Blood.
She was covered in it, swimming in it. And there was somebody else in the room. Not in the room. In the reflection of the room. A man, tall, in his forties, dressed in some sort of suit, grey face, moustache, small, beady eyes.
'Go away!' Isabel yelled. 'Go away! Go away!'
When her mother found her, curled up on the floor in a huge puddle of water, naked and trembling, she didn't try to explain. She didn't even speak. She allowed herself to be half-carried into bed and hid herself, like a small child, under the duvet.
For the first time, Susan Harding was more worried than annoyed. That night, she sat down with Jeremy and the two of them were closer than they had been for a long time as they talked about their daughter, her behaviour, the need perhaps for some sort of therapy. But they didn't talk about the bath - and why should they? When Susan had burst into the bathroom she had seen nothing wrong with the water, nothing wrong with the mirror, nothing wrong with the bath. No, they both agreed. There was something wrong with Isabel. It had nothing to do with the bath.
The antique shop stood at the corner of Swiffe Lane and the Fulham Road, a few minutes' walk from the tube station. It was somehow exactly as Isabel had imagined it. From the front it looked like the grand house that might have belonged to a rich family perhaps a hundred years ago: tall imposing doors, shuttered windows, white stone columns and great chunks of statuary scattered between it and the street. But over the years the house had declined, the plaster-work falling away, weeds sprouting between the brickwork. The windows were dark with the dust of city life and car exhaust fumes.
Inside, the rooms were small and dark - each one filled with too much furniture. Isabel and Belinda passed through a room with fourteen fireplaces, another with half a dozen dinner tables and a crowd of empty chairs. If they hadn't known all these objects were for sale they could have imagined that the place was still occupied by a rich madman. It was still more of a house than a shop. When the two girls spoke to each other, they did so in whispers.
They eventually found a sales assistant in a courtyard at the back of the house. This was a large, open area, filled with baths and basins', more statues, stone fountains, wrought-iron gates and trellis-work - all surrounded by a series of concrete arches that made them feel that they could have been in Rome or Venice rather than a shabby corner of West London. The sales assistant was a young man with a squint and a broken nose. He was carrying a gargoyle. Isabel wasn't sure which of the two was uglier.
'A Victorian bath?' he muttered in response to Isabel's inquiry. 'I don't think I can help you. We sell a lot of old baths.'
'It's big and white,' Isabel said. 'With little legs and gold taps…'
The sales assistant set the gargoyle down. It clunked heavily against a paving stone. 'Don't you have the receipt?' he asked.
'No'.
'Well,… what did you say your parents' name was?'
'Harding. Jeremy and Susan Harding.'
'Doesn't ring a bell
'They argue a lot. They probably argued about the price.'
A slow smile spread across the sales assistant's face. Because of the way his face twisted, the smile was oddly menacing. 'Yeah. I do remember,' he said. 'It was delivered somewhere in North London.'
'Muswell Hill,' Isabel said.
'That's right.' The smile cut its way over his cheekbone. 'I do remember. They got the Marlin bath.'
'What's the Marlin bath?' Belinda asked. She didn't like the sound of it already.
The sales assistant chuckled to himself. He pulled out a packet of ten cigarettes and lit one. It seemed a long time before he spoke again. 'Jacob Marlin. It was his bath. I don't suppose you've ever heard of him.'
'No,' Isabel said, wishing he'd get to the point.
'He was famous in his time.' The sales assistant blew silvery grey smoke into the air. 'Before they hanged him.'
'Why did they hang him?' Isabel asked.
'For murder. He was one of those… what do you call them… Victorian axe murderers. Oh yes…' The sales assistant was grinning from ear to ear now, enjoying himself. 'He used to take young ladies home with him - a bit like Jack the Ripper. Know what I mean? Marlin would do away with them…'
'You mean kill them?' Belinda whispered.
'That's exactly what I mean. He'd kill them and then chop them up with an axe. In the bath.' The sales assistant sucked at his cigarette. 'I'm not saying he did it in that bath, mind. But it came out of his house. That's why it was so cheap. I dare say it would have been cheaper still if your mum and dad had known…'
Isabel turned and walked out of the antique shop. Belinda followed her. Suddenly the place seemed horrible and menacing, as if every object on display might have some dreadful story attached. Only in the street, surrounded by the noise and colour of the traffic did they stop and speak.
'It's horrible!' Belinda gasped. 'He cut people up in the bath and you…' She couldn't finish the sentence. The thought was too ghastly.
'I wish I hadn't come.' Isabel was close to tears. 'I wish they'd never bought the rotten thing.'
'If you tell them…'
'They won't listen to me. They never listen to me.'
'So what are you going to do?' Belinda asked.
Isabel thought for a moment. People pushed past on the pavement. Market vendors shouted out their wares. A pair of policemen stopped briefly to examine some apples. It was a different world to the one she had left behind her in the antique shop. 'I'm going to destroy it,' she said at last. 'It's the only way. I'm going to break it up. And my parents can do whatever they like…'
She chose a monkey-wrench from her father's toolbox. It was big and she could use it both to smash and to unscrew. Neither of her parents were at home. They thought she was over at Belinda's. That was good. By the time they got back it would all be over.
There was something very comforting about the tool she had chosen, the coldness of the steel against her palm, the way it weighed so heavily in her hand, almost willing her to swing it. Slowly she climbed the stairs, already imagining what she had to do. Would the monkey-wrench be strong enough to crack the bath? Or would she only disfigure it so badly that her parents would have to get rid of it? It didn't matter either way. She was doing the right thing. That was all she cared.
The bathroom door was open. She was sure it had been shut when she had glanced upstairs only minutes before. But that didn't matter either. Swinging the monkey-wrench, she went into the bathroom.
The bath was waiting for her.
It had filled itself to the very brim with hot water - scalding hot from the amount of steam it was giving off. The mirror had completely steamed over. A cool breeze from the door touched the surface of the glass and water trickled down. Isabel lifted the monkey-wrench. She was smiling a little cruelly. The one thing the bath couldn't do was move. It could taunt her and frighten her but now it just had to sit there and take what was coming to it.
She reached out with the monkey-wrench and jerked out the plug.
But the water didn't leave the bath. Instead something thick and red oozed out of the plug-hole and floated up through the water.
And with the blood came maggots - hundreds of them, uncoiling themselves from the plug-hole, forcing themselves up through the grille and cartwheeling crazily in the water. Isabel stared in horror, then raised the monkey-wrench. The water, with the blood added to it, was sheeting over the side now, cascading on to the floor. She swung and felt her whole body shake as the metal clanged into the taps, smashing the C of cold and jolting the pipe-work.
She lifted the monkey-wrench and as she did so she caught sight of it in the mirror. The reflection was blurred by the white coating of steam but behind it she could make out another shape which she knew she would not see in the bathroom. A man was walking towards her as if down a long corridor, making for the glass that covered its end. Jacob Marlin. She felt his eyes burning into her and wondered what he would do when he reached the mirror that seemed to
be a barrier between his world and hers.
She swung with the monkey-wrench - again and again. The tap bent, then broke off with the second impact. Water spurted out as if in a death-throe. Now she turned her attention on the bath itself, bringing the monkey-wrench crashing into the side, cracking the enamel with one swing, denting the metal with the next. Another glance over her shoulder told her that Marlin was getting closer, pushing his way towards the steam. She could see his teeth, discoloured and sharp, his gums exposed as his lips were drawn back in a rictus of hate. She swung again and saw - to her disbelief - that she had actually cracked the side of the bath like an egg-shell. Red water gushed over her legs and feet. Maggots were sent spinning in a crazy dance across the bathroom floor, sliding into the cracks and wriggling there, helpless. How close was Marlin? Could he pass through the mirror? She lifted the monkey-wrench one last time and screamed as a pair of man's hands fell on her shoulders. The monkey-wrench spun out of her hands and fell into the bath, disappearing in the murky water. The hands were at her throat now, pulling her backwards. Isabel screamed and lashed out, her nails going for the man's eyes.
She only just had time to realize that it was not Marlin who was holding her but her father. That her mother was standing at the door, staring with wide, horror-filled eyes. Isabel felt all the strength rush out of her body like the water out of the bath. The water was transparent again, of course. The maggots had gone. Had they ever been there? Did it matter? She began to laugh.
She was still laughing half an hour later when the sound of sirens filled the room and the ambulance arrived.
It wasn't fair.
Jeremy Harding lay in the bath thinking about the events of the past six weeks. It was hard not to think about them - in here, looking at the dents his daughter had made with the monkey-wrench. The taps had almost been beyond repair. As it was they now dripped all the time and the letter C was gone forever. Old water, not cold water.
He had seen Isabel a few days before and she had looked a lot better. She still wasn't talking but it would be a long time before that happened, they said. Nobody knew why she had decided to attack the bath - except maybe that fat friend of hers and she was too frightened to say. According to the experts, it had all been stress-related. A traumatic stress disorder. Of course they had fancy words for it. What they meant was that it was her parents' fault. They argued. There was tension in the house. Isabel hadn't been able to cope and had come up with some sort of fantasy related to the bath.
In other words, it was his fault.
But was it? As he lay in the soft, hot water with the smell of pine bath-oil rising up his nostrils, Jeremy Harding thought long and hard. He wasn't the one who started the arguments. It was always Susan. From the day he'd married her, she'd insisted on… well, changing him. She was always nagging him. It was like that nickname of his at school. Grumpy. They never took him seriously. She never took him seriously. Well, he would show her.
Lying back with the steam all around him, Jeremy found himself floating away. It was a wonderful feeling. He would start with Susan. Then there were a couple of boys in his French class. And of course, the headmaster.
He knew just what he would do. He had seen it that morning in a junk shop in Crouch End. Victorian, he would have said. Heavy with a smooth wooden handle and a solid, razor-sharp head.
Yes. He would go out and buy it the following morning. It was just what he needed. A good Victorian axe…
THE END
Anthony Horowitz, The Puffin Book of Horror Stories
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