Haunts

by Stephen Jones

  The station sailed backwards, and the humped countryside set about following. She was glad the masks were gone, but she wished the view would demonstrate the past had gone too. There wasn’t a vehicle to be seen, and the animals strewn about the darkened fields were so still they might have been stuffed. She was trying to content herself with the rewinding of the panorama when she remembered that it would return her to the tunnel.

  She didn’t want to enter it by herself, especially since the lights of the carriage appeared to be dimmer than ever. She would put up with children so long as they didn’t try to make anything of the dark. If there were any in her carriage she would have heard them by now, but perhaps there were quieter passengers. She stood up, though the movement of the train was against it, and hauled herself around the door into the corridor.

  She was alone in the carriage. The empty compartments looked even less inviting than hers: the long narrow outlines of the seats reminded her too much of objects she was anxious to forget, the choked brown light seemed determined to resemble the wary glow of her memories. Surely there must be a guard on the train. She hurried to the end of the corridor and peered across the gap into the next one, down which she heard a door slide open. “Hello?” she called. “Who’s here besides me?”

  The carriage tossed, sending her off balance. She floundered towards the gap above the speeding tracks, and had to step across it into the middle carriage. It was swaying so vigorously that the lamps looked close to being shaken out, and she had to reassure herself that the sound like a nail scraping glass was the repeated impact of a blind against the window of the first compartment. If someone had drawn the blinds down for privacy, Hilda was loath to disturb them. Instead she ventured past in search of the door she’d heard opening.

  Was the carriage out of service? The insides of the window of the next compartment were so grimy they might have been coated with soil. Through a patch that a hand must have cleared she saw movement—a stump jerking up and down—the movable arm of a seat, keeping time with the rhythm of the wheels. It must be a shadow, not a large black insect, that kept creeping out from beneath the arm and recoiling, though there were certainly insects in the adjacent compartment: fat blue flies, altogether too many of them crawling over those few sections of the windows that weren’t opaque, more of them blundering against the rest of the glass, thumping it like soft limp fingers. She was trying to nerve herself to dodge past all that, because next to it was the door she’d heard, when she saw what was wedging the door open. She wanted to believe it had slid open with the lurching of the carriage, which had also thrown an item of lost property off one of the seats to be trapped by the bottom corner of the door—a glove with its fingers twisted into claws and as brown as shrivelled skin. Even if it was only a glove, it didn’t look quite empty enough.

  Perhaps she didn’t see it stir, or perhaps the careening of the train made the fingers twitch. She only knew she was backing down the corridor, leaning against the outer wall for fear of being hurled against or into a compartment, her hands sliding almost as fast over the grimy windows as the twilit hills and fields were regressing outside them. She had to force herself to look behind her rather than retreat blindly over the gap. As she executed a faltering stride into the rear carriage, her lips formed words before she knew where she remembered them from, and then while she attempted not to remember. “It wasn’t me,” she mouthed as she fled along the carriage, and as she slid the door shut on the corridor that had turned too dim for her to see the end of it and clung to the handle “I didn’t do anything.”

  She hadn’t broken into the vault or vandalised the contents, true enough. Days later she’d overheard her father telling her mother that some children had, and she’d realised they must have left the gas mask. “Pity they weren’t old enough to be called up,” her father had said for her mother to agree with, “and learn a bit of respect,” and Hilda had felt his comments could have been aimed at her, particularly since Ellen had persuaded her never to mention they’d been in the graveyard. After that, every time she’d had to go to the shelter with her parents—down into the earth and the dimness full of shapes her vision took far too long to distinguish—she’d repeated her denial under her breath like a prayer.

  “I didn’t do anything”—but she had. She’d lifted the mask from the open end of the box—from the head poking through the gap. Whoever had pulled out the box must have used the mask to cover up the head. It seemed to Hilda that some of the face might have come away with the mask, because the vacant eyes had been so large and deep that shadows had crawled in them, and the clenched grin had exposed too much besides teeth. Then the light had fled with Ellen up the steps, and as Hilda scrambled after her, shying away the mask and its contents, a steady siren had sounded the All Clear like a cruel joke. As though summoned by the memory of her having had the light snatched away, darkness erased the countryside outside the train with a stony shout of triumph.

  She doubled her grip on the handle until the hot thick stale exhalations of the engine began to invade the compartment through the open window. Now that the journey was uphill the smoke was being channelled backwards, and she felt in danger of suffocating. She lunged across the seat to grab the handles of the transom and slide the halves together. They stuck in the grooves while her hands grew as hot and grubby as the smoke, then the halves stuttered together and met with a clunk. She fell on the seat and masked her face with her cupped hands, but when she saw her blurred reflection against the rushing darkness on both sides of her she uncovered her face. At least she’d shut out much of the uproar as well as the smoke, and the relative silence allowed her to hear something approaching down the tunnel.

  No, not the tunnel: the corridor. She heard an object being dragged, followed by a silence, then a closer version of the sound. She was well-nigh deaf from straining her ears when another repetition of the noise let her grasp what it was. Somebody was sliding open the compartment doors.

  It could be the guard—perhaps he was responding to her call from before they had entered the tunnel—except that the staggery advance sounded rather as though somebody was hauling himself from door to door. She strove to focus her awareness on the knowledge that the train wasn’t supposed to stay in the tunnel much more than a minute. Not much more, her mind was pleading, not much more—and then she heard the door of the neighbouring compartment falter open. Her gaze flew to the communication cord above the entrance to her compartment just as two bunches of fingers that seemed able only to be claws hooked the edge of the window onto the corridor. The carriage jerked, and a figure pranced puppet-like to her door.

  It might have been wearing a camouflage outfit, unless the dark irregularities on the greenish suit were stains. It was too gaunt for its clothes or for the little of its discoloured skin she could see. Above the knobbed brownish stick of a neck its face was hidden by a gas mask that had fallen askew. With each sway of the carriage the mask looked in danger of slipping off.

  For the duration of a breath she was incapable of taking, Hilda couldn’t move. She had to squeeze her eyes shut in order to dive across the compartment and throw all her weight against the handle of the door while she jammed her heels under the seat opposite her. As long as the door and the glass were between her and the presence in the corridor it surely couldn’t harm her. But her sense of its nearness forced her eyes open, and the figure that was dancing on the spot in time with the clacking of the wheels must have been waiting for her to watch, because it lifted both distorted hands to fumble with the mask.

  Hilda heaved herself up to seize the communication cord, and only just refrained from pulling it. If she used it too soon, the train would halt in the tunnel. Her mouth was yearning to cry out, but to whom? Her parents couldn’t keep her safe now; they had never appeared when she’d called out to them in the night to prove they were still somewhere. Her fist shook on the rusty chain above the door and almost yanked it down as the fingers stiff as twigs dislodged the mask.


  Whatever face she’d been terrified to see wasn’t there. Lolling on the scrawny neck around which the mask had fallen was nothing but a lumpy blackened sack not unlike a depleted sandbag from which, far too irregularly, stuffing sprouted, or hair. All the same, the lumps began to shift as if the contents of the sack were eager to be recognised. Then light flared through the carriage, and Hilda tugged the cord with all her strength.

  The brakes screeched, but the train had yet to halt when the lights, having flared, died. The train shuddered to a stop, leaving her carriage deep in the tunnel. She had to hold the door shut until help arrived, she told herself, whatever she heard beyond it, whatever she imagined her fellow traveller might be growing to resemble. But when the handle commenced jerking, feebly and then less so, she rushed across the invisible compartment and wrenched the halves of the transom apart and started to scream into the darkness thick as earth.

  <>

  *

  Grandfather‘s Teeth

  LISA TUTTLE

  LISA TUTTLE made her first professional sale forty years ago with the short story “Stranger in the House”—now the opening entry in her book Stranger in the House: The Collected Short Supernatural Fiction, Volume One, published by Ash-Tree Press.

  Perhaps best known for her short fiction, which includes the International Horror Guild Award-winning “Closet Dreams,” Tuttle is also the author of several novels, including The Pillow Friend, The Mysteries, and The Silver Bough, as well as books for children and nonfiction works.

  Although born and raised in America, she has lived in Britain for the past three decades, and currently resides with her family in Scotland.

  “That I began to write ‘Grandfather’s Teeth’ on a day when I had a dental appointment is not insignificant,” Tuttle admits. “The last period in my life when my teeth caused me so much pain, I could look forward to the glorious day when my braces would come off.

  “Alas, there’s no such happy outcome to the dental woes of the elderly person I have somehow, mysteriously, become.

  “I can’t claim that writing this horror story reduced my fear of either dentures or dementia, but I enjoyed the opportunity to share.”

  GRANDFATHER’S TEETH were not the worst thing about him, but they were pretty horrible.

  Shelley squealed in disgust whenever she caught sight of the set of ivory-colored teeth arrayed in the pink plastic gums, whether carefully placed in a glass of water, or abandoned, high and dry on top of the television set, on a plate in the refrigerator, or halfway up the stairs; but for Dougie the teeth had a peculiar fascination, like a lot of horrible things, although the reason why was impossible to explain, especially to a girl. But it was that fascination which made him rush over and pick the things up whenever he spotted them somewhere out of place, and even clean them and restore them to the blue plastic box in the bathroom, although he accepted thanks from his mother and his aunts just as if he’d done it to save them the trouble.

  It only happened a few times, because Grandfather didn’t start dropping his teeth that much until he had seriously lost it, and by then his obscenity-laden rants had started alienating the neighbors, who fortunately remained neighborly enough to rescue him after he set his house on fire, and after that he was moved into a nursing home that specialized in elders with dementia.

  Dougie and his sister were taken to visit Grandfather in the home, which was much worse than going to his house had been, because they weren’t allowed to wander off, and there was nowhere to go and nothing to do but sit in the overheated television lounge, and pretend to be interested in the wildlife documentaries or cooking programs that the residents were all ignoring in favor of watching you, or sit in Grandfather’s room and pretend to be having a conversation while staying out of grabbing reach. Having him pinch your cheek or give you a slobbery kiss wasn’t very nice, but it wasn’t as bad as whatever he did to Shelley at the end of their third visit. That had made her scream and then cry—she must have cried for a whole hour—and afterwards, although Dougie still had to go for a weekly visit, she was allowed to stay home.

  Dougie could remember when his grandfather had been a kind, gentle man who seemed to know everything there was to know about birds and animals, and who had taught him how to make a kite, but that soft-spoken, intelligent man had gone, replaced by a big, bad-tempered baby who wouldn’t even put his teeth in at mealtimes, so he could only eat mush.

  Although he no longer used them, Grandfather’s teeth were still kept in a box on the bedside table, within easy reach, in case he changed his mind. The sight of the cloudy blue plastic container sitting between the old radio and a box of tissues gave Dougie a funny squiggly feeling in his tummy, and he imagined reaching out his hand and picking it up, then squeezing the sides so the smoothly rounded top would pop open to reveal the set of false teeth snug within. Then he would take them out.

  At the thought of feeling the fat, pink plastic gums and the cold hard incisors embedded there, his stomach hollowed and dropped like he was on a roller-coaster, and all of a sudden he had a stiffy. He couldn’t believe it; how stupid was that; not even a fit nurse in sight. He was hunched over a little, trying to hide it, trying desperately to think of something even more disgusting and less horn-inducing than an old man’s false teeth, when, with her usual brilliant timing, Mum asked if he was all right and did he need the toilet?

  When Grandfather died no one was very sorry, because, really, the man they had known and loved was already dead; it had just taken his body awhile to catch up. Most of his possessions had been disposed of already: the furniture and books divided among his daughters, smaller memorabilia distributed to his grandchildren and other relatives. The apprehension his daughters had felt about letting him take anything valuable into the home had been justified; no one could say what had happened to his good watch or the radio, and even things with no worth beyond the sentimental were missing. The box returned by the nursing home was stuffed with pajamas and socks and handkerchiefs, and contained a few items that must have been stolen from other patients to make up the weight: some paperback novels, a pair of praying hands carved in dark wood, an ashtray.

  Apart from the photo album and a small collection of framed photographs, Mum put everything else back into the box.

  “What are you going to do with that?” asked Dougie, who had been hanging back, watching, as his mother took inventory of Grandfather’s remains.

  “Take it to the dump. They might have saved me the trouble and done it themselves. Did they really think anyone would want a dead man’s dressing gown, or his ancient underwear? If they didn’t want it…” Sighing, she rose, wiped her hands on her trousers, and left the room.

  Alone, Dougie stood and stared at the box. He told himself it didn’t matter if they were in there or not. No one could conceivably want a dead man’s false teeth. But he couldn’t help being curious. His mother had not included them among her monotone listing of contents, nor had he once glimpsed the occulted gleam of cloudy blue plastic as she’d pulled things out and pushed them back.

  Hardly aware of having crossed the room, he found himself kneeling. She could come back at any minute, and how would he explain? The flaps pulled back, his hands plunged down; he was elbows-deep in fabric, holding his breath against the stench of stale linen, of old man, as he groped along the cardboard bottom. He felt the wooden hands, the cover of a book, then palmed something smoothly rounded, soft plastic yielding as his hand closed on it.

  He’d just pulled it free when he heard her footsteps in the hall. Quickly, he stood up and stepped away from the box, shoving the small container deep into one of his pockets. The box was open now, but being caught trying to shut it would look more suspicious than just leaving it.

  She came in holding the car keys. “Want to come?”

  “Where?”

  “I told you: the recycling center.” She nodded at the box.

  “Now? A special trip, like, just for that?”

  She ben
t down to tuck in the flaps. “I was needing to go to Waitrose, anyway. And if there was anywhere you wanted to go…?” Straightening up, she looked for his reply.

  His hand went into his pocket to curl around the plastic shell as he shook his head. “No thanks. I’m good.”

  She left the room to go make the same offer to his sister, and, unobserved, he could have returned the teeth to the box, sent them on their way to oblivion with no one the wiser, but he did not.

  When his mother and sister had left, he went into his room and closed the door. He relaxed, secure in the knowledge that he was alone, and would be undisturbed for at least an hour, even though he had nothing in mind that required such a high level of security.

  He took out the small container, put it on his bedside table, and popped it open. Looking at the faceless grin inside recalled something heard on a wildlife program, probably one of those unintentionally absorbed in the lounge at the care-home, about the meaning of the smile in apes. When a chimpanzee grinned at you he wasn’t amused; no, it was his way of showing subservience or fear: please don’t hurt me, I’m harmless.

  “Scared of me, huh?” said Dougie conversationally as he picked up the teeth.

  They didn’t feel quite the way he remembered them feeling, back when his grandfather was alive. Of course, then, when for reasons obscure probably even to himself, Grandfather would remove his teeth and put them on top of the television or inside the refrigerator, they were coated in dried saliva if not actually sticky. Now, they were clean and dry, but, strangely, not cold. They even felt warm, and somehow had a feeling of life about them. It was almost as if they were vibrating.

  He was still trying to make sense of it when Grandfather’s teeth flipped over in his hand and chomped down on the spot known to palm-readers as the mound of Venus.