She

by David Duane Kummer

  “Um, you said help with dinner?”

  Without raising his eyes, he answered, “Oh, yeah. The oven’s preheating. I just need you to throw in some nuggets and fries.”

  “Are you kidding me?” She glared at him.

  “What’s wrong?” Mr. Moore still did not look up at her.

  “First, I don’t want that crap for dinner. Second, Christian could have done this. Why not ask him? He’s probably in the living room-”

  “Studying. Unlike you, taking a nap, he is doing work.”

  She crossed her arms. “There’s no work to be done? School’s almost over, in case you didn’t notice.”

  “Don’t take that tone with me. If it wasn’t for your attitude-”

  “I don’t have an attitude,” she growled, making her way into the living room, where Christian was leaning back with a book open on his lap. When she walked in, his eyes were not on his book, but staring at the television, which was muttering quietly as the cop show raged on.

  “Doing a good load of studying.” Crystal laughed rudely.

  He did not answer, and so when she went past him on the way to the garage door, she aimed a kick at his shin.

  “Hey, what the heck?” he exclaimed as she marched past and into the sweltering garage, where the bulky freezer sat.

  Grabbing the frozen nuggets and fries, she slammed the lid and took her time returning to the kitchen, where her father sat, silently perusing the comic section of his paper.

  Across town, Brandon reclined in his comfortable, cushioned chair, eyes drifting in the direction of the television. In his hands, he held a Bible, reading the passage his father had marked for him to study before their next study that Wednesday. That particular passage, from midway through the Old Testament, encouraged him to glance up at the moving lights and figures on the screen. Whenever he did risk a quick peek over the dog-eared pages, his vision was inevitably captured, until he awakened himself and set to work on the passage.

  “Mr. Comfy, when is bedtime?” said a gravelly, yet girlish voice from in front of him. It was followed by the sound of his sister chuckling.

  On the carpet in front of him, Grace and Lilly sat indian-style facing each other. With an odd assortment of stuffed animals and dolls, they grasped the figures loosely and bounced them all around the vicinity, giggling and speaking in high or low voices, depending on the gender of their doll or animal. It seemed to Brandon that the extra noise did nothing to focus his attention on the words in front of his face.

  “Could you two be any louder?” he snapped, glaring at them.

  Lilly, who was shy around people not part of her family, stared at the carpet, fidgeting with one of the smooth tufts it was made up of. Grace, on the other hand, raised her chin and gave him a displeased look that clearly said she did not approve of his opinion.

  “Yeah, we could. Wanna hear?”

  “Not particularly,” he muttered as his father walked past. Saying nothing else so he could avoid being lectured to, he slammed the leather covers shut and decided he would read it tomorrow or something like that.

  He stood up from the chair, throwing his Bible roughly on the table. Yawning, he marched across the room without saying a word and towards the stairs. He heard his father and mother talking quietly in the kitchen, but he did not bother to eavesdrop. Instead, he began to trudge up the stairwell.

  “Brandon!”

  Turning around a few steps up from the ground, he saw his father walking out of the kitchen towards him.

  “What?” he grumbled.

  “Where are you going?” his father asked, staring at him with a raised eyebrow.

  “Um, to my room?”

  “Why don’t you stay down here and talk with us? We’re discussing the sermon from Sunday.”

  “I’m tired,” Brandon lied.

  “Have you read your Bible yet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All of the verses?”

  Brandon sighed. “Yes! Don’t you trust me?”

  “Should I?”

  “ ‘Night,” he said, heading back up the stairs.

  His father called something after him, but instead of answering or even turning around he quickened his pace on the stairs. Reaching the landing, he strolled into his room and slammed the door behind him.

  Everything was quiet as he laid down in bed, hands over his eyes. Since that sleepover with his friends, it seemed his emotions were on more of a rollercoaster than ever before. Despite not seeing the lady outside his window all weekend, her sudden disappearance terrified him more than anything. Where could she be? It could be a coincidence that she stopped haunting outside his window after all of his friends saw her, or it could be just another question.

  It had seemed on that night that she recognized him, and there had been the terrible gleam in her eyes, more so than usual. Or had that been merely the moonlight’s shine?

  On Monday, he had almost been terrified to return to school, in case he heard she had moved on from his home to one of the other two where his friends lived. If he, in some way, brought that same terrible mystery onto them, he was not sure if he could forgive himself. It was only a matter of a time before she acted on all of these night-time vigils. There was no doubt in his mind that she was not simply watching. She was studying, thinking, planning; everything hinged upon one question he could not answer.

  They had seen her clearly that night, but had she seen them?

  Even while Brandon was anxiously fidgeting in his bed, Michael’s footsteps clicked on the sidewalk a few streets away. He was heading for Brandon’s house, where Lilly had been spending most of the day. Once he got there, both of them would head home, but chances were it would take longer to leave than necessary. Brandon’s parents loved talking to him, and even if they were not in a very chatty mood, he and Brandon could spend hours talking over the most inconsequential subjects.

  Hardy had been their home for more years than either of them cared to remember or think back on. Ever since they had met early in elementary school, the two were inseparable. More than just their similar personalities, it was in the way they met that such a strong friendship was beginning to form.

  Michael and his mother had been strolling casually along this same street, which had not changed in the nearly ten years since. It was there that he saw the Gray family a little bit ahead. Mr. and Mrs. Gray were deep in a discussion with an older, angry-looking gentleman, who began to shout words and phrases Michael had never heard before. His mother seemed horrified and commanded him never to repeat those words.

  The closer they got, the more Michael understood what was going on. Whoever the grouchy man was, he clearly did not like the Gray family. Although Michael knew little about them, he felt sorry, and remembered how it was to be yelled at like that. While his mother was going to turn into a shop, ignoring the strange scene, Michael began to walk towards the scene. Then, in a flash, the vile, spewing man took a threatening step towards Mr. Gray.

  “Stop it!” he said as loudly as he dared. “Why’d you do that?”

  The man turned a hateful glare towards Michael and asked, “What? You friends with these- ?”

  “No!” his mother had interrupted, sprinting towards the scene. “There are kids here! What’s wrong with you?”

  “I ain’t sharing this town with their type,” he spat, emphasizing the last two words and giving the Gray family a piercing stare that could burn.

  “Who died and made you God?” Nicole Walker jeered at the slightly hunchbacked, balding man.

  “I’m not the only one. Lots of us don’t like their kind.”

  “‘Their kind’ are called humans, you idiot. And no matter how many of you there are, you’ll all get thrown in a cell if you do anything.”

  “You wouldn’t call the coppers,” he laughed nastily.

  “Try me.”

  With a mangled expression of hate and nervousness, the man had stormed off, leaving the Gray family to thank his mother with many words and praye
rs. She looked taken aback at all of the gratefulness, trying unsuccessfully to say things like “He deserved it” and “Anyone would have.”

  “Hey,” Brandon had said, walking up nervously to Michael. “We met at the park. Remember?”

  “Kinda,” he replied.

  “Yeah, well... that was really brave of your mom.”

  Michael glowed with delight at the compliment. “Why’d that man say those words?” he asked curiously.

  “He thinks he’s better than us,” answered Brandon with a touch of disdain.

  “Why?”

  “‘Cause he’s white, and we’re black.” Brandon looked sheepishly at the ground, as if afraid Michael might share the same opinion as the man.

  “But… I’m not black? And I still think you’re great?”

  “You don’t think he was right?”

  Michael shook his head with a childlike vigour. “No, not at all. I think he was stupid. You seem cool.”

  “Really?” asked Brandon, smiling from ear to ear.

  “Yeah, of course.”

  Now, so many years later, he was walking past that exact spot. Whatever happened to that rude man was not for him to worry or even care about. Since learning what those vile words meant, he felt a similar hatred towards the person who could dare call another human being those things simply because they looked different.

  Brandon’s ten times the man he is, he thought gladly, not at all despairing that the man had disappeared since then, never to be seen again.

  Michael turned from Pine Street onto Park Road, and for a time he found himself walking among the tall, leafy trees, some still in full bloom. Pine Tree Park was exceptionally pretty at this time of year, and a cool breeze whipped away any feeling of uncomfortable heat. Birds conversed cheerfully overhead, and he even saw a few squirrels run amok, in the direction of trees and nuts.

  For a time, it seemed as if the sleepover had never happened. Maybe nothing would come of it, anyways. Even though he worried terrible events were going to crash down soon, the last few days made every thought like that seem foggy and exaggerated. They were just being paranoid, after all. People always said teenagers were unnecessarily emotional.

  Overhead, a dark-colored bird swooped, peering down on the earth. A teenage boy casually moved along the sidewalk which bordered the park. People with strollers and people without went in all different directions. A few bikes whooshed by, along with a small pack of runners being overtaken by them. The jogging folks waved lazily at everyone they saw, familiar or not.

  Today, the park was unusually empty-looking from up here where no unaided human could ever hope to reach. Not even the squirrels who could climb and look jealously at the sky would ever reach this height. She alone, the majestic bird, would find the joy and peace hidden up here.

  But who was that, moving quietly among the scattered citizens in the park? Wearing dark-colored clothes, and methodically lengthening and shortening her strides in tune, she traveled maybe a dozen feet behind the boy, who had no idea. Unbeknownst to him, a dark figure followed, more reliable, perhaps, than even his own shadow.

  The foolish boy who had let his guard down arrived at his apparent destination, a two-story home near a field of corn. He stood at the door for a moment, pushing some button on the wall, and soon enough a middle-aged man opened the strange, rectangular piece of wood. He entered into the house, and his shadow-figure stopped outside, resting behind a tree out of sight from the house.

  The dark bird soared away, thinking she would come back later. Humans tended to linger in houses much longer than made reasonable sense, and even if he never came out, she wanted to know how long that shadow-lady would wait.

  An hour later, she returned over the house, stomach bulging with the worms she had just discovered lurking in the soft soil of the park. She saw the boy exit the house, only this time he was accompanied by a little girl wearing a pink pack on her back and with both hands clutching two miniature people.

  What vanity, the bird thought, to make images of yourself to dress up, as if you, yourself, are not good enough. Most humans do not realize their beauty. We, in the air, wish to be them, and yet they refuse to be content. It will be their downfall.

  Evening fell as they walked, and still the shadow-figure followed, barely visible now but there all the same. By the time they began walking along the road lined with soybeans, they were the only three left on the road. The figure hung back now, covered in shadows, simply watching as the duo turned into another two-story home, and the third, unseen member of the trio stopped to watch.

  The shadow-figure stayed a while longer, until turning and walking back down the road, disappearing into darkness as if she had never been there in the first place.

  Curious, the dark bird landed on the side of the road and watched the two-story house, where three people bustled around for a time before the lights shut off one-by-one and it was enveloped in darkness.

  When all the world went black and there nothing left to see except the moonlight, the bird took flight again, rising higher than any human could wish, and soaring above the darkness, as if unaffected by the whole of it and the curious events undoubtedly happening below somewhere.

  7. Stories

  “Come on… Just a little more…”

  Laying on his bed, Gameboy in hand, he was playing the new Donkey Kong game. Well, sort of new. It had just come out in his town about a week ago, whereas most places had it over a year earlier. At the same time just about, they had gotten the new Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi game. For him and Brandon, who both had Gameboys and had saved up money, it was a tough choice. In the end, they decided to split up and get both games, so that if one was not good, they could share the other one.

  Michael chose the Donkey Kong game. Even without having any other DK games, he had played it at the arcade in Marcy a few times before they took it down, saying it was going to be repaired but never brought it back. Now, finally, he would have a game of his own, besides the typical, cheap games he got at first for his Gameboy. So far, it was everything he had expected, and helped to pass the time more than he had expected.

  As for the Super Star Wars game, Brandon said it was not quite as fun, and definitely a lot different, but he still enjoyed it. The only other game he had for his Gameboy did not work most of the time, and when it did was not fun at all. Sometime soon, they would swap games, and then Brandon might buy Donkey Kong for himself.

  “Dang it,” he said as Mario got pounded by a barrel. “So close.”

  At that moment, Lilly walked in, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, with an armful of stuffed animals, mostly horses and bears of course. She calmly came into the room, looking around at the familiar objects and dressers.

  On the wall, there was a picture she had colored with him only a few weeks ago, held up by a piece of tape. Below it on the floor, there was a small pile of Barbies she made him play with, in exchange for watching what he wanted on the television before bed. Occasionally, she slept in here after their late night entertainment. He guessed the same was going to happen tonight, judging by the blanket and animals.

  “Are you playing Duckey King?”

  He laughed and smiled at her. “Donkey Kong, you mean?”

  “That’s what I said,” she snapped. Even kindergartners had an attitude, although it was adorable to everyone except themselves.

  “It’s Donkey Kong, yeah. But what are you doing with those blankets?”

  “It’s just my blankey. Very soft,” she answered, twirling around and grinning from eye to eye. Her curly red hair bobbed around, while her brown eyes gleamed.

  “Okay, but what about the animals?”

  She opened her mouth to say something, but dropped her animals. They came tumbling down on the floor, but she did not care. “Mommy said I can sleep in here if you say yes.”

  Michael went back to playing his Gameboy and said, “Well, you haven’t asked yet.”

  “Can I sleep with you?” she a
sked, wrapping the pink blanket tighter around her shoulders.

  “Hmm.” He stroked his chin, pretending to be deep in thought.

  “Please,” she responded, folding her hands together like people do to pray.

  “Well... I don’t know…”

  “Pretty please.”

  Michael held back a smile as he put the Gameboy a little higher, blocking his face from her sight. Lilly thought those cute little eyes and tiny, folded hands could work wonders and get things from others people, and they certainly were hard to say “no” to, but it was fun to tease her. “A little brotherly love,” he called it.

  When he still did not respond, she sprang up onto the bed and peeked over his console. With the deepest, scratchiest voice she could muster, Lilly growled, “If you say no, the monster’ll get you.”

  A snicker skipped out of Michael, despite his best attempts not to laugh. In an equally low voice he answered, “I’m not scared of the monster.”

  Lilly giggled and answered in the same tone. “But you should be.”

  Letting the smile spread even wider, Michael said quickly, “I am the monster,” and then jumped up and began tickling her. Lilly’s curls flew up in the air as she frantically rolled around, kicking wildly and shrieking with delight. Michael began growling betweens laughs, and her face illuminated like a flame, brightening the whole room.

  Exhausted, he collapsed on the floor, leaving her on the bed, where she was beginning to calm down with a manic laugh. Never without energy, she got up on her knees and stuck out her fingers like claws, growling and saying, “Monster, monster.”

  Michael rolled onto his back and did the same, growling and chanting.

  “Monster, monster, monster, monster, monster-”

  “Having fun?” their mom’s voice interrupted.

  Both of them looked up, grinning and exhilarated. Lilly spoke up, answering, “We’re playing ‘Monster.’ The monster got me.”

  “Well, I’m glad you two are having fun, but if Lilly’s gonna sleep in here, it’s time for bed.”

  Lilly looked expectantly at her brother, who said, “Okay, you can sleep in here.”