The roar of the vacuum cleaner woke Darcy up. What was that, he wondered with terror. Quietly he climbed out of bed and opened the bedroom door.
A cricket at the window said, “Don’t go. It will suck you into its bag. I’ve seen it happen to my parents. It was horrible.”
“Maybe it is a Black Hole,” Darcy shouted above the din.
“I don’t know what it’s called, but there is a hole in the tube and it is black.”
The woman, a much older version of his mother paused in front of his room and the vacuum went quiet. Then she turned and walked away. Again the roar started.
Darcy curled himself into a corner and said, “Maybe mother doesn’t love me anymore.”
The cricket had had this conversation with him for the past two weeks and it had never ended well, but today seemed different. “She didn’t close the door,” it chirped.
“I haven’t played in the streets since that day,” Darcy said.
“Was it the day the truck hit you?”
“Yeh. Since that day, I’ve tried so hard to be good but she acted as though I am not here.”
“I don’t think she means to.” A pause. “Maybe if you continue to be good, she may come round some day.”
“I guess.”
A loud crash startled them and Darcy ran out of the room to the staircase. There he found his mother, twisted and pinned under the heavy and still growling vacuum cleaner.
“Mommy! Mommy!” he cried and he stood there watching her twitch her life away. He shouted and yelled for help, but nobody came. When he realized that there was nothing he could do to save her, he balled his fists and covered his eyes. Maybe if he didn’t look, he thought, nothing bad would happen. Just like the day when the truck hit him. He closed his eyes so nothing happened. This would all just become a dream, just like that time.
Suddenly he felt a pair of arms embracing him tight. He opened his eyes and stared enthralled up at his mother. She was rocking him and saying ‘my baby, my baby’ over and over like it was a chant, or a prayer from the deepest recess of her heart.
He was ecstatically happy until he again saw the bright door in the wall, where no door was before, and coming out of it were the voices of strangers calling. He began to tremble.
“Look,” his mother said, “It is so pretty.”
“We shouldn’t go, mommy. They are strangers. We shouldn’t talk to strangers. They could hurt us.”
His mother’s back stiffened. “Have they ever hurt you?”
“No. They tell me that they love me and that I will be happy with them. But I don’t want to go because they are strangers.”
“Delia,” a voice called, “Delia. It’s me, child. Come quick before the door closes.”
His mother picked him up and walked to the door. “No, mommy, no,” Darcy said.
“It is alright, darling. They aren’t strangers. They are family. See, there is your great-grandmother and there is your daddy.”
“But I don’t know them,” Darcy insisted.
His mother began to sob. “That is because you never did. They were gone before you were born.”
“They aren’t strangers.”
“No, darling. They are family.” She kissed his brow, and stepped through the threshold.
The cricket waited for Darcy to come back, but he didn’t. Even when his aunt raised a racket, and even when a police car and an ambulance screamed their way to the front of the house, Darcy didn’t run back to his room. So the cricket decided to leave.
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