with that “I” sound. Rita ran upstairs and asked what the matter was. I said she got scared by the
shadows of the branches moving on the ceiling.’
‘Crawset?’ Harper said.
‘Huh?’
‘Crawset . . . closet. Maybe she was trying to say “closet”.’
‘Maybe,’ Billings said. ‘Maybe that was it. But I don’t think so.I think it was “claws”.’ His eyes began
seeking the closet door again. ‘Claws, long claws.’ His voice had sunk to a whisper.
‘Did you look in the closet?’
‘Y-yes.’ Billings’s hands were laced tightly across his chest, laced tightly enough to show a white moon
at each knuckle.
‘Was there anything in there? Did you see the -‘
‘I didn’t see anything!’ Billings screamed suddenly. And the words poured out, as if a black cork had
been pulled from the bottom of his soul: ‘When she died I found her, see. And she was black. All black.
She swallowed her own tongue and she was just as black as a nigger in a minstrel show and she was
staring at me. Her eyes, they looked like those eyes you see on stuffed animals, all shiny and awful,
like live marbles, and they were saying it got me, Daddy, you let it get me, you killed me, you helped it
kill me . .
His words trailed off. One single tear very large and silent, ran down the side of his cheek.
‘It was a brain convulsion, see? Kids get those sometimes. A bad signal from the brain. They had an
autopsy at Hartford Receiving and they told us she choked on her tongue from the convulsion. And I
had to go home alone because they kept Rita under sedation. She was out of her mind. I had to go back
to that house all alone, and I know a kid don’t just get convulsions because their brain frigged up. You
can scare a kid into convulsions. And I had to go back to the house where it was.’
He whispered, ‘I slept on the couch. With the light on.,
‘Did anything happen?’
‘I had a dream,’ Billings said. ‘I was in a dark room and there was something I couldn’t . . . couldn’t
quite see, in the closet. It made a noise. . . a squishy noise. It reminded me of a comic book I read when
I was a kid. Tales from the Crypt, you remember that? Christ! They had a guy named Graham Ingles;
he could draw every god-awful thing in the world – and some out of it. Anyway, in this story this
woman drowned her husband, see? Put cement blocks on his feet and dropped him into a quarry. Only
he came back. ‘He was all rotted and black-green and the fish had eaten away one of his eyes and there
was seaweed in his hair. He came back and killed her. And when I woke up in the middle of the night, I
thought that would be leaning over me. With claws. . . long claws .
Dr Harper looked at the digital clock inset into his desk. Lester Billings had been speaking for nearly
half an hour. He said, ‘When your wife came back home, what was her attitude towards you?’
‘She still loved me,’ Billings said with pride. ‘She still wanted to do what I told her. That’s the wife’s
place, right? This women’s lib only makes sick people. The most important thing in life is for a person
to know his place. His. his.. .uh.
‘Station in life?’
‘That’s it!’ Billings snapped his fingers. ‘That’s it exactly. And a wife should follow her husband. Oh,
she was sort of colourless the first four or five months after – dragged around the house, didn’t sing,
didn’t watch the TV, didn’t laugh. I knew she’d get over it. When they’re that little, you don’t get so
attached to them. After a while you have to go to the bureau drawer and look at a picture to even
remember exactly what they looked like.
‘She wanted another baby,’ he added darkly. ‘I told her it was a bad idea. Oh, not for ever, but for a
while. I told her it was a time for us to get over things and begin to enjoy each other. We never had a