Swallowed By The Cracks e-Pub

by Lee Thomas, Gary McMahon, S. G. Browne, Michael Marshall Smith

  "It's okay, honey," says Sally. "It's fine. I'm here."

  But she isn't the only one in the house, because I'm there too. Peeking over your shoulder, or standing outside the door, with one foot resting against the skirting board and the palm of my hand pressed flat against the wall. I am not yet whole, but we have all the time in the world... one day I will be able to reach out and touch you.

  Your unspoken desire summoned me, created me from dust and darkness, inviting me inside. The constant feeling you have that something bad will happen – that's me. I am the jinx, the genie from the bottle that should never have been opened. I am the cancer in the marrow of your bones, the toxins in your bloodstream. I know it all – I know what you want.

  * * * * *

  The last time you are twenty-nine.

  It is eight years later and that night in your student digs is just a memory, an echo of an episode that you've tried to forget. Nothing has happened since: no calls, no emails. Your life has developed a rhythm; the days fall into place, one after the other, slotting into the greater pattern of your existence.

  Your life is normal in every way.

  You have a good job with an insurance company and a fiancé who says he loves you but can't quite get you to believe it. Deep down inside you are still the lonely little girl with the cuter, more popular friends, and no amount of flowers and attention can lay that particular ghost to rest. Her image walks always alongside you, not allowing you leave her behind.

  You are working late. It isn't quite dark yet, but neither is it light. The sky is flat and grey outside the office windows and the traffic moves sluggishly along the dismal streets. It has rained for a week now, and the downpour only let up a few hours ago.

  You pick up the phone and dial your fiancés number, and then wait until his voice mail kicks in. It is too early for him to be home – he will be at the gym, flirting with fitter and prettier girls than you and arranging a night of drinks with the boys. The thought makes you feel like that dumpy teenager all over again; the one who never had any boyfriends and often stayed home with the cat on a Saturday night, wishing that someone would call.

  Until somebody did call – and that somebody was me.

  "Kev, it's me. I won't be back at the flat till late this evening, so if you want to call me make it after nine. I'm tired. I'm going to get a curry and go straight to bed. If I don't speak to you before, I'll see you tomorrow. Have a nice time." You make a move to replace the handset, and then raise it again to your ear. The mouthpiece hangs like an unspoken invitation before your lips; a wordless open mouth, perhaps waiting to be kissed. "Love you." It is an afterthought; you don't even believe it yourself, so why should he?

  An hour or so later you are ready to leave. All the paperwork is beginning to look the same: page upon page of identical text, row after row of increasingly meaningless figures. You close the folder, shut down the machine, and put on your coat. The office lights flicker. You pause, shake your head, smile, and walk across the room to the door.

  A shadow passes outside the door. You catch sight of it through the glass, and are afraid to go out into the hall. The cleaners have all gone home. It is dim out there, along the hall and on the short landing. Memories stir like snakes inside your head: a voice on the phone, a brief email you should never have opened. The same old words, spoken over and over again...

  Gritting your teeth, you push open the door and step out onto the landing. Your pace is quicker than usual as you make your way to the stairs. You are too afraid to wait for the lift, and the realisation makes you feel embarrassed, even though there is no one else around to see you.

  Nobody, that is, but me.

  Your mobile phone buzzes just as you reach the ground floor. You pull the phone out of your handbag and fumble with the buttons. There is no caller ID: the message on the screen does not show a name. You try not to press the button, but it is too late. Your thumb jerks involuntarily, an instinctive reaction, and the message flashes before your eyes.

  You are not surprised. You have been waiting for this. You have waited your entire life for this. You know exactly what's going to happen, like a movie you've seen countless times before.

  The words on the tiny screen are like a a greeting from an old friend: I know what you want.

  Even after all these years, you are filled with an emotional charge. In the past, you have spent sleepless nights and harrowing mornings trying to figure out what it is the mystery messenger knows. An answer to a question you dare not even ask yourself?

  You type out a reply, quickly, before you can change your mind.

  You don't even have to read it over before pressing Send: "What do I want?"

  That one response is all I need; the final piece of the puzzle.

  Traffic sounds outside the walls. A helicopter hovering overhead. Distant music, perhaps from a loud car stereo. They're playing our song.

  I step out from the shadows at the bottom of the stairs, dragging my crippled left leg behind me. It is always a struggle to walk at first, to make those first few newborn steps in the real world. The transformation from fearful thought to feared flesh is not an easy one. Sometimes my legs bend the wrong way, my feet point backwards.

  I try to smile but it is difficult with a face so deformed, so twisted and incomplete. You step back, alarmed, and I reach out to touch you. Disgust mars your features – it always does, though you are expecting this. Even with the ones who have asked for it, or have begged for me to appear. The truth, when they see it, is often too much to bear. But I didn't choose you; you chose me. You are the mother of my invention, the author of my fiction. I belong to you.

  Your eyes are big, so very, very big, and my hands are small.

  "No," you say, or try to say. But it is immaterial. You no longer have a choice. The only choice you ever had was long ago, and you made it.

  I nod once. Up close, I can actually taste your fear.

  You begin to scream, but by the time I reach you it will be too late for anyone to come. And then I will be gone, like always; I will blend back into the dusty shadows and wait for someone else to summon me, another willing victim. Someone who wants what I have.

  Somebody who needs what I know.

  Because I do, I really do know what you want.

  And the reason I know this is because I know exactly what you do not want.

  You do not want me.

  You don't want this.

  Not ever.

  «-ô-»

  A Night Unburdened

  By Gary McMahon

  It was almost a week after Bonfire Night but still the air smelled of smoke. Jack closed the car window, wary of the stench infiltrating the vehicle, and watched late-flowering fireworks light up the sky over the council sink estates.

  The radio was tuned to a local station. A traffic report interrupted the music: a husky female voice speaking about a bad accident on the A19, near Testo's roundabout. Several vehicles had been involved in a pile-up; three people were reported dead.

  Jack reached out and pressed the button to switch the stereo to CD mode. The Arctic Monkeys filled the car with their chirpy brand of antagonism.

  He pulled of the main road and into a new estate. The old houses had all been demolished by the borough council, and each of these replacement dwellings was built from the same kind of inexpensive red bricks, lending a slightly toy-like appearance to the rain-slicked rows of near-identical semi-detached properties.

  He pulled up at the end of the drive, checked the address chitty that was taped to the pizza box on the seat next to him, and opened the door. The warning alarm chimed, but he left the headlights on. He would only be gone a few moments.

  Carrying the cooling pizza, Jack jogged up the drive, past a tiny silver Nissan with a football pennant pasted on the rear
window, and rang the doorbell. A lower corner of the living room curtain twitched, revealing a small pale face; seconds later a light went on in the hallway.

  When the front door opened he recognised her immediately.

  "A large thin-crust Pepperoni, extra cheese, for Crossly." He held out the grease-damp box. A single firework detonated overhead, momentarily flooding the area outside the door with sultry light.

  "Thank you." She handed him a ten pound note, her long fingers brushing against his open hand. When he passed her the limp box a quizzical expression crossed her narrow face. Multi-coloured lights died in her eyes. "Don't I... Do I know you?"

  She had not changed much. Her long blonde hair, flecked now with grey, was pulled back from her face, displaying fine, broad cheekbones, thin but naturally red lips and a flawless complexion.

  "Yes. Yes, you do. Well sort of." He was stumbling over the words; even now, years later, she made him feel like a clumsy teenager.

  "Yes. Your face. I know it... did you go to my school?"

  "Yes, Mrs Crossly. My name's Jack Bentley. You took me for English."

  She flashed a smile; Jack pretended it was flirtatious, enticing, when in reality it was simply the result of recognition. "Oh, yes. Jack. How are you?"

  "I'm good, Mrs Crossly. I... well, this isn't my real job. I'm studying journalism at Uni, and do this in the evenings to pay my bills." Why did he feel the need to explain himself, to justify the dead-end night job?

  She shook her head. Strands of hair came loose from the ponytail, tracing the line of her jaw. "No need to explain your choices to me, Jack. This is honest work – a lot more honest than some of the things far too many of my ex students get up to." She had taken an unconscious step backwards, away from the door. Her hand clutched the pizza box delicately, as if she were itching to put it down.

  "I'll let you get on," he said.

  "I was just about to invite you in. Unless you have another delivery to make?"

  He stared at the front of the tight white T-shirt encasing her large breasts; at her thin waist and those long, slender legs whose image he'd masturbated over in his cramped single bedroom with the door wedged shut during so many lonely teenage nights. "You were my last one. My shift ended ten minutes ago."

  He noticed that her feet were bare. She wore a decorative silver ring on the right big toe.

  "Well? There's an open bottle of wine on the table, and I'm bored of drinking alone." She moved back, into the hallway, expecting him to follow.

  Jack did just that, trailing her through into the kitchen like a little lost dog.

  "I'll have this later. I prefer my pizza cold, anyway." Her smile was now playful; its edges twitched, perhaps a slight nervous tic. "Go on in." She cocked her head in the direction of a dimly lit lounge. "I'll close the door."

  He watched her firm, trim jeans-clad backside as she stepped lightly to the front door, closed it, and turned off the hallway light. Her face hung in the darkness, an after-image of untouchable beauty, a trace memory he'd once lusted after with such desperate longing that it still shocked him to recall.

  "I'll be with you in a second." She moved slowly to the stairs – gliding, really – and disappeared into the darkness at the top of the house.

  Jack walked into the lounge, leaving the door to the kitchen ajar. The room was lit by a low lamp in one corner. Open on the sofa was a paperback book, the cover of which he could not identify. There was an illustration of a naked man with grubby feathered wings on the front of the book, but the title evaded him because the font was so faded.

  On the walls were a handful of original landscapes. They looked like the work of a local artist, well below the level of what he would call professional: poorly sketched representations of faded skies, rotting jetties and a sombre, unoccupied rowing boat. No people were present in these pictures. They were all scenes and objects, and held a coldness he didn't much like.

  He heard a toilet flushing upstairs, footsteps moving over his head.

  The furniture in the room looked expensive. A large-screen TV formed the centrepiece, whatever DVD she'd been watching when he arrived was paused at a scene showing a close-up of a woman's sweaty screaming face. The lamp flickered. From somewhere outside came the disassociated hissing of a sparkler: the sound seemed to be drawing closer, was almost inside the room.

  "I hope you like it red."

  Jack spun around, his fists clenched.

  "Whoa, child!" She was laughing, a long-stemmed wine glass held out before her. "I was talking about the wine." She passed so close by him that he felt her heat. One of her breasts brushed against his upper arm, and he was frozen to the spot by the sudden shock of contact.

  "It's merlot. My favourite." She poured him a drink and sat down on the sofa, next to the open book. Her free hand fell across it, obscuring the cover: bloodless fingers splayed out like bleached spider legs.

  "Thanks. That sounds lovely." Jack crossed the room and sat in the armchair beside the cabinet on which she'd placed the glass. He picked it up, raised it. "Cheers, Mrs Crossly."

  "Please, you're not my student now. Call me Judy."

  The wine was lukewarm, but tasted good. He closed his eyes and savoured it, feeling the alcohol hit him immediately.

  Mrs Crossly – Judy – crossed one leg over the other. Her bare sole flashed white; there was a sticking plaster across the ball of her foot. "I hope my invitation didn't make you feel uncomfortable. I'm afraid this is my second bottle, and the sight of a familiar face made me act on impulse." Again, there was that coy little smile. "I'm not in the habit of inviting young men into my home."

  "Don't worry about it. I was at a loose end, anyway. I have a report to work on, but I can't seem to muster the enthusiasm. "It's good to see you after all this time. I feel daft saying this, but you were always... my favourite teacher." He looked down at his glass, cheeks burning. Had he really just said that?

  "You're sweet. As an educator, you always try to make an impression."

  Glancing up, he smiled. Judy's face was frozen for a moment, as if caught in the act of something unnatural, but the smile slid quickly back into place. "So," she said. "Tell me what you've been up to since school. I seem to recall that you did well in your exams."

  Voices passed by outside, becoming almost loud enough to hear their conversation, and then fading away just as he thought he might recognise a word or a phrase. "Well, I got into Newcastle Uni – which is what I wanted. I've just started the second year of a journalism degree. I always loved to write."

  "Yes, I remember. Your fiction was always particularly striking. Vivid." She sipped her wine, not taking her eyes off him. "It's good to know all that natural talent hasn't gone to waste."

  Flustered at the compliment, Jack glanced around the room. The wallpaper was a dusty cream colour, delicately patterned; a narrow wooden picture rail ran around the wall several inches below the white-painted ceiling.

  That was when he noticed the photographs. There were quite a few of them, standing on the mantelpiece, the window sills, the occasional table. Each photograph was of a different person, and the one nearest to him – on the cabinet where she'd put his drink – showed the portrait of a stern young man dressed in army uniform.

  He reached out and picked up the photograph. The young man's eyes were intense, as if he were staring at something he didn't like. "Is this your boyfriend?"

  Judy laughed lightly, leaned back on the sofa. "No, but I'm flattered. That's my son." The joviality left her voice as she continued. "He died last year, in Afghanistan." Her face took on a strange expression, not of pain or regret, but of lazy contentment.

  "Oh." He put down the photo, straightening it. The young man looked nothing like her: different coloured eyes, dissimilar features, the suggestion of a mixed race background in
the dark skin tone.

  Jack's hands were shaking. "I'm sorry. I didn't know." How old was she, anyway? She looked young, but must be at least in her late forties, possible her early fifties. Firm body. Smooth skin, Clear eyes. How did she remain so flawless? "I didn't know you had a son. Or a husband."

  Her face darkened; just a shade, but it was there. "My husband's dead too, I'm afraid. Cancer. Five years ago." Again that well-fed look; like a cat after a bowlful of milk.

  Shit. Could this be going any worse? All thoughts of fulfilling his youthful fantasies left him; she was just a lonely, messed-up woman who wanted someone to talk to.

  "Don't look so worried. I'm not going to cry on your shoulder, or break down in front of you. I've done all my grieving." She uncrossed her legs. The sound of denim on denim was like a whisper in the quiet room.

  Jack was running out of things to say. He felt embarrassed that he'd been imagining some kind of tacky porn-mag scenario: fucking an old teacher he'd been in lust with years before. He wasn't a bad person; he really wasn't. Just a weak one.

  "Do you like music?" She stood and moved towards a silver boom box that stood on a book shelf at the front of the room. She made no sound as she stepped lightly across the floor, her feet barely making in impact on the soft pile of the carpet. She was like a ghost, a beautiful and untouchable phantom.

  "Yeah. I like most kinds." His voice was strained; he coughed gently, just to clear his throat.

  "How about some jazz? But not the weird kind. This is nice. Sexy."

  Did she really say that, or was he merely imagining it? Suddenly, the mournful sound of a horn cut through the air, snaring his attention. Judy turned around, her glass almost empty, and swished her hips. Once again she was smiling. Her teeth were very white – clearly she had a good (or expensive) dentist. She moved fluidly to the music, her body a visual form of poetry. Her full hips beckoned, her tight runner's thighs moved fractionally apart.