A Little Tied Up Now-{Will+Caleb}
He didn’t wait up. He told himself that he didn’t have to. Caleb wasn’t a child. He didn’t need someone waiting on him. And he figured that might be the best step to take. Not waiting up. Caleb didn’t need a sitter. He needed a friend. But that was a pretty funny fact, wasn’t it? Will wasn’t so sure how to be anyone’s friend. He had lived his life in his own head, a sort of isolating cutting off from the rest of the world. He saw too much and that scared him.
He didn’t wait up. He went into his room and got some studying done. He had a habit of looking in on Becca. Like she might disappear in the middle of the night. And they would search for her but never find her. Sometimes in the overactive images of his imagination her crib was stained with blood. And he would search and find that he had had killed her. A nightmare that was bitter on all edges.
He watched her a moment now. She was asleep. Still there. Still alive. No blood. No empty. Just there. And he was able to rest then. Able to allow himself a few hours of sleep so that he wasn’t so damned exhausted at school. He was always exhausted. Dreaming had a habit of making him stay awake.
The morning came quick. Leaving him feeling like he had only slept five minutes. The clock told him four and a half hours. But he could doubt time in the first five minutes of his morning. He went to get Becca. Not going to see if Caleb was in or not. He wasn’t waiting up.
He did come back. He stood outside the front door and watched the moonlight turn to morning light on the frayed wood of the door. He stared at the spots, stared at the splinters, stared at the marred image there in front of his eyes. This was his home and this was his prison. Darkness, it awoke within those walls. Darkness and memories.
Resting back against the door he slid down and rested his head back against it, staring the opposite way. The stairs. Long and winding. Winding and winding. The kind that shackled you to the ascent.
Anna posed for pictures on those stairs, her hand delicately set on the rail and her hair bathed in the sweet afternoon light. She asked him to develop them and then took them. He wondered what she had done with them.
He didn't go inside. He didn't go in to see how Will had survived the night, to see the crestfallen expression on his face when his eyes fell back onto Caleb. Disappointment to find a ghost again lingering in the halls of your home.
