Figures of Fear Read online

  David had never actually seen Sticky Man come to life, but he was sure that he had heard him dancing in the darkness on the wooden floorboards at the edge of his bedside mat: clickety, clackety, clickety, clackety. When he had heard that sound, he had buried himself even deeper under the covers, until he was almost suffocating.

  What really frightened David, though, was the brown dressing gown hanging on the back of his bedroom door. Even during the day, it looked like a monk’s habit, but when his father switched off the landing light at night, and David’s bedroom was filled up with darkness, the dressing gown changed, and began to fill out, as if somebody were rising up from the floor to slide inside it.

  He was sure that when the house was very quiet, and there was no traffic in the street outside, he could hear the dressing gown breathing, in and out, with just the faintest hint of harshness in its lungs. It was infinitely patient. It wasn’t going to drop down from its hook immediately and go for him. It was going to wait until he was so paralysed with terror that he was incapable of defending himself, or of crying out for help.

  He had tried to hide the dressing gown by stuffing it into his wardrobe, but that had been even more frightening. He could still hear it breathing but he had no longer been able to see it, so that he had never known when it might ease open the wardrobe door and then rush across the bedroom and clamber up on to his bed.

  Next he had tried hanging the dressing gown behind the curtains, but that had been worse still, because he was sure that he could hear the curtain rings scraping back along the brass curtain pole. Once and once only he had tried cramming it under the bed. When he had done that, however, he had been able to lie there for less than ten minutes, because he had been straining to hear the dressing gown dragging itself out from underneath him, so that it could come rearing up beside him and drag his blankets off.

  His school blazer was almost as frightening. When it was dark, it sat hunched on his chair, headless but malevolent, like the stories that early Spanish explorers had brought back from South America of natives with no heads but their faces on their chests. David had seen pictures of them in his school books, and even though he knew they were only stories, like Sticky Men were only stories, he also knew that things were very different in the dark.

  In the dark, stories come to life, just like puppets, and dressing gowns.

  He didn’t hear the clock in the hallway downstairs chime eleven. He was asleep by then. His father came into his room and straightened his bedcover and affectionately scruffed up his hair. ‘Sleep well, trouble.’ He left his door open a little, but he switched off the landing light, so that his room was plunged into darkness.

  Another hour went by. The clock chimed twelve, very slowly, as if it needed winding. David slept and dreamed that he was walking through a wood, and that something white was following him, keeping pace with him, but darting behind the trees whenever he turned around to see what it was.

  He stopped, and waited for the white thing to come out into the open, but it remained hidden, even though he knew it was still there. He breathed deeply, stirred, and said, out loud, ‘Who are you?’

  Another hour passed, and then, without warning, his dressing gown dropped off the back of his bedroom door.

  He didn’t hear it. He had stopped dreaming that he was walking through the wood, and now he was deeply unconscious. His door was already ajar, but now it opened a little more, and a hunched brown shape dragged its way out of his bedroom.

  A few moments later, there was a soft click, as the door to his parents’ bedroom was opened.

  Five minutes passed. Ten. David was rising slowly out of his very deep sleep, as if he were gradually floating to the surface of a lake. He was almost awake when something suddenly jumped on top of him, something that clattered. He screamed and sprang upright, both arms flailing. The clattery thing fell to the floor. Moaning with fear, he fumbled around in the darkness until he found his bedside lamp, and switched it on.

  Lying on the rug next to his bed was Sticky Man, staring up at him with those round, unblinking eyes.

  Trembling, David pushed back the covers and crawled down to the end of the bed, so that he wouldn’t have to step on to the rug next to Sticky Man. What if it sprang at him again, and clung to his ankle?

  As he reached the end of the bed, and was about to climb off it, he saw that his dressing gown had gone. The hook on the back of his bedroom door had nothing hanging on it except for his red-and-white football scarf.

  His moaning became a soft, subdued mewling in the back of his throat. He was so frightened that he squirted a little warm pee into his pyjama trousers. He looked over the end of the bed but his dressing gown wasn’t lying in a heap on the floor, as he would have expected.

  Perhaps Mummy had at last understood that it scared him, hanging up on the back of the door like that, and she had taken it down when he was asleep. Perhaps she had taken it away to wash it. He had spilled a spoonful of tomato soup on it yesterday evening, when he was sitting on the sofa watching television – not that he had told her.

  He didn’t know what to do. He knelt on the end of the bed, biting at his thumbnail, not mewling now but breathing very quickly, as if he had been running. He turned around and looked down at Sticky Man, but Sticky Man hadn’t moved – he was still lying on his back on the rug, his arms and legs all splayed out, glaring balefully at nothing at all.

  Whatever David did, he would have to change his wet pyjama trousers, and that would mean going to the airing cupboard on the landing. Mummy always liked to keep his clean pyjamas warm.

  Very cautiously, he climbed off the bed and went across to his bedroom door. He looked around it. The landing was in darkness, although the faintest of green lights was coming up the stairs from the hallway, from the illuminated timer on the burglar alarm, and that was enough for David to see that his parents’ bedroom door was open, too.

  He frowned. His parents never left their door open, not at night. He hesitated for a few long moments, but then he hurried as quietly as he could along the landing until he reached his parents’ bedroom, and peered inside. It was completely dark in there, although he could just make out the luminous spots on the dial of his father’s bedside alarm clock.

  He listened. Very far away, he could hear a train squealing as it made its way to the nearest station, to be ready for the morning’s commuters. But when that sound had faded away, he could hear nothing at all. He couldn’t even hear his parents breathing, even though his father usually snored.

  ‘Mummy?’ he called, as quietly as he could.

  No answer. He waited in the doorway, with his wet pants beginning to feel chilly.

  ‘Mummy?’ A little louder this time.

  Still no answer.

  He crept into his parents’ bedroom, feeling his way round the end of the bed to his mother’s side. He reached out and felt her bare arm lying on top of the quilted bedcover. He took hold of her hand and shook it and said, hoarsely, ‘Mummy, wake up! I’ve had an accident!’

  But still she didn’t answer. David groped for the dangly cord that switched on her bedside reading light, and tugged it.

  ‘Mummy! Daddy!’

  Both of them were lying on their backs, staring up at the ceiling with eyes so bloodshot that it looked as if somebody had taken out their eyeballs and replaced them with crimson grapes. Not only that, both of them had black moustaches of congealing blood on their upper lips, and their mouths were dragged grotesquely downward. Two dead clowns.

  David stumbled backward. He heard somebody let out a piercing, high-pitched scream, which frightened him even more. He didn’t realize that it was him.

  He scrabbled his way back around the end of the bed, and as he did so he caught his foot and almost tripped over. His brown dressing gown was lying tangled on the floor, with its cord coiled on top of it.

  He didn’t scream again, but he marched stiffly downstairs like a clockwork soldier, his arms and legs rigid with shock. He picked up the p
hone and dialled 999.

  ‘Emergency, which service please?’

  ‘Ambulance,’ he said, his lower lip juddering. ‘No, no, I don’t need an ambulance. I don’t know what I need. They’re dead.’

  The red-haired woman detective brought him the mug of milky tea that he had asked for, with two sugars. She sat down at the table next to him and gave him a smile. She was young and quite pretty, with a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

  ‘You didn’t hear anything, then?’ she asked him.

  ‘No,’ David whispered.

  ‘We’re finding it very difficult to work out what happened,’ she said. ‘There was no sign that anybody broke into your house. The burglar alarm was on. And yet somebody attacked your daddy and mummy and whoever it was, they were very strong.’

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ said David. He was wearing the purple hooded top that his uncle and aunt had given him for his last birthday, and he looked very pale.

  ‘Well, we know for certain that it wasn’t you,’ said the detective. ‘We just need to know if you saw anything, or heard anything. Anything at all.’

  David looked down into his tea. He felt like bursting into tears but he swallowed and swallowed and tried very hard not to. He was too young to know that there was no shame in crying.

  ‘I didn’t hear anything,’ he said. ‘I don’t know who did it. I just want them to be alive again.’

  The detective reached across the table and squeezed his hand. She couldn’t think of anything to say to him, except, ‘I know you do, David. I know.’

  Rufus said, ‘Did they ever find out how your parents died?’

  David shook his head. ‘The coroner returned a verdict of unlawful killing by person or persons unknown. That’s all he could do.’

  ‘You must wonder, though, mate. You know – who could have done it, and why. And how, for Christ’s sake!’

  David took a swig from his bottle of Corona. The Woolpack was crowded, even for a Friday evening, and they were lucky to have found somewhere to sit, in the corner. An enormously fat man sitting next to them was laughing so loudly that they could hardly hear themselves speak.

  Rufus and David had been friends ever since David had started work at Amberlight, selling IT equipment. He had been there seven months now, and last month he had been voted top salesman in his team. Rufus was easy-going, funny, with a shaven head to pre-empt the onset of pattern baldness and a sharp line in grey three-piece suits.

  David heard himself saying, ‘Actually … I do know who did it.’

  ‘Really?’ said Rufus. ‘You really do know? Like – have you known all along, right from when it happened? Or did you find out later? Hang on, mate – why didn’t you tell the police? Why don’t you tell them now? It’s never too late!’

  David thought: Shit, I wish I hadn’t said anything now. Why did I say anything? I’ve kept this to myself for seventeen years, why did I have to come out with it now? It’s going to sound just as insane now as it would have done then.

  ‘I didn’t tell the police because they would never have believed me. Just like you won’t believe me, either.’

  ‘Well, you could try me. I’m famous for my gullibility. Do you want another beer?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  Rufus went to the bar and came back with two more bottles. ‘Right, then,’ he said, smacking his hands together. ‘Who’s the guilty party?’

  ‘I told you you wouldn’t believe me. My dressing gown.’

  Rufus had his bottle of beer poised in front of his mouth, his lips in an O shape ready to drink, but now he slowly put the bottle down.

  ‘Did I hear that right? Your dressing gown?’

  Trying to sound as matter-of-fact as possible, David said, ‘My dressing gown. I had a brown dressing gown that used to hang on the back of my bedroom door and it looked like a monk. I always used to think that when it was dark it came alive. Well, one night it did, and it went into my parents’ bedroom and it strangled them. In fact it garrotted them, according to the police report. It strangled them so hard it almost took off their heads.’

  ‘Your dressing gown,’ Rufus repeated.

  ‘That’s right. Sounds bonkers, doesn’t it? But there is absolutely no other explanation. Unlawful killing by night attire. And there was something else, too. I had a puppet that my grandfather made for me, like it was all made out of grey sticks, with a wooden spoon for a head. Sticky Man, I used to call it. When my dressing gown went to murder my parents, Sticky Man jumped on me and I think he was trying to warn me what was going to happen.’

  Rufus bent his head forward until his forehead was pressed against the table. He stayed like that for almost ten seconds. Then he sat up straight again and said, ‘Your puppet warned you that your dressing gown was going to kill your mum and dad.’

  ‘There – I told you that you wouldn’t believe me. Thanks for the beer, anyway.’

  ‘You know who you need to talk to, don’t you?’ said Rufus.

  ‘A shrink, I suppose you’re going to say.’

  ‘Unh-hunh. You need to talk to Alice in accounts.’

  ‘Alice? That freaky-looking woman with the white hair and all of those bracelets?’

  ‘That’s the one. Actually she’s a very interesting lady. I had a long chat with her once at one of the firm’s bonding weekends. It was down somewhere near Hailsham, I think. Anyway, Alice is a great believer in crustaceous automation, I think she called it.’

  ‘What? Crustaceous? That’s like crabs and lobsters, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, but it was something like that. What it meant was, things coming to life when it gets dark. She really, really believes in it. Like your dressing gown, I suppose. One of the things she told me about was this armchair that came to life when anybody fell asleep in it, and it squeezed them so hard that it crushed their ribcage. It took forever before somebody worked out what was killing all these people.

  ‘What she said was, it’s the dark that does it. The actual darkness. It changes things.’

  David looked at Rufus narrowly. ‘You’re not taking the piss, are you?’

  ‘Why would I?’

  ‘Well, I know you. Always playing tricks on people. I don’t want to go up to this Alice and tell her about my dressing gown if she’s going to think that I’m some kind of loony.’

  ‘No, mate,’ said Rufus. ‘Cross my heart. I promise you. I’m not saying that she’s not loony, but I don’t think you’re any loonier than she is, so I doubt if she’ll notice.’

  They met in their lunch break, at their local Pizza Hut, which was almost empty except for two plump teenage mothers and their screaming children. David ordered a pepperoni pizza and a beer while Alice stayed with a green salad and a cup of black tea.

  When he started talking to her, David realized that Alice was much less freaky than he had imagined. She had a short, severe, silvery-white bob, and he had assumed that she was middle-aged, but now he saw that her hair was bleached and highlighted and she couldn’t have been older than thirty-one or thirty-two. She had a sharp, feline face, with green eyes to match, and she wore a tight black T-shirt and at least half a dozen elaborate silver bangles on each wrist.

  ‘So, what did Rufus say when you told him?’ she asked, lifting up her cup of tea with both hands and blowing on it.

  ‘He was all right about it, actually, when you consider that he could have laughed his head off. Most of the rest of the team would have done.’

  ‘Rufus has his own story,’ said Alice. David raised an eyebrow, expecting her to tell him what it was, but she was obviously not going to be drawn any further.

  ‘You know the word “shoddy”?’ she said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Most people think it means something that’s been badly made. You know, something inferior. But it can also mean a woollen yarn made out of used clothes. They rip up old coats and sweaters to shreds and then they re-spin them, with just a bit of new wool included. Most
new clothes are made out of that.’

  David said, ‘I didn’t know that, no.’

  ‘In Victorian times, these guys used to go around the streets ringing a bell and collecting used clothes. They called them “shoddy-men”. These days it’s mainly Lithuanians who pinch all of those bags of clothes that people leave out for charities. They ship them all back to Lithuania, turn them into new clothes and then sell them back to us.’

  ‘I’m not too sure what you’re getting at.’

  Alice sipped her tea, and then she said, ‘Sometimes, those second-hand clothes have belonged to some very violent people. Murderers, even. And clothes take on their owners’ personalities. You know what it’s like when you try on another man’s jacket. It makes you feel as if you’re him.’

  ‘So what are you trying to tell me? My dressing gown might have had wool in it that once belonged in some murderer’s clothes?’

  Alice nodded. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But it’s not like I put it on, and I killed my parents. The dressing gown came alive. The dressing gown did it on its own!’

  David suddenly realized that he was talking too loudly, and that the two teenage mothers were staring at him.

  He lowered his voice and said, ‘How did it come alive on its own? I mean, how is that possible?’

  Alice said, ‘The scientific name for it is “crepuscular animation”. It means inanimate objects that come alive when it begins to get dark. Most people don’t understand that darkness isn’t just the absence of light. Darkness is an element in itself, and darkness goes looking for more darkness, to feed itself.

  ‘That night, when your light was switched off, the darkness in your room found whatever darkness that was hidden in your dressing gown, and filled it up with more of its own dark energy, and brought it to life.’