One day at school during the morning playtime Cal, a thin, fair-haired boy, was standing in the corner as usual as the other kids buzzed around him. Grant Hanson, who was bigger than the others, stepped up to him and poked him on the chest.
“You’re a wimp, he said as he stuck his face next to Cal’s, “and I heard your dad's not coming back!”
Cal shuddered and then fell onto his hands and knees with his head bowed. Hanson laughed as some other kids gathered around, but the laughing stopped when Cal lifted his head to reveal eyes with no eyeballs. He emitted a rasping noise as the group screamed and ran away. Hanson, however, was held next to Cal by an invisible force and squealed as Cal, now upright, walked around and stood in front of him. There was a choking smell of excrement in the air. A great force threw Hanson backwards, and he smashed into the perimeter fence as Cal again fell to the ground and stared blankly into the distance—his eyes back to normal.
Two female teachers came rushing out from the common room, one helped a howling Hanson while the other tended to Cal by putting him in the recovery position.
Another teacher appeared at the main entrance and called the other children into the school. The teacher attending Cal got him to his feet and drove the boy home.
That night Cal's mother, Sarah, switched off her television and then sat in silence.
She then stood up and blew the dust off her teak sideboard as she picked up her wedding photograph. A tear slid down her cheek when she ran a finger around the wooden frame. Her husband Paul looked smart in his uniform and she in a frilly white dress. She sighed and looked at another picture of Paul with some of his marine mates. He had been killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan while on tour there five months previously. She dreamed of their honeymoon when they lay on a beach in Cyprus in each other’s arms.
Sarah then picked up a photograph of her son. What was to become of Cal? Should she be brave and tell him that his father wouldn’t be coming home this time? The doctors had diagnosed epilepsy. Would he grow out of the malady that had begun a few months ago? And what of the force that threw that kid onto the fence? A thump from Cal’s bedroom above made her jump. Then she heard running and a growling noise. She left her chair and crept into the hallway and switched on the light, but the bulb blew out. She climbed the stairs in the dark as the growling noise intensified. At the top of the stairs she peered through the gloom and could see that Cal’s door was still the way she had left it hours before: slightly open. She pushed the door open.
Beads of sweat rolled down her forehead. She stuck her head around the door.
“Hi Mum!” Cal shouted as he rolled off his bed followed by Rolfie, the next door neighbour’s West Highland Terrier.
“Oh Cal, I thought…” she uttered with tears rolling down her face as she walked further into the room.
“What Mum?”
“Never mind,” she said as she gave him a hug and patted Rolfie. “How did he get in here?”
“I let him in while you were watching ‘Coronation Street’. What’s happened to the light in the hall?”
She laughed. "The bulb's gone.”
“Mum?”
“Yes?”
“I know; so do I honey.”