They all sat that way an uncomfortable period of time. Felix quietly shared his recent health issues with Elaine. Elaine shared things back, but with less detail. Janet continued to move things about her plate with her fork, but ate nothing. Sam watched them all. He wondered if he was the only one aware of the fifth presence at the dinner table—he was pretty sure he was.
Periodically the night doctor stroked the leather bag he wore hanging from his shoulder. It squirmed in various directions, as if containing more than one captive.
Felix was taken to the hospital a few days later. Sam and Elaine watched as Janet rode off with a young man Sam assumed was their son. They never saw any of them again.
For several weeks Elaine became increasingly frenetic. She cleaned the house constantly, and reorganised the medicine cabinets more than a few times. Sometimes Sam would wake up in the middle of the night and find the bed empty. He’d go downstairs and discover her at the table quietly drinking coffee or taking down notes. Usually the night doctor sat there with her.
Often she would work herself into exhaustion and sleep late the following morning. He would come downstairs by himself and find the night doctor already waiting for him, standing in a corner or staring out the window.
It dragged on this way for months. One night Elaine woke him up in the middle of the night, her pale face hanging over him. He gently lay his hand on her wet face—she’d been crying. “I don’t want to leave you by yourself,” she whispered hoarsely.
He glanced past her, his eyes scanning the room, finding the tall quiet figure with the large eyes and the too-narrow face, the squirming bag. “You won’t be,” Sam replied.
DULL FIRE
Gary McMahon
We lay naked in the lamplight for a long time after making love, not saying anything, just looking at each other, taking it all in. I was resting on my side, with my chin perched bird-like in the cup of my hand and my elbow pressed against the hard mattress. She was reclining alongside me, staring without blinking into my eyes.
She reached out and touched my cheek, and then her steady finger traced a line down to the corner of my mouth, along the top of my lips, and back up again to my nose. She rubbed her fingertip up my nose and towards my forehead, following the crooked line.
“What happened?” she said, softly. “How did you do this? Was it a boxing injury?”
I shook my head, but didn’t say anything.
“Did it happen when you were a kid?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Tell me.”
I closed my eyes and saw red behind the lids: the wavering glow of dull fire, like something ablaze in the distance. I’d been seeing it for a couple of weeks now. I wondered if it was some kind of prophetic vision or a sign that I had a brain tumour. When I opened my eyes again she was still there. She wasn’t going anywhere, not this one. Every other woman I had known had left me for some reason or other—some of them genuine, others made up as an excuse. This woman, it seemed, was going to hang around.
“When I was eleven years old, my father punched me in the face and broke my nose.”
She breathed in sharply, but she wasn’t as shocked as I’d expected. “Why did he do that?” Her eyes shone in the dimness, eager to take in the details.
“My father was a violent man. He drank a lot. His dreams all died when I was born and he took it out on me. He was too weak to do anything else but blame a child for his failures.”
Her hand was still resting against my cheek. The skin of her palm was warm and moist.
“I need to piss,” I said, sliding off the bed.
“You’re a real charmer,” she said, smiling.
I went into the bathroom and closed the door. The ceiling light flickered a few times when I switched it on—this was a cheap room in a rundown hotel. The amenities were basic. It was clean but vaguely depressing, like the kind of place lonely suicides might come to end their miserable days.
I stared at my face in the mirror, but thankfully I didn’t experience the cliché of my father staring back at me. I’d always looked more like my mother: fair hair, blue eyes, prominent cheekbones that she always said could slice through butter.
Turning away from the mirror, I stood over the toilet bowl and waited for nature to take its course. We’d been drinking a lot, Lisa and I, so I knew my bladder was full, but for some reason it was taking its time to come to terms with the fact.
“I hope you gave her one for me.” My father was lying on his back in the small bathtub, his bare feet dangling over the end. “She’s a looker, that one. I bet she goes like a bunny rabbit.” His laughter was hollow and empty in the small room. He had his hands down the front of his trousers.
I tried to ignore him, just like always; and, as always, I failed. “Leave me alone,” I said.
“I’d love to, but somehow, no matter how much I’d rather be elsewhere, I always end up back at your side. I think I must be cursed.”
The piss crawled back along my urethra and inside me. I couldn’t go; he had spoiled it, just like he did everything else in my life. I flushed the toilet anyway and turned around, deliberately keeping my gaze away from the bathtub.
“When you go back out there for round two, think of your old man when you get to the vinegar strokes.”
I turned off the light and opened the door. Lisa was still in bed. She had put on her glasses and was reading a book. She always carried a book. It was one of the things I found interesting about her.
“You okay?” She looked up at me, her dark eyes filled with something I knew I could start to rely on if I wasn’t too careful, her lips slightly apart, showing a glimpse of wet white teeth.
“Couldn’t go,” I said, easing back down on the bed beside her. “I thought I could, but it didn’t happen.” There was a weight to my words that I didn’t intend; a dark double meaning I couldn’t quite understand.
“You were telling me about your father.”
I thought about the bathroom, and the old bastard slithering around in the tub masturbating. “There isn’t much to tell, if I’m honest. It’s a sad, boring old story.”
“So tell me anyway.” She put down her book and snuggled close, slipping off her reading glasses. I could feel the warmth of her body; the heat of our recent passion still clung stubbornly to her flesh.
“He beat me regularly until I was sixteen, when I got too big for him to push around. He backed off before I had the common sense to knock him out, and started to drink even more than before. Because he couldn’t hit me anymore, he decided to hit the bottle instead.”
Lisa stared at me, rapt, all of her attention focused on what I was telling her.
“He died when I was eighteen. It was from a sudden, but not entirely unexpected, heart attack. I didn’t go to the funeral. There was no reason for me to attend. By that time my mother was already in a nursing home, so she wasn’t there either. She had early onset dementia. I was an only child so I inherited everything: the house, the car, and the gambling debts he’d left behind. I had to sell it all and still I owed a couple of thousand. That’s why I started to kickbox. Cage fighting paid more than bartending. It was also a way of controlling the violence he’d left me along with the debts.”
“Jesus, what a prick…”
“Is that me, my father, or both of us?” I smiled to let her know I was teasing.
“Don’t be silly.” Her face was hard; she looked more serious than I’d ever seen her in the short time we’d been together. “He left more scars on you than just a broken nose.”
“I know.”
“So do I, babe. Believe me, I know.” She sat up, resting her back against the scratched pine headboard. “My mother was the same. My dad died in a car accident when I was a baby and she never forgave me for surviving the crash. Ever since I can remember, she would nip me, prick me with pins, jam my fingers in the door… little accidents, or so it seemed. She was the clumsiest mother in the world. The doctors used to laugh at her like it was all a b
ig joke.”
My chest was tight; I was having trouble breathing.
“So I know… I know all about your scars, and how they never heal properly.” She groped for my hand, held it, and squeezed it tight. “I have matching scars of my own.”
“You don’t know… nobody does. It isn’t how you think.” I was on the verge of telling her about the way my father would always come back into my life, hanging around like a dirty smell and creating misery. All I had to do was to drag her off the bed and lead her to the bathroom. If I opened the door, she would see him there, pulling on his dick and laughing like the psycho he had always been. But I couldn’t. I was too afraid that she might not see him after all. I couldn’t take the risk that I was insane, and instead of seeing his ghost all I really saw was a reflection of my own pain.
“I do know, babe. Believe me, I do.” She leaned into me and I put my arms around her, searching for that warmth. But it was all gone now; she’d gone cold. Everybody went cold in the end.
#
The next day we were on the road by nine am. She looked nice. She’d put on a new dress that showed a lot of leg, and her hair and make-up were perfect. My father was sitting on the back seat, staring at me in the rear-view mirror.
Lisa hadn’t said a word.
Just as I’d feared, she couldn’t see a thing. I was the only one who could see him. Last night we’d been like soldiers exchanging war stories, but today the world seemed slightly brighter, as if by talking about these things we had moved out of the shadows, at least for a little while.
I glanced at Lisa but she wasn’t looking at me. She kept looking in the mirror or glancing over her shoulder, as if she were searching for something on the road behind us. Or maybe she could actually see my father and she was afraid to tell me in case I thought she was crazy. The latter thought held a deep irony for me, and I suppressed a smile.
“Where are we going?”
I watched the road ahead. It was empty of traffic. “I don’t know. I thought we might just drift. We don’t have to go back for a week. I don’t have another fight for three months. Why bother making plans when we can just go wherever the wind blows us?”
“That’s one of the things I… like most about you.” She’d almost said love but changed it at the last minute. It was too early for that kind of talk, but I knew the words would come eventually. “You hate to make plans. You’re spontaneous. That’s cool by me.”
I smiled. “I spend most of my life training for fights, so when I have some downtime a plan or a routine is the last thing I need.”
The road unfurled beneath us, a long black ribbon leading to wherever we chose.
We drove in silence for a mile or two, enjoying the view: fields of flat brown grass stretched under a flat blue sky on each side of the road, dotted here and there with the abandoned carcasses of old stone buildings. In the distance, I could see a farm. A tractor moved slowly along a gravel drive, cows stood in a broad, colourless pasture, and a sheepdog ran around in circles in a field beside the burnt out shell of a pick-up truck.
“Where the hell is this, anyway?” Her voice was low, sombre. “I don’t think I like it here.”
“I have no idea. I stopped looking at the map a day ago. I’m just trying to keep off the main roads and motorways so we can see something a bit more picturesque than lorries, other cars, blacktop and service stations.”
She laughed but didn’t bother to explain why.
I glanced at the rear-view mirror. My father was no longer in the back of the car. I looked right, towards those dun, uninteresting fields, and saw him there, running alongside the car, losing ground as we sped along the narrow road. I knew from experience that he would catch up—he always did—but I allowed myself to enjoy the feeling that I was leaving him behind.
“I’m hungry,” said Lisa, pouting like a child.
“I’ll stop as soon as we see somewhere. A village, a pub, a shop… anything like that… Keep your eyes peeled.”
“What’s that?” She was pointing straight ahead, through the dusty windscreen.
I slowed the car and tried to make out what she had noticed. As we got closer I saw that it was one of those roadside snack joints, the kind that’s just a trailer somebody drags to some quiet lay-by in the morning and then picks up again later in the day. I stopped the car a few yards away and switched off the engine.
“You want junk food for breakfast?”
She nodded. “Why the hell not? We’re on holiday, aren’t we?”
We got out of the car and walked slowly towards the trailer. I could smell hot grease. The trailer was small, grubby, and the front hatch was propped open with a child’s plastic spade. The front end was resting on two small piles of bricks; the rear balanced precariously on a couple of tiny wheels. Whatever vehicle was used to tow this thing, I doubted it could go too far or move very fast.
Handwritten menus adorned the area around the hatch: hot dogs, burgers, bacon sandwiches, teas and coffees, warm cans of cola. The woman inside the trailer was sitting on a low stool and smoking a cigarette. “Hygienic,” I whispered. Lisa giggled.
“Morning,” said the woman. She had short curly hair the colour of road dirt. Her eyes were narrow; she had a permanent Clint Eastwood squint framing a thousand-yard stare. “What can I do for you?” She took the cigarette out of her mouth and flicked it into the dirt beside the trailer.
I turned to Lisa. “How does two bacon sandwiches sound?” She nodded in agreement.
“Two bacon coming right up,” said the woman. The open grill began to sizzle when she threw on the rashers. Behind me, I heard a car door slam. I turned and looked but there were no other cars at the side of the road, only mine. I could just about make out the shape of a figure seated in the rear—my father, returned from his stupid, teasing run. Lisa hadn’t noticed; she was watching the woman cook the bacon.
The sandwiches were surprisingly good, as they often are from those kinds of places. The bread was cheap, but the meat was of a decent quality, probably supplied by a local pig farmer. We finished eating and walked back to the car. As we got closer, I started to become more afraid. I didn’t want to see him. I wished that I could chase him away but I didn’t know how. No matter how many fights I had, or however tough I thought I was, this was one opponent I could never defeat.
“Don’t get nervous,” said Lisa, placing a hand on my arm so that I would stop.
“What do you mean?”
“When you see her. Don’t get nervous. Everything will be okay. I promise.”
It wasn’t my father sitting in the back of the car. Instead, there was a middle-aged woman with black shoulder-length hair and the same dark eyes as her daughter.
“This is my mother.” She took hold of my hand and gripped it as if she were trying to prevent me from running away. “I thought she might like to meet your father.”
He was standing nearby, in the shade of a tree. He had on his favourite baseball cap and a pair of baggy jeans. His shirt was hanging out of the waistband of his jeans and the buttons were open to the middle of his hairless chest.
“I told you I understood.” She squeezed my hand tighter; so damn tight that it began to hurt. “We have a lot in common, you and me.”
I closed my eyes and stared into the familiar dull fire. This time the blaze drew closer, closer, and when it was right in front of me I could see that it was in fact a house on fire. The flames had almost consumed the place, and a woman was standing in a first floor window waving her hands. I couldn’t make out her features because of the smoke, but she had dark hair down to her shoulders. Her mouth was open in a silent scream. I couldn’t see her eyes.
Tentatively at first, but gaining in confidence as she got into her flow, Lisa started to speak: “She died in a fire when I was thirteen. I squirted lighter fuel on the bed while she was sleeping and got the flames going with a box of matches I’d shoplifted from the local shop. It went on for longer than I expected. In the movies, they always mak
e it look so quick. When she finally stopped screaming I could still hear the sound ringing in my ears.” She spoke in a monotone, as if the facts no longer touched her: an actress reciting her lines.
My father walked over from his spot under the tree. He winked at me, opened the rear door and climbed in. Lisa’s mother shifted sideways to accommodate him. He nodded at her but they didn’t speak. She held his gaze for a couple of seconds and then looked away. There was a bruise on her cheek. I didn’t think it had been there before.
“Let’s go,” said Lisa. “Let’s get moving.”
I didn’t know what else to do, so I got in the car and started the engine.
We were a few miles down the road before the man and the woman in the back of the car started hitting each other. They took it in turns to throw punches; it was all incredibly civilised. The sound of fists hitting flesh and bone was unbearable at first, but I’ve learned that it’s possible to get used to anything if you’re exposed to it for a sustained period of time.
Lisa rested her hand on my knee as I drove. She didn’t say anything; she simply wanted me to know that she was there, that she would always be there, right on till the end of the road—wherever and whenever that might be. We were a family now. We were together.
I tried not to look into the rear-view mirror. The sounds were enough; I didn’t need to see what was going on. The blows took on their own rhythm after a while, a brutal song played by a dark musician. It was the percussion of hurt, the awful drumbeat of abuse.
Before long, I stopped wincing at the sound of each blow and ceased wondering if they could feel any pain.
Continuous violence can have a numbing effect. A person becomes immune to it. If you’re not careful, you can even start to like it.
#
The Spectral Book of Horror Stories Page 8
