The Evil Inside (7 page)

Bill had a great antipathy for Stephen Cummings, my favourite Australian singer-songwriter. He called him ‘Mr Sob Stories'.

‘Really?'

‘Yeah – Jay's been a blast, actually. Much more fun than you. Which wouldn't be hard. Hey, do you even have to come back? I might have to have a quiet word to Anthony about that.'

I laughed. It was a sensation I'd missed lately.

Bill then filled me in on all the latest office gossip, starting with the fact that his beloved coffee machine in the Brave Face kitchen had broken down so he'd had to schlep over the road to Café Europa four times a day for his hits of ‘black heroin', as well as the slow but steady progress on the coolcams campaign.

Apparently the client had now rejected the initial TV concept we'd pitched – a kind of contemporary
Candid Camera
with people being caught doing crazy or embarrassing things through a webcam – as ‘not slick enough'. Since they'd got second-round funding, the kids were hyped-up, cashed-up and demanding we came up with something ‘super-cool'.

One of the new concepts Bill and Jay had been tossing around involved editing some pre-existing footage from Hitchcock's
Rear Window
and then cutting in some new scenes featuring a coolcam.

Their idea was that Jimmy Stewart's character – the wheelchair-bound Jeff Jeffries – has a coolcam installed in his apartment. He trains his camera on the apartment across the courtyard and witnesses the bad guy snuff out his wife via his computer screen, rather than through binoculars as per the original film.

But that was really as far as the boys had got. The idea needed a nice ironic twist that made the coolcam more of a hero but in a more subtle way. And maybe
Rear Window
was simply too dated to appeal to today's uber-sophisticated Generation Tech? Plus, what seven-figure sum would it cost to buy the rights from the copyright holder?

‘Yadda, yadda, yadda,' Bill said after I'd voiced my concerns. ‘We already know all that. And we agree. We just wanted to prove we've been working on something since you've been away. Plus, we've got some other stuff and it's not all puke. So don't worry your pretty little head about it. Anyway your friend and mine, Terry the Terrible (a Brave Face account man we didn't like), is pacing the halls, threatening us with another fortune cookie masquerading as a brief – I gotta go.' He hung up.

The work discussion about
Rear Window
had whetted my appetite for a good holiday movie to watch that night.

There was an interesting collection of old film noir videos neatly racked up in the shelves above the TV:
Kiss Me Deadly
;
Out of the Past
;
Criss Cross
;
Double Indemnity
;
The Lost Weekend
;
Night of the Hunter
.

I really wanted to see
Hunter
again. I pulled the box down. There was Robert Mitchum, insanely menacing in his black-rimmed hat with the word ‘love' ironically tattooed onto the finger joints of his right hand. (Ironic because we know he also has ‘hate' tattooed on the left hand we can't see.)

I took the video out of its case and went to load it into the slot.

But I suddenly discovered I couldn't.

My hand started to shake. I looked over towards the darkened kitchen: Esmeralda had taken Callum upstairs an hour ago and hadn't come back down. Mia hadn't surfaced all day.

The thing was – I was now simply too fucking frightened to watch the TV by myself.

Bill had told me not to worry my pretty little head. But with what I'd seen – or thought I'd seen – on the screen yesterday with Callum, that was easier said than done.

I put the video back in the rack. The room suddenly felt very cold, despite the low hum and crackle of the stove. I walked over to the back door and pulled Anthony's big greatcoat off the hook and wrapped it round me. Then I went back to my new favourite chair next to the bookcase and introduced Jack London to Jack Daniels.

*

Anthony didn't just collect old noir videos – he had also amassed an impressive rack of local wines, collected from the many boutique wineries on the North Fork. Just before dinner on Friday night, I pulled out a '96 Pindar Cab Franc and hunted for a corkscrew.

‘Chicken
mole
,' Esmeralda nodded to herself, licking the wooden spoon. ‘Maybe not as good as
pozole
, but still pretty yummy.'

‘Smells like it,' I said. I felt a bit calmer tonight.

‘Is Mia eating with us?' she asked.

Mia had spent most of the day in her room again. Callum had gone in briefly and she'd read him a story. But I'd been reading more Jack London and hadn't seen her all day so I really didn't know her dinner plans. ‘I'll go and find out,' I told our cook and nanny.

I tapped lightly on the bedroom door. ‘Room service.'

Mia looked up groggily. ‘Hi,' she murmured. She was still in her pyjamas. Her bedside lamp was on. Her book lay across her chest.
No Logo
by Naomi Klein. A
Vanity Fair
, with Madonna cuddling Rupert Everett on the cover, was also keeping her company on the side table.

‘Hi. You hungry?'

‘No. Esmeralda brought me a snack at lunchtime. I think the medication has killed my appetite.'

‘You OK?'

‘I don't know,' she sniffed, ‘I really don't know, Guy. I just want to sleep for ever and then wake up and find that it's all just been a horrible dream.'

The doctor who'd examined her at Mount Sinai had warned me that she wouldn't be herself for a while. He told me that the only thing I could do – that anyone could do – was to ‘be there' for her. Whatever that meant.

‘Sleeping's good.' I said. Actually, I knew that excessive sleeping wasn't good at all – it was a sign of depression. But it had only been a few days since Mia had tried to put herself to sleep permanently, so I decided to cut her some slack. Let her get it out of her system.

‘Sleeping may be good but nightmares aren't.' She rubbed her eyes. ‘I had that awful dream about Callum falling again.'

‘Well, don't worry. He's downstairs right now eating Esmeralda's Mexican chicken.' I sat on the edge of the bed, almost on Ms Klein.

‘And I haven't told you yet … but the night before I—'

Turned the gas on
. I knew what she meant so I just nodded.

‘I had
another
dream, a much worse one. And that morning, when I woke up, I just couldn't stop thinking about it.'

I nodded.

‘It was unbearable because it had felt so real. I couldn't concentrate on anything – I thought I was going crazy. So I shipped Callum off to Susanna's – left him with Estella – and bought a bottle of wine from Fairway.'

I wasn't sure I wanted to hear what was coming next, but I nodded again anyway.

Mia's pupils dilated with the retelling. ‘I dreamed I was in labour and it was painful beyond belief. It was so bad, it made normal labour feel like a nice massage.

‘There was no doctor there or anything, but Callum was asleep on a chair in the corner, which was strange given the amount of noise I was making. Anyway, I had to keep pushing and pushing for days and days and days and I was screaming in agony and then finally this horrible adult-sized old woman slid out of me, all covered in blood and slime. It was just awful!'

Her eyes were wide and frantic.

‘The woman had awful bright-blonde hair – like a really bad wig – and her body was disgusting and wrinkled and smelled like rotten vegetables or a dead mouse or something. And then she stood up on the bed.'

Mia white-knuckled her book – like it was a Bible or talisman that might be able to protect her somehow.

My own stomach tightened.

‘It gets worse,' Mia panted. ‘She started retching all these little foetuses everywhere and they'd bounce on the floor and then scuttle off into the corners of the room where I couldn't see them.'

My head throbbed. Like I was getting the mother of all migraines.

‘Then she looked at me and she opened her mouth really, really wide and it looked like a horrible diseased vagina on the inside with all sorts of sores and warts and yellow pus – like those awful photos they showed us at high school about VD.'

She closed her eyes.

‘And then she cried out in this really strange voice that was half like a baby and half like an old woman …' Mia went quiet for a full thirty seconds.

‘What did she say?'

She stifled a cry. ‘She said “
You'll see
.”'

Just like that nasty old nurse at Cabrini had said. Although Mia probably didn't even remember her.

‘Oh.'

Or perhaps she'd seen our new coolcams catchcry on the layouts I'd brought home from the office?

Either way, the words now filled me with deep, dark dread.

Mia pulled the covers up under her chin, just like she had that terrible night when we'd lost Bubby in the hospital. Her lower lip trembled and she started to cry. I tried rubbing her shoulder, but it was as cold as stone so I stopped.

‘We murdered her, Guy!' she cried out. She masked her face behind her book and blubbed for a while.

Finally she looked at me with a great sadness. ‘Did you ever have any other names in mind for Bubby? Girls' names, I mean?'

The question took me by surprise. ‘Not really,' I replied truthfully. ‘You?'

‘I was vaguely thinking of “Jane” – for obvious reasons.'

‘That would have been nice. And I'm sure Big Jane would have been honoured.'

Suddenly Mia broke into an awful sob. ‘You know, Guy, we didn't even have a fucking funeral for her! All we got is this stupid little box with her footprints in it.'

She pulled out a box from under the pillow. She must have hidden it in her luggage somehow and brought it all the way from Australia. It was pink with a little white ribbon tied around it. She buried her head in her pillow. ‘They probably just put her in a bin or something …'

I had nothing to say. While Mia was still comatose, a nurse had asked me what we wanted to do with the little body afterwards. I'd advised the nurse to follow ‘normal procedure', but I really had no idea what that meant.

Mia regained some composure. ‘Thank God, I've … we've still got Callum. Look after him for me, will you? I'm not much of a mum at the moment.' She put her cold, wet hand over mine, gritted her teeth and put her other hand to her stomach.

I wanted to say so much to her and yet not a single word of love or reassurance suggested itself to me. I felt like I needed to get out of there.

Away from the pain.

‘You just take it easy and get some R & R – doctor's orders. I'll come back later with a cuppa.' She didn't respond.

Walking down the stairs, I was reminded of another classic noir in Anthony's collection:

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

*

Time seemed all out of whack at Arcadia.

As though the accepted Eastern Standard calibrations had been jettisoned in favour of some bizarre new reckoning system. I soon had no real idea what day we'd arrived, what day it was now and what day we were meant to go home again. After hibernating upstairs for the first few days, Mia finally ventured down on what I guessed to be Saturday morning. She sat on the couch next to Callum vacantly watching either
Toy Story
or
The Powerpuff Girls
on the Cartoon Network with her
Vanity Fair
on her lap. I sat diagonally across from them in the armchair, hidden behind
The Sea-Wolf
, stealing furtive glances at the screen whenever I heard any strange un-cartoon-like sounds.

That same day, after lunch, I ventured upstairs.

Callum was in his room.

‘What are you doing, Son?' I asked, sitting on the edge of his bed. It was snowing outside and we were holed up again for the day. Not that any of us seemed to have any real desire to go out.

‘I drawing, Daddy,' he smiled.

Having his own room was a luxury after the Three Bears arrangement he was used to at the Olcott. His window looked out onto the side yard and a beautiful snow-capped Atlantic cedar with a low, white wrought-iron seat encircling its base. It would be a lovely place to sit and read or think in the summer.

Callum was lying tummy-down on the floor. Esmeralda had laid out an old blue blanket for him as a drop sheet so he wouldn't mark Susanna's creamy-coloured shag carpet.

‘What are you drawing?'

He'd used a number of different coloured crayons and Texta colours. Apart from the usual childish scribbles, I could make out some distinct forms and shapes. ‘What's this?' I asked, pointing to a blue and orange rectangle. It had different coloured circles with legs inside it.

‘That's us at the Awcott,' he said. ‘That's me and Mummy. And that's the TV … and that's Melda. Oh, and that's Buzz.' This was good. It was the most animated and talkative I'd seen him in days.

‘Where am I?' I asked.

‘You was at work. Making your ads.'

‘Oh.' The usual absent father scenario.

‘This one of you and me at the park.' He held up another picture. There was a small stick figure and a larger one with a lot of white crayon in the background. There seemed to be little blue balls flying in the air between them.

‘We having a snow bore fight!'

‘And what's this one?' I asked, bending down and picking it up.

Something about the third drawing struck me: I was looking at a red bubble with a little yellow, alien-like figure inside it. The alien's eyes were large and protuberant, the black pupils bulging in fear or anger. A larger figure in what looked like a white coat was attacking the bubble, stabbing it with a large sword.

Callum was tilting his head from side to side, admiring his own handiwork. ‘What's this one?' I asked again.