Nevertheless, Helen got up, tied her dressing-gown around her, and went into the next room to check. She found Alice sleeping soundly. As she looked down at the sleeping baby, she heard the crying again, distant and muffled.
A feeling of dread pushed at her heart. Moving slowly, she followed the sound. It had died away again by the time she stood in the living room, but it seemed still to ring in the air. She turned on a lamp and looked around the room, her eyes and attention drawn by the chest. It was no longer beautiful, but dark and menacing. Hastily, Helen switched off the light. Darkness was better. She didn’t want to see the chest and think about opening it. She waited, praying she would not hear the crying again, praying that it had not come from the chest.
She waited long minutes in the darkness and the silence, and then went back to bed. In the morning she decided it had been a dream.
Helen was ironing in the kitchen half-listening to the soap opera on the television set out of sight in the next room. The baby was in her mechanical swing, creaking back and forth beside her, and Julian was playing in the living room. Helen’s mind was just registering the fact that her son was being too quiet when from the living room came a soft but definite thud, and Julian made the noise he made to signify disgust or displeasure. Alice’s face puckered and she began to cry. Helen caught a whiff of something rotten.
‘Julian,’ she said sharply. She set down the iron and rushed into the living room, ignoring the baby’s cries.
She found her son standing before the open chest, a look of intense interest on his face as he stared down into it. Apprehension twisted her stomach and she caught Julian’s arms and pulled him away from whatever it was that so fascinated him. He cried out his annoyance and hit her ineffectually, squirming to get free. Helen held him tightly and turned him away from the chest. Then, curious, about what in that empty wooden box could have caught his attention, she turned back for a look.
It wasn’t empty. For just a moment she saw – or thought she saw – the chest stuffed with bundles of old, yellowed newspapers. But when she frowned and began to move closer, she saw that of course it was empty. There was nothing inside it. The chest was empty as it had been when they brought it home the day before.
Helen turned her attention to her wriggling son. ‘Julian,’ she said, trying to keep her voice calm but firm. ‘That’s a no-no. You must not open the chest. Understand me? The chest is not a toy. You are not to open it. You must not play with it. Understand?’
He scowled up at her, obviously disagreeing but finding his small vocabulary inadequate to tell her so. Alice, in the kitchen, was still crying. Helen sighed.
‘Go on and play with your toys, Julian. Not the chest. I mean it.’
She let go of him and went to close the lid. For a moment she stared down into the chest, wondering about the newspapers. What had made her imagine the chest was filled with newspapers, something wrapped in newspaper and packed away in the chest? No answer occurred to her, so she closed the lid, then went to see about the baby.
Alice simply wanted to be held and, after a few minutes of attention, she had calmed down and was agreeable to being put back in her swing. Helen went back to the living room to check on Julian.
And found him, as she had more than half-expected, again standing before the open chest, clearly fascinated by whatever he imagined he saw inside.
‘Julian.’
Obviously he did not hear the threat in her voice, for he looked up brightly, blue eyes shining and round face puckered with interest. ‘Baby,’ he said.
‘Julian, what did I tell you about that chest?’ She advanced upon him.
The bright interest went out of his face, and he looked stubborn. ‘Me see,’ he said firmly.
‘It’s not a toy, Julian. I told you before you are not to play with it. You must not open it. Don’t open it again.’ She shut the lid.
‘Me see,’ he said again, his chubby hands creeping for the edge of the lid.
‘No.’ Helen caught his hands and held them. ‘No. Leave the chest alone, Julian. I mean it. You’re going to be in big trouble if you do that again.’ She looked into his stubborn face and knew he would go to the chest as soon as her back was turned. Threats did not work with him, so she would have to distract him.
‘Well, big boy,’ she said cheerfully, hoisting him up in her arms. ‘Why don’t you play with your old mommy for a while? You want to play with your choo-choos? You want to play choo-choo trains with Mommy?’ She carried him away, bouncing him slightly in her arms and asking questions, taking him away from the sight of the wooden chest.
For the rest of the day she kept an eye on Julian, never giving him the chance to go back to the chest. But in the evening, sitting with her family watching television, she was struck by how often Julian turned his head to look at the chest. In particular, she was struck by the way he looked at the chest.
Later, when Julian had been put to bed, she tried to explain her unease to Rob. ‘He’d get a look on his face, as if he’d heard something, and then he’d turn and look straight at the chest. As if the sound came from the chest. Except that there wasn’t any sound. Why is he so fascinated by it? Why does he want to keep opening it?’
‘Because you’ve made such a big deal out of it,’ Rob said easily. ‘He opened it once, out of natural curiosity, and you hit the ceiling. Naturally that made him curious. He can’t figure out what is so special about it. He’s a kid who doesn’t like to be told no, especially without a reason.’
‘If you could have seen him, Rob, staring into . . . He was seeing something, I’m sure of it. But there’s nothing there.’ She stopped short of telling him what she had briefly, oddly imagined: the old, crumpled newspapers which seemed to fill the chest.
‘So? It’s big and dark and empty. To a kid, it’s interesting. Why are you so worried about it?’
She saw from his face that he expected some irrational response, that he was ready to make fun of ‘women’s intuition’. She said calmly, ‘Rob, he could get hurt. If he decided to play inside it, he might shut himself in and suffocate.’
‘Oh come on, Helen. You’d hear him and find him long before that could happen.’
‘What if the lid slammed down? It’s heavy enough to break his hand.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Rob said. ‘But there are lots of other ways he could get hurt around the house – more likely ways. It’s silly to worry – ’
‘It’s not silly! I’ve caught him opening the chest twice, and he’ll try again, I know it.’
‘All right, all right.’ He held up a placating hand. ‘Don’t get upset. Maybe we could put something on the chest that he’d have trouble getting off.’
Helen nodded grudgingly and the discussion was over, but she was far from satisfied. She wished they had never bought the thing.
Something was wrong. Helen swam up out of sleep, drawn by the sound of a baby crying.
Then she was wide awake, listening and remembering. This was no dream. A baby was crying, somewhere in the house. It was not Alice – to Helen’s ears the cry sounded like that of a much younger infant, a newborn child. The muffled sound came, she thought, from the living room.
She looked resentfully at Rob. He could sleep through anything. There had been a time, just after Julian’s birth, when Helen had seen Rob’s regular, undisturbed slumber as a sign of hostility towards her and their child. Logically, she knew he did not will his sleeping patterns. And she was used to it, now.
Gradually the crying was fading, and Helen thought she might be able to go to sleep after all. Then she heard the soft, unmistakable patter of Julian’s feet in the hall, going towards the living room, and she sat up in bed. Had Julian heard the crying, too?