That night, my mom and I were in the living room watching TV when I saw the flash of my dad’s motorcycle headlight dance across the living room. Then I heard the racing engine. He’s driving across the lawn, I thought. Just then, my mom jumped up and ran to the door. There was a clatter outside, like he’d just dropped the motorcycle on the sidewalk, and his boots stomped up the stoop, and the door flew open.
He slammed the door behind him, pressed his back against the door, and fumbled for the lock.
He was shivering. Shivering hard, and his arms and face glistened with an oil slick of a sweat that smelt of garlic and fear. His eyes were wide and crazed, like a horse trapped in a burning barn.
“Jesus,” my mother said, her hands hovered around him looking for a place to land. “What’s happened?” Then she turned and looked at me, and she looked damn scared.
My dad kept his back pressed against the door like he wanted to keep something out, even with the locks thrown.
“I saw something,” he said. “I can’t stop shaking.” Then he let out a deep, deep breath like he’d been holding it in for a long, long time.
“What happened?” She asked again. She asked it like she was talking to a kid, and she grasped both his hands in hers. He looked around the room like he didn’t recognize a thing.
“I saw something on Bull’s Bridge.” He said and his eyes flashed in recognition that I was standing there.
My mother turned, “Bobby, go to your room.”
I didn’t linger. I knew better. I turned down the dark hallway and took a few steps down it. Usually, I’d sprint past the bedroom where my grandmother died. The door was always open, the bed made-up, but at night I imagined she’d be in that bed, and she’d sit up as I walked past. But that night I didn’t think of my grandmother, and I waited in front of her open door hoping to hear what my father was going to say.
“I was coming over the bridge, all the lights on the bridge were out. And I saw Marty’s car on the side of the road like he’d had an accident. So I pulled up behind his car. I took off my helmet and yelled, ‘Marty’.
“Nothing,” he said, and it was quiet for a minute. I jumped a little when the refrigerator came on. I couldn’t imagine Bull’s Bridge in the dark. That place was usually lit up like a prison yard at night.
“I left the headlight on, but it started flickering and throwing shadows all over the place. It was impossible to really see what was going on, but,” he stopped for a long time. The silence in the house was heavy. “It sounded like someone was walking in mud, real steady steps.”
And there was another long break of silence.
My father’s voice took a turn I hadn’t ever heard before. “I saw his sneaker poking out in front of his tire, and I thought, Shshshit, ah fuck,” he cleared his throat.
“It’s ok, it’s ok.” My mother said soothingly, trying to draw the words out of him like a salve drawing out an infection.
“I thought he maybe had a heart attack or something, so I ran up and around the front of his car.”
I was gripping the corner of the hallway wall hard enough to bruise my fingertips.
“Then his leg kicked,” My father said like a scared shitless kid. “Like a spasm and I yelled, Marty.”
At this point I was peering around the corner, looking at my parents and on the verge of tears over Uncle Marty.
“I get to the front of his car, and I can barely see.” My father’s voice, Jesus, it broke like thin glass and his mouth just turned down. He still had his back pressed against the door, and my mother was kneeling in front of him, holding his hands.
“What. Happened?” There was a sharp edge to her soothing voice.
“I got around the front of the car, and,” He looked at my mother. “Marty was laying there.” He paused and steadied himself. “His eyes were wide open. Oh,” he said, and that word took some air out of him and he shrank down a bit. “And that sound, I can’t get it out of my head, that sound like someone walking in mud. I, I could,” he rocked back and forth, “I could smell him, his insides. Something opened him up like a fish. It was bent over him.”
“Oh, my God.”
“I saw Marty’s face in the light, his eyes were wide and moving around like he was looking for something, but the rest of his face was slack and his mouth was just hanging open. But there was this thing bent over him. I couldn’t make it out. It was just a denser darkness. ‘Get off him,’ I screamed. And it looked at me. It didn’t have a face, there was nothing but darkness. I could just feel it. Then this darkness, it just rose up. It kept rising up, and up, for a whole second or two, I don’t know, but it was big.”
“Like a bear?” My mother was trying to help.
“Bigger. It loomed over the street and I, Jesus, I ran. I hit the bike and I didn’t look back.”
“Ok,” my mom said. “I’ll call 911, get someone out there.”
I let go of the wall then and said, “Uncle Marty’s?” I couldn’t bear to say it all.
My father looked out of breath then, he glanced at me and so did my mom. “I don’t know,” he said, but his expression told me something else.
The TV flickered and wailed out a hiss.
I looked at the TV. All the colors swirled together like tie die, and then the TV went black.
The lights flickered, then they got very bright. There was a low rushing sound, like far away water, then our lights went out.
I let out a yip.
Outside, the moon’s light poured through our windows and then was eclipsed. A foul shadow enveloped the house. I froze where I stood.
“Hide,” my father said.
“Wait, what?” My mother asked.
“Just. Hide,” my father said and I heard the snick of his knife.
There was a soft flurry of movement around me, and it smelled of sweet shampoo and lilac. My mother grabbed me. She couldn’t lift me then, not anymore, but she yanked me right up off my feet and went the three steps down the hall into the little bathroom, all tile and no windows. The door slammed behind us, and she locked it. She slipped me into the tub and covered me with her own body. I felt the nervous heat from her, and the cold porcelain on my back.
“Shshsh,” she whispered and I kept quiet in the dark. We waited. Her hair fell across my face, and she tried tucking me in tight. She scuttled her knees under my feet and drew me up into a ball.
It was quiet for a while. I listened to my mother’s breathing. The house creaked like it had been hit with a hard wind. Then my father proclaimed, “Not in this house.”
There was an insectile shriek and my mother’s body stiffened, but she never let go of me.
“All right,” my father said. He sounded brave. Like that time three men came after him in a parking lot and he said, “Not in front of my boy.” Then, when they didn’t go away, he said, “All right.” He put those three guys down pretty fast, even the guy with the knife, and when I saw the blood dripping from his finger tips he said, “It’s too far away from my heart to hurt me,” and threw me a smile that said it’s ok. “Don’t tell your mother,” he said and I never did.
I heard movement and then the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the floor. My mother flinched as if she’d been hit, too.
I squirmed against her and she coiled herself tighter around me, “No,” it was barely a whisper but it was an order.
There was another one of those sounds, of a body hitting the floor, and again, and again and each time we heard it my mother flinched and let out a sympathetic little cry. Then it was quiet for a while. We were trapped in the dark and silence until my father tapped at the bathroom door. Three soft knocks like he always did to see if anyone was inside.
“Donna,” he said. “Don’t come out.”
There was an awful sound. A wet sound, and my father hollered. He didn’t holler in pain, it was rage that had his voice.
My mother gripped me and whimpered against my neck. I squirmed against her again, but she was too strong.
That battering sound happened again and again. I imagined a giant child throwing a tantrum and flinging my father’s body about the house. Then silence.
My mother was crying now and this time I wrapped my arms around her neck. After a while I heard my father’s voice. But, at the same time it was like his voice was doubled. There was his voice, and an underlying voice echoed behind his, a series of sinister clicks and scratching sounds hiding in the shadows of his words.
“Don’t come out,” his voice said. “Wait.” He spoke like he was lifting something heavy and trying to talk at the same time. Then a forever of silence.
“It wants to understand me,” he said.
My mother’s body shook against mine, she took in short shallow breaths and my eyes burned with held back tears.
A long time passed.
The pump in the basement whined to life and the TV came on. There was a woman’s voice, crisp, clear, and pretentiously happy. It was the Good Morning News program and a woman told the empty living room that there was a perfectly beautiful day in store for us.
My mother broke her hold on me. “Stay right here,” she ordered, but her voice quavered, and I was too damned scared not to obey her.
It was still dark in the bathroom, but some light snuck under the door. My mother let out a breath and slowly turned the knob on the bathroom door. The hinge let out a squeak as she opened the door and she gasped. Sunlight crept in casting her shadow across the floor.
“Mike,” she whispered.
She stepped out, one step, then, after a long pause, she took another step, and she shrieked.
She shrieked, and it burned my insides to hear her. It was a lament so long, and so pure an expression of grief that I ducked down in the tub and covered my head with my arms.
“Oh, oh, oh!” Then she screamed again.
I heard her feet pound against the floor and heard the front door slam against the wall. I knew she had made it outside, and she screamed, “Somebody!” Her voice was out of control, “Somebody! Somebody help!” She screamed and I pictured her in the front lawn, next to my father’s motorcycle, tearing at her hair. “Somebody please help me!”
To my shame, I didn’t have the courage to move. I stayed there, huddled in the tub.
I heard other voices now. Neighbors.
“Donna, Donna? What’s happened,” Mrs. Tyler asked, but my mother didn’t say anything and Mr. Tyler, I heard him come inside and say, “Where’s the boy?”
Then I heard him say, “Oh, my God!”
“Mary,” he could barely speak, “call the police!”
She didn’t answer back. In the breaks of silence I heard my mother crying and my throat hurt from holding back.
“Bobby,” Mr. Tyler’s voice was scared but firm. “Bobby? Where are you son?”
There was a confidence in his voice that gave me the courage to answer. “In here,” I called and my voice echoed in the bathroom. Mr Tyler opened the door slowly, his shadow took up the whole of the room, then he came inside.
“Bobby are you hurt?” He asked as he hunted for the light switch thumping and pawing at the wall.
If I said anything I would have fallen apart.
Then he was inside the bathroom. I felt his presence, and when I saw him, he looked like he’d aged ten years. His eyes were wide and he stared at me like I was very far away. He opened the closet, rummaged around knocking things over and onto the floor. Then he got a towel. He draped the towel over my head and picked me up in his arms. “Don’t look,” he said. “Just don’t look.” But I could smell the house. It smelled sour and heavy like when an animal dies in the woods in the summer.
Mr Tyler carried me out of the house, with my eyes covered, into the daylight, just like they do when they lead horses out of a burning barn.
I sat on the Tyler’s concrete stoop looking at my house. Mr Tyler was sitting next to me, but he didn’t say anything. My mother was inside with Mrs. Tyler. Some of the other neighbors came out on the street and stood on tip toe, craning to see what was going on, but there was nothing to see. I returned my stare to my father’s motorcycle carelessly sprawled on the sidewalk.
A little while later the police arrived. One of them asked me what I had seen, but I didn’t see anything. Mr. Tyler told the officer that he’d found me in the tub shaking like a jackhammer.
After a while some more police cars showed up. Other officers asked me the same questions and I told them what I could, but I didn’t mention anything about how my father’s voice sounded at the end. I didn’t know how to describe it back then, and I didn’t think they’d believe me even if I could.
“Your dad loved that bike,” Mr. Tyler said as an ambulance pulled up onto my lawn. The ambulance’s lights weren’t on. “But, boy did your dad love you, Bobby.” Mr. Tyler said and got up off the porch. He reached down and pulled me to my feet. “Your dad really loved you.” He put his hand on my shoulder and turned me around and guided me into his house. “Don’t ever forget that, Bobby.”