Haunts

by Stephen Jones

  It hurt like hell, and Dougie screamed and shook his hand in a useless attempt to get it off. It was only when he grabbed hold of the teeth with his other hand, attacking them from behind, that he was successful, and that was only because, when the teeth slackened their grip for a moment in preparation for a second, harder, bite, he felt that slackening, and was able to use it to his advantage and pull the teeth off.

  He looked in horror from the teeth marks in his left hand to the set of teeth in his right. How? Why? Once again, his attempt to understand made him slow to react. Whether they moved on their own or somehow used the energy in the hand that held them might be impossible to judge, but the end result was the same. They moved and caught the end of his left forefinger, this time biting down hard enough to take it off. Of course, as soon as they had bitten through, the set of teeth fell away with the fingertip.

  Dougie stared at his throbbing, bleeding hand, in pain but too shocked to scream. He began to whimper, and called out for his mother’s help.

  Then he remembered he was on his own.

  He ran to the bathroom and snatched up a facecloth, which he wrapped around his mutilated finger, as much to hide it as in an attempt to stop the bleeding, and then he clamped his hand in the opposite arm-pit as he awkwardly used the phone to call emergency services. In the first gush of terror he said he’d been bitten, that the end of his finger had been bitten off. When asked for more details, he had the presence of mind to blame an imaginary dog, which he said had run off.

  The calm-voiced operator took his details, told him what to do, said an ambulance and paramedic would be with him hopefully in a very few minutes, and then asked if he still had the fingertip. If he could find it on the ground, he should keep it on ice, and bring it with him, because the surgeon might be able to stitch it back.

  He went back into his bedroom to search, waves of sickness running through him in hot and cold surges, flinching at every shadow, terrified that the teeth would leap out at him and bite off more fingers, or maybe this time go straight for his throat. But nothing happened; nothing moved in the room except himself, and the only evidence that the teeth had ever existed was the blue plastic clamshell case lying open and abandoned on the table.

  It was just as he was about to give up—he could hear the welcome sound of an ambulance siren coming closer—that he noticed a small, dark pool of blood on the carpet. Going near to it, bending down, he saw a gobbet of flesh in the middle of it, and the muted gleam of his own fingernail.

  *

  His finger would be slightly lopsided in future, and the nail would probably fall out before (probably) growing back, but the repair of Dougie’s finger was judged a success. He didn’t get away with his story about the dog, even though it made it into the local paper: the doctors and nurses recognized the telltale signs of a human bite—confirmed by the imprints of a set of teeth around the base of his thumb.

  Who bit you, Dougie? We know someone bit you, and it was a person, not an animal. What happened? Who are you trying to protect? You must tell us the truth.”

  The truth, of course, only made things worse. They didn’t believe him. His insistence on blaming a set of false teeth (which he couldn’t even produce; how should he know where they’d gone?) only shifted the suspicions of the grown-ups away from some imaginary, violent friend—(Mother: “He doesn’t have any friends. At least, no one he brings home.”)—squarely back to him. If there was no other person involved in the incident, adult or child, then Dougie must have used his late grandfather’s false teeth to inflict the damage on himself. Why did he want to hurt himself? What did he think he was doing? Why had he stolen the teeth?

  “It wasn’t stealing,” he said quickly, defensively. “Mum was only going to throw them away. Anyway, she already said we could have anything we wanted out of Grandfather’s things.”

  And why had he wanted the false teeth?

  But he didn’t. He never wanted them. He hated the horrible, smelly things! He didn’t know why he’d taken them. He didn’t mean to do it; it was just, suddenly, they were in his hands. And biting.

  He was made to stay in hospital for a few days while social services investigated his home situation. He thought that meant they would be searching for the teeth, but when his parents came to take him home, and he asked if they’d found the teeth and what they’d done with them, he knew by the look that went between his father and the social worker that not only had they not found them, they probably hadn’t even been looking for them, because they actually thought he was crazy, and had only imagined, if not invented, the whole sick story.

  He didn’t care if he had to talk to a psychiatrist twice a week, to express his feelings and play word games; he didn’t mind taking pills and being put on a special, healthy diet; even the prospect of being sent to a “special” school did not bother him nearly as much as returning to the house where grandfather’s teeth were waiting for him.

  Where were they? Would he be safer shut inside his own room, or was that the most dangerous place in the house? He decided, against his usual habits, to leave the door to his room open—noticing, as he went in, that his old door handle had been replaced by one without a lock. His bandaged finger started to throb, painfully, and he stood in the middle of the floor, his elbows tucked in against his sides, hands at chest-level in the T. Rex position, and held his breath, listening for any small sound—squeak or clack or shuffle—but there was nothing. Nothing happened, and he had to breathe. He had to move. He couldn’t spend his whole life—not even the entire day—waiting to be attacked. He’d just have to be careful.

  Before going to bed that night, Dougie looked everywhere he could think of in his room, using a flashlight to search out dark corners under his bed, but he did not find the teeth. He’d always been good at Easter egg hunts, so he was able to satisfy himself that, wherever they had gone, they were no longer in his room. He’d noticed the blue plastic case was missing, and assumed that, like the bleached-out patch on the carpet where his blood had dripped, was his mother’s doing. Maybe she’d also found the teeth and destroyed them and just wasn’t saying anything on the doctor’s advice. He decided that unless his parents raised the subject he wouldn’t say anything more about Grandfather’s teeth. If they were outside the house, they were no longer his problem. If they were still lurking somewhere inside the house—well, he’d worry about that in the morning. He shut his bedroom door and went to bed.

  When he woke it was not morning—it was nowhere near morning, since his room was even darker than when he’d gone to bed—and he knew the teeth were nearby. He didn’t know how he knew, and he stayed absolutely still, hoping not to reveal his awareness, and tried to recapture whatever it was that had awakened him: was it the click of teeth meeting floor in a bizarre scuttle, or the soft thump of something falling onto his bed?

  His arms were tucked in close to his sides beneath the covers, and he hated to even think of putting one out, reaching over to the bedside table where not only the lamp but those teeth might be waiting to bite another finger off, but there was no safety in lying in the dark, where the next he knew of the teeth might be as they met through the cartilage of his nose or ear.

  As swiftly as he could, praying his thrust was accurate, Dougie sent out one arm towards the lamp. His fingers closed on the switch, and at once the room was flooded with warm yellow light. He breathed out in relief at the sight of the empty tabletop, and beyond that, apart from his shoes, socks, and jeans, the floor empty all the way to the door. He turned his head, and saw them, hardly an inch away, on his pillow.

  They were so close, he could smell them, the sharp chemical tang of plastic overlaid with something more personal, biological—a trace of ancient saliva mingled with his own blood.

  He opened his mouth to scream, and they flew inside. His scream was choked off before it could emerge, and he thrashed in agony. They were in his throat, they would kill him—he had a vision of the teeth eating their way out of his stomach, and o
f his own lingering, agonized death—but the gag reflex saved him. The teeth were too big to swallow, and his throat pushed them back.

  Yet he could not spit them out. They would not be ejected. They were doing something, as fiercely active as a small animal nesting in his mouth. When he tried to pull them out, they snapped at his fingers, a painful nip that drew blood. He had to withdraw his hand; he didn’t dare try again although what they were doing was so painful it made him cry.

  They were breaking his teeth, forcing them out, pushing them down into the gums, making way for themselves, and they were brutally efficient. Scarcely more than a minute after they’d entered his mouth, the teeth were as firmly lodged as if they’d grown there.

  Still too frightened to put his hands too near his mouth, Dougie ran to the bathroom, switched on the light, and looked in the mirror.

  His face was sweaty and greenish with fear, his lips were puffy, and there was blood running in streams from his mouth, down his chin, like he was some deranged vampire-zombie cross. He grimaced at the mirror, peeling his lips back in the ape’s fear-smile to reveal the set of perfectly even, gleaming white teeth, monstrous in his mouth.

  The moan that came out of his mouth had nothing in common with that hideous grin. Gaining in volume, it finally cracked through the spell of sleep wrapped round the house.

  Shelley was first to emerge, coming out of her room rubbing her eyes, sleepily asking what was the matter.

  Dougie turned towards his sister. She looked like some kind of cute little cartoon bug, the way her skinny white arms and legs stuck out of her black sleep-shirt. He loved her, even if he would never say it. He didn’t want to make her scream and cry, but Grandfather’s teeth did.

  <>

  *

  Ill Met by Daylight

  BASIL COPPER

  BASIL COPPER was born in 1924 in London, and for thirty years he worked as a journalist and editor of a local newspaper before becoming a full-time writer in 1970.

  Copper’s first story in the horror field, “The Spider,” was published in 1964 in The Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories. Since then, his short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and has been extensively adapted for radio. Collections of his work include Not After Nightfall, Here Be Daemons, From Evil’s Pillow, And Afterward the Dark, Voices of Doom, When Footsteps Echo, Whispers in the Night, Cold Hand on My Shoulder, and Knife in the Back.

  One of the author’s most reprinted stories, “Camera Obscura,” was adapted for a 1971 episode of the television series Rod Serling’s Night Gallery.

  Besides publishing two nonfiction studies of the vampire and werewolf legends, Copper’s other books include the novels The Great White Space, The Curse of the Fleers, Necropolis, House of the Wolf, and The Black Death. He has also written more than fifty hard-boiled thrillers about Los Angeles private detective Mike Faraday, and has continued the adventures of August Derleth’s Holmes-like consulting detective in several volumes, including the collections The Exploits of Solar Pons, The Recollections of Solar Pons, and Solar Pons: The Final Cases, along with the novel Solar Pons Versus the Devil’s Claw.

  More recently, PS Publishing has produced the nonfiction study Basil Copper: A Life in Books, compiled and edited by Stephen Jones, and a massive two-volume set entitled Darkness, Mist & Shadow: The Collected Macabre Tales of Basil Copper. Forthcoming from the same imprint is a restored version of Copper’s 1976 novel The Curse of the Fleers and a collection of all the author’s Solar Pons stories.

  “I must admit that my work in certain genres has been greatly influenced by the wonderful tales of M. R. James,” explains Copper. “His own subtle and oblique way of constructing narrative has been my dictum: less is more. I also admire the work of the distinguished film director Lawrence Gordon Clark, who has translated some of James’s finest stories to the television screen in a restrained and wonderfully evocative fashion. Clark has been trying to get my film treatment of James’s ‘Count Magnus’ made for TV, for which I shall always be grateful.

  “I hope that those who come to this tale for the first time will find some measure of enjoyment and, dare one say it, a frisson of the terror that takes hold of the protagonist. For, as Edward van Sloan so memorably observed in an epilogue to one of the classic Universal horror films, ‘There are such things!”‘

  IT WAS LATE MORNING when Grant left St. Ulric’s Church. He had come down there on an architectural project two months earlier, and now, on this bright spring day, he had dropped into a bar almost opposite for a pre-lunch drink. As he sipped his goblet of chilled house white he had a clear view through one of the front windows across the road and to the church beyond. That was when he first saw the old man. He wore dark clothes, and the architect thought for a moment that it was the sexton, a somewhat lugubrious character he had spoken to earlier in the morning, but then he realized he was mistaken.

  The man’s dark clothes had nothing about them appertaining to the church. In fact, now that Grant saw him more clearly, he looked like a tramp, for the watcher could have sworn the old man’s overcoat was tied together with string. He was acting in a most peculiar manner, which had first attracted Grant’s attention.

  He swayed slightly, as if drunk, and though Grant, oblivious of the animated chatter of the occupants of the bar, shifted slightly to catch a glimpse of the man’s face, he kept it averted. Then he suddenly darted into the church entrance, so perhaps he was connected with St. Ulric’s after all, Grant thought.

  “Something else, sir?”

  The white-coated barman was at his elbow.

  “Yes, same again, please. By the way, do you know that old chap hovering about opposite?”

  The barman looked puzzled.

  “I don’t see anyone, sir.”

  Grant turned his attention back to the church entrance but the man had gone, no doubt ‘round the main body of the building. There was a public footpath there.

  He gave a short laugh.

  “It’s nothing important. An old chap was there just now.”

  The barman nodded, glancing at the former’s leather case, which he had propped against the table leg.

  “Ah, you’ll be Mr. Grant, sir. Doing the survey of the church for Mr. Brough. Staying at The Bull, I believe.”

  Grant nodded. Brough was the rector.

  “You seem to know a lot about me.”

  The barman smiled.

  “It’s a small place. And Mr. Brough enjoys a drink here from time to time. He spoke about you when you first came.”

  After Grant had returned to The Bull, where he had taken a room for the duration of his work on the church—it would be a long commission, for the building was in a very poor state, particularly so far as the foundations went—he had lunch and then found a corner of the coffee lounge and checked his latest notes and drawings. This occupied him for over an hour and afterward he decided to take a walk ‘round the village in order to stretch his legs. He passed the old timbered post office on his way ‘round and on impulse, seeing a phone booth outside, went in and dialed his fiancée, Sally, in London, to let her know how things were going. Then he returned to The Bull and continued working on his notes in the now deserted lounge.

  Presently there was a pleasant interruption to his labors when a shadow fell across his drawings and the bulky form of the rector, the Reverend Charles Brough, materialized. A good-looking man in his early fifties, his black hair flecked with grey, he had established a good rapport with Grant and the latter had enjoyed the hospitality of Brough and his much younger wife at the rectory, a mellow 18th-century building the other side of the churchyard.

  Grant, using his privilege as a guest at the hotel, quickly ordered the visitor a glass of sherry and the two men were soon engrossed in facts and figures regarding the renovation work on the church.

  “Of course, you do realize it will be a very expensive job,” the architect pointed out. “A good deal of underpinning of the buttresses on the north side of the building, whe
re water has been penetrating for years and some of the paneling and other interior fitments are showing signs of dry rot, to say nothing of woodworm.”

  The rector smiled briefly, raising his glass in salute.

  “I don’t think that will be too big a problem, Mr. Grant. The Diocese has promised us half a million pounds and we have a large-scale restoration fund underway.”

  Grant nodded.

  “Oh, but you haven’t taken my fees into account.”

  The rector gave a dry chuckle before continuing.

  “Now that you have been on the spot and gone into all the details how long do you think the work will take? We have an excellent firm of church restorers, and though they have only undertaken what you might call running repairs in the past, they will be glad of this major commission in these difficult times.”

  Grant pursed his lips, putting down his sherry glass and tidying up his papers.

  “According to the requirements you’ve laid down and the preliminary figures I’ve arrived at, around two years for the complete restoration. Perhaps a little longer. My associates will, of course, check the work thoroughly as it proceeds. And naturally I shall still have overall control.”

  Brough gave him an approving glance.

  “That’s about what the church council thought. I’ll let them know your provisional findings at the council meeting next Monday evening. You’ll be present, of course, and perhaps you’d like to have dinner at the rectory afterwards.”

  Grant thanked Brough for his invitation and the two men rose.

  “I must get back to the church,” the rector said.

  “I’ll come with you,” Grant replied. “I have to take some more measurements and make further inspection before writing my notes this evening.”

  The two men fell into step as they crossed the road towards St. Ulric’s, engaging in small talk, when Grant caught sight out of the corner of his eye a black-clad figure walking among the gravestones in the churchyard. He was too late to see clearly, and the man—for he was certain of the gender—had disappeared along the footpath by the time they reached the worn-lych-gate.