Creed

by James Herbert

  Kneeling on the bed, Creed began to shed his clothes, handling them carefully because they were damp and smelled of pee. Only they didn’t, did they? No, Creed, it’s in your mind, only the result of upset brain chemicals. Shaken and definitely stirred. Christ, what a mess.

  Jacket and shirt were gone. He sat, kicked off his shoes, then pulled at his trousers and underpants. Getting his socks off was the most difficult.

  Naked, he flopped back on to the duvet. He didn’t mean to, but he couldn’t help it: he giggled. Crazy. A mouth jumping out of the toilet, snapping at his pecker. Oh Jesus, Judas . . . crazy . . . Before tiredness overtook him completely, he managed to slide beneath the duvet cover, pulling it up to his neck, relishing and needing its comfort. He lay there spreadeagled and bare, and oddly enough, the beginning of his dream was fairly pleasant.

  But his awakening wasn’t pleasant at all.

  He’d been on a beach to begin with, the sun high and warming his stomach. The sea sounds were soothing, gulls circled overhead. Relaxing . . . restful. Sand trickling over his chest. More. Beginning to cover him. His belly, his crutch, his thighs. Squinting into the sun, a shadow suddenly blocking the glare. That you, Sammy? Burying your old man, huh? It’s all right, kid. Enjoy yourself. Make a castle on my chest. Keep the sand away from the kisser though, son, grit in the teeth isn’t nice. Come on, now, take it easy, that’s too much. I’m not dead yet, boy. I told you, Sammy, keep it away from the face . . .

  The sun had faded. It hadn’t disappeared behind a cloud – it had just faded, gone, shrivelled away. And he wasn’t on a beach any more. There were stone monuments all around, some leaning over perilously, most of them decaying, lichen-covered and cracked, slabs of stone, their legends hard to determine. Gravestones.

  The sand wasn’t sand any more; it was great clods of earth, thick and damp, smelly and clinging. Cut it out, Sam. Enough’s enough.

  But not just the locale had changed: Sammy was different too.

  His face had aged, become lined, weary. His eyes were staring. He’d grown gaunt, all puppy-fat gone. He looked like someone else . . .

  Dirt stifled Creed’s next cry. He choked, spat it out. He tried to move, but earth was packed around him, pressing against his chest, making it difficult to stir, let alone shout . . . let alone scream . . . He was being buried alive, but it was someone else, someone familiar . . . but not familiar, no one he knew, a stranger, a thin man in a grey gaberdine raincoat . . . digging dirt, chuckling while he shovelled the soil . . . piling it on to Creed . . . covering his whole body . . . his arms . . . his legs . . . his belly and chest . . . his – oh God no – his face.

  He awoke and the dream was gone almost immediately.

  He felt cold, even though the duvet was still up around his neck. He wondered what he had been dreaming of. Something not very nice, he was sure. Something about graveyards. Yeah, wouldn’t you know it?

  He raised his head from the pillow and looked towards the end of the bed. Moonlight through the open window revealed his bare feet. That’s why he was so cold. They were like blocks of ice and his big toes were completely numb. Wriggling them hardly improved the circulation. He rested on one elbow and reached out with his other hand to push the cover back down, but something black and scurrying caught his eye. It had sped from the edge of the mattress, as though having climbed from the floor, and disappeared beneath the duvet.

  Before Creed could kick out with his feet, he became aware of other movement in the bed with him and he felt a prickling sensation that was not unlike goose-bumps rising on chilled flesh.

  Then he saw another little black thing hurry over the bottom of the mattress and race into the shelter of the duvet.

  Creed leapt from the bed, almost tripping over his discarded clothes lying in a heap on the floor. He stumbled into the door and his hand scrambled against the wall for the lightswitch. He found it and smacked it down.

  He immediately clapped a hand over his eyes, shielding them from the sudden glare, lifting his palm cautiously after a while like a traveller staring into the sun towards the horizon. Nothing was on the floor around the bed apart from the jumble of clothes. Had he honestly seen a spider – two spiders – disappear under the duvet? Or had it merely been the tail end of his dream? Whatever, he had no taste for creepy-crawlies, but they certainly didn’t frighten him. Not much, anyway.

  After a few more blinks he scanned the rest of the room to make sure he really was alone. His gaze returned to the bed.

  The duvet was rumpled, a corner turned over where he had scrambled out.

  He wiped the back of his neck with a hand, twisting his head to relieve a stiffness there. Again Creed looked over at the bed.

  There was nothing peculiar about it. Yet something was not quite right.

  He watched the cover as if expecting it to move and, of course, it didn’t.

  So why was he reluctant to get back into bed? Be sensible, he told himself. Lie down and think of nice things.

  He was tired, very, very tired; but part of him was extremely alert. Something wasn’t quite right, but he didn’t the hell know what. Creed approached the bed cautiously, in the way a hunter might approach a downed tiger, knowing it was lifeless but still taking no chances.

  Creed, naked, stood over the bed. Reaching out he gripped the turned-over corner of the duvet. He paused for just one moment, then swept back the cover so that half of it tumbled on to the floor.

  He meant to scream, but couldn’t quite work the parts that allowed it. He wanted to back away, but those parts wouldn’t function either. The bit that did work was his bladder; fortunately it was only a brief squirt of urine that wet his thigh, more like a nocturnal emission than anything else.

  All he could really do was to stare. And stare, and stare.

  They were small, yet somehow bulky, their hairy little bodies bulbous and seeming too heavy for their tiny legs. They were mostly black, although the tops of their swellings were hued a deep red, as if liquid inside was pressing to be released. And they came in a variety of shapes, some long like caterpillars (many of these were wormishly hairless, though), others round and energetic, while still more were but minute grubs grubbing around in packs. The one thing they all had in common was that they looked bloated. Glutted, you might say.

  And Creed had already made the connection before he looked down at himself and saw the pinpricks and smears of blood all over his own body.

  These busy creatures had feasted on him while he slept. They were obese (in their small way) with his blood.

  Creed cried out as much in revulsion as in fear.

  He staggered backwards towards the door, never taking his eyes off these revolting, detestable creatures that had invaded his bed, hundreds of them it seemed, all moving in a madness of direction, the bedsheet beneath them splodged red as though flicked with ink.

  His hands fumbled with the doorknob behind him and it was awkward to twist, but not once did Creed consider turning his back on those blood-gorged mites occupying his bed. At last the lock sprang and he pulled at the door, jarring it against his bare heel as he did so. Only then did he face away from the bed and hurry into the hall, slamming the door shut once outside. For several seconds he held on to the doorknob, irrationally making sure those crawly things couldn’t follow him, his breath drawn in sharp and shallow gasps.

  His next idea (this one perhaps more rational) was to run downstairs, grab an overcoat from the rack, and get out of the house. But when he looked down towards the front door, he saw that someone was there, someone lurking in the shadows, someone whose domed, bald head caught the faint light shining through from the kitchen upstairs.

  That skull-like head shifted, tilting backwards so that whoever it was there in the dark could look upwards, upwards at Creed. The eyeballs were so big, set in that dreadfully thin (and now familiar) face, they appeared almost round. The pointed front teeth were dulled in the poor light.

  Creed fainted.

  11

&n
bsp; He stirred. Then he shivered.

  His belly was warm, but the rest of him was freezing. He had no feet: they’d gone away. Another shiver – no, more violent than that: this time it was a shudder. Creed moaned and hunched himself around the warmth at his stomach. He turned over on to it.

  A screech and frantic scrabbling beneath him brought Creed to his senses. He shot up as the cat flew away from what had been a comfortable nest in its master’s lap and disappeared into the kitchen. Grin leapt on to the table and turned to glare back through the open doorway at the naked man who was pushing himself against the hall wall, a wild-eyed look on his face.

  Creed’s vision did some dips and curves before settling. He gazed back at the bristle-furred cat on the kitchen table uncomprehendingly, then down at his own bare legs with pretty much the same expression. His feet were totally numb with the cold, but at least they weren’t actually missing.

  The night’s events began to come back to him, just bits and pieces like a poorly edited trailer for a horror movie (a B horror, at that). A swift examination of his private parts brought him some relief. But what was he doing out here in the hallway? He concentrated very hard to bring some order to the jumbled images and instantly regretted the effort when he saw in his mind’s eye those . . . those . . . things . . . he had shared his bed with. My God, they’d been drinking my blood! Creed struggled to his feet as if to make himself less accessible.

  A further inspection of himself denied the memory: his flesh was unmarked apart from one or two fresh scratches from the squashed cat. He touched the bedroom doorhandle very tentatively and it took some courage to turn it. He swung the door open a few inches, listened, peered through the crack, then swung it wider. He looked round the door towards the bed.

  The duvet cover was turned back and the rumpled sheet over the mattress looked pure enough. Creed ventured in, scrutinising every step of the way before taking it, scarcely feeling the carpet beneath his frozen feet. The bed really was empty of bugs as far as he could see, and when he hauled back the duvet further – again, hesitatingly – there was nothing lurking beneath the folds.

  He pulled the cover off completely and wrapped it around his shoulders; he stood there afraid and alone and wondering what was happening to him.

  There had been nightmares before, lots of them – Christ, everyone had nightmares at some time or other – but nothing so real, nothing so bloody awful! He shuddered again and this time continued to do so. Only the deadly chill forced him into some kind of action, otherwise he might well have stayed there dwelling upon the nightmare for the rest of the morning. He went over to a chest of drawers and took out a pair of socks.

  Sitting on the corner of the bed he pulled them on, then reached for a pair of jeans lying over the back of a nearby chair, the duvet still around his shoulders like a quilted shawl. The Wranglers were only halfway up his legs when the thought of those hairy, blood-swollen creatures busying themselves on his naked flesh while he slept slipped into even sharper focus and his stomach contracted and flipped and chose to rid itself of any contents.

  He hobbled to the bathroom, tugging at the jeans on the way, shawl falling to the floor, dignity and poise having little value to him at that point in time. Past the stairway he hurried, one hand momentarily gripping the rail there to steady himself. He made it in time, but stopped, his throat and cheeks filling as he looked down at the toilet, with its closed lid and biding attitude.

  Creed turned aside and let loose into the bathtub, sinking to his knees with the second wave, leaning his chest against the rim. It was unpleasant – in fact, it was disgusting – but no way was he going to open that toilet lid, nightmare or no nightmare; he really wasn’t ready for that just yet.

  The nausea passed, along with all he’d eaten that month, he figured, and his stomach felt raw and hollow. Still resting against the bath, head and neck hanging over as if waiting for a falling axe, Creed reached out blindly for the taps. His shaking fingers found one head and twisted it to its fullest extent, then crossed to its companion. He swirled the water with the same hand, rounding up the slimy pieces and directing them towards the drain. Repellent though it was, the activity had some small therapeutic value.

  He only stopped when his thoughts finally acknowledged what his eyes had noticed lying in the hallway only a few moments before.

  He crawled to the bathroom door, his hand leaving damp patches on the tiled floor. It was there, exceedingly white on the beige hall carpet, lying quite near the top of the stairs. He watched it for a little while.

  Creed slowly rose to his feet, hoisted up his jeans and buttoned them at the waist, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then went forward, hand trailing along the rail overlooking the stairway.

  He didn’t pick up the envelope immediately; instead he took time to wonder how it had got there. His hand gripped the top of the rail post when he remembered what had been at the bottom of the stairs last night.

  His mind did tumbles when he pictured that creature climbing up towards him, placing the envelope on the floor beside him, or . . . or even on him. Had he, Creed, dislodged it when he’d woken from the nightmare? Nightmare? Which was the nightmare and which was the reality? His body was unscathed, there were no bugs in the bed, yet here, lying at his feet, was material evidence of that thing’s presence! Creed lowered himself to his knees, hand still clinging to the post. Oh God, God, God, was he really so vulnerable? Could strangers enter and leave his castle whenever they wanted?

  He touched the envelope as if expecting a reaction from it. There was none (but if toilets could develop teeth, there just might have been), so he picked it up and held it before his eyes. The flap was not sealed.

  Finger and thumb slipped inside and pulled out the single sheet of folded paper. The note had been typed in caps and in two neat lines. It read:

  YOU WILL BRING THE FILM TO US

  YOU WILL NOT SPEAK OF IT

  That’s all it said.

  12

  The motorist in front mistakenly imagined that the parking space just about to be vacated was his: Creed had other ideas. He pulled up close behind, pretending he hadn’t noticed the other car’s reverse lights, nor the indicator winking the intent.

  The driver of the parked vehicle shook her head in despair as she was forced to ease her way around the rear of the Suzuki, and Creed ignored her clearly mouthed obscenity as she finally drove by. He reversed the jeep, swinging a hard right, having to go forward again to avoid scraping the Peugeot next to the empty parking space. Meanwhile the driver whose meter he was stealing let his resentment be known by way of his Mercedes’ horn. Creed ignored this too, going forward once more so that he was correctly aligned.

  What was difficult to ignore, though, was the supremely ugly face (that is, what could be seen of it above the wiry, matted whiskers and equally wiry, matted hairline) that appeared at the side window.

  ‘Oi’ll see y’all roight, sor,’ came a muffled voice that was as grizzled as the man’s features. Life-wearied, bloodshot eyes blinked at him from the other side of the glass.

  The old lag waved his arms in the no-nonsense manner of an airport marshaller docking a 747, his fairly useless instructions liberally aided by shouts of ‘Sor!’ In the meantime, Mercedes Man had gone off in search of fresh pastures, albeit after having let Creed know what his life expectancy would be should they ever meet again. The rear wheels of the jeep nudged the kerb and Creed switched off the engine.

  He had parked in Soho Square, using one of the rarely unoccupied bays fringing the tiny gardens there, all the vehicles positioned front– or rear-on so they resembled multicoloured metal petals around a giant sunflower’s centre. He touched his temples with stretched thumb and fingers and squeezed gently; neither the vociferous expressions of hostility, nor the filthy old buffoon out there still waving his arms and issuing instructions had helped his headache one bit. He felt hungover, but if pleasure had preceded it, then Creed wouldn’t have minded so much. He wonde
red if he’d suffered permanent damage in the fall downstairs the night before last. Brain damage, maybe. No, couldn’t be. He could think, see, smell. Nothing was impaired. The problem was, he was seeing too much.

  Taking his hand away, he found the worn old face peering at him through the window again, a nightmare itself with its red-veined cheeks and nose, shiny wet lower lip, and yellowy eyes. A rag as grease-stained as the tramp’s ankle-length raincoat appeared on the windscreen and began a wildly exaggerated circular motion that left smears rather than clear patches.

  Creed opened the side door three inches and said, ‘Piss off,’ in a matter-of-fact way.

  ‘Be done in a minute, sor,’ was the unoffended reply. ‘Sparkly clean it’ll be.’

  Creed sighed and dipped into a top pocket of his combat jacket for a smoke. He’d had to take time to roll fresh ones before leaving the house that morning, using the work as a kind of therapy, something to do while he pondered on bad dreams and the very real message left on the carpet at the top of the stairs. Unfortunately the physical occupation hadn’t helped the thinking and vice versa: his fingers had been incredibly clumsy so that the cigarettes themselves were malformed and loose. He should have followed his normal habit of rolling a few the night before; but of course, he’d been a little shaky then as well, if he remembered correctly. In his possession he’d had a photograph of someone who was a dead ringer for a man hanged over fifty years ago. Nothing really unnerving about that. He could have been a relative – a son, a nephew – or just a guy with a similar face. So what?

  Somebody wanted the photos and the negs, and they were going to unusual means to get them, that was so what.

  Those prints were already gone, and although he could be wrong, it might have been Cally who had taken them.