The New Uncanny Read Online Free PDF Page A

answering rap through the wall.
    He might have grabbed the phone to demand another visit from the staff or, better, have dashed into the corridor to cause uproar outside 339, ensuring that the intruder couldn’t escape unseen this time. Instead he spoke, quite conversationally. ‘I know you’re there.’
    ‘I loathed her hair.’
    He wanted to believe he’d misheard or imagined the voice, which was more muffled than ever. Even when Elizabeth’s hair had grown so thin her scalp showed through, he’d stroked it in the hope she would forget about its state. He hardly knew whom he was addressing as he objected ‘I never said that.’
    ‘I never said fat.’
    ‘That’s right, I didn’t.’
    ‘That’s right, I did it.’
    ‘No, not that either.’
    ‘Oh, what a liar.’
    ‘That’s just not true.’
    ‘That just stopped you.’
    Ferguson had begun to feel trapped in an infantile game by someone who’d succumbed to their second childhood, if not worse. He could hardly wait for them to finish echoing or rather misrepresenting him before he responded – he was becoming desperate to think of an answer they couldn’t turn into a gibe. He might have imagined he was being tricked into selecting words his tormentor found it easy to mishear. Although he tried to take his time, the best he could produce was ‘What a lie.’
    The indefinite voice didn’t bother imitating his pause. ‘Watched her die.’
    While there was no denying this, he didn’t need to admit ‘That’s true.’
    ‘Not you.’
    He was afraid his words might take him unawares. ‘All right,’ he mumbled, ‘let’s have silence.’
    ‘All right, let’s have slyness.’
    He found his mouth with a hand, flattening his lips to keep in any further inadvertent speech. He ached to sleep, but suppose it released his voice? Even the notion of dozing made him feel threatened by a dream – an ill-defined image of somebody wakening in a dark place and struggling to communicate by whatever clumsy methods they still had. His mind recoiled, but staying awake was no refuge. Soon the voice in the next room began to speak.
    He bore it mutely as long as he could, and then he tried to deny all it said. No, he hadn’t ever even slightly wanted her to die. No, he hadn’t grown tired of holding her hand as she lay in bed open-mouthed as a stranded fish. No, he hadn’t wished as her hand grew slack yet again that this time it had slackened for good. No, he hadn’t been disgusted by having to dab at her drool and deal with her other secretions. No, he hadn’t sneaked out of their room to pray for an end to it all. By now he was striving to blot out the voice, but it went inexorably on until he lost any sense of which of them was trying to contradict the other. ‘All right,’ he cried at last. ‘I did, but only for her sake.’
    If this was echoed, it was by the flatness of the hotel room. He felt abruptly far too alone in the dark. When he switched on the light, the room looked as impersonal as a hospital ward – the kind of ward where Elizabeth hadn’t wanted to spend her last weeks. His scattered belongings were at best pathetic attempts to make some kind of claim for his presence. ‘I shouldn’t have come,’ he whispered. ‘There’s nothing here.’
    He didn’t know who was supposed to overhear this, or perhaps he did. ‘It didn’t mean anything with those girls,’ he tried saying. ‘They wouldn’t have wanted me. Nobody would.’
    He was hoping to be contradicted, but the only sounds were his – the creak of the bed as he shifted his weight, the intermittent urgency of his heartbeat. ‘You’re still there, aren’t you?’ he said louder. ‘Say you’re there. Say anything you like.’
    His voice made the room sound as small and flatly featureless as a cell. So did his rapping and then knocking on the wall. It was too late to wonder what he’d done to earn the answering silence. If he caused much more noise the hotel staff might intervene