Prey

by Graham Masterton

  I went back to Dennis Pickering’s car and had another look all around it and under the seats. If he had driven here this morning, parked his car in front of the house and walked straight to the front door, how could he possibly have lost his keys? I put my hand on the bonnet of the car to steady myself as I leaned over to look underneath it—and although the metal was hot from standing out in the sun, there was no smell of hot engine.

  I opened the bonnet and touched the cylinder head. It was completely cold. This car hadn’t moved this morning—it had been standing here ever since Dennis Pickering had brought it here last night.

  Just then, Liz came to the front door. “Telephone,” she called.

  I took the call in the living-room. Outside, I could see Danny still dodging and weaving as he kicked the beach-ball around.

  “It’s Detective-sergeant Miller,” said Detective-sergeant Miller. “I’ve just had a call from Mrs Pickering, the vicar’s good lady.”

  “Don’t tell me, he’s turned up.”

  “That’s right, how did you know?”

  “He’s been here, too. At least somebody that looked like him.”

  There was short pause. “I’m not quite sure that I catch your drift.”

  “Don’t worry about it. The consensus of opinion around here seems to be that I’m going mad.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “No, I don’t really think that you do. I saw Dennis Pickering a few moments ago but I’m not convinced that it was Dennis Pickering.”

  “Why shouldn’t it have been Dennis Pickering?”

  “Because Dennis Pickering’s missing.”

  “No, he’s not. His wife’s just called to say that he’s home.”

  “Is she sure it’s him?”

  “Well, if his own wife can’t identify him, I don’t know who can.”

  “I’m worried about her,” I said.

  “Why’s that, then?” asked D-s Miller.

  “If he isn’t Dennis Pickering—which I don’t think he is—then he’s something else.”

  Another short pause. A machine-gun clearing of the throat. “I suppose that does have a certain twisted logic, yes. But if he’s something else, what is he?”

  “I think he could be Brown Jenkin.”

  “You think he could be Brown Jenkin,” D-s Miller repeated, in a flat voice. “You mean he’s actually a giant rat, dressed up in a dog-collar?”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t believe you. I’d just like to know how Mrs Pickering could possibly mistake a rat for her husband. There are plenty of women who might mistake rats for their husbands, but not Mrs Pickering.”

  “You saw his car this morning, didn’t you, outside Fortyfoot House?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “So he must have come here last night?”

  “That would be the inference, yes. Unless somebody else had taken his car without his knowledge and parked it there.”

  “He didn’t say anything about that. I mean, he didn’t say ‘oh, look, my car’s here, I’ve been looking for it everywhere.’ But he did say that he hadn’t come last night.”

  “Why do you think he said that?”

  “To make me believe that I’m suffering from delusions, that’s why. But I’m not suffering from delusions because his engine was cold. That car hadn’t moved since last night. So he must have come. What’s more, he didn’t even have the keys with him. He pretended he’d lost them. But how can you totally lose a set of keys across six yards of gravel?”

  “This is all jolly interesting, Mr Williams, but it’s not exactly cast-iron proof that the Reverend Pickering is a giant rat. Besides—why should he make you want to believe that you’re suffering from delusions?”

  “It’s not him who’s doing it.”

  “Then who is?”

  I suddenly realized how absurd and hysterical I sounded. I very much wanted D-s Miller to support and believe me. After all, now that Dennis Pickering was gone, he was the only authority-figure who gave any credence to the reality of Brown Jenkin. But I could hear by the tone of his voice that I was stretching his credulity miles too far. He was obviously beginning to think that I was suffering from delusions—and the trouble was, I was almost beginning to believe it myself.

  Everything that had happened to me since I had first arrived at Fortyfoot House seemed no more real than a horror film that I might have watched on video.

  D-s Miller said, “All right. Now that the Reverend Pickering has returned home—or, at least, now something that looks like the Reverend Pickering has returned home—there’s no need for me to take up your floorboards any more. So we’ll just call it a day, shall we?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t really know if I was sorry or not. I put down the receiver and let out a long breath and stared at the crayon drawing that Danny had pinned up on the wall. Sweet Emmeline, with red ragged meat-worms in her hair, and the man in the chimney-hat. I felt as if I were very close to going mad.

  *

  I went through to the kitchen. Liz was peeling onions, and her eyes were wet with tears. I stood in the doorway and said, “What are you doing?”

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist, and smeared her mascara. “Making a chicken casserole. Why?”

  “There’s no point, not unless you’re going to eat it all yourself. We’re leaving. At least Danny and I are leaving.”

  “David…” she said. “The worst thing that you can do is run away. If you run away, you’ll never be able to face up to what it is that’s causing you so much stress. You need to rest; and to talk it out. You need to think it through.”

  “Listen to the great amateur psychiatrist.”

  She put down her knife. “David, please… you’ve turned Fortyfoot House into a kind of allegory of your relationship with Janie. Can’t you understand that? And when you saw Harry Martin die, and then you found Doris Kemble’s body, you took that as evidence that all of your nightmares about Fortyfoot House were true.

  “David—I’ve been watching you. You’ve been acting so peculiar, and saying such peculiar things. I thought you’d get over it, but it just seems to be getting worse. If you leave here now, because of what’s going on in your head, you’ll only be making those nightmares all the more believable.”

  “Hm,” I said, walking around the kitchen table. “Good theory. Nice try. But supposing I go and take a look in the attic, what then?”

  She shrugged. “How should I know? You’re the one who keeps going up in the attic.”

  I looked at my watch. “It should be nearly dawn now, in 1886.”

  “David,” Liz appealed, “have you listened to what you’re saying? It sounds so loony. Next thing you’ll be telling me that you’re Napoleon.”

  “I need proof, that’s all,” I told her. God, I hoped that I wasn’t beginning to tremble. Danny’s ball went flup-slap-flup against the kitchen wall, and a seagull let out a long succession of babylike cries as it sloped against the warm morning air.

  “What about a cup of coffee?” Liz asked me, worriedly. Would a soulless entity from the dawn of time ask me if I wanted a cup of coffee? Perhaps it would. Perhaps it was capable of all kinds of subtle and detailed deceptions. It had made a mistake with Dennis Pickering’s car, for instance. It might have used Liz’s impression of Dennis Pickering to create an illusion of Dennis Pickering himself; but a girl like Liz (who didn’t drive) wouldn’t have thought about creating an illusion of heat for the engine of his car.

  And what about his keys? She had forgotten about his keys, hadn’t she? Yet—if Dennis Pickering’s reappearance really had been an illusion—surely she would have thought of giving him keys. Perhaps illusions couldn’t drive. Would a soulless entity from the dawn of time know how to drive?

  I looked up at her. She looked so pretty and innocent and concerned that I felt madder than ever. I literally felt as if my brain was all smashed up, like a jar of marmalade that somebody had dropped
onto a tiled floor.

  “No thanks, I don’t want a c-c-c—” I stammered.

  She laid her hand on my shoulder and kissed my forehead. “David, you look awful. Why don’t you lie down for a while?”

  I took a deep breath. Steady, David. Steady. You’re not mad at all. You know you’re not. So where’s Charity? And why can’t Danny even remember her?

  “I want to take a look in the attic first,” I said.

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “I don’t know. It might be a very bad idea. It might be extremely dangerous. But I don’t suppose you can remember why. I don’t suppose you can remember hauling Charity out of that trapdoor to stop Brown Jenkin tearing her to pieces?”

  Liz said nothing, but squeezed my shoulder comfortingly, and stayed very close, so that I could feel her breath on my face.

  “It’s—ah—something I have to do, that’s all,” I told her. I stood up, and pushed my chair up to the table.

  “Do you want me to come up with you?” she asked.

  “No, no—just—carry on cooking. Who knows, perhaps there’ll be nothing there, and then we can stay for supper.”

  18

  Illusion

  I opened the attic door. Again, that stale-breath wind. I looked back at Liz who was standing halfway up the stairs, and she nodded and said, “Go on. Go ahead. You have to find out for certain.”

  I switched on the torch and angled it up the stairs. It was dark up there—totally dark—no hint of dawn. But in 1886 it was November, rather than July, and it was very early in the morning—so it was quite possible that Fortyfoot House was still immersed in darkness.

  “David,” said Liz. “Please—shout if you want me.”

  “Did I ever say I didn’t want you?” I retorted.

  “I just want you to be well,” she said.

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I climbed up the stairs to the attic, and looked around. The torch illuminated the same old junk—the rocking-horse, the school trunk, the furniture draped in age-softened sheets. I stood very still by the banister-rail and listened for a long time, but there was no scratching, no scuffling, only the hollow-bottle sound of the wind blowing, and the keening of hungry seagulls.

  —little dwarfs creep out—I thought—and little dwarfs creep in—

  It’s your imagination, you see. You were brought up on dwarfs and long red-legged scissormen and Harriet and the matches and Augustus who wouldn’t eat his soup. O take the nasty soup away! I won’t have any soup today!

  I remembered my mother sitting by the coal-fire in my bedroom, on wintry nights in Sussex, reading aloud. I could hear the words as clearly as if she were saying them now. I could see my green-patterned quilt, my green-striped pajamas. I could see my plastic model aeroplanes on the mantelpiece, blobby with glue and badly-made.

  I could see Kezia Mason, bundled in blood-stained sheets. I could see young Mr Billings, crossing the lawn like the scissor-man, swift and angry; and Brown Jenkin running behind him like a shadow full of claws and teeth.

  I found that I was gripping the banister-rail as if I were trying to wrench it loose, and that my heart was pounding wildly against my ribs. Stress, I thought, stress. Too much adrenaline. I’m going mad. I can’t tell the difference between real and imaginary any more. This is what it’s like when you go over the edge, when you go totally crazy. This is full-blown, out of control, wide-screen, Technicolor paranoia.

  I took one step forward, then another, flicking the torch-beam left, then right, then up, then down. I reached the skylight and looked up. No sky, no stars. It was all closed off, just as it had been before, when Harry Martin had stuck his head up there, God help him. I walked over to the place where the trap-door had been, and lifted the carpet. No trap-door. I ran my hands over the bare boards and there was no doubt about it. Young Mr Billings’ so-called “Sumerian doorway” to 1886 just didn’t exist. I had imagined it all—everything. I had mixed up cautionary tales from my childhood and local gossip about Fortyfoot House and the National Geographic’s article about Sumerian ziggurats, and I had created an imaginary world of mysterious strangers and witches and time-travel.

  In a way, it was almost a relief to discover that none of it was true. I stood alone in that darkened attic with tears in my eyes, feeling as if I had been liberated from some terrible responsibility. God—if Liz hadn’t intervened, if Liz hadn’t shown me how weird I had become—I could have ended up in a mental home, nodding and twitching and telling my kindly nurses that Sothoth was out to get me. I could even remember where the name “Sothoth” had come from—a short horror story that I had read at school, by H.P. Lovecraft—“the noxious Yog-Sothoth, that spawn of the blackness of primal time, that tentacled amorphous monster whose mask was as a congeries or iridescent globes—Yog-Sothoth, who froths as a primal slime in nuclear chaos forever beyond the nethermost outposts of space and time!”

  I crossed from one side of the attic to the other, still crying. It was almost like being born all over again—or, if not being born all over again, then at least like being forgiven everything that I had ever thought, and everything that I had ever done. I stamped on the attic floor where the trapdoor had been—or, rather, where it hadn’t been, and then I went back down the stairs, and switched off my torch, and closed the attic door behind me.

  Liz was still halfway up the stairs. “Well?” she said, with a smile.

  “Well, I don’t know what you’re smiling for. I’ve just discovered that I’m mad.”

  “Oh, David, for goodness’ sake! You’re not mad! You’ve been struggling against stress—trying to keep your life together. Listen—why don’t we take the bus and go along to St Lawrence, to the Buddle Inn, and have some lunch. I love the Buddle Inn.”

  Danny was waiting for me, too, at the foot of the stairs. He took hold of my hand in a very grown-up, solicitous way, and led me out onto the patio.

  “Are you all right, daddy?”

  “Of course, yes. Of course I’m all right.”

  He stood beside me with his hands clasped behind his back like the Prince of Wales, looking out over the lawns and the overgrown oaks and the ruined chapel as if he owned them all, bless him. “Do you think we’ll ever have a house like this?” he asked me.

  “I don’t know. We might, if things turn out all right.”

  “I wish mummy was here.”

  “Yes, I expect you do.”

  “Don’t you wish that mummy was here?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I think that’s all finished now. Mummy seems to be happier with Raymond. Perhaps I should try to be happier with Liz.”

  “I like Liz,” said Danny, and I was pleased with that.

  “What has two legs and flies?” he asked me.

  “I don’t know. What has two legs and flies?”

  “A pair of trousers.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. Not because Danny’s joke was particularly funny; but out of relief, and release. I felt as if the burdens of the whole world had been lifted from my shoulders.

  “Liz is funny,” he said.

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Liz made my picture dance.”

  I looked down at him. I felt that cold, familiar drenching of dread. “What do you mean, Liz made your picture dance?”

  “Sweet Emmeline, and the man in the chimney hat. She made them dance.”

  “How did she do that?”

  Danny shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  I was about to ask him what he meant by “making his picture dance” when Liz came out onto the patio, her hair brushed up, wearing crucially tight stretch-denim jeans and a red T-shirt that made it pointedly obvious that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

  “Are you ready?” she asked, coming up and kissing my unbruised cheek.

  I don’t know what kind of a facial expression I made; but it must have been complicated and concerned; because Liz shoved her arm into mine, and kissed me again, and said, “For goodnes
s’ sake, David. We’re only going for lunch. Hurry up—we’ll miss the bus.”

  *

  We ate lunch outside, in the sunshine—fresh-fried haddock and chips, pints of Ruddles beer, and I watched Danny dipping his chips in his tomato-ketchup and felt very English and normal, almost like a family again.

  After lunch we returned to Bonchurch on the bus, while the sky grew black with impending thunder, and lightning flickered like snakes’ tongues over Godshill and Whiteley Bank. By the time we clambered down from the bus at Bonchurch, there was a strong smell of ozone in the air, and raindrops the size of ten-pence pieces were spotting the roadway.

  Liz and I walked arm in arm, while Danny skipped on ahead. Her breast bounced heavy and warm against my hand. I was still finding it almost impossible to believe that my excursions back to 1886 were nothing but my own imagination. But the extraordinary part about it was that it was less complicated for me to believe that it hadn’t happened. It was easier to think that it had all been the stuff of nightmares: pushing Dennis Pickering out to sea, talking to young Mr Billings under the shadow of the trees, having my face scratched and bruised by Kezia Mason, and my crotch clawed by that sniveling, louse-infested Brown Jenkin.

  How could it all be true? How could the Old Ones be true? How could Liz be impregnated with semen and saliva and blood, and give birth to three different creatures of no human shape? I could feel her next to me—slim, bosomy, soft, girlish, and smelling like home-baked biscuits and musky Body Shop perfume. She was right. It was all madness.

  A devastating crack of thunder split the sky from one side to the other, and lit the rooftops and chimneys of Fortyfoot House like a Hammer horror film. The rain suddenly pelted down, hissing and clattering through the laurel-bushes, and we ran as fast as we could to the front porch, where Danny was already waiting for us, skipping and dancing because he wanted to go to the toilet.

  “Hurry up, daddy!”

  I unlocked the door and we went inside. Inside the house it was very gloomy and damp; and it smelled of neglect. I hung up my wet jacket, and then I went through to the kitchen and opened the fridge.