Figures of Fear: An anthology (30 page)

‘
Now
let’s see who’s beautiful,’ she said. She picked up the small stainless-steel spoon that Mummy had given her for eating her strawberry yogurt. Then, with her thumb, she raised Zebedee’s sticky left eyelid, so that his eye was exposed, with its sunflower-yellow iris. He didn’t try to blink, so she assumed that he must be dead. She felt that it was a pity, in a way, that he was dead, because she would have liked him to be aware that she was taking back her beauty. He had stared at her. A cat may look at a queen, she thought, but that doesn’t mean that the queen won’t be angry for being looked at.

Very carefully, with the tip of her tongue clenched between her teeth, Fiona dug the tip of the yogurt spoon underneath Zebedee’s eyeball. The eyeball made a slight sucking sound as she lifted it free from its socket, but it wasn’t difficult to lever it out. Soon it was hanging on Zebedee’s cheek, staring sightlessly at his whiskers. Fiona picked up the scissors and cut the optic nerve, and then she carefully placed the eyeball on the tray next to her plate of sandwiches.

She took out the other eye the same way, and then she had both eyeballs side by side. She couldn’t help smiling because they were squinting, like cartoon eyes.

‘Fee-fee!’ called Mummy, from the kitchen. ‘Have you finished your lunch yet?’

‘Nearly!’ Fiona called back. She lifted Zebedee off her lap and stood up. Then she carried his lifeless body over to the side of the house, where the dustbins stood. He was surprisingly heavy, and his legs swung from side to side like a pendulum. She opened the lid of the dustbin and dropped Zebedee into it, on top of a black plastic bag.

She had half-closed the lid when there was a frantic rustling of plastic, and a scrabbling sound, and then, with a screech, Zebedee came jumping up the inside of the dustbin, blindly scratching at the sides in an attempt to climb out. He managed to get his front legs and his head over the rim of the dustbin, but the plastic was too slippery for him to get any purchase with his back legs.

Fiona slammed the dustbin lid down on his neck, and pressed down as hard as she could. Zebedee spat and hissed at her, his eyeless face contorted with fury and pain. She pressed down harder still, and at last she heard a snap as the vertebrae in his neck were dislocated. He stopped hissing, and when she lifted the lid up a little he dropped back heavily on to the plastic bag full of rubbish.

Serves you right, too
, thought Fiona.

She returned to the steps and sat down. She picked up one of Zebedee’s eyes and held it up, so that she could stare into it. It stared back at her, sightlessly, with a shred of optic nerve hanging from the back of it. In there, that’s where my beautiful face has been hiding. She hesitated for a moment, not because the eye disgusted her, but because she was so pleased that she had discovered how to get her beauty back, and it was a moment to savour.

She placed the eye on her tongue, and then she slowly closed her mouth. The eye felt like a grape, although it had a strange taste to it, oily and slightly musky. She waited a few seconds longer, and then she bit into it, so that it popped, and this time she could actually feel the small blob of optic fluid sliding down her throat.

She picked up the other eye, and bit into that, too. This eye had a longer string of connective tissue still attached to it, which stuck to the back of her throat and made her gag. For a few seconds she thought she was going to be sick, and lose all of the beauty which she had retrieved from Zebedee’s eyes, but then she took a mouthful of lemon barley water and managed to swallow it.

She finished the second half of her cheese-and-pickle sandwich, and then she ate her strawberry yogurt. The sun flickered through the leaves of the horse-chestnut trees at the end of the garden and made Fiona feel as if she were an actress in a film. She kept touching her face and she was sure that she could actually feel her beauty coming back to her, little by little.

She sang, in a high, reedy voice, ‘I feel pretty … oh so pretty! I feel pretty and witty and bright!’

From next door, she heard old Mrs Pickens calling out, ‘Zebedee! Zebedee! Where are you, you naughty cat?’

Later that afternoon, when Mummy was busy in the kitchen, Fiona crept upstairs again and went into Mummy’s bedroom. As quietly as she could, she turned the little key in the lock and opened the closet doors.

There she stood, in the mirror, the girl with the hideously distorted face. Fiona peered closely at her, so that their lumpy little noses almost touched, and she was sure that she wasn’t quite as ugly as she had looked before. So it
did
work, finding beholders and swallowing their eyeballs. But it wasn’t working as dramatically as she had hoped. She needed more – many more – and the bigger the eyeballs, the better.

A
person
, that’s what she needed. A person who had seen her.

But who had seen her? Daddy was dead and presumably buried, or cremated, and Mummy had never taken her out of the house. She had never been to school, because Mummy taught her everything. She had never been to a shop, although she knew what they were because Mummy had shown her pictures of them.

She thought she could remember a man and a woman looking at her. They had both been wearing white coats and said things which she hadn’t been able to understand. But that had been a very long time ago, and she had no idea who they were or where she could find them.

She carefully closed the closet doors and went back downstairs. Mummy was vacuuming in the sitting room so she was able to go through the kitchen and out on to the patio without Mummy seeing her.

She sat on the steps with Rapunzel and started to braid Rapunzel’s hair, in the same way that Mummy braided
her
hair. The sunlight was still flickering through the trees, but it was much lower now, and the shadows across the lawn were much longer. After she had pinned up Rapunzel’s braids, Fiona turned her around and looked at her blank, featureless face.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
. That’s what Mummy had said. And it was then that it occurred to her.
Mummy
. Apart from those two people in the white coats, Mummy was the only person who had seen her, all these years. There had been no other beholders, apart from the insects and the animals and the birds in the garden. Mummy was the only one.

Mummy came outside and sat beside her on the steps.

‘Phew!’ she said, with a smile, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. ‘That’s all
that
done!’

Fiona stared at Mummy’s eyes. Her irises were pale blue, like hers, but in the late-afternoon sunlight her pupils were only pinpricks. But now Fiona knew. Inside the blackness of Mummy’s eyes, that was where her beauty was hidden. It must be. Nothing else made sense.

‘What shall we do this evening?’ asked Mummy. ‘What about a film? We could watch
The Cat in the Hat
again, if you like.’

Fiona thought of that stringy shred of tissue sticking to her throat and shook her head. ‘I’ve gone off cats.’

Once she was in bed, she was allowed to read for half an hour, but this evening her storybook remained unopened, because she was too busy thinking.

Mummy had always done everything she could to protect her and take care of her, ever since she was little, so she was sure that Mummy would understand why she needed to take out her eyes. Mummy would be blinded, yes, but blind people could still go shopping, couldn’t they? And Fiona could help her around the house, cleaning and cooking. Fiona could roll out pastry and she knew how to make baked potatoes with grated cheese in them.

Perhaps they could get a guide dog, so long as the guide dog didn’t look at her, and become another beholder. A guide dog with no eyes wouldn’t be much good. The blind leading the blind!

The main problem would be keeping Mummy still, while she did it. And quiet, too. Zebedee had fought like a demon, even though he must have known that what was in his eyes belonged to her, and not to him.

At eight-thirty, Mummy came into her bedroom to tuck her in and give her a goodnight kiss.

‘Sleep well, darling. Pleasant dreams.’

‘Mummy?’ said Fiona, as Mummy switched off the light.

‘What is it, Fee-fee?’ she asked, standing in silhouette in the doorway.

‘If I did something terrible, but I did it because it made me happy, would you forgive me?’

‘What do you mean by “something terrible”?’

‘If I hurt somebody, really badly.’

‘I don’t know what you mean, darling. You don’t
know
anybody, do you, apart from me?’

Fiona was tempted to tell Mummy what she wanted to do. Perhaps Mummy would agree to gouge out her eyes voluntarily, so that Fiona could be beautiful again. She had already given up her whole life for her, what difference would it make if she gave up her sight?

But then Fiona thought: what if she says no? What if she finds the idea really horrifying, and refuses to do it? After that, she will always be on her guard, and I won’t be able to sneak into her bedroom in the middle of the night and take out her eyes, even though she doesn’t want me to.

‘I know, Mummy. I was just being silly.’

Mummy blew her a kiss. ‘You are a funny girl sometimes. You know that I’d forgive you anything, don’t you? Since Daddy left, you’re all I have.’

‘Daddy
left
? I thought Daddy died.’

‘That’s what I meant, darling. Since Daddy left us, and went to Heaven.’

‘Oh.’

Mummy closed the door, leaving Fiona lying in darkness, except for the illuminated green numbers on the digital clock beside her bed. For some reason, she thought that Mummy had sounded strangely unconvincing when she had said that Daddy had gone to Heaven. Perhaps he hadn’t gone to Heaven at all. Perhaps he had gone to Hell.

She waited for over an hour, trying hard to keep her eyes open. She could hear the television in the sitting room below her, as Mummy watched the news and then some comedy program with occasional bursts of studio laughter.

This is the last time she’ll ever be able to watch TV
, thought Fiona. But she can listen to it, can’t she? And she’ll still have the radio in the kitchen.

At last she heard Mummy switch off the television and come upstairs. Mummy closed her bedroom door behind her and a few minutes later Fiona heard the bathwater running. The water tank in the attic always made a rumbling sound like distant thunder, followed by a high-pitched whistle.

Fiona waited for another half-hour, and then she sat up. She went across to her door and opened it. Mummy had switched off her bedside lamp, and the landing was in darkness. She knew that Mummy almost always took a Nytol tablet before she went to bed, so it was likely that she was asleep already. Mummy said she took Nytol because she found it difficult to get to sleep, and even when she did she had nightmares about monsters.

Fiona closed her door and turned on her light. She went over to the window and unhooked the pink braided cords that held her curtains back during the day. Then she took a small blue plastic-bound dictionary off her bookshelf, and a brightly coloured cotton scarf from the top drawer of her chest of drawers.

Last of all, she picked up a dessertspoon which she had taken from the cutlery drawer in the kitchen, as well as the poultry scissors.

She switched off her light and opened her door again. She stood there for a few seconds so that her eyes could become accustomed to the darkness. She didn’t want to trip over something and wake Mummy up too soon.

In her head, over and over, she could hear Marni Nixon singing ‘
I feel pretty … oh so pretty! I feel pretty and witty and bright! And I pity any girl who isn’t me tonight!
’ She softly panted the words under her breath.

Very gently, she pulled down the handle of Mummy’s bedroom door, and then opened it. When it was only a few inches ajar, she stopped, and listened.

At first she couldn’t hear anything at all. But then Mummy turned over in bed, with a slippery rustle of her satin quilt, and muttered something that sounded like ‘
never
’. After that, Fiona could hear her breathing quite steadily, with a slight sticking noise in one of her nostrils.

Fiona crept across to Mummy’s bedside. By the light of her luminous clock, she could see that Mummy was lying on her back, with one arm raised on the pillow beside her, and that she was deeply asleep.

With great care, she lifted Mummy’s upraised arm a little further up the pillow, until Mummy’s hand was poking through the brass rails of her headboard. She took one of the curtain cords and tied Mummy’s wrist to the nearest rail, using the double knots that Mummy had taught her when she was showing her how to sew.

Next she walked around the bed and climbed up on to it so that she could gently tug Mummy’s other arm out from under the bedcovers, and tie that to the headboard, too.

Now she lifted Mummy’s head up from the pillow and slid the cotton scarf underneath it. Mummy stirred and said ‘
what?
’ and then ‘
never!
’ but still she didn’t open her eyes. However, Fiona knew that what she did next was certain to wake her up. She took three deep breaths to steady herself and made sure that she had the little dictionary ready in her left hand and the spoon and scissors waiting on the bedside table.

I feel pretty
, she breathed.
Oh so pretty
.

She parted Mummy’s lips and then she pried her teeth apart. Mummy almost immediately opened her eyes and jerked at the cords that were keeping her wrists tied to the headboard. Without hesitation, Fiona jammed the dictionary between her teeth, as far as it would go, and then she took hold of the two ends of the scarf and tied them quickly in a tight knot over Mummy’s mouth, so that she couldn’t push the dictionary out with her tongue.

Mummy’s eyes rolled in panic and bewilderment. She pulled at the cords around her wrists until the headboard rattled, and when she couldn’t free herself she began to twist and kick and bounce up and down on the bed – all the while grunting and mewling at Fiona to untie her.