Sam shook his head.
Dave looked at Naomi and said, ‘Do you understand now why I was never able to tell this story? Why I put it in that room?’
‘Yes,’ she said in a trembling, sighing voice that was not much more than a whisper. ‘And I think I understand why the kids never told, either. Some things are just too … too monstrous.’
‘For us, maybe,’ Dave said. ‘For kids? I don’t know, Sarah. I don’t think kids know monsters so well at first glance. It’s their folks that tell em how to recognize the monsters. And she had somethin else goin for her.
You remember me tellin you about how, when she told the kids a parent was comin, they looked like they were wakin up from a deep sleep? They were sleepin, in some funny way. It wasn’t hypnosis – at least, I don’t think it was – but it was like hypnosis. And when they went home, they didn’t remember, in the top part of their minds, anyway, about the stories or the posters. Down underneath, I think they remembered plenty … just like down underneath Sam knows who his Library Policeman is. I think they still remember today – the bankers and lawyers and big-time farmers who were once Ardelia’s Good Babies. I can. still see em, wearin pinafores and short pants, sittin in those little chairs, lookin at Ardelia in the middle of the circle, their eyes so big and round they looked like pie-plates. And I think that when it gets dark and the storms come, or when they are sleepin and the nightmares come, they go back to bein kids. I think the doors open and they see the Three Bears – Ardelia’s Three Bears – eatin the brains out of Goldilocks’ head with their wooden porridge-spoons, and Baby Bear wearin Goldilocks’ scalp on his head like a long golden wig. I think they wake up sweaty, feelin sick and afraid. I think that’s what she left this town. I think she left a legacy of secret nightmares.
‘But I still haven’t got to the worst thing. Those stories, you see – well, sometimes it was the posters, but mostly it was the stories – would scare one of them into a crying fit, or they’d start to faint or pass out or whatever. And when that happened, she’d tell the others, “Put your heads down and rest while I take Billy
… or Sandra … or Tommy … to the bathroom and make him feel better.”
‘They’d all drop their heads at the same instant. It was like they were dead. The first time I seen it happen, I waited about two minutes after she took some little girl out of the room, and then I got up and went over to the circle. I went to Willy Klemmart first.
‘ “Willy!” I whispered, and poked him in the shoulder. “You okay, Will?”
‘He never moved, so I poked him harder and said his name again. He still didn’t move. I could hear him breathin – kinda snotty and snory, the way kids are so much of the time, always runnin around with colds like they do – but it was still like he was dead. His eyelids were partway open, but I could only see the whites, and this long thread of spit was hangin off his lower lip. I got scared and went to three or four of the others, but wouldn’t none of them look up at me or make a sound.’
‘You’re saying she enchanted them, aren’t you?’ Sam asked. ‘That they were like Snow White after she ate the poisoned apple.’
‘Yes,’ Dave agreed. ‘That’s what they were like. In a different kind of way, that’s what I was like, too. Then, just as I was gettin ready to take hold of Willy Klemmart and shake the shit out of him, I heard her comin back from the bathroom. I ran to my seat so she wouldn’t catch me. Because I was more scared of what she might do to me than anything she might have done to them.
‘She came in, and that little girl, who’d been as gray as a dirty sheet and half unconscious when Ardelia took her out, looked like somebody had just filled her up with the finest nerve-tonic in the world. She was wide awake, with roses in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eye. Ardelia patted her on the bottom and she ran for her seat. Then Ardelia clapped her hands together and said, “All Good Babies lift your heads up! Sonja feels much better, and she wants us to finish the story, don’t you, Sonja?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sonja pipes up, just as pert as a robin in a birdbath. And their heads all came up. You never would have known that two seconds before that room looked like it was full of dead kids.
‘The third or fourth time this happened, I let her get out of the room and then I followed her. I knew she was scarin them on purpose, you see, and I had an idea there was a reason for it. I was scared almost to death myself, but I wanted to see what it was.
‘That time it was Willy Klemmart she’d taken down to the bathroom. He’d started havin hysterics during Ardelia’s version of “Hansel and Gretel.” I opened the door real easy and quiet, and I seen Ardelia kneelin in front of Willy down by where the washbasin was. He had stopped cryin, but beyond that I couldn’t tell anything. Her back was to me, you see, and Willy was so short she blocked him right out of my view, even on her knees. I could see his hands were on the shoulders of the jumper she was wearin, and I could see one sleeve of his red sweater, but that was all. Then I heard somethin – a thick suckin sound, like a straw makes when you’ve gotten just about all of your milkshake out of the glass. I had an idea then she was … you know, molestin him, and she was, but not the way I thought.
‘I walked in a little further, and slipped over to the right, walkin high up on the toes of my shoes so the heels wouldn’t clack. I expected her to hear me just the same, though – she had ears like goddam radar dishes, and I kept waitin for her to turn around and pin me with those red eyes of hers. But I couldn’t stop. I had to see. And little by little, as I angled over to the right, I began to.
‘Willy’s face came into my sight over her shoulder, a little piece at a time, like a moon coming out of a
‘clipse. At first all I could see of her was her blonde hair -there was masses of it, all in curls and ringlets –
but then I began to see her face, as well. And I seen what she was doin. All the strength ran out of my legs just like water down a pipe. There was no way they were goin to see me, not unless I reached up and started hammerin on one of the overhead pipes. Their eyes were closed, but that wasn’t the reason. They were lost in what they were doin, you see, and they were both lost in the same place, because they were hooked together.
‘Ardelia’s face wasn’t human anymore. It had run like warm taffy and made itself into this funnel shape that flattened her nose and pulled her eyesockets all long and Chinese to the sides and made her look like some kind of insect … a fly, maybe, or a bee. Her mouth was gone again. It had turned into that thing I started to see just after she killed Mr Lavin, the night we were layin in the hammock. It had turned into the narrow part of the funnel. I could see these funny red streaks on it, and at first I thought it was blood, or maybe veins under her skin, and then I realized it was lipstick. She didn’t have lips anymore, but that red paint marked where her lips had been.
‘She was usin that sucker thing to drink from Willy’s eyes.’
Sam looked at Dave, thunderstuck. He wondered for a moment if the man had lost his mind. Ghosts were one thing; this was something else. He didn’t have the slightest idea what this was. And yet sincerity and honesty shone on Dave’s face like a lamp, and Sam thought: If he’s lying, he doesn’t know it.
‘Dave, are you saying Ardelia Lortz was drinking his tears?’ Naomi asked hesitantly.
‘Yes … and no. It was his special tears she was drinkin. Her face was all stretched out to him, it was beatin like a heart, and her features were drawn out flat. She looked like a face you might draw on a shopping bag to make a Halloween mask.