The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 22

by Stephen Jones

  For BBC Radio he is a regular contributor to the Afternoon Play slot, produced by Martin Jarvis, and his series The Chain Gang has won two Sony Awards. However, he is probably best known for his work on Doctor Who, bringing the Daleks back to the screen in the BAFTA-winning first series of the revival in an episode nominated for a Hugo Award.

  Shearman’s first collection of short stories, Tiny Deaths, was published by Comma Press in 2007. It won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection, and was also short-listed for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and nominated for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize. One of the stories from it was selected by the National Library Board of Singapore as part of the annual Read! Singapore campaign.

  His second collection, Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, published by Big Finish, won the British Fantasy Award and the Edge Hill Readers’ Prize, and was joint winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. The story that follows also appears in his third collection, Everyone’s Just So So Special, again published by Big Finish.

  “I don’t like writing at home much,” admits the author. “Home is a place for sleeping and eating and watching afternoon game shows on TV. There are too many distractions. So, years ago, I decided I’d only write first drafts in art galleries.

  “And the best of them all is the National Gallery, in London, a pigeon’s throw from Nelson’s Column. I can walk around there with my notebook, thinking up stories – and if I get bored, there are lots of expensive pictures to look at. Perfect.

  “A lot of those paintings, however, have angels in them. They’re all over the place, wings raised, halos gleaming – perching on clouds, blowing trumpets, hovering around the Virgin Mary as if they’re her strange naked childlike bodyguards. And I began to notice. That, whenever the writing is going well, the angels seemed happy, and would smile at me. And whenever the words weren’t coming out right, when I felt sluggish, when I thought I’d rather take off and get myself a beer, they’d start to glare.

  “I wrote this story in the National Gallery. Accompanied by a lot of glaring angels. Enjoy.”

  HE THOUGHT AT FIRST that she was dead. And that was terrible, of course – but what shocked him most was how dispassionate that made him feel. There was no anguish, no horror, he should be crying but clearly no tears were fighting to get out – and instead all there was was this almost sick fascination. He’d never seen a corpse before. His mother had asked if he’d wanted to see his grandfather, all laid out for the funeral, and he was only twelve, and he really really didn’t – and his father said that was okay, it was probably best Harry remembered Grandad the way he had been, funny and full of life, better not to spoil the memory – and Harry had quickly agreed, yes, that was the reason – but it wasn’t that at all, it was a bloody dead body, and he worried that if he got too close it might wake up and say hello.

  And now here there was a corpse, and it was less than three feet away, in the passenger seat beside him. And it was his wife, for God’s sake, someone he knew so well – or, at least, better than anyone else in the world could, he could say that at least. And her head was twisted oddly, he’d never seen her quite at that angle before and she looked like someone he’d never really known at all, he’d never seen her face in a profile where her nose looked quite that enormous. And there was all the blood, of course. He wondered whether the tears were starting to come after all, he could sense a pricking at his eyes, and he thought it’d be such a relief if he could feel grief or shock or hysteria or something . . . when she swivelled that neck a little towards him, and out from a mouth thick with that blood came “Hello”.

  He was so astonished that for a moment he didn’t reply, just goggled at her. She frowned.

  “There’s a funny taste in my mouth,” she said.

  “The blood,” he suggested.

  “What’s that, darling?”

  “There’s a lot of blood,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said. “Yes, that would make sense. Oh dear. I don’t feel I’m in any pain, though. Are you in any pain?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t think so. I haven’t tried to . . . move much, I . . .” He struggled for words. “I didn’t get round to trying, actually. Actually, I thought you were dead.”

  “And I can’t see very well either,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said.

  She blinked. Then blinked again. “No, won’t go away. It’s all very red.”

  “That’ll be the blood,” he said. “Again.”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “Of course, the blood.” She thought for a moment. “I’d wipe my eyes, but I can’t seem to move my arms at all. I have still got arms, haven’t I, darling?”

  “I think so. I can see the right one, in any case.”

  “That’s good. I do wonder, shouldn’t I be a little more scared than this?”

  “I was trying to work that out too. Why I wasn’t more scared. Especially when I thought you were dead.”

  “Right . . . ?”

  “And I concluded. That it was probably the shock.”

  “That could be it.” She nodded, and that enormous nose nodded too, and so did the twisted neck, there they were, all nodding, it looked grotesque – “Still. All that blood! I must look a sight!”

  She did, but he didn’t care, Harry was just so relieved she was all right after all, and he didn’t want to tell her that her little spate of nodding seemed to have left her head somewhat back to front. She yawned. “Well,” she said. “I think I might take a little nap.”

  He wasn’t sure that was a good idea, he thought that he should probably persuade her to stay awake. But she yawned again, and look! – she was perfectly all right, wasn’t she, there was no pain, there was a lot of blood, yes, but no pain. “Just a little nap,” she said. “I’ll be with you again in a bit.” She frowned. “Could you scratch my back for me, darling? It’s itchy.”

  “I can’t move.”

  “Oh, right. Okay. It’s itchy, though. I’m allergic to feathers.”

  “To what, darling?”

  “To feathers,” she said. “The feathers are tickling me.” And she nodded off.

  His first plan had been to take her back to Venice. Venice had been where they’d honeymooned. And he thought that would be so romantic, one year on exactly, to return to Venice for their first anniversary. They could do everything they had before – hold hands in St Mark’s Square, hold hands on board the vaporetti, toast each other with champagne in one of those restaurants by the Rialto. He was excited by the idea, and he was going to keep it a secret from Esther, surprise her on the day with plane tickets – but he never kept secrets from Esther, they told each other everything, it would just have seemed weird.

  And thank God he had told her, as it turned out. Because she said that although it was a lovely idea, and yes, it was very romantic, she didn’t want to go back to Venice at all. Truth to tell, she’d found it a bit smelly, and very crowded, and very expensive; they’d done it once, why not see somewhere else? He felt a little hurt at first – hadn’t she enjoyed the honeymoon then? She’d never said she hadn’t at the time – and she reassured him, she’d adored the honeymoon. But not because of Venice, because of him, she’d adore any holiday anywhere, so long as he was part of the package. He liked that. She had a knack for saying the right thing, smoothing everything over.

  Indeed, in one year of marriage they’d never yet had an argument.

  He sometimes wondered whether this was some kind of a record. He wanted to ask all his other married friends, how often do you argue, do you even argue at all? – just to see whether what he’d got with Esther was something really special. But he never did, he didn’t want to rub anyone’s noses in how happy he was, and besides, he didn’t have the sorts of friends he could be that personal with. He didn’t need to, he had Esther. Both he and Esther had developed a way in which they’d avoid confrontation - if a conversation was taking a wrong turning, Esther would usually send it on a detour without any apparent effort.
r />   Yes, he could find her irritating at times, and he was certain then that she must find him irritating too - and they could both give the odd warning growl if either were tired or stressed – but they’d never had anything close to a full-blown row. That was something to be proud of. He called her his little diplomat! He said that she should be employed by the UN, she’d soon sort out all these conflicts they heard about on the news! And she’d laugh, and say that he clearly hadn’t seen what she was like in the shop, she could really snap at some of those customers sometimes – she was only perfect around him.

  And he’d seen evidence of that, hadn’t he? For example – on their wedding morning, when he wanted to see her, and all the bridesmaids were telling him not to go into the bedroom, “Don’t, Harry, she’s in a filthy temper!” – but he went in anyway, and there she was in her dress, she was so beautiful, and she just beamed at him, and kissed him, and told him that she loved him, oh, how she loved him. She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t ever going to be angry with him. And that night they’d flown off to Venice, and they’d had a wonderful time.

  So, not Venice then. (Maybe some other year. She nodded at that, said, “Maybe.”) Where else should they spend their anniversary then? Esther suggested Scotland. Harry didn’t much like the sound of that, it didn’t sound particularly romantic, especially not compared to Venice. But she managed to persuade him. How about a holiday where they properly explored somewhere? Just took the car, and drove – a different hotel each night, free and easy, and whenever they wanted they could stop off at a little pub, or go for a ramble on the moors, or pop into a stately home? It’d be an adventure. The Watkins family had put their footprints in Italy, she said, and now they could leave them all over the Highlands! That did sound rather fun. He didn’t want it to be too free and easy, mind you, they might end up with nowhere to stay for the night – but he did a lot of homework, booked them into seven different places in seven different parts of Scotland. The most they’d ever have to drive between them was eighty miles, he was sure they could manage that, and he showed her an itinerary he’d marked out on his atlas. She kissed him and told him how clever he was.

  And especially for the holiday he decided to buy a Sat Nav. He’d always rather fancied one, but couldn’t justify it before – he knew his drive into work so well he could have done it with his eyes closed. He tried out the gadget, he put in the postcode of his office, and let it direct him there. It wasn’t the route he’d have chosen, he was quite certain it was better to avoid the ring road altogether, but he loved that Sat Nav voice, so gentle and yet so authoritative: “You have reached your destination,” it’d say, and they’d chosen a funny way of getting there, but yes, they certainly had – and all told to him in a voice good enough to be off the telly. The first day of the holiday he set in the postcode to their first Scottish hotel; he packed the car with the suitcases; Esther sat in beside him on the passenger seat, smiled, and said, “Let’s go.”

  “The Watkinses are going to leave their footprints all over the Highlands!” he announced, and laughed.

  “Happy anniversary,” said Esther. “I love you.”

  On the fourth day they stayed at their fourth stately home of the holiday a little too long, maybe; it was in the middle of nowhere, and their next hotel was also in the middle of nowhere, but it was in a completely different middle of nowhere. It was already getting dark, and there weren’t many streetlights on those empty roads. Esther got a little drowsy, and said she was going to take a nap. And the Sat Nav man hadn’t said anything for a good fifteen minutes, so Harry knew he must be going in the right direction, and maybe Esther sleeping was making him a little drowsy too – but suddenly he realised that the smoothness of the road beneath him had gone, this was grass and field and bushes, for God’s sake, and they were going down, and it was quite steep, and he kept thinking that they had to stop soon surely, he hadn’t realised they were so high up in the first place! – and there were now branches whipping past the windows, and actual trees, and the car wasn’t slowing down at all, and it only dawned on him then that they might really be in trouble. He had time to say “Esther,” because stupidly he thought she might want to be awake to see all this, and then the mass of branches got denser still, and then there was sound, and he hadn’t thought there’d been sound before, but suddenly there was an awful lot of it. He was flung forward towards the steering wheel, and then the seatbelt flung him right back where he had come from – and that was when he heard a snap, but he wasn’t sure if it came from him, or from Esther, or just from the branches outside. And it was dark, but not yet dark enough that he couldn’t see Esther still hadn’t woken up, and that there was all that blood.

  The front of the car had buckled. The Sat Nav said, “Turn around when possible.” Still clinging on to the crushed dashboard. Just the once, then it gave up the ghost.

  He couldn’t feel his legs. They were trapped under the dashboard. He hoped that was the reason. He tried to open the door, pushed against it hard, and the pain of the attempt nearly made him pass out. The door had been staved in. It was wrecked. He thought about the seatbelt. The pain that reaching it would cause. Later. He’d do that later. Getting out the cell phone from his inside jacket pocket – not even the coat pocket, he’d have to bend his arm and get into the coat first and then into the jacket . . . Later, later. Once the pain had stopped. Please, God, then.

  Harry wished they’d gone to Venice. He was sure Venice had its own dangers. He supposed tourists were always drowning themselves in gondola-related accidents. But there were no roads to drive off in Venice.

  He was woken by the sound of tapping at the window.

  It wasn’t so much the tapping that startled him. He’d assumed they’d be rescued sooner or later – it was true, they hadn’t come off a main road, but someone would drive along it sooner or later, wouldn’t they? It was on the Sat Nav route, for God’s sake.

  What startled him was the realisation he’d been asleep in the first place. The last thing he remembered was his misgivings about letting Esther nod off. And some valiant decision he’d made that whatever happened he wouldn’t nod off, he’d watch over her, stand guard over her – sit guard over her, he’d protect her as best he could. As best he could when he himself couldn’t move, when he hadn’t yet dared worry about what damage might have been done to him. What if he’d broken his legs? (What if he’d broken his spine?) And as soon as these thoughts swam into his head, he batted them out again – or at least buried them beneath the guilt (some valiant effort to protect Esther that had been, falling asleep like that!) and the relief that someone was there and he wouldn’t need to feel guilt much longer. Someone was out there, tapping away at the window.

  “Hey!” he called out. “Yes, we’re in here! Yes, we’re all right!” Though he didn’t really know about that last bit.

  It was now pitch black. He couldn’t see Esther at all. He couldn’t see whether she was even breathing. “It’s all right, darling,” he told her. “They’ve found us. We’re safe now.” Not thinking about that strange twisted neck she’d had, not about spines.

  Another tattoo against the glass – tap, tap, tap. And he strained his head in the direction of the window, and it hurt, and he thought he heard something pop. But there was no one to be seen. Just a mass of branches, and the overwhelming night. Clearly the tapping was at the passenger window behind him.

  It then occurred to him, in a flash of warm fear, that it was so dark that maybe their rescuer couldn’t see in. That for all his tapping he might think the car was empty. That he might just give up tapping altogether, and disappear into the blackness. “We’re in here!” he called out, louder. “We can’t move! Don’t go! Don’t go!”

  He knew immediately that he shouldn’t have said don’t go, have tempted fate like that. Because that’s when the tapping stopped. “No!” he shouted. “Come back!” But there was no more; he heard something that might have been a giggle, and that was it.

  Maybe the
re hadn’t been tapping at all. Maybe it was just the branches in the wind.

  Maybe he was sleeping through the whole thing.

  No, he decided forcefully, and he even said it out loud, “No.” There had been a rhythm to the tapping; it had been someone trying to get his attention. And he wasn’t asleep, he was in too much pain for that. His neck still screamed at him because of the strain of turning to the window. He chose to disregard the giggling.

  The window tapper had gone to get help. He’d found the car, and couldn’t do anything by himself. And quite right too, this tapper wasn’t a doctor, was he? He could now picture who this tapper was, some sort of farmer probably, a Scottish farmer out walking his dog – and good for him, he wasn’t trying to be heroic, he was going to call the experts in, if he’d tried to pull them out of the car without knowing what he was about he might have done more harm than good. Especially if there was something wrong with the spine (forget about the spine). Good for you, farmer, thought Harry, you very sensible Scotsman, you. Before too long there’d be an ambulance, and stretchers, and safety. If Harry closed his eyes now, and blocked out the pain – he could do it, it was just a matter of not thinking about it – if he went back to sleep, he wouldn’t have to wait so long for them to arrive.

  So he closed his eyes, and drifted away. And dreamed about farmers. And why farmers would giggle so shrilly like that.

  The next time he opened his eyes there was sunlight. And Esther was awake, and staring straight at him.

  He flinched at that. And then winced at his flinching, it sent a tremor of pain right through him. He was glad to see she was alive, of course. And conscious was a bonus. He just hadn’t expected the full ugly reality of it.

  He could now see her neck properly. And that in its contorted position all the wrinkles had all bunched up tight against each other, thick and wormy; it looked a little as if she were wearing an Elizabethan ruff. And there was blood, so much of it. It had dried now. He supposed that was a good sign, that the flow had been staunched somehow, that it wasn’t still pumping out all over the Mini Metro. The dried blood cracked around her mouth and chin as she spoke.