The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20

by Stephen Jones (ed. )

  Vincent shook his head slightly. “I believe that he believed it.” He held up his fat wrist with the charm on it. “The amulet is supposed to keep the desert spirits from touching your soul. It protects you from the haboob.” He smiled. “Maybe I’ve been here long enough to start hedging my bets too.”

  It was at about five o’clock in the morning that Fanshawe felt the breeze carrying the tiniest particles of dust through the mesh of the mosquito gauze stretched across the open hotel room window. He sat up, his heart thumping hard in his chest for no good reason. Wind tickled his face. More breeze than he’d felt in nearly a full week in the Sudanese capital.

  He pushed back the covers, pulled on his trousers and without stopping for a shirt strode to the balcony doors and stepped outside. Despite the hours of darkness that had passed, the tiles under his feet were still pleasantly warm as was the metal rail that he gripped with his fingers. He barely felt them though, as he stared out at the land on the other side of the river, the wind dancing around him, teasing him, laughing at him.

  He’d never seen anything like it. In the distance, small white one level houses disappeared into the foaming sand that surged across the land. A tidal wave of brown stretching across the width of his view thundered across the furthest parts of the city. Watching it rise up from the flat cream land, its facing edge billowing like clouds ballooning forward, Fanshawe could only guess at its height. Maybe fifty feet? Sixty? Or was it as much as a hundred feet in the air, endlessly rising towards the African sky.

  Fanshawe’s mouth dropped open in awe, as it claimed more of the city below, battered trucks and cars lost beneath its rolling movement, the desert like a murky cloud so huge and heavy that it had dropped from the sky, spreading out on the land and swallowing everything it touched in the whistle of its wind.

  Against the silent backdrop of the pale pink horizon, the haboob raged. Fanshawe squinted. Despite the grit that pelted painfully into his bare skin he leaned forward. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be. For a moment out in the wild madness that had been the desert, he thought that the sandy shape of a huge horse’s head, its mouth wide against the bit as it galloped, rose up through the cloudy edges of the sand storm before collapsing back below, as if something had . . . cut it down.

  Gripping the edge of the balcony so tightly the bones of his knuckles threatened to tear through his skin, he blinked the screaming horse away. It was replaced by another. And another. And as the sand charged forward, Fanshawe was almost sure he could hear the battle cries, both orderly and foreign carried on the wind that brought the sand from Omdurman to the borders of Khartoum and was sure, just for a second, beneath the wailing and screeching of the wind, that the cry of “Al nasr lana!” Victory is ours.

  He stared until his eyes were bleeding water from the onslaught of dust, and then just as the foamy surf of the desert tidal wave reached the far shore of the Nile, the wind dropped. Within moments the desert had fallen, becoming simply silent dust and sand covering everything it had touched.

  He stood there for a long time, feeling the small particles of crushed ground fall slowly through the still air, pulled back by gravity, their tiny weight still too heavy to sustain their flight without the power of the wind. They tickled at Fanshawe’s skin and scalp. It seemed to him that in that dawn moment of complete peace, the city sighed.

  The day was quiet in the city. Fanshawe made some pretence of working in Cartwright’s office, but in fact spent much of his time staring at the desert photographs, spread out in front of him, a code within a code. Clift seemed relieved that he had no more questions for him and kept himself hidden away, and when the chai wallah came round he merely watched Fanshawe cautiously for a moment or two before sinking into his subservient role and pouring out the tea and milk with his one good hand before wheeling his trolley away again. Fanshawe caught a glimpse of metal and ivory around the man’s neck just before the door closed behind him.

  The burning air was thick as honey and seemed so still that Fanshawe thought that not the breath of any god could lift it, but at four in the afternoon the slightest hint of a breeze teased its way into the hubbub of Khartoum. Away from the desk and looking out of the window, the glass panes blurred with dust in front of the mosquito screens, Fanshawe chewed on his lip and was convinced that he felt the city and its various people tense up.

  He slipped out of the Embassy without saying a word to Clift and told the reluctant driver to take him to Omdurman. Staring at the shapeless streets and hawkers that lined them, he watched the wind tug at the djellabahs and yashmaks and Adidas T-shirts, making its presence increasing felt. Somewhere beyond the pretence of civilization the desert was stirring. Breathing. Claiming its life.

  At Cartwright’s house, he let himself in. His heart thudded to a stop for the briefest moment before he slowly closed the door behind him and crouched to examine the floor more closely. His eyes narrowed.

  Where the day before the marble had been spotlessly clean, sandy footprints now wandered aimless through the house, as if they’d come looking for their owner.

  Fanshawe’s cool MI6 trained eyes scanned the room, and he walked carefully to the sink, picking up the glass that sat on the draining board. Around its edge were crusty brown lip prints that glittered in the fading light.

  With the glass in one hand, he stared at both it and the footprints scattered on the ground and thought of the photographs still in his pocket, and the horses heads that had rose through the storm that morning, and that final cry of Al Nasr Lana, until eventually the wind outside howled as the sun set and his reverie was broken.

  He left the lights off and put the dirty glass down. He took a clean one from the cupboard and made himself a large gin and tonic. The ice cubes tinkled loudly as he padded into the gloom of the large lounge. In the cushioned high back chair, he casually crossed one leg over the other, sipping his drink before letting the glass rest on the scratched wooden arm of the regulation Embassy furniture. He’d mixed it perfectly and as the gin tingled to his head, the tonic buzzed sharply on his tongue.

  After half an hour the first tendrils of sand began to whip at the sides of the house. Fanshawe, perfectly still in the chair, smiled. He’d come to Khartoum for answers. In the encroaching embrace of the desert haboob, he wondered if perhaps he’d get them from Cartwright himself.

  MARK SAMUELS

  * * *

  “Destination Nihil”

  by Edmund Bertrand

  MARK SAMUELS IS THE AUTHOR of three short story collections: The White Hands and Other Weird Tales (Tartarus Press, 2003), Black Altars (Rainfall Books, 2003) and Glyphotech & Other Macabre Processes (PS Publishing, 2008), as well as the short novel The Face of Twilight (PS Publishing, 2006).

  His tales have appeared in both The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror and Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. His fourth collection of stories, The Man Who Collected Machen & Other Stories is scheduled to appear from Ex Occidente Press in 2009. He is also literary executor for the late Edmund Bertrand.

  “How I came to be Bertrand’s literary executor is a convoluted affair and too long to go into here,” explains Samuels. “In any case, it’s certainly ironic, given that Bertrand (an American citizen, but of French ancestry, as his name suggests) was a staunch Anglophobe.

  “Bertrand was born in Memphis, sometime during 1957, and died in a mysterious hotel fire whilst attending a convention in England, two years ago. His stories chart the far reaches of madness, and were never collected together in a single volume. His main influences were European authors such as Stefan Grabinski, Roger Gilbert-Lecomte, Dino Buzzati and Jean Lorrain.”

  “I SAID, ‘CAN I SEE your ticket please, sir’.”

  The man to whom the instruction was issued gave a start and appeared to wake from a trance-like state. He rummaged in the pockets of his worn corduroy jacket and finally drew out a crumpled and aged card.

  The conductor, however, did not touch the ticket but leant forward in order to scrutiniz
e it. At no point did his hands leave his pockets of his staff jacket. His face, shaded by a cap, appeared strangely paralytic and expressionless. It was devoid of healthy pallor, being of a bloodless yellow hue. The eyes were too far back in their sockets, as if sinking in the quicksand of bodily decay. Overall, it was too much like a dead face.

  “Have a pleasant trip Mr Grey.”

  The man who had been addressed as “Mr Grey” examined the ticket, squinting at the print through his horn-rimmed eyeglasses. The name on the ticket read “Robert Grey”, but it meant nothing to him. No starting point or destination was indicated although the name of the train company NORACH was emblazoned at the top.

  I assume then, the man thought, that I must be Robert Grey. He tried to keep down the wave of panic that threatened to wash over him. Since I cannot recall what I am doing here on this train, he reasoned, the only logical conclusion is that I am either an amnesiac or suffering from some form of dementia affecting my memory, perhaps with hallucinations thrown in for good measure. The cadaverous appearance of the train conductor was surely an example of mental turmoil externalized by a diseased imagination.

  Grey examined his hands. A few liver spots dappled the skin and blue veins were prominent. He turned his head to the dusty window and saw his reflection, slightly hazy but still mirror-like in the darkness outside the car. His face was paunchy and lined. Thinning white hair crowned his head. His neck had turkey folds. Grey calculated his age to be somewhere between sixty-five and seventy. Perhaps it’s senile dementia, he thought, since he appeared to be at the prime age range for its onset. His breath caught in his throat and he fought back a second wave of panic.

  Across from him, on the far side of the dividing table and resting on the seat opposite, was a large black valise. Its leather surface was scuffed, particularly at the edges, and it looked to have seen a great deal of use. Perhaps there might be an answer in there. If it were his property then the familiar possessions within might kick-start his memories, or at least give him a foothold in his own identity.

  The valise was atrociously heavy. Grey gasped with the effort as he hauled it onto the table, and then unbuckled the two binding straps that kept the lid down. Once he’d pulled the top open, the smell that wafted out alerted him to its contents before he’d even laid eyes on the interior. The valise was full of densely packed earth. And when Grey put his hand inside, turning over the moist and pungent soil, he discovered that it was infested with innumerable wriggling maggots. He closed the lid with a cry of disgust and brushed his hands clean of the black dirt that clung damply to them.

  There was no question now of keeping panic in check. Grey loped off along the aisle of the car in search of the conductor, or of the first person he encountered. A few rows further down he saw a man slouched in his seat, dressed in a rain mac and a wide-brimmed floppy hat that obscured his face. Grey hesitated before addressing the stranger, because he feared the face concealed in shadow. Would it be like that of the conductor? If it were, then he feared he would have reached a tipping point and might scream himself to death.

  But the stranger was conscious of Grey at his elbow. He looked up and revealed himself to be an ordinary, living man, possessed of an ordinary face, albeit one marked by concern at Grey’s agitation.

  “Are you alright?” The stranger said, “You look dreadful. Here, sit down.”

  Grey hesitated for a moment, staring hard at the stranger’s face, searching for any sign of abnormality. He could find none. It was the face of a harmless middle-aged man, slightly wrinkled around his blue eyes, clean-shaven, nondescript, bland in the extreme. It was the face of a million men who are passed on the sidewalk every day without leaving any impression in the memory.

  “Something’s wrong,” Grey burbled out, “I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know where I am. I don’t even know who I am. You must help me. That conductor, for example, there’s something . . .”

  “Calm down,” the stranger interrupted, “you seem to me to be in shock. I know what it’s like. Take it easy. Tell me about it.”

  Grey lowered himself into the seat adjacent to the man, let out a deep breath and tried to control himself. He ran his hand over his forehead, transferring a cold sheen of sweat to his palm.

  “My name is Black,” the middle-aged man said.

  Grey replied, “Where’s this train bound for?”

  Black grimaced. He’d kept his hands hidden within the outside pockets of his mac and had not removed them since Grey had first spotted him. Now he made circular movements as if twisting them around inside his coat.

  “Black, what is this train’s destination?” Grey asked again.

  “Shush.” Black whispered, “If the conductor hears you . . . the destination is not important. The journey is the thing.”

  “What do you know about this train? Look around you.” Grey persisted.

  Black’s steady eyes looked over the enclosed expanse of the car in which the two men were seated. Sickly green paint flaked from the walls. Half of the lamps were broken. The spring suspension in the seats had given way long ago, and deep hollows indicated the presence of thousands of former passengers. The inside of the windows was coated with a layer of dust. In the overhead racks there were dozens of valises, all apparently without owners.

  “What I know,” said Black, “is that if you insist on making a fuss like this, you’re liable to be thrown off the train.”

  “Thrown off the train just for asking a straightforward question?” Grey was now regarding Black with incredulity. Grey had anticipated some anchor in reality, a counterpoint to his own confused mental state, rather than an individual who seemed in an even worse condition than himself.

  “Of course. But I see you don’t yet understand. Have you just woken up? Obviously you’ve not had the chance to see what’s outside yet. Still too dark I suppose.” Black said.

  Grey momentarily turned to the window. It was impossible to discern what was outside. Even after he had managed to scrub away some of the grime from the pane with the cuff of his jacket, all he could see was his own reflection peering back at him and an impenetrable blackness beyond.

  “I suppose, in a manner of speaking, I have just woken up,” Grey said, shifting back into the seat opposite Black with a long drawn-out sigh, “but it feels as if I’ve gone insane.”

  “It’s said that if you die in your dreams you die in the waking world. But what if you went mad in your dreams? What if you couldn’t wake up and the dream went on and on and on . . .”

  “What about if you tell me what’s really going on here?” Grey interjected, thumping his fist on the table between them. This was no dream, he was certain of that much. There was no blurring around the edges, no non-lineal procession of events, none of the recognized attributes that accompany dreaming.

  “Perhaps it’s not your dream, perhaps it’s mine. Perhaps you’re just a made-up character and I haven’t filled you with memories and a past,” Black said.

  “I need to find someone talking sense, excuse me,” Grey said, getting to his feet and loping off along the aisle again, swaying slightly with the rocking motion of the car.

  * * *

  Grey had gone through sixteen deserted cars before he paused for breath. Some were almost in ruins, with seats torn out and there were even signs of fires having been started in half a dozen. He had not encountered another person. He wondered whether all the passengers had deserted the train, alighting at an earlier station after having wreaked havoc in the cars like rampaging Brit soccer hooligans. Only the elusive ticket inspector could provide an answer, but Grey feared that he might already be in a car even further forward in the train, at such a distance that exhaustion would intervene before he could be intercepted.

  Grey tried not to think about the prospect any more deeply, and trudged onwards, picking his way through several more cars choked with debris until he came to a luggage coach. He noticed at once the moist and pungent smell of earth and was not surprised
to find dozens of large valises piled up in the storage area. A couple of their poorly fastened lids had come loose and the soil within had spilled out on the wooden floor, along with the writhing grubs who’d formerly been its inhabitants. The mass of valises was not properly secured and they teetered with each sideways lurch of the train.

  He leaned down to get a closer look at one of the sickly-yellow grubs wriggling around blindly. It was, like its companions, considerably larger than the ones he’d seen back in the valise he’d opened just after awakening. These specimens appeared more developed and Grey noticed that each one was wriggling along the floor, towards the back of the coach, around and beyond the pile of valises.

  Grey followed in the wake of the grubs, taking care not to crush any underfoot, since he thought it would be loathsome to see one of them squashed.

  Behind the valises he discovered more than a dozen black canvas sacks and secured at the top end by rope. Each contained something that struggled to escape. They were piled up, one on top of another, in a mound. Grey thought that he detected the sound of a low groaning coming from a couple of the formless heaps.

  The grubs were not making for the occupied sacks but for the empty ones even further back in the coach.

  Terrified, but unable to resist discovering some part of the solution to the riddle in which he was trapped, Grey pulled one of the sacks from the mound and untied the rope securing the opening.

  Grey couldn’t make out the thing within clearly as it huddled up its stunted body to itself, as if avoiding the light. But he had the impression of a squashed and boneless parody of humankind. He did, however, see the creature’s face before it had turned away. Its lidless eyes were wholly white. Drool oozed from its groaning, gummy mouth.

  The moaning from the other occupied sacks intensified, as if they were aware of Grey’s presence, and were pleading either for his attention or to be left alone. He tied up the end of the sack he’d just opened, returning its occupant to its former state, and hauled the squirming object back onto the mound to rejoin its companions.