Mimic

It was the start of summer, and Adam finally had his son for the weekends. 

He'd felt that latent competition that maybe all newly divorced parents had, wanting to give Matthew a better time with him than he'd had with Sarah (maybe, just maybe in spite of her.) On Saturday morning, they'd gone to the beach. They'd played multiple board games. They’d gone out for ice cream twice. And each night, he'd tucked Matthew in and they'd gone through the pattern he'd sorely missed (‘Love you, buddy.’ ‘Muchly?’ ‘Muchly Muchly.’) 

It was devastatingly humid for June, and Adam kept the fan trained on him religiously while he worked in the kitchen Sunday night, washing up the dishes. He could hear the door behind him slamming open and closed as six-year-old Matthew ran in and out. His son was fully enjoying the newfound freedom summer vacation afforded him.

"Hey, bud, don't slam it so hard," Adam said absently about the fifth time this happened.

"I'm done anyway," Matthew announced. "It's raining."

When Adam looked out the window above the sink, he saw his son was right. Little pinpricks of moisture shot through the air, a few lightly spattering against the glass. The sun was finally almost completely below the horizon and the crickets were already striking up a chorus. 

"Hey, you want to take that blanket indoors?" he asked, looking at the patchwork mound he assumed was part of the ‘fort’ his son had been working on. Matthew either didn't hear or pretended not to hear, and Adam let it drop. He and Sarah were both going a little easy on the kid these days, in the aftermath of the divorce. Especially him-  Sarah liked to make comments about his 'mental health' ever since what she liked to refer to as his ‘ordeal’ last summer, liked to ask him- passive-aggressively, he thought- whether he was taking his meds. He'd clawed weekends from her in court, despite her snide suggestions that it might be 'unsafe' for their son to be in his custody. 'Unsafe'. He still bristled to think about it- she knew very well he'd never hurt their son before and he never would. People like him were more a danger to themselves, the psychiatrist had told them both.

A knock sounded at the door, cutting through Adam’s brooding, and he tossed down the kitchen towel, going to answer with some confusion. Who, at this hour…?

 A small figure stood outside, the long patchwork blanket draped over it, two jagged eyeholes cut in the cloth. Rain pattered all around, though the blanket looked curiously dry. Underneath the hem of the blanket, Adam could see Matthew's worn Deadpool sneakers. 

"Trick or treat!" his son exclaimed, holding out a crumpled plastic bag.

There was a strange, tinny quality to his voice that gave Adam pause before he said, "Matt, what are you doing out there? Get in here, bud, you're gonna get soaked.”

Matthew only stared up at him under the sheet- the eyes, Adam thought uneasily at second glance, looked torn rather than cut. His son lifted the empty bag and shook it. Adam sighed. If Matthew wanted to pretend it was Halloween in June, that was fine with him. Ignoring the voice in his head that asked when did you go outside again? Adam turned to go back into the kitchen, hoping to find something more-or-less candy-shaped. The best he could come up with was a pack of Devil Dogs. "If this is your way of trying to secure dessert before dinner, it's a weird one, bud. You-" He turned back for the door and the words trailed off his lips. It was open on the balmy night, crickets chirping louder than ever, the peaceful sound of the rain rushing in to fill his senses. Matthew was no longer there. 

"Daddy?" 

Adam jumped, not just from the voice alone, but from the direction: it was coming from upstairs. 

Looking up, he saw his son's small face peering down at him from between the banisters. “Daddy, I’m scared.”

"Matt," he said sternly, starting up the stairs. "What did we say about outside time after dinner?" 

Matthew looked up at him with wide eyes. "I wasn't outside," he said. "I was in my room, like I was 'sposed to be."

Adam looked at him askance. "You aren't in your room now."

"I told you, I got scared," Matthew said, and Adam belatedly noticed that he was shaking a little, moving from one foot to the other like he couldn't keep still.

"What's wrong, buddy?" he asked, melting a little. He pulled his son against his leg, which Matthew clutched like an anchor for a moment. He noticed then that Matthew was completely dressed in his pajamas, with bare feet. His beat-up Deadpool sneakers sat on the rug by the front door- Adam could just see them if he craned right from his spot on the landing. ...How?

"I saw someone,” Matthew said, as Adam knelt to hug him, “in my- in my window. I was playing my game on the bed and I looked up and there was something out there looking in. It...it was looking at me, like it was standing on the ground outside but it couldn't have been on the ground because it's the second floor.”

Adam felt a slight chill despite the humidity of the house. 

"Come on, bud, there's no reason to be afraid," he said, taking his son's shoulder and steering him back to his room, at the same time as his mind was caught up in a scramble, attempting to explain what had just happened- and why he felt like his reassuring words might be a lie.

Once in the bedroom, Adam did his due diligence- he looked out the window- no one there, see?- drew the curtains shut, and stayed with Matthew until his son's eyes began to slip shut despite himself. Adam had just stood up and was on his way to the door when Matthew spoke again, quietly, from the bed.

"Daddy?"

"Hmm?"

"If I saw something that wasn't there...does that mean I'm like you?"

Adam froze, inwardly cursing Sarah, wondering exactly how much she'd told their son.

"No," he said, "you're perfectly fine, buddy, just tired." He'd looked it up before, because of course he had, and it was statistically unlikely: children with one schizophrenic parent were only 10 to 15% likely to develop the illness later in life. That percentage comforted and threatened him in turns. 

"Daddy?" Matthew said again.

"Hmm?"

"You're okay, right? Mommy said you had new medicine. She said if you weren't-"

"Yes, buddy, I'm okay," Adam said, gritting his teeth. He needed to talk to Sarah about the shit she'd been putting in their son's head. It felt a lot like sabotage. "I'm not going anywhere."

Satisfied, he heard the sound of Matthew settling in bed and had just crossed the threshold into the hall when the boy said again, voice even smaller:

"Daddy?"

"What is it?"

"Who were you talking to earlier, downstairs?"

For a moment, Adam's tongue seemed frozen, stuck to the roof of his mouth, before he finally said, "Just myself, Matt. Sometimes grown-ups talk to themselves."

Silence, as Matthew chewed on this. "I do too, sometimes."

"There you go. Anything else, buddy?"

"...no. Goodnight, Daddy."

"Goodnight. Love you, buddy."

“Muchly?” 

He smiled. “Muchly muchly.”

Leaving the door open a crack, Adam went down the hall and the stairs to his laptop in the den. He stared at his phone a moment, wondering if he should call Sarah like he wanted to, tear open the wound they'd both made a habit of worrying every time they talked now. 

Lately he'd been pursued by a new, looming fear that Sarah would try to use his diagnosis as leverage in court to get full custody. He didn't doubt she was capable, and it was all to easy for him to imagine them taking her side. Man has major episode that makes him quit his job and visit the psychiatric ward. Pair that kind of mental headline with the fact that family court favored mothers and well...he could imagine.

Matty saw something too, though he thought. He wondered if he should’ve asked his son what the thing he’d seen had looked like, but he didn’t want to frighten him anymore. 

Adam stared at his laptop and typed in "Halloween in June??” and then "summer trick or treating", but nothing he found was any help, just fun event ideas and Pinterest boards. He ended up drifting off on the couch, the phrase trick or treat spooling out in his head, repeating down a long dark tunnel. Where had it come from anyway? The ‘treat’ part was obvious, but what was the ‘trick’ about? Where had that part come from? The word gained a slightly ominous note in the silence of his dim living room as his eyes slipped shut and he fell to sleep.

creak

Adam’s eyes cracked open slightly. He registered the wood floor beyond the couch where he lay, and then the door by the base of the stairs. Something- or someone- was standing there, framed in the shadows, swaying just slightly side to side.

Watching him.

Adam bolted upright, scrambling to stand, his heart beating against his ribs like a violent staccato drum. Fully awake now, he blinked at the spot where he swore he'd seen something, rubbing his eyes. Nothing. No noise, no shadow, only a great sinking in his chest as he thought of his doctor's office, of the talk it was looking like he was going to have to have sooner rather than later. Anxiety could imitate schizophrenic symptoms to some extent, couldn’t it? He thought he’d heard that somewhere. Maybe he just needed to relax. Slowly, he lay down again, forcing himself to shut his eyes, though he remained alert, listening to every little noise the house made. The ticking of the clock on the mantel. The settling of the ancient beams. 

He was just starting to drift off again when he heard the scream: quick, sharp, frightened, coming from up the stairs. 

Matthew.

Adam was up in a flash, thundering up the stairs and down the hall. He noticed the door to Matthew's room was flung open wide now, as though he'd got up and left the bed, though when Adam came to a halt, breathless at the door, he saw his son lying on his stomach, head to one side, body tangled up in the blankets, breathing softly. He came to sit on the end of the bed, watching his son sleep peacefully, confusion and relief wrestling in his head, before he noticed a wet spot on the sheets and caught the unmistakable smell of urine. Oh, buddy, he thought sadly. He wondered if bed-wetting and night terrors were a new phenomenon. If not, Sarah hadn’t told him. 

When Adam finally went to his room across the hall and got himself properly into bed, he was still thinking about Matthew, about how the boy must be having a harder time than either of them had thought. He didn't expect sleep to come, so when he woke to sunlight flooding the room, he felt disoriented. He padded across the hall to Matthew’s room, and, finding the bed empty, stripped the sheets to put in the wash. When he continued down to the living room, his son was sitting on the couch fully dressed, kicking his feet, the scene so mundane and perfect he thought the prior night he remembered must have been some bizarre dream.

"Up early, huh bud?"

"It's ten o' clock."

Adam did a double-take. Shit. "Did you have breakfast?"

"Yes," Matthew answered. Though Adam couldn't see a bowl or plate in sight, he let it go. They had to hurry.

"Okay, come on, we have to go to Mommy."

He didn't mention the bed incident and Matthew didn't bring it up. 

Moments later, they were in the car on the way to Sarah. Matthew, for some reason, had got in the back seat as opposed to calling out 'shotgun' and getting in front like usual, and it was from back there that his voice sounded, minutes into a completely silent ride.

"She wants to take me away from you, you know."

Coming to a stop in front of a red light, Matthew peered into the rearview mirror. 

"Who's taking you away, bud?" he asked, but he already knew. 

"Mommy. She wants to take me away because you're sick."

Adam couldn't see Matthew, his head disappeared behind the driver's seat, so that his voice seemed to come from some deep, far abyss, perhaps from inside Adam himself.  It sounded curiously cold and flat, and he felt the back of his neck prickle.

"It's okay, Matty," he said, despite the feeling that it was anything but. "I'm better. You don't need to worry about that."

What did she tell you? he thought. He felt a rush of anger as he pulled into Sarah’s driveway and saw her rushing out of the house towards them. Adam unbuckled and turned to look at his son. Matthew was sitting very still, hands on his thighs, palms up. He turned to look at Adam and it seemed for a moment that there was something keen behind his brown eyes, something that didn't belong there, something...crafty. From outside, Sarah knocked on the passenger-side window and he rolled it down. She looked good, he hated to admit, radiant in the late morning sun, and she gave him a little questioning smile like she hadn't just been planting these things in their son's head, hadn't just been conspiring against him.

"Everything okay?" she asked. In the back, Matthew was rustling to the end of the seat; Adam heard the door clunk open but at Sarah's words, the rustling stilled, the whole car waiting for an answer.

Was everything okay? He thought of the previous night, and something poised on the tip of his tongue, trembling towards sliding off. Sarah only looked at him, her forehead creasing slightly.

"Yeah," he said. "Just got a bit of a late start." The door snapped shut behind him and Matthew came around to stand beside his mother, who bent and gave him a quick hug.  

"Bye for now," Adam called, feeling if he stayed any longer he might let something slip. "Love you, buddy.”

"Love you," his son echoed, and as he turned to head inside, his hand in his mother's, something in Adam froze. 

"Wait," he said softly to Sarah's retreating back, but his voice came out choked and she didn't seem to hear. Matthew- or the thing in the shape of Matthew- turned briefly and gave him a small, secret smile, just before his mother opened the door and they disappeared inside.