Five Stories High

by Jonathan Oliver

  I CAUGHT THE first train back, arriving home at lunchtime. Robin was painting the kitchen walls red again. Bright red. Bear in mind, it had taken him three coats of undercoat to mask the original colour. He was ragged with exhaustion.

  I think it was then that I realised he was trying to put the flat back to how it was. To how Joyce had it before she died. That was why the makeover wasn’t working, and why he was never satisfied with it. An unbearable itch in his mind nagged at him to keep going until it was perfect, but he didn’t know what perfect was. I didn’t know then how far he’d gone. I didn’t know that a switch in his brain had told him to put pieces of himself in the walls. Why did it affect him and not me? I can’t answer that. Maybe I don’t want to answer it.

  “Robin,” I said. “Robin. We have to get out of here. We have to leave, Robin.”

  He didn’t answer me.

  “Robin.”

  He turned to look at me, hollow-eyed, and held up one of those damned paint cards. “Scarlet Fever isn’t working, Mal,” he said. “Do you think I should try Autumn Haze?”

  I tried to tell him about Joyce, but he wouldn’t listen. He was consumed. And what would I say? Great news, Robin, you aren’t going insane, the place is possessed by the soul of a dead woman who was horrendously abused by her husband.

  “Let me just finish this, Mal, and then we’ll talk,” he said.

  I was tired. I was worn down. I’d reached the end of my tether. “You promise?”

  “Course.” And then he smiled at me, and I caught a glimpse of the old Robin. The one I’d fallen in love with.

  I went to a Starbucks in Leicester Square. The busiest, most anonymous place I could find. I found a corner table and sat there for hours. Yes, I know they couldn’t find me on the CCTV footage. Maybe I told them the wrong Starbucks; there are hundreds. I don’t know.

  Time slipped away.

  It was dark when I made it home.

  Key in the lock.

  The big silent house. As usual I felt its hollowness, its emptiness.

  I unlocked the door, called out, “Robin?”

  A smell.

  I knew that smell.

  It smelled like a butcher’s shop.

  Numb. I was numb.

  I walked like an automaton into the kitchen. Switched on the light. Dark brown paint was splashed all over the cupboards. No. You know it’s not paint.

  A sanding machine on the floor, ragged with flesh.

  A collage of hair glued to the splash back.

  I didn’t scream then. Cold. I was cold. Freezing.

  I walked numbly into the bathroom.

  Fingers. Three of them, next to our new, claw-footed bath that we hadn’t got around to installing. More blood.

  Nothing in the dining room.

  Nothing in the lounge.

  Into the bedroom.

  He was there. Curled on the floor. Naked. It was the first time I’d seen him naked for weeks.

  His skin was glistening with blood and fluid. The smell was a physical blow. I bent down next to him. His skin was a patchwork of missing flesh. Old scars.

  He’d removed his eyes and his genitals. They were placed neatly on an unopened designer duvet set. It had beaten him.

  I collapsed to my knees. I touched him, and he lashed out, whacking me in the face. I fought to get close to him. He hit me again, batted at his own face with his hands, then was still.

  Too still.

  He was empty.

  Help me!

  I screamed. Screamed and screamed and screamed.

  No one came. If our neighbours heard me screaming they didn’t care.

  I DON’T REMEMBER phoning Helena. I must have sat with him for hours, the blood drying on my skin, tightening it. I was in shock of course, but there was something horribly inevitable about the whole thing. At some stage I think I tried to put him back together.

  It was my fault.

  I’d let him get into this state because I didn’t want anyone to know how bad it had become.

  It took me fifteen years before I could admit to myself that Gerry was a manipulative bastard.

  It took me too long to admit that I was losing Robin.

  You can’t wallpaper over the past. Sometimes you have to live in it.

  Robin, Joyce, they’re still there.

  I should have burned it down when I had the chance. Razed it to the ground. But how can I do that stuck in here?

  I know it will have to be sold at some stage. It’s inevitable. But people have to know. They have to believe me. Someone has to put it back to how it was. Put it back, then burn it down.

  It’s the only way to be sure.

  It’s the only way to be safe.

  It’s not about me getting free. I know this new defence has no chance. But I did know it would get me some publicity. I don’t care about me. I’m done. The story has to get out. You have to promise me that it does.

  Do you?

  The New Residents

  NO. I’D RATHER you didn’t come in. We’re doing the place up, see. Gutting it. Starting from scratch.

  What are you even doing here? She’s gone; she’s long dead. You people just can’t let it lie, can you? One of you shows up every month, but it’s been almost a year since she died. Can’t you just let the story die?

  Wait... Tell me this. Did she really cut herself to pieces? Same as what she did to her boyfriend?

  God.

  No, it doesn’t bother us knowing what she did here. It’s just a flat. Doesn’t bother the children either, although Luke has the occasional bad dream – he overhead the kids at school gossiping about it when we moved in. It’s the other parents I blame for that. They really shouldn’t have been talking about it in front of the little ones. She’s gone. And we’re busy. It’s our place now. We’re doing all the work ourselves.

  Okay, come in then. But just for a minute. Yes, we are re-doing the lounge. Do you know it’s the second time my partner’s wallpapered it out! We can’t quite get it right. Isn’t that funny? We’re usually so decisive, but for some reason it just doesn’t sit quite right with us. The kitchen’s the same. We love a modernist, Scandi look, but I keep being drawn to reds. Isn’t that strange?

  NOTES ON IRONGROVE LODGE

  WELCOME HOME.

  I am writing these words in Irongrove Lodge. Once I have finished, I will leave my notebooks here, at the top of the fourth flight of stairs, though that will not necessarily be where you discovered them.

  Commonly, the histories speak of there being five storeys in Irongrove Lodge, but I am standing on the fifth floor and the stairs continue upwards. If I lean over the banister, I can see that they continue on for quite some distance. Irongrove Lodge has more to reveal to me, much more. And so, I ascend.

  Who knows; perhaps we shall meet one another upon the stairs?

  AUTHOR BIOS

  NINA ALLAN

  Nina Allan’s stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Best Horror of the Year #6, The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2013, and The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women. Her novella Spin, a science fictional reimagining of the Arachne myth, won the BSFA Award in 2014, and her story cycle The Silver Wind was awarded the Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire in the same year. Her debut novel The Race was a finalist for the 2015 BSFA Award, the Kitschies Red Tentacle, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Nina lives and works in North Devon.

  SARAH LOTZ

  Sarah Lotz is a novelist and screenwriter with a fondness for the macabre and fake names. Her collaborative and solo novels have been translated into over twenty-five languages. She currently lives in a forest with her family and other animals.

  K. J. PARKER

  After a spectacularly unsuccessful career as a lawyer, K J Parker started writing for a living in 1995. When not gazing helplessly at a blank screen, KJ rears pedigree Oxford Sandy & Black pigs, chops down trees and makes things out of wood, metal and cloth. He won the World Fantasy Award for
best novella two years running, and currently averages 92.8 in the SSBSA summer league. He also writes under the name Tom Holt.

  ROBERT SHEARMAN

  Robert Shearman has written five short story collections, and between them they have won the World Fantasy Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Edge Hill Readers Prize, and three British Fantasy Awards. He began his career in the theatre, and was resident dramatist at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter, and regular writer for Alan Ayckbourn at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough; his plays have won the Sunday Times Playwriting Award, the World Drama Trust Award, the inaugural Sophie Winter Memorial Prize, and the Guinness Award for Ingenuity in association with the Royal National Theatre. He is a regular writer for BBC Radio, and his own interactive drama series The Chain Gang has won two Sony Awards. But he is probably best known for his work on Doctor Who, bringing back the Daleks for the BAFTA winning first series in an episode nominated for a Hugo Award.

  TADE THOMPSON

  Tade Thompson lives and works in the south of England. He is the author of the novels Making Wolf (which won the Golden Tentacle Award at the 2016 Kitschies) and Rosewater. His short fiction has been published at Interzone, Escape Pod, Apex Magazine, Ideomancer, and Interfictions. His work has been included in a number of anthologies including Dangerous Games. His background is in medicine, psychiatry and social anthropology.

  HOME IS WHERE THE HORROR IS...

  The tread on the landing outside the door when you know you are the only one in the house. The wind whistling through the eves, carrying the voices of the dead. The figure glimpsed briefly through the cracked window of a derelict house.

  Critically-acclaimed editor Jonathan Oliver brings horror home with a collection of haunted house stories by Lisa Tuttle, Stephen Volk, Terry Lamsley, Adam L. G. Nevill, Weston Ochse, Rebecca Levene, Garry Kilworth, Chaz Brenchley, Robert Shearman, Nina Allan, Christopher Fowler, Sarah Pinborough, Paul Meloy, Christopher Priest, Jonathan Green, Nicholas Royle, Eric Bown, Tim Lebbon and Joe R. Lansdale.

  “Jonathan Oliver is the hottest new horror editor to come out of the UK since Stephen Jones, and I have high hopes for House of Fear.”

  – Jonathan Strahan, Locus award-winning editor of Swords and Dark Magic

  www.solarisbooks.com

  They gather in darkness, sharing ancient and arcane knowledge as they manipulate the very matter of reality itself. Spells and conjuration; legerdemain and prestidigitation – these are the mistresses and masters of the esoteric arts.

  From the otherworldly visions of Conan Doyle’s father in Audrey Niffenegger’s ‘The Wrong Fairy’ to the diabolical political machinations of Dan Abnett’s ‘Party Tricks’, here you will find a spell for every occasion.

  Jonathan Oliver, critically acclaimed editor of The End of The Line and House of Fear, has brought together fourteen extraordinary writers for this collection of magical tales. Within you will find works by Audrey Niffenegger, Sarah Lotz, Will Hill, Steve Rasnic and Melanie Tem, Liz Williams, Dan Abnett, Thana Niveau, Alison Littlewood, Christopher Fowler, Storm Constantine, Lou Morgan, Sophia McDougall, Gail Z. Martin, Gemma Files and Robert Shearman.

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE

  Each step leads you closer to your destination, but who, or what, can you expect to meet along the way?

  Here are stories of misfits, spectral hitch-hikers, nightmare travel tales and the rogues, freaks and monsters to be found on the road. The critically acclaimed editor of Magic, The End of The Line and House of Fear has brought together the contemporary masters and mistresses of the weird from around the globe in an anthology of travel tales like no other. Strap on your seatbelt, or shoulder your backpack, and wait for that next ride... into darkness.

  An incredible anthology of original short stories from an exciting list of writers including the best-selling Philip Reeve, the World Fantasy Award-winning Lavie Tidhar and the incredible talents of S.L. Grey, Ian Whates, Jay Caselberg, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Zen Cho, Sophia McDougall, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Anil Menon, Rio Youers, Vandana Singh, Paul Meloy, Adam Nevill and Helen Marshall.

  www.solarisbooks.com