PANIC (9 page)

Atop its head sits a ribboned top hat, tilted slightly but sat firmly, dark maroon like its coat.

It’s not a man or a boy or a dwarf, too fleshy and fluid to be some kind of statue, too grotesque to be anything real or living. Eric balances himself on the rail and pinches the brow between his eyes; sure it must be something else.

Sure, it must be something else.

He looks back and his scalp is on fire, the sensation of fear combing over the flesh on his skull. It must be a trick of the light, an illusion of the dusk, a severe symptom of sleep deprivation. He’s got to stop taking the prescription stuff when he’s only a little sick, it must be a kid playing a practical joke-

“Hey,” he says, his voice cutting over the indifferent cricketing that fills the breezy night air.

Eric hears his own voice come back to him, an echo in his head, not his voice at all but something frightened.

It remains imperturbably silent, not speaking or even reacting, preferring to let the insects calling to each other from stalks of grass to do the talking for it.

He stands there, petrified, watching its feet creep forward, one after the other, bloated and deformed, bare and wet and scaly. Its body wobbles slightly when it moves, waddling stupidly toward him, a disgusting, pulsing, living garden gnome inflated with a bicycle pump.

“Get out of here,” he whispers, and it comes steadily forward, carefully stepping onto the wooden deck step. He rushes to the gate at the top of the stairs, shuts it and locks it with fumbling hands as it slowly takes one step at a time. By the time it stops at the wooden gate, Eric backed into the glass table, making it rattle on its base.

“You hear me? I’ve got a gun in the house, so...”

It was a rotten bluff.

“So get the hell off my property.”

It puts its hands on the wooden gate, a flimsy barrier meant to hold back a short dog. It touches lightly and the deck creaks, the deep, disconcerting sound of an old house settling suddenly. Its hands are malformed, tumorous things, mangled carrion hands, evidence of a murder at a garbage dump.

Under the brim of its hat, its dun eyes study Eric, its nose pressed against the gate, its thin lips spreading wide.

His nose is turned up but it has no smell other than wet grass.

“Jesus,” she says, giving him a curious feeling of being startled and relieved all at once.

He tilted his head slightly in her direction. The sound of his voice was thin and panicked.

“Shannon?”

She was just as surprised as he was to see it just a few feet away at the top of the deck, peering over the fence like a nosy neighbor. Its eyes, deep and dark, barely took notice of her, sliding the glass door from the house to the deck but coming no further.

“What in the hell is that thing?” she said, her dripping with disgust. She held fast to the doorway like she needed a lifeline to reel Eric back into the safety of the house from the gulf of the treated wood beams that separated them.

“You can see it too?” he says, and his voice hairline cracks, sounding like shooting, wincing pain in his mind.

“Horrible little goblin at the top of the stairs?”

“I’m not crazy, then,” he says, walking his hand blindly over the table, searching for the barbecue fork.

“Eric,” she says, panicked. “Eric, get over here! I don’t like the looks of it.”

The sound of the wood groaning in the deck grows, the wood shrinking as in winter, tightening, whining as if the beams might collapse at any moment.

“Shh, I’m trying to run it off. Stay right there.”

He creeps slowly forward with the lanyard of the long fork looped around his wrist, its sturdy wood haft ideal for plunging the blunt tines into the flesh of the filthy homunculus. He’d get it right between its dead, staring eyes and it would scamper away like a whipped dog, back into the burrow it dug itself up from.

“I’m not gonna tell you again, you ugly little sh-”

Its head tilted upward to study Eric, who was trembling even in the posture of attack. The dark eyes bore into him, ageless and sightless.

“Screw this,” he said, pushing himself away from the place where he had stood, rooted to that spot and unable to act. It looked real but he couldn’t touch it, couldn’t bear to find out that something so grotesque could be flesh and blood.

“Just come to the door and we’ll call the cops,” whispered Shannon. He paced over to her to crowd the sliding doorway with her, not thinking himself a coward.

“Call the cops? ‘Uh, hi, police, there’s an ugly gnome in my backyard? Bring Animal Control while you’re at it?”

“Real funny.”

“I’m serious. Who on earth is going to believe this?”

“I’m seeing it just like you’re seeing it. Someone else must.”

“So, wake the boy up and ask if he can see it too.”

She stood back from the doorway to face him, no longer appreciating the warmth of his closeness.

“Are you insane? I’m not waking my son up to traumatize him.”

“That isn’t what I meant and you know it.”

“Go next door and ask. Better yet, go take that fork and scare it off.”

“Why’re you getting mad at me?”

“Eric, I’m not involving Caden in this craziness.”

“And I’m not going near that thing.”

She could see the fear lining his face and wondered if her disappointment registered. If there was any time at all for him to step up and take responsibility it would be right this moment, damn the monstrous thing.

She hesitated, then grabbed the long, hefty fork from his hands.

“Alright. You want me to do it?”

He watched for what she’d do, sheepishly, and to his relief, she hung back, holding onto the door frame, bouncing on her heels to get her blood going.

“Alright...” she muttered, and he put his hand on her shoulder. His other hand held the fork above where she’d gripped it.

“Let’s go together on three.”

He hoped she felt as ridiculous about it as he did, daring her to attack an oversized midget with a grilling fork.

“Okay...one...two...”

She felt perspiration from his hand drip onto hers and it tickled - at least she told herself that’s why she laughed.

“This is so stupid!” she said, snatching the fork away and leaving the safety of the house. It didn’t acknowledge her presence at all as she stalked to it angrily and swung the tool right at it, missing entirely. It didn’t even swipe the nose that spread across and away from its face.

“Mom!” shrieked Caden again, and it rattled the window from the outside. She swung around, instinctively, dropping the fork and rushing back to the house.

“Oh God, honey, I forgot all about Caden,” she panted, but he could hardly hear her, watching the fork tumble on the deck, where he’d have to kneel down and smell its surely fetid breath just to reach the weapon.

He caught himself from saying anything, from reaching out and grabbing her sleeve until her blouse ripped at the shoulder. Little brat, he thought, thinking better of going for the fork and instead drawing his phone from his pocket, out of ideas now that he didn’t have the courage to take a leap at the thing. He took several pictures with the phone, making sure the flash was on each time, surely blinding the creature.

It didn’t blink or react at all, each flash turning its disgusting pink flesh hot and white, the twinkling of the camera’s LED reflecting perfectly in its glossy, dead pupils.

It wouldn’t cross the closed gate on the deck, which was good enough, but he wished he had a gun to run it off. A gun or a spear. A stick of dynamite. Get it the fuck away.

Eric backed slowly off the deck toward the threshold again, feeling for the solid frame of the door in the darkness. It seemed unwise to turn his back to it, especially since he’d been left alone with it. He had to look at it without looking into its eyes, inscrutably dark, but that was hardly the problem. It wasn’t watching him at all, just facing him, its presence was enough to turn Eric’s insides to ice, yet he had to face it alone.

He wasn’t afraid; you’d have to have a reason to be afraid. What was going on in his stomach was disgust, the sour, bilious sensation of revulsion. Eric backed onto the warm kitchen tiles and slid the door shut, then the curtains with fumbling hands. The opaque drapes slid on their tracks, squealing like a violin string being tuned and it made him leap back, padding his bare feet onto the polished floor.

At the glass door was the silhouette, following him, looking without looking. He hadn’t seen it take a single step but it was determined to harass him, it would’ve been hilarious if it wasn’t so tough to look at, the lumpy, deformed body like a stillborn, slug-slimy lips that looked like they couldn’t part except to clamp down on living flesh and spread its poison with diseased saliva, its face like a pustulent relief map - he couldn’t take anymore and pushed his legs out of the kitchen and hustled down the hall and into Caden’s room.

He shut the door quietly, seeing that the boy was under the covers with the sheets pulled and tucked under the mattress as though Caden were leftovers bound for the fridge. Eric might’ve laughed louder if the boy didn’t seem so uncomfortable. He might’ve locked the door, too, if he wasn’t distracted by the sight of the kid wrapped up in his rocketship sheets like a four foot burrito.

“That just isn’t right,” he said, smiling to himself, grateful for the levity.

He sat down on the edge of the bed by the boy and loosened the bonds of the taut bedsheet. He smoothed a hand over it, finally and the boy wiggled his body free from the stricture.

“Does Mom bundle you up like this every night?” he asked.

“He’s there, isn’t he?” mewled the boy.

It never failed to push Eric’s buttons; how the boy would completely ignore something he’d said to go on a tangent. He was only five, but screw it, it was annoying. She would be pissed at him for saying so but he found it whiny and self-centered when they should’ve been teaching the boy together to do more listening than talking. If he had to be a father, he wasn’t interested in raising a brat.

He felt poised, like a triphammer.

“Go to sleep, Caden,” said Eric, absently. Eric stood at the window, searching the green that faded away as it sloped from the house.

“It’s fine. Now say night night.” he said after a moment, turning to shut the door.

“Night,” he replied, holding the sheets up to his face.

Eric paused there in the doorway, knowing the boy was still tilting his head up, unable to relax.

“What is it, Cade,” he said. His tone was no-nonsense, the ‘hurry up and sleep’ voice.

“Is he there?”

It was too much.

“Is who there?”

“Mister Mimal,” said the boy, clearly as he’d been told it. He ought to have known that the kid’s mind would latch onto that weird thing and take it into his nightmares. Eric had seen it for himself but when the kid said it, he knew better. It wasn’t real, of course it wasn’t real.

Shannon was just humoring him. In the morning, he wouldn’t have any recollection of it. In a year, the thought of it might tickle him in the base of the spine and make him wonder if it were a real memory or not, like a déjà vu.

“No,” he replied.

“He’s there, I know it.”

“Jesus, Caden,” he started, and he could see the boy’s face contracting with uncertainty and fright at the explosion.

“Mommy!”

“What’s your mother going to do, huh? She’s sleep. Its bedtime, I don’t want to hear it anymore!”

“I’m scared.”

He was terrified, too, though it would be absurd to bring the boy into it over something so impossible. It was irrational, entirely.

“Look, guy,” he said, moving away from the door handle. “You’re a big boy, you can’t just scream for mommy whenever the lights go out. You’ve got your own room, cause you’re a big boy. It’s just us in the house, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Caden nodded, not wanting to see that angry face again.

“Want me to finish reading to you?”

“No.”

“Speak up.”

“No.”

“Want me to put your night light on?”

“Yeah.”

He flicked it and the room was bathed purplish-blue with a faint star pattern on the ceiling. If you stared at it long enough, you’d think it was moving, processing across the sky like the real thing.

“Caden, listen. Just stop it, it’s not real. Forget I told you about it; it’s just a silly thing from a picture book. There’s nothing to be scared of, okay?”

Caden sat still, eyes big.

Eric rubbed between his brow with a thumb and forefinger, holding himself back so he wouldn’t explode. He always had to be the bad guy.

“Just say okay. Your mother can’t be here for every little thing.”

“Okay,” said the boy, resigned. Eric didn’t care if he hated him at that moment but sooner seemed better than later to tuck up those apron strings and let the boy handle some things on his own. There was nothing in the dark that was going to hurt him.

Any of them.

T
HREE

HE LINGERED AT the door for longer than he needed to, his way of an apology. He hoped that the kid would understand or remember that, that he wasn’t a hard, mean man. He couldn’t really remember how he reacted when he was disciplined; all he knew was that it helped shape him into a responsible adult who was in control of his emotions.

Any lingering feelings about it were just residue; to try and equate a spanking every now and again was hardly comparable to someone who had a genuinely poor childhood. The boy was good but he wasn’t going to be one of those douchebags who were best buddies with their children. It was important to know what a boundary was.

Eric locked Caden’s door from the outside, it was only there because the year before he’d had trouble with sleepwalking. All it took was one time finding the keep asleep in the backyard under the deck like a damn dog after an hour of panicked searching and that was that. This night, though, he didn’t want the boy climbing in bed with them. He had work in the morning.

Still, he left their bedroom door open, just so they could hear any commotion.

Seeing her face there on the pillow with the corners of her mouth turned up in a smile made him reassured. Maybe she was just shitting him. It would be weird for her to suddenly develop a sick sense of humor but anything’s possible.