The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23 (Mammoth Books)

by Jones, Stephen

  But not as much as it bothered Cody.

  We’d descended by rope ladder from a trapdoor in Frankie’ souvenir shop – the descent being, too bad for me, textbook smart; guy with gun first, unarmed chick second, creepy old guy third – and ever since we’d got here, Cody’d evidenced increasing signs of having got himself into something that wasn’t what he thought he’d signed up for.

  Yeah, well too damn bad, Gangsta.

  Once his awestruck and unhappy glances at his surroundings started to occupy more of each of his last minutes on earth than his glances at me did, I figured it was time to put him out of his misery.

  I couldn’t even feel smug about it, guy was so out of his comfort zone. A slight hesitation, as if I was mesmerised by one of the clay-like excrescences that bloomed from the dripping walls like attempts at imitating local flora, a misdirecting glance back behind him, and then a well-placed heel and elbow, and he was on his knees, gasping for breath, and his gun was in my unforgiving hand.

  “Say goodnight, Cody,” I said, and put one through the centre of his forehead.

  I was swinging back towards where I’d last seen Frankie when I heard the click of his safety and felt his barrel at the back of my neck. Cargo pants don’t look that great on guys his age, but they do have a lot of pocket space.

  “Leave it with him,” Frankie said, and I dropped the .38 on Cody’s dead chest.

  “Watch,” Frankie said, trying for dispassionate but failing to completely mask the fascination and excitement.

  So I watched. Partly because information is power, and partly because Mom always told me it’s a bad idea to piss off a crazy old fucker with a gun.

  The blood jetting out of Cody’s shattered skull was being sucked into the liquid sheen of the clay like mother’s milk into the mouth of a greedy newborn. And it was a two-way street. Cody’s flesh was invaded by the faecal brown of the mud he’d died on until, inside of a minute, he looked like something somebody’d moulded from the wet and alien earth itself.

  So much for any lingering hope that this could all be explained away by sedimentary settlement.

  “It accepts the offering,” Frankie said, more out there by the fucking minute. “But don’t entertain any hope that this can replace your own sacrifice. There was no gravitas here. No ceremony. The unfortunate news for you is that your death needs to be both slow and somewhat spectacular.”

  Fuck me. With the exception of his charming opening gambit with the C-word back in his trophy room, everything this guy said sounded like he’d lifted it from his back catalogue of crappy scripts. Case in point, his subsequent lurid description of what I had to look forward to before the day was much older.

  “I’m going to blah blah blah. Blah blah blah, Kitty, blah blah blah.” On and fucking on. Use your imagination. I assure you it’s at least as good as his.

  “That how you get it up?” I said, when he was finally done. “Telling girls what you’re going to do to them?”

  “No, Ms Donnelly,” he said. “I get it up watching people’s eyes turn glassy with dread as they feel all hope of escape disappear.” TV’s Frankie Metcalfe, Ladies and Gentlemen. A real fucking sweetheart. “Now, let’s move on to the central chamber.”

  We moved ahead through a curving anterior walkway. Only then, within its lower ceiling and narrower walls, did I pause to wonder where the hell the light was coming from. But it was a meaningless question. I could see perfectly well. And I had no idea how or why.

  Another of those misshapen flowers was growing from the weeping wall to our left. This one was vanguard minded, attempting an impression of colour, its stalk and leaves blood red, its petals an eerie and bilious yellow. Frankie’s left hand plucked it from the wall with a flourish.

  “Here,” he said, shaking some of its slime from his fingers and flinging it at me. “Pretend it’s Prom Night.”

  “Thanks,” I said, catching it and pretending to sniff it before holding it to my wrist like a corsage. “Every time I smell it, I’ll think of you.”

  He gave me a look that told me he was smart enough to know I’d stolen the line, but not sharp enough to remember from whom – let me save you the Google; it was my fellow Irish deviant, Oscar Wilde – and then, all done with our little time-out flirtation, waved me ahead impatiently, waggling the gun like a signalling device.

  “Got it,” he said. “You’re un-fucking-flappable. Now get moving, or I’ll drag you there by the short-and-curlies.”

  Sad old bastard. Like anybody has pubic hair anymore. I dropped the nasty little flower – wet and rubbery and pulsing unpleasantly like it hadn’t yet decided its final shape – and moved ahead of him, conceding reluctantly to myself as I walked on that things were not looking good for our plucky girl detective. Fact, I could feel The Adventure of the Hollow Hill lobbying to give itself a real fucking downer of an ending as I stepped out from the walkway into what he’d called the central chamber. There was a bubbling quicksand-like pool at its heart, surrounded by several ill-defined shapes that put me in mind of the grotesque statue that Cody’s body had become. More formal offerings, I thought. The place was a compost heap, a mulch pit, and Frankie’s ode to its insane splendour confirmed as much.

  “You’ve doubtless seen all that pentagram and puff of smoke nonsense in the movies,” he said. “But the truth is it takes time and effort to actually effect a materialisation. The ground must be prepared. I’ve been seeding it for years, Kitty. Seeding it with frozen pain, with artefacts that contain the captured essence of human suffering. I’ve brought such treasures here. The skulls of slaughtered children, a letter to the media that one of our most celebrated serial killers wrote in the blood of a victim, a copy of the De Vermis Mysteriis bound in human skin. ‘The Devil Rides Shotgun’ would have been a beautiful addition, but alas . . .”

  He let his voice trail off theatrically. Prime fucking ham.

  I’d have asked him the obvious question – why the hell are you doing this? – but I knew there was no point. He wouldn’t have an answer because he wasn’t really here anymore. He was as hollow as his hill, and just as much in the process of transformation. Whatever the human motivations that had kicked him off – curiosity, excitement, thrill of the forbidden, whatever – he was now merely a vessel of the Other’s desire to manifest itself. He had nothing to do with it. He was long gone. Whatever was blossoming in his cavern had eaten Frankie Metcalfe from the inside too.

  So why leave the crust?

  He was staring at the bubbling pool at the heart of it all and, for a second or two, hardly paying attention to me. I’d think later that perhaps either outcome was equally acceptable to what was left of the man he used to be, but I wouldn’t think about it much because it allowed for too much human ambiguity in the monster he’d become. I sure as shit didn’t think about it in the moment. I was younger and faster, and all his meditative pause in the proceedings meant to me was this: forget the gun, close the gap, get one hand on his skull and the other on his chin, and snap his wretched ancient neck like a fucking twig.

  I’d have run anyway, but the terrifying re-ossification of the whole cavern lent my legs a whole new level of motivation. Killing Frankie had been like flipping a power-down switch on whatever he’d been ushering in to our world. It made sense, I suppose. Any other death down here – like, you know, mine – would have been just more mulch on the shit-pile of its becoming, but the death of its possessed summoner threw everything into reverse. Whatever had been coming was now retreating, and the hill was reclaiming its solidity. Reclaiming it, thank fuck, not quite as fast as I reclaimed the rope ladder and clambered my way back up into the house.

  By the time I let myself out of the front door and headed for the Cadillac, the sun was just starting to set. California perfect. Orange and blue and purple and beautiful.

  But I wasn’t really thinking about that. I was thinking about this:

  Neck tattoo, five-foot-six, name of Scott.

  Catch you later.

>   SIMON STRANTZAS

  An Indelible Stain Upon the Sky

  SIMON STRANTZAS IS THE critically acclaimed author of Nightingale Songs, Cold to the Touch and Beneath the Surface – three collections of the strange and supernatural currently available from Dark Regions Press.

  His award-nominated fiction has appeared previously in the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror series, Zombie Apocalypse! Fightback, PostScripts and Cemetery Dance.

  At the moment he is hard at work on his fourth collection, while also editing an anthology about thin places by some of the genre’s best new talent. He still lives in Toronto, Canada, with his ever-patient wife and an unyielding hunger for the flesh of the living.

  “My wife and I once took a weekend trip on the advice of a friend,” Strantzas recalls, “and it turned out to be the most horrendous experience either of us had ever had. So horrendous, in fact, that it did not take long for aspects of the trip to end up incorporated into my fiction, along with my long-standing fear of punishment dolls and my obsession with regret.

  “But it wasn’t until I incorporated the oil spill from one of my failed novellas that the piece really clicked, and the echoes of past and present began to clearly assert themselves.

  “It’s a story of loss and despair – the perfect combination for an easy summer holiday on the beach.”

  I WALK THE SHORELINE as I did ten years ago but everything has changed. The intervening decade has not been long enough for wounds to heal; everywhere I look I see the scars of what’s been done. It all looks dead, covered in a thin viscous layer of regret.

  The name is infamous even now. The oil tanker Madison, one thousand feet long and one-sixth that wide, ran ashore on the reef not twelve miles from where I stand, and the sharp coral sliced through its two hulls as though they were made of paper. From that long gash flowed the darkest, most vile blood into McCarthy Sound, and it spread faster than any estimate could predict. It raced towards the shore, hungry for life to feed on, and it took all birds and fishes and animals in its way until their deaths numbered into the thousands. Everything it touched withered and died, and then it took the life of Port McCarthy, the once peaceful town that could do nothing but watch itself succumb.

  Suzanne and I had been there only a few months earlier, when everything seemed as though it would remain beautiful forever. It was still early June, when the days stretch their longest and we had nothing but warm weather to look forward to. We had by then only been together a short while, yet like the summer I could only see happiness laid before us, mapped out across the white sands of the beach. It’s strange now to remember; the accident was so close, and in hindsight I can see the ripples it sent backwards through time, yet I was too ignorant to recognise them for what they were. Portents of change, and what they promised has haunted me every day since.

  We had driven half a day to reach the small town, sent on the recommendation of a close friend. Suzanne wore a straw hat, and through its wide woven brim a checkerboard of light dappled her soft face and filled her eyes with something akin to a sparkle every time she looked at me. Her laugh made me in turn laugh, and I still recall the sight of her newly shaven legs rubbing against one another and the feeling of absolute happiness it brought me. Were I somehow able to have frozen that moment, I would gladly have spent my remaining life there, wrapped in that beatific feeling of joy. That is the worst of the hauntings: the reminders of what I shall never again have.

  The Port McCarthy that lies before me now is overcast, and I must work to remember that this is due to the shorter late autumn days and not that the oil has stained the sky.

  I check myself into the Windhaven Inn, the same place where Suzanne and I stayed those many years ago. I must admit I’m surprised it’s still there and doing business, but one step inside shows me that it has hung on only by the thinnest of threads. The smiling woman who greeted us a decade ago is nowhere to be seen. Instead, in her place, a girl no more than sixteen, her faded black clothes stretched over her thick body, coils of seeping tattoos wrapped around her arms. I notice her pierced tongue as she speaks to me, and the words leave me feeling cold and wet.

  “I’ve a reservation,” I tell her. “For the weekend.”

  “Sign here,” she says, and I see her chipped nails are painted a matching dull black as she points to an empty space in the smudged guest book. I take the pen and try to sign my name, but after more than two attempts the ink still refuses to run. She takes the pen from me wordlessly and dabs it on her studded tongue. When she hands it back it works, but the ink it dispenses is clotted and old.

  I follow her upstairs, carrying my small leather bag over my shoulder. I make the mistake of touching the banister and my hand comes away feeling sticky. I try to discreetly rub it clean on the leg of my trousers, but instead stain them as well. When I ask after the woman I’d seen there years before, the young girl explains that she is that woman’s daughter, and hints that the Madison spill changed her mother in inexplicable ways, ways impossible to come back from. My smile is weak as I look away though I don’t know if it’s because of the girl’s mother or the mother’s child. The young girl gives me a half-hearted tour of the inn, her well-practised voice unable to disguise her boredom. She takes me down a corridor and along its length I see three other bedrooms. Only one door is ajar however, and I try to glance in while we pass but the gap is too narrow and the girl has guided me too quickly to catch more than a fleeting glimpse of something dark and wet seeping across the floor.

  “This is your room,” she says, and hands me a key large enough for only a child’s hand. “The lock sticks sometimes and you need to pull it shut to move the bolt.” I smile and nod but she doesn’t return the courtesy. Instead, she tells me breakfast will be served downstairs at seven, and warns me not to be late.

  I close the door and, after struggling with the lock, inspect the small room. It’s the same one in which Suzanne and I spent those past days together and for a moment my memories are superimposed over what is truly there. Instead of the stained wallpaper under an overcast day, I see sunlight and warmth; instead of a sagging bed and carpet that looks matted by a million little feet, I see Suzanne laughing as she jumps on the bed, the springs bouncing suggestively. I smile, and the act of smiling causes the mirage to dissipate, revealing the truth of the room, and the first thing I see is a crack that runs down the wall, starting a foot from the ceiling. At its base there is a dark wet mould that has grown into the carpet. I breathe out slowly and look in the mirror on top of the dresser. It too is covered in some greasy film, obscuring my features or twisting them into someone who looks far too old. I hear a noise and look towards the window but I see nothing there. Nothing at all.

  I walk over a small bridge into the town of Port McCarthy. To my right, between the rooftops of the tiny stores, the dark grey clouds roll towards me, while beneath them dark waters churn. No one walks the streets but me, and it’s clear why as soon as I reach the grimy storefronts. They are closed; boarded for the coming winter. I wonder if it’s my timing that’s the issue. Had I arrived earlier, in June as before, would the town be bustling with the tourists that I remember Suzanne and I walking past, hand in hand, as we investigated the narrow streets? The two of us spent hours there, wandering through the tiny shops filled with trinkets and home-made crafts, each one comprising a tiny piece of a town that neither of us wanted to leave or ever forget. How different, I think, to now, when all I want is to somehow rid myself of the memories. I look just off the main street and the spectre of Suzanne is there waiting for me, wanting to evoke a memory I’d long ago suppressed.

  Suzanne, standing in the sun, an ice-cream cone in one hand fresh from a cart by the edge of the water, pointing at a small sign affixed to a faux-antique lamppost.

  “Look,” she said, “A new store’s just opened. Do you want to see inside?”

  “I’m pretty tired,” I laughed. “And we’ve been on our feet for hours. Can’t we just rest for a bit?”

 
; She handed me her cone.

  “You sit on that bench. I’ll only be a minute.”

  And she was off.

  I laughed and waited, and as her treat melted I ate it with selfish glee. Yet, after twenty minutes she had not yet returned and I decided I’d had enough of sitting. I followed the direction she had taken until I came to an old house at the end of the small street. It looked much like any of the houses beside it, yet it had a hand-painted sign with the word ALICE’S written on it in children’s paint. The screen door was slightly ajar and I pulled it open to step into the dim room beyond.

  It took a few moments to get my bearings, my eyes unable to cope with the change in light. A shadow moved before me and I tried unsuccessfully to blink away the spots that blinded me. In the faux darkness, small black blobs squirmed across my vision, making the world appear murky. As my sight cleared, the first thing I saw was Suzanne, inspecting a polyester dress that hung shapelessly from its hanger. Around me were the beginnings of a consignment shop, filled with crafts of all different kinds, each vying for the attention of tourists. But beyond the items displayed for sale it was clear that no other work had been done to transform the house into a proper store.

  “This place fascinates me,” she said. “I could spend hours in here.”

  From room to room we travelled while Suzanne inspected the clothes slowly, her fingers lingering on sizes that would forever be too large for her, and in every corner I saw the same traces of the store’s previous function. A single standing lamp in each room were the only sources of illumination, and those oversized ugly dresses were displayed from small hooks screwed into the rafters and walls. I shook my head. It was a terrible place, that converted former house. I thought I heard it scream for release, then realised it was not the house, but Suzanne, and I was immediately certain I had underestimated just how bad things would become.