The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror

by Stephen Jones

  “I thought: God, sharks! But then I remembered: there are no sharks in the Med. Still, I wanted to be sure. So . . . so I turned, made a shallow dive and looked to see what . . . what . . .” She broke down into sobbing again.

  Geoff could do nothing but warm her, hug her tighter yet.

  “Oh, but there are sharks in the Med, Geoff,” she finally went on. “One shark, anyway. His name is Spiros! A spider? No, he’s a shark! Under the sea there, I saw . . . a girl, naked, tethered to the bottom with a rope round her ankle. And down in the deeps, a stone holding her there.”

  “My God!” Geoff breathed.

  “Her thighs, belly, were covered in those little green swimming crabs. She was all bloated, puffy, floating upright on her own internal gasses. Fish nibbled at her. Her nipples were gone . . .”

  “The fish!” Geoff gasped. But Gwen shook her head.

  “Not the fish,” she rasped. “Her arms and breasts were black with bruises. Her nipples had been bitten through – right through! Oh, Geoff, Geoff!” She hugged him harder than ever, shivering hard enough to shake him. “I know what happened to her. It was him, Spiros.” She paused, tried to control her shivering, which wasn’t only the after-effect of the water.

  And finally she continued: “After that I had no strength. But somehow I made it back.”

  “Get dressed,” he told her then, his voice colder than she’d ever heard it. “Quickly! No, not your dress – my trousers, shirt. The slacks will be too long for you. Roll up the bottoms. But get dressed, get warm.”

  She did as he said. The sun, sinking, was still hot. Soon she was warm again, and calmer. Then Geoff gave her the spear he’d made and told her what he was going to do . . .

  There were two of them, as like as peas in a pod. Geoff saw them, and the pieces fell into place. Spiros and his brother. The island’s codes were tight. These two looked for loose women; loose in their narrow eyes, anyway. And from the passports of the honeymooners it had been plain that they weren’t married. Which had made Gwen a whore, in their eyes. Like the Swedish girl, who’d met a man and gone to bed with him. As easy as that. So Spiros had tried it on, the easy way at first. By making it plain that he was on offer. Now that that hadn’t worked, now it was time for the hard way.

  Geoff saw them coming in the boat and stopped gouging at the rock. His fingernails were cracked and starting to bleed, but the job was as complete as he could wish. He ducked back out of sight, hugged the sentinel rock and thought only of Gwen. He had one chance and mustn’t miss it.

  He glanced back, over his shoulder. Gwen had heard the boat’s engine. She stood halfway between the sea and the waterfall with its foul pool. Her spear was grasped tightly in her hands. Like a young Amazon, Geoff thought. But then he heard the boat’s motor cut back and concentrated on what he was doing.

  The put-put-put of the boat’s exhaust came closer. Geoff took a chance, glanced round the rim of the rock. Here they came, gentling into the channel between the rock and the cliffs. Spiros’s brother wore slacks; both men were naked from the waist up; Spiros had the tiller. And his brother had a shotgun!

  One chance. Only one chance.

  The boat’s nose came inching forward, began to pass directly below. Geoff gave a mad yell, heaved at the loose wedge of rock. For a moment he thought it would stick and put all his weight into it. But then it shifted, toppled.

  Below, the two Greeks had looked up, eyes huge in tanned, startled faces. The one with the shotgun was on his feet. He saw the falling rock in the instant before it smashed down on him and drove him through the bottom of the boat. His gun went off, both barrels, and the shimmering air near Geoff’s head buzzed like a nest of wasps. Then, while all below was still in a turmoil, he aimed himself at Spiros and jumped.

  Thrown about in the stern of his sinking boat, Spiros was making ready to dive overboard when Geoff’s feet hit him. He was hurled into the water, Geoff narrowly missing the swamped boat as he, too, crashed down into the sea. And then a mad flurry of water as they both struck out for the shore.

  Spiros was there first. Crying out, wild, outraged, frightened, he dragged himself from the sea. He looked round and saw Geoff coming through the water – saw his boat disappear with only ripples to mark its passing, and no sign of his brother – and started at a lopsided run up the beach. Towards Gwen. Geoff swam for all he was worth, flew from the sea up onto the land.

  Gwen was running, heading for the V in the cliff under the waterfall. Spiros was right behind her, arms reaching. Geoff came last, the air rasping in his lungs, hell’s fires blazing in his heart. He’d drawn blood and found it to his liking. But he stumbled, fell, and when he was up again he saw Spiros closing on his quarry. Gwen was backed up against the cliff, her feet in the water at the shallow end of the vile pool. The Greek made a low, apish lunge at her and she struck at him with her spear.

  She gashed his face even as he grabbed her. His hand caught in the loose material of Geoff’s shirt, tearing it from her so that her breasts lolled free. Then she stabbed at him again, slicing him across the neck. His hands flew to his face and neck; he staggered back from her, tripped, and sat down in chest-deep water; Geoff arrived panting at the pool and Gwen flew into his arms. He took the spear from her, turned it towards Spiros.

  But the Greek was finished. He shrieked and splashed in the pool like the madman he was, seemed incapable of getting to his feet. His wounds weren’t bad, but the blood was everywhere. That wasn’t the worst of it: the thing he’d tripped on had floated to the surface. It was beginning to rot, but it was – or had been – a young man. Rubbery arms and legs tangled with Spiros’s limbs; a ghastly, gaping face tossed with his frantic threshing; a great black hole showed where the bloated corpse had taken a shotgun blast to the chest, the shot that had killed him.

  For a little while longer Spiros fought to be rid of the thing – screamed aloud as its gaping, accusing mouth screamed horribly, silently at him – then gave up and flopped back half-in, half-out of the water. One of the corpse’s arms was draped across his heaving, shuddering chest. He lay there with his hands over his face and cried, and the flies came swarming like a black, hostile cloud from the cave to settle on him.

  Geoff held Gwen close, guided her away from the horror down the beach to a sea which was a deeper blue now. “It’s okay,” he kept saying, as much for himself as for her. “It’s okay. They’ll come looking for us, sooner or later.”

  As it happened, it was sooner . . .

  1990

  The Man Who Drew Cats

  Michael Marshall Smith

  THE FIRST VOLUME OF Best New Horror won both the British Fantasy Award and the World Fantasy Award. This helped establish the series amongst the readers and some publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, although it has always remained a struggle to convince people to submit material for consideration.

  Back in the early days, Ramsey Campbell and I found ourselves spending quite considerable amounts of our own money acquiring books and magazines just so that we could read stories for the anthology. In fact, twenty years later I still have to do the same thing.

  This time our Introduction had expanded to nine pages and the Necrology was up to thirteen. Ramsey and I were concerned about the much-hyped recessions in the movie and publishing industries (apparently some things never change), and we warned that the mid-list was under threat. Once again, we were scarily prophetic.

  The publishers once again reused my Letraset logo, now embossed and with an added 2. This time the cover was an original piece by Spanish-Mexican illustrator Luis Rey, who lived in London. As with the first book, Robinson did it in trade paperback and Carroll & Graf went with a hardcover. However, a couple of years later I found an American paperback that neither Robinson nor I had been aware of. G&G claimed it was not a reprint, but a rebinding of their earlier edition, until I pointed out that it was, in fact, a larger format than the hardcover . . .!

  For this second compilation we found ourselves working with s
ome of the Big Names in genre publishing. Out of the twenty-eight stories in the book, we included work by such established authors as Peter Straub, Jonathan Carroll, Harlan Ellison, F. Paul Wilson, Gene Wolfe and Gahan Wilson.

  However, the story I have chosen to represent this particular volume was from a relative newcomer. In fact, it was Michael Marshall Smith’s first published story.

  One of the most rewarding experiences about being an editor is discovering and nurturing new talent. I have always tried to leave slots for new or upcoming writers in Best New Horror and the other anthologies I have edited. Which is why it was such a thrill when David A. Sutton and I plucked “The Man Who Drew Cats” out of the submission pile for Dark Voices 2: The Pan Book of Horror.

  Rarely have I ever encountered a voice so assured or a writing style so effortless in a first tale. Remarkably, Mike wrote the story in a day. More than anyone else, it reminded me of the work of Stephen King, and given the accolades that both the tale and its author have subsequently received, I can only presume that I was not the only one . . .

  TOM WAS A VERY TALL MAN, so tall he didn’t even have a nickname for it. Ned Black, who was at least a head shorter, had been “Tower Block” since the sixth grade, and Jack had a sign up over the door saying MIND YOUR HEAD, NED. But Tom was just Tom. It was like he was so tall it didn’t bear mentioning even for a joke: be a bit like ragging someone for breathing.

  Course there were other reasons too for not ragging Tom about his height or anything else. The guys you’ll find perched on stools round Jack’s bar watching the game and buying beers, they’ve known each other forever. Gone to Miss Stadler’s school together, gotten under each other’s Mom’s feet, double-dated right up to giving each other’s best man’s speech. Kingstown is a small place, you understand, and the old boys who come regular to Jack’s mostly spent their childhoods in the same tree-house. Course they’d since gone their separate ways, up to a point: Pete was an accountant now, had a small office down Union Street just off the Square and did pretty good, whereas Ned was still pumping gas and changing oil and after forty years he did that pretty good too. Comes a time when men have known each other so long they forget what they do for a living most the time, because it just don’t matter. When you talk there’s a little bit of skimming stones down the quarry in second grade, a whisper of dolling up to go to that first dance, a tad of going to the housewarming when they moved ten years back. There’s all that, so much more than you can say, and none of it’s important except for having happened.

  So we’ll stop by and have a couple of beers and talk about the town and rag each other, and the pleasure’s just in shooting the breeze and it don’t really matter what’s said, just the fact that we’re all still there to say it.

  But Tom, he was different. We all remember the first time we saw him. It was a long hot summer like we haven’t seen in the ten years since, and we were lolling under the fans at Jack’s and complaining about the tourists. Kingstown does get its share in the summer, even though it’s not near the sea and we don’t have a McDonald’s and I’ll be damned if I can figure out why folk’ll go out of their way to see what’s just a quiet little town near some mountains. It was as hot as Hell that afternoon and as much as a man could do to sit in his shirtsleeves and drink the coolest beer he could find, and Jack’s is the coolest for us, and always will be, I guess.

  Then Tom walked in. His hair was already pretty white back then, and long, and his face was brown and tough with grey eyes like diamonds set in leather. He was dressed mainly in black with a long coat that made you hot just to look at it, but he looked comfortable like he carried his very own weather around with him and he was just fine.

  He got a beer, and sat down at a table and read the town Bugle, and that was that.

  It was special because there wasn’t anything special about it. Jack’s Bar isn’t exactly exclusive and we don’t all turn round and stare at anyone new if they come in, but that place is like a monument to shared times. If a tourist couple comes in out of the heat and sits down, nobody says anything – and maybe nobody even notices at the front of their mind – but it’s like there’s a little island of the alien in the water and the currents just don’t ebb and flow the way they usually do, if you get what I mean. Tom just walked in and sat down and it was all right because it was like he was there just like we were, and could’ve been for thirty years. He sat and read his paper like part of the same river, and everyone just carried on downstream the way they were.

  Pretty soon he goes up for another beer and a few of us got talking to him. We got his name and what he did – painting, he said – and after that it was just shooting the breeze. That quick. He came in that summer afternoon and just fell into the conversation like he’d been there all his life, and sometimes it was hard to imagine he hadn’t been. Nobody knew where he came from, or where he’d been, and there was something real quiet about him. A stillness, a man in a slightly different world. But he showed enough to get along real well with us, and a bunch of old friends don’t often let someone in like that.

  Anyway, he stayed that whole summer. Rented himself a place just round the corner from the square, or so he said: I never saw it. I guess no one did. He was a private man, private like a steel door with four bars and a couple of six-inch padlocks, and when he left the square at the end of the day he could have vanished as soon as he turned the corner for all we knew. But he always came from that direction in the morning, with his easel on his back and paintbox under his arm, and he always wore that black coat like it was a part of him. But he always looked cool, and the funny thing was when you stood near him you could swear you felt cooler yourself. I remember Pete saying over a beer that it wouldn’t surprise him none if, assuming it ever rained again, Tom would walk round in his own column of dryness. He was just joking, of course, but Tom made you think things like that.

  Jack’s bar looks right out onto the square, the kind of square towns don’t have much anymore: big and dusty with old roads out each corner, tall shops and houses on all the sides and some stone paving in the middle round a fountain that ain’t worked in living memory. Well in the summer that old square is just full of out-of-towners in pink towelling jump-suits and nasty jackets standing round saying “Wow ” and taking pictures of our quaint old hall and our quaint old stores and even our quaint old selves if we stand still too long. Tom would sit out near the fountain and paint and those people would stand and watch for hours – but he didn’t paint the houses or the square or the old Picture House. He painted animals, and painted them like you’ve never seen. Birds with huge blue speckled wings and cats with cutting green eyes; and whatever he painted it looked like it was just coiled up on the canvas ready to fly away. He didn’t do them in their normal colours, they were all reds and purples and deep blues and greens – and yet they fair sparkled with life. It was a wonder to watch: he’d put up a fresh paper, sit looking at nothing in particular, then dip his brush into his paint and draw a line, maybe red, maybe blue. Then he’d add another, maybe the same colour, maybe not. Stroke by stroke you could see the animal build up in front of your eyes and yet when it was finished you couldn’t believe it hadn’t always been there. When he’d finished he’d spray it with some stuff to fix the paints and put a price on it and you can believe me those paintings were sold before they hit the ground. Spreading businessmen from New Jersey or some such and their bored wives would come alive for maybe the first time in years, and walk away with one of those paintings and their arms round each other, looking like they’d found a bit of something they’d forgotten they’d lost.

  Come about six o’clock Tom would finish up and walk across to Jack’s, looking like a sailing ship amongst rowing boats and saying yes he’d be back again tomorrow and yes, he’d be happy to do a painting for them. He’d get a beer and sit with us and watch the game and there’d be no paint on his fingers or his clothes, not a spot. I figured he’d got so much control over that paint it went where it was told a
nd nowhere else.

  I asked him once how he could bear to let those paintings go. I know if I’d been able to make anything that good in my whole life I couldn’t let it out of my sight, I’d want to keep it to look at sometimes. He thought for a moment and then he said he believed it depends how much of yourself you’ve put into it. If you’ve gone deep down and pulled up what’s inside and put it down, then you don’t want to let it go: you want to keep it, so’s you can check sometimes that it’s still safely tied down. Comes a time when a painting’s so right and so good that it’s private, and no one’ll understand it except the man who put it down. Only he is going to know what he’s talking about. But the everyday paintings, well they were mainly just because he liked to paint animals, and liked for people to have them. He could only put a piece of himself into something he was going to sell, but they paid for the beers and I guess it’s like us fellows in Jack’s Bar: if you like talking, you don’t always have to be saying something important.

  Why animals? Well if you’d seen him with them I guess you wouldn’t have to ask. He loved them, is all, and they loved him right back. The cats were always his favourites. My old Pa used to say that cats weren’t nothing but sleeping machines put on the earth to do some of the human’s sleeping for them, and whenever Tom worked in the square there’d always be a couple curled up near his feet. And whenever he did a chalk drawing, he’d always do a cat.

  Once in a while, you see, Tom seemed to get tired of painting on paper, and he’d get out some chalks and sit down on the baking flagstones and just do a drawing right there on the dusty rock. Now I’ve told you about his paintings, but these drawings were something else again. It was like because they couldn’t be bought but would be washed away, he was putting more of himself into it, doing more than just shooting the breeze. They were just chalk on dusty stone and they were still in these weird colours, but I tell you children wouldn’t walk near them because they looked so real, and they weren’t the only ones, either. People would stand a few feet back and stare and you could see the wonder in their eyes. If they could’ve been bought there were people who would have sold their houses. I’m telling you. And it’s a funny thing but a couple of times when I walked over to open the store up in the mornings I saw a dead bird or two on top of those drawings, almost like they had landed on it and been so terrified to find themselves right on top of a cat they’d dropped dead of fright. But they must have been dumped there by some real cat, of course, because some of those birds looked like they’d been mauled a bit. I used to throw them in the bushes to tidy up and some of them were pretty broken up.