Behind

by Nicole Trope

  He bolts up the stairs, following the noise, to find Rachel in Beth’s room.

  She is staring down at their daughter’s empty bed, screaming and screaming. The covers are thrown back, and lying in the centre, right in the centre, is another troll doll, with shiny purple hair and a leering smile. Rachel is standing still, frozen in place, staring at it.

  It takes him a moment to process what he’s seeing. Their daughter is not in her bed. He looks across the landing at the bathroom but the door is open, the light is off. He shouts because he needs Rachel to stop her terrible noise. ‘Where’s Beth?’ he yells, expecting a response he can understand. Rachel doesn’t move but she finally stops screaming. She is facing away from him. He walks around to look at his wife. Her face is pale and she is chewing on her lips, chewing hard enough to draw blood. Her green eyes are focused on Beth’s wardrobe, staring at the wooden doors as though she can see through into the dark interior. He wonders if Beth is in the cupboard. ‘What’s going on?’ he asks, and again she doesn’t answer him. He opens the door of the cupboard and rifles through the hanging clothes. She is not there.

  He walks back over to Rachel, who is still frozen but blessedly silent now, just staring down at the ridiculous doll. She hasn’t even picked it up. He puts his hands on her shoulders and gives her a little shake. ‘Rachel, where’s Beth? Where’s Beth?’ Even as he does this he is not overly concerned, certain that there is just something he’s missing and Beth will appear in a minute from hiding behind a door or that she will have be snuggled up in their bed. He is more concerned about Rachel and her disconcerting gaze. He doesn’t know what she’s thinking.

  ‘Rachel,’ he says again, holding her shoulders tightly, ‘what’s going on?’

  ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘Gone? What do you mean gone? Beth, Beth, where are you?’ he calls. He darts to their bedroom and switches on the light, checks in their bed, flinging back the covers. He looks in their en-suite bathroom, in the bathroom Beth uses, and does a quick circuit of the house, calling for his daughter. Only when he returns to her bedroom, finding his little girl nowhere, with Rachel still standing in the same position, still staring down at the ugly little doll, does he begin to panic.

  ‘What?’ he says to Rachel, trying to understand what’s happening. ‘What’s going on? Talk to me, Rachel, talk to me now!’ he yells.

  She doesn’t answer him. She doesn’t say anything at all. And he is suddenly furious. Furious with her catatonic state, with the strange way she has been acting lately, and especially furious with how fragile she is and how much of his own pain he has kept from her because of that. And even though he knows that he would be this broken as well if it were his mother who had just drawn her last breath, he still cannot stop the anger.

  He grabs her by the shoulders again, his fingers digging into her skin, and he shakes her back and forth. ‘Where is Beth, Rachel? What’s going on? You have to talk to me.’ Her head rocks back and forth, he hears her teeth click together, and then she finally, finally meets his gaze. He lets go and she slaps him violently across his face.

  The shock sends him reeling backwards and he stares at her, horrified. Horrified at her and at himself. Shame washes over him.

  ‘Don’t,’ she hisses at him, ‘ever lay your hands on me like that.’

  He holds up his hands. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t… Where is Beth? You have to tell me where she is, please. Please, Rachel.’

  She glances down at the doll again, leaning down and picking it up. She throws it on the floor and stamps on it again and again. ‘Why aren’t you dead? You’re supposed to be dead!’ she shouts. Ben is suddenly afraid for her. She is losing her mind. He is sure of it. Grief over her mother has broken her, but where is Beth? Where is their daughter?

  He is surprised to hear himself whimper. He has never been more unsure of what to do in his life.

  Rachel looks at him. ‘He’s taken her,’ she states.

  ‘Who, Rachel? Who’s taken her?’

  She takes a deep breath, straightens her shoulders, and for a second it looks like she’s grown a little bit taller.

  ‘I thought it was my father,’ she says. ‘I thought he was the one leaving the dolls. But he’s dead. He wasn’t dead before but the police told us he’s definitely dead now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s… I don’t know… The police said he was definitely dead. They said he was…’ His wife stops speaking.

  ‘What are you talking about? What dolls? Rachel, you’re not making sense.’

  ‘The troll dolls,’ she says, ‘the dolls you’ve been finding, I’ve been finding. I thought it was my father leaving them for me because they used to be mine.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he says. His worry for Beth becomes tinged with fear for Rachel, who isn’t making sense at all.

  Rachel walks over to him and holds him by the shoulders, gently. Her voice is quiet, her manner calm. ‘You need to listen. I thought it was my father sending me the dolls. But now he’s dead and Beth has been taken. No one else knew about the dolls except for my mother and…’ She stops speaking and lays a hand on her chest.

  ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Kevin. It’s Kevin. My brother.’

  ‘You have a… a brother?’ he asks weakly. He cannot imagine what else he is going to hear from this woman, from this woman he has been married to for nine years. How can she have kept an entire life from him?

  ‘Look,’ she says, her voice firm, ‘I will explain. I promise I will explain everything, but right now you need to help me find Beth. All I can tell you is that two weeks ago someone broke into the house and left a doll for me to find. It used to be mine when I was a child. All the dolls used to be mine. I thought it was my father but he’s dead so I think it’s my brother. He’s the only other person who would be angry enough at me to want to hurt me.’

  ‘But you said no one broke in – you said… the police said…’ Ben closes his mouth. He doesn’t know what to think anymore. He feels like he’s fallen through the looking glass. Nothing is as it should be. His whole world has tilted.

  ‘I lied,’ she says and she meets his gaze, lifts her chin, as if to challenge him. ‘He broke in and left me the doll. Beth was right. There was a monster but it was a monster from my childhood. I thought it was my father but now I’m sure it was my brother, and I can tell you that he was as much a monster as my father was. And I have no idea how bad he would be now.’

  ‘But… why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me he was leaving the dolls?’

  ‘I thought he was just… I thought it was my father and he was trying to torment me and that he would stop. He liked to play games and I thought he would stop, that it would all stop. When it didn’t, I was going to tell you. I was, but then Mum and your job and…’

  ‘I don’t understand…’ He stops speaking. He doesn’t have the energy left for all of this. He slumps onto Beth’s bed. ‘You should have… Why would he want Beth?’

  ‘I don’t know. But he has our daughter. And I don’t know where he’s taken her.’

  ‘We have to call the police,’ he says as her phone starts ringing. It’s in her pocket and she drags it out and looks at it. She answers it, putting it on speaker.

  ‘I’m in the park,’ says a male voice. ‘Come alone. Don’t tell anyone. I won’t hurt her.’ And the call is ended.

  Rachel sinks down onto Beth’s bed. ‘Okay,’ she says, ‘okay, okay, okay.’

  ‘Was that him? Is it him?’

  ‘I think so… I haven’t heard his voice for nearly thirty years and he was only thirteen when we left… but I think so.’ She chews her bottom lip and Ben wants to take charge, to make a decision, but he finds himself unable to come up with anything to say.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Ben asks finally.

  ‘Now,’ says Rachel, ‘I go to the park and you call the police and tell them where we are.’ She pushes her shoulders back.

  ‘It’s not safe, you can’t go
alone.’ But even as the words leave his lips, she stands up and runs out of Beth’s room and down the stairs, clutching her phone. She grabs her jacket off the hook near the front door and her beanie hat, and even as he is formulating his next words for his wife, she is out the door.

  Ben stands on the landing for a moment and then he moves as quickly as she did, grabbing his coat and dialling the police as he runs, explaining to the woman who answers his 000 call that his whole life has suddenly imploded.

  31

  Little Bird

  It is dark in the night and I am supposed to be asleep but I am awake because there is too much noise to sleep. There is a thump, thump sound coming from the kitchen. I slide out of my bed and creep along the passage towards the light. I hear Daddy grunt and say, ‘Stupid, stupid bitch.’ And then there is another thump.

  I go past Kevin’s room but it’s dark in there and I know he’s not home. He’s never home. Mummy says he needs to be back by dark so he can do his homework but he just laughs when Mummy says that and Daddy says, ‘Leave the boy alone. See if you can manage your own small life before you try to start managing his.’ I remember that it is Saturday so Kevin is sleeping over at his friend James’s house. I hate Saturday because Daddy is home all day. Today Mummy cleaned and cleaned and cleaned and Daddy followed her around all day saying, ‘Are you sure you’re happy with how that looks?’ so she cleaned and cleaned again.

  I am scared and shivering even though the night is sticky and hot. I try to move like a quiet cat down the passage. I should just go back to bed but I need to see what the thump, thump noise is. In bed I am safe. But I can’t stay safe because I need to know what the noise is.

  I stop on the landing and look down the dark stairs. Mummy is down the stairs. I know Mummy is down the stairs and not safe in her bed. I have to go to her. I have to.

  When I get to the kitchen, I know I’ve made a big mistake. Daddy doesn’t like it when I make big mistakes. I want to turn around and run away but I don’t. My feet won’t move. Move, move, I tell my feet but they won’t listen.

  It is bright and shiny in the kitchen, too bright for my eyes that have been sleeping, and I scrunch them up. I can’t see and then I can see and what I see is Mummy lying on the floor. There is blood falling out of her nose and she is like a little round ball, holding onto her knees. Daddy is standing up, big and tall, and he is kicking her, thump, thump, thump. His hair is not neat and tidy but messy and his face is shiny and he looks hot.

  Mummy’s eyes are closed tightly like she doesn’t want to see the kicks but I can see tears are falling and mixing on the floor with the blood from her nose.

  I want to run away. I want to hide but I have to make him stop. How can I make him stop? I have to make him stop hurting Mummy. She’s my mummy. I have to make him stop. I wish Kevin was here even though I hate him. I wish he would come home and make Daddy stop but I know that even if he did come home, he wouldn’t make Daddy stop. He thinks Mummy is pathetic and he doesn’t want to save her from Daddy.

  ‘Daddy,’ I say quietly and I hope he doesn’t hear me but he does. He turns around and looks at me with dark, angry eyes.

  ‘What are you doing out of bed?’ he asks quietly. His voice sounds funny and his chest is moving in and out, up and down, like he’s running. His face is shiny. It is hard work kicking Mummy.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I reply and then I start to cry because a little bit of wee has come out and I’m not a baby. Only babies wee in their pants.

  ‘Go-back-to-bed,’ he says in a robot voice.

  Inside me I get angry at Daddy. He shouldn’t be kicking Mummy. He shouldn’t be hurting her. Hurting other people is bad. Mr Stanley said so last year. When Andy hit Maisie because she took his eraser, Mr Stanley said that was very wrong. ‘We don’t hit and we especially don’t hit girls, Andy,’ Mr Stanley told him. Mummy’s a girl and Daddy shouldn’t hit her and he shouldn’t kick her.

  ‘You shouldn’t hurt Mummy,’ I say and I want to sound big and brave and strong but my voice is only small and rattly. I’m so scared of Daddy, of how big he is, of how dark his eyes are. He looks like a monster, a scary monster. I don’t want a monster in my house. I am scared but I am also angry. Daddies should be nice. They shouldn’t be monsters.

  ‘Go back to bed, Little Bird,’ says Daddy and he smiles at me. It makes me even more angry because he shouldn’t be smiling when he’s hurting Mummy.

  ‘No,’ I say, making my voice loud.

  Daddy turns away and kicks Mummy again, thump, like he doesn’t care that I can see him being a monster. She makes a groaning sound, a crying sound.

  ‘You leave Mummy alone!’ I shout and a bit more wee comes out because Daddy is so big and his eyes are so black.

  ‘Get back to bed!’ he roars at me and he turns around and comes towards the door where I am standing. As he steps closer, he slips in the tears and blood puddle on the floor and he falls over and his head hits the kitchen floor – crack. He lies very still. He is very quiet. He is not roaring anymore. He is not kicking anymore.

  Mummy says, ‘Oh.’ And she struggles to sit up. Her face is big and puffy and the blood keeps coming from her nose.

  Daddy is lying still on the floor. He can’t kick Mummy anymore. He looks like he’s sleeping. I don’t want him to wake up. I don’t want him to ever hurt Mummy again.

  ‘Go to bed, Little Bird, run, run to bed,’ says Mummy but her mouth is filled with blood and she sounds strange. I don’t like the way she sounds. He made her sound like that. I don’t like that he hurts her and gives her a sore head. I don’t like that he shouts at her and that he shouts at me and that he broke my favourite mermaid dolly. I don’t go back to bed. I walk over to where he is and look down at him. ‘I hate you,’ I whisper.

  ‘No, no, don’t say that,’ says Mummy, and she stands up, holding her stomach. She grabs a dishcloth and wipes her mouth and nose.

  ‘He’ll wake up soon. Just go back to bed,’ she whispers.

  ‘I don’t want him to wake up,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to see him again. Let’s run away.’

  ‘We can’t, I can’t, I… can’t, Little Bird.’

  Daddy makes a sound, a rumble, and he turns his head with his eyes closed and I know he’s going to wake up and then he’s going to go back to hurting Mummy. I look around the kitchen and see his hand weights on the floor. He likes to sit at the table and curl his arm up and down, up and down, making him stronger and stronger so he can hurt Mummy more and more and I know that he will start hurting me soon. He will hurt me like Kevin hurts me only it will be worse because Daddy is stronger than Kevin. I’m not going to let him hurt me and I’m not going to let him hurt Mummy anymore. I feel like there is a big angry fire inside me with the flames getting higher and higher. I am hot, hot, hot.

  I go over to the weight and I try to lift it up but it is heavy, heavy. There is a number ten on the side of it and I know this means it is too big for me to lift up. I pull hard and my arms burn but I pick it up and then I take it over to Daddy, who is moving now. I can see he’s going to open his eyes.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asks Mummy, but she asks quietly. She is sitting on the floor again, the blood coming from everywhere. She watches me but she doesn’t move. I look at the kitchen door. The weight is pulling on my arms, making them ache and stretch. It’s ten heavy and that’s too heavy for me.

  ‘Don’t die, Mummy,’ I say because she looks like the cat that got run over outside our house. It had blood coming from everywhere and Mrs Jackson took it to the vet but it died.

  Mummy shakes her head.

  Daddy groans and I stand above him with the weight making my arms and hands burn. His eyes are closed and he can’t see me and can’t see what I’m holding, but he will open his eyes soon and it will be too late. Too late for Mummy and too late for me. I can’t let it be too late.

  Now the fire is all over my body and I think that Mummy must be able to see the flames. I am burning inside and my arms ar
e burning outside but I won’t put down the weight. I won’t be pathetic. Mummy doesn’t deserve to be hurt.

  I lift it high, high above my head. It makes everything hurt. It makes my whole body sore and Mummy still doesn’t say anything. She just watches me as I drop the weight on Daddy.

  Right on his head.

  He stops rumbling. He stops moving. He stops everything.

  ‘Oh… oh what… oh my God, what are we going to do, what are we going to do?’

  Mummy’s face is all blood and there is a gap in her mouth like she has lost her tooth but she is too old to lose teeth, only little girls like me lose their teeth. She looks at me and I stand up straight. Mummy has had too many kicks and she doesn’t know what to do. But I know what to do – I know.

  ‘We have to run away, Mummy,’ I say and she is crying and bleeding but she nods at me and then she stands up.

  ‘We’ll run away,’ she says.

  ‘Kevin isn’t here. What about him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Mummy. ‘Should we wait for him? What if Daddy wakes up?’

  I feel like I am Mummy and Mummy is the child but I don’t mind because Mummy is bleeding and sore and I have to help her.

  ‘He’s just like Daddy,’ I say and Mummy nods because she knows I’m right and we can’t have someone who is just like Daddy run away with us. That would be like taking Daddy with us.

  ‘I don’t want Kevin to hurt us, Mummy,’ I say, and she shakes her head.

  ‘I don’t want him to, I don’t think… we should.’ She doesn’t know what to say. I think she is finding it hard to even make her brain work.

  ‘We have to leave Kevin,’ I say. ‘He likes Daddy.’

  Mummy starts to shake her head because she knows that Kevin is afraid of Daddy but then she nods. We can’t wait for Kevin. Kevin is going to grow up to be Daddy and we can’t take Daddy with us.

  32

  Kevin

  If she had recognised me, I believe I would have done things differently. If she had looked at me and said, ‘I know who you are,’ and maybe told me she had always thought about me, missed me even, I believe I would have done things differently.