Kesh (7 page)

The policeman smiled. “I'm sorry, son. I can see you're a young man, and you don't need to be carried.” As he set the boy onto uneasy legs, Kesh saw that one of the officer's eyes was as black as ebony and the other a deep emerald green.

“Your eyes?”

The man laughed. “Everyone comments on my eyes. I suppose it's a little strange, the different colors I mean, but they're good, clear-seeing eyes, and they don't get fooled much.” The man watched Kesh wobble a little as he regained his balance. “Are you sure you're okay, son?”

 “Yes, sir. I'm okay. But, how were my mother and father when you saw them?”

“Like I said, Kesh, they seemed fine, aside from being worried half to death about you. Why? Is there something you want to tell me?”

He hesitated. “No. That was it. I wondered if they were too worried about me.”

The policeman grimaced. “I get concerned about parents who don't worry about their kids. They can never be too worried about their children.

The ride in the squad car was warm, and Kesh felt a wave of deep weariness wash over him. He let the feeling take him, and he dozed.

 

He was walking along a dark, wooded trail, and he sensed something behind him. He began to trot, and the follower kept pace. Then, he began running. He was unsure of where he was going, but the thing behind him stayed close. Then, suddenly, the tall, dark figure of a man loomed ahead, blocking the trail. He looked to the side for an escape, but the trees and underbrush grew as thick as steel wool. He considered trying to bolt past the man, but the man's form filled the trail.

“He's waiting for me,” he thought. Kesh considered his options. He could go for the man and hope he'd get by, or he could turn and face the creature that had been following him. He had to decide quickly. The man smelled of danger, and the follower had not attacked him even when he had walked slowly. The choice was clear. He whipped his lithe body around and…”

 

“Kesh. Wake up. We're at your house.” Officer Wolfe was turning the squad car off of Ontario Drive and into the driveway of his house.

He shook his head and blinked to clear out the remains of sleep and his dream. His parents, both seemingly alive and well, waited on the porch until the car pulled to a stop. His father leaped from the porch, pouncing on Kesh and sweeping him up in what he called his famous big powerful hug. His mother wasn't far behind, and she threw her arms around the two boys, squeezing them both so tight, his dad yelled out, “Allyssa, you're going to smother us.”

She laughed and eased off a bit. “Sorry, guys. I'm just so happy to have my Kesh home, safe and sound.”

When the scrum broke up, Officer Wolfe shook both parents' hands and crouched down to Kesh's level to look into his eyes. He said, “You're going to be fine, but keep your eyes open, and keep a quick wit. You're going to need it.” Kesh nodded. Then the policeman added, “The best thing you can do is tell your parents everything. Trust me on this one.”

Kesh let out a very quiet, private gasp. He had just met this man, and he was hesitant to trust anyone, even a cop. He shot the policeman a look.

The officer winked. “I know it's hard and it's going to get a lot harder before it's over, but you need to have faith, young man. Have faith.”

Once again, Kesh caught his breath for a moment. As the big man got back into his squad car, he whispered, “I'll try.”

“What were you thinking, Kesh, running off like that in the middle of the night? We were worried sick.” Kesh could see that his parents were angry, as parents tend to be at times like this, but they were also relieved and visibly sorry for their part in the whole mess. Still, he wasn't sure of what that part was. How could they have ignored the terrifying scene in the living room? Then again, he thought, maybe that part was just a dream, or, even worse, maybe he was hallucinating.

He just might be going crazy. Crazy people see things that aren't there. He thought,
Maybe I'm schizophrenic!
He didn't know that much about mental illness, but he'd seen enough movies to know it looked a lot like what he was experiencing. Something had driven him into the cold last night, and nothing about the night was normal.

For now, though, Kesh was exhausted and relieved to be home and glad to be safe in his father's arms. Although he was twelve years old, and he knew he should have been embarrassed, he let his head settle onto the strong shoulder, and his attention drifted off to the yard directly across the street, Taylor George's house. Mrs. George and Taylor were just getting off to school. Kesh blinked. Next to Mrs. George, where Taylor had been just a moment before, was now a low, flat, broad creature with a white stripe blazing up a black forehead and down its back all the way to the tip of its tail. Kesh shook his head and tried to blink away the hallucination, and suddenly it was just Taylor again smiling and waving.

That night, as he lay in his bed, Kesh tried to sort everything out in his mind. He had a hunch that the badger he had seen in Taylor's yard was the beginning of a lot of problems. Maybe, he thought, he had actually seen Taylor's animal spirit. He knew badgers had a reputation for being pretty feisty, even nasty, so it fit his classmate to a tee. Then again, he couldn't help but wonder if he was seriously nuts. If he was going to be seeing animals all over the place, he needed to know why. As he stared at the dark ceiling above his bed, he imagined he heard, off in the distance, the strangely familiar howl of a coyote.

He lay awake, unable to sleep, his mind racing across a landscape of darkness and danger and wonder. And he kept thinking about what the policeman had said. “Tell them everything.”

Finally, he turned over, opened his journal, and began writing.

 

Okay, so I'm supposed to believe I saw a python and a panther in my living room last night. Then I spent the night following a talking muskrat to a meeting with a talking spider. And I'm supposed to tell my parents about this? They'd think I was out of my friggin' mind. The whole thing is way too weird. If I try to tell them what really happened they won't believe me. And why should they? I don't even believe me. At least I don't know if I do. They'll smile and say it was just a boy's wild imagination, and they'll pat me on the head in that insulting way grownups do.

On the other hand, what if it really happened? What if all of it is true? If they were really a cat and python they shouldn't have any trouble believing my story. I know one thing for sure…if I'm going to do it, I'd better do it soon while they're still feeling guilty about me running off. I have to do before I chicken out. I have to have faith.

 

He whispered the words to himself as he wrote.

 

That's it then. I've decided. I'll tell them at supper.

 

He felt a little better now, but not completely. He had to admit he still wasn't convinced that the whole thing was anything but a long, complicated dream. And, what if it was true? After all, how in the world could he and the others tear down the factories? He wasn't even sure what that meant. What exactly was he expected to do?

 

My nocturnal adventures: I had a pretty good day. Mom and dad were so worried about me after last night they let me stay home from school. Good thing too. I was beat. Funny how the world looks completely different when you wake up. Mom called the school office and told Mrs. Barkley that I wasn't feeling well and wouldn't be in today. She didn't even ask me. I slept in, and when I finally got up, the sun was high on a clear blue morning, and I still had most of the day to do nothing but watch TV and play video games.

I saw Adventure Time, Flcl, and threw in Invader Zim for old time's sake. It's a weird little show, and Zim is a funny little guy who always made me laugh. He still does. They all got me thinking about the impossible last night. The more I think about it, the more I know the whole thing had to be a dream. People are always walking in their sleep and seeing ghosts and goblins and other strange things. I think that's what happened to me. For some reason my mind made me imagine I saw those animals and, of course, I panicked. I didn't imagine that part.

Then I fell asleep in that shack (I'll tell you about that later). If that wouldn't give a guy nightmares, I don't know what would. I'd be crazy to tell mom and dad everything about the rag man, and I'm not going to mention that stuff about turning into a coyote and talking to a muskrat. There's nothing to tell except that I had some really weird dreams.

 

He closed the journal and yawned. He was still tired, but he felt better about the whole strange experience. He flipped the book open again and wrote quickly
,

It's good to be back to normal.

That evening, supper was quiet. Usually, he was the quiet one while his mom and dad made small talk across the table. Tonight they ate without talking, without reviewing the mundane dullness of the day, without watching their son to see if he had managed to have a day without insult, without humiliation, without feeling like the runt of the litter. Tonight the air was heavy with unspoken expectation. It was like they were waiting for him to fill them in on what had happened in the night, and he wasn't about to go there.

Kesh, unwilling to test the waters, as if he were afraid he might find out something he didn't want to know, ate mechanically and left the table. As sure of himself as he had been a couple hours before, now the doubts began to creep into the back of his mind. He tried to ignore them, and when he lay down for the night, he fell quickly into a deep, dreamless sleep and slept soundly until morning.

Kesh's mother had always told him that morning has the power to make everything right. On this second new day, he felt even more certain that things were back to normal. There were no animal spirits, no talking muskrats or spider women or coyotes. He was glad to be back in the real world where his frightening illusions seemed to have faded like smoke on the breeze.

Of course, he was cautious at first. He studied the people he passed on the way to school. They were old, young, happy, and grumpy, like people are, but they were people, just normal human beings. Once he was in school, in crowded hallways, in the same old classes and the chaotic cafeteria, his remaining uncertainty disappeared. When Taylor George rounded a corner and was still just Taylor, he breathed a deep sigh of relief. Then, that evening at supper, his parents were back to normal as well, zipping little comments across the tablecloth, half joking zingers that dodged in and out between the salt and pepper, and careened off of the flatware.

Kesh was delighted and more than a little relieved. He had nothing to tell his parents, no reason to have faith in the misty hallucinations that now seemed so distant. They were nothing more than dreams. Everything was back to normal. At least for the moment.

 

* * * *

 

Kesh survived Thanksgiving and his mother's dry turkey and wretched cranberry sauce. The October nightmare had all but faded from his memory. It had been a bad dream. He knew that for certain now. After all, he hadn't seen anybody turn into a toad or a weasel for nearly a month, not even a whisker. That was not counting Omar Gilman who was the only twelve-year-old kid Kesh knew with chronic five o'clock shadow. But he was a different kind of beast, the big, oafish, human kind. Nope, everything was back to normal–even better. His parents had decided that Kesh wasn't having mental issues after all and were back to their usual sweet, boring selves. He had not heard growling or hissing for weeks.

So the house was peaceful, there were no wild animals in his living room, Taylor was not a badger (although she was clearly suffering from a lot of other strange afflictions that Kesh observed were specifically partial to very annoying girls), and the holiday vacation was going to begin in four days. Of course, they would be painfully long days, but Kesh knew from experience that they would go by and he would have two weeks of freedom, food and presents.

Evan leaned over a bowl of the cafeteria's special horror, runny lime Jell-O. He was relating to Kesh the sordid tale of a scary movie he had watched the night before. Evan was good at telling these stories because, Kesh thought, he really seemed to believe them. What's more, Kesh suspected, he seemed to sympathize more closely with the monsters and ghouls than what he called “the stupid victims.”

Evan leaned far over the table to emphasize the gravity of what he was telling Kesh. “The really creepy and gory ones always start like this,” he said. He leered his most disturbing grin, and his eyes sparkled. “The poor, unsuspecting victim is taking a walk, the birds are singing, the sun is shining, and everything in the word seems perfect.” He emphasized the next word with long, dramatic pause. “Except…we all know that the stupid guy did something really bad a long time ago, and he's going to be punished for it, if you know what I mean.”

Kesh rolled his eyes as if to say
, I don't but I don't really want to know what you mean
.

Evan went on. “So, it's a beautiful day, and this dumb guy and his really hot but equally dumb girlfriend are walking through the woods along a creek. It's called Spider Creek, and the guy tells the girl that he heard it was called that because it's named after some guy named Spider, or it's got a lot of water spiders on it, but those aren't the reasons at all.” Evan's eyes got big and he sang the spookiest “Woooo” he could manage.

Kesh said, “They're called water striders, and they are not spiders, bonehead
.
” He paused and glared at Evan. “So, what are the reasons?”