The Boy Who Drew Monsters
Page 28
“It’s the police,” she said. “The bone’s gone missing. They opened the box and found nothing but ashes.”
His father said it would be all right to stay up and watch TV till the ball dropped in New York City, and his mother agreed that it would be okay if he would first change into his pajamas. The empty bed reminded him of Nick in the hospital, but he would soon be just another imaginary now, gone like Red and all the others. On his desk, a quiver of sharp pencils stood in a cup beside the last pages of his sketch pad. It would be easy to sit in his chair and continue as he always had, but he set his mind to resist the temptation. Jack changed out of his clothes and sat cross-legged on the carpet, looking up at the dresser mirror and the moon reflected in the glass, trying to push the last of his friend out of his mind. The lady with the cloud in her eyes would help him. He would talk with her next time. Tell her the whole story.
A soft knock at the door broke his concentration. His mother appeared at the threshold, and when he nodded she came in. “What have you been doing up here all this time? We’ve been waiting for you to join us. Don’t want to miss the countdown.”
He rocked gently to and fro, unable to put into words what he was feeling.
“Were you thinking about Nick?” She sat next to him on the floor, and he allowed her to put her arm around his shoulders. After a while, he laid his head against her chest, and she felt a wave of joy rise through her body. They remained together that way for some time.
“Good grief,” she said at last, looking toward the space between the desk and his old toy box. “We seem to have caught a mouse.”
The forgotten trap had been sprung and the killing bar lay neatly against the mouse’s neck. He remembered how Nick had wanted to stick his finger in there. The tiny body was stiff with rigor mortis. His mother got up at once and fetched a plastic bag from the linen closet and wrapped it around her hand and forearm like a long evening glove. Looking away from the body, she picked up the mousetrap and its victim with one hand and tied a knot in the bag.
“Be a lamb,” she said. “Take this to your father to dispose of properly.”
Jack grabbed the top edge of the bag and held it at arm’s length, taking care not to let the dead thing touch him as he walked downstairs. Slumped in an easy chair, his father watched the New Year’s Eve festivities on TV, numbed to the presence of his son. His head rested on a wing of the chair, and on his neck, the wounds had healed to pale red stripes, sure to leave faint scars in due course. Jack showed him the bag.
“Mouse,” he said. “Mommy wants you to get rid of it.”
Tim lifted himself from the chair and accepted the burden. “I will,” he said. “And go tell your mother that the show is about to begin.”
On the upstairs landing, Jack listened to the soft sounds coming from his room, his mother’s exclamations of surprise and wonder. She was seated where he had left her, between the desk and the now open toy box, and she had found his hidden secret. A stack of papers spilled from her lap and smaller piles surrounded her. She looked up when he came into the room, her eyes wide and questioning. She flipped through the drawings and held up a picture of Nick flying a kite.
“These are all of Nick?” she asked.
He bit his bottom lip.
Nick in a classroom bent to his lessons, Nick swinging on a rope over a lake, Nick banging on a toy drum, Nick and his parents sitting on a mountain, Nick dressed for church, Nick catching a baseball, Nick in the winter, spring, summer, and fall. Nick at seven, eight, nine, and ten. Growing older, changing his hair, the style of his clothes, the number of teeth in his smile. A thousand Nicks.
“When did you have time to draw all these?”
He did not know what to say. “Every day.”
“What do you mean every day? How long have you been making these pictures of Nick?”
“One drawing every day since he drowned. But I got tired of having to do it. So I drew monsters to chase him away, not me.”
Lines of confusion furrowed her brow. “No, honey, that can’t be right. That was only two days ago when you and Nick went in the water, and there must be more than a thousand pictures here.”
“Not then,” he said. “The first time he drowned. Three years ago.”
“But why—”
“Made him up,” he said. “Since he died. To keep him alive.”
“What do you mean made him up?” She pushed her way to the bottom of the stack and saw the seven-year-old dream boy that Jack had made, and at last she understood. A thousand drawings, a thousand boys, a thousand days. And now Nick was in a hospital bed, fighting to live.
“You can’t stop,” she said. His mother rose from the floor and grabbed him by the wrist and led him to the desk. Holly shoved him to sit in front of the paper and forced a pencil into his hand. Wrapping her trembling fingers around his, she held him to the page. “Draw,” she ordered. “Draw him again.”
He faced the blank page and laid down a line.
Also by Keith Donohue
The Stolen Child
Angels of Destruction
Centuries of June
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KEITH DONOHUE is an American novelist, the author of the national bestseller The Stolen Child, Angels of Destruction, and Centuries of June. He also has written reviews for The Washington Post. Donohue has a Ph.D. in English with a specialization in modern Irish literature and wrote the introduction to Flann O’Brien: The Complete Novels. He lives in Maryland.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE BOY WHO DREW MONSTERS. Copyright © 2014 by Keith Donohue. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Donohue, Keith.
The boy who drew monsters: a novel / Keith Donohue.—First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-250-05715-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-05716-7 (e-book)
1. Boys—Maine—Fiction. 2. Monster—Fiction. 3. Psychological fiction. 4. Ghost stories. I. Title.
PS3604.O5654B69 2014
813'.6—dc23
2014018914
eISBN 9781250057167
First eBook Edition: October 2014