by Glen Krisch
No matter what Carin tried, her conversations always turned to unsavory subjects. "I know it's only been two weeks, but I'm worried about him, Mom. I can understand his behavior around me and when we're in public. No one his age would feel like being social under the circumstances. What bothers me is how he's having those dreams I was telling you about. They seem to be getting worse."
"That pains me to hear."
"It's one nightmare in particular, a dream monster he calls Mr. Freakshow. He says Mr. Freakshow is going to take over the world, stare everyone in the eye one by one and see their weaknesses. Every night he dreams that this Mr. Freakshow is coming for him, is coming to kill him."
"Dear God, that poor boy." Her mother reached out, covering Carin's hand with her own.
"I'm going to take him to see a doctor," Carin said and there was another pause in their conversation. She didn't want her mother to respond. She wanted the whole idea of some horrible dream monster tormenting her son to go away. All she wanted was for them to move on, but they couldn't do that as long as Kevin had these nightmares.
Kevin normally liked watching Ben 10, but hadn't paid attention since it started. Instead, he listened to every word spoken in the kitchen, keeping his eyes glued to the T.V. While he listened in on the conversation, his own conflicting thoughts threatened to overpower his outside world. He knew from overhearing his parents' arguments that his dad had been acting inappropriately at work, acting in ways that wouldn't seem right for a married man. Or for someone's dad. Kevin was so mad at him. Anger broiled in his gut and he didn't want to love him anymore. But then his mind returned to the final moments of his dad's life. How he tried to save that stranger from being butchered, and how he'd given his life to protect Kevin. People he didn't want to love anymore shouldn't act so selflessly, without regard for their own life.
"If it comes down to it, you can take him to see Dr. Edwardson," his grandma said.
Kevin didn't want to see a doctor. What was the point when he didn't remember much from his dreams? Sure, he remembered who Mr. Freakshow was. But the monster always seemed to change. If Kevin closed his eyes he couldn't see the nightmare man. Upon waking, Mr. Freakshow became faceless, void of detail. Only the fear remained, haunting his every thought.
He didn't want to hear anymore. He shut off the T.V. and went to the bedroom that had been Kevin's whenever they visited. He closed the door and leaned against it, taking in the room. The bed was too hard and he never slept well on it. Now he would have to sleep on it every night. On top of the dresser, was a red and blue lamp with toy soldiers on the shade. A Chicago Bears poster hung on one wall, a Michael Jordan life-sized poster on another. While he liked Jordan, he didn't even watch football. This was his bedroom, but it sure didn't feel like his.
Everyone asked how he was doing, how he was sleeping, or not sleeping. He was just glad that it was still summer break and he didn't have to face the kids at school. They would've looked at him funny and forever know him as the guy whose dad was killed in a bus station bathroom by the Steak Knife Killer. At least he was starting fresh at a new school and no one would know. He would miss his friends, but he didn't want to face them, either. Even with school out for the summer, his classmates had sent condolence cards made out of construction paper and white school glue. He didn't read any of them. At the insistence of his teachers, he had made similar cards for people when a grandparent had died, or when a car had run over someone's dog. When he had made those cards, he'd felt like he was being kind and that the people would appreciate his thoughtfulness. Now he realized none of that mattered, and that his teachers had used the students' tragedies as a way to fill their art hour requirements.
He lay down on the stiff bed and twined his fingers behind his head. He didn't want to hear his mom and grandma talk anymore. He didn't want to think about his dad anymore. Or school or distant friends, or their move to his grandma's or anything else. All he wanted was for his mind to stop whirling at a million miles a minute.
When he took a deep breath and closed his eyes, it did. He was swiftly off to sleep, the sun beginning its arc to the horizon.
The night swallowed the sun, leaving his room draped in long, skeletal shadows. Enough moonlight shined from the window for Kevin to see through the ethereal gloaming. He sat up from the stiff mattress, groggy as usual. His back ached and his right hand had fallen asleep, making it feel like a battalion of fire ants marched across his skin. Shaking his throbbing hand back to life, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed.
That's when he saw the bulky shape in the window.
He stood, feeling the cool hardwood under his feet as he approached the window. The bulky shape shifted, becoming less a mass of shadow and mystery. The moon illuminated details in shades of somber blue and bruised indigo. A broad, muscled back, with tree trunk arms outspread in the shape of a crucifix. Raised gray scars lined his back like grubs burrowed under tree bark. Greasy swaths of black hair fell forward over mountainous shoulders. Each inhaled breath defined his spine--sledge-hammered stones piled one on top of another; his shoulders heaved, his head bowed in thought.
Kevin was close enough to the window to feel the cold glass pulling at his body heat. He touched the glass with his finger and felt a shiver quake through the digit, up his arm and beyond, until his whole body trembled.
With arms still outspread, the monster turned to face Kevin. Endless black irises surrounded pupils that swirled with liquid fire. Intricate henna tattoos covered his massive chest--the artwork's reddish hue contrasting the deadman-blue of his skin. Blood-caked wooden splinters pierced his nipples, and iron shackles bound his wrists, trailing clinking chains to the ground.
Mr. Freakshow smiled at Kevin. An openly lascivious smile.
"Hello, boy." The monster's breath steamed the glass. Mr. Freakshow's voice was deep and discordant, the sound of the earth's plates grinding on one another.
Kevin couldn't move away from the window.
"I see you've moved to your dear old grandma's house. So far away, and yet I found you." Mr. Freakshow ran an index finger over the glass separating them. He traced a circle in one of the central panes, his claw-like fingernail scratching a trail into the glass.
Kevin's voice caught in his throat, but he fought through the turgid thickness of his fear. "What do you want?"
Mr. Freakshow tapped the circle and the cut glass fell to the bedroom floor. Reaching through the hole in the window, he flipped open the locking mechanism. Corrupted air seeped into the bedroom as the window opened. Open sewers on a hot day, rotting fish floating in a dead lake.
"Leave me alone." Kevin staggered away until the backs of his legs bumped into the bed. He lost his balance, falling to a sitting position on the mattress.
"Oh, Kevin, I'm not going to hurt you. Not yet. It's way too early for that. I've come to teach you a thing or two, to enlighten you. All I ask is for you to pay attention." Mr. Freakshow stepped aside and waved his shackled arm like a game show diva showing off a shining brand new car. The window widened, the whole bedroom wall seemed to fall away.
What Kevin saw made his heart ache and forced a sluggish surge of adrenaline to drop into his bloodstream. The canopy of oak branches and the emerald green yard were gone. It was no longer night. Blinding sunlight broke through a lead-lined stained glass window. The multi-colored puzzle pieces of the window focused, revealing Christ on the cross, the two Marys at his feet--their time of mourning. Dust motes spiraled in the broken beams of light, twirling down away from the window, down to the smell of burning incense, down to the sight of his dad's funeral.
A stooped and ancient priest spoke in Latin, his palms raised heavenward in benediction over his dad's coffin. Sunlight gleamed on the coffin's polished lid. The six pallbearers, all strangers except for his Uncle David, stood in the aisle behind the coffin, their heads lowered, their hands clasped respectfully in front of them.
"Such a sorry sight, isn't it?"
Kevin felt a tear spill from
his eye. He blinked and it blazed a trail down his cheek.
"The sadness of this spectacle is not the fact that a perfectly healthy man, still young in years, was cut down so mercilessly, so viciously. The sadness, at least in my eyes and I assume probably in yours, stems from the fact that Amber Winstrom, the petite blonde standing three rows behind your own mother is actually the last woman that your daddy ever... how shall I put it, knew."
Kevin's vantage point was high up in the rafters, even higher than the choir balcony at the back of the nave, but he still saw of whom Mr. Freakshow was speaking. His mom was standing at the end of the first pew, her arm over Kevin's shoulder. His grandma stood next to him, holding his hand. He could see his own head bobbing, unable to control his tears. He was far from alone. Everyone appeared to have a tissue or kerchief in hand, or with tears on their faces, untouched. And yes, Kevin could plainly see, Amber Winstrom had her face buried in a lace hanky.
"That's not true. My dad wasn't like that," Kevin was able to blurt out.
"Oh, I'm afraid it is. Your mom only learned of his indiscretion after your dad was fired for sexual harassment. You see, once she was in good with your dad, Amber tried to weasel her way up to the management ranks in his office. Of course, she was unqualified, and while your daddy enjoyed his tryst with Amber, he knew she was not management material. Pardon the pun, but your daddy was screwed. Either he would push for her promotion, with his intentions as obvious to everyone in the office as if they had actually witnessed your dad's spurious rutting, or he would not mention a word of her ambitions for management and have her spill all the lewd details to anyone who would listen."
"You lie. He'd never…" Kevin wanted to argue, but deep inside he knew Mr. Freakshow's words were true.
"At least your daddy had the dignity to not promote someone unworthy."
Kevin was crying now. Seeing the funeral for a second time, knowing his dad was in that shining box, and knowing that the woman with whom he had been having an affair stood only a few feet away from his own mother, made him feel like he would be sick.
"Why... why are you doing this? Why don't you just leave me alone?"
"I can't do that, Kevin, my boy. I can't leave you alone, because I'm a part of you." Mr. Freakshow rattled his shackled wrists. "See these? I'm bound to you and you to me." The monster walked down the center aisle of the church. The funeral goers didn't seem to be aware of his presence. He shoved the pallbearers out of his way, punching one in the back of the head, while elbowing another over several pews. "I want to show you one more thing. I'll need your help, of course, since we have this whole brotherhood thing going on, this bond of ours." Mr. Freakshow rested his palm against the top of the coffin. The priest droned on nearby about dust and earth and the sins of man. Mr. Freakshow backhanded him until the gray balled-up priest tumbled down the aisle, hitting a lectern with a clamorous crash.
"Leave me alone."
A knocking came from within the coffin. Mr. Freakshow seemed surprised. "You hear that? Do you know what that is? I think I know what that is. Let's find out. I need for you to come here." Mr. Freakshow waved at Kevin, his wrist shackles jangling, gesturing for him to join him next to the coffin.
"No!" Kevin screamed as he floated past the choir balcony, descending toward the coffin.
The knocking became louder. "You hear that, Kevin? That's your daddy banging against the coffin lid. Let's pry this lid open so we can find out which woman he chooses. Is it going to be contestant number one, Amber Winstrom, the ambitious whore-secretary who would go down on anyone to get a leg up? Or is it contestant number two, his dear wife, your mother, the woman who bored him to the point of such a succulent temptation!" Mr. Freakshow yanked on the corner of the lid with both hands, one grotesquely clawed foot propped up on one of the handles for leverage. "Come on, give me a hand!"
From a far off place, a warm voice tore through the nightmare. It tickled his ear and stirred his heart. He turned away from the sight of Mr. Freakshow violently shaking the coffin, and began to rise from his slumber. The church pulled away, becoming smaller, darker. The bedroom wall fell back into place, and then the window began to shrink, stopping at its original size. The darkness outside lightened, and the oak canopy soon cast shadows across his bedroom floor.
"I'll see you again, Kevin. Real soon," Mr. Freakshow's voice hissed, fading away to nothing.
"Kevin, dinner. Come on and get washed up," his grandma's voice cut through the last tenuous strands of sleep.
Kevin's eyes opened, this time for real. He touched his wet cheeks and the puffy skin around his eyes. He didn't want his mom to know he had been dreaming. He felt like he had slept the night away, but was probably out for only an hour. He cracked open the bedroom door and saw the coast was clear down the hall to the bathroom. He hurried out and reached the bathroom before his mom could see him.
He splashed cold water over his face until the puffiness around his eyes subsided. By the time his mom knocked on the door to call him again to dinner, he looked as close to normal as possible. When he sat down to a dinner of batter-dipped chicken, fried rice and honey-glazed carrots, he had little memory of his dream. Just glimpses, flashes of thought, fragments of emotion. As he ate, he thought about how he didn't want to see a doctor, and how he would do anything to prevent his family from knowing how scared he was to fall asleep.
Chapter 4
Nolan Gage stood in the Serenity Wing of his museum of dreams, transfixed by the mural he had commissioned. Behind him was a wall of state-of-the-art impact-resistant glass. Beyond the glass, austere and empty rooms awaited the arrival of the dreams.
The nearly finished mural was much closer to his original concept than he could have hoped. A silvery rush of water crashed over a boulder-strewn cliff, leaving the wooded vale below shrouded in a cool mist. The pale lemon sun hung low at the start of a new day. Reeds knifed skyward from the hidden reservoir's spongy shoreline at the bottom of the falls. Thick, downy grass carpeted the ground. Two people dwarfed by the enormity and natural beauty of the vale cast their fishing lines into the shimmering water.
He was one of those minute people lost in the gray morning mist. The other was his daughter, Nicole. His little Nika. He was teaching her how to cast the line with a sharp flick of her wrist, letting gravity take the bait-laden hook through an arc to splash the water. Every time Nika would cast during the day that inspired the mural, she would want to reel in the hook right away. She didn't want to wait for the fish to find her bait. But she had learned. She had learned, and she had been adorable and innocent. And whole. A whole person, not the withered form he now visited on a daily basis.
His mind seemed to drift through the unmoving air of the museum, crossing through to the otherworldly air of the painting. As he absorbed the depth and detail of the shore, the texture of his painted fisherman's vest, the thatch of the picnic basket they had taken along on that lost morning, a hint of movement played at the far reaches of his peripheral vision. The movement tore his attention from the fond remembrance captured in the painting. He quickly looked up to see a pair of painted birds flying higher than the falls, above the mist, cutting the air with their sharp, weightless wings. He couldn't remember seeing the birds before. They couldn't be new. Sophie wasn't at the museum and there was no way they had painted themselves.
He had only looked in that direction because he sensed movement. It was an instantaneous reaction, subconscious and altogether instinctive. But the birds were only smudges of different shades of paint. Highly realized and beautifully idealized, but smudges nonetheless. He chalked it up to the mural's breadth of detail. He had simply missed seeing them before.
"I didn't know you were here, Nolan."
The sudden voice startled him. When he turned, he felt disoriented.
"Sophie. Hi. I didn't know you were here, either. I thought I had the place to myself."
"I was just getting my coat from the office," Sophie Marigold said, zipping her yellow slicker. A loos
e bun held her silver hair. She wore bright red lipstick and a long denim skirt that swept the floor as she walked. Streaks of red and cream colored paint stained her clothes. Her right cheek carried a fresh daub of yellow paint like misplaced makeup. She was the only person who worked for Nolan Gage who called him by his first name, and the only person who could get away with it.
They had met in college. Gage had majored in finance while Sophie had studied art. He'd needed to take an art class to graduate, and when the semester was half over and Gage was on the verge of getting a B and ruining his perfect GPA, Sophie took pity on him and helped him get his A. They were soon inseparable.
"Done for the night?" he asked.
"I'm so close to finishing, I want to gut it out to the end, but I'm exhausted."
"And I suppose you would like to get home to Andrew."
While in college they had nearly fallen in love, but their lives were too different, their worldviews would never travel the same path. Not long after their break up, a fellow art student named Andrew Morton captured Sophie's heart. They married less than a year later. Nolan Gage graduated and made his first million before his thirtieth birthday.
"Yes… Andrew." An underlying sadness weakened her voice.
"He's probably busy at home. Painting."
"Even if I wasn't so tired, I should go. He misses me."
"That's understandable," Gage said softly. They were quiet then, standing at the base of the mural, seeming only a step away from entering the grassy vale. "This piece is better than I deserve."
"You are too hard on yourself. You've given me something no one else could have. Andrew and I haven't been this happy in so long."
"Good. That's good. Then I guess it worked out for everyone. You have your happiness, and I have the perfect image of a perfect day to look on whenever I want."
"Can you walk me to the door? I'm afraid I don't have a key to lock up behind me. I should have realized when the last of the workers were leaving, but I was a bit distracted by the painting."
