by Tim Curran
Taking another step toward the stall, I can't help smiling slightly. These two people seem so utterly strange, and so lost in their conversation, that I find myself wondering if they're quite alright in the head. They're dressed rather formally, and in fact they even appear a little old-fashioned, but evidently they're quite happy to discuss my various merits and failings without worrying one jot that I can hear them. The way they're talking about me, it's as if they view me as some kind of inanimate object. A cake, perhaps. Or a bun that didn't come out quite right.
“My legs ache,” the woman groans as I get closer, adding an elaborate, slightly theatrical sigh. “Julian, can we please just settle? There's nothing wrong with her, at least not that I can see, and it's not as if we have to achieve absolute perfection. Maybe this can be a lesson for you. Next year, you can jolly well agree to start Christmas shopping with me a little earlier, instead of always rushing at the last minute!”
“Come on, Agnes, don't take pot-shots,” he replies. “Let's try one more market and -”
“We've found what we came for,” she says firmly. “Julian, honestly, will you just be told?”
The man stares at me for a moment, and it's clear that he's not entirely convinced. I can see his eyes now, but they're very dark, with no hint of white at all. Finally, he shrugs his shoulders.
“Okay, fine,” he mutters, with a resigned air. “Where's the little man, then? Let's get it all sorted and paid for, and then we can go home to the fire.”
“Can I help you?” I ask, raising a quizzical eyebrow. “Do you need something?”
I wait for a reply, but the woman simply continues to watch me with a critical eye, while the man turns and looks around as if he's waiting for somebody else to arrive.
“Where the bloody hell is he?” he asks after a moment, sounding annoyed. “You'd think these people would bother to stay put, so they can take our money. This is no way to run a business, Agnes. I'm telling you, these stall-holders have no work ethic whatsoever!”
“Oh, do be quiet, Julian,” she replies. “He'll be along in a minute.”
“What exactly is it that you're after?” I ask as I reach the stall again. “I don't think anyone's running this one. I think it's just been dumped here. The actual market's just over there, where all the lights are.”
Again, I wait for a reply.
“I think this is a sign,” the man grumbles finally, ignoring every word I just said. “We should just keep looking.”
“We've found one that'll do, Julian!” the woman groans, rolling her eyes. “Now make yourself useful and locate the little man who runs the stall. It's cold out tonight, and I want to get this over with. Don't forget, we've got a nice bottle of mulled wine waiting for us at home.”
Mumbling something under his breath, the man turns and walks away, quickly disappearing into the darkness. Left alone, facing the woman as she waits on the other side of the stall, I can't help thinking that I've wandered into something rather surreal. The woman seems completely uninterested in listening to me or making conversation, and she doesn't even seem to think it's worth acknowledging me at all. At the same time, she has no problem staring straight at me, watching me as if she thinks I'm just a thing.
“Can I ask you a question?” I say finally. “What are you... I mean, I don't quite get what you're doing here.”
She maintains eye contact with me, but she doesn't say a word.
“I'm not the stall-holder,” I continue. “If that's what you think, I... I really don't think this stall is selling anything. I think it's just been dumped here.”
Again, she doesn't reply.
“Emma!” a voice calls out suddenly, far behind me. “Where are you?”
“That's my friend,” I tell the woman, recognizing Jessie's cry. “I should probably go to her, but I don't think anyone's going to come to this stall and sell you anything. You need to go to the main part of the market, just over there. Do you see all the lights?”
“Emma! Come on, dude, where are you?”
I wait for the woman to acknowledge me, before finally figuring that there's nothing more I can do here. Turning, I keep my hands in my coat pockets as I head back to the crowd, and fortunately the market seems to be just a tad less busy now. Slipping into the sea of bodies, I quickly spot Jessie waving at me, and I wave back at her before glancing over my shoulder toward the stall. The man has returned, standing next to the woman, and he seems to be taking some money from his wallet. He's speaking, too, although I can't imagine what he thinks he's going to achieve, and then a moment later he holds the money out across the stall.
Suddenly I spot a dark figure, standing pretty much exactly where I was standing just a moment ago. Tall but hunched, the figure takes the money, at which point the man looks this way and points straight at me.
Before I can reach, the dark figure turns and looks at me, and I'm shocked to see two pitch-black pits where it should have eyes. Its limbs are mostly long, thin, very straight black lines, with occasional sharp bends, like the branches of the dead trees in the distance, while its torso is plump and rounded at the bottom. There seems to be a kind of shell-like arch to its back, as if the guy is wearing some kind of old, tattered insect-style Halloween costume. The sight is creepy as hell, and yet I can't look away. For a couple of seconds, I feel as if this thing is staring straight into my mind.
“There you are!”
Jessie grabs my arm. Startled, I turn to her, and then I look back toward the stall, only for the crowd to bump me along until all I can see are all the other, more colorful stalls. I crane my neck, trying to peer back toward the strange couple and the dark figure, but they're completely out of view now and I can already tell that there's no point trying to fight the crowd's momentum.
“Where'd you go?” Jessie asks excitedly, clutching her packaged pudding. “Are you having fun yet?”
“Did you see that?” I stammer.
“See what? Come on!”
As we make our way around the rest of the market, I try telling her about the strange experience with the couple and the abandoned stall, but she's not really paying attention and finally I more or less give up. That doesn't mean I think I imagined the whole thing, of course, although Jessie keeps laughing at the parts of the story that she actually hears, and she's clearly far more interested in all the other stalls. My mind's really not on the market any longer, and I keep trying to figure out if we're getting closer again to the weird stall, although the layout of the place seems somewhat haphazard.
Finally, with no warning, I find that we've suddenly reached the entrance, where people are excitedly piling in and out of the market.
“Bloody hell, I'm knackered!” Jessie sighs. “Wanna go to the pub? Selina and Tim are gonna be there!”
I try to tell her that I'm too tired, but she's typically persistent and by the time we're out past the market's main gate I've already agreed to follow her to Jekyll's for just one drink. Of course, one drink with Jessie always turns into two or three, but I've already factored that into my decision-making process, and I figure I can handle a mild, short night out. Maybe some socializing would even do me good. It's been a long time since I really went anywhere.
“Where the hell's my pudding?” she says suddenly, sounding panicked as she looks down at the various packages and boxes she accumulated while we were in the market. “Damn it! I must've left it at that last stall!”
“Well -”
“Back in a minute! Don't go anywhere!”
With that, she turns and hurries back into the market, while muttering loudly about how some “thieving buggers” had better not have taken her pudding and done a runner.
I almost go with her, before realizing that the idea of going back into the surging mass of the market really isn't a very appealing prospect. Crowds are definitely not my thing.
“I'll just wait here, then,” I mutter under my breath.
I didn't even buy anything in the end, which feels vaguely anticlimac
tic, but I guess it's not as if I have many people to buy gifts for. Or much money to buy gifts with. I'm spending Christmas with Jessie and her family, and I know they feel sorry for me, but I also know it's really nice of them to invite me. There's still a part of me that wants to just make an excuse and go back to my flat, and spend the entire holiday period alone. I could be perfectly happy with Christmas dinner for one, and a copy of the bumper Radio Times, and some books and maybe just one little box of candy. I've always been the kind of person who doesn't mind being alone, but Jessie has already shouted down all my attempts to slip out of this big Christmas visit. I guess I should be grateful that I have such a good friend.
“Stephen, can you please stop complaining?” a woman says suddenly, marching a little boy out of the market. “I told you, we can't afford any more. You got the one you wanted, didn't you?”
“I changed my mind!” he hisses angrily, holding a slice of cake. “I want chocolate now!”
“Well, I'm sure the carrot cake is still nice. If -”
“I don't want it!” he yells, turning and throwing the cake with such force that it splats against the boundary fence that marks the edge of the market.
“Stephen!” his mother shouts. “What did you do that for?”
“Why can't I have chocolate?” he screams, starting to pull a full-on tantrum. “I want chocolate!”
“Okay,” she mutters, pulling him along faster, toward the distant lights of the parking lot. “That's it! If you can't be grateful for anything you get, then why should I bother? We're going straight home!”
“I hate you!” he shouts as they get further and further away. “And I hate everything you give me! You never get it right!”
I can't help watching their silhouettes as they reach the parking lot. A kid like that is my absolute worst nightmare, and I feel sorry for the mother. If the kid behaves that way with everything she gets for him, then frankly I feel like she should stop buying him gifts at all. When I was that age, I was always grateful for anything I received, and I understood that my parents barely had enough money for us to get by. Some years, we couldn't even afford crackers.
“Emma?” a familiar voice calls out suddenly, over my shoulder. “Are you ready to go?”
Turning, I see that Jessie has retrieved her pudding, although she also seems to have picked up two toffee apples on sticks. She's licking one of the apples as she comes back out from the market, while holding the other apple and balancing her various packages and parcels.
“Hey,” I say with a faint smile. “You won't believe the kid who just came by here a moment ago.”
“Emma?” She takes another lick, silhouetted against the lights of the market as she looks around. Since she came back out, she hasn't quite made eye contact with me once. “Where are you, babe?”
“Right here,” I reply, holding up a hand and waving at her, even though she's only a few feet away.
She continues to look around. “Emma?”
“Shall we get to the pub, then?” I ask. “Sorry if I didn't seem enthusiastic earlier. I was just in a weird place. I'll perk up, I promise.”
She turns and looks back into the market for a moment, before taking her phone from her pocket and tapping at the screen. I hear a faint ringing sound coming from her phone's speaker, but to my surprise my own phone doesn't react at all. When I pull it from my pocket, I see that I have no signal at all.
“Seriously?” Jessie says with a sigh, tapping at the screen again, and this time she seems to be typing out a message. “Come on, Emma. Don't do this to me. Not after everything I've put up with from you.”
“Put up with?” I reply, startled. “What do you mean?”
She stares at her phone for a moment longer, before tapping again and then holding it at the side of her face.
“It's me,” she says with another sigh. “Hey, Selina, I'm two minutes away, but Emma's vanished. She didn't seem very into the market, I think she might have just gone home without saying anything.”
She hesitates, listening to a voice on the other end, and then she starts wandering toward the road.
“I know,” she continues. “I've texted her to say where we'll be, but I'm not standing around waiting in the cold. I swear to God, I actually think I'd prefer it if she went home. She's being such a downer.”
“Sorry?” I stammer, hurrying after her. “Jessie -”
“I know!” she adds, still acting as if she can't hear me. “Frankly, I'm starting to think she's a stuck-up bitch. I dragged her to the Christmas market, but she had a face like a wet weekend the whole time. I get it's sad that her parents died in a car crash, but that was three months ago! She should be starting to pick herself up by now!”
“You think I'm a bitch?” I ask incredulously.
She laughs at something.
“Yeah,” she continues. “Maybe. You're right, screw her. If she shows up at the pub, she shows up. If she doesn't, it's her loss. Snooty cow.”
Stopping, I watch as she makes her way to the crossing, and then she heads across the road. She's still talking to someone on the phone, and I can hear her laughing, but I feel genuinely hurt by everything she just said. Even if she was joking, she took it way too far, and I'm not in the mood to be called a bitch or a snooty cow.
“Fine, then!” I mutter, even though I know she can't hear me anymore. “I'd rather spend Christmas alone, anyway!”
I watch as her silhouette disappears around the corner, and then I turn and start heading back past the market, toward the path that leads home. Stuffing my hands into my pockets for warmth, I tell myself that I'll be much better off just staying in my flat and keeping myself company. There'll be loads of films to watch, and I can pick up some books, and I'll have a quiet, un-rushed Christmas. Maybe I'll take some flowers to the grave on Sunday morning and spend some time up there. Jessie told me it'd be maudlin and depressing to do something like that, but I actually think I'd rather see whether -
Suddenly I'm grabbed from behind and a black sack is placed snuggly over my head. I try to cry out, but a hand clamps tightly over the front of the bag, forcing my mouth shut, and ropes are quickly wrapped around my chest. A moment later, someone grabs my legs and I'm swung around. I tell myself this is all a joke, that Jessie is staging some kind of dumb, elaborate prank, but I can hear whispering voices nearby as I'm carried across uneven ground. I try to twist free, but I'm being held far too securely.
A moment later the bag is yanked off of my head as I'm dropped into some kind of empty space. Immediately, a piece of cloth is shoved into my mouth, pushed far down my throat before something is tied over my lips. I manage a few muffled groans as I try to climb out, but I'm quickly forced back down as the bag is once again roughly yanked down over my head. Panicking, I try to kick out at my attackers, but something slams into my chest, momentarily blasting the air from my lungs.
“Wait!” a familiar voice hisses. It's the man from earlier, from the weird, dark stall. “Let me get a proper look at her before we leave!”
“Oh, Julian,” the woman replies, sounding exhausted. “We've already paid! He said no refunds, remember? You never get refunds from the market.”
“Take the bag off,” he continues. “I want to be sure he'll like her. The last thing we need is to spend the whole of Christmas dealing with another of Leonard's tantrums.”
Suddenly the bag is pulled from my head, and I'm shocked to find myself staring up at the man and the woman. I seem to be in some kind of trunk, maybe in the back of a car, and I quickly try once more to climb out. Suddenly the man pushes the tip of a walking cane against my chest, and I feel a burst of pain that sends me slumping back down into the trunk.
“I suppose she'll do,” he mutters, as I try to call for help despite the gag over my mouth. “I think I really need to see her properly, though.”
Reaching up, he starts digging a fingernail into his own flesh, at the edge of his left eye. Staring in horror, I see that he's carefully pulling loose a flap of
skin, and then he starts slowly peeling a section of flesh away.
“These things always itch so much,” he complains. “You'd think we'd have something better by now, for our jaunts out into the world.”
With that, he pulls the fake skin aside, revealing his real eyes. Large, baseball-sized black orbs stare down at me from an otherwise human-looking face, and I meet his gaze with a growing sense of dread as I see my own terrified features reflected back at me.
“Fine,” he mutters, followed by an approving grunt. “She's better than last year's, at least. She'll do.”
Behind him, the woman peels the fake flesh from around her eyes too, revealing similar large, black balls that take up almost half her face.
“I'm glad you approve,” she says with a sigh. “I'm sure Leonard will enjoy her, and that's what really matters. He always breaks them after a few days, anyway.”
They stare at me for a moment longer, with those horrific, unblinking eyes, before suddenly the man reaches up and slams the trunk's lid down, plunging me into darkness.
I try to scream, but the gag over my mouth is too tight. I try to pull my hands free, but the ropes are holding my arms firmly at my sides. I try to wriggle around so I can force my shoulder against the top of the trunk, but a moment later there's a shudder that briefly shakes the dark space. I think I'm in some kind of old-fashioned carriage, and the man and woman just sat on seats directly above me.
“Get on with it!” the man calls out, and I hear the sound of horses whinnying before the trunk starts shaking again.
We're moving.
“I'll be glad to get home and back into the warm,” the woman says calmly. “All this cold air is no good for my angina, you know.”
As the carriage rolls over the bumpy ground, I turn and start furiously kicking the side of the trunk, trying desperately to get somebody's attention. There have to be people out there, people who can hear me, but I'm sobbing frantically now and no matter how hard I kick the trunk, I don't hear any sound of help coming. Someone has to have seen me being abducted, though. There's no way I could have been dragged away without someone noticing. Help's going to come. It has to.
