CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
SUMMER 1992
A PARALLEL UNIVERSE
The lightning blinked in and out like a flash from a camera. “It’s just the angels taking pictures of heaven,” Andy’s mom would always say whenever it stormed, “just the angels taking pictures.” The lightning turned Aunt Maggie’s house into a blinking lantern—on, off, on, off, on, off—flashing every few minutes, spilling in through the big bay windows and skylights. Andy thought the house was spooky enough during the day, she hated being there for the summer. Her parents insisted it was just for the summer, that they were just taking care of it while Aunt Maggie was away on her honeymoon (whatever that was), but Andy was six, a summer was a lifetime for a six year old. Aunt Maggie’s house was cold and dark and old, and it made Andy feel like she was living someone else’s life for the whole two weeks she had been there already, but it was always worse in a storm. The lightning was not the worst of it, though; it was the thunder that followed.
BOOM!
The crack of thunder that came after the next flash made Andy’s bones dance under her skin. She was in one of the back hallways on the first floor, wandering around holding back scared whimpers as she navigated the dark. The light switches were high on the first floor and she couldn’t reach them without a chair, so the only light she had was what little drifted in from the outside and the occasional big flash from an angel’s camera. Bare feet bounced over the cold tile, perked up on the balls to keep her footsteps light. Andy Barclay pranced—partly to keep quiet and hide the fact that she was out of bed when she wasn’t meant to be and partly out of fear. Anxiety built up in her, tensing up like a can of coke that was just vigorously shaken. Her little heart pounded against her chest, filling her throat as her mind raced with when the next flash of lightning would come.
“Chucky, where are you?” Andy asked, calling out into the darkness down the hall ahead of her, the darkness she was scampering toward only to escape the darkness behind her. “It’s not funny! I’m going to get in trouble!” Her voice was a loud whisper, an attempt to let it carry to the ears she wanted to hear it but avoid the ones she didn’t.
FLASH!
The house lit up like Christmas and collapsed back into shadow. Andy chirped with fear, eyes widening and she hurried forward faster, counting in her head the seconds until the thunder would come, a trick dad showed her to demonstrate to her how far away the storm was and if it was getting closer or farther off. The last gap between lightning and thunder took six seconds. “Three mississippi, four mississippi, five—”
BOOM!
It was getting closer! Andy was almost running now, speeding down the hall, reaching the end and hugging the wall close as she made her turn right into—
“AHH!!” Andy screamed as she crashed into her mother’s leg.
“Whoa, whoa, slow down, kiddo.” Karen Barclay held Andy’s shoulders to calm her down, keeping her in place and dropping down to her level to make eye contact. She was a soothing presence in the storm. “It’s alright. Hey, it’s alright, it’s just me. What are you doing out of bed?”
“I’m looking for Chucky! I told him not to run out like that, especially in a storm but he didn’t listen, he never listens anymore, NEVER!” Andy’s big blue eyes welled up with tears as she talked about a million miles a minute. But mom always knew what to do, always, just like she always knew what to say, but this was definitely more of a doing moment than a saying moment, and she knew that too, because that’s what moms did; they knew things, they did things, and they said things. Without hesitation, Andy’s mom softly ran her hand down her daughters slick cheek. She hummed and cooed and shared her mellow, peaceful energy with her daughter, letting her feed off of it as she came down from the height of fear and frustration. Lightning flashed and thunder cracked again all in the interim, and Andy sniffled and cried a little more, but her mother set the example and she followed it. Within thirty seconds, Andy calmed. She still trembled, but she calmed.
“We’re still on this Chucky thing, sweetie?” Her mom said when things were more subdued. She brushed some of Andy’s hair out of her face. They had the same long brown hair and pale complexion, though Andy didn’t expect she could ever grow up to be as pretty as her mom. “He’s just a doll. He doesn’t talk.”
“He does too,” Andy said, a little righteous indignation poking through the cloud of the doldrums she wafted in.
“Only what he’s been programmed to say,” Mom said. “That’s about three things, I think. ‘Hi, I’m Chucky, wanna play?’ Ummm, what are the other ones? ‘I’m your friend to the end?’ something like that? Maybe ‘hi-de-ho’?”
“He also says other things,” Andy insisted. “Like how Eddie roy-lly f***ed him over and how Aunt Maggie is a skank bitch!” Andy struggled getting the word royally out of her mouth but she did her best to quote her doll for her mother. Chucky, an old Good Guy doll that went off the market five years ago and was sitting in a discount bin when Andy’s parents picked it up, was meant to be a soothing present for the young girl, something to help her make it through the summer in this creepy house. It started out alright… but alright went out the door days ago.
Andy’s mother’s face sank with confused disgust at the words coming out of her daughter’s mouth. When she next spoke she did so with a firm mother’s tone. “Andrea Barclay,” she said, “Where have you been hearing language like that?”
“Chucky! I mean it, I’m telling the truth,” Andy pleaded.
“Lies are bad enough, sweetie, but insisting on a lie is worse.”
“I’m not lying!” Andy tried to pull away but her mother held her arm. “I’m not. Chucky is bad, he’s bad and he’s going to hurt someone, he’s going to hurt daddy!”
“Andy!” Her mother was firmer now. “You can’t— Why would you say something like that? I—”
The ground creaked in the darkness behind them. Both Barclay women turned and a flash of lightning lit up a closed closet door at the end of the hall that disappeared again when the lightning went away. A few seconds passed and the thunder rolled through. Andy and her mother blindly stared at the door.
“William?” Her mother called out. Silence answered her. When Karen Barclay stood up she remained holding on to Andy’s hand by the wrist, staring at the door like staring was going to make a difference and do anything. “William, is that you?”
“It’s Chucky,” Andy said, her voice low. “I know it is. Why won’t you believe me?”
Another creak came from the closet, and a third followed. Something shifted its weight behind the door. There was a pitter-patter of small footsteps and then silence. Andy’s mom waited for more, but everything went still and quiet.
“William, this isn’t funny.”
“Chucky, don’t!” Andy screamed at the closed closet door.
Andy’s mother sighed, losing her patience by the second. “For Christ’s sake, Andy, it’s not your doll. It’s just your father being a big jerk and— You know what? I’ll show you. Big joke, Will, you’re scaring your daughter.” She let go of Andy and started for the closet. Andy screamed out for her to stop but she didn’t listen. “Deep breaths, kiddo, there’s nothing scarier tonight than the angels taking photographs.”
The closet opened with a squeak from the hinge and Andy’s legs became warm and wet from the pee that slipped out of her. Mom clutched her mouth in horror and held back a scream. Daddy was propped up on a pile of junk in there, thirteen holes in his chest that turned his grey pajama shirt red. His head was slumped over to the side but his eyes were still open, non-blinking and lifelessly staring off at nothing. Sitting in a puddle of blood on his lap was Chucky, the red headed Good-Guy doll who clutched a long, dripping kitchen knife in his plastic hand.
“WILLIAM!” Her mother screamed.
Chucky sat still like he did when the adults were around, but when Andy’s mother stopped screaming the mechanisms in his neck clicked into place and his head turned. The doll blinked twice and in his pre-recorded, fake voice he said, “Hi, I’m Chucky. Wanna play?”
Malice slipped in, contorting the silicone face of the doll into a grimace of evil and hate. “Well?” Chucky said in his more gruff and honest voice. “Do ya, mumsy?” Chucky stood up on daddy’s lap and mom took a step back, locked up by shock. He lunged out of the lap, knife held high, and he buried it in Andy’s mom’s gut where he landed, stabbing deep and twisting the handle of the knife. Red spilled down mommy’s legs stealing all the color from her skin.
“No!” Andy cried. “Stop hurting them, stop hurting them!”
But Andy’s mom was already on the ground now, jerking against the force of every stab that Chucky brought down on her. The doll kneeled on top of her, stabbing down into her chest and gut over and over again. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed and Chucky kept stabbing, laughing with a demonic cackle as he did so. Andy cried and her mother rolled her head over to look at her. There was no more soothing calmness in her look or touch. The light left her eyes and the peace went with it.
“STOP!” Andy turned and ran away. The laughing stopped behind her and Chucky gave chase. She ran back down the hall, away from daddy, and mom, and the blood, and Chucky. Lightning flashed and Andy forgot to count and the next crack surprised her. She ran and ran and ran, taking every turn she could until she didn’t know where she was running too anymore. She was lost, spinning in the hall as lightning flashed again. A pitter-patter of footsteps came right behind and Chucky swooped in, cackling along the way.
“Time to be an angel,” Chucky laughed. “Time to take some pictures!”
***
27 YEARS LATER
***
Panicked, tearful eyes shot open in the dark room. Andy’s breath hitched with fear, but she kept from crying out. The residual effects of her nightmare—her relived trauma that played on a loop in her mind night after night—shot up and down through her body like a tremor. She buried it, or attempted to anyway, swallowing down the grief and fear of that night so many years ago, and her body shook, her face fidgeted, she bottled it up and contained it for later, careful to not wake up the woman sleeping beside her. Thoughts of her mother helped ease her back down. That soothing touch she had always eased her back down and pretending to feel her fingertips against her cheek, brushing hair out of her face, it allowed Andy to gently slide into some makeshift sense of peace.
When she released the breath it came out in a broken vibrato, but it was soft and quiet. She sat up and Claire rolled over beside her. She had been staying with her girlfriend all week but this was the first time one of her nightmares got her worked up like this. She had been seeing Claire for a few months now—they both worked at the same Wal-Mart—and even though Andy had gotten closer to Claire than anyone else in her life before, she still wasn’t ready to share everything. Their relationship was too young for Claire to see the damage hiding under Andy’s surface.
Claire made a soft groaning sound and rolled over again, her face hidden by a mess of brown hair. “Kay?” she asked, her voice heavy from sleep and unable to get out more than half a word.
“It’s okay,” Andy said quietly. “I’m okay. Go back to sleep.” Claire didn’t need to be told to go back to sleep, she was already back asleep. Andy eased the covers off of her and threw her legs off the side of the bed. She got up, fished her cigarettes from the pocket of the pants slung over the back of her chair, and snuck out of the room.
Heading down a narrow hallway, Andy passed the bathroom and passed Mollie’s room. Mollie, Claire’s teenage daughter, was still up, or at least her lights were on, but she didn’t come out or make a sound when Andy passed. She could hear some music on the other side of the door but didn’t linger enough to hear what it was. She went to the window at the end of the hall, hoisted it open with a little elbow grease, and crawled out onto the fire escape where she could have a smoke in the chilly night air.
The city blotted out the stars in the sky but it was cloudy anyway. Andy didn’t go out for the clouds though, she went for the noise. Buses, trains, cars, people, the city was a living breathing thing, and it helped Andy not feel so alone. Feeling alone and being alone, those weren’t always the same thing. Andy was never really alone; first she had her parents, and when they died she had Detective Norris who took her in, and a string of people after that who always made her feel like a person, like a part of something. Claire was the latest link in the chain, and Andy wasn’t really alone with her, but feelings didn’t care about facts.
“Maybe somewhere out there there’s a version of me that doesn’t feel so alone,” she thought as she smoked and stared up at the starless sky. “Maybe another Andy is doing better.”
