Festival of Fear Read online

  ‘He had just attended his fiancée’s funeral. I think he had very mixed feelings about her.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He felt guilty that he may not have loved her as much as he ought to have done.’

  ‘Can you elaborate?’

  Robin looked serious. ‘I think he felt uncertain about his sexual orientation, apart from other things.’

  ‘I see. Anything else?’

  ‘Even though he said that his fiancée hadn’t really – well, excited him – he was still very jealous if he thought that she was seeing other men.’

  ‘Did he think that she was seeing other men?’

  Robin nodded. ‘He said that it was making him very depressed. And of course he was very depressed about her death, too; and still in shock, if you ask me.’

  Richard Morton, a thirty-five-year-old computer salesman from Milton Keynes, gave evidence that he had talked to Peter on the telephone just after Gemma’s accident, and that Peter had seemed to believe that he and Gemma had been having an affair. ‘He was beside himself with rage. I simply couldn’t understand why.’

  Dr George Protter, Peter’s GP, said that Peter had been reasonably healthy, although he had suffered from several mild allergies, and had once consulted him after an anxiety attack at work. ‘As far as the matter of his late fiancée seeing other men is concerned, this was more than likely a figment of his imagination. She was a patient of my colleague Dr Carpenter, and three weeks before she died he had diagnosed a lump in her left breast. Under the circumstances it would hardly have been surprising if she had acted toward the deceased in a preoccupied manner. As Dr Carpenter will testify at her inquest next week, the evening before she fell beneath the train at West Kensington Station he had been to make a house call to tell her that she would have to have exploratory surgery.’

  Dr Vikram Pathanda, the senior pathologist at Hammersmith Hospital, then described how Peter had died. ‘There were two deep diagonal wounds, one to each cheek, that went right through to the mouth cavity. There was a deep penetrative wound to the lower abdomen, followed by an invasive section of the abdomen, in an upward direction, right up to the sternum. The injuries were such that death would have occurred within two or three minutes.

  ‘The wounds were caused by a specially sharpened, quarter-inch stonemason’s chisel which was found at the trauma scene. There is no question at all in my mind that they were self-inflicted.’

  The coroner took off his glasses. ‘Thank you, Dr Pathanda. And now, I think, we could all adjourn for a spot of lunch.’

  Robin Marshall sat on the top deck of the number fifteen bus, one hand raised to shield his eyes from the late-afternoon sun. Next to him, a black boy in enormous cargo pants was listening to rap on his stereo and joining in the beat with an occasional, ‘unh-a-unh-a.’

  The bus stopped outside Paddington Station. As it did so, another bus drew alongside. Robin looked at a handsome young Asian sitting near the front of the bus. Then he looked down at the side, where there was a large advertisement for Pepsi Cola.

  Somebody had scratched letters in the side of the bus – high, jagged letters that went right through the paint and exposed the bare aluminum. They said, HOW ARE YOU FEELING TODAY, ROBIN?

  Sepsis

  ‘What have you got there?’ she asked him, her eyes shining.

  ‘Nothing – it’s a surprise,’ he said, keeping the lapels of his overcoat drawn tightly together.

  ‘What is it?’ she demanded. ‘I can’t bear surprises!’

  ‘It’s something I bought specially for you, because I love you so much.’

  ‘Show me!’

  She tried to circle around him and peer down the front of his coat, but he backed away from her. ‘Before I show you, you’re going to have to make me a promise. You must promise to love this just as much as you love me.’

  ‘How can I, when I don’t know what it is?’

  ‘Because it’s all of my love for you, all of it, all wrapped up in one little bundle.’

  ‘Show me!’

  ‘Come on,’ he coaxed her. ‘If you don’t promise, I’ll take it back, and you’ll never find out what it was.’

  ‘Show me!’

  ‘Promise first!’

  She took a deep breath. ‘All-right-whatever-is-in-your-coat-I-promise-to-love-it-just-as-much-as-I-love-you.’

  ‘Cross your heart and hope to die?’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’

  Gently, he reached inside his coat and lifted out a tiny tortoiseshell kitten, with big green eyes. It gave a diminutive mew, and clung on to his lapel with its brambly little claws.

  ‘Oh, it’s a darling!’ she said. ‘Oh, it’s absolutely perfect!’

  ‘What did I tell you? All of my love, all wrapped up in one little bundle. What are you going to call her?’

  She took the kitten and cupped her in her hands, stroking the top of her head with her finger. ‘I don’t know yet. But something romantic. Something really, really romantic.’

  She made a mewing noise, and the kitten mewed back. She did it again, and again the kitten copied her.

  ‘There! I’ll call her Echo.’

  ‘Echo? What’s that? Sounds more like a newspaper than a cat.’

  ‘No, silly, it’s Greek mythology.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Echo was a beautiful, beautiful nymph, the most beautiful nymph that ever was.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? So what happened to her?’

  ‘Everybody loved Echo but Zeus’ grumpy old wife Hera got mad at her because she kept Hera talking while Zeus had hanky-panky with another goddess. Hera cursed her so that she could never speak her own words ever again – only the last words that were spoken to her by somebody else.’

  He shook his head in admiration. ‘Do you know something, I think I love your brain as much as your body. Well, almost as much. Unfortunately . . . your brain doesn’t have breasts.’

  She threw a cushion at him.

  His name was David Stavanger and her name was Melanie Angela Thomas. They were both twenty-four years old, although David was a Capricorn and Melanie was an Aries. Their star charts said that they should always be quarreling, but nobody who knew them had ever seen two people so much in love with each other. They lived and breathed each other, sharing everything from wine to whispers, and when they were together they radiated an almost palpable aura.

  Some evenings they did nothing but gaze at each other in awed silence, as if neither of them could believe that God had brought them another human being so desirable. And they were desirable, both of them. David was six foot ten inches tall with cropped blond hair and a strong, straight-nosed Nordic face that he had inherited from his grandfather. He was broad-shouldered, fit, and one of the most impressive wide receivers that the Green Bay Packers had fielded for over a decade. Melanie was small and slim, with glossy brunette hair that almost reached the small of her back. She had the dreamy, heavy-lidded beauty of a girl in a Pre-Raphaelite painting, as if she passed her time wandering through fields of poppies in poppy-colored velvet. She had graduated with a first-class English degree from the University of Wisconsin in Green Bay and now she was working as a contributing editor for MidWest magazine.

  They had met when Melanie was sent to interview pro football players about their private lives. Her first question had been, ‘What kind of girls appeal to you the most?’ and without blinking David had answered, ‘You.’

  David and Melanie shared a ground-floor apartment in a large, white-painted house in a street in Ashwaubenon lined with sugar maples. David drove a blue Dodge pickup and Melanie had a new silver Volkswagen Beetle. The evening after David brought Echo home, Melanie was sitting on the front veranda on the swing seat, with Echo in her lap, while David went jogging.

  It was one of those evenings in late August when the moths patter against the lamps and the chilly dew begins to settle on the lawn and you can feel that somewhere in the far north-west, Mr Winter is alrea
dy sharpening his cutlery.

  Mr Kasabian came down from the first-floor apartment to put out the trash. He looked like Gepetto, the puppet-maker who had carved Pinocchio, with a yard-brush moustache and circular eyeglasses and a black shiny vest. When he saw Echo dancing in Melanie’s lap he climbed up on to the veranda to take a closer look.

  ‘Cute little fellow.’

  ‘Girl, actually. David brought her home yesterday.’

  ‘Reminds me of my Wilma,’ said Mr Kasabian, wistfully. ‘My Wilma used to love her cats.’

  ‘You must miss her so bad.’

  Mr Kasabian nodded. ‘It’ll be three years this November twelfth, but believe me it’s still a shock when I wake up in the morning and I put out my hand and find that she’s not there any more.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’d do if I lost David.’

  ‘With the grace of God you won’t have to think about that until you’ve both lived a long and happy life.’

  Mr Kasabian went back inside, and just then David appeared around the corner in his green-and-white tracksuit, his Nikes slapping on the sidewalk. ‘Thirty-one minutes eighteen seconds!’ he gasped, triumphantly. He came up on to the veranda and gave her a kiss.

  ‘You’re so sweaty!’ she said.

  ‘Sorry – I’ll hit the shower. Do you want to get me a beer?’

  ‘No,’ she said, and clung on to his tracksuit. ‘Come here, I love you all sweaty.’

  He kissed her again and she licked his lips and his cheeks and then she ran her fingers into his hair and pulled him closer so that she could lick the sweat from his forehead.

  ‘Hey – beats the shower,’ said David, kissing her again and again.

  She tugged open his zipper and buried her face inside his tracksuit, licking his glistening chest.

  ‘Come on inside,’ she said, picking up Echo and taking hold of his hand.

  In the living room, she pulled off his tracksuit top and licked his shoulders and his back and his stomach. ‘I love the taste of you,’ she said. ‘You taste like salt and honey, mixed.’

  He closed his eyes. His chest was still rising and falling from his running.

  She guided him over to the couch so that he could sit down. She unlaced his Nikes and peeled off his sports socks. Kneeling in front of him she licked the soles of his feet and slithered her tongue in between his toes, like a pink seal sliding amongst the rocks. Then she untied the cord around his waistband and pulled down his pants, followed by his white boxer shorts.

  While he lay back on the couch she licked him everywhere, all around his sweaty scrotum and deep into the crevice of his buttocks. She wanted every flavor of him, the riper the better. She wanted to own the taste of him, completely.

  And that was how it started.

  Every night after that they would tongue-bathe each other all over, and then lie in each other’s arms, breathing each other’s breath, their skins sticky with drying saliva. Every night he would bury his face between her thighs, licking her and drinking her, and she would suck his glans so hard that he yelped in pain. When he did that, Echo would mew, too.

  One night, eleven days later, he lifted his head and his chin was bearded in scarlet. He kissed her, and she licked it off his face, and then he dipped his head down for more.

  Melanie’s parents took them out for dinner at MacKenzie’s Steak and Seafood. They sat close to each other, their fingers twisted together, staring at each other in the candlelight.

  Her father looked at her mother after a while and raised one eyebrow. He was a lean, quiet-spoken man with brushed-back silver hair and a large, hawklike nose. Her mother looked almost exactly like Melanie, except her hair was bobbed short and highlighted blonde and her figure was fuller. She was wearing a bright turquoise dress, while Melanie was all in black.

  ‘So . . . do you two lovebirds have any plans to get married yet?’ asked Mr Thomas. ‘Or is that me being old-fashioned?’

  ‘I think we’re past getting married,’ said Melanie, still smiling at David.

  ‘Past getting married? What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that we’re much, much closer than any wedding ceremony could make us.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t get it.’

  Melanie turned to her father and touched his hand. ‘You and Mom were so lucky to find each other . . . But sometimes two people can fall in love so much that they’re both the same person . . . they don’t just share each other, they are each other.’

  Her father shook his head. ‘That’s a little beyond me, I’m afraid. I was just wondering if you’d considered the financial advantages of being married.’ He grunted, trying to make a joke of it. ‘Huh – I don’t exactly know what tax breaks you two can expect from being the same person.’

  Their meals arrived. They had all chosen steak and lobster, apart from Melanie, who had ordered a seared-tuna salad. Their conversation turned to the football season, and then to the latest John Grisham novel that Melanie’s father had been reading, and then to one of Melanie’s friends from MidWest magazine, who had been diagnosed with cervical cancer at the age of twenty-six.

  ‘She wants her ashes spread on her vegetable patch, would you believe, so that her boyfriend will actually eat her.’

  ‘I think that’s so morbid,’ said Melanie’s mother.

  ‘I don’t. I think it’s beautiful.’

  David poured her another glass of white wine. ‘How’s your tuna?’

  ‘It’s gorgeous. Do you want to try some?’

  ‘No, that’s OK.’

  ‘No, go on, try some.’

  With that, she leaned across and kissed him, ostentatiously pushing a half-masticated wad of fish into his open mouth. David took it, and chewed it, and said, ‘Good. Yes, you’re right.’

  Melanie’s parents stared at them in disbelief. David turned to them unabashed. ‘It’s really good,’ he confirmed, and swallowed.

  The next day Melanie’s mother phoned her at work.

  ‘I’m worried about you.’

  ‘Why? I’m fine. I’ve never been so happy in my life.’

  ‘It’s just that your relationship with David – well, it seems so intense.’

  ‘That’s because it is intense.’

  ‘But the way you act together . . . I don’t know how to say this, really. All this kissing and canoodling and sharing your food. Apart from anything else, it’s embarrassing for other people.’

  ‘Mom, we love each other. And like I said to Dad, we’re not just partners, we’re the same person.’

  ‘I know. But everybody needs a little space in their lives . . . a little time to be themselves. I adore your father, but I always enjoy it when he goes off for a game of golf. For a few hours, I can listen to the music I want to listen to, or arrange flowers, or talk to my friends on the phone. I can just be me.’

  ‘But David is me. The same way that I’m David.’

  ‘It worries me, that’s all. I don’t think it’s healthy.’

  ‘Mother! You make it sound like a disease, not a relationship.’

  October came. David started to miss practice at Lambeau Field and Melanie began to take afternoons off work, simply so that they could lie naked on the bed together in the wintry half-darkness and lick each other and stare into each other’s eyes. Their greed for each other was insatiable. When they were out walking in the cold, and Melanie’s nose started to run, David licked it for her. In the privacy of their own bedroom and bathroom, there was nothing that they wouldn’t kiss or suck or drink from each other.

  They visited their parents and their friends less and less. When they did, they were no company at all, because they spent the whole time caressing each other, deaf and blind to everybody and everything else.

  One afternoon when it was beginning to snow, the Packers’ assistant head coach Jim Pulaski came around to their apartment. He was a squat man with bristly gray hair and a broad Polish-looking face, deeply lined by years of standing on the touchline. He sat on the couch in h
is sheepskin coat and warned David that if he missed one more practice he was off the team. ‘You’re a star, David, no question. But the cheeseheads are more important than the stars, and every time you don’t show up for practice you’re letting the cheeseheads down.’ ‘Cheeseheads’ was the nickname that the Packers gave their supporters.

  Without taking his eyes off Melanie, David said, ‘Sorry, coach? What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Mr Pulaski, and after a long while he stood up, tugged on his fur-lined hat, and let himself out of the front door. As he crunched across the icy driveway out he met Mr Kasabian struggling in with his shopping bags. He took one of them and helped him up the porch steps.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Mr Kasabian, his breath smoking in the cold. ‘I’m always afraid of falling. At my age, you fall, you break your hip, they take you to hospital, you die.’

  ‘You live upstairs?’

  ‘That’s right. Twenty-seven years this Christmas.’

  ‘You see much of David and Melanie?’

  ‘I used to.’

  ‘Used to?’

  ‘Not these days. These days, pfff, they make me feel like the Invisible Man.’

  ‘You and everybody else.’

  Mr Kasabian nodded toward the green Toyota parked at the curb with Green Bay Packers lettered on the side. ‘David’s in trouble?’

  ‘You could say that. We’re going to have to can him unless he gets his act together. Even when he does show up for practice he’s got his head up his ass.’

  ‘Mister, I don’t know what to tell you. I was in love with my wife for thirty-eight years but I never saw two people like this before. This isn’t just smooching, this is like some kind of hypnotized hypnosis. If you ask me, this is all going to turn out very, very bad.’

  Mr Kasabian stood in the whirling snow and watched as the coach drove away. Then he looked back at the light in the downstairs window and shook his head.

  Three days before Christmas, Echo went missing. Melanie searched for her everywhere: in the cupboards, behind the couch, under the cushions, down in the cellar. She even went outside and called for her under the crawl space, even though Echo hated the cold. No Echo. Only the echo of her own voice in the white, wintry street. ‘Echo! Echo!’