The tiny face looked up from the bare floor to his mother’s gloomy face. She looked sad or worried, he wasn’t sure which, but she looked unhappy for sure. It was probably the sad news. There were a lot of young people going missing and his mother had five of her own boys to worry about. That seemed like a lot of things to think about at once to him.

His frown deepened when he saw his mother look at his father in the chair next to the couch. He didn’t worry about them, probably, the youngster thought. His mother was the only adult in the entire world who would miss him if the scary people took him. Maybe Jay, but that’s only because he was always told that if anything happened to his little brothers, he would be the one to get the beating. The boy didn’t think that was very fair, but it wasn’t his rule to worry about. He just did his part by not getting into trouble so that Jay wasn’t mad at him.

“Momma?” he asked softly.

“Yes, baby.” His mother turned her dark brown eyes to his little round face, and a genuine smile broke out on her face.

“I ain’t scared of those men, not really.”

“I’m glad, baby. You’re safe with me and daddy and your brothers.” She smiled at him again, and her forehead started to lose its worried crinkles.

“I only meant that if those scary men tried to take me, I would use my special powers and blast them to pieces.” His mother’s face went flat, and she stiffened. Her eyes flicked to her husband beside her.

“Son, what the hell did I tell you about them stories? You shut your mouth.”

“I would do it, daddy. If they tried to take me or Jay or Indie or the twins, I would blow them up with my mind,” he said defiantly. He wanted to reassure his mother, erase her worries and see her smile again, even though he knew what was coming his way. His father uncrossed his legs.

“Boy, I told you to shut your goddamn mouth.” His hand reached for the flyswatter in the pocket on the side of the chair. “Come here.”

“Daddy…” the slight boy began to plead.

“Come. Here,” his father said between gritted teeth. The tiny boy stood and faced his father. He took one step forward then spun and bolted for the hallway, living up to the nickname his brothers had given him. He was faster than his daddy, faster than even Jay. And if he hid under the bed like a rat until his daddy wasn’t angry, he could come out later and avoid the flyswatter.

He dove under his bunk bed that he shared with three of his brothers, startling the two that were sitting on the bottom bunk looking through baseball cards. He felt splinters from the unworn wooden floorboards stab into his palms and knees, but he crawled all the way to the wall and lay flat. He could hear his father’s feet still stomping in the living room. He could also hear his mother begging her husband to let him go.

“He’s just a little boy, tellin’ stories. No one will believe him,” she said gently.

“You and I both know that boy ain’t normal,” his father said, his feet no longer moving. “He just ain’t right.”

“He’s unusual, yes. I will talk to him about not speakin’ about…it.” His mother knew how to talk down his father. Only she could temper him, and all the boys knew it.

The boy’s next eldest brother, twelve years older than him at a grown-up seventeen, peeked under the bed from above.

“What you do to Pops now, Rat?”

“Nothin’! I was just telling momma that I would blow up the bad guys that’s taking kids, is all,” the younger brother replied in a whine.

“Aww, Ratty, you know Pops don’t like you talkin’ about that stuff. Makes you look weird,” Indie reminded him.

“I’m special, Indie. I could blow them up. Just like that with my mind.” He tried to snap his fingers and sucked in his breath. He had a huge splinter in his thumb. He stuck it in his mouth and sucked.

“Yeah, I know, Rat. I know,” patronized the teen. “Come out and I’ll pull that out of your hand. Pops is sitting down again. You’re ok now.” His brother’s face disappeared from above the bed. As he crept out from under the bunk, the boy looked shyly at his eldest brother, an adult at twenty.

“Jay, can I look at your cards later if I’m real careful?”

“Fine, ok, Rat. Get them sticks outta your hands first. I don’t want no blood on ‘em.” The little boy grinned and held his hands out to his other brother who immediately began to take the splinters out with care.

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That night, as the brothers were all getting ready for bed, the littlest boy sat quietly watching each of his siblings. Jay, the eldest, was reading a book. He was the only brother that liked to read anything and sometimes he would read to the youngest from the big books he brought home from the library. The boy often pretended to understand what the book was talking about, but mostly he just liked listening to the deep voice of his brother.

His tall body was muscular after two years of hard labor and his feet hung off the edge of the bed. His large, manly hands turned the pages of his book slowly; hands that would often swat his siblings if they got in his way or if he thought they would get him into trouble. Jay caught him staring at him and shot him a half-hearted smile that made the little brother’s face light up.

The boy’s eyes then landed on his twin brothers sitting together on the floor near the window. They had been given nicknames, despite having perfectly normal names. Toe, because he was born breach and Two because he was born after Toe. Their curly haired heads were bent together over a textbook as they worked on their homework. Identical twins, only the family could tell them apart, and the baby of the family was no exception. Toe looked up and yawned. Two stuck his eraser in his twin’s wide-open mouth and dodged a fist to the nose. Both twins had their own copy of their mother’s eyes, thick lashed and large but their father’s build. They were the only brothers that weren’t thin and willowy, and they often used their strength to win arguments or to start them.

Then the little boy’s eyes touched on his closest brother who was sitting in the bed they shared looking over the young boy’s drawings from school that day. His own version of the black curls tumbled to his shoulders and draped over one eye as he looked up and grinned genuinely at the boy. The light in his favorite brother’s black eyes always filled him with wonder. Indie was shortened from an unoriginal name their father had given him for being the first of the family’s children to be born in Indiana and not Illinois. He knew his brother disliked his name.

As the youngest of the boys looked at his sibling, he remembered asking him one time why he didn’t just go by another name instead of Indie. He was told that if he didn’t have to go by Indiana all the time he would get by.

“I could have been named Idaho, Rat. What would you call me then?” the boy recalled his brother saying with a laugh.

Later that night, while the bright moon lit their room, the boy was cuddled up to his brother in the bed that they shared.

“Indie, if I got taken would you go looking for me?” he whispered quietly.

“’Course. We all would. Shush and go to sleep now.”

“I love you, Indie. I love you so much,” he whispered, his tiny arms grasping his brother’s neck in a tight hug.

“Shut up!” hissed the eldest brother from across the room, the only one of them allowed his own bed.

“I love you, too, Jay!” the youngest of them whispered with a giggle. “And you too, Toe and Two,” he yawned out the twins’ names above him. “I just love you all.”

“Great, now shut it,” Indie said softly.

He beamed and turned away from his brother, looking at the moonshine pouring in the window. It made everything glow coldly and reminded him of his secret place. Sometimes when he took things out, they looked like they were covered in moonlight. He opened his hand and looked at a coin in his palm. The weak light from the window sparkled on the coin’s wet surface. The boy smiled widely and closed his hand. He put his money back in his special place where no one could ever find it and opened his empty hand. He felt the familiar tightness in his chest and breathed in deeply, trying to stretch out the stiffness and wound up yawning. When he closed his eyes, he fell asleep thinking about all the wonderful things he might one day be able to do with his special talents. He was asleep before the shadow stole across the window.

Jay lay awake as he worried about his family and their needs. He had been out of school for two years, but his future was not his own. Immediately after graduating from high school, with honors, his father press-ganged him into putting food on the table and clothes on the backs of his little brothers. Jay was given vague promises of being sent to college or trade school if he wanted, but the littlest brother had to start kindergarten first. That was going on a year ago now and he was still showing up to work at the agency.

His father had connections that led to him being placed with a manual labor agency, an under-the-table collective that doled out the men like work animals. He flexed his blistered hands and thought about the paltry compensation that he received. His aching back was not aided by the perks of working at the bakery or farm, either. Add to this his parents’ refusal to treat him like an adult still and he was in a near-constant state of irritation. Injustice bloomed in his gut, thick and oppressive, like an inky blackness in his heart.

Across the room, in the dim light, Jay watched as his brother opened his hand and grinned at something dark in his palm. A heady rush overcame Jay and he blinked back a dizziness threatening to make him sick to his stomach. The boy closed and opened his hand again, his fingers small yet still dexterous. The dark shape was gone as was the boy, lost to sleep. After a few minutes a soft snore signalled true sleep, and Jay shook the wavy darkness from his mind. He got up and reached his large finger out to touch his little brother’s baby-like hand. He pried his fingers open and felt in his hand for the shape he had seen him hide. It was empty. Jay slowly reached under the pillow beneath the sleeping boy’s face. It too was empty, devoid of any clue as to what could have happened to the item. A shadow rippled behind him and he turned. He saw nothing but a faint outline of a foggy handprint, probably from one of his brothers earlier.

Unease played across Jay’s shoulders as he crept back to his own bed. It was impossible, of course, but the little boy’s dexterity, and the ease with which he was able to perform the illusions was disturbing. He hated how his mother handled the situation, too. Her superstitious nature was in combat with her devotion to her youngest son. She refused to outrightly let the boy flaunt his sleight of hand trickeries, but she also did not have the heart to tell him to stop. Their father, no reservations holding him back, was ready to beat down any wonderment in the boy to keep them from being ostracised by their neighbors. Jay punched his pillow in anger and turned his naked back to his brothers, and consequently to the source of his problems.