The Boy Who Drew Monsters: A Novel (21 page)

Mr. Keenan was nowhere to be seen, and Nick wondered if he had forgotten and was still asleep. Jack Peter, of course, was up and dressed, a ball of excitement and anticipation. Without being asked, he took Nick’s suitcase and propped it against the banister, and he bounced around aimlessly, waiting for the adults to finish their business so that the fun might begin.

“I hope we didn’t wake you,” Nick’s mother said. “It wouldn’t be so early, but it’s all so complicated. We’ve got to be in the airport an hour ahead, just to make it through security, though I don’t expect we’ll see too many people the day after Christmas. And then we have a connecting flight in Atlanta, of all places. You can’t get theah from heah. And we have to make that, or we miss our boarding time. I’ll be glad when it’ll be over.”

“We’ve been up for hours,” Mrs. Keenan said. “Coffee?”

His father winked at her. “Only if it’s already on. We can’t stay too long. Time waits for no man, and neither does our airplane.”

“Won’t be a sec.” She headed off to the kitchen, and Nick was inclined to follow her, but he stayed put. Mr. Keenan came lurching down the stairs, alert to the guests in his house, his hair mussed from bed and a shadow of whiskers on his cheeks. He waved to the Wellers but saved his real greetings for Nick.

“Nicholas, moving in with us, I see.” He bowed formally like a butler in a comedy of manners. Not knowing what was expected, Nick returned with a bow of his own, and not to be left out, Jack Peter bowed as well, as stiff and angular as a T square.

Mr. Keenan asked, “You have come about the bones,
Herr Veller
?” They played these games all the time with Nick. Mr. Keenan acting like a clown, nearly desperate to make him feel welcome.

“
Ja
.” Nick answered, taking up his part. “I have come to see about
ze skeleton
.”

Nick’s father wanted in on the fun. “What’s all this about skeletons and bones?”

Mrs. Weller ignored her husband and said, “Tim, you’re looking better. Your throat.” She raised her fingers to her neck, and Mr. Keenan copied her gesture.

Nick turned to Jack Peter to see if her remark had registered, but the kid had his usual blank expression and he seemed to be caught in a game involving his interlocking fingers.

With her rump, Mrs. Keenan pushed through the door from the kitchen. She carried a tray with a package of store-bought muffins, the coffeepot, cream, sugar, and mugs, and Mr. Keenan sprang to help her. “Oh, you’re up. Give me a hand with these things. Nell and Fred only have time for a quick nip.”

“A nip and a nibble,” Mr. Weller said. “Now what’s all this talk about bones? Got a skeleton in the closet?”

“You’re right, Fred,” said Mr. Keenan. “But not the closet. In a hole on the beach.”

“I don’t know which is worse. A scandal hiding safely away, or a skeleton out in the open for all to see.”

“Didn’t you see the police at our place yesterday afternoon?” Mr. Keenan asked. “Quite a show, and the neighbors must think a crime was committed. Dead body in the attic, or a cat burglar swiped the family jewels, but nothing of the sort.”

Looking up to the ceiling, Nick imagined a corpse moldering in the rafters. Old man dread roiled again in his curdling stomach, warning him of the pending dangers the moment his parents left him alone with these people.

“Well,” Mr. Keenan continued, “we called them out to the house ourselves. There wasn’t any murder that we know of. But something dug a big hole on our property, and in it we found a bone.”

“A real human bone,” Mrs. Keenan said. “Washed up from the sea.”

Mr. Keenan seemed anxious to tell the story. “Actually, the arm bone from a child about Nick’s age or maybe a little younger, although the police seem to think that the bone itself is fairly old, judging from the erosion. But it is the damndest thing. Something must have dug it up during the night before Christmas, ’cause we saw it in the afternoon. Didn’t know what to do.”

Jack Peter bounced on the sofa. “I drew a hole—”

“So we called the police, that’s why you might have noticed the squad car parked—”

“—full of bones.”

“That’s enough, Jack,” Mrs. Keenan said.

With a sharp bang, Mrs. Weller cracked her empty cup on the coffee table, setting it down too hard, causing everyone to jump in their seats. A rill of nervous laughter flowed from person to person. Embarrassed, she lifted it again and set it down softly on the surface. “So, all that trouble about an old bone?”

“And a hole, big as a grave,” Mr. Keenan said. “The police think it might have been dug up by a wild dog running loose. That’s your coyote, Fred, a big white dog. We’re supposed to fill in the hole so nobody will stumble across it and get hurt. That’s what the trooper told us. You should have seen him, Nell. They’re making them younger and younger. A baby.”

Jack Peter piped up from the sofa. “What happened to baby?”

His mother put her finger to her lips just like a kiss. Jack Peter rocked in place, stifling an impulse, rocked so hard he nearly made Nick ill.

“The hole is still out there,” Mr. Keenan said. “C’mon, take a look from the kitchen.”

“Just one quick peek,” said Mrs. Weller. “And then we have to get going or we’ll miss our plane.”

Single file they followed Mr. Keenan into the kitchen and marched straight to the window that faced the sea. With the flair of a game show model, he waved his arm to present the scene below.

His audience leaned forward and strained to see what had been promised. Squinting and searching, the Wellers walked up to the glass, and Mrs. Keenan followed, laying her hands on Nick’s shoulders from behind. The beach was empty, rocks and sand leading to the sea, a stick of driftwood washed ashore, but nothing else. No hole, no grave, not so much as a small dent in the sand. Mr. Keenan had been watching their faces, and when he saw how puzzled they were, he turned to look out.

“I guess someone must have buried your body,” said Mr. Weller.

“Where did it go?” Mrs. Keenan asked. She looked as if she was running through the possibilities in her mind and rejecting every one.

“No,” said Mr. Keenan. “I’m telling you it was right there, six feet deep. Holly, you saw it. Jip, you drew a picture of it. And the policeman saw it, wrote a report. Officer Haddock.”

“Pollock,” said Mrs. Keenan.

But her husband was already halfway out the door. Moments later, he reappeared far below on the shore, a tiny mad toy soldier, coat wrapped over his robe, the cuffs of his pajamas jammed into untied boots. Darting from rock to rock, he searched the beach for the missing hole.

Jack Peter pressed his palms against the windowpanes. “There he goes again.”

“He’ll catch his death,” said Mrs. Keenan, and she peeled off from the group, heading for the mudroom for her coat and boots. Everyone but Jack followed, flying out into the morning wind, shocked by how cold and empty the world was. They blew around in crazy circles, looking for the nonexistent bones and the missing hole, until the whole bunch caught up with Mr. Keenan on top of a wet rock at the tideline. The hem on his robe fluttered like a flag. A fine cold spray coated his hair and clothing, and his eyes were frantic in their sockets.

“It was here just yesterday,” he said. “How could we lose a hole? You must think I’m crazy, but there’s no way it could have just disappeared—”

The others tried to talk Mr. Keenan down from the rock, urging him to come in from the cold, for the Wellers really have a plane to catch, and inventing for him a handful of plausible explanations. Nick had stopped listening to their fairy tales and turned his back on them and raised his gaze to focus on the boy inside the panoramic window, distant and indifferent as a god on high.

Four

Imaginary friends often leave without warning. Lying across from him on the other pillow was the head of Nicholas Weller, and Jack Peter wanted to reach out and poke his friend’s cheek with his finger, but if that was really Nick, he might just get angry. Then again, even imaginary friends can lose their tempers. Take Red, for instance. He could be as mad as a jar of wasps. Good thing he was dead.

His mother first showed Jack Peter when he was five years old how to make a little boy out of red clay. First you get some dough and roll it into a cigar and then you pinch the bottom and separate it in two for the legs and two again for the arms and leave a bit at the top for the head. Each morning he would take Red out of the cardboard can and unfold his limbs. He put the clay boy on the shelf like a voodoo doll. As long as it was out of the can, the imaginary boy was alive, not Red at all, but a boy same as him, who was just his size and just his age. He would be there all day, someone to talk to, someone to play with, someone to tell his secrets, and Red would tell him things as well. Stories about what he did when Jack Peter was not around. Stories about his parents, about Nick and the other boys and girls, stories about the world beyond the front door. Jack Peter could make the boy, but once made, Red was beyond his control. Red lived his own life apart from their time together, going places Jack Peter could not go, seeing things Jack Peter never saw, thinking things unimaginable to his creator. Most of the time, Jack Peter was simply glad for the company and the chance to learn the secrets Red would tell. But sometimes Red would get mad at him, call him dummy, and threaten to share Jack Peter’s thoughts with Mommy and Daddy. And then Jack Peter wished he had never made the boy of clay and was so tired of him that he hoped Red would go away and never come back or maybe a giant could come and flatten him like a pancake.

And then one night, he forgot to put away the clay boy, and the next morning, it was all dried out and the boy crumbled to bits, and Red was dead and never came back anymore. Jack Peter thought he might make another boy, someone to be his friend, but he did not. Instead he went to school in the fall, to morning kindergarten, and the other children were there and if you be nice, they will be nice to you, and then Nick would come over to play sometimes after school or especially in the summertime, and then came first grade and a new class with a lot more children, and then summer again, and nearly dead beneath the waves. Better to stay away from the ocean. Best to stay inside.

Long time ago. Now Nick was here, the real Nick, for a whole week. A few more days and it would all be over. He wanted Nick to stay, but the monsters were already here. It had taken all day for his parents to stop talking about the bones in the hole. He could have told them where the rest of the skeleton went. He would have said
dig deeper
, but now it didn’t matter. The paper with the skeleton bones was in the fire.

They had stayed up late, the four of them, with hot cocoa and popcorn and a movie on TV, and over the hours, his parents’ worries melted away. His father laughed at some silliness on the show. His mother stopped fretting and was nodding by the fire before she declared universal bedtime and off they all went. The mood, if not festive, had certainly improved from the anxiety of the afternoon. The boys brushed their teeth and put on their pajamas and went to his big warm double bed. Mommy and Daddy’s old bed, first bed, and now his own. They were still awake when the adults finished getting ready and the lights went out all over the house.

In the dark, they whispered to each other.

“Do you miss them?”

Nick drew out a sigh. “My parents? No, I guess I don’t. Maybe later, but not now. Parents always think you are going to miss them, but they don’t know that sometimes you wish they would just leave you alone.”

“I wish my parents would go away,” Jack Peter said. “Instead of me.”

“You would miss them if they went away for good.”

“Like you miss the baby.”

Nick did not answer but rolled over to stare at him. How did Jack Peter know he had been thinking about Baby?

Kicking off the comforter, Jack Peter slid out of bed and walked to his desk and turned on the table lamp. The light seemed to scream against the darkness, but he sat quietly and began to draw. He worked quickly and with great purpose.

“What are you doing?” Nick called from the bed. “We’ll get in trouble if your parents see the light under the door.”

“I need to make something before I forget,” Jack Peter said. He dashed off the drawing in minutes and scampered back to bed. In the closeness of the room, they soon fell asleep as if drugged.

*   *   *

At three in the morning, the baby began to cry. The sound came from far below and outside, persistent as a cat yowling on a fence, but Nick heard it clearly enough over the constant ocean. Unholy as a siren, the baby’s cries rode the wind and wound their way into the room. Beside him, Jack Peter did not move, even as the clamor drew nearer, and Nick was tempted to wake him or bang on the door to the room where Mr. and Mrs. Keenan slept so they might hear what he heard and come to his rescue. But he did no such thing. He lay in bed beneath the comforter, stiff as a bug on a pin.

The baby did not bawl continuously but would stop and start again, each time louder than before, so that it seemed to be getting closer and closer. Nick pulled up the covers and waited helplessly in the darkness. With his foot, he nudged Jack Peter on his bum, but it was like trying to wake the dead. The body shifted slightly and then rolled back into the soft trough in the mattress. Not that his friend would have been of any use. Despite Jack Peter’s presence next to him, Nick felt desperately alone.

A gentle drumming noise made him uneasy, and he squeezed his eyelids tight so he could listen without distraction. He thought it might be the sound of hail or sleet against the side of the house. He could be hallucinating, as his mother had said about the bodies in the closet, conjuring a figment in his imagination, mistaking something quite innocent for something more sinister. Stepping from the bed, he felt the warmth of the braid rug give way to the chill of the wooden floor. The crying had stopped, and he felt it safe to go to the window to investigate, holding his breath as he approached. The shape of a tiny hand swiped across the bottom of the glass. He waited for it again, convinced that his eyes were playing tricks. Impossible. He pressed his nose against a pane, resting his forehead on the sash. No snow was falling that night, and the bright moon shone over the Atlantic, casting faint light across the waves, illuminating the rock faces upon the shore. He could see there was nothing out there, nothing to fear, and for a moment, he wondered if the noises had all been in his head. Just as he was about to turn away from the window, a fleeting motion above his head, no more than a passing change of light, convinced Nick to look out again.