Free Stories of the Strange and Sinister (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) by Frank Baker

before?
    Because now, it was curled round the chimney and the TV aerial. Draping itself over the tiles, in a kind of graceful manner, almost protective, as though it had settled there for the winter.
    Yet I still told myself – the wind did it. Until the wind dropped and in a dead quietness when even the withering roses – the white roses Dorothy loved so much – till even the white rose petals didn’t quiver, I saw the sack hunched up, or should I say ‘bunched’ up, against the front door, the door I now never use, not even for the Vicar should he happen to call, as he once did, not long after Dorothy went. There it was; and when I write ‘hunched’ or ‘bunched’ – I mean – in a kind of pyramid, or a tent, as though three sticks had been stood up inside, wigwam-fashion, holding it tent-wise. Like a little tabernacle.
    I wish I hadn’t used that word, ‘tabernacle’. For even as I wrote it I half knew what it meant. And now I’ve looked it up in Chambers. ‘A tent, or movable hut . . . or, the human body as the temporary abode of the soul . . .’
    It was not until then – not until I saw the sack slooped against my front door, as though it was saying, ‘Let me in, please . . .’ – it was not until then that I was certain: I had left it, in the locked garage, the night before.
    From that moment, I knew I was not just imagining things. From that moment, my life has become a torment.
    But I must not overstate. In a kind of way, I’ve learnt to live with it, learnt to live with this torment, this bit of ‘coarse material’, dun grey with a slither of rustiness in it, and a prickly roughness that seems to tinge the fingers. Learnt to live with it – yes. But I cannot easily touch it. For one thing, I’m now convinced that this itching I get, all over my body, was caused by contact with the sack. There’s a kind of tic in it. Yes, a tic.
    But I am not really writing of physical matters, although one cannot discountenance them. So – what happened next?
    I think it was this way. After I’d seen the sack before the front door, I decided it might be a good thing to open the door and let the sun into the hall. And when I did – well, I opened the door to nothing. Or, rather, only to the rose bushes in the bed near the door. The sack had been blown away.
    Why did I write ‘blown away’? I suppose I am still trying to rationalize. In fact, there was, as I’ve said, no wind at all. The sack could not have been blown away. And, certainly, it could not have been ‘blown’ into the house, where I found it, late that night, lying in a slither, along the bottom of the door to a cupboard where I keep all the odds and ends everybody keeps. The things you want to lose, and can’t lose.
    I didn’t sleep well that night. This is unusual for me – and I never take sleeping pills. But I tossed about a lot; and when I write that – I mean it in the old sense. I mean, I was sexually alert. And I awoke about three – bad hour, I’ve heard people say. And so it is. I awoke to feel myself stiffening, and hot; and the bed-clothes all in a tumble about me. There had been a bad dream; but, what was it? I couldn’t remember. And there was a foul yet sweet smell, which I couldn’t place. Was it sweat? Was it my own smell? I didn’t know. Somehow, with bones that ached and creaked, I jerked my body up from the bed.
    I stood for a moment, trembling all over. I was looking at what lay, crinkled and frozen, over the candlewick spread.
    It was then I fully realized – the sack was an enemy. It was the enemy.
    I am determined to go on writing, not to go to the outhouse. I am determined to put down what I know is true.
    But I wish I wasn’t alone here.
    What happened next that night? I stood by the bed, and I must have picked up the sack, I must have – or did I? Did I pick it up? This is what I can’t remember. What I do remember is that I went to the toilet, and was sick, violently sick, and then went to