The Mammoth Book of Body Horror

by Marie O'Regan

  “You could try it again, couldn’t you?”

  Ominously, it began to flex its fingers, like a pianist preparing for a particularly difficult solo. Yes, it said, I could; any old time.

  “In fact, there’s very little I can do to stop you, is there?” Charlie said. “Sooner or later you’ll catch me unawares. Can’t have somebody watching over me for the rest of my life. So where does that leave me, I ask myself? As good as dead, wouldn’t you say?”

  The hand closed down a little, the puffy flesh of its palm crinkling into grooves of pleasure. Yes, it was saying, you’re done for, poor fool, and there’s not a thing you can do.

  “You killed Ellen.”

  I did. The hand smiled.

  “You severed my other hand, so it could escape. Am I right?”

  You are, said the hand.

  “I saw it, you know,” Charlie said, “I saw it running off. And now you want to do the same thing, am I correct? You want to be up and away.”

  Correct.

  “You’re not going to give me any peace, are you, till you’ve got your freedom?”

  Right again.

  “So,” said Charlie, “I think we understand each other; and I’m willing to do a deal with you.”

  The hand came closer to his face, crawling up his pyjama shirt, conspiratorial.

  “I’ll release you,” he said.

  It was on his neck now, its grip not tight, but cosy enough to make him nervous.

  “I’ll find a way, I promise. A guillotine, a scalpel, I don’t know what.”

  It was rubbing itself on him like a cat now, stroking him. “But you have to do it my way, in my time. Because if you kill me you’ll have no chance of survival, will you? They’ll just bury you with me, the way they buried Dad’s hands.”

  The hand stopped stroking, and climbed up the side of the filing cabinet.

  “Do we have a deal?” said Charlie.

  But the hand was ignoring him. It had suddenly lost interest in all bargain-making. If it had possessed a nose, it would have been sniffing the air. In the space of the last few moments things had changed: the deal was off.

  Charlie got up clumsily, and went to the window. The glass was dirty on the inside and caked with several years of bird-droppings on the outside, but he could just see the garden through it. It had been laid out in accordance with the terms of the millionaire’s bequest: a formal garden that would stand as glorious a monument to his good taste as the building was to his pragmatism. But since the building had started to deteriorate, the garden had been left to its own devices. Its few trees were either dead or bowed under the weight of unpruned branches; the borders were rife with weeds; the benches on their backs with their square legs in the air. Only the lawn was kept mown, a small concession to care. Somebody, a doctor taking a moment out for a quiet smoke, was wandering amongst the strangled walks. Otherwise the garden was empty.

  But Charlie’s hand was up at the glass, scrabbling at it, raking at it with his nails, vainly trying to get to the outside world. There was something out there besides chaos, apparently.

  “You want to go out,” said Charlie.

  The hand flattened itself against the window and began to bang its palm rhythmically against the glass, a drummer for an unseen army. He pulled it away from the window, not knowing what to do. If he denied its demands, it could hurt him. If he acquiesced to it, and tried to get out into the garden, what might he find? On the other hand, what choice did he have?

  “All right,” he said, “we’re going.”

  The corridor outside was bustling with panicky activity and there was scarcely a glance in his direction, despite the fact that he was only wearing his regulation pyjamas and was barefoot. Bells were ringing, Tannoys summoning this doctor or that, grieving people being shunted between mortuary and toilet; there was talk of the terrible sights in Casualty: boys with no hands, dozens of them. Charlie moved too fast through the throng to catch a coherent sentence. It was best to look intent, he thought, to look as though he had a purpose and a destination. It took him a while to locate the exit into the garden, and he knew his hand was getting impatient. It was flexing and unflexing at his side, urging him on. Then a sign, To the Chaney Trust Memorial Garden, and he turned a corner into a backwater corridor, devoid of urgent traffic, with a door at the far end that led to the open air.

  It was very still outside. Not a bird in the air or on the grass, not a bee whining amongst the flower-heads. Even the doctor had gone, back to his surgeries presumably.

  Charlie’s hand was in ecstasies now. It was sweating so much it dripped, and all the blood had left it, so that it had paled to white. It didn’t seem to belong to him any more. It was another being, to which he, by some unfortunate quirk of anatomy, was attached. He would be delighted to be rid of it.

  The grass was dew-damp underfoot, and here, in the shadow of the seven-storey block, it was cold. It was still only six thirty. Maybe the birds were still asleep, the bees still sluggish in their hives. Maybe there was nothing in this garden to be afraid of: only rot-headed roses and early worms, turning somersaults in the dew. Maybe his hand was wrong, and there was just morning out here.

  As he wandered further down the garden, he noticed the footprints of the doctor, darker on the silver-green lawn. Just as he arrived at the tree, and the grass turned red, he realized that the prints led one way only.

  Boswell, in a willing coma, felt nothing, and was glad of it. His mind dimly recognized the possibility of waking, but the thought was so vague it was easy to reject. Once in a while a sliver of the real world (of pain, of power) would skitter behind his lids, alight for a moment, then flutter away. Boswell wanted none of it. He didn’t want consciousness, ever again. He had a feeling about what it would be to wake: about what was waiting for him out there, kicking its heels.

  Charlie looked up into the branches. The tree had borne two amazing kinds of fruit.

  One was a human being: the surgeon with the cigarette. He was dead, his neck lodged in a cleft where two branches met. He had no hands. His arms ended in round wounds that still drained heavy clots of brilliant colour down on to the grass. Above his head the tree swarmed with that other fruit, more unnatural still. The hands were everywhere, it seemed: hundreds of them, chattering away like a manual parliament as they debated their tactics. All shades and shapes, scampering up and down the swaying branches.

  Seeing them gathered like this, the metaphors collapsed. They were what they were: human hands. That was the horror.

  Charlie wanted to run, but his right hand was having none of it. These were its disciples, gathered here in such abundance, and they awaited its parables and its prophecies. Charlie looked at the dead doctor and then at the murdering hands, and thought of Ellen, his Ellen, killed through no fault of his own, and already cold. They’d pay for that crime: all of them. As long as the rest of his body still did him service, he’d make them pay. It was cowardice, trying to bargain with this cancer at his wrist; he saw that now. It and its like were a pestilence. They had no place living.

  The army had seen him, word of his presence passing through the ranks like wild fire. They were surging down the trunk, some dropping like ripened apples from the lower branches, eager to embrace the Messiah. In a few moments they would be swarming over him, and all advantage would be lost. It was now or never. He turned away from the tree before his right hand could seize a branch, and looked up at the Chaney Memorial Wing, seeking inspiration. The tower loomed over the garden, windows blinded by the sky, doors closed. There was no solace there.

  Behind him he heard the whisper of the grass as it was trodden by countless fingers. They were already on his heels, all enthusiasm as they came following their leader.

  Of course they would come, he realized, wherever he led, they would come. Perhaps their blind adoration of his remaining hand was an exploitable weakness. He scanned the building a second time and his desperate gaze found the fire escape; it zig-zagged up the side of the
building to the roof. He made a dash for it, surprising himself with his turn of speed. There was no time to look behind him to see if they were following, he had to trust to their devotion. Within a few paces his furious hand was at his neck, threatening to take out his throat, but he sprinted on, indifferent to its clawing. He reached the bottom of the fire escape and, lithe with adrenaline, took the metal steps two and three at a time. His balance was not so good without a hand to hold the safety railing, but so what if he was bruised?; it was only his body.

  At the third landing he risked a glance down through the grille of the stairs. A crop of flesh flowers was carpeting the ground at the bottom of the fire escape, and was spreading up the stairs towards him. They were coming in their hungry hundreds, all nails and hatred. Let them come, he thought; let the bastards come. I began this and I can finish it.

  At the windows of the Chaney Memorial Wing a host of faces had appeared. Panicking, disbelieving voices drifted up from the lower floors. It was too late now to tell them his life story; they would have to piece that together for themselves. And what a fine jigsaw it would make! Maybe, in their attempts to understand what had happened this morning, they would turn up some plausible solution; an explanation for this uprising that he had not found; but he doubted it.

  Fourth storey now, and stepping on to the fifth. His right hand was digging into his neck. Maybe he was bleeding; but then perhaps it was rain, warm rain, that splashed on to his chest and down his legs. Two storeys to go, then the roof. There was a hum in the metalwork beneath him, the noise of their myriad feet as they clambered up towards him. He had counted on their ador ation, and he’d been right to do so. The roof was now just a dozen steps away, and he risked a second look down past his body (it wasn’t rain on him) to see the fire escape solid with hands, like aphids clustered on the stalk of a flower. No, that was metaphor again. An end to that.

  The wind whipped across the heights, and it was fresh, but Charlie had no time to appreciate its promise. He climbed over the two-foot parapet and on to the gravel-littered roof. The corpses of pigeons lay in puddles, cracks snaked across the concrete, a bucket, marked “Soiled Dressings”, lay on its side, its contents green. He started across this wilderness as the first of the army fingered their way over the parapet.

  The pain in his throat was getting through to his racing brain now, as his treacherous fingers wormed at his windpipe. He had little energy left after the race up the fire escape, and crossing the roof to the opposite side (let it be a straight fall, on to concrete) was difficult. He stumbled once, and again. All the strength had gone from his legs, and nonsense filled his head in place of coherent thought. A koan, a Buddhist riddle he’d seen on the cover of a book once, was itching in his memory.

  “What is the sound . . .?” it began, but he couldn’t complete the phrase, try as he might.

  “What is the sound . . .?”

  Forget the riddles, he ordered himself, pressing his trembling legs to make another step, and then another. He almost fell against the parapet at the opposite side of the roof, and stared down. It was a straight fall. A car park lay below, at the front of the building. It was deserted. He leaned over further and drops of his blood fell from his lacerated neck, diminishing quickly, down, down, to wet the ground. I’m coming, he said to gravity, and to Ellen, and thought how good it would be to die and never worry again if his gums bled when he brushed his teeth, or his waistline swelled, or some beauty passed him on the street whose lips he wanted to kiss, and never would. And suddenly the army was upon him, swarming up his legs in a fever of victory.

  You can come, he said, as they obscured his body from head to foot, witless in their enthusiasm, you can come wherever I go.

  “What is the sound . . .?” The phrase was on the tip of his tongue.

  Oh, yes: now it came to him. “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” It was so satisfying, to remember something you were trying so hard to dig up out of your subconscious, like finding some trinket you thought you’d lost for ever. The thrill of remembering sweetened his last moments. He pitched himself into empty space, falling over and over until there was a sudden end to dental hygiene and the beauty of young women. They came in a rain after him, breaking on the concrete around his body, wave upon wave of them, throwing themselves to their deaths in pursuit of their Messiah.

  To the patients and nurses crammed at the windows it was a scene from a world of wonders; a rain of frogs would have been commonplace beside it. It inspired more awe than terror: it was fabulous. Too soon, it stopped, and after a minute or so a few brave souls ventured out amongst the litter to see what could be seen. There was a great deal: and yet nothing. It was a rare spectacle, of course; horrible, unforgettable. But there was no significance to be discovered in it; merely the paraphernalia of a minor apocalypse. Nothing to be done but to clear it up, their own hands reluctantly compliant as the corpses were catalogued and boxed for future examination. A few of those involved in the operation found a private moment in which to pray: for explanations; or at least for dreamless sleep. Even the smattering of the agnostics on the staff were surprised to discover how easy it was to put palm to palm.

  In his private room in Intensive Care Boswell came to. He reached for the bell beside his bed and pressed it, but nobody answered. Somebody was in the room with him, hiding behind the screen in the corner. He had heard the shuffling of the intruder’s feet.

  He pressed the bell again, but there were bells ringing everywhere in the building, and nobody seemed to be answering any of them. Using the cabinet beside him for leverage he hauled himself to the edge of his bed to get a better view of this joker.

  “Come out,” he murmured, through dry lips. But the bastard was biding his time. “Come on . . . I know you’re there.”

  He pulled himself a little further, and somehow all at once he realized that his centre of balance had radically altered, that he had no legs, that he was going to fall out of bed. He flung out his arms to save his head from striking the floor and succeeded in so doing. The breath had been knocked out of him, however. Dizzy, he lay where he’d fallen, trying to orientate himself. What had happened? Where were his legs, in the name of Jah, where were his legs?

  His bloodshot eyes scanned the room, and came to rest on the naked feet which were now a yard from his nose. A tag round the ankle marked them for the furnace. He looked up, and they were his legs, standing there severed between groin and knee, but still alive and kicking. For a moment he thought they intended to do him harm: but no. Having made their presence known to him they left him where he lay, content to be free.

  And did his eyes envy their liberty, he wondered, and was his tongue eager to be out of his mouth and away, and was every part of him, in its subtle way, preparing to forsake him? He was an alliance only held together by the most tenuous of truces. Now, with the precedent set, how long before the next uprising? Minutes? Years?

  He waited, heart in mouth, for the fall of Empire.

  The Chaney Legacy

  Robert Bloch

  This story is dedicated, with gratitude, to Harlan Ellison

  Nobody thought Dale was crazy until the trouble started. True, he’d been a film buff ever since he was a kid, the way other youngsters sometimes get hung-up on baseball, football, or even chess. If they follow their hobby into adult life such interests can become an obsession, yet no one thinks it’s a sign of insanity.

  In Dale’s case his studies led him into teaching a course on film history at the university, which seemed sensible enough. Certainly he appeared to be normal: he wasn’t one of those wimpy professors seen in comedy films aimed at the junk-food generation.

  Actually Dale was rather attractive. Debbie Curzon thought so. She was a newscaster on local radio where she met and interviewed many of the stud celebrities in sports or films; Dale must have had some charisma for her to choose him as a lover.

  The two of them might have ended up together on a permanent basis if Dale hadn’t leased the Cha
ney house.

  That’s what the realtor called it – “the Chaney house” – although Dale couldn’t verify the claim and the ancient escrow was clouded. The place was really just a small cottage halfway up Nichols Canyon in the Hollywood hills. Huddled amid a tangle of trees and underbrush on a dirt side-road, which turned to quicksand during the rainy season, the weatherbeaten frame dwelling offered no exterior charm or interior comfort. Debbie’s reluctance to share it was understandable, but once he found it Dale couldn’t wait to move in.

  “All right, do as you please,” Debbie told him. “If that dump is more important to you than sharing a brand-new condo with me—”

  “It’s not just a dump,” Dale protested. “This is the Chaney house. Can’t you understand?”

  “Frankly, no. What makes you want to hole up in a place like this just because some dumb actor may or may not have hung out here sixty years ago?”

  “Lon Chaney wasn’t dumb,” Dale said. “He happens to be one of the finest performers in silent films, perhaps the greatest of them all.”

  “Who cares?” Debbie’s voice honed to a cutting-edge. “I just hope your wonderful Mr Chaney knows how to cook and is good in bed, because from now on you’ll be living with him, not me.”

  It was open warfare, but Dale found no weapon to pierce the armour of feminine logic. In the end Debbie told him to bug off, and he had no choice but to obey the entomological injunction.

  A week later Dale moved into the Chaney house and by then everybody thought he’d flipped out. Turning down a renewal of his teaching contract now at the end of the fall semester meant losing his chance at tenure, and that certainly was a crazy decision, because he gave no reason for leaving.

  But Dale knew exactly what he was going to do. He would vindicate himself in the eyes of Debbie and the academic world by writing a Hollywood history of his own – a definitive work which would answer the questions which lurked behind the legends. Who killed William Desmond Taylor, and why? Did Thomas Ince meet his death because of illness or was it murder? What really kept Garbo from returning to the screen? Had there been cover-ups in the case of Thelma Todd or Marilyn Monroe? So much had been surmised, so little verified. And for a starter, he meant to solve the Chaney mystery.