Damer Trusted in Stones
by Patricia Russo
Damer trusted in stones. Every time we managed to leave the house, he hunted out a few. Damer could find rocks in places you’d never expect. Best of all, he was quick. He could snatch up a stone and push it into the bottom of his pocket in less than a blink. Now, naturally, this was bad for his clothes. First the front pockets tore, and soon afterwards the back ones, so Damer was reduced to carrying everything in his hands. This made people nervous, since because he looked like he was forever aching to throw a punch. Plus Damer always had cuts on his fingers, and he kept wiping his nose on his sleeve no matter how many times Robin told him to cut it out, so people already thought bad things about him. The truth was Damer never hit anybody. The guy was as soft as spongecake. You could make him cry just by sticking your tongue out at him.
Robin trusted in uniforms. Delivery men, sanitation workers, meter readers, it made no difference. Her eyes would catch fire. That should have scared strangers a lot more than Damer’s closed fists. Robin had the kind of stare that chilled your skin. It was a wonder to me that the uniforms didn’t drop their clipboards and flee when she charged up. Each time she spotted a meter reader checking for an address or some delivery guy hoisting a package out of his truck, she’d rush over to the person and stare. Most of the time these people ignored her. Sometimes they smiled. Robin wasn’t bad-looking. She made an effort to wash, and usually her hair was decent. She was small, too, which helped. So once in a while they smiled. And then Robin went off. She’d throw back her head and suck in a huge breath and start talking very loud and very fast, with her arms going up and down, as if she were physically pumping the words out. She’d tell the stranger our names, our ages, our favorite colors, our least favorite vegetables, and our address. This only took a few seconds, and then she’d start over from the top. Usually she got through her recitation four or five times before the person backed away. Nobody could understand what she said, but Damer and I couldn’t get that fact into Robin’s head.
I trusted in the voices on the other side of the wall. At least those were real.
If I said that, Damer would counter that his stones were very real, and hold them up in front of me, whichever rocks he had chosen to break his heart with that day. Sometimes he even shook them in my face. Now, of course the stones were real. I readily conceded that. What he wanted to do with them was another matter. We’d seen the procedure carried out on TV, but it had been in a cartoon, for pity’s sake. Damer claimed that he’d read about it in a book as well, but he was the only one of us who had.
Robin dared me to dispute that the people in uniforms were real. Well, naturally they were. I wouldn’t argue about anything as silly as that. It was Robin’s belief that such people could magically change our situation which was fantastic. Even if she could somehow climb over the communication barrier – slow her speech down to human level, teach her lips to kiss the p’s and the b’s and the m’s, get a handle on intonation – I doubted that any uniformed person would ever actually show up at the door, or if one did, that he or she would do any good. “You can’t believe what you see on television, Robin,” I told her. “Life doesn’t work that way.”
The voices on the other side of the wall gave clear instructions. They offered a plan.
“'Open the door' is not a plan,” Robin objected.
Our room was very small. We had no furniture. Once there had been bunk beds, but that had been a long time ago. I recalled them faintly, like something remembered from another life. The one I slept on had a dip in the middle; I would always slide down into it over the course of the night. That was when we used to sleep at night. That was when night used to exist. Damer wasn’t with us then. He arrived some time after night drained out of the world.
Our room had two windows, but they were both closed. In the wintertime blankets were nailed over them. In the summer the blankets were exchanged for dark blue sheets. It was wintertime, and had been for several years. Fortunately we hadn’t had a lot of snow. When it snowed, things tended to disappear more quickly. The bunk beds went that way.
We slept on the floor, on top of our spare clothes. This made it easy to hear the voices, as they began a few inches above the floor. Sometimes the voices ran all the way up and down the wall, but usually they stayed close to us.
“There isn’t any door. Don’t you see that?” Robin asked. She cycled through the question fourteen or fifteen times before she ran out of breath.
“It’s right there, Robin.” I took her hand and put it on the wall, but she drew it back as soon as I let go, and shook her head. I shook my head, too. It wasn’t my fault her perceptions were limited.
Damer could see the door perfectly well. Because of that, he usually sat with his back to it, whether he was striking his stones together or trying to sew new pockets into his clothes or simply resting his head on his hands.
Our room was dark. Sometimes we were allowed to take a flashlight in with us. A little light when you were eating was comforting. But even without illumination, we knew the room so well we could move around in it with ease. The darkness bothered Damer more than it did Robin or me. I suspected that was the main reason he was so keen on the idea of fire.
“Wait,” he’d say, banging his rocks together. “When we have fire, everything will be different.”
Touching disturbed Robin the most. When we slept, she lay alone, even when it was freezing cold. When we walked, she jumped aside if an arm brushed against hers.
The airlessness was what got to me. The stifling, dead stillness. With the big door closed, our room became stuffy within minutes. Day after day of it, weeks on end, breathing shallowly, itching all over, fighting against the pounding in my ears, the pounding in my chest.
The voices on the other side of the wall were kind. They said they understood, and that they wanted to help. That was a very hopeful thing to hear after weeks and months of darkness and cold and airlessness, plus the screaming that constantly went on downstairs. And upstairs, too. When the screaming got bad, Damer usually cried. Robin would beat her fists against the floor. I’d hitch myself closer to the wall and listen hard.
You’ll have to buy the key, they said, and then they told me where.
The price is considerable, they admitted, even before they confirmed what it was.
The keyhole is here. Feel it with your fingertip, they instructed, and patiently repeated their directions until Damer, and even Robin, had followed the path down the bumpy wallpaper and over the cracks. They didn’t get angry when Damer went back to his stones, or Robin to practicing her syllables.
Naturally, I suspected them. “Why do you want to come in here? This is an awful place.”
We don’t. This isn’t that kind of a door. It only opens one way. Remember that. After you turn the key, you must push.
Their voices were soft, and quavery. Sometimes the yelling downstairs – and upstairs, too – drowned them out. Sometimes the air was so stale my head swam and even if no one was screaming I could not catch their whispered words. But their tone was always kind. I wondered why they should be kind to us, so I asked.
We hate cages.
I called them the voices on the other side of the wall, but the only thing on the other side of the wall was another wall. I knew that really they were voices on another side of the wall. But it was hard to remember to think that way.
Damer believed in fire. He was absolutely convinced that if he picked up enough rocks, if he tried enough rocks, if he struck enough rocks together, he would find the ones with the sparks inside, and from the sparks he could make a fire, and the fire would sweep the room away, and the house, and the cold, and the pain, the screaming and the itching, and the pounding, and the darkness. Fire changed. That was its nature.
Robin believed in the uniforms. She knew, absolutely knew, that if she spoke up enough, spoke out enough, threw herself at enough strangers, one of them would appear some day, cold-eyed and righteous, and bestow justice. A single one would be enough, for then the cruel would be punished, the sick healed, the worthy elevated. After all, uniformed operatives monitored and adjusted all the details of life. That was the nature of their work.
Open the door, and come out.
The voices on another side of the wall were so very patient. I tried to follow their example.
The person who sold us the key looked a little bit like Robin, if Robin had had any hair, and talked a lot like Damer, if Damer’s voice had been deeper. She admired the stones Damer had collected that afternoon. He kissed Robin on the tip of the shoulder. They made us pay with a splash of heart’s blood each.
“It’s a key,” Robin said. “That’s all you know. You can’t be sure it’ll even fit. And if it fits, you can’t be sure you’ll be able to turn it. And if you can turn it, you can’t be sure the door will open. And if the door opens—”
“These stones will work, I know it,” Damer said.
“The woman I told today understood, I know it,” said Robin.
“Look! See? Sparks!”
“She gave me her card.”
Damer knocked his stones together, and sparks flashed in the darkness. Robin scratched the back of my neck with the corner of a business card. I waited.
Damer struck sparks into a heap of clothing. Once I thought I smelled cotton smoldering. Robin listened for footsteps. Once she called her mother’s name.
On and on and on in the darkness we worked and waited, but the fire never caught and the rescuers never came.
I passed the key from one hand to the other. I rubbed it until it was so slick I was afraid I was going to drop it. I tapped it against my teeth. Then I gripped it firmly.
I stood up. “Are you ready?”
“No!”
“No.”
I knew where they were. I slipped around them easily. “When we open the door, we’ll need to push. Come on. It might take all of us.”
I found the keyhole with my fingertips.
“Fire,” Damer said. “I can make it come. Give me time.”
“Authorities,” said Robin. “I can make them come. Don’t despair.”
I slid the key inside. “The door opens outward. Come here and help me push.”
In love with fire, in love with power, they hesitated. Hating the room, the house, the cold, the darkness, the tension of half-hopes, they crept forward.
I turned the key. The voices on another side of the wall hushed. I could sense them holding their breaths. Damer was crying. Robin cheeped like a famished bird. Finally, together, the three of us pushed.
Some of Patricia Russo's other stories can be found online at Lone Star Stories, Fantasy, Dog vs. Sandwich, and Coyote Wild.