Fat Girl in a Strange Land (17 page)

“Take your time.” Tol followed my gaze. “If he needs something I can get it.”

I nodded, but I’d already finished. Pale sauce on the plate in front of me, no memory of what it had contained. Whatever it had been was heavy inside me like ballast. As soon as I thought that, the panic that comes from nowhere reared up and drove me back to the bedroom. I took Davy with me, stood in the doorway staring at the painting, feeling the darkness within me rise. There was a strange shadow on the wall: the painting bulged oddly at one corner.

“Tol…”

He was in the corridor before I’d closed my mouth. “Are you alright?”

I turned back to the painting; it was flat, the shadow gone. “Yes… fine…” I swallowed uncomfortably, tried to trace some sort of line between imagination and reality. Tol stood in the doorway to the kitchen, watching me, waiting for me to make sense, to come back. “Sorry,” I said.

Tired from getting up for dinner, from sitting in a chair, I was almost asleep when a thin, grey arm reached out of the painting and something pulled itself into the room. It wasn’t really there, I knew that so I didn’t let it worry me. My dreams had been so strange since Davy was born that a spindly twig creature crawling onto the ceiling was a pretty mild manifestation of whatever was happening in my head. Reacting would prove I was mad, that I couldn’t tell reality from illusion.

The creature that wasn’t really there had ears like a story book elf and a flat, cat-like face with hooded yellow eyes. Its fingers and toes were very long, its whole body was grey and hairless. It hung from the ceiling above my bed, its face turned towards mine. A reflection in a bad fairground mirror; the opposite of heavy, earthbound me.

I drifted in and out of reality and more creatures emerged. Their long, thin limbs criss-crossed on the ceiling above me, their flat faces turned to me. They were humming.

We lay in contentment all afternoon, and when Davy started making snuffling noises and trying to eat his fists I diagnosed without help that he was hungry, and even managed to feed him without breaking anything. When I came back into the bedroom, the creatures were sliding themselves, one by one, back into the painting.

“Thank you,” I said, as if they were real.

The last one blinked its heavy eyes at me, and its mouth curved. Then the painting was just a painting, and the humming was gone as well.

Tol was not pleased to hear about the grey creatures. “Laura, seeing things isn’t good.” He sat on the bed and took my hand. “Baby, I don’t want to scare you. If you start wanting to hurt Davy you’ll tell me, won’t you?”

I stared at the painting, willing them to come back so Tol could see. Knowing they wouldn’t. It felt as if I’d lost myself and him; I’d gone so far from normal life that there was no way back.

He rubbed his thumb up and down, up and down the palm of my hand, frowning.

It was dark. Tol was at work. I lay and listened to the humming; Davy’s hot little body was pressed against my side. We were both calm; it was wonderful. The flat grey faces looked down at us. Peace couldn’t last forever, though, not with Davy. He wriggled and opened his mouth, then he screamed.

With my newly found competence, I took him to the kitchen, warmed a bottle. He spat the milk over me, his eyes screwing up with rage. Sticky with milk I took him back into the bedroom, hoping the humming would calm him. He lay on the bed, pulled his legs up, and screamed and screamed. I picked him up again, but he was flailing against me; his head smashed into my lip.

“Ow!” I dropped him on the bed, closed my eyes. He screamed even louder.

I didn’t know what to do. My lip was swelling. Where was Tol?

I left Davy on the bed, covered my ears with my hands. He was turning red, his eyes screwed up, his mouth wide. The screaming drilled right through me.

I wanted to walk away but I couldn’t. I was stuck. I didn’t know how to stop it.

More and more grey things were creeping out of the painting. The humming rose in volume until it was competing with Davy for space in my head. It was as if they were drawn by Davy’s distress, by my helpless fury. When I looked up, they were layered on the ceiling, hanging from each other. The lowest was inches from my face.

Davy screamed.

I picked him up.

He screamed.

I put him down.

He screamed and screamed.

I went and stood in the hallway taking deep breaths. I closed the door.

Through the door, I heard him screaming. I couldn’t stay outside. I went back into the bedroom. I was overwhelmed with the weird certainty that the grey things were feeding on us, sucking in our misery. They seemed to be growing more solid, brighter.

He screamed and screamed. Nothing stopped it. Frustrated rage ran down into my fingers, tightened my neck. My breath came fast and shallow.

“Stop it.
Stop it!
” I yelled, holding myself, my fury, at the other side of the room. I was so angry I didn’t trust myself near him. Something shifted above me and I was looking straight into the eyes of the lowest flat-faced thing. It smiled.

“If you think it’s funny, you have him,” I snapped. There was a wild scurrying, a tangling of limbs on the ceiling, scuttling down the wall, flowing over the floor; my vision filled with grey bodies, yellow eyes. When I could see again, Davy had gone.

The room was bright and quiet and empty. Davy wasn’t there. I drew a deep breath in the silence. For a moment I wondered if he was with Tol, if I’d just woken from a weird dream. But I knew I hadn’t. I knew, really.

I put my hand against the corner of the painting, against the spooky grey lines, and I pushed. My hand flattened against the paper. It was just paper. There was no way through.

Davy had gone. He’d gone. And I realised — suddenly, unbearably — that the love I’d wanted to feel was nothing compared to what I did feel. I needed him. Without him, I was hollow and aching and pointless.

The scream built uncontrollably, burst out of me like it would split me open — I couldn’t breathe anymore — I couldn’t think. I pulled my hair — the sharp pain did nothing — not
enough
— so I banged my head against the wall. I didn’t have enough breath for the scream — it whined out of me, weak and breathless — it needed to be louder — it needed to be
heard
then someone would come, someone would help. Everything was focused on the agonising, breathless emptiness right in the core of me. I was all pain and horror and loss.

Screaming still, I grabbed the painting and this time my hands went straight through and I was scrambling after them, too frantic to think, not caring that I was wearing only an old night shirt damp with milk. I clambered through into the malevolent grey world, and the bedroom behind me vanished with a soft
pop
.

All around me was grey. Everything was cold, muffled silence, as if nothing had ever breathed here, as if nothing had ever lived. My gulping sobs were swallowed unnervingly by the air. I stopped sobbing.

The tree-things were not trees, but strands of something soft and woolly. They crossed all about me, hemming me in. Above, they were sparser, an almost-tunnel, reaching upwards towards pale light. It seemed the only way to go, so I took hold of a strand and pulled myself up. Under my weight, though, it gave and broke and the two ends drifted from my hands. I reached for another and tried again, but the strands were not strong enough to support me.

I was too big for the place, too heavy. I was the opposite of the grey creatures, and it was their home.

But they’d got Davy.

I twisted the strands together, tried my weight on two, three at once. They stuck together — I hoped they wouldn’t unravel as soon as I took my hands away. When I put my weight on them, they sagged alarmingly, but held. I started to climb, slowly and carefully, putting my feet where my hands had been, twisting more strands, pulling myself upwards. At each step I stopped to twist fibres together, checking before I trusted my weight to them. I had to be careful or I’d fall. My weight pulled me downwards towards the ground further and further away.

I stopped looking down.

The further I climbed, the colder it got. My naked skin goosebumped and my clammy nightshirt stuck to my chest. Nothing existed except grey strands, misting away into the distance on either side. It was like being wrapped in sheep’s wool, still oily from the sheep. No one was there; there was no sign that anyone else had ever been there. But I had no other ideas. I kept climbing because it was the only thing I could think of.

My hands were sticky with oil; the wool started to catch between my fingers. I stopped, rubbed one hand down my front, and I noticed a tunnel to the side. It led off into the grey distance. How many others had I missed? I hung, swaying on the strands, panic rising in my throat. Above me I saw other tunnels, hundreds, leading from mine. Davy could be anywhere. They could have taken him anywhere.

My laboured breath groaned in the muffled air. My arms ached with climbing. I choked back tears: I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t ever go home. Everyone would think I was mad. They’d think I’d done something to Davy. Even Tol would, because there was no other explanation. And the worst thing was, I had: I’d told the creatures to take him.

But none of that mattered, really. It was simple: I couldn’t go back without Davy. There was no point. Knowing that made me strangely, back-to-front glad, because I did need my baby. I wasn’t the blank failure at motherhood I’d thought I was.

But my arms hurt so much, and my breath wheezed in my chest. I was tired and I was sore. Even when I’d been little and skinny — the way I’d been when I met Tol — I couldn’t have climbed in there for long. Even when I hadn’t been heaving an extra four stone of chocolate and flab and helplessness.

Then I heard… something.

Was that Davy screaming?

I closed my eyes, stifled sudden laughter. Who’d have thought I’d ever be grateful for Davy’s screaming?

But I was, I was, I was. I climbed on, more quickly, following the screams. It was the strangest experience, as if the force of his yelling was pulling me onwards.

I climbed too quickly. Turning from the upwards tunnel to one of the sides, my hand slipped. I tore through the strands I was holding. The sudden jerk of weight on my other hand ripped the twined strands there. My feet slipped. There was a sickening jolt, and I was falling.

The strands grabbed at me as I fell through them; soft, treacherously weak. It was like falling through cloud. Davy’s screams got fainter. I stretched my arms and legs out, praying frantically. Strands wrapped around my limbs, held me for an instant, tore. The next layer held me a little longer and then I was hanging in a web of grey fibres, arms and legs outstretched, staring upwards at the fluttering edges of the strands I’d fallen through. When I tried to move, I couldn’t.

Strands were wrapped around my arms and legs; I was held like a fly in a web. I glanced around, half wondering if somewhere behind me, somewhere I couldn’t see, there was a spider — the sort of monster spider that would live in a web like this. But there was nothing, nothing moved. All I could hear was Davy, still screaming, the pitch rising, frantic.

What were they doing to him?

My arms and legs were hopelessly tangled and heavy. I couldn’t pull myself away. Strand stuck to strand, as if the force of my landing had bound them together. My head was free, though; I lifted it, turned to the side, tried to chew through the strands I could reach. I got a mouthful of oily wool, bitter and sticky. Where my tongue touched the fibres, they shrank like grey candy floss. My mouth watered, sour saliva filled the back of my throat. I turned to spit it out and my shoulder pulled free of the web, uncovered by the shrinking wool. A wave of hope flooded through me. I didn’t spit. I turned to the other side, licked the wool on my shoulder, felt it dampen, sinking away, as acid flooded my mouth again. Against the background of Davy screaming, I worked my way free. Fibres that wouldn’t melt stuck to my lips, prickled against my tongue.

I was sticky and damp and my mouth hurt, but at last I could pull my legs out of the web. Davy’s screams pulled me onwards. I reached up and took three strands, twisted them together and pulled. I heaved my body upward, testing and careful and all the time aiming for the sound of my son’s cries.

Hand over hand, twist and pull, twist and pull. Shuffle feet, and climb. I was covered in grey fibres, itchy and awful. I didn’t stop, I only twisted and pulled and moved through the strange web world. Davy’s screams were getting louder, closer. The burning in my arms and the ache in my back didn’t matter — couldn’t matter — because I was moving towards him.

When I reached him it was very sudden: abruptly, he was in front of me. I was shocked by how colourful he was — how bright in the grey world. His body was cradled in the wool, his little blue sleep suit with the bear on the front was sticky with fibres and he was red-faced and howling.

“Oh, love,” I said. My voice seemed to vanish almost as soon as it left my mouth. “I’m here.” He stopped screaming, fixed his eyes on mine. I reached for him with one arm, balancing unsteadily. The wool around him shifted, turned. He was surrounded by the thin grey creatures — they were woven into the strands around him. I couldn’t reach him. He screamed again, his eyes on me.

Ours,
something whispered hoarsely, and I couldn’t tell if it was speaking inside my head or not.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I replied, muffled and angry. “He’s mine. I’m taking him.”

They shifted around him, their stick-like limbs obscured his body, but I could still see his face, his eyes on me. It’d been a long time since I’d spoken with any authority, but I’d used to be good at it. I frowned and my voice deepened.

“Get away from my child. I am taking him home.”

There was hissing.
Ours, ours, ours…
round and round inside my head; they slithered around him, sinuous and untrustworthy as cats, as snakes, as anything boneless and shadowy.

I’d had enough. I reached for him through the barrier of arms and legs. They were tough but I was stronger.