“Mom’s right,” Nate assured him. “It’ll be okay.”
“What if it isn’t?” Gordie sobbed.
“It will be,” Maryann said firmly. “But right now, I need to make dinner, and you still have homework to do. You have to keep going even when you’re sad.”
“Yeah, Gordie. Tell you what. Why don’t I help you with your homework?” Nate offered.
Gordie nodded reluctantly, his chest still heaving.
“Let’s get you some tissues first.”
Maryann smiled gratefully at Nate and went to the kitchen to prepare dinner.
By bedtime, Harry P still hadn’t shown up. Gordie tossed and turned in his bed for a while before finally falling into a fitful sleep.
He dreamed of a bonfire and the smell of barbeque.
The next morning, after Maryann saw a very sad Gordie off on the school bus, she went to his room. She stood in his doorway and stared at Harry P’s cage, frowning. After a moment or two, she became aware of a smell – a smell like roasted meat . . . and the faint odor of wood smoke.
She walked slowly around the room, sniffing the air, trying to identify the source of the smell. She knelt down at the foot of the bed and lifted the comforter to look beneath.
“What the?”
In the morning sunlight that streamed between Gordie’s open curtains and made its way beneath his bed, she saw one of his large wooden blocks. On top of this was a small pile of ash, as though from a fire. Standing above the pile of ash was a tiny frame made of various toy parts; it resembled a spit for roasting meat over a fire. She reached out and touched the wooden block. Though the ashes were cold, the block was warm. Then she saw the little pile of bones.
“Oh, fudge,” she said softly.
Next to the pile of bones was a piece of brown cloth. She hooked it with the tip of her finger and pulled it out from beneath the bed. She held it up and examined it.
It was a piece of clothing, a tunic of some kind. Maryann wrinkled her nose; the thing smelled rancid. It was covered with dirt and dark stains that looked fresh. When she touched the stains, they felt damp. Her fingers came away red.
Blood?
She went upstairs and rousted her older son from his bed. “Nathan, there’s something I want you to see.”
“It isn’t more college brochures, is it? Because –”
Maryann gave him a look. “No, Nathan, this is more immediate. I think it has to do with Harry P.”
“Oh.”
They went to Gordie’s room, where Maryann had him look under the bed.
“There’s bones under there,” Nate said, looking up at her. “It smells like a pig roast. And it looks like there was a fire. Jesus, Mom, do you think that’s Harry P?”
“Unfortunately, I do. The bones look like those of a tiny animal.”
“I wonder why the smoke detectors didn’t go off,” Nate said. “We’re lucky Gordie’s bed didn’t catch on fire.” He paused for a moment. “Mom . . . do you think he did this?”
His mother gave him a look. “He’s an eight year-old boy. I don’t think he would kill and eat his own pet. You saw how heartbroken he was.”
Nate shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”
“Look at this.” Maryann held up the bloodstained tunic.
He stared. “What is it?”
“I have no idea.” Silence filled the room as he absorbed the weight of her statement.
“Oh, crap.”
“You said it.”
“What do we do?”
“First, I’m making a fresh pot of coffee. Then we need to discuss this. In the living room.”
Maryann scraped a dab of peanut butter into the back of each of the two small box-style mousetraps. She had chosen these traps, rather than spring traps, because they were humane and wouldn’t kill or injure the rodent, but would contain it. She wouldn’t be able to forgive herself if Harry P was alive and running loose around the house and she killed or hurt the hamster in a spring trap.
“What now?” Nate asked.
“We go about our business.”
They left everything in Gordie’s room exactly the way they had found it that morning. Maryann had replaced the tunic beside the pile of bones under the bed, hoping that its disturbance would go unnoticed.
“Do you really think it will come back?”
“I don’t know. But if you found a meal somewhere for free, wouldn’t you be tempted to go back and try again?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” He switched on the television, setting the volume slightly lower than usual, and settled himself in the recliner.
Maryann smiled tightly and went to the kitchen to do the breakfast dishes, hoping that it wouldn’t take too long to catch the thing, whatever it was.
She moved around the house, doing daily chores, while Nate watched movies. Eventually she brought him a new sack of college brochures.
“Oh, Mom,” he groaned.
“Well, you’ve got to do something.”
“Can’t I just get a job as a gas station attendant?”
“Sweetheart, you can get a job anywhere you want, as long as you’re doing something productive.”
“Fine,” Nate sighed. He rifled through the stack of brochures.
Maryann went into Gordie’s room and gathered his dirty clothes from the floor. Everything was quiet and appeared undisturbed.
As she was about to leave the room, Maryann thought she heard something. She turned and paused in the doorway.
She heard the sound again. It came from the direction of Gordie’s toy box.
She held her breath and watched intently. She saw Gordie’s little white cash register at the top of the untidy pile; just beneath it were his remote control truck and his old animatronic bear.
The noise continued. It sounded the same way it did when Gordie was looking through his toy box for something to play with: things being pushed aside, other things tumbling down to take their place.
Did the bear just move? She wasn’t sure.
Wait . . . yes, the bear seemed to be moving – just a tiny bit, barely enough for the motion to be detectable.
She began to feel just a little afraid. Maybe it’s nothing, she thought. Maybe the bear’s switch just got knocked, and the bear turned on.
The feeling in the pit of her stomach told her it was more than that. She didn’t want to call for Nate, yet; if it as Gordie’s visitor from the night before, she didn’t want to tip it off and send it back into hiding. She wanted to catch it and get rid of it.
Maryann stared with fascinated apprehension as the bear heaved upward, dislodging the cash register from the top of the pile of toys. She jumped when it flipped over and fell to the floor with a crash and a ding! as the drawer popped open.
A little brown and white head, with tiny round ears and long, white whiskers, popped up from among the toys. It sniffed the air for a second; then it continued to root around in the toy box.
Maryann smiled in wonder and relief. Harry P! But even as she watched, her heart sank, and she knew it wasn’t so.
She realized that whatever this creature was, it was wearing Harry P’s skin, head and all. Oh my God, it skinned Gordie’s hamster!
Beneath Harry P’s stolen skin, the thing was brown. It had a wrinkled leathery face, and its two arms and the front of its body were covered in short brown fur. The skin of its wrinkly brown hands matched its face. It stood upright on two legs, which were also covered in brown fur.
Appalled at the appearance of the tiny creature, Maryann felt a surge of disgust.
The thing tipped its head back and sniffed again. It stared over at Harry P’s cage, hoping to catch the scent of its next potential meal.
It eagerly clambered over the toys, using all fours, and dropped down to the carpet. It reached up to the lowest shelf of Gordie’s bookshelf and hauled itself up.
Maryann waited until it had reached the top shelf before she said loudly, “Oh, no you don’t, you little monster!”
It turned and saw her. It threw its head back and let out a high pitched screech, exposing rows of neat little razor-sharp teeth.
It launched itself off the shelf and landed on the toy box. It grabbed something from the pile of toys, jumped on the bed, and leaped at Maryann, screeching all the way.
“Mom!” She heard Nate’s voice behind her in the hall.
Maryann held her hands up in front of her and snatched the six-inch tall creature out of the air with her left hand, closing her fist around it firmly. She screamed as sharp pain lanced through her palm. Opening her fingers, she realized that the thing held the tiny sword from Gordie’s Swashbuckling Pirate Play Set. She had closed her hand around the blade; now her palm was sliced open and bleeding. She switched hands, making sure that the sword was positioned above her enclosed fingers.
Nate stood in the door as and stared in horror as the scene unfolded. The creature struggled in his mother’s hand. It raised the sword and plunged the blade repeatedly into her hand as she winced in pain.
He cried, “What do I do, what do I do?”
“Get the sword, get the sword!”
Nate stepped forward and wrestled briefly with the creature, trying to grasp the tiny sword with his fingertips. He finally managed to wrench the sword away.
“Go get a cold, wet towel!”
When Nathan stayed rooted to the spot, transfixed, Maryann shouted, “Nathan, go!”
He started, then ran upstairs to the bathroom and grabbed the towel off the rack and turned on the “Cold” tap in the sink. As he ran water over the towel he heard his mother screaming.
“You ate Harry P! That’s my child’s pet, you little bipedal rat thing!”
Leaving the water running in the sink, Nate raced down the stairs.
“Put the towel over it! Quick!”
Nate threw the cold, dripping towel over the thing’s head. Even as Maryann screamed at him to wrap the creature up, he was swaddling the writhing creature, rendering it immobile.
Maryann gasped, sweat running in rivulets down her face. Her hands dripped blood.
“Mom, are you okay?” Nate looked as though he was going to cry.
“I’m okay, I’m okay, see? All I need to do is wash my hands and wrap them up, and I’ll be fine. Could you help me?”
The two of them headed up to the bathroom, Nate still hanging on to the struggling thing in the towel.
Maryann rinsed her trembling hands in the cold water Nate had left running. There were several nasty puncture marks in the webbing between the thumb and forefinger of one hand, the other had one single slash across the palm. There were teeth marks in several places where the creature had bitten her.
Nate held the bottle of peroxide firmly in one hand while Maryann turned the cap. She held her hands over the sink and he dumped the peroxide liberally on them. She inhaled through her teeth at the stinging.
“What is this thing, Mom?” Nate asked.
“I don’t know. It came out of Gordie’s toy box.”
“What are we going to do with it?”
“I’d love to kill the thing, but we’re going to call Animal Control and let them deal with it, because I have no other ideas.”
Nate found some gauze and a couple of rolled bandages; they worked together to get her hands wrapped.
When the Animal Control officers arrived, they managed to get the screeching creature into a cage.
“You’d better make sure that cage door is chained up so that it can’t get out. Because I can almost promise you that it will figure out that simple slide latch. And it’s mean!”
“Where did you find it?” Asked Officer Patel, the younger of the two responders. He didn’t look much older than Nate.
“It came out of my younger son’s toy box,” Maryann told them. She led them to Gordie’s room and showed them the spit, the ashes, the pile of bones, and the tunic under Gordie’s bed.
“That thing roasted my little boy’s hamster on that spit and ate it while he was sleeping in his bed last night,” she said “Then it attacked me when it came sneaking out looking for more. Have you guys ever seen something like this before?”
The two men looked at each other. Officer Dillard, the elder and stouter of the two, said, “No ma’am. I can’t recall ever seeing anything like this. The thing is intelligent enough to use tools, cook, and make clothing?” He shook his head and looked at Maryann’s bandaged hands. “I think you’d better go to the hospital and get those looked at, just in case. You might even consider a rabies shot,” he said. “Do you know where this thing came from, in the first place? You got a basement? Have you seen any more?”
“Yes, we have a basement,” Maryann said. “Do you really think there might be more than one?”
“We don’t know how many there are. This is something new and different, to us, anyway. Another agency may have come across this; we’re going to try to find out. I think it would be a good idea to get hold of a wildlife management agency, and have your placed swept for more of these critters. With something as aggressive as this, it’s better to be safe than sorry.” He glanced at the thing in the cage. It was rattling the wire bars, emitting short shrieks, sounding like an angry bird. “Do you and your kids have a place you could stay for a couple of days?”
Maryann gave Nate a troubled look. “I guess we could probably stay at Aunt Janice’s,” she said.
“Cool!” Nate exclaimed.
“Do you really think this is serious enough to warrant us leaving?”
“Like I said, ma’am, in this case, I think we should be cautious. At least until we can make sure the property is clear.”
Maryann sighed. “Okay, we’d better pack some clothes for a couple of days. Nate, dial the phone for me, would you? You’ll have to hold the phone for me, too.”
Nate laughed a little and she gave him a look. “I know it isn’t funny, Mom, but it is, just a little.”
Maryann turned back to the officers. “We’ll get Gordie off the bus and then we’ll be go.”
“We’ll give you a call when set up a meeting with wildlife management,” Officer Dillard said. “Will you be available to let us in?”
“I’ll have Nathan unlock the door for you. Just let me know.”
Maryann and Nate met Gordie at the school bus, and they all piled into the car.
“Where are we going, guys? Hey, did you find Harry P?” Gordie asked.
“We’re going to Aunt Janice’s to stay for a couple of days,” Maryann said. “And no, we didn’t find Harry P, yet. I’m sorry.”
His face fell. “What if we never find him?”
“Well, it looks like he escaped. He’s probably living it up by now, chewing his way through a cereal box in the cupboard. There are enough warm and cozy places for him to hide in the house. He’s probably found a place to make a nice nest.”
“If we don’t find him, I’m going to miss him. I love him so much!” Gordie’s voice sounded tearful.
“I know, Gordie, and I really am sorry that we lost him,” Maryann said. “We all love him, and we’ll miss him, too.”
Nate drove them to Janice’s where they dropped Gordie off, and then took his mother to the hospital to have her hands checked.
Animal Control scheduled a sweep of the Zeik property the next morning.
Meanwhile, in a maze of countless subterranean tunnels far beneath the basement floor, hundreds of six-inch tall creatures grew restless as they waited for their scout to return.
Bereavement Services, LLP
Juniper wiped through the foamy fog of lemon-scented furniture polish, clearing it from the sideboard’s surface until the walnut finish glowed. There; the dusting was done.
She had gotten the daily chores down to a science, and what had once taken the better part of each day now took only a couple of hours, leaving the rest of the day free. Simon didn’t know that, though, and Juniper wasn’t about to volunteer the information. He thought she spent all of her time slaving away.
; That’s the way it had been during the first few months of their marriage. He had loaded her down with so many tasks that it was nearly impossible to complete them all by 5:30 p.m., when he came home from work. She was often sweaty and disheveled, dinner either still cooking or burned, the kitchen a mess, when he walked through the door.
Eventually, Juniper managed to coordinate everything and became efficient at her work. She completed the chores with time to spare, and used that extra `time for herself. She read books, watched television, or relaxed on the rear patio with a drink, observing the comings and goings of the wildlife in the woods and fields that surrounded the house. Simon came home every evening to a hot, perfectly prepared dinner awaiting him on the polished and elegantly set dining room table.
After a few days of being greeted coolly at the door, Simon questioned how his pretty young wife was spending her days. At the time, she was unaware that he wanted her to be flustered, frazzled, and exhausted, running around the house in a panic, trying to get things done by the time he arrived.
He had not been pleased at Juniper’s explanation of efficiency. The reprimand, as usual, was physically harsh, and he doubled her list of chores, practically pushing her out of bed the next morning to start work despite her freshly bruised ribs.
He shook his finger at her. “Don’t ever let me catch you sitting around reading worthless smutty romance novels or watching television,” he said. “I didn’t marry you to use up my electricity watching Jerry Springer and those other idiotic reality shows all day long.”
His newly wedded wife didn’t bother to argue that she watched the History and Discovery channels, not reality television. Nor did she correct him and tell him that she read books from his own library; it really would have hit the fan, then. She had learned enough of his obsessive-compulsive habits to make sure each book looked untouched when she returned it to its shelf each day.
She had learned enough to remain silent about why she thought he had married her, to begin with: she had thought he’d loved her. He had been good to her when they met. A gentleman. Well-mannered. Generous. Attentive. Affectionate.
Blood and Bone: A Smattering of Unease Page 8