Beach Reads #6: Den Mother

Welcome to Beach Reads for Goth Kids. All summer long, I’m sending out short stories that pack a haunting punch: creatures of the week, heatwave madness, and things that go bump in the cul-de-sac. These will be sticky stories with summery themes, best consumed with a tiny paper umbrella.

Just when you thought it was safe to go to camping, we present Den Mother.

Photo by Birgitte Heiberg on Unsplash

Emmy marched up to the tent with her little duffel bag overflowing with stuffed animal friends. She arranged the animals around her corner of the tent— Piggy, Blueberry Bear, and Rosie the Rabbit—explaining to each of them what camping was all about. She told them not to be scared, because Mom and Dad would be right there in the tent with them every night. She climbed inside the sleeping bag and pulled her stuffed friends close.

Emmy woke hours later in the quiet night. She could hear her parents breathing, but only barely. She wondered what woke her. As she reached for the animals, to pull them closer, she saw a shadow cross the front of the tent. She squeezed Blueberry Bear until her hand started sweating. The shadow came close, then disappeared.

Emmy’s heart was beating so loud, she was sure it would wake up her parents.

She watched with saucer eyes as the zipper on the tent inched up, so slowly that it didn’t purr but clicked, tooth by tooth by tooth. She opened her mouth to cry out for her parents, but found she couldn’t make a sound.

The moon shone silver through the nylon, enough light for her to make out the thin white hand at the end of a long arm, snaking in through the tent flap and reaching for her sleeping bag. Rosie, her one-eyed rabbit, was on her side next to Emmy’s face. The hand reached out a long finger, close enough to Emmy’s face that she could see its nails, broken and dirty, in the dark. The finger came to Emmy’s lips, shushing her. Then it wrapped itself in the red ribbon around Rosie’s neck. Emmy watched, paralyzed, as the hand withdrew slowly, Rosie dragged out by her neck, gone into the night.

The tent flap swished and then stilled. Emmy couldn’t bring herself to zip it.

Tears spilled over her cheeks but she held her jaw shut. She squeezed her eyes closed and shrunk into her sleeping bag, concentrating on the sound of her dad’s raspy breath. Blueberry Bear’s fur matted in her sweaty grip, until her fingers relaxed and she fell back asleep.

***

“It was a bad dream honey. You’re not used to sleeping outside,” her mother was saying, pouring coffee out of a silver pitcher into a metal mug. The steam from the coffee curled up like fingers.

“But Rosie is gone!” Emmy felt herself choking back tears and she balled her little hands into fists. “I know it wasn’t a dream.”

“Be a big girl, Em, you’re in Kindergarten now. You have to learn to tell the difference between real and imaginary. Remember? Imaginary things are—?”

Emmy crossed her arms in front of her chest and puffed out an exasperated sigh. Her lips were sealed.

“Emmy?”

“In our heads,” Emmy said finally. She knew the rhythm of that sentence well, but the meaning didn’t take root. How could a long arm be in her head?

“That’s right, imaginary things can feel real but they are not real. Rosie is probably at the bottom of your sleeping bag.”

Emmy forgot to check her sleeping bag, because the day got exciting with other things. A plate of scrambled eggs and bacon. Fishing in the lake with her dad. Collecting sticks and pine cones for the fire. Before she knew it the sun was setting. As the sky went gray she felt her lungs tighten. She tried to stay awake but it was no use.

Eventually, she nodded off in her father’s arms, sitting around the dying campfire as her parents’ lips slowly turned wine purple. He carried her to the tent and lay her in her little pink sleeping bag, tucking in Piggy and Blueberry Bear next to her. He zipped the flap behind him and she woke at the sound.

As soon as she realized where she was, she remembered to check the sleeping bag for Rosie. The light was low in the tent and she felt around her for all her friends. Blueberry Bear was there right by her head, and Piggy she knew by the velvet snout under her fingers. She stretched her toes to the bottom of the sleeping bag until she was sure she felt the corner. But no Rosie.

“Mom!” She screamed. “Mommy!” Mommy usually got the better response.

Her mother’s silhouette appeared at the flap, her curly hair standing up around her head. The zip sounded and her face popped in, backlit by the orange glow of the fire.

“What baby? What is it?”

“Rosie is gone! She’s not in the sleeping bag. She’s not here! The arm was real!”

“Sweetie it’s pitch black in here. You can’t find all your animals in the dark.”

“Mommy can you get the flashlight please? Please, I’m scared. I don’t want to sleep outside anymore.”

Instead of getting the flashlight, her mother slipped off her sneakers and stooped to climb in the tent. She lay on her side next to Emmy’s sleeping bag and rubbed her child’s arm.

“Sweetie we will find everyone in the morning. There’s a lot of stuff in here— our clothes, our pillows, and all these sleeping bags! Rosie didn’t walk away on her own.”

Emmy knew she didn’t walk away. She was stolen.

“Emmy girl,” her dad appeared at the flap. His cheeks were red. “I heard some raccoons rustling around last night, maybe they borrowed your toys for their babies.”

“Raccoon babies?” Emmy’s mind was racing. She knew raccoons had little black hands. Maybe they could have white ones too.

“Rick, don’t tease her,” her mom said, frowning at her dad. He shrugged. “You’re not serious are you? Would raccoons take her toys?”

“Maybe,” said her dad, and Emmy noticed he was using adult tone now, so this was not for her anymore. “They like shiny things, maybe they were attraced to the big eyes? Possible they took it to their den.”

“No. No way.” Her mother looked at her. “Emmy, raccoons did not take Rosie. I’m sure she’s in the tent under our stuff. We’ll find her when we pack up tomorrow.”

***

Again, Emmy woke to a silent night and the shadow outside the tent. She stuffed Piggy into the sleeping bag, slid down inside, and clapped a hand over her own mouth. She didn’t want the hand to touch her face again. Blueberry Bear was just out of her reach, and she dare not go for him.

The zipper teeth clicked open, one by agonizing one, and the white fingers came in like a spider, walking across the tent floor. She heard the each tiny step of its fingers on the nylon sleeping bags. The long white arm seemed to grow, as the hand crawled across Emmy’s legs.

When the tapping stopped, Emmy pictured the hand grabbing onto Blueberry Bear, twisting up in his little t-shirt, and dragging him out through the flap. She knew he was gone.

Emmy cried into her own hand, feeling silent sobs in her chest. She counted to twenty but when she got there she couldn’t remember what was next.

Imaginary things are in our heads. Imaginary things are in our heads.

She thought of the hand crawling into her ear, spider-walking around in her head. She counted to twenty again, and somehow she cried herself to sleep.

***

Emmy woke before her parents. The morning light brightened the inside of the tent, and nothing looked as scary as she remembered. The tent flap was open a couple inches and it moved in the morning breeze. Her eyes were crusty and her head hurt, but she felt a little braver in the daylight.

Immediately she looked to the spot she had last seen Blueberry Bear and he was gone. Piggy was in the crook of her arm, a little sweaty but intact.

She decided to do a thorough search for the others.

Emmy diligently checked around her sleeping bag, unzipping and shaking it out. Her parents didn’t even stir. Emmy put Piggy’s satiny ear in her mouth, a habit she had long outgrown. All her animal babies, slipped out through the tent flap in the night, never to be found again. Her heart ached. She wrapped an arm around Piggy’s head and squeezed. Crawling in between her parents, she tried to wake them, to show them the results of her investigation. After some prodding her mother finally mumbled with her eyes still closed.

“Sweetie please find your coloring book or play with your toys. Be a big girl and let Mommy and Daddy sleep.”

“My animals are gone Mommy, all of them.” Her lip trembled.

Her mother reached toward her without looking, and her hand landed on Piggy. She patted the toy on the top of its head, like a period on a sentence. Emmy wanted to explain that Piggy was the only one left, but she didn’t want to sound like a baby.

Instead, she scooched out of the tent and sat down to put on her shoes. She frowned, never sure which was the correct foot. She tried one way and then the other but they both felt wrong. She finally decided to go on without them, and trudged across the camp site in her white socks.

The sun was higher in the sky and the darkness had retreated to just a few spots under bushes and around tree roots. Emmy didn’t feel scared. She felt brave, like a big girl. Like a Kindergarten kid.

“Next month,” she said out loud to Piggy, “we will ride the bus to school. I don’t know if you can come with me.” She pictured the older kids getting on the yellow bus on the corner. She couldn’t remember if any of them had stuffed animals.

“But I promise I wont lose you. The school day is short and then I come home.”

The grass and leaves were wet with dew, sparkly in the morning light, and she let herself imagine fairies flying around the trees. She saw birds and squirrels and wondered if there really was a family of cute bandit raccoons, snuggled somewhere in a den lined with stuffed animals.

And that’s when she saw a stuffed animal in the mud. It wasn’t one of Emmy’s, but its plastic eyeball shone from the base of a huge tree, in between thick roots and a dark hole leading into the earth. Emmy pinched its ear between her thumb and finger and lifted it out of the dirt. It was filthy, wet and old, but surely evidence of a cache of stuffed animals nearby.

Emmy got down on her belly and inched towards the hole. The raccoons’ den. Her pajamas were smeared with dirt, and she swatted away mosquitos that buzzed her face. She wished she had brought the flashlight. Rosie and Blueberry Bear were inside this hole, and maybe she would even see some baby raccoons. Rescuing her toys all by herself, she knew her parents would be proud.

Silently, from the the tree above, dropped the thin white hand. It craned in on an impossibly long arm that stretched like a strand of spider’s web. It closed around Emmy’s ankle, its cold grip tight as a vice. She was heavier than its other prizes, but the arm was strong. Emmy screamed as she was jerked up into the canopy, but her sound was silenced before her parents even opened their eyes.

A moment later, the hand dropped down once more, scooping up the two stuffed animals and lifting them back into its nest. They were much softer than the new one.