Right before Halloween, or maybe in preparation for it, Jack picked up a new habit. He started walking around whispering quietly, rapidly, nonstop. If you talk to him he’ll look you straight in the eye, but the muttered whispers don’t stop. They continue until you make a concerted effort to get his attention, and start right up again when he’s done with you.
It’s disquieting, to say the least.
Jack is a quirky kid, and it’s not just the autism causing it. Ok, a lot of it is the autism, but Jack is a pretty spunky dude anyway. He’s had a laundry list of ticks that have come and gone. He’s picked at the skin between his nose and lips until it bled. He’s picked at his lips until they’ve bled. He’s pulled his eyelashes and poked himself in the eyeball. Each one has stopped in its own time with not too much intervention. Except the eye thing, which I put a stop to by telling him if he didn’t quit I’d take him to the eye doctor, who would blow air directly into his eyes.
(It’s not a lie, although the doctor most likely wouldn’t perform a glaucoma test on a six-year-old for touching his own eye. I’m not proud.)
He stopped pretty quickly, although now that I actually have to take him in to have his eyes checked, I may wish he hadn’t listened so closely.
My point is, I’m sure someday the muttering will stop. In the meantime, I’m having flashbacks to every horror movie I’ve ever seen featuring possessed children each time I try to have a conversation with Jack. He’ll be doing his thing, playing with something or running endless laps of the living room, and I’ll hear it. Like the persistent static of an old transistor radio in a Stephen King novel, I just know if I listen closely enough, I’ll hear something that will scare me right out of my pajama pants.
This photo creeps me out. But not as much as my possessed kid.
Is he speaking to dead people? Planning our demise? Chatting with himself about the weather? I may never know, but I won’t lie. I’ll be happy when he moves on to the next thing. I can only hope it’ll involve more fun quirkiness and less demonic possession.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
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