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

“What about Brid?”

“You know! Our little Brid,” she keened. “I hate you. I hate you and your family, John Spence. Little Brid was the only good thing to come from you.” Spittle landed on Magnus’s face. “You’re a damn liar. You said she wasn’t real because she came from me. That she was bound for Maw. She was just a baby, and I let you do it.”

“Do what?”

“You know,” she wept, “you know.”

Magnus did know. John Spence was a determined man.

Beneath the wind and waves there was the sound of their breathing and a click.

The container door was open.

“Will you kiss me, John?” Mairi’s voice was full of self-loathing. “Will you love me, like I love you?”

Magnus leant down. Her lips were dry and withered. Her breath was sour. Her fingers fluttered around his face.

He picked her up. She was like dry kindling in his arms. The old woman’s eyes were paler than he’d ever seen them. She rested her head against his chest and sighed.

She needed to be airlifted off the island to a hospital. How long would it be before the storms cleared and they could radio for help? He knew Mairi wouldn’t want that. She wouldn’t want to leave, not for anything.

The tide was closing in, faster than he’d ever seen, and another weather front directly behind it. Scud clouds were just the messenger. They hid the vast heights of the thunderhead above them. The air crackled with energy and the wind rose. Lightning discharged from cloud to cloud, not as a zigzag but a vein. The closing rumbling became a crack. Rain poured through.

Mairi wasn’t a fallen goddess or an elemental trapped in flesh. She was an addled old woman, touched in the head. It didn’t matter though. Maw had sent the container and now the tide was coming in.

So, this.

I see him. He sees me. Thinking these black-bead eyes unknowing, he gets an ape’s grin back from the stack of cuddly toys in the bin next to the checkout at Duty Free. He fans and counts the last of his Euros, joke money to him that looks like it came with a game of Monopoly.

Boarding pass?

Certainly.

He thinks the Dutch speak better English than he does. Always felt his Aussie drawl embarrassing. Damn thing still made him self-conscious several degrees and doctorates later, called upon to talk at international conferences on matters that save lives. Still, to him, the snarl of sheep dip and hats with dangling corks, and he hates it.

Screwy-angled, I scrutinise him back.

Above his ears I see lines each side made by the arms of glasses he’s not wearing. Atop, blond beach-bum waves now fading to the colour of his scalp. Aeons since he felt sand between his toes. House brick jaw he got from his dad. The twinkling eyes, his ma. Sky-coloured.

He stares down at me with something between curiosity and incipient affection.

I recognise that look.

I’ve watched it day in, day out, in the myriad glances that slide over me. The micro-glimmer of tears that accompany flashbacks to hearth and home.

Most turn away, not wanting to acknowledge that inner surge of sentimentality. Not him. He lets the guilt and separation anxiety rise in his chest and I feel in my complete-lack-of-bones his pang for the child he left behind.

The one he will see at the end of his journey. Soon, but not soon enough.

The one he’ll sweep up in his arms. No weightier than a toy herself. Who snores now somewhere in her suburban Melbourne dreamsleep. Yet he cannot hear that. He is robbed of it, that moment, that silly, cherished everyday nothing as the flight announcements drone.

His wife and nipper, waiting for Dad to return, miss him with an indescribable ache. This is the real currency of the airport—longing.

And so. I am here to be touched, loved, adored. Made for it, and he knows it. I am the salve to the pang he feels in his heart—and I have been waiting.

He touches my plastic ear.

Air from his nostrils.

I amuse him. Hey. No problem with that.

I’m not a serious figure. My lips are too big. My mouth sticks out like an over-size bagel. I’m covered in black fur. My legs are short. Wouldn’t stop a pig in a passage. Toes like fingers and thumbs. My arms reach way below my knees. I wear a T-shirt with the name of the city we’re in and a logo of a tulip. I’ve got a comical, idiotic expression. My grin mirroring the one he dreams of seeing on his daughter’s face.

He squeezes my tummy with his thumbs. Turns me over. Examines my behind.

(Ignominious, to say the least. Come on, people! Animal rights and shit!)

Made in China, he reads.

(Okay. Nobody’s perfect.)

Anyway, he loves me, or knows someone who will.

So, this.

I’m face down on the counter and the tag on my ankle gets scanned. Ping .

Have a nice day, sir, and have a pleasant flight.

Thank you.

He lifts me up like he lifted her as a babe. A trophy, a triumph.

My face inches from his. What is he? Thirty-five, forty max. He laughs again, and though it’s still soundless, it judders his whole frame in a way that’s appealing.

Nice person. Good person. Come on. His kid. Gimme a break.

And here I go, under his arm now—parallel to the Famous Grouse, the overpriced chocolates, bagged and dangling from his other hand. His elbow tight across my abdomen, reassuring, protective. I feel secure.

Now he’s sitting on a plastic bench, waiting for his gate to be called. Props yours truly beside him, righting me up when I droop. Some Asiatic fool chuckles. The fool would droop too if he had my legs—bandy and boneless. But I try not to get bitter. (I have a permanent fucking smile painted on, so that helps.)

The board flutters like so many call girls’ eyelashes. The gate and flight number appear.

He gathers his bags. He gathers me. Flat of his hand splayed against my back, my face pressed to his chest, mashed to the buttons of his Mambo shirt, loose for travelling in, more him than the suits the conference required.

We ride the travelator. Yippee.

Children giggle. My one eye that’s not mashed into Mambo psychedelic colours sees them wave and pull faces. Fuck them. We’re on our way.

I’m feeling a sense of anticipation, of excitement. A new owner and a new experience ahead. Got to be good news, when you’ve been in a Special Offer bin with a lumpy giraffe and a pink kangaroo for weeks on end. (Glad to see the back of that fucking giraffe, let me tell you.)

First impressions? He seems an okay guy.

I think we’ll get along. Not that I’m hard to get along with. I’m adaptable. Hey, I take the path of least resistance. What can I say? It’s who I am.

All right, I get attached. I know I shouldn’t. I know because it always ends in tears. I can’t fucking help it.

As we enter the airplane the flight attendant, orange tan and grinning (because she got fucked raw the night before) pretends to talk to me. Oh, so funny. Never heard that before. Says she hopes I’ll enjoy the flight. My guy laughs out loud, like it’s comic genius. He goes down in my estimation a tad.

Whoa! I think for a horrible moment I’m going up there with the hand luggage. No fucking way. What is this, some “Premature Burial” fucking bullshit?

Phew! The suitcase and the raincoat go up, but not this simian. Praise the Lord! I don’t know if my man is afraid of damaging me before I even reach his precious daughter, but whatever. I’m on his lap like a baby as he leafs through the in-flight magazine.

On board, the safety demonstration. The whole Marcel Marceau.