Cry Holes by Michelle Howarth

Adrian is perched on the park bench, legs swinging, arms folded. The other boy sits in the woodchips and cries. He has fallen off the swing, which rattles back and forth minus its passenger, who holds his scuffed knee in both hands.

“He shouldn’t do that,” Adrian says, shakes his head, and pouts his lips.

Liza, who is with him now—the shape that tucks him in at night, the one who feeds him, sings to him, and guides him when they cross the street—asks, “What?”

“Cry,” Adrian points out. “He shouldn’t cry.”

Liza looks at the boy in the woodchips. He sobs louder as a woman comes to wrap her arms around him. “It’s okay, he hurt his knee.”

“Doesn’t matter. Mummy says you should never do that. Not ever.”

Familiar lines wrinkle Liza’s face. Her eyes grow extra big. Her lips press tight, then blow out a puff of air. “Your mummy’s not here now,” she says, and takes hold of Adrian’s hand.

Before leaving the park, Adrian tells the boy, “Don’t do that.” He strains against Liza to stop her pulling him away. “Naughty, boy. Never do that. Not ever.”

The boy wails, and shoves his head beneath the woman’s—his mother’s—arm. She looks at Adrian and has the same lines Liza has. Liza gives a shake of her head, and tows Adrian into the street.

On the way to Liza’s house—she calls it home, but Adrian knows it’s not—she buys him an ice cream with strawberry sauce and a chocolate flake. The flake is yucky, so he throws it at a little girl with pigtails and blue ribbons. She shrieks when the ice cream slathered chocolate sticks to her face, and sobs as a dribble of red runs down her neck.

“Adrian!” Liza snaps, not an angry snap, just surprised. “You mustn’t do that.”

Adrian smiles. “I know. You must never cry. Mummy says so.”

Those lines are back on Liza’s face. Her eyes look shiny. Her hand squeezes Adrian’s. “It’s okay to cry, honey.”

He thinks about this on the journey to Liza’s house—not home like she says. It’s okay to cry. He remembers Mummy—her face furious and red, her fists clenched with strands of his hair caught between her fingers, bits of his skin buried under her nails—and doesn’t believe Liza, at all.

* * *

That night in his Thomas the Tank Engine room, Adrian is surrounded by the Thomas nightlight, bed sheets, and a poster of bright green Henry and bright red James. Liza sits on the edge of his bed.

“Tonight, our story is very special,” she tells him. “It’s about a boy who never, ever cries.”

“A good boy,” Adrian adds, and decides he will like this story—it sounds better than the one about the little boy whose mummy was wrong, and the little boy whose mummy didn’t love him, and the little boy whose mummy was gone forever, and never coming back. But those lines are still on Liza’s face. He doesn’t like them, so he watches the Thomas nightlight instead.

“Once, there was a boy,” Liza starts. “He was five years old.”

“I’m five!” Adrian chimes in. Then mutters, “All the boys in your stories are five.”

Liza smiles, he sees it from the corner of his eyes, but keeps his gaze on the Thomas nightlight.

“Yes, they are,” she says. “But this one is extra special. This little boy never, ever cries. Not ever.”

“A very good boy.”

“You would think so, but he wasn’t.”

“He wasn’t?”

“No, he threw a chocolate flake at a little girl.”

Adrian pulls the bed sheets over his head. He doesn’t like this story anymore.

“But that’s okay.” Liza’s words come through the covers. “The boy didn’t know it was naughty.”

Adrian pokes his head out to look at Liza. “He didn’t?”

“No, because his mummy never told him so.”

Adrian tries to remember Mummy and what she said about being naughty. He thinks about the time he cut all of her hair off while she was sleeping. Afterwards he got a hug. About the time when he put the plug in the bath and filled it up until water started dripping through the kitchen ceiling. He got a lollypop. The time he played with next door’s cat until it couldn’t move anymore. Mummy said, “never mind,” and took him to the duck pond.

“I don’t think that boy was ever naughty,” Adrian finally declares. “But crying . . . that was extra naughty.”

That made Mummy shout, made the house tremble, and all the books fall out the book case. It put a crater in the garden. It turned his wardrobe and all his best toys into splinters and screwed up pieces of plastic. Made Mummy scream and smack him and bellow, “Don’t do that. Don’t you ever do that!”

Tucked up with the Thomas nightlight, and Liza gone to one of the other rooms, Adrian lays awake in his Thomas room, in Liza’s house that is not home like she says it is.

She told her story about the boy who never cried, not ever. He never cried, and that made him naughty—he did naughty things because he never cried. Then at the end of the story, he learned it was okay to cry. He cried lots, but only when he wanted to, and everything was good for him.

Adrian could only think one thought about that: Liza was wrong.

* * *

His dreams take him back to Mummy. To their house—proper home—not like Liza’s house. Mummy is making silly faces that look nothing like the lines Liza wears more and more since Adrian came to live with her.

Mummy prods her tongue out at him, and uses it to touch the tip of her nose. Mummy goes cross-eyed, puffs out her cheeks, and wiggles her ears. She’s so funny, Adrian rolls on the floor, and laughs until his sides ache.

That’s when the nail stabs him. It is stuck up from the carpet, and it goes right into him. It hurts, it really hurts. He feels warmth and burning. His eyes sting. His breath is difficult to take.

It hurts.

It hurts.

And then the house is shaking, and things are spinning through the air. Mummy is red faced and screaming. She’s coming at him, clawing, and ripping. Her head is thrown back. She’s on the floor, writhing in circles. Thunder cracks, and lights go black.

* * *

“Wake up!” Liza’s voice interrupts. Her hands pull him up, and proper home goes away. Adrian is back with Thomas the tank engine in Liza’s house.

“It’s okay,” Liza hugs him. “You were just having a bad dream.”

“It wasn’t bad,” Adrian says.

“It’s okay.” She’s not listening. She rocks him to and fro. “Everything’s okay now.” She puts him at arm’s length and says, “You can cry if you want to.”

Adrian jerks away, and smacks her face. “No! You mustn’t do that. You must never do that.”

She tries to grab him, but Adrian jumps off the bed, and hides behind the toy chest, which is filled with toys that aren’t really his toys.

“Leave me alone, stupid lady!” he shouts. “You’re wrong. You’re all wrong. It’s not okay to cry.”

“It is,” Liza insists, and her voice sounds high pitched. “Your mummy was wrong. It’s just a mean thing she said to hurt you.”

“No!” Adrian is angry now, and he throws the Thomas nightlight at Liza.

It hits her head, before being stopped by the plug, and she falls to her knees. Her hands cover her face and its familiar lines. “I can’t do this anymore.”

Adrian sits and watches her. She is crying, and Mummy said never cry. Not ever. She was right, Liza is wrong. Silly Liza, and all those other people—Derek and Alison and their nice dog, Jumper. Wrong. Billy and his flat filled with lots of sweets. Very wrong. And Andy and Rebecca, and Carol. So many homes which weren’t really home. All wrong.

Adrian misses real home. He misses Mummy bad.

“I want to go back,” he tells Liza, as she sits on the floor, shoulders curled up, body shuddering.

She looks up—no lines on her face at all—and sniffs. “I’ll take you back in the morning.”

“Yay.” Adrian jumps up and down, and rushes to wish goodbye to Thomas, because he’s going home. Real home. But then Liza is saying, “They’ll just have to find someone else. Someone stronger and better than me.” She looks at the ceiling, her eyes not on Adrian. “They used to say I was the best.”

“They?” Adrian asks. He feels cold inside. “But I want to go to real home.”

Liza shakes her head. She has tears smudged cheeks. “You know you can’t.”

Adrian’s body grows colder, then hot. “But I want . . . ”

“It’s gone,” Liza whispers. “Don’t you understand that?”

Adrian remembers Mummy red faced and screaming. He tries to think about what happened next, but only draws upon a place so empty and alone it hurts to concentrate on it.

Mummy is gone.

The house is gone, too.

He knows this.

Now there’s just him and a string of people who shouldn’t be taking care of him, whose houses are not gone like home.

Liza reaches out and takes Adrian by the hand. “I’ll take you back tomorrow, okay?”

Adrian screams, “No!” He whirls from her fingers, and leaps onto the Thomas the tank engine bed.

Mummy. He wants her back. Wants her bad. Wants her now.

“I want to go home,” he cries. “I want my Mummy!”

“Don’t cry,” a voice made of silk whispers in his ear, but his body is shaking, his eyes burning.

“Don’t cry, don’t ever, ever cry.”

He tries not to. Tries to be a good boy, like Mummy wants him to be. But Liza is saying, “Your Mummy is gone, and you are never going home.”

He buries his face in his hands, and the walls start to shiver.

Liza is still talking. “We’ll go back tomorrow, and they’ll find someone new for you. Someone much better, much more capable than me.”

Adrian lets out a sob and the Thomas the tank engine things jump up and down on the spot. The bedspread screws into a ball. The nightlight swirls around the room, tethered by its plug. Bright green Henry and bright red James tear from the shuddering walls.

“Back tomorrow and . . . ”

Adrian wails, and the roar of thunder drowns him out. Things are flying around his bedroom like the balls in a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos. Thomas the Tank engine is sizzling. Flames are springing from the carpet. The lights flicker, then the light bulbs shatter, and everything swims in orange fire.

Adrian weeps into his fingers. Wet tears cook on his face.

Don’t cry, don’t ever cry.

But he’s crying now, and Liza isn’t talking anymore.

“I want my Mummy back,” he sobs.

And Liza screams.

The flames rise higher, faster. The walls crumble bit by bit. The fire is bouncing and its glow opening up to form the jaws of a great black hole, a tunnel which licks its lips and snaps its teeth, and rises from the puddle of steaming tears that collects at Adrian’s feet. The steam mixes with smoke, as the house whines and whinges. The bed is a pile of sugary ash. Paper is crisp and curly on the walls, and Adrian no longer stands surrounded by flames, but is suspended midair, watching the hole—birthed from his tears—slurp up toys which aren’t really is toys. They spin and collide like Rice Krispies mixed with milk, then vanish between the lips a place without light.

The room is gone, the house fast disappearing. Thomas the tank engine is no more, and Liza screams on and on, and louder and louder, as skin strips from her like orange peel. It ravels into kaleidoscope spirals, and slithers like windsock snakes into the hole.

Cryhole, thinks Adrian.

Liza glistens and dances. She looks like a string puppet Adrian once stripped the paint off of. Her eyes are running down her skinless face, and her tongue dripping and oozing between her teeth.

Adrian cries harder, and the cryhole grows, and gobbles up the house, and Liza. Soon he stands alone in an empty pit. Snot dangles from his nose. His eyes hurt, and his chest feels tight, and he is staring at nothing.

The house is gone.

Thomas the Tank Engine is gone.

And Liza is gone.