The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror

by Stephen Jones

  They had pulled a cumbersome object, a box of some kind, up from the deck with a winch operated by a third man, above them on the jetty. He had been waiting for them, staring out to sea, for some time before they had arrived. Danny had asked his Gran to open the top window because it was an oppressively warm evening and the hotel room had a flat, earthy smell, like the inside of a greenhouse in winter. Through it he could hear the rattle of the hoist’s cranking chain as the box lurched into the air, and the barking shouts of the man operating it. He was a very big man, dressed in heavy, unseasonable garments that made him look like a bear. He moved like a bear as well, Danny thought, with rolling, lunging motions, and seemed to have trouble keeping his balance.

  When the box rose to the level of his shoulders the man pulled it around with a rope attached to the top of the hoist, then slowly lowered it onto the jetty. It must have slipped its chains at the last moment because Danny saw it suddenly drop a few inches, and heard it land with a sound that made him think it was very heavy, and made of wood. The bear-like man walked around it quickly, inspecting it, then shouted sharply down to the others on the boat. At once, a light came on in the cabin at the front of the smack. The engine started clunking, the third man cast off the ropes, and the vessel curved away out into the bay beyond, leaving a widening ark of crumpled tin-foil foam in its wake.

  “Danny – please. It’s so late, and you’ve not even got into your pyjamas!”

  Gran didn’t seem at all cross, as his mother would have been, but she sounded strained and disappointed in him. Danny hadn’t heard her come in, but she always moved like that – so quietly and carefully, like a phantom. He dropped the edge of the curtain and, feeling slightly ashamed of himself, took the tray bearing a mug of chocolate and some toast she had brought him for supper, and set it down on the table beside his bed.

  “I’m not tired, Gran,” he lied, then yawned hugely, giving the game away. “I was watching the sea,” he explained, somewhat inaccurately.

  “You’ve got all week for that,” Gran said, folding a triangle of quilt tidily back away from his pillow to display how temptingly comfortable the bed beneath it looked.

  Danny said, “I like the boats. There’s hundreds in the harbour. Will we be able to go for a trip on one?”

  “I can’t take Grandad, and I mustn’t leave him behind, but perhaps you could go on your own, if I think it’s safe.”

  “Is Grandad ill?” Danny asked, plugging the sink and twisting the taps to run water for his evening wash. When Gran didn’t answer he turned back to her and added, “He looks all right. I can’t see anything wrong with him.”

  “He’s not exactly ill, like you were last winter, with your chest. It’s just that, recently, he’s got a bit . . . forgetful.”

  “Yes,” Danny agreed, “I’ve noticed that,” and saw his Gran’s face darken. “I mean, sometimes, he looks at me as though he doesn’t know who I am. When I met you both at the station, and you left me with him and went to get a magazine, he asked me what my name was.”

  “Oh dear,” said Gran, poking nervously at the grey curl that dangled down over her right eye, “did he really?”

  “Then, when I told him, he just shook his head, as though he’d never heard of me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Danny said generously. “He got my name right later.” He began to brush his teeth.

  Pleased to be presented with this enforced curtailment of the conversation, when she had been thinking how she could change the subject without arousing in Danny an alarming suspicion that her husband was worse than he really was, Gran decided to make an exit.

  “Breakfast is at eight-thirty,” she said, after kissing Danny goodnight on the top of his head.

  “Can I go on my own, or must I wait for you?”

  “No, you’re big enough now to make your own way down, I think.”

  “Of course I am,” Danny agreed. “I was last year, when we went to Brighton, but you wouldn’t believe me.”

  Gran smiled, but she didn’t seem to agree with him. “Into bed now, Danny,” she insisted. “I’ll look in soon to make sure you’re asleep.”

  When she had gone Danny sipped the chocolate and pulled a face. It didn’t taste anything like it did at home, when his mother made it.

  He poured the drink down the sink, ate the toast quickly, got into his pyjamas, then could not resist taking one more peep out the window before getting into bed.

  The man on the jetty was still there. He was pushing the big heavy box towards the shore with great difficulty. He was bending behind it, almost on all fours, looking more than ever like a fat black bear. Although obviously pushing with all his strength, he was only managing to move it inches at a time. After two or three strenuous efforts he stopped, leaned against the box as though exhausted, then strained to shove it a couple of times more. It made a harsh crunching sound as it moved, as if it was sliding across a surface scattered with broken glass. The box was still only a few feet from where it had landed. At that rate, Danny thought, it would take the man all night to reach the end of the jetty!

  He could hear the box sliding and grinding along every now and then as he lay in bed, but it didn’t sound as if it was getting any nearer. He felt sorry for the man. Why didn’t he get someone to help him? He had looked somehow very lonely out there, and the way he had spoken to the men on the fishing boat, and they to him, had not sounded at all friendly. It occurred to Danny that it was likely that the man was not nice to know, and had no friends.

  When Gran peeped in, twenty minutes later, she could tell from his breathing that he was asleep. She was closing the door again when she heard the sound of the huge box being moved outside, and went to the window. By mistake, she had only brought her reading glasses on holiday with her, but was just able to see what Danny had seen and, like him, watched and speculated about the man on the jetty. At that moment he was leaning on the far edge of the box and his white blob of a face was looking up towards the hotel, or seemed to be. He remained in this pose for only a few moments, then suddenly bent down, shuffled his legs back a little, and began to push. His body appeared to compress as he increased his effort then, though Gran’s faulty vision could detect no movement, the box grated on the stone surface of the jetty as it jerked a few inches closer, and the figure behind it elongated. This happened three times, then the man stood up, stretched his back, arced his arms above his head, and glanced up towards the hotel again.

  Gran stepped away from the window and closed her eyes for a moment as a harsh, cold light shone in on her. She realized it was the headlights of a car turning off the promenade, up into the town. She suddenly felt an unexpected evening breeze from somewhere, that made the edges of the curtains flutter, and caused her to twitch and clench her teeth and shudder.

  Because of that, and because she didn’t want Danny woken up by any noise, she shut the window before she left the room.

  Someone knocked on the door. Danny opened his eyes, registered the dim daylight beyond the curtains, and waited. Gran never needed inviting. When, after a static silence, whoever it was knocked again, Danny sat up and called, “Come in.” A young woman in a pale blue overall stepped sideways into the room. Still holding the door handle she showed him a sketch of a smile and said, “G’morning. Tea or coffee?”

  Danny had not been expecting this. Hotels he had stayed in in the past had provided equipment for guests to make their own refreshments. He asked for tea and, while the girl was busy at a trolley he could see parked on the corridor outside, hauled himself up out of the last few yards of sleep, feeling obscurely embarrassed and slightly irritated.

  The girl placed the tea by his bed and gave it an extra stir. She said, “Sleep well?” in a distant sort of way.

  “Mmm, yes. Very, thank you.”

  “Good,” the girl acknowledged, and bent down over him and began fussing with his pillow. Danny made some effort to sit up. The girl must have thought he was ha
ving difficulty doing so, as she reached behind his head with her right hand and supported the upper part of his back. It was a gentle, helpful movement, but Danny didn’t like it. The girl’s fingers were thin and hard against his spine and there was something investigative about the way she touched him that made him uneasy, as though she was literally weighing him up, and testing the quality of the flesh beneath his pyjamas.

  He reared up away from her hand and shook his shoulders. The girl’s thumb and fingers rested for a moment on the top of his arm, almost squeezing, before she turned away to open the curtains with a flourish, revealing rain-spotted windows and, beyond, the grimy grey sky of the disappointing day outside.

  “They say it will clear up later,” the girl assured him, and the edgy smile shifted briefly across her face again. Danny couldn’t understand why he didn’t like her. There was nothing about her looks to upset him. She had a sharp, but almost pretty face, and she was obviously trying to be nice. She couldn’t help having hard, bony fingers.

  After she had gone Danny snuggled down into the bed again until he remembered the man on the jetty the night before. He played a game in his mind, laying bets with himself about how far the man had moved the box. In the end he decided there would be no sign of it. Someone would have been to collect it, and taken it away.

  He hopped out of bed to check, and saw the box still on the jetty, not far from where he had last seen it. A large sheet of dark green tarpaulin, tied in place with a strand of rope, had been draped over it. A puddle of rain had formed on top of it. There was no sign of the man. The jetty was otherwise empty.

  Danny found that if he stood on tiptoe he could just see over the roofs of the hotels on the street below him onto the beach to the left of the jetty. It too was deserted now, except for piles of deckchairs and a solitary dog, jumping and jerking in the foam at the waters edge, tugging savagely at something, probably a strand of black seaweed, that glistened like a hank of wet, soapy human hair. From time to time the dog dropped the weed, held up its head, and snapped its jaws open and shut.

  Realizing his window had been closed, because he couldn’t hear the creature barking, Danny climbed onto the sill and opened it. Cold damp air straight off the sea surged into the room. He could hear the sloshing breakers of the turning tide, slightly baffled by the veils of wind-blown rain that were sweeping across the town, and the urgent, worried yapping of the dog, sounding much further off than it really was.

  He washed, dressed quickly in a new T-shirt and jeans, and set out to find the dining room. The hotel was full of the smell of breakfast, and he hoped he could find his food by following his nose. He soon took a wrong turning, however, and wandered into a half-lit, grey painted room full of wheelchairs and pale-blue, uncomfortable looking furniture.

  There was a large mural on the wall depicting, in faded primary colours, what he thought must be heaven, with naked sexless angels leading stooping elderly humans, in white togas, through an English rural landscape, drawn in such a way as to suggest a vast perspective.

  At the top of the picture other angels, with tiny golden wings, flew through the sky, pulling strings of smiling old people along behind them. Yet more of the heavenly hosts, playing musical instruments, rested on cotton wool clouds beneath a beneficent, smirking sun, while a multitude of ancient mortals hovered around them, listening to their concert with obvious gratitude and appreciation.

  At first Danny thought he was alone in the room, then he noticed, scattered along the walls, a number of elderly people, seemingly asleep in their seats and wheelchairs. They were lolling sideways, backwards, or forward, like inanimate puppets. One old man, his liver-spotted head quite bald on top, with an aura of pearly curls of unbrushed hair stretching up from the back of his neck to above his ears like coral or fungus, lay stretched out face down on the table in front of him.

  Danny, chilled by the atmosphere of the room, froze on the spot for a few moments. Nobody moved, or showed in any way they were aware he was there, until a voice to his left called out, “Nurse! Is it you? Can you prop me up? My cushion slipped. I’ve lost it.”

  Danny turned towards the sound and saw an incredibly thin old lady leaning at a sharp angle out of a wheelchair. She was resting on one arm, with her elbow in her lap, and stretching so far forward, she seemed to defy gravity. Her other arm dangled, limp as a bell rope, by her side. She had had to lift her head right back to see him, and her toothless mouth hung open wide, as dark inside as a railway tunnel. A pair of red-rimmed glasses rested slightly askew on her nose. Behind them, it seemed, her eyes were shut.

  At the sound of her voice some of the other old people began to stir. A man’s tremulous voice called out insistently, “I’m hungry.” Someone started to cough and spit, another to moan, as though suddenly in pain, and a woman protested tiredly, “Mrs Grange has wet herself again. When are you going to do something about her?”

  Danny stared at the floor below the person closest to the old lady who had spoken last, and saw, under her chair, a dark stain on the carpet.

  The woman who had complained that she had lost her cushion repeated her plea for help, now sounding cross. Danny moved towards her and must have stepped into her line of vision because she said fiercely, “Who are you? You’re just a boy! Are they sending children, now, to look after us?”

  Danny snatched up the cushion and thrust it towards the woman, who whined, “That’s no good to me, unless you pick me up and pull me back. Can’t you see that if it wasn’t for the strap, I’d have fallen on my face? You can’t leave me like this . . . I can hardly breathe . . .” and her voice died away, as though she were indeed expiring.

  Danny saw she was held in place by a thick white belt tied tight around her waist and the back of her chair. She was so thin, the belt buckle on her stomach was only a couple of inches from the fabric of the chair against her spine.

  Danny placed his hand on the top of her chest, that felt like a bird cage under his palms, and tried to push her upright, but he was not tall enough, and must have done something painful, because she gave a shriek and shouted, “What are you doing, child? What are you doing? Let go, for God’s sake . . . you’re hurting me.”

  Some of the other old people started to shout abuse at him then, and he felt his eyes flood and his throat constrict, and knew he was going to cry.

  A man’s voice, coming from just behind Danny, said, “What’s the matter Betty? You are making a fuss. The young gentleman is only trying to help.”

  The scrawny woman said, “Where have you been Kelvin? Where’s our breakfast? You’re ever so late.”

  “No I’m not,” the man said. “I’m just on time.”

  “You’re a bloody liar,” the woman suggested peevishly. “What do you mean by sending bits of kids to look after us?”

  “He’s not on the staff, Betty, he’s a guest,” the man explained, easily hauling the woman upright and adjusting her limbs so she sat in a comfortable, balanced position.

  “Then why is he here? This is no place for kids.”

  “I don’t know.” The man, who was dressed in a white jacket, like the Chinese who worked in Danny’s local chip shop wore, gave him a curious, slightly angry look that was only partly disguised by the shadow of a smile he managed to force across his face. He had a bony, narrow head, with dark hair brushed back tight against his scalp, and a large nose under which sprouted a pencil moustache. His smile reminded Danny of the girl who had brought him tea half an hour earlier, who had also seemed to find it hard to form her features into a good humoured expression for more than a second.

  “I expect he’s got lost,” the man continued. “Is that right, young man?”

  Danny, choking back tears, wiped his fingers under his nose and nodded.

  “I expect you were looking for the dining room?”

  Danny didn’t stop nodding.

  “This is the Twilight Lounge. The room you want is on the floor below. You should have kept on walking, down another flight of stair
s.”

  The man clasped Danny’s shoulder unnecessarily hard and steered him out of the door. Two or three of the old people shouted, “Nurse, nurse!” in protest at being left alone again.

  “Back in a tick,” the man yelled, with an edge of irritation. His voice was so loud, Danny looked up at him, startled. Noticing this the man explained, in a more moderate tone, “They’re deaf, sonny. Most of them are deaf,” and led Danny to the top of the stairs and pointed the way to the dining room.

  Danny, no longer crying, and bursting with curiosity now, said, “Those old people back there . . . they thought you were a nurse, didn’t they?”

  “That’s what I am.”

  “But this is a hotel, not a hospital!”

  “It’s a bit of both,” the man said, after a short pause.

  “Oh,” Danny said, totally confused.

  Back in the lounge the old people were cackling and calling for Kelvin, who gave Danny a horrible wink that briefly distorted the whole of one side of his face, then retreated to join them.

  A portly woman pushed a heated trolley reeking of bacon out of the lift and across the corridor into the Twilight Lounge. She was greeted with a tiny, ironic ovation from the residents.

  Danny ran down to the dining room, which was almost empty. He had left his room at exactly eight-thirty, and the incident in the lounge had only lasted two or three minutes.

  He sat alone at a table close to a rain-flecked window that looked out to sea. He could see the box on the jetty and, through a gap between two of the buildings below, a slice of the promenade and the beach beyond. The box looked bigger and somehow heavier from the lower level. The wind blew up under the tarpaulin draped across it, causing the hanging sides of the covering to flap mournfully. It looked as though someone inside the box was reaching about through holes in the sides with their hands, trying to find some way out.