**AS SEEN IN** *PLANET SCUMM ISSUE #10: SUPERGIANT X*
Written by **SAM REBELEIN**

*Illustrations by* Alyssa Alarcon Santo

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be careful what you wish for, readers… we’ve unlocked a vault story from issue #10: supergiant x, and it’s brimming (pun intended) with twists and turns and a mysterious “healer” who is not what he seems…

HECTOR BRIM

Sam Rebelein

When she’d been gone for seven days, Gil took an ax to her piano.

There’d been a small reception in his apartment after the funeral. Just Natalie’s parents, his mother, a handful of friends, and a few neighbors, including Mrs. Preston down the hall. Gil did nothing the entire time but wish them all gone. They had no comfort to give. No reassurances of higher meaning or better places, which they did not believe in. That wasn’t the kind of crowd they were, so it wasn’t the kind of crowd Gil needed.

Mrs. Preston was the only exception. She’d once spoken to him in the elevator, convincingly and unsolicited, about reincarnated pets and the spirit realm. But Gil squirmed in her company. Even her words of sympathy and reassurances felt small and cold. She seemed to sense this, leaving the reception early, patting his arm, and telling him, “Knock on my door if anything comes up.” There was something ominous about it, like she knew something. It made Gil squirm even more.

He finally managed to usher everyone out, and as the door closed on Nat’s parents, he heard her mother say, “Don’t you think we should stay a bit longer?”

“No,” her father said, gentle. “Honey, come on. He wants to be left alone.”

The door shut on that. Alone vibrated throughout the apartment. For a long time, Gil didn’t move. He just stood there, black-suited and formal, leaning against the door, needing to break something.

He turned. Gazed around at what had been their home. The tall ceilings, exposed brick. Paint they’d picked out together. Shelves filled with their books and photographs. And in the corner, those bone-and-black keys she’d hunched over with her long fingers, smiling as she played him the songs she wrote privately on lunch breaks.

“You could be a famous singer,” he’d told her once.

“But then I wouldn’t sing for you.”

The ax was buried in the hallway closet. Why he’d brought it with him when they’d moved down to the city, he couldn’t say. Maybe a part of him knew.

He loosened his tie. Rolled up his sleeves. Tore the closet door open. He knelt, began tossing old jackets over his shoulder. A tennis racket. Cobwebbed shoes. He dug the ax out of the dust, hefted it back into the living room, and began hacking that piano to bits.

A long sliver of wood sliced at his cheek as pieces flew through the air. He felt the sting, but his whole life was sting now anyway, so what did it matter. He started with the keys, then moved sideways to the body. The jangling, springy chorus of snapping wires beat against his ears. He grinned, reveling in it. In the breakage of everything this once solid, formidable, smiling, perfect thing had been.

The ax crashed again and again.

Suddenly, a wire whipped across Gil’s bicep and he stopped. Stood panting above the wooden ruin, debris scattered across the floor. The ax hummed, frozen above his head. He felt himself pulse. Felt the leak down his arm, on his cheek.

The way the truck had hit her as she stepped unknowing off the curb, her arm had nearly cracked in half. Right along the bicep, right there. Feeling the wire now across that same spot, on his own arm, he was right back there. Holding her as she went. Watching her arm twitch. Watching those long fingers go limp. The truck driver standing in the street, rocking back and forth on his heels. Retching. Weeping. Gil never heard his apologies. He just watched the arm twitch….

A sound. Soft and far-off. A kind of skittering slowly filling the apartment. Gil let the ax drop and clatter down out of his hand. He listened. Hundreds of insects, or tiny paws, scratching at the floor. Scrabbling across the wooden boards. A hollow, frantic scramble.

Gil frowned. Cocked his head. The noise grew louder. Louder. Began to roar throughout the room. But he couldn’t tell what it was.

Someone was standing behind him.

He turned. He was alone. Alone. Of course he was. She was gone. But for a second, he’d felt someone. Felt a pocket of displaced air or… something. He couldn’t explain it. He just felt watched.

The roar drowned this feeling out. His pulse, the leaks across his skin, quickened. He realized the noise was now joined by the coppery snaking whir of springs bouncing against each other. Gil turned again, looking around the room, starting to itch and sweat. What the hell was it? It sounded half-wooden, half… ivory. Sliding across the….

“Oh.”

He looked down.

The debris of the piano was moving.

As he watched, it rolled itself across the floor and, slow but steady, wove itself into a wide, crooked heart.

Gil blinked at it. Then he threw up.

#

Because it wasn’t really the crowd Gil belonged to, he didn’t know what to do with… this. He didn’t have the tools to process this kind of thing. And he knew, no matter how it sounded, that that was probably why his wife had waited an entire week to be known like this. Or felt, or whatever. Giselle knew—she must—that she’d have to wait for a break. A moment when he’d actually listen, or see. Some kind of rock bottom. Watching him hack at her piano with an ax was probably the best chance she’d get. Like Gil, she’d been kind of a skeptic, so he knew she’d think like that. That is, if. If she really were….

Gil sat on the couch, knees tucked tight under his chin. He stared at the floor, at the wet spot from the puke he’d mopped up, right in the center of the piano heart. He’d carefully left the heart untouched.

He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. Shook his head. Laughed. Tried to pull himself together. Laughed again. Gave up. He figured whatever was happening, he might as well go all in. And if he was starting to go crazy, what the hell.

He cleared his throat. Looked around the room, feeling self-conscious. “Alright,” he said. “Are…” He cleared his throat again. “Are you… here?”

There was a green and yellow light fixture in the hall. Something Natalie had brought down to the city, and loved.

It flickered on.

Gil began to cry.

A low rushing breathed down the hall. Gil held his breath. Sliding along the floor, around the corner, came a box of Kleenex. It slid to a halt just before the couch.

“Oh,” he said.

#

By sunset, he’d cried everything out. He sat calm on the couch, knees still tight against himself. Sore now, after sitting folded like that for hours. Clutching a wad of sodden tissues, he peered down the hall to the light fixture. Not sure what else to do, he said, just sort of confirming, “You’re really here.”

The light blinked.

Heat flooded his chest. “I… I miss you.”

The light flickered.

Gil sat up. He stretched his legs and his knees cracked. He wrung his hands, thinking.

“Are you… mad that I broke your piano?”

The light said nothing.

Gil nodded. “Okay.” He sniffed, ran a hand under his nose. “Okay.”

He figured out quick that he could ask Nat simple yes or no questions through the light. She’d blink once for yes, stay off for no. As long as he kept the questions simple, she could answer.

Over the next three weeks, every chance he got, he’d speak with her. And of course, told no one about it. Sometimes, she would float old pictures around to make him smile, or throw her jewelry across the room. Once, he’d felt a hand on his back. It made him jump and scream. But the hand wrapped around his shoulder, warm and safe. He melted into its company.

He sat under the hall light for hours every day. Talking, reminiscing, sometimes just staring. Silent. Trying not to hurt.

Finally, he worked up the strength to ask the most terrifying question he could think of.

“Are you in pain?” Gil sat slumped against the wall. He stared up at the light. Waited for it to respond.

It didn’t.

“Hey. Are you in pain?”

The light flickered. Wavering enough so that he wasn’t sure.

“Are you in pain?” Through tears this time.

Another flicker.

“Hey. Are you okay?”

Nothing.

She wasn’t sure. He could feel it. Could feel it through the walls. Some kind of aching uncertainty. A looseness or unbalance. Something… off.

It was after another week of this, of asking and crying and clinging to her, of barely leaving his apartment just to be near her, even if it was just a flicker and an echo of who she was, that Gil finally decided she probably needed help.

Something echoed through his brain: Knock on my door if anything comes up….

Well. Something had definitely come up.

#

Even if she hadn’t offered, Gil probably would have trusted Mrs. Preston more than any of his skeptic pals. Especially now that he’d isolated himself for weeks, barely answering their texts and calls. He and Mrs. Preston weren’t friends. Not by any stretch of anything. They said hello to each other when they crossed paths in the lobby. In the elevator sometimes, they chatted politely about the weather, city life, reincarnated pets that one time, spirits rarely, and… well, they had chatted about Nat. Or with her, even, when she’d been there.

That hurt to think about.

Mrs. Preston was maybe 80, a good 50 years older than Gil. He couldn’t say what she did for a living, really, or call her voice to mind unless he thought hard about it for several seconds. She was just some (and he felt bad thinking this) generic, squat, sweet old lady in his mind. And he was pretty sure (and this made him feel slightly better) that to her, he was just some generic, tall young guy. But if anyone would believe in ghosts speaking through light bulbs and piano shards, he felt like it’d be her. Her door stank of sage and mystery every time he walked by it. She had that… vibe. A weird energy of knowing things. And at the reception, it’d seemed like she’d definitely known. Or guessed.

So.

He stood in the outer hall, peering down it at Mrs. Preston’s front door. He worked his hands into his pockets. He glanced back at his own door, which felt like looking at Nat herself, now that she seemed to be in the very beams of his apartment. He looked away. Twisted his hands back and forth in his pockets. Dug his cheek into his shoulder, itching the old scab from the piano shard.

What exactly was he going to say to her? How precisely did he think she could help him? How could Mrs. Preston help Nat, furthermore? Did she need to “move on,” whatever that meant? What if Mrs. Preston thought he was crazy? What if he… What if he was?

He shook those thoughts away. Useless at this point. He was too far in.

He stood there in the outer hall. His hands twisted harder. Faster. The cheek scab itched. With each second, the hallway grew longer.

“Fuck it,” he muttered, and marched down the hall.

#

The whole thing came tumbling out in jagged starts and stops, almost as soon as Mrs. Preston opened the door. Gil stammered his way through the explanation of the piano and the light. He skipped over some parts that seemed more insane than others. But he was also describing his wife’s ghost inhabiting his apartment, so what sounded insane versus what didn’t felt like kind of a toss-up. The more Gil talked, the more self-conscious he felt. As he spoke, his hands never left his pockets.

Mrs. Preston listened to the whole thing, face twitching between confusion, concern, and something else.

“And I feel,” he finished, at last, “that she’s just… spaced out. Stretched. That her… I don’t know, the spirit? Has just expanded into the whole place. Instead of being in her. And… well….”

He stopped. Something he’d said had made Mrs. Preston’s eyes light up. They danced over him. He wasn’t sure how to take that. Almost backed away from her.

She knew, he decided.

“It’s funny you use that word,” she said. “Expanded.”

Gil shrugged. “It’s how I feel. Or—”

“You think it’s how she feels?”

“Of course,” he said. “And, and confused. Lost. I know her, I can feel it.” The words were more high-pitched, more desperate than he expected. His cheeks burned. What am I saying?

But Mrs. Preston just nodded, grinning wide.

“One moment,” she said.

She shuffled away into her apartment, leaving the door open. Gil stood there. His mind railed at him. Called him stupid, told him to go back to his cage and hide with the dead. What the fuck did he think he was doing here? Bothering an old, kind woman with his bullshit.

He was just about to stalk shamefully back down the hall when Mrs. Preston returned, still grinning. She held her hands tight to her chest. Whatever she was holding, Gil couldn’t see it.

She leaned against the jamb, sighed, and closed her eyes for a moment. Ran her thumbs in circles round the thing within her hands.

“My husband,” she started. Stopped. Swallowed some sharp stab of tears. She tried again, voice stronger. “My husband. When he died, I didn’t know what to do with myself.”

Mr. Preston was a somewhat nebulous entity to Gil. From what he’d gathered, the man had died about two years before Gil and Nat moved in. She’d mentioned him once or twice, but only in passing.

Gil stood a little straighter, alert.

“Apparently,” she continued, “he didn’t know what to do either. Because he never left.”

The bottom of Gil’s stomach opened.

“I never knew,” he said.

“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Preston. “His spirit was still with me. And in such pain. I knew I wasn’t ready to move on. But I could feel he wasn’t ready, either. Because of me. I could feel it through the walls. And whenever he made himself known, whether it was just a little sign or a feeling I got, I could tell that he was still there because he was worried I wouldn’t be okay alone.”

Gil’s eyes flicked down to her hands.

“We were both hurting,” she went on. “But then a friend gave me this.”

Her fingers blossomed and held out the thing she’d been hiding. A business card. She held it out to him, delicate, in both hands. To be offered, so ceremoniously, something so simple and secular, made Gil suddenly uneasy. He gave her a dubious look. He removed a hand from his pocket, slow, and took the card from her. It was grimy, mostly blank. Looked almost homemade. Nothing on it but a number, in deep, black font. And a name. Gil turned it over, expecting more on the back. It was blank.

“I don’t get it,” he said.

“He helps people,” said Mrs. Preston. Her eyebrows yanked themselves up and down, confidential. Her head trembled. As if passing on this knowledge excited but exhausted her. Drained her of some old burden.

Gil looked down again at the card. Its edges frayed. Dark brown spots. Passed between dozens of hands over dozens of years.

Just a number. And a name.

He tried to hand it back to her. “I don’t need a therapist.”

She shook her head, put her hands up, palms out. “No, no. You misunderstand. He isn’t… He’s a kind of healer.”

The card lingered in the air between them. Once he realized he was stuck with it, Gil drew it back in. It felt heavier than it had a few seconds ago.

“He helped me understand,” she explained, “that when people die, their spirits expand. Swell out of the body into the air. To be part of everything without being bound. That’s the beauty of being released after death. But if they feel… unfinished, people get stuck. Halfway. They… echo back. These echoes aren’t contained in bodies anymore, of course, so they become tethered to a specific place. Like your apartment. Sometimes an object, like a mirror. And they sort of… bounce around in there, in that loose, expanded state, instead of swelling into the air and being free. It’s hard. But this man.” She wagged a finger at the card. “He helps set them free. That’s where my husband has gone now.”

“Gone,” said Gil. It was the only word that really stood out.

She nodded. “But gone where he’s a part of everything, like he’s supposed to be. Gone to… to a better place.”

“Ah huh.” Gil stared at the card. It grew heavier.

“Well, thanks,” he said. Immediately he hated himself for sounding disingenuous. “I mean, really. Thank you. I’ll… I’ll give him a try.”

She grinned again. He tried not to look at her teeth, realizing just how grey they were. “Do. He helps. He’ll help your wife find her way.”

“Right. No, I appreciate it. I’ll give you the card back after I call him?”

“Oh, no. I don’t need it anymore. It’s yours.” With that, she waved, wished him good luck, and shut the door. A waft of incense puffed out after her. He coughed.

Gil remained for several seconds, until he heard the chain slide on the other side of the door and figured it was probably time to walk back down the hall. The entire way, he held the card out in front of his chest. Stiff. As if it were on fire.

Nothing there. Except a number. And a name.

When he got home, it took him 10 nervous minutes, one hand holding the card, the other turning in his pocket, to finally take out his phone and dial the number.

It rang twice.

When the line connected, he heard a cough. The crack-rustle of moving leather. Then a voice. Low and thick, like the drone of a distant lawnmower: “Hector Brim. Help you.”

Gil swallowed. This was not the voice he’d expected. It did not feel safe. It did not feel helpful. It felt, instead, like someone had stretched rubber bands across his limbs and now tugged them hard.

“Hello,” he managed. “My name is, uh, Gil. I have a, a problem.”

“Most people do.”

This threw him off. “It’s… Ah huh. Right. Well. I got this card from a friend. It’s my wife. She—”

“When did she pass?”

Again, Gil was taken aback. The voice hadn’t skipped a beat. No preamble, no explanations. The blank simplicity of the card made itself felt here, too. This man knew what he was about.

“About a month ago,” he said.

“Recent.”

A pause. Gil’s grip on the phone tightened. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to say something or if the man on the other end were thinking. Or waiting. He pictured the voice out there, what its owner looked like. Saw him sitting in shadow, draped over an armchair in a corner somewhere. Nothing but stillness and dark and—

The voice broke in on him: “Your address?”

Numb, Gil could think of nothing else to do, other than just give it to him.

“Mm. Been there before.”

“Yes. Um. Mrs. Preston. She gave me your card.”

“Not much for names.”

Another pause. Gil winced.

“So,” he said.

“Alright. Three hours work for you?”

“Three… Sorry, three hours from now?”

“Mm.”

“I.” Gil cleared his throat. “Yes. Sorry. Yes. That works.”

“Be four hundred.”

“Sorry, dollars?”

The line went dead.

Gil began to pace, heart and mind racing. Eventually, he landed on the couch in the living room. Tucked his knees up under his chin. Coiled himself there, tight and anxious. He wondered what he was supposed to do for three hours. Knew he would do nothing but sit.

Regret flooded him.

A better place… Christ, that’s… What is that? What a fucking cliché. That might be all well and good for Mr. Preston, but whatever that “better place” was, Natalie would be gone. And suddenly, he wasn’t so sure he wanted that. Even if it meant hurting her, he wanted her to stay. Because if she left, he’d be totally, completely alone.

He thought about asking the light in the hall for its opinion, but was afraid to know the answer.

No. He knew. And he knew he knew. This was the right thing to do. He was just scared, that was all.

So he sat. Waiting. His entire body throbbing.

Eventually, he got up and wrote a check to Hector Brim.

#

When Hector Brim was young, he moved to the city because he wanted to feel connected to everything. All the voices and echoes he could possibly hear. He’d brought with him his bag of Brim family tricks. The tricks were old, but new to him and exciting. For the most part. There were a few that Hector, for the several years his father trained him, passing on his inheritance, had never really liked or understood.

The brand, for example.

“Doesn’t it hurt?” Hector asked once, when he was nine.

“This tool is for angry, violent spirits,” his father explained. “Ones beyond our help, and in need of control.”

“But they’re people, too.”

“Everybody is people, too.”

“So, we should help everybody.”

His father smiled. A limp, tired thing. “You can try. That’s all this family has done, for nearly a century. Try. Come, let’s keep practicing. Hold the brand to the light again. Your form needs improvement.”

When Hector moved to the city, he rented a small apartment in Chinatown, and everything was magic. This was back when he was helping people, and the irises of his eyes were sunlight on leaves. He looked through them at his new apartment, beaming. They shone as he thought of all those echoes, all the people there to help. All around him, in the tall glittering of the city.

It was a bright time. Being young.

But the more time he spent in that apartment—the more he listened to the radiator’s metallic tattoo, the scurry of rats on floorboards, the couple upstairs who fought and broke things, the alley downstairs where people mugged, fucked, wept, vomited—the smaller it felt. More cramped. More lonely.

Jobs poured in. Word of mouth. Desperate people seeking closure, seeking help, seeking proof of Something More.

He kept doing it, dealing out his family tricks like candy. But the high lessened every time. For a while, he brought the stones to the shore every time he used the box for a job. Kept dumping them there, trying to feel good about it all. Trying. He even tried to feel good about the times he had to use the more violent tricks, like the brand.

But something held him back.

One day, before he brought the latest stone to the beach, Hector gazed out his one small window at the afternoon. He held the stone in his hand, soaking in its warmth and company, its voice. He always liked to sit with them like that. Just for a little while. The company was good, for what it was. The sun gleamed against all the glass stuck up in the sky. He tried to breathe it in. Feel less cramped. Tried to press his palm against the window and touch it all. All those people….

But the family tricks don’t work that way.

His eyes landed on a face. Stuck inside another window, far across the way, gaping out at the same bleak cityscape. And seeing that, Hector realized that he wasn’t connected to anything at all. He was in a cage. His palm against the bars. That face was in its own cage. And all across the city, there was nothing at all but cage upon cage upon cage. All alone. All clanking, scurrying, fighting, breaking, mugging, fucking, crying, dying. No trick could help or stop that. He realized this, and something inside of him began to turn. To bend.

He never took that stone to the beach.

Eventually, his entire world became nothing more than the warm-metal piss-stink of a life lived in a constrictive, concrete Hell.

And that was a very long time ago.

#

***CHECK OUT ISSUE 10 IN THE PLANET SCUMM SHOP!***

Gil opened the door. He had to take a step back and blink. Looking at Hector Brim gave him vertigo. The doorway swam a little, and it took him a moment to steady it. The man was well past six feet tall, looming a solid foot over Gil. He was old. Tufts of dirty-snow hair cotton-balled across his head. The vertigo came not from his height but from his body, which was cracked to one side. Head lilting towards his left shoulder, and the shoulder sagging outward. It was the bag in the man’s left hand. It dragged an entire half of his body down towards the floor. A massive, black leather briefcase. Stuffed with what Gil assumed could only be bricks. The man’s eyes made Gil dizzy, too. The irises a deep, vague moss. Overgrown and forgotten. The man’s beige trench coat must have weighed a ton. And it was August.

The man spoke. “Gil?” That old lawnmower groan.

“I am. Yes.” Gil stuck out his hand. Hector Brim stared at it. Gil retracted.

“Come in,” he said. “Mister….”

“Just Brim.”

Brim had to duck under the doorway. He stepped into the room, feet heavy, echoing. Gil closed the door behind him. As soon as Brim entered the apartment, he locked his eyes on the ceiling. Grunted. Moved into the living room. The carcass of the piano was still in the corner, but Brim didn’t even glance at it. He moved in slow circles around the room, gazing up at the ceiling. The bag thudded against his thigh, but he seemed not to mind. He’d done this hundreds of times before. Thousands, maybe.

The room was silent except for the soft pound of the bag and the flutter of the trench coat. Gil stood awkwardly by the door, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. Should he say something? Brim didn’t seem to mind the quiet, so Gil remained silent. Brim swung his head from side to side. It swung him into the hall, and his body followed it, as if the rest of his spine were only vaguely attached to his skull. A broken rag doll, Gil thought. He hesitated, then followed in Brim’s wake. When he did, he found Brim standing in the middle of the hall, staring straight up. Straight into the light fixture.

“Jesus,” Gil couldn’t stop himself from muttering. “That’s her.”

“Seems like.”

“I mean… You’re the real deal. Aren’t you?”

“Never heard anything to the contrary.” Brim kept his eyes on the light.

Gil became immediately aware that Nat was hiding. That she was pointedly not making herself known. She didn’t want to go. She wasn’t ready to leave him. He could feel it. His hands turned in his pockets. Anxiety tugged at those rubber bands in his arms. He shuddered.

“Woman down the hall,” said Brim.

“Um. Mrs. Preston.”

Brim grimaced. “Names….”

Gil wasn’t sure what he meant by that.

“She explain to you?” Brim asked. “About souls?”

“She said something about expansion? I mean, no, not really. I… Look—”

“Mm.” Brim lurched back into the living room. He breezed past Gil, pressing him against the wall. The bag almost rammed into Gil’s knee as he passed. Again, Gil followed. He felt stupid just following this man around his apartment, but he wasn’t sure what else he was supposed to be doing.

“Souls,” said Brim. He positioned himself in the middle of the living room, and Gil felt his blood go cold. Brim stood in the exact center of where the heart had been. Maybe Brim already knew that. That was probably the point.

In his pockets, Gil’s hands churned.

“When our bodies release them,” Brim continued, “they spiral out into the ether.” He placed his briefcase on the floor. “Typically, they go elsewhere. Don’t know much about that.” He undid the zipper running along the top of the briefcase. Its lips yawned open. Gil could almost hear it sigh. “But if there is a lack of what you might call closure, the spirit remains. In a somewhat half-tethered, expanded state. Your wife, for instance.” The bag looked like it was choking. It gasped for air. Jaw muscles stretched tight against whatever was lodged in its throat. Gil felt it, like a living thing. He stepped back. “Your wife has expanded out of her body, and has sunken herself into the very beams of your home. It is, I’m sure, uncomfortable.” Brim reached down into the gaping maw of the bag. It seemed to gag around his wrist. Gil took another step back. “What we do here is re-condense those souls. Bind them back into something more… solid.” Brim pulled a box out of the bag’s innards. He held it up and looked at it.

The box was an ancient thing. It had the same passed-down quality of Brim’s card. Its sides shone black from decades of hands. The small brass latch had once glittered, but now bore the dull refraction of a dying fluorescent.

Brim placed the box on the floor next to the bag. He slid open the latch, lifted the lid. Let it fall back. The box and the bag sat next to each other, yawning at the ceiling. Trying to swallow it whole.

“The box will accomplish that,” Brim concluded. He ambled over to the couch. Sat down with a large rush of air. He sighed. The coat settled about him. He was still.

Gil stared at him. Almost a minute passed. Brim sat motionless, hands in his lap. Eyes blank. Gil shifted side to side. Part of him wanted to grab the ax again and hack the little box apart. Silence throbbed against his ears until, finally, he burst. “I don’t understand what the fuck is happening.”

Brim jerked his shoulders. “Your wife will condense inside the box. I’ll take her to a place where she can be free. She’ll be ready in a minute or two.”

“Yeah, sorry, I don’t know what the fuck that means, though.” Anger curled into Gil’s voice. Brim just stared at him, unmoved. Those old moss-covered rocks gaping out from their sockets.

Gil stepped forward. Took his hands out of his pockets. “Hey. What does that mean?”

Brim sighed again. Everything seemed hard to him. Everything a struggle. He seemed to drag himself through talking just like he dragged his body through space. “Look, don’t bother asking how it works, because I don’t know. Just that it does. The box draws souls inside itself. Once inside the box, they crystalize into stones. The stone usually reflects the true spirit of the person. Agate, pyrite, opal, amazonite, obsidian, red coral…. Most people are quartzite.” He shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe how many people are quartzite.”

“I don’t give a shit about quartzite. I know my wife. I don’t need to see her true whatever the fuck.”

“Not about need. Happen anyway.” The final word strained as Brim stood. He unbent himself from the couch and his joints cracked. He shuffled back to the box, continuing to crack and pop along the way. He towered above the ancient, wooden thing. Peered into it.

“Ah,” he said. He stooped, reached inside.

Gil felt manic. Felt angry energy beating through his body like massive drums. He was restless and tired and he wanted this man gone. He wanted his wife back. Wanted her to stay. Not crystallized. Fuck this.

He charged to the door, threw it open, and said, voice shaking, “You know what? This, this is done. I’m sorry. I don’t want this.”

Brim didn’t move. He kept his hand in the box.

“Hey. Did you hear me? I—”

“Tiger’s eye.”

Gil blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“Tiger’s eye.” Brim held up a gleaming, honey-colored stone, about the size of his thumb.

Gil swallowed. “Where… where did that come from? How did you get that? What is that?” His mind rejected it. This rock was not his wife.

Brim ignored him. “Tiger’s eye is a good one. Your wife was very confident.”

Gil shook his head. “Stop.”

“She was grounded. Practical. Had an artistic streak.”

“Please stop.”

“She made you feel safe. Brought good luck.”

“I said stop.”

“Here.”

Brim strode over to Gil. He held out the stone. Eels swarmed in Gil’s stomach. He hesitated. He gave Brim his hand. Brim placed the stone in Gil’s palm. It was warm. Felt… full.

“Can you feel her?” Brim asked.

Gil’s voice came from far away. “Yes.”

“Can you hear her?”

His eyes burned. He didn’t move his hand. He felt the warmth, the pulse of those ribbons of color. Tried to focus, and feel or hear anything else.

“No,” he said. His voice caught in his throat.

“I can. She has a beautiful voice. Hearing her sing must have been very special.”

Gil looked up. The man’s face remained mossy and distant.

“What are you going to do with her?” Gil asked. “I mean, how does this help her? She’s in there? Fucking… in there?”

“I’ll take her to the beach. Many other stones. There, she can be with the ocean and the land and everything else. Free. Connected to the entire world.”

“Oh,” said Gil. He didn’t take his eyes off the stone.

After a long time, Brim slid it from Gil’s hand. “It’s time.”

Gil felt suddenly cold and empty.

“I can take her to the beach,” he said, desperate. “Let me take her.”

Brim shook his head. “There’s another step.”

“Can I at least wa—”

“It must be done alone. It’s how the trick works.”

Gil shrank. “Oh.”

“Don’t worry. She’ll be fine. Think of it like spreading your ashes into the ocean.”

“I… I like that.”

“Most people do.”

These were the last words they exchanged. Brim slipped the stone into the breast pocket of his coat. With it, Gil felt like his soul slipped away, too. He opened his mouth. Nothing came. He closed it.

Brim gathered up his bag, gagging it again with the box and sealing its lips with the old, bulging zipper. Gil watched, feeling empty. Not sure what else to do. He gave Brim the check. And the man was gone, thumping out the door with his bag. Quiet and somehow shameful, like he’d just broken Gil’s heart. And Gil, just as ashamed, slumped back onto the couch. Coiled himself back up. The walls closed on him. The apartment was empty. Down to its very beams. For the first time since the funeral, he felt truly, irrevocably alone. An animal in a cage. He told himself that it was the right thing. That she would be alright. That he would be alright. He told himself everything was fine. Everything was good.

And then he wept.

Outside, lurching through the hall, Brim heard him. He smiled. He knew that feeling. And it was so delicious to feel it spread around him like a weed.

#

Hector Brim never went to the beach. Instead, he dragged himself along the subway, back to his hot, cramped apartment. Bag kept him lopsided, whacking against his leg as the subway moved. Sometimes he thought about not bringing it. Bringing just the box. He usually just needed the box. But you never knew. If the woman had been stubborn, he’d have needed the lighter, the saw. Maybe even the brand. Best to be prepared.

Scraping down the street, bag thumping at him. August, and the trenchcoat, made Brim sweat. Could take it off for once. But without the coat, he wouldn’t have his father’s echo, which was company at least.

The echo kept asking why.

Rolled his shoulder back. Rolled the voice out of his mind. Didn’t need the judgement. Just the company.

Back at his building. Not as nice a place as Gil’s. No tall ceilings. No elevator. Everything here warped, curling wood. The floor didn’t reflect or clap as you walked on it. It screamed.

Key stuck in the lock. Door stuck on the jamb. AC leaking on the floor, broken.

The coat twitched. It called him back to the beach. Tried to remind him this wasn’t what the family tricks were for.

Tried.

Hector took off the coat and the echo vanished. He hung it on a hook by the door. Limped into his main room. Turned and stood before the large glass table. Perfect, unstained. Ancient. Passed down, like almost everything else here. And resting in its center, the massive glass bowl.

That was Hector’s, and Hector’s alone.

Hector dropped his bag on the floor. He stepped out of his loafers, nudged them against the wall. Gray-blue balls of hairy dust fluttered in his wake. He moved back down the hall, to the coat. Reached inside the pocket. As he brushed against the fabric, he heard the faint echo-cry of his father. Ignored it. Removed the chunk of tiger’s eye from the pocket. Moved away. Returned to the table. The bowl.

He ran the warm stone between his fingers. Felt the woman in there. Heard her. He held her above the bowl for a moment. Listening. Watching. Feeling her through his fingers. She was attractive, and he could feel her throwing herself around with that confidence and will tiger’s eye usually indicated. She did have a beautiful voice. Probably wonderful to hear her sing. But it was even more beautiful to hear her scream. Beautiful to hear her trapped inside that tiny stone room. Afraid. Confused. Beating her head against its sides, unable to understand the cage she’d been sucked into. Utterly alone. In the dark. Lost and hurting and scared and, above all, stuck there for eternity.

He smiled.

He dropped her into the bowl.

She clattered down against hundreds of others. Brilliant colors flashed through the glass. Purple, blue, green, red, and orange. Bright white and pitch black. Stones of every kind. Quartzite. There was a lot of quartzite.

Hector’s fingers itched with excitement. He grinned, wide and wolfish. He let himself linger there, fingers twitching over the rim of the bowl, for as long as he could stand. This was the best part of the day. He savored it. Then plunged his hand inside. The roar was orgasmic. Thousands of voices, all howling, weeping. All of them stuck in the dark. Stuck inside their little stones. He closed his eyes. Lost himself in the wash of voices. In the wash of power over each and every soul. His knees began to quake. A cacophony of wails. All those people condensed into tiny dark hells. Sucked into the box against their will and beaten into rock. Trapped in some cramped, intangible vessel, with nothing but four walls and a hard floor. Unable to see or feel or understand beyond its bonds. They did not sleep. Did not hunger. Nothing to break the monotony except tears and the memory of light.

Hector had to sit down. He kept one hand in the bowl, fingers hot against the spirits of the many-dead. Reached around blind for a chair with the other hand. Dragged it to him. Dropped into it. Sighed. The euphoria. The company of this bowl. All locked in their own little cages. All hopeless and trapped, echoing him. His own ache. That was good. So good. Good to not feel alone.

He licked his lips. Swam his fingers around. The stones clicked and beat against each other. Screams faded and grew as he grazed against each soul.

This, he thought. This was the true connection. The heart of everything human. Suffering and shadow.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, his father’s voice still begged. Told him, for the millionth time, that this was not why the tricks had been passed down. They were passed down to help people.

When you were young, Hector, you understood. So why this? What happened?

Who the hell knows, he said, and shoved his father out of his skull.

His hand stopped. His thumb had landed against one piece in particular. Hector fished it out of the bowl. Held it above the rim. Looked at it. It was cold. Lifeless. He had to squeeze it hard to feel the soul inside. What a coincidence. Mr. Preston. Huddled deep into the rock. Closed in on himself in the corner of his cage. Silent and limp.

Hector remembered him now. Remembered how the man used to thrash. To beg. All quiet now.

Sometimes this happened. Sometimes so much time had passed, and so much despair spent, that the souls inside the stones faded. Stopped crying or trying to escape or anything else. They just stopped. Sat down. Grew cold. Remained there. Staring at the walls. Forever.

Hector understood. It happens.

He popped the stone into his mouth. Crunched Mr. Preston between his teeth, ground him into nothing, and swallowed him out of existence.

Whatever beauty there was in the world, Hector Brim never felt like he had been made privy to it. But at least he could try to make himself feel better.

Try.

He closed his eyes, and dove his hand back into the bowl.

Except the sound of stones running between his fingers, the little apartment was silent. Upstairs, the couple still fought, after all this time. Down in the alley, a pregnant homeless girl vomited.

Everyone everywhere alone.