House of Fear

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “What you looking at?” Arif said. Lee had thought he was asleep, curled like a child on the top bunk. But his eyes peered out, bright and blinking, from beneath the thin blanket he’d wrapped around his shoulders and head.

  “Nothing,” Lee said. “It’s dark.”

  “Then why’re you looking?”

  He gritted his teeth, but the other man didn’t seem to be taking the piss. “’Cause I’d rather look at nothing than look at you, you useless cunt,” Lee said.

  Arif’s face fell. It had filled out in the last few days, his cheeks rounding beneath hair which had finally been washed and allowed to dry in a black wave over his heavy brows. “Whatever,” he muttered and wiggled round until all Lee could see of him was his bony shoulder.

  Lee’s eyes were drawn back to the windmill, like a nail to an itchy scab. There were flashes of light on it now, sudden illuminations of a decaying vane, a strip of crumbling brick, scorched grass. For a moment he thought it was lightning, though there wasn’t any thunder. Then one of the beams caught a figure, a flash of white face and the black hole of its mouth, and he realised it was them. They were carrying torches as they milled at the base of the windmill, and now he could hear their voices too. No clear words, just the impression of an angry kind of excitement.

  There was something almost hypnotic about the whirling of the torch beams and the black shadows which danced between them. It reminded him of nights down the Academy. As if the thought had given birth to it, music started, a pounding bass beat with only scraps of melody floating above it. Lee looked at the scene for a long time. Hours maybe, drifting. When he blinked back into full awareness Arif was snoring and the lights inside the prison had died.

  Outside, the dancers still flickered through the shifting torchlight as if they were tireless. Inhuman. Lee couldn’t work out what had caught his attention and dragged him from his half-sleep. Then his attention focussed on a tight, dark knot of figures in the centre of the action. Their movements were different, less carefree. There was a sense of struggle about them – of coercion.

  They had a prisoner. It was obvious once he realised it. One shadow among the others was being restrained and dragged somewhere it didn’t want to go. Lee heard a shrill yelling. It grated down his spine and made his fingers twitch with the need to do something. But there was nothing to do, not here, behind the door, behind the bars.

  They were dragging their prisoner towards the windmill. The wandering torches began to focus in on the drama like a stage spotlight falling on a singer as they did their solo. The figure’s arms were lifted and long hair swung to obscure its face. Hair just like Tasha’s.

  Lee pressed his palms against the glass, pushing, knowing it was futile. And he couldn’t see her face, anyway. Loads of women had long hair. Loads. Why would it be her?

  They’d dragged her to the base of the windmill. More of them had joined in, dropping their torches in their hurry. The beams criss-crossed at their feet, a jumble of shadows and light as her legs kicked and struggled – and suddenly stiffened as something yanked her upward with shocking suddenness.

  The beams of light swung to follow her, a little slow, so they caught her feet first, heels pattering frantically against the bricks, and then her long legs and finally her head, hair wild over a face that was impossible, fucking impossible, to recognise for sure, though he could see the thick rope around her neck just fine.

  Then every single light flicked out. The darkness surrounding the windmill was absolute. The hanging figure was lost in shadows and only the building itself retained its outline, blotting out the stars behind it. Lee stared at it for a long time, his eyes straining to make out the woman who hung from it.

  He didn’t sleep at all. The sun rose with him still at the cell’s window, but when the first glow lit the sky behind the windmill, there was nothing to be seen. The sails stood out in silhouette against the fiery clouds and no other shape broke their symmetry. The figures had gone and the woman as well. He could almost have imagined it.

  The wait until they opened the cell door was agony, the second hand on his watch moving sluggishly from number to number. When the key finally turned in the lock they were only supposed to get their breakfast and head back to the cell. Lee ignored the food. His stomach felt tight, no room inside it for anything but worry. He pushed past the screw who’d let them out and headed for the nearest payphone.

  The screw grabbed his arm but he used the other to dial the pin, then Tasha’s number. It rang three times and he thought it would stay unanswered, which was an answer in itself. Where could she be at this time of the morning? But then the ring ended and it took him a moment to realise the phone had been picked up.

  “Tasha!” he shouted. “Where the fuck have you been?” He shook his arm impatiently, trying to shift the screw who was still clinging to it like a limpet.

  The phone hissed at him. A bad connection, maybe. Then the hiss changed, growing higher and irregular, until it was clearly laughter.

  “Tasha?” he said again, not so certain now.

  The laugh went on, rising and falling, almost but not quite like the wind.

  The screw pulled harder and Lee dropped the phone and let himself be dragged away. He shook his head, partly denial, partly an attempt to clear it of the fuzz of adrenaline and panic. Where the fuck was Tasha? What the fuck had happened to her?

  He realised he was being led back to his cell and didn’t resist, the speeding, circling, churning working of his mind seeming to use up all the energy that should have powered his body.

  “What’s up with you, Curtis?” the screw said. “Been getting high on your own supply?”

  He laughed at his own joke, but Lee didn’t reply, even as he was pushed into the cell and the door slammed shut behind him. It was only when he turned to face the thick, cold metal that he realised he’d lost his chance to find out anything more, try to phone one of his other friends, or maybe Tasha’s sister. He banged on the door, hurting his hands, but nobody came. They were used to it and it was breakfast time and the junkies were crowding round the meds hatch and the bastards obviously thought they had more important things to worry about.

  “Bad day?” Arif said. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, feet dangling like a carefree child on a swing. Lee could see the windmill behind him, looking almost whole in the grey morning light. Arif looked whole too, and healthy, a different man from the one who’d first crawled into the nick less than a fortnight ago. He was smiling at Lee, as if he was having a laugh at his expense, and it was all too much.

  “You little shit,” Lee growled. “You think this is funny?”

  “Nah,” Arif said. “Losing your bird ain’t funny. I know that.”

  Losing your bird. But Lee hadn’t said anything about that – not to anyone. He grabbed the other man’s throat, pressing him back against the wall. “What the fuck do you know about that?”

  Arif kept on smiling. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  Lee found his hand unclenching against his will. Arif’s shirt slipped through his fingers like fog. “I’ve been sharing a fucking cell with you. ’Course I remember you.”

  “I bought off you for four years and you never even knew my name.” Arif was standing by the window now, his thin face framed by two of the bars and the windmill behind him. “My family begged me to stop – kicked me out when I didn’t. My girlfriend said she’d marry me if I stopped. I knew I was destroying myself. But I couldn’t stop. And you were always there to give me what I wanted. Killing me with every dose.”

  “Boo-fucking-hoo. It was your choice.” But he’d backed away until his spine pressed against the cold metal of the locked door.

  “It was an OD finished me off,” Arif said. “I’d been inside a month and I’d kept clean, but I went straight to you when I got out. Same old story, innit? I went to that old windmill to shoot up. Nice and peaceful, no one around I could call to for help. And I just lay there, feeling fucking awful. I knew I’d done i
t, then – and I thought about you. Thought about all the money I’d given you. All the people I’d hurt to get it. I’d seen you that night, with your bird. She was expecting and so was mine. And I thought how I’d like to take it all away from you. Everything you’d robbed off me.”

  “What are you saying?” Lee said. “What are you saying?”

  Arif smiled. Lee remembered something Mr Williams told them in GCSE biology, back before he’d really known what shape his life was going to take. Teeth are just bones, Mr Williams had said, bones exposed to the air.

  “He’s a sweet little baby you’ve got, innit?” Arif said. “Wonder how he’s doing without his mum. No one to look after him. Anyone could walk in and do whatever they wanted with him.” He looked behind him, towards the windmill.

  Lee flung himself at Arif, roaring with rage. He hit him again and again and again. There was a terrible pain in his hands and he heard cracks that might have been his knuckles breaking. It felt like he was hitting metal, not flesh, but it didn’t stop him. Behind Arif’s head he could see the windmill, the figures milling at its base and the little bundle they’d brought with them. He screamed as they threw it between them, laughing.

  “I’ll kill you!” he shouted. “Just fucking die!”

  The laughter outside mingled with Arif’s and the crack of his fists striking the metal bars drowned out the sound of the cell door opening. He felt hands on him, dragging him away, and he fought against them.

  “Jesus,” someone said. “He’s totally fraggled out.”

  “He killed my baby!” Lee shouted as they pushed him to the ground, arms pinioned behind him. “Get him, not me! Get him.”

  “Who the hell’s he talking about?”

  “Fucked if I know. Better get him to F-Wing.”

  F-Wing – where the head cases went. Lee struggled even harder. “My boy,” he said, surprised to find that he was sobbing. “My baby.”

  He lifted his head as they pulled him to the door. He expected to see Arif smiling in triumph as he was dragged away. But the other man was gone. Only the windmill was visible through the barred window of his cell, the wind creaking its broken sails above the dead grass at its feet.

  MORETTA

  Garry Kilworth

  Garry Kilworth is a diverse writer, having written for both adults and children over a variety of different genres. I’ve been a fan of Garry’s SF work for a long time, but it was his YA novel, Attica, that inspired me to ask him to write a story for House of Fear. In Attica a group of children find themselves lost in a seemingly infinite world found in the attic of a house. The rich and creepy atmosphere of that novel showed Garry’s skill as a master of unsettling prose; a talent that is very much in evidence in the following story.

  “My God, what an ugly-looking place,” I said, staring at the photograph. “Lucy lived there?”

  “Moretta, not Lucy. She liked to call herself Moretta.”

  Elaine, my niece, sighed and expanded on this piece of information. “It’s the name of one of those Venetian masks, that they wear at carnival time. Black, of course. You know Moretta was into the macabre in a big way. Black clothes, black lacy gloves. All that sort of thing.”

  “A Goth?”

  “I suppose you could call her that, though I think she took the thing a step further than just a fashion statement. The house...” Elaine paused. Elaine herself was a university professor. She lectured in economics at the LSE. She was worldly and no prude. “...you should see the house. You will see the house. It’s dreadful. Full of ghastly-looking furniture and ornaments straight out of a horror film. Dracula would have a hard time living there without tripping over a stuffed raven.”

  I peered again at the photo. It was, yes, a Gothic-looking mansion on the top of a cliff: dark, brooding, bristling with those corner spires that seem only to appear on seaside town houses. The ocean below it was caught in mid-flamenco. In the distance there was a ruin of sorts, beyond a tangle of brambles and gorse, half-hidden amongst some raggedy pines.

  “What’s this place?” I asked, pointing.

  Elaine peeked over my shoulder. “Oh, the old leper colony. It’s no longer in use.”

  “I should bloody well hope so.”

  “Well, Steve, there are still lepers in the world, you know. Probably in England. Is James going with you, by the way?”

  “Yes, you don’t think I’d go to a house like this” – I flicked the photo – “without a bodyguard.”

  She laughed at that. The idea of a gentle creature like James being the tough heavy of the two of us was strongly ludicrous.

  “So, tell me again what happened.”

  Elaine sat down on one of her kitchen chairs.

  “About two months ago, Moretta was found dead in her bedroom; in her bed, actually. It appeared she passed away in her sleep. However, the autopsy found signs of suffocation – oh, nothing like a pillow over her face, or anything like that – it seemed pressure had been put on her lungs. You know that torture they used to have in the Inquisition? And other Medieval institutions, I suppose. Where they laid heavy stones on the victim’s chest to crush them to death? Apparently that would have produced the same effect. There were no stones of course, nor heavy weights of any kind. Poor dear Moretta. Something had squeezed her to death, but what? The coroner’s verdict was left open.”

  “And Lucy – sorry, Moretta – left the house to you in her will.”

  Elaine shrugged. “Yes, to me and Lloyd. My sister was quite conventional in lots of ways, you know, despite her eccentricities in others.”

  “And you and Lloyd didn’t want to sell the house?”

  “We did, but look at it! We’d need to find another Moretta to fall in love with it. And also you must know that the village of Dunwich has been slipping into the sea since the 1400s. There are streets of houses, churches, shops, all under water now. Some say you can hear the church bells sounding on stormy nights. Who would want to buy a house on a cliff in a place like that? You can see by the picture that it’s close to the edge. It won’t been too long before erosion claims another victim.”

  “So you rent it out as a themed holiday home, presumably to lovers of Gothic literature and movies. How do you look after it?”

  “An agency. They send in a cleaner and manage the clients.”

  “But not at the moment.”

  “Not since Mr and Mrs Clements died.”

  “In the same way as Moretta.”

  “Yes. They had been crushed to death. The couple were from the States. California, I think. Anyway, the police were called in, but nothing untoward was found.”

  “Beyond all the grisly contents.”

  We both stared at each other.

  Elaine said, “You don’t have to do this, Steve. We could just leave the place to fall down or drop into the sea. Lloyd and I don’t actually need the money. It would be a waste, but preventing more loss of life must be the priority.”

  “I know,” I replied, smiling, “but what else have I got to do? I’m a retired old major. I don’t like fishing or golf. As an ex-army cryptographer, naturally what I like is puzzles. This will make a change from the daily crossword.”

  “Well, be careful.”

  “Just what your aunt Sybil used to say before I went to foreign climes with a gun over my shoulder. I’m still here.”

  “This is different and you know it.”

  “It’s intriguing, I know that.”

  By evening the next day, James and I were on the train heading towards Ipswich, where we intended hiring a car to drive to Dunwich. I like East Anglia, with its rugged, evocative coastline. It has an oldy-worldly feel about it, especially places like Orford and Shingle Street, which are out on the very tip of the end of nowhere. And Dunwich, of course. Suffolk and Norfolk are a shotgun blast of villages, with only the odd town or two of concentrated life. They are said to be the least inhabited of the English counties. On top of this, once we were in the car we found out that there are very few street l
ights in Suffolk, even now in the twenty-first century, in this amazing Technological Age.

  “Why is that, do you think?” I asked James, as I concentrated on hurtling the vehicle into the pitch blackness.

  James was an ex-telecoms man; not BT, but a firm called Cable and Wireless, a company who operated mostly in countries abroad. We had met at the London-based ‘Hong Kong Society,’ having both spent some years in that wonderful Oriental city, with its mystical undercurrents and effervescent street life. Suffolk was a million miles away from one of the most densely populated places on the planet.

  “The villagers don’t like street lights,” he said, emphatically.

  “The reason being?’

  “Once you get street lights, the council starts putting in double yellow lines. They can’t do that without the street lights being there in the first place. You can’t see yellow lines in the dark.”

  “Interesting. Canny people, these Suffolk yokels. Ah, here we are in dear old Dunwich.”

  I drove down a slope and found myself in an unmade car park near the pebbled beach. All roads lead to the sea from Dunwich. We left the car there and, with backpacks on and torches bravely beaming, set off along a track which led up to the top of the cliffs.

  After about a quarter of a mile of walking along the path between the forest and the sea, we came to the house. Moretta’s place. I had looked up my niece’s new name on the internet. A moretta was an oval mask of black velvet with a fringe-veil at the bottom, worn all year round by women in Venice visiting convents, as well as at Carnival. Perfect for a drama queen like Lucy, who seemed to have taken up the macabre in her fifties the way some women take up voluntary work.

  It was indeed a ramshackle-looking place. Godforsaken, one would have called it, even in the nineteenth century, when presumably it was built. The windows were small, twisted and mean, no doubt to keep out the fierce North Sea gales, and the misshapen doors had obviously been swollen by the constant dampness, fed by sprigs of spray coming up from the sea below. The chimneys were right out of Gormenghast, sprouting at odd angles from a slick-tiled roof full of dips and rises. There were all sorts of porches and gables, and dormers, and a weather vane shaped like a terrified man in flight. My torchlight ranged over lumps and bumps on the exterior, which at one time had been intended for decoration, but now looked like canker growths and galls on oak branches. A wind from the ocean was causing a wild stirring amongst the glass panes, loose in their frames. They rattled and shook as if trying to escape their prisons. In silhouette, with the starlit sea shining behind it, I have to say the dwelling looked quite uninviting.