Festival of Fear (36 page)

‘You're a good man, Jack.'

‘I used to think so. Now I'm not so sure.'

We went to bed but this was another night when I couldn't sleep. The hours ticked by and the clock in the hallway chimed each hour. At three o'clock, after the chimes had died away, I was sure that I could hear a faint jingling. Just an echo, probably. I had a brief fight with my pillow and tried to get comfortable, but the covers were all twisted and I didn't want to pull them too hard in case I woke Jenny.

As I settled down, I heard the jingling again. It was slightly louder this time, and closer. I lay in the darkness, waiting and listening. Then I heard a hollow knocking sound, right outside our bedroom window, as if something had struck the fascia boards around the guttering. I eased myself out of bed and looked outside.

It was steadily snowing, and the street was glistening white. There, in our driveway, was a long black sleigh, with eight shaggy black dogs harnessed in it, panting patiently. The sleigh was empty, except for a heap of black sacks. I suddenly realized what the knocking sound had been – a long ladder, placed against the house.

‘Jenny!' I shouted at her, shaking her shoulder. ‘Jenny, wake up! Call the police!

She sat up and stared at me blurrily.

‘Call nine one one! Do it now!'

But right above us, I heard footsteps crossing the roof, and then the creak of shingles being torn out. The children, for God's sake. He was trying to get to the children.

I hurtled along the landing to the children's room, but as I reached the door it slammed shut, and I heard the key turn. I pummeled against the paneling with my fists, and I threw my shoulder against it, but it wouldn't budge.

‘Tracey! Mikey! Wake up! Open the door! Open the door and get out of there, quick!'

I heard more creaks as nails were dragged out of the roof. I hammered on the door again and shouted, ‘Tracey! Mikey! Wake up! You have to get out of there!'

Now I heard Mikey crying, and Tracey calling, ‘What is it? What is it? The ceiling's breaking!'

‘The door's locked! Turn the key and get out of there, quick as you can!'

Jenny came hurrying along the landing, her hair wild. ‘The police are coming right now. Five minutes, they said. What's happening?'

‘Open the door Tracey goddamnit! Open the door!'

‘I can't!' wailed Tracey. ‘The key won't turn!'

‘What's happening?' Jenny screamed at me. ‘What's happening? Why can't you open the door?'

‘It's him,' I told her. ‘It's the man who came this afternoon. It's Satan.'

‘What? What have you done? Get my children out of there! Get my children out of there!'

I held on to the banister and kicked at the door with my bare feet, but it was too solid to budge. Inside, Tracey and Mikey were shrieking hysterically.

‘Daddy! Somebody's coming through the ceiling! Daddy, open the door! It's a man and he's coming through the ceiling!'

Oh shit, I thought. Oh shit oh shit. Jenny was totally panicking now and beating at the door so hard that she was breaking all her nails and spattering the paintwork with blood.

God there was only one thing to do and I hoped it wasn't too late. I ran along the landing and down the stairs, three at a time. Jenny called after me, ‘Where are you going? Jack! We have to open the door!'

‘Mommy! Mommy! I can see his legs! Open the door, mommy!'

I careered through the kitchen and opened the door that led to the garage. I seized the metal box from my workbench and went running back upstairs with it.

‘What good will that do?' Jenny screamed at me. ‘You could have brought your ax!'

But I went up close to the door and shouted out, ‘Listen to me! I have it! Your box! If you let my children alone and open the door you can have it back right now!'

I heard a crack-
thump
as the man broke through the last of the plaster and dropped down on to the floor. Tracey moaned and Mikey gave that little yelp that he always gives when he's really, seriously scared.

‘Can you hear me?' I asked him. ‘I have it right here in my hand. You can have it back, no questions asked, no charges brought, nothing. Just open the door and take the box and we'll let you leave.'

There was a long, long silence. I could still hear Mikey mewling so the man couldn't have hurt them yet.

‘Please,' I said. ‘Those are our children.'

Jenny stood close beside me, clenching and unclenching her bloodied fists. Then she suddenly screeched out, ‘
Open the door you bastard
!
Open the door
!'

Another silence, and then the key was turned. The door swung open by itself.

Tracey and Mikey were cowering down behind Mikey's bed. The man was standing in the middle of their bedroom, his black clothes covered in plaster dust. He had torn a hole in the ceiling three feet across and snow was whirling into the bedroom, and melting as it touched the carpet. He was holding a large curved sickle, with a black handle and an oily blade.

I stepped forward, lifting the box in my left hand. ‘Here,' I said. ‘Everything's in there, except for the powder I used on the grass.'

He smiled at me, and hooked his sickle into his belt, and took the box in both hands.

‘I'm sorry I took it,' I told him. ‘I didn't realize that it was yours . . . that you were still alive after all those years.'

Jenny skirted around behind me, took hold of Tracey and Mikey, and hurried them out of the bedroom. The man raised one eyebrow and said, ‘Beautiful children. You were wise.'

‘No . . . I was just what you said I was. Greedy. Wanting something for nothing. And I almost lost my family because of it.'

‘Oh, I shouldn't be too hard on yourself, Jack. We all make mistakes.'

His mistake was to put the box down on the floor and open it up, just to make sure that everything was there. He should have trusted me. While he was bent over it, I swung myself around like a baseball pitcher and lifted the sickle that I was holding in my right hand. He sensed my movement and began to raise his eyes but it was then that I hit him across the back of the neck and the sickle chopped right through his dry gray hair and right through his vertebrae and halfway through his throat. His head dropped forward on to his chest as if it were attached by a hinge, and blood jumped out of his neck and into the box. He looked at me – he actually looked at me, upside-down, from under his arm, and that look would give me nightmares for countless Christmases to come. Then he fell sideways on to the carpet.

I didn't want to do it, but somehow I knew that I had to. I turned him over and hacked at his neck twice more, until his head was completely severed. After that I didn't have the strength to do anything else, but kneel beside him with gloves made of gradually-drying blood, while the snow fell on to my shoulders, and a police siren warbled closer and closer.

It was Christmas Day, and Santa had been.

Sarcophagus

‘
A
re you sure this is safe?' asked Maureen. The evening sun had suddenly entered her dorm room, so she had to lift one podgy hand to shield her eyes.

‘Of course it's safe,' Myron told her. ‘The ancient Egyptians did it, in the reign of King Seti, thirteenth century BC. If the king complained that one of his concubines was growing too chubby, his eunuch used to find a sarcophagus beetle, and insert it under her skin. Then he let it roam around inside her for a couple of hours.

‘They eat subcutaneous fat, that's all these suckers eat. It's natural liposuction.'

Maureen looked at the small brown-and-yellow beetle that was struggling to climb up the side of the Perspex box. It looked harmless enough, like a ladybug.

Myron took off his glasses and polished them on his Albert Einstein T-shirt. ‘It's your decision. Sure, your fifty bucks will help me to buy some more rare insect specimens, but you're very pretty as you are. A little
zaftig,
maybe.'

It was
zaftig
that decided her. ‘I'll do it,' said Maureen. She heaved herself back on the bed and lifted up her XXL sweatshirt. Myron sat next to her, took a scalpel out of a sterilized wrapper, and pinched three inches of flesh from the left side of her stomach.

‘This will hurt just a tad,' he told her, and cut a quarter-inch slit, right into her underlying fat. Blood ran into her panty elastic.

Carefully, Myron opened the Perspex box. He used a drinking straw to suck out the beetle, and to drop it over Maureen's open cut. It immediately burrowed beneath her skin.

‘It feels like a spider crawling all over me,' said Maureen. ‘But
inside
.'

Myron checked his watch. ‘I'll be back in two hours exactly. By that time you should look like Gwyneth Paltrow.'

As he stepped outside the dorm, Myron collided with a tall, slim, dark-haired girl in skintight jeans.

‘Ellie? Ellie Newman? Well, look at you!'

Ellie grinned. ‘Atkins Diet. I lost forty-eight pounds.'

‘You look
great
! Do you have time for a drink?'

Walking Ellie back to her dorm, Myron heard the campus clock strike eleven.

‘Shit,' he said, clapping his hand to his mouth. ‘Maureen.'

‘What about Maureen?'

He pushed open the door. Maureen's room was in darkness. He switched on the light. Maureen was still lying on her bed. Her face was a glittery-eyed skull, and her skin hung from her shoulders like heavy folds of drapery.

‘Myron,' she croaked. ‘Am I thin, Myron?'

As he approached her, Myron heard scratching coming from the bathroom, followed by a wallowing sound. Cautiously, he peered inside.

Underneath the basin was a huge, distended bag. It was translucent, so Myron could see that it was filled with thick lumps of white fat. It was only when he looked closer that he could see its tiny black head, and its minuscule legs.

‘Yes, Maureen, you're thin,' he said. ‘You don't have an ounce of fat on you.'