by Lukens, Mark
“I can smell it,” Ed said, and he sniffed at the air dramatically. “I can’t wait to try them, but I need to get out of these stinky clothes first.”
Ed went to the bedroom and pulled off his pants, shirt, tie, and undershirt. He thought about looking in the closet for something, but decided on the dresser instead. He found an old pair of sweat pants and a T-shirt.
• • •
After dinner, Ed went out to the garage. The scraps of his childhood memories had him thinking about his father. His dad had died a few years ago from cancer. His mom had died when Ed was a teenager. Dad was never the same after Mom went.
He rummaged through a few boxes that were stacked up on a row of old lower cabinets that they had put out here after installing new ones in the kitchen. These old cabinets made great storage. And even though they had utilized the cabinets for storage, they still had so much junk in the garage that they didn’t even park their cars in there anymore.
He found a box of his father’s stuff and he took it with him to the workout bench that never got used. He sat at the end of it and looked through the box. Inside were a few odds and ends he’d picked up at his dad’s house after he had died. Most of the sentimental and valuable stuff was inside the house—his ring, his old pocket watch that his father had given him, a few medals he got when he was in the Army for four years, some photos.
Ed wasn’t sure why he was rummaging through this old stuff. He had planned on going through the junk and getting rid of a lot of it, but he couldn’t do it right after his dad died, and then he just never got around to it these last few years.
There were some old magazines in the box, a broken bowling trophy, a few cassette tapes, and then he saw something he hadn’t seen in a long time—a large dreamcatcher, and it fired up a sudden and fierce feeling of nostalgia inside of him. He remembered now that his dad had told him that the dreamcatcher had been handed down to him by his father. The dreamcatcher was old and looked handmade. It was a metal loop wrapped in bands of leather with a net weaved across the circle. Attached to the circle were feathers and beads on strings of leather. The dreamcatcher was supposed to be hung above the bed and catch any bad dreams in the net before they got to the person in bed.
Was this what he’d been looking for without realizing it? Did this old dreamcatcher have something to do with that night so long ago?
Maybe he should hang it above his bed.
Ed tossed the dreamcatcher back on top of the box and stood up. He was acting stupid. He’d just had a nightmare when he was a kid—an extremely vivid nightmare—and that was all. And now his nightmares over the last few nights had brought those memories back. It was that simple.
He turned off the garage light and went back inside the house.
• • •
After they put Jimmy to bed, Ed and Brenda stayed up for another hour watching TV. Then they went to bed.
While Brenda was in the bathroom, Ed made sure the closet door was closed. He pulled on it to make sure. If there had been a lock on the door, he surely would’ve used it.
They turned the lights off and lay in the darkness, talking for a few minutes.
“You know I’m going to stay at mother’s house tomorrow,” Brenda said.
“Yeah, I remember. How long?”
“Just the weekend.”
Ed didn’t say anything. He didn’t like the idea of sleeping in their bedroom by himself. Maybe he would sleep with the light on. Or maybe he would fall asleep in the living room in front of the TV.
“Jimmy told me today that he thinks there’s a monster in his closet,” Brenda said.
Ed’s heart skipped a beat, and then it thundered in his chest. “Is that so?” he croaked out, trying to sound normal.
“I told him that monsters aren’t real,” she said and yawned, already breathing heavier.
Brenda fell asleep and left him alone in the darkness, staring at the ceiling.
• • •
Ed woke up at three thirty in the morning again. The closet door was wide open and he was sure that things were moving around inside. He heard the soft rustling of clothing. And he heard other noises—he heard whispers.
He stared at the closet, at the darkness inside of it. Something was in there, and it was going to come out soon.
But not tonight … he was sure of that for some reason.
The memories of that night so long ago were beginning to come back...
• • •
The next morning Brenda left to go to her mother’s house. She only lived sixty miles away. Brenda took turns with her three sisters taking care of their mother who was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s.
Ed and Jimmy went to the store and bought a cartload of sweet and salty snacks—all of the stuff that Brenda usually wouldn’t let in the house. “It’s guys’ night,” Ed told Jimmy.
“Yeah, guys’ night,” Jimmy said and beamed.
That afternoon they played catch in the backyard with the football.
That evening Ed watched a few movies with Jimmy; they were Pixar movies that they had seen before, but he didn’t mind watching them again. Ed drank four of the six beers out of the six-pack he’d bought. He rarely drank, especially not in front of Jimmy, but after the last few nights he told himself he needed something to help him calm down a little, help him relax.
The plan was for him and Jimmy to stay up late and fall asleep on the couches in the comforting glow of the flickering TV and neither one of them would go to their bedrooms tonight. Neither one of them would be near their closets …
But Ed woke up exactly at three thirty in the morning in the darkness of his own bedroom.
He sat up quickly, looking around as panic set in.
How had he gotten in here? When had he come to bed? Where was Jimmy?
Ed stared right at the closet—the door was wide open.
“Daddy!!” Jimmy’s cries pierced the night.
Ed stared at the darkness of the closet and he expected to see the shapes moving around inside, the rustling of clothing, the secretive whispers.
But there was nothing moving in his closet.
“Daddy!! There’s a monster in my closet!!”
It had never been in his closet, Ed thought. How could he have forgotten that night all those years ago, the scariest night of his life? But it all came back to him in a rush.
Oh God, it’s in Jimmy’s room. It had always been in Jimmy’s room!
Ed jumped out of bed and bolted out of his bedroom as Jimmy continued screaming for him. He burst into his son’s room and saw Jimmy huddled against the headboard, the covers pulled up to him like a dreadfully inadequate barrier from the monster.
Ed looked at Jimmy’s closet from the doorway. The door was wide open and the closet looked much bigger now, much deeper, and everything inside the closet was spinning and swirling together, forming a creature—a many-legged thing that was pushing itself out into the bedroom.
He ran towards his son’s bed, but he only made it a few steps before the tentacles of the monster shot out of the closet like a bullfrog’s tongue. The tentacles wrapped around Ed’s legs and one arm, pulling him back towards the closet.
He fought, trying to pull the tentacles off of him, but they felt like bands of iron around his legs, squeezing harder and harder, pulling him closer and closer to the dark mouth of the closet. These tentacles were made of twisted cloth, shredded books, and melted plastic and metal toys. And inside the closet, Ed saw the face of the creature, two yellow eyes the size of dinner plates, a yawning black mouth stretching open underneath the eyes.
“Jimmy!” Ed yelled.
Two more tentacles made of twisted cloth and melted plastic toys shot out and slammed into the wall beside the door with a soft splat. The thing had so many legs.
Jimmy watched as his dad tried to fight the monster in his closet, but his dad was losing. The door was beginning to close, and Jimmy knew that if the door closed his dad would never come back out again.
Ed twisted around and managed to shoot his leg out and plant his foot against the wall, bracing himself. But the creature continued to pull him closer and his leg threatened to buckle.
“Son!” Ed yelled. “You have to go get something!”
“I don’t know what to do!” Jimmy cried.
“Go to the garage. There’s a box on the floor by the weight bench. There’s a dreamcatcher on the box. It has a big net in a circle, and it has feathers on it. Get it and bring it here!”
Jimmy was too scared to move, but he was even more afraid his father was going to be eaten alive by the creature. And his father wouldn’t be enough food for the creature … no, it would want more.
“Hurry, Jimmy!!”
Jimmy ran out of his room and through the living room. The whole house was dark. The last thing Jimmy remembered was watching TV in the living room and getting sleepy. And then he’d woken up in his bedroom. Maybe his dad had carried him to his bedroom after he had fallen asleep, he thought absently as he hurried into the kitchen. He opened the door and reached inside to flip on the overhead fluorescent lights.
He didn’t like going into the garage by himself—especially at night.
He stepped through the doorway and bolted across the concrete floor, his bare feet slapping at the concrete. He saw the dreamcatcher on the top of the cardboard box, it was a large circle wrapped in old leather with a net in the middle and feathers dangling from it attached to strings of leather and beads, just like his father had said.
He grabbed the thing his father called a dreamcatcher and ran back to the doorway, afraid there might be another monster in the garage waiting for him.
Jimmy ran back to his bedroom and saw that the closet door was almost shut. One of his dad’s feet was poking out, and it was the only thing keeping the door open. Jimmy could hear his dad’s muffled screams coming from inside the closet, it sounded like he had a heavy cloth over his mouth, or in his mouth.
Or maybe he was already inside the monster.
Too late.
Jimmy didn’t even think about it. He ran to his closet and pulled the door open. It was hard to pull the door open, but Jimmy found strength he never knew he had. He saw his father up against the monstrous thing inside the closet, tentacles of twisted clothing, metal and plastic toys, a Halloween costume, sports equipment, all of it twisted together to construct this hideous thing. But there were glimpses of something dark and slimy underneath the cloth and plastic and metal, like a glimpse of the monster’s true flesh. And set deep in the cloth and paper were the two yellow eyes, milky and blank, like the eyes of a deep water fish.
His dad wasn’t inside the creature yet, but the monster’s mouth was opening wider and wider, about to wrap around his father’s head and shoulders. And Jimmy saw jagged pieces of metal and plastic inside the mouth—they had formed into teeth.
“Do it!” Ed yelled.
Jimmy wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, but he swung the dreamcatcher down, holding it by the feathers, and he felt an energy buzzing from the dreamcatcher and moving up his arms. He saw that the dreamcatcher’s net grew larger and larger as it swung down towards the creature, the netting spreading out and draping over the malformed thing that was the monster’s head. There was a terrible whine of pain and surprise from the thing that spanned the inside of his closet—and the giant thing was shrinking down beneath the net, almost like it was melting back into cloth and broken toys and books again.
The cloth-covered tentacles loosened around Ed’s arms and legs and he scrambled out of the closet and dove into the bedroom as Jimmy backed out of the way. Jimmy had let go of the dreamcatcher when he backed out of the closet.
The closet door slammed shut.
“Daddy …” Jimmy whispered.
“It’s over, son,” Ed said and hugged his son. “It’s gone.”
Ed looked back at the closet door. There were no sounds coming from inside the closet. He opened the door and saw that the closet was in ruins. Some of the clothes and toys might be able to be salvaged, but they would have to buy some more before Brenda got home.
Ed stepped inside the closet and he heard the harsh intake of air from Jimmy. He turned and smiled at his son and nodded, letting him know again that everything was okay. He needed to do this; he needed to go back inside and get the dreamcatcher back.
He picked up the dreamcatcher from the floor amid the piles of clothes and toys. The dreamcatcher was back to its normal size and not a feather or a bead was torn from it. He took it out of the closet and handed it to his son.
“You keep it,” Ed told him. “It’s yours now.”
Jimmy took the dreamcatcher and held it in his hands.
“You keep it with you until you need it one day to save your son,” Ed told him.
Jimmy nodded and looked at the closet. He believed his father, and he knew the monster was gone now.
JULY
THE TANK
July brings to my mind Independence Day. And this story is about freedom in a way. A man wakes up to find himself trapped inside a metal tank. He’s not sure who put him there or why, but he’s going to learn what it’s like to lose his freedom—and then to try to get it back.
John woke up in suffocating darkness and he had the sudden feeling that he was deep beneath the ground—buried.
Dead and buried.
He felt as if he was floating in the pitch-black darkness of his coffin, and he knew that he should be afraid, he should be horrified. But his mind floated in a foggy haze and he closed his eyes and lay very still on the metal floor which had a curve to it beneath his naked body.
He knew he should be terrified. He should be screaming.
There would be plenty of time for that later.
He drifted back to unconsciousness.
• • •
He woke up screaming. It was still pitch-black in this coffin he was in. He sat up too quickly and scraped the very top of his head on the ceiling of the tank he was in. He explored the darkness around him with trembling fingers, feeling nothing but curved metal walls, floor, and ceiling. He felt thick lines in the metal that seemed like welding joints and what seemed like rivets or some kind of fasteners.
“Help!” he screamed and his voice echoed in the metal tank.
He scurried around, still feeling his way along, exploring every inch of his prison, still screaming.
“Help! Get me out of here!”
But no one came to help him.
He sat down against the end of the tank, his back to the wall, his legs stretched out as far as they would go. He tried to get his breathing under control. He tried to slow down his racing heart. He was afraid he was going to have a heart attack.
He pounded on the walls and heard a dull echo. For a moment he was afraid he had been buried underground in a metal tank, but the sound from his fists hitting the wall seemed to have an echo to it.
He had to calm down.
Why was he in here? When did he get in here? He couldn’t remember.
“My name is John Logan,” he whispered. The sound of his own trembling voice brought a little comfort to him. “I’m thirty-two years old. My birthday is July twenty-third. I live at 9983 Hillcrest Street. Apartment 206.”
You live here inside this metal barrel now, his mind whispered.
“I’m a desk clerk at a hotel,” he went on, ignoring the whisper in his mind. “I don’t keep in touch with my parents. My girlfriend dumped me a year ago. She said I was too boring. I watch a lot of TV and read a lot I used to run and workout when I was younger but now I don’tseemtohavetheenergryforit—”
John stopped himself, realizing that his speech was getting faster and faster, spiraling towards panic again. The echo of his voice mixed the words together into a jumble inside the tank.
“Why me?” he shouted in an eruption of anger and tears. He pounded the side of the tank and heard the hollow thump. “Why am I here?”
He let himself cry, his body racking with
sobs.
“Why me? I get up and go to work every day like I’m supposed to. I don’t bother anybody. Why would someone do this to me? Who would hate me that much?”
John wiped at his tears. He hugged himself and shivered against the metal wall. He began to pray silently to himself. He hadn’t prayed in a long time, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do. He wondered if he was slowly running out of air in here. Would he be dead in a few hours? A few days?
He closed his eyes, his lips still moving, the whispered prayers filling the dark tank.
He drifted off.
• • •
John woke up from a stabbing, piercing brightness. He sat up too quickly and scraped the top of his head on the curved ceiling.
A few feet away from him, in the curved metal wall, a small hatch was open and a rubber-gloved hand reached in towards him.
John screamed.
The hand retreated and a small metal door slammed shut over the rectangle of blissful light. There was a clicking sound like a lock being engaged.
John lunged for the metal door. He could see the thin line of light around it.
“No! Please, no! Wait! Who are you?!”
He clawed at the little door and two of his fingernails bent back, shooting bamboo splinters of pain into the flesh beneath the nails. He gave up trying to pry the door open, and he pounded on it.
“Come back! Whoever you are, come back! I don’t know what I’m doing in here!”
• • •
John waited in the darkness for hours. It felt like days.
The door opened again, blinding him with the light. The rubber-gloved hand shoved a tray in through the rectangular slot. There was a plastic cup and some kind of food on the tray.
John stared at the tray.
“Hey! Help me, please!”
The hand held the tray, but the person didn’t speak.
John grabbed the tray of food, and the drink spilled over onto the tray, running into the mush.
The hand retreated and the metal door clanged shut. The lock was bolted from the outside.
“Wait! Please, wait! PLEASE!!”
But the door didn’t open again.
In a rage, John threw his tray of food across the tank and the clatter of the plastic rang in his ears as he sobbed.