The Best New Horror 5

by Ramsay Campbell

  Grant McDade removed his dark glasses and gazed earnestly into Marcia’s eyes.

  “You see, you have to learn that no matter what you’re doing to another person, it doesn’t hurt you.”

  The blue eyes that once had laughed were dead and dispassionate as a shark’s eyes as it begins its tearing roll.

  Marcia let go of Grant’s hand and excused herself.

  She never saw him after that night, but she forever mourned his ghost.

  SALLY ROBERTS JONES

  Easing the Spring

  SALLY ROBERTS JONES cites the reading of her grandmother’s copy of Dracula as beginning her interest in horror, and she has subsequently passed on the family’s addiction to the genre to her three sons.

  Born in London, she now lives in Port Talbot, Wales. In 1959 she won first place in the Inter-College Eisteddfod for an essay on science fiction (adjudicated by Kingsley Amis) and her poetry, short stories and local history have been published since the mid-1960s. More recently she has found a long-term interest in genre writing combining with an equally long-term interest in folk lore and Celtic history.

  If they’re all as good as the atmospheric tale which follows, we look forward to seeing many more stories from this writer whose self-confessed interests include “anything to do with Wales”.

  AS HE CAME out of the main door of County Hall, Johnson could see his followers dotted across the grass, huddling under their umbrellas in a useless attempt to avoid the persistent drizzle. When they saw him coming, the bedraggled groups of demonstrators slowly moved towards their leader, dragging banners in the damp grass as they went. Johnson waited until they had reached him, then gestured for silence.

  “The Council agreed to consider our petition before they decided whether to grant planning permission,” he said. “And they’ll look at our evidence for the current level of pollution. It’s as much as we can hope for at the moment. Now it’s up to us to make a strong enough case to convince them that Mynydd Pendar is not the right place for Kleenworld.”

  “The only case that’d do that is one full of pound notes,” called out someone at the back of the group.

  There was scattered laughter and a few nods of agreement, then the demonstrators began to wander away towards the car park.

  “Don’t forget there’s a meeting next Wednesday,” Johnson called after them. He turned, and saw that two of the younger members were still standing there. “Yes?” he said. “It’s David and Owen, isn’t it? Can I help you?”

  “Mr Edwards brought us over, but he went back early and we haven’t got enough money for the bus,” explained David.

  “We thought maybe you could lend us some,” said Owen, hopefully.

  “I’ll do better than that,” said Johnson. “Hop in, and I’ll give you a lift home.”

  There was an accident on the by-pass and they sat impatiently, waiting for the overturned lorry to be removed. To their right, across the glistening grey roofs of the town, a plume of yellowish smoke rose into the air above the chemical works. It went almost straight up for a hundred feet or so, then the prevailing wind seized it and bent it away towards the new housing estate on the mountainside.

  “Dad says they’re working at the very edge of technology in that place,” said Owen. “They don’t know themselves what they’re making.”

  “Mam’s tights melted on the washing line the other day. There were holes all over them, like acid burns.” David stared thoughtfully over the drab back gardens. “The trees are late this year. Almost May and still no leaves. Do you think it’s the pollution?”

  “Perhaps it’s the cold weather,” suggested Owen.

  “There are no salmon in the river any more, either,” David said.

  “Dad used to go fishing up at Robin’s Pool, where the old hut is.”

  “That writer who came to school told us how Robin’s Pool got its name,” said Owen. “The men of Pendar and the men of Magor quarrelled about the boundary between the two villages, and people were always getting killed, so they decided to settle it for good. They took this idiot called Robin and let him loose at one end of the boundary, then made him run towards the river, and wherever he ran would be the boundary.”

  “Did that stop the fighting?” asked Johnson, watching the breakdown crew as they worked on the damaged lorry.

  “I suppose so,” said Owen. “Only Robin was killed. They’d been throwing things at him to make him run, and someone threw a reaping hook and it killed him – his blood filled the river from side to side!” He savoured the gory details for a moment.

  “Not the most constructive way of settling a quarrel,” said Johnson wryly. “Look, the traffic’s moving at last.”

  When they reached David’s house they had lost an hour over the delay.

  “I’d better come in and explain,” said Johnson. “Your parents may be worrying and I don’t want to lose our prize junior members.”

  “Our parents have gone to Cardiff for the afternoon,” said Owen cheerfully. “And David’s gran never minds when he gets in – you should meet her, she knows all about plants and the weather.”

  “Yes, come in and talk to her,” urged David. “Then she can tell my parents it’s all right if Dad gets awkward about me going to meetings.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Johnson, doubtfully. “She might not like the idea of a stranger inviting himself in for tea.”

  “She likes strangers,” the boys assured him, and led him into a small, cluttered living room where an old woman with silver hair and bright dark eyes sat. For a moment, and for no reason that he could grasp, he was almost afraid. But then the fragile old lady gestured to him to sit and whatever it was that he had sensed was gone.

  “This is Mr Johnson,” said David. “He’s with the Friends of Pendar.”

  “Call me Ian, please. ‘Mr Johnson’ sounds like a teacher,” he said, sitting down.

  The table was already laid for four and he wondered how she had known – then remembered the absentees.

  “I mustn’t eat all your tea. There’ll be nothing left for your parents,” he said.

  “Oh, they won’t be back till after supper,” David told him. “Gran always knows if we’re having visitors.”

  “So you’re David’s ‘environment man’,” said the old lady. “He says you want to save the world.”

  “Just this little piece of it around Pendar. But if everyone stands up for their own little piece, perhaps we will save the world.”

  “And you’d give a lot for that, no doubt.” The bright eyes inspected him with cool interest.

  “To save the whales and the rain forests? Oh yes, I’d give everything I have to save them if there was a practical way to do it. The world is something abstract, but if I can stop one tree from being cut down needlessly, I’ve saved a living thing.” He felt suddenly uncomfortable at letting his passion show, but the old lady was clearly not embarrassed by his forcefulness. She seemed almost pleased, as though he had passed some test.

  “Have a piece of my soul cake,” she urged, offering him the plate.

  “Soul cake?”

  “It’s Gran’s secret. The best ever,” David assured him, and Owen nodded in agreement. “We only have it on special days.”

  Johnson wondered vaguely why this was a special day, but the cake was already cut. Perhaps it had been someone’s birthday. He took a slice, bit into the soft, sticky sweetness, and realised that the boys were right. The cake was definitely something special.

  “You’re not a teacher, then,” said the old woman.

  “No. I used to be in the Works but when the cuts came, our department was axed. So now I work up at Pendar House – organising exhibitions, visitor services, that sort of thing.”

  “That must be very interesting,” commented the grandmother. But now her response was only politeness, and he excused himself as soon as he decently could, with a vague apology about another meeting to go to that night.

  “You must come again,” t
he old woman told him. “There are some photographs upstairs of Pendar House in the old days. Perhaps they would be useful for your exhibitions.”

  “I’d like to see them,” agreed Johnson.

  “Come next Friday. For tea. I’ll be expecting you.”

  He hadn’t intended to keep the appointment, but when Friday came, he found himself standing on the doorstep of David’s house, being ushered in by David’s mother – who, curiously, had an air of serious disapproval about her, though otherwise she was the soul of politeness.

  “Here’s your visitor, Mother,” she announced, opening the door into the middle room. Tea was laid on an immaculate white tablecloth, and David’s grandmother presided from her rocking chair at the head of the table. Sitting next to her was a dark-haired young woman whom he recognised as one of the typing pool at the steel works.

  “Ceri’s grandmother used to work at the House and her grandfather was the head coachman. They’re in some of the photographs, so I thought you wouldn’t mind if she came too,” explained the old woman. “She’s often said she’d like to see the pictures.”

  “No, of course I don’t mind,” said Johnson, smiling inwardly at what he took to be an attempt at matchmaking.

  There was soul cake again and home-brewed wine with an exotic, spicy tang – “My own blend – but don’t ask for the recipe, that’s a secret. It’s come down from mother to daughter since the beginning, berries and herbs – and our own little bit of magic! But my daughter doesn’t believe in that sort of thing, so I’ll be leaving my secrets to Ceri. A dowry for her, you might say.”

  After tea they looked at the photographs, all pasted up in a heavy Victorian-style album. Johnson was sharply aware of Ceri’s bare arm pressing against him as they bent together over the pages of the book. The perfume she wore was light and flowery, but behind it there was a hint of something more sensuous, and he found it hard to concentrate on the faded sepia views of the great house and its gardens.

  “Take Ceri home,” commanded the old woman at last. It seemed quite natural then to go with this stranger through the dark streets, under a slender, hallucinatory crescent moon, in at her door and up the stairs into a room that seemed one vast pink feathery bed. Johnson turned to look at her, but Ceri put her palm flat on his chest and pushed. He fell back into immeasurable soft depths, and lay there, unmoving, while her hands busied themselves with buttons and zips, then moved with unbearable delicacy across his skin. She was lying beside him now, her body cool against his, her fingers stroking him into release. High above him the ceiling rose dilated into a pattern of unbelievable beauty . . .

  “Mr Johnson! Mr Johnson! It’s time to get up!” His landlady was knocking briskly on the door, and in the distance he could hear the eight o’clock milk float purring down the road. Then he remembered.

  “Oh my God, if Mrs Thomas finds you here –” he gabbled, rolling over towards Ceri. But there was no one there. He was in his own bed, wearing his own pyjamas; his clothes were neatly laid out on the chair by the window – too neatly.

  “Well, if I got so drunk on elderflower wine that I can’t remember what happened, it’s not likely to happen again,” he muttered ruefully, swinging his feet out of bed onto the soft pile of the rug. “I’m coming, Mrs Thomas,” he called. “I’ll be down in five minutes.”

  “It’s kippers,” she announced through the door, and he heard her heavy footsteps going away down the stairs.

  He did not expect to hear from Ceri again, but when he got back from taking a group of councillors round the hall the next afternoon, he found a note on his desk asking him to “call this number” when he was free. Somewhat to his surprise, Ceri answered the phone and invited him to a party.

  “Nothing special, just a few of us going over to that new club this evening.”

  “I was going to write up the minutes of the last committee meeting – ”

  “Hey, come on, live a little,” Ceri urged.

  “I suppose I could leave it,” he agreed. “Shall I pick you up?”

  “I’ll be at the Square at 7.30,” she said, and hung up.

  As a party, it was a low-key event. Ceri spent most of the evening chatting to her girlfriends; but when he eventually dropped her at her front door, it seemed only natural to follow her in and upstairs. This time things moved at a much steadier pace, and afterwards they lay side by side, in companionable silence.

  “I must go,” he said at last.

  “To write up the minutes of that committee meeting?” There was a note of amusement in her voice.

  “Someone has to,” said Johnson defensively. “We can’t just let the world fall apart.”

  “There are other ways to save it. All your meetings and protests, they’re just part of the problem, more paper, more trees cut down.” Ceri rolled over and looked up at him critically as he stood there pulling his trousers on. For a moment he felt like a prize bull being assessed for the butcher’s knife, but then she smiled and said, “Pick me up after work tomorrow. I’ll take you to Cwm Woods and show you where the badgers have their lair.”

  “Badgers? Here in Port Ivory?”

  “Oh yes. Not everything is recorded in your minutes, you know,” she told him gravely. “Now come back to bed. The committee minutes can wait.”

  There were times in the days that followed when he surfaced enough to wonder seriously if he was under the influence of some mysterious potion administered at the old woman’s tea party. But for most of the time all he was aware of was Ceri – her presence, her perfume, her body moving under his. He was drunk with her, obsessed, seeing the world around them with an almost surreal clarity, as though they were living inside a Dali painting. He had phoned in to say that he was unwell; whether Ceri had excused herself he did not ask, he only knew that she was there in the room whenever he turned towards her.

  “You need some air,” she said one evening. She was standing by the window, her naked body outlined against the pale yellow light of the street-lamps outside.

  “I don’t think I can stand,” he said foolishly.

  “Then you do need air. And food. Come here.” She helped him into his clothes as though she was dressing a baby – or an idiot, he thought wryly, momentarily aware of his condition.

  “We’ll go to see the badgers,” she told him, and led him out of the house and through the streets towards Cwm Woods, high above the town. They went to their usual place, but there were no badgers that night, and after a while it began to rain, a thin misty drizzle.

  “We can shelter in the cottage,” said Ceri. “They may still come.”

  The cottage was little more than a ruin, but the front room ceiling was still intact and there was glass in the window. Ceri produced a torch, then pulled some dry sacking from a corner and made a bed for them on the floor.

  “Suppose someone comes?” said Johnson, hesitating. The lethargy of the last few days was beginning to wear off in the chill of the hours before dawn and he was conscious of where he was and what they were doing.

  “No one will come at this time of night,” she said, pulling him down onto the sacking. But the spell had ceased to work. He felt acutely uncomfortable at being there, in such dubious circumstances, with a stranger.

  He could see that Ceri sensed his withdrawal, but she made no attempt to urge him further. They sat in silence, listening to the soft drip of water on earth and the occasional squeal of a small animal as its predator found it.

  “Nature red in tooth and claw,” said Ceri at last. “That’s the truth of it, not parades and petitions.”

  “I didn’t know you were so bloodthirsty,” muttered Johnson.

  “I wasn’t named Ceridwen for nothing,” she said.

  “Ceridwen? Wasn’t she the moon goddess? Very appropriate –” But he broke off, seeing her face masklike in the torchlight, and half afraid of what he saw.

  “You have enjoyed yourself these last few days, haven’t you?” Ceri asked, earnestly. “It’s important. That you should
be satisfied.”

  “I have to go,” said Johnson abruptly. “My work – I’ve let things go too far. The committee minutes –” He began to get up, but Ceridwen reached up to him, pulling him down again towards her, her hands twisted in his hair.

  “I love you,” she said. “You do know that?”

  “I hadn’t thought –” he murmured, staring at her – and never heard the faint rustling behind him, only felt the sudden shock of the blow that sent him toppling into darkness.

  At first he thought he was camping out again, the ground was so hard underneath him. His body ached from it. Then he tried to move, to ease the pain and found that his hands and feet were tied, and the dry, flannelly taste in his mouth was just that, some sort of gag. At first he thought he had been blindfolded too, the darkness was so intense. But when he tried again to move, to explore his immediate surroundings, the pain in his head was so great that he flopped back again, whimpering.

  How long had he been here? It was still dark – or was the place sealed against the light? When had he and Ceri –? And why –? But nothing fitted. Was Ceri here too? Who would want to do this? His head spun with the effort of trying to make sense of what had happened.

  The floor beneath him was cold stone, and gradually he realised that he was naked except for his underpants. Vague stories of kidnappers stripping their victims to humiliate and control them stirred at the back of his mind. It must be serious then, he thought. If Ceri was with him, she was not breathing.

  He had lost all idea of time, but eventually there was a noise from somewhere in front of him, and the faint squeak of hinges in need of oiling. Light trickled in through the door opening, first the flickering light of a candle and then a flare of brightness as someone switched on a torch. When his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw that he was in the old fisherman’s hut that stood by the river, halfway up the valley. Then he saw that the light-bearer was his landlady, Mrs Thomas. There were two other women with her, all of them dressed with total incongruity in flowered overalls.