The Puffin Book of Horror Stories

    The sales assistant set the gargoyle down. It clunked heavily against a paving stone. 'Don't you have the receipt?' he asked.

    'No'.

    'Well,… what did you say your parents' name was?'

    'Harding. Jeremy and Susan Harding.'

    'Doesn't ring a bell

    'They argue a lot. They probably argued about the price.'

    A slow smile spread across the sales assistant's face. Because of the way his face twisted, the smile was oddly menacing. 'Yeah. I do remember,' he said. 'It was delivered somewhere in North London.'

    'Muswell Hill,' Isabel said.

    'That's right.' The smile cut its way over his cheekbone. 'I do remember. They got the Marlin bath.'

    'What's the Marlin bath?' Belinda asked. She didn't like the sound of it already.

    The sales assistant chuckled to himself. He pulled out a packet of ten cigarettes and lit one. It seemed a long time before he spoke again. 'Jacob Marlin. It was his bath. I don't suppose you've ever heard of him.'

    'No,' Isabel said, wishing he'd get to the point.

    'He was famous in his time.' The sales assistant blew silvery grey smoke into the air. 'Before they hanged him.'

    'Why did they hang him?' Isabel asked.

    'For murder. He was one of those… what do you call them… Victorian axe murderers. Oh yes…' The sales assistant was grinning from ear to ear now, enjoying himself. 'He used to take young ladies home with him - a bit like Jack the Ripper. Know what I mean? Marlin would do away with them…'

    'You mean kill them?' Belinda whispered.

    'That's exactly what I mean. He'd kill them and then chop them up with an axe. In the bath.' The sales assistant sucked at his cigarette. 'I'm not saying he did it in that bath, mind. But it came out of his house. That's why it was so cheap. I dare say it would have been cheaper still if your mum and dad had known…'

    Isabel turned and walked out of the antique shop. Belinda followed her. Suddenly the place seemed horrible and menacing, as if every object on display might have some dreadful story attached. Only in the street, surrounded by the noise and colour of the traffic did they stop and speak.

    'It's horrible!' Belinda gasped. 'He cut people up in the bath and you…' She couldn't finish the sentence. The thought was too ghastly.

    'I wish I hadn't come.' Isabel was close to tears. 'I wish they'd never bought the rotten thing.'

    'If you tell them…'

    'They won't listen to me. They never listen to me.'

    'So what are you going to do?' Belinda asked.

    Isabel thought for a moment. People pushed past on the pavement. Market vendors shouted out their wares. A pair of policemen stopped briefly to examine some apples. It was a different world to the one she had left behind her in the antique shop. 'I'm going to destroy it,' she said at last. 'It's the only way. I'm going to break it up. And my parents can do whatever they like…'

    She chose a monkey-wrench from her father's toolbox. It was big and she could use it both to smash and to unscrew. Neither of her parents were at home. They thought she was over at Belinda's. That was good. By the time they got back it would all be over.

    There was something very comforting about the tool she had chosen, the coldness of the steel against her palm, the way it weighed so heavily in her hand, almost willing her to swing it. Slowly she climbed the stairs, already imagining what she had to do. Would the monkey-wrench be strong enough to crack the bath? Or would she only disfigure it so badly that her parents would have to get rid of it? It didn't matter either way. She was doing the right thing. That was all she cared.

    The bathroom door was open. She was sure it had been shut when she had glanced upstairs only minutes before. But that didn't matter either. Swinging the monkey-wrench, she went into the bathroom.

    The bath was waiting for her.

    It had filled itself to the very brim with hot water - scalding hot from the amount of steam it was giving off. The mirror had completely steamed over. A cool breeze from the door touched the surface of the glass and water trickled down. Isabel lifted the monkey-wrench. She was smiling a little cruelly. The one thing the bath couldn't do was move. It could taunt her and frighten her but now it just had to sit there and take what was coming to it.

    She reached out with the monkey-wrench and jerked out the plug.

    But the water didn't leave the bath. Instead something thick and red oozed out of the plug-hole and floated up through the water.

    And with the blood came maggots - hundreds of them, uncoiling themselves from the plug-hole, forcing themselves up through the grille and cartwheeling crazily in the water. Isabel stared in horror, then raised the monkey-wrench. The water, with the blood added to it, was sheeting over the side now, cascading on to the floor. She swung and felt her whole body shake as the metal clanged into the taps, smashing the C of cold and jolting the pipe-work.