Blood and Grit 21

by Clark, Simon

  The dwarf’s feet squelched in the blood soaked carpet when he moved.

  Then he put down the knife and began to pull at the flaps of skin. The outer casing of the body came apart in chunks.

  Mark expected to see skeleton. Instead there was more tissue. This time smooth. Pink.

  The dwarf peeled at the skin as if he was taking the skin from a massive orange.

  Twenty minutes later the shell of the creature lay on the floor.

  On the bed lay a girl. Mark judged her to be about twenty, and her long hair had been glued to her breasts with blood. She suddenly panted and opened her eyes to stare at the ceiling with an expression of surprise.

  She was beautiful.

  Mark Stainforth walked slowly back to the hotel turning over and over in his mind what he had seen.

  He had stopped to watch the dwarf wipe her with towels, then dress her with clothes from his brown paper parcel. Then, laughing and kissing him, she had hugged him and run from the house.

  As he went the dwarf had seen Mark.

  Mark recalled the Little Man’s amused smile.

  He had known Mark had been watching all along.

  * * *

  DECEMBER 24.

  The house felt icy after being unoccupied for five days. Mark switched on the central heating and decided to take a walk to get rid of the effects of the long coach journey from Dover.

  He strolled round the park and down to the wall.

  The sun shone low in the sky and Mark found himself looking forward to seeing the wall in this light – the sun pulling out the deep and mellow reds and rust colours.

  On the path leading to the wall he stopped and stared. The cool breeze made his eyes water.

  The wall had gone.

  It had been demolished. A board on the wasteland announced a housing development.

  FIFTEEN EXECUTIVE HOMES

  Mark walked slowly along the line of rubble.

  FIFTEEN EXECUTIVE HOMES

  Picking up one of the three-hundred-year-old bricks, he gently stroked it. Then he went home.

  For a while he looked through his diary. He thought about his ex-wife and his children. He would probably never see them again. The kids would never know what he was really like. Maybe in years to come they’d find a photograph of him and look at the square face and blue eyes and wonder.

  He remembered his promise never even to try and contact them.

  Opening the diary, he turned to a fresh page. Paris he wrote. He would capture the events while they were fresh in his mind.

  Outside, a winter rain had begun to fall. A dwarfish figure, carrying a radio, walked slowly along the deserted street. The radio played a song with the lyric: Nothing ever really ends, nothing ever really ends …

  Suddenly Mark crossed out Paris, and taking a piece of paper wrote: Dear Jonathon and Cindy.

  * * *

  In the distance, on a thirty-year-old radio, John Peel was announcing the death of Elvis Presley, seconds later a news flash told of the assasination of Martin Luther King.

  Heart pumping hard, fingertips tingling, Mark realized he would have to work through the evening and into Christmas Day. How do you capture your life in a few pages? His hand drove the pen urgently across the paper and

  Sex, Savagery and Blood, Blood, Blood

  It was Friday night in Lupi’s brothel. It was the hottest one this side of the Poison Delta.

  Friday night was S&M night. When every kind of depravity was not only tolerated, not only encouraged, but rewarded. Rewarded by gifts of sex slaves and the sexiest thing of all: money. Great gobs of money stuffed into denim bags.

  Gorbo got there to see a great lump of an oriental drilling 5mm holes into the skull of a skinny redhead.

  The redhead? Gorbo didn’t even see what sex he or she was. What does it matter? People feel pain whatever sex they are. The Black and Decker was smoking. Probably it had been running for a good two or three hours by the look of the blood and all that shitty stuff that comes out of heads once you get five or six good holes drilled. The oriental had made his tenth hole.

  Watch it, Chinaman. Drill too deep. Penetrate the brain just that incey bit too far and your wriggling, squealing meat becomes dead meat.

  Man, there was wall-to-wall sex in that place. It hung like steam in the air; you could feel it; you could taste it; man, you could get high on it. Oh, the love in the place. The love and the hate, and the fear and the pain and the agony and the ecstasy …

  Lupi as always watched from his iron chair suspended from the glass domed ceiling. Hells bells, he was enjoying himself that night. A pair of siamese twins were trying to strangle each other as they coupled ferociously on the backs of twenty nuns broken on the stone mill-wheels out back.

  Lupi’s place was sizzling tonight.

  Once Lupi had watched the dance of the five hermaphrodites (tonight they did something freaky with razorblades and a sackful of kittens – here kitty, kitty, slide on this for your supper!), he beckoned Gorbo with his thick middle finger and smiled a pervert’s smile.

  ‘It’s your turn now,’ he said, smiling even wider. ‘I hear from Slimcrack that you do quite a turn in the Poison Delta brothel.’

  ‘Some like,’ said Gorbo. ‘But then,’ he grinned, ‘it depends on who does what to whom.’

  ‘The floor is yours.’ With a wave of his hand Lupi invited Gorbo to take centre stage. Two hundred eager people gathered round. They’d heard about Gorbo. Who hadn’t?

  Clicking his fingers, two burly dwarfs, looking like beach balls on legs, brought in a girl of about sixteen or seventeen: a lovely thing with blonde hair that curled down to her naked bottom and small pointed breasts that made more than one man feel lust punch well below the belt. The girl meekly allowed herself to be led on to the stage.

  Gorbo knew what he had to do. He lifted a fistful of her delicious blonde hair. Theatrically he drew out a phallus of solid brass which he heated over a fire. So hot the air shimmered above it. Then he did what he had to do.

  Please. Let me explain. You think this story is written by someone called Simon Clark. It is a lie. Simon Clark does not exist. This is a plot to, if not destroy this nation, then weaken it so a band of a few thousand armed terrorists can conquer it and so impose their own evil regime.

  I am a captive in what I take to be some ancient island fortress off the coast of Africa. My legs have been amputated to prevent my escape. I work at a computer, churning out vile, disgusting stories of sex and gore. These are sent to editors who unknowingly publish them.

  They do not know that saboteurs in numerous print works are spraying the pages with an undetectable poison. The poison can be counteracted by eating a cupful of pickled onions and drinking five pints of water. Please do this as soon as you can.

  Oh, just one more word before my captors come, already I can hear their nailed boots on the stone steps. You will know if you have been too late to administer the antidote if you have a strong desire to urinate in the next two hours. And please – do not, I repeat, do not read any other stories by Simon Clark. Tell everyone – neighbours, friends, family – Simon Clark is nothing more than a wild terrorist act. Do not read Simon Clark stories.

  Luckily, these terrorists speak little English. They will only read the first couple of paragraphs of this. They will think it is merely another disgusting story. You know the truth! Goodbye, and God bless!

  Extras

  Twenty-One Years Later

  Afterword by Simon Clark

  Blood and Grit is my first book. It was published twenty-one years ago. When I got to hold that slim, yellow volume in my hands it was the most exciting moment of my life as a writer.

  I’d made it. These were my stories in my very own book. Words can’t fully describe how thrilled, elated, and amazingly exhilarated I felt at that instant. Now, twenty-one years later, here are some of my memories of Blood and Grit’s origins, and some of the hair-raising adventures we had in telling the world that a book by a largely u
nknown writer called Simon Clark actually existed.

  So, I’d be delighted if you’d join me while I tell you the story of the stories in my first book.

  First, though, there’s just a little matter of how Blood and Grit happened in the first place.

  Chris Reed started publishing a beautifully produced magazine of cutting-edge fiction in his teens. Back Brain Recluse, as it was called, showcased exciting new talent as well as famous writers, such as Garry Kilworth, Ian Watson and Michael Moorcock. Chris was, and still is, a man of vision. Back in 1989/90 he was becoming an expert in the new computer technology that was just starting to be made available for home use. He was ambitious. He loved publishing. And he was determined to evolve as a publisher. So, with a successful magazine under his belt, he said to me one day, ‘Simon, I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to publish my first book.’

  I wasn’t surprised. Even back then, Chris Reed clearly had the drive and the talent to accomplish whatever he set out to do. ‘Moving into books sounds like a good idea,’ I told him.

  ‘I thought so, too. And I’d like your book to be the first one I publish.’

  ‘But I haven’t even written one.’ Up to that point, my stories had appeared in various small press magazines, including Chris’s Back Brain Recluse.

  Chris gave a knowing smile: he’d carefully thought all this out in advance. ‘How about this? You write half a dozen new stories, and really pull out all the stops – make them as exciting and as daring as you possibly can – then we put them out as a paperback.’

  Of course, I was flattered. Of course, I said: ‘Yes!’

  And Chris really had been thinking about his strategy. I was a more shoot-from-the-hip writer in those days. Before I could rush off to start blazing away at those stories, with all the incandescent ferocity of a nuclear reactor running wildly out of control, Chris wisely suggested that the stories be set in my native home county of Yorkshire. One: it was a place I knew well. Setting them in locations familiar to me would add a certain resonance. Two: Nobody, as far as he knew, had ever published a book of Yorkshire-based horror stories before. Three: a Yorkshire-themed anthology would mean guaranteed publicity from local newspapers, TV and radio.

  ‘Yes. Brilliant idea, Chris!’

  So, I went home and told my wife, Janet, the exciting news, ‘I’m going to have my first book published!’

  The next day I started to write the stories you have here.

  As Chris suggested, they are based in Yorkshire, here in the North of England, where I was born and grew up. When I read them again this year I was both surprised, and mightily pleased, by their raw power. In fact, it’s almost eerie to experience them afresh after twenty-two or so years. For me, this is the closest thing to time travel: they enable me to revisit the Me of my early thirties when the ambition to become a writer blazed so ferociously inside of me. My God, I had an insatiable hunger to create stories. I’ve still got that hunger now; however, back then it was like trying to contain a raging forest fire inside my head.

  Thanks for taking this trip down memory lane with me. Now here are a few words about the individual tales that make up Blood and Grit:

  Skinner Lane

  There really is a Skinner Lane. It’s in the town of Pontefract, a place famous for its medieval castle, liquorice factories and a phantom hell-hound known as ‘the Pontefract Padfoot’. For a while, I lived in Pontefract. To reach home, I’d walk down Skinner Lane, a steeply sloping road that lay between the old workhouse and a cemetery full of huge trees and imposing Victorian gravestones. Lots of English street names refer to the activities that took place there. For example, there’d be Miller Streets, where millers did their milling. Mason Lanes for the stoneworkers. Butcher Alley that would have seen beasts slaughtered before been chopped up for customers.

  Then there was Skinner Lane. It had a subtle air of menace … of brooding mystery. Of course, this is where the animals were skinned hundreds of years ago. After that, the hides would be shipped off to nearby Tanner Row to be turned into leather for boots, belts and satchels.

  When I walked home in the dark after a night out, Skinner Lane’s air of mystery intensified. I’d find these words running around my head. ‘Why do they call it Skinner Lane?’ I couldn’t help but answer: ‘Because that’s where the Skinner lives, of course.’

  Who is the Skinner? As I passed under thick branches that arched over the road I’d find myself knowing exactly who the Skinner is. In my imagination, he’s a huge, pale figure that lives in the trees. He waits patiently at night for someone to walk down the lane. Someone like me. Someone, perhaps, like you. Then down comes his huge hand. He plucks his victim up from the road before carrying them into the treetops.

  Then the Skinner does what he always does. He smiles to himself as he carefully begins to skin his juicy morsel.

  If you’re ever in the vicinity of Skinner Lane, go take a look. Listen to the sound the cemetery trees make. Is that the wind in the leaves? Or is that the Skinner singing softly to himself? Here comes more ripe flesh … just ready for the peeling.

  Skinner Lane, in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, where I’d walk and hear these words running through my head: ‘Why is it called Skinner Lane? Why … because that’s where something called the Skinner lives.’

  The railway bridge at Skinner Lane with its cloak of ivy.

  Out From Under

  Chris Reed was being extremely smart when he suggested I set stories in my native Yorkshire. He knew that I’d draw inspiration from the real things I saw and touched in my day-to-day life. Something I did NOT touch was the mortuary that I could see from my house. I had a terrific view of the redbrick building that stood in the grounds of the hospital. A view of a mortuary from a horror writer’s window is extremely convenient. I don’t know if local criminals were being sensitively considerate toward me, but they’d regularly break into the mortuary. When I looked out on a morning, the big doors were often open at the back of the building, which gave me a vulture’s eye view of the cutting slab inside.

  One lad stole a corpse, tied it to the pillion seat of his motorbike, then he roared through Pontefract’s streets, the slack head of his passenger flopping this way and that. When he appeared in court for this grossly disrespectful crime he was asked why he did it. He replied frankly: ‘I always wondered what it would be like to ride my bike through town with a dead body on the back.’

  I don’t know if that macabre motor-biker went to jail. But I’m certain that later in life his one-time passenger came back to haunt him.

  ‘Out from Under’ is about a man collecting his father from the mortuary. It’s a long time since I wrote it, and can’t be exactly sure if there’s any specific incident that inspired the plot. Now I come to think of it, I suspect it was looking out of the window on a cold November morning, and seeing the mortuary doors forlornly swinging to and fro in the breeze.

  Over Run

  I set out to write a spectacularly glorious, over-the-top gory tale about an army of invading corpses. This was well before the recent zombie craze. The setting isn’t specific to any place I know, although I’d often take a short cut into town through the cemetery I mentioned in the ‘Skinner Lane’ recollection. The accumulation of all those corpses under my feet – thousands of them – force-fed my imagination with images. There were trees that wormed their roots into the graves. The leaves had blood red veins. Ah, that’s interesting, whispered my muse, leaves that appear to contain blood. And have you noticed that rabbits are burrowing into the graves? Writers feed on thousands of little details such as these, just as blue whales feed on those myriads of plankton in the ocean. Scenarios of all those buried men and women erupting from the ground to pay someone a visit that they’d never forget probably still lingered in my mind when I sat down to write ‘Over Run.’

  This cemetery lies alongside Skinner Lane. Here there are trees with strange red veins in the leaves … well, that's enough to give a horror writer ideas. This cemetery got
my own creative juices flowing, which eventually led to the writing of ‘Over Run’.

  Another detail of the graveyard that, in my imagination, supplied the cast of thousands for ‘Over Run’.

  Bite Back

  The longest story in this collection has the shortest anecdote. I wanted to write a kind of road-movie story that would visit lots of Yorkshire locations. This would be the piece which proved that Blood and Grit was truly embedded in the county. But how? Then, one day, I sat gazing over a lake at a line of hills, and I had one of those ‘what if?’ moments. What if a giant appeared over the hill, saw me, then chased me? In ‘Bite Back’ Joe Slatter is pursued by an invisible monster. It’s destructive, vicious and very persistent. Later, a TV station created an amusing animation sequence to give its viewers an idea of the plot. I explored the idea of the invisible monster again in the novel Darker. There’s something deeply satisfying about the notion of the relentless, invisible hunter. And, at some time or other, aren’t we all pursued by some nameless horror in our dreams?

  Revelling in Brick

  ‘Stories,’ my English teacher often told us, ‘must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Pay attention there at the back of the class, yes, I’m talking to you, Simon Clark. So, Simon, what must have stories have?’

  ‘Robots?’ I asked hopefully as I emerged from my customary daydream.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Monsters?’

  ‘No, Simon. Stories must have a beginning, a middle and an end.’

  Here I set out to prove the teacher wrong. On this occasion anyway. Life is a conveyor belt of events – these events have no obvious beginnings or tidy endings. So ‘Revelling in Brick’ begins mid-sentence and ends mid-sentence. Just as it would in