A Book of Horrors Page 8

  How do you know if you’ve got them? I mean, an early sign.

  Like ghost droppings? Hugh Laurie suggested.

  The audience laughed.

  ‘Let me turn off that fucking radio,’ Hugh said. And he did.

  Following him into the bedroom, Gary didn’t say anything but looked down at his hand. The chocolate chips had melted over his fingers. He lifted the cookie and popped it into his mouth, licking the fingers one by one as he watched Hugh, searching his friend’s face.

  At last Gary said, ‘You didn’t— didn’t have a fight, did you?’

  ‘A fight?’

  ‘You know … a difference of opinion, let’s say.’ He pointed at the bedclothes.

  ‘You’re asking me if we had an argument over sex?’

  ‘Well, not exac—’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Gaz.’

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, Gary!’

  Gary didn’t say anything.

  They stood like that in silence for what felt like an age.

  Then Hugh said, ‘Where is she, Gaz?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s like she’s just gone’ – and Hugh snapped his fingers – ‘poof!’

  Gary didn’t comment. Well, Hugh reasoned, what could he comment? Instead, he just stared at the sheets. Then he stepped out into the hallway and picked up the phone.

  VI

  ‘Here we all are again,’ Frank said when Hugh opened the door. ‘Hey, Gary,’ he said as he stepped into the hallway, hat in hand.

  ‘You’re having quite a day of it,’ Gary said.

  Frank shrugged. ‘We don’t usually bother with missing person reports until twenty-four hours have gone by but … under these circumstances,’ he added. Hugh refrained from asking exactly how these circumstances differed from any other missing person report, but he reasoned that coming across as a smart-ass probably wouldn’t be constructive.

  He had known Frank and his brother Gordy for most of his life – Gordy was a District Detective Supervisor over in Boston – and he was all too well aware they were serious about their jobs … perhaps more particularly Frank, despite the fact that Tuboise was a far cry from Boston.

  Gary had called home and asked Sarah to come round. She was in the kitchen now, making coffee, and toast with peanut butter and raspberry jelly. The last thing Hugh wanted to do was eat, but he knew he should build up some energy. He felt totally exhausted.

  ‘This is just a formality,’ Frank said. His face was tight and his mouth tight-shut. When he talked to Hugh, he stared into Hugh’s eyes, reading every response and every answer. ‘You ask me, we’re wasting our time.’ He smiled and rolled his eyes. ‘Most often,’ he added, lowering his voice and glancing at the door that Sarah had just peered around, ‘they’ve just had a bit of a mood and gone walkabout. She might even be back before I’ve finished my report.’

  ‘She’s never just walked out like this,’ Hugh said.

  ‘Sometimes wives behave out of character,’ Gary said softly.

  The Sheriff nodded. ‘Okay, your wife’s age, Hugh?’

  ‘Forty-six.’

  ‘And her full name?’

  ‘Angela Rose.’

  ‘Okay, so tell me about the man you say you saw in your room?’

  ‘Nothing much to say really. We—’

  ‘I saw him, too,’ Gary said, resuming his place in the chair by the piano.

  ‘In the same room?’ Frank jerked his head upwards. ‘The front bedroom?’

  ‘I thought it was Hugh,’ Gary said. ‘He stepped back when he saw me.’

  ‘And this wasn’t you, Hugh?’

  ‘No, we – Angie and me – we were coming back from Boston. Like I told you before.’

  ‘And you have an alarm?’

  ‘Yes, we do.’

  ‘Yes. I thought I’d seen a keypad in the kitchen.’ Frank wrote some more and then looked up in the middle of a sentence.

  ‘Yeah?’

  Frank frowned. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘The keypad in the kitchen?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve seen it.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘When did I see the keypad?’

  ‘Mm hmm.’

  ‘Some other time, I guess.’

  Hugh was quiet.

  ‘That a problem?’

  ‘It’s not a problem.’

  Frank waved his hands around, palms up. ‘It’s just you make it sound like it’s—’

  ‘It’s not a problem, Frank. I just don’t recall you ever being in the kitchen is all.’

  The Sheriff gave a little laugh and looked at Gary.

  Gary gave a little laugh in response and looked at Hugh.

  Hugh gave a little laugh and jiggled his head from side to side.

  ‘Have you had any trouble with it?’

  ‘With the alarm?’ When Frank nodded, Hugh said, ‘No, no trouble at all. A few power cuts, but they have a seventy-two-hour battery back-up. We had to call them once for the whole system to be reset, but no problems as such.’

  ‘It didn’t go off, though. I mean, when you saw the person when you got in and—’ He turned to Gary. ‘—when you saw him this morning. Is that correct?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re asking me, Frank.’

  ‘I’m saying, Gary, that the alarm was not going off when you saw Hugh here – sorry, when you thought you saw Hugh – in his bedroom this morning. Is that correct?’

  Gary looked at Hugh. Returning his attention to the Sheriff, he said, ‘Yes, that’s correct.’

  ‘Correct that the alarm was not going off?’

  ‘Yes. There was no alarm.’

  ‘And no alarm when we got back,’ Hugh said.

  ‘And the alarm had been activated while you were out?’

  ‘Yes. All the time we were away, in fact.’

  ‘So it would also have been activated when Gary saw this person in your bedroom?’

  ‘Yes, it was the same time. Well, the same session … if that’s what they call it.’

  ‘But you haven’t had any problems with the alarm? It’s a SuperSafe, I believe, yes?’

  ‘Yes, SuperSafe. They’re in Boston.’

  ‘Yes, we’re familiar with them.’

  ‘“Familiar with them” as in you’ve had problems with them before?’

  ‘No, no problems.’ Frank shrugged. ‘We just know about them.’ ‘Funny thing, though,’ Hugh said.

  Frank shifted his attention from one man to the other and then back again. He pursed his lips. ‘Okay, I think that’s about it for now. Let’s see if Angie turns up and then take it from there.’

  The Sheriff closed his notebook and slipped the pen into his pocket. ‘Okay, Frank. We’ll leave it at that for now.’ He slapped Frank on the shoulder. ‘You’ll see her again,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  Hugh and Gary stood at the door until the cruiser had disappeared. Closing the door, Hugh said, ‘That was an odd thing for him to say.’

  ‘Telling you not to worry? I don’t think—’

  ‘No, saying I’d see Angie again.’

  ‘Well, you will.’

  ‘But where is she, Gaz?’

  VII

  Gary wanted Hugh to go round to their place but Hugh said no. ‘I want to be here when she comes back.’

  Sarah said she understood that. But there was nothing else they could do for him, she explained. They would come and stay here with him, Sarah said, but they were having the principal and his wife around for dinner – Gary said they could cancel it (though Hugh didn’t feel Sarah’s look indicated that was a good idea), but Hugh wouldn’t have any of it.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ he told them at the door, with the first telltale sign of a winter evening draining the light from the sky. In the park across the street, a sea fog was spindling misty fingers amidst the tree branches.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  The quick glance between Hugh’s friend
s would have been lost on anyone else, but not Hugh. It was the kind of exchange you only ever see between people who are totally comfortable and have known each other for many years. Perhaps Sarah gave the most imperceptible of nods and perhaps she did not, but she turned around, shrugged on her coat and, removing the car keys from her pocket, announced that she would get the car started.

  ‘Okay,’ Gary said. He turned to face Hugh and scanned his friend’s face. ‘You okay?’

  Hugh nodded. ‘I already said.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Gary’s eyes narrowed as though physically piercing the protective barrier that Hugh had erected. The car engine started with a loud clunk and then quickly settled into a gentle idle.

  As he watched it go, listening to the sound of the tyres on the gravel, Hugh felt a momentary panic. He wanted to run after them and tell them he had changed his mind … that yes, he would like them to stay: would like them to make it all okay again and laugh about things. Maybe even produce Angie, who had just ‘had a turn’ as Hugh’s mother had liked to say way back when.

  He stayed his ground, but he did see the expression of profound sadness on Gary’s face. But it looked as though Sarah was saying something to cheer up her husband, because her face was smiling, bathed in the greenish glow of the dashboard instruments. With the car already being consumed by the fog, Hugh turned to the house and with a heavy heart took the first step back.

  The silence that washed around him as he closed the door and threw the deadbolt was profound – in fact, it was as though he had been suddenly struck deaf. So when the telephone rang, the noise was shrill and almost physical.

  Grimacing and praying for it to cease, Hugh lurched unevenly into the sitting room. Perhaps this was Angie, calling to explain what had happened and where she was. I’m afraid I just needed to get away for a while, sweetie, he imagined her voice saying to him through the earpiece as he lifted it clear of the cradle and said, ‘Hello?’

  At first, the crackle seemed to be all there was until a man’s voice said, ‘Mr Ritter?’

  It sounded a bit like Gary and for the most fleeting of seconds, Hugh thought perhaps Gary and Sarah had got back home to find Angie sitting on their stoop. But, no, they wouldn’t be home yet – they lived barely a mile away, but they had been gone only a couple of minutes. He turned around quickly – perhaps rather too quickly – just in time to see someone standing outside the high windows of the sitting room.

  Just as he wondered what they were doing talking on a telephone out there – with the fog now thickening against the glass to such a degree that the hedge was hard to make out – he realised that it was his own reflection. ‘Yes,’ he said at last, wondering if the fog were affecting the lines in some way, so as to make the voice sound strangely speeded up and slowed down at the same time.

  ‘Mr Ritter?’ the voice said again.

  ‘Yes, this is Hugh Ritter.’

  ‘Did you say goodbye to your friends, Mr Ritter?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘And the Sheriff? You say goodbye to him?’

  ‘Who is—?’

  ‘Oh, we are multitudes, Mr Ritter – or may I call you Hugh?’ the Sheriff’s voice intoned lazily. ‘First we are this,’ Angie’s voice added, ‘and then we are that,’ Gary’s voice continued, ‘and then we are someone or something completely different.’ The last one was Sarah Aaronson, who went on to say, in a squawky voice that belonged to Maude Angstrom and was filled with good-natured chuckles, ‘And we’re gonna have ourselves some fun. After all, ain’t like you’re gonna be going anyplace.’

  The line went dead.

  ‘Hello?’

  The line remained dead.

  He had always wondered how he would cope in such a situation, in a moment of profound and senseless chaos and confusion. Okay, what had always figured in his mind was Angie dying on him. But he reasoned that in such a situation he would have time to acclimatise. And as horrific as the scenario might be, it would make sense. The events of the day he had just lived through made no sense at all.

  Hugh moved the handset away from his ear and looked at it accusingly, immediately annoyed with himself for descending so quickly into cliché. Whatever was the point of looking at the handset? There wasn’t a point. The handset’s countenance could offer no explanation for the caller ringing off – or was it callers? Could all those voices have been the one person? If so, it was one hell of a trick. But maybe he/they hadn’t rung off. Perhaps he had simply been cut off. That made much more sense, particularly with the fog and all.

  Hugh looked up at the window and saw his reflection standing watching him. Was it his imagination or did the window-Hugh’s hand – the one holding the telephone – continue to move after the real Hugh had kept his own hand stationary?

  Preposterous.

  ‘Preposterous,’ Hugh exclaimed.

  He looked back at the handset and immediately pressed *69. A rather informal-sounding woman’s voice told him that a caller had dialled in at 7:02 p.m. The only problem was that the number she gave was—

  ‘That’s my number,’ Hugh said. ‘How can I be calling myself on my number?’

  He hit *69 again. The line was busy. He was about to ask aloud how it could ever be busy when he realised that the repeated beep-tone did not signify that the person at that number was already dealing with a call. Rather, it informed him that someone else had picked up one of the other handsets somewhere in the house.

  He pressed the button to get the dial tone and said ‘Hello?’

  Maybe it was the wind buffeting the eaves of the house and exploring the chimneys, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he could hear breathing – not the in-out, in-out sigh of a sleeper but the cautious surveillance of a watcher.

  ‘Hello? Is someone there?’

  The phone clicked in his ear and almost immediately began to ring.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mr Ritter?’

  ‘What the hell do you want?’

  The caller – a man – sounded genuinely surprised. ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘Did you just call? A few minutes ago?’

  There was a short silence that suggested the caller was shaking his head, though, to be safe, he said, ‘No. I called just now.’

  ‘For the first time?’

  ‘Yes, for the first time.’

  Hugh waited for a few seconds to regain his composure and then said, ‘I’m so sorry for that outburst. It’s my wife. It’s been—’

  ‘It’s about your wife I’m calling, Mr Ritter.’

  ‘Do you know where she is?’

  ‘It’s not too late is it, Mr Ritter? To call you, I mean?’

  ‘What? Oh, no … no, it’s not too late. You said—’

  ‘This is Shelley Mitford, with the Sheriff’s office here in Tuboise? The Sheriff asked me to give you a call.’

  ‘About my wife?’ Who the hell is Shelley Mitford? Hugh thought. He had never heard of him. ‘Do you—?’

  ‘It’s about the alarm, sir.’

  ‘The alarm?’

  ‘We’ve been in touch with the people at SuperSafe – the alarm people?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And the Sheriff needs me to ask you if it’s possible that you didn’t set the alarm before you went out today.’

  ‘Didn’t set the alarm?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, it’s always possible that I might forget but— No – when Angie and I—’ Hugh suddenly felt like sitting down and weeping, ‘—when we got back home, Angie cancelled the alarm code as we walked into the house.’

  There was a pause. ‘Who else knows the code, sir?’

  ‘Who else knows the code?’ Hugh was beginning to feel like a parrot. ‘Gary … Gary Aaronson. He was round here with the Sheriff this afternoon – and I suppose that means Sarah will know it, too. Er …’

  ‘Sarah, sir?’

  ‘Sarah Aaronson. That’s – I mean “she’s” – Gary’s wife.’

  ‘Anyone else, s
ir?’

  Hugh thought for a minute, then said, ‘I think maybe Angie’s friend.’

  ‘And she is?’

  ‘Florence. Florence Gilliard.’

  ‘Could you spell that for me, sir?’

  Hugh spelled it out.

  ‘And she lives locally?’

  Not much point in her having a fucking key if she didn’t live locally, Hugh thought. ‘Yes,’ he said, and he gave the address.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Before you ring off—’

  ‘Yes sir?’

  ‘What did they say? The alarm people, I mean. You said you’d been in contact with them?’

  ‘They said it wasn’t possible for someone to be moving around inside the house while the alarm was active.’

  Hugh waited for more but there wasn’t any.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Hugh asked.

  ‘It means that someone who knew the alarm code was in the house or—’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Or you’ve made a mistake in one or more parts of your story.’

  ‘A mistake?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You mean “or I lied”.’

  ‘I didn’t—’

  ‘That’s what you meant, isn’t it?’

  ‘We have to keep all options open, sir.’ After a few more seconds, the policeman added, ‘You might even have a poltergeist.’ He coughed and cleared his throat, making a noise that sounded like goeswithseeth and Hugh said, ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’

  ‘Sir? I said we have to keep all—’

  ‘No, after that.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything after that, sir.’

  The fog must have affected the phone lines because it sounded as though, just for a few moments, the man was stifling amusement.

  ‘Have a good night, sir.’

  Hugh hung up.

  He went out to the kitchen and started to key in the alarm code, but then thought better of it. What if Angie came back home? She would have her key – wouldn’t she? Hugh went to the little rack of hooks and checked. Her house key was not there … but, of course, that didn’t mean anything.

  Ghosts with teeth, a voice said at the back of Hugh’s head. That’s what he said, the guy on the phone. Ghosts with teeth.

  VIII