PANIC (8 page)

N
INE

DANNY AND BEN cling together, approaching the Jeep from behind out of the safety of the overhang.

“I look on the right and you look on the left, okay?” Danny says. Ben whimpers.

“C’mon, Ben, please, don’t do this to me. On three, okay?” The spare tire on the back of the Jeep physically separates them and Ben has to relent. He can’t hold Danny’s hand, no matter how much he needs to hang onto someone at that very moment.

“One.”

He’s going to piss his pants. How in the hell could there be nobody in the Jeep?

“Two.”

He hears something behind the slats, like a metal garbage can falling over. He suddenly remembers Jerry behind there. Maybe the chain is loosened now.

“Three.”

He makes himself look, ducking his head out. Nothing is moving. The window’s still blown open, the sidewalk and pavement are still covered in tiny shards of busted glass. He’s not sure what he was expecting.

Danny takes the right side, and there’s the mannequin torso, laying just under the bumper of the Jeep. Its face is looking directly at him, perfect features traced by the wan, purplish light of the moon. Something must be funny because the asshole is still smiling; the frozen expression seems to be pleased that the Jeep stopped just short of running him over.  His dad has that look on his face sometimes, when he’s trying to avoid an argument. The blank eyes fix on the boy, regarding him like an insect.

It’s just a stupid mannequin but Danny’s heart has stopped beating.

The chain drops from the slats, startling him out of his fearful transfixion.

“Guys! Help!”

Jerry sounds panicked. He’s got his hand through the slats, waving madly.

“Danny, get up! We have to help him!”

Ben helps his friend up and they rush over to Jerry’s exposed arm. Without thinking, Ben is tugging away, trying to free his little brother.

“Aahh! Watch it!”

Splinters dig into Jerry’s shirt. Danny is trying to pry it apart again.

“Get it-get the other side,” he says, still stunned. They pull and pull on the slats but it doesn’t seem to be going. Jerry is pounding on the slats.

“Please! Guys, help!”

“Just hang tight.”

“Hang on Jer, we’ll get you out!”

They hear the silent, staggered marching, feet hitting tiles with a gut-wrenching hollowness. Ben and Danny look at each other and pull in tandem, wrenching the slats so hard that they fall away with the chain. Jerry sprawls on the ground as they jump back to avoid the falling boards.

Dust swirls around the boys, blanketing them in decades of pale grime.

“Shit!” Ben yells, the board narrowly missing his face but snagging his shirt on a nail.

There’s a family of four in the front.

The boy wears a Steelers cap and a Penguins jersey and lewdly, no pants. It doesn’t matter. He’s smooth as a Ken doll, his face like that of the mannequin lying in the parking lot. The bemused look seems wicked on the boy’s face - a psychopathic lil’ slugger.

His sister wears a tutu and stockings, hand curled into a grip meant to hold a fairy wand. They lead their parents, a three piece suit and a party dress with five inch heels. The woman statue has no head. The man statue has no semblance of a face, like an android.

The creatures walk forward, their arms swinging stiffly, their legs goose-stepping in staggered rhythm, with an indeterminate number behind them following them like a train of porters. Some are fully dressed, some partially, all in the artifacts of the previous generation.

Some are wearing jewelry and it clatters on hollow necks and wrists.

A few are nude, sexless. Man-sized action figures with ten points of articulation.

The torso on the ground has abandoned its charade and takes its place with the family, crawling, dragging its head along the ground indifferently.

Silent faces frozen in various states. Posed bodies jerking themselves forward. They file out into the world, their smooth doll bodies lit by the moon. Something that cannot be.

The boys scramble over themselves, tripping over backward. There’s no choice but to  help each other up and recover quickly. Jerry has already broken into a run and refuses to look over his shoulder. His heart is beating out of his chest. Danny and Ben aren’t as fast but they run like they are. Ben’s face is wet and he chokes trying to take in air as he sprints as hard as his legs will allow.

“Ohgodohgodohgodohgod,” says Danny, darting through the hole in the fence after his two friends.

They scramble up the slope, ass over teakettle, kicking up dirt as they go. It suddenly doesn’t seem so insurmountable. They pump their legs over the glade and don’t stop until they reach their bikes. They ride home in utter silence.

Behind them, three dozen doll people fan out, their placid faces searching the night for a destination.

The boys tear across town home, faster than the stiff mannequin legs can follow.

T
EN

DANNY’S DAD IS still up in the den, watching the game. His mom is too exhausted to ask why he’s home after dark, or ask if he wants some dinner. They look as if nothing happened and it’s just as well; if he told them, they’d just laugh.

“Some pizza in the oven, hon,” she says, not looking up from the receipts she’s going over.

He has no appetite.

“No...no thanks, ma.” His voice sounds like someone else’s, scratchy and distant.

His bed never felt so good, yet he can’t sleep.

It’s impossible.

It’s not real.

He can’t think. Guilt gnaws at him.

There’s a long siren going in the background, coming down the street adjacent to his own. Once it passes, he can think straight. Rationalize it. Review the footage.

The only image forming in his mind is of the smirking face, turned to meet his.

Another siren comes, from the other direction, further off.

Then another, closer. This one sounds like the siren of an ambulance.

Distant bleating of the horn of a fire truck.

The urgent sounds mingle, cacophonous.

He looks over to the window, turning his head to the side. He’s got a good view in his upstairs window of what’s unfolding in town. The night is filled with the strobing lights, all over his neighborhood, all over the streets in the valley. He turns his head to the wall to shut it out and tries not to cry.

"Hey kid," he imagines. "You're alright." Its arm would lock in a canned thumbs up pose.

He refuses to leave the bed.

O
NE

S
OMETIMES WHEN IT’S warm out, they have dinner on the back deck. She’d whip something up real quick and it would taste better just because it was outside, even if it was tuna salad and lettuce cups.

When she was on a diet, it seemed like the whole family was too, but he didn’t mind too much.

He and Shannon loved it after a long day, but Caden didn’t, at least not that night.

“Mom,” he lilted, carefully picking his words. “Wanna go inside. It’s too dark.”

Eric always interrupted, never liking the way she just caved to whatever the boy wanted. He’d never grow out of it if she kept encouraging it.

“C’mon, Cade, sit under the porch light with me.”

He had a picture book out on his lap, trying his best to get along with the boy while Shannon took the disposable plates and cutware out to the covered can at the foot of the stairs of the deck.

Caden moved toward his stepfather, tentatively, seeming more focused on what his mother was doing off the deck. Eric hadn’t fixed the lights lining the edges of the house in back and aside from the back porch light and the light emanating from the house and a candle she’d set on the table as they ate, it was pitch black.

It was too early in the year for lightning bugs, even.

“Hey, pay attention,” he said to the boy, trying to get him to look at the book. “Let's see if you know your states. What’s this one at the bottom?”

“That’s...” he began, his eyes darting back to where his mother stood, making sure she made it back up the stairs. When he saw her ponytail again, he looked back to his stepdad. “That’s ‘ouisiana.”

“Real good, Cade. What’s the one over it?”

“Um...Kansas.”

“No. It’s Ar-kansas. But you don’t say it like that. Say it like Ar-kan-saw.”

He wanted to see if the boy could find what was above Minnesota, if he could point out Manitoba or Ontario out on the map, as if hoping to have something to whip out at parties to prove he hadn’t married a redneck with a little weirdo bat boy son.

“It’s him,” said the boy, pointing at the page.

“Him?” said Eric.

“The man in the picture, I seen him.” He traced his finger up through the five states, ending at the US border.

“Oh, you know what they call that?” said Eric.

“No...” said the boy, puzzled by the strange outline.

“They call it Mister Mimal. Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas and Louisana. See his hat, and his nose, and—”

“Don’t like it. Turn the page, Eric.”

“Cade,” he moaned, irritated. “Don’t call me Eric. And don’t tell your parents what to do.”

“Turn the page,” said the boy, anxiously. His mother should be there but she wasn’t, so he just stayed stubborn.

“What’d I just say?”

She heard their voices raised then came back onto the deck. “Eric, don’t make me put you in time out, too. Caden, apologize.”

“Mommy, don’t go back out there,” said the boy, his high voice shrinking.

“Did you hear me? I said apologize to your father.”

His eyes bugged and welled on the verge, not old enough yet to know how to deal with the frustration of having adults ignore everything you say. On the other hand, she felt no compunction about his occasional tantrums. She had plenty of time to be disturbed by adolescent sullenness in seven or eight years.

Eric was already checked out, exasperated. Everything Caden did seemed to try his patience.

“Do not start with me. You are a big boy; you’re too old to be crying when you don’t get your way. Now stop this.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, pouting and sniffling.

“Thank you, Ca-”

“Don’t go back out there, mommy, there’s a man there.”

Eric stood from kneeling and went to the edge of the deck, peering down where his wife just stood.

“Are you sure, Caden?” he said, almost rhetorically, not directing his voice at the boy.

“He’s there.”

“Where?”

“Out there.”

His mother smoothed the puddling tears from his cheeks with her thumbs and combed her fingers through his hair. Her wedding band made him tingle when it ran along his scalp.

“I don’t see a thing, kid. Now come on, time to start getting ready for bed.”

“Come with me, mommy,” he said, taking his mother’s hand in his. He felt cold; spooked was the word. She was still busy trying to clear off the deck, expecting the rain that would come overnight and ruin anything they left out. She wasn’t the type to just leave stuff lying around; after all, nobody was coming to clean up after her.

“Caden, I can’t.”

It seemed like a small betrayal, knowing the boy was frightened of something. She knew, unlike the boy, there was nothing to be afraid of; that she and her husband would be right there for him. She rubbed his shoulders to warm him, feeling him suddenly frosted over with fright.

“Listen, just go and brush your teeth and get right under the covers. I’ll come finish reading to you in a minute.”

His face looked pained but he nodded anyway, still distracted by something. Eric still stood looking over the deck, scanning the dark field extending away from their house for anything lurking, wandering in from off the road or the edge of the woods.

“Do you want Eric to help?”

He shook his head and turned to toddle back into the house, disappearing around the corner from the kitchen and down the hall. She was relieved when she saw the bathroom light click on promptly.

“God, that boy,” she said, sighing and knelt on the deck to collect some of his toys, including the book Eric had been reading to him. She turned to Eric, facing away from her at the edge of the deck, rooted to the spot.

“Eric?”

She stood slowly and dumped the load in an old laundry basket. She approached carefully as if he’d whip around and give her a good scare with an orange peel for teeth or squirt blood from a ketchup packet.

“Eric?”

She raised her hand and heard the squeak of the boy’s voice, muffled from the bathroom.

“Mom? Mommy!”

She jumped and whipped around; pushing the sliding door aside to make sure her son wasn’t in danger. Her bare feet thumped in the house, far away from wherever Eric’s mind was.

T
WO

BETWEEN THE HOUSE and the thin willows marking the border between property and preserve are rolling lawns shared in common, about an acre in all, ringed by an island of seven or eight houses.

A car comes up the pass, its moonbeam headlights shining between the houses as it crawls along.

The light roams over the field for brief seconds, spotlight rays that might catch the spooky yellow eye reflections of possums, skulking shyly under cover of night. In the crossing of the beam, he can see a cloud of gnats flitting over the lush grass, dancing and mating in midair.

In the mown field glistening with night dew, stands a stout thing, as big as a child but old, too.

He can see its bare, warty feet, standing on the damp earth, grass standing up stiff through its toes. It wears a simple frock coat with a wide collar and riding pants, both dingy from life on the road. It looks like a chimney sweep, caught in a press.

He can see it standing with its hands in its pockets, a trollish dandy waiting for a train, at any moment ready to produce a pocket watch to check the time.

He can see its wide, ugly face, warped, distended, its features smeared in the distance.

He can see its huge, bulbous nose, blood vessels cracked and skin roughly textured. Its eyes are fixed under a thick brow with wisps of light hair, but do not glow in the dark like the eyes of a cat or a fox. Still, he can see it staring darkly.