Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis [125]
“Dad?” This was an echo.
I couldn’t open my eyes. (If I had, I would have seen Robby silhouetted in the doorway, backlit by the flickering hallway behind him.) “What is it?” my voice rasped out.
“Dad, I think there’s someone in the house.”
Robby was trying not to whine, but even drunk I could detect the fear in his voice.
I cleared my throat, my eyes still closed. “What do you mean?”
“There’s I think there’s something coming up the stairs,” he said. “There was something scratching at my door.”
According to Robby, I actually said the following: “I’m sure it’s nothing. Just go back to sleep.”
Robby countered with “I can’t, Dad. I’m scared.”
My first reaction: Well, so am I. Welcome to the club. Get used to it. It never leaves.
I could hear Robby moving closer, stepping through the darkness of the master bedroom. I could hear him nearing me as he made his way toward my black and shapeless form.
The weight shifted on my chest again.
Robby was speaking into the darkness: “Dad, I think there’s somebody in the house.”
Robby was reaching for the bedside lamp.
Robby turned on the lamp.
Behind my closed eyelids an orange light burned.
Robby was silenced by something.
He was contemplating what he was looking at.
The image he was contemplating momentarily knocked the fear away and was replaced by an awful curiosity.
His silence was rousing me from my inebriation.
The weight shifted on my chest again.
“Dad,” Robby said quietly.
“Robby,” I sighed.
“Dad, there’s something on you.”
I opened my eyes but couldn’t focus.
What I saw next happened very quickly.
The Terby was on my chest, looming above me, its face seizing, its open mouth a rictus that now took up half the doll’s head, and the fangs I had only noticed earlier that day were stained brown
(of course they were because it “mutilated” a horse in a field off the interstate near Pearce).
Its talons were locked into the robe I’d passed out in and its wings were fanning themselves and it wasn’t the length of the wingspan that shocked me at that moment (it had grown—I accepted that within a second) but it was the wings webbed with black veins bulging tightly beneath the doll’s skin (the doll’s skin, yes, tell this to a sane person and see their reaction) and pulsing with blood that amazed me.
According to Robby, when he turned on the lamp the thing was motionless. And then it quickly rotated its head toward him—the wings were already outstretched, the mouth was already opening itself—and, when he spoke, the doll returned its focus on me.
I shouted out and knocked the thing off my chest as I bolted up.
The Terby fell to the floor and quickly clawed itself under the bed.
I stood up, panting, frantically brushing something nonexistent from my torn robe.
Except for the sounds I was making it was silent in the house.
But then I heard it too. The mewling.
“Dad?” Robby asked.
My nonanswer was interrupted when we heard something rushing up the stairs.
From where Robby and I stood looking out from the doorway of the master bedroom a shadow—maybe three feet high—was coming toward us in the dim, flickering light; it was shambling sideways along the wall and as it got closer to us the mewling turned into hissing.
“Victor?” I asked, disbelieving. “It’s Victor, Robby. It’s only Victor.”
“It’s not Victor, Dad.”
According to Robby, I said, “Then what the hell is it?”
The thing paused as if it was contemplating something.
It was 2:30 when the electricity went out.
The entire house was plunged into blackness.
I uselessly reached for a light switch. I was weaving on my feet.
“Mom keeps a flashlight in her drawer,” Robby said quickly.
“Just stand still. Just stay where you are.” I attempted a normal voice.
I jumped onto the bed and reached for Jayne’s nightstand drawer. I opened it. My hand found the flashlight. I grabbed it. I immediately turned it on, aiming the beam at the floor, scanning for the Terby.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
Robby followed behind me as I aimed the flashlight at