1503933547

by Paul Pen

  That was when I heard a bang.

  My heart thumped in my ears.

  There was another bang.

  And then another.

  I broke into a sweat because I knew what it meant. “Please not for me. Please don’t have come for me,” I whispered into the darkness.

  The first night I heard those noises I cried in my bed with my muscles so frozen with terror I couldn’t move. When I mentioned it at breakfast, Mom told me that I must’ve imagined it. That there were no monsters up above, or in the wardrobe, or under my bed. But Dad told me the truth.

  “What you heard was the Cricket Man’s footsteps,” he explained.

  “He’s an old man with giant black eyes whose knees bend the wrong way.” And he tried to dramatize what he was saying by walking in a squat around the dining area. “He also has two big antennae, so big they rub against the ceiling when he goes in a house.”

  “Why does he go in houses?” I asked.

  Dad turned a chair around and sat on it with his legs open, holding the backrest. “Because he hunts for children with his antennae.” He held both arms against his forehead and waved them. “With his antennae, and the light from an oil lamp, he searches underground for badly behaved children, to stick them in his sack.”

  “And what does he do with them?” I wanted to know.

  Dad moved his face so close to mine that he scratched me with his hair scar. “He eats them,” he said. “He starts with the feet, then the legs, and then the belly, until he reaches the head.” He made a chomping sound with his teeth. “And while he eats them, he rubs his back-to-front knees together to chirp like a cricket.”

  Now, positioned by Dad’s armchair with the firefly beating its wings inside my hand, I felt a shiver as I remembered the chirping I’d heard just after he told me that story, the chirping of a real cricket.

  There was another bang in the darkness.

  The Cricket Man was coming for me. He wanted to stick me in his sack because I’d put the baby’s life in danger when I hid the firefly jar in the crib. And because I’d begun to ask myself what there was outside the basement.

  I held my breath.

  I looked up at the living room window. The bars killed off any idea of escape. I also looked at the door that had never been open. I had to make a big effort to move my body numbed with fear, but managed to cross the living room in the direction of the hall. I saw the half-open door to my bedroom. I wanted to run to my bed and disappear under the sheets, to feel the soft material inside my pillow between my fingers.

  That was when the hinges creaked on my parents’ door.

  I pressed myself against the wall, to one side of the threshold that led to the hall.

  Then I heard it.

  A knee clicking. The back-to-front knee of the Cricket Man. I imagined his antennae vibrating, searching for my scent, scraping the ceiling. His giant black eyes capturing what little light there was in the basement to make my silhouette multiply in lots of hexagonal cells.

  More clicking. Nearer this time.

  With my head pressed against the wall, I made out his silhouette in the hall, to one side of my field of vision.

  I heard the patter of his feet on the floor. Until I realized it was the sound of my teeth chattering. I bit my bottom lip to stop them.

  The Cricket Man opened the door to my grandmother’s room. I knew then that he hadn’t come for me. He wanted to take the baby. The stony feeling that locked my joints prevented me from moving.

  When the door closed, I couldn’t contain the hot liquid that now dripped down my legs.

  After a space of time that I was unable to measure, the silhouette emerged from the room. I imagined my nephew in the sack, his face scratched by the Cricket Man’s hairy legs.

  The baby cried.

  But the crying came from inside the bedroom. The little boy was safe.

  The hinges on my parents’ door creaked again, making my body finally react. I emerged from behind the wall and ran to the bunk bed. I threw myself onto the mattress, sheets up to my forehead, firefly still in my fist.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to hurt the baby. Please don’t have come for me.”

  The sweat that covered my body went cold. I could sense someone looking at me inside the room. I could hear breathing. When I heard the first guffaw I closed my eyes. And then I recognized the laughter. That guttural sound. My brother’s heehaw got louder.

  “You’re scared,” he said. He made another donkey noise.

  “Shut up, or he’ll find us.”

  “Who?” he asked, still laughing.

  “The man who comes sometimes,” I whispered.

  My brother went quiet.

  “Did Dad tell you about him?” he said after a few seconds.

  “Yeah,” I answered into the darkness. “Ages ago.”

  “Age—” He swallowed. “Ages ago?”

  My brother fell silent again.

  “Didn’t you know?” I asked. “The Cricket Man hunts children who live underground, if they misbehave.”

  My brother laughed again.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “He told me, yeah.”

  He exploded into guttural laughter while I tried to shush him.

  “Shut up,” I said. “Shut up, or he’ll find me.”

  My brother laughed until he choked. Then he started coughing. The springs on his bunk squeaked with every cough.

  Then the bedroom door opened.

  The Cricket Man had found me.

  The light came on. I covered my face with the sheet.

  “What’s wrong?” Mom asked from the door.

  I sighed with relief, and took a breath before answering. “I’m scared.”

  “Not you, your brother.” He was still laughing and coughing. “Will you be quiet?” my mother ordered.

  She approached the bed. I poked my head out from the sheet. I could see Mom’s body up to her chest. The rest was above my brother’s bunk. He wasn’t laughing much anymore. He was coughing in a frantic way that was making him choke.

  “Stop!” my mother shouted. I heard her slap my brother’s back a few times.

  “You have to stop!” she persisted. “Your brother mustn’t be kept awake.”

  The coughing fit gradually subsided.

  “What brought this on?” my mother asked him. Receiving no answer, she turned to me. “How long have you been awake? What have you heard?”

  I hesitated. The key hung from her neck like a pendulum. “I saw the Cricket Man,” I said.

  “Have you been out of your room?”

  The firefly I’d gone to rescue was still fluttering in my closed hand.

  “No,” I lied.

  “Then where did you see him? In this bedroom?”

  I shook my head.

  “Of course you didn’t,” she said, “because he doesn’t exist. You know that.”

  “He does exist!” my brother shouted from above.

  My mother cuffed him.

  “Be quiet,” she told him. “He doesn’t exist.”

  Mom pinched her stretched T-shirt between her legs and sat on the side of my bed. She put a hand on my tummy.

  “That man doesn’t exist,” she repeated. “No one’s going to take you away. This is your home and you’re safe here. Now I’m going to bring you a glass of milk, you’re going to drink it, and you’re going to sleep. Understood?”

  I nodded, unconvinced.

  Mom left the room. Above me, my brother said, “He does exist.”

  I remained silent, remembering the silhouette I’d seen in the hall. The two clicks of his back-to-front knees. Then I heard a cricket’s chirp. Like I had just after Dad revealed the Cricket Man’s existence to me. A real chirp, like the one I’d heard in documentaries. Like when night fell in the movies.

  A shiver ran down my back, as if a real cricket walked down my spine.

  Mom returned with the glass of milk. She offered it to me, and I too
k it with my free hand. I didn’t want her to discover the firefly.

  “I want to see you drink it,” she said.

  I drank it in one gulp.

  “It tastes strange,” I said.

  My mother looked away for an instant. “The glass must be dirty,” she replied. “Now, sleep.”

  She took the glass and waited for me to lie down. She tucked me in.

  “I’m still scared,” I said to her. “What if I can’t sleep?”

  I had to wait until she went and my brother started to snore before I could put the firefly back in the jar. I would’ve liked to have changed my wet underpants, too. But I must’ve fallen asleep right then, because when I opened my eyes again, my family was talking in the kitchen. The house smelled of coffee and toast. In my hand there was a squashed pea.

  10

  The toaster went off to welcome me to the kitchen. Mom was warming milk. Beside her, twelve eggs sat on their throne of gray cardboard.

  “Doesn’t it all smell great?” she said. “I knew he wouldn’t let us down.”

  “The boy’s here,” my father warned her.

  Mom turned around.

  “Come here so I can give you a hug,” she said, kneeling by the oven.

  My brother, sister, and father were also hanging around in the kitchen.

  “That doesn’t go there,” Dad said. He took out a packet of rice my brother had just put in the top drawer and stored it in the third one down.

  When I pulled my chair out from under the table, I found a sack of potatoes on the seat.

  “Wait,” said Mom. She came over and took it off so I could sit down. “See how you were able to sleep?”

  I nodded, rubbing an eye with the back of my hand.

  “Don’t listen to your father,” she whispered in my ear. “That Cricket Man’s an invention to scare kids and make them behave.”

  “But I saw him,” I responded.

  Dad spoke from the fridge. “I can hear you both,” he said. “You bet you saw him. Because the Cricket Man exists. And he moves like this.” He crossed the kitchen in a squat and put a string of onions on the extractor fan. “The difference is his knees bend backward.”

  Mom held my chin and shook her head. Then she straightened with a groan, hefting the potatoes, and she stored them in a low cupboard.

  The rest of my family sat down one by one.

  “So someone was scared last night,” my father said as he took his seat. “And it seems it wasn’t the baby,” he added, gesturing at my sister without looking at her.

  “First the baby cries, then the next night it’s the boy. What is going on in this house?”

  “I didn’t cry,” I answered.

  “You didn’t? So why did your mother have to go to your room and comfort you?”

  “I actually went to calm your other son down,” Mom cut in. She put down a bowl of boiled eggs in the middle of the table before sitting. “He wouldn’t stop laughing.”

  “Can we eat?” my sister interrupted. “I’m hungry.”

  Dad waited with his wrists resting on the table’s edge, without picking up his cutlery.

  “Why isn’t Grandma coming?” Mom whispered. “Shall I go fetch her?”

  My sister stretched out an arm to take an egg from the bowl.

  Dad smashed his hand down like he was killing a mosquito. “No one eats until Grandma’s here,” he said.

  “And how do we know she’s coming?” Mom asked.

  My grandmother’s voice came from her room. “I’m coming out,” she shouted.

  “She’s coming out,” repeated Dad.

  “They understood me,” she added. “I don’t need a translator.”

  The sound of her slippers dragging along the hall preceded her appearance in the doorway. She was wearing the nightgown she always ate breakfast in, which she then changed out of and wouldn’t put on again until nighttime. Her white hair, which combed in a certain way hid the bald areas made by the fire, was now brushed forward, covering her face. On either side of her head the bare patches of scalp could be seen.

  “Your hair,” said my father. “We’re all here.”

  She sorted it out as best she could. Mom wanted to get up, but my grandmother stopped her. “Don’t worry, I’m fine on my own.”

  When she sat down, she tidied her hair a bit more and tried to smile, but the result was nothing more than a big crease across her swollen face.

  “How are you?” my father asked her.

  “What’s wrong with your eyes?” said my brother.

  Grandma took a deep breath. She felt for her plate with her fingers. Then a hand slid across the table to her right. She touched the seventh plate. She always smiled when she found that Mom had served it, but this time her chin trembled.

  “Let’s eat,” Dad said.

  “Let’s eat,” Grandma repeated. Her lips were reddened, her eyes swollen, the tip of her nose raw.

  “Why are you so sad?” I asked her.

  She put her cup down on the table, and dried her lips with a cloth napkin full of holes. Mom had explained to me that moths made the holes, so for days I’d searched for caterpillars all around the basement. I wanted to feed them with my clothes, see them grow, and witness their metamorphosis. But Mom filled wardrobes and drawers with mothballs. For days the basement smelled of nothing else.

  “Can’t you see how sad she is?” I said to everyone.

  Mom lowered her head.

  Grandma put her napkin on her lap. A strained crease of flesh spread across her face in the worst imitation of a smile.

  “Did the Cricket Man do something to you?” I asked. “I saw him go into your room.”

  Her normally cloudy eyes filled with tears.

  Then the baby’s high-pitched scream came from the hall.

  “Have you left him in the bedroom?” asked Dad. Grandma blinked as if she’d just remembered there was a baby in the basement.

  “Go get your son,” Dad ordered my sister.

  She put the sugar jar down on the table. The teaspoon clinked against the edge of the glass. She looked at Grandma, then held a finger to her temple and moved it in circles.

  “Don’t do that,” Dad said.

  “Do what?” asked Grandma.

  “Nothing,” replied my sister, “I’m not doing anything. I’ll go see what’s wrong with him.”

  She tipped a final spoonful of sugar into her coffee and closed the jar as she got up. Then she was still for a moment and sat down again. She lifted the jar with her elbow resting on the table. “Would you mind going?” she asked me.

  “Me? Why me?”

  She looked at the jar. Then tipped it up. It was just like the firefly jar.

  “Well, if you don’t want to . . .” She left the jar on the table and ran her finger around the edge of the lid. “I could—”

  “All right,” I interrupted when I understood she was blackmailing me, “I’ll go.”

  She smiled and took her finger away from the lid.

  “If he’s crying because he’s hungry, bring him here and I’ll feed him.”

  My brother pushed his chair out to block my path.

  “She has to go,” he said.

  I tried to dodge around him but he moved again.

  “She has to,” he insisted.

  “I don’t care who goes,” Dad said, “but go now. I can’t stand that child’s screaming.”

  In the crib, the baby was crying with his arms stretched out toward the ceiling, as if he wanted the Cricket Man to find him and take him away. I put a hand on his tummy and rocked him. His crying began to subside. When I put a finger near his mouth, the baby caught it and began to suck. A mistaken look of peace lit up his face.

  That was when I noticed the bulge under the sheet.

  It moved near his feet. At first I thought it had been his legs thrashing about as he cried, but the bump was too far from the baby’s body, like a stretchy limb that wanted to escape from its own anatomy. The bulge moved to a corner o
f the crib. I went on tiptoes to grab hold of my nephew. Before I could lift him and get him away from the thing that moved under the sheet, the bulge positioned itself on his chest. Like a second body.

  I felt the tickling of whiskers before I saw anything. A gray, pointed nose, twitching, appeared between my hands. It bumped against the baby’s chin, and my nephew just managed to turn his head to escape the thing.

  The rat came out from under the sheet. It walked over the little boy’s cheeks, sinking its feet into the flesh. One of the front ones found purchase on his nose, the other near the ear. The rodent’s claws opened little cuts on the skin. The baby opened his mouth to scream again. The animal’s tail slithered between his lips, and its snout stopped for a few seconds on the boy’s left eye, sniffing, the whiskers quivering over it like grotesque eyelashes.

  I pulled on the baby with trembling hands. A muscle in my back sent me a stab of pain. The animal clutched the boy’s head, bending the neck at an unnatural angle, before jumping back into the crib. It escaped between two bars. The tail disappeared into a corner of the room.

  I kissed the baby’s forehead, which was resting on my chest. I held his head from behind to keep the neck straight. Two drops of blood slid down his face.

  “Is that child going to shut up, or what?” my father yelled from the kitchen.

  I sat on the floor, my back resting against my grandmother’s bed. With one of my thumbs, I cleaned the drops of blood from the baby’s face.

  “How hard can it be?” Dad asked from the other room.

  “If he’s hungry, bring him to me,” shouted my sister.

  My throat was so tight from the shock I couldn’t answer.

  I sat there waiting, until I heard my grandmother’s footsteps in the hall.

  “What is it?” she asked as she walked in.

  She bumped into me. A sparse eyebrow arched, taut with worry.

  “Hey, what is it?” She knelt beside me. She searched for the baby with her hands. “Is he OK?”

  I swallowed. I opened my mouth but couldn’t utter a word. I swallowed again.