Fremlin Don't Go to Sleep in the Dark

Classic Halloween Ghost Stories from the Author of Uncle Paul
Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-31270-2
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 168 Seiten

Spine-chillingly creepy Halloween tales of horror from author of Waterstones Thriller of the Month, Uncle Paul: the 'grandmother of psycho-domestic noir' (Sunday Times) for fans of Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith and Stranger Things. 'Few people can chill the blood like Celia Fremlin.' Telegraph 'Grips like grim death.' Spectator I tried to open my mouth to call out again; but it was not my mouth that opened; it was a great beak, jutting out of my face, cruel and curved like a bird of prey ... In the high flats, up near the clouds, Hilda and her baby twins reach a fateful end ... An aunt feels foreboding about her niece's new fiance - but the darkness comes from within ... A haunted babysitter experiences a little girl's terror of The Hen With The Great Big Eyes ... One teenage girl's evening home alone is ruined by a mysterious unexpected visitor ... A little boy's obsession with angels leads to a dramatic metamorphosis ... Celia Fremlin's classic Gothic story collection is a masterpiece of psychological horror, mining the darkest elements of marriage, childhood, and ageing; probing paranoia, grief and toxic relationships; inviting the ghosts of the past into our present; and exploring the nightmarish secret impulses and supernatural forces lurking beneath suburban Britain.

Celia Fremlin (1914-2009) was born in Kent and spent her childhood in Hertfordshire, before studying at Oxford (whilst working as a charwoman). During World War Two, she served as an air-raid warden before becoming involved with the Mass Observation Project, collaborating on a study of women workers, War Factory. In 1942 she married Elia Goller, moved to Hampstead and had three children. In 1968, their youngest daughter committed suicide aged 19; a month later, her husband also killed himself. In the wake of these tragedies, Fremlin briefly relocated to Geneva. In 1985, she married Leslie Minchin, with whom she lived until his death in 1999. Over four decades, Fremlin wrote sixteen celebrated novels - including the classic summer holiday seaside mystery Uncle Paul (1959) - one book of poetry and three story collections. Her debut The Hours Before Dawnwon the Edgar Award in 1960.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fremlin, Celia

Leseproben

THE QUIET GAME

IT WAS NOT Hilda who first talked of being driven mad, up there in the high flats, far above the noise of the traffic and the bustle of the crowds. On the contrary, it was her neighbours who complained to her about the stresses. “It’s driving me up the wall!” said her neighbour on the right: and “I can’t stand it any longer!” said her neighbour on the left: and “I’ll go out of my mind!” said the woman in the flat below. But not Hilda. Hilda was the young one, the busy one. From the point of view of the neighbours it was she who was the cause and origin of all the stresses. She wasn’t the one who was being driven mad, Oh no. That’s what they would all have told you.

But madness has a rhythm of its own up there so near to the clouds; a rhythm that at first you would not recognize, so near is it, in the beginning, to the rhythms of ordinary, cheerful life …

*

“What’s the time, Mr Wolf? What’s the time, Mr Wolf?” Thumpty-thump-thump-thump. Thumpty-thump-thump-thump … The twins’ shrill little voices, the thud of their firm little sandalled feet reverberated through the door of the kitchenette and brought Hilda to a sudden halt in the midst of the morning’s wash. Her arms elbow-deep in warm detergent, she just stood there, while the familiar, helpless anger rose slowly from the pit of her stomach. She would have to stop them, of course; the innocent, happy little game would have to be brought once more to a halt by yet another “No!” And quickly too, before Mrs Walters in the flat below came up to protest; before Mr Peters on the right tapped on the wall; before Miss Rice on the left leaned across the balcony to complain of her head and to tell Hilda how well children were brought up in her young days.

Miss Rice’s young days were all very well; in those days children had space for play and romping. If they were rich they had fields and lawns and nurseries and schoolrooms; if they were poor, they had at least the streets and the alley ways. But today’s children, the sky-dwellers of the affluent twentieth century, where could they go to run, to shout, to fulfil their childhood? All day long, up here in the blue emptiness of the sky, Hilda had to deprive her children, minute by minute, of everything that matters in childhood. They must not run, or jump, or laugh, or sing, or dance. They must not play hide-and-seek or cowboys and Indians, or fling themselves with shrieks of joy into piles of cushions. Except when she could find time to take them to the distant park, they must sit still, like chronic invalids, growing dull and pale over television and picture books.

“What’s the time, Mr Wolf? … One o’clock—two o’clock three o’clock….” Thumpty-thump-thump-thump. Hilda had a vision of the sturdy little thighs in identical navy shorts, stamping purposefully round and round the room, little faces alight with the intoxication of rhythm and with the mounting excitement of the approaching climax. Before this climax—before the wild shriek of “Dinner-time, Mr Wolf!” rent the silence of the flats, Hilda would have to go in and spoil it all. “Martin! Sally!” she would have to say, “You really must be quieter. Why don’t you get out your colouring books, and come and sit quietly? Come along, now, over here at the table.” And she would have to watch the bright little faces grow tearful, hear the merry, chanting voices take on the whine of boredom; watch the firm, taut little muscles relinquish their needed exercise and grow flaccid as they sat … and sat … and sat. It was wicked, it was cruel….

“Mrs Meredith? Could I speak to you for a minute, Mrs Meredith?”

So. Already she had left it too late. Here was Miss Rice out on her balcony, hand on brow, headache poised like a weapon, and already sure of her victory.

“It’s not that I want to complain,” she began, as she began every morning “And if it was just for myself, I suppose I’d try to put up with it, but it’s Mrs Walters too, she hasn’t been too well either, and it’s driving her up the wall, it really is, all this hammer, hammer, hammer. She’s just phoned through to me, asked if I could have a word with you, save her coming up the stairs with her bad knee.”

Bad knees. Headaches. Not-too-well-ness. These were the weapons by which happy little four-year-olds could be crushed and broken; there was no defence against them. “I’m sorry,” said Hilda despairingly; and again “I’m sorry … I’m sorry….”

*

The twins had been settled at their colouring books for nearly an hour before Mrs Walters below rang up to enquire if Hilda couldn’t somehow stop that boom-boom noise? “Boom-boom-boom” the clipped voice mimicked explanatorily down the wire. “It goes right through my nerves, Mrs Meredith, it really does. I can’t think what they can be doing, little kiddies like that, I can’t think what they can be doing.”

Firing cannon? Riding roller-coasters round the room? No, it turned out to be Sally’s energetic rubbing-out of her drawing of a cat. It wobbled the table, it set the floor vibrating.

“No, Sally, don’t use the rubber any more, just colour it how it is, there’s a good girl.”

“No, Martin, you must keep your dinky-car on the rug, Mrs Walters will hear it on the linoleum.”

“No, Sally, leave that chair where it is, we don’t want Mr Peters knocking on the wall again.”

No…. No…. No. Two lively little creatures reduced to tears and tempers, to sobbing, hopeless boredom.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t Hilda saying “I can’t stand it!” It was Miss Rice. And Mr Peters. And Mrs Walters.

*

Autumn passed into winter, and it was less and less often possible to take the twins to the park. Their bounding morning spirits had to be crushed earlier and earlier in the day. The search for a quiet game, for something that wouldn’t annoy the neighbours, became a day-long preoccupation for Hilda; but in spite of all her efforts nothing, nothing seemed quiet enough; for still, without respite, came the voices, from above, below, on every side:

“Really, Mrs Meredith, if you could keep them a little quieter….”

“Mrs Meredith, I don’t want to seem to complain, but….”

“Mrs Meredith, sometimes I think it’s a herd of elephants you’ve got up there….”

“It’s not that I don’t love kiddies, Mrs Meredith, but that’s not the same as letting them grow up little hooligans, is it, Mrs Meredith?”

“It’s my head, Mrs Meredith.”

“It’s my nerves, Mrs Meredith.”

“I’ve not been feeling too well, Mrs Meredith.”

So No, No, No, all through the grey November days. No, Martin. Stop it, Sally. No. No! No! No! The twins grew whiney and quarrelsome; their sturdy little legs looked thinner, their faces paler.

And still it wasn’t Hilda who said “I can’t stand it.” It was Miss Rice. And Mr Peters. And Mrs Walters.

*

It was the new carpet that gave her the idea; the new square of carpet bought to deaden the sound of footsteps in the hallway. It was not really new, it was second-hand and somewhat worn, but the twins were enchanted by it. They had never seen a Persian carpet before, and for a whole afternoon there was silence so absolute that not a word of complaint came from above or from below or from either side. From lunch-time till dusk, Martin and Sally crouched on the carpet examining every brown and crimson flower, every purple scroll and every pinkish coil of leaves. Hilda felt quite light-headed with happiness; a whole afternoon with the twins truly enjoying themselves and the neighbours not complaining!

“It’s a magic carpet!” she told them hopefully, when she saw that their interest was beginning to flag. “Why don’t you sit on it and shut your eyes, and it’ll take you to wonderful places. See? Off it goes! You’re flying off above the rooftops now, you’re looking down, and you can see all the houses, and the streets, and the trains….”

“And the Zoo!” chimed in Sally. “I can see the Zoo and all the animals in it. I can see the tigers and the lions …”

“And now we’re over the sea!” squealed Martin. “I can see the whales and the submarines and—and—Oh, look! Look, Sally, I can see an island! Let’s stop at that island, let’s go and live there!”

The game took hold. The perfect quiet game had been found at last. Hour after hour the twins would sit on the carpet travelling from land to land, and seeing strange and wonderful sights as they went. They would land in Siberia, or at the South Pole, or on a South Sea Island, where wild adventures would befall them, and they only escaped in time to fly home in time for tea.

But their favourite destination of all was Inkoo Land. In Inkoo Land there were tiny elephants just big enough to ride on; there were twisty, knobbly trees, wonderful for climbing, and from which you could pick all the kinds of fruit in the world. There were wide spaces of grass to run on, there was a jungle to play hide-and-seek in, there were monkeys who talked monkey-language, and Sally and Martin learned it too, with fantastic speed and ease; and then they played with the monkeys, swinging from branch to branch through the green, sun-spangled forests.

But always, in the end, they had to come home; they grew tired of sitting even on a magic carpet; and the moment they disembarked and set foot on the floor, the voices would...