Faces

by Leigh Kennedy

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi

Synopsis

It is hard to say how it started - all the unexplained little signs of a new baby about the house in 'The Silent Cradle' - but soon none of the O'Bannons could deny that there had been a highly irregular addition to the family. In 'Max Haunting' a middle-aged hippie, preserved almost intact from the Sixties, starts showing up on the doorsteps of his old friends and loves who, in acquiring jobs and furniture, have 'sold out' rather less than he thought. Hauntings of curious varieties continue in other stories: the sort manufactured out of glass by a man who thinks his godly wife deserves a miracle; the visitation of a mother's cruelty into the mind of her daughter as she confronts the frustrations of coping with her own child; the specters of opportunities lost or spurned which nag to be laid, like ghosts. Elsewhere Leigh Kennedy considers the impulse of cannibalism in a future world whose greed has induced ecological upheaval, and the phenomenon of speaking in tongues as investigated by a sociology professor. She views the world through the eyes of a victim of seizures and of a primatologist whose devotion to apes has gone a bit too far.

Release date: December 14, 2012

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 192

Sample

Florie O’Bannon first suspected that she had a third child about mid-October.

The room at the end of the hall had been relegated to storage, mostly furnishings that Vanessa and Tim had grown out of. Florie opened the door, expecting disarray. The old crib that both children had used stood against one wall, a yellow blanket draped across the rail, as if to keep the bright sunlight off the mattress.

There was the smell of soured milk.

Florie stood for a moment, rubbing her arms. Everything had been packed away into the closet except those things an infant would need. A clean, dry bottle stood on the bedside stand, which was filled with folded diapers.

She walked to the window, trying to remember when she’d last come into this room. A month … two months ago? She remembered closing the door one evening in late summer to hide the clutter. She opened the window to air out the strange smell.

‘Now, why did I come in here?’ she asked aloud. She’d completely forgotten. Coming through the window, the breeze was cool. Too cool. Instinctively, she shut the window.

She walked back into the living room, filled with nostalgia about newborns. Vanessa was now eight; Tim five. Both had been a joy to her at all ages, and yet sometimes she thought the newborn’s day most magical, like the first days of a love affair. She had only wanted to stare at their wrinkled faces and fondle their toes.

She sat down cross-legged in front of the bookcases where they kept the baby albums.

There was a new one. Like the others, it had a padded white binding. Tentatively, Florie pulled it out and opened it.

Born: October 11, 7:45 a.m., 8 lb., 4 oz., 21½ inches, George Russell O’Bannon.

No picture.

Florie reread the entry absently, trying to imagine what sort of joke her husband might be playing on her. He’d often told her that she enjoyed children too much, that two would certainly be enough. No, this was not the kind of thing he would do. The smell of milk, the casualness of the blanket on the crib … These things were apart from his senses, too subtle for his kind of joke.

Florie closed the book and put it away. Momentarily, she felt guilty. Yes, she would love to have another child, and, for a moment, she could pretend. When Tim came storming in from the back yard calling, ‘Mom! Mom!’ she thought that she might shush him. The baby was sleeping.

But she said nothing. She would wait to see who would finally break down and laugh with her about the book and the room.

Florie paused in the hallway. Vanessa stood at the crib with her face wedged between the side rails. An empty bottle lay in the crib.

‘What are you doing?’ Florie asked.

Vanessa looked up, embarrassed. ‘Just looking,’ she said.

‘At what?’ Florie realized that she sounded sterner than necessary.

Children have a way of looking obviously secretive without knowing the adult ability to follow such nuances. Florie smiled at her daughter’s coyness, feeling a flush of recognition for her as an individual. ‘Did you put the bottle in there?’ Florie saw a thin white residue on one side.

‘No.’ Vanessa pulled away from the crib and started past Florie without looking up.

‘What are you thinking about, little one?’ Florie asked.

‘Ms Harley asked me how my new little brother was,’ she said in a tone of confession.

Florie knelt and looked Vanessa in the eye. ‘We don’t have a baby,’ she said. ‘Did you come in here to look?’

Vanessa nodded. ‘I thought maybe he was a secret.’

Florie laughed. ‘It would be hard to keep that a secret, wouldn’t it? Besides, wouldn’t I want you to help me with a new baby?’

Vanessa smiled briefly, then a question appeared in her eyes again. ‘But what was that sound I heard the other night?’

‘What sound?’ Florie was chilled.

‘It sounded like a baby crying.’

Florie paused to pull herself together. ‘It may have been some cats in the yard.’

Vanessa gave her a doubtful look but said nothing. After Vanessa went to the kitchen, Florie looked back at the silent crib. She pulled the door to.

Quietly.

The meatloaf is too salty, she thought, shaking the ketchup bottle over her plate.

‘I can’t imagine how this got started, Florie,’ her husband said. ‘Don’t they remember the picnic this summer? You were in shorts and a halter top. Don’t they remember Bridget’s birthday party? That was only a few months ago.’

‘Don’t know, Bert,’ she said.

The children looked from their plates to their parents, forks in their mouths, eyes curious. Tim had a milk moustache.

Florie had hoped her husband would clear up the whole affair. But in the last few minutes, he had proved to be as puzzled as herself. ‘Well, whoever it is is close to us,’ she said. And she rose to fetch the baby book she’d found.

She discovered new entries: a month-old weight and a note of the six-weeks check-up. ‘Healthy!’ it said. She found an envelope stuck between the pages. Her husband took the book and leafed through it, frowning. ‘What is this?’

She laughed. And then she began to giggle, self-consciously, knowing her amusement wasn’t shared yet. Tears wet her lashes.

‘Florie?’ Bert said. ‘What’s going on? Are you trying to tell me something?’

She handed him the paper and envelope which she’d just read. ‘He’s a cheap kid, anyway.’

Bert smiled vaguely as he read the receipt from the pediatrician. Paid. They both ignored Vanessa’s persistent, ‘What? What is it?’

‘Florie, it’s a funny joke,’ Bert said flatly.

‘But it’s not mine,’ she said, smiling.

Tim looked back and forth between his parents with reserve. ‘Mom, can I have more potatoes?’

At Christmas, Florie put a teddy bear under the tree and tagged it ‘Russell.’ Vanessa wanted it, but Florie playfully viewed it as a sacrifice to the prank. Into the crib it went.

By Easter, it was worn. Florie thought that the children played with it surreptitiously.

By summer, there had been other notes and receipts in the baby book. Florie discovered that Russell cut his first tooth earlier than her other children.

By fall, she found pieces of zwieback on the floor. Anything placed at the edge of counters was likely to be found on the floor.

She said little about it to Bert. In the beginning, they had taken it lightly. But now, she took pleasure in the situation. She no longer thought about who was pulling the prank or why. Now that Tim was in school all day, she’d begun to go shopping, visiting with her mother and a few non-working friends.

She would pause at the door, staring inward, uneasy about leaving.

Whenever she stood in the extra room, she felt a kind of warm spookiness. As if someone were thinking of her strongly and lovingly. She set up her sewing machine in the room. Then a comfortable chair for reading by the window.

More and more often, she found an excuse to spend time by the crib.

‘Florie,’ Bert called.

She thought he was in their bedroom, but she found him in the spare room. He was holding a small wooden truck. He looked stern, as he did when he had to do or say something he didn’t relish.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘We can’t afford for you to be buying things like this for foolishness.’

‘What!’ She looked at the truck. Like the mobile that hung over the crib, little blue ducks and yellow fish swimming mid-air, like the rattlers and the teething rings, it had just suddenly been there. Where it had come from, she had no idea.

‘Listen, Florie,’ Bert said patiently. ‘I know you would like to have another baby.’

‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘I don’t have anything to do with this.’

Bert sighed. ‘Why can’t you just talk to me about things any more? What’s happened to you?’

Florie shook her head. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. I haven’t done any of this. Well, I bought the teddy,’ she said, picking it up out of the crib. She felt a pang, wondering if somehow she really was responsible for whatever was going on. But how? She knew in her mind that soon a friend, her mother, or even Vanessa would own up to it.

‘We can’t afford this joke any more,’ Bert said.

Florie was aware that things were tight. Their car had thrown a rod a few months ago and they’d unexpectedly been forced to buy a new one. They’d had to have the plumber out a few times. School clothes were expensive this year, and Christmas was on the way. Prices were going up.

‘Bert, believe me,’ Florie said.

He studied her a long while. ‘I don’t know what to say. I think we need for you to go back to work, even just for half days.’

‘Bert …’

He put his arms around her, teddy and all. ‘I think it would be good for you. I suspect you’re bored.’

Stunned, Florie said nothing. Perhaps he was right.

She sat at her desk and squirmed. As if she itched, she longed to scratch, but she couldn’t localize it. She simply was uncomfortable.

She pleaded illness and rushed home. In the bathroom, a tub of cloudy tepid water stood, and a box of baking soda sat on the floor. Florie looked in the spare room. It was hot and stuffy, but she didn’t dare open the window.

She lay on her bed, feeling safe at home, but worried. Worried about what, she didn’t know. She dozed.

As she slept, she seemed to be aware of her sleeping self, knowing where she was and why. And in that awareness, she held close to her the shape of a toddler wrapped in a blanket. The child was restless, his fever radiated through the blanket to her.

‘It’s all right, Russell,’ she said in her sleep. She comforted him just as she had Vanessa and Tim, thanking God that she had already had chicken-pox.

She was furious the day she came home and the kitchen was ravaged. Pots and pans, dishes and tin cans had been pulled out of the cupboards. A stick of butter hadn’t yet melted enough to hide the teeth marks.

She yelled at Russell from the living room, to be sure that he heard her from wherever he was. But he was too young to understand yet, for the situation didn’t improve until the receipts from the daycare center began arriving.

‘Mom,’ Tim said, ‘Russell broke the crib.’

Florie looked at Bert.

Bert stood. ‘Now, look, young man. That’s going too far. You can’t blame things on an imaginary being. What did you do?’

‘I didn’t do it,’ Tim said with the certainty of a clear conscience. ‘I heard a noise a while ago and now the crib’s busted. Come and look.’

Florie saw that Bert believed Tim’s honesty, but not the story. They followed him into Russell’s room. The slats of the crib had been smashed outward.

‘The bed’s too small for him now,’ she said calmly.

‘That’s stupid,’ Bert said. ‘I think …’ He shrugged. ‘This whole thing is stupid.’ And he stalked away.

They bought Timothy a new bed, had the crib hauled away and sent Tim’s old bed into the extra room. Florie went to the second-hand store and bought a bedspread for the old bed. She cleaned out the baby things and had a garage sale. All of Tim’s old clothes went into Russell’s dresser.

Sometimes she found them in the laundry hamper.

Tim spent time playing in Russell’s room. Bert noticed it, explaining that Tim probably missed his old bed. (Bert never did see the need for the new one.) ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘we don’t yell at him when he bounces on it any more.’

Vanessa found blood on the back porch one day. A few days later a receipt came for nine stitches at the clinic.

Bert raged. ‘I’ve had enough of this!’

He called Dr Thorn. After explaining the 4-year-old prank to the pediatrician whom Florie had always been reluctant to discuss it with, the doctor only said, ‘I don’t know what to tell you. According to our records, Russell has always been seen by my partner, who only works on Wednesday afternoons.’

‘What the hell is going on around here?’

‘I don’t know, Mr O’Bannon. Maybe you should hold a séance.’

Florie heard Bert say something she thought improper and impolite. Embarrassed, she took her children to another pediatrician the next time.

One day the kitchen window . . .