The girl crouched on the back seat, her face pressed against the window, watching avidly. Occasionally someone on the pavement would look up, catch sight of her, and falter for a moment before carrying on. Even without the fangs on show she was a disturbing sight. Once or twice, Cassie glanced in the rearview mirror to see the reflection of someone shaking his or her head. The lengths some people go to for Halloween, it’s ridiculous. Pushy parent syndrome. Poor kid. Other faces took on a sympathetic expression: Maybe the kid has cancer. Maybe this is her last Halloween. Maybe the mother’s doing her best to turn that bald scalp into something positive.
They were waiting at a stop light on the tattered edge of Harraby when Cassie felt a small hand snaking around her waist. The girl found the small patch of drying blood on her shirt, the small tear that was neat enough to have been cut by scissors. She rested her fingers over it with another slight keening sound, as if she were trying to speak. Cassie turned her head and smiled.
“It’s all right,” she soothed. “I know you didn’t mean to. It doesn’t hurt.”
The black gaze changed its focus. A moment later the girl lifted one hand to Cassie’s face and traced one small finger around the edge of her glorious bruise.
“That doesn’t hurt either,” Cassie said.
She avoided the main road into town, taking instead the route that coasted over the golf course and on to the high vista of Beacon Edge. Pooling in the valley below, the town was a dichotomy of lights. LED gaudiness had sprung up everywhere, on houses and shops, on streetsigns and garden gates, tainting the night with cheap pound-shop explosions of purple, green, and orange, as if the commercial world had decided this night had an acceptable color scheme that consumers must be forced to observe. Amid this, though, was the orange-yellow-white glow of naked flame. It gave light of an ancient quality—raw, elemental, alive.
Cassie watched it as the car traveled through the encroaching darkness, knowing that it marked the point from which the droving procession would begin. The massed flames of the lanterns and the torchbearers that would provide its escort made the rest of the town’s decoration look meager in comparison.
She glanced in the rearview mirror again. The girl was transfixed by the flames, rocking back and forth, staring out into the darkness. A small bead of thick saliva had worked its way from the corner of her mouth. Her small fingers kneaded the air, opening, closing, opening, closing, clutching at nothing, just in motion.
“Poor thing,” Cassie said. “You must be starving.”
The procession began as she parked the car on the drive. Cassie got out and watched for a moment as the flames began to move. A coil of fire unfurled and a heavy lone drumbeat began. The percussion echoed across the valley, loud, deep. Others joined it, one heartbeat becoming many, rising above the general noise, or perhaps forcing a tunnel beneath it.
The procession set off, a line of flame moving slowly along streets lined with masked watchers, ancient things, feral and strange: devil-dogs and evil fairies, water sprites. Elves with the sharpest of sharp teeth.
Cassie brought her gaze closer to home. There were people everywhere, noise sifting and shifting in the night, the manic laughter of sugar-drunk children, music from a party at the house next door, from another farther down the street. A tumult of paganism, old and new, as if some rift had opened up and folded the town into itself—the dark ages thrown into the drift of a purple electric light.
She opened the rear door of the car and held out hand. “Come on,” she said, to the girl. “Let’s get you inside.”
Nick’s reaction when she brought the girl in was so predictable that she almost laughed in his face.
“You must be fucking joking,” he said. “I’m not having that freak under my roof. No way.”
“It’s just for one night, maybe two,” Cassie told him. “Have a bit of compassion, why can’t you?”
“Forget it,” he said, crumpling his empty beer can in one fist as he got up from the sofa. “Go on, get her out of here, right now. I’m going for a piss and when I come down again, you’d better already be in the car with it compassionately buckled into the back. Or I swear, Cassie Wish, you’ll wish you’d never been fucking born.”
Cassie held on to the girl’s hand until he’d stalked past them and out of the living room. They heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs, an echo of the drumbeat that had reached out from that procession of flames.
Cassie waited until he’d reached the landing, then crossed to the Bose speaker and turned up the volume. She didn’t even know what the playlist was, some shitty pop-themed mulch. Nick’s taste in music always had been terrible. She counted one second, two—enough time for him to have stumbled into their bathroom, enough time for him to pull his limp excuse for a dick out of his trousers.
Cassie turned. The girl was watching her, head cocked to one side, the black sockets of her eyes bigger than ever, nostrils flaring like a bloodhound with the Devil inside. Her fingers were curled in on themselves, her small body quivering with the effort of remaining still.
Cassie smiled.
“You’re such a good girl,” she said. Then: “Go for it.”
The girl understood her meaning even if she didn’t grasp the words themselves. A second later Cassie was alone, the living room door rocking slightly in the wake of the girl’s passage through it, a soft sound on the stairs as she scampered up them, light and quick as falling rain.
Cassie heard the first scream despite the sappy crooning from the speaker, then the reverberating thump of something heavy hitting a wall, followed by some desperate scrabbling. She pumped the volume louder and found herself tapping along to the rhythm despite herself. She took off her jacket, then her shirt, leaving only the short-sleeved white T underneath. Cassie left enough time for one jaded beat to fade into another that was almost identical. Then she went upstairs.
The thumping had stopped, but there were still sounds emanating from the bathroom. They echoed along the hallway and down the stairs.
Cassie climbed slowly, deliberately, because she wasn’t really in any rush. When she reached the bathroom, the door was shut. She pushed it open carefully and watched a trickle of dark red blood become a thick smear across the pale ceramic tiles.
Nick was sandwiched between the shower cubicle and the toilet, his head and neck compressed awkwardly against the wall. The rest of him trailed across the floor like roadkill. The girl had started with his stomach, ripping it open lengthways across the lower abdomen. She’d pulled out his intestines, a coiling mess of grayish-yellow organic rope, slippery enough that they kept escaping her small hands even as she tried to stuff them into her mouth.
Cassie moved farther in to the room, then dropped to a crouch at Nick’s twitching feet. She was fascinated to see that her husband was still alive. He was moaning—pathetic, breathy sounds that honestly made her want to laugh. Where was the tough guy now? Where was he?
“Nick?” Cassie called, softly.
His eyes flickered open, glazed with pain and misery. They took on a new expression, though, as they saw her. She thought it was probably hope. He tried to move, his shoulders levering up, then dropping back, a dead weight.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
He nodded, nothing more than a slight movement of his chin. His skin had turned gray. He was fading fast. He must have known it. Still, he reached out a hand, palm-up. Begging. Trick-or-treat. Please, please, give me the treat.
“Funny,” she said. “I’ve always wondered what that feels like.”
The girl chose that moment to dip her head into the cavity she’d torn in his gut. She bit into something new. It must have been a lung because Cassie heard the crunch of thin bones snapping and a wet, popping sound, almost like a balloon bursting.
Nick jerked, a weak scream bubbling out along with a glob of blood. His eyes clouded.
Cassie stood. The girl looked up at her, demon-teeth fully extended, covered in blood. Cassie reached out, gently touched her sm
eared head, and smiled.
“Be quick,” she said. “I’m going to need you downstairs.” Cassie mimed what she meant too, just in case. She still didn’t really know how much the girl understood. Still, there was a connection, somehow. Like recognizing like, perhaps.
Cassie made sure her feet and hands were covered in Nick’s blood. Then she ran down the stairs, slipping, sliding, hands gripping the banister then colliding with the walls. She stumbled into the kitchen, scrabbled against the cooker, against the drawers. She dropped to her knees as she fumbled opened the one where they kept the knives. She took out the carving knife, then slumped back to the floor, her back against the fridge door. She stayed there, waiting. Music pounded from the living room and through the wall from the neighbors’ party. There was a drumbeat, too, under everything, pumping, thumping in time with her heart.
When the girl came into the kitchen, Cassie said, “You’re going to have to bite me.” She proffered her arm.
The girl looked at it, blankly, blood dripping from her fangs. There was human matter splattered all over her head, over the clean clothes she’d been given, over her feet. Cassie could imagine the mess she’d left on the stairs, dragging the remains of that filth in the bathroom with her.
“You have to,” Cassie said, again. “Or they’ll know. Do you understand?”
The girl dropped to her haunches, still staring. Weirdly, for a creature straight out of nightmare, she looked more horrified than horrifying.
Cassie lifted the knife. Clutching it, she sank in into her own outer arm, just below the shoulder. Bright blood welled up and gushed over the blade. The girl keened and cantered forward on all fours. Cassie dropped the knife, then dug her own fingers into the cut and pulled back a thick flap of skin.
“It’s all right,” Cassie said. “It doesn’t hurt. You won’t hurt me. You can’t. Please… .”
The girl hesitated for another second. Then she leaned forward with her demon teeth. She nuzzled at the loose flap, tearing it deeper, then yanking. The flesh ripped in a wide strip, skin and sinew parting down to the bone. Cassie watched, fascinated by the revealed tangle of veins, the secret shapes of her own muscle.
“Okay,” she said, once the girl had torn a chunk as far as her elbow. “That’s enough. That’ll do.”
The girl sat back, teeth snapping around the fresh meat, swallowing it down. Cassie dragged out her phone with her one good hand. The other she couldn’t seem to move, her arm just hung against her like a broken wing, though she felt no pain. Blood was rapidly soaking through her clothes. It was pouring out of her like a river, hot and sticky, spreading across the kitchen floor in a viscous flood. She couldn’t feel a thing, but she needed help. She knew that much.
“You have to go,” Cassie said and heard the slur in her words. Something was happening in her brain. More than anything, she wanted to sleep. Cassie blinked, sight blurring as she punched in the numbers, muttering all the time, hoping that the girl could understand. “I have to call this in. You have to run, now. No one out there will think twice about you tonight. Get out of town—go up on the fells … Hide. I’ll find you. I promise. I will. Try to stick to sheep. Run. Please, run… .”
The girl’s face swam toward her, snuffling at her cheek. Her breath was warm, rank. The operator’s voice echoed in Cassie’s ear, far away, farther, farther. Then there was nothing but a black void even deeper than the girl’s eyes.
She opened her eyes into a light so bright it was blinding. Cassie turned her head away, crushing her face against a soft pillow.
“Wish?” said a familiar voice. “Well, now. There you are. There you are, lass. You’re all right. Take it easy.”
Cassie forced her eyes open again, blinking into thin sunlight. The room swam around her, then solidified. Everything was white and smelled of disinfectant. Hospital, then. There was a figure sitting beside her bed. It took her a moment to realize that her hand was clasped in another, larger one that on closer examination belonged to DI Eddie Evans.
She blinked at him. He came slowly into focus, an anxious face staring at her closely. He looked older than the last time she’d seen him, as if he was trying to smile with ten-ton weights attached to his lips. His brow was heavy over watery eyes.
“Sir?” she croaked. Her body was throbbing. Cassie looked down at herself. Her left arm was heavily bandaged, suspended from a crane-like apparatus that stood on the other side of the bed.
“Bloody hell, DS Wish,” said Evans. “Bloody, bloody hellfire, Cassie lass, you were a lucky one.”
Cassie still felt groggy, but she remembered to ask about Nick. Evans’s head dropped. She shut her eyes, turned her face away again. Even faked a tear or two. Evans’s hand squeezed hers. When Cassie looked at him again, she wondered what it would have been like to have him as a father. She wondered what difference it would have made, or whether it would not have changed a thing.
Nature. It was such a difficult thing.
THE BEAUTIFUL FEAST OF THE VALLEY
STEPHEN GALLAGHER
Stephen Gallagher is a Bram Stoker Award and World Fantasy Award nominee, and winner of the British Fantasy Award and International Horror Guild Award.
The author of fifteen novels, including Valley of Lights; Down River; Rain; and Nightmare, with Angel; recent TV work includes an award-winning episode of Silent Witness and a stint on Stan Lee’s Lucky Man. He has also written for Doctor Who, Murder Rooms, and Rosemary & Thyme, and is the creator of Jerry Bruckheimer’s science thriller series Eleventh Hour. His latest novel is The Authentic William James.
As the author explains: “In my Murder Rooms episode there’s a mummy-unwrapping scene in which I had Professor William Rutherford—Arthur Conan Doyle’s model for Professor Challenger—speculate on the practical nature of the Ancient Egyptian afterlife. The lines still linger in my memory, with the feel of unfinished business.
“Today we’re more focused on the idea of preserving the conscious mind than resurrecting the physical body. But the obsession’s not so different, and in this story I saw a way to bring ancient and modern together.”
SOMETIMES I SEE her. Magdalena, late at night, in the stacks on the seventh floor where she used to work and study. I know she isn’t there, and I don’t believe in ghosts. This is something else.
I’m taking out my keys as I approach her carrel. At this hour there’s only the night cleaning crew and me, and they’re somewhere on another floor. We close the library at nine, but I have staff privileges. It’s a modern building, low ceilings, open-plan. The lights are turned low but the air-conditioning is a constant; old books need a steady climate, and the bound volumes on the seventh are among the University’s rarest. It’s always quiet. On warm summer days our undergrads will seek out the cool air and fill the study areas but, at other times, not so much.
The carrel was Magdalena’s private space, and now I suppose it’s mine. It’s at the end of the building with a corner view over the campus. An odd shape, thin-walled, hardly big enough to call a room—just a desk and chair, a lamp, and her boxes. The sense of her presence is strong.
But I think I’ve told you already, I don’t believe in ghosts.
I’m working my way through Magdalena’s boxes. Two were here when she died, and I retrieved the others after her mother and sisters had been through her flat. The boxes contain her work diaries, her notebooks, all the background research for her doctorate, even lecture notes and timetables from her student days. I gave the hard drives to Henrik in Computer Sciences, and he gets back to me for anything he needs explained. Henrik claims that he’s mastered classical Greek, but he’s joking. With his programmer’s mind he quickly grasped the alphabet, and he enjoys my show of faux-horror when he mangles the words.
I switch on the lamp and draw out the chair. The folder on the desk is open, the papers arranged as I left them.
I admit that I struggle. I used to manage with a big magnifying glass, but now I’ve an app on my phone that does the job almost
as well. Eyesight problems apart, I found her handwriting almost impossible at first. Some of it’s in a personal shorthand that no optical scanner could ever decipher. Now I know it as well as my own.
Halfway down an old shopping list, which has no relevance to the project but which fascinates me nonetheless, the phone vibrates in my hands. I still jump when that happens. I answer and it’s Henrik.
He says, “Do you have a copy of the index?”
“Not to hand. Why?”
“I’ve some content with no attribution. Thought you might know it.”
“You want to send it over?”
“I could read you the first few lines.”
“Just send it.”
While I’m waiting for the attachment to show up, I look out of the window. I can see; I just can’t see well. The campus is deserted, though the main walk-through stays lit for student safety. I can see across to the white tower of the Computer Sciences building where I imagine Henrik alone in the basement, surrounded by his technology, while I’m here in the sky amongst my centuries-old texts. Two lonely souls in our different spheres, working on into the night.
One of us haunted by a dead spirit, the other working to recreate one.
My phone vibrates again as the attachments come in. The Greek text is accompanied by a crude machine translation, which I ignore.
From the Greek I read:
This story was told to me by a priest. It concerns a slave who had been one of the many prisoners of war taken by Sesostris, men of the vanquished countries who were brought home and set to work on great monuments to their conqueror’s name.
I don’t recognize it but I’m thinking that it reads more like Herodotus than Plutarch. Magdalena was familiar with both. It’s no more than two or three hundred words, but I save it for later when I can view it on a bigger screen.
It’s after eleven when I leave. With its long rows of shelves and the whisper of hidden engines, the seventh floor has the feel of an empty aircraft on a long night’s flight. Hard to believe that such shiny modern architecture can house spooks and shadows, but there it is.
The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories Page 34
