The Boy in the Park: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist. A Grayson J

my otherwise unsurprising retreat. Two days ago, in the past-that’s-present, the way memories go. A Monday, so vividly clear now. I was just starting what I hoped would be one of my longer poems, an exercise in iambic pentameter (I don’t usually write in meter), and I was distracted mid-iamb by a rustling of the otherwise silent greenery.

      I didn’t know where to look, at first. There’s so much of it. Part of the appeal of this place is that the pond is completely encircled by trees and dense shrubbery, embraced by it. A flutter in the branches could have come from anywhere.

      But sight is far more precise than sound. Green everywhere, rustling leaves everywhere – but a small figure that stood only in one spot. A little landing at the edge of the water, almost immediately across the pond from my perch on the bench. The foliage reaches out nearly to touch the shore, thick and dense; but just at its edge is a foot and a half of hard-packed mud that leads into the water itself.

      And on the muddy shore stood a little boy.

      I’d never seen him before, which is part of what made his impression on me so interesting. Not being a man with children, or with any cause to be around children regularly, it could realistically be said that most boys are boys I’ve never seen before. For that matter, apart from customers in the shop, most people of any age are people I’ve never seen before. I am not the socialite that culturally advanced mothers hope their sons one day will become, climbing up civic ladders on the shoulders of fleets of ‘friends’ who bear that title after a single lunch together or chat over a Starbucks counter. I have two friends: Greg, whom I haven’t actually seen in six years, but who sends an email on most major holidays and with great faithfulness a week or two after my birthday; and Allen, a co-worker with whom I’ve grown close enough that I suppose by most standards we’ve crossed the amorphous line that distinguishes acquaintances from friends. He owes me three drinks down at the Mucky Duck bar on 9th. That’s a good measure, I should think. Only friends owe each other drinks.

      But this boy, who in the present moment is the cause of my angst, was then a complete stranger to me. I’m not even sure just how or when he appeared on the shore of my pond. When I looked up, he was there. He can’t be more than four or five, though I’m hardly the best judge of ages (I still consider Allen’s daughter, Candy, to be three, the age she was when I first met her five years ago).

      I find myself at a loss for words to describe him – a strange position to be in, for a poet. He’s a touch over half my height, scrawny, brownish hair in a fluff over his ears. His arms look a bit like wires, but dirty wires, well used. He wore a white T-shirt under his overalls on Monday, and again yesterday. I can’t say it was clean, or that it might smell too nice were one close enough to catch a whiff. But boys play, don’t they? He’s a long way off from puberty and the special reek boys develop when the hormones hit, but sweat is sweat and will stain the clothes of a boy as well as a man.

      His overalls are the lighter, rather than the more common darker, denim blue, just a little too short for him. Probably in a growth spurt.

      You’ve probably seen this kid. At least, I felt I’d seen him before, or at least the image of him. Mark Twain had him in mind when he dreamed up Tom Sawyer — this exact boy. Add a straw hat and a Mississippi steamer and you’ve got the principal casting for Huck Finn sorted. Throw in a lovable golden dog and you’ve got Travis Coates getting ready to run after Old Yeller. Put him in the Catskills and you’ve got Sam Gribley on his side of the mountain. He’s that boy, all those boys. A bit out of place for modern times, perhaps, but the traditional image in all its details.

      Yet there’s something more about him. Something as unknown as known. Something I couldn’t quite grasp, back then. Or now. I haven’t been able to get a good look at his face – not yet, not even after all these months. The shadows in this part of the park sometimes play havoc. Maybe that’s part of it. But a faceless child is a little … well, eerie.

      I was sure, though, at that first sighting, that I’d see it soon enough. Each day the boy came back. Same spot, same still posture. Playing with a stick, though barely that. He just stood there, really, but he seemed content enough.

      And I returned too, again and again. It became my habit. Nothing to do with him. Yet I would still sit on my bench, my notebook open on my knee and pencil knuckled tightly in my hand – and I would gaze out over the water. Waiting for him to appear.

       14

       Monday Afternoon

      No, the stick definitely should not be there. My comforting recollections have puffed out of existence as fast as they came and I’m bound back to the present. Here, now, I’m absolutely certain that I picked the stick up when I went looking for the boy after The Disappearance. I’m sure I walked with it into the trees. I don’t know where I left it, but I know I never returned to the boy’s spot.

      But there it is. Today. Impossible. Wrong.

      I’m already walking down that path again as the thoughts come – the familiar ring around the pond. Walking this time, though, not running. I arrive after a few moments, half expecting the vision to be gone. An illusion. The stick, though, is lying where I’d seen it, its wispier tip still in the water.

      I reach down to pick it up, and I’m momentarily taken over, again, by that stark feel of wood on skin. Rough, natural, completely earthy. But there’s more to the feel: today there is memory. The kind of memory that resides in fingertips and nerve endings more clearly than brain synapses. This is not a lookalike, not a similar piece of forested remains. I have felt this stick before. I have held it.

      Two days ago.

      I’m not sure it’s possible for a heart to ‘suddenly’ beat twice as fast as it had been a moment before. I’ve read this in books, but I’ve always shied away from using the expression in my poems. It doesn’t seem like organs should really work that way. But my pulse is certainly racing forward right now at a speed it wasn’t before this moment. Maybe there is meaning in certain catchphrases, just like there is good in certain evils, truth in certain lies.

      It’s important that I don’t panic. What happened on Monday was close to panic, and the outcome was less than fruitful. I have to keep my wits about me. Be calm, I command myself. And then, with a familiar retort, Don’t repeat Nashville.

      It’s my own stock phrase (we all have to have them) for moments of too-intense emotion. Don’t repeat Nashville. Had I never gone there, never ventured out to see the music scene and taste a culture I’d never known, I’d be a happier man. But I went. Curiosity is a hard cat to kill. I went, and I heard the music, and I saw the scene. And I discovered Jaegermeister, as well as the tolerance I thought I had for Jaegermeister. My closest friend at the time, Greg, should have known better than to let me drink the way I did; but Greg had also simultaneously discovered Jaegermeister, so we were sort of together in the proverbial boat.

      The boat tipped when Greg’s stomach turned inside out. That’s how I remember it: not just vomiting, not just retching. It was as if his stomach simply inverted itself. In a single instant, what had been inside was out – and it was everywhere. Disgusting, and everywhere.

      I was sure that Greg was dying. Stomachs aren’t supposed to do that. The quantity and the suddenness were unbelievable. Everything was tinged a surreal brown from the drink, and that didn’t help; but in the amalgamation of it all I simply lost my wits. I panicked. I started to perform CPR on him after he fell to the floor, and had to be ripped off his chest once everyone else in the bar convinced the bouncer this wasn’t a good idea, as Greg hadn’t lost consciousness or stopped breathing. I, however, was in a panicked frenzy. I punched at the bouncer, on impulse I suppose, but this was an even poorer choice of action than the CPR. The fist that swung back at my head was like an iron cannon. I can still see the lights that flashed through my vision as I planted my face into the wet, wooden floor. None of the shake-it-off-and-swing-back magic of action films. One punch and I was levelled.