Little Doors (5 page)

All the doctors fell silent. Finally, Billy’s Doctor spoke.

“Well, you see, it hasn’t happened yet.”

Billy’s father’s brain hurt. Once more he was forced to say, “I don’t understand …”

“It’s your son. He hasn’t died. He’s breathing normally. His EKG is fine. No brain activity, of course. Not surprising, since he hasn’t got one. Doesn’t respond to visual stimuli either. But he’s alive. And he gives every indication of continuing to live for an indefinite period.”

Billy’s father considered long and hard. “This is good news, then. I guess.”

“I suppose so,” the Doctor agreed.

“I’ll go tell my wife.”

Billy’s father returned to his wife’s bedside. He told her the news.

Billy’s mother seemed to take the new development in stride.

“We’ll call him Billy,” she said when they had finished discussing what this meant for their lives.

“Of course,” said Billy’s father. “It’s what we planned all along.”

* * *

Billy came home from the hospital a week later.

It had turned out that he did not need any special equipment to survive. As the doctors had finally concluded, he possessed just enough gray matter to insure the continuation of his vital functions.

Billy’s mother was thus able to carry home her child, who was wrapped in a gay blue blanket, on her lap in the car, while her husband drove.

Once home, Billy was installed in the nursery his parents had prepared before his birth. It was a very nice and pleasant sunny room, with popular cartoon pictures on the wall.

Unfortunately, Billy could not appreciate these decorative touches. When he wasn’t sleeping he lay motionless on his back, his dumb, passive, blank eyes—which, however, were a beautiful, startling green—fixed implacably on an unvarying point on the ceiling.

He stared at the point so long and hard that Billy’s father began to imagine he could see the paint starting to blister and peel under his son’s unfathomable eyes, slick and depthless as polished jade.

In addition to this fixity of vision and lack of interest in his surroundings, young Billy exhibited few of the gestures or reactions of a normal baby. He seldom moved his limbs, and had to be rotated manually to avoid bedsores. This chore his parents performed conscientiously and tenderly, on a regular schedule.

Also, Billy made no noises of any sort. He was utterly silent. No gurgles or whimpers, cries or primitive syllables, ever issued from his lips. Billy’s parents knew he possessed a complete vocal apparatus, but assumed correctly that the neural controls need to operate it were missing.

They had been ready to put up with sleepless nights due to their baby’s wailing. Instead, their house seemed somehow quieter than it had before Billy’s birth.

Sometimes at night Billy’s mother and father lay in bed, awake, tensed for a cry that never came.

Since it never came, after a while they stopped listening.

One instinct that Billy possessed to a sufficient degree was that of suckling.

Billy’s mother had decided while still pregnant with Billy that she would breast-feed her infant. When she came home with Billy, she remained determined to follow this course. Several times a day, then, Billy’s mother would hold him to her tit and Billy would take her sweet milk eagerly, his tiny lips and throat working silently. After feeding, he never even burped. Neither did he exhibit colic.

Thus was Billy able to take the nourishment necessary for his survival and, indeed, his growth.

While nursing Billy, his mother would gaze down at her child with a complex mixture of emotions. She would note how the bony pink ridge of his cranial crater—below which grew a smattering of fine hair like a monk’s tonsure—was hardening and changing color, from roseate to peachy. She refrained from looking inside.

The doctors had decided that no cosmetic repairs were possible for Billy’s tragically grave prenatal malformation. They admonished his parents to keep the interior of Billy’s partial skull free of foreign objects (the exposed backs of the eyes were particularly sensitive), and to wash the rim daily with a mild solution of hydrogen peroxide and water, being most careful not to allow any of the solution to come in contact with Billy’s tiny, yet hard-working brain fragment. (Truth to tell, the doctors felt that Billy would not survive for long, so they were reluctant to expend much time and energy on him, when there were so many other more curable patients demanding their skill and attention.)

Billy was supposed to wear a protective surgical cap, but his mother felt that it would do Billy’s skull good to receive fresh air, and so she soon abandoned this practice.

Indeed, Billy’s appearance quickly came to seem so natural to his parents that they almost forgot his unique condition. After supper each night they would stand by Billy’s crib, holding hands and gazing down on their silent, motionless son, speculating wordlessly about his future.

One night Billy’s father said, “I imagine that we’ll always have to care for Billy. He won’t ever be normal, will he?”

“No,” admitted Billy’s mother, “he won’t ever be special, as we had hoped. But I don’t mind. Do you?”

“No. But we must never try to have another child.”

“I agree.”

* * *

When Billy was sixteen years old, his life changed forever.

Billy had attained the normal stature of an average sixteen-year-old. His unlined, emotionless face was attractive in the manner of a well-designed mannequin. His narrow crescent of hair, kept neatly trimmed by his mother, was a common brown. His eyes remained the same empty mint-green pools.

Each morning Billy’s mother removed him from bed. She took off his pajamas, bathed him, dressed him in pants and shirt, socks but no shoes, and fed him. (Billy had progressed to solid food at the appropriate stage in his development, mastication apparently being as instinctive as suckling, and within his limited capabilities.) Then she sat him down in a comfortably padded chair and left for work. Billy’s muscles were kept well-toned by a series of exercises which his father put him through each night, and he would maintain whatever pose he was arranged in.

Billy’s mother knew she could leave her son safely alone while she worked, for he would make no movement of consequence to endanger himself. The only thing she worried about was a spontaneous fire of some sort, in which case Billy would continue to sit until consumed. (Billy’s reaction to even a pinprick was nil.) But after installation of an elaborate fire alarm system and a machine that would automatically dial 911, she managed to rest easy.

Occasionally Billy’s mother would leave the TV on for him, knowing full well that it made no difference, but somehow feeling better for doing it.

On this fateful day, the television was not on. Therefore Billy sat in complete silence. Time passed. Morning shadows lengthened into those of the early afternoon. Billy sat as his mother had left him. He did not stir, save to blink now and then. His heart beat. His lungs worked. The few neurons he owned discharged in their efficient, albeit limited fashion.

Directly above Billy’s head, a spider was attached to the ceiling by her thread. She was a rather large black spider, of a mundane household species, but about the size of a ping-pong ball. Although Billy’s mother was a good housekeeper, she had somehow missed this spider in her weekly cleaning.

The spider was very intelligent, as were most members of her species. Contemplating Billy’s gaping skull below her, the spider reached the conscious decision that the inside of Billy’s head represented a safe and attractive place to build a web.

The spider began to descend, letting out silk in her judicious way.

She paused a few inches above Billy’s open pate. From this vantage, the place still held its appeal.

The spider entered Billy’s skull.

When her legs touched Billy’s bare brain, Billy’s limbs twitched.

The spider cut her silk. She looked around. The place was pleasantly confined, yet open to passing insects.

“This is a good place to build a web,” she said aloud, to herself.

Then she began to spin a web, parallel to the base of Billy’s brain, and anchored to the sides of his skull.

Since the spider did not again touch Billy’s brain, he did not move.

When Billy’s mother returned that night, the spider’s web was complete.

Billy’s mother did not notice, since she had long ago ceased to look inside Billy’s head.

When supper was ready, Billy’s mother brought him to the table.

The spider was initially somewhat alarmed when her new home began to move. But since the movements were gentle, and her web was not threatened, she eventually accommodated herself to the notion that her web was now mobile. It seemed an advantage, in that more territory would be open to her predations.

Billy’s father, massaging and exercising his son’s limbs later that night, also failed to perceive the new occupant of his son’s skull.

Thus a new symbiosis was achieved with little difficulty.

For the next few weeks, the spider lived a pleasant life, alone in Billy’s skull. She caught bugs. She ate them. She slept.

Billy’s exterior life did not change.

One day the spider heard an unusual noise outside her home. It resembled the sound of claws digging into the fabric of Billy’s chair. The spider looked nervously up at the rim of Billy’s skull.

The next instant two pink paws appeared, followed by a whiskered snout.

A moderate-sized rat, his hind legs on Billy’s shoulders, now peered into the spider’s home. His black eyes were like twin chips of marble.

“What’re you doing in there?” asked the rat.

“This is my home,” answered the spider.

“This is a human. A strange human, for it doesn’t notice us. But it’s still a human. You can’t live inside a human.”

“But I do.”

The rat considered this reply. “No one bothers you?”

“No.”

“Is it dry in there?”

“Reasonably so.”

“Then I’m coming in to live too.”

“You’ll break my web.”

“I don’t care.”

The spider in turn considered this assertion. She doubted she could dissuade the rat. And not being poisonous, she had no defense. So she resolved to give in.

“Just let me rework my web. I’ll have the rear, and you can have the front.”

“Good enough. Hurry up though, before someone comes.”

The spider ate her web and restrung it smaller. Then the rat clambered in.

“Don’t step on that lump down there,” warned the spider. “It makes the house jump.”

“Oh, really?” said the rat. He probed Billy’s miniscule brain with a claw.

Billy stood up. The rat, growing nervous despite his bravado, retracted his claw. Billy remained standing. The rat lay down with his soft furry stomach across Billy’s brain. This caused no further response on Billy’s part.

That evening Billy’s mother returned to find her son still standing. Although puzzled, she was not overalarmed, but rather proud, as if a new milestone had been reached.

Billy’s father did not know what to make of the event either, when told. His reactions were rather similar to his wife’s.

“Perhaps Billy is changing.”

“Maybe so,” said his wife.

Neither thought to check the inside of Billy’s head, having been conditioned by years of inactivity to expect no development there.

Another week passed. The rat left on nocturnal forays, but always returned during the day. It was good that he was absent at night, for, with Billy supine, he would have rolled to the back of the skull and crushed the spider’s web.

It was a warm summer’s day. Billy’s mother had left a screenless window open. The rat and the spider were sleeping inside Billy’s skull when they were awakened by a raucous voice.

“Hello, folks! What’s up?”

Perched on the rim of Billy’s skull was a smallish parrot. This parrot had escaped from a neighbors house, and had been flying rather aimlessly, yet happily about since.

“What do you want?” the rat asked.

“You look so comfy, I was wondering if I could join you,” replied the bird.

“No,” said the rat. “Go away.”

“Come now,” said the spider. “You’re not the original owner, you know. Why can’t the parrot join us?”

“Birds are messy. He’ll leave droppings in here.”

“I would not,” the parrot proudly said. “No more than you would.”

“What can you offer us?” continued the rat.

The parrot thought a moment. “I can speak human.”

This seemed to intrigue the rat. “Say, that is a handy talent. Okay, you can move in.”

“Great!” said the parrot.

And so he did.

* * *

One morning Billy spoke.

His mother was lifting a spoon of cereal to his lips when Billy said, “I can do that myself, thank you.”