Rattle-Rattle

Some toys are just creepy.

This was written for the 30 Days of Fright Writing Challenge, prompt 2: something apparently innocent, but unsettling.

Rattle-Rattle

Her father was winding the crank on the side of the dusty old box, filling the attic with a jerky, circus-sounding tune. “Come look at this, Ellie.”

The attic was much like Ellie had expected an attic in an old house to be—dark with one bare bulb and a string for light, one dusty window with a dead-fly-covered sill, and boxes and furniture and mystery objects, not belonging to her own family. Belonging to the past.

She went over to her father just as the tune stopped, the top flew open and a devilish thing bounced out. It was the top half of a doll, a clown or jester, attached to a spring.

“That’s creepy,” Ellie said, startled, looking at its bulbous nose and too-big clown smile.

“It’s an antique,” her father said, as if that explained something. He shoved the doll back into the box and clicked closed the lid.

“What’s it for?”

“It’s a toy. A jack-in-the-box.” He set it back next to a wooden trunk. “You wind the crank and after so many times, randomly, Jack pops out.”

Ellie didn’t think that sounded like a very fun toy.

“This one’s old,” he said. “It’s even made of wood. Could be worth a bit of money.”

That’s why they were going through Great-Aunt Mil’s attic. To see what to keep, what to donate, and what to sell. And because they had inherited the house and her mom said it needed to be “cleaned up and cleaned out.”

The weak light from the window caught dust motes in the air. Ellie could hear her mom coming up the stairs, and their chihuahua Toby’s nails clicking and scratching behind her on the wood.

She looked at the box with the fading stripes and star on it. “Does that mean every single one of these guys ever made is named Jack?”

Her dad shrugged. “I guess so.”

“We should give him a different name, like… Leopold.” It was an old-fashioned name that she didn’t particularly like the sound of. The thing in the box looked like a Leopold.

“Sure. Leopold-in-the-box.” Her dad laughed. The box behind him sprung open suddenly, its half-doll bouncing on its spring. “Geez, that spooked me,” her dad said. “I must not have latched it right.”

As he turned to push Jack-Leopold back in his box once more, he said, “Or maybe he’s just saying he likes the name you gave him.”

Ellie tried to laugh, but it got stuck in her throat. As she watched the doll’s head disappear back into the box, she could have sworn his grin got a little bit bigger.

+++

“We should bring a lamp up here,” Ellie’s mom said. “Imagine! This will be your very own playroom!” Her mom was always thrilled when there was a “project” to do.

Ellie rolled her eyes at the word “playroom,” but she did like the idea of having her own private space, and she liked the gloomy, quiet, undisturbed feeling of the attic.

Toby’s nails clicked on the hardwood floor, in and around boxes and old furniture, as he sniffed everything, exploring.

“Let’s open the window and get some fresh air in here, before summer’s over,” her mom was saying. Ellie heard the sound of wood scraping wood as her mom opened the long-shut window. “Just a bit. There’s no screen yet. Don’t want Toby falling out.”

Ellie sat on the floor looking through some old photo albums she had found, all of the pictures in black and white. All people she didn’t know, and never would.

She wondered who the people in the photos were. Maybe one of them was Great-Aunt Mil as a child. Maybe Leopold-in-the-box had belonged to her when she was little.

Her mom just kept going. “This’ll be such a great fresh start. A new school. New beginnings.”

Just stop talking, Mom, Ellie willed. She hadn’t wanted to move here from the city. At least she had a couple of friends at her old school, despite her problems. Here, she wouldn’t have any friends at all.

“Dr. Robinson said the change would do you good,” her mom continued. Dr. R., the therapist. “And you haven’t had a single outburst since we got here, so–”

Please, just stop. Ellie could feel her hands balling into fists. She closed her eyes and tried to take deep breaths. Why couldn’t mom just drop it?

Toby started barking then. At the walls. He moved from spot to spot, sniffing. Thank God. It gave her mom something else to focus on.

“Mice,” her mom said. “Or maybe even rats. Most of these old houses have them in the walls, if the house wasn’t maintained very well. He probably hears them.” She sighed. “We’ll figure something out.”

Ellie had seen several empty mousetraps up here when they first moved in. Her mom had cleaned those up, too, saying, “What a horrible way to die.” And that she didn’t want Toby getting his nose snapped.

Toby stopped barking, but continued sniffing around the baseboards.

“Some of these paintings were done by Aunt Mil,” her mom said, with a bundle of framed pictures in her arms. “I’m going to take them downstairs. Be back in a sec.”

Toby whined—he didn’t like to be anywhere without Mom—but then he began his sniffing search for mice again.

Ellie flipped the page in the photo album. She liked looking at the clothes people used to wear, and their sometimes sad-seeming faces. She liked that they weren’t required to smile for photographs.

Then she heard it. That shaky, unmelodic circus music. Just a few notes. She looked up.

Leopold’s box sat on the floor next to the trunk. Ellie watched it, but nothing happened. What did she expect?

Toby came sniffing along and cocked his head.

A couple more notes. Had the crank moved? She couldn’t tell.

Toby came closer, wary. “Toby, be—” Then, pop! out sprang Leopold. Ellie could have sworn that the doll’s mouth snapped at Toby, that the mouth moved.

The dog shrank back and crouched close to the floor, his ears down, eyes on the toy, bouncing upon its spring and smiling its too-wide smile.

+++

She had grabbed Toby by the collar and practically dragged him downstairs with her.

“Mom! Mom!”

Her mother was in the dining room, laying out the framed paintings on the table. “What’s wrong?”

Toby scampered up to Mom to say hi and then trotted off as if nothing had happened. Ellie opened her mouth and then closed it again. Her mom was not going to believe a toy came to life and tried to eat their chihuahua.

“Nothing.” She sighed. “Toby just wanted you, that’s all.”

Maybe she could get proof about Leopold.

When she went back up to the attic, Ellie closed the door at the bottom of the stairs so Toby couldn’t come up.

Now she found herself sitting across the room, staring at the closed jack-in-the-box. It just sat there, like the old ugly toy that it was, the paint faded and chipping. She was building up her courage to go over to it.

Maybe she really had imagined it all. She could hear the therapist’s words from their last session: “She’s an imaginative girl, and observant, and sensitive. But that goes hand in hand with being impulsive and quick to get upset. Especially when she gets fixated on something.” Dr. R. was talking about the “outbursts.”

She glanced at the open window and felt the cooling breeze. Two more weeks before school starts. Where she’d have to work hard to fit in, all over again. Her mother had said, “Fourth graders don’t fly off the handle; they don’t have tantrums over little things like a lost notebook or… whatever.” The therapist had said her mother’s words weren’t very “productive,” but Ellie knew her mom was right.

She got so mad, or frustrated, or confused that she felt like something was coiling in her chest and that the room was closing in, and then she just… had an outburst. Like the time she shoved Devin at recess for saying she was the worst at kickball, or the time she’d cried and broken all her pencils during a particularly hard math test.

Just thinking about it made her upset. She tried taking deep breaths. That’s why she liked the dim, quiet attic, surrounded by all the old things—it was calming. Her eyes drifted to Leopold’s box. Except for him.

She would just go pick it up, play with it, prove to herself it was all in her head.

+++

“I swear to God, Dad,” Ellie said. “Something’s friggin’ wrong with it.”

“Watch your language, please,” her dad said calmly, just like the family therapist had taught him.

“But Dad, it’s making this weird rattling noise.” She didn’t say, and it tried to eat Toby. If she’d learned anything at therapy, it was to not say things that sounded crazy, even to Dad.

He pushed through the doorway past her and went to pick up Leopold’s box. He turned the crank until it popped open.

“Look,” her dad said, sighing in his way that let her know he was practicing being patient. “There’s just a spring inside.” He held up the box and tilted it so she could see inside its dark maw—at least that’s how she thought of it. Leopold’s head bobbled upside down on its spring. Otherwise the box was empty.

She couldn’t argue with the evidence. That is what her dad would say. And he was right. But as he pushed Leopold’s head back into the box, she wanted to punch the doll in his stupid smiling clown-face.

With it closed, her dad shook the box. A slight noise of the spring rubbing against the wood, that was all. “See?” he said. “You probably just shook it a different way, and it made a rattling noise. But it’s just the spring.”

He set the box down and headed downstairs, saying over his shoulder. “Maybe take a break from the attic. Go ride your bike.”

Ellie sat cross-legged on the floor. She punched one fist into her other hand over and over until it stung. She hadn’t said that when she heard the rattle, she hadn’t even touched the box.

+++

That evening after dinner, Ellie sat in the attic. Lots of the boxes were pushed to one corner, and a few old end tables taken downstairs, so she was starting to be able to picture how this would be as her “playroom.” She had brought up a small lamp and now she lounged in her beanbag chair, writing in her journal just like Dr. R had taught her, when she was feeling confused or worried or upset.

Except the page was mostly blank. Ellie was just staring and thinking. Then she heard small scratching sounds. The mice or rats in the walls. And then one skittered out of some hole in the wall somewhere–a brownish mouse–and ran along the baseboard.

Jerky, unsettling, circus music. Ellie’s body tensed.

The mouse scampered along the edges of some boxes and the trunk with the jack-in-the-box next to it.

The mouse moved quickly. But Leopold was quicker.

In a flash, the music stopped, he sprang from his box and—this time she was sure—he opened his mouth and… devoured… the mouse. It was gone, just like that.

From across the room, she locked eyes with Leopold, bouncing up and down on his spring, his face showing a toothy grin where no teeth had been before.

Ellie jumped to her feet and screamed. By the time she heard her dad’s footsteps hurrying up the stairs, Leopold had ducked and latched himself back into his box, as if nothing had ever happened.

+++

Ellie babbled and what she said probably didn’t make a lot of sense to her dad. He glanced at her book and lamp and beanbag chair. “You fell asleep up here,” he said, “and had a nightmare.”

Ellie eyed Leopold’s silent box warily. “Yeah,” she said. “Probably.” Her dad switched off the lamp and she let herself be led downstairs, making sure to close the door tightly behind them.

As she lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, she thought she could hear the rattle-rattle of Leopold’s box, a scraping on the floor, the faint start and stop of circus music. That, she thought, is why the mousetraps were all empty.

+++

“It’s Saturday,” her mom said cheerfully. “After we finish up with these boxes, let’s go out and get some ice cream.” The breeze from the attic window was warm. It was probably one of the last warm days of the summer.

With both her parents and Toby up in the attic, and in the light of day, Ellie felt braver.

While they were busy boxing up stuff for donation and to sell at the antique store, she walked boldly up to Leopold and picked up his box. She shook it. It rattled. She wanted to turn to her father and say, See, I told you so. But instead, she leaned closer to the box and whispered, “I know what you do.”

Then she set it on the floor and turned to her parents. “You’re going to sell this jack-in-the-box, right Dad?” she asked loudly.

“Yeah, I told you, I think he’s worth quite a bit.”

Ellie smirked. “Good.”

Then she walked away and started helping her mom fold up clothes for the donation box, humming a little tune to herself.

But after a moment, it turned into the tune of the jack-in-the-box and she realized she was humming along with it. It was making noise, again.

She turned just as Toby yelped, but it was too late to catch Leopold. The box sat closed and still. Toby was whimpering.

“What happened Tobes?” her mom asked, but Ellie was already by the little dog’s side. He had backed away from the toy. There was blood on his head. Part of his ear was missing.

“Oh my god!” her mom said. “How on earth…?” She grabbed a cleaning rag and scooped up the dog, who appreciatively burrowed into his mama’s arms.

Ellie’s face clouded. She felt the coil in her chest, the tightness in her throat. Her fists clenched of their own accord. “I know how.”

She grabbed Leopold’s box and ran to the open window, embracing her anger, not stopping to think. She pushed up the window and threw the rattling box as hard as she could. She watched it sail down until it hit the paved front walk below, shattering into pieces.

“Ellie, what the hell?” Her dad.

“My god, Ellie, what’s gotten into you?” Her mom.

“We’ll talk about this later. I told you that was worth a lot of money.” Dad headed off downstairs. Ellie still stood in the window, leaning over, watching. There were a lot of pieces. Too many, really.

Her dad came out the front door below. She saw him look around at the mess. And then a tone of voice she hadn’t heard before, querulous maybe, fearful perhaps. “Margaret… get down here…” he called.

Ellie followed her mom, still carrying the frightened Toby, downstairs and out front.

Before them on the pavement were strewn the wooden shards of Leopold’s box and among them…. bones… many, many small bones. More than could have reasonably fit inside Leopold’s box.

“What…?” her mom started, but didn’t finish.

“Mouse bones, I think,” her dad said. “Rodent bones. A lot.” He looked over at Ellie, but she didn’t say anything. She was already wondering about something else.

She found what was left of Leopold, his spring detached from his box, part of his head chipped away, the mouth no longer smiling, and those eyes—those eyes were, thankfully, closed.

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