episode 4

He hopped on his bike and skidded fearlessly along the hillside. His speed and dexterity surpassed the old Andrew, even on his best days. As beautiful as it was watching him fly over the rocks, the sight was impossible to appreciate with the wet gurgle of coughing blood sounding from further down. I had to make a choice, and judging by the amount of blood pooling on the rocks below, I had to make it fast. I could go down the treacherous slope and lift my son into my arms. I could drag him to the hospital, burning through my energy and savings in the vain fight toward a subnormal life. I could explain to Amy that I had lied to her, and that it was my fault that our life would never be the same. And if after all that Andrew were still to die, then I know she would leave me and I would have nothing left. ―Don‘t worry Dad. We‘re going to win next time. I promise.‖ Or I could turn around and leave with … with what? Watching him race up and down the hills, the answer was obvious. I could turn around and leave with my son, and none of this will have ever happened. ―I‘ll be right there,‖ I said. ―First one home gets ice cream for dinner.‖ Climbing up the hill after Andrew – after my son – it wasn‘t as hard as I thought it would be. It was abject relief to see his beaming face waiting for me at the top. The only hard part was when I had already lost sight of the ravine and was headed home, only to hear a voice dissipating on the wind behind me. ―Please don‘t go. I need you Dad.‖ I gripped my son‘s hand – my new son – and held on tight all the way home. For the next few weeks, I wouldn‘t let Andrew out of my sight. I drove him to school instead of letting him take the bus. I picked him up for lunch, then again when school got out, taking him to his favorite places and spending all of my time helping him practice. I was trying my best to be a good father, and trying even harder not to think about what that meant. I thought about going back to the ravine to at least bury the body, but every time I began to work up enough courage to face that broken corpse, my new son seemed to appear wanting to spend time with me. By the end of the first month, life had gone back to normal and it was like nothing ever happened. The new Andrew was identical to the old, even sharing the same memories, and habits, and everything. By the second month, I‘d even forgotten that horrible day ever passed, although sometimes the echo of those words being torn by the wind still slip into my brain as I lay down to sleep at night. I need you Dad. But I was a good father. I did everything for my boy, and I knew he was going to repay me by becoming the best biker the world had ever seen. It wasn‘t until Andrew was 12 years old when I began to notice behavioral anomalies that I couldn‘t explain. But surely the real Andrew – I mean the old Andrew – he would have had his own changes by this age. I tried to tell myself that he was just starting to go through puberty, but even Amy began to feel that something wasn‘t right. ―Do you know what I caught Andrew doing last night?‖ she told me one morning over breakfast. ―He‘s going to be a teenager soon. I‘m sure I don‘t want to know.‖ 51 Sleepless Nights ―He was eating a bug!‖ she declared. ―A big shiny cockroach. Just munching it right up, looking as proud as a kitty cat who caught his first mouse.‖ Then there was the rustling outside our window late at night. A dozen separate occasions I must have heard it – like someone was in the bushes watching us. Amy wanted me to check it out, but I just kept imagining Andrew running through the field like a wild creature, biting the heads off animals or digging up worms. I think I was happier not knowing.

It wasn‘t just that either. Some nights we‘d catch him awake at four in the morning, face an inch from the mirror, just staring at himself and giggling. Another time he had a butterfly knife – God knows where he got it – and was peeling away the skin on the back of his hand. He‘d exposed a strip of bloody muscle and tendons running all the way from the tip of his finger running halfway up his forearm. I took the knife away and demanded what he was doing, but all he said was: ―Just curious what goes on under there, Dad.‖ He grinned when he said Dad, stressing the word like it was our shared secret. Neither of us had ever mentioned that day on the hillside, but it felt like he not only remembered, but was actively using it to blackmail me. The worst was when he was trying to get something out of me, like when he decided he needed a laptop. I told him to wait for his birthday and turned to leave, but then he replied with: ―Please don‘t go. I need you Dad.‖ Those words were burned into my subconscious like a trigger.

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