Holes for Faces

by Campbell, Ramsey

  Robbie’s mother shook her head as hard as she was gazing at him. “Can’t,” he said.

  “Why, what’ll you be doing?”

  “Homework,” Robbie said, the only safe answer he could think of. “I’ve got to do some of it again.”

  “All right,” his mother said as he ended the call, “I’m going to trust you. You don’t need to come with me tonight.”

  She was making sure he wouldn’t be with Duncan. Robbie felt as if he were in a film where whatever the plot required was bound to happen. Nothing else had to for the rest of the day, and he stayed in the front room when he wasn’t helping his mother shop. He wondered if he was grinning too often over dinner, but she left him to clear up. He waited to be certain she was well on her way to Midge’s, and then he left the house.

  He might have borrowed the bicycle if she hadn’t locked it. As he hurried to the bus stops, the smell from the grain silos hovered in the cold dark air like the stench of melted plastic. Burning claws reared up to sear black prints on the sky or on his eyes, and he heard the mound of Chucky’s grave collapse as the doll fumbled its way out, but that was scrap being dumped beside the river. A bus took him into Liverpool, where he alighted just short of the dockland multiplex.

  People were converging on it—students, older couples, solitary characters carrying Gorehound magazine with Chucky’s face on it. All of them were met outside the cinema by pickets waving placards—CHILDREN NOT CHUCKY, HORROR ISN’T HEALTHY, CARE FOR KIDS INSTEAD OF FILMS, SAVE OUR BABES FROM SADISM… Whichever Robbie’s mother might be wielding, he ran behind an apartment block without locating her.

  The luxury block was guarded by an electrified fence, the outside of which led him parallel to the river. He didn’t think anyone saw him sprint from the corner of the fence to the rear of the multiplex, where the plot he was enacting seemed to abandon him. All the back doors of the cinemas were locked, and the side doors were just as immovable. As he faltered in the recess of the exit closest to the pickets, they began to chant “Chuck Chucky out” and drum the staves of their placards on the concrete. Somebody was remonstrating with them, and when Robbie peeked around the corner he saw it was the manager, supported by quite a few of the cinema personnel. Among the pickets growing louder in response were Duncan and Robbie’s mother, but nobody appeared to see him dodge through the nearest front door into the multiplex.

  Nearly all the staff must be confronting the pickets, and the girls in the box office were dealing with a queue. There wasn’t even anyone to take tickets at the entrance to the screens. While the staff at the popcorn counter might have, they were serving customers. Robbie walked not too quickly or too surreptitiously past them into a corridor where posters indicated which door led to which film. He hadn’t found the poster he was looking for when he heard Chucky’s voice.

  It was beyond a door marked STAFF ONLY. Robbie glanced around to see that the corridor was deserted. He hauled the door open and slipped past as it began to close behind him. He felt as if he were not merely in a film but in a dream he’d had, unless he was having it now. He was where he would have hoped to be—in a projection room.

  The projectionist was elsewhere. Six projectors—half the number of screens—were casting images through dwarfish windows on the far side of the room. The mocking gleeful voice led Robbie to the second machine from the left. A window next to the one the projector was using showed him Chucky’s face swollen larger than any of the audience beneath it in the darkened auditorium. They were watching a documentary about the films, all five of which were stacked in cans beside the projector.

  Robbie lifted both fire extinguishers out of their cradles on the walls and laid them alongside the projector. A film magazine was lying on a table by the door, and he tore it up to pile the pages between the extinguishers. Prising the lid off the topmost can of film, he tipped out the contents, which unwound across the heap of paper. The chant of the pickets and the drumming of sticks urged him on. By the time he’d emptied all the cans his fingernails twinged from opening the lids, and his arms ached with his efforts. None of this mattered, because the extinguishers had prevented the tangle of celluloid from burying all the paper. Perhaps Chucky wanted to be caught—to be stopped. Robbie took out the matchbox and struck a match.

  The paper flamed at once, blazing up beneath the pile of film. In a moment the celluloid was on fire. Chucky was still ranting in the shaky darkness, but he wouldn’t be for long. Robbie would have liked to see the flames reach the film in the projector, except that the fire or the projectionist might trap him. As the room began to fill with a plastic stench he retreated into the corridor. He was loitering outside the toilets near an exit—he would look as if he were waiting for someone if anybody noticed him—when a man appeared at the far end of the corridor and made for the projection room.

  For just an instant Robbie wanted to warn him, and then he realised that the projectionist must have watched Chucky while checking all the films. Robbie observed him as he pulled the door open and uttered a syllable and lurched into the room. The door shut behind him, puffing out thick smoke, and then there was silence apart from the noise of the pickets. Robbie was at the side exit when a figure covered with flames and partly composed of them staggered into the corridor.

  Was it a doll? Bits of plastic were peeling away from it, unless they were pieces of film. It wasn’t making much noise; a clogged rising groan was the best it could do for a scream. Perhaps its face was melting. As it pranced away it looked more than ever like a puppet, growing smaller while its hands clutched at and flinched away from its blazing skull. It had almost reached the far end of the corridor when a woman and her children came out of a cinema to scream on its behalf. Robbie had to cover his grin with a hand as if he was overcome by their emotion; he might have been putting on a mask. As the family retreated screaming into the cinema and the puppet fell on any face it had left, he let himself out of the multiplex.

  The pickets were still chanting and thumping their sticks. He would have told them there was no longer any need, but however necessary his actions had been, suppose he was misunderstood? He sprinted behind another apartment block while fireworks in the sky celebrated his success. The top deck of a bus from the stop beyond the multiplex gave him a view of people streaming out of all the exits, and just a few signs sprouting from the crowd. A placard sank out of sight as he watched, and he thought it was acknowledging him.

  He had to shut a smell of melted plastic out of the house. He felt hollow, but in the best way—emptied of the need to intervene. He drowsed in bed until he heard his mother come home, and then he fell asleep. He didn’t dream or waken, even when a church started ringing its bells. Perhaps they were for Chucky’s funeral, but there must have been a phone as well, because Robbie opened his eyes at last to see his mother in the doorway of his room. “You had a long one,” she said. “My nan used to say you only sleep well if you’ve been good.”

  Could he tell her how good he’d been? As he tested the mechanism of his lips she said “You missed it all.”

  His lips parted, but she headed off whatever he might have said. “It’s a good job you weren’t there, though.”

  “Why?”

  “There was a fire at the cinema. The police think it was deliberate. They want to talk to us.”

  Would they understand? She ought to hear before they did, and Robbie was about to tell his secret when she said “One of the staff was in the fire. Midge just called to say he died. We’re all going over to hers for a while. I’ve left your breakfast.”

  So she hadn’t meant the police were after him. He should have seen how normal she wanted life to be. She looked sad for the projectionist, and perhaps he hadn’t deserved to be burned, but he’d had to be. All at once she looked sadder. “I forgot your juice again.”

  “I can get some.”

  “You’re a good boy really. Stay like that,” she said and hurried downstairs.

  As soon as the bicycle trundled out of the h
ouse Robbie headed for the bathroom. He still had work to do. Perhaps he could be sad about it, if you needed to be sad about people who’d turned into dolls. He didn’t look sad in the mirror; he could see no expression at all—his ordinary face was the only mask he needed. He was contemplating it when his phone struck up its slogan.

  There wouldn’t be peace yet, but there might be soon. “You should of been there last night,” Duncan told him.

  “What happened?”

  “My mam and yours nearly got in a fight with the cinema. And somebody started a fire and half of it’s burned down, and a feller was in it. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. I’ve got some stuff that’ll do your head in.”

  Watching so much Chucky had done that to Duncan, Robbie thought. “Where?” he said.

  “In the park. I found somewhere nobody’ll know we’re there. Are you coming now?”

  “I’ve got to go to the shop first.”

  “Being your mam’s good boy again, are you?”

  “You’ll see.” Robbie knew Duncan was grinning, and imagined how they both would when they met. His grin wouldn’t be the same as Duncan’s; it was a mask, because he was the opposite of Chucky. “I won’t be long,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

  With the Angels

  As Cynthia drove between the massive mossy posts where the gates used to be, Karen said “Were you little when you lived here, Auntie Jackie?”

  “Not as little as I was,” Cynthia said.

  “That’s right,” Jacqueline said while the poplars alongside the high walls darkened the car, “I’m even older than your grandmother.”

  Karen and Valerie giggled and then looked for other amusement. “What’s this house called, Brian?” Valerie enquired.

  “The Populars,” the four-year-old declared and set about punching his sisters almost before they began to laugh.

  “Now, you three,” Cynthia intervened. “You said you’d show Jackie how good you can be.”

  No doubt she meant her sister to feel more included. “Can’t we play?” said Brian as if Jacqueline were a disapproving bystander.

  “I expect you may,” Jacqueline said, having glanced at Cynthia. “Just don’t get yourselves dirty or do any damage or go anywhere you shouldn’t or that’s dangerous.”

  Brian and the eight-year-old twins barely waited for Cynthia to haul two-handed at the brake before they piled out of the Volvo and chased across the forecourt into the weedy garden. “Do try and let them be children,” Cynthia murmured.

  “I wasn’t aware I could change them.” Jacqueline managed not to groan while she unbent her stiff limbs and clambered out of the car. “I shouldn’t think they would take much notice of me,” she said, supporting herself on the hot roof as she turned to the house.

  Despite the August sunlight, it seemed darker than its neighbours, not just because of the shadows of the trees, which still put her in mind of a graveyard. More than a century’s worth of winds across the moors outside the Yorkshire town had plastered the large house with grime. The windows on the topmost floor were half the size of those on the other two storeys, one reason why she’d striven in her childhood not to think they resembled the eyes of a spider, any more than the porch between the downstairs rooms looked like a voracious vertical mouth. She was far from a child now, and she strode or at any rate limped to the porch, only to have to wait for her sister to bring the keys. As Cynthia thrust one into the first rusty lock the twins scampered over, pursued by their brother. “Throw me up again,” he cried.

  “Where did he get that from?”

  “From being a child, I should think,” Cynthia said. “Don’t you remember what it was like?”

  Jacqueline did, not least because of Brian’s demand. She found some breath as she watched the girls take their brother by the arms and swing him into the air. “Again,” he cried.

  “We’re tired now,” Karen told him. “We want to see in the house.”

  “Maybe grandma and auntie will give you a throw if you’re good,” Valerie said.

  “Not just now,” Jacqueline said at once.

  Cynthia raised her eyebrows high enough to turn her eyes blank as she twisted the second key. The door lumbered inwards a few inches and then baulked. She was trying to nudge the obstruction aside with the door when Brian made for the gap. “Don’t,” Jacqueline blurted, catching him by the shoulder.

  “Good heavens, Jackie, what’s the matter now?”

  “We don’t want the children in there until we know what state it’s in, do we?”

  “Just see if you can squeeze past and shift whatever’s there, Brian.”

  Jacqueline felt unworthy of consideration. She could only watch the boy wriggle around the edge of the door and vanish into the gloom. She heard fumbling and rustling, but of course this didn’t mean some desiccated presence was at large in the vestibule. Why didn’t Brian speak? She was about to prompt him until he called “It’s just some old letters and papers.”

  When he reappeared with several free newspapers that looked as dusty as their news, Cynthia eased the door past him. A handful of brown envelopes contained electricity bills that grew redder as they came up to date, which made Jacqueline wonder “Won’t the lights work?”

  “I expect so if we really need them.” Cynthia advanced into the wide hall beyond the vestibule and poked at the nearest switch. Grit ground inside the mechanism, but the bulbs in the hall chandelier stayed as dull as the mass of crystal teardrops. “Never mind,” Cynthia said, having tested every switch in the column on the wall without result. “As I say, we won’t need them.”

  The grimy skylight above the stairwell illuminated the hall enough to show that the dark wallpaper was even hairier than Jacqueline remembered. It had always made her think of the fur of a great spider, and now it was blotchy with damp. The children were already running up the left-hand staircase and across the first-floor landing, under which the chandelier dangled like a spider on a thread. “Don’t go out of sight,” Cynthia told them, “until we see what’s what.”

  “Chase me.” Brian ran down the other stairs, one of which rattled like a lid beneath the heavy carpet. “Chase,” he cried and dashed across the hall to race upstairs again.

  “Don’t keep running up and down unless you want to make me ill,” Jacqueline’s grandmother would have said. The incessant rumble of footsteps might have presaged a storm on the way to turning the hall even gloomier, so that Jacqueline strode as steadily as she could towards the nearest room. She had to pass one of the hall mirrors, which appeared to show a dark blotch hovering in wait for the children. The shapeless sagging darkness at the top of the grimy oval was a stain, and she needn’t have waited to see the children run downstairs out of its reach. “Do you want the mirror?” Cynthia said. “I expect it would clean up.”

  “I don’t know what I want from this house,” Jacqueline said.

  She mustn’t say she would prefer the children not to be in it. She couldn’t even suggest sending them outside in case the garden concealed dangers—broken glass, rusty metal, holes in the ground. The children were staying with Cynthia while her son and his partner holidayed in Morocco, but couldn’t she have chosen a better time to go through the house before it was put up for sale? She frowned at Jacqueline and then followed her into the dining-room.

  Although the heavy curtains were tied back from the large windows, the room wasn’t much brighter than the hall. It was steeped in the shadows of the poplars, and the tall panes were spotted with earth. A spider’s nest of a chandelier loomed above the long table set for an elaborate dinner for six. That had been Cynthia’s idea when they’d moved their parents to the rest home; she’d meant to convince any thieves that the house was still occupied, but to Jacqueline it felt like preserving a past that she’d hoped to outgrow. She remembered being made to sit up stiffly at the table, to hold her utensils just so, to cover her lap nicely with her napkin, not to speak or to make the slightest noise with any of her food. Too much of t
his upbringing had lodged inside her, but was that why she felt uneasy with the children in the house? “Are you taking anything out of here?” Cynthia said.

  “There’s nothing here for me, Cynthia. You have whatever you want and don’t worry about me.”

  Cynthia gazed at her as they headed for the breakfast room. The chandelier stirred as the children ran above it once again, but Jacqueline told herself that was nothing like her nightmares—at least, not very like. She was unnerved to hear Cynthia exclaim “There it is.”

  The breakfast room was borrowing light from the large back garden, but not much, since the overgrown expanse lay in the shadow of the house. The weighty table had spread its wings and was attended by six straight-backed ponderous chairs, but Cynthia was holding out her hands to the high chair in the darkest corner of the room. “Do you remember sitting in that?” she apparently hoped. “I think I do.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Jacqueline said.

  She hadn’t needed it to make her feel restricted at the table, where breakfast with her grandparents had been as formal as dinner. “Nothing here either,” she declared and limped into the hall.

  The mirror on the far side was discoloured too. She glimpsed the children’s blurred shapes streaming up into a pendulous darkness and heard the agitated jangle of the chandelier as she made for the lounge. The leather suite looked immovable with age, and only the television went some way towards bringing the room up to date, though the screen was as blank as an uninscribed stone. She remembered having to sit silent for hours while her parents and grandparents listened to the radio for news about the war—her grandmother hadn’t liked children out of her sight in the house. The dresser was still full of china she’d been forbidden to venture near, which was grey with dust and the dimness. Cynthia had been allowed to crawl around the room—indulged for being younger or because their grandmother liked babies in the house. “I’ll leave you to it,” she said as Cynthia followed her in.

  She was hoping to find more light in the kitchen, but it didn’t show her much that she wanted to see. While the refrigerator was relatively modern, not to mention tall enough for somebody to stand in, it felt out of place. The black iron range still occupied most of one wall, and the old stained marble sink projected from another. Massive cabinets and heavy chests of drawers helped box in the hulking table scored by knives. It used to remind her of an operating table, even though she hadn’t known she would grow up to be a nurse. She was distracted by the children as they ran into the kitchen. “Can we have a drink?” Karen said for all of them.