The Best New Horror 6

by Stephen Jones

  Why should he assume that he was following the street along which he’d turned in his dream? Apart from the numbers on the doors and over the communal entrances, there was little to distinguish one street from another. He was driving past the low nine hundreds; the block on the far side of a junction scattered with broken glass should contain the flat whose number he had dreamed of. He avoided the glass and cruised past the block, and then the car shuddered to a standstill beside a rusty Vauxhall as his foot faltered on the accelerator.

  It was by no means the only faded red door he’d seen since leaving the dual carriageway, nor the only door on which a number was askew; but the sight of the 9 dangling upside-down as if the final 3 had been subtracted from it seemed disconcertingly familiar. He switched off the ignition and got clumsily out of the car. Glancing around to reassure himself that nobody was near, he ran across the road and up the stairs.

  Of course the concrete staircase looked familiar, since he had already driven past a host of them. He peered around the corner at the top and hurried along the balcony as fast as he could creep. There were seven doors between the stairway and the door with the inverted 9. One glance through the gap between the curtains next to the door would quieten his imagination, he promised himself. He ducked his head towards the gap, trying to fabricate an explanation in case anyone saw him. Then he froze, his fingers digging into the rotten wood of the window-sill. On the carpet a few feet from the window was a telephone, and he’d recognised the number on the dial.

  Even stronger than the shock which caused him to gasp aloud was the guilt which overwhelmed him at the sight of the room, the ragged pinkish curtains, the double bed against the wall beyond the unmatched chairs. He felt responsible for all this, and unable to retreat until he’d done his best to change it. He groped for his wallet and counted out fifty pounds, which he stuffed through the slot in the front door. Having kept half the cash made him feel unforgivably mean. He snatched the rest of the notes from his wallet and shoved them into the flat, where they flopped on the hall floor.

  The sound, and the prospect of confronting anyone from the flat, sent Highton fleeing like a thief. How could he explain to Valerie what he’d just done when he could hardly believe that he’d done it? He swung the car screeching towards the dual carriageway and drove back to the business district, where he withdrew another hundred pounds from the dispenser in the wall outside the bank.

  As he let himself into the house Valerie was coming downstairs laden with the manuals she employed to teach her students word processing. “Hello, stranger,” she said.

  Highton’s stomach flinched. “How do you mean?”

  “Just that you’re late. Though now you mention it, you do look a bit strange.”

  “I’m home now,” Highton said, feeling even more accused. “I had something to tidy up.”

  “You can’t fool me, you’ve been visiting your mistress,” Valerie said smiling. “I’ve had to eat so I can run. Everything for you three is by the microwave.”

  He was relieved not to have to face her while his thoughts were in turmoil, but his relief felt like disloyalty. He listened as the dreamy hum of her car receded, fading sooner than he was expecting. When the oven peeped he called the children downstairs. Lucy came at once, her extravagant earrings jangling; Daniel had to be shouted for three times, and would have worn his personal stereo at the dinner-table if Highton hadn’t frowned at him. “Let’s hear about your day instead,” Highton appealed to both of them.

  Daniel had scored a goal in a football match against a rival school and been praised for his science project, Lucy’s work on local history had been singled out to be shown to the headmistress. “Now you have to tell us about your day,” Lucy said.

  “Just the usual, trying to balance the books.” Feeling trapped, Highton went on quickly: “So are you both happy?”

  Daniel looked puzzled, almost resentful. “Expect so,” he said and shrugged.

  “Of course we are. You and mummy see that we are.”

  Highton smiled at her and wondered if she was being sensitive to his emotional needs rather than wholly honest; perhaps it had been an unreasonably direct question to ask people of their ages. Once the dinner things were in the dishwasher Daniel lay on his bed with his headphones on while Lucy finished the homework her class had been set in advance to give them more time at the school disco, and Highton poured himself a large Scotch and put a compact disc of Mozart piano sonatas on the player.

  The stream of music and the buzzing in his skull only unsettled him. Had he really donated a hundred pounds to someone he didn’t know, with as little thought as he might have dropped a coin beside any of the beggars who were becoming an everyday sight in the downtown streets? In retrospect the gesture seemed so flamboyant as to be offensive. At least the money had been in old notes, and couldn’t be traced to him; the idea that whoever lived in the flat might come to the house in search of an explanation terrified him. Worse still was the thought of their asking Valerie or the children. His growing confusion exhausted him, and he would have gone to bed if that hadn’t seemed like trying to avoid Valerie when she came home. He refilled his glass and switched on the television, which was more likely than the music to keep him awake, but he found all the programmes unscomfortable: newscasts and documentaries about poverty and famine and a millionaire who had never paid tax, a film in which a policeman had to hunt down a jewel thief who had been his best friend when they were children in the slums. He turned off the set and waited for the financial report on the radio, in case the broadcast contained information he should know. The programme wasn’t over when he fell asleep in the chair.

  The next he knew, Valerie was shaking him. “Wake up, I want to talk to you. Why won’t you wake up?”

  He found himself clinging to the arms of the chair as if by staying immobile he could hold on to his slumber. One of his fingers poked through a tear in the fabric, into the spongy stuffing of the chair. The sensation was so disagreeable that it jerked his eyes open. Valerie was stooping to him, looking in danger of losing her balance and falling back on the bed. “Don’t keep going away from me,” she begged.

  Highton grabbed her wrists to steady her. “What’s wrong now? Is it the children?”

  “Lucy’s in her room. I’ve spoken to her. Leave her alone, Alan, or she’ll be running off again. She only wanted to give Daniel what she could because she can’t bear to see him suffer.”

  Highton blinked at Valerie as she tried to toss back her greying hair. The light from the overhead bulb glared from the walls of the room, except where the shadow of the lampshade lay on them like grime, yet he felt as if they or he weren’t fully present. “Where is he?”

  “Gone.”

  “Where?”

  “Oh, where do you think?” Her resignation gave way momentarily to anger, and Highton felt deeply ashamed of having left her to fend for herself. “There was some money in the hall,” she said as though she was trying to clarify her thoughts. “A hundred pounds that must have been put through our door by mistake. Whoever did that can’t be up to any good, and they’ll turn nasty if they don’t get it back, but Daniel wouldn’t listen. He was away with it before we could stop him.”

  Highton felt that he ought to know where the money had come from, as if he had foreseen it in a dream. The impression was too vague to grasp, and in any case he hadn’t time to do so. “How long ago?”

  “Ten minutes, maybe quarter of an hour. We didn’t see which way he went,” Valerie said like an accusation.

  “You wouldn’t be safe out there this late.” Highton squeezed her shoulders through the faded grey checked dress and stood up. “You look after Lucy. I’ll find him.”

  He wouldn’t return until he had, he vowed to himself. He closed the front door and picked his way along the unlit balcony to the head of the stairs. Through the windy aperture in the rear wall he could see across the yard. Some of the windows that were lit shouldn’t be; he glimpsed the glow of an uptur
ned flashlight beyond one set of makeshift shutters, the flicker of candlelight through another. Daniel and youngsters like him would be in one or more of the abandoned rooms while their suppliers hid at home behind reinforced doors and windows. The knowledge enraged Highton, who launched himself at the stairs, too hastily. His foot missed the step it was reaching for, and he fell headlong.

  He was bracing himself to hit concrete, but his impact with the carpet was a greater shock. His fists and his knees wobbled, and the crouch he had instinctively adopted almost collapsed. He stared bewildered at the chair from which he’d toppled forwards, the radio whose voice had grown blurred and distant, the glass of Scotch which seemed exactly half empty, half full. The room and its contents made him feel dislocated, unable to think. He stumbled to the telephone and dialled the number which had lingered in his head.

  The number was disconnected. Its monotonous wail reached deep into him. He was pressing the receiver against his ear, and feeling as if he couldn’t let go until he had conceived a response to the wail for help, when Valerie came into the room. “Who are you calling so late?”

  He hadn’t realised she was home. He clutched at the earpiece to muffle the wail and fumbled the receiver onto its rest. “Nobody. Nobody’s there,” he gabbled. “I mean, just the speaking clock.”

  “Don’t look so disconcerted or you’ll have me thinking you’re being unfaithful.” She gazed at him for several protracted seconds, then she winked. “Only teasing. I know you’ve just woken up,” she said, and went upstairs.

  Her affectionateness made him feel guiltier. He switched off the mumbling radio and sat trying to think, until he realised how long he had been sitting and followed Valerie. He was hoping they could make love – at least then he might feel closer to her without having to talk – but she was asleep.

  He lay beside her and stared up at the dark. His desire for sleep felt like a compulsion to dream. He didn’t know which disturbed him more, his fear of finding out what happened next or his need to do so. Why couldn’t he accept that he had simply acted on impulse this afternoon – that he’d donated his cash to some of O’Mara’s tenants to compensate for his involvement with the man? Given how cramped the flats were, the presence of a bed as well as a few worn-out chairs in the front room didn’t require much imagining, and was he really certain that he had dreamed anything more specific about the place before he had looked in the window today? Had he genuinely recognised the phone number? The memory of seeing it through the window was vivid as a photograph – so vivid that it blotted out any memory of his having seen it before. Trying to recall the dream felt like slipping back into it, and he kept recoiling from the promise of sleep.

  When at last he dozed off, the alarm seemed to waken him so immediately that he could hardly believe he was awake. As long as sleep had caught up with him, why couldn’t the dream have reached a conclusion? He dozed again, and when he was roused by Daniel and Lucy calling their goodbyes he thought he was dreaming. He sprawled on the floor in his haste to be out of bed and under a reviving shower.

  Whatever temperature he set it to, the downpour felt more distant than he would have liked. The breakfast Valerie put in front of him was almost too hot to taste, but he mustn’t linger or he would be late for work. He kissed her cheek and ran to the car, feeling obscurely treacherous. Because of his unsettled night he drove as slowly as the traffic would allow. At the junction from which the concrete flats were visible he felt in danger of forgetting which way to go, and had to restrain himself from driving townwards while the lights were against him.

  Julie brought him a mug of coffee and the news that a client had cancelled that morning’s appointment because one of her boutiques had been looted overnight. Highton set about examining a hairdresser’s accounts, but he didn’t feel safe with them: in his present state he might overlook something. He dictated letters instead, trusting the secretaries to spot mistakes. Since he had no appointments, should he take the afternoon off and catch up on his sleep? Once Rebecca had collected the tape of his dictation he cleared a space among the files on the desk and propped his hand against his mouth.

  The phone jolted him awake. He wondered how they had been able to afford to have it reconnected until he saw that he was in the office. “It’s Mrs Highton,” Julie’s voice told him.

  “Yes, I want to talk to her.”

  A moment later Valerie’s breathing seemed to nestle against his cheek. “Next time it will be,” he said.

  “What’s that, Alan?”

  “I was talking to someone here.” Despite his confusion he could lie about that, and say “What can I do for you?”

  “Do I have to make an appointment? I was going to ask if you wanted to meet for lunch.”

  He couldn’t say yes when he hadn’t had time to think. “I’m already booked,” he lied. “I’m awfully sorry.”

  “So you should be,” Valerie retorted, and laughed. “I just thought when you went out you looked as if you could do with easing up on yourself.”

  “I will when I can.”

  “Do, for all our sakes. See you this evening. Don’t be late.”

  “Why should I be?” Highton demanded, hoping that didn’t sound guilty. He dropped the receiver onto its cradle and pinched his forehead viciously to quicken his thoughts. He knew why he’d greeted Valerie as he had: because on wakening he’d found himself remembering the last words she had addressed to him. “Why did it have to be money? Why couldn’t it have been something that might have meant something to him?”

  She meant the cash Daniel had taken from the flat. Highton must have dreamed her words at the moment of wakening, but he couldn’t recall doing so, which made them seem unassailably real. He wouldn’t be able to function until he had proved to himself that they weren’t. He told the secretaries that he wouldn’t be more than an hour, and hurried to his car.

  By the time he reached the junction he had a plan. He needed only to be shown that the tenants of the flat weren’t the victims of his dream. If sounding his horn didn’t bring someone to the window he would go up and knock. He could always say he had mistaken the address, and surely nobody would take him for a thief.

  The pavements were scattered with chunks of rubble. Icy winds ambushed him at intersections and through gaps in the architecture, carrying tin cans and discarded polystyrene into the path of the Jaguar, dislodging an empty liquor bottle from a balcony. As he came in sight of the block where he’d posted the notes, a wind raised washing on the line outside the flat as if the clothes were welcoming him. Closest to the edge of the balcony was a dress as purple as a flower.

  He clung to the wheel and sent the car racing onwards. Not only the purple dress was familiar; beside it was a grey checked dress, more faded by another wash. He trod on the brake at last, having realised that he was speeding through the duplicated streets with no idea of where he was. Before he found a route to the dual carriageway his head felt brimming with panic. He succeeded in returning to the car park without mishap, though he couldn’t recall driving there. He strode almost blindly into his office, shouting “Leave me alone for a while.” But when Julie tapped on the glass to inform him that the rest of the office was going home he was no closer to understanding what had happened or where it might lead.

  He depressed the accelerator hard when the lights at the junction with the dual carriageway turned amber, and was dismayed to find that he wasn’t so much anxious to be home as even more nervous of being sidetracked. He steered the car into the driveway and was unlocking the garage when Valerie opened the French windows and stepped onto the back patio. “You may as well leave your car out, Alan.”

  “Why, are we going somewhere?”

  “You haven’t forgotten. You’re teasing.” Her amused expression disguised a plea. “You’re getting worse, Alan. I’ve been saying for months that you need to take it easier.”

  When he didn’t respond she marched into the house, and he could only follow her. The sight of Lucy still in her
school uniform released his thoughts. “I was joking, you know,” he called after Valerie. “It’s time to meet Lucy’s teachers again.”

  “Don’t bother if it’s that much trouble,” Lucy said.

  “Of course it isn’t,” Highton replied automatically, hearing Valerie tell Daniel “Make sure you’re home by nine.”

  As the family sat down to dinner Highton said to Lucy “You know I like seeing your schoolwork.” He saw that she guessed this was a preamble, and he hurried on: “But your mother’s right, I’ve been having to push myself lately. Better too much work than none, eh? Would you mind if I stayed home tonight and had a rest? I can catch up on your achievements next time.”

  She suppressed her disappointment so swiftly he might almost have believed he hadn’t glimpsed it. “I don’t mind,” she said, and Valerie refrained from saying whatever she had been about to say to him, rationing herself to a frown.

  She and Lucy drove away before Daniel made for the youth club. Now that Highton had created a chance for himself – the only time he could foresee when he was certain to be alone in the house – he felt both anxious to begin and nervous of betraying his eagerness to Daniel. Hadn’t he time to conduct an investigation which should already have occurred to him? He leafed through the phone directory to the listing for Highton, but none of the numbers alongside the column of names was the one he’d seen in the flat. Nor could Directory Enquiries help him; a woman with a persistent dry cough explained patiently that she couldn’t trace the number, and seemed to suspect he’d made it up.

  Whatever he’d been hoping the search would prove, it had left him even more confused. As soon as Daniel had left the house, Highton ran Valerie’s Toyota out of the garage and unlocked the boot, then he carried Daniel’s computer out to the car. The boy wouldn’t be without it for long, he told himself, and the insurance money might pay for an upgraded model. He felt unexpectedly mean for removing only the computer, and so he rushed through the house, collecting items which he felt ashamed to be able to afford: the telephone extension in his and Valerie’s bedroom, the portable television in the guest room. Dumping them in the boot, he ran back to the house, trying to decide which window to smash.