Five Stories High

by Jonathan Oliver

  All the while, as he shuffles downwards, the boy thinks that outside his bedroom there’s a birthday cake and games, and that’s so close he wants to laugh.

  A knock at the bedroom door.

  He freezes.

  Above him the wood cracks, a chunk of bark the size of a football breaks off and narrowly misses his head.

  And the knock. “What are you doing in there?” Mummy.

  “Go away,” he whispers, and that isn’t loud enough, she’ll never hear that, but if he shouts out he knows the door will shatter and fall down upon him – he has no choice – she is knocking again, and with every impatient knock loose wood is coming away – “Go away!” he cries.

  The ceiling seems to groan. He closes his eyes. He opens them. The door’s held – and his mother, at last, is gone.

  And he stupidly allows himself to believe that the immediate danger has passed, he even smiles – and then, then, there is more knocking, louder, angrier than before.

  But not at the bedroom door. Not the bedroom door; it’s above his head, and the boy wonders how his mother has got up on to the roof, and of course it’s not his mother – there is something on top of the door, something else, and it’s kicking downwards, it’s trying to get in.

  And this is when he panics. And isn’t there a relief to that, giving in to it at last, even though it will surely kill him? He jumps from the bed, and his brain screaming at him, you’ll never make it, you’re going to die! All around the sound of snapping and cracking, as if the whole world is breaking in half, and he knows it will be the last sound he hears, and yet he’s at the bedroom door, he is at the handle, he’s pulling at it, but someone on the other side is opening the door, it’s his mother coming in, Mummy is in the way and he can’t get past her, Mummy is going to kill them both – and he allows himself a final agonised look upwards as he sees the impossible door at last free from its frame and swinging down bringing so much noise and a darkness that is solid and heavy and terrible.

  He is not dead. Not dead, but lying on the floor, and Mummy is standing over him, and the great tree door is gone and the ceiling is back and all the little circus animals on the wallpaper are winking at him in merriment.

  “You’re being very rude,” Mummy says.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You have friends out here. You may not like them very much...”

  “I like them just fine.”

  “Then come and entertain them. They’re not my friends.”

  She’s going to leave now, she’s turned back towards the open doorway – and the boy knows that as soon as she’s stepped through it the other door will be back and he will be lost. “Wait!” he says. “Wait.”

  “What?” She sounds tired, just as she sounds with Daddy.

  “Thank you,” says the boy. “For my birthday.” She looks surprised, her mouth actually pops open. He stands up, manages a smile. “Thank you,” he says again, and offers her his hand.

  They leave the room together, but the boy makes sure he gets out first.

  YOU MAY WONDER why the boy never speaks of the door to anyone. But of course he does.

  He tells his friends at school. He tells them many times. And for a while he enjoys being the storyteller, the strange attention that lends him – they gather round him in the playground and listen to his strange adventures. But it doesn’t take long before the audience grow restless. “But what happens next?” they say – and they look annoyed when there is no next, as if it’s all just a fairy tale and he’s holding out on the exciting bit. Darren says, “Next time, just go through your stupid door.” And then he stomps away, and he says he doesn’t want to play with the boy any more, and they sort of make up again later, and swear they’re still friends, but when Darren has his own birthday party a couple of months later the boy isn’t invited.

  And his parents? No, he never tells them.

  Why not? Maybe because the boy understands it is a childish thing. In the same way that he never told them about the paint demons writhing on his bedroom wall, or that he still can’t sit in the bath as the water runs out for fear he’ll be sucked down the plughole. The danger of the door is real – he believes it entirely. But he believes it in a different way to his homework or the bullies on the school bus or his check-up visits to the dentist. And if he tells his parents he’ll be changing it from one type of reality to the other, he’ll drag it into the adult world. Adult reality is different. It’s all money and work and irritation. He’s a child, and so long as the door is childish too then he is safe. Bad things do happen to children sometimes, of course he knows that – but only when the adult world creeps in.

  And maybe too there is a sense of ownership? That the threat is his. And that he’ll deal with it in his own way.

  He spends the whole year working out how he will deal with it. But he knows the door will only appear on his birthday – the childish logic of it is sacrosanct. And his next birthday is always such a long time away.

  Even a week before his ninth birthday he hasn’t given the problem much thought. And then his mother wakes him up one morning and tells him to get dressed quickly, they’re leaving.

  “What about school?” the boy asks.

  “You’re not going to school today.”

  It’s only in the car that Mummy explains they’re going to visit Granny and Grandad for a while. He likes Granny and Grandad doesn’t he? The boy does. Is Daddy coming too? No. Granny and Grandad live hours away, and on long car journeys the boy likes to suck travel sweets and sing counting songs and play I Spy. Mummy isn’t interested in any of that; for the love of Christ can’t he just shut up for a while and let her think? Whenever they hit traffic lights she thumps at the steering wheel, “Shit!” Once in a while Mummy’s phone will ring, and she’ll look at it, and laugh, or swear, but she’ll never answer it; eventually she just throws it on to the back seat. “I’m not crying,” she says at one point, “I’m not going to cry.” At another, “We’re going to be all right.” The boy would like a travel sweet, but if he rolls up his tongue it feels properly weird and alien in his mouth, and he can suck that instead and pretend. He plays I Spy in his head, but it isn’t as much fun when he knows the answers.

  WHEN GRANNY OPENS the front door, Mummy flings herself into her arms, and she no longer bothers to lie about whether she’s crying or not.

  “He’s a shit,” says Mummy, over coffee. “He’s a lying shit.” Grandad suggests that maybe the boy would like to go play in another room, and Mummy says, “High time he learns what a shit his father is.” Granny keeps on saying she’s sure everything will all blow over. Mummy’s phone rings again, and this time she decides to answer it. “No,” she says. “No! No more fresh starts! How many fresh starts do you think you can get?” Grandad says that obviously they are welcome to stay as long as they like, maybe for a few days. Mummy has stopped being angry, she’s in tears again. “Why?” she asks. “What’s wrong with me? Why couldn’t I have married someone like you, Daddy, you would never cheat!” Granny asks Grandad to get the spare room ready, and Grandad says he will.

  Grandad takes the boy to the park. It isn’t much of a park, but Grandad buys ice lollies, so that’s okay. “I don’t want you to worry,” says Grandad, and he looks at the boy so seriously. “Things have a habit of working out in the end. Don’t be scared.”

  But the boy isn’t scared. Scary is the door appearing in his bedroom. And what he thinks is, if he gets to spend his birthday at his grandparents’ house, he’ll have escaped, and he wouldn’t even have to do anything!

  Mummy shows the boy his new bedroom. “It was my room when I was just your age,” she says. “I’ll be safe here.” Granny and Grandad only have one spare room, so Mummy and the boy will have to share. Mummy can have the bed, and the boy a big mattress on the floor beside her. “It’s only for a little while,” says Mummy, but the boy doesn’t mind, the mattress is exciting, it’s fun to be close to the ground! Sometimes in the night the boy wakes up, and wo
nders where he is, and then he remembers, and is relieved – and he realises the strange noises coming from the darkness are of Mummy snorting and sobbing in her sleep.

  There’s not much to do at Granny’s house. On Thursday they all drive to the shopping centre. On Friday, Granny says, they can all go to the pictures, maybe, if there’s something good on. But nothing good is on. Saturday, it rains. “Would you like me to tell you a story?” Grandad asks. “A boy as big as you must like haunted house stories!” “Nothing scary, Dad, or he won’t sleep,” – so Grandad shuts up.

  And then, his birthday. The boy gets up bright and early to open his presents. Granny and Grandad give him a book token. Mummy gives him a toy truck, and he had seen her buy the toy truck in the shopping centre, and he had never suspected the toy truck was for him because he doesn’t like toy trucks. “This is a pretend present,” Mummy says. “You’ll get real presents soon. This is a pretend birthday!” The grown-ups say he can do anything he likes to celebrate, but nothing really comes to mind. Granny’s made him a cake, and there are nine little candles on it, and he blows them all out in one go. And he hears Mummy on the phone, sounding so happy and fierce! “No, you can’t wish him happy birthday! Because he doesn’t want to speak to you! Because you disgust him!”

  But it isn’t too bad a birthday for all of that, and it’s only a pretend one.

  When it’s time for bed he gives his grandparents a big hug. Grandad laughs and says, “Who is this strong young man? Look how big he’s grown!”

  Mummy falls asleep straightaway. The boy lies on his back and stares up at the ceiling. He likes to count the cracks, last night he counted eighty-seven. It’s too dark to see, there’s no moon outside – and he realises he doesn’t mind, he’s not scared of the dark any more, and he’s pleased.

  And then, finally, a noise.

  He assumes it’s his mother. She makes lots of peculiar noises, especially if she’s been drinking wine in the evening. But this is new. A sort of grinding – the grinding of something mechanical, like gears? Or the grinding of teeth?

  Both, thinks the boy. Both.

  And in the middle of the wall, light. A faint outline of light, rectangular in shape – light leaking from behind a small door.

  He stares at it. It’s there – now it isn’t. It winks in and out of existence. The grinding is louder, more impatient. The door struggling to appear, and failing.

  It can’t reach him. It’s trying so hard, but it can’t get through. And the boy is terrified, because now he can see how angry the door is, the grinding becomes a snapping. There’s a fury to it, and a despair. The boy is terrified, yes, but he’s also triumphant. He’s beaten it. He’s won.

  A final grunt as it bursts through the brickwork – and then it disappears for good.

  The boy pants for breath. He lies awake, waiting to see if it’ll return.

  It doesn’t.

  And at some point he must fall asleep, because he’s being shaken awake by his mother. Just as she had done a few days ago, but this time she’s not even trying to hold back her tears, and it’s still the middle of the night.

  “He’s gone!” she says. “He’s gone!”

  She tries to lead him downstairs – “No,” she says, “you mustn’t look!” But the boy is able to snatch a glimpse of Granny through the door across the landing, and she is kneeling on the bed, and she seems to have four legs and two of them are bare and sticking out from the tangle of sheets – and Granny is screaming, “Sally, I can’t shut his eyes! I can’t shut his eyes!”

  It seems to take hours before the ambulance comes. Mummy shuts the boy in the kitchen so he won’t see as Grandad’s body is brought down and taken out into the dark.

  And it is nearly dawn before Daddy arrives. Mummy opens the front door and rushes into his arms. “Oh God, it’s so horrible,” she cries. “I’m sorry, I love you, I love you,” Daddy tells her, and she holds him tight, and he keeps kissing the top of her head. “I love you too,” she sobs, “I love you too.”

  Daddy will drive the boy back home. Mummy will follow on in a few days, but Granny needs her now. Daddy sits the boy in the front passenger seat, and he feels properly grown-up. Daddy doesn’t wish him a happy birthday, but the boy supposes that’s understandable given the circumstances.

  “You should sleep,” says Daddy. “It’s been a busy old time, what with one thing and another!” But the boy doesn’t want to sleep. He knows he has some serious thinking to do.

  And at one point, as they drive down the motorway, Daddy speaks up and interrupts the boy’s train of thought. “Listen,” he says. “I’m sorry. I fucked up. I shouldn’t swear, but it’s true, I fucked it all up. I shan’t do it again. I love you. I promise never to hurt you. I promise, I’ll never hurt you.”

  The boy says nothing.

  Daddy says, “I’m such a weak man. But you. You have to be stronger.”

  He reaches into the glove compartment then. “Would you like a travel sweet?”

  “No.”

  When they get home Daddy asks the boy if there’s anything he can do for him, and the boy says there isn’t, and goes to his room.

  In the room there are a few presents on the bed. He unwraps them. He supposes this isn’t the pretend birthday any more, this is the real thing.

  He stands in the centre of the room. He looks about him, but there’s nothing unusual to see. He gives the little speech that he’s practised in his head all the drive home.

  “I’ll never try to escape you again,” he says. “Don’t hurt anyone else. Don’t hurt my Mummy or my Daddy. I shan’t escape, I promise. And next year. Next year, when the door comes, I’ll go through.”

  The walls give no rumble of assent, the skies outside don’t darken, rain doesn’t fall. The boy doesn’t know if anyone, or anything, has heard. And he feels a hard knot of dread in his stomach. But there’s also relief there, the battle is over, and a treaty has been struck. He gets into bed, falls asleep, and his dreams are calm and empty.

  “DO YOU WANT to have a party?” Mummy says. The boy says no, thank you.

  “Or go out for a pizza?” asks Daddy. The boy says no, thank you.

  “We should do something special. You’ll be ten. The big one-o!”

  “Double digits! We must do something special.”

  “No, thank you,” says the boy.

  On the morning of his tenth birthday the boy gets up and opens his presents. Toys he’ll never play with, books he’ll never read. A computer game. “It was the best one in the shop!” says Mummy.

  It’s a school day, and he gets cards from those friends he’s still got, and the teacher asks the class to sing him happy birthday.

  That evening Mummy has made him his favourite meal, chipolata sausages and baked beans, and he hasn’t the heart to tell her he’s outgrown it. Then there’s cake and candles.

  “You can stay up half an hour longer,” says Daddy. “Seeing as it’s your big day.” So the boy has to delay the inevitable a little while longer.

  “I love you very much,” he tells his parents, and gives them both a hug, and goes up to bed.

  He closes the door, and at last he’s alone, and he doesn’t feel he has to hold on any longer, he doesn’t need to be brave. He cries like a little boy.

  “I’m ready,” he says.

  Nothing happens. The train of circus animals across the wallpaper seem to stare with a sort of shrug. Even the ones whose eyes he’s filled in with a ballpoint pen to break up the unending uniformity, running round and round his room, round and round and round with nowhere to go.

  Nothing. No door appears upon the walls, there’s nothing on the ceiling. He made the deal. Was just making it enough? Could it be that simple?

  It’s not that simple.

  He heaves the bed against the other wall. There’s the door, hiding in the floorboards, as he knew it had to be.

  This time it’s neither too large or too small, and the wood is smooth and lacquered. There’s no need to
be cross with him any longer. The knots in the doorknob smile at him kindly.

  Still the boy hesitates. The door: well, come on, slowcoach! What are you waiting for?

  “Nothing,” the boy says out loud.

  The doorknob turns easily in his hand. The door pulls up.

  The boy can see nothing but blackness within. So pitch dark he cannot see the bottom. But that doesn’t matter, can’t matter now.

  He jumps in.

  III.

  The Wasteland

  HE SEEMS TO wake up, and that is odd, because he hasn’t been asleep – and he thinks, maybe he’s been unconscious, maybe the drop into the dark was deeper than he thought and he’s hurt his head – and he doesn’t think he’s in pain, but can he be sure? – and he tries to move his arms, his legs, and they are trapped, it’s as if there’s a thin membrane covering him in all directions and it’s holding him down so tightly, it makes him feel compressed. “Help,” he says, “help,” and at least he can make some sort of a sound, but it’s so quiet and so feeble – open your eyes, he thinks, open your eyes, because they’re screwed up fast, hard against this new world to which he’s sacrificed himself, open your eyes, there’s no point in having eyes if you don’t use them – “Open your eyes,” comes a voice, and it isn’t his, and he refuses to think about that, he’ll worry about that later – open your eyes, and he does.

  He’s in his bedroom. He’s in his bed. The only thing pinning him down are the sheets – Mummy has tucked him in tight just the way he used to like it, before he got too old and grown-up to enjoy it.

  It was all a dream, he thinks.

  But the bedroom is different, and so he still feels panicked, and it takes him a moment of hard concentration to work out how it’s different. The toys. The toys on the shelves are old, the ones he long ago outgrew, his parents had thrown them away or given them to a jumble sale, who cares which? There’s no frieze of circus animals upon the wallpaper – in fact, there’s no wallpaper at all – in fact, the walls aren’t even decorated yet, there are just splotches of paint here and there. There are no curtains up to hide the glare of streetlamps on the busy road outside.