i can speak

He was forty years old and wanted to eat the sugar right from the open bowl, despite the line of ants marching out of it. The menacing stain on the floor, however, presented a challenge. Leonard stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the three season porch. The counter was shaped like an L, its long leg running beneath the window and cabinets and its short leg marking the threshold between kitchen and living room. The sugar bowl sat on the short leg. The corners of the linoleum tiles curled away from the floor that separated him from it. The stain traced an outline of a person who had fallen with limbs splayed, if such a person were made of black threads that could be teased out into long, shakey tendrils at the toes and fingers. It wasn’t a water stain. It wasn’t blood, either.

“Mum?” he said. “Momma?”

Leonard scratched the rough skin on the inside of his elbow, the entry point of countless needles.

step on a crack, break your mother’s back.

He placed his toe on a linoleum tile. It was yellowed and greasy, but not black. Leonard brought the other foot forward and rested his entire body on that single tile. So far so good. The sugar bowl awaited. The next step was tough. He could see no other way across but to step over a stain line that diagonally traversed two tiles. The blackness within was not totally black. He could see a motion, a trickle flowing towards the thing’s left hand, where a tendril stretched away and disappeared in the gap beneath the counter, right below the sink and the window.

“Momma, are you here?”

step on a creek, the hunt dog will speak

It would be better if Leonard could have his dolls. They weren’t allowed in prison or the halfway house, and he wouldn’t have wanted them to come anyway. People on the outside wouldn’t have treated them well, especially Juliet. That was his youngest sister and the one he loved the most. Leonard caught his thoughts straying, but not in time. He’d managed to get his body almost all the way over the forbidden zone, but he could feel something dragging him back a little by the heel. He yanked his foot away. Trees rustled outside. Leonard glanced over at the window and saw them waving in the breeze. He took two more steps, careful to avoid both creek and tile, and reached the short leg.

Something whispered through the three inches of wire screen exposed by the open window. At first it was just a slow, soft hissing sound, the panting rhythm of someone who was trying to force their breathes down despite a racing heart. Then the hisses formed words.

i can speak

A cat wandered into the living room and leapt onto the counter. It ignored the sugar bowl and sauntered to a cup of milk that was sitting nearby. As the feline began lapping up the milk, Leonard snatched it away and held it close to his body.

“No, it’s not good for you.” he said.

Kittens need milk, but become lactose intolerant as they turn into cats. They don’t know any better. Like anyone else, they craved the comforting experiences of their youth. Leonard looked up when the corner of his eye caught another motion. This time it was Momma. She was thin as a winter poplar and dressed in a shabby paisley dress. Her lips were dry and crusted. Leonard opened his mouth. Before he spoke, he noticed that Momma wasn’t meeting his eyes. She was looking over his shoulder, out the window.

“It’s there?” He said.

step on a creek, the hunt dog will speak

“Momma?”

The frail woman’s body shivered. She broke her stare and turned that gaze to Leonard. He thought she might have tried to smile at him. He wasn’t sure. Momma came to the short leg and gathered up the sugar bowl and cup of milk. She passed Leonard as though he wasn't there. She danced around the stain with terrific poise, as though she’d spent her entire life avoiding it, and deposited the dishes on a pile of their cohorts. There was nothing in the window above the sink. She went to the three season porch and left Leonard alone.

He went to his bedroom. He hadn’t been there in a decade, but it was as he’d left it. Martha and Nelson sat on the dresser with their backs pushed against the mirror. Juliet had the coveted spot on the bed. Long strands of curly red yarn flowed off her head and over her shoulders. Some of her stitches were uneven, but by and large Momma had crafted her well. Juliet held a page in her cotton stuffed hand. Leonard fetched it and found a note.

“Welcome home. You always were my favorite. I’m not saying I hated Martha and Nelson and Juliet. I loved them as much as you did. There was just no way out when the hunt dog came. Be careful. Love Momma.”

Leonard gathered up the dolls and tried to sleep, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t sure of the time when he got up again. He’d lost track of time in prison. The halfway house hadn’t been much better. Neither was home. His siblings in hand, Leonard went into the bathroom. He slid his back down against the wall and sat there, looking up at the stain on the opposite wall. It was another person, this time looking as though it was jumping. That same almost-black oily pigment traced and outline. An ant, perhaps a refugee from the sugar bowl, crawled across the wall. It made the mistake of stepping into the almost blackness, where the subtle current carried it away.

He scratched at the inside of his elbow again and pulled his knees close to his chest. Feeling very tired now, Leonard rested his shoulder against the cabinet beneath the sink. There was no escaping the memory of hiding in there, trying to keep his breathing quiet even though his heart was pounding. The small bathroom was warm and the green tub was filled. One by one, Momma paraded the other children up to the bath and dunked them under. How such a small woman managed to hold them down was still a mystery. Leonard always thought she’d gotten the strength from somewhere else, from the same place she’d gotten the idea of drowning her babies in the first place. She hadn’t been a monster before that. No one had expected it. But what can you do when your mind turns?

Juliet had been the smallest and the last. Her final gasps were caught in tiny bubbles that rose to the surface and joined the thin air. The water was crimson, not with blood, but with ample billows of bright red hair. Momma lifted the body from the tub and propped it up like the other two as though she were forming a row of dolls. The floor was sopping wet.

It was the boy. Leonard was the oldest, the biggest and strongest. Who else could it have been? He was strange. Immature gestures and words from a man child were not endearing to most people. They were suspicious, a sign of danger lurking in the depths of muddy water. It was the boy. He didn’t know what he was doing. Momma hadn’t even needed to say it. Hell, the way she leapt on the idea when the cop first suggested it meant the thought of blaming Leonard hadn’t even occurred to her before that. Sometimes gifts come from strange places.

Leonard put his brother and sisters back where they’d been and burst out the back door. He charged through the three feet of packed dirt and crunchy leaves and the barren sticks of bushes that occupied the space between his home and the one next door. There was nothing outside the window. Climbing over the chain link fence, he came to the corner. There was a house there with a wide porch. He remembered it from when he used to deliver papers. A big white dog sat on the steps. How old was that dog now? Eighteen? It had been gentle giant. Leonard opened the gate.

The dog bolted to its feet and scrambled down the steps. Leonard ran back and fiddled with the gate clasp for a second too long. He felt the teeth close on his leg. He kicked at the thing’s snarling face until a woman came screaming out of the house.

“Leave him alone!”

She was, of course, talking to Leonard and not the dog. The animal relented and backed away. Then Leonard heard that hissing sound again. It formed words from the dog’s mouth.

i can speak

“He attacked me.” said Leonard.

“He never attacks anyone. What did you do? Why are you even here? I’m calling the cops.”

It wasn’t the first time that something like this had happened to him. As a paperboy, he’d seen friendly animals turn all the time. He’d also grown used to adults blaming him if he ever complained. But I’ve always been good to them, he’d protest. That dog has never bitten anyone before. You must have done something.

Was it so difficult to believe something could decay within a canine brain? It happened to people all the time. Perhaps the adults were afraid of just that, of a functioning mind slipping, of some unspeakable madness dragging them away. Better to sacrifice the children. You can’t fall if you were always low.

Leonard looked the dog in the eyes.

“I don’t care if you can speak.” he said. “It doesn’t mean you’re not crazy.”