The Year's Best Horror Stories 21

TRACKS by Nicholas Royle

Do you love me?”

“Of course I love you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

I used to torment Melanie like this a lot, unintentionally, constantly asking the same questions when the answer should have been abundantly clear: of course she loved me. She told me sometimes how irritating it was and in exasperation asked: “What do I have to do to convince you I love you?”

“Nothing,” I’d say. “Just keep on loving me.”

She’d reply: “But if you constantly doubt me, I feel undermined. It’s tiring.” An edge would have crept into her voice and I’d feel compelled to ask again: “Do you love me?”

Egerton spoke: “That company in Birmingham have paid, Alex.” He flashed me a proud smile as he passed on this information. Egerton was responsible for chasing up bad debts. “That means you can go ahead and process their festival entry. The check arrived in the lunchtime delivery.”

I couldn’t care less about the Birmingham company paying up—I’d already processed their festival entry in the knowledge that I could delete it in one keystroke if they failed to pay—but Egerton’s interruption reminded me of what had happened before I left home for work that morning.

Melanie lived in the Midlands, which accounted in part for my insecurity in our relationship: I lived in London and missed her during the week when we were not together. We wrote letters so I was always eager for the sound of the postman in the mornings. He often came when I was in the bath, gaining entry from the street by pressing the service bell, then climbing the stairs to deliver letters to the individual flats. I waited for the rattle of the letter box.

It had become one of my favorite sounds, and I invariably jumped out of the bath to see what the postman had brought, then got straight back in. Bills I dropped unopened on the bathroom floor where they generally stayed for at least a week. Circulars and marketing scams from Reader’s Digest went straight behind the laundry basket and only when the basket started to walk did I take them and put them in the rubbish. If there was a letter from Melanie, I would open it and read it in the bath, sinking down in the bubbles and steam, always a sensuous experience, to be enjoyed to the full, even if it meant being late for work.

She wrote long, involved letters. They all said how much she loved me, but I still found it hard to believe anyone could love me as much as she claimed to. Does she love me? I used to ask the inflatable frog soapdish. Does she really love me?

The letter box rattled and I jumped up, quickly drying my feet before stepping out onto the bathmat. It was only three steps out of the bathroom and into the hall to reach the front door.

There was nothing lying on the Oh-No-Not-You-Again doormat. I lifted my leather jacket which hung on a hook on the back of the door, but there was nothing sticking out of the letter box. I unlocked the door and opened it a crack, the cold draft reminding me I was naked and wet. The postman sometimes left larger items outside in the hallway but there was nothing there today. Puzzled, I closed the door. I had heard the flap bang shut. It was an unmistakable sound. I bent down and opened the flap again, peering inside, even pushing open the exterior flap with my dripping fingers. Not a thing.

I lifted the doormat. On the carpet underneath the mat were just the familiar brown stains left by the stenciled words.

Nothing.

It was impossible. I had heard it. I got down on my hands and knees and scanned the hall floor. I looked behind the storage heater and in the wardrobe cupboard in case the letter had broken the usual laws of movement through space.

Disconsolately I drained the bath and tried to come to terms with the possibility that the luxury of my bath had lulled me to sleep and I dreamed the rattling letter box out of wish fulfilment.

Egerton was always a source of acute irritation, but inadvertently reminding me of the morning’s phantom delivery was too much for me to bear. I cleared my screen with a short sequence of angry keystrokes and left the office. From behind his desk in his own office Whitehead saw me slamming out. I hoped I hadn’t incurred Whitehead’s displeasure. I tolerated him marginally better than Egerton, but Whitehead was the boss and I needed the job.

Across the road I bought a bar of chocolate in the shop and ate it sitting on a railing. There was a pay phone nearby and I contemplated ringing Melanie to see if she’d posted me a letter the day before. I still wasn’t completely satisfied by the dream theory. I wondered if maybe the postman had rattled my box in error or—and my chest tightened as I thought of this—on purpose to torment me because he knew how much I looked forward to receiving letters.

I didn’t phone Melanie because it seemed silly to pay when I could call her from the office for nothing.

“The Arsenal stuffed up their chances yesterday, eh, Alex?” Egerton asked just as I was reaching for my phone. He seemed to think that if he leavened his accountancy qualifications with a little authentic-sounding football chat and the odd reference to his heavy weekend drinking, people would not think him a boring bastard. But it didn’t seem to work.

“I really don’t know,” I replied with deliberate pomposity. I’d stopped indulging Egerton after only a couple of weeks in the same office, yet still the man persisted. He was either thick-skinned or completely mad; I hadn’t made up my mind. In any case, Arsenal’s cup chances were of no concern to me.

I rang Melanie’s number but she was in a meeting. I was glad to get away when 6 p.m. came around. I said goodnight to Whitehead on my way out. He gave me one of his weak smiles: it lurked behind his thick moustache and failed to light up his eyes.

I thought about Melanie on the way home: was it my imagination or was she writing fewer letters these days and saying less in them? It seemed to me that I used to get one a day. The relationship is changing, part of my mind told me, she doesn’t need to write so many letters. Another part of my mind told me: she’s starting to love you less. But she’ll deny it if you confront her with it. She’ll deny it and deny it then one day she’ll say you were right and she doesn’t love you any more.

While I was in the kitchen making some tea, the phone rang. I put down the knife I was using to slice some lemon and went to get the phone, but it rang off after the first ring. My hand hovered over the handset in case the caller redialed immediately. The apparatus remained silent. I went back to slicing lemon and it rang again. I ran to get it, but again it rang off. Someone was having trouble. Then I remembered that a similar thing had happened a week before. Twice in one night the phone had rung off before I had been able to get it. It could only have rung once on each occasion because my flat is hardly big enough to get lost in. I finished making my tea and sat down on the sofa by the open window. The street smelled of dogs, petrol and fish and chips. I felt on edge.

I wondered if it had been Melanie. I went and got the phone and carried it over to the sofa.

I punched in her number. “That wasn’t you, was it, just then?” I asked her when I got through. For some reason my question confused her, even when I repeated it, so I assumed it hadn’t been her and we just talked. “Are you all right?” I asked.

“Yes. Why?” That slight catch was in her voice, the one that meant stop, don’t continue with this line of questioning. But I always did.

“You sound a bit funny, that’s all.”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I was fine.”

“What d’you mean?”

“I mean until you started the cross examination.”

“All right. I’m sorry.”

“Yes, but it’s so irritating. I’m all right, but you make me not all right when you ask so many questions. Don’t you see?”

I saw only too well. I had to stop it before she did. “Do you love me?” I asked meekly.

“I’m going,” she said abruptly and hung up.

I replaced the receiver and dithered for a minute or two, not knowing whether I should ring her back or not and apologize. I waited five minutes and made another cup of lemon tea, then I pressed the redial button.

“Melanie?” I ventured.

“Yes?” She sounded tired.

“I’m sorry for being a pain. It’s just that when I can’t see you I don’t know what you look like. You could be smiling or frowning, but I don’t know because I can’t see you. Do you know what I mean? Just hearing your voice it’s hard to tell if you’re all right or not.”

“Alex.” Her exasperation could be heard in just my name. “Will you stop worrying if I’m all right? It wears me down. OK?”

I agreed and we tried to chat about nothing in particular, but I could tell I’d annoyed her and brought the call to an end before I could do any more damage. Later the same evening the phone rang again while I was dozing on the sofa. I stretched out an arm to pick it up, but my hand seemed to move very slowly as if in a dream and it rang off before I was able to reach it.

I went to bed hoping a letter would arrive from Melanie in the morning.

Again I was in the bath, luxuriating, possibly dozing, when I heard the letter box. I made to get out, but my arms slipped from the sides of the bath and fell into the water with a splash that shocked me out of my torpor. My empty stomach was aching, yearning for food, yet my mouth was dry and slightly bitter. I levered myself out of the bath and didn’t bother drying my feet before padding into the hall.

The doormat was clear. I lifted the leather jacket and raised the flap.

Nothing.

Oh, shit. This isn’t happening.

But it was.

I grabbed my dressing gown from the back of the bathroom door and unsnapped the locks on the front door. I fled down the airy staircase to the communal hallway. There were no letters on the window ledge by the door, where the postman left them if he couldn’t be bothered to climb the stairs. There was nothing but a pile of last week’s free local newspapers, and a couple from the week before. I opened the door to the street and looked up and down for the postman, but he wasn’t around. He moved quickly, I knew, but not that quickly. I shivered and stepped back inside.

Back in the flat I conducted a brief, futile search around the hall. I had to have been dreaming: it was the only explanation.

I was shaken from my gnawing displeasure by the phone. I went to go and get it, but to my dismay it rang off. I picked it up and heard the dialing tone.

Losing my temper, I threw the receiver back at its cradle. It bounced off and I had to control myself and reposition it more carefully.

As I swayed through the Piccadilly Line tunnels on my way to work, I hoped for his sake that Egerton wouldn’t come near me today. The mood I was in, I was liable to twist his unpleasant cheap polyester tie around his furry, animal neck until he choked to death. That way the day, which had started extremely badly, would yield some small pleasure.

The train stopped in the tunnel before King’s Cross and the bank clerk in the Oxford Street suit behind me huffed and tutted. I squared my shoulders against his pathetic noises. Such irritability on the part of other passengers was always worse than the wait for the train to go again. I told myself that if he tutted again I would turn round and ask him to be quiet, but mercifully the train moved.

“Good morning to you,” Egerton practically shouted as I stepped into the office. He was striding past the door, clicking his fingers purposefully as if they were part of the dynamo which powered his ceaseless activity. He always placed stress on the you. Perhaps he thought because he hadn’t yet been smacked in the mouth or taken out by precision bombing that people liked him and his studied eccentricity. They didn’t.

I rang Melanie but she said she couldn’t talk—too busy. We said goodbye. “I’ll ring you later,” I said, but she hung up and I didn’t know if she’d heard me or not. So I rang her back.

“Melanie,” I began.

“Alex. I’m busy.” She sounded pissed off.

“Are you all right?” I asked anxiously.

“Will you stop asking if I’m all right?” She was pissed off.

“Sorry. Look, I only wanted to make sure you’re all right.”

“I’m busy. I’ve got to go.”

Again she hung up. I hated being hung up on, but I couldn’t possibly ring her again. So I waited. Five minutes. Then pressed redial. This is stupid, part of my mind told me. I knew that was right. It was stupid, destructive, doomed to failure. But I couldn’t leave the phone alone when it sat there, saying, go on, use me. Phone her back. You might as well.

“It’s me,” I said quickly. “Listen, don’t hang up. I just want to apologize…”

She hung up.

I had to get up and walk around to try and calm down. But Egerton’s animated hand movements between keyboard and phone, and chin and coffee cup, just put me more on edge. I left the office and walked round the block, wondering what I could do about Melanie. I couldn’t leave things the way they were. I’d upset her and I needed to let her know I was sorry. It wasn’t just for my own peace of mind. I needed to know she wasn’t angry with me. Maybe it was just for my own peace of mind. But if she was still angry with me, ringing her again would only make her angrier.

When I got back to the office I rang a mutual friend, Steve.

“She’s all right, Alex,” was Steve’s opinion. Then the conversation veered away from Melanie and I formed the impression that Steve knew something he wasn’t telling. Something about Melanie.

“Is everything all right, I mean, does she still fancy me?”

“Of course she fancies you,” Steve said before once more steering the conversation into some gloomy sidetrack that seemed to lead nowhere. I allowed myself to be drawn along, as the feeling grew inside me that Steve had placed a particular emphasis on the word fancy, suggesting that yes she still fancied me but that was all and the least of my worries. I wanted to ask him if she still loved me but didn’t dare in case the answer was either no or an awkward silence.

When I got home I rang Holly, one of Melanie’s friends whom I knew well enough to chat to, and asked her if she thought Melanie still cared for me.

“Of course Mel cares for you,” Holly tried to reassure me. I was sure she stressed the verb and once more I was too cowardly to use the word love.

Now I began to convince myself that Steve and Holly were on the same track: they both knew the same thing about Melanie. Maybe it was that she still found me attractive and was fond of me but no longer loved me. Or that she had met someone else or that she had come out. Whatever it was, I worked myself into such a state of anxiety that when the phone rang I found myself virtually paralyzed. I tried to extricate an arm—they were folded around my body and I was rocking gently on the chair—but couldn’t and the effort dragged me off the chair and on to the floor.

Meanwhile the phone rang off after only one or two rings.

Who was trying to contact me? If I managed to answer, would a familiar voice soothe me and calm my fears or would some malicious interloper take delight in confirming my paranoid fears? I had a strong feeling that the world wasn’t as simple as I had always imagined. Not all lives proceeded at the same pace and there were different tracks.

It seemed to me that someone was trying to get through to me, but something about me or my flat was blocking them. Something needed to change, but I didn’t know what.

The phone rang while I was cleaning my teeth. I thought I would just carry on because it would ring off after one ring and I wouldn’t get to it. But it continued to ring and I still brushed.

It rang a third time.

I dropped the brush in the bowl and ran through to the other room, reaching for the phone. But it had fallen silent. I picked up the receiver and listened to the dialing tone for a moment.

I drifted off to sleep determined to catch the postman out in the morning. As soon as I heard the alarm I reached across and silenced it, then slid out of bed. I stood in the cold kitchen while the kettle heated up, and drank my coffee looking out of the sloping skylight, through which I could see only sky. The dawn was a gentle clash of violets and oranges. The coffee in my cup went down slowly. At quarter to eight I moved into the hall and took up a position two meters from the front door. If the postman came, if the letter box was lifted, if a delivery was made, I would see it. There would be no question that I wasn’t fully awake. I squatted and waited, patient in the pursuit of my objective. Nothing happened. I heard someone downstairs lock their door and leave the building. I wondered about Melanie without taking my eyes off the letter box. Did she love me? What would she say in her letter if one should arrive? That she loved me and I should stop worrying or that I had been right all along and she didn’t love me at all?

My haunches tingled with pins and needles then went numb. Straining my ears for sounds with which the postman might betray his approach, I began to notice a hum in the flat. Electrical appliances, storage heaters, the immersion, all would no doubt contribute, but it seemed as if the flat itself were alive and trying to tell me something. It was the first time I had sat and listened so intently. Normally I played a compact disk or boiled a kettle, switched channels or ran a bath. At night when I lay still, I covered my ears with the duvet.

Now, however, for the first time, I was listening to the flat.

I thought that maybe it was telling me not to take my eyes off the letter box. But I couldn’t live like this—watching the letter box every morning.

The humming seemed to acquire a rhythm, a beat, like a clock, as if my flat was in tune with the universe, a quartz clock. The flat was part of the great design. I felt it protecting me, like a mother or the mother’s womb itself. I watched the door. The flat hummed. It felt completely right.

Then the flap lifted slowly and the white corner of a letter slid through into the flat. I heard my heart beating faster. The letter pushed the flap open wider and fell on to the doormat. The metal flap fell back with the familiar rattle.

My body was tense, ready to spring. I wanted to open the letter. I realized I was sweating. The flat was still all right. I crawled forward and picked up the letter. It was a bill. I snapped it down on the narrow bookshelf in disgust and disappointment, and some small degree of relief.

The hum receded until it was barely perceptible, as if the flat was satisfied it had demonstrated to me that all was in order. A letter had arrived—although not the one I would have wanted—and I had been reassured that the world was still functioning as it should. Possibly had I not been watching, the letter box might have banged open and shut while some hateful, terrible communication slipped, not into sight, but between the tracks upon which my life ran, into the void I knew I would have to face one day. How many letters waited there for me? How many unanswered phone calls? How any small hands stretched out unseen? How many open mouths and proclamations of terrifying truths which would destroy the lies of the life that had gone before?

As I dressed I debated whether or not to phone Melanie. I needed to speak to her and get that part of my life back on the right track. Derailed, it could slip into the space where the letters and phone calls waited. But I left it too late to act: she would have gone to work. I realized I was late myself, so I grabbed my jacket and rushed out, locking the door behind me.

The morning was crisp with fragmented memories of winter. The promise of spring lifted my spirits. The world went on and it was good.

Halfway down the road I felt in my pocket for my travel pass and found it wasn’t there. For a moment I considered going on without it and paying a couple of quid on fares. But I could scarcely afford it and I didn’t know what I would be doing after work.

So I turned round and went back.

I unlocked the door and instantly felt the difference. It was like stepping into a stranger’s home. The flat was as quiet as death. No humming. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I had left for the day and in coming back after only two minutes found myself intruding. I felt as if I had penetrated some membrane in reality. Everything seemed colorless in the weak natural light my windows allowed. I stood stock still in the hall listening, but the flat was silent. I began to shiver. The hairs on the back of my neck pricked and gooseflesh crept up my arm.

The volume control on the phone was turned low, but when it rang in the stillness of the gray flat it was the shrillest, most frightening sound in the world. My heart faltered. But I wouldn’t miss the phone this time. I strode into the living room, wading tearfully through the thick air. I reached the phone and picked it up while it was still ringing. I held the receiver to my ear and listened. The flat had become like a photograph printed in a newspaper and the dots were gathering and re-forming and swarming before my eyes.

“Hello?” My voice was toneless and compressed with the suppression of terror.

A voice said, “Go to the door. Quickly. Go to the door!” The voice was familiar but seemed constricted by anxiety.

I could only obey.

The flat knew. I wasn’t supposed to be there so it couldn’t protect me. I shouldn’t have come back when I did. The flat knew everything but could do nothing to help me.

I stepped into the hall just as I heard the letter box bang shut and a letter fell through on to the mat. Had I not got there in time there would have been no letter; just an empty rattle.

I tore at the envelope, though I didn’t need to because I had recognized her handwriting and I knew what the letter would say.

Having crossed over accidentally from one track to another, I was now staring into the space in between.

Just as I had strained the relationship by worrying at it and asking all the wrong questions, so had I colluded now in my own downfall both by making the call and by answering it in time. Too late I realized it had been me also on the other occasions, when I’d hung up to save myself.

From the other room I could hear my own distressed voice on the phone shouting, “No no no!” It’s a bit late for that, I thought bitterly.