The Heart of Gaia/She can hear him screaming in the room next door.

by Phil Brucato

She can hear him screaming in the room next door.

It’s the forth time Ryan has awakened this way in the last week, and it’s not a new experience. In the years since Sean walked out the door, Ryan has had nightmares of uncompromised ferocity. And they seem to be getting worse all the time.

Clarissa lights a cigarette and waits till the screams die down into sobs, then into heavy breathing. It kills her to sit around while her son’s in pain, but she doesn’t want to embarrass him again. He’s a young man now, after all, and young men have their pride. No teenager wants Mummy walking in when he’s in tears. Mother Mary, what a mess. She shakes her head as the smoke curls up from the ember. Sean’s made such a cock-up of that boy.

He’s a good kid, she reassures herself. Deep down, I know he is. But he hasn’t been acting the part. Truth be told, he’s been a little prick, a brawling, sullen layabout with a head full of bad music and nightmares. It’s be expected, Clarissa thinks, but when is he going to grow up? When is he going to put the past behind him?

It’s not like there haven’t been counselors — he’s seen nearly a dozen. Or drugs — there’ve been experiments with Prozac, Lithium, Thorazine, even something too new to have a reputation. (Clarissa doesn’t want to think about that one; the doctor seemed almost pleased when it turned Ryan into a near-vegetable.) Claire even moved the boy back home to England, hoping the change would do him good. Too wild, the States, or so she thought. But it didn’t make a damned bit of difference. In fact, it seems to have made him worse.

He’s on suspension again this week. Another fight, another boy sent to the doctor… for littering, or some such. It’s the third time this year, and if it happens again Ryan will have to be boarded off.

Not like Claire can afford that, but what can you do? A child is responsibly, she always believed. No matter what they might think in the States, you don’t just dump a kid when things go sour.

Ryan quiets in the next room, and Clarissa pulls on her robe and musses her hair. It won’t do to look like she’s been up awhile. She grinds the cigarette out in the ashtray (full— must empty that tomorrow, she reflects), and assumes her just-woke-up voice: "Ryan? Are you all right?"

In the darkness, Ryan can smell the cigarette and the sleepy scent of Mother long before she speaks the words. Dammit! He needs her again, but he doesn’t want to see her. It sucks, this wake-up-every-night-screaming-like-a-faggot thing. He hates it, but can’t help it. If you saw the shit that’s in his head, you’d scream, too.

Sometimes he looks into Malfeas, sees the stinking pools of sewage and the lost souls bobbing like little bits of shit. Sometimes he sees a spiral, a harsh labyrinth filled with revelations he doesn’t want to think about. And sometimes, he’s being tossed in a pit, or locked up below ground in a cell too small to stand in. Every time, he knows, it’s forever. The voice in his head tells him that.

Oh, we are freakin’ crackers, aren’t we? he thinks. Voices in the head and the whole damn thing.

Then there are times when he feels like some kind of animal — a big one! — running around through the streets all naked and shit, biting dripping chunks of… ew… out of tentacled nasties.

Once in a while, he sees a dancing monster, some sorta wolf-thing with a build like Stone Cold Steve Austin and a head like a nightmare. (Doh! It is a nightmare, dumbass, he thinks.) There’s a pile of dolls piled up around the thing’s feet, and he’s chewing on ‘em like a fatass. Only they aren’t dolls, and sometimes they shriek when he bites down….

Or there’s the babe with wings, laughing and twisting… holy shit, is that skin?… off the poor dude who hangs screaming from her ceiling in chains….

Or the Catholic fundie in his weird robes, ordering these Men in Black types to… oh, man, I really didn’t wanna see that!

Or the drowning chick in the pond, swimming down, down, down, then getting tangled in the branches of a sunken tree and thrashing around, screaming out her last breath into a silent, watery hell….

Then there’s Dad, looking nastier than ever, all scragged out and drunk off his ass, standing in some devil-star with a red book in his hands and screaming all kinds of eerie bullshit. Outside the star, there’s a hurricane tearing the room to pieces, scattering books and papers everywhere. Dad’s hair is blowing wild, and his eyes look all crazy and fried.

What’s that all about?

The worst ones are the ones where he wakes up tasting blood. First time out, he figured he’d just bitten his lip or something. But the taste seemed too fresh, and there was too much of it to have come from a cut on his lip or tongue. It tasted big, all salty and meaty and just a bit dead, and it always followed those "I’m-running-around-biting-shit" dreams. Great, he thinks as he catches his breath. I’m a fucking American Werewolf in London. If it wasn’t for the taste of blood, he might get into those dreams — they’re pretty cool sometimes, and ILM couldn’t match the effects.

The problem is the blood. He likes the taste too much. And that’s no special effect.

"Ryan?" Mom’s up now, her soft feet creaking on the wooden floor. She raps gently on the hollow door, and Ryan hears her thumbnail tap the wood beneath her fingers. Smoky breath hangs on the other side of that door, and Mom’s robe smells like it hasn’t been washed in weeks. She’s worried. She cares. Better let her come in. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

"Hey, Mom," he whispers, and as the hinges squeak open, he’s glad he let her in.

The night’s too scary to handle alone.

Not that he’d ever admit that, of course.

There’s too much of his father in him.

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