The monstrous, p.19
The Monstrous, page 19
There was a moment of revulsion and horror, and he tried to wonder how long the ancient contamination had been passing from man to man to man, how far into the past the chain of lives stretched, how Wernecke himself had been trapped, and then his parched lips touched wetness, and he was drinking, drinking deeply and greedily, and his mouth was filled with the strong, clean taste of copper.
The following night, after Bruckman led the memorial prayers for Wernecke and Bohme, Melnick came to him. Melnick’s eyes were bright with tears. “How can we go on without Eduard? He was everything to us. What will we do now…?”
“It will be all right, Moishe,” Bruckman said. “I promise you, everything will be all right.” He put his arm around Melnick for a moment to comfort him, and at the touch sensed the hot blood that pumped through the intricate network of the boy’s veins, just under the skin, rich and warm and nourishing, waiting there inviolate for him to set it free.
SOMETIMES I PRETEND I’m a Roman lady in my Roman villa in a countryside which has got long pointy trees and marching soldiers and wide tinkly rivers with ducks and swans. I used to spy on mum watching a TV show called Rome and that’s where I got the idea. There was lots of blood and guts and sex in it and mum’s face went pink when she found my hiding place behind dad’s armchair and she told me to close my mouth and sent me to my room and told me never to spy on her watching it again.
But sometimes when mum’s busy with Wobs I sneak into the kitchen and pour some of her baking raisins into the bowl that she grinds stuff up in and then some Ribena into the chipped wine glass next to the sink ’cause I can’t reach the good ones. I get the old dust sheet from under the stairs and wrap it round me as many times as I can and still breathe and sometimes I try to pile my hair up on top of my head using string or elastic bands but it doesn’t usually work.
There’s an old shezlong in the living room that came in a van after granny M died. It’s just a couch really—with a low back and only one side—but after I asked mum if granny M died on it and she said no it became the thing that I sit on all the time. Especially when I’m being a Roman lady.
That was what I was doing when mum shouted on me. When she screamed.
Now I’m scared. I’m more scared. I’m in a strange room in a strange place and there’s people outside it but I don’t know who they are. I think they might be policemen and policewomen but they don’t have uniforms on.
I don’t know where mum is. I don’t know where Wobs is. But all the people outside want to know is where dad is and I don’t know that either. On Fridays after school he and Sadie-who-tries-to-make-me-call-her-mummy wait outside our house in their car to pick me up. Mum doesn’t come out and she thinks I don’t know it’s ’cause she hates them and then they take me to their house and it takes a while to get there. Their house is much bigger than ours is but I don’t like it as much. But I like my room okay. It’s painted with big yellow daisies.
I don’t like this room. It’s wee and white and it smells like the stuff mum puts on my cuts. In it is a bed and a table and a chair and a window that doesn’t open ’cause I’ve tried. I don’t like the bed. It’s metal and cold. Even the bit where my head goes when I’m sitting up. My bedroom at home is yellow and green and the window opens and has Angelina Ballerina curtains (I’ve told mum I’m a bit old for them now). My bed is soft and squishy all over and I’ve got a really cool Lord of the Rings light that stays on all night ’cause I still don’t like the dark. There’s only one light in here and it’s just a bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling.
I hear the door creak and I open my eyes and swing my legs ’round so I can get up off the bed. My knees are shaking but I pretend they’re not. I close my mouth and make sure with my fingers. A man comes in. He’s fat and hairy and he’s wearing a stripy jumper that’s too small. He’s got a white something over his arm. He says, “hello, Joanne” and then, “can I sit down, Joanne?” and then he does it anyway when I don’t say yes.
“Where’s my mum?”
“I’m not here to talk about your mum just yet, Joanne.”
“Where’s my mum? Where’s Wobs?” I put my hands on my hips and pretend to be mad. Mum says I’m a stroppy little madam but she smiles when she says it so I think it’s a good thing. And sometimes it gets me what I want.
The man tries to smile but his lips won’t stretch right. I think there’s something wrong with his nose ’cause he sounds coldy and I can hear his breath. I can see his teeth. I can see his tongue. It’s got white bits on it.
“Let’s get you sorted out first, Joanne. I’ve got you some new clothes to get changed into.” He shows me the white things: a T-shirt and joggy bottoms.
“Where’s my mum? Where’s Wobs?” I’m starting to get scared again. I keep checking my mouth in between speaking ’cause I have to open it to do that.
The man makes a big rattly sigh that makes me feel a bit sick. His eyes look red like dad’s used to when he came home late from work. “Wobs is Colin, yes?” He doesn’t wait for me to say yes. “He’s okay, Joanne. He’s in the room right next to you, snug as a bug. He got changed into his new clothes without any fuss at all.”
I roll my eyes and forget to be scared. “He’s a baby.”
The man blinks and tries to smile again. I can’t stop hearing his horrible breath. I think I can hear a buzzing noise too and my heart gets jumpy. “Nevertheless—”
“Where’s my mum?”
“Joanne.” He screws up his fat hairy face. Now he looks the same as dad did when he lied and said he had to go away for a bit. He uses the same kind of voice too. “You know what happened to your mum, sweetie.”
I shriek when he gets up off the chair and starts coming towards me and then remember to clap my hands over my face. I step backwards and the bed bangs cold at the back of my legs. I think the buzzing is getting louder. Nearer. I look at his horrible tongue and his horrible teeth.
“You should shut your mouth,” I say through my fingers.
“We’ll talk about your mum soon, I promise, sweetie.” His fat face looks worried like he’s done something wrong. “Just not yet.”
“Shut your mouth!”
“Joanne—”
I’m angry and hot and scared and the backs of my legs are cold cold against the bed. “You’ll catch flies,” I whisper.
He doesn’t listen. He keeps on breathing his horrible breath through his horrible mouth and I can tell that he’s getting angry now too. He throws the white clothes on the white bed. “You need to get changed, Joanne. You don’t have to do it now while I’m here, but you—”
“I’ve got clothes on!” I shout and one of my fingers slides over my teeth.
He steps back away from me and folds his arms. “But they’re dirty, aren’t they, Joanne?” he says in dad’s voice again. “Look at them. They’re dirty.”
I look at them. I have to take my hands away from my mouth or else I can’t see. I’ve got on a pair of jeans and my favourite yellow jumper. It’s got daisies on it. And blood. Lots of blood. Even though it’s dried and even though it’s nearly brown. I still remember that it’s blood.
I didn’t cry when granny M died even though I think I was supposed to. Granny M was mum’s mum but she was very strict and very cross and very ugly. When she came ’round to visit she sat at the table in the kitchen with her cross face and a china cup of tea. She had no lips and lots of wrinkles so her mouth looked all sewed up like a scary puppet.
When she saw me or heard me she’d say to mum, “you let that child get away with far too much, Mary.” To me she always said, “you’ll catch flies, girlie!”
Mum said that to me too—all the time in fact, ever since I could talk I bet—but she didn’t just say that and nothing else. She was fun so it was okay. She let me paint flowers on the walls in our garden and we had Mad Hatter tea parties and when I helped her with dee-I-why and other boring stuff she said things like “hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work we go” and “triumph begins with try and ends with umpf!” just to make me giggle I think. Sometimes we danced around the living room to loud music with the curtains shut and she laughed and went pink and forgot to look scared. Sometimes when she tucked me into bed and switched on my Lord of the Rings light and stroked my hair and whispered, “I love you, Jojo” I wanted to cry. But it was a nice kind of wanting to cry.
When she shouted for me—when she screamed for me—I got off the shezlong and ran to the stairs. My heart was beating very fast but I still stopped at the bottom to unwind the dust sheet before going up. I wondered if I was in trouble—if she’d heard me saying things like “bastards of Dis!” and “you piss-drinking sons of circus whores!” while I’d been pretending to be a Roman lady. I knew it wasn’t that though. I was just trying not to be scared.
Mum had stopped screaming when I got to the landing. I went into Wobs’s room on tiptoe though ’cause I was still scared. She was standing next to his cot and her hands were over her mouth. I started to do the same but then she took hers away.
“It’s okay now, I think. I’m sorry, Jojo, I didn’t mean to frighten you again.”
The sun was going down to sleep and the room was full of yellow. It made mum look like an angel. Her face was bright and her hair was glowy like my nightlight. Wobs was still sleeping in the cot like always. His fuzzy hair was sticking up and his dummy tit was taped to his big pink cheeks so I couldn’t see the rubber sucky bit inside his mouth.
Colin is a really stupid name for a baby. Before dad left to make new babies with Sadie-who-tries-to-make-me-call-her-mummy he’d give me piggybacks around the landing and dangle me upside down till I screamed, “uncle!” and then he’d laugh and say, “Joanne has got the Collywobbles! Wobbles have her Colly got!” I didn’t know what it meant but he laughed even more when I started to call Colin Wobs. Mum didn’t like it at first but now she calls him it too.
“Is Wobs okay?” I whispered.
“Yes, sweetie, he’s okay.” Mum looked like she was going to cry again and I didn’t like that. I hate it when she cries. Me and Wobs are the ones who are supposed to cry. After dad left she was sad a lot. We didn’t have many Mad Hatter tea parties anymore and she got scary letters that she tried to hide and she thought I didn’t know what all the brown boxes full of our stuff in the hall meant but I thought I did. “Thank you for coming when I called you, Jojo.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “Can I go away now?”
Mum smiled but I saw her closed lips wobble. “Can you stay here for a wee while maybe?”
I wanted to ask why but I didn’t ’cause I thought I knew anyway. I was thinking about the last big time she cried—more than when granny M died or dad went away—the day when the Really Bad Thing happened to mister and missus S next door. Their house is all boarded up now and the for sale sign has fallen over but lots of people still come and point and stare. “Okay.”
She left Wobs to come over and cuddle me. My nose went funny when I smelled her—it was like the smell in dad’s tool shed: like the big metal vice on the wooden bench. The big metal vice with its wide wide teeth. Mum usually smelled like the flowers in our garden.
“What would you have done if it wasn’t okay, sweetie?”
“Mum—”
She pinched my arms till it hurt a bit.
“I know it!” I said. “I know what to do!” ’Cause then I knew for sure she was talking about mister and missus S and I didn’t want to talk about it back. It made me think about all the screams and then the quiet and the policemen and the black trolleys on wheels that dripped black stuff down the path like the slime behind a slug.
“I know you do, Jojo,” she said and she let me go and went down on her knees to give me a proper cuddle. “I’m sorry, sweetie, I’m sorry.”
I cuddled back but I could still smell that nasty smell and she felt funny too. Cold but wet. And I knew what both those things meant. It meant mum was still scared.
“It’s just that’s it’s getting worse, sweetie. It just keeps on getting worse.” Her breath tickled my ear but I didn’t want to laugh. She’d said that a lot since granny M died. She’d said it nearly every day and every night.
I wake up and it’s night time again. The horrible hard bed creaks as I sit up and then stand up. The floor is cold. The stupid white clothes don’t fit me. The T-shirt is too tight and the joggy bottoms are too long—they swish on the floor as I creep to the door.
There’s a funny feeling in my tummy. Mum said I would feel it one day and now I do. It’s not horrible like I thought but fluttery like there’s birds inside me. Which there isn’t.
The fat hairy man said dad’s coming tomorrow. He’ll take me and Wobs to his and Sadie-who-tries-to-make-me-call-her-mummy’s big house and I won’t be able to dance around the living room with the curtains shut or have Mad Hatter tea parties or pretend to be a Roman lady in her Roman villa anymore.
Mum always says that I’m older than my age but I don’t think anyone else thinks so. Whenever something went wrong (usually during dee-I-why ’cause I’m clumsy mum says) I’d shout, “fils de pute!” or “me cago en todo lo que se menea!” and mum would laugh and choke and tell me never to say things like that in front of any other grownups or else they’d take me away. And now they have.
I push down the handle and pull open the door. It creaks again but not too much. When I’m in the corridor I let the door go slowly till it stops moving and then I roll up my joggy bottoms to my ankles. The corridor is cold and shiny. I know Wobs is in the room next to mine but I don’t know which one. I tiptoe left and my tummy is flapping and flapping inside. Before I can try the black door next to mine I hear voices and freeze.
“It’s a crying shame,” a lady says. “An absolute crying shame.”
I can hear other people muttering and yes-ing but they don’t get closer. I hear the roll of a chair on wheels and look at my room door and pretend I can’t feel the birds inside me.
“We think there’s abuse.” It’s the fat hairy man—I can tell by his wheezy nose. “I phoned the school, spoke to the girl’s teacher. It runs in the family. Apparently she refused to speak at all for the first three years.”
“A crying shame,” the lady mutters again like it’s the only thing she can say.
They’re talking about me and mum and Wobs and maybe even granny M. Bastards, cunts, and short-arsed shits. I think it inside my head just like mum told me to. The fat hairy man is the son of a Narbo scrotum. My tummy jumps and flutters and then I remember that I’m trying to find Wobs.
I turn ’round and go back past my horrible room. The door on the other side of mine has a little window in it. I try to look inside it but it’s dark. I try the handle and the door opens with no creak. I put my hand over my mouth and I go inside but it still stays dark. I don’t like the dark. I wait till the door shuts again and then whisper, “Wobs?”
I don’t hear anything back. It’s stupid that I wanted to—he’s just a baby. But that fluttery funny feeling in my tummy is getting worse and I know it’s ’cause he’s in here. I know it’s ’cause he’s in here and the flies are coming and there’s no mum to look after us anymore. No mum to feel a fluttery funny feeling in her tummy and know what to do about it. Or to tell me what to do about it.
“Wobs?” I slap the hand that’s not on my mouth against the wall ’cause there must be a bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling and so there must be a light switch.
And then I find it. The light is very bright. I move my hand from my mouth to my eyes till I can see right. Wobs is lying in a cot just like the one in his room at home. He’s wearing white pyjamas and lying on his back with his legs and arms out but he doesn’t have a dummy in and his mouth’s wide open.
That fluttery feeling in my tummy gets worse and now I can hear the buzzy sound again too. The buzzy sound that keeps on getting louder and louder even though the other window in Wobs’s room is just like mine: mean and wee and locked. There’s a funny mini room in the other corner—it’s made of glass and has a little door in the side. Someone’s left a cup of coffee on a table inside it but there’s no one there to drink it.
My legs get shaky when the buzzy sound gets even louder and my knees smack against the cold floor before I know I’ve fallen down. I keep whispering for Wobs even though he’s a baby—a baby who slept all the way through his mummy dying and me and him getting taken away to here.
They’re coming. They’re coming. I’m older than my age. I’m clever. I’m nearly a grownup really. I keep thinking these things as the fluttering gets harder and the buzzy sound gets louder. But I don’t believe them. I’m just really really scared. And I want my mum.
And then the light buzzes too and then it goes out. The dark is darker. The buzzy sound is so loud I can’t hear anything else. I think of mum saying, “I love you, Jojo.” I think of her pinching my arms till it hurt and asking, “what would you have done if it wasn’t okay, sweetie?” And I think of all our practicing after mister and missus S and the screaming and then the quiet and all the policemen in uniforms who came to ask us questions ’cause mum said she’d been too scared to stop the Really Bad Thing. And then dad lying to me like mum lied to them when he took me to see the monkeys in the zoo and said he had to go away for a bit.
I march into the middle of the room and I reach out into the dark till I feel the bars of Wobs’s cot. And then I think of mum smiling in the living room with the curtains shut and the stereo on and whispering in my ear, “come on, Inch-high Private Eye, what’s your plan?”
Keep your mouth shut, I think. Or you’ll catch flies.
I thought everything was okay again till I was halfways down the stairs looking at the messy sheet on the floor. This time mum didn’t scream my name—she just screamed and screamed. And then she stopped. I turned ’round and ran back up but I didn’t want to. Wobs’s room was dark ’cause the sun had gone away behind the wall at the end of our garden.
Mum stood in the middle of the room. Her face looked strange. Fat and black and full. When she saw me she shook her head from side to side and her eyes were wide. She closed them once and then waved a hand over her face.
