This story was published in 2004 in the defunct ezine called Buddy Tales. I don't think it caused the defunction. It also got third place in a JA Konrath contest. Many stories are based loosely or not so loosely on the personal lives of writers. This one revolves around three events in my life at the time: my wife having to travel for business, my son learning to ask for hugs, and a strange reflective anomaly involving angular placement of mirrors in a darkened house that made shadows of myself look like they were coming toward me as I walked through a certain hallway. This seemingly innocuous combination of occurrences turned into an eerie science fiction fantasy called…

Daddy, Hug
By Bob Farley

James Stationer woke up and turned on the bedside light, relieved to find he was unable to see through his hands. The clock read two in the morning. He'd been having the scary dream again, about turning into a ghost, but it was only a dream. Wasn't it?

The dream had started the same day his wife, Emily, had left for her latest five-day business trip, leaving him and their son, Billy, alone for the week. He didn’t like Emily being away, but she made the big bucks, so they put up with it. Only one more day, and Emily would be home.

A warm breeze splashed through the room. He heard the furnace humming, the dog snoring beside the bed, and something making clicking sounds on the roof, like a bird walking or willow tree limbs tickling the siding. And now and then, something else. A voice?

He peered over the bedposts, through the open bedroom door, and into the kitchen illuminated by little five-watt nightlights that Emily liked to plug into every other electrical outlet in the house. They gave the rooms an uplit, scary movie ambiance. He’d rather have pitch black.

The sound of the voice drove him to throw back the covers and walk out of the bedroom, weaponless and dressed in plaid pajamas. Tiptoeing through foyer and hallway, he jumped at the sight of shadows crisscrossing between mirrors. The low-placed nightlights turned ficus plants into two-dimensional wall monsters ready to reach out and end the life of any casual passer-by unwise enough to be up so late at night. Tall urns topped with plants looked like skulking muggers in his peripheral vision.

Closer to his son’s room, he heard the voice more plainly. Maybe a radio had come on. Maybe something had fallen on one of his talking toys and triggered its speech function. Inching closer to the door, he heard the voice saying, “Daddy, hug. Daddy, hug.” The voice wasn’t a toy. It was his son.

“Daddy, hug. Daddy, hug.”

Peeking around the door, he gasped. Something that looked like him, except translucent. It held out its arms to something in the room.

James pulled his head back from the doorway and stood as though glued to the wall. Hearing his son’s voice again, he looked back, horrified to see his son standing, stiff and unnatural, holding out his hands to the thing in front of him. At that point, James’s feet came unglued from the floor and he jumped into the room.

“Billy, wake up!”

The apparition turned toward him, coalescing and swirling between James and Billy. As James reached to hold Billy, Billy’s eyes opened wide, as if seeing a monster for the first time, and he screamed, “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” Turning and running, the child disappeared through the house walls as if they…or he…were vapor.

James tried to reach him, but his hand sliced through the ghost instead, sending a clammy chill up his arm. At that moment, the phone rang and the apparition evaporated, like steam from a gutter grate.

Stepping into the foyer, he picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Yes, what did you want?”

James recognized Emily, but not the reason for her call. “What do you mean?”

“What I mean is you called me, didn’t you? The phone rang, the ID says HOME, so what is it?”

“Sorry, babe. No call from here. I just woke up a few minutes ago and was looking around the house. I think I had a bad dream or something.”

“Okay, a bad dream, huh?” She sound annoyed. “I guess you’d better get back to bed. You don’t sound so good. How’s Billy?”

James gulped. “He’s fine. Why wouldn’t he be?”

“Okay, James, maybe you haven’t woke up all the way or something. There’s no need to get snippy.”

Thinking that maybe the whole thing really had been a bad dream, James decided to go along with what his wife told him. “Okay, sorry, yeah, you’re right. We’re fine. I must have hit the redial button in my sleep. See you tomorrow night. Love you.”

“I love you, too. You can tell me all about your bad dream when I get home.”

Hanging up the phone, he went back into Billy’s room, and was shocked to see the child lying in it, as cherubic asleep as he was devilish awake.

“This is crazy,” James said, deciding to try to go back to sleep.

On the way back to bed, he went to the bathroom. As he washed his hands, he noticed his head feeling stuffed up and puffy. Turning on the lights, he reached for the medicine cabinet and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. "What!"

A milky, wispy creature stared back at him. Holding out his hands, he looked through them like wax paper. Isn’t anything real anymore, he thought, growing faint from the effects of not knowing. Then a noise drew his attention to the bed, where he saw himself lying asleep. He shuddered uncontrollably, electrically.

As he stared, a cloud appeared above the version of himself on the bed, descending on him. When it disappeared inside him, the alarm clock rang and the sleeping version of himself woke. When he focused on the translucent self of James, both screamed. The version in the bed turned on the light and inexplicably darkness cloaked the room.

James tried to see, but the harder he tried, the thicker the darkness became, seeping back into his eyes.

***

James didn't feel like he'd slept at all. The strange dream had again haunted him. Shutting off his alarm, he looked up to see a misty, amorphous figure standing in the bathroom. A shout escaped his lips, and the thing, whatever it was, began to fade. Drops of condensation fell from where its eyes would be, as if it were crying. Then it was gone, and he wasn’t sure if it had really been there or not.

Splashing water on his face, he shuddered as a warm feeling crept over him. Then he remembered. The thing that he had seen had been part of his dream. It had wanted to find Billy.

“Billy!” he yelled, rumbling through the house and into his room.

“Daddy!” the boy screamed back.

“I’m here, son. I’m here. Give me a hug.”

Billy rose from the bed and into James’s arms. “Daddy, hug.”

Something wasn’t right. Billy’s head was on his shoulder. He should have felt his jaw move when he spoke. Again he said, “Daddy, hug.” Again, no movement. James held him away from him to see into his face, motionless, white, vacant.

The voice came again, but from inside him. His eyes were closed, and when James opened one, gently, with his thumb, inside he saw the milky, cloudy, condensation-like stuff of the nightmare creature.

“Billy!” he said, shaking him gently, prodding him, trying to wake him.

Finally his eyes opened, and out of one rolled a large, white tear, the consistency of mercury from the way it slid down his face.

***

Emily came home that night, and the next few days felt more normal. Eventually, as it always happened, Emily had to leave again. Billy got cranky after she left, and James hoped the next week would be easier.

***

James’s eyes opened and slowly focused on the dim surroundings of the bedroom. A sound coming from outside the room transformed into Billy’s voice. James jumped out of bed, grabbing a baseball bat he’d leaned against the nightstand. Creeping toward Billy’s room, he found the apparition inside.

Leading with the aluminum bat, James said, “Okay, I don’t want to have to use this. Billy, you get back in bed, and ....”

Whatever the thing was, it lunged, growing in width and height, and swatted the bat out of James’s hand as it swooped past him, engulfing Billy. Then, they both disappeared through the wall. Seconds later, the phone rang, just like the first time. Shocked, James answered the phone. Again, Emily wanted to know why I had called, even though he was sure he had not touched a phone.

Nevertheless, he went through the same explanations as before and hung up the phone. Walking back to the bedroom, he looked in the hallway mirror, not surprised to see he had turned into the creature again. In the bedroom, he saw the other James sleep, wake up, stare, and nonchalantly turn on the light, plunging James into darkness. He went looking for Billy.

***

James woke up expecting Emily to be home, but she wasn’t. He expected Billy to be in his bed, but he wasn’t. He went to work and came home, and still no Emily or Billy. At six, he called the police.

An hour later, he watched a police car pull up and was shocked when Emily got out of the passenger’s seat. But no Billy.

“Emily, what’s going on?” James asked. “Where have you been? Where’s Billy?”

Emily said nothing, but looked at him through eyes that drooped with sadness.

“Could you please come with us, Mr. Stationer?” the officer asked.

“What? Why? What’s going on?”

“We just need to take you down to the office fill out some paperwork,” the officer explained.

James agreed and got in the car. During the ride, no one said anything. James asked questions, but neither the officer nor Emily answered.

The car stopped at a building that was not police headquarters.

“Where is this?” James asked.

“We have to get some papers from here, and then you’ll understand,” said Emily.

“What kind of papers? Understand what?”

Huge doors swung open as all three walked up the gray slab stairs. At a desk a plump lady in a nursing uniform said, “Ah, our friend, Mr. Stationer. Back from your little vacation?”

“What vacation?” James asked, more concerned with each passing moment.

“Darling, you need to finish your therapy,” Emily said.

“What...” James started to say, but he was beginning to remember details from the past that were not clear enough to mean anything to him.

“You need to let the doctors help you,” Emily said, her smile forced, her teeth and lips like plastic.

***

A siren awoke James. The light in his room flashed red and blue. He was bound to a metal bed. His room was small, with one window, barred. He had been here before, but for how long or how many times, he wasn’t sure.

When the apparition appeared again, it was almost like a long-lost friend, floating through the window bards like fire through tissue paper. Ebbing and flowing into the room, the thing said two words, a request: “Daddy, hug?”

Finally, he understood and nodded his head and smiled as it engulfed him, somehow enabling him to follow it through the window, over the courtyard, and away.

James Stationer was almost done with the world.

***

“We’re very sorry, Mrs. Stationer,” the facility chief, Dr. Sanbornt said. “We had a watch on your husband’s door, since he’s left us twice before. We notified the state police. We just have no idea what happened to him this time.”

Emily Stationer dabbed her eyes and nose with a handkerchief. “He took Billy’s death so hard. I lost both of them in that fire. And now, I’ve lost James again."

Sanbornt nodded.

Emily shook her head and sighed. “I’ll be going, then. Thank you, for all your help.”

She drove down the steeply sloped driveway to the street below and stopped. Out of habit, she looked into her rear view mirror. Her vision was blocked by something in the back seat like a threadbare sheet being blown in the wind on a sunny day.

Emily screamed and pressed the gas pedal to the floor, sending the car fishtailing slowly into the street. She looked up in time to see a large delivery truck barreling down upon her, and then glanced into the rearview mirror. Nothing blocked her view. She had just enough time left to modulate her scream a full octave higher.

***

Emily Stationer opened her eyes. She was still alive. Her car was in the ditch beside the road. The sound of a siren grew, and soon flashing lights appeared over the crest of the road.

“Ma’am, are you all right?” a uniformed policeman asked.

The officer helped her out of the car and asked, “Can you tell me what happened?”

Emily went through her memory of the accident. She was clear up until the point that it looked like she was going to be crushed by the truck. The officer wrote studiously as she spoke, and when she told him about the ghost-like appearance in the backseat of the car, he asked, “Have you had anything to drink tonight, Mrs. Stationer?”

“No! And the implication--“

The other officer who had been interviewing the truck driver yelled over, “Hey, Cal. Could you come here a second?”

“I’ll be right back, Mrs. Stationer,” Officer Cal said.

Moments later he returned with a puzzled expression and a confused tilt to his head.

“What’s the matter?” Emily asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost now.”

“In a way, I have. The driver of the truck told a story almost as strange as yours. He said that something like fog suddenly appeared over your car, and then your car was in one spot, and suddenly it was in another spot, off to the side.”

Shaking his head, Officer Cal walked to his car and returned with a pedometer wheel. In the roadway, he looked at the position of the vehicles several times, then stood scratching his head.

“What’s the matter?” Emily asked.

“I’m looking at these skid marks from the truck and the spin marks from your car and they’re not adding up.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is, something’s missing. According to the marks,” Cal said, “you’re heading straight toward each other here. Then the marks disappear, and you’re there, and he’s there, and....”

***

“Doctor, I know what I saw, and you see the copies of the report yourself. The other driver saw the same thing. I’m not crazy.” Emily sat on the edge of her seat, making her case to Dr. Sanbornt.

“This is true, Emily, but surely you must hear yourself how fantastic this whole thing sounds.”

“I think it was James. Or James’s spirit, his ghost, whatever you want to call it.”

Dr. Sanbornt tilted back his head.

“In the light of all the peculiarities of this incident, I cannot say with a certainty that you are wrong. But even if you are right, what then? What do we do?”

“I think James wanted to have his family back together so much that he turned some kind of a corner between life and death.”

Dr. Sanbornt said nothing.

“I think he found a way to bring us back together that required my death, but then he decided now wasn’t the time for me to join him and Billy.”

Dr. Sanbornt tapped his pencil on the clipboard in his lap, still quiet, a worried and puzzled look on his face.

“I know this has to sound crazy, doesn’t it?” Emily continued. “Two days ago, I would never have imagined myself saying any of these words. Am I crazy, Doctor?”

“No, Emily, just very stressed. A bit of rest, and you should be fine. Nurse.”

A plump nurse walked in and took the handles of Emily’s wheelchair.

“Take Mrs. Stationer back to her room, please. We’ll talk again next week, Emily.”

***

In the waiting room of the psychiatric facility, James Stationer saw the sad look in the doctor’s eyes, and he knew he would not be able to see his sick wife again this week.

“She’s not yet able to process reality,” Dr. Sanbornt said. “She’s still telling the story about your son being a ghost and you disappearing from the hospital. It’s as though she were you when she tells the story.”

James had heard it before. “And she doesn’t remember the wreck, either?”

The doctor tapped his clipboard. “Her memory of the wreck continues to be distorted, too. Seeing you alive, I don’t know, I’m afraid that could put her into another catatonic state.”

James nodded sadly, thanked the doctor, and left the building. He had not heard what he wanted to hear.

What he truly wanted to hear, however, had nothing to do with his dear Emily. What he really needed to hear was still in his head, barely an echo, but a part of his memory forever: “Daddy, hug?”

THE END
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