Midian Unmade (11 page)

Not that any of it mattered anymore—she wasn't going to make it back to one of her bolt-holes before the sun came out, and she was glad for it. Besides, it was nice up here, the coolness of the slate roof radiating up through her back and head as she watched the stars wink out one by one above her.

It wouldn't be long now.

 

BUTTON, BUTTON

Ernie W. Cooper

Kathryn Miller wrinkled her nose as she dug into the damp mass at her feet. The breeze was cold, colder than she had expected when she first decided to haul the overflowing laundry basket to the small yard behind the modest house. Their dryer had broken several weeks ago, and she now had to hope for the weather to cooperate whenever the piles of clothing in her or Elliot's room approached critical mass.

At the other end of the yard, Elliot crouched in the grass. The stiff breeze tousled the twelve-year-old's brownish hair as he lined up a row of twigs meticulously in the soft earth.

“… seven … eight … nine.”

He nodded slowly at the ninth stick, and then knocked the collection to the ground. Kathryn sighed as, moments later, he began to line them up once more.

“Elliot!” she called to him, softly at first, and then again.

Her son destroyed his handiwork, oblivious to her calls. She sighed and shook out one of her work skirts. As she lifted it to the line, she swore softly. The three buttons that ran down the side of the garment were missing. She ran her fingers over the little frayed areas where they had been plucked off, and then strode across the lawn to Elliot.

He plunged the seventh twig into the ground, and then her shadow made him pause. He looked up, blinking. She held the skirt out to him.

“Did you do this?”

He stared at the skirt and then gingerly reached up, running his hand across the cloth.

“One … two…”

She pulled the skirt away. “Three, yes. All three buttons are gone. Why did you take Mommy's buttons? You know she needs this skirt for work.”

Elliot's fingers slowly twitched in the air, still feeling for the third cloth nub. “Didn't,” he replied sullenly.

Kathryn threw the skirt over her shoulder and knelt down in front of her son. She held him firmly by his shoulders. “Can you give me the buttons? I can sew them back on, I won't need to buy a new skirt.”

Elliot looked away. “I don't have them.”

“Please, baby.”

“I didn't do it.”

Her grip tightened on his shoulders. “Give Mommy her buttons.”

His hands began to spasmodically reach out and snap the twigs in front of him. “Didn't.”

“Why are you lying to me?”

Elliot stopped breaking sticks. His brow furrowed, and he whispered softly, “Why don't you believe me?”

There was a heartbreaking silence. They'd had this conversation before. It wasn't always about a button, but it always ended the same way.

Kathryn chewed softly on the inside of her cheek and ran her hand slowly down the side of his face. She could feel his slight shaking. Her stomach twisted. A mother's touch should not evoke such a reaction in a child. It was all just so frustrating. Two years. Two years and no end in sight.

Her hands dropped to the ground and she tilted forward, resting her forehead against his. “Why don't you go to the park? Maybe I'll meet you there when I'm done with the laundry.”

Elliot knew he was being exiled. Rather than continue their discussion, his mother found it easier to just give up and send him away. It was happening more and more of late. Laundry would give way to dinnertime, and there would be no meeting him at the park. They would both find some peace apart from each other, their mutual accusations fading temporarily.

He brushed his lips against her forehead and turned without a word. Kathryn watched his small, hunched back retreat from the yard. She went back to the clothes basket, unaware that the buttons in question were roughly twenty feet away, under her back porch.

*   *   *

The three buttons were laid out on the cold earth in the darkness. There were two holes in each dark blue button, and they ran perfectly in a line from one to the next. Five white buttons lay in a line that ran perpendicular to the blue ones. Six black buttons ran parallel to these. They were slightly smaller than the blue ones, with four holes.

A small figure lay next to the arrangement, his black eyes watching Elliot walk away. He was the same size as Elliot, but it had been a very long time since anyone had considered Simon a boy. One long-fingered hand hovered protectively over the missing buttons. They were his now. He had taken them from the woman's room the night before. Now he lay in the cool darkness, waiting to take his night's haul back to his new—albeit temporary—home. The sun would not be kind to his pale, almost translucent skin. In the days following the fall of Midian, he had learned to travel by night. Normally, he would have been in and out of a house long before the dawn, but the boy had been up most of the night again. Simon had stood in the hallway, listening to the soft counting on the other side of the boy's door. It had been hypnotic, comforting.

He began to count, quietly running through the fourteen buttons that kept him company. He rolled the numbers slowly around in his mouth as if he were tasting them. They did not soothe him as the boy's droning had, but he still felt his eyelids grow heavy. Sleep had been a luxury since he'd lost his friends and family, his tribe, on that terrible night.

*   *   *

As fitful slumber claimed Simon, Elliot was cutting across one of the neighbors' yards. Since he knew that his mother was unlikely to join him, he could freely skip the park. There would be other children there, and he had no desire to see them. Generally, they were cruel. Best-case scenario, they were confused by his behavior. He would rather be alone than face their taunts or pointed ambivalence.

His left hand absently plucked at one of the buttons on his shirt. Kathryn had planted the seed, and even though he had not ruined her skirt, he found his way to his own buttons. His thumb played around the smooth plastic. It was solid, comforting. It was an anchor.

The town's cemetery loomed ahead, and Elliot eagerly pushed the gate open. The headstones were neat and orderly, and that pleased him. The rows of white stone glistened slightly in the sunlight as they climbed up and back over the low hillside. Elliot breathed deeply as he caressed the first stone he came to. The name was irrelevant. Instead, he felt his eyes drawn to the date of death.

Elliot knew death. His grandparents and his father had all died. One set of grandparents and his father were in this very cemetery. He vaguely recalled their funerals, but had never found his way back to them on the days he came here to play among the headstones. Or maybe he had, but was so caught up in the numbers that their names had not registered.

1947.

He smiled and raced off among the stubby monuments, searching for 1948.

*   *   *

Back under the house, Simon twitched in his sleep. The nightmare came, like it always did. He was lost in a sea of noise and confusion. There were uncertain cries of terror ringing out down the tunnels of their sanctuary. Simon's brother, Alexander, had him by the hand and was pulling him toward the surface. There was smoke, there was fire, and when they finally reached the surface, there was the Button Man.

Alexander had turned toward him. He was outwardly calm, but the organs visible beneath his pale skin betrayed his mood. They pulsed and twisted like a school of fish, or perhaps a bloom of jellyfish, bunching and breaking in agitated waves. He looked as if he were about to speak, perhaps to say something reassuring, but he retched up black bile instead. A knife tip blossomed in the center of his chest.

The multitude of black organs attempted to move away from the invasive steel, but the knife plunged in again, and Alexander fell heavily, black blood continuing to gurgle from his mouth. A figure towered above him. In the orange glow of the flames, Simon could see the glint of two buttons staring down at him. The Button Man cocked his head, listening, and then casually opened Alexander's throat before striding purposefully away. Simon watched him cut down another one of the Breed before being swallowed up by the acrid smoke.

The smoke grew thicker in the dream, the screams louder. As they reached a crescendo, his eyes snapped open under the porch. The sun was still somewhere overhead. He had probably been sleeping for mere moments.

Every time he closed his eyes, the Button Man came for him. As much as it terrified him, he was always a little disappointed, though, that it was just in his head. In the confusion after the fall, when the tribe began to scatter, he had been told that the Button Man had been killed.

Simon knew better.

The thing that had taken his brother from him was still out there. While the survivors of the fall spread out into the harsh world, Simon began to move slowly from town to town. He would avenge his brother. When others called for reunification, Simon knew that he must strike out on his own.

He needed only to find the right button.

He had been here for several weeks now. Among the pristine white headstones in the cemetery was an older mausoleum. When he had first slid inside, he had unearthed a small tunnel that led to a tunnel that cut back into the hillside. Obviously, some of his people had been there, many years ago. For now, he would use the mausoleum as a way station. There had been three other towns before this one, but something felt right about this place. It might have been the familiarity of the graveyard, but over the last week, as his collection grew, he also found himself drawn back to the same house.

The boy always seemed to be searching for something with an intensity that matched Simon's own. And his affinity for the graveyard confused Simon. Sometimes, as the sun set, he watched from the safety of his crypt as Elliot ran about the graveyard with a sense of mysterious purpose. Did he know about the Button Man?

*   *   *

In the graveyard, Elliot was looking for 1971. His quest was interrupted by the arrival of Shawn Wells. Shawn was years older than Elliot, and lived three houses away. He'd spied his neighbor entering the cemetery three days ago, and now casually looked that way whenever he was in the kitchen, on the off chance his victim had returned. And while Shawn had always been an equal-opportunity bully, the more withdrawn Elliot grew, the more Shawn seemed fascinated with Elliot's behavior. No amount of physical or verbal abuse seemed to deter the boy from his collecting or his counting. It soon became a challenge.

This time, Shawn didn't say anything. He just slouched lazily across one of the headstones and watched Elliot scurrying about the cemetery. Elliot kept glancing up nervously, and soon abandoned his search. Shawn grinned triumphantly as the smaller boy retreated through the gate.

“That's what I thought!”

*   *   *

Elliot gloomily returned home. He went to the rear of the house, but his mother had already finished and gone inside. Simon followed his trudging footsteps as he clambered up the back porch, noting that he softly counted each step. The footsteps stopped, briefly, directly above him. Simon stared straight up, breathing in, exhaling. Repeat. He started counting the breaths to himself.

Finally, the steps continued on into the house. Simon continued counting each individual breath, and sleep claimed him. The Button Man stayed away for hours.

This time in the dark dream, Simon himself felt the Button Man's blade, and it startled him awake. One hand clutched at his chest, and the things within him pushed outward against his chest, reassuringly, like the beat of a chorus of hearts.

He slowly moved out from under the porch into the night air. He reached into the pocket of his ragged pants and felt the weight of the buttons therein. He cinched the rope that held the pants up a little tighter. The button that had previously done the work had been one of the first added to his collection.

He'd never been away from the cemetery tunnel this long. It made him slightly nervous. As he prepared to slink across the yard, he glanced back to make sure the home's occupants were asleep, or at least not anywhere they could see him.

His eyes fell on a single dark button lying in the center of the porch.

Simon stopped breathing. There was no question, it had been left for him. Was it a trap? Countless years of mistrust and words of warning told him it had to be. On the heels of the nightmare, he even pondered if it could have been set by the Button Man.

Paranoia was soon replaced by a stronger sense of conviction, though. The boy's footsteps had stopped overhead. He had come back while Simon slumbered. It wasn't a trap. It was a gift.

Simon stepped carefully onto the porch. He picked up the button and put it in the pocket opposite the rest of his collection. The mystery button could not mingle, and potentially taint, the rest. Not yet. He would somehow find a way to vet the button.

One of the porch windows was half open, and another button lay on the sill. It had clearly come from the same article of clothing. It quickly joined the first button in his pocket, and he stood in front of the window. Another button lay in sight on the hardwood floor of the dining room.

Simon's lips pursed, and his pale skin blackened as the ephemeral black shapes within him rushed to his face. Without even finding it necessary to compact his frame, Simon climbed into the house and advanced on the third button. Three buttons later, he stood in front of Elliot's door. He hesitated, took a long, deep breath, and then pushed the door open.

Elliot was awake in bed, knees pulled up to his chin. Waiting. Anticipating. Simon slowly walked into the room. He could hear the woman breathing noisily down the hall, and so he gently pulled the boy's door shut behind him.

One last button sat at the end of the bed. Simon crawled onto the bed, his slight form barely making an impression. He sat cross-legged and picked the button up, rolling it between thumb and forefinger.