The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2002, Volume 13

by Stephen Jones

  Hardy nodded. ‘A shame. I was hoping – that is, I had thought, maybe – once Return to Elmwood is completed, that you might be willing to part with one of your originals. It would have a place of honor in our house, wouldn’t it, dear? Especially if we might purchase – if Mr Dimsby would consider parting with – the jacket painting.’

  His wife agreed that, yes, a Dimsby original would be treasured in the Hardy home.

  ‘Alas, I fear that would be impossible,’ Simeon Dimsby commiserated, ‘but perhaps after dinner you would enjoy a tour of my workshop. You may have some comments on the renderings I have done for Return to Elmwood.’ Before he could say more his wife returned from the kitchen and summoned them to the dinner table.

  The Dimsby dining room, like the parlor, could have served as the set for a period motion picture, but there was no sense of artificiality or unreality to the room. Rather, upon entering its confines one had the impression of having stepped backward in time.

  Mrs Dimsby bustled into the kitchen and returned bearing a large platter. It was covered with a green, shimmering mass of interwoven strips that reminded Mr Hardy of marine vegetation that he had seen on past visits to the Pacific Ocean near his home. Mrs Dimsby set the platter in the center of the gleaming linen cloth that covered the table.

  Mr Dimsby asked if the Hardys would object to the old-fashioned practice of saying grace prior to dining. They did not. Mr Dimsby then folded his grey, bony hands in a manner unfamiliar to the guests. He lowered his head and closed his eyes, murmuring what Regis Hardy took to be his devotion. Mr Hardy had no notion of Simeon Dimsby’s ethnic heritage or his religious affiliation. The prayer was in a language unfamiliar to Hardy, a disquieting mixture of sibilants and gutturals. As the prayer ended the room seemed to shudder. Accustomed as he was to occasional small earthquakes in California, Regis Hardy was unalarmed by the minor temblor, despite never having heard of earthquakes in Maine.

  The green substance proved to be a pre-prandial salad. Its flavor was mildly unpleasant, the dressing of an odd gelatinous consistency and its odor peculiarly marine, but Mr Hardy managed to down a small portion of it, as did his wife.

  Mrs Dimsby removed the platter and salad plates.

  Mr Dimsby said, ‘The main course is Mrs Dimsby’s specialty, an old family recipe handed down ever since Colonial times here in Repentance. In fact, local legend has it that the dish was a favorite of the aboriginal inhabitants. Unlike other native peoples they neither died out nor moved away, but were assimilated by the settlers. Or, perhaps more accurately, one might say that the settlers were assimilated by the local inhabitants.’

  Mr Hardy was about to ask if his host’s prayer had been spoken in the natives’ language, but before he could do so, Mrs Dimsby returned from the kitchen bearing a massive iron pot. Mr Hardy was amazed that the short woman could handle its weight, but she hefted it onto a blackened trivet. The contents of the iron pot bubbled and hissed, emitting visible columns of steam.

  ‘I hope no one is allergic to shellfish,’ she announced. Receiving no objections she nodded to her husband, who lifted a long-handled implement and dipped it into the pot. Beside him stood a stack of deep bowls. He ladled a portion into one for Helena Hardy, then for Regis Hardy, then for his wife, Eustacia, and finally for himself.

  Regis Hardy gazed at the contents of his bowl. Taking his clue from Mrs Dimsby’s comment, he assumed that the meal consisted of a shellfish stew or bouillabaisse. Not only bits of marine carapace but tiny tentacles, claws, and even eyestalks were clearly visible, floating in a viscid red broth. The meal must have been brought to the table while still a-boil, for bubbles rose to the surface, tentacles waved and minuscule claws seemed to snap at Mr Hardy’s spoon. He shot a glance at his wife, sharing with her his distress.

  He managed to secure a spoonful of the broth and convey it to his mouth, all the while staring at a small marine crustacean that seemed to stare back at him from his bowl. The broth was hot in both main senses of that word, and as it reached the back of Mr Hardy’s tongue he could have sworn that a tiny, serrated claw nipped at his uvula, sending a wave of pain and nausea through him.

  The Hardys managed to down a bare polite minimum of their meal while the Dimsbys emptied their bowls and refilled them repeatedly, smacking their lips and exclaiming in pleasure at the textures and flavors of the repast. Conversation was desultory, and it was with relief that Mr Hardy pushed his old ladder-back chair away from the table at the end of the meal, helping his wife to follow suit.

  Eustacia Dimsby excused herself in order to clear the table and attend to her duties in the kitchen. Helena Hardy volunteered her assistance. Simeon Dimsby renewed his offer to Regis Hardy, to tour the subterranean workshop. Hardy attempted to beg off, pleading fatigue after the day’s transcontinental travel, but yielded to Dimsby’s persuasive words and the astonishingly powerful, even painful, grip on his elbow.

  Dimsby insisted that Hardy precede him down a lengthy narrow stairway. The first flight was of creaking, wooden risers and treads. Thereafter the flight plunged more steeply into what seemed bedrock, the stairs carved out of ancient New England granite.

  Illumination was provided by concealed fixtures.

  Mr Hardy’s breath rose coldly in visible clouds.

  After an exhausting trek which left Mr Hardy wondering how he would ever be able to climb back to the surface, the staircase ended. He found himself in a small antechamber. A single iron door met his gaze.

  Simeon Dimsby stepped past Mr Hardy. He drew an oversized, old-fashioned key from his suit pocket and inserted it in a massive, time-blackened lock. Turning the key, he snapped the lock open and pulled the door toward himself.

  Inside the chamber the temperature seemed to plunge still farther. Mr Hardy stood, surrounded by magnificent yet macabre images. At a sound he turned and observed Simeon Dimsby, who had pulled the heavy door shut behind the pair of them with a jarring, metallic impact.

  ‘Let me show you my sketches for Return to Elmwood,’ Dimsby grated. ‘We won’t be disturbed. Only Auric Mantigore and I have keys to this door. Not even my wife, dear as she is, can enter unless we permit it.’

  He opened a drawer in a rough wooden table and removed a huge envelope. He undid the hasp on the envelope and withdrew one of a sheaf of renderings on stiff illustration board. He turned toward Hardy. ‘I hope you will be pleased.’

  The top drawing was Dimsby’s illustration for Mr Hardy’s story ‘Narcotics from Neptune’. The illustration for this tale in Interstellar Stories, by one Barton Gorgon, had been a literal representation of the climactic scene of the narrative, in which Hardy’s beleaguered space voyagers, imprisoned by amoeboid creatures from the frigid outer planet, injected with a deadly, addictive drug and forced to work in the noxious mines of Neptune’s rocky moons, confronted their captors in an apocalyptic rebellion.

  Gorgon had focused on the haggard, bearded faces of the enslaved earthlings. Regis Hardy had always felt that Gorgon’s drawing, while not ineffective, had lacked considerably in impact.

  Not so Simeon Dimsby’s version.

  Dimsby had dealt directly with the aliens. His rendition of them was horrifying. Dimsby had transcended Regis Hardy’s own description of the aliens’ physical appearance and had managed in some undefinable way to capture their overwhelming sense of monstrous power.

  Hardy gasped. ‘How did you do this?’

  A thin smile curled Dimsby’s lips. ‘Do you like it? The medium is a substance that I manufacture myself. The primary ingredient is the ink of deep-water Atlantic kraken. And there are other ingredients as well.’

  Dimsby retrieved the drawing from Regis Hardy’s grasp, replaced it carefully in the envelope and removed another. He looked at the drawing himself, smiled once more, again faintly, and extended the illustration toward Hardy’s outstretched hand.

  This time the drawing was clearly based on ‘Vampire Town’. The tale had been Regis Hardy’s first sale. Not his best work, he felt, but
one for which he held a great affection because of its landmark importance in his career. The art director of Mayhem Monthly had assigned the story to Walter Wallace, a longtime hack illustrator who hadn’t done a good drawing in thirty years, but who managed to eke out an existence on the basis of name recognition and long-standing connections if nothing more.

  In contrast to Wallace’s crudely gory imagery, Simeon Dimsby’s night scene of the village – torch-wielding undead pursuing the last surviving day-dweller to his inevitable doom – was enough to send a shuddering frisson down Regis Hardy’s spine.

  Dimsby’s images for Hardy’s other stories were all powerful and frightening, but more than this they were strangely disquieting. As Regis Hardy looked at each drawing he felt as if Simeon Dimsby had seen past the prose of his story and penetrated into the nethermost and most fear-haunted recesses of his soul.

  At last Simeon Dimsby’s grey hand retrieved the last of the drawings from Regis Hardy’s unsteady grasp. He returned the leaves to their envelope and the envelope to its drawer. He tilted his head on its abnormally long and flexible neck, twisted his thin lips into a suggestion of a smile, and asked, ‘Had you any thoughts, Mr Hardy, regarding the jacket illustration for Return to Elmwood?’

  ‘I thought you and Mr Mantigore had already made a choice,’ Hardy replied.

  ‘We have held several meetings and exchanged a number of notions, but Mr Mantigore felt that you deserved to be consulted before a final decision was made.’ He paused. ‘As the author, you see. Mr Mantigore has the greatest respect for us – what he calls, “creative geniuses.” I believe that he uses the term in an ironic sense, but perhaps I am mistaken.’

  He placed a bony, grey hand on Hardy’s wrist. His grip was amazingly strong and his hand was frighteningly cold.

  ‘Did you – have a medium in mind?’ Hardy asked. ‘I mean, I’m pretty ignorant where art is concerned, but I’ve heard of oils, watercolors, something called gouache.’

  ‘You’re not as uninformed as you pretend, Mr Hardy.’ The artist still had hold of the author’s wrist. He leaned closer, peering into Hardy’s face. In Dimsby’s eyes Hardy saw distant flames dancing, yet the eyes seemed oddly ice-like, almost crystalline, and the flames emitted chill instead of warmth.

  ‘I don’t – I don’t really know,’ Hardy managed to stammer.

  Dimsby said, ‘Well then, let me show you some of the materials I have left from my last painting.’ He released Hardy’s wrist and Hardy shrank back, breathing a sigh of relief. Dimsby knelt in front of a safe-like storage cabinet. He twirled the lock that held it shut, then pulled the heavy door toward himself. ‘A pity that Mr Mantigore has been unable to join us,’ he commented.

  As if on cue there sounded a grating noise from the heavy lock on the iron door to Simeon Dimsby’s workshop.

  The great iron door swung back.

  Regis Hardy had never met Auric Mantigore, never seen a photograph of the publisher, yet even so there was no doubt in his mind as to the identity of the newcomer.

  Auric Mantigore was almost abnormally short, little more than four feet tall, yet he was built as massively as the iron safe that Simeon Dimsby had just opened. He might have been a blood relative of Dimsby’s wife. ‘Mr Hardy,’ he said, ‘I’d know you anywhere.’

  He strode into the room. ‘Your spouse was upstairs with Mrs Dimsby. Just moments ago I had the pleasure of making her acquaintance.’ In the brighter illumination of Dimsby’s studio, a small but disturbing birthmark was visible on Mantigore’s forehead.

  ‘Auric,’ Hardy heard Dimsby saying, ‘have you dined?’

  Mantigore grinned broadly. He drew an oversized bandanna from his pocket and wiped a speck of red from the corner of his mouth. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Well then, I was about to show Mr Hardy the kind of materials I use for my color work.’

  ‘Were you, indeed?’ Mantigore responded. ‘Then my timing is apt, is it not?’

  He slipped his suit coat from his shoulders and laid it carefully aside, drawing a large, glistening blade from an inside pocket.

  Dimsby lifted a huge iron pot from the safe. It resembled the one Eustacia Dimsby had used in her kitchen, but was larger.

  Far larger.

  Dimsby placed it carefully on a work table very near to Regis Hardy. The author knew even before he peered into it what he would see, but he could not keep from looking.

  His impulse to retch was forgotten in the terror and pain that he felt as Simeon Dimsby seized him by the elbows, his grip like ice-cold iron.

  Auric Mantigore said, ‘I’m so happy that I got to meet you this once, Mr Hardy. I do so admire your work. You can rest assured that Mantigore Press will do its very best with Return to Elmwood. I give you my word, we’re going to make your book a success. We’re going to cook up something really spicy to help put it over.’

  He nodded as if in pleased agreement with himself. ‘And yet, you may rest assured, it will be in the best of taste.’

  THOMAS LIGOTTI

  Our Temporary Supervisor

  IN 1997, THOMAS LIGOTTI RECEIVED the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award for superior achievement for his novella ‘The Red Tower’ and both the Bram Stoker and British Fantasy Awards for his short-story collection, The Nightmare Factory.

  His other books include Songs of a Dead Dreamer, Grimscribe: His Lives and Works, Noctuary, The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein and Other Gothic Tales, In a Foreign Land In a Foreign Town and I Have a Special Plan for This World.

  The author describes ‘Our Temporary Supervisor’ as ‘an extrapolation of the nightmare of the contemporary working world.’ It is included in his latest collection from Durtro, Teatro Grottesco, which also features the companion tale to this piece, ‘My Case for Retributive Action’. Also recently published is My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror, which includes a previously unpublished short novel. Crampton: A Screenplay, is a further title from Durtro, co-written with Brandon Trenz.

  I HAVE SENT THIS MANUSCRIPT to your publication across the border, assuming that it ever arrives there, because I believe that the matters described in this personal anecdote have implications that should concern even those outside my homeland and beyond the influence, as far as I know, of the Quine Organization. These two entities, one of which may be designated as a political entity and the other being a purely commercial entity, are very likely known to someone in your position of journalistic inquiry as all but synonymous. Therefore, on this side of the border one might as well call himself a citizen of the Quine Organization, or a Q. Org national, although I think that even someone like yourself cannot appreciate the full extent of this identity, which in my own lifetime has passed the point of identification between two separate entities and approached total assimilation of one by the other. Such a claim may seem alarmist or whimsical to those on your side of the border, where your closest neighbors – I know this – are often considered as a somewhat backward folk who inhabit small, decaying towns spread out across a low-lying landscape blanketed almost year-round by dense greyish fogs. This is how the Quine Organization, which is to say in the same breath my homeland, would deceptively present itself to the world, and this is precisely why I am anxious (for reasons that are not always explicit or punctiliously detailed) to relate my personal anecdote.

  To begin with, I work in a factory situated just outside one of those small, decaying towns layered over with fogs for most of the year. The building is a nondescript, one-storey structure constructed of cinder blocks and cement. Inside is a working area that consists of a single room of floor space and a small corner office with windows of heavily frosted glass. Within the confines of this office are a few filing cabinets and a desk where the factory supervisor sits while the workers outside stand at one of several square ‘assembly blocks.’ Four workers are positioned on each side of the square blocks, their only task being the assembly, by hand, of pieces of metal that are delivered to us from another fa
ctory. No one whom I have ever asked has the least notion of the larger machinery, if in fact it is some type of machinery, for which these pieces are destined.

  When I first took this job at the factory it was not my intention to work there very long, for I once possessed higher hopes for my life, although the exact nature of these hopes remained rather vague in my youthful mind. While the work was not arduous, and my fellow workers were congenial enough, I did not imagine myself standing forever at my designated assembly block, fitting pieces of metal into other pieces of metal, with a few interruptions throughout the day for breaks that were supposed to refresh our minds from the tedium of our work or for meal breaks to allow us to nourish our bodies. Somehow it never occurred to me that the nearby town where I and the others at the factory lived, traveling to and from our jobs along the same fog-strewn road, held no higher opportunities for me or anyone else, which no doubt accounts for the vagueness, the wispy insubstantiality, of my youthful hopes.

  As it happened, I had been employed at the factory only a few months when there occurred the only change that had ever disturbed its daily routine of piece-assembly, the only deviation from a ritual that had been going on for nobody knew how many years. The meaning of this digression in our working lives did not at first present any great cause for apprehension or anxiety, nothing that would require any of the factory’s employees to reconsider the type or dosage of the medication to which they were prescribed, since almost everyone on this side of the border, including myself, takes some kind of medication, a fact that is perhaps due in some part to an arrangement in my country whereby all doctors and pharmacists are on the payroll of the Quine Organization, a company which maintains a large pharmaceutical division.

  In any case, the change of routine to which I have alluded was announced to us one day when the factory supervisor stepped out of his office and made one of his rare appearances on the floor where the rest of us stood positioned, in rather close quarters, around our designated assembly blocks. For the first time since I had taken this job, our work was called to a halt between those moments of pause when we took breaks for either mental refreshment or to nourish our bodies. Our supervisor, a Mr Frowley, was a massive individual, though not menacingly so, who moved and spoke with a lethargy that perhaps was merely a consequence of his bodily bulk, although his sluggishness might also have been caused by his medication, either as a side effect or possibly as the primary effect. Mr Frowley laboriously made his way to the central area of the factory floor and addressed us in his slow-mannered way.