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

  It was all the more annoying that both his parents were enchanted by what they saw. “It’s so exotic!” his mother exclaimed, peering out of the window. “And listen to that!”

  From a high, slender tower – a minaret – the high-pitched voice of an imam was echoing across the city.

  “What’s that racket?” Charles demanded.

  His father, sitting in the front seat, twisted round. He had noticed the driver frowning next to him. “It’s not a racket, Charlie,” he explained. “You should be more respectful. It’s the Muslim call to prayer.”

  “Well, I hope it doesn’t go on too long,” Charles muttered.

  And now the hotel.

  The Riad El Fenn was about halfway down the alley. A large wooden door opened into a dark, cool hallway with deep red walls and a chessboard floor. A bowl of white roses had been arranged in a vase on a low, Arab-style table and there were about fifty pairs of slippers – all of them different colours – spread out for guests who preferred not to wear shoes. From the hall, a passageway led to an inner courtyard with doors on all sides and four orange trees forming a tangled square in the middle.

  Noreen had been right. The riad was more like a house than a hotel, with half a dozen different courtyards connected by a maze of stairs and corridors. Even after several days, Charles would still have difficulty finding his way round. There wasn’t what he would have called a swimming pool here, although every courtyard had its own plunge pool, like something you might imagine in an Arabian palace, just big enough for five or six strokes from end to end. There were flowers everywhere, scenting the air and giving a sense of cool after the dust and heat of the city. And unlike in a hotel, all the rooms were different. Some were modern. Some were old. All of them had a little surprise of their own.

  Charles was sleeping next door to his parents in a turquoise room with a keyhole-shaped door and antique wooden lattice-work all around his bed. His bathroom was huge, with grey stone walls, a little like a cell in a monastery only with a shower at one end and, at the other, a bath almost big enough to swim in. There were more roses on a table and rose petals scattered over the bed. His parents almost fainted with pleasure when they saw it. But the first thing that Charles noticed was – no TV! No plasma screen. No flat screen. Not even a portable. He wondered how he was going to survive.

  They had lunch together on the roof. That was another strange thing. The riad didn’t seem to have a proper dining room. Everyone ate sitting on low cushions, at tables shielded from the sun by a canopy stretching from one end of the roof to the other. Charles could barely recognize any of the food. There was some sort of bean salad and pieces of lamb cooked in a sauce, but there wasn’t anything he actually wanted to eat.

  His parents were in raptures.

  “This is the most wonderful place!” Noreen exclaimed. “It’s so beautiful. And so peaceful! I can’t wait to get out my watercolours…”

  “The food is sensational,” Rupert added, helping himself to a spoonful of couscous, which was a local speciality.

  “Look at those flowers!” Noreen had a new DSLR camera and quickly focused it on a terracotta pot on the other side of the roof. She had already taken at least a hundred pictures and they had only been there an hour.

  “More wine!” Rupert lifted his glass and a waiter appeared almost at once, carrying a bottle fresh from the ice bucket.

  What was even worse than all this was that, as Charles soon discovered, all the other guests were equally delighted by the Riad El Fenn. They swam in the pools, drank in the courtyards, took steam baths and massages in the warm, scented air of the hammam and chatted until midnight, sitting under the stars as if they had known one another all their lives. It didn’t help that Charles was the youngest person there. One of the couples had sixteen-year-old twins, but the three of them didn’t get on so Charles was largely left on his own.

  He spent the next twenty-four hours getting his revenge on the riad in all sorts of mean and spiteful ways. He jumbled up all the slippers and broke the leaves off the plants. He poured a glass of lemonade into one of the plunge pools. He even scribbled his name on a painting hanging in one of the hallways. None of this helped the situation at all. In fact, nobody even mentioned what he’d done which, in a way, made him even more annoyed.

  And then, one evening, the Atchleys visited the souk.

  This was the covered market that sprawled across the heart of the city, with hundreds of little stalls selling rugs, slippers, glasses, handbags, spices, plates and bowls but nothing – as far as Charles could see – that anyone would actually want to buy. He was tired and footsore by the time they came out, Noreen now wearing a pair of ridiculous earrings which Rupert had bought for her at probably ten times the proper price.

  “Aren’t they lovely?” she asked, examining herself in a mirror.

  “I think they’re horrible,” Charles replied.

  “No need to be like that!” Rupert said. “Come on. Let’s go to the main square. With a bit of luck we might see the cobras…”

  The main square – it was called the Djemaa el Fna – was beyond the souk, in the old part of town, a huge open area surrounded by hotels and restaurants with long balconies and staircases leading up to crowded rooftops. It was just getting dark and the square was a fantastic sight, with thousands of people milling around and food stalls with flames sparking and charcoal glowing and smoke climbing slowly into the sky. There were entertainers everywhere – magicians and acrobats, jugglers and storytellers – with fifty musicians competing to make themselves heard above the din.

  And there were the snake-charmers. There were at least half a dozen of them, each with their own basket, their own pipe, their own separate crowd, the sounds of their music fighting with one another in the open space. The Atchleys had moved towards the one nearest to them, on the very edge of the square, almost lost in the shadows. It was strange how set apart he was from the others, almost as if he didn’t want anyone to watch him – or maybe it was the other snake-charmers who didn’t want him anywhere near them. Certainly, he had attracted fewer spectators than the rest of them. Only seven or eight people stood watching as the Atchleys approached.

  Even so, the solitary snake-charmer looked exactly as a snake-charmer should, sitting cross-legged on a little mat in front of a round wicker basket. He was playing on a pipe, a dark, slender instrument which reminded Charles of the recorder that had once been forced upon him at school, although the sound it made was harder and more sinuous. He played for a moment and then Noreen gasped, her hand fluttering to her throat. A cobra had suddenly appeared, silk-like and deadly, rising out of the basket and swaying just a few inches away from the pipe as the music continued.

  The Atchleys pushed their way to the front so that Noreen could take another half a dozen photographs, the flashbulb briefly fighting against the approaching night. Rupert’s mouth was hanging open. He had caught the sun during the afternoon and his neck seemed to be glowing as much as the streetlamps. Charles couldn’t help thinking how stupid they both looked. And as for the snake-charmer…

  He was a small man, at least sixty, with very dark skin, grey stubble on his cheeks and a hooked nose. He was wearing a long white robe with a waistcoat and loose-fitting cotton trousers. His feet were bare and his toes looked like pieces of old, gnarled wood. Charles only glanced at him briefly. He was much more interested in the snake, which certainly looked vicious enough with its flared hood, its spitting tongue and its tiny, sinister eyes. It really did seem to be hypnotized, totally controlled by the music that wove an invisible pattern around its head.

  “It’s extraordinary!” Noreen whispered, afraid to raise her voice in case she broke the spell. “It’s like something in a fairy tale!”

  “That’s one of the most venomous snakes in the world,” Rupert told her. “It’s got enough poison to kill a horse.”

  “Isn’t it dangerous to be this close?” Noreen stepped back a pace, suddenly nervous.

  “T
hese people know what they’re doing,” Rupert replied. “It takes years of practice. But they know exactly the right tune to play. It’s a bit like magic. The snake will dance all night if they want it to.”

  “That’s not true, Dad,” Charles interrupted in a loud voice. “There’s no magic and the snake isn’t dancing. It’s not dangerous. It’s actually half-asleep.”

  Both Rupert and Noreen turned to look at their son, who was standing with his arms crossed and a smug smile on his face. Some of the people in the crowd had also overheard him and were turning to hear what he had to say.

  “I saw a programme about it on TV,” he went on. “The snake can’t even hear the music. “The only reason it’s swaying is because it’s following the movement of the pipe. And actually, cobras are very timid. They’re not dangerous at all.”

  “But look at it, darling!” Noreen exclaimed. “It looks as if it’s about to attack!”

  “Spreading its hood is just a way of defending itself,” Charles explained. “It would much rather be back in its basket. And it probably doesn’t have any poison in it anyway. The snake-charmer will have made sure it was sucked out before he began.”

  “Young man, you are quite mistaken!”

  Charles looked around to see who had spoken and was surprised to discover that it was the snake-charmer himself. The old man had lowered the pipe from his lips and the cobra immediately disappeared back into the basket. The few spectators who remained drifted away without giving any money. Suddenly the Atchleys were on their own.

  “The art of the snake-charmer is an ancient one,” the man continued. It was hard to believe that such an old and Arab-looking man could not only speak English but speak it so well. He had a very cultivated accent, which sounded completely unlikely, coming through those yellowed teeth and cracked lips, but he spoke very slowly as if remembering a lesson taught years ago. “My father was a snake-charmer, and his father too. I learned the skill when I was six years old. And sometimes I learned from my mistakes…” He held out his arm and as his sleeve fell back the Atchleys saw an ugly, crescent-shaped scar which could have been stamped into his flesh. “The bite would have killed me had my father not had a phial of anti-venom,” the old man went on. “Even so, I was ill for months and the mark of the cobra remains with me to this day.”

  “My son didn’t mean to be rude,” Rupert muttered.

  “Your son displayed his ignorance and did not care whether he was rude or not,” the snake-charmer replied. “He has spoiled my performance and thanks to him I will have no money to take home.”

  “Let me pay you!” Rupert took out his wallet and produced a fifty-dirham note. He didn’t seem to have registered that this was hardly very generous. Fifty dirhams was only worth about ten pounds.

  “Say sorry to the man, Charlie,” Noreen suggested. She was rather hoping that the cobra would rise up and dance again. Her camera was still poised between her fingers.

  “I won’t say sorry because it’s true!” Charles insisted. “I saw it on the Discovery Channel. It’s all just a trick.”

  “You should be careful how you speak to me, child,” the snake-charmer muttered and for the first time he looked angry. His eyes had narrowed and he was regarding Charles with the same quiet malice as the cobra itself. “You are a visitor to my country so you should be respectful of its customs. And there are some things that even your television channels do not understand. Magic, for example, has a way of sneaking up on you and biting in ways that you may not expect.”

  “I don’t believe in magic,” Charles retorted. But some of the confidence had gone from his voice.

  “Let’s get back to the riad,” Noreen suggested. She gave the snake-charmer a wobbly smile. “It was a pleasure meeting you,” she wavered. “In fact it was charming!”

  The three of them turned and walked away, but Charles couldn’t resist having the last word – or at least what passed as a word. Neither of his parents were watching. They were already searching for the passage that would lead them back to the riad. Charles dropped slightly behind, then twisted round and raised his middle finger, a universal symbol that he was sure the old man would understand. Sure enough, the snake-charmer recoiled as if he had been slapped across the face. Then he composed himself and nodded slowly, twice. Once again, his jet-black eyes settled on the boy and, despite the heat of the evening, Charles couldn’t avoid a small shiver of cold. But then his father called out to him, “Come on, Charles. It’s this way.” And a moment later they were out of the main square and making their way back through the souk.

  By dinner-time, the whole incident had been forgotten.

  The meal was served once again on the roof, and this time there were belly-dancers performing to the wail and beat of a small band of musicians all dressed in brilliant white. The guests loved it and – to Charles’s embarrassment – his parents insisted on joining in. His father was a large, well-built man and the sight of him waving his arms in the air while shaking his stomach around was something that Charles felt would damage him for life. In the end he crept away and went to bed.

  It was about eleven o’clock when he turned out the light. His parents were still upstairs, probably telling rude jokes by now – which is what they always did when they’d had too much to drink. Charles was fed up. The heat of Marrakech wore him out and he was in dire need of a large plate of French fries. As far as he was concerned, the holiday couldn’t end a day too soon. Five minutes later, he was asleep. His last, comforting thought was that at least when he woke up there would only be another three days to go.

  But in fact he was woken up suddenly in the middle of the night. The room was not quite dark. Four windows looked out onto the courtyard and the moon was slanting in, washing everything a pale white. He turned his head and saw his watch, propped up against a lamp. Half-past three. What was it that had disturbed him?

  The sound came again, sliding underneath the door or through the window and although Charles didn’t understand why, it sent a shiver all the way down his spine. Music. The shimmering wail of a pipe. It was the snake-charmer … it had to be. Charles recognized the sound from the main square. The old man must be somewhere outside the riad – although surely that wasn’t possible as he was fairly certain that his room didn’t back onto the street. And yet he sounded so close! It was almost as if he were right inside the room.

  Something moved.

  Charles didn’t see it, but he knew it was there. As the hairs stood up, one after another, along the back of his neck, he heard its body, heavy and soft, sliding across the tiled floor. It was heading for the bed – but how had it got into the room? The door wasn’t open. The windows were barred. His first thought was that it must be some sort of huge insect that had somehow slipped through a crack in the plasterwork but he knew that wasn’t true. The music told him exactly what it was and, sure enough, a moment later it rose up at the foot of the bed – inches from his feet – silhouetted dark green against the moonlight, its little eyes blinking malevolently, its tongue flickering, its hood stretched wide. Charles could imagine the rest of its body curled up beneath it.

  The cobra.

  It was there, with him, in the room.

  For a few seconds it swayed from side to side as if unsure what to do. Then the music stopped. There was a sudden silence. It was the signal the snake had been waiting for. At once, it lunged towards him.

  All the beds at the riad had duvets rather than sheets and blankets, and the snake had aimed for the gap between the soft material above and the mattress below. Charles knew at once that it had entered the bed with him and he tried to pull his legs back, tried to roll out of bed and hurl himself onto the floor. But his body wouldn’t obey him. It was doing things it had never done before. His heart was heaving. His eyes were bulging. He seemed to have swallowed his own tongue. Tears were coursing down his face. He screamed for help – but only the tiniest of whispers came out.

  Charles was lying on his back with his legs slightly apar
t. He was wearing pyjama bottoms but no top and he could feel the sweat sliding over his stomach. The music had begun again, so close now that the piper could have been sitting right next to the bed with the pipe beside his ear. Desperately, he looked down. He could just make out the bulge beneath the duvet as the cobra slithered first one way, then the other. It was climbing up between his legs and he realized exactly where it was going to bite him.

  Oh God! He could imagine its fangs, perhaps as much as half an inch long. They were like hypodermic needles. He remembered that from Discovery Channel too. When the cobra struck, it would inject him with a venom that would paralyse his nervous system. His muscles would dissolve. He would die slowly, unable to breathe, and when his parents came in the next morning, they would hardly recognize him. He would be a shrivelled mummy, wrapped in pain.

  The music stopped again. And in this second silence everything happened. The cobra struck. Charles felt its bite and screamed – and this time his voice came out loud and hopeless. At the same moment, his hands grasped the duvet and he threw it one way even as he threw himself the other, rolling off the bed and crashing onto the cold tiled floor. In the distance he heard voices, raised in alarm. Footsteps echoed across the courtyard.

  And then the door flew open, the lights went on and there were Rupert and Noreen, his father in pyjamas, his mother in a nightgown with moisturizer all over her face. “Charlie, darling – what is it?” she squealed.

  “The s-s-s…” Charles was lying on the floor, trembling violently. He was almost hissing like a snake himself but he couldn’t get the word out.

  “The what? What is it?”

  “There’s a snake!” The tears flowed more heavily. Charles knew that his parents had come too late. He had already been bitten. The agony would start soon.

  “I don’t see a snake,” Noreen said.