How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets by Garth Stein Read Free Book Online

his heart thudding in his chest, he throws back all the sheets and blankets, exposing the entire mattress, and he dives for his leg, which he sees huddled in the corner, suddenly naked and exposed to the cold air in the room. He dives for it and grabs it, but it isn’t trying to escape any more. It’s frozen in fear, shivering, scared half to death. It doesn’t know who Evan is. The poor thing is petrified. Evan lifts it out of the sheets. It’s not his leg. It’s a baby. Such a pretty baby boy.
    Carefully, Evan holds him up. He looks fine. Healthy and fine. He’s got a head of raging black hair. His eyes are squinty, his mouth opens and closes like he’s an alien, an appropriate image considering he was born from Evan’s leg. Evan wraps the tadpole in a blanket so he’ll stop shivering. And then he brings the little monster close to him, his tiny hands gripping the air as if he needs something to hold onto, some mama’s fur to grasp, a strange anachronistic instinct harkening back to when we were all simple apes swinging from the branches with our pups clinging to our breasts, desperate not to be dropped to the jungle floor.
    Evan kisses the munchkin on the forehead. And the funny Turkish Delight looks up at his father and says, quite simply and quite clearly, “Da.”
    Da.
    I’m your Da.
    So Evan hugs junior, and the clammy goober hugs back, and Evan closes his eyes because he’s so happy, so overjoyed to be the proud father of a freak of nature. And Evan closes his eyes and sings a quiet lullaby for his babe, sleepy-time music to send the booger off to meet the Sandman for some well-deserved rest before the little tyke has to wake up and face the rest of what will turn out to be his sad and miserable life.

L ONG AGO, WHEN he was still a child, Evan learned that if something seems good, it can actually be bad, and that if something seems bad, it might actually be worse. He learned that there is danger lurking behind every corner, that in the darkness of every closet hides a monster. Evan knew. He’d been ambushed by the monster before. He’d felt the creepiness, the cold clammy hands on the back of his neck. He’d felt the fear that rises up in his body so fast it makes his gums tingle. He had known the monster, had intimate dealings with it, as it crept out of its closet and attacked.
    So when he wakes at six in the morning with that familiar queasy feeling—familiar not because it was so frequently felt but because it was so distinctive—and with the memory of his odd but extremely vivid dream fresh in his mind, he knows what has happened. In the night, the monster came out of the closet and set upon Evan, shaking him about in his bed, leaving him groggy and spent. Evan has had a seizure.
    He pushes off his bedspread and sits up. Where was Dean for all this? Was he awake? Had he heard anything, any strange gurglings or thrashings about? No. All kids sleep hard and long. That much about adolescence he knows. He swings his aching legs over the side of the bed and places his feet on the floor. The carpeting has an uncomfortable feel to it. An itchiness he doesn’t usually notice. He stands up. A little spin to his vision. And strips off his clothes; he had fallen asleep fully dressed. He plods into the bathroom and checks himself in the mirror. A crusty trail of drool runs from the corner of his mouth across his cheek. His eyes are baggy and dark. He opens his mouth. The inside of his cheeks are bloody. At least his tongue was spared. You can’t swallow your tongue, but you sure can chew the hell out of it. He turns on the water in the shower and stands under the burning hot ribbons, hoping to wash away the crawly sensation on his skin.
    A seizure. He hasn’t had a big one in quite a while. The little ones don’t really count. He has those more often, like on the porch of the Smith house. Little ones are annoyances, mosquito bites on the arm of life. Big ones are to be feared. He felt this one coming,