The New Boarder

The New Boarder

By


storyteller

“Yes, you will!" Francine Wilks said, her voice high and shrill in the large, fragrant kitchen. "If he says anything about you waking him up, you most certainly will apologize!"

Davy looked across the supper table at his mother, her brown eyes narrow with anger. He had committed a mortal sin - he had made too much noise coming down the stairs after washing his hands in the bathroom. But apologize to Mr. Bolleg -- never!

"I'm trying to keep things together, Davy, but you're not helping me. Not at all." She took a deep breath and brushed the loose strands of hair away from her face.

Davy watched her pick at the chicken wing she was eating. Her elbows rested on the table. "You're not supposed to eat with your elbows on the table, Mother.”

She stopped eating and gave him that look again. “You're confined to your room tonight,'' she said, pronouncing each word slowly and clearly.

Davy dropped his fork on the plate and pushed it away.

"I wasn't going to allow you to watch television tonight anyway," she continued. "I know you snuck downstairs last night after I fell asleep." She lowered her head to stare at him over her glasses. "You watched one of those damned horror shows, didn't you?"

"Dad used to watch them,” He had said the magic words and watched her soften. The glasses slipped on her nose and tears were rising suddenly, threatening to spill. He learned the trick from her the first year after his father died. "For Dad” was her favorite weapon to get him to do whatever she wanted. “... remember it's what Dad would want you to do ... if he were alive, Dad would not want you to do that." It worked so well that Davy began trying it himself, sometimes successfully. Not tonight, though; the softness had already dissipated.

"Your father was old enough to do what he wanted. You’re only twelve. Those old horror movies aren't good for you."

"I learn things from them!" Davy said sharply.

"You're too impressionable," she continued, glowering at him. "Shows like that will give you nightmares. And what could you possibly have learned from that scary crap?"

He didn't even try to tell her, because she'd never understand what he had learned about Mr. Bolleg.

"Finish your supper."

"I'm not hungry."

"Then go on up to your room. And you'd better be quiet about it."

Davy lay on his back in his disheveled bed watching the sun settle behind the trees, wondering. He was still confused, but no longer felt so powerless. He would defend his house against its enemies once more, only this time the enemy was real, not imagined -- Mr. Bolleg, the new boarder.

The Wilks had purchased as their dream house this big old gingerbread home in the oldest part of town ten years ago and restored it to its original condition. Immediately after his Dad had died, his Mother had taken on a boarder to help pay the monthly bills for the large old house. Davy always called him Mr. Green and they’d been good friends for two years. Then Mr. Green became very sick and died suddenly in the hospital.

A month after Mr. Greene’s death, Mr. Bolleg knocked on the front door in answer to the newspaper advertisement for the vacant bedroom. He needed silence during the day with complete privacy, he said, because he worked the graveyard shift and would be sleeping. He offered to pay substantially more than the ad requested if these two conditions could be met.

Davy took an instant dislike to the tall, pale man, and was sure his mother would never even consider him. She knew that Davy played in the house with his friends and to expect them to be silent was unreasonable. This was Davy's castle, his fortress. Within its walls lay unseen skeletons of millions of imagined enemies that he had slain with his cap pistols and plastic machineguns. There was no room for Mr. Bolleg or silence here.

However, the extra money was badly needed and Davy's world began to collapse the day Mr. Bolleg moved in.

The very minute he arrived the atmosphere of the house took on a strange chill, becoming more like a damp dungeon than the castle of an invincible king. Severe punishments were meted out for breaking the silence. The house was sealed against its king, except for his chores and bedtime.

"Be quiet or go outside," became his mother's preferred phrase. And out he went--from breakfast to noon, from noon to supper, or even dark. He haunted the shadows of nearby oak trees and grassy lots. The sun grew hot, and the wind died often as the days passed, but there were only so many trees to climb, spider webs to drop grasshoppers into, or fire-flies to put in empty Mason jars. More and more, Davy did these things alone. His friends stopped coming over, and formed a new gang from which Davy was largely excluded.

Davy felt the intense, frustrated hatred of the powerless-until last night. His mother had fallen asleep on the couch and he had sneaked downstairs to watch a horror movie. Davy had suddenly become aware of parallels between the man in the cape and Mr. Bolleg. Everything fell into place. He saw why Mr. Bolleg worked only at night, never coming downstairs during the daylight hours when the hot, summer sun was shining. He learned what Mr. Bolleg's "job" really was. Best of all, the movie showed him how to take care of Mr. Bolleg, and he was determined to do it.

Davy twisted himself into a sitting position, crawling over to the window to look out. Soon Mr. Bolleg would awaken, leave, and then he would dissolve into the deep shadows of the night, stalking an unsuspecting victim. Davy Wilks was the only one in the world who knew Mr. Bolleg’s secret.

Davy wished again -- as he did almost every night -- that his father was still alive, still here to talk to, because he desperately needed to tell someone all the things churning inside him. Talking to his mother usually proved to be useless. All she ever did was scold him for "talking nonsense", or nag him about unfinished chores, but not his Dad. Dad would listen and know exactly what to do. But then, Mr. Bolleg would never have come into the house if Dad hadn't died so suddenly. Died as suddenly as those people in the movie.

Davy heard muffled noises coming from Mr. Bolleg's room. He had risen! Davy moved quickly. From under his pillow, he retrieved the pitted crucifix he had found in his mother's jewelry box, and sat on the worn oval rug between the old chair and his bed. Here the darkness was heavi¬est and he could not be easily seen by anyone in the short hallway, but he could watch Mr. Bolleg's every move. He hoped that tonight Mr. Bolleg would, for once, forget to lock the door when he left. Then all Davy needed to do was find something in the room that would improve to the world he knew.

The unoiled hinges of the door across the hall protested slightly, and Mr. Bolleg became barely visible, a spectral shadow in the unlit hallway. The door was re-closed and relocked.

Davy sighed in defeat as the boarder moved almost silently down the stairs. He toyed with the cross, wondering if he should confront Mr. Bolleg right now, in this house, before he went out to "work".

Rising slowly, Davy crept towards the stairwell, holding the cross outstretched in front of him in case Mr. Bolleg suddenly decided to return to his room. As he placed his bare foot on the top step, he hesitated. What happened after he held up the cross? Mr. Bolleg would know that he had been discovered and Davy then would be facing an even greater danger.

He hurried quickly back to his bed, where, through the open window near it, he tried to hear the footfalls before they faded away. He had never watched Mr. Bolleg leave, so he didn't know the direction the man took. And, he found out, he could not tell now by listening.

As Davy thought more about the situation, he realized that he had to get into that locked bedroom, and the only way left was through the single window at the back of the house. Mr. Bolleg's room was on the same side of the house as the old nursery, now used only for storage. The rooms were separated by the bathroom, but connected by the roof of the back porch. Davy jumped off the bed and crossed the room to the door on the far wall.

Carefully picking his way through the blackness, through the maze of stacked boxes of decorations, old clothes, and keepsakes, he reached the window. He flipped the latches tugged at the window, and it raised with only a little effort. He returned to his room. From the shelf in the closet he got a blanket and arranged it and the sheet on the bed to make it look like he was in bed and asleep. From under the mattress he pulled a narrow wooden board and a small, rusty hatchet. The doctor in the movie had used a stake, so Davy had pulled a loose board from the collapsing shed in the back yard, and chopped one end until it became roughly pointed. He put the crucifix in his pants pocket.

The window in the storage room was only a slight problem to get open. Beyond it the porch roof sloped easily downward for several feet – then it ended. Davy hesitated, wondering if there wasn't another way. There wasn’t.

The night had cooled considerably, a slight breeze drifted steadily through the trees as he inched his cautious way. He stayed as close as possible to the side of the house, not allowing himself to think of the edge of the roof and the sudden darkness below, or it might magnetically pull him toward it.

After what seemed a long, tiresome effort, he reached Mr. Bolleg's window. Strangely, there was no screen, and the window was up an inch. He only needed to lift it to get inside, but he stopped, weeks had passed since he'd been in the room, or even glanced into it. Anything could be in there behind those curtains. He thought he felt the eyes of some grotesque monster watching him. He was suddenly acutely aware of his position -- caught between the ominous black muzzle of the window and the deep gaping obscurity of the roof edge. Worst of all, he could not make a quick escape. He became terribly frightened.

As Davy tried to move away from the window, the rough shingles scraped the skin on the knuckles of his left hand. Pain and vertigo threatened to overcome him. He almost quit--almost tossed the tools over the edge, and returned to the safety of his room, but something inside made him stay. He knew too much. He must, like the doctor in the movie, be willing to die rather than let this creature prevail. He must go in.

The window slid smoothly open. Davy thrust a foot through the thick curtains, moving it around in a slow circle. Nothing touched it. He relaxed, entered cautiously, lowered the window, and squatted on the wooden floor.
The bedroom was cool, and filled with a strange musty smell, like the odor of the soil underneath the back porch. As his eyes began to adjust to the darkness, the fuzzy silhouettes around the room took recognizable shapes. They seemed little changed from when Mr.Greene lived here. The small, nicked table stood beside the bed, a familiar tiny lamp still on it. The large blob on the far wall was the chest-of-drawers. The dresser was next to the door. In front of him, occupying much of the room was the bed.

With the furniture placed, Davy began creeping around the dim room looking for something, but he didn't know what. Tiptoeing toward the dresser he bumped into an oblong box bulking at the foot of the bed. He touched it, felt the sturdy metal clasps that sealed it, the smooth, polished top. He knew what it was. He'd seen one in the movie.

Davy kept looking, searching for that thing that would prove what Mr. Bolleg was, but there was nothing. Whatever he hoped to find in Mr. Bolleg's forbidden lair was not out in the open. Except for the box at the foot of the bed.

Standing in front of the dresser, Davy tried to see himself in the mirror, but he couldn't. He could not even see the reflection of the weak light coming in the window. He reached his hand out and touched only wallpaper. He hadn't heard anything about the mirror having been broken. The movie bad something about mirrors, but he had dozed at that part and could not recall.

He heard a noise on the stairs and froze. Could Mr. Bolleg be returning so soon? If he heard a key in the lock he would have to climb out the window!

Footsteps moved into the bathroom. His mother was preparing for bed.

He tried to be quiet for the long moments until she finished, but sleep began to nag at him. Despite the excitement and danger of being in the room, he yawned repeatedly and his eyelids grew heavy. He needed a little rest--just for a minute. He curled up on the box. Just for a minute.

Davy awoke with a jerk to the rolling barrage of thunder. What time was it? Where was Mr. Bolleg? He hadn't meant to fall asleep. Now he couldn't get back to his own room because of the rain. He felt panicky. All he could do was find a place to hide. But where?

There was only the bed.

He lifted the edge of the cover and felt underneath, flinching when he touched the dust balls. As long as Mr. Bolleg didn't know that he had been found out, Davy would be safe.

Davy placed the crucifix directly over his heart, the tools at his left side. He began a fitful sleep, wondering what might happen when the sun rose.

When he awoke again the room was quiet. The house was quiet except for the rain running down the drainpipes. He stretched the cramped muscles in his legs and lower back. Raining or not, he couldn't stay here any longer. Clutching his tools tightly, he wormed out from under the bed and stood on stiff legs.

Through the curtains he watched the lightning flash across the sky, heard the rain tapping the window. Inching his way along the porch roof had been bad enough before the storm. His imagination raced; he saw the roof sliding under him as his fingers lost their grip on the soaked shingles, add felt the sudden nothingness beyond the edge.

He hadn't learned enough from that movie. He had trapped himself. Mr. Bolleg might return at any second to catch him.

Then he noticed the form on the bed.

Fear kept him standing beside it. He was rooted to the floor, staring at Mr. Bolleg lying under the sheet. He looked taller, whiter, more fragile. There seemed to be nothing to fear from him now. In the movie, before sunrise, the creature returned to his castle where he must spend the day sleeping. They were harmless, he remembered - in the daytime
.
He glanced at the curtains, considering throwing them open to let sun light flood the room, but the storm obliterated the sun. Besides, Mr. Bolleg might merely awaken.
That left only one course of action. He must do what the doctor in the movie had done. To save his house and, perhaps, even the whole world.

As a tumultuous crack of thunder roared, he lifted the stake high over Mr. Bolleg's chest.

END

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