The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 10 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  * * * *

  It is a truism that anything seems larger as you get closer, that you lose perspective; but here he thought it was the other way, that his eyes had made him think the lodge small because they couldn’t credit the house with being so very large. It must be so, although he wasn’t looking at the house now to make comparisons. This near, the lodge took everything. Squat and massive it sat below its dome and drew him, dragged him forward; he thought that it was so dense it made its own gravity, and that he was trapped now, no way out.

  The lodge had double doors that faced the water, too close for his liking, only three low steps and half a dozen flagstones between them. In echo of the house, there was a small pediment above the high doors, with columns to support it in a classic portico. Still no proper windows. He could see a thin run of glass at the cupola’s foot, between lead and stone; but even with that, even at this season with the sun low enough to strike through the doorway at the height of the day, it was going to be dark in there.

  No lock on the doors, though, no need to struggle with the keys. He climbed the steps, laid his backpack down, set his shoulder to one of the doors and pushed.

  * * * *

  There was rust in the hinges, and it spoke to him: its voice was cold and harsh, it said “Guilty,” and then it squealed with laughter.

  He jumped back, sweating, clutched at a column for support and looked out across the lake again. Saw nothing, no movement, no man.

  Stood still, listened; heard the blood hiss and suck in his ears, heard his heart labour behind his ribs, eventually heard birdsong and the soft lapping of the lakewater, a more distant rushing which must be the underground flow to feed and freshen it.

  The door stood ajar, silent now, its greeting spoken and its accusation or its judgement made. He stepped forward and pushed again, and it swung wide with no sound beyond the grating of rust in its hinges.

  * * * *

  Not a lodge, then. Surely a folly after all.

  He stood in the doorway, and the sun threw his long and slender shadow across an enamelled iron bath. One of eight, all set in a circle, radiating; and at the centre a square tiled pit, a plunge-bath large enough for a dozen men to share.

  There was nothing else in the great circular chamber except for wooden slat benches around the sides, dark with mould and damp. The walls were adorned with intricate murals, figures from history painted in the Pre-Raphaelite style, though the light was too dim for him to identify the scenes portrayed.

  A bath-house, he thought, a bathing-house. This vast construction, and it was only a place to bathe, ensemble or en famille; and that with the lake outside, just there, wide and deep and surely more attractive...

  Perhaps there’d been a club, a bathing-club, the local gentlemen anxious to preserve their modesty or their ladies’ blushes. That or something like it: nothing else could explain so much labour, so much expense to such frivolous effect.

  But frivolous or not it was here, and so was he. If D’Espérance could spawn a structure so large and strange at such a distance, then he thought his keys could stay where they were, safely in his pack. Something he lacked, to take him up to the house. He’d settle for this, at least for today. The child is father to the man; there were lessons here to be learned, aspects of the parent surely reflected in its idiot son.

  He thrust the door as wide as it would go and then opened the other also, to let in as much light as he could, and to allow the breeze to freshen the musty air. Some few cracks in the domed roof added a little further light to what the door gave, and that high circle of glass below the dome, but this must be the most it ever saw by nature. He thought they would have needed lamps, those who used it. Whatever they used it for.

  Still, there was enough to see by. Stepping inside, he could see a gallery now, circling just at the wall’s height, below that ring of glass and the dome’s first curving: all wrought iron, the gallery, and likewise the spiral stair that led up to it from behind the door. That must have been for strangers, he thought, for observers, non-participants.

  Now he was concerned about the murals, he thought at the very least they must be lewd. Some provincial Medmenham set he imagined building this bath-house, ambitious to reproduce the Hell-Fire Club in their own gardens. But lowering his eyes tentatively to look, expecting grave disappointment, expecting a grand fancy rendered simply sordid, he found nothing like it.

  King Arthur and Excalibur he found, Oberon and Puck he found, Wayland in his smithy and other men or fairies that he couldn’t identify, but all surely harmless even to his nervous sensibilities.

  And all flaking, too, some cracking as the plaster bulged behind them or staining darkly from beneath. Seeing one crack too long, too straight for nature, he went closer and found the outline of a door within the picture, found a painted leather strap to tug it open.

  And tugged, and first saw the mirror that backed the door, that showed him his own shape marvellously moving in this still place. Then saw the closet behind the door, with its hooks and bars for hanging clothes, its slatted shelves for towels and other necessaries.

  Closed that door and looked for others, found them regularly spaced around the chamber; and none hid anything more than an empty closet, until the last.

  On the other side of the double doors was the iron spiral leading up; here, as though in secret reflection behind its concealing door, was a stone spiral leading down, leading into darkness.

  Bold he could be, curious he certainly was; but he needed a light in his hand before he ventured those narrow steps. And hot food in his belly, that too.

  * * * *

  One thing at least he’d learned in his time at school, though not from his teachers. Like many a boy before him, he’d befriended the local poachers for the sake of an occasional salmon or grouse to scorch over his study fire and eat with his fingers, with his friends. At the start of term he’d brought them bottles of brandy filched from his father’s cabinet; in return they’d taken him out more than once, shown him how to make a snare and where to set a night-line.

  Those skills would feed him now. There must be fish in the lake; there were certainly rabbits in the wood’s fringe, he’d seen signs of them already. He hadn’t thought to bring fishing-line or wire, why should he? He wasn’t here for sport. But he could improvise. He had bootlaces, there were springy willow-shoots growing by the water. No need to visit the town, even to shop for what would ensure he need not visit again.

  Sitting on the steps in the sunshine while water rippled before him, that water reflecting clouds and light and nothing of the great dark house, he reflected on the house; and almost felt he had a duty there at least, if none to family and reputation gone or a name that was meaningless now, himself the last shamed bearer of it. He should go to the solicitor, and ask how arrangements might be made. If he had to be honest, I shall be dead soon, and the house needs an heir, then so be it. He could do that, once. More than once, he thought not; but once would be sufficient.

  Something screamed in the wood behind him, with the voice of a young girl. He started, shifted on the warming stone, and went to check his snares.

  Already there was a rabbit kicking, held tight around the neck and its feet barely in contact with earth. He gathered wood for a fire, laid it in the portico and lit it with flint and tinder from his pack; then he fetched the rabbit. Carried it still living to his fire, though it lay still as a dead thing in his hands, only its eyes alive. Those he killed first, with a pencil. Contrary to all his tutors’ lessons he let it die slow and suffering, tutor himself now and pain all his lesson, the real world his theme.

  “See it?” he whispered, poking with his pencil, digging gently. “See the light, little brother, see the light?”

  What the rabbit saw, of course, was darkness: which was what he saw also, whichever way he looked, into the bath-house or out across the lake. Shapes woven from shadow moved in the shadows inside, avoiding the last of the sun’s fall across the floor; or they moved da
rkly in the water, under the glitter of light.

  Ragged gunfire sounded through the wood and birds rose like smoke, screaming on the wind. A posse shooting crows, he thought; but he still thought himself alone in this valley, and he didn’t believe that anyone would shoot at crows with a .303.

  Later, as his fire hissed under the rabbit’s dripping quarters, he heard sounds of soft knocking, dull and rhythmic.

  Sat and listened; and no, not knocking after all. Sounds of kicking. Slow, steady, unremitting, a foot thudding into flesh and breaking bone.

  He tended his fire, but his hands were trembling now.

  * * * *

  Sitting in the twilight, licking greasy fingers - not wanting to go to the lake to wash, not while it was light enough to see what moved within the waters - he thought he saw words scratched black across the red disc of the sun.

  Guilty he thought was said again, and other words he couldn’t read for the fire in his eyes, but they might have been names. His father’s or his mother’s, the girl’s or his own. It didn’t matter which. Any name was a betrayal.

  He thought he should leave this valley before the games turned worse than cruel, before they remembered the real world and turned to blood. Not at night, though, he wouldn’t leave at night. The wood had been friendly to him once; but there was coming in and there was going out, and they were different. He felt a little like an eel in a basket, trapped without trying. Come the morning, he’d test that. Not now.

  * * * *

  So he made his bed in the portico, on hard stone because there were too many shadows in the long grass moving, too many murmurs coming up. Between the wood and the water, even the bath-house seemed to offer something of protection.

  Something, perhaps; but not enough. Waking in the cold night, he felt a moist warmth on his face and smelt sour breath, smelt blood.

  Heard his own breathing change, heard his blood rush. Stiffened every muscle not to move, not to roll away; and thought there was no greater giveaway, no louder announcement, I’m awake!

  An unshaven cheek brushed his, dry lips kissed him, and he held himself rock-still. A voice moaned in whispers, and he wouldn’t moan back. Then touch again and harder this time, hard to hold against such pressure as the man’s face stropped itself against his. Skin and stubble and the bone beneath: and something else he felt, wouldn’t open his eyes to see it but he felt coarse cloth, a blindfold.

  And then there was nothing but the hard sounds of breathing, and the sounds of footsteps gone too quickly. He couldn’t hear water, but he thought the man had walked straight into the lake.

  In the morning he found a thread of linen caught in his own soft stubble. He tied it in a coil and put it in his wallet for safe keeping, where he might have put a lock of someone’s hair; and no, he couldn’t think of leaving now. Too much of betrayal already, too much of guilt.

  Besides, the wood would never pass him through. He tested that. He went back to the culvert, and tried to walk the path upstream; and tree-roots tripped him, leaves hid hollows underfoot where he fell and hurt his ankle, might have broken it. Where the path slid beneath his feet and he could barely scramble back to solid ground, watching earth crumble into water, there he gave it up, there he turned and came back; but it had been nothing more than a token in any case, he’d only meant to scout.

  * * * *

  No escape from the valley, then. Not by the wood, at least. There must be a road, however ill-kept; but between himself and any road the house lay, massive and dissuasive. My house, he thought; but that was a legal fiction at best, and more of a brutal joke. Even at this distance, he was learning a little. The lesson was that D’Espérance didn’t belong, it wasn’t owned. It might, on sufferance, permit; but he was not yet ready to confront what that would mean, being accepted by D’Espérance.

  So no, not that way. He wouldn’t even skirt the borders of the house; this was closer than he liked already, in its ambit even this further side of the lake.

  Locked out of the wood, not ready for the house and no water-baby, never that, there was only the bath-house left him. This much he could encompass, heavy as it was, as it might prove to be. This much he could carry, for a while. For a brief while, his thoughts reminded him, and were still.

  * * * *

  In the best of the light, with the doors wide, he went in with a pale torch burning and opened the door to the spiral stair.

  Walking down in sinking circles, he smelt must and mould and dead air. The flame flickered, making shadows dance around him; but that was only mechanical, the action of light unfiltered by strangeness, he could understand that and not fear it.

  Distant sounds of rushing, like a hard wind contained: he thought of the culvert, and the hurry of hidden water.

  The stair turned one final time, and brought him into a high cold chamber lined with brick, dark with moisture. This too was dedicated to the mechanical, though, and nothing to fear. His weak torch showed him pumps and boilers, copper pipes and iron, gauges and valves. His eye traced the run of pipes, what would be the flow of the water; he followed it, he learned it, he loved it. This was how he wanted the world to be, all in order and all explaining itself.

  Until his torch went out; and this was not how he wanted the world to be, utterly dark and cold and empty, nothing in reach of his groping hands.

  Groping, his hands found nothing but his eyes did. Knock knock, cool and stiff like fingers but not that, not fingers: lightly knocking against his eyes and knocking again like crooked fingers while he only stood there, too much knocked upon.

  Moaning, he heard his voice say “Mama”; but all moans sound more or less like mama, and he hadn’t called her that since he was a child, not since he was very small indeed.

  He stepped backwards, away from the knocking; and kept his hands rigidly at his sides not to grope again, not to feel.

  Not to find.

  His feet found a wall for him, and he kept his shoulder against it until they came to the rise of the stairs. And so up, still in darkness and that rushing sound in his ears changing now, turning rhythmic, turning to kicks; and the door closed at the top but his barging shoulder crashing it open and his stumbling feet carrying him out into the cool and shadowed bath-house which was so much warmer, so very much brighter than what lay below.

  * * * *

  And still he couldn’t leave, and wouldn’t. Not if she were here too, and the girl somewhere in the wood, perhaps: that early glimpse no trick of light or memory, those sounds of kicking no folly of his mind.

  He saw his father again across the lake, bound and blindfold, a khaki figure in an early light although the sun was setting.

  Beset by his own senses, he struggled for that numb normality he’d worn like a cloak before. Horror was unexceptional, pockets were a proper place for rocks, one deep plunge and never rising after was a fit deed in a nothing, nothing world.

  But poking at a rabbit’s eyes wouldn’t do it now, wouldn’t keep him. Not where his father’s eyes were too much on his mind, where his mother dangled always in his thoughts, where the girl might be watching from the wood.

  What could keep him, the only thing that might keep him from the slip, from sliding through terror and into its undermath, would be to walk that slip’s edge, to hang on terror’s lips against its speaking. To go back into the bath-house and take possession of the dark below, where his mother currently possessed it.

  * * * *

  Gathering cobnuts and filberts at the wood’s edge, his back turned to whatever threatened in the water, he heard a snuffling that might have been tears and saliva backed up in a sobbing girl’s throat. He heard a scratching that might have been a girl’s desperate nails digging furrows in the path, and then a steady heavy thud-and-scrape that sounded like nothing so much as a boot falling and falling, and its metal studs scraping on the path between falls as the foot drew back and lifted to fall again. He could hear breathing too, hard grunts tied to the same rhythm.

  He lifted his
head expecting to see her, expecting to see her kicked; and saw instead a bloated pink-brown rump swing and rub against a tree, hard enough to shake the trunk. And it swung away and swung back, thud and scrape, and it was only a pig after all: a great sow twice or thrice his weight, let forage in the wood or else - more likely, he thought, out here where no one was - escaped its sty and living feral. Unless D’Espérance did this too, throwing up animals unexpectedly and when they were most desired.

  He needed this sow badly, and lacked the means to take her.

  * * * *

  Means could be made, though. Made or found.

  He slipped away quietly, not to disturb her at her scratching, not to startle her off into the depths of the wood where he might not be allowed to follow. If this was her current rooting-ground, then above all he wanted her to keep to it.

  He blunted his knife cutting at ash-saplings, hacking them away from their roots. With the blade given an edge again on the granite steps of the portico, he spent the evening trimming and whittling until he had an armoury of sorts, three straight poles each sharpened at one end. He hardened the points in his fire, remembering an engraving in a book that showed cavemen doing the same; and the work absorbed him so that he forgot to look over the water before the light failed, to see if his father were there.