Ghost Girl notices them through the kitchen window and waves at them. They wave back, their faces smiling. As one, their bodies begin to fade and dissipate into the night air.
Ghost Girl, Zombie Boy and the Count drift away from the residence of the late Mr. Lindholm and make their way home; Ghost Girl to her dark, empty house at the other end of the street and the other two to their beds in the cemetery. There they will sleep, full and satisfied with their Halloween candy.
Until next year.
THE TWO MONSTERS OF LEVITTOWN
T. FOX DUNHAM
“The men were skeletons when we liberated the camp. Flesh hanging off them like wallpaper.”
“What was it like, Papa?” Christopher asked.
“Hell on earth,” he said. “Those S.S. bastards destroyed men and women. They ground them down and starved them till they weren’t human anymore then burned them in ovens. We rolled in the camps to free them. Many of them died. We couldn’t help.” Papa threw back a shot of whiskey. He only talked about the camps when he’d been drinking, and after a day of moving boxes to the new Levittown rancher, he needed to rest his leg—took some shrapnel outside of Cherbourg when the Germans blew up his truck.
“We rolled in with the Third Army. I got taken off the trucks and attached to a battalion as a chef. I couldn’t even cook oatmeal.”
“General Patton?”
“Fine commander. Knew how to treat us like men. That’s the day I met President Eisenhower.” Papa had the photo to prove it, packed with his war souvenirs. “I wrote Ike a letter, reminding him of that day. I told him to get my son the hell out of Korea.”
Chris wore Tom’s varsity jacket every day since the army had shipped him to Asia. He smelled the tobacco smoke soaked into the sleeves and sighed. Papa would whoop his ass if he knew Tom smoked pipes. He’ll be safe. God will protect him.
“Buchenwald,” Papa said. “It was the President, General Bradley and General Patton. Forced labor camp. We liberated the inmates. So many of them couldn’t walk or cry cause they were hungry. I opened up a shed looking for hiding Krauts, ready to shoot someone and found bodies all stacked up like wood, just left there. They did medical experiments on them like rabbits. Made all sorts of monsters we weren’t supposed to talk about. We put them down to sleep, and they stopped screaming.”
“Don’t tell the boy about that!” Momma said, carrying in her quilts in from the car. She’d won several quilting contests in Philly, always working on a new one. “I don’t want him to know about that evil in the world.”
“It’s nothing new, Mary,” he said. “It’s been in the world since humans were made in the garden. And it’ll always be in the hearts. Best my son knows about it now. Can’t ever let it happen again.”
She sighed. “Chris. Go on out and help your Uncle with the kitchen table. And don’t scuff the floors of my new house.” Momma examined the brick fireplace again, checking for chips. The kitchen of the Levittown house opened into the dining room which flowed into the living room, and the fireplace had been built with two hearths on either side. Chris picked his bedroom straight down the hall, next to his brother’s room. His parents took the master bedroom. Papa rubbed his leg and took another shot of whiskey. Chris stepped out the front door and down the gravel driveway to his uncle’s truck. Young mulberry trees grew in the yard—a yard growing grass, a place for Momma to plant rose bushes. He didn’t have to play on Walnut Street in Philly anymore, tripping on the broken pavement and broken glass. Papa finally made enough bread with the construction company he started with his uncle when they got out of the Army. Momma fell in love with Levittown when she saw it in Life Magazine. It surprised Chris they even sold the family a house. Hal Levitt normally refused to sell to black families, but times changed. Momma was on cloud nine.
Chris walked to the truck and a couple of kids strolled up the sidewalk across the street. They carried a football, and Chris wondered if there was an open field nearby. The kids—looked about ten, a few years younger than Chris—stopped and stared at him, stunned. The short one picked up a clump of mud and chucked it at the truck. The sod hit the door and burst, spraying the window and windshield with dirt. Chris tasted the metallic soil on his lip and gripped his hands to fists. The words choked in his throat.
“Damn Coons!” yelled the taller. “Ruining our good neighborhood.” Chris couldn’t speak. He grabbed a rock from the grass and aimed it. The white boys waited for him to move.
“Christopher Samuel Gray,” Momma yelled from the doorway. “You get in here this instant.” Chris hesitated. His heart pounded in his ears, and he clutched the rock until his fingers hurt. The boys waited, snickering, and he split in two, dying of his rage; however, he couldn’t hurt anyone in front of his mother. He dropped the rock, grabbed a box and turned his shoulder on the boys. He heard them laugh as he carried the box into the house.
~ ~ ~
Late in the evening, after they’d unpacked the truck, his mother fried steaks on the stove, and he sat at the kitchen table, peeling potatoes. Chris rubbed his brother’s sleeve, not used to the space of the one-story rancher. He had his own bedroom. “You think that was brave what you did today?” she asked. He held his tongue. All day as he’d moved in their stuff, he felt ashamed he hadn’t fought back. “And what would it have accomplished? You think those boys would have learned anything from a rock?”
“They would have learned not to come to my house and disrespect my family.”
“No son,” she said, shaking her head. “They would have just found a bigger rock.” His mother always had a way of calming him down. Still, after they sat to dinner and he slept for the first night in his own room, he pulled up the sheets from the mattress and couldn’t sleep, sweating in the summer heat. Shadows oozed around the boxes in his room, cast from the moonlight shining through his two bedroom windows. Finally he got up, pulled on his pants without putting on a shirt and put on Tom’s jacket. Then, Chris slipped out the window above his bed. He needed to walk and think, to work the anger out of his muscles.
On the Philly streets, you kept to yourself, stayed in the streetlights, kept out of the alleys or you might be mugged by a junkie. You knew the rhythms of nightlife, and Chris had been sneaking out since he was nine. He listened for the casual background noise of the city—the roll of trains, the groan of traffic, the occasional laughter cracking from the houses. A police siren would keen and pierce the night hourly. He walked on the pristine sidewalk—not a crack. The single-story ranchers all glowed with perfect paint jobs in the moonlight. Each yard cut perfectly, all the same length. The wind blew in the night. Not a car passed down the drive. Chris clutched the sleeves of his brother’s coat.
Chris spotted movement on the bank of a drainage ditch. The man struggled in the mud and roots, clawing at the ground. Chris stood across the street, wary of approaching, but it was his Christian duty to offer aid—he heard his Momma telling him. “Yo!” he said, not yelling. The local cops would just love to pick him up. The figure keened a howl that nearly launched Chris running for home. It cried out again, reminding him of a suffering wolf—lost and bleeding in the wood. Chris crossed the drive. The guy stank of...chemicals, like carpet cleaner or something from his dad’s construction site. Chris crossed the road, and the odor burned his nose.
“You okay, man?” he asked.
The guy slurred when he spoke. “Stay away!” When he pronounced the W, he did so with a V-sound, reminding Chris of a German accent from all the war films he’d seen. “Just stay back.”
“Dude, you hurt?” Chris paused in the street. He sensed a primal danger—something unnatural, imbalanced about the man. As he approached, he noticed that the guy’s arm fell at an odd angle, seemingly out the front of his shirt. He hobbled, carrying a sack over his back. A dark fluid stained his face. His load slid off his back, hit the bank and fell into the dirt. The man ran off, kicking off the mud and launched with inhuman speed onto the blacktop of Thornridge Drive. Chris swore he saw
a third arm hanging off his chest, poking above his overalls. “Shit!” Chris said. The monster merged into the darkness, and Chris lost sight of him in the dim streetlamps.
Chris grabbed some exposed juniper roots. He lowered himself down, keeping his feet steady. The muddy waters frothed below. Oil glimmered rainbow colors on the water’s surface. Half of the lumpy burlap bag submerged in the stream. Chris dragged it by the attached ropes. The contents rolled. His hand smeared in ooze seeping from the bag, and Chris yanked back his hand, dropping the bag into the stream. He held his palm in the moonlight, and the fluid dripped black like ink, staining Tom’s coat. The bag spilled open as the current dragged it down the creek, and in the faint light he swore a man’s arm fell out of the bag. He spotted a mouth, lips that breathed-no-more kissing out of the water before the sack hit fast currents that dragged it below the murk. Chris realized he shouldn’t be there. He dragged himself up out of the ditch, pulling on the tree roots. The raw bark ripped the skin from his palms, and he climbed up to the drive where a spotlight blinded him.
“Hey swamp rat! Hold it.”
“What?” Chris asked. The officer spun a spotlight on the car door so Chris could see the uniformed police officers standing beside their cruiser. A long silver moustache grew on the senior, and Chris couldn’t read his eyes. He considered running. In Philly, he could cut out and get away clean. The PPD would move onto to the next urgent call. Here, Chris stood out, conspicuous, and the bored suburban cops wouldn’t take long to find his home. They only had to ask some of the neighbors about the new and unwanted residents.
“We’ve had some complaints about a prowler.”
The old horse took out his cuffs. Chris knew the routine and just offered his wrists. He didn’t kick back. The senior cuffed him hard, and his wrists ached. Chris remembered his mother’s words. It would be better if he just went for a ride with them and try to explain what he’d seen. His hand felt sticky from the bag, and he knew he couldn’t talk about what he’d seen. They’d never believe him.
“Get in the car, boy,” the old cop said. Chris flinched at the name, but he rubbed the jacket sleeves, keeping calm. His young partner kept his mouth shut.
Chris knew to cut the gas, not open his mouth. Patience. They’ll wait out these assholes. Somewhere in the distance of Levittown, that Frankenstein monster howled.
~ ~ ~
They cuffed Chris to a chair. He tapped the wooden leg of the table, and the leg hit the concrete floor, and the tap echoed off the tight walls of the interrogation cell. Senior cop with the moustache came in to the room with his junior partner—Batman and Robin. The young cop kept quiet and just watched.
“What are you doing in this neighborhood?” he said, sitting down in front of Chris. He stopped tapping the table. Chris hid his bloodstained hand under the table, trying to act cool. The cops hadn’t noticed in the dark.
“I live here.”
“You Bozo the Clown?” The old cop played with his belt, tight under his hanging belly. He sagged, looking beaten and old.
“My family just moved in,” Chris said. “Thornridge Drive.”
“There ain’t no nigger families in Levittown.” He looked over at his young partner, and Chris spotted him rolling his eyes but holding his tongue. “Is there?”
“A black family moved in today,” the young officer said. “They’re three doors down from Molly and me.”
“Shit. This town is going to hell.” The senior chuckled. “So what were you doing out there, boy?”
“Just going for a walk. I was seeing my new town at night. Pretty at night.” He refused to call him, Sir. He had to make a stand somewhere.
“You family moved to Levittown?” the older cop asked.
“My brother is killing red Chinese in Korea. My father served in France. He took shrapnel in the leg.”
“Well god bless your dad and brother, son,” the young cop said and shielded a dirty look from his partner. “I don’t think we have any reason to hold this young man. You’re no prowler, are you?”
“This is my home, now,” Chris said. “I take care of my home.”
The young cop nodded at him, and the old goat sighed. “Right.” The old cop fed the key into the cuffs and released him. “Your father is here waiting on you.” Then Chris wished they had arrested him. His father was going to beat his ass for this.
~ ~ ~
Papa surprised the family with a new RCA television on four stubby legs, bigger than the old one they had, and that night Momma heated TV dinners. The family watched Ed Sullivan, and Earth Kitt sang “Love is a Simple Thing.” Momma even got a new dress.
“Chris, you like our new home?” Papa asked before Chris finished his peach dessert in the aluminum bed of the tray and got up to go to bed.
“It’s very...white,” Chris said. He went to bed before he could hear Papa grumble and drifted into sleep, dreaming of the frozen hills of Korea. Please come home, Thomas. He woke soon after, thinking of the man of three arms he’d seen.
Had he dreamed it? The Bucks County Courier Times hadn’t mentioned any missing people. At night, he lay in his bed and imagined the static of the city, filling in the gaps of peace in this suburb. He felt like a lion prowling in the forest—a strange world. What had he seen? No one mentioned a body found in the drainage ditch, and he knew if they did, the police would probably blame him—the easiest suspect. Still, that young cop might believe him. Chris got dressed and climbed out the window. He slipped into the darkness, running on the sidewalk until he made it to Thalubush Lane—slipping past the sleeping ranchers. As he turned the corner, he spotted a police cruiser turning the corner, and he jumped into a juniper bush. Sap drenched his brother’s coat—still stained with the blood from the other night—and he hid among the fronds until the police car eased by.
Chris ran through the lane mouth and crossed to the ditch, where he followed a trail that led down along the stream, and then over the cement causeways. The stream grew, flowing fast, and Chris discovered a field at the edge of Levittown. An old mansion rotted on the grass. Three wings extended from the sides of the main house, and the roof had collapsed on the second floor. The house looked like it had been built years ago and had dry-rotted, like an old rotting body left in the elements. Tractors rusted in the old fields, and wild wheat grew in the field. It was the old America, decaying away, falling beneath the roots and the soil. The moonlight illuminated the house, and Chris approached the cellar door. He thought of turning back, to leave it alone, but part of him sought the monster to find solidarity: two freaks in this perfect world. Chris approached the house, much like his brother must have snuck up on the enemy in the hills of Korea, and he found a basement hatch at the border of the clapboard house. Dead sparrows littered the ground as if killed from some poison gas emanating from the place.
Chris knew he might be caught for breaking-and-entering, but he had to know. The foul wind blew from this house. He knew it. The house felt wrong, and Chris trusted his instincts. The cellar hatch wasn’t locked.
He dragged the hatch, dropped the door on its side and descended the wooden stairs, snapping the webs. Spiders dropped on his back, and he flicked them off his jacket. He made his way into the basement. Broken preserve jars lined shelves in the cellar along the walls, left there after years. The subterranean chamber reeked of fermented jelly, and the air made Chris dizzy. He stumbled down the stairs and walked through a viscous jelly on the floor, staining his shoes.
“Shit,” he whispered, as he tracked along the basement and scanned the walls. The root cellar looked mundane—a common cellar that belonged to the antiquated house. Still, none of the rancher houses claimed a cellar. He checked the walls, and beyond a carpet hanging on the wall, he found a hatchway.
Nazi flags bearing German eagles decorated the concrete wall; each held a swastika in its talons. Other war details decorated the small chamber. Someone upstairs had lived through the war. He’d been proud and still hung his flags buried beneath the e
arth, in the past where his kind and creed belonged. Photographic portraits lined the walls—a man in his prime wearing the black uniform of the S.S., prime with his skull soldier’s cap. A silver skull adorned the brim. The soldier with a scar up his cheek stood tall in the monochromatic and labeled photos: standing with a Doctor Josef Mengele—scribbled below the photo— and other Kraut surgeons wearing hospital gowns. Chris looked away from the photos. Glass vials, chemicals, equipment filled the room. Dust encrusted much of the apparatus, and Chris ran his finger along the glass, feeling the cool surface of the vials and boiler. Chris scanned the darkness, and chains chimed as they clattered, swaying like clock pendulums. He stumbled back into the wall, the realization of the room’s purpose shocking him, and a dust cloud floated into the dark air. The creature slithered down the wooden steps from the main floor.
“I see you,” the figure whispered.
Chris paused. “Are you going to kill me?”
“Death and life? I’ve forgotten. I used to know. We brought death to the Jews, to the communists. We raped the land. We infected Russia like a disease.” He pronounced his Ws as Vs as he had at the ditch.
“You can’t be much older than I am,” Chris said, realizing it didn’t matter if he spoke.
“I’m older than you know.” And the man of three arms laughed and giggled and danced about the stairs. Chris enjoyed the rhythmic elegance of the creature that he had accosted at the bottom of the ditch.
“Why did you kill that man?” Chris asked.
“He was needed for the greater good of mankind. I serve the master race. My work is noble. His family will miss him but they will sacrifice. One day they will know what they have given to the greater Reich.” How could he be here? Nazi Germany was destroyed. Papa told Chris so. The creature plucked the string to a hanging light. Arms and legs hung from meat hooks from the ceiling like butchered hogs.
American Nightmare Page 9
