Тим Леббон - New Fears 2 - Brand New Horror Stories by Masters of the Macabre

“But ours has always been a good, safe neighbourhood.”

“Oh, I agree,” my visitor enthused, though his words conveyed a worrisome undertone that this might, could, somehow change at any moment.

“My wife and I have lived here for most of our lives,” I reasoned. “If the neighbourhood has always had this arrangement, why have you not come to us before now?”

“This is the first time I have spoken to you,” the man on the porch allowed, “but on those occasions I have spoken with your wife, she was always most accommodating.”

I turned my sight internally. Cosima did sometimes enjoy an evening walk. Unaccompanied, I thought.

“My wife is away on a business trip,” I admitted.

“She communicated to us that she might be. But the fact remains,” he continued with some urgency, “we need someone, rather badly, to serve as our neighbour’s escort tomorrow night. You seemed to be a good bet.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, we know that you’re a night owl and, being a writer, the hours you keep must be your own.”

“How do you know I’m a night owl?”

“I sometimes have difficulty sleeping. I look out the window. Your upstairs lights are always burning.”

“You can see that from your place?”

“In the autumn and winter, when the trees clear.”

“And how do you know I’m a writer? Do you also have a view of my desk?”

“Not at all, my friend. It’s just that, you know… your good wife is very proud.”

“Not to my face, she isn’t.” I smiled. “If you don’t mind, so that I might have the comfort of equal footing, what exactly is it that you do?”

His expression turned suppositional. “I go knocking.”

“I see. Well, just so we understand each other… Is this to be a one-time thing, or an on-going… obligation?”

Standing out there on my porch, a jacket draped over his arm, its hand sunk deep into his trouser pocket, he shrugged from a place I had clearly never been.

“I believe, when all is said and done, you will consider it something of a privilege.”

I was now too intrigued to refuse him. “Very well then, shall I get my jacket?”

“You aren’t needed tonight. I’m actually on my way back home from tonight’s duty.”

“And you’re not available tomorrow night?”

“That’s not it. I really can’t tell you why. Our neighbour likes variety among the escorts.”

“And accommodations, apparently.”

“Indeed.” The word hovered in the air between us, as if somehow etched in elemental stone.

“Right. Where shall I meet this person—and when?”

My evening caller once again leaned toward me, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “696 Murdock Avenue. It’s the third house from the corner where Locust meets Murdock. You must be there tomorrow night at precisely seven twenty.”

“And if I can’t?” There was no reason I couldn’t, but it seemed worth testing the waters, if only to better define them.

“Then these pages were never written.” I took his strange comment in the manner of spontaneous poetry rather than as a threat.

“No worries,” I assured him. “As you surmised earlier, my time is my own.”

“Now this is very important,” my visitor told me. “When you get to—what is it?”

“696 Murdock Avenue.”

“Flying colours. When you get to 696 Murdock Avenue, you will see there is a gate. Do not pass through the gate. Do not come to the porch. Do not knock or ring the bell. You won’t have to. Our neighbour is very punctual.”

“I’ll be there.” The man looked at me a bit timorously until I added, “You have my word.”

At this he smiled meekly, nodded appreciatively and turned to step down from my porch.

“Hold on a minute,” I called out, opening the door a crack and placing one foot on my porch. “How will I know this person? You haven’t even told me their sex.”

“That’s not how it works.” He smiled over his shoulder, and receded into the night, shrinking and shrinking until he became one with the darkness surrounding the nearest street lamp.

It was true what I’d said about Cosima being away on business. That night, I was alone in the house with Honouria our haughty Scottish fold. I had recently finished the novel I was reading and, needing something new, I went looking through the vertical stacks of the recent incoming on the floor of my library before climbing into bed. A full moon was shining directly through the window; there was no need for electrical light to guide me. As I perused the horizontal spines, I was startled by a sudden sound in the room. At first I saw nothing but then something black flapped out from the alphabetic filings on one of the higher shelves and flailed to the floor. I was fearful at first that a bat had got into the house, having an irrational fear of bats, but it turned out to be a small, young blackbird. Much as with mice, I had no problem with birds in their own element but I could not welcome them indoors. I watched it with apprehension. It seemed fairly docile. After gaining its bearings and shaking out its feathers a bit, it flew towards me! I crossed my arms guardedly over my face… and felt it perch on my pyjama sleeve. I carried it to the window so bright with lunar light and found another bird like it stationed on the sill. I unlatched the window and opened it outward, at which point the bird on my sleeve hopped outside, joining its mate. I closed the window but remained there watching as the two of them tilted their heads, their black eyes sparking in mysterious awareness of one another, a prelude to their taking off together into the night.

I still hadn’t settled on a new novel to read. To be honest, I was feeling a bit too distracted to choose wisely, so I brought to bed my trusty Dream Dictionary , a very old volume that smelled of tea and had originated from China. It was in its acid-browned pages that I learned that dreaming of a blackbird in your house signifies a lack of motivation and lingering concerns that one isn’t realizing their fullest potential—or it may alternately represent feelings of jealousy, lust or temptation. I went to sleep that night wondering why I didn’t find more blackbirds in the rooms of my house.

At 7:19 the following evening, I was keeping my word, standing on the sidewalk outside the house at 696 Murdock Avenue. There was a chill out, so I had worn my wool-lined jacket to the appointment. No active rain or drizzle, but the evening air around me twinkled wetly as though a rain cloud had descended to ground level.

There was nothing at all auspicious about the residence. Frankly, it was a bit on the dumpy side. I looked at my watch and counted the seconds.

At exactly 7:20, its front door popped open—with almost supernatural alacrity. It did so silently; had it made a sound, I imagine it would have been a hydraulic hiss, like the sound a bus makes when it drops off a passenger. Framed inside the doorway, silhouetted against a bright-yellow interior wall, was a squat black figure. For a moment I thought the shape might be that of the mysterious neighbour’s baggage, but then it leapt forward—almost merrily, half walking and half hopping the way a child might toward a beloved uncle. The closer this figure came to me, the better I could see that it was adorned in a woollen, hooded mackintosh, carrying a small overnight bag and what appeared to be a violin case in unseen hands.

I had been strongly forewarned not to pass through the gate; but, seeing my charge’s hands full of belongings, I felt obliged to open it, so this strange, migratory creature could pass through without inconvenience. I couldn’t see a face, well-recessed inside the hood as it was, but as the figure waddled to a standstill beside me on the sidewalk, I intuited that the truth underlying this concealment had to be much older than I. Indeed, I felt an almost supernatural intuition that here was someone infinitely old, vulnerable and precious, whose security during this passage was both my great responsibility and my honour. I volunteered to carry the overnight bag and did so, finding it somewhat heavier than its size indicated, but under no circumstances would the violin case be relinquished. I had been given no indication of our destination, so I trailed behind their gnomic trailblazing—tailgating, really—like a guardian shadow.