The Best New Horror 5

by Ramsay Campbell

  Kelly shivered, and realized that it wasn’t the night air that made her do so. Mulligan was – well, maybe she shouldn’t be too uncharitable, since after all the man had died in the fire, according to the newspapers. But she remembered things.

  Things suddenly so vivid that she leaned closer to the fence and studied its markings. Its lower markings, where a child could have – yes! Yes, there, beneath the more superficial scrawl of a modern age less given to permanence. There – deep in the wood, discernible even under paint, two letters: MC. Mary Connors, the little raven-haired girl upstairs, the one with the lisp.

  Kelly traced a finger along the letters. M. Still pretty clear, after all these years. C. A little more worn away, but still –

  Suddenly the act of running her finger along these old lineaments brought a stirring of other memories, darker memories that had been trying all evening to surface, and she decided that it was time to get back to the well-lighted hallways and conference rooms of her hotel.

  But after another long day of dreary panel discussions on interlibrary loans and acquisition techniques and cataloguing, she was back, skipping the convention’s evening events again, lingering now on her old corner, where Mulligan’s fence grinned its wooden grin at the rising moon. Somehow the fence looked complacent, secure in its swarm of inscriptions.

  The front door to the old apartment building had been left of center, and to the left of the now boarded-up gateway in the fence only a short stretch of wooden slats was sufficient to reach the nearest surviving building, an apparently empty brick-faced hulk that extended back from the street and angled right and kept going, forming the side and rear of the vacant lot; over the fence she could see the highest of the dark windows back there, a string of yawning mouths stretching all the way to Ames Street. Here where she stood, there was a narrow gap between the end of Mulligan’s fence and the edge of the remaining building, and leaning a little into this gap she could just make out a low tumulus of fallen bricks where the pale wash of moonlight came over the fence to invade the weedy and rubble-strewn lot. She could have squeezed through the opening and inspected the blackened ruins, had she wanted to.

  But she chose to edge to the right along the length of the fence, past the barricaded entrance, back to the longer stretch of boards, where a bewilderment of carved and painted legends told their endlessly repeated litany to 47th Street. They, the kids, had always done their carving here on the 47th Street side for some reason, never around the corner on Ames Street, perhaps because it was riskier here; Mulligan might catch you, might notice. The most intrepid carvers of course had done their work nearest the old gate.

  Kelly squinted at the deeper carvings, faint but detectable beneath the superficialities of the fence. First came ND and, below that, LD: she remembered, with uncanny clarity now, the blonde, blue-eyed twins Nancy and Lucy Daniels. On a line with them, to the right, was CWYNN: Charlie Wynn, whose father had worked at the drugstore on the corner (gone, she’d noticed; a laundry now). Just below and to the right of Charlie was AB: Alice Baker. Kelly remembered the name but little else. Then, a little higher, were BJ and MR: Billy Jenkins and Mikey Ryan, a pair of neighborhood bullies as she recalled, always together, even here in wooden epitaph. After them came FREDDYS: that would be Freddy Shea (disturbing memories, there); then MC again, little Mary Connors with her raven locks and lisping voice. And just past the halfway point on the way to the corner was GARYW: Gary Williams. At this one she paused, remembering.

  Gary had been painfully skinny, with the largest ears she had ever seen, then or since; he was not terribly bad to look at, all in all, but his ears had run nearly the full length of his thin face, like big pink bookends, or like ominous parentheses enclosing his face as an afterthought. He had liked her, had in his childish way made eyes at her and had at one point even tried to kiss her, but she had kept him at a distance, fearing, for one thing, the taunting of the others; most of the kids had made fun of Gary. Absently, she traced out the G with her forefinger, and the A, the R, the Y, the W. Actually, she had thought of him from time to time, wondering what ever became of him; she had visions of him ensconced with a family somewhere, mowing a lawn and tossing a ball with his kids. Where did people go when you lost sight of them?

  She passed along to the next inscriptions she could make out: JL and BL, which would be Jerry and Betsy Lloyd, whose mother always had a fresh pie cooling on the windowsill upstairs. Betsy was somewhat older than her brother Jerry, and his leaving his initials on the fence must have emboldened her to add her own. Farther along she found RT: Russell Tully, a boy she only vaguely remembered. Finally, in the least courageous spot, nearest the street corner and far from the apartment entrance, she found the fossil memory of herself: KF. Most of these older letters were rather large and rather deeply gouged into the wood, but it was still surprising that most of them were legible after all this time. She lingered over her own initials, musing.

  “Kelly? Is that you?”

  Startled, she turned toward the voice. The woman was still a little shorter than she, and some of the shoulder-length raven hair was now streaked with gray; and yes – Kelly had noticed a slight lisp.

  She took the woman’s proffered hand. “Good heavens. Mary? Mary Connors?”

  Mary nodded, smiling, holding the hand a moment longer. “Mary Douglas now. I knew it was you. Somehow you don’t seem to have changed that much. And I remembered your place. You’re standing by your place on the fence. KF.” She laughed, and Kelly did too, but when their eyes met again it was with a certain odd seriousness. Kelly felt compelled to explain her presence there.

  “I’m in town for a convention at the Sheraton. I figured while I was back for the weekend I might as well walk over here and have a look. What – what brings you here, Mary?” Even in asking, she half felt that she already knew.

  The other woman looked away for a second, then shrugged. “I couldn’t say. I live only across town, on the north end, but I never really thought of coming here. Till now. Last night I told Tom – that’s my husband – that I had the most peculiar urge – I mean, suddenly I just wanted to come here. Tonight I left straight from work and here I am. Isn’t that the strangest thing?”

  Kelly studied her face. “Is it?”

  All at once Mary looked nervous, as if the conversation were about to take a direction uncomfortable to her. “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” Kelly said, “do you remember what happened, with Freddy Shea? You can still see his name on the fence, you know, if you look closely.” They walked a little away from the corner and Kelly pointed out the name, to the left of MC. “Remember, Mary?”

  “I – I’m not sure I do.”

  “Or not sure you want to?” Kelly asked, trying to let her tone say that she was not being unkind. “I wouldn’t blame you. Anyway, I don’t know if Freddy ever told you what he told me. Old Mulligan actually caught him carving his name, caught him right in the act, when he was finishing up. Freddy said Mulligan traced his finger along the letters in the fence. Just ran a finger along the letters, staring at Freddy the whole time, and turned and walked away, and went inside. Later Freddy went in and started to walk past Mulligan’s door to go upstairs, but couldn’t walk past. Just couldn’t, for the life of him. Instead, he ended up knocking on Mulligan’s door, doing it but not wanting to, and Mulligan opened the door and pulled him inside. Freddy never would tell me what happened in there, but I remember him coming up the stairs later, white as chalk and trembling all over. He never told you any of this?”

  Mary shook her head. “No, he never said much of anything to me at all, actually. But I take it you don’t know the same sort of thing happened to – what was her name? Alice? And to those twins, you know, Lucy and Nancy. And to the kid whose dad ran the drugstore.”

  “Charlie?”

  “Charlie Wynn, right. Some of those things may have happened after you moved away. Good thing you weren’t around. I moved away too, the year after you, or Mulligan might
have got around to me next.”

  Kelly shuddered. “God, what kind of man was he?”

  Mary stared at the rough boards for a long time before looking at Kelly again. “No, you know, I think the question is, what kind of thing was his fence?”

  By now Kelly felt sure enough to reply: “I would ask what kind of thing is his fence.”

  Mary glared at her. “You mean – the reason I – ”

  Kelly nodded. “Guess so. It wasn’t Mulligan so much. It was – well, yes, I did trace out your initials. Last night. Right here. You know, I think we could get the whole gang back here if we tried.”

  Mary turned away, and seemed to be mulling this over. When she turned back, it was to ask: “Did you call anyone else?”

  Kelly hesitated. “I – ah – well. Just Gary.”

  Mary gaped at her in evident astonishment. “Gary? Gary Williams?” Choking back a laugh, she put her hand over her mouth and shook her head slowly, as if in incredulity. “Oh, Kelly, my God, you really are impossible!”

  And, trailing a somehow mirthless-sounding laughter, she was around the corner and gone.

  Kelly stood on the corner for a while, feeling suddenly very alone. She walked around for a while, and finally headed back to the hotel.

  In the lobby, she checked with the clerk at the desk to see if she had any messages; Mrs Fletcher, her neighbor back home, was supposed to call if there were any problems while she was away. There was indeed a message, but when the clerk handed the rumpled note to her and she unfolded it and read it, the message was not from Mrs Fletcher. Instantly Kelly turned around and hurried out the revolving door to the street.

  Back on the old corner under the pale lamplight, she asked herself why she had come back here this time. After resisting the idea for some minutes, she admitted to herself that it was to see – to verify that something would not happen. Assuredly would not happen. Mary’s urge to come back here had to have been a coincidence: a truly remarkable one, but a coincidence nonetheless. Kelly was back here by the fence now to see that nothing else was going to happen.

  And apparently nothing was. A pair of late-night strollers sauntered by, talking quietly, but otherwise the streets were empty. Across the way, huddled apartments had long since closed their tired eyes and slept. From somewhere far off, vague traffic sounds mingled with the wind that had sprung up, but all else was silence, and she began to feel foolish standing out here unaccountably, pointlessly. What would she say if a policeman came along and asked her why she was here?

  She strolled closer to the corner, straining to read the older inscriptions on the fence, those archaeological strata beneath the modern vulgarities. The kids, her old circle of friends – scattered, gone. Where? Anywhere, everywhere, nowhere. Strange, how you never forgot some –

  The thought broke off in her mind with the realization that she was listening, had been listening for some time. For what? To what? The wind, her own breath, nothing else.

  No – no, there, again. A sort of scraping sound. Faint, vague, distant, but seeming to come closer.

  Well, now, this was foolish, letting her imagination go this way. There was nothing to be nervous about. But the sound was closer now, apparently coming from around on Ames Street, approaching the corner, and in the same moment she realized both that it sounded like a shoe scraping along the pavement, and that some undefinable odor now floated on the wind. It took another moment for her to place the odor as damp sod, with some less thinkable smell beneath, but by then the tattered and rail-thin source of these impressions had shambled all the way around the corner. Some feverish region of Kelly’s mind chattered: he got here fast, considering how much farther he had to come.

  Even mostly eaten away, the ears were still quite large, and she had time only to reflect once more on Mary’s note – Kelly: Gary Williams died a year ago – before, embracing her, he had pressed what was left of his mouth to hers.

  DANIEL FOX

  How She Dances

  DANIEL FOX is perhaps better known as Chaz Brenchley, the author of four psycho-thrillers, The Samaritan, The Refuge, The Garden and Mall Time, as well as three fantasy novels for children. His latest novel, Paradise, is described as “an inner city epic of good and evil”.

  The author lives in Newcastle upon Tyne and has recently completed a year as crimewriter-in-residence at St Peter’s Riverside Sculpture Project in Sunderland. He has written around four hundred stories in various genres, and his short horror fiction has appeared in The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein and several volumes of Dark Voices: The Pan Book of Horror.

  SHE PICKED ME up down at the station, on a Saturday night.

  I’d been drinking with friends till the pubs closed, and the plan was to go on to a nightclub after; but I was in an odd mood, restless and unsettled, even with people I’d known for years. I didn’t want the evening to end in a fight, but it was heading that way, I could feel it; and all my own work it’d be, if it happened. If I let it happen. So I left the others abruptly, with a shrug and a wave and let them wonder. I didn’t know myself what had got into me that night; but I could sort it out tomorrow. A couple of phone calls, an apology, they’d laugh it off. They were my friends, and no problem.

  Right now, though, I had nowhere to go but home. And I was still solvent, thanks to my interrupted evening; and I’d missed the last bus, and it was a two-mile walk to the flat, and I wasn’t so drunk I wouldn’t notice it. So, what the hell, Mick, treat yourself. I went down to the station for a taxi.

  There’s always a queue that time of night, and it’s worse on Saturdays. I took a look and almost changed my mind; but the line was moving quickly, a constant stream of taxis picking up. So I tagged on the end, shuffle-dancing on the spot for warmth, turning the music up good and loud in my head and wondering if maybe I should’ve gone clubbing after all. Dancing always was therapy, for me. Used to be.

  But chances were I’d change my mind again halfway there; and there were already half a dozen people in line behind me, and you always feel stupid giving up your place in a queue with no visible reason. So I stayed, and danced, and looked around, and saw her.

  She would’ve been hard to miss, in all honesty. A tall, thin woman wearing a man’s raincoat over a long khaki skirt that surely had to be home-made, there wasn’t a shop in the country would sell a thing like that. And her hair was all tied up in a square of cloth the same dead colour, and her hands were twisting and shifting and tangling together, and all in all she just looked mad. I thought she might be talking to herself too, mutter, mutter, with the odd shrill curse. Couldn’t tell from this distance, she was twenty yards away or more, but looked the type.

  Thing was, though, she was beautiful with it. Not sexy at all, she was too weird for that, but her face had that modelled perfection to it that always hits you hard, it’s so rare. Like one of those Victorian china dolls – creepy, but flawless. I couldn’t guess how old she was. Anywhere from twenty-five to forty: older than me, for sure, but surely too young to be doing this, to be dressing weird and wringing her hands and talking to herself, being noticed by everyone and hurriedly ignored by most.

  I didn’t ignore her. Not me, not smart Mick Hunter. I was too curious, too interested, head full of questions that eluded any answer. That’s an occupational hazard for either a student or a pisshead, and I was both.

  So I stood there gawping, and she saw me doing it, and even then I didn’t look away; and she thought that was an invitation. And who knows, maybe she was right, maybe it was. Come on in, I might have been saying, even things up, do me a little damage here. I can take it. Or maybe, I deserve it.

  Whatever. This is what she did, this is what happened. This is what she did to me.

  She came sidling up to me in this odd walk she had, sort of striding but never striding straight, she never did anything straight; she came at me crabwise, and her eyes moved all over, all around my face without ever meeting mine, and she said this, or something like it. Close enough to this.
<
br />   Said, “I’m sorry, excuse me, I know I shouldn’t ask, I shouldn’t be asking; only I’m desperate, you see, and my baby, my baby needs me.”

  Never straight, she never came straight at anything. I just looked at her, dead straight, waiting for the pay-off.

  “Are you,” she said, “it’s silly of me really, I don’t suppose you are, you could be going anywhere and you don’t know me, but are you, are you going up the West Road at all? In your taxi? Are you waiting for a taxi?”

  “Yes,” I said, drunk and honest and never mind my sinking heart, “I’m waiting for a taxi; and yes, I’m going west.”

  I knew what she wanted, and I knew what I’d say. Good middle-class boy, me, ex-Boy Scout, all the right instincts trained in. But I stopped there, I didn’t offer. I was going to make her ask, at least.

  “Well, could I, do you think I could possibly, would you mind terribly if I shared it? If I came with you? I haven’t any money, I can’t give you anything towards it, it’s stupid of me but I left my purse at home; and I’ve got to get back, for my baby . . .”

  She spoke dead posh, high and hoarse and fluttery, pretty much like you’d expect from the look of her; and her hands moved like her conversation, in gentle jerks and fingerings, reaching to touch my arm and drawing back. And I guessed she’d done this often enough before, but she obviously had a knack for it, unless everyone’s as soft a touch as I am. As I was, rather. Back then.

  Because I said yes, of course I did. I thought she was glass, I thought I could see through her all the way. I didn’t believe the maiden-in-distress act, not for a minute, but I still said yes. She could sit in my taxi, five or ten minutes and there you go. Why not? She’d be safe with me, at least, where she might not be with another man; and it’d make a story for my friends to hear, how I did my knight-errant bit for a crazy lady.