The New Uncanny Read Online Free PDF

again and drive away for good whoever had been there. He could still use the phone, and he keyed 339, though his fingers were so unsteady that their fat tips almost added extra numbers. He heard the other phone ring in the dark, and continue ringing and at last fall silent, because he’d laid the receiver to rest in its cold plastic trench. After that there was silence – for all the long night, silence.

Possum
Matthew Holness
    I PICKED IT up by the head, which had grown clammy inside the bag, drawing to it a fair amount of fluff and dirt, and pushed the obscene tongue back into its mouth. Then I blew away the black fibres from its eyes and lifted out the stiff, furry body, attached to its neck with rusted nails. The paws had been retracted by means of a small rotating mechanism contained within the bag handle itself, and I detached the connecting wires from the small circuit pad drilled into its back. Forcing my hand through the hole in its rear, around which in recent years I had positioned a small number of razor blades, I felt within for the concealed wooden handle. Locating it, and ignoring the pain along my forearm, I swerved the head slowly left and right, supporting the main body with my free hand while holding it up against my grubby mirror.
    I’d come home to bury it, which was as good a place as any, despite my growing dislike of the mild southern winters. Yet, having stepped from the train carriage earlier that afternoon and sensed, by association I presume, the stretch of abandoned line passing close behind my old primary school, up towards the beach and the marshes beyond, I’d elected to burn it instead; on one of Christie’s stupid bonfires, if he was still up to building them.
    Despite my plans, I’d felt inclined to unveil it mid-journey and hold what was left up against the compartment window as we passed through stations; my own head concealed, naturally. But I’d thought better of that; I dare say rightly. In any case the bag concealing it drew inevitable attention when, entering the underpass on my way back to the house, one of the legs shot out, startling two small boys who were attempting to hurry past. Years of adjustments to the inner mechanism had enabled the puppet’s limbs to extend outward at alarming speeds, so that when operated in the presence of suggestible onlookers, it looked as though the legs of some demonic creature, coarse and furred, had darted swiftly from an unseen crevice. Then, as happened rather beautifully on this occasion, the perturbed child, or children, more often than not would catch sight of a second, larger hole, carefully positioned at the rear of the bag to capture peripheral vision, and glimpse, within, its eye following them home. The effect, I am pleased to say, was rather stunning, yet, like any great performance, had taken me years of practice to perfect.
    Christie had not been at home when I’d arrived, although as usual the front door had been left unlocked and the kitchen table crammed with large piles of rubbish awaiting destruction. Stacked among the old comics and clothes I’d found the familiar contents of my bedroom drawer, along with an old tube of my skin cream and a skull fragment I’d once dug up at the beach. Having retrieved these, I’d drunk a large measure of his whiskey, tried the lounge door, which, unsurprisingly, was locked, then taken my bag up to the bedroom. The walls had been re-papered again with spare rolls from the loft, familiar cartoon faces from either my sixth or seventh year. The boards were still damp, the floor slimy, and a strong odour of paste hung heavily in the cramped room. I’d opened a window – the weather was indeed horribly mild – and switched the overhead bulb off, favouring darkness for what I was about to do.
    Although the body was that of a dog, Possum’s head was made of wax and shaped like a human’s, and I could not have wished for a more convincing likeness. Capturing even my old acne scars, yet