Before You Sleep Page 3

  I couldn’t bear to look behind and see another one close up, so I snatched at the board and I pulled with all my strength at the bit not nailed down. The whole thing bent and made a gap. Sideways, I squeezed a leg, hip, arm and a shoulder out. My head was suddenly bathed in warm sunlight and fresh air.

  One of them must have reached out right then, and grabbed my left arm under the shoulder at the moment I had made it outside. The fingers and thumb were so cold that they burned my skin. And even though my face was in daylight, everything went dark in my eyes except for the little white flashes that you get when you stand up too fast.

  I wanted to be sick. I tried to pull away, but one side of my body was all slow and heavy and full of pins and needles. I let go of the hardboard sheet and it slapped shut like a mouse trap. Behind my head, I heard a sound like celery snapping and something shrieked into my ear, which made me go deafish for a week.

  Sitting down in the grass outside, I was sick down my jumper. Mucus and bits of spaghetti hoops that looked all white and smelled real bad. I looked back at the place that I had climbed through and my bleary eyes saw an arm that was mostly bone, stuck between the wood and door-frame. I made myself roll away and then get to my knees on the grass that was flattened down.

  Moving around the outside of the house, back toward the front of the building and the path that would take me down to the gate, I wondered if I’d bashed my left side. The shoulder and hip had stopped tingling but were achy and cold and stiff. I found it hard to move and wondered if that was what broken bones felt like. My skin was wet with sweat too, and I was shivery and cold. I just wanted to lie down in the long grass. Twice I stopped to be sick. Only spit came out with burping sounds.

  Near the front of the house, I got down on my good side and I started to crawl, real slow, through the long grass, down the hill, making sure that the path was on my left, so that I didn’t get lost in the meadow. I only took one look back at the house and will wish for ever that I never did.

  One side of the front door was still open from where we went in. And I could see a crowd in the doorway, all bustling in the sunlight that fell on their raggedy clothes. They were making a hooting sound and fighting over something; a small shape that looked dark and wet. It was all limp too and between the thin, snatching hands it came apart, piece by piece.

  In my room, at the end of my bed, Nana Alice has closed her eyes. But she’s not sleeping. She’s just sitting quietly and rubbing her doll hand like she’s polishing treasure.

  The Ancestors

  It never stops raining at the new house. When you are upstairs it sounds like hundreds of pebbles thrown by as many little hands onto the pointy roof. We can’t go outside to play so we stay indoors and amuse ourselves with the toys. They belong to Maho, but she is happy to share them with me. My parents never knew about Maho, but she is my best friend and she lives in the house too. Maho has been here a long time.

  When Mama used to come upstairs to put clean clothes in my drawers, or Papa knocked on the door to tell me that dinner was ready, Maho would hide and wait in my room until I could play with the toys again. Maho sleeps in my bed too, every night. I wish I had hair like her. Maho’s hair is long and silky. When she puts her arms around me and hugs me, I am covered by her hair. Tucking itself under my arms and winding around my neck, her hair is so warm that I never need the blankets on my bed. I think her hair feels like black fur too, and like big curtains she pulls her hair across her face so all that I can see is her little square teeth. ‘How can you see through your hair, Maho?’ I once asked her. ‘It looks so funny.’ She just giggled. And with their teeny fingers the toys like to touch her hair too. They stand and sway on the bed and stroke it.

  In the daytimes the toys never do much, but we still go looking for them in the empty rooms and in the secret places that Mama and Papa never knew about. When we find a toy sitting upright in a corner, or standing still after stopping dancing on those tiny fast feet, we talk to them. The toys just listen. They can hear everything you say. Sometimes they smile.

  But at night the toys do most of the playing. They always have things to show us. New tricks and dances all around the bed. I’ll be fast asleep but their little hard fingers will touch my face. Cold breath will brush my ears as they say, ‘Hello. Hello,’ until I wake up. At first I was scared of the tiny figures on the bed, all climbing and tugging at the sheets, and I would run and get into bed with Mama and Papa. But Maho told me that the toys just want to be my friends and play. Maho says you don’t need a mama and papa when you have so many friends and I guess she is right. Parents don’t understand. Most of the time they think about other things. That’s why they weren’t needed for the playing.

  Maho told me that when the other children who lived here grew up and left the house all of their toys stayed behind. And it’s an old house so there are lots of toys. Maho never left either. She never left her friends. Like I did when we moved out here. I told Maho my parents made me move. ‘See,’ she said. ‘Parents don’t understand about friends. About how much we love our friends, and how special secret places are to us. You can’t just leave them because papas get new jobs or are sick. It’s not fair. Who says things have to change and you have to go to new places when you’re happy where you are?’

  I didn’t want to move here and I was scared of the new school. But since I made friends with Maho and the toys it isn’t so bad. I like it here now and I will never go to that school. Maho knows a way around that. She’ll show me soon and the toys will help.

  There are so many toys. We find them everywhere: beneath the stairs and under the beds, in the bottom of trunks and behind the doors, up in the attic and looking through holes. You never know where they’re going to show up. Most of the time you have to wait for them to come to you. And sometimes you can only hear them moving about. Mama thought we had mice in the house and Papa put traps down. Maho was angry when she showed me the traps in the kitchen and in the cellar. Toys don’t eat coloured seeds, she said, pointing at the blue poisonous oats, but sometimes they dance too close to the snapping traps. Twice we had to rescue them before the morning. A dolly with a china face got one of her long arms stuck in a trap in the pantry. She was squealing and the thin arm covered in black hair had snapped. When we freed her, Maho picked her up and kissed her cold face. When she put the dolly down the dolly ran behind some bottles and we didn’t see her again for three nights. Then the old thing with the black face and whitish beard got his pinky tail all smashed in the trap by the mop and dustpan in the cellar. When we let him loose, he showed us teeth as thin as needles and then he crawled away.

  Three nights back, when Mama and Papa were supposed to be sleeping, I know Papa saw a toy. There were plenty of them out that night, skipping mostly. The first of them came out of the fireplace. ‘Hello,’ a little voice said to me. I was only dozing because I was too excited about the playing, so I wound Maho’s silky hair off my face – it goes in my ears and up my nose too – and I sat up in bed. ‘Hello,’ I said to the little thing down on the rug. They don’t like lights, so you only see them properly when they get real close, but even in the shadows I knew I’d seen this one before. He was the one with the top hat and little suit. His shirt is white, but his face is all red and his eyes are black and shiny like marbles. He went round and round in a circle on skipping feet and in the room I could smell sneezes and old clothes. But Maho’s right: you get used to the smell of the toys.

  She sat up beside me and said, ‘Hello.’

  The toy stopped his dancing and said, ‘Hello.’

  Then we heard the drum, but we couldn’t see the musician. He was in the room with us. Under the bed, I think, and playing his leather drum. He shines like the brown shoes that I once saw made from alligator and he creaks like old gloves when he moves. As usual, when he played the drum, the clown in the dirty blue and white pyjamas came out to dance also. All around the bed he went with his shabby arms thrown
up towards the ceiling and his head flopping back. His mouth is all stitched up and his eyes are white and bobble on his cloth face.

  I leaned over the bed to get a better look.

  ‘Best not to touch him,’ Maho whispered into my ear and her coldish breath made me shiver inside. ‘He’s very old. He once belonged to a boy whom he loved very much, but he was taken away from the boy by parents. So he climbed inside the boy’s mouth to fix the broken heart.’

  I wanted to ask what happened to the boy, but Maho turned her head to the door so that I couldn’t see her face. ‘Your papa is coming.’ But I couldn’t hear a thing. I looked at her and frowned. ‘Listen,’ she said, and she took hold of my hands. Then I heard a floorboard moan. Papa was outside in the hallway, going to the toilet. Papa was not well at that time. That’s why we came here, so that he could rest his head. He never slept very much at night and we had to be careful when we played with the toys. ‘Some toys are out there,’ Maho whispered. ‘He might see them again.’ She was smiling through her hair when she said this, but I didn’t know why.

  The man with the top hat skipped back inside the chimney. Under the bed the drumming stopped.

  The next morning my family sat at the kitchen table. We never ate in the dining room because Mama couldn’t get rid of the smell. She tried to find cheerful music on the radio, but it sounded all fuzzy so she turned it off. Her mouth was very tight so I knew she was angry and worried too. She gave up on the radio and pointed at my bowl. ‘Eat up, Yuki,’ she said, then looked at the window. Rain smacked against the glass. Watching the water run down made me feel all cold inside.

  Papa said nothing. He just looked at the table next to his bowl. His eyes were red and his chin was bristly. When he kissed me that morning I shouted out for him to stop. All night I’d been wrapped in soft black hair and his chin felt like it was covered in pins. And he still wasn’t looking any better, even though he didn’t have to go to work any more.

  ‘Taichi,’ Mama said. She was upset with him. Slowly, Papa lifted his head and looked at her.

  ‘Eat or it will go cold,’ Mama had said. She had fried the rice with eggs the way that he liked, with salmon on top that gets warm from the steam. Papa tried to smile but he was just too tired. He looked at me instead. ‘Finished?’ he asked.

  As my spoon clunked in the empty bowl his eyelids flickered. I nodded.

  ‘You can go.’

  I climbed down from my chair and ran into the hall.

  ‘Sit still for a while,’ Mama cried out. ‘Or you’ll be sick.’

  I walked down the hall, then took my shoes off and sneaked back to the kitchen door that Mama closed behind me. My parents wanted to talk. First thing in the morning they would talk to each other, but they would stay in different rooms for the rest of the day. Papa would mostly sit in a chair and stare at nothing, while Mama kept busy with washing and cooking and cleaning. One day she was crying in the kitchen by the cookbooks, which made me cry too. She stopped when she saw me and said that she was ‘just being silly’. But at night I often heard Mama shouting at Papa. When this happened Maho always held me tighter and put her silky hair over my ears until I fell asleep.

  ‘What is it? Tell me, Taichi. I can’t help if you don’t tell me,’ Mama said in the kitchen that morning, and in a voice that was quiet but also sharp enough for me to hear through the door.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘It can’t be nothing. You haven’t slept again.’

  ‘It’s nothing. When it stops raining I’ll go out.’

  A bowl hit the side of the sink. Mama then had a voice full of tears. ‘I can’t stand this any more. This isn’t working. It’s making you worse.’

  ‘Mai, please. I can’t . . . I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you would think I’m crazy.’

  ‘Crazy? You’re making yourself crazy. You’re making me crazy. This was a mistake. I knew it.’

  ‘Maybe. The house . . . I don’t know.’

  A chair scraped against the floor. Mama must have sat down. Her voice went soft and I guessed that she was holding his hand.

  ‘Yuki.’ It was Maho calling me. Standing at the top of the stairs, she waved at me to join her. Because I wanted to hear what Papa was saying, I smiled at her but put a finger against my lips. Maho shook her head and her hair moved across her face to cover all of the white bits. ‘No. Come and play,’ she said. But I turned my head back to the kitchen because Papa was talking again.

  ‘I saw something again.’

  ‘What, Taichi? What did you see?’

  His voice was all shaky. ‘I have to go to the doctor again. I’m going crazy.’

  ‘What? What did you see?’ Mama’s voice was going high and I could tell that she was trying not to cry again.

  ‘I . . . I went to the toilet. Last night. And it was there again.’

  ‘What, Taichi? What?’

  ‘Sitting on the window sill. I told myself that I was still dreaming. I stopped and I closed my eyes and made sure that I was awake. Look at the bruise on my arm where I pinched myself. Then I opened my eyes and it was still there. So I pretended that it wasn’t. That it was just a bad dream. I ignored it. But when I came out of the bathroom, it was still just sitting there. Watching me.’ In the kitchen they stopped talking, and all I could hear was the rain. Thousands of little drops hitting the wood and tiles and glass all around us.

  ‘You were dreaming,’ Mama said after a while. ‘It’s the medicine, Taichi. The side-effects.’

  ‘No. I stopped taking the medicine.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just for a while to see if they would go.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Yuki. Yuki. Come and play. Come,’ Maho whispered from behind me. She was coming down the stairs on silent feet.

  ‘I don’t know,’ My Papa said. ‘A little thing . . . with long legs that hang over the window sill. And its face, Mai. I can’t sleep after I see its face.’

  ‘Yuki, look what I found. In a cupboard. Come and see,’ Maho said from behind me and reached out to take my hand. When I turned around to tell her to be quiet, I saw that her dolly eyes were wet. So I went up the stairs with her. I can’t stand to see Maho cry. ‘What’s wrong, Maho? Please don’t be sad.’

  She led me into the empty room upstairs, at the end of the hall, and we sat on the wooden floor. In there it’s always cold. There is only one window. Water ran down the outside and made the trees in the garden all blurry. Maho’s head was bowed. Her hair fell over her white gown all the way down to her lap. We held hands. ‘Why are you crying, Maho?’

  ‘Your papa.’

  ‘He’s sick, Maho. But he’ll get better. He told me.’

  She shook her head, then lifted it. Tears ran down from the one wet eye that I could see through her hair. ‘Your mama and papa want to leave. And I don’t want you to go. Not ever.’

  ‘I’ll never leave you, Maho.’ Now she was making me sad and I could taste the sea at the back of my throat.

  She sniffed inside her hair. The rain was very loud on the roof and it sounded like it was raining inside the room. ‘You promise?’ she said.

  I nodded. ‘I promise. You are my best friend, Maho.’

  ‘Your parents don’t understand the toys.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘They just want to play. Your papa should sleep and let them play. If he finds out about me and the toys then he will take you away from us.’

  ‘No. Never.’ We hugged each other and Maho told me she loved me, and told me that the toys loved me. I kissed her silky hair and against my lips I felt her cold ear.

  Downstairs, I heard the kitchen door open and then close. Maho took her arms away and uncurled her hair from around my neck. ‘Your mama wants you.’ Tears were still running down her white face.

  She was ri
ght because I heard feet coming up the stairs. ‘Yuki?’ Mama called out. ‘Yuki?’

  ‘I have to go,’ I told Maho and stood up. ‘I’ll come right back and we can play.’

  She didn’t answer me. Her head was bowed so that I couldn’t see her face.

  ‘Yuki, what would you say if I told you we might be moving? Going back to the city?’ Mama looked at me, smiling. She thought this news would make me happy, but I couldn’t stop my face feeling all long and heavy. Mama was sitting on the floor next to me in the cold room where she found me. Even though Maho had hidden I knew that she was still listening. ‘Wouldn’t you like that?’ Mama asked me, ‘You’ll see all of your friends again. And go to the same school.’ She looked surprised that I was not smiling. ‘What is wrong, Yuki?’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  She frowned. ‘But you were so upset when we moved here.’

  ‘But I like it now.’

  ‘You’re all alone. You need your friends, my darling. Don’t you want to play with Sachi and Hiro again?’

  I shook my head. ‘I can play here. I like it.’

  ‘On your own in this big house? With all this rain? You are being silly, Yuki.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘You will get tired of this. You can’t even go outside and use the swing.’

  ‘I don’t want to go outside.’

  She looked at the floor. Her fingers were very white and thin where they held my arms. Mama sniffed back her tears before they could come out. She put the back of one hand to her eyes and I heard her swallow. ‘Come out of here. It’s dirty.’

  I was going to say, I like it in here, but I knew that she would get angry if I said that. So I stayed quiet and followed her to the door. In the corner, in the shadow, I saw a bit of Maho’s white face as she watched us leave. And above us, in the attic, little feet suddenly went pattering. Mama looked up, then hurried me out of the room and closed the door.