With art by Bettina M. George
Spots of gold dappled Will’s cheek as he sat in the back of the family car. The seat beside him was empty, as it always was, and as always he imagined someone sitting in it, looking at him. He imagined a teenaged girl named Siri wearing a black and yellow shirt, black jeans, yellow shoes, and a black headband holding back long brown hair. The order in which he imagined these clothes always varied, and the clothes themselves tended to vary as well. Sometimes he didn’t even think of her as Siri, but rather Natascha. Or some other name – well, he couldn’t think of one at the moment. But even if these superficial surface details changed, she never did: she always had that same hair, the same kind eyes, that same warm smile. Her face was— She was everything that Will, a boy of ten years, considered pretty.
Although Will did not know sign language in the way that sign language is generally known, he utilised his own approximation to interact with Siri, and Siri used it to interact with him. It was makeshift but surprisingly subtle, at most becoming a harmless game in the eyes of his parents; there was no way for them to know he was speaking to a girl who existed only in the family car.
Will used this language to explain to Siri why the car was packed with so many of their belongings, why the luggage had even been strapped to the roof: it was because they were to spend the summer at the family summer house, an isolated place overlooking Boarshoe Lake, and they would need everything necessary to make it feel like home once the Newness of it wore off.
Siri nodded and smiled. She said I would like to come with you.
Will was confused. He said I thought you couldn’t leave the car.
I can . . . come and go as I please. I’m not exactly trapped here.
Will looked at her and, as he sometimes did, wondered if she was more real than he had originally thought. He gazed at her eyes, at the light that bounced off them when the car drove past a dotted row of trees, and he looked at the slight dryness of her lips.
I could stay in your room. How about it?
Why would you want to?
To . . . You could think of it as me protecting you. I mean . . .
Siri sighed and her thoughts seemed to drift to something she’d rather not think about. She moved her attention from Will to the blur of green and gold that flashed past her window.
Will said Okay, you can come. You can stay in my room.
Siri continued gazing out the window. Will wondered if she had heard him. He tried saying it louder – he said Okay, you can come. You can stay in my room.
Siri turned back to him and smiled. Thanks, Will, she said. I can’t wait.
Will looked at her with eyes wider than before, eyes wide at the sudden realisation of some miracle. His throat dried. Feeling that Siri could sense these changes in him, Will turned to his own window and carefully considered just what, exactly, having her live in his room might entail. As Siri must’ve been an aspect of his imagination, he figured he should have total control over what she did and when she did it. Was he satisfying some dormant desire by having her leave the security of the car to stay with him, in his own room, throughout the summer? To stay with him in his own room—
Something tapped him on the shoulder. He turned back to find Siri sitting directly beside him, sitting on that middle half-seat Will knew nobody liked to sit on. Siri again spoke to him with her hands, saying Will, look over there.
Will once more looked out his window. Somehow he could hear Siri’s hands behind him.
Where?
There. Between those trees coming up.
Will watched the trees intently. There were so many of them, with different shades of green and brown, that Will was at a loss. He had no idea what Siri was talking about.
Look! Look . . .
With this hand-spoken exclamation, Will finally saw what Siri wanted him to see: a figure standing between two trees. The trees were the only ones along the road with black trunks, though their leaves were as lushly green as those of any other. The figure between them was even more out of place: unmoving, it was short, with black jeans and a blue shirt, and a pure white skull where its head should have been.
This wasn’t the type of thing that Will liked to use his imagination for. As the car was driving along a dirt road, it moved slowly enough for Will to take in all of the figure’s fine details, and it was enough for Will to know that what he was seeing was somehow real. He found himself incapable of looking away, his eyes pinned open by some unseen force, and the back of his head felt like it was on fire.
The figure, with its hollow eye sockets, seemed to be staring back at him, and with the car moving along so slowly, what should have been a single, uncertain moment became Will’s first glimpse into eternity.
When it was over – when the car had finally driven past this impossible vision – Will found the strength to turn back to Siri.
Did you see? she asked.
Will swallowed and nodded.
Cool. Did you know that these things are everywhere, in the spaces between things?
Will thought about it for a moment. He shook his head.
He said I don’t— I don’t know if I want to hear what you’re telling me.
Siri gave him a reassuring smile.
It’s okay, Will. I’m here for you.
Will once more inspected Siri. At the point where he found himself counting out each of her individual eyelashes, he knew she had to be at least as real as the skull-headed figure she had pointed out to him.
You’re going to protect me?
Siri nodded and smiled. Her smile was so genuine that Will wondered if all of this was just some game, something that couldn’t actually hurt either of them. He decided to let Siri tell him the rules.
You said there are things between things?
Yeah. There’s, um, stuff that nobody seems to notice. Some of it’s bad and some of it’s good – it kind of depends on your own personal perspective on things. I like to think I’m good, for example, but there are some who think I’m bad. That’s why I’ve been in your car. Um . . .
How does it work?
Oh, it’s easy. Try looking at a space instead of through it.
Will decided to test this with a space he was familiar with – the one between the front seats of the car. Instead of looking at the window ahead of the space, or at the limbs of his parents, he tried looking at the space itself. At emptiness. Not too surprisingly, there was nothing there; he tried looking at it as hard as he could, but nothing happened. He wasn’t all that great with Magic Eye images, either.
I don’t see anything.
Hm? Well, of course. There’s nothing there.
Will folded his arms and turned towards his window in frustration.
There’s nothing there, Will.
Let me know when there’s something, then.
Will sat atop an upright suitcase and watched as his parents unpacked their belongings.
‘Go ahead and pick whichever bedroom you want, Will.’
Will’s father could say this as they had already picked out their own room, and had picked it out long before the family had piled into the car. Will’s parents would be staying in the biggest room, with the biggest bed and the biggest windows, a room that had its own balcony overlooking the lake, leaving Will to choose which bedroom would be his out of all the other rooms on the house’s three substantial floors.
As his mother began stuffing her undergarments into dresser drawers, she gave Will a Look, further nudging him out of the room and into the wild wooden yonder of the house.
Will hopped off the suitcase, accidentally knocking it onto its side, and left the room. He took a right down the hallway and bounced down the stairs to the second floor. The most important part of being able to choose his own room, he knew, was being able to choose one that wasn’t on the same floor as his parents’.
The first room he popped into was the one furthest from the stairs. From what he had seen, this room was like all the others, with a strong Stock quality, as though it were merely a glorified hotel room. Its position was what mattered to him – strategically placed between his parents’ room and the main floor, it allowed his independence while also giving him ready access to whatever he might need, whenever he might need it.
Apparently he wasn’t the only one to think so: Siri was sitting on top of the bed – on top of the pillows, actually – with her back to Will. She was facing a large window that outlined her with a white glow.
‘Oh, uh.’
Shh, she quickly shushed him. She turned to look at him over her shoulder and gave him her warm smile.
Is this . . . good for you? Will asked nervously. This was the first time in his short life that he felt he had to impress a girl – one much older than him, and one with an indecisive existence. He hoped he wouldn’t do anything to scare her off.
I’ll sleep on the floor, Siri answered back, and her ornate ‘yes’ quickened Will’s heart.
She climbed off the pillows and stepped soundlessly to the floor.
You should go get your things, right?
Y-yeah, said his trembling hands.
Okay, Siri said, stretching. I’ll wait here.
Will left the room with the image of her outstretched fingers, those slender slivers of gold, stuck inside of his head. There was something odd about this stretch of hers, something he couldn’t quite put his own finger on, and the offness of it lingered in his mind as he left the house and pulled his luggage out of the car.
It was with great determination and a terrible strain on his wiry muscles that Will managed to drag his two suitcases into the house and lug them up the stairs. All he could think about as he did so was how impressive this would have seemed to Siri if she had actually been around to witness it. Perhaps when he re-entered the room, the sight of his sweat and the tension in his arms would make her understand the effort he had put forth. Something like that.
Back in his room, however, Siri was lying facedown on the bed, and she neither moved nor made a sound when Will came in with the suitcases. He huffed and let them fall to the floor.
This is one comfortable bed, Siri said.
There was something off about this, about Siri, and it wasn’t that she was now wearing blue shorts instead of black jeans. As Will stared at her, panting, he realised what had been so strange about her stretch – it was the same reason why her lying on the bed was coming across as particularly odd to him. She wasn’t moving her hands to speak.
Will decided to try something: he kept his hands to his sides, and didn’t move them – or open his mouth in the slightest – when he spoke to her next.
Do you want to sleep on the bed?
Mm. That would look too strange to your parents. Besides, this is your room. I’ll be fine on the floor.
A noticeable silence ensued. Siri lifted her head to peer at Will, hoping to determine what was wrong.
You’re in my head, Will said to her, his tone more surprised than accusatory.
But you already knew that.
The first thing Will did after unpacking was leave the house. He wished to explore the surrounding wilderness; he wished to get as close to the lake as he could, so that he could spy the fish through the water; and more than anything he wished to put the whole Siri thing out of his head. He wanted to take a break from all the profundity and confusion – he wanted to be a little boy for at least a little while longer.
It did not take long for him to want to be something else. As he dashed through tall plants, jumped over mushroom-covered tree stumps and bounced down hills, Will imagined he was a hobbit from the Tolkien art book he had brought along with him to the summer house. The book had been a gift from his grandmother, a large, hardcover book that was easily the heaviest thing he had packed. In it were many different pictures from many different artists, each one depicting a different scene from large books he had not yet managed to read.
Knowing nothing about hobbits, Will assumed they were simply young boys just like him, albeit with particularly hairy feet. And, of course, they lived in a fantasy realm that existed only within the pages of the book, while Will lived in a realm of reality that was a different experience for every individual within it.
Will danced his imaginary hobbit body to the old grey dock at the bottom of the forest, which he had spied between the trees. While an adult would have stepped timidly onto the decaying wood of the dock, and only if they had been forced to, Will flung himself to the dock gleefully, knocking chunks of wood into the water and splinters into the air. He scrambled right up to the jagged edge and peered into the murky water below.
All he could see was grey, brown and a deep, dark green. Then, when he looked more carefully, he could make out his silhouette against a wavering sky. He moved his elbow to make himself more comfortable. He then set his entire arm down, which was how he found the space where a plank should have been.
He sat on his shins and looked at the rectangular space between two planks, a rectangle of ripples and sudden flashes of sunlight. The world within the space was just like the one in his book, or the world inside of his head, a world that could not exist anywhere else. Looking at the space, he felt a strong desire to slip into it; he pressed his face to it, inserting his nose and lips, and breathed in the other world. He closed his eyes to it and then opened them again, and when he opened them again he saw something shiny that could not have been the sun.
Will licked his lips and pulled away. He then stuck his hand into the hole, sending it into the water without a splash, the coolness racing up his skin. He felt around for whatever it was that had shined before him. For some reason he expected an ancient ring.
He touched something hard and slick. It moved slightly when he brushed it with his fingers, but it could not have been a fish since it didn’t swim away or try to break free. He forced as much of his arm through the hole as he could, forcing it until the water went past his elbow. He managed to get a grip on the object and pulled it out with a gasp.
He was very much glad that there hadn’t been anyone to see him fall onto his butt. He was greatly disappointed, however, to find that whatever he had grabbed was no longer in his hand, and wasn’t anywhere around him. When he looked back into the hole, all he could see was the murkiness of forgotten water.
Could it have been real, Siri? Do you believe it was real?
Of course. What could be easier than believing in something that doesn’t exist?
I wonder what it was.
I don’t know. You’d probably be the authority on that.
Will was lying on his bed and gazing up at the ceiling. During the day the ceiling had been white, but now, with the moon and stars shining through his window, it was cast in a dark blue. Siri was lying on the floor beside his bed, lying on her side; she had stayed in his room the entire day, she had told him, to ensure that nothing bad tried to sneak in.
There are so many things— There were so many things I thought it could be.
Yup.
Will furrowed his brow in frustration.
What can you tell me that I don’t already know?
I can put things more succinctly for you, I guess. I can say that there are no individuals, only individual realities. You were thinking about that earlier.
I don’t get it. Why tell me something like that? I don’t get it.
It’s hard to say why people say things. Who are writers writing for when they write? Think about all the books that have never been translated.
I don’t get it.
Siri smiled.
How about sleep? Can you get that?
I . . . Yeah.
I’ll still be here, if that’s what you’re wondering.
Will didn’t say anything.
I’ll still be here, Will.
Will rolled onto his side and covered his head with one of his pillows. This was actually his most comfortable sleeping position, a habit he had taken up when he was younger and his nightlight had burnt out – it was what he had done to protect himself from monsters. After all, if he was unable to see them, then how could they see him? How could they exist?
Will, are you sleeping? Will? Are you sleeping? I can hear you breathing, Will, but I can’t tell if you’re sleeping or not. Are you? Are you sleeping, Will? I can’t . . . I can’t tell if you’re sleeping or not. I can’t tell if you’re sleeping or not, Will. Will . . . Good night, Will. Good night.