The Boy Who Drew Monsters

by Keith Donohue

  “Your son?” she asked.

  “No,” Holly laughed. “That’s Nicholas in the picture, but Jack drew it. That’s his latest thing, one of many portraits, who knows how long it’ll last. He’s taken it up recently and has become something of a fiend for it. I bought him art supplies for Christmas, and he’s nearly gone through the whole sketch pad already. And poor Nicholas. I’m not sure he’s as interested, but that’s all they do. Draw, draw, draw.”

  “He has a certain eye.”

  “You think so? A mother can’t be objective.”

  “You have a lovely home,” she said.

  “Thank you. It’s a work in progress, even after all these years. I’ll give you the grand tour once our tea is ready. Can’t imagine where my husband’s gone off to.”

  Overhead a loud clump on the floor let them know they were not alone after all. Holly hulloed again, and the boys came tumbling downstairs, Nick arriving first and Jack on his heels. They stopped in the threshold at the sight of Miss Tiramaku, wary of her strange presence. From his workroom below came Tim, his arms laden with the day’s laundry, ready for folding, in a green plastic basket.

  “Where have you been hiding?” Holly asked. “This is a friend of mine. Miss Tiramaku, this is my husband, Tim, and the boy with no socks is our son, Jack, and the sensible one is Nicholas Weller.”

  The males waved hello in their dopey shyness. Finding his manners, Tim came over to shake hands properly, but she bowed slightly instead, confusing him, and then they resorted to an awkward exchange of greetings.

  “Where did you two meet?” Tim asked.

  “Out and about,” Holly said.

  “I work for Father Bolden,” Miss Tiramaku spoke over her. “At the Star of the Sea, and I met your wife there. How come I didn’t see you at Mass on Christmas eve?”

  The scowl on his face came and went in an instant, but everyone noticed. “I don’t go to church. I don’t believe in such things. I only believe in what my senses tell me, what is real.”

  “Spiritus est qui vivificat, Mr. Keenan. ‘It is the Spirit which gives us life.’”

  Holly could see that he was growing annoyed, so she changed the subject. “Boys, Miss Tiramaku came all the way from Japan, clear on the other side of the world.”

  “How did you end up all the way in Maine?” Tim asked. “At a Catholic church, no less.”

  “I was an orphan raised by nuns,” she said. “Years later I came here as a young woman, intended for the religious life, but God had other plans for me. I keep house for the priest.”

  The teakettle whistled, and Holly asked if anyone cared to join her in a cup. Tim crossed his arms and slouched against the back of his chair.

  “It’s called tiger tea,” Miss Tiramaku said as she joined the boys at the table. “The secret ingredient is the stripes of a tiger.”

  Jack giggled at her remark, but Nick rolled his eyes. They added teaspoons of sugar and a schlook of milk to their cups. Everyone sat up straight in their chairs, good posture, and Holly smiled to herself when she saw Jack mimic Miss Tiramaku’s grip on the handle, one dainty pinkie sticking out. Tim sulked at the end of the table, nursing his drink.

  “You boys have a good Christmas?” Miss Tiramaku asked. “Santa Claus was generous this year?”

  They nodded. Nick’s face flushed with embarrassment.

  “You are so lucky,” she said. “At Christmastime, there wasn’t too much for all the children in the orphanage. We all got some special treat, a slice of fruitcake and some roast turkey, but only one present, you see—there wasn’t too much money. And all the other girls, they wanted a doll, perhaps, or maybe a teddy bear or something they could hold and carry around like little mothers. But not me. Do you know what I wished for?”

  The boys looked down into their teacups and had no answers.

  “I saw a picture in a magazine about a windup fish. It was a koi, with a tiny key and golden scales and jade eyes. The most magnificent thing ever. So I prayed for it, and told the nuns about it, and would you guess, bless them, there was the windup goldfish for my Christmas gift, and it was as lovely as I had imagined. The special thing was that if you wound the key and put it into the water, the fish would really swim. All through that winter, I would play with the windup fish in a basin, or when they would give us a bath it would circle round the tub, and I never tired of it. Often I dreamt of it at night, swimming in my dreams. When spring came, I took it outdoors. There was a stream behind the orphanage, and one day, I wound it up and put the koi in the water, and it could swim just like a real fish. The most astonishing thing. But then the fish kept going down the stream and I ran beside it, chasing from the banks, but I was not fast enough. It swam out into the river and from the river into the sea and across the sea to America, and though my heart was broken, that is how I knew I would one day end up here in this country.”

  When she had finished her story, Miss Tiramaku folded her hands in front of her atop the table. The boys fidgeted in their seats, freed from the spell.

  “I like to draw,” Jack said.

  “So I hear,” said Miss Tiramaku. “What do you like to draw?”

  “What is in my head.” His right hand began to twitch, as though he could not control the impulse to draw even at this moment.

  Tim tapped a spoon against his teacup. “I think that’s enough, Jip.”

  Miss Tiramaku unfolded her hands and placed one on each side of Jack’s teacup, and in a near whisper, she asked, “What do you imagine in that mind of yours?”

  “Monsters,” said Nick. “He draws monsters.”

  She reached out to still Jack’s hands, and he did not even flinch.

  “Would you mind if I talked alone with your son?” Miss Tiramaku asked. “Somewhere the two of us could have a private chat. Give us the chance to speak frankly. I’ll come get you when we are through. It won’t be long, but I feel certain that Jack wants to say some things, if he could take me into his confidence.” She raised one eyebrow, and Holly took the cue, and pushed Tim and Nick into the living room, shutting the door behind them with a firm click.

  “Why is she here?” He was simmering anger just below the surface. “What are you doing in church, Holly? You mean more than just at Christmas?”

  Holly frowned at him. “I needed to talk with someone. About Jack.”

  “So you went to see a priest without saying anything, and he sent his … minion over here to plant ideas in our son. She kicked me out of the kitchen, my own kitchen.”

  “Would you keep your voice down? They’re right in the next room.”

  He raised his voice. “I will not. What sort of monkey business are you trying to pull, Holly? I don’t approve—”

  “Please don’t shout.”

  “I’m not shouting,” he shouted.

  From the corner of her eye, she could see Nick pretending to inspect the ornaments on the Christmas tree, as if he were oblivious to their conversation, but those boys heard everything, noticed every little detail. Turning her back on her husband, Holly went straight to the stereo cabinet and chose an album from their collection, and then put the record on the old-fashioned turntable and switched it on. The stereo had belonged to her parents, and it was one last link to her childhood and family. The arm swung in motion and dropped the needle precisely in the groove for the first track. “Jingle Bells” by Frank Sinatra. The music was loud enough to drown out their conversation.

  “I don’t like this,” said Tim. His tone had changed, his manner much calmer. “Did you ever see such a creature? That eye. There’s no call to bring in strangers to talk to our son. Especially without my permission.”

  “I don’t need your permission, Tim.”

  “He’s my boy, too.”

  “I’m going out of my mind, and if you won’t do something, I will.”

  Tim perched on the arm of the sofa. “How long has this been going on?”

  “For years,” Holly said. “He’s going to be out of control one day. And
despite what you think, he’s getting worse. Not worse, but more difficult.”

  “I don’t mean Jip. I mean, how long have you been seeing this priest and this voodoo woman? She gives me the creeps.”

  “Just a little while, and you shouldn’t judge people by how they look. Even an oyster hides a pearl.” She uncrossed her arms and leaned on the opposite wing of the sofa. “It’s getting to me, Tim. It all started when I surprised Jack in his sleep. My head is hammering all the time. Noises, tap-tapping, and then you come in a bloody mess, and poor Nicholas comes crying in the middle of the night.”

  Nick looked away, as if embarrassed to be remembered.

  “We’re all on edge, and you have to admit there’s trouble with Jack—”

  “It’s a phase,” he said.

  “Not a phase, Tim. Not another damned chapter, but the whole rest of the story.”

  He looked away from her, and she turned her head in the opposite direction. Cemented in place, just as Nick had seen his own parents so many times, and he began to wonder if this was not part of what it meant to be a grown-up, to reach an impasse in the argument too deep for words. Even for adults. Sinatra kept crooning, and when the songs were over, she flipped the record and they listened to the other side, trapped in the living room by the circumstances of the day.

  When the door opened, the woman, bowed with fatigue, ushered in the boy with a hand on his shoulder. Her face was wilted but she seemed clearly pleased by the conversation. Jack Peter looked the same as ever, a bit tamer perhaps, or calm enough at last to bear the weight of human contact. Mr. and Mrs. Keenan rose from their places, expecting some news from beyond, and they both seemed surprised by the simple presence of their son.

  “We had a good talk,” Miss Tiramaku said. “Didn’t we, Jack?”

  Jack Peter smiled and nodded his head.

  “We’ll have to talk again, if that’s okay with you.”

  “Do you think you can help?” Mrs. Keenan asked.

  There was a moment’s hesitation that stretched and swallowed hope. “Yes,” Miss Tiramaku finally said. “I’ll help.”

  By her side, with the deft motions of his fingers, Jack Peter drew figures in the air.

  iv.

  Tim could no longer remember with any clarity the moment he realized the truth about his son. As first-time parents living on their own far away from any family, how could they be expected to read the signs? Their pediatrician had told them not to worry—each child develops at its own pace, there’s no strict timetable for rolling over or sitting up or vocalizing, no matter what the books might say. The only other baby in their sphere was Nell’s son, Nick, and he wasn’t exactly a prodigy but more or less the same, so what could Tim be expected to know? They eat, they cry, they sleep. They need their diapers to be changed. One day they seem to recognize you, respond to the sound of your voice. They coo, they drool, they smile. They work as designed. The way they are meant to work. Until they don’t.

  And then the experts tell you the truth. The doctors, all supremely diffident even when they mean to convey empathy and good bedside manners, they tell you something is not right with your son, and your wife goes to pieces, and you tell yourself that he can be fixed. Everything broken can be made whole again. Bit by bit, day by day, measured in minor victories, Jip could be restored. Faith and hard work will make it so, and then suddenly she says, no, he’s getting worse, if such a thing is possible. She doesn’t know, she doesn’t know what a father can do. No need for priests and one-eyed witches and their hocus-pocus.

  Ever the good host, Tim saw Miss Tiramaku to the door, said the obligatory “so nice to meet you,” and then watched with relief as Holly drove her back to the rectory. The boys, too, seemed glad to see her go and to have a measure of the old order restored. From the front window, they watched the car drive away, but Tim could detect no signs upon their faces, no hints that they had been spellbound.

  Holly must have passed the police car on the road heading in the opposite direction, for no more than five minutes elapsed between her departure and the arrival of the big cruiser in the Keenans’ driveway. Across the street, the Quigleys’ dog barked madly at the man in uniform. The boys drew up at the sight of the policeman, exiting the car, zipping his jacket against the cold, and by habit checking in all directions for some danger. In the gray wash of the winter’s day, his sunglasses seemed fairly ridiculous, a stab at authority and menace but out of place on such a youthful face. With a few brisk steps, he was at the front door. The boys swung around as smartly as soldiers and stood at attention. Officer Pollock saluted them when he came in and flashed his baby-toothed smile when they returned the salute. He shook hands with Tim and then removed his hat, holding it in his hand.

  “You just missed my wife, she’ll be sorry. But if you’ve come about the bones, you’re too late,” Tim said. “We’ve lost the hole, too, I’m afraid.”

  “Ah, right. The bone.” The young policeman looked baffled. “What do you mean, lost the hole?”

  “That’s just it. The hole was gone the next morning. Completely vanished.”

  “That’s a head-scratcher. Maybe the wind filled it in, or the tide came up farther than we thought. But I didn’t come about the bone. Haven’t had the chance yet to send it to the lab. I came about your monster. I’ve got the DB in the back of my rig.”

  “DB?” Tim asked.

  “Dead body.”

  The boys rushed to the window to spy on whatever might be in the squad car.

  “You’ve got a monster in there?” Jack Peter asked.

  Pollock shifted his weight and slid a thumb into the waistband of his trousers. “Remember how we thought there might be a wild thing roaming around these parts? Well, Mr. Keenan, you weren’t too far off. We’ve found it. It’s in the trunk. If the boys want to come out and see it with you, they can.”

  “My son never leaves the house.”

  “Ah, right. I’d forget my head sometimes. Then you and the other boy come out and have a look-see.”

  Bundled in their coats, Tim and Nick followed Officer Pollock into the yard, stranding Jip like a jailbird in a glass cage. Thick clouds gathered in the west, full of long-promised snow, and Tim’s joints and spine ached with the moist threat of it. In the driveway, the car sat like a cold metal sarcophagus, and as they made their way back to the trunk, Tim couldn’t help but tingle with fear. Suppose the policeman had found the white man and now had bound the creature and stowed it in the back for safekeeping? An image flashed in his mind, the thing that had attacked him on the beach. He could picture the constrained wildness, snarling and straining against the rope at its wrists and ankles, the awful nakedness of the creature, its dead fish smell, its tangled hair and beard, the rotting teeth and filthy nails. Its fearsome prospect thrilled him as well, for he could at last prove that he had not hallucinated and willed the thing into being. He was doubly glad to have Nick along with him as a witness.

  “It was frozen when I found it,” Officer Pollock said. “Probably been dead overnight.” He fumbled for the keys to the trunk, and then motioned for them both to stand back, as though he did not believe his own words. They retreated a step and craned their necks to see what might be inside.

  The first glimpse of white nearly stopped Tim’s heart, but when the fullness of the color and its nature became apparent, he had to stifle a laugh, despite himself. It was a dead dog, a big white German shepherd curled into a sleeping position, the black nails on its paws ragged and broken, its great pink tongue lolling between two rows of sharp teeth. Lying on a piece of old tarp, the dead body took up virtually the entire space. Were it not for the open eyes, the corpse might be mistaken for merely resting. Nick leaned in close and reached out with tentative fingers, caught between the desire to prove the dogness and revulsion over its deadness.

  “Here’s your monster, Mr. Keenan. Found it on the road near the tree line on Mercy.” He took the muzzle in hand and turned the head so a large red contusion could be se
en. “Blunt object, if you ask me. Bumper of a car, poor thing, and then it must’ve wandered off to die. But take a good look, Mr. Keenan, that there is bigger than any coyote, big as a wolf. A great white wolf—that explains a lot, I expect.”

  “Are you sure it’s dead?” Nick asked.

  “Sure as sure can be,” he said. “I had to kinda fold it to get it into the trunk, so you better believe it would have bit me if it had breath. No tags, no collar, who knows how long it was out there, terrifying the public. I guess that’s what you seen, Mr. Keenan. What dug your hole and found that bone. I guess that’s what’s been running round these parts.”

  Nick brushed his hands through the dead dog’s fur. The hairs bristled at odd angles, and the body was as cold as a tombstone.

  “That’s not it,” said Mr. Keenan. He turned his back on the car and caressed the wounds on his neck. “That’s not what I saw, sorry to say. Or at least, I don’t think so. What I saw was big as a man. That’s quite a large dog, but still—”

  “You sure you don’t want another look? If the evidence points in one direction, it’s hard not to trust what’s right in front of your eyes. You said there was something wild roaming about, and I find you a wild thing. Pretty much locks down the case.”

  They stood for a while considering the dead animal, like uncertain mourners at a funeral. Nick poked at the corpse as though attempting to get it to move or bark or growl.

  “A man,” Mr. Keenan began, but then he cut himself short and just smiled at the trooper. “Could be,” he finally said. “You could be right. Maybe it was just a big white wolf-dog all along. Thanks so much for taking the trouble to bring it by.”

  “Knew you and your wife had been concerned.”

  “She’ll be sorry she missed you.”