tell me when I was just little. Any of you ever hear the story of TonTon Macoute?”
“TonTon?” Arm wrapped around my stomach, I bend forward on a giggle. “What kind of name is that?”
“It means Uncle. TonTon Macoute is sort of like the Boogeyman.”
The laugh dies in my throat as I swallow a gulp. “The Boogeyman?”
“Yes. Let me see if I can remember …
“He carries on his crooked back
A ragged burlap gunnysack
And in his hand he wields a blade
Of children’s’ bones, from which it’s made
He hunts the night for those who’ve lied
There’s nowhere you can run, or hide
He’ll swipe you up right out of bed
And by first light, you will be dead.”
The memory slips away to the present, the figure still sitting in the chair across from me.
“Your daddy’s gon’ go mad, if you don’t go up and see what he’s callin’ after you for, child.”
A hum of fear vibrates across my bones as, keeping my eyes on her, I push to my feet. Screams lay trapped inside my skull, bouncing around, warning me to get the hell out of here, but I can’t. Curiosity compels me to find my father, as she said. I want to see him. I’ve yearned to see him again.
The boots I slept in all night hardly allow me to tiptoe across the creaking wood floor on my way to the staircase. Having ascended halfway, I twist to find her standing at the foot of the stairs, her gaze locked ahead, but not on me, which keeps the deformed side of her face hidden by white, straggled hair. She doesn’t move toward me, but remains still, as if standing guard. The child inside of me recognizes her, misses her, as I would a mother, but I’m not a child anymore, and this isn’t real. It’s a dream. A horribly cruel dream.
At the top of the stairs, I scan over the corridor, left to right, confused on where to go next.
Something thumps against the wall to the right.
A flinch tugs my muscles. My pulse hastens.
Without much direction from my head, my feet guide me toward the doorless corridor, where the gold in the paisley seems to shimmer brighter, almost like lights against the red wallpaper.
Red. So much red.
Staring at it takes me back to an unbidden visual of the past.
With frantic strokes, my father runs a roller up and down the walls, mumbling and whimpering to himself.
“Daddy, what are you doing?”
Ignoring my question, he stretches the roller up toward the ceiling, and back down again.
“Are you okay?” I dare to ask again, fingers fidgeting, as the sight of him stirs an unsettling feeling in my stomach. It’s one of many strange behaviors in the last couple of months. Sometimes, he paces back and forth for hours, talking to himself. Other times, he’ll carry on like this. Two days ago, he went around sealing all the windows shut, and now, I can’t open the one in my bedroom. “Daddy?”
“Get away! Get away from here!” Eyes wide and crazed, he lurches toward me, drawing back the roller in his hand as if he might strike me with it.
On a gasp, I back myself to the bannister behind me, and my eyes shoot open to the emptiness of before. Nothing there but the red paisley wall.
Nothing there.
“He’s not there,” I mutter to myself. “There’s nothing there.”
Nothing but a dream.
A frigid emptiness settles in my chest, as I recall the last few months with him. How the warmth faded from his eyes. The laughter died. The way his focus shifted from me and the minutiae of everyday life, to his research. To the extent that I rarely saw him outside of his study, except for the odd little rituals, like the wallpapering, that left me questioning how much of his sanity had been spared.
I twist around and find Maw Maw still standing at the foot of the staircase, and something cold skitters across the back of my neck.
Don’t look away. The words of what I thought might’ve been the ghost of my mother, who visited me back at the cabin. No matter what.
Palms sweating, fingers fidgeting, I hesitate to turn back toward the corridor, terrified of what stands behind me.
But I do.
Partially cloaked in shadows, at the end of the hall, waits a spectral figure, whose slightly bent posture and form is vaguely familiar to me.
Goaded by both curiosity and uncertainty, I edge closer. “Daddy?”
When he lifts his gaze to mine, the recognition is instant. A warmth rushes over me,