Figures of Fear

by Graham Masterton

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by Graham Masterton

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Ex-Voto

  What the Dark Does

  Saint Brónach’s Shrift

  The Battered Wife

  The Night Hider

  Underbed

  Night of the Wendigo

  Spirits of the Age

  Witch-Compass

  Resonant Evil

  Beholder

  Recent Titles by Graham Masterton available from Severn House

  The Sissy Sawyer Series

  TOUCHY AND FEELY

  THE PAINTED MAN

  THE RED HOTEL

  The Jim Rook Series

  DEMON’S DOOR

  GARDEN OF EVIL

  Anthologies

  FESTIVAL OF FEAR

  FIGURES OF FEAR

  Novels

  BASILISK

  BLIND PANIC

  CHAOS THEORY

  COMMUNITY

  DESCENDANT

  DROUGHT

  EDGEWISE

  FIRE SPIRIT

  FOREST GHOST

  GHOST MUSIC

  MANITOU BLOOD

  THE NINTH NIGHTMARE

  PETRIFIED

  UNSPEAKABLE

  FIGURES OF FEAR

  Graham Masterton

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2014

  in Great Britain and 2015 in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2015 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2014 by Graham Masterton.

  The right of Graham Masterton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Masterton, Graham author.

  Figures of Fear.

  1. Horror tales, English.

  I. Title

  823.9’2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8446-6 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-552-0 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-599-4 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  From the beginning of history, men and women have been haunted by figures of fear. They appear in many different shapes and disguises, from statues to animals to spiders to waif-like children. They frighten us to the point where we hang protective symbols and herbs around our doorways to keep them out, and say prayers to prevent them from harming us.

  The reality is, however, that we have created these figures ourselves, in order to give a physical form to all of those things that we are afraid of: our dread of the inexplicable, and the terrible uncertainty we feel about never knowing what will happen to us next.

  These figures represent everything from poverty and disease and madness and death to those horrors for which we have no names.

  Many of them have become legendary. Satan is a prime example, with his horns and his hooves. Then there’s the Indian goddess Kali, covered in blood, naked except for her belt of severed heads. Or Damballa, the slithery voodoo serpent god; and bristly Coyote, the Native American trickster. Or the Irish banshees, with their screeching voices and their ragged dresses, who gather outside your house as somebody comes close to breathing their last.

  There are literally thousands of them, in every culture and religion, representing every possible terror that you can imagine, and some that you should be thankful that you can’t.

  But there are other figures of fear, closer to home. They are less well known but equally terrifying – if not more so – because they are so unfamiliar and yet so near to us.

  That strange little girl with the deathly-white face who you see in your local churchyard, perhaps, but who vanishes when you turn away for a moment.

  That limbless rubber doll that you find in a box in the attic, her pink skin turned amber with age, her eyes staring at you as if she knows what pain your future has in store for you, but refuses to tell.

  That faceless statue in an alcove, in some small grey city in Eastern Europe, with dead bouquets heaped around its feet where people have been praying – but for what? For the statue to protect them from ill fortune? Or not to come alive at night and tap at their windows, warning them that their time is up?

  In this collection, you will discover many new figures of fear – some of which appear to be innocuous when they are first encountered; others which instantly bring shock and horror.

  However, they all have one thing in common. They have all haunted my imagination for years, and still do; and if you choose to go further and read this book, they will haunt you, too. They will never leave you alone, ever again.

  You might see one of them reflected in a shop window, right behind you; or gravely looking down at you from some high window in an unfamiliar city. Maybe one of them will be standing on the opposite side of a canal, with no reflection in the water, staring at you as if you have been picked out for the most calamitous fate of all.

  You have a choice. If you believe that these figures can really bring you bad luck, then close this book now. There are happier books, sunnier books, books that will reassure you that you have nothing to be scared of. But if you decide that they are nothing more than stories intended to frighten you, then please read on.

  Only you can figure out how fearful you are.

  Graham Masterton, 2014

  EX-VOTO

  ‘Señor Foster! This way, señor!’

  Henry stepped out of the shadow into the sunlight and into the middle of the marketplace. All around him, stalls were selling melons and tomatillos and decorated leather belts and scarves and holy statuettes and sticky-looking cakes and dishwashing brushes and bottles of Radiante floor cleaner.

  Mariachi music was playing loudly from competing loudspeakers precariously wired on top of the stalls, and the noise of shouting and laughing and dogs barking and parrots squawking was so deafening that Henry felt as if he had found himself in the middle of a riot.

  He caught up with Esmeralda, who unexpectedly took hold of his hand, as if he were a child rather than a forty-five-year-old man with thinning brown hair and a flappy white linen suit.

  ‘You said that you wanted souvenirs, señor,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Well, yes. But something artistic, you know. Something truly Mexican, of course. But reasonably tasteful. I can’t give the head of my sociology department a plastic cactus.’

  ‘We will find something for you, señor,’ said Esmeralda, and continued to tug him through the crowds. Henry had no choice but to follow her, as much as he didn’t like be
ing jostled. A gap-toothed man leered right in his face, holding up a necklace strung with large red chilli peppers.

  ‘Show your girlfriend that you are hot stuff, señor!’

  ‘She’s my guide, thanks,’ said Henry. ‘Not my girlfriend.’

  He didn’t know why he had felt obliged to say that. After all, Esmeralda was stunningly pretty, with shiny brown curls and feline eyes and a mouth that seemed to be permanently pouting. The only trouble was that she was young enough to be his daughter.

  ‘I know what we buy for you!’ she said, as she pulled him through the acrid smoke that was wafting across from a carne asada stall. ‘I know exactly for sure what you would like!’

  She led him down a shady alley by the side of the marketplace, where old men with faces like wrinkled gourds were sitting on doorsteps together, smoking. At the end of the alley there was a makeshift stall constructed of packing cases and blankets and sacking.

  A roughly painted metal sign outside the stall said Retablos. Inside, a woman was sitting on a kitchen chair with an easel in front of her, painting a small sheet of metal with enamel paints from twenty or thirty different little brightly coloured pots.

  ‘Buenos días,’ said Esmeralda. ‘Mi amigo quiere comprar un retablo.’

  The woman turned toward them. She must have been about forty years old, with high, distinctive cheekbones and hooded eyes that were as shiny and colourless as ball bearings. She wore a black scarf twisted around her head and a black dress with grey serpentine patterns on it.

  ‘Ah,’ she said, and her voice was deep and throaty, as if she had been chain-smoking Delicados cigarettes since she was old enough to breathe. ‘I have been waiting for you, señor.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Henry.

  Without another word, the woman stood up and went to the back of her stall. She produced a small package wrapped in newspaper and handed it to him.

  ‘What’s this?’ Henry asked her.

  ‘Your retablo, señor. Ex-voto.’

  Bewildered, Henry unwrapped the newspaper. Inside was a thin sheet of metal with a shiny picture painted on it, like a scene from a comic strip. It showed a city street, with a crowd of people standing on the sidewalk. A man in a white suit was lying in the middle of the street, with one arm pinned underneath the chassis of an overturned truck. He was cutting his own arm off with a large saw, and there was blood all over his sleeve.

  Up above him, floating in the sky, there was a saintly figure dressed in blue and gold, and attended by golden cherubs.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Henry.

  ‘It is simple,’ the woman told him, pointing to the man in the white suit with a long, silver-polished fingernail. ‘People come to me when they have survived a terrible accident, or a life-threatening sickness, or maybe they have been robbed and nearly killed. I paint for them an ex-voto, a thank you to the saint who saved their lives, which they will put up on the wall of their church.

  ‘In this case I have painted yours before your accident. Sometimes I can do that. It depends on who you are, and which saint will preserve you. In this case it is La Virgen de los Remedios, Our Lady of the Remedies. She told me many weeks ago that you were coming, and what would happen to you, and how your life could be saved.’

  Henry said, ‘What? You think I’m going to be run down by a truck?’

  ‘All fates are unavoidable, señor.’

  ‘I’m going to be run over by a truck and I’ll cut my own arm off to get free? That’s insane.’

  The woman shrugged. ‘I do not decide the future, señor. I will sell you this retablo for twenty dollars. You will be able to thank Our Lady even before she has saved you.’

  ‘This is sick,’ said Henry. ‘This is totally sick.’

  He twisted his hand from Esmeralda’s grasp and started to stalk back toward the marketplace.

  Esmeralda called, ‘Señor Foster! Señor Foster! Wait!’ But Henry refused to turn around and angrily shouldered his way through the crowds.

  He crossed the marketplace and walked back along the shadowy arcade that led to his hotel. His whole life people had treated him like he was some kind of a dupe and even now he was here in Mexico on business he was still being taken for a mark. He felt hot and sweaty and embarrassed and outraged.

  If he hadn’t been so angry, maybe he would have looked to his right before he stepped out into the blinding white sunlight at the end of the arcade and across the street in front of the Soledad Hotel. An old Dodge truck loaded with oil drums hit him at no more than fifteen miles an hour, but it knocked him through a wooden barricade that had been erected around a twelve-foot-deep excavation in the street, where the sewers were being replaced.

  He fell right to the bottom, amongst the sewer pipes, and then the truck skidded on the dusty surface of the street and dropped into the hole on top of him, with a shattering, ramshackle crash.

  He opened his eyes. It was gloomy and surprisingly chilly at the bottom of the excavation, and there was a strong smell of sewage and gasoline. He tried to sit up but found that he couldn’t move an inch. His right shoulder was crushed under the right nearside wheel of the truck, and the truck itself was jammed at an angle.

  He looked up. He could see anxious faces peering down at him from the sunlit street.

  ‘Señor Foster!’ a girl called out, and he recognized it as Esmeralda. ‘Are you hurt, señor?’

  ‘I can’t – I can’t get out,’ Henry called back, his voice blurry with shock. ‘My arm … it’s stuck under the wheel.’

  ‘Señor Foster, you have to get out. The truck is pouring gas.’

  ‘I can’t. It’s my arm.’

  Henry could hear Esmeralda talking to some of the men up on the street. Then there was a long pause. The stench of gasoline was growing stronger and stronger, and it was making his eyes water. It suddenly occurred to him that he was going to be roasted alive, down at the bottom of this stinking pit. That was how his life was going to end, and he had never even found anybody to love.

  It was then that he heard a clanking noise. He lifted his head again, and realized what it was. A large carpenter’s saw was being lowered down to him on the end of a length of cord.

  It came to rest next to his left hand. He stared at it in horror.

  Esmeralda called down to him. ‘It is terrible, señor, I know! But what choice do you have?’

  Henry picked up the saw and positioned it against his upper arm. The cross-cut teeth were so sharp that they snagged in the fabric of his linen coat. He closed his eyes tight, clenched his teeth, and pushed the saw as hard as he could. It cut through his coat and his shirt, and ripped into his skin. He had never felt anything so agonizing in his life, and he screamed, or he thought that he screamed. He was deafened with pain.

  He dragged the saw back, and then pushed it across his shoulder a second time, cutting through muscle. So much blood welled up that his whole sleeve was flooded bright red, but he realized that he would have to push even harder, or cutting his arm off would take hours.

  He pushed a third time, so forcefully that the teeth cut into his bone. But the saw also skidded against the iron sewer-pipe, and set off a spark. There was an instant whoompph of exploding gasoline fumes, and Henry’s face was seared by a blast of 300-degree heat. His hair flared and shrivelled and his eyes were fried.

  Henry blazed like an effigy. His linen suit turned brown and shrank and fell apart. His skin was scorched scarlet, and then charred black. But unlike an effigy he sawed harder and faster, with the jerky motions of one of those little figures on a weathervane. Within a few minutes he was a mass of flames, but he kept on sawing and screaming until he had cut right through his upper arm. He dropped backward, blackened and smoking, but free.

  The painter of retablos had joined Esmeralda in the street above. She laid her silver-polished nails on Esmeralda’s shoulder.

  ‘Le Virgen de los Remedios, she warned him,’ she said, in her throaty voice. ‘He had no faith in her, no trust. But the Vir
gin of the Remedies … she has a remedy for everything, even that.’

  WHAT THE DARK DOES

  ‘Mummy – please don’t close the door.’

  His mother smiled at him, her face half lit by the landing light, the other half in shadow, so that she looked as if she were wearing a Venetian carnival mask.

  ‘All right. But I can’t leave the light on all night. Honestly, David, there’s nothing to be scared of. You remember what Granpa used to say – dark is only the same stuff that’s behind your eyelids, only more of it.’

  David shivered. He remembered his granpa lying in his open coffin at the undertakers, his face grey and half-collapsed. He had thought then that Granpa would never see anything else, ever again, except the darkness behind his eyelids, and that was scary.

  Darkness is only benign if you know that you can open your eyes whenever you want to, and it will have fled away.

  He snuggled down under his patchwork quilt and closed his eyes. Almost immediately he opened them again. The door was still open and the landing light was still shining. On the back of his chair he could see his black school blazer, ready for tomorrow, and his neatly folded shorts.

  In the corner of his room, lying sprawled on the floor, he could see Sticky Man, which was a puppet that his granpa had made for him. Sticky Man was nearly two feet tall, made of double-jointed sticks painted grey. His spine and his head were a long wooden spoon, with staring eyes and a gappy grin painted on to it. Granpa used to tell him that during the war, when he and his fellow soldiers were pinned down for days on end under enemy fire at Monte Cassino, they had made Sticky Men to entertain themselves, as many as ten or twelve of them. Granpa said that the Sticky Men all came to life at night and did little dances for them. Sometimes, when the enemy shelling was particularly heavy, they used to send Sticky Men to carry messages to other units, because it was too dangerous to do it themselves.

  David didn’t like Sticky Man at all, and twice he had tried to throw him away. But his father had always rescued him – once from the dustbin and once from a shallow leaf-covered grave at the end of the garden – because his father thought that Granpa’s story about Sticky Men was so amusing, and part of family history. ‘Granpa used to tell me that story when I was your age, but he never made me a Sticky Man. So you should count yourself privileged.’