Imp

by Andrew Neiderman

  It was his imagination, however, that drove him forward and kept fear at bay. It was as though he had the power to create through his dreams. Anything unpleasant could be destroyed by popping it out of his mind. He could turn the bushes into a friendly army or a defeated one. With his stick, he could slap down monsters. All that was evil fled his path. But his imaginary E.T. would recognize that he was an ally and would come forward.

  Captain’s first loud growl brought Billy back to reality and made him pause. He had gone nearly three-quarters of the way, cut in close to The Oaks, pried bushes apart, slapped at the tall grasses, charged into openings, and found nothing. Now, he held his stick high, like a lance, and, without moving a muscle, he listened as hard as he could.

  At first, he heard nothing. He stepped back to Captain and slowly knelt beside him again. When he embraced the dog’s neck, he was surprised at the animal’s tightness. He was as hard as a statue. The growl vibrated through his entire body. Captain pulled his lips back tightly over his now clenched teeth.

  “What is it?” Billy whispered. The dog ignored him. Billy tried to follow Captain’s pathway of vision to see what he saw. As far as he could tell, there was nothing there but the bushes and the weeds. He listened intently again, but the dog’s growl drowned out everything. “Shh,” he commanded. Captain only intensified his sound of anger.

  Billy stood up and strained to see beyond the overgrowth. Then he continued moving forward. Captain did not want to follow. There was a tiny clearing ahead of them in the path where the bushes and weeds separated into an X shape—one part going back to his house, one part going toward The Oaks, and the others going deeper into the field.

  “Come on,” Billy commanded, but his dog did not move. Billy considered the path before him again. Then he looked back at Captain. This time the dog took a few steps forward and then barked. “Quiet,” Billy said. He went further forward and extended his stick, until he touched the bushes directly in front of him. He separated them gently and peered within.

  “Hello,” he said. “If you’re in there, don’t be afraid. I won’t tell anyone about you.”

  He waited. There was nothing now but the sound of the dog’s low-toned, but continuous, growl. He hesitated and then went further ahead. The moment he did so, Captain barked louder and harder. Billy’s heart began beating faster because of the excitement, and now, the early sensations of fear. It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps his theory was wrong, that this wasn’t another E.T., that his parents and his brother might be right. Deep in the bush, night falling faster, shadows moving almost in a liquid fashion around him, casting darkness everywhere, he realized that he might very well have placed himself in some sort of danger.

  He looked back toward his house; he could barely see the upper level and roof. When he turned to the other direction, however, he noted that The Oaks was in clearer view. For the first time, he realized just how close he was to it and how dark and frightening it was. In fact, it looked like it moved toward him. Actually, it wasn’t the house so much as it was its shadows that stretched over the field, thickening the darkness. All the stories he had heard about the house and the Oaks family came back to him. He remembered his mother’s warnings. The early sensations of fear grew stronger and he considered a quick retreat.

  It was then that he heard the bushes separating. Captain heard it too and it set him into a series of sharp, shrill barks. As he barked, he backed away slowly. Billy stepped to the left of the bush he had separated, but his little legs felt weak and wobbly, and he wasn’t sure he could just turn and run off. A clammy, cold feeling ran down his back when he realized that the noise was still there and that something was coming toward him. He held his breath, raised his stick defensively, and then … he saw it.

  He didn’t know the boy existed, so he didn’t have any intention of confronting him. He had known about the dog, having heard it and seen it, but he didn’t like it, and he didn’t want to be near it. When he came upon some day-old field mice huddled together in a pink mound, their eyes still sewn closed, their furless bodies intertwined in a web of security, he paused to study them, prying them apart and holding them gently, but firmly, in his palms. He was intrigued with their nervous, almost somnambulistic movement, and he didn’t pay much attention to the sounds coming from the right. By the time he heard the dog’s growl, it and the boy were only a few feet from him.

  He placed the field mice back in their nest and listened. It was then that he heard the boy speak and saw the bushes being parted. He couldn’t help his physical reactions. This was the first time he had been discovered on the outside and all he could think about was the big creature and her strap. There would be punishment, terrible punishment.

  Once again, he had come out of the basement before it was totally dark. Anxious to make his journey around to see the little girl, he had barely waited for the big creature to go back upstairs after feeding him. He gobbled down his food, scooping it and shoving it into his mouth carelessly. Much of it was wasted. He knew that if the big creature found it scattered about, she would be enraged, so he had to take time to hide it and dispose of it anyway.

  Then he opened his hole in the wall and escaped into the early twilight. He followed the path up toward the woods and came upon the mice. He imagined that they and things like them were along the path the night before, but it was only because of the added light that he was able to see them. He had a strange reaction to more light—at first it frightened instead of pleased him. More intense illumination changed his world. Comfortable with shadows and dark shapes, he felt threatened and intimidated by visible details. This outside world seemed more foreboding, more challenging.

  Because of this added nervousness and fear, because of the dog, and because of the suddenness of being discovered, he reacted like a caged animal. The moment the boy came into view through the bushes, he hissed and folded his body into a spring of muscles, long fingernails, and teeth. Squatting so compactly, he looked even more deformed.

  Billy didn’t retreat or pull his stick away. For a few moments, all he could do was stare at the imp. This wasn’t the E.T. Billy had envisioned, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t something extra terrestrial. What else could it be? Perched down in the bushes, its hair long and stringy down around its shoulders, its eyes big and wild, its arms long like a monkey’s, naked with the face of a human, but the look of something else, it had to be something from another world. And he had discovered it, just as he had planned!

  Captain was growling and barking louder and harder now; but, seeing that Billy wasn’t backing away, the dog stopped his retreat and inched a few feet forward. The imp saw the way the dog flashed its teeth, and he did the same. He even tried to imitate the growl.

  “Hi,” Billy said. “Don’t be afraid. We can be friends.” He turned on Captain. “Quiet, Captain. Shut up. Quiet,” he commanded, but the dog didn’t obey. The imp shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He considered flight back to the basement, but, before he could make the move, Billy came toward him. He extended his hand slowly, with the intention to show him friendliness and perhaps lead him out of the bush. Billy felt sure that once Captain saw the imp take his hand, the dog would stop growling and barking at him.

  For the imp, the oncoming hand and arm, reinforced with the continuous sound track of the angry dog, was one of the most frightening things he had seen. Billy still held the stick straight out with his other hand to keep the bushes apart, but from the imp’s perspective, it looked like a weapon about to be launched against him. True, the boy’s voice was soft and his face was bright, but he had seen the big creature’s face like that and heard her voice as soft, just before she inflicted some kind of pain on him.

  When the boy’s hand was just inches from his face, the imp reacted. Both his arms shot out, his hands cupped like claws. He clamped down on Billy’s arm just above the elbow. It happened so quickly, Billy barely acknowledged the pain. The imp’s sharp, hard fingernails pierced Billy’s ski
n as though it were tissue paper. Polka dots of blood appeared instantly. Shocked, Billy started to pull his arm back; but the imp didn’t release his grip, and his tiny knifelike fingernails continued to cut and slice down Billy’s arm, peeling the skin back, drawing lines of blood down to and over the elbow on both sides.

  Billy screamed and held his arm up and away. The sight of his own blood now tracing little streams over his forearm drove him into a greater panic. For a moment he was unable to move. Captain lunged forward until he was at his side, snapping wildly into the bush. The imp, almost as frightened by what he had done himself as he was of the dog, fled through the undergrowth, tearing a new path in the tall grass.

  Captain started to chase in after him, but stopped when the imp was out of sight, deep into the field. Billy, screaming and crying, ran back toward his house, also disregarding the beaten path and charging through bushes. Branches sliced freely at his exposed legs, creating tiny red line drawings over his calves and knees, but he had no realization of it. The dog barked wildly at the tall grass, until it tired of the effort and retreated, carrying a heavy motorlike growl in the bottom of its stomach.

  Billy was only a few feet from his house by the time Cindy O’Neil was out the back door. By then, the ten small streams of blood had turned the little boy’s arm into a red sleeve, making it appear far worse than it was. Cindy began to scream hysterically. Dick O’Neil, followed by Bobby, came charging around from the front of the house, where they had been repairing a screen door.

  “WHAT IS IT? WHAT HAPPENED?” Cindy embraced Billy, took his hand, and held his arm up before her. The little boy couldn’t speak. His eyes were locked in a glazed look of terror. Cindy seemed incapable of doing any more than screaming questions at him, so Dick O’Neil scooped up his son and carried him quickly to the house. Bobby followed his mother inside, trying to calm her. He looked back once to see Captain standing there, his tongue out, his face in a wry smile. If animals could look frightened, this one did.

  When they cleaned Billy’s arm in the bathroom, they saw the ten tiny but deep punctures. Tears continued to stream down the little boy’s face, but he wouldn’t speak. Calmer now, Cindy O’Neil knelt beside her son and tried, in a soothing voice, to discover what had happened. Bobby remained in the doorway, watching his parents question his little brother.

  “It … grabbed me,” he finally said, spacing the words between sobs.

  “What grabbed you? Oh Dick, do you think it could have been something rabid? With that second dog in the county reported …”

  “Just take it easy, willya, Cindy. This wasn’t done by any dog.”

  “Captain,” Billy said, nodding his head and swallowing hard to get out more words, “saw … it first.”

  “That damn dog,” Dick said. “Must’ve trapped a raccoon. Shit,” he added and turned to Bobby, who quickly nodded in agreement.

  “We’ve got to take him to the hospital and get him a tetanus shot,” Cindy said. At the suggestion of that, Billy began to cry harder. In his garbled words, he tried to tell them that it wasn’t a raccoon, but they were no longer listening. Cindy wrapped a wet towel around his arm and then Dick carried him out to the car. He tried protesting again, telling them it wasn’t an animal, it was an E.T., but Cindy only embraced him harder and Dick O’Neil drove faster.

  Fortunately, the Community General Hospital was only fifteen minutes away via a back road that took them out to a main highway. There was a lull in the emergency room when they arrived, so the doctor on call took them right into an examination room. By this time, Billy, who was more frightened of being taken to the hospital than by what had just happened to him, sat subdued, his sobs more like hiccups, his eyes watery and red. He sat on the table, practically unable to keep himself up.

  Cindy held him, while the young intern, a man with curly red hair and a freckled face, unwrapped the towel. Dick O’Neil scowled, obviously thinking this man was too young to be a real doctor; but the intern went about his business undaunted. He smiled and spoke soothingly, trying to make everything seem insignificant and silly. Billy did begin to relax a little.

  “So what happened, Buddy?” the doctor asked. Billy looked helplessly toward his parents. Dick O’Neil stepped forward, his face reflecting more of a look of anger than concern.

  “I think our family dog led him to a raccoon.”

  Billy started to shake his head, but the doctor mistook that to mean he was being apologetic.

  “Oh, attacked by a wild animal, eh? Yeah, you must’ve stuck this arm somewhere you shouldn’t, huh, great white hunter?” He began cleaning the wounds. “He was scratched all right. Can’t say I ever saw a raccoon’s work, but I imagine this is it.”

  “I’ve seen them do jobs on dogs,” Dick said. “He was lucky.”

  “It wasn’t a raccoon,” Billy said.

  “What’s that, little Buddy?” the doctor asked, as he applied the antiseptic.

  “It wasn’t a raccoon. It was an E.T.,” Billy said.

  “E.T.?” The doctor turned to Cindy.

  “Oh, he’s been talking about seeing E.T. He saw the film twice.”

  “Uh huh. Well, as I recall,” the doctor said, “E.T. was not a dangerous or unfriendly creature, right?”

  “He’s right, Billy,” Cindy said. Billy looked at both of them. He wanted to say this wasn’t the same E.T., but it was still something not from this world. He didn’t, though, because he could see from both their smiles that they wouldn’t listen to him.

  “It was a raccoon,” Dick O’Neil said with more definiteness than ever. “They can look like little children, but they’re dangerous as hell when they’re threatened.”

  “I believe that,” the intern said. He began to bandage Billy’s arm. By the time he was finished, Billy was very tired. He was almost unaware of the tetanus shot, but, when it came, he began crying again. That and all that had happened to him left him totally exhausted. Soon after they got him back into the car and headed home, he was fast asleep.

  Dick O’Neil carried his little boy up to bed, where Cindy undressed him and covered him. They stood by his side looking down at his now relaxed, soft face. Cindy kissed his forehead, brushed some hair off his temples, and left him to sleep. Downstairs, Bobby stood anxiously in the living room.

  “Oh boy,” Cindy said, “can you believe this?”

  “Maybe we should go out with a shotgun tomorrow, Dad,” Bobby said. Dick O’Neil grimaced.

  “For what? What are you going to do—shoot all the raccoons back in the bush and the woods? You’d be there forever. Naw, we just got to keep the kid from wandering off by himself.”

  “I don’t think he’ll do it again,” Cindy said.

  “I bet Captain was some help,” Bobby said.

  “Some help? That dumb dog probably riled up the coon and drove him into Billy. I want him tied up from now on, hear? You go out there and do that right now,” Dick commanded. “That dog’s as dumb as they can come.”

  “It could have scratched his face, God forbid his eyes,” Cindy said, just realizing what might have happened.

  “Nature can be wild. The coon was probably more frightened of him than he was of it. The dog drove it into a frenzy and then it attacked Billy. That’s what must have happened,” Dick said. Blaming it on the dog made some sense. It was practically the only thing he could think of that made sense.

  “Go on, Bobby,” Cindy said. “Do what your father says and tie up Captain.”

  “OK.”

  When he went out back, he found the dog lying by his doghouse. The animal looked up at him gratefully, when Bobby knelt beside him and stroked his head. The dog’s sad eyes made Bobby think it felt responsible for what had happened. He wondered if it could have that kind of awareness.

  “What did you guys do, huh? Now you’re going to have to stay close to the house. No more wandering through the fields,” he said and hooked the chain to the dog’s collar. The animal didn’t seem unhappy about it. “I almost think you�
�d rather have it this way, huh Captain?” The dog wagged its tail and then looked out at the darkness. When it did that, it whimpered and then growled.

  “Think it’s still there?” Bobby said. He studied the darkness himself. Then he looked back at his house and thought about his father’s anger. “Well, maybe you and I will go out there when Dad’s not home. I’ll bring a shotgun. Can’t hurt knocking one or two of them off, can it? And maybe we’ll get the one that hurt Billy, huh? We’d all sleep better, wouldn’t we, Captain?” he said and he stroked the animal again.

  The dog looked up at him and then turned to the darkness again. The dog seemed drawn to it, as though it expected whatever it was to come back. That brought a tingle of fear to Bobby O’Neil. He couldn’t help but think of his brother’s bloody little arm.

  “Damn,” he said and started back to the house, looking behind and around himself as he walked. He was almost to the door when he remembered he was supposed to have met Faith Oaks on her fire escape landing a little more than two hours ago. Now it was too late. That added frustration and disappointment to his feelings of fear and anger. Like his parents, he found it very hard to fall asleep that night.

  To Faith it seemed as though the night sky was ablaze with stars. She was sure it had been this way before, but never had she been so aware of it. There was something about the combination of the warm evening and her anticipation that made her sensitive to every sight and sound. Her body had come alive and she was filled with the excitement of expectation. There was a flush in her cheeks and a quickness in her eyes. She felt as though her face was absorbing the moonlight, turning her into a citizen of the night, pumping her veins full of the electricity of the constellations.

  Sitting there on the windowsill, her back against the frame, the warm evening breeze penetrating her nightgown and caressing her softness, she felt light enough to float. When she closed her eyes, she caught the scents of grass and earth. She thought she heard the sound of a car horn far off and away, coming and going like a call, urging her to let go of herself.