The Puffin Book of Horror Stories

Laurence Staig Freebies

The old one-eyed Chinaman who stood in the market place was giving them away. He wasn't giving them to quite everyone though. Just people who took his fancy, and who said nice things about the pile of old junk that he was selling from his stall. The old man appeared to like kids, and was acting up like some weird oriental Santa Claus.

Dad had bought a wok from him, for Mum; it was going to be a Christmas present. I'd have preferred to go to Habitat, then you knew where it'd been, but Dad wanted to be his usual 'grassroots' self and buy the thing from the people who knew, really knew, about woks.

Dad really can be a boring old fart sometimes.

I wasn't so sure that Mum would know what to do with the thing anyhow, or whether or not she even wanted one. Her mind would be on other things this year, it being the first one without Grannie.

So I ended up being dragged around Chinatown, in the middle of dirty smelly old Soho, on a busy Saturday afternoon, just to get a piece of authentic Chinese frying pan!

The old Chinaman gave me the creeps. A wrinkled prune of a face, with green teeth in a gap-filled mouth, which gasped hot stale breath when he bent down to whisper in my ear.

'Please take it,' he grinned, 'for you. It is present. For you, how you call it? A freebie. With every twenty wok I sell today, a freebie. Yes, it is good, eh?'

He had to be joking, and what a coincidence.

How'd he know about my little hobby, anyhow?

It didn't matter, I'd got another one for the collection.

I looked at the little black plastic box with the dangling chrome chain. He must have read ray mind and I could certainly read Dad's. He just groaned. You see, I had a thing about 'give-aways'. Collected them all the time, out of breakfast cereal packets, from petrol stations when we got petrol, supermarkets, anywhere really.

I just liked them, like little trophies. Freebies, as the man said.

'What is it?' I asked.

'It doesn't matter,' said Dad through clenched teeth, 'it's kind of the gentleman to give us anything at all.'

'It clever key-ring,' said the Chinaman, 'instructions in little panel, where battery go. Batteries not included. You like? I sell you packet, here. Special price to you of one pound ninety pence.'

A leathery hand unfolded to reveal a packet of digital watch batteries, produced from nowhere like a card in a magician's card trick.

Dad's face twitched. I sniggered.

'Crafty old sod,' I said to myself, 'he's just got Dad to shell out on a couple of batteries that he wasn't expecting to have to buy.'

Dad gave him what he sometimes called one of his 'old-fashioned' looks and pressed two pound coins into the Chinaman's palm.

The hand closed.

The old man wished Dad a happy Christmas, and turned to serve another customer who was interested in a wok set.

We didn't even get the change.

That Chinaman was smarter than he looked.

Dad, decided that we should walk to Trafalgar Square and perhaps take a bus or taxi back to Brixton. He still wanted to poke around in a few shops, just in case he saw something else he fancied.

'We've got to help Mary through Christmas now that Edith won't be with us this year. You know how dependent she was on the old bat — ' he corrected himself, 'the old dear. Help her to take her mind off things, OK?'

He winked at me. I smiled back to keep him happy.

Hypocrite. I knew what he really thought about Grannie.

I hated it, too, when he called Mum Mary, so familiar, as though I was one of their wally 'drinks party' friends instead of a kid, and I could never get used to Grannie being called by her first name. It wasn't right. As far as I was concerned Grannie was Grannie, and she'd always been around.

'You're growing up now, Sarah,' he'd said to me once, 'you must start to behave more like an adult. I also think it's about time you stopped playing with all those stupid gimmicky toys you litter your room with.'

He always went on and on about how we were slaves of the 'consumer society' as he called it, and how I was a mindless dingbat to go along with it all.

That was a joke coming from a middle-aged bloke who thought he was really IT.

Me? I just liked freebies, that was all.

Dad hated the fact that the old Chinese prune had given me another toy. The joke was on him though: he'd bought me the batteries to go with it!

As we walked down Charing Cross Road I turned the little plastic tag case over in my hand. I wondered at first why a key-ring needed batteries, but then I realized what it was.

In gold lettering on one side was a line of Chinese letters; beneath that in English it simply said 'Chang's Quality Woks, Brewer Street, London, England (main distributors)'.

On the other side of the tag it said 'Key-Finder'.

The little yellow paper stuffed inside the base explained it all in sentences my teacher wouldn't have liked: Kee-Finder will nether let yuu down if kees yuu lose or mislay. Just whistle. If yor keys are within a 30' radios our tag will immeddiately return call with a serees of clere tones.

It was one of those lost-key locators. I was really pleased.

I couldn't wait to try it out.

Dad wanted to go into a bookshop near the National Gallery, 'Better Books'. He wanted to get Mum (or Mary) another present. I followed him in while trying to fit the pill-shaped batteries into the base of the key tag.

The shop was jam-packed. Christmas shoppers, cookery books and pictures of the Royal Family everywhere.

A lady in the shop, with glasses and a bun on the back of her hair, pinned a big round yellow badge on my coat lapel. She asked me if I liked books and wished me happy Christmas. There was a miniature book stuck in the centre of the badge, the size of a postage stamp. It opened, with pages like a real book. Above this was the message: Better books are Better!

It was a really good freebie. I hadn't seen one like that before.

Dad took my badge off when he saw it, and slapped it down on the counter. The lady with the bun glared at him.

Dad (or Jim if we're into parent-speak), was getting himself all worked up again. Mumbling about me being an easy target, a sucker for it all.

He bought a hi-fi magazine on the way out of the shop, and there was a freebie stuck to the cover with a bit of Sellotape. A Hi-fi Casebook pencil sharpener. It was clever. A little plastic compact disc with the sharpener on the other side of the spindle hole. On the way home he never lifted his head out of his precious hi-fi magazine once! Typical. He's just as much of a consumer-head as everyone else!

He wouldn't let me whistle on the bus, but when we got off at Brixton Hill I tried to get the Key-Finder to work.

So I whistled. I whistled at it, whistled in it, practically took the thing apart. Nothing.

Dad got mad, which was really ironic considering all the fuss he'd been making about the thing, said he'd a mind to go all the way back to Soho and give the man his batteries back.

I wasn't that bothered. After all, it had been free, it looked pretty and I could still put my keys on it if I wanted to.

But I had another idea, another use for it.

'Are you going to chuck it?' asked Dad as we turned into our drive, past the dustbins.

I shook my head.

Dad stopped and turned on his heels. A single finger was lifted.

I'm warning you, are you listening, young lady? You leave Dylan alone, he's got a hard enough life as it is trying to survive in the Brixton Hill gardens with all that other nonsense you've fixed on the poor little devil's collar!'

I just smiled, politely, and then shoved the key tag deep into ray coat pocket. Dad could be such a pain.

Dylan was scratching himself on the porch mat as we walked up the path.

The front door opened. Mum (or Mary) stood in the doorway.

She didn't look good. I sighed.

Dad (or Jim) was making caustic comments in the living-room about how the Christmas booze seemed to be prematurely lowering its level. The surface line in the large bottle of Gordon's, which sat on the Habitat trolley, was certainly nearing the bottom.

Even I noticed that.

But then again, Mum was depressed.

I spent my time out in the kitchen trying to make the key tag work, but it wouldn't give out so much as a peep. Dylan had struggled into the kitchen too.

Mum and Dad were rowing again and Dylan wanted to get out of their way.

I didn't blame him.

Dad was making the usual fuss about how she had to pull herself together, she'd a family (and him) to look after, just because Edith's number had come up we didn't have to spend the entire Christmas in mourning.

Then he threatened to re-convert the grannie-flat which we'd had built next to the garden shed. He'd always threatened to make it into an outdoor aquarium.

Ah well.

And my new freebie didn't work.

Dylan purred smugly down at me from the top of the boiler. His head was lowered from the weight of his great collection of Cat Consumables. Mum called him our 'Consumer Kitty'.

I attached the key tag to his collar along with the other freebies:

his Katto-Kipper personalized name disc

plastic Burger King bun

miniature Coca-Cola bottle

Holiday Inn room tag

MHI luggage label

Kellogg's Munchkin Man

and a Dr Who Energizer ring which wrapped around his neck.

That had been a special 'give-away' at the Arndale Shopping Centre in Croydon; he liked that best of all.

Dylan opened his sleepy eyes and stretched his paws and shook his new toy. Then, with a loud miaow, probably a 'thank you', he made for the kitchen door. His freebies crashed into the cat flap on his way out.

In the living-room they were still rowing.

Dad's voice was getting really loud.

Outside came the rumble of an approaching car. I suddenly had a bad feeling.

I heard Mum's glass smash at almost the same time as we heard the screech of brakes out in the front road.

There was an awful short tangled wail. The kind of sound cats make when they scrap. Then silence.

I heard Dad yell, 'Oh my God, no!' Dad can be 50 dramatic.

Yesterday was miserable: black and solemn.

Dad blamed me. He was really mad. But it was good of him to dig Dylan a nice neat grave out in the back garden.

He kept muttering about how there had been far too much on his collar, and how the whistling keyring had been the final straw. Just slowed him down, so when he'd run across the street he was an easy target.

Mum told him to shut up, that he'd upset 'the child'.

'The child' indeed. I just ignored her.

We put Dylan in the soft soil where Mum had planted the Hobson's Garden Centre roses, just in front of the grannie-flat.

We buried him with full honours, all his toys intact. I'd wanted the key-ring back, just as a souvenir, but Mum was almost sick when Dad tried to find it. It was like picking a favourite strawberry out of a collapsed flan.

She called me a funny word. I didn't know what it meant, but I didn't like the sound of it at all.

A ghoul?

You can go off parents.

Sleep was very difficult that night, in fact everything was a funny blur. The air in my bedroom seemed thick and it was difficult even to breathe.

I opened the dormer window and looked down into the garden.

It was dark and cold, but winter clear outside.

A grey cloud passed over, and the grass in front of the grannie-flat reflected moonglow once more.

The garden shone.

A newly heaped pile of topsoil marked the spot. I had scratched Dylan's name on a coke can, and fixed it in the ground, a temporary tombstone.

The TV offer peacock wind-chime which hung within the window-frame sang softly as a gentle wind got up.

A last goodnight to Dylan.

I shivered and scrambled back to bed.

I must have forgotten to close the window because I remember the sounds well. So bright. Icy sharp.

There was the rustle and flutter of feathers against branches.

A low warbling sound, and then a single hoot.

It was our owl, and he had come to speak to Dylan.

He'd startled me. Through half-closed eyes I watched as the shadows of the branches shimmered across the bedroom wall. Tangling into twisted claws.

Dylan would sit for hours on the window-ledge. The owl came often. Dad said that it was unusual to find a bird like that in Brixton.

Dylan and the owl were friends. But now he'd have to find somebody else.

I pulled the sheet up tight to my neck, eyelids heavy with sleep.

There was a high-pitched whistle outside.

The owl was preparing to fly from the tree.

It shook its feathers and then let out a strange kind of 'hoot'.

And then another… it was really scary.

Almost a whistle.

Just after that I heard a strangled muffled growl, far away, from deep beneath the still cold earth.

I sank and sank, down and down, into the softness of dream.

My eyes were not quite closed. Not yet. But I knew.

From the distance the owl cried out once more. I couldn't do a thing. Couldn't even move. I didn't know if I was awake or dreaming.

There was a familiar scratching on the bark of the tree outside my window. A slow and perhaps painful kind of shifting.

The shadows of branch claws trembled across the wall as something pulled itself along a main bough.

There was a shape framed within the window, dead eyes that glowed, and then the soft plop as it dropped from the sill down on to the floor.

I heard a gasp, the momentary 'puff of the eiderdown as though something heavy had landed on the bed.

Outside the branches rustled. Twigs cracked.

I became aware of a gentle repetitious pumping at the bottom of the bed, and then a warm comforting vibration in the small of my back like an electric motor.

I was afraid. At first.

But I'm a big girl now.

Mum was very excited. 'Hysterical,' Dad said. She kept asking him over and over about the white and ginger hairs at the bottom of the bed. He told her not to be so silly and to 'lay off the sauce'.

I think it was the blood that really bothered her. That and the soil-clogged Burger King bun she found next to the pillow.

I can understand why she was so upset, but she's all right now.

What pissed me off most was Dad, saying that I could never bring another freebie into the house again.

I'll do what I want!

Have I got a surprise for them, for Christmas!

I've been practising my whistles, and I've got lots of ideas for using those key-rings now. I went to Brixton and caught the tube, all the way up to Chinatown, and all on my own too. I got a whole bunch of the tags from the old Chinese wok man.

We did a deal. I'd keep quiet about his fiddle with the batteries.

Tonight I'm going to go and see Grannie at the cemetery.

It's just up the road.

Mum misses her so, and it'll serve Dad right.

The key-ring works fine now. Fine.

Best freebie I've ever had.