“Are you worried about what they’ll think?” she said between giggles.
He grinned at her, kissed her again and lay down beside her. Together they listened to the snow patting against the window. He leaned across to switch on his tape player. She screwed up her face at the music.
“What’s this old crap, Granddad?” She tickled him.
He squirmed away then sat astride her. “Fad Gadget. Quite a hit when I was your age.”
She leaned over and ejected the cassette. “Soon get rid of that,” she said, reaching into the pocket of her coat which was hanging on the back of Gary’s chair by the bed. She produced a tape and put it on.
“What’s this?” he asked her.
“This is the real thing,” she said, “Curve,” throwing him back on the bed and mouthing “I’m anything but your kind” along to the girl singer’s voice. Then without warning she let fly at him with her hands, long fingernails brushing the soft skin on his throat, fists punching him in the chest as she straddled him. Catching on, once he’d got over the initial shock, Gary fought back, trying to hold her arms, but she was strong. It was the hot, animal smell which radiated from her that turned him on most of all. Soon they formed a ball of flesh and fur, glistening teeth and dangling drool, sharp nails, long strong tongues and burning eyes, rolling over on the bed and falling on to the floor where they play-fought until mere exhaustion stilled their sweating bodies. As they were lying still enclosed in each other’s embrace there came a muffled knock on the door. Gary would have ignored it, but Catriona seemed anxious.
“Ssh,” he said to her. “They’ll go away.”
Then a voice spoke: “Catriona, let’s go. The others are waiting for you.”
Gary looked at her. She was twitching, head held high in the air. “Who is it?” he asked her.
“From the union,” she said. “Graham. He was sitting next to me when you came in.”
“Catriona, come on” – the voice again.
Gary remembered the scruffy kid in the khaki jacket, the hurt look that had smeared his features when Gary had turned up.
“I’m staying here, Graham.” Her voice betrayed no anxiety, but Gary could see the fear in her eyes.
“Fuck him, Catriona. Come on, let’s go.” Graham sounded desperate.
“Leave me alone, Graham.”
Gary was about to add his own voice to the argument, he was just drawing air when Catriona’s hand snapped across his lips. “Don’t get involved,” she whispered, and louder, “Go away, Graham.”
There was no more sound from the other side of the door. After a few minutes she said, “He’s gone. It’s OK.”
“How do you know? I didn’t hear anything.”
“I can’t smell him any more. He’s gone.”
Gary had a look out of the window but couldn’t see anyone. He noticed it had stopped snowing, but the ground was still uniformly white. Catriona had got back into bed. He joined her and they lay quietly for a while. The day was silent in the way only a heavy snowfall can make it. Before long they were both asleep.
Gary came awake slowly, his dreams meshing with the real world like an Escher diagram which he had to pick at gently before it came apart. His head hurt and his mouth ached but a smile spread across his face as he remembered Catriona. It had only been six months or so since he’d last woken up after sleeping with someone new, but the feelings were bright and surprising as freshly minted coins. His mind still furred with dream dust, he searched for shadows and anxieties, but there didn’t seem to be any. The tape was playing again – Catriona must have switched it on – and it had come round to the song that had been on when she’d initially switched cassettes. The singer’s velvety voice closed around his mind like a glove: You can say anything to contain my mind / You can try and strip me bare / Till you think you know my kind / But I will never be yours. He turned over to look at Catriona.
She wasn’t there.
I’m anything but your kind.
“Catriona?” he called, his voice falling like a stone into snow. He got up and looked around. It was cold in the flat and she wasn’t there. Pulling on his jeans he looked at the time: 11.30 p.m. He hoped none of the students had turned up for the seminar. A glance out of the window revealed a set of tracks leaving the front of his building and heading in the direction of town. When he got downstairs he noticed they were twin tracks, one set of human footprints – about the size of Catriona’s Dr Marten’s – and one set of animal tracks, presumably a dog. Or a fucking big cat. He set off. Few people had ventured out at all, so it was easy to keep sight of the footprints. At the next junction they turned left, away from the town centre and towards the railway station. He buttoned his greatcoat and took his black woolly hat out of the pocket and pulled it down over his ears.
The tracks disappeared inside the railway station, which was deserted. The Curve song was still running through Gary’s head. He stepped on to an empty platform. The sheltered part stretched away in both directions, beyond its limits a white carpet on which any fresh tracks would be quite clear. Gary wandered down the platform trying to look casual. He passed the Photo-me booth, peered into the standard class waiting room – a few plastic chairs and ashtrays in the lobby outside the ladies’ loo – and the first class passenger lounge – carpeted, no-smoking signs and a television set, unplugged. The door was locked with a combination device. Gary reached the end of the awning and stepped into the snow, which was otherwise undisturbed. Across the line was a double platform.
He retraced his steps and crossed the footbridge to the other platforms, moving as quietly as possible and keeping a keen lookout. On the far side of the station a huddle of electric locomotives waited in sidings. The night’s hush was broken by the insectile clucking and ticking of transformers and the buzzing of the overhead wires, each of which bore a thin line of snow. Gary squinted into the gloom between the locomotives. Had something moved against the mound of ballast or was he seeing things again? A noise made him jump: a crackle followed by a hissing sound coming from above. He looked up to catch the final graceful movement of a pantograph coming to rest on top of one of the locomotives after it had disconnected from the wires. The other locomotives remained connected to the power, their pantographs eager and still as praying mantises. Then he saw something which turned him to ice, rooting him to the platform. Draped across two sets of overhead wires was something that looked like a large black cat. As big as a leopard. With careful, slow movements he withdrew behind the corner of another waiting room and watched from there. It didn’t move. He circled the outside of the waiting room and approached the far corner, twenty yards nearer to the cat.
It wasn’t a cat.
It was Catriona’s fur coat.
He ran forward in panic, looking closer to check he’d been right. It was definitely her coat. Just the coat. On the track beneath the wire was a small crumpled tissue which had fallen out of one of the pockets. He climbed down on to the line and picked his way across to the sidings, slipping between two locomotives. Snow-melt dripped from the wires. He stood between two lines of ticking hulks, looked both ways and saw a dark blur run across the open space at the far end. He ran, not caring how much noise he made now. He even called her name. But when he got to the end of the line of engines there was no sign of anyone, or anything.
Pressure was growing inside his chest. He hardly knew the girl, but there was a special vulnerability about a relationship that was only a night old. Having slept with her once it was as if he’d given her a part of himself for safekeeping, knowing she wouldn’t run off with it, because it hadn’t felt like a one-night stand.
Looking around frantically, determined to find her, he decided to search the whole station. He crossed the footbridge back to platform one and turned left.
Crossing the snow near the end of the platform was a set of paw prints. They led to a door. Gary approached slowly, hand outstretched. He listened but there was nothing to hear. He opened the door quickly. Curled u
p on the floor just a few feet inside the door was Catriona, freezing without her coat. Her eyes were like two moons.
“Catriona, it’s okay. It’s me,” he said, bending down and moving towards her.
“Keep away,” she said tearfully. “Go away, Gary. I can’t be with you.”
“It’s okay. I’m here now. I’ll take you back.” He stroked her hair. “I don’t know what’s going on. Whether it’s that boy Graham, or what. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll take you back and get you warm.”
She stared at him sorrowfully. “I can’t, Gary,” she said quietly. “They want me to join them.”
These words sent a chill through him.
“Catriona, what are you saying?”
Then he heard a noise behind him and instantly he saw a change in her eyes. They flashed once, clouded over, seemed to become yellow, and in a split-second that for the rest of his life would seem like an eternity he saw her turn. One moment she was frightened Catriona, the girl who’d been in his arms only hours before, the next she was snarling and spitting, no longer playing an erotic game, her pale soft flesh crisping to sleek black fur as she streaked past him and bounded through the open doorway.
He’d been knocked over and by the time he picked himself up and stepped back outside on to the platform she was gone, prints disappearing as the snow gave way at the start of the sheltered section. Outside the Photo-me booth he found her bright pink cigarette lighter and he sat in the booth playing with it until it was too cold to sit still any longer. If he’d thought she might come back for the lighter he was disappointed. He left the station and crossed the road bridge over the tracks, stopping to look down. Beyond the patient lines of waiting locomotives a large group of dark shapes flitted in and out of focus as they were gradually obscured by the trees that marked the border between the town and the moors.
Dennis Etchison
THE NIGHTHAWK
Just as I used Dennis Etchison’s story “It Only Comes Out at Night” in The Mammoth Book of Vampires because it could be interpreted as a vampire story, so some readers will have to read “The Nighthawk” carefully to discover why I’ve included it in the present volume.
To reiterate what I said in my introduction to that previous book, I consider Etchison one of America’s foremost short story writers (either inside or outside the so-called horror genre), and I’m proud to publish his work whenever I have the opportunity.
His stories have been collected in The Dark Country, Red Dreams, The Blood Kiss, The Death Artist, Talking in the Dark and Fine Cuts. The title story of the first volume won the World Fantasy Award in 1982 (tied with Stephen King), as well as the British Fantasy Award that same year – the first time one writer received both major awards for a single work. He has also published several novels, including The Fog, Darkside, Shadowman, California Gothic and Double Edge.
However, for now, prepare to be dazzled by a master of the short form . . .
The little girl stood gazing north, toward the rich houses and the pier restaurant that was still faintly outlined through the mist. The high windows captured the white light of the sky in small squares, like a row of mirrors for the gulls; the pilings and struts underneath could have been stiff black legs risen from the sea and frozen in the November wind, never to walk again.
Is Maria coming? she wondered.
She had hurried to the corral first thing, of course, but Pebbles was gone. Maria must have come home early and taken him out, down past the big rocks to the Sea Manor, maybe, or up under the pier to the tidepools by the point at the edge of the Colony. She did not know what time Maria’s school let out, had never asked, but still had always managed to be the first one home; she would be laying out the bridles or patching a break in the fence with driftwood from under the burned-out house by the time Maria came running – always, it seemed. Yes, always. Every time.
She began to wander back along the wet sand, found a stick and paused to block out a word in the sand – C-O-P-P-E-R – turning round over each letter and humming to herself to keep the chill away. But the fog came settling in now, a thick, tule fog it looked like, and she saw her breath making more fog in front of her face and so hastened the rest of the way with her head down, hearing only the cold breaking of the waves out on the dark, musseled rocks.
She stayed with Copper for as long as she could, leaving extra feed for Pebbles, too, so that Maria would not have to bother when she brought him back. Copper seemed restless, bobbing and pawing the sand, eager to be taken out. She tried to explain that it was too late now for a real ride and instead walked her out and around the cliffside and back, over the leach line creek that trickled from the cottages to the ocean. The tiny rivulet with its sculptured and terraced bed – she and Maria, trotting the ponies carefully from one crumbling tier to the other, liked to imagine that it was the Grand Canyon. But the truth was that she had no heart for riding, not now. Not with the dark coming on so soon and the fog all around. Not alone.
She was cold and growing colder as she climbed the wooden stairway and let herself in through the side door, the one to the storage room, and then slipped into the house as quietly as she could. She started to close the door on the fog, but decided to leave it ajar for Grandfather, who would probably be coming in soon.
She heard the television voices from the living room, the same ones she always heard when she went into the house after school. They laughed a lot, though there was an edge to the voices whenever they were interrupted by the music or the buzzer, which was almost all the time, it seemed. They were probably pretty nervous, too, about being kept on the program for so long, day after day, week after week; sometimes, of course, one of the voices would say the right things and win enough money to buy its freedom, and then they would have to let it go home and the next afternoon there would be another voice, a new one, to take its place. They always sounded excited and happy when they said a right answer, and then the audience would not laugh and the buzzer would not buzz.
She padded over the jute-covered floor and slipped around the doorway into the kitchen. She stopped with her hand on the refrigerator door. She looked back at the rattan chair and couch, the sandbag ashtrays, the clock and the flying metal geese on the wall, the shiny black panther on the table, the lamp shaped like a Hawaiian dancer, the ivy planter, the kissing Dutch girl and boy, the picture of the crying clown and the ones of the father and mother in the stand-up frames. She turned away. She opened the refrigerator and poured a glass of Kool-Aid.
“Is that you, Darcy?”
“Ye-es,” she called sweetly, Grandma, but would not say it.
“Have you seen Maria yet?” She heard the grandmother climbing out of her chair, not waiting for an answer. “I must talk with you, dear. This morning we received a most disturbing telephone call . . .”
The grandmother was coming, even though the TV was still on. It must be something bad, she thought.
On the other side of the kitchen window the fog was descending heavily, almost like rain. In fact she heard a tapping begin on the low roof – but no, that would be Grandfather, hammering with his short strokes, scraping his slippers on the rough tar paper. Just a minute, I have to talk to Grandfather. Would that be good enough? She turned from the window to watch the doorway for the black walking shoes, the hem of the flowered dress. Another kind of movement caught her eye, down low by the floor, but she knew that would only be the fog.
There was the hammering on the roof, the plinking of the wind chimes by the geraniums out on the railing of the sun deck, the fog deepening until it, too, could almost be heard settling over the house. There was the slow, unsteady pursuit of the grandmother, nearly upon her now.
And something else, something else.
A dull, familiar thumping.
She looked quickly and saw, through the window, a moving shape approaching along the beach. She knew at once that it was Pebbles. The pony hesitated, breathing steam, and the vapor thinned around him momentarily so that his markings showe
d clear and unmistakable, like a cluster of moonstones through the white water of a pool at low tide, far out by the broken sea wall.
“Got to go,” she yelled, Grandma. “Maria’s got Copper. Ooh, that girl—!”
She darted out and, by the time the refrigerator door had swung shut and before the grandmother could object, had dropped from the deck and was sprinting toward Maria and the pony. It wasn’t true, of course; of course not. Maria was riding Pebbles. But it had worked.
“Hey,” she called. Then, again, when there was no answer, “He-ey!”
Maria, small and dark atop her pony, reined and turned Pebbles, his hooves slapping the slick, packed sand. She had kept near the water, had not even come close to Darcy’s house; but she had had to pass by on the way back, and now she held her body tense and distant, almost as though afraid she might meet something there on the beach – herself, say – with which she knew she would not be able to cope. “Hey, yourself,” she said, because she had to say something. But her face did not change.
“Did you stay home today?” tried Darcy. She waited and, trying to make it look like she was not, had not been waiting, leaned forward and watched her feet as they dug down into the sand. She stepped back, and the imprints of her toes began to fill up with water. “Well, were you sick or something?”
“I got to go now,” answered Maria.
She was like that. Once, when they were playing and Darcy had said something wrong – it must have been something she had said because nothing had happened, they had only been sitting with their knees up, molding little houses in the sand with a paper cup – Maria had stopped and stared over the water with that smooth, flat face of hers, as if hearing what no one else on the beach or in the world could hear. And then she had said that, the same thing, I got to go now, and she had jumped up, brushed off her hands and started running – and not even toward her own house, so that Darcy knew Maria hadn’t been called home, even if she couldn’t hear it herself. Maria was like that.
The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men Page 44
