Jason's father bounced, too, because he hadn't hung himself with rope, but with a bunch of bungie cords, the kind of cord adults used to tie down the boot of their car when they had too much in there to shut the boot door.
So, he bounced, and he swung, and his tongue lolled out from his purple lips.
Jason remembered that, and sometimes he dreamed about the face of his father and he never really forgot it, never really remembered it, but for within the nightmares that woke him often in the middle of the night.
He never really remembered where Bill came from, either.
From beneath his father's swinging, bouncing corpse. The little bear that could. The little bear with a wicked sense of humour that swaggered and persuaded a ten-year old boy to colour in his dead mother's face, because of course his mother was dead and Jason awoke with a scream, knowing she was dead and that he should have understood earlier in the way that she'd felt cold to the touch while he'd held her head still for Bill to draw a penis on his dead mother's forehead and he, too, was cold, because Bill wasn't in bed to keep him warm.
Bill never had been there to keep him warm. Keeping things warm wasn't in Bill's nature, because Bill was...
What is Bill? Thought Jason, in the pitch black without the teddy bear in his arms. What is Bill?
Bill couldn't talk, but he could swagger, and Jason heard the little bear's soft footsteps on the carpet in his room, heading out of the door.
Bill wasn't the kind of teddy that was there to keep you warm. He was the kind of teddy that was there to make you cold.
*
Jason pulled open his door, pulling the handle down so that the latch wouldn't click.
How had Bill got through the door? A teddy bear, even one that swaggered, couldn't open a door because he couldn't reach.
But he had.
And he'd left a light on for Jason, just like Jason knew, feared, he would. He'd left the light on in the bathroom, down the end of the hall. And there was his mother, sitting on the crapper, a sad and horrible sight with puke in her hair and a penis drawn on her sagging forehead.
Jason couldn't understand what he was seeing, because suddenly the sight of his mother dead in the bathroom was just a picture, something he was seeing in 2D. Flat, somehow, robbed of vigour.
But it was because the tableau lacked life. It was inanimate, in a way that he hadn't experienced death before. Death wasn't supposed to be inanimate, but move. Like a body getting hit by a car or a bullet in a movie, being blown back, thrust aside, exploded, rolling. Jason understood that. Death was supposed to swing and bounce.
It wasn't dead on the toilet or with your head in the toilet bowl.
Of course it wasn't.
Bill knew that, too. That was why Bill was sitting on top of Jason's mother's head holding a child's blunt pair of scissors and grinning like the lunatic he was.
It's hard to grin without teeth. It's hard to take an eye out with blunt plastic purple scissors, too, but Bill was a resourceful kind of teddy bear. He managed it just fine.
Jason screamed, torn, because he was a pretty resourceful kind of kid.
Torn.
Run to or from.
Bill grinned and it turned out he did have teeth and a tongue when he popped that eyeball in his mouth and bit down so that it popped.
Pop, said the eyeball.
Run, said Jason's brain.
Piss, said Jason's bladder.
But he feet knew what they were doing, even if the rest of him didn't. His feet hit the stairs and he ran for his life.
*
Bill hopped down from Jason's mother's head and landed on her thigh.
If a teddy bear can grow teeth and a tongue and a taste for flesh, too, there's no reason, no damn reason at all, that the little teddy couldn't talk.
'Hehe,' he said. 'Muff!'
He pulled on the knicker elastic and with a quick snip and a yank pulled them free.
'Fuck me,' he said. 'That's a growler, alright.'
He used the sodden knickers to mop eyeball juice from his fur. All he managed to do was smear it further, but...
'What're going do, eh?'
He grinned, licked his lips, and jumped down onto the floor. A little bear, barely a foot high, swearing like a builder with a big fucking hammer and only one eye.
When it comes right down to, thought Bill, a pair of kid's scissors was a little embarrassing.
He threw the scissors aside. A teddy bear doesn't have hands. It has paws. Of course it couldn't hold or use a pair of scissors.
But Jason didn't know that.
*
Jason ran into the kitchen, same place as Bill was headed. Ran to the kitchen drawer, same place as Bill was headed.
Beat the little bastard to the rolling pin, because in some part of Jason's head he knew that knives were wrong, and that he couldn't stab anyone...anything.
Bill didn't have the same compunctions about violence. Bill did it right. He leaped right past Jason's swinging rolling pin and landed on the still open knife drawer. Picked up the biggest knife he could find and turned with that mean old grin just as Jason's foot lashed out and slammed the drawer shut, cutting Bill in half. Stuffing came out and Bill's top half, still holding the knife, fell to the floor. Jason might not be able to stick a knife in a toy bear, but he was a put together kid.
He slammed the rolling pin down on Bill's fluffy, mucky head and cracked both button eyes at once. Bill dropped the knife. His legs beat out a rhythm from within the knife drawer.
'Oh,' said Bill. 'You little fucker...'
Jason picked up the toy and took him over to the cooker. Flicked the gas hob alight and held Bill to the flame. Bill screamed and so, too, did Jason. Jason might have been screaming for a long time, maybe since he'd found his mother dead in the toilet, maybe since he'd found his father swinging and bouncing in the attic.
Maybe he'd been screaming for three, four years, since the wallpaper began to peel from the walls.
Maybe Bill was just a toy he'd found in the attic. Maybe Jason was fucking crazy. Because of course toy's couldn't talk or take out an eye with a pair of plastic scissors.
Jason burned Bill's top half on the hob and the smell was sickening. He took the still kicking legs from the knife drawer and burned them next.
*
Three, maybe four years ago, around the time the wallpaper began peeling from the walls, Jason's father's therapist might have given him a tiny teddy bear, a little under a foot tall. Transference, a tool, a crutch, for his crippling bi-polar disorder.
Maybe around that time Jason's mother had started drinking, and carried right on 'til she got to the end of the bottle.
Maybe, too, that little teddy bear did its job in the end, smouldering on a kitchen work surface while a boy of ten screamed and cried his heart out in a long dead house, because even little boys know death's not still. It swings.
It bounces.
The End
About the Author:
Craig Saunders is the author of over thirty novels and novellas, including 'Masters of Blood and Bone', 'RAIN' and 'Deadlift'. He writes across many genres, but horror, humour (the 'Spiggot' series) and fantasy (the 'Rythe' tales) are his favourites.
Craig lives in Norfolk, England, with his wife and children, likes nice people and good coffee. Find out more on Amazon, or visit:
www.craigrsaunders.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/craigrsaundersauthor
@Grumblesprout
Also by Craig Saunders
Novels
The Dead Boy
Left to Darkness
Masters of Blood and Bone
Damned to Cold Fire (previously published as 'The Estate')
A Home by the Sea
RAIN
Vigil
The Noose and Gibbet
A Stranger's Grave
The Love of the Dead
Spiggot
Spiggot, Too
BLOOD DRUGS TEA (previously published as
'The Gold Ring')
The Devil Lied
Novellas
UNIT 731
Death by a Mother's Hand
Days of Christmas
Flesh and Coin
Bloodeye
Deadlift
A Scarecrow to Watch over Her
The Walls of Madness
Insulation
Short Story Collections
Dead in the Trunk (Vol. I)
Angels in Black and White (Vol. II)
Dark Words (Vol. III)
The Cold Inside (Vol. IV)
Writing as Craig R. Saunders:
The Outlaw King (The Line of Kings Trilogy Book One)
The Thief King (The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Two)
The Queen of Thieves (The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Three)
Rythe Awakes (The Rythe Quadrilogy Book One)
The Tides of Rythe (The Rythe Quadrilogy Book Two)
Rythe Falls (The Rythe Quadrilogy Book Three)
Beneath Rythe (The Rythe Quadrilogy Book Four)
Angels in Black and White (Horror Short Stories) Page 11