A half-remembered tune filled his thoughts, providing a balm against the terror. His mother used to sing to him when he was much younger, hovering above him as she gave him a bath. “‘Yellow bird, up high in banana tree.’” Her voice was high and pretty, and in the quiet, he could hear it again, the rising and falling melody. He wished his mother were there to save him. “‘Yellow bird, you sit all alone like me.’” But she was not there, and her absence intensified his dread. No one but himself to count on.
One of Jack Peter’s drawings had fallen to the floor and lay near him under the kitchen table. He scurried sideways and grabbed it, turning the sheet over to reveal the picture. Like a skeletal tree, the white man towered over the two boys, reaching out to them with his branchy arms, and crouching at its feet, the boys were cowering and shielding their faces. He hated Jack Peter and his drawings. Hated all monsters. He tore the paper in two in a swift and merciless execution, separating the creature’s head from its body.
From upstairs came an unholy scream, an anguished animal groan that he knew at once came from the monster and not the boy. The drawing, he thought to himself, it’s Jack Peter’s drawing that has made the monster. He crawled out from beneath the table and found other drawings strewn across the surface. Sifting through the pages till he found another picture of the white man, he quickly ripped the paper from top to bottom. The monster cried out again in pain and anger. He gathered all the sheets together and tried to tear through the stack, but it was too thick. Dividing it in half, he tugged and sheared one set after the other. Below him the babies bawled in chorus, and the upstairs hallway resounded with a high and bitter howling. A door flew open and small feet raced across the ceiling, and in moments, Jack Peter came charging down the stairs, his face red and tearstained. Nick was never happier to see him in his life.
“Where were you?”
“Hid,” he said. “Under the bed there were no monsters. When he couldn’t find me, he hollered and left to get you.”
“Never mind.” He held up the torn pages. “It’s the pictures. We have to get rid of them.”
“No.” He was trembling. “Not my drawings.”
Like some wild thing, Nick pounced on him, taking his shirt in the talons of his hands. “Listen to me. Do you want the monster to kill us? I found what you hid upstairs. Are there more? Where are the rest of the pictures?”
“Everywhere,” Jack Peter said.
The news destroyed him. There were the drawings in the bedrooms upstairs, now lying upon the beds and strewn across the floor, and who knew where the others might be hiding or how many Jack Peter had stashed in secret places. No way to find them all with the creature in pursuit. Above them, the thing clomped from room to room, searching.
“We have to get out of here,” Nick said. “Get help. We have to leave the house.”
“No.” There was no panic in his voice, only certainty.
He grabbed Jack Peter by the throat and shook him hard. “You’re coming with me. Get your coat and boots. Now.”
A door slammed upstairs and rattled the windows. The monster was on the move, and it was only a matter of time before it came back down the stairs. Nick dragged Jack Peter to the mudroom and tugged him to the slab floor. A pair of new red boots stood in a corner, and he forced them on Jack Peter’s unbending feet, like dressing a stubborn toddler. He buttoned him into an overcoat and crammed his fists into a pair of mittens. In the background, the wild man took the stairs one by one, its knees clacking and popping with stiffness. With little time to spare, Nick got himself ready and then pushed his friend down the passage to the ruined open door.
The storm had subsided, but little bursts of snow fell gently in the white world. They stood on the threshold preparing to jump into the abyss. He could feel Jack Peter hesitate at the edge, panic welling up and taking hold. Behind them, the monster had reached the bottom of the stairs, and from the kitchen his ragged breathing sounded like a hunting tiger.
“You’ll be just fine,” Nick said. “Your father said we should cross the road to the Quigleys if we had any trouble. It’s not far, and I’ll help you, c’mon.”
He grabbed Jack Peter by the arm and pulled him outside.
*
Tim winced when Holly mentioned the boys, and the pain in his back shot into his legs. Shifting his weight in the chair, he wanted to scream, he wanted the Japanese woman with the fuzzed eyeball to work her magic again on his panicked nerves. The others observed him clinically, their faces mirroring his discomfort with expressions of empathy.
“The boys?” He pinched out each word. “They’re fine. Inside. Probably drawing or playing one of their games.”
Holly shook her head disapprovingly. “I don’t like leaving them alone for so long. If anything happened to Nick while we’re away, Fred and Nell would kill us. Do you remember what those boys did when you went off on your wild goose chase a couple days ago? Nearly ate us out of house and home. Pots and pans and dirty dishes all over the place. Lord knows what kind of trouble they might be getting up to.”
“Nothing happened,” he said.