The Things We Bury - Part 2: No Big Apocalypse [Completed]

Chapter 9: Kevin's Story (An Interlude)

Kevin Walsh came home from the hospital to a new life. If something shattered could be called new.

Bluebell Crescent was no longer the safe place he had grown up in. His neighborhood was like a snow globe village smashed on the bricks. The buildings small and feeble and the protective shell gone forever. But Aunt Gwen said, "You can hardly tell anything happened here."

To Kevin the signs were everywhere. A streamer of yellow police tape snagged on a scarlet sage shrub flapped in the air, when they turned off Warden Rd. The round island in the center of the crescent was crisscrossed with tire tracks, scarring its pristine green plain. The Westgate home had windows covered in plywood. The door was sealed with a sheet of black plastic that billowed as though the house was breathing. In and out. In and out. Slowly. (Just like the doctor had shown him to help his anxiety.) Black dots made spitball splats randomly across the house's exterior.

Although it wasn't the visible marks that made this familiar world so alien. It was the shadow memories overlaying the sunny afternoon. Under the daylight, the night of the attack bled like a marker through newsprint. That's where the ambulance had been. That's where the police officer told him he was brave. That's where mom was lying in her own blood. That's where the monster landed when it leaped from the window.

Aunt Gwen pulled into the driveway. Dad was watching out the window. Kevin had been happy about coming home until that moment. The way dad had to peer up to see from the seat of his wheelchair made him look a little like the Paterson's dog waiting for someone to come home.

Kevin didn't want to see him like that. He also didn't want dad to see him the way he was now: a coward. A whiny little kid who couldn't sleep if the light was off.

Who was he kidding? A whiny baby who started crying and trembling whenever the lights went out.

Kevin also didn't like that coming home meant leaving his mom. He suddenly understood how Ryan Kimball felt. His parents were divorced and he spent the weekends with his dad and school days with his mom.

You can have half your life now and the other half later, but you can never have it all together again.

They said he could visit mom when he went for his therapy sessions. (Which would be most days for the foreseeable future.) His doctor had an office at the same hospital. And who knew? Maybe one day mom would get to come home too.

"Are you going to be okay, slugger?" Aunt Gwen asked.

Kevin smiled and nodded.

A false smile. A lying nod. Even at the age of nine, he was mastering the art of hiding his feelings. That was one thing grown up about him at least.

Nothing was ever going to be okay—ever. He didn't care what that man from the government said or the people on the news kept repeating. It wasn't an animal that had killed the Westgates. It had been a monster.

He knew because it had left its mark on him. Left a scar right across his soul.

Coyotes couldn't do that.

***

It was visiting day at the hospital and Kevin was anxious to see mom. It would be the first time she came by since the doctors had told him he'd be home for Christmas. (Just like that depressing song they played in the hallways.)

Art therapy was usually his favorite part of the day but this morning he couldn't wait for it to end so he could go up to the lounge and look out for mom's Tacoma to come up the long drive from the gate house. The other children were working on Christmas drawings, pathetically childish things with Santa and fir trees and piles of presents. Kevin was filling in the last empty spaces on a large sheet of bristle board he started a week ago.