Creed (14 page)

Oh dear God, what was happening to him? This was insane, a nightmare, like a bad acid trip. Things like this couldn’t happen, they couldn’t be real. It was his head, it was all inside his head. He needed a doctor, he needed one very badly.

He forced himself on to one knee, eyes never leaving the toilet that stood impassive – impassive but
waiting
– at the other end of the bathroom. Using the edge of the bath for support, Creed reluctantly (knowing what had just happened couldn’t have happened at all) slid himself back towards the seat. He had hallucinated, he knew that; yet he had to be sure, he had to make certain, that nothing really lurked down there, no mouth, no teeth, nothing. That the whole thing had been a mind-joke.

He crept nearer, scarcely daring to breathe. Levering himself up into a shaky half-crouched position, he peered over the rim. There was only still water, slightly greenish, a cigarette butt floating on the surface, at the bottom.

Nevertheless he slammed down the toilet lid.

Creed sprawled on the floor for a while, trying to bring his senses together, his breathing now ragged. He didn’t feel well at all.

Gradually, reason infringed upon lunacy, as it usually, or at least, eventually, tends to do with the perfectly sane when something ridiculously illogical has happened. He should have had the bump seen to; it was as simple as that. Nobody could walk away from such a fall without suffering worse after-effects than a nasty headache. Brain cells had been jiggled, and this was the result. Probably, drinking alcohol that night hadn’t helped any. Moaning more from self-pity than pain, Creed crawled to the door and used the handle to pull himself erect.

His clothes were wet, but that didn’t surprise him: as far as he was concerned it was just another part of the illusion. Guided by the lights from the kitchen and the bathroom behind him, Creed lurched along the short hall and all but fell into the bedroom. A rest, he told himself. All I need is to get my head down for a few hours. Too late – too
early
– to call a doctor in. What would he tell me anyway? Take a couple of aspirins, that’s what he’d say. A good night’s sleep will do wonders. See me in surgery hours. Thanks a lot, Doc. Maybe I should call an ambulance. Yeah, maybe that’s the thing to do. Just . . . just rest for a moment, though. Just a little sleep . . .

Kneeling on the bed, Creed began to shed his clothes, handling them carefully because they were damp and smelled of pee. Only they didn’t, did they? No, Creed, it’s in your mind, only the result of upset brain chemicals. Shaken and definitely stirred. Christ, what a mess.

Jacket and shirt were gone. He sat, kicked off his shoes, then pulled at his trousers and underpants. Getting his socks off was the most difficult.

Naked, he flopped back on to the duvet. He didn’t mean to, but he couldn’t help it: he giggled. Crazy. A mouth jumping out of the toilet, snapping at his pecker. Oh Jesus, Judas . . . crazy . . . Before tiredness overtook him completely, he managed to slide beneath the duvet cover, pulling it up to his neck, relishing and
needing
its comfort. He lay there spreadeagled and bare, and oddly enough, the beginning of his dream was fairly pleasant.

But his awakening wasn’t pleasant at all.

He’d been on a beach to begin with, the sun high and warming his stomach. The sea sounds were soothing, gulls circled overhead. Relaxing . . . restful. Sand trickling over his chest. More. Beginning to cover him. His belly, his crutch, his thighs. Squinting into the sun, a shadow suddenly blocking the glare. That you, Sammy? Burying your old man, huh? It’s all right, kid. Enjoy yourself. Make a castle on my chest. Keep the sand away from the kisser though, son, grit in the teeth isn’t nice. Come on, now, take it easy, that’s too much. I’m not dead yet, boy. I told you, Sammy, keep it away from the face . . .

The sun had faded. It hadn’t disappeared behind a cloud – it had just faded, gone, shrivelled away. And he wasn’t on a beach any more. There were stone monuments all around, some leaning over perilously, most of them decaying, lichen-covered and cracked, slabs of stone, their legends hard to determine. Gravestones.

The sand wasn’t sand any more; it was great clods of earth, thick and damp, smelly and clinging. Cut it out, Sam. Enough’s enough.

But not just the locale had changed: Sammy was different too.

His face had aged, become lined, weary. His eyes were staring. He’d grown gaunt, all puppy-fat gone. He looked like someone else . . .

Dirt stifled Creed’s next cry. He choked, spat it out. He tried to move, but earth was packed around him, pressing against his chest, making it difficult to stir, let alone shout . . . let alone scream . . . He was being buried alive, but it was someone else, someone familiar . . . but not familiar, no one he knew, a stranger, a thin man in a grey gaberdine raincoat . . . digging dirt, chuckling while he shovelled the soil . . . piling it on to Creed . . . covering his whole body . . . his arms . . . his legs . . . his belly and chest . . . his – oh God no – his face.

He awoke and the dream was gone almost immediately.

He felt cold, even though the duvet was still up around his neck. He wondered what he had been dreaming of. Something not very nice, he was sure. Something about graveyards. Yeah, wouldn’t you know it?

He raised his head from the pillow and looked towards the end of the bed. Moonlight through the open window revealed his bare feet. That’s why he was so cold. They were like blocks of ice and his big toes were completely numb. Wriggling them hardly improved the circulation. He rested on one elbow and reached out with his other hand to push the cover back down, but something black and scurrying caught his eye. It had sped from the edge of the mattress, as though having climbed from the floor, and disappeared beneath the duvet.

Before Creed could kick out with his feet, he became aware of other movement in the bed with him and he felt a prickling sensation that was not unlike goose-bumps rising on chilled flesh.

Then he saw another little black thing hurry over the bottom of the mattress and race into the shelter of the duvet.

Creed leapt from the bed, almost tripping over his discarded clothes lying in a heap on the floor. He stumbled into the door and his hand scrambled against the wall for the lightswitch. He found it and smacked it down.

He immediately clapped a hand over his eyes, shielding them from the sudden glare, lifting his palm cautiously after a while like a traveller staring into the sun towards the horizon. Nothing was on the floor around the bed apart from the jumble of clothes. Had he honestly seen a spider – two spiders – disappear under the duvet? Or had it merely been the tail end of his dream? Whatever, he had no taste for creepy-crawlies, but they certainly didn’t frighten him. Not much, anyway.

After a few more blinks he scanned the rest of the room to make sure he really was alone. His gaze returned to the bed.

The duvet was rumpled, a corner turned over where he had scrambled out.

He wiped the back of his neck with a hand, twisting his head to relieve a stiffness there. Again Creed looked over at the bed.

There was nothing peculiar about it. Yet something was not quite right.

He watched the cover as if expecting it to move and, of course, it didn’t.

So why was he reluctant to get back into bed? Be sensible, he told himself. Lie down and think of nice things.

He was tired, very, very tired; but part of him was extremely alert. Something wasn’t quite right, but he didn’t the hell know what. Creed approached the bed cautiously, in the way a hunter might approach a downed tiger, knowing it was lifeless but still taking no chances.

Creed, naked, stood over the bed. Reaching out he gripped the turned-over corner of the duvet. He paused for just one moment, then swept back the cover so that half of it tumbled on to the floor.

He meant to scream, but couldn’t quite work the parts that allowed it. He wanted to back away, but those parts wouldn’t function either. The bit that did work was his bladder; fortunately it was only a brief squirt of urine that wet his thigh, more like a nocturnal emission than anything else.

All he could really do was to stare. And stare, and stare.

They were small, yet somehow bulky, their hairy little bodies bulbous and seeming too heavy for their tiny legs. They were mostly black, although the tops of their swellings were hued a deep red, as if liquid inside was pressing to be released. And they came in a variety of shapes, some long like caterpillars (many of these were wormishly hairless, though), others round and energetic, while still more were but minute grubs grubbing around in packs. The one thing they all had in common was that they looked bloated. Glutted, you might say.

And Creed had already made the connection before he looked down at himself and saw the pinpricks and smears of blood all over his own body.

These busy creatures had feasted on him while he slept. They were obese (in their small way) with his blood.

Creed cried out as much in revulsion as in fear.

He staggered backwards towards the door, never taking his eyes off these revolting, detestable creatures that had invaded his bed, hundreds of them it seemed, all moving in a madness of direction, the bedsheet beneath them splodged red as though flicked with ink.

His hands fumbled with the doorknob behind him and it was awkward to twist, but not once did Creed consider turning his back on those blood-gorged mites occupying his bed. At last the lock sprang and he pulled at the door, jarring it against his bare heel as he did so. Only then did he face away from the bed and hurry into the hall, slamming the door shut once outside. For several seconds he held on to the doorknob, irrationally making sure those crawly things couldn’t follow him, his breath drawn in sharp and shallow gasps.

His next idea (this one perhaps more rational) was to run downstairs, grab an overcoat from the rack, and get out of the house. But when he looked down towards the front door, he saw that someone was there, someone lurking in the shadows, someone whose domed, bald head caught the faint light shining through from the kitchen upstairs.

That skull-like head shifted, tilting backwards so that whoever it was there in the dark could look upwards, upwards at Creed. The eyeballs were so big, set in that dreadfully thin (and now familiar) face, they appeared almost round. The pointed front teeth were dulled in the poor light.

Creed fainted.

He stirred. Then he shivered.

His belly was warm, but the rest of him was freezing. He had no feet: they’d gone away. Another shiver – no, more violent than that: this time it was a shudder. Creed moaned and hunched himself around the warmth at his stomach. He turned over on to it.

A screech and frantic scrabbling beneath him brought Creed to his senses. He shot up as the cat flew away from what had been a comfortable nest in its master’s lap and disappeared into the kitchen. Grin leapt on to the table and turned to glare back through the open doorway at the naked man who was pushing himself against the hall wall, a wild-eyed look on his face.

Creed’s vision did some dips and curves before settling. He gazed back at the bristle-furred cat on the kitchen table uncomprehendingly, then down at his own bare legs with pretty much the same expression. His feet were totally numb with the cold, but at least they weren’t actually missing.

The night’s events began to come back to him, just bits and pieces like a poorly edited trailer for a horror movie (a B horror, at that). A swift examination of his private parts brought him some relief. But what was he doing out here in the hallway? He concentrated very hard to bring some order to the jumbled images and instantly regretted the effort when he saw in his mind’s eye those . . . those . . .
things
. . . he had shared his bed with. My God, they’d been drinking my blood! Creed struggled to his feet as if to make himself less accessible.

A further inspection of himself denied the memory: his flesh was unmarked apart from one or two fresh scratches from the squashed cat. He touched the bedroom doorhandle very tentatively and it took some courage to turn it. He swung the door open a few inches, listened, peered through the crack, then swung it wider. He looked round the door towards the bed.

The duvet cover was turned back and the rumpled sheet over the mattress looked pure enough. Creed ventured in, scrutinising every step of the way before taking it, scarcely feeling the carpet beneath his frozen feet. The bed really was empty of bugs as far as he could see, and when he hauled back the duvet further – again, hesitatingly – there was nothing lurking beneath the folds.