The Spectral Book of Horror Stories (4 page)

As he stalked along the aisle he began to recognise the passengers—the man at Jaz’s table in Yesterday’s, the girl who’d been brought into Vin’s shop. He couldn’t see his wives, however many faces he caught hold of. He was well on the way to prying a face wide to grasp the source of the relentless voice before its owner struggled free, having bitten Stu’s fingers, and fled like the rest of them. Several were emitting sounds higher than Stu was making. The guide was the last to flee, and shut him on the bus. He didn’t mind being left when he still had his audience, more of whom were joining them on the pavement. It was completely his tour now, and he took the guide’s seat, but he hadn’t discovered how to start the bus by the time several men drove up to help him.

THE DOG’S HOME

Alison Littlewood

Sometimes, the cruellest thing a creature can give you is love. I get up and Sandy the retriever is there. He comes running when I go downstairs and tries to lick my face. I feel sad, or irritated, depending on my mood, and then I go out and the last thing I see is his head tilted to one side, surprised to see me leaving him all over again. I get back and he’s there, tail wagging—I can hear it, beating the radiator by the door—and it begins again. There’s no end to his love. It’s capacious; it’s infinite. It was the first thing I was told about him, and it was true, and every day I’m surprised to see that it’s true. You’d think both of us would have got used to it by now, but we haven’t. I suppose, in that, I’m more like him than I realise.

“You wouldn’t stand a chance if it wasn’t for the dog,” my mother had said when she raised the question of visiting Aunt Rose. At first I didn’t know what she meant, though I remembered my aunt from when I was small; she’d come on a duty visit. I was about five years old. She’d loomed over me in the hall and dropped her bag next to her feet, which were clad in brown brogues that I could see my snotty little nose in. She’d leaned down, her scrawny hands reaching for me, and she’d touched both my cheeks. Her hands were cold, I remember that too, and then she leaned in closer, pursing her lips. I’d waited for the touch of her tight mouth on my cheek, but it never came. Instead she’d whispered, her voice dry and fierce but her breath surprisingly warm against my skin, “Wash your face before you greet your elders and betters.”

I’m not sure my mum even heard; certainly, I never saw her react. And that was how I remembered Aunt Rose, crone-like, tall, thin, claws for hands and a death rattle voice. I filed her away in a mental box with
Do not open
on the lid, and left her there. Or so I thought.

“It’ll go to the dogs’ home,” my mother said.

She had no love of my aunt. She had no love for my dad, either. He’d left the two of us a long time ago and I thought we’d managed all right, got along without too many problems; until she’d said that about the dogs’ home.

Aunt Rose had ‘married rich’, Mum always said, and she always had a note of resentment in her voice when she said it. Better still, judging from her tone, Rose had ‘married dead’, the guy popping it soon after, leaving her loaded. A big inheritance with nowhere to go. No wonder Mum had pound signs in her eyes.

That was when she’d said, “Course, Andrew, you wouldn’t stand a chance if it wasn’t for the dog.” She looked at my blank expression and snapped, “Rose doesn’t like people. But that dog—that dog likes people. So Rose tolerates them. She’ll visit folk just because the dog likes to see them. She’ll stop and chat to people on their walks, because her dog likes
their
dog. If it wasn’t for that animal—” she clicked her tongue in disapproval. “And now,” she added with a note of triumph, “the dog’s home all alone, isn’t he? The neighbour’s feeding him and that’s about it. So she needs someone to go and stay. She needs
you
to go and stay.”

I opened my mouth to protest. I saw the look on my mother’s face and closed it again.

“Make sure that dog loves you,” she said. “Make him love you and
she’ll
decide she loves you too.”

#

Sandy wasn’t at all the kind of dog I’d expected. I’d thought Aunt Rose would have some sniffy little thing, a chihuahua or a peke, but when I collected her key from the neighbour and let myself in, there he was, a flurry of tail, big paws and weight behind them, all joy and enthusiasm. There was a volley of barks but not a second’s hesitation before he was all over me, licking, covering my sweater in hair and drool. I couldn’t reconcile the idea of Aunt Rose and this living, breathing, messy creature; it didn’t seem they occupied the same universe, let alone the same house. But occupy it Sandy did. I could smell him there, a cooped-up smell that was unmistakably dog, and I sighed and set down my bag at my feet. It looked like I wouldn’t just be staying in her house; I’d be cleaning it too. But first, it was time to visit Aunt Rose.

#

The hospital’s antiseptic smell, barely masking what lay beneath, was a sharp contrast to the shut-in, musty house. Rose was in a room of her own and I was thankful for that. I’d never been around illness, not really. I didn’t look at the wards to either side as I went towards number seven and I found it a small, narrow box, a metal bed clearly visible through a large window. In the bed was the collection of bones and skin that Aunt Rose had become. Looking at her there, I had no idea how I could ever have thought of her as tall. She seemed barely larger than a doll, and when she let her head fall to the side, looking at me from hollowed sockets, she seemed to move like one too.

“Hello, Aunt Rose,” I said, and she rolled her head back again with a little grunt. I’d intended to play it carefully, but found myself blurting, “I came to look after Sandy. Mum said you might need some help.”

Some help
. I knew, looking at her, how inadequate those words were. She needed more than help, would soon pass beyond the kind of help that anyone could give. But she didn’t appear to think about what I said. She made a brief gesture and I recoiled from it, then realised she had indicated the plastic chair next to her bed. I slid into it. The legs scraped against the tiles and her lip twitched.

Aunt Rose stared at the ceiling. I didn’t know if she was waiting for me to speak, but I tried. I told her that Mum was fine. I said she’d have come herself, but she couldn’t get away from work—I almost found myself saying that Mum couldn’t afford to have her wages docked, but I wasn’t sure how that might sound. I thought of the slight body in the bed in front of me, hidden under a single sagging sheet, and all the money it possessed. It seemed terribly unlikely.

“Sandy’s fine,” I said. “He was happy to see—”

The breath was shocked out of me when she grasped my hand. I looked down. Her fingers, narrow and putty-coloured, held mine, which had turned white under their pressure. I tried to pull away but she held on, moving with me, and I had a sudden image of it being like that forever, her cadaverous hand closed on mine.

“Bring him to me,” she said.

“What?”

Pardon
, is what I expected her to say – the remnant of some childhood memory, perhaps—but she did not. “They won’t let him in,” she said, “and they won’t let me out. I want to see my dog.” Her eyes met mine. “It’s
all
I want. You understand?”

Her eyes were pale blue and weak-looking, but a cold strength shone through them. It didn’t appear natural. I looked away.

“I want to see my dog.” She sank back against the pillows. Her face was blank, as if the life had already gone out of it—
already
, that was what I thought—and then a nurse came in talking about changing the sheets, smiling at me a little too brightly, in a way that told me it was time for me to go.

#

Sandy greeted me when I got back to the house. It was as if he hadn’t seen me in years. I was surprised by his love. It was capacious; it was infinite. I imagined the look on Aunt Rose’s face if she could see it being bestowed upon me.

#

“He’ll understand,” she said, the next time I went to see her. I tried to tell myself I didn’t know what she meant, but I did.

“They’ll think he’d jump all over me,” she said, “but he won’t. He’ll know. He’ll take one look at me and he’ll know.” Her head lolled, her gaze moving towards—but not quite meeting—my own.

“He’s a smart dog. He always knew me and I knew him. He just needs to see me, so he knows—he knows I haven’t—”

Abandoned him
, I thought. In my pockets, my hands curled into fists. I’d spent the morning cleaning out her fridge. The smell had been indescribable. Then I’d started on the cupboards, but not before I’d walked the dog;
her
dog.

He was too joyful a creature to be her dog.

I told myself that Sandy wouldn’t give two shits if he thought she had abandoned him, not now, but how could I know that was true? A dog is not a person.

A dog is not a person
. I curled my fists tighter when I remembered what I’d found in the cupboard in the lounge. I scowled, just as I might have when I was five years old, but she didn’t notice.

“I thought I’d have to make an awful choice for him one day,” she said. Her throat was working, as if she was holding back tears. “That’s the only thing that makes it bearable now. Going first, I mean. I know I won’t have to do that. I’ll never have to look at him while he goes to sleep. And he’ll forget, won’t he? After he’s seen me. He can move on.”

You’re damned right he can
, I thought. That morning I’d taken him to the park. He’d gone scurrying after all the sticks I threw.

She grasped my hand again. This time her grip was weak. “Please,” she said. “If you do anything for me. Do this.”

#

That night Sandy curled up on the floor and stared up at one of the chairs. No one was sitting in the chair. I scowled at him. I went and sat in the chair. After a while, he came and sat at my side and rested his head on my knee. I whispered to him while his eyes closed and he slept like that, the breath catching noisily in his throat.

#

How easy it is for a dog to love you. How hard it is, for a person. Sometimes people don’t even love their own family. It just isn’t in them. It wasn’t in Rose’s small, wasted body; it never had been. I knew that from the letters I found. Not hers, of course; I never saw whatever answers Rose had sent, but I know we never received anything more than words.

I always thought we’d got along all right, me and Mum. But I was a child, and children don’t always know. They aren’t like dogs. They can’t take one look and understand. I wasn’t even sure I understood after I’d read the letters I found stashed out of sight in Rose’s cupboard.

He grows so fast
, Mum had written.
He already needs new shoes. The trousers I got him last month are too short already. He looks a bit like Dad, have I mentioned that? You’d love him if you saw him now. I don’t suppose you might be able to…

But she never had, had she? Aunt Rose hadn’t helped us. She never helped her own sister. She’d read these letters and she didn’t love me. She’d seen me when I was five and she didn’t love me then and here I was taking care of her house and her dog and visiting her in hospital because that was what family did, and she hadn’t even noticed. Mum had been right, but she had been wrong too. The dog may have got me in, but I never had stood a chance, not really. There was only one way Aunt Rose was ever going to notice me; one way I might be able to persuade her to help.

#

Aunt Rose was right. She’d never actually said it, but it’s true. A dog can break your heart.

#

“Five minutes,” I said. “Five minutes, or maybe not even that if anyone finds out.” The papers shook in my hand. My fingers had dug into them, claw-like, gripping too tightly. “But you have to sign first. And it has to be witnessed. We’ll find a couple of nurses to do it.” She stared at me. Mostly she stared at the ceiling, but this time she never took her eyes from mine. Hers were small, the pupils constricted, the pale blue almost blending with the greyish whites of her eyes. It was horrible to see, but I didn’t look away. She was family, after all.

If there’s any way you could help—he has to start school next week. He needs a uniform. I’ve been offered more hours but it means I can’t be with him. I’ll have to leave him with a neighbour, and he screams the place down when I’m not there…

I shook the thought away and forced myself to focus on the will. “Are you going to sign it?”

“But—”

“You don’t need to worry about Sandy.” I thought about how he’d been that morning, watching me leave, his head poking through a gap in the curtains, his tongue lolling in a wide doggy smile. I forced myself to stroke her hand. We both looked down at our fingers. “I’ll make sure he’s okay.” I thought about telling her about his love, how he had enough for everyone; about how he’d be comforted. I stopped myself just in time.

“Will you sign?” I repeated.

Her head rolled away, but I could still make it out when she nodded.

#

Back at the house, I read the letters once more. It wasn’t so much the words that got to me, but their frequency. My mother had written to her sister once a week. Her hope—no, her faith—had never wavered. Family; she had believed in family, in their love.

Sandy rested his chin on my knee while I went through the letters, and occasionally I paused long enough to stroke his head. His fur there was a little shorter but softer than on his back. Long whiskers jutted from the side of his head, besides the ones that grew around his nose; others formed extra-long eyelashes. I listened to him breathing, the little catch where the air was constricted in his throat. His posture must have been uncomfortable, but he still didn’t move.

Sandy was a big dog. He wasn’t the kind that could be smuggled inside a handbag or under a coat. He was big and full of life and anyway, he loved me now.