‘I must explain,’ said John softly. ‘My wife would never forgive me if I didn’t,’ and as they walked he went over the whole inexplicable story once again, beginning with the telegram received the night before and the conversation with Mrs. Hill, the decision to return to England the following day, Laura by air, and John himself by car and train. It no longer sounded as dramatic as it had done when he had made his statement to the police officer, when, possibly because of his conviction of something uncanny, the description of the two vaporettos passing one another in the middle of the Grand Canal had held a sinister quality, suggesting abduction on the part of the sisters, the pair of them holding a bewildered Laura captive. Now that neither of the women had any further menace for him he spoke more naturally, yet with great sincerity, feeling for the first time that they were somehow both in sympathy with him and would understand.
‘You see,’ he explained, in a final endeavour to make amends for having gone to the police in the first place, ‘I truly believed I had seen you with Laura, and I thought…’ he hesitated, because this had been the police officer’s suggestion and not his, ‘I thought that perhaps Laura had some sudden loss of memory, had met you at the airport, and you had brought her back to Venice to wherever you were staying.’
They had crossed a large square and were approaching a house at one end of it, with a sign ‘Pensione’ above the door. Their escort paused at the entrance.
‘Is this it?’ asked John.
‘Yes,’ said the sister. ‘I know it is nothing much from the outside, but it is clean and comfortable, and was recommended by friends.’ She turned to the escort. ‘Grazie,’ she said to him, ‘grazie tanto.’
The man nodded briefly, wished them ‘Buona notte,’ and disappeared across the campo.
‘Will you come in?’ asked the sister. ‘I am sure we can find you some coffee, or perhaps you prefer tea?’
‘No, really,’ John thanked her, ‘I must get back to the hotel. I’m making an early start in the morning. I just want to make quite sure you do understand what happened, and that you forgive me.’
‘There is nothing to forgive,’ she replied. ‘It is one of the many examples of second sight that my sister and I have experienced time and time again, and I should very much like to record it for our files, if you will permit it.’
‘Well, as to that, of course,’ he told her, ‘but I myself find it hard to understand. It has never happened to me before.’
‘Not consciously, perhaps,’ she said, ‘but so many things happen to us of which we are not aware. My sister felt you had psychic understanding. She told your wife. She also told your wife, last night in the restaurant, that you were to experience trouble, danger, that you should leave Venice. Well, don’t you believe now that the telegram was proof of this? Your son was ill, possibly dangerously ill, and so it was necessary for you to return home immediately. Heaven be praised your wife flew home to be by his side.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said John, ‘but why should I see her on the vaporetto with you and your sister when she was actually on her way to England?’
‘Thought transference, perhaps,’ she answered. ‘Your wife may have been thinking about us. We gave her our address, should you wish to get in touch with us. We shall be here another ten days. And she knows that we would pass on any message that my sister might have from your little one in the spirit world.’
‘Yes,’ said John awkwardly, ‘yes, I see. It’s very good of you.’ He had a sudden rather unkind picture of the two sisters putting on headphones in their bedroom, listening for a coded message from poor Christine. ‘Look, this is our address in London,’ he said. ‘I know Laura will be pleased to hear from you.’
He scribbled their address on a sheet torn from his pocket-diary, even, as a bonus thrown in, the telephone number, and handed it to her. He could imagine the outcome. Laura springing it on him one evening that the ‘old dears’ were passing through London on their way to Scotland, and the least they could do was to offer them hospitality, even the spare room for the night. Then a seance in the living room, tambourines appearing out of thin air.
‘Well, I must be off,’ he said. ‘Goodnight, and apologies, once again, for all that has happened this evening.’ He shook hands with the first sister, then turned to her blind twin. ‘I hope,’ he said, ‘that you are not too tired.’
The sightless eyes were disconcerting. She held his hand fast and would not let it go. ‘The child,’ she said, speaking in an odd staccato voice, ‘the child…I can see the child…’ and then, to his dismay, a bead of froth appeared at the corner of her mouth, her head jerked back, and she half-collapsed in her sister’s arms.
‘We must get her inside,’ said the sister hurriedly. ‘It’s all right, she’s not ill, it’s the beginning of a trance state.’
Between them they helped the twin, who had gone rigid, into the house, and sat her down on the nearest chair, the sister supporting her. A woman came running from some inner room. There was a strong smell of spaghetti from the back regions. ‘Don’t worry,’ said the sister, ‘the signorina and I can manage. I think you had better go. Sometimes she is sick after these turns.’
‘I’m most frightfully sorry…’ John began, but the sister had already turned her back and with the signorina was bending over her twin, from whom peculiar choking sounds were proceeding. He was obviously in the way, and after a final gesture of courtesy, ‘Is there anything I can do?’, which received no reply, he turned on his heel and began walking across the square. He looked back once, and saw they had closed the door.
What a finale to the evening! And all his fault. Poor old girls, first dragged to police headquarters and put through an interrogation, and then a psychic fit on top of it all. More likely epilepsy. Not much of a life for the other sister, but she seemed to take it in her stride. An additional hazard, though, if it happened in a restaurant or in the street. And not particularly welcome under his and Laura’s roof should the sisters ever find themselves beneath it, which he prayed would never happen.
Meanwhile, where the devil was he? The square, with the inevitable church at one end was quite deserted. He could not remember which way they had come from police headquarters, there had seemed to be so many turnings.
Wait a minute, the church itself had a familiar appearance. He drew nearer to it, looking for the name which was sometimes on notices at the entrance. San Giovanni in Angora, that rang a bell. He and Laura had gone inside one morning to look at a painting by Cima da Conegliano. Surely it was only a stone’s throw from the Riva degli Schiavoni and the open wide waters of the San Marco lagoon, with all the bright lights of civilisation and the strolling tourists? He remembered taking a small turning from the Schiavoni and they had arrived at the church. Wasn’t that the alleyway ahead? He plunged along it, but halfway down he hesitated. It didn’t seem right, although it was familiar for some unknown reason.
Then he realised that it was not the alley they had taken the morning they visited the church but the one they had walked along the previous evening, only he was approaching it from the opposite direction. Yes, that was it, in which case it would be quicker to go on and cross the little bridge over the narrow canal, and he would find the Arsenal on his left and the street leading down to the Riva degli Schiavoni to his right. Simpler than retracing his steps and getting lost once more in the maze of back streets.
He had almost reached the end of the alley, and the bridge was in sight, when he saw the child. It was the same little girl with the pixie hood who had leapt between the tethered boats the preceding night and vanished up the cellar steps of one of the houses. This time she was running from the direction of the church the other side, making for the bridge. She was running as if her life depended on it, and in a moment he saw why. A man was in pursuit, who, when she glanced backwards for a moment, still running, flattened himself against a wall, believing himself unobserved. The child came on, scampering across the bridge, and John, fearful of alarming her further, b
acked into an open doorway that led into a small court.
He remembered the drunken yell of the night before which had come from one of the houses near where the man was hiding now. This is it, he thought, the fellow’s after her again, and with a flash of intuition he connected the two events, the child’s terror then and now, and the murders reported in the newspapers, supposedly the work of some madman. It could be coincidence, a child running from a drunken relative, and yet, and yet…His heart began thumping in his chest, instinct warning him to run himself, now, at once, back along the alley the way he had come – but what about the child? What was going to happen to the child?
Then he heard her running steps. She hurtled through the open doorway into the court in which he stood, not seeing him, making for the rear of the house that flanked it, where steps led presumably to a back entrance. She was sobbing as she ran, not the ordinary cry of a frightened child, but the panic-stricken intake of breath of a helpless being in despair. Were there parents in the house who would protect her, whom he could warn? He hesitated a moment, then followed her down the steps and through the door at the bottom, which had burst open at the touch of her hands as she hurled herself against it.
‘It’s all right,’ he called. ‘I won’t let him hurt you, it’s all right,’ cursing his lack of Italian, but possibly an English voice might reassure her. But it was no use – she ran sobbing up another flight of stairs, which were spiral, twisting, leading to the floor above, and already it was too late for him to retreat. He could hear sounds of the pursuer in the courtyard behind, someone shouting in Italian, a dog barking. This is it, he thought, we’re in it together, the child and I. Unless we can bolt some inner door above he’ll get us both.
He ran up the stairs after the child, who had darted into a room leading off a small landing, and followed her inside and slammed the door, and, merciful heaven, there was a bolt which he rammed into its socket. The child was crouching by the open window. If he shouted for help someone would surely hear, someone would surely come before the man in pursuit threw himself against the door and it gave, because there was no one but themselves, no parents, the room was bare except for a mattress on an old bed, and a heap of rags in one corner.
‘It’s all right,’ he panted, ‘it’s all right,’ and held out his hand, trying to smile.
The child struggled to her feet and stood before him, the pixie hood falling from her head on to the floor. He stared at her, incredulity turning to horror, to fear. It was not a child at all but a little thickset woman dwarf, about three feet high, with a great square adult head too big for her body, grey locks hanging shoulder-length, and she wasn’t sobbing any more, she was grinning at him, nodding her head up and down.
Then he heard the footsteps on the landing outside and the hammering on the door, and a barking dog, and not one voice but several voices, shouting, ‘Open up! Police!’ The creature fumbled in her sleeve, drawing a knife, and as she threw it at him with hideous strength, piercing his throat, he stumbled and fell, the sticky mess covering his protecting hands.
And he saw the vaporetto with Laura and the two sisters steaming down the Grand Canal, not today, not tomorrow, but the day after that, and he knew why they were together and for what sad purpose they had come. The creature was gibbering in its corner. The hammering and the voices and the barking dog grew fainter, and, ‘Oh, God,’ he thought, ‘what a bloody silly way to die…’
The Hospice
Robert Aickman
Robert Aickman (1914–1981) was an English ghost-story writer, considered the best of his generation. However, Aickman described his fiction as ‘strange’ and the term ‘weird’ fits just as well. Long considered a classic, ‘The Hospice’ (1975), demonstrates the qualities by which Aickman pushed passed the familiar or comforting and into the unsettling. The mysterious is balanced by a perfect character study and precision of detail. Although perennially under-appreciated, Aickman did receive such awards as the World Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Award. Aickman also served as a chairman of the London Opera Society and was active in the London Opera Club, the Ballet Minerva, and the Mikron Theatre Company in London.
It was somewhere at the back of beyond. Maybury would have found it difficult to be more precise.
He was one who, when motoring outside his own territory, preferred to follow a route ‘given’ by one of the automobile organizations, and, on this very occasion, as on other previous ones, he had found reasons to deplore all deviation. This time it had been the works manager’s fault. The man had not only poured ridicule on the official route, but had stood at the yard gate in order to make quite certain that Maybury set off by the short cut which, according to him, all the fellows in the firm used, and which departed in the exactly opposite direction.
The most that could be said was that Maybury was presumably at the outer edge of the immense West Midlands conurbation. The outer edge it by now surely must be, as he seemed to have been driving for hours since he left the works, going round and round in large or small circles, asking the way and being unable to understand the answers (when answers were vouchsafed), all the time seemingly more off-course than ever.
Maybury looked at his watch. He had been driving for hours. By rights he should have been more than halfway home – considerably more. Even the dashboard light seemed feebler than usual; but by it Maybury saw that soon he would be out of petrol. His mind had not been on that particular matter of petrol.
Dark though it was, Maybury was aware of many trees, mountainous and opaque. It was not, however, that there were no houses. Houses there must be, because on both sides of the road, there were gates; broad single gates, commonly painted white: and, even where there were no gates, there were dim entrances. Presumably it was a costly nineteenth-century housing estate. Almost identical roads seemed to curve away in all directions. The straightforward had been genteelly avoided. As often in such places, the racer-through, the taker of a short cut, was quite systematically penalized. Probably this attitude accounted also for the failure to bring the street lighting fully up-to-date.
Maybury came to a specific bifurcation. It was impossible to make any reasoned choice, and he doubted whether it mattered much in any case.
Maybury stopped the car by the side of the road, then stopped the engine in order to save the waning petrol while he thought. In the end, he opened the door and stepped out into the road. He looked upwards. The moon and stars were almost hidden by the thick trees. It was quiet. The houses were set too far back from the road for the noise of the television sets to be heard, or the blue glare thereof seen. Pedestrians are nowadays rare in such a district at any hour, but now there was no traffic either, nor sound of traffic more remote. Maybury was disturbed by the silence.
He advanced a short distance on foot, as one does at such times. In any case, he had no map, but only a route, from which he had departed quite hopelessly. None the less, even that second and locally preferred route, the one used by all the fellows, had seemed perfectly clear at the time, and as the manager had described it. He supposed that otherwise he might not have been persuaded to embark upon it; not even over-persuaded. As things were, his wonted expedient of merely driving straight ahead until one found some definite sign or other indication, would be dubious, because the petrol might run out first.
Parallel with each side of each road was a narrow made-up footway, with a central gravelly strip. Beyond the strip to Maybury’s left was a wilderness of vegetation, traversed by a ditch, beyond which was the hedge-line of the different properties. By the light of the occasional street-lamp, Maybury could see that sometimes there was an owner who had his hedge trimmed. and sometimes an owner who did not. It would be futile to walk any further along the road, though the air was pleasantly warm and aromatic. There were Angela and their son, Tony, awaiting him; and he must resume the fight to rejoin them.
Something shot out at him from the boskage on his left.
He had disturbed a cat, returned to its
feral habitude. The first he knew of it was its claws, or conceivably its teeth, sunk into his left leg. There had been no question of ingratiation or cuddling up. Maybury kicked out furiously. The strange sequel was total silence. He must have kicked the cat a long way, because on the instant there was no hint of it. Nor had he seen the colour of the cat, though there was a pool of light at that point on the footway. He fancied he had seen two flaming eyes, but he was not sure even of that. There had been no mew, no scream.
Maybury faltered. His leg really hurt. It hurt so much that he could not bring himself to touch the limb, even to look at it in the lamplight.
He faltered back to the car, and, though his leg made difficulties even in starting it, set off indecisively down the road along which he had just walked. It might well have become a case of its being wise for him to seek a hospital. The deep scratch or bite of a cat might well hold venom, and it was not pleasant to think where the particular cat had been treading, or what it might have been devouring. Maybury again looked at his watch. It was fourteen minutes past eight. Only nine minutes had passed since he had looked at it last.
The road was beginning to straighten out, and the number of entrances to diminish, though the trees remained dense. Possibly, as so often happens, the money had run out before the full development had reached this region of the property. There were still occasional houses, with entries at long and irregular intervals. Lamp posts were becoming fewer also, but Maybury saw that one of them bore a hanging sign of some kind. It was most unlikely to indicate a destination, let alone a destination of use to Maybury, but he eased and stopped none the less, so urgently did he need a clue of some kind. The sign was shaped like a club in a pack of cards, and read:
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories Page 95