The Mammoth Book of Terror

by Stephen Jones

  Martin had a plausible story prepared; Charlotte would be visiting relatives, which would give him time enough. Time to drain the contents of the tank; he would not make the mistake of emptying it into the drains. He would convey the sludge in the original drums to a garbage tip at the edge of the city and empty it out gallon by gallon, making sure there were no identifiable remains. He had thought it through very carefully.

  He frowned at the child, who watched him with those large accusing eyes. Martin was vaguely aware that she had never liked him. He did not care for her if the truth were known; she was too much like Charlotte in her nature. Vindictive and spiteful; even a child could show these traits in a dozen ways without displaying open hostility. Kathy was a strange, deceitful child. Martin would have to watch her. Someone with her alertness and gift for being in the wrong place at the wrong time could upset all his plans.

  She leaned toward him, her head on one side.

  “It will soon be Hallowe’en!” she breathed.

  The man was startled by the sudden staccato beat of footsteps at the side of the house. The child had heard them too and glanced quickly at a shadow passing the window.

  “You’d better hurry! Mummy is going down to the workroom!”

  III

  Martin went down the steps hurriedly, his heart thumping irregularly in his chest, a dull rage against the child in his heart. He had sent her to bed quickly. The plan was not working. It might even have to be postponed. Firstly, Kathy had seen her mother on her way to the outside steps. Perhaps Charlotte had gone out without him knowing.

  And she was almost an hour early. Everything was falling apart and his nerves were ragged as he got to the shadowy corridor at the foot of the stairway. He had left the lights off. For his own purposes, of course. But one had to be careful here; the steps branched off to the old wood-store at the right.

  There was a sheer drop to concrete here which was dangerous. He had been meaning to have it railed off for years but had never gotten around to it. It would have been the ideal solution to his problems but Charlotte would never come this way to the cellar; she always went around to the side of the house and down the shallow flight of steps to the outside door there.

  He hoped she would not go through into the main laboratory; then he remembered he had kept it locked. He suddenly felt giddy again. He leaned against the wall for a moment. He recalled Kathy’s eyes. Their strange, violet gaze seemed to haunt him. He pulled himself together, descending the remaining steps carefully. He was himself once more by the time he found his way to the room where he worked on his experimental theories.

  The door was ajar and the small radio he kept there was playing dance music loudly. That was one of the things which irritated him about Charlotte. Even in small matters her habits made his nerves raw. But things could not have been more propitious this evening. Apart from the problem of Kathy. He looked in quickly. Charlotte was sitting at the desk with her back to him, going through some papers he kept there. He was committed now.

  He had the iron bar from the bench. In two steps he was at her side. Before she could turn the heavy metal was descending. He caught her at the nape of the neck, as he had planned. She was already dead before he began dragging the body out to the laboratory. It was the work of a few moments to carefully immerse her, still fully clothed, in the tank, making sure none of its lethal contents slopped.

  He did not stop but fled from the place, locking the door behind him. He did not know how he came there but presently he awoke to find himself at his desk in the living room. He was perspiring heavily, his pulse racing, his face white and curiously elongated in the mirror. He glanced at his watch, saw with a shock that only some two minutes had passed since he went to the cellar.

  He held the dial to his ear. It had not stopped. Then he heard the brittle clatter of footsteps passing along the concrete path at the side of the house. His heart froze. Had he slept then and dreamed of the horrible event in the workroom below? Had he to go through it all again? He got to his feet, conscious of Kathy’s strange eyes boring into his own.

  No, he had not been mistaken. His wife’s footsteps were real enough; the clock in the corner went on ticking gently. It showed the same time as his watch. He almost expected to see his daughter’s ethereal-looking form huddled in the window seat but there was nothing there. He remembered then she had gone to bed.

  He crossed the room quickly, made his way to the door which led to the cellars, his brain confused and bewildered. Charlotte was dead; there was no doubt about that. There were cobwebs on the front of his suit where he had descended the steps some time ago. But it could not have taken less than two minutes. The thing was impossible.

  He must have been mistaken about the footsteps. Perhaps some child on a Hallowe’en prank had passed on the sidewalk. That must have been it. He was halfway down the steps now, the light from the hall door above sending yellow beams down the wooden stairway. He had forgotten the light switch in his agitation.

  “Martin! Martin. Where are you?”

  His heart turned to stone in his chest. There was no mistaking Charlotte’s voice. His mind must be going. He knew her body was already dissolving within the tank. The blow alone would have killed her instantly.

  The voice went on calling his name imperatively. He went down hurriedly, his nerves aflame as though the acid were eroding them too. He had to know whether he had been dreaming or something unexplainable had happened in the cellar. He ran down quickly, careless now, a great roaring in his ears.

  Too late he realised he had mistaken his direction on the landing in the dark. His feet encountered empty space. He had time only for a mumbled cry as he descended into the darkness where the concrete floor awaited.

  IV

  “It’s Hallowe’en tonight,” Kathy said.

  She sat on the floor in front of the window seat, busy with her preparations for the evening, intent on the contents of a big cardboard box. On the boulevard outside the dusk was falling almost imperceptibly on the facades of the houses opposite; the automobiles cutting red trails with their rear-lights in the gathering darkness.

  Charlotte sat at her husband’s desk, uneasily conscious of her daughter’s strange violet eyes regarding her from beneath the mass of blonde hair.

  “What did Daddy say?” she asked impatiently for perhaps the tenth time that day.

  Martin’s inexplicable disappearance was only one of several things that were disturbing her thoughts. She had been through the wardrobe and none of his clothes or his suitcases were missing. When he was called away on urgent business he usually left a note or telephoned her from the office.

  “Perhaps Daddy and Auntie Janet have run off together,” the child said maliciously.

  Charlotte was shocked at the vehemence and the understanding in her daughter’s tones. It was evident that she knew a great deal more of what went on around her than her parents had ever guessed.

  But she gave a bright, false smile that matched her daughter’s own.

  “What an extraordinary thing to say! What makes you think that, dear.”

  The child went on fiddling with something in the big cardboard box by her side. Around were spread the strange paraphernalia of the Hallowe’en ritual. White sheets that looked at though they had been taken from her narrow bed; some stumps of red wax candles; an old lantern from the garage that had been tied with string to the end of a broken-off tree-branch.

  Charlotte looked on absently, her thoughts elsewhere. Her lips curved bitterly. It would solve a good many of her problems if Martin and Janet had run off somewhere. She had forgotten how many weary years the problems involved in his treachery had flourished like a rank weed in their marriage.

  She again caught a faint thread in the child’s prattle, prompted by a band of youngsters passing the window, lanterns already lit. The blurred chant of “Trick or treat!” died off round the next corner, chopped into segments by the rising wind that gusted at the windows. The fire flickered, sending
weird shadows over the furniture until she got up to switch on the ceiling lights.

  All Hallows’ Eve. It was a strange custom, she reflected, her calm gaze fixed on her daughter’s deliberate and methodical actions. A small rose of fire came to life in the corner by the window seat, made a warm glow in which Kathy’s absorbed face was silhouetted against the darkening window panes. The child had lit one of the red candles in its metal holder.

  “Be careful,” Charlotte warned.

  Her daughter turned innocent eyes upon her and once again the mother was struck by the strange, almost baleful glance that had the power to draw even an adult up short.

  There was an ethereal quality about Kathy sometimes that was a little unnerving. Charlotte’s interest aroused, she walked over from the light switch.

  “What have you got there?”

  Kathy smiled one of her sweetest smiles.

  “A skull. I’m going to put a candle in it.”

  Charlotte gave the girl an incredulous look.

  “A skull! Where did you get it? Is it made of candy?”

  Kathy ignored her questions. She was again absorbed in the cardboard box, her fingers rustling mysteriously among folded twists of paper. She held up the candle, dripping the burning tallow below the edge of the box.

  Charlotte was held halfway across the room, her attention focused on the child’s intent activity. Kathy lifted the object now. Charlotte gave a gasp. The thing was certainly – she was going to say lifelike – but that was absurd under the circumstances. It was a small, beautiful, highly polished skull; delicately made and apparently that of a woman.

  Charlotte waited breathlessly as the girl fixed the candle, manipulating it delicately through one of the eye-sockets.

  “Don’t you think it looks like Auntie Janet?” the child said.

  Charlotte was astonished; she supposed the exquisitely modelled artefact was made of spun sugar, probably purchased at some establishment which specialised in such macabre aspects of Hallowe’en. Her throat tightened and her breath came fast and shallow.

  There was an amazing resemblance to Janet now that the child came to mention it. Janet had a small, delicate head, almost like some ancient Egyptian queen. There was one tiny blemish which would have revealed the absurdity of the suggestion, but Charlotte remained where she was; pinned there by some sudden, overmastering emotion.

  Kathy had lit the candle again now, the skull a subtle shell of growing radiance through which the eye-sockets and the teeth gleamed eerily.

  “It gives a lovely light!” the child piped excitedly.

  Charlotte fought down her nervous qualms. She recalled Edna St Vincent Millay’s lines. It did give a lovely light.

  Kathy had twisted the skull, so that the light gleaming from the jagged orifices threw uneven shadows on the wall. She cradled her soft cheek against the white bone, posing for her mother’s approval.

  Charlotte stared at the candle in the skull, its small halo of orange flame making little fretwork patterns on the girl’s cheek, shimmering on the golden mass of hair.

  “It’s Hallowe’en tonight!” Kathy said.

  RAMSEY CAMPBELL HAS BEEN named Grand Master by the World Horror Convention and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horrors Writers Association.

  His latest supernatural novel, The Overnight, is now available from PS Publishing, Tor Books has reprinted his landmark collection Alone With the Horrors, and a new edition of his Arkham House collection The Height of the Scream was recently reissued by Babbage Press. An original ghost story, “The Decorations”, appeared in a limited edition from Sutton Hoo Press of Winona for Christmas 2004, and the author is currently at work on a new novel, Secret Stories.

  “I see from the ledger I used as a diary in those days that ‘The Chimney’ was conceived on Christmas Day 1972,” recalls Campbell, “after (but presumably not related to) my first viewing of Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tape. To quote the notes:

  “Child afraid of Santa Claus . . . Perhaps from a very early age has associated horror with the large fireplace in his bedroom? His parents tell him of Santa Claus . . . But when they tell him the truth about SC, the horror comes flooding back . . . And somethings always moving in there toward Christmas . . . He sees it emerge each year: but this year he sees it in more detail . . .

  “I sketched some other details, including the final apparition, and there the material appears to have lain until I was looking back in search of story ideas in June 1975. The tale was written in a little over a week, from the 20th to the 27th of that month. By gum, the energy of the young! I don’t think I could be so productive these days.

  “It wasn’t then apparent to me that the story was disguised autobiography – about my relationship with my father, who was an unseen and hence monstrous figure who lived in my house throughout my childhood. I still recall realizing this as I read the tale to a gathering at Jack Sullivan’s apartment in New York.

  “It was also there that I discovered how funny a story it was, but well before the end the laughter ceased.”

  MAYBE MOST OF IT was only fear. But not the last thing, not that. To blame my fear for that would be worst of all.

  I was twelve years old and beginning to conquer my fears. I even went upstairs to do my homework, and managed to ignore the chimney. I had to be brave, because of my parents – because of my mother.

  She had always been afraid for me. The very first day I had gone to school I’d seen her watching. Her expression had reminded me of the face of a girl I’d glimpsed on television, watching men lock her husband behind bars; I was frightened all that first day. And when children had hysterics or began to bully me, or the teacher lost her temper, these things only confirmed my fears – and my mother’s, when I told her what had happened each day.

  Now I was at grammar school. I had been there for much of a year. I’d felt awkward in my new uniform and old shoes; the building seemed enormous, crowded with too many strange children and teachers. I’d felt I was an outsider; friendly approaches made me nervous and sullen, when people laughed and I didn’t know why I was sure they were laughing at me. After a while the other boys treated me as I seemed to want to be treated: the lads from the poorer districts mocked my suburban accent, the suburban boys sneered at my shoes.

  Often I’d sat praying that the teacher wouldn’t ask me a question I couldn’t answer, sat paralysed by my dread of having to stand up in the waiting watchful silence. If a teacher shouted at someone my heartjumped painfully; once I’d felt the stain of my shock creeping insidiously down my thigh. Yet I did well in the end-of-term examinations, because I was terrified of failing; for nights afterwards they were another reason why I couldn’t sleep.

  My mother read the signs of all this on my face. More and more, once I’d told her what was wrong, I had to persuade her there was nothing worse that I’d kept back. Some mornings as I lay in bed, trying to hold back half past seven, I’d be sick; I would grope miserably downstairs, white-faced, and my mother would keep me home. Once or twice, when my fear wasn’t quite enough, I made myself sick. “Look at him. You can’t expect him to go like that” – but my father would only shake his head and grunt, dismissing us both.

  I knew my father found me embarrassing. This year he’d had less time for me than usual; his shop – The Anything Shop, nearby in the suburbanised village – was failing to compete with the new supermarket. But before that trouble I’d often seen him staring up at my mother and me: both of us taller than him, his eyes said, yet both scared of our own shadows. At those times I glimpsed his despair.

  So my parents weren’t reassuring. Yet at night I tried to stay with them as long as I could – for my worst fears were upstairs, in my room.

  It was a large room, two rooms knocked into one by the previous owner. It overlooked the small back gardens. The smaller of the fireplaces had been bricked up; in winter, the larger held a fire, which my mother always feared would set fire to the room – but she let it alone, for I’d
screamed when I thought she was going to take that light away: even though the firelight only added to the terrors of the room.

  The shadows moved things. The mesh of the fireguard fluttered enlarged on the wall; sometimes, at the edge of sleep, it became a swaying web, and its spinner came sidling down from a corner of the ceiling. Everything was unstable; walls shifted, my clothes crawled on the back of the chair. Once, when I’d left myjacket slumped over the chair, the collar’s dark upturned lack of a face began to nod forward stealthily; the holes at the ends of the sleeves worked like mouths, and I didn’t dare get up to hang the jacket properly. The room grew in the dark: sounds outside, footsteps and laughter, dogs encouraging each other to bark, only emphasised the size of my trap of darkness, how distant everything else was. And there was a dimmer room, in the mirror of the wardrobe beyond the foot of the bed. There was a bed in that room, and beside it a dim nightlight in a plastic lantern. Once I’d wakened to see a face staring dimly at me from the mirror; a figure had sat up when I had, and I’d almost cried out. Often I’d stared at the dim staring face, until I’d had to hide beneath the sheets.

  Of course this couldn’t go on for the rest of my life. On my twelfth birthday I set about the conquest of my room.

  I was happy amid my presents. I had a jigsaw, a box of coloured pencils, a book of space stories. They had come from my father’s shop, but they were mine now. Because I was relaxed, no doubt because she wished I could always be so, my mother said “Would you be happier if you went to another school?”

  It was Saturday; I wanted to forget Monday. Besides, I imagined all schools were as frightening. “No, I’m all right,” I said.

  “Are you happy at school now?” she said incredulously.

  “Yes, it’s all right.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, really, it’s all right. I mean, I’m happy now.”

  The snap of the letter-slot saved me from further lying. Three birthday cards: two from neighbours who talked to me when I served them in the shop – an old lady who always carried a poodle, our next-door neighbour Dr Flynn – and a card from my parents. I’d seen all three cards in the shop, which spoilt them somehow.