Before You Sleep (3 page)

My chest was hurting and my eyes were stinging with sweat. Pickering was too far ahead for me to catch him up. I could hear his feet banging away on loose floorboards, way off in the darkness, and I didn’t think I could run any further. So I nodded at the girl. She stood aside and opened the door wider. The bottom of her black dress swept through the dust. ‘Quickly,’ she said with an excited smile, and then looked down the corridor, to see if anything was coming. ‘Most of them are blind, but they can hear things.’

I moved through the doorway. Brushed past her and smelled something gone bad. It put a picture in my head of the dead cat, squashed flat in the woods, that I found one time on a hot day. But over that smell was something like the bottom of my granny’s old wardrobe, with the one broken door and little iron keys in the locks that don’t work.

Softly, the little girl closed the door behind us, and walked off across the wooden floor with her head held high, like a ‘little Madam’, my dad would have said. Light was getting into this room from some red and green windows up near the high ceiling. Two big chains were hanging down and holding lights with no bulbs, and there was a stage at one end, with a heavy green curtain pulled across the front. Footlights stuck up at the front of the stage. It must have been a ballroom once.

Looking for a way out, behind me, to the side, up ahead, everywhere, I followed the little girl in the black bonnet to the stage, and went up the stairs at the side. She disappeared through the curtains without making a sound, and I followed because I could think of nowhere else to go and I wanted a friend. But the long curtains smelled so bad around my face that I put a hand over my mouth.

She asked me for my name and where I lived, and I told her like I was talking to a teacher who’d just caught me doing something wrong. I even gave her my house number. ‘We didn’t mean to trespass,’ I also said. ‘We never stole nothing.’

She cocked her head to one side and frowned like she was trying to remember something. Then she smiled and said, ‘All of these are mine. I found them.’ She drew my attention to the dolls on the floor; little shapes of people that I couldn’t see properly in the dark. She sat down among them and started to pick them up one at a time, to show me. But I was too nervous to pay much attention and I didn’t like the look of the cloth animal with its fur worn to the grubby material. It had stitched up eyes and no ears; the arms and legs were too long for its body too, and I didn’t like the way the dirty head was stiff and upright like it was watching me.

Behind us, the rest of the stage was in darkness, with only the faint glow of a white wall in the distance. Peering from the stage at the boarded-up windows along the right side of the dancefloor, I could see some bright daylight around the edge of two big hardboard sheets, nailed over patio doors. There was a draught coming through the gaps too. Must have been a place where someone got in before.

‘I got to go,’ I said to the girl behind me, who was whispering to her toys. And I was about to step through the curtains and head for the daylight when I heard the rushing of a crowd in the corridor that me and Pickering had just run through; feet shuffling, canes tapping, wheels squeaking and two hooting sounds. It all seemed to go on for ages; a long parade I didn’t want to see.

As the crowd rushed past the ballroom, the main door clicked open and something glided inside. I pulled back from the curtains and held my breath while the little girl kept mumbling to the nasty toys. I wanted to cover my ears. A crazy part of me wanted it all to end; wanted me to step out from behind the curtains and offer myself to the tall figure down there on the dancefloor. Holding the tatty parasol over its head, it spun around quickly like it was moving on tiny, silent wheels under its long musty skirts, while sniffing at the air for me. Under the white net attached to the brim of the rotten hat and tucked into the high collars of the dress, I saw a bit of face that looked like the skin on a rice pudding. I would have screamed but there was no air inside me.

I looked over to where the little girl had been sitting. She had gone, but something was moving on the floor. Squirming. I blinked my eyes fast, and for a moment, it looked like all of her toys were trembling. But when I squinted at the Golly, with the bits of curly white hair on its head, the doll lay perfectly still where she had dropped it. The little girl may have hidden me, but I was glad that she had gone.

Way off in the stifling distance of the big house, I then heard a scream; a cry full of all the panic and terror and woe in the whole world. The figure with the umbrella spun around on the dancefloor and then rushed out of the ballroom towards the sound.

I slipped out from behind the curtains. A busy chattering sound came from the distance. It got louder until it echoed through the corridor, and the ballroom, and almost covered the sounds of the wailing boy. His cries were swirling round and round, bouncing off walls and closed doors, like he was running far off inside the house, and in a circle that he couldn’t get out of.

I crept down the stairs at the side of the stage and ran to the long strip of burning sunlight that I could see shining through one side of the patio doors. I pulled at the big rectangle of wood until it splintered and revealed broken glass in a door-frame and lots of thick grass outside.

For the first time since I’d seen the old woman, scratching about the front entrance, I truly believed that I could escape. I imagined myself climbing through the gap that I was making, and running down the hill to the gate, while
they
were all busy inside with the crying boy. But just as my breathing went all quick and shaky with the glee of escape, I heard a
whump
sound on the floor behind me, like something had just dropped to the floor from the stage. Teeny vibrations tickled the soles of my feet. Then I heard something coming across the floor toward me, with a shuffle, like a body was dragging itself real quick.

I couldn’t bear to look behind and see another one close up, so I snatched at the board and I pulled with all my strength at the bit not nailed down. The whole thing bent and made a gap. Sideways, I squeezed a leg, hip, arm and a shoulder out. My head was suddenly bathed in warm sunlight and fresh air.

One of
them
must have reached out right then, and grabbed my left arm under the shoulder at the moment I had made it outside. The fingers and thumb were so cold that they burned my skin. And even though my face was in daylight, everything went dark in my eyes except for the little white flashes that you get when you stand up too fast.

I wanted to be sick. I tried to pull away, but one side of my body was all slow and heavy and full of pins and needles. I let go of the hardboard sheet and it slapped shut like a mouse trap. Behind my head, I heard a sound like celery snapping and something shrieked into my ear, which made me go deafish for a week.

Sitting down in the grass outside, I was sick down my jumper. Mucus and bits of spaghetti hoops that looked all white and smelled real bad. I looked back at the place that I had climbed through and my bleary eyes saw an arm that was mostly bone, stuck between the wood and door-frame. I made myself roll away and then get to my knees on the grass that was flattened down.

Moving around the outside of the house, back toward the front of the building and the path that would take me down to the gate, I wondered if I’d bashed my left side. The shoulder and hip had stopped tingling but were achy and cold and stiff. I found it hard to move and wondered if that was what broken bones felt like. My skin was wet with sweat too, and I was shivery and cold. I just wanted to lie down in the long grass. Twice I stopped to be sick. Only spit came out with burping sounds.

Near the front of the house, I got down on my good side and I started to crawl, real slow, through the long grass, down the hill, making sure that the path was on my left, so that I didn’t get lost in the meadow. I only took one look back at the house and will wish for ever that I never did.

One side of the front door was still open from where we went in. And I could see a crowd in the doorway, all bustling in the sunlight that fell on their raggedy clothes. They were making a hooting sound and fighting over something; a small shape that looked dark and wet. It was all limp too and between the thin, snatching hands it came apart, piece by piece.

In my room, at the end of my bed, Nana Alice has closed her eyes. But she’s not sleeping. She’s just sitting quietly and rubbing her doll hand like she’s polishing treasure.

I
t never stops raining at the new house. When you are upstairs it sounds like hundreds of pebbles thrown by as many little hands onto the pointy roof. We can’t go outside to play so we stay indoors and amuse ourselves with the toys. They belong to Maho, but she is happy to share them with me. My parents never knew about Maho, but she is my best friend and she lives in the house too. Maho has been here a long time.

When Mama used to come upstairs to put clean clothes in my drawers, or Papa knocked on the door to tell me that dinner was ready, Maho would hide and wait in my room until I could play with the toys again. Maho sleeps in my bed too, every night. I wish I had hair like her. Maho’s hair is long and silky. When she puts her arms around me and hugs me, I am covered by her hair. Tucking itself under my arms and winding around my neck, her hair is so warm that I never need the blankets on my bed. I think her hair feels like black fur too, and like big curtains she pulls her hair across her face so all that I can see is her little square teeth. ‘How can you see through your hair, Maho?’ I once asked her. ‘It looks so funny.’ She just giggled. And with their teeny fingers the toys like to touch her hair too. They stand and sway on the bed and stroke it.

In the daytimes the toys never do much, but we still go looking for them in the empty rooms and in the secret places that Mama and Papa never knew about. When we find a toy sitting upright in a corner, or standing still after stopping dancing on those tiny fast feet, we talk to them. The toys just listen. They can hear everything you say. Sometimes they smile.

But at night the toys do most of the playing. They always have things to show us. New tricks and dances all around the bed. I’ll be fast asleep but their little hard fingers will touch my face. Cold breath will brush my ears as they say, ‘Hello. Hello,’ until I wake up. At first I was scared of the tiny figures on the bed, all climbing and tugging at the sheets, and I would run and get into bed with Mama and Papa. But Maho told me that the toys just want to be my friends and play. Maho says you don’t need a mama and papa when you have so many friends and I guess she is right. Parents don’t understand. Most of the time they think about other things. That’s why they weren’t needed for the playing.

Maho told me that when the other children who lived here grew up and left the house all of their toys stayed behind. And it’s an old house so there are lots of toys. Maho never left either. She never left her friends. Like I did when we moved out here. I told Maho my parents made me move. ‘See,’ she said. ‘Parents don’t understand about friends. About how much we love our friends, and how special secret places are to us. You can’t just leave them because papas get new jobs or are sick. It’s not fair. Who says things have to change and you have to go to new places when you’re happy where you are?’

I didn’t want to move here and I was scared of the new school. But since I made friends with Maho and the toys it isn’t so bad. I like it here now and I will never go to that school. Maho knows a way around that. She’ll show me soon and the toys will help.

There are so many toys. We find them everywhere: beneath the stairs and under the beds, in the bottom of trunks and behind the doors, up in the attic and looking through holes. You never know where they’re going to show up. Most of the time you have to wait for them to come to you. And sometimes you can only hear them moving about. Mama thought we had mice in the house and Papa put traps down. Maho was angry when she showed me the traps in the kitchen and in the cellar. Toys don’t eat coloured seeds, she said, pointing at the blue poisonous oats, but sometimes they dance too close to the snapping traps. Twice we had to rescue them before the morning. A dolly with a china face got one of her long arms stuck in a trap in the pantry. She was squealing and the thin arm covered in black hair had snapped. When we freed her, Maho picked her up and kissed her cold face. When she put the dolly down the dolly ran behind some bottles and we didn’t see her again for three nights. Then the old thing with the black face and whitish beard got his pinky tail all smashed in the trap by the mop and dustpan in the cellar. When we let him loose, he showed us teeth as thin as needles and then he crawled away.

Three nights back, when Mama and Papa were supposed to be sleeping, I know Papa saw a toy. There were plenty of them out that night, skipping mostly. The first of them came out of the fireplace. ‘Hello,’ a little voice said to me. I was only dozing because I was too excited about the playing, so I wound Maho’s silky hair off my face – it goes in my ears and up my nose too – and I sat up in bed. ‘Hello,’ I said to the little thing down on the rug. They don’t like lights, so you only see them properly when they get real close, but even in the shadows I knew I’d seen this one before. He was the one with the top hat and little suit. His shirt is white, but his face is all red and his eyes are black and shiny like marbles. He went round and round in a circle on skipping feet and in the room I could smell sneezes and old clothes. But Maho’s right: you get used to the smell of the toys.

She sat up beside me and said, ‘Hello.’

The toy stopped his dancing and said, ‘Hello.’

Then we heard the drum, but we couldn’t see the musician. He was in the room with us. Under the bed, I think, and playing his leather drum. He shines like the brown shoes that I once saw made from alligator and he creaks like old gloves when he moves. As usual, when he played the drum, the clown in the dirty blue and white pyjamas came out to dance also. All around the bed he went with his shabby arms thrown up towards the ceiling and his head flopping back. His mouth is all stitched up and his eyes are white and bobble on his cloth face.

I leaned over the bed to get a better look.

‘Best not to touch
him
,’ Maho whispered into my ear and her coldish breath made me shiver inside. ‘He’s very old. He once belonged to a boy whom he loved very much, but he was taken away from the boy by parents. So he climbed inside the boy’s mouth to fix the broken heart.’

I wanted to ask what happened to the boy, but Maho turned her head to the door so that I couldn’t see her face. ‘Your papa is coming.’ But I couldn’t hear a thing. I looked at her and frowned. ‘Listen,’ she said, and she took hold of my hands. Then I heard a floorboard moan. Papa was outside in the hallway, going to the toilet. Papa was not well at that time. That’s why we came here, so that he could rest his head. He never slept very much at night and we had to be careful when we played with the toys. ‘Some toys are out there,’ Maho whispered. ‘He might see them again.’ She was smiling through her hair when she said this, but I didn’t know why.

The man with the top hat skipped back inside the chimney. Under the bed the drumming stopped.

The next morning my family sat at the kitchen table. We never ate in the dining room because Mama couldn’t get rid of the smell. She tried to find cheerful music on the radio, but it sounded all fuzzy so she turned it off. Her mouth was very tight so I knew she was angry and worried too. She gave up on the radio and pointed at my bowl. ‘Eat up, Yuki,’ she said, then looked at the window. Rain smacked against the glass. Watching the water run down made me feel all cold inside.

Papa said nothing. He just looked at the table next to his bowl. His eyes were red and his chin was bristly. When he kissed me that morning I shouted out for him to stop. All night I’d been wrapped in soft black hair and his chin felt like it was covered in pins. And he still wasn’t looking any better, even though he didn’t have to go to work any more.

‘Taichi,’ Mama said. She was upset with him. Slowly, Papa lifted his head and looked at her.

‘Eat or it will go cold,’ Mama had said. She had fried the rice with eggs the way that he liked, with salmon on top that gets warm from the steam. Papa tried to smile but he was just too tired. He looked at me instead. ‘Finished?’ he asked.

As my spoon clunked in the empty bowl his eyelids flickered. I nodded.

‘You can go.’

I climbed down from my chair and ran into the hall.

‘Sit still for a while,’ Mama cried out. ‘Or you’ll be sick.’

I walked down the hall, then took my shoes off and sneaked back to the kitchen door that Mama closed behind me. My parents wanted to talk. First thing in the morning they would talk to each other, but they would stay in different rooms for the rest of the day. Papa would mostly sit in a chair and stare at nothing, while Mama kept busy with washing and cooking and cleaning. One day she was crying in the kitchen by the cookbooks, which made me cry too. She stopped when she saw me and said that she was ‘just being silly’. But at night I often heard Mama shouting at Papa. When this happened Maho always held me tighter and put her silky hair over my ears until I fell asleep.

‘What is it? Tell me, Taichi. I can’t help if you don’t tell me,’ Mama said in the kitchen that morning, and in a voice that was quiet but also sharp enough for me to hear through the door.

‘Nothing.’

‘It can’t be nothing. You haven’t slept again.’

‘It’s nothing. When it stops raining I’ll go out.’

A bowl hit the side of the sink. Mama then had a voice full of tears. ‘I can’t stand this any more. This isn’t working. It’s making you worse.’

‘Mai, please. I can’t . . . I can’t tell you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you would think I’m crazy.’

‘Crazy? You’re making yourself crazy. You’re making me crazy. This was a mistake. I knew it.’

‘Maybe. The house . . . I don’t know.’

A chair scraped against the floor. Mama must have sat down. Her voice went soft and I guessed that she was holding his hand.

‘Yuki.’ It was Maho calling me. Standing at the top of the stairs, she waved at me to join her. Because I wanted to hear what Papa was saying, I smiled at her but put a finger against my lips. Maho shook her head and her hair moved across her face to cover all of the white bits. ‘No. Come and play,’ she said. But I turned my head back to the kitchen because Papa was talking again.

‘I saw something again.’

‘What, Taichi? What did you see?’

His voice was all shaky. ‘I have to go to the doctor again. I’m going crazy.’

‘What? What did you see?’ Mama’s voice was going high and I could tell that she was trying not to cry again.

‘I . . . I went to the toilet. Last night. And it was there again.’

‘What, Taichi? What?’

‘Sitting on the window sill. I told myself that I was still dreaming. I stopped and I closed my eyes and made sure that I was awake. Look at the bruise on my arm where I pinched myself. Then I opened my eyes and it was still there. So I pretended that it wasn’t. That it was just a bad dream. I ignored it. But when I came out of the bathroom, it was still just sitting there. Watching me.’ In the kitchen they stopped talking, and all I could hear was the rain. Thousands of little drops hitting the wood and tiles and glass all around us.

‘You were dreaming,’ Mama said after a while. ‘It’s the medicine, Taichi. The side-effects.’

‘No. I stopped taking the medicine.’

‘What?’

‘Just for a while to see if
they
would go.’

‘They?’

‘Yuki. Yuki. Come and play. Come,’ Maho whispered from behind me. She was coming down the stairs on silent feet.

‘I don’t know,’ My Papa said. ‘A little thing . . . with long legs that hang over the window sill. And its face, Mai. I can’t sleep after I see its face.’

‘Yuki, look what I found. In a cupboard. Come and see,’ Maho said from behind me and reached out to take my hand. When I turned around to tell her to be quiet, I saw that her dolly eyes were wet. So I went up the stairs with her. I can’t stand to see Maho cry. ‘What’s wrong, Maho? Please don’t be sad.’

She led me into the empty room upstairs, at the end of the hall, and we sat on the wooden floor. In there it’s always cold. There is only one window. Water ran down the outside and made the trees in the garden all blurry. Maho’s head was bowed. Her hair fell over her white gown all the way down to her lap. We held hands. ‘Why are you crying, Maho?’

‘Your papa.’

‘He’s sick, Maho. But he’ll get better. He told me.’

She shook her head, then lifted it. Tears ran down from the one wet eye that I could see through her hair. ‘Your mama and papa want to leave. And I don’t want you to go. Not ever.’

‘I’ll never leave you, Maho.’ Now she was making me sad and I could taste the sea at the back of my throat.

She sniffed inside her hair. The rain was very loud on the roof and it sounded like it was raining inside the room. ‘You promise?’ she said.

I nodded. ‘I promise. You are my best friend, Maho.’

‘Your parents don’t understand the toys.’

‘I know.’

‘They just want to play. Your papa should sleep and let them play. If he finds out about me and the toys then he will take you away from us.’

‘No. Never.’ We hugged each other and Maho told me she loved me, and told me that the toys loved me. I kissed her silky hair and against my lips I felt her cold ear.

Downstairs, I heard the kitchen door open and then close. Maho took her arms away and uncurled her hair from around my neck. ‘Your mama wants you.’ Tears were still running down her white face.