Haunted Legends (42 page)

Perhaps she looked reproachful because she’d made turkey burgers, his favourite. Whenever their eyes met he thought it best to grin. The meal ended some time after he’d stopped enjoying it. As she returned the chutney to the refrigerator his mother said “Now look what you’ve made me do.”

She was craning inside, her neck between the doorframe and the edge of the door, as she held the refrigerator open with one hand. “What?” Robbie said.

“I forgot to buy orange and now there’s none for breakfast.”

As the legs of his chair and the linoleum collaborated on a squeal that a maniac’s victim might have been proud of, Robbie said “I’ll go.”

“Just hurry there and hurry back.”

He ran upstairs and made sure she heard him go into the bathroom, and then he dodged into his room. Now his footfalls felt as light as plastic. The money was the only secret in his room, not that it was much of one; less than half was change he’d kept the last time she’d sent him to the shops. Dust squeaked beneath his fingernails as he groped behind the wardrobe for the coins. He flushed the toilet and sprinted downstairs, to be met by his mother. “Remember what I said,” she told him.

As he hurried to the shop he felt as if his face was shaping itself so that the mask would fit. What would the mask allow him to do? He thought of peering in the windows at the televisions inside which Chucky might be hiding, and his grin expanded, only to sag when he reached the street that led down to the Strand. The shop with the masks in was dark.

The door didn’t budge, and nobody answered however hard Robbie clattered the letter box. “What are you grinning at?” he demanded, but the mask didn’t seem to hear. It looked entertained by his plight, unless it was amused by its secret thoughts. Suppose he smashed the window and set Chucky free that way? He glanced about to make sure the street was deserted and in
search of something he could use. Then, with a shock that turned his mouth so dry it felt raw with skunk, he realised what he was planning to do.

Had the mask put the idea into his mind? What else might Chucky have sneaked in? Robbie remembered wishing he could wear the mask so that he could deal with his mother, and all at once he saw her neck in the guillotine of the refrigerator. Lightning widened the empty eyes as if the mask had been enlivened by the memory. The flash was the explosion of a firework above the houses, and it sent Robbie away from the window, to the grocery around the corner.

Had the flash been an omen too? There were fireworks under the glass counter, and he used the carton of juice to point. “One of them as well.”

He thought the shopkeeper was about to refuse, but she must have been waiting for politeness. As she shook her head and laid the firework on the counter Robbie said “And some matches.”

She didn’t take the second chance to say no. Robbie paid and hurried back to the intersection. If there was anybody in the other street he wouldn’t be able to carry out his plan—but the street was deserted even by traffic. He wandered over to the shop as if he were bound somewhere else entirely, and then he lit the firework.

The stitched mask seemed to watch him askance as he inserted the long cardboard barrel through the letter box and gave it a violent sideways shove. The firework landed inside the window. In a few seconds it spouted fire, and moments later several fireworks were ablaze. Even if Chucky never stayed burned in the films, mightn’t this destroy his face? The mask appeared to writhe in fear as detonations shook the window. The glass held, but the masks slithered down it to fall on top of the outbursts of flame. Gouts of fire spurted from Chucky’s eyes, which grew larger and blacker and emptier, and then the helpless upturned face began to split apart as if the stitches had torn open. When the pieces started curling up and bubbling like slugs, Robbie dashed home.

He felt both reckless and justified. His mother should be proud of him, but could he risk telling her? As he inserted the unnecessarily shaky key into the lock he was trying to decide how much he might hint. He’d eased the door shut when he heard a voice croaking somewhere in the house.

It was Chucky’s mate. Before Robbie could begin to deal with this, his
mother darted like a killer out of the front room. “Where have you been this time? How long does it take to buy juice?”

He was distracted by the film she’d been watching—the Simpsons film. “There was a shop on fire,” he said.

“I suppose I can’t blame you for that.”

Robbie didn’t grin until he was heading for the kitchen, and managed to suppress the expression on his way back. Once he joined in watching the film he had no idea how to look. He tried only laughing if his mother did, but this was almost always when Marge Simpson spoke in that unnatural voice. He peered at the film as if it might show him what else he could do, and then his mobile clanged. As he brought up the message his mother leaned over to read it.
chuckies burnd shop down,
Duncan wanted him to know. “What does he mean?” Robbie’s mother demanded.

Robbie thought it wisest just to shrug, and she was rediscovering how to laugh with Marge when the ringtone interrupted. “Is that Duncan again?” Robbie’s mother said and silenced the television. “Put him on the loudspeaker.”

Robbie was unnerved by the sight of her dubbing Marge’s dialogue. Poking the loudspeaker key seemed to bring an audience into the room. “That shop those girls said about, it’s on fire,” Duncan shouted over the sounds of the crowd. “You want to come and see.”

“I saw.”

“Did you see Chucky? He’s gone now. Maybe he done it and went.”

“No he didn’t.” Since Robbie’s fervour apparently impressed his mother, he added “He’s just in his films.”

“Till someone lets him out.”

“I’ve got to go now,” Robbie said and cut the call off.

He still had to face his mother. “Was he trying to tell you he’d started the fire?” she said.

“It wasn’t him.”

“How do you know?”

“There was a Chucky mask he’d have wanted. It’s all burned up.”

Far too many seconds passed before her gaze relented. “Just please don’t ever watch any of those films again.”

“I won’t.”

“Don’t go anywhere near them.”

At once, having realised what else he could do, Robbie was afraid she meant to extract the promise. She picked up the remote control, however, and restored the doll’s voice. He kept hearing it and Chucky’s even once the film was over, but now he knew how to stop them. When his mother started watching a programme about refuges for women he used it as an excuse to go to bed. “You get your sleep. You’ve plenty to do tomorrow,” she said.

She had no idea. He wasn’t sure himself. As he lay in bed he saw Chucky’s face bubble and blacken while it struggled to crawl out of the flames. It didn’t let him sleep much; he kept jerking awake like a puppet someone was testing. He was afraid his mother might interrogate him at breakfast, but perhaps she was used to his red eyes or too preoccupied to notice. He tried not to grin every time she looked at him, and eventually he was able to stay out of her sight by taking his homework into the front room.

For English he had to write about a film. He was tempted to discuss Chucky but didn’t know what he might say. He wrote about the Simpsons film, although the need to avoid mentioning the truth about Marge’s voice felt like wearing a mask. As he strove to keep his mind on the essay, the phone in the hall went off like an alarm.

Had someone seen him set fire to the shop? Would the police believe why he’d had to do it? He heard his mother take the receiver to the kitchen, but he couldn’t distinguish her words or even her tone. He wrote very few words while he listened for her footsteps in the hall. At last she came back and opened the door. “Midge wants us to picket the films tonight,” she said. “What am I going to do with you?”

He was searching for an answer when his mobile tried to crawl across the table.
what you doeing tonit,
Duncan wanted to know. Robbie couldn’t say, and he felt his skull grow thin as plastic as he waited for his mother to decide. Neither of them had spoken by the time Duncan rang. “Let me hear,” Robbie’s mother said.

As Robbie amplified the sound Duncan said “Where have you fucked off to now?”

“Doing my homework.”

“Hope it’s evil.” When Robbie didn’t respond Duncan said “My mam’s got me picketing Chucky tonight. Should be a laugh. Want to come?”

Robbie’s mother shook her head as hard as she was gazing at him. “Can’t,” he said.

“Why, what’ll you be doing?”

“Homework,” Robbie said, the only safe answer he could think of. “I’ve got to do some of it again.”

“All right,” his mother said as he ended the call, “I’m going to trust you. You don’t need to come with me tonight.”

She was making sure he wouldn’t be with Duncan. Robbie felt as if he were in a film where whatever the plot required was bound to happen. Nothing else had to for the rest of the day, and he stayed in the front room when he wasn’t helping his mother shop. He wondered if he was grinning too often over dinner, but she left him to clear up. He waited to be certain she was well on her way to Midge’s, and then he left the house.

He might have borrowed the bicycle if she hadn’t locked it. As he hurried to the bus stops, the smell from the grain silos hovered in the cold dark air like the stench of melted plastic. Burning claws reared up to sear black prints on the sky or on his eyes, and he heard the mound of Chucky’s grave collapse as the doll fumbled its way out, but that was scrap being dumped beside the river. A bus took him into Liverpool, where he alighted just short of the dockland multiplex.

People were converging on it—students, older couples, solitary characters carrying
Gorehound
magazine with Chucky’s face on it. All of them were met outside the cinema by pickets waving placards—
CHILDREN NOT CHUCKY, HORROR ISN’T HEALTHY, CARE FOR KIDS INSTEAD OF FILMS, SAVE OUR BABES FROM SADISM
. . . Whichever Robbie’s mother might be wielding, he ran behind an apartment block without locating her.

The luxury block was guarded by an electrified fence, the outside of which led him parallel to the river. He didn’t think anyone saw him sprint from the corner of the fence to the rear of the multiplex, where the plot he was enacting seemed to abandon him. All the back doors of the cinemas were locked, and the side doors were just as immovable. As he faltered in the recess of the exit closest to the pickets, they began to chant “Chuck Chucky out” and drum the staves of their placards on the concrete. Somebody was remonstrating with them, and when Robbie peeked around the corner he saw it
was the manager, supported by quite a few of the cinema personnel. Among the pickets growing louder in response were Duncan’s and Robbie’s mothers, but nobody appeared to see him dodge through the nearest front door into the multiplex.

Nearly all the staff must be confronting the pickets, and the girls in the box office were dealing with a queue. There wasn’t even anyone to take tickets at the entrance to the screens. While the staff at the popcorn counter might have, they were serving customers. Robbie walked not too quickly or too surreptitiously past them into a corridor where posters indicated which door led to which film. He hadn’t found the poster he was looking for when he heard Chucky’s voice.

It was beyond a door marked
STAFF ONLY
. Robbie glanced around to see that the corridor was deserted. He hauled the door open and slipped past as it began to close behind him. He felt as if he were not merely in a film but in a dream he’d had, unless he was having it now. He was where he would have hoped to be—in a projection room.

The projectionist was elsewhere. Six projectors—half the number of screens—were casting images through dwarfish windows on the far side of the room. The mocking gleeful voice led Robbie to the second machine from the left. A window next to the one the projector was using showed him Chucky’s face swollen larger than any of the audience beneath it in the darkened auditorium. They were watching a documentary about the films, all five of which were stacked in cans beside the projector.

Robbie lifted both fire extinguishers out of their cradles on the walls and laid them alongside the projector. A film magazine was lying on a table by the door, and he tore it up to pile the pages between the extinguishers. Prising the lid off the topmost can of film, he tipped out the contents, which unwound across the heap of paper. The chant of the pickets and the drumming of sticks urged him on. By the time he’d emptied all the cans his fingernails twinged from opening the lids, and his arms ached with his efforts. None of this mattered, because the extinguishers had prevented the tangle of celluloid from burying all the paper. Perhaps Chucky wanted to be caught—to be stopped. Robbie took out the matchbox and struck a match.

The paper flamed at once, blazing up beneath the pile of film. In a moment the celluloid was on fire. Chucky was still ranting in the shaky darkness, but
he wouldn’t be for long. Robbie would have liked to see the flames reach the film in the projector, except that the fire or the projectionist might trap him. As the room began to fill with a plastic stench he retreated into the corridor. He was loitering outside the toilets near an exit—he would look as if he were waiting for someone if anybody noticed him—when a man appeared at the far end of the corridor and made for the projection room.

For just an instant Robbie wanted to warn him, and then he realised that the projectionist must have watched Chucky while checking all the films. Robbie observed him as he pulled the door open and uttered a syllable and lurched into the room. The door shut behind him, puffing out thick smoke, and then there was silence apart from the noise of the pickets. Robbie was at the side exit when a figure covered with flames and partly composed of them staggered into the corridor.

Was it a doll? Bits of plastic were peeling away from it, unless they were pieces of film. It wasn’t making much noise; a clogged rising groan was the best it could do for a scream. Perhaps its face was melting. As it pranced away it looked more than ever like a puppet, growing smaller while its hands clutched at and flinched away from its blazing skull. It had almost reached the far end of the corridor when a woman and her children came out of a cinema to scream on its behalf. Robbie had to cover his grin with a hand as if he was overcome by their emotion; he might have been putting on a mask. As the family retreated screaming into the cinema and the puppet fell on any face it had left, he let himself out of the multiplex.