The Telling Place
Nora Peevy
Issue #5 (July 2008)
“Clarice,” hissed the serpent coat rack. The snake heads addressed her with a chilly gaze. “Your next appointment is approaching.” They flicked their slithery tongues over their scaly lips, their red eyes slit like splintered rubies.
“Be quiet or I’ll turn you four into a new pair of shoes. You’re supposed to be a coat rack, for Hecate’s sake.”
The four snake heads snickered, their dry scales rustling as they assumed the shape of four coat hooks, eyes dulling and becoming cloudy, bodies and tails entwining to form the stand.
Ms. Sinclair peeked out the front window of her cozy reception room, absently rearranging a rumpled collection of HIGHLIGHTS and NATIONAL GEOGRAPHICS on a cheery red table. If anyone had been in the room with her, they would have noticed that the shadows from the windowpane did not fall across the crook of her nose or her face at all; odd in itself, but not totally peculiar. What was more peculiar was the strange bone bird talisman around her neck blinking and shrieking an ear-piercing squawk that Ms. Sinclair’s dry, bony hand quickly stifled.
Mrs. Martin and her son, Logan, blew in on a spirited door slam typical of a wild windy summer day in Wisconsin, the kind you’re grateful for because as soon as you start to sweat from the cloying humidity, a big gust of wind messes your hair and ripples through your shirt, fooling you into thinking it’s not hotter than witches brew out there.
Mrs. Martin adjusted her pixie coif, alternately scrunching and patting her reflection in the mirror by the door. “Good afternoon, Ms. Sinclair.”
“Good afternoon.” She nodded to Logan, noting his wariness as he placed his Red Sox cap on one of the coat hooks and ran a grimy paw through his curly mop of hair, his freckles infused with sunlight and fresh air.
Mrs. Martin loved coming to see Ms. Sinclair. She felt Logan was behaving so much better since he started coming here. Why, with just four visits he already said things like “yes mom” and “thank you” at home, and last Saturday he even cleaned his room without being asked. She really would have to remember to call and thank Trudy Jenkins for the referral. ‘The Telling Place’ was a wonderful resource for parents who had almost passed the end of their rope and were only hanging on by two fingers. It was so homey with all the knickknacks and mismatched furniture. It reminded her of Granny.
“Logan, what are you staring at? Come have a seat dear.”
“But mom --”
“I said come have a seat.” Mrs. Martin patted the crazy quilt patterned couch, fingering a whimsical painted giraffe with her other hand. The wooden giraffe sneered at the unsuspecting mother while she watched her son.
Ms. Sinclair frowned at the giraffe, the tips of her fine silver brows being drawn together. They were one of her prettier features.
“But mom,” Logan sputtered as his plump sweaty body plopped down on the couch, “I swear that one of those snake heads blinked at me.”
“Really, Logan.” Logan recognized his mom’s tone from previous fights at home -- the “don’t push it further” tone. Her denim eyes flushed with embarrassment. “Do you see what I have to put up with, Ms. Sinclair? Kids and their imaginations.” She laughed an uncomfortable laugh like a piece of china breaking in a quiet shop, as she rumpled her son’s red curls.
Still frowning, Clarice risked a quick peek at her coat rack in the corner. A pink snake tongue flicked the air. Clarice crossed the room, the afghan from the back of her rocking chair in her grasp. “We’ll just cover this so it doesn’t bother you, Logan,” she smiled at him through perfect straight teeth, pinching the nose of the offending serpent between two steely fingers. As she draped the coat rack with her blanket she said in a firm, teeth-gritting voice, “Just you behave now or I’ll be frying you up for the cat’s supper later.” A rotund marmalade cat poked her pink nose out from behind a collection of dusty tomes on the bookshelf, grinning with glee and licking her whiskers. With her grandmother smile perched upon her lips, Clarice turned to reassure Logan. “All better,” she announced as she sat in her rocking chair across from them.
Logan studied her face, thinking he heard something slippery in her voice. He didn’t like this place, The Telling Place. It sounded like a place you went to tattletale on someone, and Logan knew other kids didn’t like tattletales. It went against the kid code, and he didn’t like Ms. Sinclair either. As his mother would say, he couldn’t put his finger on it, but he knew something wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right at all. He glanced again at the rack, swallowing his nervousness as he saw a slither of movement from beneath the colorful afghan. His nervousness settled into a hot coiled pinball ready to spring in his stomach at any moment.
“So, Mrs. Martin, how are things at home with Logan this week?”
“They’re going better.” She smiled at Logan. “Why, I don’t know what you and Logan talked about, Ms. Sinclair, but Logan’s attitude has seemed to improve greatly almost overnight. It’s like magic.” Mrs. Martin beamed brighter than a lighthouse, gushing.
“Anything new?” Ms. Sinclair seemed to loom closer to Logan, a snaggle-toothed dragon eyeing its prey.
“Well …” Mrs. Martin glanced at Logan and patted his chubby hand. “We have had one problem.”
“Oh?”
Logan watched the blood drenched dragon’s eyes perk up with the possibility of pain.
“Logan’s been spending a little too much time on his models and not enough time on his grades. He got another failing grade in math this week.”
“Logan, is this true?” Ms. Sinclair watched the boy flush a nice shade of red to match her coffee table.
“Yes.” He hung his head, picking at a week old scab on his knee.
“Why do you think that is, Logan?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged his shoulders, conscious of Ms. Sinclair’s crooked nose pointing in his direction. He wondered if she had a husband. Could a woman like Ms. Sinclair be married? Could she have a family, a boy possibly like him at home? No, he didn’t think so. She wasn’t like his mom. Something in Logan’s gut told him so.
“Maybe, you’d feel more comfortable talking to Ms. Sinclair on your own, Logan?” Without waiting to notice her son’s panicked stare, Mrs. Martin stood and adjusted her purse strap on her shoulder. “I’ll just do some shopping and be back in half an hour.”
“Wait, mom.” Logan’s voice sank like ice in his throat. His heart jigged in his chest.
“Bye, son.” She winked at him and the red door closed with an ominous click.
Ms. Sinclair’s eyes gleamed with voracious delight. “Now that we’re alone, Logan, we’re going to have a little chat about responsibility and doing one’s homework. Give me your hand.”
Logan felt his stomach rising in hot acid waves as he touched Ms. Sinclair’s hand. The last time he’d done so he’d felt the leathery coldness of a zombie’s curse and smelled something rank and rotting. He’d also heard the sharp snap of a dried turkey wishbone and tasted musty, stale cinnamon. This time he tried to focus on Shep’s happy smile, his pink dog tongue hanging lopsided out of his mouth.
Ms. Sinclair sensed Logan’s fears quivering in his stomach like green jelly. She pushed past the grinning, goofy image of the idiot dog not even fit to carry fleas and searched deeper into Logan’s mind. She saw a blue painted room with plaid clad bunk beds and a spaceship nightlight. Her tongue flicked over her lips and her fingertips itched with anticipation as she honed in on a secondhand desk strewn with tubes of colored paint, model glue, and assorted paintbrushes held in an old Jiffy peanut butter jar.
She grasped her bird whistle until Logan saw her knuckles turn gray and he closed his eyes, trying to hold onto Shep’s face. He wanted so bad to pull his hand away from hers, but something primordial told him it was better to remain still, not to wake whatever beast lay slumbering behind Ms. Sinclair’s eyes if he wanted to be eating mom’s meatloaf for dinner that night. Logan concentrated on fluffy garlic mashed potatoes and meatloaf while Ms. Sinclair talked. Her hand felt oddly uncorpselike, which puzzled him. Maybe, it was just nerves last time, as mom said.
Ms. Sinclair stroked the whistle, feeling the warm bone stir beneath her fingertips. She peered closer at the modeling table in Logan’s room. “Now, Logan, you know that you need good grades to get a good job someday, right?”
“Yes.”
She saw a tiny zombie miniature on the table, its face drawn back in snarled agony, a miniscule dagger in its fist. She smiled. “And you know you have to obey your parents and that your mom wants you to get good grades, right?”
“Yes.”
Ms. Sinclair focused on the graveyard model displayed on the desk, the undead locked in limbs with the living, creeping, sneaking from clawed graves, shuffling out of the rusty cemetery gate, staggering around toppled gravestones, their lips pulled back in menacing howls, blood feast in their eyes. And she stroked her whistle. “Then you’ll work harder to better your homework, right? To do your homework before your models?”
“Yes.” Logan felt something viscous and slippery crawling up his arm into his mouth, probing with its wet tongue. He spat and opened his eyes, startled. Yanking away his hand, he noticed nothing was there, but tasted vile brine in his mouth. “Sorry.” He wiped the palms of his hands on the front of his STAR WARS t-shirt. “I thought a bug flew into my mouth.” He blushed, realizing how foolish he sounded with the window closed.
“That’s quite alright, Logan.” Ms. Sinclair glanced out the window. “Your mother’s back.”
The red door opened and Logan heard the faint tinkle of the ice cream truck outside.
“Ready?”
“Yes.” He hugged his mom.
“Did everything go okay, Ms. Sinclair?”
“Yes, it did. I’ll see you at the same time next week.”
“Thank you, Ms. Sinclair.” Mrs. Martin winked at her.
“Goodbye, Logan.”
“Bye.”
Ms. Sinclair waited until their tomato red Toyota Camry turned the corner on Wabash at the light before she raised her whistle to her lips.
* * *
“Mrs. Hammond, I assure you that hypnotism is a widely accepted form of therapy proven to show significant results almost overnight.” Clarice smiled at young Johnny who sat on the floor repeatedly crashing two Hot Wheels® on the braided rug.
“You’re going to die in a fiery pit of burning hell,” the eight year old screamed. “Burn, burn, and die!”
“See what I mean, Ms. Sinclair? It’s just not normal, the aggression he displays. And the fighting with his sister at home has escalated.” Mrs. Hammond rubbed her weary face. “I just don’t know what to do any more. And I’m working such long hours at the hospital now that I can’t even begin to think of putting him in an afterschool program with his behavior like this.”
“I’m sure I’ll be able to help you out, Mrs. Hammond. It’s a good idea you brought him in. If you’ll give me a half hour alone with Johnny, I promise you’ll see results before his next session.”
“Fine.” Mrs. Hammond was almost out the door already, needing no prodding to escape for a half hour from her son.
“Mrs. Hammond, if you don’t mind my asking, where did you hear about my services,” Clarice stopped her in the vestibule.
“From Logan’s mother.”
“Oh.” Ms. Sinclair smiled. “Enjoy your time alone, now. Most mothers do.” She winked.
As Ms. Sinclair closed the door, Mrs. Hammond thought she saw the old woman’s small bird talisman squirm against her purple blouse. But no, it couldn’t have been. It was just her imagination.
“In a pit of fiery burning hell!”
“Yes, Johnny, some day we will all die in a fiery pit of burning hell. But in the mean time, why don’t you come over here and talk to me for a minute.” Clarice stared at the black boy on the rug, following his gaze to a brightly painted wooden chest on the opposite wall. Well, if he won’t listen to me, we’ll just get his attention, won’t we? The little maggot. Clarice glowered as her feeble fingers stroked the bone bird whistle hanging from her waddled neck.
Johnny sat mesmerized by the chest, his arms poised over the rug with his cars suspended in mid-cataclysmic crash. The chest boasted a jungle scene carved in base relief and painted in electric blues, hot magentas, neon greens, and psychedelic yellows. Lions, giraffes, moneys, parrots and long serpents capered and danced with the dark African figures under leafy umbrella palms. The greens were so lush Johnny could almost drink the sweet, cool water from their stems. As he reveled in the details of the scene, the silhouetted figures began to shiver and quake as one tall, lean man raised a machete and decapitated a giraffe. Its shiny yellow wooden body ran bright red with rivulets of blood. Johnny hurried away from the gruesome pandemonious scene as animals fled shrieking and squealing into the jungle. He clambered for the warm safety of the couch by Ms. Sinclair’s rocking chair and wrapped the granny square afghan around his quivering shoulders, hiding his blue “The Dog Ate My Homework shirt”.
“You w-wanted to talk to me, Ms. Sinclair?” Why couldn’t Johnny see her pupils? It almost seemed she didn’t have any. Strange, like a witch. He shivered, pulling the afghan tighter around his body.
“Yes, I wanted to talk with you, Johnny. Just a friendly talk. Nothing bad. Give me your hand,” Ms. Sinclair beckoned, sliding her rocking chair closer to the couch.
Johnny knew that voice. It was the lying voice, the kind of voice Dr. Martin used when he told him the shot wouldn’t hurt much or the voice his sister used when she promised to take him to the park if he left her alone for awhile and then didn’t. It was a dark, bruised voice, the lying voice. Johnny didn’t want to disappoint his mother again. He really didn’t, so he gave Ms. Sinclair his left hand, palm up, and squeezed his tongue tight against the roof of his mouth to keep from screaming.
“Close your eyes, Johnny.”
He closed his eyes.
Clarice put her bird whistle to her wizened lips and blew once. A piercing squawk hurt his ears. He winced. “Tell me about your sister, Johnny.”
Johnny’s voice hung wasp nest thin on the air, his eyelids fluttering like insect wings. “I don’t like her. She threatens to cut the heads off my G.I. Joes and steals my candy. And she tells on me and gives me purple nurples and stuff.”
“I see.” As Clarice held the boy’s soft, clammy hand, she saw a long-legged girl with a slender coltish neck and a delicious mischievous grin. “Is that why you beat her up?”
“No,” he blurted. “She beats me up first.”
“I see. And how does that make you feel?”
“Angry.”
“Keep talking.” Clarice pressed deeper into the boy’s nubile consciousness, searching, searching for … Ah yes, there it was. She wet her lips and stroked her bird talisman. It grew hot and malleable like the boy’s hand.
When Johnny was younger, two, maybe three, his mother had read him the story, THREE BILLY GOATS GRUFF. The long rickety bridge they had to cross didn’t frighten him and the troll with the nasty eyes didn’t frighten him, but for some reason he did not like the goats, even though they were the heroes of the story. Goats were vile and dirty. They stank at the petting zoo. They ate your nametags and slobbered slimy spit in your hand, leaving you all germy, while flies buzzed around them to bite their smelly legs. At night he’d gone to sleep and the goats plagued him with their malodorous odor and their red eyes like glowing pinpoints in the dark as they bared their brown stained teeth, their hooves tapping with anticipation. Click, click, click … Why was he thinking about this now?
The boy was strong -- almost too strong. He knew something was wrong. Clarice saw it written in his scrunched up face, his mouth tinier than a shriveled raisin. She tasted his fear in the air, alkaline and slippery. Continuing to stroke her bird whistle, she whispered, “Johnny, do you remember the goats?”
“Y-yes.” His grip on her hand could have crushed a drinking glass.
“When I say ‘hippopotamus’ and tell you to open your eyes you won’t remember me asking that question.”
“’Kay.” His lids fluttered and stilled. Johnny thought of the ballerina elephants in FANTASIA now. It must be the mention of hippos. He grinned.
“Hippopotamus. Open your eyes, Johnny.” Clarice startled as her office door opened. Mrs. Hammond had a bag of Einstein Bros® bagels in her hand.
“Hi, Johnny. Did you have a good talk?”
“Y-yes, mom.” He really couldn’t remember. That was odd. He remembered something about a hippo or a dancing elephant. His tongue felt swollen and his head felt thick like he’d been sleeping.
“Well, Johnny, you’d best get out of here and make the most of what’s left of the daylight while you can. It’ll be dark before you know it.” Ms. Sinclair grinned.
“’Kay.”
“Johnny, why don’t you wait for me in the car? We’ll go get a Happy Meal after I finish talking with Ms. Sinclair.”
“’Kay.”
She waited until he safely rounded the corner. “Anything I should know about?”
“I think you’ll see a remarkable improvement, Mrs. Hammond. Johnny’s hypnosis went very well, better than expected, really. I think we got to the root of the problem, but if you do have any episodes at home before our next visit, just say ‘hippopotamus’. That’s Johnny’s magic word when things get out of control.”
“And what’s a magic word?”
“Just think of it as a little reminder for Johnny to behave.” Clarice patted Mrs. Hammond’s shoulder.
Mrs. Hammond didn’t know why, but she thought she saw a goat reflected in Ms. Sinclair’s eyes. Her feet seemed to be buzzing, like they’d fallen asleep. Weird. “See you next week then, Ms. Sinclair. And thank you for seeing us on such short notice. You’re an angel.”
Or a devil, Clarice thought. “Goodbye, Mrs. Hammond.” She watched them pull away, stroking her bird whistle with an idle hand.
* * *
Across town that evening Logan got ready for bed. The streetlights were just coming on and Logan could hear the older kids playing down below on the sidewalk. An enticing breeze ruffled his blue curtains, bringing the clean damp smell of the riverbank and the promise of more adventures, like frog hunting and tree climbing and the blessed chance to get truly dirty that we savor as children. He heard whoops and hollers as kids gathered for a game of Ghosts in the Graveyard and the delightful twangy thump! of a basketball bouncing the pavement. He set another miniature gravestone into place on his model.
“Logan, did you finish all your homework?”
Logan knew he should tell the truth, but he was almost done and he figured he could finish it on the bus tomorrow morning. “Yes.” He got that funny tickly feeling in his belly that he always got when he lied.
“Good. Five minutes until bedtime.”
“’Kay.”
Mrs. Martin looked over his room with a mother’s concerned curiosity, cringing a bit at the colorful movie posters plastered to the walls: giant ants attacking in THEM, zombies lurching in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, a damsel in distress in the arms of a robot in FORBIDDEN PLANET, a slavering rabid CUJO with enormous fangs. Why boys liked those movies she would never understand. Tiny icicles crept like spiderlings down her spine, each new movement causing her to shudder.
Logan climbed into the top bunk just as his mom popped her head back in the room. “Night, champ.”
“Night.” The lights went out and Logan watched the glowing constellations on his ceiling with lazy interest, his eyes drooping.
Logan floated weightless above his bed. He saw his head resting on the pillow and looked up to see the stars above him on the ceiling, so close, he could lick them. A trippy giddiness flowed through him as he pivoted; his body light and airy and electric: marveling at how different his room looked from this vantage point. This was what it was like to be a superhero.
As he reveled in the power rushing through his arms and legs, a bolt of adrenaline slammed into his chest. His heart catapulting, Logan struggled to find his voice, but it froze, locked away in an icy prison in his throat. Sweat pooled on his brow.
“N- no.”
He shook his head. Climbing up the bedroom ladder with grimy nails and rotting putrid flesh the zombies advanced in rows of two. Climbing up the ladder with faces pulled back in terrifying grimaces and with festering puss-filled tongues bloated and purple-black. Climbing, climbing, and climbing until the first two crouched by his ear and he could hear the gnashing of their teeth and feel the cold chill of their splintered nails scratching at his cheek.
“No,” he struggled to cry out, but his voice stopped in his throat. The scream was trapped within him, building to a terrible crescendo, until he thought his head would burst, exploding in gory bits, dripping red gore sliding down the blue bedroom walls, soaking into his blankets.
Logan watched his fists crumple the sheet in his hot palms as he tossed in bed. He watched the first wave of miniature zombies scale the mountain of his body as they licked their cracking lips and ran their diseased tongues as dry as reeds over his ear before feasting on their fresh meat, gnawing his nose, his lower lip, his arms, and his legs with a mauling vengeance. The wet ripping noises of Logan’s flesh filled the night.
“No,” Logan shrieked, and shot up in bed, his eyes panicked, trying to focus on the dark shadows of night in his bedroom. His nightshirt plastered to his back with sweat, his curls a wet cap on his head, he reached with shaking fingers for the red plastic flashlight he kept under his pillow for emergencies. The comforting click of the button calmed his hammering heart as he shone the yellow beam onto the model on his desktop. It was just a model. Logan sighed, willing his breath to slow as he counted the zombies. Twenty-six.
“Phew,” he mumbled to the empty room. “Nothing to worry about. Just a nightmare.” He adjusted the blankets, taking care to cover all of his limbs and listened to the dark. Only the wind playing in the trees and Mr. Phil’s cockapoodle, Daisy, barking down the block.
One more check, he thought. He swept the beam of light over his model. Twenty-six. They were all there. All twenty-six of them. He thought he saw a blur of movement and the curtains billowed with the breeze, bringing with them the moist scent of the river. It was just a wicked nightmare. Just a bad dream, he thought as he clicked off the flashlight. But somehow, his boy mind knew it could be more than a dream. Indeed, could be more than a dream. And he clutched his flashlight to his chest like a life preserver, prepared for a long night of unrest.
* * *
Mrs. Hammond could hear Daisy barking down the street, that danged cockapoodle from hell. She had a mongo headache.
“Rat breath!”
“Scab face!” Johnny sneered at Mae, for he knew she was sensitive about her skin these days.
“Aaaaaaah-ruff,” Mae snarled as her fists hammered into Johnny’s back.
“Whooooomp!” Johnny fell to the floor unable to breathe, his back on fire as flipped over and crab-walked across the kitchen floor, alternately kicking Mae in the shins with each shoe as he scrabbled backwards.
“I’m gonna beat your butt off, you lil booger!”
“Not before I kick your ass,” Johnny cried, leaping to his feet like a video game fight contender, fists drawn for action.
“That’s enough!” Mrs. Hammond rubbed her knuckles, hunched over the fifties chrome dinette with her Opus mug filled with chamomile and the day’s crossword puzzle letters swarming like ants before her eyes, a sharp pain splintering her head. “Stop it you two, before I give you both a reason to cry.”
“Make me, momma. I’m tired of her picking on me all the time.” Hot rivulets of tears rushed down Johnny’s cheeks.
“Boo-hoo,” Mae snickered as she wound up for a swing.
“Hippopotamus,” Mrs. Hammond spluttered over her tea.
Johnny’s leg muscles weakened and he fell, hitting his chin on the floor from the force of Mae’s punch, drool puddling underneath his cheek.
“Think you’re so hot now, do ya, pipsqueak?” Mae kicked him in the kidney.
Johnny whimpered. Mae’s face morphed into a goat’s, an ugly, hairy, rank smelling goat with a scruffy beard and wild bloodshot eyes singeing his skin with their hellish brute glare. A frenzied bleating spilled forth from her mouth.
“That’s right. You’d better think next time before you come at me.”
He covered his ears with his fists to block out the bleating.
“’Cuz next time it’s gonna be worse. You can count on it.”
The bleating, the demonic bleating!
“Mae, stop it and go to your room, now.” Mrs. Hammond gripped her mug tighter.
“But momma!”
The bleating! Johnny couldn’t take another second of it. He slammed his fists into his ears, hoping to beat out the noise as he sobbed, curled up on the floor in a fetal position, “I’m sorry, momma! I’m sorry, momma! I won’t fight any more. I promise!”
His chest heaved with great gusts of sobs as he peered gingerly through a curtain of tears at his sister. It was just Mae again, ugly mean ole Mae. He hugged his arms to his chest, the tears wracking his torso as his mother knelt beside him, smoothing her cool hand over his burning forehead.
“Ssssh, ssssh,” she crooned to him.
* * *
Ms. Sinclair perched on the windowsill the next morning, a cup of catnip tea warming her old hands. “What do you think, kitten,” she asked the marmalade cat cleaning itself on the braided rug. “Do you think we’ll have any new clients today?”
The cat paused and then continued cleaning, not even looking at her, probably dreaming about what a nice fat tasty robin would be like. Clarice sipped her tea, enjoying the robust mint flavor. She turned as the bell above her door tinkled. A pretty middle-aged mother and her blonde daughter stood in the doorway.
“Hello, I’m Ms. Sinclair. And you are?”
“Mrs. Richie and this is Samantha.”
Samantha thought the old woman smelled musty like old books from her grandma’s trunk in the attic.
Ms. Sinclair extended her hand to Samantha. “Hi there, sweetie.”
The little girl sucked on her red lollipop, continuing to stare at Ms. Sinclair. The old woman’s smile reminded her of the witch in HANSEL AND GRETEL. Not good at all.
“Well, shake her hand, Samantha.”
Not wanting to, Samantha slowly took Ms. Sinclair’s leathery hand in hers. She felt something slither under the old woman’s skin. She did not like The Telling Place. She did not like The Telling Place at all.
