A Nest of Nightmares

by Lisa Tuttle

  But as soon as she stepped back, the pounding began again.

  She stared at the door, remembering something Harold had said: ‘All you have to do is ask me, and I’ll come.’

  ‘But you’re dead,’ she said. It was barely a whisper, but again it stopped the pounding, as if whoever was in the hall was eager to hear anything she had to say.

  ‘Go away,’ she said more loudly. ‘Go away, do you hear me? Go back to where you came from! Do you hear me? I don’t need you! Go away!’

  There was no more pounding after that. There was no sound of any kind. Corey slumped to the floor, facing the door, no more able to walk away from it than she was to open it. She was shivering and felt slightly sick.

  If it was Harold, she thought, someone would find the body out there, sooner or later. And if it wasn’t, if it had been only her imagination, her need, someone would find her and let her know; someone would call or someone would come. Sooner or later.

  And so she sat, all through the night, waiting and listening for the sounds of the dead.

  THE MEMORY OF WOOD

  It was a beautiful chest. The hard, dark old wood gleamed in the sunlight, looking rich and exotic against the bright green grass.

  Helen and Rob saw it at the same time and glanced at each other swiftly, smiling in shared delight. Helen shifted the baby in her arms, looked down to see that Julian had not strayed, and followed her husband. They made their way among the furniture, the bits and pieces of a life scattered on the big front lawn, towards the thing they had, in that instant, made up their minds to buy.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ she said softly, watching her husband run his hand across the smooth grain of the lid.

  ‘It’ll cost,’ he said. His voice was dreamy.

  ‘But we need it. Don’t we?’

  ‘We could keep blankets in it,’ he said. ‘Let me see how it opens.’ He crouched on the grass and she moved near, standing over him. The chest wasn’t locked; the hinged lid came up smoothly and quietly under his hands.

  Helen clutched the baby closer and drew back, nearly stumbling. Her stomach twisted. The stench was horrible: sweet and rotten, with something nasty underneath. She made a small, despairing sound.

  Rob looked up at her, frowning. ‘I thought I – ’

  ‘That smell.’

  ‘Yes . . .’ He was still frowning, puzzled. ‘I thought I caught a whiff of something horrible, but – ’ He sniffed loudly, obviously, moving his head above the open chest. ‘Nothing, now.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Cautiously, she breathed through her nose again, and smelled nothing unusual, but she hesitated to move closer, to lean into the chest as Rob was doing.

  ‘I’m sure,’ he said.

  She looked down at the chest, her pleasure broken.

  Rob lowered the lid gently and stood up. ‘It could go in the living room, beneath the Clarke print. Next to the red chair.’

  ‘People would use it as a table then, put drinks down on it and spoil the finish.’

  He smiled at her. ‘We could put out coasters when we serve drinks.’

  ‘Take baby for a minute, would you?’ She flexed her arms when the weight was gone, and bent over the chest, stroking it with her finger tips. The wood was as sleek and satin-smooth as she had imagined. ‘Whose estate was this?’ she asked. ‘Somebody really took care of this chest. She must have rubbed it with oil and polished it every week to get the wood like this.’

  ‘Some old woman who just died,’ Rob said, glancing up at the elaborate gingerbread of the house. ‘She was all alone, no family, no children. An old maid.’

  Helen hesitated, wanting to turn her back and walk away. She told herself she was being silly. Her fingers found the edge of the lid and she lifted.

  They both sniffed, and looked at each other. They smelled nothing but the sun, the grass, the faint scents of musty furnishings exposed to the open air, the perfumes of people drifting around them.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Rob.

  ‘We didn’t imagine it.’

  ‘No, but maybe it wasn’t the chest at all. It might have been a coincidence that we smelled it when I first lifted the lid. Maybe it was someone passing by – ’

  Helen giggled. ‘Anyone who smells like that and is still walking around – !’ She lowered the lid.

  ‘It’ll cost,’ said Rob. ‘But not like it would if we bought it from a dealer.’

  Julian let out a crow of pleasure and began running away at top speed on his fat, stumpy legs. Helen looked around and saw that he had sighted a leashed poodle. She winced, seeing his inevitable tumble a split second before it happened, and started after him, to comfort him. But Julian took the fall with his usual uncomplaining good nature; it was baby Alice, safe in her father’s arms, who began to scream as Rob bent down to examine the chest again.

  They spent more than they could realistically afford, but less – they were certain – than the beautifully made chest was worth. They were well pleased with themselves as they drove home from the estate sale, the chest in the back seat with Julian.

  None of their furniture had been bought new; all of it had come as hand-me-downs from family or had been bought at garage sales, auctions, flea markets, and junk shops. What had started as economic necessity had grown into a point of pride. No shoddy, mass-produced contemporary furniture for Helen and Rob. They favoured dark wood, intricately carved high-backed sofas and chairs with velvet cushions, glass-fronted bookcases, and ancient, hand-made wardrobes. The chest was simple, but old and beautiful. It would fit in with the rest of their furniture.

  When they had put it in place that night, in the living room near the red-velvet chair and the ornately tasselled floor lamp, beneath the black-and-white lithograph of a man on a lonely road, Helen opened the lid. Her hand flew to her mouth and she gagged at the rich and rotten smell of something dead. With an effort, Helen held back the rush of sickness, but tears came to her eyes.

  ‘Rob,’ she called weakly.

  He came at once with the beers he had fetched to toast their new treasure. ‘Darling, what’s wrong?’

  ‘The smell,’ she said hopelessly.

  Rob went to the chest and leaned into it. Watching, Helen felt the sudden urge to pull him back to safety. He looked around, shrugging. ‘Honestly, darling, I can’t smell anything. Some old dust, maybe.’

  She let herself breathe again. He was right; the smell was gone. But it must be lurking within the chest, every opening releasing it.

  ‘It was the same horrible smell,’ she said. ‘The minute I opened the chest, there it was.’

  He gazed into the chest thoughtfully; put in one hand to stroke the interior. ‘I suppose it could be something . . . maybe some food that went bad, or maybe a rat got inside and died there long ago. Wood holds a smell for a long time.’

  Helen nodded bleakly. The odour, brief though it had been, had disturbed her profoundly. ‘I wish we hadn’t bought it. I can’t bear that smell. I don’t want it in the house.’

  Rob frowned and said, ‘You wanted it as much as I did. We agreed on it.’

  ‘I know. I fell in love with the way it looked. But I didn’t know – honestly, Rob, I can’t live with it!’

  ‘Do you smell anything now?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, but I did when I first opened it. I know I did. And if that’s going to happen every time I open it – ’

  ‘It won’t. We’ll fumigate it. We’ll clean it out with disinfectant and then put some of those whaddaya­callems inside. Sachets. Oranges stuffed with cloves. I used to make them for my aunts every Christmas, and they’d put them in the big trunk where they kept the quilts. It’s a great smell, that orange and clove among the blankets.’ He looked at her earnestly, eyes compelling her agreement. Weakly, to avoid an argument, Helen nodded. But she didn’t believe his prediction. That horrible smell was someho
w trapped in the chest, and it would not go away. Wood had a memory for smell that soap, disinfectant, and perfume could not erase.

  She thought of the chest of drawers that was now in the baby’s room. She had inherited it in college, when her roommate left to get married. Helen never knew whether Jenny had spilled perfume in the bottom drawer or if the smell had simply lingered from the clothes she had kept there – in either case, although Helen had cleaned out the drawer with soap and water and lined it with fresh paper, whenever she pulled out that bottom drawer she was tempted to look around, thinking that Jenny had come into the room. The fragrance was transmitted from the drawer to whatever clothes she kept there, although it was faint and did not last long. But the scent never left the wood, although it had been nearly six years since the chest had been Jenny’s.

  Wood remembers, she thought, and as if he had read her mind, Rob said, ‘Look, as long as any of the bad smell lingers, we don’t have to use it to store anything. It’s still a beautiful-looking chest, even if we don’t use it. We don’t have to keep opening the lid. But I’m sure it won’t last. Tomorrow why don’t you teach Julian how to make a pomander out of an orange and cloves?’

  She smiled at him, relieved that they weren’t going to argue after all. ‘Julian will only stick the cloves up his nose,’ she said. ‘If he doesn’t eat them first.’ She closed the lid.

  A baby’s crying woke Helen in the night. This was not unusual. What was unusual was that she didn’t think it was Alice crying, and the sound didn’t come from the nursery. Some odd trick of acoustics, or perhaps her sleepy mind, made the sound seem to come from the direction of the living room.

  Nevertheless, Helen got up, tied her dressing-gown around her, and went into the next room to check. She found Alice sleeping soundly. As she looked down at the sleeping baby, she heard the crying again, distant and muffled.

  A feeling of dread pushed at her heart. Moving slowly, she followed the sound. It had died away again by the time she stood in the living room, but it seemed still to ring in the air. She turned on a lamp and looked around the room, her eyes and attention drawn by the chest. It was no longer beautiful, but dark and menacing. Hastily, Helen switched off the light. Darkness was better. She didn’t want to see the chest and think about opening it. She waited, praying she would not hear the crying again, praying that it had not come from the chest.

  She waited long minutes in the darkness and the silence, and then went back to bed. In the morning she decided it had been a dream.

  Helen was ironing in the kitchen half-listening to the soap opera on the television set out of sight in the next room. The baby was in her mechanical swing, creaking back and forth beside her, and Julian was playing in the living room. Helen’s mind was just registering the fact that her son was being too quiet when from the living room came a soft but definite thud, and Julian made the noise he made to signify disgust or displeasure. Alice’s face puckered and she began to cry. Helen caught a whiff of something rotten.

  ‘Julian,’ she said sharply. She set down the iron and rushed into the living room, ignoring the baby’s cries.

  She found her son standing before the open chest, a look of intense interest on his face as he stared down into it. Apprehension twisted her stomach and she caught Julian’s arms and pulled him away from whatever it was that so fascinated him. He cried out his annoyance and hit her ineffectually, squirming to get free. Helen held him tightly and turned him away from the chest. Then, curious, about what in that empty wooden box could have caught his attention, she turned back for a look.

  It wasn’t empty. For just a moment she saw – or thought she saw – the chest stuffed with bundles of old, yellowed newspapers. But when she frowned and began to move closer, she saw that of course it was empty. There was nothing inside it. The chest was empty as it had been when they brought it home the day before.

  Helen turned her attention to her wriggling son. ‘Julian,’ she said, trying to keep her voice calm but firm. ‘That’s a no-no. You must not open the chest. Understand me? The chest is not a toy. You are not to open it. You must not play with it. Understand?’

  He scowled up at her, obviously disagreeing but finding his small vocabulary inadequate to tell her so. Alice, in the kitchen, was still crying. Helen sighed.

  ‘Go on and play with your toys, Julian. Not the chest. I mean it.’

  She let go of him and went to close the lid. For a moment she stared down into the chest, wondering about the newspapers. What had made her imagine the chest was filled with newspapers, something wrapped in newspaper and packed away in the chest? No answer occurred to her, so she closed the lid, then went to see about the baby.

  Alice simply wanted to be held and, after a few minutes of attention, she had calmed down and was agreeable to being put back in her swing. Helen went back to the living room to check on Julian.

  And found him, as she had more than half-expected, again standing before the open chest, clearly fascinated by whatever he imagined he saw inside.

  ‘Julian.’

  Obviously he did not hear the threat in her voice, for he looked up brightly, blue eyes shining and round face puckered with interest. ‘Baby,’ he said.

  ‘Julian, what did I tell you about that chest?’ She advanced upon him.

  The bright interest went out of his face, and he looked stubborn. ‘Me see,’ he said firmly.

  ‘It’s not a toy, Julian. I told you before you are not to play with it. You must not open it. Don’t open it again.’ She shut the lid.

  ‘Me see,’ he said again, his chubby hands creeping for the edge of the lid.

  ‘No.’ Helen caught his hands and held them. ‘No. Leave the chest alone, Julian. I mean it. You’re going to be in big trouble if you do that again.’ She looked into his stubborn face and knew he would go to the chest as soon as her back was turned. Threats did not work with him, so she would have to distract him.

  ‘Well, big boy,’ she said cheerfully, hoisting him up in her arms. ‘Why don’t you play with your old mommy for a while? You want to play with your choo-choos? You want to play choo-choo trains with Mommy?’ She carried him away, bouncing him slightly in her arms and asking questions, taking him away from the sight of the wooden chest.

  For the rest of the day she kept an eye on Julian, never giving him the chance to go back to the chest. But in the evening, sitting with her family watching television, she was struck by how often Julian turned his head to look at the chest. In particular, she was struck by the way he looked at the chest.

  Later, when Julian had been put to bed, she tried to explain her unease to Rob. ‘He’d get a look on his face, as if he’d heard something, and then he’d turn and look straight at the chest. As if the sound came from the chest. Except that there wasn’t any sound. Why is he so fascinated by it? Why does he want to keep opening it?’

  ‘Because you’ve made such a big deal out of it,’ Rob said easily. ‘He opened it once, out of natural curiosity, and you hit the ceiling. Naturally that made him curious. He can’t figure out what is so special about it. He’s a kid who doesn’t like to be told no, especially without a reason.’

  ‘If you could have seen him, Rob, staring into . . . He was seeing something, I’m sure of it. But there’s nothing there.’ She stopped short of telling him what she had briefly, oddly imagined: the old, crumpled newspapers which seemed to fill the chest.

  ‘So? It’s big and dark and empty. To a kid, it’s interesting. Why are you so worried about it?’

  She saw from his face that he expected some irrational response, that he was ready to make fun of ‘women’s intuition’. She said calmly, ‘Rob, he could get hurt. If he decided to play inside it, he might shut himself in and suffocate.’

  ‘Oh come on, Helen. You’d hear him and find him long before that could happen.’

  ‘What if the lid slammed down? It’s heavy enough to break his
hand.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Rob said. ‘But there are lots of other ways he could get hurt around the house – more likely ways. It’s silly to worry – ’

  ‘It’s not silly! I’ve caught him opening the chest twice, and he’ll try again, I know it.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ He held up a placating hand. ‘Don’t get upset. Maybe we could put something on the chest that he’d have trouble getting off.’

  Helen nodded grudgingly and the discussion was over, but she was far from satisfied. She wished they had never bought the thing.

  Something was wrong. Helen swam up out of sleep, drawn by the sound of a baby crying.

  Then she was wide awake, listening and remembering. This was no dream. A baby was crying, somewhere in the house. It was not Alice – to Helen’s ears the cry sounded like that of a much younger infant, a newborn child. The muffled sound came, she thought, from the living room.

  She looked resentfully at Rob. He could sleep through anything. There had been a time, just after Julian’s birth, when Helen had seen Rob’s regular, undisturbed slumber as a sign of hostility towards her and their child. Logically, she knew he did not will his sleeping patterns. And she was used to it, now.

  Gradually the crying was fading, and Helen thought she might be able to go to sleep after all. Then she heard the soft, unmistakable patter of Julian’s feet in the hall, going towards the living room, and she sat up in bed. Had Julian heard the crying, too?

  Heart thumping unpleasantly, Helen got up and went to check.

  Julian was standing in the dark living room, a few feet from the chest. He turned and looked at his mother when she came into the room. He pointed to the chest. ‘Baby,’ he said.

  Helen felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No baby. Come back to bed, Julian. You must have been dreaming.’