Strangewood (5 page)

"I'm not the only one who can see him, Daddy,"
Nathan said gravely. "Crabapple's afraid they're going to hurt him, or
take him away forever."

Suddenly, Thomas found himself profoundly regretting that he
and Emily hadn't continued to bring Nathan to Dr. Morrissey. Obviously, the
child had deep-rooted anxieties as a result of the divorce. Guilt reared its
ugly head, but Thomas pushed it away. Nathan was better off not listening to
his parents fight all the time.

But sometimes the guilt overcame reason. It made him feel a
little sick to even consider that he might have caused his own child such pain
and sadness.

"Nobody's going to hurt Crabapple, buddy," he
promised Nathan, forcing a smile. "Nobody's going to take him away from
you."

"Crabapple doesn't believe you, Daddy!" Nathan
cried, and now he was growing even more agitated. Though he'd at first seemed
dubious about the imaginary opinions of his imaginary friend, they now seemed
to have him frantic.

"They're going to take him away and hurt him, maybe
kill him dead, Daddy!" Nathan insisted.

Then the tears came.

Thomas pulled over to the side of the road and flipped on
the hazard lights even as he unlatched his seat belt. He reached out, unlatched
Nathan’s seat belt, and pulled his son to him in a crushing embrace, cursing
himself all the while. He knew it wasn't his fault. It was just life. But
knowing and feeling were two different things; and what he
felt
was just
the tiniest bit of self-loathing.

"Ssshhh, Nathan, it's okay," he whispered. "Daddy's
here. I won't let anyone hurt you . . . or Crabapple."

"You can't stop them, Daddy," Nathan whimpered. "Crabapple
says they're going to get him no matter what."

"Who's they, buddy?" Thomas asked his son,
confounded by the boy's insistence. "Who's going to hurt him?"

"All of them. Feathertop and Grumbler and Bob Longtooth
and the Wood Nymphs. The Jackal Lantern's going to hurt Crabapple, Daddy. They
all want to hurt him," Nathan roared in tears.

Thomas could only stare. Strangewood. Nathan was talking
about the characters in Strangewood, the characters Thomas — as TJ
Randall — had written about most of his adult life. The characters who
had provided a comfortable life for the Randall family all along.

"Why . . . why would they do that?" Thomas asked,
not even wondering at the absurdity of the question.

"Crabapple says it's cause he's out here with me and
they're . . . they're still in Strangewood," Nathan said, his voice
hitching, but his tears beginning to subside.

"But, come on, Nathan," Thomas pleaded with his
son, trying to reason with him. "You know that the characters in
Strangewood aren't for real. Daddy made them all up. And even if they were
real, why, Grumbler and Feathertop would never be friends with Bob Longtooth
and the others."

There
, he thought.
Five-year-old logic.

And it seemed to work, for Nathan brightened up a bit right
away.

"Crabapple's just being a silly," Thomas said. "Why,
who wouldn't want pepperoni pizza?"

"Silly," Nathan agreed, staring at the empty space
where Crabapple was supposed to be.

The boy didn't talk to his invisible friend the rest of the
way to the Pizza Palace. By the time they were eating, the conversation had
moved on to sandboxes and swingsets and why chocolate milk was God's greatest
invention.

But the incident stayed with Thomas. He vowed to himself
that he would speak to Emily about it Sunday when he dropped Nathan off. He
thought a return visit to Dr. Morrissey was in order.

By the time he'd finished cooking Nathan pancakes on
Saturday morning, Thomas's mind had returned to the deal with Disney, and the
possibility of developing
Strangewood
for live-action. The threat to
Crabapple's life and well being had been forgotten.

Nathan was happy, maple syrup smeared across his chin. The
sun warmed the kitchen, despite the cool breeze that blew in through the window
over the sink. It was a beautiful day. Nathan jabbered on about Jonny Quest,
Scooby Doo, and some of his other favorites on that time machine of animation
called the Cartoon Network. Thomas was as content as he'd been at any time in
recent memory. Happy that he could share his son's love of certain cartoons. Such
simple things.

As they talked, and made silly faces, over breakfast, Thomas
congratulated himself once again for having the foresight to rent a house
rather than an apartment. Nathan had his own room and had to actually walk down
stairs to have breakfast. Somehow, that seemed important. It made it seem like
his real home, instead of just his Dad's house, where he spent weekends.

It was a nice place, too. Thomas had been fortunate to find
it, and at an affordable price. After all, despite the money he was making, the
cost of supporting separate households for himself and Emily — she had a
decent job as HR Director at Sentinel Software, but not enough to pay the
mortgage and the bills and daycare — not to mention the cost of raising
Nathan . . . well, he'd gotten a deal on the house. It was a traditional
Colonial, only a few years old. There were three bedrooms upstairs, one of
which Thomas used as his office. Downstairs, he had transformed what might have
been a dining room into a library. Other than that, there was just a living
room and a kitchen. And bathrooms, of course, one on each floor.

The black and white house was in nice shape, but didn't have
much character. It was too new, and Thomas didn't pay a lot of attention to
decorating it other than to bury it in his books and videos. He hadn't read
comic books in years, but he still had the collection he'd accumulated up
through college and looked forward to the time when Nathan might actually have
an interest. If he liked comics at all. With the Internet and CD-Rom, kids weren't
spending time reading much of anything.

Including books.

Sure, kids loved Strangewood once they were exposed to it. But
Thomas found that his — TJ Randall's — audience was actually
parents, rather than their children. Much to his pleasure, Nathan was already a
voracious consumer of books and stories.

An errant breeze blew extra strong through the kitchen.

"Daddy, can I have some more juice?" Nathan asked.

Thomas fetched it for him, then began to clean up the
breakfast dishes. When he was finished, he took a shower while Nathan watched
ancient Superman cartoons.

"It's going to be a great day, buddy," he
announced as he toweled dry. "What do you say we go to the zoo?"

Even Superman was no match for the Bronx Zoo. Nathan cheered
and did a little dance that had been his trademark since the age of two. Thomas
felt his heart surge, and he smiled so wide he thought his slightly dry lips
would crack.

"Let's go!" Nathan cried.

Thomas gave him the thumbs up. "Cool!" he said,
and Nathan mimicked the gesture and the word.

Later, as they ate cotton candy and watched the monkeys play
tricks on one another, Thomas surprised himself by wishing Emily were with
them. An unexpected and unwelcome sadness began to intrude upon the perfection
of the day, to taint it somehow.

"See your friends, Nathan?" he asked, shaking off
the feeling. "Monkeys, just like Mommy always calls you."

Nathan looked at him strangely. "Mommy doesn't call me
a monkey, Dad," the boy said, as if his father were hallucinating.

Thomas grimaced. He almost argued, then realized that he
hadn't actually heard Emily call Nathan her "little monkey" in quite
some time. It was possible enough time had passed that the boy had simply
forgotten. The sadness threatened to sweep in full force, but Thomas pushed it
away. They were making new happy memories now. That was what life was all
about. The present. Not the future or the past. Children grew up so terribly
fast, and Thomas wanted to make the most of every day he had with his son.

Nathan was much too old for naps, but he fell asleep briefly
on the way home from the zoo. It had been an exhausting day, and Thomas felt as
if he could drop off as well. But someone had to drive the car. As they pulled
into the driveway of the house in Ardsley, he noticed that Nathan clutched a
long, green feather in his hands and wondered where the boy had gotten it. It
must have come, he decided, from the parrot house at the zoo, though Thomas
couldn't recall having seen any bird with such vibrant green plumage. It was so
bright it looked artificial, like something painted.

When Thomas turned off the engine, Nathan stirred and the
feather disappeared down between the car seat and the passenger door.

"We're home, Nathan," he said. "What do you
want for dinner?"

"Pepperoni pizza," Nathan predictably replied.

"Again? I don't think so. How about homemade fishsticks
and French fries?" Thomas asked.

Nathan mumbled his assent, still sleepy. Thomas smiled,
knowing he'd be up late with the boy now that Nathan had taken a nap. Which was
fine with him. He'd already planned to introduce Nathan to the wonderful world
of the
Planet of the Apes
film series this weekend. He only hoped his
son wouldn't have nightmares.

"Daddy! Daaaaadddddyyyy!"

Thomas's eyes flickered open a moment before he realized he
was actually awake. Even then, whatever had woken him was still part of the
dream world he'd just left. There were cobwebs in his brain, and they had to be
shaken loose before any actual thinking could be accomplished.

Nathan's next scream brought him to his senses.

"Daddddddyyy!" his son cried from across the hall.

There was a hitching, plaintive quality to Nathan's voice,
which Thomas remembered from before the divorce, when Nathan was smaller and
more prone to waking during the night. The boy was lonely and frightened. He'd
had a bad dream.

"Damn you, Roddy McDowall," Thomas grumbled and
whipped back the covers.

"I'm coming, buddy," he called. "You're
okay!"

In his underwear and a T-shirt, Thomas hurried across the
hall to Nathan's room. Something moved by his feet, gossamer and green,
disturbed by his passing. A green feather? The same one he'd thought Nathan had
left in the car.

When he pushed open the door to Nathan's room, the feather
was forgotten. The eerie incandescence of the boy's night-light cast a gas-lamp
pallor across Nathan's NFL bedspread. The shadows pooled in the folds of the
bedclothes, on the pillows, and on Nathan himself where he huddled against the
headboard. Tears on his cheeks, Nathan stared in abject horror at the pooling
darkness. For just a moment, as Thomas tried to look more closely at what had
so terrified his son, the shadows didn't look like shadows anymore.

Instead, they seemed to have transformed into indigo
bloodstains, soaking through the sheets and spread, splashing the walls . . .
splashing Nathan. Thomas recoiled, blinked several times, and stammered his
son's name.

"Nath . . . Nathan?" he asked, and by the time the
word was out, the shadows were only shadows again, and Thomas realized they had
never been anything more. He wondered if, perhaps, he too should be more
careful what he watched on television before bedtime. Or maybe it was just the
guilt catching up to him.

"Daddy!" Nathan cried. "Oh, Daddy, save
me!"

He rushed to his son's side, took the boy in his embrace and
sat down hard on the edge of the bed. Nathan sobbed and buried his face in his
father's shoulder, and Thomas held him tightly, whispering comfort and love in
his ear.

"It was just a bad dream, honey," he promised,
though he'd given up calling Nathan "honey" two years earlier,
fearing the endearment too feminine for a boy. "Just a bad dream, and
Daddy's here now. I won't let anybody hurt you."

Nathan continued to weep, arms clamped around his father as
if he might be pulled from the warmth of Thomas's embrace at any moment. It was
all Thomas could do not to cry as well. Regardless of what the boy might have
dreamt about, he could not help feeling partially responsible.

Nothing Thomas said seemed to calm him, and finally, he tore
Nathan away from him, held the boy at arm's length and stared into his
frightened eyes.

"Hey, hey, come on, now," Thomas chided. "Nathan,
buddy, you've had nightmares before. It's okay, Daddy's here now. What did you
dream about?"

"Didn't you see the blood, Daddy?" Nathan cried, his
father's soothing words only seeming to cause him more anxiety.

The question gave Thomas a start, but he pushed aside the
memory of what he had thought he'd seen in the shadows moments earlier. There
was nothing in Nathan's room but Nathan, and the phantoms always created by a
night-light and a little boy's imagination. And the pain of a part-time family.

"There was no blood, Nathan," he insisted. "Whatever
you dreamed, it was only a nightmare. Not real. You know that, buddy. You're a
big boy. Now, tell Daddy about your dream, and I'll show you that it wasn't
real."

Nathan stared at him doubtfully for a moment, sniffling. Then
his eyes wandered around the room as he remembered the dream, and the wailing
began again.

"They came after me, Daddy," Nathan cried. "They
came after me, wanted to take me while I was asleep. But Crabapple stopped
them, Dad. He stopped them from getting to me . . . and they killed him!"

A terrible feeling of dread began to roil in Thomas
Randall's belly. It reminded him, in the kind of awkward observational moment
that had become familiar to him over the years, of the feeling he would get
when he knew without a doubt that he was going to be sick, and just as surely
knew he could do nothing to prevent it.

"Nobody could kill Crabapple, Nathan," Thomas
insisted, tilting his head to look his son in the eye. "Crabapple isn't
real. I'm sorry to say it, but he isn't. He's just in your imagination, and
I've a feeling you know that already, don't you? He's no more real than the
characters I created for
Strangewood
."