Forgotten Fears (16 page)

I think I heard my wife call to me in the night. I staggered out on deck, but I couldn’t see her. And why would I? She’s dead. Ha! The thing is still circling the boat. Why won’t it just leave me alone?

I’m so hungry.

Couldn’t help myself. It was meant for the fish but it has eaten recently and I haven’t ha! The smell made me gag, but I forced myself to keep it down.  The trick was to pretend it wasn’t human.  What have I become? Need to act now before it’s too late. I never expected things to end this way. My wife is calling to me from somewhere down in the water, and I just want to be with her. I’m so thirsty, and at least that soon will be at an end. I hope I can bring myself to swallow enough water before that thing out there gets me. The thought of feeling those teeth puncture my skin whilst I’m still alive is one that frightens me almost to the point of backing out. But if I’m going to do this, then I intend to do it my own way. I intend to tie the harpoon to my leg with the fishing line. It should be heavy enough to make sure I sink. This journal along with its collection of letters from strangers who were nothing more than ghosts of the past, I shall leave here. My voice shall be added to that of those who came before me.  I shall leave it by the wheel of the boat. If by some miracle it remains afloat, if by some miracle you are reading this by the light of the sun, then I know at least that you are in a situation better than the world I am about to leave. I only hope that if you are reading this, those creatures died with us who remained on this planet, and the world you inhabit is safer, happier place.

It’s time to go now. It’s getting late and I want to do this before I lose my nerve. I hope this book finds you in good health. For me, it is time to go. Tell them if they ask where I am that I have gone fishing.

[This one came about in the weird way things sometimes do. I was woken up early one morning by a strange scratching sound. I thought it might have been a mouse or something, but it turned out it was just a bird up in the eaves. Either way, it sparked an idea which morphed into the story you are about to read. It was originally part of the individual kindle only stories in the Taste of fear series.}

I’M NOT CRAZY. That’s something I want to get straight right off the bat. I’m sure they will say otherwise of course when they get here – especially when they see the holes in the walls and the blood on the floor. But really, I’m not. I have already called the police, and I want to write this down before they get here. Consider it my confession if you want to. My name is Trenton Hughes, aged thirty-three. I’m a surveyor for a pretty big global firm. You have probably heard of them, but I’ll spare them the indignity of being associated with me after word of this gets out, although the chances of retaining any form of anonymity after this are probably already out of the window by now. No matter what you think when you (whoever you are) reads this, please know that I’m a good person, and have always tried to live a good life. There isn’t a good way to tell you about this other than to just come out and say it, even though it sounds as ridiculous to me as it will probably sound to you. Still, no time to stand on ceremony anymore so here goes.

I started to see the little people who live in the walls a few days ago.

See? I told you it would sound crazy. Bear with me, though, and I’ll do my best to explain.

It started just after my wife, Hilary, told me she wanted a divorce. In hindsight (which I’ve since discovered in a wonderful but frustratingly useless thing) I probably should have seen it coming. As a husband, I was lacking in a lot of areas, although none that I thought would lead to her dropping ‘the big D’ on me. Either way, I had no idea things had gotten so bad, and the news hit me like a cliché filled freight train. I went through the expected responses. Telling her things would change, telling her things would get better. She responded to this not with love and open arms and forgiveness as I’d hoped, but by instead informing me that not only did she not want any kind of promise of change from me, but she was already seeing someone else, a work colleague called Ted.

I asked how it was that I’d never heard of Ted, and why she had never mentioned him before, then it dawned on me that a secret affair usually meant that the clueless husband is kept completely out of the loop. I asked her if it was serious and she said Ted had told her he loved her and wanted her to move in with him.

Thanks, Ted. Thanks a lot.

How did I respond to this earth shattering news I hear you ask? Was it with the British stiff upper lip that my birth parents possessed and had tried to drill into me when I was a nervous, spotty youth? Was it with grace and dignity, or a steely determination to deal with the situation and set about building a new life by myself?

Not exactly.

I went and had myself a nervous breakdown.

You hear all this bullshit about how time heals, and if you love someone, let them go. But none of that means anything when all you can think about is your wife with her legs wrapped around another man’s waist and screaming his name whilst you gradually come apart at the seams. Let me tell you, it’s not a great place to be. Either out of stubbornness or some childish desire to do everything I could to piss her off, I started to do all the things she hated.

I started smoking again, not because I missed the delicious flavour of those tar-packed cancer sticks, but because I knew Hilary hated it. She used to moan and whine about the smell and the damage that I was doing to my body. Despite her warnings, that first one tasted pretty sweet, and almost made me forget all about her fucking someone else whilst I was by myself polluting my body.

Same story with the drinking. The six pack a night that I started with to help me get through to the next day soon became twelve, and in the interest of efficiency, those have now been replaced with a bottle of Vodka a day, or failing that, good old Jack Daniels. Hell, I would drink anything if it would help to take away the feeling of absolute worthlessness and self-pity for a couple of hours. It was during one of these self-depreciating binges that I first saw the wall people, or Scratchers, as I have since christened them.

I was slouched on the sofa, eyes raw from lack of sleep, booze, or crying – take your pick – when I saw one of them scurry across the edge of the wall.  I didn’t freak out as you might expect, instead, I sat there and stared, feeling like Gulliver in the Lilliput of my too expensive, too empty apartment.

He was about six inches tall – action figure sized if you will – and wearing a tiny brown tunic. His tiny eyes glinted in the semi-gloom, and he was armed with what looked to be a converted nail file sword, one of Hilary’s no doubt that had been lost at some point in the past. He froze and stared at me, holding the tiny weapon defensively in my direction. I could only gawp back, the worthless drunk and the impossible tiny man engaged in a stare down. The Scratcher sniffed the air, then shoved the kitchen door open a crack and squeezed inside. I just sat there, listening to the tiny pitter-pat of his feet as he went. It was then, as I sat and really listened to the house, that I truly heard them.

They were stealthy, moving behind the walls, a subtle scratching as they moved between plasterboard and insulation. The sound of them reminded me of the house I grew up in, the way the rats that used to make nests in our barn during winter months used to scurry around as they looked for food to scavenge on. I think that was when I truly started to feel afraid, because as I sat there and listened, it sounded like there was a hell of a lot of them.

My response to this disturbing discovery was not to leap into action the way any self-motivated hero would, but to finish my freshly opened bottle of Mr. Daniels’s finest and bring on a glorious, booze-fuelled sleep. The next day, with a head that throbbed like a rotten tooth, I dragged myself off the sofa and walked to the kitchen, trying to convince myself that I wanted a glass of water when I knew it was the unopened bottle of Smirnoff that a was really looking for.

Gleaming white tiles greeted me, the room edged with expensive, custom made fitted cupboards which I had never wanted but Gloria had insisted on. I wondered in the back of my mind what kind of cupboards Ted had in his house and how long it would take her to get her claws into him and take away his decision-making ability on such things. Probably not yet. They would still be too busy enjoying each other for mundane things like kitchen furniture.

Anyway, I’m losing track.

As soon as I opened the door I could hear them, that same subtle scratching sound as they went about their business. I don’t know how long I stood there and held my breath. It felt like hours, the average lung capacity of a human being, especially one who had just rediscovered his old smoking habits told me it was significantly less.

With more effort than I expected it to take, I forced myself to walk across the room to the cupboard under the sink and kneel in front of it. Most of the noise seemed to be coming from there, and I grasped the handles with every intention of looking, but just couldn’t bring myself to open them. I don’t know if I was more afraid of seeing them, or of not seeing them. Either way, I didn’t think it bode well for my sanity. Eventually, I found the guts to do what I needed to and  yanked the doors open, expecting to see a fully function micro- village like something from The Borrowers, but was greeted instead with the familiar landscape of spare mop heads, cleaning materials and old washcloths. I was about to close the doors when something caught my eye that looked out of place. I fished out one of the washcloths from the back of the cupboard and held it up to the light, half mesmerized, half afraid. Clothes had been cut out of the material, leaving only tiny templates for trousers and shirts behind. With my racing heart feeling like it was now beating in my throat, I checked the other rags and cloths that were in there, and almost all of them were the same. It looked as if my dish rags had clothed an entire tiny populace.

Surely now he will react and do something proactive, I hear you say.

Actually no. I closed the cupboard, opened the Smirnoff that I had tried to lie to myself I didn’t want, and drank until I passed out on the sofa. (I hadn’t been able to sleep in the bed since Hilary left. It still smelled of her perfume). When I woke up, I was aware of three things all in fairly quick succession. First, that my body felt as if it had been put through a mangle stamped on and then put through it again. Second, that I was struggling to cope with the amount of booze I was consuming, and that I ought to slow down a touch. The third thing I noticed was the note taped to my chest. It was written on a small scrap of paper, and the text looked to have been scrawled by a young child, or - dare I say it - a tiny hand.  The writing was uneven and spiky, and in truth barely legible, but still, the message was clear enough despite the awful spelling.

Firgit abot us.

Or els.

Ice replaced blood, and even the throbbing headache subsided for long enough for me to be afraid of that tiny scrap of paper. There was sinister simplicity to it. A way of wording that told me that these people- pardon my French – don’t fuck around.  As I write this – covered in blood and waiting for the police to arrive – it dawns on me that I should have left there and then. The second I got that note, I should have packed a bag and got the hell out of dodge, but stubbornness has always been a problem for me, and so I decided instead to do something stupid. Much like the dumb hero in a cheesy horror flick will confidently walk into the dark and tell his friends he’ll be right back when we the viewer know what’s waiting for him, I had my very own stupid idea. I decided to try and catch the little critters on video, partly to prove to myself that they weren’t a figment of my imagination (Believe me, the idea had dawned on me more than once) and second, to maybe get the bragging rights of discovering something never seen before, a new species of undiscovered creature that had taken residence in my walls. Hell, my booze addled brain thought that I might even earn a little bit of money and maybe, just maybe, use my new found fame to win my wife back from the arms of the mysterious Ted.

I set up a couple of cameras. One in the corner of the living room, getting as much of the space in shot as possible, the second in the kitchen, facing the cupboards. The idea was to leave the cameras recording, stay awake all night and log everything that happened.  I wanted to get everything, you see. Log it so that when the inevitable questions came from the newspapers and such I would be able to answer. I wanted to know how many there were, where they came from, what they did when they came out, and more importantly, what they wanted with me. But my grand plan was, as always, derailed by the demon booze, and although I promised myself I would stay sober to complete my important mission, I had passed out by ten o clock, three-quarters of a bottle of whisky for the worse with my notepad in hand and pen poised over paper. It was almost three in the morning when I jolted awake, spilling remainder of the precious liquid all over myself, and for a second, I didn’t know where I was. It was only when I reached over to turn on the lamp that I saw the notepad. Before I had nodded off, the page had been clean and empty, ready for me to log the night’s events. But now, there were words on the page, scrawled in that same spiky longhand, and with much the same abruptness as before.