The Mammoth Book of Body Horror

by Marie O'Regan

  A gleam gilding the letters now, all up and down – sticky-slimy, a perspirant flood, gelid as Vaseline. Something sucked in hard then expelled through the pores, broken down to its original components: scrubbed, purified, diffused. Rendered harmless.

  His arms starting to go numb, he laid her down by degrees, with as much care as he could. “I, that guy Paul . . . I mean, they’re expecting you back by now, right? Curfew. I should probably call—”

  DONT NO POINT SERIOUSLY IM FINE.

  BEEN OVER TWENTY MINS ALREADY.

  ALWAYS HAPPENS THEYRE USED TO IT W ME.

  “Well, then maybe I could—”

  JUST WAIT OKAY.

  STAY WITH ME OKAY SY THATS ALL I NEED.

  JUST STAY.

  Another long breath while he thought about it, then nodded; one hand crept into his, long fingers vibrant, bitten nails adrip. He clenched it back, hard, and watched as the fit dulled, frenzy becoming languorous, dormant, dazed. Till at last she lay prone and blank on the dusty floor, her ecto-coating gone dry, and he watched the bulk of it peel off like sunburn, flake to glitter and disperse, blown away by some impossible wind.

  That long, at least. And at least a half-hour longer.

  Two weeks later, he was back to see her again, without Abbott’s blessing (or knowledge).

  Carra sat by the TV-room window, street clothes replaced with a fetching johnny and terrycloth robe combo, hair hung back down like a living veil. Big brown slippers with little rodent faces, beavers by their buck teeth and trailing black heel-tails. Her pale arms hung nude once more, clean of sutures and messages alike, aside from that tape-anchored meds-jack stuck in the left-hand elbow’s crook.

  “Thought you’d like to know,” he said, sitting down, close enough she could touch-test him for solidity if she wanted to. “Abbott wanted to keep the Thanatoscopeon, ’specially once I told him you’d cleaned it out – guy has a serious case of archivist fever, and that’s not gonna change anytime soon. But I don’t have to tell you.”

  He saw the hair-curtain shift a bit, side to side; a nod, maybe, in its most rudimentary possible form. Or maybe just the breeze kicked up as Orderly Paul went by, tray in hand, scowling at Sy like he held him personally responsible for Carra’s condition. For which, Sy found, he really couldn’t fault him.

  “Funniest thing, though,” he told her, leaning a tiny bit closer. “Turns out Locker Two? Whatever Abbott put in there next must’ve been really accidentally flammable, ’cause . . . the whole unit just went up, all of it, from the inside out. Nothing left but ash.”

  A slight pupil-flicker under half-slung lashes, making Sy wonder, what colour were those always-hidden eyes of hers, exactly, if he had to choose? Grey like smoke, or steam? Silvered, like a frosted window? Didn’t matter: he was glad enough to get a reaction, of any sort.

  Maybe next time she’ll be awake enough I can tell her how I did it. If she doesn’t know already.

  And here there suddenly came a spark, the barest jolt, synapse-swift – so long since he’d felt that for anybody, it would’ve surprised him no matter who drew it. A stroke along the mental inseam, lizard-area flag automatically part-raised to meet it, no matter how the rest of the brain might scoff.

  Bad idea, he thought, knowing it was true. Knowing she’d agree, if she could: BETTER NOT SY emblazoning itself ’cross palm or cheekbone, coming up on wrist or calf like a blistered rose. NO VERY DANGEROUS VERY DANGEROUS FOR YOU BELIEVE ME. BETTER

  (NOT)

  And yet: What the hell, lady? I’ve got at least half a say in this, don’t I?

  So since he could, he reached across, took her slack hand in his and squeezed it. Until he felt the pad of her thumb stroke his love-line, too slow and steady to misinterpret . . . and smiled.

  The Soaring Dead

  Simon Clark

  1.

  “What do you mean, ‘the sick did not fall, they rose up’?”

  “That’s what it says here, Mr Baxter.” The old man’s watery eyes had got all bulgy from deciphering the antique handwriting. The kind of loopy, swirly stuff that they used to do with some crappy bird feather dipped in ink. “Ah . . . in a document . . . let me see . . . made the third day of July, eighteen hundred and three.” He cleared his throat. “‘On the first day of the plague the aldermen, freeholders and tenants of Hangthwaite Vale were subject to transfiguration by God. Let it here be known that the sick did not fall, they rose up.’”

  He sat there in the office of my property development company like he was too lah-di-dah for the place. He wore this absurd yellow jacket, with leather patches on the elbows, and he’d uttered those words with a straight face.

  I asked him point-blank, “Have you been drinking again?”

  “No, Mr Baxter, sir.”

  “Because I’m paying you to give me rock solid facts about my land, not to sit there behind a pile of books with a damn bottle.”

  “Mr Baxter, I am conducting a most diligent search of the archive.”

  The old man made me angry. The way he stared at me in disgust like I was a squirt of dog crap he’d stood in – and the moment my back was turned he was sucking on the hard stuff. Leo Sneep was his name. Creepy Sneep suited him better.

  “Look,” I told him. “The only reason you’re here in my office is to read through this God-awful mess of files and find where the bodies are buried. Understand?”

  “Yes, Mr Baxter.”

  “Do you? Do you really?”

  “Yes, sir.” He eyeballed me in disgust. To him, I was a waste of good molecules. “You explained to me that you inherited fifteen hundred acres of land adjoining the River Kelder. You’re most keen, sir, to find where victims of the 1803 plague are buried.”

  I sniffed. “What do I smell?”

  He faltered – just a bit of tell-tale faltering – then kept talking: “It is your deepest wish to find where the unfortunate victims of the plague are laid to rest, because you intend to sell the land for commercial development.”

  “Blended? Or single malt?”

  “And . . . and until you find where the plague pits are situated the authorities won’t give you permission to build.”

  “Single malt, yes. The good stuff.”

  “Mr Baxter. I know this means a lot to you. But we must remain calm.” I’d scared him. I’d scared the bastard! “Sir, I am a professional. I investigate land holdings for a living. I fully understand that official permission won’t be granted for commercial development if infectious human remains are buried there. Spores from deadly plague strains can lie dormant in the earth for centuries. There is a real danger that even today . . . Mr Baxter . . . please!”

  I lifted the scrawny bag of bones out of the chair by his tie.

  I snarled into his face. “I smell whisky. I even see whisky.” I pulled the bottle from behind the books. “You take my money, and you’re taking the piss.” I pressed the bottle’s neck into the puffy skin beneath his right eye. “And now you’re feeding me some crap about the sick not falling.”

  “Mr Baxter. I’ve found something interesting.”

  “I don’t want ‘interesting’. I want hard evidence that allows me to sell my land.”

  “Sir, you’re hurting me.”

  “Good.”

  “If you’ll allow me to explain . . . I’ve discovered—”

  “A fairy story.”

  “Please don’t—”

  “I’m going teach you – in a very physical way – some manners.”

  “Sir! Listen, I can help you!”

  I twisted my fist. The necktie got a hell of a lot tighter. Like a hangman’s noose. Old Sneep yelped. Good . . . nice . . . a result . . .

  “Mr Baxter . . . I’ve some important information.”

  I twisted the tie even tighter. He couldn’t talk. Come to think of it, he probably couldn’t even breathe.

  Then, just when I’d started to have fun, the phone rang. I dumped Booze Breath back into the chair. His arm flew out, knocking a shit-heap of
documents on to the floor. He looked so soppy I wanted to laugh. But phone calls mean business. I’m always serious about business.

  So I answered the phone in a brisk, no-waffle-tolerated way. “Tom Baxter’s office.”

  The guy at the other end was a hot-shot property developer. He’s a lot like me. He gets straight to the guts of the issue. “Tom. I need to close that deal on the River Kelder land today.”

  “That suits me, Ken. How’s the family?”

  “Look, it’s time to stop shitting around. Does that land have a plague cemetery in it or not?”

  “I’ve got a man working on that right now, Ken.”

  “Unless you can tell me that there are no – ABSOLUTELY NO! – pits full of diseased fuckers on that land then the deal is dead. Nobody’s going to buy a house there if you’ve got killer bugs in the soil.”

  “We have lots of documents to study before we—”

  “Okay, so now I know: the deal’s off. Goodbye, Tom, you fucking loser.”

  “Ken, look here—”

  “No, you look here, Tom. Everyone knows that if you can’t sell that land you’re going to go bollocks up. Bankrupt by the end of the year. That land is the only asset you’ve got.”

  “Ken, please—”

  Sneep frantically yanked at my arm. I glared a NOT-NOW look. He tugged again. He was nodding; his mouth flapped like he wanted me to lipread the most important thing he’d ever said in his pointless life.

  “Listen, Baxter.” What happened to “Tom?” “That office of yours in the high street. I’ll do you a favour and take the lease off your hands. As long as you’re gone by the end of the week.”

  “You wanted the land by the river, you bastard.”

  “If it’s got plague dead, then there’s no point. Contaminated land is worthless. Goodbye.”

  Sneep tapped me on the chest, his eyes were going frantic.

  I snarled at the runt, “Do that again and I’ll break your neck.”

  “I’ve been trying to tell you . . . there isn’t a cemetery on the land. There were no burials.”

  Those words of his – and they were suddenly lovely words – changed my mind about snapping his neck. Like all good businessmen, I took a chance. I spoke into the phone. “Good news, Ken. We’ve found what we’re looking for in the historical records.”

  For a moment, I thought my potential buyer had hung up. Then I heard him say in a thoughtful manner, “Go on.”

  “There’s written evidence stating that there are no burials. That means my land is extremely valuable. Interested?”

  “I’ll call my team.”

  “Bring them to the site at three on the nail. We’ll close the deal then.” I felt a big happy smile on my face as I rang off. Then I fixed Sneep with a killer look. “You better have found proof that there are no burials, or I’ll break that bottle over your head.”

  He stared at me. The guy’s expression was just pure horror through and through.

  “Well?” I said. “We know that everyone in the village died in 1803.”

  “Yes, Mr Baxter.”

  “So, if they didn’t bury the dead on my land where did they bury them?”

  “That’s just it, sir. They didn’t bury the bodies anywhere.”

  “So what did they do with a thousand corpses?”

  Suddenly he didn’t want to talk any more. You know, I think he was frightened that I would be angry by what he had to tell me. “Well, Booze Breath?” I encouraged him to get chatty, mainly by tapping his shin with my foot.

  He rolled his bulgy eyes down to a letter in his hand. “It says here. It says . . .” His voice grew oddly faint. “It says that when the people became ill . . . they just . . . they just floated away into the sky.”

  2.

  Big boys don’t cry. Old men should never cry. I shoved Creepy Sneep into the passenger seat of my car. Then I barrelled down the road to my fifteen hundred acres of riverside dirt.

  I glared at Sneep. He’d made me angry. So angry that I . . . well, let’s just say tears mixed with snot make an old man’s face resemble a chewed toffee. Lots of creases and wet, glistening stuff.

  “Sneep. Let me explain something,” I snarled. “I’ve just promised Ken Farley, the most powerful property developer this side of Manchester, that a plot of land I’m planning to sell to him doesn’t have a poxy cemetery blighting it. The reason I did that is because you told me you’d found evidence that there are no bodies there.”

  “That’s what the parish records state.”

  “And what will Ken Farley say to me when I tell him not to worry about there being diseased bones in the ground, because when the people of Hangthwaite Vale got sick they didn’t take to their beds, they simply got lighter than air and drifted away?”

  “That’s what the documents say.”

  “Wipe that snot off your mouth. It’s disgusting.”

  “You shouldn’t have hit me, Mr Baxter.”

  “You drink whisky, you tell fairy stories about flying dead people. Do you think I should cuddle you, and tell you how imaginative you are?”

  “You chipped one of my teeth.”

  “You’re starting to whine, Sneep. I don’t like people who whine.”

  Suddenly he got all fearless. Maybe a mixture of adrenaline, whisky and even righteous indignation. Hallelujah.

  “Mr Baxter. Listen to me. I am not making this up.” He had an old book on his knee. Printed in gold on its spine: Hangthwaite Vale – Parish Record 1803. “I’m going to read what’s written here.”

  So, as I blazed along the road, he began reading in this high-pitched voice that couldn’t decide whether it was scared or angry: “I, George William Meckwith, being the last living occupant of Hangthwaite Vale, doeth solemnly declare that the village was visited by plague. On the first day of sickness the people were stricken with fever. White blisters formed around the mouth. These became foul smelling as the fever upended the wits of grown man and child alike. It is said that the disease issued forth from the spring known as Saxon Well.”

  “Saxon Well?” I repeated. “That’s where one of the mass graves is supposed to be, isn’t it?”

  “According to this testament that’s where the grave was dug.” He rolled his veiny eye towards me. “But it was never used.”

  “And the reason is, the corpses all sprouted wings and flew away?” I turned on to a dirt track, which ran through meadows to my land by the river.

  “Meckwith says nothing about wings, Mr Baxter. The account, written shortly after the epidemic in 1803, goes on to say: Disease on the first day progressed with such swiftness. The sick refused to lie or to sit. Instead they wandered the fields. As night fell, they were seen to adopt a lightness of tread, as if they heard music that instilled a desire to dance. Moments thereafter, they lost traction with the good earth. They floated aloft. One by one, the diseased of Hangthwaite Vale ascended into the night sky.”

  “Never to be seen again.”

  “Oh, but they were, Mr Baxter. According to Meckwith’s testimony the people soon died of the plague. Yet they continued to float in the air, much as the drowned float in the sea. Meckwith reports that bodies were seen snagged in trees, or brushed against the rooftops. Eventually the dead collected in a group high above the village. It says: A telescope would reveal the rotting faces. Birds feasted on fleshy titbits on the wing. The rank cadavers continued to hang suspended in the sky above the church steeple.” He closed the book. “Meckwith was the only one to survive, because he was the only one who did not take his water from the Saxon Well.”

  “You do realize that I’ve got to persuade Ken Farley to believe this fairy story of flying corpses?”

  “There’s no need.” The old man suddenly looked triumphant. “The account of flying corpses is just that. A fairy story.”

  “So there will be mass graves?” My fists clenched around the steering wheel. “I really want to punch you again right now, Sneep. Ken Farley is going to laugh in my face.”

>   “No . . . Meckwith must have invented the story to explain away the lack of bodies to the authorities.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because he was a local landowner, too. He didn’t want his farm to become worthless, so he got rid of the dead, then made up this story.”

  “So where did all these blister-faced bods go?”

  The old man shrugged. “Probably dumped in the river. Either way, they’re not here now.”

  “I apologize for hitting you.” I smiled at him. “You’ve just given me the best news I’ve had in months.”

  “You cracked my tooth.”

  “I’ll give you money for the dentist. I’m suddenly feeling generous.”

  “What will you tell Mr Farley?”

  “I’ll tell him the land is as clean as the freshly fallen snow. What’s more, I’m going to prove it. I’m going to dig a lovely big hole right beside Saxon Well. And I’ll show him that there isn’t a mouldy old bone in sight.”

  3.

  The big yellow mechanical digger had sat on that wasteland by the river for three weeks, doing absolutely nothing. Not any more it didn’t. Now it roared, and shook, and vented clouds of blue exhaust smoke. I attacked the ground. I fought it. I showed it who was boss. I slammed the steel bucket of the backhoe into the dirt again and again as I gouged a hole ten feet deep.

  Creepy Sneep watched. So did Ken Farley. The millionaire property developer stood there in a black leather coat like a Gestapo wannabe. He shouted, waved, gestured. I couldn’t hear the words over the bellow of the digger. Though I think I’m learning to lipread, because I’m sure he yelled: “HAVE YOU GONE MAD?”

  No, not mad, my friend. I was elated. I was full of the joys of frigging life. Because I knew my land, which everyone had told me was worthless, was suddenly worth a fortune . . . a large fortune . . . a stupendous fortune. All my financial troubles were floating away into the big blue sky. Hallelujah!

  Ken’s team were there. Three middle-aged guys with sour expressions on their faces. They liked to think they were important. In fact, they were nothing but pathetic yes-men. They’d have stripped off their clothes and rubbed thistles into one another’s buttocks if Ken had even hinted it might be amusing.