A Twist of the Knife

You’ll never forget my face

It was almost dark when Laura drove away from the supermarket. Sleet was falling and strains of ‘Good King Wenceslas’ echoed from the Salvation Army band outside Safeway. She wound down her window and pushed her ticket into the slot. As the barrier swung up, a movement in the rear-view mirror caught her eye and she froze.

Black eyes watched her from the darkness of the car’s interior. She wanted to get out of the car and scream for help — instead, her right foot pressed down hard on the accelerator and the rusting Toyota shot forward.

She swerved past a van, zigzagged between a startled mother and her children, who were walking on a zebra crossing, and raced across a junction.

The eyes watched her, expressionless, in the mirror.

Faster.

The windscreen was frosting over with sleet, but she couldn’t find the wipers. She swung out too wide on a bend and the car skidded, heading on to the wrong side of the road. She screamed as the Toyota careered towards the blinding headlights of a lorry.

The lorry’s bumper exploded through the windscreen. It slammed into her face, ripping her head from her neck, hurling it on to the back seat. The car erupted into an inferno. Flames seared her body...

Then she woke up.

The room was silent. She lay bathed in a cold sweat and gasping for breath. Suddenly, she remembered the old gypsy woman who’d tried to force a sprig of heather on her outside the supermarket.

The gypsy had blocked her way and had been so insistent that Laura had finally lost her temper, shoved past the woman and snapped, ‘Sod off, you hideous old hag!’

The gypsy woman had followed her to the car, rapped on the window, pressed her wizened face with its piercing black eyes against the glass and croaked, ‘Look at my face. You’ll never forget my face. You’ll see it for the rest of your life. The day you stop seeing my face will be the day you die!’

Laura turned for comfort towards her sleeping husband. Bill stirred fleetingly. She smelled the raw animal smell of his body, of his hair. He was the rock to which her whole life was anchored.

Christmas Eve tomorrow. It was going to be just the two of them together this time and she had been really looking forward to it. She snuggled closer, wiggled her toes — hoping faintly that he might wake and they could make love — pressed her face against his iron-hard chest and began to feel safe again.

In the middle of the next night, Laura woke again, startled by a sharp rapping. The room was flooded with an eerie sheen of moonlight. Odd, she thought, that she hadn’t drawn the curtains.

Then she heard the rapping again and her scalp constricted in terror. The face of the old gypsy woman, a ghastly chalky white, was pressed against the bedroom windowpane.

‘Look at my face!’ she hissed. ‘Look at my face. You’ll never forget my face. You’ll see it for the rest of your life. The day you stop seeing my face will be the day you die!’

Laura turned to Bill with a whine of terror, but he was still sound asleep. ‘Bill,’ she whimpered. ‘Bill!’

‘Urrr... wozzit?’ he grunted, stirring.

‘Someone’s at the window,’ she said, her voice so tight it was barely audible.

She heard the sound of his hand scrabbling on his bedside table. Then a sharp click and the room flooded with light. She stared fearfully back at the window and a wave of relief washed over her. The curtains were shut!

‘Wozzermarrer?’ Bill grunted, still half asleep.

‘I had a bad dream.’ She turned towards him, feeling a little foolish, and kissed him on the cheek. ‘I’m sorry.’

In the morning, Bill brought them both breakfast in bed. Then he gave her a huge card and three gift-wrapped packages. ‘Happy Christmas,’ he said, and blushed — he was never very good at sentiment.

Laura gave him his presents — an expensive bottle of aftershave and the cordless screwdriver he’d hinted at wanting — then she opened hers.

The first package was a sweater with daft-looking sheep appliquéd on the front. It made her laugh and she kissed him. The next was a bottle of her favourite bath oil. Then she saw his eyes light up in anticipation as she gripped the final package. It was small, square and heavy.

‘I... er... hope you like it,’ he mumbled.

With mounting excitement she unwrapped a cardboard box. It was filled with sprigs of heather. Buried in their midst was a small porcelain figurine.

Laura froze.

Bill could sense something was wrong. ‘I... I got it yesterday,’ he said. ‘For your collection of Capo di Monte peasants. I thought it had...’ his voice began to falter, ‘... you know — a real presence about it.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘A junk shop. Something made me stop there — I just knew I was going to find the perfect present for you inside.’

Quite numb, Laura stared at the black, piercing eyes of the hag that leered up at her with lips peeled back to reveal sharp, rat-like incisors.

‘It’s lovely,’ she said flatly, seeing how hurt he looked. ‘Really lovely.’

Laura kept the figurine on her dressing table over that week, to please Bill, but the thing’s presence terrified her.

The following Sunday, he left to drive his container lorry to Italy. She didn’t start back at her office until the day after next, so she busied herself with housework. As the afternoon drew on, she felt increasingly uncomfortable.

Finally, she made a snap decision, went to the bedroom, put the figurine in its box, took it outside and dropped it in the dustbin.

Feeling better, she ate supper on a tray and watched a weepy movie on television, wishing Bill was home.

Shortly after eleven, she went upstairs. As she switched the bedroom light on, her eyes fell on the dressing table, and a slick of fear travelled down her spine. The figurine was back, sitting in exactly the same position it had been that morning. Laura’s eyes shot to the undrawn curtains, then returned to the dressing table. The floor seemed to sway. She backed unsteadily out of the room, clutching the door frame to stop herself falling, then slammed the door shut.

She stumbled downstairs, pulled the sitting-room curtains tight, switched all the bars of the fire on, curled up on the sofa and listened, petrified, for a sound upstairs. She lay there all night, finally dozing for a brief spell around dawn.

In the morning, she put the figurine in the boot of her car, drove to the tip three miles away and threw it on to the heap. She watched it fall between the discarded fridges, busted sofas and tangle of rubble and old tyres, until it finally disappeared beneath a fire-blackened cushion.

When Laura finally got home, she realized that it was the first time she’d felt at ease since opening that damned present. At two in the morning, she was woken by a sharp rap. The room felt as cold as a deep freezer. As she switched on the bedside light, she let out a curdling yelp of terror. The figurine was back on her dressing table.

Laura sat up the rest of the night, too frightened to sleep. Next morning, she carried the dreaded figurine out on to the patio and smashed it to smithereens with a hammer. She carried the fragments in a rubbish bag to her office, and during her lunch break dropped them in the incinerator. All afternoon she felt elated, as if she’d finally freed herself. When she finished work, she drove to the outskirts of town and went to Safeway to do her weekly shop.

As she pushed her trolley down the aisles, she found she was smiling to herself. Smiling at her little triumph and smiling, too, at her own stupidity. Probably the figurine hadn’t looked anything like the old gypsy, it was just her wild imagination, the same way she must have imagined throwing it in the bin and on to the tip but hadn’t.

‘Got spooked by the old hag and now I’m cracking up.’ She grinned to herself. ‘Silly fool.’

It was nearly dark as she left the store. There was no sign of the gypsy woman, but even so, Laura looked carefully at the back seat of the car before climbing in and quickly locking the doors. She reached the exit, pushed her ticket into the slot and the barrier rose up. As it did, a sudden movement in her rear-view mirror caught her eye. The temperature plunged. Goose pimples as hard as rivets spiked her skin. In the mirror, she could clearly see the piercing black eyes watching her out of the darkness. The dream flooded back. She remembered how she’d accelerated helplessly and she found her right foot pressing down now. The car surged forward as if it had a will of its own. Laura let out a tiny whimper of fear, and saw the rat-like teeth grinning at her in the mirror.

‘Got to stop this somehow. Got to change the dream. Got to break the spell.’

Gripping the wheel with both hands, her heart thrashing, she turned to face her tormentor. There was no one there, just the empty rear seat.

I imagined her, she thought, with immense relief. I imagined her!

The blare of a horn filled her ears. As she spun her head back to the road, she saw, far too late, the blazing headlights of the oncoming truck. In that last split second before the little Toyota exploded in a fireball, Laura remembered the gypsy’s words. ‘Look at my face. You’ll never forget my face. You’ll see it for the rest of your life. The day you stop seeing my face will be the day you die!’