The Spectral Book of Horror Stories (5 page)

But a promise is a promise.

#

The last time I visited Aunt Rose was the first time I’d seen her smile. I got there a little late, because by then the nurse at the door tended to be occupied with other visitors. I waited until she turned her back before I slipped down the corridor and into Aunt Rose’s room. It was easier than I’d thought, though my heartbeat felt as if it would trigger alarms. I listened to the steady
beep—beep—beep
of my aunt’s monitors, and calmed myself. Her rhythms sounded strong and steady, as they had for the last couple of days; as they had since I made my promise.
A turn for the better
, the nurses had said.
Who knows . . .?

I pictured it, Aunt Rose back in her house, in her favourite chair, the dog gazing up at her, adoration in his eyes. It wouldn’t happen. It
couldn’t
.

I shook my head. A promise is a promise, especially to family. Because promises to family are mainly unspoken, aren’t they? The ones about love, especially. The ones about help.

I smiled when I turned to face my aunt. She was sitting up in bed, looking brighter than she had in days. Her eyes were shining; there was joy in them. She knew I’d keep my promise—that was what families did—and now I was here.

“Where is he?” she asked.

My smile became a little wider. It took her a moment longer to see the expression in my eyes.

#

I get up and Sandy is there. I live in Aunt Rose’s house now, though it isn’t her house any longer. It’s mine. He comes running when I go downstairs and tries to lick my face. I feel sad, or irritated, depending on my mood, and then I go out and the last thing I see is his head tilted to one side, surprised to see me leaving him all over again. I get back and he’s there, tail wagging—I can hear it, beating the radiator by the door—and it begins again.

The thing I see, though, when I look at him, is Aunt Rose. Aunt Rose, little bigger than a doll, her limbs desiccated, covered by a single sagging sheet. Her eyes lolling back in their hollowed sockets, the emptiness in them. The
nothing
in them. It was the only thing left that she had really wanted, and once I gave it to her—once I opened the bag and leaned towards her and let her look inside—I guess she’d done.

It had been hard to cut. He wouldn’t hold still, for one thing, and I couldn’t see what I was doing because the fur on his neck was longer than that on his head. It was still golden though, and it spilled over my fingers. He licked me when I got hold of his collar. He tried to jump up at me, excited, not understanding.

It wasn’t easy to cut; I think I said that, but it really wasn’t.

I thought I’d have to make an awful choice for him one day
, she’d said. And I remembered the relief on her face when she’d said it. I understood it. I took one look, and I understood.

I couldn’t see for crying.

Make him love you
, Mum had said, and I had. The awful thing was, I loved him too. I took a knife to his neck and I pushed it in. The noise he made was terrible. Pain, yes. But mostly, it was the sound of betrayal.

It didn’t kill him, not at first. He bucked in my hands, and the knife slipped out. It took me a while to gather myself. He struggled. It was a while before I could do it again.

When Aunt Rose looked inside the bag, at first, she didn’t do anything. She just froze, me trying to hold it steady so that she could see his eyes, not the bloody part, the matted fur, just those adoring eyes—and her own eyes swivelled and she looked at me. She looked at me for a horrified second before she opened her mouth—to form words or take a breath, I wasn’t sure which—and then she started to claw at her chest.

Aunt Rose didn’t get better. She didn’t come home. She did get to see her dog, though, or what remained of him, before she died. I didn’t want to do it, but he was a big dog. He wasn’t a dog that would fit under a coat or in a bag. Not all of him, anyway.

Sandy comes to greet me whenever I get home. He wraps himself around my legs, and on some level, I can feel his touch, though the house never smells of dog any more. It doesn’t smell of him because he isn’t really there. I remind myself of that whenever I look into his eyes and see the adoration written in them. Sometimes the cruellest thing a creature can give you is love. I’d rather see
her
. Aunt Rose, the last look she ever gave me, her face twisted in pain and her eyes—the coldness in them. The hatred. It’s what I deserve, but I tell myself; it’s what she deserved too.

The dog was only caught between us.

There’s no end to his love. It’s capacious; it’s infinite. It was the first thing I was told about him, and it was true, and every day I’m surprised to see that it’s true. You’d think both of us would have got used to it by now, but we haven’t. I don’t think I ever will, and that’s a pity, because I have the feeling we’re going to be living together for a long, long time.

FUNERAL RITES

Helen Marshall

Her home university in Toronto was notoriously cheap when it came to travel budgets and, though Nora was something of an experienced traveller, she was still possessed of a certain naiveté—or, rather, disregard—when it came to subjects outside her field of expertise, a trait not entirely uncommon in her breed of scholar. That had led to bad luck in the past.

There was one time in particular, three years back, when trying to rent in London she had accidentally found herself in contact with Nigerian scam artists, with the result that the magically underpriced flat she’d purportedly rented in Bloomsbury had turned out to belong to a confused and overworked accountant who wouldn’t put her up for anything. The summer being the height of the tourist season, Nora had barely managed to find herself a place in a hostel. When she had clumsily dragged her oversized suitcase up five flights of stairs into blistering humidity—heat rises, she remembered and cursed—and then hauled herself into a top bunk that, with its black privacy netting slung over the side boards, resembled a coffin for all intents and purposes, she vowed that never again would she find herself in such a place. It wasn’t the closeness she hated, the small cramped space; no, it was the noise and the people, their demands, their excesses. No one whispered; music and conversation in foreign languages spilled out from the bunks, snores, such heavy breathing. A clotted tangle of black hair in every shower drain.

Because of that memory—a memory that came back to her with such grim vividness in any time of social unease, in the crush of the subway, at department parties, moments of forced camaraderie and feigned intimacy—Nora had been careful to check in advance that Mrs Moreland, the purported owner of a house on Observatory Street in Oxford, was indeed real. A friend of Nora’s from her undergraduate days, now positioned as a Lecturer at Magdalen College, had stopped by to investigate on her behalf. She had reported the place to be clean, if a bit cramped, but entirely trustworthy. On the subject of Mrs Moreland herself, the friend had little of note to add.

“I don’t expect you’ll have any problems with her,” Nora was told, “she keeps to herself. Nothing
too
fussy. By my count she’s no madder than anyone else here.” It was enough of a recommendation to seal the deal. Nora’s needs were few, in any case, and she was used to keeping to herself. No matter how mad the old woman was, provided she had a single furnished bedroom available on the cheap, she could be handled, of course she could be handled. Or avoided entirely, if Nora kept out late enough at the Bodleian. The place would do nicely, she thought.

#

It was—when Nora found it, thoroughly soaked from a fresh burst of rain whipped up by gusting January winds—exactly as advertised: a narrow terraced house along a nicely maintained street in Jericho where the facades had each been brightly painted in yellows, robin’s egg blues, and pinks. Hers was salmon-coloured with a dark green door. Nora took a deep breath, nervous. She hated the formality of lodging in a stranger’s house, but in some ways it was easiest—strangers could be put off more easily, their questions avoided with pat answers about the nature of her work, the weather back home. Yes, strangers were easier. She could cope. She needn’t stay very long at the house. The Bodleian would be open for several hours yet, and if she hurried she could still get a Reader’s Card. Come back late in the evening after dinner, creep back to her room. She only had to smile politely and get the keys. Thinking this, she took a breath and knocked very gently using the brass ring.

Nothing.

She waited.

Should she try again? No. Best not to appear too eager. It might be considered crass.

She waited several more minutes. The sky opened up in a downpour. Nora gritted her teeth.

Finally, she knocked on the door furiously. It opened amidst the rain of blows with an unexpected suddenness, as if the owner had been waiting directly on the other side. The knocker was almost wrenched out of her hand.

“Nora Higgins?” asked the old lady who stood in the doorway.

Nora tried on what she expected was a rather sheepish and apologetic smile. “Sorry about the clatter. It’s a bit damp, you see.”

“I suppose you’d better come in.”

The place had a funny feeling about it right away. Stuffy, but that could be excused. Mrs Moreland moved with a slow ungainliness, everything precise but shaky. It took her several seconds to vacate the doorway. Her eyes were red-rimmed, face pale and taut, a bruised purple over the cheekbones, lipstick once very bright but now partially blotted away.

Nora stepped inside. “Sorry about the dripping,” she said. She struggled with the suitcase, afraid she might knock over the little wooden table with its framed glass photograph. She felt entirely too big for the space; it made her want to hunch over.

“This way, if you please.”

Nora followed her into a little sitting room, all lumpy floral patterned cushions that hid, nestled between them, two girls the age of undergraduates, one as wan as Mrs Moreland despite her youth, the other dark-haired with a feverish look to her. They had clearly been speaking with some intensity before Nora’s arrival. There was a heavy silence filled only with the ticking of a very ancient clock. They all stared at Nora.

“I’ve brought the deposit,” Nora said uncertainly.

“Good, good,” whispered Mrs Moreland.

“I’ll take it,” said the dark-haired one. She stood up abruptly. Almost snatched the cheque out of Nora’s hand.

“It’s fine, dear, let me, let me. I can still do that, can’t I?”

The dark-haired one did not sit down, but her lips twisted gruesomely.

“Leave it,” said the other.

“I won’t.”

“She wants to do it. Let her do it.”

Mrs Moreland took the cheque from Nora and bent over a large-format accounts book. Her handwriting was very neat.

“A week then?”

“If that’s all right.” Nora was feeling nervous. “I’ll be at the library most days. Not much time to spare.” She laughed and regretted it instantly.

“She can’t stay here. It’s not right.” A hushed whisper from the girls. Mrs Moreland waved her hand as if to dispel it.

“Let me show you the room.”

#

“I call my place the doll’s house,” Mrs Moreland said, “it’s very sweet, very pretty, nothing much changed in twenty years. I manage the property myself, you know. I only take in scholars, not students. I can’t abide students. You’ve finished your degree?”

“Yes,” Nora said, “in Toronto. I teach there now.”

“Good. Then I expect you’ll be all right.”

The room boasted a cream carpet and several framed pictures of plants labelled in Latin, with a single bed covered in a heavy wool blanket tucked against the wall. A tea service had been placed on the bedside table with an electric kettle.

“I laid this all out in the morning for you. Good thing too.” Her gaze wandered.

“Shall I leave you to your visitors?” Nora asked.

“Them? They’ll spend the night if they can. They don’t want to leave me alone. But I’ve told them, you’ll be in tonight, yes?”

“I suspect so.”

“There you have it then. No need for them to stay.”

“Auntie,” said the dark-haired one from the doorway. She was holding Nora’s suitcase, having dragged it thuddingly up the staircase on her own.

“You don’t need to carry that,” Nora said. “I can get it.”

“We’re absolutely staying the night.”

“No, Kitty. I insist. Miss Higgins will be here. Miss, yes?”

Nora nodded.

“You see? I shan’t be alone, no, I understand your concerns, but I have a lodger and I couldn’t possibly put her out. There won’t be enough beds for all of us. I’ll sort it out with Rose,” Mrs Moreland said. Nora watched her totter carefully down the stairs.

The dark-haired woman—Kitty—stayed in the hallway, clutching at the suitcase as if she wanted to strangle it. She was a slip of a thing, pretty, and moving with the unconscious arrogance of someone who knew she was pretty. Her lipstick was very red, her mascara very black. Nora knew the type, had seen countless Kitties in her classes. They were invariably lazy, fatuous, and lacking any sort of intellectual rigour.

“She’s had a nasty shock,” Kitty hissed. It was an ugly sound.

“Sorry?” Nora asked as politely as she could.

“We’ve just had word. Her son died. My cousin, Sean. A heart condition, completely unexpected, he was only twenty-three.” She stared at Nora with a bird-like intensity, never blinking. There was a hectic colour to her cheeks. “Listen, I can get back the deposit for you.”

“The deposit?” Nora asked.

“Of course. I don’t imagine you’ll want to stay, what with all this.”

Nora said nothing. She remembered the heat of the hostel, the way the smell of the other travelling students—sweat and pot and perfume and sex—had overwhelmed her. Two Italians had been curled up on the bunk beneath her. She remembered staring at the intertwined shape of them. She remembered the noises they made, the bedframe shaking and pitching as they whispered love phrases to each other:
Mi fai il solletico, oooh, no, non ti fermare! Mi piace!