Spanky

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘If you harm them—’

  ‘You’ll do what, exactly? Here’s another question to challenge your sense of reality: Where do you think Max’s son is at this moment?’

  ‘In France, somewhere near Avignon.’

  ‘This time you’re wrong. Paul is back in his apartment. He arrived home just an hour ago. The romance I concocted for him doesn’t seem to have worked out. The little bitch was already spoken for. I can’t be held responsible for unscheduled changes. Tell you what, let’s start with poor old lovesick Paul, and put him out of his misery on the stroke of midnight—I’ll race you there, shall I?’

  I watched as he sauntered off down the hall toward the elevator bank. Then I ran back into my apartment and locked the door from the inside.

  Paul’s line was engaged. If he had just arrived back in town, he was probably playing back his messages.

  I knew where he lived.

  I checked my watch. Fourteen minutes to twelve. If I jumped a cab, I should just be able to make it. There was no point in calling Max. He lived further away from Paul than I did.

  I was sure that I could get there in time to save him.

  I was so sure.

  Chapter 23

  Bestiality

  Which brings me back to where I began.

  Paul was sprawled out with a poker through his gut, and he died believing that I was his killer. A nice touch from Spanky; he had taken on my appearance while he carried out his work, just in case the boy had lived, or had managed to talk to someone before he died.

  I didn’t think anyone had seen me arrive or leave, but I couldn’t be certain. I should have called the police, but in my agitated state I would have incriminated myself if I had done so. I had caused his death as surely as if I had killed him myself. How long would they take to discover his body? To tell the truth now was unthinkable; no one in their right mind would believe me.

  Two hours after I saw Paul die before my eyes I was storming around my apartment, my mind filled with warring, absurd contradictions.

  During the last few weeks the only thing that had anchored me to my changed life was my association with Spanky. Now that he was no longer there, I felt lost in my new surroundings: the bright, pristine rooms that felt too large and were always too tidy, the shiny possessions that were hardly used, the new friends who were never at home, the smart car with a permanently clean ashtray, the designer girlfriend who kept her distance, the perfectly groomed figure I no longer recognized when I looked in the mirror.

  I badly needed to talk to someone.

  I called Sarah, but there was no answer from her apartment. Just the usual cool-casual ansaphone message. Even if she had been in, I knew that I couldn’t have asked for her help, and she wouldn’t have expected me to. I nearly rang Zack, then thought, isn’t that what Spanky wants? If I involve others, they’ll be at risk. He’ll hurt them to make me capitulate, and have me branded as a murderer. I had to work out the limit of his abilities. Could he read my thoughts at a distance? I thought not, but it was impossible to be sure of anything.

  I rang the airport to ask about incoming flights from Portugal, but there were no more arrivals scheduled for tonight. I was told I would have to request a passenger check for each flight as it arrived. What if Spanky decided to intercept my family? I had no idea how to track them down. I didn’t even know which airport they were likely to use. I could be sure that my nemesis would take the least expected route.

  One part of my dilemma was clear enough. I had made a stand against the daemon, but had no way of backing up my bravado with positive action. As far as I knew, he had no earthly weaknesses. I hung on to the thought that he needed my consent to take control. It was the only defence I had.

  For want of something more useful to do I changed back to my old clothes, the jeans and baggy T-shirt I had always worn before I met him. I called Sarah again. Still no reply. I instinctively knew that she was staying out for the night. Fidelity did not register highly on her personal agenda. There was nothing for it but to go to bed.

  I threw cold water on my face and tossed my jeans on the floor, crawling under the duvet. But I left the bedside light dimly glowing. The possibility that Spanky might suddenly appear had made me nervous of the dark. I lay there staring at the ceiling, trying to calm my mind and think of nothing at all.

  Half an hour later I was still staring, still trying to get to sleep. Every few minutes a distant car would pass, its tyres hissing in the rain. My extended hearing range picked up the mournful lowing of a river tug, the yapping of a dog on the far side of the river.

  Then the bulb in the bedside lamp cracked and went out.

  I knew at once that there was something in the room with me. I could hear a faint, wheezy breathing in the darkness at the end of the bed. A nose-wrinkling zoo smell was filling the room. I told myself that whatever was there wasn’t real. It couldn’t hurt me, because it didn’t exist. Spanky was playing on my most basic fears. He was an illusionist, nothing more. He had told me so himself. So there was nothing to be frightened of.

  Like hell.

  No amount of rationalization could make me feel better. I could pull the duvet up over my head and ignore it, refuse to indulge Spanky’s taste for the macabre. Convince myself that there was nothing there, breathing and waiting patiently in the dark. That was the best plan. I pulled the duvet in around my ears.

  There was nothing out there.

  Nothing there.

  Nothing.

  I was congratulating myself on having made the right decision when whatever it was began to pull at the bottom of the sheet, and the duvet started to slide from me.

  I was forced to sit up and try to pull the cover back, but I had no intention of entering into a tug of war without knowing what was on the other end. Instead, I slipped from the bed, ran into the hallway and switched on the light.

  It looked like a cross between a chimpanzee and a wolf. That is, it had a flat face, a snout and yellow teeth, but it sat on its haunches and held the edge of the duvet in long, tapering fingers. A row of spines thrust up through its back fur like Spanky’s, and it stank of decayed meat. It turned its attention from the bed and looked into the light with red lidless eyes.

  That was when I ran for the kitchen.

  As I headed along the hallway, I could hear it bounding after me, moving with incredible agility, its palms slapping against the tiles. I reached the kitchen and slammed the door shut behind me as it smashed into the sudden barrier with a spray of spit, nearly jarring me on to the floor. There was no lock, and nothing in reach to jam under the handle.

  I tried holding the door shut with my foot, but I still couldn’t get to the drawer that held the only weapons in the apartment, a set of carving knives. Suddenly the pressure on the door ceased, and there was silence. I listened carefully, but could hear nothing. No breathing, no movement.

  I waited.

  Without a clock it was hard to tell how long I stayed like that. The silence thickened. Eventually I knew I couldn’t remain in the kitchen forever, so I decided to end the suspense. Placing my foot at its base, I slowly opened the door and peered out.

  The flat was still and empty, the lounge faintly illuminated by the hall light.

  I opened the door wider. I held my breath and listened.

  Nothing there nothing there nothing there.

  I walked quickly into the hall, turning on the lounge lights as I did so. Gobbets of flung saliva were roped across the tiles. I sniffed. The acrid zoo-smell lingered in the air. If Spanky had been here, there was no trace of him now. The creature must have returned to the confines of his sick imagination.

  I realized that my hands were shaking. Went to the drinks cabinet and poured myself a very large scotch, downing it in one. Forced myself to think rationally. He had slaughtered Paul, and had taken on my appearance to do it, but I hadn’t given in to him. Now he would terrorize me into submission. It would only take a single shouted word to admit defeat and grant him
admittance. I could end the victimization at any given moment.

  But if I agreed to allow him control, it would just be the beginning.

  He’d be able to do whatever he liked through me. I was sure if I checked into William Beaumont’s past I would find a well-covered trail of carnage.

  I looked at the clock. Hours to go before daylight. Suddenly I felt very tired. I cautiously returned to bed, checking the rooms as I went. No sign of the damned thing anywhere. Just silence and stillness. I went to the bathroom, took a piss, wanting to think about Spanky and how I could outwit him, knowing that if I did I would never get to sleep. How could I continue to have a normal life if I spent every waking hour covering my ass? In a few hours’ time I was supposed to make a major presentation to Syms.

  I was still thinking about that when the fucking thing jumped out from beneath the toilet and grabbed my dick, trying to pull me over.

  I screamed and fell, cracking my head against the bowl as it crouched across my chest, squealing and yanking at my genitals. Clawed fingers dug into my skin as it chattered and wrenched me from side to side.

  As the blow to the head took its toll I felt myself losing consciousness. I remember the red eyes staring into mine as it hissed and squealed like a deranged baboon. My passing out probably preserved my sanity. When I came to a few minutes later, I was still lying on the floor with my T-shirt pulled up around my chest, but at least the damned creature had gone. Had it ever really been here? There were deep scratches all over my groin, and they were real enough. I gingerly touched them, and they hurt like hell.

  If Spanky had wanted to make me aware of my own mortality, he had succeeded. By the time I finally crawled back into bed, it was daybreak. I remember thinking that if he planned to pull this kind of thing night after night, I would probably never get to sleep again. So I would buy sleeping tablets. He couldn’t harm me if my mind wasn’t awake and functioning.

  Could he?

  Chapter 24

  Subjugation

  Lottie brought the news. Her eyes were red and hydrous.

  ‘Paul is dead,’ she said simply. ‘A neighbour found him in his flat. Max has gone with the police. Two officers came in an hour ago. They talked to him and he started crying. Just sat there and bawled his head off.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ I said, sure that I sounded unconvincing. ‘Did they say what had happened to him?’

  ‘No, just that he was dead.’ She cast around the desk, looking for something to turn in her hands, finally settling for a pencil. ‘I’ve cancelled your presentation to Neville. What an awful thing to happen. All these changes. I suppose we’ll just have to wait for things to return to normal.’

  She looked lost and sad. I hadn’t properly studied her face until recently. A perfect oval half-hidden by glasses, topped with a fringe of sandy fine hair. She fished in the pocket of her skirt and produced a crumpled Post-it note. ‘I forgot. There was a phone call for you just before you arrived. A funny name. Do you know someone called Spanky?’

  He had never before allowed the introduction of his name to others. Perhaps my refusal to admit defeat had rattled him.

  It was more likely to be the next stage of his campaign.

  ‘He didn’t leave a number, said he’d catch you later.’

  Spanky’s idea of humour. I returned my attention to the lists of figures before me, but my vision started to blur the type. Nothing made sense anymore. If I closed my eyes, all I saw was the chimp-thing clawing at my bed.

  No hope. No way out.

  Nothing ahead for me but madness or death.

  It was then, of all times, that I had an idea.

  I needed to find out William Beaumont’s date of birth.

  I rang Somerset House. They informed me that birth records weren’t kept there anymore but at St. Catherine’s House, and anyway they weren’t allowed to give out information over the telephone. I was given another number to call, and was eventually put through to an extension that was engaged. I wasn’t about to give up. I’d go through the national archives of the Public Record Office at Kew if necessary. But I had another idea.

  William Beaumont’s mother had been a well-known actress. I rang Amanda Gielgud at the London Theatre Society, where she had told me she worked between unsuccessful auditions. She wasn’t in today, but an elderly theatrical-sounding woman offered to be of assistance.

  I asked if she had any way of looking up the past histories of performing artists.

  ‘I can so long as they were registered with a recognized union. We have brief biographies, and in some cases obituaries, of most of the century’s major stage and screen performers on computer. It’ll take about a week, and there will probably be a small service charge.’

  I told her I needed some details urgently, and would be willing to donate a considerable sum of money to the ACTT or RADA or whoever they liked if I could just get hold of the information at once.

  ‘It still takes a week to be processed, I’m afraid. The computer is in Barnsley.’

  I gave her the details anyway. I was looking for biographical facts concerning Edith Beaumont, of Wigmore Street.

  ‘Well, of course, I knew Edith, so I might be able to tell you myself,’ came the reply.

  ‘You did?’ I asked, taken aback.

  ‘Of course, darling, we all did. Marvellous woman, very popular in the late forties. Drawing room comedies mostly. Tragic, the way she died.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Why, she and her husband were both murdered. They never found out who did it. A dreadful scandal, the papers talked of nothing else for months.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘In the late fifties, I think.’

  ‘Do you know when she gave birth to her son?’

  ‘Hang on a minute, I shall have to look that one up.’ The receiver went down with a clonk. A few minutes later she came back on the line. ‘It was way before my time, of course, but we think it was around November 1925. Such a beautiful boy.’

  ‘Can you be more exact? I need the actual date. I’m doing a book.’

  ‘Well, we like a challenge here. Let me ask Mr Marshall, he’s our resident historian. He might have something in his personal files. Do you want to call back?’

  ‘I’ll hold.’

  Twenty-three minutes later she returned to the phone. ‘I have the information you requested,’ she said casually. ‘One son, William Kerwin Beaumont. He’ll be nearly seventy now.’ She read out the date. ‘That means his birthday is one week from today.’

  One week, I told myself, if I could survive for just one week his time in Beaumont’s body would be up and I would have beaten him. Now I had a goal.

  One week could be a hell of a long time.

  For a while, everything seemed to return to a state of semi-normality. Customers were coming into the store. Lottie rushed around answering phones and arguing with suppliers while I ordered up stock, attempting to look as if I wasn’t going out of my mind.

  Lottie guided me through the printout pages, pointing out the areas that needed to be dealt with in Max’s absence.

  The one thing I didn’t need was a formal business meeting with Sarah.

  She arrived in a sharp blue suit looking restyled and refreshed, as though she’d dressed for someone special. She seated herself opposite with a pair of underlings and began to outline contract terms for the proposed new branches, and all I could think was: Who the hell were you with last night? Where were you while I was watching a man die?

  She peered over her glasses at me, endlessly reciting product features while pushing forward in her seat to splay her thighs beneath the glass-topped table, and I realized she was teasing and urging me to do something if I dared. Right now, sex was the last thing on my mind.

  I wanted to tell her the truth, but was sure it would be a bad idea, especially if I told her the part about how we met. So I handled her with as much formality as I could muster, and let her think I was just pissed off about
not being able to reach her on the phone.

  I thought of Paul lying on the ground, and realized with a stab of sadness that I would not be able to see Sarah anymore. The risk of involving her now was too great. I would have to manage the situation without help from anyone. I watched her saunter across the shop floor, flick back her head and smile as she slipped through the doors, praying that each step away from me would take her to safety.

  After she had gone, I rang Heathrow and Gatwick and had the counter staff check through the passenger lists on all incoming flights from Portugal. They weren’t happy about doing it, so I told them that I believed my family were unable to travel without medical supervision, and needed to be met. There was no sign of them on any of the airlines. I would have to try again tomorrow.

  The rest of the day was a waking nightmare.

  Without Max there was too much to do in the store. I hadn’t begun to think about the work on the new outlets, and my supervision of the shop fitting was nonexistent. Neville wandered in half-cut after a bibulous lunch, and made a fuss about some bank charges Max had incurred until Lottie took him on one side and explained what had happened.

  It was impossible to concentrate with carpenters and plumbers hammering and sawing. The crack I had received on the head had left me with a lump that throbbed every time the drilling resumed.

  Max returned briefly at the end of the afternoon. He was done in, tired and somehow smaller, shrunk in his clothes. He looked as if he’d been rubbing grit in his eyes, and his face was the same pale yellow as his shirt. Nobody dared to ask about his son, and he volunteered no further information.

  As it grew dark, I began to dread the thought of returning home. The tube carriage was packed with soaked, steaming raincoats. I found myself searching the faces of the passengers, looking for the narrow green eyes, the too-perfect features. He was still here somewhere, drifting between the bodies, merging into the crowds. There were traces of him all around. I could feel them. Smell them. Perhaps I was picking up the spoor of other daemons, and was simply attuned to the odour of their blighted race.