Late Bloomer

When night came and the floor was acrawl with glisters, Arnie talked to the girl at the bottom of the chute. Between his level and the one below sat a dumbwaiter, inoperable, collecting dust. Grandpa refused to repair it because “dumbwaiters are for rich people.” Grandpa and the Keep Quiet Club weren’t rich. Not at all.

The squat was a dilapidated three-story house jammed into the side of a hill, the result of an old earthquake that had entombed many of the city’s neighborhoods in mud. Because of this, the front windows of the first two floors stared into the guts of the earth. Only the third floor saw daylight.

“I’m happy to be talking to you,” the girl whispered up to Arnie.

The chute door—despite Grandpa’s attempts at sealing it shut—hung open a few inches. Arnie kneeled on the mattress and pressed his forehead against the wall next to the bottom hinge. Cold, dry air from the floor below played across his chin.

“Me too,” he said. “They sound like rain when they move. They keep me up.”

The glisters were worse than that, scarier than that, but he didn’t want to seem soft.

“Wear socks in bed.”

By Grandpa’s estimation, Arnie hadn’t experienced enough trauma. Not nearly enough. He was a late bloomer.

“That’s what this is all about,” Grandpa told him the following morning. He was peeling shiny glister carcasses off the adhesive he’d stuck all over Arnie’s bed frame. “You get them all riled up. It’s supposed to happen that way.”

Some of the creatures, still clinging to life, squeaked and chittered pathetically. Arnie felt bad for them. According to Grandpa, to unlock the “curative properties of their essence,” you had to first ignite their bloodlust.

They would eat Arnie the first chance they got, but he still felt bad for them.

“They’re fond of young meat,” Grandpa went on. “Which is you. The best trauma occurs when you’re young meat. Two birds, one stone. Get it? What’s Forgiveness without trauma? Fuck, you wouldn’t know. You will.”

Grandpa’s eyes flashed, his many pupils dilating.

The holy sacrament of the Keep Quiet Club was the glister essence. Its consumption led to a feeling of serenity, a placid acceptance of all the bad things that may have befallen a person over the course of their life.

Grandpa called the essence Forgiveness.

Arnie had the second landing all to himself, except when people came to the kitchen. He usually passed the hours on his own, but from time to time his older siblings Deb or Gary would pay him a visit. He wasn’t allowed to go upstairs to visit them.

He and Deb sat on the edge of his bed. Deb punched a tape into her Walkman.

Arnie asked, “So he did it to you, too? You had to do it?”

She nodded.

“Gary, too?”

Deb nodded again.

Arnie stared at his shoes, defeated. The floor was littered with wet cardboard, newspaper, and clothes. The acrid smell of glister essence from the previous night hung thickly in the air. It felt more like the glisters’ room than his.

“Was Mom around back then?”

Deb looked at him. Something in her face changed.

“Mom was around,” she said. “But barely.”

“Like how Grandpa said?” Arnie whispered. “Like she—”

“‘Regressed? Got stuck in the past? Didn’t Keep Quiet’?” Deb’s delivery was condescending in the style of Grandpa’s way of speaking. Arnie tensed up, nervous they might be overheard.

In her normal voice, Deb said, “She got worse, yeah.” She seemed to think about it for a second, then shook her head. “More sensitive to loud noises. All that.”

She put the Walkman in Arnie’s lap and handed him her headphones.

“You probably won’t like this,” she said. “But after a while you might get it.”

At first Arnie thought she was talking about the glisters, but then he remembered the music. The last tape had terrified him. Deb might tease him again. As she placed the headphones over his ears, he grew tense.

Deb hit PLAY.

Tumultuous fuzz and a man’s gravelly roar penetrated his skull. Arnie flinched. He saw Deb’s mouth open in laughter, but the music was so loud it drowned her out.

He pulled the headphones down around his neck, blushing with shame.

“It’s okay,” Deb said.

But she wasn’t looking at him. She was already ejecting the cassette. She had lost interest. He had disappointed her.

“Do you ever hear a voice at night?” Arnie asked. “Like from the chute?”

Deb’s room sat right above his.

“The chute?” She shook her head. “It’s sealed shut. I’m always listening to music. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of ghosts now.”

Once his nerves had calmed a bit, Arnie allowed himself to get excited about the girl at the bottom of the chute. Hadn’t she told him she was happy to be talking? When was the last time someone had said something like that to him? Arnie had faint memories. At least he thought he did. What qualifies as a friend? He wasn’t sure he’d ever had one.

In any case, the girl now provided a welcome distraction from the intolerable heat and constant, all-night-long sounds of the glisters.

Maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t going to be so alone anymore.

When Arnie whispered down the chute that night, however, the girl didn’t answer.

But he could hear her humming. As if she were trying to tune him out. He lay in bed, sweating and listening.

Was this also music? Was he supposed to like it?

Grandpa lived in the biggest bedroom on the third floor. The staircase was cordoned off where it descended to the first floor. Grandpa never acknowledged the first floor. For all intents and purposes, the first floor was a basement, and the house had only two stories.

On meeting days, Keep Quieters entered through the second landing’s backdoor, on through the kitchen, and marched single-file up the quarter-turn staircase. Ready for the latest lecture, they crowded into Grandpa’s room.

One person, perhaps a little too loaded on Forgiveness following a meeting, had stenciled the Club’s slogan across the wall of the second-floor hallway:

Arnie had to pass the stenciled words and the staircase every time he went to pee. He tried to do all his peeing during the daytime, because once night came, he couldn’t leave his bed. Not even if he wanted to.

At sundown, Grandpa locked his door from the outside.

Arnie, lying alone in the darkness, talked to himself. He wondered aloud if there might be glisters on the first landing. He was afraid of them climbing up the chute and pushing themselves through the partially sealed door.

The girl overheard him.

Her voice cooled the sweat on his brow.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “They aren’t down here. Down here it’s cold and dry. They’re not interested in me, anyway.”

Grandpa had deposited more soiled cardboard, newspapers, and dishrags in Arnie’s room. He’d also added another space heater—meant to entice the glisters, to mimic their natural environment.

“They like young meat, though,” Arnie said. “You sound young. Aren’t you young?”

Nobody in the house followed a calendar. All Arnie knew was that when the family had moved in, he’d been younger. How much time had passed since then, he couldn’t say. Now he found himself old enough to be used as bait, his room no longer his own but a sweltering prison.

“Young?” the girl said. “I guess I sound that way. But I’m not meat.”

The most important practice for the Club was to Keep Quiet. It didn’t make sense to Arnie that its members got to be so loud while everybody else in the house had to be so quiet.

“Why do we have to be quiet?” he asked. “They make noise all the time.”

In the kitchen Gary was stirring noodles on the battery-powered stove and had a broadcast of a basketball game playing on the pocket radio he carried around with him. Arnie was trying to get his attention.

Annoyed, Gary turned down the volume.

“You know why.”

“Not… really.” It had been explained to him, sure, but he still didn’t quite grasp it.

Gary, in a tone devoid of emotion, recited Grandpa’s words.

“‘No reactive yelling. No tantrums. No getting triggered. Just Keeping Quiet. Now that doesn’t mean Keeping Quiet all the time. The point is victory over trauma. Whatever it takes.’”

Arnie readjusted in his seat, unsure if he could ask more without being scolded.

“You’ve heard this shit enough by now, Arn, come on.” Gary gave a big sigh. Stirred. “Anyway,” he said, “listen.”

Gary turned the radio back up.

Arnie listened hard. His older brother hadn’t quite clarified anything, but this matter was just as important. Arnie wanted to like basketball. He wanted to get it.

Gary announced: “They’re gonna run a pick-and-roll.”

A moment passed. The team tried running a pick-and-roll, but they turned the ball over.

Gary cursed.

“Hey!” came Grandpa’s voice bellowing down the stairs. “Keep it down!”

Gary, lowering the volume, muttered, “Stupid asshole.”

Had he glanced at Arnie when he said that? Did Gary think Arnie was a stupid asshole?

Later that day, Grandpa provided some context.

“Trauma soaks into walls the same way nicotine does when you smoke inside.”

Arnie tried to follow.

“That goes for everybody everywhere,” Grandpa went on. He was hacking an opening in Arnie’s bedroom wall. Through this opening, glisters would enter. “Anybody who’s lived in a place long enough leaves a part of themselves behind.”

“Like… meat?”

Grandpa’s ax paused midair.

Arnie regretted his words at once. Why had he said anything? Why had he put himself at risk of sounding stupid?

The legion of pupils in Grandpa’s eyes meant he could be looking anywhere at any given moment. When he looked at Arnie, Arnie could feel the glare in a way that made him want to disappear into the wall.

Grandpa seemed about to say something mean. Instead, he paused for a breather. Wiped sweat from his forehead. The flash of rage faded from his face.

“Lemme give you another one, kid. Trauma’s like asbestos. It sticks around, leaves an imprint, shortens your life. Get it? But—also like asbestos—it can be used. Weaponized. See how old I am? How long I’ve made it? You catching on yet?”

Arnie didn’t know what asbestos was.

That night, glisters poured in, shells gleaming, mandibles clicking.

Someone—perhaps previous squatters—had carved deep into the hill until the tunnel they made burst through a wall. Arnie walked out onto what had once been the second-story balcony at the front of the house, then followed the burrow down to where it connected with the city tunnels.

He took the tunnels to school every day, even on weekends. Nobody at home kept track of which day of the week it was. He never brought home report cards.

Going to school meant a break from Grandpa and the Keep Quiet Club. A break even from Deb and Gary, whose disinterest in him hurt almost as much as Grandpa’s sadistic obsession with using him as glister bait.

Today, Arnie encountered a woman in the tunnels. He passed her as she tried to make eye contact with him. He hooked lefts and rights down innumerable dank turns. The woman followed him.

She wore soggy clothes yet was see-through in a way that Arnie’s mind couldn’t process. And she had this gaunt face that he thought he recognized. Had she been a Keep Quieter? Had she left an imprint?

People from the Keep Quiet Club sometimes stayed over. They listened to Grandpa. Talked. Partied. They drank Forgiveness. They sang. Their singing reached Arnie a floor below. It sounded like church bells underwater. Arnie imagined the Club members opening and closing their mouths like fish, their throats lubricated by Forgiveness, releasing mournful bubbles.

Grandpa had earned the status he enjoyed primarily because his wartime experiences amounted to the “truest, purest” kind of PTSD. Other forms of post-traumatic stress, by extension, were to be taken less seriously.

“You know what makes his eyes like that?” Gary asked in the kitchen, over a bowl of noodles.

Arnie had just noticed movement through the window. Past the deck, down in the backyard, the woman from the tunnels crouched in the half-shadow of the fence, looking up at them.

Up at him.

“Drinking that shit all the time,” Gary continued. “One of the side effects. Mutates the eyes.”

The woman oozed back into the shadows. Out of view.

Arnie pulled his gaze away to look at his older brother. Black specks drifted behind Gary’s corneas.

“Have you been drinking it, too?” he asked.

Gary shrugged. “I’m old enough now. I did my time. Deb goes harder than I do.”

Maybe that’s why she doesn’t look at me as much anymore, Arnie thought. Because she’s ashamed about doing Forgiveness and she doesn’t want me to know about her doing Forgiveness.

But a stronger voice in Arnie’s head insisted it was him. It was his own fault. Deb didn’t want to talk to him. Neither did Gary; the only reason he was even talking to Arnie now was because he was lit up on Forgiveness and didn’t care.

Grandpa had set an example. He was always loaded on Forgiveness. His greatest achievement—what made him, as far as anyone was concerned, the Keep Quiet Club messiah—was that, no matter how intoxicated he got, he never lost his lucidity.

Mostly never.

Arnie didn’t know how long Grandpa had been with them. Grandpa insisted he was always there. Had always been there. If not physically there, then there in their hearts.

Where there was Forgiveness, there was Grandpa. Arnie didn’t know what that really meant. But Grandpa had said it enough times for it to feel true.

All Arnie remembered was Deb and Gary being younger, around the age he was now, and his mom talking about Grandpa a lot. It was like she’d talked about him so much that one day it conjured him out of thin air. And then he was here to stay and she was gone.

Arnie lay awake in bed. Upstairs, they were Keeping Quiet.

“Love,” Grandpa intoned through the ceiling, “is no match for mental illness.”

The applause made Arnie wince.

He rose to his knees and rapped his knuckles on the wall. He pushed his lips through the opening in the chute door.

“Hey,” Arnie whispered. “Are you there?”

“Yes.”

The response traveled up to him like the hiss of a water heater.

“How… long have you been down there?” He realized he hadn’t prepared a topic. He’d just wanted to make contact again. Hear words that weren’t his grandfather’s or his own.

The girl said, “As long as you’ve been up there.”

A drop of sweat fell from Arnie’s lip down the chute. He hoped it didn’t land on the girl. He said, “Does Grandpa know about you?”

A moment passed. All he could hear were the scattered voices of the Keep Quieters as they enjoyed what he assumed was a recess. Arnie dreamed of having a recess.

The girl said, “He wishes he didn’t know about me.”

Her tone sounded different. Had her voice changed? Arnie thought he recognized something in her cadence, in her inflection.

He swallowed.

“Mom,” he said. “Is that you?”

The chute was quiet.

He waited, but no answer came. Only a soft humming emerged.

Eventually, even the humming got lost under the staccato of glisters clambering to get into his bed.

Nights stacked atop days which stacked atop more nights.

Arnie slept little. He felt like he was in a perpetual dream where he either lay pasted to his bed or drifted, numb, through damp tunnels.

Was this what it had been like for Deb, for Gary? How long did Grandpa end up using them as glister bait? When did they graduate? Would Arnie graduate?

A chill ran down his spine: had Deb and Gary been better bait? Had they attracted more glisters than he was attracting?

He could believe it. They were better than him. Better than him at everything. Well-adjusted.

Deb started wearing headphones all the time. Blaring fast, heavy music. She let Arnie look at the tapes she carried in her jacket pockets. He told her he liked the art on the J-cards but that he couldn’t read the illegible fonts.

She merely nodded. His attempts at conversation failed.

Gary wore headphones now, too. Listening to radio broadcasts of the city’s basketball team. Grandpa must have chewed him out for the noise enough that he finally gave in. Gary used to say things like: “Can’t defend the three-point line to save their life” or “No shooters. Really need a three-and-D.”

But these days, Arnie’s brother just sat, mumbling curses at the terminally bad team, a faraway look in his eyes. Whenever Arnie tried asking questions, Gary responded like he was half-asleep. His eagerness to share basketball knowledge had all but evaporated.

At school, on weekends, by himself, Arnie played basketball. He liked the sound the ball made when it went through the net. It was the antithesis of unpleasant noise. It drowned out his thoughts. He shot hoops and made gruff noises like the vocalists in the bands Deb liked.

He worked up a sweat of his own.

Back home, hidden in the shadows of the sagging fence, the woman watched. Her pupils were normal. On his way to school, even on the basketball court, Arnie could feel her gaze on him. He started seeing her everywhere.

Any time he was in the tunnels and turned around to confirm she was tailing him, she raised a finger to her lips.

“Shhh.”

The sound hissed through the shaft like a half-turned valve releasing something pressurized.

Only three things brought Grandpa out of his bedroom: collecting glisters from Arnie’s room, brewing Forgiveness, and boiling glister meat.

Tonight, he was shucking glisters at the kitchen counter. He plopped the meat into a giant pot on the battery-powered stove. When he slid the empty shells into a trash bag, they smacked against each other like rocks.

Even in the dim candlelight, the shells were hard to look at. Overwhelmingly lustrous.

Grandpa took glugs from mason jars of Forgiveness he kept in a cooler by the stove. Though he swayed on his heels, he worked efficiently.

Arnie waited at the dinner table, unsure if Grandpa had made note of his presence. If he wanted to eat, he had to lurk around the kitchen, otherwise Grandpa might forget to feed him.

The family subsisted primarily on glister meat. It was grayish and its smell—like mold, like Arnie’s bedroom—permeated the kitchen. The more shucked glisters, the more rank and humid the air. Arnie could hardly remember other food.

Grandpa turned the burner on. As he pulled a ladle from the dishrack, he disturbed some dishes. Displaced bowls, plates, and silverware clattered onto the counter and the floor and into the sink.

The eruption of noise made Grandpa practically jump out of his skin. One hand went to his head, the other went to his chest. He became, that very instant, aware of Arnie. He turned to his grandson, nose scrunched into his brow, eyes dancing wildly. His body shook. He fumed.

Arnie didn’t recall saying anything. Maybe his mouth had been open. Whatever it was, if it had been anything, within a heartbeat Grandpa was upon him, arriving from the far end of the kitchen to within inches of his grandson.

He loomed, taking up Arnie’s whole view.

Innumerable pupils bounced around Grandpa’s eyes like ping pong balls. It was hard to tell what color his eyes had been before he started Keeping Quiet.

Arnie shrank into his seat. Should he apologize?

Before he could decide, Grandpa raised a hand and brought it down across his face hard. Arnie’s head knocked against the back of his chair.

“No,” he heard Grandpa growl through gritted teeth, between heavy breaths. “Sudden. Noises.”

Arnie’s ears rang. It felt warm and wet under his hair.

When he dared to crack open his eyes, Grandpa was back at the stove, tilting a mason jar upside down and letting Forgiveness pour down his throat. With the ladle in his other hand, he returned to stirring glister meat.

The water had begun to boil.

One of the first lessons Grandpa had given Arnie was that everyone had their individual traumas and their own expressions of those traumas.

But there was often, with families, a through-line, a shared instinctive response to certain stimuli, such as unexpected noises. Grandpa called these things “reactions.” Reactions were weak. A strong person—someone who has conquered their traumas—does not react. They don’t lash out, they don’t flinch, they don’t raise their voice, they don’t go into a frenzy.

They keep their cool. They act. If they can’t manage that, then they must resort to other things. Like wearing protective headphones. Or leaving.

But of course nobody ever leaves. Not fully.

By the time Grandpa had finished cooking the glister meat, he was more lit up than Arnie had ever remembered seeing. He muttered to himself. Things about Keeping Quiet. Things about war, deafening gunfire, bombs.

The old man managed to carry the garbage bag of glister shells out onto the back deck and, with a grunt, chuck it over the railing before returning inside.

Arnie watched him wobble down the hallway, past the Keep Quiet Club slogan, and up the stairs. Balancing two plates of glister meat for himself.

Arnie stayed in the kitchen because tonight he could get away with it.

On the cold linoleum, sleep came quickly. It had been so long since he’d slept without sweating. Without having to listen to little legs scuttle across cardboard mush. Without the fear of rolling out of bed and into the jaws of death.

He didn’t know how long he slept before something jolted him awake. He was sweating, but this time the sweat was cold.

The kitchen was soundless, wreathed in shadows.

Moonlight poured in. It limned the woman’s silhouette in the window. Arnie blinked, letting his vision adjust. She was smiling at him. She knocked lightly on the glass.

Arnie got up and went to the door. When he opened it, cold, dry air swept in, amplifying his skin’s clamminess, giving him goosebumps. He stood aside and the woman entered. She carried the garbage bag of glister shells.

Her form glistened and wavered. Was Arnie still dreaming? She had several pairs of socks on. When she walked, she walked without a sound. She left no tracks. No wet trail.

Arnie whispered, “Do you want a candle? It’s dark inside. You won’t be able to see that well.”

But she just put a finger to her lips and went, “Shhh.”

Arnie nodded.

The woman went down the hallway, bearing the garbage bag in such a way that the sound of the shells knocking against each other was nearly imperceptible. She stopped at the foot of the staircase and set the bag of shells down before proceeding to do something else. Arnie strained to see what it was, but it was dark and her figure was turned away from him.

After a moment, there was the rustle of the bag being lifted.

Then light footfalls, going up the stairs.

Arnie held his breath, waiting. Sound traveled in the house so well that he knew the noise each door made when it opened. The door creaking open now was Grandpa’s.

He found the ensuing silence deafening. Louder than any of the silences he’d endured on his own, waiting for the company of somebody’s voice.

Then: cacophony.

Objects hitting the floor. Dashed against walls. Snapping and breaking.

Grandpa screaming. Not just one scream but a long, cracking string of them.

Arnie only came to when the sun’s warmth found his back. He was still standing in the kitchen. How? He shook his head. Grandpa’s screams no longer filled the air. The air was heavy, and Arnie was parched.

He popped the lid off the cooler but found no water bottles. Not even water left over from melted ice, or from the boiled glisters. Only mason jars of Forgiveness. He riffled through the pantry; it was practically empty.

Mouth dry, he returned to the cooler and grabbed a jar. It felt warm. He unscrewed the lid to take a sip, careful not to breathe to avoid the smell.

He ended up taking more than a sip. It went down easy and wasn’t as warm as it had felt through the jar. A satisfying coolness spread down Arnie’s throat, extending to his chest, to his fingertips, then all the way down to his toes.

When he finished the jar, his mouth was still dry, but he felt better. He left the kitchen, feeling lighter on his feet.

The stencil in the hallway looked smeared. Hardly readable anymore.

The slab of particleboard Grandpa had used to block off the stairs to the first floor had been set aside, against the wall. Arnie couldn’t see far down the staircase; it was too dark. He could, however, feel the air coming up. It was cold. Dry.

Lightheaded—but not unpleasantly so—Arnie ascended the stairs.

He found the third story quiet.

He stood outside Grandpa’s door, listening. Was that a voice? Murmuring? Arnie let a moment pass before he decided it wasn’t his imagination.

Bolstered by an unfamiliar bravery, he turned the doorknob and pushed.

What he saw inside made him withdraw and cover his eyes.

Sunlight refracted from dozens of glister shells, turning the bedroom molten. Grandpa lay curled into a fetal position on the floor, crying bloody tears. He was gibbering.

There was no sign of the woman.

Arnie took a step forward, intending to get close enough to make out what Grandpa was saying. Then the light flared, too bright to be tolerated, and he was repelled back into the hallway. Eyes shut, he reached into the bedroom and felt for the doorknob. He pulled the door closed.

Blinking, Arnie leaned against the wall. His vision gradually returned to normal.

What now?

He went to Gary’s room and knocked. No answer. The door was ajar, so he nudged it to peek inside.

Gary sat on the edge of his bed, headphones on. His eyes were open and Arnie could see he had a few more pupils. Still not as many as Grandpa, but more than normal. He didn’t seem to be staring at anything in particular.

“Gary,” Arnie said.

But Gary didn’t hear him.

They’d talk later, maybe.

He went to Deb’s room. Since her door was open, he just walked in. Like Gary, she had her headphones on. She sat cross-legged on a pillow, tapping a beat on her thigh with an index finger, nodding her head rhythmically. Her eyes were closed.

Arnie didn’t want to interrupt. He left without announcing himself.

Walking felt more like floating. Like each step was padded by an invisible pillow. So this was what Forgiveness could do.

He came back to the head of the stairs. He stood there, feeling numb but not necessarily bad. Maybe even kind of good. The silence in the house seemed to have changed. Become less heavy. More open.

Arnie took a step down. He barely registered the contact his foot made with the stair.

He took another step down. Then he took a breath. The air, he found, was lighter.

At the bottom of the stairs, he would turn left. After that, he would go down again. He was going to learn all three stories.