Blundering to yet another halt he nervously sniffed the air. The only reason he could think of for such a wide-scale evacuation was the presence of some kind of severe physical threat. Was the place about to be bombed by terrorists or could the attack already be underway? Perhaps he was wandering around, blithely inhaling toxic fumes; perhaps germ warfare had come to middle England and he was gulping down anthrax spores or worse. Or perhaps, he thought, as he examined his skin and tried to convince himself that the nausea and breathlessness he was feeling were psychosomatic, the attack had already happened. Perhaps a nuclear bomb had been dropped close by and the town’s population had been evacuated to protect them from the approaching cloud of radioactive dust.
There were flaws in his thinking, he knew that. But one thing was certain: he had to get to a phone, had to find out what was going on. He started to run, telling himself it was only stress that was making his lungs hurt and his legs feel leaden. But if so, what was it that was affecting his memory? He couldn’t even remember getting on the train, never mind where he had been going, or for what reason.
As if his desperation for answers had made it happen, he suddenly emerged from the stultifying maze of drab streets full of shuttered buildings and found himself in a pedestrianised precinct leading to what appeared to be a central square. There were comfortingly familiar chain-stores here – Woolworth, Gap, HMV – though they seemed to be more impoverished versions of the ones he was used to seeing back home.
Home. Where was that? The renewed surge of panic that accompanied his dawning realisation that he knew almost nothing about himself was so overwhelming that he stumbled and almost fell as the strength drained out of him. He staggered up to a Miss Selfridge’s and put an outspread palm on the display window to steady himself. His head was pounding, his body slick with sweat, and he was finding it difficult to breathe.
His mind, however, was in overdrive. He thought of the air teeming with germs and chemicals, thought of toxins rushing through his body, disrupting and destroying it. He expected to start coughing up blood at any moment, expected blisters to erupt on his skin. He waited for the first searing pain in his gut or head, and hoped that when it came it would be intense enough to render him quickly unconscious. He’d rather pass out and die unknowing than writhe in agony as his innards dissolved into soup.
He was heartened to discover, however, that several minutes later, rather than deteriorating, his condition had actually improved. He felt well enough, at least, to push himself away from the window and stand unaided. He even managed a wry grin. Panic attack, he thought, not gas attack. Now pull yourself together, Meacher. It was at this point that he noticed that all the mannequins in the clothes shop window had plastic bags over their heads.
At first he thought it was some kind of avant-garde display, thought the store was simply using shock tactics to grab attention. If so, he hoped it backfired on them. It was creepy, sick and irresponsible. He almost welcomed his sense of indignation. For the first time since waking up on the train he was responding emotionally to something that was not directly related to his own situation, and the respite, though brief, was welcoming. He looked around almost as if hoping to spot someone in authority he could complain to, as if momentarily forgetting he was alone. His eyes swept across the rows of shops, of which several more – River Island, Envy, Benetton – used mannequins to display the clothes they sold, and as he noticed each of them in turn his indignation gave way to a mounting unease.
There was not one mannequin he could see that did not have its face hidden in some way. Most had plastic bags over their heads, though in Envy they (whoever they were; the staff presumably) had simply draped articles of clothing over the figures. The sight put Meacher in mind of parrots whose cages are covered to simulate night and encourage them to sleep. He couldn’t for the life of him imagine what the motives of the staff might have been in this instance, unless the gesture was somehow symbolic or perhaps even a form of black joke.
Whatever the reason, the sight of all those smothered heads gave him the creeps. He shuddered and turned his gaze purposefully towards the central square. As he did so, noticing that it contained a statue of what appeared to be a figure on horseback, which he thought might be able to give him an indication of where he was, he heard the first sound behind him that he hadn’t made himself.
It was an odd sound, and brief, like someone liquidly clearing their throat or attempting to gargle with their own phlegm. It was also faint and muffled, as if he had heard it inside a house from several rooms away. He whirled round, but by the time he had spun ninety degrees all was quiet once more. Nevertheless, he hurried across to the door of River Island, which he had pinpointed in his mind as the source of the sound, and yanked the handle. Finding the door locked, he peered through one of its reinforced glass panels at the store interior.
The place was gloomy and apparently deserted. He was about to turn away when yet another mannequin caught his eye. This one was standing at the back of the shop, and like all the others had a plastic bag draped over its head. In this case, however, not only did the bag appear to be clinging tightly to the mannequin’s face, but there seemed to be an oval-shaped indentation in the plastic that to Meacher resembled a gaping mouth desperate for air.
Recoiling with a cry, Meacher turned away. There was a part of him that instantly wanted to go back, if only to reassure himself that what he had seen had been nothing but the result of shadow-play and his own imagination. However his revulsion was too great, and propelled him towards the statue that dominated the central square. As he drew closer to it he noticed two things almost in unison. One was the presence of a quartet of telephone boxes – all Perspex and cold grey steel – on the pavement outside a darkened café called Petra’s Pantry, and the other was that what appeared to be a hessian sack had been pulled down over the statue’s head.
At least they left the horse alone, Meacher thought, and felt a sudden urge to giggle. He clapped a hand over his mouth and rushed towards the telephone boxes like a drunken man looking for somewhere to throw up.
Wrenching open the door almost pulled his arm out of its socket. He fell inside, snatched up the receiver and rammed it against his ear. The familiar hum of the dialling tone filled him with such joy that he did laugh out loud, and was immediately alarmed at how hysterical he sounded. The display screen informed him there was a minimum call charge of twenty pence. Meacher shoved his left hand into his pocket and felt nothing but lining. Tilting his head to trap the phone between shoulder and ear, he rooted through all his pockets increasingly feverishly with both hands. At some point during his snooze on the train he must have been robbed because his pockets were empty. Not only did he have no money, he had no wallet, no train tickets, not even a handkerchief. Had he once had a mobile phone? If so, it had gone now.
He was on the verge of taking out his frustration by smashing the receiver against the smugly indifferent display screen when he remembered that emergency calls were free. Unable to prevent the escape of a triumphant whoop that he found hard to equate to himself, he jabbed thrice at the nine, and was only able to quell his eagerness to do it again by clenching his fist.
A phone burred once, then was interrupted by a barely audible click. Meacher was framing his lips to say hello into the expectant pause that followed when the screaming began.
It was a child’s voice, shrill and bubbling with terror. Its words were running together, to form a plea that it seemed would never end. “Nodaddynodaddynopleasedon’tpleasestopdaddynopleaseno—” Meacher slammed the phone into its cradle, then slid, as if boneless, to the floor. He wrapped his arms around his head and began to keen.
The child’s voice had had a devastating effect on him, not only because it had been distressing to hear, but because it had awakened what felt like a memory he couldn’t grasp. He knew the child, he was sure of that, but he couldn’t put a name or face to it. He clenched his hands into fists and began to pound the top of his head, punishing
his brain for failing to yield its secrets. With each blow he grew angrier at himself and his situation, until his rage reached such a peak that he scrambled to his feet, shoved open the door of the telephone box and charged, teeth bared, towards the hooded statue.
The base of the statue was a rectangular block of stone six feet high and inset with panels, each of which contained an elaborate carving of interweaving vines. Meacher threw himself at it, scraping a layer of skin off his arms as he hauled himself up beside the horse and its rider. The statue was slightly larger than life-size, the rider’s covered head now eight or ten feet above him. As Meacher placed his left foot on the horse’s raised foreleg and grasped a loop of stone rein to heave himself closer to the sack which he intended to tear from the rider’s head in an act of manic defiance, he heard the rattling thump of a door opening on the opposite side of the square.
Excited, fearful, and even a little abashed at the prospect of being discovered in such an uncompromising position, Meacher strained to see which of the many doors had opened and who had opened it. However he hadn’t raised himself quite high enough to lift his gaze above the horse’s frozen mane, and so had to clamber down from his perch and peer between its motionlessly galloping legs, feeling not unlike a child engaged in a game of hide and seek.
What he saw bewildered him for no more than a second before cold, harsh fear stabbed at the base of his throat, then cascaded through his body, lodging in his stomach like broken glass. On the far side of the square, the door of a pub, the fleur-de-lis, had opened and four men had emerged from it. Dressed in jeans and shirts and boots, they looked perfectly normal except for one thing. Like the mannequins in the clothes stores and the stone rider atop its horse, each of them wore a sack-like hood over their head.
The two thoughts that sped through Meacher’s mind were more like sharp, bright flashes of despair than anything else. The first thought was an instinctive one that Meacher would have found curious had he had time to ponder it. He thought that if only he had removed the sack from the statue’s head and placed it over his own, he would have been safe. His second thought was perhaps equally intriguing, but more fundamental: he knew with absolute conviction that he had to get away before the men caught sight of him.
Even as he jumped sprawlingly from the statue’s plinth and tried to use its blocky mass to cover his retreat, however, he knew he was already too late. The men did not cry out, but even through their makeshift hoods it was obvious they were aware of his presence. They moved towards him with a purpose both remorseless and terrifying, and when he began to run, his terror making him feel as though he was wearing lead boots, their pursuit became more purposeful still.
The subsequent chase through the unknown town’s deserted streets was as surreally terrifying as any nightmare. Meacher’s terror made him stumble and stagger and skid. Within moments his body was greasy with sweat, which flowed from his hair and into his eyes, blinding him. His heart hammered, his lungs toiled, and his breath felt like a length of barbed wire that he couldn’t dislodge from his throat. Whenever he glanced back, his pursuers were the same distance behind him, which may have been encouraging if not for the fact that they appeared to be marching rather than running, their movements effortless, machine-like, full of deadly intent.
They were toying with him, Meacher knew. They were wearing him down prior to closing in for the kill. Meacher wished he could see their faces, and yet at the same time dreaded the disclosure of whatever might be concealed within those sack-cloth hoods. In fact, in some ways the prospect of finding out was what terrified him more than anything else.
The streets were getting narrower, danker. Sooner or later he would come to a dead end and then that would be that. If he couldn’t outrun his pursuers he had to escape them in some other way. The only viable alternative was to evade them for long enough to find a hiding place. At best that would be a short-term solution, but at least it would give him time to think, to plan his next move.
He rounded a corner, his hand slapping the brick to steady himself as he changed direction, and – as though he had willed it to appear – saw an aperture between two buildings on his right, so narrow it could barely even be termed an alleyway. He plunged down it, and was immediately doused in a gloom cold enough to make him feel he was underwater. Above him the tops of the buildings on either side of the rat-run appeared to be craning to touch one another. Certainly they gave the impression that they were squeezing the thin white stripe of sky that separated them still thinner. So dark did this make the alleyway that from his present position Meacher couldn’t see its end.
It was too late to change his mind, though. If he emerged from the alleyway now his pursuers would be on to him in an instant. He began to trot forward, stepping as lightly as he could in the hope that those behind him might plough straight past the slit-like entrance, oblivious. How much could they see through those hoods? How much could they hear? How much could they smell?
This last thought came unbidden, and disturbed him the most. He thought of sniffer dogs, attuned not to the scent of food or drugs, but to fear. He quickened his pace. Was the alleyway getting narrower still? If he stretched out both arms like a child pretending to fly, he reckoned he might just about be able to touch the buildings on either side.
As he passed them, he barely glanced at the individual establishments embedded within the grey stone edifices. On a subconscious level he registered that each of them was a cramped shop unit, comprising of a door and a narrow display window with a sign above it. However there was not one that wasn’t coated in a layer of dust and grime so thick that it both obscured the name on the sign and made it impossible to tell what the shop sold, or once had. This, combined with a deepening murk that felt like twilight’s closing fist, made him fail to notice that one of the shop doors was ajar until it creaked as it widened further.
Meacher’s senses were so attuned to danger that his instinctive leftward spring was balletic. His landing, however, was not so graceful. His ankle turned on the pitted tarmac and he all but shoulder-charged the door opposite the one which had opened. As he fought to regain his senses and his balance, he saw a grey-shrouded figure materialise from the gloom beyond the open door and extend a beckoning hand. The figure’s face was concealed within a triangle of shadow so black it seemed impenetrable, but its words were clear enough.
“In here, quickly, if you don’t want them to find you.”
Though Meacher hesitated, it still took him less than a second to make up his mind. The boom of his shoulder hitting the door was even now reverberating in the alleyway; in the otherwise total silence his pursuers would have to be deaf not to have heard it. Scrambling upright, he propelled himself towards the figure, that backed away at his approach.
Crossing the threshold felt like passing through a portal between this world and the next. The darkness into which Meacher plunged seemed so profound that for several seconds he was completely disorientated. Opening his eyes wide and finding nothing for his vision to latch on to, he flailed with his arms, and was rewarded or punished by a crack of pain across the knuckles of his left hand. Undeterred, he groped again for the hard surface he had encountered and found a thin ledge of some kind – possibly a shelf or the edge of a desk. He clung to it like a shipwrecked man might cling to driftwood until his eyes had adapted to the sudden absence of light.
It took perhaps a minute for the slowly emerging slatted shapes to gain sufficient definition to reveal themselves as books. As soon as they did, he acknowledged that the shop was full of them. Of course, he would have known sooner if he had focused on any sense other than his eyesight, because as soon as he saw the books he became aware of their musty odour. In any other circumstance he would have found the smell comforting, even homely, though he had hardly read a book since his childhood. Hearing a snick behind him he whirled, but it was only the sound of the catch sliding into place as the shop door closed. So dingy was it, and so effectively did the shop owner blend into his sur
roundings, that the cowled man’s movement from the door to the far side of the room seemed as soundless and insubstantial as a drift of smoke.
“Thank you,” Meacher said, his throat clogged by dust and exertion, but the man’s only response was a sharp upraising of his left hand.
Though it was hard to make him out in the gloom, Meacher could tell by his stance that he was listening. As though deferring to a greater authority, Meacher too remained as still as he could, even though his exhausted body longed to sag. He did his utmost to contain his breath despite the attempts his racing heart and toiling lungs were making to encourage him to pant and wheeze. The two of them stood there for so long that Meacher began to wonder whether the shop owner was once again waiting for him to speak, and he was gathering the courage to do so when the man murmured, “Alas.”
Before Meacher could ask him what was wrong, a pounding on the door invalidated his question. Meacher instinctively scuttled forward, then ducked, twisting his head to look wildly behind him. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of the blows that seemed to be making the books shiver on their shelves was that they were not urgent but ponderous, relentless, evenly spaced. They sounded more like the pounding of some vast machine piston than human fists on wood. They suggested to Meacher that his pursuers would never give up, that they would hunt him down remorselessly, that in their eyes (if they had eyes beneath those hoods) the outcome of the chase was inevitable. Still cowering, he looked from the door to the shop owner, in the same way that a small child would look to a parent for guidance.
“Go up the stairs,” the man murmured, pointing to a shadowy patch of wall between two bookcases that on closer inspection Meacher realised was a door. “You’ll find an unlocked room there. Go inside and lock yourself in.”
Will I be safe? Meacher would have asked if fear had not denied him his voice, and if he had not been so terrified of the answer.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18 Page 20
