The first short story from Small Matters. If you like it, why not check out the rest of the book? Faces In the Wall Tommy’s bedroom was done in fake wood paneling, the kind that’s supposed to look like pine. When he lay in his bed and looked at the wall next to it, the whorls and knots sometimes looked like faces. He first noticed them when he was five years old. It wasn’t a scary thing, though sometimes there were monstrous faces, demon faces, there in the fake wood paneling. It was a secret thing, his secret thing, like the stone steps that cut into the hill down the street, almost hidden in spring by the tall grass. Walking to the brick schoolhouse on top of the hill, he and his cousin Joe would go up the crooked stones. Joe said the steps were made by trolls, long ago. The faces in his bedroom wall were like that. Secret. Fun. He watched the faces in his wall at night, and tried not to listen to his parents fight. He did like Telly and Big Bird said on Sesame Street, and used his imagination. He made up stories for the wall people, while out in the rest of the house his father came home late and drunk again, and his mother screamed that she’d had enough of his crap again, and something got broken or thrown across the living room. Just above Tommy’s face were the Maiden and the Troll, two of his oldest wall people. The troll lived in a cave deep in the woods. He was big (Tommy knew the troll was even bigger than his daddy, and if the troll told his daddy to sit down and shut up, he would in a second), and he looked scary, with his little eyes and crooked teeth like fangs, but he had a secret. The secret was that he wasn’t scary at all. He liked to read, and play chess by mail with a gnome from over by the closet wall, and he never killed anything. The troll was a good troll, but everyone judged him by his looks. And that, Tommy knew, was a mean thing to do, though everyone did it. The maiden was very beautiful. Even more beautiful than Tommy’s mommy. She had long blonde hair that fell in heavy curls to her waist, and big blue eyes, and she always smiled even though her family was poor. She came into the woods near the troll’s cave to get water from a spring, for her family. The spring bubbled out of Tommy’s wall right next to where his hand lay when he was asleep. Sometimes she only came and filled her jug and left. But other times she would sit awhile, and sing songs of love lost, and sailing ships, and the kings and queens of Elfland. And the troll, so hideous and so kind, would listen to her soft voice from the shadows just inside the entrance of his cave, which sat just below the shelf where Tommy kept his favorite toys and books. Tommy felt bad for the troll. He loved the maiden who came to his spring, but she would never love him. He knew from listening to his parents and the stuff they watched on television when he was supposed to be asleep that beautiful people didn’t love ugly people. Ugly people were either to laugh at or to be frightened of. That was how the whole world worked. Tommy rolled over on his side, just a small seven year old boy in tan cargo shorts and a plain white T-shirt. He let his eyes drift over the bedroom wall, which was lumpy in some places and just gone in others. There was a part of the wall down near the floor where he could see the yellow light of the naked bulb down in the basement, and sometimes he wondered what might live down there. Nothing good, of that he was sure. He trailed his hand along the soft not-wood of his bedroom wall, surveying his own small kingdom. There was a pack of goblins, kind of like snarling dogs with people faces. A kindly lion, a shaggy wizard with smiling eyes, ghosts made of smoke. Men and women and little children, some with names he knew and some he didn’t. He loved them, his wall people. He loved them, and they loved him, and they didn’t spend their time looking for some reason to be mad at him, like his daddy. Something broke out in the kitchen or the living room, and Tommy closed his eyes. Slurred, incoherent words bellowed out of his daddy’s mouth as he stumbled into something and fell. His mommy screamed that she was serious this time, she was calling the cops, she’d had enough. Someone new had appeared on the wall when he opened his eyes again. Her hair was a length of midnight, one eye twinkling with good humor- the other was covered with a patch made from a dark knot in the fake wood paneling. A tri-corner hat sat jauntily on her head. A naked sword was tucked into the big leather belt she wore low on her hips. Her small hands were planted on those hips, and she was laughing as if she’d just heard the funniest thing in the world. And behind her, oh could it be? Yes, there was her ship, the Will o’ the Wisp, most dreaded vessel of the Westwall Sea. Tommy knew her name just as soon as he saw her, though she was new to the wall and he’d never seen her before. Esmeras, Queen of the Westwall. She stole the treasures of fat, greedy kings, and brought them to the people of the wall who needed it most. She could wield a fiddle as well as she could a sword, always ready for a song or a fight. And more than anything, she would love a little boy of her own, to sail with her on all kinds of adventures. In the living room, in the real world, one of mommy’s porcelain figurines fell from the coffee table and shattered on the floor. A scream, followed by the bullish roaring of Tommy’s daddy. The real world, Tommy thought, is where the real monsters live. Esmeras smiled at him, and behind her the tall sails of the Will o’ the Wisp flapped like fresh laundry in a summer breeze. Tommy could smell the tangy salt air of the sea, could hear fat white gulls screeching and wheeling in the sky. Adventure was waiting. When the pirate queen’s small hand came through the wall, transformed from the color of fake pine paneling to the soft, creamy white of flesh, Tommy didn’t hesitate for a second. Smiling, he took it in his own, and sailed off to find his fortune.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 12:12:49 +0000
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