The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 19

by Stephen Jones

  If I don’t go out hunting in the afternoon, then either I’ll nap a while or go do a little more sculpting. It only occurred to me to start that project a few weeks ago, and I’d like to get some more done before it starts to snow.

  At first, after the thing, it looked like everything just fell apart at once, that the change was done and dusted. Then it started to become clear it didn’t work that way, that there were waves. So, if you’d started to assume maybe something wasn’t going to happen, that wasn’t necessarily correct. Further precautions seemed like a good idea.

  Either way, by 5:00 p.m. the light’s starting to go and it’s time to close up the day. I’ll go out to the shed and cut a portion of something down for dinner, grab something of a plant or vegetable nature to go with it, or – every third day – open a can of corn. Got a whole lot of corn still, which figures, because I don’t really like it that much.

  I’ll cook the meat over the day’s third fire, straight away, before it gets dark, next to a final can of water – I really need to find myself another of those vacuum flasks, because not having warm coffee in the evening is what gets me closest to feeling down – and have that whole process finished as quick as I can.

  I’ve gotten used to the regime as a whole, but that portion of the day is where you can still find your heart beating, just a little. I grew up used to the idea that the dark wasn’t anything to fear, that nothing was going to come and do anything bad to you – from outside your house, anyway. Night meant quietness outside and nothing but forest sounds which – if you understood what was causing them – were no real cause for alarm. It’s not that way now, after the thing, and so that point in the schedule where you seal up the property and trust that your preparations, and the wires, are going to do their job, is where it all comes home. You recall the situation.

  Otherwise, apart from a few things like the nature of the food I eat, it’s really not so different to the way life was before. I understand the food thing might seem like a big deal, but really it isn’t. Waste not, want that – and yes, he said that too. Plenty other animals do it, and now isn’t the time for beggars to be choosers. That’s what we’re become, bottom line – animals, doing what’s required to get by, and there isn’t any shame in that at all. It’s all we ever were, if we’d stopped to think about it. We believed we had the whole deal nailed out pretty good, were shooting up in some pre-ordained arc to the sky. Then someone, somewhere, fucked up. I never heard an explanation that made much sense to me. People talked a lot about a variety of things, but then people always talked a lot, didn’t they? Either way, you go past Noqualmi cemetery now, or the one in Elum, and the ground there looks like Swiss cheese. A lot of empty holes, though there are some sites yet to burst out, later waves in waiting.

  Few of them didn’t get far past the gates, of course. I took down a handful myself, in the early days.

  I remember the first one I saw up here, too, a couple weeks after the thing. It came by itself, blundering slowly up the rise. It was nighttime, of course, so I heard it coming rather than seeing anything. First I thought it was someone real, was even dumb enough to go outside, shine a light, try to see who it was. I soon realized my error, I can tell you that. It was warmer then, and the smell coming off up the hill was what gave it away. I went back indoors, got the gun. Only thing I use it for now, as shells are at a premium. Everything else, I use a knife.

  Afterwards I had a good look, though I didn’t touch it. Poked it with a stick, turned it over. It really did smell awful bad, and they’re not something you’re going to consider eating – even if there wasn’t a possibility you could catch something off the flesh. I don’t know if there’s some disease to be caught, if that’s how it even works, but it’s a risk I’m not taking now or likely ever. I wrapped the body up in a sheet and dragged it a long, long way from the property. Do the same with any others that make it up here from time to time. Dump them in different directions, too, just in case. I don’t know what level of intelligence is at work, but they’re going to have to try harder at it if they ever hope to get to me – especially since I put in the wires.

  I have never seen any of them abroad during the day, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t, or won’t in the future. So wherever I go, I’m very careful. I don’t let smoke come out of my chimney, instead dispersing it out the doors and window – and only during the day. The wires go through to trips with bells inside the cabin. Not loud bells – no sense in broadcasting to one of them that they just shambled through something significant. The biggest danger is the shed, naturally – hence trying to make it airtight. Unlike just about everything else, however, that problem’s going to get easier as it gets colder. There’s going to come a point where I’ll be chipping dinner off with a chisel, but at least the danger of smell leaking out the cracks will drop right down to nothing.

  Once everything’s secured for the night, I eat my meal in the last of the daylight, with the last hot cup of coffee of the day. I set aside a little food for the morning. I do not stay up late.

  The windows are all covered with blackout material, naturally, but I still don’t like to take the risk. So I sit there in the dark for a spell, thinking things over. I get some of my best ideas under those conditions, in fact – there’s something about the lack of distraction that makes it like a waking dream, lets you think laterally. My latest notion is a sign. I’m considering putting one up, somewhere along one of the roads, that just says THIS WAY, and points. I’m thinking if someone came along and saw a sign like that, they’d hope maybe there was a little group of people along there, some folks getting organized, safety in numbers and that, and so they’d go along to see what’s what.

  And find me, waiting for them, a little way into the woods.

  I’ll not catch all of them – the smart guy in the car would have driven straight by, for example, though his girl might have had something to say on the subject – but a few would find my web. I have to think the idea through properly – don’t know for sure that the others can’t read, for example, though at night they wouldn’t be able to see the sign anyway, if I carve it the right way – but I have hopes for it as a plan. We’ll see.

  It’s hard not to listen out, when you’ve climbed in bed, but I’ve been doing that all my life. Listening for the wind, or for bears snuffling around, back when you saw them up here. Listening for the sound of footsteps coming slowly towards the door of the room I used to sleep in when I was a kid. I know the wires will warn me, though, and you can bet I’ve got my response to such a thing rigorously worked out.

  I generally do not have much trouble getting off to sleep, and that’s on account of the schedule as much as anything. It keeps me active, so the body’s ready for some rest come the end of day. It also gives me a structure, stops me getting het up about the general situation.

  Sure, it is not ideal. But, you know, it’s not that different on the day-to-day. I don’t miss the television because I never had one. Listening to the radio these days would only freak you out. Don’t hanker after company because there was never much of that after my father died. Might have been nice if the Ramona thing had worked out, but she didn’t understand the importance of the schedule, of thinking things through, of sticking to a set of rules that have been proven to work.

  She was kind of husky and lasted a good long time, though, so it’s not like there wasn’t advantages to the way things panned out. I caught her halfway down the hill, making a big noise about what she found in the shed. She was not an athletic person. Wasn’t any real possibility she was going to get away, or that she would have lasted long out there without me to guide her. What happened was for the best, except I broke the vacuum flask on the back of her head, which I have since come to regret.

  Otherwise I’m at peace with what occurred, and most other things. The real important thing is when you wake up, you know what’s what – that you’ve got something to do, a task to get you over the hump of remembering, yet again, what the worl
d’s come to. I’m lucky that way.

  The sculpting’s the one area I’d like to get ahead of. The central part is pretty much done – it’s coming up for three feet high, and I believe it would be hard to get up through that. But sometimes, when I’m lying in the dark waiting for sleep to come, I wonder if I shouldn’t extend that higher portion; just in case there’s a degree of tunnelling possible, sideways and then up. I want to be sure there’s enough weight, and that it’s spread widely enough over the grave.

  I owe my father a lot, when I think over it. In his way, through the things he said, he taught me a great deal of what it turned out I needed to know. I am grateful to him for that, I guess.

  But I still don’t want to see him again.

  SIMON KURT UNSWORTH

  The Church on the Island

  SIMON KURT UNSWORTH LIVES IN Lancaster in the north of England with his wife Wendy, young son Benjamin, two dogs and an apparently immortal fish. He has been a lecturer at university, a policy officer for a couple of local authorities and a support worker, but he currently works as a self-employed trainer and consultant specializing in health and social care, which kills the time between bouts of writing.

  His only publication previous to “The Church on the Island” was in a BBC online anthology of work inspired by M. R. James, although four of his stories have been accepted for publication in All Hallows, the journal of The Ghost Story Society.

  “ ‘The Church on the Island’ was almost entirely written during the course of a wonderful two-week holiday with Wendy on a small Greek island,” recalls Unsworth. “The view from the hotel took in a half-mile sweep of golden-sanded beach with a ruined temple at one end, a glorious blue bay and, in the middle of the bay, a tiny island with a small blue and white church on it.

  “Everyone I heard talking about the church said how beautiful it was, how nice it would be to go to a service there, or even better, to get married there. My first thought was, if the end of the world’s going to happen, it’ll start in somewhere just like that.

  “I have no idea if this is normal or not.”

  CHARLOTTE PULLED HERSELF onto the beach and pushed her hair back off her face in a cascade of water. She took a couple of deep breaths, quietly pleased by the fact that she was not more affected by her swim. As she let her heart rate and breathing settle, she untied the string from around her waist and freed her plastic sandals; they had spent the swim bobbing along at her side, gently tapping her thighs every now and again as if to remind her of their existence. Now, she let them fall to the floor and slid her feet into them. Water squeezed under her feet and around her toes, spilling out onto the wet sand. Then, walking away from the sea, she let her eyes rise to the object of her visit: the little blue and white church.

  Charlotte had seen the church the first time she had looked out from her hotel room window. Perhaps half a mile out from shore, nestling into the vibrant blue sea, was a tiny island. It seemed to be little more than an upthrust of grey rock from the ocean, its flanks covered in scrubby green foliage. Its lower slopes looked gentle, but there was a central outcrop of rock that appeared almost cubic, as though cut by some giant hand with a dull knife. This mass was settled on to the centre of the island as though the same hand that had cut it had placed it down, forcing it into the earth like a cake decoration into icing. Its sides were almost vertical and striated with dark fissures and it looked to be fifty or sixty feet tall, although Charlotte found it hard to judge this accurately and changed her mind every time she gazed at it.

  The church was in front of the outcrop, tiny and colourful against the doleful grey of the rock face. Its walls were a startling white with blue edging, the roof a wash of the same blue. By squinting, Charlotte could just make out a door in the front of the building and a cross, set at the front of the roof. At night, the church was lit by a pale yellow light that flickered in time with the wind; Charlotte assumed that oil lamps hung around its exterior. The light made its walls shimmer and stand out starkly against the grey stone mass behind it. The mass itself loomed even more at night, rearing and blocking out the stars in the Greek darkness. It gave the impression of being man-made; the crags and fissures became the battlements of a castle, abandoned and decaying but resisting a final collapse with bleak force. It, too, appeared lit at its base by the same yellowing illumination. Charlotte never saw anyone light the lamps.

  In fact, as hard and as often as she looked (and she spent long periods of time simply staring at the island, to Roger’s irritation), she only ever saw one person at the church, and then only for a fleeting moment. A shadow framed in the doorway, seen in the corner of her eye as she turned away, that was gone by the time she turned back. It had to be a person, she told herself. Someone lights the lamps, and the church is well cared-for. Its sides (the two that she could see from her hotel balcony, at least) were the white of freshly painted stone or brick, and the blue roof and trim were neat and well defined. The low wall that surrounded the church corralled ground that was clear of plants or noticeable litter. It was curiously entrancing, this little blue and white building with its domed roof and dark doorway, and Charlotte studied it for hours.

  It was Roger that put the idea in her head. “Why don’t you swim out there?” he asked on about the third day of their holiday. “If you see it up close, you might stop staring at it all the time.”

  Charlotte could hear the irritation in his voice, but also the joking tone. She knew he was simply trying to draw her attention back to him and their break together, but the idea took hold in her mind and would not let go. The next day, she said to him, “It’s not that far, is it? And the sea’s fairly calm around here.”

  “You’re serious?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she said, and couldn’t help adding, “It was your idea, after all.”

  Charlotte planned the Great Swim (as Roger had taken to sarcastically calling it) for the second week of their break. It gave her time to get used to swimming in the sea, to feel the way it pulled and pushed at her. It also gave her the opportunity to ask around about the little church, but no one seemed to know anything about it. The holiday company representative merely shrugged, and the locals looked at her blankly when she asked. One said, “It is just an old church,” and looked at Charlotte as though she were mad, but it wasn’t. It was not old, not to look at anyway. This apparent disinterest in the church, which made Roger more dismissive of her plan, only strengthened her resolve and by the morning of the swim, she was determined to reach it, to feel its stonework for herself.

  The path from the beach to the church was steeper than it had looked from the mainland and Charlotte had to scramble and grasp at plants and roots to support her on her ascent. The climb was more tiring than the swim and she reached the top grateful that she had not needed to go further. Grit had worked its way into her sandals and her feet felt hot and scratched by the time she reached her destination and her hands were grimy and sore. When she placed her hands on the top of the low wall and felt the heat of the sun on the rock and saw the church, however, all her aches were forgotten.

  Close to, the building was even prettier than she expected. She wanted to walk straight to it, to marvel at its simple beauty, but before she could she had to deal with Roger. Standing by the wall, she turned back towards the beach. Across the strip of blue sea (I swam that, she thought proudly), the wedge of golden sand gleamed in the late morning sun. She located Roger’s tiny, frail form by finding the hut that sold fresh fruit and cold drinks and looking just in front of it, the way they had arranged. There, besides a family group, sat Roger. She raised one arm in greeting and saw him do the same in return. At least now he would not worry and might even start to relax a little.

  Ah, Roger, she thought, what are we going to do with you? Back home, his constant attentiveness was flattering. Here, its focus unbroken by time apart for work and without the diluting presence of other friends, it had become claustrophobic. She could not move, it seemed, without him asking i
f she was all right or if she wanted anything. The Great Swim had appealed, in part at least, because it gave her time away from him. He was neither a strong enough swimmer nor adventurous enough to want to do it with her, and although she felt a little guilty at taking advantage of his weakness, she revelled in the freedom that it gave her. She could not see their relationship continuing after they returned home and although this made her sad, it was a distant sadness rather than a raw grief.

  Roger hopefully placated, Charlotte turned again to the church. The path up from the beach had brought her out directly facing the door, which hunched inside a shadowed patch surrounded by a neat blue border. There was a simple wooden step up to the door. Around it, the wall was plain, white-painted stonework. Instead of approaching, however (worried that she might find the door locked and that her little adventure would end too soon and in disappointment), Charlotte went around to the far side of the building.

  As she came around the church’s flank, Charlotte saw that one of her assumptions about the place had been wrong; she had expected that it was built on a little plateau (possibly man-made?) and entirely separate from the rocky outcrop that glowered behind it. It was not: the rear of the church was built up against the base of the natural cliff. Going closer, she saw that the mortar that joined the church’s wall to the cliff was spread thickly so that no gaps remained. Under the skin of the paint, different sized stones had been used to ensure that the wall fitted as snugly as possible; she could see the irregular lattice of them.

  The wall itself was plain except for a single dark window of quartered glass set just below the roof. The window was low enough for Charlotte to be able to see through if she went close, as the building was only single-storey. Along from the window, a metal and glass lamp hung from a bracket, and she gave a little private cheer. Her assumption about the nighttime lights had, at least, been correct. She resisted the temptation to look through the window for the same reason that she had not tried the door; she wanted to save the inside of the building for as long as possible. Instead, she turned away from the church to look at the land around it.