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

by Неизвестный

  He sat up, finding himself on the living-room sofa.

  He looked at the clock and saw it was four o’clock. Since it was sunny beyond the drapes, he deduced it must be four o’clock in the afternoon. He was still in his pyjamas and dressing gown and still too tired to care.

  He’d hardly slept a wink all night. In fact, the short, shallow period of sleep broken by the dream had been by far the longest. Perhaps an hour. The rest, when he could, had been spent at most in a fitful doze, and that only occasionally, interspersed as it was with shambling wanders round the house or up and down stairs in the dead of night. That darkness inculcated fears was a truism, but such knowledge did nothing to abate it. Fears multiplied as he’d curled up wide-eyed, turning circuitous thoughts over in his mind, multiplying still more while he’d walked aimlessly from room to room, in a futile search for distraction, illumination, resolution or peace of mind. All evaded his grasp.

  He had lain in his bed thinking of Carl Drinkwater lying in his. The boy’s words, the whole encounter, replayed in his ears. What did he hear? Was he misguided? Did he take it all at face value when he shouldn’t have? Was the mother right? All kinds of doubts set in.

  Most of all, that he was mentally accusing a man he’d never met of the most despicable act, the vilest crime imaginable – based upon what?

  He had woken, walked round like a penitent, unable to sleep, as these questions went round and round in his head. Who was he to pronounce? Who was he to judge? Who was right? Who was wrong? Who was good? Who was evil? He wished he could talk to somebody, but who would listen to the silly gibbering of a recently bereaved man whose very job was spinning a preposterous yarn and making it seem true?

  It was Sunday but he didn’t want to go to church. Too many people. Too many eyes. In fact he hadn’t been to church since Helen’s funeral. Afterwards the young vicar at St Alphege’s had told him: “If you ever want to come and talk, Peter, for any reason, you know where I am.” He’d said: “My name’s Godfrey. You can call me God.” Then he had nudged Peter’s arm with his elbow. “I’m joking.” Peter didn’t want to hear a joke and he didn’t want to laugh. He didn’t want to go back for a chat with “God” either. “God” could find other people to chat to. He’d rather have a good actor like Peter Sallis or Miles Malleson playing a vicar than that young fake who was acting the part anyway. As Olivier had said, “Be sincere, dear boy, always be sincere – and when you’ve faked that, you’ve cracked it.”

  But if you cannot do good, he thought now, where is God? Where?

  Unable to turn without a painful reminder confronting him – the furniture was all Helen’s choice from her favourite antiques dealer, and every piece of it held a story – he dragged his feet up to his studio, the “playroom”, at the top of the house. For five or ten minutes he sat and gazed up through the windows along one wall at the darkening sky above.

  The far table was strewn with art supplies, palettes rainbowed with dried paint and uncapped tubes of aquamarine and burnt sienna gone hard as concrete. The miniature theatre sets he’d made to the original Rex Whistler designs sat like frozen moments of time waiting patiently to be awakened. Model aeroplanes dangled on fishing line, Lancaster bomber, Spitfire, Messerschmitt: a veritable Battle of Britain suspended in the air. Frozen in time, like he was in so many ways. A child with his toys. A boy playing at being a man. What was a “play” anyway but “playing”? He thought of Captain Stanhope in Journey’s End, the part he never got a chance to do. In glass-fronted cabinets the length of the room stood hundreds of model soldiers, the British Army through the ages: the Scots Greys at Waterloo; Desert Rats at El Alamein; Tommies at Normandy. In days gone by he’d get them out and solve international problems on his knees on the carpet. His men were clever, bold, indefatigable, strategic, victorious – always. But they were no use to him now. They’d fought all those battles, but what could they do to fight this one? Now they were as useless and impotent as he himself. He suddenly wanted to give the boy all those toy soldiers. He wanted to give him all the toys in the world.

  Helen gazed out at him radiantly from a pastel drawing pinned to the wall.

  He slid a record out of its sleeve, placed it on the gramophone and slumped in the threadbare rocking chair letting “Symphony Number One” by Sibelius wash over him. It always had the effect of reminding him of the wonder of human achievements, the humility with which we should revere, in awe, such pinnacles of artistic endeavour, but it struggled to do that now. He cast his mind back to being on set singing Giuseppe’s song from The Gondoliers to Barbara Shelley, competing with Chris Lee to see who could sing the nightmare song from Iolanthe fastest without missing a word. He tried to think of singing and old friends laughing, whilst knowing a child somewhere wept into its pillow.

  The doorbell rang.

  He opened his eyes. Rather than lift the needle and risk scratching the LP, he let the music play as he went downstairs to answer it.

  A figure stood outside in the dark. He could make out the distinctive square shoulders and upturned collar of a donkey jacket. He could see no face, just a man’s outline and the collar-length hair covering his ears backlit by the almost iridescent purple of the night sky. He had not replaced the light bulb in the conservatory, which had blown weeks ago, nor had he switched on the hall light in his haste to open the front door. Now he wished he had done both.

  “Mr Cushing?” It was a light voice and one he didn’t recognize, or had reason to fear, but some part of him tightened.

  “Yes?”

  Instinctively, Cushing shook the extended hand – calloused, dry as parchment from physical work, not the hand of a poet: an ugly hand – and gazed into the face of a man in his thirties with sand-blond, almost flesh-coloured hair and beard. Thirtythree, the older man thought, peculiarly, unbidden. The age Jesus was when he died: Thirtythree. The long hair and beard was “hippie”-like, the style of California’s so-called “flower children”, but now ubiquitous, of course. Under the donkey jacket Cushing saw a red polo-neck jumper and blue jeans, flared, faded in patches from wear – a working man, then. No. He corrected himself from making any such assumption: threadbare jeans were, inexplicably to him, the fashion of the day. Students at Oxford wore jeans. Jeans told him nothing.

  “Hello, mate. My name’s Les Gledhill …”

  Les loves that boy.

  “First of all, I’ve got to say I’ve always been a massive fan of your films. I know, I know probably everyone says that. You probably get bored with hearing it. But I really mean it, sir. I feel quite nervous talking to you, in point of fact …” Realising he had not released the actor’s hand, the man now did so, laughing and holding his hands aloft, pulling faces at his own crassness and ineptitude.

  Les loves that boy.

  Cushing didn’t ask himself how the long-haired man had found his address. Everyone in town knew where its most famous resident lived – though most conspired in respecting his privacy.

  Les loves that boy.

  “Sorry. Sorry. Am I disturbing you? Only, it’s really important I have a word.” The visitor rubbed his hands together vigorously in the night air, hopping from foot to foot. “I, ah, think there’s been a misunderstanding. A really, really big misunderstanding, mate …” he chuckled, “and I really, really want to clear it up before it goes any further.” Still laughing, he pointed both index fingers to the sides of his head, twirling them in dumb-show semaphore for the craziness of the situation.

  “I’m so sorry to be a bore …” Cushing’s voice retained its usual mellifluous charm. “It’s Sunday evening. This isn’t a very good time, to be perfectly honest. In fact, I’m expecting guests any minute …” On tiptoes he craned over the other man’s shoulder, pretending to be scanning the path beyond.

  “This won’t take long. I promise to God. Just a minute of your time, mate. If that. Honestly …”

  “I have food in the oven. I’m most terribly …” Blast. The pyjamas and dressing gown were a giveaway tha
t he was lying, and he had to think fast. “I’m, I’m just about to get changed. This really isn’t convenient. If you’ll excuse me …” He did an excellent job also of covering up the fact that his heart was pounding thunderously. When you can fake that, dear boy …

  A hand slapped against the door. “Sorry, mate. Hold on. Hey. Mate …”

  It stopped the door from closing but Gledhill, almost immediately embarrassed by his brisk action, quickly removed it and stuffed it in his jacket pocket, laughing again.

  “Listen. Please. I really, really want to clear this up, sir. I swear, you have no idea what this is doing to me. You, a respected man in this, this community, I mean, loved in this town, let’s face it, Christ, thinking …” One cheek winced as if in momentary pain. “When she … that’s why I had to come over, see. I couldn’t let …”

  Cushing wondered why he still felt afraid. Much as he hated to admit it, the man seemed reasonable. Why did he hate to admit it? What had he presumed the chap would be like? Here he was. Not an ogre. Perplexed, certainly. Bewildered, genuinely. It seemed. And – unless a consummate actor himself – shaken. The voice didn’t sound angry or vicious in the least, or beastly. Or evil – that was the remarkable thing. It sounded confused, and quite upset. No – hurt. Terribly hurt. Devastated, in fact.

  “Of course, if you’re busy, sir, I understand. Blimey, I have no right to just barge over here, knock on your door, expect you to …” Running out of words, the man in the donkey jacket backed away, then turned to go. Then, as he reached the white-painted garden gate, turned back. “Look, the truth is … I’d hate you to think I’d done anything to hurt that boy. Or whatever you think. That’s just … Just not the case. Truly.” He made one last, haltering plea. “I … I just wanted to explain to you you’ve got the wrong end of the stick, that’s all. That’s what concerns me, more than anything. You’re a decent man. A perfect gentleman. You don’t need this. It’s not fair.” The front door had not shut and, this being so, he took this for some kind of invitation and walked quickly back into the conservatory.

  Peter Cushing’s fingers did not move from the latch on the inside of the door. “I’d rather we discuss it here, if we must.”

  Gledhill stopped, suddenly bowed his shaggy head and plunged his ruddy, working man’s hands deep in his jacket pockets, shuffling. “Yes, of course, mate. No problem.”

  Letting the front door yawn wider in a slight act of contrition, Cushing retraced his steps and switched on the hall light, then returned to stand on the welcome mat whilst the man in the donkey jacket hovered in silhouette at the mercy of the shrill wind cutting in from the sea. It buffeted the door, sending an icy breath through the house, room to room, riffling paperwork like a thief.

  Picked out of the darkness by the paltry spill of light from the hall, Gledhill shook a solitary Embassy from its packet. “Listen.” He rubbed one eye. “Carl is a good kid, a great kid. He’s quirky, a laugh, in small doses, don’t get me wrong. He’s a character. But he has problems, that’s what you don’t realize.” The lighter clicked and flashed, giving a splash of illumination from his cupped hand to his chin and upper lip. “He says things. Things that aren’t true.” A puff of smoke streamed from the corner of his mouth. “All the bloody time. Not just about me. About everybody. The school already has him down as a liar. And a bully. They have problems with him. He hurts other kids. That’s what kind of child he is, Mr Cushing. His mother worries about him day and night. So do I. Day and night.”

  Night.

  Cushing remained tight-lipped. The face of a hundred movie stills. Immobile. “You’re telling me I shouldn’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth.”

  “Honest to God.” The man’s next exhale was directed at the moon. The whites of his eyes seemed flesh-coloured too, now. Perhaps it was the ambient yellow glow from within. He dawdled in its penumbra. “You think he’s some kind of angel? You don’t know him. You don’t know any of us.” He let that fact, and its obvious truth, bed down in Cushing’s mind. “I didn’t have to take on this woman with her boy, did I? Let’s face it, lots of blokes would run for the hills the minute they know there’s a kid in tow. And I haven’t, have I? Because I love her. I’m trying to piece this family together. God knows. I’m going to marry her, for Christ’s sake. Put everything right for both of them. The boy too. I’m not a bad person.” He offered the palms of his hands.

  “Then what do you have to fear from me?” Cushing spoke quietly and with precision.

  “I don’t know.” Gledhill shrugged. “I don’t know what you think.”

  And he laughed again. And the laugh had a wrongness. There was something in it, a grace note, deep down, disingenuous, that the older man detected and didn’t like. If pressed, he couldn’t have explained it any more than he could have explained why, on meeting his wife he knew instantly they were meant to spend the rest of their lives together: it wasn’t even love, it was that he’d met his soul. Similarly, the thing embedded in Les Gledhill’s laugh was inexplicable, and, inexplicably, enough.

  “I think you’d better leave now. Good night to you.”

  He shut the door but found something wedged into the jamb, preventing it from closing. The laughter had stopped. He didn’t want to look down and didn’t look down, because he knew what he would see there: a foot rammed in between the bottom of the door and the metal footplate.

  O, Lord. O, Jesus Christ.

  “I’m trying to be reasonable. I’m trying to …” Gledhill’s teeth were clenched now, tobacco-stained, his face only inches from the other man’s. “Why are you doing this?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Why are you doing this?” The Kent accent had become more pronounced, transforming into a Cockney harshness. “I’ve done nothing to you. I’m a total stranger to you. Have you ever met me before? No. So why are you doing this to me? Going to my house, upsetting my girlfriend. I come home to find her in bits. How d’you think that makes me feel? Before I know it she’s firing all kinds of questions at me. Stupid questions. Ridiculous questions—”

  “Please …” The older man’s voice was choked with fear. He couldn’t disguise it any more. It took all his strength to hold the door in place. “I have nothing more to say.”

  Gledhill’s face jutted closer still, his shoulder firm against the door, holding it fast, and Cushing could detect the strong sweet reek of – what, blood, decay? – no, alcohol on the man’s breath. But something else too. Something of death. “What kind of person are you, eh?”

  Cushing stood fast, half-shielded by the door, halfprotected, half-vulnerable. “I was going to ask you exactly the same question. Except Carl answered that for me. In his own way.”

  “How? What did he say?”

  “He said you’re a vampire.”

  The laugh came again, this time a mere blow of air through nose and mouth accompanied by a shake of the head, then the bubbling cackle of a smoker’s hack. It came unbidden but there was no enjoyment behind it or to be derived from hearing it.

  “That kid cracks me up. He really does. Such a joker. You know what? That’s hilarious.” The turn of a word: “You’re hilarious.” Now Gledhill’s expression was deadly serious. “You’re being hilarious now.”

  “That doesn’t mean I can’t stop you.”

  “I’m innocent! I’ve done nothing wrong. Haven’t you been listening to a bloody word I’ve said? You need to clean your ears out, mate. Get a hearing test, at your age. Pay attention to people. Not just listen to idiots.”

  “Carl isn’t an idiot. I don’t consider him an idiot.”

  “I know you don’t.” One elbow against a glass panel of the door, Gledhill jerked his other arm, tossing his spent cigarette into a flower bed without even looking where it fell.

  “Why do you believe him and not me, eh? What gives you the right to cast judgement on me, anyway? You, a stupid film star in stupid films for stupid people.”

  So much for being a lifelong fan. His true col
ours, at last. “I know evil when I see it.”

  A grunt. “What? Dracula and Frankenstein and the Wolf Man?”

  “No. I’m talking about the true evil that human beings are capable of.”

  “And what’s that, eh? Tell me. Tell me what’s going on in your sick mind, because I have no bloody idea.”

  Cushing did not reply. Simply stared at him and with supreme effort refused to break his gaze. He saw for the first time that the monster’s eyes were as colourless as the invisibly pale eyebrows that now made an arch of self-pity over them.

  “You think I’d hurt him? I wouldn’t hurt a hair of his head. Cross my heart and hope to die.” With the thumb of one hand, Gledhill made the sign of the cross, horizontally across his chest, then from his chin to his belly.

  “It’s curious,” Cushing said, one hollow cheek pressed to the side of the door. “In vampire mythology, evil has to be invited over the threshold. And she invited you in, didn’t she? With open arms.”

  “Yeah, mate. It’s called love.”

  “Love can be corrupted. I will not be witness to that and let it pass.”

  “How Biblical.” The glistening eyes did not suit the sneer that went with them.

  “I have been a Christian all my life. It gives me strength.”

  “You Bible-thumpers see evil everywhere.”

  “No, we don’t. But to God innocence is precious. It’s to be valued above all things. It must be protected. Our children must be safe. It’s our duty as human beings.”