Gilbert

This story will end in blood. At least, that’s what Gilbert says. 

They don’t believe me; that he’s real, that’s he been doin’ all these terrible and awful things. But I know the truth. I swear it. 

Mama made me come here. She thinks I need medicine or somethin’. These doctors though, they’re real pieces of work. They come on in here, with their fancy white coats and big serious words, and think they can make sense of it all. 

Of him.

Of me.  

They come on in here and they tell me to write it all down, sweetie, every last bit of it. 

I don’t think they know what they’re askin’ for. But I also know I won’t be able to leave until I give em’ what they want. 

Gilbert won’t like this. He won’t like this one bit. 

But here I am, sittin’ in this cramped, dull room with a notebook and five coloured pens laid out in front of me. Them doctors told me to write down what happened, piece by piece. And as I work through the memory of it all, I’m supposed to pick the coloured pen that best represents the way I was feelin’ at the time.

A new colour for an old memory. 

What they don’t understand is none of these colours are right. Since Gilbert, everything’s stained in shadow and secret. There ain’t no colour out there right for that, except black, I guess. 

Black like beneath floorboards.

Black like a doll’s eyes. 

Black like death. 

Suddenly, someone taps the glass window twice, and even though I can’t see em’, I know they’re watchin’ me. They’re all there, Mama included, right on the other side of the glass, waitin’ for me to begin. 

So, I guess I better get started. 

I stare down at the coloured pens before me and take a deep breath. I wait a second or two, then, with shakin’ hands I reach for the blue pen.  

BLUE

I found Gilbert last summer when I was explorin’ our new house. Mamma said I could pick any room I wanted, so I sprinted upstairs and began my search. I walked down the long hallway, peering in room to room, and then, I found it.

I called it the blue room. 

And I called it that because walkin’ in, all you could see was the sky. By far the largest room in the house, two of the walls were lined with floor to ceilin’ windows that looked out over the backyard. I could see where our yard ended, and the woods began. I liked the lighting in the blue room, the openness of it all. It made me feel less lonely and happier, somehow. 

But the real reason I liked the blue room was because of the large drawin’ on the far-left side wall. It was a simple paintin’ of a sun. 

The sun’s colour, perhaps once a vibrant crimson, now dulled to a faded amber. It had a bright white smiley face on it, with blue eyes that bore down on ya, followed ya, no matter where you were in the room. 

The sun paintin’ wasn’t in no frame or picture, it was just drawn right there on the wall, clear as day. The wall and roof met there in a slant, so the paintin’ towered over the space, stretching high upwards at an angle. 

I loved that paintin’ from the moment I saw it. I thought it was meant for me, drawn for me. I asked Mama right there on the spot if I could move my bed underneath that sun paintin’, and she didn’t mind none. 

If only I knew then what lay in wait behind the sun paintin’. 

GREEN

A few days later I was in my big, beautiful blue room when I heard a scratchin’ sound coming from somewhere in the room. It sounded like fingernails scrapin’ against wood and as I got closer to the sun paintin’, I realized the scratchin’ sounds was a comin’ from just the other side of the wall.

So, I walked right up to the sun paintin’ and knocked on the wall. The scratchin’ sounds stopped at once.

I was about to walk away, when to my surprise something on the other side knocked back. 

I stood there, stunned. I didn’t know what to think or do. Was this really happenin’? Was my head screwed on straight?

After a few minutes, I steeled myself then tried knocking again, but this time twice. And sure enough, after a few seconds, something on the other side of the wall knocked back twice, too. 

I laughed, for surely, I was goin’ crazy. But then I heard somethin’ I ain’t never heard before in my blue room: The undeniable moans of someone cryin’ and sobbin’ on the other side of the sun paintin’.

They sounded so sad, so hurt, I knew I needed to help them. I thought about goin’ and gettin’ Mama, but right before I hopped off my bed, the slow creakin’ of a door being opened stopped me in my tracks. I paused, then turned back towards the slanted wall.

And right there before my eyes I watched that paintin’ part right down the middle to reveal a small crawl space. 

I peered right into the black of it all, and it was so very dark I couldn’t see nothin’ at first. Cool, stale air brushed my cheeks, and all the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. 

I called out into the empty space and asked if anyone was there, and if they were ok. 

Nothin’ answered me, not at first.

But then, as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I thought I saw somethin’ move in there. I took a step back, and as I did so, I noticed a pair of green eyes in the corner of the crawl space starin’ back at me. 

And that was the first day I met Gilbert.

YELLOW

As summer stretched into fall, I talked to Gilbert every day. I swear it. 

I couldn't wait to come home from school (the fifth graders in my class didn’t like me all that much) and see Gilbert. He was my only friend. 

I’d race up the stairs, two at a time, making my way to the blue room. Once I knew Mama was away, either in the kitchin’ or garden, I’d crawl up on my bed, knock twice on the sun paintin’, and wait.

Then, after a second or two, the door to the crawl space would open up, and there would be Gilbert. 

We’d talk about toys or games, and I’d laugh most of the time, but sometimes Gilbert could be mean. And sometimes Gilbert could be scary. 

One day after school, when it was storming up real good outside, Gilbert asked me to lift one of the floorboards near the back of the blue room. I did just that and found it— a small, pale porcelain doll, with eyes as black as buttons. 

The doll wore a tattered yellow onesie with a matching yellow bonnet, and its rosy cheeks were offset by its plastic lips, which curved upward in a smirk. 

Then, I did somethin’ real silly. Lookin’ back, I wish I hadn’t done it all. But I liked that doll Gilbert showed me. And I wanted to play with it.

So, I asked Gilbert if I could keep the doll.  

ORANGE

Next thing I knew, I was screamin’ and cryin’ and running down the stairs. 

Mama wanted to know where I had gotten all those cuts up and down my arms from. 

I cried and cried, because those cuts stung real bad. They wouldn’t stop bleedin’ neither, and my blood was so bright, I thought it looked orange.

When Mama finally calmed me down, she asked me again, real serious, where did you get those cuts from?

I didn’t want to show her the sun paintin’. I didn’t want Gilbert to be mad at me. But the way Mama was lookin’ at me, pleadin’ with me, I knew I just had to show her.

So, I took her upstairs to the blue room. We sat on my bed, and I knocked twice on the sun paintin’. The door didn’t open at first, and I knew Gilbert didn’t wanna see Mama. But I kept on knockin’ and knockin’ and then, well, the door to the crawl space opened. 

Mama never saw Gilbert, even though he was sittin’ right there, watching us, but she did see the doll. 

Mama was so scared she took me straight to the doctors that very night. But these doctors haven’t fixed nothin’. 

Gilbert never went away. Not really. 

I still see him, every day.

I swear it.

RED

I set down my orange pen and stare at the glass window in the room.

I know they can see me. I know they know I’m done.

And sure enough, there’s the door openin’, and there’s one of em’ doctor’s waltzing on in here. I hand him my notebook and he flips through the pages.

After he’s done readin’ it, the doctor compliments me on how good the drawin’ in the back of the notebook looks.

I shake my head slowly, thinkin’ maybe I heard him wrong. I tell him I didn’t draw no picture, that I only wrote down the words of what happened to me.

The doctor furrows his brow then opens the notebook to the last page. He holds it up in front of me, and all at once the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and my blood runs cold.

Because there is drawin’ in the back of the book.

A drawin’ I didn’t make.

A drawin’ of a sun, a smiley sun, scribbled in the colour red.