Brett McBean - Tales of Sin and Madness

I set the Whipper Snipper on the ground, crouched, tossed away clumps of weeds and gazed upon what I had unearthed.

My smile broadened, my heart twinged with a nostalgic ache — part joy, part sadness.

“What are you doing here?” I said, feeling foolish talking to a toy, but there was no one around to hear me. Dad was still busy mowing and there lived a deaf old lady next door. “I thought Dad gave you away to charity?”

Apparently not. I guess he couldn’t be bothered driving to the charity bin that day, instead deciding to toss my toy lawnmower down the narrow stretch of untamed wilderness between the fence and the garage.

My once prized possession now lay half buried under the bottom of the garage. Only its orange handle and some of its blue plastic blades were visible.

I pulled off my right glove, reached down and gripped the grimy plastic handle. I didn’t know what I hoped to do with the toy once I had it out: clean it up and keep it for my son when (if) I had one? Give it a proper send off, one I felt it deserved? Whatever the reason, I started working the toy out of the tight spot that it had called home for the past seven or eight years. Centipedes scurried away at my rude intrusion.

It was harder than I expected; the damn thing wouldn’t budge. I dropped to my knees, whipped off the second glove and, with my other hand, took hold of the plastic blades and tried again.

I pulled hard at the toy lawnmower, my arms straining. I wondered how on earth the toy could be so tightly wedged under. It was like somebody had deliberately tried to hide the thing. I was about to give up trying to pull the toy out and begin digging in the dirt, hoping that would do the trick, when I heard a hissing sound and suddenly the handle began curling around my wrist, like a plastic orange snake.

“What the…” I gasped, at first not believing what I was seeing.

But when I felt the cold, dirt-encrusted handle start to tighten, I knew my eyes weren’t playing tricks.

I screamed, terror and pain gripping me in equal measures.

“Dad!” I cried. “Dad, help!”

I clawed desperately at the handle, tried prying the plastic off my wrist, but the handle was wound too tightly. I felt around for the Whipper Snipper, but my hand touched only dirt and chopped weeds.

The ground began to fall away around the toy.

“Dad,” I cried again, only this time the cry was more like a squeak.

Where is he? I wondered. Why isn’t he coming to the rescue? Isn’t that what dads were supposed to do?

He’s not going to save you; nobody’s going to save you, the small voice said.

I started weeping then, as the soil continued to be sucked down into an ever-widening hole. The toy lawnmower started pulling me forward as it, too, was drawn into the black void.

I fought uselessly against it, hot tears streaming down my face making small mud puddles in the dirt. I was only thirteen years old and didn’t have the strength.

I was dragged head-first towards the gaping hole under the garage, my right arm disappearing into the darkness. I was smacked in the face by the smell of wet dirt, old grass, petrol fumes and something else, something foul like a million gassy farts that had been trapped inside the hole for a thousand years.

I heard a noise within the darkness; a deep swishing, like something slicing the air, over and over again.

It sounded horribly similar to the whirring of mower blades.

Or a dragon gnashing its teeth.

I tried stopping myself from being pulled into the hole by gripping the bottom of the garage with my one free hand. But the force dragging me forward was too powerful.

I let go before my left arm was snapped in half.

My arm was plunged into the darkness and I groped around, hoping for something, anything, to grab onto.

My hand touched something slimy. I yanked back my arm, not realising until my arm was out that I had something in my grasp.

I stared in horror at the souvenir I had brought back from the inky depths, at the Collingwood Magpies football hat clenched in my tiny hand.

“Daaaa-dddeee!” I cried one last time, as my toy lawnmower vanished into the blackness, followed by my head.

The rotten stench of bad eggs and petrol grew more pungent, the blackness was as deep and thick as a night-time desert sky. The whirring noise grew louder and I felt wind whooshing against my face.

I heard dirt pattering on metal, like rain against the garage roof, and rocks being carved up and turned into a thousand tiny pebbles.

Then a voice, ancient, cold, full of dirt and grit said: “I told you to be careful. I told you not to stick your hands into the blades. The lawnmower’s not a toy, you know.”

“We’ve missed you,” said another voice, this one higher-pitched and giggly. “You thought you were too old to play with us. But we tricked you. You’re still just a kid. You’ll see, you’re never too old to play with us…”

Still holding onto the hat, and with legs kicking, I was dragged fully into the darkness.

And play we did.

“Hey kiddo, wanna help me…?”

Darrin Thornton frowned at the sight of his son’s empty room. Usually on weekends Ben spent the entire day in his bedroom, reading, watching DVDs, or surfing the ‘net.

“Wonder where he could be?” Darrin muttered. He left his son’s room and headed into the kitchen, where his wife was busy unpacking the shopping from the green environmentally friendly bags.

“There are more bags out in the car,” his wife said in her typically playful, almost girlish voice.

“Ben’s not in his room,” Darrin said. “I was going to ask him if he wanted to help me with the mowing today.”

His wife paused, a packet of pasta in her hand. “I think I hear him outside. He must be playing.”

Darrin listened, heard the distant sounds of playful shouting.

“He’s too old to be playing,” Darrin huffed.

“He is not,” his wife said as she put away the pasta. “He’s only thirteen. He’s still just a baby.”

“He may be a baby in your eyes, but he’s growing up, Jayne. Our baby’s becoming a young man. And I want our young man to help with the mowing. I know he’s wanted to help ever since he was little.”

As Darrin headed for the back door, the unmistakable sounds of a boy trapped in that weird and scary place between childhood and adulthood coming from somewhere out in the backyard, his wife said, “Just make sure he’s careful. I don’t want him poking out an eye from a flying twig.”

Darrin nodded, adjusted his Magpies hat, opened the back door and went out to find his son.

This story is almost completely autobiographical (I say almost, because naturally, I was never pulled under the garage by a troll). In the house where I grew up, there was a narrow area between the bungalow and garage and the neighbour’s fence. I was forever scared of that area. I’m not exactly sure why; perhaps it was simply out of fear of getting bitten by a spider or even a snake. But I think there was something else that frightened me about that narrow alley. I think it was a fear of the unknown, as most of the time it was populated with tall weeds and so in my mind anything could have been lurking within the grass. I hated venturing into that area, as I sometimes had to do whenever a ball was hit or tossed down there by accident. But, I did it, and I did it as quickly as I could, running out of that narrow space fast and always expecting to either feel the sharp pinch of fangs at my ankles, or for something evil to grab me around the legs and drag me down. Sometimes, usually whenever my cousin would come to visit, I would be goaded into seeing how far I could walk down the narrow space before I got too scared and ran away. I don’t ever remember making it more than halfway to the far wall. It wasn’t until years later, when I was a teenager and had to help cut the weeds, that I finally made it all the way down the alley that lay between the garage and the fence. And even then, my childhood fears were never far away.