New Fears 2: Brand New Horror Stories by Masters of the Macabre

THE MIGRANTS Tim Lucas

It was an unusual hour for anyone unbidden to be knocking at my door. Night had fallen and the porch light was off, extending no further invitations. I couldn’t see through the slats of the blinds who was out there and felt some hesitation about turning the light on, but inside my house the lights were burning brightly, so my caller could certainly see me. I illuminated my porch and did not recognize with the middle-aged male face looking back at me with its hat-in-hand expression.

I could tell at once that he wasn’t a salesman. There was something kindly and enquiring about his countenance that eased any concerns I might have had about undoing the locks.

“Good evening,” he said in a voice ripe with character. “You don’t know me, but I live a block over, on Angora Path.” He half-turned and pointed across my street to the second house on the left. “Over there, behind the Sturdivants.”

I could see no house behind the Sturdivants, only trees, but this was not to say there might not be a house there, somewhere beyond them.

I was already calculating, in the back of my mind, the possibilities awaiting me behind this obliquely neighbourly approach. This fellow had mentioned the name of a family, the Sturdivants, but in the more than thirty years that Cosima and I had lived on Locust Lane, I had never known them as anything more than a whisper of rumour, a passing blur. Of course, we kept to ourselves, by and large, though we had always been friendly with our immediate neighbours, those on either side of us, and responsive to their needs when required. In all the time we had lived here, we had seen the ramshackle house two doors down and across run down, refurbished, sold and run down again several times before the Sturdivants involved themselves in its trading of hands. But where was all this leading?

“Excuse me,” I said, closing the storm door and—in the same movement—sliding the upper window down to permit continued conversation. “I’m sorry,” I explained, “but we have a cat that likes to dart out.”

“No offence taken. That’s quite all right.”

“Was a package of ours delivered to you by accident?” I asked, hazarding a guess. “The delivery people are always doing that. I’m afraid the only time I ever get over to Angora Path is when I have someone else’s mail under my arm.”

“Well, as you see, I don’t,” my visitor said, showing his arms upraised and empty-handed. “I’ve actually come to you about another matter. It’s about…” He lowered his voice. “It’s concerning someone in the neighbourhood.”

“The drummer? I know what you mean. We can hear him clear over here when he’s practising. I can’t imagine the hell it must be for you, living right next to him.”

“No, no, that’s not what this is about.”

“All right then”—I hurried him along as politely as I could—“what is this about?”

“I don’t mean… to disturb you,” he said, showing sensitivity to my feelings and pausing every few words to weigh and squeeze those next to be spoken, “but there are… some things in place… for which we all must… assume some responsibility. It’s simply the way things work. We only involve people when they absolutely need to be and… well, now… you need to be.”

What the—? “I’m listening.”

“There is a neighbour of ours… a certain neighbour who requires, shall we say, a nightly escort.”

“An escort.”

“I assure you,” he pressed, detecting a hard coloration of suspicion in my tone, “this is nothing sinister nor unwholesome. But it is,” he continued, after a slow peer over each shoulder, “hush-hush. A kind of privilege, you might say. All that I mean is precisely what I said.” He leaned closer to the door and lowered his voice. “We have a special neighbour, who keeps a very low profile. This neighbour moves around a lot and needs to be accompanied when the time comes for them to move… from place to place. It’s as simple as that, really. It may sound strange, but the fact is, each and every night, this neighbour packs up all their belongings in a single suitcase and moves house. And we of the neighbourhood have inherited this arrangement that this business is always conducted on our watch, under our protection.”

“This person… packs up. All of their belongings… and moves house. Every night.”

“Well, yes,” my visitor confirmed. “You know how some people are about walking around after dark.”

“But ours has always been a good, safe neighbourhood.”

“Oh, I agree,” my visitor enthused, though his words conveyed a worrisome undertone that this might, could, somehow change at any moment.

“My wife and I have lived here for most of our lives,” I reasoned. “If the neighbourhood has always had this arrangement, why have you not come to us before now?”

“This is the first time I have spoken to you,” the man on the porch allowed, “but on those occasions I have spoken with your wife, she was always most accommodating.”

I turned my sight internally. Cosima did sometimes enjoy an evening walk. Unaccompanied, I thought.

“My wife is away on a business trip,” I admitted.

“She communicated to us that she might be. But the fact remains,” he continued with some urgency, “we need someone, rather badly, to serve as our neighbour’s escort tomorrow night. You seemed to be a good bet.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, we know that you’re a night owl and, being a writer, the hours you keep must be your own.”

“How do you know I’m a night owl?”

“I sometimes have difficulty sleeping. I look out the window. Your upstairs lights are always burning.”

“You can see that from your place?”

“In the autumn and winter, when the trees clear.”

“And how do you know I’m a writer? Do you also have a view of my desk?”

“Not at all, my friend. It’s just that, you know… your good wife is very proud.”

“Not to my face, she isn’t.” I smiled. “If you don’t mind, so that I might have the comfort of equal footing, what exactly is it that you do?”

His expression turned suppositional. “I go knocking.”

“I see. Well, just so we understand each other… Is this to be a one-time thing, or an on-going… obligation?”

Standing out there on my porch, a jacket draped over his arm, its hand sunk deep into his trouser pocket, he shrugged from a place I had clearly never been.

“I believe, when all is said and done, you will consider it something of a privilege.”

I was now too intrigued to refuse him. “Very well then, shall I get my jacket?”

“You aren’t needed tonight. I’m actually on my way back home from tonight’s duty.”

“And you’re not available tomorrow night?”

“That’s not it. I really can’t tell you why. Our neighbour likes variety among the escorts.”

“And accommodations, apparently.”

“Indeed.” The word hovered in the air between us, as if somehow etched in elemental stone.

“Right. Where shall I meet this person—and when?”

My evening caller once again leaned toward me, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “696 Murdock Avenue. It’s the third house from the corner where Locust meets Murdock. You must be there tomorrow night at precisely seven twenty.”

“And if I can’t?” There was no reason I couldn’t, but it seemed worth testing the waters, if only to better define them.

“Then these pages were never written.” I took his strange comment in the manner of spontaneous poetry rather than as a threat.

“No worries,” I assured him. “As you surmised earlier, my time is my own.”

“Now this is very important,” my visitor told me. “When you get to—what is it?”

“696 Murdock Avenue.”

“Flying colours. When you get to 696 Murdock Avenue, you will see there is a gate. Do not pass through the gate. Do not come to the porch. Do not knock or ring the bell. You won’t have to. Our neighbour is very punctual.”

“I’ll be there.” The man looked at me a bit timorously until I added, “You have my word.”

At this he smiled meekly, nodded appreciatively and turned to step down from my porch.

“Hold on a minute,” I called out, opening the door a crack and placing one foot on my porch. “How will I know this person? You haven’t even told me their sex.”

“That’s not how it works.” He smiled over his shoulder, and receded into the night, shrinking and shrinking until he became one with the darkness surrounding the nearest street lamp.

It was true what I’d said about Cosima being away on business. That night, I was alone in the house with Honouria our haughty Scottish fold. I had recently finished the novel I was reading and, needing something new, I went looking through the vertical stacks of the recent incoming on the floor of my library before climbing into bed. A full moon was shining directly through the window; there was no need for electrical light to guide me. As I perused the horizontal spines, I was startled by a sudden sound in the room. At first I saw nothing but then something black flapped out from the alphabetic filings on one of the higher shelves and flailed to the floor. I was fearful at first that a bat had got into the house, having an irrational fear of bats, but it turned out to be a small, young blackbird. Much as with mice, I had no problem with birds in their own element but I could not welcome them indoors. I watched it with apprehension. It seemed fairly docile. After gaining its bearings and shaking out its feathers a bit, it flew towards me! I crossed my arms guardedly over my face… and felt it perch on my pyjama sleeve. I carried it to the window so bright with lunar light and found another bird like it stationed on the sill. I unlatched the window and opened it outward, at which point the bird on my sleeve hopped outside, joining its mate. I closed the window but remained there watching as the two of them tilted their heads, their black eyes sparking in mysterious awareness of one another, a prelude to their taking off together into the night.

I still hadn’t settled on a new novel to read. To be honest, I was feeling a bit too distracted to choose wisely, so I brought to bed my trusty Dream Dictionary, a very old volume that smelled of tea and had originated from China. It was in its acid-browned pages that I learned that dreaming of a blackbird in your house signifies a lack of motivation and lingering concerns that one isn’t realizing their fullest potential—or it may alternately represent feelings of jealousy, lust or temptation. I went to sleep that night wondering why I didn’t find more blackbirds in the rooms of my house.

At 7:19 the following evening, I was keeping my word, standing on the sidewalk outside the house at 696 Murdock Avenue. There was a chill out, so I had worn my wool-lined jacket to the appointment. No active rain or drizzle, but the evening air around me twinkled wetly as though a rain cloud had descended to ground level.

There was nothing at all auspicious about the residence. Frankly, it was a bit on the dumpy side. I looked at my watch and counted the seconds.

At exactly 7:20, its front door popped open—with almost supernatural alacrity. It did so silently; had it made a sound, I imagine it would have been a hydraulic hiss, like the sound a bus makes when it drops off a passenger. Framed inside the doorway, silhouetted against a bright-yellow interior wall, was a squat black figure. For a moment I thought the shape might be that of the mysterious neighbour’s baggage, but then it leapt forward—almost merrily, half walking and half hopping the way a child might toward a beloved uncle. The closer this figure came to me, the better I could see that it was adorned in a woollen, hooded mackintosh, carrying a small overnight bag and what appeared to be a violin case in unseen hands.

I had been strongly forewarned not to pass through the gate; but, seeing my charge’s hands full of belongings, I felt obliged to open it, so this strange, migratory creature could pass through without inconvenience. I couldn’t see a face, well-recessed inside the hood as it was, but as the figure waddled to a standstill beside me on the sidewalk, I intuited that the truth underlying this concealment had to be much older than I. Indeed, I felt an almost supernatural intuition that here was someone infinitely old, vulnerable and precious, whose security during this passage was both my great responsibility and my honour. I volunteered to carry the overnight bag and did so, finding it somewhat heavier than its size indicated, but under no circumstances would the violin case be relinquished. I had been given no indication of our destination, so I trailed behind their gnomic trailblazing—tailgating, really—like a guardian shadow.

After we had walked the distance of a block, I noticed that, while it was not a very late hour, our entire neighbourhood had fallen into a most peculiar silence. All the streets were empty, yet behind the façades of the homes we passed there were no muffled sounds of stereos or televisions or even children at play indoors. As we stepped from one corner to the next as if from one ice floe to another, I would sometimes look up from this bobbing, incessantly restless hobgoblin of a figure to the darkened fronts of the houses falling behind us on either side. I could see no watchful eyes peering out, no hands or faces pressed to glass, neither openly nor covertly. There was not so much as the whisper of another living soul, and the quality of the silence was unusual; it was that special, tucked-in silence that is ordinarily experienced only during heavy, blanketing snowfalls. Though the air was cold and crisp, there was no snow, and the only sounds to be heard were those of our footsteps, mine trailing those in front, and the lively murmur of a soliloquy in a language unknown to me.

Before I knew it, we arrived at our destination. It was numbered 969, I took no note of the street. It was one of those apartment buildings composed of four residences, two on each floor, each side mirroring the other. There was a piece of ornamental stone framed in brick above the main entrance, inscribed with a woman’s name. Someone beloved by the architect, I imagined. As I write these words, I very much doubt I could ever find my way back there, wherever it was, though it could not be more than a five-minute walk from my own home. My neighbourhood is rife with buildings just like it.

My charge scurried ahead of me, pushing through the building’s front door. I hurried in pursuit, feeling my responsibility, and trailed a happily chattering voice to the second floor, where I found an open door, numbered 3. It offered ingress to an apartment with another bright-yellow interior. It had green wall-to-wall carpeting like the blades of a well-manicured lawn and no furnishing other than a single wooden chair, into which I sank—as I say—with intuition.

Once I had time to settle, the figure then solemnly, respectfully, removed from the violin case a stringed instrument of indescribable beauty, of such exquisite refinement and delicacy that its wooden parts were wholly translucent, as clear as glass. Even so, it was unquestionably made of wood, albeit wood curbed to the will of an inconceivable level of high craftsmanship.

Without removing its hood, the migrant raised the butt of the instrument and nestled it shoulder-wise under the clamp of a chin, a golden cleft and sacred chin, the only aspect of identity made available to my sight. Fingers of similar hue curled around the strings of its neck and then—gently, tentatively—the other hand lowered a magnificent bow to hover just above them. From my close vantage, I could see that the instrument was strung with four taut filaments of subtly different colours. They seemed to ripple up and down their full length as though they contained the rapids of a great river, alive with untapped sound even before they were touched.

My squat charge held this intent, disciplined, tentative pose for so long that I began to wonder if the divine instrument might produce its music somehow other than by direct contact—if it had to come about through some more inscrutable form of conductivity. Its celestial makeup did seem to argue against the involvement of anything so coarse as the frenzied scratching of horsehair upon catgut, however skilled, however impassioned might be the bow’s guiding hand.

Then, as if zooming inward from the outer reaches of my suspense, the figure suddenly upraised its bow and struck, with violence and panache, a galvanizing pose. From that pose arose a single note—and from that note radiated each of the world’s wonders, and from the next its horrors; in the summoned melody could be experienced each of the world’s defining revolutions, each of the world’s enlarging calculations, its decapitations and abominations, each of the world’s great declarations of love—each and every god-damned eureka—all symmetrically ordered and then fanned and arrayed as in a peacock’s tail, a gleaming spectrum of refulgent miracles, shames and intrigues. I found my senses dialling into them, my spinning form that of a weightless cosmonaut, visiting, inhabiting, becoming each place, each moment, each instance, each shaded evil and proud passion with perfect attenuation and detachment. I could stop wherever I chose.

Somewhere between the Taj Mahal and the Great Pyramid of Giza, I disentangled myself from the cartwheeling of the Khajuraho Monuments in Madhya Pradesh to find myself once again walking along Locust Lane. Each step, I knew, was taking me farther away from a feeling of wanting to remain, but I could not help but move forward. Had I turned on my heel, I knew there would be no finding my way back— which would only condemn me to a greater loss. This fate had been woven into my opportunity, and the point of it all was not what had happened, or where, or even with whom, but what still lay ahead.

There was a notable difference in the feeling of my homeward journey. The crystalline chill in the night air began to subside, the cloud now lifting. Here and there I could hear the muffled sounds of courtroom testimonies and criminal investigations being played out on different televisions tuned to different channels. I saw hands and faces pressed to glass, observing me in transit. I saw fear. I saw impatience. I saw the cold sweat of envy.

My jacket was beginning to feel a bit too warm, so I took it off and draped it through the handle of my arm, my hand sunk deep in my pants pocket. A shiver of sense memory, like a feeling of exposure, caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up.

I turned and saw the vague outline of a man, watching me intently and curiously as I made my way home. He stood with one foot inside his house, the other planted on his porch. Honouria ran through his legs onto the porch, her back arching and bristling at the receding sight of me.

After I had moved some distance beyond the streetlamp, I looked back once again and found that page had turned.