But just that single shot of whisky had done its dirty work on me, and utterly incapable of resistance I first went to the bar, bought a half-bottle of the filthy stuff, and without even trying to conceal it took it with me up to room number seven . . .
I remember something of it. Such as sitting on my balcony thinking, drinking. And out there over the night dark sea, a shining silver disc – oh yes, a bright full moon – laying its shimmering pathway on the slumbering waters of the bay.
Lying back in my deckchair and looking the other way, looking up at that great grim shape silhouetted against the glow of the hidden town, my rebellious or simply lying eyes were having more than a little trouble penetrating the darkness on the high hillside terraces. It was the booze, of course, but I persisted . . . at least until I forgot what I was looking for, only remembering when finally I found it.
Previously it had stood watch up there along with a pair of damaged companion sentinels behind the derelict hotel’s balustraded patio wall; then it had reappeared at a location halfway down the terraces, perhaps placed there – or so I had conjectured – by some midnight Romeo, to act as a roof over his bower or love nest. And now . . .
But, how had it made its way here? To this spot directly across the dark canyon of the road, behind the rim of the great retaining wall, where only its cowl and upper half were visible from my balcony? Perhaps a freakish gust of wind had carried it aloft, tumbling it down the terraces and landing it right-side-up, trapped against the hillside’s retaining wall.
Well yes, perhaps. And perhaps not.
But there it was, for all the world like the top half of an eerily human figure – indeed of a cowled nun! – looking down on me. And as a car crested the hill and its headlights shone however briefly on that oddly religious shape behind the high wall, so the darkness under the cowl flashed alive in a pair of triangular flares, which were at once extinguished as the beam swept on.
These things I remember, and also laughing to myself in the stupid way that drunks do, as I stumbled in through the balcony doors to collapse upon my bed . . .
I felt it coming. But don’t ask me how; I just knew. Perhaps it was this affinity of mine for weirdness, this magnetism working on my mind, my being. I had felt it, it had felt me. I had seen it, it had seen me. I definitely had not wanted to know it, and that could be why I had failed to recognize it: a natural reluctance to engage yet again with the Great and Terrible Unknown. And it very definitely did not want its existence revealed!
Of necessity a secretive creature, it had become, unfortunately for me, practised in the erasure of any suspect knowledge of its being. And quite simply – as an adept of this indelicate art – it now intended to erase me!
I felt it coming, its flexible mantle fully open, parachuting on the night air. But immobilized, my mind dulled by drink, I refused to believe; I denied it. It could not be . . . it was a nightmare . . . the Demon Drink had filled my mind with monsters. Ah! But what then of the Thin People of old London Town? Or the Clown on Stilts as I believed I had once seen him or it? Or had they too been impure and not so simple fantasies of the flowing bowl, mere figments of fermentation, tremens of delirium?
Yet now I could even smell it: a not-quite-taint, a waft of mushroomy fungus spores, a hybrid thing’s clammy innards, contracting to engulf and smother me . . .
My God! I felt it on my face like a slither of wet leather! And knowing that it was real, I came awake screaming!
It was there in room number seven with me, inside the wide-open balcony doors, leaning over my bed. Its membraneous canopy was closing over my head, shutting off my air, holding me down. I lashed out with both arms, groped beyond the perimeter of the thing’s web. My left hand found and grasped the bedside lamp. I automatically thumbed the switch and dragged the softly glowing lamp inside the living canopy with me.
I was stone-cold sober in a moment, as this alien – what, intelligence? – was illumined from within. And seeing it like that, literally from within, I remembered comparing the structure of more orthodox, man-made parasols to the physical form of the octopus. Oh, yes! And now . . . well it wasn’t only the more orthodox ones!
For there beneath its mantle – where, thank God, there was no huge parrot beak but, instead, surrounding a pulsating slitlike mouth, a ring of eight short, worm-like tongues, spatulate at their tips for the delivery of whatever food sustained it – I saw that indeed the thing had tentacular limbs, all eight of them connected by webbing and lined with grasping suckers.
As for the mantle stretched between these limbs, while it was flexible and had the consistency of a bat’s wing, allowing my lamp to shine through it, still it had the strength of fine leather and was redolent of the thing’s alien essences: anaesthetic odours which were aiding it in my suffocation! Except I wasn’t about to die like that, or by allowing it to drag me to the balcony and hurling me over!
Holding my breath, I stopped breathing the thing’s poisons and thrust my glowing lamp deep into the ugly gash of its mouth. The lamp, too, had a canopy of sorts: its shade, which crumpled up and fell apart as the electric bulb penetrated the monster’s pulsing, dribbling mouth. Only moments ago energized, that bulb couldn’t be very warm, but still it was hot enough to alarm the thing.
Muscles inside the mouth closed on the bulb like a ray fish crushing a mollusk – and the bulb exploded with a loud popping sound. The thing’s mouth was lacerated internally. It spat thin shards of glass into my face, however harmlessly, thank God; it also spat foul, stinking yellow fluid, its blood, and commenced a violent shuddering as it jerked up and away from my face and upper torso.
Then, trying to yell, I only succeeded in gasping, and when at last I could breathe properly I shouted my outrage. This was as much to hasten the creature’s retreat as an expression of my horror. Vivid curses poured out of me as I reached up and tried to throttle its central column, a thin stem of a “body” and, as if these breathy obscenities had helped to inflate it, the monster’s canopy bulged and began to open.
Still shuddering, now it convulsed, and chitin hooks on the ends of its flailing tentacles caught on the frame of my single bed, turning it on its side. Saying a silent prayer of thanks, I sprawled on the floor, from where I could see the thing’s mushroom shape, its silhouette, against a faint night glow. In full flight now, it was desperately squeezing the bulk of its partly opened canopy out through the sliding doors on to the balcony.
Getting up from the floor I lunged after it. I didn’t know what I could do, if anything, but I was more angry than afraid. It wasn’t my fault that this creature, like others I had known, was attracted to me – or me to them, whichever – and I wanted it, them, to know we could fight back, that men could be deadly dangerous too.
And still shouting at the top of my voice I rushed out on to the balcony where, fully inflated, the monster was now drifting aloft. How such a thing could fly or glide – well, don’t ask me – perhaps by generating gasses within its mantle? I don’t know. But anyway I tried to get hold of the clawed, club-like foot at the base of its slimy stem of a body. It was a wasted effort; I couldn’t get a grip and those retractable claws were sharp.
In another moment it was gone, rising into darkness, ascending by means of unknown gravity-defying abilities, assisted by the smallest of breezes off the sea.
“Damn you, you bastard thing!” I yelled after it, and suddenly realized that for some little time I’d been hearing a loud hammering at my door. And there I was, leaning across the balcony wall, when the door to the landing crashed inwards from its hinges and Gavin McCann lurched into the room. Close behind the Scotsman came a shrill Janet Anderson, both she and he in night-clothes under their dressing-gowns.
While a single dim night-light was burning on the landing, the ceiling light in my room had remained switched off since I came up from the bar. Which meant the eyes of the newcomers – my would-be rescuers – would take a moment or two to adjust to the gloom. And indeed I clearly heard McCann’s ga
sping, urgent question: “Damn! Where’s the bleddy light switch?”
That and Janet Anderson’s trembling, panted answer: “Here, Gavin – I know where it is – let me do it!” But then, before she could find the switch, that smell, a faint fungus reek wafting down to me where I leaned out across the balcony wall and scanned the sky. It came from . . . from over there, yes, borne on the breeze off the sea! And as I turned my eyes toward the bay at that awkward angle, I saw something blot the moon in the instant before the monster’s clawed, club-like foot swung at me like a pendulum, catching in my shirt.
I was almost but not quite dragged bodily from the balcony. I felt my shirt rip, and I fell! I fell—
—But on the inside of the wall. Brilliant lights flashed in my head as my skull cracked against the top of the wall. My body flopped to the floor and the very last thing I remember: Janet Anderson’s arms cradling me, and her sobbing, hysterical voice fading into a painful, rushing darkness as she questioned me: “What happened, Mr Smith? What did you see? Was it . . . was it the nun?”
And then, nothing . . .
I had suffered a cut scalp and very bad concussion, which kept me out of it for four days, three of which I was semi-conscious and had my doctors fearing there could even be some brain damage. While that might seem serious enough, poor Janet Anderson had suffered rather more: a total nervous breakdown. She spent a month in what was referred to euphemistically as “a refuge”, the secure mental wing of a local hospital.
As for the Seaview’s chef, bless his heart: in addition to cooking and helping Hannah to run the hotel, Gavin McCann dedicated what was left of his time during that period to visiting Janet Anderson and myself in equal measure: his employer out of friendship and loyalty, and myself, oddly enough, out of guilt. And it was during one such visit after I returned to full consciousness that he asked me what it was all about: what exactly had I seen?
But I didn’t tell him. For from the moment I had opened my eyes to perceive the world afresh, I had been thinking it over. And I had come to a conclusion, settled on an explanation which I might at least attempt to believe. For, let’s face it, I still could not state with absolute conviction that there really were thin, telegraph-pole-tall people in London; I couldn’t swear to them any more than to pink elephants! And likewise clowns – or at least one such – on stilts!
What, a clown with stilt legs, and wings? A clown who flew away with a small girl’s smaller dog and who would, presumably, if they were available, fly off with other rather more meaningful small things? No, of course I couldn’t believe in him. Not while it was even remotely possible that he had been . . . well, simply a strikingly original clown, and what I had made of him had been fevered guesswork, imagination and hallucination, but mainly nightmares spawned in a bottle of booze.
That is what I told myself to believe; I must at least try to believe in that. Because if I failed to do so, then I might have to accept advanced degenerative alcoholic madness. And as for the latter, well, Gavin McCann was able – in his way and mistakenly or not – to corroborate something of what I was forcing myself to accept. And seated by my bed wringing his hands, on that occasion when I had nothing to tell him: “I blame mahsel’!” he said. “Me and the bleddy booze both! I should never have let ye take that short, not knowin’ how it was with ye! Aye, and Janet and me, we found ye’re empty bleddy bottle on the balcony. Man, ye must have been drunk out o’ ye’re mind!”
Well yes, maybe then. But no more . . .
And something a little over a month later – after reading in my Exeter newspaper about a hotel fire in a certain resort: an unsolved case of arson in a disused, derelict building, according to a police report – I called McCann on the number he’d given me to find out what he knew.
“Aye, that old place on the hill,” he told me, guardedly I thought. “I was in the bar and heard the sirens. Janet was out in the town doin’ some late shoppin’ when it went up. She came in and we watched the blaze taegether. But it was arson, definitely. Why, we could smell the petrol fumes right down there on the balcony o’ room number seven! And do ye know what? That poor woman’s been right as rain ever since!”
So there you go. I’ve told myself I can stay off the booze and avoid further imaginary confrontations, or I can take the occasional drink and suffer the consequences, whatever.
But you know, when my mind is clear and the night is dark, I lie in my bed and turn things over in my head, and then it’s as if I am fully in touch with unnatural Nature. I’ve heard of the octopuses that imitate coconuts to “stroll” on their dangling tentacles through dangerous shallows. I’ve read of insects that imitate leaves, and seahorse fishes that are indistinguishable from the seaweeds they live in. There are so many kinds of insects, plants and animals that pretend for their security or, as often as not, their fell purposes to be other than they are. And there are thousands of small species that aren’t even catalogued as yet.
And that’s only the small species . . .
As for me and my problem, if indeed I have a problem other than the alcohol, can it be coincidence, pure and simple? Or is it that I am in fact a lodestone, a lightning-rod for the weird and the wonderful? Because if the latter is true, then it seems I’m actually destined to be drawn to such things: to these thin people, these clowns-on-stilts, these nuns and nonesuches.
In which case so be it.
But if I can’t avoid them, you can at least be sure I’ll be looking out for them!
MICHAEL KELLY
Princess of the Night
FOLLOWING HIS AWARD-NOMINATED ANTHOLOGY Apparitions, Canadian Michael Kelly currently has a further two projects as an editor forthcoming: Chilling Tales is a volume featuring Canadian horror writers, while Shadows & Tall Trees is a literary journal of contemporary strange tales. The author’s recent fiction can be found in PostScripts, Space & Time and Supernatural Tales.
About his second story in this volume, Kelly recalls: “The genesis of ‘Princess of the Night’ is a little murky. It was written for an anthology of Halloween tales. Alas, it didn’t make it into the book.
“The tale then sold to a slick new professional magazine, where it promptly languished for four years until the magazine (which published four issues, I believe) folded before publication. I forgot about the story for a while. Then, one day, as I was looking through my files for possible stories to include in a new collection, I chanced upon it again.”
Let’s be grateful he rediscovered the story, because it rounds off this edition of Best New Horror with a nice short, sharp jolt in the EC comics tradition . . .
WARREN HEARD IT, quite plainly, outside his front door; a faint stirring, a sigh, a melancholy moan. He waited . . . waited . . . but no knock came. Then another sound, like shuffling feet.
Warren groaned, dropped the magazine, and lifted his tired bones from the rocker. He shuffled over to the door and pulled it open.
“Trick or treat.”
Warren looked down, puzzled. The first thing he noticed about her was the scar; a livid line that zigzagged from the corner of her mouth to her earlobe. In the wan light of the full moon it pulsed, as if alive. She was a wee pale thing with fine blond hair and cool blue eyes that gazed flatly at him. Couldn’t have been more than nine or ten years old, Warren thought. She was dressed in a purple robe, trimmed in gold. A tiara sat on her head. A little princess. She clutched an orange plastic pumpkin that grinned blackly.
Dead leaves skittered on the porch. The wind rushed in, carrying a touch of frost. It smelled like earth and worms and rain. It snatched at his sweater, the wind. It swirled around him, whispering secrets only he knew.
Warren breathed deeply. Burning leaves and peppermint rain. Autumn! A half-smile creased his face. Once – long, long ago – he’d been an autumn person. Once, long ago, he’d been a man who’d smiled.
“Trick or treat.” Her voice was an autumn voice, a voice of fog and rain and green mystery. And Warren hadn’t seen her mouth move.
&n
bsp; Warren sighed. He hadn’t left the porch light on, hadn’t left a Jack-O-Lantern in the window. Didn’t they know he never celebrated Halloween? He hadn’t celebrated Halloween in a very long time, not since . . . since . . . Why were they knocking at his door? Then he remembered that there hadn’t actually been a knock. And another memory came bubbling to the surface, one that had lain hidden like a dark stone in a cool riverbed: wet and foggy night; a sudden blur of blond hair; hiss of tyres; a faint thump; and Warren – before driving away – watching through the rain-blurred window as a plastic pumpkin bumped and rolled down the dark, almost empty street.
“Trick or treat.” Her voice was an autumn voice – dead leaves, rich earth and green menace.
Warren shuddered, took a step back. Though her mouth didn’t move, Warren heard a sigh, a miserable moan. And as the little princess took a slow step forward, one dim thought entered Warren’s head:
It wasn’t Halloween.
STEPHEN JONES and KIM NEWMAN
Necrology: 2009
ONCE AGAIN, WE ACKNOWLEDGE the passing of writers, artists, performers and technicians who, during their lifetimes, made significant contributions to the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres (or left their mark on popular culture and music in other, often fascinating, ways) . . .
AUTHORS/ARTISTS/COMPOSERS
American fan artist Randy Bathurst died of a heart attack on January 10. He contributed cartoons to many 1970s fanzines, including the first issue of File 770, and also designed the first FAAn Award.
British science fiction fan and artist Harry (Henry) Turner died on January 11, aged eighty-eight. The son of a music hall escapologist and illusionist, Turner developed a life-long interest in space travel and science fiction at an early age. He first became involved in fandom in the 1930s as a member of the Manchester Interplanetary Society, editing the group’s journal The Astronaut. He began publishing his own fanzine, Zenith, in the early 1940s, and the following decade published (with Eric Needham) Now & Then. Turner continued to contribute his illustrations of “impossible objects” to numerous fan publications until a stroke wiped out many of his fan memories a few years before his death.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Page 47
