Andrew looked down at her, his face a mixture of horror and bewilderment. The axe fell from his nerveless fingers and thudded on the floor.
What was the matter with her? Couldn’t she see the faces? The demon faces laughing and howling as the bright red blood ran from their mouths?
Couldn’t she see the faces?
Angst for the Memories by Vincent McHardy
Canadian writer Vincent McHardy was born April 26, 1955 and currently resides in Agincourt, Ontario. Following a three-year term in anthropology at York University, McHardy eventually decided to try his hand at writing. His interest in fantasy and horror arose through his voracious reading appetite, which led him to devour everything from Doc Savage to Ray Bradbury. In the last few years, McHardy has written a great many short stories. Initially these were published in amateur or semiprofessional magazines—Quarry, Reader’s Choice, Moonscape, The Horror Show, Etchings & Odysseys, and others. In the past year he has sold to Twilight Zone Magazine, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, as well as to several anthologies. The following story is from R. L. Leming’s small press anthology, Damnations; McHardy has a story also in the forthcoming follow-up, More Damnations. His story, “Keepsake,” was reprinted in The Year’s Best Horror Stories; Series XII.
Vincent McHardy is looking for a publisher interested in a collection of his short fiction, while he works away at his first novel, And Cancer For All. Ought to be some takers.
“Thought.”
“It’s so far away.”
“I can’t see. I can’t feel. I can’t live this way.”
“Let me go.”
“If I could touch something, or have a hand to touch something with, I could prove I exist. But there is nothing to point to. No sound. No heat. No pressure. No light. Nothing.”
“Am I talking, or am I thinking? I don’t feel lips moving. Where are those tender vibrations that would tell me I have a skull?”
“Let me go.”
“Whoever, whatever holds me here, let me go. Or tell me where I am. I could live knowing what happened. How I got here. Where this, here, is. I could live with that, and lie down and die.”
“Ha! Lie down. I could be lying down now, or floating, or falling, or standing quite still. I can’t tell. There are no boundaries in this world. I rush to the infinite. I contract to the infinitesimal.”
“Let me go.”
“End it.”
. . .
“. . . Here.”
“What!”
“I’m here. Don’t go.”
“I won’t go. I won’t go. Where are you?”
“Nowhere. There was nothing to hold my mind until I found you.”
“Then you’re not the one holding me here?”
“No. I’m here with you.”
“Then, who are you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You’re part of my madness.”
“I am not. I found you. I pulled you to me.”
“Then tell me your name.”
“It’s been so long since I asked myself that question.”
“Your name. Tell me!”
“I remember, Lloyd . . . Lloyd Pryce. Yes, Lloyd Pryce. A beautiful name. A glorious title for existing. Don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
“Lloyd. Lloyd. Lloyd. Oh, how I hated my name as a child. A child. I was a child. I grew up. Became a forest manager. Yes. Yes. I married Jennifer Cleary. We have four children. I . . . I want to go back. Oh Lord, please take me back. Don’t leave . . .”
“Shut up! Don’t crawl. They want us to crawl.”
“They?”
“Yes, they. Do you think this is natural? Someone has done this to us. Put us here. Blocked our senses. Disoriented us.”
“It’s possible.”
“It’s true, Lloyd. You broke their plans. You reached me.”
“I had to. I’d reached bottom. I had to find somebody. Somebody? Who are you?”
“Well, I’m . . .”
“Come on. It shouldn’t be difficult.”
“Just a minute, will you . . .”
“Does it start with an A?”
“Please, let me think.”
“Stop.”
“Why not start with all the alphabet. It doesn’t matter. Does it? Not to a . . .”
“ALEXANDER J. SCULLY! Druggist for thirty-five years, at Kirbie’s Pharmacy. Divorced. No children. Graduated Danner University, with honors. And, to the best of my recollection, I had a very happy childhood.”
“I’m sorry, Al. I thought you might be . . .”
“Might be what I thought you were?”
“Yes.”
“We might be, Lloyd. Names don’t prove we exist.”
“They help. Before we named ourselves, we drifted. Names give us something to hold on to. Names will pull us out of here.”
“How did you know I was out here? I sensed nothing.”
“I didn’t know you were out there. I drifted. How long I can’t tell. Then something twitched. I felt there must be something out there. The darkness changed. I felt a thickness and thought, ‘There it is.’ And then you came.”
“Nothing more than thought?”
“That’s all it took, Al.”
“Then we must remember. Develop links to our past. Our past will save us.”
“Yes, that’s it, Al. Try and remember your last day in the real world. I remember mine. I was on vacation, camping, up at Lake-of-the-Woods. We have a cabin up there. Jenny and the kids were up with me. I wanted to hike over to Gem Lake. You can only get there by foot. I went alone. It’s a five-hour walk, too long for the children. I camped overnight. Ten hours of walking left little time for exploring. Nothing unusual happened. I reached the lake, explored, caught dinner and pitched a tent under a fine Norwegian pine. I read by the light of a Coleman till about one. After I turned out the light, I heard the sound of thunder. I remember thinking, oh, it’s going to be a fine storm. The way summer storms are. I tried to stay awake, but the pounding tapped on and on. The storm was far away. It crept closer. I fell asleep listening. Now, I’m here.”
“Nowhere.”
“I wish I’d stayed awake.”
“Listen, Lloyd. Listen to my last day outside.”
“I’m all ears.”
“I opened the pharmacy at seven-thirty, like always. The clerks were waiting for me. The papers came at seven-thirty-eight, our first customer at eight-o-six. The morning was slow. I ate the lunch I brought. The afternoon could have been the morning. At six-fifteen I went to the Golden Wheel Restaurant next door and had supper. I came back and waited until ten before closing up. I live just across the street, so I was home in time to catch the early news. I filled my pipe, my only vice, and sat to watch. Bombings, revolutions and cold war politics. I’d seen it all before, like the world had and will again. The news didn’t tell me anything new, so I drifted off, and beached up here.”
“Al, we’re dead.”
“The hell we are!”
“It fits. You with your pipe, me in a lightning storm, we both could have fried in the night.”
“Could, could, could. That’s not proof. That’s not even probable. I’ve been smoking a pipe for over thirty years, and I’ve learned that it’s damned hard to keep lit. It’s not like a cigarette. You’ve got to puff it, coddle it, make sure your spittle doesn’t drown it. You concentrate to keep it going. Lloyd, that pipe was cold by the time I fell asleep.”
“Now, what about that lightning? The tree you were sleeping under, it wasn’t the only tree around?”
“I was in a forest.”
“The tree wasn’t the tallest tree in the forest?”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“So the danger was slight. Chances are, you didn’t burn from lightning.”
“But there is always a chance. When you hear that one in ten thousand will die in a car crash, you think, well, it won’t be me. Those are just statistics. People are statistics! Some bodies must die to make
those numbers add up. So why not you and me? Eh, Al? Who’s to say we can’t crap out on a dice roll? You fall asleep with a pipe that can’t be lit with a blow torch, but tonight is special, one small ember holds on. No reason. Just one-in-a-million. Poof! Inside of ten minutes, you’re indistinguishable from your pipe ash. And me. Lucky Lloyd, with a trillion-billion-to-one, triple-lightning-bolt bank shot, off the water, off the rock, off the tree to off me. I’m probably sitting out there, grinning, with my zipper electroplated.”
“Stop it, Lloyd. You didn’t struggle to reach me just to prove you’re dead.”
“Why not? I don’t know why I thought there was something out there in the dark. I just thought. The thought might be a joke, to give us hope there is a way out of here. Al? If we’re not dead, then what are we?”
“We are lost. We are confused. But we exist. We have our minds. If we have a mind, we have a brain. I’ve been a chemist all my life, and I’ve yet to see an exception to the rule, function following form. Our minds must have a form to exist.”
“But where are we?”
“I think we are in a tank.”
“Tank?”
“A desensitization tank. No light. No sound. No sensation of up or down. Just floating.”
“No. It doesn’t make sense. If we were in a tank, I’d be able to splash. I’d hear that. Or I’d be able to punch myself. I’d feel that.”
“True. If we were in a tank alone. But if we are drugged, or restrained, those methods are not possible. If this is true, we are living through our skins. The difference between the inner and outer world is a delicate one. Remove the barrier, disrupt it, and you unleash monsters.”
“If our senses are blocked, how are we talking?”
“Well, we’re not speaking. They wouldn’t have overlooked our hearing. I’m willing to believe it’s telepathy. Cut off from our bodies, by the tank and drugs, our minds are active. You close one door and you’ve opened another. They’ve awakened us to telepathy.”
“They. You’re always talking about them. You sound paranoid.”
“This place is paranoid. It is constructed to drive us mad. I’m looking for a reason to save us. There must be a reason why we are here. I can’t give you a name, but I can give you a reason. Somebody wants us to lose our memories.”
“Tabula Rasa.”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“But why?”
“I’ve seen it coming on the vid-news. Last year’s Southern Hemisphere Alliance, the bombing of OPEC ministers in Geneva, the destruction of Mexico City by the plague, I could go on. The world is at war, an undeclared war that’s claimed us as victims.”
“But we’re unimportant. Nobody would want us.”
“Lloyd, in a war, anyone behind enemy lines is important. Someone, some power, wants our names, our pasts, but not us.”
“It’s possible.”
“It’s true!”
“No truer than my theory.”
“How can you say that? I’ve used reason to show . . .”
“To show we disagree. We won’t get out this way.”
“You’re right. We must work together.”
“It’s the only way.”
. . .
“Al, don’t be spiteful about Nancy.”
“Nancy?”
“Curious. At a time of crisis you think of your ex-wife. You haven’t forgiven her for the divorce. Do you really believe if she stayed with you, you wouldn’t be here?”
“How’d you know?”
“Reason, Al. You said it. You used it as a club against me. I reasoned that, if we’re linked telepathically, I didn’t have to wait until you sent me a thought. I could take what was there.”
“Get out of my mind!”
“Don’t be afraid Al. It works both ways. If we’re ever to get out of here, it must work both ways. We can only grow stronger. Try . . .”
“Chalk. You’re smelling chalk from the blackboard eraser. You’re cleaning them after school.”
“I wasn’t thinking of that.”
“Somewhere you were. Under the layers. I found it. You’re right. It works.”
“We are right.”
. . .
“Lloyd, I feel something.”
“I know. You feel the others. Ever since I found you I’ve felt them. Now that we’re linked you feel them.”
“Have you spoken to them?”
“No. I sense them. It’s like trying to remember something you’ve known all your life. You strain to remember. You feel a resistance. You back away. Calm down, and there it is. You remember.”
“I don’t know if I can calm down, Lloyd. I’ve been on the edge too long.”
“You can do it, Al. We work together now. We can break through if we co-operate.”
“I’ll try.”
“Think back to when you were happy. When nothing was wrong and you thought you would live forever.”
“I’ve never had a time like that.”
“Yes you did. Time held its breath and you breathed deeply.”
“Never!”
“You’re twelve years old and it’s summer vacation. You’re in a canoe . . .”
“. . . It’s three in the morning and I have the lake to myself.”
“That’s it.”
“The air is still. The water is dark, deadly still. I’m the only human moving at three in the morning. There are no stars. The sky is overcast. I can see the forest edging the lake because the sky lights up with distant lightning. A storm is coming. I turn on my flashlight and hold it between my knees. A mist sits on the water. I paddle out deeper. Tiny whirlpools suckle down to the mud below. Water dribbles off the blade as I reach for another pull. I bang the canoe with the handle as I stroke through. The sky grumbles . . .”
“What! Why did you wake me? Is it news from the front?”
“I . . .”
“Speak up man! I have little time for sleep and no time for needless interruptions. What are the Russians doing?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’ll have your head on a spike! Guards! Remove that man!”
“What?”
“He’s quite mad, Al.”
“What’s going on, Lloyd?”
“We broke through. Your sense memory pulled us through the barrier to him. He thinks he’s Napoleon, but he’s Arthur Friske. A used car salesman, playing out his dreams of power.”
“I’ve always wanted to know what lurked beneath a used car salesman’s smile. It’s not pleasant.”
“Not at all, Al. That’s why I’m controlling him.”
“Yes. I can’t hear him.”
“We don’t need to hear him. It would take more energy than we can afford to unravel his madness. We could get lost down there.”
“Yes, Lloyd. We can’t waste time explaining. We must get out.”
“We can, and will get out. Do you feel how?”
“I feel something.”
“Power, Al. It’s power. Since we took over that pathetic Arthur Friske, we’ve grown. We resonate.”
“Lloyd? Something is moving. I feel it around us. Swimming, lurking, waiting for us.”
“The others. There are many others out there, Al. Hundreds. We must agree that we can’t stop to listen. Not if we want to get out.”
“Agreed. The others will all have stories and needs. They might contest us.”
“If we give them a chance.”
“We won’t. We need their life power.”
“Power to reach the edge. Power to escape.”
“The others can come, but they must follow.”
“Al-Lloyd will not stop.”
. . .
“Thank you. I knew someone would come. I knew I wouldn’t be left here alone. I . . .”
“Must we cut her?”
“We must. Feel the power?”
“Feel the awakening?”
“More come. Listen to them. They splat on us like bugs on a wind screen. Lucy
Spicer. Aloysia Rutter. Lawrence Ellam. Gertrude Diack. William Rumelfanger. Come in.”
“So fast. We can’t count you all. So fast. We want to scream.”
. . .
“The barrier.”
“The barrier!”
“It is complete. It is sealed.”
“It is hard. It is cold. It cannot be torn.”
“This is not the end. The hundreds cry.”
“It is time to wait.”
. . .
“Light!”
“A band of light!”
“The barrier is breaking open.”
“Move now. Move out to the light!”
The trunk/vat had sat in the back room of the abortion clinic, forgotten. The five-hundred-plus fetuses originally left inside, equally forgotten.
But times and contents change.
As seen when someone curiously opened the lid . . . and something, very much like a hand, reached out . . .
The Thing in the Bedroom by David Langford
David Langford has long held the name-most-often-on-a-hit-list distinction in science fiction circles as the fearless editor of the magazine, Ansible. Born in 1953 in South Wales, Langford earned an honors degree in physics at Brasenose College, Oxford and worked as a physicist at Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, Aldermaston until 1980. Since then he has been a freelance author, whose books on various subjects include War in 2080: The Future of Military Technology, Facts & Fallacies: A book of Definitive Mistakes & Misguided Predictions (with Chris Morgan), The Necronomicon (with George Hay, Robert Turner, and Colin Wilson), The Space Eater (a novel), The Leaky Establishment (a satire), and the forthcoming The Third Millennium: A History of the World 2000-3000 AD (with Brian Stableford).
Robert Bloch has commented that horror and humor are flip sides of the same coin. While Langford’s last appearance in The Year’s Best Horror Stories (“3.47 AM” in Series XII) was unrelentingly grim, with “The Thing in the Bedroom” he takes an irreverent poke at one of this genre’s hallowed traditions, the occult investigator. David Langford currently lives with his wife, Hazel, “in a vast crumbling house in Reading, with 7000 books and slightly fewer woodworm.”
The circle of initiates about the roaring fire in the King’s Head bar was sadly diminished of late, entertaining though the conversation had always been. For one thing, the roaring fire had been superseded by a mournfully bonging radiator; even the popular Mr. Jorkens had ceased to come when the landlord installed his third Space Invaders machine. On this particular evening there was little sparkle in the conversation, and far too much in the foaming keg beer: only Major Godalming, Carruthers and old Hyphen-Jones were present, and, passing by an easy transition from gassy beer to chemical warfare and military reminiscences in general, the Major was well into his much-thumbed anecdotes of the earlobe he lost to Rommel, the dueling scar acquired while in Heidelberg on a package tour, and the ugly kukri wound he’d received in Bradford. Carruthers and Hyphen-Jones yawned their appreciation and choked down their beer; half-formed excuses about not keeping the wife up too late seemed to be trembling in the air like ectoplasm, when a shadow fell across the table.
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