Due to the confused state of things following the Civil War, the town of Sparkle’s diminutive size, and its relatively out-of-the-way location, it wasn’t until a few years after Douglas Windward’s death that they caught the attention of the Pennsylvania Department of Education, which required them to establish a publicly funded school. So they tore down the old schoolhouse, built a bigger one, and got to work. By the 1950s, the stalwart Sparkle K-12 school was successfully graduating as many as nine seniors a year. Due to a sudden increase in the population of the town(it soared past three-hundred)in the mid-60s, it was decided that a larger school was needed to receive the oncoming flood of new, eager pupils. For various reasons, the town leadership had expected Sparkle to continue growing at a robust rate, so a three story school building was built. The explosion never came, but the school remains a tribute to ambition. Both Miranda-Julia and Derek attended Sparkle Public School. Miranda-Julia being one year ahead. Though cousins, they had never been close. The barrier between First and Second Grade was simply insurmountable.
Miranda-Julia, at that age, was already showing some of her future self. She was surprisingly strong, but whatever she lacked in any capacity she made up for in strength of will. The first time she was struck out in kickball she chased down the boy who made the catch, jumped on his back, and dragged him to the ground. The other kids looked on, their jaws mowing the grass, as she forced her knee into his spine, performing something called the Camel Clutch and made him take back the out. Her team won the game.
Quiet, little Derek, however, seemed to be her opposite in every way that counted. Skinny, somber, and lacking his cousin’s will, Derek was like a runt piglet in a hog pen. Among children, meekness tends to attract contempt in proportion to itself, and Derek was as meek as they came. Miranda-Julia often saw the typical schoolyard bullying, but took no stand for Derek all the while this went on. She never joined in on the tormenting, but she did not attempt to help. She knew of Derek’s problem, she could see it from a distance, but she was never particularly moved by it. His class played on the pavement while the rest of the students met out on a nearby grassy field.
There were soccer nets and a kickball diamond marked by stakes in the ground. It wasn’t until so many kids were missing, so many off spectating Derek’s degradation that a game couldn’t be formed, that Miranda-Julia suddenly took notice. She stomped across the field, pushed her way through the crowd of students, and grabbed the head bullies by their collars, yanking them backward and spilling them onto their backsides on the pavement. A multitude of kicks and shoves drove the boys scraping across the playground on their hands and knees for safety. She turned to Derek and gave him a sharp look.
“Okay, kid,” she said. “Get up and start acting like a girl!”
Sunday May 3, 2015
It was Sunday, two days since Miranda-Julia had seen her cousin. She still found herself shivering with anger whenever she thought about the boy. In his absence, though she didn’t seem to be conscious of it, she started gravitating towards places where teasing and bullying were animals constantly on the prowl. Now, she stood in the yard of the most recent, very active, Lutheran Church, where kids played after service while parents chatted and hobnobbed out front or in the small foyer. Some of the nastier children enjoyed these Sundays, because the playground was at the side of the building, slightly out-of-sight while their parents were occupied. Some kids loomed timidly in the background, well outside of the arena of taunts and jeers that generated spit and fistfuls of flung mud. The kids who got the brunt of the abuse were mostly the overdressed boys shoehorned into ill-fitting suits. Nothing like the regular violence was tolerated on this Sunday, however. Miranda-Julia was making sure of that.
She didn’t look much like your typical enforcer of justice, adorned in another brightly-colored, cartoon-themed outfit. A smiling, wide-eyed character crazily dashed and weaved around her legs on the wavy folds of her dress. This didn’t, however, diminish the effect her presence had on the kids at play beneath her. When she arrived, she climbed to a perch at the top of the gigantic jungle gym, hooked a leg around the bars, and sat there with arms crossed. Her authority projected itself. Whatever sort of shenanigans had been going on before she arrived quickly, and wisely, concluded itself. She was the overseer of the playground and was stoic, for the most part. Kids avoided her eyes. It was another sunny day, and she tried to enjoy it as best she could. The wind was a gentle tease, and the sun’s rays were warm on her face and arms. Things were, simply, ideal, so she relaxed.
Ten minutes later, though, something started to happen. She watched as the group’s behavior passed strange, all at once, like a waddle of penguins all swinging their heads in the same direction. The children became restless, watching each other suspiciously, as if ready to turn on one another. Tension boiled underneath the surface. Hands clenched and teeth ground. What was causing it was not apparent. In her peripheral vision, Miranda-Julia saw a strange shape emerge from around the corner of the church on her right side. When she spun her head, she saw a boy in a cape coming their way.
She kept watching him as he stepped into the yard. He was actually hard to look away from. The crimson cape was clasped at his neck with what looked like a large, diamond brooch, and the outfit underneath was some type of old costume from a century she wouldn't know. Besides his silly outfit, though, nothing about him seemed particularly threatening. He was small, skinny and pale, with shiny, black hair that hung down below his ears. All in all, he looked like an alien prince who’d just wandered off of a movie set. As she was focused on him, though, something snapped. Some frantic tipping point was met, and surmounted. Both boys and girls, alike, tore away, en masse, out of the yard. They rushed away without barely a screech or an utterance, scared beyond vocalization. The only sounds being the pumping of their arms, the thudding of their feet, and their lungs’ heaving gasps for precious breath. Miranda-Julia didn’t know what was wrong, but she was pretty sure she knew who to blame. She zipped down from the jungle gym, jumping off halfway and landing hard on her feet. She spun around and pounded her way towards the intruder, her eyes aflame with anger. The boy’s head cocked to one side, as if he were witnessing something, truly, new to him.
She stomped right up to him and planted herself right in his way. He was tiny, like a boy even younger than he must have been. She even looked down at him, just a little bit. Her fists plugged into her hips like she was reaching for her six-shooters. “Who are you, kid!” she demanded.
He offered up a smile like a wavy noodle, the tips of his lips curling up like the Grinch’s. “Tibb,” the boy answered, his voice raspy.
She shoved her face right into his. “What kind of stupid name is Tibb? Who let you out of your crib, Tibb? Get you a bib, Tibb? Now get the heck out! And don’t come back here! I’m only gonna tell you one time. You hear me?”
His head cocked to one side, curious. “Of course, dear one. I’d never cause you care.”
She examined him, up and down, then scowled at his outfit. “What kind of weirdo are you, huh? Walking around dressed like a vampire? You look crazy.”
The boy ignored the gibe, he now seemed fixed on the lively figure that appeared all over her dress. He extended a bony finger. “What do you call this, sister?” he asked.
She stiffened up, made a curt face. “It’s Sponge Bob. Whatta you care? And I wouldn’t be your sister for a mansion in Disneyworld!”
The boy nodded. “A sponge, yes. Not a peasant’s colors.”
Her reaction was instant. “Did you just call me a peasant, you toad!”
Tibb performed a slight bow. “Pardon me, sister. This is not the world I knew.”
“You’re a freak! Go away! Now!”
Pleasure bloomed across his face. It would have alarmed someone less hearty than Miranda-Julia. “Ahhhh, but that hasn’t changed - the fear.”
Miranda-Julia jabbed a finger at him, almost poked him in his eye. “You think I’m scared, chimp? Scared of you? You’ve got another thing coming, kid!”
Tibb’s face grew tender, his eyes wide and contrite, as if meekly confessing his sins. “No, no, sister. A fear for others. You reek of it.”
The boy smiled. His lips pulled apart, revealing two rows of ghoulish, sharp teeth. They were pointed like a picket fence, both top and bottom. They were the jaws of a shark. It was hideous, yet, wondrously novel, in its way. The girl’s mouth dropped open. Then, with a laugh, he was gone. Just gone. Leaving nothing but an absence that seemed to marvel at itself.
Miranda-Julia stumbled back two steps, her head twirling, her eyes darting every which way, searching the boy out. She stepped back to where she'd been and surveyed the ground. He seemed to have disappeared into the grass like a bucketful of water. There was nothing left of him. “Tibb…” she said. Her words had a tang hateful reverence. Her fists clenched tight. “Tibb.”
After a very confusing night, in many respects, Alyssa woke around 8:30 a.m. Which was a little late for her. She put on her running shoes and was out the door, almost immediately. Hours later, when Peter, finally, crumbled down the stairs to the kitchen, he was greeted by nothing but a sweet nod from his wife, who was already setting up new bits of furniture. So far, that morning, she had purchased, and installed, a large shelf system made from an old chicken coop. It was, really, just crisscrossed rows of rickety planks made of ratty wood and aluminum sheets. Peter realized she must have been hammering for hours, and it hadn’t even caused a ripple in his dreams.
Knowing that he’d be no use to her, Peter got himself a Pepsi and wandered to the front porch. He stepped outside in bare feet, this was the closest his exercise pants had ever come to being exercised in. Dickon was asleep to the right of the door, curled up with his shoes lined up next to his head. The boy had told him that he always slept in the afternoon, so here he was, again, stone still and dreaming, as angelic as a porcelain figurine. Something about it made Peter emotional. That the child chose to sleep outside, probably thinking he wasn’t welcome to stay within seemed like a disaster to Peter. He also felt guilty about what Dickon had gone through. Having been told all those confusing things, before being chased off into the night, the poor boy had gone through quite a bit. He’d been wrong about him, all along. What that meant, and what he needed to do about it, were questions too big for him to handle, at the moment. He sat down on a step and just watched the boy sleep. He was starting feel protective of him. He wasn’t certain what he needed protecting from, but don’t all children need protecting? Even if they may not be children, at all?
A few minutes later, Peter got up and went back inside. Dickon might need protection, but not in the middle of the day, in the middle of nowhere. Besides, nobody saw the boy, except for him. It was about time he put a little thought into what might be happening here. And for Peter, thinking meant the internet. Even if he had a computer, where did he begin? Did he do a search for boys named Dickon in England a hundred years, or so, ago? For sleeping gods? Was the kid a ghost? He wondered if the town library had computers. He could use his phone’s browser, but immediately decided against it. That’s what he always did, and he’d been learning the hard way, since he left college, that he’d almost lost the ability to think for himself. Sherlock Holmes memorized the entire map of London, I completely forget the most basic instructions before I can write them down. When Dickon woke up, he would talk to the boy, find out everything he knew.
Peter went back inside. He walked into the living room to examine the damage caused the night before. It wasn’t extensive. The wallpaper was distorted about half the way up to the ceiling, which was twice as high as in a regular house. It had already been ugly, now it was grotesque. Considering the emotional roller coaster ride they’d been on, he knew he should help as much as he could. Yes, I will do everything wrong. Yes, I will cause her more work, in the long run. And yes, we will both regret the whole thing. But damn it, I have to contribute something. It’s in my best interests, anyway, if I don’t do something to curb Alyssa’s barnyard inclinations she’s gonna drag a trough in here for us to eat from. I should learn how to cook, too. One of us ought to know how. We can’t have a panquake every night for the rest of our lives. Awesome as that would be. He looked over the peeling patch of the wall just above the couch. It had been sagging, like a wet Band-Aid, just hours before, but now it was dried out.
Much of the mansion was built out of chestnut and cedar. These woods are not all that alike, so the decision to use cedar was probably out of necessity. Chestnut had been plentiful in the 1860s, but the bulk of the later restorations were made after the former had become impossible to find. The living room(or parlor, depending on how pretentious you are)was made out of this later cedar. Peter didn’t really know the difference, but Alyssa knew a little bit, and she was very careful when applying the wallpaper removal concoction she’d mixed up in the bucket. Peter bent down and sniffed the contents. It had an acrid air about it. What is that, anyway? It smells like spoiled salad dressing.
He looked more closely at the spot on the wall. A ladder was set against it, he moved it aside. There was an unsightly, white paint underneath the paper, and he could see a small misting of a darker color. Without thinking, he scratched it with his thumbnail. It was brittle and chalky. Peter knew that this wasn’t paint, at all. It was primer. It’s what you applied to a wall before you painted. But where was the paint? There was just a layer of primer, which you would never use to decorate a wall. Did someone slap all this up and then decide not to paint? Although he knew better, he pried back some more of the wallpaper. He was curious. The next strip was loose, and Peter didn’t see the harm in tearing it off, it was just going to get the salad dressing treatment, anyway. So he slipped his fingers behind it as best he could, then yanked. About a foot of paper lifted off. He gave it another good tug, and it tore off in his hand. Though the wallpaper was bubbled over from last night, the strip was largely still attached. Pretty soon, it started to annoy him, and the notion of doing this neatly went out the window. He started to scratch at it, clawing out curled slivers with fingers. Finally, he’d uncovered enough to recognize it as part of an arm. Something about it…
He ran out of the room and to the kitchen. Alyssa was still working on her chicken coop when he charged in, frantically, looking every which way.
“What is it?” she asked, a little alarmed.
Peter was flicking his hands impatiently. “I need a knife! Something sharp!”
Alyssa’s eyes shrieked. “What! I’m not giving you a knife! You’re acting too weird, Peter.”
Peter jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. He was jogging in place from excitement. “Okay! You do it! Get something sharp and come to the living room!” He backed out, leaving Alyssa startled.
Peter waited by the torn paper, bouncing from foot-to-foot, until Alyssa warily rounded the corner. She sighed when she saw what he’d done. “Peter, what are you up to?” Then she noticed the picture on the wall. “Oh. Hmm.”
Peter urged her. “Tear it down! Please! None of that gunk in the bucket, it might ruin in it!”
“What’s the rush, Peter?”
“Just, come on.”
“All right, all right.” She was carrying a shiny, new chef’s knife. She slid it under the wallpaper and started to cut it from the wall, being careful not to damage the mural. It was just like opening a giant letter. Soon, a big strip was coming loose. Peter loomed over her shoulder, trying to get a look at what she’d uncovered. Finally, she pulled the strip off the wall and the picture of innocence gazed out at them.
“I wonder who that is?” said Alyssa.
Peter took a deep breath, released it with a gasp. “That’s Dickon.”
“No, Peter!” Alyssa yelped. “Stop it with this Dickon thing!”
“It’s not me doing it!” cried Peter.
“I said stop!”
“Let’s just talk about this. Okay? Let’s talk about last night.”
Alyssa, walking out of the room, turned back around. She still had the large knife in her hand. “Talk about what, exactly?”
Peter pointed at her weaponized kitchen tool. “Whoa, can’t we settle this like men? Remote controls at twenty paces?”
Alyssa rolled her eyes and stomped out of the room, back into the kitchen. Peter immediately followed her, his light steps a meager counterpoint to her own. “Look, that thing last night, all that crazy passion. Didn’t that seem a little weird to you?”
She was at the sink now, washing off her new knife. “What’s so weird about making love, Peter? We did it seven times in one day, once.”
Peter’s hands flailed. “One second we were fighting, like now, the next we were doing something else.”
“Well, it didn’t feel weird to me. It felt good. Like it always does. Normal.”
This gave Peter pause. “Normal?”
“Yes.”
“But you were so…”
She turned around. “What? I was so what?”
He shrugged his shoulders a little. “I don’t know. Just…a little more aggressive. Well, enthusiastic is a better word. Kind of…slutty and nutty. It was awesome.”
Alyssa finished scrubbing the knife, then turned back around, again, hands wet and soapy. “I was stressed. Okay? You’ve got me stressed, Peter. I had a lot that needed purging. Is that such a surprise?”
“No.”
“I mean…” she wiped her brow with the towel she was drying her hands with. Then she said nothing, obviously getting emotional. “Peter…” she said. Peter cut her off, though, scooping her over to him. They hugged. She was on the edge of tears. “When is this going to end, Peter? When?”
“I know,” he said. “I know, sweetie. I promise this crazy stuff is all going to pass.”
“How can you promise that? You can’t.”
“Yes, I can. I can prove to you I’m not making this up.”
She let go of him and stepped back. “Okay,” she said, with no conviction. She was ready to consider any alternative to her husband losing his mind.
“Come on,” he said. He took her hand and led her back to the parlor, where the tippy-tops of the wallpaper strips drooped like weeping willows. “Wait here,” Peter said, then he left her standing in the parlor’s door jamb. He went out onto the porch. Dickon was still there, asleep. Peter stood over the boy. It didn’t feel right to wake him, but he had to. Now was the time. It seemed a shame, though. He looked so peaceful. “Dickon?” he softly spoke. “Hey, Dickon.”
The boy’s eyes started to twitch, and within half of a minute he was awake and sitting up. He smiled with such delight, it was like they hadn’t seen each other in years.
“Mr. ‘uffy? Fine day, innit?” Dickon greeted, his spirits rising.
“It sure is, Dickon. Um, say, I need you to do something. It’s for Alyssa.”
“O’ course. Just nim it.”
About a minute later, Peter went back in the house, leaving the front door open. Alyssa was waiting there, patiently. “Okay,” he said, steering her attention to the parlor. “Just watch.”
“All right.” Alyssa said with a sigh.
Peter turned to the door. “Okay, Dickon. Let her rip!”
There was a short pause while Dickon puzzled over what ‘let her rip’ meant, then he began to play. Heat began wafting out of the room, it drove the couple back a few steps, into the foyer. It was hotter than last night
“Oh, my god,” Alyssa whispered.
The fife’s melody took on a new eagerness, and the room became skewed in a strange haze. This was much hotter than before. Soon, shiny lines of decades-old adhesive began to trace streaks down the wall. Then the wallpaper began peeling back, flopping down into loose curls. Standing in the window, the image of Dickon seemed to exist in quiet solitude, with the music all happening inside the house. The mural touched every wall. The trunks of small trees sprouted up from the baseboards, lending the room a faded, brown patina that seemed to hang in the air like smog. All the space in between them was crowded with the slashes of exaggerated flower stems, bushes, and weeds, all crisscrossed and fighting for governance. Above all that, standing no more than waist-height, treetops exploded in a flurry of cracking, flaking leaves.
“Wow,” said Alyssa, taking slight steps into the parlor. “This house is just full of beautiful secrets, isn’t it?”
“I’ll say,” Peter added.
Alyssa stood in front of Dickon’s picture and dragged her finger down the cracked, sweaty wall. “Okay, Peter. I’m listening.”
Peter offered her a wry smile. “Oh, really? Didn’t take much to convince you, did it?”