Danny Yates Must Die. Stephen Walker

      Danny climbed from the cab, letting its door swing to behind him. It clunked as Lucy pulled it shut.

      He stepped forward, eyes fixed on distant fields and a white cottage gleaming in the sun. An imaginary choir sang as he imagined summer days spent running through that long long grass, lazing by that cool cool lake, climbing that distant ridge against a sunset that couldn’t fail to be glorious in such a setting. And he knew at last he’d found happiness.

      He heard Lucy approaching behind him. He wanted to hug her, to take her in his arms, spin her round and round and round in slow motion, laughing and giggling stupidly. He decided not to, fearing violence.

      ‘Danny, the girl’s a student. How could she afford the countryside? She owns just these houses.’

      ‘Which houses?’

      ‘Either side.’

      ‘There are no houses either side.’ His gaze remained on the fields, still dreaming of the days ahead. And this woman? Annette? Beneath the cyberman suit she was Beetlejuice Winona, or as good as? And she liked him? It was as though all the rotten luck he’d ever had was now being cancelled out by the law of averages.

      Lucy’s grip forced his head leftward. She said, ‘Look twenty feet, straight ahead.’

      ‘What about it?’

      ‘Concentrate really hard.’

      He did – convinced she was wasting his time when he could be running around that valley, like the Railway Children as the final credits rolled and they knew everything would be perfect from now on. Ahead he saw nothing but full-bloom cherry blossom stretching down to a stream that seemed made for stickleback jam jar fishing.

      Then he frowned.

      The harder he looked, the darker those trees became and the fewer of them there were. They twisted, thickened, threatened. Branches became arms. Twigs were fingers reaching out to scratch the eyes of unwary passers by. Bark became the faces of souls who must have done terrible things in life to be so anguished in death. The daisies punctuating the cherry blossom turned into coarse grass to grab the ankles of those foolish enough to encroach, and to tug them to the ground before consuming them.

      He frowned deeper. Something was materializing.

      It was a black smudge, floating, spreading, as though being sketched in charcoal by some mad artist. It became huge, brooding, a gaunt silhouette. It had chimneys, twelve, one on each outcrop. Screaming-faced gargoyles appeared beneath the eaves. Things stuck out for no purpose. Things stuck in for no purpose. Things stuck.

      Windows were eyes. A door was a mouth. A crazy, yellow brick path connected street to door; an invitation to enter at your peril.

      And it was a house, a great, complacent toad of a house waiting to unroll its tongue and reel in the careless.

      ‘Jesus.’ Danny gasped and stepped back. The cab blocked his uncoordinated retreat.

      ‘Now look right.’ Lucy’s grip redirected his head.

      On the street’s other side, a second house appeared, faster now he’d learned the trick. It exactly mirrored the first.

      How many houses like this were there? Was the town full of them and he’d never noticed?

      ‘See them now?’ she asked.

      ‘See them? They’ll be in my nightmares for the rest of my life.’ He glanced behind him but the rest of Plescent Street was still square-gardened suburbia.

      Lucy was sat grinning on the cab bonnet, feet on bumper, elbows on knees, chin on palms. ‘Involuntary denial. Your subconscious doesn’t want to accept they exist, so it hides them from you unless forced to reveal them.’

      ‘And you expect me to live there?’ He was incredulous.

      ‘Damn right I do.’

      He again watched the houses. ‘Which one belongs to this Annette creature?’

      ‘Both; fifty pence each from a bucket shop estate agent. For twenty-five years they couldn’t sell either. Then along comes Annette and buys them both. Great, huh? Like the twin towers of Wembley but less clichéd. And every kid dreams of going to Wembley.’

      ‘I didn’t.’

      ‘Now’s your chance to start.’

      ‘I’ve never seen anything so horrible,’ he said.

      ‘You’ve never seen yourself naked?’

      ‘Lucy, I look a lot better than that naked.’

      ‘Believe me, Danny, you don’t.’

      He looked at her.

      Chin on palms, she shrugged. ‘I drilled a hole in the bathroom wall once. Remember when you complained of funny noises while you were showering, and I said we had a big cement-burrowing worm problem? And you said the worm looked like an endoscope and I said, no no no, all cement-burrowing worms have glow-in-the-dark heads that follow your every move and try to look up your bottom. I had to stare for fifteen minutes before my subconscious’d let me register you. It wasn’t worth the wait. I took photos. Want to buy them? Ten pence the lot. I’ve got stacks. Tried selling them at Poly but no takers. No one could see you, apart from Annette. She bought loads. She walked off smiling. But then Annette likes you.’

      He stepped toward her. ‘One of these days, I’m going to …’

      ‘You’re going to what?’ she challenged, contemptuous.

      Fists clenched, he tried glaring her into oblivion.

      She was unaffected, her gaze settling on the house to her left. ‘That, Daniel, is a style known as Wheatley Gothique. No one expects an ingrate like you to understand but some things can only be produced by the personal vision of an individual.’

      ‘What kind of individual would build things like these?’

      Wednesday, April 21, 1926. What Hejediah Johnson saw from his bedroom window bothered him.

      He saw neat trimmed houses. Whitewashed picket fencing contained hedges topiaried into trains, snowmen, castellations, airborne kites, friendly dinosaurs and friendly dinosaurs flying kites. Each bordered one of a row of perfectly square gardens with identical ornaments in identical positions by identical ponds. Propriety as God.

      Next morning, the same.

      And the next.

      And the next.

      And the next.

      After two months’ growing disquiet, he emerged into a summer morning, paint pot in hand, bold strokes daubing his front door red. Not any old red, but the blazing scarlet of his fondest-remembered sunset.

      The street’s other front doors were army green. Always had been. Always would be.

      His neighbours’ reaction amazed him. Far from being outraged, they were delighted, having also hated being identical, though lacking courage to defy the Residents’ Committee.

      The Residents’ Committee comprised one member; Miss Xenia Minnlebatt. It represented the interests of one resident; Miss Xenia Minnlebatt. Her meetings ran with an iron fist in a chain mail glove, often ending with the death of a small domestic servant. Frequently, she would beat even herself into submission during displays of bloody-minded intolerance.

      But now he’d given a lead, they’d all paint their doors a different colour; and hang Miss Xenia Minnlebatt – literally, said some. But Miss Xenia Minnlebatt’s public execution would have to wait a further ten years.

      For the first time ever, Hejediah Johnson went to work with a spring in his step and a song in his heart. Though no one knows what the song was, some said it involved lost hats.

      He whistled all through work at Givens’ design office. Workmates thought him delirious. Osbert Givens insisted he knock off early,