Seventh Son

Sure enough, a few of the roaches started skittering under Alvin's door, and then more and more of them, and finally the whole troop went off in a single great cavalry charge under the door, through the wall, their bodies shiny and glowing in the candlelight, guided by their eternal insatiable hunger, fearless because Al had told them there wasn't nothing to fear.

It wasn't ten seconds before he heard the first whoop from the room next door. And within a minute the whole house was in such an uproar you'd've thought it was on fire. Girls screaming, boys shouting, and big old boots stomping as Papa rushed up the stairs and squashed roaches. Al was about as happy as a pig in mud.

Finally things started calming down in the next room. In a minute they'd come in to check on him and Calvin, so he blew out the candle, ducked under the covers, and whispered for the roaches to hide. Sure enough, here came Mama's footsteps in the hall outside. Just at the last moment, Alvin Junior remembered that he wasn't wearing his nightgown. He snaked out his hand, snatched the nightgown, and pulled it under the covers just as the door opened. Then he concentrated on breathing easy and regular.

Mama and Papa came in, holding up candles. He heard them pull down Calvin's covers to check for roaches, and he feared they might pull down his as well. That would be such a shameful thing, to sleep like an animal without a stitch on. But the girls, who knew he couldn't possibly be asleep so soon after getting stuck with so many pins, they were naturally afraid of what Alvin might tell Mama and Papa, so they made sure to hustle them out of the room before they could do more than shine a candle in Alvin's face to make sure he was asleep. Alvin held his face absolutely still, not even twitching his eyelids. The candle went away, the door softly closed.

Still he waited, and sure enough, the door opened again. He could hear the padding of bare feet across the floor. Then he felt A

Alvin pretended not to hear anything. He even snored a little.

“You don't fool me, Alvin Junior. You better not go to sleep tonight, because if you do, you'll never wake up, you hear me?”

Outside the room, Papa was saying, “Where's A

She's in here, Papa, threatening to kill me, thought Alvin. But of course he didn't say it out loud. Anyway, she was just trying to scare him.

“We'll make it look like an accident,” said A

Alvin was begi

“We'll carry your body out and stuff it down the privy hole, and they'll all think you went to relieve yourself and fell in.”

That would work, thought Alvin. A

The door opened wider. “A

The fingernail quit scratching. “I was just making sure little Alvin was all right.” Her bare feet padded back out of the room.

Soon all the doors were closed, and he heard Papa's and Mama's shoes clattering down the stairs.

He knew that by rights he should still be scared to death by A

There was somebody in the room.

He couldn't hear anything, and when he opened his eyes he couldn't see anybody. But he knew somebody was there. Hadn't come in the door, so they must've come in the open window. That's plain silly, Alvin told himself, there isn't a soul in here. But he lay still, all laughter gone out of him, because he could feel it, somebody standing there. No, it's a nightmare, that's all, I'm still spooked from thinking about Reds watching me outside, or maybe from A

The blackness inside Al's eyelids turned pink. There was a light in his room. A light as bright as daylight. There wasn't no candle in the world, no, not even a lantern that could burn so bright as that. Al opened his eyes, and all his dread turned into terror, for now he saw that what he feared was real.

There was a man standing at the foot of his bed, a man shining as if he was made of sunlight. The light in the room was coming from his skin, from his chest where his shirt was tore open, from his face, and from his hands. And in one of those hands, a knife, a sharp steel knife. I am going to die, thought Al. Just like A

Then it was like as if the light from the man pushed right through Alvin's skin and came inside him, and the fear just went right out of him. The Shining Man might have him a knife, and he might've snuck on into the room without so much as opening a door, but he didn't mean no harm to Alvin. So Alvin relaxed a little and wriggled up in his bed till he was mostly sitting, leaning up against the wall, watching the Shining Man, waiting to see what all he'd do.

The Shining Man took his bright steel knife and brought the blade against his other palm– and cut. Alvin saw the gleaming crimson blood flow from the wound in the Shining Man's hand, stream down his forearm, and drip from his elbow onto the floor. He hadn't seen four drops, though, before he came to see a vision in his mind. He could see his sisters' room, he knew the place, but it was different. The beds were up high, and his sisters were giants, so all he could see clear was big old feet and legs. Then he realized he was seeing a little creature's view of the room. A roach's view. In his vision he was scurrying, filled with hunger, absolutely fearless, knowing that if he could get up onto those feet, those legs, there'd be food, all the food he'd ever want. So he rushed, he climbed, he scurried, searching. But there wasn't no food, not a speck of it, and now huge hands reached and swept him off, and then a great huge shadow loomed over him, and he felt the hard sharp crushing agony of death.

Not once, but many times, dozens of times, the hope of food, the confidence that no harm would come; then disappointment– nothing to eat, nothing at all– and after disappointment, terror and injury and death. Each small trusting life, betrayed, crushed, battered.

And then in his vision he was one who lived, one who got away from the looming, stomping boots, under the beds, into the cracks in the walls. He fled from the room of death, but not into the old place, not into the safe room, because now that was no longer safe. That was where the lies came from. That was the place of the betrayer, the liar, the killer who had sent them into this place to die. There were no words in this vision, of course. There could be no words, no clarity of thought in a roach's brain. But Al had words and thoughts, and he knew more than any roach what the roaches had learned. They had been promised something about the world, they had been made sure of it, and then it was a lie. Death was a fearful thing, yes, flee that room; but in the other room, there was worse than death– there the world had gone crazy, it was a place where anything could happen, where nothing could be trusted, where nothing was certain. A terrible place. The worst place.