It hadn’t been opened in a long time. No matter how much Cindy pushed at it just wouldn’t move; Steve at last had to help, crouching down with Cindy on his shoulders and then springing up tall, sending his wife fast up in the air and using her as a battering ram.
The rather dazed Cindy poked her head through, and Steve called up, “Can you see anything? Can you hear anything?” Cindy remembered the fairy tales she’d been told, Jack climbing his way up a beanstalk to dangers unknown, Aladdin lowered into the darkness whilst his uncle stayed safe up top. “No, nothing,” she said. Steve got up on to a table and climbed through the hatchway after her. There were a few nondescript boxes piled up, mostly cardboard; they contained years-old fashion magazines, clothes, toys, a stamp collection, stuff. If there was a chill, it was only because they were away from the central heating. If there was a whispering, it was just the lapping from inside the water tank, or the sound of wind playing against the roof.
And if they were disappointed, neither Cindy nor Steve said they were. They went back to their ordinary lives. Cindy learned how to use the kitchen, she’d make them both dinner from tins she found in the cupboard. Steve found a DIY kit, and would enjoy banging nails into things pointlessly with his hammer.
And in bed they continued to explore each other’s bodies. Steve discovered that Cindy enjoyed it when he nibbled on her breasts, but that he should stop well short of making the blood thing leak out; for her part, Cindy quickly learned that sucking at appendages rather than biting down hard and chewing was always a more popular option. They examined and prodded at each and every one of their orifices, and into them would experiment inserting opposing body parts; they found out that no matter what they tried to stick up there, be it tongue, finger or penis, the nostrils weren’t worth the effort. And soon, too, they realised that it was better to do all of these things in the dark, where the ridiculous contortions of facial expressions on their spouse’s face wouldn’t put them off.
They listened out for the ghosts. They never heard them.
One night Steve woke from his sleep to find Cindy wasn’t there. He put on his favourite silk dressing gown from the wardrobe, went to look for her. At last he found her in the attic, sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth as she cried so hard. At his approach she started, turned about, looked at him with startled teary eyes. “Where are our ghosts?” she begged to know. “Where’s the chill, the sickness in my stomach? I can’t feel anything. Why can’t I feel anything at all?”
iii
You were thinking of a nursery, right? The attic for a nursery, that was the plan?
Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to make you jump! Coming round unannounced, very rude, but I tried the doorbell, and there was no answer, and I thought, shall I just pop in anyway, why not, good friends like us don’t need to stand on ceremony. I can see why you didn’t hear me. You’re pretty busy. Pretty… entwined, there.
Don’t stop on my account. I can wait. You finish off, I don’t mind, I’ll watch. Oh. Oh. Suit yourselves.
Speaking of which! I can see that you’ve discovered the joys of sex. Which is nice. I’m a little surprised, ha, by your choice of partners, I mean, doesn’t it strike you as a bit incestuous? You crazy kids, what will you get up to next! I don’t mind. I don’t mind at all. I mean, it makes me wonder why I invented the zebu in the first place, you don’t fancy the zebu, all those dewlaps? It could have been a baby zebu that’s growing inside your stomach this very moment, imagine what that would have looked like!
Oh, you didn’t realise? Yeah, you’re pregnant. Congratulations! Some men don’t like women when they’re pregnant, but Cindy, I must say, you look great, all shiny and hormonal like that, all your body parts swelling every which way. And yeah, well done too, Steve, yeah. And you’re going to need a nursery. Which is why, I’m sure, you had only the best intentions when you ignored my advice and went up into the attic. And why not, good choice. Babies are great, but take it from me, they’re annoying, they cry a lot, there’s a lot of noise and sick, keeping the baby up in the attic out of earshot is a good plan. Clear away the boxes, there’ll be room up there for all those baby things babies seem to like. It’s all just junk, there’s nothing in there to worry about.
Except, of course, for that one box. The one with the padlock on. Now, you two and I have had a bit of a laugh, haven’t we? It’s all been fun. But this time I’m really telling you. It’s a padlock. That’s a big fucking hint. You are not to open the box. You are not to open the box. I forbid it. I absolutely forbid it, and yes it’s a law, it’s an order, it’s a commandment from up high. Leave the box alone. No matter what you hear inside. No matter what the ghosts inside the box say to you.
Lightening the mood! – any ideas for a name for the baby yet? No? Well, I’m just saying. You want to name it after me, you can. Call it God, or Lord, or Jehovah, or some such, and I’d be honoured.
The daffodils are out. They look beautiful.
Well, I can see you have things to do. Some of which will no doubt make you drowsy, you’ll be wanting to sleep soon. So, you know. ’Night, ’night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite. No, I really mean it, I’m not sure, but I think I put cancer in a few of them, the bedbugs are riddled with cancer. You see a bedbug, you run.
So they smashed the padlock, and straightaway they heard them, the whispers inside – and there were so many, there was so much chatter, the conversations were all overlapping so they couldn’t make out what was being said! “Open the box!” said Cindy, too eagerly, and “I’m trying!” Steve snapped back, and it seemed such a fragile little box, but now the lid was heavy, they pulled together and the lid raised an inch, and husband and wife had to prise their fingers painfully into the little gap to stop it from shutting again. And the whispers seemed so loud now, how could they not have heard the ghosts before? And they both felt a bit ashamed of that. Ashamed that they’d been carrying on with their lives quite pleasantly, cooking and hammering and shagging away, and had never paid the ghosts any attention. Cindy looked at Steve, and smiled at him, and thought, I wonder if I’ll find someone new to talk to. And Steve looked at Cindy, smiled back, thought, I wonder if their orifices will be prettier. Because they both loved each other, they knew they did; but how can you tell what that love is worth if you’ve nothing to compare it to?
They took strength from each other’s smiles; they heaved again; the box opened.
The whispering stopped, startled.
Inside there was a house. Not a proper house, of course, but a doll’s house. And it wasn’t quite like their house; it, too, had red bricks, and thin chimneys, it had windows and guttering, but they could see that the sitting room was smaller, there was less wardrobe space in the bedroom, the toilet had a broken flush.
There was no one to be seen.
“Talk to us!” said Cindy. “Come back!” said Steve.
They wondered if they could squeeze themselves into something as small as that house. And they exchanged glances. And they shrugged. And they went in.
iv
God didn’t talk to them for a long while after that.
There was lots of fun to be had in the haunted doll’s house.
Their new neighbours were very kind. Their names were Bruce and Kate. Bruce and Kate knocked on the door one day, said they’d heard people had moved in next door, wanted to welcome them, hoped they’d be very happy. They invited them round to dinner. Cindy and Steve didn’t know what to bring, but they found a bottle of old red wine in the back of one of the kitchen cupboards, and Bruce and Kate smiled nicely at it and said it was one of their favourite tipples. Kate made a really lovely casserole, “nothing fancy, just thrown it together,” and Bruce laughed and said Kate’s casserole was a secret recipe, and it was certainly better than anything Cindy could have come up with. Bruce was in charge of dessert. Bruce and Kate showed Cindy and Steve around their modest house, and it wasn’t much different to Cindy and Steve’s, only in the bathroom their flush did work, Cin
dy and Steve felt a little bit jealous. And Bruce and Kate had a seven year old daughter called Adriana who was quite pretty and very polite and did ballet and whose drawings from school were hung on display for all to see with fridge magnets. “Can see you’re expecting!” said Kate to Cindy, and Cindy agreed she was; Kate said it’d be nice for Adriana to have a new friend to play with, maybe. Bruce and Kate were dead. They were dead, but they didn’t seem to know they were dead. Cindy and Steve could see right inside them and there was nothing but ash in there and their souls were spent. They smelled of death, their eyes rolled dead in their heads, they waddled awkwardly as they walked. Adriana was dead, and when at Kate’s indulgent prompting she agreed to show the new neighbours a few choice ballet steps it was like watching a broken puppet splaying cack-legged across the floor. “Well done!” said Kate, and clapped her dead hands, and Bruce laughed the most cheery of death rattles, and Cindy and Steve were good guests and clapped and laughed too.
Bruce asked Steve what he did for a living, and Steve said that he was between jobs. And Bruce was very kind, he got Steve an interview at the bank where he worked. And Steve spent the day sorting money and counting money and giving money to people through a little glass grille. He’d never seen money before, but he liked the feel of it, and in return for his hard work he was given money of his very own. Steve determined he would try hard to collect an awful lot of it. And the bank manager was very nice, and congratulated Steve on his efforts, and gave him a promotion, which basically meant that Steve gave more money to different people through a slightly bigger glass grille. And the bank manager was dead, and the customers were dead, and Bruce was still dead, of course, Bruce being dead wasn’t going to change in a hurry. And Steve would sometimes after work go out with Bruce to a pub and get pissed.
And Cindy wanted to work at the bank too, but Kate told her she’d really be better off staying at home and looking after her baby. And Cindy could feel it kicking inside, and decided it was high time she let the baby out, she couldn’t be sure but she thought it had been kicking inside there now for years. She went to the hospital and the doctors were dead and the nurses were dead and all the patients were dead, and some of the dead patients were so ill that during their stay at the hospital they died again and somehow got even deader, that was so weird. And a particularly dead nurse told Cindy she had to push the baby out, and that she was being very brave, and that they were having this baby together, and push. And out came the baby, and the baby was crying, and still kicking away, and the nurse cooed and said it was a beautiful little girl, and Cindy felt a sudden strange rush of love for her child, a stronger love than she’d ever known before, stronger than anything she’d felt for Steve or, even, God; but the baby was dead, it was dead, Cindy was given it to hold and it rolled its dead eyes at her and burbled and sneezed and Cindy could see there was no soul to it, just ash. “I don’t want it,” she said to the dead nurse, “I don’t want this dead baby,” and she thought of how this ashen soulless corpse monster had been feeding inside her stomach and she felt sick. The dead nurse told her again the girl was beautiful, she was such a beautiful girl; “You keep it then,” said Cindy. But apparently that just wasn’t an option, and Cindy had to take the stillborn little parasite home and feed it and pet it and read it fairy tales and give some sort of shit when it screamed.
And Steve didn’t like their new baby daughter either – he said he did, and he played with it, and sat it on his knee, and asked after it when he came back home pissed from the pub – he didn’t say anything against the baby at all, come to think of it; but Cindy knew he must hate it, because she hated it, and they were one flesh, weren’t they, they were soulmates, they were one. And they still had sex, it was a little more routine than before, even a bit desultory – but Cindy didn’t mind, she wasn’t quite sure what part of the sex process had resulted in this baby growing inside her in the first place; she thought that if they did the sex thing very quietly, almost without passion, almost as if they weren’t really there at all, then they wouldn’t draw attention to themselves. Then no future daughter would see.
Cindy stayed at home. Cindy felt trapped. Cindy remembered the fairy tales she’d been fed when she was a child. Damsels with long hair locked away in high towers, princesses forced down to sleep on peas. Mothers pressed into bargains with grumpy evil dwarves who wanted to steal their first-born. Cindy didn’t meet many dwarves, no matter how hard she looked – not at the supermarket, not at the kindergarten, not at the young mothers’ yoga group that the erstwhile Kate had persuaded her to join. Cindy knew that the dwarves wouldn’t have been much use anyway, the dwarves, too, would have been dead.
“I love you,” Steve would say to Cindy, each night as they got into bed, and he meant it.
“I love you,” Cindy would say back, and she meant it too.
Steve had met someone at work, a little cashier assistant less than half his age. He didn’t expect her to like his whitening beard and his receding hairline and his now protruding gut. She fucked him at the office Christmas party, and he told her it had to be a one-off, but she fucked him three more times in January, and an astonishing fifteen times in February, she was really picking up speed. “Tell me you love me,” she’d say afterwards as she smoked a fag, ash in her ash, and he’d say he did, and he thought that maybe that was even true, just a little bit; she’d wrap her corpse legs around him and her dead matted bush would tickle the bulge of his stomach, and then he was inside her, he was inside something that felt warm and smooth but he knew was really so, so cold and was rotting away into clumps of meat. He thought her death would infect him, he hoped it would. He wished he had the sort of relationship with Cindy where he could talk about his new girlfriend, who bit by bit was becoming the very centre of his world, the little chink of garden at the heart of his day. But Cindy had never been one to share things with, nothing of any importance. And some nights he’d cry.
Once in a while they’d try to escape the doll’s house. But they couldn’t find the exit. They took their dead daughter on a holiday to Tenerife, but there was no exit there, not even as far away as Tenerife. When their dead daughter was older, and wanted holidays of her own, with disreputable-looking dead boys who had strange piercings and smelled of drugs, Cindy and Steve took their very first holiday alone. They went to Venice. They drank wine underneath the Rialto. They were serenaded on a gondola. They made love in their budget hotel, and it felt like love, too. It felt like something they could hold on to. And sometimes, back at home, when Steve cried at night, or during the day when Cindy stared silently at the wall, they might think of Venice, and the memory made them happy.
This account focuses too much upon the negatives, maybe. They had a good time in the haunted doll’s house, and the ghosts were very chatty, and some of them were kind.
v
“Hello, hello!” Beaming smiles all round. “Well, here we are! Here we all are again!” A clap on the host’s back, hearty and masculine, a kiss on the hostess’ cheek just a little too close to the mouth. “So good to see you both, I’m not even kidding! I brought some wine, where would you like it?”
They showed him the house. He made appreciative noises at the sitting room, the kitchen, the bedroom. He admired the toilet, Steve pointed out to him the flush, and how he’d fixed it with all the DIY he’d learned. They settled down at the kitchen table and ate Cindy’s casserole, and they all agreed it was really good.
“Well. Well! Here we all are again.”
God was wearing a sports jacket that was meant to look jaunty, but it was two sizes too big for him; God looked old and too thin; the jacket was depressing, it made him look diminished somehow. The wine he’d brought was cheap but potent. The conversation was awkward at first, a series of polite remarks, desperate pauses, too-big smiles and eyes looking downward. The wine helped. They began to relax.
Cindy asked if they could return to the garden.
“Go backwards?” said God. “I don’t know if you can
go backwards. You crazy kids, what will you think of next!”
They laughed, and shared anecdotes of mazes and apples, of fairy tales told long ago.
God mused. “I think the idea is. If I think about it? I think, the older you get, and the more experienced you get. And the more you realise how big the world is, and how many opportunities are in front of you. Then the smaller the world becomes. It gets smaller and smaller, narrowing in on you, until all that’s left is the confines of a wooden box.” He coughed. “You could say that it’s a consequence of maturity, of finding your place in the world and accepting it, of discovering humility and in that humility discovering yourself. Or, maybe. Ha. It’s just a fucking bad design flaw. Ha! Sorry.”
He drank more wine, he farted, they all laughed, oh, the simple comedy of it all.
“But,” God said, “this world isn’t all there is. It can’t be. There must be a way out. At the very centre of the world, there’s a dark space. Don’t go to it. Don’t go. It isn’t a law. I’m not, ha, forbidding you. But I think,” God said, and his voice dropped to a whisper, and he looked so scared, “I think there are ghosts there. I think the dark space is haunted.”
“Well,” said Steve, eventually. “It’s getting late.”
“It is getting late,” said Cindy.
“No doubt you’ll be wanting to get back home,” said Steve. “Back to your garden and whatnot.”
“Back,” said Cindy, “to your maze.” She took away God’s wine glass, put it into the sink with a clatter.
House of Fear Page 16