A lock up in a different town, big enough for the Mondeo and the van.
A girl who’d lost Mr. Wobble. But that was in the twilight time, the time between his two lives. That time was like the colours in the rainbow. There were only seven. Everyone knew that. Except for the times there were eight. A greenish, yellowish colour, just below violet. A kind of sickly colour that couldn’t really be there, but was there, nevertheless, waiting for rain on a sunny day, and when the light hit just so...
Deano’s wife bucked beneath him as she came. They kissed for a while. Then he rolled from her and tucked one arm behind his head and stared up at the ceiling, as he always did when he went to sleep.
Daisy glanced over at him with a small smile on her lips. She turned away onto her side, then she, too, drifted down to sleep.
*
There was a soft tinkle, like small bells, muffled by cloth, maybe. A delicate sound. Dean remembered it from childhood. He had been in a curio shop, as his mother had called them. The shop was full of cut glass ornaments and things. Thimbles, ballerinas, sherry glasses, doe-eyed puppies. There had been a row of bells. Glass bells. Dainty, spiteful little things. He had rung one and it sounded like this. Crystal, melodic and arrhythmic.
Dean put the glass bell down on the glass shelf but he misjudged it and it fell to the floor with a crash. The sound of the glass breaking and a child screaming. His screams, as his father’s hand caught the back of his thigh. The blow left a welt there, on the meat between his buttocks and his thigh. The mark had stayed for days.
His mother, turning away.
It was a soft tinkle that brought the memory of that moment, but it was just a memory. It didn’t mean anything and it wasn’t real. It was from the time before Dean and Deano existed. It wasn’t real, just as his childhood wasn’t real. This was a dream. A memory of a dream. He was sleeping, that was all.
What happened in dreams stayed in dreams. He allowed himself to dream.
He stood beside a lake. An old lake, black water so dark you could see no more than an inch into it. Forbidding water. No one would swim in the old lake. No one would fish there. The water was poison, anyway. So said the locals. Sometimes, an out of towner without a fishing license might try dipping their rods, but they always went away disappointed.
Maybe it was for the best. That dark water held secrets. Secrets the sun would never reach, down where the really big fish swim. Fish so big they could be monsters.
The man that dreamed, the man that became Dean in the daylight and Deano when the sun went down, he put things in the lake sometimes. Dean didn’t do it. Deano didn’t do it.
Once, that man had been a little boy. He’d broken a glass bell. Just like the one pealing softly in his dream. But that boy was no more real than the bells.
He was a boy now, though, in his dreams. He wore shorts. He had chubby boy legs. In his dream he was no more than ten. The lake, black and hungry, swelled and surged toward his feet.
He took a step back.
‘It’s alright,’ he said to the girl, standing beside him. She wore a hood so he couldn’t see her face. He knew she was older than him. Probably a teenager, but only just.
‘You can’t fall in,’ he told her. ‘I’ll hold you.’
‘I know I can’t fall in. I can’t fall down,’ she said. She rocked to the left, rocked to the right, so far that her head almost touched the mulch and deadfall around the lake, but she sprang back up every time. The bells sounded. A jolly, depressing sound.
The little boy stepped back.
‘Shh, Mr. Wobble,’ said the little girl.
The girl turned. Below the hood was a jolly face. A depressing face. A clown with eyes painted red above rosy cheeks. His hair was a bright jarring yellow, but only on one side. On the other it was a sickly toxic green. Down his front blue buttons held together a harlequin waist coat of worn velvet. His trousers, too, were yellow, and within that enormous waistband the sound of bells came out, muffled, but clear, too. Like a bell made from crystal, falling to the floor.
The girl was a clown and the clown was a girl, but she couldn’t be a Mrs. Wobble, because that wouldn’t be right.
Mr. Wobble had no feet, but in his hand he held a girl with two-tone hair.
‘Shh,’ Mr. Wobble said. ‘I won’t let you fall.’
The little boy woke.
*
The tinkling sound followed Deano as he woke.
From under his arm.
‘Uh. Uh...’
Mr. Wobble was tucked tight into his shoulder. He’d been cuddling him in his sleep. It. Cuddling it.
He thrust the toy away from him with a start. It fell with a tinkle to the floor and rocked back and forth, bright idiot eyes watching him the whole time.
He shuddered as he looked at it. Felt cold. Cold to the bone.
His chest was drenched with freezing, foul water. The sheets were black with it.
He didn’t know what the hell was going on. All he knew was that he didn’t want it in the house anymore. The toy was giving him goose bumps. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, bringing him home. Bringing him from...where the hell did he come from?
He remembered giving him to Miles, though. He knew he’d done that. Miles had gone to sleep with him.
It. For fuck’s sake. It. A bloody toy.
He checked his wife was still asleep beside him. He could sense her breathing, unchanged.
The toy had stopped rocking. There were no bells.
He slid his feet out of the bed first, then swivelled his body upright, taking care not to pull the covers with him.
He picked up the toy oh so gently.
Mind now, boy. Mind the spiteful little bells.
Deano padded downstairs, as quietly as he could, the toy held away from him so the sway of his body as he walked wouldn’t set the bells ringing.
His heart was pounding when he reached the kitchen, but the house was quiet. Mr. Wobble hadn’t spoken.
He turned the key, holding the toy one handed, and pulled the handle down. Cold air rushed in. His wet chest was suddenly freezing. His teeth chattered.
Nothing for it but to do it. Slowly, because it had a squeak he couldn’t get rid of even though he’d drowned it in WD40, he pulled the door wide, leaving it open behind him and went down the sideway to the bins.
There was a hunter’s moon high in the sky. He managed the find the bolt on the sideway gate with the aid of the silver light glinting on steel. The sideway itself was bright. The moon, pale and bloated, looked down on him.
Like it was laughing at him.
‘Well, fuck you,’ he told it, and pulled open the non-recyclables bin lid.
‘Fuck you, too,’ he told Mr. Wobble and dropped him in amongst the rotten leftovers and crinkled plastic meat wrappers. He wiped his hands on his wet pyjama top and turned to head back to the house, a satisfied grin on his face, teeth darker than his skin in the moonlight.
The back door squealed.
Now stop. The voice was the part of him that kept his lives apart. Kept him from jail. It was the part of him that survived his transition to Dean and Deano. The child he was before.
The child who broke the bell.
He remembered the day when he broke the bell. God, it had felt good. Spiteful little bell.
He remembered his mother, turning away.
He remembered teaching her a thing or two before he left home for good.
Deano shook his head and pawed at his face, like there were cobwebs there. Anything that had passed was gone again, and he was just an innocent dad on a night time errand, caught out by the wife.
‘Sorry, honey. Couldn’t sleep. Remembered to...’
What?
It didn’t matter. The lie would be there when he needed it. It always was. And the funny thing was, whatever he said, it would be true, too.
He watched his breath mist on still air. The noise came again.
‘Come on,’ Deano said. Gearing himself up. Getting ready to pu
t a smile on his face for his wife.
‘What are you doing, honey?’ she would say.
But it wasn’t Daisy’s voice he heard.
‘Daddy?’
A voice from the dark. He couldn’t see, because he was down the sideway, and the sound came from the back door.
A child’s voice, but not Miles.
It was a girl’s voice. A young woman’s voice, maybe.
‘Daddy?’ she called, but this time her voice didn’t sound quite right. She sounded, he thought, like she was talking through water. A burbling sound. Like him, trying to talk through mouthwash before he went to bed and kissed his wife.
*
Miles woke up. Mr. Wobble had gone.
He heard the bells, somewhere downstairs.
‘Mr. Wobble?’ he called. His voice was soft and low, because it was night time and we don’t shout at night.
‘Mr. Wobble?’
He was sure he’d gone to sleep with Mr. Wobble. But he’d had a dream. He couldn’t remember the dream. It had Mr. Wobble in it.
He crept downstairs, because he wasn’t supposed to be out of bed. Daddy told him not to get out of bed. Sometimes he did, though, and came downstairs. Daddy was there, sometimes, but he didn’t hear Miles. Miles was good at being quiet.
When Daddy was downstairs he wasn’t always Daddy. Well, he was always Daddy, but sometimes he was a different Daddy. The kind of Daddy that made this funny sound in his mouth, like he was biting his own teeth. Miles didn’t know if you could actually bite your own teeth. He tried, but he couldn’t make the sound that Daddy made. It made him want to go to the bathroom when he heard it.
He didn’t like that sound at all.
On the rare times that Miles did go downstairs looking for a glass of milk or maybe a secret snuck cookie, if Daddy was there, whether he was a different Daddy or his usual Daddy, Miles always crept back upstairs, because he never was sure.
When the house was dark, and Daddy sat in his armchair, facing away, Miles never was sure.
He crept downstairs. He checked around, really carefully, because he didn’t want to meet anyone. Whoever they might be.
‘Daddy?’ someone called. Miles knew it wasn’t his voice, because in the night he would never call out Daddy, but mostly because it was a girl’s voice. He smiled, though, because he knew that voice. It was Pooky.
He didn’t call out, but if Pooky was downstairs, it was OK, because Pooky was cool.
*
Mr. Wobble came round the corner. Not exactly Mr. Wobble. Mr. Wobble was only a child’s toy made up to look kind of like a clown, but instead of big flappy shoes it had an enormous belly.
Mr. Wobble wasn’t a child’s toy anymore.
He filled the side way with his girth. One side of his belly rested against the wall. On the other side, his gut pushed out the fence panel. The fencing post splintered under the weight.
Deano couldn’t move. He could run away, sure. He could run for the gate at the front of the house. Run out into the street, get the fuck away. Do something. But he couldn’t. He had places to go, but he could not move. Not an inch. Terror held his legs still and his mouth dumb.
Mr. Wobble couldn’t move. He was stuck between the fence and the side of the house, but somehow he moved anyway. He rocked a little this way, a little that way. The fence shrieked and splintered. Brick dust drifted through the air.
Bells tinkled, but this time they were large bells. Big fat man bells.
Mr. Wobble’s bells didn’t really tinkle anymore. They tolled.
The idiot smile Mr. Wobble usual wore was gone. He smacked obscenely fat lips. A bulbous tongue slid out and moistened his lips.
Noise was coming from Deano’s mouth, but nothing like words. Maybe an incoherent plea, but all thought but one had stopped.
The bells. He could hear nothing but bells. Deep bells, high bells. Bells of brass that tolled and bells of glass that dropped from a little boy’s hand.
Mr. Wobble’s girth squelched and sloshed, like he was full of water. Deano could imagine the water in that great belly. A deep dark pool. A black lake.
Deano was aware he was saying something under his breath. Whispering, because he didn’t want to wake his wife. Even though he was terrified, he was whispering. Quiet, because this was just a dream.
Over and over. Just a dream.
What happened in dreams stayed in dreams.
He remembered. Back in the twilight. A girl with soaked two-tone hair. She smelled exactly like the old lake. Black and foul.
Mr. Wobble smiled and the smile widened until her mouth became something deeper, something darker. She leaned forward.
But Mr. Wobble couldn’t be a girl. Of course he couldn’t.
‘Daddy!’ came a voice from deep within. And it sounded like his voice. His voice, and Miles’ voice, and the voice of a girl, just turned fourteen.
But it was just a dream, just a dream, just a dream.
He said it, but it didn’t make any difference.
Mr. Wobble’s gapping mouth sucked Deano deep inside. Her spit was brackish, her breath rank. He was drowning in her, his own mouth full of water. Full of the lake.
Then Mr. Wobble bounced back and rocked against the side of the house, his bells tinkling merrily and sadly, somehow expressing both in perfect harmony.
*
Miles saw that the back door was open and came out in a rush. He heard the bells.
Mr. Wobble sat on top of the green bin. Green bin for icky rubbish. But Mr. Wobble wasn’t icky rubbish.
Miles picked up the toy and cuddled him close. It was a bit wet but he didn’t mind. Miles carried him back to bed, put him on his bed side cabinet and gave Mr. Wobble a stern talking to, even though some of the words were wrong.
‘Naughty Mr. Wobble. You’re not post to go downstairs at night.’
Mr. Wobble nodded. ‘Because of Daddy,’ he said, gravely mimicking Miles’ serious tone.
‘Not-Daddy-Daddy.’
The toy nodded again, tinkling as his head bobbed. Once down, then back up.
‘Sometime,’ Miles confided in Mr. Wobble, ‘Not-Daddy-Daddy scared me.’
Mr. Wobble understood. His red eyes looked sad, but though his smile was just a line of wool, stitched round to look like a smile, it seemed real enough to a little boy. When he wobbled this way and that way, his woolly crazy green and yellow hair flopped across his face. Just like Pooky’s used to do.
Mr. Wobble voice, too, reminded him of Pooky, even though she was a girl.
She used to baby sit him. He’d always called her Pooky. The first time he’d met her, he’d said her hair looked Pooky. She didn’t understand at first, but then she’d laughed. She’d laughed a lot.
He wished she hadn’t gone away.
A tear slid down his cheek. He sniffed, then his shoulders started shaking.
‘Shh, Miles,’ said Mr. Wobble, in that familiar voice of his.
‘Pooky?’
He wanted it to be Pooky. He wanted it so much. But even little boys know you can only carry a wish so far.
But still, did Mr. Wobble just nod? A little back, a little way forward?
He cuffed his nose with his pyjama sleeve and leant a little way forward, toward the toy on his bedside cabinet. ‘Can I tell you a secret?’
Another nod, of sorts.
‘I’m scared now,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t know why.’
‘You don’t need to be,’ said Mr. Wobble. ‘Not if you don’t want to. Because I’m here, Miles. I’m here, and I’ll never let you fall.’
Mr. Wobble didn’t have arms, just hands. He was just a small toy, too.
But just the same, that night he held Miles tight and stroked the boy’s hair until he went to sleep, the bells in his belly a soft lullaby, like bells might sound if they could ring underwater.
The End
Unusually, for me, I haven't written that many short stories in the last year or two. I used to write short stories for fun. It got to be a
chore, at some point. I don't remember when.
Novels are where the money is. Maybe for a reader, too. But I enjoy reading a good short. I stuck to novels for about two years (I hoped to make a dent of some kind at 'writing'). But then I wrote this, and another story (later in this collection. 'The Giant Inside')...
...and I remembered writing short stories isn't, always, about the money. Sometimes you just do it for you.
Doubloons
The pain began in Harvey Ships' left heel on his thirtieth birthday. Right at the back, so it hurt whenever he walked or put his weight on his foot.
When the pain continued, he thought about seeing a doctor, wondering if perhaps he'd damaged his heel somehow. Harvey didn't like the doctor much. He didn't go. Instead, he took to resting his shoeless foot on a hot water bottle whenever he could. It was the only thing he found that gave him any relief. Painkillers didn't really cut it. He tried getting drunk once and only achieved a nasty thumping headache and a moderate case of the shits.
Harvey couldn't wear trainers to work. He worked on a building site and needed protective footwear with steel plates to save his toes should a girder fall on them. His toes would be fine, though the rest of him would probably be dead.
His foot hurt badly enough to make him limp at work. Then, two months or so since the pain began, it became serious enough to visit the doctor. He could not, in fact, walk on his foot any longer.
He limped all the way to the doctor one Tuesday morning, rain dripping from his baseball cap and down the neck of his high-visibility coat. He winced and groaned and the walk took forever. The rain got heavier, his trousers became wet and uncomfortable, his foot hurt and now his back hurt, too, because of his limp.
He sat in the tallest chair they had in the waiting room. There are always a few tall chairs. Easier for old people with shit legs to get up from, he guessed.
He was thirty.
About a week ago, he'd begun to wonder if it was in fact some kind of malignant cancer, eating his foot. Or flesh eating bacteria.
Dark Words (Horror Short Stories): Collected Short Fiction Page 2