Green Eyed Boy

1.

“The police are across the street.”

Cal stood in front of the bathroom mirror, face covered in white shaving cream and an orange razor in one hand. The room was full of warm steam from the long shower he’d taken, but after his wife’s statement he’d gone cold.

She knocked on the door again. “Did you hear what I said?”

“At the Daniels’ house?”

“Yes,” she said, “and there are a lot of them.”

In other words, hurry up.

He thought of the black notebook he kept in the bottom drawer of his desk, the Journal of Dead Animals. Cal was trembling.

2.

The kitchen smelled like bacon. A plate of cooked strips was on the table, covered with paper towels that glistened with grease. Saturday breakfast; eggs, hash browns, toast and bacon was their tradition. Julie stood at the windows, peering across the street. He joined her.

“Morning,” he said, giving her shoulders a squeeze.

Two police cars were parked in front of the Daniels’ house. Another, a sleek grey color with no light bar on top, was angled in the driveway. A detective’s car, he thought. Or the coroner.

“They’re pretty old,” he said. “One of them might have passed.”

“Are you going to check?”

He nodded. “Where’s the kiddo?”

“Sleeping in.”

Cal grabbed his coat from the mud room and exited the house. It was getting colder. The furnace needed an inspection, probably some repairs. Need to get that done before too long, he thought as he left the front yard.

Cop cars at the neighbor’s house never meant something good had happened. When they’d bought the house, the Daniels had been the first to welcome them. They’d become friendly acquaintances. Kyle’s peculiarities had never pushed them away, making them true friends. He hoped everything was okay.

The cop cars were black with white emblems on the door. Why did they make them so ominous? He stepped onto the Daniels’ walkway and saw the group on the side of the house. The Daniels, both white haired and stooped over with age, stood next to two police officers and a man in a suit, probably the detective. The formed a semi-circle around something on the ground. Cal approached, walking heavy so that they’d hear his footsteps.

“Everything okay?”

Stupid question.

Old man Daniels waved and stepped away from the circle. Cal saw the dog. Rather, he saw what was left of her. She lay in a heap, blonde fur matted with a crust of blood. Parts of her internal organs lay on top her carcass. She’d been gutted. All that remained whole was her face and she stared into nothing, eyes vacant, dull and dead.

“Oh no,” Cal said.

“Something got a hold of my dog,” the old man said.

Cal joined their circle, but only for a moment. Black flies hovered over the dog-corpse. One landed on something white, a sharp piece of broken bone maybe. Cal’s stomach flip flopped. He backed away.

“You hear anything last night?” the detective asked.

“I heard the dog barking, but not like it was being hurt.”

One of the cops, he looked only a few years older than Kyle, said, “I’m calling this one a Code WTF.”

Indeed.

3.

Kyle shoved a forkful of scrambled eggs in his mouth. He’d covered them with hot sauce and the splotches of red, like watered down blood, against pale yellow egg triggered Cal’s gag reflex.

“So what happned?” Julie asked.

“Something killed the dog.”

Julie sucked in a breath and covered her mouth.

In that gesture, he knew that she knew.

“No way!” Kyle said.

“Tore it inside out,” Cal said, “must have been a wild animal.”

“I want to see.” Kyle’s chair groaned as he backed up from the table.

“You may not,” Cal said.

They’d wanted a house full of children, a tribe of noisy boys and girls. That had been the plan when they’d bought the fixer-upper in Manitou.

“I’m not a little boy,” Kyle said.

That was true. He was twelve years old, almost a teenager.

“I’m old enough to see crap like that.”

“I don’t want you to,” Cal said. “It’s nothing you want to look at, believe me.”

Julie put both hands on his shoulders, her protective touch keeping him in his seat. “You have enough bad dreams already, honey.”

Children had not been in their destiny. Julie could get pregnant, but her body rejected each baby. Her womb cast them out, the pain a little worse each time. But Kyle survived. He was their sandy haired miracle, this handsome green eyed boy.

Cal sat down at the table. The smell of breakfast, however, made his head spin.

4.

Later, when Kyle locked himself in his room, he took Julie by the hand. He closed their bedroom door quietly, so that the boy wouldn’t hear.

“It’s happening again,” he said, his voice a tight whisper. “What are we going to do?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He was home. I sat up with him for at least two hours.”

The shock was gone. She’d had time to find denial and lock onto it like a life preserver.

“What time was that?”

“It was around three to five,” she said. “He wasn’t roaming around the neighborhood, all right?”

“After he’d had the bad dreams?”

“Yes.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. When Kyle has nightmares, bad things happen.”

In Manitou, when Kyle was ten, dogs had died. Not died – been butchered, that was more like it. A poodle behind a tool shed, a pug on someone’s porch, both had been shredded into ribbons of meat. And as the murders went on, the neighbor’s had blamed Kyle.

He was the weird kid on the block, the one who faced the world with an intense, silent stare. Julie described his quiet look as one of depth and creativity. “He’s a sensitive child,” she’d say, “and so very bright.” Cal thought it was just plain strange. So did the other kids, he guessed, because they stayed away from Kyle.

“You sound like one of the crazy people in Manitou.”

“It’s never been a large dog before.”

If any of the kids that lived on the block were capable of sneaking out in the middle of the night and turning someone’s beloved pet into a mangled pile of guts, they’d reasoned it was him.

He’d never left the house, not once, after bedtime. Back then his screams had awoken both of them when his night terrors overwhelmed him. The neighbors didn’t believe that spooky- eyed Kyle remained tucked in his bed at night. They pictured him hunting, sneaking into their yards, a silver knife reflecting moonlight as he went about his work.

“It’s always been something small,” he added. “The Daniels’ retriever must have weighed a hundred pounds. Whatever it is, it’s getting stronger.”

“You said yourself it must have been a wild animal. You’ve heard the coyotes. A den of them must live close by.”

“No coyote would torture a dog like that.”

“But our son could do it while he was asleep? You’re crazy.” She headed toward the stairs, conversation over.

It had been the beagle’s death that had frenzied the neighbors. That dog had died inside. And the neighbor’s couldn’t stand the image of Kyle breaking and entering to do his killing. Had we not moved, Cal thought, they would’ve attacked us with torches and pitchforks.

Maybe they should have?

“I’ve kept a journal. His bad dreams coincide with an animal’s death. I can show it to you.”

“As his parents it’s our job to protect him,” she said, “just in case you didn’t know that.”

“Please, I know you love him. I love him, too.”

“Do you?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then shut up about the stupid journal, please.”

5.

The house in Evange was smaller. With one kid rather than a tribe, a few bedrooms was all they needed. The house needed work, but he could do most of the repairs himself. Best of all it was next to a forest. He’d imagined taking Kyle on long walks amongst the trees, the smell of earth and trees inspiring father-son talks. But that hadn’t happened.

Now he told his boy, “I want to talk with you about the dog across the street.”

It wasn’t normal for a boy to spend all of Saturday in his room – was it? Boys had sports practice, friends, something to lure them into the world. Not Kyle. He’ demerged from his room, his eyes red from computer burn, as the sun began to set.

Kyle looked back, his expression indifferent. “What about her?”

“Let’s go for a walk, just you and me.”

He put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. Kyle looked up at him, a thin smile tugged at his lips.

“When you were younger, before we moved -.”

“Yeah, the neighbor’s dogs got creamed. It wasn’t me then and it wasn’t me last night. Sorry if you don’t believe me.”

He’d said it without a change of expression. Anger would’ve been normal, the healthy kind of rage that accompanied denial when an innocent person was accused of something monstrous. He’d said it all so matter-of-factly.

“I know you don’t mean to do these things,” Cal began, aware that his arms were shaking.

“I wouldn’t hurt Macy. I liked that dog.”

Macy – remember that for the Journal of Dead Animals.

“I also know that something very frightening wakes you up at night. When you have these dreams terrible things happen. Do you realize that?”

Kyle’s feet snapped over twigs and fallen branches. The woods thickened here. A man could get turned around in these woods, especially after dark. If the weather was cold enough, he could freeze to death a mile from home. It could happen to a boy, too, especially one unfamiliar with the woods.

“I guess I do,” he said.

“Can you tell me what you dream about?”

“No.”

“No because you don’t remember or no because you don’t want to?”

“I honestly don’t know what I dream about. I know you don’t believe me. Besides, I’ve already talked about all of this with mom.”

“If you dream of something… Vicious, something that wants to cause harm, maybe you can control it.”

“Dad,” Kyle said, stepping out from under him. “You wouldn’t hurt me, would you? I mean you wouldn’t dig a hole out here and drop me in it, would you? I really didn’t do anything, seriously.”

“God, no,” he said and shoved his shaking hands deep into his pockets.

Kyle gazed at him, his green eyes shone like emeralds and, like gemstones, they showed no fear.

“Okay, good.”

“I would never hurt you,” he said. “Would you hurt me? Or your mom?”

“Can we go back inside now? It’s getting cold.”

“Sure,” he said. “Answer my question first.”

“Never,” he said. “I swear.”

They returned to the house, father and son. Cal wondered if Kyle couldn’t remember what he dreamed about, then what had he talked about with his mother?

6.

The year’s first snow arrived later that week. Cal worked late, waiting out the traffic, and got home late.

“I invited the Daniels over for dinner this Friday,” she said.

“And?”

“They’re busy.”

So now they were friendless – again.

“The heater’s on the fritz,” she added, changing the subject. “The heat’s been on and off all day.”

“I’ll look at it this weekend,” he said.

Nothing died for a while and, because of that, denial came easy. Cal watched Julie dote on the boy. She spoke to him in sweet, hushed tones, one hand on the small of his back.

“What should we get him for his birthday?” she asked one night.

All the years of longing for a child made her immune to him.

“He’s been asking for a couple of new video game. I don’t remember which ones, though.”

Cal rolled onto his side. “All of those games are violent.”

“A little violence is normal for a boy his age.”

She saw nothing but beauty in his strange green eyes.

Cal worked late as often as he could and drove home long after dinner was over. Sometimes, he worked until exhaustion numbed him, then spent hours awake in bed, staring into the dark and listening for the bark of frightened dogs.

7.

Kyle turned thirteen. He unwrapped his presents with methodical care. They’d bought him the video games he’d wanted, a couple of sweaters, new jeans and an expensive pair of shoes.

“Do you love your presents, sweetie?” Julie asked him.

“I do,” he said and smiled back at her, green eyes ablaze.

“Maybe we should’ve got you a puppy,” Cal said. “You’ve always wanted a dog of your own, haven’t you?”

Kyle looked to his mother, then shook his head – no. “Not since I was little.”

He scooped up his new belongings. Cal heard his bedroom door shut a moment later.

“What was the puppy comment all about?”

“He wanted a dog at one time, that’s all.”

“You know what I’m talking about. How could you bring that up? What if you’d ruined his birthday?”

She left him alone. Cal watched cable in the living room, one mindless program after the other. On his way to bed, he saw a sliver of light from Kyle’s door. He paused at the doorway and listened. He heard only silence.

Cal opened the door. He saw Kyle kneeling on the floor. The boy wore only boxers and his pale skin was wrapped by ribbons of shadow so thick they looked like tar. The black strips clung to his flesh, knife-like points stuck to his boney shoulder blades. It retreated, whatever it was, to the darkness under Kyle’s bed. Cal thought it looked a family of octopuses scurrying to their lair.

“Hi, Dad.” The boy turned and looked up at him, a slow smile spreading to show white teeth.

Cal blinked. A fluid coldness washed through him. Kyle’s bedside lamp glowed in warm yellow. No monstrous shadows lurked anywhere.

“What’s wrong?” the boy asked, maintaining steady eye contact.

“I thought I saw something.”

“Mom’s right, you’re putting in way too many hours.”

“Why are you on the floor?”

“I was stretching,” he said. “My back was sore.”

He stared at the boy. The boy gazed back at him, pleasant, somehow patient.

“You look tired, Dad.”

“Yeah,” he said and backed out of the room.

8.

The furnace gave out the first week of December, right after they’d set up the Christmas tree. Cal stayed home to fix it.

“Enough already,” Julie said, “call a professional.”

They’d slept under extra blankets, but Julie still caught a cold.

The repairman arrived late afternoon. “Wiring’s shot,” the guy said. He wrote a quote that Cal barely glanced at before handing over a credit card. The repairman went to grab his tools and he went upstairs to check on Julie. She had a space heater cranked on high.

“Want some medicine?”

She sniffled. “Please.”

He poured her a cup of orange liquid.

“Where’s the kiddo?”

“He’s in detention.”

Detention! So he’d misbehaved. That was something normal boys did. That was good. And for a moment he forgot about the cluster of shadows he’d seen clinging like a parasite to his young son’s body.

“Really? What’d he do?”

“I doubt that he did anything.” She downed the cold medicine like a shot. “He tells me that Mr. Bonner has it in for him.”

“Which one’s Bonner?”

“Algebra,” she said. “You’d know these things if you talked to him once in a while. And what are you smiling about? For God’s sake, Cal, he’s being punished.”

He sat with her until the medicine’s deadening sleep took hold . It took only a few minutes. Kyle made it home before the repair was complete; and Cal saw something new in the boy’s green eyes – rage.

He let the boy slide past him, watched him sulk to the stairs and ascend to his room.

His hideout.

He thought about following his son. For a moment, he even imagined having a fatherly talk while sitting together on the bed. But Kyle’s slouch and sullen expression kept him downstairs.

Let him calm down, he thought, get over himself. Then we’ll talk.

The heat kicked in an hour later.

9.

“The police are here.”

On Saturday morning, Cal stood in front of the bathroom mirror, face covered in white shaving cream and an orange razor in one hand. The room was full of warm steam from the long shower he’d taken, but after her statement he’d gone cold.

She knocked again. “Cal?”

“What do they want?”

“To talk to us.”

Cal dressed and went downstairs. He recognized the paunchy man in the kitchen. He’d been at the Daniels’ house, investigating the dog’s death.

“We met across the street,” the man said.

Cal eyed the fat automatic holstered on the man’s hip.

“I remember.” He joined Julie. “Who could forget a thing like that?”

“The detective says there’s been a homicide,” Julie said.

The man nodded. “At your son’s school.”

Cal said, “My, God.”

“When I saw the body, I couldn’t help but think it looked a lot like the dog at your neighbors.”

Cal thought of the black notebook he kept in a drawer in his office, the Journal of Dead Animals.

I’ll need to change the title.

He was trembling.

Maybe shorten it to Journal of the Dead.

“You don’t say,” Cal said.

“I do say. The man was torn inside out.”

Cars passed on the street outside, their tires hummed against the asphalt.

“So you’re visiting us… Why?” Julie said.

“What do you suppose it is?”

“Something evil,” Cal said. “What teacher was killed?”

“Who said it was a teacher?”

“I just, uh, assumed.”

“David Bonner,” the detective said.

Algebra.

Detention.

The cold fury in Kyle’s bright green eyes.

The detective made small talk for a long time. He asked what grade Kyle was in, when he’d be up, if he was one of Bonner’s students…

The cop’s instinct, Cal thought, would lead him to Kyle, to all three of us. He’d have no evidence, no case to take to court. But he’d know. Just like the neighbor’s in Manitou had known. Just like the Daniels’ knew. Kyle was a different kind of boy. It was clear by his disturbing, unblinking gaze. He was dangerous.

“May I speak with him?”

“I wouldn’t want you to upset him,” Julie said. “Let us break the news about his teacher first.”

The man’s right hand moved toward his gun and Cal thought he was going to draw and fire. He dipped into his pocket, though, and pulled out a business card.

“Sounds like a fine idea,” he said. “Call me when he’s ready to chat. Nothing serious, just want to know if he ever saw anything unusual.”

Cal thought of shadows so thick they looked like strips of tar…

The detective left and Cal asked Julie, “Now what?”

“Now you make him breakfast. I still feel terrible.”

10.

He’d dreamed of a son. He admitted this to himself for what felt like the first time in his life. He’d longed for an athletic, straight A student, one that loved to watch football games on Sundays and didn’t mind his father’s company.

“You’re not spending today in your room, kiddo,” he told the boy after breakfast. “We’re spending time together.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re father and son and we should.”

“But what will we do?”

Cal didn’t know.

“I love you, Kyle.”

Automatically, the boy replied, “I love you, too. But what are we going to do?”

“There’s enough white stuff on the ground to make snowballs. You think you could beat me in a snowball war?”

“I know I can.”

“Grab your coat. Let’s see what you got.”

Cal wanted to hear the sound of their laughter mixed together in the cold winter air. Kyle remained stoic, however, his gaze unbreakable.

“For a boy who hates sports, you throw pretty good.”

“This is weird.”

“What is?”

“Hanging out with you, I mean we haven’t done anything like this for a long time.”

“That’s my fault.”

“It’s okay. I’m getting kind of cold.”

“You want to teach me how to play one of your video game?”

Together, they gunned down zombies, breaking only to warm bowls of canned soup. The sun set early and, as darkness filled the room, Cal rose to finish his plan and murder his family.

“I’m going to check on your mom.”

“Kay.” Kyle’s avatar smashed another zombie into chunks.

“Why don’t you meet me in the kitchen and we’ll dig something up for dinner.”

The bedroom smelled like sweat. Julie was on her back, sleeping. He pulled the blankets up to her chin and kissed her fevered head.

“Good night,” he whispered. “I’ll love you forever.”

Then he swiped her bottle of cold medicine, scanned the instructions and went downstairs. Kyle made it to the kitchen as Cal set two glasses on the table and filled them with juice. He inhaled deep. He pushed one toward the boy.

“Your mom will kill me if you don’t get your vitamin C,” he said. “Drink up.”

He gulped his own juice down. Kyle did the same and Cal glanced at his watch. The boy weighed less than Julie, maybe a buck ten with his pockets full of rocks. He’d just had four time the recommended dose of a do not operate heavy machinery will cause drowsiness across the counter drug. It wouldn’t take long.

Cal turned the stove’s burner to ignite. The pilot ticked twice, then blue flames whooshed in a circle. He adjusted the knob, lowering the fire.

“Do you want to tell me why you got a detention?”

“Oh, so that’s what this is about. I didn’t do anything.”

“Your teacher’s dead.”

Kyle kept eye contact.

“You already know that, don’t you.”

“He shouldn’t have punished me. It wasn’t fair.”

“Do you feel bad?”

“He deserved it.”

“So you feel nothing?”

“Why would I feel bad if he deserved it? Dad, why…?”

Kyle’s eyes went glassy as his body registered the drug.

“I’m going to put you to bed, Kyle. Then I’m going to blow out the pilot light on the furnace. The house is going to fill with gas and we’re going to blow up.”

The headline – Family killed by faulty furnace.

Nobody the wiser.

A tragedy.

Kyle’s lids fluttered closed and his head dipped toward his chest.

“Dad…”

His head jolted up. Cal saw the panic. His eyes were round and frightened. He looked more human that he ever had.

“I’ll always love you,” he said.

“Daddy…”

Kyle slumped in his chair and Cal caught him before he hit the floor. He cradled the boy in his arms, walked him to the living room and laid him out on the couch.

Kyle mumbled something and opened his mouth as if to call out.

“Go to sleep,” Cal said. “It won’t hurt. I promise.”

Kyle moaned, “Ma…”

Cal turned to the furnace room. He was almost there when the shadows seized him. They came from all directions, stripes as thick as tar that wrapped around his chest and torso, slithered around his arms and legs, pinning him in place. The shadows lifted him off the floor and then they pierced through his body. They felt like shafts of ice cold air and he knew, when they retracted, they’d rip him inside out.

“Cal.”

He tried to turn in her direction, but the shadows held him tight.

“I told you it’s our job to protect him.”

The shadows tightened. Cal gasped and tried to breath.

“He’s just a boy and he’ll learn to control it.”

The coils released him. He dropped to the floor and fell over backwards. The shadow tentacles retreated into darkness.

“Just like I have,” she said.

He watched her go to the sleeping boy on the couch and stick her finger in his mouth. The boy gagged. She positioned his head so that he spat up juice and cold medicine onto the floor.

“Help me get him upstairs,” she said. “The poor boy’s exhausted.”

Green Eyed Boy

Lake Lopez 

Copyright © 2010 by Lake Lopez. All Rights Reserved.

D I S C L A I M E R

This horror story is a work of fiction. All of the characters, places and events portrayed in this horror story are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. 

DARK HOUSE (Chapter One)

The car breaks. Its engine makes a loud bang, then sputters as metal rips into metal. The noise reminds me of my father’s deathbed cough. I let off the gas and the motor shuts down. I coast in neutral, ease the car onto the narrow dirt shoulder and stop.   

“Damn it to hell.”   

I’d been speeding, pushing my old car through the shadows by Becker Lake, the place where the rich hide their weekend houses. The road is always smooth, each crack and pothole immediately patched and filled. A dark, burnt oil smell emanates from the car’s hood, poisoning the clean scent of woods. My running shoes crunch through gravel as I walk. A glow of house lights shines through the trees and, when I find a driveway, I head toward the light.

 It’s a big white colonial; no curtains or security bars. I see her clearly through the kitchen window, a slender woman with dark blonde hair. She’s pulling a tray of cookies from the oven. She senses me, I guess, because she turns and peers through the glass. A quizzical look crosses her features. I wave and offer a smile. She meets me at the door.

“You’re the guy who drives the Mustang, right?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It just broke down on me, too.”

She holds the door open. The smell of baked cookies wafts out to welcome me. My stomach churns for one as I step inside. Cookies are everywhere; plates of them cover the counters and the kitchen table. I glance through the doorway and see a huge mound piled on top the dinning room table.

“I like to bake,” she says and her hand slips to my arm, touches me above my elbow. All at once I see my life with this girl, laughing in this kitchen, long strolls through the trees together, holding hands and kissing at the water’s edge…  It’s a lifetime in of one feminine touch. She smiles. It radiates. My knees buckle a little.

“So what do you do, Mustang guy?”

“I’m a writer,” I say. “I’m finishing my next novel now.” I like the smooth tone of my voice. I sound sure of myself, even cocky. I catch the look of my arms then, firm and muscular. My stomach, I see, has no bulge. I run one hand through my hair and find it long and, most likely, a boyish mess.

I’m dreaming. My mind seizes that thought; I am dreaming.

Then a man’s yell tears through the stillness outside. “Ou taah aaaah merr,” he says. “Ou et aahh aaaa merr ow!”

The woman just smiles at me, unalarmed.

“My ex,” she says. “He lost one leg in the war and every bit of his common sense went with it. Don’t worry about him. ”

Immediately, I envision a one-legged man, limping through the woods on a robotic prosthetic, spying on her from behind an oak tree. The image of a crazy-eyed stalker angered me. Someone had to protect a girl like her from a man like that.

“Pay no attention to him.”

The room begins to ripple, as if the walls are turning to liquid. Two children enter from the dinning room; a boy in shorts, dark haired like me, and a girl in a summer dress, a child version of the mother.

“My babies,” she says. “Do you have kids?”

“Someday I will,” I say.

The whole room shudders.

“Next time plan to stay awhile.”

I woke up in my clothes, long sleeves still buttoned tight around my wrists. The oppressive darkness of my apartment surrounded me. I slid off my couch, limped stiff-legged to the balcony and smoked a cigarette. September’s wet air sent shivers crawling down my spine. The dream’s images, shards of my past stacked into nonsense, stuck in my head.

The Mustang – the first car I’d ever owned. I’d worked two jobs to buy that relic; ticket ripper at the Marion Theater and burger flipper at Hardee’s. My dad made me earn every dollar. “A boy’s first car should be all his own,” he’d said. We’d called it, “Ryan’s Red Wreck.”

Becker Lake – the last place I’d spent quality time with my dad. We hadn’t owned a house there. Poor people only rented. I remembered the boat oars in his meaty hands as he propelled us across the water’s flat surface. I saw the permanent engine oil under his nails as he uncoiled the anchor. By then I’d hated the constant grime on him. “I sure would love to own a house on a lake like this,” he’d said and coughed into one fist, the lung cancer already bristling in his chest.

It was a good dream, I decided, especially the girl. The doctor told me that the medication could trigger vivid dreaming. I’d been expecting nightmares, though. If this was all it could do to me I didn’t mind at all. I slammed the balcony door, stripped to my boxers and left the clothes on the floor. My stomach sagged over my drawers, a growing ball of soft fat. The girl from my dream wouldn’t look twice at me in this life. I pictured her, the curves of her hips, her luxurious hair…

A lone candle’s tiny flame sends lightning around her bedroom. We claw at each other, two bodies merging under white sheets. The flashes of light blind me. In the total darkness I hear her moan. Then, in a low and breathless whisper, she adds, “Ah, baby.” It almost makes me cry, the way she calls me baby.

She slides off of me. My vision returns. I eye her alabaster body, then roll onto my side and pull her close so I can keep her a little longer.

“I’m falling for you hard,” I say.

The words sound loud, like thunder.  

She turns to me and smiles. Again, it radiates.

Then I hear him screaming again, the man in the woods. His guttural yells penetrate the walls like a sudden blast of winter. “Ou taah aaaah merr. Ou et aahh aaaa merr ow!”  

“He’s really nuts-o tonight,” she says and chuckles.

“We have to do something about him,” I tell her.

Her soft lips fall to mine and in that kiss a single moment stretches to what feels like decades.

Chapter Two

“Nice kicks.” Larry entered my cube with a customer’s file, stepping over my gym bag and running shoes. “Are they new?”

“I bought them last year,” I said.

“I read somewhere that they pack more technology into a pair of modern running shoes than they did the first astronaut suits. It’s the same synthetic materials.” He picked up one of the red-and-black shoes. “That’s why they’re so lightweight.”

I took my phone headset off my head and fiddled with it. “Interesting.”

“These are new. You put any miles on them at all?”

“Did you need something?”

“Yeah, actually, I have to talk to you about this quote because you completely screwed it up. It’s a mess.”

The whole time he lectured me I thought about fishing with my dad, the way the boat rocked underneath us, the feel of wet air on my arms, the cold against my seat and my father’s peaceful gaze between coughing jags. When Larry shut up I nodded. “Okay.”

“…So you really have to double-check your work before you click submit.”

“Got it.”

By the end of the day my head throbbed and I skipped running. I drove home in the dark, glad it was Friday. Inside my apartment, I dropped the shoes next to my front door. Their soles were black as roofing tar. Not one speck of street dust or mud had tainted them since I bought them with a credit card. How pathetic.

I washed my face in the bathroom. Then I opened a small brown bottle, shook out one pale blue pill and swallowed it with tap water. I hoped it sent me back to Becker Lake. Then I huddled upon my couch.

My writing room is small and crammed with books. I spend the morning at my desk, drinking green tea and writing. Framed covers of my previous works adorn the walls, seven novels, all of them have a gold bestseller seal in the lower right corner.

I’m dreaming again.

And in this dream I’m a bestselling novelist – awesome.

I think about having a cigarette, but dream-me doesn’t have any ashtrays around. This life holds too much to live for, I guess. I leave the office, pad through the old house in my socks, admiring old wood molding and paneling. The house fits me like a broken-in pair of jeans. I find the master bedroom. A picture of me and the girl lays on the nightstand. It must be her handwriting on the back, Ryan and Miranda, it says.

I don a sweatshirt, cinch up my red and black shoes and head outside. The screen door bangs shut behind me and I break into a jog. I start breathing deep, but I keep my wind. My chest expands; my lungs feel plump and full of oxygen. I run along the waters edge, then cut through a patch of forest and onto the asphalt road. I walk to cool down, then stroll to her house. She’s sitting on the porch below the street address numbers, 667.

“I was hoping you’d come by today.”

I hurry up the steps. Her playful grin makes my heart accelerate more than the run did. She stands up and I wrap my arms around her.

I woke up numb. A haze of morning light filled the living room. For a moment I thought I’d slept through the alarm, then I realized it was Saturday. I got off the couch, stiff muscles resisting movement. I headed for the bathroom and something caught my eye. It was not movement, but the realization that something had changed. My running shoes; they were exactly where I’d left them, but they were no longer new. The red-and-black material had faded. The soles had worn down and turned grey. I poked at one with my foot, felt cold against my toes. Then I knelt down. A slow current of electricity vibrated inside me. I snatched them off the floor. The shoes were damp. The waffle shaped tread was heavy with brown sand.

Chapter Three

On Saturday afternoon, I take the little girl fishing. Our wooden rowboat creaks and sways on gentle waves. She sits across from me, her clever fingers baiting a hook. “Good job.” She beams back at me, eyes bright. She’s my favorite, I know, but I remind myself that I mustn’t neglect the boy. He loves baseball and, on Sunday, we toss a sweat-stained ball back and forth in the backyard. I throw it high, making him run to get under it. Each throw pops into his glove, the sound of a good catch. He hurls it back, laughing, pleased with himself. I’m delighted with his laugh. He’s my favorite, too, I guess. Miranda joins me.

“Thanks for spending time with them,” she says. “They really think you’re something.” 

“What about you?”

“Oh, I guess they’re right,” she says.

That evening, after dinner, the four of us pile onto the couch and watch a kid-movie, something with animated creatures I’d never heard of. The girl likes it. The boy makes fun of it. A plate of Snickerdoodle cookies two feet high sits on the coffee table. We stuff ourselves with them, devouring the uneven circles and licking cinnamon sugar off our fingers. My mouth goes dry. Then, as the kids are dozing off on the floor, the screaming begins.

“Ou taah aaaah merr.”

The kids – my kids – lift their heads and look at us, teary eyed. Miranda scoops them up, one on each knee. I stand. Then I pace back and forth.

“Ou taah aaaah merr. Ou et aahh aaaa merr ow!”

“He’s close to the house.”

“No,” she says. “He never comes out of the trees.”

The window shatters. The crash of breaking glass makes us duck. Miranda clutches the kids close to her as shards hurl past her. Sharp pieces land on the couch, her shoulders, in her hair. I start moving.

“Don’t.”

It’s too late. I’m already at the door, pushing through it, charging into the woods. The air is colder than it should be this time of year. I see my breath and start to shake. The forest is still, quiet. I hear branches break and I trot toward the sound.

“Hey,” I yell. “Come out. Now. I want a word with you.”

I find him, a shadow figure, taller than me, broad shouldered, hobbling away from the house.

“Come here.” I chase after him. “I want to talk to you.”

He dodges through trees, lumbering on his good leg, leading me in a zigzag pattern. He’s trying to get me lost, get me turned around so he can conk me on the head. I burst onto the shore. The lake is in front of me, a vast shadow of black water. On the beach is a message. He’d carved it in the sand.

 L E A V E

A tall wave rises up and crests about ten feet out. It crashes over the letters. The surprise wave washes over the word and rushes all the way to my feet, splashing over my shoes and soaking me up to my ankles. When it pulls back the message is gone. The cold settles into my flesh and, all at once, the whole word shudders. The trees shake so hard they blur and the water rises into tidal waves.

“No, I don’t want to wake up… I don’t want to leave her. I don’t want to leave this life…”

“Are you coming to work?”

I stood in my living room, the phone in one hand and a filthy, worn out running shoe in the other. It was heavy with lake water, like it’d been drenched.

“Of course I am – on Monday.”

A foul, locker-room odor had filled the room.

“It’s Wednesday,” Larry said.

“What?”

“It’s Wednesday afternoon,” he said. “Look, if you miss four days in a row it’s considered job abandonment.”

“I’m sick,” I said. “I got really sick.”

“Will you be in tomorrow?”

“Yes,” I said. “I will definitely be in tomorrow.”

After a long silence he said, “Okay.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, but he’d already hung up.

I held the shoe for a long time. The odor, I realized, was my own. It was days and nights of boiling sleep. I went to the bathroom, turned on the tap water, and popped the lid off the pill bottle. I shook three capsules into my palm and gulped them down with lukewarm water. The pills took hold with a deadening sensation, an anesthetic against my soul. Everything went heavy. Still, I trembled myself to sleep.

Chapter Four

“Wish you’d tell me what’s on your mind.”

We’re in her bed; the now familiar shadows pulsing with warmth. She’s resting her head on my chest. Her hair smells clean as the first day of summer.   

“If I sleep forever I’ll die.”  

The bed squeaks as she shifts positions.

“You ain’t sleeping, baby.”

If I’m not asleep than both of me exist and here at Becker Lake I’m as real as the sand and mud stuck to my shoes. I am not an image in my own longing, but flesh and bone. I live – happy.

I shake my head, clearing the sudden sensation of waking up off of me.

“Stay forever, okay? It won’t hurt for very long.”

“What won’t?”

After a silence she tells me. “The poison.”

I can sense her biting her lower lip, a look of pleading straining her features.  

“The kids adore you.”

I never wanted children, but now that I’ve taught a tomboy girl how to fish and played catch with an exuberant boy I do. I don’t care that they’re not my own. I don’t care that their biological father stalks the woods outside the lake house. I will deal with him. I just love these children and – .

“And I love you.”

I will protect them; each of them. Nothing bad will happen to us, not to my family. 

I woke up groggy, my bed empty, and closed my eyes to –

Slide close to Miranda and inhale the warm smell of her –

And eventually relented, blinking against the first rays of morning piercing my bedroom window.

I was starving.

Later, at work, I opened a browser and searched for “667 Becker Lake, Becker Lake, Minnesota.” The search came back with three-and-a-half million sites. I clicked on the first – fishing tips.

“Whoa, what happened to you?”

Larry stood at my cubicle, eyebrows raised with suspicion. He stared at my arms. They were cut from the branches I’d run through when I sprinted through the woods. Each arm was a tangle of deep red lines edged with white infection.

“Do you need something?” A fever burned in my head, pushing a sweat as thick as oil out of my pores. I felt it dripping through my hair.

“The forms for your sick days.”

“I’ll leave them on your desk.”

“And I have to write you up for not calling in.”

“No problem.”

He left. I put my phone on Do Not Disturb, sending every call to voicemail. I kept clicking links and that afternoon I found it: Becker Lake Man Charged with Wife’s Murder. I read the article twice. It gave no gruesome details, only short facts; woman found dead, man arrested. It said nothing about her sweet nature or that she was a good mom. It didn’t say she loved to bake, only that she was found dead in the early evening hours.

“He kills her. If I’m not there, he murders her.”

More sweat poured out of me. My skin went cold. Nausea rose inside me. A thumping dizziness made me rest my head into my palms, exhausted. I closed my eyes.

She meets me at the door. No girl’s ever been so happy to see me before. She is so beautiful it’s hard to inhale, like my lungs are too busy looking at her to do their job. The woods are quiet this afternoon. No birds, no cars on the nearby two-lane, not one sound. She hugs me tight. I lean down, kiss her head.

“Come inside,” she says and leads me into the kitchen. Cookies, great mounds of them, are piled everywhere.

She’s set one aside for me. It’s a large circle on a red napkin and silver tray. She hands it to me. “Snickerdoodle’s your favorite, ain’t it?”  

“Should I eat it now?”

“Plenty of time for that later,” she says. “Right now you should come upstairs with me because the little ones are at school.”  

 Chapter Five

I scanned my apartment, my small, dark house. The cookie waited on my kitchen counter, between a coffee stain and the sink. I took it to the couch. For a time, I thought about my mom and wished I had more memories of her. I had so many of my father. I hoped I still had them in the next life. I got a glass of tap water and swallowed the rest of the blue pills. I felt a slow, creeping paralysis infecting my muscles as the chemicals took hold. I inhaled long and slow, steadying myself. Then I bit into the cookie.

My tongue tingled. I chewed fast and swallowed. The inside of my mouth began burning. I fought back a retch and stuffed more Snicker Doodle into my mouth. I chewed. I swallowed. Chewed and swallowed and the pain erupted below my heart, a long piercing like being stabbed from the inside. It emerged hard and definite as the woods near Becker Lake come into focus.

The smell of trees and black earth, of water in the air and wild things with matted fur and sharp teeth. I’d never noticed that dangerous scent before. I sat on a grey boulder, the clearing in front of me illuminated by moonlight. A man stands in front of me and his presence startles me. I stand up too fast, lose my balance and crash to the ground. Dead pine needles dig into my palms. I try to cry out and cannot. Blinking, dazed, I turn to peer up at the man. He looks down at me. His eyes are full of sadness. I don’t understand. He points to his mouth then feigns eating a cookie. I nod. Yes, yes. I ate her cookie. He opens his mouth. He has no tongue. A stump of tissue, fish belly white, raises near the back of his mouth.

“Ah old uu taah aaaah merr.”

I know what he’s saying; I told you stay away from her.

I’m not dreaming now.

My mind seizes this realization, this time with dread.

I am not dreaming.

I get to my feet and I run. I’ve spent so many hours running through these woods that I get my sense of direction right away, but this time I’m easily winded. I’m panting by the time I find the road. I pass my red Mustang, still sitting on the shoulder, emanating that thick, burnt oil smell. Miranda’s house lights must be off because no glow guides me. I find the road, though and I charge to it.

The white colonial is a decrepit shell of weathered wood. The remnants of white paint curl off in long peels. All the grass has died and the dirt surrounding the house is as grey as concrete. I hear my children’s laughter, but there is no longer joy in it. Now, it’s high pitched, malicious. The front door opens a few inches. I sense someone – something – peering out. It’s not my beautiful girl…

“You came.” Its voice was full of mud. “Welcome home.”

Dark House

Lake Lopez 

Copyright © 2009 by Lake Lopez. All Rights Reserved.

D I S C L A I M E R

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, places and events portrayed in this work are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.