New Fears II - Brand New Horror Stories by Masters of the Macabre

by Mark Morris

  Watkins made typing gestures with his fingers.

  “Of course,” I said, feeling woozy.

  “Which reminds me,” Watkins said. “What did old Pringle say about your—” And then his mouth closed with a little snap and his eyebrows knitted neatly in the middle of his forehead. I could almost hear the proverbial penny drop.

  I walked away from his desk and avoided him for the rest of the day.

  Returning home that evening, I brimmed with resolve to jettison the typewriter. My plan was to put it in a sack and throw it in the Thames. However, when I walked into the back room and laid my hands on the machine, I had a sudden change of heart. I found myself caressing its keytop and platen. Same the following evening, and the evening after that. Much as I knew I should, I just couldn’t bring myself to part with it.

  It would appear that it has quite a hold on me.

  Wednesday 24th June 1964

  So many bad dreams. Click-clack-ding! Click-clack-ding! Last night was the worst yet, and the violent imagery still pours through my head. Far too disturbing to commit to paper. I’ll keep it in my head and hope it fades.

  Thursday 25th June 1964

  Drummond has requested I shave. And bathe. He insists my shabby-genteel image is not appropriate for the workplace. I imagined plunging my dividers into his left eye. Ding!

  Monday 29th June 1964

  I stopped at Temple’s Bric-à-Brac on the way home, fully intending to ask if he would take the typewriter off my hands. He could have it for free, if he was willing to come and collect it.

  I couldn’t do it, though. I stammered like a moron and Temple looked at me through one eye, but the offer wouldn’t spill from my lips. Instead I purchased a ceremonial Japanese samurai sword. The blade is a little rusty, but I’m sure it’ll sharpen nicely.

  Tuesday 30th June 1964

  Many tears tonight. Not from me, but from Evelyn and the children. They are all sleeping now and their bags are packed. They leave for Liverpool tomorrow.

  The window rattles, but the sound of the whetstone along the blade is very comforting.

  Wenzday 1st Juli 1964

  I mad some poetry for a whil and lookd in mirror and saw the crack. Then I got my samri sord and went upstares and there was Evelyn sleping in the bed like an angel. I thoht I could kep her and stop her from leeving if I cut her into peeses and put her in a nise littel box. Then the windo ratteld a sound like clik and clack and clik and Evelyn waked up and saw me and screemed. I tryed to cut her in half with the sord. I think I cut somethin bekuase there was some blood but not much and Evelyn throw the lamp at me the fucken bitch. She run from the bedroom and down the landin and I chayse her with my sord. She gos to kiddys bedroom and slams the door and bloks it with somethin I think a chare. I could here them all cryin and screeming. I try to brake down the door and evn used my nise sord but I couldnt brake it. I needed somethin hevvy so went downstares and got my typewryter which I luv. I carry it back upstares and use it on the door wam and bam and crak and yes the door brake open but wen I lok inside the windo is open and Evelyn the fucken bitch is gone and tak the kiddles with her. I think she gos to Livrpol but she left her bags. Mayb she come bak. The windos still rattel and I lik the way they go clik and clak and ding.

  Friday 3rd July 1964

  The police are looking for me. My picture adorns the Evening Standard, along with a warning that I am extremely danjerous and not to be approached. I think they will be looking for some time, though. I have effected a disguise by shaving my hed bald and trimming my beard into a neat goatee. I look very different from the man I used to be.

  I feel different, two.

  I write this—my final dire entry—from the Ten Bells in Whitechapel. It is late, and the pub is crowded with merrymakers. Some rabblesome men, and a bounty of young women—pale and frajile, all.

  So many shadows outside. So many places untouched by streetlight.

  I think I’ll linger here a whil, with my samri sord conceeled inside my long koat. I rather like these crooked streets. It feels like hell.

  In fact, it feels lik coming home.

  LEAKING OUT

  Brian Evenson

  I

  It was abandoned, the clapboard peeling and splintered, but practically a mansion. And surely, thought Lars, warmer than the outside. No wind anyway. The front door was padlocked and the windows boarded, but it didn’t take long to find the place where the boards only looked nailed down and the shards of glass had been picked out of a window frame. The place where, with a minimum of effort, he could wriggle his way through and inside.

  But of course that place meant that someone had arrived before him, and might still be inside. He didn’t mind sharing—it was a big enough house that there was plenty of it to go around—but would they?

  “Hello?” he called softly into the darkened building. When there was no answer, he pushed his duffle bag through the gap and wormed his way in after it.

  * * *

  He waited for his eyes to adjust, but even after a few minutes had passed all he saw were odd thin grey stripes, floating in the air around him. Eventually, he divined these to be the joins between the boards nailed over the windows, letting the slightest hint of light in.

  He felt around with one gloved hand, but the floor seemed bare. No rubbish, no sign of habitation—which meant that whoever had been here hadn’t stayed long or perhaps, like him, had just arrived.

  “Hello?” he called again, louder this time, then listened. No answer.

  Just me, then, he told himself. Though he wasn’t entirely sure it was just him. He groped for the top of his duffle bag and unzipped it, then took his glove off with his teeth so he could root around by touch inside. Lumps of cloth that were wadded dirty clothing, the squat cylinders of batteries, the thin length of a knife, a dented tin plate, a can of food. There it was, deep in the bag: a hard, long cylinder with a pebbled grip. He took it out, fiddled with it until he found the switch.

  The flashlight beam came on, the glow low, battery nearly dead or the contacts corroded. He shook the flashlight a little and it brightened enough to cut through the dark.

  He shined it about him, walking around. Ordinary room, it seemed. The only odd thing was how clean it was: no debris, no dust. The pine floors shone as if they had just been waxed. Immaculate. Had he been wrong in thinking the house deserted? But no, it had appeared ruined from the outside, and the windows were boarded.

  Strange, he thought. And then the flashlight flickered and went out.

  * * *

  He shook it, slapped it with the heel of his hand, but it didn’t come on again. He cursed himself for having left his duffle bag near the window. He returned slowly backward in what he hoped was the direction he had come from, but darkness was making the space change, becoming uncertain, vast. He kept backing up anyway.

  The back of his heel struck something. Feeling behind him he found a wall. Where was the window he had entered through? He couldn’t find it, there was just solid wall.

  It’s just a house, he told himself. No need to worry. Just a house.

  But he’d never been able to bear the dark. He hadn’t liked it when he was a boy and he didn’t like it now. He felt along the wall again. Still no window. He was hyperventilating, he realized. Take a breath, he told himself. Calm down.

  He passed out.

  * * *

  When he woke up he was calm somehow, almost as if he were another person. He had none of the disorientation that comes with waking in a strange place. It was almost as if the place wasn’t strange after all—as if he’d been there a very long time, perhaps forever.

  The stripes, he thought. And immediately he began to see them, the lines of grey that marked the windows. There were none near him—the wall he had been touching must have been an interior wall, he must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. How had he gotten so turned around?

  He stood and made his way to them. Halfway there, he stumbled over something and went down in a
heap. His duffle bag, he thought at first, but when he groped around on the floor for it, he found nothing at all. What had he tripped on?

  He climbed to his feet. Once he’d touched the wall with the window in it, he swept his foot over the floor looking for his duffle bag, still not finding it. He tugged on the slats of wood over the window, but none were loose.

  Wrong window, he thought. Wrong wall. He did his best not to panic.

  Turning away from it, he peered into the darkness. He could just make out, at what seemed a great distance, another set of lines defining another set of windows. He made his way toward it.

  * * *

  The duffle bag was there this time—he stumbled on it, and when he felt around for it, it had the decency not to vanish. It felt just slightly wrong beneath his fingers, but that no doubt had come when he had forced it through the gap in the boards and let it drop. He shouldn’t worry, it was his duffle bag: what else could it possibly be?

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he searched through it for the spare batteries and in a moment had them. He unscrewed the cap at the end of the flashlight. Shaking out the old batteries, he dropped them onto the floor with a clunk, then pushed the new ones in, screwing the cap back into place.

  Carefully he pressed the switch, and this time the beam came on bright and strong. The room became a room again, boundaries clean and distinct. Nothing to be afraid of, just an ordinary room, empty except for him and his duffle bag.

  He slung the bag over his shoulder and started toward the door that led deeper into the house. Halfway there, he stopped and, turning, swept the light across the floor behind him. The dead batteries, he wondered, where could they possibly have gone? They simply weren’t there.

  * * *

  The adjoining room offered a stairway and then narrowed into a passageway that led to the remainder of the ground floor. Here too everything appeared immaculate, the floor and stairs dustless, as if they had just been cleaned.

  He shined the light up the stairway but didn’t climb it, instead following the passage back. After openings leading to a dining room, a kitchen, and a storeroom, the passage terminated in a series of three doors, one directly before him and one to either side. He tried the door to his right and found it locked. The one on the left was locked as well. But the door in front of him opened smoothly. He went through.

  A fireplace dominated the room, a large ornate affair faced in porcelain tile. The grate and firebox were as clean as the rest of the house: spotless, as if a fire had never been made. There was a perfectly symmetrical stack of wood to one side, a box of kindling in front of it. On the other side was a poker in its stand, also seemingly unused. The porcelain of the tiles had been painted with what at first struck him as birds but which, as he drew closer, he realized were not birds at all but a series of gesticulating disembodied hands.

  And there, on the wall above the mantel, what he took at first for a curious work of art: something seemingly scribbled directly on the plaster. Upon closer inspection, it proved to be a stain—the only blemish he had seen in the whole house. And then he came closer, and closer still, and recoiled: it was not just any stain, he realized, but the remnants of a great cloud of blood.

  * * *

  There were two armchairs here and a bearskin on the floor. He could light a fire and get warm. Did he dare start one? What if someone saw smoke coming up from the chimney? Would they cause trouble for him?

  But his batteries wouldn’t last forever and the last thing he wanted was to be left in the dark again. No, he needed a fire. If he was caught, so what: it would mean a night in jail and then they’d let him go. And the jail would be warm.

  He balanced the flashlight on its end so that the light fountained up toward the ceiling, then rummaged through his bag until he found his book of matches.

  It was bent and crumpled, the striking pad worn along the middle of the strip through to the paper backing. Most of the matches were torn out and gone.

  Carefully he arranged the split logs in a crosshatched stack, and then on top of this built a little mound of tinder. The mound looked, he realized, like a star, and once he’d noticed this he found his fingers working to make it even more of one.

  The first match he struck fizzled out. The second did a little better, but the tinder didn’t catch. With the third, once the match was alight he lit the matchbook as well, pushing both into the tinder.

  He blew on the flame until the tinder caught, watched it blacken and curl, charring its mark onto the pale wood below, and then that catching too. He stared into the flames. Soon he felt the warmth radiating from the fire. Soon after that, it was too hot to be so near.

  * * *

  He made his way back to one of the armchairs, but before he could sit in it realized there was something already there. A rubberized blanket perhaps, strangely shaped and nearly see-through. An odd colour, a dirty pink—pigskin maybe, cured in a way that gave it a translucency or stretched thin. It was soft to the touch, and warm—no doubt from the fire. He grasped it in both hands and lifted it, found it to be more a sheath than a blanket, something you could crawl into, as large as a man, roughly the shape of a man as well.

  He dropped it as if stung, took a few steps away from the chair. His first impulse was to flee, but with each step away from the sheath he felt safer, more secure. Somebody’s idea of a joke, he told himself. An odd costume. Nothing to worry about.

  He settled into the other chair, still shaken. He would rest for a few minutes, warm up, and then leave.

  A moment later, he was sound asleep.

  * * *

  He dreamt that he was in an operating theatre, much like the one his father had performed surgery in back when he was still alive. There was a chair on the upper tier just for him, his name on a brass plate set in the back of the chair. When he entered the theatre, everyone turned and faced him, and stared. It was crowded, every chair taken but his own, and to reach his spot he had to force his way down the aisle and to the centre of the row, stepping with apologies over the legs of the others. Down below, the surgeon stood with his gloved hands held motionless and awkwardly raised, his face mostly hidden by his surgical mask. He seemed to be waiting for Lars to take his seat.

  Lars sat and then, when the surgeon still continued to stare at him, motioned for him to proceed. The surgeon nodded sharply and turned toward the only other man on the theatre floor: a tall elderly gentleman, stripped nude and standing just beside the operating table.

  The surgeon ran his hand across a tray of instruments and took up a scalpel. He made a continuous incision along the man’s clavicle, from one shoulder to the other. The elderly man didn’t seem to mind or even to feel it. He remained standing, smiling absently. The surgeon set the bloody scalpel down on the edge of the operating table. Carefully, he worked his gloved fingers into the incision he had created and then, once he had a firm grasp on the skin, began very slowly to pull it down, gradually stripping the man’s flesh off his chest in a single slick sheet, from time to time looking back at Lars, as if for approval.

  * * *

  Lars awoke gasping, unsure of where he was. He was sweating, the room warmer than when he’d fallen asleep, the fire glowing a deep red, the heat making the air in front of the fireplace shimmer.

  “Bad dream?” asked a voice.

  He turned, startled. There in the other armchair was a man. Something was wrong with his skin: it hung strangely on him, too loose in the fingers and elbows, too tight in other places. There was something wrong too with his face, as if the skin didn’t quite align with the bones beneath. One eye was oddly stretched so that it was open too wide, the other bunched and all but shut.

  “Bad dream?” asked the malformed man again.

  “Yes, it is,” said Lars.

  “Was, you mean,” said the malformed man. But Lars had not meant was but is. I’m dreaming, thought Lars. I’m still asleep and dreaming.

  “What are you staring at?” asked the man. “Is it me?”
He reached up and touched his face, and then began to tug on it, sliding the skin slightly over with a wet sucking sound. The eye that had been bloated began to shrink back, the other eye opening up. Lars, sickened, had to look away.

  “There we are,” said the man. “You see? Nothing to be concerned over.” When Lars still stared into the fire, he added, “Look at me.”

  Reluctantly Lars did. It was just, he saw, a normal man now, not malformed at all.

  “What was wrong with you?” he couldn’t stop himself from asking.

  “Wrong?” asked the man. He smoothed back his hair. “Nothing. Why would you think anything is wrong?”

  Lars opened his mouth, then closed it again. From the other chair, the man watched him.

  “I hadn’t realized someone else was here,” Lars finally managed. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I’ll go.”

  “Nonsense,” said the man. “It’s a big house. A mansion of sorts. I don’t mind sharing.”

  “It’s just—”

  “Don’t worry,” said the man. “I’ve already eaten.”

  What the hell? wondered Lars. Had the man thought he wasn’t going to stay because he had no food to offer? Was that a custom around these parts? Confused, he started to rise from the chair.

  But the other man was already up, patting the air in front of him with his hands. Sit, sit, he was saying. To get past him, Lars would have to touch him, and that was something he felt he did not want to do.

  He let himself fall back into the chair. Impossibly, the man was already back in his own chair as well, sitting down. The skin on one side of his face seemed to be growing loose again, or maybe that was just the flickering of the firelight.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” said the man. “Though perhaps it wasn’t I who woke you.”