A Nest of Nightmares

She thought of the chest of drawers that was now in the baby’s room. She had inherited it in college, when her roommate left to get married. Helen never knew whether Jenny had spilled perfume in the bottom drawer or if the smell had simply lingered from the clothes she had kept there – in either case, although Helen had cleaned out the drawer with soap and water and lined it with fresh paper, whenever she pulled out that bottom drawer she was tempted to look around, thinking that Jenny had come into the room. The fragrance was transmitted from the drawer to whatever clothes she kept there, although it was faint and did not last long. But the scent never left the wood, although it had been nearly six years since the chest had been Jenny’s.

Wood remembers, she thought, and as if he had read her mind, Rob said, ‘Look, as long as any of the bad smell lingers, we don’t have to use it to store anything. It’s still a beautiful-looking chest, even if we don’t use it. We don’t have to keep opening the lid. But I’m sure it won’t last. Tomorrow why don’t you teach Julian how to make a pomander out of an orange and cloves?’

She smiled at him, relieved that they weren’t going to argue after all. ‘Julian will only stick the cloves up his nose,’ she said. ‘If he doesn’t eat them first.’ She closed the lid.

A baby’s crying woke Helen in the night. This was not unusual. What was unusual was that she didn’t think it was Alice crying, and the sound didn’t come from the nursery. Some odd trick of acoustics, or perhaps her sleepy mind, made the sound seem to come from the direction of the living room.

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.