Art by Kit Carter
He pressed his left temple to her left temple and the nose of the gun to his right temple. Her eyes closed, her breath was even and her heart slow, but his was rapid and shallow. He pulled the trigger.
The Thin Man watched the window shatter and the volcano of gore erupt. He held the hand of a little girl with short, cherry hair. Billy, her stuffed green bunny, hung limply from her other hand. There were no tears, but the gunshot rang in her ears leaving the world muffled and distant.
“Say goodbye to mummy.” The Thin Man’s voice was faint and jagged.
She did not speak.
They turned and walked away from the house.
“Will I see Mummy and Daddy again?” She clutched Billy tight.
The Thin Man stopped and squatted down before her flooded eyes in which he saw his own reflection. He picked her up and carried her away, her eyes watching the house grow farther and farther away, one step at a time.
#
She watched him for months, barely breathing, while he prowled through the house, all sinew and bone. Every rib pierced through, sharp hips and shoulder blades like wings. The skin of his head stretched so tight it threatened to rip leaving a skull like chrome. He walked shirtless and shoeless, each step soundless, leaving no footprints. Hands like talons that he rubbed over his baldness, tapped on the walls, and tugged out souls.
“What would you like for breakfast, my dear?” The words pierced her ears and danced up her spine.
“Um,” she dropped her eyes to the table then back to his sunken eyes, “eggs.”
He nodded and turned to the refrigerator where he collected eggs, an onion, peppers, and cheese. Washing and chopping, whisking and combining with claws of ivory, he tossed it all on a pan and scrambled it together. He hunched over and his vertebrae rose from his skin like the spine of a dragon, jagged and conspicuous. His movements were silent, only the occasional touch of metal spatula to metal pan chimed through the sizzle. His neck craned and his head leaned over his shoulder, snakelike. “Would you like some toast?”
She nodded her head once. The smells collided in her nostrils, and she became hungry.
Slowly, his head returned to its bowed position over the food. He popped in the toast and grabbed a plate, a glass, and a jug of orange juice. The plate was filled with eggs on toast and placed in front of her with a glass of orange juice.
“Thank you.”
The Thin Man nodded and handed her a knife and fork. She had never seen him eat and was not surprised by his skeletal figure, but she wondered how he survived. Using only her fork, she cut into the eggs and ate. “These are really good.” She meant it, like she always did. The peppers added spice and flavor, the cheese cooled her mouth and calmed her taste buds, and the eggs filled her up.
He wiped his hands on his pants and nodded and sat across from her. “Cut with your knife.”
She tried to manage the movements of knife and fork. “I can do it with my fork.”
He came behind her, put the knife in her right hand, the fork in her left, and moved her hands for her. “Like this.” His hands were delicate and soft, not at all like the claws she envisioned. They stabbed with the fork through the egg and bread, and cut behind it with the knife, freeing a bitesize bit. She ate it. His head came into view, his body wrapped around behind her, and he nodded, smiling with his dark eyes. He returned to his seat and watched her eat.
#
The house was wood with one floor containing five rooms, a kitchen, two bedrooms, a sitting room, and his always locked room. She wandered through the woods that surrounded the house with her green bunny, playing tag with the trees, mimicking the birds, and lying in the grass watching the clouds float by and teaching the bunny what they were made of. The piano mingled with the chirping of the robins and blue jays, the rustling of squirrels, and the cascade of crickets. He played slow melodic songs, minimal in movement, and repetitive in nature that lasted for hours. Her time passed in eighth and sixteenth notes, punctuated by the hours-long breaks he would take to wander the woods with her, the bunny always in hand. He gave her the names and songs of birds, taught her to climb trees and speak to squirrels. He spoke sparingly, barely a handful of words a day passed between them; their life contained in their stretch of forest like a bubble forgotten by the world where nature flourished. Deer roamed often and they did not fear the Thin Man, nor could they hear him move. She feared their size at first, but he brought one to her and showed their gentleness. He wandered with them through the woods and sat whispering with squirrels. An endless summer, the sun always shined, and the grass was always green, the flowers always in bloom. By day, he taught her the notes of the keys and the letters of words. They farmed and tended the chickens. When he was away, she taught her bunny all that she learned. At night, he told her stories of princesses and goblins, dragons, and knights, stories of a beauty and a beast, of children lost in the woods and trapped in a house of gingerbread. She studied him in the moonlight, the shadows heavy from the many contours of his body. His eyes abyssed and his silhouette disappeared. He was there, but she could see through him. She touched his hand to make sure he was real and he held on until she slept.
“Sleep well, my dear.”
He then retreated to the locked room.
#
They stood outside of a large house. The top floor was lit, but the bottom lay dark. His hand was hot on hers and she clutched her green bunny tightly to her chest.
“Wait here, my dear.”
“Where are we?”
He dropped to one knee, patted her on the head with a smile, his ivory squared teeth glimmered, and he walked toward the house wearing the charcoal pants he always wore. The door opened before him and closed behind. She looked all around her at the trees that surrounded the house and the cul-de-sac twenty feet back. The driveway was a backwards “h” allowing for many cars. She counted the windows viewable from the front, which numbered ten. A car drove by like a wisp, the sound elliptical in magnitude, which was swallowed once again by the hum of streetlights. The birds did not sing here, and the animals were aloof. It unsettled her, and she spoke to her bunny, “It’s okay, Billy. He’ll be back soon.” She sat on the steps in front of the house facing the street and the lonely light that washed the gate with color.
A gunshot fired and she jumped to her feet, hugging Billy the Bunny. It was like the world spun out, toppled off balance. The lights flicked off in the house and she backed away, looking all round her. It returned then, an action she had no words for, something years old, before the trees and songs. Only Billy remembered that far back and she looked into his doll eyes, which were touched by a single yellow spot of light. The door opened and the Thin Man walked towards her.
He reached one hand for her to take. She looked from the hand to Billy and back to the hand. For once, Billy was silent and her heart raced faster.
“What is the matter, my dear?”
She took his hand and they walked from the house down the street and into the woods.
#
She knocked on the locked door, clutching Billy. The door opened quickly, but it was too dark in the house to see.
“What is it, my dear?”
“I had a bad dream.” Her throat ached, and her voice filled with tears.
He squatted and opened his arms for embrace. She hugged him tightly, clinging to him with Billy hanging over his back. Picking her up, he brought her back to her bed, but she did not let go, so they both lied down. “Tell me about your dream.”
Her face was so close to him that she could smell him for the first time. It was faint, but he smelled like earth and fire, but the fire was far away, smoldering. “There was a man and a woman. Billy said they were Mummy and Daddy. We were swimming, but then a big black bird came and it swooped down really fast and they couldn’t get away and it was so big that I couldn’t see the sun anymore and it stole them right out of the water and I screamed for them as loud as I could but they couldn’t get away from the big bird and I wanted to go with them but the bird wouldn’t come back. It just left me alone in the water and I cried and then I woke up.”
“There are no black birds here, my dear.”
“I wish I could be with my parents.”
“You’d be dead.”
“I know.”
“Do you want to die?”
Her forehead knit. “I want to be with Mummy and Daddy.”
“You will see them again one day and they will be glad.”
“Will it be long?”
“It will seem like it.”
She rolled onto her back and stretched her arms to the ceiling, holding Billy above her. “I don’t remember them so good, but Billy does. He remembers everything.”
“He’s a very smart bunny.”
She hugged Billy and closed her eyes.
“Would you like to hear a story?”
“Mhm.”
“Once there was a princess who lived in this forest. She had long red hair like fire and could talk to all the animals that lived here. The birds sang for her and the playful deer danced for her. She loved them so much that she wanted to make sure they would never suffer. Singing to the spirits of the trees and the lord of the skies, she asked that the sun would always shine and flowers would always bloom. She told them that if they didn’t make it so, she would leave the forest forever and the sun would follow her because of her pure soul. You see, she was ageless, but always like a child in curiosity and generosity. The spirits fell in love with her and all adored each note she sang, so they promised to never let the forest die, not even for a winter. The sun became tied to her and only slept when she did, but the sun sent the moon always to watch her sleep and make sure no evil befell her. The forest flourished and roses blossomed in her footsteps. She loved this place, far away from the world, but inside of it. You can still see her magic and hear her song if you listen close to the trees and the birds. That’s why I teach you their language.”
“Mhm.” Her eyes were closed and her breath evened, but she hung onto Billy with both hands.
“Sleep well, my dear.”
#
He left occasionally. Gone before she woke and back after she fell asleep, returning with clothes, books, whatever she asked for. Most of the food she ate came from the forest or the lake or their chickens. When he returned, he appeared brighter and more energetic, his songs sprightlier. She asked him what he did but never received a response. Sometimes he brought her along, leaving her to watch him enter a home and leave several minutes later with the pierce of gunshot ringing through the air. For days afterward, she hid from him. Each day without the Thin Man brought the image of her father and mother clearer, but the shadows remained long. She investigated the house and the grounds in his absence, dancing in the melody of the leaves and the wind, the birds and the squirrels. Nothing was secret to her except the windowless room behind the locked door, the only lock she knew, the only place closed to her.
As she grew older, she no longer needed him to hold her hand or read her stories till she slept. Lying awake with the moonlight through her window, she tried to recall the voice of her father, the face of her mother, but there was little to find. The Thin Man’s face blotted out the past, his voice dragged them from her. The years mounted and she aged, but The Thin Man remained unchanged. With every year, she stepped further from childhood, but his image mirrored the same one she saw so many years before.
#
A hawk hung in the air, a faint shadow figure-eighting above the earth, edging close to the noon sun. Her hair curled from the end of the dock into the water in fiery rolls. She held Billy above her, matching the movements of the hawk, trying to block it away or wait for Billy to take flight, if only they could get the timing right. The Thin Man cast his lure into the lake, whooshing through the air until it plopped thirty paces out. Flicking the head of the pole back and forth, he reeled it in slow, trying to mimic the movement of a small fish.
“You’ll fly one day, Billy boy.” She rolled over onto her stomach, her hair wrapped round her, the tip wet and dangling above the surface, and hung Billy over the water, his ears hovering just above the lake.
“You’re too old to talk to that bunny.” The Thin Man’s eyes followed the ripple of water created by his line, his voice faint and sharp as it always was, like a petal afloat in water that could cut through steel.
“I don’t have anyone else to talk to.”
“You can talk to me, my dear.”
“You never speak unless you’re teaching me.”
He nodded. “The squirrels and deer.”
She pulled Billy from the water and pulled her legs underneath her, sitting up. “They’re too suspicious, superstitious, and dumb.”
His reeling hesitated for a moment and he looked at her. Her bright green eyes were large and almond shaped. “Squirrels are smarter than humans. You criticize them unfairly, my dear. One afternoon the right squirrel will teach you all that you’ll ever need to know.”
She dropped to her back, her legs still crossed, and sighed. Her arm over her face, blocking the sun, she watched his caged back. He cast no shadow.
He returned his attention to the lake. Fishless, he recast.
“Do fish talk?”
“Not to me.”
She got up, removed her shorts and shirt and dove naked into the water. Reappearing, she spit water in an arch and pulled her hair back. Looking back at the Thin Man, his image distorted in the light like a phantom. He barely took up space and the light swallowed him. She swam further out into the lake.
“Be careful of the line.” His voice was right over her shoulder, like he whispered it to her, but she did not look back.
She pulled on his line and turned to him. He stood motionless, patient like the dock. She had never seen him hurry, never seen him panic. His movements were imperceptible, silent, and forgotten. He frightened her, even still, after ten years, like a ghost that her life revolved around. She dove into the water as deep as she could. The fish avoided her and the water became cold and murky and she could swim no deeper. Arriving back to the surface, the Thin Man was gone. Floating on her back, the hawk flew back and forth across the sky. The wind carried piano keys over the water, and the years fell away behind her eyelids.
She was tired of the endless summer and the forest. She had never seen the leaves change or the snow fall, only read of them. It rarely rained, but the growth never abated. The sun washed over her and browned her skin.
#
She knocked on the locked door, letting Billy hang from one hand. The house was dark and when he opened the door, she could not see past him. He was only a head taller than her, but he seemed smaller.
“What is it, my dear?”
“Can’t sleep.”
He stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I keep thinking about my parents.” She could not see his face, but she imagined he frowned.
“You do not want to die, do you?”
“No.” Her eyes fell to her feet, and she pulled Billy into her arms. “I just wish I could remember them.”
He nodded.
“I can’t remember their faces or voices. There’s only this place and you.” Her eyes raised to his black holes.
“I’m sorry, my dear.” He placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Will you stay with me till I fall asleep, like you used to?”
He nodded. She took his hand and they walked back to her room. She got in bed, but he sat in the chair beside it, like he did when reading to her as a child.
“Get in.” She patted the bed.
He climbed in and lay next to her. He smelled like earth and ember, the same as ten years before. She sidled up next to him and lay her head on his chest. Hard and bony, like a birdcage, but warm, a fire burned inside. She kept it there to listen to his heart, but she heard nothing. He stroked her hair and held her loose, but she gripped him tight to make him real.
“Your heart doesn’t beat.” She lifted her head and looked him in the eyes.
He said nothing.
“Do you have a heart?”
“I have all that I need here.”
She rested against his chest once more. “Why did you take me here?”
“I couldn’t leave you there.”
She closed her eyes and tried to remember that night, but all that came was the gunshot. His chest did not raise and fall with the act of breathing.
They stayed there, unmoving, enveloped by the dark amid a forest that never wilted. She ran her finger along one of his ribs, traced it to his wrist, which was like a twig in her hand, thin, but hard as stone. His hand caressed her head, running through her hair.
“I don’t even know your name. I call you Thin Man in my head or when I talk to Billy, but you’re the only person I know. You’re the only person I can see when I close my eyes, but, sometimes, you don’t even feel real. Like, if I tried, I could see through you or make you disappear, like a bad dream.” She raised her head to look at him again. “You’re my whole life.”
He did not move or speak. His eyes were blacked out in the dark like caverns. She could see nothing in them.
“I love you and I don’t even know you.”
“You’re just a child yet.”
“I know what I feel.”
“You cannot love me.”
“But I do.” She clung to him and pressed her face into his neck. “I love you.”
He separated from her, but she knew not how. She fell into her pillow and he sat on the bed beside her, his eyes out the window. She lay there, confused and spurned. Her heart raced, the air caught in her throat, and spiders crawled under her skin, up her spine.
“Did my dad own a gun?” She wavered, like she was falling through the floor.
He did not look at her. “I don’t know.”
“Why do you do it?”
“It must be done.”
“But why him? Why them?” She broke and tears flung from her face, blotting her vision.
He came from behind and held her.
Her chest heaved and her voice collapsed. “I hate you and this place.” She struggled to free herself and he let her go. “Why do you keep me here?”
He took her hand and held it. His face appeared through the darkness, his eyes closed, and his eyebrows upturned. He kissed her hand. “I’m sorry, my dear.”
She flung her arms around him and cried.
#
“Sleep well, my dear.”
“Goodnight.”
He stood for a moment longer and slipped from the room.
She waited half an hour, or what she believed to be half an hour, then crept out her window. The moon shown bright and she sighed, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. The grass was soft and slightly wet from the late sprinkle of rain. Clouds spread like fingers over the star filled sky. The trees were silent and she walked towards them, rubbing a hand on the bark of each one she passed. The squirrels were all off gathering nuts or fighting the birds for space, so they were occupied as well. She found some flint and grabbed the fallen branches she had collected and the leaves she dried. The walk back to the house weighed on her steps and she heard them, like she was empty as a cave and each step was a drop of water into a pool. Her life fell away, the twelve years she spent in the forest with the Thin Man, the languages, the lessons, the books. A prisoner ready to be freed. A child ready to start a life. A lover spurned. She was hollow, as hollow as he, with his heartless, lungless chest. If cracked open, she was sure she would find only the bones that shown so clear beneath his thin layer of flesh. Through the door, her steps were soft, the things he taught used against him. She built a pyre before the locked door with the leaves, twigs, and branches. In her room, she grabbed Billy, for there was no life without him. As quietly as possible, she struck the flint and started the fire.
She sat outside beneath the stars and the moon watching the house catch light and burn. The smoke plumed towards the stars, and she connected a line from Orion to the black smoke. The fire leapt higher and higher, a dance of orange, red, and yellow. Demons lapping at the dark, swallowing it and growing larger, consuming everything. She smiled taking in the heat of the night. The music of the forest came dissonant, the animals fleeing the area, the fire crescendoing with cracks and snaps of wood and the roar of current rushing through the blaze. Lying back, she caught sight of a shooting star and traced it with Billy.
“We’re going to have a real life now.” She hugged him and smiled, the first smile in a long time, longer than she could remember.
A roar ripped through the flames, different than the one the funeral pyre made. She sat up.
A shadow emerged from the flames. It stretched its arms wide towards the heavens and screamed, stabbing out the discordant chords of fire and nature. It stepped towards her, hazed in the heat and black as soot. Falling to its knees, it rubbed a taloned hand over its skull.
With each step, the image of the Thin Man grew fainter and fainter.
e rathke writes about books and games at radicaledward.substack.com. A finalist for the Baen Fantasy Adventure and recipient of the Diverse Worlds Grant, he is the author of Glossolalia, the lofi cyberpunk series Howl, and the space opera series The Shattered Stars. His short fiction appears in Queer Tales of Monumental Invention, Mysterion Magazine, Shoreline of Infinity, and elsewhere.