Chapter Two: Pansy Patch Park
Colin backtracked twice, like Grandfather Thunder had taught him, making sure nobody was following. He was especially careful because he didn’t want to give his aunt any more reasons to deny him access to the outside. As it was, he was on tenderhooks with her. One more slip and he’d end up like Spike, confined to Pansy Patch Park indefinitely.
From his vantage, on the cusp of the old riverbank, he was able to scan the park through the trees. In this way he was able to make sure it was clear. Not too many people frequented Pansy Patch Park because it was haunted. It wasn’t really haunted; they just wanted it to seem that way, making it easier for them to come and go. As he waited, Colin’s eyes went to the sunlight bouncing in splashes off the little river and creek that made Pansy Patch an island. The ever-constant sound of the running water, the detritus smell of the earth, the gentleness of the unseen wind, were comforting. The rich autumnal smells of coming fall swirled about him. Soon the time of change would be upon them, and they would get ready to leave. They would board Grandfather Thunder’s houseboat and sail somewhere else. The only problem was, this time; he didn’t want to leave.
He slid down the slope on the dead leaves. At the bottom he approached the little bridge that spanned the creek. Suddenly, the wind picked up, assaulting him from the front and blowing cold against his face. The obnoxious clattering of a bone rattle filled the air. Adrenaline shot through his body, but did so needlessly. Rolling his eyes, he shouted, “Come on Spike! Is that the best you can do?”
A disembodied head materialized, floating in the air in front of him. Spike had nut-brown skin, sandy-colored hair that was tied back in its usual ponytail. He stuck out his tongue in distaste. His nose crinkled: a trait that revealed thought, humour, or irritation or a combination of the three.
“Aunt Grizzelda wants me to use traditional methods to scare people off. She says it’s more natural. If it were up to me, I’d love to get my hands on a few cherry bombs! You wouldn’t…the next time you’re out…would you mind picking…”
“No way! Are you kidding? If she catches me, we’ll both be stuck”
Spike gave a mild grunt, “At least I wouldn’t be alone. So, how was it?” continued Spike enviously, a body joining his head. “Did you win?”
He always asked the same question and each time Colin gave him the same answer, “No, we lost.” Colin didn’t want to go into detail describing his less than stellar performance in net. “The coach kicked me off the team.”
“You’re that good, eh? So, did you get it?” asked Spike anxiously rubbing his hands together.
Colin reached inside his jacket, grateful for not having to talk about the game, and pulled out a comic book. He looked around guiltily, then unrolled it and gazed down admiringly at his hero. Sergeant Peary was holding a blazing machine gun in one arm while protecting a curly-headed blond girl with the other. Clenched and smoldering between his grimacing teeth was a stubby cigar. In a bubble above his head were the words: EAT LEAD YOU DIRTY NAZIS!
“Awesome!” said Spike. “What’s a Nazi?”
“I don’t have a clue,” answered Colin. When he bought the comic it hadn’t seemed important, but now he wondered about it.
“Open it up. What’s the story about?” urged Spike.
“Yes, do tell. What’s the story about?” said a cold, reptilian voice over their shoulders as a bony hand, complete with long claws masquerading as painted fingernails, shot down and tore the comic from their fingers.
Grizzelda, looking down her aquiline nose, regarded them as if they were twin insects. Her piercing dark eyes gave the impression of a set of laser beams slicing to pieces anything that met her disapproving gaze. When she regarded you, it was like being examined, taken apart, one piece at a time. Spike swallowed hard and turned pale.
“It’s Colin’s,” he confessed. “I had nothing to do with it!” he said imploringly, hoping Colin would forgive him.
Colin glared at his friend. Even though they both called Grizzelda their Aunt, she was Colin’s real aunt with the full weight of unrealistic expectation. Spike, out of pity, was permitted to call her aunt even though there was no relation. “Thanks, thanks a lot,” he muttered.
“What I want to know,” said Grizzelda, staring down at them imperiously, “is how you got the money to buy it – if that’s what you did?” implying that he might have stolen it. She thrust out her free hand, palm up, waiting for it to be filled.
“What?” asked Colin. He didn’t really like being called a thief.
She cleared her throat, indicating her impatience. He knew that nothing from the outside was permitted in. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out a chocolate bar, silently berating himself for not eating it before coming home, even though it wasn’t meant for him.
“A Big Jurt!” lamented Spike, knowing his aunt would throw it into the river, making sure they watched while she did so.
“Follow me,” she said coldly, “both of you!”
“But, I was guarding the bridge,” said Spike, his tone desperate.
“It can wait,” she answered over her shoulder, her hand flicking up and motioning for them to follow.
On the back of her dress was a silver brocade design of an hourglass, except this hourglass, like a real one, was working. They fixedly watched as silver grains of sand flowed steadily into a growing pile at the hem of her dress. They gulped and shot one another worried looks as she crossed over the bridge and disappeared, not stopping to throw the contraband in the river. They were in deep trouble.
“I am waiting!” she said from the other side of the bridge.
The gate to their invisible camp was the bridge. On warm, sunny days, outsiders would pass over the bridge with their picnic baskets, set up their blankets and settle down for an enjoyable afternoon. Sometimes they would set their blankets down in the same place as their encampment, but the outsiders never noticed. Even though it was the same place, there were two separate dimensions. Colin had always accepted it, but now he was wondering why they had to remain invisible, why they had to hide, and why they had to scare people away sometimes.
The scaring of children and families was forbidden, reserving the haunting for rebellious adolescents, and suspect individuals, who, in Grizzelda’s words, seemed “shifty.” But now Colin was questioning even this. If nobody on the outside could see their camp at Pansy Patch, why bother scaring anyone at all? Then a thought occurred to him. Maybe families can’t see because they’re so preoccupied with each other that they don’t bother to look. With this idea came the revelation that Rhea – if she could see a Nix – might be able to see their camp. He had never supposed that there were others who could see them, but in this context, the scaring away made sense.
As they passed over the bridge, their invisible camp appeared. Colin’s home consisted of wooden poles and buffalo skins wrapped around them to form a teepee. He examined the three conical teepees and felt a rush of dread flooding into him. It was home, but lately it was feeling more like a prison. He, Spike and Melissa were becoming more restless, more interested in the world they referred to as “the outside.”
The boys were being taken directly to Grandfather Thunder’s tent. Melissa, Spike’s little sister, coming back from the river with a pail of water, gazed at them with a questioning look. Her hair was jet black. Each eye was of a different colour. Her right eye was a striking light blue, while her left eye was a deep, compassionate brown. Spike shrugged innocently, as if to say he had no idea why he was following Aunt Grizzelda. As they got closer to Grandfather’s teepee, an odd sensation percolated through the air. It was something they had never felt before, yet, they all knew instinctively that the phenomenon told of an End. The paintings on the teepee’s skin started to move. Strange red and black painted people, some with horns, danced around and through the colorful geometric designs on the tent. When Aunt Grizzelda brushed against the
buffalo hide, the figures stopped dancing and crowded around the dark oval that marked the entrance to the teepee and gazed out at them in mute interest.
“Grandfather Thunder has gone fishing. Please try some other time. If you wish to leave a message, please feel free to paint one,” said a big black figure with horns.
Grizzelda gave a small, irritated growl and the black, horned figure leaped back defensively. “Grandfather Thunder, I need to talk to you, now!” The odor and fumes from burning sweet grass emerged gently from the dark interior of the tent.
“Come in, come in,” came an old soporific voice from inside. As Grizzelda went to enter, she was stopped as the voice continued, “Not you Star Blanket, if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to Colin alone. Spike Pine, you may return to your duty.”
With the look of suppressed victory, Spike slipped away, trying not to make eye contact with Grizzelda or with Colin. “Come in, and please, bring the comic,” then after a moment of hesitation, “and the chocolate bar.”
Apprehensively, Colin took the comic and bar back from Grizzelda, trying not to be too glad. Sometimes Colin wondered if Grandfather Thunder could read minds. G.T. wasn’t someone he feared, so he wondered why a cold knot of anxiety was gripping his stomach as he bowed to enter into the sweet-smelling, dark, mysterious interior of the tent.
At first, he couldn’t see anything except the glowing end of the sweet grass placed in a seashell in the middle of the tent. As his eyes adapted to the darkness, the outline of the hoary-headed old man began to separate itself from the darkness. Like some mystic adumbration, Grandfather Thunder sat, cross-legged, head bowed, so that his features were obscured in deep shadow. He looked old, very old, and so very tired. Slowly he lifted his head revealing a beak-like nose and sharp, piercing eyes, eyes that shone and danced eerily in the dark. Colin noticed, with some trepidation, that Grandfather Thunder was sitting at the western end of the tent: the place of farewells, the place of death. The warm smile didn’t negate the seriousness of the moment. The meaning was unmistakable; an end was coming, change. Lifting his staff, Grandfather Thunder motioned for Colin to sit across from him in the East. Colin swallowed hard with some difficulty; the end of the staff was in the form of a serpent’s head, its eyes taking on the hue and glitter of the stars at night. Colin had never seen that before.
Grandfather Thunder held out his free hand and motioned for the comic and chocolate bar. A big grin spread over his face. “A Big Jurt!” he said reverently as he turned the bar over in his hands and held it up to his nose to drink in the scent. “You don’t think she suspects?” he asked.
Colin shook his head, sure the covert collusion of smuggling in chocolate bars was still a secret. He watched as the old man opened the end of the bar and took a nibble. There was definitely something wrong because G.T.’s hands were shaking.
Colin watched, almost forgetting to breathe several times, as his Grandfather Thunder slowly placed the bar down and began to thumb through the comic book. Eventually he folded the comic back into its original position and patted its cover. After a long pensive moment, Grandfather Thunder reached forward and gave the burning sweet grass coil in the seashell extra life by fanning it with an eagle feather.
“So, what do you think of Sergeant Peary?” he asked breaking the debilitating silence.
Colin felt the sharp intelligence behind the heavily hooded eyes, waiting, examining him. Grandfather Thunder already knew about the voice in Colin’s head. He learned long ago that trying to hide anything during an interview was a serious mistake.
“He talks to me -- tells me how -- how, I should behave -- outside,” he said haltingly.
Grandfather Thunder arched his eyebrows at the comic’s cover, the blazing gun, and the fair woman cowering behind the soldier. “I hope you’re not following all his advice.”
Colin smiled, and began to relax; G.T. had just made a joke. It wasn’t necessarily a fear that motivated Colin, but the dread of disapproval. For some reason the possibility of causing disappointment in the old man’s eyes was more dreadful than all of his Aunt’s threats.
“No.”
“When did he start talking to you?” he asked calmly. Although Grandfather Thunder spoke almost casually, there was a serious earnestness in his voice, as though each word had been weighed judiciously.
Colin stared down at his hands, not wanting to meet the old man’s eyes. “A couple of months ago, in the spring.”
“The spring,” he said surprisingly, as though it was full of portentous meaning.
He appraised the comic book again. “I would say this cost you a good twenty pop bottles. Beer cans are best to avoid, beer bottles too. They can carry bad spirits.”
Colin let the tension flow out of him. G. T. wasn’t going to say any more about the voice. He satisfied himself with the image of Rhea that leapt into the forefront of his mind and her ability to see the Nix that attacked them.
“There is a girl -- while I was playing soccer today,” said Colin.
“Soccer? What is Soccer?” asked Grandfather Thunder curiously.
“It’s a game where you kick a ball and score goals.”
“Ah, the ball, is black and white,” he said knowingly. “You are good at this game?”
“Well, not really, but I get to meet others. We were attacked by a Shadow Nix.”
“Ah, I see,” said Grandfather Thunder sagely, “so, you avoided the Nix?”
“Yes,” said Colin feeling his pulse begin to race as he began to recall the incident, “but our Coach, Mr. Bone didn’t. The Nix did something different. It usually just attaches to a person’s shadow, but this one…” Colin felt the darkness around them thicken, as though it was reaching out with cold, clammy fingers and joining the shadows already around them.
“Continue,” encouraged Grandfather Thunder giving him strength.
“It slipped inside the Coach, like it was slipping beneath his skin, and then, it was gone.”
After a few moments of thoughtful silence, Grandfather Thunder finally spoke again: “You are sure of this?”
“Yes.”
A great sigh of worried breath filled the interior of the teepee. “It would have to happen now, wouldn’t it?”
“Excuse me?” asked Colin not understanding.
“Have you ever heard of the saying that difficult things tend to happen during the worst of times?”
“No.”
Grandfather Thunder laughed, followed by a great coughing spasm.
“That may be your salvation, Colin, your innocence.”
“She can see, Grandfather, really see! When we were attacked by the Nix, Rhea saw it!
Colin heard a sound just outside the tent; Aunt Grizzelda involuntarily inhaled a sharp breath.
“Do you know how you came to be with me?” asked Grandfather Thunder.
Colin felt puzzled by the change in flow. He knew how. It was well known history, so he wondered why the question was being asked. “Yes,” he said haltingly.
“Please, humor me again. It is important.” The word, important, seemed to hang in the air before vanishing in the darkness that was surrounding them.
“My aunt brought me here as a baby. She said I was her sister’s. She was able to find you because she could see you when nobody else could.”
“Yes, seeing, or finding someone who is able to see, marks a beginning,” he whispered, and then finished so faintly that Colin couldn’t hear him say, “and an end.”
“Grandfather Thunder?” asked Colin who was afraid that the old man had fallen asleep.
“Yes,” came the heavy reply.
“Why does my aunt hate me?”
“I wouldn’t exactly say she hates you,” chuckled Grandfather Thunder. “Let’s just say she has a particular way of showing her love for you, and Spike and Melissa. Remember, she has acted as your mother all these years, and that is a serious and sometimes heavy thing.”
&n
bsp; “What happened to her -- my mom?” asked Colin, hoping this time he might receive an answer.
“That is not my story to tell, but your aunt’s.” Then suddenly, Grandfather Thunder raised his voice and spoke loudly, something he didn’t do often. “Grizzelda Star Blanket, I think it’s time we had a Council. There are some things we need to discuss, don’t you agree?”
There was an awkward surprised shuffling just outside the tent where his Aunt had been listening to their conversation. They felt her anxious energy, her need to control, nearly vibrating through the walls of the tent. As they heard her stomp away, they felt the air clear as her self-made atmospheric disturbance accompanied her.
Grandfather Thunder sighed and motioned for Colin to stand up, and at the same time, held out a hand for help. “Sometimes these old legs don’t respond on command. I worry about your aunt, so much anger in her. She keeps secrets, too many.”
Colin helped him to his feet and supported the man’s distressingly fragile frame as he stooped and tottered out the egress of his teepee. Once outside he managed to straighten, supporting himself with his staff whose head had now changed from that of a serpent to that of an antelope. He considered the staff scrupulously, looking carefully at the pronghorns and the beautiful coloring of the animal’s head, and smiled. He shrugged and winked at Colin. “Wishful thinking,” he said, “I am afraid my galloping days are over,” and began to shuffle along. “Oh, by the way, is there any chocolate on my mouth?”