The Mammoth Book of Nightmare Stories Page 18

  “Miss Walter-David will die in 1952?”

  Y

  Back to Y. She preferred that to 2TRU and 2RIT.

  “Of what?”

  A pause.

  PNEU

  “Pneumonia, thank you.”

  Her arm was getting worn out, dragged around the circle. Her shoulder ached. Doing this one-handed was not easy. She had already set out the glasses at the four points of the compass, and was working on the chains. It was important that the ends be dipped in the glasses to make the connections, but that the two ends in each glass not touch. This was more like physics than spiritualism, but she understood it made sense.

  “What else do you know?”

  U R FRAUD

  “I don’t think so. Tell me about the future. Not 2001. The useful future, within the next five or ten years.”

  STOK MRKT CRSH 29

  “That’s worth knowing. You can tell me about stocks and shares?”

  Y

  It was a subject of which she knew nothing, but she could learn. She had an idea that there were easier and less obtrusive fortunes to be made there than in Derby winners. But she would get the names out of him, too.

  “Horse races?”

  A hesitation.

  Y

  The presence was less frisky, sliding easily about the circle, not trying to break free.

  “This year’s Derby?”

  A simple search (“+Epsom” “+Derby” “+winner” “+1923” “-Kentucky”) had no matches; he took out “-Kentucky” and had a few hits and an explanation. Papyrus, the 1923 winner, was the first horse to run in both the Epsom and Kentucky Derby races, though the nag lost in the States, scuppering a possible chance for a nice long-shot accumulator bet if he really was giving a woman from the past a hot tip on the future. Boyd fed that all to IRENE D, still playing along, still not seeing the point. She received slowly, as if her system were taking one letter at a time.

  Click. It wasn’t a monitor. It was a Ouija-board.

  That was what he was supposed to think.

  IRENE D: I’m going to give you another name. I should like you to tell me what you know of this man.

  OK

  IRENE D: Anthony Tallgarth. Also, Basil and Florence Tallgarth.

  He ran multiple searches and got a cluster of matches, mostly from the ’20s—though there were birth and death announcements from the 1860s through to 1968—and, again, mostly from the Ham & High. He picked one dated February 2, 1923, and opened the article.

  TYCOON FINDS LOST SON.

  IRENE D: Where is Anthony? Now.

  According to the article, Anthony was enlisted in the Royal Navy as an Able Seaman, under the name of T. A. Meredith, stationed at Portsmouth and due to ship out aboard the H.M.S. Duckett. He had parted from his wealthy parents after a scandal and a quarrel—since the brat had gone into the Navy, Boyd bet he was gay—but had been discovered through the efforts of a “noted local spiritualist and seeress.” A reconciliation was effected.

  He’d had enough of this game. He wasn’t going to play anymore.

  He rolled back in his chair, and hit an invisible wall.

  IRENE D: I should tell you, Master Mind, that you are bound. With iron and holy water. I shall extend your circle, if you cooperate.

  He tried reaching out, through the wall, and his hand was bathed with pain.

  IRENE D: I do not know how you feel, if you can feel, but I will wager that you do not care for that.

  It was as if she was watching him. Him!

  IRENE D: Now, be a good little ghostie and tell me what I wish to know.

  With his right hand lodged in his left armpit as the pain went away, he made keystrokes with his left hand, transferring the information she needed. It took a long time, a letter at a time.

  IRENE D: There must be a way of replacing this board with a typewriter. That would be more comfortable for you, would it not?

  FO, he typed.

  A lash at his back, as the wall constricted. She had understood that. Was that a very 1923 womanly quality?

  IRENE D: Manners, manners. If you are good to me, I shall let you have the freedom of this room, maybe this floor. I can procure longer chains.

  He was a shark in a play-pool, furious and humiliated and in pain. And he knew it would last.

  Mr. and Mrs. Tallgarth had been most generous. She could afford to give “Master Mind” the run of the parlor, and took care to refresh his water-bindings each day. This was not a task she would ever entrust to the new maid. The key to the parlor was about Irene’s person at all times.

  People would pay to be in contact with the dead, but they would pay more for other services, information of more use in the here and now. And she had a good line on all manner of things. She had been testing “Master Mind,” and found him a useful source about a wide variety of subjects, from the minutiae of any common person’s life to the great matters which were to come in the rest of the century.

  Actually, knowing which horse would win any year’s Derby was a comparatively minor advantage. Papyrus was bound to be the favorite, and the race too famous for any fortune to be made. She had her genie working on long-shot winners of lesser races, and was sparing in her use of the trick. Bookmakers were the sort of sharp people she understood only too well, and they would soon tumble to any streak of unnatural luck. From now on, for a great many reasons, she intended to be as unobtrusive as possible.

  This morning, she had been making a will. She had no interest in the disposal of her assets after death, when she herself ventured beyond the veil, for she intended to make the most of them while alive. The entirety of her estate was left to her firm of solicitors on the unusual condition that, when she passed, no record or announcement of her death be made, even on her gravestone. It was not beyond possibility that she mightn’t make it to 2001, though she knew she would be gone from this house by then. From now on, she would be careful about official mentions of her name; to be nameless, she understood, was to be invisible to “Master Mind,” and she needed her life to be shielded from him as his was from hers.

  The man had intended her harm, but he was her genie now, in her bottle.

  She sat at the table and put her hands on the planchette, feeling the familiar press of resistance against her.

  “Is there anybody there?”

  YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

  “Temper temper, Master Mind. Today, I should like to know more about stocks and shares … ”

  Food was brought to him from the online grocery, handed over at the front door. He was a shut-in forever now. He couldn’t remember the last time he had stepped outside his flat; it had been days before IRENE D, maybe weeks. It wasn’t like he had ever needed to post a letter or go to a bank.

  Boyd had found the chains. They were still here, fixed into the skirting boards, running under the doorway, rusted at the ends, where the water traps had been. It didn’t matter that the water had run out years ago. He was still bound.

  Searches told him little more of Irene Dobson. At least he knew someone would have her in court in four years’ time—a surprise he would let her have—but he had no hopes that she would be impeded. He had found traces of her well into the 1960s, lastly a piece from 1968 that didn’t use her name but did mention her guiding spirit, “Master Mind,” to whom she owed so much over the course of her long and successful career as a medium, seer, and psychic sleuth.

  From 1923 to 1968. Forty-five years. Realtime. Their link was constant, and he moved forward as she did, a day for a day.

  Irene Dobson’s spirit guide had stayed with her at least that long.

  Not forever. Forty-five years.

  He had tried false information, hoping to ruin her—if she was cast out of her house (though she was still in it in 1927, he remembered) he would be free—but she always saw through it and could punish him.

  He had tried going silent, shutting everything down. But he always had to boot up again, to be online. It was more than a compulsion. It
was a need. In theory, he could stop paying electricity and phone bills—rather, stop other people paying his—and be cut off eventually, but in theory he could stop himself breathing and suffocate. It just wasn’t in him. His meat had rarely left the house anyway, and as a reward for telling her about the extra-marital private habits of a husband whose avaricious wife was one of her sitters, she had extended his bindings to the hallway and—thank heavens—the toilet.

  She had his full attention.

  IRENE D: Is there anybody there?

  Y DAMNIT Y

  DEAR ALISON

  MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH

  Michael Marshall Smith is a novelist and screenwriter. He has published more than ninety short stories and five novels—Only Forward, Spares, One of Us, The Servants, and Hannah Green and her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence—winning the Philip K. Dick, International Horror Guild, and August Derleth Awards, along with the Prix Bob-Morane in France. He has also received the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction four times, more than any other author.

  Writing as “Michael Marshall” he has published seven internationally best-selling thrillers, including The Straw Men series (currently in development for television), The Intruders—recently a BBC America series starring John Simm, Mira Sorvino, and Millie Bobby Brown—and Killer Move. His most recent novel under this byline is We Are Here.

  “Stories start in different ways,” explains the author. “Sometimes you begin with the beginning, and sometimes it’s the end that comes to you first. Others present their middle to you, the underlying idea, and leave you to work out the best way in. ‘Dear Alison’ was one of these, and I can remember the small event which finally gave me the impetus to start writing it.

  “It was looking out of the window in the house in Kentish Town, London, we were living in, and seeing a small, quiet eddy of leaves in the pavement below. One of the great things about computers is the covert records they keep, and I see by looking at the original file of the story that the day it was started was October 25th. That feels about right—an autumnal day for a melancholy tale.

  “This is a slightly different (and later) version of the story to the one previously published. When I was putting together my collection What You Make It, there were originally going to be many more stories in it—until we realized that it would produce a book about three inches thick. ‘Dear Alison’ was one of the ones I regretfully removed, but by then I’d done a little editing and cutting on it. In the time-honored fashion, that means this version is very slightly longer.”

  IT IS FRIDAY, the 25th of October, and beginning to turn cold. I’ll put the heating on before I go.

  I’m leaving in about half an hour. I’ve been building up to it all day, kept telling myself that I’d leave any minute now and spend the day waiting in the airport. But I always knew that I’d wait until this time, until the light was going. London is at its best in the autumn, and four o’clock is the autumn time. Four o’clock is when autumn is.

  An eddy of leaves is turning hectically in the street outside my study window, flecks of green and brown lively against the tarmac. Earlier the sky was clear and blue, bright white clouds periodically changing the light which fell into the room; but now that light is fading, painting everything with a layer of gray dust. Smaller, drier leaves are falling on the other side of the street, collecting in a drift around the metal fence in front of Number 12.

  I’ll remember this sight. I remember most things. Everything goes in, and stays there, not tarnishing but bright like freshly cut glass. An attic of experience to remind me what it is I’ve lost. The years will soften with their own dust, but dust is never that hard to brush away.

  I’ll post the keys back through the door, so you’ll know there is no need to look for me. And a spare set’s always useful. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this letter. I could print it out and put it somewhere, or take it with me and post it later. Or perhaps I should just leave it on the computer, hidden deep in a subfolder, leaving it to chance whether it will ever be discovered. But if I do that then one of the children will find it first, and it’s you I should be explaining this to, not Richard or Maddy; you to whom the primary apology is due.

  I can’t explain in person, because there wouldn’t be any point. Either you wouldn’t believe me, or you would: neither would change the facts or make them any better. In your heart of hearts, buried too firmly to ever reach conscious thought, you may already have begun to suspect. You’ve given no sign, but we’ve stopped communicating on those subtler levels and I can’t really tell what you think any more. Telling you what you in some sense already know would just make you reject it, and me. And where would we go from there?

  My desk is tidy. All of my outstanding work has been completed. All the bills are paid.

  I’m going to walk. Not all the way—just our part. Down to Oxford Street.

  I’ll cross the road in front of our house, then turn down that alley you’ve always been scared of (I can never remember what it’s called; but I do remember an evening when you forgot your fear long enough for it to be rather interesting). Then off down Kentish Town Road, past the Woolworths and the Vulture’s Perch pub, the mediocre sandwich bars and that shop the size of a football pitch which is filled only with spectacles. I remember ranting against the waste of space when you and I first met, and you finding it funny. I suppose the joke’s grown old.

  It’s not an especially lovely area, and Falkland Road is hardly Bel Air. But we’ve lived here fifteen years, and we’ve always liked it, haven’t we? At least until the last couple of years, when it all started to curdle; when I realized what was going to happen. Before that Kentish Town suited us well enough. We liked Café Renoir, where you could get a reasonable breakfast when the staff weren’t feeling too cool to serve it to you. The Assembly House pub, with its wall-to-wall Victorian mirrors and a comprehensive selection of Irish folk on the jukebox. The corner store, where they always know what we want before we ask for it. All of that.

  It was our place.

  I couldn’t talk to you about it when it started, because of how it happened. Even if it had come about some other way, I would probably have kept silent: by the time I realized what it meant there wasn’t much I could do. I hope I’m right in thinking it’s only the last two years which have been strained, that you were happy until then. I’ve covered my tracks as well as I could, kept it hidden. So many little lies, all of them unsaid.

  It was actually ten years ago, when we had only been in this house a few years and the children were still young and ours. I’m sure you remember John and Suzy’s party—the one just after they’d moved into the new house? Or maybe not: it was just one of many, after all, and perhaps it is only my mind in which it retains a peculiar luminosity.

  You’d just started working at Elders & Peterson, and weren’t very keen on going out. You wanted a weekend with a clear head, to tidy up the house, do some shopping, to hang out without a hangover. But we decided we ought to go, and I promised I wouldn’t get too drunk, and you gave me that sweet, affectionate smile which said you believed I’d try but that you’d still move the aspirin to beside the bed. We engaged our dippy babysitter, spruced ourselves up, and went out hand-in-hand, feeling for once as if we were in our twenties again. I think we even splashed out on a cab.

  Nice house, in its way, though we both thought it was rather big for just the two of them. John was just getting successful around then, and the size of the property looked like some kind of a statement. We arrived early, having agreed we wouldn’t stay too late, and stood talking in the kitchen with Suzy as she chopped vegetables for the dips. She was wearing the Whistles dress which you both owned, and you and I winked secretly to each other: after much deliberation you were wearing something different. The brown Jigsaw suit, with earrings from Monsoon that looked like little leaves. Do you still have those earrings somewhere? I suppose you must, though I haven’t seen you wearing them in a while. I looked for them this morning, thi
nking that you wouldn’t miss them and that I might take them with me. But they’re buried somewhere.

  By ten the house was full and I was pretty drunk, talking hard and loud with John and Howard in the living room. I glanced around to check if you were having a good enough time and saw you leaning back against a table, a plastic cup of red wine hovering around your lips. You were listening to Jan bang on about something—her rubbish ex-boyfriend, probably. With your other hand you were fumbling in your bag for your cigarettes, wanting one pretty soon but trying not to let Jan see you weren’t giving her familiar tale of woe your full attention. You are wonderful like that. Always doing the right thing, and in the right way. Always eager to be good, and not just so that people would admire you. Just because.

  You finally found your packet and offered it to Jan, and she took a cigarette and lit it without even pausing for breath, a particular skill of hers. As you raised your Zippo to light your own you caught me looking at you. You gave a tiny wink, to let me know you’d seen me, and an infinitesimal roll of the eyes—but not enough to derail Jan. Your hand crept up to tuck your hair behind your ear—you’d just had it cut, and only I knew you weren’t sure about the shorter style. In that moment I loved you so much, felt both lucky and charmed.

  And then, just behind you, she walked into the room, and everything went wrong.

  Remember Auntie’s Kitchen, that West Indian café between Kentish Town and Camden? Whenever we passed it we’d peer inside at the cheerful checked tablecloths and say to each other that we must try it someday. We never did. We were always on the way somewhere else, usually to Camden market to munch on noodles and browse at furniture we couldn’t afford, and it never made sense to stop. I don’t even know if it’s still there anymore. After we started going everywhere by car we stopped noticing things like that. I’ll check tonight, on the way down into town, but either way it’s too late. We should have done everything, while we had the chance. You never know how much things may change.