The Year's Best Horror Stories 16 Part 7

And in the white I saw something that looked like a face.

I blinked quickly because I felt myself crying, felt the tears on my cheeks and I didn't know why. It was stupid. There was some kind of electronic thing in my father's stupid shed, and all that black and all that dead white were making me cry like a stupid little baby.

For a minute, just a minute, I wanted to die.

Father stopped.

The white vanished.

The black faded to normal black, and the wood crate was back.

It was a few seconds before I was able to shake myself into moving around the corner so that, when he came out, whistling to himself, he wouldn't see me. He strolled back to the house with his hands in his pockets, and Mother opened the door for him, nodded, and kissed his cheek.

Then I looked up to the moon, saw the face, and I knew. One thing, then another, and something jumped inside my head and I knew what was going on, and I fell to my knees and put my head in my hands.

Hate is a word I use only about my father, but I know now it's a word both my folks use about me.

It's almost dawn. I've been sitting here so long I'm touched with dew, and I can't move. Not an arm, not a leg, though my teeth stopped chattering a long time ago.

Mike said his big brother was the favorite; Jeanne said it was her two sisters; Tony didn't have anyone; and I have Peggy.

So what can you do about it if you're a parent? You give birth to the kid and you watch it grow up and into a person, and then you decide if you like it or not. Someone you meet that you don't like you don't have to see again, or you can be polite to, or you can ignore. A kid is there all the time-all day, all week, all year, all your life.

It's cold out here.

So what can you do about it if you're a parent and you don't like your kid? What can you do if you don't want him anymore?

It's very cold, and it's dark.

I think ... I think some parents go from hate to not caring, and that's the worst of all. And if they look right, they can find someone who can see that, see the dark of it, and make it almost alive. Like a cloud, a black cloud that hangs over you in November, telling you it's going to rain but not telling you when. Those kinds of days are the most rotten, and they make you feel rotten, on the outside where it's raw, and on the inside where you wish you could just go away and find a place that has the sun.

If the cloud stays long enough, you don't wait for the next day, or the rain, or the snow-you go on your own, and you never come back.

I didn't call Mike. My father did.

I didn't talk to Tony. My father did.

I wonder if Mr. Falkenberg hated his son?

I keep trying to remember, but I can't. Jesus. I can't remember whose face I saw in that dying white light.

But there's no sense in running.

I won't go back in the house, but there's no sense in running.

I'm just going to wait here, and maybe think of a way to stop it.

But sooner or later, when the sun comes out and the birds start flying and the kids are off to school and Peggy is laughing with my mother and my father is off to work, a telephone is going to ring.

My father did the magic; my mother told him who to get.

When that telephone rings, somebody is going to tell someone else that another kid is dead.

Oh s.h.i.t, Jeanne, don't hate me, but I hope that it's you.

REPOSSESSION.

by David Campton.

English playwright David Campton was born in Leicester on June 5, 1924, where he still makes his home. During World War II Campton served in the Royal Air Force, and afterward he began writing plays as well as pursuing an acting career. He gave up on the latter in 1963 in favor of writing and has since written more than seventy plays in addition to numerous radio and television plays (including a few in collaboration with Sheila Hodgson, who also appears in this collection). Campton's most recent plays include Cards, Cups and Crystal Ball (about three clairvoyant sisters who foresee one murder and try to prevent another) and Can You Hear the Music (about mice succ.u.mbing to the temptations of the Pied Piper).

When he-all too infrequently-turns his talents to short fiction, David Campton exhibits a precise control of language and a sophistication of style which deftly lead the reader to whatever sort of horrors Campton has in mind this time out. Since he has a penchant for dark humor as well as dark fantasy, it's best to watch your step.

The Johnson audit took longer than I antic.i.p.ated, but I stayed working until it was finished, and was heading for home when a threatened wintery shower materialized. When I drove by the old Marlow factory I was concentrating on the wet road, so the light in the upper window barely registered and I was well past before the oddness struck me. What was a light doing on in a building that had been shut down for years? Was it vandals? Squatters? Should I do anything about possible trespa.s.sers?

I could have telephoned the police, but was sure n.o.body would thank me. With the place scheduled for demolition there was every possibility it might fall down before the bulldozers moved in; so if some benighted soul had found shelter in the ruin, who was I to interfere? Constructed on the forbidding lines of a Victorian workhouse the derelict works offered only marginally better comfort than an exposed doorway. Let whoever was up there stay there.

I continued to speculate on the light, though. Surely all services had been cut off when Marlow's went into liquidation, so the gleam could hardly have been electric. Could a candle so far away have caught my attention through a sleet-spattered windscreen? Not even a hurricane lamp could have been expected to do that, so why had I even considered it? Except that the light forced itself more and more on my attention.

I tried to shrug off the problem, yet found myself musing on alternatives, even with the car locked away and myself sinking into a reclining chair, keeping the chill at bay with a high-proof rum toddy.

In my mind's eye I could see that top window. Clearly now. No rain or sleet to obscure it. Harsh light streaming through. Who or what could be up there?

From the point of view of the waste ground in front of the building, its grim silhouette made even more forbidding by the glow of city lights in the sky behind it, that solitary rectangle, like a single bright eye high above, was almost fascinating enough to make one forget the freezing slush underfoot. Who? Or what?

I came to my senses when I dropped the toddy gla.s.s-fortunately empty by now. No, I was not shivering in the shadow of that monument to nineteenth-century economics. I was comfortably established in my own bachelor domain.

In which case why were my feet so cold? Why were my sodden slippers caked with sludge? And why was icy cloth clammy against my legs?

I was as wet as if I had been standing outside, exposed to the wintery weather. Impossible. But there were the dark stains. Had I been so engrossed that I had spilt the contents of my gla.s.s? No. Whatever was soaking into my clothes was not hot rum and lemon. I had not moved from my chair, and yet ...

An accountant is expected to have a logical brain, and logically there was only one thing to be done-change into something warm and dry. The autopilot that guides us through daily routine took over while my thought processes slithered and foundered, trying to come to terms with the patently unbelievable.

If I had not left the house why did my reflection in the wardrobe mirror look as though I had been trudging through fallow fields? There were actually blades of coa.r.s.e gra.s.s sticking to the mud. A dried leaf. A fragment of paper. On slippers that since the day they were bought had never stepped farther than the front door. Half of me wanted to scream "there is something wrong here," the other half laid out clean underwear, peeled off oozing socks and decided a shower was called for.

While not exactly washing my bewilderment away, the hot water was at least soothing. As circulation returned, my numbed mental powers recovered sufficiently for me to take stock of the situation. I had been sitting back indulging-as surely as a man is ent.i.tled to after a long day with ledgers-in idle reverie. Something to do with a light, wasn't it? In the old Marlow place. Yes, now I remembered the lighted window. At the top of ... and the warm water was rinsing away fresh streaks of dirt from my feet.

Later, wrapped in my bathrobe, I took the rum bottle to my empty gla.s.s. Such refinements as lemon and hot water were dispensed with. My present state of nerves called for undiluted restorative. When I stopped shaking I tried to consider what might have happened.

Surely such things did not happen. A person cannot be here one minute and somewhere quite different the next. Yet what could not have happened seemed to be connected in some way with ... No! Don't think about the light. That light was part of the-illusion?-delusion?-phenomenon. Comforting word-phenomenon. A word for papering over cracks. Phenomenon can be applied to anything from young Miss Crummies to a light that ... No, not that light again! Even at the flicker of memory a gust of night wind seemed to ruffle my hair. I must not think about a light in an upper window.

How to keep at bay those insistent, intrusive images? The baleful hulk of the factory ... Take a swig of neat rum, fierce enough to concentrate attention on tongue and throat ... with the glowing rectangle ... More rum ... like a signal ... At this rate I should soon be tight, and how much control would be left then? Another tot. The alcohol was taking effect. Even if I happened to think of a lighted window, it would be a blurred window because I was by now experiencing difficulty in focusing on anything; and at last stopped caring about anything ...

I woke with a head like an echo chamber and a mouth like a sweaty sock. A thin ray of sunlight picked its way through a gap where the living room curtains failed to overlap. I had pa.s.sed the night in my reclining chair and the empty bottle on my chest explained why. There are few things to be said in favor of a hangover, but at least its demands take precedence over other preoccupations. I was washed, dressed, aspirin-dosed and halfway through my second black coffee before I recollected the light and what had apparently followed.

Perhaps fully dressed in daylight I felt bolder; perhaps the ache behind my eyes left me feeling that nothing worse could happen; at any rate I tried to repeat last night's experience. Nothing happened.

Somehow I could not exactly picture the way the window had appeared in the looming wall. Anyway, everything there would have been different in the stir of morning. My feet remained firmly planted on the kitchen floor. Whatever had (or had not) taken place was over now. Just something to look back on. "A funny thing once happened ..." becoming dimmed and distorted with time. The detail was blurred already. Ah, well ...

The day's work was something to be staggered through. Making allowances for impaired concentration, by midday I was almost normal again.

Though I still could not face a meal. Ploughman's cheese-and-pickle at the pub round the corner lacked appeal; as did the alternative little spaghetti place. I suppose I could have worked through the lunch-hour on more coffee, but I felt a need for fresh air. So I took a walk.

The weather had improved and a fitful sun struggled through thin clouds. There was no mysterious inner compulsion and I did not wander in a daze; but I ended my stroll outside the Marlow factory.

It had once been surrounded by rows of inadequate houses, built to accommodate mill-hands as cheaply as possible. Those streets had been swept away in the first stage of a ma.s.sive slum-clearance project, but Local Authority had not yet raised finance for the second phase; and the inner-city area, flat as a highwayman's heath, had become an urban wilderness. Playground and natural hazard for stray animals and children, it stretched like an abandoned battlefield, strewn with discarded cans, bottles and waste paper, between a rusted chain-link fence and the grimy factory walls.

I had never been so close to the place before, hardly ever having paused to give the eyesore a glance. After all, on that stretch of road a motorist usually concentrates on rush-hour queue-jumpers and the traffic lights ahead. I felt no more than mild curiosity, but I had half an hour to play with before being due back at the office. So I stepped cautiously across a broken section of fencing, and picked my way through the rough gra.s.s and tough weeds that sprouted as mangy covering over the broken ground. Underfoot was still spongy after last night's wintery showers, though to a pedestrian mud was the least noxious of the hazards. By the time I reached the factory I needed the piece of sodden newspaper blown against the door for cleaning my shoes.

Wiping away as much of the mess as I could, I leaned against the door. It opened. I might have guessed the lock would have been smashed. Architectural derelicts tend to attract human counterparts.

Technically I suppose I was trespa.s.sing too; but there was no one to stop me-or even shout a word of warning. (Notices warding off intending intruders had long since been burned.) Having seen Marlow's monument from the outside, why pa.s.s up the chance to look inside? If anyone should ask, I was interested in industrial archeology. I stepped over the threshold and pulled the door shut behind me.

The entrance lobby was small with narrow stairs in one corner. When first built it must have const.i.tuted a natural fire hazard: so many employees jammed into so little s.p.a.ce; but in old Marlow's heyday human lives were just so much raw material. Such paint as had not peeled off the walls was mostly obscured with dust, cobwebs and handprints. The floor was littered with torn packets and empty bottles-evidence of previous interlopers.

I called "Anyone there?" not so much expecting a reply as seeking the rea.s.surance of my own voice. Silence followed. Feeling bolder I mounted the stairs.

Dim light filtered into the stairwell from above and below-halfway up was particularly dreary-yet at no time did I feel any sense of foreboding. This was merely an abandoned building that had served its purpose and was waiting to be sc.r.a.pped. At the first landing a corridor stretched to the rear. On one side open doors revealed a work-room extending over most of the first floor. Iron pillars at intervals supported the floor above. Rough outlines indicated where machinery had once been fixed. There were other indications of more recent occupation. I soon had my handkerchief pressed to my nose: at least that kept out the worst of the stench.

It was probably this that drove me up to the top floor. Here the pattern of the floors below was repeated: on one side of the corridor another workroom (mercifully not yet used as a lavatory) and on the other side several closed doors. I opened them one after the other, peering into rooms that had been stores or offices. One still had shelving in place. But the last door along the corridor would not open.

At first I a.s.sumed it had jammed. Stains down the walls suggested a roof in need of attention, and damp could have caused the woodwork to swell. However the door resisted all my pushing and after some wasted effort I had to admit that it must be locked. Ridiculous. Why lock up one room in a building as wide open as this?

Given time I could have doubtless thought of half a dozen explanations, but there was no time for putting theories to the test. I had to be on my way back to the office.

There were stairs at the end of this corridor, too. I hoped they might lead down to the ground floor, avoiding the unpleasantness at the end of the first floor work-room.

As I reached the last few steps I thought I heard a slight scuffle. Rats? The notion brought me to a temporary halt. We all have our phobias, and rodents happen to be one of mine. I silently swore for not taking the possibility into account sooner, especially having seen those food wrappings lying about. I froze while all the data I had ever encountered concerning attacks by vermin flickered through my brain. Did they really make instinctively for the groin? Wasn't that why navvies tied the bottoms of their trousers with string?

But a move had to be made one way or the other. As quietly as possible I peeped round the corner to make sure no gray furry beastie was lying in wait for me. There was nothing.

Only a door almost opposite the stairs slowly edging shut.

Rats, no matter now intelligent, do not close doors with excessive caution. A surge of irritation now replaced my instinctive panic, almost reaching the point of equally irrational fury. I had just made a fool of myself and needed to blame somebody. I bounded forward and booted the door with all the force I could muster. The blow was violent enough to thrust the person on the other side across the room; while, thrown off balance by such feeble resistance, I executed a miniature pirouette before steadying myself. A girl, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, sagged against the wall opposite.

My first impression was of tatters and patches. Even her hair was a dirty yellow-and-brown skewbald-not deliberately so, but the result of inexpert dying half grown out. Her clothes were a jumble of rummage-jeans with one knee out, grubby jumper and torn anorak. She obviously belonged in the dump more than I did. I guessed her age as late teens. Young and frightened I suppose she ought to have aroused my sympathy, but affronted dignity crowds out finer feelings. I wasn't sure what sort of figure I was presenting, but I had a suspicion it must have been fairly ridiculous.

We stared at each other without a word. Until she sniveled and whimpered. At least that broke the ice, and I felt free to bawl, "What the h.e.l.l are you doing here?"

"I ain't done nothing," she whined, like a rabbit appealing to the better nature of a stoat. Not that I ever thought of myself as a predator; but that please-don't-hit-me-when-I'm-down att.i.tude inevitably provokes the opposite effect.

"You realize you're trespa.s.sing," I snapped; which was as near as I could ever get to putting the boot in.

"I ain't done nothing," she repeated forlornly.

A badly tied brown paper parcel lay in one corner. Near it on the dusty floor were an unopened can of fizzy drink and a packet of crisps. A half-eaten meat pie appeared to have been dropped when she was disturbed.

"Yours?" I asked unnecessarily.

"I ain't done nothing," she whispered. What else was there to say? She was lunching at home today. As far as she was concerned this bleak hole was home. Temporary accommodation, no doubt, but with the only alternative a doss under one of the nearby ca.n.a.l bridges, who was I to frighten her away?

"Have you been upstairs?"

She shook her head.

"Liar."

"I ain't done nothing." She slid down the wall and sat in an att.i.tude of huddled resignation.

"I've just been upstairs," I said, and left the implication to register. She looked up at me dumbly. The grubby little creature wasn't even intelligent. Her only attraction lay in her vulnerability. Suddenly I wanted to get away without losing too much face.

"Oh, go to h.e.l.l," I growled, turned abruptly and left her. I may only have imagined she cried, "I ain't done nothing."

Luckily I found a rear door, also unfastened, so I was spared the embarra.s.sment of blundering about looking for an exit. I didn't even look back at the factory, and only hoped n.o.body spotted me recrossing the waste ground.

A fleeting memory of the girl came between me and my work a couple of times during the afternoon. In particular I recollected that pathetic half pie; but by then I was feeling hungry myself.

I stayed in town for a meal before going home, making up for my missed breakfast and lunch by indulging in a half carafe of plonk: so I pa.s.sed the old Marlow factory about the same time as the night before.

It was all dark. At any rate there was now an explanation of yesterday's light. A girl on the premises could have been responsible for almost anything. It occurred to me that the window in question must have belonged to the locked room. More mystery? Whatever it was had nothing to do with me. By now I had convinced myself that whatever I may have imagined last night had been uneasily compounded of overwork, slight fever and rum. There would be no rum tonight. In the first place because there would be no need for it, and in the second place because there was none left at my place.

All the same I felt that early retirement was called for. Just an hour perhaps listening to music before a milky nightcap. There was a ca.s.sette already in the deck waiting for a press of the "play" b.u.t.ton. Had I been listening to Allegri when ...? Did it matter? I could always find pleasure in Allegri. I pressed the b.u.t.ton and sat back at ease.

The soaring treble of the "Miserere" usually has me feeling that the world is a better place than it is usually given credit for, and that I am probably a better person than I am generally given credit for. Self-indulgence maybe, but even an accountant needs some illusions.

Then, as the music took over, a picture began to form. Yes, I must have been listening to Allegri earlier, because the picture was as before-a lighted window high up on a dark wall. Only this time I seemed drawn toward the patch of brilliance. Then I was inside the upper room.

It was as bare as any I had seen in the factory that day, bare as a monk's cell: but unlike the others these bare boards had been spotlessly scrubbed and walls and ceiling freshly whitewashed. There was a man on his knees in the middle of the floor, his back toward me, his curling hair and broadcloth coat stark black against all that white. With head bowed he appeared to be praying.

Did music alone have the power to suggest all this?

What is more, the figure seemed to be aware that I stood behind him. He raised his head and started to get up without looking round. He did not need to look round. Whoever he might be, he knew who I was.

Then a click as the music ended and the tape-deck switched itself off. Jerked back into my present surroundings I was staring at the mirror on the opposite side of my own room. Potent stuff the Allegri "Miserere" if it could conjure such impressions. I made no attempt to change the tape, but sat on, half under the spell. I did not want to move. I wanted a little time for contemplation.

Had the imagined room been part of the Marlow factory? However intangible, it had seemed more real than any of the others I had seen earlier in the day; just as the dreamed-up man had seemed more vital than the wretched girl I had actually encountered. The white room was the same size and shape as her miserable refuge. I found myself mentally comparing the two ...

The girl's ground-floor squat for instance-so dimly lit that shapes could barely be made out in it. The slight effulgence from a frosty moon made its way through holes in corrugated sheeting fastened over the window s.p.a.ce. The girl lay on the floor, using her paper parcel as a pillow. Her knees were drawn up and her hands tucked underneath her arms, no doubt for some slight protection against the cold. Was she asleep? She sniffed and then coughed. Automatically I stepped back, encountering the door with a slight thud. It must have been just off the latch, clicking as I pushed back.

The girl raised her head. "Who-?" she murmured. "Whosere?" She peered hazily in my direction, then suddenly sat up. I imagine she was about to scream, but I heard nothing.

Why should I? After all, I was sitting in my own chair. I had never left it. But if I had never left it, where had the thick smear of dust on the back of my hand and sleeve come from?