Ramsey Campbell - 1976 - The Doll Who Ate His Mother (22 page)

 
          
“A teacher!
Are you! You all think children are angels these
days, don’t you? He was no angel, let me tell you. He was the Devil incarnate.”

 
          
Edmund
was nodding to Clare, but she didn’t need his cue. “Come on, Mrs. Kelly, children
aren’t devils,” she said. “In what way was he a devil?”

 
          
But
Mrs. Kelly grinned. “Oh no, you won’t trap me like that. I’ve got all the rest
of my senses left, don’t you mistake it.”

 
          
“I’m
not trying to trap you,” Clare said, full of frustration.

 
          
Mrs.
Kelly hadn’t waited for her. She was muttering, “I know all about teachers.
They’re the ones who want to tell parents how to bring up their children. I’d
like to see a teacher give twenty-five years of her life to a child and then
have that child betray her. I’d like to see her telling parents what to do
then.”

 
          
“Do
you mean your grandson?” Clare said, keeping her temper. “He betrayed you?”

 
          
“No,
I don’t mean him.” As if the silence had contradicted her, she added furiously,
“I mean his mother.
My daughter Cissy, Cecilia.”

 
          
“Sounds
like you haven’t had much luck bringing up kids, right?” Chris said.

 
          
“I’ve
had the Devil’s luck. He must have it in for me. I don’t know why God lets him.
There must be a special place for me in Heaven. The Devil made Cissy betray me,
I know. And she turned to him for help. Not to her own mother.”

 
          
Both
Chris and Clare opened their mouths, but Edmund gestured as if he were a
conductor silencing an orchestra. In the silence the glowing embers crinkled
like tinfoil. Mrs. Kelly said, “Just you have a look at her. Does she look
badly brought up to you? Mr. Pugh, you look at her in the photographs.”

 
          
Clare
watched George rub a hole in the grime for a face. The girl beneath the glass
was about eleven; her large eyes gazed out of her large face, her full lips
were pressed together primly. “Is that her as a little girl?” Mrs. Kelly said.
“That’s her confirmation dress. It cost so much to make, we were flabbergasted.
But we bought it. Just so she could go to the Devil.”

 
          
In
the other photograph the girl was years older. A woman in her forties—Mrs.
Kelly—and a burly man stood on either side of her, arms about her shoulders.
The girl’s lips were fuller now; she looked sullen—trapped, Clare thought. “Can
the others look at them?” George said.

 
          
“Yes,
yes. Let them all see.” Mrs. Kelly shook her head. “That one of the three of
us,” she said. “I had that taken because I thought we were such a close family,
so Cissy would have something to remember us by. I shouldn’t have wasted my
money.”

 
          
She
took hold of the arm of her chair and squatted down to place coal on the embers
with fire-tongs. George moved to help, but she said, “Sit down, sit down. I’m
not helpless yet.” She threw on a shovelful of slack; dark flames uncoiled,
mostly smoke.

 
          
“Sometimes
I wonder what God has against me,” she said from her chair. “He’s sent me some
trials in my life, I know that. Cissy never had much in her head, but I’m sure
the teachers made her worse. I brought her up as I’d been brought up; it never
did me any harm. We found her a job in a factory, but she didn’t keep that
long. Still, we were used to going without; my husband was only in the post
office. We looked after her and never complained. All we asked was that she was
home by nine every night, and told us everything she’d done during the day. And
what she was going to do the next day. Sometimes she caught herself out there;
she’d contradict herself. But someone must have taught her to lie. Because
she’d been at another factory for six months before we knew she was going with
a man.”

 
          
She
looked as if she might vomit. “They used to do what they did in broad daylight,
in the factory. Her supervisor found them one day.
Against
the wall, like animals.
Her father gave her something to remember that
night, even if she was twenty-five. Do you know what she did then? She ran
away. Her, who couldn’t even keep her shoelaces tied. She wouldn’t have run
away if her father had been well. But he had lung cancer, so that made it easy
for her.”

 
          
The
shouts of children had gone from the street, which was sinking into darkness.
“We knew she’d be back,” Mrs. Kelly said. “Her man didn’t want her, not for
long. She went wherever she went for a couple of months, then she came back
here. Do you know why?
Because she was going to have a baby.
As brazen as you please, she brought that here.” Her lips were white with
primness.

 
          
“Yeah,
well,” Chris said. “
It’s
still life, though, isn’t
it?”

 
          
“You
call that life, do you? I wonder if you’d think so if you heard what that thing
did. I sound cruel, don’t I? A cruel
mother,
not fit
to bring up children. Oh, we thought as you do, at the time—we thought it was
still a baby, after all; it deserved the same chances as anyone else. We told
her she could have it, but we couldn’t afford to keep it, not with her father
getting worse. Of course there was no question of her not having the baby, but
it would have to be adopted.

 
          
“You’d
have thought we’d told her to kill it. It mustn’t be adopted, she kept saying,
it mustn’t go out of her sight ever. We found out why later. But even if we’d
known, I don’t see what difference it could have made.

 
          
“She
was ashamed to talk to us, and I don’t wonder. At least she never talked about
the man responsible. I certainly didn’t want to hear about a man like that. So
she just sat around the house and wasted away. Just sat and wouldn’t say what
she was thinking, not even to the priest. She didn’t dare tell him, of course.
And I had to watch her get thinner. I’m a cruel inhuman mother, am I?” she
shouted at the silence. “Let me tell you, I lay awake half the night, every
night, praying for her and the baby. I wouldn’t have wasted prayers on that
thing if I’d known. We thought it was the worry that was sapping her, but it
was that inside her, eating her away.

 
          
“Then
just before the baby was due, she left. And the next day there was a letter
saying she was going to kill herself. After the way we brought her up, she
sinned against the Holy Ghost, against hope.”

 
          
She
closed her eyes. The listeners waited, hoping she would answer the silence.
Flames leapt through smoke. Suddenly Clare realized they must learn the
contents of the suicide letter. She remembered what the doctor had told George
about Mrs. Kelly’s daughter. Hoping she sounded as stupid as the question, she
said, “But what reason did she have to kill herself?”

 
          
“You
may well ask. She had her reasons. But I don’t want to talk about them. I want
to forget, if I can.”

 
          
Clare
groaned silently. Then Mrs. Kelly said, “No, I won’t have you thinking I drove
her to it. I’ll tell you what she couldn’t tell me face to face.”

 
          
Edmund
nodded vigorously at Clare, flourishing his
upthrust
thumb.

 
          
“She
wasn’t satisfied having a baby out of wedlock,” Mrs. Kelly said. “That wasn’t
enough of a sin for her. She tried to get rid of it. She’d heard of a man who
could get rid of babies by black magic. God help her.

 
          
“But
he didn’t get rid of it. He made her promise it to him. After the way we
brought her up, she promised her child to the Devil. And he told her nothing
could take back that promise, not even death.”

 
          
She
crossed herself, squeezing her eyelids tight. “He must have seen how easily
swayed she was. He roped her into all manner of filthy practices. She wrote
them all down; she must have enjoyed thinking how it would upset me. I threw
all that on the fire, didn’t even let my husband see. This Satanist was a dirty
old man, filthy, making use of gullible people.

 
          
“But
he had powers from the Devil. He’d kept himself young; he told Cissy all about
that. Now he was growing old, he needed someone to look after him. I’d have
looked after him,” she said savagely. “He wanted
Cissy’s
child to look after him and to be taught all the filth he knew. I don’t know
what changed her mind, but she ended up
hating
him.
She said she was writing to him as well, to tell him what she was going to do.”

 
          
“This
guy, the Satanist,” Chris said. “Is he still alive?”

 
          
“No,
thank God. That’s one prayer of mine that was answered. He should have suffered
as he made others suffer, but he died in his bed, of old age. Sometimes I
wonder what God’s doing.”

 
          
“Your
daughter,” Clare said. “She killed herself after the baby was born?”

 
          
Mrs.
Kelly was silent for minutes. Once she made to speak, then her face collapsed
and filled with darkness—shadows of the fire. On the walls, chairs of dark
jelly danced and jerked, slowly quivering.

 
          
Abruptly
Mrs. Kelly said, “They found her in a cave in Wales. Someone had seen her going
up a hill. She was dead, but that was alive, God help us. I’d taken her letter
to the police. They told me when she was found, and I had to go to identify
her. Then they showed me the baby at the hospital.”

 
          
Chris
was squinting at the photographs. He said, “Have you got a picture of him?”

 
          
“I’ve
got nothing of him. And I want nothing. After what he did, all I want is to
hear that he’s dead.”

 
          
“But
you cared for him, didn’t you?” Clare prompted. “I mean, you looked after him.”

 
          
“Oh
yes. I couldn’t leave him with strangers. He looked such a lovely baby. That
was a Devil’s trick to delude me. And I wanted him because he was
Cissy’s
. It wasn’t my fault she’d gone to the Devil, don’t
think that, but I thought I could save him from going the same way, make up for
what she’d done. The cruel mother wanted to make up for her daughter,” she said
harshly.

 
          
“They
kept him in the hospital for months. They said he should have died. I don’t
know if they meant he would have been better dead, but that’s what they ought
to have meant. When I went to collect him, a nurse told me— No. No, God help
me, I won’t talk about that.” Her hands fastened convulsively on her chair.

 
          
“I
tried to bring him up as if he were normal. The priest said he was still a
child of God; it was up to me to put him on the right path. He said God must
have let him live so that I could save him. I tried, God knows. I even called
him Christopher—carrying Christ. I thought that might help.”

 
          
Clare
winked at Chris; shadows flickered in reply.

 
          
“We
went without to bring him up. We were used to that. We even bought him special
food, to change his tastes.” She shuddered, or the light did. “I told him his
mother had gone to Heaven. Perhaps she had. God’s mercy is infinite.

 
          
“He
was far cleverer than Cissy. I often used to see him watching me. The Devil had
made him clever—pretending to be a little boy, waiting for the chance to be a
monster.

 
          
“When
he was five my husband died. I had to bring him up on the pittance they gave
me. Oh, that didn’t worry me, I could do without. But my sight was going. I was
terrified of him, and he knew it.”

 
          
“Of a five-year-old child?”
Clare demanded.

 
          
“A
five-year-old monster, you mean. Oh, but children are angels, aren’t they? I’ll
tell you something. When he was eleven he savaged another boy. Did you know
that, Miss Teacher?”