The Future of Horror

by Jonathan Oliver

  Jen pushes her half-eaten curry away. She’s barely touched her wine.

  “I’m sorry, Chris, but not tonight, eh? I’m not in the mood.”

  “You’re never in the mood,” her husband mutters under his breath before he has the good sense to stop himself.

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, what do you think? How long’s it been now?”

  “Chris, I’ve just had a baby.”

  “Yeah, almost two months ago. And how long’s it been since we last had sex?”

  Jen looks at him, flabbergasted. “I don’t know.”

  “Have a guess.”

  “Um…”

  “Twelve months, almost to the day.”

  “What is this? Are you keeping score now?”

  “Used to be you could hardly keep your hands off me; even after Toby was born we were back at it within a couple of months at most. And that was at your instigation.”

  Jen stares at him, feeling her neck and face flush in embarrassment.

  “But ever since Emmie came along it’s like you don’t want anything to do with me.”

  “How can you say that?” she rails, finding her voice again. “You know that’s not true!”

  “Well that’s how it looks from where I’m standing!”

  “What do want me to say? I’m sorry? Is that it? Well, in that case, I’m sorry.” Setting her elbows on the counter, she rests her head in her hands. “This wasn’t how I wanted this evening to go.”

  “Me neither.”

  It’s then that Emmie starts to cry, the lights of the baby monitor arcing in sympathy.

  Neither of them moves for a minute, and then Chris meets her sulky stare. “Look, are you going, or shall I?”

  03:33. ON THE dot.

  She goes to the loo, then checks on both the children before getting back into bed, but, try as she might, she can’t get back to sleep.

  She eventually gives up on the charade and gets up. She checks on Emmie again, but the little one shows no sign of waking up any time soon, so she creeps downstairs.

  She easily finds her way in the muted gloom of the hallway, the suffused light from the streetlamp outside shining in through the frosted panes of the front door. She heads into the kitchen.

  It sits there, in the darkness, like a malignant shadow. Its windows gleam like obsidian mirrors. The flesh on her arms goose-pimples under her baggy T-shirt, and an icy shiver of unease crackles up her spine. She can imagine the housekeeper at one of the windows, staring out at her from behind the darkened glass, and she can imagine the sort of thing she’d be saying: the cutting, hurtful comments; the chastising tone.

  Emmie’s hungry mewling stirs her from her reverie and she looks at the glowing red digits of the clock on the cooker.

  04:47.

  BARELY TWO WORDS pass between her and Chris the following morning when he leaves for work. He doesn’t even stop to make himself a coffee and the memory of the argument leaves her in a foul mood for the rest of the day.

  She’s still stewing over their argument, chopping onions for that night’s spaghetti bolognaise, when Emmie’s cries stir her from her melancholic reverie, the lights spiking red on the baby monitor. She only went down for her nap an hour ago. She should be good for another half hour at least.

  Putting down the vegetable knife and wiping her hands on the tea towel she casts a glance towards the doll’s house. Toby’s not there.

  The doll’s house is open, and the sight of it makes her stop and stare. Her three year-old son has arranged the furniture with such precision that everything is in its proper place and not a single piece is missing. Except for one. The housekeeper doll – Mrs Mulligan.

  “Toby?” she calls, but there’s no reply.

  She pokes her head around the sitting room door as she heads for the stairs, but the TV’s off and Toby’s not there.

  Emmie’s angry howls continue unabated. She always sounds so angry, as if she’s thinking: How dare Mummy leave me alone up here like this?

  “Toby? Are you alright?”

  Still no reply.

  Emmie’s angry protest is coming at her front two directions now – from the baby monitor in the kitchen as well as down the stairs.

  As she makes her way up, she catches a glimpse of the yawning doors of the doll’s house again.

  She finds Toby in Emmie’s room. He’s peering through the bars of the cot at the screaming baby, chatting away quite happily.

  At first she thinks he’s talking to the baby, or even talking to himself. Then she sees the housekeeper doll clenched tightly in his right hand and feels her throat constrict and her stomach knot in fear. The doll is watching Emmie with its black painted eyes, the never-changing expression of disapproval on its face.

  “Toby, what are you doing in here?” Jen demands, as she lifts the kicking, screaming infant out of her cot. The air is redolent with an unhappy marriage of diarrhoea and talcum powder. “Didn’t you hear Mummy calling?”

  She lays Emmie down on her changing mat. Judging by the spreading yellow stain at the thigh of her babygrow, it’s another squitty one.

  “Mrs Mulligan doesn’t like Emmie screaming,” he says with candid honesty.

  “But she’s a baby,” Jen says, wearily, “and that’s just what babies do. And this one more than most,” she adds under her breath.

  “Mrs Mulligan says that children should be seen and not heard,” the toddler says. “Mrs Mulligan says we’d all be better off if the little blighter had never been born.”

  She turns on him at that. “Toby! That’s a horrible thing to say! I never want to hear you say such a horrible thing again!” With Emmie kicking her way out of the open nappy mid-change, Jen grabs Toby by the arms. “I never want to hear you talk about your little sister like that again!”

  Toby cries out in pain and drops the doll. It lands on the carpet, its head turned towards Jen, its painted features set forever in the same disapproving black scowl.

  Without thinking, she lashes out, kicking the doll out of the door and halfway across the landing.

  Toby starts to cry.

  “Go to your room!” she screams at him.

  Toby does as he’s told, his little body shaking as it’s wracked by his sobs.

  She turns back to the baby, fists clenched as she struggles to hold in her simmering rage.

  There’s shit everywhere. Emmie’s legs are covered in it, as is the changing mat. Some has even made it onto the wall.

  Jen gives in to her own scream of frustration, the baby’s yells rising in response in animal panic.

  “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” she shrieks. And then she stops, exhaustion threatening to overcome her. Her heart’s racing. She looks at her hands. She’s shaking too.

  She just stands there for a moment, letting out her breath in a weary sigh. She doesn’t know how long she stays like that, eyes closed, doing nothing, wishing the world away. But the world doesn’t go away.

  Taking another deep breath, she opens her eyes and sets about clearing up the mess.

  “I MEAN, WHERE did he even hear language like that?” she says to Chris over dinner, as she twirls a piece of spaghetti onto her fork over and over and over.

  “Not on CBeebies, I take it.”

  “I wish you would take this seriously, Chris.”

  “Why? You seem to be taking it seriously enough for both of us.”

  Her silence is reaction enough.

  “Look, you don’t know what he might overhear at Nursery. They’re caring people, sure, and I’ve got nothing against them, but they’re common as.”

  “It didn’t sound like something they’d say.”

  “Look, what is it you’re really worried about here?”

  She hesitates before answering, still twisting the same piece of spaghetti around the tines of her fork.

  “I guess I’m worried he might try to hurt her.”

  “Emmie?”

  “Of course, Emmie! Who
else would I mean?”

  “Alright,” he counters defensively. “But come on, be serious. Do you really think that’s likely to happen?”

  She says nothing.

  Chris looks at her, an expresson of burgeoning anxiety on his face. “Clearly you do.”

  She meets his gaze at last, her tired eyes wide with fearful doubts of her own.

  “Look, here’s what I think you should do. Call Doctor Pomeroy in the morning.”

  “Great! So you think I’m going mad.”

  “No! No, I don’t. Not at all. But what harm could it do just to have a chat about things?”

  Jen turns her attention back to the congealing meal on her plate. “Everything was alright until she brought that bloody doll’s house round.”

  “Now, come on, Jen. You got ill before and it didn’t have anything to do with a doll’s house.”

  “I was right. You do think I’m going mad.”

  She pushes her plate away from her with a clatter of cutlery.

  “Look, let’s not do this again. Not tonight. I’ve had the day from Hell and –”

  “And you think I haven’t?”

  “I was just going to say we’re both tired, so let’s open a bottle of wine and relax. Watch some TV, nothing more heavy than that, and let’s see where the evening takes us. No pressure.”

  “That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “Alcohol!”

  Chris slams his hands down on the breakfast bar and gets up from his seat. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”

  “Where are you going?” she asks, suddenly consumed by overwhelming dread.

  He’s already in the hall putting on his shoes. “Out.”

  “But we haven’t finished supper.”

  “Oh, I rather think we have, don’t you?”

  He picks up his keys from the shelf by the door and is gone, slamming the door behind him.

  “I’M WORRIED ABOUT you, Jennifer dear,” comes her mother’s voice down the phone line later that evening.

  Jen takes a moment to wipe her nose on the balled-up tissue she’s been using to wipe away her tears, as she struggles to compose herself.

  “Don’t be,” she manages between sniffs. “I’m alright. Really I am. It’s just that I’ve been so tired and then Chris storming out earlier… I just wanted somebody to talk to.”

  “Are you sure, Jen? I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but this isn’t your old condition coming back, is it?”

  “If we’re going to rake over the past, Mum, can we at least call it by its proper name? It’s not ‘my old condition’ or ‘the baby blues.’ It’s called postnatal depression. But I’m not depressed!”

  “Couldn’t you just give that nice doctor of yours a call in the morning? You know, the one you saw last time. What was his name?”

  “Doctor Pomeroy. And no, I’m not going to call him in the morning, because I am not suffering from postnatal depression.”

  “Do you want me to come over, Jennifer? I’m supposed to be going over to Tommy and Sheila’s but it’s nothing I can’t cancel. I mean we’ve had it planned for weeks now, but if you want me to come over, I’ll give them a buzz and tell them I can’t make it.”

  “No, Mum, it’s alright. I’m fine. Honestly, I’ll be okay.”

  “Alright, then, if you’re sure. But just give Doctor Pomeroy a call for me, will you dear?”

  “’Bye Mum.”

  “’Bye, dear.”

  She puts down the phone quickly before the tears start again.

  IT’S GONE MIDNIGHT before Chris comes home again. The time it takes him to open the door and the way he stumbles about downstairs, in a vain effort to be quiet, tells her he’s drunk. He’ll regret it in the morning.

  She listens as he makes himself some toast and then hears the muffled tones of the television as he moves into the sitting room. He doesn’t come upstairs until gone one. She pretends to be asleep as he plants a beery kiss on her cheek, whispering, “I’m sorry,” before climbing into bed beside her.

  He’s asleep within seconds, and she prays his drunken snores won’t wake the baby.

  But sleep doesn’t come for her, even after the day she’s had. She lies there tossing and turning for what feels like an interminable age, and the longer it goes on, the more she worries that she’ll be up again at 03:33 anyway. It’s becoming a habit.

  In the end she gives up and sits up. She looks at the alarm clock, already knowing what it’ll say.

  03:33.

  She gets up. There are baby grows and bibs and shirts and God knows what else to iron before the next round of washing begins.

  DESPITE HERSELF, SHE tries the surgery in the morning. After getting the same answerphone message what feels like twenty times, she eventually gets through to the receptionist. Doctor Pomeroy is busy, but the girl on the end of the line says she’ll get him to give Jen a call after morning surgery.

  She feels a little better after that, more clear-headed and more motivated. She puts that motivation to good use, having got Toby off to Nursery. She finishes the ironing, gives the kitchen and the bathroom and the downstairs loo a thorough clean as Emmie gurgles and chuckles contentedly in her baby-bouncer.

  She tidies Toby’s toys, hoovers the house from top to bottom and even gives Chris’s football boots a clean, ready for the pub league game at the weekend. She even has time to make herself another cup of coffee before she has to pick Toby up. And it’s then, as she’s tidying away the last few toys while she waits for the kettle to boil, that her thoughts turn to the doll’s house again.

  It’s got to go. She doesn’t care that Toby will miss it. It has to go and it has to go now.

  There and then she decides to forego her cup of coffee, put the doll’s house in the boot of the car and make a diversion to drop it off at the nearest charity shop before collecting Toby from Nursery.

  She’ll deal with Toby, Chris and her mother later, but at least she’ll be shot of the bloody thing.

  It’s then that the phone rings. Its Doctor Pomeroy calling back.

  By the time she gets off the phone again, she’s feeling better in herself but she’s late for Toby. The doll’s house will just have to wait until later. But she’s decided; it’s going, no matter what.

  “IT’S NO GOOD, Toby, it’s going. It doesn’t matter how much you scream and shout; I’m not having that thing in the house a moment longer. Why don’t you go and shoot some goals in the garden or play with some of your other toys?” she says, steeling herself as she makes for the toy table. “We could get your paints out if you like.”

  Screaming like a banshee, Toby throws himself at her, grabbing her arm with his small hands. He digs in with his fingernails, making her gasp in surprise and pain.

  “Toby!”

  It’s then that he bites her.

  It is the action of a moment, a consequence of instinct rather than rational thought. The punch sends him flying across the room to land in a heap on the floor.

  He looks at her with hatred in his eyes, his bloody teeth bared in an animalistic snarl.

  “You spiteful bitch!”

  Jen stares at her son in horror, the moment of appalled guilt and self-recrimination swallowed up by the implications of that one simple statement.

  It’s the same voice that she heard Toby use before, only now she recognises the shrewish, accented tones for what they are. It’s too deep, too old, too malevolent, to be her baby boy.

  Her eyes alight on the doll he’s still gripping tightly in his little hand.

  “Give me the doll, Toby,” she says, her voice shaking. “Give me Mrs Mulligan. I’m sorry I hit you, it was an accident, but I want you to give Mrs Mulligan to me now!”

  “No!” Toby screams at her in his own voice.

  “Do as Mummy says!” Jen demands, her heart racing.

  “No!”

  This isn’t like him. He’s never this badly behaved. And he’s
never bitten her before.

  “Be a good boy and do as Mummy says now!”

  “No! No! No!” Toby yells, running away from her, heading for the hall.

  Jen grabs his arms and holds on tight. “Do as you’re told, young man. You don’t want to make Mummy cross, do you?”

  Toby struggles and kicks as he tries to wriggle free.

  “Give me the doll – now!”

  She lets go of one arm so as to take the doll from him, but he continues to resist, putting the hideous thing behind his back in his vain attempt to stop her taking it from him.

  “Right, that’s it!”

  Not holding back now, using her full strength against him, she spins the boy round. Seizing the offending hand, she bends the little boy’s fingers back, finally succeeding in prizing the doll from his grasp.

  The child’s screams of protest have become incoherent howls of hysterical rage and frustration. Emmie adds her own wails of uncomprehending infant fear from where she sits restrained in her baby-bouncer.

  Toby grabs hold of his mother’s leg as she strides across the kitchen towards the bin.

  Jen slams her foot on the bin pedal and the lid snaps open. She holds the scowling doll over the mess of potato peelings, used tea bags and sticky baby wipes filling the black bag, but then stops herself.

  Going out with the rest of the rubbish is too good for the old witch. Mrs Mulligan’s fate needs to be something more final.

  Kicking her son away from her, Jen opens the cupboard under the sink – the one with the toddler safety catch – and takes out the can of lighter fluid and the box of matches she keeps there next to the floor polish and the sink unblocker.

  Deaf to the screams of her howling children, she flings open the back door and storms out into the garden. The barbeque is standing there on the patio.

  Throwing back the barrel lid, she chucks the doll onto the grill and pops open the can, dousing the thing with accelerant. Dropping the half-empty container at her feet, she takes a match from the box and lights it, watching as the white flare of initial combustion subsides to become a flickering orange flame, the thin stick of wood twisting and blackening in the heat.