a collection of horror short stories

by Paul Finch

  Even if I’d been of a mind to, I couldn’t have turned.

  With my body making some bizarre rebellion in the name of good sense, certain of my muscles and joints appeared to lock. I was facing away from whatever it was – into the dank, three-way cul-de-sac, and that was the only way I would be permitted to go. And slowly now, as my eyes attuned to this next level of dimness, I saw that at the far end of the utilities passage, where I’d thought there was only a brick wall, there was a door with a latch and bar.

  Stiffly, like some automaton, I lumbered towards it.

  I could still sense that nebulous presence behind me, following close, whispering again: “What’s behind you …?”

  It was barely audible and yet I heard it clear as day as I splashed my way forward through the mass of broken pipes and fallen plaster, and then I was at the property’s rear door. I don’t know what I’d have done had I found that bar jammed fast – possibly had a heart attack – but it wasn’t. It moved almost smoothly, as if oiled. There was a clank and bang as I struck the latch, and the door swung open.

  Merciful heaven, full daylight and clean air embraced me.

  I tottered outside like a drunk, though my ordeal wasn’t entirely over. A crazy-paved path wound ahead of me, hedged from either side by tall, densely matted vegetation. As I stumbled along it, I could still sense something to my rear, pursuing me every inch of the way, taunting me, tempting me to look around. A scream of panic was trapped in my chest, ready to burst out at a second’s notice, but I suppressed it and kept on walking until at last I was away from the wretched property and striding through knee-deep furze, the soles of my shoes breaking a crust of sandy loam beneath. I can’t tell you what a joy it was to see the Down rising to my left and the roaring seascape on my right, and at that very same moment to realise that I was alone again – that I was back in the normal world. I sank to my knees as if I’d just run a marathon, wringing with sweat, and only finally glanced up and back towards the house, now concealed from me by the vegetation clinging around it, when, maybe five minutes later, I heard the voice of Gibbon, who had clearly been selected to follow me through next.

  “You alright?” he said, approaching, eyeing me curiously. “Bit rum in there, bit grubby and all. But nothing to get excited about, I don’t think.”

  “You …” I stammered, “you didn’t hear anything?”

  “Not at all.” He was blank-faced. “Did you?”

  “No,” I lied. At least I think I lied. Already I was having doubts. Had my overactive imagination foxed me inside that dingy, stagnant house, every aspect of which had seemed custom-made for the frightful fantasy bestowed on it?

  One by one, the other chaps emerged. Most looked relieved to have made it through. A fellow called Barton was grumbling because he’d completely lost his way in the gloom and had bashed his knee on something. But he was sweating hard, which suggested that he’d probably charged through at full pelt, which also explained his injury. None wore the harrowed mask that must have been on my face when I’d emerged – none until Sir James came through, right at the end. When he swayed into view, I saw an expression that almost stopped my breath. His teeth were bared but locked together so tightly there were deep, scimitar-like furrows at either end of his mouth. His green eyes were fixed like Christmas baubles, staring directly ahead but glazed as though he was only semi-conscious. His skin was the colour of chalk.

  “Did … you see something?” I asked.

  “I … erm, hah!” he replied, coming round and grinning at us, though his eyes remained glassy. “Of course not. Nothing at all. There’s nothing to see, is there?”

  “Did you hear it though?” one of the other boys asked.

  Sir James now made a great show of being unperturbed by his walk through the Rectory. “The whole thing’s just a silly legend,” he boomed. “Something for the tourists, which is exactly what we are, boyos. Though if we don’t get a move on, we’ll become residents, because our bus leaves in the next fifteen minutes.”

  I couldn’t help noticing that he didn’t say anything else after that, at least not until we were on the bus and en route back to Swansea. And when we arrived in Swansea, and had to walk to the railway station, he stopped and made a lengthy call from a public payphone. “Remiss of me,” he muttered afterwards. “First time I’ve called home all week.”

  Of course, when it comes to holidays, the long homeward journey tends to be a bit more of a drag than the long outward one. As a group we had plenty to talk about, though it was interesting that no-one really mentioned the Rectory and that there were no more Pan Horror stories. Sir James conversed barely at all during this stage of the trip, but instead sat alone and appeared to be sketching something on a sheet of paper. When I tried to glance over his shoulder, he moved it away from me.

  “No peeking, Mr Pendleton,” he said sternly.

  “Will this be your next masterpiece?” I asked.

  “Possibly the greatest of them all,” he replied. He noticed that the others had taken interest, and, with a melodramatic sigh, folded the sheet, inserted it into an envelope and slid it into his inside pocket. “Can’t a true artist ever have a little privacy?” he complained.

  Midway along that laborious stretch of line between Cardiff and Manchester, the chirpy conversations dried up in favour of quiet contemplation and ultimately, as we had the compartment to ourselves, more singing. Everyone had a go. I chipped in with ‘Living Doll’, which went down rather well, especially as two of the other chaps accompanied me by performing the Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch two-step. Sir James laughed until I thought his sides would break. But pride of place went to his own recitation: a quite marvellous, full-length version of ‘Land of My Fathers’, a hymn, which, even if you’re English, always has the power to bring a tear to the eye.

  It was late evening when we changed trains at Manchester, and summer dusk was falling. Another forty minutes later, and we disembarked at Wigan Wallgate, where it was now completely dark. There were several people on the lamp-lit platform; mostly these were our parents waiting to meet us, but there were also several men in uniform, and two in trench coats. It was one of the latter who approached us.

  “James Ravenstock?” he said.

  “That’s correct, sir,” Sir James replied, straightening his lapels.

  “I’m Detective Sergeant Cranwood, and I must ask you to come with me.”

  Sir James nodded soberly. “Of course. You looked where I directed you?”

  The rest of us stood watching in confused surprise, though I now recalled the lengthy phone call Sir James had made from Swansea bus station.

  “We did, sir,” Cranwood replied, and he took hold of Sir James by the wrist. In my naive way I tried to intervene, but one of the uniformed officers held me back.

  “You’ve got the wrong man!” I shouted. “Sir James has done nothing wrong.”

  “Your faith in me is inspiring, Mr Pendleton,” Sir James replied. “I’m also flattered that you found that portrait of my wife, the one in the upper window, so lifelike.”

  “But that was …” The words dried on my tongue.

  “Take charge of this, if you would,” Sir James said. They were now applying handcuffs to his wrists, but first he had time to slip me the envelope containing the folded sheet on which he’d sketched. “Feel free to examine it, though I advise you don’t.”

  I was still aghast by what was happening. Everyone was. No-one could understand it, but now I gazed down at the envelope in my hand, and a secondary shock jolted through me as I realised what the sketch inside it depicted.

  “You looked back,” I said to him. “You heard the voice and you looked back.”

  He smiled sadly. “Whether I’d looked or not, it clearly would have made no difference. But once I had looked, I saw no point in delaying matters.” Sir James assumed an air of studied dignity as they prepared to lead him away. “It’s been a pleasure, gentlemen. You are all fellows of the highest calibre.”

&
nbsp; *

  Pendleton lowered his head, deep in thought.

  “Did you look at the sketch?” I finally ventured.

  He glanced up. “I did indeed. It had a profound impact on me. So much that I can only thank heaven I never looked around when the voice was calling to me.”

  “But what did he see?” Kirsty asked, fascinated.

  In response, Pendleton removed from his inside pocket an old, brown-edged envelope. There were gasps around the table as he slid out the crinkled sheet from within and unfolded it. “Hardly his best work,” he said. “But then it was only a preliminary sketch.”

  We gazed, appalled – at the image of a stick-man dangling from a stick-gallows.

  Those They Left Behind

  Paul Finch

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Those They Left Behind

  The Stables Market near Chalk Farm tube is well known across London as a centre of trendy fashion and alternative art, and as a stamping ground for counter-culture types. But it also has a reputation as a bazaar of the weird and wonderful. Numerous of its stalls may seem initially as if they’re selling only bric-a-brac, but look a little closer and you’ll find a bewildering array of curios; everything from tawdry jewellery to antique ironmongery, from Halloween masks to Easter bonnets, from pairs of mismatched gloves to veils of exotic silk. Useful workaday oddments like corkscrews, toilet brushes, photo frames and mousetraps, intersperse with the truly bizarre – a glass eyeball, a bird’s nest, a priest’s stole, a gramophone horn, a corn dolly, a stained lobotomy cap, an edible jockstrap, a pack of pornographic playing cards (well thumbed). Ranges of military memorabilia – medals, ribbons, badges, rusty bayonets, maybe even a replica Luger – sit snugly alongside selections of glow-in-the-dark religious figurines. Mundane items like DVDs are rendered far more interesting by only having cardboard covers and titles handwritten in Japanese. A row of different coloured bottles, all quirkily shaped and made from smoky glass, are perhaps a little more likely to catch your attention when you notice that each one contains a pickled body part; if a notice proclaims them to be ‘Collectibles’, who are you to argue?

  The list of goods on sale here is endless, and never less than strange or irreverent.

  As such, the Stables would not be the sort of place where you’d expect to find thin, elderly ladies in brown macs, woolly mittens and headscarves tied neatly under their chins. Elsie Dawkins, for example, had been a resident of Camden all her seventy-eight years, and nearly always did her shopping in the markets on Buck Street and Inverness Street; never at the Stables. And yet, this was the second Saturday in a row when she’d ventured onto this unknown territory to gaze at the wares of one particular stallholder, a plump young Asian man who, the first time she’d visited, had offered her a good deal on what looked like a sheep’s foetus in a jar of green fluid. She’d declined because something else had been occupying her attention, though the stallholder’s apparent interest in her custom had suddenly seemed to wake her to the reality of where she was, and she’d hurried away without a backwards glance. However, now she was here again, staring at the same thing.

  On an upper shelf at the rear, its arms and legs spreadeagled, sat a life-size replica of a human skeleton. A top-hat with a white feather in it was positioned between its open thighs. All around it, in looping, leathery strips, hung what was apparently ‘Genuine Snakeskin’. But the thing that had really caught Elsie’s eye was actually at the far end of the shelf, in the extreme left-hand corner of the stall.

  It was a head.

  Not a real head, obviously. By its texture, it was made from flesh-toned plastic, and it was quite old because its painted features had faded, but it was clearly supposed to be male, and was about the correct size to represent an adult. Its hair, which had also been painted, was short and black, and its features had been moulded, so even though the colours – the blue of the eyes, the pink of the lips – were barely recognisable, it was possible to imagine what the face might have looked like. It would have been handsome, Elsie thought; the nose was straight, the jaw square. The mouth was set in a slight frown, but that didn’t put her off.

  “Bit keen on Old Bob aren’t you, missus?” the stallholder asked her.

  At first she didn’t hear him.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Oh … I’m sorry.”

  “I say you’re a bit keen on Old Bob?” The stallholder might be Asian, but he spoke with a broad Cockney twang.

  “Old Bob?”

  “That’s what he was called. Fancy a closer look?”

  He retrieved the head from the shelf, and only now did Elsie notice that, from the neck down, it was attached to what looked like several folds of material – a thick canvas, which might once have been white but was now a dingy yellow. The stallholder shook the material out, and Elsie was shocked to see that it was body-shaped, comprising a broad torso with arms and legs stitched onto it, the proportions roughly accurate to an average-sized man. When he turned it around, she saw that, down its back there were zip fasteners, one to each limb and one bisecting the middle of its trunk.

  “This is where they used to put the sand in,” the stallholder said. “Or the sawdust, depending on what they had available.”

  “I don’t understand,” Elsie replied.

  “No, didn’t think you did. Look …” Again, he shook out the material. “Hollow, see? And they used to put sand or sawdust in it. A different amount each time, to get the weight right.”

  “The weight?”

  “Only for practise, of course.”

  He offered to hand the head over to her. Elsie recoiled, though her gaze remained fixed on the faded, mournful face. The stallholder laughed.

  “I hope the hangman wasn’t as squeamish as you. Otherwise he’d never get to test his apparatus, would he?”

  Slowly, Elsie turned to look at him.

  He explained. “Old Bob here – that’s what they used to call him – Old Bob got dropped the day before each execution so they could see everything was working right.” Again, he offered it to her, but now she was peering at him with mute disbelief. “There was probably a few of them, but this is an original. I think it was Pentonville where this one came from.”

  “Oh … my God,” she whispered.

  “Fancy cuddling him?”

  “Oh God!” Elsie turned and limped hurriedly away, her bad leg suddenly giving her hell in the November chill.

  “Rare piece of British culture, missus!” he shouted after her. “I can let you have it for fifty.”

  But she didn’t look back. Instead, she stumbled into a deserted side passage, where she was violently sick.

  *

  Elsie was sitting alone in her small, neat living room when Shirley arrived that afternoon.

  “Yoo-hoo, Mrs Dawkins … it’s me!” Shirley called, letting herself in. “Heck, it’s gone cold out. Proper frosty.”

  Elsie made no reply. She was in the armchair in front of the gas fire, her bad leg resting on a cushion. She had Tommy’s framed photograph in her hand.

  Shirley entered from the hall, taking off her gloves and her heavy Afghan coat. “I met the new priest at St Luke’s today. He’s a nice young chap, Father Ryerson …” She stopped when she saw what Elsie was doing.

  Sensing the disapproval, Elsie stiffened. “It doesn’t matter about him. I go to a different church now. St Mark’s.”

  “St Mark’s? That’s Kentish Town, isn’t it?”

  “The further away the better.”

  “Oh, Mrs Dawkins …”

  “And I’ve joined the Mothers’ Association there too.”

  “The Mothers’ Association?”

  “Yes. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “No, of course not. I’m glad you’re getting out. It’s just – well, St Mark’s is quite a way to travel.”

  “They only meet once a week.”

  “Well if it makes you happy.” Shirley rubbed her
hands. “I’ll put the kettle on first, then I’ll start, okay?”

  Elsie sat and analysed the photograph. She was doing the same thing fifteen minutes later, when her home-help had finished dusting and moved onto the vacuuming.

  “I thought we agreed you were going to stop brooding,” Shirley said conversationally.

  Elsie shrugged.

  “It won’t do you any good,” Shirley added. “Not after so many years.”

  “It’ll be forty years exactly in two weeks’ time.”

  “Hardly the sort of anniversary you want to remember.” Shirley stopped behind the armchair. She switched the vacuum off. “Why don’t you put that old picture away, eh? And I don’t mean on a shelf. I mean right away, so you don’t keep seeing it whenever you walk in.”

  Rather to her surprise, Elsie sighed and nodded.

  “Let’s do it now?” Shirley said. “Let me do it for you? There’s no time like the present.”

  Elsie handed the photograph over. Shirley opened a drawer in the sideboard. There was nothing in there except a few yellowed newspaper cuttings. The first bore a grainy black-and-white image nearly identical to the photograph she had in her hand; it showed the face of a handsome, sad-faced young man with short, dark hair. Over the top of it, the strapline read: Camden killer to die. The second cutting had no picture. It was simply text, and was headed: Dawkins hangs today.

  *

  St Mark’s Sodality, or Catholic Mothers’ Association as its members preferred to call it, was a social group with only slight religious overtones. It consisted mainly of older ladies of the parish, who met on Wednesday afternoons at the church hall, and exchanged gossip over tea and cakes. Most of the chatter concerned family, usually grandchildren. Elsie didn’t contribute much, but for the first time at a meeting of this sort she didn’t feel entirely isolated.