Skeleton Man

by Joseph Bruchac

  “No,” I whisper. “It’s not.”

  And then I tell her. I don’t tell her everything because now that I’m in school, my fears seem a little foolish, and I don’t want her to think I’m being melodramatic. But I tell her how I feel, how weird it is in my uncle’s house, how I really, really don’t want to be there. She doesn’t interrupt or ask questions. She just listens, nodding every now and then. When I’m done I feel lighter, as if I’m no longer carrying a ten-ton truck on my shoulders.

  Ms. Shabbas lightly places her hands on my shoulders. She doesn’t say I’m being foolish or that I should grow up.

  “Sweetheart,” she says. “Thank you for telling me.” She turns slightly to write something on a card that she hands to me. “Here’s my home phone and my cell phone. Call me anytime. Okay? We’ll keep an eye on this together, right?”

  “Right,” I say. And for the rest of the day in school things almost do seem right.

  But then I take one more deep breath and the school day is over. That’s bad. The only good thing is that it is Wednesday. That means I get to come back to school tomorrow and the next day before the weekend comes, which most kids love because it means we won’t have to go back to school for two days. Two whole days.

  I walk home because it takes longer than the bus. I stop at a fast-food place to eat enough to kill my appetite. I don’t have much money left, and I don’t know what I’ll do when it runs out. But I try not to worry about that now. There are other, more pressing concerns.

  Finally it is getting dark. I can’t avoid it anymore. I’m headed back to the house of doom.

  5

  Eat and Grow Fat

  YOU MAY be asking yourself what life is like for me inside that house. Are there spiderwebs everywhere? Bats and centipedes and mold on the walls? Are there chains clanking down in the cellar and ghostly moans coming from the attic?

  No. Actually, aside from being dark and set back from the road, it isn’t really all that spooky a place to look at. It’s a hundred years old, but there are older places in town. And the house is full of modern appliances in the kitchen and the living room. Dishwasher, microwave, a television with a cable hookup. My uncle even has a personal computer. I saw it through the open door of his study once. He spends a lot of his time in that room and I imagine he must be surfing the Net, visiting all the weirdest websites, probably.

  What makes that house strange is the way it feels when you get inside it. I saw an old movie once where someone walks into a room and then the door disappears and the walls start moving in. It is something like that. And I always feel as if someone or something is looking at me, but when I turn around there’s nothing there.

  Then there’s the way my uncle acts. Like when you’d expect him to be waiting for me, his niece, to come home, and to ask me how my day went, he’s not. He’s not here. There’s just a note on the front door, not handwritten, but out of his laser printer. “Back later,” it reads. “Dinner in fridge.”

  He’s left food for me in the refrigerator for the last two nights as well. The food I’m supposed to eat is on a plate on the top shelf, ready to pop into the microwave. Anyhow, it makes it easier for me. I flip on the garbage disposal and spoon the loathsome stuff, a huge plate of spaghetti with meatballs, down the sink drain. If I ate everything he gave me—even if it wasn’t full of drugs—I’d get as fat as a butterball turkey.

  I could go into the living room and watch TV. Or one of the videos from the library of movies he has next to the VCR. There’s a lot of stuff that some people think kids like to watch. Mostly Disney movies and cartoons. But I don’t want to. It’s the thought of having him walk in while I’m watching something. Or, even worse, of him watching me without my knowing it. I’ve got homework and books to read in my backpack. I’m seeing more of the school librarian now than I ever did before my parents turned up missing. Before I go upstairs I look out the kitchen window and see that the light is on in front of his shed. That either means he is out there or he forgot to turn it off. No way am I going out there to find out which it is.

  I put the chair in front of my door and then take a quick bath, put on my pjs and my favorite pink robe, which I have worn just about every night for a year now. I move the bedside lamp closer so I can get the most out of its feeble light, lie down on my stomach, and breeze through my homework. Even the math problems are really no problem at all. Then I pull out one of the books I’ve borrowed. It’s one that Ms. Shabbas once said I just had to read because you can really identify with the heroine and it takes you somewhere else. Which is where I want to be, for sure.

  It turns out that she was right. The book truly does take my mind off things. Before I know it I’ve read a dozen chapters. I feel like I’m on a sailing ship with the heroine. Until I start wondering what Charlotte Doyle would do if she switched places with me. And I realize that I don’t know what she would do any more than I know what I should do. I put a bookmark in to keep my place, lean back on my pillow, and close my eyes. As always, at least since I’ve been here, I don’t turn out the light. I just want to rest my eyes. I don’t want to go to sleep.

  But I do.

  And, instantly, I am there in that same dream. I’m back in the cave, the body of a partridge warm and limp in my hands. I’m holding it out to my uncle as he crouches in his corner. Without looking over his shoulder, he reaches an arm back. I see for the first time that his fingers are long and hairy and his fingernails are thick and sharp, more like claws. He grabs the dead bird so hard that I hear its bones crack.

  “I thought it would be a rabbit,” he growls. “Did you catch a rabbit?”

  “No,” I say. “This is all.”

  Then he begins to eat. I don’t see him eat it, but I hear his teeth crunching through feathers and flesh and bones. He eats it all, growling as he swallows.

  Then he reaches his arm back again. I stare at his fingers. A few small feathers from the partridge are stuck to them and the nails are red with blood.

  “Hold out your arm, child,” he says.

  I don’t give him my arm. Instead I hold out a stick the size of my wrist. His groping hand closes about it.

  “Arrggh,” he growls. “Even thinner and harder than before. No flesh at all, only bone. You must eat more, my niece. Eat and grow fat for me.”

  I sit up. I’m awake.

  I say that aloud. “I’m awake. It was all a dream.”

  But then I look around me and I see this room—as bare and cold as the chamber of a cave. And then the snick, snick, snick of the locks.

  No, it wasn’t a dream.

  6

  No Pictures

  THERE ARE NO PHOTOS at all in this house. No pictures of any kind, no paintings, not even any mirrors, aside from that small cloudy one in my bathroom. Even that was not up on the wall at first. I found it tucked behind the wardrobe and hung it up in the bathroom. Whenever I leave each day I take it off the bathroom wall and carefully put it in its original hiding place. I just have this feeling that if I don’t do that, it will be gone when I come back. There is nothing else in this house to show his face or anyone else’s.

  When he picked me up, he smiled and laughed and talked like a concerned adult. It must have been an effort for him. His face was drawn and thin, angular with high cheekbones and a chin that jutted out, a high forehead with only a fringe of hair around his ears. But he looked human then.

  As soon as he got me into the car, he started to change. I remember him putting on sunglasses and pulling his big hat down so that his face was concealed from me and from other drivers. I caught a glimpse of the side of his face every now and then, and it seemed as if the flesh was melting off his bones. At the time I figured the light was playing tricks on me, but now I’m not so sure. Ever since that day he’s been careful not to show me his face at all. He always keeps his back to me.

  And his hands! He’d kept them in his pockets, hidden from the social service people. But I could see them as they held the wheel. They wer
e white, pale, pale white. And the skin on them was so thin that I thought I could see through to the bones. And the fingernails were thick and long and sharp like claws. He must have seen me looking because he slipped on a pair of leather gloves at the next stoplight. Then I turned away to watch the trees and telephone poles and the houses whizzing past, being left behind us as we went down that road toward someplace I never wanted to go.

  He didn’t speak much that day. He just opened the car door when we got to the house.

  “Get out,” he whispered.

  I got out.

  “Go in,” he said.

  I went in.

  “Eat.”

  I ate the plate of food he put in front of me while he stood behind me and watched until I was done.

  “Your room is upstairs,” he said.

  And I went up to it with my box and my suitcase, and he shut the door behind me and locked it. I remember wondering that night if the door would ever be unlocked again. I also remember not caring whether I lived or died. I missed my parents so much. And then I remember feeling zombielike and conking out.

  I still miss them. But I can’t believe that they’re gone forever. Dad always told me that being a dreamer meant that I had a special kind of gift like our old people had long ago. If they really were never going to come back I’d know somehow through my dreams. But I haven’t had that kind of dream. Instead, I just have this feeling that they’re out there somewhere and that they will be back. And when they come back I will be there and they’ll hug me and explain why they were gone and things will be all right again. I do care whether I live or die.

  It is the middle of the night. It is still Wednesday night, a night that just doesn’t seem to want to end, that just keeps creeping along. But my mind is moving like a runaway freight train. Run away, that’s exactly what I feel like doing. But run away where? First of all I’ve got almost no money, and without it I wouldn’t get far. He’d find me and bring me right back here.

  But that is not the only reason I haven’t run away. I have this feeling that if I’m ever going to see my mother and father again, I need to be here. That somehow my uncle is involved in their disappearance, even though he didn’t show up until after they were gone.

  Trust your dreams. Both my parents said that. That’s our old way, our Mohawk way. The way of our ancestors. Trust the little voice that speaks to you. That is your heart speaking. But when those feelings, those dreams, those voices are so confusing, what do you do then?

  “Help,” I whisper. “Help.”

  I’m not sure who I’m talking to when I say that, but I hope they’re listening.

  7

  The Counselor

  WHEN THE MORNING COMES I haven’t dreamed again. I haven’t slept. I’ve been thinking about what I can do, and I’ve made up my mind. I’ve got a plan at last. It’s a simple one, but simple ones are probably the best. It’s also the only thing I can think to do.

  At school you are always hearing about kids with problems. And there are people called counselors whose job is supposed to be to help kids who have them. It seems to me that most kids never actually see them. At our school, at least, the counselor is kept busy by the kids who are always in trouble or getting into trouble. Her name is Mrs. Rudder. Unless you are frothing at the mouth or something, it just isn’t easy to get in to her.

  As soon as I walk into the classroom I go right up to Ms. Shabbas. She doesn’t do the adult thing of seeming to listen while not really hearing you because she thinks she already has the answer. She listens so well that she even forgets to sing whatever show tune she’s picked out for that morning.

  “It’s gotten worse for me,” I tell her. “It’s driving me crazy. Every night when I hear him lock me in my room I think I’m going to scream.”

  Ms. Shabbas sits up straighter at that. “He locks you in? You didn’t tell me about that before.”

  As soon as class goes out to rec, she takes me straight to the counselor’s office. The door is partially open. I’ve walked by the door a million times and never gone in before. Ms. Shabbas pushes it open the rest of the way and pulls me in with her.

  One whole wall to the left of the desk is taken up with pigeonholes. Not the kind that you put mail in, but smaller. Every one has the name of a kid written under it, and in every pigeonhole is a little pill bottle. Ritalin and stuff like that. The kids who need meds have to take their daily pill in Mrs. Rudder’s office. There’s a water cooler and paper cups, lots of them. On the other wall are some posters about not smoking and not taking drugs. I guess the two walls balance each other out.

  “Can I help you?” says a voice from behind us that sounds like the person mostly wants to help us to leave.

  We turn around and Mrs. Rudder is standing there. She’s not very tall, but she has this way of looking at people that makes them feel as if they’re being shrunk down under a microscope.

  Ms. Shabbas, though, refuses to be diminished.

  “Molly needs to talk to someone.”

  “I can make an appointment for…” Mrs. Rudder says, stepping past us to her desk and starting to look at her appointment book.

  “Now!” Ms. Shabbas says.

  “I’m very busy,” Mrs. Rudder replies. “I’m sure this can—”

  “This child is afraid,” Ms. Shabbas says. “Look at her eyes.” She won’t take no for an answer.

  The next thing I know, I’m sitting in the chair and Mrs. Rudder is leaning over her desk asking me questions and taking notes while Ms. Shabbas listens.

  At first I can’t make any headway. I’m telling the truth, but I feel like I’m not giving the right answers to the questions I am asked in a calm, matter-of-fact way.

  “Has he ever touched you in a bad way?”

  “No.”

  “Hmmm.” Mrs. Rudder nods. “So he’s never hit you?”

  “No.”

  “Has he ever threatened you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Ah-hah,” Mrs. Rudder says. She looks over at Ms. Shabbas and shakes her head. I can tell that she thinks I am wasting her time. She’s no longer sitting but standing up in a way that makes me feel as if I’ll be standing up soon, on my way out her door. “What has he done that makes you afraid?”

  I know what I want to say. I want to say that I see him looking at me out of the corner of his eye in a way that makes chills go down my back. Even when I’m walking down the hall and going into my room I feel like I’m still being looked at. It is as if eyes are watching me wherever I go in his house. I want to tell her that whenever he comes into a room, the air gets colder. Whenever I know he is thinking about me I have that feeling like someone is walking over my grave. I want to say that he’s not really a human being, he is something else. I don’t know what. He is fattening me up. But if I say that they’ll suspect I’m nuts. I want to tell them about my dreams. But I know that if I tell Mrs. Rudder my dreams are warning me about the danger I’m in, she’ll move from mere suspicion to absolute certainty that I’m lying.

  Instead, I say the one thing that does get her attention.

  “He locks me in my room at night.”

  Mrs. Rudder sits back down. She looks right at me over her desk, her hands clutched together. “Every night?”

  “Every night.”

  “Can you come out if you ask?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  More things are said, but this was a big one. I see Ms. Shabbas nodding to me. Mrs. Rudder has listened. She’ll do something.

  But not much.

  That afternoon Mrs. Rudder and a man who is introduced to me as Mr. Wintergreen from Child Welfare escort me to the house. Ms. Shabbas wanted to come along, but Mrs. Rudder told her that it wouldn’t be following proper procedure.

  He’s waiting because they’ve called him on the phone an hour before we get there. Plenty of time for him to get ready. He’s wearing his hat and a human face again and he smiles at them. They don’t seem to notice that he doesn’t offer
to shake hands, that he keeps his hands in the pockets of his sweater.

  “Your niece is very upset,” Mrs. Rudder says to him.

  “I understand,” he says. “She’s had a lot to deal with.”

  They follow him upstairs. He shows them the door to my room. There is no lock on the outside of the door. Never was. And no sign of screw holes that would be there if a lock had been removed. The only lock is on the inside. See, there’s the release for the lock on the inside of the door, he tells them. Her side of the door. She can get out any time she wants.

  “She’s a very imaginative child,” he adds.

  I can’t say anything. How can I say that he had time enough to change the door frame and the door? It wouldn’t make any difference no matter what I said. They believe him, not me. I’m the melodramatic one. He’s just a kindly older man who’s taken in a difficult young relative.

  They stand up. They’re going to go and leave me there with him.

  Mrs. Rudder leans over and places a hand on my shoulder. “Molly, dear,” she says. “If you are still having these anxiety attacks, I can fit you into my calendar next week.”

  She looks up at my uncle and smiles. “Thank you for your time.”

  I hold my hand up as they walk toward the door as if to stop them. I want to scream, but I can’t. They think I’m waving and they wave back to me as they go through the door, as it closes behind them, as my uncle goes over to the door and locks it.

  As he turns, without looking at me, I wonder what he is going to say, what he is going to do…

  But he doesn’t say anything about it. It’s as if he has no anger, no real emotions at all.

  “Your dinner is in the refrigerator” is all he says. Then he goes upstairs. I can hear the whirring of an electric screwdriver. I don’t even have to guess what he’s doing. After a while he comes down and walks out the back door to his work shed.