I Dream of Simon by Baden

I am holding in my hand a much larger hand. It’s a wax hand.

“That’s Simon’s hand”, my uncle tells me.

He tells me Simon lives in the attic. I’ve never been to the attic. The attic seems miles away. I look up at the ceiling. I’m not sure Simon really lives there. But I can see him in my mind, luminous and smooth, bending over in the dark and peering down. Maybe he opens the trapdoor. Maybe sometimes…

“Sometimes he comes down into the house. Only at night though. When you're asleep”. My uncle smiles, pats me on the head, and walks away.

This house is my grandfather’s house. He’s a short stout man who sneaks up on me and presses coins into my palm and walks off as if nothing’s happened. He says things I don’t understand like “Be the hokey man!”. The house has three stories and winding steps. My room is on the third floor. We all live there. Me, my mum, and my brother. I sleep in a bed with my brother.

“Do you believe in Simon?”, he says to me. He looks scared.

“Yes,” I say, satisfied by his widening eyes.

I don’t know if I really believe in Simon. But I dream of Simon.

Simon is pure and white and soft and large and moves like a cat among the beams. He doesn’t eat or drink or laugh or cry. He needs nothing but his lofty space and sometimes to come down into the house and see how people live. Every time he comes it’s as if he has never come before. He opens the trapdoor and peers into our room. He sees our little bodies sleeping. He feels for us no hatred nor love, only that he must be among us. And he creeps down into our room and walks around and stares at my sleeping eyes and puts his one hand close to my brow and sees how white it is against my pink skin and wonders.

He has done this many times.

But now I move in my bed and put my hands over the covers and he sees I have two and he wonders again and looks at his stump and becomes unhappy and envies me and moves away.

I awake and look around. Everyone is sleeping. It’s too early to get up for school because it’s still dark. I wonder where Simon’s hand is. I wonder if he found his hand. Then, after a time, the room brightens and I think of getting up and I wonder if I really believe in Simon.

*

My father doesn’t live here. He’s a computer programmer. He works in Saudi Arabia. He told us some strange things about there.

My uncle is younger than my father and lives on the second floor of the house. He goes to college. He gives me the hand again. My brother tries to take it from me and I bat him away. He skulks off.

“What happened?’ I ask combatively “How did Simon lose his hand?”

“Nobody knows.”

“You’re fooling us.”

My uncle bends down and looks me straight in the face.

“Am I?” he says and takes the hand. “Y’know, we shouldn’t play with his hand too much. He might get jealous.”

“Did Simon steal something?” I say boldly. “Is that why they cut it off?”

My uncle bursts into laughter, then quietens.

“Maybe. But nobody knows. Nobody knows how Simon lost his hand. Not even Simon.”

“Will he take it back?”

“If he finds it.”

“Why don’t you give it back to him?’”

My uncle thinks about this for a moment and can’t seem to come up with a good answer.

“Maybe I will,” he says eventually.

“Don’t!”

He looks at me curiously.

I run off to tell my brother.

“Why don’t you want him to have his hand back?”

“He’d be spoilt.”

My brother nods. “Oh”.

Then he looks at me sadly.

“You didn’t let me have it.”

*

I dream of Simon lying on his back and looking at his stump. Now he knows it’s a stump. Now he knows something isn’t there. But does he know that what’s missing is down here? It’s hard to tell. He doesn’t swing so much now. He is not so much a cat. He lumbers. He stoops. He trudges. There’s one small window in the attic and he looks out. The moon is the same colour as him. He feels something. He reaches one hand up to it. If he had two hands maybe he could climb out onto the roof. Maybe he could walk across it and climb down the drainpipe and walk through the streets and out into the woods. But he can’t pull himself up. You can’t pull yourself up with only one hand.

“How can he get back into the attic then?”

“What?” I don’t like my brother’s question.

“You said he can’t pull himself up to get out onto the roof. How can he get back into the attic after he comes down then?”

“Well… he steps on a chair. And it’s not so hard then as up there. There aren’t any chairs in the attic to help. There’s nothing.”

“Isn’t there? But I thought…”

“I’m not going to tell you about Simon any more.”

My brother pauses for a moment. “Do you really believe in Simon?”

“Yes”, I say firmly.

*

My father comes back for Christmas. He’s a big man. A distant man. When he says something everyone has to listen. My mother doesn’t like him. One time she spat on the ground right in front of him and walked off. He always brings us nice presents though. It’s hard to know what to make of my father.

*

Simon bangs his stump against the attic wall and looks dolefully at the trapdoor. Then he marches over to it, opens it, and quickly lowers himself into our bedroom. He looks at me with steely eyes and raises his hand into a fist and then opens it again. I move furtively in my bed as he searches in and around me. I don’t know why he thinks I have it. He thinks I stole it from him.

“Where have you put it?” he says wordlessly and sweeps out the bedroom and down the stairs and through the hall and past the picture of Mary the Blessed Virgin, who he glares at angrily. He rifles through drawers and desks and dives under the stairs and into the tiny kitchen and screams noiselessly in frustration. His soft solid body shudders; his pale lips, forever shuttered, quiver. “Where. Is. It?” Then he stops and thinks and his eyes turn to ice. He takes a knife from the kitchen drawer and turns and walks back up the stairs, up one winding staircase and then two and to my bedroom door and I writhe in my bed trying to wake before he gets to me and he opens the door and raises the knife and strides towards me. He stands over me and pins one of my arms with his stump and stares with mad envy at my hand…

“You were shouting”, my mother says.

“Huh?”

“Shouting in your sleep.”

“I had a nightmare.”

“Come on into my bed.”

“What was it about.”

“Simon.”

“Hm.” My mother looks annoyed, then says kindly, “There’s no such thing as Simon. Go on off to sleep now.”

*

“It’s gone.” My uncle says.

“What do you mean? I want to see it.”

“It’s gone. Just forget about it. Sure, I was only joking anyway.” He pats me on the head and walks off.

*

“He’s not real then.”

“He is.”

“Mum says he’s not.”

“She doesn’t want you to be scared.”

“You’re just trying to scare me. You always do that. You’re mean.”

My brother looks really angry. I jump him and get him down on the floor.

“He’s real.” I shout. “He’s real! Say it!”

I push down on him with my hands, push his face into the floor.

“Say it!”

My brother starts crying. “He’s real, he’s real.”

I let him up and he runs off.

*

My father comes back for Christmas. I didn’t know he was coming back that day. It’s a surprise.

“Hello,” he says in a big voice.

“Oh! Hi, Dad.”

He laughs and walks off.

Later, I hear noises and look out into the hall. My mother is saying something from upstairs to my father. My father is looking upstairs at her from downstairs.

I hear her say “stupid”.

My father’s face goes red and he marches angrily upstairs. He shouts at my mother and she runs up to the third floor, to our bedroom, and runs inside and closes the door and he runs after her and pushes the door in on her and she screams. Me and my brother run upstairs and shout at him “Get out! get out!”

My father stops and turns and leaves.

“You’re lucky you have your children to protect you,” he tells my mother.

*

I dream of Simon lying in the attic and staring up through the window into the moonless night. “The hand is gone”, he says to himself, “I’ll never find it.”

“Tell me a story and you can have it.” another voice says.

“What’s a story?” says Simon.

“It’s anything you want it to be,” says the voice.

“Who are you?” says Simon.

The voice keeps talking but Simon doesn’t understand it and he stares at his stump and the emptiness there and wonders if he’ll melt away in sadness at his loss.

I want to tell him the hand isn’t gone. I want to tell him he’ll find it. I want to say I’m sorry I didn’t want him to have it and that I believe in him. But I don't know.

I don’t know if I really believe in Simon.

But I must dream of Simon.