Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis [90]
He seemed to notice my suspicions when I found myself staring at the boxes, and he asked, more urgently, “But what if it does, Dad?”
My gaze jumped back at him. The “Dad” did not sound right. He was playing a game, and my instinct was to play along, since that was the only way I was going to find any answers. I wanted to crush the phony specifics and get at some larger truth—whatever it was. I didn’t want to accept anything from him under a false pretense; I wanted him to be genuine with me. But even if he was just going through the motions, he had still initiated a conversation and I wanted to keep it moving.
“Well, you don’t want to . . . die for your country,” I said slowly, thoughtfully.
At the word “die” Sarah stopped playing with the doll and looked over at me worriedly.
“Well, then what should I do?” he asked casually, unconcerned. “If I’m drafted into the army?”
A long pause while I formulated my answer. I tried to come up with simple, practical advice, but when I glanced back at the Salvation Army boxes I suddenly hardened and decided not to play the game anymore. I cleared my throat and, staring straight at him, I said, “I’d run away.”
At the moment I said this whatever false light was animating Robby went out in an instant, and before I could reframe my answer he had already shut down.
He knew I was daring him. He kept standing in front of the computer and I wanted to tell him he could step away, that the face of the missing boy was gone and he didn’t need to block what wasn’t there anymore. Helplessly, I looked at Sarah—who was whispering to the doll—and then back at Robby.
“Why is your sister in here?” I asked quietly.
Robby shrugged. He had already lapsed into his usual silence, and his eyes had become speculative and cold.
“I’m scared.” Sarah tightly hugged the Terby.
“Of what, honey?” I asked, about to move closer to her, even though the presence of the Terby kept me at a distance.
“Are there monsters in our house, Daddy?”
This was Robby’s cue to move away from the computer—the moonscape was now pulsing from the screen—and his confidence that I would become locked in a conversation with his sister relaxed him enough that he sat back down on the floor and recrossed his legs and resumed playing the video game.
“No, no . . .” I shivered as my mind flashed on the rush of images I had dreamt since Halloween. “Why do you ask that, honey?”
“I think there are monsters in the house.” She said this in a thick, drugged voice while hugging the doll.
I wasn’t aware I had said “Well, maybe sometimes, honey, but—” until her face crumpled and suddenly she burst into tears.
“Honey, no, no, no, but they’re not real, honey. They’re make-believe. They can’t hurt you.” I said this even as my eyes took in the black doll in her arms and all the things I knew it was capable of, and then I noticed that the doll didn’t have claws anymore. They had grown, and warped; they were talons now, and they were stained brown. I began formulating plans to get rid of the thing as soon as possible.
Sarah somehow knew that there were monsters in the house—because she now lived in the same house that I did—and she knew that there was nothing I could do about it. She understood that I couldn’t protect her. And at that point I realized the grim fact that as hard as you try, you can hide the truth from children for only an indefinite period, and even if you do tell them the truth, and lay out the facts for them honestly and completely, they will still resent you for it. Sarah’s spasm of crying ended as quickly as it began when the Terby suddenly gurgled and rotated its head toward me, almost as if it didn’t want this particular conversation to continue. I knew Sarah had somehow activated the doll but I had to clench my fist to keep from crying out and moving away, because it seemed so intently to be listening to us. Sarah smiled miserably and