21 months
take refuge in the deep double-lot of the backyard. The previous owners cultivated blueberries, which had run riot over wired arches and pressed against overgrown flower beds I had neither interest nor time for. An old cobblestone patio surrounded the back of the home. The entire rear portion of the property is ensconced in a rather useless white picket fence. When we had bought the house, Riya and I joked that we were buying the American dream, complete with a white picket fence.
The back part of the fence is more honeysuckle than fence. A towering bush stands otherworldly in between our home and the elementary school. The unused original schoolhouse is just across the fence. The realtor had warned them they would be renovating the building back to its former glory just as soon as the next bond passed. Years came and went, and the brick building remained handsomely empty and ivy strewn.
Recently, Rudy had begun to sleep through the night and with it his disposition lifted dramatically. It is time both precious and fleeting. We spend our days lolling on my grandmother’s old quilt, under the branches of an elm. The summer has turned into a warm reprieve after the hurricane that was Rudy’s first year. He sits contentedly with me, arranging a collection of small animal figurines into marching band ready lines on the blanket. I lose myself in the pages of Virginia Woolf, stopping only to reapply sunblock and adjust Rudy’s sunhat. All around us hums a chorus of insects and chirping birds.
I look down and see the bottom of the coffee cup. Riya and I had stayed up late, watching movies and making love. It had been a good night and well worth the sleep we had both missed. My mouth waters at the memory and craves another cup of coffee.
Rudy does not look up from his toys when I stand.
“Rudy,” I say.
He continues to play.
“Rudy,” I say, this time a little louder.
He ignores me and I try once more before giving up and walking into the house. It is like he lives in a world wholly different from mine. He is there, alongside me in everything we do, but existing on some kind of parallel plane—his body there, but his mind somewhere in the atmosphere. Still, he is my world, and I am determined to be the planet he orbits.
When I return with a fresh cup of coffee, Rudy is gone.
This is odd, as he rarely leaves the blanket, disliking the feeling of grass on his bare feet and preferring to spend his time arranging dog figurines in quiet contentment. He will only occasionally wander if something interesting enough catches his attention, like a garden pinwheel or the sound of an approaching garbage truck.
Anxiety rises in my chest as I scan the backyard.
“Rudy!” I yell.
I hear only the birds chirping and the far-off sound of a radio playing big-band music. I set the cup down and call his name again, more urgently this time, looking around the backyard.
After twenty minutes of searching, hysteria is closing in. I run back into the house to get my phone and call Riya. I look down at her name on my contact list, hesitating. Ever since the day of the smoke alarms and the man at the fence, I am leary of telling her anything that might alarm her further. With shaking hands, I begin to type a text asking her to come home at once when a strange buzzing sound covers the backyard.
It takes me a moment to locate the sound, which is coming from the enormous honeysuckle bush at the back of the yard. As I walk closer, I see a swarm of bees covering the bush in an arch. They appear to be converging on the outer edges of the plant. Their buzzing is like an orchestra of the surreal calling her name.
He’s here.
The thought comes unbidden in my head and is directly followed by an image of Rudy disappearing into the honeysuckle like a fox darting into the underbrush. I look again at the plant. It’s twisted into a crooked arch, the blooms surrounding a darkened space like a wreath. I run the rest of the way to the fence and drop to my knees before the void, the sickly-sweet smell of the tiny white flowers turning my stomach.
Through the branches and vine, I see a dark space pierced through shards of light. I push my head through the opening and gasp. The rot in the wood has given way to a space no bigger than fourteen inches across—just the right size for a small animal or tiny human to push through.
I rear back, and kick the edges of the rotted fence away, widening the hole. With desperation, I haul my body through, not even flinching as a splinter of wood rips through my thin linen pants, tearing the skin beneath. The wood cracks and gives way with a snap as I tumble out through the other side of the fence.
“Rudy!” I scream.
I look around the vacant lot. The closed schoolhouse rises out of the weeds like an ancient ruin. It is an older style building of three stories. A decrepit black metal exterior staircase marches up the back of the building. Every inch of the property mocks me with the places it could hide my baby. Every direction I look, I face another sharp edge that could kill him; the back cement lot covered in nails, the loosely boarded windows hung haphazardly, waiting for a small nudge to send them flying down the ground below, bits of broken glass. But the stairs are by far the worst.
They rise up three stories of black, rusted steel. Holes the size of a fist shine through with sharp ridges of sunlight. It appears to almost sway in the wind. I know before I even set one foot on it that it will buck under my weight. Rudy would be drawn to it, loving to climb any set of stairs he could find; delighting in the heights he could now mount all by himself.
I step up the first step and scream his name and my blood turns to ice. Instead of hearing Rudy, the sound of children’s laughter drifts down the fire escape from the floors above.
There are no children here.
This has not been an operational school for thirty years. I know this, yet the laughter sounds again, louder this time. I look wildly around the area, frantically trying to locate the source. The next time I hear the laughter, it is right behind me. I whip my head around and see nothing besides cracked concrete and weeds. I feel something wet on my side and when I look down, I see blood soaking through the hip of my pants where I had ripped my skin on the broken fence. My head swims with dizziness.
“R-Ru-Rudy!”
Struggling to catch my breath, I listen for him, praying the phantom children would stay quiet enough for me to find him. I hear a creak above my head. My heart leaps into my throat as I hear a familiar sound.
“Maum-Maum-Maum-Maum-Maum.”
Rudy’s babble. I would know it anywhere, as familiar as my pulse. A scuffling sound was coming from the steps above. Rudy was moving! I sprint up the stairs, willing myself to ignore how far apart the metal bars were set; how easily a toddler could squeeze through those gaping spaces.
On the third-floor landing, Rudy sits with his back facing a pitch-black open doorway. The door hangs open into the midnight interior of the school. He smiles and begins pumping his arms when he sees me. I close the distance between us and snatch him up with a speed I didn’t know possible.
Clutching him to my breast, I turn around and begin to descend the swaying staircase.
I feel him before I see him. The man from the fence.
He stands in the doorway, more shadow than person. Too tall, he steps from the doorway of the long-abandoned classroom into the sunlight. I stand frozen, one foot on the stair behind me, poised to run. He wears an old-fashioned suit this time, but his skin looks awful where it peeks out at the hands and neck. It is rough, textured, and covered in small thorns and thistle. He is sallow; the color of earthworms and grubs. He is alleyways and construction lots and fauna peeking through the garbage. He smells of unwanted living things, fed with urine and spilled oil cans, vicious brambles pushing through broken concrete to chase out sunlight.
“Man-man,” Rudy babbles, then goes silent, staring into the man’s awful eyes.
A blast of radio static burst through the air. Somewhere in the distance, a neighbor turns up their radio and I hear the familiar strains of an old song, one my grandfather used to play. Stickers, he would say. Honey, you got stuck with a sticker. The man’s skin looks like sticker weeds, the thorny sharp weeds you see in overgrown fields and abandoned lots across the Midwest.
The Stickerman’s face clouds with anger as he looks in the direction of the music. As his attention shifts, I take another step down.
He licks his lips and a gray, forked tongue flits out from his cracked lips. He looks at us hungrily and steps forward, his eyes locked on my waist—on Rudy. I stumble back, grab the rusted handrail, and sprint down the stairs. A burning pain shoots through my shoulder as the man clamps his massive hand on me. Tears and pain cloud my eyes and I wrench forward, clearing the second story in what feels like seconds.
I hear wood splintering and feel the stairs sway under our weight. Paint chips and grit rain down from his thundering footsteps above us. A burst of adrenaline thrusts my legs forward in one final push. I clear the stairs and take off for the fence. In one motion, I toss Rudy through the hole in the honeysuckle as he cries quietly.
Back in our yard, I glance back and, to my surprise, see the lot and stairs are empty. The third-floor door that was hanging open only moments before, is closed and boarded up. In shock, I run to the garage and pull out an old wooden door we had stashed in the back, hoping to refinish and hang back in the house. Holding it up with my bleeding hip, I hammer it over the hole in the fence with one hand while holding Rudy by my other. I think about the baby bunnies, covered in their mother’s blood.