Figures of Fear: An anthology (3 page)

He scrabbled his way back around the end of the bed, and as he did so he caught his foot and almost tripped over. His brown dressing gown was lying tangled on the floor, with its cord coiled on top of it.

He didn’t scream again, but he marched stiffly downstairs like a clockwork soldier, his arms and legs rigid with shock. He picked up the phone and dialled 999.

‘Emergency, which service please?’

‘Ambulance,’ he said, his lower lip juddering. ‘No, no, I don’t need an ambulance. I don’t know what I need. They’re dead.’

The red-haired woman detective brought him the mug of milky tea that he had asked for, with two sugars. She sat down at the table next to him and gave him a smile. She was young and quite pretty, with a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

‘You didn’t hear anything, then?’ she asked him.

‘No,’ David whispered.

‘We’re finding it very difficult to work out what happened,’ she said. ‘There was no sign that anybody broke into your house. The burglar alarm was on. And yet somebody attacked your daddy and mummy and whoever it was, they were very strong.’

‘It wasn’t me,’ said David. He was wearing the purple hooded top that his uncle and aunt had given him for his last birthday, and he looked very pale.

‘Well, we know for certain that it wasn’t you,’ said the detective. ‘We just need to know if you saw anything, or heard anything. Anything at all.’

David looked down into his tea. He felt like bursting into tears but he swallowed and swallowed and tried very hard not to. He was too young to know that there was no shame in crying.

‘I didn’t hear anything,’ he said. ‘I don’t know who did it. I just want them to be alive again.’

The detective reached across the table and squeezed his hand. She couldn’t think of anything to say to him, except, ‘I know you do, David. I know.’

Rufus said, ‘Did they ever find out how your parents died?’

David shook his head. ‘The coroner returned a verdict of unlawful killing by person or persons unknown. That’s all he could do.’

‘You must
wonder
, though, mate. You know – who could have done it, and why. And
how
, for Christ’s sake!’

David took a swig from his bottle of Corona. The Woolpack was crowded, even for a Friday evening, and they were lucky to have found somewhere to sit, in the corner. An enormously fat man sitting next to them was laughing so loudly that they could hardly hear themselves speak.

Rufus and David had been friends ever since David had started work at Amberlight, selling IT equipment. He had been there seven months now, and last month he had been voted top salesman in his team. Rufus was easy-going, funny, with a shaven head to pre-empt the onset of pattern baldness and a sharp line in grey three-piece suits.

David heard himself saying, ‘Actually … I
do
know who did it.’

‘Really?’ said Rufus. ‘You really
do
know? Like – have you known all along, right from when it happened? Or did you find out later? Hang on, mate – why didn’t you tell the police? Why don’t you tell them now? It’s never too late!’

David thought:
Shit, I wish I hadn’t said anything now. Why did I say anything? I’ve kept this to myself for seventeen years, why did I have to come out with it now? It’s going to sound just as insane now as it would have done then.

‘I didn’t tell the police because they would never have believed me. Just like you won’t believe me, either.’

‘Well, you could try me. I’m famous for my gullibility. Do you want another beer?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

Rufus went to the bar and came back with two more bottles. ‘Right, then,’ he said, smacking his hands together. ‘Who’s the guilty party?’

‘I told you you wouldn’t believe me. My dressing gown.’

Rufus had his bottle of beer poised in front of his mouth, his lips in an O shape ready to drink, but now he slowly put the bottle down.

‘Did I hear that right? Your dressing gown?’

Trying to sound as matter-of-fact as possible, David said, ‘My dressing gown. I had a brown dressing gown that used to hang on the back of my bedroom door and it looked like a monk. I always used to think that when it was dark it came alive. Well, one night it did, and it went into my parents’ bedroom and it strangled them. In fact it garrotted them, according to the police report. It strangled them so hard it almost took off their heads.’

‘Your dressing gown,’ Rufus repeated.

‘That’s right. Sounds bonkers, doesn’t it? But there is absolutely no other explanation. Unlawful killing by night attire. And there was something else, too. I had a puppet that my grandfather made for me, like it was all made out of grey sticks, with a wooden spoon for a head. Sticky Man, I used to call it. When my dressing gown went to murder my parents, Sticky Man jumped on me and I think he was trying to warn me what was going to happen.’

Rufus bent his head forward until his forehead was pressed against the table. He stayed like that for almost ten seconds. Then he sat up straight again and said, ‘Your puppet warned you that your dressing gown was going to kill your mum and dad.’

‘There – I told you that you wouldn’t believe me. Thanks for the beer, anyway.’

‘You know who you need to talk to, don’t you?’ said Rufus.

‘A shrink, I suppose you’re going to say.’

‘Unh-hunh. You need to talk to Alice in accounts.’

‘Alice? That freaky-looking woman with the white hair and all of those bracelets?’

‘That’s the one. Actually she’s a very interesting lady. I had a long chat with her once at one of the firm’s bonding weekends. It was down somewhere near Hailsham, I think. Anyway, Alice is a great believer in crustaceous automation, I think she called it.’

‘What? Crustaceous? That’s like crabs and lobsters, isn’t it?’

‘Well, I don’t know, but it was something like that. What it meant was, things coming to life when it gets dark. She really, really believes in it. Like your dressing gown, I suppose. One of the things she told me about was this armchair that came to life when anybody fell asleep in it, and it squeezed them so hard that it crushed their ribcage. It took forever before somebody worked out what was killing all these people.

‘What she said was, it’s the dark that does it. The actual darkness. It changes things.’

David looked at Rufus narrowly. ‘You’re not taking the piss, are you?’

‘Why would I?’

‘Well, I know you. Always playing tricks on people. I don’t want to go up to this Alice and tell her about my dressing gown if she’s going to think that I’m some kind of loony.’

‘No, mate,’ said Rufus. ‘Cross my heart. I promise you. I’m not saying that
she’s
not loony, but I don’t think you’re any loonier than she is, so I doubt if she’ll notice.’

They met in their lunch break, at their local Pizza Hut, which was almost empty except for two plump teenage mothers and their screaming children. David ordered a pepperoni pizza and a beer while Alice stayed with a green salad and a cup of black tea.

When he started talking to her, David realized that Alice was much less freaky than he had imagined. She had a short, severe, silvery-white bob, and he had assumed that she was middle-aged, but now he saw that her hair was bleached and highlighted and she couldn’t have been older than thirty-one or thirty-two. She had a sharp, feline face, with green eyes to match, and she wore a tight black T-shirt and at least half a dozen elaborate silver bangles on each wrist.

‘So, what did Rufus say when you told him?’ she asked, lifting up her cup of tea with both hands and blowing on it.

‘He was all right about it, actually, when you consider that he could have laughed his head off. Most of the rest of the team would have done.’

‘Rufus has his own story,’ said Alice. David raised an eyebrow, expecting her to tell him what it was, but she was obviously not going to be drawn any further.

‘You know the word “shoddy”?’ she said.

‘Of course.’

‘Most people think it means something that’s been badly made. You know, something inferior. But it can also mean a woollen yarn made out of used clothes. They rip up old coats and sweaters to shreds and then they re-spin them, with just a bit of new wool included. Most new clothes are made out of that.’

David said, ‘I didn’t know that, no.’

‘In Victorian times, these guys used to go around the streets ringing a bell and collecting used clothes. They called them “shoddy-men”. These days it’s mainly Lithuanians who pinch all of those bags of clothes that people leave out for charities. They ship them all back to Lithuania, turn them into new clothes and then sell them back to us.’

‘I’m not too sure what you’re getting at.’

Alice sipped her tea, and then she said, ‘Sometimes, those second-hand clothes have belonged to some very violent people. Murderers, even. And clothes take on their owners’ personalities. You know what it’s like when you try on another man’s jacket. It makes you feel as if you’re
him
.’

‘So what are you trying to tell me? My dressing gown might have had wool in it that once belonged in some murderer’s clothes?’

Alice nodded. ‘Exactly.’

‘But it’s not like
I
put it on, and
I
killed my parents. The dressing gown came alive. The dressing gown did it on its own!’

David suddenly realized that he was talking too loudly, and that the two teenage mothers were staring at him.

He lowered his voice and said, ‘How did it come alive on its own? I mean, how is that possible?’

Alice said, ‘The scientific name for it is “crepuscular animation”. It means inanimate objects that come alive when it begins to get dark. Most people don’t understand that darkness isn’t just the absence of light. Darkness is an element in itself, and darkness goes looking for more darkness, to feed itself.

‘That night, when your light was switched off, the darkness in your room found whatever darkness that was hidden in your dressing gown, and filled it up with more of its own dark energy, and brought it to life.’

‘I’m sorry, Alice. I’m finding this really hard to follow.’

Alice laid her cool, long-fingered hand on top of his. Her green eyes were unblinking. ‘What else could have happened, David? You said yourself that nobody broke into the house, and that you didn’t do it. You
couldn’t
have done it, you simply weren’t strong enough. And your puppet man came alive, too, didn’t he? How do you think that happened?’

David shrugged. ‘I haven’t a clue. And why should my dressing gown have come to life
then
, on that particular night? It was hanging there for
months
before that. My mother bought it for me in October, so that I could wear it on fireworks night.’

‘Well, I don’t know the answer to that. But it could have been some anniversary. Perhaps it was a year to the day that somebody was murdered, by whoever wore the wool that was woven into your dressing gown. There’s no way of telling for certain.’

David sat for a long time saying nothing. Alice continued to fork up her salad and sip her tea but he didn’t touch his pizza.

‘How do you know all this?’ he asked her. ‘All about this – what did you call it – screspusular stuff?’

‘Crepuscular animation. “Crepuscular” only means “twilight”. My great-grandmother told me. Something happened to one of her sons, during the war. There was a lot of darkness, during the blackouts. So much darkness everywhere. She said there used to be a statue in their local park, a weeping woman, on a First World War memorial. Apparently her son and one of his friends took a shortcut through the park at night, and the statue came to life and came after them. Her son’s head was crushed against the metal railings and his neck was broken.

‘Of course nobody believed the other little boy, but my great-grandmother did, because she knew him and she knew that he always told the truth. She made a study of inanimate objects coming to life when it begins to get dark, and she wrote it all down in an exercise book and that exercise book got passed down to me. Nobody else in the family wanted it. They thought it was all cuckoo.’

To emphasize the point, she twirled her index finger around at the side of her head.

‘I don’t know what to think,’ David told her.

‘Just beware of the darkness,’ said Alice. ‘Treat it with respect. That’s all I can say. And if you see a dressing gown that looks as if might come alive, then believe me, it probably will.’

He returned home late that night. The bulb had gone in the hallway and he had to grope his way to the living room.

The living room was dimly lit from the nearby main road. He lived on the ground floor of what had once been a large family house, but which was now divided into eight different flats. His was one of the smallest, but he was very fastidious, and he always kept it tidy. Up until the end of last year, he had shared a large flat with two colleagues from work, and that had been horrendous, with dirty plates stacked in the kitchen sink and the coffee table crowded with overflowing ashtrays and empty Stella cans. Worst of all had been the clothes that were heaped on the floor, or draped over the backs of chairs, or hanging from hooks on the back of every door.

He switched on the two side lamps, and the television, too, although he pressed the mute button. On the left-hand wall stood a bookcase, with all of his books arranged in alphabetical order, according to author. In front of them stood two silver shields, for playing squash, and several framed photographs of his father and mother, smiling. And then, of course, there was Sticky Man, perched on the edge of the shelf, staring at him with those circular, slightly mad eyes.

When Sticky Man had jumped on David on the night that his parents had been murdered, he had terrified him, but David had come to believe that he had been trying to warn him, and that was why he had kept him all these years. Hadn’t Sticky Men always been helpers, and facilitators – entertaining the troops in Italy during the war, and carrying messages under shellfire? When David was little, Sticky Man may have frightened him by coming alive during the night, but he had only been dancing, after all.