Short Story: "The Grinning, Part 1"

The Grinning, Part 1

Steve

A nudge.

Steve.

Another nudge, harder.

Stevie, wake up.

Steve Carter swam out of his dreams. His eyes opened wearily, his limbs regained feeling. The last memories of his dream faded out. He vaguely remembered Ellie’s face, her brown eyes, her smile that filled him with giddiness that only a child can have.

The seven-year old’s world came into focus as he rubbed his eyes. He looked down at himself, laying on the basement couch. His body was illuminated with the faint glow of the television. The slightly rough texture of the couch he lay on dug into his arms. He raised them, and saw marks where he had pressed them into the couch under his weight. He turned his head towards the left, where he saw his mother kneeling over him. She held the remote that was previously clutched in Steve’s hand. She smiled and rubbed his shoulder.

“Come on, sleepyhead,” she said softly, brushing his hair from his forehead. “You fell asleep watching TV. Why don’t you go to your bed?”

“No, mummy, I’m not tired,” Steve said, propping himself up on his elbows and leaning his neck against the pillow behind him. He looked at the television, where a commercial for some headache relief was paused. “Can’t I watch for a bit longer?”

His mother looked behind her to the small clock on the table next to the television. It was twenty one minutes past eight o’clock. “You can have ten more minutes,” she told him. “After that, I want you to get ready for bed. Lights out by eight forty-five.”

“Okay, mummy,” Steve said.

Evelyn Carter stood up and started to head towards the stairs. She turned back and said, “I don’t want to call you again. And don’t sit like that, it’ll hurt your neck.”

Steve sat up properly and pressed the remote. The ad resumed, and then transitioned into some cartoons, but he hardly watched them. His mind wandered back to the memory of his dream. The subject of his past fantasy led to a recollection of a time more grounded in reality. He thought back to that morning, when his father parked in the curved road in front of the elementary school where he passed his weekdays. He remembered how his father wished him a good day, and how he told him he would be back in six days from a business trip, how he told him he loved him. He remembered waving, and going into the school, up the stairs towards his classroom. He had sat down at his desk, waiting for her to walk through the doorway. One by one, his classmates had entered and sat at their respective desks, and each time they did, he snuck a glance towards them to see if it was her. Finally, after an amount of time that passed far too slowly for his liking, she entered. She was giggling with her friend, and the sound of her laugh made his heart race. Her friend whispered something in her ear, and then bounced towards the back of the class towards their own desk. Ellie stood still for a moment, and looked in his direction. Steve averted his eyes, his mind imprinted with the last image of her face frozen in an expression of slight surprise and realization.

But then she did something that she never did before; she walked towards him, skipping on her feet to his desk. “Hi Stevie,” she had said to him, and then she continued her way to the back of the room and sat at the desk next to her friend. They giggled together again, a sound that filled his stomach with insects and made his face go red.

For the rest of the day all Steve could think about was those two words, stuck in the back of his mind while his teachers lectured about history and mathematics. At recess he sat alone in the shade of a tree, thinking about how she had hopped towards him. He fantasized her hopping towards him again, without the watchful eye of a teacher, and planting herself next to him. He envisaged her grabbing his hand, leaning over, (by now Steve was watching himself from the third person), and doing the thing that always made him blush and avert his eyes when he was watching a movie with his parents…

A loud bang emitted from the television, and he crashed back into reality. He realized that six minutes had passed since his mother went upstairs, and he didn’t have a clue what was happening on what he was watching.

________

Evelyn rose up the stairs, hearing the sound of the ad announcer come back on over the creaky steps. As she opened the basement door, she heard the air conditioning turn on. The whistle of the vent in the living room reminded her of the opened screen door, and she went to the kitchen to close it. After it was closed and she turned the latch to lock it, she heard a faint wail come from upstairs. Sarah.

She went upstairs towards the cries, down the dark hall and towards the closed door where she had left her three-year-old to sleep only ten minutes ago. The sound of Sarah’s crying came into focus when she pushed open the door, and she hastily turned on the light and went over to her bed where she was asleep just moments ago.

“Shhh, what’s wrong?” she whispered, picking her up and cradling her like she did when she was an infant. She’s getting heavy, she thought. Soon she won’t be able to pick her up anymore. She grabbed a tissue from beside her and wiped away the tears and snot from her face.

“I-I saw s-something, m-mommy,” Sarah said.

“What? What did you see, sweetie?”

“I-I saw a m-man, mommy,” she lamented.

“A man? What man?” Evelyn said, her chest filling with the tightness of fear.

“A d-dark man, he was just sit-sitting there, and-” her voice hitched and she started crying again.

Evelyn’s mind reeled. Her worst fear had been realized, she thought. Ever since she started living away from her parents she had a constant, lingering fear of an intruder. Her husband made her feel safe, more secure, but now he was gone. Was she that unlucky? Did someone break in on the same day her husband left? She went quickly to the open window by Sarah’s bed (thinking in the back of her mind that she should close it, now that the AC is on) and looked down into the backyard. It would be pretty tough climbing up the side of the house to the open window, especially with no rope or ladder, which she didn’t see. She didn’t see any sign of anybody in her backyard, none of the bushes at the base of the house were disturbed. Evelyn shivered at the thought of a stranger inside her house, inside her daughter’s room. Just because it doesn’t look like anyone was in the backyard, she thought, that doesn’t mean that nobody did come in, but that would mean that whoever this creep was, they came in some other way and went straight to Sarah’s room, and that would mean that they knew where her three-year-old daughter’s room was, and that they purposefully went to Sarah, and…

In her arms, Sarah said something incomprehensible through her tears, bringing Evelyn out of her waking nightmare.

“You must have had a bad dream, sweetheart,” Evelyn told her, kissing her forehead. But was she saying that to reassure her daughter, or to reassure herself? She still saw an image of a man in this very room, standing over her daughter’s bed. What if Sarah had never woken up? What if the stranger had a weapon? She quickly checked her daughter’s body for injuries, for blood, anything that would confirm her fears.

“Can I sleep with you, m-momma?” Sarah asked.

“Of course,” Evelyn said, closing the window. The evening breeze cut off and the room was filled with eerie silence. She left her daughter’s room, stepping over toy blocks and crayons and loose paper. She closed the door behind her, and headed towards the master bedroom she normally shared with her husband. “I have to brush my teeth,” she said, putting Sarah down on the king sized bed. “Lie down and try to fall back asleep, and I’ll be with you in just a second.”

Evelyn brushed her teeth quickly, not bothering to floss, and went back to her daughter on the bed. Sarah was already starting to fall asleep.

“G’night, momma,” Sarah said quietly.

Evelyn’s heart swelled with the exact opposite of the feeling that was there moments before. She kissed her daughter again, brushing her hair. “Good night, sweetheart,” she whispered, and got in bed next to her. Mother and daughter lay in bed in identical fetal positions, Evelyn’s body curled around Sarah’s. Sarah quickly fell asleep again in her mother’s embrace. Evelyn listened to her soft, slowed breathing, hardly believing that she could fall asleep again this quickly. Everything’s fine, she thought to herself. She just had a nightmare. Evelyn closed her eyes and tried to sleep. Eventually her breathing fell into a rhythm that matched her daughter’s, and she drifted off into a light sleep. While she slept her subconscious mind was still filled with visions of a stranger in her house.

________

Steve shut off the television and went upstairs. Still daydreaming, he put on his pajamas and brushed his teeth. Neglecting to wash his face, he crept towards his mother’s closed bedroom door. He pushed it open quietly, peering through the tiny crack between it and the doorframe. He saw his mother and sister curled up in bed together, eyes closed, and started to close the door again when he heard his mother speak.

“G’night, Stevie,” her tired, softened voice said.

“Good night, mummy,” Steve whispered. “Sorry for waking you.” He closed the door before she could reply. He walked back to his own room down the hall, stepping around the squeaky part by the top of the stairs so as to not wake his mother again.

He got into bed, curling up under a quilt. The late-summer humidity in the air made him put his arms over the top of the blanket, and he closed his eyes.

Steve went to sleep thinking of Ellie.

________

He awoke slowly, rising from the deep water of his dreams, but he didn't open his eyes yet. There wasn’t any point in doing so, because that night was going swimmingly. He held on to the last picture of his dream in his mind, clutching to it like he was dangling over a chasm and it was the only thing keeping him from falling. He couldn’t hang on forever, though, and the image of her leaning in close was replaced by the memory of that morning, when she had capered towards his desk. The sweet thought of her distracted him from the other thing he was feeling. A faint sense of awareness, a sense that something was there beside him, maybe laying in bed with him, was present somewhere deep in his mind. Steve pushed away this feeling and fell asleep again. When the sun rose and he woke up on a new day, he didn’t remember ever waking up in the middle of the night at all, let alone that weird sense that was chewing at the back of his brain. It was probably nothing, though, just the feeling you get when you’re awake in the dark, because everyone’s afraid of the dark, at some subconscious level, because the dark is where predators hide.

Stay tuned for Part 2 in next month’s issue