The New Uncanny

by Priest, Christopher

  You collapse in the driver’s seat. Turn to look at your passenger.

  ‘Weird place,’ you say, and wait for a response. ‘Suit yourself. Let’s go.’

  You realise you’ve not taken your coat off and Hilde’s car will now be covered in mud.

  ‘Too bad,’ you say. ‘She should have thought of that.’ And you laugh.

  You know you shouldn’t be driving, but you don’t care. You can feel that wet sensation on the left side of your chest again. Still sweating? You look down, tugging at your coat. There’s blood. Quite a lot of blood. Stop the car. Pull at your T-shirt, covered in blood.

  There’s a big hole in your chest. Fist-sized. As if something has been torn out of you.

  You bend over to look more closely. Tentatively insert the tips of your fingers. Your hand slowly falls away and you look up through the windscreen at the ever-falling rain. The only sound you can hear, apart from the rattling of the rain, to which you have become so accustomed you don’t notice it any more, is the ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum of the wipers.

  *

  The text said she had taken the kids and gone. I could come back, she said, but they wouldn’t be there. I’d be coming back to an empty house.

  It wasn’t like she was kidnapping them and I’d never see them again. They’d be going to school as normal and I could hang around the school gate. But I wouldn’t get to be with them properly. I could fight it, but I knew I didn’t have a hope.

  It was a long text.

  I got in Hilde’s car and drove out of Brussels, heading north-west towards the coast. Not that I had any kind of plan. It was already late and dark, and the combination of alcohol, tiredness and the constant rain meant I had to stop. I found a DIY superstore with a large car park on the outskirts of Gent. I parked by the wall facing the exit and slept on the back seat. In the morning I went in search of food, then sat in the car while waiting for the DIY store to open. I went in, got what I wanted and returned to the car with it coiled in a plastic bag, which I put in the boot. I then drove on with no fixed destination in mind.

  There was a pain in my chest. From having slept badly, I presumed.

  *

  You drive until you reach the coast. Still it rains. The first cheap hotel you see, you leave the car and carry the dummy in over your shoulder. The woman gives you a twin room. You lay him on one of the beds and you take the other, kicking off your shoes. You turn and turn but sleep won’t come. You get up and gently move him along a little so that you can get on the same bed. Facing away from him. You lie absolutely still, listening, but all you can hear is the rain hitting the window.

  You turn to face him. There are raindrops on his yellow jacket. You pull the jacket to one side and rest your head on his chest. After a few moments you realise you can hear a noise like the windscreen wipers and you wonder if it’s a kind of hypnagogic auditory hallucination or if it’s the pulse in your temple.

  You wake up in the original position you had occupied on the shared bed, facing away from him. A thin grey light from the window reveals large brown flowers on the wallpaper. You turn over and look at him. His face looks the same, smooth, unlined, eyes open. On his chest a line of stitching provides a point of detail on the otherwise featureless dark fabric that covers his frame and padding. Remembering the last thing that happened before you fell asleep, you press your ear to his chest. It’s faint, but still there, but again, it could be the blood in your own head. Or it could be auto-suggestion.

  You go into the bathroom and run the shower. When you come out, I’m sitting up on the edge of the bed staring at the floor.

  ‘Shall we go?’

  You drive along the coast towards Zeebrugge.

  ‘What did you buy from the DIY store?’

  My voice is flat, affectless.

  ‘I think you know.’

  We take a ferry to England and are then faced with a long drive to London. By the time we reach the M25, it’s late. In Upper Holloway you park Hilde’s car outside the kids’ school. It’s a very short walk to your house. I follow you up the path. The house is in darkness. The kids’ rooms are empty, their cupboards and drawers bare. You offer me your bedroom and say you’re going to sleep in your son’s room.

  In the morning, you look in on me, your face blank, and you say goodbye before going downstairs. I hear the chink of a glass as a drink is poured, then another, and finally the sound of the front door. I get up and watch from the window as you cross the street. You open the boot of the car and look inside. The plastic bag from the DIY store is still sitting there. You close the boot, then open the driver’s door and get in.

  I feel a tiny stabbing pain on the left side of my chest as I think about what might be in that bag and what it could be used for.

  It’s not long before the street becomes busy with parents dropping off their kids, some on foot, others by car. I watch you watching the street and the school gate. A large black car stops in the middle of the road and two children get out. A boy and a girl. The black car moves off and you get out of Hilde’s car and call them. They stop and look at each other, then run towards you and I see you holding them close to you. A short conversation takes place and you open the rear door of the car and they look at each other again before getting in. You start the engine and pull out of the parking space. As you move off down the street I have a last glimpse of the children sitting in the back seat, their heads nodding with the movement of the car. When you reach the end of the street, you turn left.

  How far will you go before you stop and open the boot? The outskirts of London? Somewhere more remote?

  It’s usually somewhere remote.

  The Sorting Out

  Christopher Priest

  SHE WALKED HOME in the warm night air, feeling the wind from the sea, sensing rather than hearing the movement of trees and bushes. Melvina was tired from her day in town, from the slow train journey home afterwards, but it had been a successful trip. Two commissions received, and a medium-sized cheque, as well as a general feeling that her career was back on track after recent upheavals. The bag on her shoulder weighed her down, because she had celebrated in her own preferred way, in a bookshop close to the railway terminus. She thought about the weariness of her legs and back, and the prospect of a shower before falling into bed. She planned to sit up in bed browsing through her new books. Also, because thoughts are not linear or orderly, she was musing in disjointed fragments about an article she had just thought of writing, while she was on the train, inspired by watching some of the passengers as they dozed. Thoughts of Hike intruded as well at random moments, the familiar irritation.

  Now she was walking alone, almost home. It was a clear summer’s night, with the stars brilliant above. It was a pleasant time to walk, although she would have enjoyed it more if she had not felt so weary. She passed the small park and war memorial on her left, where some of the houses that overlooked the open space still showed lights in their windows. Then at the end of that street came the flight of steps up to the loneliest part of the walk, a short passage across an area of open land. This was in fact the mound of one of the clifftops, with the sea away to her right and just a well-worn but unpaved path between the large bushes of gorse and tamarisk. Night scents briefly wafted by on the wind. At the end of this path was the terrace where her house was situated. Soon she saw the shape of the tall houses in their long darkened row, the single streetlamp close to where she lived.

  As she approached the short path that led through her overgrown front garden, she noticed there was something wrong. Her white-painted door was hanging ajar, an angle of the dark interior visible behind it. Suddenly alert to danger, she felt her breath tightening. left it open that morning? Was the door open all day? Had someone broken in? Had Hike called round again while she was out? She hurried anxiously up the path to the door, pushed through.

  Light from the streetlamp fell in from behind, casting her shadow at a steep angle across the floor, a shape of unexpected dread. She put her ha
nd to the light-switch, felt the sharp-edged plastic, the metal ring that held it in place, both so familiar to the touch. Her chest was heaving, her breath coming in uneven gasps. She felt as if she was suffocating. Terror of intrusion gripped her. The light came on: the familiar dim beginning, then the quick gain to full luminosity.

  At first, nothing appeared to have been moved. Nothing she could see. The books on the shelf, the coats and scarves on the hooks, the two small paintings by the mirror. Hike’s paintings.

  Behind her, the door swung open with another gust of wind. Melvina went back and saw where some tool or heavy instrument had been bashed against the hasp, breaking it irretrievably, wrenching the lock out of the body of the door.

  Frightened of the darkness outside, the darkness that so recently she had relished, Melvina pushed the door to. There was a pile of books on the door mat, apparently knocked to one side when the door opened. She had no memory of putting them there. She eased the door across them, then propped it closed by leaning her bag against the base of it.

  She stacked the books neatly, out of the way.

  Now. She took a deep, shuddering breath. The house.

  There were two rooms off the entrance hall, both on her right. She pushed a hand through the crack of the door to her study, reached around the door jamb to find the light switch and clicked it on. Dreading what might be in there, she kneed the door open and peered into the room. Her computer was there, her printer, the scanner, her cluttered desk, the bookshelves, the filing cabinet. Nothing disarranged. A green LED flickered on her answering machine.

  Familiar calm rested in the untidy room. There was no one in there, no one hiding. She walked across to the windows, feeling her knees tremble with the temporary relief. At least the intruder had not come in here, stolen or broken anything. She swayed, so she stepped back momentarily from the window and pressed down on the surface of the desk with a hand, steadying herself. She could see her own reflection in the rectangle of window and beyond it the light from the streetlamp.

  She stepped back close to the window and peered out into the night. There was a car parked in the road not far from the entrance to her house. It was unusual to see any car here after dark. She swished the floor-length curtains closed.

  A book fell off the windowsill, landed on the carpet by her feet. She picked it up, closed it, laid it on the cupboard.

  She had lived alone in this house from the start, when she bought it after Pieter’s sudden death. Then it had been an escape, a new challenge and a fresh start. She became an unwilling widow, a single woman again, a role she had not expected. Piet’s death was something she had no control over, but she had felt that a change of scene afterwards was necessary. As the months and years went by, she grew comfortably into this place by the sea, always missing Piet, full of regrets about things they had never had the chance to do together, but getting by.

  She had never felt threatened by her solitude, before this. There was no one to help her. The silence of the house surrounded her, enveloped her fears. Who had been in? Were they still there?

  In the hallway again, she called, ‘Hike? Is it you?’

  So silent. She heard a familiar clicking sound from the kitchen, and the thump of the gas boiler igniting itself. Emboldened momentarily, she pushed open the second door, which led to the living room with the kitchen beyond, and stood in the doorway as she turned on the light.

  For a moment she realized how exposed and vulnerable she was, should there in fact be anyone lurking in the darkness within, but the light came on and filled the room with comforting normality. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed. One of her books lay in the centre of the carpet, held open by one of her shoes. She walked past, went into the kitchen and turned on the light there. The fluorescent strip flashed noisily twice, then settled to its pink-white glare. In the corner was the boiler with its blue flame, visible through the inspection glass, the same as always. No one was there, no one concealed under the table, behind the open cupboard door. She looked everywhere. The door that led to the back of the house, the yard, the garden, finally to the open clifftop, was still securely locked and bolted.

  She did not remember leaving the cupboard door open when she went out. It was normally kept closed, because it jutted into the room. She looked inside – everything seemed to be in place. She looked in the fridge: no food had been taken.

  She knew she had to go upstairs, search the rooms there.

  She returned to the hall, looked at her bag holding the door closed. The lock hung away from its fitting. Bright scratches of exposed metal flared around it, where the paint had been scraped away. There was a deep groove where whatever had been used had dug in.

  Why should someone be so desperate to break in? It had to be Hike – he was furious when she made him give her key back. But would Hike, even Hike, attack the door so violently?

  She stood still, holding her breath, trying to detect the slightest sound from the upper floors. Next, she had to search upstairs. She was shaking with fear. She had not known such a reaction was possible, but when she looked at her hands she could not keep them still. Both her kneecaps were twitching and aching. She wanted to sit down, lie down, stop all this, return to the fear-free sanity she had known until three or four minutes before.

  At the bottom of the stairs she laid a hand on the bannisters, looked up at the familiar carpet, the old one that had been here when she bought the house and which she had been meaning to replace ever since. Every worn patch, every strand of exposed canvas, was reassuringly familiar. She took another breath, then changed her mind. She hurried into her office, leaving the door in the hallway wide open so that she could see into the hall, and pulled her mobile from her pocket. She pressed the numbers that unlocked the keypad, but she fumbled it. She could not make her fingers go where she wanted. She tried again, muffed it again. She remembered Hike had an instant-dial number. Numero Uno, he said, when he had set it up for her five weeks earlier, just before he drove away.

  She pressed the speed-dial key, then the ‘1’ on the keypad. The ringing tone sounded in her ear.

  She moved the handset away briefly, to listen for sounds from upstairs. She went back to the door, peered out at the bottom of the stairs, the part of the wall where one of Hike’s old paintings still hung. The ringing tone continued.

  How late was it? She glanced at her wristwatch: it was just after midnight. Hike was sometimes asleep by this time. She felt the back of the handset growing slippery, where she held it so anxiously. Then at last he answered.

  ‘Hullo?’ He sounded curt, muffled, annoyed at being woken.

  She started to say, ‘Hike...’, but as she tried to speak the only noise she could make came out as a single gasping syllable. ‘Ha-a-a-a!’ That uncontrollable sound amazed and appalled her. She sucked in air, tried again. This time she managed a high-pitched squeak:

  ‘Hi-i-i-i!’ Silence at the other end. Humiliated by her own terror, she tried to control herself.

  Finally, she got his name out, nearly an octave too high: ‘Hike?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s me. Is that you, Mel?’

  ‘Hi –!’ She swallowed, took another shuddering intake of breath, concentrated on the words she had to say. ‘Hike! Help me! Please?’

  ‘It’s the middle of the night. What’s up?’

  ‘Someone – there’s someone in the house! Here, when I came in. I found the door –’ Again she remembered what had happened at the start, just those few minutes earlier. That dread feeling when she found the door open in the night, the darkness within, the silence. She almost let go of the handset at the memory. She sat down, lowering her backside against the edge of her desk, but immediately stood up again. Trying to keep her voice low, but hearing the stress make it harsh, she added, ‘I think someone’s still here.’

  ‘Have you looked?’

  ‘Yes. No! I haven’t been upstairs. I’m too frightened. They might still be in the house!’

  ‘Is this what it takes to
get you phone me?’

  ‘Hike, please...’

  ‘How long has it been? Five or six weeks?’ Melvina could not answer, cross-currents of Hike and the fear of an intruder flooding together. ‘Is there anything missing?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’ The cross-currents gave her thoughts sudden freedom. ‘Was it you, Hike? Have you been over here while I was out?’

  He said nothing.

  ‘Maybe it was just local kids,’ he said after a moment. ‘Kicking the door in for fun.’

  ‘No... it’s been forced. A chisel, a hammer, something heavy.’

  ‘Are you asking me to drive over?’

  Hike lived more than an hour away, by car. He had always said he disliked driving at night. She had kept him away all this time.

  ‘No, I’m OK,’ Melvina said. ‘I’ve just had a fright, that’s all. I don’t think there’s anyone still here. I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Look, Mel – I think I’ll drive over and see you anyway. You want me to pick up my stuff, and this might be an opportunity to do that.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I told you and you agreed, you bloody agreed, that you would send a friend to get the stuff. I want that room cleared out.’

  ‘I know. But you need me, otherwise you wouldn’t have called me in the middle of the night.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll call the police. That’s what I ought to do.’

  Suddenly the phone went dead at the other end. Hike had cut off the call.

  She put down the phone, laid it on her desk next to her keyboard. A mistake! A mistake to call him... but there was no one else. The flashing LED on the answering machine radiated normality, and for a moment she reached over and rested her finger on the play button. Then she remembered what had happened to the house. Talking to Hike had changed nothing. Just delayed things, just as always.