The Painted Darkness (3 page)

knew he should still be thrilled: he didn’t have to go to school today, after all. Now he needed to decide what to do, and the answer to that question was easy, too. There was a big back yard full of snow waiting for him. What couldn’t he do?

As Henry dressed himself in his snow pants and the yellow rain boots, his mind filled with possibilities. No school! He actually liked going to school and seeing his friends and his teacher, but the idea of being home on a day he was supposed to be in the classroom was exhilarating, like getting away with breaking a stupid rule.

A few moments later Henry’s mother came into his room, where he was sitting on the floor trying to buckle the latches on his boots. She was dressed for her job as a triage nurse in the hospital’s emergency room, which the snowstorm had left more shortstaffed than normal.

“Going to play in the snow?” she asked. “Yep!”
“Have fun and be safe. I have to go to

work, but Ms. Winslow will watch you.” “No snow day for you and Dad?” he asked. “Sorry, love, but duty calls.” She kneeled

and helped Henry with his boots. Then she smoothed the part in his hair with her fingers. Her nails were freshly painted. “You be good for Ms. Winslow. Be my Big Boy, okay?”

“And promise me you’ll stay away from the woods.”
“I promise,” he lied without missing a beat.
In the summer, the growth of the woods beyond the yard was thick and wild, but if he made it through the bushes and prickers and weeds safely, there was a well-worn path along the Slade River where he could skip stones on the water or catch a frog with his bare hands. Today the river would be icy and there would be no frogs, but he wasn’t the least bit interested in the frigid water. He had another destination in mind.
Back in the heaviest growth, just short of the river, was where Henry had discovered the old abandoned pick-up truck the previous summer. The tires and seats were rotted, the paint was nearly gone, the frame was rusted, and it was sitting a mile from the nearest road with no easy way to explain how any kind of motor vehicle could have gotten there. Henry’s best guess involved something he had seen while watching the New Year’s Day Twilight Zone marathon with his father.
The truck wasn’t the only hidden treasure to be discovered in those woods—and that was what really excited Henry’s imagination. The best thing he ever found—besides the truck and the dozens of antique Coke bottles and a broken fishing rod and even the rusted barrel of a flint rifle—was a forgotten tree house, nestled high in the limbs of a soaring oak with a thousand branches. The majestic tree stood alone in the middle of a clearing, rising above the rest of the forest like a mighty tower.
There wasn’t a rope ladder to the tree house any more, but sometimes Henry thought if he were just a little bit taller he might be able to reach the lowest branch and climb the rest of the way. He daydreamed about what he might find up there, and he fought the urge to tell anyone else about it, even his father. The clearing and the giant oak were meant to be a secret place. Somehow he knew that deep down where he kept all of his secrets.
Henry loved his adventures in the woods, but he had to be careful, too. He had a bad scare the first time he wandered off the trail—a mistake he knew to never make again—and the older kids at school had already filled his head with stories of monsters from beyond the grave who supposedly haunted the forest. Henry knew enough not to believe the stories, yet deep down, he thought maybe they could be true, at least a little. For a little boy with a big imagination, that was enough.
The warnings didn’t stop Henry from wandering off the trail occasionally, of course. He was careful in the woods—people sometimes really did go missing along the river—but there was so much cool stuff to be found away from the trails and he wanted to explore the land until he knew all of its secrets.
And today the woods presented a whole new world, one covered under a thick blanket of snow and ice. So even as Henry had been dressing himself to play in the backyard, he knew where he was really headed on this perfect snow day.
His day would be spent exploring the woods.
And that was how he would discover the monsters in the real world.

every twelve hours during the winter, and the previous owner left Henry a helpful note explaining all five steps of the process very clearly. Henry had discovered the handwritten instructions tacked to the cellar door the day his family moved into their new home. He knew all about steam boilers from his father, of course, but he appreciated the kindness of the previous owner, the man who had lived here all his life, leaving behind the workshop and those rusty tools in the cellar as his legacy.

A modern unit can do the five maintenance steps automatically, but the boiler in this cellar is anything but modern. Actually, Henry is pretty sure it was original with the house. Somewhere along the way someone upgraded the unit to oil from coal, but the idea of adding any kind of new and automated controls is laughable. Henry is hoping to replace the boiler once and for all in the spring if their finances allow. The new unit will handle the five twice-a-day maintenance steps automatically, controlled by a thermostat on the first floor. Henry will never have to visit the cellar again if all goes well.

Right now, though, Henry stands frozen in place, unable to perform the tasks he came here to do. Something feels very wrong in the cellar. Maybe it’s those damn rats or maybe the sensation is an aftereffect of the vertigo, but his arms are covered in goosebumps and his heart is racing. He senses movement in the periphery of his vision, but when he swings the flashlight around, there’s nothing to be seen. Then:

Thump-thump-thump , the boiler calls. The hulking mass emits a burp from deep inside the heavy cast iron belly—and Henry laughs, the tension broken by the sound.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asks himself, shaking his head in disbelief. “It’s just a boiler! And I know how to handle a fat bear.”
Henry laughs again and crosses the cellar, the dirt cold on his feet as he hunches over to avoid hitting his head on the wooden beams. Bending like this at his hips comes naturally enough after a few months of navigating the space twice a day. The flashlight guides him past the rough spots in the dirt-packed floor. Henry wishes he had put his shoes on, but now he just wants to finish the work and get upstairs where his paints and canvas are waiting for him.
Thump-thump-thump.
The first step of the maintenance routine is simple enough. Henry flips the metal toggle switch on the side of the unit from ON to OFF. As the previous owner had written in his note, This baby’s a gulper and you don’t want her gulping while you have her valves open!
After that’s done, Henry moves to the second step. On the other side of the boiler is a spigot with a rusted cut-off valve. Below the spigot is a metal bucket with a broken wooden handle. Henry keeps meaning to replace the bucket, but somehow he never gets around to it. Too many other things to fix in the house, he reasons, although he isn’t entirely satisfied with his explanation.
After double-checking to confirm the bucket is in place, Henry cranks the rusted valve. The valve creaks, the pipes shake, and then there’s a thunderous belch of steam as the boiling black water spits into the bucket, which screams from the sudden heat. The boiler groans in pain, too. The water is as dark as the thick oil the boiler gulps.
Henry’s father had given this process a lot of nicknames, but “draining the fat bear” is probably the one Henry remembers the best. He always thinks of his old man while performing this five-step act of home maintenance each day. His father spoke fondly of the steam boilers he cared for at work. They even had names. Always girls’ names. Hillary, Matilda, Gertrude, Amelia. That’s probably why his father saying his most important duty was to “drain the fat bears” always made Henry laugh as a child.
After fifteen seconds, the water spitting from the spigot is relatively clear and the bucket is full of the thick black goop. Henry twists the valve back in the opposite direction until the steam and water stop; the pipe bucks and groans. He then lets the bucket sit for a few moments so the metal can cool.
While he waits, Henry considers the potential danger if he ever fails to heed the boiler’s warnings and needs. Eventually the system would overheat and burn the whole house down—or, if things went really wrong, the boiler could explode. There were no safety shutoffs on models manufactured when people were still dependent on horses to make the trek to town, after all. No gauges or emergency breakers, either. You have the unit OFF or you have it ON, and if it’s ON, you’d better be paying attention because it can get mighty hot and mighty pissed off, as Henry’s father would say.
The third step is a lot like the second step, only sort of in reverse. Henry reaches up to the top of the boiler’s main body where a pipe from the outside wall runs into the unit. There’s another rusting shutoff valve there and he cranks it clockwise from the CLOSED position to OPEN—or at least as open as the calcium-filled pipes get these days. There’s a cold hissing sound as clean, clear mountain water rushes into the boiler’s system. Henry can’t see the water, of course, but he can imagine it. Imagining things has never been a problem for him. Quite the opposite, as Sarah reminded him last night.
After fifteen seconds—he counts in his head, no need for him to look at his watch with the flashlight—he twists the valve to the CLOSED position. Now that the system has fresh water, it’ll be good to go for another twelve hours.
Just two more steps and Henry’s work will be completed.
Next he places his flashlight on the dirt floor and he picks up the bucket. He shuffles his way toward step number four, which is to carefully tip the contents of the bucket into the circular metal grating covering the drain in the middle of the dirt floor. The drain is merely a pipe leading into a pit under the house dug by the original builders. A reasonable amount of liquid can be poured into the pit, but if you put in too much, it’ll simply back up into the cellar. And, as the former owner cheerfully explained in his handwritten instructions, Don’t piss in the drain unless you want the funk to linger for weeks.
Henry carries the steaming bucket of black sludge water with both hands, one on each side of the broken wooden handle. Steam rises, condensing on his flesh. He follows the beam of light from his flashlight and he carefully sets the bucket next to the rusted metal drain.
Henry wipes his hands on his shirt, and after another moment of rest, he tips the bucket forward as gently as he can considering he’s using the broken handle for leverage.
That’s when Henry sees the big red eye blinking up at him from the bottom of the drain, and that’s when he hears the growl of the beast for the first time.
That’s also the last thing Henry remembers until he awakens on his kitchen floor hours later, ice cold and bleeding from the forehead with burns on his scalded right hand.

game show less than ten minutes after she arrived to watch Henry, but those were the longest ten minutes of his life. He tried to concentrate on other things to pass the time, but all he really wanted to do was sneak into the woods and explore the icy landscape. To anyone observing him, he might have looked just a tad bit crazy as he quickly paced around the backyard, his bright yellow rain slicker and boots reflecting the morning sunlight all around him as he moved.

Finally, on the tenth time Henry stood on the overturned bucket on the snowy concrete slab and looked through the kitchen window, he saw exactly what he was waiting for: Ms. Winslow shaking her hand at the television screen, doing her best to urge a contestant on the game show toward the correct answer.

Henry jumped off the bucket and ran across the yard. He shoved through the barren bushes under the big tree at the edge of their property and a wave of ice and snow rained down on him. He didn’t care if he got wet. The sight beyond his yard took his breath away. The woods were even more beautiful than he expected: everything white and pristine. He realized no one, not even an animal, had been through the area since the snow stopped. He felt like he was the first human explorer to find an undiscovered land.

Henry gazed up at the icicles hanging from the tree branches; they glowed bright white in the cool winter sunlight. The whole world was like that: radiant and vibrant and picturesque.

Soon, though, the peace was broken as Henry went bounding along the deer trails, his index finger extended to form the shape of a gun. He was a top-secret soldier on a topsecret mission behind enemy lines in a topsecret war. His cover had been blown, and he was on the run, firing over his shoulder, picking off his pursuers with frightening accuracy. Bullets whizzed past him and he ducked and rolled through the snow, firing and hitting one bad guy and then another and another. When he spotted an elite enemy sniper perched in a tree, Henry dove and fired from the hip. The bad guy screamed, spun, and fell through the branches, sending a cascade of ice and snow crashing to the ground with a roar like thunder.

When Henry played the Top Secret Soldier game or his Cops and Robbers game or any of the Win The Big Game games, he could see everything as clearly as if the people were really real: the soldiers, the spies; the cops, the robbers; his teammates and even the crazed fans in the stands.

Henry had sort of assumed everyone else could conjure up playmates, too, but he was starting to have his doubts. The kids at school played the normal games together during recess, while he sat alone and imagined crazy new games he could play all by himself in his head. His adventures were as real as any story his father read to him at bedtime or anything Henry saw on television, but recently he told his father this and his old man laughed and said:

My boy, you’re never going to run out of imagination.
Henry didn’t know what that meant, and from the way his mother looked at him after he talked about his imaginary worlds, he had the feeling he shouldn’t tell anyone else. Doing so might not be such a hot idea. If he was the only one who could make up things and have them seem so real, telling people was probably just asking for trouble. He saw how the kids at school who were “different” were treated, and he was happy to just be left alone when he consider the alternative.
Henry was still sprinting through the woods, pushing branches to the side, and it wasn’t too long before he burst through another thick grove of icy bushes, sending frozen chunks of snow flying everywhere. He stopped dead in his tracks, stunned by the beautiful sight he had stumbled upon: the hidden clearing in the thickest part of the woods.
Henry had been here before, but he was surprised to see the snow had been blown against the big oak tree, the one with the dilapidated tree house. In fact, the snow had piled up in such a way that Henry was certain he could reach the lowest branch—which meant he could finally discover what was hidden in the dark confines of the tree house placed firmly in the high branches.