Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 92, No. 3. Whole No. 547, September 1988

Bright Scissors, Sharp As Pain by E. J. Wagner

© 1988 by E. J. Wagner.

“Stop that! Stop that noise!” Alice demanded. “You just be quiet and listen to me. You look old enough to understand this.” The child clutched her ears, but Alice forced the small hands, cold as little stones, down and gripped them...

So intent was Alice, as she unpacked the china — so careful not to let any of the translucent, cream-colored cups slip through her fingers — that she never heard the afternoon school bus arrive, never had a chance to brace herself against the quick shiver of pain and loss she still felt at the sound of children laughing and whooping as they chased each other through fallen leaves vivid as blood.

Don’t listen, she told herself, you don’t have to listen. Just concentrate on what you’re doing. One thing at a time, one day at a time. That was what the therapist who had helped her work through her feelings of agonized guilt had said.

She walked to the sink and began to run lukewarm water into the dishpan so that she could rinse off the fine film of dust that clung to the dishes after the many months in storage. That’s it, she encouraged herself. That’s it. Just one thing at a time. Concentrate on what you’re doing. Then you won’t start to remember, and you won’t start to cry. She thought of calling David, then recalled the still-unconnected phone. Never mind, better to face it through herself. She couldn’t call David every time something reminded her.

She turned on the water a bit harder so that it would drown out the children’s sounds — and so it was through the rush of water that she first heard the knocking at the door. She tried to ignore it, hoping that whoever it was would go away, so that she wouldn’t have to answer, so that she wouldn’t have to talk, but the knocking persisted, and finally she gave in, drying her hands on a towel, walking down the hall with a briskness she didn’t feel.

The visitor was a child, a girl of perhaps eight. She wore a red jacket over a plaid skirt, white kneesocks, and scuffed sneakers. She carried a red bookbag and a metal lunchbox with Snoopy on the lid. The brightness of her outfit was an odd contrast to her pale complexion — her skin so light and faintly tinged with blue it made Alice think of skim milk. She was evidently from the neighborhood, but Alice couldn’t remember having seen her before.

“Yes?” Alice said, trying to keep her tone one of friendly inquiry. “Yes, what may I do for you, young lady?”

A wary, almost sly expression crossed the child’s face. “Hi,” she said. “The bus picked us up late at school and I got cold waiting for it.” She had a dry, whispery little voice that reminded Alice of dead leaves rustling. “I’m so cold.” She looked up and smiled a little, watching Alice’s eyes. “I’m really cold. Can I have some hot cocoa?” The smile grew broader, knowing. “Can I?”

Then she said it, pronouncing the word with deliberation. “Mommy?”

Alice jerked away from the child, trembling with rage and humiliation. How dare they? she thought. How do they dare to do these things?

She expected the child to run now that the tormenting was done, but amazingly the child stood her ground, staring at Alice without a trace of remorse. “Can I have some cocoa?” she repeated, her voice rising to a whine — and she walked past Alice, into the house.

Shocked, Alice stared at her. The kids, the teenagers mostly, who had made her life a misery with their vicious taunts, who had probably put this little one up to this, had never gone so far before. Alice looked out the door for some sign of the instigators, but the street was empty. The other occupants of the school bus had presumably made their way home. A chill wind gusted through the leaves.

Alice knelt so that she could look the child in the face and spoke as calmly as she could, reminding herself that this was a very young child who couldn’t possibly understand the enormous cruelty of the trick she was playing. “Now, look, dear. I know you think this is a funny joke to play, and I’m certain it wasn’t your idea, but what you’re doing makes me very unhappy and I’d like you to stop.” The child’s eyes dropped under Alice’s steady stare. “You really must go home now. I understand you might not want to walk home alone. I’d tell you to call your mom, but our phone isn’t working yet. If you like, we can go next door and make the call from there.”

Alice felt stronger now that she’d been able to keep her voice level. She gently touched the little girl’s hand. The child said, “No, no, no!” And then she screamed — a terrible banshee wail of rage and hate. She threw her bookbag and lunchbox and they skidded on the tile floor. “No!” she screamed. “No!”

“Stop that! Stop that noise!” Alice demanded, shouting now, too. “You listen to me! You just be quiet and listen to me. You look old enough to understand this.” The child clutched her ears, but Alice forced the small hands, cold as little stones, down and gripped them. “You will listen.” Alice’s need to explain was overwhelming. “Before we moved to this house, my husband David and I lived in another house not far away. We had a little girl. She was seven years old, her name was Annie—”

Alice had to stop here to breathe slowly and evenly for a few beats, until she was sure she had the tears under control. When she began again, she spoke as much to herself as to the child.

“We had a swimming pool built in the back yard. No, that’s not true. I had the swimming pool built in the back yard. I did it. It was my idea. My husband thought we should wait until Annie was older, but I persuaded him. I said I would be very careful, that I would watch her and never leave her alone near the pool. When I went back to teaching, we warned the babysitter. We explained that even though Annie could swim, it wasn’t safe to leave her alone near the water. I really tried to be careful.

“One day in the fall — this time of year — just before the pool was covered for the winter, I stayed late at school for a conference. When I got home, there was a crowd in front of our house — and an ambulance and police—”

Alice’s mind always skidded at this point. She could remember getting out of the car and running — running through the open garden gate — and seeing police and paramedics bending over the small form that lay dripping and still by the side of the pool — and the babysitter, Marcy, crying, saying something about leaving Annie just for a minute to go to the bathroom. Alice remembered saying “Please, please — let it be all right, let there be a chance—” and then seeing how very still and pale that limp form was. She remembered running again and falling to her knees on the concrete edge of the pool, smelling the chlorine, and clutching the small hands that felt so cold and heavy and stiff — like little stones — and knowing, and saying, “It’s my fault. It’s my fault.”

The child had grown very quiet listening to Alice. She stood so still that Alice was barely conscious of her. “Afterward, after the accident, I couldn’t work. I cried all the time. I cried at what they called ‘inappropriate’ places. I cried at the library. Once I cried at the supermarket. The kids in the neighborhood used to stare at me. They followed me down the street and made faces behind my back. They yelled “Crazy lady” when they passed the house. There would be phone calls in the middle of the night and someone trying to sound like a little girl would say ‘Mommy — Mommy — I’m so cold!’

“So we sold our house. I wanted to move far away, but we couldn’t — not now, anyway — because of David’s job. But at least this is a different house, with no reminders, and no swimming pool. And I’m trying very hard to get on with things. So you must understand that it’s very wrong of you to listen to the other children and play this trick on me, and that you really must go home now.”

Alice stood up as she said this, and grasped the child’s shoulder, bony and cold even through the red jacket, and tried to turn her toward the door. The little girl shook her head rapidly from side to side. Her colorless lips were pressed tightly together. Suddenly she wrenched free of Alice’s grasp and ran down the hallway, her sneakered feet soundless.

“Come back here!” Alice cried, stung to fury. “I want you out of my house!” She ran wildly after the child, no longer caring if she was being responsible or logical or controlled. “I want you out of here, you little devil!”

The child careened down the hall with Alice after her, stopped for an instant when she reached the door of the laundry room, then tore it open and raced inside. Alice grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her violently. “Little devil!”

The child’s face was contorted, as twisted as a gargoyle’s. “Get away from me!” she shrilled. “Get away from me!” She pulled free and swooped around like a trapped bird, waving her arms in frantic arcs. She knocked the laundry basket full of clothes off the top of the washer. Treading on the spilled wash, stomping on it, she flung a bottle of detergent against the wall, where it broke and bled its contents over the scattered shirts and towels. “Get away from me!” she screamed. “Get away, get away, get away!” Mucous streamed from her nose.

It occurred to Alice that the child was crazed, and really not capable of understanding. She reached out to touch her. Then, appalled, she froze. Clenched in the child’s fist were the wickedly sharp scissors from the mending basket. “Get away, get away, get away!”

Alice, her eyes riveted on the gleaming blades, backed slowly out of the laundry room, then with a desperate quickness she slammed the door shut and held it closed with all her strength against the child’s shrill cry of frustrated rage. She felt the pounding on the door, the sharp rap of the scissors, and, feeling real fear now, so intense it cancelled the anger, Alice held on.

After a while — she didn’t know how long exactly, ten minutes or so — the screams subsided, the pounding stopped, and a low, choked sobbing began.

Alice moved very quietly. Holding the doorknob tightly, she stretched her foot out toward the low chest filled with garden tools that stood in the hall and slowly slid it in front of the laundry-room door. It was reasonably heavy. She lowered herself onto the chest very quietly — somehow it seemed very important not to allow the girl to know what she was doing — and leaned against the door. The sobbing had grown quieter.

Alice was sure of one thing. Whatever motivated the child, Alice was terrified of letting her out of the room. She didn’t dare risk getting up to allow the weight of the chest alone to keep the door shut. So there was no way to get down the hall and out the door and over to a neighbor’s phone. The child might push her way out and hide somewhere in the house, those bright scissors, sharp as pain, glittering in her small cold hand. Alice knew she must sit on the chest, and control her nerves, and wait for David to come home.

It was two hours before she heard his car in the driveway. Her legs were stiff and her back, pressed against the door, ached. The child had grown completely silent. Alice strained to hear her, but there was no sound at all. Alice thought she must have fallen asleep. It seemed very cold. Perhaps the window in the laundry room was slightly open. There was a strong draft coming from under the door.

She heard David call a greeting from the front door. Afraid to waken the child, she remained silent. She saw David’s square, solid figure at the end of the hall. She held her fingers to her lips in a quieting gesture, and very carefully, slipping off her shoes, she crept on stocking feet toward him. Throwing her arms about his neck, her mouth against his ear, she whispered the story.

“Oh, my God,” he said, “what a terrible thing to go through. Alice, don’t be so frightened. You did just fine. Go upstairs. I’ll take care of it.” He gently pushed her toward the stairs and started down the hall toward the door with the chest in front of it.

A wave of terror overcame Alice, watching him. She felt a sudden, intense conviction that if he opened that door something terrible would happen, that things would never be the same again, that the child behind the door, now so strangely silent, had somehow become huge and monstrously powerful. She raced after him, grabbed his arm, and hissed her panic at him.

“Alice, Alice — it’s only a child. You said it was a child. Go upstairs and let me handle this.”

Alice watched him bend over and grasp the chest and slide it out of the way. She was shaking with fear, but unable to move from the spot. She thought of those little cold hands, the bright blades, of jagged bloody wounds in vulnerable flesh. “David, please don’t open the door! Please don’t let her out!” she begged, knowing that he would do it anyway — that she couldn’t stop him — that once he did, the dreadful unnameable thing would happen — that she was watching him in this hallway for the last time, before things changed forever.

When he reached for the doorknob, she covered her face with her hands so that she wouldn’t see. She heard the door creak open, a silence, then a child’s wild weeping, and David’s voice, steady and reassuring, saying, “It’s all right, darling, it’s all right. It’s all right. Don’t cry. I’ll call the doctor. He’ll come and help Mommy get better. Like he did the last time.”