Pollock reached for the lip of the trunk lid and was surprised to find Nick leaning inside the well. “You’ll have to get out of there. I’ve got places to go and criminals to catch.”
Slipping out of harm’s way, Nick straightened and shielded his eyes to look at the policeman. “You are a superhero.”
“Officer Pollock,” he said. “To the rescue.” With a grin, he slammed the trunk, got into the car, and drove away.
“Hi-yo, Silver,” Tim said, and then he put his arm around the boy’s shoulders and they walked back inside.
Waiting like a fledgling in the nest, Jip began pestering them at once. “What was in the car? I couldn’t see, I couldn’t see.”
“A monster,” Nick said. “Hairy white beast straight out of your nightmares.”
Tossing his jacket over the back of a chair, Tim grimaced at the boy. “Don’t pay any attention to him. It was just a dog. A poor misfortunate German shepherd dog, white as winter. Must have been a beautiful thing before it met something bigger and more dangerous. Now it’s just a broken body in the back of a police car.”
“That’s right.” Nick sniffed. “Just a dog.”
* * *
Holly could not remember a time over the past few weeks when she had such an unbroken stretch of peace without the constant drumming in her head. The talk with Miss Tiramaku had done her good she was certain, and on the ride back to the rectory, they had discussed more of Jack’s case history from the very beginning. Holly told her about the first time she had noticed her son’s strange affect. He was cradled in her lap, laid lengthwise against her propped-up legs, and she bent down to kiss him again and again, soft zerberts on his tummy and cheeks, but he didn’t respond as she’d hoped, didn’t respond as other babies with a yelp of glee or belly giggles or even just a sharp inhalation. No, he seemed to resent her affections. Her suspicions played out in the months to come, Tim fighting her all the way when she sought out specialists. The pediatricians were missing it. She knew. A mother knows her child.
“Sometimes a father is too close to tell,” Miss Tiramaku said. “Or maybe your husband doesn’t want to admit his child is different. I can connect with Jack, and I’d like to talk with him again. Maybe next time Nicholas, too. Do you think he is angry with Nick?”
“Angry?”
“Or resents him, perhaps. Resents the difference he feels?”
“No, Nick’s a good boy. He’s like a brother.”
“A brother,” Miss Tiramaku repeated and stared through the window, chewing on the word.
They had arrived at the rectory and sat in the car, plotting the next steps. To be sure that Miss Tiramaku hadn’t been locked out, Holly watched her go to the door, changing from spry to tottering as though she were a windup doll herself in need of another turn of the key. Father Bolden met her on the porch, held the storm door for her in a gesture of familiar welcome. Holly did not bother to wave good-bye, but turned the car around and drove home.
In the last navy blue moments of the day, she pulled into the driveway. The Christmas lights were on, and when she walked in, the rich aroma of a beef stew made her dizzy with hunger. The boys were busy setting the table, and Tim stirred the pot with a big wooden spoon. A glass of red wine sat breathing at her place at the table, and she felt a surge of tranquility shoot through her veins with the first sip.
After a quick hello kiss, Tim shared the news. “You’ll never guess who came by the house, not ten minutes after you left.”
“Santa Claus,” she said. “Come to deliver that Caribbean cruise he forgot?”
“Very funny.” Tim reached for the wine bottle to top off her glass. “It was Haddock. That policeman who was here Christmas Day.”
“Pollock,” she said. “To check up on the case of the mystery bone? I have a theory where it came from.”
“That’s what I thought too, at first, but no. Not that at all. You’ll never guess what he had in the back of his car.”
Jack Peter shouted, “A monster.”
“Now, Jip, let your mother guess.”
“A monster?” Holly asked.
“Sort of,” said Tim. “Remember that thing I saw on the rocks, that thing that got at my throat? Well it wasn’t a coyote, it was a big white dog, the size of a wolf. Found it dead at the Point. Pollock had to stuff it in the back of his rig. Been roaming round here for weeks. Isn’t that great?”
“That’s terrible,” she said. “Poor thing.”
“It was already dead, of course, but don’t you see? It proves there’s been something out there, just like I thought, and it explains everything—the noises, the dog across the street going crazy, the feeling like you’re being watched all the time out there.”
She drained her glass of wine. “If you say so, dear.”
“What do you mean, if I say so? Don’t you understand, this fixes everything.”
“A big white dog?”
“Precisely.”
“Precisely.” She helped herself to the bottle and refilled her glass and lifted it in a toast to her husband. “Case closed.”
The boys were already seated at the table, quietly waiting for the start of dinner. The oven timer buzzed, and Tim retrieved a pan of biscuits and set in motion the whole process of clattering bowls and spoons and fetching the milk from the fridge and getting dinner on the table. They all tucked in, and in those first moments, appetite trumped conversation, and they ate as though this meal was their first in ages.
Tim speared a chunk of potato on the end of his fork and blew to cool it down. “It looked like it was asleep, all curled up like they do, in the bottom of the trunk.”
“If you cut them open to let the steam out, you wouldn’t have to blow on your food,” Holly said. “Potatoes stay hot a long time.”
“That’s what I like about living in a small town. Mighty nice of that young policeman to keep us informed.” He fanned his open mouth with his free hand.
Jack Peter blew on his potato.
“Same goes for you,” she said. “Let the steam out, so you can eat them sooner.”
“At first I didn’t believe him,” said Tim. “About a big dog, but the more I got to thinking, the more it makes sense.”
She buttered a biscuit and ignored him. “Jack, Miss Tiramaku said you and she had a good talk, is that right?”
When he heard his name, Jack stopped chasing a pearl onion around the bottom of his bowl and stared at his mother.
“Says she wants to talk with you some more. Would that be all right, son?” Holly sank her teeth into the biscuit, and Jack nodded and resumed his game.
Tim waggled an empty fork at her. “I’m not sure it’s all right with me.”
“It doesn’t have to be with your approval, Tim. He needs somebody. I don’t think there’s any harm in her talking with the boy.”
“Bunch of superstition.”
Her spoon clattered when she dropped it into the bowl. For the next few moments, they ate in deep silence.
“Didn’t seem real at first,” Nick said. “A make-believe dog. Like something Jack Peter would dream up.”
* * *
They all made their peace after supper, managing a few hands of cards before bed. On the calendar in the boys’ bedroom, Nick drew a big black X through another number and calculated how long it would be until his parents returned. Just a few more days. While Jack Peter was in the bathroom brushing his teeth, Nick changed his clothes. He stripped off his shirt, and as he undid his belt buckle, he felt the lump in his jeans pocket. He pulled out a wad of papers, the torn strips from the drawing adhering together like a ball of yarn, ragged and matted. The drawing. The babies. It seemed so long ago in retrospect, and with all of the strange visitors, Nick had forgotten to ask Mrs. Keenan about it, and he had not dared mention the drawing to Jack Peter. From down the hall came the sound of the bathroom door opening with a burst. He would be back soon, so Nick shoved the pulpy mass under his side of the mattress.
He was tired, oh so ti
red.
When the lights went out, he had hoped to go straight to sleep, but instead, Jack Peter rolled to his side and faced him in the darkness, wanting to talk. Nick could smell the mint toothpaste on his breath and the scent of soap on his skin. Go away, he wanted to shout, but he said nothing and tried to will his friend to sleep.
“What do you want, Jack Peter?”
Up on one elbow, he was eager to talk. “I wasn’t scared of the lady with one eye.”
“She had two eyes. A cataract on one. My nana in Florida has ’em all the time. She had a surgery to cut one out.”
“They cut her eyeball?”
“With a knife. A scalpel.”
“I would not want a knife in my eye.”
“Me neither. I’m glad you weren’t scared of her.”
“She was nice.” There was an air around Jack Peter’s sentence, a kind of wistfulness that Nick associated with school when one of the boys or girls had a crush on a teacher. A teacher’s pet.
“You should talk to her,” Nick said. “Tell her everything, all your secrets.”
No reply. All was still for a while, quiet enough for Nick to hope their conversation was over and he could sleep. He had nearly dropped off when another question disturbed him.
“What about that dog?”
“It was a big white dog, big as a wolf. Kinda scary to look at since it was dead.”
“I wonder what it is like being dead.”
Nick did not answer. The question hung over the bed palpable as a thick and heavy cloud. There was no answer to it, and in time, the boys fell asleep.
Hours later, when the house was quiet for the night, a scratching at the door awakened Nick. He had heard that sound before. At his grandparents’ house, their little Yorkie would paw at the door whenever it wanted to be let out or let back into the house. Nails scraped the wood, more desperately now, as if something was trying to dig its way into the room, and a canine whine came through the space between the floor and the door. Nick could hear it snuffle and breathe and then the low-pitched growl rumble from its chest. In the trunk of the police car, the dead dog’s mouth was pulled back exposing two rows of sharp teeth. He could see them clearly now, the long fangs snapping at him. He could feel the canines ripping at his pajamas, hear the vicious mad barking. With a whimper, he turned away and shook Jack Peter by the shoulder. Nick knew he had been drawing again. “Make it go away,” he whispered, repeating and repeating until the boy rose from his dreams and whatever was beyond the closed door padded down the hall and went back to that special hell where nightmares are born.
v.
The dream house now sat at the bottom of the sea. Waves broke six feet above the roof, and bubbles escaped from the chimney and streamed one by one to the surface. In between the fronds of the kelp forest swam the windup fish, shining brightly as it passed through columns of sunlight. An octopus hid in the mailbox, two arms slithering through the slot. Starfish clung to the balustrade along the front porch. One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. With great care he drew dorsal fins, walleyes, scales, and the little beard beneath the mouth open for one underwater breath. The cod took a long time to draw, but Jack Peter didn’t mind, he had all morning, he lost track entirely. The pencil weighed just right in his hand, the lines certain and crisp, and the sketch paper was smooth and willing.
One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. He remembered the sound of the Dr. Seuss book, its music in the background of his mind as he drew, and he could picture the illustrations and how the book was about counting things and observing details. Say, what a lot of fish there are. Windup fish swimming in the sea all the way from Japan, and the lady with the cloudy eye knows how he works. Inside his head. All these fishes need deep water, and if the ocean came and rose above the roof, Daddy would be dead, and Mommy, too, and Nick, bodies floating in the deep. Their friends could come and gather the dead and drowned and hang them up to dry. The end. No more pictures to draw, no more secrets. His hand cramped, and then the pencil grew as heavy as a spade.
He studied the house, vaguely dissatisfied with how he had drawn it, the difference between the perfect construct in his brain and the finished images on the page. He felt a bit sick to his stomach and slid the paper to the bottom of the stack on his desk. He turned off the light and sat in the gathering dawn. The others slept, slumbering in dreamland. Nick sprawled across the mattress, twisted sheets wrapped around his body like a fishing net. Late in the night, he had been crying again. Always crying. Always wanting something else. Nick could be such a chore; there was a limit to Jack Peter’s patience. Down the hall, his parents drifted, two on a raft. They would be up soon enough, his mother off to work, his father wandering restlessly from room to room. If they were drowned and dead, who would take care of him? “Be careful,” he whispered, and then all at once, the whole house sprang to life.
“Wake up,” he said to Nick, and the boy obeyed at once, sitting up in the bed, wiping the sleep from his eyes. A glimmer of leftover resentment lingered, but Nick said nothing, just dutifully rose and hurried off to the bathroom. Jack Peter heard the others make way, the quiet good mornings exchanged in the ebb and bustle of another daybreak. His father stuck his head into the room, and from the chair at the desk, Jack Peter nodded at him.
“You’re up. Just us boys today,” Tim said. “Your mother’s back to work. Come have some breakfast with us and say good-bye.”
Good-bye, he thought after his father departed. Good-bye, mother; good-bye, father. Good-bye, Mr. and Mrs. Weller. Good-bye, Nick at the bottom of the sea.
At the breakfast table, Jack Peter watched his parents get ready for the day. They moved like bees from flower to flower. Coffee on, muffins in the toaster. Cereal bowls and spoons, a bottle of milk, cornflakes, a ripe banana cut into coins. The newspaper rescued from the front stoop, shedding its plastic skin. She was trying to tell his father a story, but had trouble keeping his attention. A manila folder on the counter contained her evidence, and she kept returning to it and brandishing different sheets of paper.
“There’s a painting in the rectory at Star of the Sea,” she said. “That’s where I first heard of it. All these years and I never knew, a shipwreck right in our backyard.”
Shuffling across the floor in his bare feet, Nick entered the kitchen. His hair stood on end like a cartoon character just frightened out of his wits. I suppose he had been, Jack Peter thought. I mustn’t forget about the dog.
His father tousled Nick’s hair. “Orange juice?”
Nick and Jack Peter nodded, and he fetched two glasses from the cupboard.
“So I went to the Maritime Museum yesterday,” she said. “Did you know they have an archives there with a record of every ship that hit the rocks from here to Machias?”
His father poured the juice. “Say when.”
She buttered a muffin and chomped a half-moon from the edge. “And here’s a list of all the passengers. No survivors, can you imagine? And some of the drowned came ashore. Listen: ‘bodies taken by friends.’ And the others were never found. Do you understand what I mean? Tim, are you listening?”
“Bodies taken,” he said.
“Not that. Some bodies were never found. And I looked on the Internet to find out what happens to bodies left at sea.”
Gingerly, he stroked the red marks on his neck. “Honestly, Holly. In front of the boys.”
She chewed another bite. “You boys can take it, can’t you? It’s not as if it happened just yesterday. Bodies disappear quickly, but in the right conditions, the bones can last for years, for centuries. The bone, Tim, the arm bone.”
In the next chair, Nick shoved a spoonful of cornflakes into his mouth and crunched.
“I’ll bet you anything,” she said, “when the tests come back, they’ll say just how old it is, just how long it has been in the water: 1849.”
His father pulled out the sports page from the newspaper. “And the dog just found it on the beach?”
“Don’t yo
u get it? The bone, the shipwreck, the weird voices in the night. Miss Tiramaku says there might be ghosts. Funa-yurei, she says.”
Clearing his throat, Tim leaned back against the counter, regarding her with wonder. “Tiramaku,” he said at last, making the name sound like an insult.
His parents stared at each other from their respective corners, a truce passing between them before any shots could be fired. His mother was the first to break, glancing at her watch. “I’m late. You boys be good.”
They mumbled their promises through their cornflakes.
* * *
The boys vanished after breakfast, off to their secret games. Tim let them go with a smile. They were close as brothers sometimes. On the counter lay the jumble of Holly’s papers, and he stacked them neatly in their folder, sighing at his wife’s latest obsession. Old bones, ghost ships. That ridiculous Japanese woman with her crazy ideas. He washed the dishes and gathered the plastic garbage bag to take outside to the trash cans. He shivered as he looked out to the snow clouds collecting off to the west. He had just lifted the lid from the metal can when a blur of white in the yard frightened him.
Flushed from his hiding place, the white man bristled alert and then darted between the fir trees and crossed the road. All angled arms and legs, he galloped along the edge of the Quigleys’ house and disappeared from view. It all happened so quickly that Tim could not believe what he was seeing. He shoved the trash bag into the can and considered following, but knew from hard experience that it would be as futile as chasing a rabbit. The cold handle cut into his palm, so he screwed the lid back in place.
White as a ghost, white as paper. Tim had thought it was dead, if such a thing could ever be called alive. Or shown to be a great white dog. Or a figment of his mind, but there was the white man again, running not twenty feet from the house. Where the man had brushed against the evergreen branches, needles still swept the air. For the longest time, Tim stared at the path the thing had taken like a deer caught in the open and gone to cover. He thought if he waited long enough he might make him reappear.
The Boy Who Drew Monsters Page 20