Red Jacket
A cartoon flashed across the screen; all bright colours and high-pitched childish voices from tinny speakers. In the corner of the screen an immobile, ghostly presence; the famous round face and over-sized ears, behind which danced Mickey, Donald, Goofy and the rest, acting out an approximation of a Midsummer Night’s Dream. Mickey was Lysander. Goofy was Puck. It’s easier that way; saves the writers from coming up with original plot lines. Not that Rachael knew that. Perhaps she might have guessed this episode was based on another story from the mock-Elizabethan costumes, but it would be another four years or so until she learned who Shakespeare was. From downstairs came her mother’s voice, shouting over the raucous cartoon voices, over a baby’s wail, over the shouts of boys playing football outside and the middle-distance hum of traffic.
“Rachael.”
“What?” She uncrossed her legs, hopped off the pink My Little Pony sheets of her bed and went over to the door frame where she hung off the door, letting it swing with her body-weight and felt the smooth white paint under her fingers. “What?” she repeated.
“Come downstairs,” her mother said. Rachael sighed, flicked her head back towards the TV. The adverts were on now anyway: blonde girls dancing with glittering plastic hoops in the sunshine, spiky-haired boys in sunglasses chewing gum, blowing bubbles. Rachael slumped downstairs, letting her bare feet fall heavily on each step, while, in the cramped kitchen her mother tried to comfort Michael, Rachael’s baby brother, and unpacked shopping from white and green Asda bags. Entering the kitchen Rachael began to root into one of the bags, searching for sweets and chocolate, making the thin plastic crinkle as her slender hands moved over a packet of mince, a bag of carrots, some folded up magazines.
“There’s nothing for you in there,” her mother said, gently slapping her arms away.
“What’d you shout me for then?” Rachael asked.
“Because I have a job for you,” she replied, bouncing Michael up and down in the crook of her arm and rattling a colourful little Humpty Dumpty with a bell inside its stomach for him. Rachael sighed. For a few seconds the toy quieted the chubby little boy, then his wailing began anew.
“I want you to take this bag over to your Nan’s” her mother said, abandoning the toy and raising her voice above the noise, “she rang me up earlier and asked me to pick up some Lemsip and a couple of other things for her because she felt ill. I meant to drop it off on my way home, but what with Michael and all the traffic I forgot.”
“Why don’t you just take it now?”
“Rachael, please, I’ve been working all morning, then I had to go shopping and pick Mike up from nursery, and the traffic was bad, and he’s been crying ever since because he’s teething. And what have you done all day? Sat in your bedroom watching cartoons. It’s not healthy. So you can do this for me and get some fresh air while you’re at it.”
“Fine,” Rachael said. Argument being futile; mother, stressed, being absolute. She scampered upstairs and pulled on some socks, then searched through her drawers and the piles of clothes on her bed and chair and desk for her favourite jacket, a denim one that was once upon a time a violent, strawberry red, but had since faded to a lusty salmon pink.
After switching off her TV she ran back downstairs and slipped into her battered trainers, the ones with the red LEDs in the soles that lit up with every step. They flashed their way to the kitchen where Rachael’s mother handed her the bag and gave her a pound to buy some sweets on the way back.
“I’ve just rang Nan, and told her to expect you knocking at her door, so don’t dawdle your way there.”
“K, Mum. Bye.” Rachael said, leaving.
Outside the sunlight was bright, brighter than the primary-coloured cartoons, as it reflected off the pavement and the windows of the surrounding semi-detached houses. Rachael turned away from the glare momentarily, sun-spots in her eyes, to bid her mother goodbye and close the door. Instantly the wail of her brother was muted and now came those myriad suburban sounds to her ears: the shouts of children playing, the hum of traffic, the car alarm somewhere, the lawnmower somewhere else. Into this world of light and sound Rachael had now stepped, and would have to walk about a half mile to reach her grandmother’s flat.
Halfway down her own boring street, Rachael glanced into the shopping bag she was carrying. In it was a loaf of bread, a bottle of milk, a packet of Lemsip, some cakes (Cadbury’s) and, beneath the purple cake packaging, a pair of apples in a transparent plastic bag. Apples reminded Rachael of Snow White. They were always showing Snow White on the Disney Channel. Rachael, impatient for sugar, decided to buy the sweets before going to her grandmother’s, and so turned left, instead of right, at the bottom of her road, so she could walk to the Newsagent. Walking the other way down this road was a man, Rachael noticed, with greying hair and a large gut hidden under a dark blue polo-neck shirt. As she neared him he stopped abruptly and began to speak to her.
“Oh, hello,” he said, “how are you? How’s your mother?”
“Uh, do I know you?” Rachael asked, looking at him, at his thick brows that perched wolfishly over his dark eyes.
“We’ve met before, yes?” he said, “I’m a friend of your mother’s. She introduced you to me, but it was a while ago. What was your name? Uh, L…Lucy, yes?” His smile encouraged her to speak, so genuine it was, and so Rachael shook her head and spoke her name, even as she noticed the yellowed teeth, the hairy arms.
“Ah yes, Rachael, that was it, yes” he had been leaning in close to her, she hadn’t even noticed, but now he straightened up. “And where are you off to, Rachael?”
“To see my Nan,” she said, “I’ve got to take her this food.”
“Ah, of course. And how is your Nan? It’s quite a while since I’ve seen her.”
“Well, she’s a little ill at the moment, that’s why I’m taking her this food and some medicine too.” Rachael was a friendly and talkative girl, in spite of her better instincts.
“Oh,” the man said, his thick brows sinking down over his eyes “I’m sorry to hear that. I shall have to go see her sometime. Yes. though I can never remember what number she lives at, my memory not being quite what it used to.” He smiled again: a practised charm.
“Twenty-seven B,” Rachael said.
“Ah, yes, Twenty-seven B, at, ah…oh now I can picture the place but I just can’t remember the name of the road…twenty-seven B at…”
“Hansel Court.” Perhaps she shouldn’t have said that, she thought as soon as the words left her mouth.
“Yes, that’s it, of course. Yes, I might pay her a visit later. I really ought to be on my way now, though,” the man said, “tell your grandmother I said hello and shall see her later. Yes?”
“Uh, yes, I mean, okay, Bye,” Rachael said, glad he was leaving. The man turned away and carried on walking, a slight spring in his step. Rachael watched him but he never turned back, and then he disappeared around the corner. Rachael put him out of her mind: sweets, now.
Soon a Sherbet Dip Dab and a Milky Way joined her grandmother’s groceries in the Asda bag. She ate the Dip Dab first, awkwardly holding the yellow packet in the hand that held the carrier bag while she used the other to plunge in the scarlet lolly, like a cat’s tongue lapping up the tingling sherbet. Eating in such a manner, stop-starting so she didn’t spill sherbet, wiping the white powder off her red jacket when she did, meant that it took her twice as long to reach her grandmother’s as it ought to have done. Eventually she was climbing the stairs in Hansel Court to knock on her grandmother’s front door.
“It’s unlocked,” a man’s voice said from within. Unsurely Rachael opened the door and took a single step inside to see the man she had spoken to earlier sat, one leg across the other, on her grandmother’s settee. “Come in, come in,” he said, “close the door, you’ll let all the heat out, and your nan’ll be getting cold, yes.”
“Where is she?” Rachael asked, still hovering apprehensively in the door frame.
“Ah, she’s asleep. I came over to see her, a little earlier than I’d planned, and we talked for just a little while, then she said she was tired and went for a lie down. I made sure she was alright, and was about to let myself out, when I remembered that you’d be coming. I thought it’d be a shame for you to knock and wake her up when she was feeling so rotten, yes? So I decided to wait for you and let you in myself.”
“Oh, uh, okay,” Rachael said, slowly stepping inside, into the musty smell of static dust, and the stuffy warmth of the electric fire, closing the door behind her. “I’ll just go check on her, see if she’s awake.” She felt awkward.
“I really don’t think you should disturb her,” the man said, standing, “she needs her rest, yes? Why don’t you go put some of those groceries away for her? It’ll be a nice surprise when she opens up her cupboards, yes?”
“Uh, okay.” Rachael said. She noticed that the man was moving incrementally towards the door, but felt all she could do right now was as he suggested, so she went into the kitchen, put the bag down on the counter. In the other room she heard the rattle and click of a chain. She leant towards open door to see what the sound was, but was greeted by the man, stood now at the entrance to the kitchen.
“You didn’t put the door chain back on. You should always put the door chain on, because you never know when there might be a wolf at the door, yes?”
“Oh, right,” Rachael said. It wasn’t the unfamiliar turn of phrase that made her uncomfortable: it was the eyes she could feel moving over her body, making her skin tingle, even through the red jacket, like the sherbet had made her tongue tingle. She would have to look soon. Glancing up quickly she met dark, hungry eyes. She did not look again.
From outside drifted in the distant hum of traffic, the rustle of leaves as a light breeze blew through them, insulating the oppressive silence of the kitchen. Rachael had never remembered Nan’s house to be this quiet; always Nan would be talking, usually to Rachael’s mother, usually with the TV on in the background. Even when she nodded off on the settee she would snore loudly. Where were her snores now, the comforting rumble of musty air through ancient nasal passages?
“You’re a very pretty girl, Rachael.” The man said, “very pretty. So pretty I could just…eat you up.” A pink tongue poked out between his thin lips as he said this, ran across them, leaving a saliva trail like an agitated slug, and then he shuffled ever so slightly towards her, making her body tense and her mind freeze, like a doe cornered by a wolf. Rachael took a step back, watching him warily. “I bet you have all the boys chasing after you at school, yes?” He smiled, chuckled slightly. The afternoon sunlight sparkled in his eyes, bright like the sun in children’s adverts. Rachael felt sick.
“Why don’t you, uh, why don’t you come here and show me why, yes?” he said, taking a very deliberate step towards her. It was enough to make her run, though since he stood at the only exit, it was towards him that she ran, and he grabbed her by the collar of her red jacket. “Now, Rachael, don’t cause a commotion, yes, don’t make a lot of fuss and noise; you’ll wake your Gran up. Why don’t you and I sit on the sofa and have a little chat, yes? It’ll be all the better for everyone if we just do that.”
Rachael screamed and slipped out of her red jacket and made for the front door. Grabbing the handle she wrenched at it with her slender, skinny arms, pulling it only a few inches before the chain pulled taut. She reached to unhook it, but already the man stood over her, a hand on the door, so she ducked under his reaching, grasping fingers, and ran, tear-blurred, to her grandmother’s room where she slammed the door behind her.
“Nan. Nan!” she screamed, shaking the old lady in her bed, wrenching the white-sheeted duvet from the fully-clothed figure, revealing the lolly-pop red stains in the window-blind-dappled light. “Nan,” Rachael sobbed, slumping down from the bed onto the floor.
“Don’t cry, Rachael,” the man said, having casually crossed the sitting room and entered the bedroom, “I’m here. I’m here for you. Yes I am.”
Rachael screamed again, and tried to pull herself under the bed, kicking the bedside table as she did so, causing something fall off: her grandmother’s little panic button with its long white neck-cord. Quickly, she snatched it up, and jabbed the smooth plastic again and again as she wriggled further under the bed. A light lit up on it, but it made no sound, then Rachael felt a hand around her ankle as the man, having gone around the other side of the bed, tried to pull her out from under it. She kicked at his hand, her trainers flashing wildly through the air as they connected again and again with flesh and bone. After the fourth or fifth hit he let go.
“You little bitch,” he shouted, momentarily losing his temper. “But I know you’re upset, yes. Don’t worry; I still want you. And I can wait for you to come out. Yes. Yes.”
“Go away go away go away,” Rachael sobbed, curling up into a ball under the bed, hugging her skinny knees to her chest and feeling still the grip of fingers at her ankle.
“I-” the man began, when he was interrupted by a sharp rapping at the door.
“Mrs. Hudson?” a concerned woman’s voice called through the door, then the letter box, “Mrs. Hudson, are you alright?” The woman called twice more, then tried the door handle. The door opened a little way before it was stopped by the chain. “Mrs. Hudson, it’s Linda, are you home? You pressed your panic button. I…I’m going to try and get in now.”
The man was silent. Rachael thought she heard him move, but any sound he made was drowned out almost immediately by the social services worker throwing her weight against the door. Eventually the chain was pulled from its fixture, or snapped, and the door flew open. Linda stumbled in and went to the bedroom. She screamed when she saw the old lady, and gasped when the little girl crawled out from under the bed. The man who had attacked them both, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen, having escaped through the bedroom window and disappeared like a wolf into a forest, leaving behind only the red-stained sheets of a dead woman and a mark the colour of a faded red jacket on the ankle of a terrified girl.
Tags: fairytale, Fiction, original fiction, red, red riding hood
