Days of utter dread, p.11
Days of Utter Dread, page 11
He didn’t pull out his bed that night. The restaurant’s doorbell kept on jangling, and the smell of curry seemed to be stronger than ever. He lay sideways on the sofa and dropped off to sleep at about two o’clock. He dreamed that he could hear the wind whistling sarcastically and children’s voices taunting him.
‘Cut the mustard!’ they were singing. ‘Cut the mustard! You can’t – cu-hut – the mustard!’
At about five in the morning he was woken up by a refuse lorry banging and crashing in the street outside. He sat up, confused, and found that his trousers were soaking.
*
When he arrived at the library the next morning he found a stack of books waiting for him on his desk – seven or eight of them, even though he had ordered only For the Sake of Reptiles and The History of Double-Enveloping Worm Gears. His name Terrance Colman was scribbled on a Post-it note and stuck to the top book.
He laid his ham roll down beside his notebook and peered at the titles of the books with growing bewilderment. This was the non-fiction section but these books all appeared to be fiction, or poetry. The Dance of the Nymphs. Children of the Lost Forest. The Day My Youth Was Stolen. Lolita.
Terrance looked around, feeling increasingly unsettled. The library was deserted, except for Mrs Parker and an elderly man sitting in the corner leafing through an encyclopaedia and systematically wiping his nose with a large white handkerchief. There were no schoolchildren, teasing him about his name: too early for that. No Inspector Riley, standing behind him like Moros, the legendary Greek messenger of impending doom.
He turned back to his desk but even before he had reached forward to switch on his computer, he heard the library door swing open behind him, and a soft, fluffing sound. He paused, not turning around, but alert and listening. The fluffing grew louder, and he heard a leaflet flutter from Mrs Parker’s counter and onto the floor. It was that wind again, he was sure of it, that wind that had blown only for him. The titles of those books should have told him that this was something sinister. More sinister than a knock on the window on a dark night; or the scratching sound of steel in a bleak winter storm.
He didn’t dare to look behind him, but as he sat there, a small figure glided to stand close beside him, on his left-hand side. He slowly turned his head, his heart beating so hard that it hurt his ribs. The figure was only two metres away, and yet it was in shadow, as if it were standing against the sun.
He leaned forward and adjusted his glasses, trying to see the figure’s face. It was a girl – he could see that by her long hair, which was stirred by the rising wind. But he couldn’t make out what she looked like, or if he knew her.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded, trying to sound authoritative, as he did in school. ‘What do you want? This is a public library – I hope you know that! We don’t allow any nonsense in here, I’m afraid!’
Without warning, his computer monitor flicked on, fuzzed and settled. Words started to appear on the screen, typing quickly from line to line with the keyboard keys denting in accordingly, even though Terrance wasn’t touching them. He shoved his chair away from his desk, a blinding pain swelling in his head.
‘Who are you? Get away! Get away from me!’ he shouted at the girl. He scrambled across his desk for his phone and frantically pressed Mrs Parker’s extension number on the front counter.
The girl came closer, although her face remained in darkness.
‘Read the words, Terrance,’ she told him, pointing to his computer screen. ‘Read the words and weep.’
‘Audrey? Audrey you must help me – something’s happening! I… I can’t explain – but it’s happening now! Please come!’ and with that he slammed the phone down. He looked back to the monitor. The lines of words were still climbing up the screen. There were hundreds of them, thousands, even. At first he found it impossible to focus on them, but then they stopped.
‘Read them, Terrance,’ the girl repeated, and as she did so her face was gradually lit up, so that he realised it was the same girl who had challenged him yesterday.
Terrance squinted at the monitor. As far as he could make out, the words were all a list of names, and dates, and places. Sandra Livingstone, 14th May, Tooting Graveney Common. Jessie Wilson, 18th June, Norwood Grove Recreation Ground. Asha Mabela, 12th August, Brockwell Park.
He read the last lines aloud, but in a whisper. ‘You must come in and talk to us, Terrance. You must come in and pay the price for what you did. You think you’re special, Terrance? You think you can win? We will show you. We will show you your darkest thoughts, and make you live them for us, the way that you made us live them for you.’
He turned back to the girl and said, ‘I don’t understand.’
She gave him a knowing smile, but she didn’t answer. Instead, she raised both of her hands, and the library doors swung open again. A wild gust of wind blew in, almost like a hurricane, so that the pages of books flipped furiously back and forth with a sound like hundreds of people clapping. The girl paused beside Terrance for a few moments more, her hair whipping across her face. Then she glided away, towards the door, with books flying off the shelves on either side of her.
‘Terrance!’ shrieked Audrey. ‘Terrance, what’s happening?’ She was struggling against the wind as she came around her counter and started to clamber over the fallen books towards his desk. More books tumbled off the shelves and a heavy dictionary hit her on the shoulder. ‘Terrance!’
Gradually, though, the wind began to die down, and by the time she reached his desk the library was silent again, and still. A last book dropped off a shelf, like the last lump of ice after a thaw.
‘Terrance?’ said Audrey, cautiously. ‘Terrance, where are you? Terrance?’
There was no sign of Terrance anywhere. His corduroy jacket was still hanging over the back of his chair. His ham roll, wrapped in cellophane, was still lying on his desk. His computer was still switched on but the screen was blank. Audrey went to the back of the non-fiction section, wondering if he had sheltered from the wind in the U-shaped recess of the geography section, but he wasn’t there, either.
She walked slowly all around the library, picking up fallen books as she went. She even half-opened the door to the gents’ toilet, and called out, ‘Terrance?’
There was no reply. Terrance had disappeared. She could only imagine that he had been frightened by the wind and run out of the library, although she was sure that she would have seen him as he came past her counter. Perhaps he had simply had enough of being a librarian and walked out without giving her any notice. He had always been taciturn and never exchanged pleasantries, not even ‘good morning,’ or ‘miserable weather, isn’t it?’ or ‘did you see Strictly Come Dancing last night?’
But if he had simply had enough and quit, why had he left his jacket behind, and not taken his lunch? Perhaps he would come back, and explain where he had been. Meanwhile, she switched off his computer.
The hours went past, however, and borrowers came and borrowers went. Books were taken out and books were returned. The school reading circle came in, laughing and jostling as usual, and they seemed to be disappointed that Terrance wasn’t there to be jeered at.
‘Where’s old mustard, then? Hasn’t cut it today! That’s it! Hasn’t cut the mustard!’
*
That evening, two hours after the library had closed, the sound of shrill singing echoed through its corridors. It was Mavis the cleaner, singing to her heart’s content, accompanied by the discordant squeak of trolley wheels. Her trolley was crowded with dusters, disinfectant sprays, a sponge mop and a plastic bucket, as well as a fluffy blue mascot of a bear that her granddaughter had given her.
She swept the floor past the library doors and into the non-fiction section. As she entered it, a chilly draught blew around her ankles and fluttered her pinafore. She looked to see if any of the windows had been left open, but as far as she could make out they were all closed. She carried on warbling, ‘You were such a fool to leave me – but the rain keeps singing its song!’
She pushed her trolley to the middle of the room and then approached Terrance’s desk, duster in one hand and Mr Sheen furniture polish in the other. But then she stopped, and saw that Terrance’s jacket was still draped over the back of his chair.
She looked at her watch, and said, ‘That’s weird.’ It was past seven o’clock and the library closed at five. As scruffy as he was, she couldn’t imagine Terrance leaving his jacket behind, especially not in this weather, and when she lifted it up off the chair, she could see that he had left his wallet in the inside pocket.
‘Terrance, ya still ’ere somewhere?’ she called out. She waited, but there was no reply. ‘Terrance?’ she called again, but there was still no answer, so she carried on singing and spraying polish onto his desk.
‘I dunno, this man is so mucky,’ she muttered to herself. She tugged on a pair of blue nitrile gloves before she picked up Terrance’s half-eaten coleslaw sandwich and dropped it into her bin.
Now she picked up her glass cleaning spray, wiping underneath his computer keyboard and over its keys, with a soft rattling sound. She polished the monitor screen and after she had swiped her yellow duster over it, she peered into it to see her own reflection. Almost at once, though, her face began to change, as if it were made of melting wax. She stared at the screen with ever-increasing bewilderment and horror as her hair shrank shorter and her cheeks turned pale and she realised that she wasn’t looking at herself any more but Terrance. His eyes were closed but his mouth was slightly open, as if he were finding it difficult to breathe.
Mavis turned around, sharply, expecting to see Terrance standing behind her, but there was no one there.
‘This man,’ she said shaking her head. ‘He give me the creeps. The right royal heebie-jeebies. Something not right with him, ya know.’
She turned back to the screen, expecting his face to have vanished, but it was still there, almost as if it were pressed up against the glass from the inside. Now, though, he opened his eyes and stared directly at her, and his lips moved as if he were trying to say something, and she was sure that she could hear a faint, tiny voice calling out to her. She felt a shivery tingle all the way down to her feet, and she rubbed hard at the screen with her duster, trying to wipe his image away. As furiously as she wiped, though, she couldn’t erase him, and she could still hear that tiny, muted voice.
In all the time he had worked at the library, Terrance had never once said hello to her, even though he expected his desk to be clean every morning. Yet here he was, calling out to her, as if he desperately needed her to help him.
It was then that the temperature in the library suddenly dropped like a stone, and Mavis felt as if all the blood in her body had become so cold that it had was as thick as treacle. The bookshelves started to creak, and a freezing draught made her arms go prickly with goose bumps.
‘What ya doin’, ya horrible, horrible man!’ she screamed at Terrance’s face. ‘Stop starin’ at me, will ya? Stop starin’!’
She wiped the monitor screen around and around, harder and harder. It was then that the duster began to squeak and slime, and before long she realised it was becoming soaked in red and that she was swirling wide red streaks all over it. The harder she pressed, the more red liquid seemed to swell from the seams of the monitor frame, and she realised from its metallic smell that it was blood. She had been a trainee nurse once, and she knew what blood smelled like.
Blood was not only oozing from the frame of the monitor but now it started to dribble from the ventilation holes underneath the screen and drip all over the keyboard. Within seconds it was pouring out, sliding across the desk and pattering in blobs and sticky glops onto the carpet. Mavis flung her blood-soaked duster to one side and tried to take a step back, but the interior of the library was now so cold that the blood had coagulated and it stuck to the sole of her shoe. Her shoe came loose and her stockinged foot slipped sideways on the blood-soaked laminate floor. She fell to her knees, grabbing for support from her trolley, but that toppled over with a crash.
With her pinafore drenched in blood, she managed to climb to her feet and hobble out of the non-fiction section and make for the library doors. She unlocked them and then she stumbled out onto the forecourt. The street was deserted so she reached into her wet pinafore pocket and took out her phone. Even though it was tacky with blood she managed to prod out 999.
‘What’s your emergency?’ the operator asked her.
‘Police. I’m at Broadbent Library. There’s nobody here but it’s like somebody got murdered.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand you. There’s nobody there but you think that someone’s been murdered?’
‘I seen Mr Colman’s face, but he wasn’t there! He wasn’t there but there’s blood! There’s so much blood! It keep on comin’! Blood, blood and more blood!’
*
Two police cars arrived, their blue lights flashing, in less than ten minutes. When they climbed out, four uniformed officers found Mavis sitting on the library steps, shivering. She had been too frightened to go back inside to fetch her coat.
‘What’s your name, love?’ asked a female officer, squatting down beside her.
‘Mavis. I do the cleaning here.’
‘And you reported that you saw blood?’
‘It’s in there. In the library. So much blood! It’s everywhere. All over the floor.’
‘Whose blood, Mavis?’
‘I don’t know. There’s nobody there.’
‘Didn’t you tell the emergency operator that you saw somebody’s face?’
‘I did. Mr Colman. I seen his face but not him. Only his face. I try to wipe it away but it wouldn’t be wiped. And then all that blood come pourin’ out his computer! Blood, blood, blood, but nobody there!’
The female officer looked up at her fellow officer. She said nothing, but raised her eyebrows in that expression that meant ‘nutter’.
‘Are the library doors still open?’ the male officer asked her. ‘We’ll take a butcher’s inside, okay? Just to see what’s what.’
At that moment, another car arrived and parked behind the police cars. Its door opened and out stepped Inspector Riley, wearing a thick sheepskin coat with the collar turned up. He came up the library steps and said, ‘What’s the SP? I was just on my way to Morden nick and I heard the shout on the radio.’
‘This is Mavis, the cleaner,’ said the female officer, standing up straight. ‘She says that there’s blood in the library but nobody there.’
‘Mavis?’ said Inspector Riley. ‘You mentioned somebody called Colman. Did you mean Terrance Colman?’
Mavis nodded. ‘Terrance Colman. That’s him. I seen his face in his computer but he wasn’t there.’
‘In his computer?’
‘Yes. Like he’s inside it. Like a goldfish in a bowl. But then all that blood.’ She pressed her hand against her mouth and then she said, ‘I think I’m going to bring up me lunch.’
Inspector Riley turned to the female officer. ‘Take care of Mavis, would you?’ he told her, and then he beckoned to the other officers and said, ‘Come on. Let’s go in and see what the bloody hell this blood is all about.’
He pushed open the library doors, and they gave a high, soft groan, like a child having a nightmare. The library was brightly lit, but it was still so cold that the officers’ breath smoked.
‘Blimey,’ said one of them. ‘It’s like a bleeding fridge in here.’
Inspector Riley walked straight across to the non-fiction section. He saw the blood as soon as he entered the alcove. It had spread halfway across the floor, all around the upturned cleaning trolley, and Mavis’ footprints were still clearly visible, as well as her abandoned shoe.
‘Hold on,’ said one of the officers. ‘I’ll go and get some overshoes.’
Inspector Riley waited at the edge of the pool of blood while the officer went off to fetch some plastic forensic shoe covers. He noticed that it was still creeping across the floor, until it was almost touching the toes of his suede Hush Puppies.
He could see Terrance’s blood-smeared PC on his desk, but apart from the crimson circles where Mavis had wiped it, the screen was black and blank.
Once they had all pulled on their blue plastic overshoes, Inspector Riley told two of the officers to make a thorough search of the library, including the book storeroom, the staffroom, and the toilets.
‘Somebody must have been killed to produce all this blood, unless it was brought in here in a bucket, and I don’t think that’s very likely. There’s no footprints apart from the cleaner’s, and no tracks to show that a body was dragged out of here, so presumably the deceased is still on the premises.’
He went up to Terrance’s desk, his shoe covers making a sticky-tape sound on the floor.
‘It looks like the blood came from inside the computer. How weird is that?’
The sergeant standing beside him shook his head. ‘On a weirdness scale of one to ten, guv, I’d say about seventy-three.’
At that moment – even though Inspector Riley hadn’t touched the keyboard – the computer screen switched itself on. At first it lit up bright and blank, but then the scene of a local park appeared, with flower beds and thick bushes. A pretty young girl of about twelve appeared, with blonde plaits, a pink blouse, and jeans. She was laughing as she ran into the bushes and disappeared, but the camera followed her. It looked as if she were playing hide-and-seek and whoever was holding the camera was trying to find her.
After two or three minutes, the camera found her crouching down behind a bush. The cameraman’s hand appeared, seizing her arm. She laughed again, but then the camera was dropped onto the ground and she stopped laughing and said, ‘No – no – no!’ Her voice became muffled and then her pink blouse fell onto the ground, in view of the camera, followed a few moments after by her jeans.
