We all froze. Following the direction of Billy’s frightened gaze, I saw it. It looked like a child, but its face resembled something of a white board cutout, with eyes made of buttons, a paper clip nose, and a piece of string shaped to form the lips. Then there were those terrible, hateful spots on his skin, miniature lunar craters.
Mel stepped back as the creature took one step forward. Its grotesque limbs cradled the ball, stretching awkwardly towards Mel. We huddled close, our eyes fixed on the creature as it set the ball on third base and scuttled back into the bushes. Judith was the one who picked it up for Mel.
“He’s just a freak,” Mel declared, looking down at his dirty sneakers as we walked away from the Lares House.
“He must’ve gotten some radiation when he was a kid,” Billy added.
I was annoyed by the way that they blatantly referred to the creature as a he. It wasn’t human to me. And I hated it, had to hate it more for what it represented. It was completely dislodged from my concept of primal order. The creature was a pure abomination.
“What’s radiation?” Judith asked.
“It causes things to mutate,” Billy said. “Like if I give it to you, you’ll change into a rat or something.”
“Shit,” Mel said, horrified. “How do you get it?”
“I don’t know,” Billy answered. “It’s everywhere. The government puts it on our food so we don’t get past fifty. And there’s this one time—”
“I think it’s an alien invader,” I said. I was not smiling. “I think it wants to take over the world. We have to stop it.”
“Us?” Mel gasped. His face was ashen with fear.
“Shouldn’t we call the police, or something?” Judith said.
“They won’t believe us. Not grown-ups. They won’t believe a thing like that. They’d laugh their heads off and then stick us in the loony bin, like what happened to Karl’s dad.”
“You’re right, Jude,” Billy agreed.
“Not if we take a picture of him,” Judith suggested.
I noticed that Mel was looking around nervously.
“How?” I said. “Say ‘hey, Mr. Moonman, we’d like you to pose and say cheese so we can prove your existence and get you destroyed?’”
“Why don’t we just forget about him, okay?” Mel said. He was perspiring and taking shallow breaths. Crybaby.
We were silent for a while.
“Come back here tomorrow,” I said when we reached my house. Something important was happening. I would take the responsibility if I had to. “We’ll talk about what we’re supposed to do.”
I turned and walked across the yard, feeling their eyes on my back. I did not wait for them to respond because I knew they would stick with me no matter what happened.
In the end, everyone agreed to join me in hunting the Moonman. Mel, anxious about the idea, finally gave in when he saw Judith’s enthusiastic response.
We tracked the Moonman for three days without success. On the fourth day, we had some luck, spotting it near the stream. It was playing, forming a mound of sand with its bulbous fingers. The scene disturbed me; it was a blasphemy. The creature was building what appeared to be a sandcastle.
It did not have a right to do that. The Moonman had corrupted my innocence, my sense of order and I was convinced I had nothing to lose. I pegged my first rock with such murderous force my right arm ached in its socket for days after. One shot was all it took. The rock hit the creature squarely on the forehead, and it collapsed against the stream bank. Yes, close your eyes now, Moonman, my mind screamed triumphantly. Close your eyes and seal those lunar craters on your skin forever. Let the earth feed on you and leave us in peace.
Then I saw red stuff ooze out of its hairless head. I could not believe what I saw but I knew it was blood.
Mel wailed, and all three of his rocks fell out of his shirt. Clack, clack, clack. Colder than the earth, the rocks whispered a rhythmic chant as they hit the ground.
Billy and Mel quickly found their way out of the dense undergrowth we used as a hiding place. They ran. They ran away. They never talked to me after that. Judith cried on our way home, and I never heard a word from her again. But I knew everyone would keep the secret. It was a pact none of us needed to talk about.
A month later, I overheard my father talking to my mother about a rotting carcass near the stream two miles from the Lares House. According to my father, the police swore they never thought the remains could be human until it was autopsied.
But I knew better.
Dominic & Dominic
When at last six-year-old Dominic finally learned to trim his fingernails without accidentally cutting himself, he grasped the clipper’s tiny lever and brought the blade down expertly against his nail, the sharp click-clack of stainless steel striking keratin satisfying him. He gathered the nail clippings on his lap, unceremoniously deposited them in a shallow hole in the backyard, and sealed them underground by toeing loose soil into it. Burying his fingernail clippings was a move that wasn’t at all symbolic to Dominic. In fact, he did not even think why he chose to do so instead of tossing the clippings in the trashcan in the bathroom or the one under the kitchen sink. If asked why he buried the nail clippings in the backyard, he would probably shrug and say he didn’t know.
The morning of the next day, Dominic happened upon the same spot in the backyard and noticed the tip of a finger. It was small enough to be inconspicuous but pale enough to stand out against the dark brown of the loam. Dominic, who was curious at first because fear would only come later, knelt to inspect more closely the odd flesh-colored protrusion.
He retreated to the screen door where his mother was going through the motions of domesticity, and asked her whether or not it was possible for a fingernail to grow back into a finger.
Distractedly, his mother explained that fingernails were dead. “That’s why you don’t feel a thing when you trim them,” she said. “They’re like our hair. They’re made of a type of protein called keratin. And no, there’s no way for nail clippings to grow into fingers. What’s dead stays dead.”
So, armed with the newfound certainty of the dead supposedly staying dead, Dominic headed to the backyard, scrutinized the spot where he buried his nail clippings, and gently touched the finger growing therein, the finger that was now exposed down to the proximal phalanx, the finger pointing skyward with the surliness of a person whose belief system was based on self-importance. Dominic carefully, almost reverently, disturbed the earth around the jutting finger. He recognized the tips of three more fingers close to it. The thumb, not yet visible, would be down there along with the rest of the hand. Dominic, who was still curious because fear would only come later, replaced the soil to cover the three fingers he had exposed and left the partially buried finger pretty much how he found it. He rushed to the kitchen. Breathless and excited, he told his mother that fingers were growing in the spot where he had buried his fingernail clippings.
“They’re what?” she asked, wearing the harried look of a single mother on a Monday before the morning rush hour. She scanned the notepaper sheet attached to the fridge door with a watermelon-shaped magnetic holder. “Not now, honey, I’m busy.”
“But you have to see them. They’re really fingers, I swear. What if there’s a whole hand in there? We have to do something.”
She waved him away with a stern expression, grabbing the yellow pages from a shelf under the telephone stand. “The hand will be fine. There’s nothing you and I can do for it. Now, you can play in the backyard as long as you want after you’ve had your breakfast. Aunt Nancy will be here any minute.”