Stories can't hurt you

STORIES CAN'T HURT YOU

by

COLIN MILBURN

'.....and then Benny wouldn't give me the pencil back so I grabbed his
hand and shoved it and jabbed it in his eye and all this blood 'n'
stuff came ooooozin' out've his eye all over his face an'....'

'Have you finished your soup?' Sheila asked Davey without turning to
look at him,

'Yeah,' he replied, wiping his tomato-smeared mouth with his sleeve
before his mother turned around.

'Yes. The word is yes, not yeah or yep. Yes. Yes?'

'OK'

Sheila was about to scold her son when she saw the mischievous grin on
his face. She smiled instead and took the soup bowl from his
outstretched hands.

'Did he give you the pencil back before he was taken to hospital or
after?'

The question was a few moments sinking in before the seven-year-old
realised he was being teased.

'You don't believe me,' he stated.

'No, no. Every word's true. I know it is. Just like the time the school
toilets caught fire and Mr Haskins was turned into a human torch trying
to rescue Masie Jones. And when Miss Tranter went mad with the fire axe
and hacked off the caretaker's head.' She put a double-decker cheese
and ham sandwich with HP sauce and a glass of milk in front of him.
'All true.'

She heard the door slam and Gerald's scream of pain and the sound of
footsteps running into the night. She could see the pool of blood even
from the top of the stairs, the moonlight through the glass in the
front door reflecting off it, showing it as a dark grey mess on the
pale blue of the carpet.
Gerald's hand was at his throat trying to stem the ebbing flow of
darkness from the severed vein. The metallic tang of the blood rose up
the stairs to scrape across her throat as though it was trying to match
the damage done to her husband.
She screamed soundlessly into the night...

The TV cast blue flickering shapes into the dark room as Sheila shook
herself out of the dream. She was almost used to it now. At first she
had come awake giving voice to the final, silent scream of the
nightmare. Davey would be disturbed and the pair of them would huddle
together until daybreak enabled them to face life without Gerald. Life
without Dad.

But now she roused herself as though from any common-or- garden bad
dream. It worried her that she still had the nightmare but it concerned
her even more that she treated it in such a matter-of-fact way.

The TV sound was turned low in case it disturbed Davey. He was still
liable to waken at the slightest sound that was out of the ordinary
from the night-time murmur of noises. Apart from that he seemed to have
handled the murder of his father with a maturity beyond his years. The
only noticeable change had been the stories.

Davey had always had a vivid imagination. He could recite with
startling clarity the details of any dreams he had. He would embellish
any occurrences at school with dramatic flourishes of his own making.
But since Gerald's death he seemed to take great delight in taking the
most mundane of incidents and embroidering it with tales of mayhem,
death and destruction.

Sheila was trying to be very adult and mature about it by rationalising
that it was just Davey's way of dealing with the trauma of loosing his
father. She was loath to take him to a child psychologist as she feared
that would let Davey know she was concerned about him and trigger off
something worse than the telling of a few blood-curdling stories.
Because, she told herself time and again, that's all they were. Just
stories.

The next morning Davey was nearly impossible to get out of bed. Sheila
shouted him three times to come downstairs for his breakfast and that
if he wasn't at the table inside the next two minutes he was going to
be one sorry little boy.

When he did appear he looked dreadful. Dark rings under his eyes made
him look like an old man. His skin had a soapy, grey pallor to it and
he only toyed listlessly with his cereals.

'What's the matter, kid?' she asked him.

'Don't feel good.' He pushed the bowl of Cheerios away into the centre
of the table. Some of the milk slopped over the rim onto the pine
surface. 'Izzy kept me awake.'

'Izzy up to his old tricks again, eh?' Sheila took the bowl from the
table and scraped the soggy mess into the waste bin. She took a cloth
and wiped up the spilt milk.

'No use crying over that, is there?' she said.

Davey looked up at her.

'I thought Izzy and you had come to an understanding. He wouldn't give
you the bad dreams and keep you up all night and you'd let him sleep
peacefully in the cupboard.'

Davey cast his eyes down again.

'Hmmm?'

'The door wouldn't stay shut. He kept comin' out and waking me.
Whispering in my ear.'

'What was he whispering?' Sheila was not sure she should be going down
this particular line of questioning but the business of Izzy the
phantom cupboard-dweller should have been faced ages ago.

'He was going on about Benny and his eye. How I was going to be in big
trouble over it.'

'Davey, it's all right. You're not going to get into any trouble over
it because nothing happened to Benny's eye. If you'd been responsible
in any way Mr Haskins would have contacted me right away.'

Davey, not convinced in the slightest, slid from the table and went to
brush his teeth.

'And you tell that Izzy to stay in the cupboard and leave you in
peace.'

The afternoon sun was a pale disc in a smoky, mottled sky. The school
bell was ringing as Sheila hurried towards the gates. Other mothers and
the occasional father waited for their children to emerge from the
double swing doors of the school. Davey was always the last out so
Sheila was never concerned about arriving a few minutes late. She stood
at the back of the crowd of parents and waited. The chilling wind
pulled at her hair and she wished she had brought her woollen
hat.

Children began to spill out of the doors now and run towards their
respective parents, waving the results of their day's labours. A
drawing of a sunset, a car made from the cardboard tube of a toilet
roll. Davey would be soon out brandishing his effort. The last three or
four days had been relatively quiet with no flights of fantasy.
Davey came through the doorway with another boy. They both held up
sheets of paper and were conversing animatedly. The other boy ran up to
his mother, a petite blonde Sheila put at several years younger than
herself. Davey ran up to Sheila and showed her the picture. It was a
fairground scene, fairly low-key stuff for Davey despite the lurid
blues and blood-red slashes across the page.

The blonde woman and the boy walked toward them.

'This is Benny, Mum,' he said as they drew alongside them. It was only
then that Sheila realised that the boy had a large bandage and patch
over his right eye.

Benny's mother was saying something to Sheila and she had to ask her to
repeat it.

'I had such a job keeping Benny away from school. Even when they kept
him in overnight for observation. He kept asking me when he could go
back to school to finish off his picture. Sign of a good school, don't
you think?'

'Er, yes. I think it's an excellent school. What happened to Benny's
eye?'

'Playing about with a pencil, so he tells me. Tried to get it from his
pencil case, it slipped and went point first into his eye. Fortunately
it was blunt and it caught the bottom edge of the socket, so it didn't
do too much damage, thank God.'

'Did he do it on his own?' Sheila hated the way the words came out but
it was too late. The blonde woman looked at her askance.

'How do you mean?'

'Oh, you know what kids are like. Always larking around. Did any of the
other kids in his class have anything to do with it?'

'Good grief, no. How could they? He was at home when it happened. The
night before last.'

Two days. There were two days between Davey telling the story of Benny
and the pencil and the boy actually nearly putting his own eye out with
a pencil.

Coincidence? It had to be.

And anyway, the accident had happened at home. He had done it to
himself.

Accident? Coincidence?

Yes, dammit.

Davey was late. He had promised he would come straight home when school
finished and that he would walk most of the way with several of his
classmates.

'I'm not a kid, you know, Mum,' he'd said, with that Gerald-like look
in his eye.

It was less than a fifteen-minute walk from the school to home and
Sheila had reluctantly agreed. She was regretting it now.

The kitchen clock showed twelve-thirty. Fifteen minutes late. She put
on her coat and locked the house behind her.

What if they missed each other and he arrived home while she was out
looking for him? He wouldn't be able to get in. He didn't have a key.
She wouldn't find him. He would be waiting. He would panic. She would
have failed him.

She stood in front of the door, key in hand, torn with
indecision.

'What are you doing, Mum?'

Sheila turned and Davey was walking nonchalantly down the drive.

'Where have you been!?' she snapped at him.

Davey's expression changed from a casual smile to a blank stare.

Sheila stooped and gripped the boy's shoulders harder than she meant
to.

'Ow! That hurts!'

'You should have been here half an hour ago!' She knew it was an
exaggeration but that's the way it came out. 'I've been worried sick!'
At least that was the truth.

'You're hurting my arm. Stop it!' He wriggled and squirmed in her grip.
Sheila released him.

'Get inside the house,' she said, unlocking the front door.

Davey walked sullenly passed her and took off his jacket. He hung it on
the back of a chair and went to get himself a glass of milk.

'Where have you been 'til now, anyway? That's the first and last time I
let you come home on your own until you can show a little more
responsibility.' She stopped herself from saying more. She could feel
her voice rising in tone towards hysteria, starting to sound like
someone else.

There was a long silence in which Davey drank his milk.

'Well?' She kept her voice calm and even. 'I'm waiting for an
answer.'

'Bobby Simmons died this morning.' He spoke the words flatly, as though
her anger forbade any outward show of emotion. He took another drink of
milk and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

'Use a napkin,' she said absently as a cold chill ran through her.
'How... did he die?'

'Fell off the climbing frame in the playground. Fell on his head.' He
said this as though reciting a bland fact of history or geography. He
looked up at her. Sheila had turned her head away but glanced back as
he stopped speaking.

'So it was an accident? He didn't get sick?'

'Oh, yes.' Davey nodded his head gravely. 'I didn't mean to push him
but Izzy whispered in my ear.'

'What?' Sheila took a few seconds to realise what Davey had said.
'Davey, I've told you. You'll get into trouble telling these stories!'
A sharp metallic taste was in her mouth now. 'They're not true. You've
got to stop telling such horrible stories.'

Davey shouted at her, 'But it's true! I pushed him off. Izzy pulled his
hands away and I pushed him off the bar!' Davey brought the glass down
on the tabletop. It shattered and the remains of the milk slopped over
the surface. 'I pushed him and...'

'Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! I don't want to hear you say anything about
it again!'

'But...'

'Be quiet'

'You don't believe me.' He slumped down in a chair, chin on his
chest.

'And you don't believe me when I tell you that Bobby isn't dead. It's
all in your head.'

'But it's not. He is dead.'

'Right. Come on!' Sheila grabbed his arm and pulled him from the chair.
Picking up his jacket she led him to the car.

'Where are we going?' he asked as she reversed into the street.

'I'm going to show you that what you're saying is not true.'

The drive to Bobby Simmons' house took less than five minutes. It was
situated in a short cul-de-sac off a busy main road that led to the
town centre. As Sheila turned the final corner she had to brake
suddenly to a halt as the road was blocked by an ambulance, its blue
light rippling in the pale afternoon sunshine.

Sheila parked the car and they walked to the Simmons' house. Of course
the ambulance could be for anyone in the road. It was just a
coincidence. It meant nothing.

As they stopped outside Bobby's house the side gate leading to the rear
of the house opened. The two paramedics carried a stretcher towards
them. The small figure lying on it was covered with a blanket.

A tall, red-haired woman and a dark-haired man with a moustache
followed the stretcher. The woman was sobbing into the man's shoulder.
As the paramedics walked past Sheila and manoeuvred the stretcher into
the ambulance she could see a small lock of ginger hair showing in a
loose fold of the blanket. Bobby Simmons was a typical ginger-haired,
freckle-faced kid who liked climbing.

'The tree. He fell out of the tree.' It was the dark-haired man
speaking as the paramedics helped the woman into the ambulance. 'He's
climbed it a hundred times before. I've told him off about it. I was
going to cut the bottom branches off to stop him...'

'When did this happen?' She knew the question sounded callous just as
she knew the answer. But she had to know for sure.

The man looked at her distantly. He answered in short, breathless
bursts. 'Just now. He'd come home from school on his own. We were a
little late from town. He knows to wait. We're never that long. He was
nearly at the top of the tree when we came round the back. I looked up
and he waved. And then his other hand let go of the branch
and...'

'Mr Simmons?' It was one of the paramedics. 'Will you coming with us or
are you going to wait here? I don't advise you driving.'
'I'll come with you,' he said, stepping up into the ambulance and
sitting next to his wife. The couple stared fixedly at the small shape
under the blanket.

The ambulance engine started up, reversed out of the cul-de-sac and
accelerated away up the road.

Sheila, too numb to say anything, looked down at Davey who was not
there. The side gate swung on its hinges and Sheila walked through it
into the garden.

The lawn had been recently mown and the sweet smell of cut grass hung
in the air. The oak tree was toward the rear of the garden, its
branches stretching above the flowerbeds and shrubberies. It had grown
too big for the garden and was in need of radical pruning.

Davey stood in the middle of the lawn and stared up at the oak. Sheila
thought she heard him whisper something. She stepped closer. Davey
seemed in a trance. The word came from his lips again.

'Izzy.'

The T.V. flickered soundlessly. Figures ran and jumped. They shouted
and cried, their mouths moving, producing no sound. Sheila stared
vacantly at the square of light.

Without any hope of sleep She went to bed. The night was still and
humid. Small sounds drifted through the open window. An after-smell of
a barbecue, fatty, singed food and an undercurrent of alcohol
threatened to make her feel queasy. She tried to clear her mind of
thoughts of Benny's bandaged eye and the small, still, shape under the
stretcher blanket.

She hardly noticed the murmur of voices until the name filtered into
her mind.

'Izzy.'

She sat up in bed and a chill breeze billowed the curtains and made her
flesh shiver.

Davey's voice came to her, clearer now. It was his voice but the words
were still indecipherable except for the name.

'Izzy.'

Getting out of bed, Sheila put on a towelling robe and walked slowly
along the landing to Davey's room. The door was slightly open, throwing
a thin strip of light onto the floor. Since Gerald's murder Davey had
always slept with a night light on.

She stood outside the boy's room, pressing herself against the wall.
What was he saying? She strained to make out the words. Was he just
having another dream? Just Davey talking in his sleep?

No. This was no dream. What she was hearing was one side of a
conversation.

'No. That's a bad thing. It would hurt her.' Davey's voice seemed to
crack and quaver. There was a pause in the boy's words but he continued
to make small murmuring sounds.

Sheila slowly edged towards the door and pushed it open.

Davey lay on his back, the bedclothes kicked away in an untidy pile on
the bedroom floor.

She approached the bed and saw that Davey's eyes were open but
sightless, seeing only what was in his mind.

'No!' The sharp syllable startled Sheila.

Davey's eyes widened and his head jerked from side to side. His lips
moved in a sinuous, almost obscene, fashion, the corners on his mouth
curling into a cruel, malicious grin.

The lips stopped mouthing the silent obscenities, the grin disappeared.
Davey's face was his own again but with a look of fear and
despair.

'You can't make me hurt her. She's my mum.'

The base of Sheila's spine felt as though hot needles had been inserted
into it. She wanted to shake Davey awake and she moved closer to grip
his shoulders but Davey's hands came up from the bed and caught her
forearms. She cried out at the pain of the boy's grip.

This was not the strength of a small, innocent, boy but the force of
something else. Something corrupt and evil.

She tried to twist away from the grip of the hands but they were as
unyielding as a statue's. As she struggled the boy's eyes closed and
the grip relaxed slightly. She felt as if the episode was passing.
Relief filled her and she managed to force a smile when Davey's eyes
opened wider than before, as wide as mouths and the grip on her arms
re-doubled. The boy's expression changed, it seemed to glass over with
a patina of fluid that glistened and shimmered.

As though she was looking into a dark pool, ripples appeared at the
outside edges of the fluid. They then shrank back and coalesced in the
centre of the boy's face. The ripples faded, the surface of the pool
settled and the face re-formed. She felt the grip on her arms slacken
but she remained motionless. The face below the surface was Davey's,
still, but with a veneer of evil. The flesh was puffy, the eyes
glittered with menace. The mouth twisted in a contemptuous sneer and
then opened as if to speak. But the voice came from behind her, then
above, then all around.

'You're losing him, bitch.' The voice was a metallic sound, like coins
shaken in a tin. A smell of decay rode on its breath.

'Who are you?' Sheila spoke through clenched teeth, her short, shallow
breathing jarring the words in her mouth.

'Who do you think?'

'Izzy?'

'Who else? It's been a long time coming but he's mine now. All
mine!'

She screamed at the face and pulled away from the slack grip of the
hands.

'What ya goin' to do about it, bitch?'

The cackling laughter rippled around the room. Sheila grabbed at the
throat of the laughing, sneering face. She felt her arms plunging into
warm, viscous fluid. She pulled back and her arms came up smeared with
blood, its own metallic sweetness making her gag.

'Wassa matter? Frightened of a little blood?'

The ripples caused by her hands settled into the centre and the face
sneered again. With renewed force she grabbed the throat again. The
pool of blood evaporated and she was inches from the cackling, jeering
mouth.

She gripped the throat with a force she did not know she possessed. Her
thumbs pressed down on the windpipe. The face laughed louder, she
pressed harder and harder and the laughter began to fade. The joints of
her fingers, locked and screaming with cramp, pushed further into the
flesh of the neck, determined to rid Davey of this evil.

The feeling of falling forward came to her while there was also the
sensation of rising up to the ceiling.

Then the laughter stopped.

The hands fell back on the bed and the face belonged to Davey
again.

She released her hands and looked at the boy's throat. The indentations
where her fingers had been showed as blood-red coins on the white skin.
But the boy slept so peacefully and the marks would fade and everything
would be all right now.

There was nothing to worry about. The demon was dead. Izzy was
dead.

Sheila lay beside her son and held him in her arms. She would hold him
until daybreak. There was nothing to be afraid of now.

Dr Philips closed the white-painted door behind him, shaking his head.
The nurse accompanying him kept her expression professionally
neutral.

'Her trauma symptoms seem to be entering a second stage,' he said,
checking details on Sheila's file in his hand. 'A self-delusional
stage.'

The doctor and the nurse walked down the corridor towards his
office.

'At first there was denial that she'd killed her son. Now there's this
insistence that she had to rid him of his demons.' The two
professionals reached the office and stopped at the door. 'I felt for a
while she was making progress towards acceptance. But now these
stories. Quite fantastical. And she believes every word of them.'

'So we continue the medication and the observation?' the nurse
asked.

Dr Philips nodded and opened the office door.

'Oh, by the way, how's Mrs Carson after her fall?'

'Improving.'

'Did we ever find out what happened?'

'Some of the patients swear she threw herself down the stairs. Others
think she was pushed.'

End.