by R. H. Dixon
When, eventually, he came into her mouth, clouds of red burst behind his closed eyes like broken blood vessels dousing his vision. A wave of heated fulfilment surged through his whole body, making it shudder. But his gratification was short-lived. When he opened his eyes again Pamela Tanner was no longer there. A faceless female form straddled his legs. Lustrous black hair had diminished to an aged bald pate, and Pamela Tanner’s tanned curves had been replaced with all the bloated blueness of a drowned body. The faceless woman’s breasts hung down either side of an ample stomach mound, each down-pointed nipple the colour of rancid liver. Worst of all was the wide gruesome slash that hung loose in the woman’s otherwise featureless face, and in this hole there were multiple rows of barbed teeth.
John made a choking noise and his hands became clawed as he clutched at the mattress, trying to move beneath her bulk, trying to drag himself away, because even more than her deliberate deadweight on his legs, he was aware of the fact that she was still holding onto him. He hardly dared to look, but couldn’t help himself, and when he did he saw how her gnarled fingers were clutching the most intimate, rapidly shrinking, part of him with a firmness that both repulsed and frightened him. Again he tried to struggle free, desperately wanting her not to be touching him anywhere, least of all there. And she responded by opening her hideous jagged mouth wider to reveal even more teeth. Then a crackling noise emerged from her throat. A sound he’d heard before in dreams. She snapped her teeth tauntingly at his flaccid penis and as she did this John’s fever broke and he felt suddenly cold, like all life was leaving him. And then he wished it would do so more quickly because she bent and took his cock into the serrated abyss of her head. He closed his eyes and screamed and screamed and screamed.
_
…
_
He awoke sweating and shivering, and his hand was quick beneath the sheet to clutch his crotch. All was intact.
Thank God.
But there was a fetid stench that filled the room and flies buzzed around the open window behind the curtain, a whole swarm of them by the sound of it. And now footsteps, out on the landing, followed by Emily’s voice. ‘Seren? Seren!’
Not again. Please not again.
John dived out of bed and threw his jeans on, then bolted from the bedroom. Out on the landing he saw the door to his mother’s room was wide open and he could hear Emily’s thundering footsteps at the bottom of the stairs now.
‘What’s going on?’ he shouted, racing down after her. ‘Where is she?’
‘I don’t know.’ Emily flung the bathroom door open and poked her head inside to look around. ‘I woke up and she was gone.’
John rushed through to the lounge, then the kitchen. Seren was in neither, but the back door was standing ajar.
‘Seren?’
He fled outside, bare feet slapping on the concrete drive, and Emily followed close behind. This time he found Otis and Mindy snuffling about on the lawn and his daughter huddled on the garden bench below the lounge window. Her knees were drawn up to her chest and she looked at him with a sense of terror that resounded his own nightmare.
‘What the hell are you doing out here?’ he cried, not even noticing the damp chill against his bare torso.
‘I’m not going back in there,’ she whimpered. ‘Megan says the bad woman’s coming for me. She says she’s nearly strong enough now and that…’
‘Enough!’ John pointed to the house, his expression furious. ‘Get inside. Now.’
Emily, who was standing next to him, held out her hand and said, ‘Come on, darl, let’s talk inside where it’s warmer.’
Seren shook her head and gripped her knees even tighter to her chest.
Seeing that her niece wasn’t about to change her mind, Emily went to the bench and sat down next to her. ‘Who’s Megan? Want to tell me about her?’
‘No.’ Seren buried her face in her knees.
This time John went to the bench. Crouching before both girls, he said, ‘Listen, this is what’s gonna happen, I’m gonna check the loft over and then we’re gonna pack our stuff up and head back home to Leeds, okay?’
Seren looked up, hopeful. ‘Really?’
‘Really. But there’s one condition.’
‘What?’
‘That in the morning when we leave, Megan stays here.’
‘But I want to go home now.’ Seren’s mouth downturned.
John groaned. His head was still fuzzy with wine and the bout of cold he seemed to be fending off felt like it was worsening if anything. ‘We can’t.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we can’t just leave Gran’s house the way it is. Imagine how she and Norman would feel if they got back home to discover their bedroom ceilings are all mouldy. I don’t think they’d be very happy, do you?’
‘But I don’t want to go back upstairs.’
‘What about if I sleep with you?’
‘No. I’m not going up there.’
‘What about the couch? You can sleep downstairs.’
She looked at him uncertainly, but this time didn’t refuse.
‘I’ll stay with you, we’ll camp out in the lounge,’ he offered. ‘Then tomorrow afternoon we hit the road and head home.’
Her small shoulders sagged in defeat and she nodded her consent, allowing him to take her back inside. John, straight away, went to gather some bedding. When he was half way up the stairs he heard the phone ringing. He ran the rest of the way up but by the time he got to the landing the ringing had stopped and he could hear the muffled sound of Emily’s voice downstairs. When he returned to the lounge, arms laden with blankets and pillows, she was replacing the phone in its cradle and Seren was lying on the sofa, looking marginally calmer.
‘Who was that?’ he asked, tipping his head towards the phone.
Emily shrugged. ‘Cold caller.’
John looked at the golden carriage clock on the mantelpiece. It was just after half ten. ‘At this time of night?’
‘I know, ridiculous.’
‘Well, I hope you told them where to go.’
Emily smiled wanly. ‘You know me.’
John covered Seren with a duvet then went through to the kitchen to triple check that the back door was locked. He put the key on top of the refrigerator, where she wouldn’t be able to reach it, then started when he turned round and saw Emily standing next to him.
‘Hey,’ she whispered. ‘I know it’s none of my business and all, but I don’t think you should be running about like that, not where Seren is.’
Regarding her with vagueness, he said, ‘Running about like what?’
‘With no shirt on.’
‘Why the hell not?’
Emily raised her eyebrows. ‘Forgot about something, have you?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Duh.’ Emily huffed and jabbed him in the chest. ‘That bloody big love bite, dipshit.’
John looked down, horrified. Circling his left nipple, where Pamela Tanner had bitten him in his dream, was an undeniable set of teeth marks amidst angry purple bruising.
_
24
_
A deep sense of loss filled Natasha’s heart with a hurt that lacked the sharp intensity of freshness but ached with all the deep-rooted insistence of healed broken bones in winter months. She felt restless and unsettled, Seren playing heavily on her mind. After she’d hung up, Natasha had dialled 1571 and jotted down the little girl’s number on a yellow Post-it note. She’d then muddled on until home time in an unpleasant autopilot fugue. Now she was lying in tepid bath water, the bubbles of which had been reduced to a film of soapy residue on the surface gathering thickest and white around her protruding thighs.
Why me out of all the random strangers on the internet? Why not someone else?
Natasha chewed on her fingers. Gut instinct told her the little girl’s phone call was in some way connected with her own bad dreams and experiences of late. She knew the idea wasn’t some irrational conclusion borne f
rom a hormonal imbalance post-miscarriage. She could sense something other-worldly scratching about beyond the boundaries of her normal perception with spidery, dead fingers which she imagined only the bereaved might feel.
Shivering, she sat forward, her skin taught with gooseflesh. The lukewarm water and comfortable temperature of the bathroom did nothing towards easing her chill. Beyond the sound of the bathroom’s extractor fan the house was silent. All the unlit rooms at the other end of the hallway, although familiar spaces filled with her stuff, as they had been for well over a decade, now felt uninviting with the malignancy of some unseen threat. Natasha looked nervously at the bathroom’s open doorway, regretting having not, at least, left the lounge’s light on. She knew that once she left the spotlit sanctuary of the bathroom shadows elsewhere in the house would look darker than usual, they would be home to solid breathing hulks with blank faces and closed mouths, and inside those insidious mouths would be expandable jaws with hundreds of spiky teeth. Like the faceless woman from her dream.
Something was close. Something intangible. She could feel it. Premonition teased her skin with butterfly kisses; a creepy, crawly sensation that made her hair follicles pucker and scalp tingle. She shuddered and looked over at Maverick who was sitting on the closed toilet lid watching her intensely with his china-blue eyes.
‘What is it, mister? Do you know?’
He purred piteously in answer, and seemed fully intent on letting her take charge of the situation.
Natasha reached across and pulled the plug out. When she stepped out of the bath, water slopped down the side of the bath panel and pooled on the floor tiles and a chill settled on her wet skin. After hastily drying herself she wrapped the towel around her chest, tucked the fold beneath her arm and scurried down the hallway, leaving a trail of damp footprints behind, pursued by a Siamese cat. When she slapped the lounge light on shadows retreated into other rooms, and she stood for a moment eyeing the living space, relieved to see that nothing more substantial lingered in their place. Nothing with a blowhole instead of a nose. Nothing with sharks’ teeth. She thought tonight she might leave every light in the apartment on.
Picking up the cordless phone from the coffee table, she frowned when she saw its digital display: 22:33.
Shit, later than I thought.
Would it be terribly intrusive to call a stranger up at that time in the evening? She thrummed her fingertips against her lips. Probably. But then, she wouldn’t get any sleep unless she did. Retrieving the little girl’s number from her handbag on the floor, Natasha held the yellow Post-it note close to her chest and closed her eyes, listening to the internal monologue that began to list and repeat excuses as to why she shouldn’t pursue this madness.
‘Oh just do it!’
Her thumb hovered over the phone’s keypad and she looked down at her own handwritten scrawl on the paper, noticing something she hadn’t noticed before. The dialling code was for Tyne and Wear, inclusive of Peterlee: her own hometown. It could mean something or it could mean nothing at all, but somehow she felt it was relevant and this spurred her on. She dialled the number and waited. It rang just three times before someone answered. ‘Hello?’
‘Oh, er, hi.’ Natasha fumbled with the bath towel and started to pace in front of the couch. ‘Sorry to bother you so late, it’s just, well…a little girl from this number called me earlier. Seren?’
There was brief silence in which Natasha heard three of her own heartbeats, then the woman on the other end of the line said, ‘Oh really? I hadn’t realised. Can I ask who’s calling?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course. I’m Natasha Graham. Owner of One Hundred & Ninety Nine. A boutique gift shop in Whitby. That’s where Seren called. At my shop. Are you her mother?’
‘No.’
‘Oh. Are you Megan?’ Natasha brought her index finger up to her mouth and began to nibble on the inflamed skin to the side of her nail.
‘Er, no. I’m Emily.’
‘Oh right. You wouldn’t happen to know who Megan is? It’s just, apparently, she was the one who suggested that Seren call me.’
Again there was a slight delay, then Emily said, ‘No, sorry, I’ve no idea who that is.’
‘Okay. Well, never mind.’ Natasha sat down on the edge of the couch, a feeling of disappointment settling over her, making her legs feel leaden. All of her questions, it seemed, would remain unanswered and the conversation she’d had with the little girl now seemed more obscure than ever. Foolish even. ‘Would you be able to let Seren’s parents know about this then please? It’s just, I’d hate to think the little tinker was running up a massive phone bill and them not know anything about it.’
‘Oh yeah, absolutely,’ Emily said. ‘I’m fairly certain John won’t know anything about this. Thanks for letting us know.’
‘No problem. Oh and sorry again for disturbing you so late.’ Natasha hung up and sank back into the cushions. She had hoped that after the call she would feel more relaxed, but she didn’t. Dead knuckles still rapped at the edge of her sensory grasp. She felt scared not knowing who they belonged to, but even more scared that she might not be receptive to whatever message they might try to relay.
What if..?
No. Don’t do this to yourself.
What the little girl had said was nothing more than coincidence, like a phoney clairvoyant who strikes it lucky by correctly guessing a name or favourite catchword or item of clothing once used by a now-dead relative. Chance, that was all it was.
But Natasha couldn’t settle.
The bad woman’s coming back.
What bad woman?
The one who took Megan away.
Where to?
Someplace in the dark.
She looked down at the scribbled phone number again. Something beyond the dialling code spoke of familiarity and tugged at some defunct part of her brain. But Natasha didn’t know anybody called Emily. And just who was Emily to Seren? The other woman hadn’t said. Natasha’s thoughts were a jumble of confusion. What did it all mean? What was the answer to this seemingly impossible conundrum that gnawed at the edge of her understanding?
Then something Emily had said hit her with all the emotional impact of a high-speed head-on collision.
I’m fairly certain John won’t know anything about this.
John?
John.
Natasha sprang forward and clamped a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide.
No. It can’t be.
She looked at the phone number one more time and her blood ran cold with stark recognition. The truth had finally uncovered itself. Another dormant grenade from the past to blow up in her face.
Oh. My. God.
Realising all at once that her sense of foreboding hadn’t been misplaced after all, great waves of confusion and anger, hurt and jealousy surged through Natasha. She would have preferred to have been plunged into a blanket of darkness that was filled with gaping mouths and sharks’ teeth than find out this terrible truth.
Damn you all the way to hell and back, John Gimmerick. You contemptible, evil bastard.
__
25
_
John was in the loft again. He checked the header tank once more, just to be certain there were no cracks in the casing. When he was certain there weren’t he moved all of the storage boxes to one side of the room to clear a large space, then went about untacking the carpet. He peeled the carpet and a thick layer of underlay back and lifted four boards up, enough to access the two copper pipes that fed into the tank. He checked each pipe joint for leakages but found none. Then checked again twice over. There was no hint of condensation either, the whole area bone dry. Frustrated and flummoxed by the whole business, he swore and set to putting everything back into place. He wasn’t sure what else he could do. How could he fix a problem that didn’t seem to exist? There wasn’t even an explanation for the bad smells that frequented the first floor. He’d done about as much as he could do and he could cope with no more.
; With the floorboards fitted and carpet laid again he started moving boxes back to where they’d come from, eager to get finished because each time he bent, stretched or swivelled the bruised bite on his chest rubbed against the cotton of his t-shirt, reminding him of the dream he kept trying to forget. The dream that had somehow seeped into reality. The quicker he and Seren left Horden and Pamela Tanner behind, he thought, the better it would be for them both.
After shifting three weighty boxes into a brand new pile John reached for a fourth, a large Quaker Oats box that sat on the floor. But when he tilted it backwards to get a firm grip beneath, he could feel that the cardboard was soggy against his fingers. Heaving it into his arms, he was then dismayed to see that there was a damp patch on the carpet where it had been standing for the past hour or so. He took the box downstairs to the kitchen and put it on the draining board, ready to investigate. Emily and Seren were sitting at the dining table, doodling on pieces of copier paper. Emily glanced up, ‘Found something?’
‘Maybe.’ He started unsticking tape from the box’s sealed flaps, curious about what on earth he’d find inside. ‘This box is wet for some reason. It’s the only damn thing up there that seems to be.’
‘Let’s hope all your report cards and swimming certificates aren’t ruined then.’
‘Huh?’
Emily pointed to the side of the box where he’d missed the words: JOHN’S STUFF.
John’s brow furrowed and he sighed. ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ He pulled off the remaining tape, his negative sense of curiosity heightening further, and peered inside. One of his old sketch books lay at the very top. He picked it up and sifted through the pages, then handed it to Seren. ‘Here, kidda, want to see some of your dad’s old drawings?’
