The World House (2 page)

 

The delusion, if that's what it had been, had taken all the energy out of Miles' anger so he took the box upstairs to stare at in some degree of comfort. The wine was done but in a twist of good fortune he found half a bottle of cheap-shit calvados in the kitchen cupboard. He'd bought it when trying to impress a date by his ability to cook. It burned all the way down his throat, whether with alcohol or regret was impossible to tell.

  He placed the box on the stained coffee table in the lounge, turned on all the lights and sat down on the carpet to roll another cigarette. While he packed strands of tobacco, tangled as pubic hair, into the centre of his cigarette paper he tried to remember where he had bought the box. After a while the auctions and house clearances had a habit of blending together. An endless parade of tatty banana-boxed "treasures", things once precious reduced to funky-smelling trinkets wrapped in decades-old newspaper. He had a vague memory of a house near Coventry, the stink of a dying man's piss, and ticks in the upholstery. Hadn't there been a whole chest filled with decorative boxes? The spoils of a youth in the navy? He picked up the Chinese box, meaning to open it. The lid wouldn't shift; possibly the wood was warped or the hinges rusted. Now the box was so close to his face he became aware of a noise, a gentle ticking from inside it. He held it next to his ear and listened. It was a precise but unrhythmic clicking, not clockwork, more the sort of noise a beetle might make. He turned the box over in his hands, shaking it and rubbing his thumbs along its edges. The ticking grew louder. Suddenly, something sharp stung his palm and he dropped the box. Rubbing at the sore flesh on his hand he watched a red weal, like an insect bite, begin to develop.

  He pulled his mobile out of his pocket and called Jeremy. The phone rang out a few times before his friend's voice groaned into the receiver. "Miles? Bloody hell… do you know what time it is?"

  When his friend spoke, the box stopped its noise, as if shy.

  "No," Miles admitted, glancing at his watch. He'd lost a few hours somewhere along the line: it was nearly two in the morning. "Sorry… didn't realise it

had got so late. Listen, that box…"

"Are you drinking?"

  "Of course I am, what else is there to do in my current situation? I'd be eating heroin like toffee if I had any. You know the box you were looking at? The Chinese one?"

  "Please tell me you didn't wake me up to sell me antiques."

  "Don't be stupid, there's something…" How to pin it down without sounding mad? "There's something weird about it. When I was looking at it I thought it changed shape. Now it's ticking."

  "You really have been drinking, haven't you?"

  "Jesus!" Miles' exasperation made him clench his teeth "It's not the bloody wine, all right? I'm pissed but I'm not hallucinating… There's something seriously weird going on."

  "I'll tell you what's weird," Jeremy replied. Miles could hear him getting out of bed and turning on a light. "That's the fact that you've got a bunch of thugs waiting to pay you a visit and you're just sat in your flat messing about with stock. If you can't find the money – and of course you can't – then get out of there, for fuck's sake. Come round here, or even better get yourself to a train station and bugger off somewhere. What about that friend of yours in London? Gary something… go and kip on his floor for a few weeks."

  "And then what?"

  "I don't bloody know!" Jeremy's voice distorted in Miles' ear. "Stay there, I suppose! Anything's better than just sitting around waiting for them to come knocking on your door."

  "Don't worry about it," Miles muttered, hanging up. A few seconds later Jeremy rang back but Miles ignored it.

  He wouldn't run, though he couldn't have told Jeremy why, not without sounding pathetic. He had just sunk too low. Movement, thought, self-preservation… they all required energy, they needed him to care. Right now, the only thing he could sum up any enthusiasm for was this damned box. It began ticking again.

  "What are you about?" he muttered. A throbbing pulse of drunkenness surged through his head as he moved, his brain bobbing like a boat in a storm. He nudged the box with his foot, nervousness vanishing alongside the last few crumbs of his giving a shit. He rubbed at the mark on his palm but it didn't hurt. He sat down on the floor, his back against the nicotinestained paintwork that he had promised himself he would touch up for the last three years.

  The box flipped over and landed on its base. Miles stared at it, unsure how to respond. The ticking continued to grow in volume, an angry jazz rimshot that made his left eyelid twitch.

 

The ostrich cricked its neck, startled by the fire from the lighter, and there was a dry, tearing noise like a baguette being broken in half. A cloud of dust sprinkled from its throat and it opened its beak with the creak of a pair of rusted garden shears. The heat from the flame singed Miles' thumb and he let the light go out. Panicking in darkness all the more dense for the flame's absence, he blew on his thumb and spun the flint wheel, desperate to reignite it, sparks leaping into the dark and vanishing quickly. Finally, the flame lit and the ancient bird gave a startled squawk. It reared its head back and, with another cry, thrust it forward, stabbing at Miles' hand. Now, without thinking about it, Miles found he was able to move a little more, the upper part of his body rolling to one side as he tried to avoid the angry pecking. The beak punched the small of his back as he pulled himself out of the way, his legs dragging uselessly behind him. He lashed back with his right arm, catching the bird on the side of its head with his fist. The bird gave another squawk and retreated in a rustle of feathers. Miles kept pulling himself along the carpet, clouds of dust stinging his eyes. A dull throb pulsed in his lower back from where the bird had hit him. His hand smacked against a wooden pole. He ran his fingers up and down it, feeling its bulges and contours. It was a table leg, stout enough to be Regency (the absurdity of his trying to date the thing by touch, given his current situation, was not lost on him but it was hard to break the habit of a lifetime). He pulled himself past it, rolling on to his back and feeling the underside of the table above. Hopefully it might offer some protection. The ostrich was trotting to and fro some distance away; he could hear its scaly feet pounding the old carpet. It wasn't alone – the whole room seemed to be coming to life: there was creaking and hissing; a sound like someone tapping on a window; a shuffling of something large pulling itself along the floor; a low growl… The scent of age was growing stronger too, sweet and dusty, making him want to sneeze or vomit, perhaps both. Something jumped on to the table he could hear its claws tapping as it walked along the wood.
Tap…
tap… tap…

 

He woke to a knocking on the door and, for a second, thought the sound must be coming from the box. He was still sat in the corner of his room, unaware of the moment when he had lost consciousness. Daylight shone through the windows, making him squint. The knocking came again, echoing along the stairwell that led from his flat to street-level. His door wasn't used to visitors and there was only one man he could imagine eager for his company (or, more precisely, his wallet). Surely he still had a few hours to find the money? He checked his watch as the knocking came a third time, staring at its hostile face and the late afternoon it swore he had woken into. The person at his door ran out of patience and started rattling at the lock.

  Now that the threat was solidifying, becoming an actuality rather than an abstract, he realised he hadn't been scared at all. Fear,
real
fear, was the surge of nausea he felt right now, curdling the cheap red wine in his stomach and turning his lower jaw to jelly. How could he have imagined that he could just sit here and take what had been promised to him? Getting to his feet he slammed a hand to the wall to steady himself as his legs buckled and his stomach ejected the previous night's self-pitying booze in an arc across the paintwork. There was no time for cleanliness and he ran through to the kitchen and his back door. The rear of the flat boasted a wooden balcony with a row of steps that would see him in the delivery area behind the building; from there it was a short jog to the street.

  The person at the front door was working the lock. Miles could hear the careful investigation of metal on metal as the tumblers were forced to roll over and let the intruder in. He pulled at the handle of the back door, spitting some of the filth from his mouth in anger as he realised it was locked. He yanked the kitchen drawers open, hunting for the key. He found it, still wearing the rental agency address tag on a length of old, thick string. He shoved it into the lock. He heard the front door open behind him as the key turned, heavy feet beginning to ascend the stairs. The back door was stiff and the wood cried out as he wrenched it open. If he could just get on to the street he had some hope of giving his pursuers the slip. Surely they would be wary of attacking him in plain sight?

  "Don't be a dickhead," Gordon Fry said, standing on the balcony just outside Miles' door. "Give us a bit of fucking credit, yeah?"

 

The feeling of safety offered by the table began to wane. Miles couldn't begin to imagine what was pacing up and down above him but the sound of its claws, tapping and scratching on the polished wood, was all he needed to know to be afraid. The growling was getting closer too, though the animal must surely be sick as the noise was too harsh to come from a healthy throat. Perhaps it was also lame; certainly it was dragging itself rather than walking towards him. There were more birds, tuneless whistles and squawks and the occasional whoosh of air as they flew past the table, stirring the dust with the beating of their wings. Sometimes the noise would stop with a dull thud as they found the perimeter of the room, beaks pounding into wood-panelling like inaccurately thrown pub darts. There was a dry rattle, a maraca shaken in the dark.

  Miles, terrified of snakes, found a cold sweat beginning to form on his forehead as he imagined its dry belly curling its way along the greasy carpet. He held the lighter in his hand and wondered whether to strike it. He couldn't decide whether it might attract the creatures or scare them off. He rubbed his thumb indecisively along the flint wheel as the noises drew nearer…

 

After so long insisting he wasn't going to run, it now seemed he couldn't stop. It was completely pointless, of course; he could hardly lose them in a one-bedroom flat. Fry knew this and took his time stepping into the kitchen, closing and locking the door behind him, casually poking through a couple of the cupboards out of sheer nosiness. The two men that he had brought with him – who had proven so adept at forcing locked doors – also knew their quarry was going nowhere. They followed Miles into the lounge as casually as if they had been invited, perhaps to discuss Our Beneficent Lord or the benefits of solar panelling as an alternative energy source. Miles wasn't fooled by their nonchalance, nor did he think for one minute that the heavy-looking canvas bag that one of the men dropped on to the sofa contained promotional literature. There was the chink of metal against metal as the objects inside the bag tumbled together. It was a deceptively prim noise, like the tapping of champagne glasses during a wedding toast.

  The men had the sort of bland appearance that was only found in the true professional: long wool overcoats, pink muscular heads razored baby-arse smooth. They showed no sense of eagerness for the task ahead but no concern either. Miles, on the other hand, was so concerned that he was close to losing all physical control. He was shaking violently as he watched Fry enter the room nibbling on a chocolate biscuit he'd found in the kitchen. His legs desperately wanted him to run and he didn't altogether disagree, just had no idea where or how. Fry, noticing the purple spray of wine-laced vomit that bruised the wall in the corner of the room, grimaced and threw what was left of the biscuit on the floor.

  "Heavy night, was it?" he asked. "If it weren't for the fact that you were trying to fuck off over the back wall I'd hope it was in celebration of getting me my money."

  Accepting there was no way he would walk out of the room, Miles started trying to talk his way out instead. His jaw was shaking so much with nerves that he couldn't get his words out straight. Fry punching him in the face didn't help.

  "Think how I feel," Fry said, the small amount of feigned civility he had offered gone, "coming all the way over here, only to hear the bad – if not altogether surprising – news that I'm deeply out of pocket." His cheeks were reddening as he got angrier, pounding his shiny leather shoes into Miles' legs and belly. "Hardly fucking fair, is it? I lend you some money, you don't pay it back and now I'm supposed to be the bad man for taking it out on you. Well,
fuck you!
" He gave him one more kick to the arse, sending a wave of pain through the base of Miles' spine. "Thieving fucker."

  Miles was hunched, foetal, trying to protect himself from Fry's kicks – though, Lord knows, in a few moments he would likely look back on them as the gentlest of kisses. Despite the fear, despite the sight of one of the bald men unzipping the canvas bag and pulling out a pair of wooden blocks, despite Fry wiping at his spittle-covered chin with his coat sleeve and looking sorely tempted to resume his attack, despite all that… Miles became aware that the wooden box was ticking again. He twisted his head to look at it, his interest, once again, somewhat inappropriate to his circumstances.

  Fry certainly felt snubbed, stepping over Miles to snatch the box from the floor. "Worth something, is it?" he asked, shaking the box in his hands, maybe to silence the ticking. Miles found himself scared to see the box manhandled in such a fashion, though he knew he was due for heavier treatment.

  "Fucking
fucker!
" Fry shouted, verbose as ever, slamming his hand to his mouth as if to shove the words back down his throat. Miles glimpsed a trickle of blood on the man's lips and realised he'd caught himself on the box. "Cunting thing," Fry mumbled, sucking his wound. He threw the box at Miles, who instinctively grabbed it.