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

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  Vlad saw Bagnell and Branch match eyes. Whatever Darnell Frost was up to, it was something a vast deal different from what the others had been up to.

  Frost went on in his rapid way, one word almost overtaking the other. “Is his disease - let’s call it Paper-Man’s Disease - is it worse than leprosy? At one time the unfortunate victims of leprosy were isolated from society forever. We winced when we saw their dreadful deformities and heard their warning bells. If they did not submit, they were hunted down. But that is mercifully a thing of the past, and oh what a good thing that it is. They aren’t even called lepers now, they are victims of Hansen’s Bacillus. We don’t cast them out,” Frost declared, shaking his head. “We beckon them in and treat them. Yes we do. Am I not also a man and a brother ? Is not the victim of Paper-Man’s Disease a man and a brother like the victim of Hansen’s Disease? Why, yes he is. I appeal to us all to rise to the incredible challenge which this study presents. I am speaking not only of compassion, but of profit. You ask - What? Profit? You wonder how I can be so bold, but I say that we must not feel afraid but hopeful. For this wretched and unfortunate creature has, I truly believe, a precious secret locked within his body, the most precious secret any creature may have. The secret that every living being desires; my friends and colleagues. What secret is that? Why it is so obvious, why haven’t I heard it from anyone gathered here? The precious secret which, like the ugly and venomous toad, the Paper-Man bears in his body - why of course that secret islife’“

  By now all eyes were on Dr Darnell Frost.

  “That secret, my friends, my colleagues, is life! Oh I don’t dare say eternal life, no I don’t, but is a life span prolonged for let’s say a century and a half, is such a life span nothing?”

  Vlad rose to his feet, as the bile rose in his mouth. “My god, man, such a life is worse than nothing,” he shouted.

  Frost waved him gently down. “Be patient with me, dear sir, and then it will be your turn. I’ve been patient with all of you. The Paper-Man’s life has been sad and terrible, true, but I say it need not be! I say why weepest thou? Arise, now, and gird up thy loins! We are men and women. . . people of science! We do not take the past for granted. We must not tarry. We have tasks of the topmost priority, friends and colleagues. We must track the Paper-Man in every hidden wall and closet and doorway, in every wretched building and slum that he inhabits. We must take hold of him gently and lead him to refuge, where he may be studied with every merciful consideration, like every other victim of a baffling disease. After full-scale research which will surely discover his secret, we will share this secret with our fellow men and women. My dearest friends, we have no choice, it’s not a thing which permits of hesitation, and we must share it with all humankind -and we will share the glory and the profit among ourselves. There.” He slapped his neat stack of notes on the table and looked around the room. Dr Darnell Frost had staked his claim.

  The room was in commotion. Calloway was on his feet, shouting. Branch was pounding his fist on the table, shouting, “What are you going to do, milk them like snakes?”

  Vlad’s startled blue-gray eyes met Jack’s - both men looked shocked, troubled. “I think we’ve found the kernel in the nut,” said Vlad. “He can’t be serious.”

  “Frost sees himself in the newspapers,” said Jack Stewart. “On the cover of Time. Or even more in the Readers Digest, which is what he probably reads. He doesn’t know what kinds of worms are in that can, and he doesn’t want to know either.”

  Branch leaned over to Vlad; grimly he said, “Well, now you know why I didn’t want to tell you before . . . why I wanted to protect you. Have you seen enough? Are you happy now?”

  Vlad said, “I wasn’t happy before, but I’ve seen enough for now.”

  “- details must be worked out as we go along, doctors, professors, admittedly there is an immense amount of work, but -”

  Frost had staked his claim. Who knew where the assay office was? It could hardly be said yet that the rush was on, but certainly the brawling had already started in the mining camp.

  * * * *

  VI. The Old, Old House Revealed

  Why had Hillsmith not received his usual dose of Thorazine? No one really knew. Doors would slam and heads would roll, thorough investigations be made: the facts would never be discovered. Things sometimes happened which should not. Confusion followed. For in fact the hospital was always overcrowded and understaffed. Even the locked ward could not always be kept locked; could every linen locker?

  Hillsmith, for once alert and cunning, had turned into a quick-change artist. Finding the ward briefly unlocked, he slipped into the staff physician’s shower-room, and emerged with the clothing and ID badge of someone in the shower. Properly clad and badged, he calmly strolled along, looking here and there and, sure enough: “There’s my bag,” he said, aloud, but not loudly. The car keys were in the bag, and the gate guard, due for retirement, had other things on his mind. Never mind the gate guard. Hillsmith didn’t.

  He got as far as Bewdley Hill when the car ran out of gas. Hillsmith continued on foot. He persuaded young Eddy Fritz at the gas station to keep the doctor bag as security for a can of gas.

  It was always a question around Bewdley Hill; was that Nasser Fauntleroy boy crazy, or just plainmean? Nasser greeted Hillsmith at first sight with a loud cry of “Hey, Doctor Flim-Flam! Watchew wearing them funny clothes for, Doctor Floy-Floy? I says hey! Hey!”

  This getting no response (and perhaps desiring none), he fell into step a safe distance behind, and began following his latest victim in an exaggerated version of the victim’s gait, all the while jeering and hooting and mocking. In fact it was almost impossible to get rid of him. If ignored, he kept on. If confronted, he increased his attack. If smiled at, he became more brutal. He had been known to follow someone for miles.

  Hillsmith kept on, carrying the can of gas. So did Nasser Fauntleroy, flinging out fists and feet, breaking out when he saw fit. Hillsmith turned up River Road, and up a lane containing a certain old house. He began to gather wooden rubble from the littered lane. At this point a curious change came over Nasser Fauntleroy. His stiff-legged steps faltered, and he looked all around. He slowed. He made many faces. He never entirely stopped, but he did, however, fall quite quiet.

  * * * *

  Vlad had seen enough, and now he wanted only to see his family. His favorite niece, Elizabeth, answered the phone. “How’s your Aunt Elsa?” asked Vlad.

  “She’s playing gawlf. They’re all playing gawlf.” said Elizabeth.

  “Say, that’s great!” Vlad exclaimed. “And Bella?”

  “She’s taking her nap on the screened porch.”

  “Cooler, eh?”

  “Well, she won’t sleep inside.”

  Vlad winced. “Is she having any of her attacks?”

  “Nope,” said Elizabeth.

  “Does she smile and laugh?”

  “Nope.”

  “Does she eat or talk?”

  “Little bit.”

  “Listen, I’m coming to pick her up ... to take her for a drive, okay?

  There commenced a pause and a series of squalid sounds which Vlad analyzed as those of a teenager eating an apple. Then: “Yeah, I guess so, okay.”

  Vlad dropped off Jack Stewart to attend to some business of his own, and went to pick up Bella. After he drove for a while with the quiet and withdrawn child beside him in the car, he had the great and good idea of returning to the old house. Bella would see the place in the sunlight, as he had first seen it - when the creature would be quiescent - and she would realize there was nothing to fear. It seemed worth a try; all the psychologists and medications clearly weren’t helping. Bella did not recognize the old house, so Vlad took her inside, to the room where the tragedy had occurred.

  * * * *

  Hillsmith paused in the lane in front of the old house, and eyed a car parked near the overgrown drive. Then he continued his stride. There was a lot of debris in the yard: fragments of furn
iture, frayed boards, sloughed shingles and the like. Hillsmith gathered and put some of this under his arm, and, walking tiptoed, went up to the house. Fauntleroy did the same. Still he kept silent.

  Hillsmith carried the rubble to the verandah surrounding the old house, and made a neat trail of wooden debris all the way around. Then he paused to listen at the walls. Was there, in the sultry silence of the ebbing day, was there any sound at all? If so, was it made by the wind in the huge old trees? Was there any other sound? A rustle? A click?

  Nasser Fauntleroy mocked his movements in silence. Why did he not leave? He was certainly in no way at ease.

  What is there which makes them both stop now? Perhaps Nasser Fauntleroy stops because Hillsmith stops, but why does Hillsmith stop? Why does he scan the moldering wall so carefully? Hillsmith picks up his can and runs. Hillsmith runs and runs, a-teeter and a-totter, around the verandah, and it is a marvel how thin a stream of fluid he has managed to spill, almost to spray, along the base of the walls as he runs and runs, tossing lit matches like fireflies.

  Then with no warning, with no word, with no sound, Hillsmith seems to leave the floor to hurtle through the air, to burst through the rotting wall, to seize - suddenly - something in both his hands - something which rustles . . . and rattles . . . and clicks . . . and kicks . . . and struggles . . . and slips out of Hillsmith’s grip as Hillsmith staggers and half-falls to the ground. Does Nasser Fauntleroy scream? If not, who then did?

  * * * *

  Once again, Vlad Smith heard his small daughter’s shrill scream, and felt her body arch in his arms. Did he smell smoke or was that the stench of . . .? Did he hear the crackle of flames or was that the clicking sound of . . .? “My god,” he whispered, and he felt his body grow cold. They poured out of cracks in the walls as if a roaches’ nest had been disturbed. They surrounded him with their horrible stenches and their horrible sounds; then they clambered, roachlike, up the walls towards the ceiling.

  Now Vlad saw the smoke and the flames through the window, and he knew what had wakened them, and he knew they had to get out. But a Paper-Man lay on the floor in the doorway, blocking their escape. It began to crawl towards them with its terrible claws extended, shedding scraps of rotting paper as it moved. Its stinking odor hit Vlad in waves. He watched for a moment, and willed his stomach to be still. He recalled that the best way to kill a Paper-Man is to break its neck. Vlad dashed forward and aimed a long-unused soccer kick at the creature’s head. Something snapped lightly and rolled. It was the head, which stared with open eyes at him and writhed its lips at him and clicked its foul teeth at him.

  Then the headless body in the doorway, in its reeking and tattered clothes, the shattered body began to writhe and crawl. Its hands went scrabbling and pawing and feeling . . . feeling for the missing head. Vlad knew it must not find the head. He broke the window with a single kick, seized the head by its scant and filthy hair, and threw it out into the flames. Still the headless thing in the doorway twitched and flung its scrannel arms around, and lunged. Then there was a sound like a breaking stick, and the thing in the doorway was still. Choking smoke filled the room, as Vlad, shielding whimpering Bella in his arms, leaped over the Paper-Man’s body, and raced out of the old house . . . into the front yard.

  * * * *

  A large yard it is, and one in which many splendid carriages had come, one after the other, one after the other . . . and then had ceased to come. At all. Long years ago.

  Outside it is by now the long summer twilight.

  Hillsmith walks along the old carriage-drive, now a neglected lane, to the large Oak tree draped with Spanish Moss, very near where the street begins; and there he leans, against the tree, facing the house. He waits. Waits.

  Hillsmith was still there long after the night air was filled with smoke and noise. Now there were many people with him, and police cars and fire-engines and ambulances. Many people by then were there, shouting and screaming and pointing as the flames poured forth from every window of the old, old house. “Purified by fire!” Hillsmith cried. Again. Again. He felt weak, he tottered.

  A man’s large arm went around his waist, and Hillsmith found it immensely comforting. “Purified by fire!” he cried . . . again, again, in a voice gone weak.

  “Easy now, Mr Hillsmith. Easy. Lean against me, now . . . That’s right. You know me, Mr Hillsmith?”

  “Dr Eberhardt?”

  “That’s right. That’s right. You set this fire, right? Why did you -?” His voice stopped abruptly. Every voice of the growling, howling multitude stopped. Abruptly. Atop the roof of the house, like a spectacle prepared to amuse some King of Ghouls, appeared a row of figures . . . dancing . . . stamping. . . pirouetting . . . flinging out gant arms and lifting gant legs . . .

  “Good Lord!” cried Eberhardt. The crowd began its growl again.

  Lifting gant legs and flinging gant arms in mad disco-ordinate movement; stamping and dancing, and all silent. Silently dancing.

  And all ablaze - dancing on the rooftop all ablaze - all ablaze.

  After a while the roof fell in, and the crowd groaned. Steam and vapor from the fire-hoses began to hide it all from sight.

  Hillsmith said, really gently, to Dr Eberhardt, “You see why? Purified by fire. No longer human. Abominations, they were.”

  From a corner of the yard, the ambulance crew dragged someone. Someone kicking . . . dancing . . . flinging arms and legs about. Someone crying and screaming. Screams and cries. “Dry bones live! Dry bones live!” screamed Nasser Fauntleroy, as they lifted him and carried him away. “Dry bones live!”

  Hillsmith said, so softly that Dr Eberhardt had to put his ear up close, “. . . purified by fire . . .”

  * * * *

  Vlad wrapped Bella in his jacket, and from the bottom of the jacket a pair of very small feet projected. “Bella, my god. Bella!”

  She opened her eyes and rolled them up until only the whites showed. Then she rolled them down. Then she looked at him directly with wide blue-grey eyes, and shook her head and said, “No.” Then she reached her arms to him, and he couldn’t say anything at all.

  “Was that a bad dream, daddy?” she asked, into his ear.

  “Something like that.”

  “It was very bad. I don’t like it here. Let’s go home.”

  * * * *

  To say that the office looked dirty and shabby was to say that water looked liquid and wet. Newspapers, documents, magazines, clippings, files and folders lay stacked and slipped and scattered. Someone was thrusting his hand into a large manila envelope. Someone was turning the pages of an old illustrated publication. Someone was going through a scrapbook, moistening loose corners with a small glue-brush. On one webby wall was a sign, THE CONTRACT NEVER EXPIRES. None of the men was working hard or working fast, none of them seemed interested in what he was doing, and whatever they were all doing they gave the impression of having been doing it for a long, long time. One man ruffled through the clippings taken from the manila envelope. Stopped. Went back a few clippings. Opened a drawer and removed an album, opened it. Turned pages. Put the album down and read the clipping. Cleared his throat. Another man looked up, said, after a moment, “What.”

  The first man said, “Mackilwhit’s head.”

  The second stared. “Mackilwhit’s head?”

  “Yeah.”

  The second man said, “Where’s the rest of him.”

  The first man slightly shrugged. “Doesn’t say.”

  “Mackilwhit. He went into the wall. Yeah. In the wall.”

  The first man fumbled till he found what seemed an old handpenned list. From his rat’s nest of a desk he selected a worn-down pencil, the point of which he moistened in his mouth. Then he let his finger find a line. Slowly, as though he had all the time in the world, he made a pencil-mark through it.

  “Well,” the man said, “he’s out now.”

  * * * *

  And he dwelleth in desolate cities, and in houses which no man inhabiteth . . .<
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  - Job xv, 28

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  * * * *

  HARLAN ELLISON

  Objects of Desire

  in the Mirror Are Closer

  Than They Appear

  The great fantasistTheodore Sturgeon once remarked, “Anywhere you go in the world, if there are at least two writers in the group, they’ll wind up having a conversation about Harlan Ellison.”

  Although that well-known epigram may be more than slightly apocryphal, there is still no denying the fact that Ellison is certifiably a legend in his own lifetime.

  He has won more awards in the genres of imaginative fiction than any other living author - including the Hugo, Nebula, Edgar, Writer’s Guild of America, World Fantasy and Bram Stoker; so many in fact, that they now merely give him prestigious Lifetime Achievement Awards.