A siren wakened him – an ambulance. The pair of notes might have been crying “Davy” through the streets. He wondered if an ambulance had carried off his grandmother. The braying faded into the distance, leaving silence except for the wind. His mother and his grandfather must be in their beds, unless they had decided David was sufficiently grown-up to be left by himself in the house. He hoped not, because the wind sounded like a loose voice repeating his name. The noises on the stairs might be doing so as well, except that they were shuffling footsteps or, as he was able to make out before long, rather less than footsteps. Another sound was approaching. It was indeed a version of his name, pronounced by an exhalation that was just about a voice, by no means entirely like his grandmother’s but too much so. It and the slow determined unformed paces halted outside his room.
He couldn’t cry out for his mother, not because he wouldn’t be a man but for fear of drawing attention to himself. He was offstage, he tried to think. He only had to listen, he needn’t see more than the lurid light that flared across the carpet. Then his visitor set about opening the door.
It made a good deal of locating the doorknob, and attempting to take hold of it, and fumbling to turn it, so that David had far more time than he wanted to imagine what was there. If his grandmother had gone away, had whatever remained come to find him? Was something of her still inside her to move it, or was that a worm? The door shuddered and edged open, admitting a grotesquely festive glow, and David tried to shut his eyes. But he was even more afraid not to see the shape that floundered into the room.
He saw at once that she’d become what she was afraid of. She was draped with a necklace of fairy lights, and two guttering bulbs had taken the place of her eyes. Dim green light spilled like slimy water down her cheeks. She wore a long white dress, if the vague pale mass wasn’t part of her, for her face looked inflated to hollowness, close to bursting. Perhaps that was why her mouth was stretched so wide, but her grin was terrified. He had a sudden dreadful thought that both she and the worm were inside the shape.
It blundered forward and then fell against the door. Either it had very little control of its movements or it intended to trap him in the room. It lurched at him as if it was as helpless as he was, and David sprawled out of bed. He grabbed one of his shoes from the floor and hurled it at the swollen flickering mass. It was only a doll, he thought, because the grin didn’t falter. Perhaps it was less than a doll, since it vanished like a bubble. As his shoe struck the door the room went dark.
He might almost have believed that nothing had been there if he hadn’t heard more than his shoe drop to the floor. When he tore the curtains open he saw fairy lights strewn across the carpet. They weren’t what he was certain he’d heard slithering into some part of the room. All the same, once he’d put on his shoes he trampled the bulbs into fragments, and then he fell to his hands and knees. He was still crawling about the floor when his mother hurried in and peered unhappily at him. “Help me find it,” he pleaded. “We’ve got to kill the worm.”
Digging Deep (2006)
It must have been quite a nightmare. It was apparently enough to make Coe drag the quilt around him, since he feels more than a sheeted mattress beneath him, and to leave a sense of suffocating helplessness, of being worse than alone in the dark. He isn’t helpless. Even if his fit of rage blotted out his senses, it must have persuaded the family. They’ve brought him home. There wasn’t a quilt on his hospital bed.
Who’s in the house with him? Perhaps they all are, to impress on him how much they care about him, but he knows how recently they started. There was barely space for all of them around his bed in the private room. Whenever they thought he was asleep some of them would begin whispering. He’s sure he overheard plans for his funeral. Now they appear to have left him by himself, and yet he feels hemmed in. Is the dark oppressing him? He has never seen it so dark.
It doesn’t feel like his bedroom. He has always been able to distinguish the familiar surroundings when any of his fears jerked him awake. He could think that someone – his daughter Simone or son Daniel, most likely – has denied him light to pay him back for having spent too much of their legacy on the private room. However much he widens his eyes, they remain coated with blackness. He parts his dry lips to call someone to open the curtains, and then his tongue retreats behind his teeth. He should deal with the bedclothes first. Nobody ought to see him laid out as if he’s awaiting examination. In the throes of the nightmare he has pulled the entire quilt under him.
He grasps a handful and plants his other hand against the padded headboard to lift his body while he snatches the quilt from beneath him. That’s the plan, but he’s unable to take hold of the material. It’s more slippery than it ought to be, and doesn’t budge. Did his last bout of rage leave him so enfeebled, or is his weight pinning down the quilt? He stretches out his arms to find the edges, and his knuckles bump into cushions on both sides of him. But they aren’t cushions, they’re walls.
He’s in some kind of outsize cot. The walls must be cutting off the light. Presumably the idea is to prevent him from rolling out of bed. He’s furious at being treated like this, especially when he wasn’t consulted. He flings up his hands to grab the tops of the walls and heave himself up to shout for whoever’s in the house, and his fingertips collide with a padded surface.
The sides of the cot must bend inwards at the top, that’s all. His trembling hands have flinched and bruised his sunken cheeks, but he lifts them. His elbows are still pressed against the bottom of the container when his hands blunder against an obstruction above his face. It’s plump and slippery, and scrabbling at it only loosens his nails from the quick. His knees rear up, knocking together before they bump into the obstacle, and then his feet deal it a few shaky kicks. Far too soon his fury is exhausted, and he lies inert as though the blackness is earth that’s weighing on him. It isn’t far removed. His family cared about him even less than he suspected. They’ve consigned him to his last and worst fear.
Can’t this be another nightmare? How can it make sense? However prematurely eager Simone’s husband may have been to sign the death certificate, Daniel would have had to be less than professional too. Could he have saved on the embalming and had the funeral at once? At least he has dressed his father in a suit, but the pockets feel empty as death.
Coe can’t be sure until he tries them all. His quivering fists are clenched next to his face, but he forces them open and gropes over his ribs. His inside breast pocket is flat as a card, and so are the others in the jacket. When he fumbles at his trousers pockets he’s dismayed to find how thin he is – so scrawny that he’s afraid the protrusion on his right hip is a broken bone. But it’s in the pocket, and in his haste to carry it to his face he almost shies it out of reach. Somebody cared after all. He pokes at the keypad, and before his heart has time to beat, the mobile phone lights up.
He could almost wish the glow it sheds were dimmer. It shows him how closely he’s boxed in by the quilted surface. It’s less than a hand’s breadth from his shoulders, and when he tilts his face up to judge the extent of his prison the pudgy lid bumps his forehead. Around the phone the silky padding glimmers green, while farther down the box it’s whitish like another species of mould, and beyond his feet it’s black as soil. He lets his head sink onto the pillow that’s the entire floor and does his desperate best to be aware of nothing but the mobile. It’s his lifeline, and he needn’t panic because he can’t remember a single number. The phone will remember for him.