I know the next sip will be the point of no return. I should probably put the shot of Montezuma back on the counter, tell my brother, "Thanks but no thanks," and head back to the in-laws’ place in Newtown.
I'm already buzzing with a mix of booze and the culture shock of coming home for the first time over three years. From seeing an old friend unexpectedly. From the Breaking Benjamin on the juke in the smoky dive; it's some song I never liked, but one I haven't heard in so long, I like the way it sounds tonight.
This has all components of a memorable night in place. The equation only needs one more variable to determine its outcome.
At thirty-eight, as a father and husband, I don't really do “memorable nights” anymore. I'm happy, of course—I have memorable days—but my nights usually consist of winding down on the couch with my partner by my side while we watch something on Netflix. If I've had any booze, it's because I had a beer with dinner; if I'm high, it's because I had a tough day at work and took an edible to help myself relax. The wild guy who used to stay out all night isn't me anymore. I'm no longer even sure I ever was that guy.
It's also the dead of winter, and the roads are bad—dangerous to even the most sober of drivers.
Plus, I’ve always hated tequila.
But in the time that I've been away, a close friend of ours caught cancer and died. I didn't get to fly back for the funeral because of flight costs and pandemic-era fears.
Sven says he'll take me to the place where Preston is buried.
Tonight.
“Yeah?” I ask and eye the shot.
“Of course, man!” he says in a tone charged with enthusiasm. “I’m just glad to see you is all, and well, I go to see Preston often.”
My brother Vaughn lights another cigarette with the smoldering butt of his previous one. With a roll of his eyes, he says, “You guys have fun.”
I ignore Vaughn’s apparent nonchalance because I’m still chewing on Sven’s offer and what he confessed.
I go to see Preston often.
Vaughn mentioned when I got here that Sven has been weird since Preston’s death. I responded by saying Sven has always been weird. Vince just shook his head and said, “No, I mean even for Sven.”
Whatever that means.
I nod at Vaughn. “What do you want to do?”
He blows out a plume of smoke and snatches his pool cue. “I have a game here in a few.”
I look at Sven but side-eye the shot. “Are you sure you don’t mind taking me?”
“Oh, dude. It’s not far.”
“You’re sure you don’t want to go?”
Vaughn gestures with his cue again but doesn’t say anything else. I feel a little bad leaving him behind, even though he’s mostly ignored me all night. I try not to let it get to me. His whole world has changed, and why wouldn’t it? Almost a decade has passed since I moved to Texas, and I haven’t exactly been great about visiting or calling. I guess I just took for granted that we could pick up where we left off no matter how much time had passed or what happened in the interim. We were family, weren’t we?
I open my mouth to tell Sven I’ll go to the grave with him, but Vaughn interrupts.
“If you guys wait until after the game, I’ll come with,” he says.
“Yeah, that works for me. Sven?”
Sven shrugs. “Sure. I don’t have work until late tomorrow.”
“Great,” I say, and take the shot off the counter. “Cheers, fellas.”
I slam the liquor in one gulp, and it nearly comes back up. It happens every time with tequila, but this time, I manage to hold it down by shutting my eyes and pretending it’s something less disgusting.
It’s like a burst of electricity to my third eye. Everything around me turns swimmy. Everyone has an aura. Every light on the Christmas tree in the corner has a trail whenever I move my head.
It only lasts for a blink before my vision returns to normal, but inside, I’m charged by the Impulse. I won’t be sleeping anytime soon. I may not even make it back to my in-laws’ in one piece. Consequences are inconsequential.
After Vaughn loses the game by scratching on the eight-ball, we pick up two six-packs of Montucky tallboys and leave the bar to pile into Sven’s Jeep.
The drive to the burial site isn't too far, but the air feels even colder than when I first went out tonight. The vehicle's vents blow feeble gusts of heat that just can’t compete with the chilliness. I stuff my hands into gloves and cross my arms.
Sven goes on about his job. How he helps makes catheters and other pieces of medical equipment. He seems happy about it and says he does things that are genuinely good for the world.
"That's great," I say at intervals.
Everything looks dark and icy, and I try not to look at the speedometer. In the back seat, Vaughn lights another cigarette. It used to make him look cool, in spite of what all our teachers warned. Now, though, it looks automatic and sad. With Preston in the ground after the big C, I can't imagine ever wanting a cigarette again. I quit years ago, but still sometimes slipped up when I'd been drinking. Not these days, though. Everything feels so immensely fragile, and sure, booze can kill you too, but at least it can sometimes take away the ability to care.
Just like now…
We turn off onto a road less lit than the main drag—there are still some Christmas lights but no neon signs or traffic lights. A couple more turns and we're there. It isn't what I expect; it's less a cemetery and more a yard in front of a big stone house. Two Christmas trees guard the gate, lit with blue icicle lights.
"What is this place?" I ask.
"It belongs to Preston’s family," Vaughn says.
"Is anyone home?"
"Nah, it's not that kind of house."
Before I can determine what that means, Sven opens his door and lets in a fresh draft of chilly air. It's strong enough to make my eyes water. I curse and wipe them.
Vaughn and I join Sven outside and follow him to the gate. My heart accelerates as I cross the threshold.
"This is good," I say in a trembling voice. "I wish I could've come home for the funeral, but I almost prefer this."
"Totally!" Sven says. "More intimate."
Vaughn snuffs his cigarette in a patch of wet dirt. It gets darker the further we get from the street. I rub my hands together and blow in them. Sven confidently strides ahead, ducking between trees stripped of their leaves. There’s not a cloud in the sky, but I can see no stars above.
Sven takes out his phone and switches on the flashlight app.
“It’s over here,” he says, shining the light on another bare-limbed tree. This one’s the thickest in the immediate woods—it’s old and proud. “I guess Preston used to climb this tree a lot, you know, as a kid.”
I look the impressive trunk up and down. Moving images of a smaller Preston climbing as high as his little arms and legs will lift him clash with the static image of Preston lying beneath the earth at its base. The tree’s branches sprawl across the sky like a spider’s web with impossibly thick strands. The surrounding property has no visible endpoint, no perimeter beyond the limits of my night vision. A wall of blackness encircles the land, and us.
“Not that kind of house,” I mutter.
“What?” Sven asks.
I nod at Vaughn. “He said, this isn’t that kind of house. So, what kind of house is it?”
“His family has owned this place forever,” Vaughn says. “A caretaker comes by sometimes, but no one has ever really lived here. They just use it for family functions.”
Something stirs in my guts. It could be dread or drunken nausea or both.
“Reunions, wedding and funeral receptions, graduation parties, and such,” Sven says.
I swallow something bitter, but the feeling we’re standing somewhere uncanny remains at the surface. I don’t feel it; I know it.
“So, this is the house,” I say. They each look at me, but I don’t elaborate. I’m not ready, and I’m not sure if I ever will be. Besides, they’d know if they read my book.
Sven lowers the flashlight beam to the tree’s base, illuminating a gray rectangle in the frozen ground. Someone has set up a couple of folding chairs.
“Did you put these here?” I ask.
“Nah, I think Preston’s brother did,” Vaughn says.
“I guess they want to put in some stone benches eventually,” Sven says and plops into one of the chairs.
I hand over one of the beers and he cracks it open. I pass one to Vaughn and sit down in a chair opposite Sven. Vaughn opens his beer and lights another smoke. He remains standing. I peel another beer from the plastic ring but don’t open it. Sven kills the flashlight, and everything around us turns bluish gray.
Now that we’re here, I have no idea what to do. What do I say? Do I say it aloud? Do the three of us just swap memories? I don’t even know if I have any Preston stories the other two don’t know.
They were there all those times at the Boot; Vaughn would have a new lady friend with him every week and Sven was always dressed for nine holes. They’d tolerate it when I raved about industrial pioneers like Skinny Puppy and Throbbing Gristle, and I’d tolerate it when they went on about sports or jam bands. I tuned out whenever they discussed fantasy sports, but always enjoyed simply being there—even on nights the bar was too smoky, or the music was too loud and mainstream. Preston and I always came together on literature, fawning over stuff like Sartre’s The Wall, Clive Barker’s Books of Blood, and the stream-of-consciousness inanity of William S. Burroughs. He’d recommend the poets while I’d recommend the pulpsters.
The other two know he turned me onto The Larry Sanders Show and that I once forced him to watch the notorious Indonesian film Lady Terminator after we passed around a pipe packed with opium. We were all together on my wedding and many times throughout our various courtships. We all knew about the time he lay on his back in a field and pointed a middle finger heavenward, shouting to God that he hoped the smug, omnipotent prick knew the raised digit was for Him.
Vaughn and Sven probably had more stories, though, because they stayed. I left, and I wonder now how many moments with Preston I missed while building a new life down in Texas. We didn’t lose touch, at least not more than any other adult men trying to hold down their home and progress in their careers. I got pictures of his kids when each of them was born. I saw him twice on visits. The first time, Vaughn had joined us. Beyond drinking beer and talking shit—about political disillusionment, keeping our houses in order, and taking better care of ourselves, nothing of note happened. The second, I came over to Preston’s place and watched him rock his six-month old daughter for hours on end. We talked career choices and how our respective relationships were playing out. They were nice visits, but I can’t recall anything worth sharing with the others now. Just that…
“I never had a bad time with Preston,” I say. “Like, ever.”
Vaughn blows out a plume of smoke. Sven wipes his eyes, but I don’t see any tears.
I contemplate the beer. I’m already pretty fucked up, but nine times out of ten, Preston and I didn’t hang out sober. Not drinking more felt fundamentally wrong.
Preston loved his alcohol back in the day. We all did; I still do. Well, sometimes.
Things are different now, only maybe they aren’t. If they are—if I’m so grown up—would I be fucked up in a cemetery after midnight?
I don’t know how to answer that.
“Do you think he can hear us?” I ask.
“No,” Vaughn says quickly and takes another deep drag.
I look at Sven. He gives a wry smile and says, “I can’t rule out anything.”
“I like that answer,” I say with a nod.
“Me too,” Vaughn said. “I just wish it were true.”
“How do you know it isn’t?” I ask.
“Yeah!” Sven pipes up.
“It just isn’t. Preston’s gone. We’ve got our memories and some pictures. There are his kids, but by the time they grow up, they won’t even remember him, especially the daughter because she’s so young. It’s fucked up, but what are you supposed to do? There’s nothing.”
Vaughn takes a generous pull from the beer and an even more generous pull from the cigarette. His brief outburst puts a damper on Sven and me. Sven looks into the shadows of the surrounding woods, deep places where no light exists. I look down at my shoes. The ground is frosted and hard, the grass gray in the dimness of the night.
My gaze wanders to the modest grave marker. I think about what will happen to it years after anyone who remembers Preston has died too. Me, Sven, and Vaughn. Preston’s kids. His brother and sister. Anyone else he left behind. I imagine grass and vines and moss growing over its marble face, the lettering showing his name and the years of his birth and death becoming less and less legible as time erodes the stone. Maybe this big old tree rots from the inside and falls over on top of it and there’s no one left who cares to clear it away.
People have always told me that making peace with the insignificance of myself and everyone and everything I care about is some crucial part of growing up. But I feel no peace now. The coldness of The Bleak Season seeps through my jacket and runs its icy fingers over my skin like an undead lover.
“You don’t think there’s any truth to what Preston told us about this place?” I ask.
“What? That it’s haunted ground?” Vaughn asked. “Please.”
“I mean, it’s not that far-fetched, is it?” When I ask, I’m thinking of the many battles of the Revolution that were fought either nearby or in this very place. And then the series of murders that took place the decade leading up to Preston’s family buying the land and building on it. All those bodies found sunk in the marshier ground not far from here, and not deep enough to remain undiscovered.
“It’s stupid,” Vaughn says.
“Preston and his cousins did say they sometimes saw things out here as a kid,” Sven says. “Things they couldn’t explain. Apparitions, I think the word is.”
I shudder and guzzle my beer in one pull.
“Anyone else need another?” I ask and lay the empty at my feet.
“Sure,” Sven says.
“Nah,” Vaughn says, but he does light another cigarette.
“You need to quit that shit, dude,” Sven says. “It’s so fucking bad for you.”
“Worry about yourself.”
“I just care about you, that’s all.”
I look down again and chew my lip. It’s gone dry and chapped. Vaughn’s poor health choices bother me, too, but it’s not like I’m a picture of perfect health either. Besides, who am I to come home after three years and tell him how to live his life?
My attention wanders once again to the grave marker, and I pop the top on another beer. Instead of drinking it, I lay it at the head of the stone next to a vase containing some dried flowers.
“When I wrote my first book, Preston and I stayed up all night reading through it and making notes to get it into the best shape possible.” I lean back and stare at the beer on the marker. “We weren’t drinking this shit; I brought over a bottle of Johnny Walker Black. We killed most of the bottle too. It was a great night.”
Vaughn begins to pace as he smokes. I can feel Sven’s eyes on me, though I can’t take my eyes off the beer I put out for Preston. As tightly as I wrap my arms around myself, I still can’t ward off the creeping cold.
“He used to be a pretty good writer himself,” I say with a shake of my head. “I wish I had more than just a few fragments of his work. I sent them to Tina, just so she could have them too.”
“Fuck her,” Sven says, darkening.
“Yeah, I know, but at least she can show them to their kids when they’re a little older.”
“Fuck her,” Sven says again, this time a little more quietly. He twists the tab off his beer can.
“At Bailey’s, right after the funeral, I saw the guy she fucked around with,” Vaughn says and stops pacing. “It took everything I had not to get up and beat his ass.”
“You should’ve,” Sven says bitterly. He places the tab between his teeth and gnashes on it. All his previous positive luster has left him.
“I get it,” I say. My gaze lingers on the beer can and the grave marker. The dead flowers. Decay. “Emotions run high in those situations, especially if death is involved. Can’t give in, though. No matter how bad you want to.”
I’m not sure what I’m saying. The words feel automatic and empty. My vision gets all swimmy again. My stomach cramps. Everything feels far away, everything but the cold.
“Why not?” Sven grinds the tab on his molars.
It’s the sort of noise that normally makes my skin crawl, but in my dissociative state, it sounds muted.
“Well, I didn’t want to go to jail for one,” Vaughn says.
My laughter comes out mechanically. Then…
“Oh, shit!”
I clutch my stomach and double over. The vomit comes, spraying the dirt which houses my friend’s remains. The acidity burns the back of my throat. Steam rises from the chunky puddle, and I fall to my hands and knees, faceplanting in the nastiness as the night’s cold hands massage my neck and hold back my hair.
We drive back in silence. Vaughn says he’s good to drive, so Sven lets him off at the bar. No one even asks me. Sven just starts driving to my in-laws’ place. I close my eyes and lean my head against the cool window. Something plays low on the stereo. I think it might be Animal Collective or one of those mid-2000s indie bands, but I’m not too sure. I’m too fucked up, and it’s been too long.
“Vaughn says you’ve been different since…” I trail off. Alcohol has loosened my tongue enough to repeat Vaughn’s less than flattering comment but not enough to acknowledge Preston’s death now that we’ve left the graveyard.
“What did he say?” Sven asks, an edge now in his voice.
“Nothing really, just that you’ve been different is all.”
I hope the lie is convincing.
“Whatever. After Preston died, I went into therapy and stopped dating people. I’m trying to figure out who I am. I care about living an impactful life. Losing a friend can really put things in perspective, and I can either let Preston’s death crush me, or I can use it to help me better myself. Vaughn has just stayed Vaughn. The same pool-playing, cigarette-smoking asshole he's always been.”
“Maybe he has it figured out.”
“Doubtful.”
I glance out my window. We’re on one of the major highways. Signs zip by at an alarming rate. If I pay too much mind, I might throw up again, so I close my eyes. Several uncomfortable seconds pass where the only sound is the engine and the tires on the snow-slick pavement. I open my eyes again when we slow, coming up an exit ramp.
“Preston told me once that his family was cursed,” I say in a heavy slur. “I wrote about that shit…put it in a book because I knew he wouldn’t. Is that fucked up?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. It depends.”
“On what?”
“I’m not sure. What did he tell you?”
“Some devil shit,” I mumble, too trashed to go into it.
The song changes to something with more bass. It thumps the speaker beside my calf, and I move my leg.
Preston and one of his cousins both told me about the gray shape—one they described as not quite human—who followed them each for several months while they were kids. As they got older, they thought they imagined or maybe dreamed it until they told each other about it. The shape had apparently followed them around the property, home from school once or twice, at church, and, for Preston, even on a camping trip. It freaked them out even more when they learned the same figure had followed around Preston’s father and uncles as children—and the men in the family who died young. No one knew what the shape was or where it came from or why some of the family members who saw it died while others lived.
But they all described it the same way.
“And you wrote about it?” Sven asks, as if reading my thoughts.
“Yeah.”
I drift off, recalling Vaughn calling to tell me about Preston’s initial diagnosis, the same month my book detailing the supposed curse was published. I don’t mention it to Sven because I’m tired of magical thinking. I’m tired of seeing patterns in everything. The insignificance of a grave marker in the woods, destined to be overgrown by vines and moss or covered by a fallen tree, sounds nice.
Sven parks in the driveway of my in-laws’ place and asks if I need help. I shake my head once, thank him for the ride, and step out into the cold.
Inside, everything is dark. I stagger up the stairs and find the guestroom. Joanne and the kids are fast asleep. The sound machine’s gentle whirr lulls me forward and I collapse into bed without getting undressed.
Sleep comes immediately and without dreams.
Someone’s crying when I wake up. I worry it might be me. Heavy things push on my bladder and brain. It makes me think of cancer.
The last time I spoke to Preston, he said he wasn’t in any pain. I sometimes wonder if he said that for my benefit or out of pride. I wonder if I’m feeling what he felt—if we’ve switched places and I’ve gone back in time. In the noisy, painful darkness behind my eyes, this feels perfectly plausible.
A glitch shifts me from that reality to one more familiar.
My eighteen-month-old daughter is crying. I’m hungover. I desperately need to pee.
I get her out of the pack-n-play and hold her close. She’s warm, real, and worth keeping it together for. It’s a damn good thing I had the presence of mind to let Sven drive me home instead of trying to one-eye it myself.
I carry her downstairs where Joanne is already up with our oldest. He’s watching a show about cats in a dollhouse. Joanne is sipping coffee and looking at her phone.
I get our daughter situated with some buttered toast and a sippy cup of milk, give our son a pat on the head, and tell Joanne we’ll need to pick up the car later. I get coffee for myself and head back upstairs to pee and clean my face. Upon entering the bathroom, my feet stutter and I jerk to a stop.
A tallboy of Montucky sits on the vanity next to a shot glass full of what smells like tequila. My heart lurches and I mentally run through the events of the previous night. I definitely didn’t bring any of that beer home or pour myself a shot. Sitting before me is the elixir that set things in motion and the one that brought the night to a disgusting halt.
I touch each container. The liquid inside the blue can is frozen solid and the liquor in the glass is chilled, even though a steady gust of heat blows from the vent above. I let my hands flop to my sides. I stare at the can and the glass. I look up and stare at myself in the mirror, half expecting someone to be standing behind me, Preston all pale and translucent, or perhaps crusted with mud and gray with rot.
I don’t see anyone other than myself, but the can and the glass remain. The icy fingers of the night touch my neck and massage the tense muscles. The pressure behind my eyes relents. My bladder lets go, and my urine comes out cold.
Everything is cold in The Bleak Season.