The Boy Who Drew Monsters

by Keith Donohue

  Dominating the space, the Porthleven seemed to rock gently in its frame. In those last few moments before the ship broke apart, the men and women on board must have realized their fate. Purcell and the sailor did their bravest to keep her afloat, and the Rev. Vingoe led the others in prayer, but they all knew, they knew, they had no hope. The water rushes over us and we are drowned. There were no people visible in the painting, just the storm-tossed boat, the black clouds, and the frothing sea. They would have gone into freezing shock, breathed in, and it was all over, she hoped, with no more struggle. Or they would hear their own muffled heartbeats as they held their breath underwater, fighting to survive.

  Miss Tiramaku glided into the room and handed her a small package in red gift wrap. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Thank you,” Holly said and sat, dumbfounded, at the table. With a child’s curiosity, she ripped at the pretty paper and found a pressed block of dried leaves in a cellophane wrapper. Inscrutable kanji decorated one side. Putting the brick under her nose, she inhaled deeply, detecting a hint of anise, a suggestion of tea.

  “You’re not going to get me into trouble with the police, are you? No controlled substances involved?”

  Hiding her smile with her hand, Miss Tiramaku giggled. “A special tea. A little licorice and gingko and other secret ingredients. For anxiety. Completely harmless,” she said. “But you never know, it might work. Or perhaps you would like to try acupuncture. I know a man in Portland.”

  “It was very kind of you to think of me.”

  Miss Tiramaku dismissed the gesture. “For when you are stressed. You can even drink it at night. No caffeine.”

  “That’s a good thing. I can’t seem to sleep as it is.” Holly toyed with the ribbon from the package. “I should apologize for the other day when we first met. I was upset before you had even shown up. I’m sorry if I came across as frightened of you. How rude that was of me.”

  “Even the oyster hides a pearl.”

  “Ancient saying?”

  “No, it’s from a commercial,” Miss Tiramaku smiled. “I was planning to come see you. About your boy.”

  “What do you know about my son?”

  “Not much, in particular, just what I hear. I’ve been working at Star of the Sea for nearly twenty years. Father and I are like an old married couple. No secrets. Don’t get me wrong, he didn’t break a confidence. I figured it out in hints and pieces. Besides, this is a small, small town. Everybody knows at least the outlines of everybody’s business, particularly when you work in a rectory. It’s like the village green, only inside, where it’s warm.”

  “What do you know? What do people say about him?”

  “That he is a special child. A boy trapped inside his own mind.”

  Holly slid her hand from her lap and drummed her nails on the tabletop. Inside boy.

  “You mustn’t worry about what the others say. He is your boy.”

  A tear crept to her eye. Holly wiped it with one finger, determined not to cry. They sat for a while, finding their way back to equanimity.

  “I have a confession to make,” Miss Tiramaku said. “My parents died when I was quite young, and I went to live in an orphanage run by the nuns. Too old for adoption, everyone wants a baby. But I was also considered a bit too odd. Lost in the clouds of my own mind. They didn’t say Asperger’s syndrome in those days. This was almost sixty years ago, you understand. The diagnosis was much more pointed, and the treatment severe, but it made no difference for me. No psychiatrists ever came to the orphanage. I was just a special case, a little girl apart from all the other little girls. I kept to myself, stuck in my mind. Truth be told, I was a difficult child, but, praise the Lord, the nuns did what they could for me.”

  Holly cradled the gift in her lap.

  “Don’t be sorry, my dear. That was a long time ago, and look at me now. I’ve found a place in the world. Here with Father.”

  “Nobody understands Jack,” Holly said. “He’s what they call high functioning, but that’s misleading, isn’t it? It was hard enough before he developed his fear of the outdoors. And lately, he’s been even harder to reach. Just the other morning, I went to wake him, barely laid a hand on his shoulder, and he woke up in a terror and hit me.”

  “You may have knocked on a door that he thought he had shut.”

  “Nobody knows what it is like.”

  “I do,” Miss Tiramaku said. “Maybe that’s what drew you here. I’d like to meet him. Your son. That’s partly why the gift of the tea. A little ruse. Father Bolden was going to drive me over this evening.”

  The brick of tea atop the wrapping paper looked like an altar. Holly smiled at the deception. “I’ll take you now if you like, and you can meet Jack. And then I can run you back, it’s not far.”

  Miss Tiramaku stood at once. “Let’s go.”

  On the drive, they chatted about her life in the rectory, the pastor’s quirks and quiddities, and how they had both arrived in Maine from faraway places. How he took her in, gave her a job and a place to stay, and how they grew closer over the years. When the ocean came into view along Shore Road, Miss Tiramaku asked if they might stop for a while. Holly pulled over into the verge and left the engine idling. From their vantage point they could see a wide swath of the Atlantic, the breakers rolling white cotton across the gray sea.

  “I never tire of this view,” Miss Tiramaku said. “Sometimes I think that people born on islands are never completely content without the smell and sound of the ocean.”

  “I love it,” Holly said. “We settled here—in our dream house—just before Jack was born. Though I still feel as if I’m an outsider to a degree, never completely accepted by the locals.”

  “We are not from heah. We’re from away.”

  Holly laughed at the localism. “Outsiders. We could live here for a hundred years and still be from away. It’s like a secret society all its own.”

  On the silvery water, the wooden ship bobbed along, sails full, the sailors on deck in their antique costumes manning the lines and skipping up the rigging, Captain Purcell hollering orders from behind the wheel. A woman made her way from aft to stern, holding the rail to keep her balance, a small boy in tow. Doomed, they went about their tasks unaware of their fate. Holly would save them if she could, even knowing that the ship, the crew, the woman and her son, and all the other passengers were but a moment’s hallucination. She was drawn to them, pulled by the vacuum of their sinking. In the seat next to her, Miss Tiramaku stared vacantly at the same distant spot.

  Holly reached into her bag and pulled out her notes. “When I first came to Father Bolden, he told me the story of that painting in your dining room. The Wreck of the Porthleven. Ever since, I can’t shake the image of those poor drowning people. They were outsiders, too, looking for a new start, only to come to a bad end. So this morning, I went to the Maritime Museum to research the story, and I found a list of the dead.”

  Flipping through the pages, she handed over her notes of the ship’s manifest. “People on the shore came to take those who washed up from the sea. But some bodies were never found.” Holly pointed in the direction of where she imagined the phantom ship. “I think I may have heard them out there. Voices on Christmas eve. And I’ve been hearing other things banging and knocking, and cries on the water, late at night.”

  “You poor thing.” Miss Tiramaku turned to face her. “You may have heard the funa-yurei.”

  “Tell me more about these ghosts,” Holly said. “These yurei.”

  “Father would not want me to say.”

  “Father would not have to know.”

  In a near whisper, Miss Tiramaku told her tale. “I saw the first ones when I was a little girl in the orphanage. We slept in a ward, perhaps twelve of us, and the nuns told us we must stay in our beds after lights-out, but in the small hours of the morning, I had to go to the toilet. To wet the bed was a great shame, so I crept out in the dark, careful not to wake my sister orphans, and made my way by feel along the
wall. I noticed a strange light at the far end of the hallway, and curiosity pulled me. Floating in the air in the corner were two girls, twin sisters maybe five or six years old, with bright red faces and bobbed black hair like my own. ‘What are you doing out of bed, little princess?’ one of them said, and I knew at once who they were.”

  A gust of wind rocked the car, making them laugh nervously.

  “They were the murdered children of the woman who owned the house before the church bought it to make the orphanage. The mother had strangled them in their sleep and then drowned herself in a small stream that runs along the property. All the orphans knew the legend, but as far as I know I was the only one to see the ghost children.”

  “What did you do?” Holly asked.

  “I ran away and hid beneath the covers, for I was frightened. But I would see them all the time, and they would talk to me in my sleep, and sometimes I saw their footprints in the ashes from the fireplace. It gave me the idea to have a funeral. I made two dolls that look just like them and burned the effigies in the fire with six coins to send them on their journey. And the yurei departed.”

  “Six coins?” Holly asked.

  “For the River of Three Crossings, from this world to the next. But there are many kinds of yurei, Holly.” She had the faraway look Jack sometimes had, blank and distant. “The funa-yurei are ghosts of those who died at sea, and they are horrible creatures who want to bring the living under the water with them. Sometimes they appear as flames; and sometimes they are men with horrid faces, floating through the air above the waves saying ‘bring me a hishaku,’ and when they are given a ladle, they fill the victim’s boat with seawater.”

  “Good God,” Holly said, and Miss Tiramaku chided her with a wagging finger.

  “You mustn’t tell Father about the spirits,” she said. “He doesn’t believe.”

  Holly put the car into gear, grabbed hold of the steering wheel, and eased onto the road. “We should get going. Maybe I could use a cup of your tea, and you can meet that boy of mine. And his little friend.”

  “He has a friend?”

  “Nicholas Weller. The neighbor boy we’re watching. His parents went off on a cruise for a week. Second honeymoon, a chance to start over. Nicholas is really Jack’s only friend, and we’re lucky to have him. They’ve known each other since they were babies.”

  “A friend,” Miss Tiramaku said, the astonishment in her voice resounding the rest of the way.

  iii.

  The morning after he had seen the babies on the wall, Nick made sure to wake up earlier than Jack Peter. Moaning quietly to himself, he tiptoed over to the desk to see the drawings from the night before. Even in the blue light of early morning, all of the pages on the desk were blank as new snow. Nothing upon nothing, but Nick clearly remembered Jack Peter hunched over the page, furious pencil in hand. The drawings had to be there still. Hidden somewhere. Quietly he opened the desk drawer, but there were only a few clean sheets of paper.

  A small trash basket sat on the floor next to the toy box, and in it, curled like a nest of snakes, were strips of torn paper. He gathered the pieces into a loose ball and looked for a place to stash the evidence till he had time and light enough to inspect what Jack Peter had drawn and destroyed. From the bed, his friend grumbled in his sleep. Nick shoved the scraps into the pocket of his robe hanging by the door, and then sneaked back beneath the covers to wait for a more natural waking hour.

  At nine o’clock Mr. Keenan came in and threw open the drapes. In came the brilliant sun, its light bouncing off the mirror, doubling the brightness inside. Disoriented, the boys woke slowly. “Rise and shine,” he encouraged them. “Don’t let the whole day slip away.” Just as soon as they had vacated the bed, he stripped the sheets and pillowcases for the wash. He was about to toss Nick’s bathrobe in the basket of clothes when the boy cried that he needed the robe because it was so cold.

  “You’re getting soft in your old age, Nick.”

  “That’s because I’ve been stuck inside.” He wrapped himself in the terry cloth and knotted the belt. “Would it be okay if I went out for a bit today, took a walk after breakfast?”

  Mr. Keenan went to the window to check on the weather. The morning was clear and bright, and nothing lurked on the beach. He pressed his hand against the cold glass. “Bundle up, if you go, and don’t be gone too long. But first have some breakfast. Pumpkin waffles on the griddle.”

  A short time later, a fully stuffed Nick Weller excused himself from the table, leaving Jack Peter in the middle of a short stack of waffles, and hurried upstairs to change clothes in the privacy of the bedroom. He fished the scraps of paper from his robe and crammed the lot into a front pocket of his jeans. Careful not to rustle as he walked, he returned downstairs in search of his coat and gloves and watch cap. Mr. Keenan was at the kitchen sink, washing the sticky dishes, and Jack Peter sawed through his last waffle, all the time watching Nick prepare to leave. With his little finger, he chased and cornered a bead of maple syrup and stuck it in his mouth, and his words came out garbled. “Whey youf going?”

  “Just out,” Nick said. “A little fresh air. Maybe I’ll walk to Mercy Point and back.”

  “Mebbe I’ll go wif you.”

  “Ha-ha, very funny,” he said. “I won’t be long. Maybe when I get back, we can do something different today.”

  “We can always draw.”

  “I’m tired of monsters.”

  Jack Peter picked up a strip of bacon and munched it like a bone.

  From the mudroom, Nick heard the Quigleys’ dog barking, so he made his way quickly around the house and climbed the hillock to the safety of the ocean and the beach. Colder air blew off the water, and he considered for a moment just hunkering down on the spot and looking at the clues, but he feared Mr. Keenan might wander about and accidentally catch him. As he walked away from the house, Nick kept glancing over his shoulder at the back facade, now drenched in sunshine. The windows of Jack Peter’s room shone like great eyeglasses, and he could picture himself with his head through the opening of one of the lenses and seeing those terrible infants swarm all over the walls. The memory gave him the willies, and he resolved to put some distance between himself and the house.

  Not another soul on the beach as far as he could see, and he inhaled and savored the lonesome feeling. Since he had arrived at the Keenans’, he had not been alone except for stolen interludes in the bathroom, and wherever else he went there was always someone not far away. At home he might go hours without seeing his mom or dad. No, Mr. and Mrs. Keenan seemed to be hovering, ready with the next meal or popcorn in front of the television set. And Jack Peter was incessantly following him like a puppy that couldn’t be shaken. Not that he was particularly demanding, but all the more bothersome for his dumb attentiveness. His friend seemed unable to abide being alone, as though he had saved up years of solitude and was now cashing in on Nick’s company. Even when they were doing nothing or sleeping or drawing those stupid pictures, Jack Peter was suffocating him. It felt good to be away from that particular burden.

  Bound by his thoughts, Nick did not realize how far he had traveled till he looked back and saw the sloping roof of the Keenans’ house. He rightly figured that if he could not see them, they could not see him either. Looking for a windbreak, he walked further and found a trio of pines rooted in a fissure. Beneath the boughs, he crouched and dug out the scraps from his pocket. The spot was calm, but he made sure to weigh down each strip with a little stick or pinecone or piece of shell. He spent a good twenty minutes figuring out the jigsaw puzzle, and he would have been done sooner had not the images bothered him so.

  Jack Peter had drawn the babies.

  They were as horrible as he remembered, the distorted faces and limbs, the pale misshapen bodies, the lizardlike way they clung to the walls. The torn paper halved some of the images, while others escaped from the page entirely. He had drawn them before they showed up, and then he had ripped the drawing to shreds after they fled
. Why? When could he have possibly seen them? Why would he not wake up when they threatened to climb into the room?

  Nick gathered the ribbons of paper and shoved them in his pocket. I won’t go back, he said to himself. I can’t. If he just kept walking, he eventually could reach his own house, break a window, and hide out until his parents came back. But that would be the first place the Keenans would check. He could hide elsewhere, not outdoors, he’d never survive the cold, but in one of the vacation homes boarded up for the winter, it wouldn’t be too hard for a few days. The Mackintosh place was nearby, and he could make it there before anyone came looking for him. If someone stumbled upon him, Nick would say he was running away from a haunted house. But he knew that the Keenans would only come searching or call the cops. He could picture Mrs. Keenan worrying, frantic in the kitchen, and could feel how safe he had been in her embrace. She would know what to do, he decided. She would know what the picture meant. Hitching up his pants, he headed back to the house.

  As he climbed the last rocks before reaching the Keenans’ waterfront, Nick noticed a soft spot in the sand, a mound just big enough to hide a body or two. He guessed the bone had been found there, and he could picture the whole skeleton at the bottom of the grave. The grinning skull, the birdcage ribs, the long leg bones, and the arm missing its radius. Nick ran the final forty yards to a safer place beneath the deck. Overturned and resting in the sand, a little wooden boat tempted him with a means of escape, but the hull would not budge. He screwed up his courage and went inside. For the rest of the morning, they circled each other, wary as two bears, Jack Peter suspicious and resentful that his friend had left him and Nick paranoid about the games his friend was playing. Mr. Keenan flitted around the edge, cleaning house and looking in on them, vaguely aware of the tension between the boys.

  * * *

  No one greeted them when they entered the house. She hung their coats by the door and called out that she was home, but no one answered. They went through the living room and into the kitchen, where Holly put the kettle on. Miss Tiramaku took a turn around the room, stopping at the refrigerator to admire Jack’s drawing affixed to the door with four magnets.