Upstairs to Story Time

I had no love for the scenery outside, not with the thought that people might live within the drops of water that were streaming down outside. Not with the thought that I might hear them once more, as I had in childhood.

“Let is go upstairs, let us find a room without windows to explore,” I suggested. I took my wife’s hand, and led her out the heavy door, and up two stories, until we came to the small pull down ladder, which seemed so out of place in such a large mansion, and clambered at once into the attic.

This itself was quite large, and it did contain one window, through which the grey light of the stormy sky shone through. A fixture on the wall turned on electric lights, and a dimmer allowed us to turn the brightness all the way up. I could not have handle a room in the dark in the state I was in. Jacinta was no better, and her heavy breathing punctuated every second, every thought: it was strong and like the ticking of the clock.

The room was mostly empty: only a few boxes were left behind by the previous occupants. Investigation into those things proved futile, as they contained it seemed only old clothes. But touching them, as Miss Gilda did when she saw a dress she imagined she might wear, turned them into the same dust that sprinkled through the whole place. So we simply sat in a circle and attempted to wait out the storm. All was quiet for about a minute, but then that urge within humans to speak, no matter how unnecessary, took hold.

“Does anyone know any scary stories?” asked Roman. My wife clutched my arm. She was in no state to hear such tales, and I was still very much anemic to the idea of confronting my own fears.

“This place looks to have some scary stories of it’s own,” Miss Gilda broke in.

Jacinta shuddered with the thought, and clutched me tighter.

“Do you think there’s a radio here we could listen to--” I started to ask, but Roman cut me off.

“If not, it wouldn’t too hard to make one up. Something happened in that basement, and there must be some reason food was left out, just to spoil, in that kitchen.”

“That will always be a guessing game,” said Robert. I thought that that would lay the whole matter to rest, and for a moment we resumed our former silence. But then Robert himself broke that taboo, and stated that he had a story of his own.

“Now this was when I was a child,” he said, “and I cannot prove it. But I was one of those lonely sorts unfortunate enough to have the confidence of an imaginary friend. At first, this friend, who was a soldier from the last war, in all the appropriate get up-- according to my mother’s recollection of events-- seemed innocent enough. We would play outside, in the rose bushes, and in little dugout throughout the lawn. We would play at war, of course, and always on our side. But suddenly, one day, after I asked this friend, who I called Rabbie and insisted was named Robert, just like myself, whether he had anyone he loved, he named my mother.

“‘But she’s married to my father!’ I said to the my imaginary friend.

“‘No matter,’ he said, and took a long drag, so it seemed, from his cigarette. ‘He will soon be removed from the equation.’ His face seemed to twist up, not with anger, but with the horrifying contortion of someone planning to do evil to another person. I ran-- tried to get to my mother, but my friend held me down. Or so I imagined it. I cannot tell whether this indeed happened or it is in my head-- I have recollections of being able to fly, too, at that very age. You see, my imagination was very large and every jump was a jetliner across the Atlantic, it seemed to me.”

“I suppose you dressed up like Peter Pan, too?” asked Roman. Another moment of silence.

Robert nodded. Then, he asked us whether we had all dressed up as any of the characters from the same story. I nodded yes-- I had indeed dressed as that immortal youthly sprite. So too, it appeared, had Roman.

“I dressed as Peter as well,” volunteered Miss Gilda.

“You never played at being Wendy?” asked my wife.

“No-- I never had a desire to play at being some mother to lost children. I preferred, I think, the same as everyone else here: to be the eternal boy. And you?”

“I did play the part of Wendy,” my wife said. “Mainly when my brother’s insisted, but should I have chosen what I wished to play I would have been Tiger Lily, or if I must be some projected fantasy, Tinkerbell.” My wife thought for a moment, and then added: “or indeed, I would truly have liked to be the Crocodile.”

“How appropriate a discussion for a toy-maker to be having, “ I said. I had thought to prevent the continuation of Robert’s story, for I had often seen in my own life, at crossroads and out of the corners of my eyes such men of shadow as he now described. At the very worst, in the darkness of night, they seemed to talk to me. I had made a game of it, of course, and tried to turn them from the frightening shapes into lucid dreams of wondrous beasts such as unicorns. But still, the thought of these shades disturbed me. And still, I could not find the words to prevent Robert from continuing his tale.

“I ran to my mother and began to tell her all about my friend. She did not believe me of course, and said that silly boys should put such notions out of their heads. There was nothing, it seemed to her, dark in this world but those struggles which God had made.

“I was a skeptic at an early age, I suppose, in those matters. But, when I turned around it seemed I would always find Rabbie standing behind me, waiting. Once, I even caught him looking up my mother’s skirt. I ran at him, intent on punching him away, but he disappeared behind me, and my hand stuck to my mother’s buttocks. I was thrashed quite roundly for that.

“It became worse three or four weeks later. My father had been away on some business trip, and returned quite tired. He wanted, I think, nothing more than to retire into the living room and take a few long drags from his pipe, letting the stale stench of long-abandoned tobacco, once more taken up, fill the room. But my mother needed some contraption, something, from our garage. And my father was the one to remove it. I think she had gone in their days earlier and attempted the retrieval herself, but was chased out by a fliedermaus-- by a bat.

“As my father went to retrieve the item, I saw my apparition of a friend appear and follow him. I went after them, quick as my short legs could sprint, to try and warn him. For I had seen the smile on Rabbie’s face: wicked and evil. I knew what he was thinking: he wanted to push my father off the ladder that he would use in retrieving the item.I sprinted and got to the garage just in time. I lunged, and attempted to push Rabbie out of the way. But it was too late.

“He had pushed the ladder, and my father fell. He fell, landing on me. My body was enough to cushion what could have been a nasty blow, and doctor’s did say, later, that without my weight preventing his tumble, my father’s skull would have broken and he would have necessarily died. But I was there.

“I was there and I received the blame. A psychologist later suggested to me that my friend, the apparition I thought I saw, was nothing but a projection of my incestual desire. That my father’s return meant that my childlike belief in my status as the new father was threatened and I conjured up a spirit to deal with my natural fratricidal tendencies. As a rational thinker, of course this makes sense-- but I cannot deny to myself the possibility that I did indeed see something in my youth.

“Even some times now I think I see Rabbie standing in doorways, waiting by the side of the road. A tall strange might appear, and before they turn around there is always a slightly fear in me, like small dagger’s in the stomach turning outwards, that when the person’s visage is reveal it will be the same shadow I knew in my youth.”