A Penny a Piece

"The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window, and I don’t know how I knew that. That it was abandoned before. And I don’t know how I knew about the candle except that this time it was out. But I knew that it was good that it was out.” Franklin shivered as he recalled his dream. His mother soothed his little furrowed brow with a thumb, as he stared into the memory, still so vivid, his whiteknuckled fingers twistlocking his comforter tight under his chin.

“And mom?” he turned to face her. “It was the candle, mom! The candle was wrong.” His eyes implored her to understand. “It was a candle but not a candle.”

“Shh, honey. It was just a dream. I know. They can be really scary.” She readjusted beside him and nudged a little closer. She cooed and consoled him, resting a mother hand on the knot of blanket he held so tightly, gentling him back to calmness. She smoothed his forehead with a finger.“Who’s going to be eight tomorrow?”

“ I am,” he beamed.

After he finally settled into sleep, she eased herself off the bed. She moved to the window and looked out at the dark of the early night. The bullfrogs were in full chorus and a nearby cricket was chiming in. A perfect Spring night, she thought.

She pulled the window open just a bit more for the fresh air and checked the tape around the screen. Franklin sometimes dropped pieces of bread for the chipmunks, and mosquitos would get in. Not for a few days though. Gosh, she loved him. She looked back out the window. Scary dreams. She remembered some from when she was little. Halloween masks and monsters. She breathed in the coolness of the night and looked up for the Little Dipper. A star flickered too bright just above the black silhouette of the big Elm. Venus.

She thought back to her boy’s dream and the candle. A long forgotten childhood memory of a dream almost niggled at her mind then vanished as she spotted her starry quarry. She had forgotten the dream. She had forgotten her brother. She remembered him of course, at times, but she was only nine when he disappeared. She did not remember him now. She adjusted the old lamp as she left the window. She should have remembered. They shared the old nightlight lamp for one night when they were kids.

“Someone must have carved it out of a single piece of a tree,” her father had said. “Pretty ingenious.”

“It’s really cool, dad!” Bobby said. It’s just like Green Lantern’s, except wood. He had found it amongst the other knick knacks.

“How much?”

“How’s fifty cents?” The old man held out his yellowed hand.

“Deal.”

Abby had turned up her nose at the jumpers, so that’s all they got that morning. Bobby was delighted with their find and twisted it this way and that, peering at its gnarly grains, as dad rummaged in his pocket for change. He plopped two quarters in the old man’s grizzled hand and followed his kids out of the market.

The man’s eyes gleamed at the coins, both heads up in his wrinkled palm. “A quarter a piece,” he whispered, and his bony fingers wrapped them up tight as he withdrew his arm, slowly, carefully, a marionette. And he, the old man, withdrew as well, ‘til he was nothing but whispered tatters of yellow and red and green. Dreamed smoke. And then nothing. A magic trick that no one noticed.

They plugged it in at home. It didn’t have a switch. The light fizzled on and glowed orange. All this memory was lost to her. As was her brother that very night. He would have turned eight years old the next day, but in the morning, he was simply gone.

Franklin’s mom left his door ajar how he liked it and went back into the living room. This is Us was frozen on the TV screen. The remote and a bowl of plain ripple chips waited on the table beside the couch. Will was also waiting on the couch, chewing slowly on a chip, deep in his phone sudoku. He didn’t know about the window feedings.

Franklin roamed from dream to dream until his parents were long asleep. Just at midnight he found himself again at the cabin. The candle that was not a candle burned orange in the window. He steeled himself and opened the door. He saw his own bedroom. The candle in the window was now the lamp on the shelf. He walked slowly in. Everything was gone, except his neatly made bed, the shelf and the lamp. He looked at the lamp. Its dark grains against the orange light seemed to writhe, as if it was stretching in place, working out kinks. He peered in closer to see better. Tendrils of mist oozed out from the sinewy grains. Yellow, red and green, coalescing into fingery strands. Before he could scream, they gripped his little face and sucked him right into the lamp that was not a lamp. Franklin emerged on a slick, spiraling slide, surrounded by darkness, speeding down in monstrous, shrinking loops, unable to grab its too high sides. As he neared the bottom, he saw monsters, green monsters, all teeth and long claws, scrabbling to eat him first. A Giant old man loomed behind them, wringing his hands. No one heard Franklin scream.

Abby woke up from her sleep with a terrible foreboding. She rushed into her son’s room to find a neatly made bed and no Franklin. She didn’t understand until she looked at the shelf. Then she remembered. The niggly dream. The forgotten past. The market. The old man who wasn’t a man at all. It was all right there. Everyone heard her scream.

On the shelf, where the lamp that was not a lamp wasn’t, were two quarters.