The Child Eater

by Rachel Pollack

  Simon rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure. Everyone knows there’s no buried treasure around here. We’re not exactly living on a desert island, you know.”

  Dad smiled. “Of course,” he said. He looked at Simon a little funny. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, Dad, I’m good.”

  Dad stared at him for a while, almost like the way Dr. Howard sometimes did, and this made Simon laugh. Now his father looked about to say something but stopped himself. Simon thought maybe he should speak, so he said, “I’m really good.”

  Dad glanced down, and when he lifted his head his eyes were wet. When he spoke his voice shook a little, but all he said was, “Well, why don’t you go upstairs and take a shower?” He stopped, took a breath, then in that same funny voice said, “I’ll start dinner. And make sure you put those clothes in the hamper.”

  Simon hid the cards, with the blue cloth still wrapped around them, in a box of old toys under the bed. In the shower, he found himself laughing as he remembered how the squirrels had changed into those weird kids. What a funny dream. And then he realized it was true. He did feel good. He felt better than at any time since his dad first told him he was cheating.

  Jack Wisdom had no idea what had changed in his son. He didn’t dare to ask. Maybe like people said, all the nightmares, the anger, were just a phase, because suddenly it was as if he’d got his son back. Simon smiled and laughed a lot, and over the next couple of months, his grades began to improve, and he even started making friends again. Jack told himself he didn’t dare ask what had happened because he didn’t want to make Simon self-conscious, or in some way jinx it. In fact, maybe he didn’t really want to know. Whatever had changed, he was grateful.

  A couple of times he thought of the strange kids he’d seen that day he got lost in that decrepit neighborhood on the other side of town. Had there ever been a danger Simon would end up like that? Jack didn’t want to think it was possible, but he still thanked God it couldn’t happen now. His beautiful boy was safe.

  Simon never visited the dream garden again. He went back to the dead tree a couple of times, but didn’t see the strange squirrels. It didn’t matter. Every night, before he went to sleep, he took the cards from their hiding place and looked at them. Sometimes he quickly went through the whole deck, jumping from picture to picture like some superhero jumping between worlds. Other times he slid them in and out of each other, then selected one at random. He made up stories about them, or maybe the stories were already there, each picture a doorway into a tale. It almost felt as if they were telling him stories, like his dad used to do when he was little. It wasn’t like there were voices or anything, but the stories just kind of appeared in his head. Sometimes they were simply of a place to go, like the garden with the squirrels who turned into children. Sometimes a group of them would lay out an actual tale, kind of like a comic where you didn’t need any words to know what it was about. There was a boy who found a gold cup and a talking fish came out and told him to travel over the sea with a woman who covered her head so he never saw her face, until they came to an exploding tower . . . That one went on for a couple of days.

  Other times the cards just made him feel a certain way. One day, when he’d been looking at them a little longer than usual, he stood up and suddenly the room, and the house, the whole world, it seemed, was filled with waves and waves of color. Except they were colors no one had ever seen before, colors that were somehow impossible, yet there they were. Simon wanted to run and tell his dad about them, but he was afraid that his dad couldn’t see them, or worse, that he might suspect Simon was cheating in some way, seeing colors no one else knew about. So Simon just watched them all until slowly the world settled back to its usual dullness.

  There were scary stories, too, or rather the beginnings of them. Sometimes a card, or more likely a combination of two or three, would open a door to a place Simon knew he did not want to go, like a reenactment of the terrible dreams of the children, or even a memory of Eli, as if the dead boy was still alive somewhere, hidden in the cards, and pleading with Simon to save him, forever and ever. But Simon discovered he could recognize when something like that was going to happen and then stop it by putting the bad cards back and smooshing them all around on the floor, face down, until nothing was left of the awful story. The sound of the cards moving in and out of each other was like a woman’s voice telling him, “It’s all right. You don’t have to see that. You’re safe.”

  None of the pictures had titles at the bottom or anything to say what they were called. Simon didn’t really mind that, they seemed kind of cool just the way they were, but he remembered seeing titles on the ones Ellen had brought to school, and he wondered if maybe he should know what they were. He tried to make up his own titles, like “Upside-Down Tree Man,” or “Talking Fish,” but he was afraid he’d make a mistake and they wouldn’t work right. So one morning, he asked his dad if he could have some money for a video game.

  Dad looked at him a little nervously. “Which one?” he said.

  Simon knew that grown-ups had some list of bad games, the ones with too much killing or bad words or sex. He said, “It’s called Knights. You ride around on horses and kill dragons and stuff.” That wasn’t really a lie, because there were actual knights on horses in the cards (though no dragons).

  Dad appeared to think a bit but Simon was sure he’d say yes. His dad was so happy that Simon had stopped getting into trouble that he probably would have given him anything. “How much is it?” Dad asked.

  Simon had checked online for what Tarot cards cost, so he was ready. “Twenty dollars.” Amazon actually said fifteen but sometimes things were more in stores.

  “Well, that sounds fair,” Dad said. He gave one of those half-laughs grown-ups sometimes did. “These days that’s downright cheap. How about we go this weekend to pick it up?”

  This was the tricky part. For just a moment Simon considered checking Dad’s thoughts to know just what to say, but he quickly put the idea aside. He said, “Could I go myself? After school?”

  Dad looked startled. Simon’s school ran after-hours programs in the gym for kids without someone at home. You were supposed to use it for homework or clubs, but lots of kids just hung around, and none of the teachers seemed to mind. The school allowed kids to leave with a note from their parents, either to go with another grown-up, or even on their own if the parent said it was okay. The signature on the note would have to be checked against the signing cards the school kept for every parent.

  Dad said, “Wow, you really want this game, don’t you?”

  “I don’t need to do the after-school, it’s not so much fun, really. And I promise to do all my homework as soon as I get home.” He hoped his dad couldn’t see him holding his breath.

  “Well,” Dad said, “you have been a really good boy lately. Maybe it’s time to let you do something on your own.”

  Yes! Simon thought, but he kept his face and body still.

  Dad said, “You’ll come right home from the game store, right?”

  “Sure, Dad.”

  “And you know where the extra key is, right?”

  Simon nodded.

  “But you can’t bring anyone home with you. Is that understood?”

  “I know.”

  Dad sighed. “If you have any problem, get Mrs. Volck from next door, okay?”

  “I know, Dad.”

  Another deep breath, then, “Okay.” Dad wrote a note on the memo pad, put it in an envelope, sealed it and gave it to Simon, who put it in his backpack’s zipper pocket. “I guess you’ll have to take your bike to school,” Dad said.

  “I’ll be careful, Dad. I promise.” Simon knew this whole idea was only possible because the store was not very far from both the school and the house, with only a couple of traffic lights in each part of the trip.

  “And you’ll come right home from the game store?” Dad said again.

  “Sure.”

  “And you’ll be super careful crossing inter
sections?”

  Simon nodded.

  “If anyone speaks to you, or asks you to go somewhere with him, even if he says I sent him, don’t listen. Okay?”

  Simon rolled his eyes. “Dad! I know that stuff.”

  His father hugged him. “Okay, then.” He stood up.

  “Dad? The money?”

  His father laughed. “Right.” Simon watched him take out his wallet and bring forth a bright twenty-dollar bill. “Here you go,” he said. Simon put the money in his jeans pocket, not his backpack, and watched his father nod. Simon had lost a dollar when he was six, and Dad had told him then you never put money in your pack. Dad said, “Maybe if it’s a cool game you can have Jerry over to play it with you.”

  Recently, Simon had begun hanging out with a boy named Jerry Lowe. He felt funny not playing with Popcorn Jimmy so much, but Jimmy looked just as happy to be by himself. And Jerry was cooler, and more popular. Simon liked the idea of inviting Jerry over, but not to look at his cards. He said, “Dad, for twenty dollars, it’s just a one-person game.”

  “Oh,” Dad said. “Sure. Well, maybe for something else sometime.”

  “Okay,” Simon said. He shrugged on his backpack and headed for the door.

  “I want to see that game when you bring it home,” Dad said.

  “Okay.” This was tricky, but Simon thought there was a good chance Dad would forget about it. Lately, his father’s work appeared to be taking up all his attention. If not, maybe he could show him some old game.

  Simon got on his bike and headed toward school. When he’d turned a corner and was sure Dad couldn’t see him, he stopped and pumped his fist in the air. “Yes!” he said out loud. He’d persuaded his dad to let him go to school alone, and without cheating. He almost wanted to tell his father what he’d done so Dad could be proud of him.

  After school, Simon gave in his permission slip and pretended not to notice the kids watch him leave the gym and ride off on his bike. He rode straight to the game store, and was happy he hadn’t needed to lie to his dad about where he was going. When he was there with his dad once, he’d seen a box of Tarot cards on the counter, mixed in with the RPG decks. He hoped they were still there.

  Yes, there they were, and with tax they came to only $16.32. Simon bought gum and a Mars Bar with the rest of Dad’s money and left the store. He wanted to rip off the shrink-wrap and look at them right away but decided it was more important to get home before his dad, so he put them in his pack and pedaled home as fast as he could.

  The moment he opened the package he could see they were wrong. They were the same pictures—mostly—but they just looked, well, wrong: drawn too thick, the faces all funny, the colors too dull and too bright all at the same time. Simon wanted to tear them up and flush them down the toilet or something—but he reminded himself why he’d bought them, not for themselves but for the names.

  Just as he’d remembered, the ones from the store all had titles at the bottom. Mostly they only said the suit and number, like “Four of Swords” or “Seven of Cups” (they were different from regular cards, no hearts and spades and things), and there were kings and queens, and—just as he’d guessed—knights, plus something called a “page,” which appeared to be a person and nothing to do with books. The talking-fish card, in fact, was called the Page of Cups. Simon thought his name was better. And then there was a group with fancier titles: “The Tower” or “The Hanged Man” (the upside-down guy). These were the exciting ones, and when Simon looked at his own set—the “real” ones, as he thought of them—he realized he’d already known that group was special.

  Some of the pictures showed naked women, and even though they didn’t look much like the Playboy pictures some kid had brought to school in his backpack, Simon figured that was another reason not to tell Dad about them. At first Simon thought there were twenty-one of the special cards, since that was the highest number, but then he saw that one of them—his favorite, actually, which he’d called “the Beautiful Boy about to Fly” but now saw was called “the Fool”—was numbered zero, so that made twenty-two. He liked that, he didn’t know why. Twenty-two just sounded like a cool number. And it was cool that something should be called zero.

  Card zero, the Fool, was definitely his favorite. He’d liked the picture before, a young man walking or dancing on the edge of a cliff with his arms out like a bird, but this time he liked the real title better. Most of the others had fancy names, like “The Emperor,” and they looked kind of serious, but here was a fool, and he looked so happy, even though he might fall off that cliff at any moment. Simon just knew nothing bad could happen to the Fool. And nothing bad could happen to himself either as long as he had the cards.

  There were some scary pictures, or sad ones, such as a woman sitting up in bed, weeping in a dark room. This card had always made him sad, and now he saw it was called “Nine of Swords,” and there were in fact nine silver swords mounted like a kind of ladder on the wall behind the woman. When Simon looked at the picture, he just wanted to put his arms around her and tell her it was okay.

  There were angry cards, too, with people fighting, and there was even a card called “Death,” which showed a skeleton dressed up in black armor like a knight and riding a white horse. Simon had never thought of it as scary, not even now that he saw its title.

  Most of the cards from the game store were pretty close to the “real” ones, but two of them didn’t match up at all. One of them was a card he liked a lot, though he wasn’t sure why, and the other, well, the other disturbed him, though again, he couldn’t really say why. The one he liked from the real deck was one of the strangest. It showed a beautiful head, with golden hair and a bright face, the eyes closed, the mouth open wide as if singing. There was no body—the head was mounted on a shiny black stick, with dark trees around it. There was nothing like it in the store deck, and Simon finally decided it had been replaced by something called “Judgment,” a picture of an angel blowing a horn with people standing up in boxes and praying or something. So should he call the real picture Judgment, or just keep his own title—“Head On a Stick?”

  The other replacement card was called “The Devil,” and showed a scowling man with horns and goat feet holding a pair of chains like dog leashes that were connected to collars around the necks of a naked man and woman. The picture was just stupid, Simon thought, but he didn’t feel that way about the card it replaced. That one—the “Devil,” as he now thought of it—showed a handsome man standing in a stone room. He stood a little sideways but with his head turned to look directly out from the card, staring so intently Simon almost felt as if the man could see him. He wore a long robe of braided black and gold, which should have looked weird but didn’t. A light shone around his face, which was set in a little smile.

  Simon thought of him as beautiful somehow, which was a funny thing to think about a man, and yet . . . and yet he felt queasy when he looked at him and always put him back in the deck whenever he turned up. Sometimes he even forgot the man—the “Devil”—was there, and would be surprised if he suddenly came across it. All he knew was that he didn’t want whatever stories the Devil wanted to show him.

  There appeared to be a lot of forgetting going on those days. Just as Simon had hoped, his dad asked all about going out by himself, and cars, and not talking to strangers, and did he do his homework, but he never actually asked to see the game. He did say he’d look at it later, then he went into the kitchen to make dinner, which, since it was Tuesday, was cheeseburgers and potato salad. After dinner, he took out his laptop and his briefcase of papers and worked until it was time to put Simon to bed.

  Two days later, Simon got rid of the Tarot cards from the store. He told himself he didn’t need them anymore, he’d learned the names now, and it just meant two things to hide from his dad instead of one. But really, he simply didn’t like them. He couldn’t get over the feeling that they were wrong, like something that had forgotten what it was supposed to be. He took the game store cards
to school with him in a brown bag, and when he passed the gray trash can by the door, he dropped them inside.

  A week later, Jerry Lowe’s mom and dad invited Simon for a sleepover. It wasn’t the first time Simon had stayed at another kid’s house, but it was the first in more than a year, since all his “troubles” began. Dad fussed around him, asked over and over if Simon was sure he felt okay about it, said there was nothing wrong with saying no, told him he could come home whenever he wanted, checked Simon had what he needed, until finally Simon rolled his eyes and said, “Dad, it’s okay. It’s cool.”

  And it was cool. Simon was all excited, Jerry had the best game station ever, and Mrs. Lowe had promised they could have pizza with whatever toppings they liked. Simon’s only question was the cards. Should he take them? Sometimes he woke up in the middle of the night, all sweaty with his heart beating very fast, and looking at the pictures calmed him down. But suppose he did that and Jerry caught him? But if he left them home, his dad might decide to clean his room or something and discover them. Finally, Simon decided they were safe in their hiding place and he should just leave them there.

  The funny thing was, it wasn’t Simon who woke up all disturbed, but Jerry. And it was even weirder because when they were in their pajamas, and Jerry in his bed, and Simon on an air mattress on the floor, Simon asked what kind of dreams Jerry had, and Jerry said he didn’t, he never dreamed at all. So it really surprised Simon when he woke up in the middle of the night to hear Jerry moaning and twitching his hands, just like someone in a nightmare. He wondered for a moment what to do, then finally touched Jerry’s shoulder. His friend’s eyes flew open and stared at Simon. “Hey,” Simon said, “you okay?”

  “There’s a stone room,” Jerry said. His face tightened, and he seemed to be trying to say the right thing. “No. Not a room. A long . . . long tunnel. Stone tunnel. There’s things—things on the floor. Pieces of . . . things.”

  Simon jumped back. After a second, he said, “It’s just a dream. It doesn’t mean anything.” Wasn’t that what his dad always said? (Remember, the woman had told him.)