Inyo County, 1981

Eddie held the medallion to his ear and tried to catch more of its song. He'd heard many songs in his six years - the surprising swiftness within the old man at the hardware store, the cancer in the old dog and the puppies in the new dog, and even (though perhaps he'd imagined it) stones on a sunny day - but he'd never heard a song as complex as this. Something pulsed and beckoned within the medallion. But it was too fleeting and faint, like all the really interesting songs. Another trick of the adult world.

The little boy kicked the pedals and peered out the grimy window of the rusty VW bug that served as the official headquarters for him and his brother. Past the pickup truck in one direction, past the sagging house in another direction, past the barn beyond that -- in every direction was only the long dull scrub of Olancha, a place where dreams were spread as thin as the households. Olancha wasn't even a town, just a spot where the population density hit the mean for the county, its boundaries fixed by the Census Department because no one else had ever bothered.

Kate Palmer used to dream of escaping this aridness and flatness and torpor. She had run off to New Orleans, and then San Francisco. She'd done many foolish things and some bad things, until she got in a scrape that her long shapely legs, whose energy had once been inexhaustible, couldn't quite outrun. By then she was the only Palmer left, and what with the house being paid for and the cheap cost of living, an embarrassed homecoming was her best option. Kate turned out to be an Olancha girl through and through, and in a short span her ambitions shrank to sitting on the porch with a novel in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and a tumbler of Southern Comfort in easy reach.

If she regretted bringing Eddie and Frankie into this brown world, she never gave a sign. But her gentle boys could listen better than most people could talk. They caught the weariness around her eyes, and the number of times she refilled her tumbler on Sundays, and the intensity in her voice when she talked about the places she'd seen. They caught too, and began to reflect, her unfocused resentment. So they got swept up in her excitement when a new issue of Fortean Times arrived - then she would show them how to make divining rods, or dig out her crystals, or stay up all night observing the stars and making notes in cryptic script - or when a letter arrived from someone from the old days.

The rhythms of mail delivery came to shape Kate Palmer's days more than the time she spent at Olancha's only notable feature, its alpha and omega, the bottling plant. She received mysterious letters from all over the world, sometimes in bulky envelopes with strange scents stubbornly clinging, wisps of spices and oils and humidity and everything that wasn't this blank stretch of California. And the letters had come more and more frequently, sometimes packages too, until finally the stepfather came.

He came direct from the post office for all that Eddie and Frankie knew, for his history and people were never discussed. His mother would joke that the stepfather came from Egypt, or Shangri-La, or Cloudcuckooland. Once she said he was from Tehachapi, and his eyes flared and a dreadful silence fell on the dinner table. The stepfather never raised his voice or his hand, but his eyes could do a kind of violence. Eddie would have been at a loss to describe the stepfather, because you would have to begin with the eyes and they were indescribable.

So they all obeyed the stepfather. He never had to make a threat, because his very presence was a threat. Then too, there was the prickling sense of expectancy he brought with him. A vague unease settled on the house, and at the oddest times they found themselves stopping whatever they were doing and listening, as if a long awaited visitor was coming down the dirt road at last. Eddie's mother began to seem excited one day, and then sad the next, and then every day brought a knot of emotions and they boys knew that whatever wonder was coming, it was almost here.

But - oh the unfairness! - it wasn't for little boys, not as little as Eddie anyway. This morning his mother had hustled Frankie into the cellar, and the stepfather had shooed Eddie out of the house. Eddie had lurked sadly on the porch, and the stepfather stopped at the door to the cellar, sensed Eddie's presence, and turned back to press the medallion into Eddie's sweaty little palm.

"If you can tell me a secret about this amulet," he had said, "then I'll give you a treat. Go study it." He smiled briefly, a smile issued from the same factory as his formidable eyes, and watched the child run off to sulk in the ancient VW.

Eddie looked distastefully at the ancient silver circle, hating its inscrutability, its provenance, its strange markings almost worn down to smoothness. Everyone else was having an adventure and all he had was this. He twirled it on its cheap chain and let it go. It bounced off the dashboard with a satisfying thunk and flew into the backseat. "Yeah!," Eddie cried triumphantly, and then he guiltily scrabbled for it on the floor. Still dissatisfied, he jumped out of the car and slammed the door loudly, and then again for good measure. Clutching the medallion tightly he ambled towards the barn.

The weathered building was small for a barn but big for a hen house, which was what it had once been. But this was where Eddie and Frankie played their secret games, and there is no romance to a hen house.

Eddie stepped carefully over the broken floorboard, edged past the tangle of old tools and wood, and into the dimness. He laid down in the slight dip in the center of the ramshackle structure and considered looking for the empty soda can. It was the boys' favorite game: set the can in the middle of the space and see who could move it farther without touching it. Other times they would see who could communicate the most without speaking, or try to guess their mother's thoughts. That was a cheap game, but in some ways the best, because there was no proving a winner. It always lead to an argument and a hearty scuffle, and then they would lie together on the floor, smelling of sweat and sawdust and happiness.

But on his own it would be no fun. It would be like when the stepfather took Frankie away for their private games. What those were he did not know, because Frankie would close up like a fist until Eddie couldn't hear him. Later, his face too would be tight as a fist. Now Eddie made a real fist, seething with anger that Frankie should have secrets with anyone but him. It wasn't fair. Frankie was his older brother, his protection and comfort and anger and --

Anger. It was Frankie's anger he was feeling, seeping out from the house. Frankie was angry, and more, and worse: Frankie was afraid. Eddie closed his eyes and pretended Frankie was next to him, communing with quite contentment. He reached out in that indescribable way, a reach that had nothing to do with hands, and found his brother. Slowly, slowly, he built up a picture. Candlelight in the cellar. Incense burning the nose. His mother wearing a greedy grin and strange eyes. The stepfather reading strange words from an old book.

And more, and more. The air in the cellar was cool on his bare skin. Rope chafed his wrist and his ankles. His chest was on fire from dozens of shallow cuts, and he remembered - no, Frankie remembered and Eddie knew - no, the other way around - knew that Frankie had been given something bitter to drink that made him not notice for a long while the slow, precise carving of the symbols on his face and chest.

In that moment there was no division between Frankie and Eddie. And then they remembered themselves, and Frankie came fully awake and panicked. Get out of here, his thoughts ran and ran and ran around.. Run, run, run, run, but I can't run. I can't run. I can't run.

Then fight, said Eddie.

Their hands were bound, but they didn't need their hands. Frankie's body bucked on the old workbench, his head thrashing around. Eddie spasmed on the floor of the barn and saw flashes of the cellar. The boxes in the corner collapsing, bleeding Christmas decorations. A shelf of preserves boiling over, spitting glass and sad peaches. The tools falling off their pegboard. The candles, flaring up and falling to the floor. The candles. Sparks landing on the stepfather's book, the stepfather's sleeve.

Eddie clambered to his feet and tried to find the door, but all he could see was the smoke in the cellar. All he could hear was his mother shrieking and the stepfather laughing. He ran and fell and rose and fell and Frankie was screaming. He crawled and crawled and stood and fell and Frankie was dying. He smelled sawdust and incense and paper and smoke and Frankie was dying. The bad floorboard broke at last, the rusty tools were falling around him, and Frankie was dying. They were screaming and the rafters were burning and the water heater was clanging and Frankie was pushing him away, was receding into darkness, was gone.

After a time Eddie realized he was face down in the dirt in front of the barn. His hand hurt. He pulled himself up to his knees and unclenched his fist. An angry red circle marked his palm where he had clutched the medallion. He slipped the amulet into his other hand, and now both hands throbbed; the right from pain and the left from the medallion itself. It felt strange, so Eddie slipped it around his neck as he ran to the VW. With the windows rolled up he could barely smell the smoke, and if he faced forward he only had to watch the house burn in the manageable frame of the rear view mirror.

It took hours to burn itself out, and hours more for Eddie to slowly slump in his seat, and close his wet eyes, and dream about his brother.