The Spectral Book of Horror Stories (15 page)

They are greeted as ‘Mr and Mrs Webster’ and Sonia opens her mouth to correct the misapprehension but they are already being led through the restaurant towards their table in the corner, and in the end she says nothing.

When the waiter comes to take their order, Sonia asks for a pasta dish.

“Are you not going to have the seafood platter?” asks Peter.

“I don’t think so,” says Sonia.

Peter looks concerned. He orders his own meal without looking at the menu.

Sonia, looking around at the decor, says to Peter, “I doubt they’ve changed a thing since your parents first came here.”

Peter touches the flock wallpaper and says, “That’s a nice thought.”

The waiter returns to light their candle and pour the wine. They raise their glasses, touching the thin rims together. Sonia brings hers close to her mouth but barely wets her lips before putting it down again.

“All right?” says Peter.

Sonia nods. She has not yet told him about the test she did in his parents’ bathroom, about the white plastic stick with the little window in the middle, the vertical line that proved the test was working, and the sky-blue, sea-blue flat line that made her think of a distant horizon seen through an aeroplane window. She has not told him that when she came out of the bathroom with the plastic stick still in her hand, Peter’s mother was standing there, and that when, after breakfast, she looked for the stick, it had been moved.

The waiter returns with their meals. Peter, smiling down at the food on his plate, picking up his fork, begins to talk to Sonia about the possibility of a management position at the pavilion. His dad, he says, can pull a few strings.

The waiter is coming back already. He is going to ask them if everything is all right, and Sonia is going to say yes even though she has barely had a taste yet. Peter is holding his fork out across the table towards Sonia, offering her a piece of something whose fishy smell reminds her of the stony beach, the tarry pebbles, and the gulls that will wake her at dawn.

She sees, in the molten wax around the wick of the candle, an insect. Sonia picks up her fork, aiming the handle into this hot moat. She is an air-sea rescue unit arriving on the scene to lift the insect to safety. Carefully, she places the insect on a serviette to recover, as if it has only been floating in a sticky drink.

“I think that one’s had it,” says Peter, and Sonia looks at it and thinks he might be right.

#

Peter, who had the whole bottle of wine to himself, is still sleeping the next morning when Sonia gets up, puts on the beige coat and lets herself out of the house. She walks down the promenade again, away from Peter’s parents’ house, heading in the direction she and Peter came from when they arrived here. She goes as far as the end of the promenade, where she stops to watch the gulls, and then she goes further, climbing up above the town until she is standing a hundred metres above sea level in the wind. She is still in Eastmouth, though. She cannot see across to the next town. When she looks at her watch, she realises that she has been gone for a while now. As she makes her way down from the cliffs, she hears the tolling of a bell; it is coming from the church that stands on top of one of the hills that surround the otherwise flat town.

On the promenade, all the shelters are empty. All the bay windows of all the retirement homes are empty. She realises that it’s Sunday and wonders if everyone’s at church. Peter’s parents might be there, and perhaps even Peter.

She veers slightly away from the promenade now. It is the start of the summer and ought to be warmer, but it is windy and cold and she is glad of Peter’s mother’s coat. She has her purse in the pocket. She heads down a side street that brings her out at the train station, which is overlooked by the church.

Alone on the platform, she stands in front of the train timetable. She looks at her watch, although pointlessly, as it turns out, because when she consults the timetable she finds that no trains run on Sundays. She wanders to the edge of the platform and looks along the tracks in the direction she would go to get home, and then in the opposite direction. Is there really nothing at all on a Sunday, she wonders; does nothing even pass through?

She is still there when she notices that the woman in the transparent mac is now standing at one end of the platform. She is talking on a mobile phone but she is looking at Sonia and so Sonia nods at her. She doesn’t know whether she has been recognised. The woman, putting away the phone, approaches. When she is within touching distance, she says, “You’re the Websters’ girl.”

“No,” says Sonia, preparing to introduce herself, whilst at the same time noticing the locals coming down the hill, coming from church. The service is over. It seems as if the whole town is heading towards them, like an army in beige and lilac.

“Yes,” says the woman. “You are. You’re the Websters’ girl.”

The crowd is nearing the foot of the hill; they are close now and one by one they look at the woman in the transparent mac and they nod.

CARRY WITHIN SOME SMALL SLIVER OF ME

Robert Shearman

Beverly McRoberts looked like both her parents, and that was quite a feat, considering that they in no way resembled one another. She had her father’s nose, large and bulbous and with nostrils that had a propensity to flare—she also had his deep blue eyes and his cold thin lips and his hair. And she had her mother’s skin with all of its strange milky pallor; Beverly sometimes imagined that her mother was a big sack of milk and that if she were cut open all the milk would come pouring out, and if that were true of her mother she supposed it was also true of her, and she’d pat at her stomach and listen to all the milk sloshing about inside—she also had her mother’s little hands and her crooked teeth and her ears. Whenever she got lonely at school, and missed the parents who loved her, Beverly would go into the toilets and gaze into the half-length mirror by the washbasins. And there she’d see her parents gazing right back—Beverly would gaze at different body parts dependent on which one of her parents that day she’d decided to love the most.

And she’d asked if she could have her ears pierced, just like her mother’s were, and her parents had always said no, no, she was too young—and then she’d turned eleven, and they’d changed their minds, because eleven meant she was very nearly a teenager, and a teenager meant she was very nearly grown up! And Beverly’s mother had one ring in her left ear and two rings in her right, and that looked unusual but had apparently been quite the fashion once. That’s what Beverly wanted, just the same style, please. Mother pierced Beverly’s ears herself. She told Beverly to keep still and be brave. Beverly couldn’t sit still but she wasn’t frightened, she was excited, it was a completely different sort of not sitting still—Mother used some rubbing alcohol and a needle and made three little holes in Beverly’s lobes, and she gave Beverly three little stud earrings, just like the ones she wore, and Beverly was proud.

And when her parents weren’t watching Beverly might take out her father’s pipe from the cabinet in the drawing room. She’d never seen her father smoke a pipe—he once told her, laughing, that he’d only smoked it when he was young and pretentious—but he’d kept the pipe anyway, didn’t it make a nice ornament, it was wooden and looked so grand. And Beverly would put the stem of the pipe into her mouth, and imagine her father’s lips had been there once, years ago, before she had even been born, before she’d even been dreamed of. She didn’t like to suck at it, the stale taste made her tongue curl. She liked to blow down it as if it were a whistle, if she blew hard enough a sound might come out too high for human beings to hear.

But the best days were when they all went out together. Perhaps to the park—and they’d all hold hands, and Beverly would be in the middle, father to one side, mother at the other, they’d march to the big pond, and her parents would let her throw bread for the ducks, they’d let go of her hands just so she could do that, her aim was getting better, sometimes she’d hit those ducks right on the head! And if not the park then the supermarket, but they couldn’t walk hand in hand there, it blocked the aisle. And even the worst days were like the best days—not to the park, not to the supermarket, just staying at home, watching television, eating dinner, sitting about not doing much at all—but they’d still be
together
, that was the main thing, they’d still be a family.

Beverly had friends at school, but not too many, and none very close. They thought she was a bit odd.

#

The letter for Beverly arrived on a school day. And so her parents could have easily intercepted it. They could have opened it, or destroyed it unread, and they didn’t because they loved their daughter and they didn’t believe she’d ever betray them. And so the envelope sat on the table for hours, unassuming, flat, waiting for Beverly to come home and find it.

Beverly didn’t receive many letters, not unless it was her birthday, and it wouldn’t be her birthday for ages. It was exciting. She took the letter upstairs, and lay down upon her bed, and opened it, and she hoped that the message inside would be terribly long and full of great incident and detail.

It wasn’t very long at all. “You should know this,” it said. “Your father has died.”

That was it. Beverly turned over the letter, and then turned it over again. She looked down at the bed as if some other words might have slipped off the page without her realising. The handwriting was small and mean, the message at the top of the sheet and the rest of it left blank, it seemed oddly cruel so much of the paper had been wasted.

The handwriting on the envelope was just as mean, and Beverly shivered to see her name and address written there so coldly. On the back was a series of numbers, and Beverly thought it might be a telephone number, but when she counted it was a few digits short.

And then she was crying—
bawling
, so that it hurt her throat—and she didn’t even know why, only that she felt grief, though she had no idea whom or what the grief was for.

Mother came in and sat on the bed next to Beverly, and held her hand, although she didn’t hold it too tightly, as if that were no longer allowed. Father stood at the doorway, tall and upright and so serious. Father told Beverly that she was adopted. He told her that it didn’t matter she was adopted, he and Mother loved Beverly very much, and surely that was what was important? In the scheme of things? He told her that they hadn’t been able to have children of their own, but they’d been given the chance to make one very special girl the happiest and most beloved darling there ever was, she was lucky really, didn’t she feel lucky, even a bit? “We were going to tell you when you were older,” he added, and he looked away, and Beverly knew he was lying.

“They shouldn’t have written,” said the woman Beverly had thought was her mother. “It was supposed to be confidential!”

“We love you very much,” said the father figure by the door.

“Did you know my real parents?” said Beverly.

“No,” said Mother, and let go of Beverly’s hand.

“No, kiddo,” said Father, and tried to smile.

“Do you know where I can find them?”

“It was supposed to be confidential,” said Mother again, and she seemed close to tears herself. “We have to move away!”

“Would you like that, kiddo?” said Father. “Shall we move away? Somewhere they’ll never ever find us, so we can be left in peace?”

Beverly wasn’t a spiteful girl, and she knew what they said was true, that their love was all that mattered. During dinner she tried to behave the same way she always had, she was nice, she smiled from time to time, she even laughed when Father made one of his terrible jokes. But it seemed to her that she was watching herself from a distance, and her laughter sounded so false, as false as everything else in the world, and the smile made her face hurt. The parents offered her extra pudding because she was being such a good girl, and she thanked them both politely, she asked to be excused, she wanted to go to bed.

She got into her pyjamas, brushed her teeth. The toothpaste tasted off. She looked at herself in the mirror, she looked really hard. She realised she didn’t resemble either of the grown-ups downstairs at all.

She went to sleep.

And maybe she dreamed it, but in the night she thought she looked up and saw her mother standing over, watching her. Not her mother, of course, she’d have to correct that, she’d have to find something else to call her, but what, what? “Hey,” said Mother softly. “Hey. I don’t want to disturb you.”

“It’s all right,” said Beverly.

Mother sat down on the bed, and began to stroke Beverly’s hair.

“I love you so much,” said Mother.

Beverly promptly said the same thing back.

“We lied earlier,” said Mother. And she continued to stroke the hair. And then, nothing else was said, not for a while, and Beverly thought that that was it, that she wouldn’t have to hear what the lie was, maybe it was all a lie, every single scrap of it, and she closed her eyes tight and pretended she was still asleep.

Then Mother spoke on, so very softly, never raising her voice. “We
can
have children. We had a child once. A proper child of our own. I hated it, darling. I hated my own daughter, can you imagine? I could feel it, for months, growing inside my stomach. Eating the food I swallowed. Kicking me. Making me feel so sick, sick like you can’t believe, sick that just wouldn’t go away, and then giving me so much pain. I wanted to get rid of it. I didn’t want it in me. I didn’t want this monster.” All the time, still, still stroking Beverly’s hair.

“Mother,” said Beverly. “I’m asleep.”

“When it was born, I pushed and strained, I wanted it out of me. Parasite. And out it came, and how it screamed. What did it have to scream about? What did she? She wasn’t the one who. She wasn’t the one who had to. She had nothing,
nothing
, to scream about.”

“I’m asleep now. Please. Please let me sleep.”

“They said I would adjust, feel differently. Give it time. I gave it time, but I never did. I never did. We gave it away. We gave it up for adoption. But this is the truth,” Mother said, and she loomed ever closer to Beverly, Beverly thought she would bite her ear she was so close, “I always wanted a daughter. Just not that one. Not her. I wanted to love someone who had never hurt me. Was that so wrong? Was it wrong to adopt you, my perfect little girl? To want all the good times, and not have the bad? I don’t know. I don’t see why. I don’t know.”