2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories

by Paul Finch

  George closed his eyes for a moment, and Dahl thought he was lingering on some regret about his son. Then he realised what was really happening and he wanted to turn and walk out of there. Instead he took a long swallow of his drink.

  "We're really sorry about your son," George said. "We've been reading about it in the paper. How are you holding up?"

  "I'm all right," he said curtly to let them know this was not up for discussion.

  Al didn't get the message. "It's a goddamn horrible thing," he said, a faint slur around the edge of his words. "And I'll tell you what-it's a good thing you have more self-control than I do. Because if I was you I would have gone straight to that guy's house, your wife's boyfriend, and choked that son of a bitch." Al was pointing with one finger, the others wrapped around his drink. "If I was you I'd be in jail right. I'd be locked up." Al looked like he thought he might have misspoken. He attempted to clarify, "I'd be locked up because of killing the boyfriend, I mean. Not your son. By all accounts you had nothing to do with it, you weren't even around."

  "No," George said, "you're just an innocent victim in all of this. I couldn't imagine-couldn't even imagine-losing my son."

  "It's the worst thing there is," Al said, "outliving your kids. I've lost both my parents and that was hard enough. And me and June lost our dog a few weeks back, the sweetest lab you've ever seen. Had her for fifteen years. We were just devastated."

  The pressure that had been building in Dahl seemed to burst like a ruptured organ, filling him with poison. "What did you just say to me?"

  "What?" Al said with a small, defensive jerk of his head.

  "What the fuck did you just say to me?"

  Al was speechless. Dahl pushed him, slamming his palms against his chest and knocking him back a step.

  Carol shrieked behind them.

  It felt pathetic, shoving this old man, but not enough to back down. "Did you just compare my son to a dog?"

  "No," Al said, his blustery facade crumbling, replaced by a scared, confused old fool.

  "No one's saying that," George said. He put a hand on Dahl's shoulder. Dahl knocked it off.

  "Mia!" Dahl said. "It's time to go." He pointed a finger at Al. "Don't you ever mention my son again." He shoved past him to the door.

  "I'm so sorry," Mia was saying behind him. "He's just really upset right now."

  Dahl got in the car, shoved his key in the ignition. Mia got in the passenger side and he sped out onto the dark road.

  "What the hell happened in there?" Mia said.

  "Nothing."

  "You pushed Al! You were trying to beat up our neighbour?"

  "Hey! We shouldn't have been there in the first place. We had no business going to a party. We had no business. What, were we supposed to have fun? Is that what we were supposed to be doing? Just having fun like nothing's wrong?"

  "Okay, I'm sorry. I guess you're not ready."

  "No! I'm not! I'll never be ready. I'll never be ready to have fun again. Ever. How can I? I'm not going to forget. Fifty years from now I'm not going to forget."

  "Don't say that. This is all still new. At some point you'll be able to move on."

  "But I don't want to move on. What kind of animal would I be if I just moved on?"

  Dahl pulled into the drive, the tyres grinding to a stop in the gravel.

  Mia didn't get out. She sat quietly, staring at her lap. "I'm going to stay at the apartment tonight and let you calm down."

  "Fine," Dahl said, "and do yourself a favour, all right? Don't come back. Get out now. I'm giving you a free pass. Because this-me-it's not getting better."

  He got out and slammed the door. As he marched up the stone path to the house, he heard the passenger door open and part of him was relieved. Part of him wanted her to stay and to throw her arms around him and refuse to give up.

  But then the driver's side door opened, and closed, and she was pulling away. She wasn't staying. And that was fine. It was the only thing that made any sense. He meant what he'd said.

  Dahl stepped inside the quiet house-still bare-walled and transitional-and he went straight for the bourbon. Probably the last thing he needed, but would that stop him? Hell no it wouldn't.

  But where was Buck? Why wasn't that overexcited mutt jumping all over him?

  Dahl hadn't told Mia what happened last night. Hadn't told her they couldn't leave the back door open for him anymore.

  Dahl stared at the partially opened patio door and dread washed over him like polluted waters. He fought his instincts and moved toward it. He opened the door and stepped out onto the patio. He heard noises, movement, and for a moment there was a small, warm flicker of hope. But then he looked over the patio railing and saw that the activity he heard was a pack of those hideous pale animals, crowded together in a tight knot in his yard.

  "Hey!" Dahl yelled. He picked up a clay pot and hurled it over the edge. It shattered near them. They scattered and ran to the woods.

  In their absence, Dahl saw what had been at the centre of the pack. It was Buck, sprawled lifeless and torn.

  Dahl ran down the steps and across the yard to make sure there couldn't possibly be some last glimmer of life inside him, just hanging on, just enough that Dahl could bring him to the vet and get him fixed up. But no. Of course not. Just one more feeble hope to be crushed underfoot and ground into the dirt.

  In the few short seconds he could stand to look, Dahl felt something dark and hateful rising inside him. A rusty old shovel was leaning against the support beam for the deck. That would do. He snatched it up and marched to the edge of the forest. He could see the dim illumination of the animals, scrambling up the scaly trunks of the pines. One of them was climbing a thin young tree that wobbled with its weight.

  Dahl swung the shovel, hacking at the narrow trunk. The treetop swung and the animal slipped but didn't fall. Dahl chopped at the tree again and the animal dropped, falling through branches and hitting the ground with a pained chirp.

  Before it could run away, Dahl swung the shovel like he was clearing a path in the brush, knocking the animal out of the tree cover, tripping and rolling into his yard.

  Dahl stood over the animal. It looked up at him with panicked black eyes and held a clawed, luminous arm in front of itself.

  Some part of Dahl felt a tugging compassion and a sick revulsion at what he was doing, but that part was smothered beneath a white-hot electric rage.

  The animals in the forest were chirping and crying, shaking the branches of the trees.

  Dahl brought the shovel down, a meaty smack and the sound of tiny bones snapping. The animal was still moving, but slightly. That gnawing sense of revulsion was growing, eclipsing the anger, but it was too late to stop. As if to silence his doubt, he brought the shovel down again with a wet, fleshy crunch. And now the animal was not moving. Slowly, the soft white radiance faded from inside it.

  The shrieking of the animals grew louder. There was a scraping sound, something being dragged through the dirt and the blanket of pine needles. It was a small pack of the creatures, and they were pulling something across the forest floor.

  They emerged from the trees, into the yard and stopped just feet away from Dahl. They were dragging a dead animal, a young mountain lion, ragged claw marks across its throat and back. They were looking up at him and if there was emotion or meaning in those black eyes, he was unequipped to read it.

  Why were they showing this to him? So they'd killed another animal. Were they saying they were going to kill him too? It didn't seem so. Or was this what had really killed Buck? Had this mountain lion killed Buck and they went after it?

  Dahl stared at the little creatures and they stared up at him as if awaiting an answer.

  He dropped to his knees. He picked up the lightless gray body, still warm but limp in his hands. He held it close and cradled it like an infant. "Oh God," he said, tears beginning to pour out of him like a dam had burst. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry."

  The animals crowded in aro
und him. Dahl didn't know if they were going to tear into him, and he didn't care if they did. But that didn't happen. They moved in close to see the body. Dahl laid it on the ground before them and they gathered around it. They pressed in next to him. Two of them climbed up onto his back to look over his shoulders. One crawled up into his lap. He touched them and they seemed to welcome his touch.

  The animals that encircled the body glowed brighter and this radiance spread to those farther away, and farther still, to those still in the trees, and their number was greater than Dahl could have imagined. They illuminated the forest like Chinese lanterns. Their shrieking and chirping had hushed. It rose again in a long, low wail.

  They all mourned together, and Dahl mourned with them, helpless to change what had happened, and crying out at the injustice. Crying out at the goddamn injustice of it all.

  WRONG

  Stephen Volk

  To my parents when I was growing up, laughable when you look back from today's perspective, job security was the Holy Grail. It didn't really matter if you had a pleasurable or rewarding life. Work wasn't meant to be pleasurable, it was just a means to an end. The end being going out on the occasional 'run' of a Sunday to Llantwit Major with a flask of piping-hot coffee, or having a week at a caravan site in Porthcawl every summer. That was their lot and they had no goals or aspirations beyond it. I did, I think, even then. Anyway the fact was I wasn't academically brilliant and there was only one subject I was even remotely good at or interested in-to their eternal dismay, no doubt, not that they ever showed it. So, not much good for anything else, with so-so A-Levels but a sliver of talent for drawing and painting, I gained a place on the Foundation Course at Newport College of Art in the early '70s, eager to learn but full of trepidation about an uncertain future.

  I can't remember how we found my digs. Perhaps the Art College provided a list of people who put up students. My father and possibly my mother-almost certainly my mother-were with me when I first met my landlady and her husband. My mum would've wanted to give the place a surreptitious once-over, and was fairly swiftly reassured that the house was as spotless as her own. I could tell she was gratified and relieved by the warm welcome we all received too: tea in a chubby pot and a plate of chocolate digestives and butter crumbles arranged in an arc like a magician's card trick. She settled back and relaxed while my dad talked about rugby. Luckily he had the ear of a fellow sports obsessive.

  Mr Bisp (Percy, as I grew to know him: an old-fashioned name even then) was a short, stoutish man similar in build to my grandfather and, like my grandfather, faintly comical in appearance. Snow-white hair in a Tintin quiff when most men his age would be bald as a badger, black-rimmed glasses, bulbous W. C. Fields nose, receding chin, trousers pulled up over a pot belly to an equator just under his armpits, kept resolutely in place with a pair of fanatically taut braces. His shirt, I remember vividly, was Persil white, rolled up beyond the elbows of spindly, hairless forearms. Shoes polished within an inch of their lives, spine as rod-straight as that of a twenty-year-old, from the off he gave the impression of being a dry old stick, but as I came to know him better I could see there was always a twinkle of a smile flickering behind the grumpy exterior.

  A funny little chap, he was certainly no Robert Redford, but Mrs Bisp (Enid), poor woman, was no oil painting either. On first sight I couldn't help but compare her to a Goya hag-toothless, laden with deeply-etched wrinkles, with a protruding jaw and rubbery lips-but she was a sweet woman whose caring nature made me immediately feel ashamed for having such a superficial reaction, and I'm sure I blushed. I was a shy teenager, after all, and this was the first place I was going to live in that wasn't my home.

  I was shown my bedroom. I installed a few armfuls of books, and my own twin-ring electric hob (which my parents insisted on getting me, even though I said I'd be eating at the college canteen most of the time). Mr and Mrs Bisp said I was free to cook my own food in their kitchen, use the toaster, use anything I liked, in fact, as long as I cleaned up afterwards.

  I was thinking of my territory. They were thinking of theirs. I wasn't going to get in their way, and that was how they wanted it. But it was nice. They were nice people. And my mum was happy. (On one occasion my brother, who was ten, picked up that Mrs Bisp said "muke" instead of "milk" and it became a running gag whenever any of us referred to her. Evidently she had a London accent, whereas Percy was from the Valleys, born and bred.)

  As I say, Percy was quiet, but brusque. When I got home from college about seven o'clock on my first day, he said, "I expect you've got studying to do"-which immediately set out the rules in no uncertain terms. They didn't want me sitting with them all night, which was fair enough. They'd said I could use the middle room to work in, so that's where I'd set up my drawing board, irrespective of whether I had 'studying' or not.

  Sometimes I'd listen to my transistor radio, set to Radio 3, or read whatever science fiction novel I had on the go (Moorcock, William Burroughs, J. G. Ballard). As routine set in over the first few weeks, I'd get accustomed to Mrs Bisp knocking on the door and asking, "Tea?" Sometimes when I had nothing to do, and with the evening stretching bleakly until bedtime, I'd yearn to go and join them but thought I would intrude. It wasn't my space, and after all it was their house. Instead, as I worked, I'd hear the dim mumble through the wall of the TV set in the next room. Having said that, one or other of them would always tell me when News at Ten was about to begin, and I'd always watch it with them, then go to bed.

  Of course it wasn't exactly imprisonment. I could have gone out with friends from college to the pub, but I didn't. I wasn't a pub kind of person. I'm still not. Besides, my closest two mates travelled home in the evening (to Usk and Cwmbran respectively) so I was a bit abandoned. There was a nice Irish girl with long hair and a springy walk who I liked very much-she blushed even more readily than I did-but if I'd have asked her to go for a drink she'd have been mortified. Not that I could ever have plucked up the courage to do so.

  Percy liked his Western Mail but didn't engage in conversation much. As he sipped his tea-always tea, never coffee-he might remark on a topical story on TV, giving a wry smile or shake of the head, pointing at the screen with his thumb. His views were what you'd expect. I didn't volunteer mine. Maybe he tested me politically, but if he did I didn't rise to it. There again, maybe he wasn't really interested in me at all.

  But he was a good sort. Sometimes I saw him going to the local shops with his string shopping bag and shopping list. I found out later he used to deliver to old dears in the area, elderly folks who couldn't get out. Didn't take any money for it. "God, no." Told me it was just something he liked to do. Said it "took him out".

  One day-I think it was in the second term, because by then we were left to our own devices to get our portfolios ready and bulk out our all-important sketch books-a girl from Third Year Fine Art came to pose for life drawing. Unexpectedly, I was the only one in the room with her. She arrived on a bicycle decorated with rainbow tape, and stripped off in front of me without a glimmer of hesitation. Taking a break for a roll-up, still stark naked, she came to look at my drawing on the easel and after due consideration said it was good. She was tiny and her haircut a punkish crop. But her pubic hair was red-to be honest, I hadn't seen pubic hair before. It was richly colourful and unapologetic, totally unlike the sparse whiskers of the sixty-year-old overweight model we would become all too familiar with.

  That night the sitting room door was open as I passed and Percy beckoned me to come in and sit down. He was watching Coronation Street and I wasn't sure from his expression if he was perplexed by it or enjoying it. "She likes this," he said. Enid's chair was unoccupied so I naturally asked where she was. "Gone to her sister's for a few days."

  "Finally had enough of you, has she?" I joked.

  "Aye."

  He seemed quiet. "Didn't have a row, did you?"

  "Row? Good God, we don't have rows." Percy dismissed the idea, getting up to go and make us both a cup of te
a. "Two sugars?"

  And so it was. I spent my spare time during the day filling my sketchbook, which was an important part of the course. We were told by our tutors we had to do at least two drawings a day, on top of our lessons and other projects such as design work, illustration, technical drawing, and so on. Consequently I took every opportunity when out and about or even sitting having a drink or chat, to draw anything that happened to be in front of me. Beer glass. Ashtray. Bus stop. Person with slip-on shoes. It didn't have to be interesting. (Mostly it wasn't interesting but you drew it anyway.) It was about training your eyes, improving your observational skills, and I must say if you compared the first scribble in a sketchbook to the last there was a marked improvement. It was remarkable, really. I always say, when people ask, that the whole discipline was like putting your eyes through a pencil sharpener.

  I stayed at Mr and Mrs Bisp's from Monday night to Thursday, returning home on the train Friday night for the weekend. Not far, and only one change at Cardiff Central.

  My father in those days was a bit of a control freak. He had to do everything his way, to the extent that the most banal household repairs were no-go zones for us boys-even if later in life we looked back at his DIY jobs and realised he was pretty rubbish at everything. But I think I've got a bit of that in my DNA. It would be abnormal if I didn't, but I was drastically unlike him, fundamentally. My brother and him, on the other hand, were too much alike, which is why their arguments gave my mum a lot of grief. The two of them would have a shouting match and afterwards be all smiles, talking about the football results or how Cardiff City did, while my mum was left in tears. No wonder she had to see that specialist that my Nan saw for her 'nerves'. Dad exploded on a regular basis. I think he was a man who couldn't deal in any way with the stress he was under, but lived with the pathetic and bombastic delusion he was strong-willed and in charge, which he obviously wasn't. Even as kids we could see that.