Long-Awaited Eighth Birthday

His heart beats after every seven and a half years

I woke up with sticky eyes and a stuffy nose. I was allergic to dust and it was showing. I was harshly woken up by a loud moving truck outside our house. I knew our old neighbors had gone but the new family came earlier than expected.

“Mom! Close the door please!” I tried to bury my head in my blankets to try to sleep again. Our neighbors' house was joined to ours. There was only a difference of one wall between our plots, so the noise of the moving furniture was clear.

“Get up Daisie. New neighbors are here, we have to welcome them.”

Eventually, I got up and we went out to see the new family. A husband and wife, and their small child. He was bald and had a scar on his head. He was wearing a red and white sweater. I tried to guess the age of the kid. I was 15, and comparative to me, he looked quite small, so I assumed he was seven or eight.

Now that I realize it, I never knew what was the name of that kid. When his parents did introduce him to us, they simply said, “This is our child.”

It was difficult for me to keep eye contact with any of them because of the dusty wind. We couldn't stay outside longer, so my mom gave them a bread casserole and we came back in.

When I came out of the bathroom after washing my eyes, I saw my mom sitting quietly on the sofa. She was a psychologist, so I could tell she observed something in that family that I didn’t.

“What happened, mom?”

“Nothing. Just that the kid looked like he was very anxious. To the point it was making me question if he was abnormal.”

“What made you think he was anxious?”

“His eyes. He wasn’t looking at us, not at the road, he was,” after a pause, she continued, “basically looking at nothing. He was blank. His eyes weren’t big, so he probably wasn’t lost in thought. Right now, he was just blank. He didn’t even move a single inch all the time we were standing there.”

“So, are you going to ask his parents about him?”

“Not right now. I want to observe that kid a bit more before I say anything to his parents.”

After that conversation, my mom kept her promise, though her first encounter with the kid was unexpected.

Two days later, my mom went up to our rooftop to drink tea on our swing. She was sitting there, the weather was still hazy like someone had color graded it to the color of parchment paper.

While she was there, the neighbor’s kid came up to their rooftop. My mom described his walk to be mechanical. His arms didn't sway alongside him while he was walking. Still in the same sweater, he stood along the railing, his head moving. He was looking around at the neighborhood, observing. Observing What? I don’t know.

He looked at our rooftop. He didn’t see mom but kept staring at it. Disturbed, mom came back down.

I could tell she was thinking hard about the kid. There seemed to be an attitude about her that said she had a very strong instinct for something along with strong resistance to believe that instinct.

She behaved like that for another week. She would go up to the rooftop and every time, the kid would be up there too, observing.

Finally one day, she hurriedly came downstairs at nighttime. My older brother, dad, and I became alert at the sound of her footsteps.

“We need that family to move out within these two to three days. That kid is a murderer.

He will be eight soon and we need him to move out before that.”

“His parents don’t look like murderers though,” I said.

“His parents are not. The kid has killer instincts and he will soon be killing someone else. Someone from this neighborhood.”

“Sam, he is eight! If we do have to get the family to move out, at least blame it on the right people. The most realistic explanation is that his parents are making him commit murders through a veil of innocence.” Dad tried to plead.

“Really. That family needs to move out. But, the parents are not murderers. I don’t know how the kid kills people. But I know for sure, he needs to move out before he is eight.”

“Why eight though?” My older brother, Dave asked.

“That, Dave is something I can’t answer confidently. It’s an instinct. I tried to remove it by other observations of that kid, but it’s a very strong instinct.”

“Mom, so are you going to talk to the parents now?” I asked.

“Yes.”

The next day, both my parents visited our neighbors. I remember feeling tense all through those 45 minutes my parents were there.

When they came back, I just jumped off the bat.

“So?”

That was all I needed to ask to open up a safe full of secrets regarding that kid.

“That kid —his parents haven’t given him a name — is not normal. He is an eternal being and his heart beats after every seven and a half years. He doesn't go to school. He doesn’t speak. I don’t know if he can’t speak or doesn’t choose to. He is a composer. He hasn’t learned the piano but can play very well. He only composes throughout the day and eats very little and doesn’t sleep. He blinks rarely.

He is seven and a half right now and will be eight in a few days. As soon as he turns eight, he gets the ability to compose one-of-a-kind, beautiful pieces of music that, upon hearing kill a person. It isn't because of their beauty that a person dies. Why do they die? It’s not clear. But he only gets the ability to do this after he is eight and he uses it to the fullest.”

“Wait. What do you mean? How can they know he will get this ability after he is eight? He isn’t eight yet.” I said, dumbfounded.

“He has been eight four times by now.” Mom said.

I was extremely confused.

“Elaborate.” I couldn’t take the time to be polite.

“After he turned eight the first time, he somehow, again I don’t know the details here, he used to take his piano to different houses and play it there, at any time of the day and kill people. So, in other words, he played for specific people. His parents were as shocked as we are, although they said they were scared of him and suspected him to be different in the prior years, this killer instinct never crossed their minds.

They devised a system to decrease his age. They couldn’t let the time pass because, after eight, his ability to create to compose such music would stay with him, no matter what age he was. So, somehow they realized they had to freeze him to reduce his age mentally.” My mom stopped.

“And they did. Four times after he was eight.” My dad continued.

“Why not do it before he turned eight?” Dave asked.

“They told us they tried. But he needed to turn eight before they could freeze him. He would struggle out of the small freezer they bought for him if they put him in there before he turned eight.”

“How long does he need to stay in the freezer to de-age?” I asked in a small voice.

“About two years.”

I was about to ask “Doesn’t he die?” but then I remembered the first thing I was told. He was an eternal being.

“The thing is, he has got his heartbeat in this, let’s say, period of existence. So, he is older than seven and a half right now.”

“How do you know he got his heartbeat?” Dave asked, his eyes wide with fear.

“His parents said that recently when he was composing, his pieces started to make them feel dizzy. It was usual for them to feel uncomfortable, but not dizzy.”

Just then, my mom got a message on her small Nokia mobile phone. It was the neighbors. It was a long message filled with the mother cursing the kid. And she was doing so because of the last line which read:

“He is turning eight tomorrow.”

End of part 1.