Dark Terrors 6 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  She was always relaxed in those surroundings. Too relaxed. When site saw me coming, it was too late.

  I swear I didn’t actually make it happen. Not physically. It was just that I looked at the gas cylinder connected to the greenhouse heater, and as I looked, it suddenly vomited flame. I was nowhere near it, honestly. But all at once the whole greenhouse was a vast glass oven. Amanda was engulfed in flame as she screamed and groped towards the door.

  The only thing I actually did was turn the key outside, and then when the smell of burnt flesh was billowing through the cracks in the blistered glass, turned it back again. Then I went indoors and called the ambulance.

  There was no way her rope ladder was going to get her out of that.

  At the funeral, those of her friends still alive stared at me. I didn’t know all of them, but somebody seemed to have passed on tales about me. None of the women went in for the usual slobbering kisses, and their husbands didn’t shake my hand.

  As I walked away from the graveside, I looked up at the top of the church tower. Even craning my neck at this angle made me dizzy. That must have been why I saw Amanda so clearly up there, willing me to come and join her at the parapet. And there were other shapes crowding in behind her, and some behind me and around me. A wisp of Penelope, a long wail from Marjorie, and all of them urging me to go into the stair turret and climb to the top. But there was no reason to be scared of shadows, even shadows who knew from what had been said at those dinner parties, or hinted at by Amanda during one of their hen parties, about my fear of heights. What remained of Amanda wasn’t strong enough on her own to drag me up there, and those other wraiths were as pathetic dead as when they had been alive.

  My feet firmly on solid ground, all I’m conscious of is this emptiness now it’s all over. Now Amanda’s dead, I’m looking impersonally at what I’ve done, yet at the same time looking at it in dismay. Because I’ve destroyed the only person who could have shared the joke.

  Like I said, loving and hating are so close. I’d loved Amanda. Really loved her, in my own way. It was her own fault that she’d had to be killed, and the true horror is that now there’s nobody left to love or hate.

  Except myself.

  And I don’t hate myself. Well, not all that much. Not yet.

  And when I do …

  John Burke was born in Rye, Sussex, and grew up in Liverpool, where his father became a Chief Inspector of Police. He won an Atlantic Award in Literature for his first novel, Swift Summer, and worked in publishing, the oil business and as European Story Editor for 20th Century-Fox Productions before becoming a full-time writer. Burke has published nearly 150 books, including The Devil’s Footsteps, The Black Charade and Ladygrove in his ‘Dr Caspian’ trilogy about a Victorian psychic detective. He has also written novelisations of film and TV programmes such as The Bill, London’s Burning, Dr Terror’s House of Horrors and two volumes of The Hammer Horror Film Omnibus. In recent years Robert Hale has published a sequence of his thrillers, including a detective-cum-horror story, Stalking Widow, followed in the autumn of 2002 by The Second Strain. A collection of his short weird tales, edited by Nicholas Royle, recently appeared under the title of We’ve Been Waiting for You in a limited edition from Ash-Tree Press in Canada. As the author explains: ‘The preceding short story arose, as far as I can analyse the workings of my own weird subconscious, from a couple of minor irritations - two horsy women screeching away in an otherwise quietly sociable bar, and the sight of chewing gum being stamped into the pavement by some scruffy schoolboys - which provoked me into fairly light-hearted fantasies of how to punish them. From trivial beginnings, the idea began to turn sinister. Add up lots of petty everyday nuisances, and see how far one mind could be tipped over into a desire for quite disproportionate revenge. As with so many stories I’ve written, it was a matter of beginning with a glimmering of an idea derived from something quite small, and then seeing how far it would go - almost of its own accord - after a few paragraphs.’

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  Dead Snow

  TERRY R. BARKER

  Tilton yelled at him.

  Like the pimp had yelled at the burned woman in the tight skirt; the one with round burns dotting her cheeks like tribal scarification. Her pimp had stood next to her, his cigarette giving their faces an orange glow. “Choo lookin’ at, white bread?’ he had asked. ‘Wanna go at my lady? Gotta wait ‘til she back to livin’.’

  she said something just when we hit the ice i remember that

  ‘Joey? Where are you?’

  A wino grabbed Joey’s ankle. ‘Got some money?’

  ‘You’re gonna die, you know.’ Tilton’s voice was muffled by the snow.

  ‘I’m already dead.’ Joey ran deeper into the alley.

  ‘Hey,’ the wino called. ‘How come you ain’t leave no tracks?’

  Joey had seen the dead, had smelled their rancid, meaty odour. Their wounds were obvious and bloody; bruised features, missing limbs, the sleepy faces of natural death. The dead had packed that tiny room, asking the old man - Joey thought of him as Reaper Bob - to save them.

  ‘Damnit, Joey,’ Tilton called. ‘I’m trying to help. You don’t have much time left. A few hours maybe.’

  As Joey ran, a hot iron stitched his side. His chest heaved, his heart pounded. Is this what it felt like? Is this what Jennifer had felt when it began?

  Except she had said her wrists tingled, that she couldn’t breathe.

  ‘Please, Jennifer,’ Joey whispered. ‘Where are you?’

  she touched my face i remember that

  An abandoned building hovered over the alley, rusted metal fire-escapes like broken arms. Its darkness engulfed him as he went in. Broken glass, boarded windows, burned beams. He had to stay away from Tilton. He had to find Jennifer.

  Then he could go back to Reaper Bob.

  It was a noble thing, Tilton trying to help. Tilton wanted to save his lifelong friend - ‘Can Joey come out and play?’ said in the soft falsetto of a young boy carrying G.I. Joe Action Figures. But Joey had answered that nobility by running. Terrified and lost without Jennifer, Joey had lied the dead room.

  ‘Joey. Quit dicking around.’ Tilton’s voice so plaintive. ‘Please. Let’s go back.’

  Joey looked through a gap in the boards. Tilton stood in the alley, streetlamp-yellow snow falling gently on his head, the wino crawling up behind him.

  ‘We don’t have time, you’re going to be dead pretty quick.’

  ‘I can’t come back without Jennifer.’

  ‘You first, then we’ll deal with her.’

  ‘She’ll be dead by then.’

  ‘She’s dead—’

  sat on the kerb and jabbed her palm with her finger i remember that

  —already,’ Tilton said. ‘I don’t want you to die.’

  ‘You my mother now?’ Joey peered through the boards again, saw only the wino.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Tilton said.

  Iron hands hauled Joey to his feet. He sputtered and when Tilton dragged him outside, Joey’s feet flailed at the snow-stained pavement.

  ‘No, it’ll be too late for her. She’s all I have.’

  ‘You have me. You’ve always had me.’

  The wino looked up from his heap. ‘Money?’

  ‘That’s different,’ Joey said.

  ‘Love is love,’ Tilton said.

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘It’s what I—’

  ‘Got some money?’ The wino grabbed at Tilton and managed to tangle his hands in Tilton’s feet. Tilton and Joey fell on top of the drunk. The man grunted, Tilton yelped. The three of them rolled together, Joey tangling Tilton’s hands with the wino’s.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Tilton said.

  Joey jumped to his feet and ran.

  ‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’ Tilton yelled.

  ‘I gotta find Jennifer.’

  said something but i don’t remember what

  I need to remember. I nee
d to know what she said.

  ‘I wish it were someone else.’ How many times had I said that? A hundred? A million? Anybody else. A homeless guy or a battered wife or even an autistic kid. Anyone who didn’t have a life as good as mine. Joey’s beautiful green eyes were shocked every time I said it. It offended his soul.

  But he hugged me. There had been lots of hugs lately. Gentle and soothing and yet somehow agitating. I did want the touch, but not gently. A soft touch is a reminder that I am Ms Kobold, cardiac patient. I’m tired of the pity. ‘Hear about Jennifer?’ ‘She’s so young.’ ‘Runs in her family.’ ‘Defective blood, I guess.’

  Anybody else. I don’t care who. ‘I am a horrible person.’

  ‘Only,’ Joey always answered, ‘if you forced somebody to have a heart attack. That would probably be horrible.’

  Then I would giggle. Sometimes it was actually funny, sometimes I just wanted us to hear me laugh. His face would light up like a cheap Christmas tree. But laughing always brought pain: my thigh where they stabbed me with the catheter, my chest where it had all started. During deepest night, when I slept alone because I hardly slept, I fantasised the pain was rejection, my heart trying to spit out the stents the cardiologist had implanted.

  Pressing his lips against my temple, he asked, ‘How about a drive?’

  I wanted to get out of the house, to get some sunshine in my head. But outside was where the world had hurt me. ‘I need to rest.’ Even though there had been nothing but rest since the heart attack. The first two weeks I slept. The next two I dozed in bed with our black and grey portable TV as companion. After the TV drove me insane, Joey cleaned out the corner newsstand. I had hundreds of magazines in one great pile of ‘unread’. Then in a pile of ‘read’. And then? Then I hated them. I threw them against the wall. Out the door. Through the open window. They reminded me I was Ms Kobold.

  I didn’t want to be the cardiac patient. I wanted to be Jennifer. Wife. Companion. Lover. All those things I was to Joey. But to myself I was a jogger, a swimmer, a carpenter. I called for those things when I was awake and dreamed of them when I slept. But the doctor had given me eight pages of recovery rules, beginning with total rest. ‘Maybe in a few weeks,’ he had said, ‘I’ll allow you to piss by yourself. Or go downstairs to watch TV.’ And work? He had smiled as though the four-day ICU bill of one hundred and sixty-four thousand dollars wasn’t a problem. ‘You’ll see me five or six times before you work again. And you’ll probably never work like you used to.’

  ‘Chances are,’ I said to Joey, ‘it’ll happen again.’

  ‘A short drive. You haven’t been out since you got home from the hospital.’

  Why was it so hard to understand? I had to recover. ‘Honey, I’m not ready. I have to get my strength back, don’t I? And I need to answer all the e-mails and letters. I’ve got to write thank-yous for the cards and flowers and things. And I have to take all my pills and read all the damned recipe books for low fat foods even though there wasn’t much blockage and I need to learn to fucking breathe and meditate so I don’t get completely stressed out so no, Joey, I’m not going for a drive, I’ve got too much to do.’

  Then I was crying. Like I had for so much of every moment since I collapsed on the sidewalk. I cried because I hated that this had happened to me. Everyone said it wasn’t my fault - ‘Runs in your family’ - but it was. I had worked too hard, hadn’t exercised enough, hadn’t relaxed enough, was born into the wrong genetic pool.

  Still crying, I stood. I wanted to storm into the bathroom and slam the door. But the pain - and the dizziness from the blood-thinners - snapped me to the floor. Joey was there instantly, his face riddled with fright. ‘Jennifer? Holy shit. I’m calling the ambulance.’

  ‘No, I’m fine. Just a little dizzy. It’s not another heart attack.’

  His hands were on mine, his eyes on mine. He would have sat there for ever, I think. It would have been nice to try that, just sit and not worry about heart disease and bills and the rest of it.

  The pain comes and goes. There is always a dull hurt, but I never know when the spikes are coming. And every time the pain interrupts us, becomes a third partner in our marriage, I am again Ms Kobold, cardiac patient. Ms Kobold’s face is hard and tired, her eyes exhausted. She moves slowly, and sometimes giant rivers of pain run through her veins.

  Together, we limped back to the couch. ‘You’re right. You’re not ready to go out yet.’

  I sighed. ‘Crap, I’m so sorry, Joey. You shouldn’t have to deal with this, you shouldn’t have to—’

  ‘Jennifer, you have nothing to apologise for. You had a heart attack, it’s going to take some time to recover.’ He frowned. ‘God, that’s so freaky to say. Breast cancer or suicide or old age or something. But heart attacks for women? I thought that was only for old guys.’

  I grabbed my crotch and farted. ‘Call me Geezer.’

  We giggled together and I was able to imagine things were good, that heart disease wasn’t hanging over us.

  ‘I know just the thing for you, sweetie pie.’ Dramatically, he produced a videotape from his coat pocket.

  ‘Please. Not Haifa Loaf of Kung-Fu again.’

  ‘This is a new one. Sergeant Kabukiman NYPD.’

  ‘Sounds too artistic for me,’ I said. ‘We might have to take it out and go with something like Shrunken Heads.’’

  Or Shrunken Heart, I wanted to say. But of course that wasn’t a movie, that was me.

  Twenty hours since the accident.

  He stood in his yard, snow falling on his head though it didn’t feel cold.

  Twenty hours since he’d found himself looking up at the road and hearing the awful scream of metal against asphalt. Nearly a full day since he’d seen the hood and the left front quarter panel of the car peel away like flesh off bone.

  He and the rest of the dead - and they were everywhere - moved quietly and mostly unseen through the living. Some were casual about their passing, but others wore their deaths like formal suits.

  Joey had slipped onto the bus to get home. As it pulled away from the kerb, Tilton had come out of the alley. Seeing Joey, he had tapped his watch.

  Time was running out.

  The street lights around Joey’s house layered a soft yellow sheen over the entire neighbourhood. It was as though some artist had dipped the entire block in streetlamp-yellow: the snow, the cars, the houses, all the colour of Jennifer’s lemons.

  ‘Jennifer,’ he called when he reached the porch.

  The door was locked.

  His keys were still in the wrecked car, long since dragged away by a tow-truck. He threw the newspaper hard through the front window, shattering the glass, and then crawled into the house.

  ‘Jennifer?’

  He searched room to room and everything was in its place, nothing disturbed, nothing gone. But in the kitchen, he noticed a new soup bowl. White with purple flowers. Shadowed green stems held the blooms aloft. There was a matching spoon and they were tied together with purple ribbon.

  ‘The hell we get these?’

  He toyed with the spoon, stared at the bowl. Maybe Jennifer had bought them before—

  Suddenly she was in his head again, panic in his throat.

  He had forgotten her. Standing there, staring at the bowl, she had slipped away, disappeared as though she had never existed.

  ‘It’s happening,’ he said, quickly checking the bathroom and the smaller bedroom. ‘Tilton said it would.’

  Twenty hours and already holes had appeared. How long would it be until he couldn’t remember Jennifer at all? Until there was no face to see, no name sitting on his tongue?

  And what about her? Was she forgetting him?

  Be here, he willed, tears in his eyes. Please be here.

  His chest was bleeding again. Tilton had packed it tightly with bandages, but still the blood flowed. How much blood-loss? Bleeding at the crash site, bleeding at Tilton’s place after Tilton had hauled him from the wreckage, bleeding two or three tim
es since then.

  Joey snorted as he checked the utility room and the den. Be damned funny if he bled out before they could raise him from the dead, wouldn’t it?

  Almost as funny as seeing the look on the checkout boy’s face at the drugstore when Tilton had plopped down fourteen boxes of gauze bandages.

  Tilton had stopped the bleeding, but he couldn’t stop the march. Death goose-stepped next to Joey, each second ticking off more of his and Jennifer’s souls. Soon enough, there wouldn’t be anything left and it wouldn’t matter if he found Jennifer or not.

  said something i remember that

  ‘Jennifer, come on,’ Joey called. ‘Where are you?’

  The house was silent. The panic in his chest grew, spread to his arms and legs, his face, like a warm disease.

  The longer you’re dead, Tilton had said, the more pieces get left behind.

  Wasn’t that already happening? Didn’t certain words already sound strange in his head, like they were bullshit words, made up for no reason?

  Like Jennifer. Or was it Jenilee? Or Jenna?

  ‘It’s Jennifer,’ he shouted. ‘She’s my wife. She’s my best friend.’ Joey pounded the walls. ‘Where are you?’

  Then he knew. If she were here, she’d be in the bedroom. It was where she’d spent most of her time since the heart attack.

  But what if she was? She’d been in the same crash Joey had. If she was here, she was probably in shock. Maybe dealing with the pain of a dead husband. Or maybe she had died and didn’t even remember she was married.

  He swallowed back the lump of fear sitting uncomfortably in his throat. Quickly, he twisted the knob and shoved the bedroom door open.

  Nothing. A dark room, but he didn’t hear her breathing, didn’t smell her sweet odour, didn’t feel the press of her in the air.

  The curtain was open and through it, Joey watched the snow fall. Beneath the streetlamp light, it was yellow.

  The house was empty and her name felt strange on his tongue.

  There was a second.

  Four and a half weeks after the first. I never told Joey. I was in the shower. Massive chest pain, though a lesser version of what I’d had on the sidewalk. Where the first had been like someone cutting out my heart with a white-hot knife, this was simply someone jabbing me with that knife. I climbed out of the shower and placed one of the nitroglycerine pills under my tongue. After it dissolved, I took a second. Vision blurry, I sat on the toilet seat and eventually the pain subsided. In fifteen minutes, I was fine. Tired, but alive.