Until At Last I Had a Land of My Own

For all his life, he ran. Through the thick copses of pines and spruce and willows and other monstrous evergreens, Jim ran with not a look behind him: frantic, terrified… pursued… he knew. His small boyish features tortured and despairing as they fought for the center of his round face where tears glistened in the damp and foggy midnight air. Owls hooted an awry: ‘Who?’ The moon hung above on a string of stars. A pitch-black backdrop to a game where Jim sometimes pretended he could connect the dots like in a colouring book; but this night was different. On this night The Man In The Slimy Grey Suit had come once more to pay him a visit. Jim was not a stupid child, not a gullible youth, nor one who took anything at face value, his years were well beyond his age, in fact, it had been at the age of four (two years earlier) when he had dismissed all possible imaginings of a so called Boogie-Man. Children in his class would cry when he used to make up stories of horror which his mind constructed with such relative ease, following in the hallowed footsteps of all his most favorite authors. Then, one long year ago, The Man had shown his face for the first of many times; times which left Jim in a state of shock, paranoia and complete unrest when his mother spoke those awful words: “Its time for bed, sweetie.” His leg caught on a grassy knoll and he collapsed to the muddy ground as his tiny legs pumped harder and harder, trying to outrun his evasive pursuer. He let out a grunt and climbed to his feet, chancing a glance back up the hill towards his home, the way he had come and wiping the mud and grime off his red plaid pajamas and taking-off once again. A large chi-cot blocked his path and he lunged over it hurriedly. Puffing out wisps of fog he came to a meadow-like clearing. On one side lay a swampy ditch of impassable depth and length: reeds and rushes swaying with the cold, cold wind, he knew, and to the other a forest of evergreens which stood like a tall dark harbourer of certain doom, Jim not able to make-out anything more than three feet in, where the moon still claimed dominance over the darkness that lay beyond… whatever that darkness was. Panic filled him as it did every time he came to this crossroad. He knew how this would end. As it always did. He took off into the meadow as he did every time, struggling to catch his breath as he felt it slipping away further and further. But he knew he must run, run and run until he reached the only safe place left when The Man came around. It was nearly winter now. Frost gathered on the fallen barley and wheat, making a crunching sound as his rubber boots impacted the ground, leaving footprints that he knew for some reason would not be there in the morning. Footprints which always led The Man to his safety place, no matter how fast or far Jim ran. He collapsed --again -- his left boot caught in a kind of small sinkhole or bog. Unable to pull his boot free and with more panic rising, precious time slipping away, he removed his boot and continued on with just the one. Left foot freezing in none but a thin white cotton sock. He chanced another glance behind and there he stood: The Man, whatever he was, all clad from head to toe in grayish fleshy plasma that almost seemed to pulse and move as the moonlight shone its phosphorescence, muscles small but taught and still held with strength, long thin neck covered in green capillaries like snakes around a tree. The Man In The Slimy Grey Suit stocked forward, smiling a most unsettling and seemingly timeless smile that spoke of things and events of which no other man in history could boast to have observed. The broken and bleeding black eyes made him look inhuman but everywhere else he was made like a man, with arms and legs and a clean-shaven head. But what else could he be? Jim wondered. Your dreaming, wake-up, wake-up, wake-up! He closed his eyes and took a deep breath then opened them again. The Man was still there, and what was worse, he was ever closer: smiling that smiling smile that smiled like no other smile ever could. He turned and ran, tears a cataract. Five-minutes later Jim climbed to the peek of a grassy hill, trees encompassing the hill in a ring around the base of it. One lone evergreen was posted at the top of the hill next to a large rock like some antediluvian sign marking the only safe place of this world and all its integrity held within the roots of its beginnings. Below the rock was a long steel drainage tube roughly twenty feet long and approximately two feet in diameter, sloped and dug into the ground for a purpose Jim could never think to reason. But it was the perfect size for him. He got his legs in first. Arms bent as he steadied and lowered himself through the mouth of the tube, quickly as he could. He knew he shouldn't but his young naivete forced him to do it, chancing one final glance towards his home, atop the hill adjacent his own, so very far away. And there The Man was… not eight feet away, panting out clouds of white fog and shrouded in St. Elmo’s fire, with long sinewy arms outstretched like claws. Of no volition of his own, his hands let go of the rim of the tube, more tears streaming down his face as he slid down the thirty-foot length of tubing. As he fell his arm caught on a jagged piece of granite that had at some point penetrated the tube. He held his torn arm when he reached the bottom, now streaming life-blood sickeningly from the long and deep red wound. He whimpered and moaned helplessly like a wounded and hunted animal, feeling sick and lost and hopeless. The full-moon still shone at the apex of the tube, almost filling the entire opening, until The Man moved into view, covering it like so many grey clouds on a dark night. His black eyes replaced the moon, now two orbs of swirling chaos and insanity that the sun could not hope to challenge even at its greatest height in the sky. The Man opened his mouth, revealing two rows of tiny, filed-down teeth and a long pointed tongue thick with saliva and greenish-brown ooze dripping from his gums. A long and all-together malign laugh escaped his chapped and scarred lips; croaking like a bullfrog here then cackling like a hyena there, ending in a wispy hiss and broad, ever-present smile. But The Man would never enter the tube, as if it were silver to a werewolf, allergic, or dreaded, or something. The laughing continued, as it always did. The stare continued, as it always did. Driving Jim to shield his ears with his hands and close his eyes, wishing he were at home in bed with his mother -- but she never believed him. Every time he would tell his mother about the dreams he had with The Man In The Slimy Grey Suit she would never believe him, saying: “They would pass with time,” and that, “The Man was not real.” But it was always so vivid. He could feel the cold gulps of air enter his lungs, hear The Man’s bloodcurdling cackle, but he was never able to explain to his mother why the footprints were not there in the morning. He himself remembering the exact path he had taken the night before. Night terrors she called them: a vivid and recurrent nightmare usually brought about by some recent trauma. The psychologist blamed the nightmares on his parents recent split-up, but Jim knew better. He had hardly ever spent anytime with his father even when his parents had been ‘together’ as they called it. His father far too busy seeking other opportunities of possible courtship and whatever other needs his body or mind might have. For hours his mind drifted, his arm still bleeding and his left foot almost numb from the cold. Tears now froze to the sides of his face as consciousness became dimmer and dimmer. Terrified or not, exhaustion took him…