Obsidian
by J. Alexander Greenwood
Obsidian.
That was the word. Obsidian. He had read it somewhere. Not ebony, not onyx.
Definitely obsidian. A sharp blackness.
Somehow in his terror Addison thought of that word.
He sat in his leather armchair; the room almost pitch-black save the dull light of the moon. The lamp, on a timer, had switched off. His reading glasses had slipped from his face and jabbed him in a dozing fit, startling him awake.
Adjusting to the darkness, his eyes widened like a ripple in a pond. Just as he was summoning the energy to rise and go to bed he saw the shape in the window. He looked away, then back. There was no denying it. Outlined in his living room window by a halo of moonlight was a silhouette of what looked to be a small man with a round head. It moved slowly, deliberately to the left, then the right. When it moved right it caught the moonlight. Two massive orbs twinkled, like eyes.
Obsidian eyes.
The round head turned back to the window and stared into his living room, hell, into him. He felt all the hairs on his arms stand up. Though shrouded in darkness, he still felt the shiny black holes focused on him. He started, as if a spider had crawled across his open palm. Surely it saw him.
Don't move you damn fool. There was a chance that whatever the hell the thing was it did not see him. Its bizarre mineraloid orbs may not observe his slumped form in the beat-up leather chair, a Gore Vidal novel clamped between his knees where it had fallen in his sleep.
He clenched his teeth as a bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. The shape did not move. Addison sat still.
Night terrors. Yes, night terrors, he thought. Pavor nocturnus. He would regain control of his body when he awoke fully and the shape at his window would be gone.
He squeezed his eyes shut and counted to three.
One. It's not really there.
Two. I had a rough week. This is just a manifestation of stress.
Three. It could have been that pork chop on the Hibachi.
His eyes opened, and the shape was gone.
Addison raised his hand to test his lucidity. It rose above the arm of the chair a few centimeters. He blinked, his eyes accustomed to the darkness of the cabin's living room. He saw nothing, just a faint moonbeam unblocked by a shape in the window. He removed the novel from between his knees, placing it gently on the chair's wide arm.
He felt a breeze from the fireplace, the faint ashy smell of last night's blaze in his nostrils. He needed to close that flue, as snow was predicted for tonight and the cabin was already drafty enough, especially when there was no fire.
Addison stood, his joints clicking. He stretched and rolled his head, producing more clicking sounds. Exhaling, he reached for the light switch. He turned it, but it failed to come to life.
The timer. Damned timer needs to be unplugged first.
Addison reached for the large box of long fireplace matches on the mantle, took one out and lit it.
His eyes contracted painfully as the match flared. As he wheeled to find the lamp timer he heard a loud crash outside the cabin, apparently from the wraparound porch.
He dropped the match. It extinguished on the hook rug.
Darkness enveloped him again as his eyes adjusted and looked back to the window. There in the moonlight was the unmistakable obsidian gaze of the shape.
This time, however, it had a companion.
***
Addison made a split second decision to menace the bizarre voyeurs at his window away with a show of brute force.
The fireplace poker was cold and heavy in his hand. He raised it level with his face, as to show the shapes that he meant business. The shapes did not move. He stood there, transfixed, the poker getting heavier.
A yell strangled in his throat, as if he meant to scare away an alley cat and lost all enthusiasm. He couldn't force the sound out.
Instead he smashed the poker against the fireplace screen. It caved in, crashing with a somewhat satisfying substitute for a scream.
The shapes held their ground.
The moon climbed higher overhead, and the two pair of obsidian orbs were trained on him, even in the darkness. Oh yes, they could see him just fine in the dark; built-in night vision for these chaps. He felt another bead of sweat track down his temple. What did they want? What the hell are they?
Swallowing hard, his Adam's apple danced in his throat. Addison took a moment to inventory his situation. He is alone in his cabin in the woods, nine miles from the nearest town, about twelve miles from the nearest sheriff's station. He is at least an hour from his loft in the city.
The cabin had two locked doors, one in the back, just off the kitchen, and the one near the window occupied by the shapes. There were seven large windows. About seven hundred square feet, the cabin was all logs, mortar, stone floors and a fireplace. Just one bedroom, one bathroom, a living room, a kitchen and a small root cellar.
He thought of making a break for the root cellar. But what good would that do? He would be trapped. All that was in there was a few boxes of dry cereal, cans of soup and bored spiders. This cabin was a simple escape from his daily life in the city, not a fortress. There was no safe room. The cabin was solitude, a refuge from interaction with people.
People.
Addison didn't much like people. It probably started when he was a kid. His Dad had died in a car accident the night before Halloween-drunk driver plowed into him. He never knew what hit him. Then his mother married a guy who believed kids were to be seen, not heard. Or really to rarely even be seen. In his aversion to setting off his stepfather, Addison developed a nearly arresting aversion to people in general. He preferred his people in the pages of books.
To most, Addison seemed an affable sort. A top earner at the P.R. firm, he skillfully created the impression of a man who thrived on contact with others.
Actually, inside him revulsion roiled. It was as if he had a limit to the amount of bearable contact with other people. Once he reached that limit, it was almost physically and certainly psychically painful to be in the presence of others. He could tolerate just so much chitchat and small talk; and after a while it all seemed like small talk. The cabin allowed no small talk.
A certain Mr. Balaban at the firm brought out the revulsion regularly. Balaban was a senior vice president of the firm, a man very full of himself. A favorite pastime included rewriting Addison's ad copy, press releases or speeches. As a senior vice president that was his prerogative, but it was Balaban's peculiar mania about reading each change aloud--as if he were a tutor and Addison his student-- that was most odd and unbearable.
Balaban wore a pencil-thin mustache and suits-no matter what color-with matching shoes. An aqua-colored suit meant aqua-colored shoes, burgundy suit: burgundy shoes. Addison had time to focus on these details as Balaban proudly read his "corrected" passages in Addison's work, as if he sought not Addison's understanding about why the changes were made, but a tacit recognition of Balaban's "superiority."
Once Balaban was reassured of his station above Addison, the sessions usually devolved into chitchat about others in the office; the sex life of the lesbian in marketing, the guy from graphics banging an intern in the mailroom; a named partner's secret drinking; all things Addison could not have cared less about.
Balaban's eyes would gleam as he dished the dirt. Addison's gaze would fall on the mustache, his replies to Balaban's remarks just as thin. Like a sniper waiting to take his shot, Addison would wait for a gap in Balaban's queer speechifying and gossip to make an excuse and get the hell out of the office. He would even fake stomach cramps to escape the loud suits, matching shoes, creepy mustache and lurid, banal conversation.
Addison felt palpable relief just getting away from the man. He would often leave the office building to sit on a park bench and breathe deeply for an hour, as if that would empty his overflowing supply of small talk. Agonizingly, Balaban was just one of many who triggered this response in Addison.
L'enfer, c'est les autres. Hell is other people, Sartre said.
Ironic, Addison thought: Sartre said that in No Exit.
Addison's refuge now his prison; he remained where he stood, a sweating statue by the cold fireplace.
I have no phone, only a cellular that gets no reception here. I have no weapons beyond my kitchen knives. Not a fan of guns, he was more of a hiker than a hunter.
The shapes stayed put, as did Addison.
The bizarre, silent standoff continued for what seemed hours, though it was only about three minutes before Addison acted, as if by instinct. He dove from his position beside the stone fireplace into the beat-up leather couch a few feet from the chair in which he had previously slept.
Peering from behind the arm of the couch, he saw that the shapes had vanished from their perch in front of the window. Shit.
He blinked a couple of times, breathing shallowly. He heard curious scraping sounds from the wooden planks of the porch, as if something was walking and dragging its feet. Addison wanted to call to them, to threaten, to warn that he was armed and dangerous.
Fear was winning, however. As he did when he was a child frightened by scary movies or his surly stepdad, he flattened his body into the couch, willing himself to merge with the cushions.
A moment into this infantile reaction, his rational mind took over. He had to act. The luminous dial of his wristwatch showed one a.m. There were at least five more hours until daylight. Something or some things were on his porch, peering in his window and refusing to leave.
He cursed silently. Why does it always have to be this way? Isn't anything ever easy? All I wanted was some peace and quiet and time to myself, he whined internally.
He heard terracotta shatter and scatter-the shapes had knocked over the flowerpot his sons had painted for him at summer camp. They had painted one pot for him and one for their mother, hers back in the city and his in a million pieces on his porch. A shape moved quickly past the window.
By God that's enough.
Gripping the fireplace poker, he rose to his knees on the couch and coaxed a deep voice from his throat.
"I don't know who you are or what you want, but I've called the sheriff and I have a...big...gun," his throat moved, rasping now. "If you know what's good for you, you'll get the hell out of here."
He lay back down on the couch, peering over the arm to the window. The sounds stopped. All was silent but the crickets outside.
Addison's heart raged against his ribcage; the nausea of fear overtook the adrenaline that raced through his body. Over the sound of his cardiac muscle came a slight creak of a porch floorboard.
In the moonlight he made out the doorknob of the cabin door. It turned.
***
Last week’s visit with his sons had been difficult. He had picked up the boys from his ex-wife and took them to a movie. The divorce had not been terribly acrimonious, and Addison didn’t hate his ex-wife; he didn’t like her much, though. Nor did he care for the vinyl siding company owner she had married last year.
His ex and her new husband were living with his sons in a vinyl-coated cocoon in the suburbs. They could have that shiny facade; he sniffed to himself as he buckled the boys in the backseat.
Jack is eight and Bobby ten. They are smart boys who look like their mother: dark blond hair on round heads, long legs and big brown eyes.
Jack had a smart mouth, which had flourished while living under the roof of the vinyl guy. Though Addison did not see the boys every week, he noted that Jack’s personality and behavior had recently veered into petulance and talking back.
Bobby’s demeanor tended to quiet, introspective and respectful. He would often quietly chide his little misbehaving brother. Bobby always seemed to be at work cleaning up after Jack.
Sitting in the Disney movie du jour, chomping on Whoppers and drinking sodas, Addison saw their faces in the glare from the movie screen. The little boys’ eyes sparkled, all dark and alive and enthralled as they absorbed the animated spectacle on screen.
“Dad, I need to pee,” Bobby said.
Without a word, he took Bobby’s hand and nudged Jack.
Jack shrugged him off, still staring ahead.
“Jack,” Addison whispered. “Come on, we need to go potty.”
“I’ll miss the movie,” he said, his eyes pasted to the screen.
Measured, serious tones, delivered in a whisper: “Jack, come with us now.”
Jack sighed peevishly and dragged his feet loudly behind Addison and Bobby to the restroom.
After Bobby urinated and Jack pulled ten or fifteen paper towels from the dispenser and threw them in wads on the floor, they hurried back to the auditorium and slipped back into their seats.
Jack ignored the rest of the movie, claiming he “missed too much” while they were in the bathroom. He instead spent his time trying to distract his brother by kicking him in the ankles and throwing Whoppers at the screen.
Worn down from trying to discipline his son, Addison finished Jack’s soda and closed his eyes until the movie ended.
After a quiet, rushed snack at McDonald’s, Addison dropped the boys back off at the house of vinyl. He unbuckled the boys from their seats. Jack did not hug him, instead he ran to their mother at the house’s front door.
Bobby looked at his shoes. “Thanks Dad. I’m sorry we weren’t good today.”
Addison felt something hard in his throat. “Hey pal, you were just fine. Jack was…well, Jack was just being Jack.”
“A pain in the butt?” Bobby said. His eyes squinted a little as he looked up at his father.
Addison squatted down to Bobby’s level, looking into his dark brown eyes. “Well, he was just being eight years old. He’s not as mature as you are yet.”
Bobby smirked a little. “I miss you Dad.”
Addison cleared his throat. “Me too, pal. Me too.” He gave the boy a cursory hug, then patted his bottom and pointed him to the door. Jack hugged his mother’s leg. She held her arms out, beckoning to Bobby.
“Bye,” Bobby said.
“Bye son,” Addison said.
Bobby walked a few feet, and then stopped beside an iron birdbath aside the walk. He turned back to Addison. “Dad?” his eyes were filled with tears.
“What’s up son? I’ll be back soon.”
“Dad, I don’t like Gary,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “He’s not nice to Jack and me.”
This again. Addison thought there was something “off” about Gary, something unkind, even in his smile. But he had attributed it mostly to projection of his own experiences with a stepfather and the fact that Gary had married his ex-wife. He had also seen the occasional odd bruises on Bobby and Jack, but Marilyn said it was “just little boy bruises” and that Gary was a good stepfather. Yeah, a good stepfather who polishes off a case of Schlitz every night. Addison saw the dozens of crushed beer cans in the recycle bin outside just about every time he picked the boys up.
“Son, what do you mean by that?” Addison said, looking past Bobby at Marilyn, who waited for Bobby at the door.
“Just that he yells and stuff,” Bobby said.
Addison stood, scooped Bobby in his arms and walked him to the door.
“Marilyn,” he said.
She nodded, reaching for Bobby.
Addison stepped back a bit, just out of reach. “Is everything okay? Bobby seems upset by Gary, and if…”
“Not again,” she said through clenched teeth. “Everything is fine. Just stop looking for reasons to stir things up, okay?”
Addison put Bobby down. “Son, take Jack inside, will you? I’ll talk to you later.”
Bobby did as he was told. Jack waved and followed his brother.
“I’m just asking if there’s anything wrong,” he said.
“No, it’s fine. Gary just yelled at Bobby when he didn’t clean his room, that’s all.”
“That’s strange,” Addison said, his ears reddening in anger. “Putting aside that he’s yelling… at… my… son,” he paused a moment between each word, pointing his finger at the house as if its vinyl façade were a stand-in for Gary. “It’s odd that Bobby hasn’t cleaned his room, considering we call Bobby the neat freak. It’s Jack who’s the messy one.”
She rolled her eyes, not harshly, but wearily. “People change. You know that all too well.”
“Look, if there’s something going on, I want to help. I’m not trying to meddle in your marriage. I just want to make sure the boys are okay,” he said.
“Like you care? I mean really, how often do you see them?” She crossed her arms. “Once a month? How often do you call?”
Addison knew he was distant. He knew it was also the main reason his marriage couldn’t go the distance. “I love my sons, Marilyn. You know I’m just not good with…with people and stuff.”
“Yes we’ve been through that. But the boys hardly know you. You’re like a glorified babysitter. Even when you actually spend time with them all you do is take them to a movie. You don’t really even talk to them,” she said, her voice softening, her eyes on the steps. “You of all people should know how important it is for kids to be around their Dad.”
“Well, I don’t yell at them,” he said.
“You’re barely connected to them,” she said. “Gary may yell sometimes and get a little—well, he’s here. That’s what’s important.”
“I’ll work on it…how I am. Okay? But you can’t say they don’t know me. You can’t. I’m their father. We’re connected in a way that distance—any kind of distance or my hang-ups—can’t break.”
“Whatever,” she said. “Are we through? Because I have to start dinner before Gary gets here.”
“Will he yell if you don’t have dinner ready on time?”
Marilyn turned, walked inside and slammed the door in his face. Addison winced and walked back to his car—he resisted the urge to kick over the stupid birdbath. He opened the car door. When he turned to get in, he looked up and saw his sons waving at him from the second floor window.
He put up his hand and forced a smile to form on his angry face.
Bobby put his arm around Jack, their hands pressed to the glass.
A block away, Addison stopped at a gas station. A tear tracked down his face as his hands gripped the steering wheel like a life preserver. He gulped several deep breaths.
He put the car in gear and drove home and didn’t think of his sons or his ex-wife the rest of the day. He merely sat in his loft apartment and dreaded contact with the many people that would make up his Monday.
***
All he ever wanted from the cabin was some time alone. All he wanted was to be in his bubble, isolated from people, from their faces. Addison wanted to see only the world of his choosing; he only wanted a world of himself, his books and his thoughts. The real world had problems and pettiness and people who yelled and the tears of children.
That world now intruded on his bubble. The cabin’s doorknob turned and a shaft of moonlight streamed from the window and made a spotlight just in front of the doorway.
“Stay out, I’ve got a gun in here!” He shouted as he raised himself off the couch, wielding the fireplace poker like a sword.
The door unlatched and opened with a creak, slowly revealing two shapes. One shape was about three feet tall, the other six inches or so taller. Their round heads and obsidian eyes stared straight at him. Addison now understood the meaning of blind terror.
But the shapes did nothing. Addison stood there, breathing shallowly, his heart rattling, his throat dry and his eyes straining to see.
“What do you…what do you want?” he rasped.
Addison raised the poker defensively as the taller shape took a step forward into the light of the moonbeam. On closer inspection he could see that its obsidian eyes were dark brown.
“Dad?” Bobby said. “Dad?” It was his son Bobby, his nose bleeding.
The shape behind Bobby stepped forward. It was Jack. He fell on his back into the moonbeam, his eyes dark with bruises.
“Good God! Bobby, Jack!” Addison said, dropping the poker and going to them. It took only two seconds to cross the room, but by the time he reached the moonbeam the shapes—his sons—were gone.
***
Breaking every speed law along the way, it took Addison an hour to drive to Marilyn’s house. Outside the vinyl-sided home he saw lights on in nearly every room. Stopping at the door, he listened and heard shouts and cries. Marilyn, Gary, Bobby and Jack, voices all raised in fear or anger.
Addison turned the doorknob. Locked.
He scrabbled between the hedges and the large living room bay window and peered in. Addison now the shape in the window, he witnessed Gary slapping Marilyn, who stood between the man and the boys. A summer camp flowerpot lay in pieces at their feet.
Bobby’s nose was bleeding; Jack’s eyes were black.
His own eyes obsidian with fury, Addison picked up the heavy iron birdbath from the lawn and heaved it through the picture window. The double-paned glass shattered. Addison crawled through, cutting his shins and hands on the shards.
“What the?” Gary said, slurring his words.
“Dad!” Bobby said, his eyes wide.
Addison got to his feet. Without thinking, he pounded Gary’s face with his fists. He didn’t stop until Gary lay on the floor, his face a bloody mass of hamburger and Addison’s fists numb.
***
At the hospital, Jack and Bobby lie on the same bed, sleeping under a blanket behind a curtain. Marilyn had a gash on the back of her head stitched by a young resident. Gary’s facial injuries were treated as he lie handcuffed to a bed in the security ward.
Addison’s throbbing hands were wrapped in gauze, an icepack on each.
“How did you know there was something going on? I mean,” the police officer said, looking down at his notebook. “You were an hour away and out of phone contact.”
Addison looked at his bandaged hands and sighed heavily. For once in his life he wanted to speak--to talk to someone, but he didn’t know what to say.
“It’s hard to explain,” he said, looking at the police officer “It was just something I saw in his eyes.”
***
From the author...
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