The Year's Best Horror Stories 10 Read online

  Hugh Pears was gathering mint in the back yard when he heard the crash. It sounded like someone hurled onto a sheet of tin. God, not the children! As he ran through the kitchen, Chris glanced at him, puzzled; she hadn’t recognised the sound. “You aren’t going out now,” she protested. “The children will be home any minute.” But he hadn’t reached the front door when they ran in.

  “There’s a man hurt outside,” Linda shouted.

  “They nearly ran us over,” Andrew shouted louder.

  Pears let go of his fear with a gasp of relief. He hurried out. A red Mini had slewed into the wall of the house next door. The driver was lifting a figure from the passenger seat. Its head was a raw red bulb; blood had rusted its hair.

  When Pears opened his eyes he’d regained control. The driver was supporting his passenger, whose forehead was bleeding copiously. Pears wondered why he should have seen anything else. He wasn’t fond of the sight of blood, but nor was he given to building nightmares out of it. “Bring him in here,” he called. “My wife’s a nurse.”

  As Pears helped them up the path, he saw the young man in the ground-floor flat next door gazing expressionlessly at them. Only his gaze moved, as if he were peering from behind a pale gaunt mask. If you can’t help, Pears raged, then have the decency to take yourself elsewhere. The gaze followed them blankly, indifferent as the fog that massed at the edge of the streetlight, like dim spectators.

  Chris sat the man in one of the white wood dining-chairs. “What happened?” she asked, tilting his head back.

  “We skidded on a patch of oil,” the driver said. “It looked big enough for a lorry. I wouldn’t have thought they were supposed to come down a residential street, not a narrow one like this.”

  “Too many people don’t care about that,” Chris said.

  The passenger was holding his trouser-leg away from his shin down which blood was running incontinently into his shoe. “This’ll teach me to wear my seat-belt,” he said, shaking.

  She cleaned the wound and gave him a compress to hold against it. “I don’t think it’s serious, but we’d better be sure,” she said, turning down the cooker. “I’ll drive you to the hospital.”

  Andrew was sponging blood from the back of the chair. That jarred Pears out of the reverie through which he’d watched Chris caring for the man. The thoughts had streamed through his mind like smoke; he felt vaguely that he would prefer not to remember them. He shook his head. All this nonsense came of boredom, inertia, probably of feeling incapable of helping Chris. Get on with something. He strode into the back yard.

  He’d finished gathering the mint when he heard Linda’s cry of disgust. A spider, he thought, or a crane-fly or a slug. As he hurried through the kitchen and the dining area he saw, beyond the open front door down the hall, the young man from the flat standing on the pavement, gazing in. If he’s what you’re saying yuk to, Pears told Linda, I can’t say I blame you. But she was staring at the hall wall.

  Just inside the front door, the wallpaper had acquired a splotch of blood. Trickles were making their way toward the skirting-board. “Damn,” Pears said. “He must have done it as they went out. Get me a cloth, Linda, quick.”

  He closed the front door. As Pears hid the blood from him, the young man gaped in appalled disbelief. You’re absolutely right, Pears told him, we’re going to scrape it off and use it for soup.

  He dabbed at the blood. Mrs Tarrant can get the worst of it off, she’ll be here tomorrow. That’s what she’s paid for. He scrubbed as hard as he dared. The stain remained, but fainter. Eventually he sat and waited for his dinner, minutely lining up the cutlery, listening to Linda and Andrew playing pole-vaulting in the yard. His mind felt full of rapid formless smoke.

  Over dinner Chris asked, “What exactly happened?”

  “He shouldn’t have driven down our road so fast,” Andrew said.

  “If someone hadn’t been so stupid, they ran out in front of him, there wouldn’t have been an accident,” Linda said.

  “I didn’t see him. He came straight round the corner.” He glared at her, the threat of angry tears in his eyes. “I bet you’d have been glad if I’d been run over.”

  “That’s right. No, I wouldn’t,” Linda amended, trying to head off his mood. She put an arm round him, but he threw her off.

  “You’re quite right, Andrew,” Chris said. “He shouldn’t have been driving so fast. But for your own sake you must be more careful how you go.”

  Pears listened blankly. He heard the words, but it was as though he heard them through a wall; they seemed separate from him. He stared at the table, at the white wood and its reflected hints of the violet and lilac walls. The words affected him in the same way: they were there, that was all.

  He gazed at his food as he ate. Wherever he looked, there seemed to be movement at the edge of his eye. Dark spots moved on the walls, as though the kitchen were a sweating cave, or as if the walls were the throat of a chimney, fluttering with soot. When he looked, the movements snapped into corners of the room or behind the furniture. His eyes must be tired. Perhaps he could blame the tree in the next yard, its shadow on the curtain swaying sluggishly, blurred by the gathering November fog. Perhaps he was overworked, though he hadn’t thought himself to be more so than anyone else at the bank.

  Andrew had been mollified, or nearly. “Sisters,” he said witheringly. When he’d eaten his fruit he said, “May I leave the table? I’m going to dust Fritz.”

  Linda had been waiting for a chance at the last word in the argument. She was too much of a young lady now to stick out her tongue. “Aren’t you too old for that thing yet?” she demanded. “When are you going to throw away the horrible doll?”

  “Linda, you’re only two years older,” Chris said. “Hardly the voice of maturity.”

  “Well, I didn’t want that doll when I was eight.”

  An aunt had brought her Fritz from Germany, but Linda had mislaid the doll behind her bed almost at once, complaining, “Alice’s father brought her back a lovely German dress.” “Give me the doll if you don’t want him,” Andrew had said. Pears supposed that now it was up to him to intervene. Anything to drag his mind free of the slow heavy dance of the nodding shadow on the curtains, to shake off the darkly teeming walls. “There’s nothing horrible about Andrew’s doll, Linda,” he said.

  “There is too. You come and look.”

  She pulled him into the hall. “Go outside and see,” she said. “I used to like to look up at our bedroom when I came home. Now he makes it look nasty. I’ll switch on the light so you can see.”

  She ran upstairs, pleats flirting from her bare thighs. A Majorca tan was fading from her legs. He must talk to Chris about making her wear longer skirts. She was far too enticing. One of these days—What? He snatched his gaze away from Linda as she reached the top of the stairs, and rushed himself out.

  As Pears emerged, the young man next door was letting in three others. One displayed a fat hand-rolled multicoloured cigarette for approval. Stupid fools. No wonder the fellow in the flat looked so inert. And him an industrial chemist, if Pears wasn’t misinterpreting his salary cheque: should know better.

  When Linda switched on the light, the fog sprang forward, towering blankly on the opposite pavement. It settled clammily on Pears, who shivered and looked up. Fritz the doll was standing on the sill in the centre of the bay window, grinning out. Pears could just see his red knees over the sill, beneath his lederhosen. His raised tankard was halfway to his mouth; his painted wooden face was edged with light. He looked hideous.

  Fog crept insinuatingly down Pears’ spine, fog was a dwindling blank-faced box around him. The lawn stirred feebly, as if drowned. He tried to shake himself, but shuddered. Good God, he was standing in his own front garden, looking at his own house: what could be so terrible in that? But he could hardly keep his eyes on the doll.

  It looked like an overgrown bloated schoolboy mottled with red paint as if its skin were bursting. Beneath the blue glass eyes,
the grin had become secretive, knowingly obscene. Its free hand hovered near its flies. It was all the effect of the fog; fog had tinted its face shinily grey, slimy, diseased. It looked swollen with waste, that might gush forth at any moment.

  Linda read his expression. “See?” she called.

  “I must say,” Pears said warily, “he looks rather a nasty little man today.”

  He didn’t realise that Andrew was in the bedroom until the boy appeared behind Linda, weeping. He pushed her out of the way and threw up the sash, then he hurled the doll into the road. Pears heard it break.

  “Did you see that?” someone said in the flat. “Far out!”

  Cretins, Pears snarled. Tears were streaming between Andrew’s fingers, Linda was trying to comfort him and fighting to pull his hands away from his face, Chris was hurrying upstairs, irritably shouting, “What’s going on?” Pears opened the front gate; wet flakes of rust chafed beneath his fingers. He stopped to pick up the doll. Then he recoiled.

  The fog had dimmed the streetlights. The shadow of the doll was blurred, the wet road was uneven. He wasn’t really seeing a thick dark lumpy fluid, seeping slowly from the doll’s cracked head.

  The fog was muttering; the sound grew into an open-mouthed snarl. A car swung into the road. Pears reached for the doll, then he pulled back his hand and ran toward the house. Behind him he heard the car grind the doll into splinters.

  Andrew had heard it too; Chris was trying to calm him down. “Will you stay out of this!” she shouted. Pears gladly took the order for himself. He went into the living-room. Beyond the garden the privet leaves looked thick, coated with fog; he knew how they felt. He drew the curtains and sat in the bay window.

  When Chris came down, she stared at him. He frowned enquiringly. If she didn’t say what she was thinking, they couldn’t talk about it. His mind seemed clearer now; he relaxed, smiling. She sat opposite him, shaking her head. The subdued children trudged into the next room, the playroom; Linda whispered. “It’s not my job to run this family single-handed,” Chris said.

  “I never said it was.”

  “But you act it. If you don’t intend to help, at least don’t make things more difficult.”

  She sounded weary. “Have you a migraine?” Pears said.

  “It’s taken you long enough to notice.”

  “I’m not feeling too well myself. I expect that hasn’t helped my behaviour.”

  “Your behaviour isn’t that unusual.”

  This was hardly the time to discuss it; if she felt as odd as he did, they would only end up screaming. He moved his chair out of the bay and switched on the television.

  He found he couldn’t watch for long. The image whirred silently, as his eyes refused to aid the illusion of continuous movement. Black-faced minstrels danced and sang, hurtling forward to fill the bulging screen, grimacing with painted lips. Pears reached for the switch. “I’m listening to that,” Chris said. He sank back and gazed at the fire. On the edge of his vision colours boiled beneath glass, as if an aquarium had gone mad.

  The fire swayed gently, flickering high and vanishing. When he emerged from his reverie, the programme had been ousted by another. A sandy brown desert, a bright amber sky; the colours didn’t clamour for attention. Calm now, he looked. Men in khaki shorts were gently spading out a pit. Archaeologists? Two of them were coaxing something from the soil. He leaned closer.

  It came up with its arms held stiff at its sides, its skin pulled back from a yellowing, fixed smile. The pit was surrounded by fleshless bodies, rigidly contorted or lying supine with their lips wrenched back as if by hooks, grinning.

  “So far, the mass graves have yielded at least five hundred dead,” an announcer was pronouncing. The camera tilted up to show that it had been keeping back a vista of ranked corpses as far as the horizon. In the next room the children were putting toys away. “I don’t think we should risk the children seeing this,” he said, turning to Chris. As he spoke something moved to the edge of the screen and emerged into the room.

  A shadow, of course. When Pears glared at the corner where it had halted, there was nothing. How could television cast a shadow? It must have come from the street. The screen piled up with swarms of brown emaciated manikins. Their dried-out sockets were turned to the sun, their jaws protruded through their skins. He surged out of his chair and switched off the television.

  All he achieved was to send the announcer into hiding. “There are almost certainly further graves to be discovered,” the man continued, muffled now, as if he’d put his hand over his mouth. Not until Pears heard someone shout, “Jesus, that’s sick. Turn it off!” did he realise that the voice was persisting in the flat through the wall.

  He slumped back, and began to cough. Had the fog managed to insinuate itself into the room? There was a faint, unpleasant smell. In the corner a faint shadow remained—an after-image, of course. The smell reminded him of old meat, but wasn’t quite like that. Had a mouse died beneath the floor? He’d look tomorrow—he didn’t feel at all like searching now. “I think we’d all benefit from an early night,” he said. “It’s past their bedtimes, anyway.”

  “Do what you want,” Chris said.

  Andrew was morosely obedient, and Linda made only a token protest; yet Pears found himself becoming irritable. Suppose Chris noted the smell, what might she find? Nothing, for God’s sake. Get to bed.

  Reading his mood, the children allowed themselves to be herded quickly to the bathroom. Pears stood outside as they splashed; Linda was trying to wheedle Andrew into her game. We aren’t such a bad family, Pears thought. I can hold Chris, we don’t need to talk.

  Abruptly Linda was out of the bathroom. She ran naked to him, towelled pink, her bald pubes and tentatively swelling breasts framed in her tan, and put her arms around him. “Carry me to bed,” she pleaded.

  Her hair was warm beneath his chin. She moved against him, soft to his touch, instinctive and guileless as a young animal. As she gazed up at him, sleepy and innocently sensuous she looked exactly as Chris sometimes did. For a moment of illusion she was Chris, renewed.

  “Not tonight, love,” he said. “Your mother and I aren’t feeling very well.”

  He smacked her bottom gently. She wriggled with delight, gazing at him.

  Suddenly he pushed her away. “Go on, now,” he said, close to panic. “We want to get to bed.”

  He hurried into the bathroom. “Finish your teeth quickly, Andrew, and I’ll tuck you in.” He leaned against the wall, his nails squeaking on the tiles. As soon as Andrew had closed the door, Pears was seized by a violent and prolonged orgasm.

  He lay in bed, making a lair of the darkness. Even there he wasn’t safe. When he closed his eyes, grinning faces floated up, plump and sticky. Suppose Chris wanted him to make love to her? That was often the way they expunged their arguments. He could hear her scrubbing the blood from the wall.

  Her climbing footsteps seemed to take forever, as if she were sadistically prolonging her approach. She knows, he thought. I’ve broadcast to her what I’ve done. He pressed himself as near to his edge of the bed as he could, pretending to sleep.

  He held himself still as she slipped into bed. Too still. He moved slightly, muttering. “Hugh?” she said. He glared into the darkness, grinding his teeth silently. “Hugh, listen,” she said.

  He turned over violently. “What is it?” He hadn’t meant to shout.

  “Nothing,” she said, turning away.

  “No, what is it?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  He could feel her turning restlessly for hours. He held himself rigid, willing her to sleep. She turned against him, rubbery; the bed felt like a tropical tent. When at last she was quiet, he couldn’t be sure she wasn’t pretending. He didn’t dare leave the bed in case he disturbed her. Fog hung in the gap between the curtains, glowing feebly, thick and blank as his mind. His eyes itched hotly. He gazed at nothing.

  At breakfast his eyes felt bloated and raw. Around dawn the ch
attering of birds had suddenly toppled with him into sleep. He stared at his plate. His knife sliced a poached egg; yellow liquid leaked from its pupil. The sounds of Chris and the children nagged at him, annoying as radio voices bumbling against an exhausted battery. He didn’t know how he would be able to face work.

  “I don’t want to go to school today,” Andrew said. “I don’t feel well.”

  “Neither do I,” Linda said.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Chris demanded.

  They looked at each other, baffled. “Come on, both of you,” she said. “No nonsense. Once you come home tonight, you’ve the whole weekend.”

  Pears forced himself to look at them directly. They were rummaging for an argument. “Listen, don’t fret,” he told them. “It won’t be so bad, once you’re there. I don’t always want to go out in the mornings, you know. I don’t this morning. But we have to go.”

  “And what about me?” Chris demanded angrily. “Do you think it’s a picnic for me to go shopping, the way they look at you round here? It’s an effort of will, I assure you.”

  He stared at her. “Only last week you said you liked these shops.”

  She was flushed with anger that she’d let her feelings show. “Well, that’s how I feel now,” she said defiantly.

  “Well,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Time’s getting on. If I go now, I can walk up with you two. Are you coming?” he asked Chris, rather discouragingly: her revelation had annoyed him, for he didn’t know how to handle it.

  “I’ve the washing-up to do. I’ll manage, don’t worry.” When he hesitated she said, “I’ve told you not to worry about me.”

  Fog was blocking the way just outside the gate, a dull featureless thug. Behind the thickening grey screen, the privet leaves looked fat and plastic. Pears could see nothing he would be able to bear to touch. He gazed back down the hall, past the dining-table to Chris at the sink, and almost retreated. Then he urged the children out. Glancing back at their bright orange curtains, which looked shabby now with fog, he caught sight of the young man in the flat, gazing apathetically through the uncurtained window.