It Knows Where You Live
Read It Knows Where You Live Online
Authors: Gary McMahon
WHERE YOU LIVE
G
ARY
M
C
M
AHON
Kindle Edition
Published by Crystal Lake Publishing
Edited by Joe Mynhardt
Contents
Alice, Hanging Out in the Skate Park
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Gary Fry for publishing the original edition; to Joe Mynhardt for agreeing to publish it again—along with the other stories, of course; and finally, as always, to my beloved Charlie and Emily for being where I live.
To Second Chances
AUTHOR’S FOREWORD
It’s just about morning here: coffee and yawning; that weird empty lull before sunrise. I have to write this brief introduction, but I’m tired and distracted. I’ll try my best, but forgive me if some of the minor details are incorrect.
Back in 2012 a collection of mine called
It Knows Where You Live
was published as a signed, limited hardback by Gray Friar Press. The subtitle of the book was “modern tales of unease”. That didn’t make it into the printed book, but it exists in the Word file. Only one hundred copies of the book were ever printed. I inscribed a small, unique message in each one. It’s a gorgeous little volume. The print run sold out before it was even produced.
Ever since then, people have continually asked me if I have any spare copies. The book was in-demand, but there were no copies remaining—even the book dealers sold out fast. I always thought we missed a trick not putting out a trade paperback edition. Now, especially with the popularity of eBooks, it seems like the right time to make the book available again...but in a slightly different form. When I contacted Joe at Crystal Lake Publishing and pitched him the idea, I was delighted he seemed keen to run with it. I’ve worked with Joe before; he’s a good guy. I like working with good people.
This new edition leaves out three stories from the original hardback:
Among the Leftovers
,
Hope is a Small Thing Dying in a Bin Behind an Abandoned Kebab Shop
, and
Nine Lives
. I left these stories out for two reasons: one, to ensure those who bought the original hardback didn’t feel cheated; and, two, because I wanted to streamline the first part of this book to make room for the additional material. I think they’re good stories, but they’re short, and their absence doesn’t affect the flow of the book.
The additional material I mentioned (subtitled “Other Monsters”) consists of two obscure reprints and five brand new pieces of fiction. I wanted to make this book attractive enough to whoever bought the original that they might consider putting their hands in their pockets again. I don’t want to cheat people. I’ll leave the cheating to others.
So, welcome to where I live, the fictional world I inhabit. It’s cold and dark, but hope still blooms in the shadows. You just have to look hard enough, and with the right kind of eyes. Sometimes fantasy and reality tend to blur; the lines between those two states get fuzzy.
Strange things can happen here. Things nice people don’t like to talk about, but people like you and I love to discuss. In fact, let me tell you about something that happened only last night...
•
•
•
I told myself it would be a bit of fun: hiding beneath my son’s bed, dressed up in a cheap clown suit and fright-wig, with my face covered in white greasepaint makeup. He’d get the shock of his life, and we’d laugh about it. Of course we would. We hadn’t shared a joke in months, and everyone says laughter is food for the soul.
He doesn’t get to laugh much since his mum left us, so I figured it would be good for him. Good for me, too, if I’m honest.
So I slid in under the bed frame, pushing aside the discarded toys and torn magazines, and made myself comfortable down there—well, as comfortable as I could.
Then I waited. I waited to play my little joke.
Time passed. I wondered what was taking him so long to come upstairs. Surely he’d brushed his teeth by now? I waited and I waited and I think I fell asleep, just for a moment, or maybe a little longer. Whatever.
When I opened my eyes again, it was darker under the bed than it had been before. The room felt...
different
. I couldn’t say how, it just did. Nothing felt the same.
I heard movement above me. The mattress creaked, the bed frame shuddered, and somebody was breathing softly. He was in bed. The little so-and-so. He must have come upstairs while I was dozing, slipping softly under the covers while I lay below. Perhaps he even knew I was there, under the bed, and was playing his own little joke. Turning the prank on the prankster.
Oh, how we’d laugh at that. We’d laugh and laugh until our faces ached.
Slowly, I began to edge sideways, moving out from under the bed. I was as quiet as a mouse, as soft as a promise. I straightened my back and got up onto my knees, rising slowly at the side of the bed with my hands grasping the edge of the bedclothes. Then I looked, preparing a smile.
“Hello, Daddy,” said the scrawny yellow thing sitting on my son’s bed, in a quavering, high-pitched voice. Its lidless eyes were as deep as the ocean and its wide mouth was filled with glinting silver. “I’ve been waiting for you.” It lifted its bald, flabby head off the pillow, smiling through razorblades, long tongue hanging down onto its quivering, scaly chest.
Only then did I realise the joke was on me.
•
•
•
See what I mean?
I’m sure it happened, but this morning I woke up safe and sound in my bed. I felt a bit groggy, as if I had a hangover, but I was unharmed. I have no recollection of going to sleep.
When I finish typing this and email it to my publisher, I’ll go to my son’s room to wake him up for school. Part of me has been hanging back, scared of what I might find in there—because strange things have been known to happen where I live.
But none of this is your concern. It needn’t bother you. Just have a read of the stories and enjoy them. They’re only fictions: they can’t really touch you, not where you are. Fear and dread cannot possibly bleed through the pages of a book.
Meanwhile, I’m off to check on my son.
I’ll try to let you know how I get on.
Gary McMahon
Yorkshire
2013
IT KNOWS WHERE YOU LIVE ...
JUST ANOTHER HORROR STORY
It begins with a man and a woman in a room. It always begins this way; has done since time immemorial. A couple, a pair of lovers on a bed in a single room, sprawled across the mattress, their bodies still slick with sweat from a bout of lovemaking. Words of passion still tremble on their lips like hummingbird wings. The lights are low. All is silent. Then, abruptly, one of them speaks...
•
•
•
“I remember hearing about something that happened here once. Or maybe I read it in a book—a book of real-life horror stories.” Terry rolled onto his side and bent his elbow on the hard mattress, one hand supporting his chin and the other cupping his balls. He blinked in the darkness and looked at the woman by his side. “Something about a murder.”
“Don’t,” said Nancy, but she was smiling, enjoying the game as it began. Her eyes glittered like rain on a pavement, reflecting the light from the main road outside the hotel window. They had left the blinds open even though it was a ground floor room. The window was guarded by a row of bushes, then the retaining wall of the car park. The main road was beyond, distant enough not to risk them being seen by anyone passing by.
“Go on,” she said, warming to his theme, her eagerness negating the doubt she’d expressed in her previous statement.
Terry smiled. She thought his teeth looked too white—like scrubbed fangs—in the darkness.
“There’s this couple, right.” He slithered on the bed. The springs creaked, adding a sound effect to his story. “They’re illicit lovers, two married people meeting up to fuck.” He paused.
She shook her head. “Yeah, yeah, yeah...I know: just like us.”
He nodded. “So they’ve just been having sex and she goes for a shower.” His gaze darted momentarily towards the bathroom. “He stays in the bed, thinking about joining her but too lazy to move. His eyes roam over the cheap hotel furniture and then up across the wall. That’s when he sees it.”
She was fumbling for the whisky bottle on the bedside cabinet. There was half left. She poured two glasses and handed one to him. He reached for it with his ball-fondling hand.
“What did he see?” Her voice was low, almost forlorn. She knew how this would end—if not the specifics, then the general outcome.
“There’s this small hole on the wall, like a drill hole. Perfectly round, but with the wallpaper torn all around its edges. That’s how he spots it: because of the torn paper.
He paused to take a drink.
She did the same, and grimaced. The whisky was raw, a crude blend, and the only glasses they’d been able to find in the petrol station shop were cheap dessert glasses.
“So he gets up and pads naked across the room. Staring at the little hole. He sees something glinting there, like glass catching the light from a passing car. When he gets really close, with his nose touching the wall, he sees it’s a camera lens.”
Nancy choked a little on her drink. “A camera?”
Terry nodded. “A camera.”
She laughed softly. “Continue. Please. This is fascinating.” But despite her sarcasm she did feel a sudden chill, the stipple of gooseflesh across her bare arms.
“So she’s still in the shower. He leaves the room and stands outside the door to the next room—the one where he thinks the camera must be located.” He paused again, drank. “
That
room.” He raised the glass and tilted it slightly towards the wall, indicating the room beyond.
“This wallpaper’s terrible. Like something out of a 1970s porn flick.” She pulled up the covers, trying to get warm again.
“Funny you should mention that...about a movie, I mean. The guy, our guy, he tries the door. It’s unlocked. So he opens it and steps inside. There’s the camera, pushed up against the wall with the business end of its lens pressed right against the hole. A black and white TV on the side shows the empty room he’s just left, with the open bathroom door and steam from the shower creeping around the frame like a mist.”
The traffic sounds from outside the window hit a lull, and the silence became deep and unfathomable. Terry took another drink, almost draining his glass. She could see that he was drunk; his bottom lip had gone soft and his eyes had taken on a familiar glaze.
“And,” she said, knowing she would regret this later.
“And as he watches the other room on the small black and white screen he sees a masked figure, all done up in a leather gimp outfit, walk out of the bathroom holding his girlfriend’s cut-off head in one hand. There’s blood on her face and in her hair, and blood and stuff on the knife the gimp has in his other hand.”
She felt her body twitch and hated herself for it. She should have seen this coming—in fact, she had, or something very similar. Terry’s stories always ended in blood and death.