Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

Even though it was the end of November, we still hadn’t had any snow. Robin was practising for the Christmas concert — songs about happy little snowflakes and sleigh rides — while the temperature refused to drop below zero. Dark mornings with the smell of rotting leaves in the damp air, long evenings with the pine trees around the house swaying and creaking in the strong winds.

One evening I was sitting at the table in the living room with my MacBook, trying to write a job application. I was in charge of the greengrocery department at the ICA hypermarket, but for a long time I had dreamed of being in charge of a smaller shop. Such a position had just come up. The work itself would be more varied, plus my journey would be five kilometres shorter each day.

So I polished up my set phrases and tried to present myself in as responsible and creative a light as possible, while the wind howled in the television aerial and Robin began to play the piano.

My fingers stopped, hovering over the keys. It was those notes again. Despite the wind which was making the windows creak and the wooden joints whimper, I could hear the notes as clearly as if the piano had been in the same room.

Dum, di-dum, dum.

I couldn’t remember whether the notes were exactly the same as the last time, but I always knew exactly which note would come next, even though there was nothing recognisable or logical about the melody. My fingers extended and moved in time with the music, as my thoughts drifted off into space.

I was woken by the sound I made closing the computer. The clock showed that half-an-hour had passed, half-an-hour of which I had no memory whatsoever.

Robin had stopped playing the piano, and from his room I could hear the low murmur of conversation as he spoke to some friend on Skype or Live. As usual I wondered what they actually talked about, given that they had no real lives, if you’ll pardon the expression.

I sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and stared out at the swaying trees; I could vaguely make out the shapes in the glow of the outside light. No real lives. But then again, what would people say about my own life?

My empire during the day was a space measuring some two hundred square metres, where my role was to satisfy people’s need for fruit and vegetables in a way that pleased the eye. No empty shelves, fresh goods on display, arranging the trays in combinations that were dictated by head office, teaching assistants the correct way to handle mushrooms.

On one occasion when we were running a promotion I had improvised slightly and placed a battery-driven monkey among the bananas. Naturally it had frightened a child so much that the kid burst into tears, and I had received a reprimand from up above, instructing me to stick to the manual issued by head office. It’s like working in an East European dictatorship, but with brighter colours.

I was sitting at the kitchen table thinking about all this when the fir trees and pine trees suddenly disappeared. All the tiny electronic sounds of equipment on standby were gone, and the house was completely silent.

A power cut. I sat for a while in the darkness, listening to the silence. As I was just about to get up and find some candles and oil lamps, I heard something that made me stop dead.

The electricity was off and nothing was working. So how come Robin was still talking away in his bedroom? I turned my head towards the sound of his voice and tried to listen more closely. What I heard made me shudder. Of course it was only a phenomenon created by the movement of the wind through and around the house, but I really thought I could hear one or more voices in addition to Robin’s.

It’s hardly a father’s job to come up with imaginary friends for his son, but I still couldn’t help sitting with my head tilted to one side, trying to make out what those voices were saying. Faint, almost inaudible utterances, and then Robin’s replies, which I couldn’t make out either. I chewed my nails. Robin wasn’t in the habit of talking to himself, as far as I knew. Perhaps he’d nodded off, and was talking in his sleep?

I groped my way over to the side of the room to get out the torch. Just as I pulled open the drawer the power came back on, and I let out a little scream as all the everyday objects jumped out of the darkness. The voices in Robin’s room fell silent, and the fridge shuddered as it started up again.

When I knocked on Robin’s door it was a couple of seconds before I heard “Mmm?” from inside. I looked in and saw him sitting on the piano stool, his body turned away from the instrument.

“Hi,” I said.

I was expecting the usual expression of listless amazement at the fact that I was disturbing him yet again, but the look he gave me was that of someone trying to place a face which is vaguely familiar. He said: “Hi?” as if he were speaking to a stranger.

“There was a power cut,” I said, unable to help myself from glancing around his room to see if I could spot the people who had been talking. The scruffy, peeling wallpaper I hadn’t had the time or energy to change, the vinyl flooring with its gloomy seventies pattern.

“Yes,” said Robin. “I noticed.”

I nodded, my eyes still flicking from the bed to the desk, the wardrobe. The wardrobe.

“Were you talking to somebody just now?”

Robin shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, what about it? On Skype.”

“But. when we had the power cut.”

“When we had the power cut?”

I could hear how stupid it sounded. But I had heard something . My gaze was drawn to the wardrobe. It was a basic, recently purchased IKEA wardrobe in white laminate, but I thought there were an unusual number of grubby marks around the doorknob.

“So you weren’t talking to anybody then?”

“No.”

Before I could stop myself I had taken three strides into the room and pulled open the wardrobe door. Robin’s clothes had been shoved carelessly into the wire baskets, with odd tops and shirts that he never wore arranged on hangers. Apart from that, the wardrobe was empty.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Just checking that. you’ve got clean T-shirts and stuff.”

I couldn’t come up with anything better, even though I’d folded and put away the clean laundry that very afternoon. As I pretended to check the stock of underwear I felt a cold draught. The window was slightly ajar, with both catches open.

“Why is the window open?”

Robin rolled his eyes. “Because I forgot to close it, maybe?”

“But why did you open it? It’s really windy out there.”

Robin was now back to himself, and gave me the look that means: Have you got any more amazingly interesting questions? Even I didn’t understand what I was getting at, so I closed the window, flicked the catches down and left the room. As I was closing the door I saw Robin start up the computer, and a few minutes later I could hear the one-sided mumbling as he communicated via Skype. I placed a pan on the hob to make our bedtime hot chocolate.

It was a bad habit I couldn’t bring myself to give up, that hot chocolate. Because Robin spent so much time sitting still it had begun to show on his body; he had a little belly protruding above the waistband of his trousers. But I still made hot chocolate every night, and we had three pastries each along with it.

Because that’s what we used to do when he was little. Ever since he was four years old it had been a little ritual every night: the three of us would gather around the kitchen table before it was time for Robin to go to bed, and we would drink hot chocolate and chat.

I couldn’t bring myself to let go, even though there were only two cups on the table and we frequently ended up sitting in mutual silence. At least we were sitting there. When Annelie was alive we used to have a lit candle in the middle of the table, but I decided to skip that particular detail after trying it once following her death. It had felt like keeping vigil beside a corpse.