Year's End: 14 Tales of Holiday Horror Read online

  My sister.

  My sick sister who I had promised to visit by the year’s end and forgotten about.

  A lame dog crossed my path and for some unknown reason I kicked it brutally.

  I stopped and regained control of myself, and immediately wrote a text confirming the arrangements. I would need to leave on the Friday train. This would involve taking a day off and losing valuable work time. I was about to delete the message and think of some excuse, when my finger pressed the send button and it was too late.

  I stared at the words “message sent” as if I was staring down an abyss.

  My head raced. I couldn’t get out of it now. It was Thursday. I needed to buy her a present. What? I usually got my secretary to deal with this sort of thing, but there was no time. What did Hilary like?

  I racked my brains for memories of her, displaced like old papers yellowed with time.

  Her picture wrinkled at the edges like a burning leaf.

  I sat staring from the train window as the grey backs of houses shot by in a haze and ran a list through my head.

  She was sick, I had to make an effort.

  It had been years, years Hilary had been kind about.

  One glance at my diary told me that now was my one chance to buy her a present.

  As I walked from the station I noticed some of the animal’s hair had stuck to my shoe. I stopped and wiped it off.

  Passing through Chapel street market I was roused from my daydream by the shouts and calls of the street traders. I stopped in the bright winter sunshine and looked about me at a world of colour and banter, and saw Hilary as clearly as if she was standing there in front of me. A memory of her at play with her dolls in the nursery flashed through my mind.

  I passed a fruit seller and walked towards a brightly lit stall selling various objects and knickknacks.

  An old woman looked at me as I stopped to scan her wares. And there in front of me lay the doll.

  I could feel the woman’s eyes on me as I stood taking it in, and I guessed she was calculating how much to charge me for it.

  It was a porcelain doll, unusual and antique, with steel blue eyes that shone out at me, frayed old fashioned clothes, a smudge of a mouth and no nose. Its fists were clenched and it seemed to be holding something sharp in one of them but when I picked it up to look there was nothing there.

  The doll was cold to the touch.

  “Nice, ain’t she?” the woman said.

  “How much?”

  “With a doll like this,” she said, “it’s for you to make me an offer. It’s a special doll.”

  I must have paid several hundred pounds.

  It was very unusual and I knew there is a market for antique dolls.

  “OK?” I said.

  “You’ve given all you have, always a good sign with a doll like this.”

  “Then we have a deal?”

  “We have a deal all right. Shall I wrap it for you?”

  “Yes.”

  And she folded it into some white tissue paper.

  I took it and returned to my office, where I said to my secretary, “No calls” and prepared my case.

  I was in court first thing.

  I won.

  I always do.

  Then I made my way to the station.

  As I sat down I heard someone say, “I’ll do what you want.”

  I looked round and saw two kids fooling around behind me. Then I toiled my way through two counties until I saw darkness settle outside.

  I had finished what I needed to do and put my papers away. On the seat beside me lay the doll in its wrapping. The motion of the rain must have jostled it, for it had moved along the seat.

  I looked out of the window at the countryside flashing by. Finally I saw the name of the station and got out of the train. Ian was waiting for me outside.

  “Hello Mark, good journey?”

  I shook his hand warmly, taking in the jovial face.

  “How are you?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, putting my case in the car.

  It had been years since I’d seen Ian. He’d always struck me as a pleasant chap, a bit dim, perhaps, but good for Hilary.

  He started the car and for a while we sat in silence. I was waiting for him to give me more news.

  Finally I spoke.

  “How is she?”

  I saw his face drop.

  “Not good, be prepared for a shock. The old Hilary is gone, a pale shadow has taken her place.”

  “Oh come on, it can’t be as bad as that.”

  “Since the miscarriage she’s haemorrhaged twice, badly. Lost a lot of blood. Women’s things, you know, but I can tell.”

  “What can you tell, Ian?”

  “She’s not well. But,” he said, striking me on the knee, a habit I truly hated, “you’re just the trick. You’ll cheer her up. She’s really looking forward to seeing you.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely. I know you two haven’t always got on, but she’ll be delighted to see you.”

  “We’ve always got on.”

  “Not what she said.”

  “Oh?”

  “Said you used to fight like cat and dog, hated each other.”

  “Usual brother sister stuff.”

  “It was a lot more than that,” he said.

  I had only been to their house once before, many years ago, but I recognised it now as it swung into view, the leafy walls glancing off the lane that edges round to the old building surrounded by lawns.

  It was a pleasant enough affair if you like that sort of thing.

  As we got out of the car I already missed the city. It was dark and I couldn’t hear a sound.

  A dog bounded towards us. A Labrador, good-natured and soppy.

  “There there,” Ian said, patting him, “he wouldn’t hurt a thing.”

  I followed him inside, where a fire crackled in the hallway.

  I expected Hilary to greet me at the door and was annoyed that the house stood empty as I entered.

  “I’m afraid we’ve got no fanfare for you,” Ian said.

  “Where is she?” I said.

  “In bed, old boy. Didn’t she tell you? She’s bed bound.”

  Hilary had told me very little and I resented her for this. I didn’t want to be there. My only reassurance was that I wouldn’t have to endure any parties.

  “Shall I go up and see her?”

  “Absolutely. First room on the right.”

  The corridor at the top was dark. I could see a glow coming from under my sister’s door.

  Putting my bags down, I approached and knocked. Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see.

  There was a pause, and then a weak voice called out, “Yes?”

  I turned the handle and walked into the bedroom.

  The first thing that hit me was a stale smell of almonds and urine, some stench of sickness and decay that made me want to run from the house. There, surrounded by pillows, lay what was my sister, although if I had passed her in the street I would not have recognised her.

  She had lost weight. A lot of weight, and her skin was white and flecked with blue. Veins stood prominent on her shrunken skull-like face and she was frail. A feeling of nausea passed over me. I felt a rush of saliva in my mouth.

  Her gaze was locked into mine and there was no light in her eyes. They looked milky and opaque.

  She turned her head away.

  I rallied myself and said jovially, “So sis? How are you?” and was met with a stare that chilled me.

  As she looked at me again I could see hatred, definite hatred in her eyes.

  She opened her mouth to speak, her thin lips pallid and almost non-existent, like two lines drawn on a face by a child

  “Sit down, Mark,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”

  I walked over to the small chair beside her bed and pulled it away a little for a better view.

  “Can’t stand to sit close to me?”

  �
�It’s not that.”

  I held her present in my hand.

  “Busy?”

  “Very.”

  “Ian no doubt has told you about….”

  Her voice trailed away.

  “I can see that you are ill, Hilary, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I didn’t want your pity. I wanted you to come and visit me.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  “Why didn’t you come all these years?”

  “Work.”

  “Work!”

  “I’m here now aren’t I?” I said, squeezing a shape that lay under the blanket and feeling bone.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Nothing.”

  She stared out of the window where a pale moon hung in the sky and I saw a tear make its way across her cheek.

  “I’ve bought you a present.”

  She lifted her head.

  “What is it?”

  “Why don’t you open it?”

  And I handed her the white package.

  She pulled herself up with great difficulty and struggled with the tissue paper. Eventually the eyes stared out at her and she stopped. She looked at me. It was a strange look that lasted for I don’t know how long before she continued to tear away at the paper as if were some sort of rope. As she did so, I saw small cuts open up on her white hands, like nicks of a razor.

  The face and then the rest of the doll emerged and she held it in her hands for a few seconds.

  “It’s horrible,” she said, “what on earth inspired you to get it for me?”

  “I thought you’d like it.”

  “I hate dolls, take it away.”

  “I’ll put it over here,” I said, placing it on a table.

  Downstairs I could hear Ian calling me for dinner.

  “Your room’s at the end of the corridor,” she said, turning her back to me.

  Outside I fumbled for the light.

  The corridor was cramped and narrow, and almost every inch of the walls was filled with knickknacks and hanging objects arranged in no particular order, as if no consideration had been given to them. There was a crazy circus feeling to it.

  I found my room and put my things in there and went to eat, then I turned in for the night, wondering if the next morning would see Hilary in better mood.

  The house was black and I felt as though I was staring into ink. An ink filled with the noises of animals I briefly struggled to identify before nodding off.

  I was disturbed in the small hours by an unearthly scream.

  I heard Ian calling out in the hallway. I made my way to my sister’s room, where he was standing by her bed.

  Hilary lying there with blood pouring from her face.

  My first thought was that he had hit her, and I wanted to thrash him. One eye was closed shut with a black pit of dried blood around it.

  Something lay on the bed. As I looked closer, I thought one of the doll’s eyes must have dropped out, then I realised it was Hilary’s.

  “That thing,” she said, “attacked me.”

  “What?”

  “The doll!”

  It lay on the table where I had placed it and I knew at once my sister was mentally ill. I had seen inmates do this sort of thing before, self-harm, usually as the result of prolonged incarceration. I wondered how she’d done it. Such self-injury must be driven by the most immense wellspring of unconscious fury.

  Ian called an ambulance and she was taken to hospital.

  The damage was too bad for the surgeon to replace the missing eye. He wanted her to stay in but she refused, and after waiting all night we took her home the next morning, where we gave her a sedative and left her to sleep.

  I sat downstairs with Ian, listening to the bruised silence of the house.

  “How long has she been like this?” I said.

  “She’s never done anything like this before.”

  “This is serious.”

  “I know.”

  “She needs to see a psychiatrist.”

  “She says it was the doll.”

  “Oh for God’s sake man, you don’t believe that, do you?”

  He poured himself a whisky.

  “When she lost the second baby she refused to give it up. It was deformed. It looked like a small pig. She kept holding it, this thing, half-human shape. It made me sick. It was some psychological deformity I was witnessing in her. I can’t even touch her now.”

  “I know she’s not well, but you’ve got to do something.”

  “I’ll talk to her.”

  She slept through the whole day.

  As night fell, Ian prepared something for us to eat.

  I went outside, feeling that the atmosphere of the house was unbearable.

  Stepping through the front door was like being pitched headlong into some blackness, and I stood there a while. I could make out the trees, but little else. In front of me the lawn and what appeared to be some sort of shape on it. Blackness seemed to be bleeding into the landscape and I scanned the moonless sky for light. I looked up at my sister’s window.

  Black.

  A pale curtain hung there and in the narrow gap at its edge I thought I saw a face. Not hers, something else, something familiar staring out at me, moving its lips, then submerging itself in total darkness again.

  After dinner I went to my room wondering if the night would be shattered again.

  It wasn’t.

  The next morning the smell of fried bacon roused me and I went downstairs to find Ian making breakfast.

  “Last bacon of the year,” he said. “Not the Dunmow Flitch, but tuck in.”

  We sat and ate and I asked him again what he thought was the problem.

  He looked at me with what appeared to be a smirk.

  “I don’t know how she ended up like that, but I don’t believe she did it.”

  He said it without feeling, and I thought of my sister lying there upstairs with only this man for company.

  This man about whom I knew nothing.

  “Who did then?”

  He shrugged. I could see he didn’t care. In that moment I realised that behind the mask of bonhomie lay a cruel and violent man.

  Was he behind my sister’s illness? I had come across cases where men had tyrannized their wives for years without anyone suspecting. I wanted to leave. As I thought how to go about doing this, we heard another scream.

  Ian raced ahead of me and I followed him upstairs and watched as he opened Hilary’s door. The dog had somehow got into her room and was mauling her. It had its teeth firmly planted in her head and was shaking her skull around in its mouth. It had removed a good section of cheek by the time we pulled it off, and ribbons of flesh hung from its teeth like some trophy snatched from a party table.

  Blood had sprayed the wallpaper and a piece of bone jutted out of her head.

  As I turned my head I thought I saw Ian laugh.

  She needed another hospital trip.

  Yards of stitching.

  She said nothing all the time she was there, and we brought her back and put her to bed.

  Then I watched as Ian went outside and shot the dog.

  The first shot was not well aimed. Little wonder, since he had drunk the better part of a bottle of whisky. The animal hopped about yelping, half of its head hanging off its narrow shoulders, its eyes fixed on its master with the years of trust giving way to the confusion of an animal, and Ian fired a second better aimed bullet into it as it dropped onto the immaculate lawn.

  As I watched this, I wondered if he’d done it deliberately. He enjoyed cruelty.

  He stood there looking at the body on the lawn, his cigarette almost burned out and a long wedge of ash at its end, and walked over to the Labrador.

  He knelt down and put his hand to it, checking for a pulse, and then turned and walked past me, taking one long drag on his cigarette with bloody fingers.

  I went to my room.

>   I wondered if they were dual actors in some drama of self-destruction, fellow collaborators in some sort of sadomasochistic feast. Childless and miserable, was this all that they had left?

  As I sat there a commotion came from the end of the corridor.

  I got there before Ian did.

  Opening the door to Hilary’s room I saw her wrestle with something.

  She had her hands deep in her blankets, which seemed alive.

  Blood was spurting from her head and she threw an object at the floor.

  Ian came in behind me and she lay there staring up at us.

  “Get that thing away from me!”

  The doll lay on the floor, the bandage was torn across her face and the wound was welling now again, the blood thick. I took the doll out into the hall, where I placed it by a low wall that buckled slightly, and on which no ornaments hung.

  I heard Ian whisper something to her and then he passed me in the corridor and made his way downstairs.

  I went in to see my sister.

  “I want you to leave,” she said.

  I looked at her face awash with blood and thought how ungrateful she was. For a moment she seemed less my sister than some impostor placed there as a practical joke. I decided there was nothing more for me to say and stayed out of their way for the rest of the day.

  It was New Year’s Eve. I drank some of Ian’s whisky alone in the creaking house. I could hear no festivities there in the dark landscape that hemmed us in. I went upstairs and began to pack. As I did I thought the house was falling down.

  I went into the corridor and saw a pile of rubble and dust.

  The wall against which I had placed the doll had collapsed, and beneath it I could see two shoes.

  Hilary had left her room, had somehow struggled from her bed and now lay trapped under the rubble with the doll, whose porcelain fragments I could see scattered on the faded carpet.

  Ian raced upstairs and started sobbing. I wondered if the tears were genuine and waited for him to say something, angry with him for neglecting my sister like this.

  When he did speak, it showed nothing.

  “She’d dead,” he said.

  She was barely visible beneath the rubble.

  I called an ambulance, which took Hilary away. I tried to console Ian. He kept asking what to do and I studied his face for its attendant smirk.

  “Chin up,” I said.

  He drank all day until he was comatose, and I went to bed early.