The Year's Best Horror Stories 21

“Melanie?” I ventured.

“Yes?” She sounded tired.

“I’m sorry for being a pain. It’s just that when I can’t see you I don’t know what you look like. You could be smiling or frowning, but I don’t know because I can’t see you. Do you know what I mean? Just hearing your voice it’s hard to tell if you’re all right or not.”

“Alex.” Her exasperation could be heard in just my name. “Will you stop worrying if I’m all right? It wears me down. OK?”

I agreed and we tried to chat about nothing in particular, but I could tell I’d annoyed her and brought the call to an end before I could do any more damage. Later the same evening the phone rang again while I was dozing on the sofa. I stretched out an arm to pick it up, but my hand seemed to move very slowly as if in a dream and it rang off before I was able to reach it.

I went to bed hoping a letter would arrive from Melanie in the morning.

Again I was in the bath, luxuriating, possibly dozing, when I heard the letter box. I made to get out, but my arms slipped from the sides of the bath and fell into the water with a splash that shocked me out of my torpor. My empty stomach was aching, yearning for food, yet my mouth was dry and slightly bitter. I levered myself out of the bath and didn’t bother drying my feet before padding into the hall.

The doormat was clear. I lifted the leather jacket and raised the flap.

Nothing.

Oh, shit. This isn’t happening.

But it was.

I grabbed my dressing gown from the back of the bathroom door and unsnapped the locks on the front door. I fled down the airy staircase to the communal hallway. There were no letters on the window ledge by the door, where the postman left them if he couldn’t be bothered to climb the stairs. There was nothing but a pile of last week’s free local newspapers, and a couple from the week before. I opened the door to the street and looked up and down for the postman, but he wasn’t around. He moved quickly, I knew, but not that quickly. I shivered and stepped back inside.

Back in the flat I conducted a brief, futile search around the hall. I had to have been dreaming: it was the only explanation.

I was shaken from my gnawing displeasure by the phone. I went to go and get it, but to my dismay it rang off. I picked it up and heard the dialing tone.

Losing my temper, I threw the receiver back at its cradle. It bounced off and I had to control myself and reposition it more carefully.

As I swayed through the Piccadilly Line tunnels on my way to work, I hoped for his sake that Egerton wouldn’t come near me today. The mood I was in, I was liable to twist his unpleasant cheap polyester tie around his furry, animal neck until he choked to death. That way the day, which had started extremely badly, would yield some small pleasure.

The train stopped in the tunnel before King’s Cross and the bank clerk in the Oxford Street suit behind me huffed and tutted. I squared my shoulders against his pathetic noises. Such irritability on the part of other passengers was always worse than the wait for the train to go again. I told myself that if he tutted again I would turn round and ask him to be quiet, but mercifully the train moved.

“Good morning to you,” Egerton practically shouted as I stepped into the office. He was striding past the door, clicking his fingers purposefully as if they were part of the dynamo which powered his ceaseless activity. He always placed stress on the you. Perhaps he thought because he hadn’t yet been smacked in the mouth or taken out by precision bombing that people liked him and his studied eccentricity. They didn’t.

I rang Melanie but she said she couldn’t talk—too busy. We said goodbye. “I’ll ring you later,” I said, but she hung up and I didn’t know if she’d heard me or not. So I rang her back.

“Melanie,” I began.

“Alex. I’m busy.” She sounded pissed off.

“Are you all right?” I asked anxiously.

“Will you stop asking if I’m all right?” She was pissed off.

“Sorry. Look, I only wanted to make sure you’re all right.”

“I’m busy. I’ve got to go.”

Again she hung up. I hated being hung up on, but I couldn’t possibly ring her again. So I waited. Five minutes. Then pressed redial. This is stupid, part of my mind told me. I knew that was right. It was stupid, destructive, doomed to failure. But I couldn’t leave the phone alone when it sat there, saying, go on, use me. Phone her back. You might as well.

“It’s me,” I said quickly. “Listen, don’t hang up. I just want to apologize…”

She hung up.

I had to get up and walk around to try and calm down. But Egerton’s animated hand movements between keyboard and phone, and chin and coffee cup, just put me more on edge. I left the office and walked round the block, wondering what I could do about Melanie. I couldn’t leave things the way they were. I’d upset her and I needed to let her know I was sorry. It wasn’t just for my own peace of mind. I needed to know she wasn’t angry with me. Maybe it was just for my own peace of mind. But if she was still angry with me, ringing her again would only make her angrier.

When I got back to the office I rang a mutual friend, Steve.

“She’s all right, Alex,” was Steve’s opinion. Then the conversation veered away from Melanie and I formed the impression that Steve knew something he wasn’t telling. Something about Melanie.

“Is everything all right, I mean, does she still fancy me?”

“Of course she fancies you,” Steve said before once more steering the conversation into some gloomy sidetrack that seemed to lead nowhere. I allowed myself to be drawn along, as the feeling grew inside me that Steve had placed a particular emphasis on the word fancy, suggesting that yes she still fancied me but that was all and the least of my worries. I wanted to ask him if she still loved me but didn’t dare in case the answer was either no or an awkward silence.

When I got home I rang Holly, one of Melanie’s friends whom I knew well enough to chat to, and asked her if she thought Melanie still cared for me.

“Of course Mel cares for you,” Holly tried to reassure me. I was sure she stressed the verb and once more I was too cowardly to use the word love.

Now I began to convince myself that Steve and Holly were on the same track: they both knew the same thing about Melanie. Maybe it was that she still found me attractive and was fond of me but no longer loved me. Or that she had met someone else or that she had come out. Whatever it was, I worked myself into such a state of anxiety that when the phone rang I found myself virtually paralyzed. I tried to extricate an arm—they were folded around my body and I was rocking gently on the chair—but couldn’t and the effort dragged me off the chair and on to the floor.

Meanwhile the phone rang off after only one or two rings.

Who was trying to contact me? If I managed to answer, would a familiar voice soothe me and calm my fears or would some malicious interloper take delight in confirming my paranoid fears? I had a strong feeling that the world wasn’t as simple as I had always imagined. Not all lives proceeded at the same pace and there were different tracks.

It seemed to me that someone was trying to get through to me, but something about me or my flat was blocking them. Something needed to change, but I didn’t know what.

The phone rang while I was cleaning my teeth. I thought I would just carry on because it would ring off after one ring and I wouldn’t get to it. But it continued to ring and I still brushed.

It rang a third time.

I dropped the brush in the bowl and ran through to the other room, reaching for the phone. But it had fallen silent. I picked up the receiver and listened to the dialing tone for a moment.

I drifted off to sleep determined to catch the postman out in the morning. As soon as I heard the alarm I reached across and silenced it, then slid out of bed. I stood in the cold kitchen while the kettle heated up, and drank my coffee looking out of the sloping skylight, through which I could see only sky. The dawn was a gentle clash of