THE WORDS NOT THERE
By: Sara Raymond + Illustration by Sherry Melvin
“All right, guys.
Pass your vocabulary sheets in.” Mr.
Monniger addressed the dismal 8th grade Language Arts class with a
joyless, deadpan tone.
“Get out your green
books now, and please turn to page 354.”
Ben scrambled to
complete the last entry in his vocabulary worksheet. He was pretty sure that
the word pithy did not mean “rectangular in shape,” but he was out of time and
it was worth a shot. He handed his paper to Simon and reached for his book in
the metal bin beneath his desk.
He brushed a swath
of mud colored hair out of his eyes as he arched his back and sat upright.
Norah, two rows away, caught his eyes and smiled shyly. Ben considered himself
to be charming and good-looking enough, if he could just grow into his face a
little bit and find a pair of glasses that didn't reduce his blue eyes to
watery pinpricks. Although he was secretly a nerd at heart, he had the gangling yet fine-tuned body of an athlete. Norah was clearly into it, at any rate.
Ben regarded the
musty, faded, lime-green textbook as he slapped it onto his empty desk. It was
a relic of the 70’s, a testament to a cruelly underfunded English department in
a dying school district. The school had of course purchased the proper English
textbooks as required by State, but had been limited to only providing each
classroom with a pathetic set of four glossy guides to literature and writing.
Teachers had been left to supplement this dearth of reading material with their
own creative means. Mr. Monniger was lucky enough to inherit a full set of 24
dated editions of “The Young Readers Focused Guide to Short Fiction” from a
neighboring town’s defunct library. It was the go-to book for every daily
lesson plan.
“The green book,”
as they called it, was comprised of 50 short stories, each one written before
the sixties by writers no one had ever heard of. Ben nudged the cover open
carefully, noting the terrible condition of the spine. The binding was due to
fall apart at any moment. None of the students were looking forward to this.
The stories contained within the green book were notoriously tedious. Last week,
they had read some cruelly pointless story about a man obsessed with growing the
perfect lawn. That was it. Fifteen pages of inner monologue while a guy
obsessively measured and trimmed his front yard. Riveting.
Mr. Monniger paced
the front of the room, hands clasped behind his stooped, wiry frame. The man
looked a lot like some version of Mr. Rogers that had been soaked in vinegar
and nuked in the microwave for a few minutes.
“Today, we are
reading “The Sky Swimmers” by
Holly Ebbersol. You know the drill guys. Starting with Ashley, you will take
turns reading each paragraph out loud. Follow along, and be ready to read, or
you can expect supplementary homework for the story.”
Ben sighed and
rolled his eyes. It was going to be a murderously dull afternoon, it seemed.
Monniger was famous for days like this. Ben’s friend Trish reached across the
aisle and slipped an orange starburst onto his desk. He smiled at her, and she
returned a goofy, freckled grin. Ben popped the starburst in his mouth and
focused on the story, not wanting to be caught off-guard. Monniger gestured for
Ashley to start reading. She daintily cleared her throat and began, “There were
five of us that summer. Billy, Kate, Franny, Todd and me. It was a summer that
now seems so long ago, but has frozen itself like a crystalline shard of a
perfect, glistening memory…”
“Blah, blah, blah...ugh,”
Ben whispered to Trish. She shook her head and put a finger to her lips. The
story proceeded from student to student, going down the first row, and then the
second. Simon gutturally stuttered
through his paragraph with great effort. Ben braced for his turn.
“…The b..b..birds
flew through the…g..g..grove and shot…upwards.”
Mr. Monniger curtly
nodded toward Ben. He cleared his throat and started the short paragraph that
was designated as his.
“Into the sky,
these birds like fish with shining scales leapt higher and higher into the
endless horizon of blood.”
Monniger was quick
to correct him, “Blue, Ben.”
Ben blushed,
embarrassed to make such an obvious mistake. He returned his eyes to the
previous sentence and read it again, “…into the endless horizon of blue.”
He continued, “These
birds like fish danced and reveled in the blood. The blood that
flows through the hearts of all children and…”
Monniger was
annoyed and losing patience, “Blue…it’s BLUE, Ben.”
Ben blinked and
studied the page. The blood that flows…
“Mr. Monniger, it
says blood, though! I think I have a typo version or something.”
Trish, ever the
nosy nelly, leaned across the aisle and sneaked a peak.
“It says blue, Ben…see?”
She pointed a cherubic digit at the page…The blue that flows…
Ben felt spooked.
He was certain it had said blood before. In fact, he was sure it had read blood
the previous time as well. He apologized and rushed to finish the paragraph.
“…the miraculous
creatures led us through the forest, winding through brook and mossy slope.”
Ben shut his mouth
and buried his head sheepishly into the green book. He removed his glasses and
quickly polished the lenses. He located the current sentence in the story and
listened along with greater scrutiny. Tom was reading, his round apple face
bobbing as he spoke.
“…the creatures had
left our sight, but we could still hear the sweet singing of the kindly old
woman…”
Ben bolted forward
and slammed his hands on the sides of his desk. That was not what his book had
read. Not at all. Tom kept reading, but Ben swept back and reread the last
sentence. The creatures had fed. We could still hear the sweet screams of
the old woman. Ben waved for Trish’s attention and all but slammed the book
in her face, pointing to the sentence that he had just underlined. She just
shrugged and silently motioned him away. Ben angrily withdrew and checked the
book again. The sentence had changed. It now matched what Tom had read aloud,
word for word.
A few minutes later,
it happened again. Sindi had read, "Thick vines of twining ivy cascaded
down the side of the little cottage. Pots of fragrant herbs sat, propped up in
neat little rows."
Ben scrutinized his
warped version of the passage. Thick ropes of rotten intestines cascaded
down her side. Corpses sat, propped up in rows, crows pecking lovingly at the
feast of carrion.
The words in his
book were all wrong. The mistakes were getting steadily worse
A cold shiver ran
down the length of Ben’s spine. “What the crap?!” he silently mouthed as he
rubbed his eyes and continued reading along. Trish began her paragraph. She was
describing a flower garden or something. It was hard for Ben to pay attention.
The paragraph he was looking at nowhere remotely matched what Trish was
reading. He leaned in closer and scanned the passage with a growing sense of
trepidation.
The flesh and sinew lay strewn across the
meadow as if vile cyclopean vultures had fastidiously shred whatever beings
dared to cross the rotten field. Cries of agony echoed in the distance as the
fading sun cowered behind the impending darkness. We are lost and without hope,
as you soon shall be too.
Ben slammed his
book shut. He was certain that no one else was seeing the same words. A quick
glance showed a room full of bleary eyed kids bored out of their minds. Mr.
Monniger slowly turned and began to pace back toward his side of the classroom.
Ben quickly flipped his book open again but firmly covered the text with his
hands, trying not to glance at the few words that were peeking out from between
his fingers
…......cut……….death…….rot…………………bleed
Mr. Monniger was
uncomfortably close to Ben’s desk. He was an infamously strict teacher and all
the kids knew when it came to discipline, he wasn’t playing around. Ben removed
his hands and bowed his head low, keeping his eyes shut. He decided he only
needed for this stupid freaky story to end, and then he would switch books with
Simon tomorrow. Ben lost track of time; he had been blocking out the voices of
his peers. The low grunts of meathead Simon meant his turn was next. Ben
gritted his teeth. He knew that if he refused to read aloud it would be a
surefire detention sentence. He opened his eyes and blinked.
Everything on the
page was banal pastoral descriptions. Flowers and birds. Butterflies floating
over pleasant ponds. Ben considered the possibility that maybe he needed a new
glasses prescription. Maybe he had just seen one too many late night horror
flicks. Mr. Monniger abruptly disrupted his contemplation.
“Your turn, Ben. Go
on.”
Ben took a deep
breath and exhaled slowly. He placed the flat of his hand directly below the
first sentence in the paragraph.
“We found Billy
behind the great apple tree. He was sleeping peacefully in a soft bed of
dandelions,” He began with a quavering voice. It seemed harmless so far. He
squinted his eyes and continued, willing the words to remain in this innocent
state.
“The bright warmth
of the summer sun embraced us as we flopped down beside him, sinking into the
soft, shimmering fluff of the dandelions.” The words seemed to pulse and
darken. Ben continued to read as if in a trance. The words escaped his lips
before he had a chance to register that the ink beneath him was swirling,
blinking into different arrangements.
“I propped up on an
elbow and leaned over Billy. He had grown so pale, so cold; his skin was
starting to flake off in grayish patches. His peaceful visage seemed to twitch
and shudder. A torrent of pulsating worms poured forth from his ears, his nose,
his mouth. He had been dead for weeks. The flood of worms surrounded him and…”
“That is ENOUGH,
Ben!” Mr. Monniger loomed over the desk, beet red nostrils flaring, a look of
apparent disgust on his sagging face. “Take your book and finish the story in
the hall; we will talk after class.”
Uncomfortable
silence flooded the room, but it was hard for Ben to feel anything other than
relief. He awkwardly apologized to Monniger, who responded only with a
contemptuous grunt and a hand waved toward the door. Ben gathered his
belongings, reluctantly picked up the book and exited the room.
He plunked himself
down in the vast gray hallway and slapped the green book against the floor,
leaving a wide berth between it and him.
Time clicked by
with agonizing slowness. Ben stared at a grayish blue tile inches in front of
his left foot. Curiosity tickled the back of his mind and after a few more
minutes he scrambled for the green book and flipped it open. He shrank against
the wall in horrified fascination. The story had seemingly warped and
stretched. The happy summer story about children and magical creatures bore no
resemblance to this new, unexplainable revision. Ben flipped back to the
beginning of the tale. Only the title remained the same. “The Sky Swimmers.” Everything beneath
that had become a twisted splatter-fest.
Cascading paragraphs describing horrific scenes of death and decay leapt
from the pages and burned into the young boy’s mind. Ben was shaken, but he
reminded himself that he had always liked scary stuff and tried his best to
shrug it off.
Franny handed me the knife, curved inward
with a wicked flanged blade. She peered at me through wide, hollow eyes as she
tried to speak. Blood dribbled and frothed from her lips as she produced
a choked croaking sound. She had amputated her tongue in a joyous fervor only
moments before. I tilted my head back and pressed the blade against the soft
pallid flesh of my inner elbow. The dark beings trapped within my blood pushed
outward, straining for release. I cut slowly, enjoying the pain as it blossoms
through me. The inky creatures escaped from the slit in my skin,
spilling into the air with my blood.
“Jesus Christ! What
the crap?!” Ben’s voice echoed down the corridor. He sat transfixed by the
letters before him that now seemed to be freely floating, swaying eerily on the
page. He skipped ahead, skimming the gruesome passages until at last, his eyes
snapped to one lone sentence at the bottom of the page.
The boy who is
reading this now, cowering in the gray corridor, the doomed inheritor of this
endless nightmare, draws closer to the darkness, the inescapable end.
Ben instinctively
ripped the page from the book, crumpled into a ball and threw it against the
wall.
“This--this is
bullshit! I am DONE with this!”
The bell pealed
loudly. Ben frantically grabbed his backpack and hopped up, pausing to turn and
forcefully kick the sinister textbook down the hall. From behind him, pushing through
the rapid current of students, Mr. Monniger cleared his throat. He silently
walked past Ben and picked up the book. He turned on his worn loafers and
handed the book out to Ben, expectantly.
“Due to your
outburst in class today, you unfortunately missed the pop quiz that concluded
the lesson. You are going to finish that story, Ben. I don't think I need to
remind you that your grade in my class has been falling perilously close to
failing these past weeks. I will generously give you one night to make up the
quiz by writing a two-page essay on the main theme of ‘The Sky Swimmers.’”
Subdued and
defeated, Ben took the book and shoved it into his backpack. Monniger leaned in
and lowered his voice, “I don’t know what all that was about, Ben, but I can
tell you seem to be going through something. Just get it together, kid. If you
fail to hand in that essay tomorrow, it will result in three days of
detention.”
Ben swallowed and
nodded. What could he say? Any explanation he could provide would sound like
mockery or madness. So he lowered his head and slinked away. He spent the bus
ride home in a glossy daze. As the trees and rows of houses flashed by his
window, Ben couldn’t shake the images of crows and carrion, worms and decaying,
peeled skin. He stumbled off the bus and bolted for his house. Up the stairs he
flew, into his room. With the door slammed behind him, he flung himself onto
his bed and buried his face in his pillow. Ben dozed off as the sun inched out
of sight.
“Ben! Dinner!” He
snapped awake at his mother’s summons.
“Dangit! The essay,” Ben lamented as the trials of the
day swarmed his mind. He soundlessly sulked downstairs and slurped a shallow
bowl of beef and sweet potato stew. His mother flitted around the kitchen and
stopped only briefly to ruffle his hair. She was oblivious to the air of
palpable dread that hung over her son. Ben dumped his bowl into the sink with
the other dirty dishes and retreated back to his room. He opened a blank
document on his laptop and tentatively placed the green book on his desk. He
typed a heading and title, then turned and hovered his hand over the book,
working up the courage to open it one last time.
He flipped it open
and landed somewhere in the middle of the tale. The children were picking wild
strawberries and attempting to feed them to birds. Ben knew better than to
allow himself to be caught off guard.
“Yeah, right, ‘Sky
Swimmers’…strawberries…” He groaned sarcastically, “…probably will turn into
blood and guts or something. Too easy.”
He flipped the page
to reveal a full-page black and white illustration of rosy-cheeked children
laughing in a wooded clearing. A feeling of unease rolled about in the pit of
Ben’s stomach.
“Shit. Not pictures,
too?”
As if in response
to his thought, the ink on the page swirled darkly. The picture became a grisly
scene. One little girl lay in the dirt screaming, while a boy pinned her down.
Another girl kneeled beside her with a curved blade gripped in both hands,
poised high, about to plunge into the exposed stomach of her helpless,
screaming victim. A fourth child, impossible to say if boy or girl, lay
discarded to the right side, a bloody pile of gore and viscera. The grinning
faces of the girl and boy disturbed Ben more than anything else. The same rosy-cheeked
faces, filled with insane sadistic glee.
His phone rang,
startling him. He shut the book and dove to answer it.
“H—uh—hullo?” he
panted breathlessly.
“So, what the crap
was all that about in Monniger’s class?”
It was Trish. Ben
was relieved to hear her confident, cheery voice.
“Oh, hey Trish!
Yeah…uh,” Ben immediately realized that the shifting horror story was not
something he would ever feel comfortable sharing with anyone. He evaded with
ease, “Man…I was just joking around. I was so bored and that story sucked balls,
y’know?”
Trish laughed, “Omigod,
yeah, that one taught me the true meaning of ‘dull.’ That was kinda freaky
though, dude. Ashley thinks you’re the Antichrist or something now, haha! Did
you get into big trouble?”
Ben explained to
her the scolding from Monniger and the essay he now found himself burdened to
complete, then got an idea.
“So…what was that
story about, anyway? I forgot to bring the green book home. Help me out?”
His old friend
related a story about children getting lost in a forest and discovering some
sort of magical creature.
“…so in the end the
fish-bird things were really just these miniature kites that the old woman had
made. Why do all these old stories always end in disappointment?”
Ben was anxious to
get off the phone now. “Man, thanks, Trish, but I really gotta go now. It’s
already eight and I’ve got to get this dumb essay over with.”
“No problem!” Trish
paused for a moment, then responded thoughtfully, “Y’know though, you should
just google the theme of the story, or find like, an interview with the author
or something. Anyway, bye Ben! See ya tomorrow.”
Ben set his phone
down and faced the white, glowing screen of his laptop. It beckoned to
him. He leaned in close and whispered,
“Okay, Holly Ebbersol, what the hell is your deal?”
Two quick searches
on separate tabs of his browser revealed a scholarly synopsis of “The Sky
Swimmers” and a website dedicated to the author. The Holly Ebbersol site had
painted a brief picture of a lonely, reclusive, underappreciated 30’s-era
woman. Ben breezed through the synopsis just long enough to find mentions of a
main theme. He decided to settle on innocence as the main point for the essay.
It seemed standard and simple. He closed that tab and was about to do the same
for the biographical website when he noticed the bold, red hyperlink near the
top of the screen. It read The Tragedy Surrounding “The Sky Swimmers.”
Ben tensed up and clicked the link. The article described a failing female
writer slowly descending into madness. An interview with Ebbersol’s editor
explained:
She became more and more withdrawn into a
macabre fantasy world. It wasn’t until we were working on a revision of “The
Sky Swimmers” that I finally realized that she had become completely volatile
and dangerous. I remember her storming into my office, screaming unintelligibly
at me and waving a crumpled revision of the manuscript in my face. She was
shaking and had that gaunt, dark-eyed look of someone who had not slept in
days. She was raving about words changing, screaming, “This is NOT the story I
wrote! Don’t you see it!?” She would talk about passages that had mysteriously
changed and point them out to me, but I never saw whatever it was she saw. She
sat there spouting obscene descriptions of murder and bodily harm. This
mysterious “other” story she claimed was taking over her book. It was meant to
be a novel, you know. But after what happened, I just polished what we had and
retooled it as a short story. It’s what she would have wanted.
Then, following the
interview, the website detailed the grim ending of Holly Ebbersol.
“The Sky Swimmers” would be her final
literary contribution. Holly spiraled deeper into madness and depression,
completely abandoning her writing. On October 26, 1939 she was discovered dead,
having hung herself in her room. We will get you too, Ben.
The light from his
laptop screen flickered. Individual pixels winked and sputtered.
Ben held his breath
for nearly half a minute, stifling a scream. He flipped his laptop shut and,
for extra measure, unplugged it from the wall. His eyes floated toward the book
laying a foot away. There was pure evil emanating from those pages, and he had
had enough. In a surge of panic, he swept it up and flew downstairs into the
den. It was a chilly evening, and he could smell the smoke from the fireplace.
Without hesitation, he threw the book into the roaring autumn fire and watched
with relief as the pages blackened and curled. Wisps of ash drifted up,
hopefully purging whatever demons had lived within that nightmarish tome of
horror.
He slept in the den
that night, but not before hastily scrawling a lackluster two-page essay on
loose-leaf notebook paper. He knew it was a C at best, but it would at least
clear him of detention and save his grade in Monniger’s class. He struggled to
pay attention in school the next day, but managed to make it all the way
through to Language Arts without a hitch. Mr. Monniger greeted him sternly at
the door. Before the teacher could question him, Ben held out his two-page
report, relieved that the entire ordeal was finally over.
Mr. Monniger idly
accepted the essay, and then glanced down. His jaw dropped. Ben was attempting
to slide past the door to his desk when Mr. Monniger called out, “Ben! Get back
here!”
Something in the
sound of Monniger’s voice filled Ben with immediate panic. He steeled himself
and turned around.
“Do you think this
is funny? Is failing funny? You will be getting detention and an F for the quiz
grade, you can be sure of that. You can expect a call to your mother…” Monniger
continued his verbal assault, spitting at Ben with apparent disgust. The words
were lost on Ben. He could only focus on the two pages Monniger was waving
spastically. There was something horribly wrong with this situation. Ben lunged
at his teacher and snatched his essay back. His hands trembled violently as he
poured over the two pages. One was nothing more than a single question
repeated, front and back, crudely scrawled in black ink.
Won’t you join us,
Ben?
The second page was
a drawing of a dead woman hanging from a noose in a 30’s-era dress.
Ben’s jaw slowly
lowered in a silent scream. The blood drained from his face. He looked up at
Mr. Monniger with tears beginning to leak from the corners of his eyes.
“But…that's not
what I wrote…”
 |
| That's not what I wrote... |
