Cuckoo Song

Chapter 8. THE MIDNIGHT POST

When Pen appeared at the head of the stairs, Triss could not prevent a small smile from creeping across her face. The younger girl looked thunderous and disappointed at seeing Triss standing there in the hall. Perhaps she had really thought that the doctor would instantly order Triss to be taken away in a straitjacket, leaving their father to return home alone.

Pen’s first words reflected nothing of this, however.

‘Where’s Violet?’ she demanded. ‘That was Violet outside, wasn’t it?’

‘Hush, Pen,’ her mother answered firmly. ‘It was, and she’s gone, I’m glad to say.’

‘Why didn’t she come in?’

Pen’s question was not dignified with a response, so the younger girl stamped off down the landing again. This was one of Pen’s many small acts of rebellion, an occasional perverse insistence that she liked Violet. Triss was fairly sure Pen only said it to shock, just as when she claimed to have drunk gin or seen a dead body.

‘Really,’ muttered their mother, ‘that child.’ She trailed her fingertips lightly over her temples. ‘Sometimes I just cannot…’ She did not say what she ‘could not’, but there was a tone of utter weariness in her voice.

Triss had hoped that her cake frenzy would dull the edge of her appetite, but as the smell of dinner reached her nose she was again swept up by dizzying waves of hunger. A pleasant surprise awaited her, however.

‘Dr Mellow says that you’ve lost some weight, so we should let you eat as much as you like for now,’ her mother told her, heaping Triss’s plate with steak-and-kidney pie. Pen glared poison over her more meagre serving, but Triss had no thought to spare for her. She wanted to weep with relief, and mentally sent a hundred thanks to Dr Mellow. For a while she was incapable of thought, so utterly submerged was she in the joyous, helpless, compulsive task of eating. Pie, potatoes, mashed parsnips, buttered peas, bread and butter, fruit, jam sponge, tinned pears, bananas, preserved cherries…

Only gradually did the bliss of it start to develop a bitter edge. There was something dreamlike about it, a continual ritual of disappointment. It seemed to her that every time she reached for a serving bowl she found it empty. She was vaguely aware that full plates were being brought in to replace these, but they were not brought fast enough, and eventually she awoke to the dull, horrified realization that the arrival of loaded dishes had trickled to a halt.

She stared at all the empty plates before her, breathing heavily. What was wrong? Why had they stopped bringing more food? She looked around, aware for the first time that all sounds of dining had ceased around the table, that the rest of her family was mutely observing her as she scraped at each bowl for crumbs or traces of sauce.

‘That’s enough, Triss,’ her mother said gently, with the tiniest touch of panic in her voice. ‘That must be enough.’

Enough? Triss could barely understand the word. She might as well have been asked whether she had had ‘enough’ air, and was ready to stop breathing.

‘But I’m still hungry!’ she exclaimed. There was nothing in her head except need, and it made her angry, terrified and childish. ‘You said I could eat as much as I liked! I’m still hungry!’ Her voice was louder than she intended, but why not? She was desperate. And they had promised her all the dinner she wanted! If they loved her, why was there not more food?

‘Darling,’ her mother said, gently and shakily, ‘you’ve eaten half the pantry. Now, unless you want to eat dry oats or flour…’

‘Oats – I could have porridge! Porridge!’

‘No!’ snapped her mother, then closed her eyes and smoothed her own hair. ‘No,’ she added more gently. ‘That… That really is enough, Triss.’

‘You promised!’ The yell tore its way out of Triss as she jumped to her feet. ‘You promised I could have as much as I wanted!’ She felt impossibly angry, as if she had been tricked into giving full rein to her appetite. Her plate was gripped tightly in her hands, and it seemed possible that she might smash it on the table, watch its little blue-white Chinese scene shatter into bits. Why were her parents starving her? What was wrong with them?

‘Triss!’ It was her father’s voice, and it was sharp enough to penetrate the fury and desperation that had enveloped her. It was not a tone he had ever used towards her before, and it stung her to the quick.

She became abruptly aware of herself, standing by an overturned chair, gripping a plate, white-knuckled. Her mother had one hand raised protectively to her throat, a sign that she was particularly nervous or shocked. Pen was struggling to keep a look of mock shock on her face, her eyes alive with glee, fascination and triumph.

The plate rattled as Triss hastily set it back on the table. Her mouth was too dry to form words. She mutely fled the dining room.

Back in her room, Triss lay on her bed, curled into a ball.

When a knock sounded, she raised her head, but could not face opening the door.

‘Triss?’ It was her father’s voice. It was gentler than before, but Triss did not want to see his face, in case it wore some of the hardness and disappointment she often saw when he looked at Pen.

‘I’m… I’m sorry,’ she croaked.

The door opened. Her father entered, and his face was not hard. It was tired and sad, which made Triss feel even worse.

‘That sort of behaviour was not something I expected from my Triss,’ he said softly. ‘My Triss is a sweet, quiet, well-behaved girl. She doesn’t stamp and scream at the dinner table.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ whispered Triss. ‘I couldn’t…’ I couldn’t help it, I think I went a bit mad, I felt like you were starving me and I was going to die, I felt like you hated me and I hated you. ‘I think I might be… running a bit of a temperature.’ It was the easy lie, the much-stamped passport to forgiveness, and Triss felt sick as she heard herself say the words.

‘Yes.’ Some of the sober tension went out of her father’s posture, and he came over to sit next to her on the bed. ‘Yes, that’s probably it. I did think you looked a bit flushed when we left the dressmakers’.’ He touched the back of his hand to her forehead, and seemed satisfied. ‘It has been a long day, hasn’t it? Lots of shocks too.’

He put an arm around her and she threw both of hers around him, clinging on as if otherwise she might drown, her face buried in his waistcoat.

Help me help me help me…

‘What you need,’ her father said at last, ‘is an early night. You’ll feel a lot better after a good, long rest.’

He gave her a brief squeeze and stood up, pausing to gaze fondly down at her. Triss managed to force a smile and nod.

The door closed behind him, and Triss was alone and at the mercy of her thoughts.

Pen had told Triss that she was doing everything a little bit wrong. It’s true, she reflected, I am doing everything wrong. I lied to the doctor when he tried to help me, and it didn’t even do any good – if I keep screaming at everybody, they’re going to decide I’m crazy anyway.

So what can I do? I have to get better without the doctor’s help. I have to get better really quickly before they realize just how sick I am. I can’t go on like this.

She had to get well. Perhaps it was all a matter of willpower. Perhaps she could force herself not to eat everything in the house. Maybe she could make herself stop seeing strange things that could not exist.

Perhaps when Angelina had started screaming, she should just have ignored it and carried on packing. Perhaps if she had stared down the shifting shop mannequins instead of running away, they would have returned to being decently inanimate again. Perhaps the dolls in her room had not really been moving in her peripheral vision…

Her eye strayed towards the wardrobe where she had hastily bundled all her dolls, and she sat irresolute, chewing her lip.

They won’t move, she told herself, as she edged gingerly towards the door. And even if they do, I’ll know it’s not real. I’ll just stare at them and stare at them until they go back to being normal.

When she opened the wardrobe door, the lumpy pillowcase bundle within showed a reassuring disinclination to writhe or struggle. With her foot, Triss nudged it on to its side, stepping back quickly. As it slouched and fell open, a single doll felt out of the opening. It was a china half-doll with a glazed pompadour hairstyle, narrow-waisted blue dress and a pincushion where its lower body should be.

Very slowly and deliberately, Triss crouched beside the bundle and picked up the doll. The pincushion was just small enough to fit into her splayed hand, the china head, neck and torso four inches tall altogether. The doll had its eyes lowered so that they looked shut, and its delicate little hands rested on its lace neckline and the rose on its bodice, as if it was adjusting its dress.

You’re just a doll. You’re just a doll. You’re just a…

The first movement was very slight. A tiny hand, delicate as a minnow fin, shifted its position on the porcelain lace. Slowly, stealthily, it reached out towards Triss’s encircling hand, and Triss felt tiny, cold fingertips grate lightly down the fine grain of her thumb pad. It did not turn its head. Its eyes were closed and it moved its hands like a blind thing, searchingly.

It took all of Triss’s willpower not to hurl it away. There was a horror in the idea of it smashing, however, the elegant neck snapping like a celery stick. Her hand shook, but she tried to focus all her attention on the idea that what she was seeing was not real.

At last the small, questing fingers nudged against one of the pins in the pincushion and closed around the white glass bobble of its head. Before Triss could react, it grasped the pin with both hands, tweaked it out of the cushion and drove it into the flesh of Triss’s thumb.

‘Ow!’ Triss jerked her hand, but managed not to drop the doll. It’s not real, she tried to tell herself, even as a bead of blood began to swell from the tiny puncture. This pain can’t be real, it can’t. A moment later she was suffering more unreal pain, as the half-doll raised the pin high and drove it into Triss’s thumb again. ‘Ow – stop it!’

In spite of all her resolutions, Triss found herself using her free hand to tweak the pin from her tiny attacker’s grasp. I shouldn’t have done that, it isn’t real, it isn’t real. But mind over matter had seemed much easier when the matter was not actually stabbing her.

Triss became aware that the half-doll was making a faint musical rattling noise, like the sound of cups tottering on saucers. Its jaw was moving rapidly up and down, but she could not tell whether it was cackling, gnashing its teeth or trying to talk. Its hands were now stroking over the surface of the pincushion, in search of another weapon.

‘Stop it!’ hissed Triss. She shook the doll, and her blood ran cold at the way its big-wigged head wobbled forwards and backwards. ‘Stop it, or…’ A flood of panic filled her, and with it the tide of hunger that had been driven back but not defeated. ‘Stop it, or I’ll… eat you!’

The little doll’s voice increased to a crockery snarl. A black well of terror swallowed Triss. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth wide, then wider.

The china slid over her tongue like ice cream. The pincushion was harder, and for an alarming moment it lodged in her mouth, filling it, the saggy velvet stale-tasting and dusty. Then Triss did something that sent a shiver through her throat, and next moment she was swallowing the cushion down. For a second or two she could feel the cold knobbly sensation of the pinheads grazing her insides as they travelled downward.

Afterwards Triss sat for a long minute, staring down at her empty hands.

I can’t have done that.

Coming to her senses, she slammed the wardrobe door with trembling hands. Then she rose unsteadily, walked over to her dresser and dropped into her chair. Staring into the mirror, she opened her mouth as wide as she could, closed it again, opened it, closed it.

Seeing dolls move was crazy. Swallowing dolls whole was impossible. There was no way that she could have opened her mouth wide enough to fit the entire doll inside it, let alone force it down her gullet. She watched her face in the reflection crumple with confusion, fear and misery, but tears did not come.

It was only slowly that she realized that the howling quicksand in her stomach was now silent. For now, she was no longer hungry.

Hours passed, and at last Triss admitted to herself that there was no hope of sleeping. She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, while her thoughts traced out dark kaleidoscope patterns across it. I’m ill, I’m mad, I’m horrible, I have to get better.

What had the doctor said? Remembering his words, Triss felt a tiny sting of hope. What if he was right, and her illness was just caused by a memory that she had swallowed like a marble? What if all the strangeness really was just a ‘tummy ache of the mind’? What if she could get better just by remembering whatever it was that she had forgotten?

If so, then the ‘swallowed’ memory must be of the day that she had lost, the day she had fallen into the Grimmer. Before that day, everything had been normal, she was almost sure of it – no strange hallucinations, no terrible hunger. Triss focused all her energy on trying to remember the missing day, but in vain. She sat up and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyelids until red flowers starting exploding against the blackness. She tried to recapture the sense of certainty and imminent recollection that she had felt on the nocturnal banks of the Grimmer, the memory of icy cloudy water, but to no avail.

Triss knew next to nothing about the mysterious ‘he’ whom her parents had discussed, but she did know one thing. He had sent dozens of letters to the family, all of which had somehow found their way into the desk drawer in Sebastian’s room.

As quietly as possible, Triss rose from her bed. After taking a pair of tweezers from her dresser, she eased open her bedroom door and listened hard.

Houses breathe in their sleep as people do, and the only noises in the silence were such soft ticks and settling creaks. The rest of the family had long since gone to bed, and Triss could hear no sounds of movement from their rooms. There was nobody else in the house except Cook, whose room was down in the basement. Usually the Crescents’ governess would have a room near the family, but at the moment there was no governess.

Triss padded carefully across the landing, alert for any sound from the other rooms, any mattress creaks or waking murmurs. Sebastian’s door opened smoothly, and once again Triss crept into the forbidden room.

She did not dare light the gas, but her eyes had adjusted somewhat to the dark and she made her way to the desk without bumping into anything. Dropping to her knees, she ran her fingers over the front faces of the drawers, their ornate metal handles cold to the touch. Yes, it was this one, and she knew it was full to bursting with letters, so many that some had been visible through the crack at the top of the drawer.

She found that her tweezers fitted through the gap only if she turned them sideways. Trying to grab the corner of an envelope by touch alone proved difficult and frustrating. Time and again she felt her tweezers tentatively grip a papery edge, only to slide off it again.

While she was busy with this, she heard the faint, tinny, self-important sound of the mantel clock downstairs counting out twelve chimes. The last note faded, but it seemed to Triss that it continued to hum out into the silence, as a tickle in the ear.

It was while this silent note was still hanging that Triss heard another sound out in the corridor. She acted reflexively, scooting on all fours back to her previous hiding place under the bed and rolling under it. Only when she was hunched behind the fringe of coverlet did she realize that the sound beyond the door was not a footstep at all.

It was a dry, wispy flutter-tap, like the noise a dying fly makes against a window, but louder. It drew closer and closer, until Triss was certain that whatever made it must be right outside the door and braced herself for the handle to rattle or turn. It remained motionless, however. Instead the stealthy sound abruptly became much clearer. The door had not opened, but the unseen intruder was no longer out on the landing. It was in the room with Triss.

Peering from beneath the hanging counterpane, Triss caught glimpses of the intruder, enough to be sure that it was definitely an ‘it’ and not a ‘he’ or a ‘she’. It flitted in heavy, clumsy arcs around the room, grazing the walls with what she thought might be wings, bumping gently against furniture, halting now and then to perch.

The creature was hard to see, and not just because of the dark. Whenever it paused for a moment and she was able to stare at it directly, it seemed to melt away before her vision. When it flitted to and fro, however, it left dark, fleeting streaks across her sight.

At last it came to rest on the handle of the drawer full of letters, and Triss heard a papery rustling. From nowhere the creature produced a slim, pale oblong. As Triss squinted, the duskily unseeable something leaned back and smoothly slid the envelope in through the crack at the top of the drawer to join the other letters.

It glanced around itself once, and Triss thought she glimpsed a tiny pallid face, no bigger than an egg, with sparks for eyes. Then there was a roar of air and rapid flapping, like a flag in the wind, and it was gone.

Long after the sound of its wings had faded, Triss lay still, carpet rough against her chin. She was seeing the impossible again. But somehow, alone at midnight in her dead brother’s darkened room, the impossible was easier to handle.

Mouth dry, she crept back to the desk. One corner of the latest delivery was just visible, jutting out of the crack. She pulled it out using the tweezers, then scurried back to her own room, where she ripped it open and pulled out the letter. It bore the date of that very day, and the handwriting was achingly familiar.