New Fears II--Brand New Horror Stories by Masters of the Macabre

by Mark Morris

  A: Yes, for fuck’s sake.

  Q: Uh, we’d really rather you didn’t—

  A: Whatever. (ANOTHER PAUSE) And then I went downstairs, talked to the concierge, wanted to know what the lighting set-up was in all the other apartments with the same layout—they wouldn’t tell me. Cited privacy, can you believe that? So I tell them what’s happened, and how I just want to figure out how to put in lights that’ll turn on so I don’t have to light the whole place with floor lamps, and they’re like: well, we can’t help, can’t even get in touch with the Hong Kong dude because he changed his phone number and it turns out they never even had his email. And my mortgage agreement says I’m the one who’s basically responsible for everything that happens inside my walls, anyhow.

  Q: So it was the, um… annoying, frustrating, no doubt expensive unreliability of this system which prompted your eventual… lifestyle change?

  A: No. Not that.

  (ANOTHER, LONGER PAUSE)

  Have you ever thought—I mean, I guess you kind of must have, considering this show you run—but have you ever really thought, like in detail, about just how much we all rely on things these days that almost none of us actually understand?

  Q: You mean, technologically? Like—

  A: Yeah, that too, of course. But… not just that.

  Q: Well, a lot of the people we interview do make a big deal out of how much we take for granted. How our whole society runs on these… tides of energy going back and forth: electricity, cellular signals, microwaves. Invisible presences that we all work with constantly, and only a tiny minority of people actually know how to build, or control, or fix. I remember one bloke talking about how he’d taught himself practical electrician’s skills as part of getting his lodge set up, and he did some handyman work for his friends and neighbours in the meantime; what always amazed him, he said, was how mind-boggled everybody he helped was. “It really was like I was some kind of wizard or magician,” he told me. “Wave my screwdriver, say stuff that made no sense, then everything works again. I mean, it felt good, but it was also kind of unnerving, you know?”

  A: Wow, it’s like you do this for a living. Though I guess it’s probably not much of one, right?

  Q: Well, we get to do what we enjoy; most of us think that’s worth the trade-off.

  A: Yeah. Well, my way of dealing with stuff like that was always to pay other people, like your friend, to do it for me. As it happened, I was dating a guy at the time, who was—lucky for me—both an engineering student and not a dickhead, surprisingly. It was early days, we’d met in a club and liked each other, I brought him home, and he looked around and said, “Why do you have all these floor lamps?” So I told him the story, or a truncated version thereof, and he said, “Oh, I can fix that for you.” I didn’t say, I doubt it, largely because I still wanted to sleep with him, but his pitch was that he’d had a light meter at home, which he’d used before for similar things, so it would be cheap and we could enjoy each other’s company while he did it.

  Q: He was well fit I take it?

  A: Very. Very… well fit. (PAUSE) So a couple of days later, he comes over to my place and I buzz him in. He’s got his toolbox with him, and a vest on with all these pockets where you can stick things, like he’s dressed to go into battle, and he’s got what look like bandoliers of shotgun shells slung across his chest. They weren’t, obviously; they were batteries and light bulbs, all the different kinds he thought he’d be likely to need. I say, “Great,” show him the empty fixture sockets, the light switch and where everything is, including the fuse box, and he gets to work.

  Well, he can’t get anything out of the wires either, any more than the other guy did. I’m standing by this stepladder he also brought holding the light meter up over my head, and he keeps asking me, “Did you see it jump? Is it jumping now?” to which I just kept saying, “Nope.” I honestly thought the meter was broken, and for a minute so did he, until he tested it with one of the floor lamps and proved that it wasn’t. Then he gets into the fuse box, and manages to turn everything else in the apartment on and off at least once, but still can’t find anything that looks like a working light circuit in the ceiling outside the kitchen and the front hallway. And he’s like, “Well, that’s weird.” And it was weird. To be frank, it was kind of starting to freak me out at this point, and I was perfectly willing to tell him to stop. But you know how guys get; he had this look on his face like he was taking it personally. Like “This is pissing me off, and I’m gonna beat it.”

  So he took the light meter from me—he was a tall guy—and he stuck it right up near the ceiling, maybe ten centimetres2 away, started going back and forth across the ceiling from the fixture, doing this sort of—like he was sweeping a field for mines, you know? Or using a metal detector to look for treasure, and I was like, Oh, this is ridiculous. But eventually, he was almost to the main window, and he was making a sweep to his left, and suddenly… the pointer on the meter twitched. He stops, says: “Look at this!” Further he went towards the corner, meanwhile, the more reaction he got, until finally it was reading as though there was an active socket there.

  Q: But there couldn’t have been, was there? Or you’d have seen it.

  A: Correct. There wasn’t even a power point. I never even put a floor lamp in that corner.

  Q: Why not?

  A: Because… I didn’t like that corner. It was always cold there. I mean, it was always going to be a little cold, because it was winter; plus, an additional downside to floor-to-ceiling windows that slide open is that if you want to be able to open them you can’t caulk them up. But this was—colder. Off-puttingly so. So I just avoided putting anything in there, because I didn’t want to be there.

  Q: What was it like in summer?

  A: I never made it to summer. (PAUSE) So he asks me, “Was there ever a fixture here?” and I tell him I have no idea. And he looked at me and I looked at him, and then he said, “I’m gonna try something.” Gave me the light meter, and took out one of the light bulbs by the—what do you call the metal part on the bottom, the part that screws in?

  Q: That’s the cap.

  A: Right, yeah. So he held it by the cap, just this standard 100-watt incandescent, and lifted it up closer and closer to the ceiling… and as he got further and further up, the filament began to glow, and then, suddenly, it turned on. Full brightness. It was… it was horrible. Unnatural. I mean, anything unnatural is horrible, right? Like a preaching dog or a singing rose, that kind of shit? Somebody said that.3

  Q: I guess. And, uh, your boyfriend—how did he react?

  A: Oh, he was delighted. Very impressed with himself. He started to laugh. He had his arm straight out at shoulder height, and he was moving it all around watching the light brighten and dim, like it was the coolest toy in the world. It must have been really hot, but he didn’t seem to notice; maybe he had calluses on his fingers. And then, basically just by accident, he brushed the wall with the metal base of the bulb—and it stuck there. Like, it actually pulled out of his fingers and stayed behind on the wall, sticking right out like a, I don’t know, like a fucking tumour or something. A fucking glowing tumour.

  And he shook his hand, fingers snapping like he’d just figured out how close he’d come to almost burning them, and he goes: “Whoo! That was something!” Me, I just stand there with my mouth open, not knowing what the hell to say. But then he’s peering closer at it, until finally I can’t stand it any more, and I just tell him, “Pull it off. I don’t want it there.” He starts going on about how there must be something magnetized in the wall, and this is a complete cock-up that I could probably sue the building over, and I say, “I don’t care, I want you to get it off my wall, please!” So because he’d have to grab it by the hot part of the bulb this time, he put on a pair of work gloves and took hold of it— very gently—and starts trying to pull it off the wall.

  And it won’t come off.

  Q: Was he right? Had something been magnetized in the walls?


  A: I have no fucking idea, but I really don’t think so. Anyway, he’s like, “I don’t know what to do at this point, I don’t want to break it,” and I’m like, “Break it, man!” So he tries to pull it from the cap this time, hauling on it harder and harder, and then he slips a little and the bulb slides up the wall, and we both suddenly realize he can move it upwards. Towards where the reading is coming from.

  Q: The cold spot.

  A: Yeah. I hadn’t thought about it like that, but—that’s what it was, wasn’t it?

  Q: Like in a haunted house?

  A: You tell me. (PAUSE) So he keeps pushing it up the wall, closer and closer to the cold spot—the “source”, he’s calling it—and it gets brighter and brighter. And I didn’t really realize this at first, but it was as if, while the bulb was getting brighter, the rest of the apartment seemed to be getting… dimmer. Like it was about to flicker; I’d seen that before, plenty of times. Normal stuff. Even brand new, very expensive condos have power fluctuations.

  Q: Well, if the bulb was that bright, it would have made everything else look dim, wouldn’t it?

  A: Exactly. Brighter, and brighter, and then—it popped. Not just burnt out, I mean the whole bulb actually exploded, and it was only because my guy already had one hand up shielding his eyes against the light that he didn’t get hurt. And we both jump back, and we’re left with nothing except the cap and a little jagged rim of broken glass around it stuck almost right in the top corner of my ceiling. And we look at each other, and I tell him, “Okay, I think we’re done with this tonight,” and I go to get the broom and dustpan and start sweeping up the broken glass off my lovingly installed hardwood floors.

  But, you know, there’s gotta be more to it. So he takes out the highest-wattage bulb he has—spotlight-quality halogen, it looks like—puts on a pair of fricking polarized safety glasses, for fuck’s sake, and says: “Let me just try one more thing.” Well, how was I gonna stop him? He holds up the bulb, pointing it away from me, and the same thing happens as he lifts it closer and closer to the cold spot: Filament starts glowing, ramps up as he lifts, until the cone of light it’s throwing is so bright the colours on that side of the apartment look almost completely washed out. And I turn away, shielding my face, which is the only reason I see it happening.

  Q: See… what happening?

  A: How every other bulb in the place really is dimming down now, very visibly: kitchen, hallway, bathroom—and before you ask, this isn’t just my vision adjusting to one bright light source, I can see them browning out. And it’s getting colder in the place, too, like the window and front door have both been thrown open and a cross breeze is sucking out all the heat. Except everything’s still closed. And then Joe—my… my friend—I hear him yelp, like the sound you’d make if somebody startled you by slapping your hand. He staggers back from the corner, and he’s just staring at the bulb hovering there, and the look on his face is finally about as freaked out as I’ve been for the last fifteen minutes. So I hurry over to him, asking what’s wrong, and he pulls me almost right against the window so I can see what he’s seeing.

  The bulb isn’t stuck to the wall. It’s floating there right in mid-fucking-air. And smoke is curling and hissing off the plaster overhead, except the stain spilling across it isn’t black, it’s… “white” isn’t strong enough. It was like someone photographed a heat-scorch and then flipped it into negative, so black becomes white, except it’s this blinding purplish-UV glow that—I can’t describe it; staring at it hurt, like someone was squeezing my eyeballs, like the world’s worst case of glaucoma, and after a second I had to hunch over with my palms in my eye sockets. But Joe, he’s got his glasses on so I guess it wasn’t hurting him to look at, and he was just staring up at it, his mouth open a little, almost smiling—like he was so amazed, he was happy. Like he was seeing God.

  Then, under the sizzling sound of my ceiling cooking, there’s this rippling wave of sharp cracking, banging sounds, and the plaster splits open all around the bulb, shooting out in all directions from the corner—along the ceiling, down the wall, towards the windows. And more glowing shit spills out through all these cracks, except this isn’t light or smoke or fire; it’s more like…

  Ever seen one of those phosphorescent jellyfish they have in aquariums? Like the wall at Ripley’s Aquarium, the one they shot part of The Handmaid’s Tale pilot episode in front of? They’re all made of, um, goo, right, even the biggest ones… transparent, like slime, or mucus that isn’t infected. Invisible, really. Until you shine a light behind them.

  (PAUSE) I’ll assume you have. Anyway, imagine that, but with the wall’s brightness amped up to eleven, almost as hard to look at as the bulb itself. And I can’t even see the bulb, any more, only the place in the corner where the light is brightest. And this horrid blinding incandescent shit coming in through the cracks, that fizzling, spitting sparkler of a fissure between here and—somewhere else starts… weaving itself out in all directions, dropping these wet viscous tendrils onto the floor, throwing them out at the walls like the support lines on a spider web. Oh God, and just the way it sounded made me want to puke, and the smell was like ozone and rotten seaweed and rancid fat. But even while it’s doing all this—making itself manifest like somebody fucking cutting themselves apart so their entrails fall out, or whatever—it’s still cycling through every colour you can think of, and it’s fucking beautiful, like staring into a ten-foot-tall kaleidoscope.

  The bell forms, then filaments, then tentacles. Mucus and spines spread all over Joe, cocooning him—he’s up to his waist in this swamp of oozing, spiny tendrils, and I’m standing in a puddle of oil-slick glowing crap that’s inching its way up my ankles, like I’m sinking into the floor. If I hadn’t already had the broom in my hand I really don’t think I would have gotten out of there, but thank Christ, I did.

  I don’t even remember being angry, or frightened, just… wired. Like I was buzzing. Like a signal going through me.

  So I stumble forwards with my eyes closed and start flailing with the broom at the corner of the ceiling, the cold spot. And I can feel the sickening, wet way all this slimy guck gives way under it when I’m swinging and jabbing, but then—somehow—there’s this solid crunch, and the light goes out, with this… it isn’t a sound. It’s like a feeling in the air. This silent, agonizing trembling all along my skin, like a thousand dog whistles all screaming at once.

  I broke the bulb, and that’s all it took. Right then, anyhow.

  So. All the shit that’s wrapping up Joe falls apart with this disgusting squelching noise, and Joe goes over on his side, which is when I grab him up with both hands, trying to haul him to the door—where I thought the door used to be. Because it was dark in there, man, super-dark; dark plus. I’ve never seen dark like that, before or after.

  Must’ve looked pretty funny, in retrospect: there I am, dragging—attempting to drag—this huge, cute young dude twice my size, slapping his face and yelling hysterically at him, desperate to get him to wake up. Couldn’t see much, but I remember his arms felt slimy, and patches of his skin almost seemed… soft, like if I squeezed too hard it would just slide right off his arm. Overcooked meat, that was the feel. (SOFTER) God, I wish I hadn’t remembered that.

  (PAUSE, THEN NORMAL TONE) Okay, so. I get him past the kitchen counter into the vestibule, still fumbling around, and my hand falls on the door handle, at fucking last. Jesus! It was like a miracle. And I open the main door, so I can finally see again in the light coming in from the hallway—

  —which is exactly when the thing in the apartment suddenly bursts into blazing light again, even brighter, but I can still see what it’s doing. It kind of… pulses, first inward and then outward, and opens up like a gigantic umbrella, a vampire fucking squid, with red and purple teeth all ringed round inside and dripping. Tendrils shoot out and they wrap round Joe and haul him back in, so fast and hard I don’t have time to let go. Next thing I know, it snaps shut on us both: all of him, me just to the wrist, th
e right one. Joe’s just—gone, swallowed. And my hand is stuck inside the peak of the thing, and it’s burning, like I stuck it in a beehive, or a vat full of acid. Like I’d stuck it through a hole, right into somebody else’s stomach.

  I must’ve been screaming, but I don’t remember. Just hauling as hard as I could till my hand peeled free and throwing myself back out that door, slamming it shut behind me.

  Q: (AFTER A MOMENT) …Joe?

  A: (SOFT) No.

  I didn’t—I don’t… I don’t feel good about it. But… I didn’t…

  Q: You didn’t know him well enough to die for him.

  A: Thank you for saying it.

  (ANOTHER LONG PAUSE)

  By the way, when I say “peeled”, I mean literally. Large patches of skin on my hand just—melted away, exposing layered patches of fat, visible veins and tendons. Nauseating, and painful as shit. I wound up having to have most of the rest of the epidermis debrided so the skin would grow back evenly, and I still don’t have any mobility in my right ring or little fingers.

  By the time I got to the nearest ER, I’d been making a fist so long they had to sort of prise, sort of cut it open, because it’d already started healing shut. Human body’s an amazing thing, man. When they got my fingers uncurled, a bunch of stuff fell out: goo, pulp, faintly pinkish. Things that looked like bones, but soft—bendy. Like they’d been digested and shit back out. And something else.

  It was a Ryerson University Engineering Department ring.

  So yeah, nobody ever found much else of Joe. Just this… layer of sludge all over the apartment, unidentifiable, biological in origin. Just cracks in the ceiling and two broken bulbs lying in the far left corner, right by the window.

  Adding insult to injury, the condo corporation tried like hell to blame me for the damage. They only gave up when I got a lawyer smart enough to point out that just publicizing the legal battle would tank sales in the entire building. That’s how I got out of my mortgage with enough money to do whatever I wanted after that.