Psychos

by Neil Gaiman

  ‘And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed,’ the poem continues in her head. They are sisters after all, and sisters like each other. They are alike and they like each other. Like and alike. Topaz says those words in her head.

  Down down the stairs and far to the end of the hall. Then more stairs. Most times no one goes down there. Topaz isn’t feeling like and alike any more, now that they are closer. Topaz doesn’t like the basement. There were mice in there, she knew. When she went in there—in the daytime only would she go—she might see one scurry away. That wasn’t so bad. They looked sort of like a distant cousin of Cocoa Puff, but she was scared of the mice for some reason even though she wasn’t scared of Cocoa Puff. But worse, sometimes she had seen a little mouse dead in one of the traps Dad set out with peanut butter for bait. Ruby always threatened this—one day, she would set Cocoa Puff loose in the basement, and he would go straight to the peanut butter and SNAP.

  She follows down and down, in the dark, her eyes adjust but still only seeing the shapes of things. The kitchen. The steps. Then the basement. Now that they are far enough away from the rooms where everyone is sleeping, Ruby turns on a flashlight. She puts the light underneath her chin, like the way she likes to tell ghost stories. “Don’t get too close,” she says. Then Ruby opens the basement door very slowly.

  Topaz can barely let herself think it, but she thinks Ruby might have been lying. Ruby likes to scare people and Topaz expects—somewhere where she couldn’t say it, but somewhere—that maybe it is nothing. Just a joke. Ruby is going to scare her or punish her…but now the door creeps open and Topaz can see inside her heart that she hopes Ruby is lying. She prays in her head that Ruby is lying.

  The basement is pitch black inside.

  Topaz grabs the folds of Ruby’s nightgown, holding the fabric close. The light shines revealing cans of jellies, canned beets, pickles, a huge tub of grain, and then next to it, on the ground, a figure is tied up—silver tape on his mouth—blood on his face and an open blue eye that stares right into the light.

  Topaz screams. Then her head goes quick into the wall with Ruby’s fist and a hand covers her mouth.

  “Shut up right now or I’ll feed you to him,” Ruby hisses.

  Topaz tastes the dirt on Ruby’s hand. She tastes the salt and sweat—it wasn’t sweet—it tastes bad, Ruby’s hand—and it is over and in her mouth, and Topaz knows she can bite that hand but she would never bite—never dare—and the monster with the one blue eye—the light isn’t shining on him anymore and he is just there in the dark.

  “Get out of here, you little baby,” Ruby says after taking her hand away. Topaz doesn’t care about the sound. She runs away as fast as she can—up the stairs through the dark—through the kitchen in the dark up the stairs to her room—the one they share, in the dark, and she hides under the covers.

  ‘I have a little shadow,’ she thinks to try and stop it, but not the poem now, now, not the shadow. Now the shadow scares her, too. ‘I see it jump before me as I jump into my bed.’ Not in the bed. They will find her in the bed. Under the bed. They wouldn’t look there.

  She hides under the bed, her eyes focus on the door and she waits. Waiting for Ruby to come back. She breathes and counts her breaths. Cocoa Puff is running on his wheel, he doesn’t know. Doesn’t know about the basement and the snap! of the trap.

  Topaz listens to the sounds as he runs and runs. Any second Ruby will come back and snatch him, take poor Cocoa Puff and feed him to the trap or worse. Feed him to the beast. The one blue eye. But Ruby doesn’t come back. And Topaz shuts her eyes beneath the bed and falls asleep.

  It is Sunday, and Ruby looks happy to be at Church, for once. She gives Topaz a strange smile. Something bad would happen for sure. Lavender and Lily look nervous, too. Something bad is about to happen, or has already happened, when Ruby is in a good mood like that. Mom keeps holding Topaz tight to her, and Topaz buries herself in her mother’s arms, in her neck and chest. She breathes in the smell of her mother. She tries to climb on her mom’s lap during Sacrament meeting, something she hasn’t done for a long time now, and Mom lets her for a few minutes then put her back down beside her.

  “You’re too big, baby,” Mom whispers in her ear.

  Ruby isn’t looking at her. Ruby is watching Bishop Farnington speak as if she is interested in what he is saying. But none of the girls are fooled. Ruby doesn’t believe anything the Church says. Ruby doesn’t believe in the Church, or the Prophet, or in angels, or even in God. She has told all of her sisters so, laughing at their shocked expressions. She has told them they are all fools and blind to believe and they will find out for themselves, soon enough. So her expression now, her interest in every word that the Bishop says, means that something very bad has happened. Something very, very bad.

  After Church is over, they all walk back to the car, and Ruby grabs Topaz’s hand and pulls her from the hand of her mother. Mom watches and smiles as Ruby pulls Topaz into a hug and Mom moves to put things in the car. Just Ruby and Topaz for a moment.

  “Did you notice,” Ruby whispers into her ear, “that Brother Johnson wasn’t there?”

  Topaz scarcely knows who Brother Johnson is, and she isn’t sure whether the correct response is a yes or no, so she says nothing.

  “Do you know why he isn’t there?” Ruby asks. Topaz shakes her head. “Because, silly. He’s in the basement!”

  It is Quiet Time, the time after Church, when they’re all supposed to reflect, pray, read scriptures. More often than not, it is when Daddy would nap and they might sneak off to watch TV.

  Lavender and Lily are in the room next door, giggling to themselves about some boys they liked. “He likes you”—”No, he likes you!” Back and forth like a song.

  Ruby is putting curlers into her hair.

  Topaz clutches her favorite doll and pretends to read her illustrated Bible stories. She tries to ignore Ruby, who sometimes talked like this—long speeches to herself, only indirectly involving Topaz and mostly not wanting a response at all.

  “I played with him all night. Teasing him. It was kind of fun, but not really fun, if you know what I mean. Nevermind. Of course, you don’t. Such a little baby. Baby, baby, baby. He likes that. He likes babies who don’t know better. Babies he can overpower. He’s a coward and a weakling, really. He doesn’t like big girls like me. He likes little girls like you. Or boys who don’t know. He likes to trick them. But I tricked him. That’s how I got him. And I tricked him all night long. I would pretend I might let him go. Or I would pretend I might call the cops. Or I would pretend I might kiss him. And then I would hurt him. And he’s too scared to scream. He can’t scream because if they find him, then they’ll know.”

  Then it is silent. Topaz looks up to see Ruby looking at herself in the mirror, a strange smile on her face that makes Topaz want to scream. She isn’t sure who she is more scared of: Ruby, with that smile, or that thing in the basement. What if it gets out?

  “How long will he be in the basement?” Topaz asks, her voice a whisper. Ruby shrugs. “Not sure. I can’t keep him there forever, of course. I guess I will have to finish with him tomorrow, or the next day, and then ask Dale to help me get rid of him.”

  “Get rid of him?” “We will have to do something with the body. I got some ideas.” “You’re going to…” Topaz isn’t sure what word she is looking for. She isn’t sure what Ruby means exactly. She can’t mean that.…“You’re going to kill him?”

  Ruby starts to laugh. “Yes, silly. Of course.” “But—” “What?” “But—” “What?”

  Topaz can’t think. She doesn’t know how to say what she needs to say. “Shouldn’t you tell Mom and Dad?” This is what she finally arrives at.

  Ruby really laughs now. Like Topaz has never heard her laugh. Like maybe she said something genuinely funny. Topaz starts to smile a little, too, because if she has said something funny, she wants to seem like she did it on purpose.

  “No, silly. No telling Mom and Dad, and
I don’t have to tell you, of course, that you can’t tell anyone or Cocoa Puff is straight to the mice, you know. Or worse. I’ll feed you to him.”

  “The man who wasn’t at Church? Who is he?” “Brother Johnson. You know, the one who is always smiling at you.”

  Topaz thought hard. Who was always smiling at her? She doesn’t remember anyone always smiling at her. Wouldn’t she remember that? He must really like her.

  “You’re going to kill him?” she asks. “He deserves it! Baby, you don’t know what terrible, terrible things he did to those poor kids. You don’t know how many more kids he would do it to if I hadn’t got him. Trapped him. And now I’m going to kill him so he can’t hurt another poor baby like you ever again. Don’t look like that. It’s a good thing. I’m actually doing something good and right here, Topaz. Honestly. It’s a good thing.”

  Topaz thinks about “good” and “right.”

  Good and Right.

  How can Ruby be trusted with good and right? Wasn’t that something for the authorities to know? If not her parents? Topaz wants to do what’s good and right, too.

  “Shouldn’t you give him to the police?”

  Ruby sighs. “You don’t understand things. You’re just a kid. Anyway, I’m gonna take care of it because otherwise it won’t get taken care of. Trust me, I know. The people in this town, they don’t listen. They don’t see. They don’t care until it’s too late. So, you know sometimes as Dad says, if you want something done right you have to do it yourself.”

  Topaz stares at her sister.

  Ruby stretches and yawns. “I’m tired,” she says. “Like I said, I didn’t sleep at all last night.”

  Topaz stares.

  “So get out of here,” Ruby says. “I don’t want you, like, all watching me as I sleep. Go watch some TV or something, creep. Get out of here.”

  Topaz sits in the living room all alone, the cartoons on with the volume down low. Just through the kitchen, down the stairs, down the hall, down the stairs…he is there. She doesn’t remember who he is, but “always smiling at you” keeps going around and around like a bit of a poem, and in her mind she can see a face like Santa Claus, a blue eye twinkling at her, and then that blue eye in the basement, when the light hit it. Almost like Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, when the evil witch calls her into the castle, hypnotized, that’s how Topaz feels.

  “I’m hypnotized,” part of her mind says, as the other plays, “always smiling at you always smiling at you.” She sees in her mind that blue twinkling Santa Claus eye with that bloody blue eye of the Beast as the light hits it.

  And she is at the basement door.

  It is Sunday. It is daylight. She isn’t scared of things in the day. Except Ruby. But Ruby is asleep now and Ruby sleeps deep and Ruby snores, and sometimes it seems impossible to wake her, especially in the day. Topaz knows Ruby is deep asleep, just like she is hypnotized by the always-smiling-at-you bloody Santa Claus eye.

  She opens the door. It makes a little creak.

  The basement is dark, still, even in the day, but she can see him from here. He has his pants down now, his long white underwear showing, and bloody. Arms and legs tied behind him. He is sleeping, too, the creak from the door not enough to wake him. Bloody and all his clothes ripped.

  Brother Johnson.

  He still doesn’t look familiar, but it is strange to see a man with his clothes all ripped, tied up in a weird way, eyes closed. There is no tape on his mouth anymore. His mouth is open, wheezing with breath. His face around his mouth raw and red.

  It smells in there, now, like poop and pee and like Ruby, too. That weird Ruby smell she sometimes has when she comes home late at night.

  Topaz gets closer now, and closer. Very close, so she can see his face.

  He has two huge bruises around his eyes, all purple and yellow and black, and his head is bloody.

  No, he doesn’t look like anyone, not anyone she knows. Not Brother Johnson “always smiling at you.”

  “Brother Johnson?” she whispers, scared, like when they say Bloody Mary in the mirror.

  He doesn’t wake up. Was Ruby lying? Ruby lies all the time, she reminds herself. Sometimes big lies, sometimes small lies. Is this Brother Johnson? Was there a Brother Johnson at all?

  There is a broom in the corner of the basement. She gets the broom and then softly, softly—she doesn’t want to hurt him—pokes his belly; which is white and poochy and covered in light brown hair.

  His eyes open. Well, one does while the other tries to open, but it is crusted shut. That poor blue eye. She doesn’t know how she could have been scared of that poor blue eye. It looks so sad now, like it might cry at her, standing there with the broom. Does she recognize that twinkle of an eye? Did that eye ever twinkle at her?

  He is wriggling the best he can, making grunting “Help me” noises from his mouth. Then he stops and stares.

  Poor Blue Eye. “Hello, Topaz,” he says. His voice is soft and sweet, like a kind of song. “Hello. Brother Johnson?” “Yes. You have it right, little Topaz. Hi there. Hi.” He makes it sound like it is nothing at all, him here like this. Like they might have been merely walking down the street or something. So this is Brother Johnson, a man she doesn’t remember but is always smiling at her.

  So, then Ruby wasn’t lying. It is him. And this man is a murderer. The kind who makes her mom cry. She stays where she is with the broom. This man is a monster then, who would eat her. She mustn’t be stupid. She must be smart. She can scream any second now. And she knows how to scream loud.

  “Don’t be scared,” he says. “I know I look scary, but don’t be scared of me.” He tries to smile with a broken mouth and Topaz doesn’t yelp. She is scared, but she is brave.

  “Little Topaz,” he says from his cracking mouth. “I need you to help me. It’s very important. It’s life or death, you have to help me.”

  Topaz shakes her head. “No?” he says.

  Topaz shakes her head again. “No,” he says. He coughs, blood coming out of his mouth. “No,” he says again. Then: “And why, might I ask, would you—a little girl who I know is a very sweet and a good little girl—not help someone who is truly in danger?”

  Topaz likes this. There is something fun in this. He says it like a sing-song, like a game. And she is the one with all the pieces. She is the one who will say who wins.

  “Because,” she says, with her best serious face that she knows makes the adults coo, “you are a bad man. Because you kill children.” She is right.

  But then after she says it, she isn’t so sure. He did something with his face. It was strange because his face is bloody, his face is all scary looking anyway, but he did something with his face when she said that, something that looked like “no no no no” like a scream, but he didn’t make any sound at all. Just his face moved like that. She isn’t so sure she should have said that. It hurt him.

  “Have you ever heard the story, Topaz, about the Liars and the Truth-tellers?” He has a very nice voice, a voice people like to hear talk for long times. Topaz remembers his voice now. The stories. He sometimes stopped in on Sunday School and told Bible stories so you could almost see them like they were movies. He had a nice voice, and he liked jokes and riddles. Now she remembers. “Always smiling at you.” Yes. Always smiling. She liked his stories.

  Topaz shakes her head. She hasn’t heard this story.

  Brother Johnson tells her: “A man is on his way to an important meeting in Happyland, where he has never been before. It is very exciting that he has been asked to this meeting. But he is also a bit…apprehensive. That means scared. He is a little scared, Topaz, because he knows from very reliable sources that the way to Happyland is treacherous—and that means dangerous. He knows that there are two towns along the way, in opposite directions. One town is a town called Liarsville. And one is a town is called Truthstown. Now, in Liarsville, which leads to a dark boggy pit, the people can only tell lies. They cannot say anything but lies. The other way—which leads straight
to Happyland, is Truthville and there, people only can tell the truth.

  “The man comes to a fork in the road and must go in one. He sees a traveler coming from each direction—one must be coming from Liarsville, the other from Truthstown. He stops one and says, ‘Please—tell me, which is the way to Happy-land?’ ‘This way,’ she says pointing from where she came from. ‘Oh, don’t listen to her!’ says the traveler from the other direction. ‘She’s from Liarsville and can only tell lies! This is the way to Happyland—this way!’”

  Brother Johnson stops for a moment with the story, so Topaz can think about the puzzle placed before her. Topaz is worried. Which is the way? Who of the travelers is telling the truth? He coughs again.

  “So, how do you know, Topaz, how do you know which way is the way you can go? Who can you trust?”

  Topaz answers honestly. “I don’t know,” she says.

  He starts coughing more. A bad cough. It looks like it hurts him.

  She doesn’t say “Are you okay?” though. She knows she has to wait.

  She sits down on the cold basement floor. It is cold against her. He must be cold. He is a bad man, Ruby says. A very bad man. But right now he doesn’t seem bad. Right now, she feels very bad for him.

  “There’s a trick to it,” he says, after he finishes coughing, his voice sounding like it hurts him, but finding the sing-song again. “Ask the traveler who just spoke to you, ‘wait, did you just say this was the way to Happyland?’ if they are the Truth-teller, they will say ‘yes!’ and you will know it is truth. If they say ‘No! I didn’t say that!’ or any denial, you know that they are the liar. Does that make sense?”

  Topaz nods, but she says, “I don’t know.”

  Topaz likes it now, saying she doesn’t know. It makes her feel wise in some way. And as she says it, Brother Johnson, or the beast which ever he was, looks a little more scared, a little more pained. She had never seen anyone scared of her, least of all a full-grown man. She’d been scared plenty. Is this what she looked like? Is this how Ruby felt?