Justin sensed the tiger as soon as he reached the street. He didn’t see it, or hear it. He simply . . . sensed it.
Leaving the warm safety of the Baxter’s porch light behind him, he started down the sidewalk that fronted State Street, feeling the night swallow him in a single hungry gulp. He stopped when he reached the edge of the Baxter’s property line and looked back wistfully toward their front door.
Too bad the evening had to end. It had been just about the finest evening he could remember. Not that Steve and he hadn’t had some fine old times together, the way best friends will; but this particular evening had been, well, magical. They had played The Shot Brothers down in Steve’s basement while Mr. and Mrs. Baxter watched TV upstairs. When the game had been going well and everything was clicking, Justin could almost believe that Steve and he really were brothers. And that feeling had never been stronger than it had been this evening.
When Mrs. Baxter had finally called down that it was time to go, it had struck Justin as vaguely strange that she would be packing him off on a night like this, seeing how he and Steve slept over at one another’s homes just about every weekend. But this evening was different. Despite the snow, home called to him in sweet siren whispers.
Mrs. Baxter had bundled him up in his parka, boots, and mittens, and then, much to his surprise, she had kissed his cheek. Steve had seen him to the door, said a quick goodbye, then hurried away to the den. Funny thing, Steve’s eyes had seemed moist.
Then Justin had stepped out into the night, and Mrs. Baxter had closed the door behind him, leaving him alone with the dark and the cold and . . . the tiger.
At the edge of the Baxter’s property, Justin glanced around for a glimpse of the beast; but the street appeared deserted save for the houses and parked cars under a downy blanket of fresh snow. It was drifting down lazily now, indifferent after the heavy fall of that afternoon. Justin could see the skittering flakes trapped within the cones of light cast by the street lamps, but otherwise the black air seemed coldly empty. The line of lamps at every corner of State Street gave the appearance of a tunnel of light that tapered down to nothingness; and beyond that tunnel, the dark pressed eagerly in.
For a moment, Justin felt the urge to scurry back to the Baxters’ door and beg for sanctuary, but he knew he should be getting home. Besides, he wasn’t some chicken who ran from the dark. He was one of the Shot Brothers. Rough and ready. Fearless. Hadn’t he proven that to stupid Dale Corkland just the other day? “You scared?” old zit-faced Corkland had asked him. And Justin had shown him.
At the corner, Justin looked both ways, although he knew there wouldn’t be many cars out on a night like this. Then he scanned the hedges along a nearby house, where dappled shadows hung frozen in the branches. Excellent camouflage for a tiger—particularly one of those white, Siberian tigers he’d read about.
He kept a close eye on those hedges as he crossed the street. Snow swelled up around his boots and sucked at his feet, making it impossible to run should a tiger spring from behind the mailbox on the far corner. He stopped before he reached that mailbox, listening for the low blowing sound that tigers sometimes make as they lie in ambush. But all he heard was the rasping of his own breath (“You scared?) Yes. Tigers were nothing to be trifled with. They were as dangerous as the ice on Shepherd’s Pond.
Justin had stared at that ice, thinking about the warm weather they’d had the past week. Then he had looked up at Dale Corkland’s face, three years older than his and sporting a gala display of acne. “You scared?” And Justin had shown him.
But that was then and this was now; and weren’t tigers more merciless than ice? Oh, yes indeed.
Justin gave himself a good mental shaking. He tried to summon those things his father had told him at other times when this tiger-fear had come upon him. (Don’t be such a baby.) At night, when he would awaken screaming after a tiger nightmare. (It was only a dream.) Or when he felt certain that a tiger was lurking about the basement. (There are no tigers in the city. You only find tigers in the zoo.)
Wrapping himself snug in these assurances, Justin tramped past the brick retaining wall at the corner of State and Sixteenth without so much as a glance toward the spidery line of poplars where a tiger might be hiding. He rounded the corner and marched on. Heck, he had walked this way dozens of times. Hundreds, maybe.
But tonight the usually comfortable features seemed alien and warped out of reality under the snow, and finding himself in this strange white landscape, Justin suddenly felt the tiger-fear return. It bobbed up and down within him until he could almost feel the tiger’s nearness, so close that the hot jungle breath seemed to huff against his cheek.
He was half-way down the block when he saw a shadow slip effortlessly from behind the house two doors up. It seemed to glide dream-like across the snow, then disappear behind a car parked in the driveway. It was just a shadow, but before it had vanished, Justin thought he caught a hint of striping.
There are no tigers in the city.
Justin watched and waited—waited for whatever it was to show itself. He even considered turning back, rerouting around Rush Street, but that would put it behind him.
Come on, he scolded himself. You only find tigers in India. Or the zoo. Or behind parked cars. Nonsense. Tigers don’t stalk kids from behind parked cars in the middle of an American city. Only little kids let themselves be scared by shadows in the night. Not one of the Shot Brothers. Not a kid who had dared the ice on Shepherd’s Pond. Not a kid who was only two years away from attending Rathburn Junior High, where you get to keep your stuff in your own locker and change classrooms every hour and eat your lunch out on the bleachers. Kids at Rathburn didn’t go whimpering and whining because they saw a shadow in the snow—probably thrown by a branch moving in the wind.
But there is no wind tonight.
Justin swallowed hard, then started forward. He walked slowly, never shifting his gaze from the tail light of that parked car. If only he could see around it without getting any nearer. If something were crouching back there, it would be on him before he could cover the first five feet. And then . . .
. . . teeth and claws, tearing and slashing.
You scared?
You bet.
When he had drawn even with the driveway across the street, Justin stopped. Two more steps, maybe three, and he would see if his father and the kids at Rathburn Junior were right, or if tigers do indeed lie in wait on winter streets. Of course, there was still time to turn back.
Perhaps it was the idea of turning back that propelled him forward. If he were to retrace his steps, he would never know; but if he looked and saw no tiger behind that car, then the tiger-fear would be banished, and he wouldn’t see them anywhere. Not in bushes. Not behind trees. Not between houses. Just three steps, and he could lay tigers to rest forever.
Justin took those three steps the way he had walked out onto the ice on Shepherd’s pond. Old zit-faced Corkland had dared him, and he had faced it.
One—two—three.
He turned and looked.
Nothing. Nothing behind that car but an old coaster wagon lying on its side. No tigers. No lions, bears, werewolves, or boogie-men. Just an old wagon. His father had been right all along.
He covered the last block and a half with steps as light and carefree as those of a June day, when the air smelled of new-mown grass and the sun baked your skin brown. But, of course, it wasn’t June, and as he sprinted up his porch steps Justin realized that he had reached home without a moment to spare. He could scarcely see his breath at all. Much longer out in the icy cold and he thought his lungs might have frozen solid.
As he stepped into the familiar warmth of his own house, he heard voices coming from the living room. It sounded as though his folks were having a party, although the voices seemed rather subdued—much the way they sounded on bridge nights when the evenings began quietly, but noisied up as the hours grew old.
Justin tip-toed down the hall, thinking it wise not to
interrupt. And as he passed the living room, he caught a snatch of conversation. It was a man speaking, “. . . bound to happen eventually. They should have put up a fence years ago. I’ve a good mind to . . .”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Gordon,” a woman said. (It sounded like Aunt Phyllis.) “This isn’t the time.”
That was all he heard before hurrying to his room.
When he flipped on the light, he was greeted by all the treasures which reflected his short life in intimate detail. The Darth Vadar poster, the Packers pennant, the Spitfire on his dresser, the bedspread decorated in railroad logos.
And one new addition, sitting in the corner on great feline haunches.
For the briefest instant, Justin felt the urge to run—to flee into the living room and hurl himself into his mother’s arms, as he had done so many times in the past. But as he stared transfixed into the tiger’s huge, emerald eyes, he felt the fear slipping from him like some like dark mantle, to be replaced by the soft and gentle cloak of understanding.
“It’s time to go, isn’t it?” he said in a voice that was low, but unwavering.
The tiger’s eyes remained impassive, as deep and silent as green forest pools. Warm pools that never froze over, the way Shepherd’s Pond did.
In his mind, Justin heard again the pistol crack of ice giving way beneath him, and he felt the chill water closing over his head. It really hadn’t hurt that much, not the way he would have thought. Not much pain, just a moment of remorse when he realized he wouldn’t be seeing his folks anymore—or Steve . . .
. . . had it all been a dream, this last wonderful evening together with Steve? Would Steve even remember?
Justin looked at the tiger, searching its peaceful face for the answer; but those fathomless eyes kept their secrets.
“Did you follow me tonight?” Justin asked.
Whiskers twitched as the tiger’s muzzle wrinkled into a slight grin.
“Yes,” Justin said softly. “I thought it was you. You’ve been following me all my life, haven’t you?” He turned to close his bedroom door, and when he turned back, the tiger was crouching to spring.
Watch the Birdie by Ramsey Campbell
Ramsey Campbell has become an institution in The Year’s Best Horror Stories, having appeared in every volume but one—and under three different editors. This seems altogether fitting, considering that since his appearance in Series I, Ramsey Campbell has become an institution in the horror genre as a whole. As novelist, short story writer, anthologist, and critic, Campbell has solidly established himself to be the best writer working in this field today. An early protege of August Derleth, Campbell was eighteen when Arkham House published his first book of horror stories, The Inhabitant of the Lake & Less Welcome Tenants. Since then Campbell has moved on to chill his readers with such novels as The Face That Must Die, The Parasite, The Nameless, and Incarnate. His most recent books include a novel, Obsession, and a collection of his short fiction, Cold Print. He is now at work on “a large supernatural novel” entitled The Hungry Moon.
Born in Liverpool on January 4, 1946, Ramsey Campbell is fond of using his native city as a source for his particular brand of horror. At present he and his wife and two children live in Merseyside in “an enormous turn-of-the-century house [with] fifteen rooms or more and a cellar and sundry other good things.” “Watch the Birdie” was published as a 100-copy signed and numbered chapbook by Rosemary Pardoe last Christmas. Campbell’s own foreword and afterword (yes, they are true) more than doubles the story’s disquieting impact.
This piece was written over the last two days of April 1983, at the request of John Meakin, then the landlord of the Baltic Fleet, a pub on the dock road in Liverpool. He published an intermittent newspaper called The Daily Meak and was known to his friends as the Admiral. The account that follows was to be published in his newspaper.
—Ramsey Campbell
WATCH THE BIRDIE
I hope I shall not be blamed if a true story has no proper ending.
Let me start by explaining that I’m in the business of making Merseyside disappear. No, I’m not a town planner: I create horrors as a writer instead. Many of my tales have been set in Merseyside, and a disconcerting number of the settings no longer exist, rather as the model in the Poe story died as soon as the painter had achieved her likeness on canvas. For example, “The Companion” takes place in the old Tower fairground at New Brighton; “The Show Goes On” is set in the Hippodrome cinema, last seen in a series of skips; my novel The Face That Must Die shows Cantril Farm through the eyes of a paranoid schizophrenic, though it looks pretty much as it does to the rest of us, and now they’ve changed the name of Cantril Farm. And my first novel was set in Toxteth. You will appreciate that I have yet to write about the present government.
My novel To Wake The Dead (known in America as The Parasite, though I haven’t room to explain why) contains a chapter set in the Grapes in Egerton Street, during the reign of the Meakins. That’s how I came to be in the Baltic Fleet recently, to present a copy to the Admiral. The place was packed with office celebrations and planners discussing how many trees they could plant in the car parks next year, and so it wasn’t until closing time that I had a chance to make the presentation. The Admiral locked the doors and offered me a coffee, and we settled down by the parrot for a chat.
The parrot had been dozing so soundly that nothing had roused it, not even the cries of anguish from the dock road as someone else discovered there was no way into the Baltic Fleet car park. Now it blinked at us with the balefulness of a Member of Parliament woken by question time, and croaked something that sounded vaguely Russian to me. “I don’t know where he got that from,” the Admiral said.
I had a momentary impression that I should know, but couldn’t think why: something I’d seen in the pub? I glanced round at the deserted tables, smudgy now that clouds like sludge were flooding the sky outside, and wondered aloud if the pub had a resident ghost. “Could be,” the Admiral said.
My interest quickened and so, I imagined, did the parrot’s—listening for something worth repeating, I supposed. “You’ve seen it?”
“Heard it. That was enough.”
He didn’t seem to be joking. “Good places to hear ghosts, pubs,” I suggested.
“That’s all I’d been drinking,” he assured me, tapping the coffee mug and earning himself a slow reproving psittacine blink. The pub was growing dimmer. “Tell me about it,” I said, “and maybe I can write about it for your newspaper.”
“I was sitting here one afternoon drinking coffee.” The pub had been locked and deserted, the sun had dazzled the windows so that he couldn’t see the deserted interior without moving from where he was sitting, and quite without warning he’d heard someone coming upstairs from below.
You must have seen the steps that lead down to the toilets and their famed graffiti, or if you haven’t yet you’re bound to: stone steps that look as if they might lead to a vault or a catacomb. He’d heard footsteps where he knew nobody could be, and so he didn’t call out, just reached for a weapon. He was still hoping that he wouldn’t have to find out if it would work under the circumstances, when the footsteps faltered and went back downstairs. When he made himself go down, of course there was nobody to be seen.
Again I felt there was something in the pub I should have noticed, again I couldn’t think where. “What did the footsteps sound like?”
He pondered. “Not as heavy as they ought to have sounded,” he said finally, frowning.
“Incomplete?” I suggested, trying to bring my description to life.
At last he said “Big and slow, but as if they weren’t quite there.”
He didn’t seem happy with that either. “And how was the parrot behaving while all this was going on?” I said.
“Nervous.” Then he grinned. “Talking to himself, God knows what about.”
Suddenly I thought I knew. “That Slavonic stuff he was repeating before?”
“Could well have be
en. How did you know?”
I wasn’t sure yet, nor sure that I wanted to be. “Hang on while I have a wee,” I said, as I’ve found one tends to say when one is the father of toddlers.
The steps to the basement were even dimmer than the pub. Somehow the dimness made my footsteps sound muffled, timid. I wished the Admiral would switch on the lights; I wished I hadn’t found an excuse to go and look at what I thought I’d seen, instead of inviting him to look for himself. I couldn’t help remembering that whatever he’d heard on the steps had come back down here, couldn’t help remembering what I was almost sure I’d seen.
It had only been graffiti in the Gents: a few scrawled words among the collectible wit. I’d hardly noticed them except to wonder in passing what they said, for I’d been distracted by the creaking of one of the cubicle doors: I’d thought for a moment that someone had peered out at me, a large pale face which had made me think of a pig leaning out of a stall, in the moment before I’d seen there was nobody. I remembered that now, and suddenly the basement seemed colder. That must have been why I shivered as I went quickly into the Gents.
You’ve seen the graffiti for yourself, or you’ve been told about them. No wonder customers come upstairs with a smile on their faces and their heads full of quotes. But all I could see just then were the words in a language I recognized now, scrawled in the midst of the jokes. I’d heard those words more than once, I realized, and I had a good idea of what they meant and what they could do. I started forward to the nearest cubicle, for a handful of paper to wipe them out. I was nearly at the cubicle door when it creaked open and something squeezed out to take hold of me.
If I’m ever tempted not to trust my instincts I shall remember that moment. Instinct made me close my eyes tight while I lurched out of reach, toward the scrawled words. I kept my eyes on the words as I rubbed at them frantically, with my hands, since that was the quickest way. At the edge of my vision I had the impression of a figure so swollen it filled the doorway through which it was trying to struggle, arms that seemed to be lengthening as they groped toward me, groped then rose toward the large flat face that appeared to have no features. They poked at it, and then it had eyes—holes, at any rate. Then I’d rubbed out the last traces of the words, and I was alone but for the creaking of the door of the empty cubicle.
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