Year's End: 14 Tales of Holiday Horror (2 page)

Two chimes to go.

And with the eleventh the flaying commenced, and with it the cutting off of his head, while, with what was left of his body slumped, still strapped in its chair, more stirrings began. The crowd fell to silence. Sprawled on its narrow seat, the Englishman’s limbless corpse trembled as the final, twelfth stroke rang—and, scratching, clawing its way through blood and flesh, shakily standing, the New Year came forth.

Doll

Richard Godwin

I remember that day clearly. It still bears the crystal clarity of a high definition film.

I don’t know why I bought it. It wasn’t the sort of thing I would normally buy as a present.

Perhaps it was the morning I’d had. Perhaps it was the aftermath of Christmas and the endless stuffing of mouths with food, the tired bloated feeling after turkey and relatives you do not want to see. Perhaps it was the festivities I saw breaking out around me as people I despised readied themselves for parties. All I can do is recount the events as they unfolded.

I’m a criminal lawyer and highly paid. When you mix with criminals there has to be some sort of compensation for your efforts, why else would you be drawn to the underworld and its demonic characters?

I deal with animals. The things I’ve seen are barbaric. Most of us think things, horrific things, but thinking and doing are quite separate. I’d been interviewing a particularly hard case.

Wandsworth prison is a grim place—Victorian gloom hangs over it like a caul suffocating light and hope. There is an overpowering sense of sick dreams when you enter its walls, as if some universal nightmare has been spilled from a wound. The air feels stained. Its conditions are less than human. Prisoners walk the line between man and animal, neither one nor the other.

My client was in for assaulting a police officer. He had broken the officer’s face in so many paces he needed metal plates to hold him together. He sat with arms folded across his giant chest and a broad grin opening his face like a scar.

“I’ve been reviewing your statement and there are a few things I would like to go over with you,” I said.

“Don’t waste my time with all that, Mark.”

His habit of referring to me by my first name irritated me.

“I need to go over your statement.”

“I didn’t do the pig, although he deserved it—all pigs do.”

“I would strongly advise you not to say any of that before the jury.”

“There isn’t going to be a jury.”

I considered for a moment that the man was mad and this thought opened up an entirely new line of defence.

“I need to go over your movements on that night.”

“Look,” he said, putting one hand palm down over my papers and the other down on the table in the form of a clenched fist. I looked down at it, at the tattoo of some animal I could not identify, emblazoned with the words, “Man the unnatural Animal.”

“Would you allow me to do my job?” I said.

“Why do you think I hired you?”

“I assume because I have a reputation as one of the best criminal lawyers in the land.”

“No.”

He fixed me with his stare.

I did not want him to see I was disconcerted.

There was something of the basilisk about his eyes, some shifting surface of lies and violence beneath his look. His lips moved slightly, as if he was in communion with something else in the room.

“I am looking into the future,” he said. “And do you know what I see? My release.”

“That’s good.”

“The reason I hired you is because you’re just like me.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re guilty.”

“Of what?”

“Something. Maybe a relative you didn’t see at Christmas. You need to keep up your appearance in that suit of yours—you wouldn’t want it messed up.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Oh no. Not you, you’re my escape route.”

“Then do as I instruct you to.”

“I am. But you’re instructing me on different levels. The problem with you educated types is that you attach too much importance to thought. You think terrible things, you have fantasies of doing far worse than I’m accused of, and you think there’s a difference between thought and action.”

“There is.”

“All this,” he said, waving a hand at the filthy walls that flanked us, “is hypocrisy, the hypocrisy of those who run this country. You’re just like me—you hunger for blood. I’ll show you,” he said. “You’ll see what I’m talking about and what it is you’re hiding from yourself, and I’ll be released.”

I waved an arm at the guard, who let me out to the fresh air.

I had a busy day ahead of me, and as I made my way straight back to my office my iPhone beeped. The message made my heart sink.

“You haven’t forgotten have you? So looking forward to seeing you.”

My sister.

My sick sister who I had promised to visit by the year’s end and forgotten about.

A lame dog crossed my path and for some unknown reason I kicked it brutally.

I stopped and regained control of myself, and immediately wrote a text confirming the arrangements. I would need to leave on the Friday train. This would involve taking a day off and losing valuable work time. I was about to delete the message and think of some excuse, when my finger pressed the send button and it was too late.

I stared at the words “message sent” as if I was staring down an abyss.

My head raced. I couldn’t get out of it now. It was Thursday. I needed to buy her a present. What? I usually got my secretary to deal with this sort of thing, but there was no time. What did Hilary like?

I racked my brains for memories of her, displaced like old papers yellowed with time.

Her picture wrinkled at the edges like a burning leaf.

I sat staring from the train window as the grey backs of houses shot by in a haze and ran a list through my head.

She was sick, I had to make an effort.

It had been years, years Hilary had been kind about.

One glance at my diary told me that now was my one chance to buy her a present.

As I walked from the station I noticed some of the animal’s hair had stuck to my shoe. I stopped and wiped it off.

Passing through Chapel street market I was roused from my daydream by the shouts and calls of the street traders. I stopped in the bright winter sunshine and looked about me at a world of colour and banter, and saw Hilary as clearly as if she was standing there in front of me. A memory of her at play with her dolls in the nursery flashed through my mind.

I passed a fruit seller and walked towards a brightly lit stall selling various objects and knickknacks.

An old woman looked at me as I stopped to scan her wares. And there in front of me lay the doll.

I could feel the woman’s eyes on me as I stood taking it in, and I guessed she was calculating how much to charge me for it.

It was a porcelain doll, unusual and antique, with steel blue eyes that shone out at me, frayed old fashioned clothes, a smudge of a mouth and no nose. Its fists were clenched and it seemed to be holding something sharp in one of them but when I picked it up to look there was nothing there.

The doll was cold to the touch.

“Nice, ain’t she?” the woman said.

“How much?”

“With a doll like this,” she said, “it’s for you to make me an offer. It’s a special doll.”

I must have paid several hundred pounds.

It was very unusual and I knew there is a market for antique dolls.

“OK?” I said.

“You’ve given all you have, always a good sign with a doll like this.”

“Then we have a deal?”

“We have a deal all right. Shall I wrap it for you?”

“Yes.”

And she folded it into some white tissue paper.

I took it and returned to my office, where I said to my secretary, “No calls” and prepared my case.

I was in court first thing.

I won.

I always do.

Then I made my way to the station.

As I sat down I heard someone say, “I’ll do what you want.”

I looked round and saw two kids fooling around behind me. Then I toiled my way through two counties until I saw darkness settle outside.

I had finished what I needed to do and put my papers away. On the seat beside me lay the doll in its wrapping. The motion of the rain must have jostled it, for it had moved along the seat.

I looked out of the window at the countryside flashing by. Finally I saw the name of the station and got out of the train. Ian was waiting for me outside.

“Hello Mark, good journey?”

I shook his hand warmly, taking in the jovial face.

“How are you?”

“I’m fine,” he said, putting my case in the car.

It had been years since I’d seen Ian. He’d always struck me as a pleasant chap, a bit dim, perhaps, but good for Hilary.

He started the car and for a while we sat in silence. I was waiting for him to give me more news.

Finally I spoke.

“How is she?”

I saw his face drop.

“Not good, be prepared for a shock. The old Hilary is gone, a pale shadow has taken her place.”

“Oh come on, it can’t be as bad as that.”

“Since the miscarriage she’s haemorrhaged twice, badly. Lost a lot of blood. Women’s things, you know, but I can tell.”

“What can you tell, Ian?”

“She’s not well. But,” he said, striking me on the knee, a habit I truly hated, “you’re just the trick. You’ll cheer her up. She’s really looking forward to seeing you.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely. I know you two haven’t always got on, but she’ll be delighted to see you.”

“We’ve always got on.”

“Not what she said.”

“Oh?”

“Said you used to fight like cat and dog, hated each other.”

“Usual brother sister stuff.”

“It was a lot more than that,” he said.

I had only been to their house once before, many years ago, but I recognised it now as it swung into view, the leafy walls glancing off the lane that edges round to the old building surrounded by lawns.

It was a pleasant enough affair if you like that sort of thing.

As we got out of the car I already missed the city. It was dark and I couldn’t hear a sound.

A dog bounded towards us. A Labrador, good-natured and soppy.

“There there,” Ian said, patting him, “he wouldn’t hurt a thing.”

I followed him inside, where a fire crackled in the hallway.

I expected Hilary to greet me at the door and was annoyed that the house stood empty as I entered.

“I’m afraid we’ve got no fanfare for you,” Ian said.

“Where is she?” I said.

“In bed, old boy. Didn’t she tell you? She’s bed bound.”

Hilary had told me very little and I resented her for this. I didn’t want to be there. My only reassurance was that I wouldn’t have to endure any parties.

“Shall I go up and see her?”

“Absolutely. First room on the right.”

The corridor at the top was dark. I could see a glow coming from under my sister’s door.

Putting my bags down, I approached and knocked. Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see.

There was a pause, and then a weak voice called out, “Yes?”

I turned the handle and walked into the bedroom.

The first thing that hit me was a stale smell of almonds and urine, some stench of sickness and decay that made me want to run from the house. There, surrounded by pillows, lay what was my sister, although if I had passed her in the street I would not have recognised her.

She had lost weight. A lot of weight, and her skin was white and flecked with blue. Veins stood prominent on her shrunken skull-like face and she was frail. A feeling of nausea passed over me. I felt a rush of saliva in my mouth.

Her gaze was locked into mine and there was no light in her eyes. They looked milky and opaque.

She turned her head away.

I rallied myself and said jovially, “So sis? How are you?” and was met with a stare that chilled me.

As she looked at me again I could see hatred, definite hatred in her eyes.

She opened her mouth to speak, her thin lips pallid and almost non-existent, like two lines drawn on a face by a child

“Sit down, Mark,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”

I walked over to the small chair beside her bed and pulled it away a little for a better view.

“Can’t stand to sit close to me?”

“It’s not that.”

I held her present in my hand.

“Busy?”

“Very.”

“Ian no doubt has told you about….”

Her voice trailed away.

“I can see that you are ill, Hilary, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t want your pity. I wanted you to come and visit me.”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Why didn’t you come all these years?”

“Work.”

“Work!”

“I’m here now aren’t I?” I said, squeezing a shape that lay under the blanket and feeling bone.

“Yes, you are.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Nothing.”

She stared out of the window where a pale moon hung in the sky and I saw a tear make its way across her cheek.

“I’ve bought you a present.”

She lifted her head.

“What is it?”

“Why don’t you open it?”

And I handed her the white package.

She pulled herself up with great difficulty and struggled with the tissue paper. Eventually the eyes stared out at her and she stopped. She looked at me. It was a strange look that lasted for I don’t know how long before she continued to tear away at the paper as if were some sort of rope. As she did so, I saw small cuts open up on her white hands, like nicks of a razor.

The face and then the rest of the doll emerged and she held it in her hands for a few seconds.

“It’s horrible,” she said, “what on earth inspired you to get it for me?”

“I thought you’d like it.”

“I hate dolls, take it away.”

“I’ll put it over here,” I said, placing it on a table.

Downstairs I could hear Ian calling me for dinner.

“Your room’s at the end of the corridor,” she said, turning her back to me.

Outside I fumbled for the light.