The Janara

There are rules.

If you want to live, just follow them.

Taken verbatim there’s not much else to think or worry about, really – follow the rules and you’ll live, the tattooed guy had told Giuseppe. That was precisely what he had done for the past two years. Sure, it didn’t happen every night; he’d have gone crazy otherwise. But it did happen. It sure as hell happened. This New Year’s Day marked the second full year since her first visit; she had come a dozen times in 2009 and seven in 2010. But that was beside the point.

He wasn’t too sure about the first twelve because the first few times Giuseppe hadn’t counted them. He was too terror-stricken. No, terror-stricken wasn’t the right description – he was crushed. The first time he had shit his pants. Literally. The stench of warm feces had seeped right into his mattress and he had to come up with some lame excuse when he faced his parents the next day – they had been watching over him for the past few weeks with loving concern.

Perhaps they had perceived something was wrong; a month later Giuseppe’s dad had put a transmitter in his room – one of those noise-triggered gadgets – so they could be alerted in their room if anything was wrong. It was humiliating because it was one of those baby monitor devices and not for an eleven-year-old, but his dad was always on about sleep apnea and people dying because of stuff like that. Eventually it turned out to be a waste of time.

The times she didn’t come (and that was the case most of the time, thank God) the transmitter went off at random because of a cough, the crack of a powered-down TV set, or a burglar alarm somewhere along the street; over time his dad had cooled and eventually removed it.

But on the nights when she did come the transmitter never went off and the next day Giuseppe would find it there on the chest of drawers, next to the television, motionless, like all the objects and furniture caught by the morning sunlight, suddenly still in suspicious positions.

But that was beside the point too.

If the twelve times in 2009 were arguable – he had started keeping count only after a while (so maybe it had happened ten or eleven or even thirteen times) – and the seven times in 2010 were certain – at the end of the previous year he had started writing them down in his diary – well, that was the whole point: what would happen in 2011?

From twelve to seven. A downward trend for sure.

But was it by chance? In other words – was she coming more seldom because she realized he had wised up and wouldn’t be caught, or did she think the room was actually empty?

Perhaps the night-time visits were waning naturally. Or maybe – and this was the thought that tormented him the most – or maybe she was the one who had wised up and was pretending to come more seldom; she was pretending – but it was just a trick to make him lower his guard so he would make a noise, let out a breath, a sneeze, a fart – and enable her to, Jesus, Jesus, please, I don’t even want to think about it, I MUSN’T think about it, Jesus Christ, enable her to figure out that he was hiding in his bed and come and get him?

The thought made Giuseppe stare at his hands in sheer terror.

His left pinky and ring-finger trembled slightly.

It meant she would be back.

Tonight.

So he sighed, got up from the toilet, made a sign of the cross, left the bathroom and went back to class.

In the winter-morning mist, Svevo Castle’s grayish shadow clove the sea in two. Giuseppe cycled to the prison from his school in the frost of that January 2011 trying to recall – as if it were a prayer – the two things to watch out for. He knew they weren’t failsafe signs but usually they were right. He had to know the rules by heart. It was a matter of sheer survival.

In the end it was the same old story: the rules. You just had to follow them.

If his left fingers tingled, it meant she would come that very night.

If he crossed those massive grey crows displacing all the pigeons in Montesacro and said to be very aggressive, and if he saw them clustering aggressively in fours or fives along the road, it meant she would probably come some night soon. The same happened when his mobile phone gave out a weird ring or the odd metallic click.

And finally, when he heard the same words repeated three times on television within the space of a few minutes, it meant she would come three nights in a row.

What was the source of these signs? And who the hell knew about them?

Were those the only signs? Probably not – but they were the only ones Giuseppe had figured out. They were part of the rules. You had to learn them by heart, just like your times-tables, and you had to be very, very careful – if you wanted to survive, of course.

He had a skimpy lunch. He wasn’t really hungry. He spent the afternoon at home, not studying but playing with his Xbox, absent-mindedly, mechanically, his thoughts set on the dreadful night ahead. He was powerless. It was fateful; he had to be strong, stay focused and follow the rules.

In the beginning he had even tried to avoid the problem. He had asked his parents if he could sleep over at a friend’s or something, but it just hadn’t worked. His mom and dad always found a good or even excellent reason to say no. Maybe it was part of the scheme. Were they, too, unconsciously under its satanic influence? It was another of his dreadful thoughts.

But conjecturing would get him nowhere.

It was seven o’clock. Soon it would be dinnertime, then two or three hours of an anxiety-inducing pneumatic vacuum, and finally it would begin. At midnight? No – too early. At one or two. Sometimes at three or four; she would come for sure, oh yes – his left fingers had tingled, so she would come.

He got everything ready.

He unplugged everything in his room. Powering things down would do no good – they could still go off and cause trouble. If the stereo blasted full volume he might scream and she would hear him.

No noise – she mustn’t hear you. That was rule number one.

He checked the windows, even though it was pointless. She would make her way in from who knows where and she would go who knows where. But there was no harm in checking.

Flash-light with fresh batteries: between the sheets. Scissors: underneath the pillow. He had never touched it, not even slightly, but it made him feel better. He often thought – and what if she gets her hands on them? But the answer was frightfully simple – you idiot, she doesn’t need a pair of scissors or any other mundane weapon to hurt you. No way.

He inspected his bed. Underneath were some transparent cases his parents made him put his toys in. He moved them but nothing seemed out of place, of course. He checked his bed-sheets, his bedclothes and his pillow. He got into bed as a test. He pushed his feet right to the bottom to make sure nothing was there. It was childish, sure – an old habit he had had since he was a little kid; but he had never dropped it and the ritual reassured him.

Then he seized Zot.

Zot had been his favorite teddy bear since he was tiny. It was a stuffed animal which had been through all sorts of things. A missing eye, the nose a clump of melted plastic, stuffed back to life a couple of times – but it still hung on in there. Having Zot by his side when she came – having him there between the sheets – made him feel not so dreadfully alone.

And finally he switched off his mobile phone.

Nothing could wreck things worse than a mobile phone ringing in the middle of the night.

It was half past eleven. He checked to see that the door was locked, because a strange protective feeling compelled him to prevent sharing the risk with mum and dad, whatever happened; he turned on his tiny bedside light, threw a glance at his Valentino Rossi and Del Piero posters, switched off the bedroom light and ran bare-foot to his bed. Immediately he felt a chill in the small of his back as he slipped between the sheets and pulled them up to his neck. Zot was by his side. The flash-light on the other side and the scissors underneath the pillow.

He looked around at the television, the drawn curtains, the BenTen dolls, the schoolbooks. The next morning he would see them through different eyes because she would dirty them as she passed through, with her obscene invisible breath.

He sighed, stretched out towards his bedside table, hugged Zot closer, switched off the light and, the second darkness descended, he pulled back his arm.

Now he was alone, in the dark.

Between the sheets, and outside was darkness; she would come soon.

The rules – remember the rules if you want to live. Check the interstices of that murky abyss that is your bed, but don’t make any noise (that’s the cardinal rule): keep all the sheets pulled up, leaving no cracks – keep the bed sheets tucked under the pillow. Push your feet well against the end of the bed – you never know what might be hiding in that warm, intimate obscurity, between the edge of the mattress and you.

And finally – freeze. Because she can see in the dark; she can sense smells; and most of all, she can hear even the slightest of sounds. Giuseppe slowed down his breathing, just through his nose, noiselessly.

He just had to wait.

Wait and pray.

He fell asleep.

 

He woke up at some point during the night, his left hand clamped over his mouth to choke any noise. He was so used to things now that it had become a natural reflex. He held his breath and waited but he could feel – he could feel with desperate awareness that she was there in his room.

He waited.

Seconds later he distinctly heard her steps and raucous breathing. She was pacing around the bed – she was after him. Giuseppe tightened his bladder, clenched his eyes shut, felt Zot by his side and, most of all, forced himself into utter stillness.

She could see the covers move – that was the main problem.

These were the rules – she couldn’t know if he was there or not and the shape beneath the sheets was of no matter (it could be anything – pillows, a trap...); no – in order to catch him she had to be certain – certain beyond every reasonable doubt – that he was hiding under there.

And to be certain she had to catch a movement, or hear his breathing or a whimper. Maybe she had her rules to follow too – nobody knew who had set them or who enforced them, but that was how things were and Giuseppe could only abide by his own.

 

The shuffling steps stopped close to his face – ever so close. Giuseppe held his breath. He knew her head was close enough to just touch the covers and smell them. He had never seen her but he knew her face was so hideous that – well, that it would make you do that horrible thing the tattooed guy had told him about; he knew that hideous face was a fraction of an inch from his, with just the sheets separating them; so close that she could kiss him if she wanted; and the thought of that pitiless kiss cast him into the deepest distress.

But he had followed the rules and she couldn’t find him.

Sniff away – sniff away at my two thick bed-sheets drenched with Little Trees, you accursed being, he thought. You can’t smell anything. You can’t find me. I’m smarter than you. I’ve been fooling you for two years now – you’ve been after me for two years and you’ve never managed. And you never will.

He breathed out slowly – ever so slowly – without the slightest noise. He heard something creak. It was her bones – the old bones of an accursed being; she had knelt down to look under the bed. Olly olly oxen free, thought Giuseppe; but that’s not where I am, you slut.

The footsteps continued all around the bed. He heard another creak as a wardrobe door opened. I’m not there either. You know all too well I’m between the sheets but it’s driving you mad, isn’t it, you spiteful predator – it’s driving you crazy but you can’t touch me unless you know exactly where I am. And if you don’t know exactly where I am – well, no dinner for you.

Yeah, sure. It’s all bullshit. You can’t touch me but you’re making me die of fear, just like that, night after night, and...

No noise. She had stopped. And Giuseppe realized he had made a mistake.

He had forgotten the empty chair.

The tattooed guy had been very clear: remember rule number two – always leave an empty chair in the room, because when she comes she’ll want to sit down. And if she sits down, she’ll fall asleep and vanish.

But if she can’t sit down she’ll grow restless; and if she grows restless then she’ll stay there all night long, walking around in circles and huffing and puffing through her nostrils drenched with children’s blood oozing from her lungs; she’ll stay there and shuffle and cackle and stare at the bed through her tiny little she-wolf eyes, and the night is long and you might make a mistake (sneeze, stir beneath the sheets or things like that) and then she’ll know exactly where you are and – so remember, kid, make sure you remember, the tattooed guy had said.

Fool, fool, fool! He had forgotten about the chair! Giuseppe knew now that she was staring at his shape beneath the bedcovers – she was staring at him with morbid, foully ancient, timeless hatred; and if he budged ever so slightly then she could, Jesus Christ, she could –

He closed his eyes – he clenched them; he didn’t breathe; he didn’t breathe or even think, because sometimes he thought that she might catch his brainwaves, and eventually the pacing resumed.

Maybe she was leaving. Maybe it was over. Maybe –

Frantic paces approached the bed, followed by convulsive breathing, then a strike, a jump, then more steps – she was going berserk, milling around the bed like a shark to make him scream and cry and then, and then!, but it didn’t happen, no it didn’t happen and the noise subsided.

But Giuseppe wasn’t so naïve. Just because the noise had gone, it didn’t mean she had left – oh no. She could be hanging from the ceiling, upside down, staring at his warm silhouette through eyes he had never seen and if he had seen them he might have instantly lost his mind.

No – he wouldn’t be taken in like that.

The rules – stay still, motionless, make no sound, and wait until dawn.

Only then will you be sure she’s gone.

Only then will you have survived another night.

The old Montesacro prison, located inland, would soon shut down and his family would have to move.

The problem was – would she follow them or not?

His father was the warder. The city hall had granted Giuseppe’s family a house right next to the prison – a two-storey house, not very large but quiet, with a concrete yard and, all around, untilled lands stretching as far as the city. It was on those rolling hills that Giuseppe and his friends would spend the summer; but in winter the land iced over, the grey shrubs turned black and the area around the small prison took on the appearance of a wasteland fuming frozen fog.

In seven years the prison had seen seven inmates and always for just a few days, before they were sent to Foggia or further north. One such visitor was a Sacra Corona Unita mobster – a seemingly worthless short, fat Bari native. Another was a destitute Albanian caught red-handed pushing hashish to kids in Montesacro; he stayed just one night. A third was the tattooed guy, and Giuseppe was immediately entranced by him.

And so, two summers ago it had all begun.

 

He had heard about the tattooed guy from his dad, over dinner. He was from Benevento and was a Camorra member. He was forty and tattooed all over, up to his wrists; his back boasted an eagle with vernacular words all around it. He was small time and would stay just a few weeks before being sent off to Milan – San Vittore was so crammed that all new arrivals were backlogged.

Over the next few days Giuseppe wandered around the cell area, which his dad had forbidden him to visit; but all he had to do was to wait for him to fall asleep after lunch and then he could do as he pleased. The whole place soon became familiar. He went twice into the main office – a desk, a small television and a steel door leading to the four ever-vacant cells where on his birthday his dad had taken a picture of him and his friends posing as inmates.

The third time he used the keys pilfered from his dad’s coat, and he got in.

The hallway was immersed in the fresh, somber silence of the concrete walls. The two cells on the right were dark. The last one on the left shone orange.

Giuseppe tiptoed toward the light, so as not to make any noise (and not realizing that the metal door would have awakened his dead ancestors). He kept to the right, never taking his eyes off that light, moving forward ever so slowly.

When he was within reach of the cell he stopped, all to the right, at safety distance, holding his fear-stricken breath as his heart hammered away in his chest; he craned his head left trying to take a peek and –

A hand seized his shoulder from behind.

Giuseppe didn’t let out a sound but instead jumped forward as if he had been whiplashed. He turned a ghastly white and suddenly he was breathless. He remembered he had turned around mechanically, annihilated by fear.

The illuminated cell was empty. The tattooed guy was in the cell opposite – one of the cells in the shadows. “Light bothers me. I asked the screw to leave that one on,” he said with a heavy accent. “You’re his son, right?”

Giuseppe tried to see through the cell’s darkness. The man’s eyes shone like a cat’s in a photoflash, but Giuseppe’s attention was all for his tattoos. “Yes…” he whimpered.

A blow came, lasting a few seconds, then a red sparkle and finally a small scarlet halo around a gust of smoke. The tattooed guy drew closer to the bars, his cigarette between his lips. He was smiling. His forearms, resting on the lower lattice, really were covered with tattoos of all colors, from his wrists up to his white t-shirt sleeves. “What’s your name?” he asked, after gazing Giuseppe up and down for a while.

Giuseppe had been back to the wall all the time, frozen. “Giuseppe.”

“How old are you, Beppe?”

“Nine.”

“Nine. Dude, you’re smart. You showed guts comin’ here. How’d you do it?” he asked, smiling a yellow-toothed smile and sucking on his cigarette as he spoke. The smoke wreathed around his tattooed arms.

Slowly but surely, Giuseppe’s eyes grew accustomed to the small cell’s darkness. “I stole my dad’s keys.”

The tattooed guy laughed slowly. Giuseppe noticed on the bed a long blanket trailing on the floor. Months later he remembered the blanket and wondered what the guy needed it for in that sweltering summer heat. Now he knew. “You’re smart,” said the guy again.

They looked at each other again in silence. Then the tattooed guy passed his half burnt-out cigarette close to his left arm, holding it an inch from his tanned skin, framing those worming drawings. “Like ‘em?” he asked. “Get a load of this one. From when I was in the can in Salerno,” he said. There was a Christ face on his right biceps, its features marred by a whitish round scar. “Read here. This guy from Rome, he knew a thing or two.” His forearm bore the following words in elegant writing: “No luck, no God, no Master. Alone, chased about. Down but not out.”

“Cool!”

“Wanna see the eagle?”

Giuseppe stepped forward, his eyes gleaming. But on second thought he stepped back against the wall again. “I’d like to.”

“First I need to ask you a favor, cumpariello.² You do that and I’ll show you the eagle.”

Instinctively Giuseppe stepped sideways. He was self-confident again. The man was closed in his cell whereas he was five feet away and could escape whenever he liked – everything was under control.

It was the biggest mistake he’d ever made in his short life. “I know what you want!”

“That is?”

“You want me to unlock the door and let you go!”

The tattooed guy laughed again, slowly. “Would ya do that?”

“No.”

“Thought so. No, just do me a favor. I feel like a nice glass of warm milk.”

“Warm milk?”

“Yeah. Do me this favor, cumpariello. A glass and some milk, lukewarm. Not much to ask, right? Know why it’s milk I want?”

“No.”

“For my tats. It’s good for ‘em. Check this out,” he said, pulling up his white t-shirt. On his stomach, covered with dark hairs, Giuseppe could make out some skulls. “This is recent stuff, from Bari Vecchia. But without any KY jelly it’ll mess up. Milk can do the trick just as well – it keeps your skin soft. Come on – do me this favor and I’ll let you see the eagle.”

Giuseppe gazed at him for a long time in the feeble light reflecting from the cell opposite. The tattooed guy put his cigarette out on a breached wall. The tattoos seemed to move and change color depending on his movements.

 

“Here you are,” said Giuseppe, stretching out to pass the glass through the bars.

The tattooed guy laughed. “You’re too far back, cumpariello. I can’t reach it like that.”

The smell of warm milk made everything calm and friendly. So Giuseppe took a step forward, his arm well stretched out, and just barely smiled when the tattooed guy stretched out a sinewy forearm; he seized the glass and, when he was sure he had it in his grasp, a blade of wolfish light flashed through his dark eyes; then he shot out his other hand and seized Giuseppe by the wrist. Yet again Giuseppe didn’t manage to scream. He was overcome with fear – a feverish fear. The tattooed guy dragged him closer, slamming him hard against the cell bars. “Daddy, daddy,” said Giuseppe, but he wasn’t screaming – he was in fact so terrorized that he was whispering.

“Don’t scream. I ain’t gonna do nothing to ya, but if you scream I’ll slit your throat,” growled the tattooed guy. Then he smiled his yellow-toothed grin again. “Keep it cool and we’ll be done in no time.” He kept the kid’s wrist and body clamped against the bars. With his other hand he set the glass of milk down on the floor, among the cigarette butts. He rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a crooked nail. Giuseppe saw it and winced, realizing he had started silently crying. His sobs rocketed up his throat.

“It’s almost over, cumpariello – hang on in there.” He leaned forward and scratched the nail hard against his throat until a red line appeared and thick drops of blood started oozing out. Giuseppe stared and despite his clamped arm he tried to wriggle away, sobbing stronger and stronger but (if you scream I’ll slit your throat) without ever screaming. The drops of blood dripped down the tattooed guy’s throat, ever so slowly, and one fell to the floor, two in the milk, and red turned pinkish as it spread through fuming white.

“Just a little more,” he said. He pressed the nail even harder. More drops fell and blended into the milk. Then the tattooed guy dropped the nail, seized the glass and tugged at Giuseppe’s arm with even more force. He wrapped his own arm around his neck and forced his face against the bars.

“Let me go, please, please, I won’t say anything to my dad, please, please, I –”

The tattooed guy pressed the glass against his mouth. “Drink up,” he ordered. Giuseppe tightened his lips, wriggled and sobbed again but the tattooed guy just held him harder. “Drink up – drink up before I shove the whole glass down your throat, cumpariello!” he growled, so Giuseppe opened his mouth and drank – he drank that milk-blood mix, overcome by nausea and disgust, but the tattooed guy kept his head in a vice and tipped the glass higher and higher and he felt the milk dripping down his throat, on his clothes, then Giuseppe threw up everything the very second the tattooed guy let him go.

The child fell backwards, crawling and sobbing.

“It’s all over,” said the tattooed guy, pulling himself up. Now he was clinging to the bars; the glass was on the floor. He tapped it out with his foot. “Take it back to your father. We don’t want him getting suspicious, right? This is our little secret.”

“Why did you hurt me?” murmured Giuseppe from the floor. He wasn’t crying any more. Everything seemed large beyond comprehension now and somehow that’s how things really were.

“I’m sorry, cumpariello, but just the other day a crow perched itself on that windowsill and looked at me. It means she’s about to come back. Sixteen years since the last time, you see? Sixteen years. I thought it was over – I’d always got away with it. But now – in this here cell I’d be at her mercy. You see? Do you see? You’d better because now it’s your problem.”

Giuseppe stared at him through bloated eyes veiled with dried-out tears.

“I don’t even know if it’ll work. But if it does I’m free. I’m free, uagliò!” he cried out laughing and rattling the bars. “But I’m no son of a bitch. I’m gonna give you the same chances I was given. So listen up now and then you can take your glass and rush off crying like a little sissy, if you want – but first listen up, cumpariello,” said the tattooed guy in one breath. He lit up a cigarette. “There are rules.”

 

“It’s for you,” said his dad, handing him a brown envelope. “Who’s the sender?” he asked, turning it over and over. There were several foreign postage stamps. “For Beppe o’cumpariello,” he read with a smile. “What is it, some kind of joke?”

Giuseppe felt a sudden lump which had been lying in wait for two years bulge in his throat again. He seized the envelope; it seemed heavy – very heavy.

“It’s from my friends, my Xbox friends. The ones I play with over the Internet.”

“Why don’t they write you over the internet, then?”

His dad wasn’t so easily fooled (even though he let his nine-year old kid steal the cell keys and end up in the clutches of a psychopath with a tattooed eagle on his back). “Dunno,” he shrugged.

“You look awful. You sleep at night?” he asked again. “You sure you don’t spend too much time playing games?”

“No, dad, don’t worry,” replied Giuseppe. He ran off, like all eleven-year-olds do – always and for no reason.

After all, how could he tell his father why he never slept at night?

 

That day two years ago he had learned two things: not to trust anyone, and a new curse (son of a bitch). The same curse the tattooed guy had used again in that letter, sent from an Amsterdam prison. I’m no son of a bitch, he had repeated. He didn’t mention anything about cells or glasses of milk – ambiguous enough in case Giuseppe’s dad read the envelope’s content but clear enough for Giuseppe to understand. He said he had thought things over and remembered something he hadn’t told him and that he had heard from his grandmother back in town when he was a little kid – how to build a ierer, a talisman of protection.

Giuseppe sniffed the drenched palm-leaves. They stank. They had to be holy palms – sure, but how could he bless them? He had immersed them in holy water in church. And now he had left them to steep. He took them and made them into a softish paste he then poured into a cloth bingo bag. Then he added some salt. How much? Who knows. He shook the bag and on second thought added another pinch of salt. He closed the bag tight and sighed. He still wondered whether he should tell his parents – but no, he couldn’t.

The tattooed guy had been very clear – if your parents learn about it they’ll talk about her, but she doesn’t want her name to be spoken, and yet they’ll do just that and she’ll catch them. No, cumpariello, the tattooed guy had said (God knows why he had ended up in a Dutch prison) – this is something between you and me. Giuseppe was on his own and would have to deal with things on his own.

As he always had, after all.

 

The next morning was lucent bright cold; looking across the sea you could see the silhouette of the Tremiti islands. As he cycled home along the seaside Giuseppe noticed two fat, grayish crows pecking at a trash bag.

He barely missed a tree.

 

This time he had everything set out to a T.

Flash-light, scissors, blankets, Little Trees. The appliances were unplugged, the door was locked, Zot was there. And the empty chair.

Reading Naruto, he waited.

And waited.

And waited.

 

In the silence and darkness of night’s deepest hour, she came.

She came like a hot wind smelling of gone-off food.

Giuseppe hid in silence, motionless, his eyes slit. He knew she could see your eyes sparkle if you made the mistake of leaning out too far.

He heard her shuffled footsteps, her squeaks. He felt her shapeless weight on the chair, the wood creaking. Maybe she had sat down, or maybe not. Maybe she was pretending, or maybe not.

Now was the time.

He passed his hand over the cell phone. He had switched off the button sounds and everything else and had double-checked a hundred times because if anything went wrong, well, so long Giuseppe, nice meeting you, adieu. He had one number in his contacts list, ready to be used. He waited.

The wood creaked again. She paced around the room, she stopped in front of the wardrobe, she peeked between the cracks, she sniffed.

Sniff all you like, you old hag, thought Giuseppe. You’ll never find me – but I’ll find you, oh yes, you’ll see.

He heard her wobbling footsteps around the room, her broken nails rasping against the posters, in the room’s dumbfounded silence.

So he peeked from the crack he had meticulously prepared.

Just darkness. So he hid again (she can see your eyes trembling). The hand holding the cell phone was clammy. Not yet. Not yet.

A car went by outside. The headlights reflected against the ceiling for an instant. Giuseppe raised his head and looked again; for an instant he glimpsed a black silhouette, the shadow, her shadow, projected on a corner of the ceiling.

It was something narrow, and skinny, and cunning.

He immediately closed his eyes and hid again. The silence was even louder, like after the explosion of a firecracker.

Then, footsteps again, near the bed, all around the bed. He could feel her leaning down to sniff the blankets, the pillow, to figure out if a little bag of flesh was hidden there, because she had to know, if she wanted to catch him, otherwise she couldn’t touch him – if she wasn’t absolutely sure then she couldn’t touch him; those were the rules, nobody knew who had set them, nor when, but these were the rules and they had to be followed.

He pressed a button on his cell phone.

For an instant he thought time had frozen; an instant where he thought, no, God, no, I messed up, please, I messed up, let me go five seconds back, I didn’t want to press that button, I messed up, I-DIDN’T-WANT-TO-PRESS-THAT-FUCKING-BUTT

The text buzzer trilled beneath the bundle on the bed, muffled by the thick blankets. Another instant of dumbfounded darkness followed, then all hell broke loose.

The bed-sheets and blankets were torn from the bed by some sudden superhuman force. Skinny hands like the bones of extinct animals, black with filth and drenched with grease, flung out toward what was underneath, writhing, writhing, as she groaned and groaned like an animal hit by a car.

Underneath the blankets pillows mimicked a human form. On the pillows there was the ierer, tied with fishing yarn to a mouse trap, which sprang the minute one of those hands touched it. A deafening metallic CLACK resounded.

She screamed.

 

Her blood-curdling scream set off the stereo and the television and made a cd shoot out of the Xbox, even though they were all unplugged. The room was filled with a sudden deafening din. Giuseppe didn’t even have the time to poke his head out of his hiding place in the cupboard, underneath five thick woolen overcoats drenched with deodorant; she shot across the room with a piercing whistle and in the midst of a purplish flash, like a New Year’s Eve rocket, she vanished into a wall.

The appliances powered down just as they had powered up. Silence and darkness returned (silence and darkness always return and at the end of your life, thought Giuseppe, no matter how short it is, they’ll come back for good).

“GIUSEPPEEE!” thundered his father from below.

Giuseppe pushed off the coats, came out of the wardrobe, felt the freezing floor under his bare feet, went to the door, opened it and called down, “Everything’s okay, dad! Sorry!” as he switched on the light.

She was gone.

He looked at where she had vanished. There was an Alex Del Piero poster, his muscles tensed as he took a penalty. Giuseppe drew closer, removed the bottom thumbnails, lifted the edge of the poster and peeked underneath.

A grayish spiral, much like an old scald, covered almost the entire rectangle of wall behind the poster.

Then he saw a piece of Zot.

The teddy bear was dismembered, turned inside out as if it had exploded from within, its cream-colored face blackened and burned, its old threadbare fur chewed and spit out. “I’m sorry, Zot,” said Giuseppe with a lump in his throat. “I’m so sorry.”

 

Some decent weeks went by.

Winter gave way to summer and far away, with a bit of luck, if you managed to focus, you could smell the sweet scents of summer, of school ending, of races with friends along the arid hills behind the prison, of fishing competitions with his dad in the luggers behind the old port, of his cousins coming to visit and bringing with them loads of Xbox games… yes, it might turn out to be a great summer, Giuseppe thought, as he cycled like mad towards home – were it not that his right pinkie and ring finger were tingling like mad.

“Say hello to little Annetta,” said his mother when he got home, and at the dining table he found uncle Antonio and aunt Carla and his little cousin Anna, called Annetta, four years old and unbearably unbearable. He had other things on his mind. He was tired – really tired. These months of calmness had been a mere distraction.

She was coming back.

She always came back.

“Hi Annetta,” he croaked. “Hi uncle. Hi aunty.”

The usual round of hugs and kisses.

“What’s with that face, Giuseppe? You look like your cat just died,” said uncle Antonio. They all laughed.

But not Giuseppe.

He was really tired – he was sick of it all. He knew he couldn’t take any more. He was burned out. One night or the other – maybe even tonight – she would be back. She would be back and she would be furious and she would want to exact her revenge and he would make some mistake and give himself away and then… and then…

“Take Annetta into the yard to see the chickens,” said his father. He knew how much his son hated his cousin but family obligations were family obligations. “You hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” said Giuseppe. He took his cousin’s hand. While his parents resumed their chit-chat with his aunt and uncle, he took Annetta through the kitchen and stopped in front of the French window looking on to the yard. He was tired and was giving in – but he was intelligent (you’re a smart kid, uagliò). And he had an idea.

“The chickens, the chickens,” said little Annetta.

“I’ll show you the chickens now,” said Giuseppe. He knelt down, heaved Annetta up and gazed into her eyes, putting up the best plastic smile he could. “Say, Annetta – do you like milk?”

The little girl beamed. “Yes!”

Giuseppe nodded. His left pinkie and ring finger tingled electrically. “Want a nice tall glass, then?”

 

 

 

THE END