James' Story

It goes without saying, but I will say it anyway. You should never let your children roam around in the dark, in a neighborhood in which they do not belong. They were never allowed to go into the next neighborhood. It was rumored by the neighbors, the neighbors that came through their own gardens, grass clippers in hand and clippings decorated on their overalls as though they had been swimming in a pool filled with weeds that those in the next neighborhood were not to be associated with. “Don’t go over there!” one said to a Mother. “Those people are not to be messed with, you hear?” This Mother and Father, having had that particular conservation with the gardener, were to never talk or associate themselves with the neighborhood ever, until one night.

The gutters cluttered the ears of all the occupants of every house. Cats, dogs, even an old man with a pet squirrel (how he tamed this squirrel, I do not know), reverberated the sounds coming off and down from the gutters. Rainfall had started that afternoon, forcing all the areas children to flee into their homes as if swarms of yellow jacket bees had invaded their playing space. Not including two children, however. White had become the color of all to see. The two children were now consumed by this whiteness that came down in unforgiving, soaking sheets. They were a boy and girl, quite close. They had been good friends since the young age of five. Now at the ages of eleven. The girl clung to the boy for warmth and protection from the rain. It helped. She smiled up at him and give him a smile. The boy smiled back, but could already see in the girl’s eye another mischievous adventure to ensue. Whiplash! The boy was flung around by the girl taking him down the soaked and somewhat glistened roadway down… to the other street. “No” said the boy, “we mustn’t go down there. My parents have told me to never go down that street”. The girl looked back at him, not hearing from the rainfall, and said, “What”. “There are monsters ugly as a werewolf and mean as Mrs. Bell, our teacher, down that road”. “Nonsense” said the girl. She led on. The boy looking back at the houses, painted with white, thundering from the downpour, now looked at them fade away into the unseen.

“Do not go near the neighbor”. This was a statement he will never forget, for as long as he lives. His name is James. He is very kind, very smart, and… very curious. The girl, Aurora, was also very curious. They walked down the road. The boy glanced at each passing house, seeing the confusion on the faces of those who stared out. He did what he felt, what he most felt when he was scared. He cried. Wetness clouded his vision leaving him seeing deformed and warped structures of what used to be houses where his most playful days were. He quickly wiped his tears away and the world, in this process, came back into view, into something tangible.

Aurora glanced back at James, seeing his red, teared dried eyes. She stopped and pulled him next to her and gave him a kiss on his cheek. As she was about to speak, a large shape appeared in the corners of each of their eyes. The whiteness almost encompassing his body, but not quite, left a ghostly image in the middle of the road. The two children could not identify the man as someone they have seen before. But they could see the odd stance and motions he was making. His was coming their way. Without thinking, James grabbed Aurora’s hand and fled back down the road they came. They rushed into their houses and told their parents of their short-cut adventure and never were to speak of it again. Within a month, Aurora forgot all about the incident. But James did not.

In bed that night and in fact, every other night, he would dream. He would dream of the last glance back running from the shadowed man in the road. Waking in a pool of sweat and any even bigger pool of fear, he realized the dream was different every time. The man got closer. James never went down this road. But one night, he dreamed. It started in the street, whiteness clouding over the already misty place, and nothing. The rain continued but the man did not show. Neither did he ever show. Confused James got up.

The very next morning, he was to meet Aurora in the garden to play, when he found she had gone into the neighborhood. He still dreams of rain and white. But no shadowed man to be seen again. Or Aurora. He still dreams.