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

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  ‘How many?’ he asked, but Queenie was screaming louder now, her own voice and rage seemingly able to penetrate the damping effects of this blackness, rattling the windows and setting his hair on end.

  ‘Mother, mother, mother!’

  He scrambled around, looking for the doorway and escape, hand alighting on something else entirely.

  ‘Mother, mother …’

  He lunged at her, the knife an extension of his fear.

  ‘Mother . ..’ And then Queenie was quiet.

  He worked for five minutes, reminded of all the smells and tastes and sounds that haunted his memory, and taking in some new ones. Once or twice, as Queenie slid further down, the knife went straight through to the wall, marking a few more bloody days in his life.

  He left the flat, feeling his way through the dark, feeling it thicker around his neck and heavier on his eyes, wondering just when it would become too hard to push through, too there. But it never did.

  He felt the rage, old angers rising and a fresh, new hatred giving the blackness an electric edge. ‘Sorry Queenie,’ he whispered, but really he wasn’t sorry at all.

  Perhaps soon, when the memories were lost again, he’d imagine that he was.

  He found his way to the back door of the block of flats. It was rarely used and he had to kick it open, but outside he ran straight into a car. He could barely breathe now, they were coming, and pure instinct drove him on even though he knew he was finished. Like a man putting his hands over his head to save himself from a falling building, Ed continued to fight and struggle on. To pause, to wait for the inevitable, was too much for him to do. He was too scared.

  He opened the car door, reached in and found a torch. And it was only when he clicked it on - shining it around the car at the other torches, batteries, gas lamps, flares, fireworks, cans of petrol - that he realised it was his own.

  Ed carved another niche in the timber panelling above his bed. There were over two thousand scratches there already. It still didn’t feel like home.

  He waited for the timber to bleed red sap, but there was none, it was dry. He expected this every time, and every time it did not happen. Yet the fear was always just as fresh. Sometimes he believed that every memory he had was made up, a whole lifetime manufactured in his sleep and given vent in his waking hours.

  The only real memory, the one he could taste and smell and feel, was of the murder that had changed his life.

  Tim Lebbon’s books include Mesmer, Faith in the Flesh, Hush (with Gavin Williams), As the Sun Goes Down, Face, The Nature of Balance, Until She Sleeps and White and Other Tales of Ruin. His novellas White and Naming of Parts were both awarded British Fantasy Awards for best short fiction as well as being nominated for International Horror Guild Awards. His short fiction has been published in many magazines and anthologies, including The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Night Visions n, Keep Out the Night, Foreboding, The Darker Side, Dark Arts, October Dreams, The Children of Cthulhu, Phantoms of Venice, The Mammoth Book of Sword and Honour and The Third Alternative, while a serial novella will run in Cemetery Dance magazine. Future books include Dusk and Dawn, a fantasy duology from Night Shade Books; Into the Wild Green Yonder, a collaboration with Peter Crowther from Cemetery Dance Publications, and a novella collaboration with Simon Clark for Earthling Publications. ‘I’ve always been interested in guilt, how people handle it and how it affects them,’ explains Lebbon. ‘Everyone’s guilty of something and we all cope in different ways. Some people can bury it, however bad it may be. Others are destroyed by it, however minor the transgression. And some, like the main character in “Black”, are in denial. But however it’s handled, guilt is tenacious. It gets you in the end.’

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  A Drug on the Market

  KIM NEWMAN

  Had my first London enterprise met with a lesser success, Leo Dare would not have invited me to join the consortium; and had it met with a greater, I should not have accepted his invitation.

  However, response to the patent Galvanic Girdle, an electrical aid to weight reduction, merely shaded towards the positive end of indifference. After the craze for such sparking yet health-giving devices in my own native United States, this came as a disappointment. My British partners in the endeavour preferred to make known the virtues of the marvellous modern invention through public demonstration, with testimonials from newly slender ‘Yankee’ worthies, rather than incur the apparent expense of taking advertising space by the yard in the illustrated press. This was a sorry mistake: our initial penuriousness served to alienate the proprietors of those organs. The ‘papers took to running news items about the nasty shocks suffered by galvanised ladies of a certain age through overuse or misapplication of our battery-belt. In brief, the Fourth Estate was set against us rather than in our corner. The grand adventure of ‘slenderness - through electrocution!’ - the slogan was my own contribution to the enterprise - was frankly sluggish and slowing to a halt. I foresaw a lengthy struggle towards profitability, with the prospect of a smash always a shadow to the promise of rich dividends. I was not looking to get out - the example of New York proved that the trick could be done, and the odd singed spinster would be easy to set aside with a proper advertising campaign - but when the third post of a Tuesday brought a card from Leo Dare, requesting my presence at the birth of a consortium, my interest was pricked.

  The public does not know his name, but Leo Dare is an Alexander of the marketplace, a hero and an example among the enterprising. Unlike many of his apparent peers, he endows no museums or galleries, seeks no title or honour and erects no statues to himself. He is not caricatured in Punch, quoted in sermons or travestied in the works of lady novelists. He has simply made, risked, lost and regained fortunes beyond human understanding. In ‘82, Leo Dare cornered quap - an unpleasantly textured, slightly luminescent, West African mud which is the world’s major source of elements vital to the manufacture of filaments essential in the (then-uninvented) incandescent lamp. Great quantities of the radioactive stuff sat in warehouse bins for years, as rivals joked that the sharp fellow had been blunted at last. A succession of night-watchmen succumbed to mystery ailments, giving rise to legends of ‘the curse of the voo-doo’ and of witch-doctors conjuring doom for those who stole ‘the sacred dirt’. Then, thanks to Mr Thomas Alva Edison, control of quap became very desirable indeed and Leo Dare, clearly the reverse of cursed, cashed out in style. In ‘91, he introduced pneumatic bicycle tyres and obliterated overnight the market for solid rubber. Not only do pneumatic tyres offer a more pleasant, less guts-scrambling bicycling experience but they are prone to puncture and wearing-out, necessitating frequent purchase of replacements and creating an ancillary demand for repair equipment, patches and pumps - in all of which our Alexander naturally took an interest.

  The particular genius of Leo Dare, that quality which those ‘in the know’ aptly call ‘Dare-ing’, is not in discovery or invention - for canny minds are at his beck and call to handle those tasks - but in the conversion through enterprise of intellect into affluence. The old saw has it that if ‘you build a better mouse-trap, the world will beat a path to your door’. In these distracting times, the world has other things on its mind than keeping apace with the latest rodent-apprehension patents, and any major advance in the field has to be brought forcibly to its attention. Even then, Better Mouse Trap must compete with inferior snares that have an established following, or lobby successfully for a Royal Seal of Approval, or are simply blessed with a more ‘catching’ name. Better Mouse Trap, Ltd. will find itself in the care of the receivers if its finely manufactured products are placed in stores beside a less worthy effort retailing at 2d cheaper under the name of Best Mouse Trap. Leo Dare could make a fine old go of Better Mouse Trap, but if he had the rights to Worse Mouse Trap, he would represent it as Best Mouse Trap of All, emblazon the box with a two-coloured illustration of an evil-looking mouse surprised by a guillotine, undercut Best Mouse Trap
by ½d and put both his competitors out of business within the year. Snap! Snap! Snap! That is Leo Dare.

  ‘This is Mr William Quinn,’ said Leo Dare, introducing me to the three gentlemen and one lady cosied in armchairs and on a sofa in a private room above a fashionable restaurant in Piccadilly. ‘As you can tell from the stripe of Billy’s suit, he’s one of our transatlantic cousins. A veritable wild Red Indian among us. He’ll be looking after our advertising.’

  From the looks on the faces of those assembled, I did not impress them overmuch. As a member of a comparatively new-fangled profession, I was accustomed to glances of suspicion from those whose business forefathers had managed perfectly well in a slower, smaller world without stooping to plaster their names on the sides of London omnibuses. Come to that, they had managed quite well enough without omnibuses. Our host, who had no such delusions, spoke as if I was already aboard the consortium.

  It is a peculiarity of Leo Dare that he has no premises of his own. Concerns in which he takes a controlling interest might lease or purchase offices, factories, yards, warehouses, firms of carters and distributors, even railroad trains and cars. He himself resides in hotel suites and has, as the courts would say, no fixed address. It is his practice to engage rooms temporarily for specific purposes. This well-appointed salon, with waiters and attendants firmly shut outside, was the destined birthplace of our fresh venture.

  Leo Dare is one of those fellows you can’t help looking at, but would be hard-put to describe. In middle years, trim, of average stature, cleanshaven, sly-eyed, impeccably dressed but not ostentatious, he has that sense of command one finds in the best, if least-decorated, generals and statesmen. He alone was standing, back to a fireplace in which a genial blaze burned, one hand behind him, one holding a small glass of what I took to be port.

  ‘Quinn, meet the rest of the consortium,’ said Leo Dare. ‘This is Enid, Lady Knowe, the philanthropist. You’ll have heard of her many charitable activities, and of course be familiar with her family name. Her late father was Knowe’s Black Biscuits.’

  ‘ “An Ounce of Charcoal is a Pound of Comfort”,’ I quoted.

  Lady Knowe, a thin-faced young woman dressed like an eighty-year-old widow, winced. I tumbled at once that she didn’t care to be reminded that the funds for her philanthropy came from a species of peaty-looking (and -tasting) edible brick. Knowe’s Blacks were dreaded by children entrusted to nannies who believed (or maliciously pretended to believe) their consumption was good for digestion.

  ‘Sir Marmaduke Collynge, the distinguished Parliamentarian …’

  A beef-checked man in clothes too small for him, Sir Marmaduke seemed to be swelling all through our meeting, indeed all through our acquaintance, as if the room were far too hot for him and he had just enjoyed an enormous meal unaugmented by Knowe’s Black Biscuits. He grunted a cheery greeting.

  ‘Hugo Varrable, our research chemist…’

  A young fellow of about my age, with long hair, a horse face and stained hands, Dr Varrable sat with a leather satchel on his lap. The chemist prized his satchel, which was stuffed to bulging with what I assumed were formulae and vials of experimental compounds.

  ‘And Richard Enfield, administrator of the estate of the late lawyer, Gabriel Utterson.’

  A well-dressed gadabout, no longer young, Mr Enfield had the high colour of a man who has spent as little time in his rainy, foggy homeland as possible. He gave a noncommittal, very English wave.

  ‘Does the name “Utterson” mean anything to you, Quinn?’ Leo Dare asked.

  I confessed that it did not. Leo Dare seemed pleased.

  ‘What about the name of Jekyll? Dr Henry Jekyll?’

  ‘Or Hyde?’ suggested Varrable, glumly.

  Of course I knew the story. A few seasons back, even the New York ‘papers were full of little else.

  ‘Dr Jekyll was the scientifical fellow who brewed the potion that turned him into another man entirely,’ I said. ‘The dreadful murderer, Edward Hyde.’

  ‘Capital. You did follow the story.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘But, Quinn, did you believe? Do you credit that a dried-out elderly stick might, by the consumption of a chemical elixir, be transmogrified into a thriving young buck? That he might undergo a radical metamorphosis of mind and body, shucking off the respectable front of Jekyll to indulge in the licentiousness of Hyde?’

  I laughed, a little nervously. My humour was not shared by anyone in the room.

  ‘Well, Quinn. Speak up.’

  ‘Mr Dare, I read the published accounts of the strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I even saw the Mansfield company’s stage dramatisation in New York, with startling theatre trickery. Knowing something of the workings of the newspaper business, I have assumed the matter blown up out of all proportion. Surely, this Jekyll simply took a drug that unseated his wits and used disguise to live a double life. He cheated the gallows by suicide, I believe.’

  ‘They were two men,’ said Mr Enfield. ‘I knew them both.’

  ‘I bow to personal experience,’ I said, still not fathoming the import of all this.

  ‘Do you not see the opportunity created by our control of the Jekyll estate and by the notoriety of his case?’

  ‘You know that I do not. But I have a strong suspicion that you do. You, after all, are Leo Dare and I am someone else. It’s your business to see overlooked opportunities.’

  ‘Spoken like a true ad man, Quinn. Just the right tone of flattery and familiarity. You’ll “fit” in all right, I can avow to that.’

  I was still no wiser.

  ‘How would you react if I were to tell you that we had, working from the fragmentary papers left behind by the late Dr Jekyll, reconstructed the formula of his potion? That our clever Dr Varrable has reproduced the impurity of salts that was the key, one might also say secret, ingredient of Jekyll’s elixir of transformation and is at present applying his talents to a system whereby we might compound that miraculous brew in bulk? That our consortium has sole licence for the manufacture, distribution and sale of the “Jekyll Tonic”?’

  Quiet hung in the room. I was aware of the crackling of the fire.

  ‘Surely,’ I ventured, ‘Britain has a surfeit of murderers as it is? The Police Gazette is full of ‘em.’

  Leo Dare looked a little disappointed. ‘The murderousness of Hyde did not emerge for some months, remember. Initially, the experiment was a remarkable success. Jekyll became a new man, a younger, fitter, more vital man. Can you not see the possibilities?’

  I began to smile. ‘In bottles,’ I said. ‘Lined up on a druggist’s shelf. What do you call them here? Chemist’s shops. Little blue bottles, with bright yellow labels.’

  ‘I see you understand well enough,’ said Leo Dare, approving.

  ‘The formula must be highly diluted,’ said Varrable. ‘Maybe one-tenth the strength of that Jekyll used, with water …’

  ‘Coloured water,’ I put in.

  ‘… added to minimise the unpleasant side-effects. I say, Quinn, why coloured?’

  ‘So it doesn’t look like water. Otherwise, suspicious folk think that’s all it is. I served a rough apprenticeship in a medicine show out West. The marks, ah, the customers, ignore the testimonials and the kootch dances. They open their wallets for the stuff that has the prettiest colour.’

  ‘Well, I never.’

  ‘Look to your own medicine cabinet at home. You’re an educated man, and I’ll wager you purchased your salves and cure-alls on the same basis.’

  ‘We’ve decided to call it a “tonic”,’ said Leo Dare.

  I thought for a moment, then agreed with him. ‘The biggest hurdle will be the public perception of our product as the stuff of melodrama and murder. The name should not have associations with magic or alchemy, as would be the case with “miracle elixir” or “potion” A “tonic” is something we all might have at home without becoming bloodthirsty monsters.’

  ‘From henceforth, the word “monster” is
barred among us,’ decreed Leo Dare.

  Mr Enfield looked down into his empty glass. ‘I concur. Though, for a tiny fraction of our customership, the attraction will all be wrapped up in the business of Jekyll and Hyde. Some souls have a temptation to sample the dark depths. We should be aware of that and fashion strategies to pull in that segment without alienating the greater public, whose interest will be chiefly, ah, cosmetic. Everyone above a certain age wishes to look younger, to feel younger.’

  ‘Indeed. And we offer a tonic that will let them be younger.’

  ‘We should be cautious, Mr Dare,’ said Varrable. ‘The formula must be carefully tested. Its effects are, as yet, unpredictable.’

  ‘Indeed. Indeed. But it is also vital, Dr Varrable, that we consider the practicalities. I have asked Quinn to apply his wits to matters outside your laboratory. Many considerations must be made before Jekyll Tonic can be presented to the public.’

  ‘What of the legalities?’ I asked. ‘Aren’t there stringent rules and regulations? Government boards about medicines and poisons?’

  ‘There certainly are, and Sir Marmaduke sits on them all.’

  Sir Marmaduke grunted again and made a speech.

  ‘It is not the place of this House to stand in the way of progress, sirrah. The law should not interpose itself between a thing that is desired and the people who desire it. That has always been my philosophy and it should be ever the philosophy of this government. If Jekyll Tonic, this wondrous boon to all humanity, were to be denied us because of the sorry fate of one researcher, where would frivolous, anti-medicinal legislation cease? Would sufferers from toothache be prevented from seeking the solace of such perfectly harmless, widely used balms as laudanum, cocaine and heroin? I pity anyone who persists in needless pain because the dusty senior fatheads of the medical profession, who earned their doctorates in the days of body-snatching and leeches, insist on tying every new discovery up in committees of enquiry, of over-regulating and hamstringing our valiant and clearsighted experimental pioneers.