Whisper Down the Lane

by Clay Chapman

  To become someone else. To sacrifice Sean and become Richard.

  Therapists helped me rebuild my life, piecing it together like I was Humpty Dumpty. All the boy’s foster parents and all the boy’s therapists couldn’t put Sean back together again…

  I’ve put Sean behind me. I consider his life a bad movie I watched years ago. Not something I remember, per se, but something I witnessed. When I think of my childhood, it begins with Tim and Nancy. This is my life. This is who I am.

  Sean is dead.

  I have to keep repeating it to myself. So…why is he back from the grave? What does he want from me now?

  I’ve never lied to Tamara. She knows everything there is to know about Richard. But she doesn’t know about Sean.

  “Tamara?” I say her name out loud just to see if she’s awake. Her body blends in with the dark. I can barely make out the contours of her body. Her arm rests on my stomach.

  Still no sleep. I glance at the clock next to the bed. Three in the morning and I’m nowhere near drifting. There’s a dull throb in my joints. My bones ache if I stay in one position for too long. I keep turning in bed. The sheets itch against my skin. The temperature’s never quite right in our bedroom. The air is always stuffy. I notice a spot on the wall just above our bed. A shadow of mildew no larger than a quarter. Could be water damage from the roof. I’ve been staring at it for the last hour. It never blinks back. A master of the staring contest.

  I count Tamara’s tattoos like I’m counting sheep.

  There’s the thistle on her thigh.

  A compass on her hip.

  A star on her shoulder.

  I remember the first time I saw Tamara undress. I gaped—gawped?—at the ink flowing across her body, just above the hemline of her summer dresses. I thought I knew everything about her—then, lo and behold, there was more. A secret self.

  What’s this? I asked, pointing to the thistle on her thigh.

  That’s milk thistle.

  And why do you have a milk thistle tattooed on your leg?

  It’s a secret.

  Oh, come on…You’re really not going to tell me? That doesn’t seem very fair.

  It’s supposed to break hexes. She leaned in to whisper, and makes you a better lover.

  Once I made the mistake of murdering some metaphors in bed. Your body is a picture book that I want to flip through.

  Did you just compare my body to a book? Tamara asked, sounding unimpressed. Let’s keep the de-personification out of our pillow talk, okay?

  Why didn’t I tell her about Sean? There have been so many opportunities over the course of our relationship. There was our third date. You know the milestone: the confessional. This is the date where you begin to see—or don’t—the potential for something more. Something substantial. Time to air out all the dirty laundry. It’s a risk, definitely make-or-break, but you have to get everything off your chest before you can go any further. You have to confess.

  That’s when Tamara first told me about Elijah. Everything I assumed about her was suddenly recontextualized. I saw her in a totally new light. She hadn’t even blinked, unafraid to reveal herself. She drew a line in the sand and waited for me to cross it. Daring me to.

  I should have told her about Sean. That was my chance. So, uh…I also have a kid in my life that you don’t know about.

  I could’ve told her on the fourth date.

  The fifth.

  Why didn’t I tell her leading up to our wedding? That final, prewedding confessional.

  Speak now or forever hold your peace…

  During the service, with all our friends and family—Tamara’s family—surrounding us, as our officiant (not Mr. Stitch after all) asked if there was anyone who could show just cause why we couldn’t lawfully be joined together, I swore I saw Mr. Woodhouse among our guests. I had to force myself to see that it wasn’t actually him. That he wasn’t really there.

  Woodhouse is dead, I said to myself between vows. He hung himself because of what Sean said.

  Now I’m too afraid to tell her. Afraid of what Tamara will think. Afraid that she’ll leave.

  “Sean.”

  I lift my head. Someone said my—

  No, not my name.

  His name.

  The room is dark. Too dark to see clearly. Shadows within shadows within shadows—There. On the other side of the dresser. Someone crouched in the corner.

  Their eyes. Even in the dark, I can see they’re staring right at me.

  The gray boy.

  He stands and slowly approaches our bed, his body swallowed in shadows. He himself is a shadow. The gray boy moves, suddenly standing over me. His hand reaches for my shoulder.

  Take. Eat.

  I can feel his cold fingers on my shoulder, feel the chill seep into my skin. I can hear the rasp from his throat as he leans in closer to whisper. This is my body.

  I bring my arm up and in a single sweeping arc I swat the gray boy away. His body is so light, his limbs nothing but dry kindling. He makes the softest thud against the floor.

  Crying.

  The gray boy is crying. His voice lifts, wailing. The sound of it fills the room and wakes Tamara. As soon as she pulls herself out of her sleep, she turns on the nightstand lamp.

  Light erupts throughout our bedroom. It takes a second for my eyes to adjust to the sudden burst. When they do, I find Elijah on the floor, face covered in tears.

  Tamara is already out of bed and beside him, checking for bruises. “What happened?”

  “Eli…?” I sit up, bringing my feet to the floor.

  The boy retreats into himself as soon as I reach out for him, as if he were—

  As if I—

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” Tamara hisses at me, shielding Elijah.

  “I didn’t…” I start to say, still stunned. “I didn’t know…”

  Tamara picks Elijah up from the floor before I can finish and rushes out. I hear her footsteps as she carries him to his bedroom, slamming the door.

  I remain on the bed. I can see the weeping willow just outside. The severed rope from the tire swing sways in the breeze like a pendulum. Ticktock.

  I spot my studio beyond the tree. I can’t see much from this angle but when I slide up and lean forward, I notice the soft glow from the garage.

  The light is on.

  * * *

  —

  I stand in front of the television.

  Someone turned on Tamara’s old TV/VCR combo, the one I couldn’t bring myself to throw away over the summer, resting dormant for months in the corner of my studio. Someone found it, plugged it in, and left it on in the middle of the night for me to find.

  A flurry of gray static casts a dim glow across the garage walls. The paper wasp’s nest glows dully from above, almost seething. Pulsing. The volume is cranked up, filling the small space with the crackle of static. It sounds like I’m stepping into a burning building.

  There’s a VHS cassette waiting for me in the deck.

  I pull out the cassette to inspect it. There had been a label stuck to its spine at one point, but it’s been torn away, leaving behind an adhesive residue. A single strip of masking tape remains on the top. In childlike scrawl, someone has written sean in Sharpie.

  I slip the cassette back into the VCR.

  And press play.

  The tape has been recorded over several times. There’s no single image at first, but a distorted residue of several shows recorded on top of one another. Phantoms of programs that I can just barely glimpse before the image morphs into another. I hear the ghost of Alex P. Keaton for a moment before it overlaps with a jingle for low-calorie Coke.

  Tracking lines drift over the screen, splitting the images. Michael J. Fox’s melting face. A woman sipping from a soda can, smiling for the camera, her oversaturat
ed lips bleeding red.

  The recording finally settles. It cuts a few seconds into a program that’s already commenced. Whoever recorded this didn’t press record until the opening credits reached the costume designer.

  The credits are superimposed over a ring of candles. The pixelated image is dark, any detail lost on this degraded cassette, decades old by now, but I can still make out the flicker of flames set up in the shape of a pentagram. The soundtrack leans heavily on the synthesizers. The ominous drone intensifies the further into the credits we go, as the camera pulls back. That ring of candles grows smaller. Now I see several hooded figures standing behind each candle, holding them. Their eyes are hidden within the shadows of their black hoods while their mouths remain illuminated by candlelight. Their lips move. They’re all chanting in unison. The electronic score suddenly strikes a higher note on the keyboard.

  An anemic boy enters the circle. It’s difficult to tell if he’s really that pale or if it’s the desaturation from the degraded recording, or the poor production value. Whatever it is, the boy’s skin is sallow. All gray to me. He’s guided into the center of the pentagram by a hooded man. The child glances up at the surrounding adults, fear all over his face. But he doesn’t run. He simply sits and stares at them as the ring closes in.

  We’re on to the producers now, a long list of executives that require three separate title cards. As the credits rise and fade, I’m transfixed by the dimly lit scene behind them. The boy is handed a chalice to drink from. A bit spills down his chin. An accident. Just before he wipes the dribble away, we see that it’s orange. Hi-C.

  The digitized strings sting as the gray boy’s eyes grow heavy. His chin dips. He’s unable to hold his head up any longer. He’s woozy. So sleepy. The hooded man guides him to the floor so that he’s resting on his back now. The low drone of voices intensifies. Grows faster. They’re repeating the same words over and over again. Nonsense words. Latin by way of Ozzy Osborne.

  Executive produced by…

  The hooded man now reaches into his robe and pulls out a warped dagger. At first I think it’s the tracking on the VCR distorting the image—but no, the blade is shaped like a winding serpent, slithering to a sharp tip. It comes to me instantly: Tamara’s tattoo. The chanting escalates as he lifts the dagger overhead, a breath away from bringing the blade down and stabbing the boy in the heart.

  Directed by…

  Just as the knife drops out of frame, the screen goes black. The chanting stops, halted in mid-hymn. We hear the boy scream in the darkness, his voice heavily reverbed to echo forever.

  A final title card materializes: What you are about to watch is inspired by true events. Though it is based upon real people, their names have been altered to protect the innocent.

  It’s the made-for-TV movie based on the trial. I remember hearing about it, but I never saw it. I wasn’t allowed to watch it as a kid and I certainly didn’t seek it out as an adult.

  I can’t stop myself from watching it. Watching it all. That’s what it’s here for, isn’t it? For me to witness. The woman playing Mom looks nothing like her. I recognize her from her guest role on The Facts of Life, but nobody would ever mistake her for my mother.

  I feel like I’m looking into a funhouse mirror. My reflection warps and contorts into loose bands of oversaturated pixels across the screen.

  Like watching a movie. Isn’t that how I always explained Sean’s life to myself?

  But the story is all wrong. It’s not the “movie” I remember watching. This is a remake by another storyteller. Someone with his own truth. His own message to share.

  Who?

  DAMNED IF YOU DO

   SEAN: 1983

  Sean’s mother was having a difficult time reading the book. The words were barely there, slipping out half pronounced from her mouth. She lost her place on the page, her voice drifting away from the sentence. “Mom?” Sean gently nudged her with his elbow.

  She blinked back to the bedroom, to the book between them. “Sorry…Where was I?”

  But the story already lost its meaning. The words were just sounds. Before the trial, Mom didn’t need to read from a book to tell a great story. The words were simply in her. She was a living tome. She would make up tales of dinosaurs battling knights and winged bats the size of station wagons saving unicorns and princesses with green skin and fairy wings. Just as she reached a cliff-hanger, she would slyly kiss him on the forehead and wish him goodnight.

  “Don’t stop there,” Sean would plead. “Just a little more, please?”

  “You know the rules,” she’d say. “You’ll just have to tune in tomorrow…”

  Sure enough, Mom could pick up the thread right where she’d left off the night before, spinning the tale in a completely new direction.

  Sean loved his mother’s stories. Her capacity to create something out of nothing. Her imagination was always full of colors and textures and vivid sensations that seemed to manifest themselves right from the tip of her tongue. He wanted to live in his mother’s world of words. The bare walls of his bedroom would recede, taking on the contours of whatever tale she told. They had yet to decorate their new home, but with Mom’s stories, his room became a jungle or castle or spaceship blasting through the stratosphere. Sean could become anyone. His mother had granted him a potent form of magic, of casting spells with just the flick of his tongue. They were wizards and sorcerers, just like in Dungeons & Dragons, the game the older kids at school played. He wasn’t allowed to play that game because a local boy had jumped off a bridge. But Sean didn’t know that. He just knew that there was something evil about the game.

  Sean didn’t need D&D. He had her. But Mom’s stories felt rotten lately. Her worlds shriveled, the words withering on her tongue, like berries dying on the vine. Had Mom lost her magic? Was she sick? That frightened Sean the most. Something was inside his mother, making her ill. Had his words somehow caused it? Had Sean made her ill?

  For a moment, things had been better. The two of them were a team again. Sean’s story had given them a new game to play. Mom joined in on the fun. They fit in. They were embraced by the families of Greenfield. People comforted her. Complete strangers. We’re so sorry for what happened, they said. Finally, finally, people were nice to her. People were kind again.

  This was her chance to breathe. Isn’t that what she wanted? To belong to the crowd rather than be its target? What was a little white lie if it meant being a part of this community?

  Eventually, Mom gave up on conjuring her own stories. She brought a book to bed now, reading aloud to him instead. Prefabricated fairy tales. Stories everybody knew. They were never as thrilling as her tales. Now Mom’s mind seemed to wander when she read to him, never locking onto the words. Her attention drifted. Tonight, she just stopped reading altogether. She’d been in the middle of a sentence and then—nothing. It was as if her batteries ran out. Her mouth hung open slightly, her eyes locked onto some empty spot beyond the page. Out the bedroom window.

  “Mommy?”

  She closed the book, pressing it against her lap. “You know you can tell me anything? Whatever’s on your mind or—or something you’re feeling. No hiding from me, okay?”

  “No hiding,” he echoed.

  This was Sean’s chance. She had opened the door for him to tell her everything. The Truth. Take back the mean things he’d said about Mr. Woodhouse. He knew he had to do this, before it was too late. His stomach churned. The truth hurts, he remembered someone—an adult—saying. They were right. The truth was lodged in Sean’s throat, choking him.

  “It’s okay, Sean,” Mom started. “Whatever it is, you can—”

  The window exploded. Shards of glass scattered across his bed. Mom rolled onto Sean to form a protective shield with her arms. His screams echoed through the tangle of her limbs.

  “Stay in bed,” she whispered fiercely to him. Mom’s feet hit
the floor.

  After a few moments, Sean looked up and noticed her holding something.

  A brick. Someone had thrown it through the window. He noticed the glass still intact in the window frame, a mouth full of jagged teeth breathing a cold wind into the room.

  “Mommy…”

  She stepped closer to the window, glass crunching under her feet. Her bare feet.

  “Mom…”

  She peered outside. A force field had been disrupted. The protective barrier that kept the outside world from seeping into their home was gone. Anything could crawl in now. Anyone.

  What horrors she must’ve seen in the dark. Sean could only imagine.

  DAMNED IF YOU DON’T

   RICHARD: 2013

  Parent-teacher conferences are upon us. Moms and dads never demand a progress report from their art teacher, but Condrey insists we’re all in this together. I open up my classroom for what she calls walk-ins, just in case any parent wants to pop their head in and say howdy.

  “All ready?” Condrey asks behind me, peering through the classroom door.

  I try not to show how startled I am and smile back. “The doctor is in.”

  This is enough of an invitation for Condrey to step inside. “Everything all right?”

  “Everything’s great.”

  “How are your students? Any concerns?”

  “None as far as I can tell.”

  Condrey takes me in. I have to stand there and let her look. I never know how to handle myself when she does this, which is more often than one might imagine. I simply submit to her silent inspection. “Richard, I’ve been watching you lately…I know you’ve noticed.”