I knew my wife wouldn’t hurt me, either. Wouldn’t really have thrown a punch or cat-scratched me in the midst of our disagreement.
I knew that.
But as I fast-walked back to our apartment, eyes open and afraid I’d trip the whole time, I thought I heard the laugh of a witch, followed by the screams of children as they were stuffed into an oven.
—
Lynn sat at her desk, calm as could be. She didn’t acknowledge me as I entered the apartment, but I noticed that she quickly shifted the task windows on her computers.
I went to the kids’ room. The door was closed when I got there, and I knocked on it before testing the knob. Locked.
“You guys okay?”
“Why wouldn’t we be,” Amber said from the other side of the door. It felt good to hear her voice, even though she has this maddening way of phrasing questions as statements—and often barely listened if I attempted to answer. In this case, I didn’t have a reasonable reply. Oh, I’ve just got this bad feeling. About your mother. Prove me wrong, would you? Please?
“Mattie in there with you?”
“It’s his room, too, isn’t it.”
“Hey, Mattie.” I rattled the door handle. Matt didn’t respond. Instead, I heard a couple of drawers open and shut, papers shuffled, quick footsteps on the carpet.
Funny thing: It sounded like the frantic movements their mother would make whenever she cleaned the room. I’d just seen Lynn in the den, so that was impossible.
Except, in a sense, she was in the room. Her eyes and ears.
“Let me in.”
Amber scurried away from the door and another set of footsteps approached. Heavy steps. An adult’s tread.
A click, but the door didn’t open. The footsteps retreated.
I reached for the knob and this time it turned. I pushed the door open and entered the kids’ room.
Amber sat at the edge of her bed, a schoolbook open on her lap. I got the sense that she hadn’t actually been reading it.
Mattie was at his desk, sketchbook turned to a fresh page and his box of markers ready.
The room had its usual division: Matt’s bed made and every item in its proper place; Amber’s covers pulled back and stuffed animals and toys and papers scattered on the bed and along the floor. The same way the room always looked, but maybe a little “off.” Almost like they’d staged it for my benefit.
“Your mother wonders what you guys do in here.”
“Oh, homework and reading and drawing. What else could we do.” Again, Amber phrased her question like a flat statement.
“We can’t watch a scary movie. Mom won’t let us.” Matt didn’t turn to face me. Apparently the blank page was more interesting to him.
“There’s other kinds of movies.” I crossed to their fifteen-inch television with built-in DVD player. I’d borrowed some of the Stillbrook supply wood to build a TV stand, with slots below to hold their various DVDs. “Lots of cartoons here. Superhero stuff. Comedies.” As I pretended to scan their library of movies, I was actually trying to figure out where Lynn might have hidden the spy camera. This seemed a likely placement, alongside other electronic equipment.
“We’ve seen all of those,” Matt said.
“A hundred times.”
“A hundred? You’re way ahead of me, Amber. I don’t think I’ve seen any movie a hundred times.” I followed the cords behind the TV stand, checked where they met the power strip and the wall socket. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Now I wished I’d allowed Lynn to show me one of the recordings, since I could have judged from the angle where the camera was hidden. Matt’s items were so meticulously placed, he likely would have noticed any new knickknack added to his bookshelves. On Amber’s side, I picked up the nearest stuffed creature—a brown bear. “Does this thing talk?” I peered into its black plastic eyes to check for a small camera lens. I shook it, then turned it upside down. “In my day, a teddy bear might have a string coming out of his butt. You pulled the string, and the bear would talk.”
“What would he say?”
Mattie chimed in with an answer. “ ‘Get that string out of my butt.’ ”
The kids laughed, and I joined them. “You’re right, Mattie. That would have been pretty uncomfortable.”
I checked a few more plush toys, dropping them in place after I found nothing. In Amber’s dollhouse, the doll figure for the dad was missing a leg and was all scratched up—from where Mattie must have accidentally stepped on it. There was a kids’ room in the dollhouse, too. The house front was shorn off, so anybody could look inside. So exposed and vulnerable. A giant hand could grab the dolls at any moment; a giant foot could grind them into the ground.
“How long is Mom going to stay mad at us?” Mattie asked.
“We’re both mad,” I told him. “Remember?”
“Probably until Halloween,” Mattie said. “Definitely that long.”
I decided to correct my earlier statement. “We’re not mad. Just punishing you for what you did.” They were both quiet at that, not protesting their innocence as they had the day before. I reminded myself that they’d heard me fighting with their mother. Similar family fights had a profound effect on me when I was their age. I worried that my parents hated each other, had decided to get a divorce, or to do away with the source of all their problems: me. Scary stuff for little kids to overhear, and I wished I could apologize to Mattie and Amber.
I crossed to the window, then pulled aside the dinosaur curtains and put my palm flat against the cool glass. Because of the internal light, it was impossible to see outside. There could easily have been someone looking in. How about a giant face pressed close to the other side of the window. Or a ghost, able to float outside the second-floor room, waiting until bedtime to shimmer through glass and wood and brick, hovering over the sleeping kids to steal their dreams. Or a creature with claws and batlike wings that flap loudly as it hovers in place. It’s there now, calling to me, asking me to open the window. Open it.
I placed my hand on the metal latch. It was fastened shut.
“Tell me more about Halloween, Dad.” I hadn’t heard him move, but Mattie was standing beside me. I noticed his reflection in the window.
“No. If your mother found out, I’d get in trouble.”
Lynn could have been watching me right then, on her remote monitor. Since I was being recorded, I had to be on my best behavior. Be a good parent. Her idea of one, at least.
I imagined Lynn as a floating ghost. I imagined her with wings, or wearing a black cape with a red lining. Her eyes grew large; her breath steamed over sharp teeth to fog the children’s bedroom window.
Lynn
This isn’t supposed to be a dream journal. Those are kind of silly anyway.
I never tell people my dreams. They’re so random and meaningless. Writing them down implies they’re worthy of other people’s time.
And your time is expensive, Mr. Therapist.
But then again, this dream definitely relates to other things we’ve been talking about. My marriage. And the more recent topic: concern about my children.
I like to think of myself as a good medical patient, so that means I need to anticipate questions you might ask. I need to select things you can interpret.
In some ways, I’m having to do your job for you, almost like I’m an amateur psychologist myself.
Everybody knows that psychologists love to interpret dreams.
Maybe this dream gives you access to my subconscious. That’s something you want, right?
What I ate before bedtime:
Dinner: Spaghetti with meat sauce on the side, plus a vegetable and cream sauce for Amber since she’s too sensitive to eat animal products. I had some of each.
A bag salad on the side, with added green peppers, garlic croutons, and fake bacon bits.
I fixed all of this myself, for the record, even though it was Harris’s night.
Tick that in one of the irritation columns: Somet
imes he has a busy day, which supposedly sometimes wears him out and means he’s unable to do his housework that evening.
I have my share of busy days, too, but since I work from home that doesn’t count. Easier for me to get dinner started, since “I’m home anyway.”
Dessert: Rice pudding made with extra rice from last night’s stir-fry. Mixed with milk, sugar, cinnamon, and raisins.
Just before bed, I snuck down to the kitchen and had a few extra spoonfuls of rice pudding.
Wasn’t much left, so not worth saving, and I put the container right into the dishwasher.
So nothing spicy and a modest late snack that likely settled my stomach rather than upsetting it.
Judging by diet, no reason at all why I should have a nightmare.
Judging by my life, though? It’s a wonder I can even get to sleep at all.
Our kids did a terrible thing, but Harris makes it worse.
Not just because he can’t see Matt’s guilt, so clear from the way he reacted to our questions.
Amber’s innocence so clear, too, and yet she’s covering up for her brother.
That’s almost as bad, isn’t it? I’m afraid she’s turning against her own gentle nature.
Her love of animals, at least.
But Harris is the worse problem because he’s practically given our children permission to tell lies.
With the camera I’ve placed, we have a simple way to uncover the truth.
Harris refuses to look. It’s as if the truth doesn’t matter to him.
He made such a big deal yesterday about how awful it was to hide the camera in their room.
He lawyered me, almost: talked about our kids’ privacy. How wrong it was for me to spy on them.
Not spying. They’re our kids. We have to watch what they do.
It’s part of our job as parents.
But Harris really raised his voice, treated me like I was some kind of evil villain.
The witch in Snow White looking through her magic mirror.
He wasn’t right. I knew he wasn’t right. But it still hurt to be spoken to that way.
All because of a camera. A tiny electronic device that Amber and Matt never need to know about.
So no, my dinner didn’t upset my stomach and give me a bad dream.
Harris did.
Instead of reading my book for a while, I simply turned off my bedside light. That’s how upset I was.
I turned my back to Harris and closed my eyes tight.
Off and on throughout the evening, I had checked the video feed of the kids’ room to see what they were doing, which is probably where a lot of the dream images came from.
They huddled close and their backs were usually to the camera, but they spent most of their time drawing or cutting paper designs I couldn’t quite distinguish.
The black-and-white image was fairly low resolution, so it was hard to see.
At one point they took a break and Amber did a little rag-doll dance that was cute.
While she danced, Matt walked around her, pointing at the floor with his finger as if it was a magic wand that could outline a circle in the carpet.
It was a cute little scene, and I saved that section of the file to watch again later.
I’d spent so much time watching those little black-and-white screens, I could practically still see them when I closed my eyes to sleep.
I mostly dream in black-and-white, also, so that might explain why things blurred together for me.
In my dream, I watch my computer screen.
On my headset, a customer’s voice breaks through.
“Everything was working fine this morning. I can’t understand how it’s changed. Can you explain that to me?”
Patient as I can be, the same way I always am with customers, I say, “I might not be able to tell you what you did wrong, but I can help you fix it. Does that sound good?”
From there I had the “service script” of things to try, starting with rebooting their system—a cold boot, then a warm boot—then I’d walk them through a check of their RAM and graphics card and how to temporarily disable their virus software to apply the latest patch.
The script works like a flow chart on my screen, and I check-box each step when completed.
Sometimes I get bored saying the same phrases over and over, so I might vary the order, or maybe add a joke or other pleasantry.
Basically make the experience more fun for me and for the customer.
In my dream I barely look at the service script and recite the steps from memory.
I press Alt + Tab, and the script goes away, replaced by the grainy view of our children’s bedroom.
I’m aware that it’s nighttime, since that is when we dream, but it doesn’t strike me as odd that I’d be handling an after-hours service call.
It does strike me as odd that Matt and Amber are awake. They have school tomorrow.
Their bedroom light is on, so I don’t need to switch to the night-vision mode.
“What are you doing?” I speak to their figures on the screen, knowing they can’t hear me.
“I’m doing just what you told me,” the customer replies on my headset.
“You shouldn’t be messing with that.”
Amber is swinging something like a sword or a saw or board. It’s so heavy she can barely lift it, but she swings it nonetheless.
She swings it at Matt’s head.
“I only clicked on the ‘Uninstall’ icon,” the customer says. “Should I click ‘Cancel’?”
“You don’t know,” I shout at the screen. “You’re messing with things you couldn’t possibly understand.”
On the grainy screen, the sword or saw or board hits Matt on the head and he crumples to the ground.
Amber drops her weapon, and in some strange distortion of the camera image, her feet seem to rise from the floor as if she’s levitating.
From my headset I hear, “You should know. You’re the one who’s supposed to understand.”
“Not you,” I say. “Not you.”
Meaning I’m not talking to you, idiot customer.
My job doesn’t matter anymore, because my children are in their room and one of them has tried to kill the other.
They’re not themselves. Amber isn’t herself. Not you, Amber. Not you.
And I wake up in my bed and it’s dark.
Black-and-white like I’m still dreaming, grainy like I’m still watching a security feed on my computer.
That is what’s happening.
It’s our bedroom on a computer screen, but I’m watching from the precise angle where I’ve hidden the camera in the kids’ room.
I’m peering down at myself from the top of our doorframe.
I look confused. Harris sleeps next to me, covers to his neck, oblivious.
There’s a dotted line down the center of our bed. Harris’s side of the room is perfectly clean, but the sheets and blanket on my side are bunched up at my feet.
My books and clothes and toiletries are tossed about my half of the room, as if a tornado has struck.
On Harris’s side, the curtains are pulled tight over the window.
On my side, the curtain rod has fallen and the shade has flipped up.
There’s movement outside the window.
Something like the moon but with a shade over it opening and closing.
Blinking. A giant eye, looking in.
It feels like we’re in Amber’s dollhouse.
It’s Amber’s giant eye looking in, but then she’s pushed away so Matt can take his turn.
I feel how awful it is to be spied upon.
And as if that’s the lesson of the dream, the image flickers and I’m looking out of my own eyes again, in bed.
But I’m not awake.
Because Amber and Mattie walk into our room.
They have to lean down to fit through the door, and they walk to the foot of our bed.
They tilt their heads so they won’t brush against the ceiling
.
They are big and powerful, the way parents should be. They are so large they could crush us in our beds.
Harris finally wakes. He pulls the covers down and sits up in bed. He says to Giant Matt: “I’m still your favorite, aren’t I?”
Amber looms over my side of the bed, and I feel helpless. Her voice is loud but still childlike. “If you had to choose,” she asks, “which one of us would you want to kill?”
That’s all I remember from the dream.
Pretty strange, huh? I guess you can do your therapist magic on it, come up with all kinds of interpretations.
Maybe it lets you know how my subconscious mind works.
Like I said, I thought it would be the kind of thing you’d want to know.
But I really don’t see why you’d need access to my subconscious. I’ve been completely honest with you. I’m not hiding anything.
In computer language, I’m WYSIWYG. What you see is what you get.
And part of that means I have to follow through on my threats.
When I said No Halloween, I meant No Halloween.
Yet I was in a bit of a pickle.
I saw things on the hidden camera and knew they had those decorations in there, but I hadn’t “officially” caught them at it.
If I went into their room and went straight to their hiding place, they’d know something was up.
They might figure out I’d been watching them.
I’m not letting Harris make me feel bad about the camera. Parents should use every tool at their disposal. I don’t feel ashamed about it.
But I don’t want to play my hand just yet.
The camera provides useful information for me…as long as the kids don’t know it’s there.
There’s a microphone that picks up sound, too.
Most of the time, kids ramble on about nothing.
They’re good at multitasking, if you think about it. They can color or cut or glue things together while they talk about something completely unrelated.
The soundtrack to their video feed usually seemed out of sync.
They didn’t speak about what they were drawing or cutting or putting together.
At times Amber would hum a wordless melody but never any song I could recognize.
The Halloween Children Page 12
