The Thing That Lives In The Playground

* * *

By Jackson Robinson

Billy O’Brian was laid to rest with an empty coffin. The police are almost certain that he’s dead because of all the blood that was left behind, but his parents still hold out hope that something will change. Someone will call in asking for a ransom or they’ll pull over some speeding car and he’ll be there in the backseat. He’ll be smiling and just waiting for a kind police officer to take him home.

But Billy O’Brian is dead. The only thing left of him was a pile of bloody clothes that were found just outside of town.

Franklyn Amis Cannon didn’t know Billy O’Brian all that well. They would pass each other in the hallways at school, but other than that, they rarely interacted. He was part of the search party, though. His father, Thomas, took him along. Frankie was a bit too young to really understand the seriousness of the situation, but an opportunity to skip school and spend a day with his father was something that he just couldn’t pass up. Frankie meant the world to his father and though he would never admit it, Billy O’Brian’s disappearance had made it more than difficult for Thomas Cannon to sleep at night. The fact that the police didn’t have so much as a single lead made it even harder.

* * *

In the winter of 2002, a few months after the police found the bloody remains of Billy O’Brian’s clothes and the statewide search for him was officially ended, Frankie met the thing that lives in the playground. It was the beginning of December and snow had covered the town of Woodsville, North Dakota with a thick layer of white.

The weather was nice on the day that Frankie went missing, though. The sun hung high in a cloudless blue sky, warming the world below. The warm sunlight kept the temperature just above freezing and melted the snow just enough to be sticky. Frankie wanted nothing more than to spend the day outside. But since Billy O’Brian’s disappearance, most children, himself included, had been condemned indoors. It was nice on cold days, but on days when the sun was out, it was sheer torture. He would sit by the window pining for his freedom.

That Saturday in early December, Frankie’s mother had been called into work. It was uncommon for her to work Saturdays, and his parents were unable to find a babysitter, which was why Frankie was left alone that day. The night before, his mother and father had been very strict about the rules for being home alone. One of those rules, arguably the most important of them, had been to stay inside all day. But looking out at that beautiful sunshine, Frankie just couldn’t resist. He decided that he would spend his day at the park.

Frankie went to the closet by the front door and began to dress in his winter clothes. After pulling on his snow pants and coat, he plopped down on the stool next to the door to put his boots on. The boots were a bit too small for him. They’d fit when his mother brought them home from the store in early October, but by December, Frankie’s toes were starting to feel a bit squished in them.

Frankie was big for his age. He’d hit his growth spurt early and most of his clothes were just a touch too small. It didn’t bother him much, though; he knew that his mother had bought him a whole new wardrobe for Christmas. What he didn’t know was that his mother was just praying that Frankie would stop growing long enough to wear the damn clothes.

* * *

Frankie knew because he’d peeked in the back of his parents’ closet and seen the presents. He wasn’t looking for them when he’d found them. He’d been looking for his dad’s shotgun. It was wrong, he knew that, but he wanted to hold it anyway. He couldn’t have told you why, but there was something about that gun that was appealing to him and he needed to know what it felt like in his hands.

He waited until his parents left for a store run. They left him alone quite often, then. It was before Billy O’Brian disappeared that this happened. He watched them leave out the window and once their old blue station wagon was down the street and around the corner, Frankie turned the deadbolt on the door. He knew they had a key, but he would hear them trying the lock first if they were to come home while he was still upstairs.

He crept up into their bedroom and stood in the doorway for a minute, examining the room. The gun was in the closet. He’d heard his father put it there after he returned home from a hunting trip a couple of months ago.

He tiptoed across the room, being careful not to touch anything he didn’t have to. The closet door was already halfway open, and the laundry hamper inside had spilled clothes out into the room. To Frankie, it looked like a long cloth tongue lolling out of a mouth.

Frankie stepped around the laundry tongue and slid the closet door the rest of the way open. He thought that he would have to dig deeper into the closet to find the shotgun, but it was there, leaning against the wall to his right. Sunlight spilling in through the bedroom window reflected off its cold black barrel. All of Frankie’s fears of being caught started to slip away and he stretched his hands out toward it.

The gun was heavier than Frankie had imagined. Much heavier. He brought it out and lifted it up to his shoulder and stared down the sight, pointing it at his parents’ bed. He couldn’t hold it there long and had to bring it back down to waist level. He sat down and set the gun on his lap. A minute passed, and Frankie felt the dirty, guilty feeling of shame wash over him. He was disappointed in himself because he’d promised his dad he would never play with such things. Sworn it on the imaginary Bible that his mother and father made him stake his immortal soul on for important promises. He hadn’t played with it, that was true, but he had touched it and he knew that he wasn’t supposed to. He doubted that his soul was in much jeopardy, but he felt guilty all the same. His father had been very stern about the fact that all a man has is his word and if he breaks it, he can almost never get it back.

Frankie stood up and returned the gun to its place in the closet. He took time to adjust it and to make sure that it sat in the exact position that it had been in earlier.

When he was backing out of the closet, a shiny paper bag caught his eye. He turned and saw that it was a gift bag. Once again giving in to temptation, Frankie looked into the bag and saw the clothes that his mother planned to give him for Christmas. It was another thing that he knew he wasn’t supposed to do and yet he had.

* * *

Frankie pushed the thoughts of his broken promise with God and his Christmas presents out of his mind as he slid his second boot on. It was too nice of a day to be thinking of such morbid things. He laced his boots up and zipped his jacket before plunging out the front door into the sunlight. He stood on the small porch in front of their house. The air was brisk, but not cold enough to force a child like Frankie back inside. With the sun out, it felt more like a crisp Spring day than a cold December morning. Frankie started to walk.

It was only two blocks to the park. Frankie figured that he could go, play for a little while, and then dash home as quickly as he could to ensure that he made it back before his mother and father did. He would hang his coat and snow pants up in his bedroom so that his parents wouldn’t see them dripping in the closet. It was a foolproof plan if there ever was one.

It took Frankie about twenty minutes to get to the park and to his horror, he saw that he would not be spending his day there. Parked in the street and blocking his path were two firetrucks, a police car, and an ambulance. All with their lights on. Caution tape had been hung all around the park and there were policemen redirecting traffic to turn around. There were two buildings bordering the small park. One was a pizza buffet restaurant called the Pizza Ranch and the other was the post office. Frankie started walking toward the park and one of the policemen spotted him and walked over.

“Sorry, son,” the large, overweight officer said. “Gas leak in the post office today. Find somewhere new to play.”

It hurt, but Frankie turned around and started walking home.

With the wind at his back, the walk was a lot quicker. It didn’t take Frankie more than ten minutes to get home. He sulked across the front lawn and was just starting up the stairs of the porch when something caught his eye.

The town came to an abrupt stop about two hundred feet after Frankie’s house. He played out in the field sometimes but preferred the park. As he stood on the porch that December morning, Frankie saw something that he’d never noticed before. It was a path just outside of town. He could see it clearly from where he stood on the porch and just beyond it, he could see two wooden towers with slides coming out of them.

Frankie walked back to the street and this time, he turned right instead of left. He walked slowly, along the main road that would take him all the way to Interstate 94 if he kept heading south. He stopped at the edge of the path. Up close, he could see that the concrete was wavy like the lake on a windy day. He’d never seen concrete like that before. At the end of the path, there was a playground. It couldn’t be more than the length of a football field and yet somehow, he’d never even seen it before.

He wanted to tell someone about it. He almost needed to tell someone about it. As he walked from his house to the path, the thought of running and telling his mother occurred to him, but she was at work and he wasn’t supposed to be outside in the first place. He knew that. His father would be no different.

With that thought in mind, Frankie brought his foot down onto the wavy concrete path and felt a chill pass through his bones. He wrote it off as a breeze and started walking.

The path proved to be more of a challenge than Frankie had expected. The waves, though frozen in time and concrete, kept tripping him. Twice, he fell flat on his stomach. There was something else, too. A turning sensation. It made Frankie think of the funhouse that he went through at the Mercer County fair the year before. In it, you walked across a bridge that ran through a tunnel that was spinning. It made Frankie feel as if the bridge was being turned upside down. He didn’t understand it and he didn’t like it. It made him want to turn back, but he was far past the halfway point, then. The park was only a couple of yards ahead of him. He was too close to turn back. It’s a shame because things still could have ended up differently if he had turned back then. Turned back and ran home to lock all the doors and all the windows and just stay inside for the rest of the day.

But Frankie didn’t turn back, and he stepped off that wavy path just a few moments after thinking about it. He was standing in the park, but he barely noticed it. He was too dizzy to really care about it and he felt like he was about to throw up. Frankie hated throwing up more than anything and the way that his stomach was turning, he was certain that he was about to. He sat down hard on the snow and clutched his turning belly.

As it started to settle, Frankie turned to look back, suddenly very scared that he wouldn’t be able to see his house anymore. But it was still there. Nothing more than a dot on the horizon, which was strange to Frankie, considering that he’d only been walking on the path for a few minutes, but it was still there.

Directly to his right was a wooden wasp the size of a semi-truck. Its backside was raised up as if it were preparing to sting something beneath it. Looking at it, made Frankie’s stomach turn again.

The wasp had been hidden from the path by a cluster of large evergreen trees and from where Frankie sat, it looked like it was waiting. Waiting for some small, innocent little boy to come wandering along into its clutches.

He didn’t like the monstrous wasp at all. He kept waiting for it to move. Just a little bit. Just enough for him to notice. Perhaps it would blink one of those terrible yellow eyes or twitch its giant stinger. He knew that it wouldn’t. That kind of stuff only happened in the movies and this was no movie. Still, Frankie didn’t like looking at it. He turned back toward the playground. As he did, a warm wind carrying the stench of old, rotten meat swept across the field and hit his back hard enough to rock the bobble on his beanie.

It’s breathing.

Frankie whipped back around, expecting to see the thing moving, but it was still. He stared into its yellow eyes and they stared back at him emotionlessly. It wasn’t breathing. He knew that. After all, he was a big kid and knew that big kids didn’t get scared about things like that.

Frankie turned back around. The playground was in front of him. A small, waist-high, stone wall wrapped around the playground. Inside, there were two tall, thin wooden structures. They were connected by a small bridge that looked like something out of an adventure story. The first building was a bit shorter than the second. It was made of long, downward-facing planks. An orange slide protruded from a hole in the side of the building facing Frankie. The second building was built the same way, only taller and the slide was covered. There were two windows next to each other on the corner with a large wooden leaf nailed in the middle of them. From where Frankie stood, the windows looked like eyes and the leaf looked like a nose. Its mouth was the doorway at the bottom of the tower.

A cold wind started to blow through the playground. The kind of wind that North Dakota is known for. Frankie felt his blood drop a few degrees as he stared at the vacant playground.

How come I’ve never heard of this place before?

It wasn’t entirely surprising given that Frankie didn’t have much in the way of friends, that he hadn’t heard of this playground from someone at school, but surely his mother would’ve told him that they were living so close to one.

And why were there no other kids here?

Yes, this place was strange. Very strange indeed. Frankie thought about turning back right then and there, but he didn’t want to walk by that wasp again.

He turned and looked at it again, half expecting to catch it sneaking up on him, about to pounce, but it was still there by the path. Guarding it.

Frankie ducked down to avoid hitting his head and walked into the wooden tower with the face on its side. The ceiling was low. Clearly, the room had been designed with kids a bit smaller than Frankie in mind. There was a wooden floor, and in the middle of it, a trapdoor. Frankie walked over to it and crouched down on his hands and knees.

Heat was coming off the small trapdoor, and without thinking about it, Frankie wrapped his fingers around the steel handle in the middle of the door and pulled it up. He expected it to catch on a lock, but it didn’t. The trapdoor swung easily on its hinges all the way up and Frankie let it drop down beside him. Through the doorway in the floor, he could see a small, well-lit, orange room.

“Hello?” he called down into the small room. Outside, the wind blew harder and Frankie could hear it rustling through the skeletal tree branches.

His voice echoed off the walls below him before disappearing completely. He waited. There was no response.

Deep inside Frankie’s head, an alarm was going off. Part of him, a small part, but still enough for him to consider, told him to turn and run. It said that nothing good would come from crawling down into that room and it was right. But Franklyn Amis Cannon was not old enough to know to listen to that voice and like the curious cat, he just couldn’t resist himself. He swung his feet over the ledge and dropped down.

Frankie landed on the ground with a soft thud. The room wasn’t much bigger than his bedroom and was almost completely empty. There was light, but it wasn’t coming from a fixture of any kind. It seemed to be coming out of the walls themselves. It was a soft orange light. One that you could almost look at without hurting your eyes. Almost being the keyword. Frankie diverted his eyes from the walls to the floor and he saw that he was standing on a lush, green bed of grass. It was well-kept, healthy grass. He stepped across it toward a black door with no handle on it.

Frankie gently pushed the right side of the door and it opened smoothly into a hallway with another black door at the end of it. Its walls were pink instead of orange and it stunk of matches. Outside the wind picked up even more and Frankie could hear the building above him groan against it. That alarm in Frankie’s head continued to ring, but he was far beyond listening to it now. He needed to know what was at the end of this hallway.

When he stepped into the hallway, that turning sensation returned. It wasn’t as bad as it was on the path. In fact, he almost enjoyed it as he walked down toward the next door.

Frankie pushed the next door open and stared into the room, confused. He was looking at his parents’ bedroom. There were little differences. For instance, instead of a white carpet, the floor was muddy. The bed, though nicely made, looked old and weathered. Its once-white comforter was now a dingy gray. A small ray of light came in from the window above the bed and shone down on the closet, simultaneously acting as a spotlight for the closet door and making shadows in the corners of the room. Frankie turned his attention to the closet door. It hung slightly ajar and there was a tipped laundry hamper spilling clothes out onto the floor like a tongue. It didn’t take him long to realize that the room was set up in the same way that it had been the day he went to hold his father’s gun. He’d been sure to memorize the details so he could put the room back just the way it had been and here it was.

Moving as if he were hypnotized, Frankie walked across the room to the closet. The mud clung to his feet as he walked, and it made his boots feel heavy like they were filled with lead. He kept telling himself that something had to be different. He slid the door the rest of the way open and reached in, grabbing the first article of clothing that his hands touched and pulled it out. It was a brown wool sweater with a badly knitted reindeer on it. His mother wore it every Christmas.

Frankie’s head began to spin. He couldn’t figure out why this would exist. Why would anyone want to replicate his house in this way? He looked to the right of the closet and saw the new clothes that his mother had bought him for Christmas. They were sitting on the muddy floor. Beyond them would be his father’s shotgun. He knew it because that was where it sat in his house.

“Hi there, Frankie,” a dry, raspy voice from behind him said.

Frankie cried out as he spun around. Just to the left of the bedroom door, he could vaguely make out the shape of a man. He was standing back in the corner, using the shadows to hide.

“It’s a bit dark, isn’t it?” the voice said. The silhouette began to move toward the door.

“Who are you? And how do you know my name?” Frankie asked. He was trying to hide how scared he suddenly was, but the tremble in his voice gave him away.

There was a laugh. A dry sort of chuckle that made the hair on the back of Frankie’s neck stand up.

“I know lots of things, Frankie,” the voice said. “I suppose that you could say it’s my job to know things. To know which boys and girls to take when they go wandering off where they shouldn’t. Do you remember Billy O’Brian? Poor, sweet Billy who got caught stealing his mother’s cigarettes. Swore up and down that he didn’t, but I knew differently. Yes, I did. Just like I know that you’ve been playing with things that shouldn’t be played with. Am I right, Frankie?”

Frankie’s mind flashed back to the day he found his father’s shotgun. The guilty feeling that washed over him when he picked it up re-formed in his gut and he heard his father’s stern voice telling him that under no circumstances should he ever play with guns.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Frankie croaked. All the spit in his mouth had seemingly dried up at once, making his words come out hoarse and scared.

Without really thinking about it, Frankie took a step to his left, and his hand began to feel blindly for where the shotgun should be.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” the voice said, and a man stepped into the pink light coming from the hallway. He was tall and dressed in jeans and a denim shirt. He kept his head turned away so as not to show Frankie his face.

Frankie wanted to run but didn’t think he’d be able to. Not with the way the mud was clinging to his boots. Another thought hit him then, too. He was alone. No one knew where he was. If this man wanted to, he could take Frankie away forever just like Billy O’Brian and no one would even suspect him.

“Do you know what happens when you break a promise to God, Frankie?” He paused, waiting for an answer that Frankie wouldn’t give. Tired of waiting, the man said, “He gives you to me,” and closed the door. He started to laugh that dry, wheezing chuckle again and every ounce of bravery left in Frankie’s body ran out of him. The man turned around and Frankie saw that his face had been burned away. What was left was a mess of scars and holes.

“Welcome to Hell, Frankie,” the man said and his eyes flashed red.

He leaped forward, stretching one of his long, skinny arms out toward Frankie as he did so. He missed, but only by an inch, and crashed through the sliding closet door to Frankie’s right.

At the same time, Frankie plunged his hand into the other side of the closet, blindly groping for his father’s gun and knowing that he would never find it in time. When his hand struck something long and round, he yanked it free and stumbled forward out of the closet and away from the man.

But it was no shotgun. In Frankie’s panic-filled mind, it took him a minute to realize what he was holding. It was a long, white cord of bones, and at the end of it was Billy O’Brian’s head. What hadn’t been gnawed away of Billy’s face was twisted into a scream. Frankie screamed as well and then dropped the head. It splashed in the mud, spraying grime across the dingy replica of his parents’ comforter.

Frankie turned back to the man. He’d stood back up and was brushing bits of sawdust from the busted door off his denim shirt. He smiled and Frankie could see that each tooth had been filed down to a point.

Like fangs.

“Nowhere to run, Frankie,” the man rasped and flicked his tongue out. It lolled down to his chin and Frankie saw that it was forked at the end like a snake’s tongue. He flicked it up and down like he was tasting the air and then breathed deeply through his melted nose.

“Oh, Frankie,” he said. His voice quivering with anticipation. “So full of life, still. So hopeful.” The man took a step forward. “Billy was like that,” He shifted his eyes to the partially consumed skull at Frankie’s feet. “Yes, he was.” The man snapped his jaws together. The clicking sound that they made when they connected made Frankie’s heart drop into the pit of his stomach like a lead weight falling from a high building.

“I’m sorry,” Frankie cried. “I won’t ever do it again. I’m sorry!”

“Oh, it’s too late for apologies, Frankie,” the man hissed. “Someone has got to pay the piper.”

He started to chuckle again and as he did, a voice from far away called, “Frankie?” It didn’t come from the hallway where he’d come down. It came from behind the man in the denim shirt. Frankie recognized it but couldn’t place where he knew it from.

The man stopped. His scarred forehead wrinkled, and he turned around quickly. Frankie saw his opportunity and lunged toward the door, feeling the suction from the mud break as he pulled his heavy boots free. There was another call from far off behind the man. Frankie paid it no attention and ran for the door. He dropped his shoulder like he was playing football and slammed into it. It swung open and Frankie stumbled into the spinning hallway. He lost his balance and fell to the floor.

“Get back here!” the man screamed from behind him.

Frankie scrambled forward back onto his feet and ran to the end of the hall. Once again, he dropped his shoulder and crashed through the door. He slammed it shut behind him as the man started to scream.

There was a brief moment of panic when Frankie realized that he might not be able to make the jump back to the trapdoor, but the ceiling was much lower than he remembered, and he barely had to jump at all to grab the edge of the small room above him. He pulled himself out, looked down, and saw the man burst into the orange room. He slammed the trapdoor back down and sat on top of it, putting all his weight in the middle.

His breath was coming in big whopping gasps, and for the first time that day, Frankie realized that he was crying.

He’d known the voice. He just couldn’t seem to place it.

“Oh, Frankie?” the man called from underneath the trapdoor. Frankie swallowed his sobs. He wanted to run, but his body was frozen in place. Suddenly, there was a force from under the trapdoor, pushing him up. Frankie sprawled out onto his stomach as the door slammed back down. “Oh, Frankie, won’t you let me out?” the man called again. The door pushed up again, almost throwing Frankie off. He screamed as it came back down and the man below pushed again.

Frankie knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold him forever. He crawled backward enough so that his feet were on the wooden floor behind the trap door and shifted to where he was squatting. When it started to rise a fourth time, Frankie jumped.

He landed on the center of the trapdoor and felt it slam shut once more. He heard the man below crash to the floor. There were muffled shouts of pain and frustration, but Frankie didn’t stick around to listen.

* * *

Frankie burst into the sunlight with his arms and legs pumping. He was running like he’d never run before, and the thought that he might actually get away was starting to play over and over in his head. That was until he heard the buzzing.

It was a loud mechanical sound that made him think of his father’s palm sanders. He didn’t need to look back to know what the source of that sound was. There was no longer anything next to the path. That giant wooden monstrosity was in the air and it was coming for him. If Frankie so much as slipped on a patch of ice or tripped on a shoelace, it would have him in its clutches before he even hit the ground. Frankie closed his eyes and ran.

* * *

By the time the buzzing behind him stopped, Frankie’s arms and legs were sore. He opened his eyes and saw that he was standing outside his house. When he turned around, the path was gone and so was the playground. He didn’t waste any time questioning it.

When he walked into his home and his mother saw him, she collapsed to the floor. Big, salty tears streamed down her face. She looked older. The lines around her eyes were deeper than Frankie remembered, and her hair was lighter, too. And its once dark roots had lightened to gray. Frankie barely recognized the strange old woman his mother had become.

“Frankie?” she said through sobs. “Frankie, is that really you?”

“Who else would it be, Ma?” he asked her, still trying to piece together why his mother was so much older.

Frankie’s mother hugged him for what felt like hours. He didn’t shake her off. With the playground far behind him and his mother’s warm arms wrapped around him, he felt safe. He hugged her back and tears of his own started to spill from his eyes. Frankie was finally safe. He was still scared and confused by the way his mother looked, but he knew that he was safe.

* * *

“Where’s Dad, Ma?” he asked her that night as he lay in his bed. It’d been untouched since he left it that warm December afternoon.

She looked down at him and brushed the hair from his eyes. Frankie could tell that she was holding back tears. A little one crept over the edge and spilled down her cheek. “Sweetheart,” she started, then paused, trying to think of what to say. “Your father, he disappeared about a year after you did. We don’t know what happened to him.”

“After I did?” Frankie asked, confused. His mother had been saying strange things like this since he got home, and he was struggling to figure out what it meant. She’d even gone as far as having a policeman come and talk to him. They didn’t talk long though and Frankie didn’t tell him anything about the playground.

“Frankie,” his mother started. “You’ve been gone for three years. Your father went missing searching for you.”

Frankie finally placed where he’d heard the voice before. It had been his father’s voice, calling after him in the dark.

* * *

Thomas Cannon was never seen again, but on a cold January morning, his son found a torn-up work shirt of his in the ditch by their house. His name was stitched just over the breast pocket.

The shirt had been stained with blood and someone had scrawled YOU HAVE TO PAY THE PIPER in big capital letters on the back. It reminded police officials of the bloody clothes that had once belonged to Billy O’Brian.

* * *

End