The Boy Who Drew Monsters

by Keith Donohue

  “I make more money,” she had said, and it was true, even as a small town lawyer just starting out. “So it only makes sense, when he’s still little, for me to keep my job. What’s so terrible about being a stay-at-home dad? You can always find something seasonal or part-time, we’ll work it out.”

  He had stumbled into the caretaker’s position with Coast Property Management, but he often wondered if Holly had not secretly welcomed the chance to escape the responsibility of daily care for the boy, right from the beginning. When J.P. was younger, Tim took him along for odd jobs when Holly was not free or when they could not find a sitter. But after Jip developed his phobia, those excursions with his son became nearly impossible. Just as unlikely as returning to college after all these years. He was old enough to be a freshman’s father.

  With the sole of his boot, he scraped at a spot on the rug. The wind rattled the windowpanes behind him, and he hoisted himself from the easy chair, stiff with cold, and climbed the stairs to check for drafts in the bedrooms. In the dentist’s boudoir, the king-size bed floated like a raft on a wide expanse. A single wrinkle creased the bedspread, and he smoothed it with two hands, picturing Dr. Rothman and his wife, perfect and tan, resting on a summer afternoon, worn out with relaxation. The wind whistled through a chink in the walls, and Tim followed the sound, past the daughter’s room. He caught a glimpse of a giant stuffed bear, won at some seaside carnival, sitting on Goldilocks’s chair.

  The door at the end of the hall was closed, and when he opened it, a sharp odor leapt from the boy’s bedroom, as if it had been trapped for three months. Something dead in there. On the walls were posters of all the Boston sports stars, Red Sox and Patriots, Celtics and Bruins. A pair of water skis stood in the corner, and on the shelves and dresser careful lines of shells and starfish, a dried mermaid’s purse, a stick of driftwood bent like a narwhal’s horn. A scrapbook lay open on the schoolboy’s desk. Pages of an ordinary summer. The whaleboat out of Boothbay, a clambake on the beach, a set of printouts from the big annual fireworks in Portland. And the boy and his sister in the bright sunshine, climbing on rocks, kayaking on the calm Atlantic, holding a pair of trophy fishes no bigger than perch. The boy and his sister, darkening to bronze from July to September. He turned the last page and thought of his son.

  Monster under the bed. Turning back the bedspread, Tim fell to his knees and peeked beneath the mattress. Squatting like a dried toad were a pair of swimming trunks in the shadows. He strained to reach them and recoiled when he touched the calcified folds and creases. As he dragged the stiff cloth across the floor, a trail of sand spilled out. In the pockets were four hermit crab shells reeking of the sea. He poked at the little bodies one by one but they did not flinch. Some monsters. The Rothmans must not have noticed when they packed up for the season, and that the cleaning crew must have neglected to look under the bed was no surprise to Tim, for they were quick and careless, often leaving behind surprises for him to remedy. He set the swimming trunks and the dead crabs next to the scrapbook, the shells dark against the wood.

  Holly had been so angry that morning, filled with a deep disappointment that had rarely surfaced despite their hardships of the past ten years. The mark on her cheek already blossoming into a red plum. She never understood how best to deal with the boy, how to approach him sideways and give him space to come into the real world from his far-off land. Only once had Jip raised a fist against him. It was on the first day of school after the near drowning three summers ago, and Tim was sure that his son would not want to miss the chance to see his friends. He had tricked him into getting out of bed and even made it through breakfast, but as the time to go approached, the boy simply stopped moving.

  “Put on your socks and shoes,” Tim had barked. “We’re late for school.”

  His son balked and bent his legs to hide his bare feet beneath his bottom.

  “You know you want to go. Dammit, Jip, hurry up and do as I say.” He could hear the rising anger in his voice but did nothing to stop it.

  Lowering his head, the boy glowered at him, defiance steadfast in his gaze. He shifted farther away, anchoring himself in the chair, wrapping his thin arms around the rails.

  “Last chance—”

  “No,” Jip yelled.

  Tim reached and grabbed at his arm, intending to wrench him free and make him put on his socks and shoes, but in the same instant, his son twisted and swung wildly, small fists beating like a drummer against his father’s hands. Realizing his mistake, Tim stepped out of range, and watched the boy flail at him and then collapse, overcome by his rage, a different creature altogether, a mad dog snarling and showing his teeth. The display alarmed Tim at first, but he thought to simply wait and betray no emotion. Just as he had guessed, his son came back into himself and settled.

  Standing tall and looking down on the child, Tim said, “You must never hit.”

  His little boy convulsed with one short spasm, just longer than a twitch. “No,” he said.

  From that moment, Tim knew to take care in any sudden and unexpected touch, and that’s what must have done in Holly. She forgot. She scared him. It would never happen again, Tim would find the right opportunity to talk with Jip and put the fear of God in him. Send him away, indeed.

  The Rothmans would never have to send away their little boy. He would come to this room every summer until he was a young man, and probably come back with his own son in time, and that boy would be normal, too, and on it would go for them, the lucky, the untroubled, the well-to-do. And Tim would be coming here forever, checking on someone else’s second home, closing up every winter and caretaking their dreams. He listened for the wind, but it had abated. No breeze whistled through the cracks. An oppressive silence gave him the uneasy sensation of being all alone in a strange place, and then the house heaved a sigh as though it had tired of him. When he realized it was just the furnace shutting off, Tim laughed at himself. Acutely aware of his own breathing and feeling like a trespasser, he turned to leave, only to be stopped by a small and uncertain sound. Something scratched, like fingernails raked across a sheet of paper, barely audible but enough to unsettle him. It clicked again, a staccato of movement emanating from inside the room. Spooked by its suddenness, he pricked up his ears. The third set of delicate clicks came from the direction of the boy’s desk, and he heard and finally saw the scuttling of a pair of hermit crabs resurrecting themselves in their shells, fiddling their great claws and wriggling their legs to meander across the wooden surface.

  “What the—”

  All four crabs were on the march, heading off to the four corners, and he pounced, collecting them one by one in the scoop of his hands. Each quickly withdrew into its whirling cone. How they had survived for months in the boy’s pockets was a mystery to Tim, but he quickly dismissed the question and carried them downstairs and put them in the sea grass behind the house. He watched for a long time to see if they would move, but they remained still as stones.

  The sun had long since reached its winter day apogee and now arced toward the west as though rimed in mist. A frosty afternoon was sneaking in, and he was late. He left the crabs where they lay and hurried off. As he approached the Wellers’ house, he could see their son, Nick, waiting patiently on the front porch, cold as an icicle, and he raced to the Jeep as Tim pulled into the driveway, as if he had been a prisoner a long, long time and was now released from his sentence. His cheeks were red and chapped, and the boy beamed with an eagerness nearly impossible to bear. Nick was such a good friend to have for Jip. Such a good boy.

  iii.

  The grays hid as best they could on the icy white field, crouching behind the random nooks and crannies folded into the landscape. By the cut of their uniforms and the odd square lip at the bottom of their helmets, they gave themselves away as Germans. In a poised fist, one man held a grenade shaped like a hammer. Two snipers stretched out on their bellies, peering through the sights to await the foe. On the white hills above the ambush site, a squad of gree
n Americans marched to their doom. The radio man’s antenna had snapped off in some ancient skirmish. The mine sweeper kept falling over on the soft surface. Five o’clock on a December Sunday, and the dusk concealed the soldiers.

  A war cry, startling in its whooping ferocity, broke the stillness, and from the horizon, a band of red Indians swarmed on to the scene. Charging on red ponies, reins in their teeth, a pair of braves drew back their bows. The arrows whistled softly in long arcs and fell true. The gray captain gulped his last surprised breath as the arrowhead pierced his heart. One by one the army men turned in dumb shock at the unexpected arrival of the reinforcements, their savage intensity. From the pillows, the Americans cheered and huzzahed as they returned fire, launching grenades like winter hail. The kneeling bazooka man blasted a round, and bodies flew in all directions. In their feathered headdresses, their mohawks, and latticed breastplates, the warriors scrambled over the quilt, their hatchets raised with gleeful, murderous intent. Men fell through the ice and cried out full of panic in the frigid waters. At the height of the massacre, the bedroom door opened swiftly, throwing a rectangle of light from the hall against the far wall and illuminating the boys inside.

  With a fistful of plastic Indians raised in midair, Jack Peter stared at the figure on the threshold. He froze, bewildered, as if awakened from a deep sleep. His shadow on the wall was as still as the toy soldiers strewn across the bed.

  His mother kept her hand circled around the doorknob and stood halfway in the room, her gaze intent upon her son. “Boys, it’s getting late. Shall we send Nicholas home, or would you care to join us for supper?” Nobody ever called him Nicholas, not even his own parents. He smiled again at her constant formality.

  “I could stay, if it’s okay with my mother.” Nick stole a glance at Jack Peter, but he showed no reaction. A flush rose on his face, and he tightened his grip around the plastic men.

  “You boys will have to clean up now, and, Jack, you never made your bed today.” Mrs. Keenan took one step into the room, and her mere presence seemed to break the spell around her son. His rapid panting slowed into a gentle rhythm. He put down his toys and bowed his head like a penitent. Making parentheses of his arms, Nick scooped the soldiers and warriors to the middle of the mattress.

  “Jack, Jackie.” His mother snapped her fingers, trying to get his attention. “Isn’t it nice Nicholas can stay for supper? But, Jack, you have to help clean up this mess. And make your bed, okay? I don’t want to have to tell you again. C’mon, my boy.”

  In slow motion, he picked up the ponies that had fallen to the floor and added them to the pile. Mrs. Keenan turned and left the room, and in her absence, he began to move more quickly. With Nick’s help, they put the plastic soldiers in a pretzel tin on top of the toy box, and then they straightened the sheets and pulled smooth the quilt. The boys went about their work quietly, as Nick knew better than to distract his friend. He was always unsteady when transitioning, and it was best to be silent and let Jack Peter find his own way. When the room was tidy and everything in order, Nick pretended to clap dust from his palms. “Finished?”

  On cue, his friend became a ten-year-old boy again. “Yes!” he shouted, and they raced each other downstairs. The wind rattled the panes of the picture windows on the lower floor and flung sand against the siding. Just beyond, whitecaps frosted the Atlantic, and the surf pulsed like a heartbeat. Cold and damp pushed against the old saltbox house, the joists creaking in the wind, and the furnace pushed back with an exhalation of heat. It was good to be inside on such a night.

  The living room was dark except for the glow of the tiny colored lights on the Christmas tree, and the boys nearly bounced right past Mr. Keenan, nestled in his easy chair. “What ho, lads? Mr. Nick, I see, has joined us. And what have you fine fellows been up to all afternoon?”

  “War,” said Jack Peter. “With the army men.”

  “War? Mayhem and murder, J.P.? So soon to Christmas, do you think that’s wise?”

  Jack Peter hovered beside his father’s chair, a step away from contact. “Pretend war. Just pretend. It isn’t real.”

  “All in the imagination, eh, Jip?”

  “Up here.” He tapped his skull with one finger.

  “How about you, Mr. Weller? Which side were you on?”

  The question embarrassed Nick, for he felt, in part, too old to be playing with toy soldiers. He had agreed at Jack Peter’s insistence, just as he nearly always had. “There were no sides. They were all mixed up, the Germans and the Americans and the Indians.”

  “A healthy disregard for history,” Mr. Keenan said. “Good for you. There are many things more important than history. Imagination, for one. And dinner, for two. Are you boys washed up and ready for some grub? Let’s turn on some lights on the way. No need to be living in a graveyard.”

  A fish stew bubbled on the stove top. Nick watched as Mrs. Keenan sliced a loaf of bread on a wooden board. As she concentrated on her task, a bruise on her cheek deepened to purple. They sat in their usual places, the grown-ups at the ends, Jack Peter and Nick facing each other. From the saying of the blessing, Nick began to sense the difference in the atmosphere, as though something or someone was watching them eat. None of the others seemed to take heed of the situation. Mr. and Mrs. Keenan chatted idly about the weather and the food, savoring a morsel of whitefish, a hunk of bread, a sip of wine, and Jack Peter, as usual, zoned in upon his task, chewing mechanically every bite. But Nick could not shake the feeling that they were not alone.

  “You boys will never guess what I found today,” Mr. Keenan said. “I was up at the Rothmans’ place making sure it was shipshape for the winter, and I thought I heard the wind come in, so I go checking all the windows. In one of the rooms there’s a real peculiar smell. A stink, really—”

  With his glass at his mouth, Jack Peter snorted into his milk.

  “So I look under the bed, and what do you know, the kid had left a wet bathing suit under the bed. Been sitting since the end of summer, but that’s not all. Inside the pockets, what do you think? Hermit crabs. Four of them crammed in there. But here’s the weird part. I’m getting ready to leave and I hear this scribble-scrabble sound coming from where I laid them out upon the desk, and you guessed it. Those crabs come back from the dead, trying to escape the house and walk back to the ocean.”

  “Ghost crabs,” Jack Peter said.

  “That’s right,” Mr. Keenan said. “Figure they were hibernating or something. Nearly scared me half to death.”

  Mrs. Keenan rolled her eyes and pressed her hand against her painful-looking bruise. Mashing a potato with the tines of her fork, she addressed the table. “Nick, we’re looking forward to having you stay over after Christmas.”

  He reddened, remembering how his parents had foisted him off so that they could get away on a cruise between Christmas and New Year’s. Just the two of them, a second honeymoon, they said, although he wasn’t sure what was wrong with the first. The trip, he sensed, was intended as remedy for what had been broken over the years, but their attempts at rekindling left him out in the cold. They had given him the choice between a week with the Keenans or five days down in Florida with Nana and Pap. The spare bedroom at their condo in the retirement village was always hot no matter the temperature outside. Even Christmas was blazing. No snow, no friends. The endless afternoons. Dinner at five o’clock, in bed by eight. The nightly news, a game show with the television blasting full volume. Maybe you would like to do a puzzle? He loved his grandparents, but he’d rather be dead.

  “Thanks again for having me. I’m happy to stay with you guys. And with Jack Peter.”

  Across the table, his friend betrayed no emotion.

  An idea jumped from Mr. Keenan’s brain to his mouth. “We could even get the old gang together during winter break. What were those boys’ names? Jip, you haven’t seen some of those guys since, what, second grade?”

  Yes, second grade. Jack Peter had been an inside boy for over three years. Hadn’t
been to school, rarely left the house. One by one, his few old friends had nearly forgotten about him, and they always gave Nick grief for continuing his strange friendship. Perhaps it would be better in Boca Raton.

  “You boys will have the run of the place,” said Mr. Keenan.

  A pair of eyes stared out at him from over Jack Peter’s shoulders. Mismatched askew eyes, the left larger than the right, pupils dark as holes, glowered at him. He nearly dropped his spoon. The giant face came into focus, a child’s pencil drawing taped to the refrigerator door. The portrait filled the entire page from side to side: a young boy with dark tangled hair atop a high bare forehead, a rudimentary nose, a slash of a mouth. He was primitive but intense, hatched and worked over, shadows radiating from the wild eyes. Nick could not resist the temptation to look more closely, so he rose from his chair and walked right up to the paper.

  The drawing had a furious energy to it. There were no erasures, no signs of uncertainty, but rather the stray lines and swirls had been incorporated into its overall execution. A smudge ran the length of the jaw from the left ear to the chin, as though its maker was trying to soften the line and blur the edge. Though the picture looked similar to many children’s drawings, the boy on the page was animated by a different spirit, an air of unreality, that hypnotized Nick. As if the image had some power over him, life imitating art. He could not reconcile its skill with the impression he had held so long of his friend as simple, slow to talk or respond in regular ways, a boy who seemed much younger, more childish on the surface, yet there was a darkness to the drawing’s depth.

  “Do you like it, Nicholas?” Mrs. Keenan called from her place. “Jack drew that. Completely out of the blue.”

  Nick twisted his neck to look back at them over his shoulder. The boy in the picture kept watching.