Dark Terrors 5: The Gollancz Book of Horror

MARY A. TURZILLO Bottle Babies

Allie first saw the fairies in the flower garden beside the driveway, and they were naked. But maybe they would be her friends. She didn’t have any friends because Mom and Dad didn’t want people to come into the house and discover Bobby.

How to make friends with them, when they were almost invisible?

She thought the spicy-fragrant petunia blossoms were small enough to make skirts for them; she knew they were girl-fairies because of their long hair, lavender, pink, and pale green, but her eyes weren’t good enough to see if they had nipples, like her own, which must be concealed. Perhaps a tiny cloverleaf could cover each breast, though she wasn’t sure how to keep them in place.

‘Mom,’ she said, ‘may I borrow some thread?’

Mom’s sharp grey gaze flicked away from the needlework scene of a Japanese garden she was doing. Mom had all sorts of hobbies. ‘You may have that black spool that’s almost gone.’

Allie chewed the end of her braid. ‘Colours would be better.’

Mom threw down her needlework in annoyance.

‘I want to make little clothes.’

Dad came in. He was carrying one of Mom’s bonsai plants. A little dwarf maple tree, just right for the fairies. ‘Little clothes for who?’

‘Not for Bobby. Bras.’

Allie was pretty sure she really had seen the little people. She also knew she had better not say any more about them. Some things, like Bobby, were not discussed even in the bosom of the family. ‘For pretend little people.’

Dad spoke over her head to Mom. ‘The child needs glasses, Sara. She’s been seeing fairies in the garden again.’

‘My daughter,’ said Mom, taking the bonsai from him, ‘will not wear glasses. My daughter is perfect.’

Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses, Allie thought. Mom always said that. Allie felt no need for glasses. School was out for the summer. Anyway, she could see fine when the teacher put her in the front row.

‘Black thread,’ said Mom, and began to lay out the bonsai tools, scissors, wire, tweezers.

The black thread was so old it came on a wooden spool, but Allie didn’t mind. It broke easily so she wouldn’t have to use her kindergarten scissors, which didn’t cut.

She carefully selected six petunias, two each of pink and white, one purple, and one purple-and-white striped. She snapped these off close to the stem and removed the stamens, making flared skirts. Next, she selected twelve cloverleaves and laid them in pairs on the walkway. A breeze stirred them. ‘Darn,’ she said softly, trying to line them up again.

A fairy darted out and placed the cloverleaves back in place.

Allie was too startled to say anything. She sort of believed in the fairies, but she also knew that she couldn’t see very well, and as Dad said, was maybe making them up.

‘Thank you,’ she said, her voice softer than the rustle of the breeze through the zinnias. She broke off sections of thread, each two inches long, and glued them to the cloverleaves. The black wasn’t all that bad, she decided. It looked like trim, like the white collar on her plaid church dress.

‘Here you are,’ she told the fairies.

Nothing happened.

Well, of course. Nothing happened while you were looking. It was like Bobby growing up and getting big enough to fill that whole bottle, when at first he had been just a baby. Carefully, she got up and walked away. She sat on the grass, eyes squeezed shut, while she counted to a hundred.

She opened her eyes.

The skirts and tops were still there.

‘Well, have it your way.’ She knew she couldn’t stand counting to three hundred, or however much it might take, so she went into the house and read a book about a mouse that rode a motorcycle.

When she finished the book, she came outside and the six little skirts and tops were gone.

Elated, she ran all the way upstairs to Bobby’s attic room.

Bobby was in his bottle, of course. She had watched the slow growing process that forced his body to conform to the bottle shape. His shoulders came up around his ears. His knees were wedged either side of his chin. His head was moulded into a cone-shape, to fit the neck of the bottle. He was naked, of course, but his crossed ankles covered his sex parts. Anyway, she had got used to his nakedness.

Lately he hadn’t wanted to talk to her very much. He said he couldn’t breathe.

‘Bobby, fairies. In the garden!’

Bobby twisted his head away from her as much as he could. It was getting pretty tight in that bottle, which had originally been a thirty gallon dispenser for spring water, with a hole Daddy cut in the bottom just big enough to insert Bobby, who was then an infant. At least that’s what they told her had happened. Bobby was thirteen, and she was only eight, so she had to believe what she was told.

‘I wish I could take you down to see them,’ she continued, knowing that her words were both kind and cruel. Kind, because Bobby had no other entertainment. Mom came up and read to him sometimes, and Dad would talk to him while he was flushing the bottle out, but they wouldn’t even get him a television. They said radio was good enough, tuned to one of those light classics stations. Very boring.

But Allie knew she was being cruel, too. Bobby must really feel annoyed that he couldn’t go down to the yard and watch the fairies.

Still, what could she do? When Allie had been four she had lugged her tricycle all the way up the stairs for Bobby to see. Dad had been really mad over that. Said she’d chipped the paint and banged holes in the staircase wall.

‘They were just the right size to have a picnic under one of Mom’s bonsai trees. Maybe the wisteria one.’ Mom sometimes brought her hobbies upstairs to work on to keep Bobby company. ‘They won’t let Mom and Dad see them,’ she continued conversationally. ‘But you’re a kid, so they’ll come out for you.’

‘My propinquity might differ,’ said Bobby.

‘Hm?’ Sometime she didn’t understand Bobby.

‘I said, I am not your garden-variety rug-rat.’

‘Well, I think they’d realise you were a kid. They might even be special nice to you because of your Williams syndrome.’

‘The ordinariness-challenged have no advantage in life, Allie, despite what Mom and Dad and that teacher of yours feed your cranium.’

‘But fairies are different.’

‘Very well. Show me the golldurn cluricaune.’

Allie put her face very close to Bobby’s, so only the glass of the bottle kept them from touching. ‘I can’t, Bobby. They don’t come inside. They belong in the garden.’

‘Allie, you’re losing it,’ said Bobby. ‘Delusional. Fairies, even I know, are unreal. Spawn of imagination.’

‘I’ll bring you one. They can be your friends. They’re going to be my friends.’

Bobby made a face so hideous that Allie jumped back, making the bottle rock slightly. ‘We have no friends. I’m a geek and you’re a geeklette.’

‘I don’t live in a bottle,’ said Allie, rubbing her elbow, which she’d scraped as she jumped back.

‘Yes, you do. You just can’t see it.’

Allie spent hours outdoors, much to her parents’ satisfaction. ‘Put bloom in those cheeks,’ said Dad.

‘Keep her nose out of a book,’ said Mom, and went cross-eyed, mimicking Allie with her nose in a book.

The fairies came back and talked to Allie. We like the clothes, they said. So amusing. But just the skirts. The bras had man-made stuff in them.

‘It was just cotton,’ said Allie. ‘I checked the spool.’

It had been passed through a steel needle. And there was the glue.

‘This means you won’t like me, doesn’t it?’

Not necessarily. Do you have anything else for us? said the largest fairy.

‘Like what?’

But they were gone.

‘Bobby, they liked the skirts! But they want more stuff before they’ll be friends with me. Help me think what I can get them.’

Bobby was in one of his moods. He just stared coldly at her.

‘Please, Bobby! If they make friends with me, maybe they’ll come and be friends with you. Wouldn’t you like that?’

‘Obfuscate,’ said Bobby. ‘Brunhilda. Prosencephalic equitation.’

‘Stop it!’ Nobody knew where Bobby got these words. He couldn’t get at books to turn the pages. When Mom read to him, she always read stupid, simple children’s books. Allie herself couldn’t read well enough to be entertaining, and she certainly hadn’t read him words like prosencephalic.

‘Okay, sis, how about cornflakes and Cheerios? Tell them they’re potato chips and doughuts. Throw a junk food pooka-picnic.’

‘I don’t know. They wouldn’t wear the bras because the thread had been passed through a steel needle.’

‘Maybe they wouldn’t wear them because the bras were ugly.’

Next day, while Mom was carefully cutting the roots off a pretty little red maple sapling to make it a dwarf, Allie stole some Cheerios, which she dampened and dipped in powdered sugar, and some cornflakes. She tried to get salt to stick to the cornflakes. When she saw that the grains were too large, she crushed them between the bowls of two spoons, then sprinkled the pulverised salt over the flakes.

Heart pounding, she stole the cap from Mom’s tube of glue and filled it with orange juice. She placed the tiny snack on a coaster, went out in the garden, and plunked herself down next to the lily-of-the-valley leaves, where she had first seen them.

After long minutes of waiting, she realised she would have to leave the food. They didn’t like for her to see them too much.

The food was gone when she came back after lunch.

Thank you, said the fairies. That was very strange.

‘Did you enjoy it?’ asked Allie.

We didn’t eat it. We fed it to toads we use to draw our gourd-carriage.

‘Why — ’

It burned our fingers. It had been touched by machinery.

Allie looked up and realised her father was squatting only a few feet away, weeding the marigold patch.

Why can’t he hear you? she asked in a tiny whisper.

The fairies just laughed.

‘Am I the only person who can hear you?’

Your neighbour’s dog, Bandy, can hear us. If we like we can sing loud enough and high enough to poach his brain like a swallow’s egg.

‘But I can’t really hear you.’

No.

‘Then how do I know what you’re saying?’

She knelt in the sunlight holding the empty coaster for a long time, but the fairies were gone.

‘Bobby! They liked the cereal. They fed it to their horses.’

‘Equitation,’ said Bobby wearily. ‘What mounts are these? Dragonflies?’

‘Toads.’

‘Don’t tell Mother. She’d shit a manticore if she knew we had toads in the garden.’

When she went downstairs, Mom and Dad were having an argument.

‘ — not a bottle, it’s a Skinner box. Don’t make me tell you again,’ said Dad.

‘But germs get in there.’

‘No, they don’t. How would germs get in?’

‘Carried by insects, Doug.’

‘He’s perfectly safe. You have to be careful with a child who has Williams syndrome.’

‘He’s old enough to switch him to an orgone box.’

‘Sara, he’s not even fourteen! An orgone box is more appropriate for children at puberty.’

‘But he’s got sores on his rump! You can see them. The orgone box is — ’

‘Sara, I will hose the bottle out twice a day if that will set your mind at rest. Now, shouldn’t you be investigating — ’

Allie ran upstairs to Bobby.

‘Bobby, Dad is talking about hosing your bottle out twice a day.’

This bottle-washing — the equivalent of a daily bath — was bitterly unpleasant for Bobby, because it involved dumping several gallons of water mixed with disinfectant into the bottle. The water drained out the hole Dad had cut so long ago in the bottom, but sometimes the water level came up to Bobby’s chin, and he feared drowning. Also, the water was often icy cold or scalding hot.

Still, the process was necessary, or Bobby would be up to his neck in his own wastes.

Bobby screamed, loud and long. Usually the bottle muffled his cries, but this time, Dad and Mom came running up the stairs.

‘What have you done to him?’ Dad snarled at Allie.

‘Nothing. I just told him — ’

‘Nice girls don’t tell. Nice girls mind their own business,’ said Mom, hauling on Allie’s pigtail so that Allie had to stand on tiptoe to avoid having her hair pulled out by the roots.

‘Make them stop! Cease! Holy moly! Halt!’ screamed Bobby, but it wasn’t clear who he was screaming at.

Allie ran all the way downstairs and hid in the garage. She couldn’t hear anything from there, even the voices of the fairies.

When she went upstairs again, Bobby’s wispy, long hair was wet and he looked exhausted.

‘Cryogenic lancination,’ he whimpered. ‘Could you turn on the heater?’

‘They took the heater away when summer came.’ She embraced the bottle and pressed her body against it.

‘Mercy buckets, sibling.’ Bobby closed his eyes and took a ragged breath. ‘But your body-heat doesn’t get through the glass much.’

‘They’re mean,’ she said. ‘Mean parents. I don’t think any of the kids at school have such mean parents.’

‘I’ll warm up in time. It gets right califactive in here in the afternoons.’

‘What would happen if I told my teacher you were here?’

‘I don’t know. Mom would pull all your hair out and make you wear a Dolly Parton wig, and Dad would pour peroxide in my bottle.’

‘I could tell the fairies.’

‘The fairies hardly like you anyway. They’d probably never come back if they realised you came from such kinked kith and kin.’

When Allie slunk down the back stairs, she heard Mom say, ‘The point is, he’s growing. And he’s a bad influence on Allie. I say separate the two of them. Allie can go live with my mother, and we’ll shift Bobby to the cellar. He’ll be happier down there, with less to distract him.’

Allie sat down on the stairs, next to two of Mom’s less successful bonsai, a hemlock that was tied almost in a knot and a rhododendron that refused to bloom.

‘I disagree, Sara. Allie shows signs of being disturbed. It’s not just that she needs glasses.’

‘Please don’t start that again. You know how I feel about doctors.’

‘And the influences at her school are not exactly wholesome. But say she went into the Skinner box in the fall. You could home-school her. She’d still get an education — ’

‘Not another bottle-baby, Doug. She hasn’t a thing wrong with her. And she’s going to be my beauty queen, you’ll see.’

‘You win. The orgone box, then.’

‘Bobby, what’s an orgone box?’ she ask her brother.

‘Why?’ His voice reflected deep suspicion.

‘They think I’m crazy because of the fairies. And because I cried when Dad put ice-water in your bottle.’ She hushed her voice and put her mouth at the very lip of his bottle. ‘I think they want to send me away. Or put me in an orgone box. With a lock.’

Bobby banged his head against the glass of the bottle. He had less than a quarter inch to move his head in, but he banged it hard, and tensed his body as if trying to crack the bottle. ‘I will kill them,’ he said finally. ‘I will think of a way to kill them.’

Allie wished she hadn’t told him.

Allie explained the situation to the fairies.

None of them said anything for a long time. Some of our kin have been captured by humans and put in bottles, they said finally. But it hasn’t happened in a long time. We’re too invisible for them.

‘I just wanted you to be friends with us,’ Allie said. ‘But Mom thinks I’m beautiful, and Dad thinks I need glasses.’

What have you to trade? asked the fairies.

‘Little trees,’ said Allie reluctantly.

We have all the trees we need, big and small.

‘These are special little trees. My mother made them out of saplings, by cutting their roots off and twisting their branches. They’re very beautiful. They look like trees in a fairy garden. You could have little picnics under them, or put swings in them and play.’

Would your mother be very angry if we took them?

‘Oh, she would be horribly angry. She would — ’ Allie almost said that Mom would get spray made specially to exterminate fairies, but thought better of it. ‘She would punish me if she found out.’

Mmmmmm, mused the queen fairy. Mustn’t get our little fiend in trouble, eh, ladies? And yet — ’

‘I could drink coffee and stay up late at night. Then I’ll bring them out to you. But I’d have to take them back on the upstairs porch before dawn.’

Clever child! said the queen fairy. Very well. We’ll go see your brother and we’ll divert your parents’ attention so they won’t put you in a bottle.

‘Divert them?’

Do not trouble yourself. We are the fairies. We dazzle women’s minds.

‘And you’ll be our friends?’

The fairies laughed, musically.Of course, clever child! We are the soul of conviviality. And they began to sing, higher than Allie could hear, but very loud. She had to clap her hands over her ears. Her head hurt so badly she wanted to scream.

When Mom was in the bathroom next morning, and Dad had already gone to work, Allie poured the remains of the morning coffee into a large mayonnaise jar and hid it in the closet of her room. All day, she wanted to tell Bobby she had solved their problems. But Bobby was acting very strange and kept saying that he would kill his parents. He didn’t say how.

At night, she went to bed and lay in the dark, listening to the fairies laughing outside. Strange that she hadn’t heard them until just last week. Their voices were very sweet, but so high and loud that her ears rang.

She knew her parents and Bobby couldn’t hear them, but all the dogs in the neighbourhood bayed. How would her parents fall asleep so that she could sneak the bonsai out to them? She began to cry, big racking sobs, hot tears and snot running onto the pillow. And then the fairy laughter stopped, and the dogs settled down. She checked her clock, and it was midnight.

In bare feet and white pyjamas, she went to the closet. She had left it open so it wouldn’t creak when she got the coffee. She drank it and lay down, listening to hear if her parents were asleep yet.

Ready, said a voice, jarring her awake.

She sat up, rubbed her eyes, and looked at the clock. Three o’clock! She had fallen asleep.

Grimly, she plodded downstairs to her mother’s hobby room.

The hobby room was a wonder: exquisite needlework scenes of ladies in flowing gowns and veils, lampshades made of jewelled buttons and beads, macramé dresses on porcelain dolls with gauze wings. Most of the bonsai lived on the upstairs screened porch, but mother had left several in the hobby room for further pruning and potting.

Allie picked out two, a pyracantha just coming into bloom, and a juniper with miniature bamboo grass and a stone lantern the size of Allie’s thumb. The juniper was supposed to be very valuable. It was over fifty years old. Both smelled sweet and earthy, like the grave in which Dad had buried a dead robin. With one in each hand, she tiptoed out into the kitchen, down the back steps, into the garden.

The garden was flooded with moonlight, and nightfrogs warbled. The neighbour’s dog Bandy yapped once, then was silent.

‘Fairies,’ she whispered. ‘I’m here.’

Ahhhhh, said the queen fairy. Very lovely. Your mother is clever, clever.

‘What about me?’ Fairies swarmed out of the lily-of-the-valley leaves and from under the periwinkle. They climbed into the containers that held the bonsai, scrambled up branches, swung from limbs, rolled in the moss, and plucked blossoms.

If you were clever, human child, would you be here?

‘You promised,’ said Allie.

Sooooooothe, sang all the fairies.

When Allie woke, sunlight was beating down on her left cheek, and her right was ground into the grass. Her parents were standing over her.

‘Now are you willing to listen?’ asked her father.

‘She’s going to be my little beauty queen,’ said Mom, that whiny tone in her voice. ‘Bobby wasn’t right, but my little girl is perfectly all right.’

‘Sleepwalking!’

‘Other children have done it.’

‘It’s the children at her school.’

Allie could no longer pretend to be asleep. She sat up and rubbed her eyes.

‘What have you done to my bonsai?’ said Mom.

The containers held only churned earth and stumps.

Allie was ashamed to visit Bobby that day, and afraid to go into the house. Mom had not yet decreed a punishment for the destruction of the bonsai. Dad went to work and Mom stayed in the house, never even calling Allie for lunch. So Allie hid in the garage, gloomily inhaling the smell of gasoline from the lawnmower and wishing the fairies would come back. But the fairies never came in buildings. That was a strict rule. Wasn’t it? There had to be some explanation.

She got hungry, but not hungry enough to go into the house. She was thinking of running away. But how could she leave without Bobby? He really would go crazy if he didn’t have her to talk to.

When dusk fell — very late, because it was summer, Allie knew — she crept out into the yard and crouched beside the geraniums. Dad’s Studebaker was in the drive, but neither parent had come to find her, nobody had called her for dinner. She was very hungry now, even a little sick. The geranium leaves smelled like carrots, so she nibbled one, but it was bitter and she spat it out.

‘Fairies,’ she called tentatively. Abandoned by humanfolk, maybe she was now one of their kind, and they would answer.

Human girl, said the high voice, just as she was ready to give up.

‘How did you chop down the little trees?’ she asked. ‘I thought you were not allowed things of steel.’

There was a long silence, then a whir as a fairy flew by her face. Instinctively, Allie batted it away. But when she touched her face, her fingers came away smeared with blood.

The light was on in the kitchen, and through the window she could see Mom and Dad eating dinner. Carefully, so the screen door would not squeak, she stole onto the back stairs and listened.

‘ — come back when she feels like it, the scheming brat. I told her — ’

Allie squeezed her eyes shut. She must run away now, she was sure. Whatever punishment they had devised would be too horrible to imagine. And the fairies were no help — on the contrary, they were bad; they had killed a fifty-year-old bonsai tree that Mom had paid a lot of money for.

The door between the stairwell and the kitchen was ajar. If she crawled, she could make it to her bedroom to pack and from there to the attic to say goodbye to Bobby.

She had an idea. She would go first to the basement and get a brick. She would shatter Bobby’s bottle, and he could run away with her.

Where would she go? To an orphanage, maybe, or perhaps she could get some kindly couple with a baby to take her in as a nanny. She would be very sure they were a nice couple, and not planning to bottle or box their children. Bobby could get a job mowing lawns, or perhaps teaching vocabulary lessons.

Allie pushed her bedroom door open and immediately knew something was wrong. There was a damp smell, like the peat moss Dad put down in the garden, or like the humus Mom mixed with the soil of her bonsai.

In the centre of the room, blocking her access to the closet, was a big box, like a coffin, with the lid open. It was lined with damp, green carpety stuff that had little stems sticking up from it. Some of the stems had flowers or berries on them. She placed her hand on the pillow-like hummock at one end. It was cool. Live moss.

On the outside, opposite the hinges, was a hasp with an open padlock dangling from it.

If they put her in that box, she would never, never have friends, and she would never be able to rescue Bobby.

She decided she didn’t need to take clothes with her. She carefully opened the bottom drawer of her dresser and took out the tin Easter egg in which she hid her life savings. Without counting the money — she remembered that it was over twenty dollars — she slipped it in the pocket of her pinafore.

The brick was heavy and awkward, but she dragged it to the attic.

‘Bobby!’ she hissed. ‘Bobby, wake up!’ She brought the brick down on the shoulder of Bobby’s bottle with all her might.

Bobby shrieked, but the bottle was tougher than she thought. It didn’t break.

‘Be quiet! We’re going to run away!’ she whispered. She brought the brick down again, but nothing happened except that the bottle clanged like a gong.

She brought the brick down a third time, and Bobby screamed, ‘Stop! The glass will cut me, and I’ll bleed to death!’

Footsteps pounded on the stairs. Mom’s strong hands ripped the brick out of her hand. Dad hoisted her over his shoulder. She dangled there, screaming, dizzy with the height of the stair, as he strode down, down, to her bedroom.

She kicked and fought, tears streaming like blood from her face, but the two of them packed her into the mossy coffin, threw the hasp, and slammed the padlock shut.

There was, she discovered, plenty of air. It was cool in the coffin (this must be an orgone box, she realised), and the dirt-smelling moss tendrils tickled her face. She flexed her arms against the sides, and tried to draw her knees up to kick, but there wasn’t room. There was, maybe, just room for her to grow a few inches. She gave over to crying, softly and hopelessly, and the moss drank up her tears.

She cried for a long time, then dozed, dreaming that she was a bonsai tree, or a funeral arrangement, something expensive and cool Mom had brought home from the florist.

Someone was cutting her roots, and it didn’t even hurt.

She had no way of knowing how long she had been in the box, breathing dew-moist mossy air. It might have been an hour. It might have been weeks. But she heard someone turning the tumblers of the lock. By this time, she was too overcome with the scent of the moss and the coolness that had sunk into her bones to think of escape. Even if Mom threw the box open and invited her to step out, would she have the energy?

The lock fell away, and nothing happened. The lid did not open. Mom and Dad’s big faces did not peer in with their toxic concern for her. She was glad, for she was certain that they would have scissors and wires and potting soil, to change her into Mom’s beauty, the beauty that Mom planned to make her.

She just wanted them to lock it again, leave her alone. Tomorrow she might fight. Tomorrow, or a week or a month from now. Fall. That was plenty of time Perhaps she would start fighting when fall came.

Open it, human.

‘What? Mom?’

We certainly don’t have the strength to open it for you. Open the lid. Or stay there and rot.

Allie pushed feebly with her arms. The lid creaked back. She turned and heaved with her whole body.

‘I thought fairies were not allowed in human buildings,’ she said.

The orgone box drew us. Still, it is a power we find unsuited to a young girl, so we free you from it. Run, now girling. The grey large ones are in the top of the house stealing the one who lives in glass.

‘Bobby? Somebody is stealing Bobby?’

The large ones. Run from them. They are too dead for us to kill, and they are not part of our world. We have no power over them.

Allie sat up, and nearly blacked out. The orgone box seemed to have drained all her strength. She managed to roll over and balance on her hands and knees. From there, she carefully put a foot on the ground and heaved herself out.

She sat on the floor for a long time, hands over her eyes.

‘Fairies?’

No answer. She willed herself to climb to her feet and stand, supporting herself against the dresser. She was afraid if she touched the orgone box she would fall back into it and never get out again.

She took a few shaky steps to the door and opened it a crack.

Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs from the attic. She jerked the door closed again just as she saw a shadow — Dad’s shadow, she was sure — on the hall landing.

Why were they going so slow?

They must have Bobby! She had to do something, anything. Even the fairies knew something had to happen, and fast.

There was a telephone in Mom’s room, by her bed. If she waited until Mom and Dad had dragged Bobby in his bottle to the stairs from the second to the ground floor, she could get to the bedroom phone, she was sure.

She lay on the floor and peeked under the door. She couldn’t see Mom and Dad from this angle, except just when they rounded the landing and started down the lower staircase.

Then she waited and listened to make sure they were down far enough so she wouldn’t be seen.

Holding her breath, she slid through the door, tiptoed down the hall, and wrenched the knob to her mother’s room.

Someone was in the room. A ghost in white.

No.

It was her reflection in her mother’s full-length mirror.

She darted over to the bed and picked up the phone.

She stared at the big black dial. Who could she call?

O!

‘Can you please please help me?’ she begged, when the operator came on the line.

‘You have to dial information,’ said the operator, politely enough.

‘No! I’m alone in the house and something awful is happening. I need — ’

‘You need the police?’

Police? They might help! ‘Yes, please!’

Four long rings, and a woman’s voice answered, ‘Is this an emergency?’

‘Yes, oh yes, it is!’

‘What is your address?’

‘I don’t know! I can’t remember! Please, they have my brother in a bottle and they’re taking him to the basement. He’ll die in the basement!’

‘Little girl — ’

Allie squeezed shut her eyes, and bright spots pinged in her vision. Why wouldn’t anybody take her seriously?

‘Little girl! Listen, I need your address. I can’t send help if I don’t know where you are.’

Allie tried to think. ‘Asphodel Street.’

‘The house number. Do you know your house number?’

‘No.’ Allie wept. She couldn’t remember the house number or her phone number.

‘Little girl, what’s your name?’

Allie told her.

Rustling of pages. ‘Ah! That’s 222 Asphodel. Does that sound right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Now tell me what’s wrong.’

‘My brother. They put him in a bottle, and now they’re going to put him in the basement. They locked me in a box with moss in it, but the fairies let me out — ’ The minute Allie said it, she realised she shouldn’t have brought the fairies into the story.

‘Allie. Your name is Allie? Allie, you know you shouldn’t tell stories to the police.’ A deep breath. ‘But somehow I think you’re not just acting. You sound horribly upset about something. The question is, what? Can I speak with one of your parents?’

‘No!’ Allie screamed. ‘They’ll kill me. They’ll put me back in that box and I’ll never get out again.’

‘Hold on.’

Allie let the receiver sink into her lap and wiped her nose on the tail of her pyjama top.

A shadow fell across the floor in front of her.

Mom said, ‘Now how did you get out?’ She grabbed Allie’s arm and wrenched her to her feet. Allie went limp — a trick she had seen older children use in the schoolyard — then twisted away. She slithered under the bed.

‘Doug!’ screamed Mom. ‘Doug, leave the bottle down there for a minute and come here. We have a problem.’ Mom’s face, dark with fury, peered at her from the edge of the bed. Allie scuttled as far away as she could.

Faintly, from the telephone receiver, Allie could hear a voice: ‘We’re sending a patrol car right now. Tell me where you are in the house.’ Then, softly, ‘Better safe than sorry. Crazy kids.’

Mom’s voice: ‘That really isn’t necessary. We have everything under control now. Sorry my daughter bothered you. No, no, of course we’ll go easy on her. She’s just a child, after all.’

Dad’s voice: ‘How the hell did she get out?’

The bristles of a broom poked under the bed, nearly stabbing Allie in the eye.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sakes!’ said Mom’s voice. Sounds of bedding being yanked aside. ‘Help me, Doug!’

In a moment, the mattress and springs shifted and were tipped sideways beside the bed. Allie, completely exposed now, screamed. Dad lunged over the bedframe and grabbed her, his huge hand clamped over her mouth. ‘Atta girl. Just calm down, Allie. Nobody’s going to hurt you.’

‘I’m going to hurt her,’ said Mom. ‘What in the world do you mean, making prank calls to the police? Don’t you know that’s a serious crime in this state? In any state! Back in the box until we figure out an appropriate punishment. For this, and for what you did to my two best bonsai.’

Dad’s big hand was stopping Allie’s breath. She struggled to scream, to breathe! Tears and snot ran onto Dad’s hand, and she bit him.

He was so surprised that he let go. Allie hadn’t meant to bite her father, but when she saw she was free, she ran towards the door. Mom caught her pigtail and yanked. ‘For God’s sake, Doug, how can you let a little imp like this defeat you?’ She caught Allie’s ear in a grip like a pair of pliers. ‘Back to the box, you little demon!’

The doorbell rang.

Mom and Dad froze.

Mom tightened her grip on Allie’s ear. ‘Doug, just go answer it. You don’t have to let them in. They can’t have a search warrant this fast. By the time they can come back, we’ll have everything tidied up.’

Dad clumped down the stairs and went to the front door. Allie could hear muffled voices. She drew in a breath to scream, but her mother stuffed a corner of the bedspread into her mouth.

Allie heard male voices, but couldn’t understand enough to know what was going on. The voices all sounded friendly, almost apologetic.

‘No, she’s gone to bed. Fell right asleep, poor little tyke. We shouldn’t have let her stay up this late. She gets over-excited and pulls these pranks. You can come by in the morning if you like, although I hope you won’t file a complaint against her. She’s a good girl, basically, just full of the devil.’

More inaudible words, then the front door swung shut. A sound like the closing of a coffin lid, thought Allie, like the closing of the orgone box lid.

The loss of hope was almost more than Allie could bear. It had been so close! The police had been right there, at the door, and they had believed Dad instead of her. She would spend her life in a moss-lined box, Bobby would go insane in the basement with nobody to talk to, neither of them would ever have a friend, not even one, not even each other.

‘Fairies!’ she shrieked. Mother snorted in impatience. Dogs began to bark.

First only the neighbour’s dog Bandy, then the dogs across the street, then more dogs, hundreds. Above the howling, Allie could hear the sound of fairy voices. Not laughing now, not singing.

Screaming at full volume.

Allie screamed too, not because she wanted to, but because of the pain in her head. Her mother twisted her ear, then suddenly let go and began screaming. Then her father bellowed. Both had their eyes squeezed shut, their hands over their ears.

Glass shattered.

And Bobby screamed.

Bobby had probably been screaming all along, but the bottle muffled his voice.

‘Bobby! Bobby, I’m coming, Bobby!’ Allie, suddenly free, jerked away from her mother and ran down the stairs.

Bobby lay among shards of glass, blood running from cuts on his arms, torso, legs, face, all over.

She had always thought of Bobby as, well, short. He would never be any taller than the bottle he was in, she thought. But now he lay, a grey-white snail free of its shell, on the kitchen landing. His legs, twisted as they were, were long. His hands lapped uselessly at the end of rubbery, snake-like arms. In the uncoiling, his sex parts were revealed, and Allie was deeply embarrassed to see that he had hair and genitals just like those in a marriage manual she had sneaked a peek at once.

Bobby flailed, yelling and weeping, trying to coil up into the protective unborn shape in which he had spent his whole life. Allie knelt amidst the broken glass and tenderly picked shards out of Bobby’s face.

Someone was pounding at the back door now. Mom and Dad shuffled down the stairs and, holding hands tightly, gazed in uncertain dread as two policemen kicked the door in.

The dogs stopped barking.