I drifted aimlessly among the familiar-faced strangers for as long as I could. I needed to get away from the cacophony of voices and the banal expressions of sympathy offered to me by people who didn’t know the relationship that I had with my father. Every time someone told me how sorry they were, it was all I could do to keep from screaming. I wanted to tell them that I was the one who was sorry for having to drive four and half hours from Philadelphia to attend the funeral.
Finally, I made it to the kitchen and the backdoor. Everyone was so caught up in their individual conversations and gossip, I didn’t think anyone would even notice me slip away. When someone gave me a supportive pat on the back, I didn’t bother to turn around to see who it was. I figured everyone would just think I was too grief-stricken even for polite social interaction, but they would be wrong. My indifference was genuine, and the fact was that the death of my father was more of an inconvenience than it was traumatic.
The November leaves, still damp with morning dew, stuck to my shoes as I cut across the side yard. The wind had stopped gusting, but the slate sky threatened rain. I turned up the collar of my pea coat and stopped where the street used to dead end. At the intersection was a copse of trees. It was all that remained of the woods that dominated the entire area when I was a kid. Somewhere beyond the brambles and milkweed was a forbidden cabin and a haunted forest playground, a world of dark, hidden secrets where fear lingered and waited.
There was no logical reason for me to go any further. I thought my journey was over decades ago, but before I knew it, I was wending my way through the heavy underbrush.
While it had been my father’s death that brought me home, it could only be the lonely child in me that wanted to explore what was off-limits.
The miniature forest was shrouded in deep shadow. The sunlight was unable to penetrate the awning of branches and leaves overhead, creating the illusion of dusk. Prickly vines and shrubs snagged my clothes, some of the thorns penetrating deep enough to tear the skin beneath, drawing blood. Progress was slow, but as I advanced, I didn’t remember the old cabin being this far from the street. I was beginning to think that it had resigned to gravity and had fallen to the ground, or perhaps torn down by the children who now occupied the neighborhood.
Then I saw it.
Though severely weather-beaten, it was just as I remembered. A ramshackle cabin composed of dry-rotted plywood and a slump-shouldered, single-pitched roof, like a lean-to that didn’t abut anything. About eight feet square, it was little more than a shack, but in the preternatural twilight, it took on a more sinister appearance that even forty years of adulthood could not temper.
The structure sat defiantly amid a carpet of decaying leaves and desiccated tree branches. It was guarded in shadow and fortified with the terror of past generations of school children. Seeing it again terrified the child in me so thoroughly that I wanted to run away, just as I did the last time I saw it. But there was nowhere to run this time. I had to face the terror.
Like everything else in the neighborhood, this structure was provincial, with a cryptic nature known only to a few. Even now, its odious presence gave me pause, but I didn’t stop. I continued to move forward slowly until I was close enough to peer into the glassless window on the side of the shack. I could not see a thing beyond the black square.
I began to shiver, more from dread than from the falling temperature. The last time I stood on the very spot I was now I had been a boy.
When I closed my eyes, the memories that came back to me were dark and unsettling.
It was Easter. The Fortins had staged an Easter egg hunt for the neighborhood children. Thirty plastic eggs filled with coins, small toys, and candy treats were scattered around the yard while fifteen kids of various ages ran around in search of the hidden treasure. When it was over, all but one egg had been recovered.
The missing egg hadn’t bothered the Fortins or any of the other kids the way it did me, though I didn’t really know why. After everyone had gone home, I kept looking until it was dark. I searched everywhere, but the egg didn’t turn up.
The next few days, whenever I looked out the bedroom window, I expected to see some hideous creature shambling out of the woods toward my house.
There wasn’t enough light to see much of anything as I peered inside through the dark eye that was the structure’s sole window. I drew a deep breath and walked toward the side of the cabin where the door was located. As I turned the corner, I could see that no more than thirty yards from that side of the cabin, the woods ended abruptly. Where once the cabin had rested in the middle of the woods, it seemed now as if it was trying to escape, moving closer to the edge of civilization. The distinct line between nature and urban development was stark, punctuated by a marked desecration of trees. In the middle of a massive swathe of naked earth brooded the somnolent bulk of an earth mover, a sentinel of destruction awaiting its orders to begin the next phase of construction on a new shopping plaza which would be featuring a pharmacy, a fast-food restaurant, a pet groomer, and a pizzeria.
I realized at once what this represented; it was not the cabin that was vanishing, but just the opposite. The landscape of the neighborhood was about to change forever, and the neighborhood monster was being purged along with it.
Facing the cabin door, I approached it slowly. I was prepared to enter, but I hesitated.
What was I going to find inside, I asked myself.
The boogeyman?
I closed my eyes momentarily and told myself I wouldn’t find anything because there was nothing in there to find. I understood that childhood monsters were ephemeral, like youth, and only children could empower them. Adults had their own monsters to contend with. Instead of residing in forest cabins, behind closed closet doors, and beneath beds, some monsters dwelled in the souls of men and women, souls that were corrupted in some way as children. These monsters lay hidden, not in old shacks or in sewer drains, but dwelling unseen and unsuspected behind human charms and the personable guises of relatives, friends, and neighbors. These monsters look like everybody else, and therein lies the greatest danger. Maybe, in that sense, every neighborhood did have their own monster. They’re everywhere, but difficult to identify because they are not mythical beasts, but real flesh and blood monsters. This makes sense because it’s flesh and blood that drives them. Not surprisingly, the targets of these opportunist monsters are often children, so easy to plant the seed of corruption into, and come harvest time the only thing reaped is further abuse.
Behind me, the tractor shot forward with a jerk, snorting a cable of thick, white smoke from the exhaust stack.
With a creak, the cabin door slowly swung inward. It made it halfway on its rusty hinges and then just stopped, revealing only darkness inside. A moment later, a moldy plastic egg wobbled out and came to rest near my feet. There were a few identifiable specks of its original purple color, but it was blanched and bearded with green, fuzzy mold. It cradled the undeveloped embryo of abuse, neglect, and hatred. It only needed to be incubated.
I closed my eyes again and a vile stench, like vinegar and putrefied meat, assailed my nostrils. When I looked at the egg again, a dark, stringy substance was escaping the seams, seeping slowly across the dirt floor of the cabin like toxic mud. The miasma it produced made me gag. My gut lurched involuntarily, and my throat convulsed as a I made a retching sound. Nothing came up because I hadn’t eaten a thing all day.
Within the semi-solid material oozing out of the egg were bits of hair, bone, and sinew, a swirling mass of digested humanity. A puddle accumulated, and the accretion began to transmogrify into the shape of an amorphous creature, with the torso of a man and the head of a sightless monster. If there was a skull, the fragments were too soft and loosely joined to maintain a form. The face was a spongy, free flowing mass, assuming different shapes as it continued to grow.
Lying prone, with three malformed legs splayed out uselessly behind it, the monstrosity shifted suddenly and began to drag itself toward me on arms that could not adequately support its weight. As it sloshed closer, the middle of its face parted, exposing a maw with no gullet, as viscous fluid dripped back down over the cavity. The thing issued a choked shriek that produced a bubbling effect throughout its gelatinous frame. The cry echoed in my head, and I found myself unable to move. It was as if my own skeletal system had dissolved, leaving me an unsupported collection of flesh.
The iron machine screamed to full tilt.
From the darkness at the back of the shack my, father’s voice said, “Every neighborhood’s got one.” Then he laughed.
As the tractor bore down on the shack, the laughter grew louder, and the door opened fully.
***
Back at the house, I entered unnoticed, as if I had never left. My stepmother did not say a word about the wet leaves and dirt I tracked in with me, my soiled, torn clothes, or the scrapes and scratches.
When everyone else had gone, I gave my stepmother a dutiful peck on the cheek and announced that I was leaving. She nodded and watched me walk out the front door without a word passing between us.
When I got into my car, I removed the plastic egg from my jacket pocket and forced the two sides apart. A stringy, dark fluid ran down my hands.
Driving past the older houses on Tofet Street and then the new houses on Arcadia Way, I licked the sticky matter from my fingers until there was nothing left. As I left the neighborhood and got onto the interstate, I tried to recall the sound of my father’s voice, but I could not.
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