Dirty Old Men (Horror)

by Varya Kartishai (U.S.)

Maisie came to live with us the year I started school. I had never seen such a pretty woman. Her wide mouth was bright red, the same as her high-heeled shoes, her long-lashed eyes were blue, hair the color of sunlight glinting off a brass doorknob hung down to her shoulders and her chest jiggled softly when she walked, like a dish of Junket. I was outside when the movers’ truck pulled up. She was sitting in the cab between the two moving men.

One of them got out and she climbed down to the curb, straightened her skirt, and waited while they unloaded her waterfall bed and matching dresser from the back of the truck. She noticed me standing there and smiled. I smiled back. She picked up a robin’s egg blue suitcase and matching hatbox, then followed them up the stairs and into our spare bedroom, not teetering at all on those heels.

Upstairs, my mother was waiting in the hall with an annoyed expression on her face. She muttered something to my father about a “bottle blond”. He didn’t answer, but he hardly ever did. Her own light brown hair was pulled back in a bun, and her corset was laced so tight there was no way she could have jiggled. I only heard her talk to Maisie once, other than asking for the rent every week. When she came out of the bathroom in a pretty black slip with lace on the hem, my mother shook her finger and yelled at her that this was a decent house and to go put her clothes on. My father who was standing right next to her didn’t say anything, just smoothed his curly black hair, then lowered his hand and patted my mother’s arm until she stopped yelling. After that Maisie always wore a robe in the hall.

I never got to talk to her much but I liked having her there to look at. Then one day when I came home from school Maisie was gone. My mother told me I was going to move into her room. I didn’t ask any questions, but when I went in, her furniture was still there and the closet was empty. The week before I had heard my mother yelling at her because the rent was late. She said that if it happened again, Maisie would have to move.

I felt a little sad, even though I hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to her, I liked looking at her. She wore pretty dresses when she went out in the evenings. Different fellows came for her, and she didn’t come home until after I went to bed. Looking at her furniture, I thought her three quarter size bed would be an improvement over my old crib in my parents’ room where I had been sleeping. I had to sleep sideways with my knees bent because it was too short to straighten my legs all the way.

I opened the dresser drawers first, in case she had left anything behind, but even though I could still smell her perfume, they were empty except for a little blue bottle labeled “Evening In Paris” that I slipped into my pocket. I looked at the waterfall pattern on the front of the dresser. It made a fox’s face in the middle and there was one on the headboard of the bed.

I liked foxes, but I didn’t like the spare room as much as I thought I would. Its two windows faced out on the narrow alley between our house and the next, and didn’t let in much light even on sunny days.

That first afternoon, I sat down on the bed, propped a pillow against the curved headboard and leaned against it. I tried to pretend I was her, but it didn’t work. After a while I gave up, got off the bed and went over to the closet. My own clothes were already hung inside, but back in a dark corner I saw a glint of red. She had forgotten a pair of her high-heeled shoes with gold embroidery on the toe straps. I pulled them out and slipped them on, but they were too big, and my feet kept slipping out the front. I kept tripping and falling and gave up after a few tries. I put them back in the closet, hoping my mother wouldn’t find them and take them away before my feet had a chance to get bigger, and sat back down on the bed.

Then I noticed the wallpaper border near the ceiling. It was light blue like the striped wallpaper, with a design of swags and tassels, but if you squinted your eyes for a few minutes, the swags became a row of old men’s faces with big noses, mustaches and grumpy-looking mouths, Geezers,I thought. I got up, got my books and started on my homework. At bedtime I almost went to my parents’ room, but remembered in time to go into Maisie’s room. My father came in to say goodnight like he always did. When he turned out the light and left, I could just make out the row of geezers in the moonlight coming through the unshaded windows. I wondered if they were disappointed to see me there instead of Maisie in her red silk nighty.

I lay there in the big bed, feeling uncomfortable and wide awake with all the extra space around me, almost missing the familiar bars of my crib. All of a sudden there was a whirring noise and a loud bang from outside the room. A bright light came flooding in. The shade on the window of the house across the alley from ours had rolled all the way up and Mrs. Tomari, our neighbor was standing there, reaching desperately for the blind cord. She must have been right in the middle of unlacing her corset, the first few hooks were open and the laces were dangling down.

Her flat bosoms hung over the top, and her flat rear was showing below. I glanced up at the row of geezers, and I swear their faces were all wearing wicked smiles! I pulled the covers up over my head and finally got to sleep, but all night I dreamed I could hear the geezers chuckling near the ceiling. At first I didn’t know why I didn’t like being there, but I kept finding excuses to keep from spending time in my new room.

I started using the kitchen table for my homework, saying my teacher was complaining about my writing being bad, because I wrote sitting on the bed, and that anyhow even with the ceiling fixture on, the light was too dim to make out the words in my schoolbooks. My mother complained that my working on the table there got in the way of her making dinner, but there wasn’t any other table I could use, so she didn’t make me stop.

My grades had never been that good, but now they were getting worse, partly because I wasn’t sleeping very well. I talked to some of the kids about it, and they said they had nightlights to help them sleep. They came with little bulbs with things inside, dogs or ships or flowers, but I didn’t really care what they looked like, I just wanted the extra light because I was starting to be afraid of lying there in the dark.

Finally I asked my father if I could have one too and he promised to get me one, but he never got around to it. What I didn’t tell anybody was that I kept waking up at night hearing noises, like nasty little chuckling noises. I couldn’t see them clearly in the dark, but I was sure it was the geezers from the wallpaper flapping around above my head. I was afraid if I told anybody about it they wouldn’t believe me or worse, tell me I was going crazy. Later on the chuckling noises were joined by whispering sounds.

I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to. They were probably talking to each other, but it could have been meant for me. I started sleeping with the sheet over my head. That helped, but it made it hard to get enough air. I finally got used to sleeping that way, then one hot night in early June, I must have thrown off the sheet to get cool or something, and woke up suddenly with my face exposed. I swear there was something perched on the pillow next to me whispering and chuckling in my ear.

Something like hair brushed my cheek and I thought it might have been a mustache. I screamed, jumped out of bed and ran out into the hallway, still screaming. My parents woke up and my father put me back into bed, telling me I had had a bad dream. I didn’t want to talk to him about it with the geezers maybe listening.

He sat with me for a while, holding my hand and not talking. There was no more noise from the geezers while he sat there. Then I must have gone back to sleep, because when I woke up, it was morning and the geezers were all back in place flat on the wallpaper near the ceiling. That scared me worse than anything had yet, and I started tucking the sheet under the edges of my pillow so it wouldn’t get dislodged and just making a pleat over my face to let a little air in. I would wake up hot and sweaty in the morning, but at least I was getting some sleep.

Then it happened again, the sheet got dislodged somehow, only this time when I woke up in the dark there was a hairy something sitting and whispering on either side of the pillow, and a whole line of them chuckling and whispering above me on the headboard,. This time I didn’t scream, I just leaped out of bed and ran out into the hall and into the bathroom, still clutching my sheet and trailing it across the floor behind me.

I closed the bathroom door after me and sat down on the edge of the tub, sweating and shaking, not sure whether I was safe even with the door closed, but I had never seen them outside of the bedroom. Finally I threw the sheet into the tub, climbed in after it, and lay down with the sheet wrapped around me. I must have dozed off, because when I woke up it was daylight and my father was standing there shaking my shoulder to wake me. He helped me climb out of the tub and I finally told him about the geezers, but I don’t think he took it seriously.

He just said it was another bad dream and it was probably because I was upset about school. After that I started sleeping under the bed. It was dusty under there, but I felt safer, and I was getting more rest, even though my mother started complaining about the sheets being dusty and hard to wash. She accused me of playing games with the sheets, and said I must be making tents out of them to get them that dirty. I told her I was restless in the heat and the sheet would slip off onto the floor in the night. I didn’t think she would believe me about the geezers any more than my father had, and there wasn’t any place else to sleep anyway.

Finally the problem solved itself, at least for me. A neighbor had been coming to visit my mother in the afternoons. She would bring her dog with her, and I guess nobody noticed that the dog had ticks. Some of them must have gotten off the dog and moved into our place, and some of them must have bitten me. I don’t really remember anything myself, but my father told me about it later when he visited me in the hospital. It seemed that one morning I didn’t wake up and when my mother went in to call me for school she found me lying under the bed feverish and unconscious, covered with ticks and bites.

She called a doctor, and the ambulance came and took me to a hospital and they diagnosed Rocky Mountain spotted fever. The neighbor’s dog died, and I was really sick and in a coma, and had to stay in the hospital a while. My parents had to move out while the apartment was fumigated, and the landlord was so mad at having the expense of fumigating that he told my folks that they would just have to find another place to live because he was going to use it for storage and not bother having any more tenants up there. When I finally was able to go home, it turned out to be another place entirely. Sick and weak as I felt, it was a relief not to have to live with the geezers any more.

All the walls in the new place are painted, there isn’t any wallpaper at all. But even so, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, thinking I can hear them chuckling and whispering around me. I’m fairly sure they couldn’t have followed me to the new place, so it must be only a dream, but I wish I could be sure about it.