Dead in the Trunk: A Short Story Collection

by Craig Saunders

  ‘Ah.’ John manoeuvred himself so his head would obscure the tattletale pasta.

  The landlord turned from the kitchen, his face uncomfortably close to John’s.

  ‘That seems tobein order, Mr Treat. I trust there…have…been no problems. Mice, ants, or such?’

  His breath was like a corpse’s. All rot and decay. His teeth were a deep, unhealthy yellow, stark by comparison to his pale, sunless face.

  John retreated a step, stepping onto Iain’s bare foot, which elicited a sharp grunt and a swift retraction.

  ‘None at all, Mr Carson.’

  ‘Hmm.’ His body creaked round, seeming to swivel entirely from the feet, like a tree bending in the wind moves from the base to the tip. The flatmates attempted to get out of the way without scurrying.

  ‘Shall we…vis…it the toilets?’

  It seemed that sometimes he stalled when speaking, like he was lost for words, or that his head couldn’t keep his mouth running. Other times he made up for it by missing out gaps between words entirely, the words running together like water. Yes, that was it, thought John. Sometimes they came like a river, at others like a series of drips.

  Mr Carson patted down an errant hair with one bony hand.

  ‘Yes. Thetoilets. Yes.’

  John gulped. He remembered now why they made so much effort to clean up when there was an inspection. None of them wanted to find out what would happen should the house prove unsatisfactory.

  The imagination sometimes works unbidden, on a level so deep no conscious thought can influence it.

  He does look like a ghost wearing skin, thought John, smiling at Mr Carson and turning away with a look of relief. Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea.

  Mr Carson smiled at the other boys, and there was something not quite comforting in the toothy grin and the way his skin seemed to stretch tight across his cheek bones.

  They turned away, thinking much the same as John, who often led them and not always into savoury pastimes.

  They returned to the hall and John swung the door to the downstairs lavatory wide, stepping back so he wouldn’t have to make contact with Mr Carson as he past. It was not wide enough. A firm shoulder caught his, and John felt his legs weaken.

  It had been such a stupid idea. A week of winding themselves up at this idiotic inspection, a skin-full and a night in the hospital. It had all seemed like such a laugh at the time. Borrowing a mate’s car, a short tense drive in the dead of night…what could go wrong?

  Everything, thought John, and wished he hadn’t dreamed up the idea in the first place.

  Too much to go wrong. Sometimes things jumped the other side of funny. The other flatmates seemed to be picking up on his tension, and they, too, looked bleached. Suddenly, it didn’t seem so funny at all.

  Mark was looking pale faced at John, shaking his head. John nodded, as did Gwen. They wouldn’t go through with it. A new lodger had seemed like a good idea. Now, in the cold light of day (and Mr Carson was a man who really made you see what the light of day truly was, and just how cold it could be) John just wanted last night not to have happened.

  ‘Allinorder, thank you,’ said Mr Carson, making John jump. He laughed a little, to cover it up, and took one last look at the toilet as he swung the door shut. Only then did he notice the dried sick on the underside of the toilet bowl. He didn’t remember who’d put that there. It could have been any one of them. Still, Mr. Carson hadn’t seemed to notice it.

  ‘Well, that’s pretty much it,’ said Gwen nervously. ‘It was nice to see you.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ The landlord said, without turning from his examination of John’s nervous face. ‘There’s just the matter of the bedrooms. Just a matterofform…really. Hmm, yes.’

  ‘All tidy. No posters or anything. To be honest, we’re all a little old for blue tack on the walls,’ said Iain, picking up on the vibe that was running through his flatmates. He had been all for a little jape last night, but now faced with the sobering sight of Mr Carson he could see the error of his ways. He wasn’t as significant as he had thought. Now, all he could think of was getting it back to the hospital and thinking no more about Mr Carson until the next inspection in three months. If they got through this one.

  Mr Carson turned his unwavering gaze on Iain, and Iain crumbled first. He looked down at his feet like an errant school boy. It was impressive, thought John, the way the landlord made them all feel, even though one day they would be doctors…it was as if they had done something embarrassing and been caught by the police.

  Well, they had done something embarrassing. They were all stupid, and this was a nice man. What had they been thinking?

  ‘It is the...form of thethingithink, yes?’

  Mr Carson stepped onto the stairs.

  His joints didn’t seem to work on stairs. He gangled his way to the top, using the banister heavily as though he was worried about his joints bending the wrong way and tumbling him back down to the bottom in a jumbled heap.

  John watched him ascend with a kind of dread fascination. It was like watching a car wreck.

  That’s exactly what this day was turning into. He leapt up behind the ungainly man. As soon as he reached the top, as much as he didn’t want to, he took the man by the arm and guided his toward his bedroom at the end of the hall.

  Mr Carson said nothing, but it seemed he suffered the touch.

  All the bedroom doors were open, and each student stood, as if at attention before a sergeant major, at their open doors.

  Mr Carson took his time. Where his downstairs investigation had been perfunctory, his upstairs wandering were stately, as if sensing the tension in the students and trying, like a seasoned detective, to give them enough rope to hang themselves.

  But he couldn’t find anything amiss.

  ‘It all seems to be in order,’ he told them with a frightening smile that looked like a suspicious attempt at good humour, rather like a raven would smile at roadkill.

  He headed to the top of the stairs and put one foot out, the foot flopping down toward the top step as though he had no control over his own ankle.

  Mark breathed an audible sigh of relief.

  Mr Carson paused. Theatrically, he tapped himself on the head.

  John’s heart plummeted. Iain’s stomach elicited a nervous grumble, and Gwen began chewing on his fingernail.

  ‘Oh, I almost forgot. Must check the empty room. You never knowtheseday…sometimes people take liberties. Youknow…how…it is. I’m sure you boys wouldn’t, though.’

  ‘No, no, nothing amiss,’ blathered Mark. ‘Everything’s fine, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ Mr Carson granted him a sly smile.

  He knows, thought John. I don’t know how, but he knows. Then, he thought, we’re fucked.

  Mr Carson’s ungainly gait took him swiftly to the fifth door. He pushed it open, holding it wide, and stepped inside.

  John thought about trying to laugh it off. Trying to stick to the script they had agreed…Oh, a fifth lodger? How did he get in there? We never realised. Quiet as a mouse, wasn’t he? Never made a peep. Not been paying his rent, has he? Terrible, you can’t trust students these days.

  All thoughts fled as Mr Carson saw the fifth lodger.

  He turned and beckoned them in.

  ‘It seems you boys have been having a joke at myexpense…hmm?’

  They were suddenly lost for words.

  Mr Carson indicated the corpse propped on the bed, sheets covering him mostly, a cigarette dangling from his lips, a can of Fosters clutched in his hand.

  It had been so easy to ferret him out of the morgue. It is much easier to obtain a body if you don’t have to kill it first.

  The boys looked at the floor under Mr Carson’s deadly glare.

  ‘Very funny, I should think. Didn’t hear a peep, Mr Carson. Not been paying his rent, has he? Ungratefulbuggernever does...the washing up, eh? Hmm?’

  ‘Thought it would be funny, Mr Carson,’ mumbled Mark.

/>   ‘Sorry, Mr Jones? What was that?’

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ said Mark.

  ‘We thought it would be funny. Sorry, Mr Carson. But it’s not like we’ve done any harm, is it? Perhaps we could just forget all about it, eh?’ said Gwen hopefully.

  Mr Carson seemed to think for a moment, but John recognised it for what it was. It was all just play acting. The bastard had known all along.

  ‘No, no harm done. But I’ll show you what’s funny, boys. How’s about...that?’

  The students looked at each other. Mark felt his bladder weaken.

  Mr Carson’s glare, his dark eyes boring into each of them, could have stopped a stampede.

  ‘Yes, funny, that’s the ticket, hmm?’ said Mr Carson, with a cold smile, and turned from the boys and pointed a crooked, long finger at the corpse.

  Frost crackled in the air. The light changed in the room. Not dimmer, but of a different quality. John noticed in some distant way that the crackling was coming from the condensation on the window pane freezing over.

  And in a voice colder than the icy air Mr. Carson spoke one simple word.

  ‘Rise.’

  The fifth lodger turned his head toward Mr. Carson. The cigarette fell from his lips.

  The corpse shuddered while the boys watched. With a tortured cry the cadaver exposed the ‘Y’ incision in its chest as it pulled the sheet to one side. Dead feet thumped to the floor and one of the boys screamed. Maybe there was something Gallic in the scream. Maybe it was the same cry they heard from Iain’s room late into the night, kissing cousins, maybe, to pleasure.

  John was the first to find his feet, and they wanted to run. With no thought for his friends he turned to flee down the stairs. The corpse padded, naked and pallid, across the bedroom floor. Iain, Marc and Gwen were close behind John, pushing and fighting to get down the stairs, for freedom and escape from the sudden insanity.

  Mr Carson, behind the corpse, with a deathly cackle breaking free of his lips, gesturing in that peculiar and disjointed way of his.

  ‘A morbid sense of humour, mind, hmm,’ said Mr Carson to himself.

  He laughed heartily to the sounds of terror gibbering from the boys at the locked front door. He swung the key from his fingertips and took the stairs slowly, slowly, as the corpse stuttered across the hall tiles, closing the gap on the boys.

  The dead walk, sometimes. Often they walk carefully, with an ungainly and boneless gait.

  The dead walk slowly.

  John turned and saw the landlord descending.

  ‘Please, we’re sorry!’

  Gwen cried and smashed his fist at the front door, unable to break it down. As he drew his elbow back he caught Iain and heavy blow on the temple. Iain crumpled to the floor. Mark swung his foot at the door and then stepped back onto Iain’s hand. The crunch was loud, heard even over John’s pleas.

  But Mr. Carson came on. Patient. No other place to go.

  He took the stairs very carefully. Place a foot. Hold the banister. Slide. Thump. Slide. Thump.

  ‘Now. Boys. I’m all for a good jape,’ he said. Slide. Thump. Behind him, the animated corpse followed.

  Mark and John muttered, their cries changing to pleas, imploring, as the landlord and his cadaver reached the bottom of the stairs.

  Then the cries were incoherent. Just the gibbering of mad men.

  The sounds didn’t last for long. It was silent for a time, and then, one by one, came the sigh of a last breath, then that plaintive growl that came as the dead rose. The growl of disappointment, when a corpse finds there is no peace in death.

  John, Mark, Gwen, Iain, and the fifth lodger all trotted into the front room. Gwen took the remote control for the television into clumsy fingers. He frowned at it while the others sat. He poked at the remote until the television clicked on. Something primal came from his throat, like a monkey, pleased at a trick. Then Gwen, too, sat down to watch the latest video on MTV.

  Mr. Carson smiled broadly and patted Gwen on the head.

  He had a lot of properties. He had a lot of lodgers. The dead ones were by far his favourites.

  He sniffed and picked up a cigarette butt that had rolled half way under the couch. He held it in his hand and left the boys watching television. He carried the butt at arm’s length into the kitchen and took the spaghetti off the wall while he was there, dumping both into the bin.

  A lot of lodgers, he thought, but the dead were always the best. They hardly created any mess at all.

  *

  This story was an early acceptance at the literary magazine Ginosko. They're still around. You could look them up. I like this tale. It's simple...part of my experimental phase.

  Recollection

  A thousand uncut diamonds glint dully on the dashboard. Through the window a scarred tree and a snarling bonnet is all the man can see. Rain has washed the bonnet clear of debris. It comes in waves, like the pain. Lancing through the shattered windshield, wetting his trousers, mingling with his soil forced clear by shock, fear, the impact and the blood flowing around the shard of bone protruding from his trousers.

  Pain comes sharp and clear, from his skull and from his ribs, one from the collision with the steering wheel, one from meeting the windshield head on. He takes stock of his injuries without rancour, like a man waiting to die once he has been diagnosed with cancer, acceptance instant and unavoidable. He coughs something warm which trickles down his chin. He would have wiped it, but he could not move his arms. If he could, his first action would have been to wipe the gems from his lap. But they were sharp, and he might cut his hand.

  Briefly, lucidity hits him. Headlights were cutting around the shadow of the tree. He moved into darkness. A car, slowing for the bend. His hearing was muffled, and sound was obscured by the rain, but the engine of the car grew quieter, until he imagined it passing by.

  It did not pass by. The man drifted for a moment, then saw a face, lurid in the rain and the rear lights of a car. The man’s face seemed blood drenched but for the flashing orange which threw his face into occasional relief. The driver’s hazard lights, the man in the car understood. Blinking. A warning to other drivers. Too late.

  He was mouthing something, but the injured man could not hear. Could not move. Pain hit and with it, blackness, and calmness followed the wave like foam.

  *

  He stands like a shadow. A dance unfolds before his eyes. He is watching himself. A younger version, sitting in a school hall. A hard plastic chair, at the outskirts of some minor engagements, like a cowardly captain observing the battle from afar, too aloof to fight himself, but feeling the bloody excitement pounding in his veins, expectation and hope flooding him, while unrelenting fear keeps him apart. He convinces himself he must not be seen to fall to the brutality of war, but must remain detached, like the gentleman he hopes to be. But his friends, his lieutenants, all imagine they are above the petty skirmishes on the dance floor. Only the Captain can sound the horn, calling them to battle.

  The Captain waits.

  But there are lights, hues of brilliance, shades as counterpoints, hiding and illuminating a crush of teenagers clutched in first embraces, girls on heels reaching up to snatch that first kiss with unremembered loves, but he remembers this moment. It is his first kiss. He waits, watching his younger self almost quivering with anticipation but covering it with coolness, dousing his ardour, watching for the moment when she had come into his life. A man in the making, his first time with a girl, the firm intrusion of breasts pressing against his chest, and then, the softness of her lips.

  He saw her walking toward a surlier, unformed him. A white shirt, black trousers with a slight flare, earrings that were silver in yellow light, but gold in the red. Walking through the press of youths in their first embrace (he could even hear the song in the background, as though through a wall, or cotton wool) untouched, headed straight for him. A nudge from a forgotten friend, a glance and a nervous smile followed by the offer of a dance.

  Acceptance followed
, and his first kiss. He remembered her name. He would always remember it.

  And slowly, spinning like celestial bodies in the pull of gravity, holding tight to keep from falling into space, a dance, a cheek touching, cool breath on warm skin, and as darkness falls, Dana’s lips on his, soft, seeking and knowing. A rush of blood to his face, his flush hidden by the strobes of colour that flood the floor. A realisation of a thousand youthful fantasies, perfection in his arms, slowly twirling, then slowing, stopping, as her lips met his.

  A flutter of the heart, a beat and the music flows like water over his head. He hears nothing but the rush of sounds and imagines they all must be like memory.

  Vision fades, and with it comes the pain of recollection.

  *

  Lights still flash, and the man thinks for a moment he is still in the dance, but this time his lips feel cold. There is no warmth. He has no girl in his arms.

  He wonders for a moment what happened to the girl, then realises slowly that the cold is in his bones, and the only warmth comes from his injuries.

  His vision swims for a moment within the pain, and returns with forceful clarity. The lights are not from a dance, but are globes of flashing blues, and winking orange, and glowing reds. They lend the only colour to his range of sights, a tree, a mangled bonnet, and lashing rain.

  The rain has worsened, he thinks, and, I am still alive.

  He can no longer feel his legs, and cannot move. He is sitting back in the seat, head resting gently upon the head rest. He wants to turn his head, but does not have the energy, even if he has the will. It is all he can do to blink.

  The pain will come again, but for a time a brief respite is welcome. Unfeeling, with his sight blurring, he waits for the ambulance men to come. To his surprise the first is a woman. She is speaking to him, and he manages to blink. She takes his pulse, and he believes he makes out the word ‘weak’ from the movement of her narrow lips. She does not look like an angel, but a harridan, sent to torture him. Her fingers hold no warmth as they caress his neck, but elicit a small, bloody gurgle from his throat. He tries to speak, to tell her to leave him alone, but this is the only sound that emerges.