Ravenous Ghosts (8 page)

I do my best to ignore him, but he is so close I can smell him. Stale beer and cigarettes. I recognize the smell from my father.

He starts to rock back and forth on the heels of his pointy-toed shoes like he's doing nothing more than waiting for a bus and follows the trajectory of the bread crusts I'm throwing with his beady black eyes.

I know by the way he keeps sneaking glances at me that he probably has something unsavory on that wrinkled old mind of his, so I stop throwing the bread and angle my head so I can see him clearly.
"You a pervert or something?" I ask him.

He looks at me like I
've just smacked him across the face. I almost laugh, but manage to hold it back at the last second. I might be acting brave, but my father hasn't raised me to be a complete idiot. His face pales, an incredible sight since he was the color of death to begin with and now he looks more like a hollowed out corpse. It takes him a second to regain his composure and then his smile widens. It looks forced.

"
Son, I don't mean to bring harm to you. I'm just an old man out for a walk, that's all."

I go back to throwing bread and watching the ducks fight each other for the scraps. Wings flutter furiously, water sprays into transient rainbows and the old man shuffles uncomfortably. Feathers have been ruffled. I hawk up a booger and shoot it at a point on the ground between him and me. He flinches.

"Didn't your father tell you how rude that is?"

"
My father taught me how to do it. He says there isn't any need for stuff hanging around inside you if you can just as easily spit it out."

The old man says nothing.

I say nothing.

The birds drift closer to the grassy bank, eyeing me with short sharp snaps of their heads. Overhead, white snatches of cloud hang in the air like nailed cotton. There is no breeze.

"Do you smoke?" the old man asks. I look at the silver case he holds out to me in one fragile looking hand and back to the water.

"
I never take smokes from strangers."

In the corner of my eye I see him shrug and hear the fizzle and flare of a cupped match. A contented smoky sigh and then I am once again the object of his attention.

"You go to school?" he asks and I spare him a quick glance. I realize my supply of bread crusts has dwindled to nothing more than a few brown crescents, like a giant's dirty nail clippings. I have been throwing them fast to avoid looking at the old man and now I am almost out.

"
Why do you ask so many questions?"

"
Just making conversation."

"
I didn't come here for conversation. I doubt anyone comes down here for conversation."

He takes a deep drag on his cigarette and I feel his eyes on the nape of my neck, resting there like cold stones. I want to shudder but don
't. Instead I look down at my hands, one crust left in each.

"
Almost out of bread there, son," he says and I am irritated that he has noticed.

"
Why don't you go bother someone else?"

"
There's no-one else here," he answers after a moment and flicks his cigarette into the pond, right into the center of the feeding birds.

I toss the last two crusts into the water.
"Well, I'm not much of a talker."

"
We've all got our stories, boy. Scoot over there and let me rest these weary legs of mine, wouldya?"

I give him a long hard look that I hope tells him he
's messing with the wrong kid if indeed that is his intention. He begins to massage his leg and winces for dramatic effect so I shift myself onto the very edge of the bench, one leg off to the side ready to propel me out of there should the need arise. He sits.

He
's wearing a long navy overcoat, buttoned up the center almost to his throat. I wonder how he isn't roasting to death in it. It is early August after all and I'm sweating in a tee shirt and jeans. But, that's his business and I'm not too curious about what might or might not be under there.

"
I use to come down here when I was your age," he says wistfully and I pray this isn't going to be one of those merry jaunts down memory lane. "Feed the ducks, skip stones, just like you."

"
Fascinating," I tell him and scan the park for the tenth time since we sat down. I find it odd that on a day as warm as this, we're the only ones here.

He reaches into his pocket and I move further away so that now the edge of the seat is wedged firmly into the crack of my ass. He shakes his head and withdraws the silver cigarette case.
"I don't bite," he says and offers me a small smile. "But I commend your caution. Places like this aren't as safe as they used to be. Not with the way people are these days."

Lighting his cigarette, his eyes move to the sky.

Something small and brown flashes past his head and thumps to the ground. We both turn to look though I have to strain harder to see around him without getting too close.

"
Wouldya look at that," he mutters, not sounding surprised at all.

It
's a sparrow. The bird is lying flat on its back, legs curled up to it's breast as if it died looking for a perch.

"
You're lucky it didn't hit you on the head," I tell him and quickly move away as he swivels back to face me, an amused smile on his face.

"
That I am. Poor thing must have been old."

For some reason the idea of a bird dying of old age makes a laugh swell in my throat but I force it away.
"Yeah. Maybe he was a smoker."

I expect him to find this funny but instead he fixes me with those horrible black marble eyes and shakes his head.
"It's a 'she'."

I don
't get this immediately and my face obviously tells him so because he points a long thin finger in the direction of the dead bird. "The sparrow. It's a 'she', not a 'he'."

I give him a moment to crack a smile or otherwise indicate that he
's kidding. He doesn't.

"
Right, mister. How do you know that? The boys got big dicks or something?"

He does smile then but there is no humor in it.
"I just know," he says quietly. "What's your name, kid?"

"
Why do you want to know?"

"
Just being courteous, that's all. I figure since we're talking, we should introduce ourselves. I'm Janus."

"
As in Joplin?"

"
Not exactly, but close enough. And you are…?"

"
Leaving," I finish for him and get to my feet.

"
What's the rush? You must know by now I don't intend to hurt you? We're alone, wouldn't I already have done something if that were my intention?"

I look over my shoulder at him as I start to walk away.
"How the hell do I know? No offense mister, but you give me the creeps and I have better things to do on a day like today than sit around with creepy old men."

He makes no move to stop me, for which I am only marginally relieved.

What does make me stop is the sight of another dead bird lying in the short grass a few feet away from where I've been sitting. I stare at it for a moment before moving on; thinking that maybe some kid hidden in the bushes around the park is having fun with a BB gun when I find another one. And then another. For some reason, my curiosity makes me turn to see if the old man has noticed the little brown lumps lying in the grass like feathered dog turds.

He
's standing right behind me. I give out a startled yelp, restraining the immediate impulse to strike out at him and stagger backwards. "What are you doing?"

He ignores the question and drops to his haunches beside the dead sparrow, a somber look on his face.

The sky breathes down on us then, making the few remaining strands of silver hair on the old man's head dance in the new breeze. I watch, fascinated as Janus clamps the cigarette between his teeth and cups his hands together as if he's about to collect water from a stream. Instead, he uses them as a shovel to scoop the dead bird up and with a faint smile, puts it into the pocket of his overcoat.

"
What…?" I start to ask but fall silent as he walks a few steps forward and repeats the process with the other dead sparrow.

He
's filling his pockets with dead birds
, I think to myself, now sure that the old man is out of his mind.

The bizarre ritual continues a while longer as Janus zigzags across the grass, stooping to collect the birds I haven
't gone far enough to see. Eventually he stops and returns to where I stand open-mouthed and wide-eyed. He offers me a grin I'm sure he means to be reassuring—it isn't—and returns to the park bench.

Don
't go back
, my mind insists,
he's nuts. Next thing you know he'll be scooping you up and trying to shove you in his pocket.

Before I can argue, my legs are moving towards the bench. This time it is I who stay standing, frowning at the strange old man who now looks almost serene.

"I'm guessing you didn't pick those birds up to help out the litter warden?"

His eyes are fixed on something over my head.
"No."

"
Then what was all that about?"

"
Sit and I'll tell you."

His voice has become flat and emotionless but I don
't sense a threat anymore and so, eager to learn his motives, I do as he asks.

"
You remind me of me when I was young and naïve. Things were much simpler then."

Mental yawn. I have heard this same line about a thousand times from both my grandfather and my father, who are both it seems, desperate for a chance to relive the past. I sometimes wonder what changes they would make if given the opportunity and if I would be one of those changes.

"Nowadays it's all greed, death, drugs and deceit. I don't know if I could ever have survived as a child in this."

"
In what?"

"
The world the way it is now." He pokes my shoulder with a finger and winks. "You seem to be managing okay though, eh Kieran?"

I freeze, a trapdoor opening in the pit of my stomach, allowing the butterflies to fly in.

"How do you know my name?"

Thump!

I want to look but know what I'll see if I do. Sparrows. They're dropping all around us, but suddenly that doesn't seem so bizarre right now.

"
Would you believe I read minds? Or that I work for a carnival that's about to pass through town and clairvoyance is my particular talent?"

The tone of his voice tells me that none of this is the truth.

"Or would you rather I tell you I'm a supernatural being who could wipe you out of existence with a flick of my finger?"

A splash from the pond; it might have been the ducks. Are they to die too? If so, how will he retrieve them? The mental picture of Janus trying to stuff a duck into his pocket would have been funny if not overruled by the creeping sense of dread that ripples beneath my skin.

I steal a glance. The ducks are still there, alive and well but now they are gathered around a small brown object floating in the water.

"
Perhaps I'm a demon sent to spread chaos throughout the earth?"

My eyes meet his and those black orbs are filled with such an intense look that I am forced to drop my gaze.

"You live in an age where television, books and computer games sell monsters to the imagination of children in staggering doses. There is not a doubt in my mind that I could convince you I am one of those monsters. But I won't."

His words are punctuated by the sound of birds dropping from the sky and hitting the earth. Surrounded by this impossible phenomenon, I know he
's right. If he tells me he's the devil himself, I might just believe it.

"
Then who are you?"

A bird dive-bombs my shoulder and rolls into my lap. I grimace and swipe him off into Janus
's waiting hand. He casts a scornful glance at me before pocketing it.

The sky becomes the work of a time-lapse photographer; clouds suddenly flicker and grow larger and darker than they had been only moments before. Silver light blinks through holes in the ever-spreading canvas of gray above our heads.

When I look back down, Janus's face is hovering mere inches from my own. The desire to move away is immediate, powerful and impossible. His eyes hold me in place.

"
You'll go home," he says tonelessly. "You'll talk nonsense with your family and argue with your sister. You'll pet the dog and eat dinner. You'll brush your teeth, urinate and go to bed. Your daddy will stay up two hours later than you so that he can finish the bottle of whiskey your no-good uncle Isaac brought him last week. Then he too will urinate, forget to brush his teeth and go to bed. An hour later, I will visit your house and leave a sparrow outside."