The Monster Is Still Out There

I don’t remember seeing the last time my daddy beat my mama in a drunken rage. I’d seen it plenty of times enough for any six year old. I was never daddy’s little girl. He was a lazy slob of a man who spent his days drinking shine and his nights raging if anything set him off. I remember Uncle Charlie was over, trying to play referee and keep Daddy off of Mama. He told me to go to my room and hide in the closet in the very back, and don’t come out until he got me himself. I waited a long, long time in the dark of that closet. That’s all I remember from the last night my daddy was there.

We were hill folk who handled our own business and didn’t like interference from strangers, or the law, for that matter. Mama never called anyone but Uncle Charlie when Daddy would start in on her. She’d probably have let him beat her to death sooner than call the law. It’s just how us hill folk are, I guess. Mama and Uncle Charlie said Daddy was just a mean drunk and he was dealt with so me and Mama would be safe. And Uncle Charlie moved in to keep us up. He had no family of his own yet, so he may as well. “Gotta keep you ladies safe,” he kept saying. Mama wasn’t at all the same after Daddy was gone. She stayed scared all the time, like she was stuck on eggshells even after Daddy was long gone. And Uncle Charlie didn’t act anything like Daddy. I had even wished he was my daddy instead of my real daddy, the Monster. Uncle Charlie never would say how exactly he ‘dealt with’ Daddy, but he promised there was no way he was ever coming back.

Mama would sometimes wake us up at night, crying in her sleep from nightmares, or she would swear she saw Daddy looking in her window or standing over her bed. “That monster is still out there, Charlie. He’s still out there!” Mama would swear. Uncle Charlie would calm her down and promised he made sure Daddy wouldn’t come back to bother us. “Will you check? Please, Charlie, put my mind at ease!” Mama would beg him every time.

And every time, Uncle Charlie would give in. He would go off at whatever hour of the night and often didn’t return until almost morning. If Mama had an episode during the day he’d promise to check after dark, and always kept his word.

I never dared ask, but I wondered how Uncle Charlie was checking on Daddy to make sure he didn’t come back. I guess I always imagined him driving around the county roads that wound around the property, every once in a while stopping to get out and check some of our land on foot, rifle or shotgun in hand. Uncle Charlie was a hero to us. He saved us from Daddy and looked after us in his absence. Mama need3d the constant reassurance that Daddy wasn’t coming back. He worked long hours to support us. One day when I was ten, Uncle Charlie picked me up from school as usual, but instead of going home, he let me ride with him to run errands in town. We’d been driving a long time; the light was fading into pale twilight when I fell asleep.

When I woke up, the truck was running, headlights pointed directly at an old barn overgrown with vines, its broken window gaping blackly from the loft. It reminded me of how Mama had looked the day after one time Daddy got ahold of her. He’d blacked both her eyes, hurt her nose, and one of her front teeth was missing. I got a sick feeling in my stomach looking at that rotting building and thinking about how it reminded me of what Daddy did. And for once, I didn’t feel like Daddy was far, far away.

I got chill bumps all down my arms and legs and my heart started to beat real hard; I felt like I was in danger, but I didn’t know how. I was in Uncle Charlie’s truck. He must be nearby, and surely I couldn’t be safer with anyone than him. After all, he saved us from Daddy. I was peeking over the dash at the dark building and its mismatch sturdy door. Soon Uncle Charlie came out, shut the door tight and did a latch. Then he ran a length of heavy chain through it and padlocked it tight. I ducked back down in the seat when he turned around and pretended I was still asleep.

He got in the truck and drove home like everything was fine; I played possum so well it didn’t take long for me to fall back to sleep on the long drive to the house. Later that night I heard him talking to Mama after I went to bed. If I lay with my ear pressed hard to the floor and held my breath, I could make out some of their conversation in the kitchen below. “I went ahead and checked on him,” he said. Mama said something low. “I know, Dana. I know. I just wanted to make sure. Gotta keep you ladies safe.” Mama spoke again but hard as I tried I couldn’t make out a word. Unless she was having an episode she was always so softspoken. Uncle Charlie continued, “Well I promise you he can’t get you. He’ll never get you again, but he sure as hell deserves to live to pay for what he did to you and the baby, and God only knows what he could have done to Sandy.”

I didn’t know what baby he was talking about, but I got another chill when I heard my name. I didn’t remember Daddy doing anything to me except making me feel real scared, like scared for mine and Mama’s lives scared. But I had some scars I didn’t remember how I got, and Mama didn’t have many pictures of me from before. Daddy could have hurt me when I was too little to remember. He probably would have. He was a monster.

The thought of Daddy hurting me was enough to overpower my curiosity; I slipped back into my bed and sank deep into the blankets, but I still didn’t feel quite right. That night I had all kinds of crazy dreams about what Uncle Charlie could have been doing at that old barn with the chained and padlocked door. I dreamed about all the things he could be hiding in there, why he would want to keep everyone out. I dreamed about things he might be keeping locked inside, too. Those were the scariest dreams, and the most terrifying of them all was when I dreamed he had Daddy locked up in there all these years. I woke from that one in a cold sweat with my heart thumping out of my chest.

Uncle Charlie never took me back to that old building, and far as I know, he never knew I was awake to see it. One day, I’ll find it again and find out what he was hiding all those years ago.