James Swain - The Night Monster

“Good morning. My name is Jack Carpenter, and this is my dog Buster. We’re going to help the police find your missing classmate. Before we do that, I need to ask you some questions. Who was the last person to see Bobby Monroe?”

A little girl in pigtails sitting in the front row raised her hand.

“What’s your name?”

“Missy.”

“Tell me what happened, Missy.”

“We were going to gym. Miss Rosewater had us line up by the door. Bobby was right behind me. We went into the hall, and I asked Bobby if he was feeling okay. He didn’t say nothing. I turned around, and he was gone.”

“Did he run back into the classroom? Or down the hall?”

“I don’t know where he went.”

“Why did you ask Bobby if he was okay?”

“He was banging his desk and making really weird noises. I thought maybe he had a bellyache.”

I glanced at Ms. Rosewater. “Which desk is Bobby’s?”

The substitute teacher led me to an empty desk in the room’s center. Over the back of the chair hung a blue knapsack, which I opened and quickly searched. A crumbled candy wrapper caught my eye. It was for a bag of peanut M amp;Ms, and had Harrison Ford’s photo splashed across the wrapper promoting the new Indiana Jones movie. Walking to the front of the room, I held the wrapper in the air.

“Does everyone know what this is?” I asked.

The children nodded as one.

“Good. Which one of you gave this bag of candy to Bobby?”

Their faces turned expressionless. I scanned the room, and settled on a little boy with curly blond hair who wasn’t making eye contact with me. His desk was adjacent to Bobby’s, and I decided he was the culprit. I didn’t like traumatizing kids, but I had to get to the truth. Crossing the room, I knelt down in front of his desk.

“What’s your name?”

“Stuart,” he said, staring at his desk.

“Look at me, Stuart.”

Stuart lifted his eyes, which were moist and met my gaze.

“Did you give this bag of candy to Bobby?”

Stuart hesitated, then nodded reluctantly.

“Didn’t your regular teacher tell you not to do that?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why did you?”

“Bobby saw the candy in my lunch bag, and got all excited. He said that if I gave him the candy, he’d recite all the lines from the latest Indiana Jones movie during lunch.”

“Can Bobby do that?”

“Bobby knows all the lines from the Indiana Jones movies and from Star Wars and a bunch of TV shows. He’s super smart.”

It was not uncommon for autistic children to have amazing memories, and I could see Bobby pressuring Stuart to give him the M amp;Ms.

“Did you see Bobby eat the candy?” I asked.

“Uh-huh,” Stuart whispered.

“Is that when Bobby started acting strange?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry if I made Bobby sick. I didn’t mean to.”

In order for autistic children to mainstream, their parents often removed sugar and dairy products from their diets, which helped calm them down. Stuart’s bag of M amp;Ms had hit Bobby’s nervous system like a bomb, and Bobby had gone on sensory overload and decided to run. Grabbing Bobby’s knapsack from his desk, I walked to the front of the classroom where Buster lay on the floor. I placed the knapsack in front of my dog’s face, and let him get a good whiff. Buster rose from the floor and walked to the back of the classroom. I was right behind him.

Buster stuck his face against one of the windows that faced the playground. The latch was unlocked, and I pushed the window open. The opening didn’t look large enough for a child to climb through, but I knew from past experience that autistic children were capable of just about anything when they were on tilt. I turned to face Officer Gordon.

“How big is the school property?”

“Twenty acres,” Gordon replied.

“What does it back up on to?”

“Mostly woods.”

“I’m going outside to look around. I’d suggest you round up the teachers and maintenance men who are searching for Bobby, and do the same.”

I headed for the door. Scaling a fence was not difficult for most young boys, and Bobby could have gone just about anywhere. Our chances of finding him grew slimmer by the minute. A thought flashed through my mind, and I turned back to Gordon.

“Do the woods have any freestanding water?” I asked.

“Yes, there’s a large pond.”

“Is it visible from the school grounds?”

“In some spots, yes.”

My shoulder banged the door as I raced from the classroom.

Aater has a magical effect on autistic children. It calls to them like a siren’s song. I found this out the hard way when an autistic little boy who’d disappeared from his home was found on the bottom of his next-door neighbor’s swimming pool. It was a lesson I’d never forgotten.

I ran across the playground with Buster on my heels. The morning air was still and hot, and sweat poured down my face and burned my eyes. As I came to the fence that encompassed the property, I noticed a piece of torn fabric hanging in the twisted barbs across the top, and felt myself shudder.

I scaled the fence, and landed on the other side. Buster began digging at the ground in an attempt to join me. I couldn’t wait, and plunged into the woods.

There was no discernible path, the underbrush thick with weeds and exposed tree roots. More than once I nearly fell, only to right myself as I began to go down. In the distance I heard a thrashing sound accompanied by a boy’s muted screams.

“Bobby! I’m coming!” I shouted.

I charged toward the sound, the tree branches tearing at my face and arms. On the ground I spotted a child’s sneaker, and it gave me an adrenaline burst that propelled me through the dense trees and into a small clearing fronting the pond.

The pond was several acres in size, its water dark and menacing. Twenty yards from where I stood, a boy’s head bobbed up and down. Bobby Monroe appeared to be sitting down in the water, his arms thrashing helplessly. Something beneath the water had latched on to him, and was pulling him down.

Knowing what had gotten him, I dove in.

Back when I was growing up, there had been as many alligators in south Florida as there had been people. Over the years the gator population had thinned out, but there were still plenty around, and every once in a while they attacked someone.

“Bobby!”

Bobby twisted his head at the sound of my voice. His eyes were filled with terror, and he was swallowing water. He was trying with all his might to stop from being pulled to the murky depths. If the gator got him down to the bottom of the pond, he’d roll the boy until he drowned, then turn him into a meal.

“I’m coming! Hold on!”

I’d swam competitively as a kid, and still swam whenever I could. I powered my body across the water, my eyes never leaving Bobby’s face.

“Keep fighting!”

Bobby’s head dropped beneath the surface, then came back up. He spit out a mouthful of brackish water while staring at me helplessly. His arms were no longer thrashing, his body rigid and still. He had given up. I lunged through the water and shot out my arm, only to see him vanish before my eyes.

I am part Seminole Indian. I tell you this because as a kid I visited my relatives on the reservation, and watched men in the tribe wrestle alligators in front of tourists. I’d seen enough of these battles to know that there was an art to grappling with a gator, and it centered around getting your hands around its jaws and not letting go.

I dove beneath the water and swam straight down. The water was dark and I couldn’t see a thing, but I could feel the gator’s tail thrashing the water. I followed the thrashing until I had the tail in my hands. Grabbing a gator by the tail wasn’t very smart, but I knew the gator was preoccupied and wasn’t about to let Bobby go.