Chapter Nine

If I really had frozen there in the doorway, Charles was picking up the slack as far as movement. He was on the floor, crouched over a three-foot wide canvas of a painting I had just finished, feverishly scratching at it with the dry bristles of one of my brushes. His whole torso shuddered erratically with the effort. My mind, for a trace of a moment, noted it was lucky I had just bought replacement brushes and then finally snapped into gear; I rushed over, kneeling beside him to take hold of the arm holding the brush. "Charles," I said, trying to sound both assertive and calming. "Charles, what are you doing?"

Yanking his hand away, Charles heaved the brush at the canvas, let out a short shriek, almost a yelp, and quickly retreated on hands and feet back to the base of the couch. Everything about his movements and vocalizations suggested something primal taking over, something further back on our evolutionary timeline. Sitting on the floor and pressed as close to the couch as possible, Charles hugged his knees to his chest and tucked his chin down, staring still at the painting, his body rocking with each panicked breath.

I stood up, unsure of what to do next. I looked down at the painting and noticed that he had scratched an inch-long tear through the canvas; he had obviously been focused on one very specific spot. I looked back up at Charles, still balled up on the floor and almost in tears. "Charles, what happened?"

"No," he whimpered.

"Charles-"

"Take it away!" he screamed.

I thought for a moment I had frozen again, but instinct willed me past indecision. I picked up the painting and rushed it into the hall closet, shutting the door on it. "Okay. It's gone," I told him, coming back into the living room.

"They were coming back." The words were a rush, a high-pitched mumble. I was only able to decode the message because it was the only thing Charles was saying. He repeated the sentence over and over, his eyes still on the spot where he had attacked my artwork. He seemed to have forgotten I was even there.

"Charles?" Though my words were still registering at just above a whisper, Charles' eyes, huge with fright, shot up towards the sound. He stared into my face, silent, unblinking. "Who was coming back, Charles?"

At this, he broke down. His face tore itself into a grimace and he buried himself further into his knees. Sobs began shaking his entire body. Not knowing what else to do for him, I sat down on the floor by his side. My initial instinct was to put an arm around him, try to comfort him. But given everything that had just happened, I imagined the sudden touch might send him into another panic and put us both at risk.

With no other option, I waited. His sobs soon subsided into a weak whimpering and eventually into only his frenzied breathing. In our respective silences, I was fourteen again, back in Charles' old room, eradicating aliens together on his television screen, both of us knowing that what needed to be said had been waiting to pounce the entire time. Through silence we sought to dilute the situation's gravity, tried to ignore it into non-existence, all the while knowing it would soon pierce the space between us. I waited.