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

She moved her fingers over my lips and said, “I know. I know. But I’m here now.”

One part of my body had been sure ever since her thigh slid over mine. I was so hard I felt as if I might burst. I pressed her body to mine and as I pushed inside her I couldn’t tell whether the throbbing beats pulsating through me were mine or hers. I followed their rhythm, and the rhythm turned into notes which became a melody that I recognised, and I couldn’t hold back. My body contracted in a convulsion so powerful that I slipped out of her and my seed shot out all over the sheets in a single spasm.

I opened my eyes wide.

I was alone on the mattress. My penis was stiff and I could feel the warm stickiness of my ejaculation, the faint aroma of sperm beneath the covers. But that wasn’t all. Annelie’s scent still lingered in the room. The shampoo she always used, the moisturiser from the Body Shop perfumed with oranges and cinnamon, the one she called her “Christmas moisturiser”. Plus the scent of her own body, but I have no words to describe that. They were there in the room. All of them.

I was so preoccupied with trying to drink in that smell and to remain in the moment that it was a long time before I grasped that the notes were real. That they were being played in the house.

I propped myself up on one elbow and saw that the bed was empty. Robin had got up and gone to the piano.

Something moved in my peripheral vision. A faint, swaying movement. Annelie’s scent was superseded by another. Sweaty feet. Horrible, stinking, sweaty feet. I turned my head slowly to the side and saw a bare foot swinging to and fro next to me. As my gaze travelled upwards I saw that the foot belonged to an equally naked body. A hairy pot belly and flaccid testicles. A head on a broken neck, eyes staring into mine. The hanged man opened his mouth and said:

“Without her. nothing. That’s true, isn’t it? You can get her back. I did. I am happy now.”

I squeezed my eyes tight shut and pressed my wrists against my eyelids so hard that my eyeballs were pushed into my skull and I saw a shower of red stars. I counted to ten, and while I was counting the piano stopped playing. I heard voices coming from Robin’s room. And a faint creaking sound.

I opened my eyes. A long, dirty toenail was swaying to and fro centimetres from my face, and from above I heard the gurgling, muffled voice saying, “The door is open. You just have to—”

A strong impulse made me want to curl up, put my hands over my ears and wait until the madness went away. Perhaps I might even have done it if I hadn’t heard Robin. In a tearful voice he suddenly yelled: “I can’t! I can’t!”

I rolled off the mattress, away from the visitation above my head. I got to my feet and ran to Robin’s room without looking back.

The window was wide open and the room was freezing cold. Robin was standing by the window dressed only in his underpants, leaning out. When I put my arms around him to pull him inside I saw movement on the lawn outside. Two small, hunched bodies dressed in rags were running erratically towards the forest.

The door is open .

In my despair I pulled too hard and Robin lost his balance. I fell over backwards and he landed on top of me without making a sound.

“Robin? Robin? Are you all right?”

I sat up, holding him in my arms. His expression was distant and he was looking straight through me. I shook him gently.

“Robin? What happened?”

His head moved feebly from side to side, and when I checked him over I saw four long scratches on one forearm, scratches made by fingernails.

I picked him up and carried him into the kitchen. As I approached the door of the living room I let out a sob and held onto him more tightly. I inched forward two steps and peered in through the doorway. Above my mattress and the stained duvet cover there was nothing but an empty hook on the ceiling.

“Robin? It’s okay now. They’ve gone.” It was as if another voice was speaking through my mouth as I added, “The door is closed.”

Robin didn’t respond, and I gently laid him down on my bed and tucked him in. His wide-open eyes were staring at the hook. Could he see something I couldn’t? The stale smell of sweaty feet still lingered in the room, and had completely obliterated the scent of Annelie. I looked at the hook with loathing. Couldn’t the bastard have showered before he hanged himself?

“Dad. ”

I stroked Robin’s hair, his cheeks. “Yes, son?”

“Dad, get rid of it. Get rid of it.”

I nodded and licked my lips. They had a sour taste, like sweaty feet. When I got up from the bed I realised I was still naked. I pulled on my dressing gown, went into the kitchen, rummaged in the drawer where I kept tools for indoor use and dug out a pair of heavy pliers.

The first thing I did was to unscrew the hook from the ceiling. I didn’t know if it would help, but I didn’t want the accursed thing in the house. When I opened the living room window Robin whispered, “No, no, don’t open it.” I hurled the hook as far as I could, closed the window and said: “It’s fine.”

“Get rid of it, Dad. You have to get rid of it. I can’t.”

“What do you mean, son?”

“The piano. Get rid of it. I don’t want to.”

I was on the point of saying that it would have to wait until tomorrow because I hadn’t the strength to carry or even drag the piano on my own, but then I realised there might be a simpler solution.

When I stood in front of the open lid looking at the keyboard, the notes were playing inside my head. By now I had heard them so many times I knew them by heart. I was able to make out a melody, and what’s more, when I looked at the keys it was as if some of them glowed, flashed as the notes passed through my mind. I can play, if I want to . My hands were irresistibly drawn towards the piano.

Dum, di-dum, daa .

Just once. Or twice. Or as many times as necessary.

When I placed my right hand on the keyboard to begin playing, there was something in the way. A pair of pliers. I was holding a pair of pliers in my hand. A pair of pliers. I worked the handles and saw the sharp jaws opening and closing. Bite through it. Snip snip .

I blinked a couple of times and pushed the notes out of my head, concentrating on the pliers. Then I opened the top of the piano and whispered, “Sorry, Annelie.”

It took me ten minutes to snip through every single string inside the piano, and when I hit a key to check, the hammer thudded against empty space and the note didn’t play. The piano was dead.

Finally I fetched a roll of duct tape and wound it round and round the window catches so that it would be impossible to open them without tools. When I turned away the piano was staring at me; the notes popped into my head and my fingers itched.

I laughed out loud, sat down at the piano and played through the entire melody, but the only sound was the soft, dull thud of the hammers.

“Try that, you bastard,” I said, without any idea of who the bastard in question was.

Robin was still awake when I went back into the living room. When I told him what I’d done he nodded and said, “But I don’t want to sleep in there.”

“You don’t have to,” I said, lying down beside him on the narrow bed. “You can sleep here for as long as you like.”

He reached for my hand and tucked my arm around his chest. I held him and rested my forehead against the back of his head. When five minutes had passed and he still hadn’t relaxed, I said: “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

Robin mumbled something into the pillow, but I couldn’t make any sense of it.

“What did you say?”

Robin turned his head a fraction to the side; his voice was so faint that I had to put my ear right next to his mouth in order to pick up the words.