I’m somewhere in the room watching, though I have no sense of myself. It’s as if I’m paralysed. As if I exist as consciousness only.
Clover’s sitting beside Hope on the bed, reading a storybook. It’s a big one with a bright cloth cover, but I can’t make out the title or image. The room’s lit by yellow light from the lamp on Hope’s bedside table. It’s a shadowy scene, but cosy. The light gives the impression of warmth, and the girls look relaxed.
Clover’s sitting on top of the eiderdown, her stockinged feet crossed at the ankles, whilst the lower half of Hope’s body is under the covers. They’re both propped up by plump white pillows, which are stacked against the headboard behind them. I can hear Clover’s voice, but I can’t hear what she’s saying. Her voice is a soft, soothing burr.
I want to speak to them, attract their attention, but I can’t. Even though I’m in the room – or feel I am – I’m as distant from them as if I’m watching them on TV. Despite the domesticity of the scene, I have a sense of foreboding. When the wardrobe door on the other side of the room creaks open I feel dread, and also guilt, as if just by being here I’ve caused what’s about to occur.
Hope presses into Clover’s side, looking scared, and points at the wardrobe with her good arm. Clover pauses in her reading and follows Hope’s pointing finger. I see her smile and tilt her head towards the girl. She speaks to her, and even though I can’t tell what she’s saying I know from her tone and the expression on her face that she’s offering words of reassurance.
Hope’s voice when she replies is jagged, slightly shrill, but I still can’t make out what she’s saying. Clover redoubles her efforts to soothe Hope’s fears. She strokes her hair gently, then leans to the side and plants a kiss on the top of Hope’s head. There’s a quick exchange of conversation, then Clover closes the book and lays it aside. When she stands up and walks over to the wardrobe I follow her progress as if I’m turning my head, or at least swivelling my eyes. I feel tense as she reaches the wardrobe, grabs the handle and pulls the door wide. But the wardrobe is empty, and my tension eases.
Then Hope screams, and as Clover turns, so my vision swivels back to the bed. Sliding out from the shadows beneath it, its movements nightmarishly fluid, as if I’m watching a film in reverse, is a figure in a patchy, dusty harlequin costume. Streams of black sand pour from the empty sockets in its withered grey face and from between the long, rotted teeth in its gaping mouth. As Clover cries out and moves towards the figure, it cups a skeletal hand beneath its chin and then with a flick of its arm hurls the sand it has caught into Clover’s face.
She staggers, chokes, throws up a hand as a belated defence. Then her eyes widen in horror as her body starts to stiffen. Within seconds she is paralysed.
Hope is still screaming, but the harlequin figure, the Sandman, throws a handful of sand into her face too. Her screams become splutters and then dwindle to silence, as she too stiffens with paralysis. Unchallenged now, the Sandman moves across to Clover and examines her, tilting his head this way and that, the bells on his three-pointed hat tinkling. From the way Clover’s eyes bulge and glare I know she’s straining every sinew in an effort to move.
The Sandman raises his hand and I see he’s holding a large needle, through the eye of which trails a line of thick black thread. He pushes the point of the needle into Clover’s flesh just beneath her bottom lip and, as blood trickles down her chin and tears of agony leak from her eyes, unhurriedly sews her lips together.
When he’s done he admires his handiwork, nodding in satisfaction, then turns back to Hope. Although she can’t move, her terror of the Sandman, her overwhelming desire to shrink away from him, to run, to scream, is evident on her face. The Sandman slides up the length of the bed until he’s standing right beside her, leaving a trail of black sand in his wake. Once again he holds up his right hand, except this time it’s not a needle and thread pinched between his twig-like fingers but a scalpel, the blade dull and dirty.
I want to scream, to fly at him, to stop him, but I’m as immobile, as helpless, as the two girls.
I can only watch as the Sandman uses the scalpel to cut deep into the flesh around Hope’s eye.