I. THE TALL THING
EDDIE KNOWS WHAT his parents are fighting about. Even if it’s about bills, or ‘Dad’s boozing’ as Mom calls it, or what’s for dinner—it doesn’t matter. The fighting is always about Danny, even when it’s not. Eddie knows this because they didn’t fight before Danny was taken away. And he knows this because his parents don’t look at each other for more than a few seconds anymore, and because at night Mom spoons him for twenty minutes before going upstairs to bed. Ever since Danny was taken, his parents feel like walking glass statues to him, and he’s always wondering which one is going to break first.
He’s sitting on the floor of his bedroom reading a book called The Divine Comedy, and he doesn’t understand it. He thought because it had comedy in the title that the book would be funny and maybe it could distract him, if only for a little bit. But it turns out the story isn’t funny at all. The drawings that accompany the story do fascinate him, but he’s having trouble looking at them, let alone reading the confusing story. The sound of his mom and dad trying not to shout is making his stomach feel like a tight drum being wound tighter. And, every once in a while, Mom or Dad lose control and a word or two quivers sharply in the air for a moment, only to sink back down into the muted, angry whispers. ‘Booze,’ ‘cops,’ and his own name are some of the words that ping like radio signals.
A week ago, Mom went to Danny’s room after she woke up and found his crib empty. They called the police, and the police came and looked all over the house as Eddie sat at the top of the stairs, watching the officers scratch their hair and shake their heads. Dad walked from room to room but didn’t say anything; Mom kept crying and saying she wanted to talk to the chief of police. Everyone in the state looked for Danny. Mom and Dad say they’re still looking for him, but the phone doesn’t ring as much as it did in the beginning.
Eddie wishes it weren’t autumn break. Watching Mom float around the house like a smiling ghost is too hard. And when his father comes home at night, his face looks like a skeleton and he drinks more than he used to. Eddie would rather have his teachers asking him if he was okay than deal with the walking shells his parents have left behind. And when he’s alone, he misses Danny.
He sits below his bedroom window and lets the sunlight heat his back. It feels good, but it doesn’t release the knot in his stomach. He turns the page to two men riding on the back of a dragon with a man’s face. In the background, scary pointed rocks jut toward a grey sky. The image makes Eddie think of winter, but he isn’t sure why. The thought of winter stirs a dormant memory and Eddie lets his brain take him there. He remembers carrying Danny through their backyard the winter after he was born, kicking thick snow as his brother looked around at the blinding white in total awe. His parents watched them from the porch, his father laughing about something Mom said as she took picture after picture with her phone. Eddie thinks those pictures are probably still somewhere on his mom’s laptop. He remembers how small Danny felt beneath the layers and layers of insulation from the cold, how he could sense the fragility of his brother. He remembers
feeling a fierce sense of pride at the brief moment he was allowed to be the guardian of something as delicate as Danny, and understanding love in a way he hadn’t before. He turns the page to distract himself.
A lull in his parent’s conversation makes Eddie lift his head. There’s something odd about it, but he can’t place it immediately. Why does his room sound strange? He listens, his head cocked, frowning, and then realizes what it is. The birds outside his window have stopped chirping. Eddie thinks about why that might be just as the comforting heat on his back is cut off. A shadow spills on the floor in front of him. He turns.
For a moment, Eddie can’t see what’s blocking the light. It looks like a tall man with a small head standing just behind the glass. The man is large enough that he blocks almost the entire window and as Eddie’s eyes adjust, he can see that it’s not a man at all. It has hair on some parts of its body, but a lot of it is covered in loose, drooping pink skin. Some of it is scabby. It has a face that looks like a sick dog and eyes like Eddie’s uncle Evan, who Mom and Dad say went to jail for hurting kids. Eddie stands up, almost tripping over the open book, and wants to start screaming. But his mouth stays shut and he’s not sure why that is.
The tall thing doesn’t move. Its blue eyes are watery, bloodshot, and the air around its body ripples like the skin is boiling hot. Eddie can see the big tree behind the creature, distorted, wobbling, beckoning to him. For a moment, he thinks he knows something about what he’s seeing, but it slips away to the back of his mind as fresh waves of terror slosh against his brain. He can hear his parents talking, their voices calmer now, but still undercut with a note of anxiety. Eddie wants to call out to them, to alert them that their first-born is in peril. But Eddie can’t say a word, and the tall thing crinkles its mouth: a putrid smile. Even through the glass, Eddie can smell its breath, a smell like hot, spoiled meat, mixed with a lower scent that makes him think of the basement. Steam rises from either side of its mouth; the steam fogs the glass of the window. It raises its arm and it has hands like a man, only with longer fingers and nails that look like the claws
of a wolf; yellowed and canine. It taps on the glass in a frantic little rhythm. Tap tap tap tap tap tap.
“Hello, Eddie,” the tall thing whispers. Its voice is gravel and snapping twigs. It’s panting and he watches as a thin strand of saliva drips from the corner of its mouth and disappears below the window frame. “I have your brother, Eddie. I have Danny.” Eddie feels something catch in his chest and his racing heart doubles its pace. The tall thing stares at Eddie, unblinking, and continues to tap. “Don’t you want to see your brother, Eddie?” Without meaning to, Eddie nods. The tall thing breathes in sharply, then splays an open palm against the window and brings its face to the glass, fogging it with its breath. Tap tap tap tap tap tap. “Then let me in, Eddie,” it says as a grey tongue emerges from behind its lips and licks away spittle.
Its face reminds Eddie of a raccoon he once found in the woods. The creature had been stuck in a bear trap and Eddie saw that it had almost chewed through its own leg. When it saw Eddie, it screeched at him, and started scratching at the dirt, making frenzied little grunting sounds. Its paws had begun to bleed as it tried to claw itself toward Eddie.
“Open the window. And I’ll bring you to your brother,” the visitor says. Eddie tries to stop looking at the brilliant blue eyes of the thing in his window, but he is locked in place. He thinks of the monster he learned about in school with the snakes for hair. Medusa. “Let me in,” it says. Its smile is gone now. Its lips are pulled back and its face is so close to the window its teeth click against the glass as it breathes in and out. “Let me in or I’ll eat your brother and use his bones to smash this window open. And then I’ll eat you.” As it says this, a fresh stream of saliva issues from its mouth and drips down the fogged glass, making racing trails of spit in the steam.
Eddie hears the clicking of his mother’s heels as they come down the hall and the horrible blue eyes shift, glancing over the top of Eddie’s head; he feels something in his forehead go loose, like a wire suddenly snapping inside him. He whips his head to look around at his door just as his mother opens it. She has clearly just put on makeup, but Eddie can see the red rims of her eyes under the mascara. Eddie looks back to the window, but the tall thing is gone. The fog left by its breath fades until no sign of the creature remains, ...
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