The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2002, Volume 13

by Stephen Jones

  Just as Fletcher set off again the sun burst through the cloud, and its warm light gave an odd sense of exuberance to the red-brown Victorian stonework around him.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything quite like this!’ he exclaimed in wonder. But even as he paused and spoke the moment of epiphany began to fade.

  ‘Like what?’

  A man stood on the pavement, washing a car. The sun gleamed on the bonnet and dazzled Fletcher’s eyes, so that he had to shut them for a second before he replied.

  ‘Oh, the way the sun shone on the houses – it made the street seem all aglow.’

  The car washer looked doubtfully along the road at the houses with their darkening windows. As suddenly as it had emerged the sun retreated behind the clouds, leaving the road all grey and mundane once more.

  ‘Dunno about that,’ said the man, flicking water from his wash-leather before attacking the car’s gleaming bonnet again.

  ‘An interesting street, this,’ said Fletcher, and immediately felt like an idiot. He knew from experience that any show of enthusiasm was viewed by most people with the deepest suspicion.

  ‘ ’S all right, I suppose,’ the man acknowledged, ‘compared to some.’

  ‘I’m thinking of moving in, somewhere around here,’ lied Fletcher, to prolong the conversation. ‘Near the top of the hill.’

  ‘Nothing much up there,’ said the man dully.

  ‘Always something,’ replied Fletcher. ‘Houses, views, prospects.’

  ‘There is a bit of a view,’ allowed the man, after pondering for a moment.

  ‘A view over London?’

  ‘Just down the hill.’ The man frowned as if recalling something unpleasant. ‘Been there and didn’t like it.’

  ‘You didn’t like the view?’ Fletcher probed.

  ‘View?’ the man seemed confused. ‘No, not that. No, London – didn’t think much of it.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ Fletcher exclaimed, amazed at the idea of anyone not liking London.

  ‘Overrated. Couldn’t see the point.’

  The man turned back to the bonnet and resumed his polishing, and Fletcher found his gaze drawn to the metal. The sun’s brief appearance had dazzled him, and in consequence there was a peculiar blackness at the edge of his vision. He saw his reflection in the car bonnet. How strange his face looked. Like he was trapped in a distorting mirror.

  ‘You’d best hurry up,’ said the man, ‘before it turns to rain.’

  Fletcher saw that the cloud had grown heavier and the sky now loured, black and brooding. It would not be pleasant to be caught out in it, if the rain did come.

  ‘I should have brought my brolly,’ he said, half to himself.

  ‘Always brings it on,’ the man muttered gloomily.

  ‘Umbrellas?’

  ‘Nah! When I wash me car,’ the man said resignedly.

  ‘Sympathetic magic,’ said Fletcher, as he walked away. ‘There’s a lot of it about.’

  Fletcher began to walk as fast as he could, for it seemed likely that he would be caught out in the open by the rain before he reached the crest. When he saw another of the peculiar stepped alleys he walked up it rather than tramp the length of the road – the road which, he now saw, had abandoned its habit of twisting and turning, and stretched well into the distance, the end of it quite out of sight.

  Having climbed the last step he found himself standing by a small green space, in the centre of which stood a large and flourishing oak. He went to it, and from beneath its boughs surveyed his surroundings as the rain began to fall.

  The open space covered little more than an acre. Beside the large oak a few smaller trees lined the edge of the grassy area. Some bushes and uncut grass suggested a spot left largely to its own devices; one rarely touched by hand – or, for that matter, foot – of man.

  ‘Well, has it been worth all that walk?’ he demanded aloud.

  Receiving no answer, he defied the rain and crossed to where a low wooden fence stood at the edge of the untamed acre. He looked out and down over a valley, on the other side of which another hill rose steeply. He tried to orientate himself by looking toward London for landmarks – even Canary Wharf – but just the valley and hill could be seen, with the grey roofs of the tall houses darkening in the rain that he noticed was growing steadily heavier.

  ‘It’s not always like this.’

  Fletcher turned on hearing the voice but at first he could see no one. From behind the oak a young girl of about twelve appeared, holding a bunch of wild flowers. She arranged the blooms carefully against the tree, and Fletcher saw that the shrivelled remains of other flowers surrounded the oak. After the girl had finished she came to stand beside Fletcher, and looked down the valley. He followed her gaze.

  ‘You see different things at different times,’ she said. ‘Sometimes the houses are not there.’

  Fletcher imagined that at the height of summer the trees would obscure the buildings to make the view appear deceptively rural.

  ‘It must be a very nice view, then?’ he asked politely.

  The girl looked down with an intent frown, as though (Fletcher thought) she were trying to will the landscape to change. Or perhaps she willed it not to alter?

  ‘Oh no,’ she said firmly. ‘Sometimes it is really horrible, worse than this.’

  She spoke with such vehemence that Fletcher looked at her with surprise, then turned back to the view. It was nothing special. In fact he felt rather let down, and the rain was getting heavier. Why had Mathews bothered to mention the place? It really was a waste of time, and he would be soaked when he got home.

  ‘The rain spoils the view, I suppose. It can make everything look horrible.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s worse when the sun comes out, you can see more.’

  Even as he looked Fletcher thought that the prospect was subtly changing. It must be the rain obscuring the landscape. For a moment he imagined that all was underwater in a drowned world, as if a second Flood had inundated the valley.

  ‘You’re lucky that you can’t see it all – it’s being covered.’

  The girl’s voice was oddly intense for one so young.

  ‘You don’t have to see it all the time. I do.’

  The child was becoming distressed, almost about to cry. Embarrassed, Fletcher looked for what might have upset her, but could see nothing in the view that might be to blame. Indeed, as the air grew thick with ropes of rain the prospect had become almost totally obscured.

  ‘It’s like we’re all underwater,’ he said, and noticed for the first time that the girl was not dressed for the weather, either. Her shift, or whatever it was, seemed quite soaked.

  Unfortunately this remark seemed to upset her all the more, and her lower lip quivered as she pointed out into the rain.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They can swim at you through it, and when it’s dry they creep up, slithering like snakes, or sneaking and crawling like spiders.’

  Her words seemed to conjure the mysterious ‘they’, as Fletcher thought to see in the teeming rain a movement in the air, sinuous and slick. Shapes did move there, though what they were he could not quite decide. Rain dragons? Didn’t the Chinese have them? He looked again, and the rain was like smoke, and things crawled in its obscurity. He could not help but recall an obscure passage from Blake about vast spiders crawling after their prey, making smoky tracks in the firmament. Powers of the Air indeed – and it was said by some that Hell was full of spiders.

  ‘Wriggling and creeping,’ she said, ‘and hot like fires gone dead but that can still burn you.’

  Fletcher wondered if this was what Mathews had seen, or something like it. No! He would surely have warned him.

  ‘What do they do?’ he whispered, fearful now for himself and the child.

  ‘They show me things,’ she answered, ‘and tell me things too. It’s not fair! That’s why I’m here all of the time, for listening to them. I do wish that I hadn’t!’

  And she began to cry bitterly.


  The landscape wavered in the subaqueous dimness. It was changing again, more rapidly. The houses had disappeared entirely, to be replaced by what at first Fletcher thought to be human-like figures of monstrous size. He took a fearful step backward, about to flee; but the girl stood still, now wearing a rapt, half-frightened expression. He stayed and looked out again, to see that the menacing forms had changed into – or might they have been so all of the time? – giant standing stones like those of Stonehenge or Carnac. There were many of them, but they formed no apparent pattern.

  ‘They move,’ she said, ‘if you don’t watch them, and sometimes they move anyway.’

  ‘But how? Why?’ Fletcher exclaimed. ‘What are they?’

  ‘Dolls, that’s what the others told me.’

  ‘But they are nothing like dolls . . . do you mean dolmen?’

  Then Fletcher recalled that he had heard of dhols before, somewhere.

  ‘Who are these others?’

  His mind raced with wild conjecture as the floating nebulous shapes shifted and changed, looming above the alley. The shapes seemed well able to reach out a casual paw and swat at them, and Fletcher felt a sudden urge to protect the girl. But then she looked up at him, and he wondered how he could ever have mistaken her for a child.

  ‘They showed me the ceremonies,’ she said. ‘The white one, the green one, but the best of all . . .’

  Fletcher walked rapidly away, almost running, out from what now seemed a dark wood to where the road should have been – should have been but was not. Although he clapped his hands over his ears the voice of the false child still sounded in them as he fled.

  ‘The scarlet ceremony, that is the best!’

  The street he had walked up was gone, replaced by a landscape of such buildings as he had never imagined, temples and palaces, perhaps. Part of a new, or very, very old, London.

  Flowers that rarely bloomed in our world spoke to him in insinuating whispers.

  ‘I am not going mad,’ Fletcher said aloud, ‘I am not seeing or hearing this.’

  ‘Oh, but you are.’

  He did not look to see who – or what – had spoken. But the gloating voice pursued him through the landscape of bloody henges and monstrous standing stones. Why had he not seen it when he had walked up? Why had he not listened to those who had – in their own fashion – tried to warn him?

  There were others now who followed him, all childlike in stature, adding their tones to the chorus.

  ‘There is so much to see, and we have not even started the ceremonies.’

  Fletcher raced through the avenue of stones that shifted about him, as if seen through a mist or in the depths of a smoky mirror, until they changed without warning into an ordinary suburban street. He stopped to stare, amazed and wondering at the new transformation. He looked back to the grassy space where trees shivered in the rain – just a few trees. What he had thought a great oak was a stunted relic that marked the centre of a dull plot, not worth the effort of visiting.

  Some instinct made Fletcher reach for his A to Z. The pages were all loose now, so carefully he tried to find the street on which he stood. He could not, for not only were the leaves all out of order, but he saw whole districts that were unfamiliar to him and he could not help but think that he did not know the city quite as well as he had thought. The strange pages would have to be shown to Mathews. What would his friend make of it all?

  Fletcher fumbled with the loose sheets, trying to get them back between the covers. Some fell from his hand, and he bent to retrieve them before they were soaked by the rain. But even as he gathered them up the print began to run before his eyes, the ink smudging and smearing his fingers.

  ‘What could it be?’ he exclaimed. ‘Where have I been?’

  As he spoke the girl pushing the pram appeared from around the corner of the stepped alley.

  ‘It’s easier going down than going up,’ she told him and pointed to the alley. ‘You’d best be quick, it might all change again.’

  Thanking her, Fletcher was about to ask the girl if she knew where he had been; but, looking down at what the pram contained, he thought better of it. A broom lay there, an old-fashioned one with a head of what looked like birch twigs. A coverlet had been laid over it, reaching to just below where the twigs were tied to the stick.

  ‘Isn’t he lovely?’ the girl said and smiled. ‘He’s my little poppet.’

  She reached out and took the remains of the A to Z from him. Fletcher did not resist. She threw the book up into the air, and the pages came adrift and floated in the rain, hovering like birds. A vortex began to shape the loose, swirling pages into an almost recognizable form.

  Not waiting to see what his once-familiar street atlas had become he walked down the steps, his pace increasing to a trot down the hill, not looking back until he reached the road by the station. Then he turned to see an ordinary street rising up a hill to end in a piece of waste ground of no interest, except for its offering a view over London.

  ‘Not at all what I saw there,’ said Mathews, who had listened without interrupting until his friend had finished. ‘Just a rather nice view of the city. I took the trouble of going there this morning, I thought that I had better after getting that very odd phone call from you, and it was just as I remembered. Victorian streets rising up a rather steep hill, with steps connecting them. There were some sharp bends in the road, but not as many as you recall. The whole walk up from the station took barely ten minutes. There was nothing too unusual.’

  ‘What do you mean, too unusual?’ Fletcher demanded.

  ‘When I reached the top I sat down on a bench beneath a stunted oak. I rather thought that it might have been lightning-blasted. There were some flowers around its base. Well, as I sat there a girl pushing a pram came along and sat down beside me, and we exchanged a few pleasantries – as one does – and I looked into the pram to admire the baby.’

  ‘It was not a baby,’ Fletcher stated firmly.

  ‘Oh, it was a child all right. It would have been interesting to have seen the father, I fancy. Anyway, as I looked she made a suggestion that I chose not to take up. If I were a younger man, or a bit more adventurous . . . But you see, I think that would have entailed me being there for some time, in that place. Also I did not like the look of those other girls who were hovering about there.’

  ‘What was the suggestion?’ Fletcher demanded. ‘Come on, Mathews, do tell.’

  They were in a pub, as usual. Mathews took a long drink from his pint before saying: ‘I’d rather not tell but I think that we both had a lucky escape.’

  Fletcher thought his friend had a rather smug grin on his face, as if he were pleased about being so mysterious. But he knew that no amount of badgering would get him to reveal what – if anything – the girl had said. Fletcher had his own ideas.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Mathews, ‘that we are lucky to have been the ones to have discovered them; privileged that the mystery was revealed to us. Part of the mystery, anyway. I think that others have had the same experience, but not recognized it for what it was.’

  ‘At the end the mystery remains,’ said Fletcher. ‘It’s those girls I feel sorry for. Do you think they are there for ever?’

  ‘For a very long time, anyway, and I am afraid that there is nothing that we can do to help them.’

  Mathews took another sup of his beer, then mused:

  ‘Shame about your A to Z. Will you be getting a new one? I did see some pages lying in the gutter when I was there but they were quite sodden and unreadable. Do you think that you might have been mistaken about those streets? Hobb Lane, Hood Street, Pook End?’

  ‘Hardly,’ Fletcher snorted. ‘I bought a new one this morning. They come in handy.’

  He took the book from out of his pocket and laid it on the table. ‘Surprising how different it all looks in this one.’

  He opened the book at random.

  ‘This could be a form of bibliomancy. One opens the book, puts a finger on the map a
nd travels to the spot.’

  ‘One could end up in Wealdstone,’ said Mathews and leant over the table to where the atlas had been opened. ‘Travel broadens the mind, they say, and the most mundane of places can be full of curiosities.’

  ‘The best journeys take place in our minds,’ said Fletcher, ‘and are purely imaginary. Did I ever tell you of the time I was in North London and found a rather interesting park?’

  ‘Was it anywhere near Stoke Newington?’ asked Mathews.

  ‘A shrewd guess.’ Fletcher grinned. ‘It was another case of so near and yet so far.’

  And he began to recount to Mathews his most extraordinary adventure in North London.

  KELLY LINK

  Most of My Friends Are Two-Thirds Water

  KELLY LINK’S STORY ‘Louise’s Ghost’, from her 2001 collection Stranger Things Happen (published by Small Beer Press), won the Nebula Award. Her story ‘Travels with the Snow Queen’ won the James Tiptree Jr. Award in 1997 and her ghost story ‘The Specialist’s Hat’ (reprinted in the tenth volume of The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror) won the World Fantasy Award in 1999.

  She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Gavin J. Grant, with whom she co-edits the occasional fanzine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

  ‘My friend, a guy named Jak Cheng, called me up one day and said he had a great first line for a science fiction story,’ Link reveals. ‘I took his first line, and I also borrowed some of his life, and then, to be fair, I put some of my life in there as well. I’m not the narrator, not exactly, and my friend Jak isn’t Jak, not exactly, but there are some family resemblances.

  ‘So some parts of this story are true, and some parts are made up, and when I reread it, it’s the made-up bits that I like best. They’re less confusing. If I could, I’d e-mail Jak so I could tell you what bits he likes best – but he’s off on an archaeological dig.’

  ‘Okay, Joe. As I was saying, our Martian women are gonna be blonde, because, see, just because.’