Kemoa: a Halloween Story
[This is the 3rd in a series of Halloween stories. Follow the link to start with the first.]
“When she started telling me stories about little creatures with bizarre names, I figured she’d gotten it all from a book or a TV show. By now I’ve googled every permutation of the names I can think of. They’re not from any show I can find. She doesn’t read like she used to before Janelle passed away. So where was she getting it all? Maybe I’m too indulgent with her. It’s not like I haven’t considered that. Dads are supposed to dole out the tough love, right? But how am I supposed to be tough when…. Excuse me. Let’s just say I often find myself at a loss. What can I do but spoil the hell out of my daughter?
“I know your next thought too. Mind you, I openly admit I’m as susceptible to fantasies of my daughter’s creative genius as the next parent. At first, I encouraged her in what I thought were flights of imagination. Two things changed my attitude over time. First, the stories were just so elaborate. Leena is only eleven, and I figured keeping so much stuff like that straight in her mind would take more concentration than a girl of that age tends to be able to muster. Second—and this is what sent me in search of help—some of the characters started getting scary. But I’m getting ahead of myself.”
Ken, our featured guest at this year’s Halloween gathering, is a trim, youthful-looking man in his late thirties or early forties. Aside from his eyes’ red rims and the heavy dark crescents beneath them, he looks like a guy who takes care of himself. He’s in decent shape, well-groomed, and was neatly but by no means ornately dressed. At just under six foot, he carries himself like a white collar professional, courteous, thoughtful, but with an undercurrent of seriousness, even urgency, like he’s only ever being polite long enough to get back to work without causing offense. He seemed almost embarrassed to be addressing our group, but mostly he seemed mutedly desperate. He really needed help.
“Here, let me give you an idea what I’m talking about,” he said. “I recorded this on my phone. I’m not a hundred percent sure I should be recording my daughter without her knowing and then playing it back for a room full of strangers. But I’m running out of ideas. I’ll just ask that if you talk to anyone about this or write up the story, you change the names and any identifying details. Please just be discreet.”
Ken held up his phone and did some swiping with his finger until the tiny voice had everyone leaning forward. Ken helpfully increased the volume.
“They’re like fish,” the little girl’s voice said when the playback started afresh, “but they don’t swim in the ocean. They swim through the clouds. On some bright days, if you look really close, you can see them. But only because they dart around so much when the sun is shining. They don’t look much like fish either—though the way they look changes depending on what they see going on in the world. When I see them, they usually look like tiny people, but their skin or scales or whatever are all different colors—green, blue, purple, black, yellow, any color you can think of. The same one will be a different color from one day to the next. I suppose it’s like us with our clothes; every day we wake up and decide what we want to wear. They just choose the color they want to be instead.
“They all have little fans on the outsides of their legs and arms. That’s how they swim around in the clouds. It’s also how they glide down to the ground where we live, but only when the air is just right. Sometimes, if they really need to tell us something, they’ll swoop down even if the air isn’t right, but it’s dangerous, so they only risk it when what they need to tell us is urgent.
“The thing you have to remember is that they don’t fly. They can only swim when they’re in the clouds. So, when they come down here to talk, they have to catch a ride back up to the clouds from birds or hawks or something. That’s not usually a problem because they all have friends who are birds or hawks who are happy to help. That’s because they do such a good job stirring up the clouds and moving them to where the sky most needs them. See, that’s what they do, move the clouds and change them so the sun shines clear to where the trees and flowers need them, so the ground has shade and fields don’t dry up and crops can grow big and strong.”
“Do they have a name?” Ken’s voice asks.
“Of course! They all have names.”
“No, I mean, what do you call them in general?”
“Piltok says they’re called eckyura.”
“Piltok?”
“Yeah, Dad, you know about Piltok. I told you about him.”
“The guy you talk to by the creek? The one who lives underground?”
“He lives in the tunnels connecting all the lakes and ponds. He tells a joke I don’t really get, but maybe you will. He says he looks like what you’d get if you bred a boulder with a tree and then raised it in a family of moles. He laughs whenever he says that. Even though he looks a bit scary, I like his voice. He sounds strong and wise.”
“And how does he know about the—what did you say they were called? The eckyura?”
“He talks to them all the time, silly. He especially makes a point of checking in with them when it storms.”
“Let me guess, they make it storm when they’re angry?”
“No, goofy! It storms because the eckyura are fighting the adabo. The adabo live on the eckyura’s blood—only it’s not blood like ours. It’s light like air. The adabo bite into the eckyura’s chests and breathe in the blood mist, which glows blue in the dark.”
“That’s horrible. Does it kill them?”
“Usually, the adabo only get a little before each eckyura’s friends manage to rescue him. But sometimes they do die, and it’s really sad. But the thing is, the eckyura only live three or four days anyway.”
“What? That’s it?”
“Piltok says he knew one that was five days old, but he’s never known one older than that. Here’s the other thing you need to know: when the adabo breath in the eckyura’s blood, their minds are connected. That’s how the eckyura find out what’s going on where the adabo are from. That’s where they get information they need to share with us sometimes. That’s also why Piltok always goes to talk to them after a storm.”
“How often do you talk to Piltok?”
The ensuing pause lasts long enough to make us all wonder if the playback has stopped. Finally, Leena’s voice returns: “Dad, can I go outside? I don’t feel like talking anymore.”
“Okay, but before you go, answer my question please.”
“What question?”
“How often do you talk to Piltok?”
“Um…”
“You’re not in trouble. I’m just wondering.”
“I talk to him every time I go outside. Well, not every time. Sometimes, he doesn’t come around, or he doesn’t want to talk. I don’t know what he’s doing, but he just doesn’t answer, you know. Can I go outside now?”
“Okay, honey. Just stay close enough for me to see you.”
Ken reached for the device as the clip ended. “Okay,” he said, “that gives you some sense of how she speaks about all these characters. She never hesitates with a response like she would if she had to make up an answer on the spot. Whenever I press, she’s ready with more details. And she’s—what’s the word? She’s cagey, like she understands all this business is bizarre but can’t quite put her finger on what might be wrong about it. But this next clip is the part that first got me worried.”
He held up his phone again.
“Leena,” his voice sounded from the device, “you started talking about the grentroleems. You said they’re two-foot-tall black and gray monsters who hide out near children’s beds.”
“That’s right,” Leena said. “They use their power of weaving nightmares and making fears worse in the wee hours so they can frighten their victims to death. Piltok told me what the grentroleems are and how to deal with them. He said if I ever get too scared and can’t handle them, I can call him and he’ll come stomp them to death.
“But anyone can do the tricks that make them go away—I mean most of the time. What you do is take deep breaths and remind yourself that nothing is as bad as it seems when you’re lying awake at night. You see,” the voice continued, with a gravity out of place in an eleven-year-old, “the thing with fear is that it feeds on itself, until you start mixing the bad feelings from the fear with the bad things you’re afraid will happen and that makes everything seem just horrible, which just adds more fear to your mind, which makes things seem more horrible. To stop it, you remind yourself that you’ve gone through bad things before, and a lot of times—most times—they didn’t end up being as bad as you thought they would. As bad as they were anyway you got through them. And all the worry and fear you put into working yourself up and not falling asleep didn’t end up helping at all.”
After a pause, the voice begins again. “That’s really hard though when what I’m worried about is people dying.”
“Are you afraid of people dying?” Ken asked.
“Well, Dad, everyone is going to die eventually, right?”
“Do the grentroleems make you afraid any particular person might die?”
“Sometimes.”
Ken pauses the clip to tell us how her expression hardened as she turned away. She didn’t want to talk about it. More than that, it pained her to talk about it.
He hit play again so we could hear him changing tacks: “Your friend Piltok comes and kills the grentroleems? And then you feel better? But you said Piltok is a salobog, and salobogs only live a few months. How long have you known Piltok? Hasn’t it been a few months since you started talking to him?”
“Now you’re being a grentroleem, Dad.”
“I’m sorry dear. I’m just wondering who will come help you when Piltok is dead.”
“Piltok is my friend. I don’t like to think about him dying. But he has talked to me about it. He says if the grentroleems, or anyone else, are really getting to me and he’s not around, I can call Kemoa. She’s a six-foot-tall shaggy beast with black and white fur and glowing blue eyes. Kemoa loves children and babies. She can shoot invisible fireballs—well, invisible to us—that turn the grentroleems into statues of ash.”
Ken stopped the recording again to say, “This part was really interesting to me because it was the first time I thought I knew where she was getting her ideas. You see, I read your story Cannonball to Leena—eliding a few of the adult parts. She loved it. I think I read it to her three times, and each time she made me repeat the part at the end where your mom tells you how dogs like your old husky scare ghosts and goblins away so children can sleep soundly.”
He pokes at his phone again.
“How long does this Kemoa live?”
“Piltok never said. From the stories he tells me she’s been around like a hundred years. So she’ll always be around for me. The problem is, there’s only one Kemoa, and she has kids all over the world to look out for. Sometimes I get scared that when I call her, she’ll be busy saving someone else.”
Ken let the recording continue playing through a heavy pause. I looked up to see an expression of intensity, and perhaps regret, darken his features. Then his voice emitted again from the phone, almost a whisper. “Honey, you know the grentroleems are just make-believe, right? I really love that you have such a wonderful imagination, and someday I hope you write down all these awesome stories. But some of these guys seem like they’re upsetting you, and I don’t want you to be frightened. I don’t want you to worry about people dying.”
Silence.
“Honey, you know it’s all make-believe, right?” Ken pleaded.
“Yes, Daddy, of course,” she said abruptly, and then didn’t say another word.
***
Ken had reached out to me after discovering the writeups I did for some of our group’s earlier stories. Cannonball was my mom’s story about how our old dog Kea had saved her—sort of—from a guy who got rough with her after she changed her mind about bringing him home. Our group of friends has been getting together every Halloween for nine years now to share our ghost stories as part of our very own holiday tradition. Two years ago, Mom told this story that shocked me at first and then moved me for weeks afterward, until I felt I just had to write it down. Apparently, it’s moved some others as well. Since I posted it to my blog, the number of views keeps going up. The next year, I posted a story my dad told at our gathering, and the same thing happened, though to a lesser extent. It was this online footprint that led Ken to our stories, and then to me personally.
He said he got online to search for information about when imaginary friendships constitute a warning of some underlying problem. “I want my daughter to have a rich fantasy world. Her mother and I always encouraged that. I probably wouldn’t have worried so much if it weren’t for all these creatures’ ridiculously short lifespans. And then there were the ones who wanted to scare her, even hurt her. I mean, I’ve never heard of kids coming up with scenarios that dark. I thought imaginary friends were basically a step beyond having pretend conversations with yourself, you know? We all do that on occasion.”
After coming up dry with several searches, he typed in something about kids and scary stories, and that’s how he found my blog. When I got the first email from him, I responded that neither I nor anyone else in the group is a psychologist—though Mike has a degree in psychology. Ken assured me Leena had already seen a therapist, which led to some interventions that, at least for the time being, only made things worse. He said he wasn’t so much expecting a solution to his problem as he was simply looking for a nonjudgmental audience he could trust to tell him if he was being crazy, an audience that wouldn’t necessarily assume as much from the outset. He wanted a sounding board. He particularly wanted my mom to be there, which is of course perfectly understandable to me.
Unfortunately, Mom couldn’t make it to our Halloween party this year, for reasons I won’t go into here. Ken was nevertheless happy to share his story with the rest of us.
***
“It’s not so insane to think a kid might try to work through her grief over her mother’s death through her fantasies. I figured that’s why so many of her creatures were so strikingly short-lived. And, like I said, I was proud of her creativity. There was even some wisdom in what she said about how the grentroleems try to work you up into an anxious frenzy in the wee hours, and how you can ward off their attempts. Still, she didn’t seem to be interacting with any actual friends, not at school, not around the neighborhood. I was afraid I might lose her to her fantasy world for good. So I started taking her to a therapist every week.
“It was Dr. Thurman who first suggested some of the intricacies I was so blown away by in the stories may have come from Janelle, before she died. It’s entirely possible, she pointed out, that the two of them had a story world they visited together but kept from me, if for no other reason than that stories told in secret are more fun. Dr. Thurman’s main message to me, though, was that I needn’t worry so much about the imaginary menagerie, but I should make a point of getting her around other kids so she could strike up some real friendships. And that’s exactly what I did.
“Leena unfortunately fought me on this tooth and nail. She wanted to come home after school and go to the woods to see Piltok. That’s where she wanted to be on the weekends too. She didn’t want to go to any park or hang out with any of the neighbors I knew who had kids. But I kept at it. Then one night, I woke up to her screaming what sounded like, ‘Get away from her!’ over and over again. I bolted to her bedroom, expecting to find her in bed in the middle of a nightmare, but she wasn’t even in her room. She was wide awake, standing at the top of the stairway. ‘Honey, what’s the matter? Who are you screaming at?’
“‘It’s nothing Daddy. I was just having a bad dream.’
“‘Then what are you doing out here?’
“‘I was scared and I thought I heard something, so I came out here to look. But it must’ve just been part of the dream.’
“She was lying to me. I knew it to a certainty. But Dr. Thurman had advised against pressing for information about Leena’s fantasy world when she seemed reluctant to offer any. So I took her downstairs for a snack of granola and milk and then put her back to bed.
“The next time she woke up screaming was only a few nights later. This time, she was screaming, ‘Get away from me,’ and ‘Don’t touch me.’ I found her at the bottom of the stairs this time, in the foyer. She started violently when she heard me coming down the stairs, whipping her head around to see who it was. But it was the same as before. She had no answers to give. Only there was something different this time. She had three scrapes on her left forearm, deep enough to draw blood. They formed parallel lines, like someone had scratched her. When I asked if she’d done that to herself, she pressed her lips tight together. I demanded to know how she’d gotten those scratches. She burst into tears.
“You guys are all parents. You understand. I know Dr. Thurman didn’t say to stop her from talking to her friends. When she said it’s important that Leena have some real-life friends though, I took it to mean the imaginary ones were better left behind. Now, she’d woken up screaming on two separate occasions, so it wasn’t a stretch to conclude something was seriously wrong. What would you have done?
“I’ll tell you what I did. I gave her a silver cross that Janelle had given me to wear around my neck. I told her—did my best to impress upon her—that it would keep anything that wanted to harm her away. I told her it would also keep away everything else of the sort that I couldn’t see or talk to but she could. I told her the visits to the woods had to stop. And I signed her up for a creative writing club after school—so she wouldn’t have a chance to go have one of her chats with Piltok or whoever. I forbade her from talking to her invisible friends. I offered her the cross partly as a consolation. Believe me, it was hard for me to part with. But mostly I figured I needed a charm or a talisman to psych her out, to give her a reason to think her imaginary friends wouldn’t be showing up anymore.”
“What did the therapist say when you told her you’d taken that step?” Chris asked.
“Dr. Thurman was… Well, she’s professional enough not to dress me down for going against her recommendation, but I could tell she thought it was a bad idea. ‘Foreclosing on this fantasy world of hers could be dangerous,’ she said, pointing out that it was likely some kind of coping mechanism. ‘But I’m not sure the damage can be reversed by you giving her your blessing to return to it again. I would wager she knows now that you think her visits to her friends are cause for concern.’ Her upshot was that we would have to see what Leena would do next. Maybe with all the new people and the new club activities, she’d move back toward the real world again.”
Ken cast his eyes downward as he drew in a rough breath before saying, “That’s not what happened.”
***
Ken lifted his phone again, scrolled down a few swipes, and then started another clip.
“Honey, you were telling me about a new character you’ve been talking to. Didn’t I tell you I didn’t want you talking to anyone I can’t see or talk to myself?”
“Yes, but I didn’t go to the woods to talk to her. She came here.”
“You mean she came in the house?”
“She comes to my room at night, almost every night. I think she’s there even when I’m not awake.”
“Do you know what she wants?”
“She says I’m in danger and she’s come to protect me.”
“Protect you from what?”
“She says she has to protect me from Piltok and Airdol and Skirm and Leetoria—all the friends you told me not to talk to anymore. She says there’s no such thing as a salobog or an eckyura or an adabo or any of the others. She says the grentroleems are the only ones who are real, but they’re not really trying to scare me. They’re the ones trying to help me.”
“What did you say this woman’s name is?”
“Belcane. Her name is Belcane. Piltok told me about her before I ever saw her. I don’t know who to believe anymore.”
“What does Belcane look like sweety?”
“I only ever see her outline, you know, her silhouette. She’s short. Her arms are really long though, and her fingers are twice as long as they should be. Her voice is creaky, but sweet. She sounds like somebody’s grandma. I never see her eyes, but I can somehow feel them, like she’s looking at me really hard, trying to see something that’s not easy to see. And she always wears a coat or a cape or something, with these weird points that stand up on her shoulders.”
“Honey, if Piltok and the others aren’t real, why would Belcane have to protect you from them? Does she say they want to hurt you?”
“She doesn’t say they’re not real. She says they’re not what they say they are. She says all the stories about eckyura flying through the clouds and salobogs living in tunnels between lakes is a trick. She says Piltok is a demon, sent by the devil to lure me away from the house, away from everyone who would protect me, so he can keep me from signing my name in her friend’s book.”
“Leena, I need you to tell me something honestly. No stories. No fantasies. No make-believe. Where did you hear about demons and the devil and signing your name in a book? Did someone tell you about all that in school?”
“It’s not make-believe, Dad! Belcane told me all of it. But before I ever saw her, Piltok told me about her, and he said she’d try telling me lies to get me to only listen to her. He told me about the book and said I should never sign my name. Daddy, I don’t know which one of them is telling the truth.”
“I don’t know either, sugar plum. I think maybe the best thing to do is to stop talking to either of them for a while, until we can get it all sorted out. And obviously don’t sign anything.”
“But Dad, you already won’t let me go talk to Piltok. And Belcane comes to my room every night. She talks to me whether I answer back or not.”
“Yes, we’re definitely going to need to talk to Dr. Thurman about what to do with this Belcane character. In the meantime, here’s what I want you to do. If you wake up and she’s in your room, I want you to reach under your nightgown and pull out Mommy’s cross. I want you to hold it up between you and her and say, ‘You have to go away now, and God won’t let you stay.’ Can you do that for me?”
“Yeah, I can do that. But Dad, what if she’s telling the truth? What if she really is protecting me?”
“Do you think she is? I don’t see any reason her friend would want your name in his book. Do you think Piltok or any of the others would hurt you?”
We all listened rapt as Leena considered her answer.
“Never,” she said at last.
“Has Piltok ever come to the house?”
“No, but I see the eckyura here all the time. And the grentroleems, they’re here most nights too.”
“You said the eckyura wouldn’t hurt you either. And Belcane doesn’t protect you from the grentroleems. You know how to do that yourself, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. Thanks to Piltok.”
“Okay, so for now, I want you to tell this Belcane to keep away from you. We see Dr. Thurman again in two days. We’ll ask her what she thinks and then maybe we can have Belcane back. And honey, if you would just spend some time with some real flesh-and-blood kids, like the ones from your writing group, I may even let you go back to the woods to talk to Piltok again.”
“It won’t matter,” she said glumly. “I doubt Piltok will be alive for more than a couple weeks.”
***
Halloween fell on a Sunday this year. We had our party, the one where Ken told us all his story with the help of his recordings, on Saturday the weekend before. As I see the numbers of views on this site grow every day, I’m becoming more heedful of the details I share. Plenty of people who know my mom, for instance, have read her story, and I’m not sure she’d have wanted to share it so indiscriminately. I’m applying the rule here that I’ll only share details that are crucial to a clear storyline, and even if they are I’ll leave them out or change them if they could be tied to any individual.
We each took our turn to tell our old stories as per tradition, and we even got to hear some new ones. But Ken’s took centerstage, provoking intense discussion. One theme that took hold was that it was too tragic that Leena might not get to talk to Piltok before he died. Still, Ken couldn’t be convinced to let her go talk to him again, not until he could be reasonably sure it was safe. By the time everyone was getting ready to leave, I had the impression he was happy with how his visit turned out. Mike invited Ken to bring Leena over to meet his own daughter. He also said it was okay if Ken wanted to call him in the middle of the night should Leena wake up with another of her screaming fits. Chris said if Mike didn’t answer to call him next. None of our group members had any answers or solutions, but I think Ken just wanted some support. His daughter wasn’t the only one in need of some new friends.
The introduction of Belcane to Leena’s lineup of invisible interlocuters upped the ante for Ken. He said he’s considered himself Christian his whole life, but he’s never been especially devout. Having gone to Catholic school as a kid, he was plenty familiar with stories about demons and the devil trying to get people to sign his book. Unless one of her classmates told her about that stuff, though, he couldn’t think of how she may have learned about it herself. Worse, he had an inkling that Belcane showing up was a direct result of his aggressive response to Leena’s night terrors. That’s how her original and charming stories were suddenly hijacked by more traditional, far darker themes and characters. He felt guilty. More than that, though, he was scared for his daughter.
I only hoped, watching him sidle into his car and back out of the driveway after the party, that he’d been reassured that he had people who believed and supported him, people who’d come to his aid if more trouble ensued. None of us thought we’d heard the end of the story that night. But I was thoroughly unprepared for the next call I got from Ken, which culminated in a plan for another gathering, this one the night before Halloween. And this time, my mom was able to attend. I took quite a bit of time filling her in on the details she’d missed. She said she’d be glad to come to the gathering and hear Ken’s story, but she probably wouldn’t be of any more help than any of my friends or the girl’s own therapist.
I smiled before hanging up the phone, thinking, yeah, I’m not so sure about that.
***
“It wasn’t Leena’s screams that woke me up this time. It was a commotion outside my own window. Mind you, both our bedrooms are on the second floor of the house, so I’m not at all used to being woken up by anything thumping on the casement. I started from a dead sleep and turned to see the blankness beyond the glass. For a long time, I was too startled to move. The last thing I wanted to do was get out of bed and walk toward the sound I thought I’d heard. By the time I finally put my feet on the floor and started creeping up to the window though, I’d already resolved to go down the hall and check on Leena. First, I needed to see what was outside.
“With my face against the glass, I looked out and then down at the ground beside the house. There was nothing out of the ordinary, but it was too dark to see much of anything. Then, just as I was turning away to walk toward the door, I caught a glimpse of something darting past the window. In the second and a half my eyes managed to light on it, I saw it was a bird. Just a bird. I’m no expert on species. I imagine it was a finch or something. What I did see for sure was that it flew away from the house along a vertical course up into the sky. I stood there struck dumb for a couple seconds. Then I hurried out to the hall and toward Leena’s bedroom.
“That’s when I heard the scream. Only it wasn’t Leena, I knew right away. I sprinted to the door and burst in just in time to see a shadow streaking across the floor, up the wall, and along the ceiling. Bewildered, I reflexively looked over at the plug-in night light next to the closet. That’s when I realized Leena’s bed was empty. I scanned the room frantically, ran to the closet to see if she was in there, dropped down to look under the bed. Then I bolted from the room, horrified that she may have sleepwalked to the stairs. Just as I was imagining her little body as a crumpled pile at the foot of the stairs, I heard the front door open. I shouted for her to stop. But before I made it to the stairs, I heard a crunch from her bedroom. The sound stopped me in my tracks. Was she still in her room? If she wasn’t, who was? Who had just opened the front door?
“A crunch?” Mike said.
“Yes, that’s what it was. I was even sure I knew what had made the noise. The window was cracked, by something pushing against it from inside Leena’s room. I hesitated just long enough to review my search of the room in my mind. Leena wasn’t in there. As much as I wanted to investigate the sound, I had to make sure she was alright first. So I threw myself down the stairs and rushed out the front door, trying to look every direction at once. With the yard lit by the porch lamp, she wasn’t hard to find. I caught sight of her running toward the woods. I called out to her. She heard me but she didn’t stop. When I called out again, she turned back and said, ‘Dad, I have to see Piltok—I have to!’ And then she turned back toward the woods and kept going. I ran after her.
“She was by the creek when I caught up to her, an old spot I’d shown her years ago. She was sobbing. ‘I did what you said,’ she managed to say. ‘I held up Mom’s cross and I told Belcane she had to leave.’ I asked her if Belcane had said anything. ‘She told me Piltok is dead, that I’ll never get to talk to him again.’ So, that was why she’d run out of the house. Next, I asked her what happened after she told Belcane to leave. ‘She screamed and started making a commotion.’
“‘Honey,’ I said, ‘the window in your room is cracked.’ I waited. She didn’t say anything. ‘Do you know what happened to the window?’ She sniffled. Then she started sobbing again.”
This was when my mom first spoke. “I’m guessing she was plenty mad at you for forbidding her from speaking to Piltok in his final days.”
“She was indeed—she still is. As we were walking back to the house, she pulled away, shouting, ‘You made me stay away! You’re the reason I couldn’t talk to him! I had so much to tell him. I had so much to ask him.’ She tried to run back into the woods, but I caught up to her and picked her up. She wailed the whole time I carried her to the house.”
“And the window really was cracked?” Mike asked.
“The window was cracked. Leena must’ve done it somehow. She must’ve. Maybe she threw something at it or hit it. Maybe it caused a smaller crack at first, but then the wind picked up. I don’t know. It’s not like it was windy that night. Maybe pulling open the front door… I don’t know.”
“But the voice,” Chris objected. “You said you heard a scream, that you knew it wasn’t Leena. And wasn’t Leena already on her way downstairs?”
“Listen,” Ken said, exasperated. “I don’t know what you want me to say. That I have proof some ghost or demon was in my house, saying God knows what to my daughter? I came here to talk to all of you because I thought you could be reasonable but wouldn’t dismiss me out of hand as crazy. But all of this is crazy. I don’t believe in demons or grentroleems or salobogs or any of it. Jesus, it sounds asinine just saying those names out loud.”
“Mr. Baldwin,” Mom said, “how did your wife die?”
“What? She had cancer.”
“Did she have it for a long time before she died?”
“Yes, she had it when Leena was just old enough to remember. Then the treatment started working and it went into remission. Then, after a few years, it came back.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Two years ago. Why?”
“And how much have you talked to Leena about your wife’s passing?”
“I talked to her… Of course, we talked. I’m sorry Mrs. Caldwell, but what are you getting at?”
Mike, Chris, and Cindy were all staring at Mom now in disbelief. I suppose I felt the same way they did. Was she really going to psychologize this whole thing? How could the hidden mental mechanics of grief possibly account for invisible screamers and self-cracking windows?
Mom said, “Leena started developing her friendships in the woods about two years ago too, if I’m guessing right. I’d also wager that was the last time you personally visited the spot by the creek you said you originally showed her.”
“It wasn’t exactly at the same time,” Ken said, “but not long after, yeah.”
“Don’t you see why the creatures have short lifespans then? Leena’s mom was most likely given a series of updates to her prognosis. She had a year. Then she had six months. Then the cancer went into remission and she was saved. Then she had six months again.”
“Mrs. Caldwell,” Chris broke in to say, “you don’t really think this is all just coming from some emotional disturbance from Leena’s mom dying, do you? I mean, seriously. Emotional disturbances don’t crack windows.”
“Oh, by the time you reach my age, you’ll understand that you’re under no obligation to form hard and fast opinions about things before learning all you care to about them—and you’re almost always far better off if you don’t. To me, it sounds an awful lot like Mr. Baldwin here has a demon in his house, one who’s taken a liking to his daughter. On the other hand, it also sounds like Mr. Baldwin wasn’t quite sure where Leena was when he heard the window splitting. It’s also interesting to me that this Belcane character first arrived on the scene after Mr. Baldwin introduced a traditional religious element to the story—the silver cross his wife had given him. As you said yourself,” she said turning back to Ken, “up till then it had been all original, and if I may, all rather pagan-seeming characters.”
Ken looked down, shaking his head. He was smiling but I saw a tear drop from his eye. “I’ve been beating myself up over that. I knew I shouldn’t have told her to stop talking to them, if for no other reason than that she was so invested in that world. It was so important to her. Hell, she created the whole thing. And I took it from her. Whatever her conversations with Piltok were, they were important to her. And I took the last of them away from her.”
“Don’t feel bad about it, Mr. Baldwin. Your daughter is trying to encourage your engagement. Her story realm isn’t as sealed off from the rest of the world as you imagine. It’s like a dance. She coaxes you into making a move, and then she responds.”
“But Leena’s not like that. She’s not manipulative. She’s not… histrionic. She’d never pretend to some affliction to get attention.”
“Oh, in her mind, I’m sure the crises are very real—just as they are in yours. I’m not saying either of you is leading this dance deliberately. From each of your personal perspectives, you’re both responding to quite literal realities. Your daughter is receiving all kinds of messages from her new friends, and she doesn’t know how to respond or what to believe about them. Meanwhile, she’s worried that each of them is days—or minutes—away from dying. Then there’s you, Mr. Baldwin. You’re terrified your daughter may be losing her mind, and you’re worried she may hurt herself in the process. Now, with all the special effects, you’re doubting your own sanity, if you’re not wondering if maybe there really is an old witch talking to your daughter.”
“Special effects?” Chris said aghast. “You can’t really be saying Ken would mistake his own daughter’s scream for someone else’s, Mrs. Caldwell. And he heard the front door open before he heard the crunch of the window cracking. Did she open the door, run back up the stairs, sneak past her dad, break the window, and then run back downstairs, again without him seeing her?”
“Heavens no,” Mom said. “I’m as impressed with these phenomena as you are, Chris. If it’s as Mr. Baldwin says, then it sounds to me like something extraordinary really is happening in his house. You even forgot about the shadow he saw bounding about his daughter’s room when he first came in.”
Ken finally looked up now. “You’re right, Mrs. Caldwell. I mean, about Leena and me. The fact is, we hardly ever talk anymore. With Janelle’s sickness, things got so intense. I didn’t know how much more my heart could take. So I withdrew.”
“Here you are now, though, unburdening yourself among new friends. Tell me something, Mr. Baldwin. Those nights Leena woke up screaming or had scratches on her arm—did you stay with her the rest of those nights or did you both go back to your separate rooms?”
“Oh, I stayed with her for a while, but then we both eventually went back to sleep in our own beds. She’s eleven.”
“I see. Yes, eleven is old enough to sleep alone, barring extenuating eventualities. I imagine you’re not one for staying with someone you’re worried about through the night, because you’ve already done that so many times, and all that ended… not so well.”
“Yes,” he said with a brittle voice, “not well at all.”
“Tell me about the spot by the creek.”
“That’s where Leena goes to talk to the Piltok character. That’s where she goes and comes back talking about all these fantastical creatures. That’s where I should have let her keep going while I looked for other solutions to her night terrors.”
“You said you were the one who first showed the spot to Leena. What did it mean to you?”
“To me? I suppose it was just a pretty spot by our house. I did go there sometimes to sort of catch my breath, you know, when Janelle was… going through what she went through. Leena once asked me where I’d been, and I told her I’d needed a minute to gather my thoughts. She pointed out I tended to go to the same place whenever I did that. So I took her there.”
“How often did you go there together after that?”
“Not often. Maybe half a dozen times. We had a couple of really tough, but really good conversations there. Ha, you know, I’m pretty sure that’s where we were when I told her her mom’s cancer had come back, and that it was more aggressive than before.” He lifted his hand to cover his eyes.
“That poor child. Is it any wonder she kept going back there? For answers. For peace. For some kind of connection. Is it any wonder that when you stopped going there yourself, she found another way to get all of those things?”
Amazed, I looked around the room. Chris sat on the edge of the couch, his eyes focused on the floor in front of him, as if he were puzzling out some mystery etched in the carpet fibers. Mike had one leg propped on the armrest, and he was staring at Mom with his mouth agape. Cindy swiped a tear from her cheek before looking back at me and shaking her head in wonder. Ken, meanwhile, had a choked expression, as if trying to decide whether to erupt or collapse.
It was Chris who broke the silence. “What do you think Ken should do, Mrs. Caldwell?” Now Ken’s mouth fell open as if he were about to say something but then thought better of it. Everyone in the room turned back toward Mom, who visibly shrank back into her chair.
“I’m no expert on these things,” she said with poise at odds with her posture. “And I certainly wouldn’t presume to tell you what’s best for your family, Mr. Baldwin. If I were in your predicament, though, I have to say there are a few courses that seem commonsensical to me. The first is that, if you’re concerned about your daughter’s safety, whether the danger is posed by this Belcane woman or by Leena herself, you should stay with her. Bring a cot into her bedroom if you have to. Or maybe there’s a couch one of you can sleep on. That way you can be better assured she’s safe.”
Chris leaned over and whispered something to Mike. I imagine he said something like, “Why the hell wouldn’t you keep your child in the room with you with all that’s going on?” I recalled Mom’s suggestion about why Ken might be reluctant to stay with Leena through the night, though, and I concluded she was right not to think ill of him for it. But both Chris and Mike were probably adjusting to the change in focus from a thrilling exploration of supernatural occurrences to an intervention of sorts.
Ken swallowed hard before saying, “I guess that’s not so unreasonable.” He cleared his throat. “And you probably think I need to talk to Leena more as well, which is also something I probably should have thought of myself.”
“Yeah, it sounds to me like you tried to get her talking to everyone except you. I know it won’t just be hard for Leena to talk to you now, especially about the things she most needs to talk to you about. It’s going to be just as hard for you. That’s not something you should beat yourself up over. But you also can’t count on the idea occurring to you spontaneously in any given moment. And you’re going to have to overcome some natural reluctance.”
“I suppose you understand all this so well because you’ve lost someone close to you as well.”
“Oh, that was such a long time ago. Another life. Sure, I’ve lost not just one by this point. But I do remember back to when Jim died and all I wanted to do was push away the people I most needed to be close to. I don’t know how well I understand what you’re going through. It’s genuinely frightening. I’m just pointing out some things that jump out to me.”
“Maybe I’ll go with her tomorrow to look for Piltok by the creek,” Ken said. He couldn’t make it to the last word of the sentence before breaking down in tears, briefly. With some effort, he righted himself. Mom had nailed it: there really was some emotional block preventing him from going there.
I turned back to her in still more disbelief. I wanted to express my awe at her insight—we’d all been talking to Ken longer than her but were too distracted by the details of the story. Instead, I heard myself saying, “You said a few courses, Mom. Was there something else you wanted to suggest?”
Mom smiled knowingly. “I may be biased, but my favorite part of Leena’s story is the six-foot shaggy beast that saves children from nightmares. What did you say her name was?”
“It was Kemoa,” Chris said before Ken could answer.
“Ah, yes. Kemoa. I think maybe you and Leena can go looking for Piltok in the woods together, and if for some reason he doesn’t turn up, the two of you can call on Kemoa. Oh, and Mr. Baldwin, whatever happens, sometime soon I would go to the shelter and get your daughter a dog, preferably one with black and white fur and blue eyes.”
***
“Well, Chris and Mike were a little upset you turned their scary story forum into a ‘psychotherapy session,’ as Mike called it. But mostly we’re all just amazed at how you saw through to the crux of the whole thing.”
It was Halloween night and I’d called my mom to tell her I’d heard from Ken, who was already feeling much better. He’d even moved an old couch into Leena’s room so he could stay the night with her until they could figure out what to do about Belcane. “Tell your mom I somehow knew from the story you wrote she’d be able to help me,” he said in a tone markedly different from the one he’d spoken to us in before. “I was not disappointed. Tell her I can’t thank her enough. I’m even wondering if I should invite her to go to the shelter with us to pick out a dog.”
“I don’t have much confidence I saw to the crux of anything,” Mom said now. “Though if I made either of them feel better for a bit, that’s good enough for me. I’m guessing that means Piltok was a no-show. We’ll all just have to hope Leena hasn’t seen the last of him; she did say he doesn’t always come. We don’t have to assume the worst. They may still need his help if Belcane keeps getting more violent.”
“Oh, come on, Mom. I bet you were right and there was something off about Ken’s perception of the timing between when the door opened and when he heard the window cracking. He’d just woken up and was walking around the house in the dark. I know he said the scream he heard wasn’t his daughter, but it’s not like he’s ever heard Leena’s impression of a scary old woman shrieking in fear or rage or whatever. The shadow could have been anything. It could have been nothing. The real issue here was that Leena’s connection to her father was lost right when she most needed it. You saw that right away.”
“I did see that right away, but I’m not sure about the rest of it. Mr. Baldwin doesn’t seem like the fanciful type. As desperate as he probably is himself to make some new connections, he looked genuinely pained—embarrassed—when he was relaying those details. He thinks he’s losing his mind. He may be.”
“Wait. You don’t think there really is something supernatural going on in Ken’s house, do you?”
“No, you’re probably right. Probably. But I’ll say one thing, thinking about that old creature looming over that little girl sends a shiver down my spine. And even when I was telling him he should sleep in his daughter’s room, I was thinking you’d have a hard time getting me to sleep in there. Yeah, I generally don’t buy these stories you and your friends are so thrilled about, and if I had to bet I’d say it’s all explainable without recourse to the otherworldly. But I’d also bet we haven’t heard the end of Leena’s story. We haven’t heard the last of Belcane.”
The line went silent. I couldn’t think of a way to respond. As I was opening my mouth to ask what she thought we should do, Mom added, “And I keep finding myself staring at clouds in the sky, thinking I really can almost see little dots darting around in them.”
***
Kemoa is the third in a series of Halloween stories. You can follow the links below to the first two.