but the wood gave way slightly as he leaned against it. He rattled the knob and braced himself to kick the door in.
He didn't have to. In his hand the knob twisted and the door swung inward, so abruptly that he fell inside. The door banged shut behind him. He glanced across the room, looking for her; but all he saw was grey light, the gauzy shadows cast by gritty curtains. Then he breathed in, gagging, and pulled his sleeve to his mouth until he gasped through the cotton. He backed towards the door, slipping on something dank, like piles of wet clothing. He glanced at his feet and grunted in disgust.
Roses. They were everywhere: heaps of rotting flowers, broken branches, leaves stripped from bushes, an entire small ficus tree tossed into the corner. He forgot Helen, turned to grab the doorknob and tripped on an uprooted azalea. He fell, clawing at the wall to balance himself. His palms splayed against the plaster and slid as though the surface was still wet. Then, staring upward he saw that it was wet. Water streamed from the ceiling, flowing down the wall to soak his shirt cuffs. Leo moaned. His knees buckled as he sank, arms flailing, into the mass of decaying blossoms. Their stench suffocated him; his eyes watered as he retched and tried to stagger back to his feet.
Then he heard something, like a bell, or a telephone; then another faint sound, like an animal scratching overhead. Carefully he twisted to stare upward, trying not to betray himself by moving too fast. Something skittered across the ceiling, and Leo's stomach turned dizzily. What could be up there? A second blur dashed to join the first; golden eyes stared down at him, unblinking.
Geckos, he thought frantically. She had pet geckos. She has pet geckos. Jesus.
She couldn't be here. It was too hot, the stench horrible: putrid water, decaying plants, water everywhere. His trousers were soaked from where he had fallen, his knees ached from kneeling in a trough of water pooling against the wall. The floor had warped and more flowers protruded from cracks between the linoleum, brown fronds of iris and rotting honeysuckle. From another room trickled the sound of water dripping steadily, as though a tap were running.
He had to get out. He'd leave the door open — police, a landlord. Someone would call for help. But he couldn't reach the door. He couldn't stand. His feet skated across the slick tiles as his hands tore uselessly through wads of petals. It grew darker. Golden bands rippled across the floor as sunlight filtered through the grey curtains. Leo dragged himself through rotting leaves, his clothes sopping, tugging aside mats of greenery and broken branches. His leg ached where he'd fallen on it and his hands stung, pricked by unseen thorns.
Something brushed against his fingers and he forced himself to look down, shuddering. A shattered nautilus left a thin red line across his hand, the sharp fragments gilded by the dying light. As he looked around he noticed other things, myriad small objects caught in the morass of rotting flowers like a nightmarish ebb tide on the linoleum floor. Agates and feathered masks; bird of paradise plumes encrusted with mud; cracked skulls and bones and cloth of gold. He recognized the carved puppet Helen had been playing with that afternoon in the Indonesian corridor, its headdress glittering in the twilight. About its neck was strung a plait of flowers, amber and cerulean blossoms glowing like phosphorescence among the ruins.
Through the room echoed a dull clang. Leo jerked to his knees, relieved. Surely someone had knocked? But the sound came from somewhere behind him, and was echoed in another, harsher, note. As this second bell died he heard the geckos' feet pattering as they fled across the ceiling. A louder note rang out, the windowpanes vibrating to the sound as though wind-battered. In the corner the leaves of the ficus turned as if to welcome rain, and the rosebushes stirred.
Leo heard something else, then: a small sound like a cat stretching to wakefulness. Now both of his legs ached, and he had to pull himself forward on his hands and elbows, striving to reach the front door. The clanging grew louder, more resonant. A higher tone echoed it monotonously, like the echo of rain in a well. Leo glanced over his shoulder to the empty doorway that led to the kitchen, the dark mouth of the hallway to Helen's bedroom. Something moved there.
At his elbow moved something else and he struck at it feebly, knocking the puppet across the floor. Uncomprehending, he stared after it, then cowered as he watched the ceiling, wondering if one of the geckos had crept down beside him.
There was no gecko. When Leo glanced back at the puppet it was moving across the floor towards him, pulling itself forward on its long slender arms.
The gongs thundered now. A shape humped across the room, something large enough to blot out the empty doorway behind it. Before he was blinded by petals, Leo saw that it was a shrunken figure, a woman whose elongated arms clutched broken branches to propel herself, legs dragging uselessly through the tangled leaves. About her swayed a host of brilliant figures no bigger than dolls. They had roped her neck and hands with wreaths of flowers and scattered blossoms on to the floor about them. Like a flock of chattering butterflies they surged towards him, tiny hands outstretched, their long tongues unfurling like crimson pistils, and the gongs rang like golden bells as they gathered about him to feed.
Services Rendered
Louise Cooper
Louise Cooper has been writing stories since she was old enough to control a pencil. Her first novel , The Book of Paradox, was published when she was twenty-one, and since then she has had more than fifty books published. These include the Time Master Trilogy and its two spin-off trilogies , Chaos Gate and Star Shadow. More recently she has written a young adult trilogy set in the same world : Daughter of Storms, The Dark Caller and Keepers of Light.
Other adult fantasy titles include the eight-volume Indigo series and the stand-alone novels Mirage, The King's Demon, Sacrament of Night, Our Lady of the Snow and The Summer Witch. For children, Cooper has written a series of nine books (plus a Christmas special) titled Creatures, spooky tales with an animal theme published by Scholastic. She is currently working on a more 'mainstream' adult novel (though still with supernatural overtones) and a venture into an alternative-history tale .
'I haven't the faintest notion how this story came into my head,' admits the author. 'It just did. One moment I was racking my brain for a plot that would make for a slightly different twist on the vampire theme; the next, the complete idea was sitting grinning in my mind. That's unusual for me.
The theme of Services Rendered' came from a question that I find endlessly fascinating: how an ordinary, down-to-earth human being reacts when faced with the apparently impossible, especially so when that 'impossibility' combines something terrifying (possibly), repellent (probably) and dangerous (potentially) with the lure of a 'dream come true' scenario.
'As for vampires I've yet to encounter one of the classical kind outside of a movie screen, and I sincerely hope it stays that way. But there are individuals whose effect on those around them has something in common with the
