Thirteen Chairs Read online

  “Who’s there?” he cried. He fumbled for matches, spilled most of them, and took three attempts to finally strike one. He held it high, trembling and twitching, as he turned two full circles on the spot, staring into the dimly revealed room. Finding no one there, he relit the candle and looked again. Nobody.

  He cursed his foolishness, and his dreams, and made his way to bed, singing to himself—quite without thinking—a song from his childhood. He lit a second candle from the first, then climbed into the bed and, shivering at a chill he hadn’t previously noticed, drew the blankets up tight and listened attentively to the silence. Satisfied that he was most definitely alone, his grip upon the bedclothes gradually loosened and the tension in his body unwound. He closed his eyes, and his thoughts began to dissolve as sleep embraced him.

  Give it back.

  The voice was just as quiet and as clear. William’s eyes snapped open, but he was still alone. He trembled and shook. He knew the voice now. It was the voice of a dead man buried in a wood. He tried to convince himself he had been dreaming, but he knew that he had not.

  He took off the ring and shut it away in a drawer, but he did not sleep again that night. He did not hear the voice again, but he did not—could not—sleep.

  Sometime before dawn, he rose, dressed, and, without much thought, gathered together his most valuable and most necessary possessions into a satchel, and left the house. The ring, he left in the drawer: he wanted no part of it now. He walked out to the city limits with no idea where he was going, and when buildings gave way to countryside and farmland he still carried on, and on. He walked at a good pace, and without rest or sustenance, through the dawn, through the day, and through village after village until, after dusk, with no idea where he might be, he crept into a barn on some remote farm.

  He collapsed to the floor and pulled straw around and over him for a blanket. He didn’t even notice the hardness of the ground, felt nothing but gratitude for the opportunity to rest now. His feet ached, the muscles in his legs burned, and he felt drained and hollow. But he was pleased to be so many miles from his lodgings, away from the ring and the dead man’s voice, and exhaustion would surely now send him quickly to sleep. Blissful, beautiful sleep. His eyelids fell shut.

  Give it back.

  No! How could this be? William screwed his eyes tighter shut and tried to ignore the voice. He wrapped his arms around his head, covering his ears. It made no difference.

  Give it back.

  Louder now. More insistent.

  This was madness. This was imagination. This was the fevered invention of his mind, addled by lack of sleep and desperate exhaustion.

  Give it back.

  William yelled out. But his voice had been silent for over a day and he was unable to form actual words, his mind too maddened and panicked to form thoughts to demand them, he could only let out a strange animal sound of profound anguish. Then the tears came, and he did not hear the voice anymore, only his own racking sobs, and he lay there, weeping like a child, until morning. And then he staggered to his feet and walked on.

  William kept walking for two more days, but all the distance he put between himself and the ring made no difference. He could not escape the whispering voice.

  And despite a weariness far beyond any he had ever known before, he still could not rest. The voice, or just the thought of the voice, held him back from the brink of sleep, denying him the thing he most craved.

  He was so tired, so utterly ragged and broken, that it was now a kind of madness. His thoughts were small, angry things that flitted and lurched and tumbled and fought each other in his head. And though he could not sleep, he began at times to think that he was dreaming. All that he saw seemed unreal, distorted, and terrifying.

  People were the worst, so he avoided all human contact, but still he was never truly alone. Every step was full of pain, and his muscles seemed to have worn away, and his limbs had grown heavy and clumsy. He felt as if he didn’t know how his body worked anymore. And the one thought he could hold on to, the one constant, like a screaming hunger beyond any hunger he had ever known, was his desperate need to rest, to sleep, to stop.

  On that third night, hunched up at the foot of a tree, shaking with madness, he pleaded with the dead man, crying out to the night: “Let me sleep! For the love of God, please, let me sleep!”

  And the voice replied: Give it back. Give it back and let me sleep!

  William, blank-faced, gave a weary nod. He rose unsteadily to his feet and began to walk back the way he had come.

  *

  Standing at the open drawer, William looked down at the ring. He felt nothing. He reached down, picked it up, and placed it on the same finger as before. Then he went out and paid all the money he still had for one further coach journey. It was a long trip and William stared out of the window for all the hours that it took, the chaos in his head fractionally tamed by his new sense of purpose, his glimmer of hope.

  In the woods on the hill it took some time to find the spade again, but then he returned to the grave as if led to it. The remains of the flowers confirmed that this was the place; he noticed the sickly-sweet smell of their decay as he started to dig.

  The ground was mercifully soft. He had no strength left in his weary limbs, but a desperate will still somehow moved them, and slowly he progressed down into the earth. His body ached, but he did not notice. Tears fell from his eyes, but he did not know it. His breath rasped in time with the rhythm of his work.

  When he reasoned that he was deep enough, he knelt down at the bottom of the hole and scraped at the earth with his hands. Quite quickly he found cloth: the upper part of a shirtsleeve. He scrabbled at the soil, feverishly scratching earth away to reveal an arm, a hand. He held it for a moment, looked down at his own hands, blackened by the earth, clasped as if strangely praying around the body’s cold, dead flesh. When he pulled the ring from his finger, it left a clean pink circle of flesh amid the earth-stained skin.

  He lifted the dead man’s hand, parted the ring finger from the others, and slid the ring onto it. Then, for a moment, he knelt there, still holding the dead man’s hand, and he closed his eyes expectantly and listened to his own breathing. There was no other sound. The silence was beautiful.

  William laid the dead man’s hand back by the side of his body, then filled his own lungs with the sweet woodland air. He opened his eyes again, as if waking to a new day. He might have smiled if he had had the strength.

  It was over.

  But when he tried to rise to his feet he found that he could not. And it was not fatigue that prevented him. The dead man’s hand was closed around his own, holding him down. He pulled against it wearily but it only pulled back with greater determination. He toppled forward, his face landing against soil beneath which the dead man’s face must have lain. He knew he should struggle, but his slow brain was failing to tell his body how. And then he felt the embrace of another bony arm thrown around his back, holding him down with surprising force. Then the other hand released its grip, reached up above him, and began to claw at the earth, bringing down clods of it onto his back.

  William made no sound, barely resisted, as the soil piled up over him. After a while, the left arm held him while the right pulled down more earth, and more. And the weight of it was like bedclothes. And as more fell over his head, there was darkness. There was the smell of earth, and there was darkness.

  He knew he must not sleep. He knew he must not.

  But he was so tired.

  “Thank you, Mr. Blackmore,” says the pale man, and a flicker of a smile plays briefly upon Mr. Blackmore’s pursed lips before he regains his solemn expression and gives a tiny nod. Then he leans forward and blows out his candle, shifts his chair away from the table, and sits back.

  Jack, emerging from the spell of the story like a swimmer breaking the surface of a lake, gasps for air. It is only a tiny noise but it resonates around the otherwise silent room. Then he gulps, and that sounds deafening, too. But, loo
king around, no one seems to have taken any notice of him. It looks, too, as if no one else has reacted to the story quite as he has. No one else looks scared. Instead, there are smiles and nods of appreciation, as if everyone is relishing the lingering aftertaste of something delicious.

  “Well told, sir,” says the man with the ragged face, widely grinning. “A fine start to the proceedings. A good old-fashioned tale, eh, Mr. Osterley?”

  Apparently, Mr. Osterley is the pale man. He smiles a thin smile. “Quite so, Mr. Fowler. A fine traditional tale.”

  “Aye, sir. You have the truth of it there, right enough. And a burial in it, too, eh?”

  Mr. Osterley’s face tightens just the tiniest amount.

  “After a fashion,” he says, and Jack wonders why there seems to be a tone of distaste in his voice now. “Perhaps we shall have a more modern tale next. Mr. Harlow, I imagine you might have something suitable?”

  So that is what tonight is all about then, thinks Jack. Ghost stories. Well, that’s all right. Jack likes a good ghost story. He loves a good scare. Though he’ll have to take a turn himself at some point. He’ll need to give that some thought.

  Mr. Harlow, it turns out, is the man next to Mr. Fowler, and the farthest from Jack of the three bearded men. His beard is neither as neat as Mr. Blackmore’s nor as substantial as the giant Piotr’s. It is a scraggy mess, patchy and wild as an untended garden. He is a touch taller than average, and probably used to be handsome once, before so much of his face got hidden away. He is smiling an uneasy smile, nervous and tight. All of him seems to be too tight, in fact. He seems ill at ease, tense, and that tension seems to be pulling him out of his ideal shape. He has a notepad on the table in front of him, a cheap, shabby-looking thing, spiral-bound, tatty, and tea-stained. He flicks quickly through its pages with jerky, slender fingers.

  “My story tonight is, um …” He has leafed through too far, to the few blank pages left at the back of the pad. Flustered, he starts at the beginning again. “I wrote it out, years ago. Just hang on a minute …” he says rather apologetically. “If I don’t, I … Where is it? … I get rather lost and get things in the wrong …” His fingers come to a halt at a dense page of text full of crossings out, corrections, and amendments. He jabs a finger down at it, as if trying to pin it down and ensure it cannot escape. “It’s a story about … Did I ever mention that I used to be a taxi driver? Before, I mean. Well, obviously before, but … Uh, anyway, I was, for a while. And I heard this story once, from one of the other drivers. It’s kind of about a taxi, you see, and, um … So, that’s why I chose this one, because … Anyway, see what you think.”

  Mr. Harlow looks down at his notepad, quiet for a moment, gathering his thoughts and his courage.

  Then he begins to read.

  Against the background noise of heavy rain, he heard the low rumble of an engine and the crunch of tires on gravel, and he was glad of the excuse to end his telephone call.

  “Got to go,” he said. “Bloody taxi’s here early and I don’t want to risk losing him with the weather like this. I’ll see you there. Bye.” He put the phone down and glanced out of the window at the waiting cab. “Bloody idiot.” He meant it equally for the driver and the business colleague who had just called. Two for the price of one.

  He gulped down the last mouthful from his glass of whisky—an expensive single malt—and pulled on his overcoat as he walked to the front door. The black car’s rear passenger door was open, ready for him, but the driver had returned to his seat rather than remain outside in the rain to usher him in and close the door after him.

  No tip for you, he thought. He ducked into the backseat and slammed the door shut in what he hoped was a clearly dissatisfied manner.

  “The Hardwicke Center,” he said. “You know where that is, I suppose?”

  The driver didn’t reply. He didn’t even turn his head, only raised his left hand in a vaguely reassuring wave while tapping with his right hand at the screen of his GPS. Then he eased the cab around the circular gravel drive and out toward the road.

  “Turn right.” The GPS’s voice was female; soft and warm, but precise, too.

  Sprawled in the backseat, he scowled at the back of the driver’s head. They used to just know, he thought. They had to learn all the routes by heart. Now they just rely on gadgets. Probably foreign, too. Too embarrassed to try to talk to me in English. Oh well, at least that might mean he won’t try to start a conversation. He’d become all too familiar with the conversations of taxi drivers in the last year or so. He didn’t like talking with anyone very much, but he especially hated talking with taxi drivers.

  “At the next intersection, turn left.”

  “Can’t you turn the sound off, at least?”

  He wanted silence. Actually, no, he didn’t want silence. He just didn’t want anything to interrupt the sounds of driving: the rain on the roof of the car, the noise of the road beneath the wheels, the thrum of the engine. He missed it. He’d loved driving. Loved his car. Oh, his beautiful car! He didn’t want to think about what had happened to it. When was it? Must have been about a year ago now. He’d been so unlucky. There must have been some oil or ice or something at that corner: he never would have come off otherwise, whatever the so-called experts from the police said. And he hadn’t been so far over the limit. He’d just lost track a bit at the office party. It was difficult to judge quantities in those plastic cups.

  The driver gave him the same vague wave as before, again without a word.

  “In two hundred meters, turn left.”

  Oh, what was the use? He dug his smartphone out of his inside pocket and clicked on the calendar. Then he scrolled back in time to a year ago. Well, would you look at that? The accident had been exactly a year ago. To the very day! Exactly a year since he had lost his beloved new car, and his license, just because he’d had a glass or two of wine too many. And how was he supposed to know how strong that punch had been? It really wasn’t fair.

  “At the intersection, turn right.”

  He glanced out of the window, vaguely recognizing his surroundings. It was an odd route they were taking. Not the one he’d have chosen himself, but he chose not to question it. He had noticed scars on the backs of the driver’s hands. Dozens of them. He didn’t want to guess at how he might have gotten them, and he certainly wasn’t going to ask. Instead, he returned his attention to his phone. He stared at the date and, despite himself, thought back to that night.

  It had been snowing then. Prettily at first, as he had set off home, snow from a black-and-white Christmas movie. But then it had gotten worse about halfway back, and become harder to see where he was going. Perhaps he should have slowed down a little, but the road through the wood was always very quiet, so where was the harm? That was part of why he’d chosen to live out there in the middle of nowhere, after all. And a car like that—well, it’s just not right to drive it slowly.

  He closed his eyes in a moment of reverie, remembering the car. He’d only had it a couple of days. It had still had that new-car smell, not really a nice smell in itself, but full of excitement and promise. The thought of it almost brought tears to his eyes. He breathed in deeply through his nose, half expecting that same scent now but catching, instead, a distinct whiff of something rotten.

  God! Can’t they at least keep the cars clean?

  He opened his eyes and stared angrily at the back of the driver’s neck, but noticing there, for the first time, more scars to match those on his hands, continued to say nothing.

  The galling thing was that, up until the drive home that night a year ago, it had been a brilliant week for him: a big promotion at work, the new car as a result of the promotion, the final papers on his divorce coming through. He had felt a huge sense of freedom. No wonder he had celebrated with a drink or two. No wonder he had wanted to drive fast, and feel powerful and abandoned and alive.

  And it would have been fine if it hadn’t been for the snow. The snow making it so hard to see. And there m
ust have been ice on the road. Must have been.

  And the other car …

  As they turned a corner, a car passed them going the opposite way, its headlights raking through the interior of the taxi, glaring into his eyes and stretching shadows over the driver. It shook him back into the present. He glanced out of his window and couldn’t recognize where they were. He would have expected that they would have joined the main road by now, then they would go up onto the ring road, bypass the town center, and on to the venue. But maybe there was a problem on one of the roads that way and the GPS was automatically diverting them. Or, on the other hand, maybe his driver was trying to prolong the journey to push the fare up. Well, if that was the case, then he’d picked the wrong man. He took out his phone again and clicked on its GPS. A map filled the screen, a pointer tracing the car’s progress as they went. They were certainly a little off course, but only a little. Not enough that he could be sure of deliberate deceit. Not yet, at least.

  But I’m watching you now, sonny boy. You just try it and I’ll know. I’ll get you sacked at the very least.

  He wasn’t above using his influence to do damage to other people’s lives. There had been that keen young policeman after the accident, for instance.

  “I just wondered,” the cop had said, in his tremulous voice, “if you had seen anything. Only, Mr. Korbin went missing the same day as your accident. And from what we know, he must certainly have been driving somewhere nearby, and at around the same time.”

  No, he had said, he hadn’t seen anything, which was almost true as his eyes had been closed for the crucial seconds when he had drifted onto the wrong side of the road. But he hadn’t fallen asleep. Not for more than an instant anyway, and you couldn’t blame him for that.

  Nor had he lied when he had said that he did not recognize the photograph of poor missing Mr. Korbin. He hadn’t properly seen the driver of the other car in the split second available to him. And then it had swerved violently to avoid him and careered off the road and into the woodland. Once he had reined his own car back under control, he had braced himself for the inevitable sound of the other car crashing, somewhere in the woods, but it never came. And he did not go back to look, or even check his mirror. And by the time he had his own crash (there must have been ice), he was another mile down the road.