Kansas, 1995

I.

Dirty.

Filthy, disgusting. This is the start of it all. How it always starts. They’ll come in—only a few at first—and then multiply. We’ll be surrounded in no time, with no way out. An infestation. It’s happened before. Again and again and again.

There’s nothing you can do but move away. Relocate. Start all over. But even then, they always follow.

Why do they do it? It could be instinct. A parasitic, primal urge. But I think it’s something worse. More insidious. I think they know exactly what they’re doing. It’s not just biological programming with animals, you know. They can think too. That’s the part that makes me furious. I mean, fuck. They know. And they do it anyway. They come in and take everything from us. Make everything ugly. Upset the natural order of things. The whole entire ecosystem.

Pfft. And they expect us to just accept it.

I’d rather them all die than have to stay here with them surrounding us. I know it sounds harsh, but that’s really how I feel.

II.

My brother leans back, staring forward through the windshield, and snickers at my impression. Not much—just one little puff of air expelled from his nostrils that gently tilts his head back. He takes a drag from the joint and exhales slowly, a polite grin slightly stretching the corners of his mouth.

“Yeah, you’re right. That is how they sound, bro. When they talk about us. Like they don’t even want us around.” He takes another drag, long and slow.

“Like they hate us.

III.

We weren’t in foster care long before Grandma figured out all of the legal stuff to become our guardian. We hadn’t seen her in a while before that. A holiday here or there. Mom and her didn’t get along, and Dad always did what Mom wanted.

They said Grandma wasn’t responsible. 

But she was our only family left.

Everybody assumes it was hard when my parents died, but I was only seven. Mikel was five. I was sad because I was supposed to be sad–because at seven, I didn’t know how to be anything else. But our parents…they weren’t the kind of people that I would miss. Either way, losing them opened a gaping void in my life, my routine, my stability—my understanding of the world around me. Feeling empty turned into feeling sad.

I didn’t really mourn for them. I mourned for me. And I mourned for Mikel.

“Is this it, Grandma?” She pulled the whiny Buick up a steep driveway, letting it rest in a covered carport. I noticed the faded red brick of the ranch-style home first. It reminded me of the spilled juice on the kitchen floor of our foster home, layered with dust and grime from footprints. Staining the floor for days and days until another spill covered it, and they became one. 

“This is the one,” Grandma said. “It’s nice on the inside. They done remodeled everything. A world better than them fosters’ house y’all was living in. I can’t believe they had my two boys living with them nasty folks and all them other chillun’ like that. Don’t make no sense. This here is a good house, Joshua. Much better house.” She picked at an unrelenting stain on her shirt and smoothed the edges of her hair down with her palm, tucking a few strands back under her bandana when she finished. 

“How did you find it?” I asked. Mikel crashed two of his toy cars into each other, made an explosion sound, and then dropped one under the driver’s seat. He looked at me, then stared at the bottom of the seat, like maybe he could will the car back into his hands. 

“I had to find it fast, baby. I sholl wish your parents would have bought a house a long time ago. But they ain’t never wanna listen to me. By the time I came all the way out here from Kansas City, did all that paperwork, I had to find us somewhere to live to get y’all outta them foster folks house. Best I could do on short notice, but it’s a good house. Y’all parents loved you very much, I hope you know that. They left us a lot of money to take care of ourselves. But you can’t spend it all on no fancy house. Got to save some for college, your first car, all that kinda stuff. So, this is a good house for us. Real good house.” 

I stared out of the window at the house, surveyed the neatly-manicured lawns of the neighborhood. “We ain’t never lived in no place like this before,” I said. 

Grandma looked at us in the rearview and smiled with her eyes. 

The inside of the home smelled like dust and loneliness. Like when the last owners left, the house never expected anyone new to come live in it. We walked into a small kitchen with a connecting dining room. The faded wooden cabinets looked unfinished, smelled like pine. A fire sprinkler overhead had been painted over. On the other side of the wall, the living room took up the entire length of both of its neighboring rooms. One large window unloaded light into the space. Grandma closed her eyes and basked in it. 

“Gonna sit my plants in here.”

We passed a bathroom on the right before a narrow corridor led us to the back of the house. A space behind the door of a small closet revealed the hookups for a washer and dryer. Across from that space was one bedroom, and next to it, the other. 

“This gonna be y’all room here,” Grandma said, pointing at the smaller room. “And y’all can use that bathroom in the hallway.”

She beamed and knelt down to hug me.

“Oh, Joshua. Everything is gonna get better, baby. We’re all together like we should be. Everything is gonna get better.”

***

“Mikel,” I whispered through the dark. He curled right next to me on the twin mattress held up by nothing but the floor. 

“Huh?” he said.

“You sleepin’?”

“No.”

“Do you like this house?” I asked. 

“I don’t know,” he responded. “Why can’t Mom and Dad come get us? 

I stayed quiet. No one had really explained death to Mikel yet. Part of me felt like maybe it was better if he didn’t fully understand what was going on.

“Go to sleep,” I said, finally. 

“Goodnight, Josh,” he said. 

“Goodnight.”

The next day was a day I’ll never forget. Couldn’t if I tried.

It was the first day I saw the man. 

IV.

Grandma got us up bright and early, made us eat breakfast (pancakes with strawberries), brush our teeth, and get ready for school. She tried to turn on the light and Mikel whined. “We always get ready in the dark,” he said. “Mom and Dad let us.” Grandma was nice that day and went along. She made me wait outside her door while she pulled on her stockings with the holes in ‘em and a brown dress I’d already seen her wear a dozen times. 

She explained that she was going to spend the day cleaning the house and making it more like a home. She had to wait at the house because some man was coming to do inspections, or something. She had ordered some furniture for us, but it wouldn’t arrive until the weekend. 

Mom and Dad always picked out my school clothes, but Grandma didn’t care. She let me pick my own outfit, and of course I picked my favorite gray t-shirt with the soccer ball on it. It had a medium-sized hole right below the left armpit from Jessie Landgon pulling on it on the playground when I ran past him. That’s why mom never let me wear it to school again—so I didn’t look raggedy. But Grandma didn’t mind, and it made me happy. 

“Joshua, I ain’t gonna be able to walk you to the bus stop every day,” Grandma said, tightening the straps on my backpack. “But it’s easy to get there, you follow me? It’s a straight line from the house to that red sign. That’s where the bus is going to get both of y’all. I got to run errands and go to the bank and check on that furniture again this week. But you will get the hang of it in no time. You’re the big brother. You’ll be in charge of getting Mikel to and from school safely.” 

“Okay,” I said. 

“Mikel, it’s your job to draw the curtains and turn all the lights off every morning, you understand? Don’t want nobody sneaking in here while we’re gone.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mikel said. He dashed off to the back of the house, flipping switches and pulling cords.

When he was all done, Grandma put Mikel’s hand into my left and her own into my right. We walked together to the bus pickup–a stop sign at the corner of the main street and the one that dead-ended with our house. A few other kids showed up, some with their adults, some without. A rusted yellow bus lumbered down the street after a while to collect us all.  

Grandma kissed me and Mikel both on the forehead and patted our behinds to get us to walk up the stairs and onto the bus. I knew my instructions–when we got to the new school, I would go straight to the front office and tell whoever was in there that me and Mikel were new students. Grandma said they would be expecting us. No need for her to be there.

I got onto the bus and stopped in front of the driver. He was an old man with a thick mustache and a hog-head hat. He smelled like grease. The driver nodded at me and I led Mikel past him to an empty seat in the middle of the bus that we could share. My brother tried to dart in to sit by the window, but I yanked him back by his bookbag and slid in before him. He groaned, but he sat in the aisle. He knew better. 

The bus whined and moaned as it turned around. I leaned my forehead against the window pane. The cold glass felt nice. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a man. But only because he ain’t look like any man I’d ever seen. He stood still as a scarecrow in a front lawn, behind some hedges. He wore a panama hat and a baggy, short-sleeved shirt with buttons. The sunlight carried nothing but threats for his milk-colored skin. His eyes were large, round, and deep-set. His lips were bright red against his faded skin. He reminded me of a porcelain doll. 

I stared too long before I shifted my eyes. But I couldn’t look away for long. I could have sworn he was staring all the way across his yard and the street, into the bus, looking right at me. But there was no way. Right? Too many kids on that bus. Our eyes stayed locked until the bus went too far for me to see him anymore. 

“Ow!” I jumped up in my seat and whipped around to face Mikel. 

He held out two tiny pincher fingers, like a little boy-lobster. “What ya looking at?” he asked. 

I turned my face back to the window and the trees raced by. 

“Nothing,” I said. 

V.

“He be watching me, Grandma. When we go to the bus and sometimes even when I’m coming home.” 

“Child, hush.” 

“He do! I’m for real.”

“He do be watching Joshua, Grandma.” 

“Mikel, you don’t even know who we talkin’ ‘bout.”

“Yes, huh! It’s the scarecrow man. At the bus stop.” 

“No, it’s the doll-face man, remember?” 

Grandma shook her head. My ears warmed and I put my eyes on my plate. She always shook her head like that when she was disappointed in us. Grandma adjusted a shiny golden watch on her wrist. I hadn’t ever noticed it before. 

“Y’all shouldn’t be talking about people like this.” She waved a stern finger at us. “I want y’all to stop saying ugly things about that man. This is a good neighborhood. We are lucky to be here.”

The lights flickered, then every room in the house got dark. Grandma cursed under her breath. The legs of her chair dragged the floor as she pushed back from the table. 

“Joshua, go get them candles. I gotta call them electricity people tomorrow.”

VI.

I had been having nightmares about the doll-face man. He watched at the bus stop every morning for weeks, standing behind those hedges. Rain or shine. I wanted to believe he sat out there to stare at all the kids. Just a creepy old man who had nothing better to do. 

But I knew he was staring at me. I could feel it. 

Usually, he would already be outside when me and Mikel made it to the stop, but one day, we saw him exit the house. He barrelled out of a side door next to the hedges and clomped his way through the yard to his usual perch. His face never moved. He never spoke. Never gave away what he was thinking. Just watched. 

Our lights turned off a lot more as the weeks went by. Sometimes our water, too. Grandma always scoffed, saying she would call the people the next day, and that they had made a mistake. She’d put us to bed early. And in the dark corners of the room, between blinks, I’d see the doll-face man.

Grandma told us to stop talking about him. She said it with a twang, like Mom had. Country people, sounding country, with country sayings. Mom used to say as soon as you stop talking about something, that’s when it’ll happen. 

And that’s exactly what happened with the doll-face man. 

VII. 

“Joshua, get in here!”

“Huh?” I came back into the bedroom with my toothbrush still in my mouth. Grandma hovered over Mikel, her curls lively and bouncing above her shoulders. I could only just make out her face by the glow of the candle on the nightstand. I flipped up the light switch in the room, but nothing happened. 

“Why ain’t you get your brother up?”

“He said he ain’t wanna get up.”

“Then why ain’t you make him?”

“He said he ain’t feel good!”

“Then why you ain’t tell me!? This boy is sick as a dog. Running a fever high as heaven.”

Mikel groaned. 

“I ain’t know.” 

“He need to go to the doctor. I’m supposed to go to the store and a few other places, but he needs to go. Do you want me to take you with me, drop you to school on my way?”

I paused, searching for an answer, then shook my head. 

“No, I’ll just walk to the stop and catch the bus.”

“Are you sure? I have to go right by the school. It really doesn’t make any sense–”

“I’m sure, Grandma. It won’t be no problem.”

Grandma sucked at her teeth. “Alright. Well, walk straight to that bus and back. No messing around.” 

“Yes ma’am.” 

Grandma pulled Mikel out of bed and got him ready. I couldn’t wait to walk to the bus stop all by myself—to be free of Mikel. It’s not that I didn’t like having him around. It’s just … when you’re the older brother, your little brother is a lot like a backpack you have to carry everywhere. I walked past the bay window with shades of sunrise pouring in, beneath the cold chandelier in the foyer, and set off toward the stop. 

I cherished every step of my morning walk, picking dandelions out of my neighbors’ yards and twisting them into a chain. I blew some and watched the seeds carry in the wind. Pulled a honeysuckle blossom from a bush, stuck it in my mouth. School would be out soon—the honeysuckles were always the first to let us know. 

That morning was the last time I felt free. Walking to the bus stop alone made me weightless. I didn’t think about my parents. Didn’t think about Mikel. I didn’t think about anything other than swimming in the sunlight and making it to school. I felt like me again, whoever that was. 

Mom used to say if it feels too good to be true, it probably is.

VIII.

I gasped for air in between yells as the bus driver pulled away from the stop and out of my sight. I coughed twice, dug my inhaler out of my backpack, and took two large puffs. 

“I know he saw me. I know he did.” 

As my frustration subsided, the anxiety set in. 

How am I gonna get to school?

Grandma is gonna be so mad at me. 

I’ll tell her the bus came early. No. Yes. Ugh. 

She’s probably already gone with Mikel. 

I remembered that Grandma had cut a spare key for the furniture delivery people and hid it somewhere near the front door. I’d find it. By the time she came back from the doctor with Mikel, I’d have my lie about how the bus came early. She’d be mad, but what else could I do? 

I kicked up a clod of dirt and spat to the ground. The long stream of saliva draped over my bottom lip and hung there, still connected to whatever inside part of my mouth it came from. I shook my face side to side to break the stream, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw him. 

He stood in the yard, beyond the hedges this time, much closer than usual. I could make out his face better, but the features were no different: a pale white face with a porcelain gleam and cut to it. Sharp angles on the nose, chin, jaw. He wore a ‘Vietnam Veteran’ hat with the brim pulled low, a pair of dark Wayfarer shades right beneath. 

The stream of spit snapped and I straightened up to face the porcelain man. 

I didn’t move. I couldn’t. He took a couple steps toward me, so close now I could underhand a baseball to him. His expression remained ironed, taut. 

He leaned to the side a bit and cleared his throat, the sound like a dying motor. He spit toward me and the glob of saliva and phlegm landed on the ground at my feet. I looked down at it and then back up at him. The right corner of his mouth turned upward just the slightest bit. He opened his mouth to speak in a gravelly tone, ripened with age. 

“You missed your bus.” 

The sound of his voice shattered my trance, like an icicle snapping free from a rooftop gutter. I turned on my heel and sprinted toward home, looking over my shoulder every few steps to see the man, slowly following after me, step by step. Poised. Patient. 

I made it back to the house and flipped the doormat over, searching frantically for the spare key. I checked the flowerpot, the outside window ledges, and anywhere else I could think of. My heart pounded. Adrenaline surged through my body, my mind aflame with worries. 

The mailbox.

I ran from the door back down the steep driveway to the mailbox. It was an arched, brick construction with a tiny metal door in the front. The key was there, sitting on the brick inside the mailbox cave. I snatched it up and turned to race back up the driveway and into the house. 

But not before I saw the doll-face man in the distance, hobbling down the street that ended in the cul-de-sac outside our home. My stomach tumbled into my socks as I fidgeted with the key.

The man moved like a wooden puppet, his body jolting along, rocking at the joints, as he covered ground quicker than I could believe. My fingers fumbled with the key in the stubborn lock. Every couple of seconds the man got closer, closer. 

The key slid out of my sweaty grip and I dropped to my knees to retrieve it. When I looked up, the doll-face man loomed at the bottom of our driveway. He stood still with his hands at his sides, glaring up toward me. I scooped up the key. Forced it into the lock. Hurled myself into the house. Slammed the door behind me. My body felt heavy, my lungs stingy with breath. Then, the vibration of a violent knock on the door swam through my back and into my vertebrae. 

I screamed and fell to the floor. The doll-face man—it had to be him—pounded on the door, shaking it in its frame. I should have locked the screen, I thought. Stupid. Stupid! Why didn’t I lock the screen?

I crawled backward out of the kitchen quietly as the door continued to boom and rattle. I pulled myself up to an end table in the living room and grabbed the landline phone off the receiver. If I could reach Grandma, she could speed home and make this man go away. 

I heard nothing. Not even a dial tone. 

I hung the phone up and tried again. Nothing. I clicked the little button to reset the call, but still no dial tone. Anxiety ballooned in my chest as tears started to stream down my face. 

Our power. Grandma didn’t pay the bill.

I flipped the light switch, but I knew better. My heart wanted nothing more than to jump straight out of my chest. I swallowed hard and tears kept sliding down my cheeks, and then he reappeared.  

The doll-face man. It’s hard to remember his expression. Sometimes when I dream he looks like a vampire. Or a serial-killer I’ve seen on TV. But all I really remember is how pale he was. How red his cheeks were compared to the rest of his face. The sharpness of his chin and jaw. 

He stood outside the massive window in the living room, looking in at me. Mikel was too sick to have drawn the curtains. The man could see right in. I froze, but only for a second. I sprinted over to the window and hurriedly grabbed each side of the curtain to draw them together. The doll-face man pounded on the glass, the booms resounding through the entire house. I cried harder, screamed louder. We came face to face at the pane, close enough for me to notice his bloodshot eyes. Once I blocked him with the curtain, I ran to the back of the house, past the bathroom, past me and Mikel’s room, all the way to Grandma’s room. 

I stumbled over shoe-boxes and shopping bags on the way in. Jewelry draped over Grandma’s nightstand and glinted on the dresser. I shoved a bunch of dresses with tags out of my way and crawled beneath the bed. I pressed myself as low to the ground as I could beneath the metal frame supporting the box spring. I had to turn my neck sideways just so my head would fit. I held my breath and choked down the cries I wanted to let out. I knew if I breathed, I would explode. And if he heard me, he’d be able to find me. 

After a few minutes, footsteps sounded outside the wall behind Grandma’s bedroom. Then I heard laughter. Hearty, craggy laughter. It started off so loud. His voice pushed through the walls. But the laugh got quieter and quieter, farther away, until it evaporated. I pressed my face so hard into the carpet under the bed my head began to rumble. I held my breath until I couldn’t. 

IX.

I woke up to Grandma screaming my name. I scrambled to pull myself out from under her bed. The incandescent lights burned my eyes. I turned away from them and looked out of the window. A thin strip of moonlight hugged a pine tree in the backyard, swaying in the night’s breeze. 

X. 

“What’s that?” I asked Grandma. 

“It’s a cake,” she said, without looking up at me. Her wrist worked rigidly, spreading frosting around the layers. A tension unfurled in the space between us. 

“Cake for what?” I said after a moment. 

“Cake for that man up the street. For his family. I told you, he died last week, and I want to bring something nice over for his wife. It’s the least we could do, after all that fuss you made about him a few months ago,” she muttered. 

“Why are you bringing him cake?!” I screamed. “He tried to kill me! He chased me all the way home! He’s a killer!”

“Joshua, that is ENOUGH!” She shouted back, slamming the offset spatula down on the counter. “I told you to stop lying! How many times do we have to talk about this? That story you made up? It never happened! It was a pigment in your imagination! You embarrassed me in this neighborhood and it’s the least I could do to show my respect. Now stop! Stop telling those lies. There’s nothing wrong with this neighborhood. This is a good house. This is a good house.”

Grandma put her face in her hands and started to sob. Her gold bangles clanged together as her shoulders heaved. I turned around and stomped out of the kitchen to the bedroom I shared with Mikel. He lay napping on the bed. It was a little higher than Grandma’s. I grabbed a pillow and got down on the floor, army-crawled my way under the bed and lay my head down. All the sounds of the house rushed out of my ears, replaced by an airy slosh, like holding up a seashell. 

Like being nowhere. 

I closed my eyes and fell asleep. 

XI. 

Mikel takes a long drag from the joint and passes it over to me. I wave him off. We both peer through the window as several girls with blonde hair and short dresses hop out the back of a car and walk into the house on the corner. A few minutes earlier, a couple guys with All-American jawlines and letterman jackets go the same way. The row of cars down the block is endless. I crank the heat up to the next setting and zip my jacket a little higher. 

“Where you know these kids from again?” I ask. 

“School,” says Mikel. “It’s this girl in my Spanish class told me ‘bout it. Told me come through.” 

“She cute?” I ask.

Mikel shrugs. 

“White girl?” I ask. 

“Yeah,” he responds, facing the window. 

I nod.

Mikel takes a couple more pulls from the rello and offers it to me again. This time, I accept. 

“You coming?” he asks, unbuckling his seatbelt. 

I look at the crowd forming outside the door. This time of winter, everyone around here is pale. No tans. The alcohol in their system flushes their cheeks cherry. I close my eyes to blink out the visual, but I can’t. My breath catches. My heart starts to drum.  

“I’ll meet you in there,” I say, exhaling smoke. 

“Aight,” Mikel says.

He hops out of the car and heads into the party. A group of fratty-looking guys in collared shirts and khakis trails behind him a few seconds later, undoubtedly headed to the same vibe. For a moment, I want to follow him. I need to follow him. I know it’s what I should do. To keep him safe. 

But I don’t. 

I take another pull at the joint, reach over to the door panel and lock the car doors. I watch as the rest of the people standing at the entrance finally make their way inside. 

I exhale smoke, slink down in my seat and pull my hood over my head. 

I close my eyes. I think of seashells. 

I hear the ocean.