My Little Old One™
AT THE LOW HISSING NOISE, Regina Gutierrez looked up blearily from her smartphone. An ebony-clad figure loomed over her. She jumped, suppressing a scream. He—she assumed the towering figure was a he—was draped in a long, black, trailing cloak with the hood pulled down so far that she couldn’t see a face inside it.
“Pardon me for mentioning it,” the faceless one murmured, “but did you know your child is creating . . . mayhem?”
Regina sprang to her feet. Quentin! The ExCelO Ultimate baby stroller at her knee was empty. Her wonderful, precious toddler was missing! Where was little Quentin? She scanned the grounds of McLaughlin Park, peering between thickly leafed trees and under the wooden seats of the benches. She hoped he hadn’t wandered toward the bay. He was so attracted to deep water.
Her heart pounded in panic as she ran around, trying to find him. Other mothers, sitting with their well-behaved children, glanced up at her from their own smartphones with an air of annoyance at the disruption. She gave them each a faint, guilty half-smile.
A frantic shriek arose from the area of the playground behind the stand of bushes. Regina scrambled toward the noise.
As she had feared, Quentin stood over a smaller girl, his fist wound in her long blonde hair. The girl cried and struggled, which only served to make Quentin determined to hold on. The other mother hovered over the two of them, reluctant to touch someone else’s child, even though her own little darling suffered the consequences. Regina swooped in.
“No!” she said, grabbing up Quentin and untangling his fat little fingers from the strands of gold. She smoothed his dark curls, trying to calm him down so he would listen. “Do not invade someone’s space without their permission!” She turned a rueful gaze toward the other mother, now enfolding her own sobbing chick. “I’m so sorry. I . . . We’re going now.”
She retreated hastily. Quentin kicked his little feet against her khaki-clad thighs as she hauled him back toward the park bench. Those miniature Adidas sneakers hurt, but she didn’t want to scold him for what had, after all, been her choices. She had bought the shoes, and she had been the one who decided to take him to the park. And, she admitted reluctantly, the one who had taken her eyes off him.
The hooded figure now sat silently on the bench beside the stroller. She sat down too, holding tight, because Quentin wanted to return to his . . . well, mayhem really was a good word for it.
“I’m so sorry,” she said to the stranger. “I am just so exhausted. He hasn’t slept through the night since he was born.”
The cloaked figure recoiled as if in awe. “The . . . Sleepless One?”
“We call him that,” Regina said, with a bitter laugh, straightening the collar of her patterned Lacroix jacket. “I wish it wasn’t true. Sometimes I question whether I actually gave birth to him, or if the nurses switched our baby for a little monster . . . .”
She pressed her lips together, realizing that she had just unloaded onto a total stranger. God only knew what kind of face he was making under that massive hood.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I shouldn’t say that.” She leaned forward to put a hand on the enveloping sleeve. The arm inside it felt as if it were mere bones. “We love Quentin; really, we do. But if we could get him to sleep, our lives would be a lot easier. It’s an issue every single night. He just won’t do anything we want him to. I know he’s close to hitting the Terrible Twos. Kids that age just aren’t human. We’d do anything to get him to settle down.”
“You would do . . . anything?”
Regina widened her eyes in alarm.
“Well, almost anything. We won’t change his diet. We feed him organic whole foods, full of all the nutrients that a growing child needs.”
The harsh whisper seemed to resonate inside her head. “No change in diet is necessary. No. You need the aid of the Sleeper of R’lyeh. Have you ever heard of My Little Old One™?”
Regina could distinctly hear the trademark symbol. “Why, no. What is it?”
The cloaked one reached into the Stygian folds of his cape. From it, he produced a figure about a foot high, but so hideously shaped that Regina could hardly look at it. From sidelong glances, she gathered that it was faintly humanoid, but with scaly green skin, a head like an octopus, and skimpy little wings on its back. The gnarled, bloated body was naked, the eyes stared with unveiled malice, but the really ugly part was where the mouth ought to be, a mass of tentacles sprouted beneath the eyes. The whole thing shone with an unearthly gleam.
“This is Cthulhu™. Give it to him. It will help him to find his way.”
Regina felt like gagging.
“This is for kids? It’s slimy, not fuzzy.”
The figure shook its head. “I think you will soon find that it will not matter.”
Quentin struggled and kicked on Regina’s lap. To her surprise, he was reaching for the horrible toy. She fended off his grasp, and he started screaming in fury. Regina blanched. Everyone was going to hear him! She had no choice but to take the hideous green object. Even touching its rubbery, slick surface made her shudder.
Quentin snatched it from her and folded it into his arms, making a harsh, grunting noise. How she wished he would learn to use his words!
“Are you sure that this will help?” she asked the dark, hooded stranger.
“I promise you he will become . . . obedient. That will be twenty-nine ninety-five.” From the sleeve came an arcane but familiar shining device. “I take credit cards.”
Bedtime was always a struggle. At dinnertime, Quentin had thrown his food all over the kitchen. Just when Regina and her husband Justin had cleaned up the baby, and the quarry-tiled floor and tasteful, gray-toned walls, Quentin produced a hidden handful of pureed kale and ground it into their beloved Shiraz carpet. He kicked as much of the water out of his BabyClean bathtub as he could, flailed his round little legs as she and Justin diapered him, and writhed so he wouldn’t have to be put into his violet, organic flannel sleeper with the cute teddy bears embroidered all over it. But when Regina put the Cthulhu™ doll into the high-sided crib, Quentin fought to get in with it.
“He never does that,” Justin said, his dark eyes wide with astonishment. He settled his small son on his back in the crib, careful not to touch the ugly toy, then tiptoed out of the room.
Counting it as a small victory, Regina read a brand-new bedtime story from a stack of colorful little books that had been delivered just that afternoon. She had rehearsed the text, although Quentin never seemed to pay attention to the subjects of her nightly reading, or her attempt to portray all the characters in the books with humorous voices and sounds, only the duration. He wanted the attention to go on as long as possible, as though tallying some form of tribute. Just in case, Regina pronounced every word clearly, and made the words at once entertaining and soothing.
When she reached the last page, he glared at her as always, but not with the usual malice in his deep-set, dark eyes. No screaming!
Taking a deep breath, Regina started to tuck him in. He clutched the My Little Old One™ toy to him and actually let her fold the organic cotton coverlet around him. She backed away from the crib, staring but ecstatic.
“Good night, Mommy-and-Daddy’s darling,” she called. “We love you.”
Quentin snorted. She turned out the lights and crept out of the room.
“So soon?” Justin asked in an undertone, as she went into the living room, where he sat with the lights turned down low in case they disturbed the baby. The trendy architect they had hired on recommendations from Berkeley’s hottest interior design blog had assured them that Quentin couldn’t see them from his room, but the child always seemed to know if any light brighter than ten watts was on anywhere in the house.
“It’s a miracle,” Regina said, setting herself down carefully on the Eero Saarinen couch, so as not to make any additional noise that her precious baby might hear. “I had five new books ready, but he didn’t seem to care about anything but that disgusting toy.”
“Wonderful toy,” her husband corrected her.
Regina shook her head. “There’s something about it that makes me feel . . . well, uneasy.”
“Me, too,” Justin said, firmly. “But I am not looking a gift monster in the mouth. Especially if we can get a couple of hours of uninterrupted sleep, please God.”
A tremendous crack of thunder shook the house. Both of them looked up at the ceiling, then out the window in dismay at the calamitous downpour suddenly flooding their manicured garden and custom-made sandbox. The solar lights dotting their yard looked like evil topaz eyes.
“Was rain predicted for tonight?” Regina asked.
Justin shrugged. “I don’t care. I’m so tired it hurts.”
“Your turn for the two a.m. wakeup,” she said, as she trailed behind him toward their bedroom.
Regina and her best friend Martine slid into the only table open at the baby-friendly coffee shop on the main shopping street of their upscale Berkeley suburb. Regina glanced with regret at the other coffee spot across the street with Swedish designed furniture and soft music, her favorite morning hangout PQ, pre-Quentin, but it did not allow children, and, the managers were keen to point out, particularly hers. At the moment, her little darling was play-talking with his sinister-looking toy in his usual pre-verbal babble. She was grateful that it kept him from attacking Polly, Martine’s sweet little girl, as he usually did. The smaller toddler seemed puzzled, staring at Cthulhu™ with open curiosity.
“You look wonderful,” Martine said. Regina bristled. That was Bay-speak for “Have you had some work done?”
“Quentin slept through the night,” Regina said, in a hushed whisper, as if to say it aloud would jinx it. “The whole night! When I woke up at four to check on him, he was still sound asleep. He didn’t start crying until six!”
“That’s amazing,” Martine said, genuinely impressed. They had met in Lamaze class and bonded over shared numerous grievances of child-rearing. “Polly still wakes up with night terrors at least five times. We have to have quiet time together again and again, and it’s ruining my complexion. What did you do?”
“My Little Old One™,” Regina said, feeling her cheeks burn at having to say the name aloud. It did sound pretty stupid. “His new favorite toy.” She pointed at the green excrescence in her precious child’s arms. “That.”
Martine’s sculpted eyebrows rose into her lowlighted brunette hairline. “That horrible thing? Why in heaven would you give him a thing like that?”
Regina explained where it had come from. Martine stared open-mouthed in horror.
“Oh, honey, please! How do you know that weird stranger wasn’t trying to recruit you for something? You’ve heard all those stories about death cults popping up all over the country. A long, black, flowing robe?”
Regina shrugged. “At the time, I wouldn’t have noticed if he was wearing a spacesuit. But he was right! It works. Something about that . . . nauseating, scaly monstrosity . . . makes Quentin happy.”
“Well, he’s a boy,” Martine said, straightening her back. “Delicate children like Polly wouldn’t touch something that hideous.”
At that moment, Polly took her finger out of her mouth and reached out toward Cthulhu™. The tiny pink tip merely brushed one of the bent wings on the scaly back, and Quentin shrieked loud enough to make everyone in the crowded shop turn to look at them. Polly was undeterred. With her little brow furrowed, she tried to pull the green toy away from Quentin, first with one hand, then with both. Quentin, much larger and stronger, actually had to fight to break her grip. At last, he succeeded, and yanked the toy out of her reach. Polly began to cry.
“Oh, my God,” Martine said, in horror.
At that moment, a blinding bolt of lightning pierced the distant sky. A sudden torrent of rain streamed down in the street outside the coffee shop, making the joggers and cyclists in the street dash for cover. Regina shook her head.
“I didn’t think rain was predicted for today. Did you?”
Regina couldn’t say that Quentin was a changed baby, now that he had Cthulhu™, but it was easier to do other things than monitor him constantly to make sure he wasn’t committing . . . mayhem. Instead, it looked as though he and Cthulhu™ had their own little cabal, huddled in a corner, watching her and Justin with malevolent glares. In a way, it was a nice change.
It didn’t mean that he wasn’t still a challenge at every step. They managed to get him bathed and changed for bed, but when Justin offered him his sippy cup for one last drink, Quentin shook it so violently that the cap came off, spilling water all over the three of them and Cthulhu™. The baby looked accusingly at the wet toy and turned a furious gaze at his parents.
Justin sighed and hoisted the struggling toddler out of the crib.
“You go get some clean PJs and a sheet, honey. I’ll clean him up.”
Regina retreated, feeling a small measure of satisfaction. They shared parenting duties down the middle as they had agreed to do even before marriage. Stuffing the wet onesie in the hamper, Regina went for clean pajamas and a fresh cup, one with a better seal. With cuddles and coos that would have soothed any normal baby, they tucked Quentin into his dry bed and tiptoed silently out.
Justin took a bottle of pinot noir out of the wine fridge and presented the label toward Regina.
“We deserve this,” he said. She nodded avidly. She could almost taste the dry fruitiness on her tongue. But just as he reached for a couple of tall wine glasses, shrieking and wailing broke out from the direction of the nursery. Regina glanced down at the baby monitor on the counter. She frowned.
“Did you leave My Little Old One™ next to the camera?” she asked. The ugly homunculus seemed to fill the entire room except for a corner of the screen in which the crib was visible.
“No,” Justin said. His expression changed to one of horror. “Oh, my God, it’s moving!”
It did look as if the horrible toy had grown to fifteen feet tall and was oozing toward their child, all its extremities reaching for him. She ignored the sounds of the approaching thunder as Quentin screamed and bounced up and down on his mattress, clinging to the bars of his crib. He shook them like a condemned prisoner in fear for his life. Her heart pounding, Regina knew she should run to him, but she stood frozen, watching. The massive-seeming form of Cthulhu™ lifted one of its mouth-tentacles, and touched Quentin in the center of his forehead. The baby fell backwards onto the mattress, silent and still.
Regina grabbed her ten-inch Sabatier cooking knife out of the teakwood block on the counter, and Justin snatched up a tennis racket. They rushed into the room. Quentin lay flat on his back. Regina put the knife down and picked him up, searching for wounds or burns. His forehead was unmarked, and he wasn’t hurt, just deeply asleep. She joggled him in her arms, unwilling to put him down.
“Where’s the monster?” Justin asked, casting around. Cthulhu™ sat on the top of the dresser, looking malevolent and disgusting, but still only a foot tall.
“We’re dreaming,” Regina said, her heart pounding so much it made her voice shake. “We’re just hallucinating. He’s fine. I don’t know what we saw. Maybe one of the neighbors’ routers is cross-glitching with the baby-cam when they’re trying to download a horror movie. He’s fine.”
Still limp and dreaming, Quentin didn’t wake or protest as they tucked him in again. Regina put the awful little toy down beside him. Quentin hugged it to him without ever waking up.
The next day at the coffee shop, Regina studied Martine. Her friend’s usually perfect makeup was a little askew, and the middle button of her Anne Fontaine blouse was undone. She was concerned.
“Anything on your mind?” Regina asked, kindly. That was Bay-speak for “you look terrible.”
Her friend shook her head. “Polly was up and down all night. The thunder kept waking her up. She cried and cried. I was on a Skype-chat with my sister. She has a son a couple of months older than Polly. He doesn’t sleep either. I don’t know what to do.” Her mouth twisting as though she had taken a bite of something bitter, she met Regina’s gaze. “Do you think you can introduce me to the guy who sold you My Little Old One™?”
No one answered the phone number on the electronic receipt, so Regina and Martine went back to the park. She had never seen the cloaked stranger in the park before the day she had bought Cthulhu™ for Quentin, and hadn’t seen him since, but the moment the two women pushed their strollers into the nature preserve, the figure glided out of the thick trees overlooking the inlet.
“You have need of my services?” he hissed.
Martine gulped at the appearance of the sinister stranger, but she swallowed her fear. Regina held her arm tightly for support.
“I’ll try anything to get my baby to sleep overnight,” Martine said.
“Anything?” the hooded figure asked, his rattling voice rising to a higher note. Martine twisted her lips in disgust.
“Do you have to talk like a bad movie?”
“I apologize,” the figure said, dropping to a sinister whisper. “It is . . . force of habit.”
“It’s a miracle,” Martine said the next day, as they huddled over their lattes. “I can hardly stand to touch the damned thing, but Polly loves it. She feeds Cthulhu™ and insisted that I bathe it with her.”
“Quentin, too,” Regina agreed. “He talks to it all the time. And he listens to it. You know, I thought he was too young for play-acting. All the baby-raising books say so.”
“Do you think it’s really talking?” Martine asked, watching the two toddlers side by side in their strollers.
“It certainly doesn’t sound like it,” Regina said. The two babies, each with their own Cthulhu™, chattered at each other. Whatever rivalry or disagreements they usually had, they’d found a bond in the horrible little dolls.
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” Quentin said, leaning his head against his horrible toy.
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” Polly said, shyly, combing her Cthulhu™’s tentacles with her fingers. Quentin let out a bark of laughter. Polly ducked her head and giggled.
Regina stared. “I don’t believe it; he’s being nice to her.”
“I know!” Martine said, shaking her head in wonder.
Normally, Quentin would try to take both of the toys. But Polly was defending herself now, too. When another girl in a nearby stroller tried to take her Cthulhu™, Polly screamed multisyllabic abuse at her just the way Quentin usually did. Martine was embarrassed but Regina tried to make her feel better.
“She’s asserting herself,” she said. “And Polly is more verbal than Quentin is. He’s still talking gibberish. I wish that he could speak as well as she does.”
“Well, they’re learning from each other,” Martine said, mollified.
“And you’re not going to believe this,” Regina said, “but Quentin slept through six a.m. today.”
“So did Polly!”
“Excuse me,” an African-American woman with a squirming toddler in her lap said. The little girl’s curly hair was tied in puffs bound with pink bows. She was trying to tear one of the ribbons off. The mother looked as exhausted as Regina had been a week ago. “Did you say your children are sleeping through past six in the morning? What’s your secret?”
Martine nudged Regina in the ribs.
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “it’ll only cost you twenty-nine ninety-five.”
Before long, most of the mothers in the coffee shop had bought their small children My Little Old Ones™. As abhorrent as the toys were, they worked. The small boy with big dark eyes who shrieked when anyone looked at him huddled contentedly over a long, skinny Nyarlathotep™, and the bruising three-year-old with curly red hair stopped pushing other children around when he got his very own Azhorra-Tha™. For the first time, Regina and Martine could carry on a conversation over their coffee without shouting to be heard over crying babies.
“You should get a commission,” Martine said, toasting her with her pumpkin caramel macchiato.
Regina shook her head. “I’m just grateful something worked.”
Quentin’s temperament didn’t exactly improve over the following weeks, but he became more predictable, and a hair more social. In fact, she thought that Quentin’s intelligence was being stimulated by the interaction with the creature. Whenever they saw another mother with one of My Little Old Ones™ in the park or the coffee shop, he would grunt at them, and they would exchange the spate of baby talk that he and Polly shared.
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” he called, holding up Cthulhu™. The other child shouted the phrase back at him. Both children wore smug smiles, as if they shared a deep secret.
“Don’t you think it’s weird that they all know the same noises?” Martine asked, rocking Polly. She was careful not to touch either her Cthulhu™ or the Shoggoth™ that Polly had cried for when she saw another child’s maggot-like toy.
“Polly’s very quick,” Regina said. “She heard it from Quentin, and they both like the sound of it. Modeling is important to small children. Polly probably said it to them, and they retained it. Children are like sponges.”
“I can’t pronounce it, can you?”
“No,” Regina said, with a sigh. “I just wish he would learn to talk. We’ve been working with him with all the word books and phonics lessons from the internet, and all the parenting websites, but nothing is getting through yet. We’ve even tried pretending that Cthulhu™ was saying the words, but he didn’t seem interested.”
“Count your blessings. He’s playing normally. I’d even say he has leadership potential.”
That, Regina could not deny. As Quentin got bigger and stronger and more mobile, he seemed to lead a pack of toddlers that followed him through McLaughlin Park like his acolytes. If Regina happened to lose sight of him for a moment, she knew she would find him sitting in the center of a group in the park. Instead of tearing up the flowers or terrorizing passing dogs or senior citizens, the children seemed intent on Quentin and their horrible toys. Regina almost fancied that it looked like a coven or a cabal. They chanted their weird words over and over to one another. If it had been a group of adults, or even older children, she’d have thought they were plotting something . . . sinister. Regina wanted to ask the cloaked man about it, but she never saw him again.
Quentin only showed some of his old attitude when parents dared to interrupt the strange conclave of children to take their own little ones out of the circle. Regina apologized for his savage snarls, but at least he wasn’t hitting anyone anymore. She was grateful that he was finally showing signs of socialization, however weird the impetus that had spurred it.
As the sun started to dip behind the tops of the trees and the air began to cool, she gathered her toddler up and bundled him into the Audi. The Cthulhu™ doll in the crook of his arm seemed to peer up at her with its weird, red eyes. It isn’t real, she told herself, uneasily putting the car into gear. It’s just a toy.
She took Quentin home. While Justin broiled salmon for their dinner, she pureed some kohlrabi with a little fresh ginger and spinach for Quentin. The toddler rejected it, spitting out the mouthful of green glop. He fed Cthulhu™ some Cheerios instead. Suddenly, he looked up at his parents, his mouth moving. His face was intent in a way that they had never seen before.
“Look, honey,” Regina said, excitedly. “He’s trying to talk!”
They dropped to their knees beside the high chair, doing their best to encourage him.
“Come on, baby,” she said.
“Say Dada, Quentin,” Justin urged him, enunciating the syllables carefully. “Da da.”
“D . . . d . . .” Quentin struggled with the syllable, then a malevolent gleam came to his eyes that almost perfectly reflected the evil face of My Little Old One™. “D . . . dethtruction.”
Both adults rocked back on their heels.
Regina looked at Justin and shrugged. “At least he’s sleeping through the night.”