The Fog - James Herbert [120]
‘Oh, I didn’t leave her,’ the man replied. ‘I couldn’t have left Louise. I love her too much to have left her there alone at the mercy of anyone who might break in. But it was her eyes, you see, and the things she was saying. I couldn’t stand it. I had to stop her from looking at me like that and saying those horrible things. And I couldn’t leave her, not Louise, she’s too precious to me. So I brought her with me; she’s in the back. I stopped her saying those foul things and stopped her looking at me that way and put her in the back seat. There she is, my Louise, behind you, in the back.’
Holman quickly glanced over his shoulder and found himself transfixed, the car moving ahead unguided, picking up speed as his foot involuntarily pressed down on the accelerator.
On the back seat was slumped the bound figure of a woman, recognizable as a woman only by her clothes, for the body ended in a bloody stump at the neck. She had been decapitated.
‘I couldn’t leave her, you see,’ the man went on, ‘and I couldn’t stand the things she was saying and the way she was looking so I used a saw. It was terribly messy, I must say. The kitchen was in a terrible state and I had to change my clothes. And, you know, she kept talking even while I was doing it, but she had to stop in the end.’ His voice grew sad. ‘But I couldn’t stop her eyes looking at me like that, even when the head came right off. She just kept glaring at me that lunatic way. Look, she still does.’
He reached behind him, half kneeling on his seat, stretching for something that lay on the floor at the back. He brought his hand up again, his face looking seriously into Holman’s. ‘Look,’ he said.
He held the blood-dripping head by the hair, pushing it towards Holman’s face. He was right – the eyes were still staring.
A cry of horror escaped from Holman’s lips as he backed away, the hairs on his body stiffening, the vertebrae of his spine seeming to contract and lock together. He thrashed out with his hand knocking the disembodied head aside, causing the car to swerve violently across the road. His fight to control it gave his mind a brief respite from the shock it had just received.
The man beside him was astonished that Holman had smashed his wife’s head aside. ‘Don’t do that to Louise, you bastard!’ he shouted, placing it gently on his lap. He reached behind him again, careful not to dislodge the head between his legs, and this time, his hand came up with a bloodstained saw. ‘I’ll kill you!’ he screamed. ‘You’re the same as all the rest!’
He tried to bring the sharp-toothed blade down on the back of Holman’s neck, but the car bumped over a kerb, mounting a narrow pavement which ran along the centre of the broad road, knocking him back against the door on his side, the saw falling harmlessly against Holman’s shoulder blades. Even as he tried to control the car’s skid when it thumped down on to the other lane of the road, Holman struck out with his fist at the figure beside him, catching the man on the side of the jaw. His foot was jammed down hard on the brake pedal and the tyres burnt into the road, struggling for a grip. He thought the car was bound to smash into a building on the other side of the road, but to his surprise and relief he found the way clear, there was a side road dead ahead. The road dipped and the car skidded down its incline, finally stopping broadside across it, the sudden jolt throwing the man forward against the windscreen. Before he had a chance to recover, Holman had leaned across his back and pushed the doorcatch down and shoved the door open. Still in one motion, he pushed the man’s rising figure out of the car and into the road, raising his foot and using it to clear the man’s legs. His efforts were helped because the car was slightly angled on the slope of the road, and the man’s body easily fell forward. Holman saw the woman’s head, with its ghastly staring eyes, begin a slow roll down