The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) (31 page)

“Are my eyes playing tricks?”

“What do
you
think, Derrick?”

“You aren’t suggesting—?”

“I bloody well am. I’ve been doing some stiff thinking about Alice since her spiel last week—”

“
Stiff
thinking?”

He looked exasperated. “I never get a hard-on thinking about her. Fact is, I can’t seem to, whatever Charlotte may imagine.”

“Me neither.”

“She’s an enchantress. Supernatural. I mean it, old son. Haven’t you suspected?”

I nodded cautiously. This wasn’t
quite
the thing to admit to one another.

“I thought she might be a modern-day witch,” I said. “Despite commuting to Euston and driving a Saab. Type of books she publishes, you know?” I was only telling him a quarter of the truth. Since last weekend I had thought ever more about “angels” and “devils” – for want of better names! – about benign and angry vibrations from a past that had been disenfranchised, in a kind of time-crossed disinheritance: the plastic children forsaking the memory of the parent. Alice was more than any latter-day witch – and less, because she wasn’t of our time at all, in spite of her modern gear and jokes.

“Not a witch, Derrick. A
lamia
. As in Keats’s poem. Had to read that at school. A female spirit who preys on travelers.”

“She never preyed on us.”

“Just so. She was being a good girl with us. Friday evening was her leisure time, her friendly hour. She
stopped
us from feeling, well, lustful.”

“What are you two arguing about?” asked Charlotte. She and Jenny couldn’t see the fan without turning. “Did one of you say something to Alice that you shouldn’t? Something to offend her?”

“No, damn it,” swore Martin.

“But something did go wrong,” I insisted, “and she melted away.”

“No!” He grabbed and shook me. Jenny started up, fearing that we were about to have a brawl – about Alice, right in front of our wives. “You don’t get it, do you?” His face leered into mine. “The fan ate her. It fell in love with her just like you said – and it consumed her. It sucked her into itself.”

“It—?”

“The bloody fan!”

By now the slats of the Xtractall were quite clean, and no longer made that munching motion.

Charlotte also leapt up. “You’re mad!”

“Get away from under that fan, love,” begged Martin. “Remember the cat that went missing? Remember how Alice hated cats? The fan ate the cat up for her – we found that scrap of bloody fur up there, right? – and Alice knew; she knew.”

I recalled Alice’s smile, directed at the fan.

“One night last week the fan extracted poor old Tiger,” he went on. “Remember what Alice said about how the fan replaced a hungry old stone? Something up there is kin to her.”

A demon, I thought – to her angel. But both of them aspects of the past, still wooing the present weakly, in friendly or venomous guise.

“That thing’s much more powerful than Alice guessed,” insisted Martin. “When we all went off to the toilets – and who sent us, her or the fan? – it sucked her in because it wanted her.”

What Charlotte did next was either quite stupid or remarkably brave. Of course, she did not see Alice the way we fellows saw her. Maybe women couldn’t. She kicked off her shoes, burrowed in her own bag for a neglected pack of cigarettes, lit one, and mounted a chair.

“That’s impossible,” she said. “Physically impossible – leaving aside the wild idea of an extractor fan falling in love.” Charlotte puffed smoke at the blank face of the fan.

“The cat fur,” Martin protested.

Clunk-clack
: The fan opened up. The mechanism whirred. Smoke disappeared. Charlotte never flinched. She flicked her lighter for illumination. Daringly she teased two long fingernails between the slats and tugged. Several strong black strands of hair came free.

“Oh,” she said, and jumped down. “Is this some joke the two of you cooked up with Alice? Is she waiting outside the door stifling her giggles?”

Martin crossed his heart like a child. And Charlotte faltered. I was wrong: Each in our way we must have been thinking along similar lines about Alice. Our ladies had both been resisting such conclusions.

“It’s still impossible,” Charlotte said, “unless the fan leads somewhere else than just to the ordinary outside. And unless it changes what it takes. Unless it etherializes stuff instead of merely making mincemeat! Maybe it does. What was the landlord saying about never finding any mice? How can that be a magic fan? How?”

By now Jenny was caught up in our conviction. “We can’t call the police. They would think we were insane. We don’t even know Alice’s surname, let alone where she—”

I had remembered the purse and swooped. I emptied it on a table over the beer mats. Car keys. Cosmetics. Tiny bottle of perfume. Ten- and twenty-pound notes, but no loose change. A tarnished old medallion. No driver’s license, no cheque book, no hint of her full name or where she lived.

“At least we have the car keys,” said Martin.

“There’ll be no clues in her car,” I told him. “She isn’t any ordinary human being.”

“Oh, we know that already, Derrick darling.” My wife’s tone was somewhat spiced with irony.

“She’s a supernatural being. Didn’t we know it all along?” I was echoing Martin, but those had been my sentiments anyway.

Charlotte didn’t disagree with my assessment, however sceptical she may have seemed before. “And she’s our friend,” she reminded me. “
Was
, at any rate! So two supernatural forces have collided here—”

“Or come together. Like the poles of a magnet, like anode and cathode.”

“What do you suppose our landlord knows about that fan?”

I laughed. “Our Mr. Chalmers doesn’t realize the fan’s possessed. He thinks Tiger was a demon mouser. I doubt he knows much about the stone that was drilled to dust to make space for the fan. The ancient stone, the sacrifice stone.” A hard pain in my left hand alerted me to the fact that I was clutching that medallion from Alice’s purse. As I opened my palm, the pain numbed to a cold tingling.

“Carry on.” Charlotte eyed the metal disc intently, an amulet from some ancient time.

Words struggled to the surface like flotsam from a shipwreck. Don’t hold them down. Relax. Let them bob up.

“The vibrations of the sacred stone imbued that space up there. When the stone was destroyed, the force possessed the fan that replaced it. At least a fan could
do
something, unlike a block of stone. It could open up a channel – to somewhere – a feeding channel. No one had fed the stone for centuries. It lay neglected, inert. Some Elizabethan builder picked it up and used it as part of the pub wall. It stayed inert. It was hungry, weak. It was the demon side of . . . the angry past. But it was kin to Alice.”

I was holding Alice’s medallion out blatantly, like a compass. The disc was so worn that its face was almost smooth; I could barely make out faint symbols unknown to me. A coin from the realm of magic, I thought, from the domain of lamias and hungry spirits. The inscription was well-nigh erased. How had Alice kept her vitality so long? By connecting with people such as us? Preying on some, befriending others?

Jenny touched the piece of metal and recoiled as if stung. “It’s freezing.”

“That space up there is dangerous,” said Charlotte, who had so boldly shone a light into it. “Still, it didn’t bite my fingers off. It only reacts to some stimuli – Alice being the biggest stimulus of all, eh, fellows?”

“It took her by surprise,” I said. “It was playing possum till we went to the toilet; till the vibrations tickled our bladders. Or maybe that was Alice’s doing. She wanted to be alone with it. It overwhelmed her.”

She had been well aware of it, must have sensed its true nature when we first brought her here. She was flesh; it was an object – her malign counterpart, which nevertheless yearned for her. She wanted to commune with a kindred force, but imagined she was stronger.

“We want her back, don’t we?” Charlotte went on. “This is the machine age, right? We know machines. That thing’s out of synch with the age.”

“What are you driving at?” Martin asked his wife.

“You’re a dab hand at fixing things, aren’t you?” She jerked a thumb at the leaded window behind the bar counter. A
NO VACANCIES
sign hung facing us. Consequently anyone approaching from outside would read the alternative invitation,
VACANCIES
. “We’ll spend the night here. You have a tool box in the car. When all’s completely quiet, we’ll sneak down, do a spot of dismantling, and reverse those damned fan blades so that the air blows into this room, not out. Air, and whatever else.”

“Cigarette and cigar smoke is like foul incense to it,” I found myself saying.

“She’ll come back minced,” muttered Jenny. “Spread all over the floor, sticking to the walls.”

“Why should she? If it can take her apart, it can put her back together! We must try,” insisted Charlotte.

We were blunderers. We were the opposite of stone-age man placed cold before the instrument panel of a Saab or Jaguar. We were techno-man faced with the stone and blood controls of some old, alternative world of spirit forces.

Chalmers appeared, and announced, “Your table’s ready. If you’d like to come through?”

“I’m afraid there’ll only be four of us,” said Martin.

“Did the other lady leave? This is the time you booked for.”

“I know. She was called away. A friend came for her. She had to leave her car. We’ll see to that tomorrow.”

Chalmers raised an eyebrow.

“Fact is,” blustered Martin, “we’d like to enjoy a bit of a celebration. Special occasion! Do you have two double rooms free for the night? Don’t want the police stopping us afterward. Breathalyzing us. Can’t risk that.”

The landlord brightened. “We do, as it happens.”

“We’ll take them.”

“Mr. Chalmers,” said Charlotte, “out of curiosity, why did you mount that fan in that particular position?”

“Had to put it somewhere didn’t we? That was the first year we came here, oh . . . a long while ago. As I recall, the plaster up there was prone to staining. Dark damp stains. The stone behind was . . .” He wrinkled his nose. “Oozy.” Changing the subject, he waved at the counter. “If you get thirsty during the night,” he joked, “help yourselves. You’re regulars. Guests can drink anytime. Just leave a note for me to tot up.”

Charlotte beamed at him. “Thank you very much, Mr. Chalmers.”

Yes, I thought, we’re all raving insomniacs. We’ll certainly be holding a quiet party down here at two in the morning.

“My pleasure. Will you come this way?”

If we were supposed to be celebrating, Chalmers and his wife and the pair of waitresses from the village must have decided that the Roebuck’s cuisine wasn’t our pleasure that evening, to judge from how we picked at it. Or else we were engaged in a peculiar silent quarrel about the choice of fare. However, we did sink some wine, almost a bottle apiece. As we toyed with our food, the restaurant began to fill up with local subgentry enjoying a night out. When we returned to the other room for coffee, the place was crowded and the fan was busily sucking smoke out. Incense of drugful death, I thought, wondering whether this might be a phrase from Keats.

“Charlotte,” he said, “nip behind the counter and find the switch for the fan. It’s bound to be labelled. Make sure that it’s off. Not that being off might make much difference!”

“Why not?”

“How do mice get sucked into it overnight?”

“
If
they do,” I said. I should have followed this thought through. I should have pursued this possibility. I should have!

“Fan’s off,” she stage-whispered.

“Right. Up on a chair, Derrick. Hold the torch.”

I complied, and Martin unscrewed the housing, then removed the safety grille.

“ ’Course, it mightn’t be possible to reverse the action . . .” Perspiration beaded his brow. He wasn’t looking forward to plunging his hands into the works. “Hold the beam steady. Ye-ssss. The mounting unfastens here, and here. Slide it out. Turn it round. Bob’s your uncle.”

He worked away. Presently he withdrew the inner assembly gingerly, reversed it, slid it back inside.

“I keep imagining Alice walking in,” said Jenny. “What silly jokers we would seem. What a studenty sort of prank, gimmicking a fan so that cold and smoke blow
into
the pub!”

Martin unclenched his teeth. “If Alice tried to come through the front door now, she’d probably set off a burglar alarm . . . There we are! Pass the grille up, Jenny, will you? Now the slats. It’s got to be just the way it was before . . .”