This That Drives Us to be Mad

When he and Charlie were in their younger years, they had a dog. A great big dog named Bear. Bear sat at the bottom step of the stairs in their childhood home, only really leaving for the occasional trip to the bathroom or the food bowl. He was geriatric, like an old man in a nursing home whose kids never come to visit. And, throughout their youth, he and Charlie's parents often commented on the dog Bear used to be.

According to his parents, Bear had once been spry, young, and lovely. But, for all the years after, even past his death, the only thing Adam could remember him by was his spot in the front foyer. This idea of "used to be" didn't mean much to him. It was all about now. He chose his friends based on the people that were nice to him now. The people who had value to him now. He wasn't friends with people he used to be close with simply because they weren't the kind of person he liked now. And his forethought only went as far as the instant gratification every preteen desires. It wasn't until he got much older that he realized why his parents were so fond of Bear, based on the dog they remembered.

When he and Charlie graduated high school, Adam went to college. Charlie went to college, too, but he dropped out a year into his program. When Adam heard the news, he was surprised. Growing up, Charlie had always been the smarter of the pair, balancing his extracurriculars and academics far better than Adam could or even cared to. He preferred to spend his time chasing girls and coasting around on what his semi-decent good looks offered him. Charlie wasn't like that; he tried. When Charlie dropped out, his family was in an uproar. Their parents had called and messaged Charlie many times after, trying to get answers, something to help them understand how this could have happened. But he never responded. Adam called, too, of course. He called several times. He also called any of Charlie's friends whose numbers he'd had. He DM'd the ones whose numbers he didn't have. Eventually, after message and message with no response, he drove the two hours over state lines to Charlie's college apartment.

Adam banged on the door, shouting obscenities, until one of Charlie's roommates came out and calmed him down. And once Adam had cooled off, he sat down and talked to the roommate who had greeted him. His name was Daniel, and apparently, he and Charlie had met at his freshman orientation.

As he explained, Charlie had suffered what he called a psychotic break. He unrolled in his classes, cut outside contact, and apparently refused to leave his apartment. According to Daniel, whenever one of Charlie's roommates tried to talk to him, he would insist that nothing was wrong, that he was mentally sound, and that there was no need to be concerned. Adam didn't believe a word of that, obviously. He and his brother had spent most to all of their lives together. In Adam's mind, it wasn't the kind of thing Charlie would do

After their brief exchange, Daniel let Adam inside to see if he could talk some sense into his brother. And, with some cohesion, Charlie opened the door to his bedroom to let Adam inside. It was dark, the curtains were drawn tight to not let any light inside, and the floors were covered in various empty bottles, discarded pizza boxes, other clothes, trash, and clutter, indicating that the room hadn't been cleaned in quite a long time.

Charlie also looked tired. His skin was dull, and his eyes were thin and carved, as though he hadn't been sleeping. His hair and beard had also grown quite long since the last time Adam had seen him. And well, Adam couldn't help but think they had never looked so different.

Outside of Charlie's appearance, when the two of them talked, he was pretty collected. According to him, at some point in his second semester, he started suffering from bouts of sleep paralysis. At first, it happened once every few weeks. He would wake up, unable to move, terrorized by a dark figure varying in form. He laughed as he talked it over, saying in retrospect, some seemed rather silly, like the giant hand or the woman with a bird's bottom half. But the thing about them that ultimately was so terrifying, he said, was the dread the figures came with. The way he described it was a feeling of absolute malevolence, as though whatever the thing was had the intent to harm him. He then told Adam that it wasn't long until the sleep paralysis became a weekly and almost nightly occurrence. Charlie would have sworn the place haunted if he were any less a skeptic. When Adam asked why he had stopped attending his classes, Charlie told him how, after a while, that feeling of dread had begun following him. The same one that found him while he was sleeping. He would carry it throughout the day now as well. It was like something was stalking him. Throughout the conversation, he remained firm that he knew it was irrational. Still, inside his apartment was the only place he felt he wasn't followed. So, by a point, he began avoiding having to leave, relying on self-medicating for restful nights and the safety of his four walls during waking hours.

For a while, after they talked, Adam and his parents convinced Charlie to see someone. He met with several doctors during this time, and Charlie insisted they were making some headway. However, every time he saw Charlie, his expression from the months before remained. Adam heard from Daniel later on that he had moved on from self-medicating for sleeping to medicating during the day as well. And for the years after, Charlie had been in and out of many programs, rehabs, and doctors' offices.

By the time Adam got married, he was hardly the person he had been when the pair were growing up. Often, his wife would yell at him. To stop enabling Charlie. To stop giving him money. You have to tell him no, she would say. And every time she said it, he never listened. She didn't know Charlie the way that Adam did. In fact, the person she knew wasn't Charlie at all. Charlie was smart and dedicated and witty, not the worn shell of his former self he had been in these past years. So, in Adam's mind, who was she to have a say.

Eventually, she gave him an ultimatum. She would leave if he didn't put his foot down with his brother. At first, he was pissed, of course. He told her she was acting immature and that she should leave if she was willing to make him choose. That it wasn't fair that she ran her mouth on things she knew nothing about. But after days of heated arguing and threats of divorce by both parties, he relented. He told her that he would let it ring the next time his brother called.

It was 2:57 in the morning. He was asleep. His ringer was off. He didn't get the call. In the morning, when he checked his phone, he saw the missed call from his brother, and he felt the blood in his body freeze like it was pumped from a faucet. He saw the missed call from his father next, and as he let the phone ring, it felt like someone was squeezing his heart with their fist.

He barely heard a word his dad said to him after, outside of "They found your Brother, Adam."

Adam didn't believe in God, at least not anymore. For several years in his childhood, he and his brother sat under vaulted church ceilings, listening to a devout man preach scripture, the fixed statues staring down at them coldly. His brother had told him after service one day while waiting for their parents to finish chatting with the other congregation members that he didn't think God was real. When Adam questioned it, he said nothing seemed to change, no matter how much or little he prayed. Charlie was right.

As he stared at his brother's body, he saw no God or divine creation. He just saw blood, flesh, and bone. It was the kind of thing that died just as quickly as a deer on the road or a spider in a home. And as he stood under the vaulted ceiling, Mary's stone eyes against his skin, he knew there was no God here. No God, indeed.

After the service, most of the guests gathered off to a side room. There was food and drinks, with somber, hushed chatter every which way. Adam avoided it for the most part. He was unsure if he could say anything, even if he tried. He had attempted to write a speech in the days before the funeral. Stories and stories from their childhood, how smart and funny his brother was. But nothing would come out. It was like someone had taken every bit of his body from him, and his skin was all that’s left.

A few people had come up to him during the reception after, offering condolences, and he would nod, and they would go. And then he would sit on one of the plastic church folding chairs as if the whole ordeal wasn’t happening. Somewhere into it, he felt a tap on his shoulder. It took him a second to recognize the man; it had been quite a few years since he had last seen him, but eventually, he remembered.

"I'm gonna step outside and have a smoke, care to join?" Daniel leaned forward, showing Adam the blunt he had tucked inside his coat pocket.

Adam had smoked a few times throughout high school and college. He never liked it as much as everyone else always seemed to, how his brother seemed to.

"Yeah," his voice was hoarse, and the sound came out like a croak. He could use a smoke.

"It's quite shit isn't it?" Daniel passed the butt over to Adam, leaning his back against the siding of the church's exterior.

"''scuse me?" Adam choked. He and Daniel had never spoken much, but he was always on the blunter side.

"Funerals, I mean. I've been to quite a few these past few years, all the same really," he waved his hand, gesturing towards the church. "Half the time, they were filled with people I'm not really sure the departed even liked that much," he took another hit.

Adam huffed the closest to a chuckle he could muster, "Heavy year?" It was more of a decency question. "Could you call it that? I'm more used to it these days, you run in circles with certain types and you come to realize it happens quite often."

"Overdoses?"

"Mostly, sometimes not, always tragic though."

That was a word for it. Tragic. It felt so benign. Too light of a word for something like this, "Charlie shouldn't have died." It felt like an overly simple statement. Yet it was the only thing he thought to say.

"Nobody should really." He tapped out the cig. "Your brother was a good man."

Yes, his brother was a good man. Charlie was, and now he wasn't

It was the first time in several years Adam himself had sleep paralysis. It was a tall man at the foot of his bed. He was long and flat, as though he were a shadow despite not appearing against any wall. And he hovered over the edge of where Adam slept, his neck craning down.

When he was finally awake enough to move, he headed to the bathroom, hoping the cold tap water might stop the shaking in his hands. It didn't. He went downstairs to try and spend the rest of the night on the couch, but he couldn't sleep. The dread in his stomach far overtook how exhausted he felt. Eventually, he dug into his coat pocket from the jacket he wore to his brother's funeral, looking for the joint Daniel had given him "in case the stress gets to ya."

For the first time in several days, Adam was able to sleep.

Adam wanted a divorce. In the months after his brother's death, he barely wanted to be around his wife. He knew it wasn't fair to blame her. But he did. She was the one who insisted he stop answering his brother, and he listened. Now, his brother was dead. At first, she cried. Then she yelled and shouted. Cursing him, blaming him. And Adam yelled and shouted back. Then, he cried for the first time since his brother died.

Eventually, he moved out of their shared home and into a small apartment. It wasn't nearly as nice. The walls were thin and the lights yellow, but at least he was alone. It felt like he slept worse every month, and the night terrors became more intense. Sometimes, it was a loud banging at his third-floor window, like something was trying to break in. Sometimes, he would hear a woman whisper something unintelligible in his ear. But regardless of the form it took, it always came with an oppressive dread. As though he were a prey animal being stalked through dense woods.

After the first few nights, he reached out to Daniel, who agreed to stop by. They chatted for a bit, smoked, and eventually, they began to see each other a few times a week. Sometimes to smoke, mostly to talk.

Before his brother died, Daniel was one of the few people Charlie could reach out to, and hearing Daniel talk about the kind of person his brother had been all those years Adam wasn't there was cathartic in some way.

As the weeks passed, he felt like he was slowly unraveling, like a sweater pulled by a loose string. He spent most of his time in his apartment, only really leaving to work, and eventually, when his job moved him into an online position, he stopped going out, period. He would have found it sad how little people seemed to notice if it weren't for the fact that he couldn't even care. People who had been friends with him for years only texted to talk about what they had going on or ask him something. He felt like his entire world had been destroyed, yet everyone carried on like things were still okay. Even his parents had seemed to be doing well with his brother's passing. They were devastated, of course they were, but they had become expectant. God has a plan, they would say. How horrible.

It was the first anniversary of his brother's death. Adam had gotten in the car earlier that morning and drove towards his childhood hometown. He wasn't even entirely sure what compelled him to leave. It had just become that his skin felt so restless, like he would fall apart and crumble away if he didn't go. A salmon swimming upstream.

About an hour into the drive, he had to stop for gas. He hadn't driven in quite a while, and his car had been sitting empty for quite a bit. He found a Shell gas station just off the interstate, the sign was windswept and sun-bleached, and the building's exterior was made of chipped-off paint, cigarette butts, and abandoned trash.

He went inside, handing cash to the attendant. Fifty dollars for a full tank. And while waiting, he spotted a six-pack. He had never been a heavy drinker before. Only really in college and at parties, in more recent times, mostly a glass of wine here or there. He had begun drinking up to a liquor bottle a day in the past year. He slipped the cashier an extra ten.

Five hours in, he stopped at a motel. It had gotten late, and he still had several hours to cross state lines. He opened the first bottle as soon as he was through the door. He hit bottle four in quick succession, and the room had a dizzying spin. He slumped towards the restroom, turning on the shower in an attempt to wash off the disgusting feeling that had over come him. Like the only way to truly clean himself would be to peel back his skin and wash all the horrible things underneath. He leaned into the water, feeling the drops pelting against his cheek. Closing his eyes, he let out a stuttered breath, and in the darkness, he felt a heavy breathing against his neck. When he blinked his eyes open, the bathroom was empty. He stood up from the tub, clothes dripping puddles of water onto the bathroom floor as he crossed to grab a towel. As he dried, he heard a croak from outside the restroom, then a cry. He stumbled out. The room was empty. He finished the last two bottles.

It was 12:43 when he woke up. He felt pressure against the sheets, and he couldn't move. There was a woman at the foot of his bed. Her face was smooth like plastic cast in shadows, and thick horns wrapped backward like a bastard halo blended into greased long hair that draped like a woman's cowl. The only thing visible was the whites of her eyes, and the ceilings appeared vaulted behind her.

Five minutes later, he was able to move again. The room was pitch black, and under the lamplight of the bedside table, he shuffled on his shoes and headed to the nearest gas station for something to drink.

On the drive back, the sky was clear. He was in the country, and it was the first time in a while he could see the stars. When they were younger, Charlie wanted to be an astronaut. He would read book after book on stars and planets, always with this thought that there was something out there they'd yet to understand. He was always so bright. His brother hadn't believed in God in a very long time, and in the past years, Adam hadn't either, but he wondered if maybe, under all the stars, his brother was somewhere up there.

At 1:36, he was up again. He woke up to a loud bang against the motel window. The curtains were cracked, letting a thin sheen of moonlight into the room. And against the glass, he saw a thin shadow about the size of a bottle. The limbs were about twice as long as the torso, and the face was also thin, with a deep gaping mouth like a carven entrance. Its eyes appeared like white melted wax. It looked alien, he supposed. His skin was warm with dread, but it had become so routine the rest of his body felt cooled to an unsettling calm. He rolled up a joint as soon as he could turn from the bed.

Halfway through his smoke, he heard a crash from the bathroom. He took a few shakey strides forward, flipping the lights on inside. The room was as he left it, the floor still slightly damp. He grabbed the towel he'd used to dry off earlier, throwing it to the floor and haphazardly wiping up the spills with his foot. As he wiped, he noticed a slight drip forming a puddle beside the sink. His eyes traced upwards, and he was met with the bubbling skin of the creature he saw outside, its deep mouth dripping black drool collecting onto a puddle beneath the floor. As soon as his eyes met the creature his back hit the floor. The cool tile damp. He thought to move, but his body was still. His breath was stopped, and his eyes burned as the creature leaned forward, thick spit dripping onto Adam's cheek and down his neck. This, Adam thought, was where he was going to die.

He wasn't sure if he had blacked out or how long it had been, but when he came to, the floor was dry, and the sun was creeping slowly against the skyline. In all honestly, it felt like a bad dream, the burnt-out joint and crumbled towels barely serving as a reminder that he hadn't been asleep at all. He turned on the faucet, hoping the cold water would ground him, but when he met with the mirror, he almost didn't recognize his reflection. His nose was bent on the wrong side, and his freckles were scattered against his forehead rather than his nose. And after a few seconds, he realized he was looking at his brother. For so many years, no one could tell them apart. Even their parents had a hard time when they were younger, but Adam could always recall his brother's face even from a hundred miles away. Yet, staring back at him now, he could barely tell the difference between Charlie's face and his own. "It's not awful here." The voice sounded far away, like it was coming from behind him, but nothing was there when he turned his head. It had been far too long since he heard his brother's voice.

"I miss you so, so much." He felt his eyes well, and he gripped the edge of the skin as though crushing the porcelain into dust would ease the ache.

He felt his skin lift as though someone was hovering behind him, a thick drip of drool sliding down the side of his head and back. He didn't move, instead keeping his gaze steady towards his brother.

"I'm still with you Adam, until the day you die, i'm here."

The voice sounded closer, as though Charlie was speaking into his ear. He didn't dare to turn his head.

"Until the day I die," he squeezed his eyes shut tight, a small damp streak staining his clenched jaw. When he opened his again, he was alone.