The Best new Horror 4

by Stephen Jones

  But as I lingered in the theatre auditorium, settling in a seat toward the back wall, I realised that even on the level of plain appearances there was a peculiar phenomenon I had not formerly observed, or at least had yet to perceive to its fullest extent. I am speaking of the cobwebs.

  When I first entered the theatre I saw them clinging to the walls and carpeting. Now I saw how much they were a part of the theatre and how I had mistaken the nature of these long pale threads. Even in the hazy purple light, I could discern that they had penetrated into the fabric of the seats in the theatre, altering the weave in its depths and giving it a slight quality of movement, the slow curling of thin smoke. It seemed the same with the movie screen, which might have been a great rectangular web, tightly woven and faintly in motion, vibrating at the touch of some unseen force. I thought: “Perhaps this subtle and pervasive wriggling within the theatre may clarify the tendency of its elements to suggest other things and other places utterly unlike a simple theatre auditorium—a process parallel to the ever-mutating images of dense clouds.” All textures in the theatre appeared similarly affected, without control over their own nature, but I could not clearly see as high as the chandelier. Even some of the others in the audience, which was small and widely scattered about the auditorium, were practically invisible to my eyes.

  Furthermore, there may have been something in my mood that night, given my sojourn in a part of town I had never been, that influenced what I was able to see. And this mood had become steadily enhanced since I first stepped into the theatre, and indeed from the moment I first looked upon the marquee advertising a feature entitled “The Glamour.” Having at last found a place among the quietly expectant audience, I began to suffer an exacerbation of this mood. Specifically, I sensed a greater proximity to the point of focus for my mood that night, a tingling closeness to something quite literally behind the scene. Increasingly I became unconcerned with anything except the consummation or terminus of this abject and enchanting adventure. Consequences were evermore difficult to regard from my tainted perspective.

  For these reasons, I was not hesitant when this focal point for my mood suddenly felt near at hand, as close as the seat directly behind my own. I was quite sure this seat had been empty when I selected mine, that all the seats for several rows around me were unoccupied, and I would have been aware if someone had arrived to fill this seat directly behind me. Nevertheless, like a sudden chill announcing bad weather, there was now a definite presence I could feel at my back, a force of sorts that pressed itself upon me and inspired a surge of dark elation. But when I looked around, not quickly yet fully determined, I saw no occupant in the seat behind me, nor in any seat between me and the back wall of the theatre.

  I continued to stare at the empty seat, because my sensation of a vibrant presence there was unrelieved. And while staring, I perceived that the fabric of the seat, the inner webbing of swirling fibres, had composed a pattern in the image of a face: an old woman’s face with an expression of avid malignance, floating amidst wild shocks of twisting hair. The face itself was a portrait of atrocity, a grinning image of lust for sites and ceremonies of disfigurement. It was formed of those hairs stitching themselves together.

  All the stringy, writhing cobwebs of that theatre, as I now discovered, were the reaching tendrils of a vast netting of hairs. By virtue of this discovery, my mood of the evening—which had delivered me to a part of the town I had never been and to that very theatre—became yet more expansive and defined, taking in scenes of graveyards and alleyways, reeking sewers and wretched corridors of insanity, as well as the immediate vision of an old theatre that now, as I had been told, was under new ownership. But my mood abruptly faded, along with the face in the fabric of the theatre seat, when a voice spoke to me.

  “You must have seen her, by the looks of you.”

  A man sat down one seat away from mine. It was not the same person I had met earlier; this one’s face was nearly unblemished, although his suit was littered with hair that was not his own.

  “So did you see her?”

  “I’m not sure what I saw.”

  He seemed almost to burst out giggling, his voice trembling on the edge of a joyous hysteria. “You would be sure enough if there had been a private encounter, I can tell you.”

  “Something was happening, then you sat down.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “Did you know that the theatre has just come under new ownership?”

  “I didn’t notice what the showtimes are.”

  “Showtimes?”

  “For the feature.”

  “Oh, there isn’t any feature. Not as such.”

  “But there must be . . . something,” I insisted.

  “Yes, there’s something,” he replied excitedly, his fingers stroking his cheek.

  “What, exactly? And these cobwebs . . .”

  But the lights were going down into darkness. “Quiet now,” he whispered. “It’s about to begin.”

  The screen before us was glowing a pale purple in the blackness, although I heard no sounds from the machinery of a movie projector. Neither were there any sounds connected with the images which were beginning to take form on the screen, as if a lens were being focused on a microscopic world. In some mysterious way, the movie screen might have been a great glass slide which magnified to gigantic proportions a realm of organisms normally hidden from our sight—but as these visions coalesced and clarified, I recognised them as something I had already seen, or more accurately sensed, in that theatre. The images were appearing on the screen as if a pair of disembodied eyes were moving within venues of profound morbidity and degeneration. Here were the reflections of those places I had felt were superimposing themselves on the genuinely tangible aspects of the theatre: those graveyards, alleys, decayed corridors, and subterranean passages whose spirit had intruded on another locale and altered it. Yet the places now revealed on the movie screen were without an identity I could name: they were the fundament of these sinister and seamy regions which cast their spectral ambience on the reality of the theatre but which were themselves merely the shadows, the superficial counterparts of deeper, more obscure regions. Farther and farther into it we were being taken.

  The all-pervasive purple colouration could now be seen to be emanating from the labyrinth of a living anatomy: a compound of the reddish, bluish, palest pink structures, all of them morbidly inflamed and lesioned to release a purple light. We were being guided through a catacomb of putrid chambers and cloisters, the most secreted ways and waysides of an infernal land. Whatever the condition of these spaces may once have been, they were now habitations for ceremonies of a private sabbath. The hollows in their fleshy, gelatinous integuments streamed with something like moss, or a fungus extended in thin strands that were threading themselves into translucent tissue and quivering beneath it like veins. It was the sabbath ground, secret and unconsecrated, but it was also the theatre of an insane surgery. The hairlike sutures stitched among the yielding entrails, unseen hands designing unnatural shapes and systems, weaving a nest in which the possession would take place, a web wherein the bits and pieces of the anatomy could be consumed at leisure. There seemed to be no one in sight, yet everything was viewed from an intimate perspective, the viewpoint of that invisible surgeon, the weaver and webmaker, the old puppetmaster who was setting the helpless creature with new strings and placing him under the control of a new owner. And through her eyes, entranced, we witnessed the work being done.

  Then those eyes began to withdraw, and the purple world of the organism receded into purple shadows. When the eyes finally emerged from where they had been, the movie screen was filled with the face and naked chest of a man. His posture was rigid, betraying a state of paralysis, and his eyes were fixed, yet strikingly alive.

  “She’s showing us,” whispered the man who was sitting nearby me. “She has taken him. He cannot feel who he is any longer, only her presence within him.”

  This, at first sight of the possessed,
seemed to be an accurate statement of the case. Certainly, such a view of the situation provided a terrific stimulus to my own mood of the evening, urging it toward culmination in a type of degraded rapture, a seizure of panic oblivion. Nonetheless, as I stared at the face of the man on the screen, he became known to me as the one I encountered in the vestibule of the theatre. Recognition was difficult because his flesh was now even more obscured by the webs of hair woven through it, thick as a full beard in spots. His eyes were also quite changed, and glared out at the audience with a ferocity which suggested that he did indeed serve as the host of great evil. All the same, there was something in those eyes that belied the fact of a complete transformation—an awareness of the bewitchment and an appeal for deliverance.

  Within the next few moments, this observation assumed a degree of substance, for the man on the movie screen regained himself, although briefly and in limited measure. His effort of will was evident in the subtle contortions of his face, and his ultimate accomplishment was modest enough: he managed to open his mouth in order to scream. No sound was projected from the movie screen, of course; it only played a music of images for eyes that would see what should not be seen. Thus, a disorienting effect was created: a sensory dissonance which resulted in my being roused from the mood of the evening. The spell that it had cast over me echoed to nothingness.

  The scream that resonated in the auditorium originated in another part of the theatre: a place beyond the auditorium’s towering black wall.

  Consulting the man who was sitting near me, I found him oblivious to my comments about the scream within the theatre. He seemed neither to hear nor see what was happening around him and what was happening to the members of the audience. Long wiry hairs were sprouting from the fabric of the seats, snaking low along their arms and along every part of them. The hairs had also penetrated into the cloth of the man’s suit, but I could not make him aware of what was happening.

  Finally, I rose to leave, because I could feel the hairs tugging to keep me in position. As I stood up they ripped away from me like stray threads pulled from a sleeve or pocket.

  No one else in the auditorium turned away from the man on the movie screen, who had now lost the ability to scream and had relapsed into a paralytic silence.

  While proceeding up the aisle I glanced up towards a rectangular opening high in the back wall of the theatre: the window-like slot from which images are projected on to the movie screen. Framed within this aperture was the silhouette of what looked like an old woman with long and wildly tangled hair. I could see her eyes gazing fiercely and malignantly at the purple glow of the movie screen, and these eyes sent forth two shafts of the purest purple light, which shot through the darkness of the auditorium.

  While exiting the theatre the way I had come in, it was impossible to ignore the sign that said “rest room,” so brightly was it now shining. But the lamp over the side door in the alley was dead; the sign reading ENTRANCE TO THE THEATRE was gone. Even the letters spelling out the name of that evening’s feature had been taken down.

  So this had been the last performance; henceforth the theatre would be closed to the public.

  Also closed, if only for the night, were all the other businesses along that particular street in the part of town I had never before visited. The hour was late, the shop windows were dark—but how sure I was that in every one of those dark windows I passed there was the even darker silhouette of an old woman with glowing eyes and a great head of monstrous hair.

  JOHN GORDON

  Under the Ice

  JOHN GORDON lives with his wife in Norwich. Born in Jarrowon-Tyne, he grew up in the Fens and during World War Two joined the Navy from school and served on minesweepers and destroyers. After the war he became a journalist and worked on papers in East Anglia and Plymouth.

  His acclaimed books for Young Adults include the wonderful Catch Your Death and Other Ghost Stories, The Ghost on the Hill, The Grasshopper, The House on the Brink, The Spitfire Grave and Other Stories, The Waterfall Box and The Burning Baby and Other Ghosts. He has also written his autobiography, entitled Ordinary Seaman.

  Gordon’s journalistic background created the impetus for the atmospheric ghost story which follows, as the author explains: “Working as a reporter in the Fens I found myself having to write about everything from the Crown Jewels of England, which King John is supposed to have lost in the marshes near Wisbech, to court cases, inquests, water diviners, and men who knew what it was like to skate for the prize of a leg of mutton to keep their families from hunger.

  “There’s a lot of water in the Fens, and I heard of one farmworker who, coming out of the pub on a Saturday night, would regularly fall into the dyke and flounder about calling out, ‘I’m a swimmer! I’m a swimmer!’ He did it one night in winter, nobody heard him, and they didn’t find him until the thaw.

  “ ‘Under the Ice’ started there . . .”

  VERY FEW PEOPLE HAVE ACTUALLY SEEN a ghost. I have. But I wish I hadn’t.

  Rupert saw it long before I did, and I was the only person he ever told about it. I just wish he’d kept quiet, and then things might have turned out differently—at least I wouldn’t have been there on that terrible day and I would never have seen what I did see. And I would never have known how unfair it was. There was no justice in it. None.

  I have often thought I could have done something to stop it—but now I know that was impossible; I couldn’t have done a thing. I’m only telling you this because I can’t keep it to myself any longer.

  I suppose you’d expect anybody who’d seen a ghost to tell everyone about it. Rupert was different. He kept things to himself. Quite a lot of people are like that, out in the flat fens. He had nobody much to talk to, so he got out of the habit, even with me, and I was always reckoned to be his best friend. He was a thin, gangly sort of boy, a bit taller than me, and he was tough in all sorts of ways you’d never guess just by looking at him.

  I knew something was bothering him, but I didn’t know what, although it had to be pretty important because one day, out of the blue, he asked me if I’d go home with him after school. It was a half holiday, in the middle of a bitter winter, and I didn’t fancy cycling such a long way.

  “It’ll be dark before long,” I said, trying to make an excuse.

  “That doesn’t matter,” he said in a rush. “My father will take us, and we can go skating. There’s no danger, the ice is rock hard . . . So that’ll be all right, will it?”

  “Hold your hosses,” I said. This wasn’t like Rupert at all, the quiet boy from far out of town. “What am I going to do with my bike?” I wasn’t going to leave that in the cycle shed all night, not with some of the characters I knew hanging about. “And what about my tea—my mum’ll be expecting me.”

  “I’ll give you some tea,” he said, just as if he owned the whole house, the bread and butter and everything. “Give your mum a ring—and you can put your bike in the boot.” His father had a Volvo like a battle tank, so that was OK.

  “Skates,” I said. “I haven’t got any.” My lovely brother in the sixth form nicked everything that belonged to me. “William’s screwed my skates on to his boots,” I told Rupert, “so what’s the use?”

  “How big are your feet?” he said suddenly.

  “Not as big as his.”

  “Same size as me.” He plonked his foot down next to mine. “You can have my old fen runners.”

  “Gee,” I said. “Thanks a million.”

  He went red. “Or you can have my Norwegians. I don’t mind.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Rupe.” I was beginning to feel sorry for him; he seemed so eager for me to go with him that it would have been just like disappointing a little kid if I’d said no. So I said yes. You never do know what you’re letting yourself in for.

  He was in a fidget waiting for his father after school and he didn’t calm down until we’d stowed the bike and were sitting side by side in the back seat. You could have told it was a farmer’s car b
y the old fertilizer sacks in the boot, but even the back of his father’s neck would have let you into the secret because it was brown and creased, and the trilby hat he wore was a mud colour through always being out in the sun and rain. I used to get on with his father quite well, chatting about this and that, but I hadn’t seen him for some time, and now he was like Rupert—so quiet that after a while I began to feel as if he was some sort of servant in the front seat, just doing his job by driving us home. This made me so awkward that I kept silent, too.

  Rupert practically ignored me. He sat back in his corner and gazed out of the window with his mind on something else while the heater blew warm air at us and I began to wish I was at home by the fire. If I’d had any sense I would have stopped feeling sorry for myself and would have remembered what it was that kept them so subdued. Everybody knew what had happened last summer, but that afternoon it just didn’t come into my mind.

  It had been freezing for a week so I was used to a nip in the air when I was cycling home, but when we got to where Rupert lived and stepped out of the car the cold was something else. In town it lay in chunks like massive ice cubes between the houses and you felt you could dodge some of it, but out here, where there were no streets and no street lights, the cold was a solid black mass that seemed to press even the birds to the ground.

  “Don’t know what there is to eat,” said Rupert’s father. “Bread and pull-it, I reckon.” I couldn’t tell if he smiled because he turned his head away, but I guessed he didn’t bother. “The wife wasn’t expecting anyone.”

  Nice welcome, I thought, but I was polite. “I don’t mind, Mr Granger,” I said. “I’m not very hungry.”