The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2002, Volume 13

by Stephen Jones

  ‘Two weeks. It’s our first time abroad.’

  ‘There must be worse places to get experience,’ she said and caught most of a yawn behind her hand as she stretched, pointing her breasts at him through her short thin black dress. ‘Well, I’m danced out. This girl’s for bed.’

  He could think of plenty of responses, but none he dared utter. He was turning his attention to the jittering of neon on the water when Janet said ‘You could walk me back if you liked.’

  As her escort, should he take her hand or at least her arm or even slip his around her slim waist? He didn’t feel confident enough along the seafront, where the signs of the clubs turned the faces of the noisy crowds outside into lurid unstable carnival masks. ‘We’re up here,’ Janet eventually said.

  The narrow crooked street also led uphill to his and Paul’s and Derek’s apartment. Once the pulsating neon and the throbbing competitive rhythms of the discos fell behind, Janet began resting her fingers on his bare arm at each erratically canted bend. He thought of laying a hand over hers, but suspected that would only make her aware of his feverish heat fuelled by alcohol. He became conscious of tasting of it, and was wondering what he could possibly offer her when she clutched at his wrist. ‘What’s that?’ she whispered.

  He’d thought the trestle table propped against the rough white wall of one of the rudimentary houses that constricted the dim street was heaped with refuse until the heap lifted itself on one arm. Apparently the table served as a bed for an undernourished man wearing not even very many rags. He clawed his long hair aside to display a face rather too close to the skull beneath and thrust out the other hand. ‘He just wants money,’ Barry guessed aloud, and in case Janet assumed that was intended as a cue to her, declared ‘I’ve got some.’

  He didn’t think he had much. Bony fingers snatched the notes and coins spider-like. At once, too fast for Barry to distinguish how, the man huddled back into resembling waste. ‘You didn’t have to give him all that,’ Janet murmured as they hurried to the next bend. ‘You’ll be seeing more like him.’

  Barry feared she thought he’d been trying to impress her with his generosity, which he supposed he might have been. ‘We like to share what we’ve got, don’t we, us Yorkshire folk.’

  Before he’d finished speaking he saw that she could think he was making a crude play for her along with emphasizing her trace of an accent more than she might like. Her silence gave his thoughts time to grow hot and arid as the night while he trudged beside her up a steep few hundred yards – indeed, overtook her before she said ‘This is as far as I go.’

  She was opening her small black spangled handbag outside a door lit by a plastic rectangle that might as well have been a sliver of the moon. ‘I’m just up the road,’ he told her.

  Did that sound like yet another unintentional suggestion? All she said was ‘Maybe I’ll see you in the market.’

  ‘Which one’s that?’

  She gazed so long into the depths of her bag that he was starting to feel she thought his ignorance unworthy of an answer when she said ‘What are you going to think of me now.’

  He had to treat it as a question. ‘Well, I know we’ve only—’

  ‘Denise and San have got the keys. I didn’t realize I’d drunk that much. Back we go.’

  She was at the first corner before he’d finished saying ‘Shall I come with you?’

  ‘No need.’

  ‘I will, though.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ she said and quickened her pace.

  He felt virtuous for not abandoning her to pass the man on the table by herself. In fact that stretch was as deserted as the rest of the slippery uneven variously sloping route. The seafront was still crowded, and she had to struggle past a haphazard queue outside the Mediterranean Nights. ‘I won’t be long,’ she told him.

  She was. Once he felt he’d waited longer than enough he tried to follow her, but the swarthy doorman who’d been happy to readmit her showed no such enthusiasm on Barry’s behalf. Even if he’d had the money, Barry told himself, he wouldn’t have paid to get back in. He supposed he could have said that Paul and Derek would vouch for him – that was assuming they weren’t in an especially humorous mood – but he couldn’t be bothered arguing with the doorman. If Janet’s friends had persuaded her to have another drink or two, or she’d met someone else, that had to be fine with him.

  He did his best to look content as he tramped back along the seafront, and was trudging uphill before he indulged in muttering to himself. He fell silent as he passed Janet’s lodgings, the Summer Breeze Apartments, on the way to swaying around several jagged unlit bends that hindered his arrival at his own quarters. Some amusement was to be derived from coaxing the key to find the lock of the street door and from reeling up the concrete stairs, two steps up, one back down. Further drunken fumbling was involved in admitting himself to the apartment, where most of the contents of his and Paul’s and Derek’s cases had yet to fight for space in the wardrobe and the bathroom. At the end of an interlude in the latter, more protracted than conclusive, he lurched through the room containing his friends’ beds to the couch in the kitchen area. Without too many curses he succeeded in unfolding the couch and, having fallen over and onto it, dragging a sheet across himself.

  Perhaps all he could hear in the street below the window were clubbers returning to their apartments, but they sounded more like a stealthy crowd that wasn’t about to go away. He was thinking, if no more than that, of making for the balcony to look when the slam of the street door sent Paul’s and Derek’s voices up from the muted hubbub. Soon his friends fell into their room, switching on lights at random. ‘He’s here. He’s in bed,’ Paul announced.

  ‘Thought you’d pulled some babe,’ Derek protested.

  ‘She didn’t have her key,’ Barry roused himself to attempt to pronounce. ‘You didn’t see her coming back, then.’

  ‘You could have brought her up here as long as you let us know,’ Paul said.

  ‘Put a notice on the door or something,’ said Derek.

  ‘Next time,’ Barry told them, not that he thought there was much of a chance. Still, he could dream, or perhaps he could only sleep. He hadn’t the energy to ask what was happening outside. The murmur from the street and the blundering of his friends about the apartment receded, bearing his awareness, which he was happy to relinquish.

  Snoring wakened him – at first, only his own. The refrain was taken up by Derek, who was lying on his back, while Paul gave tongue into a pillow. The chorus was by no means equal to the noise from the street. Unable to make sense of it, Barry dragged the floor-length windows apart and groped between them into unwelcome sunlight. Leaning over the rudimentary concrete balustrade, he blinked his vision into focus. The street had disappeared.

  Or rather, its surface had. From bend to bend it was hidden by the awnings of market stalls and by the crowd the stalls had drawn. Barry supported himself on his elbows, though the heat of the concrete was only just bearable, until he succeeded in dredging up some thoughts. His mouth was dry and yet oily with reminiscences of alcohol, his skull felt baked too thin, but shouldn’t he wander down in case Janet was hoping to encounter him? Mightn’t she have waited, not realizing he’d given away the contents of his pocket, for him to rejoin her in the Mediterranean Nights? He picked his way to the bathroom and, having made space for it, drank as much water as he could stomach, then showered and dressed. ‘I’ll be in the market,’ he said, receiving a mumble from one of his friends and an emphatic snore from the other.

  In the lobby the owner of the apartments was crammed into a shabby armchair overlooked by a warren of compartments, some lodging keys, behind the reception counter. He wore a flower-bed of a shirt too large even for him, which framed enough chest hair to cover his bald head. He opened his eyes half an inch and used a forearm to wipe his heavily ruled brow as Barry took out his traveller’s cheques. ‘You want pay?’ the owner said.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘How
much you pay?’

  ‘No, we paid in England. My friend Derek had to show you the voucher when we checked in, remember.’ When the man only scowled at the beads of sweat his tufted forearm had collected, Barry tried to simplify the point. ‘The paper said we paid.’

  ‘Now you pay for things go smash. Nothing smash, money back.’

  ‘Derek’s in charge of booking and stuff like that. You’ll need to speak to him,’ Barry said, knowing that with a hangover Derek would be even more combative than usual. ‘He’s the man in charge.’

  ‘So why I talk to you?’

  Barry pointed at the sign beside the pigeonholes:

  TRAVVLER’S’ CHEKS CACHED.

  ‘It says you give money.’

  For a breath that threatened to pop his shirt buttons the man seemed inclined to misunderstand, and then he thrust a ballpoint bandaged with several thicknesses of inky plaster across the counter. ‘You put name.’

  Barry signed a cheque for a hundred pounds as quickly as possible – the pen felt unpleasantly clammy – and handed over both, together with his passport. After the merest blink at Barry’s signature, the owner ran his gaze up and down him between several glances at the photograph. At last he leaned back, heaving his stomach high with his thighs, to unlock a drawer and count out a handful of large grubby notes. ‘You pay me nothing,’ he complained.

  Presumably he meant there was no commission. Barry shoved the notes into his shirt pocket – they felt clammier than the pen had – and was holding out his hand when the man dropped the passport in the drawer. ‘What you want give me?’ the owner said, leering at the hand.

  ‘I need my passport.’

  ‘I keep now,’ the owner said and locked the drawer. ‘You want more pay, you come me.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Barry told him, but made for the street. Further argument could wait until Paul and Derek were there to join in – all right, and why not, to support him.

  As he opened the door he was overwhelmed by heat that competed with the light for fierceness, by the sullen roar of the fire that was the crowd, by the smell of hot wallets, which were all the table nearest the apartments sold. Its immediate neighbour was devoted to leather goods too. The stalls were packed so close together that once he sidled between them he couldn’t see the sign above the door – the Summit Apartments, though they were well short of the top of the hill.

  Most of the crowd was making its sluggish way upwards, unlike him. Whenever he glanced about for possible souvenirs or presents, and often when he didn’t, stall-holders launched themselves and whatever English they had at him. ‘Good price,’ they persisted. ‘Special for you.’ Beyond the corner was a clump of stalls blue with denim, and past that a stretch of trademarks, each of them almost as wide as the T-shirts and other clothes that bore them. Which stalls were likely to appeal to Janet? That was assuming she was even out of bed. He wasn’t sure how either of them would have reacted to the other in sight of the next expanse of tables, which were bristling with phallic statues and orgiastic with couples, not to mention more than couples, carved from stone. He dodged the sellers as the hot crowd pressed around him, and struggled to the lower bend.

  Had it brought him back to Janet’s lodgings? He was trying to see past stalls heaped with electrical goods when a stall-holder, or surely an assistant, younger than himself stepped in front of him. ‘What you look?’

  ‘Summer Breeze.’

  The boy made circles with his hands above the stall as if to conjure Barry’s needs into view. ‘Say other.’

  Barry’s head was so full of heat and light and clamour that he could think of nothing else. ‘Summer Breeze,’ he heard himself reiterate.

  The boy’s thin intense face gave up its frown. ‘Briefs,’ he said with a gesture of lowering his own and presumably his shorts as well.

  ‘Breeze.’ Barry jabbed a finger at the building the stall hid, then waved one limp-wristed hand. ‘Wind,’ he said in case that could possibly help.

  ‘Here.’

  As Barry grew aware that the exchange of gestures had made the nearest members of the crowd openly suspicious, he saw the boy pick up a pocket fan and switch it on. ‘No, that’s not it,’ he said.

  ‘You try,’ the boy insisted, thrusting it at him.

  ‘No, it’s all ow.’ Barry meant to wave away the offer, but the whirling blades caught his forefinger. ‘Watch out, you clumsy bugger,’ he cried.

  The boy turned off the fan, which had developed an angry rattling buzz, and peered at it. ‘You break. You pay.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Barry mumbled, sucking his finger, which tasted like a coin. ‘Your fault, so forget it.’

  He’d hardly presented his back to the stall when the boy raised his voice. ‘Pay now. Pay,’ he called, and other words that Barry didn’t comprehend.

  Barry saw a scowl spread like an infection through the crowd, who seemed united in obstructing him. He was willing the commotion to attract Janet and her friends – anyone who would understand him – when the crowd parted downhill. Two policemen were heading for him.

  They wore khaki shirts and shorts, and pistols in holsters on their right hips. Their dark moist faces bore identical black moustaches. ‘What is trouble?’ the larger and if possible even less jovial officer said.

  ‘He cut me,’ Barry blurted, displaying his injured finger, and at once felt guilty. ‘I’m sure it was an accident, but now he wants me to pay.’

  ‘You listen.’

  It was only when the policeman confined himself to glowering that Barry grasped he was required to observe the interview with the youth, which involved much gesturing besides contributions from nearby vendors and members of the crowd. The conference appeared to be reaching agreement, by no means in his favour, when Barry tried to head it off. ‘I’ll pay something if that’ll quiet things down. It oughtn’t to be much.’

  The policeman who’d addressed him brushed a thumb and forefinger over his moustache, and Barry had a nervous urge to giggle at the notion that the man was checking the hair hadn’t come unglued. He stared at Barry as if suspicious of his thoughts before growling ‘You go other place. No trouble.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Barry said, though his unpopularity was as clear from the policeman’s face as from every other he risked observing. To retreat uphill to take refuge with his friends he would have had to struggle through hostility that looked capable of growing yet more solid. He swung around faster than his parched unstable skull appreciated to dodge and sidle and excuse himself down to the next bend, where he saw light through a shop. Once he was out of the back entrance he should be able to find his way to the rear of the Summit Apartments.

  He launched himself between two stalls piled with footwear and into the building, only to waver to a halt as darkness pressed itself like coins onto his eyes. Outlines had only started to grow visible as he headed for the daylight, so that he was halfway through the interior before he realized where he was: not in a shop but in somebody’s home. Nevertheless the contents of the trestle tables were unquestionably for sale, a jumble of bedclothes, icons, cutlery, a religious tome with dislocated pages, dresses, spanners and other tools, toys including a life-size baby that the dimness rendered indistinguishable from a real one . . . He couldn’t judge how many people were crouched in gloomy corners of the single room; of the one face he managed to discern, he saw only eyes and teeth. Their dull hungry gleam prompted him to fumble the topmost note off his wad and plant it between the baby’s restless feet as he made for the open at a stumbling run. He barely glimpsed all the denizens of the room flinging themselves at the cash.

  He’d emerged into more of the market. Only the space just outside the door was clear. Stall-holders and their few potential customers swivelled their heads on scrawny necks to watch him. They looked as uninviting as the tables, which were strewn with goods like a rummage sale. Here were clothes he and his friends might have packed to slouch in, here were the contents of several bathrooms – shaving kits, deodoran
ts, even unwrapped bars of soap. The stares he was receiving didn’t encourage him to dawdle. He set off as fast up the narrow tortuous dusty street as his hung-over legs would bear.

  He hoped any rear entrance to the Summit Apartments would be both accessible and open. Though there were alleys between the streets, all were blocked by stalls or vans or refuse. He kept catching sight of the crowd, not including anyone who’d witnessed his difference with the youth. He might have considered dodging through a house to reach his street, but the old people dressed like shadows who were sitting in every open doorway looked worse than inhospitable. At least there weren’t many more stalls ahead.

  The next offered an assortment of electrical goods: cameras, camcorders and battery chargers, a couple of personal stereos, whose rhythmic whispers reminded him that before he’d gone to university and after he’d left it as well, his parents had often complained the stereos weren’t personal enough. Suddenly he yearned to be home and starting work at the computer warehouse, the best job he’d been able to sell himself to, or even not having come away on holiday with his old friends from school. He glanced past the stall into an alley and saw them.

  ‘Paul,’ he shouted, ‘Derek,’ as their heads bobbed downhill, borne by the sluggish crowd. They’d looked preoccupied, perhaps with finding him. He would have used the alley if the bulk of a van hadn’t been parked mere inches short of both walls. ‘I’m here,’ he yelled, digging the heels of his hands into his chin and his fingertips into the bridge of his nose. ‘Over here,’ he pleaded at the top of his voice, and Paul turned towards him.

  He would have seen Barry if he’d raised his eyes. Having surveyed the crowd between himself and the alley, he said something to Derek that caused him to glance about before vanishing downhill. The next moment, as Barry sucked in a breath that almost blinded him with the whiteness of the houses, Paul had gone too.