Strange Lights

1 Terrible Twos

Terrible Twos

Thanks to my toddler, there is goat’s blood on my favorite shoes.

My headlamp illuminates the canvas of a formerly beautiful pair of high-top Converse Chuck Taylors.

The sunny yellow fabric is now irreparably marred with dark brown and crimson blotches—arterial spray from the goat that lies dead on the forest floor in front of me.

The mud is my own fault, but I’m choosing to ignore that.

“I can’t replace these,” I complain as I throw a glare at my tiny companion. “They’re vintage.”

Eldi’s eyes reflect the light of the full moon as she pauses her feast to grin at me with a flash of fangs.

It’s apparent that she lacks a shred of remorse.

That might be because calling the shoes vintage is a stretch.

She was with me when I bought them for only a few dollars from a thrift store in Kansas.

Blood dribbles from the corner of Eldi’s mouth.

It’s a universal fact that toddlers are disgustingly messy eaters.

Most everyone mistakes Eldi to be an ordinary toddler of about two, though she’s anything but ordinary.

Eldi looks remarkably like me, though I certainly didn’t give birth to her; my uterus has never been open for that kind of business.

She showed up on the doorstep of my Winnebago a few years back.

Much about Eldi remains a mystery to me, but I am convinced her species is the origin of the legend of the Chupacabra.

Eldi doesn’t speak much, although she understands virtually everything anyone says to her in any language.

The only reason I keep her around is intellectual curiosity.

Since she can use the toilet on her own, I can tolerate her.

Despite her bloodthirsty habits, she isn’t dangerous to humans—just to animals, especially goats.

Toddlers are picky, and Eldi is no exception.

I named her Eldi once I realized she was never going to tell me her name, if she even had one.

It’s short for El Diablo, though I doubt she’s actually the devil.

If anyone asks, I say I named her after my mother.

It isn’t really a lie, after all. My mother could give the devil some serious competition.

That’s the extent of the information anyone is going to drag out of me about Eldi or my family, though.

As far as I’m concerned, I might as well have appeared out of the ether, just like Eldi did.

“I thought I told you to stay inside tonight,” I scold when Eldi doesn’t answer.

I wince as even more blood seeps through my shoes when I step closer. She makes quick work of her meal, at least, even if she is sloppy.

“It’s a good thing we’re leaving soon. The last thing we need is rumors about disappearing goats, and this is the second one this week.”

Eldi ignores me. I might as well be talking to myself.

“And you’d better hide the carcass. I’m not cleaning up your mess this time. I’m getting too old and tired for this bullshit.”

Without so much as an acknowledgment, Eldi hefts the goat up with one unnaturally strong, chubby hand and scampers up a tree spider-quick, draping the goat over one of the lower branches like a broken pinata.

It will do for now, but I’m sending her out to bury it properly in the morning.

I’ve been up all night, scouring the Michigan forest. Technically, I’m investigating sightings of a cryptid unique to these woods, a creature called Dogman.

I’m not actually looking for Dogman—he’s just an urban legend—but he makes a convenient cover for my true mission.

I am more worried about werewolves. There’s been a long-running epidemic of lycanthropy going around.

Nothing supernatural here tonight, though, save for Eldi.

With a graceless leap, Eldi crashes to the forest floor beside me and retrieves the stuffed toy she carries everywhere, plucks a leaf from his polyester hair, brushes away less than half of the fresh coating of dirt, and shoves him in between her still-bloody teeth.

She carries that filthy thing everywhere, like she’s a little mama cat.

The irony of her love for this particular toy is lost on all but me.

I creatively named him Goat, with a capital G for clarity.

His white coat was long ago aggressively loved into a mottled gray, and he has only one eye, but he’s Eldi’s most treasured possession.

Eldi and I look up as a flash of light briefly illuminates the forest, and I hold back a shudder.

I despise lightning and thunder. Despite the dark of the night, the heat is oppressive and the humidity smothering.

Midsummer is in full swing. It doesn’t smell like rain, and that’s all right; I’d rather suffer the heat.

I’m not afraid of thunderstorms, but I hate the feel of electricity in the air, the way it prickles across my skin, the metallic taste it leaves in the back of my throat.

But no thunder follows the flash. I don’t think that was lightning.

Look, look closer, a little voice in my subconscious calls.

The light must have been something else, a meteor perhaps.

Or a UFO. With my luck, I would come out to the forest looking for a monster, just to miss the aliens in the sky.

Eldi points at a gap in the canopy at the stars twinkling against the velvety black of the night sky. “Orion,” she says.

Orion the hunter is her favorite constellation and inexplicably one of the few words she will say consistently.

We must look for him every night, even throughout the summer months when that particular arrangement of stars isn’t visible in the northern hemisphere.

Toddlers and their obsessions—I’m lucky Eldi’s isn’t having to stop for every excavator we see, I guess.

“Orion’s a winter constellation. He’s hiding over the horizon, but he’ll be back.” I’ve explained this countless times, but she persists in fruitlessly searching the skies at every opportunity.

“Gone,” Eldi says with a sigh, turning her gaze from the stars back to me. She thrusts her arms up in the air, a universal toddler signal that she’s tired and wants to be carried.

“Nope,” I say stubbornly. “You made a choice. You face the consequences.”

“Up, Ma!”

Damn it. She knows my weaknesses. So much for tough-love parenting.

Eldi only breaks out the sweet talk when she really wants something.

“Ma” is her ultimate trump card. My arms are scooping her up before my brain can argue further.

I should have brought the baby carrier, but I thought I wouldn’t need it.

I left Eldi watching cartoons in the Winnebago with explicit instructions not to go hunting tonight.

The temptation of the goats at the nearby farm must have been too much for her to resist.

“You’re a menace,” I mutter into her tangled dirty-blond curls as she tucks her head under my chin.

She winds sticky hands into my shirt, twisting and stretching it, not content until my favorite tee goes the way of my favorite shoes.

It’s heathered gray and reads, “My head hurts, and I’m mad at the government” across the front.

I had it custom made and spent extra for the softest material.

Oh well, maybe the blood will give it additional character.

Eldi is heavy, a deadweight in my arms as she drifts off.

Sweat runs into my eyes and down the back of my neck.

A coppery barnyard tang coats my throat with the smell of goat and blood.

By the time the Winnebago is in sight, Eldi is sound asleep.

A snore escapes her gaping mouth, and she twitches like she’s dreaming, clutching Goat to her chest.

The first month Eldi came into my life, she was still as a statue and quiet as a mouse when she slept.

I would lean over her to make sure she was breathing, as I imagine parents with a newborn do.

Then, after a few weeks, she stopped sleeping soundlessly.

She had terrible nightmares for a month or so, screaming and thrashing violently.

It was the first time I thought about risking a pediatrician’s visit.

She eventually settled into what my educated-by-questionable-internet-forums self can only assume is a normal toddler slumber: restless, loud, and disruptive to my beauty sleep.

But she seems well rested most days, so I guess she’s all right.

My arms are aching, and I pull a muscle in my back trying to open the Winnebago’s door without dropping Eldi, but I admit I find it hard to put her down in her little loft above the front seats of the Winnebago.

Asleep is when Eldi is at her best, the only time I let myself imagine what having my own toddler might be like, the only time I wish I might keep her.

For a moment, I debate settling her into my bed, to sleep with her cuddled next to me.

I’d have to wash blood from the sheets tomorrow.

One of her hands disentangles from my shirt and comes to rest gently against my cheek, and I decide it’s worth the trouble.

As I look into her sleeping face, she seems more cherubic than devilish.

Eldi has at least three chins, and her cheeks are the kind of chubby that makes me want to bite or squeeze her too tightly.

Cute aggression—I didn’t understand it until the first time I saw a baby sleeping.

I’m still standing in the entryway, swaying Eldi gently, like a sucker, when she startles. She swiftly kicks me in the ribs and simultaneously whacks me hard across the face with Goat. I get a whiff of barnyard stink with a side of coppery blood. Never mind the cuddling—the loft will do just fine.