Dark Terrors 5 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  ’Men have hormones too, you know,’ one of us would jibe. ‘Men have midlife crises, too. Where’s your red convertible? Gonna go have t a tummy tuck?’

  ’Who’s got time for a midlife crisis in this family?’ he’d grumble.

  Once Alicia took the banter to a quite different level by saying coyly, ’I bet you’ve got a bimbo on the side, don’t you, Daddy? Somebody young enough to be your daughter? Maybe one of our friends?’ She named two or three of her sisters’ friends and even one of her own who’d been wearing a lot of make-up and very tight tank tops since grade school, and fixed her father with a decidedly grown-up leer.

  She’d gone too far. She’d pushed an edgy playfulness over into some darker, sleazier territory. There was a thunderous silence. Then her father, face flushed and lips pressed into a hard white line, left the room.

  ’What’d I do?’ Alicia asked, with an innocence that could have been genuine, and I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘She’s too young!’ he kept insisting, as if taking a stand on principle would change what was happening with Alicia. ‘She shouldn’t even be thinking about such things.’ But she was. We did hold the line on the accoutrements of sexual development like make-up and braless midriff tops and anything close to dating, but the currents of erotic energy still roiled.

  Part of the difficulty for us was language. We heard her saying ‘I love you’ to virtually every boy to whom she took a fancy, however fleeting. She spoke of ‘going out with’ or ‘being with’ somebody when all they were doing was seeing each other at school and talking on the phone. She referred to whatever boy she liked at the moment as her boyfriend and seemed not at all fazed when her boyfriend was somebody else the next week. She’d say with satisfaction, ‘I guess I’m popular, huh?’ and I’d try to gauge whether this was anything more than a healthy self-image awkwardly expressed; I began uneasily to think that it was.

  Increasingly bothered, I tried to engage her in conversations about the power of words to shape reality, and she didn’t actively shut me out, but she didn’t say anything, either, and I couldn’t tell whether she’d taken my point or not. Of our three daughters, Alicia was turning out to be the hardest to read; I wouldn’t have called her secretive, exactly, but her private self was virtually unassailable, a cache of thoughts and feelings and knowledge about herself and the world that she guarded like the dangerous treasure it was.

  Alicia was a few months into seventh grade when Todd appeared on the scene. Actually, she told me with a hint of smugness that I didn’t at the time understand, they were in the same class and had known each other for a couple of years, but neither had found the other particularly worth notice until now. ‘What’s different?’ I enquired, trying for the right degree of maternal interest. ‘Is it that he’s grown up?’

  She shook her head, her sun-streaked brown hair shining. ‘Not really. But I have.’

  Todd’s mother told me later, before I realised enough about what had happened between our children to stop talking to her about it, that she was a single mother and Todd was her only child; they’d always been really close. He was such a good kid, a straight-A student, track star and serious artist, never in trouble of any kind, never having needed any but the mildest discipline, kind and responsible and happy. He’d been showing no signs of interest in girls until suddenly one day he fell head over heels for Alicia. It was, she said somewhat wistfully, as if he’d been pulled out of childhood into adolescence overnight, before she was ready for it and, she worried, before he was.

  When I told her Alicia was the youngest of three, she said in all seriousness that she’d defer to my experience in this. ‘Oh, my, don’t do that,’ I protested. ‘I don’t know any more than you do.’ She laughed, as though I were being falsely modest. And, in fact, what I said wasn’t entirely accurate; I did know enough about kids to realise that there was something outside the normal range about Alicia.

  Todd’s mother and I chuckled wryly together about the power of love, and commiserated with each other about the interesting next few years in store for us both. I was to remember that conversation more than once as the Todd-Alicia story unfolded; in retrospect, wistfulness and amusement, however wry and knowing, came to seem shockingly off the mark, and commiseration a woefully inadequate reaction. But even if I’d been more aware then of what was going on, what would I have said to Todd’s mother? ‘Tell your son to beware of my little girl’?

  It started one autumn Saturday when Alicia was out raking leaves. This was not a chore she did willingly, but, unlike her sisters, she didn’t waste time on pouting or tantrums; once it became apparent to her that she couldn’t talk her way out of something odious, she’d set her jaw and do it. If I’d been the one to insist, that would pretty much be the end of it. If it had been her father, she’d make him pay by barely speaking to him for the rest of the day or, if it was late, going to bed without saying goodnight, which especially vexed him. It wasn’t that she thought she’d make him stop telling her to do things she didn’t want to do or saying no to things she did, but she knew her coldness bothered him, and she seemed to relish the excuse to demonstrate her influence over him. I didn’t like this pattern much, but it was fascinating to observe.

  Todd came by on his bicycle that morning, as he often did since our house was on the least direct route possible between his house and the grocery store where he was often sent. He sped past as usual, not stopping, probably hardly even glancing at Alicia. I was out in the yard myself, and I saw her follow him with her eyes, though the motion of the rake didn’t falter. Todd came back around the block. In his laboured pedalling and downcast eyes there was a strong hint of reluctance, and I had the distinct impression that Alicia had willed him back, just to see if she could.

  He pulled over to the curb, childishly dragging one sneaker in the leaf-filled gutter. They exchanged a few words, inaudible to me. Her sweet high giggle made my heart race, and I could only imagine what it was doing to Todd. Then he rode off. The interlude hadn’t even been long enough for me to complain about her not getting her work done.

  But it accomplished its purpose. Todd wandered back again that afternoon, this time ringing the bell and keeping his voice from cracking long enough to ask for Alicia, whom I discovered waiting at the top of the stairs out of his line of sight.

  Very soon it became obvious that her feelings for this gangly, awkward kid, a few weeks younger than she was, were something new. It was quite as though she’d decided this would be something new. Nearly all of her formidable attention was brought to bear on Todd, which made me pity him and wonder about his stamina.

  Alicia did her homework quickly and correctly, but minimally and without interest, using only the thinnest surface layer of her mind. Despite our remonstrances and the coach’s complaints, she hardly ever went to soccer practice, and I wished she hadn’t turned out to be right, that he’d let her play anyway because she was far and away his best player. At dinner she scarcely interacted with the rest of the family, her mind clearly elsewhere.

  ‘Earth to Alicia!’ her sisters would tease, or, a trifle snidely, ‘Oooh, little sister’s in love!’ But she’d hardly notice.

  Not infrequently we’d come upon her sitting calmly in a chair somewhere, grey eyes very bright and focused on the middle distance, lips and hands moving slightly. Even if we spoke to her or touched her shoulder, it would take a few seconds before she was aware that we were there. ‘Was I like that?’ her sisters asked incredulously, and we said yes, but in truth there was something quite different about this youngest child.

  We limited her phone time. We let Todd come over on his bicycle no more than a couple of times a week for only an hour or two at a time, made sure one of us was in close proximity whenever he was there, insisted they leave the door to the family room open and do something other than sitting on the couch listening to music. Alicia didn’t seriously protest any of these constraints. When we’d say no he couldn’t come over today, she might frown or rol
l her eyes. When we’d tell her to get off the phone, she might push it a little, stay on five minutes longer, but she wasn’t openly defiant, and I had no sense of underlying rebelliousness, either.

  ‘What do you like about Todd?’ I tried one afternoon when Alicia and I were alone in the house. ‘How is he different from Peter or Javier or, what was his name? Jimmy?’ Jimmy was a stretch; in first grade he’d brought her roses from his mother’s garden.

  She smiled and answered without hesitation, ‘I have power.’

  Something about the way she said that sent a shiver up my spine. ‘What do you mean by power?’ I asked carefully.

  ‘I mean, like, he says can he call me tonight and I say no and he doesn’t. Or he asked if he could kiss me and I said we didn’t know each other well enough so he didn’t.’ I risked a direct glance in her direction. Her lovely face was made both lovelier and a little sinister by the flush in her cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes.

  I was somewhat relieved to hear that she felt in control, but now there was another concern, a broader moral issue having to do with the character of the woman she was becoming. ‘You be nice to Todd,’ I admonished. ‘You have the power to hurt him, you know.’

  ‘Oh, Mom, please. I know.’’ But she looked newly thoughtful, and I found myself wondering, with some trepidation, what I’d just done.

  Todd started bringing her presents. Flowers from what I assumed was his mother’s’ garden until I discovered they lived in an apartment without one. A rosy lidded soapstone heart, not wrapped and not in a box, from the back of which I glimpsed her peeling what was probably the price tag. A ring with a clear stone she insisted on calling a diamond, though of course it had to be paste; she wore it prominently on a chain around her neck. Her older sisters had dubbed such things ‘friendship rings’, a concept my husband and I had never quite grasped. Alicia said, ‘It shows he belongs to me.’

  ‘He doesn’t belong to you!’ I objected. ‘Alicia, you don’t own him.’ She just smiled.

  The late-night phone calls began sometime in November. We’d decided Alicia wasn’t ready for her own phone though her next-older sister helpfully reminded us in front of Alicia that she’d got one for her twelfth birthday; we said it was because Alicia would be on it with her friends all the time, whereas our other daughter had been pretty much a loner so the phone had been more symbolic than practical to her and not much problem for us. Unspoken, even between her father and me, was the apprehension that Alicia’d be using the phone for unspecified nefarious purposes. When we denied her request, she frowned and started to sulk like any thwarted adolescent. Then a supercilious smile crossed her lips and she shrugged, declaring in every way but verbally that our intransigence was a pain in the butt, but basically irrelevant.

  The extension in our room was on my side of the bed, so I was the one who answered it. 11:45 p.m. nearly three o’clock in the morning, less than an hour before my alarm was set to go off so I had no hope of going back to sleep - every time, I’d catapult from unconsciousness to disorienting hyperconsciousness, adrenalin geysering, certain our oldest daughter had gone into premature labour or there was some other sort of bad news, since good news is rarely delivered in the middle of the night. My husband would have shot awake, too, and I’d feel his tension whether I was touching him or not. Often we’d hold hands.

  The first time, Todd asked politely for Alicia and seemed surprised and then miffed when I informed him brusquely that she wasn’t allowed to receive phone calls after nine o’clock and that he’d awakened us. He said sorry, minimally. The next few times, he asked for her in a hoarse, urgent whisper, sometimes saying no more than her name, and once he begged me to call her to the phone, which I refused to do on the theory that if he got what he wanted he’d be even more persistent.

  This was getting old. I told both kids that if he didn’t stop it I’d call his mother. My husband threatened to take away Alicia’s phone privileges altogether, whereupon she wouldn’t be in the same room with him for several days.

  Finally I did call Todd’s mother. This conversation didn’t go well. She listened without comment, and then said icily, My son is no angel, but I know he wouldn’t do something like this.’

  ‘I’m not accusing him,’ I hastened to say, although I was. ‘I just wanted you to be aware—’

  ‘Hey, you know something?’ Startled by how quickly her tone had heated with indignation, I wondered if there was more going on here than I knew. ‘I’m really tired of my son being blamed for all this. It’s your daughter who’s chasing him.’

  ‘She doesn’t call him in the middle of the night,’ I retorted, though I’d sworn I wouldn’t get into this kind of maternal debate. It was apparent that we were no longer on the same side, and I regretted that.

  ‘She tells him to. Todd says she tells him to call her, and he doesn’t want to, but he can’t help it. He’s not sleeping much. He looks awful. I’m taking him to the doctor.’ I could tell she’d just now decided to do that.

  ‘Maybe they should stay away from each other for a while,’ I ventured, wondering even as I said it how we’d ever enforce such a ban.

  Todd’s mother, having settled on a plan, was calmer now. ‘I don’t think that’s necessary. They’re just kids. Alicia is a lovely little girl. Todd really likes her, and I do, too. Let’s just help them work this out.’ I agreed, with new hope.

  For a while then we got heavy breathing, once or twice a week; we couldn’t prove it was Todd, since Caller ID showed ‘private name private number’ and *69 revealed only that the number was blocked, but we knew it was and Alicia didn’t deny it. We felt harassed, of course, and vaguely threatened. We considered calling the police. By Christmas, though, the calls had stopped. To me there was something slightly ominous about that, too, though sleeping through the night was undeniably a relief.

  Soon after Christmas break, Alicia started alluding to behaviour problems Todd was having in school. Offhandedly she’d say something like, ‘Todd got in trouble again today,’ or, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with that boy.’ Then she’d laugh, or there’d be an expression on her averted face that could be called gratified. Whether I pressed or tried subtly to draw her out, she wouldn’t give details. When we saw Todd during this time, he looked haggard and his eyes were wild.

  ‘Does it seem to you that Alicia hasn’t been having much homework lately?’ My husband was frowning at her grades, which were not stellar, as in the past they’d sometimes been, but were certainly acceptable.

  ‘She says they aren’t assigning anything, or she gets it done in class.’

  ‘No wonder the public education system in this country is such a mess,’ he fumed.

  At mid-year school conferences, where they told us Alicia was charming, never a behaviour problem, doing fine although she didn’t seem to take school very seriously, we ran into Todd’s mother. My husband kept edging away, and I found myself decidedly uncomfortable around her by now, but she hardly would let us go even when the teacher was ready for her. ‘Todd has been having an awful lot of homework lately,’ she complained. ‘Has Alicia?’

  Before I could say anything, my husband gave a non-answer, ‘I’m always glad to see them having homework.’

  ‘He hardly has time for anything else. Except your daughter, of course.’ She smiled nervously. My husband and I avoided each other’s eyes until we were out of her sight, then exchanged a long, worried look.

  It was the middle of the night on a cold snowless Tuesday, when my husband shook me awake. ‘Todd’s mother’s here.’

  I sat up. The dread that we’d been floating in for some time and that had been in my dreams, too, in the form of dangers just out of my grasp, seemed about to coalesce, and I struggled to make sense of it. ‘Why? Where’s Alicia?’

  He looked very vulnerable standing there in his pyjamas. Love for him spouted clear and strong out of the swirl of deep troubled sleep and adrenalin in my head. ‘She’s asleep in her bed. But Todd’s missi
ng.’

  ‘Is he here?’ I had visions of twelve-year-old lovers trysting under our roof, and my sense of sexual morality, not easily offended, prepared to be outraged. Acute anticipatory guilt also swept through me when I thought of facing Todd’s mother; there wasn’t any doubt in my mind that my daughter would have been the instigator.

  ‘He’s not with her, but I haven’t searched. He took his mother’s car.’

  I stalked to Alicia’s room. Despite the anger and anxiety that made me want to shake her, I decided to rouse her gently; believing this to be strategic, I was shaken by the tenderness I felt for this daughter of mine in the moments before I woke her. She was heartbreakingly beautiful, pale lashes against dewy skin, pearly bare shoulder, graceful hand clutching like a talisman the ring Todd had given her.

  On a hunch, I bent and whispered so close to her ear that I could feel its whorls against my lips, ‘Alicia, honey, where’s Todd?’

  She stirred and murmured something I didn’t catch. Her eyes stayed closed and her breath shallow and even; she appeared to be still asleep.