Best New Horror: Volume 25 (Mammoth Book of Best New Horror)

by Неизвестный

  Sick.

  And yet every night his hand slipped down between his legs and all it took was the thought of her wide eyes and high-pitched cries to make him unbearably aroused. He couldn’t banish the images. All he could do was let them wash over him as he came so hard his ears rang. Again and again.

  Yuki Hayashi. Actress. Born 13 April 1989 in Hokkaido, Japan. Filmography: Victim Factory 1 & 2, Love Hotel of the Damned and Aesthetic Paranoia (filming).

  Alex clicked on each film and read the synopses. They were all low-budget rip-offs of the notorious “guinea pig” films from the ’80s. Girls got kidnapped and tortured and that was basically it. Sometimes they also got raped.

  The fourth one in the filmography wasn’t finished yet and Love Hotel of the Damned didn’t seem to be available anywhere, not even on Josh’s pirate site. But Alex ordered the others.

  Like all rip-offs, Victim Factory aspired to take things a step further than its inspiration. The gore was over the top, even by Alex’s standards, and it was made worse by the homemade feel of the production. They looked like snuff films shot on someone’s home-video camera.

  Yuki’s debut was as “2nd victim” in an unpleasant scene where she was grabbed off the street and taken to an abandoned asylum. There she was stripped naked and thrown into a room stained with the blood of previous victims. To wait. After listening in terror to the screams and cries of another girl, Yuki was dragged off to the torture chamber next door for her turn. The killer bound her wrists tightly with rope and looped them over a large hook. He turned a crank that noisily hoisted her off the ground while she screamed and wept and kicked her pretty legs. Even her slight weight looked as though it was dislocating her shoulders and Alex winced. How could you fake that?

  Finally, in a bizarre moment of artistry, the killer carved a series of Japanese characters into Yuki’s skin with the jagged edge of a broken samurai sword. The subtitles only translated the spoken dialogue so Alex had no idea what the words inscribed on her flesh meant.

  It drove him mad.

  The exotic swashes and flourishes streamed with blood that looked disturbingly real, a striking contrast to Yuki’s pale skin. Alex could almost believe that the mutilation had actually happened but for the fact that in the second film, the one Josh had shown him, she was unmarked. Pristine and ready for more. Ready to have her fingers and toes snipped off one by one, her mouth forced open with a metal dentist’s gag and her tongue cut out.

  He searched the Net for more information, but the films didn’t appear to be widely known. There was the occasional mention on a message board, but Alex couldn’t find any translation for the characters in the carving scene. Nor was there much information about Yuki. He found one screen grab from the first film, which he immediately stored on his phone. Her eyes pleaded with him through the image and he felt obscurely guilty, as though he’d imprisoned her in a tiny digital cage. But he didn’t delete the picture.

  The films made him feel uncomfortable, almost sick at times. And truthfully, he didn’t enjoy the violence. When he played the DVDs again he only watched the scenes with Yuki and even then he felt funny afterwards. But he couldn’t get her out of his head. The very thought of her was enough to make him hard and even though he tried to picture her whole and undamaged, the images of torture would quickly take over. He tried to imagine her voice, cheerful and sweet as she chattered on her phone before being abducted in each film, but the musical sounds always devolved into screams of pain and madness.

  Her anguish was so excruciatingly real. He couldn’t tune it out, couldn’t un-see it. And he couldn’t help the effect it had on him.

  She was there behind his eyes every night, pleading with him to stop, her tiny body struggling helplessly against ropes and rusty chains. And no matter how much he tried to transform the images in his head, he always saw himself wielding the blades, the needles, the bolt-cutters. Her blood ran like wine over his hands and he was drunk on the taste of her.

  “Hey, mate, you know that DVD you were after?”

  Alex froze, staring at his phone with apprehension. Then he took a deep breath before forcing himself to ask calmly, “Which one?”

  “Love Hotel of the Damned. I found it.”

  “Oh, cool,” he replied, as nonchalantly as he could manage.

  “Yeah, some guy up in Leeds has it and he said he’d burn me a copy for a tenner.”

  “Thanks, mate. I’ll pay you back.”

  “No problem!” Josh sounded pleased, no doubt proud of himself for tracking down the obscure film. If he had any suspicions about Alex’s obsession it wasn’t obvious. “I’ll drop it by your place next week.”

  Next week. Alex felt his insides churn hungrily at the thought of seeing Yuki again, seeing her suffer and die in new and terrible ways.

  The synopsis of Love Hotel made it sound like the worst of the lot. Same “guinea pig” concept but this time set in one of those weird Japanese hotels he’d read about online. The kind where you could fuck a manga character on a spaceship or grope a schoolgirl in a room designed like a train carriage. He’d found the trailer for the film on a J-horror fan site and it looked seriously reprehensible. Even some of the hardcore gorehounds said the level of sexual violence was too much for them.

  Alex slid down in his chair as his cock began to stir.

  The film was even worse than he’d anticipated. Murky and grainy, as though someone had simply held up a cheap camera and filmed it playing on a TV. The poor quality actually made the gore seem more realistic.

  Yuki didn’t appear until halfway through and Alex almost didn’t recognize her. She was thinner and paler and she seemed even more fragile. But she was still beautiful. She wore an elaborate Gothic Lolita dress with frilly petticoats and a lacy apron and mop cap. But not for long. Her “customer” cut the flimsy costume away with a pair of shears. From the way Yuki yelped and twisted, it was clear he was cutting her too. Blood trickled down one arm and over her belly and she stared straight into the camera for one heart-stopping moment. Alex had the uncomfortable sense that he was watching a genuine victim this time and not an actress.

  His thumb hovered over the STOP button for a few seconds before he reminded himself that there was a fourth film on the list. Aesthetic Paranoia, which she was apparently still shooting. If this was real, surely she wouldn’t have made another such film. Surely she’d be shouting “Police!” or “Help!” He was sure he’d recognize that level of distress even in a language he couldn’t speak. No, it was just that weird sense of authenticity you sometimes got with ultra low-budget films.

  Yuki cried and begged in plaintive Japanese while the man stripped the mattress off the bed and threw her onto the bare springs. He bound her, spread-eagled, with wire that Alex could see biting into her delicate wrists and ankles. Then he threw a bucket of water over her and she screamed again and again, writhing on the springs.

  The man lifted the head of the bed and propped it against the wall so that it rested at an angle. The camera zoomed in and around Yuki’s naked, shivering body, shooting from underneath the bed to show the mesh pressing painfully into her back, the wires cutting into her skin. In close-up the springs looked rusty and Yuki was bleeding in several places. The detail was too subtle not to be real and Alex began to feel light-headed again. But he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

  The man held up a series of huge fish hooks with what looked like electrodes attached and Yuki screamed herself hoarse as the hooks were threaded through her skin one by one in a scene that went on for nearly ten minutes. When he was done, the man connected the trailing wires to a machine at his feet. He pressed a button and there was a terrible buzzing sound, followed by another piercing scream. Yuki leapt and bucked against the springs for what felt like an eternity before the current stopped. Wisps of smoke began to rise from the contact points and Alex thought he could smell something burning. Blood ran from Yuki’s eyes like tears as she gasped and panted, too breathless to scream. The camera zoomed in on he
r face and she stared directly out of the screen again, as though she were looking through a window right at Alex.

  When the buzzing sound began again Yuki tensed and started to plead frantically, this time with whoever was behind the camera. Alex closed his eyes against her screams and the metallic rattle of the springs and the zap of electricity. He held his breath as it went on and on, wishing it would end.

  At last there was silence. Silence and the smell of scorched meat. He shut the film off and ran for the bathroom. He almost made it.

  It was several days before Yuki came back.

  Alex had put the three DVDs in a carrier bag, knotted it and pushed it to the back of the bathroom cupboard. When Josh had asked how he liked the film he’d forced a laugh and said it was rubbish, with crappy effects. And if his voice had trembled when he’d said it, Josh didn’t seem to notice. Yuki’s picture was gone from his phone and the J-horror sites he’d bookmarked were erased from his browsing history.

  As disturbing as it had been, he knew it was fake. That was part of the point of films like that – to trick the viewer into thinking it was real. Actual snuff films were an urban legend. None had ever been found and they certainly wouldn’t be readily available online in any case. People had been fooled by special effects before. And while it was a compliment to the makers of Yuki’s films, Alex had seen enough.

  He was in bed, almost asleep, when he first heard the sound. A soft rustle, as though someone were reading a newspaper in the next room. He froze. He had the mad urge to call out “Who’s there?” even though there was no one else in the flat. Unless someone had broken in. It was that kind of neighbourhood, but the flat was too small for a burglar to hide in without Alex knowing. A rat, then? It would have to be an awfully big one.

  His heart hammered in his chest, drowning out any sounds that might be coming from the other room. Seconds passed like hours as he sat staring towards the open doorway, feeling like a child who’d woken from a nightmare. He should get up and switch on all the lights but the thought of putting his feet on the floor, exposing them to the empty space under the bed, was too frightening.

  “Get a grip,” he mouthed, trying to spur himself into action. But still he didn’t move.

  There was another sound. A soft slap, like a bare foot on the hard floor. Then another. And another.

  His blood turned to ice-water as the footsteps came closer and closer. A thin shape was emerging from the darkness of the corridor. Then he heard the dripping. He could almost believe it was some girl he’d brought home from a club and forgotten about. She’d just got out of the shower without drying off and now …

  Except it wasn’t. It was Yuki.

  When she reached the bedroom Alex bit back a scream. She stood in the doorway, naked and dripping with blood. Her arms hung loose at her sides and Alex’s stomach clenched as he saw the symbols carved into her body. The calligraphy was more extensive than he remembered from the scene in the film. The cuts ran from the base of her throat, across her small breasts and down her torso.

  A strangled sound escaped his throat and Yuki’s head turned towards him. It was a careful, deliberate movement, as though she had only located him by the sound and was trying to fix his exact position. She turned and took a step into the room. Alex stared at her in horror, desperate to run but unable to move.

  It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. It was a dream or a hallucination, just like the images in his head he hadn’t been able to get rid of. But worst of all, he felt himself responding as he always had. Hot desire pulsed in his groin even as bile rose in his throat.

  Each step she took opened the cuts further. Blood flowed over her body like water, pooling on the floor. What was almost worse was the residual grace in her movements. She didn’t shuffle or sway drunkenly. Rather, she moved with the precision of a dancer, each movement full of purpose. Blood gleamed in the light from the window, shining on her mutilated skin like a wet carapace, and Alex shuddered as he felt himself growing hard.

  “No,” he managed to whisper. “No, please.”

  Yuki responded to his voice, reaching out for him. Her eyes were empty pools of black but her lips seemed to be forming a smile.

  It took all his courage to shut his eyes and wish the sight away.

  He counted to three before his eyes flew open again in fright. Yuki was gone.

  It was some time before he was able to get up off the bed and even then his legs threatened to buckle with each step he took towards the doorway. There was no blood on the floor, no evidence that anything had ever been there.

  It was the middle of the night but Alex got dressed and drove all the way to work to throw the DVDs away. He snapped the disks in half and scattered them, along with the packaging, into the three large industrial bins behind the office building. He wondered if he ought to say something, but what? A prayer? He wasn’t religious so he didn’t imagine it would do any good. But surely it couldn’t do any harm.

  “Goodbye, Yuki,” he whispered, and her name felt like an obscenity on his lips. “Please don’t come back.”

  But she did.

  It was four nights later and Alex was asleep. He was deep inside a pleasant childhood dream when his eyes fluttered open with a start and there she was, standing over him.

  He screamed and scrambled away until he was cowering on the floor against the wall. Yuki cocked her head as if in confusion, her eyes streaming with black, bloody tears, her temples scorched and pierced by fish hooks. She looked thinner, more wasted.

  Yuki raised one pale arm and reached for him. He could see the gleam of bone through the cuts on her chest. The wounds gaped like tiny mouths with each movement, as though trying to speak the words they represented. Alex shuddered with revulsion as Yuki drew her hand down over his torso. Her touch was gentle as she took hold of his cock. He stiffened in her grasp, unable to move, unable to resist as she stroked him like a lover. She pressed her blackened lips to his and he closed his eyes with a sickened moan as he came.

  Then he crumpled to his knees on the floor, crying.

  “Mate, you look like hell.”

  Alex had been tempted not to answer the door but Josh had kept pounding, shouting that he knew Alex was home.

  “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Got some bloody bug.”

  “I’ve been ringing you for days. The guys at work thought you’d died or something. You didn’t even call in sick.”

  Alex managed a rueful smile. “Too sick to.”

  “Well, is there anything I can do for you? You need food? Booze? Drugs?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  But his assurances didn’t get rid of Josh. His friend muttered about how stuffy it was in the flat before planting himself on the battered sofa where they’d watched so many DVDs together. He shrugged out of his leather jacket, revealing a black Faces of Death T-shirt. Alex stared at the grinning skull and spiky red lettering for several seconds before looking away. Josh didn’t seem to notice his uneasiness.

  An awkward silence stretched between them but Alex couldn’t think of anything to say. He couldn’t tell Josh he was seeing ghosts, much less the specifics of the encounters. But Yuki’s presence hung in the air in spite of his silence. He could still smell her blood and burnt flesh, still feel the slick touch of her fingers on his skin.

  He’d scrubbed himself raw in the shower after the first time, but it hadn’t changed anything. She’d returned the next night, and the next. She looked worse with each visit but each time Alex’s own body had betrayed him, succumbing to her touch even as he choked back the sickness welling in his throat. He couldn’t resist or escape, and each violation only seemed to excite him more.

  He was pretty sure he understood what the symbols were now. Hours of online searching had led him to a website about curses. He didn’t need to read Japanese to know that one of the characters represented “desire” and another “obsession”. He hadn’t dared to search further to see if “love” was also among them.

  Josh was
talking, telling him about some new film he’d just seen, one his girlfriend hadn’t been able to stomach.

  Alex felt his own stomach churn queasily.

  “Anyway,” Josh continued, oblivious to his friend’s discomfort, “pretty weird about that actress, huh?”

  Alex blinked. “What are you talking about?”

  “Didn’t you get my email?”

  “What email?”

  “The one I sent you last week. About that Japanese girl. The one in the film you had me track down?”

  Alex felt a crawling sensation in his guts. So his fixation on Yuki hadn’t been lost on Josh after all. “What about her?”

  “She’s dead.”

  The words seemed to come from a long way away, like a transmission he’d already heard. He couldn’t speak. The skull on Josh’s shirt seemed to be laughing now.

  “Alex? You okay?”

  He nodded weakly. “Yeah, I think so.” Some part of him had already known, of course.

  Josh went on. “I figured you liked her since you wanted all her films and I was trying to find a copy of that last one for you – Aesthetic Paranoia. She died on the set. Some kind of freak accident.”

  “When?” Alex managed to ask.

  “That’s what’s so weird, mate. It was only a few weeks ago, before I even showed you Victim Factory 2. She was dead the whole time we’ve been watching her films. Hey, are you sure you’re okay? You’re white as a fucking sheet.”

  That night Alex lay in bed listening for the familiar sticky wet slap of her feet. There was no point in trying to resist. Yuki would come for him, would keep coming for him, until there was nothing left of either of them. He’d met her eyes through the screen and she had chosen him. He was special.

  He hadn’t liked the way Josh had said “we”. We’ve been watching her films. He didn’t like the thought of Josh seeing Yuki the way he did.