Five Stories High

by Jonathan Oliver

  IV.

  The Story

  IT ISN’T EASY for the boy to hear the stories. But, to be fair, it isn’t easy for the man to tell them either.

  It’s in the eyes that he suffers the worst. The man can tell stories all day, he’ll barely pause for breath, the words come out slow but so relentless, he has a lot of stories to get through. And the effort is almost too much for him sometimes. The boy can see how the man’s skin gets mottled and thick, as if in expelling all the air from his body the storyteller is expelling all the moisture too. He looks like an old twig, all dried up and ready to be snapped.

  But it’s in the eyes, the eyes. As they dry they become hard and heavy like pebbles. The pupils freeze, they have no liquid to swim about in. They’re like flies caught in amber, and they stare out of their sockets balefully, unable to change their gaze or focus, and as the stories go on the boy thinks he sees little fissures tease and crack across the surface.

  And then the man might break away, and he’ll double over, and he’ll cough. The coughing can go on for a minute or more. “I must rest for a while, no more, please, let me be.” As if it’s the boy who’s forcing him onwards, as if he’s the captor.

  There are so many stories. Haunted rectories and castles, haunted prefab dwellings made out of flatpack. Houses built on Indian burial grounds, plague pits and cemeteries, atop cliffs where mariners were once shipwrecked and drowned. Poltergeists and devils and sprites trapped within the walls – they want revenge, they want to be understood, they want to ensure that though they’re dead they will not be forgotten, they won’t go into the dark easily. There are even friendly ghosts – just one or two – and at those the storyteller might smirk at the boy, as if to say, but we know better, don’t we? There are no friendly ghosts. The dead despise the living. They despise us all.

  And when the boy is allowed to sleep, the wastelands of sheet and ice are to his side, and painted demons overhead. And when the boy is allowed to wake, it’s to birthday cake and candles. “Eat up every scrap, it’s the only food you’ll get!” Every day is his birthday, it seems they just skip over all the others – it’s now his twelfth, his thirteenth, his fourteenth. Speeding on into his teens – he listens to the stories, and eats his cake, and pushes on through puberty.

  It’s night time, and there are two kinds of night. The dark night when stories are told, lit up by the streetlamp glare through the window – and the darker night when they aren’t.

  After one especially grisly ghost story, the man grasps at his stomach in what must be agony. He doubles over. He coughs. He hawks up a gobbet of black liquid, spits it across the bedroom carpet. It is thick like tar.

  “You see?” he cries, delighted. “The rage is coming out! Just think of all the good things going in!”

  The jubilation is too much for him; he coughs again, he can’t stop coughing. He sinks to his knees. The boy isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to get up again.

  At last the man croaks, “Some stories are so hard to tell. The best of them, the most important. But I must be brave. I have to tell you now the hardest of stories. I haven’t the strength to do it on my own.”

  The woman stops nibbling at her cake. She walks to his side. There is no expression on her face – or what’s there is mild curiosity, but there’s no pity and there’s no fear. She stands over the man. The man reaches out to her with his one arm. The woman doesn’t take it. For a moment the boy thinks she is going to kick him.

  Then she says, “I shall take care of you. I shall always take care of you.”

  The man nods. Something like gratitude twists his mouth into a smile. And then he reaches to his face, his fingers weak and wavering. He grasps at one of his eyeballs and plucks it out.

  It’s released with such a dull crack, the eyeball is really so very dry.

  He holds it up to the woman. The woman takes it. She seems to consider, she tilts her head to one side. Then she pops the eyeball into her mouth.

  The man says, “Suck it hard. Make it moist for me.”

  The woman’s cheeks are full and bulging.

  The man says, “All my life, I always knew I could rely upon you.”

  The woman says nothing. Can say nothing, probably – she frowns in concentration as she sucks away.

  The storyteller sighs with relief. He is a man taking a warm bath. He is a man drinking an iced lemonade on a summer’s day. Then his voice hardens. “And don’t you bite. Don’t you dare bite. I don’t want any scratches on my eyeball. You so much as graze me with the smallest of your teeth, I shall hurt you.”

  He is stronger now. He gets to his feet. His one remaining eye glistens with water, and a huge tear wells up at the side, is squeezed free, and tumbles down his cheek. He smiles at the boy. “All this effort is for you,” he says. “It’s all for you.” He bends closer, and the boy can see right into the empty socket. It is night in there, a third type of night, the darkest of them all.

  THERE WERE ONCE two women, and they had a baby son, and they all lived together in a big house in the void.

  The two women loved their son, so hard sometimes they thought their hearts would break. It hurt them sometimes. It hurt them bad. The women were very happy.

  The head mother was responsible for the head, and she was the one in charge of feeding. The torso mother was responsible for the torso, and in charge of clearing up all the poop.

  If that doesn’t seem entirely fair, then that’s because life never is.

  And together they would teach their baby the alphabet, and how to count, and how to spell. The names of all the animals and the birds and the flowers. The baby son stayed silent, but he would frown hard during the lessons, it made his little face look so intelligent and cute, and the mothers liked to believe something of use was sinking in.

  The two women became firm friends, and shared all they had, and laughed when they were merry, and hugged when they were scared, and at night they lay together in bed and cuddled close to keep themselves safe from the dark. But they didn’t tell each other their names, they didn’t want to get carried away.

  And their son grew big and healthy, he was growing out in such extraordinary directions! And the mothers chuckled, they had their work cut out: they were forever cutting his hair, or trimming his teeth, or shaving down his tongue when it got too long and started winding about the floor.

  It was fast approaching their son’s birthday! They decided to bake him such a special cake. The house hadn’t thought to feed the women in months, and if they hadn’t been so intent on being excellent mothers they might have noticed just how hungry they were getting – but now at last the larder was full of all the necessary ingredients. Marzipan, icing, and there were some nuts, and there was fruit – yes, all the foods necessary to sustain life.

  It was the second birthday for the head, but only the first birthday for the torso, and the mothers argued over the number of candles they should put on to the cake, and in the end settled on one and a half candles as a satisfactory compromise.

  On the morning of the birthday the two mothers surveyed their handiwork – why, this cake looked almost good enough to eat! And they set it upon the largest plate they could find, and together they carried it through to the birthday boy.

  Straightaway the baby began to scream. A high pitched shriek that lacerated the mothers’ skin and made them bleed. Louder than before – now he had lungs, and he was putting them to truly excellent use, it seemed like he must be squeezing every last drop of air out of his body but then, still he would not run out, yet he would not stop. A cry of jubilation as before, a summons.

  There was a knock at the door. The women didn’t know there even was a door. They looked at each other, unsure what to do – they didn’t want to let the world in. But the knock was very insistent, they knew they had no choice.

  Outside a woman stood, drenched in the rain. She grabbed on to the door frame, just so she could stand. Her engorged stomach looked fit to burst.

  “Please
,” she said. “Let me in.”

  They helped her up to the bedroom, gave her hot water and a towel. The birth was not an easy one. The first leg came out squirming and kicking, it took ages to get it to calm down. An hour later, an arm, strong and muscled, pushing its way out of the womb and into the light. An hour after that, a second leg. It was more subdued than its brother.

  “Am I done? Is it over?” wept the limb mother. “Let’s wait and see,” said the mother of the torso, who had once been smart and had been to university, “as a rule, arms usually come in pairs.” But no second arm was produced, even though the two mothers waited half the night for it, even though they turned the third mother upside down and gave her a good shake.

  They took the limbs they had to the birthday boy. At first they fitted the legs wrong, put the right one where the left should be, and vice versa. “It’s not as if they came with any instructions,” the head mother said. They had to pull really hard to break them both out from the pelvic girdle so they could start again.

  But the boy was so thrilled with his three new limbs, he beamed from ear to ear! He couldn’t stop racing around and hitting things and banging into the walls – all the mothers laughed, even the latest one, even though she was still bleeding out and was in some considerable pain.

  The first two mothers welcomed the third into the household the best they could. They hugged her in the night and called her sister. But the truth was, the bed was just a little too narrow for three grown women, and sometimes tempers got frayed. “I’m not just some fucking mother,” said the newcomer, “I’m an independent woman in my own right! Let me out of here!” She sulked when it was her turn to do the nappy changing chores, and she never trimmed the fingernails or toenails as often as she should, though they were clearly her responsibility.

  One day their husbands tracked them down, as they were always bound to do.

  They weren’t to be denied entry. No matter to them they had to brave the void, and break down doors that didn’t truly exist. They wanted their wives back. They weren’t to be humiliated any longer. They were owed years and years of cooking, and washing-up, and ironing, and sex.

  The men beat their wives to the floor, but not unkindly, just to show them who was boss, and told them they were taking them home.

  Then the men began to argue, because they couldn’t tell which wife was which. Because, of course, once women have had babies they pretty much all look the same.

  “What about our son?” cried the mothers. “What will you do to him?”

  “We don’t want a freak that shames us,” said one man.

  “We’ll just leave him here to die,” said the second.

  “Let’s go kill him,” said the third.

  The boy came out of his bedroom, and all the grown-ups stopped squabbling and stared.

  “Daddy,” the boy said, and it was his first word, and it sounded so practised, so expert. “Daddy, come to me for a bedtime story.”

  The boy was still showing off his new limbs, stretching them and flexing them so it seemed his whole body was pulsating. And his nails hadn’t been trimmed, and his hair hadn’t been cut, and his tongue hadn’t been shaved – his eyes, his eyes were burning.

  One of the fathers said, “No, son. We shan’t tell you a story today.”

  The boy smiled. “Silly Daddy. I’m the storyteller. Come to my bedroom and sit upon my knee.”

  He extended his single arm, crooked a single finger in beckoning.

  The fathers did as they were told. They couldn’t stop themselves, their own limbs stretched and flexed to the boy’s command. Everybody loves to hear a story. One man turned en route to the bedroom and begged for help – and maybe he thought he was looking at his own wife, but he’d picked the wrong one.

  The boy closed the door behind them.

  The fathers listened to the stories quietly, because the boy didn’t like to have his stories interrupted. It was only a very short story, really, and there was mercy to that.

  “Mummy,” the boy called at last. “I’ve made a mess!”

  Two of the husks were holding on to each other, as if they could find some comfort in not listening alone. The third husk had lost its eyes, and there was blood upon his fingernails, so perhaps he had torn them out himself. And the mothers cleaned up the mess, every last scrap of it – however naughty their little boy could he, still he was their son.

  But in other ways he was such a good boy, and he never answered back, and he never spoke when it wasn’t necessary. “Tuck me in,” he told his mothers that night when he went to bed, and they knew he wouldn’t say it if he didn’t mean it. “Tuck me in good and tight, so I feel safe, so I know you love me.”

  THE STORY STOPS. The man pulls away from the little boy’s ear – and the boy thinks that he’s sickened again, perhaps this time he’ll croak his last and die. But the man isn’t sick. He rubs at his one remaining eye with his sleeve; it’s running with tears. Dear God, the man is moved.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m such a sentimental old fool. Oh, the power of stories! How ridiculous, that a mechanical assembly of words can so stir the heart.”

  He reaches out to the woman, who all this time has been rolling his eyeball around her mouth – at times it’s looked as if it wanted to escape, as if there were a little baby inside wanting to get out. She opens up, and the man takes the eyeball from her. It is wet and shiny, it fair drips with spit.

  The storyteller looks at the little boy in the bed, and frowns with something that could be mistaken for concern. “You look parched,” he says. “You should have another slice of cake.”

  The boy says, “I am so dry.” His skin is cracking, the moisture has gone out of him. “Please, give me something to drink.”

  The man looks hunted, then appears to remember what he’s still holding between his fingers. “Help yourself,” he says, “with my compliments.” He holds the eyeball out for the boy to take.

  The boy shakes his head.

  “Well, that’s up to you.” And the man screws the eyeball promptly back into its socket, he turns it round and round, it squeaks like a lightbulb fitting. “That’s up to you, but it’s the only drink I have.”

  And he is gone.

  The boy tries to lick his lips, but his tongue refuses to do what he tells it.

  The woman considers. She does that tilting with her head thing she seems to like. She comes to the side of his bed. The boy watches her, allows some little hope.

  She bends over to him, and the boy opens his mouth. She clamps her lips to his.

  Her lips are so soft, and deliciously moist – he has never been kissed before.

  Into his mouth runs the water – and so very much of it, all that she has siphoned away, all that’s been harvested. It is cool and fresh, and some of it is saliva, and some of it must be eye juice, and he gags a little at the thought of that, or is it just that there’s too much water, yes, it’s too much, and now she’s flicking even more in with her tongue to speed it on its way, and he’s going to drown.

  No – no, she now pulls away, and he is replete, his thirst is quenched.

  She says, “I shall take care of you. As if you were my very own.” And then she bends towards him again, and he opens his mouth in hungry expectation, but this time the kiss is on his forehead, and it’s so sweet and kind.

  She leaves him then, and that’s the end of another birthday.

  V.

  The Eye

  SOMETIMES THE LITTLE boy thinks of his parents. He wonders if they’ve given up searching for him yet. He wonders if they’ve stopped crying. He’s pretty sure there would have been crying – Mummy, obviously, but Daddy too, a bit – and he supposes by now they will assume he’s dead, and every morning when they wake the grief will be there waiting for them, it won’t get easier with time, they’ll be poleaxed by it. Or maybe they’ll believe he’s run away – climbed out of his bedroom window, and escaped into the dark, and he’s started a whole new life without them. T
hey must wonder what it was they did so wrong.

  Sometimes he thinks his parents are suffering. Good, he thinks. Good. And that little bit of spite revives him, it’s a tonic that gets him through the worst days.

  PRETTY SOON THE boy passes puberty – his voice breaks, his balls drop – he can feel them drop tucked beneath the bed sheets, how funny that feels! And he’s got hair that grows all over the place; one birthday he wakes to find his chin has erupted into a forest of thick hard stubble. It itches, but it’s not a bad itch, not if it makes him a grown-up. “You must shave him,” the storyteller says to the woman, but he won’t let her use a razor – instead, she is obliged to use her teeth; she bends over, and puffs hot breath upon his chin to make the hairs stand erect, and then she gnaws away at him, she bites and chews and gulps until every stray strand has gone and the boy once more has a face as smooth as a baby’s bum.

  It only stays smooth such a little while – the next morning it’s a whole year later, and the boy has practically grown an entire beard! He’d feel sorry for the woman, because from now on this is her daily regime – clipping away with her teeth until he is spick and span – he would feel sorry, but she seems to enjoy it: before she straddles his body she rubs her hands together and licks her lips, once or twice the boy thinks her stomach growls in anticipation.

  It’s not her only duty. She has to take care of the storyteller’s stump arm, and bathe it regularly – it can so easily get infected, sores and pustules break across the surface, tiny white maggots writhe about in the meat. “You’re such a little nurse to us both,” the storyteller says, as she sucks away at his wounds, “I don’t know what the men in this family would do without you!” And though her mouth is full, and she cannot reply, the woman seems pleased by this, and her wet face beams with pride.