“The author of those items claims to have found them on the shelf. One wonders who must have put them there.”
“I was mistaken. I didn’t write any of these books.”
The frog with the poster stares incredulously at Mottershead. “Seems not to know when to stop telling tales,” remarks the fattest of the frogs.
“Do I look as if I could be responsible for this stuff?” Mottershead cries. “Why would I be trying to buy books I’d written myself?”
The frogs snigger. “Some people will stop at nothing to promote themselves,” says the one with the poster.
Mottershead is overwhelmed by rage which feels distressingly like panic. He tosses the books into the air and is on his way to the exit before they come down. He’s fleeing past the shop when the three booksellers appear at the window, hopping up and down and croaking inarticulately as they wave the books at him. All the passing cyclists begin to ring their bells as if to draw attention to him, and he dodges behind a chestnut tree, turning up his collar to hide the parts of his face he can’t squash against the trunk.
As soon as the bell-ringing slackens he dodges out from behind the tree and hastens along the avenue, trying to outrun a sound which he has begun to suspect is concealed by the jangle of bells. He has passed only a few buildings, however, when he comes to a bookshop which has taken over a cinema. The compulsion to find himself on the shelves is stronger than ever. Glancing along the deserted pavement, he darts into the shop.
Several life-size cut-out figures, presumably of authors rather than of film stars, loiter inside the entrance. Shelves like exposed girders branch across the walls of the gutted auditorium, and the floor is crowded with tables piled with books: The Wit of the Answering Machine, 1001 Great Advertising Slogans, Inflate Your Brain … Beside the propped-up figures two young blondes deep in conversation lean against the cash desk. “She has the same hair as me,” one says in a voice light as tissue, and her friend responds “I’ll have to try it sometime.” There’s something rather forbidding about the perfection of their young faces, their long eyelashes and blue eyes and pink lips, their unblemished flesh; he can’t help thinking of the oldest of the models on the covers of the books he has just disowned. The thought sends words blundering out of his mouth. “Can I have one of you?”
They turn to him with expressions so identically polite that their spuriousness disconcerts him. “I mean, can one of you show me where you keep Simon Mottershead? Not the Mottershead who has fantasies about girls of your age and younger,” he adds hastily. “The one who wrote Cadenza.”
None of this has made any visible impression on them. He feels as if their perfect surfaces are barriers he can’t touch, let alone penetrate. “I’m talking about books, you understand,” he says. “I want you to show me some books.”
The assistant to his left glances at her colleague. “Better call the manager.”
“Is that necessary?” Mottershead says. Apparently it is; before he has finished speaking, the other girl presses a button on the desk. A bell shrills somewhere behind a wall, and a woman several years older than those at the desk but made up to look the same age rises like a figure in a pop-up book from behind a table. “What can I do for you?” she asks Mottershead.
“I’m waiting for the manager.”
“I am she.”
“Then you can help me,” Mottershead says, trying to sound friendly and apologetic and amused by his gaffe. “I’m after Simon Mottershead.”
“We have nobody of that name here.”
“Books by him, I mean.”
“We have none.”
“Can you show me where to look? I believe you, obviously,” Mottershead lies, “but you’ve such a large stock …”
The woman grunts as though he means that as an insult. “You’d be wasting your time. I know every book in this shop.”
Why is she trying to get rid of him? He feels as if the blackness which threatens his mind is darkening the shop, gathering like smoke under the roof. His surroundings, the faces of the women included, appear to be losing depth. “At least,” he says desperately, “you must have heard of Simon Mottershead.”
“I won’t pretend I have.”
The blackness is about to swallow everything around him except her cut-out face and those of her assistants. “Well, now you’ve met him,” he almost screams, and flounders towards the exit, which he can barely locate. As he makes a grab for the door, someone who has been waiting in the doorway steps into the shop. It’s the man with the false scalp.
He blocks Mottershead’s path and holds up one hand, and Mottershead loses control. Seizing the man’s shoulders, which feel loose and swollen, he hurls him aside. The man falls headlong, taking two of the propped-up figures with him, and Mottershead is sure he’s exaggerating his fall, playing to the audience, who emit cries of outrage and run to help him up. Mottershead knocks over the rest of the propped-up figures to hinder any pursuit and kicks the door shut behind him.
He’s hardly out when he sees another bookshop through the trees. Its sign—Everything Worth Reading—is so challenging that he can’t resist it. Fewer bicycles are about, and they and their bells seem slowed down. He sprints between them and peers around a tree trunk. When he sees nobody following him he scurries to the third bookshop.
The frontage seems altogether too narrow for the shop to accommodate the stock of which the sign boasts. On the other hand, if the proprietor’s standards are higher than those apparent in the other shops, shouldn’t this one stock Mottershead’s work? He pushes open the black door beside the dim window occupied by a few jacketless leathery books. A bell above the door sounds a low sombre note, and the proprietor raises his head.
His black hair looks spongy and moist as lichen. His whiskers bristle on either side of his long pointed face. He’s sitting behind a scratched desk bearing an ancient cash register and a book catalogue, the corners of whose pages have turned up like dead leaves. His wrinkled eyelids rise lethargically as he stares at Mottershead, who strides forwards and sticks out his hand. “Simon Mottershead. Simon,” he emphasises to ensure there’s no mistake.
The man gives the hand a discouraging glance and seems to brace himself as though his instinct is to recoil from his visitor. “Who do you represent?”
“Myself,” Mottershead says with a laugh which is meant to be self-deprecating but which comes out sounding wild. “I’m the writer.”
“Which writer?”
“Simon Mottershead.”
“Congratulations,” the bookseller says with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “To what do I owe such an honor?”
“I was wondering which of my books you might have.”
“I can hardly tell you that if they haven’t been published.”
“They have been,” Mottershead wails, struggling to recall titles which will help him fend off the blackness that seems about to consume him; he feels as if he no longer exists. “Cadenza. Even if it’s out of print, you must have heard of that one.”
“No must about it, I fear.”
The shop is much longer than was apparent from outside: so long that its depths are almost lightless. The growing darkness might be the absence of his books made visible. “Let me tell you the story,” he pleads, “and perhaps it’ll come back to you.”
The bookseller stands up and gazes past him. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve a customer.”
A moment later the bell tolls. Should Mottershead take advantage of the diversion and search the shelves for his name? Finding it in the face of the bookseller’s denials would be the greatest triumph he can imagine. He edges past the desk and glances at the newcomer, and darkness rushes at him. “He isn’t a customer,” he says in a throttled voice.
“If he’s about to make the same approach to me,” the bookseller says, “I must ask you both to leave.”
“Of course he isn’t,” Mottershead manages to articulate rather than lay hands on his pursuer. “How could he?”
&nb
sp; The bookseller opens a drawer of the desk and reaches into it. “Please leave or I’ll have you excluded.”
“You already have,” Mottershead says bitterly, and lurches towards the exit, away from the tunnel of blackness which the shop feels like. The bald man is in his way. The top of his scalp is concave now, dented by his recent fall; his eyes have grown luridly bright, perhaps as a result of pressure on his brain. “You’re a witness,” Mottershead appeals to the bookseller, whose hand is still in the drawer, gripping a weapon or a telephone. “I’ve told this creature to stay away from me, otherwise I won’t be responsible for my actions.”
The bookseller shakes his head. “Please fight outside.”
Mottershead sees himself and his tormentor as the bookseller is seeing them: two unpublished and probably unpublishable writers, mutually jealous because of their lack of success. The unfairness appals him, and he’s about to make a last attempt to persuade the bookseller of his authenticity when the bald man distracts him. “I’ve got something of yours,” he says with a secretive grin.
“Whatever it is, you’re welcome to it. Keep it as your fee for leaving me alone,” Mottershead tells him, thinking that it must be the damaged copy of Cadenza. Since the other doesn’t move, Mottershead lunges at him, and is gratified to see him flinch and cover his scalp with both hands. “Stay away or you’ll get worse,” Mottershead snarls, and marches out of the shop. Then his confidence deserts him, and he flees towards the open space beyond the avenue.
He won’t stop for anything, he promises himself. The prospect of failing to find himself in yet another bookshop—of prolonging the black depression which seeps through him like poison—terrifies him, and yet he’s unable to refrain from scanning the shopfronts in search of one more bookshop, one more excuse to hope. Didn’t he behave like this when Cadenza was published? Was that the day when he flustered from bookshop to bookshop, feeling as though just one copy of the book would convince him he existed, until he was ready to do anything that would stop him feeling that way? He’s dismayingly grateful that there seem to be no more bookshops on the avenue. Nevertheless a window causes him to falter: the window of a clothes shop.
He’s past it—past the full-length mirror among the shirted torsos and bodiless legs dressed in kilts or trousers—before he knows what he has seen. He wavers, stumbles onwards, backtracks reluctantly. He sees himself reappear in the mirror, walking backwards like a figure in a videocassette playing in reverse. Under his suit, which is so faded that its pattern has vanished, he’s wearing only a singlet full of ventilation holes through which the grey hairs of his chest sprout: neither a shirt nor socks.
So this is the image of himself which he has been presenting. No wonder everyone was leery of him. His reflection is beginning to tremble before his eyes; his helpless rage is shaking him. He’s staring at the mirror as if he is hypnotising himself—he’s unable to look away from the sight of himself among the portions of bodies arranged like a work of art composed of dismemberment—when the man with the dented scalp appears behind him.
The reflection shivers like disturbed water. The movement seems to spread beyond the mirror, causing the torsos and severed limbs to stir as if they, or the single dusty head which lurks in one corner of the window, may be dreaming of recomposition. Perhaps one day he’ll be able to derive a story from all this, Mottershead thinks desperately, but hasn’t he already written something of the kind? His legs are pressing themselves together, his crossed hands are clutching his chest in an attempt to hide the discoloured flesh. The other cranes over his shoulder, and Mottershead feels as if he has grown a second head. “Just a few words,” the man whispers moistly in his ear.
“Suck a turd,” Mottershead howls and staggers out of reach, bumping into the window as he twists around to face his pursuer. “Will those do? Will that satisfy you?”
The man rolls his eyes and licks his lips. Perhaps he’s trying to adjust his teeth, but he looks as though he is asking for more. Mottershead shouts every insult and obscenity and combination of them he can think of, a monologue which seems endless and yet to need no breath. When at last he runs out of words, his victim hasn’t even flinched. He raises one hand to his mouth to shove his teeth into place and gives Mottershead a disappointed look. “That didn’t sound much like a writer.”
“Then I can’t be one, can I?” Mottershead says with a kind of hysterical triumph. “Happy now?”
The other reaches for his teeth again as a preamble to responding, but Mottershead won’t hear another word. He knocks the hand aside and, digging his fingers into the man’s mouth, seizes the upper set of teeth. The tongue pokes bonelessly at his fingers but can’t dislodge them until he has taken the teeth, which he shies across the avenue, narrowly missing a lone cyclist. “Fetch,” he snarls.
His victim gapes at him as though the weight of his jowls is more than his jaw will sustain. Though he quails at the thought of encountering the tongue again, Mottershead plunges his fingers into the open mouth and grabs the lower set of teeth. Plucking them off the blackened gums, he throws them as high as he can. They lodge in the branches of a chestnut, startling a bird which flaps away along the avenue. “That should keep you busy for a while. Don’t even dream of following,” he warns, and runs after the bird.
Ahead, beyond a junction which puts an end to the shops, parkland stretches to the horizon. The sky above the park is cloudless, as though cleared by some emanation from the cropped grass. Here and there clumps of trees shade benches, all of which are unoccupied. As Mottershead passes the last shops the bird soars and seems to expand as it flaps blackly towards the zenith. Then it shrinks and vanishes before he expects it to do so, and he squeezes between two of the rusting cars which stand alongside the park.
The gates are held open by bolts driven deep into the path, cracking the concrete. Each of the stone gateposts is carved with a life-size figure which embraces the post and digs its face into the stone as though trying to hide or to see within. Above the scrawny limbs and torsos, the bald heads are pitted and overgrown with moss. Once he is through the gates Mottershead glances back, but the faces aren’t emerging from the parkward sides of the posts, even if the moss on each of them resembles the beginnings of a face. Nor can he see anyone following him.
Beyond the gates the paths fan out. Most of them curve away between the benches, but one leads straight to the horizon, which is furred with trees. As Mottershead strolls along this path he seems to feel the city and everything which has befallen him withdrawing at least as far as the limits of the park. The grass is green as spring and sparkles with rain or dew, drops of which flash like windows to a microscopic world. He won’t stop walking until he reaches the trees on the horizon, and perhaps not then unless he has grasped why the park is so familiar.
He’s beyond the outermost of the benches when he begins to remember. He was walking with his family, his wife holding his hand and their son’s, their daughter holding Mottershead’s other hand. Shafts of misty sunlight through the foliage started the trees singing. He felt as if his family were guiding him, keeping him safe while his dreams took possession of the woods. He felt that he was being led towards the fulfilment of a dream he didn’t know he had. Perhaps he was incapable of believing in it or even of conceiving it while he was awake.
In that case, how can he glimpse it now? Too many impressions are crowding it out of his head. Is it a memory, or could it be something he wrote or intended to write? Whichever, he feels certain that he recognises the setting—that he has walked with his family through the woods at the far side of the park. They had a house beyond those woods. Isn’t it possible that his wife and children still live there? That would mean he has a chance to make it up to them.
He can’t think what he needs to put right, but surely he’ll remember when he comes face to face with them. Did he use them in a story in some way that distressed them? He begins to jog towards the woods and then, as the trees remain stubbornly distant, to run. He seems to ha
ve got nowhere when he stops dead, having heard a toothless voice call his name.
He whirls around, snarling. The sky overhead seems to shrink and blacken, the clumps of trees appear to stiffen, clenching their branches. He can see nobody except a woman dashing through the gateway, dragged by three obese poodles dyed pink and green and purple, each dog wearing a cap and bells. Then the voice calls again, its speech clarified by the lack of teeth. “Here you are.”
His tormentor must be hiding among the nearest clump of trees; Mottershead’s rucksack is lolling on the bench they shade. He would happily abandon it, but if he doesn’t confront his pursuer he’s liable to be followed all the way to his family’s house. He stalks towards the bench.
The man isn’t in the trees around it. Mottershead can only assume that the sight of the rucksack attracted his attention to the wrong clump. He grabs the rucksack and wriggles his arms into the straps, feeling a weight which must be the damaged copy of Cadenza settle on his back. “Thank you. Now please go away,” he shouts.
The only movement is of the poodles, which are rolling on the grass near the gates so zealously that they’ve dragged their owner down with them. As Mottershead stares about, he notices that all the houses bordering the park sport television aerials. Was he on television? He seems to remember cameras being poked at him, lights blazing at him, technicians crowding around him. How many people saw him on their screens, and what did they see? Not knowing makes his surroundings feel like a concealed threat. “Stay away from my family, you lunatic,” he cries, and runs back to the straight path.
He feels as if the contents of the rucksack are riding him, driving him towards the woods. Whenever he passes another clump of trees around a bench he scrutinises them, though when he does so they appear to draw themselves up, to become identical with the previous clump. He’s dizzy from peering around him and behind him by the time he reaches the end of the path.
The Mammoth Book of Nightmare Stories Page 39
