The Sandman

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         Where did it all go wrong? Monica Gavin wondered as she sat behind the walnut desk in her office, staring out at the near-empty campus. Just a year earlier she had a perfect life. She and her husband were both professors at the university at Essex Green, they owned a wonderful old two-story colonial in Puritan Falls and they had a son who was the proverbial apple of their eye. Then one chilly autumn morning, Monica woke up a happily married woman and went to bed a grieving widow.

         Marshall Gavin had been the picture of health. He didn’t smoke or drink. He ate sensibly and exercised regularly. Yet he collapsed one day in the faculty parking lot and was dead when he arrived at the Puritan Falls Hospital. How could a healthy thirty-two-year-old drop dead without warning? A heart attack, the emergency room physician claimed, but Monica had always thought coronaries claimed the lives of older men who smoked, ate greasy food and sat in front of their couches pushing the buttons on their remote control units.

         As devastating as her husband’s death was for her, Monica wasn’t prepared for the change it would cause in her son. The once outgoing, energetic little boy who enjoyed skateboarding, routed for the Red Sox and played shortstop on his Little League team seemed to withdraw from the world. He lost interest in sports and his friends. His mother took him to a grief counselor who told her to give the boy some time to get over the loss of his father.

         When Dylan’s grades dropped dramatically, however, Monica knew she would have to do something to bring her son out of his depression. 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 since leaving Puritan Falls. 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 the rocks and trees for any sign of a street.

         “This must be it,” she announced hopefully.

         It looked as though the narrow dirt road had been camouflaged. Had she not had the navigator directing her, Monica would surely have missed the turn.

         “This isn’t much of a road,” Dylan observed.

         That’s an understatement, his mother thought.

         As the Subaru climbed up the narrow, bumpy, winding road, Monica regretted her decision to vacation in the mountains. Why hadn’t she and Dylan gone to Cape Code or Martha’s Vineyard instead? But when she finally saw the authentic log cabin nestled between a mountain stream and a small pond, she was glad about her decision.

         “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 deli 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 it 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.

         With Cole carrying two and three boxes at a time, the Gavins were moved into the log cabin in under an hour. 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 for dinner.

         “I doubt you’re up to cooking after that long drive. Why don’t you two come over to my house for a spaghetti dinner?” Cole offered. “I have homemade sauce and meatballs in the freezer.”

         “I can’t put you through all that trouble.”

         “How much trouble is it to boil water and throw in a pound of pasta?”

         Monica took a hot shower and changed her clothes. Then she and Dylan 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 home often found in the Swiss Alps.”

         Monica had thought the log cabin was quaint and picturesque, but it couldn’t hold a candle to Cole’s chalet. I feel like I should be wearing lederhosen and yodeling down the mountain.

         Cole’s spaghetti was far superior to Monica’s customary Ragu in a jar fare. The dinner also included a fresh garden salad, garlic bread, a glass of wine for the two adults and chocolate milk for the boy.

         “I really don’t know how to thank you,” Monica said as she twirled the pasta around her fork.

         “No thanks are necessary. I’m glad for the company.”

         “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.”

         “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 mathematics at Essex Green. My husband taught science at the same university.”

         Cole noted her use of the past tense when referring to her husband and tactfully changed the subject.

         When the sun began to set, Monica turned to Dylan. “It’s time for us to go. Thank Mr. Garrity for the delicious dinner.”

         “Do we have to leave?”

         “You’re always welcome to come back again,” Cole quickly assured him. “But your mother’s right. It’s best you leave before it gets dark. There are no streetlights in the woods, you know.”

* * *

         At the end of June the weather turned hot, and Dylan enjoyed walking in the stream and swimming in the pond. As Monica had hoped, her son was emerging from his shell, thanks mainly to Cole Garrity. The boy idolized the professor, who filled the void left by the loss of his father.

         Unfortunately, the relationship was not without its drawbacks. While Dylan was more cheerful and outgoing, he had developed an irrational fear of the dark. 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 to 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 word with him,” Monica declared. “I don’t want him frightening you with his stories, none of which contain an ounce of truth.”

         The boy was not reassured by his mother’s words, so the light remained lit that night.

* * *

         The next day Monica invited Cole to dinner. She liked him and was grateful for the attention he gave her son, but she didn’t want him filling up Dylan’s head with his silly and apparently frightening folktales.

         “I hope you like stew,” Monica said when her guest sat down at the dining room table.

         “Meat and potatoes. What’s not to like?”

         After she placed the food on the table, Monica sat down and 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. My childhood pastime turned into my life’s work.”

         “What exactly do you catalog?” she asked.

         “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 screams if I turn the light out in his room at night.”

         “A lot of kids are afraid of the dark. You needn’t worry, he’ll outgrow it,” Cole assured her.

         “You don’t understand. My husband and I raised Dylan 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, witches, wizards or ghosts. 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 out there. The legends parents entertain their children with today have evolved over the years. The fairy creatures have become little more than bedtime stories. A jolly elf named Santa will bring presents to good boys and girls, but only if they’re asleep in bed when he gets to their house. The tooth fairy will put money under their pillow 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.

         “There is a species of evil fairy that likes to steal human children. These creatures sometimes replace mortal children with fairy children called changelings, but they just as often leave behind an empty bed. In Medieval times, 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 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 and eventually the tooth fairy was born.”

         “Was the sandman one of those child-stealing fairies too?” Dylan asked.

         “More of a distant cousin to them. The sandman’s forebears were more like 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 ere 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 a 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. “That doesn’t make it any less true.”

         “You’re comparing science to superstition,” Monica said.

         “Why do you believe the two are mutually exclusive? What is that Shakespeare said? There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

         “On that note, I’ll go do the dishes,” Monica announced, realizing her guest was not about to agree with her.

         When his mother headed to the kitchen, 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.”

         The little boy took a Red Sox duffle bag out from under his bed. “My mother said I should have left 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 boy to have such a fine watch,” the professor said, examining the valuable timepiece.

         “Yeah, I know,” the boy said unenthusiastically as he thumbed through his 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 time for his bath. As Cole stood to leave, the boy asked him, “You told me the sandman was real, but my mother says he’s not.”

         “Well, Dylan,” the professor sighed, “sometimes people, even those we love, can’t see what’s right in front of their eyes.”

* * *

         Just before midnight, Monica finished reading her 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 room and found him 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 you turn out the light.”

         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 Mr. Garrity told us?”

         Dylan put his baseball cards on the bedside table, turned off his lamp and lay down on the bed. “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.

         “Mom, it’s the sandman. I know it. Close your eyes and pretend you’re sleeping.”

         “Dylan, how can I get it through to 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 Cole 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.

         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 his clothes and stuffed them in the duffle bag with his baseball card collection. “My father’s watch,” he cried. “It’s not here. It was in the duffle bag last night, and now it’s gone.”

         “No need to worry, son,” Cole said, patting his pants pocket. “I’ve got it right here.”

         Dylan suppressed a shiver of fear as he followed the sandman out the door and up the road to the chalet.

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.