The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23 (Mammoth Books)

by Jones, Stephen

  “Yes,” said Robin. “I noticed.”

  I nodded, my eyes still flicking from the bed to the desk, the wardrobe. The wardrobe.

  “Were you talking to somebody just now?”

  Robin shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, what about it? On Skype.”

  “But . . . when we had the power cut.”

  “When we had the power cut?”

  I could hear how stupid it sounded. But I had heard something. My gaze was drawn to the wardrobe. It was a basic, recently purchased IKEA wardrobe in white laminate, but I thought there were an unusual number of grubby marks around the doorknob.

  “So you weren’t talking to anybody then?”

  “No.”

  Before I could stop myself I had taken three strides into the room and pulled open the wardrobe door. Robin’s clothes had been shoved carelessly into the wire baskets, with odd tops and shirts that he never wore arranged on hangers. Apart from that, the wardrobe was empty.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Just checking that . . . you’ve got clean T-shirts and stuff.”

  I couldn’t come up with anything better, even though I’d folded and put away the clean laundry that very afternoon. As I pretended to check the stock of underwear I felt a cold draught. The window was slightly ajar, with both catches open.

  “Why is the window open?”

  Robin rolled his eyes. “Because I forgot to close it, maybe?”

  “But why did you open it? It’s really windy out there.”

  Robin was now back to himself, and gave me the look that means: Have you got any more amazingly interesting questions? Even I didn’t understand what I was getting at, so I closed the window, flicked the catches down and left the room. As I was closing the door I saw Robin start up the computer, and a few minutes later I could hear the one-sided mumbling as he communicated via Skype. I placed a pan on the hob to make our bedtime hot chocolate.

  It was a bad habit I couldn’t bring myself to give up, that hot chocolate. Because Robin spent so much time sitting still it had begun to show on his body; he had a little belly protruding above the waistband of his trousers. But I still made hot chocolate every night, and we had three pastries each along with it.

  Because that’s what we used to do when he was little. Ever since he was four years old it had been a little ritual every night: the three of us would gather around the kitchen table before it was time for Robin to go to bed, and we would drink hot chocolate and chat.

  I couldn’t bring myself to let go, even though there were only two cups on the table and we frequently ended up sitting in mutual silence. At least we were sitting there. When Annelie was alive we used to have a lit candle in the middle of the table, but I decided to skip that particular detail after trying it once following her death. It had felt like keeping vigil beside a corpse.

  When the chocolate was ready I placed six pastries in the microwave and shouted for Robin. We munched our way through the pastries and drank our chocolate without saying anything while the wind continued to squeeze the house and nudge its way in through the cracks. I was picking up bits of sugar by pressing my finger down on them when Robin suddenly said: “Did you know a murderer used to live here?”

  I stopped with my finger halfway to my mouth. “What are you talking about? A murderer?”

  “Yes. His bed used to be where mine is now.”

  “Who is this murderer, and who’s he supposed to have murdered?”

  “Children. He murdered children. And his bed used to be where mine is now.”

  “Where did you get this from?”

  Robin finished off his chocolate and an impotent wave of tenderness swept through me as I noticed that he had a chocolate moustache. When I pointed to it he rubbed it off and said: “I heard it.”

  “Who from?”

  Robin gave his trademark shrug and got up from the table, then went and placed his cup in the sink.

  “Hang on,” I said. “Where are you going with all this?”

  “Nowhere. That’s just the way it is.”

  “I don’t understand . . . do you want to move your bed or something?”

  Robin considered this for a moment with a frown. Then he said: “No, it’s fine. He’s dead,” at which point he left me alone with my empty cup and the wind. I sat there for a long time staring at the streaks of chocolate in the bottom of the cup, as if there were something to be interpreted from the pattern they formed.

  He murdered children. His bed used to be where mine is now.

  The television aerial began to sing, as it sometimes does when the wind is coming from a certain direction. It sounded as if the house itself was moaning or crying out for help.

  I found it difficult to sleep that night. The aerial’s lament combined with Robin’s strange assertion kept me awake, and I lay tossing and turning in my narrow bed.

  The double bed from the years with Annelie had been the first thing I dragged outside for disposal when I was getting ready to move. Night after night I had lain awake in that bed, tormented by the phantom pains of grief just below my collarbone where she used to rest her head when we settled down to go to sleep.

  The new single bed went some way towards helping me cope with her searing absence, but I still sometimes reached out to touch her when I was half-asleep, only to find myself fumbling in the empty space beyond the edge of the bed.

  “Annelie,” I whispered. “What shall I do?”

  No reply. Outside the bedroom window sleet had begun to fall; the wind was driving it against the pane, and it sounded like little wet feet scrabbling across the glass. I crawled out of bed and pulled on my dressing gown with the idea of sitting down at the computer and idly surfing the net until I felt tired enough to sleep.

  When I opened the screen I was confronted by the document I had left half-finished in the afternoon. I read through the account of my responsibilities in the greengrocery department, my experience in negotiating with suppliers and with quality control, my social skills and—

  What the hell?

  I had no recollection whatsoever of writing the final section, and it sat badly with the rest of the text, to say the least. I read the whole passage once again.

  During my three years in charge of the fruit and vegetable section my areas of responsibility have included among other things the dead speak through the notes, but how can a person bear it?

  There was a cold draught blowing through the house and I shivered as I sat there in my thin dressing gown, staring at the words I had written. The dead speak through the notes. I understood which notes it was referring to, of course, but where had I got such an idea?

  I’m losing the plot. Soon I’ll be singing along with the TV aerial.

  I felt a strong desire to smash the computer to pieces, but I pulled myself together and deleted the whole passage instead, then settled down to rewrite it.

  The next morning, the previous afternoon and evening felt like a bad dream. The wind had abated, and the sun was peeping through gaps in the cloud cover. When I drove Robin to school he allowed himself a big hug before he got out of the car. On the way to work I switched the radio on and was rewarded with “Viva la Vida” by Coldplay.

  I drummed along with the beat on the steering wheel and managed to convince myself that it was loneliness, grief and my anxiety about Robin that made it feel as if reality was slipping through my fingers. That I just needed to pull myself together. Life could work if I could just manage to slough off the old skin and accept things as they were. From now on I would make it work.

  I spent the morning inspecting the fruit counters and making some adjustments to Thursday’s order, as well as putting up posters announcing this week’s promotion: fifty kronor to fill a plastic bucket with your choice of fruit, and you get to keep the bucket into the bargain.

  Kalle Granqvist from the deli counter took his lunch break at the same time as me, and we sat in the staff room talking about this and that. Kalle is a permanent fixtur
e at the store; he’s been there since it opened in 1989, and is due to retire next year. Since he’s also something of a local historian I took the opportunity to tackle the issue that was niggling away at me.

  Over coffee I asked: “Apropos of nothing, do you have any idea who used to live in our house? Before, I mean.”

  Kalle stroked his short grey beard and said: “Benke Karlsson.”

  “Benke Karlsson?”

  “Yes.”

  He said the name in the way you might say “Olof Palme” or “Jussi Björling”. A person everybody is expected to know, with no further explanation needed. Kalle assumed that everyone was as well up on the recent history and characters of the area as he was.

  “Should I have heard of Benke Karlsson?” I asked, relieved at the everyday sound of the name.

  “I don’t know,” said Kalle. “I mean, it’s a while since he was up to his tricks.”

  “Up to his tricks? What does that mean, up to his tricks?”

  Kalle grinned. “Why are you looking so worried? He was a musician. He used to play at parties and such like, until . . .” Kalle jerked his head a few times, which could have meant just about anything.

  “Until what?”

  “Oh, you don’t want to go poking into all that.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, his wife died. And he took it badly. After a few years he killed himself. That’s all it was.”

  Kalle gathered up his dishes, rinsed them and placed them in the dishwasher. I knew I shouldn’t ask, that it was probably better not to know, but I couldn’t help myself: “How did he kill himself? And where?”

  Kalle sighed and looked at me with a somewhat sorrowful expression. He seemed to be searching for a more sympathetic way of putting it, but the only thing he could come up with was: “He hanged himself. At home.”

  “In the house where we live now?”

  Kalle scratched his beard. “Yes. I assume that’s why you got it so cheap. Shall we go?”

  I didn’t believe in ghost stories, which was just as well, I thought as I tidied up after lunch. But still I felt a tinge of unease and my hands were shaking slightly as I drank a glass of water. I thought I had an idea where Benke Karlsson had chosen to leave this earthly life.

  What I called my bedroom was in fact just a part of the living room. Fixed to the ceiling in the centre of the room was a substantial hook that had probably supported a heavy lamp. I went through the rest of the house in my mind and couldn’t find any other fixture on a ceiling that would bear the weight of a grown man’s body. Benke Karlsson had hanged himself two metres from the spot where I slept.

  A suicide, then. That was an unpleasant enough idea. But where had Robin got the idea that Benke Karlsson had also murdered children? And that his bed had stood where Robin’s was now?

  Regardless of what you believe or don’t believe, it was an uncomfortable image. I had cleared out my own past and instead moved straight into another man’s dark history. Fortunately there are no direct links between the present and the past, except in our minds.

  That’s what I thought at the time. Now I think differently.

  I could hear the notes as soon as I got out of the car.

  It was half-past five and I was worn out after a day at work, during which I had had to make a real effort to concentrate on the task in hand and to stop my thoughts drifting off to the former owner of our house. The outside light was switched off, and apart from the faint glow from Robin’s room where he sat playing, only the moonlight made it possible to see my way.

  I slammed the car door and the tinkling of the piano stopped. I stood there taking deep breaths as my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. Then it occurred to me that I ought to go to the tool shed. There was something in there I needed to look at.

  As I groped my way towards the blacker darkness that was the old shed, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. The light from Robin’s room had illuminated something moving on the ground outside his window. I would have investigated the matter if it hadn’t seemed more important at the time to go and look at what was in the shed.

  Dum, di-dum.

  The notes Robin had played were still echoing in my head as I lifted the hasp on the door of the shed, which I hadn’t cleared out after the previous owner. Benke Karlsson. He took it badly.

  The darkness inside was dense, and I couldn’t see a thing. However, some time ago I had left a box of matches just inside the door for situations such as this. I stepped into the shed, found the half-full box and struck a match.

  Shelves cluttered with extension leads, folded tarpaulins, screws and nails. A carpenter’s bench where my own tools lay in a higgledy-piggledy heap with things that had already been there when we moved in. But I was looking for something else. What I wanted to see was right at the back.

  I crouched down, blew out the match which was starting to burn my fingers, and struck another. Leaning against the wall was a spade with a wooden handle, and a heavy iron crowbar. I gazed at the two objects. Spade and crowbar. Crowbar and spade.

  Dum, di-dum, dum. Di-di-dum.

  By the time I had finished looking there was only one match left in the box. I put it back in the right place and stepped out into the pale moonlight. As I lowered the hasp I couldn’t understand what I had been doing in the shed. I had a bag full of groceries in the car, I was on my way indoors to cook dinner for Robin and me. What was this detour all about?

  Annelie used to say that if there was a complicated way of doing things, I would find it. I smiled to myself, hearing her voice inside me as I walked over to the car. When I had put the key in the lock of the boot, I stopped.

  I had heard her voice, hadn’t I? Just recently, somewhere. I looked around as if I was expecting to see her standing next to the car, her hands pushed down in the pockets of that duffel coat she found at a flea market.

  But I had shoved the duffel coat into a rubbish bag myself. It had been incinerated at some dump, and no Annelie would ever put it on again. I was overwhelmed with a sense of loss so strong and physical that I had to lean on the boot for support to stop myself from falling as my knees gave way. Why is the world constructed in such a way that people can be taken away from one another?

  Then I picked up the bag of groceries and went inside to make dinner.

  As I was boiling the potatoes for mash and frying the sausages, I could hear Robin mumbling into his headset, along with the roar of futuristic weapons and the groans of vanquished enemies. I wondered what Annelie would have said about it all.

  She would probably have come up with a way of limiting the amount of time Robin spent gaming, thought of alternatives. I couldn’t do that.

  Can two people converse or hang out together when they live on different planets? Here was I, frying sausages and adding nutmeg to my mashed potatoes, while Robin battled against mutants with a flame-thrower. If you looked at it like that, could we ever really meet?

  I knocked on Robin’s door and told him dinner was ready. He asked for five more minutes to finish off the session. I sat down at the kitchen table with my hands resting on my knee, listening to the sounds of the slaughter. I looked at the dish of steaming mashed potato and felt so unbearably lonely.

  Robin emerged after five minutes. As we were eating I asked what kind of a day he’d had in school, and he said “Good” with no further comment. I asked how the gaming was going and that was good too. Everything was good. The mash grew in my mouth and I felt as if my throat was closing up. I had to make a real effort in order to swallow.

  When we’d finished I asked Robin if he fancied a game of Monopoly. He looked at me as if I’d made a bad joke, then disappeared into his room. I tackled the washing up.

  I had just put the last plate in the drying rack when I heard those notes again. I listened more carefully, and thought they reminded me of voices. Had I been mistaken the previous evening, during the power cut? Was it in fact the piano I had heard? There was something about the rise
and fall of the notes that sounded like voices. Terrified voices.

  My arms dropped, but before I disappeared into the same state as before, I got a grip, strode over to Robin’s door and pushed it open.

  Robin was sitting at the piano with tears pouring down his cheeks. On the music stand I saw a piece of paper, stained and yellowed. The last note he had played died away, and he looked at me wide-eyed.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “What’s that you’re playing?”

  Robin’s eyes were drawn to the piece of paper, which flickered as a gust of wind blew in through the half-open window. When I went over to close it I noticed bits of soil on the windowsill. Behind me Robin played a couple more notes and I yelled: “Stop it! Stop playing!”

  He lifted his hands from the keyboard and I slammed the lid shut. Robin jumped and the sharp crash as wood met wood vibrated through my breastbone, through the walls. Robin’s eyes met mine. They were the eyes of a child, pure and clear. He whispered: “I don’t want to play, Dad. I don’t want to play.”

  I sank to my knees and he fell into my arms, still whispering through his tears: “I don’t want to play, Dad. Fix it so I don’t have to play any more, Dad.”

  Over his shaking shoulders I could see the piece of paper on the music stand. It was covered in hand-written notes. Here and there things had been crossed out and something new added; dark brown patches caused by damp made some of the notes illegible. It must have been written over a fairly long period, because several different writing implements – a pencil, a ballpoint pen, a fountain pen – had been used.

  I stroked Robin’s head and sat with him until he had calmed down. Then I took his head between my hands and looked him in the eye. “Robin, my darling boy. Where did you get that piece of paper?”

  His voice was muffled from all the tears and he glanced over at his bed. “I found it. Behind the wallpaper.”

  The wallpaper next to his bed was coming away from the wall and was ripped in a couple of places; Robin had made it worse by lying there picking at it. I nodded in the direction of the torn patch and asked: “There?”