“ALEX!” she screamed, holding her hands against her chest and gasping for breath.
“It’s for your own good. It’s for everyone’s good,” he said. He looked hypnotized and not fully conscious of what he had done. “Now you try to get some sleep,” he said as he started to back away. “Try to get some sleep.”
She said nothing. He opened the door and then smiled as though nothing in the world was wrong. There was something insanely innocent about his look. He seemed more impish than evil. He was about to pull some childish prank. He closed the door softly behind him. Then she heard the skeleton key being placed in the old door lock.
“ALEX!” she screamed, but it was too late. The key was turned and the lock snapped into place. “Oh God, Alex.” She brought her hands to her face. Then she got out of bed and went to the window in time to see them, Alex and his children, moving off the porch and into the night to go to that evil room, where she was sure they would plan some new, terrible act. Only this time, maybe she would be the victim.
“Sharon is not herself anymore,” Alex said as the children and he walked toward the old plank door. “I have always feared it would happen, and now it has. Do you understand?”
“I do,” Elizabeth said quickly. “I felt it when I was in there before. I saw the way she was looking at me. I had to tell her she should say thank you for what I did for her. She can’t even think of the simple, nice things.”
“I didn’t like the way she was looking at me,” Carl said. “She looked at me the way my mother, my real mother, used to look at me.”
They paused at the door, and Alex looked back in the direction from which they had come. The children looked, too.
“It wasn’t Sharon who was in here violating Pa’s sanctuary,” he said, still looking into the night. “It was the evil working through her. We mustn’t think of that person up in my bedroom as Sharon anymore.”
“I won’t,” Richard said.
“Me neither,” little Donald said. Alex opened the door. He lit the lamp so they could see their way in and then he closed the door behind them.
Richard went right to the shelf and got the candle. He lit it quickly and placed it in its place. The children took their positions and waited for Alex. He remained back longer than usual, but no one spoke and no one moved. Finally, Alex put out the lamp light and joined them.
“She couldn’t stay here long,” he said. “She was driven from this place.” He took his seat. The children watched him and waited. They were puzzled because he seemed to be smiling. When he began to speak again, his voice was different. It was softer, younger. They were confused by the warmth.
“The first time I brought Sharon to the Manor,” he began, “I took her rowing. It was a beautiful day. There were soft, billowy clouds in the sky, but a good deal of sunlight and blue sky, too. It wasn’t summer yet, but it was warm. My mother had made us a big lunch, so we were kind of lazy, sitting around on the lawn chairs, talking softly, listening to the birds. There were so many birds then. There haven’t been that many birds here for a long time. Maybe they’ll come back now.
“Anyway, we went rowing, and after a while I stopped the oars and we just floated on the lake. It was very pleasant; the water was gentle, and after a while, Sharon fell asleep. She closed her eyes and sat back against the pillow and slept. I didn’t move. I didn’t want to spoil the moment. Her face was so soft, so childlike. That was when I first fell in love with her and with what she could be. I thought I was lucky to find someone so delicate. Good things, things of real beauty are delicate, you know. It makes them more precious.
“I was still staring at her when she finally woke up. I remember the expression on her face. She was filled with such pleasure. We didn’t even have to reach out and touch each other. Our souls had already embraced. I rowed back to the dock and we returned to the house. Pa was sitting on the porch and writing and he looked up at us as we approached. He saw the look in our eyes and he understood immediately.
“‘You must always protect her,’ he said, ‘because once you have something good, they will want to destroy it.’”
Alex lowered his head. Elizabeth was the first to reach up to him. She took his hand into hers and waited. Then Richard took his other hand. Carl and little Donald drew closer. No one spoke. After a while, Alex looked up again, only this time he acted as though he were listening to other voices, voices only he could hear.
“Yes,” he said, “I understand.” He looked at the children. “Put out the candle, Carl,” he said. “We must sit in the total darkness and we must be unafraid.”
“I’m not afraid,” Richard said quickly.
“Me neither,” little Donald said, but he pulled himself closer to Elizabeth.
Carl looked at everyone for a moment and then he leaned over and blew out the candle.
Darkness dropped over them in a thundering silence. And they waited.
Even though she fought it as hard as she could, Sharon felt herself going into a panic. The phone was dead; the door was locked, and she was too high up to jump out of the window. Yet she knew she had to get out; she had to do something. Besides fighting back the panic, she had to suppress the effect the pill Alex had forced her to take was having on her. The worst thing she could do was go back into that bed and fall asleep. Asleep, she’d be helpless; she’d be vulnerable.
Think, think, think, she told herself. She went into the bathroom and looked at everything, hoping to come up with some solution. Her perusal of the contents ended when she set eyes on the scissors. It gave her an idea. She took them from the shelf above the sink and went out to the bedroom door. There she knelt to the level of the lock and inserted the blade of the scissors between the jamb and the door until she found the lock itself. As she worked the scissors in and against the tooth of the lock, she pulled the door handle. After what seemed to be an hour’s struggle, she jiggled the lock back enough to release its grip and the door swung open. She fell back to the floor from the momentum, but she was cheered by the sight of her freedom.
Outside on the landing of the stairway, she experienced vertigo, but she took hold of the banister and steadied herself. She didn’t even consider the fact that she was still in her nightgown and barefooted. All she wanted to do was get away, but when she reached the front and went out the door, she paused and thought, get away to where? To what? And what about them and what they’ve done and what Alex has finally become?
She was tormented by her sense of frustration. There was no one she could turn to who would believe her, and even if there was someone, Alex would be successful in turning it around. The children were too clever. Their hold on Alex and now on her was too tight. She had succeeded in escaping from her room, but she was no match for Alex and his children out there.
She turned and looked back into the house. She resented the fact that her home had been made detestable to her. The children had claimed most of the upstairs as their own. She was always uncomfortable when she was in the living room alone with them, and Elizabeth had more than encroached on her in the kitchen. She was well on her way toward getting Alex to change it. No wonder I made my bedroom into my sanctuary, Sharon thought, and now they tried to make it into my prison, or worse yet, my place of dying.
She stepped off the porch and looked through the darkness into the direction of the secret room. She was sure they were still in there, gathered around each other, listening to some mumbo-jumbo Alex had read in his father’s old books. They would emerge with death in their eyes, children only in body and chronological age. In reality they were as old as Cain and filled with the same spirit of evil.
She started across the lawn, walking slowly toward the shed. How ironic it is, she thought, that in the end I’ve come to believe what Alex’s father believed—that evil exists in the world in the form of a conscious, living thing. He was right: it is around us, and it must be destroyed when that destruction is possible.
She did not know from what well she now drew her strength.
Fatigue flowed through her body with the blood in her veins. She imagined it to be a thick, heavy white liquid weighing down her arms and her legs, reaching around her rib cage with fingers of steel. Yet she went on, driven by hate and anger, by sadness and by fear.
She thought she was hallucinating. It was the only way to explain what she saw. Alex’s father beckoned her forward. He encouraged her and showed her the way. As she walked, she thought she could even hear the rasping sound of his voice. It echoed and was caught high up in the trees; the wind had seized it and now took it out over the lake like so much smoke. In the distance the lake shimmered. Spirits of the dead danced on the surface of the water. She walked on.
When she reached the shed, she looked back into the darkness. All was still. Alex and his terrible children were still in the dark room holding their conversation with the Devil. It would go on forever and forever unless she stopped it. She could stop it; she had to stop it. The solution came to her when she envisioned Alex’s father coming over the hill, his hair inflamed by the red afternoon sun.
She found the kerosene lamp on the shelf and the box of matches beside it. She lit the lamp and moved the illumination around the shed until she found the five gallon can of gas. It was a little more than half full, which was quite enough for what she had to do. She turned out the lamp, picked up the can, and seized the box of matches. Then she left the shed and walked as quickly as she could toward the old plank door.
The old man was out there leading the way. Every once in a while, he stopped to turn around to see if she was still following. Even though it was so dark, she could see his face clearly. His eyes were filled with sadness, but he continued to encourage her.
“You and I never spoke very much,” she said, “and when we did speak, it always felt like I was talking over a waterfall. The truth was I was afraid of you, afraid that you really had seen the terrible things you described and you had captured them forever in your own eyes. I thought I would see them if I looked at you too long. You hosted my nightmares, narrated a string of bizarre events, opened the doors that kept my deepest fears caged and made my sleep restless and burdensome.
“When you died I felt as though some great weight had been lifted from the relationship between Alex and me. I hoped you would be relegated to the pages of family albums and occasional memories, but you lived on through Alex. You’ve always been in this house and in this darkness.”
He didn’t respond. He walked on, leading her, urging her. She felt the intensity and sensed the need not to hesitate one moment. There was danger in pausing. Pausing led to thinking, and thinking gave evil the opportunity to rationalize and equivocate. She would be awakened and made to realize what she was about to do. All would be lost if that door opened and Alex and his children emerged.
When she reached the door, the spirit of Alex’s father seemed to be absorbed into the building. She was alone, but the momentum had been enough to bring her all the way. She opened the can of gas, and, as quietly as she could, she poured it over the old wooden door, over the jamb and the walls, soaking the old wood as thoroughly as she could. When the can was emptied, she put it down gently and took the box of matches to the door with her. It required only one. The moment the tiny flame touched the soaked wood, it ran up the door and over the walls, turning everything into a conflagration. The heavy flames sucked in the air around them, exploding in the corners and cracks of the aged building. After a moment it was more like she had released the fire that had been trapped within all these years. Parts of the building that didn’t seem touched burst out in flames.
She backed away from the great heat. The sight and the realization of what she had done put her into a panic. It had all happened too quickly; there wasn’t any opportunity to rescind the decision. She put her hand out as though to stop it all magically and turn time back. She thought she heard some shouting, but she couldn’t be sure. The wood was cracking, sections were falling in and away, the rafters were exploding, flames shot through the roof in small pops as the shingles melted and fell downward into the heart of the fire.
She turned from the scene and put her hands on her face. It felt ignited, too. She couldn’t look back. Instead, she started to walk away quickly. Then she broke out into a run and ran to the front of the Manor. She went up the porch steps as quickly as she could. All the sedation and all the effort had weakened her. For a moment she lost a sense of where she was and what she was doing. She felt as though she had gotten up from her bed and walked in her sleep.
It took great effort to go up the stairway once she got back inside. Twice she had to pause to catch her breath and hold the railing to prevent herself from losing equilibrium. Finally, she reached the landing and made her way back to her bedroom. She practically collapsed in the bed when she reached it.
“What have I done?” she muttered. “My God, what have I done?” She closed her eyes, promising herself she would take just a short rest and then try to do something.
In the darkness Alex and the children had heard her splash the old wooden door with the gasoline, but they didn’t know it was gasoline until she lit it. From their perspective within the room, the flames looked even more terrifying. They looked like fantastic creatures coming through the walls. The room exploded with the lightning of the fire. The children screamed, and Alex got himself and them up quickly.
“Back,” he commanded, “stay back.” He went as far forward as he could, knowing there was no other way out. The door was entirely engulfed in fire, and the fire reached out in all directions, quickly running along the rafters and down the sides of the walls.
He went back and grabbed his chair; then like a lion tamer, he went forward, pushing the chair legs at the burning wood. The smoke was getting thicker. He knew that in moments it would be impossible to breathe, and his children…all of his children would die.
“RICHARD!” he shouted. “GET BEHIND ME! GET EVERYONE BEHIND ME.” The children lined up in their usual order. The fire had just about surrounded them. Alex drove the chair at the door of flames, shoving the blazing wood out and away until there was an opening in the wall of flames. “QUICKLY!” he screamed. “DON’T BE AFRAID. RUN OUT! RUN OUT!”
Richard went first, diving through the door of fire. Elizabeth, crying, charged forward behind him. Alex lifted little Donald and virtually threw him through the opening and then shoved Carl forward. Just as the fourth child escaped, the rafters above the door came down, creating a new wall of flames. The children, on the other side, all screamed in unison.
“COME OUT, ALEX, COME OUT!” Richard shouted. They all screamed for him, the four of them huddled together. The fire now loomed above them, singeing the heavens.
Elizabeth started to cry hysterically. Little Donald was on the ground pounding the earth. Carl stood by Richard’s side watching the fire grow. Flames leaped over the roof of the building, igniting the dry wood quickly and worming into and under the shingles and rafters. In moments the entire old section collapsed, and the flames roared as though boasting.
“It’s no use, no use,” Elizabeth said. “Alex won’t get out; he won’t ever get out.”
“The whole Manor is going to go up in flames,” Carl said.
“I want Alex,” little Donald said. “I want Alex.” Elizabeth knelt down beside him and took him to her, pressing his face against her breasts.
“Sharon,” Richard said suddenly. He looked toward the front of the Manor and that portion of the building yet untouched. “She did this.”
“It wasn’t her,” Elizabeth said. “You can’t think of it as Sharon.”
“That’s right,” Carl said.
Richard didn’t say anything. But he started walking toward the front of the Manor. The others watched him for a few moments. They quickly joined him. No one spoke. They picked up their pace until they were practically running. When they reached the front steps, they stopped.
“You can’t think of it as Sharon,” Elizabeth repeated. Richard looked at her and then went
on up the steps. The children were right behind him when he entered the house. They moved up the stairs quickly and went directly to Sharon’s bedroom. Richard opened the door and they stood there looking in at her. Outside the window, the oncoming flames had already lit up that side of the building.
“She’s asleep,” little Donald said.
“What she did made her tired,” Richard said.
“She doesn’t know where she is,” Carl said. “She doesn’t know the fire is coming.”
“It’s not her,” Elizabeth said softly.
Sharon stirred.
“Alex?” Her eyelids fluttered and she gazed drunkenly at the four children gathered at the door. “Where’s Alex?”
“He’s in the fire,” Richard said. “He’s in the fire,” he repeated, pulling the others back. Then he reached into his pocket and took out the skeleton key. He held it up so Sharon would see he had it.
“Alex?” she said again. She started to push herself up into a sitting position. The fire was now so close to this section of the Manor she could hear the crackling wood.
“HE’S IN THE FIRE!” Richard shouted and pulled the door closed. He inserted the key and turned the lock. The others watched him with wide eyes. “QUICKLY!” he commanded, “OUT!”
They all ran down the stairs and out the front door. The entire left side of the building was in flames, and the light of that fire lit up the front lawn. The children rushed out onto it and kept running and running, their eyes wide, their mouths opened, each of them carrying a part of the fire within him. They ran from what they were and what burned within them, almost as much as they ran from what consumed the Echo Lake Manor.
Child's Play Page 23