At this hour, the streets were practically deserted. She drove past a succession of shops and restaurants: Bob’s Big Boy, Li’l Pickle Sandwiches, Al’s Exotic Birds, Ralph’s Market. Inside Long’s Drugs empty aisles of hair supplies, pet food, household appliances and vitamin supplements were illuminated by pale, watery fluorescents, like the inside of an aquarium. ‘It’s not as if we couldn’t do just as well without them,” she would continue, awaiting Evelyn’s quick nods of agreement. “I certainly didn’t need to get married. I could have done just as well on my own. It’s not as if it’s some man’s secret how to get by in this world. It’s just a matter of keeping your feet on the ground, being objective about things, not fooling yourself. That’s all there is to it. That’s the big secret.”
As she turned onto Beverly Glen her high-beams, sweeping through an alleyway, reflected off a pair of attentive red eyes. Being realistic, she thought, and heard the wolves emerge from alleyways, abandoned buildings, underground parking garages, their black calloused paws pattering like rain against the damp streets. They loped alongside her car for short distances, trailed off to gobble stray snails and mice, paused to bite and scratch their fleas. She refused to look, driving on through the deserted city. The alternating traffic lights cast shifting patterns and colors across the glimmering asphalt, like rotating spotlights on aluminum Christmas trees. Wolves, men, lovers, cars, streets, cities, worlds, stars. The real and the unreal, the true and the untrue. Unless you’re careful it all starts looking like a dream, it all seems pretty strange and impossible, she thought, while all across the city the wolves began to howl.
Ramsey Campbell
NIGHT BEAT
Ramsey Campbell is the most respected living British horror writer. He is a multiple winner of the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award and the HWA Bram Stoker Award. After working in the civil service and public libraries, he became a full-time writer in 1973.
He has written hundreds of short stories (most recently collected in Ghosts and Grisly Things, Told by the Dead and Inconsequential Tales), while his novels include The Doll Who Ate His Mother, The Face That Must Die, The Parasite, The Nameless, The Claw, Incarnate, Obsession, The Hungry Moon, The Influence, Ancient Images, Midnight Sun, The Count of Eleven, The Long Lost, The One Safe Place, The House on Nazareth Hill, The Last Voice They Hear, Silent Children, Pact of the Fathers, The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Overnight, Secret Stories, The Grin of the Dark and Thieving Fear.
His reviews of obscure DVDs, “Ramsey’s Rambles”, appears in each issue of Video Watchdog, and “Ramsey Campbell, Probably” is a regular non-fiction column in All Hallows magazine.
The following, EC comics-inspired story makes its book debut here for the first time.
Almost exactly three weeks ago. Constable Sloane had visited the exhibition. Now, as he stood outside the museum at midnight, his thoughts were elsewhere. Streetlamps marched up the hill on which he stood, their lights padded by mist; cars laboured up the carriageway, reached the summit and sped away – but he hardly noticed their speed or their numbers, for his thoughts had returned to the murder.
It had been the night of the day on which he had visited the exhibition. What mattered, though, was that it had been his first month on a beat: and it mattered more that when his radio had called him to view the corpse thrown broken among the bricks of a disintegrating alley leading from one of his main roads, the older policemen who had discovered the body had had to drive him back to the station, where he had sat white and shaking, gulping cups of tea. Of course his superiors had been sympathetic: he was young, he had never seen death before – they had even excluded him from the investigation which would be concentrated on his beat, and insisted that he confine himself to the calmer city centre for a while. He had barely been able to persuade them not to give him a companion, for he knew that it had not been the corpse which had left him shaking, not the mutilations or the blood. When he looked back on that night, he felt that he had been shaking with shame and fury: for he could have led them to the murderer.
And he had been furious because he knew that they would never have countenanced his method. Intuition was no part of police procedure. Yet ever since his childhood he had been able intuitively to sense sources of violence. He felt profoundly what his superiors wearily accepted: that violence surrounds us all. His first beat had led him through both suburbia and slums; and if each broken bottle outside a pub hinted terror to him, equally he felt the presence of violence in quiet suburban roads behind the ranks of sleeping cars, knew instinctively which set of patterned curtains concealed shouts of rage, the smash of china, screams. Sometimes he was honest with himself, and admitted that it was the violence buried in him that recognized these sources, reached out to them. But now this was forgotten, for never had he felt the imminence of violence so powerfully as here. When they’d moved him to the city centre neither he nor they had realized what they had done. Last night he had passed the museum and had come alert; tonight he knew. Within the museum lay the source of that murder.
His radio hissed and spat. For a second he thought of calling Central for help, but then he half-smiled bitterly: he had no evidence, they would only think that the murder had unbalanced him completely. Yet he was determined to act; once he had conquered his fear of the surrounding violence he had become obsessed with the suppression of violence – and as well, this murder had stained his beat. He thrust the radio into his pocket and started up the steps to the museum.
When he knocked on the doors the glass panes shuddered. They were a meagre protection against the violence within. After a minute Sloane saw a light bobbing closer through the wide dark foyer. As the light found Sloane and held him, a figure formed darkly about it; a face swelled from the shadows like a wrinkled half-inflated balloon. At a childhood party Sloane had dulled and grown more taciturn as the evening wore on; tired of trying to rouse him to play, the other children had buffeted him with balloons. “What’s all this about, son?” the caretaker demanded.
Now that the doors of the museum were open the sense of violence seemed stronger; Sloane could scarcely remember his lies. “A routine check, sir,” he said.
“What routine’s that, son? What’s up?”
“We’ve had a few robberies around here recently. I’d like to look around, if you don’t mind. Just to check.”
The watchman hawked and gave Sloane room to pass. The foyer was high, reaching above the light; Sloane felt the cold arch of the ceiling. The walls were walled by darkness; painted faces glimmered dimly in the void. “Can we have the lights on, please?” Sloane asked.
“You’d have to ask the curator for that, son. But he’ll be home in bed.” He was obviously triumphant. Sloane frowned and the man came closer, nipping Sloane’s arm with his fingers and apologizing with a lopsided alcoholic smile. “You can have my torch for a few minutes if you ask nicely.”
“I’m sure you don’t want to obstruct the law. You seem a bit unsteady – perhaps you ought to sit down.”
“You can’t have it unless I’ve got a spare battery.” The caretaker sidled into his office behind the marble staircase and rummaged in the drawers of a dark table. Above the table a white lampshade was bearded with a single strand of cobweb; on the table, next to a sagging moist rectangle outlined in rum, lay an open copy of True Detective Confessions. “You’re lucky,” the caretaker said, passing Sloane the torch.
Sloane felt violence massing in the room. “I won’t be long,” he said.
“Don’t you worry your head about that, son. I’ll come round with you.”
As Sloane emerged from the office the torch’s beam touched a globe of the world standing at the entrance to the Planetarium. Above the globe a moon was balanced on a wire; a dim crescent coated its edge. Sloane crossed to the staircase and the crescent expanded. At the same time the caretaker moved behind him. Sloane flexed his shoulders as if to shake off the violence which he felt looming.
The staircase climbed throug
h a void across which their footsteps rang. The marble was slippery and sharp; Sloane glanced back at the caretaker and hurried to the top. A finger on a marble pillar pointed to THE HISTORY OF MAN. The torch-beam led him through an archway and fastened on a crumpled yellow paper mask inexpertly smoothed: a mummy’s face.
“These are their specimens, here,” the caretaker said behind him. “This is where thieves would be hiding, son, among the bodies, eh?”
He can move faster than I thought, Sloane realized. He peered at the man behind him, redolent of alcohol, one hand on a case containing the dark handle of a Cro-Magnon jaw. The air was thick with inertia; even the violence hung inert, and the caretaker seemed embalmed as the mummy. “Not here,” Sloane said.
As he crossed the marble landing, his heels clanking like boots of armour, Sloane felt the violence swell to meet him. He halted, afraid. “I’ll show you this room, son,” the caretaker said. “It’s where I take my pride.”
The torch-beam splayed out beyond the figure of the caretaker, a star of darkness shone from his limbs; Sloane moved aside to see at once what was beyond the second archway. As the light plunged in, moons sprang up in glass cases, slid from the blades of swords and axes. “Tell me those aren’t good as new,” the caretaker said. “They can’t say I don’t keep these clean, son, that’s a fact. I’d be in here like a shot if I heard a thief. Take his head off quick as that, I would.”
Aggression stirred. “You wouldn’t need me, then,” Sloane said.
“When you’ve seen as much as I have, son, then I’ll need you.”
Although he could feel the violence mounting Sloane half-laughed: here they were quarrelling among the ready naked blades, yet no word was ever worth a blow. And as the violence ebbed from him, he located its source at last. It lay beneath his feet. “I haven’t time to argue,” he said, and ran.
The void beyond the staircase clanged about him; the caretaker shouted; Sloane’s radio crackled and called out; in the shaft of light paintings, pillars, stairs leapt and swayed. Sloane’s ankles trembled as he landed on the marble of the foyer. Then he ran past the moon on the globe, which vibrated and began to swing as he rushed by, into the Planetarium.
The arc of the torch-beam streaked across the false sky like a comet; on the ceiling stars sparkled and were gone. Beyond the ranks of benches leading down to the stage, Sloane saw a glass case. At once the air snapped taut. Within the case violence was trapped. Outside, in the foyer, the caretaker swore and clattered closer. Sloane switched off the torch and felt his way forward down the aisle.
He had never been afraid of darkness; it had been the moon that he had feared in childhood, never more so than on the night of the party. But now the darkness seemed a mass of weapons, any one of which might mutilate him. His entire body prickled; each nerve felt the imminence of some poised threat. He could hear faint footsteps, but the room was full of echoes; his pursuer might be at any distance on either side of him. Sloane had failed to count the benches. His hand groped forward from what he had assumed to be the last bench. His fingers touched another, rose and felt the darkness. Moist breath clung to them, and they recoiled from a face.
As Sloane fell back, struggling with the torch, the beam sprang between his fingers. He was close to the glass case, and the caretaker was inches from him. “I thought you’d be here, son,” the caretaker said. “What’s the game? Trying to twist an old man?”
The caretaker moved in front of the glass case. His face came at Sloane, nodding like a balloon. Instinct leapt and Sloane struck out, punching blindly as he had the children at the party. Gasping, the caretaker fell beside the case. And Sloane saw the sign which the man’s body had concealed.
He had seen the sign before, on the day of the murder. Before his mind was overwhelmed he had time to remember and realize. Last time had been in daylight; the sun had helped him for a few hours, but they hadn’t won. Already the sign was meaningless; all meaning was contained in the grey stone within the case, beneath the sign LUNAR ROCK.
Sloane felt his mouth forced open from within. His skin ached as if a million needles were being forced through. But they were hairs; and his shoulders slumped as his hands weighed down his arms, formed into claws, and dragged him at last to stare down at the unconscious caretaker.
R. Chetwynd-Hayes
THE WEREWOLF
Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes (1919–2001) was known as “Britain’s Prince of Chill” at a time when horror fiction was a more genteel genre. During a publishing career that lasted more than forty years, he produced eleven novels, more than 200 short stories, and edited twenty-five anthologies.
His stories were widely anthologised and collected in such volumes as Cold Terror, Terror by Night, The Elemental (aka From Beyond the Grave), The Night Ghouls and Other Grisly Tales, The Monster Club, Tales of Fear and Fantasy, Shudders and Shivers, The Vampire Stories of R. Chetwynd-Hayes (aka Looking for Something to Suck and Other Vampire Stories), Phantoms and Fiends and Frights and Fancies, while the anthology movies From Beyond the Grave (1973) and The Monster Club (1980) were based on his work.
The house was old and tucked away behind a curtain of trees; a lonely place that had been built by a man who loved solitude.
Mr Ferrier liked the company of his fellow beings as much as the next man, but he did not have much money, and The Hermitage – due, possibly, to its isolated position – had been very cheap. So he bought the property, moved in with his furniture and family and began to extol the virtues of a rustic life.
“Room to move around,” he informed a sceptical Mrs Ferrier. “A chance to breathe air that isn’t contaminated by petrol fumes.”
“But it’s such a long way for Alan to go to school,” his wife protested. “And the nearest shop is five miles away. I tried to warn you, but I might as well have saved my breath.”
“Ten minutes’ car ride,” Mr Ferrier retorted impatiently. “Besides, there’s a travelling salesman who has everything you’ll ever need in his van.”
“And what about social life?” Mrs Ferrier demanded. “How will we get to know people, stuck in this out-of-the-way place?”
“Other people have cars, haven’t they? At least give the place a chance. If at the end of three months we find the solitude a bit too much, well – I suppose I’ll have to look for another house nearer town.”
Alan was more than content with his new home. After years spent in a large industrial town, he found the rolling moors had much to commend them. He also discovered ruined farmhouses with frameless windows and gaping roofs, the exposed inner walls still retaining patches of flower-patterned wallpaper; and he wondered how long ago the last family had moved away, leaving their home to fall into decay.
But one of these relics from a bygone age was not completely deserted. According to an old map which Alan borrowed from the public library, this particular ruin had been called High Burrow: a very suitable name, as the house stood on the summit of a fairly steep hill and commanded a splendid view of the surrounding countryside. Alan climbed the slope, clambered over a low wall, then walked across an expanse of weed-infested ground that had probably once been a front garden.
He mounted three crumbling steps and passed through an open doorway, then entered the narrow hall, where the stone floor was coated with dust, and a large rat jumped down from a window-ledge and went scurrying into a side room. The ceiling had either fallen down or been removed, and Alan could see the room above, which had an iron fireplace clinging precariously to one wall. Higher still were massive beams, each one festooned with writhing cobwebs; the naked bones of a dead house.
Alan was about to leave, for there was an indefinable, eerie atmosphere about the place, when he heard the sound of ascending footsteps, which seemed to come from beyond a gaping doorway situated to the left of a dismantled staircase. The footsteps became louder and were intermingled at irregular intervals by an exceedingly unpleasant barking cough.
Presently a figure emerged from the doorway and walked slow
ly into the hall. Alan saw a tall young man with a heavily bearded face and long matted hair that hung down to his slightly bowed shoulders, deep sunken eyes that were indescribably sad and a set of perfect teeth which were revealed when he again coughed and gasped in a most alarming way.
Alan waited until the man had regained his breath, then said:
“I didn’t realize there was anyone here. I was just exploring.”
The man wiped his brow on the sleeve of his ragged shirt, then spoke with a surprisingly cultivated voice.
“That’s all right. But I heard you come in and wondered who it could be. Haven’t had a visitor for years. This place is rather off the beaten track.”
“Do you live here?” Alan enquired.
The man jerked his head in the direction of the doorway.
“Yes, down there. The cellars are still intact, if rather damp.” He sighed deeply. “There’s no other place I can go.”
Alan thought there were many places he would rather live than in a damp cellar of a ruined house, particularly if he had such a bad cold. In fact, the man probably had bronchitis, or even pneumonia, for, despite the perspiration that poured down his face, he was shivering and could scarcely stand upright. Alan felt a twinge of pity for this strange, lonely person who appeared to have no one to look after him.
“Look, I know it’s none of my business – but shouldn’t you be in bed?”
The man nodded and leaned against the wall.
“Yes, I suppose I should. But my stores are running low and I must somehow get to the village before . . .”
The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men Page 9
