by R. H. Dixon
‘Take it,’ she insisted.
When John made no attempt to comply, she came forward and thrust the box to his bare chest, leaving him no other option.
‘What is it?’ The parcel was light in John’s arms, but he could detect slight movement inside.
‘A surprise.’
‘I don’t like surprises.’
‘You’ll love this one.’
‘What is it?’
‘Open it, see for yourself.’
A muffled whimpering came from within. A soft, kitteny mewl. John eyed Pamela Tanner warily and laid the box on the floor. Hunkering over it he set to peeling multiple layers of parcel tape off with his nails, thinking to himself that whoever had wrapped the package hadn’t intended him to have easy access, and instinctively knowing that whatever was inside needed to be set free as soon as possible. When the box’s flaps were loose he flipped them open and peered inside. A bundle of white knitted blanket, aged and grey, had been thrown in like a substitute for bubble wrap or tissue paper, concealing whatever was at the bottom. John stared, not wanting to touch the tarnished wool because if it was symbolic of what lay beneath, he wasn’t sure he wanted to see.
Pamela Tanner had sidled up behind him. She ran a cold hand down his bare back, prompting his flesh to prickle. ‘Go on, take a look,’ she urged, excitement lacing her voice.
Ignoring her hand, which had come to rest between his shoulder blades, he reached down and lifted folds of the ambiguous blanket between thumb and forefinger. He laid it on the carpet next to his feet then looked back into the box. A newborn baby, naked and pitiful, lay at the bottom on cold, uncushioned card.
‘What the hell?’ John spun round to face Pamela Tanner, furious and petrified at the same time. ‘Whose baby is this?’
Pamela Tanner’s whole demeanour was laughing. ‘Why, she’s yours, John.’
‘No.’
‘Yes. Don’t you remember?’
‘Remember?’ No!
The baby’s eyes blinked open and her face became flushed with all the angsty prelude to a scream…
_
…
_
And John awoke for a second time. He sat up, exhausted. It was starting to get light and he saw that the room’s decor was correct, but there was screaming. He could hear urgent screaming elsewhere in the house.
‘Seren?’
He shot out of bed, pulled on his boxer shorts and ran to his mother’s room. Seren was sitting upright in the double bed, eyes wide. A smell of something terrible greeted John at the door. Bad meat or old blood, something organic that had decayed over time. He wondered if this was really happening, or if it was round three of the crazies. Emily rushed out onto the landing and bundled into the back of him. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked. ‘And what the hell’s that smell? Smells like something died in here.’
John went to the bed and sat down next to Seren. ‘What’s up, kidda?’ He reached over and stroked her hair.
‘She told me I have to leave.’
‘Who did?’
‘The woman.’
Emily rushed to other side of the bed. ‘What woman?’
‘The one who…’
‘Alright, alright,’ John said, holding his hands up, reluctant to let Seren draw Emily into her imaginary world. ‘Why would you want to leave?’
‘I don’t.’
‘So what are you talking about?’
‘The woman with the black hair. She says that I have to go now.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the other woman is coming for me. The bad one.’
Emily reached over and drew Seren into her arms. ‘There’s no bad woman coming for you, dafty.’
‘How do you know?’
Pulling a mock-fierce comedy face, Emily said, ‘Because she’d have to get through me and your dad first, and us Gimmericks are hard as nails.’
Seren looked less than encouraged, but managed a smile anyway.
‘Look, why don’t you let Aunty Emily sleep with you?’ John suggested. ‘The pair of you can have another couple of hours in bed.’
‘Hey, I’m up for that,’ Emily said, nodding. ‘Early mornings are for losers.’
Seren frowned but wriggled back under the duvet.
John stood up, folding his arms over his chest. ‘I’ll leave you to it then, I’m gonna open some windows and find out what that bloody smell is.’
When he was at the door, Emily called to him, ‘Hey, John.’
He turned and saw his sister was grinning mischievously, her head on the same pillow as Seren’s. ‘Yeah?’
‘You’ll never make a decent underwear model if you don’t start getting some pies down your neck.’
‘Cheeky cow.’
She laughed. ‘Hey, you’d be lost without me.’
John extended his middle finger. ‘Love you too.’
He left the room and was only halfway across the landing when he heard her calling for him again. Only, this time, there was an urgency to her tone that conveyed panic. He bolted back and found both girls sitting upright, looking up.
‘What the hell is that?’ Emily said without taking her eyes off the ceiling.
John followed her gaze and saw slivers of black mould snaking across the white expanse. The furthest tips stretched as far across the ceiling as the area above the bed, as if reaching over to pluck his daughter into the dark space above them. Into a state of non-existence. He thought of Seren’s candle-lit, sombre face, and how hot wax had encased her small fingers.
I belong to Her now.
Who?
You know.
But he didn’t. He really, truly didn’t.
_
18
_
That night Natasha saw her mother again. She was sitting in bed, her face made-up like it used to be in the days before she got ill: black mascara, tangerine blush and a heavy-handed approach to smoky eyes using a palette of mid- to dark-brown eyeshadow. Diane Graham was back to being a fashionista of the early nineties, the way Natasha liked to remember her. Her hair was dark and shiny, styled into a sleek bob, and she wore a floral silk blouse, its cerise lilies matching her lipstick with the chic coordination Natasha had actually grown to miss. From the waist down she was covered by over-starched white bedsheets, which otherwise ruined the image of normality and made Natasha wish they could have met in a park or at the beach. Out shopping or in a bar. Anywhere but here.
‘Tash!’ Diane leaned forward in anticipation. ‘Are you alone?’
‘Mmm hmmm.’ Natasha tipped her head once, afraid to move or say too much. She didn’t want to react too brashly in case she tipped the balance and awoke the imposter who lived inside her mother’s head. The fraudster who had little idea of who Diane Graham was supposed to be, let alone Natasha.
‘You’re absolutely sure there’s no one else?’ Her mother’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.
Natasha glanced over her shoulder at the closed door behind to substantiate her answer. ‘Yes, Mam, there’s just me. See?’
‘Well don’t dilly dally about over there.’ Diane Graham’s voice was a low hiss and she beckoned to Natasha with a hand richly decorated with yellow gold. ‘Come here. Quick. I’ve got something to show you.’
‘Something to show me?’ The curious glint of mischief in her mother’s eyes wasn’t suggestive of the masquerading illness, so intrigue got the better of her. Natasha rushed over to the bedside, butterflies in her stomach. ‘What sort of thing?’
Diane Graham scanned the room, as if expecting someone might yet be hiding behind the armchair or television stand or under the wardrobe. She lowered her voice even further and whispered, ‘I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to leave. Now.’
‘Why?’ Natasha found herself matching her mother’s tone so that she was whispering too. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Look.’ Her mother cast aside the bed sheet and brought into view a blanketed bundle.
Natasha’s heart stammered and
her mouth fell open. ‘Is that a…?’
‘Yes.’ Within the crocheted blanket, Diane revealed a sleeping baby whose cheeks were pink and chubby. ‘Precious, isn’t she?’
Beyond the capability of coherent speech, Natasha simply stared at the newborn and nodded.
‘You’ve got to help me get her out of here,’ her mother said, flinging the sheets fully away from her legs, showing that she was all set to make her great escape in black leggings and leather ankle boots. ‘You go ahead of me and tell me if the coast’s clear. Once we get outside we run like we stole something, okay?’
Natasha, still transfixed by the baby, said, ‘But, is that…I mean, is she…?’
‘Yes. Yes she is. And I’ll take good care of her, I promise. Now go.’
‘But, why can’t I have her?’ Natasha’s eyes had brimmed with tears.
‘Oh sweetheart, you know why.’
‘But…’
‘I’ll keep her safe, till you’re ready.’
‘I am ready.’
‘No. No you’re not. You’ve still got plenty of living left to do.’
‘But I don’t want…’ The floorboards beneath them began to reverberate as though the building itself had developed a strong pulse. Bah-dum, bah-dum, bah-dum. The vase of pink carnations on the dresser rattled, the chipboard wardrobe vocalised its bareness with metal coat-hangers that clanked together and the fly at the window began a frantic new campaign to escape. Natasha gulped, her body rigid. ‘What’s that?’
‘Oh no. No, no, no.’ Diane’s face paled and she scrabbled from the bed. ‘We’re too late. She’s arrived. She’s here!’
‘Who is?’
Diane gripped the baby closer, covering the little one’s head with trembling hands. Fear paralysed Natasha, she looked to the door as the booming grew louder, quicker, closer. Bah-dum, bah-dum, bah-dum. Up the stairs and across the landing. Bah-dum, bah-dum, bah-dum. Along the corridor. Bah-dum, bah-dum, bah-dum. Till whoever it was was right outside their door. BAH-DUM.
A terrible silence enveloped Natasha, Diane and the baby, a sickening prelude to something even more terrible that was about to happen. Natasha could feel the threat of whatever corruption lay beyond the unassuming hardboard veneer of the door, and it made her nerves jangle with dread. Even the fly at the window had ceased its busy-ness, finding a crevice in the sill in which to hide itself. The silence seemed to stretch on and on and, just when Natasha thought her nerves couldn’t withstand much more, the baby whimpered. It was a soft sound but enough to shatter the uneasy quiet and prompt the door to burst inwards. The metal handle slammed against the partition wall, gouging wallpaper and puncturing plasterboard, and the whole room shook. Natasha reeled backwards.
Sweet Jesus Almighty.
Filling the doorway, preventing their escape, was a stout white-uniformed nurse who held a syringe aloft in latex-gloved fingers. But it wasn’t the sight of the needle that made Natasha’s guts feel liquefied, it was the nurse’s face. Oh dear God, her face. Baby-smooth flesh covered a hairless head, upon which sat a nurse’s hat, then translucent white skin, riddled with thick blue veins, puckered around a featureless face till it gave way to a hole where a nose should be. And this blowhole dilated with each intake of air then contracted with a loud snort.
‘Mam?’ Natasha’s voice was small and weak in the aftermath of the violent outburst, and she appealed to her mother without taking her eyes off the thing at the door.
Diane was the first to move, she rushed around the bed and cried, ‘The window, Tash. Quick!’
Natasha made to follow, but the nurse charged across the room and slammed her in the chest with a blow hard enough to break bones and cause internal bleeding. Natasha’s feet left the ground and she flew backwards, wondering if she might spit out her lungs. She landed on the bed, the force of impact ramming it against the wall and bucking her back up into the air. Then she lay on her back, choking and struggling for air.
Get up or wake up. GET UP OR WAKE UP!
‘Mrs Graham, give me the baby at once!’ The nurse’s blowhole flared like a large nostril as she spoke to Diane, her voice loaded with as much resonance as train brakes, metal screeching against metal. Natasha thought her eardrums might explode. Or even her entire head. She clamped her hands over her ears and wailed for the noise to stop.
‘Never. Never!’ Diane screamed back, her own voice banshee-like. ‘Here, Tash. Take her. Run!’
Stoked with adrenalin and a ferocious need to hold the baby, Natasha staggered to her feet, coughing and gasping and swallowing back the taste of blood, but when she tried to run she found that her boots were stuck to the carpet.
No!
Looking down she saw hordes of black tentacles reaching up from the floor, oozing tarry gunk all over the beige pile and wrapping themselves around her ankles. She tried to kick them away, along with her boots, but the carpet-borne appendages climbed higher and higher. They moved up round her calves and thighs then circled her hips, licking the bare skin beneath her shirt with the cold wetness of amphibian tongues. Natasha screamed and clutched the edge of the mattress, then tried to use the bed’s weight to pull herself free. But it was no use, she was tethered to the spot, forced to watch as the faceless nurse tackled her mother to the ground, the baby crushed somewhere between them.
‘No, get off! Leave them alone!’ she cried, banging her fists on the bed.
Her mother fought and struggled beneath the nurse’s bulk, but the nurse was quicker and stronger and easily thrust the syringe’s needle into her neck. As soon as the milky white fluid had been injected, Diane looked at Natasha with defeated, dying eyes. ‘I’m sorry, pet. You’ll have to do it on your own now.’
‘Do what on my own?’
‘Get the baby out. Free her.’
‘But how?’ For a moment the slithering manacles eased on Natasha’s legs, as if they’d detected a deadlock situation, but when Diane failed to respond and Natasha lurched forward to go to her, they gripped hard again, toppling her to the floor. Dazed and angry, scared and confused, Natasha kicked and writhed. But with every strain of resistance, her captors pulled tighter and tighter, cutting off the blood supply to her legs and making her feet numb.
The nurse rose to her feet, and despite her lack of eyes seemed to regard Natasha with a sneer. Then the black hole in her face became a terrifying split, from side to side, a horrific yawn which revealed sharks’ teeth on a mandible that surely wasn’t physically possible. She produced a croaking sound from the void in her face and snapped her jaws together in a display of victory, then looked down at the baby.
‘No. Don’t. Please don’t,’ Natasha sobbed. She tried to crawl forwards but her hands slipped in black slime and she ended up sprawled on her belly. Her arms were then held down by the snaking tentacles. ‘Not again,’ she begged. ‘Please don’t take her away from me!’
But the nurse stooped down, the blowhole in her face widening further, and Natasha watched helplessly as she swallowed the baby whole.
_
19
_
John felt as though he’d been up for several hours already. Really it was only two. After he’d left Seren and Emily in his mother’s room, following the drama of the spreading mould, he’d got dressed, made breakfast, drunk two cups of black coffee, walked the dogs and had a root about in Norman’s toolshed. Now, at eight a.m., armed with a toolbox full of equipment, he was sliding the loft ladders down and psyching himself up to deal with the problematic uppermost region of the house, where the strange damp seemed to be originating and the focus of last night’s nightmare had been. The memory of the cackling in his ear and the leech-like lips brushing against his skin was enough to send shivers through him, which, strangely, made his hand throb. He checked again, just to be sure, and saw the skin where the spike had gone through was unbroken and unblemished.
It wasn’t as though the loft played some fearsome part in his childhood. Nothing had ever happened up there to warrant this strange sense
of foreboding which he felt mounting, and he’d never suffered nightmares about it before now. In fact he hadn’t had many dealings with the loft at all, apart from to stand beneath the hatch and catch bundled up parcels thrown down by his dad every first of December and then to help put them all back up every first of January. He supposed the discovery of the mould and subsequent realisation that he would be forced into taking on a DIY project, which he hadn’t factored into the four-week stay, must have inspired the nightmare. Hopefully, he thought, he’d be able to shake off the anxiety and stop thinking about the damn loft as soon as he’d dealt with the leak, or whatever it was that was causing the mould.
Let’s do this thing!
John found the loft was just as cold as it had been the previous evening. Clapping his hands against his upper arms to stimulate blood flow, he also found that his merino wool jumper didn’t offer much warmth. There was a staleness to the air, like the fermentation of body odour and flatulence in an under-ventilated, frowsty bedsit, which reminded him that he never had found out where the bad smell that kept forming downstairs was coming from. Now he supposed it might be linked with the damp. Bad water and a dead rat beneath the boards maybe.
Wonderful.
Unlike in his dream, the rafters above John were hidden behind wood panelling and the ceiling light Norman had installed was bright enough for him to be able see that nobody watched his every move, apart from Pamela Anderson. She looked at him from the far corner, an old poster of his brother Nick’s resurrected by Norman, presumably. She wore a red bathing suit and beamed a white-toothed smile. A suggested wholesomeness about her was severely contradicted by the exaggerated leg line of the bathing suit and the plastic mounds of her chest. Ordinarily the sight of the poster would have amused John with the absurdity of it being there, instead he felt edgy.
The floor joists were covered by floorboards and a functional grey carpet. The carpet was rough beneath his feet and poked through the fabric of his socks like the bristly fibres of a doormat. He stood, curling and uncurling his toes, looking about. Stacks of cardboard boxes and plastic crates lined all four walls, most likely, he thought, filled with things that were of no earthly use to anyone, but things that for the sake of sentimentality would never be binned by his mother or Norman.