The Future of Horror

by Jonathan Oliver

  It was one thing to practice voodoo medicine and hoo-doo eating on yourself. But not getting real food or health care for your kids made it other people’s business. What would’ve happened if he’d told the school counselor that time Margaret had a fever for days that made her blue eyes shine like wet lilacs and Mom had refused to take her to the ER but she’d made her dolls dance?

  When Felix came home from school that day every doll in Margaret’s room, every figurine, every picture of a human or beast, even stuff that only vaguely looked like it had a head and legs was gyrating, hopping, waving, dancing. Margaret was laughing, and then she was out of bed and trying to make them dance the old-fashioned kids’ way, moving them with her hands and pretending. She got frustrated and Mom wouldn’t do it again because she said it wasn’t right to be frivolous with your powers, and Margaret threw a fit. To shut her up, and because he was happy she wasn’t sick any more, Felix played puppets with her and showed her how to put life into them or pull it out of them or whatever. The puppets had tugged at his hand and Margaret’s hand, and she’d hugged him and said he was the best big brother in the world and he had to teach her how to do that, and he did his best but she never did learn.

  So maybe Mom had cured her, but maybe Mom had made her sick in the first place. Felix never got around to telling the school counselor and pretty soon they’d moved anyway.

  Margaret had the only clean, relatively nice room in their new house. Every other space, including half of his basement man-cave, was full of the witch’s projects. Her clay sculptures and things that looked like body parts floating in colored liquids had mingled with and seeped into his ships in bottles and crushed leaves and sketches of things he knew about but couldn’t name yet, couldn’t quite make move, and everything got ruined. He’d given up having projects after that.

  Seeing her plop another grape into her mouth, he whispered, “Mom!” She raised her eyebrows. The produce guy was heading their way (again) to tell her to quit shoplifting. What kind of role model was this for Margaret? Felix hurried around the corner and pretended to be interested in free-range eggs. More than once Mom had explained to him what ‘free-range’ meant, but he refused to remember it and picturing the top of a stove full of brown eggs running around free like hamsters out of their cages made him laugh.

  Mom chatted away at the bored checkout clerk. Felix just wanted to get out of there before she did something else embarrassing, and he almost made it. He had picked up the grocery bags – why was it his job to carry the bags? – when Mom reached over, stroked the bananas, and sang out, “Thank you, my little curved friends, for letting us eat you.” The clerk stared at her, then stared at Felix, the poor kid with the crazy mother. Maybe somebody would call the authorities. Could you lose your kids for talking to bananas?

  Mom wouldn’t quit until she’d checked out at least one used bookstore. Felix wanted to tell her to carry her own damn groceries, but her back or shoulder or arm was giving her trouble. He thought about leaving her there and going to what they were calling home this week in order to be there when Margaret got out of school. Wasn’t it illegal to leave a little kid alone? But when he compared who was more likely to get into trouble on her own, Mom or Margaret, Mom won by a landslide. He thought about pulling a Margaret and walking away as far away as he could get.

  But he’d never do any of that because he was a wimp and a mama’s boy and her enabler, and somebody had to watch out for Margaret, which made him mad at both of them. Too bad he couldn’t just think Margaret into a safer place. Mom could probably do that, so why didn’t she? Personally, Felix didn’t have any magic.

  Mom and the bookstore guy said hi to each other like they were buds, except that Felix heard the OMG! in his voice. She got out her list, longer every time because nobody could ever find any of the books she wanted. The bookstore guy tried, or pretended to try, until a couple of actual customers came in. Then Mom wandered around. With the bags Felix couldn’t fit between the shelves unless he turned sideways. The plastic handles dug into his hands. There were chairs but they all had books on them, and even though the bookstore people always said it was okay to move the books if you wanted to sit down, Felix couldn’t bring himself to do that, and it would be embarrassing to sit on the floor. He leaned against the end of a bookcase, willing it not to roll, and tried to think about things other than his mother or his sister.

  She’d be here for a while, looking up weirdness like the fourteenth word on the sixty-seventh page in twenty-one different books. She’d write those words down in a tattered notebook and study them for weeks. She never bought anything – on her way out she’d grab some random book out of the freebie bin. When he edged around the towering books crowding the apartment he’d pretend to cast a protective spell so they wouldn’t collapse on Margaret, but it was just making fun of Mom. Every time they moved there were more boxes of books to carry, except you couldn’t bring extraneous stuff like that to a shelter, which was the only good thing about being homeless.

  Feeling like a homeless person again with all the crap he was carrying, Felix almost wished for a grocery cart. The thrift store bag had the name of the store in enormous letters so there was no way to disguise where they’d been shopping, and the jar was heavy against his leg and who knew what would be released or destroyed or pissed off if he dropped it and it broke. Naturally the natural-foods store wouldn’t use plastic so he had to deal with a flimsy cloth bag, and something in it smelled weird. The not one but three books Mom had grabbed out of the free bin without even looking had slick dust jackets and kept sliding out of his grip. He couldn’t reach his phone to see what time it was, which at least meant he didn’t have to deal with Mom’s dumb comments about how cell phones introduced foreign energy into your brain.

  “You about done?” he asked her. “Margaret’ll be home soon.”

  But she was communing with the spirit of a piece of trash out of the gutter. Felix didn’t want to know what it was or what she thought she was doing, but as she gently deposited it into the bookstore bag he couldn’t help hearing its voice and seeing that it was a piece of broken pink plastic with sharp edges that would probably tear the plastic so everything would fall out and he’d be the one who had to retrieve it all and figure out how to carry it. “What is that?”

  “That’s Tinkerbell. A piece of Tinkerbell. You know how your sister loves Tinkerbell.”

  He had no clue what Tinkerbell was or if his sister loved it. “What’s it for?”

  Mom smiled. “I don’t know yet. But it told me it could help us.”

  “Right.” He didn’t sound half as sarcastic as he wanted to.

  She reached up and actually patted his head. He hated when she did that. She was the one who didn’t understand the world and had to be taken care of and have things explained to her but wouldn’t listen. He might be the kid, but he was the grown-up around here. “If you have a talent you should use it,” she told him, like he hadn’t heard that a million times. Like she was talking about a good pitching arm or being able to fix cars. “Sometimes there’s just a thin line between survival and disaster. Sometimes it’s so thin you can’t even see it. Remember that, son. My abilities help this family stay afloat.”

  “Terrific, Mom. That’s really nice. Can we go? Margaret’ll be home and I gotta take a leak.” The second part was very true. He hoped the first part was.

  If he started off first there was a good chance she’d get distracted and stop following him and he’d have to go looking for her and Margaret would either be at home alone or not at home and wandering around somewhere by herself. Finally they were heading more or less toward the apartment. Felix sometimes worried that Margaret would forget where they lived today, or that he would. Mom seemed at home everywhere, which was really annoying and kind of creepy.

  He was tired of walking but most of the time they couldn’t afford bus fare and he couldn’t get a job to buy himself a car because he had to watch out for his sister and his mother. When he co
mplained Mom just twirled her fingers at him and said walking was good for your mind and your soul. She had her arms stretched out and her head thrown back, singing high and loud, and people on the sidewalk were detouring around her, even the homeless people. She actually squatted by one of them and invited him to sing with her, and he swore at her and walked off. Too crazy for the crazies. Felix trudged along, lugging her bags of junk and worrying about Margaret and hating it that he had to lug and worry.

  They could be wearing decent clothes, eating good food, living in a nice house – still living in that house where he’d actually had a little space of his own. But no. She’d rather shop in thrift stores and wear smelly old clothes and eat obnoxious things and mumble under her breath. “Why can’t we have a better life?” he’d say.

  “It’s a resource,” she’d say. “Like clean water. You have to be careful or you might use it up.”

  “Why do you let people think you’re crazy? Just show them what you can do – it’ll shut them up!” Never mind that she was crazy.

  “It’s an art, that means it’s personal, and nothing you can really explain. You don’t know why it works, it just works. And what may work for me may not work for you. That’s what people don’t understand. They try it out, it doesn’t work for them, and they stop believing.”

  “Why do we have to live this way?”

  “It’s all about luck. You try to line everything up proper, and the luck runs your way. But when it runs your way, you got to remember that means it runs against somebody else. So you have to be careful. You have to be responsible. You don’t want to hurt people, but sometimes you have to just to survive, just to make do for you and yours. And sometimes maybe you let go of the luck so that it’ll work for somebody else, because that’s the right thing to do. You’ll figure it out, Felix. I have faith in you.” Just what he needed.

  Could you go to the media with a story about a mother who was a witch and had special powers but wouldn’t use them for the betterment of her children? Devising what he’d say and quietly rehearsing the interviews he’d give to the press occupied his mind so he could tolerate the rest of the walk back to the apartment.

  Where Margaret was not.

  Felix knew she wasn’t there before Mom opened the door. Something about the energy. He didn’t like noticing energy. He also knew Margaret was in danger. He didn’t know how he knew that. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was just imagining the worst, and that would not make it happen. He wasn’t the witch of the family.

  Just as he dropped the bags onto the already-full couch, the handle of the health-food bag broke. It wasn’t his job to chase after the bottles that rolled across the floor. Mom talked to them as she gathered them up. She didn’t seem worried about Margaret. She seemed kind of excited or something. He didn’t have time right now to try to figure her out.

  On Margaret’s bed in the corner, her lunch bag was open on top of homework papers. So she’d been home after school. She hadn’t been doing her homework, though. Toys were out of the trash bag she kept them in. Crayons and colored pencils were scattered around, and papers with drawings on them of her stuffed animals and dolls with legs going this way and that, kicking at the big empty spaces on the page.

  “She didn’t eat her sandwich.” Mom was digging through the bag.

  He took the neatly-wrapped sandwich away from her. “Mom, she never eats her sandwich. And nobody will trade with her. She throws it away at school or on the way home. Maybe today she was – distracted.” Maybe she was kidnapped. Maybe she was–

  “Why not?”

  He unwrapped it, took it apart, spread the halves like a biology lab dissection. “Look at this – broccoli, grapefruit slices, and what’s this paste made out of – honey and hummus? And I used to think this was bean sprouts, but it’s that weed from the backyard, right? Gray bread, like chunks of paper mache. Who eats like this, Mom?” He thought about keeping it for evidence.

  “It’s full of essential nutrients! What has she been eating, then?”

  “I give her money. From little jobs I get. And sometimes I just take it from your purse.”

  “Stealing is bad karma.” She was looking at the floor.

  “Like you never steal. And starving your kid – I bet that’s bad juju too.” He’d heard that word in an old Tarzan movie on TV and had just been waiting to use it on her. “She’s gone, Mom. We’ve gotta go find her.”

  She didn’t try to pretend Margaret might be at a friend’s. Margaret didn’t have any friends, because she didn’t want anybody coming here. Felix had been the same way, so by now he didn’t know how to make friends. Once Margaret was back safe, he might just point that out to Mom.

  Mom said suddenly, “You look around the room, think about where she might have wandered to. You’re smart, you’ll figure it out before I can. I’m going out to get a tattoo.”

  Felix stared at her. “Mom. Margaret’s gone missing.”

  “And we’ll find her.”

  When she rolled up her left sleeve Felix realized it had been years since he’d seen her bare arms. It was covered by a series of mostly geometric tattoos, some maybe professional, a lot of them obviously amateur – it wouldn’t surprise him if she’d done it herself with a sewing needle dipped in plant-based ink. Gross.

  “Look.” He didn’t want to, but he looked. There was a tattoo of a sailing ship. “Look,” and there was a fairy with a wand. “I’ve been tattooing pieces of your and your sister’s lives, your passions, your dreams, maybe a lot of things you aren’t even aware of, onto my body since before you were born. It’s my map to my children. Once I add her disappearance, I’ll know right where she is.”

  He found himself focusing on her tattoos, or they focused on him. They were changing, developing, growing longer and thicker, joining and crossing over to display twisted passages and dance-like movements.

  He jerked his gaze away. “Aren’t there some practical things, more normal things we should be doing? Like walking down the street, searching the park, knocking on doors? Maybe even calling the police?”

  “No need for that. Don’t you understand that the authorities poison us against the natural magic of the world? But go ahead and do that ‘normal’ stuff. Watch and listen. Pay attention to your feelings and let them guide you. I have great faith in you, Felix.” She hurried out.

  For the next few minutes he searched the room. He picked things up gently and put them back where he thought they’d been. Tearing things apart would’ve just made him more scared, and Margaret would be furious when she came home. Books facedown to hold her place didn’t tell him anything. None of her zillion unicorn and castle and enchantress and Harry Potter posters had anything to say to him, either. Real magic was a sham – hard to access, hard to control, crazy and arbitrary and unfair. It promised everything but never gave you what you really needed.

  In her lunch bag he found a slip of paper. Mom used to leave notes in his lunch, too – stupid advice like YOU CAN DO IT! and REACH FOR THE STARS! This note had a silly fairy sticker on it that said Tinkerbell, plus a lot of weird designs, circles mostly, with various spokes in them, and scribbles connecting them. If he glanced at them a certain way the circles turned and the scribbles danced. Right beside Tinkerbell, under the glow of her tiny wand, was GO FIND THE MAGIC! in Mom’s one-of-a-kind handwriting.

  Tinkerbell told him what it meant, which was a clue to how upset and out of it he was. Mom had sent Margaret away on some impossible quest.

  One of his sister’s drawings crinkled under his hand, tingling his skin. He pulled the drawing up against the light and watched as the lines of the furiously dancing doll vibrated.

  Felix had no idea what he was doing. Like his mother always said, he let himself be led. With various pencils, pens, crayons, he extended the lines on the paper so that they wrapped, cocooned, buried the dancing doll in a hard shimmering tunnel. Then the spiral spread off the paper to contour the folds of sheets, comforter, pillow, until he dropped everything, ha
nds shaking, and stood back.

  Vaguely he recognized the park by that shelter they’d stayed in for a few weeks last year, elaborate slide system with a tower where kids waited their turn. On the wall of the playground was a mural he couldn’t see in the drawing, wizards and fairies, gnomes in fur coats like rats escaping a sewer, that had always creeped him out when he’d taken Margaret there. So had all the old guys hanging around like wizards who’d lost their powers, or who’d just hallucinated them, now convinced all the tasty magic was there in the bodies of the playing kids. Margaret had always wanted to say hi, and Felix hadn’t let her. The lines didn’t show anything but the dancing of the kids and a space of no-dancing, no-motion, watching.

  The deep-shadowed tangle behind the playground hid the entrance to a secret cavern, or something more everyday. The sewer. He’d yelled at Margaret to keep away.

  When Felix got into the park it felt like dusk although he didn’t think it was that late, hoped Margaret hadn’t been left alone that long, didn’t stop to check the time on his phone. Homeless guys were sitting on the wall. There was the mural, more faded and dirtier than he remembered, layered in a graffiti of filthy, hysterical requests. The opening of the sewer pipe was huge, protective mesh broken into fringe. It quivered like it was singing.

  Margaret was in there. Looking for a magic place. Because she was a kid, and magic could be anywhere her mother said it was.

  Felix dropped onto hands and knees and, without allowing himself to think about it, started into the pipe. Then the darkness detached into a ragged bulk of shadow backing out. The man grunted, hit his head and swore. The seat of his pants was muddy. He had Margaret. Her pale face popped up on one side and then disappeared.

  Felix’s first impulse was to block the exit, trap the guy inside the pipe and call the police. He fumbled for his phone. Then he thought he might have a better shot at saving his sister if he moved out of the way. The guy kept coming, dragging Margaret, his fist swallowing her hand. Felix grabbed at the guy’s shirt and was about to throw himself at him when Margaret yelled, “No! Felix! He’s my friend!”