Connor the Canary
by S. T. Talbot
“You won’t cheat, right?” Connor asks this every night, and though Lou has never given him any reason to think he might cheat, his younger brother asks it all the same. Asking the question is something of a ritual at this point. Lou doesn’t mind. The more ritualized the process, the less likely Connor will be to sniff out the real purpose of their nightly races up the stairs.
“Never do,” Lou says in his best older brother voice.
Lou is eleven, almost exactly two years older than Connor. Their closeness in age allows them a relationship of love and hatred in equally intense peaks and valleys. It’s far different from their dynamic with Garrett, ten years Lou’s senior. Garrett might as well be a deity to the kid brothers. When he left for college last year, that crowned Lou the oldest sibling in the house.
Lou knows he only has so long before Connor sees him for what he is—a coward who pales in comparison to his younger sibling in every way. Connor is braver, faster, stronger, and funnier than Lou. And if Lou’s growth spurt (prophesied by their mother) never shows up and Connor continues growing, Lou is sure he’ll be physically smaller than his little brother within a couple years.
He only has so much time left of coercing his younger brother into easing his anxieties on the false pretense of sibling rivalry before Connor sees it for what it really is. Lou isn’t sure what he will do then.
“Okay,” Lou says. “Ready?”
Connor gets down into a sprinter’s starting position, feet planted flat against the couch. “Ready.”
“On your marks,” Lou says in his best race announcer voice. “Get set.” He lets this command hang in the air, letting Connor think this is a trick, Lou’s attempt at throwing off his little brother. But Lou does this to keep up the illusion. The last thing he wants is to win the race; the race he is supposed to lose.
“Go!”
Connor kicks off of the couch and dashes through the living room, his feet getting dangerously close to the edges of the overly large sectional couch. He never makes contact though—he’s raced this same route countless times, and knows just where to lean to avoid breaking a pinky toe on the couch or stairs.
Lou does his part of the ritual by counting out loud. After a five count, he’ll race up the stairs himself, doing everything he can to catch up to Connor and touch the red metal railing of the bunk bed in their room.
Lou wonders how Connor will react when he learns the real purpose of the race is to prove to his fearful older brother that there are no monsters in their room lying in wait, ready to lunge and pounce, to sink their sharp yellow teeth into pale, pasty boy-flesh.
Connor is the canary to their room’s coal mine.
Lou fears finding monsters lurking in the bedroom at bedtime more than anything else. He knows he’s too old for such childish concerns, and that makes sense in daylight’s sterile rationality. But when night comes? When that sun sets? An entirely different story. No amount of rationality can stop his prevailing anxieties regarding pre-bedtime monsters. It’s pointless to rank the rest of his fears, as they play musical chairs for which took second place depending on the day and situation—but nothing can dethrone that number one spot.
“Threefourfive!” Lou counts loud enough to maybe upset his parents, now settling down for bed in their room across the upstairs hall from the boys’ room. He starts for the stairs, working up to a sprint. He has to keep at least a semblance of the lie alive so Connor will still participate.
Lou does his normal routine of calling up the stairs, putting on the act of the defeated older brother who will surely beat his sibling one day. “You got me Connor, that was the fastest takeoff yet!”
Lou is halfway up the stairs when he stops dead in his tracks.
Connor hasn’t completed his half of the ritual. Without fail, when he touches the bunk bed every night, he yells, “I win!” or “You lose!” or some other flavor of braggadocio.
Connor hasn’t made a peep, and now nearing their room, Lou is greeted with a sickening silence. No celebrating, no songs made up on the spot about Connor the Champion, no squeaking of metal frame as Connor climbs to the top bunk for the night. Not even the normal night sounds of the house settling or the clicking HVAC, the sounds Lou often mistakes as monster activity.
“Connor?”
Still nothing. Not even Connor’s excited panting that always follows his victory song.
Lou imagines something on the other side of his door, something that smells of mold, something with claws as sharp as they are long. Something of thin temper and thick saliva. Something that has gotten his snack-sized little brother and wanted more meat to constitute a full meal.
“Connor!” Lou says in his best I am not joking voice.
More silence.
He breaks an unwritten rule and brings his parents into things. “Mom—Dad?”
Silence.
Lou backs down the stairs one step. Two.
Images of blood-soaked carpet and walls painted with viscera fill Lou’s head. Images of something slinking beneath the bed after it finishes its meal.
He wants to give in to his cowardice and run back down the stairs. He wants to conquer it and dash up the stairs. Lou does neither. He stands frozen in place halfway up the stairs. Just him and the silence.
S. T. Talbot has been writing since he was a boy but took up writing fiction to process living in an unfamiliar environment after moving from Big Bear, CA to Florida. If he’s not at work staring blankly at clipboards or in his office conjuring up ghost stories, he’s most likely listening to spine-chilling old-time radio shows or gorging on cheap, foggy horror films with his cat Casper. You can find him on Instagram @s.talbot.writes
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