House of Fear

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “It crossed my mind,” Franz confessed, “but I think it more likely you just got it all wrong. Maybe you fell asleep for a short while that day and Murdock left without waking you.”

  “He couldn’t do that. He makes too much noise, I told you. He bellows about and blunders into everything. Knocks things over.”

  “He’s a big man. Anyway, I’m off now. I’ll have a fish about and I’ll be in touch.”

  “What do you mean ‘fish about’?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll see if I can dig into things a bit, if you know what I mean?”

  “I don’t. But that’s fine. Thank you, Franz. I’m sorry to have off-loaded all this on you. But I felt I had to tell someone who was not too… judgmental.”

  Franz slipped out of the room and almost ran downstairs. At the bottom he found his sister waiting for him.

  “What do you think?” she said. “Has he told you the whole story?”

  “He told me too much. More than I can believe.”

  “When he called me up on Wednesday, to extinguish a cigar Murdock had dropped, I had no idea that he was up there alone. Usually I hear Murdock leaving the house. He can only manage three stairs then he has to have a rest. Like a bloody elephant coming down. And he usually calls out goodbye to me before he leaves. I didn’t hear a thing that day.”

  “Perhaps he was in a hurry for some reason. Late for an appointment. Wanted to get away without causing a fuss.”

  “I expect you’re right, but people do disappear under odd circumstances. Strange things do happen, Franz.”

  “Not to me, they don’t. I’ve lived for almost fifty years and nothing remotely strange has ever happened to me.”

  “That’s why I suggested Jerry get in touch with you to hear his story. You’re so down to earth. Jerry believes what he says, though. I can’t get him away from that.”

  “He’s delusional, in my opinion. Not that I know anything about unusual psychological states. But you said yourself you’ve both been under a lot of strain recently. Perhaps he’s been working too hard.”

  “We were doing okay before Murdock went missing, Franz.”

  Next morning, Sunday, Franz lay in bed until just before noon, thinking about the work he was planning to do on his new project and trying not to think about Jerry or Murdock. It was a perfect day for working indoors, with a constant drizzle falling outside. But, after he had dressed and eaten a late breakfast, he phoned Barbara and asked for Murdock’s address. As it happened, it turned out to be quite near where he lived. After establishing that Murdock was not answering his phone, he told Barbara that he was going to call round to see what, if anything, was going on.

  “Murdock probably isn’t aware that he’s caused this upset, Barbara,” he told her. “I’ll see if I can get him to explain himself.”

  “That’s really good of you, Franz, but be careful.”

  “What?”

  “You heard what I said.”

  “Are you suggesting Murdock might pose some sort of threat?”

  “Not really, no. But we don’t know what might happen next, do we? I mean, the man’s disappeared, hasn’t he?”

  Franz put the phone down, grimaced at his reflection in a mirror, and went out to his car.

  Franz recognised the spot as soon as he saw it. He’d passed it many times going in and out of town. A thirty yard square of grass, still covered by an inch of grimy snow from weeks before. It was surrounded by a mixture of bungalows and cheaply built houses of various vintages, with little or no individual parking space, so their occupants had to squat their vehicles in front or on a makeshift, crumbling area of cement set in among the unkempt grass. The higher walls of a larger and grander estate recently built behind loomed above them, giving the impression that the older group of houses had clung on where they were not wanted.

  After finding space for his car on the cracked cement, Franz looked about for number 15, which proved to be the largest of the bungalows. Obviously the scriptwriting didn’t bring in as much money as he had supposed or, for some reason, Murdock chose to live in one of the less salubrious parts of town.

  Franz walked in the continuously drizzling rain through a creaky gate and up to Murdock’s front door. As soon as he rapped his knuckles on the glass, something, probably a small animal, went berserk in the hall beyond. He could hear it leaping and scratching frantically. He tried to get sight of it through the letter box, but the view was blocked by a flap of canvas hung behind the door. He whispered what he hoped were words of comfort to the creature, whatever it was, which only made it wilder in its desperation. Franz withdrew and took stock of the rest of the building, which was much bigger than he had supposed, by circumnavigating it. When he got around to the front door again, he was pretty sure that Murdock was not at home. He tried peering into the gloom beyond the front windows when a voice said, “Would you be looking for Mr. McFee, by any chance?”

  It took Franz a few seconds to recognise Murdock’s surname, it was so long since he’d used it.

  He turned and saw a bald man in a boiler suit carrying aloft an open umbrella. He said, “Yes, have you any idea where he is?”

  “No,” the man said. He seemed to be measuring Franz up carefully.

  Franz said, “There is some kind of animal in there that obviously wants to be let out.”

  “That will be Mr. McFee’s dog, Rasputin.”

  “Is it hungry?”

  “If Mr. McFee is not at home and it’s not been fed, then it will be, yes.”

  “Is he in the habit of going away and leaving it?”

  “No. He gives my lad charge of it.”

  “Your lad?”

  “I’ll fetch him. He’s got a key.” The man went swiftly off towards the house next door and returned at once with a boy of about fourteen huddled up next to him under the umbrella. “This is the feller, Clive,” he said. “Says he’s a friend of Mr. McFee.”

  Franz saw at once that Clive, unfortunately, was not all there. His father’s words seemed to mean nothing to him and he stared steadily at the ground in front of him.

  “Clive is a bit slow, but he loves that dog. Mr. McFee isn’t here to let him in, but if you say so he’ll open the door and let it out.”

  “Well, certainly, yes, let’s do that.”

  The man said, “Go on, Clive,” and the boy sauntered away holding the key out in front of him. A moment later, the dog burst out of the open door like a flood of bathwater, and squirmed round and round Clive’s legs. The boy knelt down and Rasputin licked his face voluptuously.

  “It doesn’t bark,” Franz observed. “Why’s that?”

  “Mr. McFee had it operated on, I believe.”

  That seemed an odd remark to Franz. “I’d better take a look round in the house, to make sure nothing unfortunate has happened,” he said and, when the man made no objection, he made his way into the bungalow.

  The stale smell of Murdock’s cigars hung about the place, particularly the kitchen, which was obviously the room most used. A few small piles of dog shit were scattered about on the floor, which Franz grubbed up with some paper towels. Not as many turds as might be expected, but then the dog hadn’t eaten for possibly three or four days. Franz opened the fridge. Not much there either – some wilting salad, a pint of milk beginning to turn blue and a few cheese rinds. Relics of meals. Obviously, Murdock was not a fancy eater. On a shelf next to the refrigerator he spotted some tins of dog food. He eased the lid off one and turned its contents out into a saucer and set it down on the linoleum.

  The large table obviously served Murdock for many purposes, as its entire surface was covered with books, magazines, DVDs, some dirty mugs and dishes, a computer and various other, to Franz, unrecognisable electrical gadgets. Two large scrapbooks of newspaper cuttings contained reviews of Dead Funny Ted, some of them surprisingly ancient, and reports of various disasters, both at home and in distant parts of the world.

  Having seen enough of the kitchen, Franz set about ins
pecting the rest of the house for signs of a possibly sick or even dead Murdock, perhaps in the bedroom.

  The bungalow was surprisingly spacious, and contained more rooms than Franz had expected. Some of them were completely empty. Murdock hadn’t even bothered to put bulbs in the light sockets, others contained oddments of furniture stacked without thought any which way. Murdock lived a far more desolate life than Franz had imagined. And this from a man who laughed a lot. But not, Franz reminded himself, at particular jokes and incidents. He seemed to find amusement in life itself.

  At the rear of the bungalow Franz became confused; someone, Murdock presumably, though he didn’t seem a likely candidate to be a master of DIY, had fitted neat partitions into two rooms to divide them up into a number of smaller spaces. Finding his way round them in the semi-darkness kept Franz fully occupied for some time and he was relieved when he came upon a wooden door which he took to be at the back of the house. He tried the handle, found it wasn’t locked, and hurried through it, only to find himself in a large, windowless room lit only by some slight luminescence originating in what at first he took to be some indoor plants. He stopped to get a better look at them and saw that in fact they were what appeared to be the upper – in fact the topmost – branches of a large tree and, looking down, he realised that they continued down into a space below the bungalow.

  Bemused, he ventured forward a couple of steps and peered into what he thought might be a cellar and saw that the space below was too wide and deep to be anything of the kind. He could see a very long way down – so much so that he felt himself reeling. His fear of heights made him almost topple forward and it was with some effort that he managed to scramble back towards the door. He held his right hand up to his brow as his head had, for some reason, begun to ache and glared again at the branches that protruded through the floor.

  He noticed that some of them were beginning to move and sway a little where they were closest together, at the back, and thought he could see a clump of something in amongst them, like a platform, or maybe it was – could it be – a nest? It appeared to be a good four feet across and three or more feet deep.

  Yes, he knew then that that was what it had to be, some kind of nest made of branches and the tattered remains of what appeared to be curtains, bed sheets and various scraps of clothing. And the reason that the branches were swaying and bending was because something, some creature, had been aroused by his presence, and was coming out of its nest to investigate the cause of its disturbance.

  After a couple of quite violent shudders the nest tipped forwards at the side nearest Franz, far enough for him to get a glimpse of what could have been the top of a large hairless head and perhaps the tips of the fingers of a chubby, grasping hand.

  Franz must have fled then, though he had no memory later of going through the wooden door and closing it behind him. He found himself in the partitioned rooms trying frantically to find his way out.

  He fumbled and tumbled about in the near darkness for some time then, before he managed to relocate Murdock’s kitchen, where he stopped for a moment to listen for any sounds of anything following him. There were no indications of that at all. All around him was perfect silence.

  He sat at Murdock’s table just long enough to recover his breath and steady his head, then left the bungalow, slamming the door behind him.

  He found the father of the boy who had gone off with Murdock’s dog waiting for him near the front step. The man, still holding his umbrella, looked at him and said, “You’ve cut your hand. It’s bleeding all down your jacket.”

  Franz couldn’t think of anything to say to this but he realised it was true. He held the key out to the man who took it and said, “I’ll give it to the boy.”

  Franz nodded.

  “He’s not in there dead or anything, then, Mr. McFee?”

  Franz shook his head this time.

  “Don’t worry about the dog. My boy will look after him in the meantime.”

  This time Franz forced himself to speak.

  “Does he go into the house to collect it?”

  “My boy? No, never. Mr. McFee wouldn’t want him to.”

  “Hum. Does he often go away, Murdock? I mean Mr. McFee.”

  “Oh, from time to time, yes. That’s when he tells my boy to look after the dog. Usually he gives him something to buy food for it. We don’t have much money.”

  Franz reached into his pocket for his wallet. He had no intention of going back into the kitchen where the tins of dog food were stashed. He held out a note and said, “Is that enough?”

  “I should think it will be, yes. Have you no idea when your friend is coming back, then?”

  Franz shook his head again and went off to his car.

  He drove home slowly, cautiously, not really concentrating on what he was doing. His mind was on other things. At one point he drove off the main road, down a side street and stopped while he sorted through his thoughts. What had he seen back in the bungalow? A hallucination, or some kind of tableau devised by Murdock to scare away burglars? It would certainly have that effect but surely it would be better placed in the front of the building instead of hiding away behind a maze of wooden partitions where he, Franz, had only come across it as an afterthought, after searching the whole bungalow.

  It then seemed to him that perhaps it had been that his brain had simply misinterpreted the information it was receiving and things were not as they seemed. He had never experienced any kind of hallucination before but that seemed a more reasonable solution to what he now began to think of as his ‘vision.’ He thought that might be the explanation for all such visions, religious and otherwise. If he, a determinedly unbelieving person, could think he saw such sights, then surely it could happen to anyone?

  He drew comfort from that thought. He even began to wish he had stayed a little longer in Murdock’s back room and even considered returning to take another look, but decided not to.

  And he wouldn’t mention anything about his visit to Barbara, apart from telling her that he had not been able to contact Murdock at all. No point in upsetting her even more.

  He went back to the main road and drove home.

  The phone rang twice that evening, but Franz did not answer it. He felt guilty and slightly irritated about not doing so but his mind was not sufficiently calm to deal with his sister and her worries. He was certain it was her who was calling, as hardly anyone else ever did.

  Next day, Monday, he worked on his computer at home, and in the afternoon returned to the library to continue his research on his project. When the library closed, he went to a supermarket to buy supplies. He was loaded down with bags of food as he approached his front door, behind which he could clearly hear his phone ringing. Flustered by the urgent sound, he tried his best to get to it in time, but fumbled with his key and almost dropped some of his bags. Meanwhile, the phone stopped ringing.

  He knew he ought to call his sister but was still unready to do so. No doubt she would call back.

  She did, almost an hour later. This time he picked up the receiver.

  “Hello, you’re there at last then,” Barbara said, then seemed to whisper something that he didn’t catch.

  “Sorry, could you repeat that?”

  “No, Franz, it doesn’t matter.”

  “I went round to Murdock’s place yesterday. He wasn’t there. No sign of him. Did you know he has a dog, though? That was a surprise. He’s never seemed to me to be a pet-loving sort of person.”

  “No, he’s never mentioned a dog to me. What kind of dog?”

  Franz realised he had no idea. The boy had run away with the creature so quickly he’d not been able to get a look at it. He explained as much to his sister, who did not sound particularly interested.

  “Anyway,” she said, “I’ll be able to ask him about it. He’s back now.”

  “What!”

  “Yes, it was all a misunderstanding. He’s been ill and he didn’t want to tell us for some reason, so he slipped a
way.”

  “Slipped away?”

  “And he’s done it again now. He’s coming to see you. He should be there in ten minutes.”

  “Ten minutes.”

  “That’s correct. Stop repeating what I say, please.”

  “But why would he want to come here? Did you give him my address? He’s never been here before.”

  “No, I didn’t need to. He must know it. Anyway, he’s heading in your direction now. He left as soon as you answered the phone and I told him you were in.”

  “But Barbara, you shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “I don’t want to see him. I particularly don’t. The bastard. What does he want with me?”

  “Franz, it’s not like you to talk of anybody like that. He said he just wants to thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. For caring enough to take the trouble to call on him?”

  “Did you tell him I’d done that?”

  “Not that I can remember, no. I didn’t know you had.”

  “He was supposed to be ill, wasn’t he?”

  “Perhaps he was too ill to answer the door.”

  “No, he bloody wasn’t.”

  “Franz, what’s got into you? You’re not normally like this.”

  Realising he had to end the conversation to prepare for Murdock’s visit, Franz gruffly apologised, said he’d probably call her back later, and put down the phone. He went round his house, checking all the doors and windows were shut and pulled all the curtains on the ground floor. Then he went up to his bedroom to watch and wait.

  He waited in the darkest part of his bedroom and kept watch on the street in front of his house. After about ten minutes, a small unmarked white van drew up against the opposite pavement. The driver turned off the engine but didn’t get out immediately, confirming, somehow, Franz’s guess that Murdock was the occupant of the vehicle. This proved correct when the door suddenly swung open some time later and Murdock’s huge bulk clambered into view. He was dressed in some kind of duffle coat with a hood concealing his face, but Franz recognized the shuffling glide of his feet as he went round to the back of the van and opened the rear door. The dog ran out.