The Printer From Hell Read online

  “I'm fine, Daddy,” he replies, although he definitely seems a little off-color now that we're back in the apartment.

  I place a hand against his forehead, but his temperature is fine.

  “Hang in there,” I tell him. “Let's not go getting sick again, not when you're only just out of the hospital. Okay?”

  He stares at me for a few seconds, before finally nodding.

  “Dinner'll be ready in about twenty minutes,” I tell him, heading back to the door.

  “It's definitely not Grandma Kate.”

  Stopping, I turn back to him. I want to ask him what he means, but I think I already know.

  “I think it's a man,” he continues, his eyes wide with fear. “It's an angry man.”

  “What are you guys doing in here?” Mary asks cheerfully as she comes through to join us.

  “Nothing,” I reply, forcing a smile as I turn to her. “Everything's fine.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Do you know what my father did when I was sick as a kid?” I ask, setting some plates into the cupboard as Mary and I get ready for bed. “He made me get out of bed and run twenty laps around the track near our house. He said it helped burn the virus out of me, some kind of crap like that.”

  “And when was the last time you spoke to your father?” she replies.

  “I'm not saying that's what we should do with Josh,” I mutter, grabbing more plates from the dishwasher, “but I'm just worried that the more we treat him like he's sick, the more he might act sick.”

  Heading to the cupboard, I'm just about to put the plates away when I happen to glance out the window and see some people outside, down on the dark street below our second-floor apartment. I hesitate for a moment, struck by the fact that the people just seem to be standing and staring, and then I realize that there are even more of them a little further off. Some are standing in pools of light beneath streetlamps, while others are in the shadows.

  Without wanting to freak Mary out, I lean closer to the window and look along the street. There must be close to twenty people out there, just standing around, most of them looking straight up toward our apartment.

  “We can't let this go,” Mary says after a moment. “He was in the hospital. We have to keep pushing to find out why. It might be a symptom of something more serious.”

  I watch the strange scene on the street for a moment longer, before heading to the cupboard and forcing myself to stay calm. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons why a bunch of people would be hanging around outside, and it's sure as hell got nothing to do with my family. Still, when I head back to the dishwasher again to grab some cups, I can't help glancing outside to see if those people are still there.

  They are.

  It's like they're waiting for something. Checking my watch, I see that it's almost 9pm.

  “Did you hear that?” Mary asks suddenly, turning and looking out toward the hallway.

  I follow her gaze, but the apartment seems dead quiet.

  “I thought it was...” She pauses, before turning to me with a faint, embarrassed smile. “Sorry, I think I'm just being jumpy. I thought it was something in Josh's room.”

  “I think Josh is too exhausted to get up to any mischief,” I tell her, taking some cups from the dishwasher and heading back past the window.

  I glance outside.

  They're still there.

  In fact, if anything, there might even be a few more of them.

  “God, I wish we had a working printer,” Mary mutters, tapping at her laptop. “Some of these articles are so long, and I prefer reading paper copies.”

  “Paper copies of what?” I ask, setting the cups away while keeping an eye on the window, watching the people who are gathering outside.

  “I'm trying to find out about links between paranormal activity and a child's health,” she replies, as if that's the most normal, most sane thing in the whole world. “I know it's a long-shot, and I know you and the doctors would be totally against the idea, but I still think it's worth considering. There are documented cases where children react very badly to even the slightest suggestion of an unusual presence.”

  “Uh-huh,” I mutter, heading back to the dishwasher while still looking out the window.

  There must be thirty of those freaks out there at least. Maybe more.

  “Steve?”

  I turn to Mary, and I realize she's waiting for me to say something.

  “Aren't you going to tell me I'm nuts?” she asks. “Usually this kind of thing sets you off.”

  I glance at her laptop screen and see that she's on some kind of website that's showing a wall of text.

  “If this kind of research makes you feel better, honey,” I say cautiously, “then I don't see why -”

  Suddenly there's a loud, heavy bump from one of the other rooms. Whatever it is, it's way too strong to be a figment of anyone's imagination, and Mary and I both hurry straight over to the door and look out into the hallway.

  “What do you want?” Josh is whining in his bedroom, sounding scared and close to tears. “I'm just trying to go to sleep!”

  We head to the door to his room, just in time to see him rolling over in bed and pulling the duvet over his head. There's no sign of anyone else in the room with him, not even the vague, blurry figure I've seen a couple of times, but I immediately hurry to his window and look out. Sure enough, there are more figures out there in the dark, staring straight up at the apartment.

  I pull the curtains shut.

  The small crowd out there is just a coincidence. It's probably just some weird flash-mob thing. After all, people never run out of ways to waste their time, and they don't care if they creep everyone else out in the process.

  “Did you have a nightmare?” Mary asks as she sits on the edge of Josh's bed. “Honey? Did you have a bad dream?”

  I wait for Josh to reply, but he simply rolls over again, turning away from Mary while keeping his face hidden from her beneath the duvet.

  “Do you feel alright?” she asks. “Josh, are you getting sick again?”

  “Tell him to go away,” he moans. “Tell him I'm tired.”

  “Tell who, honey?” she replies, briefly glancing at me with a flash of concern.

  “He was whispering to me and touching my shoulder,” he continues, and now it's clear from his tone of voice that he's close to tears. “He seemed angry. Why's he angry at me?”

  “No-one's angry at you, sweetheart,” she tells him, placing a hand on his duvet-covered shoulder. “No-one in the whole world is angry with you right now. I promise.”

  “Daddy is.”

  Mary pauses, before turning to me again.

  I feel a cold shiver in my chest as I step closer to the bed. “What was that, Josh?” I ask cautiously.

  Tentatively, almost as if he's scared of me, Josh peers out from beneath the duvet, eyeing me with great caution. “Why are you angry at me, Daddy?” he whimpers. “I was just trying to sleep.”

  “I'm not angry at you, buddy,” I reply, sitting on the side of the bed and reaching out to put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Before I can touch him, however, he flinches and pulls back, and then he turns and rolls toward Mary.

  She puts an arm around him, holding him tight.

  “I was with you the whole time,” I remind her, feeling as if this whole situation is absurd. “When the hell did I even get a chance to come in here and be angry at him?”

  ***

  “He's had a tough few days,” Mary says a short while later, as she carefully pulls Josh's bedroom door shut with a bump. “He's probably just confused.”

  “He seemed scared of me,” I reply, trying to ignore the growing sense of fear in my chest. “My own son looked at me like... I don't know, like he expected me to hit him!”

  “I'm sure he doesn't think that!”

  I pause, before reaching for the door handle. “Let me go back in and -”

  “I think he's had enough for one night,” she replies, gently nud
ging my hand away. “Steve, just let him sleep. I'm sure he'll be fine in the morning.”

  “That's easy for you to say,” I point out. “You're not the one who just got treated like he's some kind of bad guy.” I pause for a moment, thinking back to the fear in Josh's eyes when he looked at me a few seconds ago. “That's how I used to look at my father,” I continue, “and I swore my own children would never, ever feel the same way about me.”

  “I know, honey, but -”

  “So maybe I did something wrong by accident,” I continue, still trying to make sense of it all. “He's a kid, he picks up on different cues, and somehow he genuinely thinks I'm mad at him for some reason.”

  “But you're not!”

  “That doesn't matter!” I turn and head to the front room, before turning back just as Mary reaches me. I feel I need to do something to put all of this right, but I have no idea where to start. “If he thinks I'm mad at him,” I continue, “then the damage is already being done. I mean, sure, we both have to tell him off from time to time, but this is different. He looked genuinely scared of me, Mary.”

  “Everything'll seem better in the morning,” she replies, taking my hands in hers. “It's late. We should all get some sleep.”

  “Do you think I'm overreacting?”

  “I think you're a concerned father,” she continues, “and I think that if I was in your shoes right now, I'd feel exactly the same way. And you'd be telling me to get some sleep and wait until morning.”

  I know she's right, but that doesn't make me feel any better. And a few minutes later, when I go to brush my teeth in the bathroom, I peer out the window and see that there are still lots of dark figures outside on the street. I'm tempted to point them out to Mary, but I figure I'm just overreacting and nothing's actually wrong, so I keep quiet and head through to the bedroom. Mary tries to make me feel better, she tells me all the right things, all the things I'd say to her if the situation were reversed, but still...

  For the next couple of hours, I get absolutely no sleep. I just stay flat on my back in the dark, staring up at the ceiling while I go over and over the day's events, trying to work out how I might have made Josh upset. I can't think of one bad thing I said to him, but clearly I scared him somehow.

  Finally, exhausted, I let my eyes slip shut.

  Suddenly Josh lets out a terrified, agonized scream.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “It's okay,” Mary tells him as she grabs his spare backpack and shoves some underwear and socks inside, “we're just going to go stay with Grandpa for a night or two. That sounds good, doesn't it?”

  Sitting on the bed with tears still in his eyes, Josh seems quieter and more subdued than ever before in his life. After a moment he turns and looks at me, and if anything the fear seems even greater. Worse, I can't stop staring at the two large bruises that erupted on his face in the middle of the night, or at the other bruises on his arms. My son looks like he's been in an actual fight.

  “Maybe we should call someone,” I say after a moment, turning and watching as Mary grabs more of Josh's clothes from the chest of drawers. “Honey? I think we should call someone.”

  “Who?” she snaps, zipping the backpack shut. “Who do we call in a situation like this, Steve?”

  “I don't know, but -”

  “Just stay right here with the door open,” she tells Josh, before hurrying over and slipping out past me into the hallway. At the same time, she grabs my hand and leads me away. “Honey, I really think we just need to get out of here and go to my father's for a few days.”

  “Those bruises on his face -”

  “I don't know where they came from,” she continues as we reach the front room and she turns to me, “but...” She pauses, and I can see genuine fear in her eyes. Not the same kind of fear as Josh, though. Mary's fear is mixed with something else.

  Doubt.

  Doubt about me.

  “You know I didn't do that to him, right?” I ask cautiously.

  She nods. “Of course.”

  “I was in bed with you when he started crying out.”

  “I know that.”

  “I didn't go anywhere near him after -”

  “I know!” she says firmly, still holding my hand tight. “Steve, I know in my heart that you would never, ever have done anything like that.”

  “But you're still taking him away from me.”

  “I'm taking us away,” she replies. “From this apartment. And I want you to come too.”

  “To your father's?”

  “I think we need to get away and rethink the situation,” she continues. “All of us. Whatever's going on in this place, it's not...” Her voice trails off for a moment. “I know you don't like thinking about that sort of thing,” she adds finally, “but I don't hear you coming up with any better ideas.”

  “You think we have a ghost?” I ask. “One that impersonates me and beats our son?”

  I wait for an answer, but I can see from the look in her eyes that I'm more or less bang on the money. That's exactly what she thinks.

  “People are going to think it's me,” I continue. “When they see him with those bruises, that's not the kind of thing that goes unnoticed. We'll be lucky if there's not a knock at the door.” As soon as those words leave my mouth, I remember that the hospital staff already referred Josh to protective services. If they arrive and Josh is in this state, they might take him away from us. “They're going to think we're child-beaters,” I whisper, too shocked to know what I should do next.

  “If that happens, we can just tell them the truth.”

  “That a ghost did it?” I ask, feeling as if she's not being realistic. “That we bought a new printer and then a ghost showed up? And then what happens when they ask Josh, and he tells them it was me?”

  “He doesn't think it was -”

  “He does!” I hiss. “He said it to our faces! He was hiding under the duvet, but it was my voice he heard when...”

  Feeling as if I'm about to explode, I take a step back. I've been telling myself this whole time that there's a rational explanation, that we'll figure this out, but now I'm running out of time.

  “Josh and I are going to my father's,” she says firmly, “and that's not up for debate. Steve, please, you have to come with us. I hate the idea of you staying behind alone in this apartment. No matter what's going on here, we need to stick together as a family!”

  ***

  Standing alone on the pavement, I watch as Mary's car disappears into the night, taking her and our son to the other side of the city. There's still a part of me that thinks I should have gone with them, but at the same time I feel I need to stay here and figure this mess out. I'm not running away from my own goddamn apartment.

  “Please, Steve,” Mary begged me a few minutes ago, with tears in her eyes, as she finished loading the spare car. “You have to come! Please, don't stay here!”

  “It's just for one night,” I told her. “There's nothing to be scared of. I'm going to get to the bottom of it.”

  And now they're gone.

  Looking around, I feel a flash of relief as I see that at least all those dark figures are gone. The street seems deserted now, and after a moment I look up at the side of the building and see the light in Josh's bedroom.

  Suddenly my phone starts buzzing, and when I slip it out of my pocket I see that Mary is calling.

  “Hey,” I say as I answer, “I'm -”

  “Please come with us,” she sobs on the other end of the line. “Steve, this doesn't feel right. I don't think it's safe for you to be alone there.”

  Sighing, I realize that although I should go and comfort her, I have to face the apartment and figure out what the hell is going on inside.

  “I'm parked by the side of the road,” she continues, “just a couple of streets away. If I turn around and drive back, will you please get in and come with us?”

  “I have to -”

  “No you don't!” she says firmly. “You don't have to sta
y there and figure anything out! You just have to come with us, Steve! Come to my father's for a few days, let's get everything back to normal!”

  “Back to normal means being in our apartment,” I tell her.

  “Please, Steve. Please, don't be stubborn. Just come with us, for the sake of our family.”

  For a moment, I actually consider agreeing, but finally I turn and spot the lights of the all-night convenience store on the street corner, and I realize that I have to stay and figure the problem out. The apartment is our home, it's the place where we're supposed to be a happy family, and I'm not going to let anything ruin that.

  “Say hi to your father for me,” I tell her finally. “I'll call you in the morning, honey. I love you. Have a safe journey.”

  With that, I cut the call before she has a chance to reply. Slipping my phone away, I make my way over to the store, so I can grab some supplies for the night before I go back up to the apartment and fix this problem once and for all.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Hey Sanjay,” I mutter as I head into the brightly-lit store. “Quiet night?”

  “You think I'm gonna complain about things being quiet?” he asks with a smile, not even looking over at me as he continues to watch the news on his laptop. “The last time things weren't quiet around here, I had to chase a guy out with a baseball bat.”

  Heading to the chiller cabinet, I grab a six-pack of beer. I know drinking probably isn't the best idea right now, but I sure as hell need to take the edge off my nerves.

  “You didn't see a bunch of weirdos outside earlier, did you?” I ask, heading back to the counter and setting the beer down. “About half an hour ago? A load of people just standing around in the street?”

  “Sounds like a pretty normal night in this part of the city,” he replies as he scans the beer. “Why? What was going on?”

  I hesitate for a moment, before realizing that the whole idea is crazy. “Nothing,” I mutter, taking some money from my pocket. “Just sleep deprivation, I guess.” Just as I start counting out the cash for the beer, I glance at the laptop screen and see that there's some kind of news report from the motorway service station near the hospital.