Crying Child

by Barbara Michaels

  “She was married,” Ran said. We went down the steps and walked toward the car. “For less than a year. The guy who recommended her to me told me about it. Her husband was killed in Viet Nam—or was it Korea, back then?

  She was badly shaken up. Had a breakdown. It was that that made her decide to go into psychiatry.“

  Right then I got the first faint prickle of alarm. I couldn’t understand why I felt uneasy, but my subconscious must have been working on it. I remembered that it had been Anne’s suggestion that had sent us to the library that evening. I remembered Mary’s acquiescence— eagerness, even. I remembered certain things that had been said—and the look on a woman’s face as she stared out a darkening window. And I knew, all at once, why Anne’s face had reminded me of something. The resemblance had not been one of physical features. It had been an expression. The same expression, on Anne’s face, that I had seen one other night on my sister’s face as she stared out into the darkness where the crying child had its existence.

  I caught at Ran’s arm as he stopped the car in front of the librarian’s house.

  “Ran. Did Anne say anything more to you about holding a seance?”

  “No… You mean lately? Not since that first time she mentioned it, and we all decided—”

  “She’s mentioned it to me several times,” Will said. “Jo, what is it?”

  “I’m overanxious. I must be. But tonight—she did seem glad to have us go, didn’t she? She said it was her last night. She said—oh, God, what was it she said? ”I don’t dare believe it; you don’t know what it would mean to me—“ Will. You don’t think—”

  “I think we’d better get back to the house as fast as we can. Never mind the key, Ran; let’s get moving.”

  Ran drove that road like a madman, and I kept urging him to go faster. In the faint glow from the dashboard his face looked like a death mask, and he never spoke a word. I kept babbling. I couldn’t stand the silence.

  “There’s another theory, one we never considered. Suppose she’s the murderess—Miss Smith? Hezekiah died in that room, falling down those stairs. A man like that, who had walked his quarterdeck in gales and storms, tripping on a stair? Suppose she pushed him. Suppose she hit him, with a poker or something, and made it look as if he’d fallen. The child might know. She would have to dispose of it to keep it from talking. Remorse, suicide—or maybe one of the family found out the truth and took the law into his own hands, to avoid scandal. I can see Mercy doing it, she must have hated the woman anyhow. Ran, can’t you go any faster?”

  We met only one car on the road. It let out a long startled bleat of its horn, which faded as we swept past. Then we were among trees, swinging up the private road. The trunks loomed up and vanished like colossal columns in a pagan temple. And then, after far too long a time, we were in front of the house. Ran drove straight across the lawn. He was out of the car before the engine died, and we were right behind him.

  Jed met us in the hall. His somber face lit up at the sight of Ran.

  “Glad you’re back,” he said, in what was clearly an understatement.

  “Where are they?”Ran demanded.“Where’s Mary?”

  “They went upstairs an hour ago,” Jed said. “I thought they went to bed. But Bertha went up a while back, just to check, and neither of them was in her room. I’m afraid—”

  Ran made an inarticulate sound and started up the stairs. He, like the rest of us, had no doubt as to where to go.

  The lights on the fourth-floor landing were on. That was the only sign that anyone had come this way. Everything was quiet; the tower door was closed. Then I heard a voice—it was Anne’s, I learned later. I couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was calm and regular, with a cadence almost like that of poetry.

  The feeling hit me then—the same icy chill I had felt before, and with it came the sick malaise that was a sickness of the soul rather than the body.

  I forgot that the others hadn’t felt it, at least not so strongly. I saw Jed recoil, and saw the perspiration break out on Ran’s face. He grabbed at the doorknob. It turned, but the door didn’t open. They had barricaded it from within.

  They heard us—or something heard us… Anne’s voice rose, its tempo increasing; and from within the room there was a sickening grating groan and then a sob —a long, sobbing wail, the same sound we had heard before.

  Will said something, through stretched lips; I didn’t catch the words, but Jed did. He caught hold of Ran and pulled him back from his wild clawing at the door; and Will stepped back, raised his foot, and slammed it into the door.

  I don’t know whether it was karate, or what, but it was as effective as a battering ram. The door flew open.

  The sound that burst out of that open door was hellish, and I use that word in its literal sense. It was the weeping we had heard before, but magnified beyond all endurance, like a powerful hi-fi set turned up as high as it will go. Even the sweetest sound is hideously distorted under those conditions. This sound had never been sweet. Now it sounded more like cackling laughter than grief.

  The room was lit by candles—and by one other thing.

  Not moonlight; the fog obscured the moonlight, and pushed at the barred window like a white monstrosity trying to break in. The other light came from an amorphous shape that hovered near the foot of the iron staircase.

  It was like a cloud of luminous gas, or a patch of fog that has phosphorescent qualities. Its sickly gray light showed nearby objects clearly. The white bulk of the rocking horse looked obscenely out of place in that terrible atmosphere; the painted mouth seemed to grin, and I could have sworn that it was moving back and forth, as if something rode on its back.

  The two women were sitting next to one another at a small round table in the center of the room. After the first glance at Mary’s frozen stare, I couldn’t take my eyes off Anne’s face. Mary had been through this, or something like it, before; but poor Anne… Half believing, half doubting, telling herself that this was only an experiment which couldn’t harm Mary however it worked out. But the part of her mind that did believe believed in the pretty afterlife of the spiritualists, in flowers and singing and happy spirits who have passed over. Then the cold came to her, and the sickness, and the thing that was struggling to take shape against the darkness.

  It was like a monstrous birth; the creature squirmed and writhed, fighting the bonds of the invisible. And all the while it kept up that mindless squealing. Sounds have direct emotional impact; animals make certain noises to attract sexual partners—or prey. I wondered how I could possibly have heard this call before and failed to realize that it fell into that same category—not a crying child but a counterfeit of one, deliberately created to attract a certain quarry, as a hunter reproduces the call of game birds to lure them within his weapon’s range.

  The whole thing couldn’t have taken very long, but it seemed to go on forever. Then, with a snap and a crackling flash, like an electrical short-circuit, the thing came into focus, complete and self-illumined. It was distinct; and it was nothing like anything I had expected to see.

  I had seen “Miss Smith” materialize before; it had been unpleasant, but it hadn’t been nearly as bad as this. Yet I did expect to see her, because the only other face I might have anticipated was the cherub face with the golden curls, the face of the child in the miniature. That face would have suited the forlorn weeping, but it seemed blasphemous to associate it with this outrageous cacophony.

  The thing we saw was a man; at least it was man-high and man-shaped, hulking and big. Shaggy dark hair fell over its forehead and ears. The mouth was open in a grimace of triumphant laughter. It was a brutish-looking shape, but its appearance was not the worst thing about it. The worst thing was the aura of abnormality that hung upon it.

  Will claimed later that I was standing on his feet and trying to climb up on him. I may have been. I don’t remember what I was doing, or what anyone else did or said. I wasn’t even thinking about Mary. People talk about fear.
They haven’t the faintest idea what fear is. I could face a charging tiger or an earthquake or a maniac with a club now, and find all of them relatively unnerving.

  Somebody started praying. It was me. The prayer was a hodgepodge, bits of the “Our Father” and “Hail Mary” and miscellaneous lines from the ritual. I’m not claiming that the words themselves had any particular value. Maybe the multiplication table would have been just as effective—anything mechanical, learned by rote, to focus the mind and wrench it back to independent thought. The sound of my voice broke the rhythm of the wailing, and that may have helped; but it was no act of ours that saved us. The thickening shadows across the room didn’t catch my attention at first, not until the shaping was almost complete; but there she was, the black-garbed woman, just as I had seen her once before. This time she moved. Her hands came up in an odd crossing movement; and simultaneously a light shone out—a powerful bright beam, cutting through the darkness like a sword. And they were gone, both of them; the room was empty.

  The next thing I heard was a sodden thud, as Anne Fell off her chair onto the floor in a dead faint. Jed kept the light focused. He was the only one who had had sense enough to remember to bring a flashlight.

  Mary didn’t stir. Her face was like wax, stiff and white and motionless. I had the feeling that I could have taken it between my hands and remolded it into any shape I liked.

  Tentatively Ran reached out and touched her arm. She didn’t move. I could see her breathing, but that was all she did. Ran picked her up. She came up into his arms all in one piece, like a figure carved out of wood, and her face didn’t change, not a muscle of it. Ran carried her out. Will scooped up Anne, with much speed and little ceremony, and followed them.

  I turned to Jed.

  “You’re the lucky one,” I said, in a croak. “I don’t think you’re going to have to carry anybody. Not if we get out of here… fast…”

  He put his long arm around my shoulders and we went down the stairs together.

  We spent the rest of the night in the kitchen, in what was more or less a state of siege. No one wanted to be alone.

  Mary was still in shock; her eyes were open, but she didn’t respond to anything. Will seemed to find her condition relatively reassuring; at least he could give it a name.

  “It looks like a form of catatonia. Ran, stop pacing; I called Vic and he thinks he can get the chopper down as soon as it gets light. Fog’s supposed to lift. That’s only a couple of hours from now; it’s the fastest way, believe me.”

  Anne was made of stronger stuff than I had expected. Will shot her full of tranquilizers, but even so, she was doing pretty well. She didn’t even indulge in guilt feelings.

  “I couldn’t possibly have known,” she said steadily. She was thoroughly doped; her face had an almost oriental tranquility, but she was thinking rationally. “What I did was stupid and unforgivable, but there’s no point in berating myself now. Just tell me—what was that thing?”

  “I don’t know,” Will said.

  Ran wasn’t taking any part in the conversation. He sat on a chair near the cot Jed had arranged for Mary. He just sat there holding her hand and watching her still face.

  “We were calling the child,” Anne said. “We were going to find out who it was. What it wanted. I thought if it didn’t work, then she would accept the fact that there was nothing out there. And if it did…”

  A spasm crossed the calm of her face, and Will said quickly, “Never mind. I’m beginning to think it did work— better than you realize.”

  “Huh?” I stared at him. “That was no child, Will. It was a man. But not Hezekiah; I know his face.”

  “No, it wasn’t the Captain,” Jed said. He was sitting at the table with the Chinese box in front of him. He had been turning it idly in his hands. Now he tapped it with his finger. “Look at this, Will. I measured it this afternoon. There’s a space of about an inch I can’t account for. I hope Ran won’t mind; but I took out the lining.”

  With the lining removed, the secret of the box wasn’t hard to find. One of the nailheads on the bottom was false. When Jed pressed it, a drawer popped out. In the drawer was a single sheet of paper.

  “It’s a sort of birth certificate,” Will said, studying it. “Not a formal one; but the colony had a doctor, and he wrote this out. A male child… mother’s name, Georgianna Smith. Born in Macao. That was the summer colony of the Hong Kong merchants. Does it begin to make sense now?”

  “She was one of the harem,” I said sickly. “One of Hezekiah’s Hong Kong harem. British, by her name—how on earth did he get a girl like that into—”

  Will was staring at the paper.

  “She was one of the lost people, I imagine,” he said absently. “The orphans, the abandoned… The world is full of them. She might have been traveling to India or another British colony; maybe her parents died on shipboard, who’s to know? If she was young and alone and met up with an experienced rake like Hezekiah… She must have loved him. She came back here and let herself be taken on as a hired servant.”

  “That I can’t understand,” I burst out. “That kind of crawling, obsequious—”

  “It was another world,” Will pointed out. “Not a very kind world for women. She came here in—1840, wasn’t it?

  The first Opium War broke out about 1839; maybe it wasn’t safe there, for her and the boy. Or maybe it was mother love that made her do it. If she let the old man adopt the kid, he’d be provided for. What other choice did she have? I’m surprised Hezekiah had the decency to do that much. Maybe he enjoyed aggravating his legitimate family.“

  “That I can believe. But Will, we still haven’t solved the problem. What was that cretinous thing we saw up there? It couldn’t have been—”

  I broke off, seeing the expression that had come over Will’s face.

  “Not cretinous,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Something else. Jo, we’ve been on the wrong track. All wrong. Listen: That room up there. The barred windows. The rocking horse. The book with that infantile scrawl. Is there any sign of an older child, an adolescent, in that room?”

  “Of course not. He wasn’t…”

  “No crib,” Will muttered. “Full-sized bed, furniture.” His eyes were wild. “Think, Jo. The sensation of cold, the sick feeling. When you saw ”Miss Smith‘ in the graveyard you were frightened; but did you feel the coldness then?“

  “No,” I said, without hesitation. “But it was outside, Will.”

  “It was during the daytime,” Will said. “Daylight, Jo. The crying only came at night, and the cold came at night. She came at night too, sometimes, but does that mean the cold, the unique sensation of terror, is her attribute? What if it is a quality associated with the weeping instead? Because of our various prejudices we’ve tended toward a certain theory—that the woman and the child haunt the Frasers because one generation of Frasers was responsible for their deaths—morally if not literally, But that doesn’t explain what we saw tonight. There’s another explanation, Jo. It doesn’t absolve the Captain. In a way, he was responsible for the whole tragedy. But he couldn’t anticipate what happened. He was away, at sea, so much of the time… And the symptoms may not have developed until long after he brought them home…”

  “There’s something caught up under the top of the drawer,” Jed interrupted. He scooped the paper out with his fingertip. After he had scanned it, he looked at Will.

  “She did leave a note,” he said quietly. Then he read it aloud.

  “They said he had sold his soul to Satan. He was Satan’s child, the fruit of sin. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children; but on whom are the sins of the children visited? The crime of Absalom was his, but the Lord sent Joab to spare Maacah. She did not sin as I have sinned. The punishment was fair, but I am weak. And so I sin again, for the last time, because I cannot live with what I had to do. Absalom sinned, but David wept for him.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “I don’t get it,” I said.


  “It’s the pronouns that confuse you,” Will said. He was looking rather pale. “There are two of ”him‘—her son and her lover. How well do you know your Bible?“

  “I know Absalom. He rebelled against his father—was that his sin? He got killed, but David wept for him anyhow. ”O Absalom, my son, my son.“ But I don’t know Joab.”

  “ ”And he took three darts in his hand and thrust them through the heart of Absalom.“ ”

  The voice was the voice of Mrs. Willard. She looked up, from where she shared Ran’s vigil by Mary’s cot.

  “Maacah,” she added, in her flat voice, “was the mother of Absalom.”

  Gradually the meaning dawned on me, and I felt a little pale myself.

  “It’s not possible, Will. She killed the boy? Because he killed his father?”

  “He was Satan’s child,” Jed quoted. “That’s the boy she’s talking about. The sins of the children… Yes, I’d say it was pretty clear.”