One Foot in the Grave Read Free

ghosts.
    Moving ever more confidently as the plan proceeded without mishap, he took another overcoat and two suits to the bed. He rolled the bedclothes carefully aside and laid the coat and suits down where he had been sleeping. Not enough bulk. Quite definitely walking now and no longer shuffling, he went to the bath cubicle and fetched the fat towel and the extravagant sponge, laid them on the clothes and patted the whole pile into shape. He had to brace his thighs against the edge of the bed to pull the bedclothes back over the dummy without dragging it out of shape. All his life he had tended to sleep with his head drawn well down into the bedclothes, and since the plan had taken shape he had exaggerated the habit. She had teased him about it, but he’d simply said the night-lighting disturbed him. And since there was no chance of his remaking the bed to her standards, he had coaxed her to stop tucking the bedclothes in. She hadn’t liked that. Dangling blankets, all night. Tsk.
    â€œI wouldn’t let any of the others sleep like that, you know.”
    â€œWhy?”
    He’d only meant what was the harm in sleeping as one chose, but she’d answered another question.
    â€œBecause they aren’t really real. So they might as well do things my way.”
    â€œAm I real? I hardly feel it, in this place.”
    â€œDon’t talk nonsense — it’s bad for you. Just remember you’re real, but the others are all — all gnomes.”
    â€œHobbits?”
    â€œOrcs more likely. Retired orcs. I bet Mr. X has got his dragon hoard somewhere.”
    How long had all that taken? Another nine minutes. Would she have finished with Mr. X? Lady Treadgold refused to be bedded down until two in the morning, and in any case Jenny was frightened of her. …
    Almost but not quite in panic, he pushed the visitor’s chair into place, shut the wardrobe, crossed to the door and looked round. Anything she wouldn’t expect to see? The clothes he’d worn that day were as she’d left them, folded neat as a map on the dressing-table stool. The dummy … who could tell? He’d never seen himself from this angle. He nodded to it. You’re not real either now, he thought. Bye.
    He entered the bath cubicle, switched off the light, closed the door to a chink. Very carefully, mistrusting the reliability of touch, he felt his way to the tall stool that stood by the handbasin and eased his buttocks onto it, leaning his back against the tiled wall. A long sigh wandered from his lips. Rubbish, he thought. You aren’t exhausted—you’ve hardly started. Rest. Between three and seven minutes, on previous form.
    Now that he was still he became more conscious of the storm noises. Rain turning to snow, the wireless had said. Deep drifts in the north. He had sat in his chair, watching the last light fading, and seen thin flakes like ice chips beginning to swirl past the darkness of the big cedar. The storm was hissing now through those somber needles; one of the branches creaked in the gusts. The grip of his will, the impetus of the plan, began to fade, and his mind floated into its weary trick of repetition of phrases jumbled beyond meaning or memory of an origin … the boiler house is blowing in the wind … there’s that Frenchman … forty-three degrees of thirst. …
    Dark and chill. Waiting, hour after hour, motionless, just in case. Smell of fresh-sawn timber and river reek from the wharf. Unfamiliar constant nudge of pistol holster against ribs. “They might come back,” Dickie Foyle had said. “I’ve a bit of a hunch they won’t, but we’ve got to give it a go. We’ll tell the press Monday we’ve found where it all happened.” Two young men had died, very slowly, in this rickety office, their screams drowned by the squeal of the sawmills. No sense of horror or haunting, only the blankness of waiting. No one came.