A Memory of Demons

by Ambrose, David

  What was that place? Why did he have to get away from it as though his life depended on it? He knew that something had happened in there. Was it something he had done? Or something done to him? His mind was blank, all memory wiped out by shame or shock, or fear of discovery . . .

  The sound of a car passing by was so close that it startled him. Instinctively he flung himself to the ground. He heard the hum of tyres on a slightly damp road, but could see nothing. It was followed by the sound of a heavier vehicle, a truck maybe. He figured that the road must be just beyond the crest of weed-choked trees and bushes up ahead.

  He knew he had to get away from there unseen, which meant he must be careful of that road. But why was he so afraid? What was he running from? Why couldn’t he remember?

  He looked up at the sky again. The clouds were low and a pale light was slanting from the horizon. It could not be long after dawn, which meant he must have spent the night, or part of it, inside that house, on the far side of the half-rotten door that he could see swinging in the light breeze on its hinges.

  What had happened in there? What had he done?

  The thought of going back to find out filled him with a terror so overwhelming that it made him almost physically sick. He staggered on, not caring as foliage and branches scratched his face and hands and tore his clothes. He fought his way through until he reached the road, which was deserted now. He started down it, only half-consciously taking in the bleak post-urban sprawl of empty warehouses and crumbling factories with their smokeless chimneys stabbing skywards. This was not a place where people lived or worked any more, just passed through on their way to somewhere else.

  Still he felt afraid of being seen, so he continued to run, possessed only by the insane thought that if he ran fast and far enough, he would become invisible . . .

  He must have blacked out at some point, because the next thing he remembered was opening his eyes and finding himself in a darkened room. He sat up sharply, disoriented, his heart beating fast. Then he saw the familiar red figures of the digital clock beside his bed. They read 3:30 a.m. But how did he get there? How long had he been there? It was not possible that the horror he had just lived through had been a dream.

  Instinctively he turned in search of Clare’s sleeping form, but her side of the bed was empty. Where was she? What had happened to her? Had she been part of what he had been running from? Had he left her behind in that terrifying house?

  There was a sound, a soft footfall. He turned, and saw her standing in the door, a robe loosely tied at her waist.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I tried not to wake you.’

  He absorbed the sight of her with a mixture of relief and fear. ‘What happened . . . ?’

  ‘Julia was crying. She’s sleeping now.’

  ‘I mean . . . How did I get here?’

  She looked puzzled. ‘What d’you mean? You were asleep.’

  ‘No, I . . . I wasn’t . . . I was . . .’

  He swung his feet to the floor and stood up, feeling none of the sharp knife-thrust of pain that he might have expected after soaking his brain in alcohol the way he must have done. His thoughts were clear, his hands and vision steady.

  ‘Tom, what are you doing?’

  He was picking up his shirt and jeans from the armchair in the corner where he sometimes left them. There was no caked or drying mud on them. Nor on any of his jackets when he opened the closet where they hung. His shoes sat in neat rows on the angled ledge below. What had he done with those torn and filthy things he had been wearing?

  ‘Tom?’

  She came up behind him, and he turned. ‘I don’t understand. I was running through this overgrown garden, through mud and dirt . . .’

  ‘Darling, you were dreaming.’

  ‘No, it was real . . . I was running from this house . . .’

  ‘This house?’

  ‘No – a house I’d never seen before. Something had happened there, but I don’t know what it was. I just knew I had to get away.’

  ‘It was just a nightmare. Come back to bed.’

  ‘Not just a nightmare. I . . . I’d been drinking.’

  ‘Oh . . . one of those.’ Her robe fell open as she slipped her arms around him and pressed the soft warmth of her body against his. ‘You told me you still dream about it sometimes, but the nice thing is you wake up sober, no hangover. Look at you – you’re fine.’

  ‘It was just so . . . frighteningly real.’

  ‘Come back to bed.’

  She led him by the hand, pausing only to let her robe fall to the floor. ‘You and Julia both,’ she said as they slipped beneath the covers. ‘Bad dreams, that’s all.’

  He held her close, saying nothing.

  7

  Next time Susan came over to babysit, Clare asked her about Melanie. But the teenager knew nobody of that name; nor, so far as she remembered, had she ever used the name around Julia. But as Julia never mentioned it again, and was quite happy to respond to her own name instead of insisting she was someone else, Tom and Clare forgot about the whole thing.

  For almost a year.

  Tom was in New York for a meeting at WNET, the public broadcasting station. They liked a proposal he had put to them for a series of interviews with artists – writers, painters, composers – about where they’d grown up. The department heads he had come to see agreed that it could ‘have legs’ and gave him an order for six programmes. As he was leaving the sleek black building on West 33rd Street that houses WNET, his cellphone rang. It was Clare.

  ‘Darling, you’re not still in your meeting, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m heading for the station. What’s up?’

  ‘It’s not serious, but Julia’s in the hospital.’

  He stopped walking. Someone bumped into him and cursed angrily, but he paid no attention.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They’re not sure if it’s an allergy or something she ate. She was nauseous and running a fever. Linda rang me and I came right home.’ Linda was the nanny they had hired when Clare had resumed part-time work three months earlier.

  ‘But she’s in the hospital?’

  ‘They want to keep her under observation overnight.’

  Tom was walking again, the phone pressed to his ear. He could tell from Clare’s voice that there was something she wasn’t saying.

  ‘Are they sure it’s not serious?’

  ‘Quite sure. She’s upset, that’s all.’

  ‘How d’you mean, upset?’

  He heard her hesitate. ‘She was a little . . . confused.’

  ‘Confused how? What d’you mean?’

  ‘She didn’t know who I was. She kept saying she wanted her mommy. She didn’t know me.’

  Without noticing it, Tom had started walking briskly along 33rd towards Eighth. Now he started to run. He turned left, heading north, and flagged down a cab. He told the driver to get him to Grand Central as fast as he could. He was supposed to have lunch with a publisher who wanted to put out the artist interviews in book form if he swung the TV deal, but he would call him and explain.

  When he reached the station he found there was a train in twenty minutes. As he waited, he left a message with the publisher’s assistant, then called Clare back.

  ‘Can you talk?’

  ‘Yes. I’m with her, but she’s asleep. Wait a minute, I’m just going out of the room . . .’

  ‘Is Bella there?’ he asked. Bella Warne was Julia’s regular paediatrician.

  ‘She was. She’s coming back later when they get a second lot of test results.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Only that she could rule out the worst things, like meningitis, or some virus that attacks the nervous system. There’s no sign of motor or brain impairment.’

  ‘But she didn’t know you. You said Julia didn’t know you.’

  ‘At first. It was only for about a minute. I think it was the fever. It was alarming, that’s all.’

  He saw that the gate had ope
ned and passengers were starting to file down to the platform. He followed them, telling Clare that he would go straight to the hospital from the station, but she should call him before then if there was any news.

  His phone didn’t ring for the next hour. Nor did it ring on the fifteen-minute drive from the parking lot where he’d left his car to the Charles A. Martin Memorial Hospital on Bingham Road. A nurse at reception gave him directions, and when the elevator doors didn’t open immediately, he took the stairs two at a time to the children’s floor.

  Julia was awake now. She looked pale and subdued, but otherwise normal. She greeted him with an enthusiastic ‘Daddy!’ and gave him her usual kiss and hug.

  He had made eye contact with Clare the moment he entered. A flash of mutual reassurance passed between them. Nothing new had happened, but he could tell from the way she took his hand how glad she was to have him there. She had been badly shaken.

  ‘Now, young lady,’ he said, sitting down, ‘what are you doing in bed at this time of day?’

  Julia seemed remarkably calm, almost passive. ‘Have they given her anything?’ he asked Clare.

  ‘No tranquillizers. Something to get the fever down, that’s all. Her temperature’s normal now.’

  ‘Daddy, look . . . !’

  She pointed to a round Band Aid on her arm, obviously where a hypodermic had been inserted.

  ‘Just to take a blood sample,’ Clare said, and squeezed Julia’s hand. ‘You were very brave, weren’t you, darling?’

  ‘It hurt.’

  After that, they mostly tried to make jokes, doing everything they could think of to make the child laugh. Clare had told her simply that she must have eaten something that had made her sick, and the doctors wanted to find out what it was so that she wouldn’t do it again. She seemed quite unconcerned by the prospect of having to stay there overnight, though that was partly because her mummy would be staying with her.

  They waited till a nurse came in to check her temperature again before stepping outside to talk. They had already agreed that Tom would stay there for the rest of the afternoon while Clare returned to the office to clear up a couple of things.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ she said as soon as they were alone. ‘I have to stop working.’

  ‘Why? How is this your fault?’

  ‘That thing about wanting her mommy, and me not being her mommy . . .’

  ‘Oh, come on . . .’

  ‘I’m serious. I think she felt I’d deserted her. I’m not her mommy any more, not the way she wants.’

  ‘Are you saying she got sick and ran a fever because you went back to work?’

  ‘Maybe it’s psychosomatic.’

  ‘And her not knowing you was just an act?’

  ‘I don’t know. How could a child of that age . . . ?’

  She gave a sigh of deep weariness, almost despair. Tom took her in his arms.

  ‘Look, she’s fine now. You can see that, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘But nothing. Let’s not do anything hasty – all right?’

  After a moment she said, All right. It’s just that . . .’

  Her voice shook. She was close to tears.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘She was screaming. It was one of the nurses who calmed her down. I didn’t know what to do. I’ve never felt so terrified and helpless in my life. I just backed away till I felt myself pressing against the wall. Then suddenly she calmed down. The nurse pointed at me and said, “You know who this is, don’t you?” She just looked at me for a long time, then said, “Mommy”’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It’s just this feeling I had . . .’

  ‘What feeling?’

  Clare turned her eyes up to his, searching for a sign that he understood what she was telling him.

  ‘That she didn’t mean it. She was just saying it to please me.’

  8

  In the two hours he was alone with her, Tom tried everything he could think of to draw the story out of Julia from her point of view. He got nothing more than a bare statement of the facts.

  ‘I felt sick. My tummy hurt.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘We went to the hospital.’

  ‘Who did you go with?’

  ‘With Linda.’

  ‘Was Mommy there?’

  ‘Mommy came after.’

  He was convinced she had no memory of the events Clare had described. Certainly he got no sense that she was telling the story to please him. Even though Clare told him she had only felt it for a moment, it had left a deep mark on her, which wasn’t surprising. It was a terrible thing to happen.

  But the child had a fever. She was delirious. That was the obvious explanation. The only one.

  A nurse came in to check Julia’s temperature again. He waited anxiously, but it was normal. The fever had been brief and showed no sign of returning. And Julia’s spirits were picking up. She said she was hungry. He left them fixing up what the nurse was going to get her to eat, and slipped into the bathroom.

  As he washed his hands, Tom contemplated his face in the mirror. It was true what his friends had told him – those who’d had children years ago: it changed you like nothing you could imagine. Everything suddenly took second place to that tiny, fragile life that you had brought into the world, and which you would sacrifice yourself to protect without a second thought.

  Was that just the power of genes? A blind force dictating the survival of the young and procreant over the old and spent? Or was something else going on? Were love, concern and the aching tenderness of parenthood more than just tools thrown up by evolution to keep things moving relentlessly and meaninglessly on?

  Did it matter either way? All he knew for sure was how little he knew. He wasn’t religious, at least not beyond the acceptance of ‘a higher power’ that was part of the twelve-step programme that had so crucially helped him towards sobriety almost five years earlier, but he certainly felt that life was more than just a chemical process. Since the birth of their daughter, they had both felt convinced, in a strange and indefinable way, that something more was going on.

  The first thing he heard as he stepped back into the room was the nurse’s laughter. ‘You’re teasing me,’ she said. ‘Your name isn’t Melanie. It’s Julia.’

  ‘Melanie!’

  Julia was sitting up, a favourite soft toy clutched in her arms, a big smile on her face, enjoying herself.

  ‘All right, I’ll call you Melanie if you want me to. But I know you’re really called Julia.’

  ‘Melanie!’ Julia countered gleefully, like a tennis player lobbing the ball back over the net, content to keep going until her opponent grew tired and gave up.

  ‘Look, your daddy’s here. Why don’t we ask him what your name is?’

  Julia hadn’t heard Tom come in. She looked around sharply, almost guiltily. In that moment, he understood what Clare had been talking about. Suddenly there was something between them, his daughter and himself, something alien. It was a strange and disturbing feeling.

  ‘Who’s Melanie?’ he said, trying to keep his tone light, as though he wanted to join in the game. ‘I can’t see anyone here called Melanie.’

  Julia’s face relaxed into a coy smile. She began to rock the toy, a monkey, in her arms, saying nothing.

  ‘Is this Melanie?’ he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and pointing to the little monkey.

  She shook her head, and pressed her face down into the toy as though wanting to hide from his questions.

  ‘I’ll be back with your tea in a few minutes,’ the nurse said brightly. ‘Can I bring you anything, Mr Freeman?’

  ‘No,’ he said absently. Then remembered his manners and added, ‘Thank you. No, I’m fine.’

  The nurse went out. Tom didn’t say anything for a moment, then sat on the edge of Julia’s bed.

  ‘Why did you say you were called Melanie?’ he said, still keeping his tone light, as though simply asking her to explain
the rules so that he could join in the game.

  She didn’t answer, just shook her head again, all the while keeping her face buried in the little monkey, which she was now squeezing tightly.

  ‘Do you know someone called Melanie?’ he asked, running his hand lightly over her hair as he spoke.

  She kept her face buried, as though afraid to look at her father. He knew he mustn’t press too far. Yet he had to get some kind of answer. He couldn’t just leave it there.

  ‘Was it a game?’ he said.

  She nodded her head vigorously, almost too quickly, as though willing to agree to anything that would end this conversation. And he, of course, had offered her the perfect way out. All just a game.

  ‘Look at me, darling,’ Tom said.

  She lifted her face towards him, her expression solemn now, and a little wary.

  ‘It’s all right, I’m not angry. I just want to know who Melanie is.’

  ‘Melanie gone,’ she said, in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper, and strangely more babyish than her normal one. ‘Melanie gone now.’

  9

  Dr Bella Warne regarded the couple thoughtfully from behind her desk. ‘It’s not unusual for a child to have an imaginary friend,’ she said. ‘Especially an only child. In fact it’s quite normal.’

  ‘It’s not exactly an imaginary friend, Bella,’ Clare said, refusing to have her concern dismissed so lightly. ‘Julia says she is Melanie. It’s more like a multiple-personality thing.’

  Dr Warne reflected on this for a moment. She was a large-boned woman with straight dark hair and an unsmiling face. Only her eyes, which could be penetrating or kindly as the occasion demanded, hinted at the sharp intelligence behind them.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’m going to give you a rational explanation which has nothing to do with Three Faces of Eve or anything else you might have watched on late-night television.’

  She raised a placatory hand when she saw Clare about to protest. ‘I know – it’s natural you fear the worst. You wouldn’t be parents if you didn’t. But let’s just think about what happened. You said “Melanie” was the first word she used, after “Mommy” and “Daddy”.’