The Spectral Book of Horror Stories by Mark Morris (Editor) Page B

be splendid.”
    Mrs Moreland stepped quickly down the stairs and disappeared into the kitchen, appearing a moment later with a tray loaded with a teapot, cups and biscuits.
    “I’ve just been tending to Sean’s affairs,” she said. “He left quite a lot of them. It haunts me so! He was a messy boy, you know. But I miss him, I really do. I can’t bear to think about him shut up in a box underground.”
    “Where did he live?” Nora asked, trying to divert the subject. She smiled again, kept the smile, all curious politeness, fixed and ready.
    “Oh, in America. He left to go to school there.”
    “Was he a good student?”
    “The very best.”
    “That’s important, you know,” Nora said. “So many young people neglect their studies. Freedom doesn’t suit them.”
    She thought of Kitty with her cigarette. Her haughty air. Her casually fashionable clothing. Her hand on Nora’s wrist.
    “He was very thoughtful. Just like you, Miss Higgins. You seem quite thoughtful. Very pretty. He would have liked you, I think. Here’s the tea now, mind you blow on it.”
    “Thank you.”
    They sat in silence for several minutes. Nora blew on her tea. It was much too sweet.
    “I wonder—” Mrs Moreland began. She clutched her cup with both hands.
    “Yes?”
    “I don’t want to trouble you.”
    Nora’s smile widened. She would be entirely solicitous. She would be entirely helpful. She would make this little old granny feel perfectly comfortable, perfectly comforted. That would show the girl, always trying to make trouble. She knew the type. But Nora would show her. She let Mrs Moreland take her hand. She let her clutch at it with those knobbly old fingers of hers even though it half-revolted her to do so.
    “It’s just, well, if perhaps you wouldn’t mind coming to my room with me?”
    “Of course, Mrs Moreland. Whatever you need.”
    The old woman creaked up the stairs. Nora followed after her, past her own room, down the hallway. She had never come this far inside the house before. She had kept to her own little corner. But perhaps that was wrong. Perhaps she should have been more sociable. Perhaps she should have made an effort. Mrs Moreland was sweet. She had clearly taken a liking to Nora. And she must be so sad, so terribly, terribly sad. Nora could imagine that sadness. She felt light-headed just thinking about it.
    Positively light-headed.
    Nora followed Mrs Moreland into the bedroom. It was much like Nora’s, a narrow single bed, cream carpets, the whole place maintained perfectly, and there sitting in the centre of it: an enormous black coffin.
    “Oh my,” said Nora. It had the wet shine of an expensive car recently polished.
    “Sean’s come home today. They sent Sean home to me.”
    Nora said nothing. She stared. It looked so absurd in the tiny room, like finding a loaded gun amidst the tea cosies.
    “But they’ve sealed him up, you see,” Mrs Moreland said.
    Nora took a step toward the coffin. She felt the strangest urge to touch it. To see her breath mist up the finely polished surface. To see her fingerprints like little round pebbles on the black.
    When had the moving men brought him in? Had it been while she was out? And who would deliver such a thing?
    “They’ve sealed him up so very tightly. And I must see his face.”
    Nora bumped up against a little wooden chair. But Mrs Moreland was behind her now, Nora could feel her very close, there was nowhere to go but in. In and in and in.
    “Would you help me, Miss Higgins?”
    Now Mrs Moreland was pressing something into her hand. Something cold and hard. Nora looked down and she felt like laughing, it was ridiculous, it was a can opener from the kitchen, that giant clawed beast! Nora looked closer at the coffin and she could see a thin strip of something like rubber running along the inner margin of the casket.
    “My arthritis, you see,” Mrs Moreland said, and Nora could see, could see where Mrs Moreland had begun the work. Where the teeth