Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Terror

“I wish you a good day,” said the man who had touched his cap, then, after the slightest pause, he added, “Sir.” His voice was strangely accented, but there was no note of mockery in his unassuming tone.

Maurice looked hard at him, trying to read his expression, but the man’s face was in shadow, and he was too far away. There was a similarity in the posture of the five people, and Maurice was sure that they were a family. They all had a similar shape and stance. The woman pulling the cart was older than the other female, and he guessed she was the wife of the man who had addressed him, who had the air of a paterfamilias. The other three appeared to be in their late teens.

Their stillness (they remained static as waxworks) and their dumb silence as he stared at them, quickly got on Maurice’s frazzled nerves.

“They’re wondering what I’m doing here,” he thought. “I must appear very odd to them. It’s obvious why they’re here; they’re scavenging, but what the hell can they hope to find that’s worth taking away? Can people be so desperate, that they have to search in this foul place for the battered, useless things that others have thrown away?”

And; “yes,” he thought, “they do look that abject.”

Tired of standing pointlessly in silence, Maurice decided to return to his car. He set off in a line wide of the right of the group who, to his surprise, began themselves to move. They went to their cart and began sorting through its contents.

“Sir,” called the man. “Would you be at all interested in anything we’ve got here? Come and see. We’ve a few choice articles.” He held some object up. “Look at this. This is for you, sir, don’t you think? This is something you should have.”

Maurice glanced across, and shook his head. He couldn’t make out what the man had in his hand, and, for some reason, he was glad of that. “I have to go,” he called, and quickened his stride.

“Give us a chance sir,” the man pleaded, in his odd accent. “Just look what we’ve got here. You’ll curse yourself, if you don’t.”

“That he will,” called a female voice, in a kind of soft wailing drawl. “You’ll curse yourself later sir.”

Maurice hurried on, almost at a run. They continued to call after him, but he couldn’t hear what they said. He looked back a couple of times. They seemed to be following him, but he was well ahead of them, and the distance was widening.

The porta-cabin was shut when he reached it. He looked at his watch. It was almost seven, hours later than he thought! Where had the time gone?

He didn’t look at the line of trees as he passed, but something in them called out its chattering, scolding cry.

He drove home along the empty back lanes slowly and furtively, glancing in his rear view mirror every few moments.

Maurice’s wife was a hypochondriac. In the three years of their marriage she had built up an impressive collection of pills and potions for all her ills, real and imagined. They filled two drawers of a medium-sized chest in the bathroom. She kept alphabetical lists of them, stating what each one was good for.

Next morning, after a troubled night, Maurice browsed through the lists, selected four bottles, and gulped down a possibly dangerous mix of medication. He checked his post (more confirmation from the bank of what he already knew; he was on the brink of bankruptcy) then went to see if he had been faxed any better news. He found more of the same.

He sat for a while in the cold grey computer-dominated room he used as an office, listening to a CD of natural and electronic sounds his wife had bought him to help him relax after he had told her they were going broke. She had left him three weeks later.

The pills started to work, and he fell into a deep sleep. The doorbell rang twice before he was even half awake.

He got to his feet too quickly. The room wobbled under him. His eyes wouldn’t focus, and his mouth tasted and felt like the inside of a carpet sweeper. The bell rang again. Whoever it was, was in a bloody hurry! He glanced at himself in a mirror as he passed along the hall, and hated what he saw.

The front door was a fancy affair with beaded glass panels, and lots of expensive brass fittings. He had seen one like it on a backdrop representing the Ugly Sisters’ house in a pantomime version of Cinderella at the Buxton Opera House. It represented the taste of the house’s previous occupant. What he liked about it was that you could get a good idea who was on your front step through the glass without being seen and, if expedient, could take evasive action. He was finding he had to do that more often recently.

This time however, his caller was standing well back, and was just a thin blur.

As soon as he opened the door a man stepped off the drive and held a card up in Maurice’s face. The card was a dirty, eggy yellow and bore a tiny photograph of someone who may have been the person holding it. It was creased in a hundred places, as though its owner had used it to practise origami. Maurice didn’t even try to read what was printed on it.

“I’ve been unemployed,” the man on the step said, “and I’m trying to do myself a bit of good. Trying to help myself.” He had a pallid, pinched boy’s face, with small features and a gap between his eyes so wide it seemed to be an effort for him to see straight. His head kept drifting evasively round from side to side. He looked in need of a lot of square meals. He could have been any age between fifteen and fifty. He poked the card down into his shirt pocket and started to open a cheap, bulging plastic sports bag.

“No thanks,” said Maurice, “I never buy anything at the door.” He began to push the door shut.

“You never do?” echoed the man in a bewildered tone. “But I’m trying to keep myself, I’m notjust sitting back. It’s to make a living.”

Maurice was about to say something like, “That’s highly commendable, but no thank you,” when he realized that the man had an unusual accent; one that he had heard before; yesterday, in fact! The pills had blurred his mind, or he would have noticed it at once. He looked keenly at the man and, yes! he could have been one of the people he had seen scavenging at the tip. He couldn’t be sure, but he had the stance, the pleading, praying voice. He had opened the zip along the top of the bag and was pulling things out – a child’s shoe, a partly melted and twisted comb, a two-foot length of hose-pipe, a battered, lidless coffee jug, a tangle of used bandage . . .

“Is any of this any use to you?” the man asked, like a child or a simpleton, totally unaware of the inappropriateness of his words and actions. He spread the bandage out along his arm, as though it were particularly worthy of attention.

Maurice looked at the dirty, bloodstained strip of muslin, and hoped that he was asleep and dreaming. He placed a hand over the sports bag to stop the emergence of more items. “You couldn’t have followed me here,” he said. “No one did; I watched the road. How did you find me?”

“Were you lost?” the man asked, puzzled. He didn’t seem to be joking.

The pointless, silly question enraged Maurice. He growled something like “Get out!” and was about to slam the door shut with his foot when the man slid his thin fingers round inside the doorframe.

Maurice strode onto the step. He grabbed the intruder’s wrist, and hauled him to the front gate. The man’s loose skin slid back alarmingly along his almost fleshless bones. He put up no resistance. He was surprisingly lightweight. He made sad, bleating sounds. He was searching automatically in his bag with his free hand. As Maurice forced the man out onto the pavement, he was aware that something was pushed into his jacket pocket. He gave the man a final shove on the back, to get him on his way, and marched back into his house.