Stephen King: Six Scary Stories

Then a hand floated – or reached – towards me.

I screamed, losing precious air in the bubbles. I made for the surface, but something grabbed me by the ankle. In blind panic I kicked hard, hitting a round, soft thing, which buckled and gave against my heel. I kicked again and felt the grip slacken on my foot, then by some miracle I broke free.

I don’t know how I got back to the tree root, I don’t know how I didn’t drown from fear; it must have been the training kicking in. I ran back to the guest house, crying my eyes out, calling to Mrs Jakovleva. There was no answer. I sprinted to my room and, crazily, locked the door behind me. It was only when I sat on the bed, still hyperventilating, that I saw there was a mass of reeds wound round my ankle, the one I thought had been grabbed.

And so now I’m really confused, Suse, I don’t know what to think. It must have been reeds, dragging me under. It can’t have been anything else. It can’t have been the body I saw. The dead are dead, aren’t they? They don’t come back.

I wish to God I knew where Mrs Jakovleva was. I wish it were already tomorrow and I was on that train.

From: porpoise1swimit@gmail.com

To: barflysuse@gmail.com

Date: 31 May 2015, 21:18

Dear God, Suse, be online, please be reading this, please be online.

You’ve got to call the Foreign Office, call 999, anything, please, you’ve got to send somebody to help me.

Mrs Jakovleva’s dead. I thought I heard footsteps on the stairs. I thought it was her. I called for her, followed the muddy trail of prints to the top of the guest house where her room is.

The door was half open.

I had a really bad feeling, Suse, I had a bad feeling something had happened to her. I shouted and bashed on the door. Inside her bed was made up. Bottles of perfume laid out neatly on a linen doily covering the bedside table. Beside it was another closed door. Her bathroom door.

And I just knew she was in there.

I pushed it open and she was lying at the bottom of the bath, her eyes wide open. Drowned. Her clothes were the same ones she had on yesterday, which means she has been here, under the water, all that time. Wisps of grey hair floating round her face like reeds.

There was a phone on her dressing table. I ran to it, picked it up, but there was no dialling tone. So I’m going to try and get help in the town, I’m going there now.

They came for her, Suse, the people in the lake, I woke them up and they found her, and now I think they’re going to come for me.

Please God, get hold of the Foreign Office, Suse, tell them I’m here. Please send the police to Vaiduoklis. Please help me.

From: brian.heddler@ukforeignoffice.gov

To: Elaine.Griffiths@ukforeignoffice.gov

Date: 10 June 2015, 11:14

Subject: CONFIDENTIAL

Elaine,

The investigation into the death of Christine Miller is ongoing, but having now visited the reservoir and spoken to local police myself, I wanted to bring you up to speed.

There is a need to be sensitive with this case, as the family remain convinced she was murdered.

The landlady, Asta Jakovleva, was a widow with no children, and her business was doing badly. The most likely scenario, police believe, is that she committed suicide by drowning. According to medical records, she had a history of depression.

The local superintendent tells me a fingerprint search of Asta Jakovleva’s bedroom suggests Christine Miller must have discovered the body and tried to raise the alarm. In panic she then fled the premises, leaving the door open in her haste. It was dark at this time and the landscape unfamiliar to Ms Miller, who in her fright seems to have taken the path to the reservoir, rather than the one into town. Both are through woodland areas of fir, and not impossible to confuse.

Ms Miller’s body was found in the lake, fully clothed and tangled in reeds. Markings on the banks show she had clearly tried to claw her way out of the muddy sides of the reservoir after falling in, but there were no signs of violence to indicate forcible drowning. Like so many tragic cases of people swimming in open water each year, Ms Miller became caught up in reeds and drowned. It was night, she was frightened, and out of her wetsuit; even her training as an experienced wild swimmer was unable to save her. I hope in time the family will be able to accept this.

There is one anomaly in the case. Muddy footprints have been found throughout the house, as if somebody ran from room to room. The owner of the footprints could conceivably have been an intruder, but the police are confident that these must have belonged to Ms Miller who perhaps ran in panic through the property, looking for a working telephone. The footprints eventually lead to the front door.

Also, I finally have an explanation for our difficulty at the Foreign Office in locating the place from Christine Miller’s friend’s description. ‘Vaiduoklis’ is in fact a local nickname for the village, not its actual name. It is the Lithuanian word for ‘ghost’ and seems to refer to the original village, sunk in the reservoir.

I will of course keep you updated on further developments.

Regards,

Brian

Manuela is a journalist and presenter for BBC World Service and a former Indonesia correspondent for the Financial Times.

Inspiration for her story, Eau-de-Eric , came after she gave up smoking and found she could smell properly again. At the time she was working on a radio item about why smell is the most powerful of all five senses in conjuring memories and emotions.

Manuela lives in London with her two children and their large collection of soft toys, and has excellent relations with all of them. In 2015 she was placed second in an Ireland-based short story writing competition

‘I’ve been reading everything by Stephen King since my teens but the novel that has haunted me the longest is Dolores Claiborne. It only occurred to me after submitting my story to The Bazaar of Bad Dreams Hodder-Guardian competition that Eau-de-Eric also involves a mother’s troubled relationship with her daughter. Coincidence? Probably not.’

It was just another teddy, picked up for 99p at a local charity shop, until Ellie decided to name him Eric, after her dead father. She named all her soft toys but told her mother this one was special because it was big and hairy like Daddy had been.

‘But Daddy didn’t have black eyes, sweetie,’ Kathy said as she tucked Ellie into bed. ‘His eyes were blue.’

Ellie rubbed Eric’s stitched nose against her own as she snuggled under the duvet. ‘I know, but he smells like Daddy,’ she said.

Kathy hadn’t been able to resist a quick sniff herself, even though she didn’t have particularly fond memories of her late husband. Ellie was right, there was something about the smell. A whiff of Eric’s old aftershave buried deep in the teddy’s matted fur. Kathy recognised the brand. It was one she’d managed to avoid ever since Eric had died, except for that one time when a shop attendant had sprayed it at her in a department store, part of some aggressive sales pitch. Kathy had recoiled but it had been too late. The smell had clung to her hair and clothes for the rest of the day as if the ghost of Eric – the real Eric – was intent on sticking around.

‘How about Mummy puts Eric through the wash?’ Kathy said.

Ellie shook her head, squeezing the teddy to her face. Kathy tugged and cajoled but Ellie started crying, her eyes squeezed shut as she tucked her chin into her neck, hushed tears coursing over her flushed cheeks. That was often the way with Ellie; her anger was silent, tantrums were not her style. Kathy found it unnerving, more so since her father Eric’s death.