Grandpa.
You’re just a little boy, you don’t know nothing yet. But one day you will.
What does the rain say?
It tells you things you need to know. You can’t just see and hear the rain. You got to feel it. There’s more there. Things behind the rain…inside it...
Like monsters? Mommy and Grandma said there’s no such thing as monsters.
And what do you think?
I don’t believe in monsters, either.
Sometimes I think that’s all I believe in.
I don’t understand, Grandpa.
I know, son. I don’t either. I never have.
I vaguely remembered wearily climbing the stairs back to my room, and had even blurrier memories of sitting down in the bar drinking with Maggie until the wee hours of the morning. I know at one point she’d told me to go to bed and that she’d be crashing in her apartment out back, but I couldn’t remember much of what we’d talked about. Ironically, older memories were much clearer that night, fresher somehow, flooding my mind and senses the same way my grandfather’s stories once had.
After kicking my shoes off and collapsing on the bed, I closed my eyes a moment but promised myself because it was too dangerous to be vulnerable in a place like this, I wouldn’t sleep. But then, I’d also promised myself I wouldn’t drink to excess, so what was one more broken promise on a night of lies where creeping devils from the darkest nightmares of my childhood had returned? Perhaps they’d never really left, but like the secrets in the rain my grandfather spoke of, had been there all along.
Maybe I’d only begun to hear them again because I was listening closely enough.
Whispers in my mind assured me all I needed was a little rest.
I never meant to sleep, never meant to dream.
But when that rainy night reached out and touched me, I did both.
SEVEN
When I was seven I had a friend named Adam who loved trains. His father had transformed his entire cellar into another world, a magical place where numerous trains slithered along foot after foot of plastic track. An entire town, various stations, people and cars, grass and hills and parks and tunnels all resided there, the tracks winding through all of it, from one corner of the basement to the next. While I’d never been a train fanatic myself, I quickly became one. In my brief seven years, his trains were without question the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. I longed to have something similar, so when Christmas rolled around I asked for a train set. Santa Claus got me one, but all the hard work of his elves went to waste because it never made it out of the box. My grandfather had promised to set it up for me but never did, and it all slipped away, forgotten in time. And then Adam and his family moved out of state. As I stood in our yard the morning they left, waving goodbye to my best friend, I was certain I’d never again see anything as magnificent as Adam’s world of trains. In time, my interest diminished, but trains continued to hold a certain appeal to me—the power, size, the sound and motion—and I always made it a point to take notice of the real trains that moved through town on a regular basis. They were mostly trash trains, of course, but I imagined they were something far more romantic and exciting, and when you’re a child, imagining makes it so. Imagining is enough.
Years later, as a jaded teenager, I found myself in a field one afternoon with Caleb, waiting on a train. Like train robbers, we crouched in the untamed, waist-high grass, listening and watching for a train we knew would eventually cross our path. But the train wasn’t our main focus. We were more concerned with who else might be waiting on that train.
In my drunken slumber, I dreamed of the trains that night. Out cold in my seedy little room above an empty barroom, I rode the trains with Caleb the same way we had all those years before. Running, the wind blowing, the train rumbling down on us like an angry beast, we latched on and pulled ourselves up,
You’re just a little boy, you don’t know nothing yet. But one day you will.
What does the rain say?
It tells you things you need to know. You can’t just see and hear the rain. You got to feel it. There’s more there. Things behind the rain…inside it...
Like monsters? Mommy and Grandma said there’s no such thing as monsters.
And what do you think?
I don’t believe in monsters, either.
Sometimes I think that’s all I believe in.
I don’t understand, Grandpa.
I know, son. I don’t either. I never have.
I vaguely remembered wearily climbing the stairs back to my room, and had even blurrier memories of sitting down in the bar drinking with Maggie until the wee hours of the morning. I know at one point she’d told me to go to bed and that she’d be crashing in her apartment out back, but I couldn’t remember much of what we’d talked about. Ironically, older memories were much clearer that night, fresher somehow, flooding my mind and senses the same way my grandfather’s stories once had.
After kicking my shoes off and collapsing on the bed, I closed my eyes a moment but promised myself because it was too dangerous to be vulnerable in a place like this, I wouldn’t sleep. But then, I’d also promised myself I wouldn’t drink to excess, so what was one more broken promise on a night of lies where creeping devils from the darkest nightmares of my childhood had returned? Perhaps they’d never really left, but like the secrets in the rain my grandfather spoke of, had been there all along.
Maybe I’d only begun to hear them again because I was listening closely enough.
Whispers in my mind assured me all I needed was a little rest.
I never meant to sleep, never meant to dream.
But when that rainy night reached out and touched me, I did both.
SEVEN
When I was seven I had a friend named Adam who loved trains. His father had transformed his entire cellar into another world, a magical place where numerous trains slithered along foot after foot of plastic track. An entire town, various stations, people and cars, grass and hills and parks and tunnels all resided there, the tracks winding through all of it, from one corner of the basement to the next. While I’d never been a train fanatic myself, I quickly became one. In my brief seven years, his trains were without question the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. I longed to have something similar, so when Christmas rolled around I asked for a train set. Santa Claus got me one, but all the hard work of his elves went to waste because it never made it out of the box. My grandfather had promised to set it up for me but never did, and it all slipped away, forgotten in time. And then Adam and his family moved out of state. As I stood in our yard the morning they left, waving goodbye to my best friend, I was certain I’d never again see anything as magnificent as Adam’s world of trains. In time, my interest diminished, but trains continued to hold a certain appeal to me—the power, size, the sound and motion—and I always made it a point to take notice of the real trains that moved through town on a regular basis. They were mostly trash trains, of course, but I imagined they were something far more romantic and exciting, and when you’re a child, imagining makes it so. Imagining is enough.
Years later, as a jaded teenager, I found myself in a field one afternoon with Caleb, waiting on a train. Like train robbers, we crouched in the untamed, waist-high grass, listening and watching for a train we knew would eventually cross our path. But the train wasn’t our main focus. We were more concerned with who else might be waiting on that train.
In my drunken slumber, I dreamed of the trains that night. Out cold in my seedy little room above an empty barroom, I rode the trains with Caleb the same way we had all those years before. Running, the wind blowing, the train rumbling down on us like an angry beast, we latched on and pulled ourselves up,
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