The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror

by Stephen Jones

  Well I had to go back to the store after a while. I hated to go but, well, John is a good boy, married now of course, but in those days his head was full of girls and it didn’t do to leave him alone in a busy shop for too long.

  And so the long hot day drew slowly to a close. I kept the store open till eight, when the light began to turn and the square emptied out with all the tourists going away to write postcards and see if we didn’t have even just a little McDonald’s hidden away someplace. I suppose Mary had troubles enough at home, realized where the boy would be and figured he was safer there than anywhere else, and I guess she was right.

  Tom and Billy finished up drawing and then Tom sat and talked to him for some time. Then they got up and the kid walked slowly off to the corner of the square, looking back to wave at Tom a couple times. Tom stood and watched him go and when Billy had gone he stayed there a while, head down, like a huge black statue in the gathering dark. He looked kind of creepy out there and I don’t mind telling you I was glad when he finally moved and started walking over towards Jack’s. I ran out to catch up with him and drew level just as we passed the drawing. And then I had to stop. I just couldn’t look at that and move at the same time.

  Finished, the drawing was like nothing on earth, and I suppose that’s exactly what it was. I can’t hope to describe it to you, although I’ve seen it in my dreams many times in the last ten years. You had to be there, on that heavy summer night, had to know what was going on. Otherwise it’s going to sound like it was just a drawing.

  That tiger was out and out terrifying. It looked so mean and hungry, Christ I don’t know what: it just looked like the darkest parts of mankind, the pain and the fury and the vengeful hate nailed down in front of you for you to see, and I just stood there and shivered in the humid evening air.

  “We did him a picture,” Tom said quietly.

  “Yeah,” I said, and nodded. Like I said, I know what “catharsis” means and I thought I understood what he was saying. But I really didn’t want to look at it much longer. “Let’s go have a beer, hey?”

  The storm in Tom hadn’t passed, I could tell, and he still seemed to thrum with crackling emotions looking for an earth, but I thought the clouds might be breaking and I was glad.

  And so we walked slowly over to Jack’s and had a few beers and watched some pool being played. Tom seemed pretty tired, but still alert, and I relaxed a little. Come eleven most of the guys started going on their way and I was surprised to see Tom get another beer. Pete, Ned and I stayed on, and Jack of course, though we knew our loving wives would have something to say about that. It just didn’t seem time to go. Outside it had gotten pretty dark, though the moon was keeping the square in a kind of twilight and the lights in the bar threw a pool of warmth out of the front window.

  Then, about twelve o’clock, it happened, and I don’t suppose any of us will ever see the same world we grew up in again. I’ve told this whole thing like it was just me who was there, but we all were, and we remember it together.

  Because suddenly there was a wailing sound outside, a thin cutting cry, getting closer. Tom immediately snapped to his feet and stared out the window like he’d been waiting for it. As we looked out across the square we saw little Billy come running and we could see the blood on his face from there. Some of us got to get up but Tom snarled at us to stay there and so I guess we just stayed put, sitting back down like we’d been pushed. He strode out the door and into the square and the boy saw him and ran to him and Tom folded him in his cloak and held him close and warm. But he didn’t come back in. He just stood there, and he was waiting for something.

  Now there’s a lot of crap talked about silences. I read novels when I’ve the time and you see things like “Time stood still” and so on and you think bullshit it did. So I’ll just say I don’t think anyone in the world breathed in that next minute. There was no wind, no movement. The stillness and silence were there like you could touch them, but more than that: they were like that’s all there was and all there ever had been.

  We felt the slow red throb of violence from right across the square before we could even see the man. Then Sam came staggering into view waving a bottle like a flag and cursing his head off. At first he couldn’t see Tom and the boy because they were the opposite side of the fountain, and he ground to a wavering halt, but then he started shouting, rough jags of sound that seemed to strike against the silence and die instead of breaking it, and he began charging across the square – and if ever there was a man with murder in his thoughts then it was Sam McNeill. He was like a man who’d given his soul the evening off. I wanted to shout to Tom to get the hell out of the way, to come inside, but the words wouldn’t come out of my throat and we all just stood there, knuckles whitening as we clutched the bar and stared, our mouths open like we’d made a pact never to use them again. Tom just stood there, watching Sam come towards him, getting closer, almost as far as the spot where Tom usually painted. It felt like we were looking out of the window at a picture of something that happened long ago in another place and time, and the closer Sam got the more I began to feel very afraid for him.

  It was at that moment that Sam stopped dead in his tracks, skidding forward like in some kid’s cartoon, his shout dying off in his ragged throat. He was staring at the ground in front of him, his eyes wide and his mouth a stupid circle. Then he began to scream.

  It was a high shrill noise like a woman, and coming out of that bull of a man it sent fear racking down my spine. He started making thrashing movements like he was trying to move backwards, but he just stayed where he was.

  His movements became unmistakable at about the same time his screams turned from terror to agony. He was trying to get his leg away from something.

  Suddenly he seemed to fall forward on one knee, his other leg stuck out behind him, and he raised his head and shrieked at the dark skies and we saw his face then and I’m not going to forget that face so long as I live. It was a face from before there were any words, the face behind our oldest fears and earliest nightmares, the face we’re terrified of seeing on ourselves one night when we’re alone in the dark and It finally comes out from under the bed to get us, like we always knew it would.

  Then Sam fell on his face, his leg buckled up – and still he thrashed and screamed and clawed at the ground with his hands, blood running from his broken fingernails as he twitched and struggled. Maybe the light was playing tricks, and my eyes were sparkling anyway on account of being too paralysed with fear to even blink, but as he thrashed less and less it became harder and harder to see him at all, and as the breeze whipped up stronger his screams began to sound a lot like the wind. But still he writhed and moaned and then suddenly there was the most godawful crunching sound and then there was no movement or sound anymore.

  Like they were on a string our heads all turned together and we saw Tom still standing there, his coat flapping in the wind. He had a hand on Billy’s shoulder and as we looked we could see that Mary was there too now and he had one arm round her as she sobbed into his coat.

  I don’t know how long we just sat there staring but then we were ejected off our seats and out of the bar. Pete and Ned ran to Tom but Jack and I went to where Sam had fallen, and we stared down, and I tell you the rest of my life now seems like a build up to and a climb down from that moment.

  We were standing in front of a chalk drawing of a tiger. Even now my scalp seems to tighten when I think of it, and my chest feels like someone punched a hole in it and tipped a gallon of ice water inside. I’ll just tell you the facts: Jack was there and he knows what we saw and what we didn’t see.

  What we didn’t see was Sam McNeill. He just wasn’t there. We saw a drawing of a tiger in purples and greens, a little bit scuffed, and there was a lot more red round the mouth of that tiger than there had been that afternoon and I’m sure that if either of us could have dreamed of reaching out and touching it, it would have been warm too.

  And the hardest part to tell is this. I
’d seen that drawing in the afternoon, and Jack had too, and we knew that when it was done it was lean and thin.

  I swear to God that tiger wasn’t thin any more. What Jack and I were looking at was one fat tiger.

  After a while I looked up and across at Tom. He was still standing with Mary and Billy, but they weren’t crying anymore. Mary was hugging Billy so tight he squawked and Tom’s face looked calm and alive and creased with a smile. And as we stood there the skies opened for the first time in months and a cool rain hammered down. At my feet colours began to run and lines became less distinct. Jack and I stood and watched till there was just pools of meaningless colours and then we walked slowly over to the others, not even looking at the bottle lying on the ground, and we all stayed there a long time in the rain, facing each other, not saying a word.

  Well that was ten years ago, near enough. After a while Mary took Billy home and they turned to give us a little wave before they turned the corner. The cuts on Billy’s face healed real quick, and he’s a good looking boy now: he looks a lot like his dad and he’s already fooling about in cars. Helps me in the store sometimes. His mom ain’t aged a day and looks wonderful. She never married again, but she looks real happy the way she is.

  The rest of us just said a simple goodnight. Goodnight was all we could muster and maybe that’s all there was to say. Then we walked off home in the directions of our wives. Tom gave me a small smile before he turned and walked off alone. I almost followed him, I wanted to say something, but the end I just stayed where I was and watched him go. And that’s how I’ll always remember him best, because for a moment there was a spark in his eyes and I knew that some pain had been lifted deep down inside somewhere.

  Then he walked and no one has seen him since, and like I said it’s been about ten years now. He wasn’t there in the square the next morning and he didn’t come in for a beer. Like he’d never been, he just wasn’t there. Except for the hole in our hearts: it’s funny how much you can miss a quiet man.

  We’re all still here, of course, Jack, Ned, Pete and the boys, and all much the same, though even older and greyer. Pete lost his wife and Ned retired but things go on the same. The tourists come in the summer and we sit on the stools and drink our cold beers and shoot the breeze about ballgames and families and how the world’s going to shit, and sometimes we’ll draw close and talk about a night a long time ago, and about paintings and cats, and about the quietest man we ever knew, wondering where he is, and what he’s doing. And we’ve had a six-pack in the back of the fridge for ten years now, and the minute he walks through that door and pulls up a stool, that’s his.

  1991

  The Same in Any Language

  Ramsey Campbell

  BEST NEW HORROR 2 was the only book I have ever had censored by a publisher.

  Ramsey and I had selected and contracted Roberta Lannes’ disturbing serial-killer story “Apostate in Denim” (from the first issue of Iniquities magazine) for the volume. However, when we delivered the book manuscript to Robinson, certain people in the company vehemently objected to the content of the story and refused to include it. Despite our protestations (how could a horror story be too horrific?), we were overruled. At least Roberta was very understanding about the whole matter, and she later included the tale in her 1997 collection The Mirror of Night.

  For the third volume, Robinson once again used a cover painting by Luis Rey (of a werewolf-like monster crashing through a window) and added a 3 to the embossed Letraset logo. Carroll & Graf went a much classier route, completely redesigning the jacket for its hardcover and subsequent trade paperback editions.

  This time our Introduction had crept up to eleven pages, while the Necrology had blossomed to fifteen. In our editorial summation, Ramsey and I took a reviewer for Locus magazine to task for his ill-informed assertion that the horror field was “limited in its relevance to anything”.

  The twenty-nine stories included return appearances by Robert R. McCammon, Thomas Ligotti, Karl Edward Wagner and Kim Newman, amongst others. Rising star Michael Marshall Smith was represented with a second contribution (the British Fantasy Award-winning “The Dark Land”), and we even featured a tale by award-winning Scottish comics writer Grant Morrison (“The Braille Encyclopedia”).

  However, the story I have chosen from this 1992 volume is by my co-editor, Ramsey Campbell. Over the past twenty years, Ramsey has been represented in Best New Horror more than any other author. In fact, he has had stories in sixteen out of the twenty editions (including two in volume seventeen).

  As anyone familiar with my Introductions knows, I usually frown upon editors including their own stories in their anthologies but, in the case of collaborative works, I think it is fine if it is the other editor who makes the selection. Over the five volumes I co-edited with Ramsey, he always disassociated himself when it came to his own work, and it was left up to me to make the final decision.

  “The Same in Any Language” is another of those “fish out of water” travelogue tales that I love so dearly. The story was inspired by a visit Ramsey made to the Crete island of Spinalonga, the site of an abandoned leper colony, and the final paragraph is intended as a tribute to Stephen King . . .

  THE DAY MY FATHER is to take me where the lepers used to live is hotter than ever. Even the old women with black scarves wrapped around their heads sit inside the bus station instead of on the chairs outside the tavernas. Kate fans herself with her straw hat like a basket someone’s sat on and gives my father one of those smiles they’ve made up between them. She’s leaning forwards to see if that’s our bus when he says “Why do you think they call them lepers, Hugh?”

  I can hear what he’s going to say, but I have to humour him. “I don’t know.”

  “Because they never stop leaping up and down.”

  It takes him much longer to say the first four words than the rest of it. I groan because he expects me to, and Kate lets off one of her giggles I keep hearing whenever they stay in my father’s and my room at the hotel and send me down for a swim. “If you can’t give a grin, give a groan,” my father says for about the millionth time, and Kate pokes him with her freckly elbow as if he’s too funny for words. She annoys me so much that I say “Lepers don’t rhyme with creepers, dad.”

  “I never thought they did, son. I was just having a laugh. If we can’t laugh we might as well be dead, ain’t that straight, Kate?” He winks at her thigh and slaps his own instead, and says to me “Since you’re so clever, why don’t you find out when our bus is coming.”

  “That’s it now.”

  “And I’m Hercules.” He lifts up his fists to make his muscles bulge for Kate and says “You’re telling us that tripe spells A Flounder?”

  “Elounda, dad. It does. The letter like a Y upside down is how they write an L.”

  “About time they learned how to write properly, then,” he says, staring around to show he doesn’t care who hears. “Well, there it is if you really want to trudge round another old ruin instead of having a swim.”

  “I expect he’ll be able to do both once we get to the village,” Kate says, but I can tell she’s hoping I’ll just swim. “Will you two gentlemen see me across the road?”

  My mother used to link arms with me and my father when he was living with us. “I’d better make sure it’s the right bus,” I say and run out so fast I can pretend I didn’t hear my father calling me back.

  A man with skin like a boot is walking backwards in the dust behind the bus, shouting “Elounda” and waving his arms as if he’s pulling the bus into the space in line. I sit on a seat opposite two Germans who block the aisle until they’ve taken off their rucksacks, but my father finds three seats together at the rear. “Aren’t you with us, Hugh?” he shouts, and everyone on the bus looks at him.

  When I see him getting ready to shout again I walk down the aisle. I’m hoping nobody notices me, but Kate says loudly “It’s a pity you ran off like that, Hugh. I was going to ask if you’d like an ice cream.�
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  “No thank you,” I say, trying to sound like my mother when she was only just speaking to my father, and step over Kate’s legs. As the bus rumbles uphill I turn as much of my back on her as I can, and watch the streets.

  Aghios Nikolaos looks as if they haven’t finished building it. Some of the tavernas are on the bottom floors of blocks with no roofs, and sometimes there are more tables on the pavements outside than in. The bus goes downhill again as if it’s hiccuping, and when it reaches the bottomless pool where young people with no children stay in the hotels with discos, it follows the edge of the bay. I watch the white boats on the blue water, but really I’m seeing the conductor coming down the aisle and feeling as if a lump is growing in my stomach from me wondering what my father will say to him.

  The bus is climbing beside the sea when he reaches us. “Three for leper land,” my father says.

  The conductor stares at him and shrugs. “As far as you go,” Kate says, and rubs herself against my father. “All the way.”

  When the conductor pushes his lips forwards out of his moustache and beard my father begins to get angry, unless he’s pretending. “Where you kept your lepers. Spiny Lobster or whatever you call the damned place.”

  “It’s Spinalonga, dad, and it’s off the coast from where we’re going.”

  “I know that, and he should.” My father is really angry now. “Did you get that?” he says to the conductor. “My ten-year-old can speak your lingo, so don’t tell me you can’t speak ours.”

  The conductor looks at me, and I’m afraid he wants me to talk Greek. My mother gave me a little computer that translates words into Greek when you type them, but I’ve left it at the hotel because my father said it sounded like a bird which only knew one note. “We’re going to Elounda, please,” I stammer.