Others by James Herbert Read Free Book Online Page B

That was going to be added to my damage report, just another item the absent builder would have to pay for when the building society finally caught up with him. Time-wasting over, my gaze drifted towards the open doorway.
    It was so dark in there because, as the middle room, it was windowless, only light from the landing window seeping into the open doorway. I edged closer, unwillingly, treading carefully while not exactly creeping. This time I peered round the door very slowly.
    The mirror on the dingy wall opposite had broken into myriad pieces, yet still held together like a great big jigsaw of silvered glass. And it was my own image I saw reflected there, my own fearsome self mirrored a thousand times or more, my imperfections multiplied; and even though I could not understand why the glass had shattered at my approach, I now realized that it had been my own hideousness, viewed in a new and awesome way, which had shocked me so.
    I stood transfixed, watching myself in this jagged confederation of plagiarized horrors, this horrendous coalition of likenesses, and after a while I began to weep.

5
    I got back to my flat late, having lingered in a bar on the way. Not one of my regular haunts - too many friends and acquaintances would have wanted to gab, even buy me a drink or two, and I had a need to be alone with my own thoughts, my own personal misery. After five Bushmills Malt and three Buds, I’d left, stepping out into the warm night and turning towards the seafront, the salt-breeze almost clearing the fug from my head, which was something I hadn’t wanted. I needed that alcohol haze between myself and my demons, needed it to restrain them, lest their grip clung too tight, held me in terror till dawn. They had come knocking before, more than once, possessing me through the night, mesmerizing, haunting me; and with daylight, I had never understood why.
    Hobbling along the coast road, I listened to the voices of people, youngsters in the main, rising from the open areas outside clubs and cafes along the lower promenade. For years the arches between the town’s two piers had lain neglected and derelict until a bright local councillor had worked his butt off attracting investors to a scheme by which the area would be revamped. Now it had metamorphosed into a lively boulevard of clubs, bars, cafes and craft shops, where locals and tourists mingled on mild evenings and the younger ones, too many of them high on Special K or GHB, raved to their particular caste of Jungle or Techno, Nu Energy or Drum ‘n’ Bass, Trance or Speed, Hip Hop or Big Beat, Waltz or Foxtrot (just kidding). Ironically, it was both what I needed and didn’t need at that moment: the noise, the shrieks, and the babble of life was good, and, together with the bright lights, told me that life was incessant and encompassing; and that, in itself, let me know how alone I was. An outsider. Always had been, always would be.
    In that lachrymose mood, I moved on, eventually reaching the steps to my basement flat. My home was situated in one of the seaside town’s broad, sweeping crescents, a hilly green park at its centre, the main thoroughfare and the sea itself bounding the open end. It was a terrific location, most of the tall, white Regency properties - some in better condition than others - nowadays split up into flats or grand apartments, the residents a mixture of rent-paying youngsters and high-earning owners. Vehicles lined both sides of the horseshoe road, many of them double-parked, but still the vista from the apex of the curve was breathtaking, day or night. Descending the stone stairway to my front door, I drunkenly scratched the wood around the keyhole with the key’s tip before inserting it. I pushed my way in, flicking the light-switch quickly as I hurried down the short hallway to the bathroom where I kept part of my stash. My hands shook like a regular druggy’s - which, take my word for it, I wasn’t, not really - as I reached inside the