Demons in the Spring

by Joe Meno

  Thomas, as he works, will often set down his pencils and place his right eye against the viewfinder of the telescope, trying to spot the moon—to see if what he is imagining is accurate—but there will be only the deepening darkness of the empty night collapsing around him. He will then go back to his drawing, unsure, trying to remember if the moon used to have wings.

  When Thomas’s father calls the next evening, he sounds quite frantic. His voice is pitched and uneven. Thomas can hear his father’s nervous footsteps echoing against the black pavement.

  “Thomas?”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t where I am. I’m walking somewhere. I haven’t been able to find my car yet.”

  “Just take your time, Dad. We’ll figure it out together.”

  “I’ve been walking for hours. I think I’m almost out of breath.”

  “Where are you now, Dad? Describe what’s around you.”

  “I seem to be walking beside a river of some kind.”

  “Are you on a bridge?”

  “I might be.”

  “What color is the bridge?”

  “I can’t tell. It might be blue. Or green.”

  Thomas opens up a color-coded map of the city, tracing his finger along the river, searching for a bridge. In the darkness, with only the flicker of the candle’s light, he is unable to tell what is blue and what is green.

  “I’m not sure if there are any blue or green bridges, Dad.”

  “Maybe it isn’t a bridge. No, it’s an escalator. I was wrong. I am on an escalator.”

  “Do you know where your car is parked?”

  “I do. I went there, but what I thought was the parking lot is some kind of building now. I’m sure if I keep circling around I’ll find it. Go on and tell me about your day, Thomas. That will keep me from feeling so worried.”

  Thomas looks around his tiny room.

  “I worked on a new drawing today, Dad. Of the moon, when it was under the ocean, just before it would rise. There are a number of boats in the drawing being rocked by the enormous waves, and seabirds circling around it.”

  “I don’t think the moon used to do that, Thomas.”

  “I’m almost positive. I’m almost sure I remember it did.”

  “It might have been a dream.”

  “It might have.”

  “Did you do anything else today?” Thomas’s father asks. Thomas thinks he can hear his father’s anxious breath. It sounds like a soft clock ticking.

  “Oh yes, I watched the girl in the apartment across from mine this evening.”

  “And?” His father’s voice suddenly seems to twinkle.

  “And she went out to go look for her dog. I was afraid she wasn’t going to make it back in time, but she did. When she came back, she had the dog’s collar but the dog was still missing.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad.”

  “She spent some time calling for it, but it didn’t come.”

  “I think I’m all right now, Thomas. I think I’ve found the parking lot. No, no, it’s the wrong one. But there’s a number of people here wandering around. If I can’t find my car, I can always ask one of these other people for a ride.”

  “Dad, are you sure?”

  “Thomas, don’t worry. If I get into any trouble, I’ll give you a call.”

  Thomas hangs up the phone and sets it down beside his bed. When he wakes up in the middle of the night, he realizes the phone has not rung yet. Quickly, he dials his father’s number. His father answers, his voice very soft, very quiet.

  “Dad, are you okay?”

  “Thomas?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sleeping in an elevator right now. There’s a few other people here. None of us could find our cars tonight.”

  “Are you okay there, Dad?”

  “I think so, Thomas. I’ll give you a call in the morning.”

  “Goodnight, Dad.”

  “Goodnight.”

  Thomas places the phone back in its receiver and checks the telescope once again. What appears to be the moon for a moment is only the conflicted white face of the woman from the building across the way. She has her window open and is shouting for her dog. Her face glows brilliantly with the lines of recent tears. Thomas finds his sketchbook and does a hurried drawing of the moon with the woman’s forlorn face.

  By the end of the month, a sad turn of events has begun to take place. Those people who find themselves lost at night, those who wander the streets helplessly searching for their cars, those who are fortunate enough to eventually find their cars but who drive about searching for their homes, only to pull over, falling asleep behind the familiar safety of their steering wheels, have begun to vanish. When the sun comes up, these lost people are all inexplicably gone. Their automobiles are parked in awkward places, pointed in the opposite direction of usual traffic. Their clothes are left strewn about, only afterthoughts now, and in the morning, those people who work during the day find these ownerless garments in the oddest of places: in closets, beneath desks, in stairwells, in the middle of busy intersections. It is suggested that this has something to do with the moon going dark, with its silent, unknown particles, or possibly with X-rays, but the cause remains very imprecise. All that is known is that there is something wrong with the nighttime now. Once you fall asleep anywhere outside of your home, anywhere beneath the shadowed moon, its unseen, sulfurous rays may do you mortal harm.

  Thomas begins to worry seriously about his father. One day, instead of drawing pictures of the moon, he decides he will try to make a detailed map of the city. Using the telescope, he finds his father’s office building—a flat, featureless, rectangular skyscraper—and begins to sketch everything surrounding it, depicting the busy city streets in a few quick, quavering lines. One by one, he marks the trees, the lampposts, the intersections, the signs, then with more detail, a piece of trash, a garbage can, stubs of cigarettes. By the time his father calls that evening, he has all but finished a map of a large part of the center of the city.

  “Thomas, you’re never going to believe it, but I’m lost again. I’m in my car and driving past what looks to be a forest.”

  “A forest?” Thomas traces his finger along his map and taps it twice.

  “No. It’s a park, Dad. Go to the next intersection and take a right.”

  “And now there’s a fountain of some kind.”

  “What does the fountain look like?”

  “Well, there’s a statue. It might be a man. Or a woman. I can’t tell.”

  “Does the statue have a trumpet?”

  “No, I don’t think so. It has a sword of some kind.”

  Thomas searches the spotty lines for the statue with a sword and finds his father’s exact position. He instructs his father to take the next right.

  “It’s working, it’s working, Thomas. I’ll be home in no time.”

  “Good, we’ll just keep following the map.”

  “You are quite smart, my boy. What a brilliant idea! What a brilliant plan!”

  His father’s voice sounds gilded with joy. Turn by turn, Thomas places his finger along the sketched city streets, imagining his father traveling there safely, somewhere at the tip of his forefinger where his heartbeat beats. Within an hour, his father has returned home. From the receiver of the telephone, Thomas thinks he can hear his mother clapping, then shouting happily, a sound he thought he had already forgotten.

  By the following Monday, even this plan too begins to fail. For the moon, and the people, and the world in its darkness, seem quite intent to stay lost. At night, whole city blocks begin to exchange places with their neighbors. Buildings turn around, their façades shrugging into the shadows like grieving widows. In the clouded dark, more and more people start to vanish. Where do these people go? Their clothes form small mountains of debris all about the city streets. Unaware of the unfolding complexity of this disaster, Thomas continues to work on his city atlas, sketching out his map in excruciating detail. During the day, as t
he sun—unremitting, glorious, as welcome as a favored child—glows brightly in the autumn sky, Thomas places his eye against the viewfinder of the telescope, adding a line of birds along a telephone wire, a crooked lamppost, an empty soda pop can lying along a curb. That evening, however, when his father calls, the map does not work. It seems, in the dark, everything is upside down.

  “You’re sure you’re standing beside a rose garden?” Thomas asks.

  “I’m very sure, Thomas.”

  There is a long pause. Thomas traces his finger along the map, finding the rose garden is some twenty blocks from where he thinks it should be.

  “Are you having difficulty finding it, son?”

  “I’m afraid I must have made some mistake, Dad. Tell me what else you see.”

  “I don’t know. It’s very dark. I think I might be standing beside a museum of some kind. There are two bronze lions out front.”

  “Don’t go into the museum. You’ll only get lost.”

  “I think it might be too late. I can’t even see what’s behind me. I’m sitting down for a moment. My feet are hurting me terribly, Thomas. And the air. It feels sharp. My lungs are very tired. It feels like they’re glowing.”

  Thomas places his eye against the viewfinder of the telescope, searching for a glimmer, a blush, a faintness of light, but there is only the blackness, like a curtain sewn from a burlap sack, blackness crossed with blackness crossed with blackness.

  “I don’t feel so well, Thomas,” his father whispers. “I feel light-headed. Like I’m floating. I would just like to lie down and go to sleep.”

  “Don’t lie down, Dad.”

  But then there is only the static of the telephone line. In a moment, Thomas thinks he can hear his father snoring. It sounds like a watch spring unwinding. Thomas listens to his father sleeping for a few moments, then he begins to whisper loudly: “Dad, you have to get up! I have the map right here. We’ll find your car, I promise.”

  “Okay, Thomas,” his father says. Thomas can hear his father yawning, pulling himself to his feet with a groan.

  “Tell me where are you now, Dad.”

  “I don’t know, Thomas. Everything is very blue. It looks like a dream of some kind. It’s really pretty. Oh, and there are trees. The trees are very white. It looks like they are made of crystals. I am walking. There is a whole forest of these beautiful trees.”

  Thomas searches the map, squinting as hard as he can, though he knows there is no place anywhere in the city that looks like what his father is describing. He glances through the telescope, then down at the map, then stands, throwing open the window. Outside, it is very quiet. From across the street, he can hear the woman with the dog still crying. She calls its name once, then twice, then begins sobbing again. Thomas glances about for a marker, for a sign, for a star, something, anything to help guide him. But everything is dark now. The woman across the street has suddenly gone silent. She closes her window up tightly.

  Thomas places the phone against his ear and asks: “What do you see now, Dad? Where are you?”

  “All of the houses look the same. One after the other. They’re all white and square. They look very lovely. But the doors don’t look right. The doors are shaped like stars. I think these houses belong to the stars maybe.”

  “Don’t give up, Dad.”

  “I’m getting very tired, Thomas. I think I might lie down.”

  “If you lie down, there could be trouble.”

  “I’m very sleepy, Thomas.”

  “We’ll talk all night if we need to.”

  “Okay, Thomas, okay.”

  “Okay, where are you now, Dad?”

  “I’m walking past what looks like a factory.”

  “What kind of factory?”

  “I don’t know, Thomas, I can’t tell. Everything is so blue.”

  “Describe what you are seeing, Dad.”

  “There’s a large rectangle, then another, then another. There are three smokestacks. The smokestacks, they are pouring out white smoke. The smoke, it’s not smoke, it’s stardust. It’s glowing. It’s blue and then it becomes black. Do you have any idea where I might be, Thomas?”

  “I don’t know, Dad.” He holds the map very near his face. In the candlelight, it’s almost impossible to see anything. The lines are only lines. Beneath his sketch of the city, Thomas thinks he can see an imprint of the moon hiding.

  “Thomas?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m afraid I might be on the moon.”

  Thomas can hear his father’s nervous breath echoing within the plastic earpiece of the phone. He imagines the face his father must be making, the worried lines around his eyes and mouth, gaped with wrinkles, he imagines the other sounds of the empty night congregating all around his father’s head, the way his hand might now be gripping the telephone with an arthritic claw, the boxy briefcase swinging back and forth as he moves nervously along. Thomas tries to think of something that might help. He imagines his words, his voice saying something great, something wise, he imagines his map becoming clear, but all that exists between him and his father now is distant silence. He only has to figure out where this factory is, if it is indeed on the moon, and how he might lead his father back from there. He only has to figure out where his father might now be walking, where his next step should be, and why the moon is acting this way. Thomas closes his eyes, imagining his father’s shape crossing quietly beneath a cloud of white crystal trees. Finally he opens his eyes and says, “I’m right here, Dad. Now tell me: What do you see?”

  illustration by

  Cody Hudson

  1

  The Unabomber and my brother both grew up in Evergreen Park, Illinois. They do not know each other. The Unabomber’s name is Ted Kaczynski. My older brother’s name is Alan. They are both American males of Polish descent. They have both been betrayed by their own brothers. They both suffer from serious mental illness. One of them is now in prison; the other is in and out of group homes on an regular basis. One of them fears the techno-industrial age and what that means; the other thinks cloudy thoughts about leopards and cheetahs. They both have dark eyes and dark hair: Only one of them still has a beard.

  2

  The Unabomber went to Sherman Elementary on 52nd Street until fifth grade. In fifth grade, the Unabomber took some tests which apparently revealed that he was a genius of some kind. He was allowed to skip the sixth grade altogether and enroll directly in the seventh grade at Evergreen Park Central.

  When Alan was in fifth grade, he attended Queen of Martyrs on 103rd Street, which is where I also went. I was in the third grade. A few months after the school year began, Alan had to have an operation. He had been born with a herniated intestine, and because of it, his belly button was a balloon of flesh about the size of a ping-pong ball—our parents refused to have it operated on until Alan was older. If you ever mentioned Alan’s deformity, like, say, in front of the other kids on the street, Alan would box your ears until one of them bled. He would actually try and cripple you. It did not take long before I realized mentioning his hernia was a bad idea, the very worst idea ever. Alan, because of this slight deformity, had to wear a T-shirt whenever we went swimming at the public pool. I would paddle about in the shallow water and watch him floating there in the deep end, waiting for some loudmouth to make fun of him, to point at the bulbous shape of his strange-looking belly button—obvious beneath the translucent T-shirt—but no one ever did. Alan had a look about him, something about the shape of his jaw and the narrowness of his dark eyes, that frightened just about everyone. When it was adult swim, even though Alan was only in fifth grade, the lifeguards, only a few years older than him, were too afraid to tell him that he had to leave the pool. Because of this, because in fifth grade he had already developed sizable muscles and fronds of dark chest hair, I soon began to both idolize and hate him. By the end of fifth grade, my parents agreed to have the hernia removed, and though the operation was successful, Alan’s angry temperament would not
change.

  3

  The Unabomber claims his IQ was, in seventh grade, in the 160–170 range. He has said that skipping the sixth grade was an important turning point in his life. When he began seventh grade, the older children made fun of him and so he never once felt like he belonged: a critical event in a lifelong history of loneliness and alienation.

  In seventh grade, my older brother Alan was tested for learning disabilities. He would eat whatever other kids put in front of him: bits of paper, erasers, a piece of wire from someone’s spiral notebook. One of the only things that interested him were Scholastic picture books about jungle cats—lions, tigers, and, most particularly, leopards. He would spend each and every day in seventh grade carving leopards into the wooden top of his desk. His grades were consistent with what you might expect from someone who did something like that. At school, Alan was also very good at breaking things—chairs, desks, other people’s pencils. But it turned out that Alan did not have a learning disability: He was actually, on paper at least, smarter than almost everyone else in his class. There was just something about school Alan couldn’t stand: He believed he had been born a few hundred years too late. He believed that he would have been much happier being born a barbarian. The only books I ever saw him read were picture books about predatory cats, except for the one about Attila the Hun, which he left in our upstairs bathroom, always open to the same page, resting atop the white toilet tank. It took him a year or two to actually finish that book. He had stolen it from our school library; the librarian, Mrs. Moss, a red-haired maven who I secretly adored, was always cold to me because of it. Once, Alan sat on the toilet while I took a bath and tried to explain to me what he most loved about the Attila the Hun book. He said he thought that he would have been pretty good at killing Romans. He thought that being born now, here, in Evergreen Park, had been completely unfair. This frustration, this constant aggravation, was, I believe, the reason he continuously tortured me.