The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20

by Stephen Jones (ed. )

  This combination of sensations got through to me – almost. I was aware of a red faced, angry man in a denim jacket leaning out of his truck’s window, yelling, “You bloody idiot! What the bloody hell . . . are you drunk? Staggering about in the road like that!” Then his tyres screeched again, spinning and smoking, as he rammed his vehicle into gear and pulled away.

  But the mist was still swirling, my head still reeling – and Old Joe was having a silent, gesticulating argument with a stick-thin, red-eyed man!

  Then the silence was broken as the old man looked my way, sobbing. “That wouldn’t have been my fault! Not this time, and not ever. It would have been yours . . . or his But it wouldn’t have done him any good, and God knows I didn’t want it!” As he spoke the word “his”, so he’d flung out an arm to point at the thin man who was now floating toward me, his eyes like warning signal lamps as his shape took on form and emerged more surely from the mist.

  And that was when I “woke up” to the danger. For yes, it was like coming out of a nightmare – indeed it could only have been a nightmare – but I came out of it so slowly that even as the mist cleared and the old man and the red-eyed phantom thinned to figures as insubstantial as the mist itself, still something of it lingered over: Old Joe’s voice.

  As I staggered there on the road, blinking and shaking my head to clear it, trying to focus on reality and forcing myself to stop shuddering, so that old man’s voice – as thin as a cry from the dark side of the moon – got through to me:

  “Get out of here!” he cried. “Go, hurry! He knows you now, and he won’t wait. He’ll follow you – in your head and in your dreams – until it’s done!”

  “Until what’s done?” I managed to croak my question. But I was talking to nobody, to thin air.

  Following which I almost fell into my car, reversed dangerously onto the crossover track and clipped the hedge, and drove away in a sweat as cold and damp as that non-existent mist. And all the way home I could feel those eyes burning on my neck; so much so that on more than one occasion I caught myself glancing in my rearview mirror, making sure there was no one in the back seat.

  But for all that I saw no one there, still I wasn’t absolutely sure . . .

  Taking sleeping pills that night wasn’t a good idea. But I felt I had to. If I suffered another disturbed night, goodness knows what I would feel like – what my overburdened mind would conjure into being – the next day. But of course, the trouble with sleeping pills is they not only send you to sleep, they’ll keep you that way! And when once again I was visited by evil dreams, struggle against them as I might and as I did, still I couldn’t wake up!

  It started with Old Joe again, the old tramp, a gentleman of the road. Speaking oh-so-earnestly, he made a sort of sense at first, which as quickly lapsed into the usual nonsense.

  “Now listen to me,” he said, just a voice in the darkness of my dream, the silence of the night. “I risked everything to leave my waiting place and come here with you. And I may never return, find my way back again, except with you. So it’s a big chance I’m taking, but I had to. It’s my redemption for what I have thought to do – and what I have almost done – more times than I care to admit. And so, because of what he is and what I know he will do, I’ve come to warn you this one last time. Now you must guard yourself against him, for you can expect him at any moment.”

  “Him?” I said, speaking to the unseen owner of the voice, which I knew as well as I knew my own. “The man on the tor?”

  While I waited for an answer a mist crept into being and the darkness turned grey. In the mist I saw Old Joe’s outline: a crumpled shape under a floppy hat. “It’s his waiting place,” he at last replied. “Either there or close by. But he’s grown tired of waiting and now takes it upon himself. He risks Hell, but since he’s already halfway there, it’s a risk he’ll take. If he wins it’s the future – whatever that may be – and if he fails then it’s the flames. He knows that, and of course he’ll try to win . . . which would mean that you lose!”

  “I don’t understand,” I answered, dimly aware that it was only a dream and I was lying in my bed as still and heavy as a statue. “What does he want with me? How can he harm me?”

  And then the rambling:

  “But you’ve seen him!” Old Joe barked. “You looked beyond, looked where you shouldn’t and too hard. You saw me, so I knew you must see him, too. Indeed he wanted you to see him! Oh, you weren’t looking for him but someone else – a loved one, who has long moved on – but you did it in his place of waiting! And as surely as your searching brought me up, it brought him up, too. Ah, but where I only wait, he is active! He’ll wait no longer!”

  Suddenly I knew that this was the very crux of everything that was happening to me, and so I asked: “But what is it that you’re waiting for? And where is this . . . this waiting place?”

  “But you’ve seen him!” the old tramp cried again. “How is it you see so much yet understand so little? I may not explain. It’s a thing beyond your time and place. But just as there were times before, so there are times after. Men wait to be born and then – without ever seeming to realize it – they wait again, to die. But it’s when and it’s how! And after that, what then? The waiting, that’s what.”

  “Gibberish!” I answered, shaking my head; and I managed an uncertain laugh, if only at myself.

  “No, don’t!” The other’s alarm was clear in his voice. “If you deny me I can’t stay. If you refute me, then I must go. Now listen: you know me – you’ve seen me – so continue to see me, but only me.”

  “You’re a dream, a nightmare,” I told him. “You’re nothing but a phantom, come to ruin my sleep.”

  “No, no, no!” But his voice was fading, along with Old Joe himself.

  But if only he hadn’t sounded so desperate, so fearful, as he dwindled away: fearful for me! And if only the echoes of his cries hadn’t lasted so long . . .

  Old Joe was gone, but the mist stayed. And taking shape in its writhing tendrils I saw a very different presence – one that I knew as surely as I had known the old tramp. It was the watcher on the tor.

  Thin as a rake, eyes burning like coals in a fire, he came closer and said, “My friend, you really shouldn’t concern yourself with that old fool.” His voice was the gurgle and slurp of gas bubbles bursting on a swamp, and a morbid smell – the smell of death – attended him. The way his black jacket hung loose on sloping shoulders, it could well have been that there were only bones beneath the cloth. And yet there was this strength in him, this feverish, hypnotic fascination.

  “I . . . I don’t want to know you,” I told him then. “I want nothing to do with you.”

  “But you have everything to do with me,” he answered, and his eyes glowed redder yet. “The old fool told you to avoid me, didn’t he?”

  “He said you were waiting for something,” I answered. “For me, I suppose. But he didn’t say why, or to what end.”

  “Then let me tell you.” He drifted closer, his lank black hair floating on his shoulders, his thin face invisible behind the flaring of his eyes, those burning eyes that were fixed on mine. “I have a mystery to unfold, a story to tell, and I can’t rest until I’ve told it. You are sympathetic, receptive, aware. And you came to my place of waiting. I didn’t seek you out, you sought me. Or at least, you found me. And I think you will like my story.”

  “Then tell it and leave me be,” I replied.

  “You find me offensive,” he said, his voice deeper and yet more dark, but at the same time sibilant as a snake’s hiss. “So did she. But what she did, that was truly offensive! Yessss.”

  “You’re making as much sense as Old Joe!” I told him. “But at least he kept his distance, and didn’t smell of . . . of—”

  “—Of the damp, the mould, and the rot?”

  “Go away!” I shuddered, and felt that I was shrinking down smaller in my bed.

  “Not until you’ve heard my story, and then I’ll be glad to leave you .
. . in peace?” With which he laughed an ugly laugh at the undefined question in his words.

  “So get on with it,” I answered. “Tell me your story and be done with it. For if that’s all it takes to get rid of you, I’ll gladly hear you out.”

  “Good!” he said, and moved closer yet. “Very good. But not here. I can’t reveal it here. I want to show you how it wassss, where it wassss, and what happened there. I want you to see why I am what I am, why I did what I did, and why I’ll do what I’ve yet to do. But not here.”

  “Where then?” I asked, but I’d already guessed the answer. “At your waiting place? Your place on the moor, the old tor?”

  “In my place of waiting, yesss,” he answered. “Not the old tor, but close, close.” And then, changing the subject (perhaps because he thought he’d said too much?) “What is your name?”

  I wanted to refuse, defy him, but his ghastly eyes dragged it out of me. “I’m Paul,” I replied. “Paul Stanard.” And then – as if this were some casual meeting of strangers in a street! – “And you?”

  “Simon Carlisle,” he answered at once, and continued: “But it’s so very, very good to meet you, Mr Stanard.” And again, as if savouring my name, drawing it out: “Paul Stanaaard, yessss!”

  From somewhere in the back of my sub-subconscious mind, I remembered something. Something Old Joe had said to me: “If you deny me I can’t stay. If you refute me, I must go.” Would it be the same with Simon Carlisle, I wondered? And so:

  “You are only a dream, a nightmare,” I said. “You’re nothing but a phantom, come to ruin my sleep.”

  But it didn’t work! He moved closer – so close I felt the heat of his blazing eyes – and his jaw fell open in a gurgling, phlegmy laugh.

  Abruptly then he stopped laughing, and his breath was foul in my face. “You would work your wiles on me? On that old fool, perhapssss. But on me? Old Joe came with goodness in his heart, yessss. Ah, but which is the stronger: compassion, or ambition? The old tramp is content to wait, and so may be put aside – but not me! I shall wait no longer. You came to my place, and now I have come to yours. But I can’t tell my story here, for I want you to see, and to know, and . . . and to feel.”

  “I won’t come!” I shrank deeper into my bed and closed my eyes, which were already closed.

  “You will!” His eyes floated down on me, into me. “Say it. Say that you will come to my place of waiting.”

  “I . . . I won’t.”

  His eyes burned on mine, then passed through them, to burn inside my head. “Say you’ll come.”

  I could resist him no longer. “I’ll come,” I mumbled.

  “Say you will come. Say it again, and again, and again.”

  “I will come,” I said. “I will come . . . I’ll come . . . I’ll come, come, come, come, come!” Until:

  “Yessss,” he sighed at last. “I know you will.”

  “I will come,” I was still mumbling, when my bedside telephone woke me up. “I will most definitely . . . what?”

  Then, like a run-down automaton, blinking and fumbling, I reached for the ‘phone and held it to my ear. “Yes?”

  It was Andrew Quarry. “I just thought I’d give ye a call,” he said. “See how ye slept, and ask if ye’d be out at the auld tor again. But did I wake ye or somethin’?”

  “Wake me? Yes, you woke me. Tumble Tor? Oh, yes – I will come – come, come, come.”

  And after a pause: “Paul, are ye all right? Ye sound verra odd, as if ye’re only half there.”

  God help me, I was only half there! And the half that was there was in pretty bad shape. “Old Joe warned me off,” I mumbled then. “But he’s just an old tramp, an old fool. And anyway, Simon wants to tell me his story and show me something.”

  “Simon?” Quarry’s voice was full of anxiety now. “And did I hear ye say Old Joe? But . . . Old Joe the tramp?”

  “Old Joe,” I nodded, at no one in particular. “And anyway, he says that I’m to take him back to his place of waiting. He’s really not a bad old chap, so I don’t want to let him down. And Andrew, I’m . . . I’m not at all well.”

  Another pause, longer, and when Quarry finally spoke again there was something more than concern in his voice. “Paul, will ye tell me where and when ye spoke to Old Joe? I mean, he’s not there with ye this verra minute, is he?”

  “He was last night,” I nodded again. “And now I must go.”

  “Ontae the moor?”

  “I will come,” I said, putting the ‘phone down and getting out of bed.

  There was a mist in the house, in the car, on the roads, and in my mind. Not a really heavy mist, just some kind of atmospheric – and mental? – fogginess that had me squinting and blinking, but without completely obscuring my vision, during my drive out to Tumble Tor.

  I had to go, of course, and all the way I kept telling myself: “I will come. I will, I will, I will . . .” While yet I knew that I didn’t want to.

  Old Joe went with me; he kept silent, but I knew he was in the car, relieved to be returning to his place of waiting. Perhaps he was reluctant to speak in the presence of my other less welcome passenger: the one with his cold fingers in my head. As for that one . . . it wasn’t just that I could sense the corruption in him, I could smell it!

  And in as little time as it takes to tell, or so it seemed to me, there we were where the dirt track crossed the road; and Tumble Tor standing off with its base wreathed in mist, and the knoll farther yet, a gaunt grey hump in the autumnal haze.

  I, or rather we, got out of the car, and as Simon Carlisle led me unerringly out across the moor toward Tumble Tor, I knew that Old Joe fretted for me where we left him by the gap in the hedge. Knowing I was too far gone, beyond any sort of help that he could offer, the old tramp said nothing. For after all, what could he do to break this spell? He’d already done his best, to no avail. Half-turning to look back, I thought I saw him by the white-painted marker stone which he’d used as a seat that time. Like a figure carved from smoke, he stood wringing his hands as he watched me go.

  But Simon Carlisle said, “Pay him no heed. This is none of his businessss. His situation – in a waiting place such as his – was always better than mine. He has had a great many chances, yessss. How long he is willing to wait is for him to determine. Myself, I am done with waiting.”

  “Where are you taking me?” I asked him.

  “To the tor,” he answered, “where else? I want to see just one more time. I want to fuel my passion, as once before it was fuelled. And I want you to see and understand. Do you have your glasssses?”

  I did. Like him, I wore my binoculars round my neck. And I knew why. “We’re going to climb?”

  He nodded and said, “Oh yessss! For as you’ll soon see for yourself, this vast misshapen rock makes a superb vantage point. It is the tower from which I spied on them!”

  My soul trembled, but my feet didn’t stop. They were numb; I couldn’t feel them; it was as if I floated through the swirling ground mist impelled by some energy other than my own. But all I could think of was this: “I . . . I’m not a good climber.”

  “Oh?” he said without looking back, his clothing flapping like a scarecrow’s in the wind, while his magnetism drew me on. “Well I am. So don’t worry, Paul Stanaaard, for I won’t let you fall. The old tor is a place, yessss, but it isn’t the place of waiting. That comes later . . .”

  We drifted across the moorland, and despite the shadows in my mind and the mist on the earth I found myself scanning ahead for rushes and sphagnum mosses, evidence of boggy ground. Why I worried about that when there was so much more to concern me, I didn’t rightly know. But in any case I saw nothing, and soon we approached the foot of the tor.

  Simon Carlisle knew exactly where he was going and what he was doing, and all I could do was follow in his footsteps . . . if he had had any. But we continued to float, and it was only when we began to climb that gravity returned and our progress slowed a little.

  We climbed the
knoll side of Tumble Tor, where I had first witnessed Carlisle scanning the land beyond. And as we ascended above the misty moor, so he instructed me to place my feet just so, making opportune use of this or that toe-hold, or to secure myself by gripping this or the other jutting knob of stone, and so on; and even a blind man could have seen that he knew Tumble Tor intimately and had gone this route many times before.

  We passed carefully along narrow ledges with rounded rims, through stepped, vertical slots or chimneys where the going was easier, from level to striated level, always ascending from one fearful vertiginous position to the next. But Carlisle’s advice – his sibilant instructions – were so clear, timely, and faultlessly delivered that I never once slipped or faltered. And at last we came to that high ledge behind its shoulder of rounded stone, where I’d seen and even tried to photograph Carlisle as he scoured the moorland around through his binoculars.

  “Now then,” he said, and his voice had changed; no longer sibilant, it grated as if uttered through clenched teeth. “Now we shall see what we shall see. Look over there, a quarter-mile or so, that hollow in the ground where it rises like the first in a series of small waves; that very private place surrounded by gorse and ferns. Do you see?”

  At first I saw nothing, despite that the mist appeared to have lifted. But then, as if Carlisle had willed it into being, the tableau took shape, becoming clearer by the moment. In the spot he had described, I saw a couple . . . and indeed they were coupling! Their clothing was their bed where they lay together in each other’s arms, naked. Their movements, at first languid, rapidly became more frenzied. I thought I heard their panting, but it wasn’t them – it was Carlisle!

  And then the climax – their shuddering bodies, the falling apart, gentle caresses, kisses, and whispered conversation – the passion quenched, for the moment at least. Their passion, yes . . . but not Carlisle’s. His panting was that of a beast!

  Finally he grew calm, and his voice was as before. “If we were to stay, to continue watching, you’d see them do it again and again, yessss. But my heart was herssss! And as for him . . . I thought he was my friend! I was betrayed, not once but often, frequently. She gave me back the ring which was my promise and told me her love could not be, not with me. Ah, but it could be with him! And as you’ve seen, it wassss!”