Horror stories

"—no, the fourth one, not the second, the second one's fine, it's the fourth one that does it." Danny doesn't look up from his phone when he says it. I have to ask him twice which register he means…

The sound was a foghorn. I was sure of it, that low double note rolling off the water, the kind the container ships used to give near the lock gates when I was a kid. Then I saw the barrier arm…

You asked me to start from the beginning, so I'll start with the washing. It was a Tuesday, I'm fairly sure, because bins go out Tuesdays on our road and I remember stepping over the box when I…

The doorbell was sitting on top of the skip outside number 14, still wrapped in its bubble wrap. That's the first thing I want to get straight, because everyone keeps asking why I'd take something…

The wellington boot was buckled into the front seat when I got on, seatbelt tight across its ankle, green rubber gone grey. Nobody claimed it. The driver, a woman called Pam who'd done the route…

No, I didn't make a wish. That's the part nobody believes, so I'll say it first and get it out of the way. My aunt Rosalind left me a storage unit in Elyria, unit 214, rent paid through August.…

The ticket machine on Level B2 had a laminated sheet taped over its screen, yellowed at the corners, held on with the kind of parcel tape that leaves residue for years. It hadn't been there when I…

"No, I never touched the soil on Fourteen. Whatever you heard, that's not how it went." Ray said that before I'd even got the lid off my flask. I'd only wanted to know why the plot next to mine was…

Denny found it wrapped in a tea towel, in the freezer drawer where the ice trays go, still blinking its little green light once every four seconds. That was the thing he kept coming back to when he…

"—and I told them, twelve. I counted twelve aisles every night for six weeks, and the store only has eleven." That was how Priya started, halfway through her second pint, like we'd been talking about…

I was meant to be counting cutlery. Forty-two settings, silver-plate, the estate agent wanted a number for the inventory before the skip arrived in the morning, and I kept losing count somewhere in…

"No, I said I'd be back by one, not that I'd left by one, there's a difference, Carol." I had the phone wedged between ear and shoulder, indicator ticking, and she was still going on about the…