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Nightlight
"Muuum," drawls six-year old Tabbie Parker as only six-year olds can, "next door have a monster."
"Don't be silly, love," her mother says from behind the morning paper.
Tabbie scowls into her cereal. That's her mum's answer to everything - her dad would believe her if he was here, but most days he goes to work in the morning before she wakes up.
"I'm not being silly," she insists. "There really is a monster. It makes all sorts of noises at night and scares me."
Her mum finally puts the paper down and looks at her.
"What do I keep telling you, Tabitha? There's nothing scary about the night-time, and there's no such thing as monsters." She picks up the paper again, this time with a sort of sigh, and Tabbie has learnt from the past that this means 'be quiet and eat your breakfast'. Never mind. She can tell her dad about it when he gets home.
Oh, if only Evan hadn't taken this new job... Lou hasn't minded the move exactly; the neighbourhood is a lovely place for children, but since coming to Eyre's Crescent, she's barely seen her husband. He's always up and out first thing in the morning, in and straight to bed last thing at night. Which meant that any anxieties she has about their new life stay unspoken, niggling in the back of her mind like a misspelt word. And being woken in the dead of night by all sorts of ungodly howling does nothing to put her mind at rest.
"Lou?"
"Sorry. It's just going to be so ridiculous, actually saying the words."
"Well why don't you try it. Just one word at a time."
"Okay." Louise wraps her hands around her steaming mug, and blurts out - "Tabs seems to think that there's something evil next door, and I don't know what to tell her."
Mona sits and thinks about this, sips her tea, and tries not to look at her new neighbour like she's a madwoman.
"How'd you mean, evil?"
"I suppose you're too far down the street to hear, but... in the middle of the
night, all sorts of noises come from Number Thirteen. Screeching and groaning, like a banshee."
"Maybe the Daltons are just having great sex?"
"I know what sex sounds like, Mona... trust me, this is something completely different."
"Well have you asked them about it?"
"I know I should, if only to put Tabbie's mind at rest, not to mention my own... but it's not exactly something easy to drop into conversation, is it? 'Morning Deborah, your flowerbeds are looking lovely, by the way, is there a monster living in your box room?'"
"Oh, don't be ridiculous," Mona says between swigs of tea. "We both know her garden is a bloody shambles lately. She's stopped making any kind of effort, which is odd come to think of it - she's such a Stepford Wife usually."
"I wouldn't know," Lou looks down. "It's been months now but I still feel like an outsider."
"That's probably it then," Mona puts on an optimistic face and wonders what kind of sad kook she's befriended. "You're stressed about the move, you can't sleep, and these noises have started to seem a whole lot worse."
"You could be right. No, you're right, of course. Still, I should probably ask Deborah anyway. You know, for Tabbie's sake."
Yeah, sure, Mona From Number Twenty-One thinks. Tabbie my bloody arse.
"Debs? I mean... Mrs Dalton?"
Deborah looks up from the boot of her smart-car and tries to hide her disappointment at the sight of Louise Parker... she already knows what this is going to be about.
"Morning, sweetheart!" She decides to go on a charm offensive and compliment her new-ish neighbour, but God it's difficult today; Lou's usually lustrous dark hair is scraped back in a bun and there are dark circles under her eyes.
"Oh, my poor dear - are you ill?" The words of concern are out of her mouth before she can stop them. So much for a charm offensive.
"What? Erm, not really. I haven't been sleeping very well lately. Actually - "
"I'm not surprised, precious," Deborah hauls her shopping out of the boot and slams it shut. "Moving house can be such a strain, especially if your hubby's busy working and you've got a little one running around... how old is darling Tabitha again?"
"She's six, seven in a few months..."
"They're such treasures at that age, aren't they? You need to make the most of her while she's still your little girl, they grow up so fast these days... it seems like only yesterday that my Scott was playing Cowboys and Indians with the twins across the street, now all three of them are grown up, gone - one of the twins has a little one himself! It's so odd to get your head around, them having kiddies of their own when in your mind they're still bairns themselves..."
She plasters a grin on to hide the truth, and makes her way to the front door.
"We'd love to have you round for dinner one night soon, love," she says, lying through her teeth, "you and Evan both. Ciao for now!" She shuts the door behind her before Louise can reply, and exhales heavily. Damn, that was hard work.
Lugging her shopping into the kitchen, she hoists the bags up onto the worksurface and begins to empty them. Teabags, sugar, milk, bread, a small bottle of codliver oil, some paracetamol for her increasingly frequent headaches, a pot of creme fraiche to go with tonight's casserole, and a brand new bolt from the locksmith. She'll get Harold to fit that to the outside of the box room when he gets home from work; one of the three locks is starting to become a tad loose with all that crashing and banging.
Deborah busies herself with small tasks; putting the shopping away, getting out the mince for tonight so it has time to defrost, going round the kitchen surfaces with a damp sponge... anything to take her mind off whatever Louise Parker had been trying to say. Whatever she would have said, had Deborah not jumped in to stop her. She hates lying, especially to such a pleasant young woman, but in her mind there is no other option.
When he was younger, things had been different. People weren't faced with this kind of problem every other day. Or maybe they had been, maybe it's all been a case of 'those things only happen to other people'. He'd never expected it to find it on his doorstep. The truth was, it frightened him a little. There was something genuinely disturbing about what lay behind the door of the box room upstairs.
After dinner, Deborah offers to put on some coffee, but Harold declines; she is just delaying the inevitable. He touches her hand for a moment, and she nods solemnly, before standing up and going into the kitchen. She emerges a moment later carrying a tray, with a plate of tonight's stew, two thick slices of bread, and a large glass of water. She walks up the stairs in front of him, her hands shaking a little - not because the tray is too heavy, but because she knows what comes next. When they have both reached the landing, Harold steps in front of her and takes a set of keys from his pocket. Listening carefully for noises from within, he slowly unlocks the door to the box room, and pushes it forward.
He doesn't want to look in. He wants to shut that door and go downstairs, put the television on and pretend none of this is happening. But he can't. Instead, he steps in, keeping both eyes on the wretched creature curled up in the far corner of the room. Deborah comes in behind him, and, suppressing a sob, places the tray of food on the floor. She never unlocks the room by herself now; Harold comes with her every time, for safety. All furniture has been removed from the room for that same reason - a mattress lies against one wall, ripped and soiled.
Something breaks inside Harold as he looks down at the wide, sunken eyes of his son. Scott is barely recognisable. His ribs stick out from a withered torso, his arms and legs are red raw from where he has scratched himself, he's even pulled out chunks of his own hair. Traces of blood on the walls spell out hateful, crude words. Harold quickly ushers Deborah out of the room as Scott begins to stir. Locking the door and testing the handle firmly, he squeezes his eyes shut and orders himself not to cry.
"It's only been a week, Deborah... there's plenty of time for him to show improvement. Remember, this was your idea."
"I know, I know... but God, I didn't know it would be this hard. I mean, look at him, Harold! That's our baby and look what we're doing to him."
"He's done this to himself, Deborah, and he would have done a hell of a lot more too, if we hadn't brought him home."
"You're right. But I don't know how much longer I can keep up this charade. Louise from next door knows something's not right..."
Their voices faded as they made their way downstairs. Scott involuntarily reached out, wanting them to stay. It's the closest he's been to them properly in what seems like forever, even if it is through a locked door. All of the contact he's had with them lately has been full of rage and pain, of him screaming and telling them how much he hates them for putting him through this.
He wants to change. He wants to be better, so that he can get out of this hellish room and show his parents that he's not a lost cause. He remembers seeing his mother's face through a filmy haze, when she first found him in that city squat, surrounded by paraphernalia and other users. If he'd been in a fit state of mind, he would have been filled with shame and self-loathing as he watched her heart break right in front of him. But all he'd cared about was the heroin, even as his parents bundled his half-functioning body into their car and drove him back to his childhood home in the suburbs.
The first day hadn't been too bad. Scott imagines that he was so full of drugs, they'd taken an inordinate amount of time to start wearing off. But Christ, when they did... It was like being an infant again, his parents coming in to clean up his filth, to dress him and treat his wounds. Wounds he inflicted on himself, trying to deflect the pain from inside. The second and third days had been an eternity, the fourth and fifth he'd slept until the sun went down and then spent all night howling in agony as the drugs seeped from his body and every muscle seemed to scream why?
For most of today, the sixth day, he'd slipped in and out of consciousness. He feels wide awake now, and as he wolfs down the food left for him, he wonders if he'll be able to sleep tonight. Not pass out, but really sleep. Every night that he's been home, his mother has left the landing light on, like she used to when he was six and still afraid of the dark. He knows what it means. It's there to scare the nighttime monsters away; not the ones that live in the wardrobe or under the bed, but the ones that have taken up house in his mind. It's there to let him know that his mother hasn't given up on him, and that she's still there, waiting, shining a light to guide him home.
Author's Note: Recently, I asked my mother what she would do if she ever discovered me using heroin. She said that she would move me back home, lock me in my old bedroom, and force me to go cold turkey. Her answer inspired this story...
