Conjure House

by Gary Fry

  “Carl,” he told him, and hoped he’d go away now. He found it difficult to say why, but there was something he disliked about the boy.

  “No, what’s your surname?” the boy asked, making the first syllable of the last word sound like the hiss of a snake.

  Now Carl was confused. “I’m not a sir,” he explained, quite sensibly in his view. “I’m just a boy.”

  As stars twinkled vividly overhead, he continued moving along the pavement with Lucy, a bit quicker now.

  But the boy only followed him, his strides soundless on the grass. “No, I meant your second name—your family name.”

  That was surely nothing to do with him…Still, as they might soon become neighbours, Carl failed to see what harm there was in telling the boy.

  “Mallinson,” he said, and was surprised—if not also a little disturbed—when the boy began smiling. It was an unpleasant expression, making Carl think of the way some teachers looked when about to punish someone at his city centre school. He continued walking, trying to keep his face pointed forwards to avoid looking into that face.

  “How many uncles have you got?” the boy asked next.

  Carl grew impatient. “You haven’t told me your name yet,” he said sharply.

  He’d been disturbed by the randomness of the boy’s question. What did uncles have to do with anything? But then the boy went on as if Carl hadn’t even spoken.

  “I haven’t got any uncles now,” he explained, and after reaching a hedge separating the garden in which he intruded from the next one, he simply passed beyond it without any effort. Carl wished he’d been watching; perhaps the boy was an expert garden-hopper. But then his new acquaintance asked again, “How many have you got?”

  Carl decided to humour the boy, hoping this would shut him up for good. “Just one,” he said, keeping his gaze averted. “He lives in Manchester. He’s my mummy’s brother. But…why are you asking?”

  “You’ve got two now,” the boy replied, and smiled in the same creepy way.

  “What…do you mean?” Carl had now halted again. Lucy, having given up growling, was sniffing the base of another lamppost. “I don’t get you.”

  “I mean, I’ll be your uncle if you want me to be.”

  Carl didn’t like the boy’s tone: it sounded too deep somehow, as if a man’s voice had been put inside a child’s body, like some faulty toy from a factory in which all the internal mechanisms had got mixed up.

  “I still don’t get it,” Carl said, tugging Lucy’s lead to communicate his desire to turn back. He wanted his mummy now…and his daddy, of course.

  “Oh, I’ve so much to show you,” the boy went on, passing beyond another hedge without even losing breath. “When you come to live here forever, I’ll teach you lots of new stuff,” he added, touching that black mole on his upper lip with one bony thumb. “After all, what else are uncles for?”

  Had Carl told the boy he might be moving here soon? Whatever the truth was, if they were destined to become friends, he should at least know the boy’s name. Carl asked this question again…and then the cool air, which until now had boasted only a faint breeze, started gusting loudly.

  “Let me say it without speaking,” said the boy amid this frantic activity. He’d ceased moving and gazed across at Carl with unblinking eyes. Then he looked away, and the wind all around grew stronger. The house opposite, on one corner of the junction, shimmered and stirred. Tall plants or bushes in its front garden, pitch-black and shaggy-looking, shifted in the dance of nature rising all around. These forceful gusts swept off the rugged moors, bringing splashes of water scudding from the glittering lake Carl could see beyond the dilapidated building.

  And there were voices caught inside this storm.

  “SU…MAN…” the speaker hissed, like static on a cheap radio. Then, as time seemed to rush by, this noise grew even more powerful: “SUUUUUUU…MAAAAAAAAN…”

  After turning away from the tumbledown house—surely the plantlike shapes in its front garden hadn’t developed mouths moving along with the strange sounds all around—Carl noticed that Lucy had begun barking again, and that the boy had finally closed his mouth.

  Then all the weird effects from the hills died away, and there was silence again. Even the dog had ceased her racket.

  “You’ll know me soon enough, nephew,” said Suman, and began racing away, out of sight beyond a corner of the nearest unlit house.

  Carl, panicky and breathless, hurried back towards his grandparents’ home, telling himself he hadn’t just seen a figure behind him, darting across the junction towards that dark, empty-looking property. This movement had been too vague to belong to anyone alive, and must have been a cloud of flies or something similarly insubstantial. Nor had he heard a whisper, like an aftereffect of all that strange noise from the moors, add with a savage hiss, “And so will your daddy…”

  He didn’t stop running until he’d reached the bungalow. If he’d made a new friend, he was unsure whether he wished to spend much time with him. Then he let himself inside, hoping that once all the mourners had gone home, he could get back to his book. Despite the many magical and frightening events in Narnia, life seemed much simpler there.

  FIVE

  Anthony thanked Mrs. Robinson for all her help with the funeral, saying that he couldn’t have gotten through it without her. She and her taciturn husband were the last to leave, and while Melanie and Carl cleared away discarded plates and cups, Anthony saw them out.

  “My…my parents would have been very grateful, too,” he said, struggling to conceal his true feelings, which were closer to bewilderment than remorse.

  “Think nothing of it,” replied Mrs. Robinson, briefly holding his hands. “Dawn and Mick would have done the same if…well, you know, if it had been us.”

  But it wasn’t you, was it? Anthony thought, but knew that was unfair. He was simply feeling tense this evening. Despite his complicated grief, he mustn’t suspect a premeditated reason for the attack, and certainly not one involving himself.

  “I understand,” he said, and as the couple paced along the garden path, an idea occurred to him. “Hey, have you heard from…Lisa lately?”

  Mr. Robinson stopped and turned. “She’s been very busy,” he explained, an uneasy combination of pride and sorrow evident in his posture. “She’s writing for films now.”

  “I’d heard that, yes. Horror movies, isn’t it?”

  “We don’t care much for her monsters,” added Mrs. Robinson rather quickly, but then smiled. At that moment, something groaned from the moors—probably just trees responding to the wind, which was whistling and howling. When Mrs. Robinson went on, she raised her voice. “But we think she gets the characters right. They’re always nice people.”

  Anthony lifted the glass he’d been clutching all evening, wine sloshing at its base. He ignored a perception of movement in one eye corner, at the foot of the grove, a shift of light or darkness. He knew nothing was there. The noises had also ceased from the countryside nearby.

  “Here’s to nice people,” he said, a feeble attempt at a toast, and after satisfying the smiles he received in response, he closed the door.

  He found his wife and son in the lounge. Lucy was curled up on the sofa, exhausted after her walk earlier. Melanie, standing beside a Welsh dresser, offered Anthony a wan smile as he entered.

  “Are you all right, Ant?” she asked, possibly because she was unable to read him accurately—a rare occurrence in their marriage.

  “I’ll live,” he replied, and after noticing Carl sit up pertly in an armchair, Anthony added, “How about you, son? Did you enjoy your walk outside earlier?”

  He hadn’t been fishing for problems, but the boy’s reaction hinted at one anyway. “Yeah, it was…all right,” Carl replied guardedly.

  “But you do like it here,” his mum asked so quickly that Anthony guessed at what she was thinking about. But discussion about his late parents’ house and the possibility of moving here would have to wait unt
il morning. After a good night’s sleep, he might feel less vulnerable to all the nebulous thoughts lurking at the back of his mind right now.

  His son looked at his mum and replied, “Yeah. It’s nice.” And after a pause, he added more brightly, “I made a new friend.”

  Anthony froze in a drinking posture, wine frothing at his mouth like blood.

  “Oh yes? That’s nice,” said Melanie to their son, as if offered ammunition for the proposal she planned to put to her husband. “And what was he…or she…called?”

  Carl giggled. “I don’t like stinky girls!”

  “Then it was a boy?”

  “Hey, boozer, relax,” Melanie told Anthony, stepping across to the window to draw the curtains against too much dark outside. Even twinkling stars appeared ineffectual above an unseen stretch of moorland.

  Time seemed to stand still for Anthony. But then he asked the question that burned the back of his throat.

  “This new friend of yours, Carl. Did you…did you get his name?”

  While replying, Carl started yawning. “Su…man…” he said, the sound distorted by this expulsion of air.

  Anthony panicked. Simon, had his son just said? His heart drummed as he drained the last of the wine. Perhaps he’d misheard.

  “Say that again, son,” he said with feigned patience, even though his hands shook. He put down his glass on the table, which was littered with half-eaten food. But then his wife paced towards him, preventing their son from answering his dad’s question with one of her own.

  “Was he foreign, Carl?”

  Finally the boy could speak without impediment. “No. He was a lot like me really.”

  A family resemblance…Anthony rifled his pockets for the pack of cigarettes he’d so far avoided smoking inside his parents’ home, having never done so in the past. But they were both dead now, weren’t they? Dead.

  He glanced again at his son. Maybe there was a more straightforward explanation here.

  “Did you just say…someone?” asked Anthony, his lips trembling as he spoke. “Were you being cheeky?”

  But then Melanie got involved again. “Come on, time for bed, young man. It’s been a long day. You can see your new friend tomorrow. I’m glad you’ve met somebody you can play with.”

  “Wait a minute.” Anthony shook out a cigarette and rifled another pocket for his lighter. Then he stood above Carl, the alcohol in his system overruling his usual easygoing nature as he spoke forcefully. “Tell me again what he was called, this…friend of yours.”

  “I already did.” The boy now appeared a little frightened. “My ears went funny when he said it, but I’m sure he said Suman.”

  This time the name had sounded like “summon,” and if anything, that struck Anthony as even more disturbing than alternatives. He pictured in his mind Paul, Lisa and Andy, each a child again…Hell, he must be tired. But he also needed a smoke.

  When his wife rounded on their son and prepared to guide him to the spare room at the bungalow’s rear, Anthony said, “I’m just going out for some air.” He held up the cigarette smouldering from the flame he’d coaxed. “I also need a quick fix.”

  “Okay,” Melanie replied, a bit stiffly. She wore a disapproving expression, but Anthony knew this had nothing to do with him smoking. She indicated the bedrooms with one back-pointed thumb. “I’m turning in. But we’ll all talk about things tomorrow, yeah?”

  “Sure,” he replied, and then issued a cheerful good night before Carl and his mum disappeared along the hall passage. Lucy followed with leaden limbs, perhaps after many exertions lately, protecting the house as dogs did by nature.

  Free, Anthony thought, and despite knowing his son would sleep in the room that had once belonged to his brother, it was more important that Carl and Melanie were unable to observe from the bungalow’s front windows. Anthony strayed into the hallway, tugged open the front door, and stepped out into a chill night.

  The moonlight was bright, but with so much shadow in the area, the countryside around the grove was invisible. Something shifted audibly in a nearby hedge, but this was surely just a play of breeze or some small animal hunting for prey.

  Anthony advanced to the foot of the path, sucking in satisfying mouthfuls of cigarette smoke. It was possible, he supposed, that the boy his son had met earlier was called Suman. Kids these days had many unusual names; he’d taught some at university with such kitschy monikers. Or maybe Carl’s ear infection had returned, one he’d sustained during a swimming lesson last month. And if that was the case, he might have misheard; the lad might even be called Simon…

  But it was foolish to worry about this. Simon was hardly an uncommon name, and the fact that it meant so much to him offered no dominion over others’ right to use it.

  He paced on, towards the homes of the childhood friends he’d been thinking about earlier. During the wake, Mr. Smith, Andy’s dad, had forced himself upon Anthony. After hearing that Anthony was a psychologist, the ageing guy had asked whether anything could be done about his sleepwalking, which, his wife had eagerly attested, was getting worse as he grew older.

  This man wasn’t alone in thinking that such deep-rooted issues could be solved at a stroke, as if the human mind was a simple device requiring mere technical adjustment. But Anthony knew differently. And what qualified him to know any better, anyway? After all, he was unable to even solve his own psychological dilemma…

  Shaking his head, he moved on to the next bungalow. This was the home of the Jenkinses, Paul’s parents. They were a nicer couple, having also helped out with funeral duties. Anthony had the impression that they’d been closer to his parents than anyone in the neighbourhood except the Robinsons.

  It had been a shock to realise that all these people were now squarely middle-aged. Anthony wondered how the two boys, now adults like him, were getting along these days. Art and music had been their respective passions, and he was certain he’d heard of both in the media since they’d left the village to pursue these disciplines. And then there was Lisa, excelling in her screenwriting career.

  All four of them appeared to have done well in life. Anthony shouldn’t imagine any other reason than the modern world allowing people with average upbringings to succeed in this way. But such lowly backgrounds also produced other sorts, the type who’d kill for their next pathetic fix…

  Anthony continued strolling, drawing on his cigarette to combat growing anxiety.

  He had loved his parents; it was just that the three of them had always struggled to talk together. He’d wanted to tell them about his triumphs in academia—his first-class degree, early publications, securing postgraduate funding in a competitive field—but they’d understood little of it. Anthony craved appreciation for the contributions he was making to knowledge, but they’d simply enjoyed the kudos of having a son who’d done well for himself. Anthony had support from others, especially his wife, but for some reason, he’d needed it from his parents, too: his mum, for sure, but…mainly his dad.

  What did any of this mean?

  Anthony shook his head again, realising these enquiries were self-indulgent. Whatever his problems were, he was at least alive and well. And what about Simon? The boy had failed to reach adulthood, and would never know the many joys—falling in love, having children, pursuing a career—or the inevitable disappointments everyone experienced. Life was both a gift and a curse, but surely most would rather wrestle with its complications than be denied it altogether.

  Stubbing out his cigarette underfoot, Anthony stepped up to the house in which his brother had gone missing so many years earlier.

  What happened to you, mate? he tacitly asked the stars beyond, but on this occasion he was offered no response. He recalled the blinding light they’d all witnessed—Paul, Lisa and Andy included. They’d talked about it afterwards with the kind of bemused acceptance only youngsters can ever achieve. And now Anthony was beginning to realise how much of that night he’d suppressed.

  A faint sound raced across
the nearby moors: Su…man…

  This was surely just a whisper in his skull. Turning to view the section of lake visible from this spot, he saw only shaggy black bushes, swaying in a stiff wind. Then he looked back at the house.

  It looked like a face, with windows for eyes, the doorway serving as a grimacing mouth, and its thickset roof a frowning brow. Anthony had never been inside, but had often wondered what he’d find there. Would he ever dare enter, however? He certainly had an opportunity to do so at the moment, with a study period involving no teaching duties and compassionate leave allowing him a week away from his thesis. He might do anything he wished during his stay here…

  He stared hard at the property, sensing its indifferent visage gaze back. In his peripheral vision, moonlight caused clay beside the lake to glimmer moistly, but he wouldn’t look, not even once. Despite realising this was where his parents had been discovered, he was unable to tear his vision away from the house.

  A figure had appeared at one upstairs window. It wasn’t human, and that was what disturbed Anthony. It was as white as ghosts were reputed to be, and strangely amorphous. Although what passed for its head bore eyes and the broad slit of a mouth, its body was painfully contorted, a smeared representation of nothing that ever hoped to live.

  It must be a reflection, a result of the glass warping over countless years. What troubled Anthony most of all, however, was the way he’d ascribed such sentience to the image.

  He turned to flee, catching one hand painfully on his belt buckle as he moved, the thumb smarting with the impact. And right now his dreams seemed the last place he should visit.

  SIX

  Beryl Robinson rushed up the garden path with her keys and unlocked the front door. Her husband moved tipsily in tow, but on this occasion she wouldn’t complain. She’d had quite a lot to drink herself, a few too many sherries from Dawn’s leftover supply. It had been a sad day, necessitating such excess. Recollection of identifying the Mallinsons’ bodies a few days earlier lingered in Beryl’s mind, and she wanted to get inside her secure home, putting all the horror behind her.