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  WHEN WE FALL

  Peter Giglio

  First Edition

  When We Fall © 2014 by Peter Giglio

  All Rights Reserved.

  A DarkFuse Release

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  Other Books by Author

  Lesser Creatures

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  This one is for my brother,

  Anthony Giglio.

  Acknowledgements

  A big thank-you to Shannon, the love of my life. She really helped me steer this one into the light.

  Smiles, nods, and cheers to the usual gang who provide encouragement and laughs as if on cue: Scott Bradley, Charles Day, Joe McKinney, Robert & Jennifer Wilson, Mark Scioneaux, and Mark Allan Gunnells.

  Undying gratitude to my parents, Dr. James Giglio & Frances Giglio, who went out of their way to encourage my creativity when I was a kid.

  And to the childhood friends who made Super 8 movies with me: Johnny Bennetts, Joseph Straughan III, and Steve Cox.

  1

  Ben Brendel hated funerals. Not that he had any love for the boy who’d soon be lowered into the ground. In fact, he despised Ryan Barnes, a cruel kid who’d been more than a thorn in Ben’s side for years.

  This was Ben’s second exposure to the memorial service of a child. Someone his age. The first had been the previous summer, on a day far more painful than today. Johnny Chance had been the only other kid who understood Ben, had shared his love for making Super 8 movies. His only true friend.

  Now, as Father Reid stood before the mourning congregation of Saint Agnes Cathedral and spoke in solemn tones of the glorious transformations from earthly to heavenly bodies—more than a trace of doubt in his shaky voice and droopy eyes—Ben thought about Johnny.

  The day Ben received the news of his best friend’s death had been a hot one, and he’d found refuge in the aboveground pool behind his house. Relaxed within the cool aquatic embrace, he pinched his nose and gazed up, watching the sun dance upon the water’s shimmering surface. Then the dark silhouette of his mother had moved in front of the sun, casting wavering shadows within the blue-green world that had previously represented good times.

  She’d been kneeling on the deck that surrounded the pool when he splashed up from the water, taking deep breaths. The sorrow in her eyes then, not unlike the look on Father Reid’s face now, hit him hard. But nothing—nothing in the world—could have prepared him for the real blow she’d hid behind her cloudy gaze.

  “Johnny and his mother have been in an accident,” she’d said. A long pause, then, “He’s with Jesus now.”

  And that’s where Father Reid said Ryan Barnes was. With Jesus. But the thought of Ryan and Johnny together in the loving arms of the son of God didn’t sit right with Ben. No, he thought. Johnny had been good. Ryan had been an asshole.

  Right after Johnny died, Ben was plagued by echoes of a Billy Joel song that played frequently on the AM radio station his mother liked. “Only the Good Die Young.” The message had seemed apt, but now he was pretty sure the Piano Man was full of shit.

  The bad die, too. Young, old, and all points in between.

  Everyone dies.

  Releasing his mother’s sweat-drenched hand, Ben shifted his head and caught the gaze of Aubrey Rose, seated with her father in the next row of pews. Despite her sad eyes and hunched posture, she was as beautiful as ever.

  Ben tried to smile, but it felt wrong to at such a solemn place where priests and nuns and even altar boys never seemed to express mirth, as if there was a fine line between joy and mockery that wasn’t worth the risk of damnation. Although people danced and sang in some of the churches he’d glimpsed in movies and television shows, Ben didn’t think God—at least not the God of the real world—wanted people to be happy.

  Aubrey was seventeen, four years older than Ben. She had just completed her junior year at Greenfield Laboratory, the K-12 private school that he also attended. She was a popular girl, a cheerleader. She was also, to Ben’s constant amazement, something of a friend to him. Not that he would dare sit with her in the lunchroom or engage her in conversation in the halls of the school. He was afraid she might be forced to shun him if he made such a brave move. But she was good to him.

  She and her father lived across the back alley from the Brendels, and she was Ben’s sitter on Tuesday nights, when his parents went to their bowling league. At thirteen, Ben was pretty sure he didn’t need a sitter anymore, but he wasn’t looking to raise a fuss. He liked having her around.

  When the organ wailed at the end of the service, Ben fell in line behind his parents, waiting for his row’s chance to shuffle into daylight. His father reached around his mother, who was still weeping into a tissue, her head down, and took Ben’s hand in a firm, calloused grip—the grip of a hardworking man, a plumber. A slight nod, then he whispered, “You okay?”

  Ben returned the nod.

  His father bent down to face him. “You don’t have to go to the cemetery if you’re not up for it,” he said.

  “I’ll be fine, Dad,” Ben whispered.

  Once outside the church, Ben watched Aubrey break away from her father and approach. “Wanna walk to the cemetery with me?” she asked.

  Ben looked to his father for approval, which was given with a crooked smile. Then his father walked over to Roy Rose and shook his hand. The formal gesture struck Ben as strange, considering the two men had been close friends for as long as he could remember; they even worked for the same company. But Ben guessed formality came naturally to men forced to play dress-up, as if, in a way, they really were meeting for the first time.

  The two good old boys, his dad Curt and Roy, normally decked out in tattered denim and baseball caps, looked odd together in their Sunday best on a Wednesday. And Roy, who didn’t attend church as a matter of routine, looked completely like a fish out of water.

  Roy’s distance from religion made sense to Ben. His wife had died of cancer when Aubrey was a little girl, before Ben had even been born, and that gave Roy plenty of reasons to be mad at God. Aubrey, on the other hand, harbored no animosity for the man upstairs. It was hard to be pissed at someone you didn’t believe in.

  As Ben and Aubrey fell into a side-by-side stride on the path to the cemetery, birds sang in the trees, July in full bloom. Sweet scents wafted from Father Reid’s flower garden. And Aubrey, dressed in pink, stood apart from the shuffling mourners in black. She was a beacon of goodness in a sea of despair, the living embodiment of a flower, and he wanted to say something to her, to express that notion, but his mouth couldn’t find the words. It was always Aubrey who started conversations between them.

  Halfway to their destination, she put a hand on his shoulder and guided him off the path. Then she reached into her purse and pulled out a plastic container labeled KODAK. “I got you something,” she said.

  Ben, taking the fresh cartridge of Super 8 film from her, felt a sudden rush of joy.

&
nbsp; “I thought maybe we could make one of your movies this afternoon,” she said. “If you’re up for it, that is.”

  He couldn’t believe his ears. “You…you want to make a movie with me?”

  Aubrey nodded.

  “Wow,” he said. “I know exactly what movie I want to make today.”

  * * *

  Seconds after Ben and Aubrey entered his room, he threw his closet door open and rummaged through the mess behind a collection of old shoe boxes. He soon found what he was looking for: the title cards for Evil Spirits that he and Johnny had made two years earlier. He often thought of the series as a trilogy, because the fourth installment, which the friends had planned to shoot in the summer of 1984, never happened. Now he could right that wrong.

  “We’ll have to make a new one with the number four,” he said, throwing the cards on his bed.

  “Wow,” she said, “you’re really serious about this, aren’t you?”

  He laughed. “Best to do it right.” Back in the closet, he reached behind boxes that contained complete baseball card sets from the last three years, then yanked out his The Empire Strikes Back lunchbox that he hadn’t carried to school since he was in the fifth grade.

  “Shouldn’t I go home and change?” she asked.

  “No, no,” he said, shaking his head as he flung the box on the bed. “You look glamorous. Like a movie star.”

  She laughed and threw him a flippant wave. “What, this old thing?”

  On his tiptoes, he grabbed a clean poster board down from a high shelf, then turned to Aubrey, who sat on the edge of his bed, studying the articles he’d selected for their project. “So,” she said, “you told me we’re making Evil Spirits Four, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, shouldn’t I see the first three so I understand what’s going on?”

  “If you want to.” He flipped the lunchbox lid open and riffled through stencils until he found a “4.” “But I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble figuring it out. It’s not like we really followed a story for any of them. We just set up weird ways for evil spirits to get loose and attack people. A reel of Super 8 film is about three minutes long with no sound, so there’s not a lot of room for a story.” A pang of grief settled in his chest then, and with it came memories of his best friend. “Besides,” he said, “I haven’t watched those movies since Johnny died.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “No, it’s okay. It’s just that I have a hard time looking at pictures of him.”

  “I understand…but maybe it would be good to—”

  “No,” he said. “Not yet.”

  Changing the subject, she held up a title card that read Evil Spirits III. Ben was hardly paying attention to her, already penciling the outline of the “4” on the clean board. “You used Roman numerals here,” she said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, how do you plan to fix that?”

  “It was easy when we did the sequels. We just used the ‘I’ stencil and added a new one for each movie. But I don’t have a ‘V,’ so the fourth one will have to be a little different.” He took the card from her, already feeling his good mood returning. Using the scissors from his supplies, he cut away the lower half of the original title card, where the number had been displayed. Then he grabbed an X-Acto knife, popped off the lid, and closed the lunch box. “Mom gets mad,” he said, “when I cut things on surfaces like my bed. I always manage to cut more than I mean to.” He rested the new title card on top of the metal box and then, carefully, started to cut away the freshly traced number.

  “Why do you cut out the letters and numbers?” she asked.

  “You’ll see. It’s really cool. We turn off the lights and shine my reading lamp through the back of the cards. That way the letters appear to glow on a black background.”

  “Very creative.”

  “Thanks. We got the idea from an interview with John Carpenter in Fangoria. Well, Johnny did.”

  “Can you tell me a little about this movie? Who do I play? What will I be doing?”

  “Well,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about that. You like to jog, right?”

  “I don’t know if I like to, but I jog.”

  “Okay, so you jog. Point is, I was thinking that your character would be jogging around the park when—”

  “Wait a minute,” she said, laughing. “You expect me to go running in this dress?”

  “Oh.” He stopped cutting and placed a thoughtful hand on his chin, the way he imagined a real director might. Looking at her (and squinting for effect), he nodded slowly. “Yes, that could be a problem.”

  “Tell ya what, Mr. Lucas, you keep working on your titles and I’ll run home and change into my jogging clothes.”

  “Okay, but don’t take your makeup off. I want you to look good.”

  “And you’re saying I’m ugly without makeup?”

  His cheeks reddened, and he stammered, “No…no, I—”

  “Relax, Spielberg,” she said with a chuckle. “I’m only pulling your leg.”

  From under his bed, he pulled out the box containing his prized possession. He slid the case from the protective sleeve labeled SEARS, then grabbed the gunlike camera from its Styrofoam cocoon. As Aubrey opened the door and started to leave, he pointed the camera at her and said, “I won’t shoot anything till you come back.”

  “Five minutes,” she said. “If I take more than ten, send a search party out for me and tell my dad I love him.”

  Ben’s father entered the hallway as Aubrey turned. They almost collided.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Oh, hi, Aubrey,” he said, a look of surprise spreading across his face as he looked up. “Thanks for giving Ben a ride home.”

  “My pleasure, Mr. Brendel.”

  “You heading home now?”

  “Just to change, but I’ll be back. Looks like Mr. Spielberg and I are making a movie today.”

  “Oh, that’s very nice.”

  “Should be fun,” she said, then turned and started for the back door.

  His father leaned in the doorway of the bedroom while Ben loaded the film cartridge into his camera. “That’s nice of her to help you with your movie,” he said.

  “It was her idea,” said Ben. “She even bought the film.”

  “You know, I was hoping you’d be able to mow the yard this afternoon.”

  “C’mon, Dad, I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  Ben’s father sat on the edge of the bed, placing a firm hand on his son’s back. “Okay,” he said. “You know, I think it’s great that Aubrey’s playing the role of big sister to you, helping you get over what happened last summer.”

  Ben pulled away from his father, his eyes trained on the Super 8 camera. “C’mon, Dad.” He felt an uncomfortable conversation coming on and wanted to be anywhere else. Sometimes he just wished his parents could learn to let things go. “It’s been a year already. Enough is enough.”

  “That’s what she is, right?” His father said, clearly ignoring Ben’s protest. “Like a big sister, right?”

  “Dad, I don’t know…”

  “I don’t want to see you crushed, son. It’s okay, even natural, to have feelings for a pretty girl, but—”

  “It’s not like that,” Ben insisted, anger creeping into his tone. “God, it’s not like that at all, okay? Why can’t everything just be what it is? Why does everything always have to mean something?”

  “You can talk to me. If you want to talk about Johnny. Or Aubrey. I’m here. I want you to know you can always come to me. I know it’s been hard for you, that you don’t have many friends.”

  “Correction, Dad—I don’t have any friends.”

  “Things’ll get better. I promise. Just hang in there, and don’t be afraid to talk to your old man from time to time.”

  “Where’s Mom?” Ben asked, trying to change the subject.

  “Grocery store, picking up some stuff for dinner, which I expect you to be on time fo
r.”

  “Yeah, I will.”

  “And speaking of your mother, she’s not going to like it if she finds out you’ve been out playing in your good suit. Better make sure you change before your friend gets back.”

  Ben got up from the bed and walked to the closet. He slowly took off his sport coat, hung it up, then started to unfasten his tie. His father remained in place, silent for a protracted moment. Then he said, “Your mother and I have been talking, and we don’t think you need a sitter much longer. What do you think?”

  “I probably haven’t needed one for a year,” Ben said, yanking off his tie.

  The look in his father’s eyes said, How could we leave you alone? As if his son listening to depressing music, mostly The Smiths and The Cure, was also a sign he was suicidal. But his father—like most parents, Ben assumed—wasn’t about to voice such a fear aloud, as if saying it would make the terror real; instead, he said, “You like her, don’t you?”

  “She’s all I have.”

  “No, that’s not true. You have your parents. We’re here for you.”

  “But you have to be, Dad. You don’t have any choice. Aubrey doesn’t have to spend time with a stupid kid like me, but she does. Don’t you understand? That means something.”

  “I know it does, but—”

  “If I wasn’t your son, would you be interested in me?”

  “That’s not really a fair question.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you are my son.”

  “Whatever, Dad.”

  “Look, I was young once, believe it or not. I get what you’re saying.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Well, maybe Aubrey’s working through some issues of her own. I don’t know. I just don’t want to see you get hurt, that’s all.”