The Total Undoing of BIlly McMerton

Supernatural Stories | Mar 13, 2012 | 16 min read
32 Votes, average: 4 out of 5
Supernatural Stories

The Total Undoing of BIlly McMerton

Her name was Harriet Freedman, but no one had actually ever seen her alive.

Not standing in line with a half-full cart, waiting to check out at the Piggly Wiggly.  Not a-giggling and gossiping (shooting the shit) at the Tint and Snip as she got her hair colored the specialty of the house (a strange shade of purplish-grey).  No, Harriet Freedman of 69 Hunts Point Circle was no more to anyone than an address on a map. Her neighbors had never seen her.  Not once.  Never in all the years she had lived there (and if you took a poll, there would be no consensus on just how long that had been).  Not picking up The Herald, or watering her lawn (mostly dead) or handing out razor-laced apples on Halloween night.  The heavy damask curtains were always drawn; no lights ever glowed in the six over sixes.   No smoke ever wafted from her chimney boasting a warmth that was centered within.  Not a single flower bloomed in the earth's pewter hue, which bordered a house made of dirt-colored bricks.

So how, you may be asking yourself, did anyone even know that she existed?

Well, the only sign of life (if it could be a sign) was the placement of a 12-inch tall ceramic garden Gnome with a painted red hat and one winking eye.  For years (though no one could swear just how many) the Gnome had stood in her yard.

Just not always in the same location.

Sometimes he (it) was on the front stoop; sometimes he (it) was near the scraggily pines to the left of the front door; sometimes he (it) was hiding beneath the draped bay window; sometimes in the middle of the walk as if waiting on a bus that would never arrive in this life or the next.  No one ever saw her move the pottery piece  – never saw a flash of a housedress as she swooped out in the wee to alter its place.  But it did move, just the same.

Billy McMerton knew it for a fact.

He had watched it move from the second story window of 68 Hunts Point Circle, the red bricked Colonial across the street from the Gnome.  No, that isn't entirely correct.  Billy never actually saw the actual movement, he only noted the new locations whenever they occurred.  He kept a record of them in fact, in a series of charts and graphs like an astronomer marking the arc of a star.  Going back – how many years?  7 at least.  Yes, since he was four years old when he'd first asked his mother about the Gnome.  But his mother, like so many these days, was too preoccupied with tennis lessons and Pilates classes and lunch duty and re-doing the kitchen that she dismissed Billy's query, leaving him to his own devices and fancies.  Perhaps, if she had taken a few moments out from looking at granite samples things might have turned out differently?

Perhaps.

But, there's no use crying over spilt milk (or blood) and the granite she chose did bring out the richer tones of the new cherry cabinets.

Everyone said so.

So the four-year-old Billy began on that day – (with the new crayon set he had recently gotten) - to keep a record chronicling the "phenomenon".  He drew pictures and graphs, charts and patterns, observed and recorded from one year to the next until every inch of his walls was thick as a duck plucker's wick with the work.

The Gnome, and by association, Harriet Freedman, became the (now) 11 year old's obsession; while other children, "regular" children, were fixated on gadgets and gizmos or the latest viral video nothing sparked Billy's imagination like Harriet and the Gnome.  To Billy she was Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and the Abominable Snowman all combined and he somehow knew that capturing her (and it) in the act would change the course of his destiny – like catching Santa red handed with his sleigh and his sack or the Tooth Fairy's hand as it went for a tooth (Billy still believed in Santa and such as no one had told him the truth of the thing.)

Now if Billy's mother or father (a lawyer) had stopped and thought about it for more than a tick, they might have become concerned over Billy's lack of friends or how much time he spent sitting upstairs in his paper covered (Gnome covered) room.  But Billy's father was busy making Partner and with the kitchen completed the dining room really did have to be re-done (it was obvious to everyone in his mother's book club).  And there always seemed to be another party or luncheon or committee meeting or baby shower or ski weekend or "mommy's time out"; always another report or letter or e-mail or brief or text or tweet that had to be returned, re-read, deleted or sent, that neither parent really seemed to notice.

Billy was a "good" boy.

He was quiet.

He never kicked a dog in the head or set fire to a cat and they would have sworn (if someone had asked them to) that Billy would never, ever play doctor with the Albright girl next door (and they would have been right about that).  It wasn't their fault, surely.  No one had ever said to them "what are you going to do about Billy?"  Certainly if someone had said something that darkly ominous they would have taken some action (if they could have found the time).  But no one did.  So they (his parents) were exonerated from all responsibility.  And, after all - they would say later - how could anyone have seen what was coming?  Instead, with nothing to stop him, Billy (the good and the quiet) sat in his room and stared at the Gnome out his double-hung window from the house ‘cross the street.

Once, he (Billy) had tried to pinpoint the sequence and location of each of the Gnome's positions for an entire year to see if, once charted, the pattern might reveal a hidden message to him.  Perhaps the old woman, for reasons only she could know or understand, was using the Gnome as a means of communication,.  Perhaps the Gnome and its positions were a three dimensional version of Morse Code with Harriet just waiting for someone to answer her plea (although Billy was unsure how he would be able to do so, knowing full well that his mother would not tolerate a Gnome in their yard).   He spent hour upon painstaking hour completing the task. But when he had finished, once it was all together he couldn't make hide nor hair out of thing, unable to decipher its hidden meaning - like an archaeologist uncovering hieroglyphs from a people long dead with stories now lost.  Every now and again, Billy would pull out the document and stare at the pages, hoping to unlock its secrets and crack the code.   But it was all a wasted exercise.

Once he tried to get a view of the Freedman's back yard.  He traveled down the block, making his way between the houses until he came to the Peretti's (whose house sat right behind "ground zero").  But they had a snarling 60 pound German shepherd mix (Rupert) that lived outside and looked at Billy as if he were a life-sized chew toy that he would like to play with then discard in a hole he had already dug for the occasion.  Billy abandoned that idea, disappointed to be sure, now knowing that any breech into enemy territory would have to be by frontal attack.  (Unless, of course, Rupert had an accident).

 

At this time, at the end of his 11th year, as Billy's 12th birthday approached and the changes that would take him from boy to man were ravaging his body (from Billy to William or Will) the Gnome began to command the boy/man's attention not only when he was awake.  These days the Gnome loomed large in his dreams.

Now Billy had dreams, like most young boys, of pirate kings and talking cars and there had been, for a brief time in the summer of his 8th year, the dream of the man with button eyes who would come to Billy's window and whisper "button, button who's got the button" - but that was only for a few weeks and then the button man, presumably having found the lost object, went away as quickly as he had come.  The Gnome Dreams were different.  They were vivid.  They were intense.   In some, Billy would find himself on the Freedman's front stoop, firmly bound at his ankles and wrists, while across the street near Billy's front door the Gnome would stand silently beckoning him.  Billy would know that he had to get to the other side, that it was vital for him to do so, but the space between them was a river of tomato soup (for the record, tomato was Billy's least favorite of all the soups) and Billy never learned how to swim (there just was never enough time).  So Billy would sit in terror, bound on the porch while a river the color of blood flowed by.  In some of the dreams, Billy laid on the dry/dead grass of the Freedman's pillaged front lawn while the Gnome whispered close of wicked Gnome things that wormed in his mind and stiffened his groin.

He awoke from one such dream on the eve of his 12th birthday, sweaty and sticky and throbbing and squeezed.  Outside his window a bird perched and trilled on a neighboring branch.  It was entirely black from beak to back, save for two stripes on the sides of its wings – one red, one yellow (the same colors as the Gnome, noted Billy, still only half awake).  The bird looked right at the boy and trilled a throaty song.  He repeated himself (herself? itself?) as if trying to make the boy understand; as if the black bird had come to this tree near this window at this time for one purpose and one purpose only.  To tell Billy….no, to warn Billy; warn the boy in his dark bird way.  Once that thought had occurred to the lad (the instant that it did) the creature flew across the street and landed directly on the Gnome's pointed cap.  It was at that moment that Billy understood with terrifying clarity that all of this time he hadn't been watching the Gnome.

All this time the Gnome had been watching him.

Billy closed his Venetian blinds for the first time in over seven years, turning them up so tight that not even a sliver of the night sky could slip through.  He got into his bed, put a pillow over his head and prayed to see his way to daylight.  With the sun high in the new-day sky he would figure out what actions to take.

If it wasn't too late.

If the damage hadn't already been done.

The next morning he didn't go to school.  His mother in her pink and white tennis dress, blew him a kiss – not even taking the time to feel his forehead - noting how sorry she was that she couldn't stay with him (she was just so busy) but there was soup in the new walk-in pantry (tomato!) and peanut butter and "call later" and "love you" and she was gone.

Billy got out of bed and parted one of the blinds.  He saw a streak of black as his mother's SUV squealed out of the drive.  After she passed, Billy noted that the Gnome had moved sometime during the night.  When the bird had come to Billy, the Gnome had been near a half-barrel with rusted bands and mounds of dirt.  The Gnome now stood just to the right of the front door, on the porch and under the eaves.  Billy let the blind close and began to catalogue his options.  One such was breaking in.  He could approach on the Gnome's blind side making his way to the garage.  The garage door was one of those old-fashioned kinds that lifted by hand with a lever in the front.  Billy was small so if he could lift the door just about 7 inches or so he would be able to roll under before shutting the thing (and before the Gnome could see?).  From there he could slip a bony arm through the entry that (inevitably) linked the garage to the house, deftly removing the chain that kept the door from fully opening.  Then it would only be a matter of crossing the threshold and going inside.

It was here that Billy's strategizing stopped.  All of this time he had speculated about the exterior of the Freedman's house – hoping to see Harriet outside, the alternate positions of the Gnome and how it was done and what it might all mean.  He hadn't ever considered what the inner workings might be, the where or the what that was happening inside.  He had no idea what to expect or how to prepare for what he would encounter.    And the only way to do that was to understand Harriet's part in all of this.

If she had one, Billy now suddenly thought.  If she was still alive.

Perhaps the Gnome, thought Billy for the first time, was merely patrolling the perimeter and protecting his prize.  Perhaps he had been watching Billy as if to say, "look at me, look at what I have done!"  The notion of Harriet Freedman's rotting (by now rotten) corpse in the kitchen or rec room or stuffed in the dryer set Billy's mind whirling – a tornado of thought.  More so, if the Gnome was capable of that and no one suspected, who's to say that Billy and his home (his family) might not be the next in line?  Would they be slaughtered, never to be found, with a 12 inch sentinel out front for all time?

What if the Gnome didn't stop with them?  What if – once exposed – his assailant would make his way down Hunt's Point Circle, dispatching the inhabitants one by one?

If Billy had a gun - a high-powered one with an infra-red scope - he could shoot the Gnome under cover of darkness – get him in his sites and obliterate the creature into a million shattered bits of fried clay.  But Billy didn't have a gun – not of any kind – and he had never fired one either, so he'd probably miss and then the Gnome would know.  And what about Harriet?  If she wasn't so much dust and bone under her La-Z-Boy recliner she might herself have a rifle trained to take off the top of Billy's head without so much as a how-do-you-do.

He began to pace from one room to the next – past paint chips and drop cloths and swatches and stuff – through the (second) new kitchen, skipping the soup entirely (in addition to not sleeping, Billy had pretty much stopped eating).  The puppy (Edgar) followed at a safe distance, relatively assured that no crumbs would be his.     Maybe, Billy thought, he should call someone?  But Billy couldn't imagine whom.  Not his parents, certainly.  They had never taken any interest in Harriet or the Gnome (and not too much in Billy, come to think of it).  It was quite clear to the lad that his parents would be the last people who would know what to do in a crisis like this.  The police?  FBI?  Homeland Security?  But Billy figured one small boy's concern of his neighbor's garden Gnome would not elicit a high-priority response.

That left him alone with just the knowledge now inside him, devouring the boy

in an insatiable feast.  Billy had always been an outsider.  Perhaps the universe had done that intentionally – kept him secluded and sequestered in a world of his own making, grooming the boy for something much larger - something like this.  Billy was a lone wolf, and it was up to him to save them all.

Back in his room Billy began to pull everything from his walls; every chart and graph and picture and theory, from crayon to marker, color to black against white, piecing them together from one end to the last.  Where they would lead, Billy was not quite sure – only knew that this time, this time they would tell him something.  He let his instincts dictate which page went where, dropping and arranging the puzzle at will.  Out his bedroom door, down the Berber covered hall, descending the staircase to the front vestibule.  Through the living room with its imitation Ming vases and perfectly puffed pillows, down another hall, which ended at his father's dark paneled study.  The door was closed.

Billy wasn't ever allowed into the study.  It was his father's sanctuary and "not a place for children".   Billy had seen the room, of course – when the new desk chair arrived and his mother asked Billy to hold the door for the movers.  And, occasionally, Billy was sent to knock on the door and tell his father that the martinis were waiting or the Baxters had arrived.  But that was only for the briefest of seconds. Billy had seen the space, oh yes.  But Billy had never, ever, been in the space.

He hesitated at the door, knowing that he shouldn't enter.  This was the sort of action that could invite actual punishment.  But the pages – the charts and graphs and endless Gnome pictures had all told him to come to this place.  Billy was as certain of that as he was of anything else – of the bird and the Gnome and the Tomato Soup River.  He took a deep breath, twisted the knob and entered within.

The study was quiet and warm and smelled of importance.  Billy – who had only ever given the space a perfunctory glance – let his eyes drift slowly around the hallowed room. The walls glowed a deep rich mahogany, the desk a gleaming ship moored in the center.  Knick Knacks and bric-a brac in fine masculine forms adorned built-in shelves and kept slim volumes company.  A plush Oriental flowed from one end to the other in just the right shades of earthen tones, past the paneled walls and the shelves of books, the dust-free desk and the sun streaming bright.

Billy crept to the window, pulled aside the half-open shutter and looked.  The Freedman place could clearly be seen and he hoped to understand what had lead him to this.  But to his utter surprise the Gnome was gone.

It wasn't on the porch under the eaves where it had last been seen.  It wasn't beneath the scraggily pines; not under the bay window or next to the half rusted barrel or on the sidewalk waiting for a bus that would never arrive.  Billy opened the bottom shutters wider to get a better look but - for the first time in all the years he had been watching - the Gnome was had just vanished like a thief in the night.

That's when the panic started, like an unseen bug inching its way up under his skin.  If the Gnome wasn't there, could the Gnome already be here; in the basement or the attic or a Lazy Susan cupboard, hiding away just lying in wait?  Billy ran to make sure all the doors were bolted – the front, the side, and the sliding doors in the back. Along the way he flung open the curtains and shutters and shades, thinking that from a different vantage point he might catch a glimpse of red and yellow peeking out beneath unkempt foliage.  Downstairs, upstairs – even with his binoculars, but the Gnome wasn't there.  Billy searched every crack and crevice, opened every cupboard and door, looked under every sofa and settee and duvet covered bed but the Gnome was no more.  Billy went back to his room, closed the door and prayed on his knees.  That night he had another dream and in the dream was the Gnome and the Gnome was he, with black bird wings and a winking eye, pecking on the corpse of Harriet Freedman.

 

The next morning Billy awoke as his mother flew on by ("Nails done, then lunch, back later, bye-bye").  He crept cautiously to his sill and peered out.  Harriet Freedman's yard was still empty of any adornment.  Billy knew that the Gnome had a plan and if Billy and his family were to survive then he had to take action – take action today.

He was almost a man.  "A fine young man" someone recently said and fine young man did things.  They took action.  They made history.    Billy liked history.

Into the laundry room he flew.   Inside the room stood the side-by-side front-loading washer/dryer combination.  Billy never felt any affinity for the washer – perhaps there were too many cycles, as if the machine couldn't make up its mind on what it wanted to be.  By the dryer did.  It was an Electrolux 27" Perfect Steam Gas Dryer with a Luxury-Dry System, and Wave-Touch Controls in a metallic finish called "Turquoise Sky".  It was easily, in Billy's opinion (though no one had asked him), the most beautiful thing in the house.  But it was more than that, more than sleek lines and engineered grace.  The dryer had a sense of purpose.  It was reliable.  It gave off warmth and a soothing, soft hum like a mother's womb that never failed to calm Billy's nerves and set his mind right whenever it grew jumbled (which happened with increasing frequency these days).  Chances were that if Billy wasn't keeping vigil with the Gnome he could be found here.

If anyone had been looking.

But they hadn't.

Billy, the good and quiet, the strange and sad Billy, would come in with his favorite blanket, set the controls to "fluff dry", pull up a chair in front of the door and gaze into the portal like the eye of God.  Then – shwof, shoop bwompf swhof the dryer would steadily and gently do its business in a way that seemed to say – to Billy at least – "it's all good it will all be fine there's nothing there's nothing there's nothing to fear" But not today.

Perhaps, if his mother had gone with the Bosch instead, things would have turned out differently.  But the Bosch only came in a white finish, and a laundry room should be much more fun, shouldn't it?  (and what could be more fun than "Turquoise Sky"?).  Billy went about his routine in the usual way, with the blanket and the fluff and the chair and the eye.  But today the dryer had a different tale to tell.

Today the dryer told him there was plenty to fear.  ("plenty, yes plenty, yes plenty to fear…")

And Billy listened as he watched his childhood float and fluff, hearing and knowing what had to be done.  69 Hunts Point Circle was the epicenter - the portal from which the Gnome's power came.  Destroy it and you destroy the Gnome.   "destroy it and destroy the gnome destroy it and destroy the gnome shwof, shoop bwompf swhof." No more watching, no more waiting, no more graphs or charts or dark bird dreams.

Into the garage Billy/William/Will flew.  He grabbed his bike that he had rarely used (a Guru's Magis, handmade in Canada), grabbed the box of Fourth of July sparklers, a gas can in the basket and some odds and some ends.  Billy worked feverishly with duct tape and plant food and batteries and sweat, building his creation that was aimed to destroy.

When he was done he stood back to look at his labor.  It was not as beautiful as the Electrolux, not by far, but it had a certain grandeur – a sense of self-importance equal to the task at hand and Billy felt – for the first time in his life – that he was a fine young man, a fine young man indeed.

He found the button to open the door and pressed.  Slowly the garage door drew itself up, spilling sunbeams on the painted concrete floor, silhouetting Billy against the green-manicured lawn.  And there, across the street, on the Freedman's front porch – stood the Gnome.

If Billy had stopped to think, he might have concluded that he was doing exactly what the Gnome wanted him to do -  that the Gnome had manipulated him to this very moment.

If the Gnome could think.

If the Gnome could want.

If the Gnome were more than porcelain and paint.

But Billy didn't stop.  Billy didn't think.  Billy had a purpose now and a destiny to fulfill.

He strapped on a helmet (safety first!) and lit all the sparklers in dazzling array (setting off the smoke alarm to boot).  He mounted the Fizik's tri-specific saddle and gripped the Profile's aero bars.  He focused his eyes on Harriet Freedman's front door and shot out of the garage like a thoroughbred spurred by a starting pistol.  Down the drive, across the asphalt gaining momentum, smoke trailing, head bowed, pedals pumping billy, billy, billy, billy over the curb and up her front walk, like a big black bird with blackbird wings – past parched grass and gnarled trees onwards and upwards towards the house and the Gnome.

And then he was there, there at the door, with the Gnome and the gas and the sparklers and the smoke and the wrench and the crack as he slammed into wood in a spectacularly, blindingly, brilliant display.

Everyone who was home, they would later say, heard the eruption as the brittle old house ignited.   Many thought – "as sure as shootin'" - that the terrorists had finally come to Hunts Point Circle.  But that was silly.  A silly, silly thought, for it was only Billy, the quiet nice fine young man who lived across the street.

Nimble and sure-footed, the fire ate, it gorged, it consumed the Freedman place (although no one would be sad to see it go).  Not sated, the fire monster leapt off of that house and onto the Curran's to the right and the Murray's to the left.  Snarling and smacking and hiss hiss hiss hissing.   A huge double ash with a rotted out core went up in a flash; the large upper half falling into the Peretti's back yard and directly on top of Old Rupert, who sat and stared at the sky with his right-cocked head until the limb split him in two.

Seventeen houses in all would be damaged.  6 people killed or wounded.  One dog (Rupert), two cats and a pet iguana named Syd.  And Billy?  Billy was gone in a pyre of his own making.  Not a trace of him was ever found.

Nor any of Harriet, for that matter.

Later, much later – after sirens and hoses and shock and rage – after accusations and invectives and sifting on through, the only thing found at the scene – the only recognizable object, that is, was a garden Gnome.  12 inches high with a red pointed cap and one winking eye.

The fireman that found it took it home with him.

He had a daughter that loved Gnomes.

She will name it "Billy". And it will sit, good and quiet in the front of their yard, keeping a watch over all it surveys.

 

 

 

 

 
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Recommendations

Reviews

Saul Hudson Mar 15, 2012

I really liked this. Nicely done. There's probably one or two bracketed words too many for me, but that's personal choice. Other than that well done!

Cardwell Mar 14, 2012

Wow that was good... I got chills!

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