It Knows Where You Live (7 page)

Nick sat down at the table and stared at his hands. Wide fingers, broad knuckles: the hands of a car mechanic, not an artist. Why the hell had he even thought someone would be interested enough to want to read his novel?

Later, Annie came home and walked blithely into the kitchen. The door leading out into the hall—the one Nick had been unable to open for hours—opened with ease.

“What’s up? You don’t look like you’ve moved since lunchtime?” There was humour in her voice, but with a hint of irritation at its edges.
 

“I...you’re not going to believe this, but I’ve been stuck in here since you left.”

Annie stood framed in the doorway. Her weight was balanced neatly on one hip, and she stared at him with a cool detachment. Her lips were curled up into a disbelieving little half smile. Her blonde hair shimmered beneath the bright overhead kitchen light. She looked smart and sassy, like a TV lawyer, in her Dorothy Perkins suit and shiny shoes. “Don’t talk shite,” she said, ruining the illusion.

“I’ve been having some trouble lately. With doors.” Said aloud, it sounded stupid. Nick wished he’d kept it to himself.

Annie moved into the room, went to the sink and filled the kettle. “What are you on about? Trouble with Doors...isn’t that the title of a book or a play, or something? Something by Pinter?” She stood facing the kettle, waiting for it to boil and no doubt enjoying her smart-arse comment. The old Annie—the one who read tabloid newspapers and celebrity magazines—would not even have known who Pinter was.
 

The heating element clicked and clacked; Annie didn’t turn around.

“It started about a week ago. Doors sticking in their frames, and then closing in my face even when there was nobody on the other side.” His voice was flat, but there was little he could do to lift it, to add any emotion. He barely believed in what he was saying, so why should she?

“Just stop being so stupid, Nick. I’m a little bit bored with your excuses these days. ‘The post was already filled,’ ‘they already had someone lined up for the job,’ ‘my bus was late so I missed the interview.’” The kettle started to boil: the sound was like an asthmatic drawing frantic breaths. “You’re living in a dream land. That novel isn’t going to make you a millionaire. In this financial climate, you’ll be lucky if anybody even picks it up off the slush pile.”

Financial climate: another phrase he’d never heard her use before. Slush pile: that was another one.

Nick stared at her back, at her firm arse clad in the tight black skirt. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d made love, but he did remember it had been a disaster.

“Just get a job.
Please
, get a job.” Now she did turn to face him, and her eyes were red and sore-looking. She wiped a hand across her face, blinked, and breathed out. “You want coffee?”

He nodded, unable to think of anything to say.

Later that night he went upstairs to bed. Annie was lying on her front, her head buried in the pillows. During the early days of their relationship, this had worried him: he was often terrified she might suffocate in her sleep. He climbed into bed and reached out to her, stroking her bare arm. She moaned, shifted, and then went silent.

Nick stared up at the ceiling, still stroking Annie’s arm. His gaze slid down the wall, and then across to the door. He couldn’t be sure in the darkness, but it looked as if the door was slowly closing, the small gap between door and frame reducing to zero. Then, shockingly, it shut with an audible bang.

“I’m sorry.” Annie’s voice was tiny in the darkened room. “I didn’t mean to get at you earlier.”

“I know.” He kept stroking; maybe if he kept it up long enough she might realise how much he loved her.

“It’s just so difficult. You seem to be sitting around and waiting for something to happen, while all the time life’s passing you by...”

“I’ll try harder.” He closed his eyes. Stroked her arm. “I’ll do better.”

“I know you will.” Her voice was fading; she was entering sleep. “I know...” Then she said nothing more.

The next day he left the house with Annie and walked with her to the bus stop. When the bus arrived they kissed stiffly and he watched her climb aboard. She didn’t glance at him through the window, but he stood there watching anyway until the bus vanished from sight.

He walked into town, needing the exercise. Last night’s slight altercation with Annie had served to focus his thoughts. He needed to do something positive, and today’s interview might just be the kick-start he needed.
 

Entering town, he headed for the canal and started running potential questions and answers through his head:
Why should we give you this job?
Because I believe I can be an asset to this company.
What are your main assets other than your qualifications?
I’m loyal, a team-player, and strive for perfection in everything I do.

It was all utter bullshit of course, but he needed to tell them what he thought they wanted to hear. That was the art of a good interview: to give them what they wanted but without making them realise they wanted it.

He walked past new office buildings and multi-storey car parks whose external walls were mounted with CCTV cameras, feeling as if he’d entered some kind of Gerry Anderson version of the future—a clunky vision, imagined decades ago, when none of the current technology existed. Everything seemed deliberately false, plastic, like a film set after the cast and crew have all gone home.

Annie’s last job had been somewhere nearby, but now she worked out of town, where the office rental was cheaper and the rush-hour traffic wasn’t as bad. Everyone else was struggling, but she had used the weak job market and skills shortages to her advantage and switched to a better firm. She was leaving him behind; passing through doors he couldn’t even see let alone open.

Finally he reached what he thought was the correct building. He checked the address against the computer print-out given to him at the Job Centre, and once he was certain they matched he headed up the wide concrete steps and towards the main entrance.

He put out his hand and palmed the door, but it remained closed. Stopping in his tracks, Nick tried again, but the door failed to respond. He stared though the glass, at the security guard sitting behind the counter, and the man reached under his desk to buzz Nick inside. The buzzer sounded, but once again the door refused to open.

The guard hastily got to his feet and quick-stepped across the foyer, looking confused and embarrassed. He opened the door—easily, oh so easily—and stepped out of the way. “Sorry about that, sir. It must be playing up.” His smile was troubled, as if he couldn’t understand why the door had not opened in the first place.

Nick signed in and was directed by the same security guard to a company who occupied space on the second floor. He waited for the lift, and when the doors opened several people stepped out and to either side of him, like waters breaking around a rock. He slipped inside as the doors began to shut, and pressed the button for the second floor.

He was stuck in the lift for fifteen minutes, until finally someone else summoned it from the second floor and he was able to slip out through the opening doors.
 

Each time it had reached his floor prior to that moment the lift had simply continued on its way, climbing and falling through the levels until he had begun to lose his grip on the situation.

Breathing heavily, Nick stumbled out of the lift and made his way along the corridor. People came and went, appearing through doorways and passing him by in the corridor, giving him quizzical looks. He felt hemmed in; trapped in his own skin. The whole world looked like it was made up of closing doors.

The reception area beckoned: the door was open, inviting him to step inside. Nick moved towards it, his feet brushing on the tiled floor, and just as he was within touching distance of the door it slammed shut. The sound was deafening. There was no one in the immediate vicinity who could have slammed the door in his face. It had simply happened, like so much else in his life simply happened. Except nothing at all about this was simple...

Nick stood there, cut off from his possible future. He looked through the glass door like a kid with his face pressed up against a cake shop window, desperate to step inside and dig into the display.

He tried the door, knowing exactly what would happen...and inevitably, the door would not move. He turned around, looking for help, and a row of doors lined up along the corridor all slammed in unison, as if teasing him.

Nick felt like screaming, but he held it inside. If he let go, he feared he might not be able to put a stop to the madness churning in his stomach. He faced forward, towards the door, closed his eyes, and prayed...prayed to whoever or whatever might be listening...prayed to forces he did not understand or even believe in...prayed to whatever cruel god was toying with him...

Suddenly, the door wrenched in his hand; someone was tugging it open from the other side. He stepped back, pulled back his hand, and watched a large woman squeeze awkwardly through the gap. “Oh,” she said. “Sorry.” She smiled, moved aside, and Nick slipped through before the door closed, thanking her and just about keeping his emotions in check.

“I’m Nick Handy,” he said to the woman behind the reception desk. “I have an interview.” The woman smiled, but her features were flat and empty beneath the mask. She glanced up at him as she checked her list, and when finally she found his name the smile brightened, becoming more real.
 

Nick waited, eyeing the doors, all the doors leading off this single main room.

“I’m afraid you’re a little late, Mr Handy, but you’ll still be seen if you’ll wait a while. There’s a waiting room over there.” She pointed with her pencil, and then looked away, dismissing him in an instant.

Nick lurched for the door—a man was holding it open, chatting to another person just inside the room. Then, abruptly, the person inside stood up and walked out of the door, starting to close it behind them.

Nick dodged past the departing man, smiling, and slipping his leg through the narrowing gap. The door closed against his knee, trapping him momentarily, but he forced his way inside. The door clicked shut. The two men outside frowned at him, and then laughed softly before moving away.

The room was small, and there were far too many doors. Five or six, each one leading to another room where things Nick could not understand were being discussed; where strange plans and ideas were being pondered. Suddenly this interview was the last thing he wanted to sit through, but he knew he was trapped here, in the waiting room, at least until someone opened the door to let him out.

He sat down on one of the chairs and then stood up again. He was restless; his mind and body were wired, unable to calm down.

He felt strange and alone and...
locked out
. He felt locked out, even though he was effectively shut inside.

Nick stood at the centre of the room, turning in a slow circle and addressing each door in turn. “Why?” he said, quietly. “Why are you doing this to me?”

He pointed at each door, his hand shaking.
 

His fingers trembled. His blood thundered.

The doors were impassive; they were not alive or sentient, no matter what Nick might think. They were doors. Just doors.

“
Why?
”

At first nothing happened—there was no visible response. But then the lights in the room flickered for a moment before going out, leaving him in a murky gloom not nearly dark enough to be called true darkness; just a bland, grey space lacking any kind of natural daylight. He could see clearly the outlines of the furniture, the locations of the doors set into the walls.

Thoughts and images spooled through his head, flickering not unlike the failing light had done seconds before: all the interviewees who’d ever turned him down, Annie’s face when she realised he wasn’t coming home, the novel he’d written, the countless other novels he might have produced if he had only been given an iota of encouragement...if only the right doors had opened.

History, all of it: memories of a life now rapidly fading.

Then, simultaneously, the doors slowly opened, snickering like vertical mouths. Nick looked at the handles; then at the hinges; then at the rectangular panels which made up each individual door.
 

And finally he stared at the narrow black apertures between doors and frames: sly and shivering tooth-lined slits widening to allow whatever blackness lurked beyond to reach out and touch him.

THE CHAIR

The long winter evenings were hardest of all: when daylight ended early and the darkness which took its place was hard and flat as sheet metal, Ben waited in vain for his father’s shadow to arrive. He waited for so long and so often that it became habit, a ritual like so many others that made up his existence.

He sat forlornly at the living room window and watched the street, wishing his father’s car would appear, slowing as it approached the house to turn into the empty drive. His mother was usually busying herself in the kitchen—plating up a sparse meal for tomorrow, preparing his medication, or mixing herself a cocktail—and Ben’s shoulders tensed at every sound she made. The laboured twist of a lid. The eager chink of a glass. The deep sighs which bled from her willowy frame as she sat down heavily at the table to drink.

The street, however, remained empty and silent but for the occasional lone figure passing beneath the cold glare of streetlamps or a huddled group of strangers returning home from the pub. None of these passers-by made much noise; they simply went on their way, leaving the street and its inhabitants unmolested.

One night at the start of December, just as the temperature was beginning to drop sharply towards full winter, Ben sat at his usual place by the window, chin resting on his fists, knees tucked up under his body as he waited for something to happen.