Free short story -- "Checking Out"

CHECKING OUT

The bed and breakfast – the cheapest he’d found during a quick squint online – looked good enough. Johnson parked outside it, got out of the car, and hauled his overnight case from the backseat. The road led on to the centre of a small village boasting many rundown outlets. He’d have a wander down there later – seeking second-hand DVDs, maybe even grabbing a cheeky afternoon pint before eating – but first he must check in.

The property, one of a row of terraces, was fronted by a smart arched portico. Autumn cloud robbed the image of the sunshine gloss he’d reviewed on the website, but Johnson was in no position to complain about that. This was the latest leg of his sales tour of the north-east, selling trinkets bearing little resemblance to presentations in the company catalogue. He knew all about the gap between fake and authentic.

A sharp chime of a hand-bell inside summoned a man so short he struggled to deal with items on the reception counter. When he proffered the registration book he had to adopt the posture of a swimmer performing a crawl. Johnson confessed to his identity in written form and was then handed a key.

“Your room ish on the firsht floor,” the man said, a lisp added to his obvious inferiorities.

Johnson had already observed that the building had only two storeys, but he thanked his host anyway, and then went up.

Number 4 looked on to the front of the house, a double bed (he might get lucky today; you never could tell) in one corner, a sink in another (as a man alone, why pay extra for en suite?), and a fashionably door-less wardrobe beside the entrance. Like a junkie seeking a new fix, Johnson flicked on a wall-mounted TV with a grubby handset, and for a moment considered calling home. The moment didn’t last. It was 3pm and his wife would be getting food prepared for the boys after school; best not to distract her from the task – he was only thinking of her.

After downing two mugs of muddy coffee whose excessive sugar masked the fabricated taste of UHT, Johnson glanced out of the window at the fabled hoteliers’ “view”. A rough scrub of grassland populated by trees and some sort of stone monument stood in front of what appeared to be a council estate listening with ears of satellite dishes. Well, that must be why this place was cheap. Johnson only hoped his car would be safe; a damaged vehicle might put him out of action for days.

It was time for a stroll. He flicked off bickering daytime TV and then checked one pocket for his wallet. All present and ready to rock n roll. He skipped back downstairs and heard his stomach grumble. He was on company expenses this evening, and although the firm wouldn’t pay for booze, he thought he’d find a decent Indian or, failing that, somewhere offering fat steaks.

While walking along the road to the village centre, he reflected on how much he enjoyed his time on the road. He loved his wife and kids, of course, but sometimes – no, most times – it was good to feel the way he once permanently had: free from domestic duties, all the temptations of the world lying agreeably ahead. He didn’t need much to float his boat. He’d leave St Tropez and Zanzibar to blokes with bigger bollocks than his. No, give him a beer, a pool table, a few foxy admirers, and he was as happy as a boar rolling around in its own business.

The village turned out to be a high street crammed with narrow outlets, as if a widely distributed commercial network had been folded in on itself, packed into as small a space as possible. All the same, there was a pub, some charity shops, and a few diners of predictable national origin. He’d start in the Oxfams and Age UKs, seeking bargains for his big-screen home-cinema system. He hadn’t paid more than a quid for a film in years, and he’d sooner the cash went to the needy than to Hollywood heroes, anyway.

The first outlet he tried didn’t have much to offer, just the same old movies he’d seen again and again. Harry had met Sally so many times that they must think they were stuck in Groundhog Day. Johnson sniggered and was about to move on when he grew aware of the only other person in the store – an elderly woman behind the till-point – staring directly his way. When he turned to greet her with a charmer’s smile, however, he noticed that she wasn’t looking at him at all, rather had her head pointed in his direction but the eyes jauntily averted. Johnson’s sense of being observed faded at once, and he calmly left the shop.

Perhaps he’d have better luck in the next. He entered, shivering a little in the gathering chill, and immediately found himself, as was his wont, homing in on the entertainment section. Books he could live without – why spend six hours following a story that could be told onscreen in two? – but here was another shelving unit packed with narrow spines, each promising an escape from humdrum life.

Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Gibson, Sandler, Stiller – had these guys just made a lot of pictures, or did folk not want them permanently in their homes? They certainly needn’t migrate again to Johnsons’, but now he did spot a title he’d yet to view, and one that excited him in a way that was rarely possible these days.

Peeping Tom, the case read, and under the title was a huge pair of glaring eyes. Hadn’t this film effectively ended the career of its auteur director? Johnson had heard that it remained controversial, so much so that he’d considered it a must-watch for a long while now. He’d wait till the wife and kids were out, shopping in malls on a weekend, leaving him with a crate of ale and the projector. Guilty pleasures, he thought, and that was when he sensed himself being watched again.

The one member of staff patrolling the room – a man this time, considerably more middle-aged than Johnson – appeared to be ensuring that Johnson didn’t slip the case he handled into one jacket pocket. At least this was Johnson’s impression when he turned to advance for the till-point. But as he invited attention en route, the guy – who’d previously had his face pointed Johnson’s way – flicked his head to one side, gazing neutrally ahead as he re-manned his station.

“A pound, please,” he said, failing to make any eye contact at all. He took Johnson’s money and then dropped it into the till. Johnson might have expected a grin of goodbye to match the alliterative request for cash, but as Johnson stepped away, all he saw was more of the chap’s balding crown, as well as upper eyelids masking glistening orbs beneath.

Johnson opened the door with sod-you-then rigor, and yet, as soon as he paced back outside, he imagined that same suspicious scrutiny returned to him, even though he was no longer able to steal anything. He didn’t look back, however; he’d had enough of being a stranger in town, and now needed to eat and – far more importantly – drink.

The pub would offer more choices of beer than any foreign restaurant, and, if cooked well, a steak was as good as a curry. This significant life-choice made, Johnson ducked into an independent free-house whose doorway was heralded by effusively colourful A-boards. Two courses for the price of one with a free pint chucked in sounded good to him so he ordered and found a table and then produced his phone as a way of deflecting the attention of a ragtag of jaundiced locals who used damaged pints as mini-shields while snatching gazes his way and wondering who the hell he was … but maybe Johnson was being paranoid after what he’d just experienced elsewhere.

A first, and then second, and on the heels of that, third gulp from his drink had set his restless mind on edge, so he quickly took a fourth, and then a fifth, in the hope that he’d now settle down to a good few hours of sensual pleasure. A sixth certainly helped. He’d be back at work tomorrow, but if he restricted himself to only two or three strong ales, he’d feel up to the task of peddling more garbage to unsuspecting clients in other parts of Teesside.

It wasn’t long – following his starter of chicken fajitas, and midway through his well-done rump – before the eyes found him anew. Peeking back at the onlooking mob put him promptly in mind of the DVD in one pocket, but if anyone could be described as “voyeuristic” it was them and not him. All the same, every time he flicked a glance across the room – in any direction, left or right or straight ahead – he perceived only something like his earlier experience: heads tilted his way, but eyes slanted elsewhere. 

They couldn’t all be in cahoots; this wasn’t a local custom gleefully shared by furtive residents. Still, when he stared at folk at the bar, everyone in his peripheral vision near the windows appeared to glare at him. Once he’d snatched his head around, the opposite was true: the bar-dwellers assumed the task of observation while their daylit counterparts reviewed activity out in the street. None of their faces moved, but the peepers did, sliding aside in sockets like on-off switches on electric devices.

Johnson, still munching through a decent steak, wondered whether drinking on an empty stomach was compromising his psyche the way it often had as a younger man. He was never a great distance from a paranoiac frame of mind – ask his wife about that one; she’d endured enough of his moods to become expert – but how would this account for his impressions back in the charity shops, before alcohol had even moistened his lips?

After draining what little remained of his first pint, Johnson swallowed a final mouthful of meat. He’d now go to the bar and order a second beer, to hell with the xenophobic regulars. Standing and straying ahead, he half-glimpsed eyes all around rotating slowly, tracking his sheepish progress. After asking for the drink from a barman, who registered his presence only aurally, Johnson produced the requisite coinage before returning to his chosen seat, in the middle of what increasingly struck him as a silent interrogation.

He sipped and gulped, and then drained the glass. His suspicions hardly faded at all, rather grew more ruthless. As the early evening stole in, other people had entered the bar, each passively aware of a newcomer in their midst. Above unfortunate music from the place’s stereo system – an unprecedentedly sinuous rendering of The Police’s “Every Step You Take” grew particularly troubling – Johnson saw mini-clusters of folk muttering low comments, faces pointing his way but only when he glanced elsewhere.

He was now pretty much surrounded. He found it impossible to patrol everyone. For every six pairs of eyes he diverted with a direct stare, another twenty swivelled towards him. At one stage he even glanced down at his body, expecting to see multiple red dots – like those projected by snipers’ rifles in his beloved films: threat rendered piercingly tangible – dancing on his belly, his chest, his arms. But that impression certainly had to be the beer going to his head.

He wouldn’t have another, simply return to his accommodation, the better to sleep all this off, evading the scrutiny of so many peculiar locals. He got up and crossed to the exit, expecting and indeed receiving more of that oblique assessment. For one semi-drunken moment he was tempted to turn and explain in a loud voice how unwelcome he’d been made to feel, but what purpose would that serve? He didn’t want his car trashed overnight. Or something worse, perhaps. Was the short man who ran his bed-and-breakfast in on this? Johnson couldn’t remember whether the guy had looked up from his lowly posture earlier that day. At any rate, the thought of him giving some of the beefier men from the pub a copy of Johnson’s room key sent a vicious shiver down his back and then himself along the street back to his overnight accommodation.

Nobody followed, at least as far as Johnson could tell. He relied on hearing rather than his visual field, steadfastly refusing to twist and glance over one shoulder. He surely couldn’t see figures peering out between closed curtains in properties further along the two rows. That must be just a trick of the uncertain light, a full moon rising to add to the face-like menace. The wind that blew was as cold as the human climate hereabouts, bringing dry leaves scudding like furtive footfalls. Johnson didn’t relent in his headlong march until he’d reached the scrub of land beyond his parked car, where that monument loitered like some stoic guardian of the area.

Was the figure perched upon the plinth really staring across into Johnson’s room? That had to be his overstrained imagination at work, brought about by what he’d just experienced. All the same, the longer he scrutinised the subject’s stone gaze, the more he grew convinced that it was indeed watching the window beyond which Johnson’s double bed awaited, cold and dismayingly empty. Lord, and to think he’d hoped to fill it with someone else tonight! That had been, as ever, a half-hearted aspiration – he was older now, losing power over the femmes – but even so, he suspected he might struggle to nod off alone later.

Unmindful of who the stone statue represented – some mining pioneer of bygone days, maybe; an industrial tycoon who’d funded such an egotistical monument to himself – Johnson stepped up to the property and then headed cautiously inside. Nobody awaited him at reception and nobody lurked on the staircase. The corridor leading to number 4 was similarly deserted, and that left only his room. He quietly unlatched the door, pushing it open with a minimalised creak. The light was off as he’d left it, but he soon overruled that. When the bed, the sink, the wardrobe sprang into life, he rapidly checked out each of them, eyes jigging at sharp angles. Moments later, he felt reassured. Nobody was here waiting. He might sleep without fear of intrusion, after all.

He hadn’t realised how edgy he’d grown. After washing, changing, and then taking a piss in the bowl, he climbed under a duvet thick enough to suffocate him. Before switching off the bedside lamp he listened carefully – to any other activity in the building (its absence made him wonder whether he was currently the only guest?); to movement outside (only a ceaseless chill taking advantage of those denuded trees); and finally to his thoughts, which, along with the alcohol he’d consumed, soon lulled him into a pleasing snooze. He found that he missed his wife, and even his rambunctious kids. The hostility of unknown territory must be drawing this rare feeling to his attention.

Johnson couldn’t be sure how much later he wakened, or even, in hindsight, whether he’d truly done so. All he knew the morning after was that he’d had a sense that people had come to gather around the moonlit building in which he slept, flocking like supplicants attending a mass; hanging in boughs, grouped around trunks; populating every square foot of the grassy stretch; sitting on top of that stone luminary from yesteryear, clinging to the legs; clambering up on to the roofs of council dwellings, using the satellite dishes for balance; watching, staring, gazing, eyeseyeseyeseyeseyes focused on Johnson’s window, the curtains, the room beyond.

He might even have got up out of bed and poked his dream-bedraggled head between twin folds of material hanging at the glass, peeking outside at what he’d surely crafted only in a nightmare. Could he recall the street and other land nearby being as deserted as they had to be in the actual world? Whatever the truth was, he consoled himself with thinking that the imagery he’d entertained was merely a product of his feverish subconscious, a region of his brain stoked by such odd encounters the previous day.

 When he awoke for real, seeing his room filled with reassuring light, he didn’t dare glance through the window until he’d washed and dressed. He told himself that this was because he feared damage to his car, even though a sour sensation inhabited his skull which was more than the aftertaste of strong ale. When he finally managed the task – tugged back the curtains, gazed through the glass – he found all as it should be. Even that monument seemed less intimidating today, its gaze levelled lower, at the gap between the building’s two storeys.

Thankfully, Johnson had booked in for bed but not breakfast, so he could leave at once. After gathering his gear, he headed for the door, perceiving movement to his left, a figure lurching just as he had. He turned to observe, and experienced instant relief. It was himself in a wall mirror, looking worryingly harried and decidedly off-colour. In truth he didn’t feel very well, but the quicker he left this unfriendly place, the sooner he’d surely perk up.

“What are you looking at?” he asked the creepy double alongside him, and that was when he exited the room, descended, left his key at reception, and strayed outside.

It was a typical autumn morning, the sky a repository of waddish grey cloud. He paced onto the pavement and then climbed inside his car. The engine started at the first attempt, even though he knew he ought to have checked the exhaust pipe for crap stuffed up there. He engaged the gearbox and let out the clutch. Finally, he was away. The trouble he’d expected, in a deep part of himself he only now acknowledged, was simply a phantom, as tangibly ephemeral as the breeze he’d endured before sealing himself inside the vehicle. He was at last ready for the working day ahead.

He’d come into the village one way, and would leave the other, headed for different parts of the area to flog his tawdry products. That would mean driving through the centre of the place, beyond the shops and the pub in which he’d suffered the previous evening. But everything would be fine, it really would. It was still early – no later than 8am to judge by his digital dashboard clock – and Johnson doubted many of the shabby late-night drinkers would even be up yet, let alone primed for more chicanery.

How wrong he was.

He saw the first as soon as he reached the commercial outlets, a dishevelled man emerging from a cramped doorway. The guy immediately halted and stared directly at Johnson, eyes not averted on this occasion, rather burning right into him, the pupils like oncoming bullets.

Another fellow – this one younger but no less crumpled in appearance, wearing a tracksuit topped off with a baseball cap and underscored by tatty trainers – stepped out from the next store in the row. His glare was similarly unflinching, tracking Johnson’s involuntarily slowed movement like a cat stalking quarry.

A woman followed, appearing from an alleyway between two eateries; she had as many chins as they were folds under her arms, but none of that lessened her capacity to gaze Johnson’s way, the eyelids sagging but not quite diminishing her capacity for intense scrutiny.

All this was on just one side of the street. When Johnson flipped his gaze to the other, his heart gave a lurch against his ribs.

More people occupied the pavement, and more and more followed as the car advanced. Everyone was dressed in the manner of a certain character type, high street brands cheapened by unstylish combinations. Their collective skins hinted at a lack of nutrients, as if the local culinary code was one of incremental self-destruction. Nevertheless, all looked as sharp-eyed as anybody Johnson had ever seen, irises stark and fixed ruthlessly on him.

They came en masse now, flooding from doorways, rounding corners, clambering up and out of skylight windows to occupy sloping slate rooftops. Soon each side of the street was layered on multiple levels with onlooking people, women and men and children alike. Some looked as old as the stone monument Johnson had reviewed earlier, and in their sudden concentrated stillness, he might be forgiven for assuming that all had achieved a similar degree of fixedness. Only their heads moved, rotating slowly as Johnson’s vehicle, now struggling in a low gear, gradually edged through the village. But those eyes never strayed for a moment, every one of them staring, staring, staring his way.

Even the animals were at it. A dog passed briefly in front of the car, crossing from the left with its face twisted right, righter, rightest. Then an avian – thrush, sparrow, blackbird: who the fuck knew? – dropped on to the bonnet, its gimlet gaze boring into him. A moment later it took wing, just as the hound had finally shifted out of Johnson’s path.

At last, his disorienting unease lifted by the sight of an empty road up ahead, he could floor the accelerator, and that was exactly what he did. The engine roared and he was quickly away, leaving every occupant of that dreadful village mercifully in his wake. As Johnson barrelled on, he consulted neither his wing nor his rear-view mirrors, and he must have travelled a healthy mile before he finally relinquished the inner control he’d been upholding, sensing chemicals promptly flood his body. He felt physically sick, panic making his hands tremble. What the hell had he just endured?

He didn’t cease driving until he reached a service station, and then he pulled over, in plain sight of other motorists who, reassuringly, didn’t appear to give a toss about what he was up to. He parked in a designated slot and quickly removed his mobile phone. His fingers still struggled to function accurately, but he was able to make the call. No, he explained, he wouldn’t be working today; he wasn’t feeling too well. Put it down as sick leave, please, and I’ll be back on the road tomorrow … I hope.

Johnson hung up on head-office, staring through his windscreen. Home. That was where he wanted to be. The humdrum presence of his wife of twenty years, and even the boys’ ceaseless bickering – this all suddenly struck him as wonderfully normal. He started the car anew and dropped the engine into gear. Soon he was driving again, heading back to Manchester with a hunger for little more than the pleasingly familiar. He’d always been a bit of a lad – a dyed-in-the-wool roamer; just genetic, innit? – but he wondered whether he’d now hit a watershed moment, the sudden onset of middle-age dragging him back to what was important.

It was too bewildering to work out, at least at this early stage. Better instead to proceed as he rarely had before, returning like a man uncomplicatedly chuffed with his lot. Indeed, when he reached his decent semi in a respectable neighbourhood, he poked the car up the driveway, climbed out, grabbed his luggage, and went promptly inside.

Although the front door had been unlocked, his wife wasn’t in any of the downstairs rooms, and so Johnson ascended the flight of carpeted steps. She wasn’t in the bathroom, either, so that left only one option: the master bedroom. He blundered through at once. And there she was, draped across the bed … with a large figure bundled in sheets alongside her.

She glanced up; he looked back. Finally, the tension broke.

“You’re home early,” she said, adjusting her posture to relinquish the heavy duvet whose cover she’d just been in the process of changing. “Is there a problem?”

She couldn’t have been committing the illicit act Johnson had only briefly imagined; despite having to leave for school that morning – less than an hour ago, in fact – the boys would have known all about that.

“I…I wasn’t feeling so good,” he replied, voice shaking along with other, still treacherous parts of him. “Figured I’d take the day off.”

She stared his way, dropping the duvet and its sheet in a pile. Although her next words were kind – “Oh dear, where does it hurt?” – he couldn’t help feeling that she suspected him of something, as if, on his latest travels, he’d lived up to the amorous reputation he’d had before meeting her and had only tenuously suppressed since.

“Dunno, really,” he said, one hand fumbling across his face until he had no choice but to glance elsewhere. “Maybe it’s some sort of bug.”

 “I see,” she said, swiftly coming towards him. “Okay, let’s go downstairs and get the kettle on. You can have some aspirin, too.”

“Thanks,” he replied, and then returned his gaze to her.

She glanced back, wide eyes gleaming, gleaming. Her scrutiny failed to relent, even after long seconds.

Johnson smarted. Too many troubling recollections assaulting him, he wondered whether he was now changed forevermore. Whatever the truth was, after being forced to look away again, he suddenly felt as ill as he ever had in the past.