Free Piranha to Scurfy by Ruth Rendell Page A

Mummy, though she was long gone. The sound of his own voice, shrill and horror-stricken, frightened him. Had whatever it was come in to retrieve the— he could hardly put it even into silent words—the
chronicle of its exploits?
Nonsense, nonsense. It was Mummy speaking, Mummy telling him to be strong, not to be a fool. He shook himself, gritted his teeth. He picked up the parcel, dropped it into a black rubbish bag, and took it into the garden, getting very wet in the process. In the wind the biggest bush of all reached out a needly arm and lashed him across the face.
    He left the black bag there. He locked all the doors, and even when the storm had subsided and the sky cleared he kept all the windows closed. Late that night, in his bedroom, he stared down at the lawn. The Book in its bag was where he had left it, but the small thin bush had moved, in a different direction this time, stepping to one side so that the two fat bushes, the one that had lashed him and its twin, stood close together and side by side like tall, heavily built men gazing up at his window. Ribbon had saved half a bottle of Mummy’s sleeping pills. For an emergency, for a rainy day. All the lights blazing, he went into Mummy’s room, found the bottle, and swallowed two pills. They took effect rapidly. Fully clothed, he fell onto his bed and into something more like a deep trance than sleep. It was the first time in his life he had ever taken a soporific.
    In the morning he looked through the yellow pages and found a firm of tree fellers, operating locally. Would they send someone to cut down all the shrubs in his garden? They would, but not before Monday. On Monday morning they would be with him by nine. In the broad daylight he asked himself again what had come through the kitchen window, come in and taken That Book out of the waste bin and, sane again, wondered if it might have been Glenys Next-door’s fox.The sun was shining, the grass gleaming wet after the rain. He fetched a spade from the shed and advanced upon the wide flower bed. Not the right-hand side, not there, avoid that at all costs. He selected a spot on the extreme left, close by the fence dividing his garden from that of Sandra On-the-other-side. While he dug he wondered if it was a commonplace with people, this burying of unwanted or hated or threatening objects in their back gardens. Maybe all the gardens in Leytonstone, in the London suburbs, in the United Kingdom, in the world, were full of such concealed things, hidden in the earth, waiting ...
    He laid
Demogorgon
inside. The wet earth went back over the top of it, covering it, and Ribbon stamped the surface down viciously. If whatever it was came back and dug The Book out, he thought he would die.
    Things were better now that Demogorgon was gone. He wrote to Clara Jenkins at her home address—for some unaccountable reason she was in
Who’s Who—
pointing out that in chapter 1 of
Tales My Lover Told Me
Humphry Nemo had blue eyes and in chapter 21 brown eyes; Thekla Pattison wore a wedding ring on page 20 but denied, on page 201, that she had ever possessed one; and on page 245 Justin Armstrong was taking part in an athletics contest, in spite of having broken his leg on page 223, a mere five days before. But Ribbon wrote with a new gentleness, as if she had caused him pain rather than rage.
    Nothing had come from Dillon’s. He wondered bitterly why he had troubled to congratulate them on their service if his accolade was to go unappreciated. And more to the point, nothing had come from Kingston Marle by Friday. He had the letter of apology—he must have, otherwise he wouldn’t have altered the ending of
Demogorgon
back to the original plotline. But that hardly meant he had recovered from all his anger. He might still have other revenges in store. And, moreover, he might intend never to answer Ribbon at all.
    The shrubs seemed to be back in their normal places. It would be a good idea to have a plan of the garden with the