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Billy is 7 years old, just turned 7 years old, and laying on his bed facing the open closet door. His mother had run her hand through his sandy blond hair yesterday. She cooed into his ear how big he was getting, how strong, and how happy she was to have a good boy.
She told him this would be a good year because 7 is a lucky number, she promised that it would be Billy’s lucky number. But there were a lot of things she promised.
Yesterday she was cutting into his cake, passing slices around to his friends all wearing pointy funny hats, and today she was gone. Her suitcase clicking closed was just one sound in a hurricane of many, his fathers shouting voice the most of it.
Billy clutched his little hands to his little chest and watched as she packed up and left. He cried, loud and pathetic, as her blond hair bounded away. She didn’t turn around.
Not even once. Not to bring him with her.
So Billy was lucky number 7 years old laying in bed wishing he never celebrated another birthday. His crying sobs turned to quiet lines of tears wetting his cheeks. The red mark around his eye left by his father helped with that coloring. Fists left his skin puffy and sore, broken under the hair of his eyebrow, just like his heart felt like it was breaking.
So this night Billy was laying on his side so his bruised eye could breath. He looked into the open door of his closet. Clothes and boxes and mess filed the cramped space, his shirts hung haphazardly on thin wire hangers. Even in the thick darkness Billy’s eyes adjusted to the light and he was able to see one shirt that was leaning to the side. Billy studied it soberly as he wondered how it was even hanging on just by an inch of the sleeve.
Then the shirt twitched, the fabric bunching up and moving inside the closet. Billy watched with wide eyes as long, branch like appendages shift out from the darkest place of his closet. The branches are dark and matte in color, curling with so many sharp points it’s wondrous they fit inside the closet at all. Billy’s clothes shift and jingle with the motion, but no hangers fall.
In the open door the branches take up the whole space, and then Billy’s eyes move down to see they aren’t really branches at all, but two sprawling antlers. They get larger and larger in thickness before disappearing into a fluffy crown of hair. Billy blinks as he notices two glowing eyes looking right back at him.
They glow in the barely there light of his childhood bedroom with a rainbow glare, mostly white and holographic as they move. The antlers shift, one side and then the other, jingling the hangers in his closet again. For the whole time the flashlight bright eyes never turn and never blink.
Billy’s frozen, pinned to his bed under those eyes and the sprawling sharp points of the things antlers. He watches and the thing, the creature, watches back.
Then like a breath of air leaving his body, Billy starts crying again.
The first instinct that came to his child mind to do was call for his mother; push the blankets from his bed and patter his little feet into the hallway, run down to her room and wrap his arms securely around her. But he couldn’t, not any more. Not after the snap of a suitcase and the bounce of her hair as she walked away.
So Billy whimpered and cried, let his face get ugly in a way his father would call pathetic. His father would call queer. So Billy burrowed has face into his blanket.
In the morning, his closet is empty, all the things cluttering inside are untouched.
***
Billy is 13 years old, just turned 13 years old, and pushing the last of his few things into a messenger bag. He picks a journal out from the top of his closet and presses it tight to his chest as he turns to walk back to his bed. He sits down on the floor and pushes his back to the mattress hard.
Midnight flashes across his digital clock. It’s the middle of the night but he’s packing because tomorrow his father and his new mother and his new sister are leaving their childhood home. Bad memories. Billy can’t sleep even with it being so late, so he packs.
His mother would have called 13 an unlucky number, and Billy supposed that’s right. He didn’t have a cake for his birthday, didn’t have a gathering of friends, just a baggy fitting leather jacket his new mother picked out and wrote the whole family’s name on the tag. It fit too big, but she promised he would grow into it. An excuse for not knowing his size. There were lots of things about Billy his new family didn’t know.
In the dark of his half empty room, the only light the moon filtering in through the drawn curtains from outside, Billy felt no years older than 7.
He slipped a photo out from between the pages of his journal. A blond woman smiled back. Her hair was longer than his, but he was trying to grow it out as much as he could. Wondered how long before his father spoke up and told him what’s best for him, just like how he knew the move was what’s best for him.
Billy absentmindedly ran his hand through the back of his hair, when there was a shuffle from the other side of his bed. His shoulders tensed up, the picture and journal tumbling forgotten against the carpet. Billy slowly turned around, shuffling up to kneel on his knees, and crossed his arms over the bed.
On the other side was that same impressive set of antlers, and same wide reflective eyes. They seem to grow right out of darkness with only highlights of the thing’s body visible in the moonlight. Billy blinked but it didn’t blink back.
“Hey,” Billy greeted his creature. It didn’t speak, it never would speak. But it did mock his pose and move forward to the edge of the bed.
In the years of living alone, crowded and crying in this small room, trapped in his own small body Billy never found himself afraid of his creature.
The nights it visited were random. And the way it seemed to bring forth those antlers, as if he melted from the shadows against the wall, were in random places around Billy’s room.
It was there to frighten him, maybe that was it’s job, but Billy was always afraid. Afraid of his father, afraid of his birthdays ticking down, afraid of being forgotten. Didn't have any more fear to give. So he instead saw his visiting creature as a comfort. At least he wasn’t alone when he was being haunted.
“Whole family gonna be digging up root and moving tomorrow. It’s going to be a real shit show. I don’t want to go anywhere,” Billy spoke only whispers out loud to his creature. “I don’t want to go anywhere.” He repeated.
His creature shuffled a little more, leaning forward so it’s antlers glided into a tower of light pouring through the window. Surprisingly, it didn’t move away or flinch, or burn from the light. It actually leaned farther so it’s fluffy head of hair and piercing eyes were in the tower of light as well.
Billy could see his creature was colored dark brown, not a void of ink black, but a rustic dark brown. Its antlers looked like tree bark and moved and curved like branches. They were a little pretty. But not as pretty as the fluffy head of hair they spring from. Hair or fur, Billy couldn’t decide, he just watched as the light showed how it cascaded choppy down its neck and across its shoulders.
His creatures eyes sparkled a rainbow as they reflected the light, like a cat’s would, Billy recognized. But now he could see they were two huge eyes on a smooth face. No nose, no mouth, but still the shape of a face.
Billy gulped. His little fists tightened in the covers of his bed. Then, as if mocking him, his creature raised its arms to cross over the bed as well. They were human shaped but long, so long, and skinny.
Billy bit into the flesh of his lower lip as his creature folded fingers that were sharp, shiny, and long as knives over the covers softly. When they moved together they didn’t click like knives, like how Billy assumed they would.
He gulped again.
“I’m gonna miss California. I’m gonna miss being myself here. Hell, I’m even going to miss you,” Billy found himself rambling to those unblinking eyes. “But bright side, maybe the next kid that moves in is actually scared of the monster in the closet?”
And Billy laughs at his own joke while the creature doesn’t speak. It never speaks.
When the sun starts to rise, and the shadows float back, and Billy’s head is softly dropped on the mattress tired from a long night of talking, the other side of the bed is empty. Nothing in the moving boxes or messenger bag are moved. But the journal on the floor is sitting softly atop a fluffy white pillow. The picture of the smiling blond woman carefully tucked inside.
***
Billy is 18 years old, just turned 18 years old and he doesn’t need his fathers permission to get a tattoo on his arm. Still, his father doesn’t approve. There is little that his father does approve of. Maybe his new mothers cooking, maybe his new sisters grades, but not anything Billy could bring home.
This year, like the last, there wasn’t a birthday party, no collection of friends with smiles and colorful hats. Billy got slapped around for his present. He got a reminder that he was allowed to live under his father roof, out of the goodness of his heart, and if he continued to live under his roof it would be under his rules.
So Billy takes the money he was saving pressed between the pages of his journal and gets a tattoo on his arm. Half to prove a point, half to mark himself more than his father ever could. Only slightly because he liked how it hurt.
When his father saw his tattoo that night it wasn’t a slap, but a balled fist right to his temple. It wore the skin raw, puffing it up and painting his face bright red. His new mother gasped but looked away. She always looked away.
Billy took his father’s birthday present until he was allowed to slink out back to his car. He pushed the engine hard, liked the way it growled out like a monster into the night. Until he parked at a secluded spot in the woods over looking a quarry.
It wasn’t the ocean, he was far from that in Indiana, but the water was calm. Parking and getting out he could see the way the still water reflected the moonlight back even brighter to the sky. Billy pushed his car door closed and leaned against it, crossing his arms over the roof of his car, and just watched the surface of the water.
It reflected back the moon’s light unmoving, unchanging, Billy thought it was so pretty.
Then there was a snap of branches. Billy turned his head slightly, looking from over his car, and consigning to anything that hunted him from the woods, when a cluster of antlers showed. Seemingly melted right out of the darkness of the trees. A long and brown crown of twisting antlers sitting atop a fluffy head.
Billy sighed into his crossed arms. The tension in his body gone as he watched his creature melt out from behind a tree.
Billy just turned 18 years old but he didn’t consider the number any sort of way, until he realized he hadn’t seen his failure of a scary monster in 5 years. His brows crinkled together as he blinked back the wet on his eyelashes, his bruised eye not making it any easier. He hadn’t been marked like this in just as long. Maybe it was coincidence that his creature followed him, but he figured his mother would disagree. She would call it having inherited good luck.
Billy watched as his creature moved slowly from the woods. Each tree it passed it dragged knife sharp fingers across, each shadow seemed to flow with it, while each glisten of reflected moonlight seemed to color its dark brown fur starry. Billy noticed it truly was fur from the top of its head as it covered all the way down its back and around its hips. Only a lithe torso that itself was dusted with thick hair in the middle shined naked. His creature didn’t have legs, as Billy could see. Instead, it’s hooves we’re huge and loud on the ground.
Billy’s eyes flicked from those sharp hooves back to his creature’s face as it continued to mimic Billy. It walked close and pressed it’s form against the passengers door of the Camaro. It crossed those long, thin arms across the roof just like Billy’s were.
His creature’s eyes were never more bright than with the light reflected by the quarry surface.
It took everything in Billy’s power not to break down again. Just like he was lucky number 7 years old in his bed. His toes curled in his boots as he struggled not to cry. Not to admit he missed as much as he did. Not to admit he hurt as much as he did.
“Bastard,” he hissed. The words wet on his lips.
But his creature didn’t blink. “Followed me all the damn way here for what? You’ve never scared me. If I was a proper backwoods cousin fucker I would shoot you with a gun right here!”
But his creature didn’t speak. It would never speak.
“Just my luck,” Billy says and drops his chin against his folded arms. And that’s when he notices that his creature wasn’t always the same size as him. Always been a towering shadow and now it couldn’t be more than an inch taller. Maybe Billy grew but, his creatures fingers were also shorter. Now they were only slightly longer than his, human in shape with claws sharp and extending out the only difference.
He looks up to his creature; really looks at it in the moonlight. The brightest light its ever been washed in. Billy can truly see its face.
Somehow, in their years apart, his creature decided to wear a nose. It’s long, sharp, and narrow and pointed down to a curved pair of bow shaped lips. The bottom one is plump, and the top one is perky in two peaks just perfectly, so pretty with their coloring of dusty rose red.
Then Billy realizes his creature has a skin tone, ghostly pale and soft looking skin drawn over its muscles and barely showing from the spaces between dark fur. But on its face, its cheek bones are high enough to catch the moonlight as brilliant as the water of the quarry. Billy can’t believe he didn’t notice them before.
“Have you always been beautiful?” He asked. And as always his mind races to catch up with his mouth. But as always, his creature doesn’t speak back.
“Yeah, maybe it’s me. Ya know? Five years. Two houses, another state later. Changes a kid.” Billy catches on the last word. His well maintained muscles taught under his skin, the roof of his own car under his fingers, the burn of a new tattoo he didn’t need his fathers permission to get on his arm. He wasn’t a kid any more.
That makes him laugh, a rolling sound, then he knocks his fist on his car in a superstitious tick.
Looking back up towards his creature he’s still laughing as he starts to speak, when he sees his creature move. Just its lips, those pretty bow shaped lips, part subtly around a gasping intake of breath; then they form a word. It doesn’t make any noise. Billy squints and strains to listen but even with repetition it never makes a noise. He’s watching those lips intently; when he gets it.
“Billy,” he says at the same time his creature moves it’s lips. They match. Its trying to say his name.
Well that’s just lucky, Billy thinks. He feels like an idiot when he presses his hand open palm on his chest and fans out his fingers.
“Billy.” And in the gentle movement of the trees behind him, the sound of wind through the dark brown branches; maybe he hears when his creature speaks it back.
Suddenly, there’s a storm of a siren into the night, a flash of red and blue across the quarry lake face. Billy spins around to see a cream Jeep pull close enough for him to read the sheriff logo painted on the side. He has to remind himself he’s 18, one day into being 18, and needs to listen to the cops when they order him around. It’s not a free ride home anymore.
He doesn’t have to look back to know his creature isn’t leaned against his Camaro anymore.
***
Billy is 20 years old, just turned 20 years old, and he’s spinning his new college dorm room key around his index finger. He’s not thinking about how hard he worked to get here. It’s the middle of the night and he’s unpacking. He’s got one small box of all his things laying on a simple white bed, a pine desk at the foot of the bed already cluttered with textbooks, and his journal beaten and stained with age sitting atop the pile proudly.
He doesn’t consider him getting here hard work because he’s not a success story. Not just yet. He’s only 20, only turned 20 yesterday. Only been away from the fists of his old man not long enough for the last bruises on his ribs to heal. He’s getting there, he knows it, the teachers eating up his work knows it, but he’s not at the finish line.
Billy slips his keys into his pocket and gets to unpacking. He drapes a blanket across his mattress, pins an album poster to the wall, shoves paperbacks in an empty drawer of his desk. Billy even hangs his dark brown leather jacket his new mother gifted him over the back of his chair with a gentle pat. After all his grown muscles, it’s still baggy. But the color is nice.
The last thing in the box is a few folded shirts and jeans. He picks them up gingerly and starts towards the shut door of his closet.
His roommate is sleeping soundly on the other side of the room, his clothes and belongings already muddling around. When Billy greeted him he casually asked if he was ever scared of a monster hiding in his closet. The other boy was shocked, his mouth gaping like a fish, but Billy’s reputation precedes him. He got into school with a gold winning piece of fiction about monsters. About the crawling things under our feet and inside the woods just waiting to melt out and meet us. The paper got around and Billy stopped minding. So the boy sputtered out a little response; he insisted he wouldn’t be scared of a monster in his closet.
“Good,” Billy had told him.
Now Billy opens the door to their shared closet and doesn’t turn the bare bulb on, just opens the door and steps inside. He dumps the handful of clothes off on the top shelf. Then Billy sinks down, sits down on his ass, back against the wall. He’s looking into the darkness. His forearms casually propped up on bent knees, head leaned back, and a smile on his face.
Antlers scrape against the side of the narrow closet walls. They drag and scratch and leave deep lines that won’t be there in the morning. But now it’s close to midnight. Everyone is asleep.
Out of the shadows melts his beautiful creature. It’s leaned forward, stretching its pretty neck and making a pretty face that could be human curiosity if he didn’t know any better. His eyes are unblinking. They glow in the barely there light of his new college dorm closet with a rainbow glare, mostly white and holographic.
Billy doesn’t hold his rambling this night. “New place, huh? It’s going to be great, trust me.”
Billy catches a loud laugh in his throat as his creature tilts its head ever so, making its fluffy brown hair bounce, and its pointed antlers scrape against the walls. “Sorry it’s cramped. Only for a couple years and then I’ll get my own place with lots of dark spots for you.”
He notices his creature has its fur covered legs drawn up to its chest, bent at the knees in a mimic of how Billy is sitting. In an almost timid, almost human way, his creature wraps its long, knife like fingers around its knees. Sharp fingernails gentle against plush fur. The action is familiar in an unfamiliar way. And the whole thing gets Billy feeling happier than he has felt since the day before he turned 7 years old.
“So get this, okay?” Billy picks up rattling off. “The dean of students posted my entrance essay about you up on the public bulletin board with some crazy long winded review about how much of a fucking genius I am. I think the whole school is convinced I’m famous or something.”
“I’m so proud of you, Billy,” his creature whispers back.