by Philip Kerr
“Ecclesiastes,” said his mother. “Chapter three, verse twenty.” She tutted loudly. “You know that, Stephen.”
As soon as the fitting was ended, Stephen sat down in one of the little wooden cars and quickly pulled off his new sandals and his socks to take another look at his own feet, which until now had seemed so familiar to him. He counted five toes on each foot and wiggled them all for good measure. He squeezed his heels and his Achilles tendons. He even nipped the skin on the upper part of his foot—hard enough to draw blood—to make sure his feet were real.
“Stephen, what on earth are you doing?” demanded his mother. “No one wants to see your bare feet. It’s indecent. Put your socks and shoes back on immediately.”
“I was just checking what my feet really look like,” he said feebly.
“I know what they look like,” said Evelyn. “But I can’t tell you what they smell like. Unless it’s Gorgonzola cheese.”
Stephen sneered at his sister and started to put on his school socks again.
“An X-ray never lies, son,” said the salesman. “It sees right through us, to what we really are.” And he grinned a leering, sinister smile at Stephen as if he knew exactly what the boy had seen. “Sometimes I think it’s fortunate that we wear shoes so that we might hide from the world what our feet really look like.”
“Really?”
The salesman nodded. “Really. You can take my word for it. What you’ve seen is what’s there.”
The one o’clock gun had just been fired from the battlements of Edinburgh Castle when the coach carrying Stephen and Evelyn and the rest of the children from the Free Church Sunday School set off for the annual Sunday school picnic at Carberry Tower, in Musselburgh. Beset by uneasy suspicions as to who or what he was, Stephen sat by himself, moving grumpily away to another seat when any of his friends tried to sit beside him.
“What’s wrong with him?” asked his best friend, Alec.
“New shoes,” said Evelyn, and laughed as if that was really an explanation.
Stephen didn’t answer his sister. He just sat there, prey to the most terrible imaginings. Every time he moved his feet or caught sight of them, the memory of the X-ray image in the Pedoscope inspired him with all manner of terrors. Soon the coach was driving through the Midlothian countryside and the sight of a herd of cloven-footed deer grazing peacefully on a green hillside convinced him that he was the center of obscure but infernal machinations. He closed his eyes, desperate to be rid of the one idea that now haunted him. That he was the devil himself. And where better for the devil to grow up than in the home of devoutly religious parents? Who would suspect such a thing was even possible?
A few minutes afterwards, worn out by sickening apprehension, Stephen fell asleep with his head on the coach window. He seemed to find the cold glass pillow soothing to his fevered speculations about who and what he was. And when he awoke to discover that the coach had reached Carberry Tower, he was calm again.
The tower was a castle keep built in 1547 and steeped in Scottish history. It faced the spot where Mary, Queen of Scots, had surrendered in 1567 so that her husband, the Earl of Bothwell—who was strongly suspected of practicing the black arts—might escape from the hands of his mortal enemies.
But upon his arrival at Carberry Tower, Stephen felt compelled to do something he had never done before. Instead of running off to play with his friends in the grounds, and much to his own surprise, Stephen decided to visit the historic house. Then again, he had a great deal to think about.
“Don’t break anything,” said the guide at the door to the mansion house. “And watch out for the ghost.”
“What ghost?”
“The Earl of Bothwell’s ghost,” said the guide.
Stephen shook his head. “Believe me,” he said. “There are plenty of things far more frightening than ghosts.”
The guide frowned, for this was a curious answer for a boy to have given.
Stephen wandered through the old mansion house in a daze, ignoring the fine antique furniture and the many stained glass windows that distinguished the interior. He was feeling considerably put out by what had happened, although “cast out” might have been a more accurate description for his true state of mind. Cast unto the earth.
Eventually finding himself in the dimly lit chapel, Stephen knelt down to pray for guidance as to what to do. At home he usually prayed every night before he went to bed, as was his parents’ habit, and, kneeling beside his bed, he had often felt the presence of God. But on this occasion it was not God’s presence he felt, and, looking around, he saw a man sitting several rows behind him.
“I’m sorry, son,” said the man politely. “I didn’t mean to disturb your prayers.”
Stephen sighed and shook his head. “That’s all right. I don’t expect he’s listening anyway.”
“You mean God’s busy, is that it?” The man grinned pleasantly.
Stephen nodded.
“I wouldn’t know,” said the man. “I was never much on my knees myself. On the other hand, maybe you just need a better way of getting God’s attention. Shall I tell you what my father used to do? When he wanted God to answer his prayers?”
“Is that really possible?”
“Oh yes,” said the man. “I think so. My own father used to say that unanswered prayers were simply the result of absence from fellowship with the Lord and his Word. And that all you had to do if you wished to regain his fellowship was to allow his Word to speak to us. Which would be the answer to our prayers. So what he used to do was get the Bible to answer the prayer on behalf of God, so to speak. He would say, ‘Speak to me, Lord’; then he would close the family Bible, open it quickly, stab the first page with his finger and read the first text that caught his eye; and that would be the voice of the Lord speaking to him. And surely he would know then the answer to his prayer. After all, you imagine how busy God must be with all the prayers coming his way. It’s a wonder he gets a chance to answer any of them.”
The man sighed and leaned forward in the chapel pew. He was a very ordinary, typically Scots-looking man, with brown hair, a thin, wispy mustache, a florid, puffy face and shifty-looking eyes. He was wearing a yellow tracksuit top zipped right up to below his stubbly chin. His voice was much smoother than he looked.
“Yes, that’s what I’d do. In fact”—he nodded at the Bible that lay on the chapel lectern—“if I were you, I’d go ahead and use that one there.”
“Do you think they’d mind?” asked Stephen.
“Of course not,” said the man. “And certainly not if you explain what you are doing.” He shrugged. “Not that anyone will ask. It’s always very quiet here on a Saturday afternoon. Especially in summer. On a day like this, most people have better things to do than speak to God. But I’ll keep a lookout for you, if you like.”
“Do you come here a lot, then?” asked Stephen.
“I’m pretty much here all the time,” said the man, and stood by the door of the chapel. “Go on. Open it.”
Stephen approached the big Bible.
“Speak to me, Lord,” he said, and threw it open with a bang, stabbing his finger onto the first open page.
“That’s it,” the man said excitedly. “Now you read what’s under that finger of yours, Stephen, and that’ll be your answer, right enough.”
Stephen nodded and read aloud the following text from the First Epistle of Peter, chapter three, verse twelve: “ ‘For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, And His ears are open to their prayers; But the face of the LORD is against those who do evil.’ ”
Stephen remained silent for almost a minute after that.
“Not the answer you were looking for, I dare say,” observed the man.
“No,” admitted Stephen. “Not exactly.”
“In my experience of religion,” said the man, “we seldom get the answer we most want to hear. Which is the story of my own life. But, as answers go, yours seemed quite clear enough, I should say.”
> “You think so?”
“Without question,” said the man. “In truth, I imagine you already know what you have to do. Indeed, I suspect you’ve known it all along. And you just needed to have it underlined by what’s in the Lord’s book, eh?”
Stephen nodded. “I think you’re right.”
“I thought so. That’s always the way with these things. It seems mysterious and then it’s not.”
“Thanks,” said Stephen. “That’s exactly how it seems.”
The man shook his head. “Don’t mention it. I’m glad to have been of help.”
Stephen closed the Bible carefully.
“Now thank him,” said the man. “Always thank him when you think he’s spoken to you, Stephen. Even if you don’t much like the message. Close your eyes and thank him in prayer.”
Stephen shut his eyes and gave thanks in silence and when he opened them again the man had gone.
Now, as he made his way back through the old house, he began to discover strange things about himself that he was sure had not been there before. Curiously, his hair and fingernails smelled strongly of sulfur, as if he had been striking lots of matches. Then for a long time he stood in front of a large gilt mirror and, examining the space between his eyebrows, he formed the conclusion that it had become smaller, almost as if each eyebrow was reaching out to the other; and it was now he perceived how he was able to raise one eyebrow independently of the other, which he thought was very effective at conveying a certain intellectual disdain. The pupil in his amber brown eye he could dilate at will until it was a fathomless black hole. Moreover, there was now a somewhat wolfish aspect to the white teeth in his smile. And what with the smile and the raised eyebrow, he was able to make a scary, sinister face that might easily have frightened horses.
Satisfied with this clearer understanding of himself and now quite reconciled to exactly who and what he was, Stephen walked out of the mansion house and went to find his young friends at the Sunday school picnic. The weather was hot and they all enjoyed a perfect June afternoon: they played several games and caught tadpoles in the pond, and this was followed by a wonderful picnic tea where Stephen ate not just his own food, but several other children’s as well, after which he dozed through prayers in the evening sun for half an hour. And later on, Stephen threw his new sandals into the lake and, in defiance of his father, he entered every race and, grinning fiercely, won every one of the prizes that there were to be won.
The third kid’s name to be drawn from the box was twelve-year-old Lavender Leapy. She was a pretty little girl with golden pigtails and a floral dress and a very sweet manner. She was good at schoolwork and played the flute and always kept her bedroom tidy and had a puppy called Sugar. The scariest thing Lavender had ever done was to ride a bicycle down a hill without holding on to the handlebars for all of five seconds.
Lavender was at home in Northwest Hitchcock when her next-door neighbor, Mr. Kaplan, called around to congratulate little Lavender on being one of the five lucky children who was going to hear the scariest story ever written. Mr. Kaplan told Mrs. Leapy that he had heard the announcement on a local radio news bulletin.
Lavender was in the shower when she heard the exciting news from Mrs. Leapy. Immediately she became hysterical with fear at the very idea of hearing the scary story. She started to scream, and she kept on screaming for a full hour before her mother called an ambulance and had her taken out of the shower, to a hospital, where she continued to scream even after being sedated.
Mrs. Leapy was puzzled. She knew Lavender would never have entered herself in the contest at the Haunted House of Books. Lavender hated ghost stories. She always slept with the light on. She never ever went into the basement, even in the daytime, just in case something was hiding down there. Lavender was a very nervous girl and very easily scared.
But Mrs. Leapy wasn’t stupid. And she soon guessed the truth, which was that the person responsible for entering Lavender’s name in the scary story contest had been Lavender’s nasty older brother, Biff, who disliked his little sister intensely.
Some brothers are just nasty. Biff couldn’t have been a nastier older brother if he’d had a little brother called Joseph who owned a coat of many colors. And Mrs. Leapy had long and trying experience of Biff’s behavior toward his sister. He was always amusing himself with new ways of annoying poor Lavender.
On one occasion Biff caught a harmless corn snake and placed it in Lavender’s schoolbag. Another time Biff cut off one of her pigtails while Lavender was asleep. But perhaps the worst thing Biff had done to his sister—at least it had been the worst thing Biff had done until entering his sister’s name for the scary story contest—had been to lay a trail of honey between a mound of fire ants in the garden and the sun lounger where his sister was lying quietly reading a schoolbook. The ant bites took weeks to heal completely.
The record for the loudest-ever scream is held by a woman from Kent, England, who hit 129 decibels in October 2000. The record for the longest and loudest scream is now held by Lavender Leapy. After Mr. Kaplan told her the news about the scary story contest, Lavender screamed without interruption for an astonishing eight hours. The story was on the front page of the Hitchcock Hard News.
The headline read: HITCHCOCK BLONDE GOES PSYCHO IN THE SHOWER.
When Lavender’s father, Norman, returned from work and heard what had happened, he ordered his son into the car, drove for twenty miles into the middle of nowhere and told the boy to get out and walk home. Then he telephoned the Haunted House of Books and explained to Mr. Rapscallion that his daughter would not be taking part in the contest.
Mr. Rapscallion said he understood and agreed with Mr. Leapy’s decision. He said he was sorry that such a thing could have happened and expressed the hope that Lavender would stop screaming soon.
And then he prepared to draw another name from the box.
Meanwhile, several more newspapermen turned up at the Leapy home in Northwest Hitchcock to get another angle on the story of why Lavender had chickened out of the contest.
Mr. Leapy, who ran a thrift shop, had never had any dealings with the world’s press before and, foolishly perhaps, told them about the punishment he had inflicted on Biff. As soon as this was reported on local TV, the Hitchcock Children’s Welfare officer, Miss Demeenor, showed up at the house with the state police and had Mr. Leapy arrested and put in jail for being cruel to his son.
The newspaper headline read: HITCHCOCK BLONDE’S PSYCHO DAD, NORMAN.
No one ever said it was easy being a parent.
Meanwhile, Mr. Rapscallion drew another name from the box. And this time the trouble was that he couldn’t read the handwriting on the sales receipt. He was about to throw this latest name away when one of the newspapermen who were in the shop said that to do so might be illegal. And poor Mr. Rapscallion was obliged to consult a lawyer, Mr. Stoker, who then suggested he consult a handwriting expert in order to read the third child’s name. So he was particularly irritated when, several hours and several hundred dollars in legal and graphologist fees later, it was revealed that the name on this sales receipt was that of Mickey Mouse, Disneyland, California.
“Someone’s idea of a joke,” said Mr. Rapscallion. Muttering crossly, he bit his lip and drew yet another sales receipt from the box and this time was relieved to announce that he had what looked like a genuine name and address.
“And the third child to hear the scariest story in the world will be V. Capone.” He shook his head. “V. Capone. Is that a boy or a girl? You tell me. Even when I actually see the kids in front of me, I find it hard to tell one from the other.”
While the identity and whereabouts of this third winning child were investigated by the press, Mr. Rapscallion was informed that Wilson Dirtbag and Hugh Bicep were now in training for the forthcoming contest and had already consulted hypnotherapists in order to conquer their fear of almost anything.
“Well, that’s just great,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “It’s always gratifyin
g to realize that, as always, our fellow citizens are approaching this humble little contest in the true spirit of American fair play.”
But the world’s press weren’t listening. Most of them were running excitedly out of the shop.
“What’s all the commotion now?” Mr. Rapscallion asked Billy.
Billy, who had been eavesdropping on the conversation of two of the journalists, explained:
“V. Capone is Vito Capone,” he said. “It seems that Vito is the fourteen-year-old son of the infamous Hitchcock gangster Don Cesare Capone, who is himself a relation of the infamous Al Capone. One of the reporters said Cesare Capone is the toughest man in Hitchcock. That’s his stretch limo pulling up outside the shop now.”
Mr. Rapscallion, Billy, Elizabeth Wollstonecraft-Godwin and Mercedes McBatty followed the world’s press onto the sidewalk outside. There, parked right in front of the Haunted House of Books, was an enormous bulletproof black stretch limo. And from it was emerging a small, dark-haired man in a shiny gray suit and a large hat. The man was accompanied by a smaller, identically dressed version of himself. The two of them were surrounded by burly-looking men with sunglasses who looked like bodyguards.
“No pictures,” snarled one of the bodyguards, and, grabbing a photographer’s camera, he hurled it onto the ground angrily.
Cesare Capone waited for the press to fall silent and then spoke quietly:
“Let me say right away that my son Vito is pleased and honored to be taking part in this contest of manly courage. And I have high hopes for him. I’ve brought up all my sons to be law-abiding citizens, to be men of honor, but, above all, to fear nothing. Nothing. I’ve heard this man Rexford Rapscallion is a serious man, to be treated with respect. And I flatter myself that I understand what his purpose is here. I suspect he thinks as I do: that the children of today are greedy and they have no manners. They speak when they should listen. They have no learning. And they have no respect. I suspect this Rapscallion guy thinks that if the children of today have no character of their own, then perhaps they should be shown how to get it. At first I did not approve of my youngest son, Vito, taking part in such a contest as this. But I have a sentimental weakness for my children. Consequently I have decided to allow him to participate. So that he can prove his courage to me. And to the American public. That’s what you want, isn’t it, Vito?”