A Book of Horrors

by Stephen King

  Alan felt a pain in his chest, and had to sit down to catch his breath.

  At work, sales continued to slump. Alan called a meeting for his staff. He told them to buck their ideas up. That everyone was counting on them. That he was trying his best to be harsh but fair, everyone could see him being harsh but fair, right? Some of them smiled, and promised Alan that they would indeed buck up, and a couple of them even seemed convincing.

  At home Alice would tell him that the barking was at its loudest in the afternoons. It’d start a little after lunchtime usually, and would continue throughout the day. The worst of it was that Bobby’s dog was incensed by it. He’d run around the house, yipping back in pointless fury. Alice said she could cope with one dog barking, maybe, at a pinch. But to have two in stereo was beyond her.

  The dog next door would settle down each evening. That was when the music came on. It was always Christmas music, but you could only ever tell which song it was by standing out in the front garden. That way you heard not only the beat, but could get the full benefit of the sleigh bells, the choir, the dulcet tones of Bing Crosby, the odd comical parp from Rudolf the Reindeer’s shiny red nose.

  They tried calling the police. The police took down their details. Said they’d drive by and see for themselves.

  One evening the neighbours played ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ seventy-four times straight in succession. Bing Crosby sang it. Bing sounded angry. Bing hated them and wanted them to suffer. When the song eventually segued into ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ Alan and Alice felt so relieved they almost cried.

  And in the daytime, Alice would tell Alan, when Bobby came home from school, as he did his homework and his chores, he’d be humming Christmas carols under his breath. She asked him to stop. She screamed at him to shut the hell up.

  At work, Alan was forced to call an emergency meeting. He had to use that word in the memo, ‘emergency’. He told his sales force to work harder. He begged them. Or else he’d be obliged to take punitive measures. He had to use that phrase in the follow-up memo, ‘punitive measures’. One or two openly laughed at him.

  Alice said she’d called the police again, and that they’d just said the same thing as before. So Alan called them. He explained the situation very calmly. The police took down his details. Said they’d drive by. Said they’d see for themselves.

  The neighbours were at last unpacking their belongings. Their front lawn was littered with cardboard boxes, sheets of plastic wrapping. The breeze would blow them over the fence. And each morning Alan would leave for work and walk through a flurry of Styrofoam and polystyrene balls.

  The dog continued to bark. Bobby’s dog stopped. Bobby’s dog couldn’t take it any more. He’d hide in the kitchen when the barking started and he’d whimper. He’d piss on the floor in fear. He’d throw up.

  Alice told Alan that he had to speak to the neighbours again. To go over there, knock on their door, demand an answer. He suggested they should do it together, that as a family they would more represent a united front. Bobby asked if he could come too, Bobby got very excited, and his parents said no, and Bobby got disappointed and a little cross.

  Alan and Alice walked to the neighbours’ house. The music playing was ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ again, but it wasn’t Bing this time, it was some other version, so that was good, that was all right.

  The welcome mat read WELCOME – WELCOME TO OUR HOME SWEET HOME! Neither Alan nor Alice wanted to tread on it. They stood in the porch and knocked and called through the letterbox. There was no reply. ‘We’re not giving in,’ Alice told Alan, and he agreed. ‘We’re not going home until we’ve got this straightened out.’

  But some hours later they had to.

  The police told them they should stop phoning them. What they were doing, they said, was harassment. Not only to the neighbours, but to the police receptionist. Their neighbours were fine, good people; they shouldn’t hate them just because they were different. ‘But different in what way?’ asked Alan, and he wasn’t angry, and he clearly wasn’t shouting, so he didn’t think he deserved the subsequent warning. ‘Just different.’

  Alan and Alice tried knocking on the doors of other people in the street. Neighbours they’d never said hello to, not in all those years. But no one was ever in.

  One evening Alan came home to find Bobby was in the front garden. He was playing in all the bubble wrap. ‘Look, Daddy,’ he said, ‘I can make it go pop!’ He was jumping on it, rolling around in it, setting off a thousand tiny explosions. He was laughing so much. Alan told him to get away from it, get inside the house. It wasn’t theirs, it was rubbish, get away. Bobby looked so hurt – but couldn’t he play in it, couldn’t he and Daddy play in it together? ‘It’s not safe,’ said Alan. ‘You stupid boy, you idiot. It isn’t clean.’

  And Bobby still looked hurt. His mouth hung down in a sad little pout. But then the pout became a scowl. His face contorted. It actually contorted. And slowly, Bobby raised his hand, he raised a single finger. He held it out defiantly at his father.

  That night Bobby wasn’t allowed to play golf on the Xbox.

  Alan and Alice slept wearing earplugs. But Alan thought he could still hear the music. He couldn’t be sure whether the thumping was the bass beat or his own heart.

  And he dreamed about the mannequin next door with her fake plastic body and tits and her fake plastic smile. ‘Oh, Barbara,’ he grunted one night, as he took her from behind, bending over like that, arse pointing up to the heavens, just asking for it. He liked to call her Barbara. With his heart thumping away like the drums of ‘Winter Wonderland’.

  Bobby still played in the garden. Alan would watch him from the window, catching pieces of polystyrene on his tongue like snow. He’d knock on the glass, try to get him to stop, but Bobby couldn’t hear, or wouldn’t hear, and he looked so happy, like an eight-year-old on Christmas morning. Tilting back his head, mouth wide open, the white specks of packaging floating down on to his face. Spitting them out, or swallowing them down, whichever way the fancy took him.

  Alice worked out that the barking next door stopped if no one made a sound. So they tried not to provoke the dog, they trod gently, tried not to walk on floorboard creaks, they kept the television on mute. They talked in whispers, if they talked at all.

  ‘Do you fancy a game of golf, champ?’ whispered Alan to Bobby one evening. ‘We haven’t played golf in ages.’ And Bobby shrugged. ‘You can be Tiger Woods if you like,’ said Alan. And so they played golf together, one last time, and Bobby didn’t try very hard, and still won anyway. ‘We can play real golf one day, if you like,’ said Alan. ‘Real golf, not just this fake version, the real one in the fresh air. We can go and have a pint together in a pub. We can be friends.’

  At work, Old Man Ellis summoned Alan to a meeting. It was just the two of them, in that airless little office. Ellis told Alan that if he couldn’t handle his staff, he’d find someone who could.

  One night Alan came home with a good idea. The idea had been buzzing around his head all afternoon, it had kept him happy. ‘Let’s give them a taste of their own medicine!’ he cried, and he didn’t even bother to whisper, let’s see what they make of that! And he and Alice got together all their favourite CDs, and they played them in the hi-fi and turned the volume up as far as it would go. Alice played her Abba, Alan his Pink Floyd. And next door went crazy – the dog began barking like nobody’s business, the retaliatory Christmas music was deafening. But it didn’t matter, it was fun, Alan and Alice rocking out to ‘Voulez-Vous’ and ‘Comfortably Numb’.

  Even Bobby joined in, and Bobby was grinning, and Alan hadn’t seen Bobby smile for such a long time, and his heart melted, it did. ‘Can I play some music too?’ asked Bobby, and Alan laughed, and said, ‘Sure!’ And Bobby played something his parents didn’t recognise, and it had a few too many swear words in it for either to approve – but they were all jumping up and down to it, and Alan said, ‘I’m not sure you can dance to it, Bobby, but it’s got
a good beat!’ And for some reason they all found that simply hilarious.

  At last, of course, they had to give up; they had no more music to play; they were exhausted. And it hadn’t done any good, Bing Crosby was screaming out apoplectic rage, and their own dog was a quivering wreck of piss and sick. But as they got into bed that night, Alice said to Alan, ‘Did you recognise it? That was our song. Do you remember? That was the song we used to play, back when we first met.’ And Alan didn’t think they’d ever had a song, they’d never been that romantic, had they? But she kissed him, and it was on the lips – it was very brief, but it was sweet – and then turned over and went to sleep. Alan lay there in the dark and wondered which song she had been referring to. Probably one of the ones by Abba.

  The next morning, beneath the sea of cardboard and plastic and bubble wrap crap, Alan saw that there were now holes in the lawn. Craters even. It was like a battlefield. And he supposed that last night the neighbours had let the dog out. And that afternoon, at work, he sacked three of his team force. He called an emergency meeting, and sacked them at random. One of them even cried. ‘But I’ve got a family,’ she said. ‘Tough,’ said Alan. ‘We’ve all got fucking families.’

  Alice phoned Alan at work. She never did that. ‘Are you coming home soon?’ she asked.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s the dog. He’s very ill.’

  ‘Well, he’s always a bit ill, isn’t he?’

  ‘This is different. Oh God, he got out of the house. I don’t know how, but he escaped, and he’s just crawled his way back and … Come home soon.’

  Alan explained he was really very busy, and that he didn’t know much about dogs, and there was nothing he could do to help. But he still left work early, he drove back as quickly as he could.

  By now Bobby was home from school. He was crying. ‘Oh, Sparky,’ he said. ‘Sparky, please don’t die.’ And all at once he was an eight year old again, Alan’s special little boy, and he loved him so much, and he pulled him into a hug. And Bobby clung to him, and sobbed all over his suit. ‘Please, Daddy, don’t let Sparky die.’

  ‘I won’t,’ said Alan. ‘I won’t. What did the vet say? You have called the vet?’ And both Alice and Bobby looked at him blankly. Alan felt cross. ‘Well, why not?’

  ‘Look at him,’ said Alice.

  The dog was doing its best to stand on all fours, but the paws kept sliding beneath him. At first Alan thought it was simple weakness – but no, it was odder than that, the paws themselves looked so shiny and slippery, they couldn’t get purchase on the kitchen tiles. The dog was trying hard not to look at anyone, it almost seemed to be frowning with human irritation – I know how to stand, don’t worry, I’ll puzzle it out in a moment. Around him lay clumps of fur, big handfuls of it. There was a pool of liquid that looked a bit like cream but smelled much worse.

  Then the dog sneezed – a peculiar little squeak like a broken toy, and it almost made Alan laugh. And it was too much for the dog, its legs shot out from underneath him, his belly slumped to the floor in one big hilarious pratfall. And the dog opened its mouth, as if to give some punchline to the gag, and instead retched out a little more of that cream.

  ‘They did this to him,’ said Alice. ‘They poisoned him.’

  ‘We can’t know that.’

  ‘Fuckers,’ said Bobby. ‘Dirty shitty little fuckers, they did this. Pesky nasty motherfucks.’ And he glared at his parents, and that eight-year-old innocence was lost again, and Alan thought it was probably lost for good.

  ‘Hey, boy,’ said Alan, bending down towards the dog. ‘Hey, champ. How are you doing? Don’t you worry, champ, everything will be fine.’

  And the dog’s eyes bulged wide, in utter confusion, and it retched again. But this time there was no mere trickle of cream. It poured out, thick and fast, as if some hose inside had just been turned on. No wonder the eyes bulged – there was more liquid here than there was room inside the dog’s body, surely! – it was as if each and every one of his innards had been diluted into one same sticky mulch and were now being pumped out of him on to the floor, coming out now in waves, lapping against the dog’s head and getting stuck in the remaining scraps of fur, lapping against the open eyes that stared on beadily in vague disinterest, the contents of his entire body swimming lazily past him and his not even showing the inclination to care.

  There was a pinkish quality to the cream now, and Alan thought that might be the blood – but the creamy beige flattened the pink out, it became a beige so lurid it was hardly beige at all. And oh God, it wasn’t even liquid, not really, it was like a syrup, soft and smooth, and the dog was now quivering in it, seemed to be supported by it and floating upon it, this syrup so thick you could stand a dessert spoon up in it. Clean, and pure, and hard like plastic.

  The dog gave one last shudder, as if trying to shake out the last of its body’s contents; a few last drops out, all done? Good.

  ‘Sparky,’ said Bobby.

  ‘Now, we have to be brave,’ said Alan.

  ‘Fuckers,’ said Bobby.

  ‘Now, now.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alice. ‘Fuckers.’

  Alan opened his mouth. He wasn’t sure why, to say something, what? Something conciliatory possibly, or just some sort of eulogy for a dead pet, something suitably touching for the circumstances. His family looked at him expectantly. ‘What,’ he asked, ‘do you want to do?’

  ‘Revenge,’ said Bobby. ‘We’ll get revenge. We’ll poison them, we’ll poison their dog. We’ll … we’ll put shit through their letterbox.’

  ‘Right,’ said Alan, ‘right, or we could …’

  Alice looked at him. Stared at him, in fact. ‘What, Alan?’ she said, and it was so soft, that was the dangerous thing. ‘Well? Well, tell us. What can we do?’

  He tried to think of an answer to that. She waited. Give her her due, she waited. Then she tutted with exasperation and stormed out of the room.

  Alan and Bobby watched the dog for a little while. Even now the fur was still falling from its body, each hair a rat deserting a ship that had already sunk. Alan thought he should close the dog’s eyes, if only for Bobby’s sake, but he didn’t. Instead, ‘Come on,’ he said, awkwardly, reaching out to put his arm around his son, then thinking better of it. ‘Come on, let’s leave poor old Sparky in peace.’ They left the kitchen, and Alan closed the door behind them.

  Alice was waiting for them both in the sitting room. ‘Here,’ she said.

  She handed Alan a little cellophane bag, the same she’d use to pack his lunch for work and Bobby’s lunch for school. Inside nestled what looked like three sausages, small and thin, with knobbles on – and they were three turds, Alice’s turds, and they looked so dainty, they looked like polite little lady turds.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Alan.

  And Bobby grinned at that, a wolfish grin that showed his teeth. ‘Yeah, all right!’ he said, and left the room. He returned a minute or two later, still all smiles, his dog was dead but everything was okay now because they had a plan. And he was carrying his own offering in his bare hands, proud, like a hunter, like a child who had now proved himself a man – look upon the fruits of my labours! – and it was a big greasy hot dog of a turd, and Alan realised that Bobby was really no longer just a little boy.

  ‘You expect me to put these through their letterbox, just like that?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Alice. ‘We need to tell them why. We need them to know we know.’ She went to her desk, found an envelope, a nice big padded one. She wrote on it in bold felt tip: DOG KILLERS.

  She took her bag of chipolatas dangling from Alan’s still outstretched hand, dropped it inside; Bobby dropped his inside as well.

  ‘Now we’re just waiting for your contribution,’ said Alice.

  ‘Don’t you think we’ve got enough?’

  ‘This is a present from the entire family.’

  So Alan went to the toilet. He took the envelope with him. He thought of his wife and son outsi
de the door waiting for him. It was too much pressure. He couldn’t perform like that. He strained and strained, he honestly tried. But nothing popped out. He opened the envelope, looked at the turds inside for moral support, at the pioneering turds that would be forebears to his own turds. It did no good.

  He flushed away an empty bowl.

  ‘All done?’ asked Alice as he emerged.

  ‘Yes,’ he lied.

  And his family nodded at him grimly. ‘Then,’ said Bobby, ‘it’s time.’

  The neighbours’ house was actually quiet when he stepped outside. It was too early for the Christmas music, and the dog was taking a break from barking. It was peaceful, and Alan almost believed this was a joke, that nothing really had happened, that Barbara and Eric still lived there, and all was well.

  He wondered if he were being watched as he walked up the driveway. By them, his enemies – and by them, his family – both sides watching his progress secretly from behind curtains. He tried to hold the envelope as nonchalantly as possible, as if it wasn’t the sole reason for his paying a visit, as if, with his pet dog dead, he now wanted to take his pet envelope for walkies instead.

  The sun was already setting as Alan reached the front door, and that was peculiar.

  For once he didn’t want to attract attention. One simple delivery, and he was done. Gently, very gently, he pushed open the flap of the letterbox. He bent down to it, he peered through into the house – but there was nothing to see, it was dark. Pitch-dark, and Alan got the sudden thought that it was from inside the house that the night was leaking.

  He felt a slight draught from it. He shivered, looked back. The light was almost gone already, get it over with. He measured the envelope against the letterbox, and it was a perfect fit, the right size exactly, and he balanced it there, began to feed it in.

  And then from the other end he felt a tug.

  At first he thought he’d just hit an obstruction, he prepared to adjust the angle so he could push it through more easily – but then he felt it again, a definite tug – there was something waiting behind that door, and it’d taken hold of the envelope, it was pulling it in.