The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 16

by Stephen Jones

  Finley turned, just as Kathryn slid the blade through one cheek. A loose flap of skin hung down past her chin.

  “Kathryn, don’t! Give me that.”

  He grabbed for the knife and she jerked it away, then slashed at his hands. Blood welled in his palm as he dodged another slice. Finally, he slapped her, leaving a bloody handprint on her cheek.

  “That’s it baby,” she shrieked. “Let me finish taking my mask off, and then I’ll help you with yours.”

  “All unmask!” Elvis boomed again, and Finley turned to the stage, unable to look away. The King removed the pallid mask concealing his face, and what he revealed wasn’t Elvis. It wasn’t even human. Beneath the mask was a head like that of a puffy grave worm. It lolled obscenely, surveying the crowd, then gave a strange, warbling cry.

  Kathryn’s skin landed on the floor with a wet sound.

  The thing on stage turned toward Finley, and then he saw.

  He saw it. He found it.

  Roger Finley screamed.

  “Excuse me?” The bum shuffled forward.

  “Just ignore him, Marianne. If we give him money, he’ll hound us the whole way to the harbour.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Thomas,” the woman scolded her husband. “The poor fellow looks half starved. And he’s quite articulate for a street person. We should help him.”

  The bum shuffled eagerly from foot to foot while she reached within her purse and pulled out a five-dollar bill. She placed it in his outstretched hand.

  “Here you go. Please see to it that you get a hot meal. No alcohol or drugs.”

  “Thank you. Much obliged.” The vagrant smiled sadly. “Since you folks were so kind, let me help you out.”

  The husband stiffened, wary of the homeless man’s advances. “We don’t need any help, thank you very much.”

  “Just wanted to give you a tip. If you like the theatre, you should take your wife to see Yellow.” He pointed at a nearby poster.

  The couple thanked the bum and walked away, but not before stopping to read the poster for themselves.

  Roger Finley pocketed the five dollars, and watched them disappear into Fell’s Point, in search of the Yellow Sign.

  He wondered if they would find it, and if so, what they would see.

  TINA RATH

  A Trick of the Dark

  TINA RATH SOLD HER first dark fantasy story in 1974. Since then her short fiction has appeared in such magazines and anthologies as Ghosts & Scholars, All Hallows, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, The Fontana Book of Horror Stories, Midnight Never Comes, The Year’s Best Horror Stories: XV, The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women, The Mammoth Book of Vampires and Great Ghost Stories.

  An actress, model and Queen Victoria look-alike, she lives in London with her husband and several cats. Rath is currently working on two collections of short stories, plus a young adult novel and a fantasy trilogy.

  “The genesis of ‘A Trick of the Dark’ was a postcard showing an early Dracula cover and a notice outside a public park, announcing that it closed at sunset,” the author explains. “What if, I wondered, a stranger was seen passing a certain window every day at around sunset?

  “He could, of course, be a park keeper going off duty, but . . . he might not. And why was someone around to notice him every day? Well, perhaps she was confined to bed, that cosy bed with its pretty bedside lamp and plump eiderdown shown on the Dracula cover which conjured up, for me, the comfortable middle-class suburban world of the early 1920s: comfortable, but with brooding threats of worse than vampires hovering over it.”

  Although she is something of a vampire expert, having written her doctoral thesis for the London University on “The Vampire in Popular Fiction”, Rath has not written many vampire stories.

  “In fact, ‘A Trick of the Dark’ may not really be a vampire story at all,” she adds, “in spite of its first incarnation.

  “I would like the reader to judge . . .”

  “WHAT JOB FINISHES JUST at sunset?”

  Margaret jumped slightly. “What a weird question, darling. Park keeper, I suppose.” Something made her turn to look at her daughter. She was propped up against her pillows, looking, Margaret thought guiltily, about ten years old. She must keep remembering, she told herself fiercely, that Maddie was nineteen. This silly heart-thing, as she called it, was keeping her in bed for much longer than they ever thought it would, but it couldn’t stop her growing up . . . she must listen to her, and talk to her like a grownup.

  Intending to do just that she went to sit on the edge of the bed. It was covered with a glossy pink eiderdown, embroidered with fat pink and mauve peonies. The lamp on Maddie’s bedside table had a rosy shade. Maddie was wearing a pink bed-jacket, lovingly crocheted by her grandmother, and Maddie’s pale blonde hair was tied back with a pink ribbon . . . but in the midst of this plethora of pink Maddie’s face looked pale and peaky. The words of a story she had read to Maddie once – how many years ago? – came back to her: “Peak and pine, peak and pine.” It was about a changeling child who never thrived, but lay in the cradle, crying and fretting, peaking and pining . . . in the end the creature had gone back to its own people, and, she supposed that the healthy child had somehow got back to his mother, but she couldn’t remember. Margaret shivered, wondering why people thought such horrid stories were suitable for children.

  “What made you wonder who finishes work at sunset?” she asked.

  “Oh – nothing,” Maddie looked oddly shy, as she might have done if her mother had asked her about a boy who had partnered her at tennis, or asked her to a dance. If such a thing could ever have happened. She played with the pink ribbons at her neck and a little, a very little colour crept into that pale face. “It’s just – well – I can’t read all day, or—” she hesitated and Margaret mentally filled in the gap. She had her embroidery, her knitting, those huge complicated jigsaws that her friends were so good about finding for her, a notebook for jotting down those funny little verses that someone was going to ask someone’s uncle about publishing . . . but all that couldn’t keep her occupied all day.

  “Sometimes I just look out of the window,” she said.

  “Oh, darling . . .” she couldn’t bear to think of her daughter just lying there – just looking out of the window. “Why don’t you call me when you get bored? We could have some lovely talks. Or I could telephone Bunty or Cissie or—”

  It’s getting quite autumnal after all, she thought, and Maddie’s friends won’t be out so much, playing tennis, or swimming or . . . You couldn’t expect them to sit for hours in a sick-room. They dashed in, tanned and breathless from their games and bicycle rides, or windblown and glowing from a winter walk, and dropped off a jigsaw or a new novel . . . and went away.

  “I don’t mind, mummy,” Maddie was saying. “It’s amazing what you can see, even in a quiet street like this. I mean, that’s why I like this room. Because you can see out.”

  Margaret looked out of the window. Yes. You could see a stretch of pavement, a bit of Mrs Creswell’s hedge, a lamp-post, the postbox and Mrs Monkton’s gate. It was not precisely an enticing view, and she exclaimed, “Oh, darling!” again.

  “You’d be amazed who visits Mrs Monkton in the afternoons,” Maddie said demurely.

  “Good heavens, who—” Margaret exclaimed, but Maddie gave a reassuringly naughty giggle.

  “That would be telling! You’ll have to sit up here one afternoon and watch for yourself.”

  “I might,” Margaret said. But how could she? There was always so much to do downstairs, letters to write, shopping to do, and cook to deal with. (Life to get on with?) She too, she realized, dropped in on Maddie, left her with things to sustain or amuse her. And went away.

  “Perhaps we could move you downstairs, darling,” she said. But that would be so difficult. The doctor had absolutely forbidden Maddie to use the stairs, so how on earth could they manage what Margaret could only, even in the
privacy of her thoughts, call “the bathroom problem”? Too shame-making for Maddie to have to ask to be carried up the stairs every time she needed – and who was there to do it during the day? Maddie was very light – much too light – but her mother knew that she could not lift her let alone carry her by herself.

  “But you can’t see anything from the sitting-room,” Maddie said.

  “Oh darling—” Margaret realized she was going to have to leave Maddie alone again. Her husband would be home soon and she was beginning to have serious doubts about the advisability of re-heating the fish-pie . . . She must have a quick word with cook about cheese omelettes. If only cook wasn’t so bad with eggs . . . “What’s this about sunset anyway?” She said briskly.

  “Sunset comes a bit earlier every day,” Maddie said. “And just at sunset a man walks down the street.”

  “The same man, every night?” Margaret asked.

  “The same man, always just after sunset,” Maddie confirmed.

  “Perhaps he’s a postman?” Margaret suggested.

  “Then he’d wear a uniform,” Maddie said patiently. “And the same if he was a park keeper I suppose – they wear uniforms too, don’t they? Besides he doesn’t look like a postman.”

  “So – what does he look like?”

  “It’s hard to explain,” Maddie struggled for the right words, “but – can you imagine a beautiful skull?”

  “What! What a horrible idea!” Margaret stood up, clutching the grey foulard at her bosom. “Maddie, if you begin talking like this I shall call Dr Whiston. I don’t care if he doesn’t like coming out after dinner. Skull-headed men walking past the house every night indeed!”

  Maddie pouted. “I didn’t say that. It’s just that his face is very – sculptured. You can see the bones under the skin, especially the cheekbones. It just made me think – he must even have a beautiful skull.”

  “And how is he dressed?” Margaret asked faintly.

  “A white shirt and a sort of loose black coat,” Maddie said. “And he has quite long curly black hair. I think he might be a student.”

  “No hat?” her mother asked, scandalised. “He sounds more like an anarchist! Really Maddie, I wonder if I should go and have a word with the policeman on the corner and tell him a suspicious character has been hanging about outside the house.”

  “No, mother!” Maddie sounded so anguished that her mother hastily laid a calming hand on her forehead.

  “Now darling, don’t upset yourself. You must remember what the doctor said. Of course I won’t call him if you don’t want me to, or the policeman. That was a joke, darling! But you mustn’t get yourself upset like this . . . Oh dear, your forehead feels quite clammy. Here, take one of your tablets. I’ll get you a glass of water.”

  And in her very real anxiety for her daughter, worries about the fish-pie and well-founded doubts about the substitute omelettes, Margaret almost forgot about the stranger. Almost, but not quite. A meeting with Mrs Monkton one evening when they had both hurried out to catch the last post and met in front of the post-box, reminded her and she found herself asking if Mrs Monkton had noticed anyone “hanging about”.

  “A young man?” that lady exclaimed with a flash of what Margaret decided was rather indecent excitement. “But darling, there are no young men left.” Margaret raised a hand in mute protest only to have it brushed aside by Mrs Monkton. “Well, not nearly enough to go round anyway. I expect this one was waiting for Elsie.”

  Elsie worked for both Mrs Monkton and Margaret, coming in several times a week to do “the rough”, the cleaning that was beneath Margaret’s cook and Mrs Monkton’s extremely superior maid. She was a handsome girl, with, it was rumoured, an obliging disposition, who would never have been allowed across the threshold of a respectable household when Margaret was young. But nowadays . . . Mrs Monkton’s suggestion did set Margaret’s mind at rest. A hatless young man – yes, he must be waiting for Elsie. She might “have a word” with the girl about the propriety of encouraging young men to hang about the street for her; but, on the other hand, she might not . . . She hurried back home.

  Bunty’s mother came to tea, full of news. Bunty’s elder sister was getting engaged to someone her mother described as “a bit n.q.o.s., but what can you do . . .” N.q.o.s. was a rather transparent code for “not quite our sort”. The young man’s father was, it appeared, very, very rich, though no one was quite sure where he had made his money. He was going to give – to give outright! – (Bunty’s mother had gasped) a big house in Surrey to the young couple. And he was going to furnish it too, unfortunately, according to his own some-what . . . individual taste . . .

  “Chrome, my dear, chrome from floor to ceiling. The dining room looks like a milk bar. And as for the bedroom – Jack says—” she lowered her voice, “he says it looks like an avant-garde brothel in Berlin. Although how he knows anything about them I’m sure I’m not going to ask. But he’s having nothing to do with the wedding,” she added, sipping her tea as if it were hemlock. “I wonder my dear – would dear little Maddie be well enough to be a bridesmaid? It won’t be until next June. I want to keep Pammy to myself for as long as I can . . .” She dabbed at her eyes.

  “Of course,” Margaret murmured doubtfully. And then, with more determination, “I’ll ask the doctor.”

  And, rather surprising herself, she did. On his next visit to Maddie she lured him into the sitting-room with the offer of a glass of sherry and let him boom on for a while on how well Maddie was responding to his treatment. Then she asked the Question, the one she had, until that moment, not dared to ask.

  “But when will Maddie be – quite well? Could she be a bridesmaid, say, in June next year?”

  The doctor paused, sherry halfway to his lips. He was not used to being questioned. Margaret realized that he thought she had been intolerably frivolous. “Bridesmaid?” the doctor boomed. And then thawed, visibly. Women, he knew, cared about such things. “Bridesmaid! Well, why not? Provided she goes on as well as she has been. And you don’t let her get too excited. Not too many dress fittings, you know, and see you get her home early after the wedding. No dancing and only a tiny glass of champagne . . .”

  “And will she ever be well enough . . . to . . . to . . . marry herself and to . . .” but Margaret could not bring herself to finish that sentence to a man, not even a medical man.

  “Marry – well, I wouldn’t advise it. And babies? No. No. Still, that’s the modern girl isn’t it? No use for husbands and children these days—” and he boomed himself out of the house.

  Margaret remembered that the doctor had married a much younger woman. Presumably the marriage was not a success . . . then she let herself think of Maddie. She wondered if Bunty’s mother would like to exchange places with her. Margaret would never have to lose her daughter to the son of a nouveau riche war profiteer. Never . . . and she sat down in her pretty chintz-covered armchair and cried as quietly as she could, in case Maddie heard her. For some reason she never asked herself how far the doctor’s confident boom might carry. Later she went up to her daughter, smiling gallantly.

  “The doctor’s so pleased with you, Maddie,” she said. “He thinks you’ll be well enough to be Pammy’s bridesmaid! You’ll have to be sure you finish her present in nice time.”

  Margaret had bought a tray cloth and six place mats stamped with the design of a figure in a poke bonnet and a crinoline, surrounded by flowers. Maddie was supposed to be embroidering them in tasteful naturalistic shades of pink, mauve and green, as a wedding gift for Pammy, but she seemed to have little enthusiasm for the task. Her mother stared at her, lying back in her nest of pillows. “Peak and pine! Peak and pine!” said the voice in her head.

  “Do you ever see your young man any more?” she asked, more to distract herself than because she was really concerned.

  “Oh, no,” Maddie said, raising her shadowed eyes to her mother. “I don’t think he was ever there at all. It was a trick of the dark.”

  “Tr
ick of the light, surely,” Margaret said. And then, almost against her will, “do you remember that story I used to read you? About the changeling child?”

  “What, the one that lay in the cradle saying ‘I’m old, I’m old, I’m ever so old?’ ” Maddie said. “Whatever made you think of that?”

  “I don’t know,” Margaret gasped. “But you know how you sometimes get silly words going round and round your head – it’s as if I can’t stop repeating those words from the story, ‘Peak and pine!’ to myself over and over again.” There, she had said it aloud. That must exorcize them, surely.

  “But that’s not from the changeling story,” Maddie said. “It’s from ‘Christabel’, you know, Coleridge’s poem about the weird Lady Geraldine. She says it to the mother’s ghost ‘Off wandering mother! Peak and pine!’ We read it at school, but Miss Brownrigg made us miss out all that bit about Geraldine’s breasts.”

  “I should think so, too,” Margaret said weakly.

  Autumn became winter, although few people noticed by what tiny degrees the days grew shorter and shorter until sunset came at around four o’clock. Except perhaps Maddie, sitting propped up on her pillows, and watching every day for the young man who still walked down the street every evening, in spite of what she had told her mother. And even she could not have said just when he stopped walking directly past the window, and took to standing in that dark spot just between the lamp-post and the post-box, looking up at her . . .

  “Where’s your little silver cross, darling?” Margaret said, suddenly, wondering vaguely when she had last seen Maddie wearing it.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Maddie said, too casually. “I think the clasp must have broken and it slipped off.”

  “Oh, but—” Margaret looked helplessly at her daughter. “I do hope Elsie hasn’t picked it up. I sometimes think . . .”