by Laurel Gale
The maggots in his stomach twisted into knots, but Crow kept walking forward. He reached the storage shed. All he had to do was climb through the hole where the vent used to be.
It was like saying all he had to do was move a mountain. It wasn’t that easy.
He bent down. Something croaked. He put one leg through the hole. Something cawed. He put his head and shoulders through. Something hooted. He stood up in the shed, and a deafening howl almost knocked him over. Stumbling against the locked door, he shoved his fingers in his ears.
“I-i-it’s me, C-c-crow Darlingson. You m-met my parents.” The howl died down, and Crow stood up straighter. “C-could you tell me about what happened?”
For a moment, the room was dark and quiet. Then a roar ripped through the silence. A small spark burned briefly before exploding into a stream of flame. The bright fire illuminated a horrible shape crouching in the small shed: a large snout, red eyes, sharp teeth, wings, and a tail. A dragon! It barely fit inside the small room, its body bent and twisted into every available space.
The tail shot toward Crow like a whip. Another blast of fire singed his few remaining clumps of hair. The air vibrated with the dragon’s roar.
Crow ran out of the hole in the door. He didn’t stop running until he was back in his living room.
To explain away his scorched hair, Crow made up a story about attempting a science experiment in the middle of the night. He’d done such things in the past, during his many sleepless hours, so it wasn’t that strange for him to decide to calculate the calories in a walnut at midnight.
Anyway, his story was more believable than the truth. A dragon lived in the storage shed at the park.
Even Crow didn’t believe it, and he’d seen the thing with his own terrified eyes. Still, he knew it hadn’t been a real dragon. Sure, it looked like a dragon. It breathed fire like a dragon. But it had been the Meera, he was certain, and the dragon was just one of its many forms.
A shape-shifter, his father had said.
That didn’t make it any less frightening. No, no, not at all.
With so many thoughts screaming in his head, Crow decided it was best to stay busy. He finished his schoolwork—a geometry quiz, a geography quiz, a science experiment to measure the freezing point of water with various levels of salt, and a paper on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—before noon. Then, unable to sit still, he began cleaning.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Darlingson kept a tidy house, always vacuuming and dusting to keep the maggot infestation at bay, so Crow had to look pretty hard before finding any sort of mess. He stood on a chair and dusted the top of the refrigerator. His hand slid into the small gap between the cabinet and refrigerator, where it found a dead cockroach.
Oh! Not dead! The bug skittered out of his reach.
Or maybe it wasn’t a bug. Crow shuddered. Maybe it was the Meera in a new form. If it could turn itself into a huge dragon, it could turn itself into a tiny cockroach, too.
But it was probably just a bug. And Crow just needed to keep busy.
He tackled the phone next. According to an article he’d read, telephones harbored millions of germs. Being dead, he was immune to viruses, but his mother wasn’t. He disinfected the phone, the answering machine, and even the wire that plugged into the phone jack.
Except it didn’t plug into the phone jack.
Crow stared at the wire. This wasn’t right at all.
“Mom!” he yelled. “What happened to the phone?”
“What? Nothing! What are you talking about?” She hurried into the kitchen, where her son showed her the severed wire. “Oh, that. I, uh, accidentally cut it while I was chopping vegetables for dinner. I’ll get a new one soon enough.”
“But what if Dad calls?”
“If it’s important, he’ll stop by the house. Or he’ll email us. Or he’ll call me on my cell phone. Really, I don’t know why I’ve kept the landline. It’s so unnecessary these days, don’t you think?”
Crow nodded slowly, his forehead creased. How had she managed to cut the wire while chopping vegetables? The phone was nowhere near the counter space she used to prepare food.
Mrs. Darlingson smiled. “You’ve done enough cleaning and studying for one day. Why don’t you go up to your room for a while and do something fun? You haven’t worked on your knots for a long time. Why don’t you practice your figure eights or butterfly knots? Or you could finish your airplane model. That thing’s been collecting dust for months now.”
Crow nodded again and went upstairs. He didn’t feel like tying knots, though. He didn’t want to work on his model airplane, either, or his chemistry set, or his loom, or any of the scores of other educational diversions his mother had bought for him over the years. But he was supposed to start Gulliver’s Travels that week, so he sat next to the window and opened his book. The words on the page blurred, his mind unwilling to focus.
Outside, the school bus pulled over to let its passengers off. Melody emerged, followed by Grace and Hannah, her two new friends. Best friends, probably. The two boys, Luke and Travis, got off next. While the bus drove away, all five of them stayed behind to talk and laugh. No one was in a hurry to go home, not with the sun shining so bright.
No one bothered to look up at Crow’s window. No one waved.
Melody had forgotten him.
He threw down his book. The living room had been gathering some clutter. He went downstairs and began sorting through the copies of Popular Science, National Geographic, and Time. The newer ones stayed out, while the older ones were moved into the closet and alphabetized. Little space remained, but he refused to throw anything out. He might need it someday. Besides, what other contact with the outside world could he manage? Sure, he had the Internet, but he wanted something he could touch, something another person had held at some point. It felt more real that way.
He’d have to make more room. A large cardboard box was taking up a lot of space. He peered inside and found it empty except for some unopened letters lining the bottom. Odd. Why would his mother keep the letters but not bother to open them? He picked one up to see who had sent it.
The door opened.
“What are you doing out here?” Mrs. Darlingson demanded. “You’re supposed to be playing in your room.”
“I got bored.” He stared at the letter in his hands. “Why didn’t you give this to me?”
Mrs. Darlingson marched over. She attempted to snatch the letter from Crow’s grip, but he held on tight. She reached toward the box, but he was closer. He grabbed the other letters before she could get to them.
Suddenly everything made sense. Crow stared at his mother as if seeing her for the first time.
“You cut the phone line on purpose, didn’t you?” he asked. “Because Melody kept calling. It wasn’t a telemarketer. It was her.”
“Give me the letters.” She held out her hand.
Crow clutched the letters to his chest. “No. They’re mine. Melody sent them to me.”
“I’m your mother. I know what’s best for you.”
“You don’t!” Crow yelled, the anger in his voice surprising him. “You think you know what’s best, but you don’t. Dad would understand. He’d let me see the letters.”
“Your father isn’t here. I am.” Mrs. Darlingson’s voice remained calm. “But even if he were, he’d agree with me. The world isn’t ready for you, Crow.”
“Then you shouldn’t have brought me back.”
Still holding the letters, he stomped past his mother to the door. She grabbed hold of his right arm, trying to stop him. He pushed her away. She didn’t let go. He kept walking, holding the letters in his left hand, while his right arm tore off at the shoulder.
It didn’t matter. They could sew it on later. Right now, he had some letters to read.
Crow’s body parts were falling off at an alarming rate. Rather than wait for another arm or leg to detach, Mrs. Darlingson decided to reinforce all of his joints with sutures. “I learned a new stitch,” sh
e explained. “It’s meant to make clothes durable, but it should work on you, too.”
The entire process took several hours, and Crow didn’t say a word to her the entire time. He was still thinking about the letters. None of them had stamps on them. Melody must have placed them in the Darlingsons’ mailbox herself.
She had written every single day following their midnight trip to the park. She hadn’t forgotten him after all. When he wasn’t being mended like an old doll, he read each letter over and over, savoring the smallest details. She’d gone back to the park a couple of times but never heard the strange animal noises again. She’d gotten a B+ on a math test. Her father had taken her to a miniature golf course. Luke and Travis were teaching her to skateboard, or trying to anyway. She didn’t think she’d ever master a single trick. She’d let Grace and Hannah give her a mani-pedi and was considering the full makeover they wanted to do. A bad cold was going around the school, so she was drinking lots of orange juice to ward it off, so far with success.
Her life sounded wonderful.
She’d asked questions, too, about Crow and how he spent his days, what he was studying and what he was doing. She asked whether he’d learned anything new about how he died, and whether he knew any magical creatures besides himself. Her mother used to tell her about vampires, werewolves, and other monsters, and she thought he might have met some of them.
Crow’s response sat on his desk. Delivery was proving difficult. Mrs. Darlingson—who must not have bought Crow’s botched-science-experiment story after all—had installed a dead bolt on Crow’s door, and it locked from the hallway. Bars secured the window, imprisoning Crow inside his bedroom.
“What if there’s a fire?” he asked. Already dead, he was invulnerable to many things, but fire was not among them. And he hadn’t really meant what he’d said before, that his parents shouldn’t have brought him back. What he had wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.
“That’s very unlikely,” Mrs. Darlingson said. “But if there is a fire, the alarms will go off, and I’ll open your door. Don’t worry.”
Instead of replacing the wire, Mrs. Darlingson had gotten rid of the phone. Now the only phone in the house was her cell, which she kept with her at all times. Crow still had his computer, but it had been moved to the living room, where Mrs. Darlingson monitored its use.
He found no more letters from Melody. She was still writing them, he believed. He had to believe that. But his mother kept them far away from him.
—
Saturday morning, Crow stared at the street from his barred window. His father was visiting. He’d bring a gift—he always did—and for at least a few hours, Crow wouldn’t feel like a prisoner. For the first time in days, he smiled.
“Why don’t you read something?” Mrs. Darlingson suggested.
“But Dad’ll be here any minute.”
“No. Not today.” She closed the blinds. “With everything that’s been going on, I didn’t think this was the best time for a visit. I told him not to come.”
“But I need to talk to him,” Crow said. Although he supposed that was the problem, wasn’t it? She must have realized he would ask his father about the Meera. That was why she didn’t want him visiting.
“The two of us will still have fun,” Mrs. Darlingson said. “Why don’t we play Scrabble?”
—
Even after it had become clear that Crow was no longer a normal, healthy boy, Mr. Darlingson had continued trying to make things as normal as possible. A couple of days after the bowling incident, he came into the living room with a ball and glove. “Let’s play baseball in the backyard.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Mrs. Darlingson said. “Why don’t you stay inside instead?”
But Mr. Darlingson put his foot down. “A boy can’t be cooped up on such a nice day. Crow, get your bat.”
Crow, who had eaten nothing but a few nibbles of cracker since the bowling night, had a stomachache. Every inch of him hurt, for his nerves had not yet dulled. He didn’t want to disappoint his father, though, and he had been wanting to improve his batting, so he went outside without protest.
The sun beamed down, but no one said anything about the growing stench.
Mr. Darlingson pitched the ball. Crow swung and missed.
“That’s okay,” Mr. Darlingson said, and they tried again. And again, and again, and again, as the sun crept toward the horizon. Crow had known that he needed practice, but he’d never been this bad before. It must have been his arms, which ached so badly he could barely think.
“Are you feeling all right, Crow?”
Crow nodded, despite noticing that his stomach had grown tender and slightly swollen. He prepared to try to hit the ball again. Then he collapsed onto the ground.
Mr. Darlingson ran to his side. “It’s okay, Crow. I’m here. It’s okay.”
A maggot, the first of many, crawled out of Crow’s mouth, but Mr. Darlingson kept assuring his son that everything was fine.
But now Crow knew that it had been a lie. Nothing would ever be okay again.
—
The doorbell rang.
Crow put down his copy of Gulliver’s Travels, which he wasn’t enjoying anyway. All the exciting adventures made him feel even worse about being trapped inside his house. He raced downstairs.
Mrs. Darlingson was dousing the living room in air freshener.
“Aren’t you going to answer the door?” Crow demanded, but before his mother could respond, the doorknob started to turn. Crow’s smile grew so big that his dry lips started to tear, but he didn’t care. Other than his mother, only one person had a key.
The front door opened, and Mr. Darlingson stepped inside.
“Mom said you weren’t coming.” Crow ran forward to hug his father.
Mr. Darlingson placed a large rectangular box in Crow’s outstretched hands. “I thought we needed some father-son time.”
Crow got a pair of scissors from the kitchen and opened the box. “An air hockey table!” They used to play air hockey at the arcade all the time—before Crow had died, of course.
“You can’t play that in my living room,” Mrs. Darlingson said.
“And you can’t tell me not to see my son,” Mr. Darlingson snapped. “Relax. It’s a mini air hockey table. It’s supposed to be played indoors. Go ahead, Crow. Set it up.”
Crow shot his mother a nervous glance, but she’d returned to her dusting. With his father’s help, he set up the game on the coffee table, where they had to kneel to play.
“Goal!” Crow yelled. “Five to three.” He suspected his father was going easy on him, but it was still fun.
“No yelling in the house,” Mrs. Darlingson scolded.
“Then where is he supposed to yell?” asked Mr. Darlingson. “If the noise is bothering you, you can go upstairs, you know.”
Mrs. Darlingson stayed where she was.
Mr. Darlingson started the next round. Crow tried to focus. If he played better, his father wouldn’t have to let him win. He hit the puck as hard as he could. Too hard. It ricocheted off the table and hit the television.
“I told you it was a bad idea to play that here!” Mrs. Darlingson said. “Now look what you’ve done.”
“We haven’t done anything. The television’s fine.” Mr. Darlingson retrieved the puck. “Let’s play some more.”
“No,” Mrs. Darlingson said. “That’s enough.”
Crow sensed that a fight was about to start—a real fight, one that would make the present bickering look peaceful in comparison. “It’s okay. We can take a break. Let’s go up to my room so I can show you some drawings I’m working on.” Actually, he wanted to talk, but he didn’t want to give his mother a reason to eavesdrop.
Crow and Mr. Darlingson went upstairs. Mrs. Darlingson stayed downstairs. Perfect.
“I want to know more about the Meera,” Crow said as soon as he’d shut the door.
“Why are there bars on your window?”
�
��What? Oh, Mom put them there. She put a lock on my door, too. But about the Meera—”
Mr. Darlingson examined the locks. “She’s trapping you in here? That’s it. Stay here.” He stormed downstairs.
A shouting match quickly followed.
“You can’t treat him like this!”
“I’m protecting him!”
“By locking him inside? You’ve gone too far. I’m tempted to report you.”
“You wouldn’t dare. You know what would happen to him if people found out.”
“Could it be worse than this? His room might as well be a prison. You have no right.”
Crow couldn’t listen anymore. They were arguing, and even worse, it was about him. They’d talked about getting a divorce before Crow died, but then he came back and things seemed better for a while. He couldn’t help wondering if they would have worked things out if he hadn’t started to rot and stink.
He wanted things to go back to the way they had been. Maybe one day, his wish would be granted. In the meantime, he turned on some music—his mother hadn’t taken that away—and tried to drown out the noise.
—
Despite his parents’ fight, nothing changed. By the time Halloween arrived, Crow still hadn’t managed to get a message to Melody. His father’s words echoed in his ears. His mother had no right to keep him trapped like this.
The guest bedroom hadn’t been used in years, which meant no one would miss the sheets. Crow took one, plain white, off the bed. He cut out two small holes. He trimmed the bottom so he wouldn’t trip and draped it over himself. With an empty pillowcase in hand, he was set.
Mrs. Darlingson stopped him at the door. “Where do you think you’re going? And what have you done to my sheet?”
“I’m a ghost,” he said. “You promised me I could go trick-or-treating.”
“That was before you started sneaking out at night. You didn’t really think I’d still let you go, did you?”
Honestly, no, he didn’t. The fact that she hadn’t sewn a costume for him made it pretty clear. But that wasn’t going to stop him. He couldn’t spend one more night alone in his room, much less the eternity his mother seemed set on.
