Gossamer (5 page)

"I need TV."

"Well, I can't provide that, I'm afraid. But I do have a meatloaf in the oven."

He scowled. "Do you have ketchup?" he asked. She nodded. "And ice cream for dessert."

"Do you have cards?"

"Cards?"

"You know, with A's and K's and Q's."

"Oh. Yes, I do, actually. Do you know some card games? We could do that after dinner."

"Okay," he told her, grudgingly. "I'll stay tonight. We can play war."

13

"Is it a Horde?" Littlest asked Thin Elderly in an apprehensive voice. She was trying hard to appear courageous and mature. The two were inside the house, huddled in the hallway between the bedrooms. The rain had stopped and there was a moon now; it illuminated the faded wallpaper, with its sentimental pattern of hoop-skirted ladies in gardens. It was dream-giving time, the darkest time of night, but the pair had not yet begun their work because of the sound of an approaching Sinisteed.

Thin Elderly was listening attentively. "No," he said. "It's alone."

Bravely, Littlest One made a tiny fist and held it up. "Shall I punch at it?"

"No. It's much stronger than we are. We can't fight it. We have to huddle here and watch it do its damage," Thin Elderly explained. "It'll probably choose only one: the woman or the boy. They don't much bother with dogs."

"What's that?" Littlest jumped, startled. "I can hear something right there by the window!"

"Hot breath. Exhalations," Thin Elderly whispered. "It's how they get in. They breathe themselves through the walls. That's the scorching you asked about."

The sound was increasingly terrible, first a snorting and heavy breathing, then a pawing against the wall of the house. Littlest thought she could even feel the heat of it and smell the acrid wet-smoke scent.

"Make yourself as small as possible," Thin Elderly instructed. "Don't bother dissolving. It won't bother us. It won't even notice us. It'll enter, probably through this wall right here, where we hear the breaths. Then it'll choose its victim, do the infliction—it's quite fast—and then gallop away. Try not to be frightened. But be small, to avoid being trampled."

"I don't want it to choose the boy," Littlest whispered in her tiniest voice. "He's not as strong as the woman. He cried in his bed before he slept."

Thin Elderly put his fingers gently over her mouth. "Shhh. Here it comes."

Together they withdrew into their very smallest selves and curled against each other silently while the beast entered, breathing itself an opening though the wall, searing the wallpaper, which peeled back with burned edges, and charring the plaster beneath. The noise became deafening—thumps and pounds and whinnies—but the woman and the boy continued to sleep. It was a sound that humans did not hear, and even the dog, with his heightened sense of hearing, perceived only a muffled thump and turned from one side to the other with a sigh.

Littlest, peeking, terrified, through her fingers, could see the eyes, bloodshot and angry, and smell its filthy, matted coat as it entered and stood, tossing its head. The beast filled the hallway, and its shadow against the wall in the moonlight was even larger. She trembled. But Thin Elderly was correct; it had no interest in her. It whipped its ropey mane back and forth with the tossing of its head, as if in decision-making, and then strode through the open door of the guest room and toward the bed where the little boy, in his striped pajamas, lay breathing evenly, one arm curled around a pillow.

The Sinisteed leaned its massive head down toward the boy and then, like an engine releasing steam, it snorted a hissing emanation of breath that enveloped the boy's head.
Sssssssssss!
It lasted only a second. Then the creature shook its head, whinnied triumphantly, and disappeared through the wall, which repaired itself instantly, into the night.

"Your first infliction," Thin Elderly told Littlest One. "Amazing, how quickly it happens, isn't it? You would have missed it if you had blinked."

He looked at her and she gave him a nervous smile.

"
Did
you blink?" he asked.

Littlest shook her head. "No," she said, "but I had my eyes closed tight. I was scared."

"Well," he told her, "there's really not much to see. The sound, though, is astonishing. That hiss. Now we must try to undo it."

"Undo it?"

"Have you gathered something calming to bestow on him?"

"Yes. But look!" Littlest said, pointing.

The boy had sat upright in the bed and was crying out. "Don't! Don't!" He turned his head from side to side, an odd repetition of what the beast had done. His eyes were closed but he continued to call out in panic. "Don't let him get me!"

"Drat!" whispered Thin Elderly. "It's too late. Stay here. Be quiet. Dissolve."

Littlest shrank herself into invisibility and Thin Elderly, beside her, did the same. Just in time. The woman, tying the belt of her robe, hurried from her own bedroom across the hall and into the room where the boy was calling.

"John!" she said in a firm, quiet voice. She sat on the bed and put her arms around him. He struggled, crying. "Help me!" he sobbed.

"Wake up, John," she said to him firmly. "You're having a nightmare."

In a moment his eyes opened and he looked around, whimpering. The bedroom was unchanged: his little suitcase was on the floor by the chair, his clothes draped over the chair's wooden arm. A nightlight glowed in the corner.

"Someone was—" the boy said. He blinked. "He was chasing me!"

"It was a nightmare," she told him again. "You're safe here."

He lay back down. She pulled the covers up over him and stroked his back through the blanket.

"I'll tell you a story," she said to him in a quiet voice.

"Okay."

"Once upon a time," the woman said, "there was a little boy. His name was John, and he was—"

"At the beach. He was at the beach with his mom," the boy said sleepily.

"Yes, he was at the beach with his mom on a beautiful sunny day. It was warm, with a nice breeze. Seagulls were overhead, and—"

"Shells," he said, but his eyelids were fluttering and his voice was drowsy.

She glanced over to the table, where the boy had placed a delicate pink seashell that he had taken from his suitcase. "Yes," she said, "there were beautiful shells on the beach." She continued stroking him for a moment, whispering, "Shhh, shhh," until it was clear that he was sleeping again. She gazed at him briefly, then tiptoed back to her own bedroom.

From their watching place, Thin Elderly stirred himself and reemerged. Littlest did the same. "Now we have much work to do," he explained to her in a low voice. "Gather your best fragments. We must strengthen him."

14

"Who's this jerk?" John asked. He had taken a framed photograph from the piano and set it down on the kitchen table, where the woman was still sipping her morning tea.

She reached for it. "He was a friend of mine," she said, and touched the edge of the silver frame with her fingertips.

"Now he hates you, right? You
thought
he was your friend, right? But now he hates you."

"No, he never hated me. But this was a long time ago. We were both very young then."

"So where'd he go? California? I bet you don't even know. I bet he just left and didn't tell you where." John picked up his spoon and ate another mouthful of cereal, then made a face. "I hate this kind of cereal. I only like Sugar Pops."

"Don't eat it, then. I can make you some toast if you'd like." With her napkin she wiped the smudgy fingerprints from the glass that protected the old photograph.

The boy held a fingerful of soggy cereal under the table for Toby, then withdrew it quickly when the dog came to sniff. He wiped it on the knee of his jeans and kicked the dog lightly with his sneaker.

"I bet he never wrote to you or anything," he commented. "I bet he didn't send you any money. You should throw the dumb picture away."

"He wrote to me often. But then he died. Do you want toast?"

"Yeah."

She looked at him wryly. "
Yes, please?
" she said.

He repeated it sarcastically. She smiled, rose, and dropped two pieces of bread into the toaster on the counter.

"How did he die? Did he get murdered? I know somebody who got murdered."

"Not exactly. But he was shot."

The boy made his fingers into a gun. "
Blam,
" he said, and shot Toby, the dog. Then he shot the refrigerator. "I'm gonna get a gun," he said, and ate another spoonful of cereal.

"So did his wife shoot him or what?" he asked, with his mouth full.

"He didn't have a wife. He was killed in the war, in France."

"I know a poem about France: 'I see London, I see France—'" he began in a singsong voice, then interrupted himself. "Does your dog ever run away?"

"No. Toby always stays close to the house. He's always waiting for his next meal," she told him, laughing lightly.

"He'll die, though."

"Someday. But he's not terribly old. He'll probably live another, oh, maybe seven years. Won't you, Toby?" she said to the dog, who lifted his head at the sound of his name. She leaned toward him and scratched his neck.

"Well, if you don't want him anymore, you can get someone to shoot him. I'll do it for you after I get my gun."

"I'll never not want Toby," the woman told the boy. "There's your toast, popped up. I'll get some jam from the cupboard."

"Don't you ever get mad at him?" The boy lifted the two pieces of toast from the toaster and dropped them onto the blue plate on the table.

"Of course I do. Once he stood on his hind legs and grabbed a whole roasted chicken from the counter. I was furious."

"Did you beat him? I bet you beat him."

"No. But I called him a few not-very-nice names. And I shut him in the back hall for a while."

"Did he cry?"

She laughed. "He whined. Piteously."

"Sometime you'll get really, really mad at him," John said. He tore one piece of toast in half and stacked the two pieces on top of each other. "Then you won't want him. You'll probably give him away.

"You'll probably give him to some jerk with no TV," he added matter-of-factly, and poked a hole through the remaining slice of toast with his index finger. "Can we play war again after breakfast?"

15

"I'm looking for a job," the young woman said into the phone. "But I've been busy. I moved, you know that. It was a pain in the neck to move.

"But I'm looking for a job now. I'm really cleaning up my act."

She exhaled some smoke and glanced with a wry look around the room, at the stacked unopened cartons, the stained rug, the dirty dishes, and an opened pizza box with the stale crusts still inside. "Not my
apartment,
" she added under her breath.

"I know," she replied to a question from the person on the other end of the line. "Yes, I'm very aware that I have to be here for him. He'd be in school all day, and then I'd be home when he got home. I'm looking for something part-time, maybe like eight to two. I saw an ad for a receptionist and it said 'flexible hours.' I'm just about to call there."

She listened for a moment. She stubbed out her cigarette and reached for the half-empty pack nearby.

"No, I wouldn't leave him alone again. Of course not." Nervously she twisted a strand of her long hair around one finger.

"And also," she went on, "I did what you suggested. I took out a restraining order."

She lit a cigarette and listened. "He's gone. I don't know where he is. I probably didn't even need the restraining order. I think he went to California.

"So anyway, as I said, I'm really getting it together. I'm going to counseling. But I need John back. It's totally weird having him gone. He's my best friend, you know?"

She listened and made a face, grimacing to herself. "No, well, I didn't mean that. I
know
he's my child. I know all that. I'll set limits. I can do all that stuff. But I need him back here so I can do it, right? I mean, how can I do
parenting
if my kid isn't here, right?"

She twisted her hair again, listening. Her shoulders, which had been tensely raised, sank, and her voice trembled slightly. "I lost it, okay? It was a bad time for me. I did some stupid things."

The voice on the telephone was calm, reassuring. The woman listened, rolling her eyes.

"Okay," she said in a defeated tone. "Okay. Yeah. I understand. I know, it takes time.

"Listen, I'll call you back as soon as I get a job. And you make sure he's treated okay! And tell him—well, tell him I'm working on it, and he'll be back home soon, and I love him, and—"

Huddled on the couch, clutching the phone, the young woman began to cry. "Tell him I dreamed about him last night," she said.

16

"Do they come back to the same person again?" Littlest asked Thin Elderly. They were back at the Heap now, and most of the dream-givers were sleeping soundly, exhausted by their hard work during the night. But Littlest One was still thinking about the Sinisteed she had seen. Her thumb slipped into her mouth.

Thin Elderly put his arm around her. "They tend to, often," he said. "They make return visits and inflict what they call 'recurrences.'

"They won't ever hurt you," he reassured Littlest. "You needn't worry about that. But you will probably see that one again. I think he'll be coming back to the boy. We just have to hope that the Horde won't come with him. The boy is very vulnerable.

"They sense that," he explained. "They can sense when someone is weak, or in need."

The thumb popped out. "But the boy needs
me!
" Littlest said.

"Sorry," she added. "I meant, he needs
us
."

Thin Elderly laughed affectionately. "Yes, he does," he told her.

"But I think he really needs me most," she confided, yawning, "because he's very little, for a human boy. And I know what it's like to be little."