Friends for Life

It was full dark now, but Simon didn’t want to go home. She might still be up.

He got off his bike at the cemetery gates, left it propped on the old wooden fence. The low gate screeched its displeasure like an old gargoyle disturbed from its sleep. He winced involuntarily and put his hands over his mouth then winced again, the sharp pain of his bloody lip ignited fresh memories of earlier that evening when she’d thrown her half-empty Budweiser bottle at his face. He’d told her he was glad his father had left because she’d deserved it.

Nevermind that he had not.

And he was glad his father had left, for his own sake. He only wished that he’d taken him with him. Which was ridiculous because his father had taken off when he was only two. That had been eight years ago, but he still remembered bits and pieces of the turmoil infested in the home like termites that bored into your brain through your ears- the yelling and smashing of glass. He recalled pain…and blood. It had poured down his small face and soaked his soft blue flannel sheets. He lifted a hand to his forehead where a two-inch-long scar welted subtly just below his hairline. He’d cried himself to sleep, cold and alone. He remembered how uncomfortable the sticky sheets had been, crisp with blood and scratchy when he awoke the next morning.

‘What did I ever do to deserve all that?’

He only knew his father’s appearance by an old picture he’d found of the three of them, they appeared to be at a beach. Amazingly, they were all smiling. He kept the forbidden photograph under his mattress, it was faded shades of blue sky and yellow sun, and he figured the date of it to be about 1966, about a year after he was born. His mother would burn it if she found it. He did look like his father.

‘I’ve got to stop asking myself that. It is what it is. I need a plan. I need to hang in there until I can get a real job and take off.’

These thoughts rattled around in his head like Mexican jumping beans until he screamed into the chilling night air. He was sick of them. They stopped their frantic jumping about and turned to steam escaping his ears and nose. He inhaled deeply…and caught the faint whiff of smoke. ‘The groundskeeper’s chimney.’ He’d spied the old man a handful of times at a distance. There was at least half a dozen posted signs about the cemetery, ominously warning against trespassing and once he’d seen the old man with a long black shotgun stomping around the back of the cabin and off into the woods. But something about the man- a feeling or vibe- made Simon feel he'd not shoot him.

It may seem odd for a boy of ten to feel at peace in a graveyard. But he liked it here. Quiet, peaceful, best of all, no people around, no alive people anyways. Except the occasional sighting of the old man.

The old man looked like how he pictured his own grandpa would look if he had one. He inhaled the scent reminiscent of dry burning maple leaves and imagined the man sitting before the fire with his wife and a big dog- a retriever or black lab- at his feet. Sometimes, he’d pictured the man at a supper table in a cozy kitchen eating a Sunday feast – roast leg of lamb or a big golden-brown turkey- with sons and daughters and grandkids laughing and talking merrily. His mind had played these scenes like old time movies running through the projector in his head- scenes he’d watched on television when he dared come out of his room to watch it.

Simon realized he was just outside the old groundskeeper’s door; he’d been daydreaming again. He did that a lot. So much in fact that he often thought lately that he was living more in those dreams than in reality.

The wind suddenly kicked into high gear and his teeth started chattering uncontrollably. ‘I guess I gotta go home. I’ll freeze out here. It’s pretty dark, maybe eight? Nine? She’ll be passed out…if I’m lucky. If she’s up, I can get in through my window.’ The thought of a warm bed right now overtook his wishes for a hot meal. Besides, after this afternoon’s debacle, he doubted a hot meal would be saved for him.

He'd come home at five-thirty, hanging in the library that day until it closed, and silently let himself in, tiptoeing around a pile of old magazines and a plastic basket of dirty clothes by the couch, all but forgotten in the afternoon soaps…and grrring at the nearly empty bottle of cheap vodka on the coffee table and a couple of Bud bottles. He heard her cooing to Samantha, his baby sister and grimaced as he approached the kitchen alcove, the fresh cigarette smoke mingling with the stale stink of the nicotine that stained the ceiling like evil spreading fungus from a movie swamp. Her voice slurred, “C’mon now baby doll. Mommy’s got this yummy yummy peas. Eat the peas and get dessert.” It came out deshert.

Simon wasn’t bitter enough to hate his baby sister, she was as innocent as he believed himself to be. She was only one after all. She made his mother happy. His mother smiled for little Sammy.

Two years before, his mother had gotten all dolled up in skintight hot pink bell bottoms and her prettiest handkerchief-sleeved blouse. She’d had her hair done that afternoon, splurged like she did once a year, on her birthday. Her golden locks were curled around her pretty face just so. She even smelled nice, said it was a new perfume called Jean Nate, “pronounced Nat-ay, like French style.” Simon thought she was pretty though underneath the surface, the vodka stink he’d grown to despise lingered. He’d wished she would stay home, and he wished he knew how to bake a cake.

He was not scared of being alone though he’d been just nine. He actually liked it although the burning embers of disgust and loathing were being stoked even then at such a young age. She had at least made him some mac’n’cheese with wieners in it. He’d washed the dishes and found a movie on their old black and white tv, falling asleep as the monster in the bog took its final victim. He awoke when the tv was all snowy and he hated that. He always imagined a clawed hand dripping with black blood would reach through the snow to grab him, much like the alligator under his bed. He shuddered and went to his room, on the way peeking in his mother’s.

It had been empty. A wash of fear had swept over him then like a prickly wave of holly branches.

Simon recalled that day, that feeling, as if it were yesterday. He didn’t want to deal with his mother, she was mean when she was drunk. As if she hated him. He had tried to sneak past the kitchen doorway.

“Hey! It’s nearly…” a long pause, then, “six o’clock. Comm-ere. Now.”

Simon had slunk into the kitchen, his head bowed to his chest. Samantha was gurgling away happily in her highchair, green shmears on her chin and rosy, puffy cheeks. She grinned wider when she saw her big brother and waved her pudgy arms like a drunken cheerleader.

“Look at me.”

Simon looked up and, as expected, his mother gasped dramatically. “What the hell happened to you?! You get beat again?”

Simon flushed which made his blackened eye throb anew. “Mom---“ he began.

“You little wuss---”

“He’s bigger---”

“You’re a coward like yer father!”

“Mom! That’s not fair! You drove him away!”

“Shut the fuck up!” She stood, swaying over Simon. Samantha started crying, softly at first, looking between boy and adult and not understanding how one can be so happy one minute and so like this another. His mother continued, “You are sooo like him. Look at you! I can’t stand the sight of you.”

“It’s not my fault. And I’m glad he’s gone cuz you don’t deserve him!” He sccreamed as he backed out of the kitchen.

That’s when she threw the half beer at him.

Now, turning to go home…

“Hey there young man, it’s awful cold outside. Would you like to sit inside for a bit? Gotta nice blaze goin' in the fireplace, made me some nice hot soup…?”

Simon turned back to see the old man on his porch with a lantern raised. In the flickering yellow light, the lines on his face looked deep.

He hesitated only a second then said, “Yes sir, there’s nothing I’d like more.” He followed the man over the porch and into the cabin which was indeed as cozy as he’d imagined. In the brighter light of the kitchen, Simon was surprised to see the man was not as old as he’d always thought. He chalked it up to his darn imagination, the thing was always running amok, but it was all he had against his current station in life. The man looked not much older than his father would be.

“Heh heh,” said the man. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“You do?”

“Sure! How is it that a regular guy like myself is happy to live alone in a cemetery?”

“I---um---understand it. I’d love to live out here in the woods…and you’re not really alone…”

“Heh heh heh. You do understand. The woods are full of friends- owls, jays, foxes, coons..all sorts of critters.”

“Yes sir,” Simon said, nodding.

As the man scooped the delicious smelling thick soup into bowls, he said, “Simon, I too, lost my family at a young age. Not as young as you, but yes, I learned to survive just as you have.”

“How do---”

“Soup’s getting cold. Dig in.”

Simon did as he was told. He was warm at last and being sated by food. The man said, “My name is Henry.”

“But how---”

“Tut tut dear boy, it is in my best interest to know anyone who crosses through my gates, do you not agree?”

“You mean like as in ‘friend or foe?’”

“Very aptly put my son.”

Simon felt something swell in his chest just then. No one had ever called him ‘my son.’ His eyes were glazed when he looked up at Henry. Over the man’s head a blob of a shadow descended. A plump abdomen with long thin black legs morphed from that shadow.

Simon’s eyes grew hugely round as he dropped his spoon into his empty bowl. “Uh… sir…there’s a spi---”

Henry’s eyes slid sideways. “Ah yes young man, it appears we have a visitor.” The large black spider descended lower on its invisible thread and to Simon’s surprise, it crept delicately onto Henry’s outstretched palm. The spider wound its way through Henry’s fingers and Simon felt as if he were being hypnotized. Henry said at last, “do not fear them. They are quite harmless to you.”

As Simon’s jaw snapped shut, his eyes continued their unconvinced goggle.

“They are our friends. They do nothing but help…”

After their supper Henry gave Simon a thick wool sweater that smelled of what he imagined his grandpa would smell like- sweet pipe tobacco, clove gum, a hint of sandalwood- it came down to his thighs. Henry lit a pipe and as they walked out to the yard, Henry slowed and seemed to stoop slightly. They stood under an old oak tree, oak ‘berries’ were scattered about. Henry pointed to one and said, “You ever seen one like that before?”

“Woah!” Simon said. He’d never seen one so large and in the light of the moon it seemed to glow white but for a nearly perfect round black spot on its belly..

“Pick that one up, son.”

Simon did so. It looked like others he’d collected, but larger and lighter in color, he wouldn’t see it fully until he got it home and added it to his collection.

“Go on now son, it’s safe.”

Simon believed him. Warm in the sweater and warm in his belly, and for the first time since he could remember, warm with a feeling of…of…he really didn’t know. This was so new to him.

He slept like Samantha that night.

The moon was full and because the early Fall evening was redolent of the summer’s heat, the boy’s windows were open. The gleaming rays fell upon the shelves across his room. The entire wall was a collection any botanist would envy: two dozen varieties of bird’s nests, every pine tree’s cones from a foot long to just an inch, feathers on large boards, with identifying names pinned on. And on one shelf, a collection of burls and gourds.

Though he’d never seen one like the newest one, he figured since he was just ten, there were probably a lot more he’d never seen before. In the moonlight, it glowed eerily and with the round black spot, it looked like an eyeless skull screaming.

He slept soundly for the first time in…months?... He’d not heard the wee one toddle into his room. She laughed in delight as Simon awoke groggily. He looked over at his baby half-sister and panic struck him like a shooting flame from a bonfire on a mission- she was holding his newest prize, the oak gourd from his new friend’s old tree. He lunged for the gourd and the baby fell with it screaming. His mother came then, taking long strides back and forth to balance herself.

“She came into my room and took my---" was all he got out.

“This is ridiculous! Give your baby sister the damn nut or …whatever it is and just fuckin go to sleep.”

Simon let the baby take the prize of his collection. What harm was there in that? She’d grow bored of it soon enough.

The next morning Simon went to Samantha’s bed. She was not in it, but the gourd was, so he snatched it up and raced back to his room to place back in the center of his collection. Where the gourds black eye had been there was now a hole. Simon scrutinized the perfect round hole and realized the thing was now completely hollow, it was lighter in weight, more like a husk.

Curious.

Approaching the kitchen, Simon heard his mother cooing to the offspring she adored. It was just seven, so she’d be hungover. Best to make his school lunch quickly and some toast if there was bread and hope she’d forgotten their last words the day before. She was holding the baby girl up in the air…but Sam wasn’t giggling and laughing like she normally did. She was smiling and staring at him and…as Simon watched, her eyes rolled up into their sockets. Her pudgy fists beat the air, but they seemed like marionette arms automatically waving…her usually pale skin had a very blueish tint. His mother’s face turned towards him, her arms lowered the child-thing to her bosom.

Simon halted with his hand raised towards the fridge door handle, the urge to flee winding up inside like a spring.

His mother said, “What? Go on off to school where the bullies will getcha agin.”

Simon just stared and without knowing it, he was backing up towards the door.

“What is wrong with you? You little freak. You’re so much like your father…”

Just then, the baby’s mouth opened into a dark maw and continued to open impossibly wide…its O shape filling half her face, Simon heard faint crackling; he realized with horror it was her jaws breaking.

His mother heard it too and frowned. She looked at the child in her arms and gasped. She shook her head and murmured under her breath, “no no no ---” then she looked at Simon and shrieked, “what have you done?!”

Out from the baby’s mouth crawled a large black spider.

Behind it came another. And another. They were glistening and wet with the child’s insides.

They kept coming. Out of the gaping maw they came. A dozen, twenty, thirty…they skittered on delicate long black legs over the baby’s face and up its mother’s arms. The baby’s blueish skin seemed paper thin, ridges and small bulges under it pulsed and writhed as more marched out, skittering and dancing over his mother’s bosom, shoulders and up onto her face. Simon recalled the old man’s words, “they are our friends. They do nothing but help…”

The spiders came from the small child vessel relentlessly. His mother’s face was a mass of chitonis legs and fat hairy globes…when at last she sunk to the floor to her knees, she screamed. The mass as a swarm made exodus into her open mouth.

Simon buried his baby half-sister in their yard. On the wooden cross he’d made, he’d carved, “Not her fault.”

Then he went back to the man he felt would welcome him…home…like a grandfather. After all, they had so much in common.