I see these kids sometimes driving their parents crazy: screaming, kicking, crying in the airport or the grocery store while the red-faced, infuriated mother struggles not to smack their grimy face. “I swear, my son doesn’t kick the walls like this at our house. He just needs more space.” This is one version of the usual explanation, but the parent is fucking boiling inside.
Those kids are bad, but bad in the normal kid way. The kind of bad I’m talking about is bad bad. I’m talking about evil. A deep badness that no parent can scream, cry, cajole, or beat out of them.
I have one of those kids. Actually, it’s my wife’s kid. After she died, I was entrusted with his care. I’m not sure how to say this without sounding awful, but sometimes you just know something about someone: a feeling, a deep-seated unease that’s hard to explain.
They revolt you.
That’s how it was with Cory. Twelve-year-old Cory. Waves of disgust rolled through me as his care worker wheeled him in when we picked him up to bring him home with us. My wife, Sally, waited for him with open arms. Cory had lived in a facility most of his life, and his biological father—long since divorced from my new bride—had been his primary caretaker.
Cory had a rare form of palsy. No one knew how to treat it. The doctors could only label the symptoms, not the disease itself, which made him a medical anomaly. His mind and body were born atrophied and stayed that way.
I could only pity the kid. I’d met him once before, seven years before, when his mother and I drove down to Ventura from our home in San Jose. I remember the open room with huge windows that diffused the flowers and piano and patients in a soft, white glow like an old movie. Cory’s back faced us, and I shivered when the nurse turned him around. Beady eyes, one larger and higher on his face than the other. His tiny smile bored right through me.
I hated him immediately.
Two years ago, Cory’s father died in his sleep. It was mysterious. His heart had stopped. When they opened him up, rumor said that the coroner gasped. Later, she admitted that she had no explanation for the extreme calcification of the man’s heart. Men twice his age didn’t have the blackened muscle of this fifty-year-old man. In some rare cases in people exposed to extreme radiation—like those in Chernobyl—their hearts would calcify and age prematurely. But that was nothing compared to this.
Through complications with the will, there was little money left for Cory’s care. The facility in Ventura cost thousands of dollars each month, but with no more incoming cash, the hospital released him into Sally’s care.
We set up the spare bedroom, once my man-cave: part poker room, part movie corner, and total sanctuary. I got rid of everything, stuffing it all deep into the garage. We retrofitted the room and adjusted the internal wiring for Cory’s equipment.
We added a small fridge for his medications and amino acids, and we purchased a van specially designed for his wheelchair. Then, of course, we moved Cory in. It took two hours to get him inside. I eventually got it down to thirty minutes. Normal ins-and-outs required knocking down the kitchen wall and widening the door frames. Three months and $28,000 later, Cory was settled in.
I didn’t like the way Cory changed our personal lives. I stayed later at work, went out with my coworkers, and did whatever I could to stay away from Cory and the house. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the shitty feeling I got when I saw him.
About two months later, Sally came home complaining of a sharp stiffness in the back of her neck that ran down to her ass. Her entire spine and the surrounding muscles had tightened, causing headaches and forcing her to walk hunched over. Lying down brought some relief, but the pulsing pains gnawed at her and forced her to lose several weeks of work. With the remodel and the time we’d had to take off work, we were almost out of money and our savings was gone. We’d mortgaged the house—again.
I took more time off from my sales manager position at a large server manufacturing company, and Sally and I began making the rounds at doctors’ offices to try to treat her. The first doctor, the one through my insurance, called her condition TMJ. His hypothesis was that Sally’s years at a desk job had caused severe muscular issues. But this didn’t satisfy Sally. Muscles in her back would seize for minutes or hours at a time. TMJ couldn’t explain that.
The second doctor proclaimed it was multiple sclerosis, which his tests couldn’t confirm. We went to a third doctor, who labelled it fibromyalgia, or phantom pain. It was never the same diagnosis.
Two months later, we came home from the fifth doctor. I helped Sally inside, one arm slung around her back and one propping her up under the armpit. Staggering around the corner, we stopped mid-stride.
Cory was lying facedown on the hardwood floor near the kitchen. His wheelchair was several yards away, which meant that he fell out and then crawled.
Impossible.
I rushed over. Cory was awake. He dribbled a bit, his eyes fluttering once and locking on mine. I picked him up to put him back in his chair.
“What happened?” came a squeaky voice. It was just loud enough to hear over the buzzing refrigerator.
I nearly dropped him. Speaking? Impossible! His vocal cords never developed. How could he talk? I looked at Sally, but we were both shocked.
“What happened?” the voice repeated.
“I think you crawled, little guy.” What else could I say? With that, I placed him in bed and inspected him for bruises.
“Thank you, Dad,” he said, almost as an afterthought.
“You’re welcome.” I waited patiently for the soft sounds of sleep and then left, exhausted.
I helped Sally upstairs. Her feet curled under at the arches. Hunched, she hung with one arm around my neck, the other gripping some unseen pain on her back, just above the hip.
We walked on slowly.
The stairs took ten minutes.
Sweat soon came in rivers, making her makeup run down her face. By the time I got her in bed, her complexion had turned sallow, and her face was mottled by pain and cosmetics.
“What’s happening to me?” she lamented before submitting to sleep. We didn’t talk about Cory.
Over the weeks, her symptoms progressed. The muscles around her skull and the back of her neck became taut like rope. Every night, I’d spend an hour patting her down with heating pads and then massaging out whatever knots I could.
After a week, I started using the rolling pin from the kitchen on her skull and back. It would help for an hour or two, but then her muscles would snap back and make everything worse. Sometimes the pressure made her vomit for hours at a time, and sometimes she could only mutter hoarsely the next day.
A week later, her legs locked at the knees and then at the ankles. Her shoulders, high and compacted against her neck, stuck out like a hunchback in an old movie. Her fingers were gnarled like oak.
We visited every specialist in a fifty-mile radius and then expanded outward from there. We received confused diagnoses and tried certain drugs hoping they would help. Nothing did.
Work became a distant afterthought. Bills piled on bills.
Meanwhile, Cory’s physical health improved. Little bastard. His crawl was apparently not a fluke; I noticed as I cared for him that a certain plumpness has returned to his legs, arms, and face. Ribs still protruded from his caved chest, but they were supplemented with muscle. His thighs quickly lost their veiny markings.
His diet hadn’t changed. The paralyzed boy’s growing smile, returning strength, deepening vocals, the flexing of his fingers, toes and biceps, his catlike eyes and expanding jaw working up and down chewing on nothing, it all gave me the creeps.
With his physical health came mental abilities the boy had never had. This was not a return to an old self, like a recovery from a stroke. No, Cory became the boy he never was, and the doctors could offer no explanation for his miracle.
While the climb toward proper health continued for Cory, it plummeted for Sally. They were opposites. She collapsed more and more. She always tried to get around on her own and never listened to me.
One night, I found her passed out on the kitchen floor. Cory was lying next to her, cradling her head.
I knew Cory moved around more than he let on. He’d hide it. I could tell.
Sometimes I’d be lying in bed, comforting Sally with a bear hug while she convulsed and tried to sleep, and I’d hear scuttling downstairs. I’d listen to the sounds of fingernails gripping the floor, making tiny tap-tapping noises.
And, once, I could swear I heard what sounded like a body dragging itself up the stairs, pausing just outside our locked door, and then the soft, nasally breathing of a young boy with damaged lungs.
I had nothing but bad feelings for Cory after that. I developed a strange fear of entering his room, sleeping for only a few hours a night. I couldn’t eat much. Normal creaks and groans in the house startled me and set my heart racing. I needed outside help, someone to tell me if there was something wrong with Cory or if I was going insane.
The opportunity presented itself in the form of a coworker, Peter.
Peter was a man of special training and intellect. I can’t say to which branch of the armed forces he belonged, but he was, way back when, trained in tracking and apprehending insurgents in foreign countries during the time of our country’s great fucked-up war. His combination of logic and intuition made him the perfect advisor.
I figured it was best to invite him over, let him see Cory, and see what happened. If my intuition were right, he would pick up on something with Cory. Vibes? Bad mojo? Hopefully, I could see that he sensed something, and that would be enough to start a conversation—or at least validate my sanity.
When Peter arrived, I showed him around the house, saving Cory’s room for last and explaining our family’s medical situation. He was genuinely interested and didn’t seem put off by any medical talk that provoked ickiness in most people.
I opened the door to Cory’s room. Peter remained stoic—not a muscle moved. There was no surprised look or gaze that lingered a little too long. Nothing. Not even when we approached Cory’s bed and looked down on the sleeping boy with drool down his chin.
Peter asked questions about the equipment. I answered them. That was all.
Disappointing.
“Peter,” I said, as I opened his car door for him later on, “can I ask you something? It’s a little weird.” He nodded. “Did you feel or notice anything odd about Cory? A feeling, maybe? When you went into his room? An emotion?”
“A feeling?”
I backtracked, rambling. “Yes. When we spoke once, you said you would get . . . in the Army, about people or places, when you went somewhere new . . . emotions, off of people. Shit, maybe I’m talking crazy or something.”
He blinked. “You’re not crazy. I did say that.”
“Well, did you feel anything strange? About Cory?”
Silence. Peter’s brow wrinkled.
I continued. “See, I’ve always had this feeling about him, but I can’t really explain it.” I pinched my nose. “Oh, hell, do you know what I’m trying to say?”
I wanted him to know I was genuine, that I truly felt something fucked-up was happening at home, but what could I say?
“The word you’re looking for,” he said, “is intuition.”
“Of course!” I said. “Well, what does your intuition say about my home?”
He looked at his feet and pretended to fix his watch. “Me? What do you mean?”
“You told me stories of being in the jungle, having a sense about a particular place and all. And . . .” I went ahead and told him about the bad vibes around the house, my wife’s sickness, Cory acting strangely.
“I don’t know,” I pretended to laugh. “Sometimes, I think our house is cursed . . .”
He paused and then said, “I don’t want to offend you.”
“Don’t worry, you won’t.”
Peter breathed in deep through his nose and looked around. “Something’s off.”
“What do you mean?”
“The kid. I’m sure he’s well behaved and all, and I know he has a medical condition. Ah, hell.” Peter bit his thumbnail and frowned. “I can’t be sure. It’s intuition, not science. Still . . .” He cocked his head to one side, debating with himself. “It’s not usually wrong.”
He paused again, unsure whether to continue. “The boy feels like he’s sucking the life out of you.”
The air hung still. Peter understood my hesitation, looked back out the windshield, nodded, and continued.
“The impression I got from being in that room was that the boy is feeding off you and your wife. That’s where he’s getting his strength. In a normal environment, the same is true—the child always receives its strength from the parents. But this is different. Let me ask you something. Your wife. She’s gotten worse since Cory came? And he’s gotten better?”
“Yes.”
“If I were you,” Peter said, “I would put the boy back in the home. Whatever it costs. But do it quickly.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because he knows we’re talking about him. And he doesn’t like it.”
He motioned with his head toward my upstairs window and then zoomed off. As the exhaust from his truck cleared, I turned and looked upward.
Something shadowy stood in the foggy moonlight. It had the shape of a hunchbacked boy with a huge head and bug eyes.
Three weeks later, Sally passed unexpectedly, her muscles having weakened to the point of disintegration. Her heart, being one big muscle, simply stopped working.
The funeral was hot, sunny, and miserable. Only a few distant relatives came—my immediate family was all gone. Sally’s family was sparse, too, having thinned out over the years.
Cory stayed home. I broke the news to him as soft and gentle as I could. I swear he smiled a little.
That night, I checked his oxygen (which he didn’t seem to need anymore) and head brace (which he also hardly needed). I went out and lit a candle for Sally, and I resolved to keep it burning each night for one year.
Then I had a drink that lasted three weeks.
Soon after my binge, I awoke one morning with a pain in my neck. Nothing more. It was one of those sharp pains that burned whenever I turned my head. I could only keep my head straight up and down. All day, I felt like a skeleton. When I turned to grab something or speak to a coworker, the needlepoint pain jabbed in tiny spears up and down my back from my shoulders to the bottom of my spine.
My head throbbed. I couldn’t see much because my eyes were watering, and my vision had turned cloudy. I could only drive with a hand over one eye. Each red or green light caused brain-shocked agony.
The next morning, the vicious pain had dulled to a constant pounding. I checked on Cory, who looked wet. Sweaty. Maybe the temperature had been turned up in the night, and he’d been baking. I looked, but the heat was fine.
Cory’s temperature was normal, but his concave forehead was fiery to the touch and his breathing more rapid than usual. His eyes had moist droplets surrounding them, and his orbs were moving rapidly underneath the spotty lids.
As I changed his shirt, my left calf muscle seized and stiffened up. So did the whole left side of my body. I fell, caught myself on Cory’s bedside bar, and shifted my weight.
The pain was intense. Just like a charley horse, it got tighter the more I tried to move. Nothing I did could dislodge the knot inside me, not even jamming my fist deep into the muscle tissues of my leg until I thought I felt bone.
Cory’s big, brown eyes opened. He stared at me sideways. His half-cracked smile seemed to be conveying some joke only he understood. Crusty white flecks dotted his lips. His tongue, covered in white bacteria, lolled around haphazardly. I shrank in disgust at his splotchy skin and his flaking forehead and eyebrows caked in dandruff. Some of it fell into his open mouth when he moved. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
He threw his head back in what I think was laughter, head rolling around on its own in an elongated circular motion. A fresh round of pain shot up the left side of my body up into my face, and the muscles began to droop and hang.
My lips. My cheeks. I touched my face. I felt nothing. Numb.
Then, Cory’s leg—his left leg—shot out from under the covers. The blanket peeled back, and out came his knobby knee and emaciated limb.
The muscles grew. The calf seemed to generate meat and mass from nowhere, veins and tendons and joints popping up like popcorn.
I looked at my leg. Felt it. It was shrinking. Muscles were vanishing.
I hobbled to the dresser drawer on the opposite side of the room and grabbed four bungee cords from the bottom drawer.
I swung one cord around Cory’s left arm and tightened it. I snaked both ends around him, hooking them together so they connected behind the gurney. I pulled them tight to hold him in place.
He didn’t like being constrained and tried to rise from the bed. But the cord did its job, and Cory couldn’t budge. Instead, he turned his head and bellowed a wave of rank breath that poured down my throat.
I nearly vomited, but kept myself composed long enough to strap down Cory’s other arm and doubly secure his torso against the bed. I stumbled to the other side of Cory’s bed with a third bungee, positioned myself against his strong leg, and hooked one end of the cord under the gurney. I wrapped it twice around his leg.
I yanked the cord tight. The veins in his leg bulged. Cory tried to buck wildly, but the restraints worked.
A minute passed. The flesh turned purple.
Sally, were you watching? Did you believe that your son was some kind of inhuman parasite? That he’d sapped our strength, sucked it right out of us and into him? Or was I insane?
I pulled harder. Cory’s leg bulged and pulsed as red liquid tried to pump through his ever-shrinking blood vessels.
Stop! A voice cried out from deep inside me. You’re torturing a small boy! He’s helpless!
Cory had maybe another minute before he permanently lost oxygen flow. His leg would be useless.
But—
My toes! As blood in Cory’s leg dammed up, blood cascaded through mine like a rushing river from my hip to my soles.
I stood, the feeling restored in the left side of my body. My face tightened. My jaw worked again.
Cory’s lips were tight and eyes wide, his face still in a semi-paralyzed state. He didn’t have the strength to escape the bungees. From his darting glances from the cords to me, I could tell he was aware of his situation and that he was frightened.
He frowned and pouted. Air came in short, rapid bursts from his nostrils. His leg turned dark purple, the color of desert sunsets. His eyes watered in fright and pain.
He begged me to stop with muted grunts, pleading with me as best he could. Something like words sputtered out, but I wasn’t listening. I leaned back, blood running from cuts the bungee cord had left on my hands. I didn’t care. My leg had come back completely.
Suddenly, the boy’s groaning stopped, and he stopped resisting the bungees.
I didn’t see it in time. Somehow he’d gotten his left arm out from under the cord.
Cory grabbed the heart monitor and yanked it toward him. The stand fell. Cory held onto the device. His lips moved as he whispered under his breath.
His arm shook and his eyes closed.
Everything went quiet.
A humming. A flash of light. From the heart monitor. Elevating in pitch and intensity.
Cory’s body vibrated with energy, faster and faster.
Something was whistling inside of him, moving rapidly under his skin. I caught a whiff of smoke, as if someone had lit a match. The smell grew stronger. I looked down. Small wisps of smoke billowed out between the buttons on his shirt and grew cloudy.
His body vibrated still faster. The smoke grew thicker and whiter. It came out of his pores like fog rising from a lake.
Fire shone through the skin on his face. His body turned red and orange. Tongues of yellow darted out of his skin, caught his clothing on fire, and singed his flesh. His lips curled around his gritted teeth in a sick, lopsided smile.
I leapt back and lunged for the door. When I turned around, the fire had already consumed Cory’s body and the bed.
A massive pyre burned to the ceiling. Flames grabbed at the drapes and then swallowed them completely. Cory’s eyeballs caught fire, melted, oozing from their sockets and dripping to the floor where they sat like mushy coals and lit the carpet aflame.
I ran haphazardly out of the inferno, slamming the door behind me. I remember racing down the stairs and out of the house, but I don’t remember driving away.
I’m here now in a small motel near Livermore. It’s been a month or so. I’ll be here awhile. Last week, I left work for good. It seemed like a good time to start over.
The insurance companies still haven’t determined what caused the heart monitor to malfunction.
There’s not much to do here except catch up on my reading, sit by the pool, and smell the cows.
But today, I’m scrawling this story on hotel stationery because I got some news recently.
After their sweep of the rubble, the police said they’d found no evidence of another body. “Yes,” the detective had said, “in very hot fires, the body will burn to almost nothing, but we invariably find teeth or parts of the heart. In this case, we’ve found nothing. It doesn’t rule out that he’s gone. We just can’t prove it.”
I haven’t left the room in days. I keep the blinds drawn. I don’t let the cleaners in.
Maybe I’m insane. I don’t care.
Three days ago, my left leg began to cramp, and I woke up the next morning with a familiar stiffness in my neck that ran from the base of my head to the bottom of my spine.
I sit here now, propped up in my chair at the hotel dessk. Ive lost feeling in my body. i just have the muscles in my fingertips, scribbling words as best i can. My fingers ar cramped. I cant turn my head or even look down at what imwriting. i only see the wall. this will be where they find me.
i dont want to make a sound. even the scratching fo my pen is too much. everything is shutting down now. i can feel it ahppening. i hope someone finds this.
i can hear him breathing. scratching.
hes int he room.
Submitted March 06, 2017 at 06:07AM by videonarc http://ift.tt/2lQerq4 nosleep
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