by Johnny Mains
Extract from Year’s Best Spooks, 2026
Gordon Franklyn lives in Leeds with his wife, Harriet. Life hasn’t been kind to the author, especially when, half a decade ago, his two children were killed in a car accident that also involved his wife. Franklyn alone, driving the fast vehicle, escaped the flaming melee. Unpublished for several years, the author now lives back in his native West Yorkshire, caring for his disabled wife on a full-time basis. It’s a tragic story as unsettlingly heart-breaking as those with which he once thrilled a generation of genre fans. Nevertheless, this forgotten man of supernatural fiction has never been less than surprising, and imagine our delight at Year’s Best Spooks when, during our 25th Anniversary, we received a brand new submission from this living legend. And if it isn’t one of the most horrifying pieces we’ve ever had the pleasure to read. As usual in Franklyn’s last few contributions to this anthology, the author was unavailable for commentary, and so we must let the tale speak for itself. One thing that will strike readers familiar with his work is the shift from his characteristic third-person narrative to the more intimate first-person. We think this lends the fiction much more power. But Franklyn’s depiction of a drinking man haunted by past shadows that darken his path is as subconsciously accurate, analytically dispassionate, and unwittingly illuminating as anything he wrote during his all-too-brief professional career. The demons on the fringes of consciousness now take centre stage, in what the author might once have described as the nebulous mind. And so let us raise the spotlight of our mind’s eye: unblinking, obsessive, moist with unquenchable grief. Behold . . .
Extract from Year’s Best Spooks, 2029
Gordon Franklyn lives in Leeds. That’s pretty much all we now know about this reclusive author. The return address for e-payment that accompanied the story you’re about to read was of a street full of tenements in a rundown area. We understand that the author’s wife has recently died, following medical complications. The only other clue about Franklyn’s circumstances on the note attached to the following tale was a single, enigmatic message: ‘I was wrong – about many things. But wrong about this, especially.’ And does he refer here to the supernatural? That certainly seems plausible, particularly after reading the following piece, Franklyn’s first fictional output since his last contribution to Year’s Best Spooks . . . But is this fiction? That’s the question readers will surely ask themselves. The setting seems authentic: the house the author once occupied in the splendid Yorkshire countryside. But the time is all wrong, because the spooks that haunt this latest abusive, alcoholic in a Franklyn tale could never have existed there. That was once a happy, family home. And this is no happy family. We speculate that Franklyn, struggling as a result of hard experience, regular drink, and a twisted state of mind, could be planning an autobiography and has simply got some details wrong. The ghosts surely belong elsewhere: where the author now lives, in a dilapidated city. Nevertheless, these creatures are no less frightening for their tranquil rural location. They make one believe – as we at Year’s Best Spooks have always believed; as even Gordon Franklyn, once such a wry sceptic, has possibly come to believe – that the supernatural is real. We hope that you, dear readers, also share this sentiment. And so turn the page and lapse again into Franklyn’s world. He might never have been more frightening, nor have created such potent beings. The vicious behaviour of the two vengeful children, and perhaps worse, the hideously mangled wife, contain an element of autobiography, of unforgiving accuracy, of experienced horror . . . Gordon Franklyn is a haunting and haunted man. And we hope he gets by.
Doll Hands
ADAM NEVILL
I am the one with the big white head and the doll hands. I work behind the desk in the West block of Gruut Huis. When I’m not taking delivered medicines upstairs to the residents who slowly die in their beds, I watch the greenish screens of the security monitors that cover every inch of Gruut Huis’s big red brick walls and its empty tarmac forecourt.
I watch out for deliveries and for intruders. Deliveries come every day. Intruders not so much anymore. They have mostly died out there in the draughty buildings of the dead city, or are lying still on the dark stones before The Church of Our Lady. In Brugge the dying shuffle and crawl to the church. It’s like they have lost everything but a memory of where to go.
Last Christmas I was sent out with two porters to find the baboon child of Mr Hussain who lives in the east wing. The baboon boy escaped from his cage and blinded his carer. And as I searched for the boy in Guido Gezelleplein, I saw all of the wet stiff bodies beneath the tower, lying down in the mist.
One of the day porters, Vinegar Irish, beat the baboon boy when we found him feeding amongst the bodies. Like the residents, the baboon boy had grown tired of the yeast from the tanks in the basement. He wanted meat.
At ten in the morning, there is movement on the monitor screens. Someone has arrived at the goods and services entrance of Gruut Huis. Out of the mist the squarish front of a white truck appears and waits by the roller gate. It’s the caterers. Inside my stomach I feel a sickish skitter.
With my teeny fingers I press the buttons on the security console and open Door Eight. On the screen I watch the metal grill rise. The truck passes into the central court of Gruut Huis and parks the rear doors by the utility door of the service area. Behind this utility door are the storage cages for the resident’s old possessions, as well as the porter’s dormitory, the staff room, the stock cupboards, the boiler room, the workshop, the staff washroom, and the yeast tanks that feed us with their yellow softness. Today, the caterers will need to use the staff washroom for their work.
Yesterday, we were told a delivery of food was arriving for the Head Resident’s Annual Banquet. Mrs Van den Broeck, the Head Resident of the building, also informed us that our showers were to be cancelled and that we were not allowed into the staff room all day because the caterers needed to use these areas to prepare the banquet. But none of the staff ever want to go into the washroom anyway if the caterers are on-site. Despite the sleepiness of the White Ape, who is nightwatchman, and the drunkenness of Vinegar Irish, and the slow movements of Les Spider, handyman, and the merry giggles of the two cleaning girls, we can all remember the other times when the little white truck came to Gruut Huis for the banquets. None of the staff talk about the days of the General Meetings and Annual Banquets. We all pretend they’re normal days, but Vinegar Irish drinks more cleaning fluid than usual.
Using the desk phone I call Vinegar Irish who is the porter on duty in the East wing. He takes a long time to answer the phone. On the security console, I switch to the camera above his reception desk to see what he is doing. Slowly, like his pants are full of shit and he can’t walk straight, I see him stumble into the green underwater world of the monitor screen. Even on camera I can see the bulgy veins under his strawberry face. He’s been in the key cupboard drinking fluids and not beside his monitors like he is supposed to be at all times. If he was behind his desk he would have heard the alarm sound when I opened the outer gate, and he would have known a delivery had arrived. His barking voice is slurred. ‘What you want?’
‘Delivery,’ I say. ‘Watch my side. I’m going down.’
‘Aye. Aye. Trucks come. What you need to do –’ I put the phone down while he is speaking. It will make him go shaky with rage in the east wing. He’ll call me a bastard and swear to punch his trembly hands at my big head, while spit flies out of his vinegar mouth. But he won’t remember the altercation tonight when we finish the day shift, and I have no time right now for a slurred lecture about all the things I already know about our duties that he cannot manage to do.
As I walk across the lobby to the porter’s door, with my sack-cloth mask in my doll hands, the phone rings behind my desk. I know it is Vinegar Irish in a spitting rage. All the residents are still asleep. Those that can still walk never come down before noon.
Smiling to myself, at this little way I get rev
enge on Vinegar Irish, I stretch the brownish mask over my head. Then I open the airlock and duck through the escape hatch to the metal staircase outside. As I trot down the stairs, the mist rushes in to cover my little shiny shoes. Even with the mask pulled over my fat Octopus head, I can smell the sulphur-rust of the chemical air.
At the bottom of the staircase, I enter the courtyard. The courtyard is right in the middle of all four blocks of flats. The resident’s can look down and into the courtyard from their kitchen windows. I bet their mouths fill with water when they see the white van parked by the utility door. What the Head Residents don’t eat, we porters deliver up to their flats in white plastic bags.
Seeing the caterer’s truck makes my stomach turn over with a wallop. The two caterers who came in the white truck are standing by the driver’s door, talking, and waiting for me to open the utility area. Both of them are wearing rubber hoods shaped into pig faces. The pig faces are supposed to be smiling, but they look like the faces in dreams that wake you up with a scream.
The caterers are wearing rubber boots to their knees too, and stripy trousers tucked into the tops of their boots. Over their stripy trousers and white smocks they wear long black rubber aprons. They are both putting on gloves made from wire mesh.
‘Christ. Would you look at the cunt’s head,’ the older caterer says. His son giggles inside his rubber pig mask.
I clench my tiny hands into marble hammers.
‘Awright?’ the father says to me. Under the mask I know he is laughing at my big white head and stick body. The father gives me a clipboard. There is a plastic pen under the metal clasp that holds the pink delivery note to the clipboard. With my doll hands I take the pen and sign and print my name, then date the slip: 10/04/2152. They watch my hands in silence. The world goes quiet when my hands go to work like no one can believe they have any use.
On the Grote and Sons Fine Foods and Gourmet Catering sales slip, I see I am signing for: 2 livestock. Extra lean, premium fresh. 120 kilos.
The caterers go into the cabin of their truck and drag their equipment out. ‘Let’s get set up. Give us hand,’ the father says to me.
From behind the two seats in the dirty cabin that smells of metal and floor bleach, they pass two big grey sacks to me. They are heavy with dark stains at the bottom and around the top are little brass holes for chains to pass through. Touching the sacks makes my legs shake. I tuck them under my arm. In my other hand I am given a metal box to carry. It has little red numbers by the lock. The box is cold to touch and is patterned with black and yellow stripes.
‘Careful with that,’ the fat father says as I take the cold box in my small hand. ‘Is for the hearts and livers. We sell them, see. They is worth more than you are.’
The son hangs heavy chains over one arm and grabs a black cloth bag. As he walks, the black cloth sack makes a hollow knocking sound as the wooden clubs inside bang together. The father carries two small steel cases the size of small suitcases in one hand, and two big white plastic buckets in the other that are reddish-grubby inside. ‘Same place as before?’ he asks me.
‘Follow me,’ I say, and walk to the utility door of the basement. We go inside and pass the iron storage cages and are watched by the rocking horse with the big blue eyes and lady lashes. We go through the white door with the staff only sign on it, and the floor changes from cement to tiles. In the white tiled corridor I take them to the washroom where they will work. In here it always smells of the bleach used by the whispering cleaners. The cleaners sleep in the cupboard with all the bottles, mops and cloths and are not allowed to use the staff room. When the white ape catches them in there smiling at the television, he roars.
I take the caterers into the big washroom that is tiled to the ceiling and divided in two by a metal rail and shower curtain. There is a sink and toilet on one side and the other half has a floor that slopes to the plug grate under the big round shower head. Against the wall in the shower section is a wooden bench, bolted to the wall. The father drops his cases and mask on to the bench. His head is round and pink as the flavoured yeast the residents eat from square ration tins.
The son coils his chains on the bench and removes his hood too. He has a weasel face with many pimples among the scruffy whiskers on his chin. His tiny black eyes flit about and his thin lips curl away from long gums and two sharp teeth like he is about to laugh.
‘Luvverly,’ the father says, looking around the wash room. I notice the father has no neck.
‘Perfek,’ the weasel son adds, grinning and sniffing.
‘Your night boy asleep?’ the father asks. His fat body sweats under his smock and apron. His sweat smells of beef powder. Small and yellow and sharp, his two snaggle teeth are the same as the son’s. When he squints, his tiny red eyes sink into his face.
I nod.
‘Not for long,’ the weasel says, and then shuffles about, giggling. They both smell of sweat and old blood.
I shuffle towards the door.
‘Hang on. Hang on,’ the father says. ‘We need you to open that friggin’ door when we bring the meat in.’
‘Yeah,’ Weasel agrees, while he threads the chains through the brass eyes in the top of the sacks.
The father opens the cases on the bench. Stainless steel gleams under the yellow lights. His tools are carefully fitted into little trays. In his world of dirty trucks, old sacks, rusty chains and snaggle teeth, it surprises me to see his fat fingers become gentle on the steel of his tools.
With eyes full of glee, the weasel son watches his father remove the two biggest knives from a metal case. Weasel then unties the ribbon of the last sack with the hollow wooden sounds inside, and pulls out two thick clubs. He stands with a club in each hand, staring at me. He is pleased to see the horror on my little face. At the bottom of the clubs the wood is stained a dark colour and some bits have chipped off.
‘Go fetch ’em in,’ the father says, while he lays two cleavers with black handles on an oily cloth.
‘Right,’ the weasel son says.
We go back down the tiled corridor. I walk slowly because I am in no hurry to see the livestock. When Mrs Van den Broeck, the Director of Residents, announced the banquet, I decided I would show the livestock a friendly face before they were taken into the washroom; otherwise, the fat father and the weasel son would be the last people they would see in this world, before they were stuffed inside the sacks and chained up.
When we reach the courtyard, I remember what the fat father told me last time, about how the meat tastes better with bruises under the skin. That’s why they use the clubs. To tenderise the meat and get blood into the flesh. When he told me that, I wanted to escape from Gruut Huis and keep running into the poisonous mist until I fell down, until no one in the building could ever find me again. The residents don’t need to eat the fresh meats. Like the staff they can eat the soft yellow yeast from the tanks, but the residents are rich and can afford variety.
We go back into the courtyard. Above us some lights have come on in the flats. I can see the dark lumps of the resident’s heads watching from kitchen windows. And suddenly, from the East wing, the baboon child of Mr Hussein screams. It rips the smoky air apart. Weasel boy flinches. You never get used to the sound of the baboon child in the cage.
The weasel son rattles keys in his chain-mail hand. ‘We done a wedding last week. St Jan in de Meers.’
I can’t speak with all the churning in my tummy.
‘We done eight livestock for the barbecue. Da girl’s farver was loaded. Had a tent built and everything. Ya know, a Marquee. All in this garden, under a glass roof. Me and dad was up at five. They had fifty guests, like. We filled four ice-chests with fillets. Done the sausages the day before. For the kids, like.’
He finds the correct key and unlocks the back doors of the truck. Under his pig mask I know he is smiling. ‘We made a few shillings. There’s a few shillings to be
made at weddings in this part of town.’
When Weasel opens the back doors, I feel the hot air puff out of the truck. With it comes the smell of pee and sweat to mix with the chemical stink of the swirly air. Two small shapes are huddled at the far end of the truck, near the engine where it is warmer.
I walk away from the open doors of the truck and look up at the vapours. They drift and show little pieces of grey sky. There is a smudgy yellow stain where the sun must be. But you can never tell with the cloud so low. I wish I was in heaven.
‘C’mon ya shit-brains,’ Weasel shouts from inside the truck. He’s climbed in to get the livestock out. They never want to come out.
I cringe as if he is about to pull a lion out of the back. Through the white sides of the truck comes a bumping of bare feet on metal and then the chinka, chinka, chinka of a chain.
Weasel boy jumps out of the truck, holding a rope in both hands. ‘They as dumb as shit, but it’s like they know when this day is coming. Get outta there. Git! Git!’
Out of the back of the truck two pale yellowish figures stumble and then drop onto the misty slabs of the courtyard. They fall down and are yanked back to their feet by the weasel.
