It was noon when he phoned Alan. This time there was an answer. “Hello? Who’s that?”
“Alan, it’s me.” There was no response. “It’s Matthew. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m fine. No problems.” There was a silence. Lake felt it stretch across twelve miles of telephone cable, like a thread leading him into a maze of blind tunnels. He took a deep breath; still silence.
“Alan. Are you there?”
“Yes. What can I do for you?” The voice was deliberately empty of anything recognisable. Why was Alan pretending to be a stranger?
“Can I see you?”
“Yes. If your X-ray telescopic vision is in working order. We’re on opposite sides of the city, after all. Then there’s the curvature of the earth to consider. And you’re probably facing in the wrong direction anyway.” More silence. “Where were you when I needed you, Matthew? Where would you be now if I still did? Where would I be if I still did? Tell me something.”
“What? . . . Go on, what is it?”
“Do you know what flowers grow in winter?” Lake wasn’t sure he’d heard that correctly; but the next sound was the click of the receiver. He went on listening to the dead line for minutes, like a child pressing a shell to his ear to hear the sea.
Lunch tasted of less than breakfast. Midway through the afternoon, Lake switched on the TV and watched an hour of soap opera. The rage and torment of the characters stuttered in his mind. He blinked away tears and felt them trickle to the corners of his mouth, where he tasted their fresh salt. Feeling somewhat better, he phoned his doctor and got the receptionist again. “Dr Wilson is not available. There’s no space in his appointment schedule. I’m sorry.” Lake stared at the receiver as if it had bitten his ear. Well, he’d have to hire another doctor. He didn’t have to wait for help.
It was dark by four o’clock, and far colder than the morning had been. Lake typed out a series of letters to constituents on the solid Underwood typewriter he kept at home. His sense of perspective restored, he went out for a short walk. As far as the off-license and back again. Harborne’s streets were reassuringly empty. Rain shattered the windscreens of parked cars. Through a few uncurtained bay windows, he saw glass flowers, bookcases, paintings hung on dark-panelled walls. Lake felt a shock of loss and didn’t understand why. He’d always fought his own battles. It didn’t seem to matter that he had no friends. He’d been a grammar-school pupil; there was no old-boy public school network to support him. He believed in power and the respect that power earned. You could trust authority; you couldn’t trust people.
The way back took him under a railway bridge that crossed the main road. A car came up the hill towards him, and in the same moment, a train flickered past overhead. Lake felt as though his heart had stopped. He stood quite still. To one side, the streetlamp lit up points of rain on the dark thorns of a shrub. He reached out and touched them. They pricked his hand, without breaking the skin. He drew his hand back and pressed it against the flat bottle in his coat pocket. What was wrong with him?
Lake ate alone, at home. This seemed to have been the most isolated and purposeless day of his life. Something had to change. He phoned Alan, but put down the receiver before it could ring at the other end. Alan had sounded disturbed; he was evidently having problems. It wasn’t Lake’s business to help. Things like that were beyond him. How was he going to make this weekend a success? By eight o’clock, the whisky was at least a technical fire in his stomach and mind. He’d have to hit town tonight. But he’d better not drive in this condition. And which town? He didn’t want to risk being recognised. Secrecy, he thought, was not only necessary but correct.
The train to Wolverhampton took him through Dudley and Tipton, past empty and poorly-lit streets whose terraced houses were more than a century old. Security lights flooded the ground floors of the factories. Whenever the carriage window looked onto darkness, Lake saw his own face flicker across the view. He was shivering, like his reflection. A copy of the Express and Star was spread face down on the seat opposite; he picked it up and tried to read better news into its headlines. The sports pages at the back were easier to follow, because they meant nothing to him.
He caught a taxi from the station to the club, though he could have walked there in a few minutes. The centre of Wolverhampton was surprisingly quiet for a Saturday night. The sky was cloudy; mist made the upper air a canvas for the town’s light. A car park jumped in perspective, becoming a cobbled yard. Everything bright seemed closer than it was; and warmer, too. Lake felt himself sobering up. He’d have to reverse that.
Two hours later, he was walking back along the same route. His companion was a tall youth in a grey leather jacket and black jeans; his name was Gary. He lived in a rented room on the other side of town. It was too late to go back to Birmingham, and Lake wouldn’t have wanted that anyway. This arrangement suited him; he understood business better than he understood people. Why was he doing this? It wasn’t recklessness, he knew that. With Alan it might have been, if he hadn’t tried to hedge his bets. Now it was more like giving himself up. The cold shifted inside him, touching him as he breathed. In the club, nobody had spoken to him or given him a second glance. He’d have to pay to get what he wanted. Which proved he’d been right all along.
Gary’s room was in a terraced house opposite a paper yard, where flaking white blocks were piled up as if to thaw them out. There was a long series of bell-buttons next to the front door. The unlit hall smelt of fresh cat urine. Moving quietly, Gary led his client up the uncarpeted staircase. Three flights, each with a time-switch to restore darkness. Lake imagined he could follow Gary by sensing his body heat, even at a distance. Suddenly, he felt an absolute need for physical contact—a strange feeling which seemed to have no connection with what was going on. A wall opened into a small but high-ceilinged bedroom, decorated with faded newspaper cuttings and photographs. The floor was littered with envelopes, notebooks and old newspapers, the pages merged by damp. It was more like a press office than a bedroom. If Gary was going to bring people back here, he really should keep the place tidy. Was he a student? Gary sat down on the bed and lit a cigarette. Lake sat beside him, feeling too cold to unbutton his coat.
“Can you put the fire on?” Gary shrugged in reply, as if to say What fire? His cigarette brightened as he inhaled, which made the wall behind him seem darker. Lake stretched his arms, biting back a yawn. Why were there so many newspaper cuttings on the walls? He couldn’t read any of the headlines. Shadows were falling on every exposed surface, like dust. But there was no lampshade. Lake stared at the naked light-bulb, hanging from a cord in the centre of the whitewashed ceiling. Its light was slowly weakening. No, it was still as bright as before. But the darkness was pressing in around it. Lake shook his head and stood up. “God, I’m pissed.” Gary watched him without making a comment. Something on the wall caught Lake’s attention: a news item that looked familiar. He stood close to it. His own breath stung his lips.
The plaster of the wall was almost covered with cuttings from local and national newspapers. Every mention in print of anything that Lake had said or done—even where his name appeared in election results or candidate lists—was here. Several of the cuttings displayed his face, a blur of dots on yellowed paper. His appearance hadn’t changed much in ten years. Lake turned round. “What the fuck is this?” Gary was still lying on the bed, propped up on one elbow and almost smiling, like a picture in a magazine. He blew a smoke-ring.
Lake pulled at one of the sheets of newsprint. It was glued to the wall, but most of it came away. He tore down another cutting; then several at once. Underneath, the plaster was surprisingly clean and whole. He felt a streak of cold along the side of his hand, and saw the head of a rusty nail protruding from the wall. Blood immediately began to spread on the cuff of his right sleeve, like a flower petal, or an oil flame. “Oh, Jesus.” He turned back to the bed. “I’ve cut my hand.” Gary looked and nodded, but didn’t move. Lake sat down beside him. Blood splashed onto
the pale blue duvet. It dulled at once, becoming a shadow. Lake tried to pull his sleeve up over the cut. “Help me. I could get blood poisoning.” He stared at the boy. “Help me. Please!” Quite calmly, Gary reached out, took Lake’s hand, and stubbed out his cigarette on it. There was no cruelty in the action. It was exactly as though the hand were an ash-tray. Lake felt the cold stiffen inside him, blind and enclosed, like a fist. He couldn’t open his mouth. Slowly, trying to balance himself, he stood up, then walked out into the unlit hall. A few seconds later, the bedroom door closed behind him.
Outside, the street was empty; Lake tried to remember the way back into town. He could see the distant lights of tower blocks around the station. It seemed to get colder the further he walked. The wind felt like having crystals of frost rubbed into your skin. He thrust his hands into his coat pockets, careless of the bloodstains. But when his right hand stuck to the coat lining, he had to pull it free. In the metallic light of the streetlamp, he saw white threads of snow glittering at the edges of the wound. His legs were shaking too much for him to walk. Was there nobody to help him? Ahead of him, he could see people crossing the road, on their way down another street. He tried to catch up with them. As he neared the corner, he saw that each of them was carrying a light.
The street was lined with dark, unrecognisable office buildings; there were very few doorways. People were walking along the roadway and the pavements, with lit candles in their hands. Lake couldn’t see how many people there were; but white petals of wax were already scattered across the tarmac. He stepped forward. “Help me.” Silent figures walked past him on both sides. They didn’t seem to notice Lake, or even to notice each other. Lake stood directly in front of one of them, daring the marcher to walk through him. But the man stopped, looking at Lake with candles in his eyes. Others stopped too, until Lake was surrounded in the middle of the road. There were a dozen or more of them. The rest of the procession moved on. In the circle of lights, Lake could see that the marchers’ faces were covered with wax.
A gap appeared in the circle. One of the candles had gone out. Lake felt the ache in his hand disappear, as though the wound had closed. Another gap. He couldn’t feel the cold in his chest now. He touched his own face, and felt nothing. Three more candles went out. The taste of the air had gone, and the smell of burning wax. Lake turned around; a ripple of dark shivered in the air. There were only four candles left. He cried out: Help me, don’t leave me. Please. But he couldn’t hear his own voice. He carried on begging silently, making gestures. Drops of wax fell and froze around him like snow. The holder of the last candle was standing close by. If only Lake could reach his face to pull off the wax mask, he would have made contact. He was lifting a hand when the stranger bent his head to blow out the flame and with it, the streetlamps.
NICHOLAS ROYLE
Moving Out
SINCE GRADUATING from London University, Nicholas Royle has worked as a waiter, English teacher in Paris, actor, information officer, festival organiser and magazine sub-editor. He is currently chief sub-editor on a national weekly magazine and plays football—as goalkeeper—for two other magazines he has worked for in the past.
Recent short stories can be found in Interzone, Dark Horizons, Chills, Terror Australis 3, Exuberance 7 (a Nicholas Royle special), Final Shadows, In Dreams, Narrow Houses, Dark Voices 4: The Pan Book of Horror, several volumes of The Year’s Best Horror Stories and both previous editions of Best New Horror.
He has edited the original anthologies of psychological horror, Darklands and Darklands 2, and his first novel, Counterparts, is published by Paper Drum.
Royle specialises in powerful stories about urban paranoia, as “Moving Out” so ably demonstrates . . .
I DON’T KNOW WHAT SHE TOLD her friends about her reasons for moving out, but I wasn’t convinced it was just because of the new job. It was based on the east coast, seventy miles away. She could hardly commute, could she? her look seemed to say.
But did she really have to shift all her stuff and buy a flat rather than rent somewhere?
I thought we’d got on OK in my flat; it seemed to work fine. There was no indication that she tired of my frequent games and traps, which were never anything more than elaborate jokes.
Sometimes, for fun, I used to try and frighten her; tense my muscles and affix an expression to my face, then move slowly towards her. She’d return the stare as long as she could, then fear crept suddenly into her eyes and I had to laugh to break the spell. “Did I really frighten you?” “Yes,” she said, hurt. “I’m sorry.” I showed concern and concealed my pleasure. It was only a game.
She took everything. Her collection of masks left a very empty wall in the bedroom, stubbled with nails. The bathroom shelf was suddenly made bare; forgotten tubs of moisturising cream and rolled-up flattened tubes of toothpaste, even these things were taken. I saw her cast a mournful eye over my tailor’s dummy.
“When I get my own place,” she had once said, “will you give me this?”
She often asked. I didn’t know why it was so important to her; she could have picked one up in any junk shop. I saw her from the kitchen one day, when she hadn’t heard me come in from outside. She was kneeling at the mannequin’s castors and clinging to its waist. Crying her eyes out.
I still didn’t understand its significance.
She moved on a Saturday. I went along to help. Her new job came with a car, an estate, which was good because she would never have squeezed everything into my Mini.
I was ignored when I offered to drive. I knew what she’d say if she bothered to answer: I wasn’t insured because we weren’t married.
She didn’t even give me a chance to climb in next to her, before moving swiftly away from the kerb, spinning her wheels through gutterfuls of litter.
I looked at the features of the Mini as I approached it. The radiator grille—the car’s mouth—had been buckled for a couple of weeks, and one of the eyes had a smashed lens. I had to wrench the door open. The engine wheezed into life and I moved off. The front offside wheel scraped against the wheel arch, but a bald tyre was a small sacrifice. I’d said I’d help her move, and help her I would, with or without her cooperation.
I had my work cut out keeping up with her. She darted and surged, switching lanes in her haste like there was no one else on the road. I had to rely on steady progress, the weight of the boxes in the back of her car and the re-tuning I’d had done two months earlier.
Her block of flats had a lift. If there hadn’t been so many heavy boxes and bags to carry, she would have climbed the stairs, despite her flat being on the sixth floor. She had always hated lifts.
It wasn’t just the discomfort of being crammed into what was basically a large tin, with a number of strangers; nor was it the embarrassment of awkward silences and accidentally crossed stares. Lifts terrified her.
Which offered me endless opportunities whenever we went anywhere and had to use a lift.
I only had to stand there, glaze my eyes over and turn slowly towards her, and she would panic.
“No, Nick! No!”
She once bolted out of a lift in a multi-storey carpark and ran straight into an old Vauxhall. She might have got away with a few bruises, had the car been stationary.
Some months later, one afternoon when she had gone out for a walk to help build up her strength, I rigged up a dummy out of some of my clothes, which I found in the wardrobe, and had it hanging in a noose from the kitchen doorway by the time she got back.
The relapse set her back about three months.
I regretted doing it but as I explained, it was only a joke.
It always puzzled me why she liked masks when she was so easily frightened by faces.
“A mask is only a mask,” she said. “It’s not ambiguous. There’s nothing behind it.” But in order to frighten her, I always had to start off by masking my features.
“There’s nothing but wall behind my masks,” she’d explained.
“Why do you li
ke them so much?” I demanded.
“People used to believe that traumatic events that had not yet taken place could send back echoes from the future,” she explained. “These echoes would sometimes register in masks.”
“Like a satellite dish?” I quipped.
She gave me a black look.
“Why don’t they show up in faces?” I asked.
“Because we block them. A mask can’t. That’s why you scare me when you fix your face like a mask. Sometimes the echoes are like the real thing.”
I stared at her now from the corner of the lift in her new home, but she looked no more distressed than she had when I’d snatched glances in her mirror during the drive up. Now it was her turn to wear a mask, the mask of tragedy. Yes, it would hurt, but she had to make the break. That kind of thing. Stony-faced resolve, with just the occasional glimpse of what looked like terror animating her glass eyes. She only had to say, if she didn’t want me there.
But not a word was uttered. In fact, I couldn’t recall the last time she had addressed me at all. I was blurring reality and imagination, not sure afterwards if she had said something or if I had imagined it from the look on her face.
The flat was on two floors. Not bad for the price and with a sweeping view of the sea front and port. At night the lights on the promenade would be pretty.
The staircase leading to the upper rooms was situated in the middle of the flat between the kitchen and the living room. You could walk right around the enclosed staircase, through the kitchen, the hallway and the living room. Actually under the stairs there was a cupboard, at its tallest about as tall as me.
I was able to follow her around from room to room and remain unseen. I tailed her just close enough to let her know I was there. She stopped and looked round, eyes flashing with anger and fear, but I was always just out of sight.
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