Draw the Dark

by Ilsa J. Bick

  Of course, Dekker wasn’t alone. He was never alone. He always traveled with two other guys—also sandrats, straddling their bikes and squinting up through curls of cigarette smoke. I didn’t know them, mainly because they were so . . . the same. Dekker was Dekker. You couldn’t mistake him for anyone else. These other guys, they could’ve been Curly and Larry or Athos and Porthos or Crabbe and Goyle. See what I’m saying? The only guy who really mattered, the only constant, was Dekker.

  “Came by to see the handiwork.” Dekker swung off his bike. “You did a pretty good job there, Killer. Not bad at all. You could be one of the real bad boys.”

  Curly and Larry spluttered, their mouths hanging open like dogs. Dekker said, “Come on down, Cage. You’re not scared, are you?”

  Yes. I swallowed, suddenly aware not only of how far out of town I was but that I was half dressed and totally defenseless. I said, “I was just taking a rest.” Like that answered anything. Dekker was poking around the can of softener, and I said, stupidly, “Hey, you got to be careful with that. There’s acid in it.”

  “Ooooh.” Dekker gave a mock shudder. “What do you think I’m gonna do, stick my dick in it? Unless . . .” He dangled the can from his fingers. “What a shame if this slipped or, you know, something happened to that scaffolding there or . . .”

  “What do you want?”

  He showed his teeth. “We got something to discuss, Killer.”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  “Stop calling me that,” he mimicked and then said, “You coming down, or you gonna make me come up?”

  What choice did I have? I fished up my sloppy tee and tugged it on. It reeked and the clammy fabric made me shiver. I hated turning my back, but I had no choice if I wanted to get down. I half-expected the scaffolding to collapse at any second. When I made it down, I turned, folded my arms over my chest and said, “What?”

  “Want to talk to you about your uncle.” Streaks of black foundry grime sketched the creases in Dekker’s face, and his nails were ragged.

  “What about him?”

  “Know what he did?” Dekker leaned in. His breath stank of cigarettes. “He come by my old man’s place. Said that anything like that,” he hooked a thumb over his shoulder, “had to be the work of someone like me, that I musta imitated you just to get back at him.”

  To my surprise, I felt bad—and sad at the same time. Dekker was a jerk, and he was no one I wanted to be around, and he probably deserved much of what he got . . . but then, maybe, you could say that about me too.

  “I’m sorry.” I didn’t see how I could make up for anything Uncle Hank had done, though. “That wasn’t fair.”

  Dekker jabbed a finger in my chest. “Look who’s talking fair. There’s any trouble in town, your uncle comes out and sees my dad.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I kept my mouth shut.

  “But here’s what pisses me off.” Another finger jab. “You’re the one needs watching. Ms. Stefancyzk stuck her head through that noose her own self, but who helped? Who was the kid shooting death rays into her eyes?”

  I knew where this was going: where it always went. What everyone thought in this crummy little town and talked about behind my back—

  “And when your aunt bought it, you know who came tearing down to the shop? Your uncle. Said any drunk in these parts had to be my dad or one of my dad’s guys. This is right before my dad got sent away, and there wasn’t nothing to those charges, they were all bogus . . .”

  “I was just a kid.” Actually, I sounded like I still was and that made me mad. “I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Little kid, my ass.” Dekker’s face twisted. “Well, I was a kid too, but which kid got the short end? Who got sent away? Wasn’t you . . . even though we know all about you, right? I wouldn’t be surprised if you killed your aunt your own self. Ten to one, she took a look at something you drew and she couldn’t stand what she saw and—”

  That’s when I punched Dekker in the mouth.

  VII

  So, okay, that wasn’t bright. Actually, it was suicidal. Or maybe I had to stop Dekker from talking because every word... I didn’t need to hear from Dekker what I’d already thought of myself.

  My fist connected with his nose, and it felt like a bomb went off in my hand. The edge of his teeth cut across my knuckles, and fire streaked up my hand. Hitting Dekker hurt worse than I could’ve imagined, and I felt the blow shiver all the way up my arm and into my shoulder.

  Dekker staggered. He lost his grip on the can of softener. The can flew in a short heavy arc before bursting open against his bike. A gurgling gush of yellowish goo drooled over the black body and chrome exhaust pipes like thick snot.

  The other sandrats had gone dead quiet. Then they slid off their bikes.

  “You fuck!” Blood trickled from one of Dekker’s nostrils. His face flushed an angry purple. “You fucking ruined my bike!”

  His guys moved in, and then they were crowding me back against the barn, probably so Dekker would have a nice solid surface while he whaled on me for as long as he liked. I saw him coming, and it was like this awful slow motion of a nightmare where the monster’s coming and you know you’ve got to run, but the monster’s gaining....

  “I’m going to cut off your fucking nuts,” said Dekker. There was a glint of steel, an audible snick, and then I saw the knife.

  “N-no,” I said. I had nowhere to go but back, and in another second, I felt wood dig into my back. The knife in Dekker’s fist looked like a scimitar. “Please, I’ll pay for it. I’ll do anything you want....”

  “Yeah, you will.” Dekker’s teeth were a smeary orange. His fist flashed out and back, and then a second later, a line of fire sizzled along my right forearm. “You’re gonna pay and you’re gonna do whatever I say.”

  Bright red blood welled from the slice—a long one—in my flesh. I clapped a hand over the cut. My teeth were chattering, and my face was wet with cold sweat. “I . . .”

  “Shut up.” The knife flickered again, and this time, I screamed as a seam of blood striped my left bicep.

  “Hey!” One of Dekker’s guys—Curly—was looking over his shoulder, and now I heard it too: engine grumble and the pop of gravel. Curly said, “Cool it. There’s a car . . . shit, it’s a cruiser.”

  “Everyone stay cool,” ordered Dekker, and then he crowded in. I cringed back, but his knife had disappeared. He thrust his face toward mine until we were inches apart. His hot breath slashed my face. “Open your mouth about the knife, and you better hope I don’t ever find you.”

  “Hey!” Justin was out of his cruiser, striding toward us. “Hey, you! Dekker! Back off!”

  “We’re cool, it’s cool, Brandt.” Dekker stepped away and turned, hands up, palms out. He looked back at me. “We’re cool, right?”

  Yeah. We were cool.

  After Dekker and Curly and Larry growled off on their motorcycles—after I agreed with some version that had me nearly falling off the scaffolding, knocking over the softener all over Dekker’s bike, and snagging my arms on nails—Justin said, “I’m gonna have to tell your uncle about this. I mean, I gotta turn in a report, and if Dekker presses charges . . .”

  “He won’t press charges.” I was so dizzy the world tilted. “You heard him. All I got to do is fix his bike. What’s another paint job?” I tried a grin, but the world spun and I swayed.

  “Hey.” Justin moved in, wrapped a hand around my left forearm below a band of blood from Dekker’s knife. “Let’s get these cuts taken care of.”

  I might have said something like, sure, but then the smell of blood filled my nose, and then my brain scrambled in a weird jumble.

  ghosts

  I recognized the feeling: the same splits along the seams of someone else’s consciousness I’d experienced before

  and teeth like knives and my mouth

  when I landed in that other boy’s body

  don’t take my mouth please

  and then Justin
was saying something, but I didn’t get any of it

  don’t take my mouth

  because gray ate at the margins of my vision, and then everything went

  black . . . don’t . . . please

  help me

  help me

  VIII

  “Hank, you can’t let him do it.” Reverend Schoenberg forked pot roast and applesauce into his mouth, chewed, swallowed, and said, “He goes alone, and Dekker will kill him.”

  “I’ll be okay.” I sat beside Uncle Hank. As usual, Mrs. Schoenberg had made a fantastic dinner—pot roast with carrots and potato pancakes with homemade applesauce—only my stomach was too tied in knots, and the food tasted like sawdust.

  Not that I wasn’t grateful. A ton of eyes had lasered my back that morning in church, and conversations dried up as we slid into our pew, but no one had to be talking for me to know what everyone was thinking. I was sure everyone had heard about me fainting out at the barn the day before too. Now I had Steri-Strips on my arms, and a train track stitched on my forehead. So, I knew the Schoenbergs had invited us to Sunday dinner as a way of taking some kind of stand.

  From across the table, Sarah said to me, “You should be careful. Karl Dekker’s just the type of person who’d arrange for you to have an accident.”

  “She’s right, and we know whereof we speak.” The Reverend was a moon-faced man and a theology professor at the Ashburg extension of the University of Wisconsin. He liked books, gossip, and red wine. “You’re lucky Justin was there when you fainted.”

  “If you ask me, he was lucky, period,” said Mrs. Schoenberg. She and Aunt Jean had been best friends, and she’d made it her mission to make sure we ate a decent meal twice a month. “But luck doesn’t last forever, Hank.”

  “I know that, Miriam.” Uncle Hank accepted more wine from the Rev. “I’ve already talked to Justin Brandt, and he’ll stick close while Christian’s there.”

  “I’ll be all right,” I said. “I can take care of myself.”

  Of course, no one paid attention to anything I said. Probably didn’t believe me, given everything so far.

  I wasn’t so sure I believed me much either.

  The adults talked that to death some more, and then the Revsaid, “So what’s this about a body at the old Ziegler place?”

  Sarah perked right up. “Body?”

  Her dad waggled his eyebrows. “A baby is what I heard.”

  “Baby?” Sarah looked at her father and then Uncle Hank. “You mean, like a baby-baby, or a little kid?”

  “I don’t know how old and—” Uncle Hank shook his head at the Reverend. “You know I can’t talk about this, Steve. It’s an ongoing investigation.”

  The Rev made a horsey sound. “From a million years ago.”

  “Maybe not that long. I still can’t talk about it.”

  “All right, decades. Anyway, I heard some folks from Madison are on their way up,” said the Rev, like Uncle Hank hadn’t said a word. (He and my uncle had done this before. The Rev wanted gossip, my uncle would say he couldn’t, and then the Rev would just keep going until he got what he wanted.) The Rev splashed more wine into his glass. “Crime scene people is what I heard.”

  Uncle Hank shrugged. “Just the forensic anthropologist and her crew. They won’t be here for weeks yet, no real rush on this end. Coroner says the body’s been there for a real long time.”

  “No rush?” Mrs. Schoenberg’s eyebrows went up. “If it were my house, I’d want a body out as soon as possible. For that matter, I might just move. The owner isn’t a little, well, upset?”

  “No. She’s . . .” Uncle Hank thought a second. “She’s an interesting woman.”

  “Oh?” I could practically feel Mrs. Schoenberg’s ears prick up at that. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you find any woman interesting, Hank.”

  Uncle Hank gave a little laugh, like he was embarrassed, and said, “No, it’s just I think she’s more . . . fascinated. Real keen about learning all she can about the house.”

  “Well, if there was ever a haunted house . . . how long has that place been vacant? Twenty years?”

  “Longer than that. Near as I can figure, the original owner, Mort Ziegler, lost his shirt when the Apostle brownstone business dried up in the 1890s.”

  “There aren’t records?” asked Reverend Schoenberg.

  “If there are, no one knows where. Place has been vacant all that time. Kind of strange, you come right down to it. Nice location, beautiful house. Didn’t know it was on the market until the new owner moved in.”

  “Cost you an arm and a leg to heat. Think of the electrical you’d have to update. Is that how they found the body?”

  “Yup, doing repairs. The crew was upstairs yanking out old insulation and getting ready to redo a lot of the stonework. They found the body when they dismantled the hearth. The Madison people said they’d bring up GPR—groundpenetrating radar—to go around the grounds and the rest of the house, make sure there are no more surprises.”

  “Any idea whose child it is?”

  Uncle Hank shook his head. “But I’ll bet it was one of the servants from way back, maybe even turn of the century. The house has been here that long, so it stands to reason. Nobody would care much about a servant or even notice that they’d stopped showing their face around town. You’d think there’d be rumors, though.”

  Sarah piped up. “I did this project in world history last year on superstitions. You remember, Dad? I used your account through the university to do the search? Anyway, there was this really weird superstition from Germany way back, when they used to put a live kid in the doorway or wall of castles or something for good luck and to keep away evil spirits.”

  Her mother scoffed. “Oh, that can’t be.”

  “It is,” said Sarah, looking annoyed. “There was this old castle named Vestenberg, where the mason built a special seat for this little boy in one of the walls. The legend was that the boy was given an apple to keep him from crying. Then they walled him up. They did the same thing in a church in another village. I did a report on it. I even got an A.”

  “That’s disgusting,” said her mother.

  The Rev shook his head. “No, that’s called a custom we wouldn’t want to emulate. Religion’s full of superstitions that make no sense to us but perfect sense to those who lived in the times. Actually, now that I think of it, it’s really a commentary on Christ, isn’t it?”

  “How you figure that?” asked Uncle Hank.

  “Think about it. A child is sacrificed, and he carries the apple of Eve’s sin to his grave. Now, there’s got to be a sermon in that.” The Rev crammed a hunk of dinner roll in his mouth, gave a meditative chew, then inhaled more wine. “So, what do you think, Hank? Most everyone in Winter’s got some German. Maybe they brought over a couple interesting customs from the old country.”

  “I suspect it’ll depend on how old the forensic people think the body is.”

  “Can I come watch?” asked Sarah.

  “Absolutely not,” said Mrs. Schoenberg.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s ghoulish, that’s why not.”

  “Mom, it’s science. What do you think archaeologists or paleontologists do? What if I want to become a forensic scientist?”

  “She’s got a point,” said her father. “Miriam, it can’t do any harm.”

  “Hank.” Mrs. Schoenberg looked at my uncle for help. “Tell her she really can’t do this.”

  “Well,” Uncle Hank drawled. “Actually, Miriam, I can’t see why not. Might be interesting for her, and I’ve known the forensics people to bring up grad students, so they’re used to having younger people around. I’ll have to ask the forensic anthropologist. If she says it’s okay . . . sure.”

  Sarah beamed. “Great.”

  “Thanks a lot, Hank.” Mrs. Schoenberg pushed back from the table. “Who wants pie?”

  After we helped with the dishes, Sarah said, “Let’s go outside.”

  We went arou
nd back. The swing set was weathered cedar, with black belt swings on chains and an eight-foot, dinged-up green slide. There were big divots scuffed out of the dirt from years of kids pushing off and digging in their toes. The seats looked too small and were a little tight, and I sat with my feet practically out straight in front of me. Still, it felt kind of good to be out there. Familiar. It occurred to me that this was the first time Sarah had made any time to actually talk to me in I didn’t know how long.

  She dropped into the swing beside me. The old chains creaked. “You think your uncle will keep his promise?”

  “Yeah. But it’s kind of . . . creepy.”

  “Hunh. You should talk. Anyway, if it’s real, I might do this as my project for history . . . you know, investigate something local? It’d be kind of neat. You going to come out too?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Good.” She looked me square in the eye. “Why’d you do it?”

  I knew she was talking about the barn. “I honestly don’t know. I don’t remember doing anything.” I don’t know why, but I told her the truth. Well, some of it: I left out the stuff about drawing the picture with the weird onion dome and dropping into another boy’s body and most of the dream stuff. But it felt good to talk to somebody about what was going on, even if it was only half. I knew I was expected to talk to my shrink about this kind of thing, but I didn’t know the psychiatrist except as an abstraction, and Sarah was right here, and we had some history. When we were kids—before Miss Stefancyzk— we used to play together and hang out. Then Miss Stefancyzk happened, then Sarah got popular, and then I started drawing the sideways place.

  She listened seriously, twirling back and forth on her toes, her arms locked around the chains. “I don’t see how they can get on your case for sleepwalking. In psychology, we read that sleepwalking might be a symptom of a brain problem like, you know, seizures. They going to test you?”