Urbane and Other Horror Tales

by Frazer Lee

  And so, Dave had taken to the solitary life. He cooked the same meals his mother had, and on the same days she had cooked them. He kept the door to her bedroom shut, save for its weekly clean along with the rest of the house. He watched the blossom in the trees come and go, and tutted at the heaps of dead leaves lining the street untidily during autumn.

  He went to work and returned home like an automaton.

  David had no smiles for the children of Acacia Drive especially when they laughed and shouted, “Cheer up mister! Might never happen,” to him as he made his way home.

  Sleep commenced at approximately ten thirty five PM, about five minutes after Dave put his head on the pillow. Sleep was sacred to him. “Always eight hours but never more than nine,” his mother had instructed him on the subject. In the quiet vacuum of Acacia Drive, David Jones was always guaranteed his quota of silent slumber.

  That was, until one Thursday in late summer.

  The day had, unsurprisingly, started off ordinarily enough. Dave had awoken at seven, switched off the alarm and looked through his window at the tree on the opposite side of the road, heavy with blossom. Feeling slightly irritated by the way in which the petals tended to loosen themselves and drift into his front yard, Dave had closed the curtains and distracted himself with his bath and breakfast routine. Another humdrum day at work later, and Dave was once again the fine-tuned robot of reliability he always was. Except on this particular day, Dave’s workload had pretty much doubled. This was due to the fact that a colleague in his division had taken sick. Much to Dave’s chagrin, he overheard some gossip about the absentee having been involved in some kind of office outing to the pub the night before. David’s mother would’ve had a thing or two to say about that.

  David himself picked up the extra workload without a word and struggled through it, even skipping lunch, in order to finish at five thirty as he always did. The result was that Dave almost nodded off during his train journey home. In fact, he would have missed his stop if it hadn’t been for the sharp braking technique of the train driver that afternoon.

  Yawning behind his hand, Dave walked up the path from the station and onto Acacia Drive. Raucous children pierced the silence, running by yelling and giggling as they chased a football. He gave them a wide berth and marched on homewards. Perhaps he would have fish fingers for his dinner. Something simple. Something that wouldn’t take too long. So he could get an early night. As Dave opened his gate and made his way to the front door he noticed, with some dismay, that the bright pink blossom from the tree over the road had well and truly invaded his front yard. Stacks of the petals had formed little drifts on the windowsills and against the brickwork. But he was simply too tired to deal with them now. He would have to get up extra early in the morning to clean them off.

  David had eaten, washed up, and was in his pajamas by eight thirty. He sat on the side of his bed scowling at the blossom tree in the dwindling summer twilight and set his alarm clock for six thirty. There - he’d have an extra half an hour to remove the unsightly petals from the sills and from the yard. Removing the blossom tree from his sight by closing the curtains, Dave settled down to sleep at exactly eight thirty six PM, assisted into slumber by the ghostly birdsong of Acacia Drive.

  At first, there was only a dull thudding in Dave’s mattress. But the thudding traveled. It got closer and louder, snaking its way through the mattress and up into his pillow. The thudding became noise. Loud, repetitive and aggressive. Dave became aware of the noise.

  His brain began to burn at the intrusion. The white heat of cacophony spread inside his skull and he was suddenly and rudely awoken.

  Confusion. Dave’s mind whirled as he realized it was still dark. Why was he awake when it was still dark? It was late summer. It was always light when he awoke during late summer. Panic. Could he have overslept? He never overslept. Mother wouldn’t allow it. But Mother wasn’t here anymore. She would be turning in her grave if he had been so careless. Blinking through the dead weight of his eyelids, David quickly swung around into a seated position on the side of the bed and located his alarm clock. Relief. It was just after midnight, so he hadn’t overslept at all. But his relief soon gave way to a numb, dry feeling. Indeed, if David Jones was a being capable of emotion, one might suspect he was actually angry. As the dry feeling spread, the sleep-addled civil servant struggled to locate its source. He traced it from the evaporated bile in his belly, up through his soundless throat and into his parched mouth. His mouth. That was it. He had never experienced such dryness in his mouth before. He tried to smack his lips together in order to conjure up some saliva, but to no avail. His tongue scraped against the backs of his teeth like sandpaper on glass.

  Then, the noise. In his confusion, the noise had been pushed from his mind. But now, as he gathered his wits and found his bearings, the loud thudding returned to him. Boom, boom. Thud, thud. What devilry was this? At gone midnight? Waking him from his slumber? The sound was making his window rattle. The sound was coming from outside.

  Standing up slowly, and with the faintest tremble, David slowly crept over to the curtains. The noise became louder and more defined as he made his approach. It was music. Not what David himself would refer to as music of course, but rather the ugly repetition of bass-heavy hip-hop. His mother would be spinning, not turning, in her grave if she could hear this, thought Dave. And at this time of night as well. He seized the curtain in one slightly shaking hand and pulled it back just enough to sneak a glance outside.

  There, beneath the infernal blossom tree, was a huge black car. The engine was running, and the headlamps burned a tunnel of light down Acacia Drive. An ultra-violet light unit illuminated the car from beneath, making it look like an alien spaceship had invaded this quiet suburban street as part of some vile plan to deprive David Jones of his rest. He glimpsed the blue and red lights of the car stereo system as they danced drunkenly across the dashboard within the vehicle. Pushing the curtain further across, Dave could make out two figures inside the car.

  The driver was a stocky male. The passenger seat was occupied by a diminutive female who threw back her head and laughed, exhaling cigarette smoke. David could not bear smoking.

  Closing the curtain, Dave sat back down on his bed wondering what to do next. Surely there had to be laws against this sort of thing? An intrusion such as this warranted a breach of the peace. And Dave didn’t pay his council tax in order for unruly outsiders to invade his peace and quiet.

  Suddenly, the engine stopped. The glow from the headlamps was snuffed out and replaced by the burnt orange glow of the street lamp above the blossom tree. The music was no more. Gone in mid-thud, and replaced by the delicious yawning void of night.

  Dave breathed heavy and slow through his nostrils. That was that then. Perhaps a taxi was simply dropping someone off. Although Dave had never noticed the small woman in the street before. Then again, he rarely noticed anyone at all. Especially women. He lay back in his bed, yawned and closed his eyes.

  THUD THUD THUD. BOOM BOOM BOOM. The music started up from where it had left off; increasing in volume until it was twice as loud as it had been before. Dave sat up automatically, clutching his duvet in something approaching genuine annoyance. This could not be possible. This could not happen here.

  This simply could not happen to David Jones of Acacia Drive.

  He found himself standing at the curtain again almost as soon as the vile music invaded his ears. Boldly, he opened the curtains fully and peered out into the night. As he did so, Dave noticed several curtains in the houses opposite twitching shut. Others had been disturbed too, it appeared. He focused his attention on the car. Aided by the streetlight and the pernicious glow of the car stereo, Dave could see the occupants of the car more clearly than before. A large, muscular black man had his arm around the small, rather pale lady. They were laughing and sharing a cigarette. Disgusting. Dave looked on in horror as the man tossed the cigarette out of the open driver’s window.

  The glowing cig
arette end bounced across the pavement away from the car in a shower of yellow sparks. He averted his gaze as the man returned his attention to the woman. They embraced and kissed lustily, as the woman stroked the man’s back with her hands. Quiet fury seeped into David’s face as the couple shifted closer in their seats, jackets falling away, and the man’s hands crept stealthily across the woman’s thighs. As she arched her back in wanton approval, the woman used her free hand to turn the music up even more. Another curtain twitched. A trapped nerve began to throb and jiggle in Dave’s left eyelid. He couldn’t sleep through this late night floorshow. Something had to be done about it.

  The air was somewhat chilly for an August night, thought Dave as he stepped outside. Pausing on his front doorstep in his pajamas and dressing gown, he cast a disapproving glance at the blossom petals on the windowsills. The deep orange glow of the street lamps made the pink petals look like clots of blood - a deathly rusted shade of brown.

  David’s attention returned to the monotonous barrage of hip-hop emanating from across the road. They simply had to turn it off. Mother wouldn’t have liked it. He would ask them politely to turn the music off and go elsewhere. There was nothing else for it.

  As he approached the car, David noticed with disgust that the woman’s skirt had risen up around her waist. Her legs were clamped firmly around the driver’s left leg. They did not hear him approach, blissful in the ignorance of their desire, and in the relentless pounding of the music.

  Making his way round to the other side of the car, Dave tapped on the metal frame of the driver’s door. The cold metal hurt his knuckles, but still the noisemakers did not hear him. He tapped again, louder this time. Still nothing.

  A peculiar feeling welled up inside David Jones. A feeling similar to one he experienced upon realizing that he would have to miss work due to that one virulent illness which had robbed him of a day at work a year ago. His mouth was so dry. David reached out slowly and before he knew what he was doing, pressed the car horn. The blast that emanated from the horn was loud enough to drown out even the music, and as he looked around quickly Dave saw more curtains twitching along Acacia Drive. He snatched his hand away from the horn and saw that he had at last got the attention of the amorous troublemakers. They looked quite shocked as David leaned his head closer to car and said, “Turn the music off. Mother is trying to sleep.” Triumphantly, he stepped back to watch the driver turn the music off.

  But the driver did nothing of the sort. His facial expression turned to one of pure vitriol and he flung the car door open, knocking Dave over onto the pavement. Dave scrambled backwards, grazing his hands on the paving stones, as the driver disentangled himself from the woman’s legs and began to step out of the car. Dave panicked and half-stood, half-stumbled across the road towards his front door. Fumbling for his door keys, he threw a desperate glance over his shoulder to see the driver moving around the front of the car. Pushing himself to reach the door, Dave crashed through the front gate and onto the porch.

  Without looking back, he managed to ram the key into the lock and leaped inside the hallway. Turning to slam the door, he saw with terror that the driver was just few feet away.

  Swearing and cursing added to the night’s concert, as Dave succeeded in slamming the door in the driver’s face. Trembling, for real now, Dave struggled to double lock the door and affix the safety chain. He retreated slowly up the stairs, as the driver thumped the door and roared threats of violence at the civil servant who had interrupted his lovemaking. A few lights came on in nearby houses, and more curtains twitched open and shut.

  Eventually, the driver moved off after shouting one last threat through Dave’s letterbox. David shook his head and walked up the remainder of the stairs to his bedroom. What would his mother say if she heard language like that?

  As he neared the bedroom, he became painfully aware of the stinging sensation in his hands. Shards of grit and God knows what else had embedded themselves in his grazed hands. He made a detour to the bathroom and scrubbed his hands with hot water and coal tar soap. The clinical scent of the soap soothed him. It always did. It made everything clean and tidy. Just the way he liked it. Just the way mother liked it.

  The deafening music still throbbed from within the metallic love seat of the automobile as Dave returned to his bedroom. He walked over to the window and looked on in dismay at the noisy couple, who had now moved into the back seat minus most of their clothing. This sight was just too much for him to bear.

  The quiet of his street, of his very life, had become sullied by these loutish lovers and would never be the same. Numbed by the shame of his defeat and by his ever-rising anger, David threw a defiant glare at the lovers. As he did so, it was as if the woman had sensed his gaze. Looking over her lover’s powerful shoulder, she stared straight at David. Stinging bile surged into his throat as she licked her lips hungrily and winked at him mockingly. He stumbled backwards, thinking he was about to vomit. Doubled up, all he could think of was how cross mother had been with him when he been sick on the carpet as a boy. He found his resolve immediately. And, as he had taught himself to do so as a child after the vomiting incident, he choked back his bile.

  Mother would have been proud of him. Mother would have said everything was going to be all right.

  He’d done well not to throw up on her nice clean carpet after the nasty man had knocked him over. After the nasty woman had made fun of him.

  David Jones fell back onto his bed and, writhing into his sheets fitfully, promptly fell asleep. The ticking clock struck one AM in time with the beat of the music. The music that still rattled his windowpane.

  It was his own loud snore that awoke Dave this time. His legs felt like jelly. His head was soft and full of sleep. He felt weightless somehow, as if filled with the breath of his own slumber.

  He looked at the clock. Impossibly, it read two AM. David had never been awake this late. It was forbidden. And dangerous. He might sleep through his alarm, might be late for work for the first time ever. Then he’d be just like the rest of them. Like the noisy pair outside.

  Slack. Careless. That just wouldn’t do. How dare they disturb him. How dare they make so much racket at night. Nighttime was sacred on Acacia Drive. Nothing happened at night. Surely they knew that.

  He arose and walked to the window once more. Pulling back the curtain, he could see the woman atop the driver, thrusting against him and convulsing like a stuck pig in time with the moronic music. Hideous. They were fully naked in their rancid car, on his street. On his street.

  He looked from side to side, pressing his forehead against the cool glass to get a better view of the other houses.

  Dim lights shone from behind parted curtains. Dozens of grey faces peered at the erotic scene being played out in the car from half-lit rooms.

  Then he saw the figure. A man. He thought it must be a man from the walk. A man was walking up the street towards the car. The figure wore a long black coat and a wide-brimmed hat. Dave saw the faintest trace of condensation escape from the man’s mouth, partly concealed by the brim of the hat.

  As the figure made his way up the street, the curtains of Acacia Drive twitched as if in acknowledgment of his passing. Dave’s forehead moved slowly, his eyes trained on the approaching man. The lovers rocked back and forth, unaware that the man in the long black coat would no doubt be able to see every detail of what they were up to.

  The woman arched her back and the driver kicked out a leg, knocking his foot against the dashboard.

  To Dave’s despair the music suddenly grew louder. The idiot driver must have knocked the volume control with his toe.

  By now, the man in the hat and coat had reached the car. Dave hadn’t noticed him standing there in front of the bonnet in the midst of the increased noise. And as the man crept around to the passenger side of the car, Dave noticed something else. The man was carrying something. A large pole-like something with a weight at the bottom.

  Dave narrowed his eyes and peered
through the cobwebs of his tiredness.

  It was an axe.

  The man was at the passenger door now. Dave pressed his face to the glass as he saw the man gently open the car door.

  Everything happened so quickly.

  The man grabbed the woman by the hair and dragged her from the car. She flailed naked on the tarmac of the road, so shocked that she couldn’t scream. The man in the hat swung the axe down into her skull with a crack that rang out over the music. The driver pressed his body back into the seat, waving a hand pathetically in front of him as if to protect himself. He was so vulnerable in his is nakedness. So shocked at the huge pool of blood creeping across the tarmac.