The New Uncanny (3 page)

The answering spit was fierce enough for an insult. The words that followed were repeated in exactly Ferguson’s tone, as far as he could distinguish the qualities of the voice. Was it deliberately muffled? Perhaps the speaker was obscuring it with a hand, hiding their ruined teeth from the other mirror, a notion that prompted Ferguson to blurt ‘What must you look like?’

Although he thought he’d only muttered it, the question came back through the wall. The idiotic trick must be affecting him more than he realised. ‘I know how I look,’ he couldn’t help retorting as he wiped foam off his lips. ‘I think I’m better off not knowing how you do.’

He was unable to imagine a sufficiently grotesque costume for them. Perhaps they passed for normal until an event like this weekend’s gave them licence not to be. Well before they finished echoing his latest remarks he was sick of the joke, if it could be called one. ‘Very funny,’ he responded, wondering why he’d waited for the mimicry to finish. ‘Thanks for the laugh. Just what I needed. I haven’t been so entertained since –’

He didn’t know. When the partial sentence came back neutered through the wall, he had the uneasy idea that the imitator was about to complete it for him. It faltered as he had, but he wasn’t about to finish it off. He couldn’t just blame the clown beyond the wall for the whole asinine situation; there was a clown in here too, looking foolish and pathetic, not to mention incapable of controlling his own behaviour. If he didn’t make any more noise, the other would have nothing to mimic. He turned off the light, muting the switch with his hand, before tiptoeing out of the room.

For the duration of a couple of prolonged but silent breaths he was able to enjoy the possibility that his neighbour might be lingering in the bathroom for another noise to echo, and then the enforced hush set about troubling him. It emphasised the anonymity of the bedroom, which felt close to empty even of him. He wasn’t going to be forced to act as if he weren’t there. Grabbing the remote control from the shelf that enthroned the dwarf television, he threw himself on the bed.

Did he just hear the springs yield beneath him, or was there an answering twang in the adjacent bedroom? He supported his shoulders with a pillow and awakened the television with a shrill whisper of static. Dismissing the Frugotel information menu, he began to search the channels: a comedy film teeming with teenagers even louder than the party he’d seen from the lift, a report of a polo game where all the players were in wheelchairs, a documentary about a drug that was meant to retard ageing, an episode of a reality series called
Fostered for a Fortnight
, another by the name of
From a Previous Relationship
… He hadn’t reached the second channel when, with barely a second’s delay each time, a television beyond the wall behind his head commenced dogging his progress.

His neighbour was entitled to watch television too. The order of the browsing needn’t be significant, since it was the obvious one. Ferguson felt irrational for wondering what would happen if he reversed it – at least, until he did so and heard the other television copy him. Changing channels at random produced the same result, and he had to struggle not to shout at the wall. How could he watch the programme he’d been tempted to? Without the sound, of course.

He buttoned it before poking the keys to summon the Frugrownup channel, where he came in some way through an act of the kind the channel offered the no doubt solitary members of its audience. The rhythmic activity was as noiseless as it was vigorous, so that he couldn’t help fancying that the participants were all straining to produce a sound. At least he’d called up silence in the next room too, and his body had begun to show signs of emulating that of the man on the screen by the time he heard a noise through the wall.

Somebody was panting. It grew louder and more dramatic, keeping pace with the efforts on the television. His neighbour had given in to the same temptation, Ferguson tried to think, but weren’t the gasps too theatrical even for this sort of film, and oddly androgynous? Was the other guest producing them to taunt him? Without question there was just a solitary voice, and he could hear faint laughter too. It was muffled by distance, unless there were more people in the next room, covering their mouths so as to titter at his situation. That was beginning to seem as contemptible as his attempts to pick up the girls in the bar. He switched off the television, and the panting stopped at once.

He lurched away from the bed and stumbled to the window. The hotel was indeed reflected across the deserted downtown street, where the front of a building was largely composed of glass. He could see his room and his faint self in the elongated window of an unlit office, but no sign of the next room. Could its occupant really have seen the reflection of the programme Ferguson had been watching? Perhaps they were using binoculars, or their eyes were keener than his. He dragged the dun curtains together, to be rewarded by a clash of curtain rings on the far side of the wall. ‘Show’s over,’ he mouthed and saw the old man beyond the dressing-table risk a triumphant grin. ‘Try and get to me now,’ they both said silently as he began to undress. He heard no further sound through the wall as he dumped his clothes on the chair and wriggled under the sheet and the dishevelled quilt before darkening the room.

The silence in the other one felt so frustrated that he nearly laughed aloud, but he wasn’t about to invite an imitation. He closed his eyes and edged the quilt over his exposed ear and sought the dark. It swarmed with thoughts, of which the most bearable was the book he’d imagined writing. Even this seemed potentially troubling now – the idea of a couple who fell in love at first sight only to be separated for the rest of their lives. When at last they met again they would be too changed and too senile to recognise each other. In their final moments one would regain the memory, which would seem to keep them together for eternity. Who would have it, or could it somehow be granted to both? The more Ferguson worried the idea the less likely it felt, and he was glad when the Scotch and the bottle of wine he’d had at dinner conspired to sink him in the dark.

A voice wakened him. He thought it was his own, despite its lack of shape. ‘Elizabeth,’ it repeated, or more accurately ‘Livadeth.’ It was talking in its sleep – no, replicating how he must have talked in his. ‘Weary of you,’ it said.

He wouldn’t have said that, ever. He must have been asking where she was. ‘I bloody am of you,’ he informed his imitator. As soon as the remark started to be echoed he thumped the wall above the rudimentary headboard. ‘Enough,’ he yelled. ‘Enough.’

The thumping was mimicked, and so was every repetition of the word. He might have been competing for the last one. He groped for the light-switch above the ledge that was Frugotel’s version of a bedside table, and was marching or at any rate limping at speed towards the corridor before he grasped that he shouldn’t leave the room while he was naked. Grabbing his trousers, he danced an ungainly impromptu hornpipe to don them, accompanied by echoes next door of the thuds of his bare feet. This enraged him so much that he almost forgot to retrieve his key as he stalked into the corridor.

It was deserted. If there was muffled laughter, surely it was downstairs. He pounded on the next door with both fists, so hard that the plastic digits of its number seemed to tremble. No doubt that was partly because of the pounding that answered his. ‘Stop this bloody game right now,’ he shouted. ‘Normal people need their sleep.’

He was echoed so closely that they might as well have been speaking in chorus. ‘That’s all. You’ve had–’ he said and felt idiotic for attempting to catch the imitator out by stopping unexpectedly, all the more so when it didn’t work. ‘You’ve had your chance,’ he declared and shoved his face at the spyhole in the door. The darkness beyond it only convinced him that he was being observed. Having dealt the door a final thump, he tramped to grab the phone from the ledge by his bed.

The receptionist hadn’t finished announcing herself when he said ‘Can you do something about whoever’s next door?’

‘What seems to be the problem, sir?’

‘They’re–’ He might have demanded whether she could hear the echo of his side of the conversation, but he didn’t want to seem irrational. ‘They’re making all sorts of noise,’ he said. ‘I’ve asked them to stop but they won’t.’

‘Which room is that, sir?’

‘They’re in 339.’

‘Just a moment.’ After several of those the phone rang in the next room. It was answered immediately, but only by a childish imitation. ‘Ring ring,’ the voice said in falsetto. ‘Ring ring.’

The phone fell silent, and so did the mimicry. As he strained to hear more than the labouring of his heart, the receptionist said ‘Is that Mr Ferguson?’

‘There’s just me here, yes. Why?’

‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We’ve got nobody in 339.’

‘Don’t give me that. You told me you were full. You couldn’t change my booking.’

‘It was a late cancellation.’

‘Well, someone’s in there. I can hear them. I’ve heard them all the time we’ve been talking. Maybe some of this weird lot you’re full up with have managed to get in.’ The muttered repetition of his protests had begun to madden him. ‘Don’t take my word for it,’ he urged. ‘Go and see.’

There was silence at his ear and beyond the wall. Eventually the receptionist said ‘Somebody will come up.’

Ferguson replaced the receiver and was devoting his energy to making no further sound when he wondered if his complaints might have warned off his tormentor. Suppose the person fled and left him looking like a fool? He sprinted to the door despite the twinges of his heart and leaned into the corridor. It was empty, and his neighbour hadn’t had time to dodge out of sight along it. He glared towards 339 until he heard a lift hum and stop humming, and a large man in the yellow Frugotel uniform appeared around the corner.

Other than frowning at Ferguson, he refrained from any comment. Once he’d finished peering through the spyhole he rapped on the door of 339. ‘Staff,’ he called. ‘Can I have a word, please.’

Ferguson wouldn’t have been surprised if the man had received every one of them back, but apparently the prankster wasn’t so easily tempted. The man knocked harder and then slid a card into the lock. Brandishing the card like an identification and a threat, he advanced into the room. Ferguson mostly heard his own heart, but there were also the click of a light switch and the scrawny rattle of a shower curtain. He waited for the sounds to be followed up, and then he snatched his key card out of the slot on the wall and padded heavily into the corridor. ‘What’s the hold-up? Who–’

He faltered, not just because the next room was almost indistinguishably similar to his. The Frugotel employee was staring at him across the tucked-in bed. ‘It’s like Reception told you, sir. Nobody’s in this room.’

‘You are,’ Ferguson thought of retorting, but demanded ‘Have you looked in the wardrobe?’

The man lingered over looking at him, so that Ferguson wasn’t far from opening it by the time the employee did. ‘Nobody,’ he said at once. ‘Nobody’s been here. Now if you wouldn’t–’

A woman’s peevishly sleepy protest interrupted him. ‘What’s going on now?’

She was in the room opposite Ferguson’s. From the threshold her husband or a man performing some of the functions of one informed her ‘It’s the old hooligan that was making all the row out here before.’

Ferguson was sure he recognised one of the rowdy drinkers from the floor below. ‘That’s more your style, isn’t it? I thought people were meant to keep their drinks in the bar.’

He wouldn’t have minded if the hotel employee had asked what he meant, but it was the man across the corridor who spoke. ‘You know, he looks like the old reprobate Primmy said was trying to get off with her and Barbaria when they just wanted a quiet drink.’

‘I don’t think any of you know how to be quiet,’ Ferguson retorted and might have said more if the man hadn’t called ‘Good God, he’s showing everyone what it sounded like he wanted to show them.’

Ferguson glanced down to find his flies gaping wide. While his member had the grace to hide its head, its mat as grey as dust was well in evidence. ‘Forgive me,’ he gasped, yanking up the zip so fiercely that it came close to scalping his crotch. ‘I’m a bit distracted. It’s not long since I lost my wife.’

‘Then what are you staying here for?’ the offstage woman across the corridor wanted everyone to know.

‘We’d already booked. I didn’t want to let the hotel down. I thought it’d be better than staying at home by myself. We often used to come here,’ Ferguson added as best he could for a nervous belch, which he tried to explain by saying ‘It was one of our favourite towns to eat in.’

None of this seemed adequate, but before Ferguson could think of a further excuse the man said, ‘We can tell.’

‘We’re sorry to hear of your tragedy. Please accept our sincerest condolences.’ It was unclear whether the employee was speaking for Frugotel or on behalf of the couple opposite. Having locked 339, he said ‘Will you be all right now?’

‘I haven’t been hearing things, if that’s what you mean. That’s to say I have. I certainly have.’ Ferguson folded his arms in case this lent him some authority and to hide his hirsute obese breasts. ‘I’ve lost my wife,’ he said, ‘not my mind.’

He had time to interpret the awkwardness of the silence in various ways before the uniformed man said, ‘We don’t want any more of a disturbance. Most of our guests are asleep.’

‘I don’t. I’d like to be,’ Ferguson said and backed into his room. He’d managed not to slam the door when he wished he’d left his listeners a better image of Elizabeth. Perhaps they imagined an old woman as overfed as he was, not the girl he’d carried over a stream and to a gate a quarter of a mile up the sunny slope beyond it, or the mother who’d perched their daughter on her shoulders when they’d returned for the same hillside climb, or the grandmother who’d continued to outdistance him on their countryside walks even once those had grown shorter and more effortful. He bruised his forehead against the door as he peered through the spyhole. If anyone was out there he was going to let them know that he and more importantly Elizabeth had come here for the countryside, not just the food. The corridor was deserted and silent, however. ‘It’s all your fault,’ he almost yelled at the next room, instead mouthing the words. He tiptoed across the prickly carpet to stand by the bed, where he unbuttoned his trousers and eased the zip down and stepped clumsily but silently out of them. Once they were heaped on the floor he sat so gradually on the bed that the springs stayed as quiet as he was. He inched under the bedclothes and stood a pillow on end to support his raised head while he waited for some sound from the next room.