Psychomania: Killer Stories

by Stephen Jones

  In the morning he felt as though he hadn’t slept at all. He lay in the creeping sunlight, too exhausted either to sleep or to get up, until he heard the year’s sole Sunday delivery sprawl on the doormat. He washed and dressed gingerly, cursing the poodles, whose yapping felt like knives emerging from his skull, and stumbled down to the hall.

  He lined up the new cards on his mantelpiece, where there was just enough room for them. Last year he’d had to stick cards onto a length of parcel tape and hang them from the cornice. This year cards from businesses outnumbered those from friends, unless tomorrow restored the balance. He was signing cards in response to some of the Sunday delivery when he heard Mrs Hutton and the poodles leave the house.

  He limped to the window and looked down on her. The two leashes were bunched in her left hand, her right was clenched on her stick. She was leaning backwards as the dogs ran her downhill, and he had never seen her look so crippled. He turned away, unsure why he found the spectacle disturbing. Perhaps he should catch up on his sleep while the dogs weren’t there to trouble it, except that if he slept now he might be guaranteeing himself another restless night. The prospect of being alone in the early hours and unable to sleep made him so nervous that he grabbed the phone before he had thought who he could ask to visit.

  Nobody had time for him today. Of the people ranked on the mantelpiece, two weren’t at home, two were fluttery with festive preparations, one was about to drive several hundred miles to collect his parents, one was almost incoherent with a hangover. All of them invited Foulsham to visit them over Christmas, most of them sounding sincere, but that wouldn’t take care of Sunday. He put on his overcoat and gloves and hurried downhill by a route designed to avoid Mrs Hutton, and bought his Sunday paper on the way to a pub lunch.

  The Bloody Mary wasn’t quite the remedy he was hoping for. The sight of the liquid discomforted him, and so did the scraping of the ice cubes against his teeth. Nor was he altogether happy with his lunch; the leg of chicken put him in mind of the process of severing it from the body. When he’d eaten as much as he could hold down, he fled.

  The papery sky was smudged with darker clouds, images too nearly erased to be distinguishable. Its light seemed to permeate the city, reducing its fabric to little more than cardboard. He felt more present than anything around him, a sensation which he didn’t relish. He closed his eyes until he thought of someone to visit, a couple who’d lived in the house next to his and whose Christmas card invited him to drop in whenever he was passing their new address.

  A double-decker bus on which he was the only passenger carried him across town and deposited him at the edge of the new suburb. The streets of squat houses which looked squashed by their tall roofs were deserted, presumably cleared by the Christmas television shows he glimpsed through windows, and his isolation made him feel watched. He limped into the suburb, glancing at the street names.

  He hadn’t realised the suburb was so extensive. At the end of almost an hour of limping and occasionally resting, he still hadn’t found the address.The couple weren’t on the phone, or he would have tried to contact them. He might have abandoned the quest if he hadn’t felt convinced that he was about to come face to face with the name which, he had to admit, had slipped his mind. He hobbled across an intersection and then across its twin, where a glance to the left halted him. Was that the street he was looking for? Certainly the name seemed familiar. He strolled along the pavement, trying to conceal his limp, and stopped outside a house.

  Though he recognised the number., it hadn’t been on the card. His gaze crawled up the side of the house and came to rest on the window set into the roof. At once he knew that he’d heard the address read aloud in the courtroom. It was where Fishwick had lived.

  As Foulsham gazed fascinated at the small high window he imagined Fishwick gloating over the sketches he’d brought home, knowing that the widow from whom he rented the bed-sitter was downstairs and unaware of his secret. He came to himself with a shudder, and stumbled away, almost falling. He was so anxious to put the city between himself and Fishwick’s room that he couldn’t bear to wait for one of the infrequent Sunday buses. By the time he reached home he was gritting his teeth so as not to scream at the ache in his leg. “Shut up,” he snarled at the alarmed poodles, “or I’ll—” and stumbled upstairs.

  The lamps of the city were springing alight. Usually he enjoyed the spectacle, but now he felt compelled to look for Fishwick’s window among the distant roofs. Though he couldn’t locate it, he was certain that the windows were mutually visible. How often might Fishwick have gazed across the city towards him? Foulsham searched for tasks to distract himself- cleaned the oven, dusted the furniture and the tops of the picture-frames, polished all his shoes, lined up the tins on the kitchen shelves in alphabetical order. When he could no longer ignore the barking which his every movement provoked, he went downstairs and rapped on Mrs Hutton’s door.

  She seemed reluctant to face him. Eventually he heard her shooing the poodles into her kitchen before she came to peer out at him. “Been having a good time, have we?” she demanded.

  “It’s the season,” he said without an inkling of why he should need to justify himself. “Am I bothering your pets somehow?”

  “Maybe they don’t recognise your walk since you did whatever you did to yourself.”

  “It happened while I was asleep.” He’d meant to engage her in conversation so that she would feel bound to invite him in - he was hoping that would give the dogs a chance to grow used to him again - but he couldn’t pursue his intentions when she was so openly hostile, apparently because she felt entitled to the only limp in the building. “Happy Christmas to you and yours,” he flung at her, and hobbled back to his floor.

  He wrote out his Christmas card list in case he had overlooked anyone, only to discover that he couldn’t recall some of the names to which he had already addressed cards. When he began doodling, slashing at the page so as to sketch stick-figures whose agonised contortions felt like a revenge he was taking, he turned the sheet over and tried to read a book. The yapping distracted him, as did the sound of Mrs Hutton’s limp; he was sure she was exaggerating it to lay claim to the gait or to mock him. He switched on the radio and searched the wavebands, coming to rest at a choir which was wishing the listener a merry Christmas. He turned up the volume to blot out the noise from below, until Mrs Hutton thumped on her ceiling and the yapping of the poodles began to lurch repetitively at him as they leapt, trying to reach the enemy she was identifying with her stick.

  Even his bed was no refuge. He felt as though the window on the far side of the city was an eye spying on him out of the dark, reminding him of all that he was trying not to think of before he risked sleep. During the night he found himself surrounded by capering figures which seemed determined to show him how much life was left in them - how vigorously, if unconventionally, they could dance. He managed to struggle awake at last, and lay afraid to move until the rusty taste like a memory of blood had faded from his mouth.

  He couldn’t go on like this. In the morning he was so tired that he felt as if he was washing someone else’s face and hands. He thought he could feel his nerves swarming. He bared his teeth at the yapping of the dogs and tried to recapture a thought he’d glimpsed while lying absolutely still, afraid to move, in the hours before dawn. What had almost occurred to him about Fishwick’s death?

  The yapping receded as he limped downhill. On the bus a woman eyed him as if she suspected him of feigning the limp in a vain attempt to persuade her to give up her seat. The city streets seemed full of people who were staring at him, though he failed to catch them in the act. When Jackie and Annette converged on the shop as he arrived he prayed they wouldn’t mention his limp. They gazed at his face instead, making him feel they were trying to ignore his leg. “We can cope, Mr Foulsham,” Annette said, “if you want to start your Christmas early.”

  “You deserve it,” Jackie added.

  What we
re they trying to do to him? They’d reminded him how often he might be on his own during the next few days, a prospect which filled him with dread. How could he ease his mind in the time left to him? “You’ll have to put up with another day of me,” he told them as he unlocked the door.

  Their concern for him made him feel as if his every move was being observed. Even the Christmas Eve crowds failed to occupy his mind, especially once Annette took advantage of a lull in the day’s business to approach him. “We thought we’d give you your present now in case you want to change your mind about going home.”

  “That’s thoughtful of you. Thank you both,” he said and retreated into the office, wondering if they were doing their best to get rid of him because something about him was playing on their nerves. He used the phone to order them a bouquet each, a present which he gave them every Christmas but which this year he’d almost forgotten, and then he picked at the parcel until he was able to see what it was.

  It was a book of detective stories. He couldn’t imagine what had led them to conclude that it was an appropriate present, but it did seem to have a message for him. He gazed at the exposed spine and realised what any detective would have established days ago. Hearing Fishwick’s name in the night had been the start of his troubles, yet he hadn’t ascertained the time of Fishwick’s death.

  He phoned the radio station and was put through to the newsroom. A reporter gave him all the information which the police had released. Foulsham thanked her dully and called the local newspaper, hoping they might contradict her somehow, but of course they confirmed what she’d told him. Fishwick had died just before 9.30 on the night when his name had wakened Foulsham, and the media hadn’t been informed until almost an hour later.

  He sat at his bare desk, his cindery eyes glaring at nothing, then he stumbled out of the cell of an office. The sounds and the heat of the shop seemed to rush at him and recede in waves on which the faces of Annette and Jackie and the customers were floating. He felt isolated, singled out - felt as he had throughout the trial.

  Yet if he couldn’t be certain that he had been singled out then, why should he let himself feel that way now without trying to prove himself wrong? “I think I will go early after all,” he told Jackie and Annette.

  Some of the shops were already closing. The streets were almost blocked with people who seemed simultaneously distant from him and too close, their insect eyes and neon faces shining. When at last he reached the alley between two office buildings near the courts, he thought he was too late. But though the shop was locked, he was just in time to catch the hairdresser. As she emerged from a back room, adjusting the strap of a shoulder-bag stuffed with presents, he tapped on the glass of the door.

  She shook her head and pointed to the sign which hung against the glass. Didn’t she recognise him? His reflection seemed clear enough to him, like a photograph of himself holding the sign at his chest, even if the placard looked more real than he did. “Foulsham,” he shouted, his voice echoing from the close walls. “I was behind you on the jury. Can I have a word?”

  “What about?”

  He grimaced and mimed glancing both ways along the alley, and she stepped forward, halting as far from the door as the door was tall. “Well?”

  “I don’t want to shout.”

  She hesitated and then came to the door. He felt unexpectedly powerful, the winner of a game they had been playing. “I remember you now,” she said as she unbolted the door. “You’re the one who claimed to be sharing the thoughts of that monster.”

  She stepped back as an icy wind cut through the alley, and he felt as though the weather was on his side, almost an extension of himself. “Well, spit it out,” she said as he closed the door behind him.

  She was ranging about the shop, checking that the electric helmets which made him think of some outdated mental treatment were switched off, opening and closing cabinets in which blades glinted, peering beneath the chairs which put him in mind of a death cell. “Can you remember exactly when you heard what happened?” he said.

  She picked up a tuft of bluish hair and dropped it in a pedal bin. “What did?”

  “He killed himself.”

  “Oh, that? I thought you meant something important.” The bin snapped shut like a trap. “I heard about it on the news. I really can’t say when.”

  “Heard about it, though, not read it.”

  “That’s what I said. Why should it matter to you?”

  He couldn’t miss her emphasis on the last word, and he felt that both her contempt and the question had wakened something in him. He’d thought he wanted to reassure himself that he hadn’t been alone in sensing Fishwick’s death, but suddenly he felt altogether more purposeful. “Because it’s part of us,” he said.

  “It’s no part of me, I assure you. And I don’t think I was the only member of the jury who thought you were too concerned with that fiend for your own good.”

  An unfamiliar expression took hold of Foulsham’s face. “Who else did?”

  “If I were you, Mr Whatever your name is, I’d seek help, and quick. You’ll have to excuse me. I’m not about to let that monster spoil my Christmas.” She pursed her lips and said “I’m off to meet some normal people.”

  Either she thought she’d said too much or his expression and his stillness were unnerving her. “Please leave,” she said more shrilly. “Leave now or I’ll call the police.”

  She might have been heading for the door so as to open it for him. He only wanted to stay until he’d grasped why he was there. The sight of her striding to the door reminded him that speed was the one advantage she had over him. Pure instinct came to his aid, and all at once he seemed capable of anything. He saw himself opening the nearest cabinet, he felt his finger and thumb slip through the chilly rings of the handles of the scissors, and lunging at her was the completion of these movements. Even then he thought he meant only to drive her away from the door, but he was reckoning without his limp. As he floundered towards her he lost his balance, and the points of the scissors entered her right leg behind the knee.

  She gave an outraged scream and tried to hobble to the door, the scissors wagging in the patch of flesh and blood revealed by the growing hole in the leg of her patterned tights. The next moment she let out a wail so despairing that he almost felt sorry for her, and fell to her knees, well out of reach of the door. As she craned her head over her shoulder to see how badly she was injured, her eyes were the eyes of an animal caught in a trap. She extended one shaky hand to pull out the scissors, but he was too quick for her. “Let me,” he said, taking hold of her thin wrist.

  He thought he was going to withdraw the scissors, but as soon as his finger and thumb were through the rings he experienced an overwhelming surge of power which reminded him of how he’d felt as the verdict of the jury was announced. He leaned on the scissors and exerted all the strength he could, and after a while the blades closed with a sound which, though muffled, seemed intensely satisfying.

  Either the shock or her struggles and shrieks appeared to have exhausted her. He had time to lower the blinds over the door and windows and to put on one of the plastic aprons which she and her staff must wear. When she saw him returning with the scissors, however, she tried to fight him off while shoving herself with her uninjured leg towards the door. Since he didn’t like her watching him - it was his turn to watch - he stopped her doing so, and screaming. She continued moving for some time after he would have expected her to be incapable of movement, though she obviously didn’t realise that she was retreating from the door. By the time she finally subsided he had to admit that the game had grown messy and even a little dull.

  He washed his hands until they were clean as a baby’s, then he parcelled up the apron and the scissors in the wrapping which had contained his present. He let himself out of the shop and limped towards the bus-stop, the book under one arm, the tools of his secret under the other. It wasn’t until passers-by smiled in response t
o him that he realised what his expression was, though it didn’t feel like his own smile, any more than he felt personally involved in the incident at the hairdresser’s. Even the memory of all the jurors’ names didn’t feel like his. At least, he thought, he wouldn’t be alone over Christmas, and in future he would try to be less hasty. After all, he and whoever he visited next would have more to discuss.

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  ~ * ~

  CONRAD WILLIAMS

  Manners

  THE RAIN SOUNDS different out here. Deep countryside. Kingfishers and toads. Dad told me I woke up to green so often that my eyes changed colour from brown to reflect it. He shared his love of nature with me, his practical knowledge. He was in the Scouts when he was a boy. I never went; I was far too shy, but I knew the Scout Promise off by heart. It’s common sense, really. Thoughtfulness and consideration. On my honour, I promise that I will do my best...

  I could identify all the birds, trees and flowers by the time I was five. I knew my knots and could tie them blindfold. I used to catch small animals - newts and snakes and frogs - and keep them in jars with punctured lids overnight while I studied and sketched them. In the morning I’d let them go. Sometimes we’d take long walks and there’d be something dead in the road. Later, when I went walking on my own and I saw an animal that had collided with a car, I’d place it in a bag (I always took a couple out with me) and take it home to study what it looked like internally.