The Best New Horror 2

by Ramsay Campbell

  I poured in a lovely big dollop of coconut oil bubble bath. Watching it swirl pearl and creamy through the water, I forgot a while about my crunched car and the angry man with the white hair. The angry white man with the white car.

  After hanging my clothes up, I gratefully stepped into the smoking bubbles and got comfortable. A few heavy blinks later, I was sound asleep.

  I dreamt I was in an unknown city, gray and sad enough on first sight and smell to be something Eastern, most probably Communist. Sofia or Prague, a foreign city in the truest sense of the word. A city of quiet, and anonymous pain. I had never been there, that was sure. More surprising was my companion. Tightly holding my hand was a little boy I didn’t know: an albino dressed in blue jeans and a blue blazer, red sneakers, and a red St Louis Cardinals baseball cap.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bruce Beetz.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Seven.”

  “Do you know where we’re going?”

  He frowned. “You’re supposed to be taking me home.”

  “Where is that?”

  He started to cry. I squeezed his hand and tried to smile reassuringly. But I really had no idea where we were or who he was, besides the little boy version of the man whose car I’d just hit.

  The whole dream was so strange and ludicrous that I woke up laughing. I often fall asleep in the tub and haven’t drowned yet, but waking with a giggle is not me.

  I looked around the room with tired hot eyes, refocusing on what I’d lost to sleep. Nothing had changed around me. Then I looked in the tub. Floating there among the white bubbles was a little white plastic car—a Fiat Uno, just like Bruce Beetz’s. Without touching it, I could see the front bumper had been carefully bent into the same twist as that of its big, real brother.

  Terror.

  A heart that shakes you like a tree in a storm warns that whatever word you hold on your tongue may be your last. So savor it and know it is the right one before you use it.

  Terror.

  The toy car terrified me. It was impossible, funny, the worst kind of threat. Had the white man actually come into my bathroom while I was sleeping and put it in my bath? Put it there when I was dreaming of holding his young hand in that strange and distant city?

  Worse, was he still in my apartment?

  Single women must take care of themselves these days. I keep two guns in my apartment, paranoid as that sounds. One under the bathtub, one behind my bed. They’re licensed and I have practiced with them enough so that I know how to shoot someone if it is necessary.

  Making sure the door was closed (it had been before I got into the tub), I dried myself quickly and slid my jeans and T-shirt on. The gun under the bath-tub is a thirty-eight and heavy in the hand. It is always loaded.

  Cocking it, I crossed the room and opened the door. My heart was again banging on my chest’s door.

  I walked on tiptoe through the apartment. No one was there. I think I expected that, but it was wonderful knowing for sure. I looked in every hiding place, closet, under my bed . . . before saying “Okay.”

  When I was in the bathroom again a shiver went up my back like a cold fingernail. The albino had been in that room when I was asleep. Close enough to reach over and drop a toy car into my bathwater.

  Even his seeing me naked wasn’t as disturbing somehow as the idea of a white, white hand touching and getting wet from the water I was lying in.

  The phone rang.

  I picked up the extension next to the sink. “Anthea Powell?”

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “A dead white Fiat. Remember? The guy you hit? The car in your tub? Me.”

  I still had the gun in my hand. I put it against the receiver, as if it might help.

  “What do you want? What were you doing in my house?”

  “You fucked up my car, Anthea. I’m collecting for that.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “What’s mine. You owe me a lot of money.”

  “Then find out how much it’ll cost to fix. Tell me and we’ll figure something out.”

  “I don’t want it fixed. I want a new one, Anthea. Buy me a new car and I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous: I dented your front end.”

  “I want a new car, Anthea.”

  “Don’t threaten me, Bruce. I remember your name. Don’t forget I can call the police and tell them about this. Threatening phone calls, breaking into people’s houses. . . . It wouldn’t be hard finding you. I don’t think there are too many albinos in town named Bruce Beetz!”

  He laughed. “Brucey! You think that’s my name? He’s dead, honey. That driver’s license I showed? It lapsed three months ago because old Bruce ‘lapsed’ then, too. I took it off his body and had it changed a little. He died in a car accident. Strange coincidence, huh?

  “Do what I say, Anthea, or I’ll eat your fucking face.” He hung up.

  I didn’t sleep much that night. What dreams I had were all in black and white and took place in the new unknown city.

  Young Bruce Beetz and I walked the De Chirico-lit streets—snow-white or cut in half by punishing, unforgiving shadows that scythed things into either light or darkness and nothing in between.

  Nothing special happened and there was very little conversation. But I remember we were more comfortable with each other because I seemed to know where I was going. The boy sensed that and didn’t whine or cry when I lost my way or got confused.

  “What’s your real name? You lied before; it’s not Bruce.”

  He put his small hands over his face and laughed a lovely naughty kid’s laugh.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “Not at all. What is your name?”

  “John Cray.” He kept his hand in front of his face.

  “Are you telling the truth this time?”

  The hands dropped. He looked indignant. “Yes, John Cray. That’s my name!”

  Waking, I looked across the bed and saw a book lying on the pillow a few inches away. Too nervous, I hadn’t read anything before falling asleep the night before. Grabbing the book, I tried to read the title through foggy, morning eyes: I’M COMING TO GET YOU.

  It was a large-format children’s book with little text but lots of pictures. I read it. A monster from another planet comes to Earth to eat a little boy. The story had a funny, sweet ending I would have loved if I’d read it in a different context. But I didn’t own any children’s books. And I hadn’t read this one in bed last night. I’M COMING TO GET YOU.

  When I finished, I put the book down and looked out the window. What could I do? Call the police and report a nonexistent “Bruce Beetz” who was terrorizing me? Pay him off for an accident he was partially responsible for? Wait for his next crazy move? What was his way of “eating [my] fucking face”?

  The phone book. John Cray! Everything that had happened in the last twelve hours was so cuckoo, why not look in the phone book for the name of a little boy in a black and white dream?

  There were two John Crays and one J. Cray listed. It was early Sunday morning. Time enough to track them all down and see.

  I picked up the phone and dialed the first. The voice that answered was obviously black and not whom I was looking for, but I wanted to hear him say more than just “no”, so . . .

  “Is this John Crayon?”

  “Crayon? No, John Cray, lady, John Tyrone Cray. What kinda name is that, Crayon? You think this is Sesame Street? You got yourself a wrong number, Big Bird.” He laughed and hung up.

  The next Cray number in the book was answered by a brittle-voiced old woman who said her husband, John had died six months ago.

  I dialed J. Cray not expecting much. Another woman’s voice answered.

  “May I speak with John Cray, please?”

  “He’s not here now. Would you like to leave a message?”

  “No, I’ll call later.” I smiled and hung up.

  After puttering around the apartme
nt for some hours, I went out to eat at my favorite restaurant.

  Sunday brunch at Chez Uovo is a nice way to spend seven dollars. Go there a few times and soon they’re greeting you like one of the gang and giving you free dessert if one of their fine pies is fresh out of the oven or you’re looking sad.

  I liked to sit by the window and watch the silent sidewalk traffic outside. Since it was midafternoon the place was half empty. Almost as soon as I sat down at my customary table, Walter, the headwaiter, came over and put a drink down in front of me.

  “What’s this?”

  “I’m not supposed to tell you, Anthea. You’re just supposed to drink it and be surprised.”

  I looked at the drink and smiled. It was a kir, but hooked on the side of the glass was a wedge of lime: my favorite drink in the world, although very few knew that. The last person I’d told was my old boyfriend, Victor Dixon. Was he here?

  “Who sent it, Walter?”

  “I’m not supposed to tell you that either, but I will. The guy at the bar in the great Gaultier jacket.”

  I looked up and saw a man at the bar, his back turned to me. He had dark hair and wore a cranberry-red jacket with black Cyrillic letters across the bottom. It was show-offy but wonderful, too. Victor Dixon never wore snazzy clothes.

  “Who is he, Walter?”

  “I don’t know. He just ordered the drink and said you’d like it. Gave me five bucks to make it. Toodle-oo.” Walter sauntered away, whistling the song “Love Is in the Air.”

  Who was he? How did he know about my secret, loved drink? All the time I waited for him to turn around, I felt a hot, sexy stone of expectation in my stomach. But he didn’t turn and didn’t turn. Finally I got annoyed waiting. He was mysterious and this scene was sexy, but I don’t like long games, so I went back to looking out the window.

  “May I join you?”

  I turned and, taken aback by his sudden closeness, saw only the straight dark hair and aviator sunglasses. No, he had a good chin, too. A strong square chin.

  “How did you know I like kir with lime?” He took off the sunglasses. It was Bruce Beetz.

  “I know a lot about you, Anthea. You keep your diaphragm in a purple plastic case on the night table next to the bed. Eat only ‘Bumblebee’ brand tuna, and snore just a little when you sleep. Want to know anything else? Your father’s name is Corkie. Corcoran Powell. Mother’s dead, one brother and two sisters. I know a lot about you, Anthea.”

  “Why?”

  He smiled, shrugged. “I have to know things about my people.”

  “Why am I one of your people, John?”

  He stopped smiling. It was my turn.

  “That’s your name, isn’t it? John Cray.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  My hand was shaking in my lap. I tightened it hard, then relaxed. “Because I dreamed you. I don’t know if you came out of my dream or went into it.”

  He stood up. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Where’s your white hair, John Cray? Did it go away with Bruce Beetz?”

  He stuck his finger out at me. “I studied you! I know a lot about you, Anthea!”

  I shrugged, smiled. “So our accident wasn’t an accident?”

  He cut the air with his finger. “We don’t make mistakes. We’re always right with the people we choose!”

  “Maybe I’m not people.”

  Walter watched Cray leave, then came over.

  “That was a fast romance. What’d you tell him, Anthea, you got AIDS?”

  I drank the last of the kir and held up the glass for another one. “Something like that. Did you ever see him before, Walter?”

  “Nope. But he’s certainly a good-looking guy.”

  “You mean good-looking woman.”

  Walter looked truly surprised. “No! I am a champion at guessing who’s who these days. You cannot tell me that was a woman, Anthea.”

  I nodded and pushed my glass at him. “It was a woman. She works hard at not being one, but if you look and listen hard enough, you can tell.”

  “Your ‘John Cray’ is really Joanne Cray. She lives with another lez named Petra Hackett. Probably the one on the bicycle that night. They got setup situations like that that they’ve used before. Both of them are old actresses who didn’t make it. So now the two of them got a good business terrifying people into doing whatever they want. It’s a profitable approach these days.”

  “Terrify like how?”

  He crossed his legs and took another of my cigarettes. “Like you name it. Big Push mostly.”

  “What’s ‘Big Push’?”

  “Blackmail. I heard they kidnapped a kid once, but that’s only hearsay. They specialize in scaring people into doing things. Like what they tried with you.” He laughed and sat back in his chair. “Jesus, if they only knew who they were fucking with, huh?”

  I straightened my skirt and pushed hair back over my ear. “What else?”

  He looked at the pad on his knee. “Neither of them has a record because they got so many disguises. Most people think they’re men! They also change cities all the time, move around a lot. But they got a good reputation.”

  “Are they for us? Are you sure?”

  “They are absolutely for us. No question about it.”

  I nodded he could go. He got right up. “Can I do anything else for you, Ms Powell?” He was always eager to do more, one of his few nice qualities. Otherwise just another snoopy little rat who worked for me when I’d let him.

  “No thank you. I’ll be in touch.”

  He bowed, hat in hand, and left.

  I sat back in my chair and looked out the window. I wanted to see for myself before I took them in. Other people’s opinions aren’t always my own. I liked the car in the tub and the book on the bed, but those might have been only inspired moments—the tenor who once reaches high C but then spends the rest of his career trying unsuccessfully to do it again. True inspiration isn’t luck—it’s genius. Only geniuses got in.

  So I watched them. Bruce Beetz/John/Joanne Cray liked sexy stuff. Pick up people in a bar as a man, take them home either alone or to Peter (Petra), then pull some stunt there that was both hot and embarrassing to the unsuspecting victim. Simple stuff—take some photographs, then a few days later threaten to wave them around like the Libyan flag if the person didn’t do what they asked.

  More interesting, however, was the girls didn’t always want money or the more obvious things. Sometimes it was simple humiliation. They made a snooty woman walk naked through a shopping mall and get arrested for indecent exposure. One poor man had to make an obvious pass at his son, thus ruining a lifelong wonderful relationship in a few hellish moments.

  One afternoon sitting in my car outside their apartment building, I fell asleep and dreamed again of the child and the mysterious city. Only this time there were two children— Joanne Cray and Petra Hackett. Both held my hands and we walked happily through the anonymous, uninteresting streets.

  “How much longer is it, Anthea?”

  “Soon, Joanne. A few more blocks, I think.”

  “And I get to come, too?”

  “Sure. Joanne asked and I said yes.”

  Joanne looked at Petra and walked around me to put her arm around her friend.

  “Anthea always keeps her word.” The two of them looked at me and smiled. I smiled back.

  I know I am not a good storyteller. I could be, but it doesn’t interest me. I purposely leave things out or ignore others if they don’t interest me. I tell jokes terribly.

  Anyway, this voice bores me. I am not Anthea Powell, although a real woman’s similar fear and weakness interest me (and always incite others). I have pretended to be her often when I come here on my . . . trips. A middle-aged woman with a heart condition is a marvelous disguise. I have used her for hundreds of years. A good thing lasts forever! Like my slimy little detective. He is disgusting but efficient. And I did not even need to create him because he has been around as long
as I. Loves his job, too. Loves finding all the boring dirt and gossip about people, loves the snooping, the setting up, the trap.

  Are you confused? Good! Stick with me a while longer and you’ll know everything. I could have held all this till the end. But I want you frowning now, knowing something is very wrong with your parachute even before actually pulling the cord and praying it opens. P.S. It won’t.

  I watched them for weeks. Both women were very good at telling the world things don’t make sense and cruelty often comes in new colors. It is a talent, but there are more and more people who have it these days. Only the wrong survive. . . . Maybe it’s like Hollywood in the Thirties—a lot of beautiful women dyed their hair like Lana Turner and sat around Schwab’s waiting to be discovered, but very few of them ever got in the movies.

  When I’d seen enough, I killed Petra Hackett. She wasn’t as good at it as her lover and there really was only space for one. I killed her in their apartment while Joanne was away for the weekend.

  When she returned on Sunday night, she found the table set with all their silver and linen and best crystal. I’d made a five-course dinner centered around a twenty-five-pound turkey. Petra sat in her chair in a mauve silk dress with the perfectly cooked, still-smoking turkey stuck over her head.

  But Joanne passed the test with flying colors! She walked in and very coolly looked at the ruin of her life. I came out of the kitchen wearing a chef’s cap and carrying the mince pie.

  “Are you hungry? There’s so much food.”

  She looked at me. “She’s dead?”

  “Choked on a Fiat.” I pointed to my neck. “A little white one got stuck in her throat.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Anthea Powell! One of your victims, Joanne!”

  She smiled sadly. “I didn’t do such good research this time, did I?”

  I clapped my hands to my face. Mock dismay. “Just the opposite! You hit the jackpot this time. That’s why you did what you did, all along. You two were looking for me! Want to come see?”