The Reno-Man

Just a quick note before we hop into the story – this update marks the 50th Lucid Dreaming post. That’s right – we’ve reached a quarter century!! Okay, we’re marking stories, not years, but it’s still quite an achievement. So enjoy this special story, a little longer than usual, in honour of the occasion.

I knew that he was here to fix things, the things that no one else could see.

Papa said he was a reno man. “Don’t bother him, sprout, he’s here to fix the sink,” he told me, and tousled my hair. But in the way that only children have, when they know more than they could because there’s still so much they don’t, I understood that Papa was, for the first time I was aware of, wrong. This man wasn’t here to fix the sink which I had broken trying to flush away a piece of nothing – he was here to fix the real problems. The ones in the attic.

He came in an old converted ambulance. I knew my cars – I was going through a phase where everything on wheels excited me. My grandmother had just given me a bright red fire-truck, the best loot I’d gotten at my seventh birthday. It had a light that went when you pulled it back, and the wheels were strong enough to send it rolling even across the thick brown carpet of my bedroom. So I knew it was an ambulance, even though the bottom half was yellow instead of white, and it said “Rescue Me” across the side instead of “Marpoole County Fire Brigade” like our fire-trucks do.

Dad went off to watch the game, leaving the Reno-Man and I alone in the kitchen. I had been told to go and play like good children do; to disappear when they’re not wanted, and reappear the instant they’re called; but though I was usually an obedient child, this time I stalled. I hung off the door’s frame, one hand clutching an action hero. I compared it to the slight man in front of me, vaguely disappointed.

He had curly brown hair that looked more like Peter Parker than Superman, and he wore glasses. His eyes were giant behind the thick frames, and he was wearing a one-piece brown boiler suit like the janitors at school.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Superheroes don’t wear glasses,” I told him, pointing to the head of my toy, and its distinct lack of spectacles.

He chuckled and pushed his up his nose with one slim finger. The tips were caked with dirt under the nails. Mom wouldn’t let him eat dinner at our house til he washed up. “I’m not a superhero,” he said with a wink. “I’m a reno man. And I reckon you know what’s really broken here.”

I nodded, and held out my hand. He took it, and I led him down the hall. I put a finger to my lips and we tiptoed past the telly, where Papa sat and shouted at little men who can’t hear him; but when I talk to the monster in the closet, I’m being immature. Adults. We crept up the stairs; I pointed out the third from the bottom, which creaks on the left side, and somehow he knew about the second from the top even though I didn’t tell him. I was testing him.

We crept down the hall, past my sister’s room, where she laughed on the telephone with a boy named Fred who tousled my hair when she was nearby but ignored me once she left the room; I didn’t mean to pause at the door at the end of the hall, but I did.

The curtains were drawn, and I could tell from the way she was breathing that she was asleep. I motioned again for quiet.

“We aren’t allowed to make noise when she’s sleeping,” I whispered. “We get in trouble.”

“She’s sick,” he said, the Reno-Man, and I shook my head.

“The nothing is in her. They won’t listen, but it is.”

He crouched down so our faces were level, and he held out his hand like he was waiting for me to put something in it; but when I didn’t, he sniffed and closed his fist around the empty air, and held it to his nose for a spell. “It’s in her,” he agreed.

“Do you know how to fix it?” I asked.

“Rescuing is what I do best,” he promised. “Show me the nothing.”

I pulled the cord for the attic stairs, and winced when they squeaked their way down. I’m not allowed in the attic, not since I started yelling about what no one else will see, but the telly’s on loud downstairs and my sister covers any other noise. No one stops us as we start to climb.

I hesitate right near the top, at that place where you have to stick your head into the dark and leave the light of the hallway behind. I feel his hand on my ankle, quiet and calm, and I know that if he’s really here to rescue us, I have to trust him. I’ve stopped believing my parents can save me, now that they stopped listening to my fears, but this adult seems different. Sure. I swallow a bit of fear and climb.

He follows me up, and I notice right away that you can’t hear our breathing. Usually it’s the first thing I would notice in the attic; how quiet everything is, and how all you can hear is your breathing. But not anymore. The nothing swallows it up. I wonder if I talked if it would be strong enough to swallow that, too, but I’m afraid to give it my voice. What if I can’t get it back? And the Reno-Man doesn’t say anything. He just pushes his big glasses back up his nose, and he takes some tools from his tool belt, and he starts… fixing things.

He starts at the edges of the nothing. It pools in the crack between the roof and the floor, and at first if you don’t look close, you think it’s only shadows. Mama tried to prove to me that there was nothing to be afraid of; and I guess there was. She touched it and it crawled inside, and now they say she’s sick but I know what’s really wrong. The nothing is in her. But he… he touches it somehow and it tries to eat him, I can see it try, but he’s so real, so here, so something that it can’t take him away. There’s just too much of him for it to devour, and it tries and it becomes… something. Something mean and dark and I wish I had stayed to watch, I’ll always wonder, but I ran away, down the ladder and I huddled at the bottom and there were noises from the attic. Bumps and knocks and whimpers and a final, whispering scream. And then the sound of hands slapping away dust, and the Reno-Man climbed down the ladder.

“Well,” he said, “I could do with a spot of tea.”

“But… did you win?” I ask.

He shrugged. “I don’t know… you tell me,” he said. He caught me by the shoulders and pushed me towards the door to my mother’s room. We both looked in, and I breathed a quick gasp. Mother was sitting up in bed, looking bleary and confused.

“Oh – hello,” she said, as if she wasn’t quite sure where she was.

“Thank you!” I yelled, and I threw my arms around his waist and hugged him tight. “You did it! You did!”

“Shhh,” he whispered, and winked, and kneeled down again to speak to me. “This is our little secret,” he told me.

He took my action hero – I’m not sure why, but he asked if he could have it and I said yes. He left while I was still hugging my mother, so I never got the chance to say goodbye, to say a real proper thank you; but I think he knew.

Father always complained that he never fixed the sink. And never understood the day the Reno-Man came, and saved our family.

Photo courtesy of Brock Haug.