The Bloomdon Beast
The last time my brothers and I got together, Ben broke Henry’s nose and we spent Thanksgiving in the E.R. Ben and I left our wives and children to sweep up the shards of glass. Henry left blood, bone and broken cartilage all over the pumpkin pie.
We sat in the pristine waiting room as Ben rotated his packet of cigarettes over and over between his hands. A hot flush had risen to his cheeks and his dark eyes fixated on the black and white clock on the opposite wall. He still had the military buzz cut and the snarl. I flipped through a gossip magazine and thanked God that Dad’s double bypass surgery hadn’t been successful.
Henry’s nurse let us in just as the clock hit ten. She had the body of a ballerina and the face of a rat. Cold black eyes, flat like stones, flashed over us as she led us down the hall. We didn’t speak. She was far less friendly than Martha, the nurse who had checked us in. Martha had assured me, as blood poured from Henry’s nose, that we were just one of the many Thanksgiving related mishaps she had seen that day. “I always say,” Martha said, as Henry was carted off, “you put a bunch of family members in the same room with cutlery and there’s bound to be bloodshed.”
Ben loomed over our unfriendly nurse and I walked behind them, studying the curve of their shoulder blades. Hospitals reminded me of goodbyes. They smelled like goodbyes: cold and bitter and a little sweet, like something you want to last but never does.
“I’m sorry,” Ben said as we stepped into Henry’s room. “Look, man, I’m just under a lot of pressure right now.” The nurse slid past me. Her shoulder rubbed against mine as she closed the door and disappeared. Henry looked up from his bed. The white bandage on his nose stuck out in an almost comical way, as if he were impersonating a tropical bird. Henry’s birdlike appearance—long neck and limbs, wide round eyes and a high brow—only emphasized this. “What are you stressed about?” Henry said.
I looked to him. For a moment our gaze met and Henry’s green eyes told me nothing except that he wasn’t angry. Ben didn’t notice because he had crossed to the window.
“Michaela is starting at the public elementary school next week,” he said, gripping the windowsill. “We couldn’t pay for the private place anymore.”
“I told you I could help out,” I said.
“I don’t need help,” Ben said and his voice echoed in the darkness of its own cave. “I told you that. Bloomdon was fine for us. It’ll be fine for her.”
Henry started to laugh.
Ben whipped around. His fists were clenched at his side. I began to imagine the next day’s headlines: War Vet Kills Brother on Thanksgiving and beneath it: After breaking his brother’s nose at Thanksgiving dinner, Private Ben Ferguson finished the job by killing his brother in his hospital bed. It would be the kind of story picked up by the late night shows and made fun of and then dissected up by the bigger news agencies who wanted to government to do more about veterans’ health care.
“What?” Ben said. “What is so goddamn funny?”
“Can I tell you guys a story?” Henry said.
I tensed. This was how Henry had gotten his nose broken in the first place—telling stories. Ben cracked his knuckles.
Henry has spent the day playing video games with Cameron, a mousy boy who used to live down the street from us. They’re both seven. Actually, Henry is seven and a half. He looks about ten next to Cameron, who stopped growing after his fifth birthday. Cam wears his dad’s old glasses and he and Henry both think it’s cool that they have ponytails like the characters in their videogames.
Cam eats dinner at Henry’s most nights because his mom works the graveyard shift at the local Safeway. Once Henry’s parents go to watch their TV show Ben is supposed to walk Cam back to his house. Ben usually gripes about it but one night just takes the responsibility. As they approach Cam’s house he stops them. Kids, he says, have you heard of the Bloomdon Beast?
Henry and Cam go silent. Cam shakes his head so fast that his glasses slide down his nose and he fumbles to correct them. You know Bloomdon, right? Ben says.
Of course they do—it’s the elementary school where Henry and Cam are second-graders. They can see it from in front of Cam’s house. It sits on top of the hill like a toad on a toadstool. The yellow and red ribbons of the setting sun cut through the blackening air and frame the boxy building.
Ben speaks in a low voice of the Bloomdom Beast: a creature rumored to slink around the sparse forest behind Bloomdom Elementary School. Only a few people have seen it and lived to talk about it. Look, says Ben. I’ll give you both ten dollars if you find it and bring it back to me. Henry wants to know if it’s ten dollars each or ten dollars all together. Ten each, Ben says. Twenty dollars total.
Twenty dollars. Twenty dollars.
But you have to be back by nine o’clock, Ben says. That’s in an hour.
“Bullshit,” Ben said. “You little shit. That never happened.”
“It did so,” said Henry. “Would you let me finish?” I gave Ben a look and Ben bared his teeth at me but crossed his arms over his chest and sat down.
Even though it is September, the air is warm, Henry continues. He and Cam had never gone to school when school wasn’t in session. They’d had no reason to go when they didn’t have to.
An old fence surrounds Bloomdon. Cam and Henry scramble up it and jump back down. Cam falls into the dust and Henry helps him up. The setting sun casts grotesque shadows on the orange brick—their own twisted audience. A bright blue ball someone forgot to pick up at recess sits near the basketball hoops. Henry kicks it and it goes sailing across the playground. It crashes into the brick with a wham that shatters the twilight into shards of confusion. They can see the forest from the playground. It looks denser and darker than it did during the day. Somewhere in the distance a car playing country music drives by.
They start to walk toward the forest. Their sneakers slap against the asphalt. Cam’s, because the bottoms are coming off, slap and then drag. The lights are on in Bloomdon, but they’re almost certain no one is inside. Ben told them once that they keep the lights are on because it scares away the spirits and ghosts that want to embody little kids and make them go crazy like they do in all the horror films. Henry is comforted in the fact that Ben knows everything.
The air smells like rubber and Chap Stick and the kind of perfume that their teacher, Miss Faddis wears. It’s a perfume that seems to be popular with a lot of the old lady teachers. It is cool but not cold and an occasional warm wind rustles the tops of the trees.
They make a game of crossing the playground, staying on the white lines of the four-square or the hopscotch court. They whisper and laugh about lava swirling beneath their feet as they teeter across the white lines and make it to the swing set. It looks different, Cam says, buried by darkness.
The game ends as they approach the forest. To call it a forest is a stretch, as it’s really just a cluster of skinny white trees behind the school. From above it looks like spots of hair on the head of the bald Bloomdon building. The forest is moving back and forth, stretching, dancing, swaying, groaning in the wind as if it’s trying to pull its toes from beneath the cold earth and skip away to the beat of Henry’s heart.
Above them the moon is starting to nestle in between two vast clouds. It casts a milky light around them and Henry realizes that the forest isn’t really that dark, really isn’t that scary with all the light from the moon and the school shining in.
And then they see it.
Cam sees it first and slaps Henry’s arm. They freeze and stare. It stares back.
It is sitting on a pile of dark red and orange and yellow leaves. It blends in for the most part, except for the long black stripe on its back. Luminous eyes swim in a bath of blue-gray and blink at them as the beast shrinks away. A bright pink tongue darts between its black lips, exposing its toothless jaw. It is about the size of a cat but has no fur. They can see large goosebumps like swollen hives along its back, protruding from its spine. The only feature that would classify it as a “beast” at all is the long smooth white horn sticking from its forehead.
Henry falls to his knees. Cam backs away. Henry holds out his hand to the beast. It shivers. Thoughts of capturing the creature have vanished from Henry’s mind.
It’s ok, Henry says. I’m not going to hurt you. It’s ok.
Ears like a raccoon’s perk. It takes one step forward, placing its webbed paw on the ground delicately, like a child testing the bathwater. Henry reaches into his back pocket and takes out a packet of saltine crackers. The beast sticks its nose into the air and takes three loud sniffs. It takes a step forward. Its nose and Henry’s fingers are just six inches apart.
BOO! A sound like God himself has leapt from the heavens tears through the forest. The beast leaps back and disappears into the undergrowth. Cam screams as Ben tackles Henry and they tumbles to the ground.
Ben laughs as Henry scrambles back to his feet. Tears fall down his face and he runs at his older brother and begins to hit him as hard as he can. Ben stops laughing and pushes Henry onto a pile of leaves. Jesus, he says. Cool it, would you?
Henry tries to make him understand. You scared it, he says. It wanted to be my friend and you scared it away. His voice is shrill and weak and in the darkness of the forest sounds like a dying animal.
You idiot, Ben says, pale. There’s no such thing. It was just a story.
Cam is gone—the drag of his broken sneakers slaps through the silence.
“You’re such a fucking liar,” Ben said. “That did not happen.”
Outside it was starting to snow or rain. Some weird combination of moisture tumbled from the heavens.
“Yes it did,” Henry said. Ben turned to me.
“John, tell him.” There were tears in Ben’s eyes—large clear tears that magnified his dark irises so that I was looking straight into his soul, straight into the soul of a scared little boy.
“I wasn’t there,” I said.
Ben went to Henry’s bed and knelt on the floor next to him. Tears ran down Henry’s face too. He reached out and put a hand on the top of Ben’s head. Ben’s shoulders shook.
Then the nurse came and told us it was time to go.
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