Stories: All-New Tales ngss-1

by Neil Gaiman

  I’M GOING TO THREE parties today, so I’m getting out of my bird-infested flat as soon as I can. But I did ring Mother. I raved at her rather. She may have thought I was insane at first, but when I calmed down and described the geese-by the way, the one on the sofa had laid an egg when I got back-she began to see I might be having real trouble. She said, in the cautious, respectful way she always talks about money, “Well, you might be talking about Franz Dodeca, I suppose. Not that he would do a thing like that, of course. He owns Multiphones and SpeekEasi and Household Robotics and he’s a multimillionaire and he’s naturally very much respected.”

  “Which is he?” I asked. “Of the freaks you introduced to me.”

  “Not freaks, darling,” she said reproachfully. “He was the one with the charming diamante teeth.”

  I thought grimly of this Dodeca, a short fat man in an unbecoming pin-striped suit. A pale freckled creature, I recalled, with thin reddish hair scraped back over his freckled scalp. He kept baring those dreadful glittering teeth at me in creepy smiles. And this idiot owns my diary, my phone and my Housebot! I hoped he swallowed one of his teeth and choked. “Tell him,” I said to Mother, “to stop sending me birds. Tell him he hasn’t got a chance. Tell him he’s destroyed his already nonexistent chances by stalking me this way. Tell him no and go away!”

  Mother demurred. I could tell she was reluctant to pass up the chance of all that money in the family. But after I had told her at least ten times that there was absolutely no chance of my marrying this idiot, even if he owned the universe, she said, “Well, darling, I’ll phone him and try to put it tactfully.”

  If she did phone dear Franz, she has had no effect. The swans arrived this morning, seven of them. Along with six more geese, et cetera, et cetera. At least I got five more gold rings. They came with a note of dreadful pleading, signed, “Your eternally loving Franz,” which looked odd in round shop-assistant writing. I suppose Mother must have phoned the man, since he seems to know that his cover is now blown. But it doesn’t seem to have stopped him.

  The swans had obviously been drugged. The delivery crew carried them in big drooping armfuls, through the living room and onto the patio, where they carefully wedged them into the pool. The geese waddled in after. There are now twelve of them and they’re laying eggs everywhere. As if it wasn’t enough to be overrun with hens-also laying-and a new set of green screaming parrots. The swans were just waking up when I left. Housebot tried to make me an omelette before I went and I nearly threw up.

  January 1, 2234, New Year’s Day

  THANK HEAVENS! EVEN THE Dodeca millions can’t make anyone in this country work on New Year’s Day. No further birds arrived. Nothing came. Relief! Or it would be if the swans didn’t fight the geese all the time. And I realised when I got in around four this morning that the place smells. Horribly. Of bird droppings, rotting seeds and old feathers. Housebot can’t keep up with the cleaning.

  I shall have to stop wearing my Stiltskins. My feet are killing me after last night. One of my big toes has gone kind of twisted. I have very hazy memories of the fun, though I do recall that I ran into Liam at the Markhams’ fireworks party and, besides jeering at my Stiltskins, he wanted to know if I’d consulted his list yet. I said I didn’t want to know. I told him about dear Franz too-I think. He was, I dimly remember, insistent that I throw away my phone and scrap Housebot. The man has no idea!

  But this memory has made me realise that I will almost certainly get more swans and more geese tomorrow. I can’t rely on Mother to stop them. There is no more room in the patio pool. But it has occurred to me that the big house next door, which belongs to my last-stepfather-but-two, has a large garden with an ornamental as-it-were lake in it. I shall phone Stepdaddy Five. As far as I know, he’s still in a hut in Bali, recovering from having been married to Mother.

  I got through to him eventually. He was, as ever, sweet about it all. “Isn’t that just like your mother!” he said. “I know Franz Dodeca slightly. He’s a total obsessive, too rich for his own good. Come here to Bali and I’ll undertake to keep him off you.”

  Well, I couldn’t do that. It strikes me as incest. Instead I asked him to lend me the garden of his house next door. He agreed like a shot and gave me the entry code at once. But he warned me that his caretaker gardener might not be pleased. He said he would phone this Mr. Wilkinson and explain. “And keep me posted,” he said. “Nothing happens here in Bali. It suits me, but I like a hit of distant action from time to time.”

  January 2, 2234

  JUST AS WELL I made that arrangement with Stepdaddy Five. They brought yesterday’s swans et cetera today, plus today’s lot, making fourteen inert, heavy floppy swans and twelve more geese. I showed the lot through Stepdaddy Five’s front door and out to the lake in his garden. The geese seemed to like it there. When the trees and the pigeons and the hens came, I showed them out there too. But the parrots had to stay with me because they were not hardy enough, they said. At least I got ten more gold rings.

  We are getting seriously short of bird food. I went round to the corner shop, but they don’t open till tomorrow. Avian Foodstuffs are on holiday for the week. Again.

  I don’t believe this! The swans were not all. I was just about to cross the road from the corner shop when I saw, trudging and bawling down the street, a whole herd of cows. Eight of them anyway. They were being driven by eight young women who, to do them justice, were looking a bit self-conscious about it. People in cars and on the pavements were stopping to stare. Some folk had followed them from Picadilly, apparently. You don’t often see cows in London these days.

  My stomach felt queer. I knew they were for me. And they were. Honestly, how can this Dodeca even imagine I might want eight cows? Cows are not in the least romantic. Their noses run and they drop cowpats all the time as they walk. They dropped more cowpats through Stepdaddy Five’s nice hallway as I showed the lot of them out into his garden. I said to the girls, “If you want to stay, this house has fourteen bedrooms and there’s a pizza takeaway down the road. Feel free.” I was feeling more than a little light-headed by then. The parrots don’t help.

  Now it’s got worse. Mr. Wilkinson arrived half an hour after the cows and bawled me out for allowing a herd of cows to trample his lawn. I said I would get rid of them as soon as I could. I was going to phone Mother and extract this Dodeca’s phone number from her and then phone him and tell him to come and take his livestock away. And see how he liked it. Before I could, though, a severe woman with a mighty bosom turned up on the doorstep, saying she was from the Bird Protection Trust and that my neighbours across the street had reported me for cruelty to birds. They had, she said, counted one hundred and seven various birds being delivered to my flat-busybodies! — where they were certainly overcrowded. I was to release them to better quarters, she said, or be liable for prosecution.

  After Mr. Wilkinson, she was the last straw. I told her to get the hell out.

  January 3, 2234

  NO, THE LAST STRAW was today. I did phone Mother last night and she did, after a lot of squirming, give me Dodeca’s private number. The trouble was that I didn’t know what to say, and all these parrots make it so difficult to think-not to speak of yet another swan versus goose fight erupting every five minutes. My God those birds can be vicious! Then I sat on an egg when I started to phone Dodeca and gave up. I said I’d do it today.

  Today started with those cowgirls coming round here whining and whingeing. There were beds but no sheets or blankets next door, they said, and it was not what they were used to. And where did they put the twenty gallons of milk? I said pour it away, why not? And they said it was a waste. Anyway, I got rid of them in the end, but only by ordering a stack of sheets and blankets online, which cost a bomb.

  Then the bird deliveries began. By then we were almost out of bird feed, so I ushered this lot, swans included, into Stepdaddy Five’s garden and raced off to the corner shop. They only had canary food, so I bought all they had of that. I was
staggering towards my flat with it when I saw an entirely new sort of van drawing up and Housebot, that traitor, blandly opening my front door to it. The men in it began unloading and putting together a large number of frameworks. I crossed the road and asked them what the hell they were doing.

  They said, “Out of the way, miss. We have to get all these into this flat here.”

  I said, “But what are they?”

  “Trampolines, miss,” they said.

  This caused me to bolt into my flat and race about scattering canary food and looking for that list Liam gave me. I found it just as they manoeuvered the first trampoline in. There were supposed to be nine of them. How they thought they were going to fit them in I have no idea. As I opened the list, one of the men got attacked by the broody goose on the sofa and they all went outside to let it settle down. Liam had written, “Ninth day: Nine lords a-leaping; Tenth day: Ten ladies dancing; Eleventh day: Eleven pipers piping…”

  I didn’t read any more. I gave a wild wail and raced into my bedroom, where all the parrots seemed to have congregated, and to shrieks of “I love you, Samantha,” I packed all the parcels of rings into my handbag for safety and raced out again to the nearest public phone, praying it wouldn’t have been vandalised.

  It wasn’t. I got through to Liam. “What is it now?” he said grumpily.

  “Liam,” I said, “I’ve got nine trampolines now. Is it really true that I’m going to get ballet dancers and skirling Scotsmen next?”

  “Pretty certainly,” he said, “if you got milkmaids yesterday. Did you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Liam, I have had enough.”

  “What do you expect me to do about it?” he said.

  “Marry me,” I said. “Take me away from all this.”

  There was a dreadful, long silence. I thought he had hung up on me. I wouldn’t have blamed him. But at length he said, “Only if you can assure me that I’m not just an escape for you.”

  I assured him, hand on heart. I told him that the mere thought of Franz Dodeca had made me realise that Liam was the only man for me. “Otherwise I’d get on a plane and go to my sister in Sweden,” I said. “Or maybe to Bali, to Stepdaddy Five.”

  “All right,” he said. “Are you coming round here at once?”

  “Quite soon,” I said. “I have to fix Dodeca first.” We then exchanged a surprising number of endearments before I rang off and raced back to my flat for what I sincerely hope was the last time.

  I got back just as a minibus drove up and unloaded half a dozen fit-looking young men in scarlet robes and coronets and three more middle-aged ones, who looked equally fit. Most of them were carrying bottles of champagne and clearly looking forward to some fun. They all poured into my flat ahead of me. I had to sidle among them and past the men squeezing the last trampoline in and past several enraged geese and terrified partridges to get to my phone-a phone dear Franz was certainly bugging. While I punched in his number, the chaps all climbed on the trampolines and began solemnly bouncing up and down. One of the geese accidentally joined them. I had to put my hand over one ear to detect that I had got Dodeca’s answering service. Good.

  “Franz, dear,” I said after the beep. “I’m so grateful for all the things you’ve been sending me. You’ve really gone to my heart. Why don’t you come here and join me in my flat? Come soon. And then we’ll see.” And I rang off, with the delightful thought of dear Franz arriving and the traitor Housebot letting him in among all this.

  More than all this it would be, I discovered as I left. Another herd of cows was coming down the street, lowing and cowpatting as it came. From the other direction, I could see the big lady from the Birds Protection, or whatever it was, advancing. She seemed to have a policeman with her. And Mr. Wilkinson was just storming out of Stepdaddy Five’s front door. I ran the other way, past the herd of cows. And who should I see but the nice courier lad just getting out of his van with a fifth parcel of rings.

  I stopped him. “You know me, don’t you?” I said. “Can I sign for them now and save you coming to my door?” He innocently did let me and I raced away with the parcel. “I’ve brought you a dowry!” I said to Liam as I arrived-

  “No, Liam, don’t! I haven’t finished yet!”

  A male voice: “Don’t be stupid, Sam. You know he’ll be listening in. Do you want him to know where we are? I’m going to throw this away before you tell him any more.”

  The diary ends here.

  Stewart O’Nan. LAND OF THE LOST

  SHE WAS A CASHIER AT A BILO in Perry whose marriage had long since broken up. Soon after that her two boys moved out of the house, leaving Ollie, her German shepherd, as her sole companion. From the beginning she followed the case in the paper and on TV, absorbing it like a mystery, discussing it with her coworkers and customers-so much so that her manager had to ask her to stop. Early on she visited the Web site and left messages of support in the guest book, from one mother to another, but after James Wade confessed that he’d buried the girl somewhere west of Kingsville, she began keeping a file. At night when she couldn’t sleep she sat up in bed and went over the transcripts and the mother’s map, convincing herself it was possible. She couldn’t believe a feeling so strong could be mistaken.

  She didn’t tell anyone what she was doing-she wasn’t stupid. The first time was the hardest because she felt foolish. In the privacy of her garage, while Ollie looked on, she stocked the trunk of her car with a shovel, a spade, a dry-cell flashlight and a pair of work gloves. She opened the door and he leaped into the backseat, capering from window to window, frantic just to be going somewhere.

  “All right, calm down,” she said. “It’s not playtime.”

  Searching on foot took longer than she thought. They came across nothing more sinister than a rotting seagull, but she wasn’t disappointed. Bushwhacking through the overgrown no-man’s-land behind the commercial strip on Route 302 was an adventure, and looking gave her a sense of accomplishment. They could cross this location off and move on to the next one.

  Later she added more serious gear like bolt cutters and a lightweight graphite walking stick recommended by professionals, whose Web sites she treated like the Bible. She religiously documented everything, taking videos of any ground they disturbed, writing up her field notes as soon as they got home.

  As fall came on she rearranged her shifts, working nights so she could take advantage of the daylight. In a couple of weeks the ground would be frozen and she’d have to shut down until spring. It was then, when she was feeling rushed, that she discovered a U-Store-It outside Mentor with a stockade fence and a dirt road running through the pines behind it. Across the raw lumber, kids had sprayed their illegible fluorescent-red names.

  She walked Ollie along the fence until he stopped, sniffing at a weedy mound. She pulled him away twice, and both times he came back to the same spot. “Good boy,” she said, giving him a treat, and looped his leash around a tree.

  She prodded the mound with her walking stick. The dirt was sandy and loose, and she went back to her car for the shovel.

  She dug her first hole deep, then shallow ones every three feet. She was out of shape, and had to dip her head and wipe her face on her shoulder. It was cool out, and when she stopped for a drink of water the sweat on her neck made her shiver. By the time she reached the middle of the fence, the sky was starting to get dark. At the four corners of the self-storage, high floodlights popped on, buzzing and drawing bugs, throwing weird shadows. She checked her cell phone-it was almost five. She needed to go home and get ready for work. Rather than leave the site unguarded overnight she decided to call the FBI.

  They told her it was too late in the day. They’d send someone out to talk to her tomorrow.

  When she complained to her older son, he asked how long she’d been doing this.

  The agent they sent asked the same question. He looked over her binders and the picture of the girl on the mantel and the big map tacked up in the kitchen.

  “I’m just tr
ying to help,” she said. “If it was one of my kids, I’d want everybody to pitch in.”

  “I would too,” the agent said soothingly, as if it was common sense.

  The next day they took her out to the site in an unmarked Suburban to watch a backhoe dig a trench along the fence line. Agents in windbreakers and latex gloves sifted the dirt through metal screens, then spread it on tarps for the dogs. A project like this would have taken her weeks, and she was glad she’d called. She imagined the girl’s mother hearing the news. She didn’t care about getting the credit. It was enough to know the girl was finally home.

  They found nothing. Just dirt. Worms. It had all been a coincidence. As the agent said, there was graffiti on everything these days.

  Meaning she was crazy.

  Dropping her off, he thanked her. “I know your heart was in the right place.”

  Was it? She could admit that at least part of the reason she was searching for a stranger’s daughter was that no one else needed her. Just Ollie.

  She promised her sons to take a break after that. She took down the map and stored the picture in a drawer and watched the last weeks of fall pass.

  Honoring her pledge was easier in the winter. She used the time to rethink her strategy and stockpile supplies. Some sites recommended a pitchfork to turn the soil, others a pickax. On paper, again and again, she rearranged her trunk, as if she were traveling cross-country. She enrolled Ollie in an online course for sniffer dogs, practicing with scented rags in the backyard. He didn’t always get them right away, and stood looking at her as if she might give him a hint.

  “Do you want to pass or not?” she asked. “Or am I just wasting my time?”

  She kept an eye on the Web site, and cruised the chat groups for news. She was afraid one day the page would come up and say she’d been found, but month after month, nothing changed. It had been two and a half years. Besides the family, she might be the only person looking for her.