Chapter 17: Chapter 17 – HABITS

I scowled at the attic door.

“…What?” Esther sighed.

“When’s the last time anyone’s been up here?” I asked, not reaching up for the handle. In preparation for the upcoming family Christmas dinner, my mother had sent the two of us on the hunt for some decorations she absolutely needed. Normally I was happy to follow her orders for this sort of thing—cramming her entire side of the family into this little house and then feeding and entertaining them was no small task—but this was one job I’d rather take a pass on.

“I think I was last up there in November to get the tree,” Esther said. “Why, what’s up?”

“When you did that, did a million spiders fall out on your head?”

Esther rolled her eyes and stepped forward to pull the hatch open. “You’re such a wimp. So what if there’s a few spiders up there?”

I sidestepped as the door swung open, but there was no rain of eight-legged freaks. I could, however, see a few cobwebs dangling.

“All right, you first,” I suggested.

“Oh, my god,” Esther sighed. “I should have got Eli to do this.”

“Fine, fine, I got it,” I said, reaching up to pull down the ladder. The attic, as far as I could tell, was perpetually untouched except to store and remove Christmas ornaments.

I had been facing demons and running for my life for the last few weeks, damn it, I could go into a gross attic. A flash of memory hit me suddenly, of the giant spiders in the Underground district, the horrible dense presence of their exoskeletons on my spatial sense. And all those bubbly white eyes. I shuddered, hesitating with my hand on the ladder.

“All right, you actual baby, I’ll go up and hand the stuff down to you,” Esther said dryly. I started to object but she pushed past me and climbed up into the attic. “Hey, pass me the flashlight?”

Grateful despite myself, I handed her the flashlight and waited at the bottom of the ladder. I shook my head, trying to get rid of the horrifying imagery. Maybe it wasn’t as easy as I thought to leave all of that behind. I hoped Huang actually was doing okay without me.

“I’m looking for a white string of lights, right?” Esther’s voice carried down, muffled.

“Yep,” I replied, mustering my courage and taking the first two steps of the ladder. I could see the flashlight beam darting over boxes and bags. The musty attic smell surrounded me. “And that cardboard Nativity scene.”

“Ugh,” Ester groaned. “That thing is so tacky, I hate it.”

“Don’t let Mom hear you say that,” I said, only half-joking. Disrespecting the cardboard Nativity scene was paramount to blasphemy in this house.  

“Yeah, geez. I gotta keep my voice down,” Esther muttered. “…It’s impossible to find anything in this mess.”

I climbed up the rest of the way and popped my head into the attic. It was far less scary—and far less spidery—than my imagination had made it out to be, and just seemed very dusty.  

“Welcome,” Esther said, shining the flashlight into my face.

“Stop it,” I muttered, squinting as I clambered the rest of the way over. “Should I start on this side?”

“Go for it,” Esther said, bracing the flashlight so that it lit most of the room.

As per Santos family tradition, absolutely nothing up here was labelled, so it was going to take forever to find the specific items we needed. I sighed and pulled out the nearest box, which contained some electric fans.

“All right,” I said after we’d been rooting around for a few minutes, “I’m labelling everything up here before I go home. I’m putting all the Christmas stuff in the same place and labelling all of it.”

“You can try. You know it won’t work,” Esther said absently. “I used to say that, and then everyone gets lazy after Christmas and just shoves it up here. Ooh, I found Joseph!”

She lifted a four-foot-tall cardboard standee of St. Joseph, which looked like it might have been at home in a religious education class in the 80s—it very well may have been. He appeared to be alone.

“Well, where the hell’s the rest of it?” I demanded.

“Not here…” Esther groaned.

We started a sweep of the attic, trying not to overlook any crannies where a small cardboard manger might be hidden. I was starting to look through things I was pretty sure hadn’t been touched for as long as Esther had been alive.

“Baby pictures!” Esther suddenly exclaimed.

“Not looking for those.”

“No, seriously, come look!” I glanced back and saw that Esther was seated cross-legged in front of a box, lifting out albums and frames. “Does Mom even know this is up here?”

“I’m going to venture to say she doesn’t, or it would be up around the house,” I said, shuffling over to her. “Can we focus on getting the decorations so we can leave?”

“But look at this stuff!” she held up a small frame which showed my mother holding a baby only a few months old; it was impossible to tell if it was me or Esther.

“I don’t get people who get excited about baby pictures—especially their own.”

“No? But it’s so cool to see where you come from.” She started to flip through one of the dusty albums, full of faded Polaroids of baby faces.

“Yeah, makes you wonder what went wrong,” I said, trying to force a joking tone. She glanced up at me.

“Hey, is everything okay? You’ve been acting kind of weird.”

Even if I broke down and told her everything, she’d… well, she’d think I was insane. “No, everything’s been fine.”

“Hmm.” She placed the album back into the box. “You know I’m… still here, right? If you need to talk? If you feel like you’re going to fall off the wagon, or something. Just text me.”

“I’m not off the wagon,” I said, a little too quickly. She blinked. “All right, I’ll admit that sounded defensive—but I promise, I’m doing fine.”

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“All right, well… do you need me to keep an eye on you tonight at dinner?” She looked at me earnestly and I had to push back that familiar rise of frustration, that my own little sister felt the need to take care of me.

When I didn’t respond immediately, she kicked me in the shin. “What, has being all the way down in Toronto made you not trust me anymore?”

“No, it’s just…”

“I know, you have the emotional intelligence of a walnut,” she sighed. “I thought we already agreed not to dance around talking about feelings like it’s taboo or something.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk about feelings,” I said.

“Too damn bad for you, because you can man up and do it anyway,” Esther declared.

“…I guess you’re right,” I admitted after a while. Not seeing Esther for ages had really put me out of practice with having a real conversation. “But listen, I’m fine, okay? I’m not even worried about dinner. If there’s something wrong, it’s… not really something I can explain.”

“You could try,” Esther prompted.

God, I’m surrounded by psychologists. “I trust you with my life, okay? But this has nothing to do with alcohol or whatever. I’m just trying to figure myself out, and it’s not something I need a sounding board for, you know?”

She turned back to the book. “All right. As long as you do trust me, I’m satisfied. And you know Eli’s got your back, too.”

“I know,” I said. As I got up, I caught a glance of a cardboard wing hidden in a corner behind a stack of boxes. “Yo, I think I see an angel!”

By the time we finally dug out the rest of the Nativity scene and the lights, dinner was fast approaching and other family members were arriving. I was surprised to find myself quite calm.

I was there with my family to greet everyone coming in—and for the first time, I didn’t notice any disapproving looks or catch any catty remarks. My uncle Manuel usually made it no secret that he thought I was a delinquent, but he barely glanced at me as he came in. I received a few comments on how well I was looking and that was it.

Soon after everyone arrived, we set out dinner and crowded around a makeshift dining table, setting out the food and settling into some conversation.

It was really freaking nice.

About eight years ago, I had tried to make these sorts of events unpleasant for everyone, hating that they seemed to be faking how much they liked each other. A couple of years after that, I hadn’t gone to these gatherings at all, preferring to drink alone and blame my family for exiling me.

But I didn’t… see it in that way anymore. My family wasn’t pretending to enjoy each others’ company: I mean, sure, there were plenty of little grudges and past drama they glossed over, not in the least what a shit I’d been to most of these people in the past. But we could all come together in front of a meal for one night and find what we had in common. That felt good today.

   After dinner, I stepped out onto the back porch where we’d been keeping some bottled pop to get cold. The air was positively frigid, but I paused for a moment, looking over the icy trees, crowded suburban houses, and the clear night sky with a few stars faintly visible.

So normal.

This wasn’t right. I had been running for my life, struggling for survival just a few short days ago, and there was no way I was just safe right now.

 “This is real,” I muttered, gripping the cold railing of the deck to shock myself out of it. My heart was racing, every instinct telling me there was danger nearby. What danger? Where? It was unclear.

A wave of sweat broke out over my skin. I knew what this felt like, I was… having a panic attack. I tried to take slow, even breaths, thinking the situation through. I was at my parents’ house, safe and sound. I was out of the reach of the Grey City, there were no monsters sneaking up behind me. It was fine. I was fine. I was out­—maybe forever.

Just as my heartbeat finally started to slow down, something—some sensation, something not physical but still very real—slammed into me like a truck.

I saw a pair of burning green eyes, each the size of my skull, open up in front of me. The suburban winter shimmered like heat distortion, like a mirage in the desert that had never been real. Noise filled my ears, but there was no discernable source; it was a roar of static contained inside my head. Words crackled through the wall of sound in the familiar voice of Leviathan:

—EAVE THE—UT—CAN’T! IF—HE DIES—WE ARE ALL DEAD!

I saw flashes of scenes which imprinted themselves on my spatial sense as well as my vision. Demons. Coming from water. A shining dragon, bright blood streaming through its feathers. Danger, pain, confusion.

My knees buckled and I caught myself on the railing. Suddenly, it all stopped. The noise in my ears, the buzzing of my senses, the visions. Everything was normal again.

With shaking hands, I took my phone out of my pocket and called Huang. The phone rang once, twice, three times, then went to voicemail.

Damn it, damn it. I paced in a tight circle around the deck. Were the visions real? Could I be sure? If Huang was about to die in there… what could I even do if I went back? How would I get back?

I opened a transit schedule on my phone and found out that I could get back to the Exhibition train station in Toronto, near where I lived, in about… five and a half hours.

That would be too long, right?

I didn’t want to go back. Damn it, I really, really did not want to go back. Could anyone blame me if I didn’t? No one in their right mind would return to the Grey City willingly, not once they were able to escape. Huang had told me himself that he’d be fine… even if things had changed since then… I had no obligation to go back to help him. No one would ask that of me.

But all that rationalization meant nothing, because I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave Huang to die and go back into Christmas dinner, return to my own life, keep living it as if I hadn’t condemned someone to die. We’d shook hands, we’d agreed to have each other’s backs and work together. Just because we’d had a disagreement didn’t change that.

I let out a breath and turned back to go into the house.

A few faces looked up at me from where people were sitting on the couch. “Forget the pop?” my dad asked, chuckling.

“Uh, not cold enough yet, I’ll grab it later,” I lied and dodged past everyone, avoiding eye contact. I had to go back to Toronto, now.

I hovered outside the living room for a brief second. Esther was occupied in a game with our younger cousins, seated on the floor near the tree. My parents were on the couch engaged in a conversation, my mother almost cackling with laugher in a way I hadn’t seen for a long time.

All I had to do was tell them I’d received an urgent call. Something had come up in Toronto that needed my immediate attention. On Christmas Eve? I could hear my mother demanding already, asking for all the details, trying to figure out why it had to be me who went back.

And of course, my imagination started to run wild. They’d start to think I was lying, making stuff up to get out of the house. I was lying. I wasn’t that good at it—they’d know. I tried to come up with some plausible story as to why I had to leave right this second, but my panicky brain was coming up blank. I don’t have time for this.

I took the coward’s way out. While everyone was occupied, I grabbed my coat and took my things out of my bedroom. The living room was out of sight of the front door, so no one would see me leave.

I couldn’t let myself hesitate. I slipped out the front door and gently shut it behind me. The bitter-cold air hit my face and I pulled up the collar of my coat, setting off down the street toward the nearest bus station.

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