Work Text:
[Statement of Edith Sims, regarding the disappearance of her eight year old grandson, Jonathan. Statement given 21st April, 1996]
[Statement begins]
I loved my son.
I had never been... keen on children when I was young, was never particularly motherly, but I loved my Adam. He married a woman named Beatrice, shortly after his father died, and I liked her well enough. As much as I could while I was still grieving my husband, I should think.
They had their first, and only, child a year or two later, a boy they decided to name Jonathan, after Adam's late father. From what I could tell, Jonathan was a... solemn baby. quiet. He was also the child that confirmed the theory of my having little to no maternal instinct to speak of. He was just a baby. A baby that meant a great deal to people that meant a great deal to me, but just a baby, nonetheless.
Adam died when Jonathan was only two, nasty accident, that, and Beatrice followed soon after, and the responsibility of raising Jonathan came to me.
I tried, I really did, but for all his solemnity as an infant, Jonathan was more than a handful as a child, always talking back and wandering off, so particular about the oddest things, the textures in his food, the light bulb in the bathroom, the ‘sound of the refrigerator', whatever that meant. And to top it off he was picky, like nothing else. Especially with his choice in reading material, which was problematic for me as books seemed to be the only thing that could keep him still for more than an hour, short of nailing him to the floor.
Perhaps I’m being too callous, I cared for that boy, I really did. It's just... it was like living with the ghost of my son, raising him all over again. Some days I could hardly stand to look at the boy. Isn't that awful? Jonathan hadn’t done anything, putting aside his small annoyances and eccentricities, and yet. And yet.
I devised a plan to keep Jonathan occupied. I'd present him with as many books as I could, let him have his pick of the lot, then get more. They were cheap, I'd just pick up any old books from the charity shop and donate the leftovers, but it did what it was meant to. It was a system, and it worked. No more police cars coming to drop him off after wandering too far afield, no more daily begging to go to the library, no more trouble. Until that book.
That damn, damn, book.
It was a kiddish thing, all white cardboard and mostly pictures, not something I would have expected to catch Jonathan's eye, who was nothing if not precocious, but it clearly did. He was utterly taken with the thing, called it his book.
When he first found it, in the pile of battered paperbacks I had given him, he turned to the first page, and asked me what ‘it’ meant. I wasn’t paying him much mind at the time, but ‘it’ turned out to be some… unique label, on the inside cover. I can’t remember the name, and it's not like I can exactly check anymore, but I remember the whole thing looking rather ornate, for a children's book. Looked Swedish, to my untrained eye. I told him it was the mark of whoever had owned the book before he did. He seemed satisfied by this, and clambered back up to his bedroom, his book in hand.
‘A Guest For Mr. Spider’ was the title. No author that I could see, just the title on the front and a large cartoonish spider on the back. My Jonathan hated to reread something, that was part of the trouble, you see. No old favorite he could read and reread and never tire from, most times he couldn’t even read two books from the same author. But ‘A Guest For Mr. Spider’... he must've read it twenty times. before it took him, that is.
I’m sure, now, that it was the book’s fault, with its jagged lettering and glossy little label.
The next day he was still reading it, and it seemed I’d struck gold, as no matter how odd the little thing was, he loved it. My contentment at finding something that could finally occupy Jonathan soon turned again to frustration as I realized that he was so engrossed that, while reading it in the front garden, he started just… walking away. he had that look in his eyes, curious, yet glazed, like he had no idea what could possibly be going on around him, and I had had enough, I told him, I told him, one more time he wandered off…
So I followed him.
Jonathan was focused entirely on Mr. Spider and his supposed guest, but he never once tripped. I watched him dodge rocks and cracks with a grace he had never yet possessed, it was like something was puppetting him, drawing him forward, and making sure he got where he was going safely. The phrase ‘damaged goods’ jumped to my mind unbidden, but I shook it away. I still had no real inkling this was any more than one of Jonathan’s usual excursions.
This continued for some time, long enough I began to really, truly worry. It wasn't a long book by any stretch of the imagination, he must've read it several times just while we were walking, but Jonathan was undeterred. The route was winding, doubling back, with nonsensical turns, and though I might not have been privy to the inner workings of my grandson’s mind, I couldn't imagine this was a normal course. There seemed to be a path, in his head, and he’d be damned if he didn’t follow it to the letter.
It only occurred to me later to be at all surprised he hadn’t noticed me following him.
We came upon a house, eventually. I want to say it was terrifying, a great, looming, thing in a state of disrepair, garden simultaneously overgrown and utterly barren, peeling paint covering rotten boards. I wouldn't even mind saying it was shockingly normal, all clapboard and brick and nice wooden fences and you’d never believe what went on inside, but I can't say either of those things, because I have no idea what the thing looked like. I just… can’t remember. It’s like water on rubber, the memory of it just slips my mind. Can't even remember what color it was. But it did have… a presence. There was a weight to it, that I do remember. And I’ll never forget that door. Not as long as I live.
The thing was pristine, painted a deep, matte black, and it had no windows, just intricate panels that spanned the full height of the door, the edges seeming like scallops at times. But none of that is really what struck me.
The door had no handle.
It was when Jonathan began walking up to that door that I discovered I was unable to move a muscle. I was ready to finally put an end to my observation, going for an unauthorized walk was one thing, waltzing right into a stranger’s home was another entirely, but as I made to march up and retrieve Jonathan I found I could not move my legs. Fearing the worst, or at least what I… believed to be the worst, I tried to call out to him, still walking up the path to that door, but my mouth would not open, and my lungs could only shudder.
With a start, I realized I was utterly, irrevocably, petrified.
Those last moments, of watching him climbing the steps up to that goddamn door were agony, seemingly stretched to hours of brutal anticipation and seconds of desperate hope that he would just turn around and come back to me, at the same time, but he kept going.
I could do nothing but watch, as he held the book up to the door, placed it against the dark wood, and knocked.
The door swung open, but I didn't realize it at first, so dark was the paint and so dark was the interior that you could only make out the shape of the door by the absence of those thin, white, gossamer threads that formed a jagged web inside the house.
And then the darkness moved
It seemed the house itself was reaching out, grabbing Jonathan with its spindly, bony limbs, claws and coarse, dark hair enveloping him, leaving no trace of my grandson, wrapping him in it’s shining silk and pulling, and as he disappeared into that inky blackness my mind seemingly disappeared with him, dragging me into some wretched place in the recesses of my psyche where all I could think of was the fact that he was gone, this boy, this child who I thought I hadn’t even wanted, was just gone, the last vestiges of my family stolen from me by a fucking children’s book and the sick man who owned it. I did not entertain the notion that Jonathan would ever come out of that house. I knew he wouldn’t.
When I came back to myself, my face was wet.
I wept, for longer than I believe I ever had before, standing on the pavement and watching that black door. Hating it. Cursing it. I reported him missing, of course I did, but the police just said he’d most likely wandered off again, and that he’d turn up sooner or later. I know what I saw. That accursed book took my grandson from me.
I have never considered myself a violent woman. But if I ever meet the man whose name matches that label…
I don’t think I’d have a choice.
[statement ends]