Joel Arnold - Fetal Bait Apocalypse - 3 Collections in 1

“Please,” the man said, breathing rapidly, his skin pale and dappled with sweat. “Please,” he said as I lifted the railing above my head, feeling for the maximum leverage, the best angle to create the greatest force.

“Please!” he cried one last time.

I swung.

The singing, the rocking in Davey’s room stopped.

“Honey?” my wife called.

“Everything’s okay,” I said. “Stay there.” I wiped the sweat off my brow with a shaking hand. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

I lifted the railing from the cracked bone and cartilage, the blood and bits of brain that clung to the wood. I stared at the silent, limp form of the man who’d invaded our home.

The police wouldn’t question it. I’d be a fucking hero.

I screwed the railing back into place. Stepped quickly into our bedroom and called 9-1-1.

Davey sits through four hours of Applied Behavioral Analysis — ABA therapy — a day. It focuses on repetition, compliance, reward. It attempts to circumvent and rewire the misfiring synapses in his brain. He’s made progress. No words, but the sounds were coming. The sounds — sweet and mellifluous. Occasionally there were the harsh croaks of frustration, but we’d take them, too. My heart, Jenny’s heart, longed so much to hear Mama , to hear Dada .

Often, I’d take Davey to the park. He usually let me hold his hand and guide him there, and once there, he spent most of the time sifting through the smooth pebbles surrounding the slides and swings. The therapists call it stimming — self-stimulating behavior — during which he’ll fixate on an object or movement — flapping his hands, stroking a stuffed animal over and over.

Sifting rocks through his fingers past the point most children would find it boring and move on.

We were supposed to discourage this, try to distract him, redirect him, but in the park I just let him be. Let him sift the small, cool pebbles through his fingers over and over again. I liked to think he was doing what little kids were supposed to do.

A month after the intruder came uninvited into our house, Davey still had not spoken his first word. Syllables, yes — “Ba” and “ka” and “ah” and “eh.” So we knew he was trying. We knew, we prayed , the words would come. We remained hopeful. Even when he started spending hours on the landing where the intruder had died.

The first time I noticed him there, he was making sounds. “Da—” he said. “Ah — eh.” I watched, not wanting to interrupt. He giggled. Rocked back and forth on his knees. Stared at the wall. Rocked back and forth. “Ah. Eh. Kah.”

Finally, I offered my hand to him. “Davey, c’mon, hon.”

A shadow fluttered against the wall and disappeared.

I froze.

Davey giggled.

I forced a smile. “Davey?”

He turned to my voice, but didn’t look at me. He stood and walked upstairs, whatever spell that held him now broken.

I shivered. The child gate swung slowly and tapped against the wall as he passed it.

The child gate.

How long would I feel the need to keep it there? Davey had the steps mastered even before the intruder came. Yet, when going to bed, I continued to shut it. Despite our new alarm system, despite keeping our windows closed at night, I felt safer with the gate latched.

I began to find him there often. Kneeling, rocking, flapping his hands, his mouth making sounds. It no longer seemed like the typical self-stimulation of autism, but something more, like something in that spot had a pull on him.

And the briefest of shadows appeared and disappeared on the wall, a shadow that should not be there, not the way the light shined, the way the sun hit the banister and spindles. I began to see it more and more, always fleeting.

“C’mon. Take my hand.”

Davey stared at the wall, oblivious to my presence, my voice. His right hand flapped, the individual fingers folding and unfolding. He opened his mouth, sounds forming. “Kah… kah… kah… er… kah… er…”

I continued to take Davey to the park. Now, he not only sifted the playground’s pebbles through his small, soft fingers, but he scooped them into his mouth, as well. At first, I stopped him. They were dirty and I was afraid he’d choke or swallow them, but he did neither. It soothed him to roll the smooth stones over his teeth, over his gums and tongue. I ended up letting him be, letting him stuff the stones in his mouth and sucking them clean. There were worse things a kid could do.

As I suspected, the police treated the death of the intruder in our house as an accident. He tripped on the child gate, fell down the steps and cracked his head open on the corner of the stair railing, end of story. His name was Clayton Jones, and he had a substantial record of B&E, as well as domestic violence.

Never murder, however.

One day, while Davey kneeled on the landing, rocking back and forth and staring at the wall, the shadow stayed.

I blinked and it stayed.

I looked away and looked back and it stayed.

The shadow that should not be there.

It gained form. Gained shape. The shape of a sitting man, one leg bent unnaturally.

I scooped Davey into my arms. “No!” I shouted, my voice frightening him. He cried, hitting me hard across the cheek, once, twice. I carried him into our bedroom, dropped him on the bed and closed the door. I let him tantrum as I paced back and forth, and soon the fight was out of him and he collapsed in a snoring heap amidst the rumpled and tossed white sheets.

I walked back to the top of the stairs and slid my eyes down the wall, looking for the shadow that should not be there, but all I saw were the shadows of banister spindles cast by the foyer lights. I took the steps slowly and stopped on the landing where the intruder died, my own shadow now cast, a big, dumb, still thing. I waited. Listened. Had I really seen it? I stepped aside to let the foyer light through, and still — nothing.

“What do you want?” I whispered to the wall. Nothing answered.

Instead, I heard movement on the tile floor below. I whirled.

“Jenny?”

She regarded me curiously.

“You scared the crap out of me,” I said.

Fatigue had tattooed purple-black half-moons beneath her eyes, had stolen her easy smile. “You’ve seen it, too?” she asked.

My brain refused to acknowledge I’d even heard her question. I couldn’t answer, because if I did, if I acknowledged that yes, I had seen it, it would be so much harder to return to any sense of normalcy. Easier to convince myself I’d been imagining things if no one else validated that shadows existed where they shouldn’t.

“John?” she said, waiting.

I shook my head and climbed the stairs.

A week later. Two in the morning. I woke. Heard something on the stairs.

There wasn’t enough oxygen in the room to breathe. I listened. Listened closely. The steps creaked. I sat up. Saw through the bedroom door that the child gate was open. I reached under the bed and felt for the bat, a wooden Louisville Slugger, and grabbed it around the middle. I slid out of bed. Jenny remained asleep, sleeping pills now a regular part of her night-time routine.

Another creak. I heard whispers. I couldn’t make out the words. I stepped quietly to the bedroom doorway. As I did so, a familiar odor hit me.

Davey. Where was Davey?

The odor was strong. I peered over the top of the stairs and tightened my grip on the Slugger. My eyes seemed to play tricks on me, because I saw two figures. Davey was one of them, his hair gelled with what I realized was his own shit. The other form—

But no. My eyes adjusted. There was no other form.

I turned on the hall light.

“Davey!” I hurried down the steps.