Lullaby -- by File

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He peered into the musty room, he’d forgotten how dark it was, how small.

“Hi Mum” he called.

“Andy!” The shrill reply, she came rushing in.

“Andy! Oh!” She fussed and flapped around him, quivering with nervous excitement.

He’d known it was going to be like this, he didn’t mind, he’d been away in the city for over a year now and hadn’t been back in all that time.

“Alright Mum, enough already” he laughed and so did she, her red rimmed eyes glistening, overflowing.

“How are you? What have you been doing? You must tell me everything…tea’s almost ready, there’s a bit of your favourite cheese, your Dad’ll be back in a minute, oh Andy…” she hid her face.

“Oh Mum, give it a rest” he went to hug her this time and when they parted she examined his face and could see now how much he’d changed.

“Are you eating enough Andrew, you look thin.”

Life was hard in the city in those days, you had to keep your head down, you took any scraps you could get and you were grateful for them.

“I’m fine Mum, cheese you say?”

He knew she’d feel better if she was doing something and she pottered about getting everything ready for tea and never let up with a scattershot barrage of wonderings and daintily loaded questions. He stretched out in the warm living room, nestled in the familiarity, only half listening, half just being there.”

*

A little later, he’d turned to see his Dad standing in the passageway, a study in firmness.

“Andrew.” He’d said with a perfunct nod, eyeing him carefully.

“Dad!”

He got up quickly and went over, paused, was it still ok to hug?

There was a moment while they sort of touched each others arms and Mum looked on, her head on one side, smiling, it felt like all the pieces were back in place.

They talked non-stop over tea hardly noticing their fare. As evening settled and the questions had been batted about for long enough their contentment had spilled over into nostalgia. They sat back with their full bellies and reminisced about the time of the floods, Bo the old black cat and when Aunt Beatrice had come to visit.

“Hmm, that old trout” Dad had said with tight lips and Andy and his Mum had shared a complicit glance and restrained chortle.

“Ooh!” said Mum “I’ll never forget that day you came running in here like a bolt out of the blue. That mean old cat was hot on your tail shrieking and spitting. You looked like you’d seen a ghost! Ha ha ha!”

Andy straightened for a second as the sudden memory slapped him hard in the face.

He’d been shocked to the core, he remembered now burying himself into mother’s warmth and shaking for a good while after, but he’d forgotten all of that.

She reached across now and tenderly ruffled his brow.

*

Dad woke up with a snort, he’d been dozing off easily of an evening these days. Mum was shelling peanuts; crik crak, and Andy was lost in thought, humming.

“Orr Oww Eee Oww Eee O” he kept repeating the same slowly lilting bar over and over, trancelike in the dim light.

His Dad cleared his throat a bit “Hgh, what’s that tune you’re singing Andy?”

“It’s your song Dad.” He sang up a little.

“Orr Oww Eee Oww Eee O.”

“It’s nice, but it’s not my song, I don’t know that one.”

“Come on Dad, you sang it to me every night, every night before sleep, I remember you know!”

“Not me, must have been your mother.”

“Not me love, it’s nice though.”

Andy pricked up, starting to furrow between his eyes.

“Oh, very funny ha ha.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about” said his father “I used to go out for a check around after you’d gone to bed…”

The son looked between his Mum and Dad in consternation, jaw slack and wobbling…

“But…bu…then…?”

“Perhaps it was your imaginary friend dear?” suggested his Mum kindly.

“No, Mum it was real. Every night for years, I remember every one… Orr Oww Eee Oww Eee Oooo, just like that, on and on and then it would go all dark and …and…I’d wake up in the morning.”

He was awake now, his head cocked, could he have imagined it, so much of it?

“Hm” said his Dad “Well, I’m gonna check around outside before bed, it’s getting late you know…”

After his Mum had said goodnight he lay awake for a long time in the silence and the dark, counting breaths, remembering. Slowly fatigue spread, soothed him and he started to loosen, to drift….

*

“Eee Ooo Orr ….”

Andy’s eyes snapped open. Darkness.

He blinked and listened furiously till his ears rang.

Nothing.

Eventually he smiled slightly to himself, a wan smile, he turned over keeping his arms in tight.

Very slowly the nothingness seeped back into him, lazily his thoughts began to roam again, to fade, his breathing calmed, his arms relaxed he fell back to still sleep.

“Oww Eee Orr, Eee Oww O” gently phrased melody recycling “Eee Orr Eee”

A carousel turns in the shadows, a ballerina pirouettes alone on stage, an open music box on an old dresser. Spiraling …

“O Oww Eee Orr Eee” simple notes dancing slinking, smoking…

Smoke! He flashed awake again, heart pumping, sniffing keenly. Fire?

Nothing again, but a closer nothing. The walls seemed to be just inches from him, he could feel his reflected breath on his face. This room was too small for him, now oversnug, he’d grown, he’d claimed every corner a long time ago, sucked out all the air.

Hot, but there was no fire, the heat was inside trying to get out. Burnt memories surfacing, something…

And nothing, in spite of the whirling searching it was the lack of anything that kept bringing him back to the sparse bedroom. The pointed silence and the weight of the dark air pressing…

He turned over and over, fretting,

The mustiness here had acrid tones settling on him like floating embers. The black specks making layers on him as he lay, a warm blanket, the still air, heavy air, heaviness pressing him into his bed. Heavy eyes softening the dark, a plume of shadow…

A dark net; hung in slow moving water, black silk dancing sensuously in the corner by the door.

“Eee O Oww Eee”

Part of him could feel the sound as vibrations in the walls.

“Orr Eee O Oww Eee”

Part of him was washing, waving with the undulating whisp.

“O Oww Eee Orr”

He saw a thin green crescent glint on one side.

A blue crescent on the other side split a little. Andy was weightless in mist, blue crescent…

The crescents widened, wings on black holes, two black slits, the softly billowing background, the waves…

Suddenly Andy was wide awake.

The blue, the green, looking at him. Old rotten flesh snagged in sharp white teeth. The low growl that subverted the little room, the dizziness, the stench of intensity …CAT!!!

Eyes almost popping out of his head, nostrils wide straining, an ancient terror dragged barbed claws through Andy’s sinews, his lungs. He tried to breathe and couldn’t, felt the rushing blood in his head. Frozen, looking directly into those evil eyes, looking back at him. The tune still echoed patiently but the growling was growing, seeping, filling…

“Eee O Owww…”

…getting hard to hear, building, throbbing, spreading...

Andy choked and gasped a pocket of air, immediately snapped his body out of bed and into the corner, eyes locked in front of him.

He stayed very still, there was nothing there.

He waited and waited. Then he took the step over and looked all around, under the bed, twice, three times. Nothing again, he was going insane, he’d smelt its breath on his face, tasted it, could still taste it.

After a long time he sat down on the bed with acid burn in his chest like voices from the grave.

He thought around and around it all, he’d remembered that cat from his youth, with the one green eye and the one blue, Bo. But he’d not been seen for years, how did he get in here? Why didn’t he just attack me?

Andy shuddered and twitched and kept a vigil through the rest of the long flat night. He’d heard the song again a couple of times just as he was starting to nod, each time he’d switched on again immediately and it had stopped.

*

Eventually he’d heard his Mum shuffling about getting breakfast ready.

He emerged from his room without a word and went to sit down. He was exhausted pale and still shaking nervously.

“Oh!” his Mum was surprised to see him there; she hadn’t seen him come in.

“Morning dear, did you sleep well?”

Andy opened his mouth but had nothing to say.

“Er..well, let’s get you something to whet your whistle, won’t be a moment.” A little bleary herself she hadn’t noticed her son’s full body bed head, his staring eyes or the twitches.

He sat there drained, let, feeling like a snake skin.

“What ever happened to Bo Mum?”

“Bo? That mean old cat?”

“Mm,”

“Well, he … well the man… that was a long time ago Andy, what made you think of him again? Do you still get those nightmares?”

Andy saw her for the first time that day,

“Nightmares?”

“Oh, when you were very young you used to have the most terrible nightmares about him, don’t you remember? It was just after …well, just after…when he’d been bricked up…” she tailed off.

A shiver cracked down Andy’s spine, something long forgotten, something sharp remembered, something darker.

“I always felt bad about not going in to you, you know, but your father said it was for the best…”

He suddenly felt the air empty around him, the real distance.

Not just now or last night but all those long nights, a trembling shoot before that primal terror. He realized he’d forgotten them, the solitary nights when he’d learned not to hope, abandoned even by memory, till now.

The toll of the legion feverish minutes came crashing back down on him. He slumped.

*

He’d planned on spending another night with his folks but he just couldn’t go through it again and strangely this didn’t feel like home anymore, or not his anyway.

“Are you sure you and Dad will be alright here, Mum?” She’d given him some Cheddar to take back with him, he was taking his time looking around the place.

“Oh we’re fine here Andrew” she beamed, a tear on her cheek “We’ve always felt at home here, like there was a sort of presence, you know?”

He held her in a long blank stare then held her very close for a moment, told her to say bye to Dad for him.

Outside, sitting in the gutter, looking back up at the old house, his long white whiskers fluttering in the breeze, pink tail flat out behind him, he tried to come to terms with it all and couldn’t. He thought he caught a dark shape moving in one of the dark windows, he shivered and quickly averted his gaze. He shook himself briskly and the cool morning dew flew off his mousey fur.

He set his pink nose towards the dirty city and started at a good pace.

It was time to get back to his future, he’d decide later what would happen with his past and as he thought that, he felt an awful sense of déjà vu.


– for George

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