For Those Who Dream Monsters (9 page)

“Tell
me!” screamed Sylvia.

“Cut!”
whimpered the director. Sylvia cut.

Arthur raced through the darkening forest, ignoring the branches that scratched
him and the roots that tried to trip him as he ran. But it wasn’t a root that
caused him to fall flat on his face – it was something soft and wet, which gave
underfoot, but offered just enough resistance to send Arthur sprawling.

“Sonofabitch!”
Arthur cursed loudly, rubbing his swollen ankle and studying the dead rabbit
closely. The blood was only just congealing in its empty eye sockets and it
still retained a remnant of body heat. Arthur sighed and pulled himself to his
feet, surveying the surrounding woods. The creature couldn’t have got far. It
was old and almost blind, its muscles surely atrophied by years of confinement.
But despite its age and poor physical condition, the beast was still dangerous.

Just
then a twig snapped behind Arthur. Startled, the young man cocked his rifle and
pointed it in the direction of the sound. Silence. Then a scuffling noise off
to the left. Arthur panicked and shot into the bushes. A flurry of wings as a
startled bird took off into the sky. Arthur’s shoulders slumped with relief,
but he knew that the evening was far from over. He looked down at the mutilated
rabbit and spotted a broken branch nearby; this gave him the clue he needed to
ascertain the direction that the creature had taken.

Arthur had been five years old when he first became aware that something was
not right in his grandfather’s house. Sometimes there were noises at night. Low
shuffling sounds, moaning, wailing. Arthur’s grandfather had explained that
there was a monster in the cellar. Arthur burst into tears and his grandfather
comforted him and assured him that the monster could not harm him because it
was locked up securely. Arthur asked why grandfather didn’t kill it, and the
old man explained that it was wrong to kill and that the monster would
eventually die on its own. It was grandfather’s duty to guard the monster, and
one day it would be Arthur’s job.

“I
don’t want to guard the monster!” Arthur shook his head firmly. His grandfather
laughed and said not to worry – he would try to live a long time, to carry out
his duty as long as possible.

Arthur’s grandfather had kept his word. He was ninety-three now, and more
determined than ever to outlive the creature. But his grandfather was growing
progressively more frail, and it was up to Arthur now to feed the thing and see
to its basic needs while it still breathed.

Arthur
remembered the first time he had seen the beast. It was on his eighth birthday
that his grandfather had deemed him old enough to do so. Before unlocking the
cellar door, grandfather gave Arthur a long and boring history lesson about
World War II.

“It
was a terrible time,” he told the boy. “Terrible. Suffering and death
everywhere you looked… You never knew what was waiting for you around the
corner.” Noticing the blank expression in Arthur’s eyes, Grandfather decided to
get to the point. “Anyway … one day I’d just got back from the east field, and
I was going around the side of the barn, when what do you suppose I saw?” The
old man’s glance at his grandson was rewarded with a yawn, but he was
determined to finish his story. “Right there – right in front of me – was a vile
monster, a devil from hell itself.” Arthur perked up, his eyes widening. “I
caught it unawares – it hadn’t heard me coming. Well, I wasn’t about to wait
for it to kill me, so I grabbed the pitchfork that was leaning against the wall
and I ran it right through the fuc …” Arthur’s eyebrows arched in astonishment,
but Grandfather quickly checked himself and carried on, “… the devil. I
couldn’t kill it because that wouldn’t be Christian, but I ran it through right
good, then I dragged it here and locked it up, so it could do no more harm.”

The last of the light was slowly draining from the sky and Arthur was beginning
to feel scared. His swollen ankle was slowing him down, and soon it would be
hard to distinguish the trees from the other grey shapes in the forest.

Arthur
wondered what havoc the creature could wreak if it remained at large. It must
have moved pretty fast to kill the rabbit; Arthur still did not understand how
something that old could move so quickly. He wondered if bloodlust – and the
creature was not short of that – could have an animating effect. He still had
vivid memories of the speed with which the beast had thrown itself at the man
from the loan company who had come to take grandfather’s telly away. Arthur was
thirteen at the time.

“It’s
in the cellar,” Grandfather had told the man.

“Excuse
me?”

“The
television,” Grandfather peered at the man with his cold blue eyes. “It’s in
the cellar.” The man stared at Grandfather uncomprehendingly. “I figured you
might be coming for it, so I boxed it up and stored it for you in the cellar.”

“I
see,” the man sounded like he didn’t see at all.

“I’d
get it for you,” continued Grandfather, “but my arthritis has been playing up
terribly and my knees make it very hard for me to walk down the steps… I don’t
suppose you’d mind getting it yourself?” There was a long pause.

“Well
…” the man said finally. “Alright.”

The
man had gone down into the cellar and the creature, which had been dozing in a
corner, was upon him in an instant, snarling, biting and tearing. It had all
been over in seconds. The other men who came – men from the loan company,
developers who wanted to buy Grandfather’s farm, and even a police officer –
had all been dispatched the same way. Some took longer, some took less time,
but the creature got them all in the end, and Grandfather got to keep his farm
and his television set.

Yes, there was no telling how much damage the creature would do if Arthur did
not succeed in getting it back to the cellar … or killing it. He could always
tell his grandfather that there had been an accident.

Just
then, Arthur heard a low feral noise behind him – a kind of hungry growl, full
of anticipation and barely controlled rage. He spun round to see the creature
crouching by a nearby tree. Arthur’s blood froze. He had never seen the
creature clearly. It had always been in the half-light of the cellar, and even
now it was merging into the shadows of the forest.

Arthur was a little boy again, on his eighth birthday, shaking with fear as his
grandfather slowly unlocked the cellar door and let him peer into the darkness.

There
was a horrifying, gurgling growl coming from the corner of the cellar. Then
suddenly, a flurry of white, as a thing with a long grey beard and wisps of
greasy white hair threw itself towards the stairs on which Arthur and his
grandfather were standing. Arthur screamed and stumbled back, but his
grandfather reassured him.

“Don’t
worry,” he said. “It’s on a chain. It can’t get to us.”

As
Arthur watched, the creature reached the bottom of the stairs, yelped and fell,
the chain cutting cruelly into its bare ankle. The black tatters of a military
uniform hung loosely off its emaciated frame and the silver lightning-like SS
signs on the shoulders of the creature’s jacket sparkled in the meagre light
from the weak light bulb overhead.

Arthur stood in horrified awe – now, as he had then. The creature growled again
and started to circle Arthur in the gloom, its milky eyes used to the darkness.
Arthur raised his rifle and aimed, but it was too late. The small, rank,
drooling creature was upon him, the remains of its rotting teeth already
sinking into the soft part of his throat, just under his chin.

Ralph baked bread. It was a strange feeling – using those massive, clumsy
knuckles to knead the soft dough rather than to rain down the wrath of God on
the head of anyone who gave him a funny look. A strange feeling to have people
smile at him trustingly and talk to him about the weather while they waited for
him to wrap the warm scented bread, rather than cross the road when they saw
him coming. Yes, it was a piece of good fortune that Ralph had picked up a
little of the trade from his mother before his father had battered her to
death. And lucky too that Ralph had chanced upon the village just at the time
when their baker had gone for a walk and been found beaten to a pulp by the
side of the road. Not that Ralph claimed to know anything about that.

Ralph’s
customers were very fond of his braided loaves and animal shapes, but Ralph’s
real speciality – and his own particular favourite – were the little
heart-shaped buns. Ralph’s heart-shaped buns were the talk of the village, and
people came from miles around to buy them for their sweethearts, their spouses
or their children.

Ralph
didn’t have any children, a sweetheart or a spouse, nor did he feel any need
for them. As far as he could tell, children were always wailing or causing
mischief, and women were always nagging or demanding money from their
long-suffering husbands. No, what Ralph really wanted was an apprentice –
someone who would help out around the bakery; someone to whom Ralph could
impart his knowledge, whom he could nurture, and kick the shit out of now and
again when he got annoyed and needed to let off a little steam. That was what
Ralph wanted. It would be kind of like playing God.

Then one day Ralph’s prayers were answered. It was hard to tell the boy’s age;
he was slight and pale, with a mop of unruly dark hair. He could have been
twenty or he could have been twelve; there was no way to find out as the boy
never spoke a word. He turned up one evening, just as it was getting dark, with
a sign around his neck that read, ‘I will work for food and lodgings.’ Not only
was the boy mute, but Ralph’s attempts to communicate with him by way of a
quill and some parchment led the baker to believe that he couldn’t read or
write either. Luckily for Ralph, the boy didn’t appear to be deaf, and responded
to his invitation to sit down and eat by doing just that.

There
was a hint of desperation in the speed with which the boy wolfed down his food,
and something pitiful in the way he threw Ralph an occasional sideways glance,
as if worried that the man would take the food away before he had devoured it
all. Ralph felt a confusing mixture of pity and annoyance – a feeling that
would grow over the coming weeks – and barely resisted the urge to tear the
bowl away from the boy before he had finished eating.

After
supper, Ralph took the boy to the small barn that used to house his horse –
before he’d flogged it to death – and told the boy that he could sleep there
and start work the following morning. The boy looked at Ralph and nodded. And
so it was that Ralph got himself an apprentice.

That night Ralph had trouble falling asleep and, when he finally did, he dreamt
that he was on a scaffold, about to be executed. He was protesting his
innocence, but nobody seemed to care; they just shoved a gag in his mouth and hanged
him anyway. When he woke up the next morning, Ralph had a stiff neck and a
splitting headache. He could still remember that terrible burning sensation of
the rope biting into his neck, and he was in a foul mood. Then he remembered
the boy. He strode to the barn and saw him fast asleep in the hay.

“Get
up, you lazy shit!” Ralph kicked the bale of hay that the boy was lying on. The
boy fell off, eyes wide with surprise, then got up and walked out of the barn,
towards Ralph’s house, which doubled up as the village bakery. Something about
the calmness in the boy’s stride annoyed the hell out of Ralph.

“Watch
and learn,” Ralph hissed, proceeding to mix and knead the dough for the day’s
bread before shaping it and placing it carefully in the large oven. When he was
done with the morning’s baking, he ordered the boy to clean up the bakery
before the first customers arrived.

“Who’s this?” Ralph’s customers gazed curiously at the shy young man cowering
in the corner.

“That’s
my new apprentice.” Ralph beamed.

“Where’d
he come from?”

“Oh…
He’s my cousin’s boy.”

“Never
knew you had a cousin, Ralph.”

“Aye,
I do… She asked me to train him to be a baker.”

“I
see… He doesn’t say much, does he?”

“No,
he doesn’t at that.” And that’s when Ralph realised the beauty of his
situation. The boy would never talk back, never contradict him, never complain.

After the last of the customers had left, Ralph closed up for the day and put
out two plates of food. The boy approached the table cautiously. Ralph let him
sit down and reach a hand out towards the plate. “No!” he shouted, and pulled
the plate away roughly. “You clean up and then you eat!”

Ralph
watched the boy wipe down the work surfaces and sweep up the spilt flour. The
boy was so pale and skinny. There was something unsavoury about him – unhealthy
– rather like a mangy dog. When the boy got close to baker while sweeping, his
back to the man, Ralph surprised both of them by kicking him. The boy sprawled
on the floor, then picked himself up silently and continued sweeping. Ralph
laughed. “You can eat now,” he told the boy, and left the room.

The next day Ralph got up earlier than usual and was on his way to kick the boy
awake, but found him already waiting on the doorstep.

“Oh,
you’re up.” Ralph let the boy in. “In that case, you can show me what you
learned yesterday about making bread.” Ralph watched as the boy mixed the flour
and water, and kneaded the dough carefully.

“Not
like that, you have to do it harder.” Ralph put his large hand over the boy’s
wrist, intending to help him knead the dough, but somehow the feel of that
thin, cold small hand brought about the irresistible urge to crush, pulverise,
destroy. He suddenly needed to hear bones crack and feel the little digits turn
to jelly in his grasp. The boy winced in pain, but didn’t cry out. Ralph
stopped abruptly and let go of the boy’s hand, wondering just how much damage
he’d done, afraid that the boy might not be able to work. The boy held his limp
hand, but soon moved his fingers a little, assuring Ralph that he’d stopped in
time and there was no real injury.

“That’s
enough now. Go and sweep the floor.” The boy did as he was told, largely using
his other hand to hold the broom.

Ralph couldn’t really complain about the boy’s work. He kept the bakery clean,
he did a good enough job with the dough and the animal shapes and even the
hearts, but there was something in his manner that Ralph found irritating.
Maybe it was the lack of enthusiasm. There was something amazing about making
bread to feed people, but from the absence of emotion in the boy’s face, Ralph
was sure that he didn’t feel that wonder at all. Somewhere at the back of
Ralph’s mind floated the notion that perhaps he could beat the wonder into the
boy.

As
the days passed, Ralph’s customers noticed that his new apprentice seemed to
have a knack for acquiring black eyes and fresh bruises on a regular basis.

“He’s
very clumsy,” Ralph explained. “If there’s a door, you can guarantee he’ll walk
right into it. If there’s something lying on the ground, you can rest assured
he’ll trip over it and fall flat on his face.” Ralph’s customers sympathised
with the baker – it must be hard for the man having such a clumsy apprentice,
and it wasn’t as if he could sack him, the boy being his cousin’s child and
all.

After three weeks of beatings, the boy’s face remained emotionless. He took
punishment with the same apparent stoicism as he took the extremely rare praise
bestowed on him by the baker. Occasionally the boy would look at Ralph with a
dispassion that drove the man to increasing acts of violence.

One
evening when the boy was waiting for the bread stove to cool down so that he
could clean it, Ralph grabbed him and shoved his head in the oven. The heat was
insufficient to do any serious harm, but it must have hurt. The boy resisted
only for the briefest moment – an instinctive reaction born of surprise, but
then went totally limp in the baker’s powerful arms, and Ralph was able to push
him headfirst into the hot dark space.

“Scream,
you fuck, scream!” shouted Ralph. But the boy didn’t scream and didn’t
struggle. When Ralph finally pulled him out again, the boy’s face was bright
red, and sweat and tears were streaming down his face. The boy swooned a
little, but remained standing, gazing at Ralph with what at first glance
appeared to be the same blank expression he normally wore. Then for a moment,
in the flicker of the candlelight, Ralph thought that the corners of the boy’s
mouth had turned up just a little, but no – surely it was just a trick of the
light and shadows playing around the room.

“You
want to act like a dumb animal, you’ll be treated like a dumb animal.” Ralph
marched the boy to the barn and fetched an old dog chain lying in the corner.
He brandished it at the boy, but the boy didn’t flinch. Unnerved, Ralph chained
the boy and tethered him in the barn. You never knew what was going on in that
scrawny head of his. Perhaps behind that stoic facade he was hatching some
elaborate escape plan. It was best to err on the side of prudence.

From
that time on, Ralph chained the boy up at night, releasing him to carry out his
chores during the day. He cut down on his meals too, as depriving him of food
seemed to be the only thing that elicited any reaction from the boy, in the
form of the slightest hint of a frown.

One day Ralph entered the barn and noticed a fetid smell, as if a rodent had
died somewhere in the hay and was starting to rot. He looked around, and
finally realised that the putrid stench was emanating from the boy. The metal
chain had been cutting into the boy’s ankle and the flesh had started to
fester. Ralph understood the danger of infection, and took the boy into the
house, to disinfect the wound.

As
the baker swabbed the wound with alcohol, he looked at the boy’s emaciated
body, the bruises all over his arms and legs, and felt an unfamiliar twang of
guilt. He looked up from the boy’s infected ankle and saw the boy gazing at him
with those dispassionate brown eyes. As had happened so many times before, rage
at the boy’s passivity and acceptance of his situation quickly replaced any
pity the baker might have felt.

“What
are you staring at?” The boy lowered his gaze, but it was too late; Ralph could
feel the unstoppable fury growing inside him and he grabbed his horsewhip. By
the time the red mist had cleared, Ralph realised he was still seeing red, as
the boy was lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood.

“Oh
my God!” For the first time since he was twelve – and had broken his father’s
favourite pipe – Ralph started to panic. He remembered his dream and the
stinging feeling of the noose around his neck. He threw the whip into a corner
and knelt beside the unconscious boy. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! Oh, please God
don’t let him be dead. Oh, please don’t be dead. I’ll never lay a finger on you
again, I swear!” Ralph knelt beside the boy and wept.

After
what seemed like a very long time, the boy coughed, fresh blood spattering from
his mouth and merging with the pool on the floor.

“Thank
God, thank God.” Ralph wanted to carry the boy to his bed, and reached out to
touch him, but thought better of it. “Stay here. Don’t move. I’m going to fetch
the doctor.”

When Ralph got back with the doctor, the boy was quite still once more.

“Good
God!” The doctor hurried over to the boy. “What happened?”

“I
don’t know.” Ralph squirmed as the doctor eyed him suspiciously. “He’s free to
do what he wants on Sunday. He went off to the neighbouring village, I think,
and next thing I know he staggers in and collapses. I think he was attacked.”
The doctor gazed at Ralph for a moment longer, then turned back to the boy,
carefully examining his head, back and chest.

“He’s
taken a severe beating. He has broken ribs and a broken arm. If his wounds get
infected, he will die.” The devastated expression on Ralph’s face dispelled any
suspicions the doctor might have had about the baker’s guilt in the boy’s
predicament. “He can’t be transported anywhere. I’ll try to make him as
comfortable as I can here, and you send for his mother.”

“I’ll
take care of him.” The doctor looked at Ralph in surprise. “I mean, his little
brother and sister are very sick. My cousin can’t leave them. Look, just tell
me what to do and I’ll look after him.”

Ralph nursed the boy for many weeks. He cut down his opening hours and reduced
the number of orders he took in. He would get through the baking and the
selling as fast as he could, then spend the rest of the day and much of the
night sitting by the boy, listening to his laboured breathing and hoping that
his heart wouldn’t stop. But it wasn’t just fear of death – should he be found
guilty of the boy’s murder – that so unsettled Ralph. He had taken life before,
but now for the first time he felt remorse.

The
boy drifted in and out of consciousness. The doctor came by regularly to check
on him and bring more medicine. Customers were complaining that Ralph’s little
heart-shaped buns didn’t taste as good as they used to – it was as if the heart
had gone out of them.