August's Eyes

by Glenn Rolfe

  * * *

  After a walk down the block, followed by a twenty-minute yoga session, Sarah felt much better. A little self-care was all it took to reset things. She sat down, feet tucked beneath her bum on the couch with a cup of Tension Tamer tea, and opened Stephen King’s book on becoming a writer. She only had about thirty pages left when her gaze left the words on the page and landed upon the dream book. She dropped the King title to her lap and leaned forward to snatch the non-fiction book from the coffee table where she’d left it in hopes it might attract John’s attention.

  She tucked her bookmark in the paperback and swapped books.

  Skimming through the first few chapters, she found a section on guilt:

  Dreams where you’re concerned you may be found out suggest you should feel guilty. The hidden aspects of your true nature and not being true to yourself in your life can manifest into wickedness that could have you waking up with feelings of guilt or shame.

  On another page she read:

  Dreams have a way of reminding you about acts you should or already do feel guilty about, acting as a reminder of errors you’ve committed against friends or loved ones, or even strangers in your life.

  John had mentioned feeling like his past was there in – what had he called it – Graveyard Land? It gave her the goosies just thinking of such a place. She’d had a friend named Veronica in junior high. Veronica’s little sister was crushed to death in a freak accident with Veronica right there watching her. She often spoke of the bad dreams she had most nights afterward. Sarah had visited her sister’s grave with her a few times and always felt her skin prickle at the cemetery. Veronica said it was her sister’s ghost standing with them. At some point, Veronica moved away. Sarah heard from a mutual friend years later that Veronica’s best friend, Tyrese, was brutally beaten on her way home from Veronica’s house one night for being transgender in the wrong part of town. She wondered what kind of dreams that gave the grown woman now.

  John had said he couldn’t think of any specific triggering incidents in his past, but the human brain is very good at protecting us. The natural automatic response to compartmentalize things was a feat of self-preservation. Knowing how her husband had grown up, his happy childhood sent spiraling as he entered his teenage years, his formative years, how he’d all but been abandoned by his parents and left to fend for himself against all those trying and confusing times at fifteen, it broke her heart. There was no telling what his mind had set aside in his daily struggle to navigate the ever-changing world around him.

  She thought of him waking in terror. What was it he feared in those dreams? Something about a boy and spiders? John had mentioned something about eyes. Weird eyes? No eyes? She couldn’t remember, but they’d wondered if it was the dream’s way of telling him he’d seen something or maybe there was something he couldn’t see.

  She flipped through the book and was somewhat surprised to find a whole section on seeing people without eyes or not having any yourself.

  Seeing people without eyes symbolizes a need to protect a relationship.

  Further down the page she read on:

  Dreaming of others without eyes indicates a refusal to recognize a problem. It can also indicate that you are hiding something.

  It was the spiders though…. He’d woken up convinced that spiders were under his pillow. She scanned the book and was dumbfounded by what she found:

  Spiders can symbolize women and female power. The spider is often thought to represent motherhood and motherly figures.

  Well, fucking shit, she thought.

  They’d always been so in tune as a couple. Had he sensed she was going to put trying for a baby on the table again? The mysteries of the human mind never ceased to amaze her.

  Then she remembered the notebook.

  John had purchased a notebook yesterday. When she asked him about it, he told her Dr. Soctomah had suggested it.

  Setting the dream book aside, Sarah stood.

  John wasn’t back yet but could come through the door any moment. She didn’t know how private the diary or whatever it was would be. Maybe he wouldn’t give a shit if she looked at it. Maybe he would.

  She took one last glance out the front window to make sure he wasn’t home yet, and then sought out the notebook.

  It wasn’t hard to find. John left it sitting on the nightstand next to his side of the bed. He’d slept on the couch last night, so there was probably nothing in it yet, but she looked anyway.

  Inside the cover he had written Dream Journal. That wasn’t surprising, but what did slip a tendril of unease through her was the sketch beneath it. A figure with strange bony shoulders, a gnarled left hand and scratched, blacked-out eyes. The figure stood among some crudely drawn gravestones.

  This was one of the children he kept seeing in the dreams…his name…. John had said it at some point she was sure, but she couldn’t recall it now.

  She looked to the first page and found it.

  August and One Eye are there waiting for me every night in Graveyard Land.

  One Eye wants me to play games. Not sure why or what it means. He said August couldn’t play or wouldn’t play. Something about him being special or having something special… I can’t remember. This made August mad and he scared One Eye away. He twirls leaves at the fence and stuffs them in his mouth. He turns them into spiders. I guess August scares me, too.

  Graveyard Land scares me. There are lots of other kids there. All of them are boys like me, One Eye and August. But the others never come near us, and they never speak. I don’t know why not.

  The graves go on forever it seems.

  I guess it all scares me.

  * * *

  That was all he had so far, but it was enough to give her the creeps. Gazing at the ugly sketch of August, she shuddered and closed the cover. She set it on John’s nightstand and jumped back.

  A black spider the size of a quarter scurried over the dream journal and out of sight behind the nightstand.

  Sarah hurried out of the room and back to her fictional horror stories.

  She was suddenly feeling less upset with John and couldn’t wait for him to get home. She didn’t want to be alone.

  PART TWO

  Walking Into Spiderwebs

  Chapter Eleven

  Pat awoke to his baby sister, Ada, jumping on his bed.

  “Get up, Paddy,” her tiny cartoon voice demanded.

  His eyes still closed, his face planted in his pillow, he moaned, “Ada, go watch Doc McStuffins or something. Paddy needs to sleep.”

  She fell silent. Her wiggly movements ceased. Sleep called to him, trying to pull him down where the good heavy stuff waited in the pitch black. He knew better. Turning his head, he opened one eye and spied her sitting there at the edge of his bed, her little arms across her chest, bottom lip puffed all the way out, eyes aimed at the floor.

  “All right,” he said, slugging his way out from beneath his weighted blanket. “Come on, pipsqueak.”

  “Yah!” She clapped her chubby little hands and did some sort of run-in-place hopping happy dance before grabbing at the pile of books on his floor.

  “What’s this?” she asked, her little eyebrows knitting together. She reached down and lifted the paperback.

  It was a book called The Anatomy of Evil. The cover was a sort of x-ray of a face from the eyes down and was way too creepy for his little sister to be looking at.

  She dropped it and picked up the next one. “Yuck, Paddy. I don’t like clowns.”

  “Neither do I, Ada,” he said, taking the book about John Wayne Gacy out of her tiny hands.

  “Why you got those?”

  “Ms. Davis from the library gave them to me. I have to take them back. Those are some icky covers, huh?”

  She nodded, still mesmerized by the true crime books.

  “Go
on and get,” he said. “Make sure Doc is helping everyone. I just have to go pee before I come watch it with you. Okay?”

  He had to scoop the books up and put them on the other side of his bed before her smile returned.

  “Race ya!” she said, and scampered out of the room as fast as her little feet could carry her.

  His mom stepped into the doorway as he pulled on a shirt from the floor.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I was just starting another load of laundry. I told her to leave you alone.”

  He stepped next to her and kissed her cheek. “No worries, Ma. There’ll be plenty of time to sleep when I’m dead. Besides, she did the pouty lip.”

  “Oh no, she didn’t.”

  “Yep. She’s a step ahead of us.”

  “Takes after her big brother,” she said. “And just like Ada loses half her toys…” She produced his wallet from her back pocket. “Found this in the laundry.”

  “Shit, thanks, Ma. I thought I lost it at John’s.” He tossed the wallet to his bed. “If you really feel bad about Ada waking me up you can make me some bacon and coffee. I mean, if you really love me.”

  She slapped his shoulder as he started down the hall.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Keep it up and you’ll be the one making me breakfast.”

  “Paddy, come on,” Ada said. “Doc’s gonna save another stuffy.”

  “Coming, Ada,” he said, turning to his mom. “I like my coffee with lots of cream and my bacon extra crispy.”

  “All right,” his mom said, “but I expect you to prove your landscaping skills later. Every lawn in the neighborhood looks immaculate, yet you let ours grow wild and free.”

  “Paddy!”

  “Her Highness beckons,” he said. “I’ll take my breakfast in the television chamber, please.”

  His mom threw a rolled-up pair of socks at him as he stumbled into the living room to find Ada mesmerized by the Disney magic come to life on their TV.

  * * *

  An hour later, Pat rolled down Aikman Street on his bike, heading for J & S Oil to fill the five-gallon gas tank for the lawn mower. His mother’s not-so-subtle jabs about their lawn growing wild had got his attention. Riding alone, he got to thinking. If he expected the town to see past his Mohawk and take his burgeoning landscaping business seriously, he needed to treat his own yard like a showroom. He’d mentioned the idea to John of making his neighborhood lawn-mowing business into an actual legit gig. He expected John to tease him, but instead John encouraged him to go for it. Pat would be sixteen in a few months, but he’d realized a couple things this year – he liked making money and he liked being his own boss. He’d worked at Wendy’s for two weeks in March and that was enough. He understood pretty quickly the bullshit fast food workers had to put up with from customers and management alike. When his mom said he needed to make his own money if he wanted to buy things, he started shoveling driveways after the last snowstorms of the season and then went straight into mowing lawns after that. This past week, he’d taken on so many jobs around Spears Corner that he’d had to hire a buddy, Danny Rich, to meet the demand for services. Danny was his first employee. And it wasn’t stopping there. Pat had already started saving for a snowplow. Hell, he’d planned on buying something cool for his first car – an old Rambler or Maverick if he could score a good deal, but with the idea of growing his business, he switched gears and instead bought a working 1988 Ford F-150 off old man Keisling out on Devil’s Creek Lane.

  Pat had been driving since he was thirteen. One of his mom’s cooler but equally fucked up and incapable of making good decisions boyfriends, Neal, taught him on the dirt roads of the trailer park. It wasn’t long after that that Neal, who’d lost his own license for DUI, had Pat running him to the store so he could get beer and score junk. With all that early experience Pat had no doubt he’d get his license on the first try.

  He rolled into the parking lot, set his bike on the side of the store next to the stack of milk crates, and went inside to pay ahead for his gas. He gave the cashier eight bucks and ran back out to fill the red plastic can.

  He was finishing up when a green van slowed on the street in front of him. He more felt rather than saw the person behind the wheel watching him. It gave him the heebee jeebees. He placed the gas nozzle back on its handle. He turned around, squinting to try and see the person behind the wheel of the creepy van more clearly, but the vehicle squealed its tires and hurried down the road.

  On the way home, he found himself looking over his shoulder, expecting to see the green van again at any moment lurking after him. He’d never been an anxious person. Not after all he’d been through in his life so far. Living with a drug-addicted mom could have completely ruined him, but somehow, Pat managed to not only take care of himself, but also take care of his mom and Ada. Cooking, cleaning, making sure Mom didn’t choke on her own vomit when she passed out on the bathroom floor. Making sure Ada was fed and changed and was paid attention to. It had been a hard couple years before John Colby came into their lives, but Pat did things as best he could. He’d avoided getting him and Ada taken away from his mom twice by the skin of his teeth before John was assigned as their caseworker.

  John turned out to be a godsend. He came into their situation and instantly recognized and acknowledged Pat’s work and applauded him for what he’d survived rather than treating him like a child. John worked Pat into the plan to help his mother. It wasn’t easy, but John eventually got Pat’s mom to open her eyes to all her son was doing to keep them functioning and moving forward in the face of such incredible adversity. Far from your average thirteen-year-old at the time, Pat would have done it all if he were old enough to get a job.

  And once John convinced Pat’s mother to get clean, she said she knew she’d never go back to that way of living. True to her word, she found the light and bathed in its grace. She ditched all the Neals in her life and started a new job last winter, landing at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services helping other families in need.

  Pat was smiling, thinking how proud of his mom he was, when the green van zoomed past him before its rear brake lights blinked into existence. The vehicle stopped two houses down from the entrance to the trailer park. The van sat there idling in the middle of the road, waiting.

  Pat coasted to a stop and watched from the sidewalk.

  It felt like the world had stopped.

  In those beats between his lungs fighting for air against the inside of his chest and the sleet-like sensation dragging his backbone like a lake filled with human remains, Pat saw every nightmare he’d ever read about in the true crime books that fascinated him so much pass before his eyes as he clutched his hand grips.

  When the van pulled away, Pat stood caught somewhere between hyperventilating and throwing up.

  Chapter Twelve

  That night, Pat dreamt of the green van he’d seen and the shadowy figure behind the wheel. He couldn’t remember what happened in the dreams but knew it had been cold, so cold that frost formed on his eyelashes and something far worse waited just out of sight.

  * * *

  The alarm clock buzzed like a swarm of hornets, irritating Pat from the depths of sleep and delivering him into a new day.

  “Shit,” he muttered. It was only five in the morning. The day waits for no man. If he was going to take on the world, he needed to rise and shine before everyone else. Grabbing his headphones, he hit up Spotify and started his morning playlist.

  The riff to the Eagles’ ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ offered hope and gave him enough get up and go to make it to his bowl of Cap’n Crunch. He knew it wasn’t cool for a punk rocker to listen to seventies bands not called Ramones, Sex Pistols, or his personal favorite, the Clash, but hell if he didn’t love Don Henley’s voice. Joe Walsh’s riff gave way to the Clash’s ‘London Calling’, Bad Religion’s ‘Los Angeles is Burning’, and The Interrupters’
‘Take Back the Power’. By the time he was at the Kendricks’ house on Mayflower Street, he felt ready to conquer the world.

  Most of his elderly clients wanted their work done early, and he wouldn’t disappoint.

  He finished two lawns by the time Danny rolled up in his dad’s old Chevy.

  “Dude,” Danny said. “It’s fucking hot as sweaty balls out here.”

  A poet.

  “Yep,” Pat said. “I hope you brought your water bottle. You have Mr. Chang and Ellen Hargrove’s place.”

  “Ms. Hargrove?” Danny said, his eyes bulging from their sockets.

  Ms. Hargrove was the MILF of Spears Corner, recently divorced, and totally strutting her stuff for anyone who passed into her orbit. Pat had prepared for Danny’s complaints about the crazy August heat and knew he could motivate his sole employee with their lovely former sixth-grade teacher with the nicest tits in town.

  “Dude, I freaking love you.” Danny jumped from the truck and hugged Pat.

  “Okay, okay,” Pat said. “Just do a good job and maybe she’ll offer you some lemonade.”

  “Fuck, if she’s tanning or swimming, I will give you anything.”

  “Just do a good job and be cool.”

  “Yeah,” Danny said. “Of course.”

  * * *

  Three hours later, they met up downtown at Gerrard’s Pizza.

  Pat saw the sly grin Danny was wearing and knew something happened. “Spill,” he said.

  Danny sat back in the booth and gazed out the window trying on his best James Dean. “She tanned in her leopard print bikini,” he said.

  “So? I’ve seen that. I mean it’s spectacular, but so what?”

  “She asked me to help her.”

  Shit.

  Pat edged forward. “Help her?”

  He was suddenly jealous of Danny’s growing grin.

  “Sunblock.”