The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 22

by Stephen Jones

  “A number of my friends knew him well, and I regret I myself never had the chance to do so. Sadly, I only discovered his brilliant work years after his untimely death.”

  THE TOWN OF STRASGOL is situated in a corner of Eastern Europe forgotten by all but nationalistic Poles and Ukrainians. Their governments have squabbled over this tiny piece of territory for decades. Since neither claim has received international recognition, and its aged, insular citizens have scarcely any interest in politics, it has been allowed to fall into a state of decay. Its cobbled streets are mossy. Its mixture of architectural styles, ranging from Neo-Classical to Art Deco, has been disfigured by the state of near dereliction into which its buildings have fallen. Windows are sooty, with cracked panes, and once-elegant balconies now rot on lichen-crusted facades. At night scarcely half of the street lamps light up, due to either a lack of sufficient electrical power or their not being kept in a state of proper repair. In daytime the sky is invariably leaden, and low thick clouds hang heavy just above Strasgol. The myriad bell towers and spires of the town disappear upwards into the mist as if only half-constructed.

  What had brought Eddie Charles Knox to the town had been an incorrigible wanderlust and a desire to escape from his commitments by retreat into an alcoholic haze. He had been looking for an unknown quarter of the continent where Americans were absent; such was his desire to escape from every trace of their pernicious worldwide influence. His only means of communication with people in this part of the globe was via the foreign language phrasebooks he carried with him, and by hand signals. He wanted nothing more by way of interaction.

  Like the buildings of Strasgol, Knox was derelict. Only forty-eight, he had managed to destroy his liver. With his mottled face, broken capillaries and beer gut, he had long since ceased to draw attention from the young women at whom he stared and over whom he dreamed and wove impossible romantic fantasies as he sat in the Zacharas Café nursing a glass and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

  Being a true son of Tennessee, he had a thirst for Old No. 7 whiskey. And had done for the last thirty years.

  Back in the USA, devotees of supernatural fiction in mass-market paperback called Eddie Knox the “Berserker of Horror”. His heavy bulk, the flaming mane of red hair and beard, the mirror shades, had all added to the legend that had grown up around him. Only the incongruous Harris Tweed jacket with the worn elbows distorted the overall image. But he couldn’t bring himself to do away with it. Each ink blot, each smear of lipstick, each booze or ingrained powder stain on the fabric, recalled a precious memory he did not care to forget. First drafts in longhand with his trusty Waterman, drinking alcoholic English editors under the table at conventions, educating groupie nymphs in seedy hotel rooms, the acrid tang of cocaine as it hit the sinuses and the back of the throat after being snorted in toilets on first-class transatlantic flights and in stretch limos. Now those glories were of the past and had faded away like ripples, like echoes, like the dying of the light.

  Eddie Knox chuckled to himself grimly. He took another swig of Jack Daniel’s from his personal shot glass engraved with a Confederate flag and looked around the Zacharas Café. Black humour with your choice of poison, Fortunato? But of course, Knox replied to himself, emptying his glass and making a silent toast; “The South will Rise”. Another toast – “to Edgar A. Poe”. Not “Allan” and certainly never “Allen”. America was an ignorant Yankee Military-Industrial Complex, and traditional southern gentlemen were not required. The bastards had got to Poe in the end. Banged him on the head in Baltimore. Damn the Freemasons!

  Knox wished he could drown his sense of self-contempt. Sure, it was delightful to be here in the Zacharas Café, with its intimate booths for private intellectual conversation, with its rococo plaster ceiling, its air of 1920s European decadence, pre-war cabaret, and engraved windows of dazzling green glass. But it was dirty money that got him here. And he believed he wasn’t even worthy of raising a fellow author’s silent toast to the likes of Poe.

  Knox felt like a fake. It wasn’t his tales of horror that seemed cheap; sure, they were hard to find but when found were nevertheless rightly lauded for their authenticity. No, it was the endless novels he’d written detailing the pulp adventures of Mungo the Barbarian and the sexual shenanigans of Mother Superior Lucia Vulva that had paid the bills and that had given respectability to the bank account. Those were what felt like cheating. When he was talking with fellow professionals, he laughed off any other objective than making big bucks. He was only a working writer. Fuck the pretentious snobs amongst us. But when he was alone, the compromise hit him hard. He wanted to be remembered as an artist. Nothing else really mattered in the end. There was no other form of survival after death. In the final analysis, all writers find out this hard truth. Whether or not they admit to it is a different matter.

  Knox loved Europe. He adored its sense of history and slow decay. He wanted to be absorbed into its fabric and leave behind every single last trace of the obnoxiously optimistic and bogus “American Dream”. He’d lived and fulfilled that dream; and found it as nightmarish as an endlessly repeated TV advert for fast food, as a “you’re worth it” fixed smile with oh-so-perfect white teeth. And so he stopped dreaming, and crashed headlong into a sea of reality he couldn’t bear, but which suited him better. He preferred to drown quickly than die via a suicide stretched out across years.

  He downed another dose of Jack Daniel’s from his shot glass and stared across the expanse of the Zacharas Café. It was sparsely occupied. There were one or two eastern European businessmen in sharp suits nursing beers, a couple arguing quietly in a corner, and, behind him, a fat man slouched back into a booth with his face lost in shadow. Knox had turned around once, pricked by the sensation of being watched, and, although he could not make out the man’s face clearly enough to tell, he had the distinct impression this person was staring fixedly at him. Maybe, Knox thought, he’s one of the natives who hates tourists just as much as I, another tourist, do. The way the lights were arranged in that part of the bar meant the fat man was visible only as a shadowy bulk, except for his gnarled powerful hands. These were resting on the table, in a pool of light cast by a shaded lamp. They were every inch as large and impressive as Knox’s own.

  After a couple more shots, Knox’s agitation increased. He tried to resist the impulse to glance behind him, but it was impossible. Each time he had the impression the fat man was not only staring at him with a malicious contempt, but also with a sneer about his lips. There was no way he could be sure of this, for the shadow over the stranger’s face masked it, but he felt certain, on some primal, instinctive level, it was true. Finally, with enough booze in his gut to overcome any sense of restraint, and with his bill settled by the US banknote he left behind, he stood up abruptly, spun round and made directly for the booth containing the fat man in order to confront him.

  But the stranger was no longer seated there. The booth was empty.

  Knox cast his gaze around and saw the fat man outside, through one of the café windows. He was making his way into the fog and the back of his bulk was only visible for a moment before it was swallowed up entirely.

  Knox decided to go after him. Had he been sober, the idea would have seemed ridiculous. Chase after someone in the fog, in a foreign city, for the offence of having apparently stared at you with contempt? But he was not sober. He was drunk. Moreover, he was drunk and he was sick of everything. And the stranger had become a symbol of that “everything” in his mind. Knox did not know what he would do when he confronted the fat man, but he didn’t think the outcome would be pleasant. Back in Tennessee, Knox used to shoot snakes on his porch.

  Outside, the air was cold, clammy and thick. The shock of it made Knox gasp for breath momentarily. For a second he thought of returning to the café and forgetting about the whole thing. But he pressed on instead, accompanied by the sound of his heels clattering across the slippery cobblestones. He could see only a short distance ahead, and the street lamps bu
rned like spectral pools of light in the gloom. Knox knew he could not have kept pace with a younger, slimmer, fitter man, and it was only the fact that his quarry was as overweight as Knox that made the chase a contest. He had no idea if the stranger even knew he was being followed along the series of narrow alleyways and claustrophobic courtyards, although from the circuitous route taken, it seemed likely.

  The streets became a delirium of images, of skeletal trees, arched passageways and tendrils of fog.

  Just as Knox had reached the point of breathless collapse and could not continue, he found that the stranger’s stamina had also given out only moments before. He saw the fat man’s bulk leant up against railings, hunched over and gasping for air. Knox summoned his last reserves of energy and hurled himself towards the fat man before he could land a first blow.

  All the hatred, rage and disappointment he had ever felt in life seemed to well up inside him and demanded vengeance upon this individual. Knox could not even bring himself to say anything to the fat man, but found his hands fumbling madly towards the stranger’s throat. The fog fortuitously closed in around them in order to hide Knox’s crime. The blood seemed to boil in his veins, and he squeezed and squeezed the fat man’s fleshly throat, choking him to death. Knox heard a voice, its accent indistinguishable, croak out the words I waited for you, or what sounded like them, before a gurgling sound and then final silence.

  Impossible that he had not seen his tormentor’s – his victim’s – face. But it was true. And Knox realised that, had the fog not closed in, he would have deliberately avoided looking at it, because he was unaccountably terrified of what he would see. He was grateful to have been spared the sight of the dead stranger’s face at the end, since he had pulled out the jack-knife he always carried in his breast pocket, the one with the corkscrew at one end and the blade at the other, and slashed madly at the countenance of the corpse, tearing through flesh and scratching against the bone of the skull. He used the weapon to slice and hack until his hands were dripping, and the cuffs of his Harris Tweed jacket soaked with blood.

  But the deed had not been carried out silently. The sounds of the struggle, and of his victim’s cries, had been heard. Knox heard the noise of advancing footsteps racing across the cobblestones behind him. There was more than one person closing in. Knox was sure no one could have seen him commit the murder, for the darkness and all-encompassing fog had been his ally, but he had to flee now and flee quickly.

  A return to his hotel in order to collect his meagre luggage seemed out of the question, for haste was of the essence, and Knox resolved to make his way to Strasgol Station, which he recalled was close by. He would board the first available train; clean himself up immediately in one of the compartment toilets and travel as far away from the town as he was able. As he stumbled through the narrow alleyways that weaved between the mouldering buildings, he thought to check his wallet. He’d cashed some traveller’s cheques yesterday, and had a sudden fear he might have lost it in the struggle with the fat man. Nothing was missing.

  Knox heard no sound of pursuit and, after walking for some ten minutes, arrived at the ill-lit and rundown concourse of the train station. A few passengers milled around inside under grimy fluorescent strip lighting, but it was late at night, and, in order to hide the blood on his hands and on the cuffs of his jacket, he stuffed his hands deep into his pockets. The ticket office had closed, and a sign on the notice board indicated that payment should be made to the conductor on the train. Also pinned to the notice board was a timetable. The final service, at eleven fifty, was scheduled to depart in five minutes, and was the express to Losenef.

  Knox kept his head down as he joined the other seven passengers who were making their way onto the platform. The train was already waiting for them. It consisted of six coaches painted with olive livery and a driving cab, marked PKP SN-61. The passengers climbed aboard, hauling their luggage into the compartments, and Knox waited until the other seven travellers had chosen seats before he joined the service. He wanted to find a seat where he could not easily be seen by anyone else, at least until he had managed to clean himself up. The very last compartment of the rear coach was completely unoccupied and so Knox chose this one for his purposes, climbing inside only as the platform guard blew his whistle and the train actually began to move.

  Once he was seated and the train picked up speed, leaving Strasgol Station behind, he removed his jacket with the bloodied cuffs and rolled up his shirtsleeves in order to conceal the blood that had soaked through. He folded his jacket so that its arms were hidden beneath folds, and nestled the garment under his arm. Then he left his compartment and looked along the narrow, rubbish-strewn corridor that ran along the length of the coach. It was deserted. At the end was the door to the toilet, and Knox was relieved to see, as he approached, that the indicator above the handle was green; it was unoccupied.

  The inside was tiny and dirty. There was not even enough room to stretch one’s arms out to their full extent. A light bulb had been screwed into a socket on the low ceiling and provided a urine yellow glare by way of illumination. The lid of the squat plastic toilet was down, and for this mercy Knox was grateful, for he could detect the lingering stench of unflushed excrement. Above the crack-webbed washbasin was a round mirror about six inches in diameter. Its surface was coated with a thin layer of silvery-white residue, making it appear to be filled with mist. Knox turned on the tap above the sink, put the bloodied cuffs of his jacket underneath the dribble of cold running water and rubbed them vigorously with a token sliver of hand soap. After a few minutes of work, the cuffs turned from crimson to pink. No further change seemed likely, and the soap had been used up, so Knox ceased his labours. He looked up from the sink into the recesses of the small mirror.

  At first he saw his own haggard face staring back at him, the eyes haunted, but then the image lost focus, and it dissolved into something else. He discerned a smear of red and black, until at last the vision gained form, and Knox stared at the ravaged features of the man whose face he had obliterated with his knife. The mutilated reflection in the mirror gazed back at him with Knox’s eyes. Its lipless grinning mouth breathed out a single sentence in a gloating whisper; I still await. For one terrifying instant it even seemed to Knox that he had switched bodies with the revenant in the mirror and was looking out from it through a cloud of mist at his own face. He raised his hands and covered his eyes to block out the sight, and when he lowered them, it had vanished. His hands were trembling and his nerves were shredded. He needed a drink to calm himself down. No, he needed much more than that; enough to blot out the night journey until morning came, and he was hundreds of miles away from Strasgol and the scene of the senseless murder he had committed.

  He cupped water from the tap in his hands and splashed it across his forehead, his cheeks and his beard. He looked again in the mirror, and to his relief, saw only his own face and the background of the toilet, but nothing more.

  He passed along the corridor to the next carriage and found the buffet cabin situated in a small section at the end. The metal shutter in front of the counter was down, and Knox knocked on it, hoping to draw the attention of a recalcitrant railway staff member. The possibility that the buffet was closed on this service was one he did not wish to entertain; such was the desire he had for the relief only alcohol could provide. There had been no initial response to his knocking and so Knox tried again, more forcefully this time, using his fist, until he felt someone tap him on the shoulder. Knox turned and saw the train conductor. This individual was muffled up against the cold and had wrapped a scarf high above his neck and just beneath his nose. He wore a tatty railway-issue greatcoat, with the collar turned up and it seemed, from its condition, the garment had seen many years of service. His dark green cap was pulled down low across his forehead, its brim resting on the top of thick-lensed and impenetrable eyeglasses.

  “Ticket, sir?” the conductor said, his voice hollow and his English heavy with an Eastern European inf
lexion.

  Knox rummaged in the pockets of his jacket, turning over loose scraps of paper, until he remembered he had no ticket and had intended to pay his fare on the train.

  “I have no ticket,” Knox said, “can’t I buy one from you now?”

  “More money. Two hundred zlotys,” he said.

  “I see,” Knox replied, irked that the conductor had immediately marked him out as an American tourist, and was prepared to take financial advantage accordingly. Still, Knox thought, perhaps the man could be useful.

  “How much extra would it cost to get a bottle of something warming to drink from the buffet? How about a discount for US dollars?” he asked, pulling out his wallet from the inner recesses of his tweed jacket with the pinkish cuffs.

  “Buffet is closed. No buffet. No drink. Unless you pay maybe,” the conductor said, as his head nodded towards the notes Knox had drawn out and held in his hand.

  The conductor flashed a set of keys attached to a chain that he drew from the pocket of his greatcoat and rattled them ostentatiously. He unlocked the door of the buffet cabin, disappeared inside and then emerged a few moments later bearing a half litre glass bottle and a plastic cup.

  Knox handed over twenty dollars in denominations of five each. He was not at all sure whether this amount would cover both the cost of the ticket and the unknown booze provided by the conductor, but the man looked at the notes, held them up to the lamplight above their heads and grunted something unintelligible Knox took as a sign of satisfaction.

  For his part, Knox was busy examining the bottle he’d just purchased. It contained a cloudy green liquid. The label gave no clue, at least in English, as to its contents. It was decorated with an obscure design, something five-pointed and akin to a swastika. Certainly, at least, the legend “85% vol” inspired confidence.

  “It’s good,” the conductor said, as if aware an American would not be familiar with the brand. “It is the Nepenthe drink.”