Stephen King: Six Scary Stories

‘But you promised, Mummy!’ Her face was round and wet.

‘I know, sweetie, but he was really stinky.’ Kathy closed her eyes and shivered, remembering the smell. It still cloyed at her nostrils.

‘He didn’t need a wash.’ Ellie pouted and wrapped her small, pudgy fingers round Eric’s damp body.

She sank her nose into his fur and her frown disappeared. ‘Oh! I can still smell him!’

Kathy yanked Eric from her daughter’s face, sticking him under her own nose. Damn it, her daughter was right. Eau-de-Eric was still in there, musky and burned. But there was something else too.

‘Give him back!’ Ellie said, stamping her foot. Her little arms were raised up in the air, straining to reach him.

Kathy batted her away, sniffing again. There. There it was. A hot summer evening, a barbecue, the smoke from sizzling fat billowing upwards into a deepening blue sky. His fingers were wrapped around the neck of a beer bottle and he’d flicked something at her, a piece of meat or charred vegetable – she couldn’t remember exactly what – and then he’d pressed the scalding skewer on her arm. Yes, she could still feel it. Ellie had been in her arms, crying and sucking her shoulder because she’d missed a feed. She’d almost dropped her as she’d flinched in pain.

‘He needs to go back in,’ Kathy said.

‘No, Mummy, no!’ Ellie’s bottom lip quivered and her hands clenched into fists.

Kathy marched back into the kitchen, shaking off her daughter who was tugging at her clothes. ‘Get off!’ she shouted. It came out a little too sharp, more so than she’d intended.

‘Mummy, no!’ Ellie stumbled as she followed her.

But Kathy could still feel the slabs of stone chafing at her knees as she fell on to the ground that day; the shock of the glowing skewer’s sting against her bare skin. She had cradled Ellie’s head, protecting her from the fall.

‘Please, Mummy, don’t!’ Ellie’s voice was choked and barely more than a whisper.

Then the washing machine’s door wouldn’t close. Eric’s arm kept flopping out and getting in the way. It hung limp, his head half out and turned upwards. Ellie reached to drag him out but Kathy shoved her aside with her body, forgetting that she was bigger, an adult tussling with a mere child. ‘Watch your hands!’ she said. There was a rip, like the sound of paper tearing. Stuffing spilled out of the seam between Eric’s shoulder and arm.

‘Mummy! You’re hurting him!’ Ellie’s face shone with tears and shock as she crept closer.

‘He’s a toy, Ellie! A toy!’ Kathy shouted as she chucked the teddy back into the drum, ripped shoulder and all. She pushed Ellie aside, sending her careening backward over the cold stone kitchen floor. Her foot shot out as she kicked the door shut and hurriedly twisted the dials. The machine started up and Kathy wiped an arm over her face. Her hands were trembling.

Ellie got up from the floor. She paused, her eyes lowered, and when she looked up she’d rearranged her features into an impassive mask. There was nothing there. No flush. No tears. She smoothed her hands down her dress – her favourite lilac pinafore dress, the one with ebony edging – and watched in silence as Eric’s paws clawed at the glass beneath the rising water. Tick, tick, tick, they went.

Ellie turned her gaze from the drum to her mother.

‘I hate you,’ she said and fled up the stairs to her room.

Chris became elusive. There were fewer weekend visits and he made a point of removing himself when Ellie was home. No, it wasn’t that he wasn’t warming to Ellie, he told Kathy, how could he not with her head of honey curls, rosebud mouth and plump, peachy arms? It was just that he couldn’t deal with her quiet, determined hostility. She would cast long, sideways glances at him, sitting still with Eric on her knee, turning the teddy’s face towards him as he ate or watched TV.

He had told her about the time when he’d gone to the loo and he’d felt strangely self-conscious sitting on the cold plastic seat. When he’d looked round he’d almost jumped out of his skin seeing Eric sitting there in the bath, his chipped black eyes fixed on him. Why would Ellie do that? he asked Kathy. What was the point? Plus, there was the name, Eric. Yes, he understood, of course she missed her father. But still, given what was going on, it was kind of creepy.

And now it had been several days since Chris had last called. Oh, there had been text messages and the odd email but he was always busy, always off somewhere or coming back from somewhere else, always working late or working early or waiting for a delivery.

Give it time, Kathy’s therapist said, but time felt all too malleable, the past dragging the present to itself when all Kathy wanted was a forward trajectory.

And so here they were, Kathy and Ellie and Eric, always Eric, with his bandaged shoulder. Kathy had offered to repair him in a fit of guilt but Ellie had refused. After all, Kathy had ‘attacked’ him – Ellie’s words, not Kathy’s – she couldn’t trust her mother to do the right thing and so she insisted on keeping the bandage in place. It felt like an affront, as if Ellie were pressing a point, and Kathy felt deep shame each time she was confronted by the damaged Eric. So much so, that she eventually relented and agreed for him to have his own plate and cutlery at table.

‘He needs to get better,’ Ellie said. ‘He’s hurt.’

And wasn’t it always Kathy’s way to give in anyway? She was working on it, she had to change but it was one step forward, two steps back. Habits are hard to break, her therapist agreed. Hadn’t she done the same with Eric – the real Eric – right up until the night when he fell under a car and was dragged along the road after a late-night drinking session with the boys? Kathy had seen him laid out, his chest a deep concave where the breastbone had been crushed, piercing his heart. What heart? she’d wanted to shout at the hospital staff standing to the side with their hands in their pockets.

Ellie was kneeling on her bed, her stuffed toys lined up in a row in front of her, her back to the door where Kathy leaned against the doorframe. She hadn’t noticed her mother tip-toeing up the stairs, but then she didn’t seem to notice her mother much these days. Kathy was always creeping around her now, her movements slow and deliberate.

Ellie was whispering, quiet words rustling the air, her elbows working up and down, pausing only to wag her finger at Gerald and Ollie and all the other soft toys, whatever their names were. She was busy with some sort of demonstration. There was something in front of Ellie, something all the other animals were supposed to watch. ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Come back!’ Kathy heard Ellie remonstrate. And then: ‘But I love you really, I love you.’ The words fluttered, gentle as butterfly wings, followed by the burst plops of Ellie’s lips kissing the air.

Kathy felt wet on her cheeks. She wanted to wipe the tears away but hesitated, worried that any movement on her part might break whatever magic Ellie was conjuring up on the bed. A sob welled up big and bold inside her and Kathy clamped her hand over her mouth. Ellie’s head flicked to the side. Nothing moved in her face as she registered her mother.

‘Go away,’ she said.

Kathy shook her head. ‘Sweetie, you need to talk to me. Whatever it is.’

Ellie shifted on the bed, moving her legs round, and Kathy saw she was cradling Eric in her lap.

‘Eric is hurting,’ she said. ‘You hurt him.’

‘Oh sugar.’ Kathy wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘It’s not what you think. It wasn’t like that.’

Ellie’s little fingers stroked his bandages, the tips barely touching the material.

‘Eric says you’re mean.’ She turned the teddy’s face sideways, and Kathy straightened up as she felt his black eyes drill into her. At this angle, his stitched snout was a lopsided grin.