It’s a laugh being in a farm. It’s a real riot. People stump around, dripping fluids, clapping hands with no fingers together and shitting into colostomy bags. I don’t know what was worse: the ones who knew what was going on and felt hate like a cancer, or those who just ricocheted slowly round the tunnels like grubs. Sometimes the tunnel people would stay still for days, sometimes they would move around. There was no telling what they’d do, because there was no-one inside their heads. That’s what Manny did for us, in fact, for Sue and Jenny and me: he put people inside our heads. Sometimes we used to sit around and talk about the real people, imagine what they were doing, what it would be like to be them instead of us. Manny said that wasn’t good for us, but we did it anyway. Even spares should be allowed to dream.
It could have gone on like that forever, or until the real people started to get old and fall apart. The end comes quickly then, I’m told. There’s a limit to what you can cut off. Or at least there’s supposed to be: but when you’ve seen blind spares with no arms and legs wriggling in dark corners, you wonder.
But then this afternoon the phone went, and we all dutifully stood up and limped into the tunnel. I went with Sue 2, and we sat next to each other. Manny used to say we loved each other, but how the fuck do I know. I feel happier when she’s around, that’s all I know. She doesn’t have any teeth and her left arm’s gone and they’ve taken both of her ovaries, but I like her. She makes me laugh.
Eventually Manny came in with the usual kind of heavy guy and I saw that this time Manny looked worse than ever. He took a long time walking around, until the guy with him started shouting, and then in the end he found Jenny 2, and pointed at her.
Jenny 2 was one of Manny’s favourites. Her and Sue and me, we were the ones he could talk to. The man took Jenny out and Manny watched him go. When the door was shut he sat down and started to cry.
The real Jenny was in a hotel fire. All her skin was gone. Jenny 2 wasn’t going to be coming back.
We sat with Manny, and waited, and then suddenly he stood up. He grabbed Sue by the hand and told me to follow and he took us to his quarters and gave me the clothes I’m wearing now. He gave us some money, and told us where to go. I think somehow he knew what was going to happen. Either that, or he just couldn’t take it any more.
We’d hardly got our clothes on when all hell broke loose. We hid when the men came to find Manny, and we heard what happened.
Jenny 2 had spoken. They don’t use drugs or anaesthetic, except when the shock of the operation will actually kill the spare. Obviously. Why bother? Jenny 2 was in a terminal operation, so she was awake. When the guy stood over her, smiling as he was about to take the first slice out of her face, she couldn’t help herself, and I don’t blame her.
“Please,” she said. “Please don’t.”
Three words. It isn’t much. It isn’t so fucking much. But it was enough. She shouldn’t have been able to say anything at all.
Manny got in the way as they tried to open the tunnels and so they shot him and went in anyway. We ran then, so I don’t know what they did. I shouldn’t think they killed them, because most had lots of parts left. Cut out bits of their brain, probably, to make sure they were all tunnel people.
We ran, and we walked and we finally made the city. I said goodbye to Sue at the subway, because she was going home on foot. I’ve got further to go, and they’ll be looking for us, so we had to split up. We knew it made sense, and I don’t know about love, but I’d lose both of my hands to have her with me now.
Time’s running out for both of us, but I don’t care. Manny got addresses for us, so we know where to go. Sue thinks we’ll be able to take their places. I don’t, but I couldn’t tell her. We would give ourselves away too soon, because we just don’t know enough. We wouldn’t have a chance. It was always just a dream, really, something to talk about.
But one thing I am going to do. I’m going to meet him. I’m going to find Jack’s house, and walk up to his door, and I’m going to look at him face to face.
And before they come and find me, I’m going to take a few things back.
David Case
The Dead End
Although born in upstate New York, David Case spends much of his time in either London or Greece. He has written more than three hundred books in many genres under a wide variety of pseudonyms, while his horror novels include Wolf Tracks and The Third Grave.
His acclaimed collections of macabre stories, The Cell and Other Tales of Horror and Fengriffin and Other Stories, were published in 1969 and 1971 respectively, and two of his horror stories have been filmed – “Fengriffin” became —And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973), while his classic werewolf thriller “The Hunter” was adapted into the TV movie Scream of the Wolf (1974). More recently, his short fiction has appeared in Fantasy Tales, Dark Voices: The Best from the Pan Book of Horror Stories, Dark Voices 6 and The Mammoth Book of Werewolves.
The author has always believed that the short novel which follows has been unjustly neglected. He’s absolutely right, and I am delighted to rectify that oversight by reprinting it here . . .
I
THE WAITER SPLASHED a little wine in my glass and waited for me to taste it. Across the table, Susan was studiously avoiding my gaze. She was looking out of the leaded window at the blur of motorcars moving past in Marsham Street. The waiter stood, blank faced and discreet. This was a place where we had often been very happy, but we weren’t happy now. I nodded and the waiter filled our glasses and moved away.
“Susan . . .”
She finally looked at me.
“I’m sorry.”
Susan shrugged. She was very hurt and I was very sad. It is a sad thing to tell the woman you love that you aren’t going to marry her, and I suppose I could have chosen a better place than this restaurant, but somehow I felt I needed a familiar place, where we could be alone but have other people surrounding us. A cowardly attitude, of course, and yet it had taken great courage to break the engagement. I wanted nothing more in the world than to marry Susan, and now it was impossible.
“I’ve been expecting it, Arthur. It wasn’t really such a shock.”
“Susan.”
“I could tell, you know. It’s been different. You’ve been different. Ever since you returned from South America, I’ve been expecting this. I expect you met someone else there . . .”
“No. Please believe that.”
She gave a bitter little smile across the table.
“I love you, Susan. As much as ever. More. Now that I realize how much I’m losing, I want you more than ever.”
“Arthur, you haven’t even made love to me since you came back. How can I believe you?”
“I can’t, Susan.”
“Then tell me why.”
I shook my head.
“You owe me that much, Arthur. At least that much. Some explanation. Whatever it is, I’ll understand. If there’s someone else, if you’re tired of me, if you simply want your freedom, I’ll understand. There’ll be no bitterness. But you can’t simply break it off like this, without even telling me why. It’s inhuman.”
And perhaps she would have understood. Susan, of all people, might have understood. But it was too horrible and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. I couldn’t tell anyone. I didn’t even tell the doctor who examined me what he was supposed to be looking for. It was a terrible secret, and I had to bear it alone.
“Susan, I can’t tell you.”
She looked towards the window again. The leaded panes distorted the outside world. I thought she was going to cry, then, but she didn’t. Her lip trembled. Waiters moved efficiently past our table, and the other customers wined and dined and pursued their individual lives, while I sat there alone. Susan was there, but I was alone.
“If only you hadn’t gone,” she whispered.
Yes. If only I hadn’t gone. If only a man could relive the past and undo what had been done. But I had gone, and I looked down at the wine shimmering
in my glass and recalled how it had happened; recalled those monstrous things which had been, and could never be undone . . .
It is hard to believe that it was only two months since the director of the museum called me to his office on a grim London afternoon. I was excited and expectant about his summons, as I followed the echo of hollow footsteps through those hoary corridors to his office. I was well aware that Jeffries, the head of the anthropology department, planned to retire at the end of the year, and had hopes of being promoted to his position. I can recall the conflicting thoughts that bounded in my head, wondering if I wasn’t too young to expect such promotion, counterbalancing this by mentally listing the well-received work I’d done since I’d been there, remembering that many of my views were opposed to the director’s, but knowing him as a man who respected genuine disagreement and sought out subalterns who did not hesitate to put forth their own theories, and also, perhaps mainly, thinking how delighted Susan would be if I could tell her I’d been promoted and that we could change and hasten our plans in accordance with my new position. Susan wanted children, but was prepared to wait a few years until we could afford them; she wanted a house in the country but had agreed to move into my flat in town. Perhaps, now, we would not have to wait for these things. Visions of happiness and success danced in my head that afternoon, as they do when a man is young and hopeful.
I was only thirty-one years old that day, although I’m old now.
It was two months ago.
Doctor Smyth looked the part of a museum director, the template from which all men in that position should have been cut. He wore an ancient and immaculate double-breasted suit crossed with a gold watch chain, and reposed like a boulder behind a massive desk in his leather-bound den.
“Ah, Brookes. Sit down.”
I sat and waited. It was difficult to feel so confident now that I faced him. He filled a blackened pipe carefully, pressing the tobacco down with his wide thumb.
“Those reports I sent on to you the other day,” he said. He paused to touch a match to the tobacco, and I watched it uncurl in the flame. I was disappointed. I’d hoped this meeting would be far more momentous than that. A haze of smoke began to drift between us.
“You’ve studied them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s your opinion?”
I was mildly surprised. I’d been surprised when he sent them to me. They were the sort of thing one usually takes with a grain of salt, various unsubstantiated reports from Tierra del Fuego concerning a strange creature that had been seen in the mountains; a creature that appeared vaguely manlike, but behaved like an animal. It was reported to be responsible for destroying a few sheep and frightening a few people. The museum receives a good many reports of this nature, usually either a hoax or desire for publicity or over-stimulated imagination. True, there had been several different accounts of this creature with no apparent connexion between the men who claimed to have seen it, but I thought myself too much a man of science to place much faith in rumours of this sort.
And yet Smyth seemed interested.
“Well, I don’t really know. Some sort of primate, perhaps. If there is anything.”
“Too large for a monkey.”
“If it weren’t South America, I’d think possibly an ape . . .”
“But it is South America, isn’t it?”
I said nothing.
“You mentioned a primate. It isn’t a monkey, and it can’t very well be an ape. What does that leave?”
“Man, of course.”
“Yes,” he said.
He regarded me through the smoke.
I said: “Of course, the Indians in that area are very primitive. Possibly the most primitive men alive today. Darwin was certainly fascinated by them, running naked in that climate and eating raw mussels. This creature might well be a man, some hermit perhaps, or an aboriginal who has managed to avoid contact with civilization.”
“And more power to him,” Smyth said.
“I should think that’s the answer.”
“I doubt it, somehow.”
“I don’t see . . .”
“Several aboriginals have been known to have seen this creature. Surely they would have recognized him as a man like themselves.”
“Perhaps. But there’s certainly no proof to suggest it is something less than a man. I’d rate the plausibility of anything else well behind the Abominable Snowman, and you know my views on that.”
Smyth smiled rather tolerantly. I had done some research on the Yeti which had been well received, but my conclusions had been strictly negative. Smyth was inclined to admit the possibility of such creatures, however.
“I thought much the same way, at first,” he said.
“At first?”
“I’ve given it considerable thought. I was particularly impressed by the story that half-breed fellow told in Ushuaia. What was his name?”
“Gregorio?”
“Yes, that’s the one. Hardly the sort of thing a man would imagine without some basis in truth, I should think. In fact, I sent a wire to a fellow I know there. Man named Gardiner. Used to be a manager with Explotadora, when the company was really big. Retired now, but he figured he was too old to start a new life in England and he stayed there. Splendid fellow, knows everyone. Helped us considerably the last time we had a field team out there. Anyway, he replied, and according to him this Gregorio is a fairly reliable sort. That got me wondering if there mightn’t be more to this than I’d supposed. And then, there’s another angle . . .”
His pipe had faltered. He spent several moments and several matches lighting it again.
“What do you know of Hubert Hodson?” he asked.
“Hodson? Is he still alive?”
“Hodson is several years younger than I,” Smyth said, amused. “Yes, he’s still very much alive.”
“He was before my time. Not highly regarded these days, a bit outdated. I’ve read him, of course. A renegade with curious theories and an adamant attitude, but a first-class scientist. Some of his ideas caused quite a stir some twenty years ago.”
Smyth nodded. He seemed pleased that I knew about Hodson.
“I’m rather vague on his work, actually. He specialized in the genetics of evolution, I believe. Not really my line.”
“He specialized in many things. Spread himself too thin, perhaps. But he was a brilliant man.” Smyth’s eyes narrowed, he was recalling the past. “Hodson put forth many theories. Some nonsense, some perhaps not. He believed that the vocal cords were the predominant element in man’s evolution, for instance – maintained that any animal, given man’s power of communication, would in time have developed man’s straight spine, man’s thumb, even man’s brain. That man’s mind was no more than a by-product of assembled experience and thought unnecessary to development. A theory of enormous possibilities, of course, but Hodson, being the man he is, threw it down like a gauntlet, as a challenge to man’s superior powers of reasoning. He presented it as though he preferred to cause consternation and opposition, rather than seeking acceptance.
“It was much the same with his mutation theory, when he claimed that evolution was not a gradual process, but moved in sudden forward spurts at various points in time, and that the time was different and dependent upon the place. Nothing wrong with these ideas, certainly, but his manner of presentation was such that the most harmless concepts would raise a hue and cry. I can remember him standing at the rostrum, pointing at the assembly with an accusing finger, his hair all wild, his eyes excited, shouting, ‘Look at you! You think that you are the end product of evolution? I tell you, but for a freak Oligocene mutation, you would be no more than our distant cousins, the shrews. Do you think that you and I share a common ancestor? We share a common mutation, no more. And I, personally, find it regrettable.’ You can imagine the reaction among the learned audience. Hodson merely smiled and said, ‘Perhaps I chose my words rashly. Perhaps your relation to the shrews is not so distant after all.’ Yes,
I can remember that day clearly, and I must admit I was more amused than outraged.”
Smyth smiled slightly around his pipe.
“The final insult to man came when he claimed all evolution had been through the female line. If I remember correctly, he stated that the male was no more than a catalyst, that man, being weaker, succumbed to these irregular mutations and in turn was merely the agent that caused the female to progress or change, was only necessary to inspire the female to evolve, so to speak. Men, even men of science, were hardly prepared to countenance that, naturally. Hodson was venomously attacked, both scientifically and emotionally, and, strangely enough, the attacks seemed to trouble him this time. He’d always delighted in the furore before, but this time he went into seclusion and finally disappeared entirely.”
“You seem to know a great deal about him, sir,” I said, “Considering he’s rather obscure.”
“I respected him.”
“But how does this tie in with the reports from South America?”
“Hodson is there. That is where he went when he left the country twenty odd years ago, and he’s been there ever since. That’s why you’ve heard nothing from him for the last generation. But God knows what he’s doing there. He’s published nothing, made no statements at all, and that’s very unlike Hodson. He was always a man to make a statement simply for shock value, whether he really believed it or not.”
“Perhaps he’s retired.”
“Not Hubert.”
“And you believe that his presence is connected with those reports?”
“I have no idea. I just wonder. You see, no one knows exactly where he is – I don’t expect anyone has tried to find out, actually – but he’s located somewhere in the Chilean part of Tierra del Fuego, in the south-western section.”
The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Mammoth Books) Page 63