"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 been. 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.
I admit it didn't take me long to climb the steps, yet by the time I reached the top I'd managed to persuade myself that I couldn't have seen all that, couldn't have seen anything like it. The pub looked as dim as the steps now. I might have asked the Admiral to put on the lights, but just then I wanted to ask my questions and get out of there. "Have you been crossing any Russians lately?" I said, as lightly as I could.
"Not unless you count selling Vladivar, no."
He thought I wasn't serious. "Just think about it. You haven't had trouble with anyone Slavonic?"
"Not in the pub, no."
I could tell he was remembering. "Outside?"
"Might have been. They could have been Slavs. A couple of sailors pulled knives on each other in the car park one night, and we had to sort them out, that's all."
"They couldn't have sneaked in here afterward, could they?"
"Not a chance."
"That makes sense."
He stood up to switch on the lights. "Going to tell me about it?" he said.
"When I've told you how I know." Both his gaze and the parrot's were making me uncomfortable. "You see," I said, "I once did some research for a novel about the basis of all the vampire legends, until I found someone else had already written it. One thing I did was talk to a specialist in Slavonic languages who told me some of the old Slavonic incantations. There were a couple I wouldn't have used even if I'd written the book; not once he told me what they were supposed to call up. Well," I said, glad to get it over with, "one of them was written on the wall in your Gents."
He jumped up. "It's there now?"
"It was until I rubbed it out."
He sat down again and gave me a doubtful look. I could see he thought I was making up the story for his newspaper. "How come you can read Slavonic writing?" he said suspiciously.
"I can't. I copied the stuff I researched down phonetically, and that's what whoever wrote it in the Gents did. Don't you see, whichever sailor wanted to get his own back on you sent someone in to write it for him, told him what to write. And that's not all they did—"
But there was no need for me to go on, for the parrot had started croaking—croaking the words it had already tried to pronounce. I pointed nervously at it while the Admiral frowned at me, then I punched its cage to interrupt the bird before it could finish.
The Admiral's frown was no longer puzzled but dangerous. "What did you want to do that for?" he demanded.
"Didn't you hear what it was saying? Whoever was sent in here didn't just write the words on the wall, they must have spoken them as well when there was nobody to hear—nobody but him," I said, nodding at the parrot, which glared at me. "Couldn't you tell it was Slavonic?"
The Admiral wasn't convinced. "You haven't told me yet," he growled, "what it was supposed to do."
I couldn't go into that, not then, not there. "Let's just say that if you used the invocation in a graveyard, what it called up would be dreadful enough, but if you weren't in a graveyard it would be something even less human," I said, but my last few words might well have been inaudible, for he was turning his head toward the steps. I saw his face change, and knew what he was hearing before I heard it myself.
I should have known that the footsteps would be terribly slow. "They're bigger," the Admiral whispered, and I could hear what he meant, though I was hearing them for the first time: they sounded as if they were growing as they lumbered up the stairs—as if they were putting on more substance. I had disliked the dimness, but now I wished desperately that he hadn't turned on the lights: at least then we would have been spared seeing. The footsteps came up halfway, unsteadily but purposefully, and I saw what might have been the top of a head, something white and rounded that seemed to be having trouble in keeping its shape. I was praying to be able to look away, to be able not to see any more, when the white dome jerked downward, the footsteps plodded back to the basement. I
nterrupting had achieved something after all.
Well, I told you at the outset that I couldn't promise you a proper ending. I still visit the Baltic Fleet, for the food as much as anything, but not after dark. I admit I keep a sharp eye on the parrot and the graffiti, and sometimes I need to be spoken to twice. I know the Admiral doesn't take kindly to people hitting the parrot's cage, and so I can only suggest that if you hear the bird speaking what sounds like Slavonic you do your best to interest it in something else. Quickly.
I delivered the story to John Meakin at the beginning of May 1983. I visited the pub several times during that year, but the newspaper hadn't yet been published. Close to Christmas 1983 I arrived at the pub to find it locked and shuttered. It reopened under new management this year. Nobody seems to know where John Meakin is.
Old Clothes (1985)
"Come on, lad, let'so be having you," Charlie shouted, and let the back of the van down with a clatter that sent pigeons flying from the cracked roadway. "Anyone'd think it were Fort Knox."
"Don't call me lad," Eric muttered, shoving all his weight against the door of the house. The July sunlight on his shoulders felt like a weight too, but the door didn't budge, not until Charlie stumped along the weedy path and threw his weight against the door. It cracked, then stuttered inwards, crumpling bills and final reminders and circulars and advertising newspapers, which trailed along the greyish hall towards the ragged staircase. "Go on, lad," Charlie urged. "What are you waiting for?"
"Christmas. Christmas, and the fairy to come off the tree and give me a million pounds." Eric was waiting for his eyes to adjust, that was all. Specks of light, dust that had found sunlight, rose above the stairs, but the house seemed darker than it ought to be.
Charlie gave him a push. "Don't be going to sleep, lad. Time enough for a rest when we've cleared the house."
I'm forty years old, Eric snarled inside himself, and I don't like being pushed. "Try finding someone else who'll put up with you," he muttered as Charlie threw open the first door. "We'll start in here," Charlie said.
The room didn't look as if it had been cleaned for months. Plants with grey fur wilted in pots; cobwebs hung beneath the round table, draped the lopsided chairs. Nevertheless, someone had been in the house since the old lady had died, for the drawers of a bureau had been pulled out, spilling letters. Charlie stuffed the letters into the drawers. "Take the chairs," he said over his shoulder. "You can manage them."
Eric resented being made to feel he'd said he couldn't. By the time he'd finished shifting the chairs, he was wearing grey gloves and a wig. Charlie stared at him as if he'd made a stupid joke. "Give us a hand with the table," he growled.
They had to dance back and forth along the hall and up and down the stairs. As they manhandled the table into the sunlight, Eric thought he glimpsed a pattern round the edge, of pairs of hands or the prints of hands. "Get a move on, lad," Charlie panted, glancing at the darkening sky.
The old lady's relatives must have kicked the papers along the hall, Eric decided as he stooped to a wad of letters that had been wedged behind the bureau. They were thank-you letters, one from a woman who lived a few streets away from Eric: thank you for putting me in touch with my father; thank you, said another, for my wife, for my son... "Never mind prying," Charlie said. "I don't care if she's dead, some things are private."
They were starting on the dining-room—spiders fled when Charlie lifted the fat tablecloth—before Eric realised what the letters meant. "What was she, anyway? You never said."
"You never bloody asked, lad. What difference does it make? One of them spiritists, if it's any of your business."
Perhaps it offended him, or maybe he felt that it should, as Eric's father had after Eric's mother died. Eric remembered his father on his knees in church and at bedtime, praying for a sign. They were both dead now, but he'd never felt tempted to contact them, had never been interested in that kind of thing. All the same, he couldn't help peering into each room as he followed Charlie, couldn't help feeling like an intruder as they stripped the beds and unbolted the frames. Venturing into her bedroom, he almost expected to see her or her shape made of dust in the bed. He flinched when something moved, scraping, behind him. It was a raincoat hanging on the door.
The sky was darker when they carried out the bed. By the time they took out the wardrobe, the sky was black. The downpour began as they were about to clear the attic, and so they sat in the cab of the van and ate the sandwiches Charlie's wife had made. She always made half for Eric since she'd taken pity on him, though Charlie gave him less than half. They drank coffee from Charlie's flask, too sweet for Eric's taste, and then Charlie said "Can't wait all day. Back to work."
The grey road looked like a river of tar now, jumping with rain. Charlie shrugged into his plastic raincoat; too bad for Eric if he hadn't brought one. Swallowing the words he would have liked to say, Eric ran out of the cab and into the house. Hall and rooms were squirming with large vague shadows of rain; he thought of the ectoplasm mediums were supposed to ooze, but he grabbed the raincoat from the hook on the bedroom door.
A few shakes and the dust almost blinded him. At least the coat was wearable. He fumbled in the pockets to make sure they were empty. A hint of clamminess in the sleeves made him shiver, but it had gone by the time he'd buttoned the coat on the man's side. Charlie watched him from the bedroom doorway with a kind of dull contempt. "My God, what do you look like."
Eric didn't care, or so he told himself. They cleared the attic. Then he slammed the door of the house. For a moment he thought he heard movement inside; it must be the papers flapping. Charlie was already starting the van, and he had to run.
Charlie left him in the drizzle while he drove along the coast to sell the vanload of furniture and ornaments. Eric strolled around town, reading job advertisements that always asked for people younger or more qualified than he was; then he climbed the streets above the factories that nobody wanted to rent, to his flat.
He reached in the right-hand pocket of the raincoat without thinking. Of course his key wasn't in there, but neither was the pocket empty, though the object was only a flower, easy enough to overlook. Nevertheless, he'd never seen a flower like it, especially one looking so fresh when it must have been in the pocket for weeks. He found an old glass and stood the flower in water.
Later he bought chips in the next street and fried himself an egg; then he tried to watch a film about Hawaii through the snow on the television Charlie had given him from one of the houses. Exhausted by the day's work, he was in bed before it was dark. He saw handprints dancing around a table, heard his parents calling to each other, almost saw a shape with arms that could reach around the world. Once he thought he heard metal jingling further down the room he lived and ate and slept in.
The morning was colder. He waited for Charlie to ring the shaky bell and watched newspapers chasing along the back alleys, birds darting out of the steep slate roofs. He changed the water in the glass on the mantelpiece— the flower was already drooping—then he decided to wait downstairs in case the bell had stopped working. He opened the door of his flat, and metal jingled among the coats on the hook.
He'd hung the borrowed raincoat on top. In the left-hand pocket he found two tarnished coins of a kind he'd never seen before. On an impulse he put one in his mouth and bit timidly. The metal was soft to his teeth.
He was gazing at the bite-mark when Charlie rang the bell. He hid the coins under the glass on the mantelpiece and searched the pockets twice to make sure they were empty; then, abruptly, his mind a tangle of half-formed thoughts—Long John Silver, nothing up my sleeve—he buttoned himself into the raincoat. He didn't want to leave it when he could take it with him. Charlie looked as if he mightn't even let him in the van. "Slept in it, did you?" he said in disgust. "I'm having my doubts about you."
"I thought it'd keep the dust off."
"No dust where we're going." Nor was there, neither in the house they were clearing nor the one to whi
ch the young couple were moving. The wife fussed around them all day, telling them to be careful and not to put that there, and Eric seldom had a chance to feel in the raincoat pockets. There was never anything. Soon he felt more like a stooge than ever, especially when he realised that somehow he'd managed to button the coat on the wrong side, though he remembered buttoning it properly. No wonder the husband avoided looking at him.
Eric half expected the flower and the coins to have vanished: he'd remembered his mother reading him a bedtime story about fairy gold. No, the coins were still there, and the wilting flower. He hung up the coat and tried not to watch it, then made himself go out to the Weights & Scales for a drink. An hour of listening to people decades younger than he complaining about unemployment and immigrants and governments and prophesying the football match up the hill next Saturday, and he went home. The pockets were empty, and so, when he slept, were his dreams.
As soon as he got up, he rummaged in the pockets. Still empty. Much more groping in the old material and he would be finding holes. He put the coat on, out of defiance to Charlie if nothing else, and plunged his hands into the pockets so as to look uncaring as he waited on the doorstep. The right-hand pocket contained a diamond as big as his thumbnail.
He ran upstairs and hid the diamond under his pillow. He ran down, then back up, and hid the coins next to the diamond. The van was just drawing up. Charlie gave him a look that made words superfluous, and took his time in handing over Eric's wages, which were supposed to include Eric's cut from the sale of the contents of the cleared house. The cut seemed smaller than it ought to be. Remembering the diamond, he didn't care. Charlie stared at him when he unbuttoned the raincoat to stow the money in his shirt, but he didn't want to put anything in those pockets in case it might be spirited away.
The diamond made him careless, and so did the old lady whose house they were clearing. "That's not mine," she kept crying as they lifted furniture. "Someone's trying to play a trick on me. Don't bother taking it, I won't have it in my house." They carried on doggedly, hoping her son would arrive soon, and Eric almost dropped a tea-chest full of crockery for reaching in his pocket when he thought he felt it move, and kept on reaching in there for something that would make the day worthwhile. The son, a middle-aged man with pinched eyes and a woeful mouth, arrived as they started on the bedrooms, and calmed his mother down as best he could while they brought down a wardrobe. "Where have you been? I thought you were never coming," she cried as Eric hurried back to the house, missing a step when something rattled in his pocket. It was a pearl necklace. "That's mine. Look at him," the old lady screeched, "you've brought a thief into my house."
The Collected Short Fiction Page 83