Scared to Death--Ten Sinister Stories by the Master of the Macabre Read online

  “Geraldine!” It was Dennis calling my mum. Already there was something in his voice. He didn’t just want another glass of wine or an ashtray for his cigar. It wasn’t just that he’d forgotten his reading glasses. Something had gone wrong.

  My mum put down the pan she’d been drying.

  “Geraldine!” His voice was louder, more high-pitched. And there was something else. The sound of the chair had intensified. The walls of the kitchen were vibrating more violently. A plate trembled its way to the edge of the counter, fell to the floor and smashed.

  Together, Mum and I ran into the living room.

  At first, it looked as if Dennis was clutching the massage chair with all his strength, but we saw quickly that he was actually trying to escape from it. But he couldn’t. The wrist and ankle pads which were meant to hold him gently in position had over-inflated, effectively pinning him down. His fingers were writhing but he couldn’t release his arms. At the same time, his entire body was convulsing as it was pummelled by pistons and rollers which were hopelessly out of control. They were battering him! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was as if the massage chair had become an electric chair in an American jail and we were witnessing a horribly botched-up execution.

  “Let me … aaaaagh!” Dennis screamed but we could barely hear him. The headphones were still sitting lopsidedly on his head but the volume control must have broken because we could actually hear the bass and the drumbeat filling the room, impossibly loud. TISH-TISH-TISH. What it must have been like for Dennis with the speakers clamped over his ears was impossible to imagine – and then I didn’t need to imagine it because a second later one of his eyes exploded.

  My mum screamed, then ran forward and snatched up the remote control. Dennis had dropped it on the carpet. I saw her thumb stab down on the stop button, again and again. But the chair didn’t stop. It had hardly even begun. Dennis was jerking about like a mad thing, his wrists and ankles still pinned down and his chest and thighs heaving. Blood was pouring out of his nose. His fingers were writhing. And he was still screaming, the words incoherent now. The pain was stretching his face in every direction so that I hardly recognized him.

  I had to do something. But what? I was terrified. I didn’t want to go near the massage chair. But I couldn’t just stand there and let it kill him. Suddenly I had an idea. I ran over to the wall and ripped out the plug.

  The massage chair picked up speed.

  How could that be? Did it have a secondary power source? Or had it somehow stored up enough energy to continue its hideous destruction? The twin 26-point shiatsu rollers underneath Dennis’s legs surged forward and I heard his bones break, his ribs, snapping one at a time as the tri-point hydraulic system slammed into him again and again.

  “Unplug it!” Mum screamed at me.

  “I have!” I screamed back.

  It was already too late for Dennis. I’m not even sure he was still conscious. The massage chair was shuddering and shaking as if it was trying to leave the room and he was being thrown from side to side. And then, finally, it had to happen. The quadruple rollers behind his head, the ones that promised the best spine massage ever, locked together with ferocious strength. Dennis’s neck broke with a snapping sound like a branch of a tree. The machine stopped.

  Silence filled the room.

  Gently, the air bags deflated, allowing Dennis to slump forward so that now he looked asleep … if you could ignore his twisted frame and all the blood. The music had stopped. Smoke was trickling out of his ears. The chair itself looked worn out, ready for the scrap heap. Somewhere inside it a final spring snapped with a faint twang.

  I thought my mum would be in hysterics, but she was surprisingly calm. “Lucy,” she said. “Leave the room.”

  “Yes, Mum.”

  “We’ll call an ambulance from the kitchen.”

  “Yes, Mum.”

  “And the police.”

  There’s not very much more to tell.

  The police investigated, of course. They were particularly keen to speak to the mechanic, the man who had supposedly fixed the massage chair. It was still unclear how the machinery could have malfunctioned in such a remarkable way. The chair was taken to pieces by forensic scientists. The software and electronics were minutely examined. But no one was left any the wiser.

  And the mechanic had disappeared. There was still the number in the directory, but when the police tried it, there was no reply. It wasn’t that the number had been disconnected. According to the telephone company, it had never existed in the first place, and for a short while the finger of suspicion pointed to my mum. Could she have deliberately sabotaged the massage chair to murder Dennis? Even the police had to admit that the idea was ridiculous. She had no engineering knowledge. And as far as the outside world was concerned, she had no reason to want to kill her husband.

  Even so, the complete disappearance of the mechanic was a mystery, particularly as he could most certainly have helped the police with their enquiries.

  In the weeks that followed, there were a couple of pleasant surprises. First of all, Dennis had a small life-insurance policy which paid out following his death. But much more significantly, Silver City, the manufacturers of the Pro-elite massage chair, got in touch with my mum. They had heard what had happened and were very anxious that they were going to get the blame. Dennis’s horrible death could ruin their business if it were made public … and Mum could easily sue them. So some lawyers came to see her and in the end, to apologize for her distress – and to keep her quiet – they sent her a cheque. I was there when she opened it. It was a six-figure sum.

  I saw the mechanic one more time.

  A year had passed. Mum and I were still living in the same house in Orford, although we’d now had the conservatory removed. Mum had gone back to working just three days a week and I was in the middle of my GCSEs. It was a beautiful day with a huge summer sun high in the cloudless sky. We’d just been shopping in Woodbridge and were on our way back to the car. We’d swapped the BMW for a new car, something smaller and less fancy that better suited our needs.

  And that was when I saw a white van tearing down the street, perhaps on its way to someone else’s house. I even got a glimpse of the mechanic, behind the steering wheel, with his bald head and moustache. And although I may have imagined it, I could have sworn he turned towards me and winked.

  A moment later he had turned the corner and gone, and the last thing I saw were the words written on the side of his van.

  THE MECHANIC

  And, just below that:

  We fix everything.

  And I had to admit that, in his own way, he had.

  PLUGGED IN

  HE WAS SUCH A NICE BOY. Everyone in his family agreed. He was the sort of boy you could be proud of, who would get a dozen A*s and go to the best university, who would have a wonderful career and would look after his parents when they were old. An only son, of course. There’s no one more devoted than an only child … maybe it helps that there are no brothers or sisters to fight with. Not that Jeremy would ever have fought with anyone. Every evening he helped wash the dishes without being asked. He walked the dog without complaining. Other parents might sit worrying about drugs and cigarettes and nightclubs full of predatory girls. But Jeremy Browne seemed untouched by the modern world. He was impervious to it. He was the sort of boy Enid Blyton might have written about – The Famous Five, the Sensational Six or maybe just the Wonderful One.

  He lived in Finchley, in North London, in a large, Victorian house on Elmsworth Avenue which had once been rather grand but which, like many of the houses around it, had been converted into flats. The Browne family had the bottom floor with a bright and airy basement and a garden. Jeremy liked to help with the gardening too. His father was the local manager of a well-known building society. His mother taught at a primary school just behind Finchley Central tube station. Mike and Irene Browne had arrived at parenthood fairly late in life – indeed, Jeremy had come as a compl
ete surprise … though a wonderful one, of course. The three of them were often seen shopping together, at church, or strolling on Hampstead Heath with their dog, Scampi – a mongrel that had once been rescued by the RSPCA – racing ahead of them.

  Jeremy was unusual in that he was academically gifted, physically remarkable and athletically an all-round sportsman. He was a very handsome boy with long, fair hair, blue eyes and the sort of smile you’d notice across a room. By the time he was fifteen, he had begun to fill out. He was already taller than his mother, and with his broad shoulders, thick neck and general air of confidence he could easily have been mistaken for an American football player. He loved sport. He played for his school football team, did rugby training most weekends and had even considered professional ice-skating … there was a rink at Alexandra Palace, not far away.

  There were, it has to be said, a few people who thought that Jeremy was just too good to be true. He was not the most popular boy in the school. Many of the other children mistrusted him and some threw hurtful insults his way. Even some of the teachers had their doubts. To be passionate about the poetry of William Blake was fine … but at the age of twelve? And then there was that tricky moment when he tried to convert his maths teacher to Christianity. JEREMY BROWNE IS A WEIRDO read the graffiti on the side of the nearest bus shelter and sadly this was one of the kinder things that had been written about him.

  And it would have been no surprise either that it was Jeremy who volunteered to drop in on the new neighbour who had just moved into Elmsworth Avenue. The very last house in the street was also the smallest and the shabbiest and had, for some time, caused concern among the other residents. The square of grass that was the front garden had become overgrown. The dustbins were overfilled with bottles, old newspapers and plastic bags filled with rubbish. No recycling here! The windows were dusty and the roof was in disrepair. But fortunately the last occupant had left, and now the house had been rented out again.

  It was often said that this area of London was a particularly friendly one and more like a village, really, than a major suburb. Everyone looked out for one another, whether it was via the Neighbourhood Watch scheme or just a quick gossip over the garden fence. And so it was that word began to spread about the new arrival. He was an elderly man, single and a foreigner – from Poland or perhaps Hungary. There were some who said he had been a hero of the Second World War, although that would make him at least ninety. Another report suggested that he was actually a retired nobleman – a grand prince or a duke. His name? The postman, who chatted to everyone on his round, quickly revealed that it was Jákob Demszky. This was the one certainty. Everything else was rumour. He was a widower. He had come to England for his health. He might even have been born here and had come home to die.

  The removal van had come and gone very quickly. It was obvious that Mr Demszky did not have much in the way of furniture or personal possessions. Since his arrival, he had been spotted a couple of times, once making his way home with a shopping basket in one hand and a walking-stick in the other, once pottering about outside the house, trying to clear a drain.

  He was a tiny man in a dark, old-fashioned suit with a coat hanging off his shoulders so that he was a bit like bat man … not the comic hero but a sad, dusty creature that might be found in an abandoned castle or church. He walked slowly and with difficulty. Indeed, any movement seemed to give him pain. His shoes were well polished and he wore two gold rings on the fingers of his left hand. One of them contained a jewel which sparkled, blood-red, in the North London sun. His walking-stick was topped by a silver ram’s head, the horns curling into the palm of his hand.

  “You know, I think I ought to go and see him,” Jeremy announced one Saturday, at breakfast.

  “That’s very thoughtful of you, Jeremy,” his father said over a spoonful of organic muesli.

  “He must be finding it very strange,” Jeremy continued. “Apparently he doesn’t speak much English. And there’s tons of work to do at that house.”

  “Why don’t you take him round a slice of my home-made treacle tart?” Jeremy’s mother suggested. “I could wrap it in silver foil…”

  Very soon afterwards, Jeremy found himself clutching a large wedge of tart and knocking on the door of 66 Elmsworth Avenue (the bell seemed to be out of order). It took Mr Demszky a long time to answer it, and Jeremy could imagine him lifting himself painfully out of his chair and shuffling along the corridor… But eventually the door swung open and there he was, staring out with eyes that were both politely enquiring and a little nervous.

  “Yes?”

  “Hello. My name is Jeremy Browne. I live at number 50. I was wondering if there was anything I could do to help you.” Jeremy lifted his package. “And my mother thought you might like a slice of her home-made treacle tart.”

  Mr Demszky considered all this as if trying to make sense of it. Then a soft, happy smile spread across his face. “How very kind! Please, come in…”

  Jeremy followed the old man through a darkened hallway and into the kitchen, which seemed bare and empty, with just a few food supplies and a couple of chipped mugs on the Formica surface. He had already realized that Mr Demszky spoke better English than he had been told, though with a heavy accent. The man really was very small indeed, as if he had shrunk into himself over the years. His skin was completely grey, with dark liver spots on his neck and the side of his head. His hair was white, curling limply down over the collar of his jacket. His fingers were long and misshapen, with yellowy nails that were somehow more animal than human. But most unnerving of all were his eyes. They were colourless and bulged slightly out of his face, like two plastic sachets filled with water. He grunted as he sat down. There were gaps between his teeth and Jeremy could see his tongue, as grey as the rest of him, flickering behind them.

  “Would you like some tea?” Mr Demszky asked.

  “Let me make it for you,” Jeremy said. That was his way. He had come here to help, and he certainly wouldn’t let the old man make any effort for him.

  “No, no. I already had…” When Mr Demszky spoke, his voice was partly trapped in his chest. He had to force the words and they came out in a wheeze. “What did you say was your name?”

  “It’s Jeremy Browne.”

  “How old are you, Jeremy Browne?”

  “I’m fifteen.”

  “That is a good age. That is a very lovely age.”

  Despite himself, Jeremy was feeling a little uncomfortable. The old man was staring at him in a most peculiar way, as if he had never seen a boy before, and he was trembling as if the journey to the door had almost been too much for him. “Is there anything I can do here to help you?” he asked.

  “You are so very kind!” Mr Demszky nodded so vigorously that Jeremy heard the bones in his neck creak. “I expected you to come. Yes. But so soon? So soon?” He paused for breath. “You could perhaps do a little gardening?” He spread his hands. “There are dead leaves. Dead plants. So much that is dead. Have you the time to help me in the garden? I will pay you…”

  “I don’t need paying,” Jeremy said. “Just show me what you want me to do.”

  Jeremy worked for three hours that day. And he returned the following Wednesday and did three more hours. This time his mother came with him, and after meeting Mr Demszky she took the opportunity to spring-clean much of the house, and even invited the old man to join them for dinner the following week. Although Jeremy wouldn’t have admitted it, he was a little uneasy inside number 66. The house was dark and musty and smelled of something he couldn’t quite place. He hadn’t wanted to pry, but he couldn’t help noticing that many of the doors were locked. He had been unable to go into the study, for example, and also the curtains in that room were drawn so he couldn’t look in from outside. In any event, he felt more comfortable out in the fresh air, so he had set to work clearing out the garden shed which was full of rubbish, some of it quite possibly hazardous. His father had already volunteered to drive it down to the local skip.r />
  Jákob Demszky did come to dinner – and he brought gifts for the entire family. Hungarian wine for Mike, and flowers for Irene. But for Jeremy he had something rather special. He took out a black cardboard box tied with a black ribbon and slid it across the table.

  Lying there, it reminded Jeremy of a miniature coffin and for a moment he was unsure whether to open it. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Unwrap it,” Mr Demszky said.

  “Go on, Jeremy.” His father laughed. “It won’t bite you.”

  Jeremy picked up the box, slid off the ribbon and opened it. From the weight, he had been expecting a pen or perhaps a multipurpose knife, and he was surprised to find himself holding a rectangular block of plastic that was flat and chunky, with a glass window and a few controls. He guessed that it must be some kind of music player, although it wasn’t like anything he had ever seen before. It wasn’t an Apple or a Samsung or anything he recognized. It was at least ten years out of date.

  “It is for you,” Mr Demszky said. “To thank you for your help.”

  Jeremy switched it on and a series of strange words floated across the screen: TÉPÕFARKAS … GONOSZUL … AKTÍV.

  “What does that mean?” Jeremy asked.

  “It’s warming up,” Mr Demszky explained.

  “Why don’t you give it a try?” Irene said.

  Jeremy picked up the machine. The earplugs looked too big for him with wires as thick as spaghetti and he wondered if it would even work and – if it did – what it would play. But when he plugged it in, he was surprised to discover that Mr Demszky had already downloaded several tracks by his favourite bands: Coldplay and The Killers. More than that, the quality of the sound was amazing. The music poured into his head in a torrent, sweeping away the dining room, the tick of the grandfather clock, the entire world. Every lyric, every note was crystal clear. It was as if he had been transported to the front row of the O2 Arena. He was actually sorry when his mother served the first course and he had to switch it off again.