The Sandman
Hush, little baby, don't say a word,
And never mind that noise you heard.
It's just the beast under your bed,
In your closet and in your head.
—"Enter Sandman"
Where did it all go wrong? Monica Gavin wondered as she sat behind the mahogany desk in her office, staring out at the near-empty campus three floors below her.
Just a year earlier she had a perfect life. She and her husband were both professors at the University of Massachusetts at Essex Green, they owned a wonderful old two-story colonial home in Puritan Falls and they had a son, Dylan, who was the proverbial apple of their eye. Then one chilly autumn day, Monica woke up a happily married woman and, without warning, went to bed a grieving widow.
Marshall Gavin had always been the picture of good health. He never smoked or drank, except for the occasional glass of wine at dinner. He ate sensibly and exercised regularly. Yet despite his good habits he collapsed one day in the faculty parking lot and was dead by the time he arrived at Puritan Falls Hospital. How could a healthy thirty-three-year-old drop dead without warning? A heart attack, Sarah Ryerson, the emergency room physician declared, but Monica had always thought coronaries claimed the lives of older men who smoked, ate greasy food and sat in their reclining chairs, pushing the buttons on their remote control units.
As devastating as her husband's death was for her, Monica was not prepared for the change it would cause in her young son. The once outgoing, energetic little boy who enjoyed skateboarding, rooted for the Boston Red Sox and played shortstop on his Little League team seemed to withdraw from the world after losing his father. To Monica's dismay, he lost all interest in sports, video games and his friends. His worried mother took him to a grief counselor who urged her to be patient and to give the boy some time to get over his father's death.
At first, she followed the psychologist's advice. When Dylan's grades dropped dramatically, however, Monica knew she would have to do something to bring her son out of his downward spiral. Since it was the end of the semester, she decided to rent a house in the Berkshires for the three-month-long summer break. Hopefully, with a change of scenery, fresh air and exercise, Dylan would begin to adjust to life without a father.
* * *
Monica yawned and turned her head from side to side, trying to stretch her stiff neck muscles. She had been driving for hours with only an occasional bathroom break. Both she and Dylan were tired and hungry.
"Are we almost there?" the boy asked.
"I hope so," she replied, glancing at the navigator on her dashboard.
It was nearly an hour later that the Nüvi's simulated voice instructed her to turn left.
"Turn left? Where? There's no road."
Since hers was the only car in sight, she slowed to a crawl and searched for signs of a street.
"This must be it," she announced hopefully.
It appeared as though the narrow dirt road had been camouflaged. Had she not had the navigator directing her, Monica would surely have driven right past the turn.
"This isn't much of a road," Dylan observed.
That's an understatement, his mother thought.
As the Subaru Forester slowly climbed up the narrow, bumpy, winding, unpaved road, Monica regretted her decision to vacation in the mountains. Why hadn't she and Dylan gone to Cape Cod, Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard instead? But when she finally reached the top of the mountain and saw the authentic log cabin nestled between a meandering mountain stream and a small, clear pond, she was glad about her decision.
"Here we are. Home, sweet home for the next three months. Let's eat first before we bring in the boxes and suitcases," she said, reaching for the bag of sandwiches, salads and iced tea she bought at an Italian delicatessen earlier that day.
Monica was just finishing her salami and provolone hoagie when she heard a voice call, "You folks need any help?"
Mother and son both looked up and saw a tall, handsome man standing on the stoop, looking in through the screen door.
"Are you our landlord?" Monica asked.
"No, I'm your next-door neighbor, at least for the summer."
Monica remembered her manners and invited the man inside.
"I'm Monica Gavin, and this is my son, Dylan."
"My name is Cole Garrity. I live about a quarter of a mile from here, just up the road and around the bend. You can't miss the place since there are only two houses on the road: yours and mine."
"Well, I wanted to get away from it all. I guess I succeeded. Would you care for some potato salad or coleslaw? A bottle of Snapple?"
"No, thanks. I just ate."
"If you're serious about lending a hand, we'd love to have the help," Monica said. "We have three months' worth of supplies in the back of our car."
With Cole carrying two or three boxes at a time, the Gavins were soon moved into the log cabin. After Monica took the last of the perishables out of the cooler and put them in the refrigerator, she turned to the Good Samaritan and invited him to dinner.
"I doubt you're up to cooking after that long drive. Why don't you two come over to my house for some spaghetti?" Cole offered. "I have homemade sauce and meatballs in the freezer. I'll put them in the microwave to defrost."
"I don't want to put you through all that trouble."
"How much trouble is it to boil water and throw in a pound of pasta?"
"In that case, we'd be happy to accept."
"Great! I'll run up to the house and get everything ready. I'll be expecting you and Dylan around six. Is that okay?"
"Six is fine."
Monica took a hot, relaxing shower and changed her clothes. Then, after a short nap—she was on vacation, after all!—she and her son walked the quarter mile to Cole Garrity's house.
"Wow!" the little boy exclaimed. "He lives in a cuckoo clock!"
"It's called a chalet," his mother corrected him. "It's a type of house often found in the Swiss Alps. It does look like a cuckoo clock, though."
Monica thought the log cabin was quaint and picturesque, but it could not hold a candle to Cole's chalet, which looked like it was taken from the pages of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.
I feel like I should be wearing a dirndl and yodeling down the mountain.
Cole's pasta dinner was far superior to Monica's customary Ragu in a jar Italian fare. The meal also included a fresh garden salad, garlic bread, a glass of wine for the two adults and chocolate milk for the boy. The host even served fresh fruit over pound cake for dessert.
"I really don't know how to thank you for your hospitality," Monica said as she twirled the spaghetti around her fork.
"No thanks are necessary. I'm glad to have the company. It gets pretty lonely up here in the mountains."
"Do you live here year-round?"
"Yes and no. I was here during the past winter, but I only have a year lease on the place, so I'll be leaving in the fall."
"Oh, I thought you owned the house."
"No, I'm just renting. I'm a professor of folklore and mythology. I took a year's sabbatical to write a book."
"My mother's a teacher, too," Dylan announced. "So's my father."
"Is that so?" Cole asked. "What do you teach?"
"I'm a professor of advanced mathematics at UMass Essex Green. My husband taught science at the same university."
Cole noted Monica's use of the past tense when referring to her husband, and he tactfully changed the subject.
When the sun began to set, Monica turned to Dylan and announced, "It's time for us to go. Thank Mr. Garrity for the delicious dinner."
"Do we have to leave so soon?"
"You're always welcome to come back again," Cole quickly assured the boy. "But your mother's right. It's best you leave before it gets dark. There are no streetlights on this road, and you don't want to get lost in the woods."
* * *
At the end of June the weather turned hot, and Dylan enjoyed walking barefoot in the stream and swimming in the pond. As Monica had hoped, her son was gradually emerging from his shell, thanks in no small part to their friendly neighbor, Cole Garrity. The boy idolized the professor, who filled his need for male companionship.
Unfortunately, the relationship was not without its drawbacks. While Dylan was more cheerful and outgoing than he had been since his father's death, he recently developed an irrational fear of the dark—brought on by Cole's folklore. After being awakened several times by her son's screams, Monica found it necessary to leave the lamp burning in the child's bedroom at night.
"There's nothing here that will hurt you," she tried reasoning with the boy.
"What about the sandman?" he countered.
"There's no such thing."
"Cole says there is."
"Professor Garrity told you about the sandman?"
Dylan nodded his head, his eyes fearfully glancing toward the closet door.
"Well, I'm going to have to have a little talk with him," Monica declared. "As nice as he is, I don't want him frightening you with his folktales, none of which contain an ounce of truth."
The boy was not reassured by his mother's words, so the light remained on.
The following day Monica invited Cole to dinner. She liked him and was grateful for all the attention he gave to Dylan, but she did not want him filling up her child's head with his silly and apparently frightening stories.
"Dylan will down in a few minutes. He's taking a bath. I hope you like beef stew," Monica said when her guest sat down at the dining room table.
"Meat and potatoes. What's not to like?"
After placing the food on the table, she broached the subject she wanted to discuss.
"I'm curious. What made you choose folklore as your field of study?"
"When I was young I travelled a great deal," he explained. "No matter where I went I was fascinated with local legends. I began to catalog them like ornithologists catalog birds. Over the years, my childhood pastime turned into my life's work."
"What exactly do you catalog?"
Cole laughed; it was a deep, masculine laugh.
"All varieties of magical creatures: elves, fairies, sprites, pixies, brownies, dwarfs, goblins ...."
"Sounds like Tolkien's Middle Earth."
"I take it you're not a believer."
"No," Monica replied, her tone becoming more serious, "but my son is, and that worries me. He was never afraid of the dark before, but now he screams if I turn the light out in his bedroom."
"A lot of kids are afraid of the dark. You needn't worry about Dylan; he'll outgrow it," Cole assured her.
"You don't understand. My husband and I raised our son to think and to reason. We didn't fill his head with fairy tales and nursery rhymes. He never believed in Santa Claus, flying reindeer, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy, witches, ghosts or little green men from Mars. Now, I have to look under the bed and in his closet before he'll enter his room at night."
"And you think that's my fault."
"Please don't get me wrong. I don't think you intentionally meant any harm. It's only that he's at a vulnerable stage in his life."
"All the more reason he should be warned of the dangers that exist in the world. The legends parents entertain their children with today have evolved over hundreds of years. The fairy creatures have become little more than characters in bedtime stories. A jolly elf named Santa will bring presents to good boys and girls on Christmas Eve, but only if they're asleep in bed when he gets to their houses. The tooth fairy will put money under their pillows if they lose a tooth, and the sandman will sprinkle pixie dust in their eyes that will help them fall asleep. These lovely stories are all harmless derivatives of a much more sinister and very real danger."
"Come now, Cole. You're an educated man. You don't really believe that?" Monica asked, wondering if the kind-hearted professor had a few screws loose.
"In Medieval times, there existed a species of malevolent fairy that liked to steal human children from their beds as they slept. These creatures would sometimes replace mortal children with fairy children called changelings, but they just as often left behind empty beds. Parents would try to protect their children by making dolls, using their children's clothes, locks of their hair and sometimes their teeth. They would then put the dolls in the children's beds to trick the fairies. Eventually, when people moved to the cities, the fairy abductions stopped. Folktales about the fairies continued and evolved, however, and eventually the tooth fairy was born."
"Was the sandman one of those child-stealing fairies, too?" Dylan asked, having overheard most of the adults' conversation.
"He was more of a distant cousin to them. The sandman's forebears were similar to leprechauns, only taller. Both were notorious thieves and hoarders. Gold, silver, gemstones, crystals—they liked their bling, as they say today."
Dylan laughed, and even his mother's face temporarily lost its frown.
"The legend is that these creatures liked pretty things because they themselves were hideously ugly, but I always say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Anyway, these fairies would break into humans' houses and carry away their jewels and coins. If a person was awake and saw the fairy, the creature would kill him. Adults realized they could save their lives by keeping their eyes closed and pretending to be asleep, but children ... well, they're a curious lot. These fairies have a high regard for children and wouldn't hurt them, so they'd throw sand in the little ones' eyes so the thieves could escape unseen."
"Wasn't that an entertaining story?" Monica asked her son. "Of course, you do realize it's nothing but fiction. None of what Mr. Garrity has told you is true."
"There are people that feel the same way about Darwin's theory of evolution," the professor said. "The disbelief of close-minded people doesn't make the theory any less true."
"You're comparing science to superstition," Monica said.
"Why do you believe the two are mutually exclusive? What is it that Shakespeare said? 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'"
"On that note, why don't we start eating?" Monica suggested, realizing she and her guest were not likely to ever come to an agreement.
Later, when his mother headed to the kitchen to do the dishes, Dylan turned to Cole and asked, "Would you like to see my baseball card collection? I got an autographed Carlton Fisk card for my birthday last year."
After the two walked into the bedroom, the little boy took a Red Sox duffle bag out from under his bed.
"My mother wanted me to leave this stuff at home, but I wanted to bring it with me."
"What's this?" Cole asked when Dylan unzipped the bag.
"Oh, that was my dad's pocket watch. My mother gave it to me when he died. It's a really old one. It belonged to his father and his grandfather, and way back."
"You're a lucky little boy to have such a fine watch," the professor said, examining the valuable antique timepiece.
"Yeah, I know," the boy said unenthusiastically as he thumbed through his baseball trading cards. "Here it is: a 1973 Topps Carlton Fisk card. And, look, this is Pudge's real autograph."
The man and boy talked about baseball cards until Monica called in to Dylan that it was almost time for bed.
As Cole stood to leave, the boy said, "You told me the sandman was real, but my mother says he's not. Who's telling me the truth?"
"Well, Dylan," the professor sighed, "we both are. Your mother isn't really lying to you; she's simply telling you what she believes is true. It might be hard for you to understand, but sometimes people, even those we love, can't see what's right in front of their eyes."
* * *
Just before midnight, Monica finished reading her James Patterson novel and decided to go to sleep. She walked up the stairs and down the hallway toward the master bedroom. As she stood on the threshold, she glanced in the direction of Dylan's room and saw the light shining beneath his door. She went into the bedroom and found her son sitting up in bed, looking at his baseball cards.
"Don't you think you're too old to sleep with a light on every night?" she asked.
"But the sandman might come if I turn it off," the little boy replied.
Monica sat in the rocking chair in the corner of the room.
"I'll stay here until you fall asleep. Once you're asleep you'll be safe. Isn't that what Professor Garrity told us?"
Dylan put his baseball cards on the nightstand, turned off his lamp and lay down on the bed beneath the sheets.
"Good night, Mom. I love you."
The boy was just beginning to drift off to sleep when he heard a sound at the window.
"Mom, did you hear that?" he whispered.
"It's probably just a bird," Monica replied sleepily.
"No, it's the sandman. I know it. Quick! Close your eyes and pretend you're sleeping."
"Dylan, how can I convince you that there's no such th—?"
Her question was cut off when the glass windowpane exploded into the bedroom. Dylan immediately buried his head in his pillow and squeezed his eyes shut. Not even the sound of his mother's screams could persuade him to open them.
* * *
When Dylan woke the next morning, Monica was gone. Sitting in the rocking chair was Professor Garrity.
"Where's my mother?" the child asked.
The professor frowned and turned away.
"She didn't believe in the sandman."
"Did she go to heaven?"
Cole nodded his head in reply, and Dylan sobbed into his pillow.
When the tears finally stopped, he wiped his eyes and nose on a tissue and said, "At least she's with my dad now. But what will happen to me?"
"You can come live with me. You know how much I like children."
Fighting back more tears, Dylan gathered some clothes and stuffed them in the duffle bag with his baseball card collection.
"My father's watch," he suddenly cried. "It was here last night, and now it's gone."
"No need to worry, son," the professor said, patting his shirt pocket. "I've got it."
Dylan suppressed a shiver of fear as he followed Cole Garrity, one of an ancient breed of fairies that inspired the legend of the sandman, out the door and up the road to the cuckoo clock-like chalet.
"Enter Sandman" by Metallica © 1991 Creeping Death Music; words and music: James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hammett.
Nüvi® is a trademark of Garmin Ltd.
I tried to bribe the fairies into taking Salem from his bed, but all the teeth and "bling" in the world wouldn't persuade them.
