JAMIE’S GRAVE

Lisa Tuttle

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Lisa Tuttle does not restrict herself to Dark Fantasy. As a writer (as opposed to an author), she prefers to stretch her considerable talents in as many directions as she can, not always succeeding, but, more importantly, always learning. When she does write fantasy, however, she brings a voice to the field that borrows from no other. “Jamie’s Grave,” I have said before, is the perfect Shadows story. Don’t ask me why. I just know it, as I did the first time I read it and thanked all my lucky stars that the piece came here first. I didn’t dither over this one. I’ve learned my lesson.

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MARY SAT AT the kitchen table, a cup of tea gone cold by her left hand, and listened to the purring of the electric clock on the wall.

The house was clean and the larder well stocked. She had done the laundry and read her library books and it was too wet for gardening. She had baked a cake yesterday and this wasn’t her day for making bread. She had already phoned Clive twice this week and could think of no excuse to phone again. Once she might have popped across the road to visit Jen, but she had been getting the feeling that her visits were no longer so welcome. There had been a time when Jen was grateful for Mary’s company, a time when she had been lonely, too, but now Jen had her own baby to care for, and whenever Mary went over there—no matter what Jen said—Mary couldn’t help feeling that she was intruding.

She looked at the clock again. In twenty minutes she could start her walk to the school.

Clive said she should get a job. He was right, and not just for the money. Mary knew she would be happier doing something useful. But what sort of job could she get? She had no experience, and in this Wiltshire village there was not much scope for employment. Other mothers already held the school jobs of crossing-guard and dinner-lady, and what other employer would allow her to fit her working hours to those when Jamie was in school? She wouldn’t let someone else look after Jamie—no job was worth that. Her son was all she had in the world, all she cared about. If she could have kept him home with her and taught him herself, instead of having to send him to school, Mary knew she would have been perfectly content. She had been so happy when she had her baby, she hadn’t even minded losing Clive. But babies grew up, and grew away. Jen was going to find that out in a few years.

Mary rose and walked to the sink, poured away the tea, rinsed and set the cup on the draining-board. She took her jacket from the hook beside the door and put it on, straightening her collar and fluffing her hair without a mirror. The clock gave a dim, clicking buzz, and it was time to leave.

The house where Mary lived with her son was one of six bungalows on the edge of a Wiltshire village, close enough to London, as well as to Reading, to be attractive to commuters. After the grimy, cramped house in Islington, the modern bungalow with its large garden and fresh country air had seemed the perfect place to settle down and raise a family. But while Mary had dreamed of being pregnant again, Clive had been dreaming of escape. The house for him was not a cosy nest, but a gift to Mary and a sop to his conscience as he left.

Five minutes’ leisurely walk brought the village school in sight. Mary saw the children tumbling out the door like so many brightly colored toys, and she reached the gate at the same moment as Jamie from the other side.

Jamie was involved with his friends, laughing and leaping around. His eyes flickered over her, taking in her presence but not acknowledging it, and when she hugged him she could feel his reluctance to return to her and leave the exciting, still new world of school.

He pulled away quickly, and wouldn’t let her hold his hand as they walked. But he talked to her, needing to share his day’s experiences, giving them to her in excited, discontented bursts of speech. She tried to make sense of what he said, but she couldn’t always. He used strange words—sometimes in a different accent—picked up from the other children, and the events he described might have been imaginary, or related to schoolyard games rather than to reality. Once they had spent all their time together, in the same world. She had understood him better then, had understood him perfectly before he could even talk.

She looked at the little stranger walking beside her, and caught a sudden resemblance to Clive in one of his gestures. It struck her unpleasantly, that he was well on his way to becoming a man.

“Would you like to help me make some biscuits this afternoon?” she asked.

He shook his head emphatically. “I got to dig,” he said.

“Dig? In the garden? Oh, darling, it’s so wet!”

He frowned and tilted back his head. “Isn’t.”

“I know it’s stopped raining, but the ground…” Mary sighed, imagining the mess. “Why not wait until tomorrow? It might be nicer then, the sun might come out, it might be much nicer to dig in the garden tomorrow.”

“I dig tomorrow, too,” Jamie said. He began to chant, swinging his arms stiffly as he marched, “Dig! Dig! Dig!”

During the summer they had taken a trip to the seashore and Mary had bought him a plastic shovel. He had enjoyed digging in the soft sand, then, but had not mentioned it since. Mary wondered what had brought it back to mind—was it a chance word from his teacher, or an enthusiasm caught from one of the other children?—and realized she would probably never know.

He found his shovel in the toy chest, flinging other toys impatiently across the room. Not even the offer of a piece of cake could distract him. He suffered himself to be changed into other clothes, twitching impatiently all the while. When he had rushed out into the garden, Mary stood by the window and watched.

The plastic shovel, so useful for digging at the beach, was less efficient in the dense soil of the garden. As Jamie busily applied himself, the handle suddenly broke off in his hands. He looked for a moment almost comically shocked; then he began to howl.

Mary rushed out to comfort him, but he would not be distracted by her promises of other pleasures. All he wanted was to dig, and he would only be happy if she gave him a new shovel. Finally, she gave him one of her gardening spades, and left him to it.

She felt rejected, going into the house and closing the door, staying away from the windows. He didn’t want her to hover, and she had no reason to fear for his safety in their own garden. Had she waited all day just for this?

The next day, Saturday, was worse. Mary looked forward to Saturdays now more fervently than she ever had as a child. On Saturdays she had Jamie to herself all day. They played games, she read him stories, they went for walks and had adventures. But that Saturday all Jamie wanted to do was dig.

She stood in the garden with him, staring at the vulnerable white bumps of his knees, and then at his stubborn, impatient face. “Why, darling? Why do you want to dig?”

He shrugged and looked at the ground, clutching the spade as if she might take it away from him.

“Jamie, please answer me. I asked you a question. Why are you digging?”

“I might find something,” he said, after a reluctant pause. Then he looked at her, a slightly shifty, sideways look. “If I find something… can I keep it?”

“May I,” she corrected automatically. Her spirits lifted as she imagined a treasure hunt, a game she might play with him. Already, her thoughts were going to her old costume jewelry, and coins… “Probably,” she said. “Almost certainly, anything you find in our garden would be yours to keep. But there are exceptions. If it is something very valuable, like gold, it belongs to the Queen by right, so you would have to get her permission.”

“Not gold,” he said scornfully.

“No?”

“No. Not treasure.” He shook his head and then he smiled and looked with obvious pride at his small excavation. “I’m digging a grave,” he said. “You know what they do with graves? They put dead people inside. I might find one. I might find a skellington!”

“Skeleton,” she said without thinking.

“Skeleton, yeah! Wicked, man! Skellyton!” He flopped down and resumed his digging.

Feeling stunned, Mary went inside.

“And that’s what you phoned me about?” said Clive.

“He’s your son, too, you know.”

“I know he’s my son. And I like to hear what he’s doing. But you know I like to sleep in… you could have picked a better time than early on a Saturday morning to fill me in on his latest game.”

“It’s not a game.”

“Well, what is it, then? A real grave? A real skeleton?”

“It’s morbid!”

“It’s natural. Look, he probably saw something on television, or heard something at school…”

“When I was little, I was afraid of dead things,” Mary said.

“You think that’s healthier? What do you want me to say, Mary? It’ll pass, this craze. He’ll forget about it and go on to something else. If you make a big deal about it, he’ll keep on, to get a reaction. Don’t make him think it’s wrong. Want me to come over tomorrow and take him out somewhere? That’s the quickest way to get his mind on to other things.”

Mary thought of how empty the house was when her son was gone. At least now, although he was preoccupied, she was aware of his presence nearby. And, as usual, she reacted against her ex-husband. She was shaking her head before he had even finished speaking.

“No, not tomorrow. I had plans for tomorrow. I—*‘

“Next weekend. He could come here, spend the night—”

“Oh, Clive, he’s so young!”

“Mary, you can’t have it both ways. He’s my son, too. You can’t complain that I take no interest and leave it all to you, and then refuse to let me see him. I do miss him, you know.”

“All right, next weekend. But just one day, not overnight. Please. He’s all I have. When he’s not here I miss him dreadfully.”

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Mary stood by the window watching Jamie dig his grave, and she missed him. She could see him, and she knew that if she rapped on the glass he would look up and see her, but that wasn’t enough; it would never be enough. Once, she had been the whole world to him. Now, every day took him farther from her.

She thought of Heather, Jen’s little baby. She thought of the solid weight of her in her arms, and that delicious, warm, milky smell of new babies. She remembered how it had felt to hold her, and how she had felt when she had to give her back. She remembered watching Jen nurse her child. The envy which had pierced her. The longing. It wasn’t Jen’s feelings which made Mary reluctant now to visit her but her own jealousy. She wanted a baby.

She went on standing by the window for nearly an hour, holding herself and grieving for the child she didn’t have, while Jamie dug a grave.

For lunch Mary made cauliflower soup and toasted cheese sandwiches. Ignoring his protests that he could wash his own hands, she marched Jamie to the bathroom and scrubbed and scrubbed until all the soil beneath his fingernails was gone.

Twenty minutes later, a soup moustache above his upper lip, Jamie said, “I got to go back to my digging.”

Inside, she cried a protest, but she remembered Clive’s words. Maybe he did want a reaction from her. Maybe he would be less inclined to dig a grave if his mother seemed to favour it. So, with a false, bright smile she cheered him on, helped him back into his filthy pullover and wellies, and waved vigorously from the back door, as if seeing him oft“ on an expedition.

“Come back in when you get cold,” she said. “Or if you get hungry…”

She turned on Radio Four, got out her knitting and worked on the sweater which was to be a Christmas present for her sister in Scotland. She worked steadily for about an hour. Then the panic took her.

A falling-elevator sensation in her stomach, and then the cold. It was a purely visceral, wordless, objectless fear. Her shaking fingers dropped stitches and then dropped the knitting, and she lurched clumsily to her feet.

If anything happened to Jamie she would never forgive herself. If she was too late, if anything had happened to him—

She knew he was safe in the back garden, where there was nothing to hurt him. She knew she’d had this experience before, and there had never been anything threatening her son. Logic made no impact on the fear.

He was so fragile, he was so young, and the world was so dangerous. How could she have let him out of her sight for even a moment?

She ran to the back door and out, cursing herself.

She saw his bright yellow boots first. He was lying flat on the ground, on his stomach, and she couldn’t see his head. It must have been hanging over the edge, into the hole he had dug.

“Jamie!” She didn’t want to alarm him, but his name came out as a shriek of terror.

He didn’t move.

Mary fell on the ground beside him and caught his body up in her arms. She was so frightened she couldn’t breathe. But he was breathing; he was warm.

Jamie gave a little grunt and his eyelids fluttered. Then he was gazing up at her, dazed and sleepy-looking.

“Are you all right?” she demanded, although it was clear to her, now the panic had subsided, that he was fine.

“What?” he said groggily.

“Oh, you silly child! What do you mean by lying down out here, when the ground’s so cold and wet… you’ll catch your death… if you were tired, you should have come in. What a silly, to work so hard you had to lie down and take a nap!” She hugged him to her, and for once he seemed content to be held so, rubbing his dirty face against her sweater and clinging.

They rocked together in the moist grey air and country silence for a time, until Jamie gave a deep, shuddering sigh.

“What is it?”

“Hungry,” he said. His voice was puzzled.

“Of course you are, poor darling, after so much hard work. It’s not time for tea yet, but come inside and I’ll give you a glass of milk and a biscuit. Would you like that?”

He seemed utterly exhausted, and she carried him inside. Although he had claimed to be hungry, he drank only a little milk and seemed without the energy even to nibble a biscuit. Mary settled him on the couch in front of the television, and when she came back a few minutes later she found him asleep.

After she had put Jamie to bed, Mary went back to the garden to look at his excavation.

It was a hole more round than square, no more than a foot across and probably not more than two foot deep. As Mary crouched down to look into it she saw another, smaller hole, within. She didn’t think Jamie had made it; it seemed something quite different. She thought it looked like a tunnel, or the entrance to some small animal’s burrow. She thought of blind, limbless creatures tunneling through the soft earth, driven by needs and guided by senses she couldn’t know, and she shuddered. She thought of worms, but this tunnel was much too large. She had not been aware of moles in the garden, but possibly Jamie had accidentally uncovered evidence of one.

She picked up the spade which Jamie had abandoned, and used it to scoop earth back into the hole. Although she began casually, she soon began to work with a purpose, and her heart pounded as she pushed and shovelled furiously, under a pressure she could not explain to fill it in, cover up the evidence, make her garden whole again.

Finally she stood and tamped the earth down beneath her feet. With the grass gone, the marks of digging were obvious. She had done the best she could, but it wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t the same; it couldn’t be.

As she walked back into the house, Mary heard a brief, faint scream, and immediately ran through to Jamie’s room.

He was sitting up in bed, staring at her with wide-open yet unseeing eyes.

“Darling, what’s wrong?”

She went to him, meaning to hug him, but her hands were covered with dirt from the hole; she couldn’t touch him.

“What’s that?” he asked, voice blurred with sleep, turning towards the window.

Mary looked and saw with a shock that the window was open, if only by a few inches. She didn’t remember opening it, and she was sure it was too heavy for Jamie to lift by himself.

“I’ll close it,” she said, and went to do so. Her hands looked black against the white-painted sash, and she saw bits of earth crumble and fall away. She felt as disturbed by that as if it really had been grave-dirt, and felt she had to sweep it up immediately.

When she returned to the bed Jamie was lying down, apparently asleep. Careful not to touch him with her dirty hands, she bent down and kissed him, hovering close for a time to feel the warmth of his peaceful breathing against her face. She loved him so much she could not move or speak.

In the morning Jamie was subdued, so quiet that Mary worried he might be getting ill, and kept feeling his face for some evidence of a fever. His skin was cool, though, and he showed no other signs of disease. He said nothing more about wanting to dig, nothing about graves or skeletons—that craze appeared to have vanished as suddenly and inexplicably as it had arrived.

It was a wet and windy day, and Mary was glad Jamie didn’t want to play in the garden. He seemed worried about something, though, following her around the house and demanding her attention. Mary didn’t mind. In fact, she cherished this evidence that she was still needed.

When she asked what he wanted for his tea, the answer came promptly. “Two beefburgers. Please.”

“Two!”

“Yes. Two, please.”

“I think one will be enough, really, Jamie. You never have two. If you are very hungry, I could make extra chips.”

He had that stubborn look on his face, the look that reminded her of his father. “Extra chips, too. But please may I have two beefburgers.”

She was certain he wouldn’t be able to eat them both. “Very well,” she said. “After you’ve eaten your first beefburger, if you still want another one, I’ll make it then.”

“I want two—I know I want two! I want two now!”

“Calm down, Jamie,” she said quietly. “You shall have two. But one at a time. That’s the way we’ll do it.”

He sulked, and he played with his food when she served it, but he did manage to eat all the beefburger, and then immediately demanded a second, forgetting, this time, to say “please.”

“You haven’t eaten all your chips,” she pointed out.

He glared. “You didn’t say I had to eat all my chips first. You said if I ate one burger I could have another—you said.”

“I know I said it, lovey, but the chips are part of your dinner, too, and if you’re really hungry—”

“You said!”

His lower lip trembled, and there were tears in his eyes. How could she deny him? She couldn’t bear his unhappiness, even though she was quite certain that he wasn’t hungry and wouldn’t be able to eat any more meat.

“All right, my darling,” she said, and left her own unfinished meal to grow cold while she went back to the cooker. Clive would have been firm with him, she thought, and wondered if she had been wrong to give in. Maybe Jamie had wanted her to say no. The thought wearied her. It was too complicated. He had asked for food, and she would give it to him.

Jamie fidgeted in his chair when she put the food before him, and would not meet her eyes. He asked if he could watch TV while he ate. Curious, she agreed. “Just bring your plate in to me when you’ve finished.”

A suspiciously few minutes later, Jamie returned with his plate. The second beefburger had vanished without a trace. There were only a few smashed peas and stray chips on the plate. Jamie went back to watch television while Mary did the washing-up. Almost immediately, above the noise of the television, she heard the back door open and close quietly. When she rejoined Jamie he seemed happier than he had all day, freed of some burden. They played together happily—if a little more rowdily than Mary liked—until his bedtime.

But after she had tucked him into bed, Mary went out into the dark garden. In the gloom the whiteness of a handkerchief gave off an almost phosphorescent glow, drawing her across the lawn to the site of Jamie’s excavation.

Like some sort of offering, the beefburger had been placed on a clean white handkerchief and laid on the ground, on the bare patch. Mary stared at it for a moment, and then went back inside.

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Mary usually woke to the sounds of Jamie moving about, but on Monday morning for once she had to wake him. He was pale and groggy, with greenish shadows beneath his eyes. But when she suggested he could stay home and spend the day resting in bed, he rallied and became almost frantic in his determination to go to school. He did seem better, out in the fresh air and away from the house, but she continued to worry about him after she had left him at school. Her thoughts led her to the doctor’s. She didn’t mind waiting until all the scheduled patients had been seen; she paged through old magazines, with nothing better to do.

Dr. Abden was a brisk, no-nonsense woman who had raised two children to safe and successful adulthood; Mary was able to trust her maternal wisdom enough to tell her the whole story of Jamie’s grave.

“Perhaps he found his skeleton and didn’t like it so much,” said Dr. Abden. “There, don’t look so alarmed, my dear! I didn’t mean a human skeleton, of course. You mentioned seeing something like a tunnel… isn’t it possible that your son came across a mole—a dead one? That first encounter with death can be a disturbing one. Perhaps he thought he killed it with his little shovel and so is guiltily trying to revive it… Perhaps he doesn’t realize it is dead, and imagines he can make a pet of it. It you can get him to confide in you, I’m sure you’ll be able to set his mind at rest. Of course, he may have forgotten the whole thing after a day at school.”

Mary hoped that would be the case, but it was obvious as soon as she saw him that afternoon that his secret still worried him. He rejected all her coaxing offers of help, pushing her away, hugging his fear to himself, uneasy in her presence. So Mary waited, kept the distance he seemed to want, and watched.

He was sneaking food outside. Biscuits, bits of chocolate, an apple… she meant to let him continue, but at the thought of the mess eggs and baked beans would make in his pockets, she caught his hand before he could transfer food from his plate to his lap.

“Darling, you don’t have to do that,” she said. “I’ll give you a plate, and you can put the food on that and take it out to your little friend. Just eat your own meal first.”

His pale face went paler. “You know?”

Mary hesitated. “1 know… you’re upset about something. And I know you’ve been leaving food outside. Now, why don’t you tell Mummy what’s going on, and I’ll help you.”

Emotions battled on his face; then, surrender.

“He’s hungry,” Jamie said plaintively. “He’s so hungry, so, so hungry. I keep giving him food, but it’s not right… he won’t eat it. I don’t know what he… I don’t want… I can’t… I’m giving him everything and he won’t eat. What does he eat, Mummy? What else does he eat?”

Mary imagined a mole’s tiny corpse, Jamie thrusting food beneath its motionless snout. “Maybe he doesn’t eat anything,” she said.

“No, he has to! If you’re alive, you have to eat.”

“Well, Jamie, maybe he’s dead.”

She half expected some outburst, an excited protest against that idea, but Jamie shook his head, an oddly mature and thoughtful expression on his face. He had obviously considered this possibility before. “No, he’s not dead. I thought, I thought when I found him in my grave, I thought he was dead, but then he wasn’t. He isn’t dead.”

“Who isn’t dead? What is this you’re talking about, Jamie? Is it an animal?”

He looked puzzled. “You don’t know?”

She shook her head. “Will you show him to me, darling?”

Jamie looked alarmed. He shook his head and began to tremble. Mary knelt beside his chair and put her arms around him, holding him close, safe and tight.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Mummy’s here. It’s all right…”

When he had calmed she thought to distract him, but he returned to the subject of feeding this unknown creature.

“Well,” said Mary, “if he’s not eating the food you give him, maybe he doesn’t need to be fed. He might find his own food— animals usually do, you know, except for pets and babies.”

“He’s like a baby.”

“How is he like a baby? What does he look like?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember now—I can’t. He doesn’t look like anything—not like anything except himself.”

It was only then that it occurred to Mary that there might be no animal at all, not even a dead mole. This creature Jamie had found was probably completely imaginary—that was why he couldn’t show it to her.

“He can probably find his own food,” Mary said.

But this idea obviously bothered Jamie, who began to fidget. “He needs me.”

“How do you know that? Did he tell you? Can’t he tell you what sort of food he wants, then?”

Jamie shrugged, nodded, then shook his head. “I have to get something for him.”

“But he must have managed on his own before you found him—”

“He was all right before,” Jamie agreed. “But he needs me now. I found him, so now I have to take care of him. But… he won’t eat. I keep trying and trying, but he won’t take the food. And he’s hungry. What can I give him, Mummy? What can I give him to eat?”

Mary stopped trying to be reasonable, then, and let herself enter his fantasy.

“Don’t worry, darling,” she said. “We’ll find something for your little friend—we’ll try everything in the kitchen if we have to!”

With Jamie’s help, Mary prepared a whole trayful of food: a saucer of milk and one of sweetened tea; water-biscuits spread with peanut butter; celery tops and chopped carrots; lettuce leaves; raisins; plain bread, buttered bread, and bread spread with honey. As she carried the tray outside, Mary wondered what sort of pests this would attract, then dismissed it as unimportant. She pretended to catch sight of Jamie’s imaginary friend.

“Oh, we’ve got something he likes here,” she said. “Just look at him smacking his lips!”

Jamie gave her a disapproving look. “You don’t see him.”

“How do you know? Isn’t that him over there by the hedge?”

“If you saw him, you’d probably scream. And, anyway, he hasn’t got lips.”

“What does he look like? Is he so frightening?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jamie said.

“Shall I put the tray down here?”

He nodded. The playfulness and interest he had shown in the kitchen had vanished, and he was worried again. He sighed. “If he doesn’t eat this…”

“If he doesn’t, there’s plenty more in the kitchen we can try,” said Mary.

“He’s so hungry,” Jamie murmured sadly.

He was concerned, when they went back inside, about locking the house. This was not a subject which had ever interested him before, but now he followed Mary around, and she demonstrated that both front and back doors were secure, and all the windows—particularly the window in his room—were shut and locked.

“There are other ways for things to get in, though,” he said.

“No, of course not, darling.”

“How do my dreams get in, then?”

“Your dreams?” She crouched beside him on the bedroom floor and stroked his hair. “Dreams don’t come in from the outside, darling. Dreams are inside, in your head.”

“They’re already inside?”

“They aren’t real, darling. They’re imaginary. They aren’t real and solid like I am, or like you are… they’re just… like thoughts. Like make-believe. And they go away when you’re awake.”

“Oh,” he said. She couldn’t tell what he thought, or if her words had comforted him. She hugged him close until he wriggled to be free, and then she put him to bed.

She checked on him twice during the night, and both times he appeared to be sleeping soundly. Yet in the morning, again, he had the darkened eyes and grogginess of one who’d had a disturbed night.

She thought about taking him to the doctor instead of to school, but the memory of her conversation with Dr. Abden stopped her. This was something she had to cope with herself. There was nothing physically wrong with Jamie. His sleeplessness was obviously the result of worry, and the doctor had already reminded her that it was her duty, as his mother, to set his mind at rest. If only he would tell her what was wrong!

That afternoon Jamie was again subdued, quiet and good. Mary actually preferred him like this, but because such behavior wasn’t normal for him, she worried even while she appreciated his nearness. They sat together playing games and looking through his books, taking turns reading to each other. Later, she left the dishes to soak in the sink and watched her son as he sat with his crayons and his coloring book, wondering what went on in his mind.

“Has your little friend gone away, to find food somewhere else?” she asked.

Jamie shook his head.

“We could put some more food out for him, you know. I don’t mind. Anything you like.”

Jamie was silent for a while, and then he said, “He doesn’t need food.”

“Doesn’t he? That’s very unusual. What does he live on?”

Jamie stopped coloring, the crayon frozen in his hand. Then he drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Love,” he said, and began coloring again.

He was no longer worried about the doors and windows, and it was Mary, not Jamie, who prolonged the bedside chat and goodnight kisses, reluctant to leave him alone. He didn’t seem afraid, but she was afraid for him, without knowing why.

“Goodnight, my darling,” she said for the fifth or sixth last time, and made herself rise and move away from the bed. “Sleep well… call me if you need anything… I’ll be awake…” Her voice trailed off. Already, it appeared, he was sleeping. She went out quietly and left his bedroom door ajar. If he made a sound, she would hear it.

She turned the television on low and slumped in a chair before it. She was too tired to think, too distracted to be entertained. She might as well go to bed herself, she thought.

So she turned off the television, tidied up, turned out the lights and checked the doors one last time. On her way to her own bedroom she decided to look in on Jamie, just to reassure herself that all was well.

Pushing the door open let in a swathe of light from the corridor. It fell across the bed, revealing Jamie lying uncovered, half curled on one side, and not alone.

There was something nestled close to him, in the crook of his arm; something grey and wet-looking, a featureless lump about the size of a loaf of bread; something like a gigantic slug pressed against his pyjama-covered chest and bare neck.

Horror might have frozen her—she couldn’t have imagined coping with something like that in the garden or on the kitchen floor—but fear for her son propelled her forward. As she moved, the soft grey body rippled, turning, and it looked at Mary. For a face there was only a slightly flattened area with two round, black eyes and no mouth.

In her haste and terror Mary almost fell onto the bed. She caught hold of the thing and pulled it off her son, sobbing with revulsion.

She had expected it to be as cold and slimy as it looked, perhaps even insubstantial enough that the harsh touch of her hands could destroy it. In fact, it was warm and solid and surprisingly heavy. And it smelled like Jamie. Not like Jamie now, but like Jamie as a baby—that sweet, milky scent which made her melt inside. Like Jen’s baby. Like every helpless, harmless newborn. She closed her eyes, remembering.

Mary pressed her face against the soft flesh and inhaled. No skin had ever been so deliciously, silkenly smooth. Her lips moved against it. She could never have enough of touching and kissing it; she wished she was a cat and could lick her baby clean a hundred times a day.

Responding, it nuzzled back, head butting at her blindly, and she unbuttoned her blouse. Her breasts felt sore and heavy with milk, and she longed for the relief of nursing.

Somewhere nearby a child was crying, a sound that rasped at her nerves and distracted her. Someone was tugging at her clothes, at her arm, and crying, “Mummy,” until she had, finally, to open her eyes.

A little boy with a pale, tear-stained face gazed up at her. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t, Mummy.”

She knew who he was—he was her son. But he seemed somehow threatening, and she wrapped her arms more tightly around the creature that she held.

“Go to bed,” she said firmly.

He began to weep, loudly and helplessly.

But that irritated her more, because he wasn’t helpless; she knew he wasn’t helpless.

“Stop crying,” she said. “Go to bed. You’re all right.” She pushed him away from her with her hip, not daring to let go. But as she looked down she glimpsed something grey and formless lying pressed between her breasts. For just a moment she had a brief, distracting vision of a face without a mouth, always hungry, never satisfied. She thought of an open grave, and she closed her eyes.

“He needs me,” she said.

At last she felt complete. She would never be alone again.

Within the protective circle of her arms, the creature had begun to feed.

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