Baby Teeth: Bite-sized tales of terror (14 page)

A moment later, a red scarf blew out from the shadows and settled on the path like a pool of blood.

Matt Cowens

M
y dad is real strong. And funny, too. He's not as tall as my mum but he can almost lift as much as her, and when there's a spider blocking the door to our house he gets an axe or a sword and drives it away or kills it. Mum got back from a foraging mission into the ruins of Wellington one time and started to tell us about the giant wasps and ants and the weta as big as cars and how she avoided them and managed to break into a pharmacy, and Dad said, ‘Did you get any rubbers?' and then Mum hit him on the arm but he didn't even flinch.

I like drawing and writing and Dad always asks Mum to bring back things for me, but he says it like it's a joke.

‘Get plenty of rubbers,' he always says.

‘I need to get some lead for your pencil first,' Mum replies, and we all laugh.

Last time she went I said, ‘Dad doesn't use a pencil.' Mum snorted and told me that was the problem.

It's hard to get pencils and rubbers and paper now that giant bugs have killed most of the people and the shops are shut. The plants have taken over most of everything.

*

I
t's a month before my eighth birthday when the second meteor shower hits.

‘Maybe this one will turn them all back?' Dad sounds pretty cheerful, and Mum laughs, but I can tell they're nervous. I didn't get to see the first meteor shower – I was only five. So I sneak out and sit in the back garden looking up at the stars as streaks of green tumble out of the sky and sounds like explosions thud through the night.

‘It's a hell of a fireworks show,' my mother says, right in my ear. I jump and squeal but I can tell from the tone of her voice that she's not angry at me. She drops her axe on the ground next to me and gives me a hug, and we watch. Dad comes out too, but he doesn't put down his sword. Or look at the sky.

In the morning, a giant smashes down our fence.

Not a giant bug, or spider, or anything like that. A giant man, with a scraggly beard and long hair and a big toe the size of a Labrador. He smashes our fence and makes a sad noise as the bits of wood and barbed wire and cutlery get stuck in his skin.

‘Can you be more careful?' I yell at him, but he doesn't hear me. He keeps walking, smashing more houses and knocking over giant trees and getting tangled in long-dead power lines.

‘Did you see the size of his pencil?' Dad asks Mum, but she doesn't answer. I don't like the question. I don't think he's talking about a pencil.

‘You think there are any more?' Dad asks, apologising with his shoulders.

‘I don't know what to think anymore. We're about a million miles down the rabbit hole, honey.' She's talking about a book. I've read it. And it gives me the best idea.

The next morning, before my parents wake up, I get dressed, grab my knife, compass and hatchet, and head out the door. There are only baby spiders on the driveway, little ones that don't even come up to my waist. I give them a kick and they scatter. Apparently they were nibbling on giant-flesh, a little bit of heel, which was stuck on the broken fence.

I walk in the middle of the road, where there's still a little road showing. The grass is shoulder high and the trees in our neighbours' gardens are like skyscrapers, taller than the giant was. It takes me most of the morning to get to the hill by the old playground. It's a densely packed twist of monstrous dark shrubs jutting out of a sea of too-green grass. If I squint hard I can still remember the way it used to look: the blue playground, the mown lawns, the paths between plants. Now it's a scraping, stinging slog to get anywhere, and where I need to get to is the top.

The slaters are fun. I bump into several on my climb and they wave their antennae and peer at me with their bulbous black eyes, then crash through the grass and shrubs knocking plants over as they curl up or scuttle away. I try to grab one to ride but it squirms and its antenna slips from my hand, then I roll off its back as it crashes through the shrubs.

The sun is more or less straight above me as I climb through the canopy of giant shrubs and get a decent look around. Kapiti Island looks like it needs a good shave, overgrown trees giving it fizzy edges against the blue sky. On the other side of the hill the little man-made lake has almost dried up, and beyond it, in a pile of wood and brick rubble, is what I've been looking for.

A crater.

Getting down the hill is much easier and the bridge across the lake is still standing, so it's not long before I'm standing on the edge of the crater looking down at a little glowing rock. It's green and has holes in it like a sponge.

‘If they hadn't landed so close, we never would have had the problem with the bugs,' I say, climbing down into the hole. ‘If this hadn't landed so close, I'd never get big.'

I hope that saying it will make it true.

The rock cracks into pieces when I hit it with the back of the hatchet. I sift through the bits looking for something smooth and small enough. The rest of the bits go into my pocket. All but the smallest, smoothest chunk. The little green pill.

Half way back to the house I start to feel funny. The rock in my stomach is doing something; something warm and squirmy. My fingers tingle. I try to hurry up, but I get dizzy and fall over. The ground is soft and my eyelids are heavy and before I know it, I'm asleep.

Dad shakes me awake. Mum's behind him, axe over her shoulder, keeping watch. It's dark. We're not supposed to be out after dark.

‘You OK?' Dad asks.

‘I think so,' I reply. I feel tingly all over.

‘Where the hell did you go?' he asks, real anger under the surface of his voice.

I don't want to tell him. It'll sound silly if I say it out loud. Babyish.

‘We have to get moving,' Mum hisses. ‘Something's coming.'

Dad pulls me to my feet and looks me in the eye, frowning. We look at Mum, and she gives us a nod and points in what I guess is the direction of home. We move as quietly as we can. Over the sound of waves in the distance I hear the buzz of wings, giant wings. It's not a good sound.

‘I feel funny,' I whisper to Dad. He shushes me. ‘I think I might be sick.'

We don't stop. He nods and shrugs and pushes me in the back. Funny thing is, he doesn't push very hard. And he's slowing down.

‘It's hard to breathe,' I whisper, but my voice comes out loud. Loud and low. I unzip my jacket. I hear a tearing sound as the sleeves rip off.

Things go bright and green and fuzzy in my head for a minute, then it's dark and clear and we're in a patch of old-style small vegetation, but I'm alone. And my clothes are gone. It's like a bad dream, except that the bugs are small again. I swat a couple of mosquitoes that land on my arm and they die just like in the old days. And I can see my house, not far away. I make a run for it, knocking over some rusty old toy cars on the way, but when I get there the house is tiny; a dolls' house with no dolls. I pull the roof off but it doesn't come off cleanly, and the fence is broken. The dolls' clothes in the wardrobes are tiny and cleverly made, but I feel cold and jealous. My clothes are gone and I can't seem to wake up.

‘Are you lost?' a voice asks from behind me. I turn around and the giant is back. He has some kind of cloth tied to his waist. It looks like a parachute or a hot air-balloon. He's not as tall as he was before.

‘I can't find my parents. They ...'

There are spiders squashed on the soles of my feet. Tiny spiders, like in the old days. And behind the giant, two little figures, looking up at us. I can see their mouths moving but I can't hear them.

‘We're not alone,' the giant says. ‘I've seen others like us. Maybe enough to start over.'

The little mummy and daddy are climbing into the wreckage of their dollhouse. I feel bad about the roof.

‘I'm staying here,' I say. ‘I have people to look after.'

‘Here's as good a place as any,' the giant says, and he smiles. He's not so scary looking under the beard after all. ‘I'll get some metal off some of the other buildings, we can make a new roof for the house. And I saw a giant apple tree this morning. I'll bring us something to eat.'

When he's gone I sit in the front garden and watch the little mummy and daddy clean up their house. I help with the big bits of wood and with squashing any bugs that come near. I don't seem to feel the cold too badly, and when I lie down with my ear to the ground I can just about hear what they're saying. I expect they'll find a way to talk to me.

Mum and Dad are clever like that.

Dan Rabarts

I
tucked in the sheets, nestling my little Adam down into the snug cocoon of his bed. Since nightfall, the cold hard summer downpour that had fallen all day had eased to a bare drizzle. A fitting sky, overall, for a day such as this.

‘Night-night, darling,' I said, kissing the top of his head as he smiled sleepily up at me. ‘Thank you for being a good boy today. It was a big day, wasn't it?'

‘Mmm-hmmm.'

Strange how things like ‘Did you have fun today?' or ‘Shall we do that again soon?' – all the things I'd normally say at bedtime – just weren't right these past few days. All those words were gone, fled like birds on the wind.

‘I liked the digger best,' he smiled, remembering. I forced a smile back. I hadn't even seen the digger. I suppose I was too caught up looking at the hole it had made. But when you're only four, you don't see the world the way an adult does, our vision blinkered by our wants and our grief and all the things we can't hold onto. Children still see all the things we've taught ourselves not to see, all the things that shouldn't be there but are. All the things that don't fit.

‘Goodnight, buddy,' I said, rubbing small circles lightly on his back. ‘Have a good sleep. Love you.'

‘Love you too, Daddy.' He yawned, his eyes bright as buttons in the nightlight's soft glow.

Again, the words that should've followed, that had
always
followed, didn't come, because they never could; not again. I choked a little on the thought, swallowed it down, pressed my hand to my top lip. I had to be strong now, for my boy. There would be a time for breaking down later.

‘Daddy?'

‘Yes, darling?'

‘When will Mummy come and say night-night?'

Deep breath. ‘Mummy's gone away, remember? She can't come and say goodnight. But I'll send Nan in. She'll give you a kiss and a cuddle and then off to sleep, OK? Time for a big snoozle, McGoozle.'

‘Mummy has to say goodnight. I have bad dreams when she doesn't.'

‘Just try, OK?' I rubbed his back again, perhaps a little harder than I needed to. ‘For me? Think about the digger.'

‘The one they used to dig the hole for Mummy?'

Yet there is so very much they see, our precious little ones, their perception so sharp, so unfettered, so terribly honest and brutally innocent
.

‘Goodnight, buddy.'

‘Tell Nan to say “Where's Adam gone?”' He burrowed under the covers to hide.

I slipped from the room, maintaining my composure for the moment, at least. I eased open the lounge door, saw that Margo had assumed her usual babysitting perch – sitting on the edge of the couch, knitting in hand, television in the corner turned on and muted, the Scotch on the table with a couple of glasses beside it, one half full, the other empty. She spared me a hawkish glance over her spectacles. It reminded me of how every time I looked at her, with her drooping jowls and caustic sunken eyes and the broken veins that crawled down her nose, I'd wonder if that was what I had to look forward to. Heaven knew Ellena had been able to knock it back like her mother could when she wanted to, just like she could turn that same withering gaze on me when she felt the need. But Ellena wasn't her mother. She had been all I had apart from Adam, and now she was gone.

I crossed to the coffee table, sloshed a dram from the bottle into the spare glass – an uncharacteristic gesture of solidarity on my mother-in-law's part, bringing out a glass for me, but I was willing to take it – and fumbled for my cigarettes. ‘Nan,' I said, as rote demanded, ‘Where's Adam gone?' I took a swig, the liquor raw on my throat, yet even its burning would not warm the cold inside me tonight. ‘I'm going outside for a smoke.'

I didn't wait for Margo to reply, just crossed to the French door and stepped out while she counted off the row on her knitting needle. Outside, under the clear corrugated plastic, I walked down the deck and stared through the quiet drizzle that obscured the hard lines of the cruel world beyond, taking some small comfort in the shifting orange light spilling around the edges of Adam's curtains, his rotating nightlight casting the ghosts of dinosaurs in pyjamas across his ceiling. His window was just near the edge of the veranda, and it felt good, for a few minutes, to be all alone and yet not far from my son, the only light in my rainy night.

I sipped my Scotch, inhaled smoke and night mists, and listened to the soft rise and fall of voices beyond Adam's window. I wondered how I was going to cope raising the boy all alone, with only Margo's dubious support to lean on. People did it, didn't they? There was such a thing as a solo dad, I was sure. I guess that's what I was, now. For all that Ellena could be hard work sometimes, this was not something I had ever wanted to be. But that decision hadn't been mine to make, and the fact left me feeling powerless in ways I had never known. She had promised, even in her darkest moments, that she would never leave me, and I had believed her. She had promised that no matter what happened, no matter how bad it got, she would always be with me. I had clung to that promise like a rat clings to a log in a flood, constantly rolling back into the water and scrabbling higher to keep from drowning; yet the log just keeps rolling.