The Boy Who Drew Monsters

by Keith Donohue

  And now, as with every obsession, this war had its natural limits, a moment when the luster faded suddenly and without reason, and the bored boy would cast around for novelty. His latest passion would be drawing monsters. Not bad, he thought, I could get into monsters. And yet.

  Yet he had seen that thing on the road. He pretended to Mr. Keenan that he had witnessed nothing—in part because he could not believe his eyes and in part because he was not completely sure the figure was not simply of his own imagining, an illusion based on Jack Peter’s sketches and the power of suggestion. Whatever it really was. By the time Mr. Keenan had exited the car in pursuit, it was too late for Nick to confess. Anyhow, he had shut his eyes when it looked his way, and then the creature simply vanished into the night, no more presence than if he had never appeared in the first place. Even now, with the drawing spread across his lap, Nick could no more be sure what he had seen or what he may have conjured.

  He blamed Jack Peter. That boy had always had a way of pulling him into his inner world, with a strange hold stemmed from their shared affinities and lifelong history. They had been linked from the cradle. Born just two weeks apart, they were raised together. Their mothers seemed like best friends to Nick, and he could not remember a single birthday or Halloween or Christmas that they had not spent together. Separated only by Mercy Point, they were always playing at either the Keenans’ or the Wellers’ house, especially in those long winter months when life at the shore can be so lonesome.

  Of course, Nick had other friends, boys from school mostly, but he rarely saw them outside the classroom. They were scattered widely across the peninsula; but most of them, he knew, avoided him on account of his parents. Couple of drunks. By default, his family had remained loyal with their oldest friends, the Keenans, and he to Jack Peter. Once upon a time, they had been equals, or so it seemed to him now, looking back to those years when Jack Peter was unafraid of the outdoors. They would play hide-and-seek in the fir trees that bordered the Keenans’ house, or fly kites in May and June. They were just friends, but all that changed after the accident. Jack Peter emerged out of the ocean an entirely different child, more demanding and in control, and without thinking, Nick began to bend to his wishes. From that time on, he had followed Jack Peter’s lead, always. He, too, had been changed by that day on the beach, though not in the same way.

  Daring one more glance at the monster, he rolled up the scroll and tucked it back into the hiding place. The hard wooden floor felt cold beneath his bare feet, and his bed beckoned, soft and warm. He hopped across the room and just as he snapped off the light and settled under the comforter, a crash came from beyond his closed door. A thump of something heavy landing on the floor.

  The first thought to flash through his mind was the image of the bogeyman from the drawing come to get him. Hadn’t that thing crossed the headlands moving northerly? Right in this direction. Nick pictured the creature as just beyond, pacing the hallway, readying itself to smash the door and wrest him from the covers. Counting to ten, he steadied himself and waited. A game of hide-and-seek, but when no bony fist turned the knob and no curdling groan was uttered, he realized that his imagination had raced ahead of all reason. He eased his way from under the covers to investigate.

  At the far end of the dark hall, his parents’ bedroom door stood ajar, but no light shone from within, so he tiptoed to the entrance and peeked inside. After his eyes adjusted to the dimness, Nick could make out the general contours of the furniture, the pair of mirrored bureaus, and the king bed with one body curled beneath the blankets. His mother snored quietly in her usual spot. On the far side, the white sheets were twisted and wound like wind-wrecked sails. Nick crept over and saw his father passed out in a heap of limbs on the floor. From the angle of repose, his father looked as if he had no head, and for a moment in the stillness, Nick wondered where it might have gone.

  “Dad?” he whispered in a soft voice, and when the body did not respond, he laid one hand on his father’s shoulder and shook him gently. “Dad, are you all right?”

  His father grumbled something in his sleep but did not respond to his son’s entreaties, so Nick pushed harder with both hands.

  “Whozat? Ah, Nicky. I seemed to have missed the bed.” Whiskey breath, but his clothes smelled like sour milk. Still dressed in his bulky sweater and trousers, he had at least remembered to take off his shoes and socks, for his bare feet shone white in the darkened room. As he tried to stand, he struck a pose that mirrored the man in Jack Peter’s picture, a kind of fishlike crawl from out of the primordial ooze. Nick bent to offer support, and his father used him as a crutch to stand, wobbling and uncertain. “You’re a good boy.”

  Nick helped him back into bed, untangling the sheets as best he could and tucking him in. His mother sighed in her sleep but did not stir. For a long while, he watched them to make sure that in their unconscious states they would not be tossed about by their boozy dreams. On other nights like this, they could be trusted to lie as still as a pair of corpses, but he wanted to be sure his father would not fall out of bed again. He swore to himself, as he had a dozen or more times these past few years, that he would never touch a drop of liquor. They had been better able to handle it when he was younger, but over the past few years their drinking had grown worse. Sometimes they seemed to willingly remove themselves so far from reality as to lose their place in it.

  Gently shutting the door behind him, Nick returned to his own room and eased into bed. Outside the cold wind blew, and the sheets and pillowcases were ice against his bare skin. With a wriggle he wrapped the comforter around his feet to warm them. He knew that he would be awake as long as he was frozen, that he would not be able to get to sleep anytime soon, and a mild panic set in over the lateness of the hour and the prospect of school in the morning.

  “Sleep,” he told himself. “Just go to sleep.”

  But he could not sleep. The man on the road filled his thoughts. Mr. Keenan had stopped short and the car jerked them forward against the restraints of their seat belts. Nick had pretended not to see, but he had seen all. Uncurling like a fern, the man had risen from the ground and stood half hunched in anticipation. In the pale moonlight, his bare skin shone white, and he moved with a wild animal’s hesitancy and sudden alarm. A deer caught by surprise, here and then gone, disappearing into the night. He wondered where the man had run off, for to the east lay bare rock tumbling down to the endless sea. Summer days Nick and Jack Peter had hopped about over that same rough slate, dodging crevasses and tidal pools, but he could not imagine how a barefoot man could make his escape or where he might hide or how he might avoid the dark and freezing waters.

  The room had grown stifling and close with the constant blast of forced air. He flipped over his pillow and laid his head against the cool fabric, reaching back with his free hand to throw off all the covers except for the thin sheet. Blood rushed to his cheeks, and he felt a slick of perspiration pool along the ridge of his spine. Hot as August. The faint aroma of salt water, sunshine on the beach wafted into the room. He could smell fish and the broken bits of crab and lobster shells too long in the heat. The odor of rot made his eyes water, and he sat up in the dark room, wondering where the smell originated. The rank and humid foulness hit him full blast in the face. The bed seemed to totter momentarily, a boat rocking on a wave, before it settled again, and then the wave reached the wall and slid into the closed closet. Something heavy inside bumped against the surface of the door, hard the first time and then softly again. The hangers rattled like metal chains.

  He did not want to get out of bed. The thought of opening the closet frightened him, but the clatter would not stop and the odor intensified with his every breath. Sweat beaded along his brow, and his pajamas clung to his skin like wet napkins. In their bedroom, his parents were out cold. He could call till hoarse, but they would not waken till morning. He knew he would have to face the thing itself. The closet would not let him go.

  Curious and afraid, he put one foot
on the floor as though to test whether it was safe. Tender as a wing, a flutter beat in rhythm on the inside of the closed door. The stench was now awful, fetid and briny. He wished he had just left the door open, so he could see inside without taking a further step, even if that meant, as it sometimes did, that he would have to deal with the amorphous shapes of his clothes tricking him with their ghostly transformations. The scraping from inside the door continued, insistent as a whisper. The heat pressed upon him, palpable as fog. Nick gingerly put his other foot down and crept across the floor, anxious that he might awaken the man inside, or that thing from the road that he was now sure lingered there, ready to pounce as soon as he turned the doorknob. Muttering a prayer, he steadied his nerves and, deciding at the last moment to get it over with quickly, he flung open the door.

  Even in dim light, the blur of white blazed before his eyes. Hung from the closet rod, the two naked bodies, twined together as if bound, swung in the draft he had created. Despite their disfigurement, they were recognizable at once as the corpses of his parents joined together in one final dance. The rotting smell rolled off the corpses, burning his sinuses and lingering in his mouth. Their skin was the color of bone yet waxy, the consistency of soft cheese peeling off in curled ribbons, and when they swirled into view, their crimson faces were bloated, lips blue, noses scarred as though nibbled by fishes, their wet hair flat and plastered along the contours of their skulls. Their mouths hung open and their tongues lolled hideous as eels. Worst of all, their open eyes stared straight at him, sunken in the folds of skin thick as wet dough. A dead look of accusation. They seemed to have been dragged from the bottom of the sea like a pair of large fish hung on a string to dry.

  Nick did not cry out at first, for he could not reconcile the difference between what he was seeing and what his mind knew to be true. Two simultaneous versions of reality from which to choose: the swinging bodies in the closet and the surety that his parents slept not twenty feet away in their own bed, dead drunk to the world, just out of reach. It was the incompatibility of these truths that made him crack, and he screamed, running down the dark hallway to the safety of their room. He kept on screaming until he saw his mother shift beneath the blankets and turn on the small lamp on her crowded night table. In the soft glow, her eyes blinked, bloodshot, and she struggled to sit up against the pillows, fighting the stupor in her mind, and disoriented by the sudden presence of her terrified son.

  “What it is, pet? Did you have a nightmare?” She held out her arms to him.

  He slipped in beside her on the empty space between her and the edge of the mattress. Roping her arms around his shoulders, his mother pulled him toward her.

  “There were bodies in the closet,” Nick said, realizing at once that it could not be so. She was right here. And in there, swinging on a rope next to Dad.

  “Are you sure? Skeletons in the closet.” She laughed to herself despite her best efforts at restraint.

  “You and Dad were drowned.”

  “Drowned? We’re right here.” Her breath smelled of sour wine. She blinked her eyes, fighting sleep, as she tightened her grip around his wrist. He would have stayed there forever had she not nodded off and then suddenly snapped awake, as if she finally remembered who he was. “Still scared? Let’s go see about those bodies in the closet. I’ll bet you anything it’s a couple of coats that just seemed to be something else in the dark.”

  Nick started to object, but his mother had already let go and was forcing him off the edge of the bed with her hip. She reeled in the darkness and flipped on the light in the hallway and then again as they entered his room, mother bold and protective with her son hiding behind her nightgown. He was as intimidated by her speed and confidence as he was frightened of what was behind the closed closet door. Had he closed it when he fled? She did not hesitate to reach for the knob and fling it open. Just as she had promised, nothing inside but his old familiar clothes. They stood together for a while considering its emptiness.

  “See,” she said in a calm and comforting voice, guiding him to his place. “Nothing to fear. We’ll leave it open if you like, but it was just your imagination.”

  Nick climbed back into his bed with a dozen pictures in his head, and as she kissed him good night, he wanted to beg her to stay, at least until he could fall asleep, but he let her go, stumbling back to her room. He turned on the lamp on his nightstand for he knew he could not sleep in the dark.

  vii.

  His bedroom faced the ocean, and in the morning, the rising sun would blaze fire over water and shine through his window. If he had not drawn the curtains the night before, Jack Peter would watch the reflection of the dawn in the bureau mirror on the opposite side of the room. With a rapt devotion, he would study the way the light chased away the dark. Find the pattern, watch how it repeats itself. He would not move until it was over. He tried not to blink until he saw the whole sun. The glass would slowly come to life, changing by degrees nearly imperceptible, but with patience he could distinguish each shade and hue when the pale lavender sky was shot through by the circle of the sun. Soon he could see the long trail of glowing orange run from the horizon to the shore along the smooth surface of the sea and the gentle breaking of the waves along the bottom of the mirror. Then the burning disk would continue its slow ascent, the sky would yellow then blue, and a new day had begun.

  He got out of bed and scurried to his desk. Although the winter sunshine now filled his room, he switched on the lamp to throw a spotlight on his work. Last night’s drawings lay hidden under sheets of virgin white. The stub of a pencil weighed down the papers, and he stared at the blank surface, waiting for an image to appear, some transfer from his mind, and then with the pencil in hand, he carefully drew the first curved line, satisfied that he had at least, at last, started. Within those first few moments, he was free from all exterior distraction and possessed by the flow of lines against the page. A face appeared slowly out of nothing, not a real face, but facelike enough to stand for the thing itself, so that the image on the page became a substitute for the image that had been in his mind.

  He had nearly completed his new picture when the others began to awaken. The alarm clock in his parents’ room disturbed him from his work, and his mother rose from her bed, the box springs creaking, and out slipped a mild curse as she stubbed a toe. She would be in soon to awaken him, after she had made a pit stop in the bathroom, so he had just enough time to put away his drawing, turn off the light, climb back into bed, and pretend to be asleep.

  “Jack,” she called from above, and when he refused to answer, she spoke his name again, careful not to touch him. “Rise and shine. I can’t afford to be late today.”

  With a long and deep moan, he rolled away from her entreaties, so she circled around to the other side and sat on the edge of the bed. He opened his eyes and offered himself to her, remembering yesterday morning he had struck her by accident and wanting to make peace. He pulled her hand to his face, and she caressed his cheek and then brushed his mussed hair with her fingers. “C’mon, Jack, you’ve got to help me out here. Wake up, wake up, buttercup. Time to get out of bed, sleepyhead. We need to get dressed and have some breakfast.” After a few moments of cajoling, she succeeded at last in raising him to a seated position. He pretended to rub the sleep from his eyes.

  Mornings had become a game between the two of them. He would dawdle as long as possible whether actually tired or not, and she would coax as long as patience held out. “Lift your arms,” his mother said, and when he had surrendered, she tugged his pajama top over his head. The cold gave him the shivers and he yearned for his sweater.

  From the direction of his desk came a rattle, and as they turned toward it, they saw the top drawer shake slightly in its slides as though something inside wanted to get out. Her fingers flew to her mouth to trap in her apprehension. They waited, still and quiet, until the scrabbling began again.

  “You’ve got a little visitor, Jack.”

  He hugged himself, hi
s thin, bare arms as pale as his undershirt. “What is it?”

  The drawer jerked lightly on its rails.

  “Sounds like a big mouse.” She smiled and joked, “Or a small rat.”

  Gathering the fabric into a circle, she guided the sweater over his head, and he smiled, as always, once he’d pushed his way through the opening. As he worked his way into the sleeves, Jack Peter asked, “Aren’t you going to see what’s in there?”

  “Are you kidding? I have no intention of opening that drawer. Would scare me half to death, whatever’s in there. I’ll have your father take a look. That’s why I keep him around—to kill spiders and get rid of mice.”

  “But don’t you want to know?”

  “I do not. Now, do you think you can put on your pants by yourself and some socks and shoes and march down to breakfast?”

  He nodded, so she kissed him on the forehead. She lingered a moment at the foot of the bed, regarding him with tenderness and a short smile, and then she was gone. Jack Peter gathered the blankets around his legs and listened to the next part of the morning routine.

  Through his open doorway floated the familiar rhythm of his parents’ fleeting conversation. His mother roused his father from his slumber and readied herself for work. Reminders of the day’s schedule were exchanged, and this morning, words about a mouse in a drawer. She hurried downstairs, poured herself a mug of coffee for the trip to the office, and left, closing the front door with an emphatic click. Some days, after his mother had gone, a brief interval of silence returned to the house, a sure sign that his father had gone back to bed. No such luck today. Down the hall, the pipes rattled and the shower gushed. He had seven minutes before his father would arrive.