The New Uncanny (28 page)

‘Sue...’ she hissed. Her eyes were wide and urgent. She grabbed my forearm. ‘Listen to me.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘I...’ Her eyes I remember were staring and wide, like terrified eyes, but oddly expressionless. ‘I... please...’

‘I’m listening.’

Then she turned, just as Peter had turned, spinning on her heel and walking rapidly away. As suddenly as if a switch had been thrown. I looked up and saw Ruthie on the prom. She waved to me, a big, enthusiastic wave. She ran up and hugged me and thanked me for being her friend and told me she was sad that it was all over between me and Peter. She tickled me under my arms. I think it was this scene that made me forget that moment with Andrea. That made me forget looking over the handrail later and seeing her beating her thighs in that jerky, Sims-like way.

I only remembered that moment when I went back to Silloth with Adé. When Peter leaned in to whisper something, then turned suddenly away. When I saw for a second a look of horror and pleading flicker across his eyes, before the bland smile resettled itself. As though someone was trying to escape from that body. That body which had not changed. But which now subsided into a chair as though its power source had been cut off, as though it was on pause.

‘Bye then,’ said Adé. ‘Lovely to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.’

It was only when we opened the door to go that the little girl came running in from the garden.

‘Are they going?’ she cried. ‘Oh. Don’t go. Don’t go...’ and she hugged me round the waist and tickled my ribs a little.

‘Who’s this?’ smiled Adé, rubbing the child’s lovely, twisted red hair. ‘You must be Peter’s little girl. What’s your name?’

‘Ruthie,’ said the girl, looking up at me and smiling. ‘Stay,’ she said. ‘Stay and play.’

And I saw that she wasn’t Peter’s little girl at all. She was Ruthie, the same Ruthie, ten years on but still eight years old.

SHE WAS SWEATING, I was sweating, the ground was sweating. We could feel the rumbling in her bowels, sense that in another minute, she’d open her mouth to vomit. ‘Tell them to stop,’ she pleaded, her hand stroking my damp, greasy hair, ‘please, make them stop.’ The imps capered around us, screeching in their shrill voices, making obscene gestures. Every once in a while, they ran a long, filthy fingernail over my ass or hers, giggling annoyingly each time. And we fucked. When my tongue caressed her nipple, the acrid taste of the sulphur got into my mouth too. I felt her hand slide down my wet back, or maybe it was one of the imps. I forced myself to stick my tongue out again and trailed it slowly down her body, trying to ignore the taste, the smells, the sounds. I reached her crotch. The imps clapped and whistled in ecstasy, but I tried to ignore them, focused on my moving tongue. She started to moan, but didn’t close her eyes for a minute. Her gaze was fixed somewhere on the ceiling and she must have seen the giant blind bats hanging upside down over our heads, or the ones that were flying around the room, dropping their shit pellets. You can’t ever close your eyes here, not when you’re asleep, not when you pass out, not when you’re making it with a woman. And there’s another special thing about this terrible place – you have a constant hard-on, if you’re a man, and if you’re a woman, you’re always wet, and the whole sex thing turns into an almost involuntary act, like breathing, like breathing moldy air that makes your lungs convulse as if you’re about to puke.

One of the imps jumps right over us, scoops up a little bit of the vomit on her stomach with its finger and leaps around in the air waving it to the others. My tongue is still going at it, and she keeps moaning. As I raise my body to penetrate her, my erect penis disturbs a dozing rat. The imps are in a frenzy now. They bombard us with gobs of phlegm and pellets of bat shit. Our shame and suffering delight them, and we can’t stop. If only I’d listened to the preacher when I was a kid, if only I’d stopped when I still could.

Translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverstone

A. S. Byatt
was born in Sheffied, South Yorkshire, and educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, and Somerville College, Oxford, She is the author of eight novels to date:
Shadow of a Sun
(1964),
The Game
(1967),
The Virgin in the Garden
(1978)
Still Life
(1985) which won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen ward,
Babel Tower
(1996),
A Whistling Woman
(2002),
Possession: A Romance
(1990), won the Booker Prize for Fiction and the
Irish Times
International Fiction Prize, and
The Biographer’s Tale
(2000). She has also written two novellas, published together as
Angels and Insects,
several works of non-fiction, and five collections of short stories:
Sugar and Other Stories
(1987);
The Matisse Stories
(1993),
The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye
(1994), and
Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice
(1998). She was made a dame in 1999 and currently lives in London.

Ramsey Campbell
Ramsey Campbell is described by the Oxford Companion to English Literature as ‘Britain’s most respected living horror writer’, and in 1991 was voted the Horror Writer’s Horror Writer in the Observer Magazine. His many award-winning novels include
The Face That Must Die, Incarnate, The Overnight
, and
The Grin of the Dark
. He has also published thirteen collections of short stories to date, most recently
Told by the Dead
(2003).
 

Frank Cottrell Boyce
is a novelist and screenwriter. His film credits include
Welcome to Sarajevo, Hilary and Jackie, Code 46, 24 Hour Party People
and
A Cock and Bull Story
. In 2004, his debut novel
Millions
won the Carnegie Medal and was shortlisted for The Guardian Children’s Fiction Award. His second novel,
Framed
, was published by Macmillan in 2005. He also writes for the theatre and was the author of the highly acclaimed BBC film
God on Trial
. He has previously contributed stories to Comma’s anthologies
Phobic
and
The Book of Liverpool
.

Ian Duhig
has published four poetry collections, including
Nominies
(1998) which was named as one of the 1998 Sunday Times Poetry Books of the Year and received a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation; and most recently,
Lammas Hireling
(2003) which was a Poetry Book Society Choice. His first short story was published in
The Book of Leeds
(Comma, 2007).

Matthew Holness
won the Perrier Comedy Award in 2001 for
Garth Marenghi’s Netherhead
, and has since appeared in
The Office
,
Casanova
, and his own Channel 4 television series
Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace
and
Man to Man With Dean Learner.
His first short story was published in
Phobic
(Comma, 2007).

Etgar Keret
is an Israeli writer whose award-winning short story collections include
Pipelines,
Gaza Blues
(with Samir El Youssef),
The Bus Driver Who Thought He Was God, The Nimrod Flip-Out
, and
Missing Kissinger
. He is the author of three graphic novels, several award-winning scripts for TV, and the novella
Kneller’s Happy Campers,
which was adapted by director Goran Dukic into a feature-length film
Wristcutters: A Love Story
starring Patrick Fugit and Tom Waits. His fiction has been translated into sixteen languages and has been the basis for more than 40 short films.

Hanif Kureishi
's first play,
Soaking the Heat
, was performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1976. Since then he has enjoyed success as a playwright, screenwriter, novelist and short story writer. His first novel,
The Buddha of Suburbia
, was published in 1990 to widespread acclaim, and won the Whitbread First Novel Award. He has published also three collections of short stories:
Love in a Blue Time, Midnight All Day
and
The Body and Other Stories
.

Alison MacLeod
is the author of two novels,
The Changeling
and
The Wave Theory of Angels
. Her first collection of short stories,
Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction
, was published in 2007. She lives in Brighton and teaches creative writing at the University of Chichester.

Sara Maitland
grew up in Galloway and studied at Oxford University. Her first novel,
Daughters of Jerusalem
, was published in 1978 and won the Somerset Maugham Award. Novels since have included
Three Times Table
(1990),
Home Truths
(1993) and
Brittle Joys
(1999), and one co-written with Michelene Wandor –
Arky Types
(1987). Her short story collections include
Telling Tales
(1983),
A Book of Spells
(1987) and most recently,
On Becoming a Fairy Godmother
(2003).

Adam Marek
’s stories first appeared in
Parenthesis (Comma 2006),
and
New Writing 15,
edited by Maggie Gee and Bernardine Evaristo. His debut collection
Instruction Manual for Swallowing
was published by Comma Press in 2007.

Christopher Priest
is the author of ten novels and two collections of short stories.
The Glamour
won the 1988 Kurd Lasswitz Best Novel award and
The Prestige
won the 1995 World Fantasy Award, the 1995 James Tait Award for best novel and was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. In 2006 it was adapted into a feature film by Christopher Nolan.
 

Jane Rogers
was born in London in 1952 and lived in Birmingham, New York State (Grand Island) and Oxford, before doing an English degree at Cambridge University. She has written seven novels, including
Separate Tracks, Mr Wroe’s Virgins, Island
and
Voyage Home,
as well as original television and radio drama. Her short stories were collected in
Ellipsis 2
(Comma 2007).

Nicholas Royle
is the author of five novels –
Counterparts, Saxophone Dreams, The Matter of the Heart, The Director’s Cut
and
Antwerp
– as well as one collection of short stories,
Mortality
(Serpent’s Tail, 2006). He has edited twelve anthologies of short fiction including
A Book of Two Halves
,
The Tiger Garden: A Book of Writers’ Dreams
,
The Time Out Book of New York Short Stories
, and
Dreams Never End
(Tindal Street Press).

Gerard Woodward
was born in London in 1961 and studied art and anthropology. He has published four poetry collections:
Householder
(1991), which won a Somerset Maugham Award;
After the Deafening
(1994);
Island to Island
(1999); and
We Were Pedestrians
(2005). His first novel,
August
, was shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread First Novel Award, and was followed in 2004 by
I’ll Go To Bed At Noon
(2004), shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and the third in this semi-autobiographical series,
A Curious Earth
(2007). His first collection of short stories
The Caravan Thieves
was published this year.
 

Special Thanks

The editors would like to thank the following people for their advice and support throughout the project: Tom Spooner, Tim Cooke, Libby Tempest, Deborah Rogers, Andy Darby, Lin and Jon Shaffer, and Hot Chip.