The Boy

The first time – Alice had one ritual in her life; albeit a new one but for the last sixty two days she had doggedly left her house everyday so she could complete it. Sometimes she had somewhere to go, others she would just stand outside and look at the pretty pink flowers in her window boxes for five minutes until the ritual could begin.

Today was a window box day. At precisely five minutes after she’d locked her front door, Alice unlocked it again, making sure to twist her wrist with a flourish so the little bell that hung on the key ring chimed repeatedly. It chimed three times, the way her mother had always made it do.

The next part of the ritual was the most stressful for Alice. Oxygen was the enemy and she felt it cloaking her, ready to pervade, ready to dilute, as she paused on the doorstep. As fast as she was able, though not as fast as she would like, Alice jerked open the door and rushed inside, quickly shutting the door behind her to block the oxygen’s entry. Her heart beat fast but she focused on calming it so she could savour the rest of the ritual. She took a deep breath through her nose, then another. Tears formed in her eyes as she had to take a third; her mother’s scent was so faint but she knew it wasn’t just the oxygen’s fault. Her brother’s shoes were strewn haphazardly in the entry way tainting the subtle scent of lilac and roses she had come to crave.

Despair welled in her but she managed to tamp it down, she still had the sealed bags of clothes under her bed she could inhale from when her grief became too great. If she was fast with resealing the bag it would be years before oxygen stole her mother’s scent from them.

Alice straightened her brother’s shoes, managing not to scream in frustration, and went to the kitchen. She loved her brother, she truly did. She was just having trouble adjusting. For so long it had just been her and her mother, everything had been calm, pleasant and predictable but now her mother was gone….

Her mother was gone!!!!!!!

And hard times had fallen on her brother, forcing him to move in with her out of necessity.

Alice filled the kettle and switched it on. Tears threatened again as she set out one cup, not two, and she noticed her hands were shaking as she opened the fridge for the milk. 

She reached into the fridge for milk and a boy with ghostly pale skin and black eyes stared back at her.

Alice blinked first in incomprehension then, upon registering what she was seeing, flung herself backwards in terror. Her hip clipped the kitchen work bench, flinging her to the ground but within seconds she was up and running, screaming all the time.

She heard thumping down the stairs and then Frank, her brother, was in front of her. “What the hell is wrong?” He demanded.

“In the fridge!” Alice cried and flung herself into the cushions of her mother’s armchair.

“What is it?” Frank frowned.

“Just look in the fridge!” Alice begged.

Frank huffed and marched into the kitchen. “Jesus Christ!” She heard a moment later and felt utterly sure that her big brother was about to save the day. “Alice, what is it with you and smashing eggs? Oh,” he paused awkwardly and stepped back to the doorway to look at her, “is this another episode?”

Alice frowned as she straightened in the armchair. She hated the word episode, or at least she had done since it had been repeatedly used to describe her incident. “Look in the fridge, there’s a boy in the fridge.”

Frank looked into the kitchen and then back at her and gave a deep sigh, a sigh Alice interpreted to be of the exasperated kind, and that made Alice burrow back into the cushions.

“Al, come here.” His tone brooked no argument and Alice begrudgingly uncoiled herself from the beloved armchair and walked into the kitchen to his side. She surveyed the perfectly organised fridge shelving, minus demonic looking child, and a shattered carton of eggs on the kitchen floor in front of the fridge.

“I know what I saw.” She insisted before he could chastise her. “He was in there!”

Frank took Alice’s shoulders and the caring expression on his face nearly broke her. “Alice, maybe we should go back to Doctor Whyatt.”

“I don’t need Doctor Whyatt, I’m fine.” Frank didn’t look convinced. “I’m fine!” Alice repeated and the knowing look Frank gave her made her cringe inside.

“Okay, Alice, I’ll clear up here. You should go and have a nap while I make us dinner.”

***

The fourth time - You will beg for mercy…
Your tears will run dry…

You will beg for death…

The murmurs woke Alice from her slumber. She had that groggy, barely awake feeling when the next murmur sounded.

You will die screaming…

Adrenalin pulsed through her as her eyes shot open with a certainty of danger. The boy with the black eyes was hovering above her, his face inches from hers. Alice screamed for all she was worth and then jack-knifed out of the bed to get away from him. She landed awkwardly and Frank burst into the room discovering his sister cowering against the bedroom wall cradling a broken arm.

***

“Mr Ashurst, could you come with me please?”

Frank frowned but followed the nurse. “Is Alice okay?” He asked as they maneuvered corridor upon corridor.

“The Doctor will talk to you shortly.” The nurse’s shoes squeaked as she transversed the corridors but other than that she made no sound.

“Nurse?”

“The Doctor will talk to you shortly.” She answered tartly as she opened the door to an office and ushered him inside.

Frank was faced with three stern looking, white coat cladded men, each wearing grim looking glasses that made him wonder if they were for effect or necessity.

“Doctors?” He greeted, unsure of the protocol of the situation.

“Tell me about your sister’s wounds.” One of the white coats instructed.

“Ah, as far as I’m aware she got a fright and fell out of bed.”

Lots of scribbling on notepads, lots of meaningful looks to each other; at least to everyone but Frank.

One of the white coats cleared his throat. “You know, Alice has quite a few contusions present on her body alongside from the broken arm.”

Frank knew what they were insinuating and he was a proud man. There were precious few things left in his broken life to be proud of but the fact that he’d never dream of hitting a woman was one of them so he’d be damned before he’d let these doctors accuse him of something he hadn’t done.

“I can assure you I would never lay a hand on my sister and this is not the first time she’s had a fright like this. If you must know she’s seeing an apparition all around our house.”

***

Alice tried to move her fingers in the cast encasing her broken arm but they stayed immobile.

She was officially broken. This made her laugh and she laughed hard, though the sound couldn’t have been described as jovial. The reality was she’d been broken for the last seventy six days and no Band-Aid or plaster cast could come to her rescue.

Two nurses tried to calm her hysterical laughing to no avail and then Frank was there; her Saviour, and she calmed.

“Alice I need to know what happened.” Frank said, looking more tired than she had seen him at his worst.

“The boy was in my room, he was threatening me.”

Frank took a breath, seeming to try and calm himself, and then took the hand of her unbroken arm in his. “Alice, there was no boy. I came straight to your room when you screamed. If there had been a boy in there I would’ve seen him.”

“He was there.”

“And he just disappeared? Like a ghost?”

“Maybe.” Alice frowned. She didn’t believe in ghosts but four times now she’d seen something her brother hadn’t and the boy being a ghost sat a lot better with her than the fact that she may be going crazy.

Frank withdrew his hand and scrubbed it over his face. She noticed the dark circles under his eyes and how thin his face had gotten.

“Alice, we should sell the house, move on, get a fresh start.”

Alice stiffened in horror. They’d had this conversation before, many times, and each time panic gripped her as though he’d get his way. The thought of strangers moving into her mother’s house made her feel nauseous.

“No.”

Frank sighed deeply. “It’s not healthy for you Alice.”

“It’s mum’s house.”

“No, it’s her shrine!” Frank snapped. “I’m not allowed to even open the God damn windows lest her precious scent escape!”

Alice flinched at his tone and he immediately reached for her hand again and gave a weary sigh.

“I’m sorry Alice. I’m just… sorry.”

Alice looked at her brother, really looked at him, and saw how broken he was. For the first time she put her own suffering aside and considered his. He had lost his mother as well but not only that, in quick succession his wife had left him and he’d been declared bankrupt. No wonder he wanted to sell the house he needed a fresh start. And she felt for him, she honestly did, but she couldn’t sell the house. She just couldn’t.

***

The ninth time – Alice stood at the bathroom sink with a towel wrapped around her. The tub was filling with warm water and she had two little blue tablets in her hand. Alice now had a second ritual; take Valium then relax in the tub. She knew she’d been prescribed the pills to stop her seeing the boy but that hadn’t worked, she was seeing him more than ever. They did, however, take the edge off of her all-consuming grief so she took them religiously.

Alice put the pills in her mouth and raised a glass of water to her lips. In the mirror behind her she saw the boy baring his teeth and drawing his thumb across his throat. She screamed as she spun around. The little blue pills flew from her mouth and the glass in her hand crushed under her grip.

She dropped the shattered glass but not before a shard cut into her palm. Frank burst into the room, took one look at her bleeding hand and swore under his breath.

“Alice.” He shook his head as he grabbed up a towel and wrapped it around her hand. She shrunk with shame at the depth of despair he had conveyed with that one word. “You saw him again didn’t you?”

Alice had stopped admitting when she saw the boy as Frank had started mentioning counselling more and more. She didn’t want to talk to strangers about her grief, it was private. No one could understand the way she felt and she wasn’t inclined to try and make them.

This time however, as Frank tended to her bloody hand, she realised the boy was still there. “Look!” she cried as she pointed as best as her broken arm would let her.

Frank looked over his shoulder. “What?”

“He’s right there!”

“Where?” Frank walked over to the boy, stopped right before him, and pulled the door closed to check behind it. “There’s no one here Alice.”

The boy leant to the side of Frank’s legs and stared at her. A strangled cry escaped her.

“He’s right there in front of you.”

The pitying look Frank gave her made her feel totally and utterly alone. He walked back towards her.

“Please.” She begged. She needed Frank to see him, she couldn’t be going crazy.

The boy bared his teeth in a macabre grin and put his fingers to his lips. “Shhhhhh.”

“Did you hear that?!” Alice cried as she gripped the front of Frank’s shirt.

Frank’s expression told her he hadn’t; it also said her fate was sealed.

***

Alice hated Dr Whyatt. She was judgemental, condescending and when Alice made a statement invariably “how does that make you feel?” would follow.

The doctor was scribbling notes onto Alice’s file while Alice sat opposite in a hospital gown. She sent a pleading look to Frank who sat beside her but he just smiled weakly back and squeezed her hand. He clearly wasn’t going to whisk her back to the haven that was their home any time soon.

Dr Whyatt put down her pen, pushed her glasses up on her nose and fixed Alice with a penetrating look. “I’m concerned Alice.”

“There’s no reason to be.” Alice dropped her eyes to her hands as she had done as a child when being addressed by her headmistress.

“Are you forgetting I’ve just examined your body and seen the damage you’ve done to yourself?”

Alice wasn’t going to forget that humiliation anytime soon. Her head dropped a little more.

“Your grief for your mother is manifesting in these hallucinations.”

“I’m not hallucinating.” Alice mumbled but the lack of conviction in her words was clear even to her.

“Really? Remind me of the episode that first brought you here after the assault charges were made against you.”

“That was different. That was a mistake.”

“Remind me.”

“I thought I saw my mother at the supermarket.” Alice remembered the devastation she’d felt when the woman had turned to reveal a strangers face. She’d known it couldn’t be her mother but for a brief moment hope had flared. “But it wasn’t her.”

“And how did that make you feel?”

“Upset.” Alice replied shortly, desperately wanting to move off the topic.

“Indeed, so upset that you began pelting a woman and her mother with eggs?”

Alice cringed in shame at the memory. The woman and her mother had only approached her to see if she was okay which was understandable considering she was a grown woman crying her heart out in the middle of the produce aisle. One look at them together had filled her with ferocious jealousy. What was so special about this woman that she got to keep her mother when Alice’s had been ripped away from her?

It hadn’t been a conscious decision to throw the eggs, they were just there and she’d hated that woman so, so much.

Alice began biting her nails, a habit her mother had cured her of years before.

“As I said Alice, I’m concerned for you, specifically for your safety. You are going to stay here at the hospital for a while so we can keep an eye on you.”

Alice’s head shot up. “What? No.” She turned to Frank who had a resigned look on his face. “No Frank, take me home.”

“Alice, this is for your own good. You’re hurting yourself and I can’t help you.”

“No, they’re just accidents. I only end up hurting myself because of my reactions to the boy.”

Dr Whyatt and Frank shared a look.

“I’m not crazy!” Alice cried defensively.

“No one is saying that you are, you just need to rest. It’ll only be for a little while.” Frank assured her as he gripped her hands in his.

“But the flowers, the garden, who will take care of them?” She could hear the hysteria creeping into her voice.

“I will Alice, don’t worry I’ll take care of everything.”

“Don’t leave me here.” She pulled her hands from his and fisted his shirt, desperate to keep hold of him. “Please don’t leave me here.”

“I have to Alice. Everything is going to be fine.” He detached her hands from his shirt and she noticed she’d torn a small hole in it. “You’ll see, this is for the best.” His voice was soothing and calm but Alice felt anything but soothed and calmed.

***

Frank let himself into the house and kicked his shoes off. He walked into the lounge and found a pale skinned boy with black eyes sitting on the sofa. He immediately reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet.

“Here.” He said as he offered the child forty pounds. The boy took the money. “Now get out of here you creepy fuck.” Frank said as he ruffled the boy’s hair affectionately. “Tell your dad to come and have a beer with me later.”

The boy left and Frank rang directory enquiries.

“Yes, I’d like the number of a realtor in the Epsom area.”

By Dayv Metcalfe