The Spectral Book of Horror Stories (8 page)

Sometimes, I’d find a fire burning in the lane, or even just amongst the brambles. Piles of cardboard boxes, old newspapers and magazines and even books, all just left out burning in the sun, unattended. It was as if Bacon wanted the house to get burned down. Once, a fire was burning on the slippery path itself. I had to hold my breath and jump over it, holding a crate of full milk bottles. Well, obviously, I didn’t. I could’ve left Bacon’s milk at the end of the path. But I didn’t want to risk pissing him off, because he might complain, and that would mean I’d piss the boss off. And that was a far scarier prospect than setting fire to my jeans. The boss was in a terrible mood, generally, because severed-tendon man was taking a long time to finish his round these days, and we were paid by the hour. I was pretty sure that severed-tendon man would be getting the sack soon, and replaced by somebody faster. But anyway; sometimes it seemed like Bacon didn’t even want his fucking milk delivered, it was so difficult to get to the actual porch.

All of which is to say that by the time I was delivering in darkness, the place was already creeping me out.

On the third dark morning, the moon and stars were intermittently obscured by clouds, and I could see very little. I ignored the ‘slape as fuck’, telling myself that however much it sounded real, it was obviously only a memory, a thought, something interior to me, and nothing to be afraid of. And I took the path slowly.

I crouched down to place the full milk bottles in the gloomy, stinking workhouse porch and reload my crate with empties. There were lots—Bacon got a lot of milk—and they were crusty and unwashed. I noticed light reflecting from the glass; the clouds must have shifted again, letting the moon shine through. I was glad. But then, as I stood, I noticed that the door to the house proper was slightly open, and that there was a face in that shadowed gap, peering at me. The moonlight caught on two big eyes, and on a row of big, yellow teeth, perfectly even, and shaped like a smile. They were the upper teeth. I recoiled against the porch wall. How long had he been there? Bacon, if this was he, did not speak, and neither did I. He maintained his smile. His mouth was slightly open, but I couldn’t see his lower teeth. I wondered if he was wearing dentures, and if they were fitted incorrectly. He had deep creases running straight down from the corners of his wide mouth. He looked utterly delighted about something. I couldn’t speak. I was frozen. I don’t know how long we stood like that. Then, the clouds came back, and the door was closing, and his face—smile unchanged—was hidden from view.

I ran at full speed from that doorway then, rain splattering my face. And of course, on the very last of them slape-as-fuck stones, I slipped. I slipped hard. My feet flew backwards and my face flew forwards. For a brief, hopeful moment, I thought that I might flip right over, three hundred and sixty degrees, and land on my feet again. But I performed only half such a manoeuvre. I tried to break my fall with my hands, but my hands were holding a crate of empty milk bottles. The crate landed on top of my fingers and my face landed in the crate. One bottleneck aligned perfectly with my right eye socket. Glass, bone, skin and cartilage all broke. My knuckles broke. I lay there, shattered, and I was conscious of that face peering at me from out of the darkness once more, still grinning, and fat fingers trying to turn me over.

The boss was not going to be very happy about this, I thought, as I was being dragged away. I was going to become really very slow. And probably too expensive.

THE NIGHT DOCTOR

Steve Rasnic Tem

Elaine said the walk would be good for them both. “We don’t get enough meaningful exercise these days. Besides, we might meet some of the new neighbours.” Sam couldn’t really argue with that, but he couldn’t bring himself to agree, so he nodded, grunted. Although his arthritis was worse than ever, as if his limbs were grinding themselves into immobility, it hurt whether he moved them or not, so why not move?

He would have preferred waiting until they were more comfortable in the neighbourhood—they’d been there less than a week. Until he had seen a few friendly faces, until he could be sure of their intentions. People here kept their curtains open most of the time. He supposed that was meant to convince passersby of their trusting nature, but he didn’t like it. Someday you might see something you didn’t want to see. You might misinterpret something. Since they’d moved in he’d glanced into those other windows from time to time—and seen shiny spots back in the darkness, floating lights with no apparent source, oddly shaped shadows he could not quite identify and didn’t want to think about. He was quite happy not knowing the worst about other people’s lives. He could barely tolerate the worst about his own.

Not that he had justification for much complaint. He’d always known the worst was somewhere just out of reach, so it shouldn’t have affected him. Like most people, he supposed. Human beings had a natural sense for it, the worst that was just beyond the limits of their own lives. The worst that was still to come.

What with one minor annoyance or another—finding pants that didn’t make him look fat, determining what pair of shoes might hurt his feet the least, deciding on the correct degree of layering that wouldn’t make him wish he’d worn something else as the day wore on—they didn’t leave the new house until almost eleven. Sam worried about getting his lunch on time. If he didn’t get his lunch on time his body felt off the rest of the day.

“I’ll buy you some crackers at the drug store if you need them,” she said. “Don’t fret about it.”

“Crackers? What kind of meal is that? You’re always saying I should eat healthier.”

“For heaven’s sake, Sam, let it go. Crackers to tide you over. Wheat, something like that. A lot of small meals are better for you anyway. That’s the way the cave people ate—they grazed all the time.”

“Cave people,” he repeated, as if reading some absurd road sign. He didn’t say anything more. He didn’t want to whine like Bryan, thirty-four years old and he still whined like a little boy. They’d done something terribly wrong for Bryan to be that way, but Sam still had no idea what it was. Parenting was a mystery, like diet, like exercise, like how to still keep feeling good about yourself in this world.

Sam felt uncomfortable most of the time. Physically, certainly. And as much as it annoyed him to think about it, emotionally as well. A walking mass of illogic, and that was no way to be.

After they left the house they turned onto the long lane that meandered through the neighbourhood. When he realised how long the street was, and how far away they were from the tiny mall—not so bad if you were driving, but Sam had
stopped driving two years ago—he felt on the verge of tears. Just like some kind of toddler. Humiliating.

As they were starting out a large black bird landed in the street beside him. It threw its head back, shuddering, something struggling in its mouth. Sam glanced at his wife to see if she had noticed this. But her eyes were fixed forward, and he decided not to mention it. He twisted his head around to look at the bird. Still there. Was it a crow? It looked too big to be a blackbird. In fact it might be the biggest bird he’d ever seen up close. Its beak was so sharp. It could take your eyes out and there was nothing you could do about it, it would happen so quickly. Just like they were grapes.

His knees were hurting already. There were tears in his eyes, but at least they weren’t yet running down his cheeks. Birds didn’t cry. He should be like the birds.

He wasn’t sure how it had come to this—he’d always been such an optimist. And he’d always been healthy—no, it was too late in life to exaggerate—relatively healthy. But relatively healthy still meant you could drop dead at any time. So he walked around sore much of the time, each step like a needle in his heels and a crumbling in his knees, and attempted to think about everything but death.

They passed another older couple. Elaine would have said “elderly” but Sam hated that word. Elaine smiled at them and said hello. The couple nodded and said hello back. They had already passed the couple when Sam managed to speak his delayed “nice day!” The man said “oh, yes,” awkwardly turning his head to Sam in order to be polite, but staggering a little, almost falling off the curb. Sam could feel the warmth flooding his face. He’d caused that distraction, and the resulting stumble.

“We should have introduced ourselves,” Elaine said a few minutes later. “They may have been neighbours.” Sam hoped the couple didn’t recognise him the next time they met. “Sam, did you hear me?”

“Of course I heard you, you’re right here.”

“Then why didn’t you say something?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know it needed answering, I guess.”

“I don’t talk just to hear myself.”

“Maybe they’re not neighbours. Maybe they’re just passing through, taking a walk. They might live several blocks away—they look pretty healthy. They could probably walk that far.”

“Uh huh,” she said, her head down, walking a little faster. It hurt to try to keep up with her.
Too late
. That’s what she would have said if he asked her what was wrong, so he didn’t. She deserved better—he didn’t understand how he’d gotten so fuzzy-headed. There was probably a pill for that, something to erase a certain percentage of your thoughts, clear out some space so you could pay better attention to the people you loved. So much for the benefits of exercise. Sam was feeling worse and worse.

By the time they reached the drug store Sam was ravenous. He sat on the padded bench and devoured two packets of crackers while Elaine got her many prescriptions. He’d already filled his last week before they moved. The lady across from him frowned. He looked around—he was spraying cracker crumbs everywhere. He didn’t know what to do—he couldn’t very well get down on his hands and knees right there in the store and sweep them up. He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see either the lady or the crumbs and continued to eat.

When he was small his mother would drag him all over town on her errands. She took him along even if he was sick, but that was just what you had to do when you were a single mother. The worse he felt the more clothing she put on him; he supposed it was meant as a kind of protection. Sometimes he’d get so hot his head would swim. She’d sit him down somewhere in a chair, or in the shopping cart, or even in some out-of-the-way corner of the floor and let him nap. He’d dream he was a bug in a cocoon, waiting to be someone else. That night she’d reward him with a long bath before he went to bed.

“Sleep is what you need,” she’d say, stroking his forehead. “Go to sleep and let the night doctor take care of you.”

Over the years he’d tried to make some sense out of it. Plentiful sleep, of course, was bound to help, to lower stress, to permit the body to bring its own healing. However it worked, he almost always felt better the next day. He didn’t even have to wait until the day arrived, he could take a nap in the middle of the day, and then the night doctor could come. The night doctor didn’t necessarily require night, he simply required that you be asleep so that he could properly do his business on you. All that was needed was that it be nighttime inside your head.

Had he really believed that the night doctor was an actual person? He’d never believed in magic, exactly—a person or a thing had to act, had to do something. So as a child he’d believed in Santa Claus because he was a person, sort of, this larger-than-life thing, an
agency
. He didn’t believe in the Easter Bunny because he knew a kid who had a rabbit who’d smelled and bitten him once.

It had been oddly reassuring, and yet not reassuring at all. Because if Santa were a person, then he was fallible. He could be late, or if you moved he might not find your house. The same with the night doctor. And he had had proof—he’d once visited his grandparents for two weeks and he’d been sick the whole time. The night doctor obviously couldn’t find him.

It had all been a great cause for anxiety. The fact that no one but his mother ever talked about the night doctor had only made it worse—he’d never even seen a picture of the man. Or woman, or whatever.

“Sam, darling? Are you ready to go?”

He blinked. Elaine was looking down at him, smiling. Had he overslept? Suddenly he felt lost, outside his body and not quite knowing the way back in.

“I fell . . .” He yawned. “I fell asleep waiting. Sorry.”

“You must have needed it,” she said, helping him to his feet. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. Maybe I’ve pushed you too hard today.”

“Exercise is good for me. I don’t get enough,” he said, moving slowly with her arm in his as they rocked their way down the aisle, Elaine’s bag full of pill bottles rattling at her hip. He willed the blood to flow; his feet were numb. By the time they got out of the store they were better, he could feel them tingling. He supposed the day would eventually come when they didn’t get better, when they didn’t start tingling but remained as dead as fallen logs. But not today, thank God. Not today.

It was strangely dim outside, and Sam wondered if they could have been there at the pharmacy all day. How long had he been asleep? Then he realised it was simply the clouds rolling in, and he hoped they could get home before it rained. He never liked getting rained on, not even as a child. He usually got sick afterwards. There must have been something in the rain, not just water.

They were at the highest point in the road, the remainder of the neighbourhood receding gradually below them. Had they really climbed such a hill? Maybe they were lost—they didn’t know the neighbourhood well. They could wander for hours and not find their way back. Sam gazed around in a futile search for recognisable landmarks. But he had no landmarks in his memory for their new home.

From here they had a clear view of the afternoon sky. The clouds were heavy, laden—it might begin raining at any moment. The dark shapes of birds were darting in and out between the banks of clouds as if knitting them together. Sam thought of the giant bird he’d seen earlier and wondered if these were more of the same. They appeared to be rising up from the roofs of the neighbourhood where they’d been resting, rushing up to join the others as if in collusion.