The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror

by Stephen Jones

  As I did so, I dislodged a stack of photographs lying on top of the next notebook; they slithered in a watery rush down the side of the notebook-tower.

  Shooting a quick, nervous glance at the figure in the bed behind me, making sure that she still slept, I gathered them up. They were all old, black and white snapshots of people, most of them posed in some outdoor location. They were identified on the backs with pencilled dates, names, or initials.

  London 1941 Robbie

  I recognized Helen, skirted and hatted amid pigeons at the base of some statue, holding on to the arm of a uniformed young man. As I peered into the distant grey shadows of his face, my heart gave a jolt: in the curve of his mouth and the line of his jaw I thought I could see a resemblance to Allan. The likeness to Clarissa was obvious, and it dawned on me that this was why I’d felt so immediately drawn to her. Her father looked a bit like Allan, and she reminded me of him, too.

  I glanced quickly through the other pictures, usually able to pick out Helen by her distinctive looks. Some of the other figures were also familiar: Djuna Barnes, Peggy Guggenheim, James Joyce. I caught my breath. In an English garden Helen Ralston stood, beaming triumphantly beside a tall, shy, elegant, faintly bemused-looking woman. There was no need for me to turn over the photo to check the name written on the back – Virginia Woolf was unmistakable.

  Brilliant! My heart pounded with excitement. I wondered if she’d let me use these pictures in my book and immediately knew the answer. Of course she would – why else had she sorted them out, if not to give to me? With so many well-known names to toss into my proposal, I felt the biography was a done deal. Helen Elizabeth Ralston, The Forgotten Modernist. As I gathered the pictures up and stacked them neatly again my eyes turned greedily to the pile of old journals.

  The one now on top was a slightly odd size, narrower than the contemporary standard, bound in some stiff black cloth, and as I reached out to touch it I somehow knew that this was one of her earliest notebooks, from her Paris years.

  Without even pausing to question my right to do so, I picked the book up and opened it.

  There was no date on the first page and, as I flipped through, I got the impression that it was one continuous narrative, for it wasn’t broken down into entries like a diary. It seemed to be told in the first person, and there were long passages of description, but also conversations, set off with single quotes and dashes. Maybe this was the autobiographical novel she had mentioned?

  Helen’s handwriting was small, neat and angular, but despite its regularity it was not easy to read – especially not in the dim light of her bedroom. I flipped ahead a few pages and moved a little closer to the covered window, trying to find something I could make sense of. I saw that, despite the cramped and careful handwriting, she used her notebooks the same way I did, writing on only one side of the page. (I wondered if she had continued this profligacy during the war, with paper rationing.) The blank sides weren’t wasted; for me they provided a space for notes, second thoughts, later comments, trial runs at complicated sentences, reminders, lists of interesting words and of books I wanted to read, occasionally quotations from the books I was reading, or ideas for stories, and as I flipped through the book, concentrating now on the “other” pages, I could tell that Helen worked just like me.

  These pages were easier to read since there was less on them. I managed to puzzle out a few quotations: there were lines from Baudelaire – his French followed by her rough translation – a paragraph from The Golden Bowl and two from The Great Gatsby. A list of British and American authors might have been one of my own “must read” lists, with the difference being that all of them were still alive in 1929. I wondered if she was reminding herself of books to look for, or people she wanted to meet.

  The next list was something else. I read it again and again, trying to make some other sense of it than the personal meaning it had for me at first glance:

  Yale

  Andy

  Ira

  Mark

  John

  Jimmy

  Patrick

  John

  Chas

  Allan

  Nine masculine forenames, one of them repeated twice. The names of the ten men I had loved.

  How could Helen Ralston have known that?

  She couldn’t; it wasn’t possible; not all of them. My husbands were a matter of public record, and plenty of people knew that I’d lived with a man called Mark for three years. Although my affair with Ira was ostensibly secret, I had dedicated my first book to him, and, invited to contribute to a magazine feature called “The First Time,” I hadn’t bothered to disguise Andy with a pseudonym. But Yale? Or the fact that I’d been involved with two different men called John? And nobody knew about Chas.

  Could it be coincidence? Another writer, drawing up a list of names for characters, stumbling so precisely on those most meaningful to me?

  I couldn’t believe it.

  I saw stars and jags of light in front of my eyes as I carefully replaced that notebook with the others.

  Somehow, I got out of that stuffy little room, filled with the sound of an old woman’s shallow breathing, without bumping into anything or falling over, and made my way down the stairs. I was halfway to the front door, driven by terror, before I remembered that my bag with all my things, including my car keys, was still in the kitchen.

  Although I desperately wanted to sneak away, I couldn’t. I went back to the big room to fetch my things, and then, after a moment of concentrating on my breathing, knocked at Clarissa’s door.

  The sight of me took the smile off her face. “What’s wrong? Is it Mum?”

  “Your mother’s fine, she was sleeping when I left her. I’m afraid I’ve got to go – something’s come up—” Unable to think of a convincing lie, I patted my shoulder bag as if indicating the presence of a mobile phone.

  Clarissa’s expression relaxed, but still she frowned. “Oh, dear. I hope it’s not anything—”

  “Oh, no, no.”

  “You’re so pale.”

  I tried to laugh. “Really? Well, it’s nothing terrible, just – kind of crossed wires, complicated to explain, but I have to be back there this afternoon. So – if you’ll apologise to your mother?”

  “Sure. You’ll come again?”

  “Oh, of course.” I turned away from her as I spoke. “I’ll phone in the next few days to arrange a time . . .” I felt like crying. I had liked her so much, and now I wondered if her seeming friendliness was part of some Byzantine plot, if she’d somehow been helping her mother to gather information about me, if they were stalkers, or planning something . . . but what? And why?

  I stopped at the Little Chef in Dumbarton, not because I was hungry, but because I realized I was in no fit state to drive. I needed to stop and think.

  The café was soothingly anonymous and, so late on a weekday morning, almost empty. I ordered the all-day breakfast and coffee – although I felt jittery enough already – and got out my pen and notebook to write down the list again.

  It was a list I thought only I could have made. These weren’t the only lovers I’d had in my life – in fact, two fiancés were missing – but they were, to me, the most significant. Yale hadn’t even been my lover, except in fantasy, and I wasn’t sure there was anyone now alive who knew how I’d felt about him. I’d never told anyone about my two-week fling with the man I’d called Chas – which wasn’t even his real name! Only I had called him Chas, the personal nickname adding another layer of secrecy and fantasy to the forbidden passion.

  I wondered, as I dug into my eggs and bacon, if I’d ever written down this list of names I knew so well. Perhaps, one lonely night, on a piece of paper, or in a notebook that had later gone missing . . .? That might explain how she knew it, although not why she would have been driven to copy it down on a blank page in one of her old notebooks. Was it possible that she’d become obsessed with me? That she, or her daughter, had been spying on me for some strange psychologic
al reasons of their own, eventually manoeuvring me into the idea of the biography. . .

  No, no, that just wasn’t possible. There had been no outside influence – I had suggested Helen Ralston’s name to Selwyn, not vice versa. Even if Alistair Reid and “My Death” could have been a plant, no one could have influenced, or predicted, the chain of thoughts that had led to my decision. If I’d had some other idea on the journey to Edinburgh, or if I’d decided to go shopping instead of look at pictures . . .

  Another possibility, which I thought of as I pushed my varifocal specs up on my nose and frowned in a futile attempt to make out the headlines on a newspaper at the other side of the room, was that I hadn’t seen what I thought I’d seen. It was not unheard of for me to misread a word or two even in the best conditions, and in the dim light of Helen’s bedroom I might have read Dale as Yale, Ivo as Ira, and been fooled by that into imagining a list of perfectly ordinary male names was something uniquely personal to me.

  I’d written too many stories about people with weird obsessions. It did not follow that just because Helen had read my stories, that she was obsessed with me.

  IX

  By the time I’d finished eating I’d convinced myself there was a wholly rational, non-threatening explanation for it all. Ye t some fearful, pre-rational doubt must have remained, because although I wrote a note to Helen, apologising for rushing off as I had done and promising to be in touch again soon, I did not suggest a date for our next meeting, and I was in no hurry to arrange anything.

  For the next two weeks I didn’t write or think about writing. Instead, I cleaned house. I had a major clear-out, giving my own piles and stacks of stale belongings the same treatment I’d forced myself to apply to Allan’s things a year earlier. I burned and recycled box-load after box-load of paper, made donations to the charity shops in Oban, and invited a Glasgow bookseller to come up and make me an offer. It wasn’t easy, getting rid of so much stuff – I had to steel myself to it. But this was the obvious and necessary first step towards a major life-change. If I was going to be moving, I didn’t want to be laden down with clutter, paying to shift box after box of stale memories, books, clothes and other stuff I had not used in years.

  The rain had been short-lived; the weather that spring was magnificent. It was the warmest, driest March I could remember since I’d moved to Scotland, and I took a break from my chores indoors to work outside, sanding down and repainting the window-frames, clearing and cutting back the normally wild and overgrown garden, getting everything ready for the change that I felt sure was coming, although I did nothing to make it happen.

  And then it was April, with blue skies, fresh winds, and a warm and welcoming sun that seemed to say it was already summer. One morning the telephone rang, and it was Clarissa Breen.

  A great wash of guilt made me hunch down in my chair, as if she could see me, and my cheeks began to burn. “I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch, I was meaning to call,” I said, and came to a sudden halt, unable to think of an excuse for my silence.

  “That’s okay. Mum was pleased to get your note. I did wonder . . . is everything all right?”

  I couldn’t remember what I had said, or hinted, about my reason for rushing out of the house. “Yes, yes, I’m fine. Everything’s fine. I’ve just been busy, you know.”

  “That’s good. Look, I don’t want to bother you if you’re busy—”

  “No, no, I didn’t mean – it’s good to hear from you. I’m glad you called.”

  “I just wanted to let you know – there’s no pressure, and I’ll understand if you’re busy – but we’re going to be in your part of the world this weekend.”

  This news was so unexpected that I didn’t know how to respond. “Do you need a place to stay?”

  “Oh, no! That’s not why – I didn’t mean – only, if you’d like to meet for coffee, or a meal, some time. We’ll be staying at the Crinan Hotel.”

  “That’s great – of course I want to see you! You must come here for dinner one night. How long are you staying? Have you made a lot of plans?” All at once I was eager to see them again.

  “Just for the weekend. Three nights. I really can’t take any more time off right now, but Mum has been so desperate to get back up there lately, and with the weather being so fine, for once, and the forecast good – well, the time seemed right. I haven’t made any plans yet; there’s just one thing Mum really wants to do. I thought I’d ask at the hotel after we arrive. They might know someone who could take us out sailing one day.”

  “I’ll take you out.” I didn’t even stop to think, although my heart was pounding so hard, I knew this was no light promise. I’d already guessed where Helen would want me to take her.

  “Really? You have a boat?”

  “Yes. And I’m fully qualified to sail her, so you don’t have to worry. I haven’t been out since . . . I haven’t been out yet this year, and the forecast is good, as you say. It’ll be fun.”

  We arranged that I would meet them at their hotel at nine o’clock Saturday morning and go out for a sail. I would bring provisions for a picnic lunch.

  After her call, I went straight out to the boatyard, to find out if Daisy, to whom I’d given no thought whatsoever in more than a year, was in any state to be taken out on the water in a mere two days’ time.

  Fortunately, the manager of the boatyard, Duncan MacInnes, who was the best friend Allan and I had made during our years in Scotland, had taken as good care of Daisy as if she’d been his own, doing everything Allan would have done (and a bit more) without needing to be told, or intruding on my grief.

  With the arrival of spring and the approach of the Easter holidays, even our quiet little boatyard was all bustle and go as everything was made ready for the start of the tourist season.

  When I set eyes on Daisy she was back in the water after her long winter’s sleep, barnacles scraped, rigging and sails repaired, the engine recently serviced, all neat and tidy and absolutely ship-shape, ready to go at a moment’s notice.

  I turned a look of wonder on Duncan. He stared at the boat, not at me, and rubbed his chin. “I thought, if you were interested, I could lease her out this season. There’s always a demand for a sweet little boat like this one, and it can be a good way to make extra money.”

  “Thanks, but I think I’m going to want her for myself.” After Allan’s death I had thought once about selling Daisy, but she had been so intimately a part of our marriage that I had been unable to go through with it, even though keeping a boat, even one that you do use, is, as they say, a hole in the ocean for throwing money in.

  Now he looked at me, still rubbing his chin. “Oh, aye, but we mostly do short leases anyway. One or two weeks at a time. You could book her for when you wanted her for yourself, and the rest of the time, you get paid. There’s the upkeep, of course, but you could pay me a commission and I’d take care of that, and the expenses would all come out of the rental fees. I handle three other boats like that. All you have to do is say the word, and I’ll add Daisy to the list.”

  As he spoke, I thought that perhaps he had mentioned this to me before, but I had been too deep in grief to take it in. I maybe hadn’t understood, and he would have been too diffident to persist. I saw immediately now how sensible it was and how useful it would be to have another source of income. I told him so, and agreed to a meeting early the next week to agree the details and fill in the paperwork.

  I went home and surprised myself by actually writing a book proposal. It was only three pages, and it hinted at more than it explained, but I thought it might pique an editor’s interest. I sent it as an e-mail attachment to Selwyn without agonising further. The time for procrastinating and running away was over. I was going to write Helen Ralston’s life.

  X

  Saturday morning was bright and dry, the sun warm and the winds westerly and not too stiff, a perfect day for a pleasant little sail down the coast. The sight of Helen and Clarissa waiting for me in the lobby when I entered the
Crinan Hotel made my heart beat a little faster, partly with pleasure, partly with fear.

  Helen Ralston fascinated me; she also frightened me.

  If my feelings for Clarissa were uncomplicated, the emotions Helen aroused were anything but.

  This time, I didn’t run away. It would have been easy enough to go forward, smiling and falsely apologetic, to claim there was something wrong with my boat and offer to take them out for a drive instead. Clarissa, I knew, would be on my side – I sensed she wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of taking a ninety-six-year-old woman onto the ocean in a small boat – and Helen’s anger, annoyance, disappointment could all be weathered.

  The whole sequence of events for a safe, dull, socially uncomfortable day flashed through my mind in a split-second. I had only to say the word to make it happen, but I did not.

  I decided instead to confront my fear and the mystery at the heart of Helen Elizabeth Ralston, and when she announced that we were going to pay a visit to the isle of Achlan, although my heart gave a queasy lurch, I still did not back down.

  “Oh, yes, Eilean nan Achlan. The island of lamentation. I have your painting of it – it’s in the boot of the car. I brought it to give back to you.”