The Homecoming

by Josy Bongiovanni

I almost wished I’d left the envelope unopened. Yesterday, the letter slipped through my mail slot and shattered the fragile distance I’d built between myself and Aldrich. I hadn't spoken or seen anyone since I had left over fifteen years ago, running from a fate that I hadn't known outright, but that I dreaded nonetheless.  

I had never known a sense of belonging in my hometown. Where Boston’s clamor quickened my pulse, Aldrich seemed to suffocate it, pressing me into a torpor just shy of despair. My parents only deepened the oppression. Their lives were bound in veils of secrecy, their words weighted with cryptic promise. “In time,” they would say, “when you come of age, you will understand.” I felt no desire to wait for that revelation. Though curiosity stirred faintly, some instinct warned me that their dealings were not meant for innocent eyes.

Each Sunday my father mounted the pulpit, his voice carrying with the solemn resonance of ancient ritual, always ending with the same phrase.

"In his house at Aldrich he waits dreaming." 

The townsfolk bent in reverence, their faces taut with something I could never name. When his sermon ended, those eighteen and older descended into the church basement in solemn procession. The air always seemed to change then, thickening with anticipation. The younger children whispered in awe, eager to know what mysteries unfurled below. But I felt no such hunger. Some unspoken dread kept me apart, a feeling that what waited there was better left unseen. To my father’s dismay, I was never interested in church life. Just before my eighteenth birthday, I left, never looking back. The one regret I had was leaving my sister Gwyndolin behind. She was so little, and I was too young to be burdened with such responsibility.

Now, the letter lay open across my lap as the train rattled through the countryside; the words announcing my father’s death stared back at me as if they had the power to summon me home. 

A letter. How fitting for the town where nothing ever changed, where time itself seemed to resist moving forward. Even my phone, I suspected, would find it hard to connect there.

When the train slowed as it rolled into the station, I spotted her. My mother stood stiffly on the platform, buttoned to the throat as always, a charcoal cardigan drawn tight around her narrow shoulders. She looked almost untouched by the years, except for the fine lines that deepened the downward curve of her mouth. 

Folding the letter and stuffing it in my pocket, I sighed and steadied myself for the encounter I had been dreading for years. I disembarked. The train left. And still my mother stood there, waiting for me to make the first move.

"Mother."

"Brenton,you finally came back," she said without emotion. "We've been waiting for you."

As usual, I couldn't read her. My entire childhood had been a guessing game. 

"Yes, I suppose it was the right thing to do."

"The right thing at the wrong time."

I didn't answer. She motioned for me to follow her. 

"Very well, let's go."

"That's it? After all this time, that's all you have to say to me?"

"What else is there to say? He who waits will reveal all that is unsaid."

I didn't know what more I had expected from her. Maybe all those years would have changed something in her as it had in me? But no, she still laid all of her trust in he who waited, the ominous yet ever-present being she and many others followed so fervently.

I decided then and there that I would get the funeral out of the way, get Gwyndolin and leave this place as soon as possible. 

The ride through town in the old Ford Taurus was silent and heavy. I fixed my gaze on the window, on the pieces of my childhood that hadn’t changed. Riley’s bookstore still sagged beneath its crooked green awning. Beside it, the Tipsy Cow already had drinkers lined along the bar, though it was barely morning. I knew every face among them.

As we neared the house, the pit in my stomach grew larger. Would Gwyndolin know who I was? I had written many letters over the years but had received none in return. Surely my parents doing.  

The lights were on inside. As the car pulled into the drive, the front door opened and a boy came out to greet us. He had a cap pulled low on his head and had an imposing stance, although his stature was not. 

I turned to my mother, who, of course, said nothing. Had her lips turned upwards a little? No, she was incapable of that sort of emotion.

"Who is that?" I inquired.

She exited the car and went to embrace the boy. My jaw dropped. I had never received an ounce of the affection she was showing this stranger while I was growing up. 

I extended my hand to the boy, putting aside a momentary stab of jealousy.

"Hi, I'm Brenton."

"I know who you are."

The boy instead took my mother's hand and guided her towards the house. I followed hesitantly.

"Is Gwyn home?" 

I felt like I had walked into a time warp. The brown sofa still had a scratch from where our cat had tried sharpening its claws. Without hesitation, my father had disposed of the animal. I was four, but I remember thinking that I should behave if I didn't want to suffer the same fate. Maybe I would have if I had stayed.

"Where's Gwyndolin?" I asked again as I looked for a place to put down my bag.

The boy took my bag and my coat.

" Gwyndolin is gone."

I froze.

"What do you mean, gone?"

No one answered. 

"Where. Is. Gwyndolin?"

The boy smirked and stared me down. 

"He who waits will reveal everything in time."

I couldn't stay in this house. There were too many bad memories, too many secrets, and I needed answers about where my sister was that I wouldn't get here.

"I'll see you at the funeral tomorrow. You can find me at the hotel if you need me."

"Leaving again. You're good at that."

Ignoring the jab from my mother, I grabbed my belongings from the boy and made my way towards the hotel. 

I ended up at the Tipsy Cow instead, where a couple of my old school friends, Leland and Caleb, sat at a table watching the sports channel. When they recognized me, their eyes lit up with surprise.

"Well, look at what the cat dragged in," said Leland, sporting a baseball cap with the local hardware store's logo on it. If memory served, his father had owned the place. 

"Damn, Brenton, we all thought you died or some shit like that," added Caleb, taking a swig of his beer.

In a way, he was right. The person I was fifteen years ago was gone. They were just as I remembered—unchanged, even in their hair and the clothes they wore. Taking a seat at their table, I chatted with them and reminisced with the intent of eventually asking about my sister. 

"So, Caleb," I said, keeping my tone light. "How is your sister Louise? She was about the same age as Gwyn, right?"

The two men, who had greeted me warmly but a mere hour ago, exchanged a glance and fell silent. 

"Where is Gwyndolyn, Caleb?" I asked outright. 

"I think we'd better call it a night." 

Caleb rose with a silent nod toward the door, and Leland, flustered and fumbling, threw a few bills on the table and followed him.

"Really? Is there no one who can tell me where my sister is?"

My voice reverberated through the bar as they left. As they slipped out the door, they looked back at me, their gaze unsettled, as though fear had brushed them in passing.

I let out a slow sigh and signaled for another round. The waitress came quickly to my table, looking back at the two men who had just left. She bent down low and whispered close to my ear.

"Sometimes, it's better not to know, honey."

That night, I drifted in and out of restless dreams, my mind circling always back to my sister, wondering where she was.

******

The next day, I set out for the church where so much of my childhood was squandered listening to my father preaching words that never found purchase in my heart and mind. I stopped many times on the way there, pausing to collect myself. I tried calling some friends in Boston for support but, as I had guessed, my phone refused to collaborate. 

It was a full house when I arrived, stomach in knots and sweat on my brow. It seemed as if the whole town had come to see my father off to the next life. My mother stood at the pulpit beside the boy whose name I had never learned. Beneath them, my father’s casket lay closed, its silence heavier than any sermon he had ever spoken.

I wondered whether Gwyn was here among the crowd. Surely, she wouldn't miss her father's funeral. 

A hush passed over the congregation as the boy came forward, commanding the room with his presence. Dressed in a suit and sporting my father’s old ritual hat, he looked the part of a preacher.

"Brothers and sisters, faithful children of Aldrich. 

We stand on sacred ground. Beneath these stones, the air trembles with His breath, the earth stirs with His pulse. My father lies before us, bound in silence, yet not gone. For he has gone into the vast and waiting stillness where all flesh is unmade and made again."

His father? Had my parents adopted this boy when I left? He continued talking.

"You have all felt it—the constance that is His gift. The stillness that wraps our town, year after year, as though time itself holds its breath. And now, as the heir to my father's pulpit, I must do the same, having seen him guard and speak for it."

I balked at this. His only heir? Who did this boy think he was? I saw him glance in my direction.

"He told me that one day, I would speak the words he could no longer speak. That day has come sooner than I wished. His death is not absence but offering. And I, though small, though young, stand as proof that the bloodline endures, that the pact endures."

He took the sacred ceremonial knife that my father had used and cut a large gash in his hand. The blood dripped onto the altar. 

"So let us not grieve as others grieve. Let us instead bow our heads, not to the casket, but to the floor beneath it. Father has gone to serve Him more closely. And I, in his stead, will keep the constance.

May His shadow never lift. May His silence bind us. May Aldrich endure."

Everyone replied in unison, "In his house at Aldrich he waits dreaming." 

With that, everyone took turns paying their respects and filing down into the basement if they were of age. 

"Come, Brenton, join us." The boy reached for my hand. 

I slapped it away. 

“I hated that basement when I was a kid, and I’m sure as hell not going down there now.”

"All will be revealed in time, brother."

"You're not my brother."

I turned to leave, but saw Leland and Caleb walk towards me with intent. Shoving the boy aside, I tried to make my way to one of the chapel doors, but the two burly men quickly apprehended me and zip-tied my hands together. I kicked Caleb in the shin, but he held on strong. By this time, everyone had either left the church or retired to the basement. My mother stood in the doorway to the basement. 

"Mother!"

She descended into the darkness. I was alone. 

I stopped struggling and surrendered to the inevitable fate that I had run away from all those years ago. I just hoped that Gwyn had not befallen the same terrible end. 

Caleb and Leland guided me through the threshold of the basement door and down a set of well-worn carpeted stairs. I'm not sure what I was expecting with all the stories I had built up in my head as a child, but it was just a regular church basement, with linoleum floors and folding tables and chairs. 

Everyone sat in a circle, in the middle of which there seemed to be a hatch in the floor. The boy stood next to it. They brought me to him, and he placed a red robe around my shoulders.

"Friends, long have we waited for my brother Brenton to return of his own free will."

"I keep telling you, I'm not your brother." I seethed, trying to shake the robe off.

“Our blood runs deeper than you think, Brenton,” he said, voice low and patient. “How I had longed to walk beside you on this day of honor. But after my eighteenth birthday, when you failed to claim your place at our father’s side, the burden of sacrifice fell to me. It was there, in that surrender to the One who waits, that the revelation came: a son must take his father’s place to feed what dwells beneath us. So a son was made, and I was unmade and remade, reborn as the man you see before you today.”

I looked at the boy—really looked at him. How had I failed to recognize those eyes? The truth struck with brutal clarity, and I fell to my knees beneath the force of it.

"Gwyn, what have they done to you?" 

Tears fell as I looked up at my sister's face. The joy of knowing she was alive and well and the sorrow of having lost her once again overwhelmed me with a torrent of emotions.

"Brenton, it is your turn to sacrifice for Him."

My mother opened the hatch on the floor, and a rancid smell enveloped the room. Everyone moved away. Slowly, what I first thought were multiple snakes began crawling out of the dark hole. Soon, however, I realized with horror that a creature was arising from the pit, its tentacles reaching out. I almost retched as I gazed upon its putrid body, slime oozing from every inch. 

"He requires a sacrifice on this day of mourning. It should have been me, the youngest child, but you never came."

"Gwyn, I wanted to come back for you. I wrote you so many letters."

"It's too late, brother. He who waits can wait no longer."

The creature fixed its yellow eyes on me, its gaze lingering on the red garment I wore. I wanted to run, but fear rooted me to the spot. A tentacle crept around my left leg, another tightening slowly around my neck.

"Gwyn. Mother…"