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

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  Da Silva’s arm ached with the effort of holding the knife. Sweat ran into his eye, down his temples, dripped off his nose. The air was becoming foul. His leg throbbed. His entire body hurt with the strain of mastering Meryt-ankh. And his soul, too, he thought. ‘You can threaten,’ he forced out the words, ‘but what can you do? Nothing.’

  She opened her mouth and white-hot flame roared out, bright as the sun, too fierce to look at. He looked down, away from it, and brought the knife up. It took both hands to lift it. The flame broke against the blade, and died. But he staggered back with the force of it, and would have fallen to his knees but for Phoebe grabbing him. The sorceress’s ghost watched. Very good, little man, came her voice in his head.

  ‘I think,’ he said breathlessly to Phoebe, ‘you should put the papyrus back and seal up this tomb.’

  ‘No,’ said Ruivo.

  She rounded on him. ‘What about Juliao? What about your son?’ she asked. ‘Luís, ask her if—’

  I know the woman’s thoughts. I am not unmerciful. Return me the papyrus, and her lover will recover.

  ‘I’m not—’ said Phoebe indignantly.

  The dead shall not live again, but all else shall be as it was.

  Breathing was getting difficult now. The sorceress’s power pushed him back until he reached the wall. He rather wished he could burrow into it. The knife weighed as much as a man. His arms were trembling with the strain of holding it.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Phoebe make her way towards Ruivo, moving slowly, as if walking into a gale. She tried to wrest the scroll from his hand. He resisted her. ‘I won’t let you,’ he shouted. His voice seemed to come from a long distance away.

  Da Silva strained against the power. It had stuck him to the wall like a butterfly on a pin. His only lifeline was the knife he held out in front of him, which the sorceress’s ghost could not pass. His sight was fuzzing from exhaustion.

  Phoebe finally succeeded in wrenching the papyrus from Ruivo and started to struggle towards the sarcophagus. Da Silva, transfixed, saw the archaeologist pull a revolver from his pocket and slowly raise it. He opened his mouth to warn her, but no sound came out.

  Let it be, necromancer. Meryt-ankh raised her hand again and turned towards Ruivo. Da Silva slid down the wall into a crouch, and braced his shaking elbows on his knees to maintain his knife’s upright position. Pain flared up his leg and he let out an involuntary grunt.

  Ruivo fired the gun. Echoes bounced off the walls until it sounded like an artillery barrage. At the same moment Meryt-ankh made a throwing motion towards him. The bullet exploded in mid-air.

  And then Ruivo exploded as well, something bursting out of his chest in a confusion of blood and bone. Phoebe staggered to the sarcophagus and dropped the papyrus inside and Meryt-ankh smiled.

  The lanterns went out. In their after-image Da Silva thought he saw a beast, something like a crocodile, snap up whatever had erupted from Ruivo. And then in the sudden blackness he fancied he heard something feeding.

  Darkness. Blind, utter, complete. Night could not be called dark in comparison. He fought down panic, searched for matches, found none. The blackness pressed on him, like a heavy, suffocating blanket.

  ‘Phoebe?’ He could hear her breathing shallowly.

  ‘Yes,’ came her shaky voice. Was there anything else there?

  ‘Cigarette-lighter.’

  ‘Oh … of course.’ It clicked, then clicked again. ‘Come on.’ Then flared, showing her pale face. She re-lit one of the lanterns. It burned dimly, reminding Da Silva there was little air left, as if he needed reminding. Staring around wildly, he saw only Ruivo’s crumpled body. He went to wipe sweat from his face, found he was still clutching his knife. The handle had dug grooves into his palm. Blood from his other wrist made it sticky.

  Unsteady, he pulled himself to his feet and limped across to examine the archaeologist. He turned the body over with his foot, dreading what he might find. And found no mark on it.

  ‘What was it? That came out of him?’ Phoebe whispered.

  ‘I think it was his soul,’ said Da Silva. ‘Come on, we have to get out of here.’ Something was tugging urgently at him. He didn’t ignore such warnings.

  She stood her ground, still staring at the archaeologist’s dead body. ‘But - what about Mister Ruivo?’

  ‘He’s dead, Phoebe, now come on!’ He grabbed her hand, but she stooped, obstinately, feeling for a pulse in Ruivo’s neck.

  ‘He’s cold!’ she exclaimed. And then looked up at the ceiling, her eyes widening as a tremor shook the chamber.

  The next minute they were running down the passage, gasping for breath, the lantern swaying wildly in Phoebe’s hand, as stones and dust rained down. His leg erupted with pain at every step. There was a rumbling, like thunder yet somehow unlike. Thunder is a thing of the air. This was a noise of stone, of earth, of magma’s slow seethe in the planet’s core. It was almost too deep to hear, but its resonance was chilling.

  As Da Silva followed Phoebe’s headlong rush into the sloping shaft, and the relief of fresher air, the tunnel collapsed with a roar, spewing out a billowing cloud to engulf them. They scrambled up the shaking conduit, slipping and slithering on the loose stones and debris, and he blessed whoever had put in the climbing aids. Debris and stone fragments shook loose around them, and Phoebe cried out as a chunk of rock hit her on the head. She hung onto the rope, but the lantern plummeted past Da Silva, narrowly missing him, and shattered on the tumbled stone below. The oil ignited in a brief flare, and died.

  But they were nearly at the top. Phoebe flung herself out into the daylight and he followed a split second later. They staggered a few steps down the gully, and then his leg gave way. He collapsed in the cool sand, sucking in great breaths of air, and sensed Phoebe on her knees beside him, doing the same.

  The earth convulsed again, like a huge beast shaking a troublesome insect off its skin. This was followed by a deep rumble, and dust puffed out of the entrance to the shaft. The timber baulks shoring it up cracked and fell, and a few stones and a small cascade of earth rattled down the cliff-face. Then everything was still.

  Blood streamed down Phoebe’s face from a shallow cut on her brow, splitting a swelling bruise in half. Da Silva mopped it with her headcloth.

  ‘I’ll do yours if you do mine,’ she said, putting her hand on his knee.

  The following day, the walking wounded - as Da Silva thought of them - visited Juliao Ruivo in his hospital bed to break the news of his father’s death.

  Juliao was a cheerful-looking young man of around thirty who presumably favoured his mother, since there seemed to be no paternal resemblance at all. Da Silva watched the two younger people somewhat indulgently. Phoebe may have denied the sorceress’s insight, but he thought it might turn out to be a prophecy.

  ‘I’m so sorry about your father,’ Phoebe was saying to Juliao, holding his hand. Like the forward Americana she called herself, he thought with an inward smile. ‘That they should both die so close to each other …’

  ‘We were never very close,’ said Ruivo’s son. ‘Still, it is strange … and Dr El-Aqbar as well…’ His voice trailed off. He was still weak from his illness.

  ‘Call it the curse of Meryt-ankh,’ said Da Silva, from the window.

  ‘Description of the beast Ammut: Her forepart is like that of a crocodile, the middle of her body is like that of a lion, her hindquarters are like those of a hippopotamus.’

  The Book of the Dead

  Chico Kidd has been writing ghost stories since 1979 under the name of A. F. Kidd, a choice influenced by classic writers such as M. R. James, E. F. Benson and others. Her fiction has been published in such small-press magazines as Ghosts & Scholars, Dark Dreams, Peeping Tom, Enigmatic Tales, All Hallows, and the anthologies The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories 2, Vampire Stories, three volumes of Karl Edward Wagner’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories and the hardcover volume of Ghosts & Scholars. Almost
all the short stories were finally collected together in one volume by Ash-Tree Press as Summoning Knells and Other Inventions. Her first novel The Printer’s Devil was published in 1995 by Baen Books (under the name of Chico Kidd rather than A. F.), and a volume of collaborations with Rick Kennett, featuring William Hope Hodgson’s character Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, were recently collected by Ash-Tree as Number 472 Cheyne Walk. In September 2000, a Portuguese sea-captain called Luís Da Silva barged into a story called ‘Cats and Architecture’ (published in Supernatural Tales 2) and demanded to have his story told. Since then he has appeared in nine more short stories and two and a half novels which are currently under consideration. ‘This story came into being because I wanted to see if I could write an Egyptian archaeology tale without featuring mummies at all,’ admits the author. ‘There are no special anecdotes about this particular story but there is a curious coincidence apropos the Da Silva stories as a whole. When I found I was going to be writing a lot about the Captain, I thought it would be a good idea to learn Portuguese. In the course of this I discovered the wonderful (and Nobel Prize-winning) author Jose Saramago. His first novel, Manual de Pintura e Caligrifia (Manual of Painting & Calligraphy) features a character called Chico who also works in advertising, and also mentions a writer named Luís da Silva. Make of that what you will.’

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  Midday People

  TANITH LEE

  I

  The Ancient Romans had called noon the Ghost Hour. She had been told this, or read it, but could not remember why. The Italian light perhaps, she thought, staring out across the square. It took away the shadows, it bleached and turned the buildings to flat gold, and any people walking there, they were golden too, and without physical depth.

  Unlike Chrissie, sitting under the dark pink umbrella of the cafe table. She could never tan; she even found it quite hard to burn.

  ‘It’s fucking hot,’ observed Craig.

  Chrissie turned to him attentively. ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘And that food. Too heavy. Oily. I’m going in for a lie-down. Or a throw-up. Whatever comes first.’

  She thought probably it was the amount of food he had consumed, rather than its type (surely even Craig had known that Italy meant pastas and cheeses and olive oil). Also the two bottles of red wine they had drunk between them. Although he did not like wine.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she brightly said. ‘Yes, of course. Let’s go in. It’s almost siesta time, isn’t it?’

  ‘God, get your facts straight. Not yet.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ He could be right or wrong, but was right of course. And she, stupid.

  As they rose, she imagined the few people around them might think the English couple were going in so soon because they were eager for fervent holiday sex. This was not at all the case. Craig would indeed go straight to sleep, lumpen on his bed, his thick short sweaty hair plastered to the pillow. She would lie on the bed next to his, and look up at the curious patterns of pale stains in the white ceiling. She was, after three days at the little hotel, getting to know these stains. She tried to make them into something interesting (childishly attempting to enjoy even this). Then, adult, she would try to go to sleep instead. But she was always awake, wide, wide awake.

  At about five, Craig would himself wake, lumber into the bathroom and piss, grumbling, angry at his leaden head. At the room. At the hotel for something - some noise that had irritated him, a fly that might have got in, Italy, Italians. Her.

  As they crossed the square, Chrissie looked longingly over at the church, with its biscuity façade and carved doorway. She wanted to go to the church, look inside, maybe attend a service even, decorous, with a scarf respectfully tied over her hair. She was not religious, yet she would like to do that, here. And she would like to walk round the town, go out into the countryside, admire the olive trees and the vineyards in the dust-haze, the round hills with villas tucked up on them under old red roofs—

  So far, they had not done much. They had seen more of the hotel than anything else.

  Why had he wanted to come, she wondered? Oh, that was easy really, he had been showing off to a colleague when he produced the idea of the trip. More to the point, why had Craig wanted Chrissie to come with him?

  They were only in their thirties. They had only been together, that is lived together, for two years. It had never been much good. They both worked, but he considered what she did with her group of decorators to be ‘fey’ and useless. ‘Tarting up the houses of rich cunts,’ was Craig’s term for it. Meanwhile his high-powered job kept him out a lot, drinking and eating with his clients. Coming back, he had no time for her, yet expected, as a man much older might have done, the flat cleaned and, if he had not had a meal, one ready. If this meal was then not to his taste, he told her so. Usually it was not.

  She had tried, blaming herself, making excuses for him.

  But by now she wondered why they stayed together. Fear she supposed, on her side. She was in looks thin and ordinary, and before Craig, had had very little interest taken in her by men. As for him, probably she was convenient. One day some other woman would appear on the scene and sweep him off. And Chrissie dreaded the inevitable shame. But then, it might not happen, because Craig was no catch himself. Not very tall, heavy and thickset and now, from all the wining and dining, getting extra chins and quite a belly, his small-eyed, discontented face had no compensatory attractions, his voice grated, and his personality was - well, what?

  Void, she thought.

  And, humiliated as he pushed rudely in front of her into the side street, almost shoving her out of the way, she pretended instead to have stopped on purpose to look at something. And she cursed herself. All this should end. He loathed her. Surely there might be one man in the world, someone with low enough standards, who might care for her, actually like her, find her talented and appealing despite her 32 B bra-size and her limp dull hair? And even if there was no one - could she truly not manage on her own? Probably, if she suggested they part, he would shout for joy. Only it was all so complicated now - the flat in both their names, the joint account and - coward, coward, she thought.

  And—

  saw that, pretending to look at something, she was actually looking. Staring. Back across the square. At two people, there by the fountain. Two golden people, glittering in the middle-of-the-day light bright as the scattering water.

  Oh, typical Italian young, gorgeously clad in their shining youth. Am I jealous or simply having a religious experience?

  She could not take her eyes off them. And they, in their perfect new-minted world would never notice, so it was quite all right.

  They wore jet-black shades. His hair was as black, and the girl’s was corn-blonde, like the bars of sunlight. Their clothes, smart, white, or simply whitened by the glare - the bare arms strong and graceful, the long throats and mouths that had not lost, like fruits, their juice—

  She was in love with both of them. And really, they were not so young. No. They did not wear the fashions one saw the young put on everywhere - yet wealthy they must be. They glowed with health and money, as with light.

  Something made Chrissie glance along the side street after Craig. Walking away, he had either not noticed he had lost her, or else he was entirely indifferent. Either way, it meant much the same. In the shadow that did not fall from anything, but simply amassed in the channel of the narrow street because the sun had not got into it, Craig looked extremely thick. Physically, that was. Too solid, as if he were trying to prove his existence, his importance; opaque as a block of stone.

  Chrissie looked back towards her beautiful ones. They were still there, not speaking, leaning at the fountain’s rim, oblivious of the water spotting their flawless garments and skin. Lizards, she thought, golden lizards from another planet.

  And then both their heads turned, and they looked, each of them, right at her, through their inky shades.

  Chrissie felt herself colour. “Scusi,’ she muttered. Her Itali
an was hopeless and virtually non-existent - and anyway, they could not hear her from this distance.

  She turned herself, quickly, and walked after Craig into the thunder-shade of the street.

  By the time she reached the hotel, Craig was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Has my husband gone up?’ she asked the man hovering at reception. She said it happily, as if this loving ‘husband’ and she had been separated by unavoidable circumstance, and arranged to meet again, lover-like, in the erotic seclusion above.

  The man agreed the signore had taken the key and gone upstairs.

  Chrissie began to walk towards the stairs. They would take longer, and also provide a little exercise. She had nearly reached them when she hesitated. She fumbled in her bag, pretending to search for something without which she could not go up. She could not face it. Not again, lying so close to Craig and a hundred miles from him, divided by wine, sleep and his utter antipathy.

  She would not cry. God, don’t let me cry.

  Oh the hell with it, cry if you want, she thought, this is Italy not bloody Cheltenham.

  Oddly, the urge to cry at once receded.

  Across from her she noticed the bar, open and airy, the now-one-thirty light streaming in over small marble tables and rococo chairs. Above the counter, every bottle had become a lamp with a flame of sun blazing inside, green lamps and scarlet ones, indigo and apricot.

  Should she, after the wine?

  Apparently she should. She was in the bar, and now another, smiling man approached, with coal-black curls, and she ordered her drink from him, a large vodka, not especially Italian at all, but when it came, dressed in its glass, it was an Italian vodka, with Italian ice.

  The room was empty, save for herself and the barman. She sat drinking slowly, looking out into the street to which the sun had now miraculously soaked through. She wondered how that was. In the light, everything sprang alive out there, the burnt sienna of walls, the terracotta roofs, the red and rose geraniums—