by Joel Arnold
“Go back to Davey’s room,” I said.
“What’s going on?”
“Stay with Davey,” I insisted.
“He’s asleep.”
“Please.” Then I asked the man below, “Who are you? What do you want?”
He looked up at me. A cowl of sweat covered his face. “Call an ambulance.”
Jenny remained frozen behind me.
“Please,” I said to her, my eyes stuck on the intruder. “Stay with Davey.”
“I’ll call the police.”
“No. Stay with him.”
“Someone needs to call the police.”
The man below said again, his voice strained, “I need an ambulance.”
When the intruder climbed our steps, he came to the child gate. In the dark, unfamiliar with it, he couldn’t get it open. He tried stepping over it, but my voice must’ve startled him. He tripped, lost his balance, and ended up there — leg twisted behind him on the landing six steps up from the foyer floor.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
The man grimaced.
“Answer me.”
“What do you think I was doing here?” he gasped.
“You were going to rob us? Kill us?”
He shook his head. “I needed some money.”
“So you thought you’d just break in here and take it?”
“Please.” He looked up at me, anguish casting furrows across his sweat-slicked brow. “I’m begging you. Call an ambulance.”
Jenny called from Davey’s room, “What’s going on?”
“Everything’s fine,” I said.
The man’s back was against the wall, and he clutched at his twisted leg. A patch of blood stained the wall behind his head. He must’ve banged it on something on the way down. I scanned the carpeted steps, then the handrail.
There — blood on the handrail, halfway down. The rail was cut at angles to follow the flow of the steps, and some of the angles produced sharp corners. I’d meant to sand them down in case Davey fell, but like so many household projects, still hadn’t gotten around to it.
The handrail.
I stepped quickly into our bedroom and threw open the top drawer of my dresser. The junk drawer. Full of odds and ends, a place to put all the crap accumulated over the years of living in the same place.
I grabbed an old Phillips screwdriver and stepped back to the top of the stairway. The man’s eyes narrowed on the screwdriver. “What’s that for?”
I opened the child gate. Just a squeeze of the latching mechanism was all it took.
“What’s with the screwdriver?” he asked again, panic rising in his voice.
I stared at him a moment, then sat down on a step next to the bloodied corner of the railing. I began to unscrew the railing supports.
“What the fuck are you doing? Call an ambulance!”
I ignored him and let the loosened screws fall to the carpeted steps, let the supports fall, too, as they separated from the wall and railing.
“Everything okay?” Jenny called in a singsong voice, valiantly trying to conceal her nervousness, not wanting to scare Davey.
“Yes,” I called to her. “Stay with him.”
“He’s waking up,” she said.
The man on the steps said, “Please. What are you doing?”
I lifted the railing, balancing it in my hands. “Why did you come here?” I asked. The railing felt solid, the wood smooth, the weight good.
“I told you.”
“Why our house?”
He closed his eyes. Tilted his head, pain twisting his features. “Your window was open.”
“What if you’d made it upstairs?”
“I just wanted money. Jewelry.”
“What if me — or my wife — woke up?”
“Come on, man.”
My grip on the railing tightened. “What if my kid woke up, walked out of his room and saw you?”
“I’d never hurt a kid.”
“It’s dark. Maybe he surprised you and you reacted.” Something caught the corner of my eye. A black, obscene object on the white tile below.
The intruder’s eyes followed mine. “It dropped out when I fell,” he said.
My pulse quickened. “You brought a gun into my house?”
He didn’t answer.
“You brought a gun into my house?” I asked again, my voice rising.
I heard Jenny’s voice, gentle now, singing softly to Davey. I heard the creak of the rocking chair in his room.
“What if my son woke up and surprised you? And you pulled out your gun…”
The man on the stairs shook his head. Fresh pain shot across his face. I heard Davey’s voice, now. No words, but a sweet babbling mixed with Jenny’s soft, kind voice as the rocking chair creaked out its familiar rhythm.
What if he’d come into our room? What if something — any number of things — had happened to turn a simple robbery into the slaughter of a family? What if he…
What if…
My grip on the railing tightened. I changed the directions of my thoughts.
Okay. What if he’d fallen down the steps in a slightly different way? What if he hit his head hard on the stair railing I now held? Maybe hit it at a slightly different angle, hit it hard enough to split his head open.
I slowly lifted the railing up to my eye level and studied it.
Would the police even question it? What sympathy would they give a man who broke into our house while we slept, while my wife, my little boy, slept peacefully, and with him — him, the man lying twisted on the stairs — carrying a gun? Would they even notice the inconsistencies? Would they study the forensics of his fall? The fact that maybe, just maybe the angle of blood splatter was inconsistent with my version of events? Besides, it would be my word against—
“Please,” the man said, breathing rapidly, his skin pale and dappled with sweat. “Please,” he said as I lifted the railing above my head, feeling for the maximum leverage, the best angle to create the greatest force.
“Please!” he cried one last time.
I swung.
The singing, the rocking in Davey’s room stopped.
“Honey?” my wife called.
“Everything’s okay,” I said. “Stay there.” I wiped the sweat off my brow with a shaking hand. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
I lifted the railing from the cracked bone and cartilage, the blood and bits of brain that clung to the wood. I stared at the silent, limp form of the man who’d invaded our home.
The police wouldn’t question it. I’d be a fucking hero.
I screwed the railing back into place. Stepped quickly into our bedroom and called 9-1-1.
Davey sits through four hours of Applied Behavioral Analysis — ABA therapy — a day. It focuses on repetition, compliance, reward. It attempts to circumvent and rewire the misfiring synapses in his brain. He’s made progress. No words, but the sounds were coming. The sounds — sweet and mellifluous. Occasionally there were the harsh croaks of frustration, but we’d take them, too. My heart, Jenny’s heart, longed so much to hear Mama, to hear Dada.
Often, I’d take Davey to the park. He usually let me hold his hand and guide him there, and once there, he spent most of the time sifting through the smooth pebbles surrounding the slides and swings. The therapists call it stimming — self-stimulating behavior — during which he’ll fixate on an object or movement — flapping his hands, stroking a stuffed animal over and over.
Sifting rocks through his fingers past the point most children would find it boring and move on.
We were supposed to discourage this, try to distract him, redirect him, but in the park I just let him be. Let him sift the small, cool pebbles through his fingers over and over again. I liked to think he was doing what little kids were supposed to do.
A month after the intruder came uninvited into our house, Davey still had not spoken his first word. Syllables, yes — “Ba” and “ka” and “ah” and “eh.” So we kn
ew he was trying. We knew, we prayed, the words would come. We remained hopeful. Even when he started spending hours on the landing where the intruder had died.
The first time I noticed him there, he was making sounds. “Da—” he said. “Ah — eh.” I watched, not wanting to interrupt. He giggled. Rocked back and forth on his knees. Stared at the wall. Rocked back and forth. “Ah. Eh. Kah.”
Finally, I offered my hand to him. “Davey, c’mon, hon.”
A shadow fluttered against the wall and disappeared.
I froze.
Davey giggled.
I forced a smile. “Davey?”
He turned to my voice, but didn’t look at me. He stood and walked upstairs, whatever spell that held him now broken.
I shivered. The child gate swung slowly and tapped against the wall as he passed it.
The child gate.
How long would I feel the need to keep it there? Davey had the steps mastered even before the intruder came. Yet, when going to bed, I continued to shut it. Despite our new alarm system, despite keeping our windows closed at night, I felt safer with the gate latched.
I began to find him there often. Kneeling, rocking, flapping his hands, his mouth making sounds. It no longer seemed like the typical self-stimulation of autism, but something more, like something in that spot had a pull on him.
And the briefest of shadows appeared and disappeared on the wall, a shadow that should not be there, not the way the light shined, the way the sun hit the banister and spindles. I began to see it more and more, always fleeting.
“C’mon. Take my hand.”
Davey stared at the wall, oblivious to my presence, my voice. His right hand flapped, the individual fingers folding and unfolding. He opened his mouth, sounds forming. “Kah… kah… kah… er… kah… er…”
I continued to take Davey to the park. Now, he not only sifted the playground’s pebbles through his small, soft fingers, but he scooped them into his mouth, as well. At first, I stopped him. They were dirty and I was afraid he’d choke or swallow them, but he did neither. It soothed him to roll the smooth stones over his teeth, over his gums and tongue. I ended up letting him be, letting him stuff the stones in his mouth and sucking them clean. There were worse things a kid could do.
As I suspected, the police treated the death of the intruder in our house as an accident. He tripped on the child gate, fell down the steps and cracked his head open on the corner of the stair railing, end of story. His name was Clayton Jones, and he had a substantial record of B&E, as well as domestic violence.
Never murder, however.
One day, while Davey kneeled on the landing, rocking back and forth and staring at the wall, the shadow stayed.
I blinked and it stayed.
I looked away and looked back and it stayed.
The shadow that should not be there.
It gained form. Gained shape. The shape of a sitting man, one leg bent unnaturally.
I scooped Davey into my arms. “No!” I shouted, my voice frightening him. He cried, hitting me hard across the cheek, once, twice. I carried him into our bedroom, dropped him on the bed and closed the door. I let him tantrum as I paced back and forth, and soon the fight was out of him and he collapsed in a snoring heap amidst the rumpled and tossed white sheets.
I walked back to the top of the stairs and slid my eyes down the wall, looking for the shadow that should not be there, but all I saw were the shadows of banister spindles cast by the foyer lights. I took the steps slowly and stopped on the landing where the intruder died, my own shadow now cast, a big, dumb, still thing. I waited. Listened. Had I really seen it? I stepped aside to let the foyer light through, and still — nothing.
“What do you want?” I whispered to the wall. Nothing answered.
Instead, I heard movement on the tile floor below. I whirled.
“Jenny?”
She regarded me curiously.
“You scared the crap out of me,” I said.
Fatigue had tattooed purple-black half-moons beneath her eyes, had stolen her easy smile. “You’ve seen it, too?” she asked.
My brain refused to acknowledge I’d even heard her question. I couldn’t answer, because if I did, if I acknowledged that yes, I had seen it, it would be so much harder to return to any sense of normalcy. Easier to convince myself I’d been imagining things if no one else validated that shadows existed where they shouldn’t.
“John?” she said, waiting.
I shook my head and climbed the stairs.
A week later. Two in the morning. I woke. Heard something on the stairs.
There wasn’t enough oxygen in the room to breathe. I listened. Listened closely. The steps creaked. I sat up. Saw through the bedroom door that the child gate was open. I reached under the bed and felt for the bat, a wooden Louisville Slugger, and grabbed it around the middle. I slid out of bed. Jenny remained asleep, sleeping pills now a regular part of her night-time routine.
Another creak. I heard whispers. I couldn’t make out the words. I stepped quietly to the bedroom doorway. As I did so, a familiar odor hit me.
Davey. Where was Davey?
The odor was strong. I peered over the top of the stairs and tightened my grip on the Slugger. My eyes seemed to play tricks on me, because I saw two figures. Davey was one of them, his hair gelled with what I realized was his own shit. The other form—
But no. My eyes adjusted. There was no other form.
I turned on the hall light.
“Davey!” I hurried down the steps.
Davey was naked, his body covered with the awful brown smears of excrement. He covered his eyes with filth-covered hands to block out the light.
Jenny’s voice came groggily from the bedroom. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
I swallowed. “It’s okay. It’s just Davey. Go back to bed.”
Davey raised a shit-covered hand, four fingers curling in to the palm, one finger, the index finger, pointing at me. He frowned, concentrating. “Kah…” he said.
I realized he’d smeared the wall. The feces was in lines — intersecting lines — more than lines.
“Kah…” Davey tried, looking me directly in the eye.
I looked again at the wall, at the lines, at the letters he’d drawn there, thick and brown and reeking. He had spelled a word. Couldn’t even talk, yet, but he’d spelled a word.
As the word registered in my mind, I faced Davey once again. His eyes penetrated deep into mine, his finger accusatory. With much effort, he finally said his first word, the same word written on the wall.
“Kah…” he said. “Kah…”
Finally, he managed it.
“Killer,” he said, his eyes on my eyes, through my eyes, into my brain.
“Kah… killer,” he said again, his shit-covered finger pointing at me, an inch from my chest. “Killer!” he spat out.
The sound of a soft sigh briefly surrounded my head, and the shadow that had been sitting there this entire time dissipated amidst the purposeful lines of Davey’s shit.
I grabbed my son, put my arms around him, squeezed him tight and put my mouth to his ear. I whispered into it, something for him to hear, something I needed to hear.
“Davey,” I whispered. “I am here. I am not a shadow. I will always love you and protect you. Look at me. I am here.”
His hand dropped to his side. His eyes lost their focus.
I did the only thing I could do.
I gently picked him up and carried him upstairs. Scrubbed him clean and let him soak in the warm water. While he did so, I quietly scrubbed the wall clean. And then, so as not to wake Jenny, I found a screwdriver and quietly dismantled the child gate.
I placed it outside and prayed the shadow of the man I killed went with it.
Rhythm of the Dead
Too much tequila. It was hard to move from the edge of the narrow canal that ran through San Miguel. Shallow, dirty water flowed around a dead mule ripe with flies. I wondered how long it would lie there befo
re someone dragged it out. Wondered if the inside of my stomach wasn’t much worse off than that mule. I belched up an acidic bubble of tequila and molé. Never again.
Someone tugged at the back of my shirt. I turned.
A child. Chalky-brown skin, hazelnut eyes, thick black hair falling to her shoulders in waves. She looked up and smiled.
I forced myself to smile back. It was hard not to stare at her mouth, at the desecrated gums where shiny white teeth once sat.
She held out her hand.
“What’s the matter? You lost?” I took hold of her delicate, cool fingers. My Spanish was piss-poor, so I didn’t even bother. “Where’s your ma?”
Wordlessly, she pulled me over the city’s cobblestone streets. We passed old buildings, walked quietly through narrow, dark alleyways, passing no one, hearing the bark and howl of dogs in the distance. Rod Stewart’s Maggie May wavered through the air from a nearby bar. Every once in a while, the girl looked back at me and smiled, as if to say, Not much further. You’ll like it where we’re going.
I fell in love with San Miguel the minute I got off the bus three weeks earlier. The jacaranda trees were in bloom, the people friendly — I was amazed at the abundance of shops and art boutiques. I spent half my days sipping Café Viennese in the Bellas Artes building, watching students of the Instituto Nacional in the courtyard below. The other half I spent sitting on a bench in El Jardin, the city’s zocalo, writing. There was something about the cacophony of noisy sparrows, vendors hawking tortillas and jewelry, and young men and women flirting in bright, freshly ironed clothes that lent itself to a day of writing. Instead of a distraction, the noises and sights soothed me, reminded me I wasn’t alone in this world.
Not much further…
At night, I drank Tecate and shots of tequila that the locals bought me. They seemed to find it entertaining to get the white turista drunk. Everything was fine, more than fine, except that I only had a few days left before my vacation was over. Everything was more than fine until—
