The Mammoth Book of Terror (30 page)

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.

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.

He waited a few moments, then glanced out of a window to check that his visitor had gone.

The creature was on his knees, carving something on the wooden gatepost with a pen-knife.

Maurice’s frayed patience stretched and snapped. He ran out and kicked the man on the upper arm. He felt and heard something break inside the shirtsleeve. Turning an anguished face towards
him, looking totally lost and confused, the man reached up and seemed to be trying to protect his whole body with a single, upraised, skinny hand. Feeling furiously disgusted with himself and the
pathetic being in front of him, Maurice kicked out again. The heel of his shoe hit the man in the breastbone, and his chest gave way. Maurice felt his foot sink in, and he was reminded of the
sun-dried crust he had broached with every step he had taken at the tip.

Evidently, unsurprisingly, the man had had enough. He lurched away, clutching his bag in front of him with both arms. He sounded as though he were choking. He didn’t look back.

Maurice bent down to see what he had been carving on the post. Underneath a deeply scored, slightly wavy line was a matchstick figure with over-long legs, rudimentary arms, and a tiny head, in a
breaststroke posture. He seemed to be swimming downwards.

Some sort of hex, thought Maurice, contemptuously. A tinker’s curse! He spat on the crude drawing, and went indoors.

He was horrified at what he had just done. He was still experiencing the sensation of the second kick; of feeling the man’s chest caving in under his foot.

He went into his office, sat in the armchair he kept there for visiting business associates, and pulled out from his pocket the little parcel that had been pushed into it. He unknotted some thin
string tied around it and removed a layer of charred newspaper. Underneath was a grubby pale-pink plastic box such as a child might keep cheap jewellery in. He pressed it open with his thumbs.
Inside, in a bed of more crumpled half-burned paper, was a purple-brown egg like the one he had burst. He placed it carefully on his desk. He spread his hands out in front of him and studied them.
The blotchy stains had almost gone, but the skin still looked chapped and raw.

After a while, he got up and turned on all the machines in his high-tech office. He had the latest of everything a computer could do to assist him with his work. He was continually updating his
equipment. To stay ahead in his field, he had invested a fortune, and what he produced was acknowledged to be the most advanced work of its kind in the country.

Even so, he had gone bust; he was ruined.

When everything was on and running, the room was full of the soft humming sound that sometimes soothed him. But not this time. He went around the house in search of a strong drink.

Before he had located a bottle, phone bells rang all over the house. He went to the nearest receiver, a black, Bakelite antique, hesitated for seconds, obscurely reluctant to answer at all, then
snatched it up.

It was Neville Gale, one of the partners in his firm calling, ostensibly, to commiserate with Maurice on the departure of his wife. He soon got round to the real subject on his mind however; the
failure of their business. Maurice was aware that Gale blamed him for much that had gone wrong, and could tell by his tone that the man wanted to scream and swear down the phone at him like a
drunken football fan. But he wouldn’t ever do that. Old Nev was far too civilized.

Maurice listened to Gale’s reasonable despair for some time, then shouted, “It’s too late Nev; I’m sunk, and you’re sinking. We’re all going under, and
there’s not a thing we can do to stop it. We’re in very deep shit, so get used to the idea, and get off my back!”

He slammed the phone down.

Then, feeling the need to make one more gesture of finality, he picked the instrument up and hurled it at the wall.

He swallowed another mouthful of medicaments, got in his battered car, and drove to Dove Holes the way he had come back last time, along the side lanes.

As he approached the entry to the tip he saw a huge black van – the one that had forced him off the road, he was sure! – gliding out through the gates. It turned into the road and
moved away from him very fast. Thinking about his insurance again, like a drowning man clutching at the proverbial straw, he pushed down the accelerator. He was determined to overtake and stop the
van.

He made some progress; got a bit closer.

The van was as large as any he had ever seen. It was quite smooth, with no visible panel joins, and was completely unmarked. He couldn’t even see a number plate. It was a miracle the
driver was able to steer anything that size round the sharp bends in the narrow lane. He had trouble keeping his own vehicle on the road, and had to slow down. He was astonished to see the van draw
away from him until it was almost out of sight. In seconds he was at a crossroads on the A6 in the centre of Dove Holes, and there was no sign of the van in any direction. He gave the steering
wheel a characteristic, ineffectual thump with the heel of his hand, and swore. Then he turned round and drove back to the tip.

He sensed he was being watched as he walked past the line of trees but did not go to investigate what might be observing him. Half-formed shapes moved stealthily among the shrubs behind the
trees, that he tried not to see.

He made his way through the mud to the porta-cabin. Inside, the old man was alone, spread out on his multi-mattress bed. He jumped when Maurice banged on the open door, and sat up.

“What you got?” he said automatically, like a talking machine. Then he recognised Maurice, and got to his feet. A deeply uneasy expression appeared on his face, that he tried to
conceal by turning away.

Maurice, not quite sure what he
was
doing there, felt slightly foolish. At last he said, “I wonder if you can help me? I want some information about the scavengers on the tip. I met
some people out there, and one of them must have followed me home. At least, I think he was one of them. Turned up on my door step and started pestering me.”

“That’s nothing to do with me,” the man said sullenly.

“I realize that,” Maurice said, “but I thought you might know who they are. They don’t seem like locals, the ones I met. They spoke differently, they acted differently;
do you know what I mean?”

“Perhaps,” the man said. “I don’t talk to them. I keep away. I’d do the same, if I were you. Let them get on with it.”