When I was thirteen years old, my Dad and I moved from our small apartment home in New York to an even smaller trailer in South Carolina. There were various reasons for bringing me along, depending on which parent you asked. Dad told me it was to spend more time together as he worked away from home every summer. He spent most of his time looking through telescopes and reading heavy books with long titles – I believed he was a spaceman, Mom believed he was a fool.
On my ninth birthday, he received the job offer and left right away. He told me he was going to study the stars and all the mysteries in the night sky. My curiosity grew the longer he left and I made sure to keep a list of questions to ask him once he came back in the fall. He didn’t just work the summer like he was contracted. Each year, the summers grew longer until I only saw him for five months out of the year. By the time I was eleven, I rarely saw him. Mom did a good job raising me. She bought me a keyboard the one Christmas he didn’t come home. It was a beginner Yamaha with 5 octaves. It came with a stand, stool, and a pair of headphones that Mom encouraged me to use. It kept me busy while she worked late shifts. All of the songs I learned to play were in a minor key. The keys had a natural instinct to float away like a dark cloud in space. My Mom liked them too, she always clapped for me whenever I managed to finish a piece with little mistakes. We celebrated small wins and spent the weekends together. Some of my happiest memories were spent walking around the city with my Mom trying different dessert places and buying new sheet music that I learned to play in a day.
At the four-year mark, Dad decided he wanted to parent again and have me live with him in the South. He suddenly began calling home, but Mom hastily disconnected the phone from the wall. She didn’t want me to hear from him and I didn’t protest. After a week she plugged the phone back in and within five minutes it rang. I remember the call lasting over an hour. I was playing on my keyboard when she came through and told me I’d be spending the summer with Dad. I had no idea what he could have said to her but she was insistent that I went. She told me as long as I called every day, she wouldn’t worry. I promised I wouldn’t be like him and hugged her goodbye.
Our flight to Charleston lasted a little over two hours without many complications. I felt the humidity of the air embrace me as soon as we stepped off the plane. It drained the moisture from my skin while wrapping its arms tightly around my neck – the first of many differences that made me think how far I was from home. We had to take a second flight to Greensville which was delayed by five hours. Once we arrived at the airport, a black car was waiting for us in the parking lot. Dad said it was our taxi to the trailer park but the car wasn’t convincing enough. Taxis usually have a dome light on top but this just looked like any other car. I didn’t have much choice in the matter and we put our luggage in the trunk while the driver stepped outside for a smoke.
From the time we set off, it was already dark. It was difficult to see anything apart from headlights and street lamps. The journey lasted around forty minutes before we pulled down a country lane covered by trees. The lack of bright patches emerging from the forest made it seem more ominous than it was. If it wasn’t for the car’s headlights, it would have been hard to tell there was a forest there at all. I don’t remember getting out of the car, I was in and out of sleep for the entire journey. Dad must have got my things because I don’t remember holding anything. When we were inside the trailer, I found my room right away and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow that faintly smelled of home.
❃
My new room was the size of a hamster’s cage. I slept under an old duvet I recognized from home that Dad hadn’t bothered to put any sheets on. I finished unpacking my bag and explored the rest of the trailer while Dad set my keyboard up in the corner of the living room.
“Hey bud, do you want any breakfast? I think I’ve got cereal somewhere.” “It’s okay, I’m not hungry.”
“Okay well, I’m gonna get back to some work. Help yourself to any food you find in the cupboard,” he said brushing the top of my head.
I went back to the comfort of my room and opened the floral curtains that looked like they had been fitted decades ago. From my window, in the center of the field, a heap of white plastic limbs distinguished itself as the first and only landmark of the area. Each body intertwined with the next one like lost parts of a burial site that had blown up. At the highest point of the heap, the sun landed in the palm of a mannequin’s hand, reflecting the light into a brilliant white flash. It caught my interest immediately.
Each day I played on the mountain, trying different ways to reach the top without disrupting the natural order of the mannequins. Whenever Dad caught sight of me, he made a single-handed gesture whilst shaking his head strong enough to be noticed. I enjoyed being around the strange mountain despite the many warnings I received. I kept asking the same questions about the mountain.
“Where did the mannequins come from?”
“I don’t know, son.”
“Why are they piled up like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who left them there?”
“Beats me.”
“How long have they been there?”
I persisted with my questions whilst my Dad worked on his telescope. His natural response was to grunt in bent pitches that emerged as pleasant inflections, strong enough to trick a thirteen-year-old into believing that he was listening. After so many weeks of questioning, he shut me down.
“Gabriel, I don’t know. I don’t know where they came from, but they’re not safe to play on, you could slip and hurt yourself. I’ve called a guy who’s coming to collect them for the junkyard, he should be here by the end of the week. Go play outside. I need to concentrate on this work, sorry bud.”
I wasn’t thrilled with the new information. My playground was about to be uplifted and crushed by the jaws of a metal compactor. I decided to fabricate a plan right away to prolong the little enjoyment I had left. The southern heat caused my limbs to move slowly like a puppet being pulled by a novice. Whilst my dad kept his head down in his work, I persevered through summer’s sedative and slipped outside. The mountain was partially obstructed from the trailer, so much so that I was able to remain hidden in its shaded blindspots. After ensuring that I was covered, I began the process of pulling the mannequins out from the giant plastic heap, carefully choosing which limb would prevent the mountain from crushing me. I managed to free half a dozen bodies and dragged them to the nearby wood, which required a skillful leap over the thinnest part of the creek. The Valley was encircled by the half-crescent-shaped wood, with a creek dividing the land at the edges. The water level in the innermost section was just high enough to kiss the tip of my shoelaces, making it the shallowest and simplest to cross. Dad prohibited me from exploring the creek’s outer reaches, where the torrent crashed down from higher-incline rocks. Any misplaced foot would be swallowed by the water’s tongue and swallowed into its body. The outer reaches were swampy and humid during the summer months, a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes. Dad told me that gators lived in the creek and were hungry for little boys that wandered off. I made sure not to explore and kept my imagination active with curiosity.
The trees weren’t as dense as I had imagined, and even beyond the creek, Dad would be able to spot my private collection. I managed to drag six mannequins through the forest after an hour and kept them hidden behind a large oak tree. The base of the trunk was thick enough to conceal some of the mannequins, and the wide-spread branches provided needed seclusion. I made sure to pick the biggest tree to identify it later.
I heard a male voice making a weak call through the wood.
“Gabriel!” The voice belonged to my Dad who was now shouting for me to come back and eat.
Between each silence, his voice became clearer. I started burrowing into the dirt like a wild dog, tossing chunks of soil behind me as mud lined my nails. My Dad’s voice grew louder.
“Gabriel, is that you? Come out of there!”
I kept digging until the hole was large enough to fit one of my mannequins. His shoulders stuck out like the roots of a tree until I made extra room around the sides. I let out a faint cry as my fingertips struck something solid. I used my other hand to numb the throbbing
pain in my fingers while trying to keep quiet. The sound of my Dad’s footsteps grew closer. I cleared the dirt from the bottom of the pit to see what I thought was a section of the tree’s roots. I dug around the root until it became a face. The face lay anchored in the ground staring back at me with immovable eyes. I struggled to hear the metronome of my Dad’s footsteps over the crescendo thumping in my chest. The face connected to a torso, which connected to a set of arms and legs that resembled the mannequins from my mountain. “Gabriel! What did I tell you about those mannequins? ”
He dragged me away from the pit sending all my muscles into a spasm as my body struggled to catch up. My Dad was not an aggressive man, but that was the first and only night I was beaten. He smacked me across the face until I felt my cheek redden with the heat of my blood. I knew he regretted his actions after he loosened the grip on my shirt.
After we got back home, he sat me down on the chair next to him as I tried to touch the floor with my feet.
“You don’t know what’s out there, son. I can’t have you running about waiting to get yourself hurt. I have a super important job to do here and I was hoping you’d be more involved with what we came here to do. You might want to take over one day, so I think I ought to ground you for the next few weeks.”
I resented my Dad more than ever. I didn’t understand what was so special about his work or this place he started to call home. I spent weeks locked inside a hot trailer filled with obstacles of stacked books and loose equipment. One morning I found my keyboard dismantled from its stand which was needed for extra work space.
“What’s happened to my keyboard?”
“We need the extra space, there are more important things that need to be done.” He told me to focus less on sad songs and more on science which is what boys my age were supposed to be interested in. I always favored Dad over Mom when we were a complete family in New York. He often provoked a manic side in Mom that made him seem relaxed in comparison, but being out here alone with him was far from easy. I understood Mom’s frustration.
“I want to go home.”
“You’ll be home in two months. Come look at this, tell me what you see.” “I don’t see anything, Dad! I’m tired of looking at stars!”
I ran into the safety of my room which was the only area in the trailer where you could inhale a higher ratio of air to sweat. My room was narrow and short, the door scuffed the end of my bed when fully opened, and my window provided enough light suitable for a caged animal. Every sunset was blocked by the mountain outside my window, making my room darker than normal in the evenings. I sometimes caught a few extra minutes of light which helped me read for longer when Dad was still up late. I fell asleep to the sound of pages torn from books and paper crumpled into balls as I waited for him to say goodnight.
The next morning the trailer was silent. I heard a couple of voices next to the trailer until their conversation was drowned out by the sound of an engine. I rushed to my room and swung my head out the window. A truck pulled up next to the mountain where Dad was talking to a man in a navy uniform. He had a badge and a number on his shirt that was too long to memorize.
He passed a clipboard to Dad which he passed back after scribbling something quick on the paper. A few men from the truck jumped out in grey uniforms similar to the other man who was now shaking Dad’s hand. I watched the four of them as they excavated my only source of enjoyment and threw the mannequins into the back of the truck. The sound reverberated around the park, as the birds flew for safety into the forest. The whole mountain was cleared in twenty minutes through methodical work that seemed rehearsed. After a quick handshake with my Dad, they were back in their truck and driving away from our home. I didn’t bother confronting him, he wouldn’t listen and there was no way of bringing my mannequin friends back. I felt hopeless.
The following few months were spent helping Dad with his work, becoming more involved as I learned new things about observing stars and light patterns. I spent less time outside and reminded myself that Dad loved me as his assistant. There were no more goodnights said to each other as we often stayed up until dawn working on papers. I soon fell into an artificial rhythm that suited the conditions my Dad set and things slowly began to feel normal. The family pictures on the wall opposite my bed were covered with drawings that he told me to analyze before I slept. He said it would help me see something if it’s the last thing I looked at on a night and the first thing I woke up to on a morning. Many nights were spent staring at the pictures, which looked more like amateur drawings of constellations than anything scientific. I didn’t have to look at them if I went straight to sleep.
The pressure of finishing his work heightened as the summer drew to a close and the days left in the Valley were coming to an end. I was left with the responsibility of packing anything that wasn’t work-related into boxes as he kept busy at the table in the living area. There weren’t many things to pack that belonged to Dad besides some clothes and boots that hadn’t been worn since we moved here. After finishing with his belongings, I put my keyboard away which had been gathering dust under my bed for months. I didn’t have any interest in playing it when I got home. Under my pillow, I kept a broken mannequin hand that I found at the bottom of the pit the night I dug the hole. Some nights were spent holding the mannequin’s hand, tracing the smooth contours of the fingers to warm the plastic up to skin temperature. My closest friend that summer was packed at the bottom of my backpack beneath an old t-shirt.
❃
We moved back to New York that winter to an empty apartment, stripped of any life that I remembered as home. Besides the brown leather couch where we sat for movie nights, most of the furniture was missing. A note was left on the table addressed to my Dad, and only my Dad, telling him that she was leaving him. She expressed how unhappy she felt in their marriage and how she moved on to find someone else who put her needs ahead of work. Dad looked at the letter for a short while, his nonchalant reaction told me I had nothing to worry about so we ordered pizza and watched Jaws. He wasn’t very good at staying awake during movies but he managed to see the end credits before sending me off to bed. I was uncertain whether I was left alone after I was put to bed, I vaguely remember hearing the front door lock. If he did leave during the night, I didn’t hear him come back. When I woke up, he brought me pancakes for breakfast; I could tell they were from Pip ‘N Chook – it was the closest place that sold all-day breakfast. My Mom took me there whenever she had a few extra dollars and we’d sit inside and people-watch over a shared milkshake. His apron did not convince me, but I accepted the tasty treat as his creation.
A few weeks later we moved back to South Carolina permanently. I brought the same things as before: my keyboard, books, old tennis shoes, art supplies, and my mannequin hand which I decided to name Eugene. The grass was overgrown around the perimeter and I was offered five dollars to cut it which kept me busy for the first hour of my new eternity. After I finished with the chores outside, I started to unpack my things. I placed my keyboard back under the bed where it lived before, this time covering it in a bed sheet to protect it from dust. Eugene slipped back under my pillow, and I kept my walls bare for the space Dad would end up needing. He was already at work with the phone propped up to his ear with his shoulder. “How long are we staying here Dad?”
“Uh-huh, that’s great. Thanks for getting back to me.”
“Dad?”
“Shhhh,” he said raising his index finger to his lips.
When he finally finished the call, he told me a family was moving in next to us. “Why would anyone want to live in the middle of nowhere?”
“I’ve bought the trailer park, son. Are you excited?”
I was not happy. Although he told me he was able to secure a loan to pay for the land, we never had much money for things, and most of our meals came from cans. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the idea, I grew accustomed to the solitude of my room, but he assured me it would be a good thing. I helped my Dad secure a large wooden sign into the frozen ground that welcomed people into our new home, Uncanny Valley.
The following day at 2 p.m., the family showed up – they seemed normal enough. As my dad and I watched them arrive in their four-by-four, brand-new trailer in tow, he stood behind me and rubbed my shoulders. He told me there was nothing to worry about and perhaps I’d find some new friends my age. I didn’t need to make new friends, I had Eugene.
ABOUT
Norman Riot is a queer writer of horror and weird fiction who has recently finished their master of arts degree in Creative Writing from the University of Lincoln. Norman got his name from his imaginary friend Dr. Norman who used to follow him around as a child. Norman was a former editor for The Lincoln Review and his work will be featured in the forthcoming issue of Speakeasy Magazine and WIREWORM. Norman’s debut chapbook will be published in the winter by Naked Cat Literary Magazine.
Moonbow Magazine 