The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

by Stephen Jones (ed. )

  “Your friend, sir,” said Arnold, with concern. “He seems taken poorly.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing repeatable, sir.”

  “I’ll see to him, thank you, Arnold.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Every time he spoke with Arnold, Richard had to quash an impulse to tip him. At the end of the journey, was it the done thing to palm a ten-bob note and pass it over with a handshake?

  He walked the length of the carriage, rolling with the movement of the train. He had become accustomed to the Scotch Streak. He had to concentrate to hear the rattle of wheels, the chuff-chuff of the engine, the small clinkings of cutlery and crockery. Almost comforting. Catriona Kaye said the most dangerous haunted houses always feel like home.

  Harry had barged past Mrs Sweet. Richard thought of talking with her, but she glared as he walked towards her. He was a duck’s-arse-quiffed affront to everything she believed. Real killers wore respectable suits from Burton’s and had faces like trustworthy babies. That was how they got close. Richard had a pang of worry that Mrs Sweet might have an extra gun about her – a hold-out derringer in her stocking-top or a pepperpot in her reticule – in case a wounded grouse flapped close enough to need its head dissolving with a single, deadly-accurate shot. This train gave people funny ideas. She might easily pot him on the offchance.

  He got by Mrs Sweet unshot, looked over his shoulder at Annette and Myles, and stepped through the connecting door into the Second Class carriage. He checked the lavatory and didn’t find Harry – though he caught sight of a cracked mirror and started, shocked at a glimpse of an antlered, fox-faced quarry with a target marked on his forehead in dribbling blood. How others see us.

  The carriage was empty. The corridor was unlit. Second Class did not have sleeping berths, but there were regular compartments, suitable comfortably for six, which could take ten in a pinch. The dark made it easier to see out of the windows. This stretch of track ran though ancient forest. Branches twisted close, leaves reaching for the passing express.

  Richard made his way down the carriage, checking each compartment. None of the privacy blinds were down. One seat supported a huddle of old clothes that might have been a sleeping Second Class passenger – though it was early to turn in for the night. On a second look, no one was there. He knew better than be caught out that way, and looked again. Whatever had been huddled was gone back to its hole. He trusted it would stay there.

  It couldn’t be the throat-cut spectre of “Buzzy” Maltrincham. The vicious Viscount wouldn’t have been caught dead in Second Class. 3473 had many more ghosts than him. Would Lord Kilpartinger show up again? Disgraced old Donald McRidley – assuming he was dead. The Headless Fireman? The passengers of ’31? The waterlogged witches of Loch Gaer?

  It got darker as he proceeded. Turning back, he saw the glass of the connecting door was now opaque – had someone drawn a blind? – and the dining carriage cut off from view.

  “Harry?” he called out, feeling foolish.

  Something pattered, near the toilet cubicle. Fast and light. Not clumsy Harry Cutley. It might be a large cat. They had railway cats, didn’t they? There was one in Old Mother Possum’s. But usually on stations, not on trains.

  Another of Catriona Kaye’s sayings was that sometimes observers brought their own ghosts and the haunted place merely fleshed them out. Was there a puma person still after Harry? Hadn’t Annette been bothered by something from the War? Her “it”, her Worst Thing? Some entities fished out your worst nightmare – your worst memory, your darkest secret – and threw it at you. But nothing dug for your happiest moments, your fondest wishes, your most thrilling dreams and wrapped them up as a present. What had Magic Fingers called it, Sod’s Law?

  Richard remembered his father’s advice about how to see off a tiger if you were unarmed. Knock sharply on its snout, as if rapping on a front door. Just the once. Serve notice you are not to be bothered. The big cat would bolt like a doused kitten, leaving rending, clawing and devouring for another day. Pumas are just weedy imitation tigers, so the Major Jeperson treatment should send one chasing its tail. Of course, his father never claimed to have used his tiger-defying technique in the wild. It was wisdom passed down in the family – untested, but comforting.

  “Harry?”

  Now, Richard felt like an idiot. Plainly, lightfeet wasn’t Harry Cutley.

  He walked back, past the compartments – that huddle was still absent, thank you very much – towards the toilet and the connecting door. He moved with casual ease, controlling an urge to scream and run. The puma was Harry’s Worst Thing. Not Richard Jeperson’s.

  The area between cubicle and door was untenanted. He thought. He held the door-handle, torn. He couldn’t return to Annette and Myles with no news of Harry, but didn’t want to venture further into the train without reporting back, even if he raised a fuss. Harry, technically, was in charge. He should have left instructions – not that Richard would have felt obliged to follow them. If it had been Edwin Winthrop, maybe. Catriona Kaye, certainly – though she never instructed. She provided useful information and a delicate nudge towards the wisest course.

  The nagging imp came again – he was just a kid, he wasn’t ready for this, he wasn’t sure what this was. None of that nonsense, he told himself, sternly, trying to sound like Edwin or his father. You’re a Diogenes Club man. Inner Sanctum material. Most Valued Member potential. Bred to it, sensitive, a Talent.

  Click. He’d tell Annette that Harry had gone far afield, then co-opt Arnold and make a thorough search. This was a train, it was impossible to go missing (Lord Kilpartinger did) and Harry was simply puking his pie, not held by the Headless Fireman and clawed by a Phantom Puma.

  He opened the connecting door.

  And wasn’t in the dining carriage, but the First Class Sleeping Compartments. Discreet overhead lights flickered.

  At the end of the corridor, by an open compartment-door, stood a small figure in blue pyjamas decorated with space-rockets, satellites, moons and stars. Her label was tied loosely around her neck. Her unbound red hair fell to her waist, almost covering her face. Her single exposed eye fixed on him.

  What was the girl’s name? He was as bad as Harry.

  “Vanessa?” it came to him. “Why are you up?”

  Setting aside the Mystery of the Vanishing Carriage, he went to the child, and knelt, sweeping hair away from her face. She wasn’t crying but something was wrong. He recognised emptiness in her, an absence he knew well – for he had it himself. He made a smile-face and she didn’t cringe. At least she didn’t see him as a werebeast whose head would fit the space over the mantelpiece. She also didn’t laugh, no matter how he twisted his mouth and rolled his eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Dreams,” she said, hugging him around the neck, surprisingly heavy, lips close to his ear, “bad dreams.”

  V

  “. . . and then, chicklet, there were two.”

  Magic Fingers wished the Scotch Streak’s famous facilities stretched to an espresso machine. He could use a Java jolt to electrify the old grey sponge, get his extra-senses acting extra-sensible. Like most night-birds, he ran on coffee.

  Annie pursed her lips at him and looked at the doorway through which Hard Luck Harry and now the Kid had disappeared.

  “You said we shouldn’t split the band and you were on the button,” he told her. “We should have drawn the wagons in a circle.”

  “You’re not helping,” she said.

  Was he picking up jitters from her? When Annie was discombo-bulated, everyone in the house came down with the sweats. It was a downside of her Talent.

  “Chill, tomato, chill,” he said. “Put some ice on it.”

  She nodded, knowing what he meant, and tried hard. There was a switch in her brain, which turned off the receptors in her fright centre. Otherwise she’d never have made it through the War.

  Danny Myles had been blind during the War, evacuated from the Ea
st End to the wilds of Wales. He had learned his way around the sound-smell-touch-tastescape of Streatham in his first twelve years, but found the different environment – all cold wind-blasts, tongue-twisting language and lava bread – of Bedgellert a disorienting nightmare. He had run away from Mr and Mrs Jones the Farmers on his own, and felt his way back across two countries, turning up in his street to find it wasn’t there any more and Mum was with Auntie Brid in Brixton. Lots of cockney kids ran away from yokels they were packed off to during the Blitz – some from exploitation or abuse far beyond lava bread every evening and tuneless chapel most of the weekend – but they weren’t usually blind. It was a nine days’ wonder. Mum wasn’t sure whether to send him back to the Jones’, with a label round his neck like that chick who took a shine to the Kid, or keep him in London, sheltering in the Underground during the raids.

  Born without sight, it was hard for Danny to get his head around the idea of blindness or realise his extra-senses were out of the ordinary. Then, the switch in his brain was thrown. No miracle operation, no bump on the bonce, no faith healer – it was just like a door suddenly swinging open. There was a black-out, so there wasn’t even much to see – until the sun came up. He didn’t stop whooping for a week. At first, the bright new world in his eyes blotted out the patterns of sound and touch he had made do with, but when things settled, his ears were sharper than ever. Soon, he could channel music through anything with eighty-eight keys, really earning his “Magic Fingers” handle. Then Edwin Winthrop came into the scene and the Diogenes Club took an interest, labelling him a Talent.

  He’d been doing these gigs for years. In ’53, he’d unmasked the Phantom of the Festival of Britain. Then, he’d busted the Insane Gang. Defused the last of Goebbels’ Psychic Propaganda Bombs. Rid London Zoo of the Ghost Gorilla and his Ape Armada. It was a sideline. Also, he knew, an addiction. Some jazzmen popped pills, mainlined horse, bombed out on booze, chased skirts – he went after spooks. Not just any old sheet-wearers, but haints which could turn about and bite. Heart-eaters. Like 3473-S. This was a bad one, worse than the Phantom, worse than the Ghost Gorilla. He knew it. Annie and the Kid knew it too, but they hadn’t his extra-senses. They didn’t know enough to be properly wary. Hell, not wary – terrified.

  “You’re doing it again,” Annie chided him.

  He realised he’d been drumming his fingers. “Stella By Starlight”. A song about a ghost. He stopped.

  His hands hurt. That snap from the piano-lid was coolly calculated to show him who was boss. The sides of his thumbs were numb. His knuckles were purple and blobby. He spread his fingers on the tablecloth.

  “Like, ouch, man,” he said.

  Annie giggled.

  “It hurts, y’know. How’d you like it if your face fell off?”

  She was shocked for a moment.

  “Not a lot,” she said.

  “These hands are my fortune, ought to be wrapped in cotton wool every night. If I could spring for payments, I’d insure them for lotsa lettuce. This . . . this train went for them, like a bird goes for the eyes. Dig?”

  “The Worst Thing in the World.”

  “On the button, Mama.”

  “Less of the ‘Mama’. I’m not that much older than you.”

  The Kid ought to be back by now. But he was a no-show. And Harry Cutley was far out there, drowning.

  Magic Fingers cast his peepers over the dining car. There’d been an elderly frail strapping on the feed-bag down the way. She’d skedaddled, though he didn’t recall her getting up. Arnold – the conductor-waiter-majordomo-high priest – was gonesville also. He and Annie were alone.

  Man, the rattle and shake of the train was fraying his nerves with bring-down city jazz! It was syncopation without representation! All bum notes and missed melodies.

  At first, movement had been smooth, like skimming over a glassy lake. Now, the waters were choppy. Knives and forks hopped on the tables. Windows thrummed in their frames. The cloth slid by fractions of an inch and had to be held down, lest it drag plates over the edge and into the aisle.

  He felt it in his teeth, in his water, in his guts, in the back of his throat.

  Speed, reckless speed. This beast could come off the rails at any time.

  The windows were deep dark, as if the outsides were painted – or black-out curtains hung over them. Even if he got close to the cold glass, all he saw was a fish-eye-distorted, darked-up reflection.

  They weren’t in a tunnel. They could have been on a trestle stretched through a void, steaming on full-ahead, rails silently coming to pieces behind them. Alone in the night.

  He raised his hand and fingertipped the glass, getting five distinct icy shocks. He’d been leery of using his touching, but now was the time.

  “Anything?” asked Annie.

  He provisionally shook his head, but felt into the glass. It was thick, like crystal, and veined. He felt the judder of pane in frame, and caught the train’s music, a bebop with high notes, warning whistles and a thump of dangerous bass. 3473 had a heartbeat, a pulse.

  A shock sparked into his fingers, pain outlining his hand-bones.

  He was stuck to the window, palm flat against the glass, fingers splayed. Waves of hurt pulsed into him, jarring his wrist, his arm . . . up to the elbow, up to the shoulder.

  Annie sat, mouth open, not moving. Frozen.

  No, he felt her gloved fingers on his wrist, pulling. He scented her perfume, close. The brush of her hair, the warmth of her, near him.

  But he saw her sitting still, across the table.

  It was if his eyes had taken a photograph and kept showing it to him, while his extra-senses kept up with what was really happening. He moved his head: the picture in front of him didn’t change.

  Annie was speaking to him, but he couldn’t make it out. Was she talking French? Or Welsh? He had the vile taste of lava bread in his mouth. He heard the train rattle, the music of 3473, louder and louder.

  The picture changed. For another still image.

  Annie was trying to help, one knee up on the table, both hands round his wrist, face twisted in concentration as she pulled.

  But he couldn’t feel her hands any more, couldn’t smell her.

  In his eyes, she was with him. But every other sense told him she’d left off.

  His vision showed him still images, like slides in a church hall. It was as if he were in a cinema where the projector selected and held random frames every few seconds while the soundtrack ran normally.

  A scream joined train noise.

  Annie was in the aisle, arms by her sides, hands little fists, mouth open. Dark flurries in the air around her. Birds or bats, moving too fast to be captured by a single exposure.

  The scream shut off, but Annie was still posed in her yell. Something broke.

  In the next image, she was strewn among place-settings a few booths down, limbs twisted, dress awry. The frosted glass partition was cracked across.

  The window let go of him. His hand felt skinless, wet.

  Someone, not Annie, was talking, burbling words, scat-singing. No tune he could follow.

  He waited for the next picture, to find out who was there. Instead the frame held, fixed and unmoving no matter how he shook his head. He stood and painfully caught his hip on the table-edge. He felt his way into the aisle, still seeing from his sat-by-the-window position. He tried to work out where he was in the picture before him, reaching out for chair-backs to make his way hand-over-hand to Annie, or to where Annie was in his frozen vision.

  A heavy thump, and a hissing along with the gabble.

  He stood still in the aisle, bobbing with the movement of the train, like the hipsters who didn’t dance but nodded heads to the bop, shoulders and hands in movement, carried by jazz. He guesstimated he was three booths away from his original viewpoint.

  Then the lights flared and faded.

  The picture turned to sepia, as if there were an even flame behind the paper, and the brown darkened to blackness.
/>
  He shut and opened his sightless eyes.

  His hands were on chair-backs and he had a better sense of things than when treacherous eyes were letting him down. He heard as acutely as before. The gabbling was a distraction. Just noise, source-less. There was no body to it – nothing displacing air, raising or lowering temperature, smelling of cologne or ciggies. There was one breathing person in the carriage – Annette Amboise, asleep or unconscious. Otherwise, he was alone, inside the beast.

  This was different; blindness, with the memory of sight. It was as if there had been white chalk marks around everything, just-erased but held in his mind as guide-lines.

  It wasn’t like seeing, but he knew what was where.

  Tables, chairs, roses in sconces, windows, connecting doors, the aisle. Under him was carpet. Under that was the floor of the carriage. Under that hungry wheels and old, old rails.

  Now there were shapes in the dark. Sitting at the tables. White clouds like human-sized eggs or beans, bent in the middle, limbless, faceless.

  He heard the clatter of cutlery, grunts and smacks of swinish eating. In the next carriage, the piano was assaulted. Someone wearing mittens plunked through “Green Grow the Rushes-Oh”, accompanied by a drunken chorus. This wasn’t now. This was before the War.

  This was the Scotch Streak of Lord Killpassengers.

  How far off was the In-for-Death Bridge?

  He couldn’t smell anything. It was worse than being struck blind. He knew he could cope without eyes. He’d made it from Wales to London, once. He had the magic fingers.

  Someone called him, from a long way away.

  All he could taste was dry, unbuttered lava bread. Butter wasn’t to be had in London, what with rationing – his Mum used some sort of grease that had to be mixed up in a bowl. In Wales, with farms all about, there was all the butter in the world and no questions asked, but Mr and Mrs Jones didn’t believe in it. Like they didn’t believe in hot water. Or sheets – thin blankets of horsehair that scratched like a net of tiny hooks would do. Or music, except the wheezing chapel organ. When Danny drummed his fingers, he’d get a slap across the hand to cure him of the habit. He was not to get up from the table, even if he needed to take the ten steps across the garden to the privy, until he’d cleared his plate and thanked the Good Lord for His Bounty.