The Mammoth Book of Terror

by Stephen Jones

  “But why?” I asked.

  “I can only surmise . . . you see the object of my rambling talk of darkness beneath the ice? Of course. It is exactly that. It is alien to me and I can only draw conclusions within my own frame of reference. They are undoubtedly inaccurate. But this is what I assume. The killer, for some unknown reason, wished to kill this old man. He had no desire to torture the man, for every action was designed to bring death. There were no bruises or contusions to imply a beating, no signs of any attempt to cause suffering, no wounds other than the death grip. The killer, again for unknown reasons, did not use a weapon. I can reconstruct the scene within my own scheme of deduction. The victim was probably sitting or lying on his bed. It was a small furnished room with only a straight backed chair, and I think it likely he used the bed to relax. He was, after all, an old man. He would have wanted what comfort was available to him. But that is irrelevant. The murderer came in through the door. Whether he was known to the victim or not would, of course, alter the preliminary movements. But that, too, is irrelevant here. Whether already there, or forced there, the old man wound up on the bed, on his back. The killer knelt over him, one knee on either side of his chest and placed his hands on the man’s throat. The man struggled – his fingernails were broken where he clawed at the killer’s hands and forearms – but he was old and weak. The killer tightened his grip remorselessly. I feel sure there was no haste, no frenzy. He merely closed his hands with great deliberation. But perhaps this was the first time he’d committed murder with his bare hands. This seems likely. And it always takes a long time, relatively speaking, to choke a man to death. It must seem very long indeed to the killer . . . and to the victim. The old man’s tongue came out, his eyes ballooned, and yet he did not die. It undoubtedly seemed, to the killer, that he had been strangling the man for sufficient time to kill him. And his mind was working, calculating. It occurred to him that he was not able to bring sufficient pressure to bear with his hands – that some air was still passing into those lungs. At this point, most men would surely have panicked. They would have shaken the man violently and snapped his neck, or seized a heavy object – there was a large glass ashtray beside the bed, I understand – and bludgeoned him into unconsciousness. But not our killer. There was no panic, no frenzy. He misjudged the time factor and then he sorted all the aspects out quite logically in his mind and decided that more pressure was necessary to complete the act. And when he had decided this, he followed the rational course . . .”

  “Rational,” I whispered.

  “Absolutely rational. He lowered his head and placed his mouth upon the man’s throat and proceeded to close his jaws. He didn’t snap, he didn’t tear, he used his teeth not as fangs but as a vice. The human jaws are very powerful. They are capable of exerting incredible strength. And so, after a while, the old man was dead and the killer unclenched his teeth and that was that.”

  I stared at Ramsey. I could feel the blood draining from my face, heavy and sluggish. He read the contortion of my countenance and nodded.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “It was horrible.”

  “To use his teeth for . . . efficiency!”

  “Exactly. That was the point that disturbed me.”

  “It must have been a maniac,” I said.

  “Or a philosopher,” said Ramsey, and he looked at me and I looked at him and after a while I started the motorcar and drove away. The traffic was light. The wind blew and the leaves fell and as the sun slipped down behind the afternoon angles I felt a distinct chill at my spine.

  The second murder occurred several days later.

  I wasn’t present at the identification this time, and came to hear of the crime through a particularly sensational newspaper story – a borrowed newspaper, as it were, belonging to one of the regular visitors to the museum. Museums seem to be addictive. They each have a set of regulars who have formed the habit of frequent visits, and in the course of my research, I came to meet several of these people time and time again. One of these was a middle-aged gentleman who walked with a stiff leg and used a malacca cane, a quiet and dignified man who always nodded pleasantly, wore well-cut tweeds, and seemed a trifle lonely. I usually encountered him wandering through the natural history rooms but in this instance we met in the library. I had just finished my book and was about to go to lunch when he entered, his cane tapping through the resounding silence of leather and oak. He took a seat next to me and placed a folded newspaper on the table. I glanced over to nod and happened to notice the headlines.

  “So the killer has struck again,” I said.

  “It would appear so.”

  “May I see your paper?”

  “Of course.”

  He handed it to me and I unfolded it.

  “Not the paper I usually take,” he said, smiling, as if to apologize for the gutter press. It did not, in fact, seem the sort of paper this rather dignified gentleman should subscribe to, and I had always avoided it. But it carried a very detailed account of the crime, stressing the sensational aspects. The story had been written from the point of view of one of the children who had discovered the body. He was twelve years old. It was the sort of thing that sold newspapers, no doubt of that.

  “It’s a terrible thing,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “These deaths.”

  “Death? Oh, death is natural.”

  His attitude surprised me.

  “Death, yes. But not murder.”

  He shrugged and tilted his hand in a gesture.

  “Murder? But what is murder other than a form of death? It is only unnatural in legal terms, you know. Murder did not exist before we came to define it; before we made laws against it. It is law which is unnatural, not murder.”

  I looked at him, wondering if he were serious. He seemed so.

  “I’m sure it didn’t seem natural to the victims,” I said.

  “Oh? I should think it did. It may have seemed unjust, but certainly natural. But then, at the moment of death, one does not think in forensic terms.” He smiled slightly. “Death is a jealous concept. It will not tolerate other thoughts to exist with it envelops the mind, it refuses to share with alien sensations.”

  “You seem well acquainted with the subject, sir.”

  He smiled again.

  “Oh, I’ve held the concept of death,” he said. “I’ve been very very close to dying and, I assure you, it was the most natural thing in the world.”

  “What manner of death?”

  “By violence,” he said. “By violence.”

  I could not picture him in conjunction with violence. I waited for him to continue, but he said no more; sat there with that slight smile. After a moment I turned to the newspaper.

  The twelve-year-old boy and several other lads had been playing by the river at the old disused wharf. There was always a great deal of debris in the water at that point. The docks and pilings had collapsed over the years and timber and planks had broken away to float in the river while the pilings which still stood acted as a bottleneck, gathering the various flotsam of the river. The children had developed a game in which the debris was an enemy fleet of warships and they were a defending shore battery, using rocks and stones for ordnance. It was an exciting game. The object was to sink the enemy ships before they came into contact with the pilings and the youths were positioned along the embankment and on the dock. They were laughing and shouting and having a fine time. Their artillery was proving accurate and effective and they had already sunk an orange crate destroyer and scored several crashing hits upon an empty oil can escort vessel. Suddenly one shouted a warning. The enemy fleet was being reinforced by a new ship which came floating out from beneath the pilings in treacherous sneak attack. It appeared to be a gnarled log dripping with moss and sea weed and it floated just below the surface. The children decided it must be a nuclear submarine and posed a most serious threat; knew they had to sink it before it could release its missiles and turned the full force of their lithic o
rdnance on it. They bombarded it from all sides and with every calibre. Small stones cascaded around the object, and larger rocks hit the water with great splashes, causing the submarine to roll and sway in the riled waters. But all the awesome might they unleashed proved ineffective. The submarine was actually rising to the surface. In desperation three of the youths joined forces to lift a huge slab of stone and carry it out on the dock, directly above the menacing ship. The slab was an aeroplane piloted by a suicide pilot willing to give his life for his country. They took careful aim and tilted the stone from the edge of the dock. It fell, turning in the air, and scored a direct hit amidships of the submarine. The vessel seemed to crack in half. The bows and stern rose up and the children howled in victorious glee. And then, very very slowly, the log rolled over and spread out arms and it wasn’t a log at all. The children fell silent. They stared in shocked disbelief. This was something unique, beyond the rules of their game, and for some time they stood lined along the dock, gaping down at the body. It was an old woman. Her body bobbled about and her grey hair spread out like moss around her bloated face, writhing on the surface. And then comprehension came and they ran for help with shouts which were not of gaiety . . .

  The police were summoned and they dragged the body out. It was the old flower seller who had a stall on the embankment, not far from the wharf. Investigation showed she had been dragged to the water and immersed until she drowned. There were no injuries on her body and she must have been conscious the whole time. The time of the murder was estimated at nine o’clock the night before, about the hour she usually closed her stall. There was still light at nine o’clock. There were invariably people strolling on the embankment and along the docks and perhaps young lovers had stood, hand in hand, directly above the old woman dying beneath the pilings. It was an eerie thought. One could not help but wonder what thoughts had screamed through her mind during those eternal instants of silent struggle, while the water felt like an avalanche of hard rocks pouring into her erupting lungs. It was far easier to imagine her thoughts than to conceive of those dark concepts in the mind of her killer – the mind of a man who killed without motive, without reason, without passion.

  It seemed obvious that the killer was the same man who had strangled the old pensioner a few days before. The two murders fitted the same pattern of having no pattern. The woman had no known enemies and no one could possibly have profited by her death. The killing had been cold and efficient. The police had no clues and asked anyone who might have been in the vicinity to contact them whether they had heard or seen anything or not. Anyone who had noticed a man with wet clothing anywhere in the city was asked to notify the authorities. The theory was that it was the work of a maniac. It seemed the only solution. The thought of a madman is always terrifying and this was magnified by the fact that the victims had been old and helpless and had died without reason. The police stated it was likely the man would kill again – would go on killing at regular intervals until he was captured. I had a sudden image of Detective Inspector Grant poring over all the details of the two crimes, trying desperately to project and predict and prevent, and knowing with painful frustration that he had insufficient data – and that there was only one way in which to acquire more data and that implied more victims. He would be chain-smoking cigarettes, pacing across his office, snapping at his subordinates, cross with his wife. But they would understand the great unrest of his thoughts, and would tolerate his surly behaviour. And thinking of tolerance, I found myself contrasting Grant with this gentleman whose newspaper I held – who looked at the murders in such a calm and unexpected way. I looked up from the paper; glanced sideways at him. He was turning the pages of a large volume with vague disinterest. I placed the paper on the table and he closed the book; folded the paper neatly.

  “Thank you.”

  “Why of course,” he said.

  “Say what you will, it’s a gruesome business.”

  “Oh, I daresay the papers make it seem worse than it is, you know. Circulation and all that. The human fascination with the macabre. I find myself fascinated with that strange fascination. As a scientist . . .”

  “A scientist?” I said, interrupting him with an abrupt impulse to change the subject. I did not wish to hear his opinions on human failings – if indeed he thought them failings, for he had a tendency to make the unexpected statement; to view from unconsidered angles.

  He nodded slowly.

  “What is your field?”

  “I am a naturalist.”

  I raised my eyebrows slightly at the old-fashioned term and he interpreted the gesture correctly; nodded and repeated the word. “Yes, a naturalist. I use the old word deliberately – to imply that I have spread myself over the natural sciences rather than specializing. A fault of modern thinking, specialization.”

  “But surely knowledge is accumulating too quickly for a man to encompass everything?”

  “Ah, but is that valid? If all knowledge is related – and it must be, if there is any basic law to the universe – then isn’t a shallow immersion in a wide subject better than penetration to blind and limited depths? I have always wished to form conclusions which draw all the branches of natural science into a tighter pattern. An ambitious goal, certainly, and yet in some ways curiously limited.” He paused, peering at me sharply. I had the impression he was judging my comprehension and his glance was curious – his countenance resigned and placid on the surface, yet with sharp inquiry coming through. It was like a flash of sudden lightning exposing the inner fabric of the storm clouds for a brilliant instant. Then it faded. “Oh, I fully understand the necessity for specialists,” he continued. “Men – men of that sort of mind – must probe the depths of limited fields and form little cones of knowledge – little submerged and isolated studies from which more well rounded scholars may draw as they grope for a totality. Necessary, yes. But it seems a shame that knowledge has outpaced the evolution of the mind, does it not?” And again that keen glance probed me.

  “You interest me.”

  “Yes? I’ve always believed that a man who has wide interests will prove interesting.”

  “And are you pursuing your interests here at the museum? I’ve seen you quite often and wondered if you might be doing research of some nature.”

  “Nothing specific. In point of fact, I come to the museum for pleasure. As some might go to the opera or the theatre. I dearly love to wander through the natural history halls. But research – no, my research is in the field. It was, at least, until my accident. Now I must content myself with less strenuous studies. Although recently I have been able to do a bit of field work. Just a bit. An application of former conclusions.”

  “Accident?”

  “My leg. I lost my leg, as you may have noticed.”

  He glanced down.

  “Oh, I didn’t realize,” I said, a trifle embarrassed.

  “I’ve managed to adapt myself to it. One does, you know. I have an artificial limb, of course, but I’d have adapted without it. That’s the story of survival. But it hinders field research, nonetheless.”

  This fact seemed to sadden him. He fell into a thoughtful silence. Then he looked up and smiled.

  “But we’ve not been introduced,” he said. He held out his hand. His grip was firm.

  “Claymore,” he said. “Edward Claymore.”

  I told him my name. His name had a familiar ring and after a moment I placed it; said, “I believe I’ve read one of your books. Dealing with ecology, was it?”

  “You please me. One has vanity, of a sort. Of a sort. One hopes one’s ideas are of value. And valid, of course. Yes, ecology has always been my prime study, dear to my heart. The linking of relationships between creatures within the scope of their environment, the incredibly complex interplay between organisms, subtle, slowly emerging as one gathers experience, and in no other way. These relationships cannot be predicted in the laboratory nor projected in the library. One must be there. One must observe and record. A falsehoo
d may be written but what one has seen is truth – the conclusions may be wrongly drawn but one cannot argue with the basic premise of objective fact, eh?” I nodded agreement. A certain intensity had come into his voice as he spoke of his work and I felt a new respect for the man. His book, as I recalled it, had been lucid and straightforward and unpretentious; had been an early work which, in its simplicity, had stood the test of time. It was no longer read much, for the theory had advanced beyond its scope, and yet the material had been proved correct and had greatly affected later research along those lines, foreshadowing understanding. I had read it long ago, and yet found myself able to recall certain passages of bright illumination and even simple eloquence in his descriptions of the wild reaches of our northern forests, the perfect balance of nature, the harmony of life and death. Seen in the context of his work, his unusual method of looking at events was no longer surprising. I determined to look up his book and read it again, in the new light of our acquaintance.

  Claymore was thoughtful now; seemed to be looking back into the past, looking northward to the forests of former times. I stood up and excused myself. He nodded absently. He was still sitting at the table, staring at far places, as I left.

  I did not encounter Claymore for the next few days, and forgot my intention to look up a copy of his book. He may well have been at the museum but my research had taken a sharp turn which kept me in the library through the day and he did not appear there. I did not, in fact, see him again until after the third crime had been committed. This third crime was different. It did not fit the pattern of the preceding murders and, at first, appeared to be an accident. It was far more horrible, in its quantitative effect, than the other crimes and yet did not excite as much public outrage because it was impersonal. It caused anger rather than morbid fascination. The facts were these: the home for incurables on the outskirts of the city caught fire and, in a great inferno, burned to the ground. Twelve men and women died in the flames, including a heroic nurse who had rushed again and again through sheets of fire and saved half a dozen lives; then, making a last desperate attempt, she had been trapped as the walls collapsed and had died in the incandescent ruins. When her charred body was found she still held an old man shielded to her breast, their flesh melted and then annealed together so that the corpses were inseparable. It was some time before the embers had cooled and a proper investigation carried out and then it was discovered that the fire had been deliberately set, a case of arson; some further time before connections were made and the authorities believed it might have been the work of the same madman who had killed twice before. But it was impossible to be sure. The police were keeping an open mind and investigating the background of every patient, both victims and survivors, in an attempt to discover if anyone would have gained by the death of one of them. It was a ghastly thought, but valid in these times when bombs are placed on aeroplanes, killing dozens as a side effect of collecting insurance on a solitary passenger. Nothing came of this line of investigation, however, and I, for one, felt certain it had been the maniac.