The Mammoth Book of Nightmare Stories

by Stephen Jones

  The vehicle provides no means of communicating with the driver. Mottershead could shout or walk noisily, but he doesn’t want to startle the three men. He tiptoes to the stairs and is stepping down carefully when the three turn their pale smooth faces to him. All their eyelids are closed, and so flat there might be no eyes behind them. As he falters on the stairs, the trio bursts out laughing.

  They’ve been aware of him all the time. Enraged and bewildered, he clatters downstairs, shouting “Hold on!”

  The driver brakes as Mottershead gains the lower deck, and Mottershead has to grab the only handhold within reach—the shoulder of the man in the dark suit. “What’s the upheaval?” the driver complains. “Want to give us all a heart attack?”

  “Sorry,” Mottershead says to the passenger, apologising not only for grabbing him but for discovering his secret. The man’s upper arm is unyielding as plastic; he must have an artificial limb. As the bus regains speed Mottershead staggers to the door, seeing the lit area beyond another alley, shouting “Let me off here.”

  “You’re nowhere near where you’ve paid to go.”

  “This is where I want,” Mottershead says through his teeth.

  “I doubt it.” Perhaps it’s his stature, but the driver has begun to resemble a petulant child thwarted in a game. “You’ll get no change,” he says.

  “Keep the change if it makes you happy. Just open up, or I will.”

  The driver slams the door open, and a wind howls through the bus. Mottershead is trying to prepare himself to accept the apparent challenge when the driver stamps on the brake, almost flinging him off the platform. “Thank you,” Mottershead says heavily, holding onto the bus as he steps down.

  The door flutters like a crippled wing, and he hears the driver announce to the passengers “He thinks change makes us happy.” The vehicle roars away, trailing oily fumes. When at last the fumes disperse it’s still visible, a miniature toy far down the long straight road beneath the low black sky. Down there, perhaps because of the distance, the buildings look windowless. He watches until the bus vanishes as though the perspective has shrunk it to nothing, then he surveys where it has left him.

  The nearest alley appears to lead into a lightless tunnel. He’s about to retreat towards the openings beyond which he saw light, but then the streetlamp overhead allows him to guess at the contents of a window several hundred yards up the alley—piles of old books.

  He steps between the walls and hears his rucksack scraping brick. As the darkness thickens underfoot, the sides of the warehouses tower over him. Where the alley bends beyond them, the window of the first building manages to collect a trace of the light, dimly exhibiting the books. He struggles along the passage, his rucksack flopping against the walls like a disabled pursuer, to the window.

  He’s tightening the shoulder-straps of the rucksack and skewing his head in an attempt to decipher the spines of the books when he becomes aware that the window belongs to a house. It could be displaying books for sale, but that seems increasingly unlikely as he begins to distinguish the room beyond the books. It’s a bedroom, and although the disorder on the bed consists mostly of blankets, he can just discern a head protruding from them, its bald scalp glimmering. Before he has time to step back the eyes flicker open, and the occupant of the bed rises up like a mask on a pole draped with blankets, emitting a cry which seems to voice Mottershead’s own panic.

  Why has the tenant of the room stacked books in the window if he doesn’t want to draw attention? Perhaps they’re meant to conceal him, a rampart to keep out the world. It seems not to matter which way Mottershead runs so long as the figure he’s disturbed can’t see him. By the time he regains some control of himself, he’s out of sight of the main road.

  Terraced houses crowd on both sides of him, their blackened curtains merging with the black glass of the windows. A hint of light between two houses entices him onward. It’s leaking from the mouth of an alley which should lead to the shops he glimpsed from the bus. The high uninterrupted walls of the alley bend left several hundred yards in, towards the source of the light. He dodges into the alley, glancing back for fear that whoever he disturbed may have followed him.

  He’s heartened by the sight which greets him at the bend. Ahead the alley intersects a lane of unlit terraced houses, on the far side of which it runs straight to a distant pavement illuminated by shops. He’s crossing the junction when he notices that the right-hand stretch of the narrow lane is scattered with dozens of dilapidated books and sections of books.

  This time there’s no doubt that he has found a bookshop. The downstairs windows of two adjacent houses give him a view of a huge room full of shelves stuffed with books. There must be a light in the room, though it’s too feeble to locate. Apparently the entrance is in the rear wall. He darts into the passage which divides the shop from the neighbouring houses, and the walls tug at his rucksack as if someone is trying to pull him back.

  The passage leads him not to a street but to a back alley alongside the yards of the houses. He has to sidle between the walls to reach the alley he was previously following. There must be a dog in the yard shared by the houses which comprise the bookshop; he hears its claws scrabbling at concrete and scraping the far side of the insecure wall as it leaps repeatedly at him. He can only assume it has lost its voice. A protrusion on the gate of the yard catches a strap of his rucksack, and he almost tears the fabric in his haste to free himself.

  At the alley he turns left, determined to find the entrance to the bookshop. As he reaches the junction he grunts with surprise. The glow from the shop has brightened, illuminating the lane, which has been cleared of books. The doorway between the windows is bricked up, but the glow outlines the glass panel of a door to their left. The panel bears an OPEN sign, and the door is ajar.

  Since there’s no sign of a proprietor or even of a desk where one might sit, Mottershead calls “Hello” as he crosses the threshold. Only an echo of his voice responds, and is immediately suppressed by tons of stale paper, but the presence of so many books is enough of a response. They occupy all four walls to the height of the ceiling, and half a dozen double-sided bookcases extend almost the length of the shop, presenting their ends to him. There’s barely room for him to sidle between the volumes which protrude into the dim aisles. Shrugging off his rucksack, he lets it fall beside the door.

  He’s becoming an expert, he thinks. One glance enables him to locate titles he has seen in every second-hand bookshop he has visited so far: Closeup, The Riverside Villas Murder, The Birds Fall Down, sets of the works of Dickens, dozens of issues of the National Geographic, editions of Poe. The material which appeals to him will be further from the entrance—books by countless forgotten authors whose work he can enjoy reviving for himself while he sits and waits for customers in his own shop. The notion that although these authors are either dead or as good as dead, he can choose to resurrect whatever they achieved as the fancy guides him, makes him feel as if he has found within himself a power he wasn’t aware of possessing.

  He’s pacing along the line of bookcases in order to decide which aisle looks most promising when the spines of a set of volumes beyond them, on the highest of the shelves on the back wall, catch his eye. The fat spines, patterned like old bark and embossed with golden foliage, appear to be emitting the glow which lights the shop; presumably its source is concealed by the bookcases. Without having read the titles, he knows he wants the trinity of books. Since they’re too hefty for even his rucksack to bear, he’ll arrange to have them sent once he finds the proprietor.

  He doesn’t immediately notice that he’s hesitating. What did he glimpse as he moved away from the door? He turns to squint at the shelves he initially dismissed, which contain the books whose titles he wouldn’t have been able to discern in the gloom if they weren’t already so familiar. He sees the book at once, and has the disconcerting impression that its neighbours have rearranged themselves, the better to direct his attention to it. He doesn’t und
erstand why the nondescript grubby spine should have any significance for him. Hooking one finger in the stall which the top of the spine has become, he drags the book off the shelf.

  The illustration on the rubbed cover depicts a man’s face composed of a host of unlikely objects. He hasn’t time to examine it in detail, even though the face is familiar, because the words seem to leap at him. The title of the novel is Cadenza, and the author’s name is Simon Mottershead.

  He’s able to believe it’s only a coincidence until he opens the back cover. Though the photograph may be years or even decades younger than he is, the face which gazes up at him from the flap of the jacket is unquestionably the face he saw in the bathroom mirror.

  He slams the cover as if he’s crushing a spider. His mind feels dark and crowded; he knows at once that he has forgotten more than the book. He’s tempted to replace it on the shelf and run out of the shop, but he mustn’t give way to panic. “Is there anyone here but me?” he shouts.

  This time not even the echo responds. Someone must have unlocked the door and picked up the books in the lane. Perhaps they’re upstairs, but he wonders suddenly if the bookseller may be the person he disturbed by staring into the bedroom. On the whole he thinks he would rather not meet the proprietor face to face. He’ll pay for the book in his hand and leave a note asking for the others to be reserved for him until a price has been agreed. He’s relieved to see a credit card machine and a dusty sheaf of vouchers on a shelf to the left of the door. He gropes in his pocket for his credit card and a scrap of paper.

  There’s a solitary folded sheet. He shoves the book into the rucksack and unfolds the page. Two-thirds of it is covered with notes for a lecture. At the top, surrounded by a web of doodling, he has written the word Library and a date. “Today,” he gasps.

  He’s supposed to be lecturing to a writers’ group. His mind feels as if it’s bursting out of his skull. He digs his nails into his scalp, trying to hold onto his memory until he has recaptured all of it, but he can remember nothing else: neither the name nor the whereabouts of the library, not the name of whoever invited him nor of the group itself. Worst of all, he can’t recall what time he has undertaken to be there. He’s sure he will be late.

  He grabs a pencil from beside the credit card machine. Flattening the page against the end of a bookcase, he prints the shortest message he can think of: Please communicate with me re these. He adds his details and then squirms along the nearest aisle, tearing off the message as he goes. Floorboards sag, books quiver around him and above him; he’s afraid the bookcases will fall and bury him. By craning towards the tomes he’s just able to insert the slip of paper into the niche formed by the florid cornice and the top of the leafy oaken binding. He leaves it dangling, a tongue blackened by his name, and retreats towards the door.

  He still has to buy his own book. He pins a voucher with finger and thumb against the door, which shakes with every movement of the pencil as though someone crouching out of sight is attempting to fumble it open. A mixture of embarrassment at the small amount and determination to see his name clear makes him press so hard with the pencil that the voucher tears as he signs it, and the plumbago breaks. He lays the voucher in the metal bed and inserts his card in the recess provided, then he drags the handle over them to emboss the voucher. As the handle passes over his card there’s a sound like teeth grinding, and he feels the card break.

  He wrenches the slide back to its starting point and gapes at the card, which has snapped diagonally in half. He opens his mouth to yell for the proprietor, having forgotten his nervousness, but then he sees that the lead which broke off the pencil was under the card when he used the embosser. Shoving his copy of the voucher into his pocket together with the pointed blades which are the halves of the card, he pokes his arms through the straps of the rucksack and flounces out, his book bumping his spine as if it’s trying to climb the bony ladder.

  The street is grey with a twilight which appears to seep out of the bricks and the pavement, much as mist seems to rise from the ground. A few windows are lit, but no curtains are open. He runs to the junction of the lane and the alley and listens for traffic. The only noises are the slam of an opened door and a rush of feet which sound as though they’re stumbling over parts of themselves. Even if they’re wearing slippers too large for them, their approach is enough to send Mottershead fleeing towards the light which was his original destination—fleeing so hastily that his impression of his destination doesn’t change until he is almost there.

  The area is floodlit, though several of the floodlights have been overturned on the flagstones with which the street is paved. Broken saplings strapped to poles loll in concrete tubs along the centre of the street. All the shops are incomplete, but he can’t tell whether they are being built or demolished. The figures which peer over the exposed girders and fragments of walls aren’t workmen; they’re plastic mannequins, more convincingly flesh-coloured than is usually the case. Vandals must have had some fun with them, because they are all beckoning to Mottershead, or are they gesturing him onward? Their eyes are unpleasantly red. As he blinks at the nearest he sees that someone has painstakingly added crimson veins to the painted eyeballs. A wind from the bay flaps the plastic sheets which have been substituted for roofs, the crippled saplings creak as their elongated shadows grope over the flagstones, and beneath the flapping he thinks he hears the creak of plastic limbs.

  To his left the paved area curves out of sight towards the bay. To his right, perhaps half a mile distant, several cars are parked. Mustn’t they be on or near a road? Willing the cars to be taxis, he sprints towards them.

  The roofs stir as if the skeletons of buildings are trying to awaken. Whenever they do so, the arms of the mannequins wave stiffly at him. The state of the figures grows worse as he progresses: some are handless, and brandish rusty prongs protruding from their wrists; most are bald, and those which aren’t wear their wigs askew—one wig as grey as matted dust has slipped down to cover a face. All the figures are naked, and sport unlikely combinations of genitalia, presumably thanks to vandalism. Some of the heads have been turned completely round on the necks, which are mottled as senile flesh. As he passes one such figure it falls forward, rattling the bars of the stranded lift which cages it, and Mottershead claps a hand to his chest as he runs onward.

  By now he can see that each of the three cars is occupied, but suppose a car dealer has propped mannequins in each of the drivers’ seats? The roofs writhe, and a bald figure sprawls towards him, leaving behind its hand which was supporting it on the back of a solitary dining-chair. Its head is hollow, and empty now that the contents have scuttled away behind a girder. He would cry out if he had breath to do so, but surely there’s no need, since the three figures in the cars have sat up and turned towards him. He’s no longer alone with the tread, floppy but not quite barefoot, which is following him. He lunges for the foremost vehicle, his eyes so blurred with exertion that he can hardly see the door. He’s near to panic before his fingertips snag the handle. He levers it up and, collapsing into the back seat, slams the door.

  However much of a relief it is just to sit there with his eyes closed, he has to keep moving. “The library,” he wheezes.

  Either the driver is taciturn by nature or he’s losing his voice. “Which?”

  At least he seems unlikely to trouble Mottershead with the unnecessary chatter typical of his species, but his response sounds suspiciously like an imitation of Mottershead’s wheezing. “The one where a writers’ group meets,” Mottershead says, interrupting himself twice as he tries to catch his breath.

  He’s hoping that his words will provoke a further question which may help him clarify his thoughts. To his surprise, the driver starts the car, and Mottershead lets himself sink into the seat, feeling sponge swell to meet his hands through the torn upholstery. When he’s no longer aware of having to make himself breathe, he looks where he’s going.

  The incomplete buildings have been left behind. The ca
r is passing a concrete edifice guarded by railings like fossilised branches and twigs. Despite the stained glass in its windows and the inscriptions carved in scrolls over its broad doorways, it must be a factory rather than a church. Coaches whose windows are impenetrably black are parked inside the gates, and thousands of people, all of them carrying objects which may be toolkits or briefcases and wearing brightly coloured overalls in which they resemble overgrown toddlers, are marching silently into the building. He’s trying to decipher the writing on the carved scrolls when he notices that the driver is watching him.

  As soon as Mottershead’s gaze meets his, the man fixes his attention on the road. Mottershead is almost certain that he is wearing a wig, a curly red wig twice as wide as his neck, above which it perches like a parasite which has drained all colour from the rings of pudgy flesh. The mirror seems to have lent the reflection of his eyes some of its glassiness, for although they’re bloodshot, they look dollish—indeed, a flaw in the mirror makes the left eye appear to have been turned inside out. Mottershead throws himself about on the seat in order to shed the rucksack and reach his book.

  He intends it both to help him ignore the driver and to revive his ideas for the lecture, but as soon as he reads the opening sentence—“He knows this dark”—he feels threatened by remembering too much. He skims the long paragraphs packed with detail as the unnamed protagonist listens to the dawn chorus and lets his other senses feast on his surroundings, which sunlight and his awareness of his own mortality are beginning to renew. Mottershead has glanced at only the first few pages when the memory of labouring on the novel begins to form like a charred coal in his mind. He leafs back towards the dedication, but slams the book shut as he realises that the taxi is drawing up at the curb.

  He stuffs the book into the rucksack and stares about him. He’s outside the entrance to a shopping mall, a pair of glass doors framed by several neon tubes whose glare is almost blinding. “I want the library,” he protests.