After all, perhaps Stevenson had only half of the matter. It is true there are places which stir the mind to think that a story must be told about them. But there are also, I believe, places which have their story stored already, and want to tell this to us, through whatever powers they can; through our legends and lore, through our rumours, and our rites. By its whispering fields and its murmuring waters, by the wailing of its winds and the groaning of its stones, by what it chants in darkness and the songs it sings in light, each place must reach out to us, to tell us, tell us what it holds.
ROBERT SHEARMAN
Granny’s Grinning
ROBERT SHEARMAN IS AN award-winning writer for stage, television and radio. He was resident playwright at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter, and regular writer for Alan Ayckbourn at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. Easy Laughter won the Sunday Times Playwriting Award, Fool to Yourself the Sophie Winter Memorial Trust Award, and Binary Dreamers the Guinness Award for Ingenuity in association with the Royal National Theatre.
For BBC Radio he is a regular contributor to the afternoon play slot, produced by Martin Jarvis, and his series The Chain Gang has won two Sony Awards. However, he is probably best known for his work on TV’s Doctor Who, bringing the Daleks back to the screen in the BAFTA-winning first series of the revival in an episode nominated for a Hugo Award.
Shearman’s first collection of short fiction, Tiny Deaths, was published in 2007 and won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection. It was also shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and nominated for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize. One of the stories from the book was selected by the National Library Board of Singapore as part of the annual Read! Singapore campaign.
His second collection, Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, won both the Shirley Jackson Award and the Edge Hill Short Story Reader’s Prize, and is currently nominated for the British Fantasy Award.
A collection of his stage plays, Caustic Comedies, was recently published, and his third short-story collection, Everyone’s Just So So Special, is forthcoming.
“I love Christmas,” says Shearman. “Always have done, and always a bit too passionately. The intensity with which I loved Christmas was delightful when I was eight years old, slightly unusual by the time I was eighteen, and increasingly disturbing thereafter.
“Into my thirties I was still wanting my family to celebrate the big day with all the same rituals of yesteryear. Giving out presents in a certain order. Listening to the same gramophone record of carols that we had when I was a kid. (Knock your heart out, Andy Williams.) Pulling crackers at the very same break of courses in the very same turkey meal served at the very same time of day – all of us sitting around the table, wearing colourful paper hats as I read out the jokes and mottoes, and threatened everyone with Trivial Pursuit.
“I was the last one to grow up. It suddenly dawned on me one year, looking into the faces of my parents, and of my sister, that they were all older, and fatter, and less and less festive. And that they were trying so hard to keep me happy each Christmas, pretending they wanted all those presents I’d bought, all those sausage rolls and Quality Street chocs. That what I was trying to do, each December, was somehow reach back into the past and resurrect a time that was dead, that was long dead.
“I still love Christmas. But now I recognize – as I still make them perform party games, as I still make them open their gifts and smile and say thank you – that they’re zombies now. All of them, zombies. I’ll never get my childhood back again, not really, or the innocence of that family get-together. So I’ll make do with the dead, and pretend.
“This is a story all about that.”
SARAH DIDN’T WANT want the zombie, and she didn’t know anyone else who did. Apart from Graham, of course, but he was only four, he wanted everything; his Christmas list to Santa had run to so many sheets of paper that Daddy had said that Santa would need to take out a second mortgage on his igloo to get that lot, and everyone had laughed, even though Graham didn’t know what an igloo was, and Sarah was pretty sure that Santa didn’t live in an igloo anyway. Sarah had tried to point out to her little brother why the zombies were rubbish. “Look,” she said, showing him the picture in the catalogue, “there’s nothing to a zombie. They’re just the same as us. Except the skin is a bit greener, maybe. And the eyes have whitened a bit.” But Graham said that zombies were cool because zombies ate people when they were hungry, and when Sarah scoffed Graham burst into tears like always, and Mummy told Sarah to leave Graham alone, he was allowed to like zombies if he wanted to. Sarah thought that if it was all about eating people, she’d rather have a vampire: they sucked your blood for a start, which was so much neater somehow than just chomping down on someone’s flesh – and Sharon Weekes said that she’d tried out a friend’s vampire, and it was great, it wasn’t just the obvious stuff like the teeth growing, but your lips swelled up, they got redder and richer and plump, and if you closed your eyes and rubbed them together it felt just the same as if a boy were kissing you. As if Sharon Weekes would know: Sharon Weekes was covered in spots, and no boy had ever kissed her, if you even so much as touched Sharon her face would explode – but you know, whatever, the rubbing lips thing still sounded great. Sarah hadn’t written down her Christmas list like Graham had done, she’d simply told Santa that she’d like the vampire, please. Just the vampire, not the mummy, or the werewolf, or the demon. And definitely not the zombie.
Even before Granny had decided to stay, Sarah knew that this Christmas was going to be different. Mummy and Daddy said that if she and Graham wanted such expensive toys, then they’d have to put up with just one present this year. Once upon a time they’d have had tons of presents, and the carpet beneath the Christmas tree would have been strewn with brightly wrapped parcels of different shapes and sizes; it’d have taken hours to open the lot. But that was before Daddy left his job because he wanted to “go it alone”, before the credit crunch, before those late-night arguments in the kitchen that Sarah wasn’t supposed to hear. Graham groused a little about only getting one present, but Daddy said something about a second mortgage, and this time he didn’t mention igloos, and this time nobody laughed. Usually the kitchen arguments were about money, but one night they were about Granny, and Sarah actually bothered to listen. “I thought she was staying with Sonia!” said Mummy. Sonia was Daddy’s sister, and she had a sad smile, and ever since Uncle Jim had left her for someone less ugly she had lived alone. “She says she’s fallen out with Sonia,” said Daddy, “she’s coming to spend Christmas with us instead.” “Oh, for Christ’s sake, for Christ’s sake,” said Mummy, and there was a banging of drawers. “Come on,” said Daddy, “she’s my Mummy, what was I supposed to say?” And then he added, “It might even work in our favour,” and Mummy had said it better bloody well should, and then Sarah couldn’t hear any more, perhaps because they’d shut the kitchen door, perhaps because Mummy was crying again.
Most Christmases they’d spend on their own, just Sarah with Mummy and Daddy and Graham. And on Boxing Day they’d get into the car and drive down the motorway to see Granny and Granddad. Granny looked a little like Daddy, but older and slightly more feminine. And Granddad smelled of cigarettes even though he’d given up before Sarah was born. Granny and Granddad would give out presents, and Sarah and Graham would say thank you no matter what they got. And they’d have another Christmas meal, just like the day before, except this time the turkey would be drier, and there’d be brussels sprouts rather than sausages. There wouldn’t be a Boxing Day like that again. Partly because on the way home last year Mummy had said she could never spend another Christmas like that, and it had taken all of Daddy’s best efforts to calm her down in the Little Chef -but mostly, Sarah supposed, because Granddad was dead. That was bound to make a difference. They’d all been to the funeral, Sarah hadn’t even missed school because it was during the summer holidays, and Graham had made a nuisance of himself during the service asking if Granddad w
as a ghost now and going to come back from the grave. And during the whole thing Granny had sat there on the pew, all by herself, she didn’t want anyone sitting next to her, not even Aunt Sonia, and Aunt Sonia was her favourite. And she’d cried, tears were streaming down her face, and Sarah had never seen Granny like that before, her face was always set fast like granite, and now with all the tears it had become soft and fat and pulpy and just a little frightening.
Four days before Christmas Daddy brought home a tree. “One of Santa’s elves coming through!” he laughed, as he lugged it into the sitting room. It was enormous, and Graham and Sarah loved it, its upper branches scraped against the ceiling: they couldn’t have put the fairy on the top like usual, she’d have broken her spine. Graham and Sarah began to cover it with balls and tinsel and electric lights, and Mummy said, “How much did that cost? I thought the point was to be a bit more economical this year,” and Daddy said he knew what he was doing, he knew how to play the situation. They were going to give Granny the best Christmas she’d ever had! And he asked everyone to listen carefully, and then told them that this was a very important Christmas, it was the first Granny would have without Granddad. And she was likely to be a bit sad, and maybe a bit grumpy, but they’d all have to make allowances. It was to be her Christmas this year, whatever she wanted, it was all about making Granny happy, Granny would get the biggest slice of turkey, Granny got to choose which James Bond film to watch in the afternoon, the one on BBC1 or the one on ITV. Could he count on Graham and Sarah for that? Could he count on them to play along? And they both said yes, and Daddy was so pleased, they were so good he’d put their presents under the tree right away. He fetched two parcels, the same size, the same shape, flat boxes, one wrapped in blue paper and the other in pink. “Now, no peeking until the big day!” he laughed, but Graham couldn’t help it, he kept turning his present over and over, and shaking it, and wondering what was inside, was it a demon, was it a zombie? And Sarah had to get on with decorating the tree all by herself, but that was all right, Graham hadn’t been much use, she did a better job with him out of the way.
And that was just the start of the work! The next few days were frantic! Mummy insisted that Granny come into a house as spotless and tidy as could be, that this time she wouldn’t be able to find a thing wrong with it. And she made Sarah and Graham clean even the rooms that Granny wouldn’t be seeing in the first place! It was all for Granny, that’s what they were told, all for Granny – and if Graham sulked about that (and he did a little), Daddy said that one day someone close to him would die, and then he could have a special Christmas where everyone would run around after him, and Graham cheered up at that. On Christmas Eve Daddy said he was very proud of his children, and that he had a treat for them both. Early the next morning he’d be picking Granny up from her home in the country – it was a four-and-a-half hour journey there and back, and that they’d been so good they were allowed to come along for the trip! Graham got very excited, and shouted a lot. And Mummy said that it was okay to take Graham, but she needed Sarah at home, there was still work for Sarah to do. And Sarah wasn’t stupid, the idea of a long drive to Granny’s didn’t sound much like fun to her, but it had been offered as a treat, and it hurt her to be denied a treat. Daddy glared at Mummy, and Mummy glared right back, and for a thrilling moment Sarah thought they might have an argument – but they only ever did that in the kitchen, they still believed the kids didn’t know – and then Daddy relaxed, and then laughed, and ruffled Graham’s hair, and said it’d be a treat for the boys then, just the boys, and laughed once more. So that was all right.
First thing Christmas morning, still hours before sunrise, Daddy and Graham set off to fetch Granny. Graham was so sleepy he forgot to be excited. “Goodbye then!” said Daddy cheerily; “Goodbye,” said Mummy, and then suddenly pulled him into a tight hug. “It’ll all be all right,” said Daddy. “Of course it will,” said Mummy, “off you go!” She waved them off, and then turned to Sarah, who was waving along beside her. Mummy said, “We’ve only got a few hours to make everything perfect,” and Sarah nodded, and went to the cupboard for the vacuum cleaner. “No, no,” said Mummy, “to make you perfect. My perfect little girl.” And Mummy took Sarah by the hand, and smiled at her kindly, and led her to her own bedroom. “We’re going to make you such a pretty girl,” said Mummy, “they’ll all see how pretty you can be. You’ll like that, won’t you? You can wear your nice dress. You’d like your new dress. Won’t you?” Sarah didn’t like her new dress, it was hard to romp about playing a vampire in it, it was hard to play at anything in it, but Mummy was insistent. “And we’ll give you some nice jewellery,” she said. “This is a necklace of mine. It’s pretty. It’s gold. Do you like it? My Mummy gave it to me. Just as I’m now giving it to you. Do you remember my Mummy? Do you remember the Other Granny?” Sarah didn’t, but said that she did, and Mummy smiled. “She had some earrings too, shall we try you out with those? Shall we see what that’s like?” And the earrings were much heavier than the plain studs Sarah was used to, they stretched her lobes out like chewing gum, they seemed to Sarah to stretch out her entire face. “Isn’t that pretty?” said Mummy, and when Sarah said they hurt a bit, Mummy said she’d get used to it. Then Mummy took Sarah by the chin, and gave her a dab of lipstick – and Sarah never wore make-up, not like the girls who sat on the back row of the school bus, not even like Sharon Weekes, Mummy had always said it made them look cheap. Sarah reminded her of this, and Mummy didn’t reply, and so Sarah then asked if this was all for Granny, and Mummy said, “Yes, it’s all for Granny,” and then corrected herself, “it’s for all of them, let’s remind them what a pretty girl you are, what a pretty woman you could grow up to be. Always remember that you could have been a pretty woman.” And then she wanted to give Sarah some nail varnish, nothing too much, nothing too red, just something clear and sparkling. But Sarah had had enough, she looked in the mirror and she didn’t recognize the person looking back at her, she looked so much older, and greasy and plastic, she looked just like Mummy. And tears were in her eyes, and she looked behind her reflection at Mummy’s reflection, and there were tears in Mummy’s eyes too – and Mummy said she was sorry, and took off the earrings, and wiped away the lipstick with a tissue. “I’m sorry,” she said again, and said that Sarah needn’t dress up if she didn’t want to, it was her Christmas too, not just Granny’s. And Sarah felt bad, and although she didn’t much like the necklace she asked if she could keep it on, she lied and said it made her look pretty – and Mummy beamed a smile so wide, and gave her a hug, and said of course she could wear the necklace, anything for her darling, anything she wanted.
The first thing Granny said was, “I haven’t brought you any presents, so don’t expect any.” “Come on in,” said Daddy, laughing, “and make yourself at home!”, and Granny sniffed as if she found that prospect particularly unappealing. “Hello, Mrs Forbes,” said Mummy. “Hello, Granny,” said Sarah, and she felt the most extraordinary urge to curtsey. Graham trailed behind, unusually quiet, obviously quelled by a greater force than his own. “Can I get you some tea, Mrs Forbes?” said Mummy. “We’ve got you all sorts, Earl Grey, Lapsang Souchong, Ceylon . . .” “I’d like some tea, not an interrogation,” said Granny. She went into the lounge, and when she sat down in Daddy’s armchair she sent all the scatter cushions tumbling, she didn’t notice how carefully they’d been arranged and plumped. “Do you like the tree, Mummy?” Daddy asked, and Granny studied it briefly, and said it was too big, and she hoped he’d bought it on discount. Daddy started to say something about how the tree was just to keep the children happy, as if it were really their fault, but then Mummy arrived with the tea; Granny took her cup, sipped at it, and winced. “Would you like your presents, Mummy? We’ve got you presents.” And at the mention of presents, Graham perked up: “Presents!” he said, “presents!” “Not your presents yet, old chap,” laughed Daddy amiably, “Granny first, remember?” And Granny sighed and said she had no interest in presen
ts, she could see nothing to celebrate – but she didn’t want to spoil anyone else’s fun, obviously, and so if they had presents to give her now would be as good a time to put up with them as any. Daddy had bought a few gifts, and labelled a couple from Sarah and Graham. It turned out that they’d bought Granny some perfume, “Your favourite, isn’t it?” asked Daddy, “and with their very own pocket money too!” “What use have I got with perfume now that Arthur’s dead?” said Granny curtly. And tilted her face forwards so that Sarah and Graham could kiss it, by way of a thank you.
Graham was delighted with his werewolf suit. “Werewolf!” he shouted, and waving the box above his head tore around the sitting room in excitement. “And if you settle down, old chap,” laughed Daddy, “you can try it on for size!” They took the cellophane off the box, removed the lid, and took out the instructions for use. The recommended age was ten and above, but as Daddy said, it was just a recommendation, and besides, there were plenty of adults there to supervise. There was a furry werewolf mask, furry werewolf slippers, and an entire furry werewolf body suit. Granny looked disapproving. “In my day, little boys didn’t want to be werewolves,” she said. “They wanted to be soldiers and train drivers.” Graham put the mask over his face, and almost immediately they could all see how the fur seemed to grow in response – not only outwards, what would be the fun in that? – but inwards too, each tiny hair follicle burying itself deep within Graham’s face, so you could really believe that all this fur had naturally come out of a little boy. With a crack the jaw elongated too, into something like a snout – it wasn’t a full wolf’s snout, of course not, this was only a toy, and you could see that the red raw gums inside that slavering mouth were a bit too rubbery to be real, but it was still effective enough for Granny to be impressed. “Goodness,” she said. But that was nothing. When Daddy fastened the buckle around the suit, straight away Graham’s entire body contorted in a manner that could only be described as feral. The spine snapped and popped as Graham grew bigger, and then it twisted and curved over, as if in protest that a creature on four legs should be supporting itself on two – the now-warped spine bulged angrily under the fur. Graham gave a yelp. “Doesn’t that hurt?” said Mummy, and Daddy said no, these toys were all the rage, all the kids loved them. Graham tried out his new body. He threw himself around the room, snarling in almost pantomime fashion; he got so carried away whipping his tail about he nearly knocked over the coffee table – and it didn’t matter, everyone was laughing at the fun, even Sarah, even Granny. “He’s a proper little beast, isn’t he!” Granny said. “And you see, it’s also educational,” Daddy leapt in, “because Graham will learn so much more about animals this way, I bet this sends him straight to the library.” Mummy said, “I wonder if he’ll howl at the moon!” and Daddy said, “Well, of course he’ll howl at the moon,” and Granny said, “All wolves howl at the moon, even I know that,” and Mummy looked crestfallen. “Silly Mummy,” growled Graham.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Page 38