The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) (98 page)

“I’d go to jail,” Billings said immediately. “For life. And you can see into all the rooms in a jail. All the rooms.” He smiled at nothing.

“How were your children murdered?”

“Don’t try to jerk it out of me!”

Billings twitched around and stared balefully at Harper.

“I’ll tell you, don’t worry. I’m not one of your freaks strutting around and pretending to be Napoleon or explaining that I got hooked on heroin because my mother didn’t love me. I know you won’t believe me. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Just to tell will be enough.”

“All right.” Dr. Harper got out his pipe.

“I married Rita in 1965 – I was twenty-one and she was eighteen. She was pregnant. That was Denny.” His lips twisted in a rubbery, frightening grin that was gone in a wink. “I had to leave college and get a job, but I didn’t mind. I loved both of them. We were very happy.

“Rita got pregnant just a little while after Denny was born, and Shirl came along in December of 1966. Andy came in the summer of 1969, and Denny was already dead by then. Andy was an accident. That’s what Rita said. She said sometimes that birth-control stuff doesn’t work. I think that it was more than an accident. Children tie a man down, you know. Women like that, especially when the man is brighter than they. Don’t you find that’s true?”

Harper grunted noncommittally.

“It doesn’t matter, though. I loved him anyway.” He said it almost vengefully, as it he had loved the child to spite his wife.

“Who killed the children?” Harper asked.

“The boogeyman,” Lester Billings answered immediately. “The boogeyman killed them all. Just came out of the closet and killed them.” He twisted around and grinned. “You think I’m crazy, all right. It’s written all over you. But I don’t care. All I want to do is tell you and then get lost.”

“I’m listening,” Harper said.

“It started when Denny was almost two and Shirl was just an infant. He started crying when Rita put him to bed. We had a two-bedroom place, see. Shirl slept in a crib in our room. At first I thought he was crying because he didn’t have a bottle to take to bed anymore. Rita said don’t make an issue of it, let it go, let him have it and he’ll drop it on his own. But that’s the way kids start off bad. You get permissive with them, spoil them. Then they break your heart. Get some girl knocked up, you know, or start shooting dope. Or they get to be sissies. Can you imagine waking up some morning and finding your kid – your
son
– is a sissy?

“After a while, though, when he didn’t stop, I started putting him to bed myself. And if he didn’t stop crying I’d give him a whack. Then Rita said he was saying ‘light’ over and over again. Well, I didn’t know. Kids that little, how can you tell what they’re saying. Only a mother can tell.

“Rita wanted to put in a nightlight. One of those wall-plug things with Mickey Mouse or Huckleberry Hound or something on it. I wouldn’t let her. If a kid doesn’t get over being afraid of the dark when he’s little, he never gets over it.

“Anyway, he died the summer after Shirl was born. I put him to bed that night and he started to cry right off. I heard what he said that time. He pointed right at the closet when he said it. ‘Boogeyman,’ the kid says. ‘Boogeyman, Daddy.’

“I turned off the light and went into our room and asked Rita why she wanted to teach the kid a word like that. I was tempted to slap her around a little, but I didn’t. She said she never taught him to say that. I called her a goddamn liar.

“That was a bad summer for me, see. The only job I could get was loading Pepsi-Cola trucks in a warehouse, and I was tired all the time. Shirl would wake up and cry every night and Rita would pick her up and sniffle. I tell you, sometimes I felt like throwing them both out a window. Christ, kids drive you crazy sometimes. You could kill them.

“Well, the kid woke me at three in the morning, right on schedule. I went to the bathroom, only a quarter awake, you know, and Rita asked me if I’d check on Denny. I told her to do it herself and went back to bed. I was almost asleep when she started to scream.

“I got up and went in. The kid was dead on his back. Just as white as flour except for where the blood had . . . had sunk. Back of the legs, the head, the a – the buttocks. His eyes were open. That was the worst, you know. Wide open and glassy, like the eyes you see on a moosehead some guy put over his mantel. Like pictures you see of those gook kids over in ’Nam. But an American kid shouldn’t look like that. Dead on his back. Wearing diapers and rubber pants because he’d been wetting himself again the last couple of weeks. Awful, I loved that kid.”

Billings shook his head slowly, then offered the rubbery, frightening grin again. “Rita was screaming her head off. She tried to pick Denny up and rock him, but I wouldn’t let her. The cops don’t like you to touch any of the evidence. I know that—”

“Did you know it was the boogeyman then?” Harper asked quietly.

“Oh, no. Not then. But I did see one thing. It didn’t mean anything to me then, but my mind stored it away.”

“What was that?”

“The closet door was open. Not much. Just a crack. But I knew I left it shut, see. There’s dry-cleaning bags in there. A kid messes around with one of those and bango. Asphyxiation. You know that?”

“Yes. What happened then?”

Billings shrugged. “We planted him.” He looked morbidly at his hands, which had thrown dirt on three tiny coffins.

“Was there an inquest?”

“Sure.” Billings eyes flashed with sardonic brilliance. “Some back-country fuckhead with a stethoscope and a black bag full of Junior Mints and a sheepskin from some cow college. Crib death, he called it! You ever hear such a pile of yellow manure? The kid was three years old!”

“Crib death is most common during the first year,” Harper said carefully, “but that diagnosis has gone on death certificates for children up to age five for want of a better—”

“
Bullshit!
” Billings spat out violently.

Harper relit his pipe.

“We moved Shirl into Denny’s old room a month after the funeral. Rita fought it tooth and nail, but I had the last word. It hurt me, of course it did. Jesus, I loved having the kid in with us. But you can’t get overprotective. You make a kid a cripple that way. When I was a kid my mom used to take me to the beach and then scream herself hoarse. ‘Don’t go out so far! Don’t go there! It’s got an undertow! You only ate an hour ago! Don’t go over your head!’ Even to watch out for sharks, before God. So what happens? I can’t even go near the water now. It’s the truth. I get the cramps if I go near a beach. Rita got me to take her and the kids to Savin Rock once when Denny was alive. I got sick as a dog. I know, see? You can’t overprotect kids. And you can’t coddle yourself either. Life goes on. Shirl went right into Denny’s crib. We sent the old mattress to the dump, though. I didn’t want my girl to get any germs.

“So a year goes by. And one night when I’m putting Shirl into her crib she starts to yowl and scream and cry. ‘Boogeyman, Daddy, boogeyman, boogeyman!’

“That threw a jump into me. It was just like Denny. And I started to remember about that closet door, open just a crack when we found him. I wanted to take her into our room for the night.”

“Did you?”

“No.” Billings regarded his hands and his face twitched. “How could I go to Rita and admit I was wrong? I
had
to be strong. She was always such a jellyfish . . . look how easy she went to bed with me when we weren’t married.”

Harper said, “On the other hand, look how easily
you
went to bed with
her
.”

Billings froze in the act of rearranging his hands and slowly turned his head to look at Harper. “Are you trying to be a wise guy?”

“No, indeed,” Harper said.

“Then let me tell it my way,” Billings snapped. “I came here to get this off my chest. To tell my story. I’m not going to talk about my sex life, if that’s what you expect. Rita and I had a very normal sex life, with none of that dirty stuff. I know it gives some people a charge to talk about that, but I’m not one of them.”

“Okay,” Harper said.

“Okay,” Billings echoed with uneasy arrogance. He seemed to have lost the thread of his thought, and his eyes wandered uneasily to the closet door, which was firmly shut.

“Would you like that open?” Harper asked.

“No!” Billings said quickly. He gave a nervous little laugh. “What do I want to look at your overshoes for?

“The boogeyman got her, too,” Billings said. He brushed at his forehead, as if sketching memories. “A month later. But something happened before that. I heard a noise in there one night. And then she screamed. I opened the door real quick – the hall light was on – and . . . she was sitting up in the crib crying and . . . something
moved
. Back in the shadows, by the closet. Something
slithered
.”

“Was the closet door open?”

“A little. Just a crack.” Billings licked his lips. “Shirl was screaming about the boogeyman. And something else that sounded like ‘claws.’ Only she said ‘craws,’ you know. Little kids have trouble with that ‘l’ sound. Rita ran upstairs and asked what the matter was. I said she got scared by the shadows of the branches moving on the ceiling.”

“Crawset?” Harper said.

“Huh?”

“Crawset . . . closet. Maybe she was trying to say ‘closet.’ ”

“Maybe,” Billings said. “Maybe that was it. But I don’t think so. I think it was ‘claws.’ ” His eyes began seeking the closet door again. “Claws, long claws.” His voice had sunk to a whisper.

“Did you look in the closet?”

“Y-yes.” Billings’ hands were laced tightly across his chest, laced tightly enough to show a white moon at each knuckle.

“Was there anything in there? Did you see the—”

“
I didn’t see anything!
” Billings screamed suddenly. And the words poured out, as if a black cork had been pulled from the bottom of his soul: “When she died I found her, see. And she was black. All black. She swallowed her own tongue and she was just as black as a nigger in a minstrel show and she was staring at me. Her eyes, they looked like those eyes you see on stuffed animals, all shiny and awful, like live marbles, and they were saying it got me, Daddy, you let it get me, you killed me, you helped it kill me . . .” His words trailed off. One single tear very large and silent, ran down the side of his cheek.

“It was a brain convulsion, see? Kids get those sometimes. A bad signal from the brain. They had an autopsy at Hartford Receiving and they told us she choked on her tongue from the convulsion. And I had to go home alone because they kept Rita under sedation. She was out of her mind. I had to go back to that house all alone, and I know a kid don’t just get convulsions because their brain frigged up. You can scare a kid into convulsions. And I had to go back to the house where
it
was.”

He whispered, “I slept on the couch. With the light on.”

“Did anything happen?”

“I had a dream,” Billings said. “I was in a dark room and there was something I couldn’t . . . couldn’t quite see, in the closet. It made a noise ... a squishy noise. It reminded me of a comic book I read when I was a kid.
Tales from the Crypt
, you remember that? Christ! They had a guy named Graham Ingles; he could draw every god-awful thing in the world – and some out of it. Anyway, in this story this woman drowned her husband, see? Put cement blocks on his feet and dropped him into a quarry. Only he came back. He was all rotted and black-green and the fish had eaten away one of his eyes and there was seaweed in his hair. He came back and killed her. And when I woke up in the middle of the night, I thought that would be leaning over me. With claws . . . long claws . . .”

Dr. Harper looked at the digital clock inset into his desk. Lester Billings had been speaking for nearly half an hour. He said, “When your wife came back home, what was her attitude toward you?”

“She still loved me,” Billings said with pride. “She still wanted to do what I told her. That’s the wife’s place, right? This women’s lib only makes sick people. The most important thing in life is for a person to know his place. His . . . his . . . uh . . .”

“Station in life?”

“That’s it!” Billings snapped his fingers. “That’s it exactly. And a wife should follow her husband. Oh, she was sort of colourless the first four or five months after – dragged around the house, didn’t sing, didn’t watch the TV, didn’t laugh. I knew she’d get over it. When they’re that little, you don’t get so attached to them. After a while you have to go to the bureau drawer and look at a picture to even remember exactly what they looked like.

“She wanted another baby,” he added darkly. “I told her it was a bad idea. Oh, not forever, but for a while. I told her it was a time for us to get over things and begin to enjoy each other. We never had a chance to do that before. If you wanted to go to a movie, you had to hassle around for a babysitter. You couldn’t go into town to see the Mets unless her folks would take the kids, because my mom wouldn’t have anything to do with us. Denny was born too soon after we were married, see? She said Rita was just a tramp, a common little corner-walker. Corner-walker is what my mom always called them. Isn’t that a sketch? She sat me down once and told me diseases you can get if you went to a cor . . . to a prostitute. How your pri . . . your penis has just a little tiny sore on it one day and the next day it’s rotting right off. She wouldn’t even come to the wedding.”