The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories, Volume Two

by James D. Jenkins

  The owner of number 16 was straightening up from behind his well mended fence, a handful of dead brown foliage in one hand.

  He was everything she disliked in a man. About thirty. Friendly smile, naive blue eyes, check shirt, folk-weave tie. He offered a loamy paw, having wiped it on the seat of his gardening trousers.

  ‘Just moved in then? My name’s Mike Taverner. Dwell here with my mama . . .’

  Half an hour later she broke away, her head spinning with a muddling survey of all the best shops in town and what they were best for. The fact that Mr Taverner was an accountant and therefore worked gentleman’s hours. That he was quite handy round the house and that anything he could do . . . But it was his subtly pitying look that was worst.

  Stuff him! If he thought that she was going to ask him round for coffee . . .

  She spent the day using Miss Forbes’ money. A huge hand-torch for some reason; a new transistor radio, satisfyingly loud; a check tablecloth; three new dresses, the most with-it that Southwold could offer. She ordered a new gas stove, and gained the promise that the Post Office would re-connect tomorrow­ . . .

  She still had to go home in the end.

  She put her new possessions on the kitchen table, all in a mass, and they just seemed to shrink to the size of Dinky Toys. The silence of the house pressed on her skin like a cold moist blanket.

  But she was firm. Went upstairs and made the bed in the front bedroom with the bay window. Then sat over her plate of bacon and eggs till it congealed solid, smoking fag after fag. The sounds that came out of the transistor radio seemed like alien code messages from Mars.

  She went to bed at midnight, clutching the tranny under one arm, and fags, matches, torch, magazines with the other.

  But before she went, she left the kitchen window open six inches. And a fresh plate of mince on the sill. It was like a hundred­-to-one bet on the Grand National . . .

  Boss left the house determined never to return, and picked up the devious trail through alley and garden, backyard and beach-shelter that marked the edge of his territory, smelling his old trademarks and renewing them vigorously. He stalked and killed a hungry sparrow in one alley; found some cinder-embedded bacon rind in another, but that was all. He was soon hungry again.

  By the time dusk was falling, and he rendezvoused at the derelict fishermen’s hut with his females, he was very hungry indeed. The memory of the black terror had faded; the memory of the raw mince grew stronger.

  He sniffed noses and backsides with one of his females in particular, a big scrawny tortoiseshell with hollow flanks and bulging belly. But he could not settle. The memory of the mince grew to a mountain in his mind; a lovely blood-oozing salty mountain.

  Around midnight, he got up and stretched, and headed out again along his well beaten track.

  Ten yards behind, weak and limping, the tortoiseshell followed. She followed him further than she had ever ventured before; she was far more hungry than him; her plight far more desperate. And she had smelt the rich raw meat on his breath . . .

  The creature felt them enter the house; now there were two sharp stones in its shoe.

  It had been doing well before they came. Sally had taken a Mogadon, and lay sleeping on her back, mouth open and snoring, a perfect prey. The creature was feeding gently on the first layer of her mind; lush memories of warmth and childhood, laughter and toys. First food in six months.

  Uneasy, it fed suddenly harder; too hard. Sally moaned and swam up slowly from her drugged sleep; sat up and knew with terror that something precious had been stolen from her; was missing, gone for ever.

  The creature did not let go of her, hung on with all its strength; it was so near to having her completely.

  Sally felt as cold as death under the heaped blankets; the sheets were like clammy winding-sheets, strangling, smothering. She fought her way out of them and reeled about the room, seeking blindly for the door in the dark. Warm, she must get warm or . . .

  The kitchen . . . gas stove . . . warm. Desperately she searched the walls for the door, in the utter dark. Curtains, windows, pictures swinging and falling under her grasping hands. She was crying, screaming . . . Was there no door to this black room?

  Then the blessed roundness of the door handle, that would not turn under her cold-sweating palm until she folded a piece of her nightdress over it. And then she was going downstairs, half-running, half-falling, bumping down the last few steps on her bottom, in the dim light of the street-lamp through the grimy curtains . . .

  The whole place rocked still in nightmare, because the creature still clung to her mind . . .

  Twice she passed the kitchen door, and then she found it and broke through, and banged the light on.

  Check tablecloth; suitcase; tweed coat. Sally’s eyes clutched them, like a drowning man clutches straws. The creature felt her starting to get away, struggling back to the real world outside.

  But much worse, the creature felt two pairs of eyes glaring; glaring hate. The tom-cat was crouched on the old wooden draining board, back arched. But the tom was not the worst. The she-cat lay curled on a pathetic heap of old rags and torn-up newspaper under the sink. And her hatred was utterly immovable. And there were five more small sharp stones now in the creature’s shoe. A mild squeaking came from within the she-cat’s protective legs. Little scraps of blind fur, writhing . . .

  Sally’s mind gave a tremendous heave and the creature’s hold broke. The creature could not stand the she-cat’s eyes, utterly rejecting.

  It fled back, back up the stairs, right to the boxroom, and coiled itself in the dark corner, between a high shelf and the blackened ceiling.

  It knew, as it lapsed into chaos, that there was one room in its house where it dared never go again.

  Back in the kitchen, Sally closed the door and then the window, and lit all the rings of the gas stove. The tom-cat shook itself and rubbed against her legs, wanting milk.

  ‘Kittens,’ said Sally, ‘kittens. Oh you poor thing.’

  But at that moment there was nothing in the world she wanted more than kittens. She put on a saucepan, and filled it to the brim with milk.

  She felt Boss stir on her knee towards dawn. She opened her eyes, and saw him on the windowsill, asking to go out.

  ‘All right,’ she said reluctantly. She opened the window. She knew now that he would come back. Besides, the purring heap of cat and kittens, now installed on a heap of old curtains in an armchair, showed no sign of wanting to move. She would not be alone . . .

  She left the window open. It was not a very cold night, and the room was now too hot if anything from the gas stove.

  She was wakened at eight, by Boss’s pounding savage claws on her lap. He made loud demands for breakfast.

  And he was not alone. There was a black-and-white female sitting washing itself on the corner of the table; and a white-and-ginger female was curled up with the mother and kittens, busy washing all and sundry. The aunties had arrived.

  ‘Brought the whole family, have you?’ she asked Boss sourly. ‘Sure there aren’t a few grandmas you forgot?’

  He gave a particularly savage purr, and dug his claws deeper into her legs.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘How would Tyne-Brand meat loaf do? With pilchards for starters?’

  By the time they had finished, the larder was bare. They washed, and Sally ate toast and watched them washing. She thought, I’m bonkers. Only old maids have cats like this. People will think I’m mad. The four cats regarded her with blandly friendly eyes. Somehow it gave her courage to remember the nightmare upstairs . . .

  Then the cats rose, one by one. Nudged and nosed each other, stretched, began to mill around.

  It reminded her of something she’d once seen; on telly somewhere.

  Lionesses, setting off to hunt. That was it. Lionesses setting off to hunt.

  But, for God’s sake, they’d had their breakfast . . .

  Boss went to the door and miaowed. Not the kitchen door; the door that led to th
e nightmare staircase. Mother joined him. And Ginger. And the black-and-white cat she’d christened Chequers.

  When she did not open that door, they all turned and stared at her. Friendly; but expectant. Compelling.

  My God, she thought. They’re going hunting whatever is upstairs. And inviting me to join in . . .

  They were the only friends she had. She went; but she picked up Boss before she opened the door. He didn’t seem to mind; he settled himself comfortably in her arms, pricking his ears and looking ahead. His body was vibrating. Purr or growl deep in his throat. She could not tell.

  The she-cats padded ahead, looked at the doors of the downstairs rooms, then leapt up the stairs. They nosed into everything, talking to each other in their prooky spooky language. They moved as if they were tied to each other and to her with invisible strands of elastic; passing each other, weaving from side to side like a cat’s cradle, but never getting too far ahead, or too far apart.

  They went from upstairs room to upstairs room, politely standing aside as she opened each door. Leaping on to dust-sheeted beds, sniffing in long-empty chamber-pots.

  Each of the rooms was empty; dreary, dusty, but totally empty. Sally wasn’t afraid. If anything, little tingling excitements ran through her.

  The cats turned to the staircase that led to the boxroom in the roof. They were closer together now, their chirrups louder, more urgent.

  They went straight to the door of the narrow room, with the yellow stained-glass window that was always sunshine.

  Waited. Braced. Ears back close to the skull.

  Sally took a deep breath and flung open the door.

  Immediately the cold came, the clammy winding-sheet cold of the night before. The corridor, the stairs twisted and fell together like collapsing stage scenery.

  She would have run; but Boss’s claws, deep and sharp in her arm, were realler than the cold and the twisting, like an anchor in a storm. She stood. So did the cats, though they crouched close to the floor, huddled together.

  Slowly, the cold and twisting faded.

  The cats rose and shook themselves, as after a shower of rain, and stalked one by one into the boxroom.

  Trembling, Sally followed.

  Again the sick cold and twisting came. But it was weaker. Even Sally could tell that. And it didn’t last so long.

  The cats were all staring at the ceiling at the far end; at a dark grey space between the heavy brickwork of two chimneys; between the ceiling and a high wooden shelf.

  Sally stared too. But all she could see was a mass of cobwebs; black rope-like strands blowing in some draught that came through the slates of the roof.

  But she knew that her enemy, the enemy who had stolen from her, was there. And for the first time, because the enemy was now so small, no longer filling the house, she could feel anger, red healthy anger.

  She looked round for a weapon. There was an old short-bristled broom leaning against the wall. She put down Boss and picked it up, and slashed savagely at the swaying cobwebs, until she had pulled every one of them down.

  They clung to the broomhead.

  But they were only cobwebs.

  Boss gave a long chirrup. Cheerful, pleased, but summoning. Slowly, in obedience, the three she-cats began to back out of the door, never taking their green eyes from the space up near the ceiling.

  Sally came last, and closed the door.

  They retired back to the kittens, in good order.

  Back in the boxroom, the creature was absolutely still. It had learned the bitter limitations of its strength. It had reached the very frontier of its existence.

  It grew wise.

  Back in the kitchen, there came a knock on the door.

  It was Mr Taverner. Was she all right? He thought he had heard screams in the night . . .

  ‘It was only Jack the Ripper,’ said Sally with a flare of newfound spirit. ‘You’re too late – he murdered me.’

  He had the grace to look woebegone. He had quite a nice lopsided smile, when he was woebegone. So she offered him a cup of coffee.

  He sat down, and the she-cats climbed all over him, sniffing in his ears with spiteful humour. Standing on his shoulders with their front paws on top of his head . . . He suffered politely, with his lopsided grin. ‘Have they moved in on you? Once you feed them, they’ll never go away . . . they’re a menace round Southwold, especially in the winter. I could call the RSPCA for you . . . ?’

  ‘They are my cats. I like cats.’

  He gave her a funny look. ‘They’ll cost you a bomb to feed . . .’

  ‘I know how much cats cost to feed. And don’t think I can’t afford to keep a hundred cats if I want to.’

  Again he had the grace to shut up.

  Things went better for Sally after that. Mike Taverner called in quite often, and even asked her to have dinner with his mother. Mrs Taverner proved not to be an aged burden, but a smart fifty-year-old who ran a dress-shop, didn’t discuss hysterectomies, and watched her son’s social antics with a wry long-suffering smile.

  The kittens grew; the house filled with whistling workmen; the Gas Board came finally to install the new cooker.

  And Sally took to sleeping on the couch of a little breakfast room just off the kitchen; where she could get a glimpse of sea in the mornings, and the cats came and went through the serving-hatch.

  She slept well, usually with cats coming and going off her feet all night. Sometimes they called sharply to each other, and there was a scurrying of paws, and she would waken sweating. That noise meant the creature from the boxroom was on the prowl.

  But it never tried anything, not with the cats around.

  And every day, Sally and the cats did their daily patrol into enemy territory. What Sally came to think of, with a nervous giggle, as the bearding of the boxroom.

  But the creature never reacted. The patrols became almost a bore, and pairs of cats could be heard chasing each other up and down the first flight of stairs, on their own.

  What a crazy life, Sally thought. If Mike Taverner dreamt what was going on, what would he say? Once, she even took him on a tour of the house, to admire the new decorations. Took him right into the boxroom. All the cats came too.

  The creature suffered a good deal from Mike’s elephantine soul and great booming male voice . . .

  But the boundary between victory and defeat is narrow; and usually composed of complacency.

  The last night started so happily. Mike was coming to dinner; well, he was better than nothing. Sally, in her newest dress and butcher’s apron, was putting the finishing touches to a sherry trifle. A large Scotch sirloin steak lay wrapped in a bloody package on the fridge, handy for the gas cooker.

  Sally had just nipped into the breakfast room to lay the table when she heard a rustling noise in the kitchen . . .

  She rushed back in time to see Boss nosing at the bloody packet.

  She should have picked him up firmly; but chose to shoo him away with a wild wave of her arms. Boss, panicking, made an enormous leap for the window. The sherry trifle, propelled by all the strength of his back legs, catapulted across the room and self-destructed on the tiled floor in a mess of cream and glass-shards a yard wide.

  Sally went berserk. Threw Boss out of the back door; threw Chequers after him, and slammed the window in Mother’s face, just as Mother was coming in.

  That only left the kittens, eyes scarcely open, crawling and squeaking in their basket. She would have some peace for once, to get ready.

  Maybe Mike was right. Too many cats. Only potty old maids had so many cats. RSPCA . . . good homes.

  She never noticed that the kittens had ceased to crawl and squeak and maul each other. That they grew silent and huddled together in one corner of their basket, each trying desperately to get into the middle of the heap of warm furry bodies . . .

  She scraped and wiped up the trifle. Made Mike an Instant Whip instead. In a flavour she knew he didn’t like. Well, he could lump it. Sitting round her kitchen all d
ay, waiting to have his face fed. Fancy living with that face for forty years . . . growing bald, scratching under the armpits of his checked shirt like an ape. He’d only become interested in her seriously when he heard about her money . . . Stuff him. Better to live alone . . .

  Mike was unfortunate to ring up at that point. He was bringing wine. Would Chateauneuf du Pape do? How smug he sounded; how sure he had her in his grasp.

  He made one of his clumsy teasing jokes. She chose to take it the wrong way. Her voice grew sharp. He whinged self-­righteously in protest. Sally told him what she really thought of him. He rang off in high dudgeon, implying he would never bother her again.

  Good. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Much better living on her own in her beautiful house, without a great clumsy corny man in it . . .

  But his rudeness had given her a headache. Might as well take an aspirin and lie down. She suddenly felt cold and really tired . . . sleep it off.

  Boss was crazy for the sirloin; Mother was very worked-up about her kittens; and the window-catch was old and rusted. Five minutes’ work had the window open. Mother made straight for her kittens and Boss made straight for the meat. Three heaves and he had the packet open, and the kitchen filled with the rich smell of blood. Ginger and Chequers appeared out of nowhere and Mother, satisfied her brood was safe, rapidly joined them in a baleful circle round the fridge.

  They were not aware of the creature, in their excitement. It was in the breakfast room with Sally, behind a closed door and feeding quietly.

  But Boss was infuriatedly aware of the other cats, as they stretched up the face of the fridge, trying to claw his prize out of his mouth. He sensed he would have no peace to enjoy a morsel. So, arching his neck magnificently to hold the steak clear of the floor, he leapt down, then up to the windowsill and out into the night.

  Unfortunately, it was one of those damp nights that accent every odour; and the faintest of breezes was blowing from the north towards the town-centre of Southwold. Several hungry noses lifted to the fascinating new scent.

  Within a minute, Boss knew he was no longer alone. Frantically he turned and twisted through his well-known alleyways. But others knew them just as well, and the scent was as great a beacon as the circling beams of Southwold’s lighthouse. Even the well-fed domestic tabbies, merely out for an airing, caught it. As for the hungry desperate ones . . .