Merchants of Menace

by Joan Aiken

  Free. She felt free again, with the tangy wind plastering her hair to her cheek, and her hands thrust deep into the secret warmth of her coat pockets. Free from Bevis and his sulky tantrums, his half-hearted desires and his self-doubting. But what was going to happen now; what was going to happen when they went home after next week? She’d hoped that the holiday would have given them a fresh start, but would they ever—now—be able to pick up even the flat, untrammeled, undemanding routine of the house and their jobs…?

  What was that?

  She stopped and stared up at the swaying spikes of grass fringing the crest of the sand hills on her left.

  Something had moved up there: a dark shape had bobbed up from behind the dunes, in a flickering instant, caught in the corner of her eye!

  Something—someone—watching her? Following her along the far side of the sand hills?

  She waited a few moments, then set off again, quickening her pace. And then the rain came down again.

  Whatever—whoever—it was must now be behind me at the speed I was walking, she thought. And in any event, she was now more than halfway to Top End. Up the next rise in the road, and around the next bend, she would be able to see the pub and the shop; to see and be seen. There was no comfort for her in the straggling line of bungalows on the dunes, with their dead-eyed windows. And to go toward them meant ap­proaching whoever was following her. Better anything than that. Keep going. Keep whatever it was behind her. She broke into a run.

  On the next rise she could see her goal, and there she dared to pause and force herself to turn slowly and look back along the line of dunes, silhouetted against a pinky-grey band of sky below the black overcast

  Of course, there was no one there. But she went on even faster, breaking into a run, and not just because the rain was now sluicing down, soaking her under the sodden mackintosh, but because she sensed, again, the watching eyes. And they were fingering her back.

  Naomi didn’t dare turn again—and above all she didn’t dare to turn quickly—because then she would surprise her watcher­ and then she would see him!

  At length, soaked and sobbing with relief, she opened the door of the lean-to shop, and the tiny clang of the bell made the woman look up from behind the counter, slack-mouthed.

  “Why! You’re wet through. And you look as if you’ve seen a ghost!”

  Naomi found a smile to put on, and bought a few things she had no need of, inconsequential things: a pot of chocolate spread, which she detested; some matches; a packet of sweet biscuits; salt. Then she found that she had brought no money with her.

  The woman had been joined by her husband, now, and Naomi could feel them staring at her as she stood with her head bowed in the middle of the tiny shop, clutching her purchases, while the rain roared down on the sloping glass roof above.

  “You don’t look well to me, love,” said the woman; and to her husband: “She don’t look well, and it isn’t fit to turn a dog out. Get the van and drive the young lady back to her place. You know where it is.”

  It was a blessed relief to go back in the van. The man didn’t say much, and Naomi avoided looking toward the sand hills. He put her off at the gate, and said she could drop the money in at the shop next time she was by. Naomi thanked him, and ran through the rain to the door.

  Dusk was closing in above the overcast, and she nearly trod on the thing that lay on the step.

  It was a wild bouquet of daisies, rose hips, and hawthorn, mixed with waxy leaves of laurel, all neatly tied together with a strip of bass. It signified nothing to her, so she pushed it aside with her foot.

  As soon as she had closed the door behind her, Naomi sensed that something was wrong. She heard Bevis moving about in the small bedroom; he dropped something on the floor and swore savagely so that she should hear.

  “Bevis—what are you doing, darling?”

  No answer. And he came out before she could reach the bed­room door, brushing past her, sullen-faced, and into the kitchen.

  Oh, God, she thought. He’s off in one of his tantrums again. What have I said? What have I done?

  She followed him. He was filling a kettle of water at the sink, and, with a sick, numbed feeling, she saw that his hands were shaking. He was going through the motions of making a cup of tea, but she knew it was a meaningless performance, put on for her sake.

  But why…?

  Go carefully. Ease the bitterness from him gently. Don’t tempt the flood that could engulf us both in more acrimony.

  She took off her coat. “It wasn’t a very successful trip to the shop,” she said. “I forgot the things we really need, and got myself soaked.”

  He slammed the kettle on the stove and lit the burner with the third match, cursing the two that broke in his hasty fingers. Then he took up his stand with his back to her, arms akimbo, waiting for it to boil.

  Wearily, she sat down at the table. It was nearly dark out­ side, and the rain had settled down to a steady drizzle that promised to last all night. She shivered in her damp dress.

  “What’s the matter, Bevis?” she asked dully.

  No reply.

  When the kettle gave a tinny whistle he slopped hot water into the teapot and poured himself a cup. She watched him carry it to the door and pause there. Then she looked down at her fingers and waited for it; when he was in this kind of mood, he could never resist an exit line.

  “You must think I’m a complete cretin!” he snarled, and without waiting for her to answer, walked down the corridor. The door of the front room slammed behind him.

  Hold on, that was it. Hold on with both hands and let some time go past. She sat for a while, making a blank in her mind against the hurt and the emptiness; then she changed her clothes and began to prepare their supper, standing at the sink, where she could see her face in the streaming, dark window pane, and it seemed to her that the rain made tears down her reflected cheeks.

  When it was done, she went out into the passage. “Bevis—supper’s ready!” Her voice was as calm and matter-of-fact as she could make it; and when he didn’t reply or come out, she walked slowly down the passage, though she had no intention of going into that dreadful room.

  “Bevis—can’t you hear me?”

  The door of the small bedroom was open, and she knew that he had staged it this way—for her to see.

  His suitcase lay on the bed, bulging and strapped.

  Then he was standing there, watching her. He must have been waiting behind the door of the front room with his hand poised to open it at the sound of her footsteps hesitating and stopping.

  “Tomorrow,” he growled. “Tomorrow, we’re getting out of here. And we’d go tonight, if there was a bus.”

  “Why…why?” Naomi shook her head in dazed bewilderment.

  “Why?...you innocent-faced little...” She saw him coming at her, and she shrank away against the wall. He reached her in two strides, and then his hand was cupping her chin, forcing her head back hard against the wall. His face was close to hers, so that she could smell the stale tobacco on his breath.

  “Bevis...please…you’re hurting me!”

  “Hurt?” His spittle splashed her face. And then the rambling abuse: the torrent of reproaches mouthed with all the fury of an inadequate personality exploding under the stress of a massive obsession. She cowered back against the wall, eyes closed, willing herself away from there.

  Suddenly, shockingly, the burden of his complaint came through to her.

  It concerned—unbelievingly—a man. A lover. Her lover!

  “Bevis, you must be crazy!”

  “Don’t lie. I’ve seen you together!”

  A great calm settled over her, She stared at him and shook her head. “No, Bevis.”

  “Down there on the beach!” he shouted. “You weren’t alone all those times. While I was up here on my own, you were with your fancy boy!”

  Dully, she raised her hand and dragged his from her face. “No, you’re not mad, Bevis,” she said bitterly. “You’re just
a child who’s never grown up. Your imagination—”

  And then all her strength was cut away from under her; destroyed in the instant by his next spluttering words:

  “I saw you together today! He followed you to the village!”

  No defense now; no protesting. She was face-to-face again with the horror of the afternoon; her secret imaginings dragged out and dressed before her eyes; a ghoul with a turnip head and scarecrow rags brought to life. She saw again the thing on the sand hills, and felt the watching eyes that probed her back.

  “Yes, I saw him. The big, handsome boy from next door. You like them like that, don’t you?”

  Unresisting, as his hand slashed her face. Uncaring of the hurt. Falling down the wall with the taste of blood in her mouth when he struck her with his clenched fist And, through it all, his voice screaming at her:

  “You like them big and tough, don’t you?”

  Lying with her cheek against the cold floorboards with his feet inches from her eyes. Watching as they turned and went into the small bedroom. And when he came out he was carrying his case.

  He walked past her, and out of the front door, slamming it behind him. A few moments later, she thought she heard him cry out to her, but surely it must have been her imagining.

  She lay in the dark passage while an age went past, listening to the million tiny creaks of the woodwork, the wayward sound pattern of the rain, the bass roll of the breakers on the shore below the sand hills.

  He wasn’t coming back.

  Naomi got up and switched on the passage light. The door of the front room was still open; lowering her eyes so that she wouldn’t have to see inside, she pulled it close.

  Alone. She was alone.

  Outside, the sand and the desolation of fen, the silent bungalows on the dunes, and the winding road that she would never find the courage to tread. Not now.

  “Bevis!...come back!”

  She ran to the back door and dragged it open, hoping that he might be standing there in the loom of light, in the rain, with his suitcase in his hand; pale, defenseless, and frightened of what he had done to her; waiting for her to come to him and tell him that it was all right, that it didn’t matter; waiting for her greater strength to reassure him.

  There was nothing but the sweep of rain-splattered sand, and the forlorn bunch of wild foliage lying just where she had left it.

  And something else. Something sprawled by the gate.

  Sprawled and shapeless, like…

  She ran across the wet sand. It was Bevis’s suitcase. The handle had been wrenched from its fastenings, and the thick strap broken, the lid burst open, and the contents scattered in heaps like a trampled man. She fingered his leather shaving case—her wedding present to him—it had been twisted and riven apart like a rotten apple. His thick paperback book lay in two pieces, ripped across the spine.

  She forced the knuckles of her hand into her mouth to choke the cry of horror, and stumbled back to the door, locked and bolted it behind her, and turned out the light.

  As she leaned back, wild-eyed, she seemed to hear it again: Bevis’s cry for help, the cry she had disregarded.

  If he called again, she would answer. But in her heart she knew that he was beyond the compass of her voice; that his frail body and peevish spirit had ended out there in the night.

  To live through the night; to survive. She forced herself to come to grips with it.

  Adding it up: the windows were all shut against the rain, and the door was locked and bolted behind her.

  Nothing—no one—could reach her in here without her hearing the noise of his coming in. And, if that happened, she would run out the door and down the road, screaming all the while.

  Calm. Be calm. All you have to do is crouch very still. And just exist.

  And then—with a choked intake of breath—she remembered!

  The French window!

  The window in that awful room. Bevis had been out on the verandah all the morning, before the rain came. And she knew he would never have thought to lock it when he came in.

  Her frail house of cards, her only defense, was yawning open not twenty paces from where she stood.

  She had to go in there and lock that door; cross that obscene room, under the eyes of the thing in the glass cylinder. Now, before it was too late.

  Ten dread-filled steps down the corridor, and the handle squeaked to her touch. The light was still on, as Bevis had left it.

  Deliberately fixing her gaze on the French window, she crossed the room, swaying past the cluttered furniture. The wave of relief was a physical, tangible thing, and she almost smiled to herself to find the door locked and the key there.

  And so, she never saw them till she turned round...

  They were sitting very still, side by side, on a Victorian sofa near the fireplace. And, before her stupefied gaze, they got up together.

  Mrs. Leevis wore a dress of beige lace with a corsage of artificial pansies, and a picture hat trimmed with a velvet cabbage rose, She had the air of a proud mother at a country wedding.

  “It’s nice we all meet in my lovely room,” she said. “Now we can all be happy together—’’ turning fondly to the looming figure at her side, “—just you and me and our Ned.”

  Brown boots and a lumpy suit reeking of mothballs. A spray of ferns in his buttonhole. Great red hands hanging limply. And his eyes were quite mad.

  “He’ll be kind and gentle to you,” said Mrs. Leevis. “Not like the other.”

  Then he was coming toward her, and, through her own screams, Naomi heard the woman tut-tutting with mild disfavor as she moved behind her to block the way to the door.

  The Real Bad Friend

  Robert Bloch

  This story, Bob tells me, first appeared in Mike Shayne magazine back in 1956 and hasn’t reappeared since 1957 so it probably isn’t known to many readers. “Yet,” he says, “I think it might interest buffs—since in it, I can now discover the germ of what later became Psycho.”

  It was really all Roderick’s idea in the first place.

  George Foster Pendleton would never have thought of it. He couldn’t have; he was much too dull and respectable. George Foster Pendleton, vacuum-cleaner salesman, aged forty-three, just wasn’t the type. He had been married to the same wife for fourteen years, lived in the same white house for an equal length of time, wore glasses when he wrote up orders, and was completely complacent about his receding hairline and advancing waistline.

  Consequently, when his wife’s uncle died and left her an estate of some eighty-five thousand dollars after taxes, George didn’t make any real plans.

  Oh, he was delighted, of course—any ten-thousand-a-year salesman would be—but that’s as far as it went. He and Ella decided to put in another bathroom on the first floor and buy a new Buick, keeping the old car for her to drive. The rest of the money could go into something safe, like a savings and loan, and the interest would take care of a few little luxuries now and then. After all, they had no children or close relatives to look after. George was out in the territory a few days every month, and often called on local sales prospects at night, so they’d never developed much of a social life. There was no reason to expand their style of living, and the money wasn’t quite enough to make him think of retiring.

  So they figured things out, and after the first flurry of excite­ment and congratulations from the gang down at George’s office, people gradually forgot about the inheritance. After all, they weren’t really living any differently than before. George Foster Pendleton was a quiet man, not given to talking about his private affairs. In fact, he didn’t have any private affairs to talk about.

  Then Roderick came up with his idea.

  “Why not drive Ella crazy?”

  George couldn’t believe his ears. “You’re the one who’s crazy,” George told him. “Why, I never heard of anything so ridiculous in all my life!”

  Roderick just smiled at him and shook his head in that slow, funny way of his, as
if he felt sorry for George. Of course, he did feel sorry for George, and maybe that’s why George thought of him as his best friend. Nobody seemed to have any use for Roderick, and Roderick didn’t give a damn about anyone else, apparently. But he liked George, and it was obvious he had been doing a lot of thinking about the future.

  “You’re a fine one to talk about being ridiculous,” Roderick said. That quiet, almost inaudible way he had of speaking al­ways carried a lot of conviction. George was handicapped as a salesman by his high, shrill voice, but Roderick seldom spoke above a whisper. He had the actor’s trick of deliberately under­playing his lines. And what he said usually made sense.

  Now George sat in his five-dollar room at the Hotel LeMoyne and listened to his friend. Roderick had come to the office today just before George left on his monthly road trip, and decided to go along. As he’d fallen into the habit of doing this every once in a while, George thought nothing of it. But this time, apparently, he had a purpose in mind.

  “If anyone is being ridiculous,” Roderick said, “it’s you. You’ve been selling those lousy cleaners since nineteen forty-six. Do you like your job? Are you ever going to get any higher in the company? Do you want to keep on in this crummy rut for an­ other twenty years?”

  George opened his mouth to answer, but it was Roderick who spoke. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “I know the answers. And while we’re on the subject, here’s something else to think about. Do you really love Ella?”

  George had been staring at the cracked mirror over the bureau. Now he turned on the bed and gazed at the wall. He didn’t want to look at himself, or Roderick, either.

  “Why, she’s been a good wife to me. More than a wife—like a mother, almost.”

  “Sure. You’ve told me all about that. That’s the real reason you married her, wasn’t it? Because she reminded you of your mother, and your mother had just died, and you were afraid of girls in the first place, but you had to have someone to take care of you.”