‘Thank you,’ she said, her voice softer than the rustle of the breeze through the zinnias. She broke off sections of thread, each two inches long, and glued them to the cloverleaves. The black wasn’t all that bad, she decided. It looked like trim, like the white collar on her plaid church dress.
‘Here you are,’ she told the fairies.
Nothing happened.
Well, of course. Nothing happened while you were looking. It was like Bobby growing up and getting big enough to fill that whole bottle, when at first he had been just a baby. Carefully, she got up and walked away. She sat on the grass, eyes squeezed shut, while she counted to a hundred.
She opened her eyes.
The skirts and tops were still there.
‘Well, have it your way.’ She knew she couldn’t stand counting to three hundred, or however much it might take, so she went into the house and read a book about a mouse that rode a motorcycle.
When she finished the book, she came outside and the six little skirts and tops were gone.
Elated, she ran all the way upstairs to Bobby’s attic room.
Bobby was in his bottle, of course. She had watched the slow growing process that forced his body to conform to the bottle shape. His shoulders came up around his ears. His knees were wedged either side of his chin. His head was moulded into a cone-shape, to fit the neck of the bottle. He was naked, of course, but his crossed ankles covered his sex parts. Anyway, she had got used to his nakedness.
Lately he hadn’t wanted to talk to her very much. He said he couldn’t breathe.
‘Bobby, fairies. In the garden!’
Bobby twisted his head away from her as much as he could. It was getting pretty tight in that bottle, which had originally been a thirty gallon dispenser for spring water, with a hole Daddy cut in the bottom just big enough to insert Bobby, who was then an infant. At least that’s what they told her had happened. Bobby was thirteen, and she was only eight, so she had to believe what she was told.
‘I wish I could take you down to see them,’ she continued, knowing that her words were both kind and cruel. Kind, because Bobby had no other entertainment. Mom came up and read to him sometimes, and Dad would talk to him while he was flushing the bottle out, but they wouldn’t even get him a television. They said radio was good enough, tuned to one of those light classics stations. Very boring.
But Allie knew she was being cruel, too. Bobby must really feel annoyed that he couldn’t go down to the yard and watch the fairies.
Still, what could she do? When Allie had been four she had lugged her tricycle all the way up the stairs for Bobby to see. Dad had been really mad over that. Said she’d chipped the paint and banged holes in the staircase wall.
‘They were just the right size to have a picnic under one of Mom’s bonsai trees. Maybe the wisteria one.’ Mom sometimes brought her hobbies upstairs to work on to keep Bobby company. ‘They won’t let Mom and Dad see them,’ she continued conversationally. ‘But you’re a kid, so they’ll come out for you.’
‘My propinquity might differ,’ said Bobby.
‘Hm?’ Sometime she didn’t understand Bobby.
‘I said, I am not your garden-variety rug-rat.’
‘Well, I think they’d realise you were a kid. They might even be special nice to you because of your Williams syndrome.’
‘The ordinariness-challenged have no advantage in life, Allie, despite what Mom and Dad and that teacher of yours feed your cranium.’
‘But fairies are different.’
‘Very well. Show me the golldurn cluricaune.’
Allie put her face very close to Bobby’s, so only the glass of the bottle kept them from touching. ‘I can’t, Bobby. They don’t come inside. They belong in the garden.’
‘Allie, you’re losing it,’ said Bobby. ‘Delusional. Fairies, even I know, are unreal. Spawn of imagination.’
‘I’ll bring you one. They can be your friends. They’re going to be my friends.’
Bobby made a face so hideous that Allie jumped back, making the bottle rock slightly. ‘We have no friends. I’m a geek and you’re a geeklette.’
‘I don’t live in a bottle,’ said Allie, rubbing her elbow, which she’d scraped as she jumped back.
‘Yes, you do. You just can’t see it.’
* * * *
Allie spent hours outdoors, much to her parents’ satisfaction. ‘Put bloom in those cheeks,’ said Dad.
‘Keep her nose out of a book,’ said Mom, and went cross-eyed, mimicking Allie with her nose in a book.
The fairies came back and talked to Allie. We like the clothes, they said. So amusing. But just the skirts. The bras had man-made stuff in them.
‘It was just cotton,’ said Allie. ‘I checked the spool.’
It had been passed through a steel needle. And there was the glue.
‘This means you won’t like me, doesn’t it?’
Not necessarily. Do you have anything else for us?said the largest fairy.
‘Like what?’
But they were gone.
* * * *
‘Bobby, they liked the skirts! But they want more stuff before they’ll be friends with me. Help me think what I can get them.’
Bobby was in one of his moods. He just stared coldly at her.
‘Please, Bobby! If they make friends with me, maybe they’ll come and be friends with you. Wouldn’t you like that?’
‘Obfuscate,’ said Bobby. ‘Brunhilda. Prosencephalic equitation.’
‘Stop it!’ Nobody knew where Bobby got these words. He couldn’t get at books to turn the pages. When Mom read to him, she always read stupid, simple children’s books. Allie herself couldn’t read well enough to be entertaining, and she certainly hadn’t read him words like prosencephalic.
‘Okay, sis, how about cornflakes and Cheerios? Tell them they’re potato chips and doughuts. Throw a junk food pooka-picnic.’
‘I don’t know. They wouldn’t wear the bras because the thread had been passed through a steel needle.’
‘Maybe they wouldn’t wear them because the bras were ugly.’’
Next day, while Mom was carefully cutting the roots off a pretty little red maple sapling to make it a dwarf, Allie stole some Cheerios, which she dampened and dipped in powdered sugar, and some cornflakes. She tried to get salt to stick to the cornflakes. When she saw that the grains were too large, she crushed them between the bowls of two spoons, then sprinkled the pulverised salt over the flakes.
Heart pounding, she stole the cap from Mom’s tube of glue and filled it with orange juice. She placed the tiny snack on a coaster, went out in the garden, and plunked herself down next to the lily-of-the-valley leaves, where she had first seen them.
After long minutes of waiting, she realised she would have to leave the food. They didn’t like for her to see them too much.
* * * *
The food was gone when she came back after lunch.
Thank you, said the fairies. That was very strange.
‘Did you enjoy it?’ asked Allie.
We didn’t eat it. We fed it to toads we use to draw our gourd-carriage.
‘Why—’
It burned our fingers. It had been touched by machinery.
Allie looked up and realised her father was squatting only a few feet away, weeding the marigold patch.
Why can’t he hear you? she asked in a tiny whisper.
The fairies just laughed.
‘Am I the only person who can hear you?’
Your neighbour’s dog, Bandy, can hear us. If we like we can sing loud enough and high enough to poach his brain like a swallow’s egg.
‘But I can’t really hear you.’
No.
‘Then how do I know what you’re saying?’
She knelt in the sunlight holding the empty coaster for a long time, but the fairies were gone.
* * * *
‘Bobby! They liked the cereal. They fed it to their horses.’
‘Equitation,’ said
Bobby wearily. ‘What mounts are these? Dragonflies?’
‘Toads.’
‘Don’t tell Mother. She’d shit a manticore if she knew we had toads in the garden.’
* * * *
When she went downstairs, Mom and Dad were having an argument.
‘—not a bottle, it’s a Skinner box. Don’t make me tell you again,’ said Dad.
‘But germs get in there.’
‘No, they don’t. How would germs get in?’
‘Carried by insects, Doug.’
‘He’s perfectly safe. You have to be careful with a child who has Williams syndrome.’
‘He’s old enough to switch him to an orgone box.’
‘Sara, he’s not even fourteen! An orgone box is more appropriate for children at puberty.’
‘But he’s got sores on his rump! You can see them. The orgone box is—’
‘Sara, I will hose the bottle outtwice a day if that will set your mind at rest. Now, shouldn’t you be investigating—’
Allie ran upstairs to Bobby.
‘Bobby, Dad is talking about hosing your bottle out twice a day.’
This bottle-washing - the equivalent of a daily bath - was bitterly unpleasant for Bobby, because it involved dumping several gallons of water mixed with disinfectant into the bottle. The water drained out the hole Dad had cut so long ago in the bottom, but sometimes the water level came up to Bobby’s chin, and he feared drowning. Also, the water was often icy cold or scalding hot.
Still, the process was necessary, or Bobby would be up to his neck in his own wastes.
Bobby screamed, loud and long. Usually the bottle muffled his cries, but this time, Dad and Mom came running up the stairs.
‘What have you done to him?’ Dad snarled at Allie.
‘Nothing. I just told him—’
‘Nice girls don’t tell. Nice girls mind their own business,’ said Mom, hauling on Allie’s pigtail so that Allie had to stand on tiptoe to avoid having her hair pulled out by the roots.
‘Make them stop! Cease! Holy moly! Halt!’ screamed Bobby, but it wasn’t clear who he was screaming at.
* * * *
Allie ran all the way downstairs and hid in the garage. She couldn’t hear anything from there, even the voices of the fairies.
When she went upstairs again, Bobby’s wispy, long hair was wet and he looked exhausted.
‘Cryogenic lancination,’ he whimpered. ‘Could you turn on the heater?’
‘They took the heater away when summer came.’ She embraced the bottle and pressed her body against it.
‘Mercy buckets, sibling.’ Bobby closed his eyes and took a ragged breath. ‘But your body-heat doesn’t get through the glass much.’
‘They’re mean,’ she said. ‘Mean parents. I don’t think any of the kids at school have such mean parents.’
‘I’ll warm up in time. It gets right califactive in here in the afternoons.’
‘What would happen if I told my teacher you were here?’
‘I don’t know. Mom would pull all your hair out and make you wear a Dolly Parton wig, and Dad would pour peroxide in my bottle.’
‘I could tell the fairies.’
‘The fairies hardly like you anyway. They’d probably never come back if they realised you came from such kinked kith and kin.’
When Allie slunk down the back stairs, she heard Mom say, ‘The point is, he’s growing. And he’s a bad influence on Allie. I say separate the two of them. Allie can go live with my mother, and we’ll shift Bobby to the cellar. He’ll be happier down there, with less to distract him.’
Allie sat down on the stairs, next to two of Mom’s less successful bonsai, a hemlock that was tied almost in a knot and a rhododendron that refused to bloom.
‘I disagree, Sara. Allie shows signs of being disturbed. It’s not just that she needs glasses.’
‘Please don’t start that again. You know how I feel about doctors.’
‘And the influences at her school are not exactly wholesome. But say she went into the Skinner box in the fall. You could home-school her. She’d still get an education—’
‘Not another bottle-baby, Doug. She hasn’t a thing wrong with her. And she’s going to be my beauty queen, you’ll see.’
‘You win. The orgone box, then.’
* * * *
‘Bobby, what’s an orgone box?’ she ask her brother.
‘Why?’ His voice reflected deep suspicion.
‘They think I’m crazy because of the fairies. And because I cried when Dad put ice-water in your bottle.’ She hushed her voice and put her mouth at the very lip of his bottle. ‘I think they want to send me away. Or put me in an orgone box. With a lock.’
Bobby banged his head against the glass of the bottle. He had less than a quarter inch to move his head in, but he banged it hard, and tensed his body as if trying to crack the bottle. ‘I will kill them,’ he said finally. ‘I will think of a way to kill them.’
Allie wished she hadn’t told him.
* * * *
Allie explained the situation to the fairies.
None of them said anything for a long time. Some of our kin have been captured by humans and put in bottles, they said finally. But it hasn’t happened in a long time. We’re too invisible for them.
‘I just wanted you to be friends with us,’ Allie said. ‘But Mom thinks I’m beautiful, and Dad thinks I need glasses.’
What have you to trade? asked the fairies.
‘Little trees,’ said Allie reluctantly.
We have all the trees we need, big and small.
‘These are special little trees. My mother made them out of saplings, by cutting their roots off and twisting their branches. They’re very beautiful. They look like trees in a fairy garden. You could have little picnics under them, or put swings in them and play.’
Would your mother be very angry if we took them?
‘Oh, she would be horribly angry. She would—’ Allie almost said that Mom would get spray made specially to exterminate fairies, but thought better of it. ‘She would punish me if she found out.’
Mmmmmm, mused the queen fairy. Mustn’t get our little fiend in trouble, eh, ladies? And yet—’
‘I could drink coffee and stay up late at night. Then I’ll bring them out to you. But I’d have to take them back on the upstairs porch before dawn.’
Clever child! said the queen fairy. Very well. We’ll go see your brother and we’ll divert your parents’ attention so they won’t put you in a bottle.
‘Divert them?’
Do not trouble yourself. We are the fairies. We dazzle women’s minds.
‘And you’ll be our friends?’
The fairies laughed, musically.Of course, clever child! We are the soul of conviviality. And they began to sing, higher than Allie could hear, but very loud. She had to clap her hands over her ears. Her head hurt so badly she wanted to scream.
* * * *
When Mom was in the bathroom next morning, and Dad had already gone to work, Allie poured the remains of the morning coffee into a large mayonnaise jar and hid it in the closet of her room. All day, she wanted to tell Bobby she had solved their problems. But Bobby was acting very strange and kept saying that he would kill his parents. He didn’t say how.
At night, she went to bed and lay in the dark, listening to the fairies laughing outside. Strange that she hadn’t heard them until just last week. Their voices were very sweet, but so high and loud that her ears rang.
She knew her parents and Bobby couldn’t hear them, but all the dogs in the neighbourhood bayed. How would her parents fall asleep so that she could sneak the bonsai out to them? She began to cry, big racking sobs, hot tears and snot running onto the pillow. And then the fairy laughter stopped, and the dogs settled down. She checked her clock, and it was midnight.
In bare feet and white pyjamas, she went to the closet. She had left it open so it wouldn’t creak when she got the coffee. She drank it and lay down, listening to hear if
her parents were asleep yet.
Ready, said a voice, jarring her awake.
She sat up, rubbed her eyes, and looked at the clock. Three o’clock! She had fallen asleep.
Grimly, she plodded downstairs to her mother’s hobby room.
Dark Terrors 5 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology] Page 33
