Sleepside: The Collected Fantasies Read Online Free PDF Page B

going to tell me your story?” Her voice followed me as I ran.
    It was funny. That night, I wanted to know what happened to the cats. Maybe nothing had happened to them. Not knowing made my visions even worse—and I didn’t sleep well. But my brain worked like it had never worked before.
    The next day, a Saturday, I had an ending—not a very good one in retrospect—but it served to frighten Michael so badly he threatened to tell Mom on me.
    â€œWhat would you want to do that for?” I asked. “Cripes, I won’t ever tell you a story again if you tell Mom!”
    Michael was a year younger and didn’t worry about the future. “You never told me stories before,” he said, “and everything was fine. I won’t miss them.”
    He ran down the stairs to the living room. Dad was smoking a pipe and reading the paper, relaxing before checking the irrigation on the north thirty. Michael stood at the foot of the stairs, thinking. I was almost down to grab him and haul him upstairs when he made his decision and headed for the kitchen. I knew exactly what he was considering—that Dad would probably laugh and call him a little scaredy-cat. But Mom would get upset and do me in proper.
    She was putting a paper form over the kitchen table to mark it for fitting a tablecloth. Michael ran up to her and hung on to a pants leg while I halted at the kitchen door, breathing hard, eyes threatening eternal torture if he so much as peeped. But Michael didn’t worry about the future much.
    â€œMom,” he said.
    â€œCripes!” I shouted, high-pitching on the i. Refuge awaited me in the tractor shed. It was an agreed-upon hiding place. Mom didn’t know I’d be there, but Dad did, and he could mediate.
    It took him a half hour to get to me. I sat in the dark behind a workbench, practicing my pouts. He stood in the shaft of light falling from the unpatched chink in the roof. Dust motes maypoled around his legs. “Son,” he said. “Mom wants to know where you got that story.
    Now, this was a peculiar thing to be asked. The question I’d expected had been, “Why did you scare Michael?” or maybe, “What made you think of such a thing?” But no. Somehow she had plumbed the problem, planted the words in Dad’s mouth, and impressed upon him that father-son relationships were temporarily suspended.
    â€œI made it up,” I said.
    â€œYou’ve never made up that kind of story before.”
    â€œI just started.”
    He took a deep breath. “Son, we get along real good, except when you lie to me. We know better. Who told you that story?”
    This was uncanny. There was more going on than I could understand—there was a mysterious adult thing happening. I had no way around the truth. “An old woman,” I said.
    Dad sighed even deeper. “What was she wearing?”
    â€œGreen dress,” I said.
    â€œWas there an old man?”
    I nodded.
    â€œChrist,” he said softly. He turned and walked out of the shed. From outside he called me to come into the house. I dusted off my overalls and followed him. Michael sneered at me.
    â€œâ€˜Locked them in coffins with old dead bodies,’” he mimicked. “Phhht! You’re going to get it.”
    The folks closed the folding door to the kitchen with both of us outside. This disturbed Michael, who’d expected instant vengeance. I was too curious and worried to take my revenge on him, so he skulked out the screen door and chased the cat around the house. “Lock you in a coffin!” he screamed.
    Mom’s voice drifted from behind the louvered doors. “Do you hear that? The poor child’s going to have nightmares. It’ll warp him.”
    â€œDon’t exaggerate,” Dad said.
    â€œExaggerate what? That those filthy people are back? Ben, they must be a hundred years old now! They’re trying to do the same thing to your son that