Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

Jeremy by R. M. Kinder

R. M. Kinder is the author of a number of published short stories including a collection entitled Sweet Angel Band, the winner of last year’s Willa Cather fiction contest. As far as we know, this is the author’s first suspense piece, a vivid and memorable depiction of the genesis of a chilling crime...

More than anything else, the five-year-old boy wanted to be touched, but he didn’t actually know that. He felt it, a longing that made him draw near to his mother whenever she stood or sat still, which was rarely. Then he would wait a few inches away and if she didn’t seem tired or angry, which he recognized again by a sense he was too small to identify, he would eventually lean into her, or sit by her feet. Once, when he had been able to sit near her for a longer time than usual, while she spoke with a visiting neighbor, he had gently taken her hand and when she did not immediately pull it away, he had been so overcome with a pleasant feeling that he had kissed the back of the hand.

“For God’s sake, Jeremy,” she had said, “that’s sickening.”

He sometimes thought of that day, and felt her words, and it made him keep his distance as he knew he was supposed to do. He knew never to approach her when someone else was in the house. She was a busy woman and he understood busy very well.

He learned to cherish every gift she gave, and he thought they were many. “My mother makes me eat breakfast,” he told another child at kindergarten, and then enumerated each item he had eaten for dinner the night before and for breakfast just that morning. He tested her sometimes, going outside without a coat, or leaving part of his milk, or not brushing his teeth, and he would hear, “Jeremy,” and feel relief that she loved him enough to notice. He would turn back to complete his part of the communion, mimicking the angry walk of other boys.

She liked him to read, and he made a bond with her that when his father was home and Jeremy was not to watch the terrible shows on television, he could stay in the room if his eyes were down. He had a small reclining chair which she had herself upholstered, and he would rest his elbows on the arms and hold the book squarely before him, reading only enough to respond if she were to ask him what he read, and faithfully turning a page every few minutes.

Sometimes his father said, “Jeremy, want to...” and completed it with things Jeremy might have enjoyed, a trip to the store, a walk, an ice cream. Sometimes Jeremy did go with his father, but along came the uncomfortable awareness of her at home alone, impatient, announcing when they arrived how long-they had taken. If she came, it was worse. He might at any moment do something terribly wrong, spill ice cream on his clothing or the floor, sit in a ridiculous way. He preferred the comfort of the little recliner, an arm on each side, his eyes focused on one world, his ears on another. Other children occasionally had babysitters, he knew, and he thought that strange, that parents would risk their child to just anyone, which his mother had never done and would never do.

He became very adept at looking at one place and being in another, at taking his love and pleasure from nooks and crannies no one else knew.

When he was eight, she doled out chores and freedoms, since he was a big boy now. He came home right after school and she would assign the next few minutes, to sweep the porch, carry out the trash, stack the week’s newspapers in the garage. She never gave him too much to do, and when guests came she would introduce him and he would hear his name in their conversation, what he did, how well he did it. She urged him to play and named the boys she liked, and he would straggle down the street, stand in some yard, join in some game. He played the way she would have wanted him to, neatly, fairly. She bought him a watch so he wouldn’t come home too early or too late.

When she touched or kissed his father, or just sat beside him, Jeremy would watch without looking, intensely, feeling himself there between them, in them, and fearing discovery so that he sat rigid until they separated.

“What’s wrong with you,” his father said once, and Jeremy couldn’t speak because he wasn’t back together yet.

As he grew older he learned what this was, this leaving of himself, and he practiced in his room at night. First, he tried only his hands. He closed his eyes and tried to withdraw his fingers as from a glove. When he succeeded, it was in a dream, and he woke panicked and sweaty because he had been unable to slide back in. But as he was whole, capable of touching the blanket and turning on the lamp, the fear eased and he flexed his hands to rest them. Each night then, unless he was tired, he withdrew more and more from himself. He never left his room though, even when he knew he could, that he could grip the doorknob and turn it and stand listening. He learned to do it even while he read, and then, much later, to let the other read. Sometimes they looked at one another, and he grew accustomed to that face shaped much like his father’s, to the dour expression much like his mother’s. “Can you talk?” he asked, and heard the simple, “Yes,” with which he himself would have responded. He approved of the grace and restraint of the other.

They talked. Not often, but enough so that Jeremy understood their desires were not the same. Jeremy could see no reason to leave this place, though he admitted they would have to some day. Once he fell asleep with the light on and woke in complete darkness to hear, “I want to go now. I can’t stay here any longer.” The voice was so terribly sad that Jeremy threw back the covers and stumbled toward the sound. He felt his hand taken and himself drawn near, and was so touched that he stood there embracing the other till he realized they had joined again. “Come back out,” he said, but nothing happened. “Please.” He lay down and closed his eyes. “You don’t have to be ashamed,” he said. “Not with me.”

Each night now he woke to sobbing and he whispered reassurances that they would leave.

“When?”

“Soon,” he said. “I have to think where, how.”

“We just leave. I could, go now. No one would know.”

“No. Don’t. You can’t go without me.”

“But I can. I did.”

Jeremy turned on the light. The other was seated across the room, heavier, a dark stubble on his cheeks. He glanced quickly at Jeremy and then at the floor.

“I went into the hall one night. Tonight I went outside.”

“Out of the house?”

“Into the garage.”

“You didn’t.”

“Your father backs the car in.”

“Promise me you won’t do it again. Promise.”

“I won’t.”

“You won’t go, or you won’t promise?”

The other didn’t answer. He stood, and his height surprised Jeremy, who watched himself move toward the bed slowly, and lean down close and fade inside. “Answer me,” Jeremy said to the empty room.

Jeremy taped the door shut and fought sleep to hold the other in. But some mornings the tape was broken and he knew from his own exhaustion how far he must have gone.

“Are you slipping out at night?” his father asked. “You look like you’ve got a hangover.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course he’s not slipping out. He wouldn’t do that. Would you?”

“No,” he said. He woke that night to find his bedroom door open, and he rushed into the hallway whispering, “Get back here. Get back here now.” His parents’ door was open and he stepped inside, saw the shadow in the chair across the room. He didn’t dare speak, didn’t dare look toward the bed. He gestured, pleaded with his mind, backed out quietly when the other stood.

“What were you doing?” he said, when they were back in his room. “My God. In their bedroom. What if they had wakened?”

“Let them. Do them both good.” He lay down where Jeremy usually lay. “I don’t like them, you know.”

Jeremy stood quietly a moment. Then he lay down, too. “I know,” he said. “I wish you did, but I understand.”

Jeremy could do nothing to keep him from his parents’ room. He would wake, aware of danger, to hurry to the hallway so he could be nearby if they awoke. The other was coarser now to Jeremy, and seemed larger even than himself. He said terrible things, sometimes using Jeremy’s own lips.

“I could kill them,” he said once, in a soft voice. “And no one would know.”

“I would.”

The other laughed with Jeremy’s voice.

Jeremy knew when it was going to happen. In the kitchen his eyes were caught by the glint of knives; outside, by stones. When he tied the newspapers in the garage, his hands braided the twine thicker, knotted it. “Oh don’t,” he whispered.

“I need to leave,” he told his mother.

“What do you mean, leave? Dinner will be ready in ten minutes.”

“I mean leave the house. Move away.”

“When the right time comes, I’ll help you do just that. But that’s a year or two in the future.”

He took hammer and nails from his father’s tool chest, put the nails in his pocket, the hammer in his waistband. He put them in his dresser. “Shut up,” he said.

When dinner was over and his parents sat in the living room before the television, he went to his room and closed the door. He pushed and tapped the nails in. Every now and then he would kick the door lightly to mask a final drive of the hammer. It still took a long time.

He had to leave, but he didn’t know how.

He heard them go to bed. He didn’t undress or turn out the light, but he got under the covers. He kept his eyes open, but it didn’t work. He tried to hold the other in, then pull him back. He threw his arms around the thick chest and tugged, but was shaken off. The hammer was taken up, the nails jerked out wildly, and Jeremy raced down the hall, finally even yelling, “Stop, stop, for God’s sake stop,” but there was nothing he could do. He wasn’t big enough or strong enough. He was thrown out of the room and the door shut in his face. When it opened again, he didn’t need to see what was in there. He had heard it. He followed himself through the kitchen, into the garage. “Come back,” he said. “Come back.” He stood there a long time. Then he went in the kitchen and wiped up the floor and folded the rag neatly on the washer. He took his father’s keys from the wall hook and returned to the garage. He started the motor. He lay down in the seat to wait for the other to return.