ghouls and goblins

When you wake up no one is there. Peter is out of bed. It’s already 8 and the kids aren’t making a sound. Something is wrong. Shake your head. It is only a dream.

You walk down the hallway on tip toes and all the doors are open. Every bed is made, no child in sight. Is it Sunday? Have you missed church?

In the kitchen there is not a note. And still you do not panic – you make yourself breakfast with cereal and fresh strawberries. You drink the milk out of the bowl and wash it in the sink and still there is not a sound in the house. You are alone, aren’t you?

You investigate the basement, the lights are off and when you flip the switch you find a boiler and no family. You listen for the kids in the attic, rustling through old boxes of clothes – no little feet on the floorboards. Every bathroom – doors wide open, empty and pristine, shining sinks and toilet bowls.

You walk into the backyard in your bathrobe and night gown, the children are not playing out here, Rex is sitting under the big oak tree but he is alone. You want the company, so you call to him. Rex comes.

You and Rex have searched the house thoroughly. Peter did not pick up his cell when you called, in fact it went straight to voicemail. The children are too young to carry phones. You are worried. You call Peter’s mother in Glasstown but she doesn’t pick up. You call your mother in Phoenix, she doesn’t pick up either. You look out your window. You see no one. There is no newspaper on your doorstep.

You turn on the television. Every channel is playing reruns. You turn off the television. You put Rex on a leash and decide to take a walk down the street.

You walk down your street, you stop at every door and ring the doorbell. You wait one minute then ring again, then wait for two more minutes. No one comes. No one ever comes. You walk a mile and a half down residential streets and reach town. The bagel place is closed. The post office is closed. Maybe it is Sunday. But you get the paper on Sunday.

You reach the Dunkin’ Donuts. Dunkin’ Donuts is open every day but today the door is locked. You look inside the window but all the lights are off, except those illuminating the donut shelves – the donut shelves are empty.

You are looking through the glass at the Dunkin’ Donuts in disbelief and you feel a tug on the leash. It is Rex, he smells something, he is pulling at you to follow him. You allow him to lead – he crosses the street and as you approach the movie theatre you hear the first sounds you’ve heard all morning – the shuffling of feet, people’s movement, perhaps muffled voices. The movie theatre doors are open.

In the movie theatre in town there are two screens – Screen 1 is on the left, that door is closed. Screen 2 is on the right and that door is open. Rex’s nose points straight towards the door to the second theater, you follow his four legs at a brisk walking pace. Inside the movie theatre you are horrified and confused. The theatre is filled with people from town, you see Margot and Klein, Robert and Patty with little Derek. The policeman and the grocer and the woman from Made-It-Myself, they are standing at their seats and staring intently at the screen. Their bodies are naked and wilting, they appear to streak when you blink, they are outlined in blue pencil. You can see through some of them, the screen’s great glow is overwhelming and the image being projected upon it is your face.

When you see yourself you will shriek. The townspeople will turn. They will notice you. They do not speak to you, you look in their eyes and while you can see that they recognize you, you cannot recognize them. They are outlined in blue pencil and naked and wilting, they are a swarm of melting phantoms, they begin to move towards you in a single motion, a crowd swimming through space. At first you are frozen still but Rex tugs fiercely at the leash and pulls you towards the street and the burning sun.

You are running through town with Rex pulling you faster and faster. The sun is three-quarters of the way into the sky, the wind is blowing against you, your eyes follow leaves as they detach from tree branches and flip through the sky past you, over your shoulder and into the eyes of the blue sheet. The blue pencil townspeople move as a sheet moves, they push forward even as the wind whisks some of them away. As a single sheet, as a driving force they can conquer the elements but some of the smaller children run too far from the crowd and, disconnected, get blown away into the sky.

You turn the corner and you are on Frogtown Rd. The road slopes down, it is a sharp decline and creates a valley in the landscape, a wind tunnel. The wind is with you now, Rex already knows, his pace reaches new bounds, a new frenzied energy. You’ve been keeping a fair lead on the blue sheet but now over the shoulder you can see them accelerating, it’s only a matter of time now.

To your right the driveway to Tim’s house, you’re almost there. You turn sharply, Rex quickly picks up on the new direction and drags you around to Tim’s backyard. For some reason you expect to hear Tim and his friends on the porch but you realize that at this point in time he must be part of the blue sheet. You do not know what sense of sanctuary you expect to find here. You were in a time crunch and it was a place you recognized, but you aren’t actually aware of the powers or the motives of the blue pencil townspeople.

You walk through the back door into Tim’s garage. There is a padlocked door to the basement inside, you strike the padlock several times with the biggest mallet you can find, it is rusty and breaks easily after six or seven hard swings. You open the basement door and walk down cement stairs. Behind you, you close the door and lock it with a large thick beam of wood.

In your back pocket is a Zippo. You take it out and light it to illuminate your surroundings – before you there are five green monsters. They are goblins, they have long pointed ears, their skin is a deep green, their teeth are pointed but their eyes are kind. You recognize one of the goblins – this is Tim. Tim cannot speak to you but when he sees you looking at him, you both understand, you are safe here. The goblin that is Tim’s father nods, smiles grimly. He is holding a knife as large as his forearm. All five of the goblins are. Tim smirks and hands you a pistol. It is a revolver – you have shot an automatic weapon before and you hope you will be able to figure this out. Tim looks you in the eye, his look says, Watch out for the recoil.

In a few moments the basement door begins to shake. It is only a matter of time. You wonder what it’s all for. You wonder what Tim and his family are fighting for. You realize that in their transformed state the blue screen has become a kind of walking dead but Tim and his family seems to retain their inner being – in the blue screen you watched a little girl bare fangs, burst into a sprint before being sucked away into the sky by a large gust – she had almost disappeared into the blue before you realized that it was Mary, little Mary, your sister’s daughter. In the dark of the basement the light of your flame reflects against Tim’s white eyes and his wet and white fangs, his scaly green skin glimmers, it is as if Tim has always had this skin – this is Tim’s skin, this is Tim’s skin as long as those are Tim’s eyes.

So you know that Tim and his family understand who is on the other side of the basement door. They understand they are outnumbered. They know that they are alive and you are alive and you all do not know the state of the blue screen, you have seen them but you know not how they kill or how they die. The knives are big but will they cut through blue pencil outlines? When the door breaks open you flick your Zippo shut.

After the battle you and Tim are sitting on top of the mountain of dirt in the back of Waveny Park. You and Tim smoke cigarettes and mourn the deaths of everyone you’ve ever known. Tim tells you one day you will build a house out of this dirt but you do not believe him. Rex runs free in the endless fields of Waveny, he returns sporadically, placing small dead birds in a pile at the base of the dirt mountain.

It is a routine that you have grown comfortable with – you begin to perform it without a second thought. You dig a hole into the ground in the shape of a circle, you dig until it is six inches deep. You take Tim’s knife and begin to gut the birds – you strip the feathers and skin, picking out the eyes and slicing off the beaks and feet. You mince the remaining meat and begin to fill the hole that you have dug with it. Rex waits silently over your shoulder. He wags his tail. On the top of the mountain of dirt, Tim flicks his cigarette, he smiles a fangy grin your way. You finish cutting up the sparrow meat, you fill your hands with it like a bowl and watch it drop and slip from between your fingers into the hole in the dirt. It isn’t lamb and rice but it will have to do. Rex is a good dog. Feed the dog.