The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2002, Volume 13

by Stephen Jones

  Locked. She was out, not in; she was nowhere at all. For a long time she stood there, trying to hear anything from the other side of the door, waiting to see if anyone would come back looking for her. At last she turned, and began to find her way home.

  Next morning she woke early, to the sound of delivery trucks in the street and children on the canal path, laughing and squabbling on their way to the zoo. She sat up with a pang, remembering David Bierce and her volunteer job; then recalled this was Saturday, not Monday.

  ‘Wow,’ she said aloud. The extra days seemed like a gift.

  For a few minutes she lay in Fred and Andrew’s great four-poster, staring abstractedly at where she had rested her mounted specimens atop the wainscoting – the hybrid hawkmoth; a beautiful Honduran owl butterfly, Caligo atreus; a mourning cloak she had caught and mounted herself years ago. She thought of the club last night, mentally retracing her steps to the hidden back room; thought of the man who had thrown her out, the interplay of light and shadow upon the bodies pinned to mats and tables. She had slept in her clothes; now she rolled out of bed and pulled her sneakers on, forgoing breakfast but stuffing her pocket with ten- and twenty-pound notes before she left.

  It was a clear cool morning, with a high, pale blue sky and the young leaves of nettles and hawthorn still glistening with dew. Someone had thrown a shopping cart from the nearby Sainsbury’s into the canal; it edged sideways up out of the shallow water, like a frozen shipwreck. A boy stood a few yards down from it, fishing, an absent, placid expression on his face.

  She crossed over the bridge to the canal path and headed for the High Street. With every step she took the day grew older, noisier, trains rattling on the bridge behind her and voices harsh as gulls rising from the other side of the brick wall that separated the canal path from the street.

  At Camden Lock she had to fight her way through the market. There were tens of thousands of tourists, swarming from the maze of shops to pick their way between scores of vendors selling old and new clothes, bootleg CDs, cheap silver jewelry, kilims, feather boas, handcuffs, cell phones, mass-produced furniture and puppets from Indonesia, Morocco, Guyana, Wales. The fug of burning incense and cheap candles choked her; she hurried to where a young woman was turning samosas in a vat of sputtering oil and dug into her pocket for a handful of change, standing so that the smells of hot grease and scorched chickpea batter canceled out patchouli and Caribbean Nights.

  ‘Two, please,’ Janie shouted.

  She ate and almost immediately felt better; then walked a few steps to where a spike-haired girl sat behind a table covered with cheap clothes made of ripstock fabric in Jell-O shades.

  ‘Everything five pounds,’ the girl announced. She stood, smiling helpfully as Janie began to sort through pairs of hugely baggy pants. They were cross-seamed with Velcro and deep zippered pockets. Janie held up a pair, frowning as the legs billowed, lavender and green, in the wind.

  ‘It’s so you can make them into shorts,’ the girl explained. She stepped around the table and took the pants from Janie, deftly tugging at the legs so that they detached. ‘See? Or a skirt.’ The girl replaced the pants, picked up another pair, screaming orange with black trim, and a matching windbreaker. ‘This color would look nice on you.’

  ‘Okay.’ Janie paid for them, waited for the girl to put the clothes in a plastic bag. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Bye now.’

  She went out into Camden High Street. Shopkeepers stood guard over the tables spilling out from their storefronts, heaped with leather clothes and souvenir T-shirts: MIND THE GAP, LONDON UNDERGROUND, shirts emblazoned with the Cat in the Hat toking on a cheroot. THE CAT IN THE HAT SMOKES BLACK. Every three or four feet someone had set up a boombox, deafening sound-bites of salsa, techno, ‘The Hustle’, Bob Marley, ‘Anarchy in the UK’, Radiohead. On the corner of Inverness Street and the High Street a few punks squatted in a doorway, looking over the postcards they’d bought. A sign in a smoked-glass window said ALL HAIRCUTS £10, MEN WOMEN CHILDREN.

  ‘Sorry,’ one of the punks said, as Janie stepped over them and into the shop.

  The barber was sitting in an old-fashioned chair, his back to her, reading The Sun. At the sound of her footsteps he turned, smiling automatically. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Yes, please. I’d like my hair cut. All of it.’

  He nodded, gesturing to the chair. ‘Please.’

  Janie had thought she might have to convince him that she was serious. She had beautiful hair, well below her shoulders; the kind of hair people would kill for, she’d been hearing that her whole life. But the barber just hummed and chopped it off, the snick snick of his shears interspersed with kindly questions about whether she was enjoying her visit and his account of a vacation to Disney World ten years earlier.

  ‘Dear, do we want it shaved or buzz-cut?’

  In the mirror a huge-eyed creature gazed at Janie, like a tarsier or one of the owlish caligo moths. She stared at it, entranced, then nodded. ‘Shaved. Please.’

  When he was finished she got out of the chair, dazed, and ran her hand across her scalp. It was smooth and cool as an apple. There were a few tiny nicks that stung beneath her fingers. She paid the barber, tipping him two pounds. He smiled and held the door open for her.

  ‘Now when you want a touch-up you come see us, dear. Only five pounds for a touch-up.’

  She went next to find new shoes. There were more shoe shops in Camden Town than she had ever seen anywhere in her life; she checked out four of them on one block before deciding on a discounted pair of twenty-hole black Doc Martens. They were no longer fashionable, but they had blunted steel caps on the toes. She bought them, giving the salesgirl her old sneakers to toss into the waste bin. When she went back onto the street it was like walking in wet cement – the shoes were so heavy, the leather so stiff that she ducked back into the shoe shop and bought a pair of heavy wool socks and put them on. She returned outside, hesitating on the front step before crossing the street and heading back in the direction of Chalk Farm Road. There was a shop here that Fred had shown her before he left.

  ‘Now, that’s where you get your fetish gear, Janie,’ he’d said, pointing to a shop window painted matte black. THE PLACE, it said in red letters, with two linked circles beneath. Fred had grinned and rapped his knuckles against the glass as they walked by. ‘I’ve never been in, you’ll have to tell me what it’s like.’ They’d both laughed at the thought.

  Now Janie walked slowly, the wind chill against her bare skull. When she could make out the shop, sun glinting off the crimson letters and a sad-eyed dog tied to a post out front, she began to hurry, her new boots making a hollow thump as she pushed through the door.

  There was a security gate inside, a thin, sallow young man with dreadlocks nodding at her silently as she approached.

  ‘You’ll have to check that. ‘He pointed at the bag with her new clothes in it. She handed it to him, reading the warning posted behind the counter.

  SHOPLIFTERS WILL BE BEATEN,

  FLAYED, SPANKED, BIRCHED, BLED

  AND THEN PROSECUTED

  TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW

  The shop was well-lit. It smelled strongly of new leather and coconut oil and pine-scented disinfectant. She seemed to be the only customer this early in the day, although she counted seven employees, manning cash registers, unpacking cartons, watching to make sure she didn’t try to nick anything. A CD of dance music played, and the phone rang constantly.

  She spent a good half-hour just walking through the place, impressed by the range of merchandise. Electrified wands to deliver shocks; things like meat cleavers made of stainless steel with rubber tips. Velcro dog collars, Velcro hoods, black rubber balls and balls in neon shades; a mat embedded with three-inch spikes that could be conveniently rolled up and came with its own lightweight carrying case. As she wandered about more customers arrived, some of them greeting the clerks by name, others furtive, making a quick circuit of the shelves before darting outside a
gain. At last Janie knew what she wanted. A set of wristcuffs and one of anklecuffs, both of very heavy black leather with stainless steel hardware; four adjustable nylon leashes, also black, with clips on either end that could be fastened to cuffs or looped around a post; a few spare S-clips.

  ‘That it?’

  Janie nodded, and the register clerk began scanning her purchases. She felt almost guilty, buying so few things, not taking advantage of the vast Meccano glory of all those shelves full of gleaming, sombre contrivances.

  ‘There you go.’ He handed her the receipt, then inclined his head at her. ‘Nice touch, that—’

  He pointed at her eyebrows. Janie drew her hand up, felt the long pliant hairs uncoiling like baby ferns. ‘Thanks,’ she murmured. She retrieved her bag and went home to wait for evening. It was nearly midnight when she left the flat. She had slept for most of the afternoon, a deep but restless sleep, with anxious dreams of flight, falling, her hands encased in metal gloves, a shadowy figure crouching above her. She woke in the dark, heart pounding, terrified for a moment that she had slept all the way through till Sunday night.

  But of course she had not. She showered, then dressed in a tight, low-cut black shirt and pulled on her new nylon pants and heavy boots. She seldom wore makeup, but tonight after putting in her contacts she carefully outlined her eyes with black, then chose a very pale lavender lipstick. She surveyed herself in the mirror critically. With her white skin, huge violet eyes and hairless skull, she resembled one of the Balinese puppets for sale in the market – beautiful but vacant, faintly ominous. She grabbed her keys and money, pulled on her windbreaker, and headed out.

  When she reached the alley that led to the club, she entered it, walked about halfway, and stopped. After glancing back and forth to make sure no one was coming, she detached the legs from her nylon pants, stuffing them into a pocket, then adjusted the Velcro tabs so that the pants became a very short orange-and-black skirt. Her long legs were sheathed in black tights. She bent to tighten the laces on her metal-toed boots and hurried to the club entrance.

  Tonight there was a line of people waiting to get in. Janie took her place, fastidiously avoiding looking at any of the others. They waited for thirty minutes, Janie shivering in her thin nylon windbreaker, before the door opened and the same gaunt blond man appeared to take their money. Janie felt her heart beat faster when it was her turn, wondering if he would recognize her. But he only scanned the courtyard, and, when the last of them darted inside, closed the door with a booming clang.

  Inside all was as it had been, only far more crowded. Janie bought a drink – orange squash, no alcohol. It was horribly sweet, with a bitter, curdled aftertaste. Still, it had cost two pounds: she drank it all. She had just started on her way down to the dance floor when someone came up from behind to tap her shoulder, shouting into her ear.

  ‘Wanna?’

  It was a tall, broad-shouldered boy a few years older than she was, perhaps twenty-four, with a lean ruddy face, loose shoulder-length blond hair streaked green, and deep-set, very dark blue eyes. He swayed dreamily, gazing at the dance floor and hardly looking at her at all.

  ‘Sure,’ Janie shouted back. He looped an arm around her shoulder, pulling her with him; his striped V-necked shirt smelled of talc and sweat. They danced for a long time, Janie moving with calculated abandon, the boy heaving and leaping as though a dog was biting at his shins.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ he shouted. There was an almost imperceptible instant of silence as the DJ changed tracks. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Cleopatra Brimstone.’

  The shattering music grew deafening once more. The boy grinned. ‘Well, Cleopatra. Want something to drink?’

  Janie nodded in time with the beat, so fast that her head spun. He took her hand and she raced to keep up with him, threading their way towards the bar.

  ‘Actually,’ she yelled, pausing so that he stopped short and bumped up against her. ‘I think I’d rather go outside. Want to come?’

  He stared at her, half-smiling, and shrugged. ‘Aw right. Let me get a drink first—’

  They went outside. In the alley the wind sent eddies of dead leaves and newspaper flying up into their faces. Janie laughed, and pressed herself against the boy’s side. He grinned down at her, finished his drink and tossed the can aside; then put his arm around her. ‘Do you want to go get a drink, then?’ he asked.

  They stumbled out onto the sidewalk, turned and began walking. People filled the High Street, lines snaking out from the entrances of pubs and restaurants. A blue glow surrounded the streetlights, and clouds of small white moths beat themselves against the globes; vapour and banners of grey smoke hung above the punks blocking the sidewalk by Camden Lock. Janie and the boy dipped down into the street. He pointed to a pub occupying the corner a few blocks down, a large old green-painted building with baskets of flowers hanging beneath its windows and a large sign swinging back and forth in the wind: THE END OF THE WORLD. ‘In there, then?’

  Janie shook her head. ‘I live right here, by the canal. We could go to my place if you want. We could have a few drinks there.’

  The boy glanced down at her. ‘Aw right,’ he said – very quickly, so she wouldn’t change her mind. ‘That’d be aw right.’

  It was quieter on the back street leading to the flat. An old drunk huddled in a doorway, cadging change; Janie looked away from him and got out her keys, while the boy stood restlessly, giving the drunk a belligerent look.

  ‘Here we are,’ she announced, pushing the door open. ‘Home again home again.’

  ‘Nice place.’ The boy followed her, gazing around admiringly. ‘You live here alone?’

  ‘Yup.’ After she spoke Janie had a flash of unease, admitting that. But the boy only ambled into the kitchen, running a hand along the antique French farmhouse cupboard and nodding.

  ‘You’re American, right? Studying here?’

  ‘Uh-huh. What would you like to drink? Brandy?’

  He made a face, then laughed. ‘Aw right! You got expensive taste. Goes with the name, I’d guess.’ Janie looked puzzled, and he went on, ‘Cleopatra – fancy name for a girl.’

  ‘Fancier for a boy,’ Janie retorted, and he laughed again.

  She got the brandy, stood in the living room unlacing her boots. ‘Why don’t we go in there?’ she said, gesturing towards the bedroom. ‘It’s kind of cold out here.’

  The boy ran a hand across his head, his blond hair streaming through his fingers. ‘Yeah, aw right.’ He looked around. ‘Um, that the toilet there?’ Janie nodded. ‘Right back, then . . .’

  She went into the bedroom, set the brandy and two glasses on a night table and took off her windbreaker. On another table, several tall candles, creamy white and thick as her wrist, were set into ornate brass holders. She lit these – the room filled with the sweet scent of beeswax – and sat on the floor, leaning against the bed. A few minutes later the toilet flushed and the boy reappeared. His hands and face were damp, redder than they had been. He smiled and sank onto the floor beside her. Janie handed him a glass of brandy.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said, and drank it all in one gulp.

  ‘Cheers,’ said Janie. She took a sip from hers, then refilled his glass. He drank again, more slowly this time. The candles threw a soft yellow haze over the four-poster bed with its green velvet duvet, the mounds of pillows, forest green, crimson, saffron yellow. They sat without speaking for several minutes. Then the boy set his glass on the floor. He turned to face Janie, extending one arm around her shoulder and drawing his face near hers.

  ‘Well then,’ he said.

  His mouth tasted acrid, nicotine and cheap gin beneath the blunter taste of brandy. His hand sliding under her shirt was cold; Janie felt goose pimples rising across her breast, her nipple shrinking beneath his touch. He pressed against her, his cock already hard, and reached down to unzip his jeans.

  ‘Wait,’ Janie murmured. ‘Let’s get on the bed . . .’

  She slid
from his grasp and onto the bed, crawling to the heaps of pillows and feeling beneath one until she found what she had placed there earlier. ‘Let’s have a little fun first.’

  ‘This is fun,’ the boy said, a bit plaintively. But he slung himself onto the bed beside her, pulling off his shoes and letting them fall to the floor with a thud. ‘What you got there?’

  Smiling, Janie turned and held up the wristcuffs. The boy looked at them, then at her, grinning. ‘Oh, ho. Been in the back room, then—’

  Janie arched her shoulders and unbuttoned her shirt. He reached for one of the cuffs, but she shook her head. ‘No. Not me, yet.’

  ‘Ladies first.’

  ‘Gentleman’s pleasure.’

  The boy’s grin widened. ‘Won’t argue with that.’

  She took his hand and pulled him, gently, to the middle of the bed. ‘Lie on your back,’ she whispered.

  He did, watching as she removed first his shirt and then his jeans and underwear. His cock lay nudged against his thigh, not quite hard anymore; when she brushed her fingers against it he moaned softly, took her hand and tried to press it against him.

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Not yet. Give me your hand.’

  She placed the cuffs around each wrist, and his ankles; fastened the nylon leash to each one and then began tying the bonds around each bedpost. It took longer than she had expected; it was difficult to get the bonds taut enough that the boy could not move. He lay there watchfully, his eyes glimmering in the candlelight as he craned his head to stare at her, his breath shallow, quickening.

  ‘There.’ She sat back upon her haunches, staring at him. His cock was hard again now, the hair on his chest and groin tawny in the half-light. He gazed back at her, his tongue pale as he licked his lips. ‘Try to get away,’ she whispered.

  He moved slightly, his arms and legs a white X against a deep green field. ‘Can’t,’ he said hoarsely.

  She pulled her shirt off, then her nylon skirt. She had nothing on beneath. She leaned forward, letting her fingers trail from the cleft in his throat to his chest, cupping her palm atop his nipple and then sliding her hand down to his thigh. The flesh was warm, the little hairs soft and moist. Her own breath quickened; sudden heat flooded her, a honeyed liquid in her mouth. Above her brow the long hairs stiffened and furled straight out to either side: when she lifted her head to the candlelight she could see them from the corner of her eyes, twin barbs black and glistening like wire.