Downs started a slow walk toward the RTA terminal several blocks away. The bus would be coming soon. He heard voices behind him, muffled by the walls of the lounge. Downs stepped back into the shadows.
The two bouncers were dragging the fat man out of the doorway with much difficulty. The fat man’s face was very red, and he looked like he was about to explode. As the front door bounced twice against the frame before shutting, Downs heard “Rosanna” playing again.
“All I want to do when I wake up in the morning ...”
The fat man struggled violently and Downs thought that he might have been handcuffed, as he could not see the fat man’s hands. His feet kicked at the gravel helplessly. Swirls of white dust hung heavily in the air.
One of the bouncers lost his balance slightly and the fat man moved away from him toward the roof. The other bouncer hit the fat man squarely in the right ear, drawing blood, and the fat man fell forward against the hood of a red Buick. His hands were handcuffed.
Both bouncers kicked the fat man repeatedly, in the back, in the neck, everywhere. Falling to the lot, the man’s body was kicked toward the fence surrounding the quarry.
The fat man rolled over and over, his blue windbreaker slapping against his exposed, bloodied face, his eyes shut in pain and terror, his mouth saying wordlessly over and over I’m a cop I’m a cop I’m a cop
and then his body hit the chain-link fence
(every time one of the Cubs hits one over the fence, it’s a Tru-Link fence ... for beauty, privacy, security)
his whole body jiggling like a jello mold as it stopped amid the beer cans and weeds at the fence’s base. One bouncer kicked him in the crotch. The other kicked him in the teeth. The blood was black and splattered the Miller High Life cans. Downs thought of their new ad slogan—Miller: Purity You Can See. A mad thought.
Though it was in the 50’s, with none of the humidity summer would bring, Downs was very warm indeed. His underarms were soaked and a thin line of sweat ran down his spine to his buttocks. That winter, at the AKA on Broadway, Downs had spilled his Seagram’s down the back of a Mexican girl’s dress and she had been super-pissed. Downs figured that his drink had ended up right where his sweat was now.
Downs looked across the street and saw a jovial Rusty Jones shaking hands with Mr. Goodwrench. He knew all along what the men were going to do, and the sudden realization shocked him.
The bouncers had the fat deputy up above their heads now, nearly to the top of the barbed wire fence. Their flexed muscles resembled tree roots. The fat man’s shirt was pulled up around his neck. His right nipple was hanging off. He was whimpering. Then—heave, now—he was half over the fence.
The lights on Front Street showed everything. The barbed wire pierced the fat man’s skin in half a dozen places. The blood on his chest was like paint squeezed from tubes.
Another push and he was over. Incredibly, the man’s belt buckle caught on the fence and the deputy hung suspended on the opposite side of the fence, several hundred feet above the ground. He seemed to be a warped version of a guy on a weight inverter in the Chicago Health & Racquet Club commercials.
It took three hard kicks from the bouncers to shake him off. Looking at the deputy’s lips in these last seconds, you’d think he was praying.
He hit something on the way down. It sounded like a tree branch. Then a muffled crack as he hit bottom. The sound echoed like it had been a basketball bouncing in a vacant lot. The two bouncers simply turned and went back inside the bar, each allowing themselves one quick look at the result of their handiwork. They did not congratulate themselves.
When the lounge door was opened, Downs heard “West End Girls” playing and he remembered exactly where he was. Three sailors walked down Front Street, oblivious to anything that had just occurred.
He had to look. He had to.
Downs felt like a ghoul. One foot forward, then the next. If the bouncers saw him, he’d say he was urinating. What would they care? He had to look.
He jumped as he kicked a beer can errantly. Touching the fence slowly, as if it might suddenly be electrified, Downs strained to see bottom. He saw only shadows.
After long moments, Downs moved away. The blood on the fence left dark, wet grids on Downs face and hands, but he didn’t know this.
He walked to Front Street, and kept walking, past the Club Aphrodite, past the Feline Inn, the Union 76, the Feelie-Meelie, not looking back until The Touch was just an ugly spot in the background.
Downs did not know what he was going to do next.
MOVING DAY by R. Chetwynd-Hayes
R. Chetwynd-Hayes ranks as one of England’s finest practitioners of the art of horror fiction, both as author and as editor. Born in Isleworth, Middlesex on May 30, 1919, Chetwynd-Hayes made his first sale in 1954 and since then has written more than twenty-five novels and collections of short stories in addition to editing some twenty-five horror anthologies. While Chetwynd-Hayes writes more in line with the traditional horror tale than do many of the younger English writers, his prose displays a crisp sophistication and, often, a macabre sense of humor to prove that the author is a major stylist in his own right.
Two of his many books have been filmed: From Beyond the Grave (1973) and The Monster Club (1981). His most recent books include Dracula’s Children and The House of Dracula—these two being an outrageous family history of the descendants of Dracula’s three wives—as well as Tales from the Hidden World and Clavering Nightmare. While R. Chetwynd-Hayes has remained virtually unknown in the United States these many years, this unfortunate lapse is now being rectified by Tor Books, who have recently reprinted The Grange (U.K. title, The King’s Ghost) and Tales from the Other Side. Hope to see more.
I went to live with my aunts just before my thirty-fifth birthday.
In fact they were my great-aunts, being the three sisters of my maternal grandmother. The eldest Edith was ninety-eight, the middle one Matilda eighty-seven, the youngest Edna eighty-five. My grandmother had rather let the side down by dying at the ridiculously youthful age of eighty-one. Perhaps the fact she was the only one to marry had something to do with that. As I was the only living relative and in consequence the sole heir to whatever estate they eventually left, moving in with them was not such a bad idea. At least so I thought at the time. I would be able to keep an eye on what would one day be my property and make certain that no kindly person tried to ease his or her way into their wills. It has been known to happen.
I had not been in that large, musty, over-furnished and damp-haunted house a week, before I realized the three sisters were—at the very best—looked upon as eccentrics in the neighborhood and even feared.
Certainly from the very first I had to admit there was an oddness about them that was hard to define. Something to do with the way they walked. A kind of quick-glance-over-the-shoulder-shuffle. Then their preoccupation with the local churchyard was out of the ordinary.
The only people they seemed to know were there. In the churchyard.
The table talk I endured on my first night put me off the really excellent food. Edna was cook and a very good one she was too.
Edith waved a fork at me and said: “When you move, David, you want to make certain all is ready. The furniture ordered, the box chosen, the wordage composed.”
I smiled gently, assuming old age had muddled her poor old brain. “But, Auntie, dear, I have just moved. Moved from my bachelor flat into your nice house.”
A genteel titter ran round the table and Edna poked me playfully in the ribs with a dessert spoon. “You silly boy! We mean when you move into your permanent home. The cozy little nest in the churchyard.”
I made an interesting noise, then tried to adjust my outlook to the exceptionally unusual. “I see. Be prepared for anything? Eh?”
“He’s quite sensible,” Edna informed Edith. “So many young people these days are apt to treat moving with unseemly levity.”
“Takes after his granddad,” Matilda maintained. “In
fact Alfred—did you know, David, that was your grandfather’s name?—moved twenty-five years ago last Christmas. He said, ‘Make certain the lad—you—knows what’s what.’ And I said, ‘You never need fear about that, Alfred.’ ”
“Only the other day,” Edith stressed, tapping a knife handle on the table, “you forgot to mention Alfred said that only the other day.”
“I hadn’t forgotten,” Matilda protested, “I just hadn’t got round to it. At the same time as I was going to mention the lovely surprise we’ve planned for David’s birthday.”
Edith shook her head reproachfully. “Now, you’ve spoilt it all, Matilda. The fact he now knows a lovely surprise is planned for his birthday, means it will only be half a lovely surprise. He may even guess what it is. If you have a failing, Matilda, it is talking out of turn. Gladys Foot, who you may remember moved in 1932, said the same thing only yesterday. ‘Matilda will talk out of turn,’ she said. ‘She even told me when I was going to move, and I didn’t want to know until a day after the event.’ ”
Matilda dabbed her eyes with a black-edged handkerchief. “I mean well, Edith. I’m sure dear David won’t give the matter of a lovely surprise on his birthday another thought, until he learns what it is on the great day, which I believe is the day after tomorrow.”
Edith hastened to console. “Don’t take on so, dear. I mean I only correct you for your own good. Have a glass of Mortuary 51. It will cheer you up.”
I may as well point out that Mortuary 51 was a rather bad sherry and had nothing to do with a mortuary, but they had churchyard-funeral titles for almost everything. I mean the pepperbox was an earth-sprinkler, potatoes—corpoties, spoons—grave-diggers and any kind of soup or gravy, churchyard bouillon.
When I was escorted to my bedroom by Edna, she assured me that: “The bed shrouds were changed this morning.”
I lay awake for most of the night trying to understand how this death-related mania had come into being. Possibly their longevity and the fact everyone they had known had died, might have had something to do with it. In the very beginning I mean.
My thirty-fifth birthday will never be forgotten.
To begin I found three black-edged cards propped up against a toast rack on the breakfast table. The goodwill messages were I am certain unique in birthday greeting history.
Three times thirty-five is one hundred and five,
Then you should no longer be alive.
With luck this could be the last birthday.
And that’s all we have to say.
From your loving aunties Edith, Edna and Matilda and all those who have moved.
But no present. No lovely surprise.
I had to assume it was the birthday tea that was planned for five o’clock. But I was wrong.
After lunch I was ordered to put on my best suit, polish my shoes and comb my hair, because we were going visiting. The aunts put on black satin dresses, black straw hats, and black button-up boots. Then we all set out, walked the entire length of the High Street, watched I swear by the entire population of the village. Then we turned into a narrow lane, picked our way over puddles, pushed open—or rather Edna did—a low gate and entered the churchyard.
Edith called out, “Hullo, everybody. Don’t worry about us. Won’t be long,” then led us along weed-infested paths until we came to that part of the churchyard where those who had reaped a reasonably rich harvest during their day in the earthly vineyard slept the long sleep. Or so I assumed. Marble angels stood guard over miniature flower gardens. Granite headstones proclaimed the virtues of those who rested under marble chips. We stopped at a strip of closely clipped grass, into which at regular intervals had been inserted round lead plaques, all bearing black numbers: 14, 15, 16, 17.
Edna took an envelope from her handbag. “You see, dear, we have purchased our permanent homes. Here are three deeds which state that plot 14 belongs to Edith, plot 15 belongs to Matilda and plot 16 belongs to me. Eventually we will move into our plots, but you may be sure leave them now and again to see how you are getting on.”
There was really no answer for that one, so I kept quiet and displayed more interest in the empty plots than I actually felt. Then Edna produced the fourth deed.
“Now, dear, we come to your lovely birthday surprise. We have all clubbed together and bought you plot 17. You too now own your permanent home. What have you to say about that?”
All three looked at me with such an air of joyful expectancy, I just had to express delight—near ecstasy—happy surprise, even if it did mean gabbling insane nonsense.
“How can I thank you—something I’ve always wanted—I will treasure it for as long as I live—and longer. I can’t wait to get into it ...”
“We had thought,” Matilda said, “of tying a greetings present card to the plot number, but Edith thought it wouldn’t be respectful. Now, Edna, make the presentation in the proper way.”
Edna straightened up and stood rather like a soldier at attention, the little slip of paper in her hand. It was in fact a receipt for five pounds. She raised her voice until it was in danger of dissolving into a rasping croak.
“I hereby bestow on my beloved, great-nephew David Greenfield the deeds of his permanent home, trusting he will lie in it with credit to his noble moved-on ones.”
I accepted the “deeds” and said thank you very much several times, having exhausted my fund of grateful words in the acceptance speech.
Then we all sang the first verse of “Abide with Me” before starting the tramp back to the village, bestowing words of farewell onto most of the graves as we went. I became acutely aware of the considerable crowd that had collected just beyond the churchyard wall, some of which gave gratuitous advice that included, “Why don’t yer stay there?,” “Dig hard and hearty and bed down,” “Set up house there,” “Yer all dead, why don’t yer lie down?”
However all this came to an abrupt end when Matilda pointed two rigid fingers at the crowd and chanted in a shrill voice:
On ye all the evil eye.
By Beldaza ye all die.
If ye not gone in one mo.
Or before I wriggle big toe.
And they all went. Running, jumping, pushing, gasping; I have never before or since seen a crowd that included quite a number of elderly people move so fast, or with such agility.
Edna sighed deeply. “What a shame, sisters, we have to frighten people so much. I’d much rather be friendly and explain all about moving over a cup of tea and a condensed milk sandwich.”
“The price of being special,” Edith explained.
“The curse of being upper,” Matilda agreed.
“I do hope we don’t have to become too drastic,” Edna had the last word. “People should only move when it’s right and proper.”
Two weeks later Edith was taken ill.
Not exactly ill, rather taken faint. She wilted and took to her bed and I slowly became aware that the house was being invaded.
Sort of.
Matilda and Edna accentuated their quick-glance-over-one-shoulder shuffle, only the quick glance was not so quick anymore. There was an awful lot of whispering too. I couldn’t catch all of it, but what I did seemed very ordinary. “How are you, dear? Doesn’t seem a year since you moved. Yes, time does fly. Shouldn’t be long now before your Tom starts turning up his toes ...”
Another thing. I began to take quick glances over my shoulder, for there was the distinct impression that someone was standing way back and a quick turning of the head enabled me to catch the merest glimpse of him. Not sufficient to register any details, but enough to send a cold shiver down my spine.
As time passed—three days or more—impressions began to set into near certainties. I distinctly saw the back of a woman attired in a polka dot muslin dress disappear round the corner of the landing, which led to Edith’s bedroom. When I turned the same corner some ten seconds later there was no one in sight. I peeped into Aunt Edith’s bedroom, she was lying still with hands crossed, but otherwis
e the room was empty.
Twice I was awakened in the middle of the night by cold lips kissing my forehead. Once by cold fingers gently caressing my throat. When I complained to Matilda and Edna next morning, both giggled and Matilda said, “Martha Longbridge always had an affectionate nature,” and Edna added, “Daphne is so mischievous.”
I asked, “Who are Martha and Daphne?” and they both gave me a pitying smile, before Edna replied:
“Two old friends who moved a long time ago.”
I did not dare ask any more questions.
Three weeks after Edith had been taken faint, she died. At least I would have said she died, the two remaining sisters insisted she had merely prepared herself for moving. Not moved you understand. Stopped breathing so as to prepare for moving.
The funeral took place three days later and was a very sparse affair. The coffin was pushed to the churchyard on a hand bier—rather like a costermonger’s barrow—and the clergyman was not encouraged to linger once he had galloped his way through the burial service. A deep grave had been dug in plot 14 and Edith’s cheap pine coffin was lowered into it, then the earth shoveled back in and piled up as an untidy hump, which Edna crowned by a jam jar containing three marigolds. One from each of us. Then we went home to roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes (corpoties), Brussels sprouts and rich churchyard bouillon, followed by apple pie and custard.
The house ceased to be invaded. The unseen guests merely settled in.
By that I mean I only occasionally felt the urge to glance quickly over the left shoulder, but really had the heebies when I woke up and found something very cold in bed with me. According to Edna, this was Susan Cornwall who had been—and presumably still was—very lustful. Needless to say she had moved a long time ago.
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