by Johnny Mains
It was a night for the tartan tie. He wasn’t quite certain yet if Moira was sufficiently modern in spirit to understand that his favourite pastel flowers and swirls were an expression of manliness. Best play safe. He fastened it neatly and adjusted the cuffs of his jacket. His instincts had been proved right. She was a nice girl. Very nice. Almost pretty under the flab. Darting intelligent blue eyes, and a smile that was all gratitude and expectancy. He was pleased they’d finally made contact. He suspected the group members would be resistant at first but knew that eventually they’d accept her as one of their own. There was no question she had talent. More talent than Irene and her steam punk drivel, that was for sure. Heaven preserve them all from another deathly chapter of post-apocalyptic urban decay, mumbled from underneath a flop of badly dyed, raven black hair. His stock would rise tonight in The Garscube Creative Writing Group. He was bringing them new, exciting ideas. He was bringing them fresh meat.
‘Lightly dusting the northern sides of the bone-white aspen boles, the snow merely hinted at its relentless mission to smother the land in a soft, quiet death. Winter would come. And it would come soon. The slate grey sky weighed in on her, pushed her deep in to herself. Under its pressure, beneath the unstoppable nature of matter giving way to force, her hot heart leant against her ribs and ignited the fuse that was a forbidden love for Arnold Crane.’
Moira pushed her spectacles up her nose and blinked across the table at Graham. He put his hand over hers. She flushed, pink and hot.
‘Beautiful.’
She smiled, immediately trying to hide it with the back of her free hand.
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
Graham held her gaze until she was compelled to look away.
The moment was broken as the waitress arrived and cleared their cups with a clatter that had a point.
‘Anything else?’
Graham glanced up at her with irritation. He scanned the pinch-faced, sassy, forty-something woman, all attitude and confidence, and committed her foundation-smothered features to memory. He knew she drove the silver Nissan Micra that was always parked outside under the street light and only had seven and half thousand miles on the clock, which meant she lived very close, had a husband who had a real job and paid for her new, barely used car. For later. Right now, the moment was all Moira’s.
‘No. Nothing.’
The waitress read his face and left. Graham turned to his new author.
‘They’re going to love this.’
Moira turned her sweating palm up and squeezed his hand. She looked at the floor and flushed again.
She looked so pretty. So humble. So vulnerable. Graham felt an unfamiliar tumble in his chest.
Moira gazed around the campus
‘Oh this is . . . lovely!’
Graham smiled, shrugged as though it was all his.
‘It was the Garscube estate before the vet college bought it. Some of the trees are nearly a hundred and fifty years old.’
She craned her neck up at the silhouetted branches of ancient chestnuts, oaks and beeches, lit from beneath by the pure white glare of the halogen lighting.
‘They’re like watchers. Like guards. I can see why they kept them.’
Graham stopped. He looked at Moira and she caught disquiet in his eyes. Without warning, she moved quickly, held his face and kissed him. Taken by surprise, his arms held back like a diver about to plunge, he closed his eyes. It was sublime. Her surprisingly soft lips enveloped his in the cold air, a night air enlivened by the oxygen leaching from the last leaves of ancient creatures crowding around them, breathing, living, and dropping their fruit at their feet like messages from the Gods.
She stepped back. He drew breath, like a drowning man breaking the surface of a cold lake.
Moira smiled, folded herself in to her coat, hugging herself. They stood awkwardly, shifting and shuffling for a beat, then she stooped and picked up a conker, carefully managing its spiky shell.
She pushed her specs up her nose and her face lit up.
‘Look at it. Isn’t it perfect?’
She handed it to him. He extended his hand and took the armoured chestnut in his hand.
He felt the tiny spikes prick his skin, and beneath the smoothness of a perfect globe containing the seed that could grow a giant.
‘Yes. It’s perfect.’
Moira walked on. Hands deep in her coat pockets.
‘Are we near? Which one is the meeting in?’
In the darkness a handful of modern buildings showed randomly lit windows, offices and labs still occupied by stragglers, each square of light a tableau like an advent calendar. She was excited, trying to guess which one hosted the group.
Graham watched her scanning. He tightened his grip on the spiky conker until it hurt and then dropped it.
They stopped outside the incinerator building. He gathered his courage and turned to her.
‘I don’t think we should go. Not tonight.’
Moira blinked, pulling her coat around her shoulders.
‘Why not?’
Graham shrugged, looking at his shoes.
‘I don’t know. Let’s just do something else. Something where we can talk. You know. Alone.’
He looked up again.
‘I like you Moira. You’re kind.’
She moved forward and took his hand.
‘Let’s go in. Show them how good we are.’
Graham stood, head bowed, his free hand clenched. He stamped his feet, as if against the cold.
‘No.’
He looked like a child.
Moira had never felt so confident. She was in control. Here was the man of her dreams, unsure of himself, nervous, small, and she had to take charge.
‘What are you afraid of?’
He shook his head, shrugged, then looked up.
‘Can I ask you something?’
She nodded, waited, heart racing.
‘What do you really think of my story?’
So that was it. He wanted honesty. She should have known better than to have flattered him earlier. Silly mistake. Lesson learned. Every relationship has honesty at its heart and she had nearly blown this one before it began.
Moira looked him in the eye.
‘I think that it needs work.’
Graham’s gaze was steady, unflinching. No trace of hurt or disappointment. It emboldened her.
‘The premise is weak at the moment because there’s no real motivation in either character. If we’re to understand why a man would survive such abuse to become a success, and then oddly ruin it all by what seems no more than a fit of temper, then we need to know why he’s suddenly so out of control. Why he ends up still being the loser. It’s not that it’s simply unpleasant. It’s more that it’s . . . well . . . just not plausible.’
Graham let go the breath he’d been holding and touched her face.
‘Thank you.’
She flushed with pleasure. He took keys from his pocket and started to un-padlock the heavy door.
She examined the industrial facade with curiosity.
‘In here?’
He laughed.
‘No. We meet in the refectory. I just need my manuscript. Left it in the back labs. You can wait out here if you want.’
Moira glanced at the warm, distant buildings across the broad plains of the campus, and for a fraction of a second she hesitated. He turned to her as the door swung open. A smile like an angel. His dark hair curling around a perfect neck. She smiled back.
‘No. I’ll come with you.’
Graham looked at his watch as surreptitiously as he could. No need to offend while someone was reading, even if it was appalling. So he was wrong about Moira. She was as stupid as the rest of them. Her reading had been embarrassing. Romantic, standard soap opera trash
, masquerading as literature by forcing it into a predictable historical setting. He was already regretting having introduced her. Why had he thought she would be different? He lowered his eyes and picked at his finger nails, barely trying to hide his despondency. Sonia’s moronic chic lit shopping romp was worse than usual tonight, and the desire to read his own few chapters was fast receding.
One day, it would happen. He’d find the girl who could recognise a genius. She’d be the one sitting next to him at the awards dinner table, who would leap to her feet and clap as he rose to collect his prize, who would kiss him and cheer and wipe away a tear of pride. He would single her out for her unending support and the cameras would swing to her, catch her laughing through her tears as she blew him a kiss. She wouldn’t criticize, or tell him what was wrong with his work. She would be clever, and brilliant of course, yet desperate to learn from him, hanging on his every word, and analysing every brilliant turn of his unique and celebrated prose. She would be the one.
The room grew silent. Graham looked up. He realised he’d been drifting while they read and now they were waiting, expectant, judgmental, their eyes as hard as coals. Waiting to tear his perfect story to bits.
He stood up, pulse racing, fists clenched and kicked his chair away.
‘Fuck you. Fuck you all.’
He turned and left. There was work to do at home. He was going to start from chapter one and polish it until it shone.
The rats were getting bolder. Less than three minutes after Graham Kearney had switched off the lights and locked the bolts on the long forgotten basement store beneath the furnace, they scuttled from beneath the plaster board. Fiona Hardy was mostly gone, but then she had been the first. Her jaw had been eaten down to the back teeth, the eye sockets empty and black. The tape that had bound her hands to the chair was frayed and bitten and any day now she would tumble to the side, like Shereen Kholi had done, and would require to be propped back up.
But tonight the rats were not interested in the four bone-dry corpses. There was new meat. Fresh meat. Warm, bruised, bloody and soft. Still warm. They pricked up their flattened ears only once, as the sound of thick metal doors slammed shut in the far distance, and then got to work.
Biofeedback
GARY FRY
The following author biographies have been extracted from selected editions of the annual anthology Year’s Best Spooks, edited by Simon Jackson. They are presented here with no editorial modifications.
Extract from Year’s Best Spooks, 2012
Gordon Franklyn lives in Leeds with his wife, Harriet, and their two young children, Nadia and Toby. Fans of ghostly fiction need little introduction to Franklyn’s work. His frightening first novel Truth Twice Removed was a supernatural treat and won a stack of awards the world over. And so we’re delighted to welcome him to this, his first appearance in Year’s Best Spooks. Despite the nature of his work, Franklyn claims to be a sceptic about the ‘other side’. He writes: ‘I find the supernatural genre imaginatively appealing in an emotional sense, but it’s certainly vulnerable to intellectual analysis. Its power, I think, derives from its ability, when done well, to peel away rationality. Under its surface, life is disconnected fragments, and that frightens us. And ghosts can serve as a powerful symbol for that fundamental uncertainty.’ What follows is a creepy tale some might say lays waste to the author’s scepticism. The story came to Franklyn, as often the case, in the form of a playful idea: ‘I’ve long been drawn to the notion that a living man can become a ghost to others on the basis of negligence, or perhaps as a result of detached tyranny. That forms the core of this story. The absentee factory owner haunting his staff is based loosely on a guy I used to work for, before my writing became successful. Christ, never let it be said I haven’t earned my right to make some money out of this game!’ In his mid-thirties, Franklyn likes cigarettes, fine food, drink, and – when he’s not writing – walks with his family.
Extract from Year’s Best Spooks, 2013
Gordon Franklyn lives in Leeds with his wife, Harriet, and their two young children, Nadia and Toby. Franklyn’s second supernatural novel – Lott’s Mirror – more than fulfilled the promise of his first, the genre-defining Truth Twice Removed. Indeed, we at Year’s Best Spooks predict big things for this author, and that’s why we’re delighted to see him back in our annual anthology. Another reason is that he tells one helluva scary story . . . and the one you’re about to read is no exception. Franklyn writes: ‘On the strength of sales of my novels, I recently quit the day job – Lord, never put me in a classroom again! – and moved into what me and the family consider our dream home: a lovely, secluded 17th Century property in North Yorkshire. And does this place have ghosts, I hear readers ask? Well, I’m afraid to say that, despite my wife and kids reporting a few spooky incidents, I’ve personally encountered nothing that cannot be accounted for by reason. Which is not to say the house isn’t a source of inspiration. Solitary walks in the surrounding countryside have done much to stir my creative juices, and I now have enough dark material under development to inform years of work.’ I think fans of supernatural fiction will agree that, in the tale that follows, Franklyn shows little sign of losing of his touch. Its ruthless narrative about a man haunted by a former owner of his new home with a penchant for liquor is incongruously powerful in its brief span, and hints at more of the novel length fiction we crave from this sterling new master of terror.
Extract from Year’s Best Spooks, 2016
Gordon Franklyn lives in North Yorkshire with his wife, Harriet, and their two children, Nadia and Toby. It’s been a while since we welcomed him to the pages of Year’s Best Spooks, and that’s because he’s been writing a number of increasingly popular supernatural novels. After showing early promise in Truth Twice Removed and Lott’s Mirror, Franklyn has published Still Waters, The Family Man, and Nothing Changes, all well received by readers and critics alike. Nevertheless, it troubles him that certain sections of the supernatural community, originally defenders of his work, have recently accused him of selling out. Franklyn writes: ‘Any fool knows that commercial success involves concessions to markets that pre-exist the artist. Hell, I worked long enough in the real world to realise that life is often about compromise, especially when economic survival remains so challenging. It’s my working class background, much of it spent in the mean streets of Leeds, that makes me fond of fast cars. I also have a family to clothe and feed. So come on, guys, give me a break here.’ Fighting words, we must surely agree. Indeed, Franklyn has lost little of the boozy rage that fuelled his early fiction; by way of illustration, witness the following tale. ‘On doctor’s advice, I recently quit smoking,’ Franklyn explains, ‘and that involved a month of hell for me and others. I found myself feeling intolerant of many things, even my wife’s belief – unsuspected until this stage of our marriage – in the supernatural. This got me thinking about psychological demons. Imagine a guy who so vehemently denies the existence of a ghost haunting his partner that it shifts its attention to him . . .’ The tale you’re about to read, dear readers, shows that commercial success has done little to dull Franklyn’s sinister disposition. He remains as exquisitely warped as ever.
Extract from Year’s Best Spooks, 2019
Gordon Franklyn lives in North Yorkshire with his wife, Harriet, and their two children, Nadia and Toby. Since his last appearance in Year’s Best Spooks three years ago, Franklyn has moved away from the supernatural genre, writing crime novels in an attempt, he candidly admits, to ‘remain afloat in a market unsympathetic to [his] previous fictional focus.’ Nevertheless, despite rumours of its death, we at this annual anthology believe that our field is in rude health, and we offer this latest collection as proof. Unsurprisingly, Franklyn’s story is one of its strongest offerings. We can only assume that the tale, a harrowing depiction of marital and paternal abuse, is based on Franklyn’s childhood, which he’s alluded to in many frank media interviews. His depict
ion of a husband and father haunted by a brutal, ale-enraged ancestor is a bold attempt to understand an abuser’s behaviour from the outside. Perhaps it’s time for Franklyn to address these issues; we know from public statements that his father – from whom he’d been estranged since teen-hood – died recently. In an interview earlier this year, Franklyn said, ‘Despite my contractual commitments with the novels – they alone pay for petrol and put food on the table – I’ve never lost my love for short stories. They offer me the opportunity to take risks, to dig a bit deeper into life.’ When asked about his infamous scepticism concerning the afterlife, he added, ‘As I get older, I become less certain about many things, and the supernatural is one of them. Let’s just say I’m more open-minded now than I was even a decade ago.’
Extract from Year’s Best Spooks, 2021
Gordon Franklyn lives in North Yorkshire with his wife, Harriet. Fans of genre fiction will realise that this has been a demanding one for the author, and we at Year’s Best Spooks don’t intend to add to media speculation about the challenges he and his wife have faced. Needless to say, we wish them both well during this period of recovery, and hope inclusion of a new story by Franklyn in our latest anthology is a way of supporting them. Not that the tale doesn’t earn its modest fee. It’s often said that writers’ best work comes from duress, and that certainly holds true here. One wonders whether Franklyn’s latest novels, alluded to in rare interviews, have also returned to the frightening territory of his early work. We can only hope a publisher snaps them up soon. In the meantime, we have this treat to savour, and it’s one that seems more autobiographical than Franklyn’s usual portraits of haunted men whose circumstances are quite removed from his own (formerly) idyllic lifestyle in North Yorkshire. The central character likes fast cars, hard liquor and even psychotherapy. One might say he’s racing from his past, and his sudden shift from gad-about-town to a cripple’s carer is certainly disturbing. Perhaps the cocky ghost of a man killed in the same crash that disabled the carer’s wife serves as Franklyn’s attempt to castigate the person he once was: arrogant, rash, intolerant . . . Understandably, Franklyn didn’t reply to emails asking for comments about this piece, but he made a telling statement in the last interview he gave before suffering his familial tragedy: ‘All of us haunt; we haunt everyone around us and the places we occupy. We’re all ghosts.’
