Stephen Jones - Dark Terrors 3 - The Gollancz Book of Horror

The message had just finished when Chris caroomed out of the bathroom smelling of toothpaste and moisturizer.

“ny messages?’

‘Just a wrong number,’ he said.

She shook her head slightly, apparently to clear it rather than in negation. ‘Coming to bed then?’ she asked, slyly. Waggling her eyebrows, she performed a slow grind with her pelvis, managing both not to fall over and not to look silly, which was a hell of a trick. Richard made his ‘Sex life in ancient Rome’ face, inspired by a book he’d read as a child.

‘Too right,’ he said. ‘Be there in a minute.’

But he stayed in the study for a quarter of an hour, long enough to ensure that Chris would have passed out. Wearing pyjamas for the first time in ten years, he slipped quietly in beside her and waited for the morning.

The bedroom seemed very small as he lay there, and whereas in Belsize Park the moonlight had sliced in, casting attractive shadows on the wall, in Kingsley Road the only visitors in the night were the curdled orange of a streetlight outside and the sound of a siren in the distance.

As soon as Chris had dragged herself groaning out of the house, Richard got up and went through to the bathroom. He knew before he took his night clothes off what he was going to find. He could feel parts of the pyjama top sticking to areas on his chest and stomach, and his crotch felt warm and wet.

The marks on his stomach now looked like proper cuts, and the gash on his chest had opened still further. His penis was covered in dark blood, and the gashes around it were nasty. He looked as if he had collided with a threshing machine. His ribs still hurt a great deal, though the pain seemed to be constricting, concentrating around a specific point rather than applying to the whole of his side.

He stood there for ten minutes, staring at himself in the mirror. So much damage. As he watched he saw a faint line slowly draw itself down three inches of his forearm; a thin raised scab. He knew that by the end of the day it would have reverted into a cut.

Mid morning he called Susan at her office number. As always he was surprised by how official she sounded when he spoke to her there. She had always been languid of voice, in complete contrast to her physical and emotional vivacity — but when you talked to her at work she sounded like a headmistress.

Her tone mellowed when she realized who it was. She tried to pin him down to a date for a drink, but he avoided the issue. They’d seen each other twice since she’d left him for John Ayer; once while he’d been living with Chris. Chris had been very relaxed about the meetings, but Richard hadn’t. On both occasions he and Susan had spent a good deal of time talking about Ayer; the first time focusing on why Susan had left Richard for him, the second on how unhappy she was about the fact that Ayer had in turn left her without even saying goodbye. Either she hadn’t realized how much the conversations would hurt Richard, or she hadn’t even thought about it. Most likely she had just taken comfort from talking to him in the way she always had.

‘You’re avoiding it, aren’t you,’ Susan said, eventually.

‘What?’

‘Naming a day. Why?’

‘I’m not,’ he protested, feebly. ‘Just, busy, you know. I don’t want to say a date and then have to cancel.’

‘I really want to see you,’ she said. ‘I miss you.’

Don’t say that, thought Richard miserably. Please don’t say that.

‘And there’s something else,’ she added. ‘It was a year today when. ’

‘When what?’ Richard asked, confused. They’d split up about eighteen months ago.

Susan took an audibly deep breath. ‘The last time I saw John,’ she said, and finally Richard understood.

That afternoon he took a walk to kill time, trolling up and down the surrounding streets, trying to find something to like. He discovered another corner store nearby, but it didn’t stock Parma ham either. Little dusty bags of fuses hung behind the counter, and the plastic strips of the cold cabinet were completely opaque. A little further afield he found a local video store, but he’d seen every thriller they had, most of them more than once. The storekeeper seemed to stare at him as he left, as if wondering what he was doing there.

After a while he simply walked, not looking for anything. Slab-faced fat women clumped by, screaming at children already getting into method for their five minutes of fame on CrimeWatch UK. Pipe-cleaner men stalked the streets in brown trousers and zip-up jackets, heads fizzing with racing results. The pavements seemed unnaturally grey, as if waiting for a second coat of reality, and hard green leaves spiralled down to join brown ashes already fallen.

And yet as he started to head back towards Kingsley Road he noticed a small dog standing on a corner, different to the one he’d seen before. White with a black head and lolling tongue, the dog stood still and looked at him, big brown eyes rolling with good humour. It didn’t bark, but merely panted, ready to play some game he didn’t know.

Richard stared at the dog, suddenly sensing that some other life was possible here, that he was occluding something from himself. The dog skittered on the spot slightly, keeping his eyes on Richard, and then abruptly sat down. Ready to wait. Ready to still be there.

Richard looked at him a little longer and then set off for the Tube station. He used the public phone there to leave a message at Kingsley Road, telling Chris he’d gone out unexpectedly and might be back late.

At eleven he left the George and walked down Belsize Avenue. He didn’t know how important the precise time was, and he couldn’t actually remember it, but it felt right. Earlier in the evening he had walked past the old flat, establishing that the ‘For Let’ sign was still outside. Probably the landlord had jacked the rent up so high he couldn’t find any takers.

During the hours he had spent in the pub he had checked the cuts only twice. Then he had ignored them, his only concession being to roll the sleeve of his shirt down to hide what was now a deep gash on his forearm. When he looked at himself in the mirror of the gents his face seemed pale; whether from the lighting or blood loss he didn’t know. As he could now push his fingers deep enough into the slash on his chest to feel his sternum he suspected it was probably the latter. When he used the toilet he did so with his eyes closed. He didn’t want to know what it looked like down there: the sensation of his fingers on ragged and sliced flesh was more than enough. The pain in his side had continued to condense, and was now restricted to a rough circle four inches in diameter.

It was time to go.

He slowed as he approached the flat, trying to time it so that he drew outside when there was no one else in sight. As he waited he marvelled quietly at how different the sounds were to those in Kentish Town. There was no shouting, no roar of maniac traffic or young bloods looking for damage. All you could hear was distant laughter, the sound of people having dinner, braving the cold and sitting outside Café Pasta or the Pizza Express. This area was different, and it wasn’t his home any more. As he realized that, it was with relief. It was time to say goodbye.

When the street was empty he walked quietly along the side of the building to the wall. Only about six feet tall, it held a gate through to the garden. Both sets of keys had been yielded, but Richard knew from experience that he could climb over. More than once he or Susan had forgotten their keys on the way out to get drunk and he’d had to let them back in this way.

He jumped up, arms extended, and grabbed the top of the wall. His side tore at him, but he ignored it and scrabbled up. Without pausing he slid over the top and dropped silently on to the other side, leaving a few slithers of blood behind. The window to the kitchen was there in the wall, dark and cold. Chris had left a dishcloth neatly folded over the tap in the sink. Other than that the room looked as if it had been moulded in an alien’s mind. Richard turned away and walked out into the garden.