Wild Child

in enclitic

Twisted branches zig-zag against the night sky like streaks of black lightning. The moon vanishes behind the clouds as a night-bird snaps through the air with a screeching, high-pitched cry.
“Are you alright?” Jack asks, his thick arm cradling her along the path. “Can you see?”
“Not very well,” answers the old woman. “Go slowly.”
“I will, Mother.”
Her eyes scour the darkness like a blindman’s cane, tapping in jerks that leave her eyeballs aching. Bushes crouch in shadow as she imagines the ragged outline of a hunched beast's hairy back, lecherous and leering. Waiting to waylay, its putrid fingers throb.
She utters a stifled whine.
“I’ve got you,” Jack assures her. “You’re alright.”
Suddenly the moon frees itself from the clouds, while in the black gap of a tree trunk’s shadow, the animal eyes their approach. Pulling in one leg, a shoulder hunching to support his weight, he rises. Moonlight shifts and the old woman gags on her fear. Her cane waves at the shadow as her brittle body stumbles back and a soundless cry of fright scrapes her throat with raw air.
“Wolf!” Jack yells. “Wolf, Wolf!”
He grabs for her cane and strikes at the animal while supporting the hysterical lug in his arms.
“Wolf, get out! Artimus, damn you!”
Snarls dissolve in shadow as clouds again smear the moonlight.
“Mother, Mother, it’s alright,” Jack says above her throaty gurgle. “He won’t hurt you. He’s gone.”
“He wants to kill me,” she cries.
“No, you merely frightened him.”
With screaming eyes she pans the darkness while entangling herself deep in her son’s protection.
“Are you alright now?”
“Let’s go in,” she weeps. “Please.”
She totters forward, looking at nothing so that nothing will be seen. A door opens and a white rectangle spills its glow into the night.
“What happened?” Anna asks in silhouette.
“Terrible,” the old woman mutters, entering the hallway. “Terrible.”
“I’ll kill that son-of-a-bitch,” Jack swears to the darkness outside, then his head snaps to his wife: “Where is he?”
Anna stares uneasily at his outrage before she turns to the old woman.
“Well thank heaven you’re alright. You could have taken a nasty fall.”
In the warm and well-lit hallway, the old woman casts a dull gaze on Anna.
“Jackie would never let anything happen to me.”
Her harsh eyes remain for a long moment.
“I'm sure he wouldn’t,” Anna replies, gathering in her concern. “I’ll get the boys,” she says while hurrying down the hall. “Now that you’re here we can leave,” and she disappears.
Jack and the old woman stare after her, and a suspended instant passes, motionless and mute, before their thick bodies begin drooping. Her great breasts sag even more, and the bulk about his tremendous shoulders fades to his center. The excess flesh in their faces hangs heavily, eyes vacant. Ages pass and they remain still, lumbering giants in thoughtless rest. Anna returns with Teddy, pouting and in pajamas, fastened to his mother by a paunchy hand.
“Hello, Teddy,” the old woman says, lurching forward with hands outstretched. “Come here my sweetest one. If only your grandpa had lived to see you.”
The child recoils from the old woman's wrinkled face rutted with white powder.
“You sweetest one,” she coos. “Won’t you kiss me?
Teddy buries his face in his mother’s thighs.
“Of course he will,” Jack declares. “Kiss your grandmother,” and the child does so.
Claws scrape along the hallway floor, a keen clicking rhythm drawing near. The old woman reverts to the safety of her son as her weak and fearful eyes turn to Artimus, approaching.
“Grandma,” he says tenderly, his kiss nearly reaching her. “I’m sorry Wolf scared you,” he says, hoping to soothe her apprehension. “It was the cane that made him mad.”
“Where the hell were you?” Jack demands while advancing upon Artimus who withdraws a step. “Why’s that damn dog in the middle of the sidewalk?”
“He wasn’t in the middle of the sidewalk,” Artimus replies.
“Don’t give me any lip,” Jack snaps, pushing his body between the old woman and Artimus.
Stretching himself to his full height, Jack raises a cudgeling finger.
“You either straighten out or I’ll break every bone in your body.”
Artimus, unflinching, stares into the hard points of his father’s eyes.
“I’m talking to you,” Jack declares in a threatening, hushed monotone. With only one escape from the hand of his father, Artimus relents.
“I hear you,” he answers quietly.
“Jack, let’s go,” Anna says, moving to the closet and filling the tense air with diversion. “We shouldn’t be late,” she adds while slipping into her coat—but Jack does not budge, pressing instead the intimidation of his son. “Jack, come on,” Anna pleads. “The boy’s sorry. Enough now.”
Searing eyes hold another moment, then Jack rears back, a sneer twisting a corner of his mouth. The danger diminished, Artimus swells with tears embarrassed and indignant, choked by his inability to match the bulk before him.
“Goodnight, boys,” Anna sighs, her hand caressing Teddy’s hair as she stoops to kiss him. The child rushes to her affection. “We won’t be home late,” she tells him, straightening herself up and dragging Teddy’s yearning face with her.
“Artimus,” she says, and receives his kiss, then her hand presses a faint pressure of tenderness to ease his fretted heart.
“No trouble,” Jack says, towering above Teddy, a finger aiming down at him. “You listen to your grandma, you hear me?”
The child nods vigorously as the heavy folds of his father’s coat engulf him. Jack uncovers the child, then faces Artimus.
“If she says you started up you’ll have me all over you.”
“He’ll be a good boy,” the old woman says.
Jack turns to his mother: “He’d better be,” and embraces her, missing the slightest snarl of his son’s lip. “And keep that beast away from her!”
Jack and Anna pass through the doorway.
“Remember to say your prayers,” Anna calls as their shadowy figures blend into the night. The old woman pulls Teddy to the door, prodding him to wave. The child does so, fingers barely moving. Artimus watches the darkness swallow his parents, while on swift winds the clouds flee the bright white hole of a full moon.
Within the coarse folds of her black dress, the old woman gathers Teddy from the hallway to another room. She sits him on the sofa, then muffles his whimper with chocolate candies she stuffs into his mouth.
“He’ll get sick,” Artimus tells her. “He always does.”
From her stiff lace sleeve she slips a white hanky redolent of rose talcum, wiping first her own fingers, then the plump corners of Teddy’s lips. Adjusting the slouched child upright, she asks, “You don’t miss your mommy and daddy now, do you?”
Teddy abruptly ceases chewing. His eyes shimmer again with impending tears.
“We can fight tonight,” Artimus whispers in his ear.
Chewing energetically, the child beams.
“Would you like to see my jewelry?” the old woman wonders, fidgeting with her watchband. She dangles the timepiece by its strap an instant before the child snatches it.
“This isn’t a lady’s watch,” he says disdainfully.
“It was your grandpa’s,” the old woman replies. “I’ve worn it since the day he died. And when I die,” then her entwined hands extend to the child, “you will wear it.”
But Teddy did not want it. Heavy and ornate, the watch—like everything about the old woman—irritated him. When near her, he often turned cranky. With a gigantic frown, he shoves the watch away, then asks, “What’s that?” pointing between her breasts.
“My pentangle,” she says, removing the brooch.
The two boys gaze into her hand where lays a golden star, and Artimus feels his blood race at the mark of the pentagram emblazed in the old woman’s palm.
“Teddy,” she says, jamming the pin back into her dress, “it’s time to brush your teeth.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You don’t want a visit from Mister Tooth Decay, do you? Unless you brush your teeth right now,” she says firmly, “your daddy will hear of it.”
Sulking, Teddy pushes off the sofa and stomps from the room while muttering how Mister Tooth Decay can visit anytime he wants. When certain he has gone, the old woman rummages through her handbag.
“Artimus,” she whispers urgently, “sit down. I want you to hear something.”
He obeys.
“You must be careful,” she exclaims with unsteady excitement, “or you could be next!”
She unfolds a section of newspaper, pulls it to her face and reads. A young victim, pretty, hidden in the bushes, her nude body wrapped in her torn red cape.
“Fear the dark,” the old woman urges, dragging her gaze to Artimus. “Men can change instantly into animals,” and though her face lowers slightly, her eyes remain latched. “They like boys like you,” she adds in a voice veiled with threat. “Teddy’s too small, but you,” then the pallid flesh of her white cheeks tremble: “And you’ll be sick from it the rest of your days!”
Her eyes snap back to the page. Scratches on thighs.
“Do you know what buttocks are?” she asks unhurried.
“Yes.”
“And buttocks too.”
The neck had been mauled and the skirt, perhaps ripped by teeth, streaked in semen.
“Do you know what that is?”
“Yes,” he whispers, feeling the reckless blood swelling.
“The victim’s panties,” and the old woman raises her incensed eyes, “are still missing.”
She shifts her rage at Artimus while desire and guilt battle within him. He knows he should pity the victim and at first he did so, but her nakedness thrills him, a faceless doll with her legs apart. He wants to get alone tonight, knowing he can and will. He wonders will hair really grow on his hands and did the beast eat her. The old woman strains a weak ear to the keen clicking rhythm. From the dim hallway where claws scrape, the animal slowly enters, muscles fluttering along his fine flanks. Head dipped, eyes lowered, he flows closer to the old woman and closer still. She freezes. With a sleek step between her and Artimus, the dog folds himself before her, dark eyes uplifted.
“Why are you the only one Wolf listens to?” she asks, her stare riveted on the dog.
“He listens to others.”
“Not like you. Why is that?”
For an instant her eyes dare seek Artimus before snapping back to her fearful watch of the dog. Artimus passes a hand along the white fur of Wolf’s neck.
“We’re similar.”
In a distant part of the house, Teddy lets loose his imitation of a Viking battle cry. Wolf’s ears peak, and amid her confusion the old woman hears Teddy pounding downstairs before he pours through the room, the full force of his weight sending Artimus sprawling. Wolf, up instantly, bounds to the two boys tumbling across the carpet and barks through Teddy’s rapid chant “Fight, fight” as Artimus huddles from the small, clutched, flurrying fists.
“Boys,” cries the old woman, the chant and the barking unbearable, “boys stop this,” and she prods with her cane just as Teddy rams a knee into his brother’s side.
“Teddy!” the old woman hollers, the size of her own voice startling her.
“Granma,” the child insists, standing erect before her, “it’s our best game.”
“He wasn’t hurting me,” Artimus tells her.
The old woman fumbles through her misgivings.
“But all this noise,” she mutters, “the dog.”
“Wolf,” Artimus says, pointing a finger at the dog’s muzzle, “you can’t play,” and he slaps the dog lightly. “You can’t play, do you hear?” and slaps him again.
The dog snaps at the fleeting hand, then shifts his weight to his hind legs ready to uncoil. Artimus lunges, grasping the dog’s muscled neck until Teddy jumps in and all three topple to the floor. Wolf squeezes free, circling the fighters before his white teeth close around Teddy’s flaying cuff. The old woman slams her cane across the dog’s back. Yelping once, Wolf spins away as Artimus rises instantly, the child flipped to the carpet.
“Biting Teddy,” the old woman declares to Artimus’s outrage. “The dog was biting Teddy.”
“Granma,” the child groans, “it’s our game!”
Artimus, infuriate, skips from the room with Wolf beside him. The echo of the slammed front door lingers.
“It’s too late for him outside,” whispers the old woman. She fears for the boy—the darkness, the danger—but then her breath catches on a dim vision of a carnal figure prowling through the shadows. “What does he do out there?” she asks, then turns to the child. “Do you know?”
Clouds block the moon with sooty brightness, glowing as if silent explosions occur deep within. Black branches tap and sounding night-birds’ pierce the air. Wolf slips into the shadows, dark eyes sharpened on the night’s edges. Artimus follows, his anger dispelled by the night and the dog’s ramble. Through a passageway of tangled shrubs the dog vanishes, then waits abidingly for Artimus at the grey edge of a clearing. A breeze picks up the mist and rolls it across the open yard. Wolf turns a raised muzzle, his great white chest expanding, and Artimus believes that on the wind the dog catches scent of a distant ancestry: what primal forests did he run, what moons heard the howl from a heart still pledged to the wild’s call? Wolf steps lightly across the yard as if tiny springs lay beneath each paw. Artimus, pursuing, emulates the dog. He skips on his toes above the cool grass, nimble hands bobbing at his wrists. Shadows melt away and visions form in the moonlight as Artimus recalls the midnight feature where a wolf emerged from within a man. A bog appears, crushed and rotted, then he conjures up the silhouette of a wagon pulled by a huge, motionless horse. Gypsies are near, violins play beside their firelight. The desperate man, Talbot, sought help among the strangers, pieces of him battling—but when the wolfbane blooms and the full moon shines bright, the animal inside him burned for release. After his futile resistance, the transformation: masked in fur, his mouth slobbering, he prowled the night in quest of flesh.
Artimus feared that a curse had seized him too, a thrilling, inescapable obsession. He too had struggled, waking wet and tormented in the night, but at last he surrendered, knowing surely this was the same untamed desire that changed Wolf when the neighbor’s dog stayed in. He wondered why Wolf had scratched at the door so frenzied and persistent, then raced once free across the yard as if fixed on a scent, unheeding Artimus’s call. Something more powerful than even loyalty to Artimus had overtaken Wolf, muzzle sniffing an odorous spot in the lawn that he would not abandon, frightening Artimus with his impersonal eye as spittle filled the corners of his black lips.
But gradually Artimus discovered what had possessed Wolf and how, like the dog, his own mind at such times admitted nothing else. At first sensations, baffling and irrepressible, besieged his body, but Artimus resists no longer. Hungry for details of the story that the old woman had read to him, he feels once more the reckless swelling from a naked, ravished girl envisioned. Nude, the story had read, a smooth, pink figure with her legs apart. In the secret darkness he pulls at himself with a rapid hand, dreaming that his mouth fills, as Wolf’s had done, with the taste between her thighs.
Through the dark hallway, the old woman plods after.
“What a time you were gone,” she declares, relieved of worry but irritated.
Artimus runs his fingers beneath the faucet where he quickly laps a drink.
“I looked but I could not see you,” the old woman says. “Where do you go?”
At last he confronts her scrutiny: “Not far, Grandma.”
Her eyes fill the entire lens of her spectacles. Dark centers, blurred and enlarged, aim at Artimus.
“You are not out so long when your father is home,” she says. “Am I right?”
He remains silent.
“Then why now?” asks the old woman. “Why when I am here?”
She awaits a reply, but her demands are feeble without the potency of her son behind them.
“Where’s Teddy?” Artimus wonders.
“Never mind Teddy,” she replies angrily. “Teddy’s going to bed soon, so don’t upset him with your wild ways.”
The old woman lugs her heavy limbs from the room, her shadow on the wall expanding as it dissolves. No longer chafed by her scorn, knowing she merely reflects his father, Artimus retreats by a different doorway back to the hall where Teddy blocks the path, outstretched fingers squirming.
“Granma says no,” Artimus tells him.
A bubbling growl crackles from Teddy’s mouth as he steps a foot closer, hands reaching for his brother’s throat. The child lunges, a stranglehold accompanied by Artimus’s choking sound effects. He clasps Teddy by the wrists and, still in the child’s grip, struggles from the hallway to the living room’s soft carpet. He rolls on his back, then turns, pinning Teddy beneath him. Wolf descends, snapping at their heels. Teddy coils a leg before driving a foot into Artimus who tumbles backwards into an upholstered chair. Roused by the terrific commotion, the old woman pivots in fragmented steps and returns to a room that unfolds in mayhem, flying kicks and head butts authentic like the boys have seen on Championship Wrestling. She commands them to stop but barely hears her words through the ruckus. Artimus seizes Teddy’s kicking leg and pulls him toward the basement door.
“Grandma, Grandma,” the child cries with genuine fear and grasping for the black folds of the old woman’s dress, “don’t let him feed me to the spiders.”
Artimus releases him, then again slowly stalks the fearful child.
Shielded by her bulk, he keeps his eyes fixed on Artimus.
“I’m not playing,” Teddy pouts angrily, but Artimus snatches him from the old woman’s side and again yanks the child to the basement.
“Get away from him,” the old woman insists, stumbling towards the frightened child, “get away,” as Artimus frees him and Teddy rushes to her, his fingers clutching while Artimus blends into a shadow.
“There, there,” the old woman soothes, stroking the child. “I told you not to play with him, didn’t I? Will you listen to me now?”
Teddy curls against the old woman’s body, the saggy skin of her arms flapping. She staggers through the dark hallway, her cane tapping the vague air—but then she stiffens and her dry eyes search for the rasping growl.
“You,” she utters softly to Artimus, crouching. “Do you want to scare the life out of me?”
She watches his hunched back disappear around a corner.
“Stay where I can see you,” she demands, but he has vanished.
Clinging to Teddy, the old woman pushes on, the hallway seemingly so long, the mirror on the wall a pool of shiny midnight. Behind her, the keen clicking rhythm scrapes along the floor. Her breath catches and the child beside her says thrillingly, “Artimus!” With hands like claws, he scratches at the two huddled figures, top lip snarling, nostrils flared. Again the old woman hears a low and stunning growl.
“Your father will know,” she vows with unforgivable reproach, “of this, your father will know.”
The old woman, her eyes scorching, shields the child with her body, but Artimus pursues, sniffing her fear: rose talcum, stale rooms and soup broth, an odor dry and decayed, a bitter taste of metal to his tongue. Compelled to the old woman, he smells beneath this to a scent, faint but unmistakable, of his own father. He rips the child from the old woman’s arm. Sluggishly she lifts her cane as Wolf barks and a joyous yelp breaks from Artimus who frees the child and bounds from reach.
“Oh Artimus,” the old woman cries. “What’s gotten into you?”
He leaps upon a chair, and for a moment the old woman thinks he is mad as growls ricochet with his furious headshaking. The child crawls for safety but Artimus springs again, feeling the game quicken without him as all of himself rushes with the frenzied dance. After flinging Teddy unharmed to the floor, Artimus frees the screaming child just as the old woman pushes a cumbersome leg forward. Stepping lightly, hands nimble, he circles her.
“Enough,” the old woman pleads, following in a clumsy turn, each raw breath aching. “Please, enough,” but Animus attacks again, past restrains, all of himself rushing. The old woman reaches to the child’s cry, then Artimus dives into a shadow, rolling along its edges from where he strikes once more. Teddy bawls, hysterical, but the old woman, exhausted, cannot move to help him. Artimus waits to free the child, and in that hesitation the old woman comprehends that she, not Teddy, is the intended victim. The discovery amazes her, then she is terrified. She exhales, her chest emptying, and she feels she is falling backward from the sight of Artimus straddling his brother, his head thrown back and a thread of spittle running down his chin while his unleashed brain blows with howling.

The moon set after the clouds had scattered, twisted branches invisible against the black sky. When the wind ceased the sullen night fell silent save for tapping claws from Wolf’s nervous dream of running. Teddy sleeps from exhaustion, his open mouth giving up air, while Artimus through a nightmare calls, “Mother, Mother.” He wakes unevenly, still hearing his cry only now he has his father’s voice until he realizes this is no dream.
“Mother, Mother,” his father calls urgently, “Mother, wake up. Anna,” Jack cries, “I can’t wake her!”
Artimus strains toward the thin rectangle of grey light at the bedroom door.
“Mother,” Artimus hears his mother say, “Mother, can you hear me?”
“Please, Mother, wake up,” Jack says, his voice desperate. “Mother!”
Slipping free of the covers, Artimus creeps to the bannister that leads downstairs. He pictures in his mind the old woman lying on the sofa as he saw her last, feet on the floor so her shoes would not soil the furniture, her face weak as putty.
“Mother,” Jack cries unsteadily. “Mother wake up now!”
From hurrying footsteps Artimus presses himself from sight, the front door opened to what he cannot see.
“This way,” his mother says to the entering sounds. “We can’t seem to wake her at all.”
Artimus takes a quiet step down, peering towards what he still only hears. Furniture moving, the clap of metal, unfamiliar voices low and inarticulate. Suddenly there is a great shifting of weight before two men in white rush to the front door, the stretcher wheels creaking beneath its burden. Artimus sees the lifeless face of the old woman floating into darkness, wavering with the two white figures before vanishing. His mother at the front door stares into the black, redblack night. At last she closes the door, turns and leans upon it, her head tipped back, eyes thrown to heaven. After a moment she catches sight of Artimus crouching on the staircase.
“Artimus,” she says with weak tenderness. “What are you doing there?”
“I heard voices.”
She sighs. Gathering her strength, she moves towards him.
“Come,” she urges gently. “I’ll put you back to bed.”
Once he is tucked between the sheets, Anna sits beside him.
“Artimus,” she whispers, her face in soft shadow and despair, “what happened tonight?”
“We were playing,” he cries, his voice racing as he sits up. “It was just our game. Then Grandma went to sleep.”
“Lie back down,” she says, easing him to the pillow. She strokes the swelling vein near his temple, kissing him there. Pushing herself from the bed, she turns to Teddy and kisses him too before quietly leaving the room.
“Goodnight Mom,” Artimus calls softly.
“Goodnight, dear,” she replies, then closes the door to only a thin grey crack in the darkness.
Heavy footfalls ascend the stairs. The rooms tremble with the great force approaching. Artimus cringes at the vengeance his father comes to deliver, but the bedroom door remains undisturbed. To silence his harrowed breathing, he opens his mouth and listens to the weary voices in the next room.
“They were playing,” his mother says.
Holding his breath, Artimus strains to his father’s reply but hears none.
“Do you want me to go with you?” she asks.
Silence, then shuffling follows before Artimus’s heart beats wildly at his father, black in the grey light of the doorframe. Shoulders sagging, a power sorely weakened, Jack trods to the sleeping child whom he brushes with his thick, limp hand. He remains for a long moment, staring unfocused into the soft folds of the blanket, then slowly, the effort enormous, he drags a distracted gaze across the room to the other bed. In the darkness, Jack does not see at first a gaze returned—but then he does, and something hollow drops from his throat straight to his bowels at the first stunning triumph in his son’s eye.