Blizzard Blue

Billy figured it was an odds-on bet school would be canceled tomorrow, getting confirmation from no less an authority than his mother. As usual he had been hustled into bed by eight, but the storm now raging through the Midwest had dumped a foot of snow outside in the last three hours and showed no signs of slowing. He had managed to get outside only briefly before his mother called him in for bed. “They’ll be plenty of time for that tomorrow,” she told him as she helped him remove his parka, Billy grumbling the entire time. “I can’t imagine you’ll have to go to school in that.” She jerked a thumb towards the window. This made him feel slightly better. In these sorts of matters he found her completely reliable.

          “Bet you’ll love that!” Billy's father called from the living room, the sound of the basketball game all but drowning his words. Billy detected something in the comment, as if his father had been talking to his mother and not to him. All part of the “secret language” of parents, no doubt; he did not even pretend to understand. Billy had no idea what they might be getting at, but his parents spoke in a sort of code, using everyday language to communicate subtext when their son, not part of the conversation, happened to be within hearing distance. Billy had learned to pretty much ignore it.

          He sat up in bed, his mother’s footsteps receding while the TV hummed away in the distance, spoken voices fuzzy and indistinguishable like the adults in a Peanuts cartoon. Waiting several heartbeats to make sure she was not returning, Billy threw back the coverlet, got out of bed, and pulled aside the blind, peering through his single window into the backyard. Snow was falling so heavily he could not see the tree twenty feet from his first story window or the tire swing dangling from its branch — a stinging reminder of the warm summer months. Dad had been promising Mom he would take it down since autumn gave way to winter, but he had been putting it off. He'd wait till it was time to put it up again, grin, and say, “Two problems solved at once.” Mom said Dad was a terrible “procrassator.”

          Confirming it was indeed still snowing, Billy let go of the blind and returned to bed, pulling the covers up to his chin. The curious half-light that came with heavy snow peeked around the blind, filling the room with a spooky glow.

          This gray-tinged light was not exactly a comfort, and the nightlight he usually plugged into the socket beside the half-open closet was useless on such a night, so he left it off. The monster inside the closet was not afraid of light, as boogeymen traditionally were, and it loved the shadows such lights provided. Billy had named the monster “Poo” at age five, two years earlier, and had long forgotten why he had given it such an infantile name (though it probably had something to do with potty training). It sounded silly to his slightly-older self, yet part of him knew that such a name took away some of the monster's power. While calling it “Poo” always brought a smile to Billy’s lips, he knew it would be a mistake to underestimate the wily creature. Like all boogeymen it came when his parents went away. And also like all boogeymen, it was after a single child: him.

          Billy had studied the monster long enough to know that while it did come around with greater frequency after dark, it often made daytime visits when shadows lay upon the world — mostly on overcast days. That it traveled freely at any time, he had decided, was the scariest thing about it.

          “Poo” had nothing to do with Christopher Robbin’s stuffed pal, as Billy tried explaining to his mother when he still thought she might do something about it. The thought that this name might be confusing to others never crossed his mind, the concepts so contrary to each other that when he first spoke about Poo in his mother’s presence he was puzzled by her response. “So, you’ve got Winnie the Pooh in here?” she said with a grin in her voice, opening the closet door as she had many times before, and continued to do to this day, her stated goal to prove once and for all that there was no monster in there and never had been. Of course she hadn’t found Winnie the Pooh in his closet, or anything else. Parents were such blockheads! Either Poo had not been there when his mother opened the door or it had hidden itself within the folds and wrinkles of Billy's clothing when it heard her coming; it was not stupid. It might be a lot of things, but it certainly wasn't that. Poo used wrinkles and straight lines as roads and highways into the human world from wherever it came from. This Billy knew, but he had long ago stopped trying to explain such things to his mother. She would belittle his fears, ruffle his hair, and tell him what an overactive imagination he had.

          If Mom wanted to see a kid with real imagination, she ought to talk to his friend Juniper from school. Talk about crazy ideas! She was a cutie — one grade ahead of him. Every boy in class had a crush on her: with her lustrous black hair in pigtails and her cherubic cheeks as red as Macintosh apples. When she started hanging around him on the playground, out of all the boys, he had been as shocked as anyone. He did not see himself as much different from the others, yet she had even invited him to her house a few times and once for her birthday party (he had been only one of two boys there). So she must have liked something about him. Anyway, during recess one time she told him a secret: that everything she drew became real. What would Mom say about that?

          Even if a crummy nightlight would not stop the monster, and he knew it would not, Billy continued to use it as a sort of early warning system. Maybe get to see Poo's shadow on the wall before he saw it, give him a one second advantage that might be enough to save his life. Billy had an idea, an intuition really, that the boogeyman would be coming for him soon. It had been moving around inside the closet a lot over the past few weeks, and he saw this as the worst of signs. He would hear the thing in there, making sinister rustling sounds as it found pathways through his clothing, the noises ceasing when the monster arrived at an occasional dead end. And it was furtive, as if Poo were trying not to be heard. If anything spoke of the monster's true intentions, Billy decided it was this; it would not mind being overheard if it meant no harm.

No doubt it would have gotten Billy already, but he had (quite by accident) stumbled on a way to trap it in the closet. One evening he did not feel like hanging his jeans or draping them over the back of his chair. His mother hated messes anywhere in the house, but she absolutely would not tolerate them in her son’s room. Dad reassured him she was “obsessive” about neatness, it did not necessarily concern Billy. Maybe this happened to be true, yet it certainly felt as if Billy were being singled out for special treatment. “Hang this up,” “put that away,” and “don’t leave that lying around” were phrases he heard nearly every single day — and they were not being directed toward his dad.

          Sometimes Billy wondered if Mom had been replaced by a robot. With her single-minded drive she certainly acted like the ones on TV. Once he concocted an elaborate fantasy: Dad had assembled her in his basement workshop from a kit purchased at a local hobby shop. Even if this might be intriguing to think about, Billy knew it could never be true. His father had little technical know-how and even less motivation. And if those things weren't enough, there was his “procrassation” to think about. The project would simply never be gotten around to, even if his father did have the technical know-how. If his mother was a robot, she had become one without Dad's assistance. Billy could perhaps go with the alien invasion angle, but he had enough worries without adding that to the list. Besides, he had determined, mostly by talking with Juniper on the school playground, that all parents were kooks and oddballs, and that his parents were not exceptions to this — tempting as that might be to think about.

          Because he did not feel like hanging up his pants, Billy had tossed them into the closet so Mom would not rag him about picking them up. Funny to think he’d saved himself by being lazy! Imagine what Mom would say if I told her that!

          Until that night the boogeyman had traveled freely about Billy's room. Before, the boy would often lie awake listening in terror as Poo roamed freely between the four walls, bumping into things and making that creepy rustling sound that brought to mind drapes blowing in the wind. All through this Billy could not shake the conviction it was trying to be quiet. Why Poo never attacked him while it had had the run of the place was the real mystery. Maybe it had been trying to get into his bed and could not quite figure out how to go about it, although once it reached the end of his mattress, an event so traumatic Billy nearly wet himself. That night, as he prayed and kept his eyes shut tight, he waited for a final blow that never came. The monster whispered and rustled in the bedclothes at his feet for what felt like hours before abruptly falling silent. It had been confounded — Billy realizing this later when he put two and two together — by the tangled mass of sheets he had kicked into shapelessness at the end of the bed.

          The chaos of tangled bedclothes: Poo had not been able to travel beyond it somehow. Similarly, the casually tossed pants had fallen upon the threshold of the closet and had sealed it off from the rest of his room. Why Poo had not climbed over them or crossed the ceiling where there weren't any such obstacles Billy had no idea; he only cared that he had found something that stalled the monster in its tracks. Maybe Poo was compelled to go through anything it came upon, these mazes of twisted and broken lines — even if there was no solution to the puzzle. Sort of like picking at a knot and not being able to unravel it. It moved, Billy soon discovered, by straight line only. In a way, it was as obsessive as his mom.

          Poo had picked the right child in the right house with the right mother to chase after! All Billy's clothes were either folded with mathematical precision and put into his dresser, or ironed and pressed and hung in his closet — all by his neat-freak mother. Straight lines, then, were not exactly in short supply. And Poo certainly took advantage of that.

          Until the pants incident, that was. These days Poo remained in the closet, unable to escape (rather like a kenneled dog). Each evening, after Mom tucked him in and left, Billy got up, tiptoed to the closet, and scattered clothes in the entryway. Just as each morning he rushed to get them off the floor and rehung as neatly as possible before his mother caught on to what he was up to. He had been caught a few times, but had never aroused suspicion of his ulterior motive. Not only would Mom never understand, she would assume he was making elaborate excuses for being a slob and likely give him a “time out” for lying. Billy felt a certainty that Poo was biding its time, waiting for a chance to make its move. He had to be ready.

          How many children had been snatched by boogeymen with unwitting aid from disbelieving parents? No small number, Billy surmised, if his own parents' actions were anything to go by — making Mom and Dad accessories after the fact if he ever lost his nightly battle. No way could he be the sole child whose assertions had been ignored or belittled by otherwise well-meaning parents. Juniper had told him as such.

          Mothers and fathers were really good at ignoring the evidence of their own eyes. His friend explained this was just the way it was. Wouldn't help to moan or gripe about it. People simply lost the ability to “see” as they grew older. You couldn’t really blame adults, Juniper went on, even if you wanted to and they kind of deserved it. It all came down to you in the end. You could never rely on anyone else to help; you had to save yourself if you happened to be in trouble, and Billy guessed this was about the way it was going to be with him, too. He hadn’t told the little girl from down the block anything about his particular problem. He had merely dropped a casual hint at recess several months back about having some issues with “things that go bump in the night.” Juniper had given him a knowing look, nodded seriously, and began to speak in that disconcerting way she had, the commanding tone of someone much older than she happened to be.

          “I had a monster under my bed once,” she said matter-of-factly, as the two children scrambled like monkeys over the playground's geodesic dome, the cheerful cacophony of playful children rising about them like heat from summer tarmac.

          Juniper reached the top of the dome, sat down, and dangled her legs between the bars. She fiddled with the braids in her dark hair. Billy saw a purple wildflower clipped into one of the braids. He thought it plastic, but closer inspection proved he had been mistaken; it looked remarkably fresh and alive. As he watched, a breeze caught its petals and they fluttered along with several loose strands of lustrous hair. One strand crossed her face and she absently brushed it away. Smiling widely, Juniper started kicking her legs back and forth.

          Billy’s heart throbbed painfully in his chest. Every boy in class might have a crush on Juniper, but his was biggest of all. He stared at her while she grinned guilelessly back, somehow finding his lost voice in the silence of the moment. “So, what did you do?” he asked breathlessly. He could not recall exactly when he realized he could talk to the little girl about these things, yet he found Juniper enormously sympathetic, a person he could speak to about any subject his parents did not take seriously, which pretty much encompassed everything. She never treated him with casual disdain or subtle condescension. Juniper might be one year older than he, but talking with her was almost like talking to an adult who “got it,” who understood. To him Juniper was like the mythical all-knowing older sibling of many of his classmates, the one they deferred to in crisis. And since he was an only child, Billy had no one to speak with in his household who held such authority. Still, Juniper was better than any brother or sister. She had an omniscience about her. She knew things no one else seemed to know.

          A red rubber ball rolled between the bars and into the dome beneath them, a refugee from a nearby game of kickball. Billy and Juniper were off in a corner of the playground, relatively isolated. Now the distant drone of playing children spiked about them as the game was propelled into their sphere, enveloping them within its chaos while the two friends, engaged in serious discussion, remained ignored and aloof above it. Kids swarmed about the geodesic dome like ants all over a sticky candy cane, each one attempting to get at the rubber ball which bobbed and weaved between their spindly legs. Several children slipped between the dome's steel bars to pursue it. After a short tussle, the ball, aided by some child’s well-placed foot, flew away from Billy and Juniper and back into the playground at large. The mass of children swarmed after it, their laughter and cheers once more receding into a white noise background hum.

          Having waited until they were alone so that she would not have to raise her voice, Juniper said, “I drew it away.”

          Billy did not understand and gave her a questioning look.

         Juniper’s small face twisted with concentration as she decided best how to explain what she meant. “I mean, I took a red crayon and drew a picture of the monster.” Her smile widened. “And then I took another crayon, the black one, and scribbled the monster out. Black is best for getting rid of stuff,” she elaborated. “But that only trapped the monster behind the black crayon, see? Like bars of a cage. The best way I could think of to get rid of it was to throw it in the fire. Tearing it up was no good ‘cause it would’ve still been around. Luckily my dad was burning leaves in the backyard and I threw the drawing in when he wasn't looking.” She outspread her fingers in an expansive gesture. Then, puffing her cheeks like a chipmunk storing nuts, Juniper exhaled, adding the word “Poof!” for emphasis. “No more monster. I watched the ashes float upward with the smoke into a bright blue sky.”

          “It’s really that easy?” asked Billy, not meaning to sound incredulous.

          The girl's smile dimmed slightly when she next met his eyes. She patted him on the shoulder. “No, it’s not,” she said, and her normally-cheerful voice had taken on an added weight he had never heard in a child's voice before. “For me, sometimes, sure. I can do certain things, but," she sighed, giving Billy a sympathetic look, “it’ll probably be a lot harder for you. You can try it, but don’t expect a lot. You’ll have to figure it out on your own.”

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The rest of this story is available in Volume 6, Issue 3 of Night Picnic.