What Can A Child Do?
by Chet Williamson

* * * *

She saw the boy the first day she moved in. It was close to eight o’clock, and she had just stepped from the shower, when she saw him standing naked by the bathroom closet. For a split second the thought that the boy was real was strong in her exhausted mind, but almost immediately she realized that he was a ghost.

His pale pink body was translucent, and she could just make out the brass hinges of the closet door through the child’s shallow chest. She noticed dark blotches on the arms and legs, grayish-blue marks, like bruises. And she knew it was the Bradley boy.

What was his name? The real estate agent had said. Tom? No, Timothy. Yes, that was it. “Timothy,” she called softly, her own nakedness forgotten, “Timmy?”

The boy slowly disappeared, like a Polaroid print in reverse, she thought. He hadn’t moved. He had just stood there, as if waiting for someone (his mother? Not his father, surely) to lift him into the tub.

Linda hadn’t been frightened while it was happening, but now she trembled uncontrollably, whipped the towel from the rack she had put up that afternoon, and wrapped it around her shivering body. She sat on the toilet bowl and ran her hand through the salt-wet tendrils of hair that stuck to her forehead. The bathroom was warm from the electric heater, but she felt chilled.

It seemed so real that not for a moment did she think it was her imagination. She had seen him, she was certain. Timothy Bradley. She had read the stories in the papers last year when it had happened. The boy was four years old. His father had been abusing him, and evidently the mother did nothing to stop it. The child was finally taken to a hospital with a concussion. He went into a coma and died a few days later. The father was sentenced to eight years in prison, the mother to three years for complicity. A small enough payment, Linda had thought at the time, for stealing seventy years of a person’s life.

He’d been so thin, so brittle looking. The bruises had stood out so clearly. His father must have been brutal.

She stepped back into the shower for a minute to wash the sweat away. The water swept into her face and hair, cold at first, then growing hotter. She closed her eyes and let the steam wrap around her like a shroud. She thought about the boy.

Paul above her, towering like the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk, his big red-knuckled hand coming down again, and the red before her eyes — not blood but rage, stop, stop won’t you stop, and crying harder until the wet tears ran

The pipes started banging, and she wiggled the faucet handles until they stopped. She slid back the shower door, half expecting to see him again, but there was nothing more than the light of the fluorescents and the mist that hung in the air and settled like dew on the mirror and tiles. The rough towel felt good on her skin. When she was dry, she put on her bathrobe and went into the kitchen.

All the papers were there. She’d have to take them to the bank and rent a lockbox tomorrow. As she picked up the mortgage she smiled. Even at the high interest rate the house had been a great buy. It must have been small for the Bradleys, she thought, but for a single woman who wanted a little equity, it was perfect. After the boy’s death and the arrest of the mother and father, the house had been vacant for over a year while the price went lower and lower. It was due, the real estate woman had told her, simply to the fact that most people were leery of a house in which (technically at least) a murder had taken place. Linda had scarcely thought about that. She liked the house, it was the right size for her, and the price was low enough for her to handle on her new salary. The fact that it had once had sorrow and pain within its brick Walls was irrelevant to Linda, who had had those things within her heart. She didn’t fear the ghosts of past acts, didn’t believe in them until tonight, when she accepted the existence of ghosts — or a ghost — as easily as she accepted and believed in the neighbors’ laundry hanging on the line next door. She had seen the boy. That was a fact.

And now as she looked up from the papers on the kitchen table she saw him again. He was standing by the refrigerator, his face and hands smeared with something purple, or maybe red — it was hard to be sure because of the light coming through his body. She read fear in the wide eyes, and as she watched tears started to roll down his cheeks and his tiny mouth opened in a wail she could barely hear, as if he were calling from outside, and the doors and windows of the house were shut tight against him.

Again she felt no terror, no sudden thrill of fright, but a pity so deep it gripped her bowels, and something like love that urged her to reach out to that frail insubstantial thing across the kitchen.

As if in a dream she rose and walked toward the boy, and as she drew nearer his fear seemed to increase, and he raised his shadowy arms in a defensive gesture and drew back from her.

“No,” she whispered, “no, it’s all right.” And at her words his face changed into a mask of outrage and hate whose force stunned her. She stopped and watched as he faded away once more, and the warm hand of pity became a cold claw of fear around her spine.

But what frightened her, she asked herself. Was she scared of the little boy, a weak four year old? No, even less, a shadow of a four year old with no substance, no solidity with which to harm her. A wraith (her mind tingled at the word) bound here by past hurts, a sad little thing caught between death and life — was she scared of this?

Or was she scared of the look in the child’s face, the look that her own face still remembered how to wear, the futile gesture of defense she too had made a hundred times?

The belt snaking through the trouser loops, like a python uncurling from around a tree branch in the Tarzan movies, and the sound of it, that soft shhhhh as it whispered around his waist, always so slow, so slow, and she could feel the pressure of her bladder) feel the wispy hairs on the back of her neck nearly pull away from the skin as he came closer, finally flinging her over his bony knees, his rough hands pushing her skirt above her waist, pulling down her cotton panties so she felt the autumn chill on her buttocks, and then the pain that murdered the cold, the redness that seeped up her belly, over her chest, and onto her cheeks, her forehead, her ears and her eyes until everything was red and she could only think kill me, kill me, I’ll kill you, I will, just kill me and be done, and it would stop and Paul would push her onto the floor and leave her there, saying that’ll teach you, little bitch, and she would lay there alone in the red darkness and the stale smell of beer, and the sound of her mother crying downstairs only made the red hurt more

The refrigerator motor kicked on, and she lost the memory in a mechanical whir of hidden fans. Dear God, she thought, is this what it’s going to be like to live here, that boy showing up every few minutes? What would she do, what could she? The thought occurred to her to call someone, but she was new in the town and had made no friends in whom she could confide a crazy ghost story. She thought of calling her mother, but the difference in time zones made it certain that she’d be asleep by now. Besides, since Linda’s stepfather had left her mother a few years before, she’d been withdrawn and strange in Linda’s presence.

She gave up the phone idea and suddenly realized that she felt hungry. She’d had no dinner, and a sandwich would taste good, maybe some Tab too. The breadbox door squeaked as she opened it, and she made a mental note to get some 3-in-l tomorrow when she bought paint. She pulled open the refrigerator and saw Timothy Bradley inside, staring up at her.

She shrieked and leaped back. The door swung slowly shut with a muffled thud and she screamed again. The sight was etched with steel on her mind’s crystal surface. He’d been huddled, shivering, on the flat enamel of the bottom, his body occupying the same space as the groceries Linda had bought earlier that day. The boy’s form passed through the wire rack next to the bottom, but seemed pressed against the second one up, as if he’d been jammed in there for . . . for what? Punishment?  Yes. She’d seen the marks again, this time on his face, and some blood on his lips, which were turning blue with the cold.

Christ, she thought, monsters, monsters! and her heart beat fast and her stomach churned until she was afraid she would throw up. She sat down heavily in the kitchen chair and moaned softly. Then it struck her. He’s in there. He or his ghost or whatever I’m seeing is still in there, and she leaped up and swung the door open again. This time she didn’t step back or scream, but held the door open for the whimpering child to crawl out. He was still there, and the sounds of his sobbing seemed far away as before. As if underwater, he fumbled his way out of the refrigerator, his hands touching and then going through the floor, until his whole body disappeared beneath the house. She had noticed his eyes again before they passed from sight. There was something primal in them, a fear and an urge she could not quite read, and then he was gone.

She would not stay. She would not be a noble idiot and stay in that house. She would go to a motel and think about this and maybe call the real estate agent in the morning. There were still three days to get this straightened out before she started her new job, and if there was a problem she would leave and live somewhere else. But she would not stay here tonight.

She got dressed, threw some underwear and some toilet things in her flight bag, and grabbed her purse. She locked the door, thinking as she did that if a burglar did go in, the boy would probably scare the living bejeesus out of him. Then she shuddered, took out her car keys, and wished for the first time in her life that she had a dog.

She found a motel three miles down the road, one of those places that manage to stay open with only three cars at the most in front of the U of brick compartments. But it was cheap, it was warm, and it was private. There was no little boy to pose for her nightmares, no boy bound to the bed, no boy locked in the closet, no boy forced to kneel in the shower as cold water beat down upon him, or whatever else they had done to him.

The bed was too soft, but she sank into its embrace thankfully, and fell asleep fully clothed. She awoke the next morning around seven, amazed that she hadn’t dreamed, or, if she had, hadn’t remembered it. In retrospect, she thought her night should have been filled with lurking terrors, but in reality she could not recall when she had slept more soundly.

She made some instant coffee on the wall-mounted machine, sat at the desk, and thought about the previous evening. In the hatchwork of bright sunlight coming through the opened Venetian blind, her experience softened, became almost romantic — not the boy’s maltreatment, not that, but the idea of his remaining in the house. She thought she knew why.

All the ghost stories — true or false — that she had ever heard had given the ghost a reason for remaining on the earthly plane. Perhaps it was to show where buried treasure was hidden, perhaps for revenge to right a wrong, perhaps to find something the ghost didn’t have in life.

Could that be it? Could the little boy, who had lived with fear and madness and torment all his young life, could he be looking for that which he had never had? A kind word, a touch, a gesture of loving concern?

It could be just that simple, she thought. If she ran away from him, if no one would live in the house because of the haunting, then he would remain chained there forever.

But if she tried to comfort him, perhaps she could free him.

She shook her head to clear it of doubts and sentimental illusions. First of all, she would go back to the house — now, in the clean unshadowed light of the sun. It was her home, and today she would do what she had planned to do — clean it, fix it, rearrange it until it was hers even more. And when . . . if the boy came ... well, she would do what she thought was right, that’s all.

He was waiting for her as she came up the driveway. He had on a powder blue snowsuit that was too small for him, and she could see his bare ankles above the rubber boottops. The air was cold, and the brisk wind seemed to ruffle his hair and make him shiver. She stopped the car, opened the door, and got out slowly. When she held out her hand and started to walk toward him, he turned and ran through the back yard to the hedge, into which he merged and disappeared.

The look had been there again; she had seen it just before he had bolted. Panic, fright. . . outrage.

She went inside. He didn’t reappear that morning at all, and she did what she had planned. The house was terribly dusty, and she made cleaning her first priority, reaching high up on door sills and cupboard tops with the vacuum cleaner extension until no more thick streamers of dust clung to her exploring fingertips. The loud roar of the Hoover pounded her ears all morning, and at last she gratefully turned it off and made a light lunch of soup and plain yogurt. When she opened the refrigerator door, she felt a chill that was not due to the escaping cold air, but she saw nothing, and reached into the back for a Tab with only a slight shiver.

After lunch she mixed some powdered cleanser in water and started on the woodwork. On the back of the door of the smaller bedroom, which she planned to turn into a study/sewing room, she found some penciled marks that she could not bring herself to wipe off. The first was a short horizontal line with the notation, “Mar 84,” beside it. The next was a few inches up, marked “Aug 84.” There were six in all, the last and highest marked “Dec 85,” about three feet off the floor.

Linda half expected to see Timothy suddenly appear before her, looking up in fear and expectation as he must have looked at them to see whether they would use the ruler to mark his height or to strike him again. She made a bitter face, closed her eyes in pain, and suddenly felt very tired.

No one was coming to see her today — the telephone man was due next week, and the washer and dryer were being delivered tomorrow. There was no reason for her not to lie down for a few minutes, and the floor with its deep carpeting seemed so comfortable that she lowered herself down onto her side and rested her head on her arm, the rich muskiness of her sweat bearing her on an onyx cloud down into sleep.

And in her sleep and in her dream the smell of sweat grew stronger until Paul stood over her, and the belt came off, and he took her over his knees, but now she was bigger and stronger and no he would not whip her again, and she bit his leg hard until she heard him gasp in pain and surprise. Then the hand with the belt curled around her head and wrenched it away from his leg, and she heard his heavy breathing turn ragged, and felt something beneath her stir and press into the softness of her stomach. There was no transition. One second she was over his lap and the next he was on top of her, pinning both her arms with one of his own while his other hand roughly guided himself into her.

But she was no longer there. Instead she hovered over the bed like a ghost, watching herself struggle beneath Paul’s massive body, feeling the pain dully through the anesthesia of disembodied memory.

The eyes of the girl on the bed grew wide, and as they stared into hers as she hung suspended in the air the terror in them faded and was replaced by a hot flame of lust, not for the grunting that aped passion on that bed, but lust for the blood of the defiler, the blood of those who rob the innocent of innocence, who turn childhood into nightmare.

Then the face beneath her changed again; the brown eyes turned a pale blue, the dark hair lightened, the thin nose flattened, until the face of the twelve year old girl was that of a four year old boy, and the look of savage vengeance on that face was the one she had seen him wear before. The raw power of it frightened her, and she rose higher and higher until the face was only a dot and the bed a red smear in a black void.

She awoke with the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun in her eyes, her blouse soaked with perspiration, her heart tripping over its beats. When she staggered to her feet, the boy was standing in the doorway. She could not see through him now.

There was something else. He had changed subtly in some other way. He still seemed small, frail, but there was a power around him that she could feel, that drove her slowly backward into the corner of the room. And now the reddish rays of the falling sun shone full on his young face as he stood there glaring at her, every bruise and mark on his body a living thing that screamed out its agony in a voice she heard only in her soul.

She could not think of extending her hand to the thing that wielded that power. She could not feel compassion, or pity, or sympathy. She could only feel terror and the need to escape from the force that surged out from that demonic face.

She knew now that he had not come back for love.

And as the boy drifted across to her with the speed of a thought, her head flew back in astonishment, and his right hand sheared across her exposed throat, showering petals of blood that sparkled in the sun, and ran from her throat like a penitent’s tears.