The Best New Horror 1

by Stephen Jones

  Beyond the door was a high-walled courtyard of black and white pebbles laid out in octopus and dolphin designs. A split-level patio fronted the “villa,” a square box of a house whose one redeeming feature had to be a retractable sun-awning shading the windows and most of the patio. It also made an admirable refuge from the dazzling white of everything.

  There were whitewashed concrete steps climbing the side of the building to the upper floor, with a landing that opened onto a wooden-railed balcony with its own striped awning. Beach towels and an outsize lady’s bathing costume were hanging over the rail, drying, and all the windows were open. Someone was home, maybe. Or maybe sitting in a shady taverna sipping on iced drinks. Downstairs, a key with a label had been left in the keyhole of a louvered, fly-screened door. Geoff read the label, which said simply: “Mr Hammond.” The booking had been made in his name.

  “This is us,” he said to Gwen, turning the key.

  They went in, Spiros following with the large cases. Inside, the cool air was a blessing. Now they would like to explore the place on their own, but the Greek was there to do it for them. And he knew his way around. He put the cases down, opened his arms to indicate the central room. “For sit, talk, thee resting.” He pointed to a tiled area in one corner, with a refrigerator, sink-unit and two-ring electric cooker. “For thee toast, coffee—thee fish and chips, eh?” He shoved open the door of a tiny room tiled top to bottom, containing a shower, wash-basin and WC. “And this one,” he said, without further explanation. Then five strides back across the floor took him to another room, low-ceilinged, pine-beamed, with a Lindean double bed built in under louvered windows. He cocked his head on one side. “And thee bed—just one. . .”

  “That’s all we’ll need,” Geoff answered, his annoyance building.

  “Yes,” Gwen said. “Well, thank you, er, Spiros—you’re very kind. And we’ll be fine now.”

  Spiros scratched his chin, went back into the main room and sprawled in an easy chair. “Outside is hot,” he said. “Here she is cool—krio, you know?”

  Geoff went to him. “It’s very hot,” he agreed, “and we’re sticky. Now we want to shower, put our things away, look around. Thanks for your help. You can go now.”

  Spiros stood up and his face went slack, his expression more blank than before. His wall-eye looked strange through its tinted lens. “Go now?” he repeated.

  Geoff sighed. “Yes, go!”

  The corner of Spiros’s mouth twitched, drew back a little to show his gold tooth. “I fetch from airport, carry cases.”

  “Ah!” said Geoff, getting out his wallet. “What do I owe you?” He’d bought drachmas at the bank in London.

  Spiros sniffed, looked scornful, half turned away. “One thousand,” he finally answered, bluntly.

  “That’s about four pounds and fifty pence,” Gwen said from the bedroom doorway. “Sounds reasonable.”

  “Except it was supposed to be on Skymed,” Geoff scowled. He paid up anyway and saw Spiros to the door. The Greek departed, sauntered indifferently across the patio to pause in the arched doorway and look back across the courtyard. Gwen had come to stand beside Geoff in the double doorway under the awning.

  The Greek looked straight at her and licked his fleshy lips. The vacant grin was back on his face. “I see you,” he said, nodding with a sort of slow deliberation.

  As he closed the door behind him, Gwen muttered, “Not if I see you first! Ugh!”

  “I am with you,” Geoff agreed. “Not my favourite local character!”

  “Spiros,” she said. “Well, and it suits him to a tee. It’s about as close as you can get to spider! And that one is about as close as you can get!”

  They showered, fell exhausted on the bed—but not so exhausted that they could just lie there without making love.

  Later—with suitcases emptied and small valuables stashed out of sight, and spare clothes all hung up or tucked away—dressed in light, loose gear, sandals, sunglasses, it was time to explore the village. “And afterwards,” Gwen insisted, “we’re swimming!” She’d packed their towels and swimwear in a plastic beach bag. She loved to swim, and Geoff might have, too, except . . .

  But as they left their rooms and stepped out across the patio, the varnished door in the courtyard wall opened to admit their upstairs neighbours, and for the next hour all thoughts of exploration and a dip in the sea were swept aside. The elderly couple who now introduced themselves gushed, there was no other way to describe it. He was George and she was Petula.

  “My dear,” said George, taking Gwen’s hand and kissing it, “such a stunning young lady, and how sad that I’ve only two days left in which to enjoy you!” He was maybe sixty-four or five, ex-handsome but sagging a bit now, tall if a little bent, and brown as a native. With a small grey moustache and faded blue eyes, he looked as if he’d—no, in all probability he had—piloted Spitfires in World War II! Alas, he wore the most blindingly colourful shorts and shirt that Gwen had ever seen.

  Petula was very large, about as tall as George but two of him in girth. She was just as brown, though, (and so presumably didn’t mind exposing it all), seemed equally if not more energetic, and was never at a loss for words. They were a strange, paradoxical pair: very upper-crust, but at the same time very much down to earth. If Petula tended to speak with plums in her mouth, certainly they were of a very tangy variety.

  “He’ll flatter you to death, my dear,” she told Gwen, ushering the newcomers up the steps at the side of the house and onto the high balcony. “But you must never take your eyes off his hands! Stage magicians have nothing on George. Forty years ago he magicked himself into my bedroom, and he’s been there ever since!”

  “She seduced me!” said George, bustling indoors.

  “I did not!” Petula was petulant. “What? Why he’s quite simply a wolf in . . . in a Joseph suit!”

  “A Joseph suit?” George repeated her. He came back out onto the balcony with brandy-sours in a frosted jug, a clattering tray of ice-cubes, slices of sugared lemon and an eggcup of salt for the sours. He put the lot down on a plastic table, said: “Ah!—glasses!” and ducked back inside again.

  “Yes,” his wife called after him, pointing at his Bermudas and Hawaiian shirt. “Your clothes of many colours!”

  It was all good fun and Geoff and Gwen enjoyed it. They sat round the table on plastic chairs, and George and Petula entertained them. It made for a very nice welcome to Achladi indeed.

  “Of course,” said George after a while, when they’d settled down a little, “we first came here eight years ago, when there were no flights, just boats. Now that people are flying in—” he shrugged, “—two more seasons and there’ll be belly-dancers and hotdog stands! But for now it’s . . . just perfect. Will you look at that view?”

  The view from the balcony was very fetching. “From up here we can see the entire village,” said Gwen. “You must point out the best shops, the bank or exchange or whatever, all the places we’ll need to know about.”

  George and Petula looked at each other, smiled knowingly.

  “Oh?” said Gwen.

  Geoff checked their expressions, nodded, made a guess: “There are no places we need to know about.”

  “Well, three, actually,” said Petula. “Four if you count Dimi’s—the taverna. Oh, there are other places to eat, but Dimi’s is the place. Except I feel I’ve spoilt it for you now. I mean, that really is something you should have discovered for yourself. It’s half the fun, finding the best place to eat!”

  “What about the other three places we should know about” Gwen inquired. “Will knowing those spoil it for us, too? Knowing them in advance, I mean?”

  “Good Lord, no!” George shook his head. “Vital knowledge, young lady!”

  “The baker’s,” said Petula. “For fresh rolls—daily.” She pointed it out, blue smoke rising from a cluster of chimneypots. “Also the booze shop, for booze—”

  “—Also daily,” said George, pointing. “Right th
ere on that corner—where the bottles glint. D’you know, they have an ancient Metaxa so cheap you wouldn’t—”

  “And,” Petula continued, “the path down to the beach. Which is . . . over there.”

  “But tell us,” said George, changing the subject, “are you married, you two? Or is that too personal?”

  “Oh, of course they’re married!” Petula told him. “But very recently, because they still sit so close together. Touching. You see?”

  “Ah!” said George. “Then we shan’t have another elopement.”

  “You know, my dear, you really are an old idiot,” said Petula, sighing. “I mean, elopements are for lovers to be together. And these two already are together!”

  Geoff and Gwen raised their eyebrows. “An elopement?” Gwen said. “Here? When did this happen?”

  “Right here, yes,” said Petula. “Ten days ago. On our first night we had a young man downstairs, Gordon. On his own. He was supposed to be here with his fiancée but she’s jilted him. He went out with us, had a few too many in Dimi’s and told us all about it. A Swedish girl—very lovely, blonde creature—was also on her own. She helped steer him back here and, I suppose, tucked him in. She had her own place, mind you, and didn’t stay.”

  “But the next night she did!” George enthused.

  “And then they ran off,” said Petula, brightly. “Eloped! As simple as that. We saw them once, on the beach, the next morning. Following which—”

  “—Gone!” said George.

  “Maybe their holidays were over and they just went home,” said Gwen, reasonably.

  “No,” George shook his head. “Gordon had come out on our plane, his holiday was just starting. She’d been here about a week and a half, was due to fly out the day after they made off together.”

  “They paid for their holidays and then deserted them?” Geoff frowned. “Doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Does anything, when you’re in love?” Petula sighed.

  “The way I see it,” said George, “they fell in love with each other, and with Greece, and went off to explore all the options.”

  “Love?” Gwen was doubtful. “On the rebound?”

  “If she’d been a mousey little thing, I’d quite agree,” said Petula. “But no, she really was a beautiful girl.”

  “And him a nice lad,” said George. “A bit sparse but clean, good-looking.”

  “Indeed, they were much like you two,” his wife added. “I mean, not like you, but like you.”

  “Cheers,” said Geoff, wryly. “I mean, I know I’m not Mr Universe, but—”

  “Tight in the bottom!” said Petula. “That’s what the girls like these days. You’ll do all right.”

  “See,” said Gwen, nudging him. “Told you so!”

  But Geoff was still frowning. “Didn’t anyone look for them? What if they’d been involved in an accident or something?”

  “No,” said Petula. “They were seen boarding a ferry in the main town. Indeed, one of the local taxi drivers took them there. Spiros.”

  Gwen and Geoff’s turn to look at each other. “A strange fish, that one,” said Geoff.

  George shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. You know him, do you? It’s that eye of his which makes him seem a bit sinister. . .”

  Maybe he’s right, Geoff thought.

  Shortly after that, their drinks finished, they went off to start their explorations. . .

  The village was a maze of cobbled, white-washed alleys. Even as tiny as it was you could get lost in it, but never for longer than the length of a street. Going downhill, no matter the direction, you’d come to the sea. Uphill you’d come to the main road, or if you didn’t, then turn the next corner and continue uphill, and then you would. The most well-trodden alley, with the shiniest cobbles, was the one that led to the hard-packed path, which in turn led to the beach. Pass the “booze shop” on the corner twice, and you’d know where it was always. The window was plastered with labels, some familiar and others entirely conjectural; inside, steel shelving went floor to ceiling, stacked with every conceivable brand; even the more exotic and (back home) wildly expensive stuffs were on view, often in ridiculously cheap, three-litre, duty-free bottles with their own chrome taps and display stands.

  “Courvoisier!” said Gwen, appreciatively.

  “Grand Marnier, surely!” Geoff protested. “What, five pints of Grand Marnier? At that price? Can you believe it? But that’s to take home. What about while we’re here?”

  “Coconut liqueur,” she said. “Or better still, mint chocolate — to compliment our midnight coffees.”

  They found several small tavernas, too, with people seated outdoors at tiny tables under the vines. Chicken portions and slabs of lamb sputtering on spits; small fishes sizzling over charcoal; moussaka steaming in long trays . . .

  Dimi’s was down on the harbour, where a wide, low wall kept you safe from falling in the sea. They had a Greek salad which they divided two ways, tiny cubes of lamb roasted on wooden slivers, a half-bottle of local white wine costing pennies. As they ate and sipped the wine, so they began to relax; the hot sunlight was tempered by an almost imperceptible breeze off the sea.

  Geoff said: “Do you really feel energetic? Damned if I do.”

  She didn’t feel full of boundless energy, no, but she wasn’t going down without a fight. “If it was up to you,” she said, “we’d just sit here and watch the fishing nets dry, right?”

  “Nothing wrong with taking it easy,” he answered. “We’re on holiday, remember?”

  “Your idea of taking it easy means being bone idle!” she answered. “I say we’re going for a dip, then back to the villa for siesta and you know, and—”

  “Can we have the you know before the siesta?” He kept a straight face.

  “—And then we’ll be all settled in, recovered from the journey, ready for tonight. Insatiable!”

  “OK,” he shrugged. “Anything you say. But we swim from the beach, not from the rocks.”

  Gwen looked at him suspiciously. “That was almost too easy.”

  Now he grinned. “It was the thought of, well, you know, that did it,” he told her. . .

  *

  Lying on the beach, panting from their exertions in the sea, with the sun lifting the moisture off their still-pale bodies, Gwen said: “I don’t understand.”

  “Hmm?”

  “You swim very well. I’ve always thought so. So what is this fear of the water you complain about?”

  “First,” Geoff answered, “I don’t swim very well. Oh, for a hundred yards I’ll swim like a dolphin—any more than that and I do it like a brick! I can’t float. If I stop swimming I sink.”

  “So don’t stop.”

  “When you get tired, you stop.”

  “What was it that made you frightened of the water?”

  He told her:

  “I was a kid in Cyprus. A little kid. My father had taught me how to swim. I used to watch him diving off the rocks, oh, maybe twenty or thirty feet high, into the sea. I thought I could do it, too. So one day when my folks weren’t watching, I tried. I must have hit my head on something on the way down. Or maybe I simply struck the water all wrong. When they spotted me floating in the sea, I was just about done for. My father dragged me out. He was a medic—the kiss of life and all that. So now I’m not much for swimming, and I’m absolutely nothing for diving! I will swim—for a splash, in shallow water, like today—but that’s my limit. And I’ll only go in from a beach. I can’t stand cliffs, height. It’s as simple as that. You married a coward. So there.”

  “No I didn’t,” she said. “I married someone with a great bottom. Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”

  “You didn’t ask me. I don’t like to talk about it because I don’t much care to remember it. I was just a kid, and yet I knew I was going to die. And I knew it wouldn’t be nice. I still haven’t got it out of my system, not completely. And so the less said about it the better.”

  A beach ball land
ed close by, bounced, rolled to a standstill against Gwen’s thigh. They looked up. A brown, burly figure came striding. They recognized the frayed, bulging shorts. Spiros.

  “Hallo,” he said, going down into a crouch close by, forearms resting on his knees. “Thee beach. Thee ball. I swim, play. You swim?” (This to Geoff.) “You come swim, throwing thee ball?”

  Geoff sat up. There were half-a-dozen other couples on the beach; why couldn’t this jerk pick on them? Geoff thought to himself: I’m about to get sand kicked in my face! “No,” he said out loud, shaking his head. “I don’t swim much.”

  “No swim? You frighting thee big fish? Thee sharks?”

  “Sharks?” Now Gwen sat up. From behind their dark lenses she could feel Spiros’s eyes crawling over her.

  Geoff shook his head. “There are no sharks in the Med,” he said.

  “Him right” Spiros laughed high-pitched, like a woman, without his customary gurgling. A weird sound. “No sharks. I make thee jokes!” He stopped laughing and looked straight at Gwen. She couldn’t decide if he was looking at her face or her breasts. Those damned sunglasses of his! “You come swim, lady, with Spiros? Play in thee water?”

  “My . . . God!” Gwen sputtered, glowering at him. She pulled her dress on over her still-damp, very skimpy swimming costume, packed her towel away, picked up her sandals. When she was annoyed, she really was annoyed.

  Geoff stood up as she made off, turned to Spiros. “Now listen—” he began.

  “Ah, you go now! Is OK. I see you.” He took his ball, raced with it down the beach, hurled it out over the sea. Before it splashed down he was diving, low and flat, striking the water like a knife. Unlike Geoff, he swam very well indeed. . .

  When Geoff caught up with his wife she was stiff with anger. Mainly angry with herself. “That was so rude of me!” she exploded.