Joel 2:2
a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness. Like dawn spreading across the mountains, a large and mighty army comes, such as never was in ancient times nor ever will be in ages to come.
Mama wrapped the rope around Robert’s chest.
“Can you breathe?” she asked, twisting the rope into a knot.
Robert’s eyes shifted from the speckled sun rays shimmering through the curtains to his mother's soft face.
“Yes Mama,” he said.
The screen door bounced closed, Papa’s leaden steps echoed across the wooden floor. His shadowed silhouette filled the threshold. He exhaled. “Ready?”
Mama faced Robert, tied to the kitchen chair, his feet firmly set on the floor. The dust swirls paused mid-flight, Papa’s heavy breathing slowed and Robert drifted into Mama’s blue eyes, the walls of the kitchen fell away and he floated into the quiet white void beyond. A single green door stood before him. No floor, no ceiling, no walls -- only the door and its dark brown knob, waiting.
The knob turned, the hinges squealed as Mama pulled the door open to stand in front of Robert.
“If you need me,” she began, placing both hands on his shoulders, “ I might be able to talk to you from the Sullivan’s farm. We have never tried from that distance so I am not sure if I will be able to hear you knock or call out. I will be listening but I want you to know I am not abandoning you.”
“Okay,’ Robert said. “Why can’t I help you?”
She looked past him into the white void and then knelt down to meet him face to face. “Soon. You won’t be a little boy forever. But…today…right now, it’s safer if I know that you are in the house.”
She pulled him close. He buried his face in her hug. She let go and stepped back through the door, pulling it closed. The whiteness faded into soft morning light, the motes of dust resumed their random flights and Papa took a big breath from the doorway.
“Are you ready?” he asked again. “I can go by myself.”
Mama shook her head without taking her eyes off Robert. “No, we both need to go. Geraldine needs someone there while you men are out in the fields.”
“Well, let’s go, it’s almost ninety now and it’ll be over a hundred before lunch.”
Mama took both of Robert’s hands, kissed him on the forehead, lingering, reviewing her choices this morning.
“We won’t be long.”
She stood and followed in the wake of Papa’s urgency.
Robert closed his eyes, listening to them leave, composing The Symphony of Departure: the light decrescendo of steps retreating, the percussive bass of the car doors closing, the sudden crescendo of the revving engine, gears grinding, gravel crunching, leaving only loneliness in its wake.
A boy tied to a chair in a kitchen. Guarded by Flour and Sugar, twin canisters of the royal baking guard. Above him Pot and Pan hung on the wall, knighted sentries holding the high ground. Robert knew his captors well, knew their stoic silence.
To anyone who lives with boys it would be a surprise to imagine how still Robert could sit. Boys vibrate with a restless vigor and curiosity. Often falling to the bite of their mother’s exasperation and their father’s impatience. But Robert, no stranger to the hunger of his father’s belt, practiced restraint, veiled himself in the quiet morning.
This was not the first time Robert wrapped himself in the whispers of patience and persistence. Last night, scared out of bed by the twisted nightmares of dead creatures scurrying in the dark, he hid in the shadows on the bottom step of the stairs, listening to the hurried voices of his parents through the narrow yellow gap of the kitchen door. The emotional charge of being out of bed evaporated when his parents' quiet whispers, cloaked in worry and dread, slipped past the open door.
“... just disappear Albert,” Mama said, hoarse tears in her voice.
“Shhh. We will go over early and help them search. Hunt will be out there with his dogs,” Papa said, his chair scraping against the wood floor.
Robert stood on his perch hearing Papa’s first step, unsure, a fly wiggling in the spider’s web. The heavy steps stopped, nothing moved, he decided to step down and see what he could through the cracked opening. He closed one eye and peered through the threshold gap. Mama was sitting, her face in Papa’s belly, his large calloused hand rubbing her head. She sat back, flushed and puffy.
“Okay, but what do we tell Robert?”
“Nothing, he stays here. We say we are going to the bank. Once we know where Mary is you can talk to him about what happened.”
Mary.
The girl friend who looked for bugs under stones and dug for worms around the old fence posts. Who loved to dig up the pink nightcrawlers and feel them bow and flex as they writhed between her soft little fingers.
The girl friend whose ponytail he pulled at lunch and ran as she chased him across the schoolyard. Her wooden-soled red shoes slapping against the concrete.
The girl friend who walked home with him. Throwing rocks at crows and crooked fence posts, making up the best stories, the funniest stories about a blind baker named Mr. Piewhistle and his magical cakes that cause so much trouble in the little town of Hadleigh.
Next summer they would be lost between childhood and adolescence, where it would be awkward to talk to each other about worms, and games of chase would be distant memories belonging to other people. But now, in the twilight of childhood, she was a friend in all the best ways that girls and boys can be friends.
He was about to throw the kitchen door open, indignant that his parents' voices woke him up and demand to know what was going on. Better to be the bully than the spy.
Papa let Mama go and stood looking at the door. His cold dark eyes stared into the shadows where Robert hid. Nightmare or no nightmare, Robert needed to be in bed before the kitchen door swung open. He flew up the stairs, one stockinged foot after the other, lightly skipping every other step.
Now in the morning light, Robert sat tied to a chair. His mother’s knots held firm around his chest and legs, grounding him in the present. The kitchen was quiet, but he could still hear faded whispers in the dying shadows.
He wondered why Mama hadn’t lied to him, in fact, neither parent said anything this morning until Mama whispered to him. She had woken him up, brought him downstairs for breakfast, and, after washing the dishes, tied him to this chair.
She was evangelical about her knots. The rope wrapped around his legs and chest, his arms tied so that his hands rested in his lap. He flexed his fingers. Mama’s knots had always held. But this time, she didn’t know about the knife.
He worked his hand into his shorts, past the white cotton fabric, and pulled the knife free. Thankful for the foldable blade, he cut himself free.
Free, the knife hidden in his pocket not his undies, Robert walked to the front of the house and looked through the screen door. The last of the truck’s dust plume settled on the main road.
He moved through the empty house. One main room, a kitchen, and a bedroom on the first floor. His room up the narrow wooden stairs. Quiet.
Displayed above the fireplace lay granddaddy’s shotgun. How much better Robert would have felt last week if he had had the shotgun with him behind the old chicken coop instead of a stupid stick.
Robert had been hiding in the shade of the empty coop, looking out at the rising plateau that marked the western edge of their property. Cottonwood trees crowned the ridge, stagnant in the midday sun.
He leaned against a hardened gray stump, the old chopping block. Mama’s delicious chicken dinners started on this chopping block sometimes mixed with a wayward fingertip or a careless thumb. At least that is what Papa told him to scare Robert off of playing with the hatchet.
It was in the shade of the abandoned chicken coop that Robert, the king of marbles and pisser of beds, hid from the yellow hot sun that blistered his neck and the thick brown belt that reddened his ass. He swished his stick in and out of the fine gray dirt, aimlessly trying to keep his mind off the angry welts Papa painted on his backside. Papa, who was hell-bent on whooping the bed wetting out of Robert.
The boy made the promise all spanked children make. He promised the universe he would never hit his child. He promised that if his child made a mistake, he would give them hugs, not the back of his hand. Robert promised all of his unborn children that he would be the best dad ever.
The patch of shade he crouched in dwindled in the high sun of mid-afternoon, drying the fresh tears of hurt and rejection. He decided he would walk out to the trees, and find solace in the shade when he saw the matted brown fur by the corner of the shed.
A large brown rat, curled into a comma, eyes open, tongue swollen black.
Robert reached out his stick, taking his place amongst generations of boys before him, and poked the rat's distended belly. The tip caught in the damp fur and tore the belly open, spilling out a pile of wriggling bright white maggots. He stood up, dropping the stick, backing away from the squirming shiny mess. He turned and flew for the house, chased by the image of a dead rat’s whiskers rubbing against his bare ankles.
Nightmares seemed to cure the bedwetting. For almost a week he woke up terrified in the dark. Dead-eyed rats licking his skin. Last night, the scare that woke him and sent him downstairs to spy on his parents, was the feeling his belly was full of squirming dead-eyed rodents, and their hungry maggot babies.
Now, by himself in the shadows of the morning light, the memory chilled his spine, tiny nails scratching at the back of his mind. He didn’t feel like being alone in the house anymore, alone in the enclosed space, nowhere to run if (when) the black-tongued rats came running down the stairs.
It was time to leave, he had important things to do, he had to help find Mary. Climb the back plateau, hike the woods, ferry himself across the White River. He didn’t want to swim across. The river was safe near the banks, out in the middle, dark, swirling eddies and currents would pull you under and never let go.
After he ferried himself across the river, he would meet up with his papa before they went out looking for her.
Papa couldn’t whoop him for being a good friend, a good neighbor.
He had to help find Mary. She was his friend.
He took a step towards the door and then thought better of walking through the woods by himself without some sort of protection not afforded by pointy sticks.
Robert dragged a chair over to the fireplace. He stood tiptoe-tall, resting one hand on the mantle and using the other to lift the stock.
He had never held the gun before, and like most things, the reality of an object didn’t become true until he felt the weight of it.
It was so heavy.
But he wasn’t going to be discouraged. He propped it over his shoulder, like Papa did, and made his way outside, refusing to be helpless against whatever crawled through the woods.
Dry, cracked fissures crisscrossed the back field, thirsty little mouths begging the summer sky for just a few drops of rain. Papa knew this was going to be a hard summer. He joked with Mama one night, saying they should plant corn. Then the next day they could sell popcorn to the movie theaters. They all laughed.
Robert smiled.
Robert reached the plateau. At the top of the ridge, Papa had once tied a rope to a sturdy tree. In winter, when the hill lay buried under thick, unbroken snow, Robert had climbed this same slope, the sled’s runners glinting as he hauled it behind him. He would tie the sled to the rope, grip the rough fibers with frozen fingers, and drag himself upward, step by step, until he reached the summit.
Now, in the dry dust of early summer, he looped the same rope around the shotgun’s stock, just behind the trigger. He pulled himself up the incline. The gun bumped along behind him, scuffing through the powdery dirt, and rattling over loose stones. At the top, breathing hard, he untied the gun, brushed some of the dust off the barrel, then turned to look back at the farm shimmering in the hazy heat.
He had come a long way, but not far enough. Mary still needed him. He tossed the shotgun over his shoulder and turned into the shadow of the trees.
The woods felt as if God decided to plant every huge tree, a maze of brush, dangling vines, and a wall of brush from The Garden of Eden. Where there had been no breeze in the fields, here, the air flowed, as if the trees created their wind, a ripple of cool breath from one branch to another, shimmering through unnamable hues of green and yellow. The whispers of the cottonwoods soothed Robert.
It was not long until he came to Chadron Creek or the small gully that would be Chadron Creek if it ever rained again. He didn’t even have to worry about getting his shoes muddy, the creek bed was bone crack dry.
He followed the creek bed until the ground squished, then he stepped out and pushed his way carefully through the underbrush to the edge of the White River.
The river banks, like canyon walls, dropped into the slow-moving water. Brown currents eddied around unseen rocks creating quiet pockets for the catfish to hide and wait for a dawdling dragonfly. He had crossed here a hundred times, but something in the air felt different today. As if something were watching. Waiting.
A splash to his left turned his attention down river to the old swinging tree, an old cottonwood growing out of the side of the bank, angled and bent to create the perfect branches for rope swings.
This year’s rope hung carelessly over the river. Someone had been out swimming and hadn’t tied the rope back. Now someone, probably him, would have to shimmy out on the big bowed branch and swing the rope back over to the bank. Robert decided he had about had it with ropes today.
He started towards the rope swing and the old raft tied to the base of the tree when a blue jay landed in the path. A nut in its mouth. Mama hated blue jays.
“They are the nastiest, meanest birds I have ever seen,” she said.
Robert watched the jay work the shell. Which was just enough time to forget why he was in the woods, and in forgetting, gave space to one of an infinite number of bad ideas that all little boys have when they get distracted from good intentions.
The gun was heavy, but he knew, if he was steady, he could blast that old jay right off the path, and later, when he got home, make Mama proud with how big and strong he was becoming.
The jay paid him no attention, its stop-motion pecking focused on the meaty inside of the nut.
Robert pulled the rifle into his shoulder, just like Papa showed him. He sighted the bird, then took a breath and waited.
The jay bent over, and he pulled the trigger. Robert flew back, the gun somersaulting out of his hands, landing somewhere in the weeds. He lay in the underbrush, holding his shoulder, his hands shaking. His shoulder throbbed, and he wasn’t sure if he would be in more trouble for leaving the gun or blowing his arm off.
Robert sat up, dazed, ears filled with a dry static that made his back teeth ache. The jay was gone, and he wasn’t sure where the shotgun ended up.
Then, rustling in the tall grass. A shadow rose.
A man. Wiping his mouth with the back of one hand, pushing something red into his pocket with the other.
He was a faded watercolor of blues and yellows, symmetrical patterns highlighted with red dots. The faded tattooed tapestry covered his shirtless muscled torso. He was without a nose and to make up for the lack of this most common of facial features his eyes, black as night, sat wide and big, nearly on the sides of his head. Below his flat reflectionless eyes ran an endless seam, a mouth that nearly split his chin from his head. A crudely made Jack O’ Lantern grin.
He had to be from the circus because the circus was the only place that would accept such awful deformities, hidden away in his own tent, a nickel a peek to see the Grasshopper Man because that was what he looked like, a large, flightless grasshopper. He smiled a large, lipless grin.
“Good morning, young master,” he clicked.
Robert, taught to be respectful, whispered a small, “Good morning, sir,” and rubbed his shoulder.
“Sir? The young man has called me sir! What a fine morning this is to meet one so well-mannered!”
The Grasshopper Man weaved in and out of the heavy underbrush near the riverbank, he emerged onto the path. Robert saw that the deformities did not stop with his face. The boy felt his heart stop as the man, the creature, bent to pick up a blue feather fluttering in a bush. This creature's legs were put on backward. His knees bent the wrong way.
The man knelt to get eye-to-eye with the boy. Robert couldn’t look at the Grasshopper Man’s awful face, he dropped his eyes to the kaleidoscope of colors on the man’s chest.
“How is your shoulder?” he asked
“It hurts. But I think it will be okay. Thank you for asking. Are you in the circus?” Robert asked.
“I am not.”
“Then why are there so many colors?”
“It’s how my father made me. Where are your parents? You seem to be very young to be alone with such a big gun.”
“They are helping our neighbors look for Mary. Are you an Indian?”
“No, I am not. Who is Mary?”
“She is my friend. She didn’t come home yesterday, and my mom and papa went to look for her. I’m not supposed to know, but I snuck downstairs last night and overheard them talking, and then I snuck out of the house and I snuck my granddaddy's gun…What are you?”
“Such inquisitiveness this morning from the young master!” the Grasshopper Man said, bouncing on his horribly bent legs.
He ran the blue feather under Robert’s nose, letting the fuzz tickle Robert’s nostrils.
“So soft. Have you ever studied a feather?”
Robert shook his head.
“What a miracle! So delicate, light, the wistful dream of a great creator. But! So amazingly strong, a structure that allows a creature to break the bounds of earth and soar amongst the clouds. What would we be like if we saw the world like a beautiful blue jay?”
He looked from the feather to Robert and bent in closer.
“I am very confused, a bird dies in the woods and no one mourns, no cries of grief, no screams for justice, not even an echo of its song.”
The crooked blue man held out the blue feather for Robert to take. Robert slowly lifted his hand to take the feather, making sure he did not touch the long, hard fingertips.
The Grasshopper Man snatched it back, distracted by a glimmer of metal in the bushes behind Robert. His crocodile smile flattened. He glanced back at Robert, uttered a quiet “tut, tut” and then walked (hopped) to find the sparkle that caught his eye.
“Look, you brought something also. So interesting. Very, very interesting at how we find ourselves this morning, young sir. Do you not think it is ironic that I bring you a feather, a juxtaposition of beauty and strength, art and science? And I would not have that feather if you did not bring this gun.”
He cradled the shotgun, judging its weight with a few thoughtful bounces.
“It is so easy to pull a trigger. And what does it create? A bird died today, and no one mourns. But one little girl is late for chores, and a whole town gathers to look for her. Where is the balance in that? Where is the respect?”
He ran his long, blue fingers down the barrel, rubbing the smooth wood of the worn stock. Then turned the shotgun towards Robert, running his finger over the trigger guard. Gun in hand, he walked back to Robert, still sitting in the middle of the dusty path.
“Open your mouth young sir, and we will continue this game you have started today. We will create something new by destroying something old.”
Robert trembled, the choke of tears growing in the back of his throat. He did not want to visit with this awful man anymore. He wanted Papa to walk up and take out his belt and whip this awful blue man while Robert hid behind his Mama’s dress, hysterical with relief that his parents would keep him safe no matter what.
“Time to open that pretty little mouth. And it is pretty. I should like to have a mouth like that, I think.” He pushed the barrel against Robert’s mouth.
“You will want to open up now before I break your teeth off and you choke,” the Grasshopper Man said, a small smile opening his mouth, ten thousand needle-sharp teeth hidden behind his bony grin.
Robert opened his mouth, anything not to see those awful teeth. The oily bitterness of gunpowder filled his mouth.
“How many shells does your daddy keep in the gun?”
His finger slowly squeezed the trigger. Click.
The Grasshopper Man laughed.
“Good, now we can play a little bit longer.” He stood and snapped the shotgun in half over his knee, tossing the pieces into the grass.
Robert cried.
“That was my granddaddy's gun. Papa is going to whoop me.”
The Grasshopper Man looked down and laughed. “What an incredibly odd and horrible thing for you to say. Oh, Robert, that is so absolutely, deliciously awful. I wouldn’t worry, young Robert. I don’t think he is ever going to get the chance.”
“But I need it to find Mary, to get her home,” he whimpered.
The Grasshopper Man reached back and pulled something out of his pocket -- a small red wooden-soled shoe, the white laces still tied, speckled with drops of dried blood. He slipped one long finger into one of the bow loops and started a slow twirl. It paused at the peak of each arc, holding for a single breath before momentum dragged it back down. Over and over. A pendulum. A heartbeat.
Robert could not look away. He thought he would like to just sit and watch the shoe spin, over and over and over again.
“I don’t know about any missing little girls. But I can help you look if you like. You may not want what you find, though. Atonement is not for the faint of heart.”
“That would be very nice,” Robert said, forgetting about the broken gun and his missing friend.
Robert stared at the twirling red shoe. Over and over and over again. Each arc left a little less space for anything else -- no gun, no Papa, no Mary. Only the gentle, predictable swing. Safe. Peaceful.
The Grasshopper Man’s fingers brushed Robert’s cheek with a long, bony finger. He barely noticed. The world stilled. Worry floated away, and Robert felt thankful that he had found this strange blue man in the woods with his magic red shoe.
Relaxed, the weight of the bad dreams floated away -- no more whispered screams in the night.
The Grasshopper Man’s smile faded as he opened his mouth. His face fell open. His jaw stretched to the middle of his chest. Robert watched, amazed, as the mouth spread wider, wider than the sky, wider than thought, widening until there was nothing left of Grasshopper Man’s face, nothing left of the world.
Robert stepped over the razor-toothed threshold, careful not to scrape his legs, and disappeared into the black maw.
It was dark. Not just dark -- light was impossible to imagine in this darkness.
Eyes had no purpose.
Robert stretched out his hands, swinging them in slow, careful arcs -- more afraid of what he might touch than what he wasn’t touching.
A sound stopped his stunted, peg-legged stumble. Scuttling.
The restless skitter of tiny, clawed feet. The flick of long, whipping tails. The whiskered curiosity of bright pink noses.
And he knew -- they were not alive.
These rats were as sightless as the dead rat behind the shed. Were their bellies full? Or were their bloated black tongues still hoping for a taste of something soft and fresh?
He ran.
Long, hopeless strides in the dark, racing to escape the fear.
The last time he had felt this way, he had snuck downstairs and sat in the warm wedge of kitchen light, listening to his parents.
Over the scratches and scurries chasing him, he heard his mother’s voice.
Calling him.
Calling him down for dinner.
Calling him into the light.
Then he saw it.
A black rectangle ahead, framed in yellow light -- a door, cracked open.
His steps became lighter, his heart stronger.
He picked up speed, buoyed by hope.
Robert burst through the door.
Into the light.
He shielded his eyes.
The darkness burned away, and he stood in the glow of the warm noon sun, whispering shadows playing on his face.
The river ran clear, the stagnant green hue flushed away.
And in his hand, he was holding a single blue feather.
Transfixed by its intricate beauty -- the layers of blues and whites and blacks -- he lifted it up to the light.
How could something so amazing be created?
A flicker of movement on the path caught Robert’s eye.
A blue jay. Hopping. Flapping. Dragging its right wing. With each struggling jump, Robert felt the poor bird’s confusion.
A breeze whispered through the woods, little branches swaying and singing.
He looked at the long blue feather in his hand. And he realized -- if he gave the bird its feather back, it would be fine.
Everything would be fine.
He could fix this.
Fix the bird.
Find Mary.
Eager with the glow of hope, he placed the quill end of the feather between his front teeth so that he had both hands free to scoop up the bird, carefully enclosing the wounded wing against its body.
The bird did not struggle.
Its body was lighter than Robert expected. He turned the bird around to look at it for the first time. The gray-nosed mouth lashed out at him. White teeth sank into his thumb. The long-nosed, black-tongued, dead-faced rat stared back at him. The bird’s head was gone, replaced with a rat’s.
Robert dropped the monstrosity. It flapped and writhed unnaturally, the grotesque combination of head and body defying sense. The long-nosed, black-tongued, dead-faced rat cheeped as it flapped toward him.
He scuttled back, but before he could scream, the air filled with shrieks of pain behind him.
Robert spun.
Lying in the path was the curled, bloated body of the dead rat, maggots slipping out of its belly. The missing blue jay head attached to the rotting corpse -- screaming, writhing, trying to break free from the maggots wiggling their way to eat its unprotected eyes.
The flapping bird rat hopped past Robert and began to eat its own body, the blue jay head screeching.
“I can’t fix this!” Robert screamed, covering his ears.
The sound reminded him of the chicken he and Papa had found one morning -- alive but gutted by some wild animal. Papa had grabbed the hatchet and ended the suffering.
"Never let an animal suffer, Robert. It is the cruelest thing a person can do."
Robert had to end the screaming.
He spotted a heavy stone, half-buried in the brush. He scrambled over to it, clawing it free from the roots and vines. He heaved it up -- it was the heaviest thing he had ever lifted. Waddling splay-legged, he crept up behind the Frankenstein feeding frenzy.
The blue jay head had taken to pecking out one of the rat’s dead eyes, and it hung like a broken yo-yo from the socket. Robert could not lift the rock any higher, he sucked in a breath and lifted the stone as high as he could. The rock hit with a sickening squelch. A pop of rotting organs.
Then -- silence. Darkness.
“Robert!”
Far away, his father’s voice. The feel of a big hand shaking his shoulder. His eyes flickered open.
His father’s large, worried face hovered inches away, blocking out the blinding afternoon sun. Robert was not in the woods anymore. Had he escaped just to pass out in the fields? How long had he been lying out in this burning heat?
“Robert. Can you hear me?”
“Yes, Papa,” he whispered, trying to sit up.
“Robert, don’t move. I need you to be very still.”
Papa paused, a quizzical look on his face.
“There is something in your stomach. I need to get it out.”
Something in his stomach? Robert struggled to move, but his arms were tied down. So were his feet.
How could that be? He still couldn't be in the chair.
Papa opened Robert’s pocketknife and began whittling the end of a stick.
Robert’s stick. The one he had used to poke the dead rat behind the woodshed. Where did Papa find his stick?
Shavings dropped into the dust. Papa eyed his work and tapped the point with his finger.
“Ouch. That should work,” he smiled, glancing from the sharpened stick to Robert’s sweaty, dusty face.
Papa folded the knife and slid it into his back pocket.
Then he adjusted himself, propping himself on his knees, a penitent man preparing to make one more sacrifice to his angry god.
Robert’s breath hitched. His eyes darted from his father’s face to the pointed stick hovering over his belly.
A flash of blue. Papa’s sleeves were pulled back.
His skin.
Blue.
“You are not my Papa!” Robert screamed, fury surging through him.
He slammed his fists into the creature's blue, mottled chest. The Grasshopper Man sighed, pushed Robert down, and smiled, his needle white teeth gleaming in the light.
“I am not your Papa,” he whispered. “Papa will never see you again.”
Robert squirmed, his fingers scrabbled in the dirt, and he felt something solid. A broken stock of the shotgun. He grabbed it and swung, smashing it into the Grasshopper Man’s widening grin.
The blue head snapped to the side, disintegrated into a flurry of grasshoppers before pulling itself together. Robert twisted, kicked, and broke free. He ran towards the raft, to the other side of the river.
He ran. Ran so fast, hoping he could outrun the monster behind him.
A shadow passed over him. The blue man landed on the bank in front of him, right next to the raft -- the only way across the river, the only way to safety. Robert skidded to a stop next to the rope swing tree.
The Grasshopper Man slammed his hard-shelled, slender foot into the raft. It exploded, splinters flying into the air. The rope-tied pieces pulled apart and twisted slowly in the sluggish current.
“Master Robert…has no boat.”
He cocked his head and watched Robert.
“At some point, Master Robert, you might want to run away.” He paused, glanced back over his shoulder and then back at Robert. “There are things under that tree you don’t want to see. Red things. Torn thing. Awful things that will kill you. Do you understand, Robert?”
Robert would never outrun him. But maybe -- just maybe -- he could outclimb him.
He scrambled up the tree, fingers scraping and grabbing at the old, rotted boards he used for a ladder. He shimmied out onto the rope swing branch, scooching out past the knot holding up the swing, to the end.
Crack. Robert bounced. He twisted to look, and the Grasshopper Man stood on the branch, one hand on the tree. No more room to run.
“Will you walk into my parlour?” the Grasshopper Man laughed, “Said the spider to the fly.”
Robert turned around, straddling the branch, hanging high over the river. The Grasshopper Man bent his backwards knees and began to bounce, seesawing Robert up and down. The old branch was not going to hold; it would crack and splinter, dropping Robert into the suffocating water below.
The tire swing rope dangled between them. Maybe Robert could use it -- pull it up and swing it like a whip, knock the creature off the branch, or at worst, get him to stop bouncing the branch. He gathered the rope in both hands and pulled. With each tug, the Grasshopper Man pushed down harder. Already feeling like a rodeo cowboy on a bucking bronc, Robert twirled the rope over his head and lashed it toward the Grasshopper Man.
He caught it easily. Robert pulled back, trying to wrench the rope free. The Grasshopper Man held firm.
“Tis the prettiest little parlour you ever did see,” the blue man sang, his grip tightening.
Robert knew tug of war. Knew when he was overmatched. Knew when he could not win. He also knew that, sometimes, if he could not win, he could laugh. As the Grasshopper Man heaved, Robert let go.
The blue man lurched backward -- his weight snapping the brittle, rotted branch beneath him.
The branch gave way. Wood splintered. They fell.
Robert plunged into the cold, stagnant river, kicking and clawing, he broke the surface, coughing. His eyes scanned the water --
The Grasshopper Man was sinking.
His long, spindly limbs tangled in the jagged remains of the broken branch, twisting like a puppet caught in its own strings. The river pulled, hungry and relentless, its murky depths swallowing him inch by inch.
His black, reflectionless eyes stayed fixed on Robert, unblinking, unreadable-not panicked, not afraid. Just watching.
The water sucked at his open mouth, filling the deep seam of his grin until his jagged teeth disappeared beneath the rippling surface.
Then, in a final, jerking motion, the river claimed him.
A few bubbles churned up, popping on the surface like whispered secrets.
Then -- nothing.
The water flowed on, as if he had never been there at all. Robert kicked for the shore, his arms aching, his breath ragged. He collapsed onto the riverbank, drenched, shaking, alive.
He pulled himself up the bank of the river.
Silence.
He saw the big cottonwood Tree where the Grasshopper Man had been hiding. But he hadn’t been hiding? No, he had not -- Robert could feel the sick awareness coursing through his body. The Grasshopper Man wasn’t upset because Robert found him. He was upset because Robert interrupted him. Interrupted his meal.
Robert stepped toward the spot where the nightmare first appeared, he noticed a flash of color. Stretched out behind the tree, lying in the matted grass, two feet -- one bare, the other wearing a red shoe.
Mary lay still.
Her white dress was stained by a round red circle of blood soaking through. A single bite mark encircled her stomach: hundreds of tiny pin pricks, ring around the rosy.
Robert fell to his knees beside her.
“Mary,” he whispered, holding her hand. “Mary, wake up.”
Nothing.
“Mary, open your eyes!” he implored, voice cracking, “Please.”
He started to cry. It was over. Mary was dead, and he would be soon. His legs were useless weights, and when the creature pulled itself out of the bottom of the river, Robert would die. He would be torn into little bits for the rats to eat. He was trapped just like…just like…
Just like...
He wiped away the tear. Just like he had been, trapped in the darkness.
Mama read to him all the time. Stories about witches and monsters trapping children in the woods -- huffing and puffing down their houses, locking them in cages. Somehow, the children found a way out. They tricked the monster. They made it safely home to live happily ever after. Some of the stories Robert did not like because there was kissing. Kissing to wake up the sleeping princess.
This was a grim fairy tale. And the only way to break the spell and escape the forest was to wake the princess.
Wake her and run.
He leaned over, closed his eyes and pushed his lips against hers.
A door. Faded and chipped. Its original color lost in the grains of the wood. Robert stood in an endless white space, the door in front of him.
He had not woken Mary, but the kiss had brought him here, to the place where she was trapped. Somehow, his mother had tried to open the door for Mary, but maybe she was too far away and could not get her completely free.
But Robert was here now. He could open the door. He could lead Mary out of the darkness, back to the woods, and then down the path to their parents.
He grabbed the knob, twisted --
The door flew open.
Gravity spun sideways. He fell.
At the last second, he caught the threshold. The dark void surged beneath him. Dangling, legs swinging over the emptiness, he hauled himself up, gritting his teeth, fighting the pull. Then, with one final push, he slipped back into the white. Gravity flipped. He hit the floor hard.
He stood, backing away from the opening -- unwilling to let the blackness touch him.
Why would Mama create this door? Why tie him up that morning to keep him safe, only to build a doorway to a depthless nightmare void? A place where he could be lost from her forever.
But things had changed.
He had changed them.
By leaving the house.
By taking the gun.
Most of all, by interrupting the hungry Grasshopper Man.
And with all his tricks, Robert escaped.
Mama knew.
Things are different now. And if Robert could do all that… maybe she believed he could bring Mary home.
Pull her out of the dark.
He stood up, braced himself against the side of the door, and shouted into the emptiness, “Mary! Where are you?”
His voice vanished.
“Mary, can you hear me?” he shouted again.
A wisp of smoke curled out of his lips, twisted into the void, the last puff resembling a crooked e hooked into a question mark.
He felt the light whoosh past, sucked into the emptiness beyond. It bends downward, tugged into the void, just enough to illuminate a tiny girl curled in its glow. One red shoe. Pale knees pulled to her chest.
Mary.
She shimmered like a mirage in the pale light -- an impossible distance between them.
His heart pounds, his grip tightening on the wooden doorframe. It feels like standing over a deep, abandoned well, Mary far below. But he’s upright, almost floating. The door hangs in the white space, she is buried in black.
He can’t go in. She can’t climb out.
He has nothing. No rope. No ladder. No grown-ups. No way.
Maybe it would be easier to fall. To let go. Face the darkness with her, together. He clenches his tiny fingers, ready to let go, bracing for the fall, then stops.
“Mary,” he whispered.
A wisp formed, tendrils from a small spark ignited by his voice, drifting down toward her.. As the smoke thinned, he saw it: the outline of her name, four fading letters fading into nothing.
“Robert? Was that you?” she called back, her voice echoing up from the dark.
“Yes,” he shouted.
This time, the letters exploded from his mouth, no longer smoke, but something solid, something real. They tumbled down instead of drifting -- falling together like something being built before vanishing just beyond Mary’s reach.
“Robert, where did the rope go?” she cried. “It was just here. Did you hide it? Please don’t play tricks on me.”
He heard a tremble in her voice.
“Robert, I don’t know how to get out, and I hear things. Ugly things in the dark, scratching.”
“It’s okay. I’m…”
He bit down on the letter m, watching the rest of the sentence swing on a tiny apostrophe. Then it fell, broken by its weight and momentum.
The letters crashed around Mary, scattering like broken glass before dissolving in a puff of gray smoke, each letter vanishing to its sound.
Mama said stories were bridges, spanning the space between reality and imagination. She said words could hold people up, could carry them. But only if you said them like you meant them.
“Robert, did you drop the ladder?”
No, he had not dropped the ladder. He hadn’t finished making the ladder.
He needed to be strong and loud, two adjectives his father would have never used to describe him. The words would have to come out in one powerful, continuous flow. No breaks, no commas, no pauses.
One solid declaration to pull his friend out of the dark.
“Mary, I have an idea.”
He reached out and grabbed the a in an idea. It cracked, then shattered in his grasp.
He could hear his mother’s voice, whispering in his ear: You don’t believe. This is not the time for you to doubt your power. Mary needs you. There is no time for fear. Pull your friend out of this demon’s door.
“Mary!” he shouted. “I found a rope and I’m lowering it to you, but I’m going to keep talking because it’s really far and I do not want you to be scared when you start climbing up.”
* * *
Far below, Mary looked up at the small pinhole of light.
She heard the echo of Robert’s voice, distant and strained. She knew he was trying to help her, but there was no rope or ladder long enough to reach her.
She almost lay down, ready to let the scritchy scratchy things start licking her skin.
Something hit her head.
An M.
She caught it, confused. It was connected to an a, then an r, then a y, and, oddly, an exclamation point.
More letters rained down, landing at her feet. They came faster now, forming a little pile, stretching higher and higher, until they disappeared into the light.
She grabbed a letter c and began to climb.
* * *
Robert felt the tug, she was on the ladder. She had grabbed his words.
Exhausted from speaking, he took a deep breath and reached for the last few letters before they fell into the void.
The chain was so heavy -- too heavy. All those words, and Mary, dangling in the void.
He wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer. There was one thing that was stronger than him.
The doorframe -- firm and sturdy, yet anchored to nothing -- had kept him from falling in. It should be able to hold Mary, too.
The door had opened into the void. He eased the chain forward, each letter stretching toward the dangling handle, until a lowercase a looped over the handle and held fast.
He dropped to the ground to watch Mary climb.
* * *
Mary weaved in and out of the words and phrases Robert dropped down to her. The letters were not quite a rope or a ladder, but a chain. Links born in Robert’s heart, tended in his imagination, and harvested in his words to be dropped down to her so that she could pull herself out of the void.
She paused, swinging slowly in the darkness. Her cramped, bleeding hands trembled. The sharp edges of the letters had cut into her soft, pudgy fingers. Her legs ached. The tiny dot of light she climbed towards was only slightly larger than when she began.
She wasn’t going to make it.
She knew it.
Letting go is easier, just fall forever into the void, where there is no more pain.
“Robert!” she panted. “ I can’t…my hands hurt.”
From above and distant, Robert’s voice echoed down, “You can.”
“It’s too far. I’m not getting any closer.”
“You are getting closer, I can see you. Please don’t stop.”
Then she felt it. The first scratch of tiny nails below her. At first, she thought she imagined the faint vibration crawling up the ladder. But it was real.
The scritch-scratchers were coming. Climbing. Reaching. Hungry to nip at her ankles, gnaw at her fingers, drop her back into the belly of the beast.
The Grasshopper Man was not ready to let her go. He wasn’t done with her.
“They’re coming. I hear them. They’re gonna get me…”
“No, they won’t. Not if you keep climbing. You have to climb, Mary!”
“I’m not strong enough.”
“Nobody’s strong enough ‘til they have to be! That’s what my papa says. You have to be strong now, you can do it.”
She reached higher, pushing past the burning in her legs, the screaming in her hands.
She pulled. She stepped. She climbed.
Not just toward the light, but away from the dark.
* * *
Robert laid on his belly, peering into the darkness, watching the word-chain sway.
Mary scrambled up. She slipped her arms into the hollow spaces of each letter, using her forearms to pull herself higher. Her hands were torn and bleeding.
She made it to the door handle. Just the width of the door left.
“You’re almost here,” he said.
She swallowed, tears streaking her face. Reaching up, she grabbed his hand. He pulled as she pushed with her legs.
Mary tumbled through the doorway -- and the world shifted.
The door slammed shut with a thunderous crack, slicing through the letters. The severed chain plummeted into the void, followed by a writhing cascade of tumbling dead-eyed rats.
* * *
Mary sat up, arms around Robert, holding him tight. Her whole body trembled.
Robert ached, his throat raw. He felt hollowed out, like the words had been pulled straight from his bones.
He opened his eyes.
Above them, the tree swayed gently in the cool breeze.
“We made it,” he whispered. “We made it back.”
Mary sobbed and clung to him even tighter.
He shifted and gently lifted her up.
“Let me see your hands,” he said.
She hesitated, then held them out -- scraped and bloody. Robert tore fabric strips from the bottom of her tattered dress and carefully wrapped the fabric around her palms.
“Thank you, Robert,” she whispered. “I thought I was trapped in there forever.”
He gave her a quick nod and smiled. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
They stood and turned towards Robert’s house, every step laden with exhaustion.
In the grass, Robert spotted the broken stock of the shotgun. He picked it up.
It saved him today.
Something was comforting about its weight -- familiar and solid. Maybe someday, he thought, he could get it fixed.
“When we get back to my house…” Robert began. He trailed off. They both stopped and turned.
Far down the trail, a grasshopper landed in the path.
Another landed. Then a third. A fourth.
The trees fell silent --.
And then --
A buzz.
High-pitched. Rising.
Robert turned towards the trees. He knew that dry, crackling static. The one that made his teeth ache.
Robert and Mary looked up.
A brown cloud churned above them, swirling as it descended -- a mass of wings and clicking bodies. It twisted in the air, coalescing. Changing.
Thousands of grasshoppers poured down, shaping arms, a torso, a face -- Robert pulled Mary closer as the Grasshopper Man stepped onto the path.
His soulless eyes stared straight at them.
He smiled and sang:
"Come hither, hither, pretty fly,
With the pearl and silver wing;
Your robes are green and purple –
There's a crest upon your head;
Your eyes are like the diamond bright,
But mine are dull as lead."
The twisted lullaby echoed through the trees, broken only by the distant call of men’s voices.
Robert heard his name.
The Grasshopper Man laughed -- a high, broken noise, “Too late, little man! Too late!”
He was still hungry. Still ready to devour everything.
Robert grabbed Mary’s arm and pulled.
“Run!” he yelled.
The massive blue shape charged.
They hobbled away from the blue creature, limping towards the desperate pleas of their fathers.
Robert pushed Mary ahead and turned, swinging the broken shotgun stock, anything to buy them a few more seconds before the beast finished its meal.
Then --
A blur exploded from the brush.
Brown fur. Teeth. Claws.
Jasper.
Mr. Jack’s best hunting dog tore across the trail, knocking Mary to her knees, and slammed into the Grasshopper Man mid-leap. The blow knocked Robert free; he fell hard and rolled away.
“Come on then!” the Grasshopper Man hissed and lunged.
As he sprang, Jasper met him head-on, jaws snapping. The hound clamped down on the monster’s arm, but the Grasshopper Man wrenched him free, blue blood spraying across the dusty trail. With a screech, he swung a clawed hand, raking Jasper across the ribs and knocking him sideways into the brush.
A second hound, white-and-brown, slammed into the creature’s legs, driving him back a step. The Grasshopper Man staggered, then pivoted with vicious speed, slamming a heavy kick into the dog’s side. The hound yelped, rolled, and scrambled back up, circling, growling.
Jasper, bleeding, lunged again, teeth flashing, aiming for the throat.
The Grasshopper Man knocked him away mid-air, hurling him to the ground. Jasper twisted like a cat and barely dodged the stomp meant to crush his skull.
The two hounds, cut and battered, regrouped, sharp white canines bared and glistening in the late afternoon sun. The Grasshopper Man crouched low, arms spread wide, answered their challenge with a sharp-toothed smile of his own.
The dogs attacked together.
Jasper bit deep into the monster’s thigh, pulling him off balance. The other dog clamped onto his shoulder, twisting him towards the ground. The Grasshopper Man stumbled off the path, clawing bloody furrows into the dogs that refused to let go.
Robert and Mary, stunned, watched the fight, a wild, brutal tangle -- fur and talons and teeth.
The Grasshopper Man twisted free, staggered, then slashed Jasper across the muzzle, blood flying. Jasper reeled, but lunged back in, ramming his weight into the monster’s side. The Grasshopper Man stumbled, winded now, shaking, dragging a wounded leg.
Still, he came, slow and bloody.
The dogs circled him, snarling, snapping, trying to drive him away from the children.
With a roar of frustration, the Grasshopper Man charged, swinging wild, savage blows. One after another, he battered the hounds, knocking them unconscious.
Panting, bleeding, he staggered in the center of the path, and there, through the blur of blood and rage, he saw his real prize:
Mary.
The Grasshopper Man lurched forward toward her, teeth bared in a broken smile
Blue talons tore through her shirt and sank into her shoulder. She screamed as he hoisted her into the air, dangling like a rabbit in a snare, kicking and thrashing.
“Tag, you’re it,” the monster whispered into her ear, lifting her higher.
Robert leapt and grabbed Mary’s free hand, pulling her back from the battered monster. The Grasshopper Man dug in deeper, dragging her away. Mary screamed, her feet flailing in the air. Robert dug in his heels. He pulled with everything he had, but this creature was a machine, a death machine, churning to devour its lost meal.
Robert’s fingers slipped on Mary’s wrist, slick with blood and sweat.
“Hold on!” he gasped.
Her fingers tightened.
Robert pulled harder. He couldn’t let go -- not like in the tree, not this time.
The monster yanked, dragging both children across the dirt, deeper into the shadows.
Robert squeezed Mary’s wrist, the tendons in his arms screaming, but he could feel it -- he was losing.
The same hopelessness he felt in the tree swelled up inside of him. Tears blurred his vision..
But he didn’t let go.
He heard his name, shouted -- raw and panicked -- behind him.
Papa.
He dared to glance back. The search party -- Papa and Mary’s father leading the way -- came running down the path.
Robert knew they had one chance before the darkness swallowed them whole.
“Papa! Shoot him!” Robert yelled.
The Grasshopper Man turned, locking his gleaming eyes on Papa.
He hissed.
The blast punched through the creature’s chest. Blue-black blood splattered across the leaves. Before the body hit the ground, it exploded into a shrieking cyclone of wings spinning into the woods.
Stillness.
Breathless fathers grabbed for their children, sweeping them up in their strong arms.
“Papa?” Robert cried.
“Yes,” Papa said. “I got you.”
Up the path, more men appeared.
“Papa…how did you find us?” Robert asked.
Papa held him tighter.
“Your mother just won’t stop opening closed doors.”
Robert buried his face against Papa’s shoulder, shaking.
Behind them, Mr. Hunt appeared, leaning on his walking stick, whistling for his dogs -- the battered hounds limped from the underbrush.
The forest was quiet now, only the low murmur of men’s voices and the sigh of wind in the leaves.
“I want to go home,” Robert said.
Robert stumbled alongside his father, exhausted. He could hear the men’s questions as they whispered around him. They were questions Robert wouldn’t have to answer. He knew Mama knew, and if she knew, Papa would know soon enough.
As they cleared the woods, the setting sun warmed his face, the wind soft in his hair.
Robert turned back towards the woods.
The wind died.
In the deepening twilight, thousands of eyes glittered in the shadows.
Somewhere in the deep woods, something clicked.
And smiled.
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