The house was unlit, which meant that Robbie’s mother wouldn’t see him until he had a chance to sleep off any guilt that might escape onto his face. It didn’t look guilty in the bathroom mirror, where it foamed at the mouth while the toothbrush polished its grin. He was in bed well before his mother came home, though he couldn’t sleep. If he’d been allowed a computer in his room he would have played on it, but the games might have been too violent for his mother’s taste; she’d decided even board games were aggressive. He slept once the grinning doll subsided inside the jack-in-the-box of his head.
He thought he was behaving normally at breakfast, however dull his head felt, until his mother said “What’s the matter, Robbie? Why are you looking like that?”
“I’m not looking like anything.”
“Your eyes are. Aren’t you sleeping?”
“It’s all the stuff you’ve been saying about Chucky.”
“I won’t again. Don’t worry, we’ll be getting rid of him.” As a further comfort she said “My turn to make dinner.”
So there wasn’t a meeting. Perhaps that was why Duncan didn’t seek him out but only gave him a grin across the classroom. He joined him at the morning break, when the girl who’d accosted them yesterday caught up with them in the schoolyard. “Hope you’re happy now,” she said.
Robbie grinned, though it felt inadvertent if not meaningless. “Why?” Duncan demanded.
“Someone’s brought your Chucky back.”
“We haven’t lost him,” Robbie blurted as Duncan said louder “Who’s brought what where?”
“They’ve got him in a shop down by the Strand, in the window where everyone can see him.”
“They’ve got no respect,” her friend said.
“Nobody can stop him. He’ll get everywhere,” Duncan said, baring his teeth.
He kept the grin up until the girls left them alone. If he seemed to find it hard to abandon, that was just a joke. He made the face at any girls who looked at him and Robbie as they slouched around the yard, and the trick amused Robbie so much that he couldn’t help joining in, even if it felt as though strings were attached to the corners of his mouth. His lips had grown weary by the time the bell herded everyone into the school.
The history mistress wanted to hear stories of the past that people’s families had told them. One boy said how the government had hated Liverpool so much they’d tried to take all the jobs down south, and a girl retorted that the unions hadn’t let her dad or anybody do their jobs. “I think those are legends more than they’re history,” Mrs Picton said, and Robbie took the cue. “What about Chucky?” he said.
“What about…”
“He’s a story mams and dads tell, isn’t he? How it all started when those kids watched that film.”
Before Mrs Picton could respond, Robbie’s classmates did. Someone used to dream Chucky was under the bed after she’d read about him in the paper. Someone knew a girl who’d set her dolls on fire in case any of them might be Chucky. Someone else had heard of a boy who’d attacked his sister because he thought Chucky was inside her. Several people confirmed this, but Duncan said nothing at all. “It’s only a film,” Mrs Picton said, which sounded somehow familiar. “That doesn’t mean any of you should watch anything like that at your age.”
“Didn’t those boys really kill anyone, then?” Robbie said.
“Of course they did. It’s history, and now please leave it alone.”
Why should he feel accused? He didn’t speak for the rest of the lesson, despite the doubtful glances she kept giving him. When the bell jerked him to his feet at last she said “Will you wait, please, Robbie.”
He stood like a doll at his desk until she took him to the headmistress. If someone had reported him for being Chucky in the yard, why wasn’t Duncan with him? It should be Duncan who was being stared at and whispered girlishly about as he was escorted along the corridor like a killer to the execution chamber. Robbie and his guard were almost at Mrs Todd’s office when he realised they couldn’t do this to him; his mother had to be there. But she was in the office.
She looked even more disappointed than the other women did, and he turned on Mrs Picton. “You said it was only a film.”
“What have you been watching?” his mother said.
“I didn’t see them all. Dunk saw more. They haven’t done anything to us. Like she says, it’s just a legend. Just some wimpy films.”
“Have you been too busy watching films,” Mrs Todd enquired, “to do your homework?”
“I did it all. Who says I haven’t?”
“The school does,” Robbie’s mother said sadly. “Your teacher found it on the Internet.”
Robbie’s skull felt close to cracking like plastic. “That’s only like looking it up in a book.”
“It was practically word for word,” said Mrs Picton. “You’d think you wanted to be caught.”
“What have you been filling your head with instead?” His mother clearly didn’t care to know.
“Try devoting your imagination to your schoolwork. That’s what it’s for,” Mrs Todd said. “I’m letting you off with a warning this time, but I’ll treat any further offence much more seriously. Please remember you’re letting yourself and your mother down as well as the school.”
“And I’ll want to see that work from you done properly,” Mrs Picton said.
His mother played his silent jailer as far as the schoolyard. She was hardly out of the gate when Duncan came to him. “What did they want?”
“Just about my homework.”
“Was it bad?”
Robbie had to imitate his grin, because he didn’t know if Duncan meant the homework or the interview. “It was evil.”
This widened Duncan’s grin, which aggravated Robbie’s. It was starting to feel like a contest when a girl said “What do you two think you look like?”
“Chucky,” the boys said in chorus, which made them grin until Robbie’s cheeks felt in danger of splitting like plastic.
He couldn’t keep it up all afternoon, though his lips stirred if any of the teachers even glanced at him. Though the lessons felt interminable, they ended far too soon. Where could he go except home? He wasn’t about to be scared of his mother when he wasn’t scared of Chucky, especially since she was. Her nagging would just leave his head duller still—and then he thought of somewhere to go on the way home.
The metal benches outside the shopping precinct were crammed with quartets of pensioners, warily eyeing his schoolmates while they fought at bus stops or flung litter at each other. Robbie felt watched by them as he caught sight of the face across the road, in a small shop on the side street opposite a corner of the precinct. He sprinted in front of a bus stuffed with children and gave the driver his best grin, encouraged by the face in the shop window full of skulls and hairy visages and greenish corpse heads. Though the eyeless round rubbery mask was decorated with stitches, Robbie wasn’t sure whether they were all where they should be. The longer he gazed at it, the more secretive the grin seemed to grow. He thought of wearing the mask while his mother lectured him, but she wouldn’t let him own it, any more than he could buy even one of the fireworks lined up at the foot of the window. Suppose she didn’t know? He could wear it when he went out at night while she was with Midge. He hadn’t enough money on him, but there was more in his room, and that was why he hurried home.
His mother came into the hall as he shut the front door. “What have you been doing now?”
“Nothing. Coming home.”
“Can’t I trust you any more? Whose idea was it to do exactly what I told you not to?”
“Both of ours.” Robbie dropped his schoolbag on the stairs, only to feel that it was blocking his way as she and her bicycle were. “You won’t tell his mam I said about him, will you? You don’t have to. Please don’t, please.”
“Why, are you frightened how he’ll behave now you’ve watched those films?”
“Course not. That’s stupid. Why do you
want to stop people seeing them? They aren’t that scary, and they only make little kids be bad.”
“I wouldn’t grin about it. Is that really what you think? You’d better look at this.” Grabbing her rucksack, she extracted the crumpled pages and flapped one at him. “What do you call them?” she said.
She was brandishing the report about the girl who’d been tortured in Manchester. Robbie thought he was expected to say that her tormentors were monsters or just men until he saw what he’d overlooked: the people who’d listened to Chucky’s voice had been years older than he was now. He would have liked to have the Chucky mask to hide his face. All he could find to say was “Some of them were girls.”
“That shows how bad those films are. That’s why they have to be stopped, and now I can’t leave you on your own.”
“Why can’t you?”
“I almost wish we had your father back. Are you going to turn into something else for me to worry about? Aren’t you ever going to do anything to make me proud?”
Robbie ducked to his schoolbag so that she wouldn’t see his face. “My homework,” he muttered.
While he was no more eager to do it than usual, rewriting the history essay distracted him intermittently from his fears—that the English teacher would notice he’d copied from the Internet, that Duncan would discover Robbie had told on him, that they weren’t as immune to the films as they’d thought, because they weren’t old enough after all. His nerves kept jabbing the dull lump of his mind, and he was glad when his mother called him to dinner.
Perhaps she looked reproachful because she’d made turkey burgers, his favourite. Whenever their eyes met he thought it best to grin. The meal ended some time after he’d stopped enjoying it. As she returned the chutney to the refrigerator his mother said “Now look what you’ve made me do.”
She was craning inside, her neck between the doorframe and the edge of the door, as she held the refrigerator open with one hand. “What?” Robbie said.
“I forgot to buy orange and now there’s none for breakfast.”
As the legs of his chair and the linoleum collaborated on a squeal that a maniac’s victim might have been proud of, Robbie said “I’ll go.”
“Just hurry there and hurry back.”
He ran upstairs and made sure she heard him go into the bathroom, and then he dodged into his room. Now his footfalls felt as light as plastic. The money was the only secret in his room, not that it was much of one; less than half was change he’d kept the last time she’d sent him to the shops. Dust squeaked beneath his fingernails as he groped behind the wardrobe for the coins. He flushed the toilet and sprinted downstairs, to be met by his mother. “Remember what I said,” she told him.
As he hurried to the shop he felt as if his face was shaping itself so that the mask would fit. What would the mask allow him to do? He thought of peering in the windows at the televisions inside which Chucky might be hiding, and his grin expanded, only to sag when he reached the street that led down to the Strand. The shop with the masks in was dark.
The door didn’t budge, and nobody answered however hard Robbie clattered the letterbox. “What are you grinning at?” he demanded, but the mask didn’t seem to hear. It looked entertained by his plight, unless it was amused by its secret thoughts. Suppose he smashed the window and set Chucky free that way? He glanced about to make sure the street was deserted and in search of something he could use. Then, with a shock that turned his mouth so dry it felt raw with skunk, he realised what he was planning to do.
Had the mask put the idea into his mind? What else might Chucky have sneaked in? Robbie remembered wishing he could wear the mask so that he could deal with his mother, and all at once he saw her neck in the guillotine of the refrigerator. Lightning widened the empty eyes as if the mask had been enlivened by the memory. The flash was the explosion of a firework above the houses, and it sent Robbie away from the window, to the grocery around the corner.
Had the flash been an omen too? There were fireworks under the glass counter, and he used the carton of juice to point. “One of them as well.”
He thought the shopkeeper was about to refuse, but she must have been waiting for politeness. As she shook her head and laid the firework on the counter Robbie said “And some matches.”
She didn’t take the second chance to say no. Robbie paid and hurried back to the intersection. If there was anybody in the other street he wouldn’t be able to carry out his plan—but the street was deserted even by traffic. He wandered over to the shop as if he were bound somewhere else entirely, and then he lit the firework.
The stitched mask seemed to watch him askance as he inserted the long cardboard barrel through the letterbox and gave it a violent sideways shove. The firework landed inside the window. In a few seconds it spouted fire, and moments later several fireworks were ablaze. Even if Chucky never stayed burned in the films, mightn’t this destroy his face? The mask appeared to writhe in fear as detonations shook the window. The glass held, but the masks slithered down it to fall on top of the outbursts of flame. Gouts of fire spurted from Chucky’s eyes, which grew larger and blacker and emptier, and then the helpless upturned face began to split apart as if the stitches had torn open. When the pieces started curling up and bubbling like slugs, Robbie dashed home.
He felt both reckless and justified. His mother should be proud of him, but could he risk telling her? As he inserted the unnecessarily shaky key into the lock he was trying to decide how much he might hint. He’d eased the door shut when he heard a voice croaking somewhere in the house.
It was Chucky’s mate. Before Robbie could begin to deal with this, his mother darted like a killer out of the front room. “Where have you been this time? How long does it take to buy juice?”
He was distracted by the film she’d been watching—the Simpsons film. “There was a shop on fire,” he said.
“I suppose I can’t blame you for that.”
Robbie didn’t grin until he was heading for the kitchen, and managed to suppress the expression on his way back. Once he joined in watching the film he had no idea how to look. He tried only laughing if his mother did, but this was almost always when Marge Simpson spoke in that unnatural voice. He peered at the film as if it might show him what else he could do, and then his mobile clanged. As he brought up the message his mother leaned over to read it. chuckies burnd shop down, Duncan wanted him to know. “What does he mean?” Robbie’s mother demanded.
Robbie thought it wisest just to shrug, and she was rediscovering how to laugh with Marge when the ringtone interrupted. “Is that Duncan again?” Robbie’s mother said and silenced the television. “Put him on the loudspeaker.”
Robbie was unnerved by the sight of her dubbing Marge’s dialogue. Poking the loudspeaker key seemed to bring an audience into the room. “That shop those girls said about, it’s on fire,” Duncan shouted over the sounds of the crowd. “You want to come and see.”
“I saw.”
“Did you see Chucky? He’s gone now. Maybe he done it and went.”
“No he didn’t.” Since Robbie’s fervour apparently impressed his mother, he added “He’s just in his films.”
“Till someone lets him out.”
“I’ve got to go now,” Robbie said and cut the call off.
He still had to face his mother. “Was he trying to tell you he’d started the fire?” she said.
“It wasn’t him.”
“How do you know?”
“There was a Chucky mask he’d have wanted. It’s all burned up.”
Far too many seconds passed before her gaze relented. “Just please don’t ever watch any of those films again.”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t go anywhere near them.”
At once, having realised what else he could do, Robbie was afraid she meant to extract the promise. She picked up the remote control, however, and restored the doll’s voice. He kept hearing it and Chucky’s even once the film was over, but now he knew how to
stop them. When his mother started watching a programme about refuges for women he used it as an excuse to go to bed. “You get your sleep. You’ve plenty to do tomorrow,” she said.
She had no idea. He wasn’t sure himself. As he lay in bed he saw Chucky’s face bubble and blacken while it struggled to crawl out of the flames. It didn’t let him sleep much; he kept jerking awake like a puppet someone was testing. He was afraid his mother might interrogate him at breakfast, but perhaps she was used to his red eyes or too preoccupied to notice. He tried not to grin every time she looked at him, and eventually he was able to stay out of her sight by taking his homework into the front room.
For English he had to write about a film. He was tempted to discuss Chucky but didn’t know what he might say. He wrote about the Simpsons film, although the need to avoid mentioning the truth about Marge’s voice felt like wearing a mask. As he strove to keep his mind on the essay, the phone in the hall went off like an alarm.
Had someone seen him set fire to the shop? Would the police believe why he’d had to do it? He heard his mother take the receiver to the kitchen, but he couldn’t distinguish her words or even her tone. He wrote very few words while he listened for her footsteps in the hall. At last she came back and opened the door. “Midge wants us to picket the films tonight,” she said. “What am I going to do with you?”
He was searching for an answer when his mobile tried to crawl across the table. what you doeing tonit, Duncan wanted to know. Robbie couldn’t say, and he felt his skull grow thin as plastic as he waited for his mother to decide. Neither of them had spoken by the time Duncan rang. “Let me hear,” Robbie’s mother said.
As Robbie amplified the sound Duncan said “Where have you fucked off to now?”
“Doing my homework.”
“Hope it’s evil.” When Robbie didn’t respond Duncan said “My mam’s got me picketing Chucky tonight. Should be a laugh. Want to come?”
Holes for Faces Page 17