The voice answered, “I can’t go home with you. You need to come home with me.”
The surface of the water vibrated with a hum, and the lily pad started shaking. The boy looked down at his left leg and noticed a large gash where the scalpel had dug into his thigh during the run to the pond, but he felt no pain, and this comforted him.
The voice from the pond continued, “We’ll be able to play together and you’ll have a little brother. We’ll be together, I promise. I know Mommy keeps saying she lost me, but it’s not that simple. She thinks that time is like a tunnel with no way back but there is a way…. I’m waiting for you to come back for me.”
The young boy stared at his reflection in the water. The still surface of the pond looked like a clear glass window and it reminded the boy of something. He remembered the dream he’d had the night before of a bird smashing over and over against the clear window in their living room, blood spilling down the cracks in the glass. But the bird wouldn’t die. It was so real to him that he had run crying to his mother’s room but she had just told him to forget about it, that it wasn’t real. Just a dream. But didn’t she also say that his brother wasn’t real?
The boy was confused; he thought hard. The only thing he knew for sure was that the voice hadn’t lied to him like Mommy had. The voice spoke simply and softly, always comforting him with words he already knew, and the voice liked playing games, too.
He wiped the tears from his eyes and sucked in a deep breath, air enough to respond; “I can see you,” said the boy. “You’re right there, sitting with me on the bench in the backyard. It feels like you’re trapped underwater, waiting for a friend, just like me.” The boy paused and looked down at the oak branch on the ground. “How do I go back for you?”
There was a cold silence as he thought hard. The boy looked up at the tired sun and remembered the time limit, the game. He slipped his hand into his left pocket and thought about what he’d brought for his brother. He took out the heavy scalpel and looked at the lily pad; “Why did you tell me to bring this?”
A strong gust of wind shook the water again and the voice answered back, “To cut me free. To cut away the thick skin that’s leaving me trapped and drowned here. You need to cut the surface of the water so that I can breathe, so that we can breathe. You know how to find me, right?”
The weight of the question hung heavily above the cold, dead water. The young boy’s heart raced and he shook with terror and confusion. What if he didn’t know how to find his brother?
A sudden pain shot up his left leg and rested right behind his eyes. His vision blurred and the edge of the shore blended seamlessly into the dark water. The voice from underneath continued, “Trust in me; trust in yourself. Once you come in you’ll be here with me, and we’ll be together. Forever. No more loneliness, that’s how you win. Slice me open and release me.”
The boy’s concentration was broken by the loud splash of a frog jumping into the water next to the lily pad. The distraction gave him a moment to think, and it became clear to the boy what he needed to do.
The ripples from the splash faded away and the boy’s mind refocused on the task at hand. He had finally figured out why he brought his dad’s knife to the pond—he knew how to win the game. He shouted out the answer, “You breathe water and I breathe air, so we have to switch places! I have to go underwater and give you my lungs, like a fish, right? That way we can keep playing all night and all day and Mommy won’t be there to tell us to stop. Mommy won’t be able to keep us apart anymore… this way we can both win the game!”
The young boy smiled and made a tight fist around the cold, grey handle and buried the scalpel into his neck, first one side and then the other, over and over, creating gills. The numbing pain of the blade’s smooth slices cleared the boy’s mind as the knife dug deeper and deeper into his throat. He breathed in warm bubbles of his own blood and a tired smile appeared on his face. He could breathe again.
His heart filled with joy; he was a kid, a kid with a real brother. He had never felt his heartbeat before now but he was suddenly aware of the pounding drumbeat that pushed blood out of his neck. He stumbled hard to the left and his vision steadied slightly as his lungs filled with liquid. His eyes focused proudly on the lily pad as his body fell into the pond, breaking the peaceful glass of the water’s surface. The bloody ripples swallowed the young boy’s body and his clouded eyes stared numbly at a rock on the floor of the pond. The boy pictured the rock as a baby, growing bigger as he sank closer and closer to it. You’re almost there.
* * *
The boy’s mother stood at the sink looking out at the darkening sky and wondered whether or not she should go looking for her son in the woods. Dinner was almost ready but he still had about ten minutes to get home. She dried her hands hurriedly and felt relieved when she heard two voices coming from the woods, playing and laughing.
She focused in on the second voice– who is he with? There’s no one else out there with him! “What the f….”
She ran out the kitchen door towards the woods and as she ran the laughter grew louder and louder. What felt like a warm breath swept across her neck and her eyes suddenly flashed shut; her world went silent. She knew this feeling. He was here.
* * *
When she stopped at the shore of the pond, she saw the body of her son resting in the shallow, rusty water. “No, no…,” she whispered. Her eyes locked onto a broken lily stem that was laced between the ragged gill slits in her son’s neck. She lifted her son up by the shoulder and looked into his eyes: wide open, staring. He had a slight smile on his face, like a boy who had just found something he had been looking for forever, something special. As sad as it was, she thought he looked happy.
She was unable to cry or scream, silenced by the blinding fact that she had lost her second son. She choked for air and imagined a warm umbilical cord wrap around her neck; this is what it must’ve felt like, she thought. This is what it felt like when you were being born and my body choked the life out of you. What it felt like when you breathed blood.
The boy’s mother brought her hands down from her throat and felt a chilly breeze cool the back of her hand. As she knelt next to the shore her fingertips broke the calm surface of the water. She held her son’s hand and saw the scalpel he held tightly in his palm. She wasn’t sure if she envied him more for his faith or his innocence. She wasn’t sure if there was a difference.
A GIRL SITTING
By Mark Morris
The screech of pneumatic drills. Men shouting. Scaffolding. Rubble. Mud.
“It might look like the Somme now,” Dunbar said, “but in three months it’ll be paradise.”
“What’s the Somme?” asked Diane, jiggling one-month-old Abigail on her hip.
Matt sighed and preceded his wife and Dunbar into the house.
If Diane had her way—and she usually did—then this would become their first proper family home. For the past three years Matt and Diane had rented a poky flat above the chippy on Dean Street in the city centre. Now she wanted to relocate to this new development in the suburbs, put a deposit down, and move in before the magnolia-white emulsion had barely had chance to dry on the walls. Matt would have preferred something older, something with character, something that wasn’t a clone of its neighbours—but he also wanted a quiet life, and he knew the only way to get one was to accede to Diane’s requests.
Once inside, he didn’t bother waiting for Diane and the estate agent to catch him up. He wasn’t interested in Dunbar’s ‘ideal homes’ spiel or in adopting the role of nodding dog in the wake of his wife’s squeally enthusiasm. The house as it stood, half-finished and empty, was currently little more than a box divided into a series of echoey spaces, and therefore, in his estimation, nothing to get excited about. The rooms were of a regular shape and size, there were no cubbyholes, no quirky nooks and crannies, no surprises whatsoever. The place felt cold and smelled of fresh paint and damp plaster. His footsteps echoed hollowly off the walls.
By the time Diane, encouraged by Dunbar, was getting all orgasmic over the waste-disposal unit in the gleaming new kitchen, Matt had drifted upstairs. He stuck his head around the bathroom door, noting its white sink and bath, its corner shower unit—all nice and neutral. The first of three bedrooms overlooked what would eventually be the back garden but for now was a churned-up battlefield. Matt gave it a cursory glance and stepped back on to the landing. As he heard Diane and Dunbar clumping upstairs, he ducked quickly into bedroom number two to avoid Dunbar’s banal patter.
There was a girl sitting on a chair against the far wall.
Matt jumped, not because the girl evoked fear, but simply because her presence was so unexpected. She was sitting silently, and perfectly motionless, her hands on her knees, a distracted expression on her face. She was eleven or twelve, clothed in an anonymous brownish dress with white collar and cuffs. Her mousy hair was braided into plaits which brushed her shoulders.
“Hello,” Matt said.
She didn’t answer, didn’t even acknowledge his presence. Her eyes remained fixed on a point somewhere to his left.
“Are you supposed to be here?” Matt asked. And then: “What’s your name?”
The girl stayed silent.
Matt felt a little uneasy, which in turn made him feel foolish. He walked slowly towards the girl, his feet clumping on bare floorboards.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “Because –”
He was less than two metres from the girl when she disappeared.
Matt blinked, sucking in air so quickly that it felt fishbone-sharp in his throat. For a moment he wasn’t sure what had happened. It was almost as if his attention had been diverted for a split-second, during which the girl had taken the opportunity to slip away. He gaped at the spot where she had been sitting and even stepped forward to waft his hand through the space. He felt tingly, hot and cold at the same time, and his heart raced. Had she been a ghost? Had he just had an honest-to-god supernatural experience?
Mouth dry, he took a few stumbling steps back into the centre of the room—and the girl reappeared, hands on her knees just as before, silent and motionless on her wooden chair. Matt began to shake, but before he could decide what to do the door opened and Dunbar led Diane into the room.
“And this is the second bedroom,” the estate agent said, waving his hand extravagantly as though scattering seeds.
“Oh, this is mint,” said Diane. “This is definitely going to be the nursery. What do you reckon, Matt?”
Matt couldn’t reply. His throat felt as if it had narrowed to the circumference of a pencil.
Diane frowned. “What’s-a matter with you? You look like a retard.”
Matt still couldn’t speak. He could only point at the girl.
Diane and Dunbar followed the direction of his finger. As if speaking to a slow-witted child, Diane said, “Yes. We call it a wall.” Glancing at Dunbar, she raised her eyebrows. “Sorry about this. My husband’s not usually such a mong.”
Matt’s eyes widened. Could they not see what he was seeing? Evidently not—which could only mean that he was either psychic or hallucinating.
I see dead people, he thought, and felt a sudden urge to laugh like an idiot. With an effort he swallowed the urge, which released his voice.
“Sorry,” he said. “Massive spider. It’s gone now.”
Three months later they moved in. Matt didn’t go into the second bedroom until the removal men had left and Diane was installed on the settee in front of Loose Women, Abigail sucking greedily on her nipple.
The upstairs landing was quiet. Quieter than it had been three months ago, now that the carpets were down. Diane had chosen the carpets, blue downstairs, pink up here. Matt had hated the pink, but she had insisted. Just as she had insisted on the mini glass chandelier in the front room. Just as she had insisted on the new flat-screen TV which Matt had spent the last hour installing and tuning in so that she wouldn’t miss her soaps.
And just as she had insisted on moving here in the first place, despite his protestations.
Matt had tried everything to change her mind. He had told her that the house was too small; that the building firm had a reputation for shoddy workmanship; that all the decent schools were outside their catchment area; that there was a high-crime estate not more than a mile away.
But his words had fallen on stony ground. Not only had Diane refused to listen, but as usual she had shouted him down, ridiculed and reviled him. If it hadn’t been for Abigail, he sometimes thought….
But no. He had made his bed and it was his duty to lie in it. Hadn’t his parents drummed into him the importance of always making the best of things?
So here he was, once again standing outside the door of bedroom number two—the room that Diane insisted was going to be the nursery.
He listened. Aside from the blur of chatter from the TV downstairs, he could hear nothing. The lack of noise reminded him that they were the first to move into the estate, that the houses surrounding them were silent and empty. Bracing himself, he pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The girl in the brown dress was sitting on her chair against the wall.
Matt’s heartbeat quickened. His mouth went dry. The girl was just as she had been three months earlier—silent and motionless, gazing abstractedly at a spot just beyond his left shoulder.
He took a deep breath, and then stepped directly into her eye line. Her gaze didn’t flicker. She was looking at him, but not looking at him. He moved closer. Closer.
She disappeared.
Later, in bed, he said, “I think we should turn the back bedroom into the nursery.”
He sensed Diane’s body stiffen. “Why?”
“Because it’s a nicer room. It looks out over the back garden, which means it’ll be quieter, too. Plus it’s next to the bathroom, which’ll be more convenient.”
She grunted like an exasperated warthog. “We’ve already decided where Abi’s going.”
“You’ve decided, you mean? But it’s not set in stone, is it? We can change our minds.”
“I want Abi next door to us. Where we can hear her.”
“We’ll be able to hear her wherever she is. It’s not exactly the biggest house in the world.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. I’m just saying….”
“Well, don’t.”
Matt sighed inwardly. After a moment he said, “It’s just that that room next door… it’s got a funny atmosphere.”
She twisted round so quickly that he thought she was going to slap him. “What?”
He felt the familiar sinking feeling he got whenever he was losing an argument. “It’s just… something about it doesn’t feel right. It gives me the creeps.”
It was dark, but he sensed Diane staring at him, her expression scornful. “You’re pathetic,” she said eventually—and at that moment Abigail, in the cot at the end of their bed, began to cry. “Now see what you’ve done.”
The following week, at Diane’s insistence, Matt decorated the nursery. The whole time he was in there, putting up yellow wallpaper with teddy bears on it, the girl sat silently on her chair, staring into space.
Whenever he was forced to turn his back on her, Matt got an itch between his shoulder blades. He kept imagining her rising slowly to her feet, crossing the room towards him in short, jerky strides. And even if he was half-way up a ladder, he would twist his head, convinced that the girl would be standing right behind him.
But she never was. On each occasion she was still sitting on her chair, as motionless as ever. Her manner was innocuous, there was even something forlorn about her, and yet her presence filled him with such dread that sometimes he could barely breathe.
He spoke to her frequently, sometimes calmly, sometimes with a hissing vehemence born of fear. Again and again he would ask her who she was, why she was here, what she wanted. He would plead with her to go away and leave them alone, or simply snarl at he
r to fuck off. Sometimes he would say, “If you do anything to hurt my family…,” before spluttering impotently into silence.
After a while the simple knowledge that she was there, in the house with them, began to wear him down. At night he wouldn’t sleep; he would listen for the slightest scrape of movement through the wall. And whatever room he was in, he would always be aware of her presence. She was like a darkness, a tumour, embedded in the body of the house.
Matt lost his appetite. Became thinner. Grew twitchy and nervous. Preoccupied with Abigail, and with befriending their new neighbours, Diane didn’t even notice.
After a month or so, Abi moved out of their room and into her new nursery. She slept in her cot against one wall and the girl sat on her chair against the other. Matt would spend as much time as he could, without arousing Diane’s suspicions, in the room with his daughter. He would slump against the wall by her cot and stare balefully across the room at the girl, keeping guard.
But he couldn’t be there all the time, and when Abi and the girl were alone together, Matt would feel anxiety gnawing at him. He would obsessively watch the baby monitor, jump up at the slightest sound or the merest flicker from the row of green lights beneath the little speaker. He would pretend he needed a pee just so that he could run upstairs and check on his daughter.
And each time the girl would be sitting on her chair, hands on knees, staring.
Matt tried to find out who she was. He thought that if he could do that, then maybe he could exorcise her, lay her to rest. He went to the local library, scoured the internet, but found nothing. There had never been a house or a church or a school on this site. Never been an accident or a murder. For hundreds of years this had been farmland, and before that, forest. The girl was an anomaly. She shouldn’t be here. He told her so.
“You’ve got no right to be in my house,” he said. “Why don’t you just go away?”
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