Jack-in-the-Box

by William W. Johnstone

  “Hot patootie?” Phillip laughed. “I’ve got to remember and tell Phil that.”

  They took a taxi back to Sam’s building and went up. They chatted for another half hour. Phillip checked the time and realized it was getting late. He had to get Phil and fix dinner.

  It was full dark when Phillip drove up to the Tremains’ house. Up the street he could see lights blazing at his house. He drove on, fear gripping him. His first thought was something had happened to Jeanne or the kids. Leaving the box on the front seat, he ran up the sidewalk to the door, pushing it open. Jeanne was standing in the foyer.

  “Thank God, you’re all right. Is Nora all right? Phil? What happened?”

  “Where have you been?” Jeanne shouted at him.

  3

  “What?” Phillip asked, stunned at the savagery in his wife’s tone. “Huh?”

  “I asked where have you been all day? How dare you storm out of this house and just leave, stay gone all day without telling anyone?”

  Phillip slowly closed the door and stood leaning against it, looking at Jeanne. Was he going crazy? What was this, the Twilight Zone?

  “Now just a minute, Jeanne. Hold on. I didn’t start this going-away-without-telling-anyone business. You did.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes. You did. Nora came down to the kitchen this morning while I was having coffee. She was fully dressed. She told me you were taking her up to visit your Aunt Morgan in Bridgeport. That you’d both be back late tomorrow. I’ll admit that it made me hot. I guess I did storm out of the house. I spent the day with Sam. I bought an antique jack-in-the-box at a curio shop.”

  She glared at him for one long, hot moment. “Nora?” she called.

  “Yes, mother?”

  “Come down here, please.”

  “Right away, mother.”

  “May we please go into the den?” Phillip asked. “The doorknob is poking a hole in my back.”

  “You might not be staying that long,” Jeanne told him.

  Phillip felt the blood rise to his face and his temper soar out of control. “Hey, goddammit!” he roared, rattling the pictures in the foyer. “Don’t you tell me where I will or won’t be staying!”

  Jeanne backed up several steps, her face pale. She knew Philip was a powerful man who really did not know his own enormous strength. While she had never had any reason to fear him, she had never seen him behave like this. She waved him toward the den.

  “Thanks so much,” Phillip said sarcastically, brushing past her.

  In the den, Jeanne looked at Nora. Phillip didn’t know where Phil was. “Nora,” she said. “The truth now.”

  “Of course, mother.”

  “Did you tell your father that you and I were going to visit Aunt Morgan in Bridgeport this morning? That we would not be back until late Sunday?”

  “No, mother,” the child said, her face and eyes serious. “That’s silly. Why would I do something like that?”

  Both mother and daughter smiled victoriously.

  Phillip stood, looking at Nora. His anger left him, replaced by a sadness. Sure, he thought. Now it all comes together. It’s get rid of poppa time. That was it all along. I should have guessed it before now. Ol’ dad scolds you when you’re bad. Ol’ dad sees right through your lies. Ol’ dad knows that something is dreadfully wrong with you. And you know Ol’ dad isn’t going to put up with your antics much longer. So in your cunning little mind, you pit mother against father, knowing your mother will always take your side against ol’ dad. You devious little . . . he mentally bit back the profanity. It would do no good. And, he thought with a sigh, there is no point in my challenging your lies, and you know it, Nora. Nasty little plan, kid. Your mother was right about one thing, though: You’re a hell of a lot smarter than I gave you credit for being.

  “Does counsel have any rebuttal?” Jeanne asked, sarcasm thick in her voice.

  With a calmness he did not inwardly feel, Phillip said, “Would there be any point, Jeanne? Against your perfect child?”

  “I really am sorry, daddy,” Nora said. “But I won’t lie for you.”

  “Thanks,” Phillip said drily.

  “Of course you wouldn’t, baby,” Jeanne said to Nora. “Now go to your room. Your father and I have some things we have to discuss.”

  Nora left, taking her dark-bordered innocence with her, and Phillip said, “You bet we have some things to discuss. And I’m not going to get angry; I won’t rant and rave. I’m not even going to punish Nora for lying. Because I know now she can’t help it. She’s a very sick child, Jeanne. She has got to get some professional help.”

  Jeanne looked at him, contempt in her eyes. “I don’t believe you, Phillip. How low! You’re really going to place the blame on that little girl, aren’t you?”

  “There is no blame to place, Jeanne. The child is sick. Call Sam. He’ll verify everything I told you.”

  “Your war buddy?” She laughed. “Are you kidding? Of course he’d lie for you. No way, Phillip.”

  “Carl Tremain wouldn’t lie for me,” he countered.

  Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What do you mean?”

  “I stopped by his place this morning. Told him about you and Nora leaving and my having to go into the city. I asked him if he’d look after Phil until I got back. Would I do that if I didn’t think you and Nora were really leaving?”

  She mentally wavered. “This time I’ll trap you, Phillip. I’ll call your bet.” She walked swiftly across the room and punched out the Tremains’ phone number, asking to speak to Phil. “What?” she blurted. “Oh . . . well. I . . . ah . . . decided not to go. I’m sorry I didn’t call you. Please forgive me. And thank you for looking after Phil. Please. Yes, do that. Send him on home. Thanks again.”

  She slowly replaced the phone. She turned, looking at Phillip, confusion in her eyes. It was then that Phillip’s rage bubbled over.

  “Well?” he asked, his voice tight. “Since playing favorites is not limited to you, answer this, if you will: Would I do something like this to Phil, my favorite—deliberately lie to him? You know I wouldn’t.” He dug in his pocket and held out a slip of paper. “There is the receipt for the jack-in-the-box. It’s out in the car. I was so goddamned concerned that something had happened to you or the kids, I left it out there when I pulled in. See this stain here?” He pointed to the front of his shirt. “That’s mustard, and probably ketchup, too. From the hot dogs Sam and I ate. Real swinging time in the big city, huh?”

  “Oh, Phillip . . .”

  “Aw . . . shit!” Phillip exploded, all the pent-up anger and frustration and disappointment and torn emotions finally erupting. “Don’t ‘Oh, Phillip’ me. I’ve had it with that goddamned lying little brat upstairs.”

  Jeanne paled and stiffened where she stood. She put out one hand and touched the table, steadying herself against his verbal onslaught. She flushed with anger.

  Phillip stood trembling for a moment, then his shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry, Jeanne. Forgive me for yelling. And I won’t blame you if you don’t. Nora isn’t a brat. What she is is our creation and it’s our responsibility to see her through to adulthood. And beyond, if it comes to that. Monday morning I’ll ask around and find the best child psychologist in the city.”

  But his remarks about Nora being a “goddamned lying brat” had struck home with Jeanne. “You wait just a minute, Phillip. Didn’t you say she was fully dressed?”

  “That’s right. Looked like a little doll.”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “I said no. That’s impossible. She got into bed with me not two minutes after you left the room. I would have heard her get out of bed.”

  “Not necessarily, Jeanne. That kid can move like a ghost. You’re forgetting how spooky I am. Sam, Bob, Ed, and me are all Ranger-trained LRRP’s. We worked right in the middle of the Cong. It’s going to take a pro, even now, to slip up on me. But I would never have known she was standing there had I not sensed eyes on
me. Wait a minute! Don’t I remember you getting up about four-thirty and saying you had a headache and were going to take a pill?”

  “Yes. So what?”

  “What kind of pill did you take?”

  She thought for a moment, then forced a smile. She nodded her head. “Valium. It would have hit me full strength about seven. That’s when you got up, wasn’t it?”

  “Thereabouts.”

  “Oh, Phillip—why is she doing this?”

  “Divide and conquer. And she came very close to succeeding.”

  Upstairs in her bedroom, where she had retreated after eavesdropping on her parents’ conversation, knowing she had lost this battle but not the war, Nora sat in the center of her canopied bed. She jammed a long pin into a picture of her father until the eight-by-ten was poked and punched full of holes. Then the little girl spat in her father’s face.

  Phillip had been correct on all counts.

  Nora was God damned.

  She had been God damned since the moment of birth.

  Outside, on the front seat of the BMW, in the cardboard box, in the wooden case, the jack-in-the-box crouched, coiled, and laughed and laughed as the music played.

  It was so good to be home.

  Again.

  4

  The tension was still very thick in the Baxter house Sunday morning. There had been no making up between Jeanne and Phillip at bedtime. No touching, no sexual contact. It was too soon for that. Jeanne was still not convinced about Nora. One way or the other.

  The Baxters had stopped attending church a few years back. Again, the reason had been Nora. Her sixth birthday had fallen on a Sunday, January the sixth. From that moment on the child had rebelled against even entering a church. She cried, she threw tantrums, she grew feverish, she got sick and vomited.

  The Baxters changed churches.

  The same thing occurred.

  They stopped going.

  Phillip had been raised in the Catholic Church. He had broken from that church as a boy, when his parents had divorced. His father had been killed in an auto accident before Phillip reached his teens. His mother had dropped out of sight a short time later. Phillip had no brothers or sisters—that he knew of—and so he became a ward of the court. His mother was declared legally dead when Phillip was eighteen, and he had inherited his father’s estate. The elder Baxter had been not rich but very comfortable, so Phillip had never wanted for anything. Except the love of natural parents; and that was something he could just vaguely remember.

  Jeanne, the daughter of a very successful Connecticut farm family, had been raised a Presbyterian. Both her parents were dead. Her brother still operated the farm; her sister had moved to California after a big family fuss over the estate, and she had never returned. Jeanne was not sure where the sister, Dana, lived.

  Since neither Phillip nor Jeanne was especially religious, backing away from organized churchgoing had not been that difficult. And since they themselves did not attend church, they did not force Phil to attend.

  On this Sunday morning, sitting alone in the kitchen sipping coffee, Phillip reviewed it all in his mind, recalling that at first both he and Jeanne had dismissed Nora’s tantrums as childish rebellion.

  “That was stupid of us,” Phillip muttered. He jammed out his cigarette butt in the ashtray. He had picked up a carton of cigarettes in the city, just after leaving the curio shop. Picked them up on impulse.

  “You quit smoking years ago!” Sam had scolded.

  “I felt like starting again,” Phillip said.

  Phillip lit another cigarette and poured more coffee. Where was his line of thinking going? He didn’t know. Why think about Nora’s attitude toward church at this time? Was there a connection? If so, what was it?

  He smiled, then muttered, “Maybe it’s the devil making her do it.”

  Then he remembered the jack-in-the-box.

  He went outside into a gray, windy morning. The air sharp. It reminded him that Thanksgiving was not far off. He wondered if they were going to Bridgeport, or was Aunt Morgan coming down to see them? Or were they driving up to get Morgan and then all of them going to Jeanne’s brother’s place? He just couldn’t remember.

  He opened the door to his BMW and reached across the front seat.

  The cardboard box was gone.

  He looked. He was sure he’d put it on the front seat of his car. Hell, he knew he had! He looked on the back seat. Empty except for the paper he’d bought and then forgotten to read. What was going on?

  He looked down. There it was, on the floorboards between front and back seats. But how had it gotten there?

  Oh well. He picked up the box and felt a very odd sensation flood him, grip him. A feeling of savagery and sudden hot lust. The memory of that awful afternoon in Nam came rushing back. That teenage girl they’d taken advantage of. He and Sam and Ed and Bob. Just after that search-and-destroy mission. She had popped out of a hole in the ground and shot—what was his name? Yeah. Lieutenant Rollins—right between the eyes with an AK. Sam had butt-stroked her with his own captured AK-47, and they had dragged her out of the hole. Pretty little thing. Spoke perfect English. Told them she’d killed dozens of Americans. Laughed about it. Hard to tell her age. Between fifteen and twenty-five. The four of them had looked in all directions. The rest of the battalion was way to hell and gone across a field, a good fifteen hundred meters away and moving farther away from the smoking, burning village. Or what was left of it.

  So they stripped the VC, and all of them took a turn with her. John Rollins had watched it all, through dead eyes.

  Then they didn’t know what to do with her. As LRRP’s they were supposed to bring back prisoners. But hell, they couldn’t bring back this one. She’d tell on them. They couldn’t have that.

  She had solved the problem by grabbing up Bob’s rifle. Before she could pull the trigger, Phillip shot her.

  Standing in the cold fall wind, the cardboard box in his hands, Phillip felt the strange sensation leave him. He shook away the memories. He hadn’t thought about that afternoon in years. He wondered if any of the others ever thought about it.

  He laughed cruelly, sounding not at all like himself. War makes strange bedfellows, he thought.

  He returned to the warmth of the house and put the box on a table. Jeanne came down the stairs, pausing at the last step, her slender hand on the polished railing.

  Beautiful, Phillip thought. “You’re up early,” he said.

  “I thought perhaps we’d better talk before the kids got up.”

  “All right. Good idea. I made coffee. You want some breakfast?”

  “Later, perhaps. What’s in the package?”

  “That antique jack-in-the-box I told you about last night.”

  She tried a smile that almost came across. “Open it up. I could use a good laugh.”

  “You’d better brace yourself,” he warned. “This thing is rather macabre.”

  “Oh?”

  Phillip removed the twine and opened the cardboard lid, taking out the wooden box. “You’re probably going to order me to toss this thing into the junk.”

  “Oh come on, Phillip. It can’t be that bad.”

  “It’s pretty gruesome, honey. Brace yourself.” He flipped the brass catch.

  The music began to play.

  Jeanne listened, then an expression of horror passed across her face. “Phillip, that’s the Funeral March!”

  He grinned at her. “Yeah. Weird, isn’t it.” He laughed. “Just wait until you see this ugly thing.”

  The lid slowly opened; the music became louder. The grotesque clown’s head seemed to slither upward, slowly inching out of the box, bobbing and weaving and grinning as it protruded out of its home. Its eyes rolled seemingly uncontrollably from side to side, making it look even more hideous.

  “My Lord!” Jeanne whispered.

  “I warned you.” Phillip stared at the clown’s face. It seemed . . . he searched for the word. Evil, he thought. Then all traces of
the word disappeared from his mind.

  He looked up at Jeanne, standing on the last step of the stairs.

  “Phillip, put that thing away. It’s hideous. Whatever in the world possessed you to buy it?”

  Possessed, the word stuck in his mind. Odd, he thought. Why should that word provoke such a responsive cord within me?

  “What’s wrong, Phillip?”

  He looked at her. “Eh? Oh . . . nothing.” He glanced at the grinning head of the jack-in-the-box. “God, it is ugly, isn’t it?”

  “Oh no,” Nora said. “It’s beautiful.”

  Mother and father looked up and around. Nora was standing just behind her mother. Neither had heard the girl come down the stairs. And Phillip was facing the stairs.

  Why didn’t I see her? he thought.

  “Beautiful?” Jeanne said.

  “Oh yes. Did you buy it for me, daddy?” she asked.

  “Why . . . ah, sure, honey!” Phillip stammered. “Sure. If you really like it.”

  “Oh, I love it!” She rushed across the room and came to the table where the jack-in-the-box sat, grinning insanely, evilly, always, at the mother and father and child. Nora threw her arms around her father’s waist. “Oh, I love you, daddy. Thank you so very, very much.”

  Phillip looked at Jeanne. Both were dumbfounded at the child’s reaction.

  “May I take it up to my room and play with it? Please, daddy? Please?” Her dark eyes were shining with excitement.

  “Why . . . sure, honey,” Phillip said, just slightly embarrassed at his daughter’s actions. For years she had stiffened whenever he tried to put his arms around her. Now this. “If you like it that much, it’s yours.”

  “Thank you, daddy.” She tugged at him until he bent down and allowed her to kiss him on the cheek. “Daddy needs a shave,” she said with a smile. It was a game they used to play. Nora had ceased playing it at age six.

  Nora flipped a switch on the box that Phillip had not even noticed and the ugly clown’s head slowly disappeared into the box. She closed the lid and locked it. “Now,” she said, smiling. “Mine at last.”

  “What a strange thing to say, Nora,” Jeanne said. “Whatever in the world do you mean?”