The Evil Inside (13 page)

‘I know. I feel that way as well sometimes. Like it's all been one long, horrible nightmare.'

She turned around. ‘Well, why don't we just fucking
go
?'

Part of me agreed with her. But I also felt that if we ran back home now, that nothing would really ever be resolved between us.

I remembered reading a Zen parable once about a dog that keeps moving from place to place to get rid of his fleas. But wherever he goes, no matter how far he travels, the fleas are still always with him. I feared it would be like that with us: if we went back to Melbourne, we'd still be scratching the fleas.

I tried the soft approach. ‘Look, they say it takes a good year before you settle into a new city. Plus, we've had our ups and downs.'

‘Ups and downs?' Mia sat up. ‘
Ups and fucking downs
?!' she hissed through gritted teeth. Callum stirred, but then went back to his nursery rhyme dreams.

‘Guy, since we've arrived in New fucking York we've had hospitalized nannies, depression' – she flicked her thumb at herself, then back at me – ‘paranoia and, unless I'm an absolute idiot, regular fucking infidelity as well!' Her mouth was a machine gun. ‘Plus, we've been stuck here for months at the Bates Motel. So there really hasn't been much of a chance to “settle in”, now has there,
darling
?!'

‘No,' I admitted. ‘Maybe there hasn't.'

In the next room, I could hear the movie Mia had left on. Jimmy Stewart was in some kind of trouble and getting all tongue-tied. I knew exactly how he felt.

‘Callum and I are leaving at the end of the month,' Mia said. ‘Non-negotiable, Bucko. And at this stage, I don't really give a rat's arse whether you're on the plane or not.'

She was immoveable once she'd made up her mind. Hot-tempered like her mother but bull-stubborn like her father – the worst of both worlds. She turned over to face the wall. Conversation over.

I shrugged and went back out to the couch to share a Jack with Jimmy.

It was
Vertigo
– my favourite Hitchcock. The action was up to that crucial plot point two-thirds of the way through the film where Jimmy's dream woman, the brittle blonde Kim Novak, bungee jumps off the San Juan Batista Mission belltower. Without a rope.

But then, of course, the story goes on. Jimmy has a kind of a breakdown and, after a while, comes across another woman who looks very similar to the Kim Novak he's just lost – except this new one's a brunette and a lot less crazy. So he starts dating her (who wouldn't jump at a second chance at dating Kim Novak!), but then, gradually, he begins to wonder whether the doppelgänger is more than just a doppelgänger?

If it were me being deceived, I couldn't have cared less. I'd just lay my weary head on Kim 2's big, beautiful breasts and let her stroke all my troubles away.

Callum moaned loudly in his sleep from the bedroom: probably something about a farmer's wife.

I was very tired now. But not nearly tired enough to go to bed.

Last week of April and the coolcams TV spot was finally going into production. The budget had been approved, we'd selected a director and a production company, cast the talent and scouted the locations. Under normal circumstances, I would have been very excited about the project.

‘Should she be more like Catwoman or Batgirl – her costume?'

‘What's the difference?'

‘Here, look at these.' Bill held up some pictures.

‘Just so long as it's a sexy, slinky black latex jump suit. She's a jewel thief, not a superhero. We don't want any confusion.'

‘So what about the mask? We have to see that she's gorgeous from the get-go, right?'

‘Latex or black plastic. Whatever gives it that sexy, slick sheen. And bigger cut-outs for her eyes. The eyes are very important.'

‘Eye eye, Captain!' He paused with a mischievous smile. ‘But what about the MacGuffin?'

‘Oh don't start that again, for Christ's sake!'

Bill and I had been debating earlier whether a bag of stolen jewels constituted what Hitchcock would call a ‘MacGuffin': an arbitrary object that helped drive the plot of a film forward – like a secret dossier or a computer code or a treasure map – because of the way characters reacted to it but which was, in itself, actually unimportant to the overall story.

I'd done some research on famous MacGuffins in film history and printed out a list, which I now handed to him:

• The eponymous statuette in
  The Maltese Falcon
  (1941)
  
• The letters of transit in
  Casablanca
  (1942)
  
• The uranium in
  Notorious
  (1946)
  
• The case with glowing contents in
  Kiss Me Deadly
  (1955)
  
• The government secrets in
  North by Northwest
  (1959)
  
• The Ark of the Covenant in
  Raiders of the Lost Ark
  (1981)
  
• The contents of the briefcase in
  Pulp Fiction
  (1994)
  

‘Yes, yes, yes,' Bill raised his index finger. ‘But the main difference is that our chick is an actual jewel thief. So, in this case, I'd say the jewels are more of a MacSomethin' than a MacNothin', wouldn't you?'

Lucy walked past our office and gave me a greasy look. I'd become distant and uncommunicative since Mia's recent outburst. The reality was, I still liked Lucy a lot – too much, in fact. But since Mia's threatened departure, I was doing my best to lock Lucy out.

Bill looked at Lucy looking at me. ‘I guess that's the end of the New Algonquin Club for a while.'

‘Don't even joke.' I put my head in my hands. ‘I don't know if I can go on, Bill. My life is shit. All of it. I wish I'd never come to this fucking fucked-up country.'

‘Buddy, I really think it's time for you to go get some help. From someone who cares, I mean.'

I shrugged. ‘You mean a shrink? You sound just like bloody Golden Girl.' I looked towards Lucy's office.

‘There's no stigma, man. Especially in your case. My ex-wife will have me on the couch for decades. But I'd rather be on the couch than under the ground.'

‘Yes, but you are actually crazy.'

‘Welcome to Noo Yawk, Kangaroo Boy. Everybody's crazy!'

I didn't really have much time to dwell on the vicissitudes of my mental condition because, half an hour later, Mia called saying she would be dropping Callum into the office for a couple of hours while Susanna helped her ‘sort some important things out' downtown. Things like heading back to Australia, no doubt.

This time Bill was fully prepared for Callum's visit: he cleared all of his important work off his desk and placed it in a folder on top of the bookshelf, well out of Callum's reach.

‘Hey, little man – take a seat right here. Your Dad never does any work anyway, so you may as well have his chair.' Bill lifted Callum up and put a pad and some markers in front of him.

‘Do you like to
pretend
to write like your Dad or draw
brilliantly
like me?'

Callum picked up a pink marker and took the top off. The powerful solvent smell made him crinkle his nose.

‘I'm going to see Anthony about those changes to the document,' I told Bill. ‘Back in a tick.'

Anthony's PA told me he was out. And I was trying to stay away from Lucy's office. So I went into the kitchen to make a coffee. The old machine had now been replaced by a gleaming, bean-fuelled Lamborghini.

Terry the Terrible was sitting at the kitchen table with a pizzaman.com menu in front of him, no doubt making notes for an upcoming travesty pretending to be a brief.

I ignored him, made the coffee as quickly as I could and then went back to my office carrying two cups.

‘So what have you two been up to?' I put Bill's coffee on his layout pad.

Stephen Cummings was lamenting quietly in the background.

‘It's the darndest thing,' Bill said. He looked almost white.

‘What is?' Callum was clicking the mouse to Bill's Mac and making Super Mario leap tall buildings. Bill looked at the top of Callum's head then back up at me.

‘What is?' I asked him again.

‘It's just weird is all.' He then looked out at the big shiny needle of the Chrysler Building, piercing the clouds.

‘What is?'

He reached out for his coffee, but his hand was trembling a little. So he used both hands. ‘Oh really, it's probably nothing.'

I'd given up asking, so I just sat down and waited. I looked at him.

He finally spoke. ‘Well, you know that last little baby bird out there?' He pointed to the window.

Of course I did – we'd been watching the little bird family outside on the ledge for weeks now. Only one baby was left – the runt or whatever the ornithological equivalent of the smallest sibling was. The other three babies had all grown up and flown the coop. ‘Well, I pointed it out to Callum and just as we were looking at it' – he paused and put his cup back down because his hands were still shaking – ‘a big black bird much bigger than the mother swooped down, bit the little bird's head clean off, then flew off with it.'

I looked out the window and walked a little closer: the brown nest was now completely red. The baby bird was still convulsing in the middle of it, blood spurting out of the hole where its head had just been.

‘And then little Callum here—' Bill's voice trailed off and he licked his lips nervously.

A shiver sprinted up my spine. ‘What did Callum do?'

Bill gulped, then frowned as if he couldn't quite believe what he'd just experienced.

‘He said
Bye bye birdie
.' He snorted at the ridiculousness of what he was telling me. ‘Then he just giggled. Like it was a game or something.'

‘A game like Mario!' Callum squealed as the little Italian cyber-plumber jumped off a building into the great unknown, all the while keeping his glinting blue eyes fixed firmly on mine.

When Bill took Callum over the road to Café Europa for a hot chocolate (and to calm his own jangled nerves, no doubt), I did a quick mental recap. With the thing on the screen at Arcadia, the DeD alien picture, the Play-Doh sculpture and the sockets, it had been just me who'd borne witness to Callum's strange and disturbing behaviour. He never seemed to reveal his other more sinister self to Mia, Esmeralda or anyone else. But now it seemed I finally had another witness: Bill.

It seemed that the ‘other Callum' was finally coming out into the open.

Perhaps now the time for playing games was over.

Another bad day at Black Rock.

Black Rock is the wind-blown bayside suburb where I am incarcerated as a child.

I have wet my bed again the night before and my mother greets me at the back door as I arrive home from school.

The grey/golden sheets flutter accusingly on the line: traitorous, urinous.

‘Don't you think I already have enough to do with your bloody sister without you pissing your fucking pants almost every night?' she screams from the top of the back steps.

There's really no answer to this question. Not one I can ever think of anyway.

‘Take those off – they're probably all pissy, too,' she indicates my school shorts, ‘and go and stand on the washing chair.' A rickety broken old thing under the clothes line where she rests her basket as she trades wet clothes for dry.

My father takes up residence in this chair during the summer months – when he's home that is – to smoke cigarettes and drink beer as he watches my sister stomp on snails and pull the heads off the wild daisies we call a garden.

One of my mother's many unique qualities is the stentorian range of her voice. The kids who live either side of my house easily hear her reproach float over the fence as they, too, begin to arrive home for the day.

For afternoon entertainment, there's nothing they like better than to take up positions in the trees overlooking our yard, nibbling their freshly baked biscuits or shiny washed fruit. Sometimes they throw apple cores or stones or acorns at me. They always throw insults.

‘You can stand up there till the bloody sheets are dry,' my mother decrees, slamming the door shut like a slap. That always gets a big laugh from the Greek chorus either side.

And there I stand, centre stage, trying to pull my school shirt down over my underpants, my bare legs shivering whether it's windy or not.

Sometimes in the colder weather the sheets won't dry, of course, and I'll have to stand there till bedtime.

My father used to describe this peculiar punishment as ‘enjoying the wee breeze'. ‘Show some heart, Son,' he'd say when he'd arrive home and discover his son standing like a scrawny scarecrow in the back yard with his knees knocking together. Then he'd shake his head with disappointment, ‘Get out of the wee breeze and show some fucking heart.'

Perversely, this vain admonishment sometimes loosened my accursed bladder a second time. And as the hot yellow liquid ran down my legs, I would stare up into the heartless sky and pray for some kind deity to deliver me the organ I so sorely lacked.

‘Why do you think you're telling me this story, Guy?' Dr Blakely asked.

At the same time that coolcams was hotting up, and as a result of my recent conversations with Lucy and Bill, I'd selected another name off Susanna's shrink list. But this time the name was for me.

‘Because you asked me about my mother.'

Jesus – Psychotherapy 101! I wondered if she was going to ask me to draw a picture for her as well: ‘
Here's me and here's my big, bad mommy
.'

‘Yes, Guy, but you could have told me any number of stories about your mother. Why did you choose that particular one?'

How should I know? She was the professional – why couldn't she tell me?

Still, she was kinda cute in a prissy, well-groomed sort of way. Like Tony Soprano's shrink.

‘I suppose it seems sort of dramatic and memorable. I don't know – it's just stayed with me for some reason. Like a bad penny.'

I took a sip of water.

‘And how do you think having a mother like that has affected your relationship with other women? With Mia, for example?'

Wow! She didn't waste any time, this one. ‘Um, well … Mia's entirely different, of course. Or else I wouldn't have married her.'

I smiled. But she didn't smile back. She'd no doubt already heard all the stupid wife and mother jokes in the universe.

‘Different how?'

‘Well obviously Mia doesn't torture or beat me …' I paused. Mia had, in fact, hit me on a few occasions when her temper had got the better of her. With her fists flailing like a little ninja warrior, she'd once even given me a black eye. And I was sure she felt like beating the shit out of me lately.

Doctor Blakely raised her eyebrow like a drawbridge going up. ‘How about beating you up
emotionally
, then?'

I looked at my watch: fortunately there was only ten minutes to go.

‘Um, well I suppose we have had a rough time lately … with the lost baby and her um, you know,
attempt
. And Esmeralda's accident, of course. Mia's been a little temperamental. I suppose we both have.'

‘So how
has
Mia been treating you then?'

It took me a full thirty seconds to come up with ‘Hmm … A walking Finland springs to mind. She used to be Fiji.'

But Blakely didn't go for the national metaphors. She clicked her tongue. ‘Guy, I should say from the very beginning here that if we're going to make any real progress in these sessions, you're going to have to learn to trust me.'

She locked a strand of auburn hair around her ear and powered on. ‘Because if you're just going to keep meeting me with a wall of wordplay, jokes and sarcasm, then there is only so much we will ever be able to achieve together.'

I squirmed. I knew she was right, but it was hard for me to talk about my feelings. I'd never really done it before – even with Mia.

I tried again – just for her. ‘Um OK, sorry. Well then, I would say that Mia's been uncommunicative, cold … antagonistic, and even hostile sometimes.' I blew out a big lungful of air.

‘Good. Go on …'

That was
good
? I soldiered ahead. ‘A-and I think she blames me for a lot of stuff. I get the feeling she thinks that we would have been better off staying at home. In Australia.'

She leaned forward. ‘Perhaps if she is – and you may just be experiencing it that way – she's blaming you unfairly?'

I suddenly felt about Dr Blakely the way I felt about Kim Novak: warm, loving, needy.

I wanted to float over and nuzzle her.

‘Even more importantly, you seem to be blaming yourself for things you had absolutely no control over, Guy.'

It was love: pure, unadulterated, unbridled affection. I wanted to stay talking to her for ever. She was like a drug in a dress.

‘Um, Dr Blakely, there's something else I wanted to discuss with you. Some things about my son.'

‘I'm sure you do. And I'm sure the way
you
are at the moment will be having a major effect on how
he
is. So we need to get you healthy so you can be a good father for him.'

She stood up and reached for her invoice book. ‘But I'm afraid that'll have to wait till next week.'

*

I was looking after Callum again while Mia was out seeing a Broadway revival of
The Real Thing
with Susanna.

Presumably they'd be making some more ‘ Mia leaving Guy ' plans during the interval.

I wished I could have gone to the play myself and lapped up Stoppard's dazzling bon mots and dramatic tricks. But here I was, home alone with my son instead.

He was standing on the arm of ‘the Esmeralda Sofa' as I now thought of it.

‘Get down please, Callum.' I raised my glass at him, sloshing a little Jack Daniels on the carpet.

Without Esmeralda around to supervise me any more, I'd been ‘swimming from the top of the bottle to the bottom' rather more frequently these past few weeks. ‘Please, get down from there.'

But he was muttering something to himself. It sounded like ‘Daddy gotta pay Daddy gotta pay Daddy gotta pay Daddy gotta pay Daddy gotta pay.' He didn't seem to hear me.

He was holding the new curtain cord in one hand – we'd asked the Olcott for a new, more user-friendly curtain set-up – and his beloved Buzz Lightyear doll in the other. Buzz also had a cord: you pulled it and it made him say things like ‘Never tangle with a space ranger, my friend' or ‘I don't think we're in the Gamma Quadrant any more'.

‘Get down please, Callum.' I raised my voice.

Callum blinked. But it was Buzz who responded: ‘I could fly around this room with my eyes closed!'

Through the dim light from the ever-flickering art deco lamp, the doll's eyes suddenly glowed hot chartreuse with an evil black pit burning at their centre. The thing shot out of Callum's hand and rocketed across the room toward me, arms outstretched, just like in
Toy Story
.

Callum laughed to see Buzz fly. ‘
To infinity and beyond
!' he cried, echoing the doll's famous catchcry.

‘Shit!' It knocked the glass clear out of my hand, smashed into the wall behind me and fell to the floor. ‘Callum – stop it!' I screamed.

He climbed down off the sofa and looked up at me, frightened. His lower lip was trembling. ‘Don't yell me, Daddy. It's just Buzz flying …'

I turned around to where the doll had fallen. Its eyes still on fire, it looked like it was sizing me up for a second attack. Then it spoke again: ‘Look at my impressive wingspan.'

I stood between Callum and the evil toy, holding up my arms.

Then it twitched threateningly again: ‘
I have a laser and I will use it.
'

The fucking thing was alive.

‘Callum, quick! Run! Go down the alligator to Michael! L for lobby – go!'

There was an acrid, burning smell. The doll twitched even more violently, now knocking its head insanely against the wall like a mental patient in a padded room, and fixed me again with its hellfire stare. My first instinct was to run downstairs to Michael after Callum. Instead, I grabbed the coverlet off the couch and threw it over the now-berserk Space Ranger.

Knocking over the coffee table and everything on it, I scooped up the thrashing bundle and ran to the window. With one hand, I tried to lift the latch through the heavy new curtain. With the other, I tried to hold onto the crazed wild creature I'd just trapped.

I managed to part the curtain, but the window wouldn't budge. And I was afraid to let go of the snarling, writhing thing in my other hand. I looked around for something heavy to smash the glass with. A chair? Too heavy. A book? Too light.

I ran back towards the hall. I grabbed the fire extinguisher off its hook and slammed the bundle hard into the wall next to it for good measure.

I jumped up onto the Esmeralda Sofa and bounced down to the end. I swapped the bundle to my left hand and swung the extinguisher back and up behind me like a golfer preparing to tee off.

I heard a sniffle: it was Callum – still cowering in the far corner behind the table.

‘Don't yell me again, Daddy! I just sayed that you gotta play with me and throwed Buzz to you … But now he's not working proply.'

‘Go-ooo!!!' I screamed, my voice trailing him as he ran crying and jabbering down the hallway and out the front door.

But then, just as I was about to extinguish the window, the bundle stopped moving.

Trembling, I held it up to my ear and listened. Nothing.

Buzz suddenly seemed to have lost all his frenzied energy. I stepped down off the couch and gingerly placed the bundle on the carpet and stomped my foot on it. Not a peep.

I got down on my knees, raised the extinguisher high up above my head and brought it down on the inert outline of the doll as hard as I could. The metal container bounced back into my forehead, almost knocking me out. But the bundle still didn't move. Putting a palm to my throbbing head, I lifted the bottom of the bundle and tipped the thing out.

Buzz looked up at me with vacant, dead, cloth eyes. He was just a plain old doll again.

Malfunction or Mephistophelean?

I needed to be sure.

I raced to the kitchen and came back with the carving fork. I plunged it deep into the doll's chest as if it was some small astronaut vampire that required a stake through its solar heart to finish it off. I watched the fork swaying gently from side to side as I refilled my glass with shaking hands.

It was then I felt someone standing behind me. It was Callum – still shaking and whimpering – holding the hand of one of the Irish maids who serviced our apartment. She looked askance at the empty bottle of Jack, the scattered cushions and newspapers, the upturned coffee table, the skewered doll and the sweating, still-panting man on his knees keeping watch over it.

‘Mr Russell?' she even stopped chewing her gum for a moment. ‘What in the good lord's name is going on here?'