by Alan Cumyn
Then the Bog Man put a slimy hand on Owen’s shoulder. Owen screamed right in his face. It was too dark to see anything, but the scream did the trick, because Andy managed to escape then too and ran straight into Owen. The two of them fell over, then got up so fast the Bog Man didn’t have a chance. Andy found the coal chute and they ran all the way out.
They had completely forgotten the hammer. But it didn’t matter because Horace had managed to pull his leg out on his own. He wasn’t hurt, but the hole was still there. And the bed was soaked.
They pushed the bed into the corner, and Margaret put the big corn pot in the middle of the room to catch the rain that was now pouring in.
The hole stayed in their bedroom roof for some days before Horace hired a man to plug it up properly. Owen loved to lie in bed and look up at the stars, to see possibilities where there had only been wood before. He thought a lot about his grandfather, of all the places the brass jar had sailed to around the world, and how nice it was that there might be a special spirit looking out for him. And he was able to forgive himself for almost burning down the house, because he’d had the courage to try to save his father by facing the Bog Man. He didn’t tell anyone for the longest time, but kept it kindling inside him like a small fire that was all his own.
The Bog Man’s Wife
THERE WAS A HAUNTED house near the Skyes’ farmhouse. It was in the woods beside the bull’s field, and because it was haunted it was completely deserted.
No one knew why the deserted house was in the middle of the woods. Trees hadn’t been cleared, except where the building was. The front door was nailed shut but the window beside it was easy to climb through, and the sign warning people away had fallen down and had moss over it.
The house had never been finished. Inside they had to climb the beams to get to the second floor, and the walls were open. They could look from room to room and see where the electrical wires were supposed to go, the pipes and the furnace vents. Owen found a doorknob on the floor and Andy found a bone-handled knife with a rusty blade that he oiled and sharpened back into shape. Leonard found a clawhammer with one broken prong. There were rusty nails lying around, and odd bits of wood.
And right in the middle of what was going to be the living room sat a red couch.
There was something secret and scary about the red couch. Every time they visited, it looked like someone had been sitting in it. That’s how they knew the house was haunted, and why they would only go during the day and never stay long.
Weeks passed, the days grew colder, and then it was Halloween. Owen was the family superhero Doom Monkey the Unpredictable, Andy was Frankenstein, and Leonard was a Living Corpse. It was the first Halloween they were allowed to go out by themselves, if they stayed together, and Andy thought they should do something terrifying so they would remember it. Owen thought that was a great idea. But Leonard was scared. He didn’t even like going to the haunted house in the daytime.
Leonard finally agreed to go if Andy gave him all his chocolate bars and took Leonard’s unshelled peanuts. They made the exchange on the road and then Leonard insisted on eating two of his chocolate bars right away.
He finished them, then had a third, but was still scared.
“I’ll wait here while you guys go!”
“Come on!” Andy said. “You agreed! You took my chocolate bars!”
Leonard did his best to get out of it, but the chocolate was on his face and he had to go. He whimpered along the path in the woods to the haunted house. Andy was in front with Owen’s Indian Brave flashlight, which was working again, though the batteries were low. Leonard was in the middle so he couldn’t run away.
It was a cold night and the darkness in the woods was almost as deep as the darkness in the basement. Leonard held onto Andy’s chainlink Frankenstein belt until they were going so slowly that Andy turned around and shone the light straight into Leonard’s eyes.
“Don’t!” Leonard said.
“Well, hurry up!” said Andy. “You’re just making it more scary!”
The house looked like one big black shadow. Andy shone the flashlight on it but they couldn’t see much in the weak light. Owen had been reading a lot in bed at night and had spent his allowance on comics instead of new batteries, so now when the boys really needed a good light they were in trouble. But they had come all that way so they couldn’t back out.
“I just want to have a look at the couch,” Andy said. “If there is a ghost, it probably sits on the couch at night.”
“Why do we have to see?” Leonard said.
“It could be the Bog Man,” Owen said. He thought probably the Bog Man would like a dry place to sleep every now and again.
“I’ve been thinking about this ghost,” Andy said, and he squatted down and turned off Owen’s flashlight to preserve the batteries.
“What?” Leonard asked. They all squatted beside Andy and kept their voices low.
“There was an old story,” Andy said, “that the Bog Man had a wife.”
“A wife!” Leonard said, too loud, almost laughing.
Andy and Owen said, “Shhh!”
“What would the Bog Man need a wife for?” Leonard laughed. “To clean the swamp? Iron his boggy shirts? Fold his moldy socks?”
“Is that what you think a wife is for?” Andy asked quietly, and Leonard stopped laughing.
“There’s more,” Leonard said, but in a little voice.
“Oh, yeah?” said Andy. “What else is a wife for?”
Leonard thought a long time. “Dishes.”
“What about babies?” Andy asked
“Yes,” said Leonard.
“Yes, what?” Andy’s voice was sharp.
“Men can have babies too,” Leonard blurted.
“No!” Andy said, and this time Owen had to “Shhh!” him down too. Then Andy’s voice became friendlier. “That’s just it. You have to have a wife if you want to have a baby. Men can do all those other things without women. We can cook and clean and iron and sew and whatever you like. We can just learn it. But men can’t learn how to have babies. It’s never been done!”
“So girls are smarter than us?” Leonard asked. It seemed impossible to admit.
“There are things women can’t do,” Andy said strongly. Then it got quiet while he tried to think of them.
“Sure there are,” Owen said. “Women can’t fix radiators.” He said that because the car radiator had broken and their father had to take it to a garage where the person who fixed it was a man.
“Women could learn that,” Leonard said.
“But they’d have to get their hands dirty,” Andy said, but in a weak voice. Just that week their mother had gotten her hands completely dirty fixing the plumbing under the kitchen sink. She could probably learn how to fix radiators in ten minutes.
“Women can’t stickhandle,” Andy said then.
“What about Sheila?” Owen asked. Sheila was the little girl in figure skates who scored all the goals for the Riverdale Hornets.
“She’s got a good shot,” Andy conceded. “But she’s not a terrific stickhandler.” He didn’t seem so sure though.
“Maybe if we studied hard,” Owen said, “if we spent a lot of time around girls, then we could figure out how to have babies.”
“Spend time around girls!” Andy hooted. “What a stupid idea!”
“We could ask Mom!” said Leonard, but Andy shook his head. “Women never tell,” he said. “I asked Dad, and he just laughed and said ask your mother. So I asked her but she wouldn’t tell me. It’s a big secret.”
He stood up then and switched on the Indian Brave flashlight. The beam was weak.
“What about the Bog Man’s wife?” Leonard asked. So Andy squatted down again and told the story.
The Bog Man used to be a nuclear biologist at a secret government lab underground. One d
ay when he was mixing acid and plutonium there was a terrible explosion. The scientist barely survived, and wandered in the middle of the night into the bog, where he collapsed. Most of his skin had been burnt off in the explosion, but the cool waters and black moss of the bog soothed him. Because of the plutonium he absorbed natural radiation from the surrounding bog minerals, and so now was able to live forever. However, he had to eat one body every twenty-four hours to keep up his strength.
One day he thought he’d want a child. Of course, being a man, he didn’t know how to make one, so he needed to find a wife. No woman was able to look at him without being paralyzed by fear. Desperate, he went to the orphange and stole a blind woman whose father had married his own cousin.
“It’s lucky she didn’t have two heads,” Andy said. “Everyone knows you can’t marry your own cousin.”
She liked him well enough, but thought that he smelled boggy. Also, she wanted to live in a regular house, since the bog was so wet and froze over in the wintertime. Because she was so kind to him the Bog Man agreed to build her a house in the woods. He worked on it by himself, stealing the materials from lumber yards, using his extraordinary strength to dig the foundation, raise the walls, carry the roof beams. But just as he was getting close to finishing, she started to get ill. The radiation that gave him his eternal energy was killing her. He brought in the red couch so that she’d have something to sit on while he worked on the house. But she died before he could finish, so he abandoned the house to go live in the bog again.
When Andy was through telling the story, Leonard and Owen were quiet for a long time. Then Leonard asked, “Did she tell him how to make a baby before she died?”
“No.”
“You’d think she would have told him,” Leonard said. “Since she loved him, and she was dying anyway, and he’d never find another wife.”
“I don’t think she did love him,” Andy said. “She thought she loved him for awhile, then she got angry at him for making her sick. So she must have decided not to tell him in the end.”
“It wasn’t his fault he made her sick,” Owen said. “He didn’t know.”
Andy stood up then and flicked on the flashlight. “We only have a couple of minutes to have a look,” he said. The light was pretty feeble. “I just want to see if she’s on the couch. She won’t be able to see us,” he added, “because she’s blind.”
“But she’ll be able to hear us,” Leonard said.
“Come on!” said Andy, and when he said it like that you had to follow. He could have led snowmen on a march into summertime.
They slipped through the window beside the boarded-up front door, then stood still, barely breathing, while Andy shone the weak light into the house.
“Do you see anything?” Leonard asked.
“Not sure,” said Andy. He took a step forward and listened.
“What is it?” Owen asked.
“Shhh!” said Andy.
The light started to flicker. Then it died.
“Let’s go!” said Leonard, who turned around to go back to the window. But Andy caught him by his Living Corpse costume.
“We have to stick together,” he whispered.
“Why?” Leonard asked.
“Shhh!”
Andy took a few more steps. There was a full moon shining through one of the windows. It wasn’t shining directly on the couch but beside it, so that the couch itself was cast in deep shadows.
“See anything?” Owen asked.
“I’m not sure,” Andy said. He took several steps forward. Leonard and Owen stayed back near the window.
“Andy?” called Owen.
“Shhh!” said Andy. “I think — ”
Then there was a loud crash and Andy cried out. Leonard and Owen grabbed each other and screamed and huddled back against the wall.
Then silence.
Owen said, “Andy?”
Nothing.
“Andy? Are you all right?”
They heard someone whimpering in the darkness.
“You wait here,” Owen said to Leonard. “If anything happens to me, go home and get help.” Leonard nodded grimly. Owen stepped forward.
“Andy? Can you hear me?”
Nothing.
More steps.
“Andy?”
There was a low moan. Owen stopped, tried to see in the blackness. He could just make out the outline of the couch. There was something funny about it, something extra black. He stepped forward again.
“I’m here,” Andy said. “Don’t — ”
Too late. Owen had already stepped into the hole where Andy had fallen through the floor. And Leonard, who hadn’t stayed back like he was supposed to, landed on top of both of them.
“Ow!” said Leonard, shaking his hand. “I’ve got a splinter!”
“Stop crying about it!” said Andy. “I think my leg is broken!” His leg was very sore where he’d fallen on it, and the Indian Brave flashlight was crushed in his pocket. Bit by bit he brought out the pieces, which Owen could barely make out in the gloom. The situation was so serious that Owen forgave him. Instead he turned on Leonard.
“You were supposed to go get help!” Owen said.
“We have to get out of here,” Andy said. He got his brothers to lift him, one under each shoulder. Then the three of them, hugging each other, slowly walked around the basement trying to find some stairs. They had never investigated that part of the house before, and weren’t even sure there were stairs.
Leonard started to cry. So they sat down on the basement floor near the hole they had fallen through and ate candies from their sacks.
Owen couldn’t help thinking about what he thought he’d seen up there on the couch. It was small and shadowy, but just might have been…
“I don’t think there are any stairs,” said Andy. “We’ll have to go back up through the hole we made coming down.”
“It’s close to the couch,” said Owen.
“She’s already heard us,” Andy said. “If she’s there at all.”
“You didn’t see — ?”
“I’m not sure what I saw.”
They ate bubblegum and licorice, suckers and candy kisses and caramel popcorn. They chewed as quietly as they could but every chomp sounded to Owen as loud as a hammer banging on a pot.
“She might have gone back,” Owen said.
“What?”
“To get the Bog Man.”
Andy stayed quiet for a moment. “We’d better get going!” he said.
Owen and Leonard stood and helped Andy up. Then they all looked at the hole above their heads. Normally Andy would climb up first and help the others out, but he couldn’t with his broken leg. So it was Owen’s responsibility. But when Leonard tried to boost him, they both fell over.
“You’re going to have to boost Leonard up,” Andy said.
“I’m not going first!” said Leonard.
“You have to! There’s nobody else!”
“Forget it!” said Leonard. The only way they could get him to do it was if Owen agreed to give Leonard all his remaining chocolate bars and Owen would have to take the apples and raisins. Then Leonard wouldn’t go until he’d eaten four more chocolate bars.
“When you get up there,” Andy said, “look around for a rope or a long stick or something to help us get out.”
Owen boosted Leonard so hard that he shot out of the hole, then disappeared.
“Leonard?” Andy called. “Are you all right?”
Leonard didn’t say anything.
“You might have thrown him too far,” Andy said to Owen.
They called out again and finally Leonard said, “I see something!”
“What? What is it?”
“Shhhh!” Leonard said. They could hear his footsteps on the thin floor above them. The footst
eps stopped for a moment, walked on, stopped again.
They could hear Leonard’s little voice. “Who are you?” he asked.
There was no answer. Leonard took a step forward, then a step back. “Are you a ghost?” he asked.
Silence.
Leonard said, “I’m sorry about the Bog Man. Andy told me. This would have been a nice home for you.”
Leonard shuffled his feet. Then he said, “Do you like candy?” Andy and Owen didn’t hear a reply. But they did hear a faint sound of unwrapping. There were chewing noises for a couple of minutes.
Leonard said, “My brothers are stuck down in the basement. I have to find a ladder for them. But there was something I wanted to ask you first.” Owen couldn’t believe that little Leonard was standing there talking to a ghost! But Leonard’s voice was calm and normal and strangely polite.
“What I wanted to ask you,” said Leonard, “since you’re a woman. Or you used to be a woman. Is how you make babies? I was hoping to be the first boy to have one.”
There was silence — except for some more chewing noises — for the longest time. Andy and Owen strained to listen to what she was saying, but it was very faint — like the whisper of the wind, or the scratch of a branch against a pane of glass.
Finally Leonard said, “Oh, I see. Well, thank you very much. And I’m very sorry for your tragedy.”
He walked across the floor then, quickly, as if it was daylight, and in a moment lowered a funny kind of ladder down the hole. It had been hammered together out of leftover lumber, but Owen and Andy had never seen it lying around the haunted house before. Andy went up first and Owen pushed him from behind.
As soon as they got up, they looked around but Leonard said, “She’s gone now.”
“You saw her? You saw the Bog Man’s wife?”
“I saw her shadow,” Leonard said.
“We heard you talking to her. We couldn’t hear anything she said.”
“You couldn’t?” said Leonard.
“We just heard you!” said Owen. They were looking around at all the shadows. Any one of them could have been the Bog Man’s wife.
