24 Months
A swelling of anxiety washes over me as Rudy stirs in his bed. I fight back tears as I look at the clock: 2:17 a.m. I can’t do another three months of sleep deprivation. Some animal scratching at the back door had already woken me three of the past seven nights. Now Rudy is waking up every night again. I wait for his cry, one foot on the woven carpet, one foot on the bed.
I sit up, listening. Riya rolls over and opens her eyes.
“He’s fine,” she says, reaching over to wrap one arm around my neck, pulling me back to bed.
I fight the urge to check the fence. I had already checked it twice after dinner, wiggling the slats to check for weakness in the structure, eyeing the perimeter for holes. Riya had been astounded when I had cleaned out half our savings account to pay for the new eight-foot privacy fence.
“We need it for security,” I insisted, and Riya had relented. She understands my need for safety at all costs.
“Maum, Maum, Maum. Hi, Maum.”
I feel my body relax as I heard him hum my name and recall the fitness of each fence plank.
Night hangs over my bedroom like spilled ink. My eyes fight the indigo shadows and struggle to find purchase on anything solid. Shapes shift in and out of view while the layers of sleep lift. Unsure of what has wakened me, I turn on my side and wait, listening for my son.
The radiator kicks on just as Rudy begins to vocalize and I relax. Those are happy sounds.
“Go. Hi go!” he says.
Something in the engagement of his voice gives me pause. There is a slight change in tone. This is the voice he uses when he talks to someone else. This is his seldom heard conversational voice. Unconsciously, I reach for Riya and remember she is away for work. A spike of adrenaline shoots through my body.
Someone is in the house. Someone not us.
I creep from my bedroom into the hallway and stand outside his door and listen.
“Hi, go, hi!” Rudy giggles.
The house sighs around me and whispers from the bedroom draw me closer. I look inside and the sky-blue walls are a wash of faded gray. The glow of a night-light shoots stars up the far wall all the way to the ceiling. My skin prickles with electricity like the moment before a storm.
Rudy stands facing the wall with his back to me. His little arms wave up and down excitedly, clearly enchanted by whatever or whoever is before him.
“Go, hi, go go go go.”
I watch in astonishment as a shadow peels itself off the wall. It is the shape of a dog, but somehow different. Its legs pulled out like malformed taffy; the dog extends into the dark corners of the wall in exaggerated menace. Its head twists back, a silhouette of a jaw snapping. I can hear his jaw click.
The wolves had made it inside.
“Go, hi go! Go, hi Go!” Rudy exclaims, rocking his body while energetically flapping his arms.
The shadow moves towards Rudy’s crib, and I shoot through the door, slamming the light on. Rudy screams. In my arms, he writhes and looks towards the window facing the backyard.
“Go, go. Ack ack go?”
“Shh, baby. Shhh. It’s ok. There’s no one there.”
“Go, go. Ack ack go?” over and over he asks.
As I am stroking his chubby arm, my fingers graze over a series of bumps. Still bouncing him in my arms, I move closer to the lamp and switch it on. I suck in a sharp inhale of breath through my teeth and grimace. Small scratches and pockmarks of raised skin cover his whole left arm. The worst run up his forearm in an angry spiral like a nocturnal octopus had hooked him with its tentacles to pull him down into a dreamsea. Rudy does not seem to notice and instead is fixating on the wall where the dog shadow had been.
“Go?” he asks, looking at the space behind me.
“All gone, puppy gone,” I say.
“Uppy gone uppy gone upp gone. Bye go. Go. Go.” He resumes humming and bouncing back and forth in my arms.
I sit on the floor of his room long after he has fallen back asleep and wait for my heartbeat to stop racing. I wonder how long it will be before I too will pick the plaster off his walls, looking for what lies beneath. An image runs on a loop in my mind. In the dog’s hasty retreat, a thin line of light had shone from around his neck as if it was held taut by some unseen hand.
Rudy’s longdog was on a leash, held by a hand of thorns.