I put my dogs on their leads and walked them out of the house into the unlit rural landscape I called home. Maybe I could have taken the car, but I chose to walk. I wanted to make sure my right leg would work, and I needed the time between here and Liza's house to think about what had just happened.
Did I kill him?
The question repeated in my head until I wanted to smash it against the cracked road. Now and then, I tripped on a pothole. Dark as the world around me appeared, the stars in the nighttime sky at least helped me track where I was headed.
I smelled soil. I guess it rained earlier while I was asleep. My dogs didn't tug on my arm; all were trained pretty well by my dad and me. They didn't seem to pick up the scent of any critters either, which made me a little nervous since that could mean we'd faced yet another rodent extinction. Some private citizens made an effort to keep UV lights up around their yards so the grass would keep growing. The bushes and trees wouldn't all die—some people tended to vegetable gardens or kept fruit trees and blueberry or blackberry bushes alive on their property—but that wasn't enough to feed most of the animals in the countryside, let alone the whole planet. All life decreased in numbers, from the smallest animal to the largest. The largest, like blue whales, went first to go.
I saw some UV lights at a distant farm. When I passed it, I looked through the farmhouse' large windows and saw a family with grandparents, middle-aged adults, teens, and babies at a dining room table, eating in the light.
They seemed to be smiling. I thought I saw happiness in that fleeting moment before going too far ahead to see the family.
A hard rock formed in my throat; swallowing did nothing to get rid of it. My eyes stung with fresh hot tears,, and I nearly broke down on the roadside.
Did I kill my Dad?
Something sick inside of me ... melted into his hand from mine. Whatever evil that made eyeballs appear on my leg seemed to be gone. For now, anyway. In the dream castle, the red body with one glowing eye, that figure I met shocked me awake. What was it, though?
I don't know of any religion that features a cyclops like the one I encountered or an armored buglike being that taunts its victims in their sleep. I wondered what Samira thought of them. I didn't know if Muslims believed in demons, and I figured I ought to ask her the next time I was able. Did Liza believe in God these days? If yes, what would she make of this? The tall Black man Leo probably believed in some form of an afterlife, or good versus evil. Maybe Nadine did too?
And the missing body ... Who was he?
My dogs barked when a car with no lights drove down from the top of the hill we were climbing up. We got out of the way, and the car kept going until it disappeared far behind us.
How unusual, a car driving without any headlights. And in this darkness that was awfully risky.
A couple of hours passed. We had to make a few stops along the way to drink water from relatively fresh streams or greet farmworkers who offered me and my dogs fresh blueberries from the community harvests. These were all smaller harvests that weren't as magnificent as the Bloomfield Harvest Festival Liza mentioned that night.
But sooner than later, I saw Liza's house. I arrived at her front door at the same time the Cloud drifted back overhead, replacing the glittering soft white light of the night with empty day.
Liza's home had its outdoor lights turned on, illuminated the bushes kept alive by strings of UV lights aglow along their twigs. They had a few tomato plants growing, and while I stood on a brick walkway that led straight to the green-painted wooden entrance, I could see the soil the plants were growing in; soggy and white-speckled with fertilizing pellets.
I knocked on the door and heard a small commotion from the inside. Kids voices. Was Liza still in bed, or had she also woken up? Maybe she'd already walked to work.
Her mother opened the door. I raised my eyebrows involuntarily, surprised by the messiness of her dirty blonde hair and the stains on her shirt. Mrs. Howe still went about in title as if her husband hadn't died, so I said, "Hi, Mrs. Howe," and she narrowed her blue eyes at me before a slight glimmer entered them.
"Why, if it isn't Kevin!"
Her arms twitched up a bit as if she might reach out and hug me, but she saw my dogs and opted to stay inside. She wasn't afraid of dogs, from what I could remember, just a bit scared of stepping on their toes. As a single mother of six, she must have felt exhausted twenty-four hours a day. On that matter alone, I could respect her.
"Come in, come in, bring your dogs."
"Oh, thank you." I stepped inside. She had the lanterns lit on every side table. I passed one on my way into the dining room, following Mrs. Howe, and I saw a worn leather wallet beside a silver-framed photo of Liza's deceased father. "Mrs. Howe," I asked, "has Liza gotten up yet?"
"She got up a while ago and left the house in a rush." Mrs. Howe said this with a heavy sigh and a self-pitying shake of her head. "She said she was going to work, but she wasn't supposed to work until later today. Why? Did you want to see her?"
I heard Liza's siblings upstairs, and her two brothers we on the first floor, around the corner in another room with a piano in it.
"I did want to see her," I replied, feeling a weight on my chest. "Something wild happened to me and I thought I should tell her what it was."
"You can tell me and I'll share it with her later when she's come back."
Not knowing what to do now that my dad was gone, I figured I could share the news about his death—at most. Nothing about the marks on my leg or the incident with the tangible eyeballs sprouting from my flesh. Maybe Mrs. Howe would be able to provide me with advice? Any would do. There's just something so lonesome about living in shadows. It's a kind of isolation you can taste and smell.
At Liza's house, I could smell pie baking in their oven. A smell of family. And now that I was seemingly out of family to turn to, apple cinnamon sweetness smelled to me like hope.