Imp

by Andrew Neiderman

  It was only a few more moments before he fell into a deep sleep.

  When Faith awoke in her father’s room, she was confused. It took her a moment to remember where she was and how she had gotten there. She sat up quickly and looked at the boarded windows and the locked door. How long had she slept? Was it still afternoon or was it night? She had no watch, so she slipped off the bed and went to one of the boarded windows to peer through a crack. There was no light; darkness had fallen, and, from the sound of things, it was raining hard. She brushed her hair back and walked to the door, listening first and then trying the knob. She turned it slowly and pulled, but the door wouldn’t budge. It was still locked.

  Oh God, she thought, looking about the room again, how long is she going to keep me here? She stood there, undecided as to what to do next. She was thirsty and she had to go to the bathroom. Bringing herself close to the crack between the door and the jamb, she called for Mary, softly at first and then louder and louder, until she sounded close to hysterical.

  “Mom? Mary? Can you hear me? Please. Mom. MOTHER! Please. MOTHER!”

  She tugged on the knob and pounded on the door. Then she waited to see if what she had done would bring any reaction. But there wasn’t the slightest sound from without. Nothing. All she heard was her own heavy breathing. She thought she sounded like a terminally ill patient in her last hours.

  The room looked so small and so tightly closed. She could feel panic setting in. She tried to ignore it by forcing herself to think of other things, but it was almost impossible to do so. What was it Mary had told her before she locked her in here … prayer and fast; prayer and fast? Mary meant it, but for how long? Would it last throughout the night? Throughout another day? Mary had often confined her to the house, but never to only a single, locked room. And she always had things to do … things to read, the radio, her few games and toys.

  Now, she thought, she could appreciate what the baby was going through locked in the basement all this time. Yet, the baby had no comparisons. He had never known any other world. That is, until now. The thought reminded her of her original purpose when she had come home from school. Mary didn’t understand; Mary had to give her a chance to talk and explain what she thought.

  She turned back to the door and immediately raised her voice.

  “MOTHER. I HAVE TO TELL YOU SOMETHING IMPORTANT. PLEASE, LISTEN TO ME!”

  Not a sound. She had been deserted. For all she knew, Mary was listening to one of her programs or sleeping in the easy chair below. She looked around again. She had to urinate and the ache in her groin from holding it in was intensifying. Then she spotted the old chamber pot just under the foot of the bed. Mary had made provisions. God, Faith thought, that meant she really was going to keep her in here for a while.

  She went forward and took out the pot, using it as she assumed her great grandparents and grandparents had. The two outhouses were still standing behind the house, and Mary had explained to her why they needed chamber pots. Even so, she felt a little self-conscious and silly about it. But, the relief was good and necessary. Afterward, she pushed the pot under the bed more completely, so she wouldn’t have to think about it.

  What was she going to do in here? She began to pace about the room like a caged animal, stopping every once in a while to listen for Mary. Finally, she decided to look for something, anything she could use to break out of the room. She went to the dresser and looked into the drawers, but they were all completely empty. There was absolutely nothing in the closet, not a hanger, not even any real dust. Mary must have been cleaning this room from time to time, she thought. But why? Did she know she was going to use it for this purpose someday?

  She went back to the windows and ran her hands gently over the boards. She tried getting the tips of her fingers between them and the walls, but the nails had been driven in too tightly and held the wood firmly against the window casings. When she turned and panned the small room again, she realized she really had nothing but the Bible, her bed, and the chamber pot. What was she going to do?

  Feeling more of a sense of anger now, she got on her hands and knees and began pounding the floor. Mary would have to hear that, she thought. She did it until her hands grew sore and numb again, the redness running down the sides and over the wrists. Then she took off her shoes and used the heels as a tool to continue the noise. The longer she did it without any success, the more frantic and angrier she became. At one point, she threw her shoes at the door and crumpled up in tears. All of it brought nothing. Mary was shut away where either she couldn’t or wouldn’t hear her.

  She began to shake from the frustration. This was like being tied down. She couldn’t stand the closeness; she felt stifled. It was getting hard to breathe. She realized most of this came from her imagination, but she couldn’t help it, and she could no longer hold back the growing sense of panic.

  Still on her knees, she clasped her hands in prayer. With her head down, her eyes closed, she began.

  “Oh God,” she said, “Mary’s God, please help me. Make her let me out. I’ll be a good girl. I will. Please. Have mercy.”

  After she uttered the words, she waited in anticipation, almost as if she expected God would answer her directly or the door would simply fly open. But there was only that silence, that terribly deep, haunting silence.

  She stood up slowly, a sense of great defeat pervading, and backed up to the bed. She sat there in a daze, waiting. Minutes passed, but she did not move. She didn’t cry and she didn’t speak. When she raised her head and looked around again, the realization that she was in her father’s old room became more intense. Up until now, she had been somewhat successful in keeping that fact subdued, but she felt that she was losing control of everything, especially her once imprisoned fears.

  This room was always out of bounds for her. When she was a little girl, she thought it was a place of great heat. Mary made her think so. “The Devil’s been there many times,” she told her, “and any place that the Devil’s been often is scalding to a good person. If you walked in there barefooted, your soles would burn, and if you ever slept in there, you would be visited by demons and ghoulish things. Sometimes,” she added, bringing her face close and lowering her voice to that tone and volume that made her words even more frightening, “I hear them. I wake in the night and I hear them. They dance around your father’s drunken body,” she said.

  As Faith grew older, she thought the images Mary drew up were wild and crazy, but she had been successful. No matter how much her father wanted her to come to him in that room, she resisted. Even Mary wouldn’t go into it in those days, and that impressed Faith.

  Why did she lock her in it now, then? Did she think her old stories still held true? I have taken off my shoes, yet my feet don’t burn and the floor isn’t hot, she thought. Is that because I am a sinner?

  An idea came to her. It was as wild as some of Mary’s ideas, but maybe it would work; maybe it would bring Mary to the room and get her to open the door.

  She went back to the door and listened. As far as she could tell, the radio wasn’t going. Mary was either asleep or praying. There had to be a good chance she would hear her, even if she didn’t want to. It was worth a try, at least.

  “MOTHER,” she screamed, “PLEASE. IT’S HOT! MY FEET ARE BURNING. I’M BEING SCALDED. OH! MOTHER. I CAN’T STAND ON THE FLOOR. THE WALLS ARE GLOWING.”

  She paused to hear Mary come up the stairs, but what happened instead shocked her.

  Mary whispered through the door. Mary had been there all the time, waiting and listening, practically holding her breath, so that Faith would not know it. Her response came immediately. There was no doubt about it. She had heard everything.

  “You must pray,” she said. “Pray until God hears you. Pray to his glory and mercy.”

  “Mother, Mother. Oh Mother, please, listen to me. Listen.”

  “Pray,” Mary said. “I want to hear you pray. I won’t listen to anything else, until you pray.”

 
“Mother …” Faith paused for a moment and pulled her head back from the door. What was she doing … talking to her mother through a crack? This was what Faith had been doing with the baby. She thought she felt her mother’s breath, too. The comparison was too shocking. It left her speechless for a few seconds. Then she came back at Mary with a flood of words.

  “Mother, it’s the baby. I have something terrible to tell you. I’ve got to get out of here. We’re in danger. It’s important. Please, let me out. Please.” Faith held back her concrete thoughts. She believed that the only way to get her mother to open that door was to appeal to her curiosity. She waited in hope, but Mary was relentless and trapped in her own train of thought.

  “Our Father who art in heaven …”

  “Mother!”

  “Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will…”

  “MOTHER!” she screamed. She attacked the door in an hysterical rage, pounding at it, kicking at it with her shoeless feet, forgetting the pain, until it became excruciating. Then she slammed at the door with her arms and her body and then banged her head against it, behaving like someone in the throes of an epileptic fit. The outburst exhausted her again and she crumpled to the floor, sliding down the door until she was completely seated, her arms bruised, her knuckles bleeding, and her toes sending up such pain, she felt certain she had broken one or two. She tried to catch her breath.

  Mary was squatting down on the other side. All throughout Faith’s outburst, she had been reciting the Lord’s Prayer. She continued it.

  “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name …”

  Faith groaned.

  “Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done …”

  Sliding, rather than crawling, Faith pulled and pushed herself from the door and made her way back to the bed. When she got herself back onto it, she lay back and stared up at the ceiling. Pain telegraphed from all parts of her body. Her moans did nothing to bring relief. It was painful even to cry. She turned over to bury her face in the pillow to smother her sobs. But she could still hear Mary’s whispering through the door, so she took the pillow and placed it over her head, pulling the sides down over her ears and pressing hard against them. It was as though Mary could look through the door and see her doing it, however, because she raised her voice at that moment. Over and over she recited the Lord’s Prayer.

  Finally, Faith either passed out or fell asleep, because when she opened her eyes again, Mary’s voice was gone and all was back to that deep, haunting silence. She lay there in a daze, feeling helpless and alone. It was at that moment that she remembered Bobby was going to come to her tonight.

  Bobby! His name sounded like the anthem of hope. Maybe he would come; maybe he would search for her until he found her. Maybe she would be saved after all. That thought was all she had to fight the heavy silence and the faces of bad dreams that hovered in every corner of her father’s old room.

  ELEVEN

  Eddie Morris put his feet up on the hassock and sat back on the couch in the den. Tommy and Carl were playing video tennis, and Eddie stared at the television set as though hypnotized by the small, glowing ball bouncing back and forth over the two-dimensional court. Susie was seated beside them, her legs folded neatly under her body. She cradled the new Barbie doll they had bought for her fourth birthday two weeks ago. Although she had no mother-infant relationship in the house to emulate, she was a good example of the impact television had on the preschool-age mind. Her mimicry included lines about diapers, baby powders, and oils that she had heard while watching commercials. Whenever the boys’ voices rose after a particularly close play, she would look up; otherwise, her attention was fixed on her doll.

  Barbara lingered in the kitchen. No words were yet exchanged between her and Eddie about dinner, yet he knew that she was let down by his less than enthusiastic reaction to her gourmet meal. He ate lethargically and he didn’t ask for seconds. Even consumption of the homemade apple pie seemed forced. Of course, the children were unaffected by it all, hardly aware of Eddie’s subdued mood. When it was over, Barbara moved about mechanically, insisting that no one remain behind to help her clean up.

  As Eddie sat there watching the boys play their video game, he was reminded of Billy O’Neil. There was something in that boy’s face, some look that haunted him now. It was as though Billy had seen something or learned something before his time to learn it. Eddie remembered a similar look on Vietnamese children who had been exposed to the gruesomeness of war. Sometimes he thought of them as freakish and distorted, a new kind of humanity—old people placed in the bodies of children. Eddie kept telling himself that Billy’s look was a result of great fear, just as the Vietnamese children were weaned on death and destruction and reflected that in their faces. Why couldn’t he just ascribe Billy’s situation to a terrible, freakish accident and leave it at that? He thought that if events had been reversed, he probably could.

  But first there was that strange situation with Cy Baum’s pet rabbits, and then his meeting with Mary Oaks and his discovery of that rabbit. This was the preface to his interview with Billy and it left an air of eerie uncertainty about everything on the country road.

  If the kid didn’t live next to The Oaks, he thought, I probably wouldn’t have given this a second thought. But what was there to think about now? What could there be? A little boy’s wild story about some extraterrestrial creature?

  Barbara’s entrance interrupted his thoughts.

  “Don’t you boys have any homework tonight?”

  “In a minute, Mom,” Carl said.

  “Not in a minute. Now. You do this after you do your homework, not before it,” she snapped.

  “Let’s go, boys,” Eddie said. He slapped his hands together, and the boys groaned and shut down their game. Susie took the clue from the discipline and announced that it was time for her doll to go to sleep. All three children left the den obediently, with Barbara standing back, her arms folded across her chest. She looked like a prison matron.

  “You’re tough,” Eddie chided kiddingly, but she didn’t smile.

  “Someone’s got to do it,” she said and began clearing away the toy parts.

  “I’m sorry about not being much of a ball of fire tonight,” he said. She didn’t turn around.

  “Are you going to tell me what it’s all about or …”

  “The trouble is I don’t know myself what it’s all about. Whenever I think of explaining it to somebody, I feel silly.”

  “I’m not somebody, Eddie. I’ve come home and told you a lot of stuff that wouldn’t be much to anyone else, but because you’re my husband, I don’t feel embarrassed about making too much of little things. If we can’t share our little aggravations …”

  “Oh, it’s not a question of that,” he said. “I’d love to share my aggravations with you.” The way he said it made her smile. “I mean … see, I don’t know what I mean.”

  “Just start at the beginning and let me be the judge,” she said and took a seat beside him on the couch.

  “All right,” he said. “I was coming back from doing a morning patrol, just routine stuff, when I stopped at Cy Baum’s. He was out there with his granddaughter, and Cy and I… well …”

  “I understand. Go ahead.”

  “He was telling me about these pet rabbits he bought for her. He bought them one at a time. The first one was mysteriously freed from its cage outside. It disappeared, so he bought her a second. It was freed and its neck was broken.”

  “Oh, how terrible. A prank?”

  “At first, I thought so.”

  “What do you mean, at first?”

  “Well, he buys her a third, and this time he puts it safely in the basement. Or, at least, he thought it was safe. She went down to get it while I was there and came back to report it was gone. We investigated and found the leash chewed through, the rabbit gone. The door wasn’t locked so …”

  “Chewed through?”

  “Yeah. Very unusual for a rabbit to do something l
ike that.”

  “And open the door to leave. Smart rabbit.”

  “Right. Anyway, the first suspects we come up with are the Cooper kids, who live nearby.”

  “Terrors, both of them. Mildred Wilson has them in her class, and she’s close to murdering them.”

  “But I’ve concluded they didn’t do any of it.”

  “Oh.”

  “Cy mentioned Mary Oaks’ daughter.”

  “I had her in a class last year.”

  “Really?” He paused, “Tell me about her.”

  “Not much to tell. She was very shy, terribly withdrawn. I don’t think she has one friend. None of the other kids seems to take to her. She did good, neat work most of the time. A polite girl, no trouble, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I would describe her as someone who seems constantly afraid. Her mother never came to parents’ night. I’ve never met her.”

  “I have. Knew her a long time ago, too. Religious zealot. A fanatical missionary … drove Tom Oaks into adultery.”

  “Oh come on, Eddie.”

  “I mean it. Everyone says so. Anyhow, I go to see her to see if anything’s been happening around her place.”

  “And?”

  “This is one of those parts I can’t explain. She’s not belligerent exactly, she’s … she’s …”

  “What?”

  “She’s like someone in another world who resented being made to pay attention to this one. I don’t know. Sounds stupid no matter how I put it. Anyway, the main thing is I find the missing rabbit, leash and all, there.”

  “In her house?”

  “No, right nearby. I suppose it was possible for the rabbit to make it all the way over there, but…”

  “But very unlikely?”

  “Yes. I showed her the rabbit and told her about it.”