by David Wood
Trey blinked. “I-- He's the guy who drives around my neighborhood. I know he's just a delusion, but--” Trey stopped speaking.
Tony was shaking his head, the smile wiped from his face.
“What?” Trey asked.
“That Ice Cream Man isn't who I'm talking about,” Tony said. He drummed his fingers on the metal table, and turned in his chair. “I've read your file, Trey. I know there's some information missing from it.” Tony paused, leaning forward in the chair. His breath smelled of cigarettes and coffee. “Do you?”
“I--” Trey frowned. “I don't know what you mean.” The pace of his breathing increased, but he didn't know why.
“Do you know?” Tony said again. “Do you know what's missing?”
“I--” Trey felt something crack the slightest bit in his mind. Something... “I don't know.”
Tony smiled, leaning back in his chair once again. Trey noticed the man's face was flushed as though he'd done something difficult. “There's nothing in your file describing your earliest childhood. Nothing but bullshit about it being a happy childhood.”
“It's not bullshit, it's--”
“It's bullshit.” Tony stood. His palms rested on the table, his face leaning closer to Trey's. The man's eyes were glittering, dancing with something malevolent.
Trey shuddered.
“You know it's bullshit, Trey.”
Trey leaned back in the wheelchair. “I don't want to--” He stopped speaking as he stared into Tony's manic grin. “I don't want to talk about this anymore,” he said.
Tony shook his head. “We are going to talk, Trey,” Tony said with a leer.
The image of the thing at his bedside, the thing standing over him, promising to punish him for having a child without asking permission. The thing. The Ice Cream Man. The Closet Man. It flooded his vision, saliva dripping from its canines and carrion crusted maw, razor sharp talons dangling just above its chest.
Trey put his hand to his head. “I don't want to--”
“Remember?” Tony asked. His voice was savage, on the verge of a shout. His eyes were changing color, turning green. “Remember? Good little boys remember,” Tony said in a low growl. “Good little boys tell the truth.”
The Ice Cream Man. Long nose. White stained uniform replaced by soiled jeans, soiled black boots, a red-checkered torn flannel shirt. The Closet Man. Crooked teeth in a jaw that didn't quite close. Bright green eyes leering down at him from a smiling face.
“Good little boys--” Trey muttered. “Good little boys ask permission.” Trey wept.
“Ask permission for what?” Tony's voice was still edged, but quieter. Tony's eyes returned to their brown color. When Trey didn't answer, the booming voice returned. “Good little boys ask permission for what?”
“I can't!” Trey screamed, his eyes glaring up at Tony. “I can't say--”
Tony growled, his face a mask of violence as he stepped around the table. He stood in front of Trey, leaning over him. “Ask permission!” Tony yelled at him. “Ask permission now!”
The man before him melted, the nose growing longer, hair dripping into a crew cut, brows lengthening, cheekbones narrowing. Perfect white teeth shifted, the jaw offset. Dockers and the polo shirt morphed into the dirty, filthy thing's outfit.
“ASK PERMISSION,” it growled.
“Don't hit me,” Trey sobbed. He put his hands over his head. “I didn't mean to pee in the corner!”
“You must ask permission,” the man before him said, its fist mere inches from him. “Ask permission for everything. To eat. Even to breathe, you dirty boy. Dirty little boy.” It paused, foul breath steaming into Trey's face. “Look at me, dirty little boy!”
Trey dropped his hands, staring up into the giant, leering form.
“You will ask permission, boy. You are never going to say anything.” The man slapped a fist into his palm, the sound like a belt cracking. “You will ask permission.”
“I--” Trey sobbed. “I will ask permission,” he said in a shuddering voice.
“Ask permission to save your son!” the man screamed at him. Saliva dripped from the side of the man's mouth, droplets hitting the tile floor.
Something fractured in Trey's mind. Alan. Alan's in trouble?
“My son?” he breathed.
The man before him grew a little smaller. “What have you done to Alan?”
Rage. Pure rage. The thing wasn't a thing. It was a man. The man before him had done something to Alan. Touched his boy. Hurt his boy. Savaged his boy. Trey stood from the chair. The thing had grown shorter, almost to Trey's height.
“Ask permission, boy.”
The fear rose again in his mind, but the rage tamped it down, overwhelming the icy feel with wrathful fire. “No,” Trey whispered. He took a step toward the man. “Tell me what you did to Alan.” He took another step.
The man grinned. “Ask permission, boy, and I'll tell you.” The man licked his gray lips, the stench of unwashed teeth filling Trey's nose. “Ask,” the man said and chuckled. “Ask now, or I tell you nothing.”
Trey's hate rose another notch. He spat the words, saliva flying with each syllable. “I ask permission to ask a question.”
“That's better,” the man replied, a smile exposing crooked teeth. “Ask.”
The noxious odor. The smile. The rage. Trey took another step closer, his nose nearly touching the ugly face of the man in front of him. “What have you done to my son?”
In an instant, the smile disappeared into a flat expressionless line. The man leaned forward, eyes filled with malice. “You. Tell. Me.”
The closet. The black. The unending darkness. The fetid smell of sour shit and stale urine. The feel of dirty carpet beneath a bare bottom. Hugging himself in the cold, the sting of endless tears down his face. The hurt in his throat from crying, from screaming. The fear. The pain. Alan. Alan was in the closet.
Trey screamed and swung his cast toward the man's face. The man jumped backward, but too late to completely miss the blow. The cast bounced off a shoulder blade and connected with the man's chin.
Searing pain split through Trey's mind and he crumpled to the floor. He looked up through his wavering vision, expecting to see dirty boots, soiled jeans, and that leering grin. But there were only sneakers. Dockers. And Tony Downs.
The door swung open. Two orderlies appeared in the room, followed by Dr. Kinkaid. “Trey!” she shouted as he tried to get up. “Stay down!”
The pain in his arm was a screaming hot needle. He fell to one knee and felt arms grab his waist. Trey collapsed into the chair, his good arm holding his bad one.
Tears welled up from his eyes, but he smiled through it. “I'll tell you, you fucker.”
As they wheeled him out of the room, he heard Tony's soft voice. “Nice to meet you, Trey.”
Chapter 35
Back in his room, Trey felt drained. His broken arm throbbed and he gritted his teeth against the pain. The scuffle with Tony had set his entire body into an adrenaline overdrive, but it was fading and there was little left except pain and confusion.
He wondered how soon Kinkaid would come into the room brandishing a sedative and kind words as they drugged him back into a dreamless stupor.
Tony. That fucker. He'd-- Trey stopped grinding his teeth. The man. The man with the soiled clothes, the foul breath. A man. Just a man.
“You have to ask permission,” the man had said, his fists dangling near his waist, fingers twitching.
Trey shivered. Permission. He felt something unlock in his mind. Something about Scooby-Doo. A grubby hand reaching out with a plastic lunch box, Scooby-Doo in the foreground, his tongue lolling happily from his mouth, the Mystery Machine in the background. Flashlights. Shaggy. Fred. Wilma. Daphne. The grubby hand was attached to a grubby man who smiled with all his crooked teeth.
The looming giant offered the lunchbox. Scooby-Doo. Unafraid, laughing, Trey reached for the plastic container.
The grubby man took a step backwards. “Co
me get it. Dontcha want it?”
Still laughing, Trey scampered forward toward it. The man was playing keep away, the same game Daddy always played with him.
Trey staggered forward from the lawn, heading toward the man. The grubby man opened the door to his car, his white car, and tossed the lunchbox inside. Trey scrambled into the car after the lunchbox, his small hands clutching it to his chest in victory. The door shut with a quiet chunk, the click of electric door locks following close behind.
The driver side door closed, the giant now inside. The grubby man turned toward him. “I have more,” he said softly. “I have more.”
Trey looked up into the man's green eyes. The man turned back to the steering wheel and started the car. Trey held the lunchbox, turning it over and over again. “It's yours,” the man said.
“Show it to Mommy?”
With a laugh, the man looked at him from the rearview mirror. “We'll show Mommy all your goodies,” the man said. “In just a little while.” The smile on the face. That face. The long nose. The parched lips. The glittering green eyes.
“Trey?” He flinched and looked up at the doorway. Kinkaid stood there, notebook in hand, a concerned expression on her face. “You here?”
Trey opened his mouth and then closed it. He realized a tear had fallen from his eye. He wiped at it and groaned a little as the movement brought the pain in his arm back. He nodded to her and waved her in with his undamaged hand.
She grabbed a chair and pulled it toward the bed. “Can you talk?” she asked.
He nodded again.
She pursed her lips. “Now you're just fucking with me,” she whispered.
A thin smile broke out on his face. “Yes and no,” he said in a soft voice.
“Thought that might make you smile.”
He nodded. “You always know how.” He said. He paused for a moment, scanning her face. “Is that asshole okay?”
“Who, Tony?” Trey nodded. She laughed. “You're not the first patient to deck him, Trey. Not at all.” She tapped her pen on the notebook. “I'll bet you won't be the last either.”
Trey shook his head. “What the fuck did he do?”
She shrugged. “You tell me. What did you see?”
“I--” Trey closed his mouth again, teeth clicking shut. For a moment
he tried to string the words together. “I saw him,” was all he managed. Kinkaid said nothing. Her pen tapping had stopped, leaving the room silent except for the occasional footstep in the hall and muffled, distant conversation. Words flashed in Trey's mind. Permission. Want. Need. Trey shivered. “I saw the grubby man.”
“Who's the grubby man?”
He stared at her. “I--” He stopped.
She nodded to him. “How old were you, Trey?”
“Four,” he said. “I think I was four.”
Four years old. Mommy was on the phone. Trey wanted to play in the front yard. Holding his bright orange Tonka truck under one arm, he swiveled the dead bolt on the door just like he'd seen Mommy and Daddy do so many times in the past. It clicked and he stepped out of the house.
The smell of the neighbor's freshly mown grass. Trey sat halfway down the lawn, his orange truck rolling over the bright green blades of grass. The sun was rising higher in the sky, the summer morning already warm and muggy. But Trey's truck didn't mind, so Trey didn't either. The sound of a car stopping in front of the curb with a soft squeal of its brakes.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Kinkaid asked.
Trey nodded. “I was playing in the front yard. The grubby man--” He paused, staring down at the table. “The grubby man tricked me into his car.”
Kinkaid opened the notebook. She grabbed the edge of a sticky note jutting out and pulled the notebook open to the page. “Can you tell me what happened?” she asked again.
The drive. The long drive. Trey played with the lunchbox. Something inside rattled as he shook it. Smiling, he asked the grubby man what it was.
“Open it and find out,” the grubby man said.
Frustration faded into glee as the plastic snaps finally gave under his tiny fingers. The lunchbox lid flipped open. Trey laughed. A Scooby-Doo sippy cup stared back at him, the dog's face screwed up in an expression of fear, a shambling mummy running behind him. He grasped the cup and shook it, listening to the liquid sloshing inside. “What's in it?” he asked the man.
“Something good,” the man said and smiled at him from the rearview mirror.
Trey laughed and swiveled off the top. He smelled it. Cherry Kool- aid. “I like Kool-aid,” Trey muttered and drank.
“Good boy,” the man said from the front seat. Trey put the cap back on the cup and turned toward the front. “But,” he said with a snarl, “you didn't ask permission, you little shit.”
Kinkaid leaned in toward him. “The man drugged you?”
“I fell asleep,” Trey whispered. Another tear sprang to the corner of his eye. “And, when I woke--”
Darkness. A thin slit of light from beneath a door. Trey was cold and his head hurt. He was naked. “Mommy?” Trey asked in the darkness. “Daddy?” Nothing. He started to cry and then heard a sound from outside the door. A sound like-- Like people talking on a radio. “Mommy!” Trey cried out again. “Mommy! Let me out!”
The voices on the radio quieted. The clomp clomp of work boots. The sound of heavy breathing. Trey's bladder let go and he cried as urine splattered on the floor. Daddy would yell at him for that. Mommy would--
“Boy,” something growled from beyond the door, “you're not allowed to speak.”
“I want my--” Trey started to scream.
The man behind the door growled again, a sound that shocked Trey into silence. He wrapped his arms around himself, still crying. “You're not allowed to talk without my permission, boy.” Something scraped at the door, a sound like nails on a chalkboard. “Or you'll be very fucking sorry.” The heavily breathing thing on the other side of the door paused and then growled “Do you understand, you little shit?”
Trey nodded to himself, but said nothing.
A harsh chuckle from behind the door. “Good,” the man growled.
“Do you know how long you were there?” Kinkaid asked.
Trey shook his head and shivered. “I-- I don't remember.”
Kinkaid nodded. “He made you ask permission for everything.”
“Yes,” Trey whispered. “Everything.”
She nodded again. “Trey? You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to.” She tapped the pen against the notebook once more. “Do you know how you got out of there?”
The stinging tang of stale urine, sour shit, and vomit. Trey was caked in it. The dark closet had been his home for days. The growling man didn't give him food or drink. The constant darkness had broken something. Voices inside his head whispered. The voices on the radio outside whispered, too.
The grubby man. He was always in the closet with him. The grubby man with his long arms and long nose and bright, green eyes. The grubby man. The Closet Man.
Trey couldn't cry anymore, couldn't move anymore. There was nothing left. All spent. Mommy wasn't coming for him. Daddy wasn't coming for him. The grubby man had told him that, and he believed it. There was only the grubby man. The grubby man and darkness.
He didn't even hear the clomping of the boots, or the key in the lock jiggling. The closet door opened and wan light washed in. For Trey, it was like bright sunlight. It stung his eyes, but he was too exhausted to lift a hand to shield them.
The grubby man stood just outside the closet. His fists clenched and unclenched. The baseball cap on his head shielded his eyes, leaving only his long nose protruding from its shadow. The heavily breathing figure reached around to his back and brought out a hammer, its wooden handle deeply scratched and pitted. “You are a dirty boy,” he growled.
Trey closed his eyes. He wanted to sleep again. Sleep and wake up at home. Not feel this anymore. Not smell this anymore. Just--
“Dirty, stinki
ng little boy,” the grubby man said. The man leaned down toward him, the hammer clutched tightly in one fist.
“Please,” Trey whispered through swollen, chapped lips, “let me go home. Please, let me go home. Please--”
The man had raised the hammer, his eyes glittering with hate. Trey stared up at the man through his bruised, hurt eyes. “You,” he growled, “ask permission?”
“Please,” Trey managed to say once more. His voice was gone now, dehydration locking the words in his throat. His lips continued moving, but no sound emerged.
The man dropped the hammer to the closet floor. It splattered into a day old pile of shit. He reached down and grabbed Trey by the waist. The grubby man's breath was foul, even when compared to the stench of the closet. The man's face smiled, but his eyes didn't.
“You,” he growled, leaning in closer, nose nearly to Trey's, “will ask my permission for everything you do, you little shit.”
Trey watched as the man's nose grew longer still, fangs sliding out from the misshapen jaw. Saliva fell in ropes from the slavering thing before him. The hands grabbing him by the waist grew talons. Trey tried to scream, but there was no sound.
“Trey?” Kinkaid's voice said. “Trey?”
“How long?” he asked, his face set in a mask of fear.
She cleared her throat. “About five minutes or so.”
Trey nodded. “He became...that thing at the end. The ghoul. The grubby man turned--” He choked back a sob. “Turned,” he whispered. “Just, turned.” Trey shook his head. “But that's not what happened.” He swallowed hard and ran his good hand through his hair. “He became the Closet Man. In my mind.”
Kinkaid closed the notebook with her delicate fingers. She smiled at him. “You don't remember how you got home, do you?”
Trey shook his head.
“He let you go, Trey, because you asked permission.” She placed a hand on his arm. “He could have killed you. You know that, right?”
“I think he was going to,” Trey whispered. “I think--” Tears flowed from his eyes. “Why did he--” Trey closed his eyes and convulsed, his body shaking with all the stress and fear.