(According to family folklore, when us kids were small, and before we moved into town to start school, I sometimes mentioned a man in a hat - which nobody but me ever saw. I don't know if I saw him a lot or just a time or two ... but the image has always stuck in my mind.)
Charlie and Sarah burst through the back screen door, the tight spring slamming it back shut with a single bounce.
“Where have you kids been? I was calling you five minutes ago, but you were nowhere to be found.”
“We were back down by the creek – throwing sticks into the water and watching them sail down.”
“Well, you need to pay attention and listen for me when I call. What if it was an emergency?”
“Uh-huh.”
"Anyway, come in now and have your lunch. Bologna sandwiches, milk and carrots.
“Okay. But can we go back out after lunch? We’re just going to wade across to the Mr. Parker’s shed and play house in it.”
“Wade, Charlie? How deep is the water today?”
“It’s only like this high” Sarah said, making a gap of about three inches between her hands.
“Well … alright … but don’t get your shoes or socks wet and dirty. Roll up your pants, and if it doesn’t look safe …” she wondered if she needed to check out the shed herself.
“We saw Mr. Parker over there earlier. We asked him and he said it was safe and we could come over if we wanted.”
Still – as much as she trusted their neighbor, there might be anything out in that shed – spiders, snakes, scorpions …
“Mr. Parker said it was safe?”
“We saw him over there and called to him if we could play there. He said we could, and that there wasn’t nothing to hurt us.”
Sarah stared right into her mom’s eyes. She was good. Angela knew she could sell snow to Eskimos, but if she thought it was safe for both of them, it very likely was. What she didn’t know is that she made up half that conversation with Mr. Parker. They saw him, sure, and they all waved back and forth. She hollered to him about playing in the shed and he said come on over, something something fun. She didn’t see his face, but who else would it be, out in the country like they were?
They swallowed their lunches in what seemed like three bites. Even with Charlie refilling both their milk’s, they were done in no time at all then ran to wash their faces. In the middle of scrubbing her cheeks, Sarah erupted into a nose-bleed.
Angela made her go into the living room and lean back on the couch, holding her nose to staunch the bleeding. Charlie ran in and out of the back door, checking on her every few minutes.
“Charlie! Don’t go far! I don’t want you out in that shed by yourself!”
“No, mama, I won’t.” he would call out from the far side of the door, then vanish from her line of sight.
He’d pop in in another few minutes, then back out again.
On his next trip in, he grabbed two pieces of bread.
“Charlie!? What do you need with bread? Did you not eat enough lunch?”
“No, mama, I did. This is for … it’s a secret …”
“Secret? Charlie, you tell me now or stay inside.”
“It’s for the man in the hat.”
Oh, Lord, Angela said under her breath. She thought Charlie was done with his “man in the hat” stories. It had been, what … six months since he’d mentioned him last. He was the perfect excuse for anything Charlie wanted to get away with it, and that was a lot of things. Eventually, they got tired and lazy and decided that as long as it wasn’t unsafe, he could do what he wanted with his invisible “man in the hat.”
She skewered him with her eyes and he didn’t flinch. He was, at least, committed to the story.
She sighed. Things could be worse. “Does the man in the hat need a soda to wash that bread down?”
Charlie brightened. “Can he have one!?”
“Don’t let him walk off with the empty bottle.”
“Oh, he won’t.”
I know he won’t, she thought, not unless you lose it.
She pinched Sarah’s nose herself. Whatever Sarah was doing wasn’t getting the job done.
Angela glanced down at her watch. If Charlie was true to form, he’d be back in within minutes to ask for something more – a snack to go with the drink, maybe a piece of fruit … and her waiting wasn’t in vain.
Charlie raced in, out of breath, and just stood there panting for a moment.
“What does the man in the hat want now, Charlie?”
“Nothing. I’m just coming in to check on Sarah. He’s gone into the shed for a nap, so I wanted to see if she was still not feeling good.”
“You probably ought to count her out for a while, Charlie. You and the man in the hat will have to get by without her for a bit.” It rankled her a little to acknowledge this “man in the hat” but it was easier than arguing the storyline at every turn.
“Uh-huh, okay ….”
This time he paused at the back door.
“Can we play games in the storm cellar when he wakes up?”
“What kind of … yes, Charlie, you can play games.”
With that, he trotted out the door and down the back steps.
Her eyes followed him. He skipped across the yard, making up his own sing-song yell, “Come one, come on, she said it’s okay, we can play down there.”
Curiosity got the better of her, and she stretched to keep him in sight without letting go of Sarah’s nose. She could see twenty yards around him and there was nobody else there. No body and no thing in all that space, but for Charlie and the cellar.
She looked back to Sarah. The blood was finally begrudgingly, starting to clot, which was good, because her fingers were starting to get stiff.
She heard the counterweight for the cellar door spin the flywheel once, and then again as the door re-closed. Even if she didn’t see him clearly, she heard everything just fine – aside from the sound of the flywheel and weight, there was only one set of feet heading down the cellar steps.
Things were settling once again – Sarah was laying back on the couch reading, the book propped in front of her and kleenexes under her nose "just in case." Charlie was playing peacefully, off by himself in the cellar. All was good in Angela's world for a few minutes. She made a big glass of iced tea and flipped through her magazine at the kitchen table.
“Mama, I think Charlie is being bad in the cellar.” Sarah sounded like she might drop off for a nap at any moment. Angela didn’t mind. Any time you can get a ten year old to take a nap is golden time. At least both kids were being calm and quiet. Charlie was eight. For him to be quiet for half an hour, much less take a nap, was especially rare.
“He’s fine, Sarah. He’s just playing by himself. Another ten minutes and you can probably go join him.”
“You should check on him.”
“He’s fine, Sarah. Just leave him be. There’s nothing in the cellar he can get in trouble with.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Then I’ll be surprised.
Angela had another ten minutes of peace and quiet, just long enough to finish the two articles she was interested in. She flattened the creases back out of the magazine and laid it on the done stack in her reading basket.
“Cookies, Sarah?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Chocolate chip or Oreos.”
“Mmmm… can I have some of both?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Milk or lemonade?”
“Milk, silly! How can I dunk my cookies in lemonade?” Sarah stumbled in from the living room with a sleepy giggle and threw herself into a chair at the table. She was still looking pretty pale, which was unusual from a nose bleed. Maybe they’d exerted themselves down at the creek more than she’d thought.
Angela got Sarah’s snack ready, and the same for Charlie, but giving him a Dixie cup and paper plate. The one thing she didn't need in the cellar was a broken plate or cup.
Sarah saw the other plate and got quiet.
“Is Charlie coming back up?”
“I thought I’d take his snack down
Sarah just nodded and looked out the window.
“This would be a good time, mama.”
The wind almost flipped the plate of cookies when Angela shuffled things to hold plate and cup as well as open the cellar door.
She hoisted the door, and before it could drop down again, propped it with the rake for her quick trip down and back up.
There were no lights on in the cellar.
“That Charlie … silly …” Angela thought.
“Charlie! What are you doing sitting down here in the dark? You could trip over something." She got to the bottom of the stairs and flipped the light switch, and the little forty watt bulb buzzed itself awake.
Charlie was seated in his old school desk, turned away from the door, staring right at the big canning shelves filled with dill pickles, tomatoes, asparagus, and a half dozen other things they’d put up early in the year.
“Charlie, baby, stop being silly and leave the light on. I brought you some cookies and milk."
She rounded the desk and stopped in surprise. He had been drawing on some construction paper, just some daisy-like flowers, but they were pretty good for being done in the dark. Maybe he’d only just turned the light off. She squatted down to talk for a moment and to put his plate and cup on the desk.
After surprise came alarm.
“Charlie! How long has your nose started bleeding! You should have called me, honey, or come back in, and we’d have taken care of it.” She started dabbing at his nose and squeezing the bridge like she did with Sarah. He was a little cold, which was unusual, since the cellar wasn’t.
Her eyes adjusted and she realized he was pale, too – even more pale than Sarah.
“Ohhh, Charlie … let’s get you upstairs. You don’t look good at all."
She cupped his chin to get a better look, and he turned away, his red-rimmed eyes going back to the snack, his nose dripping red onto the plate.
“Did she already have hers?”
“What, baby?”
“Her snack.”
“She just started, Charlie, why?”
“The man in the hat was just telling me this morning about how it would be funny if I put some mouse food in our snacks, then let her have some first. He said it would make her dizzy and silly and it would be fun. Then I could have some once I saw how much fun it was. I wasn’t sure but he said it would be okay.”
“Charlie … where is the man in the hat?”
“He was right here, mama. He was whispering in my ear again right when you opened the cellar door.”
She listened. She didn’t even have to look. The cellar wasn’t big enough to need to look around. All you have to do is listen to know if someone was there, and they weren’t. Not a man in a hat, just Charlie and her.
“Oh … honey ….” She knew she had to move. She had to grab Charlie and run up the stairs to Sarah, but her legs didn’t seem to have any power.
“Mama .. ?”
“Charlie …?”
“I didn’t want to wait. I didn’t have any with lunch, so I had some with the soda I brought down. I wanted to run up and surprise you and Sarah. Then I got real tired. I wanted to run up, but the man said you’d be down in a while for me and I could just wait here.”
Charlie coughed and sneezed at the same time, and the trickle became a stream down his face.
She knocked the cookies and milk off the desk trying to pick him up, his body like a big cold noodle. The cup rolled over to the shelves and stopped right next to an opened box of rat poison, a little drawing of a mouse in a fedora and trench coat on the front.
Mouse food.
The man in the hat.
She hoisted him from the desk like a man grappling an exhausted marlin & turned toward the steps.
The wind shook the door and the rake tumbled down the stairs.
The light narrowed and everything was black.
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