The Boy Who Drew Monsters

by Keith Donohue

  Across the street, in the parlor window of the Quigleys’ house, the curtains parted and suddenly closed. How strange to have someone home in the middle of the day, but of course, the children were on Christmas break. Perhaps they had witnessed the white man, too. Tim turned his collar against the wind and walked over to the neighbors’. Behind the front door, their dog barked madly. He listened for the approach of someone coming to calm him. Staring him in the face was a brass door knocker in the shape of a humpback’s fluke, covered in a pale green patina and pitted with salt. Three knocks until one of the twins answered through a crack no wider than her face. She kept the dog at bay with one firm leg against its chest.

  “Howdy,” he said to the child.

  “Nobody’s home,” she said. “My mother went out.”

  “That’s okay.” He could not remember which one of the identicals she was. They were two halves of the same peach. Without expression, she simply waited for him to continue. “Did you see anything strange go by just now? Something as big as a man?”

  She shook her head and started to close the door. Slick as a salesman, he stuck his foot in the opening. “Wait, let me at least have my guess this time. I’d say Edie, is that right?”

  “No,” the girl said. “It’s Janie.”

  “Ah, you’re right. I should have known by your obvious charm and intelligence. Tell me, Janie, were you just peeking through the curtains?”

  A guilty smile spread from ear to ear. “No.”

  “In that case, you better fetch me Miss Edie.”

  The head disappeared, and the collie stepped into the void, sniffing him in the crotch. Tim pushed away the sharp muzzle, and then both twins appeared side by side on the threshold. “Hello, Edie. I’ve just come over to ask you girls a question.”

  They stared at him, through him, waiting.

  “Have either of you seen a man running around the neighborhood? A tall man, with white bare skin, with long hair and a tangled beard? I thought maybe one of you was spying from behind the curtains.”

  The girls stiffened slightly and inched closer to each other.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you. I could be all wrong, just my imagination.”

  The twins shook their heads in matching rhythm.

  “Nothing strange at all?”

  Edie wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “We saw the police come to your house on Christmas.”

  “That? It was about something we found on our beach, is all.”

  Janie wiped her nose as well. “Did they arrest him and take him away?”

  Tim bent down so his face was on their level. “Arrest who?”

  “Jack Peter,” they said, and the certainty in their voices took him aback.

  “Whatever gave you the idea that the police would come for my son?”

  Each girl chewed on the inside of her cheek, one left one right, mirroring her twin. They stared past him to the house, where the two boys were playing.

  “Our mother isn’t home,” Edie said. “And we aren’t supposed to open the door for anybody no matter what.” Janie closed it in his face.

  One hard kick and the lock would break. Or at the very least, he could hammer with his fists until they opened up and answered his questions. Instead, he retreated without complaint, wondering the whole time what they must think about Jip. “Weird kids,” he muttered, exhaling each word in a cloud of condensation. In the few minutes he had been outside, the temperature had dropped by several degrees. Cold air from Canada rushed in, and if the weather folk were right, conditions were ripe for a nor’easter. Batten down the hatches, and, Lord, it was freezing. He walked out into the yard, wondering if he should try to track the white man. The wound at his throat throbbed, and he remembered the last time he had given chase. Besides, the thing was long gone, no doubt racing over the headlands or in some rocky hiding place. What kind of creature had come crouching from his dreams? Bone cruncher, throat slasher, nightmare vision.

  Back inside his own house, Tim called upstairs to the boys, and Jip answered as if nothing had happened. Safe, in any case. He flipped through the pages in Holly’s ghost files. Bodies not found. Sailor (stranger). Perhaps she was right after all. Had some phantoms risen from the bones of a ship? Impossible.

  The central heat cycled off and the blowers stopped, and within minutes, it was chilly enough inside for him to need an afghan to wrap round his shoulders. With a cup of coffee in hand, he nested in an armchair, staring through the window for signs of the white man prowling around outside. He brooded over the Quigley twins and their dark suspicions. Children had always found Jip strange, and they could be such emotional thugs. Even when Jip was just a little boy, the others chastised or shunned him, and Tim still remembered picking him up from his first day of nursery school to find him scowling and alone in a corner. As he grew older, kids called him retarded or stupid or crazy. No wonder he withdrew, no wonder he angered so easily.

  Adults were no better, and in certain aspects, they were much worse than children. At least children had an excuse for the most blatant stares and finger-pointing, but catch an adult gawking at your child, and they would pretend to have not looked in the first place. But he knew. Questions were just on their lips: What is wrong with him? Why does he act that way? Strangers were bad, and friends could be unintentionally hurtful. Summers Jip used to join Tim on his rounds of the rental properties, back in the days when his son could still bear to be outdoors. Most of the annual vacationers or the owners of the grand houses would be too busy having their fun to pay much attention to such a quiet little boy. But some remembered him even when he no longer tagged along. The Schroeders, who had always offered lemonade, would make a point of saying “Tell your son hello.” Jeff Hook at the barbershop would often ask, “What happened to that boy of yours?”

  What happened, what happened?

  He drew the thick blanket round his shoulders and leaned his head on the wing of his chair. Against the chill in the room, he felt warm and drowsy. For just a minute, he closed his eyes. Just a catnap. His coffee went cold.

  * * *

  Young again, the four of them, before the boys, before the nightmare years. The last September before the girls were expecting, right before the nine-month watch began. The summer people had gone away, the rows of cars parked bumper-to-bumper along the seaward lane, the French Canadians with their canvas rolling carts and beach umbrellas took their sandals and sun hats back to Montreal and Quebec. The millionaires returned to work in New York and Boston, making money once again. Gone the college kids on their endless breaks, the hordes of temporary workers at the beach bodegas and lobster shacks. All cleared out. An Indian summer Saturday upon them, bright and clear September, and it was just the four of them at the Wellers’ home, Tim and Holly, Fred and Nell. Still new and fresh to one another, late twenties and free of care.

  The red shells and splintered claws were strewn on dirty dishes like bones in a boneyard. Remains of a salad wilted in a wooden bowl. Empty wineglasses stood tall in ranks of red and white, here and there puddled with the dregs, one comrade toppled on its side, the merlot stain spread like blood on the tablecloth. A pinched roach had been extinguished in a saucer of drawn butter. They had started early that afternoon, firing up another couple of joints on the sun-drenched deck, the glorious feast at dusk, and after the food and wine, a cold dip in the ocean under a full moon. And then back for more wine, another smoke, and Fred fell asleep outside on a chaise longue wrapped in a beach towel against the chill. Around midnight, Holly curled up on a settee in the Wellers’ living room till she, too, was lost in deep slumber. The windows were open to the sound of the lapping waves. Another bottle of wine uncorked, another pair of wineglasses in the low light of the dining room. From his chair, Tim watched Nell glide across the floor, her sheer wrap parting along the seam at one tan thigh.

  “Happy?” she asked. Her smile anticipated his reply.

  “Delirious,” he said. “Stupendous, wonderful.”

&
nbsp; “What makes you so wonderful, Mr. Keenan?”

  With a grand sweep of his arm, he took in the whole room and the outside world beyond. “Good food, good drink, good company. A splendid end to summer.”

  She stood before him, the wine in her tipped glass rolling like a wave. “I thought it might be me, Mr. Keenan, that made you happy tonight.”

  Looking up from his chair, he studied her face, realizing at last that she was playing, flirting with him. “Yes, you, too. I’m always happy when you’re around.”

  Her wrap came undone, exposing the red and blue of her swimsuit. She laughed. “You’ve been staring at my tits all evening, Mr. Keenan.”

  “They are magnificent,” he said and drained his glass. “You are magnificent.”

  In an instant her expression changed from smiling to sober, her eyes catching the light from the overhead lamp as she drew near. Close enough to smell the ocean on her skin, she stood above him and leaned forward, trapping him with her hands wrapped around the arms of the chair. He made no escape but sat quite still, his breathing matching hers.

  “There was a wicked man,” she said, “who had a wicked thought.” She laid her hand against his bare chest and drew one fingernail down his breastbone. When she kissed him, her mouth tasted of smoke and butter, and he reached his hands beneath the fabric of her cover-up. She turned her wrist and slid her hand under the waistband of his trunks, and with the pad of her thumb she rubbed the tip of his erect penis. His hands wandered to the bottom of her bikini, sliding it quickly to the floor, and she stepped out of it, kissing him deeply. With a practiced shift, she rolled his swimsuit from his lap and straddled him in the chair. It all happened so quickly, punctuated by her faint moans, and he drank her in, the softness of the skin at her nape, the way her hair fell and covered his face.

  “But Fred. And Holly—”

  With one finger against his lips, she hushed him. “Our little secret,” she said, each word accompanied by the roll of her hips. When they were finished, she kissed him on the forehead, and he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, she was dressed, and glancing back once at the spent man in the chair, Nell sauntered away on bare feet and went through the patio doors to check on her husband asleep under the stars. Inside, Tim watched them from behind the transparent doors, bodies by the ocean, trapped in his own dark reflection.

  vi.

  As she left the house early that morning, Holly felt a surge of relief, as if going to the office would prove a distraction to the weirdness of the past few days. The timebomb in her head, the jangled nerves. Priests and ghosts and haunted ships, the voices in the night. She was glad of the mundane pleasures of the job during Christmas week. It was quiet there, and she was alone except for Becker at the front desk, but even boredom has its limits. At three o’clock, she decided to go home, dawdled on the Internet, searching for ghost ships. The afternoon was nearly over when she packed her briefcase and stepped out into the deserted street.

  Wind pushed around her car, and she had to lean forward and keep both hands on the steering wheel to maintain control. The sky was gray and thick with low clouds, and the sea had turned a dull pewter. In the wooden belly of the Porthleven, Fred and Nell saw the water breach the seams between the boards. At first, the leak spread slowly, a dribble through the cracks, and then one by one jets sprang free and sprayed the room. Then like a burst dam, a huge hole opened and in gushed the ocean, soaking the floor, and they began to panic, wading through the cold dark water, rising quickly to their ankles, over their knees. Serves her right, for seducing Tim and nearly ruining her marriage. And poor, poor Fred. But Nell and Fred were not out there. They were on the decks of some mammoth cruise ship, basking in sunshine, sipping brightly colored cocktails with tiny paper umbrellas. Away from it all—what Holly wouldn’t give to be away from it all.

  The infernal dream house loomed as she turned the corner. She parked in the driveway and waited, resting her head against the top of the steering wheel and closing her eyes for just a minute. Her pulse beat as steady as a clock. If the wind had not been buffeting the car, she might have catnapped, but as it was, a chill slipped in, and she was soon too frozen for one more stolen moment.

  Stepping inside, she thought at first that nobody was home, and the place was an icebox, as though the boys had left open a window again. Hidden beside the Christmas tree, Tim slept sitting up in his easy chair. She leaned over and touched his knee. Tim’s eyes popped open in terror, and he cowered under the blanket.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Her husband was still blinking and searching for his bearings as the boys came charging down the stairs. They were soaking. Jack Peter’s hair was plastered against his scalp and Nick was as wet as a drowned kitten. Their shirtsleeves were damp to the elbows and their trousers were sodden from their socks to their knees. “Tim, what happened to the boys?”

  “What happened, what happened?”

  “The house is freezing, and the boys probably have pneumonia.” Holly went to the coat closet and fetched a pair of blankets. “C’mere, honey,” she said to Nick. “How did you get so wet?”

  He trembled. “The walls.”

  “What walls?” Tim asked.

  “It’s like they were bleeding water. The walls in Jack Peter’s room.”

  For a man half-awake, Tim raced quickly up the stairs, trailing a string of curses.

  “Let’s get you out of these clothes,” Holly said, and then turned her back to give them the blush of privacy.

  The boys struggled free of their shirts and pants, the wet fabric sticking to their skin. Both were pale and thin, shoulder blades sharp as fins. They wrapped blankets across their shoulders, marching up the steps ahead of her. Grousing about the cold, they entered Jack Peter’s bedroom and found Tim standing in front of the wall, dumbfounded by what he had discovered.

  There was no flood on the second floor, no puddles of standing water, and no broken pipes from the bathroom down the hall that had leaked into the bedrooms. At first, Holly could not discern any difference at all in the room, except for its irrefutable coldness. The boys hopped to the relative warmth of the bed and rolled themselves under the quilt. Holly blew out clouds of her breath, which vanished in thin wisps. Ice had formed on the inside of the windows, fractal patterns etched on the glass. With her thumbnail, she scratched the surface to gauge the thickness of the frost, as deep as glazing on a cake. Scanning the room, she could not find any opening for the cold, and the iced window reminded her of her childhood home and the winters there in the unheated upstairs bedrooms. Overnight anything damp would freeze over until Daddy got the woodstove going in the kitchen. But in all the years they had lived in the dream house, she had never seen ice form on the inside of the windows.

  Tim studied the walls, running his fingers across the plane as if tracing the lines in a drawing, and only when she stood beside him and aped the tilt of his head could Holly see what he had divined. In the paint ran a raised design, a water stain, but dry to the touch. With the palms of their hands, they rubbed against the marks on the wall, which left a powdery residue on their skin.

  “Feels like sand,” Tim said.

  “Salt.” She licked her fingertips. “Salt water.”

  He smoothed out a fragment of the stain and then inspected the dust on his hand. The watermark spread in all directions from the ceiling to the floor. On the edge of the trim and the bit of wooden floor beneath the desk and dresser, the bookcase and the toy box, traces of salt remained. He toed the rug and dried flakes rose and dissipated. “How in the world did salt water get up into this room?”

  “Boys, put on some dry clothes and tell us what happened.”

  When the shock of the cold hit them, they hollered and danced across the floor, their bare skin mottled red and blue, and just as quickly, they dashed into fresh clothes, luxuriating in the warmth of thick socks and corduroys and the bulk of wool sweaters. Tim measured the breadth of the damage, feeling
his way along the wall. He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he calculated the meager possibilities of cause and remedy. After she had helped her son dress, Holly sat on the bed and took each boy by an arm and pulled them to her. “Tell me.”

  “It still seems like a dream,” said Nick. “Jack Peter was over there by the window, and I was on the floor. All of a sudden, I am sitting in wet. My legs are cold like when you sit down in the grass and don’t know the ground is wet and it creeps up on you and goes through your pants, and you don’t realize what’s happening till it’s too late.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jack Peter said. “I tore up the picture.”

  “Please don’t interrupt. Would you please let Nicholas tell his story?”

  “When I stood up that’s when I noticed Jack Peter staring at the walls. Water was coming in, not gushing, but…”

  “Seeping,” Jack Peter said.

  “Slow, same as when you get a cut and it’s coming out and won’t stop, but not so fast that there’s blood all over the place. We tried to hold it back, but the water just seeped onto us till we were all wet.”

  Inching closer to his mother, Jack Peter said, “Inside a wave. If the ocean came in and tried to drown the whole house.”

  Holly and Tim looked up at the ceiling. The salt left a swirling line as pronounced as the mark that waves leave upon the sand.

  “I was afraid,” Nick said.

  “That he would drown,” said Jack Peter.

  “But just like that the water stopped. Just like ebb tide, when everything gets dry again. But cold and dark in the room. The ice came on the windows fast as paint, and that’s when we thought to yell for Mr. Keenan, but he never answered.”

  Upon hearing his name, Tim stopped examining the filigree of salt upon the ceiling and faced the others with a blank expression. Holly raised her eyebrows at him. “And what were you doing this whole time? Where were you?”

  “I never heard a thing—”

  Nick joined the defense. “We couldn’t wake him. We tried, but at first, he didn’t ever move, like he was dead, and then when I shook him by the shoulder, he moaned in an awful way, and I thought he might be sick.”