The Best New Horror 1

by Stephen Jones

  Lennox remembered to close his jaw.

  She sprang onto the bed—cat-like, thought Lennox—and all of this was moving much too fast. Her black-nailed fingers clawed at his belt and zipper, and his jeans were jerked down and away from his growing erection.

  “Whoa!” Lennox protested, trying to unbutton his shirt. “Hey, let me just . . .”

  And the door must have opened, because there was another man suddenly in the room.

  The woman froze.

  “Hey,” said Lennox. “You’re shit out of luck. I put everything in the hotel’s safe deposit.”

  His voice trailed off. He sensed tension, far too much tension, and he knew this was not just a hotel burglary, and he desperately hoped it was only a dream.

  The man was not as tall as Lennox, but he was built like an all-pro NFL lineman. He was wearing kicker boots, punker black leathers, and a lot of chains and badges and things. His combed-back red hair and short beard were like rust surrounding a brutal face, and his eyes were cold blue and malevolent. Lennox quickly looked away. It was time to try pinching himself. He tried. It hurt.

  “Stay out of this, Kane!” said the woman, backing away like a cat before a pit bull.

  “It’s you who should go,” said Kane, “while you still can.”

  “We grow stronger.”

  “But not strong enough. I was in time.”

  “Hey,” said Lennox. “Are you two sure you’re in the right room? Or, just tell me if I’ve made a . . .”

  She made a gesture. A globe of blue fire darted from her fingers toward Kane. It faded before it reached him.

  “Pathetic,” said Kane. “Now, get out.”

  She made a virginal dash for her clothes, clasping their bundle before her, and Lennox almost failed to notice that her feet were changing into cloven hooves. Then she was gone. Like that.

  “I’ll let myself out,” said Kane.

  “This is the weirdest dream yet,” Lennox congratulated him. “If I can remember this when I wake up, you guys are going into my next book. You got an agent?”

  “Remember this, Cody,” said Kane. “Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean someone isn’t really shooting at you.”

  And Lennox must then have drifted back into dreamless sleep, because he didn’t remember when Kane left, and he didn’t remember how the pair of black stiletto pumps came to be at the foot of his bed.

  IV. Blue Pumps

  LENNOX AWOKE at around noon with the grandfather of all hangovers and the maid clattering at his door. He managed to get into his clothes, looked at his face in the mirror and swore never to drink again. As he headed for the bar, he told the maid: “Previous guest left her shoes under the bed. You take them. Not my size.”

  Two pints of lager put him right, and Lennox remembered that he was supposed to meet Jack Martin for lunch. A third pint, and he was able to paw through his notebook for the time and place. He gazed curiously at the clusters of stickers from the telephone kiosks in Soho. No sign of the number he had dreamt that he called last night.

  “We thought you was dead,” said Mike Carson, sitting down beside him. “Sorry I’m late, but the bus was held up in traffic. How’s the wrist?”

  “What?” Lennox was surprised to note a small scab and swelling next to his watchband.

  “Don’t you remember? You karate-chopped your pint yesterday. Is it lager you’re drinking?”

  Carson carried over a round just as Jack Martin hustled down the steps into the downstairs bar. “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said, “but it’s not my fault.”

  “Is it lager you’re having?” asked Carson.

  Lennox finally found an indecipherable scrawl that seemed to indicate he was to meet Martin and Carson here at Peter’s Bar at noon. He felt a little smug as he closed his notebook.

  “So,” said Martin, cautiously. “Are you rested up?”

  “Slept like the dead,” said Lennox. “A lustful lady in black visited my dreams.”

  “Whoa!”

  “She was chased away by Hulk Hogan before I starched the sheets.” Lennox was feeling much better. “What do you say we drink up and wander over to The Friend at Hand? They do a super pub lunch there.”

  Lennox was able to cope with a ploughman’s lunch with Stilton, and he only hit his head once on the eccentric copper lanterns that hung from the fake wooden beams. The food steadied him, and after three pints of bitter he felt up to laying waste to London.

  Martin dropped all of his change into a fruit machine, despite his avowed prowess with the Vegas slots, and when he asked for just one more 10p, instead Lennox stuffed the coin into the machine himself and collected five pounds. “Synchronicity,” explained Lennox, who had pushed buttons purely at random. Beginner’s luck, he decided privately, and converted his winnings into pints.

  It was close and crowded inside, so they found a table outside next to the door. They watched the crowds hurry by along Herbrand Street behind the Hotel Russell; it was a shortcut from the Russell Square tube station to Southampton Row and on toward the British Museum. Tourists wandered in confusion, consulting guidebooks. Office workers strode purposefully by.

  “Blue pumps,” said Lennox.

  “Eh?” Carson was headed inside for his round.

  “My next book,” Lennox confided. “You got your camera, Jack?”

  “Sure. Why?” Martin was carefully picking out the bits of kidney from his steak-and-kidney pie.

  “In this Our Harmonic August of Our Lord, 1987,” said Lennox, “London women are all wearing pumps.”

  “Training shoes?” Carson glanced at Martin’s Reeboks. “I think you mean stilettos.” He continued inside.

  “Sorry, I do not speaka your language so good. No, look. The tourists are all wearing tennis shoes or something ugly and comfortable. London women all wear stiletto pumps. And they have that quick, purposeful stride, and they never look about; they know where they’re going even if they don’t want to go there.”

  “Didn’t know you had a foot fetish,” Martin said.

  “A lovely turn of the ankle,” Lennox went on. “Pure fin de siècle.”

  “Skirts are a bit shorter though.”

  “We’ll get a cab,” said Lennox. “Drive all around London. You take pictures of their pumps. I’ll write the commentary. Blue Pumps. Retitle it Blue Stilettos for the UK edition. Coffee table book. Pop art. Sell millions of copies. You got enough film?”

  “I’ve got to piss,” decided Martin. “You going to be all right here?”

  “Steam into this,” invited Carson, bringing fresh pints. “You feeling any better?”

  “Never better.” Lennox was staring back into the pub. “See her?”

  “Where?”

  “Girl in black.”

  “Which one?”

  “Back by the corner—next to the cigarette machine. Near the Gents’. Jack just walked past her.”

  “I can’t see who you’re talking about.”

  “She’s the Lady in Black from my dream.”

  “Here, sink your pint, Cody. It’ll steady you a bit.”

  “No, wait.” Lennox made it to his feet. “I’m going to check this out. Ready for a slash anyway.”

  Lennox passed Martin as he entered the pub, and Martin gave his back a worried look.

  She was standing alone by the bar, her back was to him, and she was dressed all in black. Beside her, talking to one another, stood a group of workmen wearing white boiler suits, somewhat smudged with soot and grime. The side door, which opened onto a sort of tiny alleyway named Colonnade, let circulate a welcome breeze to part the dense tobacco smoke.

  She was pretty from the back, and her tight black skirt set off her figure. Lennox figured to walk past her, buy a pack of cigarettes from the machine, then turn to glance at her face. Next he’d casually move beside her at the bar, order a large Glenfiddich (very impressive), open his cigarettes, politely offer her one, and conversation would follow. He was aware that Carson and Mart
in were observing his progress from beyond the other doorway.

  Lennox had almost reached her, but one of the workmen—a rather large bloke—turned away from the chattering group and leaned a thick arm across the bar to block his way. Lennox started to say something.

  “Don’t,” said Kane, turning to face him. “It’s another bad move.”

  Lennox had only a vague memory of his face, but his eyes were not to be forgotten, and the man in the white boiler suit was the man from his dream.

  Lennox found drunken sang-froid. “Have we met?”

  Kane ignored him, not removing his arm from the bar. He said to the Lady in Black: “Turn around, Bright Eyes.”

  She slowly turned her head toward Lennox. Beneath the black cap, her face was a leathery mask of tattered flesh clinging to a blackened skull.

  Lennox felt his beer coming back up.

  “Leave us,” Kane told her. “Lunchbreak is over.”

  Lennox closed his eyes tightly, battling to hold his stomach under control. She—whatever he had seen—wasn’t there when he opened his eyes again.

  Kane was. “That’s twice now,” he said. “You and I need to talk, Cody. How about over dinner? I’ll have my girl get in touch.”

  Lennox pressed his hand to his mouth and surged toward the Gents’. Kane let him pass.

  “Catch you later,” Kane called after him.

  Kane was gone when Lennox stumbled out of the Gents’. When he had toweled himself clean, his face in the mirror was ghostly pale. He stopped at the bar and quickly downed a large whisky. He was shaking badly, but the second whisky settled him down.

  Carson and Martin were studiously trying not to watch him too closely as he stumbled onto his seat.

  “You OK, Cody?” asked Martin.

  Lennox wanted to say: “I’m all right, Jack.” Instead he said: “I’m not sure.”

  “Ought to go easy,” Carson suggested. “Jet-lag.”

  Lennox swallowed his pint. “Look, did you see her?”

  “See who?” Martin exchanged glances with Carson.

  “Look. What did I just do?”

  “What? Just now?”

  “When I got up from this table a minute ago.”

  Martin put down his cigarette. “Well, Cody, I wasn’t really paying much attention. You told Mike you thought you’d recognized some girl at the bar and that you needed to take a leak. Then you groped your way past one of those workmen and vanished into the loo. Mike was about to look in on you when you staggered out, tossed back two shots, and found your way back here. I really think you ought to get a nap.”

  “The girl! The girl in black at the bar. Where did she go?”

  “There was never a girl at the bar,” said Carson. “Not that we could see.”

  “My round, I think.” Lennox gathered up their glasses and lurched for the bar.

  “Don’t let him drink too much,” Martin cautioned Carson.

  “He’s really not taking it well,” said Carson, “about Cathy.”

  Martin shook out another cigarette. “What could you expect? I just hope one good drunken binge of a vacation over here will be the catharsis he needs. Otherwise . . .”

  Lennox slammed down the pints, spilling relatively little. He was really feeling lots better. Hair of the dog was a sure cure for DT’s. “So, Jack. You got your camera?”

  “For Blue Pumps?”

  “That, too. But mainly so that next time you can take a picture of me with my girl friend.”

  “Are you Cody Lennox?”

  Cody saw her dark blue pumps and followed the nicely filled dark blue hose up to the short denim skirt and jacket. Her breasts were small and firm, and he supposed he could see the rest of them if he unbuttoned her badge-covered jacket. She had that peculiarly perfect British complexion, with a fashion model’s features and short red hair in a sort of spiked crewcut. Behind her mirror shades her eyes would have to be blue, and she was almost as tall as Lennox. She was holding out a copy of They Do Not Die!

  “I apologize for being so forward,” she said. “But I’m a fan of yours, and I’d heard you were coming over for the big convention in Brighton. Well, I’d just purchased your latest book at Dillon’s, and then I saw you seated here and looked closely at the photograph on the dust jacket. It’s a match. Please, do you mind?”

  Lennox did not mind. He dug out his pen. “Would you like this inscribed to . . .?”

  “Klesst. K-l-e-double-s- and one t.”

  He was trying to place her accent. Not quite BBC English. Hint of Irish? “Last name and phone number?”

  “Just ‘Klesst,’ please.”

  Lennox wrote:

  All My Best to Klesst.

  Signed at Her Request.

  Love from London—

  Cody Lennox

  8/19/87 1:18 PM

  He closed the book and set it down on the table. “Here you go. Care to join me and these other debauched celebrities for a drink?”

  “Thanks ever so much, but I’ve got to run.” Klesst scooped up her book. “But I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again soon.” And she hurried away toward the Russell Square tube station.

  “Blue pumps, but too long a stride,” observed Lennox. “Can’t be a native Londoner.”

  “Christ, but is she 21?” Martin craned his neck to watch her vanish around the corner.

  Carson pointed. “She left you a note, Cody. See if it’s her address.”

  There was an envelope lying where the book had been. Lennox turned it over and read Cody Lennox, penned in a large masculine hand across the front. He opened the envelope. There was a short note in the same hand and written upon his hotel’s stationery:

  8/19/87 1:20 PM

  Cody—

  Let’s do dinner.

  Meet you in the lobby of the Bloomsbury Park Hotel at 6:30 this evening.

  My treat.

  —Kane

  “Shit,” said Lennox.

  Martin reached out. “Let me read it.”

  Martin read it. He handed the note to Carson. “You know what I think?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Kent Allard. It’s just exactly his sort of twisted humor. Got some pretty fan to pass this to you instead of just phoning you at your hotel. Bet he’s watching us from his hotel across the street there, laughing his head off.”

  “Seems more like M. R. James’s ‘Passing the Runes’,” said Carson, returning the note to Lennox.

  Lennox wadded note and envelope and stuffed them into the ash tray. “Anyway, I know where I won’t be at 6:30 this evening. Jack, it’s your round.”

  V. As I Wander Through My Playing Cards

  LENNOX MADE it back to his hotel, creatively opened his door, and found his bed. There he remained until 5:30, at which point his headache awakened him. He washed down six aspirin with swigs of Scotch, then decided to kill the rest of the bottle. He sat on the edge of his bed, looking at his hands, thinking about Cathy.

  At 6:00 he washed his face, combed his hair, brushed his teeth, and went out in search of adventure. After having parked his lunch in the Gents’ at The Friend at Hand, his stomach was raw and uncertain about the whisky. He supposed he really should eat something, so he steamed into a pub by the British Museum and had three pints of lager.

  Much improved, Lennox strolled through Soho and into the theatre district. Follies was playing at the Shaftesbury Theatre, but he’d already been told that tickets were impossible. He stood outside, wishing he might press his nose against the glass, and a scalper exchanged a stalls ticket for only thirty quid. Lennox was delighted, and he managed to stay awake throughout the performance, despite an overpowering headache and sense of lethargy. He enjoyed himself, and it was quite a disappointment when he had to go back alone to his hotel instead of having a late dinner with Diana Rigg.

  Instead, Lennox stopped in at the first pub he passed. By closing time he had drunk six large whiskies and had won twenty quid from the fruit machines on an investment of 50p. He w
as getting looks from the barmen as he left. Lennox had played the machines out of boredom, never really understanding what the buttons were supposed to do. Jack Martin, eat your heart out. Lennox decided he’d present Jack with a handful of tokens when they met for lunch tomorrow.

  Lennox was in good voice by now. He considered that a walk back through Soho to his hotel would count as an evening constitutional, all the better because the narrow side streets provided superb echo for his medley of Bon Jovi hits. Lennox had screamed out all that he could remember of “You Give Love a Bad Name,” when he found the Queen of Diamonds.

  She was lying in the gutter, somewhat soiled: a lost playing card with a buxom and nude lady, very much early 1960s Playboy centerfold, and quite demure by Times Square standards. He pocketed this.

  Another chorus, a sudden turning, and he found the Queen of Clubs. She had been trod upon, but was in fair repair: a lovely black girl with dusky skin and a fetching smile. Lennox added her to his jacket pocket and proceeded along the turning.

  He was quite lost by now, but completely confident, when he found the Queen of Hearts. She was propped against a lamp post, and she was a tall redhead who reminded him of Klesst, whose name had stayed in his memory. Lennox carefully included her with the others and stumbled into another darkened side street, certain he would find the Queen of Spades.

  His voice was growing hoarse, and he reckoned he could use another drink, and he realized that he was seriously lost, and then he noticed that five people were closing around him from out of the darkness.

  One was the Queen of Spades, dressed all in black, her face a pale shape in the darkness. The others were four ragged, shuffling winos—blowlamps, was that the expression in cockney rhyming slang for tramps? Whatever. More to the point, they had very long knives.

  Of additional interest, as they closed in, Lennox saw that their clothes weren’t actually ragged, but rather they were rotted, as were their faces.

  “Take him now,” said the Lady in Black.

  Lennox started to run.

  Kane stepped out of a black passage-way as Lennox flung past. He was wearing a three-piece pin-striped business suit that was obviously the best of Bond Street, and he had a distinctly professional appearance with his neat beard, bowler, and umbrella.