The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 17

by Stephen Jones

  No static, no signal fade, just sudden and instant station loss.

  He’d have hit the other pre-sets for an alternative had he not realized at that exact moment that the silence was more profound than merely the absence of music. His engine had stopped too.

  “Shit!” he said. His hands flexed instinctively on the wheel. His foot stabbed instinctively in the direction of the brake – but he managed to resist the impulse to slam on and instead tapped at the pedal gently to ease back the momentum that was all that was moving the car.

  The lights were still on, thank Christ, so he could guide the car onto the shoulder as it continued to slow down. It took about half a minute for it to coast to a perfectly safe stop. Perfectly safe, but come on – the fuck was up with this? Jackson put the car in park and turned the key back to the off position.

  Oh man. It was really dark without the lights. Jackson felt a sudden stab of unfocussed anxiety and forced himself to take a breath and let his eyes adjust. All right. That helped. A little.

  Through his closed windows, he could hear the chattering of cicadas. He tapped at the plexi-glass of the dash, which was about the extent of his mechanical expertise. None of the dials moved. The car still appeared to have nearly a third of a tank of gas. Already wishing he’d listened when someone had explained to him once how you can tell when you’re flooding the engine, he turned the key again.

  And again.

  Nothing.

  The key would click into the first position, powering the lights and electrics, but it simply couldn’t make the car start.

  He turned it off completely again. It seemed that each time he did, the darkness into which he was plunged was deeper than before but he knew that that was his imagination. He knew that.

  He looked out of the windows, ahead and to the sides. Nothing. Alright, fuck it. What did he pay Triple-A for anyway? He pulled out his cell-phone and powered it up. Reassuring tinkle of chimes . . . pretty little screen display . . . and then the message No Service. He flung it onto the passenger seat to let it keep searching and turned the key one more time.

  His headlights stabbed through the night. Directly ahead, caught in the beams like some vaudeville act who’d been standing waiting for their spotlight, were the three sisters.

  They were twelve yards or so down the road from his car and appeared to have arrived here with no vehicle of their own. They were wearing matching white gowns and, from this distance, their expressionless faces seemed almost as white against the darkness of the night.

  Jackson opened his door and got out, leaving his headlights on. The sweetly overpowering smell of jasmine hit him as, slowly, he walked towards them. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t call out a greeting. He wasn’t entirely sure that a greeting was what he would have called out anyway.

  The sisters were silent too, and remained motionless as he approached them.

  When he was just a few feet away, the one in the middle – he assumed it was Chinchilla but who could tell? – stepped forward slightly and the ghost of a welcoming smile slid briefly across her lips.

  “Mister Jackson,” she said. “How lovely to see you again.” There was nothing unpleasant about her voice. Not at all. Perhaps just a hint of mild surprise at this converging of paths.

  “I was invited,” he said. He didn’t know why he said that and he didn’t like the way his voice sounded saying it, but it didn’t seem to bother Chinchilla.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “So you were.”

  “My car. It’s . . . stopped. I mean, it won’t start.”

  “That’s all right,” she said, and her smile grew wider. “You won’t be needing it.”

  She looked as beautiful as ever, but pale. Very pale. She leaned a little towards him to say something more and Jackson had to fight the urge to flinch back from her, though there was nothing threatening or fast about her movement and her voice was a delicate and sweet whisper.

  “This is the gift we bring you,” she said. “The gift of seeing with one’s own eyes.”

  The car’s headlights went out.

  The moon must have risen while they’d been talking, or the stars have come out, because Jackson could still see her as she stepped back from him to join her sisters, who moved closer in on either side of her.

  There was nothing violent or distressing about the way their flesh melded. It seemed natural and gentle. Like the flow of water into waiting channels or the delicate sweeping application of paint to canvas, the sisters slid into each other effortlessly. Like the sundered images on a stereoscopic photograph marrying themselves to reveal an unsuspected depth, they came together, becoming one.

  But not really. Not quite.

  There were too many arms. Too many eyes.

  The landscape beyond seemed to both thicken and recede, losing definition and light, becoming a backdrop, a setting, a black base against which they . . . she . . . it . . . was foregrounded like a surrealist figure on an abstract canvas.

  Jackson could still feel the ground beneath his feet. But his other senses were already protesting their starvation. The sweet heady smell of the night-blooming jasmine had disappeared and the rhythmic chafing of the cicadas gone with it. His eyes were his only passport to the world and what they saw was already reducing itself to these new essentials. The impossible woman and the darkness behind. That was all there was.

  From somewhere within the collage of flesh in front of him, what used to be Chinchilla’s mouth smiled again.

  And then she was vanishing, all of her was vanishing, shrinking in on herself to a point of dazzling white singularity like the last collapsing sun in a voided universe. Impossibly, piercingly bright. Inconceivably distant. Unutterably beautiful.

  And then gone.

  There was only the darkness now, a darkness from which all definition and distinction was disappearing.

  He was not on the road. He was not in the desert. He was just in the dark. All stars a memory now, and the moon forgotten.

  He heard Chinchilla’s voice whispering the melody of her Italian song.

  And the night peeled open like dark petals.

  LIZ WILLIAMS

  All Fish and Dracula

  LIZ WILLIAMS’ NOVELS INCLUDE The Ghost Sister, Empire of Bones, The Poison Master, Nine Layers of Sky, Banner of Souls and Darkland (all published by Bantam Spectra/Tor Macmillan), while Snake Agent appeared from Night Shade Press.

  Forthcoming titles include Bloodmind and Vanish, while her short fiction was collected in The Banquet of the Lords of Night, also from Night Shade. Her more than fifty short stories have appeared in such magazines as Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy and Interzone.

  Four of the author’s novels have been short-listed for the Philip K. Dick Award. Banner of Souls was short-listed for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2006, and several have also appeared on the New York Times “Best of Year” listings.

  As she explains about the tale that follows: “This story was sparked off by a comment overheard in Whitby High Street by my friend, writer Sue Thomason, who subsequently invited me to attend one of the annual Goth weekends in Whitby.

  “I remember walking along the fog-bound seafront, seeing a wan-faced Victorian-clad waif drifting out of the sea mist. Then her Nokia rang. It pretty much summed up Goth Weekend for me.”

  THE GIRL SLIPPED ACROSS THE COBBLES, black lace trailing over rain-wet stone. The two women were walking a short distance ahead: elderly, bowed down with shopping bags, headscarves keeping out the worst of the October drizzle. In one bag, the girl could see the wet golden skin of an escaping onion. The women were talking together in low voices, the soft Yorkshire accent running the words together.

  She shied from the threat of her reflection in a shop window, bouncing back the lights above the rows of jet jewellery. She already knew what she looked like: all lace and velvet beneath the billowing leather coat, lips the colour of what-else, hair slicked back from a high pale forehead. Her hands clicked with silver.

  As she drew c
loser to the two women, she thought: it would be so easy. But then she spied the others at the end of the street: her vampire clan. She hurried toward them.

  As she passed the old women, she wondered how she must appear: alarming, sinister, a vision out of dark. She smiled to herself, a little. She was a few yards in front of them when one of the women spoke.

  “Ee, Mary,” she said. “In’t it nice to see so many young people taking care of their clothes?”

  WHITBY WELCOMES THE GOTHS

  The banner was huge, taking up most of an advertising hoarding at the entrance to the main street. Around the letters, someone had painted bats, with little smiling faces.

  “Look at that,” Lily said, disgusted. But it made Katya smile. Julian twisted around in his seat to look at them, flicking back a black lock of hair.

  “What, you were expecting them to meet us with pitchforks and stakes? They love Goth Weekend up here. No one getting pissed and throwing up in their gardens. We’re polite. We keep ourselves to ourselves.”

  “We spend loads of money,” Katya murmured. She waved a jet-and-silver decked hand. “What’s not to love?”

  “Precisely.”

  But Lily’s mouth turned downward, like a child who would not be comforted. Katya sighed. Lily had been in a mood ever since they left Leeds and she was beginning to regret ever accepting Julian’s offer of a lift up to Whitby. She didn’t know them very well – they were friends of a friend – and even though they were all Goths, she could not help wishing that Lily and Julian were a little less . . . well, Gothic. Lily sulked and pouted, and Julian hadn’t stopped talking since they had started, in a superior, educating-the-young kind of way. He was four years older, it was true, twenty-two to Katya’s eighteen, but even so . . . She supposed that he did know more about the bands, but she would rather see them for herself and make her own mind up. But she was too polite, or too something, to say so.

  “Where’s the guest house?” she asked, longing now for the journey to be at an end so that she could go and find Damian and the others. As they turned the corner, she saw a huge group of young men, all frock coats and knee boots. She wondered, with an odd stab of disloyalty, how many of them might be called Damian. Or Julian, come to that. Or Katy, with an extra “a”.

  “Not far now,” Julian said, quite kindly, as if reassuring someone very small.

  “Oh good.”

  She spoke more sourly than she had intended, and Lily gave her a glance of surprise, as though she were the one to have a monopoly on sulleness.

  “I’ll drop you two off and park,” Julian said. They were climbing, now, high into the town. Craning back, Katya saw a thin line of estuary through the rainy haze, banked by black harbour walls. The town stepped down to meet it and beyond lay the chilly expanse of the North Sea. A boat, tiny from this height, was setting out from the harbour mouth.

  “Herring,” Julian said, with authority.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “That’s what they fish for here,” Julian amplified. “And cod.”

  “I thought cod was all fished out?” Katya ventured. She wasn’t sure about herring, either. Julian frowned, clearly preferring not to be questioned.

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. Everything was over-fished up here. There’s barely anything left in the North Sea.”

  “Well, that shouldn’t matter much to you, should it? As long as they don’t run out of nut roast.”

  “Don’t you even eat fish?” Lily asked.

  “No,” Katya said. “I’m not that sort of vegetarian. I’ve never eaten fish or meat. I’m vegan, actually. My mum’s a bit of an old hippy. She brought us up that way. It’s just the way I am. I don’t bang on about it.”

  She saw Julian’s lip curl. “It’s natural to eat flesh. We’re predators, hunters. We need the protein.”

  “Beans have protein.”

  “You can’t be a vampire and eat beans.”

  “I’m not a vampire, am I? I’m just a Goth.”

  “Anyway,” Lily said, suddenly animated. “That’s not cod.”

  Katya peered through the car window in the direction of her pointing finger. Right at the top of the cliff, by the roadside, stood a wishbone gateway: white against the storm-dark sky.

  “That’s a whale’s jawbone,” Julian said.

  “Big, isn’t it?” Katya remarked, and wished she hadn’t made such an obvious remark. Of course it was big. It belonged to a whale. She thought of her sister Jess, who had a job in an estate agent and read Cosmopolitan.

  “I don’t know what you want to go to Whitby for at this time of the year. Whitby’s boring. All fish and Dracula. Why don’t you book a week in Malaga?”

  “Here we are.” Julian pulled up at the kerb.

  The guesthouse, set on the wind-driven cliff, had lemon-coloured gables and a garden filled with withered hydrangeas. Wrestling her bags from the car, Katya signed in at the desk, watched by a small, pale woman in a fraying chenille sweater. Then, with relief, she went upstairs and shut the door behind her. She could still hear Julian’s voice, lecturing on, and Lily’s muttered replies, but they were staying in a room downstairs, well out of earshot, and slowly the sounds faded.

  Later, Katya walked down into the town through the October twilight. She had crept through the hallway of the guesthouse and shut the door quietly behind her, in case Lily and Julian overheard and wanted to go with her. She felt a twinge of guilt, but stifled it.

  Whitby was crawling with Goths: strolling through the narrow streets in spite of the chill and the rainy air. Anubis Dusk and the Deadmen were playing at the Spa, and Katya slipped into the back after handing over a fiver. And then she was lost for the next hour and twenty minutes, in the shadow-play of music and light.

  Coming out, still dazed, into the rain, she had a moment of intense loneliness, just long enough to enjoy, because then she looked up and the others were there. The others, and Damian, thin and nervy and possibly about to become her boyfriend, Katya thought with a rush of hope.

  The rest of the evening was snatched up into gossip and chips and pints of snakebite in a nearby pub. Katya was initially too happy to notice what the place was called, but when closing time saw them out on the street once more, she glanced upward and saw that the name of the pub was the Herring Catch. Jess’s remark floated back into memory and she smiled.

  “Walk you back?” Damian asked, and she nodded, overcome with sudden shyness. They set off up the hill together. Halfway up, reminding herself that she was eighteen now, a grown woman, she reached out and took his hand. It was both cold and clammy; Katya did not mind. They did not say very much. At the door of the guesthouse, he kissed her, rather clumsily, and then he was gone. Slowly, Katya made her way through dripping hydrangeas and up the stairs to her room. She was just easing off her boots when there was a sharp tap at the door.

  “It’s me,” Julian’s voice said. He sounded younger and strained. “Is Lily with you?”

  “Isn’t she with you?” Katya did not want to let him in. She wanted to sit down on the bed and think about Damian.

  “No. Can I come in?”

  Katya stood in indecision for a moment, then opened the door. Julian seemed very pale, but admittedly it was hard to tell.

  “We went to the Disappointed gig at the Metropole. I turned round and she was gone. I’ve been looking for her ever since.”

  “I haven’t seen her since we got here.”

  “Where did you go, anyway?” He sounded petulant and accusing.

  Katya told him. “She’ll probably be back in a bit. I wouldn’t worry, honestly.”

  He seemed inclined to linger, but Katya was too tired. She herded him out of the door and fell into bed.

  Net morning, to Katya’s relief, Julian was not at breakfast. Somewhat guiltily, she ploughed her way through mushrooms and toast, and examined a flyer for the Bat Conservation Raffle, just in case one of the other residents felt the need to talk to her. No one did. She returned to her room
to fetch her coat. Beyond the windows, the sky was a deep, lowering grey.

  As she reached the front door, however, her mobile rang. The number shown was Julian’s. Katya hesitated, then answered it.

  “It’s me,” Julian said, without preamble. “I’m at the police station.”

  “Why?” Katya asked, blankly. “What have you done?”

  “I haven’t done anything!” He sounded rattled. The usual slight, superior drawl was absent. “They found Lily last night. She’s dead.”

  “Dead?” Katya turned, to see her own face looking back at her from the hall mirror. In the underwater dimness of the hallway, her face looked pallid and drowned beneath the heavy make-up. She could see each one of the kohl dots around her eyes, in perfect, unnatural clarity.

  “Katya? Are you there?”

  “Yes?” It sounded more like a question. “What happened?” The streets had been so slippery, and in high heels . . . Or perhaps a car . . . “Was she . . . run over, or something?”

  “She was killed.”

  “Someone killed her?” His voice seemed to be coming from a very long way away.

  “They said I can go. I was with people all evening.”

  She wondered why he was telling her this, then realised that of course, he would be a suspect, if Lily had been murdered.

  “Katya? Can you come to the police station? I don’t want to be on my own.”

  She had to be strong and decisive. “Tell me where it is,” she said. Her voice sounded more like a squeak.

  Under the neon glow of the station reception, Julian looked even more wan than usual, and scared. He was twisting his long black scarf between his hands.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Katya said. She took his arm and steered him through the doors.

  “They might want to talk to you, too. I don’t know.”

  “Did you give them my name?” Katya said.

  “I had to.” He shot her an uneasy look. “They kept asking if there was anyone else who knew Lily.”