It Knows Where You Live (16 page)

Never again would she underestimate the power of small things.

IT KNOWS WHERE YOU LIVE

Macmillan stood there and watched his wife die.

It was a slow death, agonising, he thought. She grasped the bed sheets with her thin hands as the masked man throttled her with one of her own stockings. Her face was large and wide; a pallid mask of pain. Her eyes were bulging from their sockets in a way that struck him as almost comical. Her screams didn’t quite match the movement of her mouth.

He walked over to the television and peered at the screen. The actress was the double of his wife, Katie; he’d never seen anyone look so much like someone else. It was uncanny, as if she were a doppelganger.

The scene changed and a hospital waiting room appeared, with two men talking quietly in the corridor outside, their stern faces visible through the glass section of the door.

Macmillan grabbed the remote control from the table and fumbled with it as he rewound the scene. He watched his wife’s death several times before switching off the television and sitting on the sofa, staring at the blank screen with the DVD case in his hands.

It Knows Where You Live
. That was the title of the film. He must have rented it on a whim, probably because of the title. He couldn’t remember picking the film from the list on the website of the mail order rental club, but the title had arrived as part of his weekly delivery.

The film was Italian, the technical information on the sleeve noted the release date as 1976. His wife would have been nine years old.

Unsure whether he should smile or scowl, he re-read the sleeve notes:

A series of young models are murdered while on an assignment in a small Italian town. The photographer catches images of the deaths in his lens before they even occur, and a local policeman begins to realise a supernatural entity is stalking the women from the past.

Beware the darkness. It is watching.
It knows where you live
...

“Rubbish,” said Macmillan, rubbing his thumb across the laminated cover. The garish illustration on the front of the case depicted a busty woman dressed in designer rags screaming into a camera lens held by a leather-gloved hand. Dark eyes watched her from above. “Utter shite.”

He dropped the plastic case onto the floor at his feet and lay back on the sofa, feeling weary and irritable. It had been a bad day: two more lay-offs at the office, Katie was upset about something characteristically vague when he got home, and there was nothing but a takeaway pizza for dinner. He glanced up, at the ceiling, and pictured her sleeping in the bed directly above him. She would be snoring, with her body sprawled diagonally across the mattress, taking up most of the space.

He looked down, at the discarded DVD case; then he looked at the screen. The film was over—the credits rolled like scribbled foreign names on a slowly spinning rolodex, the soundtrack consisted of some kind of sleazy jazz score. He wished it were true. He wished someone would come and kill her. A man in black leather gloves and a mask. A hit-and-run driver. A mugger. Some random kid with a knife.

He reached for the main remote and turned off the television. The DVD player continued to run, but he left it that way as he got to his feet and left the room.

Upstairs, he could hear Katie snoring as he stood outside the bedroom door. He was filled with revulsion. He considered sleeping in the spare room, but knew she’d be annoyed with him in the morning if he did—she needed him there, beside her, so she could feel safe in her sleep.

Macmillan entered the room and began to undress. He kept his back turned towards the bed; he didn’t want to see her skinny body on top of the covers, her nightdress pulled up to expose the scrawny thighs, the hair like yellow wire on the pillow.

As he took off his work clothes and put on his sleep shorts, he was aware of his belly hanging down near his crotch, the way his muscles had gone flaccid, the marks and blemishes on his middle-aged skin. He could no longer remember being young; he was old, had always been old.
 

When he slid into the bed beside her he touched her leg with his foot. She stirred, moaned, and repositioned herself, moving away from him. The room was dark, but not dark enough. Streetlight seeped through the gap in the curtains. Shadows scuttled across the walls.
 

Macmillan turned towards his wife, shifting onto his right side. He stared at the side of her face and was surprised to find he didn’t even recognise her. There was a stranger in the bed—two strangers, side by side.

“What happened?” The words sounded weak and empty. “What happened to us?” He groped for meaning, but none came. So he turned onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

His dream was accompanied by the jazzy tune from the film. He was standing over the bed, holding an empty DVD case. Katie slept with her eyes open. The man in the black leather mask and gloves entered the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. He was holding one of Katie’s stockings. The man did not move; he was waiting for instructions.

The jazz music soared.

There was the impression of people watching—an unseen audience perched on the front edges of their seats, willing the action to happen.

“Do it,” said Macmillan, nodding.

The man in the mask nodded in return, and then he shuffled over on the bed and wrapped the stocking around Katie’s throat, pulling it tight. The material bit into her white flesh, making a red line. Her eyes bulged. She opened her mouth but this time no sound came. Her hands went to her neck, clawing at the stocking, but the man leaned over her, pressing down his weight onto her struggling form.

Macmillan woke briefly when it was still dark. Katie was standing at the side of the bed, lowering one leg into her knickers. Her gym bag was on the bed. He watched her as she dressed; his eyes closed and opened again in rapid succession, like tiny wings. When he opened them properly she was no longer there. He heard the front door slam shut.

He got up and went to the bathroom, where he dry-heaved for ten minutes but could bring nothing up from his empty stomach. He tasted last night’s pizza: old cheese, pepperoni, onions.

After washing his face in the sink, he went through into the spare room and booted up the computer. He stared out of the window as the machine warmed up, watching a cat walk across a neighbour’s wall before leaping onto a car bonnet.

He accessed a search engine and typed in the words “It knows where you live.” He got a lot of hits, but none of them was anything to do with a 1976 Italian horror film of that name. He spent another half an hour searching, but found nothing. Even the DVD club website no longer seemed to list the title in their catalogue.

Katie came home just as he was sitting down to breakfast.

“Hi,” she said as she came in the back door, her gym bag slung over one shoulder and a copy of The Guardian in her hand.

“Good workout?” He bit into his toast and tried not to look at her knees. They were bony, unattractive.

“Not bad. But I think I pulled a muscle.” She stretched out her left arm and flexed it at the elbow, as if this explained everything.

“I think we have some Deep Heat in the cupboard.” He chewed his toast.

“Okay. I’ll check later. Is there any more bread?”

He stood up and took two slices from the bread bin, slotted them into the toaster. “Butter?”

“No thanks.” She shook her head. “I’ll have cottage cheese.” She went to the fridge and opened it, talking out a small white plastic pot. “I think there’s enough left.” She opened the pot.

When the toast popped out of the toaster, Macmillan put it on a plate and returned to the table. He sipped his coffee and grimaced. He’d made it too strong.

“You always do that,” said Katie, sitting down opposite. “Get the measurement wrong.” She smiled. She was wearing no make-up; her eyes looked small and dull.

“Story of my life,” he said. He meant it as a joke, but she didn’t laugh. Or smile. She looked away, nibbled at her toast.

A silence drifted between them, took up residence on the table. Macmillan thought about prodding it with a stick, but he couldn’t be bothered to go looking for one.

Finally, Katie scared away the silence: “We need to talk.”

He swallowed. His throat was dry. “What about.”

“About us. Where we’re going.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Yes, you do. You know exactly what I mean...this can’t go on. We barely even communicate.” Her eyes darted left then right; her eyelids flickered. “What did I do to make you hate me so much?” At last her eyes had gained some depth, but it was only the threat of tears.

“I don’t hate you.” He pushed away his plate, his appetite killed stone dead.

“Yes, you do. I feel it every day. I can see it in your face.”

He thought of a masked man with a large knife. Its keen edge gleamed in the kitchen light. No, not a knife. That was far too messy. The stocking, then: no blood, little fuss. Death by strangulation.

Katie bowed her head. “Is it because I can’t have children?”

“No.” But he’d said it too quickly; he should have waited, given pause.

“I thought so. I always thought so. I’m sorry, but it isn’t my fault. I didn’t tie a knot in my own tubes, you know.” She looked up; her cheeks were red. Anger gave her skin such a marvellous lustre.

“It isn’t that...not really. It’s a lot of things.” He raised his hands, didn’t know what to do with them, and set them down on the table.

“Then what is it, exactly? Where did this hatred come from?”

He shook his head, confused, put on the spot. “It isn’t...I don’t hate you. Not hate. I just sometimes feel like I want to be alone. It’s like...like there’s nothing between us anymore, or if there is it’s gone into hiding.”

She was grinding her teeth. Her thin arms were rigid.

“Something’s gone missing but I don’t know what it is.”

“So,” she said, finally relaxing. “Do you still love me, or has that gone, too?”

Macmillan stared at her; he stared long and hard at her narrow face, her wiry blonde hair, and her bony shoulders. “Yes, I still love you. But it’s like I’ve forgotten how.”

She nodded once. “I know. That’s how it is with me. I’ve forgotten how to be with you, how to act when I’m around you, how to live in the same house.”

“We’re like strangers,” he said.

“To each other,” she replied. “And to ourselves.”

They finished their breakfast in silence. Not much had been said, or achieved, but it was enough for now. At least they’d made a start, and if that were possible then surely reconciliation could not be far away.

“I need to go into work for a couple of hours.” Katie stood and put her plate in the sink. “I’ll be back later this afternoon. We can talk again then.”

“Okay.” He smiled, and it almost felt real.

Katie paused on her way to the stairs. She reached out and placed a hand on his arm, bent down and kissed the side of his head, clumsily, her lips brushing against his ear. “Tonight,” she said, and then she walked away.

While she was out Macmillan watched the film again. The actress who resembled Katie (only resembled; she no longer looked exactly like her) was the final victim. She did not appear in the film until the last ten minutes, where she existed only to be slain by the killer before he walked into a large black lake to die.

The plot made no sense; there was nothing resembling logic anywhere to be seen. A man in a black leather mask murdered a bunch of fashion models. A rural policeman thought the killer was somehow linked to his own dead mother. Then, after killing the Katie lookalike, the killer walked into the lake and vanished. Closing credits.

“Pathetic,” he said, taking he DVD out of the machine. There was no title or sticker on either side of the disc; it was smooth and clean and silver, the coinage of nightmare. There had been no trailers for coming attractions, no advertisements or warnings about digital piracy: the film had simply begun at the opening credits, and ended after a second of black screen immediately after the end credits.

He tilted the disc in front of his eyes, squinting as the sunlight glinted off its highly polished surface. “Where did you come from?” He’d realised by now this was not part of his weekly delivery from the rental company. Someone must have slipped the disc into the package—perhaps some joker at the depot, where the films were packed up and sent out. But why? What was the point?

He returned the disc to its case and put the case on the mantelpiece, above the gas fire. Then, trying to forget about the absurd little mystery, he went upstairs to pay some bills online. There was lots to do, he couldn’t afford to waste time thinking about dodgy Italian films and actresses that didn’t really look like his wife after all.

It was late when Katie got back from the office. She staggered through the back door, drunk and dishevelled. “Sorry,” she said, grinning. “I met up with a couple of the girls—Joanne and Gracie; you remember them, from the party last Christmas? Well, we did a bit of shopping and then went for cocktails. I didn’t think you’d mind.” She was babbling; she always did this when she’d had too much to drink.

“It’s almost eleven o’clock. I expected you back hours ago. We were going to talk.”

She waved a hand in his general direction. “Oh, well...we can do that any time. I mean, it’s not urgent, is it? Nothing’s pressing. It’s not like I can have a baby and make things better.” Her eyes blazed. She slammed the door. She had always been such an ugly drunk.

“Don’t be silly.” He walked further into the kitchen, heading for the kettle. Coffee; that might help sober her up.

She moved across the room, lurching towards him, her arms slithering around his waist. “But we could always try—to make a baby, I mean. I know I’m not capable, but the fun is in the attempt, isn’t it?” She licked his ear.

Macmillan pulled away. Her thin arms were like sticks; her hot crotch, pressing into his behind, felt grubby.