by Rin Chupeco
And when there is nothing else, I count.
I allow the whim to carry me farther down the street, where a lone peddler sells food from a metal stand (one). A cat on the other side of the road (one) arches its back and hisses at me, yowling its temerity, though its tail quivers and the hairs along its back bristle. People walk past, eating and tossing empty wrappers into bins. I count them: thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.
A young man in a tan suit stops in mid-bite to stare directly at me. Slices of bread slide unnoticed to the ground, and he begins to tremble. I move, retreating as a group of students run past (seven), laughing and giggling, and flicker out of his vision. I am occasionally seen by those cursed with a peculiar sight they themselves are rarely aware of, but I have grown skilled at evading their scrutiny once discovered. I have no quarrel with the young man, who dashes away pale and frightened, though I am sorry he sees more than he ought.
But something else commands my awareness. It is a teenage boy in a car driving past this intersection of roads. He is of average countenance, perhaps fifteen years old, with bright blue eyes and straight black hair that shoots out unnaturally from his head like spikes. He is staring out the window with a surly demeanor I have found common in many boys of this time.
But neither his features nor his behavior arrest my attention. There is something that throbs and moves from inside his clothes, restless movements both repugnant and familiar. An unnatural glow sets around him. And in his mind I taste the sweetness of home, the land of my once-birth, thousands of miles away.
The boy does not notice all this. His eyes look out on the world and pass over me, unseeing, as the car turns a corner into a smaller lane.
It stops in front of a large house where several men are moving furniture out of a large truck that says “Picking’s Movers” on its side. Tables and chairs and many more items litter the yard outside the house (sixteen). Some of these men (ten, a perfect number) are moving more in: two wooden beds, one vanity stand, sixteen assortments of electric devices, and many boxes. One mirror.
The boy gets out of the car, still scowling, with an older man of the same blue eyes, though his hair is a dirty yellow. They watch as the men move their furniture inside. I count the boxes: one, two.
“What do you think, Tark?” the older man finally asks.
The boy doesn’t answer. Ten, eleven.
“It’s nicer than our old house in Maine, don’t you think?” the man continues, ignoring the silence. “You’ll get your own room, of course—bigger, with more windows. We’ve got enough space to put up a rec room, maybe a swimming pool in the backyard once we’re done settling in. It’s only two blocks from Callie’s place, too.” Seventeen, eighteen.
Still the boy does not answer. He continues to watch the movers. The strange light persists around him, a queer dimness that radiates more than it shines.
“And we can go visit Mom next week. Dr. Aachman says she’s been feeling a lot better than the last time, and that we can go to the hospital whenever we’re ready. And now that we’re only twenty minutes from Remney’s, we can visit as often as you want.” Twenty-five, twenty-six.
A peculiar shift crosses the boy’s face, and I see emotion in him for the first time. The jaws tighten, the eyes harden, the mouth curves down. He folds his arms across his chest and a sleeve rides up, exposing a black tattoo on his forearm. Thirty-three boxes.
It is curious for a boy his age to possess tattoos of any kind.
Someone made a curious choice in the design of the tattoo on his arm. It is of two circles, the larger encompassing the smaller sphere and covered in meticulous writing, but of a language I do not understand. More symbols mark the length of his arms, climbing up to disappear, hiding under the folds of his shirt. These tattoos cause him to glow with that strange light as they hum and throb against his skin. As if suddenly aware of my scrutiny, he pulls the sleeve down.
“Dad, I’m not sure I should be visiting Mom at all,” he says.
“Don’t say that, Tark. I know she misses you.”
“Trying to scratch my eyes out is a strange way of showing just how much she misses me.” The bitterness is apparent in his voice.
“Dr. Aachman says that’s not going to happen anymore,” his father says firmly. “She’d been given the wrong kind of medication, that’s all. We’ll visit her right after your session with Miss Creswell on Wednesday. Okay?”
The boy only shrugs, though the anger in his eyes does not go away. Neither does the fear.
I pass into the house. Some of the inner rooms are bare, while the movers are gradually filling others with boxes and crates. I move upstairs into more empty rooms and, perhaps out of habit, drift to the ceiling. The previous owners left nothing of themselves here: no happiness, no grief, no pain. It is the best anyone can wish for in a place to stay.
Down below, the movers continue their work while the older man supervises. The boy sidles away to seek solace under the shade of a tree, shielding his eyes to glance up at this new house. Then his eyes widen.
“Hey! Hey, you!”
He runs into the house before anyone can stop him, and after trading startled looks with some of the movers, his father follows suit, confused by the boy’s excitement, his sudden animation. By the time he catches up, the boy is standing by the window, unable to explain the room’s emptiness.
“Didn’t you see her? There was someone in here!”
“I don’t see anyone, Tark,” his father says after a pause.
“It was a woman!” The boy prowls the room, then moves into the next, still hunting for a presence and finding nothing. The father follows. “She had long hair, and she was dressed all in white!”
His father places a hand on his son’s shoulder in a manner I believe is meant to offer comfort, but not belief. “It’s been a long trip. Why not take a little nap in the car? I’ll wake you up as soon as they get most of the things inside.”
A pause, then the boy nods, having little of either evidence or alternatives. They walk back outside, but rather than getting in the car, the boy remains outside by the gardens. He continues to watch the house, seeking something to prove himself right and his father wrong. But I am careful, and he sees nothing but an empty house where spirits do not wander.
But someone else watches him. Another car is parked two houses away, a white one, small compared to the many others that roam these streets. Its driver observes the boy, and I know this because I can feel his hunger reaching out like a web of invisible malice. From the direction of this small, white car, I hear sounds of weeping, and I recognize these noises all too well.
I leave the house and steal across the street. I slip into the man’s backseat and study him with the mirror that dangles over his dashboard. Unlike the Stained Shirt Man, he is clean-shaven and handsome. His suit is dark and very well-pressed. He has green eyes and brown hair. Other people might say he looks “friendly” and also “kindly” and “well-mannered.” He is smiling, but there is nothing in his eyes.
There are dead children strapped to his back.
(One girl, two girls, three.)
They fill the car with cries and lamentations. I see the familiar pieces of rope on their wrists, all affixed to the man’s forearms. But like the others, the smiling man takes no notice and continues to watch the tattooed boy.
(Four girls, five, six.)
They are blondes and redheads and brunettes. They are blue-eyed and dark-eyed and brown-eyed and green-eyed. They are pale and freckled, and dark and brown. They are six years old and eight years old and twelve years old and fifteen years old.
(Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.)
Some of these children have been tied to him for almost twenty years, others only since the month before.
(Twelve. One boy, two boys, three, four, five.)
He smiles now, this smiling man. It is how he sets his ba
it, how he entices. And his smile this time is for the boy with the tattoos.
I could take him
take take him take him
now. I could take his smiling, putrid little head and crush it
crush it crush
in my mouth. I could make him suffer. I could make him scream
scream scream scream SCREAM SCREAM
for me. Daylight holds no power over spirits such as me.
But I prefer the thrill of night. I prefer the same enclosed spaces in which these people do their work, where they feel themselves at their most powerful. It is a greater pleasure to kill in darker pastures, that much I know. It is not much of a vanity, but that is all that remains with me.
The Smiling Man
take him crush him
starts his car. The dead children watch me as I watch him drive away, and I know I will see him again. I quell the hungers, the quiet places, and they retreat, for now.
The boy, too, intrigues me—for the first time in as long as I can remember—and that is a long, long time. His strange tattoos intrigue me. What lies moving underneath them intrigues me. There is something inside the boy that calls and repulses. There is something strange and malevolent hiding inside him, though I know not what, or why.
There is something inside him that reminds me of home.
I want to know the language of his strange tattoos. And time is one of the few things I have left to spend.
And when the Smiling Man
take him
makes his move—as I know he will—I will be there. Waiting for him.
Until then, I can keep my own vigil.
For in this new house, there also is an attic.
CHAPTER THREE
Light Shatters
Few things of note pass during the nights at this new house, despite what finds residence in the empty room upstairs.
The lethargy finds me again, and by the time I become aware, several days in the tattooed boy’s lifetime must have passed. The furniture has been unwrapped and assembled, and the rooms no longer look abandoned. The man inspects the attic only once but quickly leaves again, unsure why he is repelled by its strange emptiness.
It is morning. The tattooed boy is sitting at a table, and his father is cooking, steam lifting from various metal pots and pans. The boy does not look happy. He is wearing dark pants and a long-sleeved shirt he keeps pulling down over his arms. The tattoos that so fascinate me only seem to anger him. He does his best to cover them up so no one else sees, though there is nobody present but his father, who has seen them many times.
“School blows,” he says by way of greeting. I count the plates in the kitchen. Eleven.
The father sighs like he has heard this all before. “I know it’s going to take some time for you to get used to a new city and a new school, Tark, but you have got to meet me halfway on this one. Applegate has a lot of friendly people. Even my boss is nice, which is about as rare a thing as you can imagine.” He is attempting to be funny, but nobody laughs.
“Not really.” The boy bites into his bread with admirable ferocity, tearing a good chunk of it out with his teeth. I count glasses. Six.
“I’m sure things will be better today,” his father says encouragingly. The boy looks unconvinced and shrugs again. It appears to be his favorite habit. I count the spice racks that line the walls. Eight.
In the time it takes them to finish, I have counted the flower patterns on their wallpaper, the lights overhead, the knots in the ceiling, the kitchen tiles. I follow them into the car, where there is very little conversation. The tattooed boy fidgets uneasily on occasion and often glances over at his right, like something out of the corner of his eye puzzles him. But when he looks my way, all he sees is the window where other cars pass them by, swift glimpses of pedestrians, and other ordinary sights.
The car stops before a large building that says Perry Hills High. Beside it is another with a sign proclaiming it is Perry Hills Elementary. A series of corridors and walkways connect one to the other. A blond girl stands outside the main doors of the elementary school, a troubled look on her face. At eighteen, she is younger than she looks, though her manner and actions are those of an adult. Children stream past her to enter, but she ignores them, waving at both the boy and his father.
“Uncle Doug! Tark!” She is smiling, but the worry in her brown eyes does not match the curve of her mouth. “Tark, you’re going to be late for class!”
The boy groans but accepts her hug willingly enough. “I’m not one of your fourth-graders, Callie.”
“Sorry,” the young woman says, not sounding sorry at all, “but that doesn’t change the fact it’s already two minutes to eight.”
“Ah, crap. I’m out of here. See you later, Dad, Callie.” He hitches his backpack, and a tattoo briefly slips out again from underneath his shirt as he turns to leave. The young woman sees it but is unsurprised, though the worry on her face grows.
“How’s my favorite niece?” the man asks with a grin. “I must say—I expected the teachers here to be older. Why didn’t you tell us you were working for the faculty?”
The young woman blushes. “I’m a teacher’s assistant—not a full-fledged teacher yet. For now, I mostly get by with tutoring and babysitting, but Mom insisted on paying the rent ’til I leave for college next year.”
“Good to hear. And speaking of Linda, how is she?”
“Mom’s still with Doctors Without Borders. Still fighting malnutrition in Africa—and winning, if you believe the last email she sent me. She’ll be back just in time for Christmas.”
The young woman pauses, glancing behind her to ensure her cousin is out of earshot. “I’m worried about Tark,” she says, lowering her voice as if fearful others might hear. “I didn’t want to mention it in front of him. I had a feeling he was a little touchy on the subject. But it’s those…those strange tattoos on his arms.”
“I did my best to explain them to Mr. Kelsey, if that’s what you mean,” the man begins, but the young woman shakes her head adamantly, nervously tucking wisps of wheat-yellow hair behind her ear.
“All the principal told the other teachers—and all Mom told me, for that matter—was that his mother gave him those when he was only five years old. I never really knew Aunt Yoko, and I don’t want to hurt Tark any further and pry, but—something about those tattoos scares me. A couple of times I’ve looked over at him, and I could have sworn…”
“Could have sworn what?”
That his tattoos were moving is what she wants to tell her uncle, but she does not. She does not tell him that the boy feels wrong. She does not tell him that she cannot shake off the feeling that there is someone else in the room, watching, when he is there. She does not tell her uncle because she believes it to be a figment of her imagination, a mockery of her senses. It is the permanent ink staining her cousin’s skin, she tells herself, spreading across the canvas of her imagination. All these thoughts she keeps to herself and does not say aloud. What she says instead is this:
“I just want to know if I can do anything to help. He doesn’t seem to want any friends, and he always keeps to himself. Nobody’s been going out of their way to bully him or anything like that, but few people go out of their way to befriend him, either.”
“Tark’s been doing pretty well at home, considering,” the man says. “He stays in his room a lot, but he doesn’t listen to death metal or write about suicide or anything of that sort, thank God. Your cousin’s a good kid. I don’t want to pressure him into doing anything he’s not comfortable with yet. And for the record—he wasn’t abused by his mother. Not in the way you… He wasn’t abused. It’s a little complicated.”
He tries to smile again. “Thank you for being concerned, Callie. I was worried you wanted to talk because his teachers told you Tark was being disruptive in class or getting into fights with the ot
her students. He’s been seeing a therapist, and he’s still a little moody around other people, but he’s improving.”
The young woman nods. “Okay. I just—I just wanted to be sure.”
“I would appreciate it if you could keep an eye on him whenever you can, though. Moving here was a little tough on Tark, and he could use a friend.”
“Or an overbearingly fastidious older cousin to boss him into having a social life,” the young woman finishes. The man laughs at this, but as he walks away after one last hug, I can see that his brows are drawn together and his eyes are tired.
After he leaves, the young woman stands there for a few more minutes until a bell rings and rouses her from her trance. She wraps both arms around herself and shivers before turning to enter, pulling the large doors closed behind her.
• • •
I spend the rest of the day counting. There are two janitors roaming the school grounds. There are sixteen rooms in the building. There are thirty students in the tattooed boy’s class, and most ignore Tarquin in the same way Tarquin ignores them. Once, a girl beside him asks for notes from Mr. Spengler’s history class from the day before, and he looks at her in a way that makes her uneasy. Still, she persists.
“Your name’s Tarquin, right? That’s an odd name.”
“It’s the name of some Roman emperor everyone’s pretty much forgotten,” the boy says, hoping she will take the hint.
She does not. “My name’s Susan. Where are you from?”
“I’m from Texas,” the boy lies. “Home to beloved exports like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, mad cow disease, and bullets. I collect mannequin legs and spider bites. A race of super-ferrets live inside my hair. They hate water so I shower with an umbrella. I eat bugs because I’m allergic to fruit. I wash my hands in the toilet because sinks are too mainstream. Anything else you want to know about me?”
