Feelings of Fear by Graham Masterton

get really close to you unless I changed my name. Oh, and changed my looks a little, too.”
    â€œâ€”
please
!
I’ll
—”
    â€œI took a course of hormones, Jack, and you’d be amazed what a difference that makes. Then I went to a cosmetic surgeon, and you’d be even more amazed what they can do with silicone these days. I had my hair highlighted and I bought some nice blue contact lenses. Thenlast Labour Day I was ready to go to the urologist and leave the last reminder of my old life behind.
    â€œIt was worth it, Jack, believe me. It was worth the pain and it was worth the waiting and it was worth every dollar it cost me. I needed to watch you die in the same way that you watched Susan die.”
    Jack gave a last terrible rattle in his throat – and then he suddenly ejaculated. Lolicia remained on top of him for a while, to make sure that he had completely stopped breathing, and then she climbed off him.
    â€œI’m sorry, Jack,” she said, “but you didn’t call my name.”
    She tore open the plastic bag with her fingernails to reveal his bright blue, sweaty face, his eyes still wide open and his tongue lolling out.
    â€œYou should have called out, ‘Jeff!’”

Friend in Need
    I had known Jan Boedewerf for over three months before I realized that his friend Hoete (of whom he spoke conversationally almost every day) was imaginary. To say that I was bewildered would be an understatement.
    â€œHoete and I went to see the Zandvliet Lock on Saturday,” Jan enthused, on Monday morning. “Well, I persuaded him to go. He’s not very interested in docks and locks. Afterwards we went to the Djawa Timur restaurant on the Klein Markt. He likes Indonesian food but he wouldn’t eat anything. He spat out his rice! I don’t know why he gets so angry.”
    On Tuesday, he said, “Hoete was still in a temper. Sometimes I think he wants to kill me.”
    â€œReally? Kill you?”
    â€œWell, metaphorically speaking.”
    At first, there had been nothing to distinguish Jan Boedewerf from every other accountant at the Bank van België, of whom there were thirty-five. He arrived at work at Schelde Straat at eight a.m., parking his brown Volkswagen Passat in a numbered slot in the staff parking-lot. He wore a brown suit and a brown necktie and tan-colored shoes and carried a briefcase. He was always whistling between his teeth. He hung his coat up on a hanger marked with his name. He sat all morning in front of his computer, and at twelve p.m. he went out for lunch at Les Routiers on Cockerillkaai. Mussels, maybe a breaded veal cutlet, a glass of red wine. At one thirty p.m. he came back and worked until four thirty and then he went home.
    He had short sandy hair and dandruff and brown-rimmed glasses and a round pale-freckled face. His weekend hobby was to visitthe docks. He knew everything about the docks and the locks. The Kattendijk maritime dock had been built in 1860 and had a surface area of 139,000 square meters. The Boudewijn Lock was 360 meters long and had a high tide depth of 15.23 meters.
    He was unmarried, and had never been married, as far as I could tell. Well – didn’t altogether surprise me.
    I don’t usually have anything to do with accountants of any nationality, especially drones like Jan Boedewerf. To tell you the truth, I’m not much of a businessman, either. I’m an automobile man, not a money man. But Bill Kruse had been ill and we were desperately short-handed: so Randy Friedman sent me over to Antwerp a year ago to set up a new division of Fancy Cars Inc – “The Car You’ve Always Dreamed Of At A Price You Couldn’t Imagine.” We started nineteen years ago in a disused grain repository in Mobile, Alabama, bringing in specialist autmobiles, by which I mean Lamborghinis and Ferraris and suchlike. We went through a pretty sticky beginning, mainly due to the oil crisis, but after