The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2003, Volume 14

by Stephen Jones

  “What’s a child doing in a film like this?” Leonard countered.

  “I’m sure I don’t know. I didn’t bring them.”

  “I hope you aren’t saying I did.”

  The lobby doors slammed behind the intruder. “Disgraceful. Shouldn’t be allowed,” the woman muttered to her companion, and Leonard was uncertain if she meant the film. She should. When the combination of her commentary and the film grew intolerable, he left the auditorium.

  At least he had time to walk home, and not much else to do. As he admitted himself to his flat he heard panting, no doubt his own. He held his breath, then gripped his mouth with a hand that smelled of the brass doorknob. There was a sound – a scuttling, a stirring of claws – at the end of the hall.

  He found the maker of the spasmodic noise on the kitchen table: half an earthworm. He scooped it into the dustpan with the orange plastic brush and shook it out of the couple of inches of kitchen window he always left open at the top, since the sash would budge no further. Could a bird have struggled in through the gap? Perhaps it was still in his rooms. Searching hadn’t rid him of a sense that something was by the time he had to leave.

  The day had grown hotter, or he had. He arrived at the school flapping the armpits of his shirt, and once he’d donned his orange coat, its too. He desisted when children began to run or skip or amble to the gates. “You’ll want to be off and get changed,” he said to some, and told others “I’ll bet you’d like to go to the baths.” When Polly’s mother led her to the kerb, having parked so far away that the source of the incessant yapping was invisible, he said “How did you like Miss Jennings, Polly?”

  “She was nice. She gave me a sweet for getting all my sums right,” Polly said as her eyelashes rendered a blink more dramatic. “How did you know who my teacher is?”

  “We know all about little girls, don’t we, Mrs Marsh?” When that earned him the faintest of smiles he said “I know who teaches your year, that’s all. I was saying to your mam, when I was your age I had a dog.”

  “About her age.”

  “Fair enough, about.” Leonard was starting to find conversation with the woman rather a task. “They last longer than a year, most dogs.”

  “What was his name,” Polly had already begun to ask, “or was he a she?”

  Leonard found he didn’t know. “How about yours?”

  “His name’s Tiger.”

  “Because he’s like a prawn, is that?”

  Polly dealt him a pitying look. “Because he’s striped.”

  Leonard supposed the dog was. “I should go to him before he does a mischief,” he said, and had an impression too momentary to grasp that he was talking, or ought to be talking, about himself.

  In the morning he was wakened by sunlight on his face. He should have been up by the time the sun reached his pillow. He twisted under the blankets to grope for the bedside clock, and dislodged an object from the foot of the bed. It struck the floor with a soft thud. As he clutched at the edge of the mattress and leaned out, he found he was expecting to see an old lost toy from his childhood. Lying on the shabby carpet, stiff legs outstretched and tiny claws splayed wide, was a dead sparrow.

  At least that explained the worm, he thought. The bird must have dropped it and then become trapped in the apartment. He loaded the small corpse onto the dustpan and shovelled it onto the back doorstep for later burial, then hurried to do as little as he absolutely had to in the bathroom.

  “Overslept,” he panted at Miss Devine, not that she seemed eager to know. “Too fond of my bed,” he told the first of the parents and children he escorted across the road. “Maybe I’m starting my second childhood. You can rely on me in future,” he assured them, and was interrupted by a yapping that claimed all their attention. “Why, it’s pretty Polly and her stripy friend,” he cried. “Is he going to school as well?”

  “I just want him to see where I go.”

  “He’ll have plenty of chances, Polly,” her mother said. “I’m sure he’ll be with us longer than you’re at this school.”

  Leonard wondered why that should be accompanied by a frown at him, then understood. “That’s right, Polly. I didn’t mean yesterday they live only a couple of years. They grow up with you, do dogs.”

  “Have you thought what yours was called yet?”

  “Flea,” he said, and with further inspiration “Because he was made of them.”

  “Not really.”

  “No, just seemed to be,” Leonard said, increasingly unsure of the truth.

  Polly’s mother talked to Miss Jennings until the bell signalled the end of fun – that was how Leonard remembered it, at any rate – and then she and sloppily striped Tiger made for him. “No tears, then,” he said.

  “Should there be?”

  “I’d never want any, if that’s what you mean. I just thought, you know, new school and all that, having to make new friends . . .”

  “She’s good at telling who her friends are.”

  “I’m sorry if I made her worried for her best one. I didn’t think.”

  “It takes more than that to upset her. When she is there’s usually a very good reason.”

  “I’m glad. I was wrong about my dog, by the way. I called him Flea because he used to run away.”

  “Why would he do that, Mr Bailey?”

  He’d only said it hoping for a laugh. “Things do when you’re my age,” he said.

  On returning home he found the doormat scattered with letters for Mr Flanagan and a purple envelope addressed to himself. It contained a birthday card premature by a week. The card depicted an unbalanced man with crosses in his eyes and bubbles spiralling around his head, and was from Pat, Leonard’s next-door neighbour from his life on the other side of town, whom he’d taken at first sight for a man. He propped it on the mantel-piece above the dusty gas fire and took the envelope to the kitchen bin – or rather, as far as the kitchen door, which stuck. A soft object was blocking it from the far side. He threw his weight against the door, which dragged the obstruction out of the way, all except one sodden feather. It was the dead sparrow.

  How thin would anything have had to be in order to climb with the bird over the top of the sash? The corpse must have been flung into the room, and the only culprit who came to mind was Mr Flanagan. Leonard grabbed the letters from the mat and bore them into the atmosphere of stale cheap smoke, but no amount of pounding on the unpainted door brought an answer. He tramped downstairs and shovelled the bird and its feather into a binliner, and scrubbed the linoleum before laying the package to rest in the weedy flowerbed alongside the concrete of the back yard. Having failed to close the sash, he stalked out of the house.

  His anger fetched him up at the library where he used to work, a windowless white bunker guarded by the remains of young trees. A uniformed man stood reading a small newspaper outside the electronic arches that raised the alarm if anything was pilfered. While Leonard didn’t recognise the guard, Mr Bloore was behind the counter. Leonard had grown to dislike the librarian as much as Mr Bloore had disliked him for chatting so much to the children rather than simply warning them to take care of books. There were considerably fewer of those than there had been in Leonard’s time, not to mention bookcases, and no sign of Mr Flanagan. Nevertheless the experience of being a member of Mr Bloore’s public amused Leonard, and he sat down to wait for a newspaper.

  Eventually someone even older than himself finished with the Telegraph. The government proposed a curfew not only for children convicted of wrongdoing, Leonard read, but also for their parents or guardians, who would have to stay home with them. If only all children were like Polly and his other favourites, he thought – not like the pair of boys no more than twelve years old who were giggling at the display on an Internet terminal. He raised his head to tut at them, but the sound he unleashed was louder and less restrained. “You shouldn’t be watching that,” he protested, hot-cheeked. “Nobody should.”

  Mr Bloore limped over, every step sendi
ng quivers through his face, a fat pink egg hairless except for eyebrows. “What’s all the noise about?” he demanded, and with very little less hostility “It’s Leonard Bailey, isn’t it? What brings you here?”

  “The same thing I’m paid to do, seems like,” Leonard was provoked into retorting. “Seeing after kids. Those two ought to be at school, and don’t you have to keep an eye on what they’re looking at?”

  “Please don’t presume to tell me my job, Leonard.” Mr Bloore raised his voice for the last word as though reminding a child of its age. “These two young gentlemen have a perfect right to be here, though I would ask them to be a trifle quieter. They’re researching a wildlife project for their schoolwork.”

  “That’s what they call it, is it?” Leonard said wildly, and saw that the screen was indeed now exhibiting only a dog. “There was a woman there before,” he insisted, and whispered “I’ll tell you what they were up to if you like.”

  “You’ve said quite enough already, a good deal more than enough. If you continue in front of these children I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  “They’re trying to trick you, can’t you see that? Dogs aren’t wildlife, they’re pets. You wouldn’t put books on dogs under wildlife.”

  “That’s all. More than all,” Mr Bloore said and turned to the uniformed guard, who had mooched to him. “Will you remind Mr Bailey where the door is, Harold? He’s disturbing other people.”

  “They ought to be disturbed. You ought. Can’t you see what they’re up to?” Leonard was shouting by now, having shrugged away from the guard’s descending grasp. When the boys began to giggle harder he lurched at them, then veered doorwards. He had to restrain himself from striking out at the electronic arch to trigger the alarm.

  Some of his fury had its roots in the notion that Mr Flanagan might be back at the house and up to more of his senile mischief. Leonard panted home and shouted his neighbour’s name. It roused only an echo of the end of itself, or did he hear a surreptitious movement? He followed his voice up the stairs, but even bruising his knuckles on the man’s door brought no response. Wheezing with the threat of having to inhale smoke of which the air was giving him a taste, Leonard slammed his own door as if that could communicate his anger. As he found himself wondering if the little grave he’d dug had been tampered with, he strode along the hall. He was unlocking the back door when a kitten darted out from under the sink and across the yard to leap over the wall with a screech.

  He hadn’t time to see how much of its grey it owed to cobwebs, tatters of which had trailed from its hiding place almost to the door – he knew only that it had been terrified by whatever had been done to it. If it had squeezed through the gap above the sash it would have been able to clamber out again. It must have been shoved through by Mr Flanagan in an attempt to make trouble for Leonard, just because Leonard had asked him not to smoke in the hall for the sake of other people’s health. Leonard locked the back door and leaned in the doorway opposite the stairs to be sure of catching Mr Flanagan when he came home.

  All that earned him was an aching shoulder, and another, and an accumulation of rage. He waited until it was nearly time to set off for his patrol, then longer still, and had to fling himself out of the house in more of a fury than ever. He did his best to calm down before reaching the school, but the children’s voices seemed painfully shrill even when they greeted him. How would Tiger’s yapping sound? Leonard was close to wishing that Polly’s mother had already taken her away. But here they came across the schoolyard, and the dog was silenced by a chewed ball almost bigger than its mouth. “That’s more like it,” Leonard said as the seven-year-old smiled at him. “That’s the Polly I want to see.”

  “How many have you got?”

  “She’s quick, isn’t she?” Since her mother went no farther towards agreement than to raise her frown by a fraction of an inch, he said “Just you. Just room for one.”

  “And your dog.”

  “Yes, I started to tell you about him, didn’t I, only he wasn’t called Flea.” It took Leonard a moment to realise he’d somehow convinced himself he could leave it at that. “He was called,” he said as it came to him, “Frog.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’d always give me a jump. Because he was always jumping up, I mean.” Since that appeared not to have made an impression, he added “And he used to bring me things like yours does. Slept with me as well.”

  “Can Tiger, mummy?”

  “Certainly not.” Mrs Marsh’s frown spread to the skin around her eyes and wrinkled her lips as well. “That’s a nasty idea. Dirty,” she said so forcefully that Tiger almost neglected to retrieve the ball she’d made him drop.

  Leonard told himself her vehemence hadn’t been aimed at him, but now he was confused as well as furious. Having abandoned his regalia in the office, he marched home. The front door wasn’t fully open when he released the shout that had been welling up in him. “Mr Flanagan.”

  “I’m here in front of you,” his burly red-faced neighbour complained, emitting a noseful of smoke that turned his extensive moustache even greyer. “What’s more, I’ve a headache.”

  “Why would you have one of those?”

  “The state of the world, for a start. They’ll be telling us next we can’t smoke in the street,” Mr Flanagan said, and scowled more fiercely at him. “What are you trying to get at?”

  “I thought it might be yowling that made your head hurt.”

  “Not yowling, yelling. That was you. Why, what have you been hearing that I’ve not?”

  “Someone’s been putting creatures in my rooms, as maybe you might know.”

  “Have you been having a bit of a tipple?”

  “I don’t drink or smoke either.”

  “Maybe you should,” Mr Flanagan said and gave him a sly yellow-toothed grin. “Putting them in your rooms, eh? Even Mr Taggart who lived there before you didn’t think up that excuse.”

  “For what?”

  “For keeping a dog when he knew none of us was let. Silly bugger used to hide it when the landlord came, in his bed or in a cupboard under the sink or in his dirty washing and God alone knows where else. Only it got to keeping me awake, worse than a woman for yapping, so I had to tell on him. The landlord paid him a visit unexpected like, and he still tried to hide the thing under some towels in the bath. Know what old Taggart did when he was told he’d have to go if the dog didn’t? Kicked it to death and then had a heart attack that finished him off. That’s what comes of losing your temper.”

  “Sounds more like it came of you telling tales out of school.”

  “You want to grow up, old boy. You aren’t going to get me livid. There’s a nag owes me some money,” Mr Flanagan said, and paused to light a cigarette from the one he threw out of the house and suck on it before pushing past him.

  His nonchalance didn’t fool Leonard. What might he have interrupted that Mr Flanagan had been up to so close to Leonard’s flat? Once the fading of his rage gave Leonard his sight back he fumbled the door open and searched the rooms. The absence of evidence that anyone or anything had sneaked or been sneaked in didn’t satisfy him. Not least because Mr Flanagan had denied all knowledge, Leonard was certain that more was to come. He hurried to the nearest fish and chip shop to bring home a greasy dinner, and searched the rooms again before he ate it, one eye alert for the kitchen window, one for the hall.

  Nothing had happened by the time the apartment set about growing dim. The thought of sitting all night in the kitchen enraged him further. He left the kitchen door wide open and sat opposite his birthday card, watching the television with the sound turned down. Mr Flanagan’s was louder, causing a slapstick comedian to utter a political speech, after which a newsreader broke into an Irish comic song. At least the noise overhead meant Mr Flanagan was there – or could he have left the set on to cover up some surreptitious activity? Leonard kept lurching into the kitchen to surprise him, but vainly. Eventually he tired of that – tired enough for b
ed. He manhandled his mattress into the hall and, having wedged the kitchen door with it, dumped blankets and pillow on it, then himself.

  The switch for the kitchen light was out of reach. He reared up and clawed at the switch as a preamble to stumbling over the pillow and twisting around like a dog before dropping to all fours and then none to drag the bedclothes over himself. He tried not to be aware of the floor through the mattress and the dim walls towering too high above him, but more than these kept him sleepless. Hours seemed to ooze by while he listened for hints that he was about to be visited. Whenever sleep began to settle on him he jerked awake, seized by an impression that something had crawled to him so as to nuzzle or otherwise touch his face. In the depths of the night he was only half aware of floundering through the apartment to peer in the bath and the washing bin and the cupboard under the sink and his improvised bed, into which he then subsided. It was even darker when he struggled free of the start of a nightmare that had required no more than an instant of sleep. “No more spiders. Don’t bring me anything,” he mouthed and to some extent said. “It’s not my birthday till next week.”

  The words roused his nerves, and realising what he’d had in mind didn’t help. He’d been about Polly’s age when he’d wakened in the early hours to find his mother on her hands and knees beyond the bed, doing her best not to disturb him by leaving presents there, though it had been not his birthday but Christmas. If his mother were to creep now to the foot of the bed or to the pillow, what would the darkness be concealing? He wished he hadn’t thought that – wished he hadn’t let her see how upset the knowledge that there was no Santa Claus had left him. He tugged the sheet over his face to fend off a sensation that felt like the imminence of cobwebs or of a sprinkling of earth. His head was crawling with unwanted thoughts, and he found he was unable to close his eyes until the walls set about collecting the dawn.