Resurrection House

by James Chambers

  I shoved Joey hard enough to knock him backward over the curb and walked away. He threw a snowball at my back but missed.

  Across the lot stood Wilt, alone, kicking the dwindling piles of soot-spotted snow. He never spoke in class anymore, and at recess he wandered off by himself and ignored everyone else. His mother had started picking him up everyday, and we no longer walked home together. He got thinner, too, and he looked like I did that day with bags under my eyes from not sleeping, only all the time.

  I worried he might be too sick to come to my birthday party Saturday afternoon. Wilt, Joey, Eddie and Billy Cooper were supposed to come. We’d play outside for a few hours and then have cake, and then Mom wanted everyone to go home when it got dark. It would suck without Wilt.

  “Hey, Wilt,” I said. “You still having nightmares?”

  “No,” he said. “I told you I made that stuff up.”

  “But what if someone else saw Mooncat Jack?” I asked. “Like if you weren’t the only one? That would mean he was real, right?”

  Wilt looked up with watery eyes, and said, “That would mean someone was lying because he isn’t real, Adam.”

  The bell rang, then, ending recess. I wanted to say more, but Wilt ran off toward school.

  That afternoon proved Joey right for a change. Before dismissal Sister Maureen, our principal, came over the loudspeaker and warned everyone to be careful and not to walk home alone. She told the story Joey had heard, leaving out Tommy and Brian’s names, but describing the white van and the driver who offered them a ride. Notices had been sent home to our parents and phone calls made.

  A lot of kids’ parents picked them up that afternoon or met them at their bus stops. I wanted to catch a ride with Wilt, but I got out the door in time to see him driving away with his Mom. No one else lived in my direction. I considered calling my mother, but she never picked me up, rain or shine, since we lived less than a mile from the school.

  The weather had turned gloomy, but not cold enough for snow and a gray dampness suffused everything. I put my hood up against the light drizzle. All the other kids had gone straight home, and the sidewalks were empty. I turned down Chestnut Street toward the strip mall on Hartford where I knew a short cut through the back alley and across the soccer field. I went that way all the time and knew the spot to hop the fence and squeeze through the thick hedges behind the back door of the Chinese take-out.

  The alley was deserted. I scrambled over the chain-link fence and pushed my way into the thin spot in the wall of dry branches, inching toward the muddy field that stretched toward a parallel hedgerow at its far end. My backpack snagged and wouldn’t come loose until I twisted around and shrugged it free. When I started forward again, I saw him standing in the center of the field, waiting like a bloated rag doll: Mooncat Jack with his black gaze set unwavering on me.

  I froze. I wanted to run back but the branches drew close around me, squeezing and pushing to spit me out onto the open dirt. I fought them to retreat, and then watched as a white van rolled into view and crawled down the back alley. A faint voice in my mind strained to tell me the van belonged to the florist, and look there on the door where the shop name is faded, but you can still read it if you squint! See the phone number? But I wasn’t listening. Panic surged through me, and I stopped pushing, thinking maybe Mooncat Jack didn’t work alone. The branches forced me forward toward the field where his cavernous face awaited.

  The dark man tilted toward me in an odd, pathetic pose, his head listing, one flaccid arm poised palm upward as though to take my hand as he presented himself. A drowsy, chilly sensation washed through me. Jack glided over the field like an old paper bag borne on the wind. Once more I threw my weight against the bushes, scrambling to plunge through, but they tore up my hands and scraped at my face and refused to part. A shadow surrounded me. I knew it was his and that if I turned I would see Mooncat Jack looming close enough to reach me with his cold dead touch. I tucked my face against my shoulder and clamped my eyes shut, ready for his terrible grip to fall and drag me into the vastness of the field.

  It never came.

  I dared a single glimpse to see that he was gone. All at once the branches loosened and gave way, and I scrambled back to the parking lot, stumbling from the sudden release. I squirmed over the fence, forgetting the white van until I saw it directly across the alley, engine running, its doors open. But then I breathed a sigh of relief.

  An old woman was counting boxes of flowers and bundles of bouquets loaded one-by-one in the back by a teenage boy—it was Wilt’s brother, Chris, a senior in high school. The two looked up as I popped free of the shrubs.

  “Are you all right?” asked the woman.

  “Adam?” Chris said.

  I was too scared to speak and I couldn’t catch my breath. I wiped a hand across my face, smearing tracks of blood from the little cuts left by the biting branches.

  “You shouldn’t be playing back here,” said the woman. “You’re liable to get hurt a lot worse than that. Where do you live?”

  “It’s okay, Mrs. Garfield. I know him. He’s a friend of my little brother,” said Chris, and then turning to me, “Hey, man, I’m going on out on a delivery run. I’ll take you home, all right?”

  The old lady let it go and went inside. Chris shut the door of the van, sealing up the stacks of long white boxes and bouquets wrapped in heavy cellophane. I climbed into the passenger seat. The cab smelled sickly sweet with the aroma of flowers. Welcome heat poured from the vents.

  “So what was that all about?” asked Chris, climbing in beside me.

  “Nothing. I got stuck in the bushes trying to take the shortcut.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  Chris didn’t live with his family. He’d moved out long before his parents broke up and lived with friends for a while until he earned enough money to rent one of the apartments in the building by the train station. He planned to finish school—barely with his grades—and move away to work in a city somewhere. Wilt never told me exactly why Chris had left, except to say he didn’t get along well with their folks.

  Chris fiddled with the radio dial while we sat at a red light. “So Wilt is pretty excited about your party this weekend. He can’t wait,” he said.

  “Cool. I thought he might not feel up to it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, with his nightmares and not sleeping.”

  “Nah, he’s fine. Just had some trouble while he was getting over Jimmy and everything. I guess we’re all pretty sad about that,” said Chris. “’Sides, Wilt’s always had nightmares, even back to when he was a little kid. I don’t think he slept a whole night through the entire second grade.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “He might have been a little upset, though, because we were supposed to see our Dad this weekend,” Chris said. “Mom changed it so he could make it to your shindig. So, we’ll see him next weekend. Dad wasn’t too happy about that. Guess he had plans.” Something bitter and aloof crept into Chris’s voice when he talked about his father.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “No biggie, man.”

  “Well, I’m glad he’s coming.”

  “Yeah, me too.” The van rolled to a stop in front of my house. “Okay, Adam, get your butt out of my truck. I got work to do.”

  I jumped out onto the curb. “Thanks, Chris,” I said and slammed the door.

  He drove to the end of the block and turned out of sight.

  I stood out front until I scared myself thinking about being alone outside, and then ran to the side door and charged into the house. I almost tripped over the step up into the kitchen on my way.

  “Don’t track mud in here, Adam. Take your shoes off by the door,” said Mom. She was scrubbing vegetables over the sink.

  “Mom, why didn’t you pick me up? Didn’t they call you from the school and tell you about the guy in the white van,” I said. “He could be the same guy I saw last night. Joey Reagan said Mooncat Jack goes around
taking kids away. I saw him again today and I thought he was gonna grab me, but then he went away and Chris Corman gave me a ride home. Mom, he came after me!”

  My legs felt like overstretched elastic. I wobbled to the table. All the fear bottled up inside me had come gushing out.

  Mom shut the faucet and dried her hands with a dishtowel. “What happened to you?” she said when she saw the slender streaks of blood on my hands and face.

  “The bushes. I tried to take the shortcut. I got scratched up.”

  She wet a paper towel, squeezed it over the drain and stuck it in my shaky hand so I could wipe my face. “It’s that damn announcement. Your school called this morning and told me they were going to warn everyone. I knew it was a bad idea. Scare the kids and send their parents into a panic over a bunch of lies some eighth-graders made up. There’s no white van, no one out there trying to grab kids off the streets, not in this neighborhood. That story was old when I went to Holy Mother, Adam. I told them as much.”

  “Bet you picked up Matty,” I said under my breath.

  “Excuse me?”

  I shut up rather than risk repeating myself.

  “And who is Mooncat Jack? Is he from one of your comic books? You’re too old to be wasting your time with that trash.”

  “Joey Reagan told us he’s a guy who takes children away from their families.”

  My mother’s eyes smoldered. “And you believed Joey Reagan? Joey, who would die of starvation if his mother didn’t remind him to eat? Please, Adam, tell me your judgment is better than that. I need you to be practical. I need you to be levelheaded. One of the men in this family has to be someone I can depend on.”

  “But I saw him last night, and he tried to get me today.”

  “He’s not real. None of it is real. You’ve got yourself worked up over a bunch of stories.” Mom made a show of rubbing her forehead with her fingertips. “As if I don’t have enough to worry about taking care of your little brother, now I have to worry about you acting like a baby.”

  “I’m no baby,” I said.

  “All right,” said Mom. “Then prove it. Clean yourself up. Go up to your room, do your homework and stop worrying about all this kid stuff. Let me prepare dinner.”

  “But shouldn’t we call the police?”

  “The police aren’t interested in your sick daydreams. And, frankly, Adam, no one else is either. Making up stories isn’t cute at your age.”

  Mom resumed scrubbing. I tested my legs against the floor, found them steady and did what I was told.

  Upstairs Matty lay napping with a coloring book smushed under his arm. I threw my backpack in the corner and flopped down on my bed. I had current events homework to do but I couldn’t think about it. I stared at the ceiling until my sleepless night caught up with me and I nodded off.

  I woke up at dinnertime. The sound of Dad coming in disturbed me, that and Mom clanking dishes. My stomach growled, and I realized Matty had already gone downstairs to eat. I had to get my homework done before supper. After picking an article from the newspaper and writing my essay, I ate cold pasta and carrots. Later I sat at the top of the stairs and listened to my parents’ conversation while Matty snored like a rabbit.

  Dad wanted to report what I had seen. “You can never be too careful about that kind of thing,” he said. “There’s always a chance that story going around is true.”

  “Damned if I’m going to make a fool of myself and my family to humor Adam’s overactive imagination,” Mom told him. “It’s just a dumb urban legend. I’ve heard that same story a hundred times, and it never turns out to be true.”

  Dad made her promise to keep an eye out anyway. “Tomorrow morning I’m going to give him my work number. He can call me if he feels like he needs a ride home.”

  “He’s old enough to walk on his own. He doesn’t need you constantly coddling him,” said Mom. “But do what you want. I can’t be driving all over town when I have to pick up Matty.” Matty went to a different school than I did where they had an all-day kindergarten.

  I could tell Dad wanted to push it, but he didn’t. He had other things to worry about. He had found out that day that he wouldn’t get the new job, which was going to a nephew of the bank president. When he told Mom she made a single sharp sound I had never before heard from her, and then the rest of the night the house stayed dead quiet.

  It poured rain on Saturday, the day of my party. It should have snowed, but the cold snap had expired and the temperature rose a couple of degrees too high. The leftover snow began melting and the roads turned slick and dangerous. The stream out back swelled and began climbing the bank, nearing the high water line in just a few hours. Mom glowered and stomped around the house. The rain meant we had to have the party inside, and it was too late to postpone it. I hadn’t seen Mooncat Jack again and I’d almost managed to forget about him, believing that it had all been something I’d imagined. Thinking about the party took my mind off it.

  By two o’clock when my friends started arriving, I felt excited and happy. Everyone showed up except Wilt. At three, I made Mom call Mrs. Corman to find out where he was. She talked a little, then listened for a long time, stretching the phone cord as far as it would go into her bedroom so I could only hear muffled sounds. After she hung up, she told me Wilt wasn’t coming, but she wouldn’t say why. Her face had turned pale and she gave me a look that made it clear not to press her. I didn’t want to spoil the party, so I didn’t, and Mom disappeared into the bathroom, telling me to get back downstairs and not ignore my guests.

  Dad had hung a red and gold “Happy Birthday” banner on the wall in the basement and tacked little clusters of balloons around it. We sat down there—me, Joey Reagan, Eddie Spirowski, and Billy Cooper—playing Atari until we got bored and started tossing a miniature Nerf football around. After that we played Twister for a while, but it turned into a wrestling match and Billy banged his head on the corner of a cabinet hard enough that we had to stop. It didn’t bleed, but he got a nice goose egg. He staggered through the rest of the party holding his head and falling into people like he was dying or passing out. Dad put out some soda and snacks and even Matty came down to play for a while. He couldn’t keep up, though, so we played keep away with the Nerf, laughing at him running back and forth between us like a trained circus monkey. That ended when Joey bounced the ball off Matty’s head and it knocked over a plate of cookies.

  “Matty!” said Joey. “Look what you did.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Matty said.

  Billy groaned and fell on the floor, groping with one hand for a cookie. “Ohhh, I’m dying for a cookie,” he said. “But I can’t see it. The pain, oh, the pain!”

  It cracked us all up.

  Around four Mom turned off the lights and carried the birthday cake downstairs, a circle of candles flickering around the edges, the flames reflected like stars in the glistening chocolate icing. Everyone sang “Happy Birthday,” and then Mom served up slices. Dad dished out ice cream to go with it. Afterward I opened my presents and thanked everyone. It was getting late and time to go. Billy’s mother showed up first, and rolled her eyes when she saw the bump on his forehead. Then Mr. Reagan came and took Joey and Eddie away.

  The rain poured down, and the wind picked up. A bad storm was settling in.

  I helped Mom clean the basement and then took my presents up to my bedroom. I wished Wilt could have been there. I asked Mom if I could call him, but she told me he was ill and changed the subject. So, I played with my birthday toys and read comics until supper time. Matty imitated everything I did and followed me around. He even acted like me at dinner, eating green beans when I ate green beans, drinking his milk when I drank mine. I gave up trying to stop him and just ignored it.

  Freezing rain crashed down and the wind whistled around the house. Our block turned dark with night, and in the meager glow of the few streetlights I saw water rushing in wide rivulets along the curb. The snow cover vanished, revealing black ground. Matty got frigh
tened by the storm and refused to go up to bed alone, so even though I had another hour to stay up, Mom made me go with him. I could read if I didn’t make any noise, but I had to keep Matty company so he could sleep.

  I guess I dozed off with the light on, because later I woke up still dressed and on top of my covers with a comic book stretched across my stomach. Something had jarred me awake, and I looked around, realizing that the odd shadows dancing across the ceiling came from my lamp, which had fallen to the floor where it now rocked back and forth. Damp air filled the room and rain spattered my legs. The window gaped open. The curtains flared in the snapping wind.

  Someone laughed. I turned on my side, looking for Matty.

  A hulking black shape hovered over him, chuckling as it bent and lifted my little brother from his bed, the sheets sliding lose like discarded wrapping paper.

  Matty opened his eyes, too scared to make a sound. Tears welled onto his cheeks. He stared at me, pleading in silence for help.

  With my brother in his arms, Mooncat Jack approached my bedside and gazed at me with hollow eyes that pinned me to my mattress. His mouth spread in a crooked smile, rotten teeth protruding from beneath wormish lips. A horrible moment passed while he lingered as though he was waiting for me to do or say something, but I could only lie there petrified. He held Matty, taunting me to grab him back, mocking my fear and helplessness. Then Mooncat Jack chuckled with a sound like water running down a drainpipe, and bounded over my bed, landing in the narrow opening of the window, poised there, perfectly balanced like a panther. He looked back, his head tilting and wobbling in short, weird arcs, and flapped one hand at me, waving. His body began to shrink until his entire figure wedged through the small space, and with Matty cradled in his arms, he winked and disappeared, leaving behind no more than the hollow echo of his laughter.

  Strength surged back to me. I ran to the window, yelling for my parents. The rain pounded and the treetops churned. Wind stung my face with fat drops of water. Power lines danced savagely around the telephone pole. Across the center of the yard ran Mooncat Jack with my little brother trapped against his shoulder.