Strangers at the Door: Twelve unsettling tales of horror

by Christopher Henderson

  He rubbed the bristles on his cheek, thinking he could put off shaving a day longer, and focused on the clock. A little before eleven.

  Amber light oozed beneath the curtains, sliding across the floor towards the bed, and further heating the room’s dense, oxygen-deprived air. Paul groaned to a sitting position and leaned across to pull the curtains open, eyes clenching as the sudden brightness pounded against the glass, demanding to be let in. The sun had already cleared the squat block of council flats out back and was crawling higher into the azure sky. He hadn’t seen a sky that blue since the States.

  He twisted the lever and pushed the window open to let in some fresh air. Thankfully, there was a cool breeze, but as he took a breath the acrid tang of a bonfire filled his sinuses. What the hell was the matter with people, polluting the air on a day like this? And then the thumping beat of a music system thudded into action as the shaven-headed scum three houses away emerged into their back garden carrying cans of strong lager, evidently setting themselves up for another long day of getting drunk and sunburned.

  ‘Bastards,’ muttered Paul, pulling the window closed again and securing it as tight as possible. The beating music was dampened a little but remained, thumping the glass with maddening insistence. The rich, stinging stench of bonfire seeped through the imperfect seal around the window frame.

  Pulling on a pair of unwashed jeans, Paul abandoned the bedroom and walked barefoot downstairs to make a cup of tea. On the doormat, he saw, the flyers had been buried beneath new items of unwanted junk: mostly local newspapers (that these days were little more than glorified adverts for places and services he had no interest in) and holiday brochures from HPL Travel and other firms. There were two separate plastic bags for clothing collections from businesses masquerading as charities and, sitting on top, held by a dried patch of ketchup, was someone’s used burger carton, squashed to fit through the letterbox. Browning shreds of lettuce were splatted against the styrene. What kind of arsehole did something like that?

  Paul put the kettle on, then peeled a black bin bag from the roll under the sink. He carried it to the front door and, without looking to see what other post the pile might contain, swept everything into the bag and threw it into the corner of the kitchen. He’d take it all out to the bin later.

  He opened a tin of baked beans and slowly warmed the contents on the cooker, resigned to eating them without toast. It had been a while since he’d last gone to the shop and canned food was all he had left. It didn’t matter. Perhaps he’d place a large shopping order online this afternoon and have what he needed delivered to him but, in the meantime, he could do without.

  Taking his miserable meal into the living room, he flicked through TV channels as he ate. There was nothing worth watching. He clicked the set off again and finished eating in what should have been silence, except that the incessant thumping of music was inescapable. After he’d placed his shopping order he’d submit a complaint via the council website, he decided. Force them to take some action against these ‘nuisance neighbours’. It wasn’t fair. He was a taxpayer – or had been until his job had gone – and he was entitled to some quality of life.

  For the time being, though, he simply slumped back in his chair and tried to ignore the world outside.

  * * * *

  An unknown time later he was woken again from uneasy slumber by the phone’s trill. He stumbled across to the downstairs handset and picked it up.

  ‘Hello?’

  A chirpy voice at the other end introduced itself by saying it wasn’t trying to sell anything, then offered to sell Paul ‘the vacation of a lifetime’.

  ‘Please,’ Paul groaned. ‘Just leave me alone.’

  The voice ignored him. The room had grown swelteringly hot while Paul had been asleep and his T-shirt – still the one he’d worn to bed the night before – stuck uncomfortably to the small of his back. The music outside was louder than before, and was coming now from at least two different sources. Both were accompanied by shouting and harsh, drunken laughter. The voice on the phone chittered away.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ Paul screamed, jamming the handset back onto its station.

  ‘… that our familiar three dimensions aren’t enough,’ declared an enthusiastic voice. Paul dimly recognized it as that of a celebrity scientist who had once been a pop star. ‘The mathematics predict other dimensions of spacetime, although there are different ideas as to just how many dimensions there actually are.’

  There was a childish thrill in the scientist’s voice, and it was emphasized by the dramatic chords pouring from the TV set. A documentary – one that Paul thought he remembered having watched months before – had erupted at full volume onto the screen. Had he left the TV on?

  He snatched up the remote and stabbed the set off. The screen went blank, only to crack back into life an instant later.

  ‘… conceiving of our Universe as just one of an infinite number of membranous bubbles, rippling through multiple dimensions …’

  Buffeted by a soundtrack that seemed to swell ever larger, Paul jabbed again at the remote, and then again. When one button after another failed to have any effect, he stooped to yank the plug from the wall.

  The programme disappeared, leaving only the relentless doom-doom-doom-doom pounding from the walls.

  No, not only that. There was something else.

  He could hear a papery rustling coming from the hall. It stopped as he stepped towards the doorway.

  He peered around the corner and for a moment he thought the hall was empty. Then there was a flurry of movement among the pile of junk mail on the doormat (hadn’t he cleared that up earlier?) and a small animal (was that a raccoon?) bolted out from within, scattering papers, only to find itself instantly trapped up against the corner by the front door. It whirled around and stared up at Paul in panic, sides panting with fear.

  Paul was almost as scared as the alien creature, less from any sense of physical danger than from a feeling of violation and incomprehension at how the animal had got inside the house and what it was doing around here anyway.

  ‘Shhh,’ he breathed. ‘It’s okay. There’s nothing to worry about.’

  He might have been reassuring them both as he circled to the right and, as gently as he could, reached across to the door and unlatched it. He eased it open. The raccoon paused, then took its chance and darted through the gap. As soon as it was out Paul slammed the door closed. He stayed there for a long moment, palms against the solid wooden barrier, heart pounding, breathing hard.

  The letterbox squeaked open, and a sheaf of envelopes was thrust through. They cascaded onto the growing pile on the doormat. Paul gazed down at them in horror.

  ‘No more,’ he muttered. ‘That’s enough now.’

  He strode to the under-stair cupboard and retrieved a broom. Unlatching the front door as quickly as possible he swept it all – papers, envelopes, brochures, everything – outside. He didn’t look up. He didn’t want to see whoever was doing this to him because then he’d have to confront them. He slammed the door closed, and this time he also drew the security chain and slotted the deadbolt across at the bottom. With a flash of inspiration, he lifted the broom, turned it horizontal, and jammed it tight between the letterbox and the wooden post at the foot of the staircase. It was just the right length; there was, it seemed, one benefit to such a tiny house after all.

  ‘Let’s see you play postman now,’ he said, wanting to sound defiant yet speaking softly so as not to be heard by whomever was out there taunting him. He heard the edge of hysteria in his voice, and he despised it.

  * * * *

  By evening, the house was overstuffed with the day’s heat. Expanded air inflated the building like a balloon. Trapped within the changing pressure, Paul’s head thudded in time with the incessant doom-doom-doom-doom. The last of the Paracetamol was gone, for all the good they’d done.

  The music was louder than ever. Paul stalked from room to room, trying to pull every window shut even mor
e tightly than before. As he reached up to the small window above the kitchen door, he was startled to notice that several thin tendrils of ivy had begun to worm their way inside, pushing through tiny gaps where the wooden frame had started to rot.

  Dragging a wooden chair from the living room, he climbed up to pull the shoots out and see how bad the damage was. The rot had definitely set into the wood, he saw, although it didn’t appear to be too bad just yet. It should be relatively easy to repair.

  As he peered more closely, four tiny spiders scuttled in through holes left by the ivy. Shocked, he jerked backward – and lost his balance. He caught himself before he fell but his weight was thrown to the side and as he stepped down his right leg jolted hard against the lino. The impact shot up into the base of his throbbing skull. By the time he looked up again the spiders had hurried away and were lost in some dark recess or other.

  He pulled one of the unwanted local newspapers from the bag still lying in the kitchen corner, tore out a page and ripped it into strips. He soaked them under a tap and, climbing back up onto the chair, pressed the wet mush over the holes. It was a temporary measure, but the wadding would hold until he was able to fix it properly.

  As he dragged the chair back through the hall, he saw that papers were once again piled on the doormat. The pile was even larger than earlier. Abandoning the chair, and fighting down a growing sense of apprehension, he approached the door. Despite the heat, a chill ran through him at the sight of the broom still wedged in place, still holding the letterbox firmly shut. Baffled, he stared down at the pile, unable to make sense of what was happening.

  ‘Hello?’

  Paul gasped in shock, spinning around to find a complete stranger standing less than three feet from him. The intruder, a tall and fit-looking black man in his mid-twenties, wearing smart jeans and a dark blue sweatshirt, was staring around with a look of bewilderment.

  ‘Fuck are you doing?’ cried Paul.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ replied the man. His voice, deep and rich, was flavoured with the nostalgic accent of that holiday in New England.

  ‘Get out!’

  ‘I, ah, I was just on my way to the station, and …?’

  ‘Get the fuck out!’

  Paul wrenched the broom from its wedged-in position, fumbled frantically with the bolt, chain and key, and threw the front door open.

  ‘Get out get out get out,’ he chanted, refusing to listen to the stranger’s protests.

  ‘Get out! Get out get out GET OUT!’

  He swung the broom. The intruder flinched back, ducked beneath the bristled head and hurried for the door. His trainers caught against something in the pile of papers and he fell rather than ran across the threshold, sprawling out into the front garden.

  Paul slammed the door closed, scrabbled the chain into place and shot the deadbolt, before staggering back into the hall, watching the door in dread, half-expecting it to fly open. His legs were trembling, unused to the adrenaline flooding his system. He stood there – and he continued to stand there, hands gripping the stair post behind him, eyes locked on the door, not daring to look away.

  Eventually his heart was no longer pulsing in his throat and he knew he needed to do something. He remembered his toolbox in the under-stair cupboard. In it he found a hammer, and with the hammer he smashed the chair apart. Grabbing an assortment of mismatched nails, he hammered splintered pieces of chair into the woodwork, securing the front door to its surrounding frame.

  As he was knocking the final fragment – most of a chair leg – into place, he realized he had been hammering in time to the music pounding in from outside. Furious with himself, he made a point of banging in the final nails as hard as possible in between the beats.

  The last nail head slammed into the wood. He grinned, panting with exertion, then spotted something in the crack between door and frame. As he watched, a hair-like shoot of vegetation snaked hesitantly into the house. Paul snarled, and gripped the shoot between thumbnail and fingernail. He pulled it out, gently but firmly so that it didn’t snap off, and he threw it down onto the pile of papers that had again collected at his feet.

  Putting his face to the crack, he peered outside. Nothing but darkness. A warm breeze breathed onto his eyeball. Floating on top of the thrumming music was the rush of traffic passing by outside. Except that had to be an illusion, distant sounds carrying on the wind, because outside the house, he knew, was only the end of the cul-de-sac.

  ‘… three dimensions of space plus the fourth of time – and that this “three-plus-one” Universe is restricted to a single membrane of a higher-dimensional space, called “the bulk”!’ blared the pop star scientist, wild with excitement.

  Paul raced back to the TV set. Somehow, it was on again, the same swelling music as before filling the house. Surely it couldn’t be the same show? Was it being repeated already, he wondered. Was the TV now showing one of those +1 channels?

  As if that were the most pressing question!

  ‘… and as other ‘branes move through the bulk they might interact with our own, in ways beyond our comprehension…’

  Paul jabbed at the buttons on the remote. The TV refused to respond. He threw the control to the floor and bent to rip the plug from the wall, and only remembered he had done this before at the same moment he saw the empty power socket gaping there.

  He froze, dissonant information paralysing his brain. Then the TV was no longer on, and the only sound was the doom-doom-doom-doom, overlaid by the rising and falling hiss of traffic. A dozen tiny spiders swarmed from the socket’s holes and scuttled outwards across the wallpaper.

  I’m going insane, he thought, running his hands through sweat-slick hair. He was boiling alive in this feverish heat, and losing his mind.

  * * * *

  In bed, Paul shivered violently and took another long gulp of water. The liquid was horribly warm in the plastic bottle but he clung to the certainty that he needed fluids and forced himself to swallow, knowing the rest of his supply would be at least as unpalatable.

  Before retreating into the bedroom and locking the door, Paul had ransacked the kitchen cupboards for every bottle of water and canned drink he owned, and had carried them all up here. Having recognized that he was in the grip of a fever, he reasoned that he needed to ride it out, and he instinctively felt this was the way to do it. He took another mouthful of warm water and lowered the bottle to stand upright on the floor, where it would be within easy reach.

  His head slumped onto his damp pillow. The pillow throbbed to the doom-beat. Other vibrations travelled up through the structure of the house; he felt people moving about downstairs, chatting unconcernedly. But why should they be concerned? After all, they lived here. Didn’t they?

  ‘It’s only the Pickmans,’ muttered Paul to remind himself. ‘The Pickmans: this is their house, I’m their tenant. It’s fine. It’s all fine.’

  He screwed his eyes tight and willed himself to remember, to be convinced. But another voice was screaming at him from deeper inside his head, telling him this wasn’t correct.

  Downstairs, someone was playing a recorder. The notes came at irregular intervals and were interspersed with squeaks so sharp they cut Paul’s thoughts, as if the player were unfamiliar with the instrument and was struggling to find the correct fingering. The music stopped – and Paul heard what sounded like a young girl laughing; a tinkling laugh, innocent. Yet something tainted the bright edges of those sparkling sounds, something dark and ancient and corrupt. Then the recorder issued an ear-splitting screech, and the house shook as something crashed below, and Paul knew the kitchen window had fallen in, its rotting frame finally succumbing to the invading vegetation.

  ‘You okay in there, Paul?’ called Mrs Pickman from the landing. She sounded as if she were trying to stifle a fit of the giggles.

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t move.

  ‘Paul? Are you in there?’ She was calling now in a singsong voice. ‘It’s a lovely day outside. As pretty as a pictu
re.’

  She started to hammer at his bedroom door, her blows inhumanly powerful. Paul’s bed shook to the roar of vehicles rushing past on the road directly below him, on the road where rooms had once stood.

  He whimpered, and curled beneath the duvet.

  * * * *

  When he came to, his sweat-stained jeans and T-shirt were rippling, a blast of air momentarily ripping heat from his aching body. The air was unclean, choked with sooty particles, and it reeked of diesel.

  A second articulated lorry thundered past to his right, the blue plastic sheeting that wrapped its flanks flapping and cracking as it sped by just inches away.

  ‘Fuck!’

  Paul jerked back, then froze as a sense of his surroundings struck his consciousness. Behind him, a dirt-streaked white Transit van hissed across the dusty tarmac, one wheel knocking an empty water bottle. The bottle went skittering across the surface to be crushed beneath the tyres of a midnight-blue Cadillac that was blasting out music.

  Wrenching away the suffocating duvet, Paul struggled to a half-sitting position, planting both hands on the baked concrete as if to anchor himself. He was on a narrow traffic island, he saw, bounded at each end by bollards; to either side, walls of traffic rushed past, harsh sunlight flashing from speeding windows and mirrors and glossy fibreglass sides.

  He heard the tinkling laughter again. Fearful to stand in case he lost his footing and fell from his precarious island of safety, he caught only glimpses between the speeding vehicles. A young girl, blonde-haired and pigtailed was watching him, giggling, one hand held up to her mouth, the other clasping a black-and-white plastic recorder. Beside her stood a policeman, a tall black man he thought he recognized from somewhere, staring towards Paul with frowning concern while speaking into a radio clipped to his left shoulder.

  No-one else was about: the pavements were as deserted as the sidewalks in New England had been. The traffic noise was deafening, and yet the sound of the girl’s laughter cut through cleanly. Above, the sun beat down in great throbbing waves of pressure.