The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror

by Stephen Jones

  After the shotgun blast there was only the wet sound of Hayden’s brains and skull fragments pattering down onto the bedding. His hard-on still glinted in the weak candlelight. His hands each clasped a fistful of blanket. One leg tipped and rested on the sheets clumped around him. His skin was pale, almost white.

  Almost.

  Rosalie leaned against the wall, dry heaving. Her dress was wet and heavy with puke and the stink of it had found a home in my nostrils. Ellie was busy reloading the shotgun, mumbling and cursing, trying to look anywhere but at the carnage of Hayden’s body.

  I could not tear my eyes away. I’d never seen anything like this. Brand and Boris and Charley, yes, their torn and tattered corpses had been terrible to behold, but here . . . I had seen the instant a rounded, functional person had turned into a shattered lump of meat. I’d seen the red splash of Hayden’s head as it came apart and hit the wall, big bits ricocheting, the smaller, wetter pieces sticking to the old wallpaper and drawing their dreadful art for all to see. Every detail stood out and demanded my attention, as if the shot had cleared the air and brought light. It seemed red-tinged, the atmosphere itself stained with violence.

  Hayden’s right hand clasped onto the blanket, opening and closing very slightly, very slowly.

  Doesn’t feel so cold. Maybe there’s a thaw on the way, I thought distractedly, trying perhaps to withdraw somewhere banal and comfortable and familiar . . .

  There was a splash of sperm across his stomach. Blood from his ruined head was running down his neck and chest and mixing with it, dribbling soft and pink onto the bed.

  Ten seconds ago he was alive. Now he was dead. Extinguished, just like that.

  Where is he? I thought. Where has he gone?

  “Hayden?” I said.

  “He’s dead!” Ellie hissed, a little too harshly.

  “I can see that.” But his hand still moved. Slowly. Slightly.

  Something was happening at the window. The curtains were still now, but there was a definite sense of movement in the darkness beyond. I caught it from the corner of my eye as I stared at Hayden.

  “Rosalie, go get some boards,” Ellie whispered.

  “You killed Hayden!” Rosalie spat. She coughed up the remnants of her last meal, and they hung on her chin like wet boils. “You blew his head off! You shot him! What the hell, what’s going on, what’s happening here. I don’t know, I don’t know . . .”

  “The things are coming back in,” Ellie said. She shouldered the gun, leaned through the door and fired at the window. Stray shot plucked at the curtains. There was a cessation of noise from outside, then a rustling, slipping, sliding. It sounded like something flopping around in snow. “Go and get the boards, you two.”

  Rosalie stumbled noisily along the corridor toward the staircase.

  “You killed him,” I said lamely.

  “He was fucking them,” Ellie shouted. Then, quieter: “I didn’t mean to . . .” She looked at the body on the bed, only briefly but long enough for me to see her eyes narrow and her lips squeeze tight. “He was fucking them. His fault.”

  “What were they? What the hell, I’ve never seen any animals like them.”

  Ellie grabbed my biceps and squeezed hard, eliciting an unconscious yelp. She had fingers like steel nails. “They aren’t animals,” she said. “They aren’t people. Help me with the door.”

  Her tone invited no response. She aimed the gun at the open window for as long as she could while I pulled the door shut. The shotgun blast had blown the handle away, and I could not see how we would be able to keep it shut should the whites return. We stood that way for a while, me hunkered down with two fingers through a jagged hole in the door to try to keep it closed, Ellie standing slightly back, aiming the gun at the pocked wood. I wondered whether I’d end up getting shot if the whites chose this moment to climb back into the room and launch themselves at the door . . .

  Banging and cursing marked Rosalie’s return. She carried several snapped floorboards, the hammer and nails. I held the boards up, Rosalie nailed, both of us now in Ellie’s line of fire. Again I wondered about Ellie and guns, about her history. I was glad when the job was done.

  We stepped back from the door and stood there silently, three relative strangers trying to understand and come to terms with what we had seen. But without understanding, coming to terms was impossible. I felt a tear run down my cheek, then another. A sense of breathless panic settled around me, clasping me in cool hands and sending my heart racing.

  “What do we do?” I said. “How do we keep those things out?”

  “They won’t get through the boarded windows,” Rosalie said confidently, doubt so evident in her voice.

  I remembered how quickly they had moved, how lithe and alert they had been to virtually dodge the blast from Ellie’s shotgun.

  I held my breath; the others were doing the same.

  Noises. Clambering and a soft whistling at first, then light thuds as something ran around the walls of the room, across the ceiling, bounding from the floor and the furniture. Then tearing, slurping, cracking, as the whites fed on what was left of Hayden.

  “Let’s go down,” Ellie suggested. We were already backing away.

  Jayne may be in danger, I thought, recalling her waving to me as she walked naked through the snow. If she was out there, and these things were out there as well, she would be at risk. She may not know, she may be too trusting, she may let them take advantage of her, abuse and molest her—

  Hayden had been enjoying it. He was not being raped; if anything, he was doing the raping. Even as he died he’d been spurting ignorant bliss across his stomach.

  And Jayne was dead. I repeated this over and over, whispering it, not caring if the others heard, certain that they would take no notice. Jayne was dead. Jayne was dead.

  I suddenly knew for certain that the whites could smash in at any time, dodge Ellie’s clumsy shooting and tear us to shreds in seconds. They could do it, but they did not. They scratched and tapped at windows, clambered around the house, but they did not break in. Not yet.

  They were playing with us. Whether they needed us for food, fun, or revenge, it was nothing but a game.

  Ellie was smashing up the kitchen.

  She kicked open cupboard doors, swept the contents of shelves onto the floor with the barrel of the shotgun, sifted through them with her feet, then did the same to the next cupboard. At first I thought it was blind rage, fear, dread; then I saw that she was searching for something.

  “What?” I asked. “What are you doing?”

  “Just a hunch.”

  “What sort of hunch? Ellie, we should be watching out—”

  “There’s something moving out there,” Rosalie said. She was looking through the slit in the boarded window. There was a band of moonlight across her eyes.

  “Here!” Ellie said triumphantly. She knelt and rooted around in the mess on the floor, shoving jars and cans aside, delving into a splash of spilled rice to find a small bottle. “Bastard. The bastard. Oh God, the bastard’s been doing it all along.”

  “There’s something out there in the snow,” Rosalie said again, louder this time. “It’s coming to the manor. It’s . . .” Her voice trailed off and I saw her stiffen, her mouth slightly open.

  “Rosalie?” I moved towards her, but she glanced at me and waved me away.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s nothing.”

  “Look.” Ellie slammed a bottle down on the table and stood back for us to see.

  “A bottle.”

  Ellie nodded. She looked at me and tilted her head. Waiting for me to see, expecting me to realize what she was trying to say.

  “A bottle from Hayden’s food cupboard,” I said.

  She nodded again.

  I looked at Rosalie. She was still frozen at the window, hands pressed flat to her thighs, eyes wide and full of the moon. “Rosie?” She only shook her head. Nothing wrong, the gesture said, but it did not look like that. It looked l
ike everything was wrong but she was too afraid to tell us. I went to move her out of the way, look for myself, see what had stolen her tongue.

  “Poison,” Ellie revealed. I paused, glanced at the bottle on the table. Ellie picked it up and held it in front of a candle, shook it, turned it this way and that. “Poison. Hayden’s been cooking for us ever since we’ve been here. And he’s always had this bottle. And a couple of times lately, he’s added a little extra to certain meals.”

  “Brand,” I nodded, aghast. “And Boris. But why? They were outside, they were killed by those things—”

  “Torn up by those things,” Ellie corrected. “Killed in here. Then dragged out.”

  “By Hayden?”

  She shrugged. “Why not? He was fucking the whites.”

  “But why would he want to . . . Why did he have something against Boris and Brand? And Charley? An accident, like he said?”

  “I guess he gave her a helping hand,” Ellie mused, sitting at the table and rubbing her temples. “They both saw something outside. Boris and Brand, they’d both seen things in the snow. They made it known, they told us all about it, and Hayden heard as well. Maybe he felt threatened. Maybe he thought we’d steal his little sex mates.” She stared down at the table, at the rings burnt there over the years by hot mugs, the scratches made by endless cutlery. “Maybe they told him to do it.”

  “Oh, come on!” I felt my eyes go wide like those of a rabbit caught in car headlights.

  Ellie shrugged, stood and rested the gun on her shoulder. “Whatever, we’ve got to protect ourselves. They may be in soon, you saw them up there. They’re intelligent. They’re—”

  “Animals!” I shouted. “They’re animals! How could they tell Hayden anything? How could they get in?”

  Ellie looked at me, weighing her reply.

  “They’re white animals, like you said!”

  Ellie shook her head. “They’re new. They’re unique. They’re a part of the change.”

  New. Unique. The words instilled very little hope in me, and Ellie’s next comment did more to scare me than anything that had happened up to now.

  “They were using Hayden to get rid of us. Now he’s gone . . . well, they’ve no reason not to do it themselves.”

  As if on cue, something started to brush up against the outside wall of the house.

  “Rosalie!” I shouted. “Step back!”

  “It’s alright,” she said dreamily, “it’s only the wind. Nothing there. Nothing to worry about.” The sound continued, like soap on sandpaper. It came from beyond the boarded windows but it also seemed to filter through from elsewhere, surrounding us like an audio enemy.

  “Ellie,” I said, “what can we do?” She seemed to have taken charge so easily that I deferred to her without thinking, assuming she would have a plan with a certainty which was painfully cut down.

  “I have no idea.” She nursed the shotgun in the crook of her elbow like a baby substitute, and I realized I didn’t know her half as well as I thought. Did she have children? I wondered. Where were her family? Where had this level of self-control come from?

  “Rosalie,” I said carefully, “what are you looking at?” Rosalie was staring through the slit at a moonlit scene none of us could see. Her expression had dropped from scared to melancholy, and I saw a tear trickle down her cheek. She was no longer her old cynical, bitter self. It was as if all her fears had come true and she was content with the fact. “Rosie!” I called again, quietly but firmly.

  Rosalie turned to look at us. Reality hit her, but it could not hide the tears. “But he’s dead,” she said, half question, half statement. Before I could ask whom she was talking about, something hit the house.

  The sound of smashing glass came from everywhere: behind the boards across the kitchen windows; out in the corridor; muffled crashes from elsewhere in the dark manor. Rosalie stepped back from the slit just as a long, shimmering white limb came in, glassy nails scratching for her face but ripping the air instead.

  Ellie stepped forward, thrust the shotgun through the slit and pulled the trigger. There was no cry of pain, no scream, but the limb withdrew.

  Something began to batter against the ruined kitchen window, the vibration travelling through the hastily nailed boards, nail heads emerging slowly from the gouged wood after each impact. Ellie fired again, though I could not see what she was shooting at. As she turned to reload she avoided my questioning glance.

  “They’re coming in!” I shouted.

  “Can it!” Ellie said bitterly. She stepped back as a sliver of timber broke away from the edge of one of the boards, clattering to the floor stained with frost. She shouldered the gun and fired twice through the widening gap. White things began to worm their way between the boards, fingers perhaps, but long and thin and more flexible than any I had ever seen. They twisted and felt blindly across the wood . . . and then wrapped themselves around the exposed nails.

  They began to pull.

  The nails squealed as they were withdrawn from the wood, one by one.

  I hefted the hammer and went at the nails, hitting each of them only once, aiming for those surrounded by cool white digits. As each nail went back in the things around them drew back and squirmed out of sight behind the boards, only to reappear elsewhere. I hammered until my arm ached, resting my left hand against the vibrating timber. Not once did I catch a white digit beneath the hammer, even when I aimed for them specifically. I began to giggle and the sound frightened me. It was the voice of a madman, the utterance of someone looking for his lost mind, and I found that funnier than ever. Every time I hit another nail it reminded me more and more of an old fairground game. Pop the gophers on the head. I wondered what the prize would be tonight.

  “What the hell do we do?” I shouted.

  Rosalie had stepped away from the windows and now leaned against the kitchen worktop, eyes wide, mouth working slowly in some unknown mantra. I glanced at her between hammer blows and saw her chest rising and falling at an almost impossible speed. She was slipping into shock.

  “Where?” I shouted to Ellie over my shoulder.

  “The hallway.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  I had no real answer, so I nodded and indicated with a jerk of my head that the other two should go first. Ellie shoved Rosalie ahead of her and stood waiting for me.

  I continued bashing with the hammer, but now I had fresh targets. Not only were the slim white limbs nudging aside the boards and working at the nails, but they were also coming through the ventilation bricks at skirting level in the kitchen. They would gain no hold there, I knew; they could never pull their whole body through there. But still I found their presence abhorrent and terrifying, and every third hammer strike was directed at these white monstrosities trying to twist around my ankles.

  And at the third missed strike, I knew what they were doing. It was then, also, that I had some true inkling of their intelligence and wiliness. Two digits trapped my leg between them – they were cold and hard, even through my jeans – and they jerked so hard that I felt my skin tearing in their grasp.

  I went down and the hammer skittered across the kitchen floor. At the same instant a twisting forest of the things appeared between the boards above me, and in seconds the timber had started to snap and splinter as the onslaught intensified, the attackers now seemingly aware of my predicament. Shards of wood and glass and ice showered down on me, all of them sharp and cutting. And then, looking up, I saw one of the whites appear in the gap above me, framed by broken wood, its own limbs joined by others in their efforts to widen the gap and come in to tear me apart.

  Jayne stared down at me. Her face was there but the thing was not her; it was as if her image were projected there, cast onto the pure whiteness of my attacker by memory or circumstance, put there because it knew what the sight would do to me.

  I went weak, not because I thought Jayne was there – I knew that I was being fooled – but because her false visage inspir
ed a flood of warm memories through my stunned bones, hitting cold muscles and sending me into a white-hot agony of paused circulation, blood pooling at my extremities, consciousness retreating into the warmer parts of my brain, all thought of escape and salvation and the other three survivors erased by the plain whiteness that invaded from outside, sweeping in through the rent in the wall and promising me a quick, painful death, but only if I no longer struggled, only if I submitted—

  The explosion blew away everything but the pain. The thing above me had been so intent upon its imminent kill that it must have missed Ellie, leaning in the kitchen door and shouldering the shotgun.

  The thing blew apart. I closed my eyes as I saw it fold up before me, and when I opened them again there was nothing there, not even a shower of dust in the air, no sprinkle of blood, no splash of insides. Whatever it had been it left nothing behind in death.

  “Come on!” Ellie hissed, grabbing me under one arm and hauling me across the kitchen floor. I kicked with my feet to help her then finally managed to stand, albeit shakily.

  There was now a gaping hole in the boards across the kitchen windows. Weak candlelight bled out and illuminated the falling snow and the shadows behind it. I expected the hole to be filled again in seconds and this time they would pour in, each of them a mimic of Jayne in some terrifying fashion.

  “Shut the door,” Ellie said calmly. I did so and Rosalie was there with a hammer and nails. We’d run out of broken floorboards, so we simply nailed the door into the frame. It was clumsy and would no doubt prove ineffectual, but it may give us a few more seconds.

  But for what? What good would time do us now, other than to extend our agony?

  “Now where?” I asked hopelessly. “Now what?” There were sounds all around us; soft thuds from behind the kitchen door, and louder noises from further away. Breaking glass; cracking wood; a gentle rustling, more horrible because they could not be identified. As far as I could see, we really had nowhere to go.