“I’ll go,” Jen says hurriedly, glad to have an excuse to get away, if only for a moment.
“Right, Chris,” she hears her mother say as she climbs the stairs, “could you give me a hand with something?” And then the two of them – mother-in-law and son-in-law – are making their way to the front door, with Toby following, his toddler curiosity as indefatigable as ever.
Jen enters the closed-curtain gloom of the baby’s room to be greeted by her darling daughter, her face already near-purple from screaming, tiny fists bunched in impotent rage, legs kicking furiously as if she’s trying to bust out of her babygrow, and the unmistakable ammonia aroma of a full nappy.
By the time Jen’s cleaned her up and put her in yet another fresh babygrow – the soiled one joining the unending pile of washing in the laundry basket, the allegedly leak-proof nappy having leaked liquid shit all up Emmie’s back – and carried her downstairs, everyone’s back in the kitchen.
“Here she is,” Jen says, passing Emmie into her mother’s outstretched arms. “Mum, meet your granddaughter.”
“Oh, isn’t she gorgeous?” her mother says, nuzzling the baby’s silk-soft hair, and then continues in a coochie-coo voice as she stares into Emmie’s wide eyes, “Aren’t you my darling? Yes, you are. Yes, you are. You’re Nana’s booful baby girl, aren’t you? Yes, you are. Yes, you are.”
Emmie gurgles and giggles in response, a cherubic smile on her face, and no sign of the howling banshee that had greeted her sleep-deprived mother upstairs.
“Who’s a good girl, eh? Who’s a good girl?”
Jen picks up her now-cold cup of coffee and watches her mother with Emmie for a moment, feeling the tension ease from her shoulders a little.
“Where’s Toby?” she asks idly, taking a sip of the cold caffeine.
“Over there,” Chris says with a nod.
Jen turns and is so surprised she spills half the contents of her mug over herself.
Toby is kneeling at his toy table – which was the coffee table from Chris’s old flat, in a former life. He is busy placing the pieces of furniture inside the large doll’s house that’s open in front of him. His favourite toys have been shoved under the table to make room for the mock Georgian edifice.
Jen recognises the peeling paint façade, the dark lifeless windows and the drab grey tiles immediately.
“Careful,” Chris says, eyeing the stain on her top.
“What’s that doing here?” she hisses, her voice barely more than an angry whisper.
“It’s been sat at the back of the attic at my place for long enough,” her mother says, smiling at her grandson as he carefully places a miniature piano in what should really be the bathroom of the house, if Jen remembers correctly – and she does. “Besides, now my little boy’s a big brother I think he’s old enough to take care of it, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t,” Jen snaps back.
“Whoa, Jen, what’s the problem?” Chris steps in, giving her a look. “Toby’s loving it. It’s very kind of you, Julia.”
“My pleasure.”
“Well I can’t stand the thing.” Jen picks up a dishcloth and starts to work at the coffee stain. She soon gives up in disgust. “Something else for the never-ending laundry pile,” she growls.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Jennifer, you used to love playing with it as a child.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Of course you did.”
“No, Mum, I didn’t. I hated the thing. Why do you think Dad put it in the attic in the first place?”
“But it’s an antique,” her mother goes on. “It’s been in our family for generations.”
“Well, you can put in on eBay, for all I care.”
“Jen! What’s got into you?” Chris chides her. “I know you’re tired, but –”
“That’s right, I’m tired!” She slams her coffee cup down on the counter. The handle comes off in her hand, what’s left of the mug tipping over and spilling the rest of its contents across the counter.
She turns to Chris, red-rimmed eyes blazing. “There’s pizza for supper or you can order takeout if you want. But I don’t care. I’m going to bed!”
“Jennifer!” her mother calls after her. “I didn’t mean –”
“Thanks for coming over,” Jen calls back, already halfway up the stairs. “We must do this again some time.”
WHEN SHE WAKES, sweating, in the middle of the night to a silent house, she knows that she’s had the dream again. She hasn’t had it since she was a child.
So sudden is her awakening that it even causes Chris to stir.
“What is it?” he mumbles, turning his tousled head and peering at her in the half-light of the room.
“It’s got to go,” she says.
“What’s got to go?”
“That doll’s house.”
“What? Really? Right now?”
“No. It can wait until the morning, but I’m not spending another night under this roof knowing that it’s down there.”
“Okay, if you insist,” he murmurs, turning over and pulling the duvet tight about him again. “’Night, ’night.” Thirty seconds later, he’s snoring again.
She looks at the alarm clock on Chris’s side of the bed.
03:33.
She gets out of bed. She pads out of the room and onto the landing, and eases Emmie’s door open. The elephants, monkeys and other animals that spell out her daughter’s name welcome her with broad, painted smiles. The glow of the street-lamp around the edge of the blackout blind reveals her daughter’s china doll face. Emmie’s snoring, just like her father. Toby stirs when she pushes open the door to his room and she mentally chastises herself for still not having got around to oiling the hinges. Her son murmurs something in his sleep and then is quiet again.
Turning from Toby’s door, Jen hesitates, one hand on the newel post at the top of the stairs. She was about to go downstairs, but what would be the point of that?
She stands there, listening to the creaks and groans of the house and the humming of the fridge-freezer down in the kitchen.
At long last, she returns to bed. Chris has stopped snoring, thankfully.
She lays there, her mind full of practical concerns. She needs to buy more nappies and Toby has Nursery in the morning. And then she has to book Emmie in for her two-month jabs at the surgery and there’s still a mountain of washing and ironing to be done.
She’s just dozing off again when Emmie starts grizzling.
With bleary eyes Jen peers at the clock, the glowing green digits slowly coming into focus.
04:26.
Wearily Jen drags herself out of bed to deal with her hungry daughter.
She doesn’t go back to sleep again after that.
THE FIRST THING Toby does, when he comes downstairs the next morning, is go to the doll’s house. Usually he’ll curl up on the sofa with a bottle of milk in front of whatever’s on CBeebies, but today he goes straight to the Georgian-fronted doll’s house and starts enthusiastically rearranging the furniture.
And Jen has to admit that it keeps him occupied and out of her way while she gets Emmie up and dressed, without the usual continuous demands for milk or attention. But she still promises herself the thing’s going away, at least until her mother drops by again, which hopefully won’t be any time soon.
Before she knows it, it’s time to take Toby to Nursery. She’s halfway there before she realises she’s still wearing her pyjamas under her baggy cardigan.
AFTER DROPPING TOBY at Nursery, she pops home to get dressed properly before heading down to the local supermarket. She decides to walk, transferring a gurgling Emmie into her pram, hoping that some fresh air and exercise might help her sleep better tonight.
The two of them don’t get home again until almost eleven, by which time Emmie’s screaming to be fed. Jen slumps in front of the telly, flicking through the Freeview channels while her daughter gorges herself on her mother’s milk, moaning contentedly to herself between hung
ry gulps, eyes screwed tight shut, making Jen feel like a prize Friesian.
Once Emmie’s had her fill and drifted off to sleep, Jen puts her in her cot so that she can finally get around to unpacking the shopping. And then, before she knows it, it’s time to get Emmie up again so that they can collect Toby from Nursery.
As she puts her foot on the bottom stair she catches sight of the doll’s house, sitting regally on the toy table against the back wall of the kitchen-cum-diner-cum-family-room.
It’s now or never. She can’t get rid of the thing while Toby’s in the house.
The loud rap at the door makes her start and she gives a small cry of surprise.
A dark shape awaits her on the other side of the frosted glass. The sheer size of the figure causes her to hesitate for a moment before she dismisses her doubts as nonsense and turns the latch.
“Post,” the hulking figure says, thrusting a parcel into her hands. And then he’s gone again.
As she places the cardboard package from Amazon on the key shelf beside the door – it’s addressed to Chris – she catches the time on her watch.
12:17.
If she doesn’t get Emmie up now, and into the car, she’s going to be late picking up Toby.
The doll’s house forgotten about again, she heads upstairs.
SHE WAKES WITH a start, her sweat-soaked hair plastered to her brow. It was the same dream; the same nightmare. She looks at Chris’s clock.
03:33.
Shaking out her pillow she lies down again, preferring to study the cracks in the plasterwork surrounding the ceiling than close her eyes and see that lifeless wooden face again.
She feels wrung out, but she can’t sleep. She listens to Chris’s heavy breathing, listening out for Emmie, fully expecting her to start crying for milk at any moment.
But Emmie doesn’t start to cry until gone five, on this morning of all mornings, just as Jen is finally starting to drop off again.
She hauls herself out of bed – the duvet feeling like it’s filled with clay, and not feathers, as she pushes it aside – going for a pee before seeing to her daughter.
She spends the rest of the night in Emmie’s room, lounging in the IKEA-bought rocking chair, her sleeping daughter on her lap, thoughts of the hundred and one things she has to do that day filling her head.
“I’M TIDYING THE playroom,” Toby shouts from the far end of the family room, later that same morning, raising his voice in an effort to be heard over Emmie’s crying.
“That’s nice,” Jen says, as she rocks the howling baby in her arms. “Emmie, sweetheart, Mummy would really like you to stop crying now.” But the red-faced screams continue.
“Mrs Mulligan doesn’t like it when Emmie cries,” Toby says, but Jen only half hears him over the baby’s bawling.
“I don’t like it either, darling. What’s wrong, sweetie?” she asks the wailing infant, but the only answer she gets is another purple-faced scream that cuts right through her.
“I’ve changed you, I’ve tried putting you to bed but you didn’t want to know. You can’t be hungry again already. You’re not too hot. So what is it, darling, why won’t you stop crying?” Jen’s rocking of the baby in her arms becomes more vigorous without her really realising what she’s doing. Emmie’s howls intensify until she almost has no voice left and her face is the colour of beetroot.
“Stop that screaming at once!”
The vehemence of the shout makes Jen start and for a moment Emmie is silent, so startled is the baby by the sudden noise. And then the howling recommences with renewed force.
Jen turns to see Toby standing on the rug in front of the doll’s house, a look of slack-jawed horror on her face.
That voice, so strict and with such authority, so much deeper than a child’s should be, and that accent… It couldn’t have been Toby, could it?
“Toby,” she says, unable to keep the quaver out of her voice, “was that you?”
The toddler stares at her, an expression of guileless innocence on his cherubic face.
“Was that you?”
He doesn’t dare blink as he meets his mother’s furious gaze, even as the tears start to fall freely down his cheeks.
“Mrs Mulligan doesn’t like it when Emmie cries all the time,” he sobs.
She looks at the doll held tightly in his small hand; the rough cloth dress, the rattling wooden limbs, the same severe painted face from her dreams.
That voice. That name…
“That name! Who told you that name?” she demands. Laying the screaming Emmie on the rug beside her, she crouches down so that her face is level with her son’s, and grabs hold of him by the arms. “Did Nana tell you? Did she?”
But Toby says nothing. He just stares at his mother in fear, those eyes, so big, so blue and so guileless.
“Tell me, Toby! Who told you that name? You must tell Mummy!”
“Mummy, you’re hurting me,” Toby whimpers.
She blinks, suddenly snapping out of the furious trance she’s put herself into. It’s like waking from a dream; a nightmare.
As she comes to, she looks down at his arms and sees the pinched purple half-moons her nails have made in his otherwise unblemished skin.
And then, the tears pouring down her face, she grabs hold of him again, bundling him up in her arms, squeezing him tightly to her.
“I’m so sorry, my darling,” she sobs as she clasps his head to her breast. “I’m so sorry.”
“HOW DID TOBY get those marks on his arms?” Chris asks later, when the children are both in bed and he and Jen are sitting at the breakfast bar with an open bottle of wine and half a dozen tin foil trays spread out between them.
“What marks?” Jen asks, feeling the skin on her neck and face flush.
“I saw them when I was giving him his bath. Looked like he’d been pinched.”
“That reminds me,” Jen says, changing the subject. “Do you know what he did today?”
Chris helps himself to the last piece of chicken shashlick. “What? Was it something bad?”
“He shouted at Emmie to stop crying. He said that Mrs Mulligan doesn’t like it when Emmie cries.”
“What’s so strange about that?” her husband asks, through a mouthful of naan. “I mean I know it’s wrong of him to shout at you –”
“But Mrs Mulligan?”
“Sorry, you’ve lost me. Who’s Mrs Mulligan?”
“The doll from that bloody doll’s house. The housekeeper.”
“Okay,” Chris replies slowly, swallowing his mouthful. “You’re still going to have to explain to me why that’s significant.”
“That’s what I used to call her. Only I didn’t name her. That’s what she was called.”
“I thought you said you hated the doll’s house.”
“I did, but this isn’t about me. How did Toby know the doll was called Mrs Mulligan?”
“Did you tell him?”
“No.”
“Well your Mum must have said something.”
“When?”
“Well you must have mentioned it in passing then.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Chris favoured her with a condescending smile. “You remember everything you say throughout the day, do you?” He laughed. “’Cos I don’t.”
“This isn’t funny. It freaked me out, alright?”
“Okay. I’m sorry.”
“And there was something else. When he shouted at Emmie to shut up, it…”
She breaks off, suddenly realising how ridiculous what she’s about to say is going to sound.
“Go on.”
“It didn’t sound like Toby.”
Chris coughs, putting a hand to his mouth to avoid spraying the counter with half-chewed food. Jen glares at him.
“I’m sorry; it’s just that our son’s doing impressions now, is he?”
“Piss off!”
“Hey, hey. Calm down.”
“Well!”
“Okay, I’m sorry. I
just sounded like –”
“I know what it sounded like,” Jen snaps. “It sounded like I’m going mad again.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” Chris puts down his knife, placing a gentle hand on her clenched fist. “That’s not what I meant at all. I mean you’re doing okay this time, aren’t you? I know you’ve not been sleeping well, but other than that everything’s alright, isn’t it?”
“Well it wouldn’t hurt if you could do a bit more around the house.”
“And you know I would, if I could,” Chris gets in quickly, “but I’m at work all day.”
“I know, and I’m left here all by myself, to deal with everything else. What I wouldn’t give for a day back in the office. I should be so lucky.”
“Jenny, I know you do a brilliant job. Nobody could be a better mum.” He squeezes her hand in his. “I do worry about you, you know? Here all by yourself, day after day.”
“Is this meant to be making me feel better?”
He gives her hand another squeeze. “Look, you haven’t been sleeping well, so why don’t we make it an early night? I’m sure we could both do with one, if you know what I mean.” He grins at her, arching an eyebrow in lewd intimation. “I certainly could. And it always helps me get to sleep.”
“You don’t need any help getting to sleep. You nod off at the drop of a hat.”
“So come on,” he presses, smiling like a fifteen year-old about to lose his virginity after downing the best part of a bottle of cider. “What do you say?”
“I don’t know,” she says, resting her head on her hand.
“Look, I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about with Toby. Kids give voices and names and characters to their toys all the time. I mean look at Teddy – that’s a perfect example. And the name thing’s probably a coincidence. He must have heard the name on one of those kids’ shows he’s always watching.”
“You make it sound like he does nothing but watch television all day,” Jen counters.
“That wasn’t what I meant and you know it. Don’t go getting all over-sensitive on me now, okay? Come on, you go on up and run yourself a nice hot bath. I’ll clear up down here and then I’ll give you one of Chris’s special back-rubs. What do you say?”
The Future of Horror Page 30