COLANDERS AND THE KALLIKANTZAROI

"The old folks believed in devious goblins, the Kallikantzaroi. Yaya said they stay underground all year, sawing away at the roots of the World Tree. But they come up when the sun is lowest in the sky, during the Twelve Days of Christmas, to terrorize folks living on the islands."

"So how's the spaghetti strainer fit into the picture?"

"It keeps them from entering the house. They like to count. They find the colander and start counting the holes, over and over, until the sun comes up. Then poof, they vanish," Johnny said, feeling a tug on his fishing rod. He began to reel in what felt like a dead weight.

Stagnant wavelets broke in the shallows beneath the seawall, wavelets parted by the long, flaying legs of a hideously misshapen crustacean.

"Nice spider crab, Johnny!" Tim called out, patting his friend on the shoulder.

Johnny shook the crab off the hook, plopping it back into the canal. He dropped the rod on the lawn and grew pale. "I need to go inside for a few — the sun, the beers…." he said, turning for the house.

***

Like he was revolving in a nightmare, Johnny found himself in a familiar position: leaning over the bathroom sink, water running into the basin, brimming to the rim. He plunged his face into the water that seemed to bear the potency of the Aegean in the days preceding the Epiphany:

it is the twilight of fatigue-green plastic army men beneath olive trees as the fulgent fiery sun setting over a vanquishing army needing higher ground no retreating as I am just returning with Yaya's old colander to line plastic sharpshooters along its dented rim and fill its hollow with infantry and bazooka men and Daddy is calling and I am leaving the army men with their rusty vantage point and soon I am in bed encompassed by oblivion blackness and waking WAKING to sounds of scraping on the back door leading to the porch then a kelpy SHLUMP and then tiny legs thousands of tiny legs countless tiny legs crawling now and I am in the hallway standing in the doorway Yaya's bedroom Yaya is sleeping Yaya is waking Yaya is frozen in horror