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

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  And what does he find when he gets there?

  This.

  Levy doesn’t notice the sound of machinery at first; besides the rumbling of the Peterbilt’s massive engine, it’s chilly outside and he’s got the windows rolled up and the heater fan going - he’s never much liked the cold temperatures. But the instant he cuts off the engine and reaches for the little bundle of daisies, the uneven revving jumps in to fill what should have been tranquil cemetery silence. Levy looks up in surprise as his hand closes around the plastic-wrapped bouquet, and the high viewpoint from the truck’s cab gives him the sight of a back-hoe poised over his mother’s grave like a huge praying mantis. He sits there, stunned, as the backward bucket swoops downwards and takes a bite out of the earth, then he registers the other people milling around the growing hole in the soil, all too engrossed in this most heinous of violations to realise he’s there.

  The flowers fall to the floorboard and are crushed as Levy claws for the handle on the door, stumbling to his knees when he bursts from the truck. For an uncertain moment he scrambles along the ground like some kind of confused beetle, then he’s up and rushing forward, arms flailing, mouth and eyes opened wide as the noise of the back-hoe grows in his head until it wipes out the sounds of everyone and everything else around him, a huge black wave that smothers his world. It isn’t until the Sheriff slaps him on the side of his head with his blackjack that Levy realises the noise he is hearing isn’t the back-hoe at all. It’s the sound of his own horrified screams.

  ‘Tell me about the …’ Sheriff Benton hesitates, not sure how to phrase it. He’s never had to deal with this before and for the first time in his career he is in so far over his head that he might as well be sucking water for air. Still, he wants desperately to keep this quiet - no one in Harmony needs a mob of big-city reporters poking their noses and cameras into secrets that are best left alone. Lord knows there were things in Harmony hidden in the darkness of closets and the cellars of old estates, and Benton had a hunch that this was another one destined to be exactly that - best left alone. Still, he’d do what he could without spreading the ugly mess around for outsiders to talk about. ‘Tell me about Ida Drannon,’ he finally finishes.

  ‘My mother.’ Levy Moreless’s voice is no more than a monotone, just about a whisper. He sits at the wooden table in the room that serves as an interrogation area, which is really just a storage room that Benton had cleared out last year. The suspect’s wrists are handcuffed and his hands are folded serenely together; Benton can’t decide if Moreless is praying or just waiting.

  Benton chews the inside of his cheek, rolling the moist flesh between his teeth until it becomes painful and he realises what he is doing. ‘Well, we got us a problem with that claim, son. We—’

  ‘I’m not your son!’

  It is the first sign of emotion from Moreless and Benton’s eyebrows rise. ‘County records indicate your mother is unknown,’ he says. ‘What’s in that grave isn’t your mother. In fact, it isn’t any one particular woman.’ He steps to the table and leans over until he’s staring directly into the other man’s eyes, but if he hopes to be intimidating, he knows instantly that he’s failed. Moreless’s gaze is as cold and empty as the sky on a cloudy and moonless January night. ‘Who are they?’ Benton demands, dropping any pretence of congeniality. ‘And where did they come from?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Moreless responds in a flat voice. ‘The woman in that grave is my mother.’

  The Sheriff scowls and thinks about hitting Moreless, then decides it isn’t going to do any good. The county had sent over a psychiatrist who’d spent a half-hour with Moreless and used a lot of multi-syllabled words to essentially say the guy was nuts. The reason Moreless is so calm now has a lot to do with heavy sedatives. He probably won’t even feel it if Benton beats on him, so why bother?

  ‘She’s no more your mother than you’re Dr Frankenstein,’ Benton says. ‘Although I gotta admit you gave it a helluva try.’ He bites into his cheek again, stops when he feels the sting of his teeth. ‘By my count, I’d say you whacked at least four women. Now I need to know who they were and where you did them.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Moreless repeats.

  ‘Mr Moreless, we aren’t blind. The body in the casket isn’t just one woman. It—’

  ‘Of course it is,’ Moreless interrupts. His eyes, formerly so dead, light up and he leans forward on the table. ‘It’s my mother, can’t you tell that? She’s old now, sure, but she was blonde like me when she was a young woman. She told me she used to play the piano, and she was a dancer until her back went out on her a few years ago. That’s when she started picking up a little weight.’ For a moment, Moreless is silent and Benton is afraid to speak, hesitant of stifling the man’s sudden urge to talk. ‘If she’d been around when I was growing up, she would have been a good mother, you know.’

  The Sheriff waits, but Moreless doesn’t say anything else. In a bizarre sort of way, the body in the casket fits what this crazy had just described, although proportionately it couldn’t have been more screwed up. The dull blonde hair of the toothless skull, the large, slender-fingered hands on the arms, the long, lean legs, all carefully sewn onto a too-pudgy torso.

  Benton decides to try a different tactic. ‘So where has your … mother been all this time?’

  ‘Around.’ Moreless gives him a sly look. ‘You know. Lots of places.’

  The man’s answer is the epitome of understated sarcasm, and for a brief, fierce moment Benton wants to punch Moreless. He quells the urge, thinks that it’s just too damned bad no one else can see his heroic act of self-control. The lawman will not give the killer the satisfaction of knowing how angry he is, of how well his button has been pushed by that ugly six-word reply; instead, he will allow Moreless the notion that Benton is nothing but a dumbfuck redneck Sheriff and it’s all going over his head. Yes, he wants to beat this murderous asshole into a million pieces, but he also wants to find out who the women are that make up his mother. Even more than that he wants to do it quietly, without turning his little southern town into a media circus. He went through that a couple of years ago when Anisette Middleton disappeared out at the Vinegar Tree Estates; God forbid he be cursed like that again.

  ‘Like where?’ Benton keeps his voice bland.

  ‘I-I don’t have any idea.’

  There is something in the man’s tone, a pause, a … hint of uncertainty, that makes Benton abruptly realise that in his own twisted way, the killer is actually telling the truth. He knows suddenly that to Moreless, no matter how she started out, now the woman he buried in that grave is just that, one woman - a single person rather than the horrid conglomeration of four bodies put together like some B-movie science experiment gone berserk. Levy Moreless will never tell him the truth of where his victims came from because he simply doesn’t remember any more.

  Sheriff Benton grinds his teeth. If there is any chance of protecting Harmony from the prying eyes of the rest of the country, this means he must take matters into his own hands.

  HARMONY DAILY EXAMINER, Tuesday - October 31

  DISAPPEARANCE AT THE COUNTY MORGUE

  The body of Ida Drannon was reported stolen from the County Morgue sometime yesterday evening. Mrs Drannon had been disinterred from Peaceful Oakes Cemetery yesterday afternoon because of questions raised by the cemetery’s groundskeeper regarding possible improper burial procedures. Sheriff Benton speculates the disappearance is a Hallowe’en prank, or possibly a college hazing ritual, but admits that the Sheriff’s Department currently has no leads. Mrs Drannon’s son, Levy Moreless, could not be reached for comment.

  Levy sits quietly on his chair across from the Sheriff’s desk and watches the other man watch him.

  It takes a long time, but finally the lawman speaks.

  ‘I’m going to let you go,’ he says in a gravel-edged voice. ‘There’s this law that says without a body, it’s hard to prove there was a cri
me. Now I saw the body, and so did a handful of other people, including you. And for the good of this town, we’re all going to just keep our mouths shut about that.’ Benton angles forward over the desk and fixes his steel-coloured gaze on Levy. ‘And so will you.’

  ‘But my mother’s body is gone,’ Levy says quietly. ‘And no one knows where.’

  ‘Well, there is that,’ Benton responds, but Levy sees the way his eyes shift up and to the left. He remembers reading somewhere that this is body language, the sure sign of a person telling a lie. He is suddenly sure that the Sheriff knows where his mother’s corpse is, but he is equally sure that Benton will never tell him. ‘And it’s a shame,’ Benton continues. ‘We’ll be looking into it and we’ll contact you first thing as soon as we find it.’ Another shifting eye movement and he’s staring again at Levy. ‘But mind you that it’s not your place to go looking for her, it’s ours. And we’re going to handle it, nice and quiet-like, without getting anybody else involved.’ The harsh overhead fluorescences make the man’s eyes glitter momentarily and the grey irises reflect the light like cold metal. ‘Do I make myself perfectly clear?’

  Levy considers this for a few seconds, then slowly nods. ‘I get it. I don’t guess there’s anyone I’d ask to help me anyway. I never have.’

  Benton nods and looks relieved. He pushes to his feet and gestures at Levy to stand; when he does, the big sheriff pulls a key from his pocket and unlocks the handcuffs around Levy’s wrists. The heavy steel falls away with a clank and Levy rubs his skin, lets Benton take him by the elbow and guide him to the door. ‘I’m glad we understand each other, s—’ He cuts off the word, but Levy knows the bastard was about to call him son again. How he hates that; no one but his mother had the right to do that.

  Before Levy can think more on it, Benton pulls a shopping bag out of a closet and hands it to him - his personal belongings, wallet, money, jacket and the things that were in his pockets when they took him into custody yesterday. Levy shrugs into the jacket without a word as the Sheriff steers him down the hall and ushers him outside, where the frost-filled October air surrounds him instantly. The sun is bright, but does nothing to warm the coldness within his soul, while across the street a line of laughing children streams into one of the small shops, begging for Hallowe’en treats.

  ‘I don’t expect to be hearing from you any more,’ the Sheriff says, and his voice is just as frigid as the late autumn air. ‘In fact, I reckon it would be best if you headed on out of town in that tractor-trailer of yours and found another place to call home. Yeah, I think that’d be an all-around bonus for everybody involved.’

  ‘But my mother—’

  ‘Well, the truth is,’ Benton interrupts, ‘that it’s likely she won’t ever be found. Just figure we’ve done the best we can and that’s all there is to it.’

  Levy stares at him for a long moment, then turns and walks away. He feels no hate for Benton or the people of this town, only pity. They don’t know how strong a love he had for his mother, they don’t understand. But he knows, and he can still feel it. If Benton won’t find his mother’s body, it’s only because he won’t look. But that doesn’t mean Levy won’t.

  He found her before.

  He can do it again.

  Yvonne Navarro is a native Chicagoan who has been writing since 1982. She has published thirteen novels (the most recent of which is Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tempted Champions) and more than sixty short stories. She is currently working on more Buffy material and a children’s book collaboration which she will help write and also illustrate. In addition to maintaining an extensive web site, she is also the owner of a little online bookstore at www.dustyjackets.com. By the time you read this, she should have finally realised her dream of relocating to Arizona. ‘This story was a challenge for me,’ reveals Navarro. ‘The theme is often used in fiction, but I wanted to do something different with it. What was really enjoyable was tying it into Harmony, Georgia, and its “existing” residents. Harmony is a town I first created around 1987, and in which I have occasionally placed characters and events from novels and stories ever since.’

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  The Receivers

  Joel Lane

  People don’t talk about it now. They’ve forgotten, or pretended to forget, just how bad it was. New people have moved in, and new businesses have started up. ‘Regeneration’ would be putting it a bit strongly, but most of the damage has been repaired. Or at least covered up. As for the madness - well, nothing healed it, so maybe it’s still hidden. When you’ve seen what people are capable of, it’s hard to believe that they can change.

  To begin with, it was nothing out of the ordinary. The local branch of Safeway reported a sharp increase in the level of shoplifting. No one had been caught. In the same week, a Warwick-based building firm reported the theft of a truckload of bricks. Ordinary items are the hardest to track down. Once they go missing, it’s already too late.

  At the time, a much more serious theft was concerning us. A former local councillor whom we’d been investigating for corruption had died of blood poisoning at Solihull Hospital - the result of a ruptured bowel, apparently. I don’t think we’d ever have got enough on him for a conviction. We’d just closed the case when his body went missing, three days before the funeral. The security guard at the mortuary swore he’d not seen or heard anything. But there was clear evidence of a breakin, in the form of a missing windowpane. Not broken: missing.

  I won’t tell you the ex-councillor’s name. It’s all over Birmingham in any case, on plaques set in hotels and shopping arcades and flyovers. He’d have attended the opening of an eyelid. I don’t even remember what party he belonged to. It doesn’t matter these days. He’d been cosy with the building firm that had some materials nicked. That was the first hint I got of how this might all be connected up.

  That October was hazy and overcast, the clouds dropping a veil of warm rain. I remember things were difficult at home. Julia had just turned eighteen, and Eileen was torn between wanting her to stay and wanting her to move in with her boyfriend. It was a kind of territorial thing. Julia was too old to stay in her room when she was at home: she needed the whole house. As usual, I tried to stay out of it, using my awkward working hours as an excuse to keep my distance. I believe in peace and harmony; I’ve just never been able to accept how much work they need.

  It was a while before the police in Tyseley, Acock’s Green and Yardley got round to comparing notes on recent theft statistics. What we were dealing with was an epidemic of shoplifting. No one much was getting caught, and the stolen goods weren’t turning up anywhere. Most of it was basic household stuff anyway, hardly worth selling on. Shoes, DIY equipment, frozen food, soft-porn magazines, cheap kitchenware, bottles of beer. If there was an organisation behind all this, what the fuck was it trying to prove? Of course, we had our doubts. Rumours of invisible thieves were a gift to dishonest shop staff - or even owners working a scam. It was happy hour on the black economy.

  To start with, we encouraged shop owners to tighten up their security. A lot of younger security staff got sacked and replaced by trained professionals, or by hard cases from the shadows of the hotel and club scene. Suspects were more likely to end up in casualty than the police station. We put more constables on the beat to cut down on burglaries. But stuff still went missing - at night or in broad daylight, it didn’t seem to matter. Cash disappeared from pub tills. A couple of empty freezers vanished from an Iceland stockroom. A junk shop lost a shelf of glassware. It made no sense. i

  Walking out of the Acock’s Green station at night became an unsettling experience. There was hardly anyone around. The barking of guard dogs shattered any sense of peace there might have been. Dead leaves were stuck like a torn carpet to the rain-darkened pavement. The moon was never visible. Every shop window was heavily barred or shuttered. Slogans began to appear on metal screens and blank walls: HANG THE THEIVES, THIEVING GYPPOS, SEND THE THIEFS HOME. I must admit, I laughed out loud when I saw
someone had painted with a brush on the wall of the station car park: WHO STOLE MY SPRAY CAN?

  People were being shopped to us all the time, but we never got anywhere. Without the stolen goods, there was no evidence. Some of our informants seemed to feel that evidence was an optional extra when it came to prosecution. Being Asian, black, European, unusually poor or new to the area was enough. As the problem escalated, letters started to appear in the local evening paper accusing the police of protecting criminals, or insisting that the homes of ‘suspicious characters’ be searched regularly. If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear. In truth, we were questioning a lot of people. And getting a lot of search warrants. We were even catching the odd thief. But not as odd as the ones we weren’t catching.

  Julia really summed it up one evening, during one of our increasingly rare family meals, ‘It’s like some children’s gang,’ she said. ‘Nicking all the things they see at home. Then hiding somewhere, dressing up, smoking cigarettes. Pretending to be their own parents.’ She looked sad. Playfulness was slipping away from her. I wondered if she could be right. Maybe it was some whimsical game, a joke played by kids or the members of some lunatic cult. But the consequences weren’t funny. People were getting hurt. Homes were getting broken up.

  I remember the day, in late October, when I realised just how serious things had become. I was interviewing some people who’d been involved in a violent incident at the Aldi supermarket on the Warwick Road. A Turkish woman shopping with two young children had been attacked by several other shoppers. She’d suffered a broken hand, and her four-year-old daughter was badly bruised. No stolen goods had been found in her bag or her bloodstained clothes. She told me a young woman had started screaming ‘Stop thief!’ at her in the toiletries section, near the back of the store. People had crowded round, staring. A man had grabbed her arm and held her while the young woman started throwing jars of hair gel at her. Someone else had knocked her down from behind. She’d woken up in hospital, and it had been a while before she’d found out that her two children were safe.