Dark Little Wonders and Other Stories Read online

  As they walk, Mary's lips move and she speaks a silent prayer.

  IV

  What if I had made a different decision? Is there some way to change my mind?

  Sitting alone in the pantry, Mary stares at the wall ahead. She has spent the morning in a daze, but now she is wearing her finest clothes and she can hear other voices in the main room, and she knows that it is almost twelve o'clock. And twelve o'clock is when she must leave for the church.

  Only one chance, she reminds herself. The house can never be found again.

  Yet still she wonders. One week after the meeting with Necros, she finds that her thoughts are still so rushed, that her mind races with the possibilities. Even as friends and family members gather to pay their last respects, Mary wonders whether she might run out into the city streets and somehow find that wretched house again.

  “I've changed my mind!” she imagines herself shouting, as she sees herself banging her fists against the door. “Let me in! I've come back!”

  Closing her eyes, she already knows that it's too late.

  “Mary?”

  As soon as she hears the voice, she knows exactly what it means.

  Keeping her eyes tight shut, she listens to the sound of footsteps coming closer, and then she feels the bench bump slightly as her sister sits next to her.

  “It's time, Mary,” Elizabeth says, before reaching out and tenderly touching her left hand. “Everyone's here.”

  Mary opens her eyes, allowing more tears to run down her face.

  “We're here for you,” Elizabeth continues. “There's no -”

  “It didn't have to be like this,” Mary says suddenly, through gritted teeth. “If he'd just let me go back, instead of forbidding me...”

  Her voices trails off.

  “What do you mean?” Elizabeth asks, before pausing for a moment. “You've said things like that recently,” she continues. “On and off. About going back somewhere. About Joseph not letting you do something. What's on your mind, sister?”

  “This is his fault,” Mary sneers, as anger begins to spread across her face. Her hands, clasped together now, are trembling violently. “I tried to persuade him, but he wouldn't listen. He just dismissed everything I told him and insisted that we couldn't go back. If only he'd let me go back and try to change things. But perhaps it's not too late. Even now, even as the coffin... Perhaps there's still a chance.”

  “Go back where?” Elizabeth replies. “You're not making sense.”

  “I -”

  Mary hesitates, and then suddenly she gets to her feet and starts drying her eyes.

  “We can't leave people waiting,” she declares, sniffing back more tears and then taking a moment to straighten the front of her black dress. “Whatever will they think? Some have come from quite a distance, and I have been a terrible host. I must go out there at once and speak to them. There is to be no going back, and no undoing of the past. Why, however could I have imagined such a thing? Once a decision has been made, it cannot be unmade.” She turns to Elizabeth and – somehow – manages a smile. “I'm ready.”

  Elizabeth stands.

  “Are you sure?” she asks.

  “I have never been more sure of anything in my life,” Mary replies, before taking a deep breath and then stepping past her, heading toward the door that leads into the main room.

  And then, as she steps through, she stops in her tracks as soon as she sees the coffin. She hesitates, and makes the sign of the cross across her chest, and then she steps forward again.

  “I'm so sorry,” her cousin Anne says, hurrying over to her as Mary makes her way on unsteady legs toward the coffin. “It's such a terrible business, Mary. It's the most terrible tragedy.”

  “It is indeed,” Mary replies, before stopping in front of the coffin and looking down at the lid. For a moment, she imagines the body inside, and a ripple of anger courses through her body. “It should not have been this way. There should have been some other solution, but he just insisted on leaving that night. He wouldn't let me go back, no matter how hard I tried to persuade him. If he had let me go back, I could surely have changed the bargain. As it is, we had no chance.”

  “Such a good man,” Anne adds, staring down at the lid of the large, six-foot-long coffin. “But you have all of us, Mary. We shall rally around you.”

  “I am sure you will,” Mary whispers.

  “And, of course, you have someone else who dearly needs and loves you,” Anne says, smiling as she steps aside to let Elizabeth come closer. “She's such a beauty.”

  Mary continues to stare at the coffin for a moment, before turning to see Clara wriggling and gurgling in her sister's arms. Sickened for a moment by the sight of the child wrapped tightly in white fabrics, Mary finally remembers that she must put on a brave face. Despite her innermost revulsion, therefore, she reaches out and carefully accepts Clara as the child is passed into her arms.

  “There,” Elizabeth says, rubbing her hands together as if to warm them, “isn't that better, Clara? Dear Mama has you again.”

  “She still seems a little out of sorts to me,” Anne suggests. “I don't know what it is with babies, but you can just tell, can't you? Then again, I believe I heard that she was sick a while ago. Is she quite alright now, Mary?”

  “She's quite alright,” Mary replies, looking down at Clara and seeing two dark eyes staring back up at her. “She's over it now.”

  “Perhaps she senses things,” Anne continues, seeming a little uneasy. “Are you going to tell her the truth about her father one day, Mary? That he was stabbed to death one night, while you and Clara slept? Oh, won't they ever catch the monster who did it? I don't know how anyone can feel safe around here at the moment.”

  “Indeed,” Mary replies, still watching her daughter's face and still seeing a rather curious expression mixed into the girl's features. “It was a most senseless attack. The brute did not even steal. The police seem to think that he might have been a drunkard, else he was someone who had a private grudge against my husband. Regardless, both Clara and I slept through it all.”

  For a moment, she glanced at the coffin, thinking back to the moment when they'd returned from the house of Necros. To the moment when she'd realized that Joseph would never let her fulfill what Necros had wanted. To the moment, finally, when she'd suffered a brief fit of madness and seen to it that Clara would survive. To the moment when she'd taken a knife from the kitchen.

  “Shall we go?” Elizabeth asked, touching her arm and bringing her back from her thoughts.

  “Indeed,” Mary replied. “Have the men carry the coffin out. I believe tradition has it that I must follow my late husband, rather than leading him.”

  So she waited patiently as several men came into the room and prepared to remove the coffin, so that they could all begin the short journey to church. And as she waited, Mary could not help but look down at little Clara as the child wriggled in her arms. Smiling, Mary told herself that everything would be alright now, that the promises of Necros had come true. At the same time, as he looked at her daughter she was unable to shake a sense of coldness, a feeling that since her resurrection Clara had never quite been the same. That the eyes staring up at her seemed different somehow.

  “It'll all be okay,” Mary said, trying to sound happy. “Papa is gone, but we have one another. And soon you'll be back to normal.”

  Suddenly Clara began once more to whisper. She had done this several times over the previous few days, but Mary was never able to quite make out the words. This time she leaned closer, turning her head so that her left ear was almost touching the child's mouth. The whispering continued but remained mostly incoherent, although Mary could tell from the rhythm of the sound that Clara seemed to be speaking in complete sentences. Which was impossible for such a young girl, but still the truth could not be denied, even as the child's icy coldness seemed to reach through her swaddling clothes and burn her mother's arms. Except that, this time, as the coffin was carried out of the
room, Clara's whispers became a little clearer, and for the first time Mary was able to hear some of what the child said:

  “I saw Death, Mama. He waits for each of us. And the longer he waits, the more time he has to plot what horrors and agonies shall befall us in the next life, according to the sins we have accumulated. Oh Mama, he was almost kind to me. Why did you have to bring me back so that I must live again?”

  The Fabricci Manuscript

  One

  224 Barnhope Gardens. This should be the place, except there isn't a 224 Barnhope Gardens. I see 222 and 226, but there's no 224 on either side of the road.

  A night bus rumbles past as I look back down at my phone. I figure I must have made a mistake, but when I check the email I find that, nope, I was actually spot on. I'm supposed to knock on the door of 224 Barnhope Gardens at precisely 10pm, which is five minutes from now. And that's going to be difficult, seeing as how the address doesn't seem to exist.

  Must be a typo.

  “Great,” I mutter under my breath as I bring up a map of this part of London. “Another dead end.”

  I'm shivering so hard in the cold night air, I can barely type, but after a few failed attempts I finally manage to input the right address. Or the wrong address, as I'm starting to assume. The map app ponders my request for a little while, before showing a red pin dropped pretty much exactly where I'm standing. So the map think I should be able to find number 224, even if there's no sign of the building itself. And seeing as how all the houses along this street are terraced, it's not like there could even be a spot where number 224 used to be.

  I'm wasting my time. At this rate, I'm never going to get a job in time. And since the email doesn't even have a valid return address, I can't find out where I'm actually supposed to be.

  I should just go home and apply for more jobs, and hopefully next time the interview will be at a place that actually exists.

  And then, as I slip my phone back into my pocket, I happen to glance one more time at numbers 222 and 226, and I see that there's actually a very thin, very narrow alleyway running down between the two houses. I hesitate for a moment, convinced that there can't be anything there, but then a niggling voice at the back of my head reminds me that I really really really need a cash-in-hand job as soon as possible, and that since I've already come all the way out here I might as well cross over and take a peek.

  I check both ways, and then I hurry across the busy road. Taking care not to step in any of the puddles with my leaky-soled right boot, I head to the alleyway and take a look, but all I see is absolute endless and distinctly uninviting darkness. I'm a fifteen-year-old girl in a shady part of London, and there's no way I'm going down some grimy alley that probably just leads into someone's rat-infested back garden. London's no Wonderland and I'm sure as hell no Alice, so I sigh as I turn to head back toward the bus stop.

  And then I see it.

  On the wall next to me, right on the edge of the alleyway, there's a simple wooden square nailed to the brickwork. Only a few inches long and tall, the square looks battered and faded thanks to the elements, but a faint number is just about visible etched into the surface. Sure enough, that number is 224, and beneath those three digits there's an arrow pointing straight along the alley.

  I turn and look into the darkness, which looks no more appealing than it did a few seconds ago. Except for the fact that I guess I now know where to find number 224. Not that I particularly want to go stumbling along a blind alley, especially when my only source of light is my phone and my only means of defense is a scream and an entirely untested right hook. I know with absolute certainty that I should just head on off to the bus stop and forget this whole endeavor, but after a moment I bring up the job ad again and read through the highlights:

  WANTED!

  Motivated, professional person of any age.

  Must have good English skills, preferably native.

  Must be punctual and presentable, with a very keen eye for detaiil.

  Must take pride in his / her work.

  Generous payment in cash at the end of each shift.

  All shifts take place overnight.

  Huh. Yeah, so basically how the ad should really read is:

  WANTED!

  Desperate person who'll take any job provided it's immediate cash in hand.

  No dignity or pride required.

  Ideal candidate will have no life and won't mind working horrible hours.

  Minimum wage or worse.

  That's better. That describes the job just as well and – to be perfectly honest – it describes me pretty well too. I am desperate, I don't have any dignity or pride when it comes to finding a job, and my social life is kind of M.I.A. right now.

  But then there's that typo.

  The ad mis-spells the word 'detail' as 'detaiil', which seems like a hell of a coincidence. I'm sure it could be a mistake, but I'm also wondering whether it's some kind of trick or test. There's also the information contained in the email, which mentions an address that – again – would only be found by someone who notices the small things. Small like a little wooden square nailed to the brickwork, pointing along a dark alley that looks like it leads to oblivion.

  And to be fair, I do have an eye for detail. When I worked for that blog last year, I never let a single error slip through. So there's a slim possibility that I'd be absolutely perfect for this job, a fact which almost makes me willing to walk along a pitch-black alley that might as well lead straight into the den of a bunch of serial killers and murderers.

  Almost.

  But while I'm desperate, I'm not that desperate.

  Sighing, I slip my phone back into my pocket and turn to walk away. And then, at the last moment, a flicker of light appears at the end of the alley just in time to stop me, and I turn to see that some kind of lamp has been switched on in the distance. It's not much of a light, just a single bare bulb burning at the end of what's still a remarkably dark and foreboding alleyway, but at least it's something. In fact, it's just enough to let me see the faintest outline of what looks like a door set into a brick wall, which at least means that there's definitely a house out there. That's almost enough to make me want to check the place out, but...

  I'm still not sure.

  I check my watch and see that it's now exactly 10pm.

  Huh.

  Almost as if that light was switched on specifically for my arrival.

  Well now I'll feel kind of rude if I walk away. These people are obviously waiting for me, which is nice, and I can almost see enough of the alley to be certain that there aren't any murderers or thieves lurking in the darkness. Almost isn't usually enough for me, I prefer to be certain, but – whereas the dark alleyway initially seemed forbidding – the light at the end now seems pretty welcoming.

  I still hesitate, though, as I try to weigh up the pros and cons of taking the risk. Finally, however, I step forward and turn sideways a little, which is necessary in order to squeeze through such a narrow space.

  In fact, I have to walk in an increasingly crab-like manner as I make my way along the alley. I swear the walls on either side are getting closer and closer as I progress, to the extent that about halfway along I actually start to feel a little claustrophobic. I keep going, however, and once I'm past the halfway point I realize that I might as well keep going. Shuffling along sideways, I keep my eyes fixed on the door at the far end, and I start to see that the door itself is actually partially blocked on either side by the brick walls, which run all the way to the front of number 224.

  Talk about squeezing a house into the tightest possible space.

  When I finally reach the door, the walls are still so close that I have to remain sideways. I raise my right arm and check my watch, and I see that it's now exactly 10pm. I hesitate for a few more seconds, still wondering whether this is really a good idea, but then I reach up and take hold of the old, faded bronze knocker high up on the front of the door. This whole situation feels increasingly absurd as I stand h
ere, almost wedged between the two walls, but I suppose that sense of the absurd is what lessens the fear as I finally bang the knocker against the door. Then I bang it again, just to be certain. Then I almost bang it a third time, before deciding to not be quite so forceful and instead letting go.

  A moment later, I hear footsteps coming from somewhere inside the house. Looking up, I see three higher storeys stretching up toward the starless night sky, and I'm suddenly impressed by just how tall and overwhelming this house seems, and how high the door rises above me. It's almost as if this place is waiting to gobble me up.

  Damn you, Myrtle. Look at the things I do for you.

  Two

  A key turns, and then I hear a bolt slide across on the door's other side. I take a deep breath, ready for the door to open, but then there's the sound of another key turning just a little further down, followed by another bolt and then by a heavy clunking sound that frankly could be anything. This in turn is followed by a series of rapid clicks, as if someone is turning a dial, and then there's the rattle of a chain high up toward the top of the door. After a few seconds, it occurs to me that this could be the sound of someone unlocking the door, or that it could equally be the sound of someone adding additional security to guard against intruders.

  And then suddenly the door handle turns and the door swings inward, and I see a large, high-ceilinged hallway with black-and-white tiles leading off toward a grand staircase at the far end. All beneath a huge, unlit chandelier that hangs down from chains that run from the ceiling.

  “You're on time,” a man's voice says, and I realize that he's completely hidden behind the door that he's just opened. “That's a good first impression.”

  “Thank you,” I stammer, so quietly and with such a strong mumble that I don't even know if he hears.