River: Ghosts Of Our Fathers Part 5

"Take it anyway," the face said. "You're hungry."

As though the words themselves caused his stomach to growl, Sean felt the stab of hunger hit his stomach and he knew he'd eat anything to make the pain go away. He reached towards the hand and wrapped his fingers around whatever it was holding. As he pulled his hand back, his fingers were spread apart as though he was holding a baseball.

"Wow," Garth said. "It's invisible!"

"Eat it," the face said again.

"What is it?" Sean asked, looking back at the face. Now it looked like the face of a toddler.

"Does it matter?" the face replied.

Sean thought about this and decided it didn't. He moved the invisible thing to his mouth. Once he felt it press against his lips, he opened his mouth and took a bite. He felt it enter his mouth, and he chewed it. It didn't taste like anything, but once it was in his mouth and he could feel it inside, he relaxed and felt better. He swallowed and felt it go down his throat. As it hit his stomach, he felt a warmth radiate out from his chest. He felt the pain in his stomach subside and the pain in his ribs lighten.

"Go on," the face said.

He took another bite, and then another. Garth watched him. It looked to Garth as though he was fake eating. "Can I have a bite?" Garth asked. He felt guilty for asking having already downed the bread, but he was fascinated by what he saw Sean doing, and wanted to know if it was real.

"Sure," Sean said, handing him what was left after several bites. Garth extended his hand and Sean moved his palm next to Garth's, turning over his hand and dumping what remained into Garth's palm. Sean felt full.

Garth took a bite and after swallowing, smiled. He immediately felt better.

"He is a bad man," the face in the junk pile said to them.

"He is mean," Garth replied.

"Who are you?" Sean asked. "I'm Sean, and he's Garth."

"I'm just a baby," the face said. As they watched, the face's mouth slowly opened and its eyes widened. It sputtered and gasped, trying to breathe, shuddering. Its lips turned blue and its eyes began to bulge and roll upward, leaving only white. Garth grabbed Sean's arm, afraid of what he was seeing. Then the shuddering stopped and it was still. The eyes rolled back down, and it stared past them, no longer seeing. It faded, leaving only a dark hole in the junk pile.

"h.e.l.lo?" Sean said.

Garth stood and approached the pile. He walked around the edge of it, studying it, trying to see the face. "He must be inside there," Garth said, looking for entrances or gaps that might allow someone to crawl in or out.

"Here!" Garth said from the back of the pile. "Here's a hole!"

Sean rose off his knees. He no longer felt any pain in his side; it was as though the substance he'd eaten had not only resolved his hunger but taken away the pain of his fight with Garth. He walked around behind the junk pile where Garth was standing. They were now in the back corner of the garage, a place they never ventured. The light was very dim, and it was hard to make anything out.

"Look," Garth said, dropping to his knees. "He's in here!" Garth disappeared inside a small hole next to the wall of the garage, barely big enough to accommodate him.

"Wait!" Sean said, but Garth was already gone.

A moment later, from inside the junk pile, Garth screamed.

Sean panicked. He was afraid for Garth, but Garth screamed all the time. He was more afraid Frank might hear the scream, come find them, and beat them. Sean dropped to his knees and looked into the hole Garth had crawled into. He was met with Garth's posterior rapidly approaching his face.

Sean pulled back and Garth's feet and legs emerged from the hole. He was rapidly backing out of it. As his body cleared the hole he leapt to his feet and ran to hug Sean. They both looked at the hole he had emerged from.

"Run!" Garth said, pus.h.i.+ng him.

Sean didn't run. He strained his eyes to see the hole, to see what would come out of it. He was expecting a rat. He'd dealt with them before. If it was, he'd stomp on it. A couple of good kicks was all it took to stop a rat.

What emerged from the hole wasn't a rat. It was large, and it looked more like the head of a goat. It had two long horns. It had a long, flexible neck, like a snake, but thick. Once the head had emerged from the hole, it turned to look at Garth, who grabbed his brother tightly. Its eyes were dark red and the glow from them lit the garage with a hue that made the walls look like they were on fire.

Sean knew he should follow Garth's advice and run, but the creature that emerged from their junk pile was so fantastic that he was mesmerized and felt compelled to examine it. The neck continued to extend out of the hole and the goat head began to rise until it was as tall as Sean. The head moved toward them and Sean took a step back, dragging Garth with him. The mouth of the goat began to open. Inside was fire, a swirling ma.s.s of red, orange and yellow. Smoke came out of the goat's nostrils. The fire extended out of the mouth and towards Sean and Garth.

Garth screamed again, and Sean placed his hand over Garth's mouth to silence him. He walked backwards from the goat head, pulling Garth with him, but not turning from the image. As they backed into the safer area of the garage, the goat head pulled back. Sean saw the eyes of the goat go black as it disappeared from view behind the junk pile. The light in the garage dimmed and went out, leaving only the dark and the smell of baked wood.

"Where'd it go?" Garth asked.

"Back into the pile," Sean said.

"What was it?" Garth asked.

"I don't know."

"Do you think it lives in there?"

Sean didn't know, but he was tired of Garth's questions. "Come on, let's sneak downstairs and go to bed. We can come back out here tomorrow and check on it again, see if it's still here."

"OK," Garth said, turning to go with Sean. As they approached the threshold, Garth turned and said, "Thanks for the food!"

Suddenly they heard the sound of a baby crying behind them. Sean and Garth turned to look back at the junk pile. There was the face again. It was the face of an infant, crying and carrying on the way babies do. As they watched it changed into the face of a boy their age, who smiled at them.

"Come back if he's bad again," the face said. "I have more food."

They both nodded and turned to leave the garage.

Chapter Six.

Garth paused. He took another bite of his bagel and chewed. The waiter came by to check on them, and Garth's entire cup of coffee had gone cold, so he asked for a replacement.

"We would visit the boy occasionally when we were hungry," Garth said. "He wasn't always there. When he did appear, we would try to engage him, find out his name, why he was in the junk pile. He would never say anything more than 'I'm just a baby' or words to that effect. And after my experience with the goat head I never had the courage to explore more of the pile. We were still scared of that area of the garage, we just went there when our stomachs were growling."

Steven was listening intently to Garth. He had a million questions, but he didn't want to interrupt Garth's narrative and make him forget anything.

"There was only one person we ever told about the boy," Garth continued. "That was Davy, who lived across the street from us. He was a little older than us and would play with us in our backyard when Frank wasn't around. For some reason Frank hated Davy, and if he caught us playing with him he'd kick Davy out of the yard and give us a tanning. But we liked Davy a great deal, and we'd play with him whenever we thought we could get away with it.

"Davy was over one day when Sean and I went into the garage for food. He saw the boy. He went right up to the junk pile and grabbed the hand sticking out, held onto it for several minutes. Sean and I were too scared of the boy to ever do anything like that, but Davy wasn't afraid of him at all. They seemed to have some kind of rapport, as though they were communicating on some level that Sean and I didn't know about. I remember asking Davy about the boy, and Davy told us that the boy hated Frank too. Not because he knew him, but because of what he was doing to us. It felt like the boy was our ally against Frank, and Davy could communicate with him."

Garth stopped to take a sip of his warmed coffee and placed the mug back down on the table.

"You're probably wondering what all of this has to do with Frank attacking you," Garth said.

"I think it's incredibly interesting," Steven said. "Please don't edit yourself on my account. I'd like to hear it all, everything you remember."

"All right," Garth said. "I'll continue. Things went on like this for a while, but Frank became more and more abusive. We would escape to the backyard, Davy's house, or the garage to get away from Frank, who didn't seem to care where we were as long as it wasn't around Davy. We wouldn't tell him where we went, and we'd just sneak back into the house at night to go to bed. The kitchen door was always open, because in those days you never locked your doors.

"One day it came to a head. Frank began beating on Sean again, I don't remember why. Any little thing might set him off. Sometimes it seemed he'd do it just to entertain himself. I ran out of the house and hid in the garage, which is what I normally did when Frank was wailing on Sean. When Sean came into the garage after this particular beating, however, I was mortified. Frank had used the belt on him all over his body, including his face, and he had deep red cuts that were bleeding. Sean fell on the ground in the garage and pa.s.sed out. At first I thought he died, but then I could see he was still breathing. I inspected the damage Frank had inflicted on him, and I was angry. I didn't know what to do about any of it. I knew the cuts needed to be bandaged, but there were no clean bandages in the garage.

"The boy in the junk pile was extending a hand, and I went to it to see if there was food there. I fed Sean what he was able to chew, but he kept pa.s.sing in and out of consciousness. Gradually he began to improve. Whatever was in that invisible food the boy gave us helped heal some of Sean's injuries; it was miraculous. Eventually Sean was able to sit up. I didn't ask him what had happened because I knew it was painful for him to speak. And it was obvious Frank had beaten the c.r.a.p out of him.

"I was surprised when the boy called me over. I walked up to the face in the junk pile, and all he said was, 'get Davy.' So I ran across the street and brought Davy back. When he saw Sean he was afraid. The damage was beginning to heal, but Sean was still covered in blood and he looked pretty frightening. Sean was able to talk and he told Davy what had happened with Frank. Frank had beaten him with the buckle end of the belt, which had caused most of the cuts. I remember looking at Davy's eyes as Sean told the story and I saw the same hatred and anger in them that I felt.

"The boy in the junk pile called Davy over and they had a conversation. The arm extending from the pile gave him something, and he returned to us. He told us the boy wanted us to use some items on Frank. He showed us a small object that looked like a wooden matchbox. The other item was a small paper envelope, and inside was some powder. The boy had told Davy we should stop Frank by using the items on him. We asked Davy if the items would kill Frank, and he said no, they would just stop him.

"Sean said he'd do it, so Davy gave him the instructions. The matchbox needed to be placed under Frank's bed, and the powder needed to be placed into something he'd drink. When Frank went to sleep in the bed after drinking the powder, he would pa.s.s out. Sean was to cut a piece of his hair and to clip a fingernail from Frank, and bring them back to the boy.

"Sean told Davy he'd do it the next day. Davy said he wanted to be there when Sean gave the hair and nail to the boy, so Sean said he'd call him over when the tasks were done and he had the items from Frank. Davy went home for the night, and Sean and I talked about how he was going to pull it off.

"Sean decided he'd place the matchbox under Frank's bed that night, since Frank would likely be pa.s.sed out already. He planned to sneak upstairs in the middle of the night into Frank's room, and leave the matchbox. I asked him how he planned on getting the powder into something Frank would drink. We thought maybe we'd try his coffee, since he always took a thermos of coffee with him to the farm in the morning, and we could put the power into the thermos overnight, and he'd fill it in the morning. But we couldn't risk him rinsing the thermos out before he poured the coffee into it. We weren't sure if we lost the powder or somehow wasted it if the boy would give us more. We wanted to make sure it worked the first time.

"We settled on putting it into his booze, since Frank drinking his whiskey was as predictable as the sunrise. The problem with that plan was that Frank tended to bring a bottle home with him from work, and he'd polish off the bottle that night. There weren't bottles of whiskey lying around.

"We solved that problem by borrowing a bottle from Davy's father. It was the same kind of whiskey that Frank drank, and there was an inch in the bottom of the bottle, so we hoped Davy's dad wouldn't miss it. Sean dumped the powder into the bottle and snuck upstairs one night to place the bottle somewhere Frank would run into it the next day. We were betting that in his drunken stupor he'd never remember whether or not he'd finished last night's bottle before he pa.s.sed out, and that he'd polish off the remaining whiskey once he discovered it.

"The next day and night Sean and I were on pins and needles, wondering if our plan would work. Would he find the bottle and drink it? Or would he just drink the new bottle he brought home every day?"

Sean and Garth were lying in bed. It was just after midnight. Neither boy had heard sounds from upstairs for over an hour, and Garth was telling Sean he should head upstairs to collect the hair and fingernails.

"Easy for you to say," Sean told Garth. "You're not going up to do it."

"I will if you want," Garth said. "You cut his hair, I'll cut a fingernail."

"No, I'll work the scissors," Sean said. "You might stab him and wake him up."

"How will we know if he's really pa.s.sed out?" Garth said. "If he wakes up and finds us in his room, he'll be mad as h.e.l.l."

"He snores," Sean said. "I'll be sure he's snoring before we start. You just stand watch while I clip him, whisper to me if he wakes up."

Garth nodded. The two boys crawled out of the bed and slipped upstairs in their bedclothes. They avoided all floorboards known to creak. It was a warm evening and Frank had a fan going in his bedroom. Its sound helped mask their movements.

Sean tip-toed to the bed and listened for the sound of Frank snoring. In the darkness of the room he could see Frank's chest rising and falling slowly, the careful measured breathing of sleep. He glanced to the bedside table where Sean had left the whiskey that he'd dosed with the powder. The bottle was empty. He turned to Garth. Once their eyes met, Sean nodded, and Garth knew they were in the clear.

Sean leaned over the bed and held the scissors up to Frank's head. He squeezed the scissors slowly so they wouldn't close all the way. He took only a few strands of hair so that Frank wouldn't notice when he woke up. Then he moved to Frank's hands.

Frank was lying on his right hand, but his left was free and dangling. Sean moved the scissors down to the hand lying about six inches off the mattress, hanging towards the floor. He inspected each finger in the dim light, looking for one nail that he could cut. They all appeared to be short, too short to clip. The longest nail was on Frank's little finger. He might be able to cut it, but he wasn't sure. He raised the scissors into position and tried to slide the edge of the nail against the blades.

Before he could squeeze the scissor's handles he heard a creak from the base of the bed, and Sean looked up at Garth. Garth was frozen in fear. He'd taken a step back from the bed and the floorboard under him had let out a loud squeak. Frank roused.

Sean pulled the scissors back and stayed down low. Frank's hand raised up and flopped up over his body as he turned in bed. Both boys stayed frozen, waiting to see if Frank had been only disturbed or fully awaken. Sean looked up at Garth again. He was petrified and shaking, stifling a frightened whine. Sean held a finger up to his lips, reminding Garth to stay silent.

After a moment, Frank's breathing returned to normal. Sean mouthed the words "don't move" to Garth and Garth quickly nodded his agreement.

Sean resurveyed the landscape. Frank's head was turned away from Sean, and his left hand was now on the other side of the bed, but his right had become exposed. The hand was pressed tightly against the mattress with the fingers spread out, and Sean saw several nails that might work. Sean knew it would be difficult to get the scissors between the nails and the mattress.

He took his time, sliding the blades of the scissors into position under the nails. As the bottom blade slid in, it raised the finger a little from the mattress. He heard Frank's breathing sputter and he quickly removed the blade in case Frank decided to turn again. After a moment Frank quieted again, and Sean reinserted the blade.

He slowly closed the top blade, only wanting a small section of nail to come off. As the blades connected he saw the nail chip free and fall to the mattress. He removed the scissors and placed them in his back pocket.

Frank began to adjust in bed again. The hand slid away and Frank's body was rolling back towards him. He reached forward quickly and picked up the clipped nail, pressing the nail tightly between the flesh pads of his finger and thumb so he wouldn't lose it. He stepped back from Frank and looked at Garth, who was in the same frozen position as before, holding his breath. He nodded towards the door and Garth let the breath out. They slipped out of the room and into the kitchen. When they reached the kitchen door, Sean silently opened it and the two boys crept out into the shadows of the yard.

"Let's take it to the boy now," Sean said. "I don't want to wait."

"OK," Garth agreed, and followed Sean closely.

They walked through the back yard feeling the cool gra.s.s under their bare feet. When they reached the garage, Sean went in first and Garth followed. Sean approached the junk pile. Within a few moments, the boy's face appeared and an arm emerged, holding out an open palm.

"Give them to me," the boy said. Sean let the nail drop from his tightly pressed fingers into the boy's palm. He had been pressing so hard the nail had made an indentation in the tip of his finger. Then he reached into his pocket and removed the few strands of hair he'd clipped from Frank's head. The fingers on the palm closed around the items and the arm retreated into the junk pile. The boy's face disappeared from view. For a moment, Sean and Garth began to wonder if anything more would happen. They waited patiently and after a few seconds the boy's face reappeared and the arm reemerged from the junk pile. It was holding a small watch, about the size of a quarter. The straps of the watch were gone. Sean picked up the watch from the palm and looked at it. The numbers on it were strange, not numbers he was used to seeing on clocks. There was only one hand on the watch.

"Place it in the box," the boy said. The arm one again retreated into the junk pile and the face disappeared, leaving the boys to themselves in the garage.

"The box?" Garth asked.

"The matchbox," Sean said. "The one I put under the bed last night."

"You mean we have to go back in there?" Garth asked.

"Only I will go back in," Sean said. "You nearly gave us away. You go back down to bed, and I'll come down as soon as I've placed this in the matchbox."

"OK," Garth said, and began walking out of the garage and back to the house. Once inside the door they parted ways, Garth heading down the stairs to their bedroom and Sean continuing into the kitchen. "Be careful," Garth whispered as Sean turned to leave him.

"I will," Sean said, "but don't make any noise when you go down the stairs."

"I won't," Garth said, taking his first step down to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Sean traced his previous path through the kitchen and living room and into the hallway and Frank's bedroom. As he entered Frank's room he kept low to the floor, moving towards the spot under the bed where he'd hidden the matchbox.

He found it and opened it. He reached into his pocket and removed the watch, then carefully placed it inside the matchbox. Then he replaced the matchbox where he'd found it, next to a pair of shoes.

Something seemed wrong. He listened, straining his ears. He couldn't hear anything.

I should be hearing him snoring, or breathing, Sean thought.

He heard the sound of the toilet flus.h.i.+ng in the hallway bathroom. Frank was walking back into the room.

Sean slid under the bed and held his breath. He couldn't fit all of the way under the bed. As long as Frank didn't look down as he returned, he'd be fine and he could wait until Frank fell asleep and then leave the room. He heard the feet approaching. He angled his head so he could see the feet.

They stopped at the bed. Sean expected to see the feet turn, hear the mattress groan above him and then see the feel rise up into the bed, but they didn't. They just stood there.