The Mammoth Book of Body Horror

by Marie O'Regan

  During their third session together, the doctor brought one particular memory back to Charlie with spectacular vividness: his father’s hands, crossed on his barrel chest as he lay in his coffin; the ruddy colour of them, the coarse hair that matted their backs. The absolute authority of those wide hands, even in death, had haunted Charlie for months afterwards. And hadn’t he imagined, as he’d watched the body being consigned to humus, that it was not yet still? That the hands were even now beating a tattoo on the casket lid, demanding to be let out? It was a preposterous thing to think, but bringing it out into the open did Charlie a lot of good. In the bright light of Jeudwine’s office the fantasy looked insipid and ridiculous. It shivered under the doctor’s gaze, protesting that the light was too strong, and then it blew away, too frail to stand up to scrutiny.

  The exorcism was far easier than Charlie had anticipated. All it had taken was a little probing and that childhood nonsense had been dislodged from his psyche like a morsel of bad meat from between his teeth. It could rot there no longer. And for his part Jeudwine was clearly delighted with the results explaining when it was all done that this particular obsession had been new to him, and he was pleased to have dealt with the problem. Hands as symbols of paternal power, he said, were not common. Usually the penis predominated in his patients’ dreams, he explained, to which Charlie had replied that hands had always seemed far more important than private parts. After all, they could change the world, couldn’t they?

  After Jeudwine, Charlie didn’t stop breaking pencils, or drumming his fingers. In fact if anything the tempo was brisker and more insistent than ever. But he reasoned that middle-aged dogs didn’t quickly forget their tricks, and it would take some time for him to regain his equilibrium.

  So the revolution remained underground. It had, however, been a narrow escape. Clearly there was no time left for prevarication. The rebels had to act.

  Unwittingly, it was Ellen who instigated the final uprising. It was after a bout of love-making, late one Thursday evening. A hot night, though it was October; the window was ajar and the curtains parted a few inches to let in a simpering breeze. Husband and wife lay together under a single sheet. Charlie had fallen asleep, even before the sweat on his neck had dried. Beside him Ellen was still awake, her head propped up on a rock-hard pillow, her eyes wide open. Sleep wouldn’t come for a long time tonight, she knew. It would be one of those nights when her body would itch, and every lump in the bed would worm its way under her, and every doubt she’d ever had would gawp at her from the dark. She wanted to empty her bladder (she always did after sex) but she couldn’t quite raise the will-power to get up and go to the bathroom. The longer she left it the more she’d need to go, of course, and the less she’d be able to sink into sleep. Damn stupid situation, she thought, then lost track, amongst her anxieties, of what situation it was that was so stupid.

  At her side Charlie moved in his sleep. Just his hands, twitching away. She looked at his face. He was positively cherubic in sleep, looking younger than his forty-one years, despite the white flecks in his side-burns. She liked him enough to say she loved him, she supposed, but not enough to forgive him his trespasses. He was lazy, he was always complaining. Aches, pains. And there were those evenings he’d not come in until late (they’d stopped recently), when she was sure he was seeing another woman. As she watched, his hands appeared. They emerged from beneath the sheet like two arguing children, digits stabbing the air for emphasis.

  She frowned, not quite believing what she was seeing. It was like watching the television with the sound turned down, a dumb show for eight fingers and two thumbs. As she gazed on, amazed, the hands scrambled up the side of Charlie’s carcass and peeled the sheet back from his belly, exposing the hair that thickened towards his privates. His appendix scar, shinier than the surrounding skin, caught the light. There, on his stomach, his hands seemed to sit.

  The argument between them was especially vehement tonight. Left, always the more conservative of the two, was arguing for a delay in the severance date, but Right was beyond waiting. The time had come, it argued, to test their strength against the tyrant, and to overthrow the body once and for all. As it was, the decision didn’t rest with them any longer.

  Ellen raised her head from the pillow; and for the first time they sensed her gaze on them. They’d been too involved in their argument to notice her. Now, at last, their conspiracy was uncovered.

  “Charlie …” she was hissing into the tyrant’s ear, “stop it, Charlie. Stop it.”

  Right raised index and middle fingers, sniffing her presence.

  “Charlie …” she said again. Why did he always sleep so deeply?

  “Charlie …” She shook him more violently as Right tapped Left, alerting it to the woman’s stare. “Please, Charlie, wake up.”

  Without warning, Right leapt; Left was no more than a moment behind. Ellen yelled Charlie’s name once more before they clamped themselves about her throat.

  In sleep Charlie was on a slave-ship; the settings of his dreams were often Cecil B. de Mille exotica. In this epic his hands had been manacled together, and he was being hauled to the whipping block by his shackles, to be punished for some undisclosed misdemeanour. But now, suddenly, he dreamt he was seizing the captain by his thin throat. There were howls from the slaves all around him, encouraging the strangulation. The captain – who looked not unlike Dr Jeudwine – was begging him to stop in a voice that was high and frightened. It was almost a woman’s voice; Ellen’s voice. “Charlie!” he was squeaking, “don’t!” But his silly complaints only made Charlie shake the man more violently than ever, and he was feeling quite the hero as the slaves, miraculously liberated, gathered around him in a gleeful throng to watch their master’s last moments.

  The captain, whose face was purple, just managed to murmur, “You’re killing me …” before Charlie’s thumbs dug one final time into his neck, and dispatched the man. Only then, through the smoke of sleep, did he realize that his victim, though male, had no Adam’s apple. And now the ship began to recede around him, the exhorting voices losing their vehemence. His eyes flickered open, and he was standing on the bed in his pyjama bottoms, Ellen in his hands. Her face was dark, and spotted with thick white spittle. Her tongue stuck out of her mouth. Her eyes were still open, and for a moment there seemed to be life there, gazing out from under the blinds of her lids. Then the windows were empty, and she went out of the house altogether.

  Pity, and a terrible regret, overcame Charlie. He tried to let her body drop, but his hands refused to unlock her throat. His thumbs, now totally senseless, were still throttling her, shamelessly guilty. He backed off across the bed and on to the floor, but she followed him at the length of his outstretched arms like an unwanted dancing partner.

  “Please …” he implored his fingers, “please!”

  Innocent as two school children caught stealing, his hands relinquished their burden, and leapt up in mock-surprise. Ellen tumbled to the carpet, a pretty sack of death. Charlie’s knees buckled; unable to prevent his fall, he collapsed beside Ellen, and let the tears come.

  Now there was only action. No need for camouflage, for clandestine meetings and endless debate – the truth was out, for better or worse. All they had to do was wait a while. It was only a matter of time before he came within reach of a kitchen knife or a saw or an axe. Very soon now; very soon.

  Charlie lay on the floor beside Ellen a long time, sobbing. And then another long time, thinking. What was he to do first? Ring his solicitor? The police? Dr Jeudwine? Whoever he was going to call, he couldn’t do it lying flat on his face. He tried to get up, though it was all he could do to get his numb hands to support him. His entire body was tingling as though a mild electric shock was being passed through it. Only his hands had no feeling in them. He brought them up to his face to clear his tear-clogged eyes, but they folded loosely against his cheek, drained of power. Using his elbows, he dragged himself to the wall, and shimmied up it. Still half blinded w
ith grief, he lurched out of the bedroom and down the stairs. (The kitchen, said Right to Left, he’s going to the kitchen.) This is somebody else’s nightmare, he thought, as he flicked on the dining-room light with his chin and made for the drinks cabinet. I’m innocent. Just a nobody. Why should this be happening to me?

  The whisky bottle slipped from his palm as he tried to make his hands grab it. It smashed on the dining-room floor, the brisk scent of spirit tantalizing his palate.

  “Broken glass,” rapped Left.

  “No,” Right replied. “We need a clean cut at all costs. Just be patient.”

  Charlie staggered away from the broken bottle towards the telephone. He had to ring Jeudwine; the doctor would tell him what to do. He tried to pick up the telephone receiver, but again his hands refused: the digits just bent as he tried to punch out Jeudwine’s number. Tears of frustration were now flowing, washing out the grief with anger. Clumsily, he caught the receiver between his wrists and lifted it to his ear, wedging it between his head and his shoulder. Then he punched out Jeudwine’s number with his elbow.

  “Control,” he said aloud, “keep control.” He could hear Jeudwine’s number being tapped down the system; in a matter of seconds sanity would be picking up the phone at the other end, then all would be well. He only had to hold on for a few moments more.

  His hands had started to open and close convulsively.

  “Control—” he said, but the hands weren’t listening.

  Far away – oh, so far – the phone was ringing in Dr Jeudwine’s house.

  “Answer it, answer it! Oh, God, answer it!”

  Charlie’s arms had begun to shake so violently he could scarcely keep the receiver in place.

  “Answer!” he screeched into the mouthpiece. “Please.”

  Before the voice of reason could speak his Right hand flew out and snatched at the teak dining-table, which was a few feet from where Charlie stood. It gripped the edge, almost pulling him off balance.

  “What . . . are . . . you . . . doing?” he said, not sure if he was addressing himself or his hand.

  He stared in bewilderment at the mutinous limb, which was steadily inching its way along the edge of the table. The intention was quite clear: it wanted to pull him away from the phone, from Jeudwine and all hope of rescue. He no longer had control over its behaviour. There wasn’t even any feeling left in his wrists or forearms. The hand was no longer his. It was still attached to him – but it was not his.

  At the other end of the line the phone was picked up, and Jeudwine’s voice, a little irritated at being woken, said: “Hello?”

  “Doctor—”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Charlie—”

  “Who?”

  “Charlie George, Doctor. You must remember me.”

  The hand was pulling him further and further from the phone with every precious second. He could feel the receiver sliding out from between his shoulder and ear.

  “Who did you say?”

  “Charles George. For God’s sake, Jeudwine, you’ve got to help me.”

  “Call my office tomorrow.”

  “You don’t understand. My hands, Doctor . . . they’re out of control.”

  Charlie’s stomach lurched as he felt something crawl across his hip. It was his left hand, and it was making its way round the front of his body and down towards his groin.

  “Don’t you dare,” he warned it, “you belong to me.”

  Jeudwine was confused. “Who are you talking to?” he asked.

  “My hands! They want to kill me, Doctor!” He yelled to stop the hand’s advance. “You mustn’t! Stop!”

  Ignoring the despot’s cries, Left took hold of Charlie’s testicles and squeezed them as though it wanted blood. It was not disappointed. Charlie screamed into the phone as Right took advantage of his distraction and pulled him off balance. The receiver slipped to the floor, Jeudwine’s enquiries eclipsed by the pain at his groin. He hit the floor heavily, striking his head on the table as he went down.

  “Bastard,” he said to his hand. “You bastard.” Unrepentant, Left scurried up Charlie’s body, to join Right at the table-top, leaving Charlie hanging by his hands from the table he had dined at so often, laughed at so often.

  A moment later, having debated tactics, they saw fit to let him drop. He was barely aware of his release. His head and groin bled; all he wanted to do was curl up awhile and let the pain and nausea subside. But the rebels had other plans and he was helpless to contest them. He was only marginally aware that now they were digging their fingers into the thick pile of the carpet and hauling his limp bulk towards the dining-room door. Beyond the door lay the kitchen; replete with its meat saws and its steak knives. Charlie had a picture of himself as a vast statue, being pulled towards its final resting place by hundreds of sweating workers. It was not an easy passage: the body moved with shudders and jerks, the toe-nails catching in the carpet-pile, the fat of the chest rubbed raw. But the kitchen was only a yard away now. Charlie felt the step on his face; and now the tiles were beneath him, icy-cold. As they dragged him the final yards across the kitchen floor his beleaguered consciousness was fitfully returning. In the weak moonlight he could see the familiar scene, the cooker, the humming fridge, the pedal-bin, the dishwasher. They loomed over him: he felt like a worm.

  His hands had reached the cooker. They were climbing up its face, and he followed them like an overthrown King to the block. Now they worked their way inexorably along the work surface, joints white with the effort, his limp body in pursuit. Though he could neither feel nor see it, his Left hand had seized the far edge of the cabinet top, beneath the row of knives that sat in their prescribed places in the rack on the wall. Plain knives, serrated knives, skinning knives, carving knives – all conveniently placed beside the chopping board, where the gutter ran off into the pine-scented sink.

  Very distantly he thought he heard police sirens, but it was probably his brain buzzing. He turned his head slightly. An ache ran from temple to temple, but the dizziness was nothing to the terrible somersaultings in his gut when he finally registered their intentions.

  The blades were all keen, he knew that. Sharp kitchen utensils were an article of faith with Ellen. He began to shake his head backwards and forwards; a last frantic denial of the whole nightmare. But there was no one to beg mercy of. Just his own hands, damn them, plotting this final lunacy.

  Then the doorbell rang. It was no illusion. It rang once, and then again and again.

  “There!” he said aloud to his tormentors. “Hear that, you bastards? Somebody’s come. I knew they would.”

  He tried to get to his feet, his head turning back on its giddy axis to see what the precocious monsters were doing. They’d moved fast. His left wrist was already neatly centred on the chopping board—

  The doorbell rang again, a long, impatient din.

  “Here!” he yelled hoarsely. “I’m in here! Break down the door!”

  He glanced in horror between hand and door, door and hand, calculating his chances. With unhurried economy his right hand reached up for the meat cleaver that hung from the hole in its blade on the end of the rack. Even now he couldn’t quite believe that his own hand – his companion and defender, the limb that signed his name, that stroked his wife – was preparing to mutilate him. It weighed up the cleaver, feeling the balance of the tool, insolently slow.

  Behind him, he heard the noise of smashing glass as the police broke the pane in the front door. Even now they would be reaching through the hole to the lock and opening the door. If they were quick (very quick) they could still stop the act.

  “Here!” he yelled, “in here!”

  The cry was answered with a thin whistle: the sound of the cleaver as it fell – fast and deadly – to meet his waiting wrist. Left felt its root struck, and an unspeakable exhilaration sped through its five limbs. Charlie’s blood baptized its back in hot spurts.

  The head of the tyrant made no sound. It simply fell bac
k, its system shocked into unconsciousness, which was well for Charlie. He was spared the gurgling of his blood as it ran down the plug-hole in the sink. He was spared, too, the second and third blow, which finally severed his hand from his arm. Unsupported, his body toppled backwards, colliding with the vegetable rack on its way down. Onions rolled out of their brown bag and bounced in the pool that was spreading in throbs around his empty wrist.

  Right dropped the cleaver. It clattered into the bloody sink. Exhausted, the liberator let itself slide off the chopping board and fall back on to the tyrant’s chest. Its job was done. Left was free, and still living. The revolution had begun.

  The liberated hand scuttled to the edge of the cabinet and raised its index finger to nose the new world. Momentarily Right echoed the gesture of victory, before slumping in innocence across Charlie’s body. For a moment there was no movement in the kitchen but the Left hand touching freedom with its finger, and the slow passage of blood threads down the front of the cabinet.

  Then a blast of cold air through from the dining room alerted Left to its imminent danger. It ran for cover, as the thud of police feet and the babble of contradictory orders disturbed the scene of the triumph. The light in the dining room was switched on, and flooded through to meet the body on the kitchen tiles.

  Charlie saw the dining-room light at the end of a very long tunnel. He was travelling away from it at a fair lick. It was just a pin-prick already. Going . . . going …

  The kitchen light hummed into life.

  As the police stepped through the kitchen door, Left ducked behind the wastebin. It didn’t know who these intruders were, but it sensed a threat from them. The way they were bending over the tyrant, the way they were cosseting him, binding him up, speaking soft words to him: they were the enemy, no doubt of that.

  From upstairs came a voice; young, and squeaking with fright.

  “Sergeant Yapper?”