The Spectral Book of Horror Stories (37 page)

Iris caught his free hand, “Now! Stop it! Both of you!”

“He was pinching him!”

“I don’t care what he was doing. You don’t kick someone. Is that clear?”

“But he was—”

“I don’t
care
! Is that
clear
?”

Kelvin scowled at his mother, eyebrows lowered, eyes black as coal. She was frightened by what she saw there—perhaps because she saw herself, her hatred of herself, or her husband’s— but just as quickly the moment was snapped in half.

“
Owww-ah!
” This time the cry came from Gareth Powell, who was rolling around, knees in the air, one hand pressed into his armpit, then shot to his feet, tears springing to his eyes as he hopped up and down. “He bit me! The pigging thing
bit
me!” The boy held out his finger and the scratch across it welled with a ruby pearl of blood. Acting automatically, Iris held it in her hand and the boy continued sobbing pitifully—it made her think of the little baby he once must’ve been rather than the superior little prig he was now. She hastily took out her handkerchief and started dabbing, but it kept on bleeding. Damn, it wasn’t just a scratch, it was a cut. A bloody deep one. How the
hell
had…?

She wrapped his finger in her hankie as she looked over at Kelvin, whose arms were wrapped round the guy, hugging it, rocking it slightly as if to comfort it after the unprovoked attack it had suffered at the hands of a stranger. Iris instantly saw that the safety pin that held the anorak in place over the guy’s chest was undone.

“It’s all right, love. It’s just a nick. Just a flesh wound, like they say in the pictures, eh? Nothing serious. It was just the safety pin caught you, that’s all, look…”

“It wasn’t!” Gareth bleated, snot dribbling from his nose, his eyes reddening slits. “I didn’t
touch
the safety pin! Wasn’t anywhere
near
it! Didn’t do
anything
!”

“All right, get upstairs you.” Iris pointed Kelvin to the stairs and he shambled away with hunched shoulders, the wobbly-legged torso trailing after him by one inelegant sausage arm, one flaccid glove.

Gareth said he wanted to go home, and kept saying it throughout the process of Iris putting an Elastoplast on his wound—which wasn’t that shocking, certainly not shocking enough for the hysteria it engendered. She then realised that Gareth wanted to go home not because he was hurting or in pain, but because he was terrified. He was terrified of staying there any longer, and the thing he was terrified of was upstairs.

#

Des walked in and asked what was going on. Iris said she was taking Gareth home, she’d explain when she got back, and she did.

“Hell,” he said, swilling a Scotch behind his teeth. He never drank spirits. Never drank at all, really. The bottles only came out at Christmas, and she’d never seen him tight. “This—this, whatever it is—attachment he’s got, don’t you think it’s embarrassing enough without advertising it? Seriously?”

“I just wanted…” She rubbed the back of her neck.

“Well, great. Well done. Tomorrow it’ll be all over the school. You know what children are like. He’ll be a laughing stock. None of the other kids will touch him with a barge pole.”

“It’s a phase,” she said, trying to convince herself.

“What if it isn’t, Iris? What if it doesn’t go away or get put right? What then?” He wanted his wife to answer but she didn’t. Couldn’t. “What do we do? Do we take him to a doctor?”

“No. I don’t know.” She held her head in her hands. “We just have to act like it’s normal.”

“It’s
not
normal though, is it, eh?” A distant fire engine whined. Bangs and splutters adorned the air, more plentiful now than even the night before. “
Is
it?”

#

At breakfast they sat in thorny silence over their plates as Kelvin chattered about how much blood was in the average human body, that the heart pumped it round and round, that’s why we had redness in our cheeks, and other organs did other things, like the kidneys that got rid of things the body didn’t need, but sometimes the things the body didn’t need stayed in the body and got worse.

“How did you find out that?” Iris asked wearily. “From school?”

“No,” said Kelvin with a mouthful of Frosties (
They’re Grrrrrreat!
). “
He
told me.”

The guy occupied one of the straight-backed dining chairs at the table, semi-deflated and lolling, its mask tilted, giving the illusion it was staring at the bowl of Coco Pops in front of it. Kelvin reached over and lifted a spoonful to its smiling slit of a mouth.

“For God’s sake…” Her husband left his seat.

“Quiet,” Iris said. “He’s only playing.”

“And I’m only on my way to work.” Des struggled into the arms of his gabardine mac. She followed him to the kitchen, stopped him opening the back door. “This has gone beyond a joke,” he whispered, fear and desperation as well as rage in his eyes. “That kid needs to see a bloody psychiatrist.” She let the door open wide for him to go.

The bowl of Coco Pops was empty when she returned.

“Don’t get upset,” Kelvin was saying to the guy, tugging its sleeve. “You’re one of the family. He loves you really. He just doesn’t know how to show it.”

The boy looked round at his mother. His lips twitched, but failed to resolve into a smile.

#

On the way back from shopping that day, Iris chose not to walk her usual route past the police bungalows and up the hill. Instead she decided to go the other way, up Graigwen Place, the way the bus went, then took the shortcut by foot round by the quarry. The bonfire had grown, and she wondered how, since nobody was in evidence. What made a person build a thing like this for enjoyment? Was it just children? Obviously not. Part of a fence had been added, as well as a broken ladder, and even a couple of doors—
doors!
—and a good number of large branches, of uneven lengths and thicknesses, some as hefty as telegraph poles, propped and criss-crossed, tepee fashion. She stood looking at it when a banger landed near her feet. It cracked, making her jump, then banged again two or three times, flitting around her before phutting out. She called out bitterly, telling someone they were stupid. Nobody replied, and she could hear only an aeroplane crossing the sky. She walked away rapidly. Whatever fool had done it was hiding, or was gone.

#

“God, what’s wrong, love?”

Kelvin stumbled past her, flailing arms, red cheeks wet. His school bag hit the floor. He started to climb the staircase on all fours, then collapsed with his face buried in crossed arms.

“What’s happened?” Iris went and placed the flat of her hand on his back, rubbing it in circles, feeling his tiny chest rising and falling in awful shudders—it almost made her well into tears herself. “Love? Tell me. Please. Tell your mam. She’ll make it better.”

He turned on her, viciously. “
How
? How will you make it
better
? You
can’t
!”

“Well tell me what it is, love, please. I can’t do anything if I don’t know, can I? Come downstairs and I’ll get you a nice glass of—”

“I don’t want a glass of
anything!
” His voice cracked, throat already raw and swollen. “I just want…” The sentence disintegrated into sobs, and Iris could do nothing but tear off her apron, lie there on the stairs on top of him and wrap her arms around him, tight, whether he wished her to or not, whether he struggled or not, and let him wail until he could speak. His little body shook in the embrace of her. She felt the warmth of him, the salt-streaming helplessness of him and tried to absorb him and rid him of it, but she could not. And the cruelty was he didn’t even want her, and pushed her off him, and clung to the banister rods instead, too much the man, not letting his mother see him cry, poor baby. Not wanting her. But
she
wanted. She wanted so much.

“They… they said it’s
tomorrow
…”

“What’s tomorrow, love?”

“Bonfire Night! November the fifth!” He was incensed at her ignorance. “The boys in school said I’ll have to burn him. I won’t have to burn him, will I?”

“What boys?”

“Gareth. Everybody!”

“You don’t want to listen to Gareth Powell…”

“It’s
true
though, isn’t it? The teacher said. We had a whole lesson about it. That’s when they started laughing at me!”

“Oh, sweetheart…” She ruffled his hair and kissed him through his pullover. “It’s November the fifth. It’s okay. It’s what everybody does. It’s a celebration…”

“Why?”

“Guy Fawkes was a man who stored up barrels of gunpowder in the cellars under Parliament and was waiting there to light the fuse, but he got caught.”

“But why do we have to
burn
him?”

“I don’t know. I suppose we have bonfires and fireworks to give thanks he didn’t succeed. Our politicians weren’t blown sky high—so we burn our own poor old Guy Fawkes instead.”

“Yes, but we don’t
have
to, do we? Why does he have to
die
? It’s not fair!”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s only a silly old bunch of clothes, love. He’s not a human being. He’s not alive.”

Kelvin turned and began screaming into her face. “
You
’re not alive!
He
is! I
know
he is—but you’re not! You don’t care about him! You don’t
love
him! But
I
do!”

With that he ran up to his bedroom, where she found him, face down in the pillow, next to the guy, which was lying on its back staring up at the ceiling, still bouncing very slightly from the weight that had just landed on the bed. To Iris it looked almost as if its head was moving from side to side. She sat on the bed next to her son and touched his body again. Couldn’t bear not doing.

“Kelvin. Kelvin, love…”

He turned his head the other way, facing the guy and not her.

“We don’t have to go to a bonfire,” she said. “We don’t have to go to a big firework display. Your dad can just light a few—”

“Stop it! Don’t
talk
about it!”

“What? Firework night?”

“Shut up! Don’t say those words! You’re upsetting him!” Kelvin threw one arm across the guy’s chest, tugging it closer to him and lowering his voice to a hush. “It’s all right. Don’t worry. I’m here. I know you’re scared but nobody’s going to hurt you. I won’t let them.”

“Kelvin, it’s November the fifth and…”

“
Don’t
! Don’t mention it again!” He glared at her. “How would you like it? To be stuck on a pile of sticks and set
fire
to? It’s horrible!” His head spun to the guy. “Nobody’s going to burn you, I promise.”

“Kelv, you have to burn him, lovely…”

“
Why
? Why should I? I don’t want to. I’m not going to! There’s no law against it. He’s mine! I’m going to keep him, just like he is. You can’t make me!”

A voice said, “Nobody’s going to make you do anything, son.”

Iris turned and saw her husband standing at the bedroom door.

#

She struck a match and lit up, grateful to have the house to herself again.
Almost
to herself. Herself except for…
it
.

Des had told Kelvin to get his football togs on, sharpish; they were going to be late for the match if he didn’t get his skates on. His voice had been uncharacteristically mellow, soft—not even rising to accuse his son of having forgotten the extra-curricular game. Iris’ first instinct had been to think something was wrong. She expected Kelvin to resist, say he didn’t want to go, but he didn’t. He sat up, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, probably not wanting his father to see the state he was in.
Come on. Shake a leg, buttie. You don’t want to let the rest of the team down. They’re waiting for you.
Kelvin had stripped to his underpants. She’d left the room, feeling redundant as Des helped him lace up his heavy, studded boots.
Atta boy…
Then she’d called out, wishing him good luck, then heard
‘Bye, mam!
Though it was not Kelvin who’d called back but her husband. A second later Kelvin’s face appeared round the sitting room door, but he had no need to voice his anxiety. She’d already anticipated it:

“I’ll look after him. You go and enjoy yourself.”

She’d have liked a kiss on the cheek but that hadn’t been forthcoming. She was a bad person now, in his eyes. She couldn’t help that. Just hoped he’d return in a better mood, and that they could have a
cwtch
watching telly like they used to. Wished that more than anything.

Now, smoking as she bent to poke a lacklustre fire into life, then pulling a guard in front of it, she wondered how much of the conversation upstairs Des had heard. She’d known what he was doing—he was clever, with his degree and everything, after all—distracting the boy with something physical to get his mind away from the damned guy for five minutes. That much was obvious. But what did he think of
her
? Did he think she was being panicky? Shrill? A bit mad? Had she said the right things? Hell, why was she frightened of what he thought?
She
wasn’t the problem after all, was she? And when her husband had opened and closed the front door he must’ve let the night air in, because she got that smell of sulphur again, rank and noxious in her throat.

From her chair Iris looked at the ceiling above her, picturing beyond the swirls of Artex her son’s bedroom and its twisted, cuckoo occupant.

I’ll look after him.

She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t go up there. Bugger that. She didn’t want to, and didn’t have to. She’d sit here and read her magazine by the fire and watch
Nationwide
and whatever else was on until they got home, and then it would be over with. They’d be a family again and she’d make supper on trays, or maybe Dad would get fish and chips from up the Graig, and that would be that.