The Spectral Book of Horror Stories Page 13

  “Please,” said Beverly. “Do you know her? Are you her friend? Please. Tell me what she’s like.”

  The woman gave this some thought. “You could say I’m a friend of your mother’s,” she said, at last. “I suppose, in a way, I am. I care for her. I do the best I can. She’s not easy to care for. Your mother is a very demanding person. But special. We all think she’s special.” The woman frowned, as if assessing the accuracy of her response, then gave a single nod, and pulled herself up from the booth. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said. “Losses are irritating things. I’ve taken care of the bill. Don’t try to follow me.”

  The woman left.

  Beverly sipped at her coffee. Just for show, so the woman would think she wouldn’t follow. It was too hot, but the taste was surprisingly sweet, Beverly wanted nothing more suddenly than to stay and finish it. It took effort to set it back down on the table. And as soon as she heard the bell on the door sound, and she knew the woman had left, she made to her feet. Her legs felt weak, she had to grasp on to the booth to steady herself, and the pink plastic was soft and yielding, her fingers sank in deep and it would have been the easiest thing in the world to let them sink further, to sit back down on to the comforting warmth of the padded seat, to drown in it.

  With all the nonchalance she could muster she walked through the cafe, walked to the door. This time none of the customers looked up at her, they had their own lives to worry about, and that was just as well, Beverly didn’t want anything to do with them, all she wanted was her mother—and even as she thought of that, of that word, ‘mother’, it seemed like such a precious lie, all her life she had never understood how precious, and if it were a lie, well, so, what of that? And so excited, and so nervous, almost walking on air, she stepped out into the dark. She’d forgotten how very black the dark was, and this time even the lights of the cafe couldn’t penetrate it, and there was a moment of panic, she couldn’t see which direction the woman had taken. But then—there—just a few metres away—she was leaning against the wall, she was fiddling with something, her purse, her hair, her shoelace, it didn’t matter—she had delayed, and that was a stroke of luck.

  And now the two of them were walking on into the night—Beverly trying to tread quietly so she wouldn’t be heard, trying to keep her distance—the woman striding into the pitch black with such confidence, as if she knew every junction, every corner, every loose paving stone (and perhaps she did)—her heels tapping out on the ground a beat for Beverly to follow. Every so often Beverly thought she’d lost her, that the woman had got too far ahead, but the woman would always stop and deal with that meddlesome shoelace again, and Beverly would catch up. They walked on like this for an hour, maybe longer. Until at last the woman stopped, and turned to one of the houses lining the pavement, and it was only then that Beverly realised there were houses there at all, it had been so dark and the houses so bland; the woman took some keys from her purse, and marched up to the front door. She unlocked the door. She turned around. She looked back out, she seemed to stare right at Beverly. Beverly froze, tried to make herself invisible, or at least see-through, or at least as black as the night—and maybe it worked, because the woman turned around again, and entered the house, and closed the door behind her.

  So this was the house where her mother lived—and Beverly felt a strange recognition, a belonging somehow; it was an anonymous house, it was no different in shape or size to the others either side, but it was so very special. She wanted to know what the address was, what this special house was called, but there were no street signs, and there was no number on the front door. She looked around for any landmarks, anything that might help her identify the house again in the daylight—nothing—really, nothing. And she thought that she’d just have to stay there, then—she’d stand on the pavement outside her mother’s house all night, just to be sure she wouldn’t lose it, she would never lose it now, she wouldn’t even take her eyes off it in case it slipped away—and then, suddenly, there was light. So startling and dazzling that for a moment Beverly was blinded, and she thought the house might have vanished in the flash, that when her eyes adjusted to the glare the house would be gone and her mother would have gone with it, gone forever. The woman had pulled open the curtains to the front room, and Beverly could see inside so nice and bright, and the woman was smiling, it was as if she wanted her to see.

  And there was her mother.

  Her mother was pregnant again. Beverly realised she had expected her mother to be pregnant, this was no shock. All she knew of her mother was that she could pump out babies, it made some strange sense to find her like this. The shock was how pronounced was the pregnancy, that it made her mother so fat and swollen. And ugly too—because it wasn’t the stomach that was swollen, Beverly thought she could have accepted that, no matter how gross and distended that stomach might have been. It was the head. It was the head. The head was swollen. Somehow balanced upon what was still a perfectly slender neck—and it was to this neck that Beverly kept lowering her eyes, the neck was the beginning of what was normal and the end of what was obscene—balanced upon that stick-thin neck was a head maybe four or five times the size it should have been. It looked like an enormous balloon, filled with air to the point of bursting—and yet, not like a balloon at all, because balloons are neat and round, and this head had grown into such a lumpen shape, bits of the skull rising sharply out of the skin like crude horns. The nose had been smoothed down to a point; one of the eyes had been stretched thin and wide across the face, the other seemed almost normal, though sunken rather, and a little dull, and a little teary, as if it knew it wasn’t as impressive as the other. And the jaw looked crushed with the weight of it all.

  When the first thrill of horror had passed, Beverly felt a surge of such pity. Her mother was in pain. Her mother was trapped—she was sitting upright on a hard wooden chair, and her ankles were tied to the chair legs. And a thick leather strap ran around her mother’s forehead, fastening the back of the head against the wall—and she could see how tight the strap was, how the fat skin pooled and bulged white against it. The woman from the cafe—her captor?—was smiling still. Her mother couldn’t smile back, she wouldn’t have been able to frame that contorted mouth into any sort of reciprocal position—but she did raise a hand in greeting. Beverly wondered whether the strap was a restraint at all. She thought that maybe the strap was there to keep the head balanced. She thought that maybe, without that balance, the head would simply fall off.

  And then there was, what? A ripple, yes, across her mother’s face? Something passing close underneath the skin, something on the move. And the ripple passed over the flat eye, and it popped out big and wide and shining, it seemed to attempt an almost flirty wink.

  The woman from the cafe was talking now. And then taking something out from a metal box on the table, it looked silver and so glamorous, like an old cigarette box. Chunks of meat—and they looked to Beverly red and raw, was it beef, was it something else? Talking again, and waving the beef at the mother playfully; Beverly could see her mother start to drool, a whole stream of it spilling out over the flab of the bottom lip, gushing now like a geyser. The woman went up to the mother, and with both hands grabbed hold of those fat lips. And then she began to prise them apart, to pull the mouth open—it was obviously quite a strain, and the woman put her all into the job, and the mother didn’t have the strength to help her, she sat there looking down at the woman’s efforts uselessly and apologetic—the woman set her own mouth hard with the effort, and her mouth was so puny and ridiculous in comparison—the woman heaved, she was up to the task, she had done this before, she was expert at opening Mother’s mouth, Beverly could see that and could admire her for it—and was there some give?—was there some dark hole peeping out between those lips?—the mouth finally gave way, it swung open large and wide and wet. And quickly the woman produced a block of wood, she wedged it in to keep the mouth from slamming shut again. There weren’t many teeth left, and they were
small and fractured—they were pebbles bobbing to the surface on a sea of hard red gum.

  Time to serve dinner. And the woman tossed the lump of raw steak into the gaping maw. The steak was lost from view—and then, just for an instant, Beverly could see it again—it was held aloft—it was held high and proud—it was gripped tight within the grasp of a tiny hand. A tiny hand sticking out from the mouth, and it looked so neat and so perfect, the little knuckles, the little fingernails.

  And then—and then, the woman turned to the window. She looked straight out. She looked straight out at Beverly. She gave a smile. Maybe it was a smile of triumph. It wasn’t a cruel smile.

  And the mother at last looked towards the window too. She strained against the straps, her head slowly turned. She stared out at her daughter—at her own child, pretty and smart and wearing earrings like a grown-up. Beverly could see that in spite of everything, the mother did look like her. Somehow, there was a resemblance.

  Mother raised a hand to her. In greeting? In need?

  And the little baby that was growing inside her mother’s mouth raised a hand in greeting too.

  There seemed to be a sound in her head. It couldn’t really be there—but maybe it was like a blast from a whistle too high-pitched for human beings to hear.

  So warm in here, big sister. But soon I’ll come out to play. And oh! What fun we shall have.

  And that’s when Beverly turned and ran.

  #

  She dozed on the trains, she didn’t know for how long. But whenever she opened her eyes it was always dark outside.

  And at first she had nightmares, but they soon wore off, soon her dreams were sweet and peaceful. She slept soundly, even though she now knew what she was.

  At one point she decided to open her mouth wide, as wide as possible. All those years and she’d never thought to see how far it could go, now it would be such fun to find out. She let her jaw droop, she stretched and stretched, she had to grit her teeth hard and concentrate, these were muscles that were weak and lazy, but Beverly had no patience with weakness any more. She heard something splinter, and she tasted blood, but there was no pain, or not much, at any rate—and soon she could fit her hand inside her mouth, the whole hand even with the fingers splayed, and then her whole arm, she could push in the arm right up to the elbow, she could push it in as deep as she liked.

  #

  At first she wasn’t sure she would even recognise her old house. But there it was, she found it on the street side just where she’d left it, looking up at it seemed like such sweet nostalgia. Had she really made that her home for the past eleven years? It was dark. All was still. She found a key in her pocket, and she put it into the lock, and it fitted, and it turned, and the door was open, and so she went inside.

  She could see her parents had been worried. There were leaflets about missing children, what to do in the event of… and how to cope with… thick pamphlets that made merry with words like ‘grief’ and ‘trauma’. They were scattered all around the sitting room, and that was the main clue something was wrong, her old mother and father had been so neat and tidy. She felt a stab of guilt, she hadn’t wanted them to suffer. She wondered how long she’d been away.

  But when she went into her parents’ bedroom, when she stood over their sleeping bodies, they looked so calm and carefree, they looked innocent as babes.

  She stood over them for quite a while. She enjoyed the peace. She didn’t want to disturb it.

  Eventually, with a soft sigh of resignation, she went to her father’s side, and she picked up his pillow, and his head went ker-thunk! down upon his mattress, and that was funny, and he didn’t even think to wake up. And she pressed the pillow down hard on to his face, right over his mouth and that bulbous nose, and that’s when he stirred from sleep, too little too late, he struggled so limply and then stopped struggling at all. She lifted off the pillow, and he just lay there, still, and he didn’t look any different in death—suffocation agreed with him, if indeed it were suffocation, as she pressed down she had heard a little snap and had wondered vaguely whether she had broken his neck.

  Her mother slept on. She walked round to her mother’s side, she lifted her pillow, the head did the ker-thunk thing again but it wasn’t so heavy and wasn’t so funny. She considered. Her mother wasn’t old, she was healthy. Beverly sniffed, and there was a faint coppery tang to the air, and she knew her mother was still fertile. The heart thrummed, Beverly could hear it, and it sounded confident and strong, it sounded strong enough to support two. Beverly put down the pillow. She sat down by her mother’s side. She stroked her hair, she stroked her milky skin. Her mother gave a little whimper at that, and cuddled into Beverly closer, and Beverly felt happy.

  When dawn broke Beverly stood up and left the bedroom. She took her father’s pipe from the cabinet. She took his other things too—the whisky that only he ever drank, the collection of commemorative coins, all the photographs, every single one. She put them into a sack, and left them outside by the dustbins. And then Beverly came back inside, and made herself a coffee, good, strong and black, and sat at the kitchen table, and waited for the woman upstairs to wake up.

  THE DEVIL’S INTERVAL

  Conrad Williams

  Each time he unzipped the padded case and withdrew the guitar Fleckney felt a sting of self-consciousness. It was a Fender Squier Stratocaster, so not the greatest axe in existence, but “no POS”, as Pat, his guitar tutor, had confirmed to him. The guitar, made in Japan in 1989, had a cherry-red body with a black pick guard. A dark rosewood neck. It had cost him £90, a dent in his wallet back when he was eighteen, but not a huge amount for a secondhand Strat. It was probably worth much more nowadays, mainly because it was an unusual model: just one volume pot (no tone controls) and there was only one pickup, where normally there were three. That pickup was a double humbucker and it produced a savage sound that he really liked. No, any self-consciousness was more to do with Pat, who must have been twenty years younger than him. He wondered what Pat thought of this middle-aged, balding, overweight, bespectacled guy who turned up every Thursday evening without fail, but had trouble remembering his scales, or seldom managed to do anything interesting with them beyond slavishly running up and down the notes.

  Fleckney had always wanted to be a guitarist but life (and laziness) had got in the way of his ambition. At sixth form college he’d cadged a handful of lessons from the mother of a friend who knew how to play chords. Once he’d learned a clutch of major and minor triads she could teach him no more, but put him in touch with a professional teacher who opened up the secrets of the minor pentatonic and barre chords. And then he took his ‘A’ levels and moved to Durham to study and suddenly he didn’t have enough money to pay for lessons. Other students were forming bands with overblown names—Wendigo Amok, Knee Cheese and Bakelite Heart were some that stuck in his memory—but even though they were only playing with three chords (if that) he didn’t feel confident enough in his own abilities to follow suit. So he stagnated, but he never felt tempted to sell his guitar, even during those grim days of student loans and swingeing overdrafts.

  It wasn’t until his fortieth birthday, when he found the original plectrum his first teacher had given him, that he felt a pang of nostalgia, and regret. He dug out his old guitar and took it to a luthier who cleaned it up and put on a fresh set of strings. He found himself in a rush to learn, keen to understand the theory behind the practicalities, but he felt the frustration of his need versus the amount of years he had left. He didn’t want to suddenly crack the guitar’s secrets only to find he was too arthritic to shape the chords.

  Pat didn’t seem to share his impatience. He was very laid back. More and more Fleckney believed Pat’s insouciance was down to a lack of concern. It was in his interests for Fleckney to progress at a sloth-like pace. Ten pounds for half an hour didn’t seem like much money until it hit home that he’d been coming for lessons once a week for just over two years. That was over a grand that he could have sp
ent on an American Standard, one of the best Strats you could buy, before you headed into the realms of silly money for custom versions of old classics, or signature editions. Was it really so hard to teach yourself? But he knew very well the answer to that. He’d tried, but the sheer mass of information online, and his own lack of conviction when it came to proceeding in a practical, linear fashion, only served to confuse him. There was so much to take in: left-hand stuff like chords, scales, arpeggios, modes, but also the intricacies of right-hand work: finger-picking, legato, sweep picking, tremolo, sforzando, rasgueado… Christ, there was so much. Where did you start? Where did you stop? What was the most effective way to advance? He knew that whole careers had been built on three-chord riffs, but he wanted it all, he wanted to acquire the sophistry that he saw and heard in the work of his heroes: Hendrix, Page, Summers, Buckley.

  He’d promised, once he’d become proficient, that he would treat himself to a brand new guitar, a real beauty. Maybe one of those American Standards. An Olympic white model with a maple neck. It didn’t matter that there was nobody around to hear him play. Except Pat with his smirk and his effortless ability and the faux enthusiastic encouragement he gave him. Playing guitar had always been just about him and his own limits. It had nothing to do with songwriting, or trying to attract women. It would be a way to express himself, he felt. A release valve, because there were no others.

  He thought about the guitar when it wasn’t actually in his hands. At work—he was an office manager for an architectural organisation based in the suburbs south of Manchester—he would go about his business diligently but was always trying to visualise where the different notes were on the neck of the guitar, or listening out for undemanding riffs being played on the radio in the kitchen that he might be able to replicate. He carried a finger grip around with him and tensed it whenever he was on the phone. There was always a plectrum or two in his pocket to fiddle with. Occasionally he would meet a resident who had played in a band back in the day and he would ask him how he learned, how long it had taken, what was the key to knowledge.