“You’ve got it.”
There’s no doubt now that the driver is mimicking him, raising the pitch of his voice as Mottershead did. “I can’t see it,” Mottershead says furiously.
“You will.”
Mottershead imagines his own voice being forced to rise as the argument continues, topping the driver’s mimicry until it becomes a screech. He flings himself out of the vehicle, almost tripping over the rucksack, and thumps the door shut with his buttocks. “What are you expecting?”
“Two and a big pointed one.”
Mottershead produces the twenty-pound note. He wishes he could see the driver’s face, but the neon at the entrance to the mall has dazzled him. “I’ve nothing else to offer you.”
“You delight me,” says the driver in exactly the same tone. He takes the note and hands Mottershead a smaller one. Mottershead keeps his hand extended, though he isn’t looking forward to a repetition of the driver’s touch; the man’s stubby fingertips seem to lack nails. He’s still awaiting change when he hears the driver release the handbrake, and the taxi speeds away.
“Wait,” Mottershead neighs, struggling to see past the blur which coats his eyes. He slaps his empty hand over his face and stands crying “Stop thief.” The noise of the vehicle fades more swiftly than the blur, until he begins to plead for his sight. Nothing matters more than being able to see. He’ll let the driver go if he can only have his vision back.
At last his sight clears. He’s beside a dual carriageway, across which the long blank slab of the shopping mall faces acres of waste ground where a few starved shrubs are decorated with litter. Above the carriageway, red lamps grow pale as the light of a glassy sun glares across the waste. There’s no sign of the taxi among the traffic which races along both sides of the road, turning grey with the dust in the air. “Good riddance,” Mottershead mumbles, and glances at the note in his hand. It’s his own twenty-pound note, except that part of it—about an eighth—has been torn off.
He emits a shriek of rage and swivels wildly. His movement prompts the doors of the mall to slide open, and he veers towards them, through an arch of massive concrete blocks reminiscent of the entrance to an ancient tomb. As soon as he has passed between the doors they whisper shut behind him.
The mall is three floors high. Shops and boarded-up rooms surround a wide tiled area on which more than a dozen concrete drums containing flowers and shrubs are arranged in a pattern he can’t quite identify. The air is full of a thin sound, either piped music or the twittering of the birds which are flying back and forth under the glassed-in girders of the roof. Escalators rise from the centre of the open space, bearing figures so stiffly posed that they look unreal. He barely notices all this as he dashes into the nearest shop.
It’s a video library called Sammy’s Hat. Cracked plastic spines are crammed into shelves on the walls which flank the counter, behind which a large man is watching a dwarfish television. If You’re Not Happy with Our Service is printed on the front of his T-shirt, which is close to strangling his thick arms and neck beneath his raddled sprawling face. Cassette boxes flaunt their covers behind him: Don’t Look in the Oven, The Puncturer, Rude and Naked, Out of His Head … He acknowledges Mottershead only by ducking closer to the television, which is receiving the credits of a film called Nasty, Brutish and Short. “Is it possible for me to phone?” Mottershead says over the buzzing of kazoos.
The shopman’s small eyes narrow. “Anything’s possible here.”
“I mean, may I use your phone?”
The man heaves a sigh which sets boxes rattling on the shelves. “What’s it all about?”
“I’ve been robbed,” Mottershead declares, waving the remains of the note. “I just paid my taxi fare with this, and this is what the cabby gave me back.”
On the tiny screen a stooge who appears to be wearing a monkish wig is poking two fingers in another’s eyes. The shopman throws himself back in his high chair, chortling so grossly that his saliva sizzles on the screen. “Come and see this,” he shouts.
A woman tented from neck to feet in gingham squeezes through a doorway behind him. Her ruddy face is even wider than his, her eyes smaller. Mottershead assumes that the shopman has called her to watch the film until the man points at the torn note. “That’s what he got when he tried to pay his fare with it,” he splutters.
Mottershead feels another screech of rage building up inside him, but it will only waste time; he won’t be penniless for long—he’ll be paid for the lecture. “Forget it,” he says when the hoots and howls of the couple squashed behind the counter begin to relent. “Just tell me where the library is.”
The woman lifts her dress, revealing thighs like a pink elephant’s, to wipe her eyes. “You’re in it, you poor bat.”
“Not this kind. The kind with books.”
Mottershead intends his tone to be neutral, but the shopman flings himself like a side of beef across the counter and makes a grab for his lapels. “You watch what you’re saying to my daughter. Nothing in here to be ashamed of. Stories, that’s all they are.”
Mottershead backs out of reach, his ankles scraping together. “You don’t deserve to have eyes if that’s the best you can do with them,” he says from the door.
He’s hoping to seek help from a security guard, but none is to be seen. At least the couple aren’t following him; they’ve begun to pummel each other, whether because they are choking with laughter or for some more obscure purpose he can’t tell. He dodges into the next shop, a tobacconist’s full of smoke. “Can you tell me where the library is?”
“At the end.”
Perhaps the tobacconist is distracted, having apparently just singed his eyebrows while tuning the flame of a lighter. When Mottershead runs to the far end of the mall he finds only a baker’s. “Library?” he wheezes.
“Who says?” The baker looks ready to turn worse than unhelpful. He’s digging his fingers into a skull-sized lump of dough which has already been shaped; a swarm of raisins oozes from the sockets into which he has thrust his thumbs. “Thanks anyway,” Mottershead blurts, and retreats.
One of the assistants in the adjacent toy shop leaves off playing long enough to direct him. “Up and through,” he says, and points a dripping water pistol at him.
Mottershead is afraid that the gun may fire and ruin his lecture notes, and so he makes for the escalators as the assistants recommence chasing one another through the chaos of toys, which reminds him more of a playroom than of a shop. The extravagant threats they’re issuing in falsetto voices fade as the deserted stairs lift him towards the roof.
Like the vegetation in the concrete tubs, on closer examination the birds beneath the roof prove to be artificial. Several birds are pursuing their repetitive flights upside down, presumably because of some fault in the mechanism, and their maker appears not to have thought it necessary to provide any of them with eyes. Mottershead finds the spectacle so disagreeably fascinating that he’s almost at the top before he notices that someone has stepped forwards to meet him.
She’s a woman in her sixties whose hair is dyed precisely the same shade of pale blue as her coat. Her flat chest sports a tray which contains a collecting-tin and a mound of copies of the badge pinned to her lapel. “Is there a library here, do you know?” he pleads.
The woman stares at him. Perhaps she didn’t hear him for the mechanical twittering of the birds. The escalator raises him until he’s a head taller than she is, and he repeats the question. This time she lifts the tin from its nest of badges, which say Pensioners in Peril in letters red as blood, and rattles it at him. “I’m sorry, I’ve no money,” he complains.
Of course, her stare has grown accusing because he’s still holding the remains of the twenty-pound note. “This won’t be any use to you. Can’t you tell me where the library is?”
Her only response is a look of contempt, and he loses his temper. “Take it if you’ve got a use for it,” he shouts, “if it’ll persuade you to answer a simple questi
on.”
As he begins to shout, a security guard emerges from a greetings-card shop and jogs towards them. “Is he bothering you?” the guard demands.
“I just want the library,” Mottershead wails, seeing himself as the guard must see him, towering over the pensioner and yelling at her. Worse, she has taken the torn note from him, and now she has found her voice. “He tried to pass me this.”
“Because you insisted,” Mottershead protests, but the guard examines the note before he turns on Mottershead, frowning through the shadow of his peaked cap. “I’d say you owe this lady more than an apology.”
“I tried to tell her I’ve no money.” Receiving only stares from both of them, Mottershead blunders on: “I’m a writer. I’m needed at the library. They’ve asked me to talk.”
“So have we,” the guard says ponderously. Then the woman stuffs the note into her tin and waves Mottershead away as if he’s an insect she can’t be bothered to swat, and the guard grasps his shoulder. “Let’s make sure you end up where you’re wanted.”
Before Mottershead quite knows what’s happening, he is being marched to the end of the mall above the baker’s. Here, invisible from below, is an unmarked door. When the guard leans on a bellpush beside it Mottershead starts to panic, especially when the door is opened by another man in uniform. He can’t judge how large the cell beyond the door may be; it’s piled with cartons, and the passage between them is scarcely two men wide. The guard who is holding him tells the other “He claims you’ve invited him to talk.”
“Show him through, love. He’ll be for the soundproof room.”
He flattens himself against the cartons to make way, and the guard pats his plump buttocks with one hand as he shoves Mottershead into the passage. The uniformed man purrs like a big cat and rubs himself against the cartons. “Hold on,” Mottershead protests, “where are you taking—” Then the guard reaches past him and opens a door, and Mottershead’s voice booms out beyond it, earning him so many disapproving stares that he would retreat into the cell if it weren’t for the guard.
He’s reached his destination by a back door. The library is as large as the mall, and disconcertingly similar, except that the walls which overlook the escalators are occupied by books rather than by shops. In front of the multitude of books are more tables for readers than he’s able to count, and all the readers are glaring at him. “Where am I meant to go?” he mutters.
“I’ll walk you,” the guard says, and steers him leftward. “What was the name?”
“Simon Mottershead.” He raises his voice in the hope that some of the readers will recognise his name, but they only look hostile. He lets himself be ushered past the tables, trying to think how to convince the readers that he isn’t a miscreant. He hasn’t succeeded in dredging up a single thought when the guard marshals him left again, through a doorway between shelves of Bibles and other religious tomes, into a room.
The room is white and windowless. Several ranks of seats composed of plastic slabs and metal tubing face away from the door, towards a single chair behind a table bearing a carafe and a glass. About twenty people are scattered among the seats, mostly near the table. Before Mottershead can make for it, the guard leans on his shoulder and sits him in the seat nearest the door. “Simon Mottershead,” the guard announces.
Every head glances back and then away. “Not here,” someone says.
The guard’s hand shifts ominously on Mottershead’s shoulder. “I’m Simon Mottershead,” Mottershead stammers. “Isn’t this the writers’ group?”
This time only a few heads respond, and someone murmurs “Who?” Eventually a woman rumbles “Are we expected to turn our seats to you?”
“Not if I’m allowed to move.” Mottershead heaves himself to his feet and, shrugging off the guard’s grasp, turns to stare him away. The man’s expression is so disappointed and wistful that it throws him, and he blunders towards the table, struggling to unstrap his rucksack.
He hears the guard trudge out and close the door, though not before admitting someone else. The latecomer is wearing either slippers or sandals. The sound of footsteps flopping after him makes Mottershead feel pursued, and unwilling to look back. By the time he’s past the table, the newcomer is already seated. Mottershead drags the chair out from the table and dumps his rucksack on the floor, seats himself, lifts the inverted glass from the carafe and turns it over. When nobody comes forward to introduce him, he looks up.
He can’t identify the latecomer. He doesn’t think it would be any of the several elderly women who sit clutching handbags or manuscripts, more than one of which is protected by a knitted cover. It might be one of the young women who are staring hard at him and poising pencils over notepads, or it could be one of the men—not those who resemble army officers, red-faced with suppressing thoughts, but possibly the lanky man who reminds Mottershead of a horse propped on its tailbone, his shoulders almost level with his ears as he grips his knees and crouches low in his seat, or the man whose bald head gleams behind a clump of hatted women. Every eye is on Mottershead, aggravating his awareness that he’s meant to speak. He tips the carafe and discovers that it contains not water but a film of dust. “As I say, I’m Simon Mottershead,” he says, fumbling for his notes.
His audience looks apathetic, perhaps because they’re wondering why he is digging in his pockets with both hands. He must have dropped his notes in the bookshop; his pockets are empty except for the voucher and the pieces of his credit card. “What would you like me to talk about?” he says desperately.
The faces before him turn blank as if their power has been switched off. “Tell us about yourself,” says a voice he’s unable to locate or to sex.
He feels trapped by the question, bereft of words. “Are you married with children?” the voice says.
“Not any more.”
“Did it help your writing?”
At least Mottershead has answers, even if they’re almost too quick for him. “Nobody except a writer knows how it feels to be a writer.”
“Harrumph harrumph humph,” a red-faced man on the front row responds.
“I’ll tell you how it felt to me,” Mottershead says more sharply. “Every day I’d be wakened by a story aching to be told. Writing’s a compulsion. By the time you’re any good at it you no longer have the choice of giving it up. It won’t leave you alone even when you’re with people, even when you’re desperate to sleep.”
By now the faces are so expressionless that he can imagine them fading like masks moulded out of dough. “When it comes to life,” he says, anxious to raise his own spirits as much as those of his audience, “it’s like seeing everything with new eyes. It’s like dreaming while you’re awake. It’s as if your mind’s a spider which is trying to catch reality and spin it into patterns.”
“Harrumph harrumph harrumph,” the red-faced man enunciates slowly, and leaves it at that. As Mottershead ransacks his mind for memories which don’t cause it to flinch, the voice which raised the question of his family speaks. “What’s it like to be published?”
“Not as different from not being as you’d think. I used to say I expected the priest at my funeral to ask ‘Did he write under his own name?’ and ‘Should I have heard of him?’ and ‘How many novels did he write a year?’”
He’s hoping to provoke at least a titter, but no face stirs. “Weren’t you on television?” says the voice, which is coming from the bald head beyond the hats.
“Exactly,” Mottershead laughs. Then the questioner sidles into view, and Mottershead sees that he wasn’t suggesting another cliché but trying to remind him. “If you say so,” Mottershead says unevenly. “I told a story once about someone who thought he was.”
He’s closer than ever to panic, and the sight of his questioner doesn’t help. He assumes it’s a man, even though the appearance of baldness proves to have been achieved by a flesh-coloured hairnet or skullcap. Although nearly all the flesh of his long mottled face has settled into his jowls, this person
isn’t as thin as he seemed to be when only his scalp was visible; it’s as if he somehow rendered himself presentable before letting Mottershead see him. His large dark eyes glisten like bubbles about to pop, and his unwavering gaze makes Mottershead feel in danger of being compelled to speak before he knows what he will say. “Everything’s material, anything can start a story growing in your head. Maybe that’s our compensation for having to use up so much of ourselves in writing that nobody wants to know us.”
The man with the unconvincing scalp looks suspicious and secretly gleeful. When his piebald mouth opens, Mottershead stiffens, though the question sounds innocent enough. “Do you still write?”
“I’m leaving it to people like yourselves.”
If that signifies anything beyond allowing Mottershead to feel relatively in control, it ought to encourage the audience, but the questioner smiles as if Mottershead has betrayed himself. The smile causes the upper set of the teeth he’s wearing to drop, revealing gums black as a dog’s, and he sticks out his tongue to lever the teeth into place. “Wouldn’t they give you a chance?”
“Who?”
“The powers that decide what people can read.”
Everyone nods in agreement. “I don’t think we need to look for conspiracies,” Mottershead says, feeling as if his own teeth are exposed.
“Then why did you stop?”
He means stop writing, Mottershead assures himself. The man’s gaze is a spotlight penetrating the secret places of his brain. “Because it wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t worth my expending so much of myself on creating the absolute best I was capable of when nobody cared that I had.”
“Don’t you think you were lucky to be published at all?”
The man’s whitish tongue is ranging about his lips; he’s begun to look as mentally unstable as Mottershead suspects he is. Genius may be next to madness, Mottershead thinks, but so is mediocrity and worse where creativity is concerned. “I think that’s up to my readers to judge, don’t you? What does anyone who’s read my books think?”
The Mammoth Book of Nightmare Stories Page 37
