Some Will Not Sleep: Selected Horrors

by Adam Nevill

  I didn’t want to move here and I was scared of the new school. But since I made friends with Maho and the toys it isn’t so bad. I like it here now and I will never go to that school. Maho knows a way around that. She’ll show me soon and the toys will help.

  There are so many toys. We find them everywhere: beneath the stairs and under the beds, in the bottom of trunks and behind the doors, up in the attic and looking through holes. You never know where they’re going to show up. Most of the time you have to wait for them to come to you. And sometimes you can only hear them moving about. Mama thought we had mice in the house and Papa put traps down. Maho was angry when she showed me the traps in the kitchen and in the cellar. Toys don’t eat coloured seeds, she said, pointing at the blue poisonous oats, but sometimes they dance too close to the snapping traps. Twice we had to rescue them before the morning. A dolly with a china face got one of her long arms stuck in a trap in the pantry. She was squealing and the thin arm covered in black hair had snapped. When we freed her, Maho picked her up and kissed her cold face. When she put the dolly down the dolly ran behind some bottles and we didn’t see her again for three nights. Then the old thing with the black face and whitish beard got his pinky tail all smashed in the trap by the mop and dustpan in the cellar. When we let him loose, he showed us teeth as thin as needles and then he crawled away.

  Three nights back, when Mama and Papa were supposed to be sleeping, I know Papa saw a toy. There were plenty of them out that night, skipping mostly. The first of them came out of the fireplace. ‘Hello,’ a little voice said to me. I was only dozing because I was too excited about the playing, so I wound Maho’s silky hair off my face – it goes in my ears and up my nose too – and I sat up in bed. ‘Hello,’ I said to the little thing down on the rug. They don’t like lights, so you only see them properly when they get real close, but even in the shadows I knew I’d seen this one before. He was the one with the top hat and little suit. His shirt is white, but his face is all red and his eyes are black and shiny like marbles. He went round and round in a circle on skipping feet and in the room I could smell sneezes and old clothes. But Maho’s right: you get used to the smell of the toys.

  She sat up beside me and said, ‘Hello.’

  The toy stopped his dancing and said, ‘Hello.’

  Then we heard the drum, but we couldn’t see the musician. He was in the room with us. Under the bed, I think, and playing his leather drum. He shines like the brown shoes that I once saw made from alligator and he creaks like old gloves when he moves. As usual, when he played the drum, the clown in the dirty blue and white pyjamas came out to dance also. All around the bed he went with his shabby arms thrown up towards the ceiling and his head flopping back. His mouth is all stitched up and his eyes are white and bobble on his cloth face.

  I leaned over the bed to get a better look.

  ‘Best not to touch him,’ Maho whispered into my ear and her coldish breath made me shiver inside. ‘He’s very old. He once belonged to a boy whom he loved very much, but he was taken away from the boy by parents. So he climbed inside the boy’s mouth to fix the broken heart.’

  I wanted to ask what happened to the boy, but Maho turned her head to the door so that I couldn’t see her face. ‘Your papa is coming.’ But I couldn’t hear a thing. I looked at her and frowned. ‘Listen,’ she said, and she took hold of my hands. Then I heard a floorboard moan. Papa was outside in the hallway, going to the toilet. Papa was not well at that time. That’s why we came here, so that he could rest his head. He never slept very much at night and we had to be careful when we played with the toys. ‘Some toys are out there,’ Maho whispered. ‘He might see them again.’ She was smiling through her hair when she said this, but I didn’t know why.

  The man with the top hat skipped back inside the chimney. Under the bed the drumming stopped.

  The next morning my family sat at the kitchen table. We never ate in the dining room because Mama couldn’t get rid of the smell. She tried to find cheerful music on the radio, but it sounded all fuzzy so she turned it off. Her mouth was very tight so I knew she was angry and worried too. She gave up on the radio and pointed at my bowl. ‘Eat up, Yuki,’ she said, then looked at the window. Rain smacked against the glass. Watching the water run down made me feel all cold inside.

  Papa said nothing. He just looked at the table next to his bowl. His eyes were red and his chin was bristly. When he kissed me that morning I shouted out for him to stop. All night I’d been wrapped in soft black hair and his chin felt like it was covered in pins. And he still wasn’t looking any better, even though he didn’t have to go to work any more.

  ‘Taichi,’ Mama said. She was upset with him. Slowly, Papa lifted his head and looked at her.

  ‘Eat or it will go cold,’ Mama had said. She had fried the rice with eggs the way that he liked, with salmon on top that gets warm from the steam. Papa tried to smile but he was just too tired. He looked at me instead. ‘Finished?’ he asked.

  As my spoon clunked in the empty bowl his eyelids flickered. I nodded.

  ‘You can go.’

  I climbed down from my chair and ran into the hall.

  ‘Sit still for a while,’ Mama cried out. ‘Or you’ll be sick.’

  I walked down the hall, then took my shoes off and sneaked back to the kitchen door that Mama closed behind me. My parents wanted to talk. First thing in the morning they would talk to each other, but they would stay in different rooms for the rest of the day. Papa would mostly sit in a chair and stare at nothing, while Mama kept busy with washing and cooking and cleaning. One day she was crying in the kitchen by the cookbooks, which made me cry too. She stopped when she saw me and said that she was ‘just being silly’. But at night I often heard Mama shouting at Papa. When this happened Maho always held me tighter and put her silky hair over my ears until I fell asleep.

  ‘What is it? Tell me, Taichi. I can’t help if you don’t tell me,’ Mama said in the kitchen that morning, and in a voice that was quiet but also sharp enough for me to hear through the door.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘It can’t be nothing. You haven’t slept again.’

  ‘It’s nothing. When it stops raining I’ll go out.’

  A bowl hit the side of the sink. Mama then had a voice full of tears. ‘I can’t stand this any more. This isn’t working. It’s making you worse.’

  ‘Mai, please. I can’t . . . I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you would think I’m crazy.’

  ‘Crazy? You’re making yourself crazy. You’re making me crazy. This was a mistake. I knew it.’

  ‘Maybe. The house . . . I don’t know.’

  A chair scraped against the floor. Mama must have sat down. Her voice went soft and I guessed that she was holding his hand.

  ‘Yuki.’ It was Maho calling me. Standing at the top of the stairs, she waved at me to join her. Because I wanted to hear what Papa was saying, I smiled at her but put a finger against my lips. Maho shook her head and her hair moved across her face to cover all of the white bits. ‘No. Come and play,’ she said. But I turned my head back to the kitchen because Papa was talking again.

  ‘I saw something again.’

  ‘What, Taichi? What did you see?’

  His voice was all shaky. ‘I have to go to the doctor again. I’m going crazy.’

  ‘What? What did you see?’ Mama’s voice was going high and I could tell that she was trying not to cry again.

  ‘I . . . I went to the toilet. Last night. And it was there again.’

  ‘What, Taichi? What?’

  ‘Sitting on the window sill. I told myself that I was still dreaming. I stopped and I closed my eyes and made sure that I was awake. Look at the bruise on my arm where I pinched myself. Then I opened my eyes and it was still there. So I pretended that it wasn’t. That it was just a bad dream. I ignored it. But when I came out of the bathroom, it was still just sitting there. Watching me.’ In the kitchen they stopped talking,
and all I could hear was the rain. Thousands of little drops hitting the wood and tiles and glass all around us.

  ‘You were dreaming,’ Mama said after a while. ‘It’s the medicine, Taichi. The side-effects.’

  ‘No. I stopped taking the medicine.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just for a while to see if they would go.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Yuki. Yuki. Come and play. Come,’ Maho whispered from behind me. She was coming down the stairs on silent feet.

  ‘I don’t know,’ My Papa said. ‘A little thing . . . with long legs that hang over the window sill. And its face, Mai. I can’t sleep after I see its face.’

  ‘Yuki, look what I found. In a cupboard. Come and see,’ Maho said from behind me and reached out to take my hand. When I turned around to tell her to be quiet, I saw that her dolly eyes were wet. So I went up the stairs with her. I can’t stand to see Maho cry. ‘What’s wrong, Maho? Please don’t be sad.’

  She led me into the empty room upstairs, at the end of the hall, and we sat on the wooden floor. In there it’s always cold. There is only one window. Water ran down the outside and made the trees in the garden all blurry. Maho’s head was bowed. Her hair fell over her white gown all the way down to her lap. We held hands. ‘Why are you crying, Maho?’

  ‘Your papa.’

  ‘He’s sick, Maho. But he’ll get better. He told me.’

  She shook her head, then lifted it. Tears ran down from the one wet eye that I could see through her hair. ‘Your mama and papa want to leave. And I don’t want you to go. Not ever.’

  ‘I’ll never leave you, Maho.’ Now she was making me sad and I could taste the sea at the back of my throat.

  She sniffed inside her hair. The rain was very loud on the roof and it sounded like it was raining inside the room. ‘You promise?’ she said.

  I nodded. ‘I promise. You are my best friend, Maho.’

  ‘Your parents don’t understand the toys.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘They just want to play. Your papa should sleep and let them play. If he finds out about me and the toys then he will take you away from us.’

  ‘No. Never.’ We hugged each other and Maho told me she loved me, and told me that the toys loved me. I kissed her silky hair and against my lips I felt her cold ear.

  Downstairs, I heard the kitchen door open and then close. Maho took her arms away and uncurled her hair from around my neck. ‘Your mama wants you.’ Tears were still running down her white face.

  She was right because I heard feet coming up the stairs. ‘Yuki?’ Mama called out. ‘Yuki?’

  ‘I have to go,’ I told Maho and stood up. ‘I’ll come right back and we can play.’

  She didn’t answer me. Her head was bowed so that I couldn’t see her face.

  ‘Yuki, what would you say if I told you we might be moving? Going back to the city?’ Mama looked at me, smiling. She thought this news would make me happy, but I couldn’t stop my face feeling all long and heavy. Mama was sitting on the floor next to me in the cold room where she found me. Even though Maho had hidden I knew that she was still listening. ‘Wouldn’t you like that?’ Mama asked me, ‘You’ll see all of your friends again. And go to the same school.’ She looked surprised that I was not smiling. ‘What is wrong, Yuki?’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  She frowned. ‘But you were so upset when we moved here.’

  ‘But I like it now.’

  ‘You’re all alone. You need your friends, my darling. Don’t you want to play with Sachi and Hiro again?’

  I shook my head. ‘I can play here. I like it.’

  ‘On your own in this big house? With all this rain? You are being silly, Yuki.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘You will get tired of this. You can’t even go outside and use the swing.’

  ‘I don’t want to go outside.’

  She looked at the floor. Her fingers were very white and thin where they held my arms. Mama sniffed back her tears before they could come out. She put the back of one hand to her eyes and I heard her swallow. ‘Come out of here. It’s dirty.’

  I was going to say, I like it in here, but I knew that she would get angry if I said that. So I stayed quiet and followed her to the door. In the corner, in the shadow, I saw a bit of Maho’s white face as she watched us leave. And above us, in the attic, little feet suddenly went pattering. Mama looked up, then hurried me out of the room and closed the door.

  That night, after Papa finished my bedtime story, he kissed my forehead. He still hadn’t shaved and his lips felt spiky. He pulled the blankets up to my chin. ‘Try and keep these on the bed tonight, Yuki. Every morning they are on the floor and you feel as cold as ice.’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’

  ‘Maybe tomorrow the rain will stop. We can go and look at the river.’

  ‘I don’t mind the rain, Papa. I like to play inside the house.’

  Frowning and looking down at my blankets, Papa thought about what I had said. ‘Sometimes in old houses little girls have bad dreams. Do you have bad dreams, Yuki? Is that why you kick the sheets off?’

  ‘No.’

  He smiled at me. ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Do you have bad dreams, Papa?’

  ‘No, no,’ he said, but the look in his eyes said yes. ‘The medicine makes it hard for me to sleep. That’s all.’

  ‘I’m not scared. The house is very friendly.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because it is. It just wants to make friends. It’s so happy we’re here.’

  Papa laughed. ‘But the rain. And all the mice here, Yuki. It’s not much of a welcome.’

  I smiled. ‘There are no mice here, Papa. The toys don’t like mice. They ate them all up.’

  Papa stopped laughing. In his throat I watched a lump move up and down.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about them, Papa. They’re my friends.’

  ‘Friends?’ His voice was very quiet. ‘Toys? You’ve seen them?’ His voice was so tiny that I could hardly hear him.

  I nodded, and smiled to make him stop worrying. ‘When all the children left, they stayed behind.’

  ‘Where . . . where do you see them?’

  ‘Oh, everywhere. But mostly at night. That’s when they come out to play. They usually come out of the fireplace.’ I pointed at the dark place in the corner of my room. Papa stood up quickly and turned around to stare at the fireplace. Outside my window the rain stopped falling on the world that it had made so soft and wet.

  The next morning, Papa found something inside the chimney in my room. He started the search in my bedroom with the broom handle and the torch, poking around up there and knocking all the soot down, which clouded across the floor. Mama wasn’t happy, but when she saw the little parcel that dropped down from the chimney, she went quiet.

  ‘Look,’ Papa said. He held his arm out with the package on the palm of his hand. They took it into the kitchen and I followed.

  Papa blew on it and then wiped it clean of ash with the paint brush from under the kitchen sink. On the table Mama put a piece of newspaper under the parcel. I stood on a chair and we all looked at the bundle of dirty cloth. Then Papa told Mama to get her little scissors from her sewing box. When Mama came back with the scissors, Papa carefully cut into the dry wrappings. Then he peeled them away from the tiny hand inside.

  Mama spread her fingers over her mouth. Papa just sat back and looked at it, like he didn’t want to touch it. All around us we could hear the rain hitting the windows and rattling on the roof. It sounded louder than ever before. Then I knelt on the table and Mama scolded me for getting too close. ‘It could have germs.’

  I thought it was a chicken’s foot, cut from a yellow leg, like the ones you see in the windows of restaurants in the city. But it had five curly fingers with long nails. Before I could touch it, Mama wrapped it up in newspaper and stuffed it deep inside the kitchen bin.

  But there were others. In t
he empty room at the end of the hallway, Papa knocked another parcel out of the chimney and took it down to the kitchen again. At first, my Mama wouldn’t even look at the tiny shoe, even before we found the bone foot inside. She stood by the window and watched the wet garden. Leafy branches moved out there in the heavy rain, like they were waving at the house.

  The shoe was made of pinky silk and my Papa untied the little ribbons. It opened with a puff of dust and he emptied the teeny foot on to the table. The rattle sound made Mama look over shoulder. ‘Throw it away, Taichi. I don’t want it in the house,’ she said.

  Papa looked at me and raised his eyebrows. We went off looking for more. In the big parlour downstairs while he was poking up inside the chimney, he told me the little parcels belonged to ancestors. ‘This is a very old house. And when it was built, the people put little charms in secret places. Under the floors, in the cellars and up inside the chimneys to protect the house from bad spirits.’

  ‘But why are they so small?’ I asked Papa. ‘Was it a baby’s foot in the shoe?’

  He never answered me and just kept poking around, up inside the chimney with the broom handle. Papa was very clever, but I don’t think he knew the answers to my questions. These things he was finding had something to do with the toys, I was sure, so I decided I would ask Maho when I saw her later. She disappeared while I was eating breakfast and was still hiding because Papa was going into every room and searching about.

  The next parcel we found was a tiny white sack, tied up with string, with brownish stains at the bottom. But right after Papa opened it and poured the hard black lumps onto the kitchen table, he quickly wrapped them up in newspaper and put them inside the kitchen bin with the hand and the foot. ‘What are they?’ I asked him.