House of Fear

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “He’s one of the couriers,” replied Ken.

  “A what?”

  “A member of staff, Holly. His name’s Steven.”

  “Oh. He’s a bit of a creeeepo.” She said, and Katie spluttered a laugh from the seat behind Ken.

  “Don’t talk about people like that, Holly,” Ken said, trying to sound stern. He then ended up just sounding lame when he added, “We’re on holiday.” He pulled away and followed the boy on the unsteady bike beneath a thick canopy of trees overhanging the track.

  Hidden behind high partitioning bushes and positioned well back on their individual lots, looming like shanties in dim and dusky arbours, were rows of static mobile homes, each with their own wooden veranda and barbecue pit. A few lights burned in the windows, but nobody seemed to be about.

  Ken squinted through the windscreen. In the gathering darkness it was getting difficult to see the boy on the bicycle; somehow he kept ahead of the light thrown from the Audi’s headlamps and appeared as an intermittent flicker in the road, weaving from one verge to another. Ken wound his window down. It was getting humid. He could see midges fuming around the muted bulbs in the intermittent streetlamps set back on some of the lots.

  After another hundred yards, Steven stopped on a corner and indicated a plot to his left. He climbed off the bike and leaned it against the veranda.

  Ken swung the Audi off the track and killed the engine. He got out and went over to the courier. Holly and Katie clambered out of the back of the car and joined them.

  “Home for the next week,” Steven said. If he was smiling as he said it, the expression was lost in the shadow that fell across his face as he tipped his head to peer down at what his hand was doing in his shorts. “Ah, here you go,” he said, and produced a yale key on a large red plastic key ring with the CampEuro logo embossed on both sides and: Villanova 48 – Adrienne.

  Ken took the proffered key and went up the plank steps leading to the area of decking which abutted half the length of the mobile home. The door was of a cheap-looking UPVC variety, windowless and scuffed. He tried the key in the lock beneath the white plastic handle.

  “We’re in,” he said. He pushed the door open and ushered the girls through. There was a light switch on the wall opposite and he reached across the narrow hallway and flicked it on. A low light came on above his head, which did little but illuminate a door to his right and part of a tiny galley kitchen to his left.

  “Get some lights on, Holly. Katie – kettle, please. Let’s have drinks and settle in.” Ken was about to go back to the car and start unpacking, but as he turned, Steven was standing in the doorway blocking him. He was blackened by shadow and for a second, Ken could smell burning. He jumped and the back of his head knocked against the bulb in the low ceiling. He ducked in reflex and where he had been blocking the light, it was now cast back across the young man standing in the doorway, revealing a concerned expression.

  “I think you’ve burned your hair,” Steven said. “Against that bulb.” Ken reached up and patted the top of his head. Difficult to tell, but maybe there were a few crinkled hairs up there, wizened by proximity to the bare bulb.

  Ken shrugged and felt himself grin. The poor lad looked utterly bemused. “I’ll live,” he said. “Excuse me, Steven, I need to go out to the car.”

  Steven didn’t step aside; instead, he went past Ken and moved further into the heart of the mobile home, where the girls were clumping about.

  A lamp came on as Ken crossed the veranda and made his way back down the steps. He opened the boot and lifted out a large plastic picnic box. As he turned to go back up the steps another light came on, illuminating the window at the far end of the mobile home, probably one of the bedrooms. That kettle better be on, he thought, and trudged back up to the open door.

  He put the picnic box on the tiny narrow work surface next to the cooker. There was a metal coffee pot on the stove and a kettle with a whistle. He lifted the kettle; it was cold and empty.

  “Katie!” Ken snapped. “I asked you to boil the kettle.”

  There was no reply. Then he heard a giggle. It was coming from his right, past the shower room. Ken replaced the kettle on the hob and ducked through the corridor linking the lounge and kitchen to the bedrooms. He was just reaching out for the handle when the door sprang inwards and Holly and Katie came piling out.

  “What are you playing at?” Ken said as they tried to squeeze past him and continue their flight into the lounge. He grabbed Holly by the shoulders and looked into her face. Holly’s eyes were large and a bit wild. Her cheeks were flushed, hectic blooms on her pale face, and her long dark brown hair was plastered to her forehead and throat with perspiration. “Holly!” Ken said more sharply.

  As he spoke, he looked up. Steven was standing in the bedroom. There was a lamp on somewhere in there, probably by the bedside, but its light was meagre and what struck Ken with immediate force was the heat that baked out at him from the bedroom. It was stifling. Ken could feel the hot air rushing out of the room past his face, sucked out into the night through the open front door.

  “Steven was showing us a trick,” Holly said.

  “A trick?”

  Holly wriggled free and scampered away into the lounge. Ken heard the kettle clank and the tap run in a hollow sputter as one of the girls began to fill it. He turned to Steven.

  Steven was no longer in the bedroom.

  Frowning, Ken went through into the small back room. There was a double bed that filled the entire width of the room, and a bank of cupboards built into the wall above the headboard. There was a flimsy wardrobe and a chest of drawers against the wall near the door, and a hairdryer fixed to the side panel of the wardrobe. Ken could see himself reflected in a mirror bolted to the wall above the chest of drawers. The room smelt a bit damp, but then the walls were little more than sheets of plasterboard; you could make them warp just by pressing your palm against them. Ken sidled his body along the foot-wide aisle allowed between the foot of the bed and the chest of drawers and slid open the wardrobe door. It was empty but for a rack of coat hangers fixed to a bar and a couple of shelves. Ken closed the door and stood looking around. The walls were covered with old, faded wallpaper with a tired and oppressive vertical yellow stripe pattern. Ken felt suddenly claustrophobic; he felt like he was in a giftbox that had been wrapped without much love and then turned inside out and thrown over his head. The room was warm, and musty, but no longer contained that fierce heat of moments earlier. It must have dissipated through the rest of the building and out of the door.

  Ken went back out into the kitchen. Katie and Holly were sitting on the padded seat that ran in a large L-shape along two walls of the lounge. There was no sign of the courier. Ken took a step back and knocked on the shower room door. No reply, so he pushed the door open. The shower room was dark. Ken groped for a switch, found a light-pull, and yanked the light on. Another dim uncovered bulb lit up the cubicle. There was a shower, a tiny dolls-house sink and a toilet. Ken pulled the cord and turned out the light, and went out onto the veranda. There was a misty half-moon masked by the high leafy branches of the trees that grew in close around the back of the mobile home and along the side of the lot. It had become very dark, very quickly.

  Ken noticed movement on the rectangle of grass beside the veranda. He crossed to the waist-high balustrade and saw that it was Steven, standing staring at the barbecue pit. He had his back to Ken, but Ken could see that he was shaking.

  “Steven?” Ken said. It came out more sharply than he’d intended, but he was tired and starting to feel a little unanchored by the young courier’s erratic behaviour.

  Steven started but didn’t turn around.

  “Steven?” Ken enquired again and began to descend the steps leading down to the grass.

  Steven whirled around. He held out his hands, which were black with soot. “I was just trying to get this grill off the barbecue for you. It seems to have got a bit stuck.”

  Ken looked down at the barb
ecue, which was a small three-sided brick construction with a shelf for charcoal and a metal grill that rested over it, supported by an inch-wide steel lip. The grill was buckled, and appeared to be soldered in places to the steel.

  “Don’t worry about that now.” Ken said. His irritation was returning. Their first holiday in three years and they’d managed to pick a real winner. The plan had been to keep it simple, low-key. No airport stress, no lost luggage, no anxiety. Just a drive and a week of beaches and markets and games in the evening. But now they had arrived late, everything was shut and this wally was starting to get on his nerves.

  Steven had returned his attention to the barbecue. “I would have done this for you earlier,” he muttered.

  So now it was Ken’s fault? He considered some kind of retort, but then Holly appeared on the decking behind them and called down, “There’s no milk, dad.”

  Ken bit his tongue and stamped back up the steps, leaving Steven still pondering the barbecue.

  “Where’s my Welcome Pack?” Ken’s voice was muffled, but his indignation was clear. He withdrew his head from the empty fridge and slammed the door. He stood looking around the kitchen with his hands on his hips. He rechecked all the cupboards but found only the same collection of old pots and pans, mismatched cutlery and crockery and cloudy drinking glasses he had located on his first search. “I’ve bloody paid for that!” he said.

  Three mugs sat on the draining board ready for hot drinks. Behind him, the kettle was whistling with a panicky shrillness, which made Ken think of a lookout at a crime scene trying to get the attention of its gang as the security guards approached.

  “No bread, no milk. I ordered tea bags and coffee, butter pats and croissants for the morning. Now we’ve got nothing until the supermarket opens tomorrow.” Ken was fuming.

  Steven was standing in the kitchen. He had to hop and scuttle out of Ken’s way as Ken rifled through the cupboards.

  “I can only apologise again,” he said. Ken was starting to sicken of Steven’s menial responses.

  Ken went to the cool-box and rummaged through the wrappers and tangerine peel and empty cartons.

  “Right, girls, we’ve got a sachet of hot chocolate and a Capri-Sun. And...” – Ken paused for effect, slowly withdrawing his hand – “a box of Tuc!”

  “Great,” said Katie.

  “Yeah. Suck-u-lent,” said Holly.

  Ken could identify with their lack of enthusiasm. He lobbed the box of biscuits onto the sofa between the girls. Then he turned to Steven. “Is the bar still –” he started to ask, but Steven was gone again.

  Ken let out an exasperated breath. If he’s fannying about with that barbecue…

  Ken went out onto the veranda but there was no sign of the courier. He went down to the car and opened the boot, looking around as he did so, an unpleasant temper tightening his chest. Then he paused and let out a small, dry, humourless laugh.

  Steven’s bike was gone.

  Ken stepped around the side of the car and peered along the lane. There was nothing to be seen but a few screened off pools of light from the subdued streetlamps amongst the trees. He shrugged and began unloading the last bits from the car, and elected to leave Steven, and his decrepit old bike, to withdraw into the deep charring shadows of the hot French night. He’d deal with him in the morning.

  ii

  Something woke Ken. He lay in the darkness, eyes wide, heart beating hard. He’d been dreaming about walking through a music shop after a fire. Everything he picked up crumbled to a wet sorbet of coal dust in his hands. He trod through black puddles and the air was like the end of October. There was a grand piano in the middle of the room. It was burnt through; even the white keys were chunks of charcoal. Ken stood and flexed his fingers. He raised his arms like a virtuoso and plunged his hands down onto the keyboard. The piano exploded around him in a storm of colliery dust.

  Gasping, Ken struggled into a sitting position. The bed was lumpy and sunken in the middle. There had only been a pile of thin grey blankets in the cupboard above the bed, and they enwrapped Ken like an enchilada. He found the button on the wall above his head that switched on the reading lamp. The striped walls seemed to pinch in towards the light, and enhanced Ken’s claustrophobia; he blinked, trying to dismiss the lingering residue of his dream and the teetering sense that the washed-out golden stripes were piano wires still resonating in the scorched and blistered music shop to a single sustained and pitiable note.

  eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

  Ken shuffled his blankets off and slid himself to the foot of the bed. He pulled on his dressing gown and went out into the kitchen.

  EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

  Ken switched on the light and blinked and drew a breath. The kettle on the hob was shrieking. Still half asleep, Ken reached out and lifted it from the gas ring.

  “Shit!” he roared and threw the kettle across the lounge. It was red hot. It hit the floor and bounced, emitting a hollow clang. Ken nursed his hand. A red line was scorched across his palm. He ran the cold tap and held his hand beneath the tepid water. As he did so he looked around. The gas was off; there had been no flames beneath the kettle. It lay on its side beneath the little folding dining table. Ken wrapped his hand in a wet dish towel and went over to the kettle. He picked it up using the towel.

  “Daddy?”

  It was Katie. She stood in the kitchen and rubbed her eyes. Ken turned to look at her. For a second he felt suspended in the dream again. She looked so like Elaine it was agonising. Where Holly was all darkness and obscurity, Katie was light. They were like something out of a Bradbury short story. Blonde and blue-eyed, his younger daughter stood and peered into the gloom of the living area, her hair flossed up into a web of spun sugar on one side of her head from where she had been sleeping.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” said Ken. How odd must he look, standing in his dressing gown with a dishtowel wrapped in his hand, holding a kettle in the middle of the night?

  “Heard something,” Katie said. She took a few bare-footed steps into the lounge. “Had a dream.”

  Ken went over to his daughter. He put the kettle back on the hob and scooped her up. She was already drifting back to sleep.

  “Come on, love.” He said.

  “Mmmm.”

  Ken carried her back to her room, a narrow space no wider than a walk-in wardrobe situated between the toilet and his own room. It contained nothing more than a bunk bed and a side table with a lamp on it. Snuggled up in a ball beneath her ratty grey blankets, Holly snored on the top bunk.

  Ken put Katie back on her bunk and covered her up.

  “’Night, baby.” He said.

  “Daddy,” Katie said.

  Ken paused at the door. “Yes?”

  “Had a dream.”

  “You said.”

  “Nice.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Mummy was playing her piano.”

  “Sweet dreams, Katie,” Ken said, his mouth suddenly very dry.

  Ken went back to bed and slept without any more dreams. By the time they were all up the next morning, dressed and washed and ready to go shopping as early as he could possibly coordinate, Ken had forgotten about the unsettling synchronicity of his and Katie’s dreams. He had also put from his mind the fact that the kettle, picked up from the floor in his dishtowelled fist, had been empty and in no way boiled dry. It had been stone cold.

  The Super-U was 500 yards from the campsite, so they decided to walk it, Holly and Katie both carrying canvas Bags-for-Life bought from Tesco back home. Again, there was no one about when they walked past the reception and bar.

  When they arrived, the large looping car park surrounding the supermarket was empty. They walked up to the doors and Ken was relieved when they slid open. The first thing that struck him was the smell. It was the brash and unfettered tang of strong cheeses fused with locally-caught fresh fish. The girls wrinkled their noses. Ken thought it was marvellous. You wouldn’t get a smell like that anywh
ere in Britain outside of a nursing home.

  Ken had anticipated the layout to be unusual but he wasn’t expecting the first aisle to be crammed with such an eclectic array of goods: Beach toys, men’s shorts, games, deodorants, gardening equipment, flip-flops, magazines and fruit juice. They wandered past the shelves towards the back of the store, following the stink from the fish counter.

  Holly and Katie crowded up against a display in the middle of the tiled floor at the end of the aisle. Upon it, made docile by a bed of crushed ice, was a pile of spider crabs jumbled like a cache of rusty medieval coshes. Holly poked a finger at the spiny haul and gasped when they shifted and flexed their legs in a stuporous response.

  “They’re alive!” Katie said, her eyes wide in surprise.

  Ken laughed and came over. He plucked one of the crabs from the pile and held it up so that its artfully articulated underbelly was visible. Its legs curled in on itself, and its claws parried in cantankerous slow motion.

  “That’s cruel,” Holly said, but her eyes were bright and she said it with a rapt expression on her face.

  Ken placed the crab onto its bed of ice. “Not really,” he said. “They’re all dopy this way when you boil them alive.”

  “Noooo!”

  “Oh, yes.” Ken pressed the heels of his hands together and clawed his fingers and thumbs and wriggled them in the girls’ faces. “Aghh, I’m cooking!” Ken cried, laughing. “I’m cooking!” and then stood wondering whether his pantomime had been a little misjudged. Holly paled; Katie shrieked; both girls turned and fled away up the next aisle, looking a bit sick.

  They lugged their bags to the doors and stopped so that the girls could look at the souvenirs and trinkets on a revolving rack by the magazine counter. It was hung with a variety of nameplates displaying French forenames and their meanings, presumably for children’s bedroom doors.