And he supposes that all makes sense – if it was all a dream, then the past three years have all been a dream too. If the door was never real, then none of his memories of the door, of worrying about the door, or talking about the door to his school friends, could have been real either. He’s not ten years old after all, he’s just turned seven – one of those baby kids he ignores in the playground – and though there’s a certain relief to understanding that, there’s also the pang of knowing he’s going to have to sit through geography lessons with Mrs Cooper again.
He peers up at the paint marks on the wall, and he shudders. He’d forgotten how fearsome they look. Not just random splashes with tails, these have distended heads and glaring eyes and sharp teeth. The demons are frozen in mid-canter right above his head and they are staring down at him with hunger that is raw and blatant. It is little wonder his past self (present self?) found them so frightening. He’s a big boy now (unless he isn’t?), and even he can hardly bear to look at them.
“It was all a dream,” the boy thinks again, and this time he says it out loud.
“Oh no,” comes a voice in the shadows. “I wouldn’t want you thinking it was that sort of story.”
And a figure crosses the window, and all the brightness seems to fall out of the room.
It’s not his mother. It’s not his father. That’s enough reason to be scared.
“The first thing I want to do,” the figure goes on, “is wish you happy birthday!”
It isn’t his birthday, that was yesterday – and the boy feels some glare of satisfaction at that – this stranger is already making mistakes.
Is it a man? The boy thinks so, but he can’t be sure. The voice is thin and high. But the voice also booms like a drum. There are many voices.
“You’re afraid of me,” says that voice.
“I’m not afraid.”
“Oh, I do hope you are not going to begin our long association together with a lie. That would be disappointing.”
“I am,” admits the boy, “afraid.”
The figure seems to nod at that, just the once. “I shall make you a promise,” it says. The voice drops to a low burr. It sounds warm, comforting. It sounds sincere. “I shall never hurt you. Do you understand? I shall never cause you pain. I shall never touch you. I shall never lay a finger on you. You and I, we’re family now. Best friends, and so much closer than you yet realise. We’re going to have such fun, oh, such fun. I shall ask so little of you, and you will get so much in return.”
There’s a smell to the man. He smells of chipolata sausages and baked beans! But the sausages have been burned, and the beans – the beans aren’t the good sort of beans, they’re the cheap ones that are supermarket own brand.
“Yes,” agrees the boy. He can’t seem to help it.
“I would never hurt a child. The idea of it! I’m not a monster. I was a child myself once! And not so very long ago. Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” says the boy again.
“But if you don’t do as I say,” the figure goes on, and it sounds so sad. “Why then, I shall hurt your parents. Your Mummy, your Daddy. The things you will force me to do. I shall rip open their bodies. I shall pull forth their innards. I shall eat their hearts.”
The boy says nothing.
“Do you believe me, birthday boy? I do hope you believe me.”
“I believe you.”
“I shall eat their hearts.”
“Yes,” says the boy, “yes. I believe you.”
“I’ll ask so little. Just that you hear my stories. You can do that, can’t you? Listen close to all my stories till you’re full up.”
The boy seems to hear the paint demons above his head stretch and bristle in response.
“But now you must rest. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. Tomorrow is your birthday!”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Oh, you are such a lucky boy. From now on, every day’s your birthday! Birthdays forever!” And the figure raises his hand, and the boy can now see it only has one full arm, the other seems to taper away just past the shoulder. “Good night,” the storyteller says, and he snaps his fingers, and the light of the world goes out and there is nothing but darkness.
THE BEDROOM DOOR is only a few feet away. His seven year old self wouldn’t have been able to find it without treading on the creaking floorboards, but even in the dark the boy knows he can now find his way to it. In a matter of seconds he can be free.
But what then? He runs to tell his parents? And does he really think his captor won’t kill them, like he said?
The boy thinks he will. He knows he will.
There’s nowhere to run. And it would be so easy just to give in, and sleep. But still, still he keeps his eyes open. Gazing straight up into the pitch black until they start to hurt.
And then he hears it.
Barely brushing the walls, tickling them. Like a moth skittering against a lampshade.
The paint demons have woken up.
He turns his head to both sides, straining to see them, to see something. The noise is louder, surer now – and though there’s no definition to it, is that a blur?
They seem to chirrup at each other. It’s not the roar of a monster, it shouldn’t make his heart race like this. But it does.
He can’t stay here.
He won’t stay in this room, no matter what that does to his parents.
No matter what, because it’s not fair, he’s the little boy, they’re supposed to protect him.
And they will protect him, because that’s what they’re for, and if they don’t protect him, what use are they anyway? They may as well be dead if they have no use. They should take some responsibility. He can’t stay here.
He inches his body towards the edge of the bed.
It’s hard work, Mummy has tucked him in so tight. He’s forced to turn on his side, to grasp at the sheets to pull himself along.
He pulls harder, and with every heave he expects he’ll find the edge of the bed, and he expects the demons to fly down upon him. But he doesn’t. And they don’t.
It takes a full ten minutes of dragging himself across the bed before he realises something is very wrong. He dares to turn his head back. He still can’t see anything, but the cries of the demons seem far away now.
He mustn’t turn round again, in the pitch black he may lose all sense of direction. He pulls himself onward. It’s getting easier now – the bed feels looser – the clump of sheet comes up more readily in his fists, or maybe he’s getting stronger, or maybe he’s starting to believe he can escape. Or he’s moving no faster than before, and in any second a demon will swoop down and eat him.
On he goes, and he’s so tired, but he dares not stop. And in the distance he makes out the faint glimmering of light. He drags himself towards it.
His fingers find a body.
He stops. He pulls his hand away.
The body is warm to the touch. He prods at it again, gingerly. It’s an arm, there’s an arm with him inside the bed.
The arm is thin. It belongs to a child, like him. “Wake up,” he hisses. “We can’t stay here. Wake up!” The child doesn’t stir.
The boy thinks, in the distance behind him, the chirrups are getting louder.
There’s no way around the body. He daren’t risk a detour. He’d have to go under the covers, deep down, take a gulp of air so his cheeks are full and put his head beneath the surface, and the boy knows that if he gets lost he’ll never find his way out again, his cheeks will go flat and the air will run out and he’ll suffocate. He’ll suffocate, and to death, mostly likely! He’ll have to climb over the body.
It takes all his strength to push against the sheets crushing him down. To find just enough give in them. His hand pats the child’s head, blindly trying to find where it comes to an end – that’s the nose, ear, ah, mattress again. He places the hand down firmly. The other hand is clumsier, it punches the child in the stomach. “Sorry,” whispers the boy. The child do
esn’t say anything.
And now he pulls himself over the child, all slithery like a snake! He tries not to kick the child, he does his best. He’s on top of the body now, and the sheets are clamping him tight into place – he can’t go forward, can’t go back, and he feels like he’s got wedged fast, and it’s suddenly so claustrophobic, he can’t breathe – he can’t breathe, he can’t suck any air in, his chest squashed snug against this other chest, and the other chest can’t get air in either, the body beneath him isn’t even trying to breathe. And this is where he’s going to finish up, the filling in a grotesque sandwich, between bedsheet and what he now realises must be a still warm corpse.
The distant light. He reaches for it. He strains with all the power he has.
Pull. Pull! Don’t worry about kicking the child now. The child can’t feel it. He kicks him in the face, he kicks him hard, he twists his body frantically just to get loose, he kicks him in the neck and thinks he hears something crack. And he’s moving, he is, he’s wriggling free, and he’s scaled the peak of the corpse in the bed, and now he’s coming down the other side, he’s on to the mattress once more, he’s free, he’s safe. He sucks in air, breathing has never felt so good.
The distant chirrups sound like a keening now, the demons are on the hunt. There is no time to waste.
On, on towards that light.
And it’s the moon. It’s the moon, shining down above him, and he can see, and everything is so white. The wilderness around him is nothing but white sheet. It is so beautiful. It is so bleak. White sheet unbroken by any sign of life or vegetation, there’s nothing growing out from it, no trees, not even twigs, nothing to break up the flat wastelands stretching as far as the eye can see.
It’s no longer a bed sheet that is holding him down, it’s the sky itself. The sky is so heavy and it forces him to crawl. But crawl he does, on his hands and knees – and now he sees that every fistful of sheet he releases from his grasp melts away like frost.
And it’s starting to snow. Floating down from somewhere above, no doubt somewhere impossibly high – pillow feathers. They’re so soft and warm.
He looks back one more time, and he can only guess at how far he’s already travelled. How long has he been here, dragging himself over this barren terrain? It may be hours. It may be days. There’s a track mark where he’s come, a pathetic little groove within the snow, it seems to stretch for miles. There in the distance, the lump that is the dead child’s body. He sees how the paint demons are flapping about it, wings wide and unfurled, fighting to get closest. Pecking off the face.
The landscape may look like frozen Arctic wastes, but the ground beneath him is so warm and gentle, and the mattress seems to yield to every new handfall he makes. He could just sink into it. He could put his head down now and in seconds he’d be fast asleep. And he’d know nothing more about anything, and why would that be such a terrible thing?
But on, on he goes.
He doesn’t know how many days he trudges on. The sheets are so deep now, he sinks into them up to his thighs. If he’s thirsty he drinks the frost. If hungry, he opens his mouth up to the bedroom ceiling and catches feathers upon his tongue.
He finds the bodies of more children. They no longer even seem to be sleeping. They’re dried up like mummies, as if all fluid has been drained out of them, and their skin is like leather. He climbs over them all, he tries not to look.
So many bodies, for a while climbing over them is all he does. He gets a bit bored of that.
The boy doesn’t know at what point the ground starts to slope upwards. Only that it’s harder going, and then he realises he’s actually climbing, and when he looks forward he’s now staring at a wall of ice and the only way forward is up the sheer side of a mountain.
This new challenge saves his life, because it was all getting a little too easy.
There are no more bodies to be found, none of the other children made it this far. And he feels oddly proud of that, he’ll get to die somewhere all alone.
It’s hard to gain purchase on the ice wall, he has to dig in his fingers so deep. The wastelands are no longer warm. The ice is cold as ice should be. The snowstorm that’s whipped about his body is freezing, it’s like a million little daggers piercing his skin. If he looks up he can only see cloud and white sky, and the mountain; there’s no end to it, the mountain climbs forever and he must climb too – he’s a little boy in pyjamas clinging on to the side of what’s real and sane and edging ever upwards.
The demons fly about him, now squawking in exasperation – what’s a little boy doing so high up in the sky, that’s their territory! Little boys should be safely tucked up in bed. But they don’t attack him. Maybe they too are curious to see just how far he’ll get. And soon they can fly no higher – they swoop about and gnaw at each other as he climbs on, and far away from them.
His hands are so numb he doesn’t even feel it when one of his fingers breaks off. Without it, it’s difficult to grip on to the ice – the remaining nine fingers have to work that bit harder to compensate.
And the whiteness – oh, there is nothing now but white, it runs over him and through him and it fills every inch of him, and the little boy wonders that he was ever afraid of darkness, and wishes for darkness again.
The woman at the top of the mountain is sobbing so gently he barely hears her until he is by her side.
She sits astride the very precipice. The mountain just ends without fanfare – it’s a blunt point where the ice and the rock have run out. The plateau is only a few inches across, the woman’s legs dangle down either side. She is crying, and the little boy’s heart goes out to her.
“Please,” he says. “It’s all right.”
The woman says, “I can’t do it. I should throw myself over the edge. It’ll all be over in a moment, I’m sure.”
“Don’t.”
“My sisters did. Both of them. Oh, they hesitated. They sat here and hesitated for a full three years. But they did it in the end.”
“Don’t. Please. I need you.”
She’s younger than his Mummy, but she’s older than the little girls at school. He feels she’s young enough he can protect her, and old enough she can protect him.
The woman considers his plea, she tilts her head to one side in thought. “All right,” she says at last.
He offers her his hand to help her down, and she grips firm, and a bolt of agony courses through his entire body, and he supposes that being able to feel again is a good thing.
They begin their descent.
The demons are waiting. They seem pleased to see the little boy again. They open up their big mouths and gobble up the woman in a single gulp. They gobble up the boy too, he slides down the throat and into the stomach and it’s hard to breathe in there, and the smell is like night sweat, and he flails his arms about as he struggles to a surface that doesn’t exist, can’t exist – and yet, suddenly, impossibly, does – and he’s gasping for air as he pokes his head up from beneath the pristine white blankets and goggles at his bedroom around him.
His captor is standing once more by the window, and it’s dark outside, but at least the streetlamps are on. Standing to his side is the woman. She doesn’t seem frightened. She seems defeated.
The storyteller says, “I hope you enjoyed your rest. I want you good and refreshed for what I’ve got planned for you.”
The boy still cannot make out his captor’s face. And then the figure approaches him, and quite suddenly he can.
“I HAVE SUCH rage inside me,” says the storyteller. “It burns me up, you have no idea. But I won’t apologise for it. I need something to fill the empty space inside.”
He is picking at a slice of birthday cake, breaking off chunks and then tipping them into his lopsided mouth. The woman is also eating, nibbling at the cake so timidly that the boy thinks she makes no impression on it at all, the slice never seems to get any smaller. The boy was presented with his own slice in a flourish – “ad ah!” – and there have
been eleven candles to blow out, and the boy wanted to correct that, he has only just turned ten, but he doesn’t want to give offence, and maybe he is eleven now, how long was he climbing that mountain for really? The cake has marzipan and icing and chopped nuts and mixed fruit – “all the foods needed to sustain life,” the storyteller says, “so eat up!” And the boy does.
“All finished?” The storyteller belches, then farts, then grins. “I’m all finished anyway! I couldn’t consume another mouthful! Happy birthday!”
The boy thanks him.
“I’ve got a present for you,” says the storyteller. “And, you know, I’ve made it myself, because the best presents come from within. I’m going to give you some stories. Stories of haunted houses. I’m going to tell you every single haunted house story in the world!”
The storyteller is so excited he can hardly keep still! Look at him, bouncing up and down! His legs bounce, his arm bounces, and all the bones sticking out where the other arm should be. The mismatched folds of the storyteller’s flesh seem to thrill in anticipation. The tongue lolls out, and it’s a very long tongue indeed. One of the eyes turns upwards into the skull.
The boy looks at his own hand. There’s life and warmth there now, but the finger he lost is still missing. There’s just a knuckle that tapers off into a sad worn nub.
The storyteller winks at him with the eye that is still in place. “I don’t like stories where it all turns out to be a dream,” he says. “Stories have to have consequences. Or what’s the point? Consequences for the characters. Consequences for the storyteller. And consequences for the little boy who hears the story, yes indeed. I tell stories that change you, inside and out.”
The woman sighs, she’s heard all this before.
The boy presses himself hard against the bed, but there’s nowhere to go. The man looks sad the boy is so scared. He extends his single arm, crooks a single finger – and the boy can’t help it, he relaxes, rests his head upon the pillow. The man comes close, too close, but never touching, he won’t touch, he promised. His mouth is right up to the boy’s ear, he could lick it if he wanted to, he could bite it clean off. “And now,” he whispers, and the breath is hot, and makes the boy’s ear tickle. “Now, let’s start with a good one.”
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