“Everything’s fine, Mom, you can go back to bed,” I said confidently. She peered sleepily through the door. It seemed like she had half a mind to ask something, but she could see I was smiling, so back she went to bed. I slept until morning curled up like a crescent moon, because I’d wet my bed in terror. Things are finally taking a turn for the better, I thought.
13.
I saw them the next morning as soon as I left the house. Natz—big, fat, ornery Natz—was holding the two of them upside down by the feet, heads dangling. He was so tall that their hands weren’t even touching the ground. Natz was not a talkative man, I knew, maybe he had never mastered human language. He nodded toward what he had in his hands. Chickichee whimpered, saying look at how this big guy was torturing him, and this was all my fault. I told him: “You deserve it. You wanted to kill my mom and sister and Uncle and Granny! Just you wait and see.”
That day at school we sang again about the girl who was headstrong and persnickety. I was happy and quiet, but I was waiting impatiently for a moment to show that I was just like everybody else, that I was better. I kept circling around Dejan.
The day was almost over when I noticed it was snowing. I said so out loud, and everybody ran to the windows. Since I got there first, the others pressed in around me, and that was the first contact with them I remember as nice, even though they smelled of straw, unwashed hair, and feet. I wanted for us to all stay squashed together like that, all twenty of us. After a minute the teacher said we should go do our coloring, so we all trooped back to our desks. Just then Bacawk and Chickichee popped up from below the window. We eyed each other, separated only by the windowpane and hatred. They were barely able to peer over the ledge, so nobody but me could see them. I saw fear and a plea lurking in their eyes. I thought back on everything I’d been through. I remembered my dad, Laddie, my mother crying, and sleeping curved like a crescent moon. I hesitated momentarily and then whispered, so nobody else could hear, “Honest t’ God, honest t’ God, damn-blasted old Natz.”
Natz dragged them from the window to the playground, so I could see what he was doing. He grabbed their heads and smacked them hard a few times onto the pavement. Then he dropped Bacawk, who slid limply to the ground and lay there, still, and he grabbed Chickichee by both feet and pulled his arms as if he had a good mind to rip him in half. That strange silence of falling snow was interrupted only by Chickichee’s plea for help. I relished it. A thin white layer was already coating the ground.
Natz had turned his back on Bacawk, who scrambled to his feet somehow and limped toward a pile of rocks. He didn’t look as if he were capable of lifting anything, much less a rock the size of Natz’s head, but I covered my eyes when I realized, to my horror, that this rock was going to hit Natz from behind. He fell, first to his knees and then flat onto his face. His huge frame lay like an island amid a snow-white sea. Chickichee flew several feet to the side and then clambered up. Everything in my head was creaking and shuddering, but I managed to hear the teacher tell me that we’d looked at the snow long enough now and I should go back to my coloring.
Bacawk picked up another stone, this one a little smaller, and went over to Natz, who had managed to roll onto his back. Bacawk dropped to his knees, and twice he smashed the rock down on Natz’s huge head. Blood spurted after the first blow, and the second blow made a big dent in Natz’s skull. It was no longer round, but more of a half globe. His face had split in two. Chickichee crawled over to them. They were quite far from me, but I remember that there was no longer any trace of fear or pleading in his eyes. Just unchecked evil. He pushed Bacawk aside and plunged both hands into the opening in Natz’s head. He worked in three fingers of each hand, and with a grimace he widened the crack. Bacawk came over and tore at the growing hole between Natz’s right eye and his mouth. Chickichee grabbed Natz’s hair, already soaked in thick blood, and jerked several times in the opposite direction with all his strength. Once the hole was opened wide, both of them scooped out the contents of Natz’s head, a mush of blood and white tubelike worms, which were the only moving parts left of him. They slurped them into their mouths and greedily gulped them down. Steam rose out of Natz’s head. After the third bite, Bacawk froze. Clearly he had the collywobbles, and he bent over and puked a powerful jet of gray-pink vomit. Chickichee paid no attention; instead he reached for all of it—the parts that were Natz’s and what had just erupted from Bacawk’s gut.
I couldn’t tear myself away from the sight, I was thoroughly mesmerized. As background noise, like the falling of snowflakes, I heard the children behind me tell the teacher I was shaking and my pant leg was wet. Again. It was as if by wetting myself these last few days I’d been creating a safe space in those places where I felt the most desperate. And I kept staring helplessly at the scene while a knot, in time with the pounding of my heart, was rising from my stomach to my throat.
The teacher took me by the shoulder and turned me, as if positioning a petrified doll. The children didn’t laugh, they just stared in horror, as if I disgusted them and they saw me as less than human.
An older teacher brought a dark-green blanket, and they wrapped me in it before I sat in his car. He dropped me off at the house, and I hid the blanket behind the fence. Before I went in, I looked around once more, in case I caught sight of them. If I had, if they’d come after me, I would have felt defeated. Beneath the horror and disgust, there was something oddly comforting about Natz’s dead body being devoured by the two repulsive fiends. The body gave in without a fight. If’n I’m gone, maybe they’ll disappear too, I thought. Everybody will be better off.
I came into the house and saw my mom, sister, uncle, and his aunt all sitting around the kitchen table. Nobody asked why my pants were wet. Uncle was smoking a cigarette, and they were all drinking something strong.
“Come in,” said Mom plainly. “An ambulance had to come for Granny.”
“Did they stab her?” I asked so softly that probably nobody heard.
“She had a stroke. A palsy come over her. It’s like a stab to the head. We’ll all go visit her tomorrow, after the plows clear away the snow that falls tonight. There’ll be more than three feet by morning if this keeps up.”
Through the window I could see Bacawk and Chickichee perched on the fence like huge birds, waiting for nightfall. I was sure I’d go that night to the forest to find Dad, even if I never returned. If I didn’t, by next Sunday, or maybe even the next day, they’d all be dead.
14.
When snow falls, I knew even at the age of five, everything gets quieter. Sound doesn’t travel well through the flakes, and those take their time, preferring to breathe in the silence, wondering whether it’ll be cold enough for them to survive another few days before the afternoon sun finally nudges them down into the darkness of the earth. Still, through the quiet, I could hear myself being summoned to the forest.