The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 10 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  But then there was new movement, something so strange and graceful and eerie that I could only sit there and watch.

  A swan was rising from the oil.

  What I had at first assumed to be a wing was a swan’s head breaking the surface. Because now that swan’s head was rising and I could see its long and graceful black-coated neck as it emerged slow and dripping from the pool. But there was something wrong with that neck now. It had been broken in the middle. It was bending at an impossible angle as the neck emerged from the oil and . . .

  This was no swan’s head, no swan’s neck.

  It was a hand, and an arm; now bending at the elbow as something came up out of the pool.

  A head crested from the oil. Long hair, black and dripping.

  And all I could do was sit, frozen and terrified, as the woman finally stood up in the pool, so completely covered in black filth that she might have been a statue carved out of basalt. She was motionless now, facing me, as if waiting for me to do something. But all I could do was sit there and stare. The woman’s eyes opened, two white orbs in that hideous black visage.

  I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t say a word.

  And then the woman began to sing.

  The voice was ragged and halting, as if she had been under that oil for a long, long time, and had perhaps forgotten how to use her voice properly. Her face remained blank, but her eyes never left me as she sang.

  “Ain’t. . . she . . . sweet? I ask you . . . ain’t she neat. . .?”

  That’s when I must have fainted, because it seemed that the black oil was everywhere then, filling my eyes. The horror of what I was seeing and hearing was too unbearable. I remember hearing:

  “. . . ask you very con-fi-dentially . . .”

  And then there was nothing.

  There were no dreams, no nightmares. Just this terrible buzzing in my ears and a dreadful taste in my mouth. I knew then, even in that dark place behind my eyes, that I was asleep at home and in bed. I had been drinking again. And when I finally surfaced from that sleep, I would have a king-sized hangover. I would wake up and realise that everything about the swimming pool and the thing that had emerged from it was an alcohol-induced nightmare. Something was wrong with the mattress on my bed. It felt too hard, too uncomfortable. I struggled to wake . . . and felt concrete. Dislocated and afraid, I jerked out of that sleep and struggled to rise.

  I was still lying by the side of the swimming pool.

  It was still daytime.

  The oil lay thick and dark and heavy on the surface of the pool.

  And not ten feet from where I lay, the young woman was still there.

  She had pulled herself to the edge of the pool, had tried to crawl out of that black mass, but her strength had given out at the last. She had hauled her upper body out of the pool, her arms stretched before her and her fingers clawing at the concrete. Oil lay spattered around her; thick streamers of the damned stuff. But her lower body and legs were still in the pool, hidden beneath the oil.

  Instinctively, I recoiled, backing away until I sat heavily and groggily on the concrete steps which led up to the derelict changing rooms. The ringing was still in my ears and I struggled to contain my nausea. I looked at my watch and realised that I couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a few minutes. Remembering the others back on the beach, I decided to run and get help.

  But then the woman groaned and one hand groped feebly as she tried to haul herself the rest of the way out of the pool.

  I hesitated, thinking: This can’t be happening.

  The woman groaned again, unable to pull herself any further.

  But she’s alive. The least you can do is get her out of that pool and then you can run for help.

  Unsteadily, I moved back to the poolside.

  “It’s alright . . . you’re all right . . .”

  I didn’t want to touch her, was still struggling to contain the feeling that I hadn’t woken up yet and that this was an ongoing nightmare. I’d had a terrible shock when I’d seen her emerging like that, but I must have imagined that she was singing that song. Imust have. The woman tried to lift her head to look at me, but was too exhausted. Fumbling at her face, she tried to brush the straggling long hair away.

  “Please . . .” Her voice was so faint that I could hardly hear it. “Help me.”

  And without being aware that I’d made the decision to help, I was suddenly kneeling beside her. I took one arm. It felt terribly cold. I pulled, but the woman hadn’t the strength to assist, and she remained half-in, half-out of the pool. Standing, I took her under the armpits and hauled her from the oil, leaving a great black trail on the concrete lip. For the first time, I realised that she was naked; her frame slender and slight. Perhaps it was the oil coating her from head to foot. When she was clear of the pool, I turned her over and helped her to sit.

  “You wait here,” I began. “I’m going to get help.”

  “No,” she replied, gagging as oil flowed from her lips. My God, was she going to die?

  “You’re going to be all right, I promise. But I need to get a doctor and . . .”

  And the woman opened her eyes to look at me.

  “Dean,” she said, calling me by my first name.

  Everything is fractured, after that. I’ve tried to put the pieces together in my mind, but a lot of it just doesn’t make sense. I seem to remember crying and laughing at the same time, calling my sister’s name. That might be wrong; that might just be all in my mind. But I do remember those eyes, because suddenly that was all I could see. The whites of those eyes were somehow shocking, set into that black-oil sculpted face. The irises were so green that they sparked, and looking at them somehow hurt my own eyes. They were growing larger as I looked. And then I seem to remember something to do with the side gate to the swimming pool; the gate behind the changing block beyond which lay a steep flight of stone stairs, leading up the cliffs to the seafront parade and its rows of hotels.

  Something to do with a length of corroded steel pipe that was lying around.

  Something to do with enormous effort on my part.

  I think, although I can’t be sure, that I smashed the lock and chain on that side gate. And we must have climbed those stairs. We must have, because that’s where I’d parked my car. I must have wrapped my own jacket around her, helped her into that car. Perhaps there were people up there; staring in astonishment at us. I seem to recall faces. Perhaps not.

  I must have driven home to my flat.

  Because the next thing I remember clearly is standing in my living room, just outside the bathroom. I was staring at that door, and when everything around me registered properly again, I realised that the shower was on. I could hear the water hissing. I raised my hand to shove the door open, but something made me stop. I looked around, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t still dreaming. Yes, this was my living room; just as I’d left it earlier that day. When I tried to move, my legs were weak. I staggered, clutching at the sofa, and ended up at the window looking down to the street, six floors below. It was evening, and my car was in its usual place.

  And there was a dark stain on the pavement, from the car to the communal entrance. As if someone had spilled something there. From this distance, it looked horribly like blood.

  I squinted at my watch. I’d lost about nine hours.

  I braced my hand on the window sill and shook my head. When I turned and looked around again, I expected somehow that everything would have changed; that this strange dream would take a different turn. But the living room was just as I’d left it that morning before heading off to the beach. I suddenly felt nauseous and took a step back towards the bathroom. Fear cramped my stomach with the sudden knowledge that Amy . . . she . . . whatever . . . was in there. It acted like an inner safety valve, preventing me from throwing up then and there.

  What was in there?

  “Amy . . .?”

  When the telephone rang, it was like some kind of electric shock. My teeth
clamped shut so hard that I nicked my tongue, and my mouth filled with blood. With the second ring, I realised that I wasn’t going to have a heart attack. By the third, the fear had returned with a sickening intensity. It suddenly became important that whoever or whatever was in the bathroom not be disturbed by the sound. Staggering across the room, I snatched up the receiver.

  “Dean?”

  It was Lorna.

  “Yes . . .”

  “What the hell are you playing at?”

  “Sorry?”

  “We’ve been worried sick about you. What happened to you? Where did you go?”

  “Go? I’m not sure what ... I mean . . .”

  “You ran off to the pool to get that poor bird, and then you just vanished from the face of the earth. Have you any idea what trouble you’ve caused? When you didn’t come back we went to look for you and you were nowhere . . .nowhere . . . to be seen. Christ, we’ve had the coastguard and the police out. We thought you’d gone into that fucking pool, or something. They’ve sent people down to drag the bloody thing. So what happened . . .?”

  “I’m sorry, Lorna. Something. . . something happened . . . and I had to leave and . . .”

  “You had to leave? I mean, without saying anything to anyone? Without telling any of us? You . . . you shit! We’ve been worried sick. Well . . .” Unmistakeably, anger building out of control, “look . . . look . . . you can telephone the fucking police and the coastguard and tell them to call off the search, and while you’re at it you can tell them why you . . .”

  “Goodbye, Lorna.”

  I put down the receiver. My hand was shaking badly.

  Beyond the bathroom door, the sound of the shower had suddenly ceased.

  It had been turned off.

  I stood there, looking at the door. A part of me knew that I should just turn and get out of that apartment as fast as I could. But I couldn’t move. I tried, but I was rooted to the spot.

  Something was going to happen.

  And there was nothing I could do.

  I tried to speak, but my voice choked in my throat.

  My heart was hammering. I could feel the blood pulsing in my temples.

  And that’s when I heard the singing again. So low as to be almost inaudible. Sly, and hideously mischievous.

  “Ain’t. . . she . . . sweet?”

  “Oh Christ, Amy. I didn’t mean to leave you in the pool.”

  Somehow, my voice sounded like the voice of the nine-year old I’d once been.

  “I...ask...you. Ain’t...she...neat?”

  “It can’t be you. Is it you? Amy, I’m so sorry . . .”

  The sorrow erupted from me. Thirty years of contained grief. The tears flowed down my cheeks to mingle with the blood in my mouth. It was the salt taste of the sea.

  “Dean,” said that voice, with a sibilant echo that must surely be impossible in there.

  “Yes?”

  “Come and open the door, Dean.”

  “Oh God, Amy. I can’t. . .”

  “Come and open the door!”

  “I’m afraid . . .”

  There was laughter then. Girlish laughter; low but still somehow echoing, and with a terrifying sense of intent.

  “Come let me taste your tears.”

  Suddenly, I was moving. There was no conscious effort on my part. The voice was drawing me to it, and there was nothing I could do.

  Through the blurred vision of my grief and my terror, I saw my own hand reach forward for the bathroom door as I stumbled forward.

  The telephone began to ring again. It sounded thin and distant, nothing to do with me at all.

  I watched my hand turn the handle, saw the door swing open.

  Beyond, I could see only steam from the shower. Some inner and distant part of me knew that there shouldn’t be steam in here at all. There was never steam when I showered. But it was there, and all the details of the bathroom were shrouded in that swirling, undulating mass. Ragged wisps and rapidly dissolving tentacles swirled over the threshold into the living room, dissolving before they reached me.

  “Come here, Dean,” said something hidden from sight.

  In terror and grief, I stepped into the bathroom and felt the warm embrace of the steam.

  And that’s when everything becomes fractured again.

  Something happened in there, but it’s as if my mind is either incapable of comprehending it, or that the horror was so great that it shuts off every time I try to understand what was being done to me. I’m trying to think of it now; trying to get impressions, but nothing will register. I know it’s in there, locked in my head, but nothing will come.

  When it ended, the nightmare had changed location again.

  The first thing I became aware of was the wind. It smelled of salt and seaweed, and when my vision cleared I could see the sea. I was standing on a beach, and moonlight was shining on the water. When I looked down, I could see that I was standing on shale, not sand. I’d spent enough time on the north-east coast to know that I was a great deal further south than Tynemouth or Whitley Bay. There was no oil on the water.

  I turned to look away from the sea and to the ragged cliffs behind me. The movement was too much for me, as if I’d been standing in the same position for hours and my limbs had frozen. I fell to my knees, retching. When I’d finished, something made me look back to the sea.

  She was standing in the water, silently watching me.

  I knew that she hadn’t been there before, that there was no way she could have suddenly appeared like that. But there she was, the water troughing around her naked legs. The moonlight silhouetted her from behind. I could see no details of her face or, thank God, those eyes.

  “Please ...” I began.

  I knew that if she began to sing that song again, I must surely go mad.

  But she didn’t say a word. She just stood motionless, watching me.

  I lowered my head once more, feeling the nausea swelling within me.

  When I looked up again, she had moved closer. But it was as if she hadn’t moved at all. As if she had somehowfloated closer to shore. The water foamed around her shins, but she was still in the same motionless position.

  “Dean.”

  The voice echoed impossibly once more. I moaned and waited for the end.

  “Stand up.”

  I staggered to my feet. I had no will to resist.

  “Come closer.”

  I took three shambling steps to the water’s edge. We were perhaps six feet apart, but I still could not see her face. I don’t know how long we just stood like that, facing each other. A part of me wondered if we’d stay like that forever, frozen in that tableau; with the hushing of the sea, the smell of salt and weed, and the flickering of moonlight on the water.

  “Stay away from Deep Water,” she said at last.

  “. . . why? ...” I barely recognised my own small voice.

  “My sisters and I feed there.”

  This time, she did move. Three languid steps towards me. For the first time, I realised that there was no trace of oil on her naked body. Her long hair moved around her shoulders in the wind, as if it had a life of its own. And now I could see that her eyes were closed. I knew then that she could still see; knew with utter certainty that she could see into my mind and read everything that was there.

  She raised a graceful arm and placed her hand on my shoulder.

  It’s difficult to tell you what happened next.

  I can’t really tell you how, but I felt something then.

  Something hideous.

  She remained in that position, and there was no physical change in her. But that touch of her hand brought images in my mind; images that still haunt my nightmares. I seemed to see something that looked like a sea anemone; something with tentacle-like clusters surrounding barbed and voracious mouth-parts, moving greedily like the mandibles of a crab or a sea spider. I felt the cold touch of scales, the fetid breath of something that fed on the corpses of the drowned. I don’t know if
I screamed or not, but I felt that I must have.

  My senses still swimming, I watched her turn from me and walk back into the sea. She moved with that same languid grace, the hair swirling around her head. She didn’t dive into the water, didn’t swim away. She just kept on walking until the water had reached her shoulders. When it reached her neck, she half-turned her head to look back at me as if she was going to say something else.