A Book of Horrors Read online

  ‘Is that the door?’

  Gary Aaronson dropped his jacket onto the kitchen table and pocketed the house keys. ‘What time did you tell them?’

  ‘Eight,’ Sarah shouted. ‘The fire’s not even lit.’

  Gary reached the front door. Through the frosted glass he could see only one figure and it looked to be too tall for the principal. ‘Won’t take me a minute,’ he shouted to Sarah. The figure on the step was wreathed in shadow and for a moment Gary couldn’t make it out, though it looked familiar.

  ‘Hurry up and close the—’ Sarah started as she came up behind her husband. And then, ‘Oh.’

  The figure stepped forward, smiling.

  ‘Did you forget something?’ Gary asked the Sheriff.

  ‘Have you found her?’ Sarah interjected.

  ‘Let’s close the door, shall we,’ the Sheriff said and, as he stepped into the house, the screen door clattered to and the inner door slowly closed itself.

  ‘How … how do you do that?’ Gary asked.

  ‘Let’s talk about poltergeists,’ Frank Gozinsky said. And when he turned around, Gary saw that there were other people standing with the Sheriff, but slightly to one side, peeping cheerfully around Frank’s shoulders as though to surprise an infant. One by one they sidled out into full view. It looked as though they had come to do some kind of repair work, for they carried all manner of tools – saws, hammers and drills, plus coils of twine.

  ‘Gary?’ Sara said.

  Gary felt an almost indescribable urge to turn and flee … to get out of the house, back into the wind and rain. But this feeling did not translate to his face or his arms and legs. There was a calm about his exterior that was not replicated inside, where his stomach churned and his heart thudded like a racehorse running the final straight.

  The radio came on and a voice said, Hello Gary and Sarah. Welcome to Halloween. Your guests are here to entertain you. Say hello.

  Gary felt himself smiling as he gave a little wave. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sarah do the same and he whimpered, ‘Sarah,’ but he didn’t think she had heard him. There were now six people standing between them and the door.

  Gary turned fully to look at Sarah and she turned to look at him. She mouthed his name, but no sounds emerged. Was that a tear just hovering at the corner of her right eye?

  Say hello, folks. Come on … be nice.

  ‘Hello,’ Gary said.

  ‘Hello,’ said Sarah.

  ‘We have a busy night ahead,’ Frank said, ‘so best get started. Trick or Treat?’

  IX

  It sounded like the sea, at first. Hugh was dreaming. He was on a boat – Angie was there, doing something with the rigging, smiling at him. The way he was watching her was as though he was watching a film taken of her. When he moved closer towards her – he saw his arms stretching out in front of himself – he noticed that she was crying.

  Oh, sweetie, she said. Her lips moved in sync to the words, but there was no sound … just the internal sound of his brain processing them, the same as his brain’s interpretation of the sound of the sea all around them. I’m so sorry, Angie said.

  What are you sorry for? he thought at her.

  The boat cleaved the water, proudly lifting and then dropping into the waves. Shhh! it whispered.

  Angie turned to her right, both expectantly and fearfully, her eyes wide, her mouth slightly agape. It’s coming, she said. As he started to turn his head, something very big and very black rose up like a thick curtain in front of him and a loud crashing sound made him open his eyes.

  Hugh was lying on his bed – no, not his bed; the bed he shared with his wife. It was their bed.

  Not any more, sweetie, the remnants of Angie’s voice whispered in his head, growing fainter and fainter.

  He glanced at the clock: 1:37.

  The light was still on.

  He looked at the crumpled ball of Angie’s nightdress and then reached out and pulled it towards him, buried his face in it and breathed in.

  Shhh!

  ‘Hello?’

  Someone was moving around on the landing. Hugh let the nightdress fall to the pillow as he slid from the bed. ‘Angie?’

  The movement stopped right outside the bedroom door and Hugh felt a wave of energy coming at him as though he were walking into a gale-force wind. His heart pounded in his chest and his forehead … and that was somehow worse because it drowned out the sounds that whatever was on the other side of the door was making – drowned them out, but deep down, Hugh knew those sounds were there.

  The door – which had not been fully closed, just pushed to – started to move inwards and Hugh watched it with a kind of detached fascination. It had gone perhaps two inches, maybe three, when it stopped. There was silence, but it was not a good silence, not a calm or quiet silence. Rather than it being simply nothing – just a quietness with nothing added – this felt like a quietness with its very soul removed. Hugh wanted to say his wife’s name, whisper it, over and over, but that first syllable – ‘An—’, drawn out like soft nougat – lodged in his throat and just wouldn’t move. What the hell was he doing? he thought.

  Hugh strode across the floor and yanked the door wide.

  ‘Ah,’ said Sheriff Frank Gozinsky, ‘there you are!’

  ‘Where did you think I’d be?’ Hugh asked. ‘I live here.’

  ‘Indeed you do, Hugh.’

  ‘How’d you get in?’

  ‘The front door, Hugh. You didn’t mind me coming right in, did you, Hugh?’

  ‘I locked it.’

  The Sheriff’s brow furrowed as he turned around to start down the stairs. ‘You can’t have done, Hugh,’ he said, throwing the words over his shoulder, ‘because I’m here.’

  ‘I did lock it,’ Hugh repeated. ‘I did call out. But you didn’t answer.’

  They walked down the stairs slowly and in silence.

  X

  When they reached the bottom of the stairs, the telephone rang.

  ‘Telephone,’ said the Sheriff.

  Hugh fought off the urge to give a sarcastic Oh, thanks … I didn’t hear it, and lifted the receiver. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello, Hugh.’

  ‘Nan? Everything okay?’

  ‘Everything’s fine, Hugh. How are things with you?’

  ‘Nan, it’s so late.’ Hugh checked his watch. ‘Christ, not just late … it’s almost two o’clock. You should be in bed.’

  ‘Oh, “To bed, to bed,” said Sleepy Head: “tarry a while,” said Slow.’

  ‘Nan?’

  ‘“Put on the pan,” said Greedy Nan, “we’ll sup before we go.”’

  Hugh stood in silence, gawping through the sitting room and trying to figure out where the Sheriff had disappeared to.

  ‘That’s what she used to call me, Hugh – Greedy Nan.’

  ‘Nan, is your sister with you? Is that why you’re calling? Is Angie there?’ How could she be there, though? Nan lived in Boston …

  There was a slight pause and then Nan said, ‘Angie’s with you, Hugh.’

  ‘Well, the fact is—’

  ‘She’s with you, Hugh.’

  Hugh heard a clattering in the kitchen and he leaned over to see what was happening, but he couldn’t see anything. Then the Sheriff shouted, ‘Where do you keep your knives, Hugh? Ah, okay … I got them.’

  ‘Nan, Angie has—’

  ‘Would you like a pot of something, Hugh?’ Nan asked. Her voice was lower somehow, and it sounded menacing.

  Menacing? This was Angie’s kid sister he was talking to. But what on earth was she doing – or why was she doing it, more like – ringing him at two in the morning?

  ‘Well, do you?’ the Sheriff called.

  Very softly, Hugh said, ‘Nan? Are you still there?’ But the line was dead.

  He hit *69. It was as he expected – the call had come from his own telephone number. Which was, of course, impossible.

  He dialled Nan Brannigan’s number and stepped back fro
m the sitting room doorway as he listened to it ringing through the earpiece.

  ‘Bit late isn’t it?’ the Sheriff said, his voice getting louder.

  Hugh took another step backwards and fell against the stairs as Frank emerged from the room with a cup of tea in one hand and his cell phone in the other, pressed up against his ear. ‘I could have been asleep,’ he muttered into the phone. He put the cup of tea on the floor beside Hugh, then turned around and went back into the sitting room. ‘Any developments?’

  A sleepy voice said ‘Hello?’ in Hugh’s ear. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Nan? It’s me.’

  ‘Hugh? What’s up? Is everything okay? Is Angie okay? It’s very late.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ He backed up the stairs, holding the phone away from his ear so that he could hear the policeman muttering in the sitting room. ‘Nan, Angie’s gone.’

  ‘Gone? Gone where?’

  ‘I don’t know. I should have called you earlier.’

  ‘Did you have a fight?’

  ‘No, we didn’t have a fight.’ He waited for Nan to say something but when she didn’t, he said, ‘We never fight. You know that.’

  ‘Nobody never fights, Hugh.’

  ‘Well, you know what I mean.’

  Something clattered to the floor upstairs.

  ‘What was that?’

  Hugh stared at the front door – someone walked up the pavement outside the house and disappeared behind the bushes. ‘What was what, Nan?’

  ‘The noise. Something fell over,’ Nan said, whispering.

  Hugh heard a doorbell chime from the earpiece. Someone was at Angie’s sister’s door at 2:00 a.m. in the morning, ringing her bell.

  ‘Oh my,’ Nan said, ‘someone at the door. I’ll just—’

  ‘Nan!’ Hugh snapped, ‘don’t answer it.’

  ‘—swer it. Did you say something, Hugh?’

  ‘Nan, don’t answer the door.’

  ‘Don’t answer the door? Whatever for?’

  ‘It’s—’

  What? What was it exactly? Halloween? The Bogeyman? A gen-you-whine ‘thing’ from someplace where there were no lights and no smiles, no love and no softness, only pain and grief and sadness, loss and regret … something that could lift a foot to take a step from rainy Tuboise and put that very same foot down at a front door in far-off Boston in the blink of an eye? All of the above, even?

  Hugh heard the sound of the telephone being put down on the little mahogany table in Nan’s hallway.

  ‘Hold on a second!’ he heard Nan shouting.

  Bing bong, went the doorbell.

  ‘Nan!’ Hugh shouted.

  A wind whistled down the wire and Hugh heard Nan say, ‘Yes?’

  Then he heard the Sheriff’s distant voice say, ‘Trick or Treat, ma’am?’

  ‘Oh, Nan,’ Hugh said.

  ‘“To bed, to bed,” said Sleepy Head; “No, tarry—”’

  Hugh disconnected the call and stood up, just in time to hear the squeak of the garden gate. An indistinct figure marched up the path, reached out an arm and pressed the bell.

  ‘Door,’ the Sheriff shouted.

  Hugh trotted down the last few steps, walked across and opened the door.

  ‘Hey,’ Sheriff Gozinsky said from the front step. ‘Boo! You think maybe I should Trick or Treatcha?’

  ‘What’s going on Sheriff? How’d you get—? How can you be out there and’ – he turned and pointed to the living room and the kitchen beyond it – ‘in there,’ Hugh finished.

  ‘You mean, both at the same time?’

  Hugh nodded.

  ‘Because I’m a Sheriff. An upholder of the law.’ He gave a big grin and then frowned, his tongue exploring the blackened bottom teeth at the front of his mouth. He pushed at one of them a couple times and then reached up and just pulled it out, then turned around and tossed it into the yard.

  ‘I don’t know what’s—’

  ‘Going on?’ Gozinsky rolled his eyes theatrically and put on a voice. ‘Hey, man … wha’s happenin’, man?’

  ‘Farmer?’

  ‘Yep, in one. The local freak. Watch.’

  The Sheriff stepped through the doorway and, kicking the door closed, he ran the flat of his right hand over his face. When the hand got to his chin, he wasn’t the Sheriff any more. He was Moss Farmer, who lived in a shack overlooking Angel Rocks.

  ‘The late Moss Farmer, may he rest in piece,’ Gozinsky said. He removed his hat and feigned sadness. ‘Or pieces,’ he added with a chuckle.

  ‘Now watch.’ He ran his hand over his face again and then dropped it by his side … only it was her side now. ‘You go on – ain’t like you’re gonna be going anyplace once you get there,’ Maude Angstrom said in her unmistakable sing-song voice.

  ‘Maude?’ Hugh said.

  ‘Ker-rect,’ said the Maude thing. ‘Hey, a puzzle for you.’ She ran her small-boned hand over her face and the Sheriff reappeared.

  Hugh glanced at the closed door.

  ‘Hey, forget it.’ He waggled the serrated knife at Hugh and shook his head. ‘I’ll get you before you take a second stride.’

  Sheriff Frank took a deep breath and smiled. He looked tired.

  ‘My friends and me, we’ve been educating,’ he said at last. ‘And I think it’s fair to say that our students have been fascinated with what we had to show them.’ He nodded. ‘Yes indeedy. Oh, they’ve occasionally been surprised and … well, often they’ve been a mite uncomfortable. But, you know what they say: “knowledge is power. And strength”.’ He cocked his head on one said. ‘They do say that, don’t they, Hugh.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Hugh said. ‘And I have no—’

  ‘Did you know that the small intestine is twenty-two feet long?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The small intestine. Twenty-two feet. I didn’t know that. And your wife’s sister didn’t know it either. Believe me. Oh, but you know,’ he said, clapping his hands together theatrically, ‘it does so make for a swell wall display.’ The Sheriff leaned against the wall and looked into the far distance. ‘“Swell” … that’s a grand word, ain’t it? Doesn’t get used anywhere near enough. I was sorry when that went out of fashion.’

  Hugh looked around for something that he might use as a weapon.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Well, I guess it’s safe for us all to assume I’m not the Sheriff.’ He pushed the knife through the palm of his left hand, looked at it with his head on one side, and then removed the blade. There seemed to be no loss of blood.

  ‘You’re crazy. Mad. Insane,’ Hugh said. Then he shook his head. ‘No, maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m the one who—’

  ‘You, dear Hugh? Oh, there’s nothing wrong with you.’ He chuckled and glanced down at the knife in his hand. ‘Not yet, anyways.’ He shrugged and blinked three times in rapid succession. ‘I will readily admit to there being some kind of imbalance up here’ – he knocked the side of his head with his knuckles – ‘but I would plead to there being extenuating circumstances.’

  ‘Why here? Why us?’ Hugh said, his voice barely above a whisper.

  The Sheriff sat down on one of the counter chairs and slumped his arms on the bar. ‘Why is it everyone asks that? “Why me?”’ he whined shrilly. ‘“What did I do?”’ He pointed to one of the chairs and said simply, ‘Sit – or should I maybe say, “Tarry a while”?’

  Hugh sat, and in doing so realised that he was unable to move his feet or arms. He could do only those things that the Sheriff allowed.

  Frank, or whatever it was in Frank’s guise – Hugh was now totally convinced that this entity in his kitchen was not Frank Gozinsky – got to his feet and started moving around the kitchen, opening cupboard doors and drawers and then closing them, all the time talking.

  ‘The mistake you all make is that you think here and me pack some kind of emotional currency … that they’re somehow special. Well, I’m sorry to say, they’re not. You’re not spe
cial, dear Hugh. And neither is – or was – Maude Angstrom. Or your dear friend Gary. Or his wife Sarah. Or Mrs Slater, or Eleanor, or Pop Maxell, or Ellie, or Joe McHendricks, or Archie Goodlowe, or Jerry Fettinger, or Nan, or’ – Frank tapped each one off on his fingers and then, as he pulled open the large drawer next to the oven hob, he clapped his hands loudly once – ‘or your own wonderful wife.’ He turned around and smiled at Hugh, reaching into the drawer and lifting out a handful of knives. ‘The tools of my trade,’ he said, and he set all the knives out in a line next to each other.

  Hugh could feel his heart pounding. When he tried to swallow it was as though his throat had been sandpapered.

  ‘Scared, Hugh?’

  Hugh nodded. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m still debating it.’ The Frank-thing thought for a few seconds and then said, ‘Was your wife a good timekeeper, Hugh?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Because she’s late now.’ He laughed. ‘Get it? “Late”?’

  ‘What have you—?’

  ‘I killed her, Hugh. There’ll be no cavalry in this oater, no flashing lights seen through the window and some fat slob with a bullhorn trying to talk me out because—’ He swaggered clumsily and put one circle-shaped hand to his mouth. ‘“Come on out now, Sheriff – we’ve got you surrounded.”’ He put a finger to his mouth feigning a surprise discovery. ‘Only, oops! I’m not the Sheriff, am I?’

  Hugh stared at his hand and tried to will the fingers to move. It wasn’t working.

  ‘And I don’t respond to the things you would expect a thinking, caring, person would respond to. What do they call it? Sociopathic tendencies? Something like that, I think. The thing is, the things I do I don’t do simply because I enjoy doing them – though, to be fair about this, I do – but rather I do them because I have to do them. Does that make sense?’

  Hugh’s left index finger was slowly lifting itself from his knees, where both of his hands were laying flat. He nodded, and then he shook his head, relaxing the finger. ‘No … no, it doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Oh, come on now … one or the other, Hughie.’ The Gozinsky-thing lifted a serrated bread-knife and walked across to Hugh, crouching down next to him. ‘You’re trying to multi-task here, aren’t you?’