The Boy Who Drew Monsters
Keith Donohue
Prologue
In the dream house, the boy listened for the monster under his bed. An awful presence in the dark had awakened him in the dead hours, and he waited for the telltale sound of breathing. Would there be breathing? Or would it arrive in silence, without warning? He would have no time to defend himself or save the treasures hidden in his old toy box. The possibility of such an attack unnerved him, but he dared not move. He did not dare lean his head over the side of his boat to check the space between the mattress and the wide blue sea of the braided sisal rug. He did not dare turn on the lamp and flood the room with light and risk spooking the monster from its hiding place. There was no breathing but his own, no sound at all but the thrum of his heart.
Dream house, that’s what his mother and father used to call it, before the troubles began. “This is our dream house by the sea,” they would tell the summer visitors who would come to stay for long weekends. Or his Grandpa and Grandma Keenan who would come for the chance of a genuine white Christmas in Maine. “Welcome to the dream house.” The boy was not sure if it was a house in which dreams came true or if the house itself had been made out of dreams. Once upon a time, the name had made him happy, but on ice-cold nights like these, the dreams turned into nightmares, and monsters under the bed stirred in the bump of the night.
He hefted the quilt over his head until he was completely engulfed. Heavy as a wave, the weight pressed upon him, and he remembered how the rough darkness of the sea, no bottom or top, swirled all around as both boys fought for air in the green-gray chaos. Suffocating and afraid, he threw off the blankets, monsters be damned, and sat up in the bed, panting, holding off the urge to call out to his mother to come rescue him. Save me! But he did not want to wake her at this late hour. She did not believe in monsters.
Lately the monsters had been coming for him inside the dreams. They would softly lay a hand upon his shoulder. They would whisper in his ear as he slept. And he would rouse himself to find nothing, no one. In the mornings, he would wonder when and how sleep had ever arrived. He was so tired of the pictures in his head. From his bed, he could see through the top panes of the windows to the cold stars in the sky above the ocean. Moonlight cast a square upon the far wall, and he believed that if he concentrated long and hard, he could make the sun appear in that space and send the monsters away. He set his will against the night.
One
Dream boy. Holly watched her son sleep, just as she had done a thousand times before, wondering where he had gone in his dreams. Another minute will be no harm, she told herself, reluctant to disturb his peace. The birdcage of his chest rose and fell, and she found herself synchronizing her breathing to his, just as she had done a decade ago when he was a newborn. Jack clenched his hands into fists, one tucked against his cheek sure to leave a mark on his skin. Beneath his fluttering eyelids, his eyes rolled back and forth as he concentrated on a dreamscape only he could see, a film playing out in his subconscious mind. He seemed deeply under, a child like every other child, a normal son, an ordinary boy in his sleep. She held the moment in abeyance, allowing the illusion to linger.
It had been three years since she had dared to stay so close to her son for so long. A summer day on the beach, her beamish boy broke free and raced across the sand and rocks into her arms, radiant heart jangling under his ribs. Fine soft hair matted onto his scalp, he smelled of salt and sand and soap, and as he kissed her again and again, he banged the top of his crown against the ridge of her cheekbone. He was in love, love, love with her, and she loved him in return with a fierceness that scared her often, she could eat him up. Her bright bold beautiful boy all of seven. He had squeezed her around the neck until she winced. Now but a memory. She watched him sleep, wishing him to come back to her. Back before it all began.
In the middle of the night, Jack had cried out once, a screech that woke her with its animal intensity. She was too tired and too conditioned to abandon the warmth beneath the down comforter, so she waited, tense and alert for an echo. But the quiet returned swiftly as he stilled himself. For half an hour, she listened, fidgeting on her pillow, watching the slow sweep of the alarm clock. Tim had turned his back to her and was little more than a familiar contour, his body sloped like a faraway roll of hills. In the morning, she woke first, only to find him slumbering in the exact position, as though dead to all interruption.
“It’s eight,” she told her husband. “You wanted to make your rounds this morning. Check the houses now the cold is here.”