The Outsiders (3 page)

He
smiled. Stress was leaving the station already.

Friday
night. Pizza for the family and the chance to chug down two or
three beers, while watching CSI. Kendra was tired after yesterday’s
late night of passion and Eddie sent her off to bed with a cheeky
smack to the rump as she went.

11.27pm.
Eddie ate cold pizza and drank another beer, belching loudly as he
watched a highlights programme of last week’s game he had already
seen. The Sandman was beginning to take hold. The beers were
beginning to aid in his work and sleep was calling,
again.

He
grabbed a bottle of mineral water from the fridge to take up to bed
and approached the drapes of the lounge, once again. He had renewed
confidence in himself now, and the Dutch courage of four beers. He
quickly pulled the curtains as wide as his outstretched arms would
allow.

He yawned
and looked across his lawn, over the street to Dan’s place, but saw
nothing out of place.

“
Fucking stress ’ll kill ya,” he muttered and went to pull the
drapes again.

A black
shadow shot up from its hiding place outside and underneath the
window, the Lurker was wide now and its eyes dazzled bright like
jade neutron stars.

Eddie
fainted on the spot...a mix of booze, tiredness...and
fear.

An hour later he woke and shaking from head to foot, he
crawled up the rough carpet of the stairs and into bed, where sleep
took him...eventually.

The kids woke him at nine the next morning after their mother
had sent them up to fetch him for a cooked breakfast. Eddie pushed
his shocked children away and ran to the en-suite toilet to
throw-up. Kendra took the kids out for the day to the mall, leaving
her sickly husband curled up in the sheets of the bed. There he
stayed staring out at the white puffy clouds that moved slowly
across the blue sky, for many an hour. He finally got up at
‘something after one’ and took a hot bath instead of his usual
shower, then had some strong black coffee and doughnuts to raise
his sugars levels.

Blaming
the beers, he apologized for ruining their Saturday, but the kids
had new games for their consoles and weren’t bothered that their
dad had suffered from ‘grizzly beer’ head.

Eddie
vowed not to touch the drapes tonight.

Whatever
was out there could do whatever it wanted; just leave him out of
it.

10.32pm.
He and Kendra headed up to bed. This was very early for him. No
booze. No pills. Just Kendra’s warm body next to his. They just
cuddled and Eddie felt so secure in her warm embrace, the Sandman
worked his magic.

At ten to
twelve, his bladder told him to get up and he headed to the main
bathroom so as not to wake up his wife, by using the en-suite. He
was halfway across the landing by the stairs, when he heard their
cat suddenly hiss from below.

“
Molly, what’s the matter?”

Then he
saw what was spooking the family pet.

A tall thin
stickman
of a shadow detached itself from the dining room
doorway and seemed to
wave
at Eddie before disappearing into the dark
room...and nothing.

The cat
recovered its composure and Eddie stood, unable to move.

He needed
no excuse to visit the bathroom. He’d already unburdened himself.
He turned around, sensing he was being watched. Kendra was standing
at the bedroom door.

Dr Michelson had always had a soft spot for Kendra and agreed
to visit on Sunday after golf and see Eddie. He hardly recognised
the fit thirty-five year old, shivering in his bed with dark rings
under his bloodshot eyes. The doctor gave him a sedative and some
sleeping pills...and stressed to Kendra that Eddie
must
visit the surgery,
first thing on Monday.

For the remainder of the day, one half of Eddie Vaisey behaved
like some catatonic mental patient, the other half was hiding in
the recesses of his mind like a frightened child.

He took
his medication at eight and was asleep by nine

Now it
was Kendra’s turn to stay up late worrying, while her husband
slept.

She came to bed at something just after eleven, with
two
Bacardi’s
to
aid her sleep...and nerves. As she climbed into bed and turned off
the light.

Darkness.

Eddie slept...
uneasily.
His dreams became a mix of memories past, some
good, some not so.

His
mother sat on the end of his bed trying to protect and educate when
explaining the death of his own father. Eddie was only nine years
old. His father, just thirty-eight.

No reason
for it. Just plucked from the prime of life.

Mom had done a good job, just enough educating, just enough
protection.
Miss you, mom.

3.33am. From the corner of the room. In the darkness. In the
gloom.
It
stepped.

Eddie rose up on his elbows. Something inside told him
not
to disturb his wife.
She would be fine.

The world
seemed to whirl and twist for a few moments, but eventually his
eyes settled on the shape in the shadows. Slow deliberate steps.
Each movement carefully considered. The creatures glowing eyes
seemed as fire coals from the deepest parts of Hell.

The
Lurker rose to its full height and remained at the bottom of the
bed. Eddie watched with petrified fascination as the shadow
creature’s right arm reached out for him. The hand with long, bony,
pointing fingers moved along the bed. Eddie suddenly realised he
could no long move or breathe. The fingers stretched up over his
quivering chin, over his agape mouth and nose and into his
eyes.

Then it went dark

..and
with the darkness went the fear of the Lurker.

5.53am. When Eddie awoke again, it was still dark, but he
found he wasn’t in his own bed any longer. He was swaying in a
strange manner on Dan’s lawn next to the cherry tree. He looked in
fascination at his own house across the street and wondered how he
came to be outside and why the Lurker thing had not killed
him.

In the dining room window in his house, the drapes were
suddenly pulled back and he was shocked to see a face he recognised
instantly...his own. His own face staring out across the lawn
at
him.

From
his
house.

Eddie
reached out a hand and screamed at the long spindly limb that was
now his own as he pointed to his doppelgänger and saw the jade eyes
glowing right back...at him.

OLD
SLIPPERY

Stuart Neild

Max
didn’t believe in spooks or ghouls. He didn’t believe in Father
Christmas. And he certainly didn’t believe in monsters. As if he
would listen to his stupid Grandad, or his dozy Gran. Ok, he liked
the fact he got to stay with them when he was on his holidays. But
he was seven years old now, and the stories they came out with were
not fooling anyone.

“
Stay away from the water.” they said.

A bit
tough, he often thought to himself, when their place was surrounded
by the stuff.

He liked
the water, and seeing as there was not much in Max’s young life
that he had a good word for. As such, the water was highly
honoured.

Grandad
had been left in charge of him for the afternoon. This caused worry
for his Gran and that made her talk loudly to Grandad. She often
talked loudly. There were other times when she would ask Grandad a
question and he wouldn’t answer or wouldn’t give the right kind of
answer. Gran would then answer back for him with the right kind of
answer.

Max liked
that.

It was
like the old people were putting on a puppet show and Grandad was
the puppet and Gran was the puppetmaster.

With Gran
away at the doctors, Max found himself to be the voice of the
puppeteer du jour.

“
Can I go down to the lake, Grandad?”

“
You can if you want Old Slippery to get you.”

“
So does that mean yes?”

“
He lives at the bottom of the lake, Old Slippery they call
him. He waits and waits, and when the time is right he strikes. He
eats children, naughty children who go near the water.”

“
What’s Old Slippery, Grandad?”

“
He’s an eel, a big giant eel. A monster.”

“
What’s an eel?”

“
It’s a big snake-like thing in the water.”

“
A big snake in the water that eats people?”

“
That’s right boy, keep away from that water or he’ll get
you.”

As if.
Max didn’t care what his Grandad thought and seeing as his Gran was
away he went down to the water anyway. Sure he knew his Gran would
go mad at him when she got home, and saw him all muddied up like he
always got, no matter how he tried not to. But it didn’t matter.
Grandad would get in more trouble. He would be the one that got
really shouted at, after which his Gran would start crying and then
ring his mother to say that Grandad was getting worse and she
didn’t know what to do. This always surprised Max. If anything it
was his Grandad who didn’t know what to do. Like the time a couple
of days ago he got lost and some people found him and brought him
back. Grandad had done tons of funny things like that, so it didn’t
really matter Max thought, that he had disobeyed his elder and gone
to the water.

As Max
sat at the edge of the lake, peering into the depths, he tried to
imagine what a monster snake-thing would actually look like. He
couldn’t imagine what an eel looked like because he didn’t know
what one was. Maybe it was just one of those silly words Grandad
made up now and again.

Max
fidgeted on the grass. Damn, it was wet. He hated it when he got
the seat of his pants wet. He hoped it wouldn’t rain anymore. He
couldn’t stick the rain. Even though he always seemed to get soaked
and muddied up, he didn’t like the feeling of it.

Still there was no point in him going home yet. His Grandad
wouldn’t get him changed or know where his clean clothes were. Max
looked down at his left leg, a great big streak of mud rose up it
like a snake. Boy, would Gran be angry at Grandad when Max did get
home. Of course Max didn’t want to stay out too long. Then his Gran
might get the police like she did when Grandad got lost the time
before last. Yep he sure was stupid. A stupid old man that thought
a big giant snake, sorry, an
eel
lived in the water. Wait a second, Max thought, he
didn’t just call it an eel, he said it had a name. Old Slippery.
Max stood and moved closer to the water.

“
Old Slippery”, he shouted in between giggles “are you there?”
The words reverberated round the desolate lake.

“
Old Slippery, Old Slippery, let me see you”, Max shouted
before exploding into fits of laughter. God, his Grandad was a
fool. Anyone had to be a fool who kept getting lost and believed in
monsters. Max never got lost and as for monsters, he…

Something
caught Max’s attention in the water.

It must
have been a big fish. Max’s dad had often talked about big fish.
He’d told Max all about the fishing trips he’d been on when he
caught the biggest fish possible. Max hadn’t seen his dad for a
long time. A long, long time.

There it
was again.

A prize
of a fish, his dad would have called it. Max lay down on his
stomach pushed his head nearer still to the water, at least this
way he wouldn’t topple into the water and he could watch the big
fish, without it seeing him. Maybe it would even come nearer that
way. ‘That was the trick’, Max’s dad always used to say, ‘never let
them see you till its too late’. He was a mighty fine fisherman,
even if sometimes his mum would say he wasn’t a man at all, and he
should pay for Max. Max didn’t want paying, he would happily hang
around his dad for free. And how proud his dad would be now, his
son, the fisherman, watching a big fish.

But wait
a minute, Max thought, to be a real fisherman you had to catch a
fish not just watch it. He looked around, he had no fishing rod, he
would have to make do with what he could find.

With a
stick in one hand and a small rock in the other hand he got back
into position on his stomach, his head hanging over the water,
watching and waiting for the big fish to make its
appearance.

Max
looked down at his own reflection in the water and giggled. His
reflection, however, abruptly stopped giggling back at him. Max
looked puzzled. No puzzled look came back from the shimmering
mirror image. Max also noted how his eyes had shrank. He looked
closer into the water, maybe it was a trick of the lake, but his
eyes seemed more beady and red in colour. He poked his stick into
the reflection and stirred the water round. The reflection that
looked nothing like him continued to stare back opening its mouth
wide when Max’s mouth was still and shut. Perplexed, Max finally
pulled his face up and away from the water. He stood and scratched
his head. Could it be...