that, for a few seconds of eternal duration, she had been unable to
draw into her lungs. The thing in the darkness had only been Joey. He
was wearing a Halloween mask that had been shaded with phosphorescent
paint.
“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded, pushing away from the
dresser, moving toward the bed.
He quickly pulled off the mask. His eyes were wide. “Mama, I thought
you were Amy.”
“Give me that,” she said, snatching the mask out of his hands.
“I put a rubber worm in Amy’s cold cream, and I thought it was her
coming to get even with me,” Joey said, urgently explaining himself.
“When are you going to outgrow this kind of stupid thing?” Ellen
demanded, her heart still beating rapidly.
“I didn’t know it was you! I didn’t know!”
“This kind of prank is sick,” she said angrily. Her pleasant vodka
haze had evaporated. Her dreamy laziness was gone, replaced by
nightmare tension. She was still drunk, but the quality of her high
had changed from bright to somber, from happy to grim. “Sick,” she
said again, looking at the Halloween mask in her hand. “Sick and
twisted.”
Joey cowered back against the headboard, gripping the covers with both
hands, as if he might throw them aside and leap out of bed and run for
all he was worth.
Still quivering from the shock of seeing that grinning, fanged,
luminous face leap out of the darkness, Ellen looked around at the
other weird items in the boy’s room. Spooky posters hung on the walls:
Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster, Bela Lugosi as Dracula, and
another horror-movie creature that she couldn’t identify. On the
dresser, the desk, and the bookshelves there were monster
models–three-dimensional plastic figures that Joey had glued together
from kits.
Paul permitted the boy to pursue this macabre hobby, and he insisted it
was a common interest among kids Joey’s age. Ellen had never
strenuously objected.
Although the boy’s fascination with horror and blood worried her, it
had seemed like a relatively minor matter, the sort of thing she always
conceded to Paul, so that he would feel comfortable about conceding the
larger and far more important issues to her.
Now, infuriated by the scare that Joey had given her, upset by the
unwanted memories that the prank had resurrected for her, her judgment
still distorted by vodka, Ellen threw the mask into the wastebasket.
“It’s time I put an end to this nonsense. It’s time you stopped
playing around with this creepy junk and started behaving like a
normal, healthy boy.” She plucked a couple of monster models from the
dresser and dropped them into the wastebasket. She swept up the
miniature ghouls and goblins from his desk and put them with the rest
of the trash. “In the morning, before you go to school, take down
those awful posters and get rid of them. Be careful not to chip the
plaster when you pull the staples out of the wall. I’ll get some good,
no-nonsense prints to hang in here. You understand?”
He nodded. Fat tears rolled down his cheeks, but he didn’t make a
sound.
“And no more of these practical jokes of yours,” Ellen said harshly.
“No more rubber spiders. No more phony snakes. No more rubber worms
in cold cream jars.
Do you hear me?”
He nodded again. He was rigid, sickly white. He appeared to be
overreacting to her admonitions. He didn’t look like a boy who was
facing his stern mother, he looked more like a boy facing certain
death. He looked as if he were convinced that she was going to take
him by the throat and kill him.
The terror in Joey’s face jolted Ellen.
I’m just like Gina.
No! That was unfair.
She was only doing what must be done. The child needed to be
disciplined and given guidance. She was merely fulfilling her duty as
a parent.
Just like Gina.
She pushed that thought aside.
“Lie down,” she said.
Joey obediently slid under the covers once more.
She went to the nightstand and put her hand on the lamp switch.
“Did you say your prayers?” “Yeah,” he said weakly.