A Memory of Demons

by Ambrose, David

  ‘Actually it was before,’ Tom said. ‘She was trying to say something that sound like “melon”. Anyway, whatever it was, it sounded like a word, so we started trying to teach her “Momma”, “Dadda”, and “Julia”. She got “Momma” and “Dadda” just fine, but Julia was a no-no. She kept hitting herself on the chest and saying, “Me Melanie”.’

  ‘So you started this name-the-family game after she said “melon”.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Had you been eating a melon, or talking about it? Was there a melon in the room?’

  Absolutely not. That’s why I thought it odd she was trying to say the word.’

  ‘Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe it was just one of those sounds that come out of babies’ mouths. But because you picked up on it and started teaching her your names, she thought that “melon”, or something like it, must be her own.’

  As you say, it’s rational, Bella,’ Clare said, not yet ready to yield her point, ‘but it doesn’t explain where that whole Melanie thing came from yesterday.’

  The doctor looked at her levelly, taking her concern seriously. ‘I think it does, Clare. Children remember the oddest things. She might well recall that you’d given her the impression that her name was Melanie, then told her it was something else. So she thinks she has a choice of names.’

  Clare regarded her sceptically. Recognizing the look, Bella’s face relaxed into a smile that started at the eyes and spread a surprising warmth over the whole of her somewhat forbidding face.

  ‘All right, it’s only a theory, but it’s a plausible one. All I’m saying is, I really don’t think you have anything to worry about.’

  The three of them walked from Bella’s office to Julia’s room. She was dressed and ready to go home. After hugging the nurses and Bella, she walked out of the building holding her mother’s hand and still clutching her favourite stuffed monkey.

  They talked it through, and Clare eventually relented on the idea of giving up her career. What finally tipped the balance was her fear of turning into an over-protective mother. Besides, Julia was due to start pre-school soon, so she would be spending less time at home.

  Tom made another trip into New York to see the publisher he’d stood up the previous week. They sketched out a deal and as much of a schedule as they could at this early stage. It was after seven when he got home, but he knew the moment he saw Clare that something was wrong. She was tense and pale. She hadn’t called him, she said, because it was still nothing to panic about. But it was troubling. It had happened again, the ‘Melanie’ business.

  Clare had been going upstairs, passing Julia’s door, when she had heard her talking. She had stopped to listen – not meaning to eavesdrop, but simply out of that tender curiosity any parent has about the mysterious imaginary world of their children. She supposed that Julia was playing with her toys and dolls, hosting a make-believe tea party, perhaps, the way Clare remembered doing in her own childhood.

  She heard the word ‘mommy’, followed by a pause, then Julia said several words she couldn’t quite make out. She edged closer to the half-open door, and saw the child talking on her bright yellow toy telephone. Clare knew perfectly well that children talk to imaginary people on toy phones all the time; that is why toy phones are made. But there was something about the concentration that Julia was putting into the conversation that made Clare listen more closely.

  ‘When Mommy goes to work,’ she heard, ‘Linda looks after me.’ There was a pause, followed by, ‘Daddy goes to work, too, but sometimes he stays home.’

  Julia fell silent again, nodding once or twice as she listened to the phone, then finally she said, ‘I like Linda . . . Yes . . . No . . . I do . . . I love you too, Mommy . . .’

  At that moment she noticed Clare in the door, broke off her conversation and hung up. Embarrassed at being caught spying on her own child, Clare came into the room and knelt by her, bringing their eyes level.

  ‘Who were you talking to, darling?’

  Julia dropped her gaze and didn’t answer.

  ‘Were you talking to Mommy?’ she asked brightly, trying to communicate her willingness to play this game by whatever rules Julia chose.

  Julia nodded solemnly in response, still not looking up.

  ‘What did Mommy say?’

  ‘She said, “I miss you, Melanie”.’

  Clare froze. ‘Melanie?’

  Julia looked up in sudden alarm, like someone who has betrayed a vital secret by a slip of the tongue.

  ‘Mommy doesn’t call you Melanie,’ Clare said, ‘do I?’

  Still the child did not reply, just continued to gaze fearfully into her mother’s eyes as though caught out in some awful lie and awaiting a sharp scolding.

  ‘Darling, it’s all right,’ Clare said, reassuring her. ‘Mommy isn’t angry. Just tell me why you said I called you Melanie.

  The child twisted her fingers for some moments, painfully embarrassed, as though searching for a way to explain herself. Eventually, she found one.

  ‘Not you,’ she said. ‘My other mommy.’

  10

  He was standing in a cellar. A faint light filtered in: looking up, he saw a tiny skylight, too high and too grimy to see out of. The floor was uneven, hardened earth, with stones embedded in it here and there. The walls were old bare brick, crumbling in places.

  He had no idea how he had got there. All he knew was that something terrible had happened in that place. Something he did not want to remember.

  Something he had done.

  But what was it? His mind was a blank. He was in shock – that was why he could remember nothing.

  He knew the answer was close by, somewhere in the darkness. All he had to do was take a step into the darkest of the shadows, and he would know.

  But he was paralysed by fear and could not move. He clung on to the thought that he must not give way to panic, but trying to avoid it was like holding his breath under water; his lungs were on fire with pain and about to burst. Suddenly he was retching for air, crouched over with his head between his legs and trying to vomit; but it passed. As his breathing steadied he was seized with only one thought: to get out of that place.

  He looked around once more, and saw an opening. It seemed as dark at first as everywhere else, but then he persuaded himself he could detect a hint of light in the distance. He started towards it, breaking into a run, bruising himself and scraping his hands on the rough walls as he went. He stumbled around one corner, then another, and found himself in a long passage with a door at the end, half rotten and hanging off its hinges so that daylight showed through the cracks in it. He stopped.

  For some moments he did not move, his headlong dash for freedom suddenly restrained by the fear of what might lie in wait outside. He edged forward, making no sound, listening. All he could hear was the whistle of a light wind, but no movement and no voices. He pushed open the ruined door a cautious inch or two, so slowly that anyone watching would hardly have observed the movement. He peered out, and saw an overgrown tangle of weeds and grass. The ground rose away from where he stood, reaching a few straggling bushes that seemed to mark the limit of a garden. Beyond that, all he could see was a slate-grey early morning sky.

  Suddenly he knew where he was. He stepped outside and began to climb, following what might once have been a path, but was now overgrown and slippery with mud. He lost his footing and landed on his hands and knees. As he picked himself up, he looked back, and saw the house he had just left: abandoned, boarded up, and with that strange imitation-Gothic tower at one corner he remembered from last time, it sat on the far edge of the untended, run-wild garden he was struggling to climb. Something about it made him think, as he remembered from last time, of an exposed tooth in a well-worn gum.

  Last time? But how could there have been a last time? Unless last time was some kind of prophetic nightmare, a glimpse into his future, and now he was living the real thing.

  But he didn’t believe in ESP or anything like that. He never had
.

  So this must be . . .

  ‘Darling? What is it? Are you all right?’

  He felt a hand on his arm, and pulled away with a shout – ‘No!’ – of rage and fear.

  ‘Tom!’

  It was Clare’s voice. In the darkness. He was back in the darkness, in that awful house.

  A light went on. He saw her hand on the bedside lamp.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, you were having a nightmare.’

  ‘No, I . . .’

  Again he felt her hand on his arm, but this time he didn’t pull away. ‘I’m sorry, I . . . I thought I was . . . I was in this house . . .’

  ‘Which house?’

  ‘Some place . . . I don’t know what or where . . .’

  He raised a hand to his forehead to steady the dizzying sensation he felt as he sat up.

  ‘You were struggling like a madman.’

  ‘I was . . . running from . . . something . . .’

  He realized as he spoke that he was still out of breath, and his heart was beating fast.

  ‘From what?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . it was just a dream . . . crazy . . .’

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘I’m fine. Sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep.’

  They both settled down. Clare switched out the light. For a while they lay side by side in silence, until she said, ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ he said, then added, ‘Besides, I don’t want to sleep alone.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  He sensed the movement as she turned towards him in the dark. ‘You know the quickest way to empty a room, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Tell people your dreams.’

  She laughed and reached out for him. They rolled into each other’s arms, and thought no more of talking.

  11

  ‘Brendan Hunt is the man to see,’ Bella Warne said. ‘He trained at the Mayhall in Boston before settling for a quieter life. He’s first class – published a couple of very highly regarded papers in the last few years.’

  Using her influence, she got them an appointment in two days. Dr Hunt was about Tom’s age, with thick sandy hair, an open, fresh face, and graceful hands that remained clasped in his lap as he talked, even when he leant forward to ask a question of Julia. He wore a tweed jacket over an open denim shirt, and had an easy manner that immediately put both parents and child at ease.

  ‘You know who this is, don’t you?’ he asked Julia, indicating Clare.

  ‘Mommy,’ she replied, with the kind of smile that said this was a silly game, but she was happy to play it.

  ‘And this?’ nodding Tom’s way.

  ‘Daddy.’

  He paused a moment, letting her replies hang lightly in the air before moving on.

  ‘Do you have another mommy and daddy?’ he asked.

  Julia looked down at the floor, as if suddenly unsure how to deal with this.

  ‘It’s all right. You can tell us.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, without looking up.

  ‘Are they here now?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Can you tell us what they look like? Maybe you can draw them for us.’

  Julia looked up now, but at him, not her parents. When she spoke, it was as though they were no longer in the room, and she had something important that she must make this stranger in front of her understand.

  ‘My daddy’s gone away.’

  Hunt showed no flicker of response, just kept his relaxed, friendly gaze focused on her earnest face.

  ‘Not this daddy. Your daddy’s here.’

  Without hesitating, Julia said, ‘My other daddy.’

  Again Hunt offered no response. Tom looked neither right nor left, though he sensed as much as saw Clare’s anxious glance in his direction.

  And what does your other daddy call you?’

  ‘Melanie,’ the child said, with a slight inflection at the end, almost as though it was a question, though quite obviously it wasn’t. She was simply unsure of whether she ought to be saying this.

  ‘That’s fine,’ Hunt said, leaning slightly closer and creating a sense of intimacy between them. ‘Now why don’t you go and play next door with Nurse Rogers, then Mommy and Daddy will take you home in a little while. OK?’

  Julia went happily into the game- and toy-stocked room next door, under the kindly supervision of the middle-aged nurse. Brendan Hunt turned to face the worried couple across his desk. His office was wood-panelled and comfortably furnished. Framed degrees and testimonials hung on the wall behind him, but the other walls bore a collection of original paintings, mostly abstract.

  ‘I’m quite sure we can rule out any physical basis for this,’ he said. ‘We’ll do further tests, including a brain scan. In fact, we’ll do whatever we have to or whatever you feel you want us to. But the truth is I have a strong sense that this is nothing more than a child’s imagination running riot – or if not quite a riot,’ he added with a smile, ‘at least threatening to disturb the peace.’

  ‘But why?’

  Clare’s question was charged with the frustration of someone who can see everything with perfect clarity, except the sense behind it.

  ‘I think if I see her a few times, we may be able to find that out. Why don’t we start with you both telling me something about yourselves?’

  Tom and Clare had prepared for this, working on the assumption that if a child has psychological problems, it’s more likely to be the parents’ fault than the child’s. They had searched their memories and their consciences long into the night to think of things they might have done to provoke this condition in their daughter – if, indeed, ‘condition’ was the right way to describe it. Clare continued to blame herself for returning to work too soon, but Tom would have none of it. He, on the other hand, could never forget that he was an alcoholic. It was a disease, admittedly, and not a sin: not something he had an obligation to feel guilty about. But like all alcoholics, like addicts of whatever kind, he was acutely aware of the effects his problem could have on other people’s lives, especially those closest to him. He had not had a drink in five years, so neither Clare nor Julia had been exposed to the worst aspects of his disease.

  But were there other aspects? Other ways of doing damage? He couldn’t be sure. Maybe, he told himself, there was something about the mindset of the addict that makes them dangerous to other people even when sober. Maybe they, or at least some of them, are just lethal human beings.

  Hunt listened to all of it – their fears and hopes, their guilt and their confessions – with a professional, non-judgemental equanimity, occasionally pausing to take notes but never interrupting, except for the occasional question that would help draw out what they were trying to say, or clarify something that they had not yet managed to wholly understand themselves. Only when they had finished did he raise his gaze to theirs and offer them a gently reassuring smile.

  ‘What I normally suggest with a child this young is a form of play therapy. And it’s most valuable if it’s fairly intensive, maybe three times a week, or even daily to begin with. That’s what I suggest with Julia, at least for the next couple of weeks, then see where we go from there.’

  ‘Would we be part of that,’ Tom asked, ‘or would you see her alone?’

  ‘You can be present if you wish, certainly if Julia prefers it, which is often the case for the first session or two. But even a child as young as Julia sometimes needs to say things that she might not know how to say in front of her parents. And part of the therapist’s job is to keep those things in confidence, if appropriate. I always give parents an outline of what’s going on in treatment, but not necessarily a detailed record.’

  ‘How do you define appropriate?’ Clare asked.

  Hunt sat back. ‘That depends. Obviously if the child asks you not to tell the parents, then you don’t. At least not right away. Or unl
ess there’s something of overriding importance that leaves you no choice. There are no hard and fast rules.’

  ‘Do you ever tape sessions?’ Tom asked.

  ‘It depends on the case. Sometimes it can be helpful, if I’m seeing the child alone, to play the parents a tape afterwards. That’s something I may do with a very young patient, though it can be counterproductive with an older child – again, the confidentiality thing.’

  Tom and Clare looked at each other. By some tacit communication between them, it fell to Tom to turn to Hunt and say, ‘All right, whatever you think best – we’ll go along with you.’

  12

  Julia had her first full session two days later. Her parents had decided it was a little heavy having both of them there, so Clare went the first time and Tom the second. ‘Play therapy’ turned out to be just what it sounded like. It took place in a room which was bare of everything except chairs, a table, a soft carpet and plenty of pillows. There were various drawers on one wall, each of which contained different sets of toys. Every child who came had his or her own drawer which was ritually unpacked at the start of every session, and packed up again at the end.

  A large part of the first session, Clare told Tom afterwards, consisted of Julia making a selection of the toys that would go into her drawer. Hunt guided her unobtrusively towards a choice that would encourage her to act out her ‘double life’, if that was what it was. By the time Tom sat in on the second session, she already had ‘mommy and daddy’ dolls for Clare and himself, plus two more dolls for her imaginary parents. He noticed that while the dolls for her ‘real’ parents, Clare and Tom, were kept very much together and were obviously a couple, the imaginary parents were apart, with the father as a kind of token figure playing little or no role whatever.

  Neither Tom nor Clare tried too intensely to decipher what all of it meant. Hunt told them that it was too early even for him to form any clear-cut ideas. What was obvious to the parents, however, was how much Julia liked and trusted the amiable psychiatrist with his easy manner. Clare sat in once more on the third session, but after that the child was quite content to be left alone. Whichever parent took her to the clinic for her session merely spent an hour or so in a comfortable waiting room reading a book or magazine. Afterwards, Hunt would give a brief summary of progress.