The Spectral Book of Horror Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

announced, “my house,” but he could still hear the commentary underlying his own. “I’ll find you,” he cried. “I know you’re there. You aren’t hiding from me.”
    As he stalked along the aisle he began to recognise the passengers—the man at Jaz’s table in Yesterday’s, the girl who’d been brought into Vin’s shop. He couldn’t see his wives, however many faces he caught hold of. He was well on the way to prying a face wide to grasp the source of the relentless voice before its owner struggled free, having bitten Stu’s fingers, and fled like the rest of them. Several were emitting sounds higher than Stu was making. The guide was the last to flee, and shut him on the bus. He didn’t mind being left when he still had his audience, more of whom were joining them on the pavement. It was completely his tour now, and he took the guide’s seat, but he hadn’t discovered how to start the bus by the time several men drove up to help him.

THE DOG’S HOME
    Alison Littlewood
     
    Sometimes, the cruellest thing a creature can give you is love. I get up and Sandy the retriever is there. He comes running when I go downstairs and tries to lick my face. I feel sad, or irritated, depending on my mood, and then I go out and the last thing I see is his head tilted to one side, surprised to see me leaving him all over again. I get back and he’s there, tail wagging—I can hear it, beating the radiator by the door—and it begins again. There’s no end to his love. It’s capacious; it’s infinite. It was the first thing I was told about him, and it was true, and every day I’m surprised to see that it’s true. You’d think both of us would have got used to it by now, but we haven’t. I suppose, in that, I’m more like him than I realise.
    “You wouldn’t stand a chance if it wasn’t for the dog,” my mother had said when she raised the question of visiting Aunt Rose. At first I didn’t know what she meant, though I remembered my aunt from when I was small; she’d come on a duty visit. I was about five years old. She’d loomed over me in the hall and dropped her bag next to her feet, which were clad in brown brogues that I could see my snotty little nose in. She’d leaned down, her scrawny hands reaching for me, and she’d touched both my cheeks. Her hands were cold, I remember that too, and then she leaned in closer, pursing her lips. I’d waited for the touch of her tight mouth on my cheek, but it never came. Instead she’d whispered, her voice dry and fierce but her breath surprisingly warm against my skin, “Wash your face before you greet your elders and betters.”
    I’m not sure my mum even heard; certainly, I never saw her react. And that was how I remembered Aunt Rose, crone-like, tall, thin, claws for hands and a death rattle voice. I filed her away in a mental box with Do not open on the lid, and left her there. Or so I thought.
    “It’ll go to the dogs’ home,” my mother said.
    She had no love of my aunt. She had no love for my dad, either. He’d left the two of us a long time ago and I thought we’d managed all right, got along without too many problems; until she’d said that about the dogs’ home.
    Aunt Rose had ‘married rich’, Mum always said, and she always had a note of resentment in her voice when she said it. Better still, judging from her tone, Rose had ‘married dead’, the guy popping it soon after, leaving her loaded. A big inheritance with nowhere to go. No wonder Mum had pound signs in her eyes.
    That was when she’d said, “Course, Andrew, you wouldn’t stand a chance if it wasn’t for the dog.” She looked at my blank expression and snapped, “Rose doesn’t like people. But that dog—that dog likes people. So Rose tolerates them. She’ll visit folk just because the dog likes to see them. She’ll stop and chat to people on their walks, because her dog likes their dog. If it wasn’t for that animal—” she clicked her tongue in disapproval.