Scared to Death--Ten Sinister Stories by the Master of the Macabre

by Anthony Horowitz

  Elizabeth remembered the man she had seen on the beach. A less demanding kite made obvious sense. Craig was short for his age … the number of cigarettes he smoked had seen to that. He really had no muscles at all. She could see him being pulled flat on his face by the first strong gust of wind, and after that the kite would be consigned to the rubbish bin. Anyway, there was the question of cost. The Laserblade 6.0 came in at an eye-watering £400.

  This, of course, was the kite that Craig had set his heart on. And once again Elizabeth was completely astonished by Arthur’s response. The price didn’t seem to bother him at all.

  “I’m not sure, Craig,” he muttered, examining the picture on the computer screen. “I do wonder if it might not be a bit too big for you to handle.”

  “It’s not too big. It’s perfect.”

  “But suppose it pulls you over? You could get hurt.”

  Craig scowled. “If the wind’s too strong, I’ll let go.” He shook his head as if he was having to explain himself to an idiot. “I’m not stupid, you know,” he said. “I know how to fly these things.”

  “Well, you’ll have to promise me you’ll be careful. We don’t want you in bed with a broken leg.”

  Craig said nothing – and two days later the new kite arrived in the post. By this time, Elizabeth was a little angry. She didn’t say anything, but she hated seeing her husband give in to the spoiled, heartless brat that she now knew her nephew to be. Nor did she think that indulging Craig would help. She could already see that Craig would get as much out of them as he could and would still go on to demand more. She wished now that she had never opened her door to him. She wished the Manchester authorities had never found her.

  “We’ll take it up to Millbrook Common,” Arthur said over breakfast. “There’s plenty of room there and we can see if Craig can get it to fly.”

  “What about school?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I wasn’t at school yesterday or the day before,” Craig reminded her.

  This was something new. Craig had begun to play truant with increasing frequency. So far, nobody had complained. It was possible that the school simply preferred not having him there.

  “There’s a good stiff breeze today,” Arthur muttered. “Good kite-flying weather…”

  Millbrook Common was an open space between Instow and Barnstaple with farmland all around. It was certainly a good place to choose for a first flight. There would have been too many people on the beach, and anyway, with Craig skipping school, it was probably better to go somewhere more out of sight. The common was also high up, which meant that it was more open to the breeze. Arthur, Elizabeth and Craig took a bus up there after breakfast. Craig was carrying the kite. Elizabeth had the assembly instructions. Arthur sat with one hand in his pocket, lost in his own thoughts.

  Eventually they found themselves on the edge of a wide, bumpy field with wild-looking grass that somehow looked hundreds of years old. The sea was far away and below them. Elizabeth drew her coat around her. It was the end of the summer and the leaves were already beginning to turn. She could feel a certain chill in the air and it seemed to her that there was much more of the breeze up here than there had been below. “I’m not so sure we should fly the kite here,” she said. “Maybe the beach would be better after all.”

  “But we’ve come all the way up here now!” Craig complained.

  “The boy’s right,” Arthur muttered. “We’re here now, so we might as well give it a try.”

  “But Arthur, there’s a lot of wind…”

  “Craig has already said. If he feels he’s losing control, all he has to do is let go.” Arthur still had his hand in his pocket. “Come on!” he exclaimed. “Let’s see if we can work out how to put this thing together.”

  It took them a long time. There were lots of different cables, struts to fit into place and complicated knots to tie. Eventually, they managed to construct the Laserblade, and Craig and Elizabeth held it down while Arthur unrolled the twenty-five-metre flying line. There were two handles at the end, one for each hand. He knelt down and examined them, running a finger along the tightly-woven material (“sleeved Dyneema, specially designed for a better grip”).

  When he was sure that everything was ready, he looked up. “All right!” he shouted. He had to raise his voice to make it heard above the wind. “Let’s see if we can get flying.”

  Arthur and Craig swapped ends, passing each other in the middle of the field, and for a moment, if anyone had been watching, they could have been duellists, meeting at the appointed time. Craig reached the handles and picked them up, gripping them tightly in the palms of his hands. Elizabeth was trying to keep the kite steady, pressing it against the ground. The Laserblade was a brilliant red, blue and green and it was already trembling like a trapped butterfly.

  Arthur joined her. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Elizabeth glanced at her husband. For the first time in thirty years, she realized that she had no idea what he was thinking. “I suppose so,” she said.

  “Don’t be cross with me, old girl. I’m just trying to do what’s best for Craig.”

  The two of them leaned down and picked up the kite. Twenty-five metres of cord hung across the jagged grass to the two handles and the boy at the other end. Suddenly he looked very small, compared with the enormous kite.

  “Ready?” Arthur shouted.

  “Let it go!” The boy’s voice barely reached them. He could have been a mile away.

  “Good luck!”

  Arthur and Elizabeth pushed upwards at the same moment. In fact, they didn’t need to do anything very much. The wind seized hold of the Laserblade and almost ripped it out of their hands. The kite flew up as if it had exploded out of the ground. It was a quite beautiful sight, the brand-new colours standing out against the grey, stormy sky. The two cables soared up with it.

  Elizabeth gazed anxiously at the boy clinging on to the other end. “It’s too strong for him,” she muttered.

  “He’ll be fine,” Arthur replied.

  And for a few seconds, he was right. Craig dug his heels in and struggled to keep the kite under control, pulling first one cable, then the other. He was leaning backwards, shouting with pleasure, his fists pounding left and right as if he were fighting an invisible enemy. The kite was now high above him, dancing around his head. All Craig had to do was harness its power. Then he would be able to run forward and jump. Briefly, he would fly – just like the man he had seen at the beach.

  There was only one problem. The man on the beach had been flying power kites for many years, and his model had an aspect ratio of only 4.7 metres. In other words, it was one size smaller than Craig’s, and – more to the point – the wind hadn’t been so strong that day. That man had known what he was doing. Craig did not. He had barely read the instructions that came with the kite. Certainly, he had ignored the many warnings.

  The first indication that something was wrong came when Craig’s happy cries turned into a wail of dismay. He seemed to be punching harder and harder, his entire body jerking, like a puppet in the grip of a mad puppeteer. He was slamming his heels into the soft ground, trying to anchor himself, leaning ever further back, his arms stretched out high over his head.

  “He’s losing control!” Elizabeth gasped.

  “No. He’s having a high old time,” Arthur retorted.

  “We should do something!”

  “If he’s not happy, he can let go!”

  In truth, there wasn’t much they could have done anyway. Craig was twenty-five metres away from them, the same distance as the kite was above his head. He seemed to be swearing – at them or at the kite, they couldn’t say. And suddenly his feet left the ground. Craig had wanted to fly. He had been given his wish.

  But only for a few moments. He must have risen three or four metres into the air, jerked off the ground by the kite. Unfortunately, he had no control. He slammed down again.

  “Bravo!” Arthur shouted.

  Elizabeth turned to h
im. “Arthur, you don’t understand!” she cried. “He’s not having fun. He’s completely out of control!”

  “Nonsense!” Arthur waved a cheerful hand in Craig’s direction. “It reminds me of when I was young. I always loved kites.”

  “But Craig isn’t loving this one…” Elizabeth broke off as Craig was jerked into the air again. This time he hung there a little longer and landed even harder.

  “Wonderful!” Arthur shouted.

  “I think he’s broken his ankle!” Elizabeth exclaimed.

  It was true. Craig was howling. There had been a definite snap as he hit the ground, and his left foot seemed to be pointing the wrong way. He was trying to hold himself up on just one leg. He was screaming now but his words were incoherent, swept away by the wind which, if anything, seemed to have got stronger.

  “You’re right,” Arthur muttered. “He’s hurt himself.” He put his hands up to his mouth, forming a sort of funnel. “Let go of the kite!” he shouted. “It doesn’t matter if we lose it. Just let go!”

  But Craig seemed grimly determined to hang on, despite his injury. Still screaming, he was suddenly thrown forward and then, before anyone could do anything, he was being dragged at about twenty miles per hour, face down across the field.

  “Let go!” Elizabeth called out. “Let go! Let go!”

  It was as if Craig hadn’t heard her. He was like a prisoner being tortured on the rack, his arms stretching out in front of him, his legs – with one foot dangling horribly – behind. The two old people could only watch as he was pulled diagonally over the field, thistles and stinging nettles whipping into his face.

  “Where is he going?” Elizabeth wailed.

  “He won’t get far,” Arthur observed. “There’s a fence ahead.”

  In fact there were two barbed-wire fences running parallel between the common land and the field below. Elizabeth was sure that Craig would get tangled up in the first of them and come to an abrupt, if painful, halt. But it seemed that the wind was playing tricks with him. At the last moment, it lifted the kite – which in turn yanked Craig off the ground. For a couple of seconds he was standing on his own two feet. Then he ran straight into the first barbed wire fence.

  Elizabeth and Arthur heard Craig scream as several metal spikes dug into his body. But at least he seemed to be pinned there. His ordeal was surely over.

  “Let go of the kite!” Arthur yelled again.

  But still Craig didn’t listen. He stood there, clinging to the handles, looking both ridiculous and hideous, his white shirt covered with grass stains, his arms and face already covered in stings and blisters. One of his eyes was closed. There was blood trickling from a gash on his head.

  “We’d better go and help him,” Elizabeth said.

  She was too late. A fresh blast of wind hit the kite, and Craig was dragged over the first barbed-wire fence and then the second. The Reeds could only watch, horrified, as his clothes were torn off him. It was impossible to imagine what the wretched boy must be feeling, but his screams echoed all the way down to the coast and several people, out walking their dogs, stopped and looked around them, wondering what could be making such a horrible noise.

  Somehow, incredibly, Craig cleared the second fence. But he had left most of his clothes behind him. His jeans, in twenty pieces, hung in tatters on the spikes. His shirt was just a bundle of rags. Even his boxers had been dragged off as he was carried forward. Wearing only a single sock, he was dragged across the second field. And worse things were to come.

  “Watch out for the cattle!” Arthur shouted.

  Craig was in no state to watch out for anything. There were about half a dozen cows and a single bull in the field, and he only became aware of them as he was thrown once more onto his face, landing slap in the middle of a freshly-laid cowpat. Somehow he managed to stagger back to his feet. Now his entire body – his face, his chest, his thighs – was dripping with brown slime. And still the kite urged him on.

  “Drop it!” Elizabeth screamed.

  A couple of dog-walkers had reached the edge of the field and were watching with undisguised horror.

  Craig still refused to save himself.

  He was running, stumbling with his broken foot, straight towards the herd. The bull saw him coming and lowered its head, two huge horns twisting towards him. Almost gleefully, the kite dragged Craig towards it. Elizabeth closed her eyes. She heard Craig scream as he was gored. The animal twisted its head. Craig continued past.

  “Why won’t he let go of the kite?” she whimpered.

  “It means too much to him,” Arthur replied. “He must be afraid of losing it.”

  Craig was in the far distance now. He was getting smaller by the minute. All they could see were his back, his legs – now motionless – being dragged through the grass and his outstretched arms still clinging to the handles.

  “I don’t like the look of those electricity pylons,” Arthur murmured.

  Elizabeth looked up just in time to see Craig leave the ground completely, rising ten or even twenty metres into the air. And, sure enough, there was a pylon directly in front of him, carrying high-voltage electricity down towards Instow. The boy was flying right into it. There was no way he could avoid it.

  Craig was little more than a speck in the distance when he hit the wire. At once there was a tremendous fizz and the boy was burned to a frazzle. For perhaps five seconds, all that was left of him was a black silhouette, a sort of statue made of ash. Then that fell apart and finally the kite came free, leaping cheerfully to one side and disappearing off beyond the trees. A shower of black dust tumbled back to the ground.

  Of course there was an inquest. Arthur Reed was seriously reprimanded for buying a fourteen-year-old boy a kite that he couldn’t possibly have controlled. But he was able to argue in court that he had suggested a smaller kite and Craig had refused to listen. His school teachers and some of the local shopkeepers also testified and the coroner had to agree that Craig had really brought his terrible end upon himself.

  Most significantly, the dog-walkers and several other people who had been out on the common that day appeared as witnesses. They had all heard the Reeds urging the boy to let go of the kite. For some reason, he had refused to listen. His death, as prolonged and as painful as it had been, was entirely his own fault.

  Or so they all thought.

  Perhaps it was just as well that none of them had been with Arthur Reed when he got home that day. He had been quite alone when he went upstairs to his bedroom, so nobody had seen him glance over his shoulder to make sure that Elizabeth was out of sight. And nobody knew anything about the tube of super glue that had been in his pocket when he took Craig out to fly the kite, and which had come out only once, when he had leaned down to examine the handles.

  The tube of glue was still there but it was almost empty now.

  Arthur dropped it into the drawer beside his bed, then went back downstairs to the kitchen where Elizabeth was waiting and made them both a nice cup of tea.

  THE J TRAIN

  THE JOHNSONS HAD NEVER BEEN to New York. In fact, they had never been out of England. They were perfectly happy living in their attractive four-bedroom house in Littleview Road, Portsmouth, and every summer they went to the same hotel in Devonshire and didn’t feel the need to go anywhere else. Why would they want to fly all the way across the Atlantic to a large, noisy city full of ridiculously tall buildings and too much traffic? They didn’t even particularly like London, and that was just a few hours away on the train. They had seen plenty of New Yorkers on television programmes and they came across as fast-talking, angry and often quite rude. And there were so many of them! How could so many people live in so little space?

  But the holiday was a gift, and it was a difficult one to refuse. Derek Johnson was a lawyer, a senior partner in a well-known firm that specialized in corporate litigation, which is to say, he looked after businesses when they got themselves into trouble. One of his clients, a company called Tambo Chemicals,
based in Southampton, was being prosecuted after it had been caught dumping twenty thousand gallons of toxic waste in the River Hamble. A guilty verdict would have destroyed them. The publicity alone would have been as lethal as the chemical cocktail that had poisoned every fish for five miles in both directions.

  Derek had got them off. He and his team had worked around the clock for three months, but it was his own performance in the courtroom that had finally won the day. He had ridiculed the prosecution, intimidated the witnesses, undermined the evidence and enchanted the jury. His closing speech was a masterpiece; a mixture of straight-talking and sarcasm with just a little spite thrown in. By the time he had finished talking, a guilty verdict was about as likely as a UFO crash-landing onto the courtroom roof.

  The Chief Executive of Tambo was delighted. As it happened, he knew Derek Johnson personally. The two men played golf together. And a couple of days after the verdict, he arrived at Derek’s office.

  “Derek, you did a great job!” he announced. “And I want to find a way to thank you personally.”

  “There’s no need for that, Jeremy—” Derek began.

  “No. I know how much work you put into this, burning the candle at both ends. You need a rest … and I’m going to pay for it. How would you and your family like a long weekend in New York City?”

  “Well…”

  “I’m going to fly the three of you out. You, Samantha and that sweet girl of yours. What’s her name?”

  “Cecily.”

  “I happen to have shares in a hotel – the Wilmott on Sixth Avenue. I’m going to tell them to give you the executive suite. And you should see a show. I might even be able to get you tickets to Hamilton! Everyone’s talking about it. You’ll have a fantastic time.”

  “Honestly, Jeremy —”

  “Don’t thank me. Don’t mention it. It’s nothing less than you deserve!”

  The trouble was that Derek Johnson didn’t dare argue with the chief of Tambo Chemicals who was the sort of man who, once he had made his mind up about something, wouldn’t budge an inch. He remembered a time, after a game of golf, when Jeremy had offered to buy a round of beers for his best friend – a man called Joe. Joe had protested in a friendly sort of way, and as a result the two men hadn’t spoken again for seventeen years. Jeremy had a violent temper. Even as a witness, during the trial he had scowled at the judge to such an extent that Derek had been nervous the entire case might actually be lost.