Best British Horror 2014

by Johnny Mains

  ‘How long do you have?’

  ‘About a hundred and fifteen thousand words.’

  He stared at me. ‘You’re in a novel?’

  ‘I’m the protagonist, dude.’

  ‘Shit.’

  I shrugged. He sat back in his chair, caught between envy and resentment. ‘Jesus, then you don’t know you’re born. I’m only in a short story, and even by the standards of the form, it’s pretty fucking brief. Three thousand words. Whole thing takes place right here in this Starbucks. I don’t even get to go out the door. I don’t know shit about the city. I can see it, through that the window, but that’s all I get.’

  ‘Hell,’ I said. ‘That’s tough.’

  ‘Tough is right. And look at what I’m wearing.’

  I’d already noticed his clothes were nondescript. Jeans. A shirt in some indeterminate colour. Shoes that I couldn’t even see. ‘Pretty vague.’

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘I don’t have a coat because I don’t do anything but be in here and so he didn’t bother to describe one, not even a thin jacket hanging over the back of my chair, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘That’s understandable,’ I said. ‘He can’t be bogging down with extraneous details, not at your kind of word length. Plus if he did mention a coat, people might assume it was going to become relevant at some point and get pissed off when it wasn’t. Any good editor would pick him up on it, blue line it out.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe so. But it gets cold in here, come the middle of the night.’

  I thought about that, and about the idea of being trapped in one location forever, pinned to one small location for eternity. It made me feel cold too.

  ‘I’m going to find the guy,’ I said. ‘Tell him I’m grateful for being – though some pretty harsh things happen to me, especially in back story – but I’d like some broader horizons now.’

  ‘Find him? How the hell do you hope to do that?’

  I shrugged. Again. I shrug a lot. ‘By searching the city – the parts of it he knows, at least. That’s what I’m doing now. It’s how I ran into you. Which is something that’s never happened to me before, and that makes me think that I’m achieving something, at least.’

  ‘But what are the odds of banging into him?’

  ‘Not good. I know that. But weren’t there any co-incidences in your story?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Things that were kind of convenient, that helped drive the plot forward without too much hard work?’

  He thought about it. ‘Not really.’

  ‘There were in mine. Small things, he didn’t take the piss with it, but –’

  ‘“Take the piss”? What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘See, that’s interesting. We don’t say that here, do we? It’s a British expression, I think. I’m supposed to be American born and bred, yet once in a while I’ll say something that’s a little bit off.’

  ‘Maybe the guy is British, but sets his stuff here in the US. Blame the copyeditor for not picking up on it.’

  ‘Could be. But my point is that while he didn’t fall back on any whopper co-incidences, he was happy to ease the way every now and then with a combination of circumstances that was a little convenient.’

  ‘I guess in a novel you have to, maybe. My thing, it happens in real time, so he didn’t need to resort to that kind of kludge.’

  ‘Right. But given that I’m driving this story, I’m hoping that my rules apply. And so it’s possible, if I keep walking, there’s a small co-incidence out there waiting to happen. Like meeting you.’

  I waited for him to think about this. It was strange, but also exciting, to be dealing with someone new, completely new, who wasn’t subservient to my protagonist status. It felt as though doors might be opening. I didn’t know where they’d lead, but I was starting to think I could find them. If I believed enough. Maybe I could make it back to Westerford after all, that leafy town upstate where I’d been for those brief chapters. I could start a new life, do new things. Perhaps I could even get to the beach down in Florida featured in a small flashback. That would be great, but actually anywhere would do. Somewhere new. A place I could stretch my wings and find some other way to be.

  The guy was frowning at me. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You stopped talking. Just sat there looking intense.’

  ‘Sorry. I had a stretch of interior monologue. Slightly lyrical. Takes a while to get through.’

  ‘I guess you first-person guys get a lot of that. Me, I’m in third. I just do stuff, pretty much.’

  ‘So let’s do stuff,’ I said. ‘Let’s get out of this generic coffee house and go looking for him.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  He looked sheepish. ‘I don’t think I can leave here. I’ve never been through that door. My whole life, I’ve been in here. I think that’s it for me.’

  ‘Have you ever tried? Gone up to the door and pulled on the handle and seen what happens?’

  He looked down at his feet. ‘Well, no. I’m just supposed to do what I do, right?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ I said. ‘I’ve spent longer with the guy than you, remember. I think he kind of likes it when one of us does something off our own bat. There was a minor character in my book, he dies in the end, but he sometimes got the chance to go do his own thing, and the writer would work around it. Maybe you’re the same way.’

  ‘I don’t want to die in the end.’

  ‘No, of course. Not saying that’s going to happen. Just . . . if you’re like me, if you’re the narrator, the audience knows you’re going to live – unless the guy’s prepared to do something tricksy or flip into unreliable narrator at the end. So there’s a set arc for me, and I kind of have to stick to it, because I manifest the story and vice versa and he can’t screw with that. But with the more minor characters – no offense – he can let them roam free a little more, see where they end up.’

  ‘‘Unreliable narrator’? What the hell is that?’

  ‘It’s a literary term. Not sure how I know it, given that I used to be a cop, but . . .’

  The guy looked nervous. ‘You’re a cop?’

  ‘No. Ex-cop. That way he could short-hand me as a tough guy with certain skill sets and a troubled past, without having to do much actual research, or getting stuck with writing a police procedural.’

  ‘That’s a relief. My character’s not a very nice guy, I don’t think. There’s a pervading sense of guilt throughout, though it’s never clear what for.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I’m not going to arrest you, even if I still could. Come on. Let’s go.’

  I stood, and waited for him to follow suit.

  ‘I just don’t think I can, dude,’ he muttered, looking wretched. ‘I look out that window and all I see is two-dimensional.’

  We turned and looked together. The light outside was beginning to fade. ‘Barely even that,’ he said. ‘It’s just two sentences, to me. “It was cold and grey and flat outside”. And “A couple of leaves zigzagged slowly down from the tree along the sidewalk, falling brown and gold and dead”. That’s it.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, pointing. Two leaves were doing just what he’d said, and it did look cold out there, and the light was grey and flat.

  ‘Every day,’ he said. ‘Every day they do that.’

  ‘So evidently what happens out there is your domain, at least to a degree. You could –’

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t do it. I’m sorry.’

  I felt bad for him, and realized how lucky I was. ‘I’ll come back,’ I said. ‘I have to keep looking, but I will come back.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Sure. I know where you live, right? And you’re in this new story now, too. That’s something, at least. You branched out
. You’re recurring.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess. Though I’m still stuck in the same place.’

  ‘I’ll come back tomorrow.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, shyly. ‘That . . . that would be cool.’

  We shook hands. ‘The name’s John.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘So’s mine.’

  I laughed. ‘Guess we were never supposed to wind up on the same pages. Never mind. We’ll cope. I’m going to find the guy, and when I do, we’ll talk.’

  ‘Good luck,’ he smiled.

  I felt jealous. I’d never been allowed to do that. I have to say things, or ask them. Shout them, once in a while. I can’t ‘smile’ them. There’s tougher editing on the novels than with the short stories, I guess, or a more restrictive house style. Though . . . right now I was in a short, wasn’t I?

  ‘Thanks,’ I smiled, and took off my coat. ‘Here.’

  ‘Don’t you need it?’

  ‘I’ve got an apartment. There are closets. I’ve never looked inside, but there must be something. Worst case I can put on a sweater or another shirt.’

  ‘Thanks, man.’

  When I got to the door I heard him wish me luck again. I turned back and winked.

  ‘Thanks. And keep the faith, my friend.’

  When I stepped outside onto the sidewalk, however, everything changed. I knew right away that a decision had been made. It’s happened to me before. I stroll aimlessly through a chapter, with lots of thinking and not much doing, and then suddenly there’s a blank line break and the next event arrives.

  I noticed a man on the other side of the street. He was wandering along, slowly, aimlessly, smoking a cigarette. He glanced across at the Starbucks I’d just left and I could see him wondering if he could face yet another coffee. There wasn’t so much traffic, but what there was, was moving fast enough that he’d have to go back to the corner to cross. It was enough to make him decide it wasn’t worth it.

  I’d never seen the man before, but I knew who he was. I knew I’d found him.

  I thought it again, for emphasis.

  I knew.

  He looked a little like me and also a little like the guy I’d just left in the Starbucks, the other John. A bit shorter, and a little older, with a touch of grey in the temples. Less distinctive overall. He looked tired, too. Jet-lagged, was my guess. Come over from London for a meeting with his publisher and some research, doggedly using his first day in the city to walk the streets. Not for him, I knew, the hours of reading or scanning the Internet or using Google Streetview. He liked to do his research with his feet, wanted to get to know the city through the miles he moved through it.

  Suddenly I realized what this could mean.

  The writer could merely be reminding himself of these streets for the sake of it, because that’s what he always did and it was better than lurking in his hotel room. Or it could merely wind up as background in another short story.

  But . . . it could also be that there was a sequel in the works. A sequel to my book.

  He could be considering doing it, at least. He didn’t normally. He usually came up with a new bunch of characters for each book, which was why we ended up in such fixed and limited worlds, without a future. But maybe he was clueing in to the fact that many readers don’t want to sit through the wheel being reinvented each time, but would prefer to settle back into a recurring set of characters like a comfortable old chair.

  The more I thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. I’d always felt that there were elements in my story that hadn’t been tied up as satisfyingly as they could have. I’d been left on a cautiously upbeat note, but there was a lot more to be said.

  Maybe he was going to do it.

  Maybe there was going to be more.

  I felt myself smiling. Meanwhile the writer ground to a halt, looking up and down the street. I saw his eyes lighting on this and that – store fronts, fire escapes, passers-by – absorbing everything without noticing, passing it down to the part of his mind that stored these snippets of local color for later use.

  I turned away, not wanting him to see my face. When I’d left the apartment that morning, a meeting had been exactly what I wanted. Now I didn’t. I didn’t want to run the risk of derailing him. I wanted whatever was going through his head to run its course, just in case there was a chance that I was right.

  I heard a noise behind me.

  I turned to see the guy from the Starbucks, the other John. He was standing in the doorway of the coffee shop, and the sound he’d made was a grunt of disbelief.

  He’d done it. He’d tried the door, and opened it.

  He stepped cautiously out onto the sidewalk. ‘Holy crap, John,’ he said, seeing me. ‘Look!’

  ‘You did it, man.’

  The joy I felt was partly for him, but mainly for myself. He’d come out because of me, after all. I’d met him and I’d changed things. If that much was possible, then maybe everything else was too. Perhaps the writer was considering a sequel precisely because I’d started to prove myself capable of independent movement, worthy of further development.

  Maybe I was even going to be a series.

  The other John was staring around in wonder. He took a couple of steps up the sidewalk. He turned and looked back the other way. Another pair of leaves came zigzagging gently down from the tree, falling brown and golden.

  He reached out and grabbed one, crumpling it in his hands. ‘I did that,’ he shouted. ‘I did that!’

  ‘Way to go,’ I said.

  He waved his hands in the air triumphantly, still shouting. He was making a lot of noise now. Enough that it reached across the street, evidently . . .

  . . . because at that moment, the writer looked up.

  He saw John, of course. John was the guy making all the noise, dancing around on the sidewalk, brandishing a crushed leaf in his hand.

  The writer frowned, cigarette halfway to his mouth, as though something about John struck him, but he wasn’t sure what. It could be that he was merely wondering if he could use the guy in something, not realizing that he already had.

  But then his eyes skated past John, and landed on me. And he froze.

  He knew who I was.

  He was bound to, I guess. I’d recognized him immediately, after all, and he’d spent nearly a year with me inside his head, every day, every working hour. Could be that he’d already been thinking about me, too, moments before, if he genuinely was considering pulling me out of the backlist for another turn in the light, as I hoped.

  He kept on looking at me. He blinked.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘You’re Michael, right?’

  He started to back away up the street.

  I was confused – this was the last thing I’d expected – but then I realized. He was scared. I’d assumed he’d understand how things work, but maybe not. I guess these guys just put down the words and chase their deadlines, not realizing what comes to life between the sentences that come out of their heads in torrents or fits and starts.

  He thought he was losing his mind.

  ‘No, it’s okay,’ I said, hurrying up my side of the street, trying to catch up with him. There were too many people and so I darted across the road instead.

  ‘Go away,’ he said, between clenched teeth, hurrying backwards as I got closer. His eyes were wide. ‘Go away.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, trying to sound soothing. ‘I got no problem with you. Not any more. I . . . I think I know why you’re here. And that’s cool. It’s great, in fact. I don’t want to freak you out. I just wanted to say “hi”, and, you know, wish you good luck.’

  ‘You are not real,’ he hissed, and kept backing away – but he realized he was right up against a crossroads, and had to stop. ‘I am very tired, that’s all.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘That’s all it is. And I just happen t
o look a little like a guy you wrote. Look, we’ll go our separate ways. It’s the way it should be. But let’s at least shake hands, okay? No hard feelings. And, you know, obviously I love your work.’

  I raised my right hand. His eyes got wider still.

  I realized my hand felt cold and heavy, and when I glanced down at it I remembered that actually, I had found my gun before I left the apartment. It seemed like he was prepared to go down the unreliable narrator route after all. I tried to throw it away, to prove I was harmless, but it wouldn’t leave my hand.

  ‘Michael,’ I said, trying to sound reassuring. ‘It’s okay. You know me – I’m not a killer. I’m basically a good person. More sinned against than sinning, like all your protagonists. Just ignore the gun, okay?’

  But he’d started to back away again, so scared now that he’d forgotten where he was standing, and he stepped back into the road and lost his balance and a cab came around the corner and smacked straight into him.

  I haven’t been back to the Starbucks in Soho. I said I would, and I will, but I haven’t yet. I don’t know what to say to John. I don’t know how to explain what happened. I don’t want to have to describe how it felt to look down at the writer’s head on the street, with all the blood leaking out of it, or to watch his eyes as they went from clear to glassy to frosted. I don’t want to admit to the fact that I was the author of that event.

  I also don’t want to see John yet because afterwards I tracked down one of the writer’s story collections. I found it in the discount section in a Borders. Borders may be history in the real world – more’s the pity – but my novel was set back in 2006, so for me they’re still around. I found the short story John’s in, and I read it. It’s pretty good, but it’s kind of spooky and heads toward a dark, bad conclusion. I don’t want to have to explain to John that he dies in the end after all, or why that may be better than being me.

  Because . . . I do not.

  I do not die. I walk these streets and these pages forever, and there will never be a sequel now.