Whitstable by Stephen Volk Page A

and hard and repellent. He knew people used it, increasingly, but he hated such foul language. But now he had the measure of the man, and the difference between them, and it gaped wide. In the full glare of the hall light, scarlet sweater radiant, a bloody breast swimming in the older man’s vision, Gledhill wiped his long, shiny slug-like lower lip. “But I don’t like people making allegations against me, okay? When they’re lies. Complete lies, all right? What normal man would?”
    Les loves that boy.

    The low burr on the telephone line changed to a single long tone and Cushing tapped the cradle to get a line.
    “Please go. Immediately, please. I don’t want to continue this conversation.”
    “Mate, honestly…”
    “I’m not your ‘mate’, Mr Gledhill, quite frankly.”
    His heart thudding in his ears, Cushing dialled with a forefinger he prayed was steady. The wheel turned anticlockwise with the return mechanism, waiting for the second ‘9’.
    The cold had infiltrated and he felt it on his blue-lined skin as he stared at the long-haired man framed in his front doorway against the February night and the other did the same in return. Neither man dared give his adversary the satisfaction of breaking eye contact first. Gledhill hung onto the door frame, meaty hands left and right. Passingly, Cushing thought of Christopher Lee in his big coat as the creature in Curse . But all that monstrousness on the outside, for all to see.
    He dialled a second time, straight-backed, not wanting to show the stranger he was afraid, but he was afraid. Of course he was afraid. He wasn’t a young, athletic man any more, sword-fencing beside Louis Hayward or leaping across tables. Far from it. If this man chose to, cocky, powerful and threatened, he could stride right in and beat him to a pulp, or worse. There was no guarantee that a man prone to other acts, despicable acts, would be pacified by a threat of recrimination at a later date. Or a mere phone call . Criminals did not think of consequences. That was one of the things that defined them as criminals. There was nothing, literally nothing, to stop his unwelcome guest killing him, if he decided to.
    For the third time he placed his index finger in the hole next to the number ‘9’ and took it round the circumference of the dial.
    “All right,” Gledhill said. “All right. I’ll say this, then I’m going. There’s nothing going on here, okay? It’s as simple as that. Nothing for you to be involved in. Nothing . Okay?”
    Emergency. Which service do you require?

    Cushing stared. Gledhill stared back.
    Emergency. Hello?

    Gledhill laughed with a combination of utter sadness and utter contempt. “Jesus Christ. You’re as loopy as he is. You’re losing your fucking marbles, old man.”
    Hello?

    Then Gledhill left, slamming the door after him and the hall shook, or seemed to shake, like the walls of a rickety set at Bray, and Cushing did not blink and did not breathe until he was gone, and his after-image—the halo of redness—departed with him. Cut!
    Hello?

    “I’m most awfully sorry,” he whispered into the receiver. “I thought I had an intruder. I can see now that’s not the case.” He tried to cover the tremor he knew was in his voice, and tried to make it light and chirpy. “I’m perfectly safe. Thank you.”
    Cushing hung up, re-knotted the cord of his dressing gown, hurried into the sitting room and parted the drawn curtains with his fingers, a few inches only, to see—nobody. Even the last fragment of light and colour had faded from the sky. It was now uniformly black and devoid of stars.
    The dryness in Cushing’s throat gave him the sudden compulsion to breathe, which he thought a very good idea indeed but strangely an effort. It was as if he had done a ten mile run, or heavy swim. Not only was his chest still thumping like a kettledrum, he could not get air into his lungs fast enough, and lurched, quite light-headedly, needing to prop himself