The World House Read online

  GUY ADAMS

  The World House

  To Diana Adams, with infinite thanks and love, for passing her passion for story onto her son and being unwavering in her support.

  CHAPTER ONE

  They had threatened to break his legs if he didn't find them the money owed. It wasn't an inventive threat but the best never are. What's the point of intimidation if it's not easily imagined? You want the recipient to get their head around the concepts on offer, to feel the sensation of bones splintering inside their legs like shattered lead in a dropped pencil. With a great threat the pain starts the minute you finish talking.

  For Miles Caulfield it had done its job, his every thought filled by men with lump hammers and an eagerness to use them. Perhaps that's what had happened? He couldn't be sure. His body felt distant, something important he owned but hadn't seen in a while, like a childhood memento stashed in the attic.

  It was dark, with a smell so familiar as to have been beneath his notice for a moment: the muskiness of old things. Was he in the shop then, rather than his flat above? Perhaps they had dragged him down here amongst the junk and cobwebs to check his till. To work their way through his shelves and display cabinets for something of worth. If so they needn't have bothered; the sign outside promised "the antique and collectable" but he would hardly be receiving leg-breakers at his door if any of it was valuable. It was a shop dedicated to the battered and broken, the discarded and worthless. He now realised that included the owner. Probably it always had.

  So he was surrounded by the smell of old things but there was something not quite right about it. He had spent countless hours sitting amongst his own stock, flipping through a newspaper or completing a crossword. The sorts of pursuits one might involve oneself in when not distracted by the intrusion of customers. It didn't smell like this. This was real age, the sort of dust that might contain fragments of God. He tried to move again but his body was so remote to him that the simple act of twitching a limb was telekinesis. They must have done one hell of a job on him.

  "They'll kill you, you know," Jeremy had said as they sat on the wooden bench teasing the ducks with the steaming contents of their takeaway containers. "It won't be quick either, I've seen enough movies, they'll make an example of you. Probably cut your dick off and stick it in your mouth."

  Miles, a hunk of meat and bread turning to mush in his mouth, put the rest of his burger down and swallowed reluctantly. "Thanks for that."

  "Just saying." Jeremy mixed a slurry of ketchup and mayonnaise with a pinch of fries and popped them in his mouth. "That's the kind of thing these people do."

  "We're talking about Gordon Fry not Tony Soprano."

  "Just think of me when you're gagging on your own bell-end."

  "Fuck's sake…" Miles dumped his food in the bin and lit a cigarette to fumigate his mouth.

  Jeremy gave him a dirty look, wafting the smoke away from his face. "I'm eating here, do you mind?"

  Miles felt a tickle in his nostrils. In the absence of any other physical sensation he fixated on it. The feeling spread, like leaking oil, from his sinuses to his face. His cheek began to prickle against the wool of a carpet. That settled it, he definitely wasn't in the shop. His floor was bare boards, all the better to wipe up after the tourists dripped their ice creams and trailed their muddy footprints. The dust bristled in his nostrils like static. He sneezed.

  "Bless you," Jeremy said, working his way through the contents of Miles' shelves. "We've known each other long enough for me to be honest, haven't we?"

  Miles shrugged. "Apparently."

  "This really is all crap, isn't it?" Jeremy picked up a tatty looking child's doll, one of its eyelids fluttering at him while the other stayed in place over its sun-damaged blind eye. "You have an entire shop filled with rubbish nobody wants."

  "Some of it's collectable."

  "Jesus, Miles, but no, it really isn't. You'd have more chance learning how to shit money than make it from this stuff."

  "Remind me why we're friends again?" Miles asked.

  "Because I'll always tell you the truth." Jeremy smiled, making the doll wave its chipped hand at Miles.

  "Nobody's ever been friends for that. I know I haven't got any good stock, OK? If I did, I wouldn't be in this situation. All the good stuff went ages ago."

  Jeremy shoved the doll back on a shelf, causing a few items to tumble to the floor.

  "Careful!" Miles shouted. "It may be crap but it's all I've got."

  He walked over to pick the items up, ducking beneath the arms of a shop-window dummy who modelled a German steel helmet on her flaking bald head.

  "Sorry." Jeremy, contrite at last, stooped down to help. "This is quite nice," he said, holding up a rectangular wooden box. "Where's it from?"

  Miles, still angry at his friend, pointed at the Chinese writing burned into the pale wood. "Sweden, where do you think?"

  Jeremy rolled his eyes. "No need to be sarcastic. Knowing you it's from one of the takeaways in town. How much do you want for it?"

  "I don't want your money," Miles snapped, snatching the box off him. "I still have some pride left."

  "That's all you'll have soon. Much use it'll be."

  Miles sat down on the floor, energy deflated, his arms filled with worthless junk. "About as much as the rest of this shite, I imagine."

  Jeremy sat down next to him. "I'd lend you the money if I had it, you know that."

  "Then you'd be an idiot." Miles dropped the stock, the box falling into his lap. "I'd only gamble it away."

  "Really?" Jeremy looked at him. "Even now, with the threat of a pair of broken legs – or worse – you'd blow it all if I gave it to you?"

  Miles turned the box over in his hands. "In a heartbeat."

  He promised himself it was the dust in his eyes making them water, not the memory of that conversation. Inch by inch his nerves were reporting in. His left thumb twitched. A spasm trickled along his arm. Immediately he tried duplicating the sensation. For a moment it was beyond him, but then he began to flex the muscle in the ball of his thumb. He would have grinned were his mouth not so numb. Soon his whole hand was twitching at the end of the wrist. There was hope yet.

  "You haven't given up?" Fry had asked as Miles stepped into the bar. He gestured to the barmaid to pour him another glass of wine but didn't offer Miles a drink. "I fucking hope not, there's no fun – or profit for that matter – in my debtors just offering their necks up for the noose. Where's the sport in that, eh?"

  "I need more time," Miles replied, inching towards the barstool next to Fry but not quite daring to sit on it.

  "Oh Christ," Fry sighed, scooping peanuts from a ramekin on the bar, "you're going to be a fucking cliché." He popped the nuts into his mouth, slapping his fingers together to knock away the salt. "Please, save me from the 'more time' conversation. I really haven't the energy for it. It's been a long day. I just want to work my way through this wine and then find some blonde cunt to treat like shit for a few hours. Is that so much to ask?"

  Miles opened his mouth to speak but Fry held up a finger to stop him. Miles watched the bar lighting bounce off the grains of salt stuck to Fry's manicured nail. He had the ludicrous notion of licking them off.

  "If you were about to say, 'I can get the money,'" Fry continued, "then you should be warned that my response would have been to smash the stem of this wine glass and put your fucking eyes out with it. It's an even bigger cliche than 'I need more time'. Jesus…" he took a sip of his wine "…feel like I've wandered into an episode of fucking Minder or something. You can't have any more time and I sincerely hope you can get me my money as I'll turn you into a spastic if you don't." He beckoned the waitress over. "Get this twat a ten-quid chip for the tables," he told her before turning b
ack to face Miles. "Take the tenner, piss it up against the wall – just to show I'm not an unfriendly sort of fucker – and then come back tomorrow with my money or I'll smash your kneecaps, all right? It's perfectly simple: cause and effect, black and white, you pay or we hurt you."

  The barmaid returned with the gaming chip. Fry took it off her and tossed it to Miles. "There you go. From small acorns great big pissing fortunes grow – you might even win me my fucking money back."

  Miles stood there for a moment, wanting to fling the chip back at Fry and be the bigger man. He was still imagining what that might feel like when he handed it over to the croupier on the blackjack table and took the cards she dealt.

  He had one good hand but the other still refused to move. That was OK. If he could get the feeling back in one then logically it would return in the other. He scratched at the carpet. It was deep and expensive but matted with dust. Any money here was old and long undisturbed. His neck loosened and he found he was able to rub his face on the pile, a friction burn developing in his cheek. There was a noise from somewhere to his right and he clenched his hand, automatically preparing to defend himself. It came again: the rustling of feathers.

  After he had played (and lost) his ten pound chip, he spent the last few quid in his pocket on rolling tobacco and cheap wine. He sat in the darkness of his shop, rolling thin cigarettes and quaffing the wine from the bottle. The amber sheen of the streetlights made everything in the shop look unfamiliar and two-dimensional. He shuffled his way through the stock, turning it over in his hands before hurling it across the room. A chipped decorative plate went first. Originally it had celebrated the Queen's Jubilee, now it rejoiced at nothing more than vented anger, shattering against the wall and showering the floorboards with china fragments. Then the child's doll that Jeremy had played with. Miles wrenched its limbs from its sockets, flinging them over his shoulder before dropping the rattling plastic skull to the floor and cracking open its smiling face with the heel of his shoe. Then a pewter tankard turned into a makeshift hammer to pound a selection of thimbles to dust in their wooden display case. He reached for the Chinese box, meaning to reduce it to splinters, but stopped as its surface rippled in the light of the streetlamps. He fumbled it in shock, dropping it to the floor. It must have been a combination of the cheap wine and lighting, but he could have sworn it had moved. He stared at it, daring it to repeat its trick. It refused. He took a swig of wine and rolled another cigarette, staring at the box, not trusting it enough to take his eyes off it.

  That rustling again as something moved past him in the darkness. He managed to windmill his arm across the floor, ignoring the pins and needles. He tried to put his weight on it to turn himself over but his palm beat uselessly at the floor, the nerves shot. He tried again, fighting against the elbow's inclination to bend uselessly. He placed his palm gently against the carpet and fought to stiffen his arm. Once convinced it would hold him, he pushed. A thin strand of saliva pulled from the corner of his mouth as he flipped successfully on to his back. He wiped his lips with a tingling but functional hand. He still couldn't see anything so he flexed his fingers again and burrowed in his jeans pocket for a cigarette lighter. He snagged his fingers on the disposable lighter's flintwheel just as he sensed something draw close. He heard footfalls on the carpet, felt the vibration of its weight through the boards. There was a slight displacement of air as something leaned over him. Pulling the lighter from a nest of loose change and pocket fluff he spun the wheel and found himself staring into the black eyes of an ostrich.

  The delusion, if that's what it had been, had taken all the energy out of Miles' anger so he took the box upstairs to stare at in some degree of comfort. The wine was done but in a twist of good fortune he found half a bottle of cheap-shit calvados in the kitchen cupboard. He'd bought it when trying to impress a date by his ability to cook. It burned all the way down his throat, whether with alcohol or regret was impossible to tell.

  He placed the box on the stained coffee table in the lounge, turned on all the lights and sat down on the carpet to roll another cigarette. While he packed strands of tobacco, tangled as pubic hair, into the centre of his cigarette paper he tried to remember where he had bought the box. After a while the auctions and house clearances had a habit of blending together. An endless parade of tatty banana-boxed "treasures", things once precious reduced to funky-smelling trinkets wrapped in decades-old newspaper. He had a vague memory of a house near Coventry, the stink of a dying man's piss, and ticks in the upholstery. Hadn't there been a whole chest filled with decorative boxes? The spoils of a youth in the navy? He picked up the Chinese box, meaning to open it. The lid wouldn't shift; possibly the wood was warped or the hinges rusted. Now the box was so close to his face he became aware of a noise, a gentle ticking from inside it. He held it next to his ear and listened. It was a precise but unrhythmic clicking, not clockwork, more the sort of noise a beetle might make. He turned the box over in his hands, shaking it and rubbing his thumbs along its edges. The ticking grew louder. Suddenly, something sharp stung his palm and he dropped the box. Rubbing at the sore flesh on his hand he watched a red weal, like an insect bite, begin to develop.

  He pulled his mobile out of his pocket and called Jeremy. The phone rang out a few times before his friend's voice groaned into the receiver. "Miles? Bloody hell… do you know what time it is?"

  When his friend spoke, the box stopped its noise, as if shy.

  "No," Miles admitted, glancing at his watch. He'd lost a few hours somewhere along the line: it was nearly two in the morning. "Sorry… didn't realise it

  had got so late. Listen, that box…"

  "Are you drinking?"

  "Of course I am, what else is there to do in my current situation? I'd be eating heroin like toffee if I had any. You know the box you were looking at? The Chinese one?"

  "Please tell me you didn't wake me up to sell me antiques."

  "Don't be stupid, there's something…" How to pin it down without sounding mad? "There's something weird about it. When I was looking at it I thought it changed shape. Now it's ticking."

  "You really have been drinking, haven't you?"

  "Jesus!" Miles' exasperation made him clench his teeth "It's not the bloody wine, all right? I'm pissed but I'm not hallucinating… There's something seriously weird going on."

  "I'll tell you what's weird," Jeremy replied. Miles could hear him getting out of bed and turning on a light. "That's the fact that you've got a bunch of thugs waiting to pay you a visit and you're just sat in your flat messing about with stock. If you can't find the money – and of course you can't – then get out of there, for fuck's sake. Come round here, or even better get yourself to a train station and bugger off somewhere. What about that friend of yours in London? Gary something… go and kip on his floor for a few weeks."

  "And then what?"

  "I don't bloody know!" Jeremy's voice distorted in Miles' ear. "Stay there, I suppose! Anything's better than just sitting around waiting for them to come knocking on your door."

  "Don't worry about it," Miles muttered, hanging up. A few seconds later Jeremy rang back but Miles ignored it.

  He wouldn't run, though he couldn't have told Jeremy why, not without sounding pathetic. He had just sunk too low. Movement, thought, self-preservation… they all required energy, they needed him to care. Right now, the only thing he could sum up any enthusiasm for was this damned box. It began ticking again.

  "What are you about?" he muttered. A throbbing pulse of drunkenness surged through his head as he moved, his brain bobbing like a boat in a storm. He nudged the box with his foot, nervousness vanishing alongside the last few crumbs of his giving a shit. He rubbed at the mark on his palm but it didn't hurt. He sat down on the floor, his back against the nicotinestained paintwork that he had promised himself he would touch up for the last three years.

  The box flipped over and landed on its base. Miles stared at it, unsure how to respond. The ticking continued to grow in volume, a
n angry jazz rimshot that made his left eyelid twitch.

  The ostrich cricked its neck, startled by the fire from the lighter, and there was a dry, tearing noise like a baguette being broken in half. A cloud of dust sprinkled from its throat and it opened its beak with the creak of a pair of rusted garden shears. The heat from the flame singed Miles' thumb and he let the light go out. Panicking in darkness all the more dense for the flame's absence, he blew on his thumb and spun the flint wheel, desperate to reignite it, sparks leaping into the dark and vanishing quickly. Finally, the flame lit and the ancient bird gave a startled squawk. It reared its head back and, with another cry, thrust it forward, stabbing at Miles' hand. Now, without thinking about it, Miles found he was able to move a little more, the upper part of his body rolling to one side as he tried to avoid the angry pecking. The beak punched the small of his back as he pulled himself out of the way, his legs dragging uselessly behind him. He lashed back with his right arm, catching the bird on the side of its head with his fist. The bird gave another squawk and retreated in a rustle of feathers. Miles kept pulling himself along the carpet, clouds of dust stinging his eyes. A dull throb pulsed in his lower back from where the bird had hit him. His hand smacked against a wooden pole. He ran his fingers up and down it, feeling its bulges and contours. It was a table leg, stout enough to be Regency (the absurdity of his trying to date the thing by touch, given his current situation, was not lost on him but it was hard to break the habit of a lifetime). He pulled himself past it, rolling on to his back and feeling the underside of the table above. Hopefully it might offer some protection. The ostrich was trotting to and fro some distance away; he could hear its scaly feet pounding the old carpet. It wasn't alone – the whole room seemed to be coming to life: there was creaking and hissing; a sound like someone tapping on a window; a shuffling of something large pulling itself along the floor; a low growl… The scent of age was growing stronger too, sweet and dusty, making him want to sneeze or vomit, perhaps both. Something jumped on to the table he could hear its claws tapping as it walked along the wood. Tap… tap… tap…