“Upstairs,” Ellie said. “The attic. The hatch is outside my room, it’s got a loft ladder, as far as I know it’s the only way up. Maybe we could hold them off until . . .”
“Until they go home for tea,” Rosalie whispered. I said nothing. There was no use in verbalizing the hopelessness we felt at the moment, because we could see it in each other’s eyes. The snow had been here for weeks and maybe now it would be here forever. Along with whatever strangeness it contained.
Ellie checked the bag of cartridges and handed them to me. “Hand these to me,” she said. “Six shots left. Then we have to beat them up.”
It was dark inside the manor, even though dawn must now be breaking outside. I thanked God that at least we had some candles left . . . but that got me thinking about God and how He would let this happen, launch these things against us, torture us with the promise of certain death and yet give us these false splashes of hope. I’d spent most of my life thinking that God was indifferent, a passive force holding the big picture together while we acted out our own foolish little plays within it. Now, if He did exist, He could only be a cruel God indeed. And I’d rather there be nothing than a God who found pleasure or entertainment in the discomfort of His creations.
Maybe Rosalie had been right. She had seen God staring down with blood in his eyes.
As we stumbled out into the main hallway I began to cry, gasping out my fears and my grief, and Ellie held me up and whispered into my ear. “Prove Him wrong if you have to. Prove Him wrong. Help me to survive, and prove Him wrong.”
I heard Jayne beyond the main front doors, calling my name into the snowbanks, her voice muffled and bland. I paused, confused, and then I even smelled her; apple-blossom shampoo; the sweet scent of her breath. For a few seconds Jayne was there with me and I could all but hold her hand. None of the last few weeks had happened. We were here on a holiday, but there was something wrong and she was in danger outside. I went to open the doors to her, ask her in and help her, assuage whatever fears she had.
I would have reached the doors and opened them if it were not for Ellie striking me on the shoulder with the stock of the shotgun.
“There’s nothing out there but those things!” she shouted. I blinked rapidly as reality settled down around me but it was like wrapping paper, only disguising the truth I thought I knew, not dismissing it completely.
The onslaught increased.
Ellie ran up the stairs, shotgun held out before her. I glanced around once, listening to the sounds coming from near and far, all of them noises of siege, each of them promising pain at any second. Rosalie stood at the foot of the stairs doing likewise. Her face was pale and drawn and corpse-like.
“I can’t believe Hayden,” she said. “He was doing it with them. I can’t believe . . . does Ellie really think he . . . ?”
“I can’t believe a second of any of this,” I said. “I hear my dead wife.” As if ashamed of the admission I lowered my eyes as I walked by Rosalie. “Come on,” I said. “We can hold out in the attic.”
“I don’t think so.” Her voice was so sure, so full of conviction, that I thought she was all right. Ironic that a statement of doom should inspire such a feeling, but it was as close to the truth as anything.
I thought Rosalie was all right.
It was only as I reached the top of the stairs that I realized she had not followed me.
I looked out over the ornate old banister, down into the hallway where shadows played and cast false impressions on eyes I could barely trust anyway. At first I thought I was seeing things because Rosalie was not stupid; Rosalie was cynical and bitter, but never stupid. She would not do such a thing.
She stood by the open front doors. How I had not heard her unbolting and opening them I do not know, but there she was, a stark shadow against white fluttering snow, dim daylight parting around her and pouring in. Other things came in too, the whites, slinking across the floor and leaving paw prints of frost wherever they came. Rosalie stood with arms held wide in a welcoming embrace.
She said something as the whites launched at her. I could not hear the individual words but I sensed the tone; she was happy. As if she were greeting someone she had not seen for a very long time.
And then they hit her and took her apart in seconds.
“Run!” I shouted, sprinting along the corridor, chasing Ellie’s shadow. In seconds I was right behind her, pushing at her shoulders as if this would make her move faster. “Run! Run! Run!”
She glanced back as she ran. “Where’s Rosalie?”
“She opened the door.” It was all I needed to say. Ellie turned away and concentrated on negotiating a corner in the corridor.
From behind me I heard the things bursting in all around. Those that had slunk past Rosalie must have broken into rooms from the inside even as others came in from outside, helping each other, crashing through our pathetic barricades by force of co-operation.
I noticed how cold it had become. Frost clung to the walls and the old carpet beneath our feet crunched with each footfall. Candles threw erratic shadows at icicle-encrusted ceilings. I felt ice under my fingernails.
Jayne’s voice called out behind me and I slowed, but then I ran on once more, desperate to fight what I so wanted to believe. She’d said we would be together again and now she was calling me . . . but she was dead, she was dead. Still she called. Still I ran. And then she started to cry because I was not going to her, and I imagined her naked out there in the snow with white things everywhere. I stopped and turned around.
Ellie grabbed my shoulder, spun me and slapped me across the face. It brought tears to my eyes, but it also brought me back to shady reality. “We’re here,” she said. “Stay with us.” Then she looked over my shoulder. Her eyes widened. She brought the gun up so quickly that it smacked into my ribs, and the explosion in the confined corridor felt like a hammer pummelling my ears.
I turned and saw what she had seen. It was like a drift of snow moving down the corridor toward us, rolling across the walls and ceiling, pouring along the floor. Ellie’s shot had blown a hole through it, but the whites quickly regrouped and moved forward once more. Long, fine tendrils felt out before them, freezing the corridor seconds before the things passed by. There were no faces or eyes or mouths, but if I looked long enough I could see Jayne rolling naked in there with them, her mouth wide, arms holding whites to her, into her. If I really listened I was sure I would hear her sighs as she fucked them. They had passed from luring to mocking now that we were trapped, but still . . .
They stopped. The silence was a withheld chuckle.
“Why don’t they rush us?” I whispered. Ellie had already pulled down the loft ladder and was waiting to climb up. She reached out and pulled me back, indicating with a nod of her head that I should go first. I reached out for the gun, wanting to give her a chance, but she elbowed me away without taking her eyes off the advancing white mass. “Why don’t they . . .?”
She fired again. The shot tore a hole, but another thing soon filled that hole and stretched out toward us. “I’ll shoot you if you stand in my way any more,” she said.
I believed her. I handed her two cartridges and scurried up the ladder, trying not to see Jayne where she rolled and writhed, trying not to hear her sighs of ecstasy as the whites did things to her that only I knew she liked.
The instant I made it through the hatch the sounds changed. I heard Ellie squeal as the things rushed, the metallic clack as she slammed the gun shut again, two explosions in quick succession, a wet sound as whites ripped apart. Their charge sounded like a steam train: wood cracked and split, the floorboards were smashed up beneath icy feet, ceilings collapsed. I could not see, but I felt the corridor shattering as they came at Ellie, as if it were suddenly too small to house them all and they were ploughing their own way through the manor.
Ellie came up the ladder fast, throwing the shotgun through before hauling herself up after it. I saw a flash of white before she slammed the hatch down an
d locked it behind her.
“There’s no way they can’t get up here,” I said. “They’ll be here in seconds.”
Ellie struck a match and lit a pathetic stub of candle. “Last one.” She was panting. In the weak light she looked pale and worn out. “Let’s see what they decide,” she said.
We were in one of four attics in the manor roof. This one was boarded but bare, empty of everything except spiders and dust. Ellie shivered and cried, mumbling about her dead husband Jack frozen in the car. Maybe she heard him. Maybe she’d seen him down there. I found with a twinge of guilt that I could not care less.
“They herded us, didn’t they?” I said. I was breathless and aching, but it was similar to the feeling after a good workout; enervated, not exhausted.
Ellie shrugged, then nodded. She moved over to me and took the last couple of cartridges from the bag on my belt. As she broke the gun and removed the spent shells her shoulders hitched. She gasped and dropped the gun.
“What? Ellie?” But she was not hearing me. She stared into old shadows which had not been bathed in light for years, seeing some unknown truths there, her mouth falling open into an expression so unfamiliar on her face that it took me some seconds to place it – a smile. Whatever she saw, whatever she heard, it was something she was happy with.
I almost let her go. In the space of a second, all possibilities flashed across my mind. We were going to die, there was no escape, they would take us singly or all in one go, they would starve us out, the snow would never melt, the whites would change and grow and evolve beneath us, we could do nothing, whatever they were they had won already, they had won when humankind brought the ruin down upon itself . . .
Then I leaned over and slapped Ellie across the face. Her head snapped around and she lost her balance, falling onto all fours over the gun.
I heard Jayne’s footsteps as she prowled the corridors searching for me, calling my name with increasing exasperation. Her voice was changing from sing-song, to monotone, to panicked. The whites were down there with her, the white animals, all animals, searching and stalking her tender naked body through the freezing manor. I had to help her. I knew what it would mean but at least then we would be together, at least then her last promise to me would have been fulfilled.
Ellie’s moan brought me back and for a second I hated her for that. I had been with Jayne and now I was here in some dark, filthy attic with a hundred creatures below trying to find a way to tear me apart. I hated her and I could not help it one little bit.
I moved to one of the sloping roof-lights and stared out. I looked for Jayne across the snowscape, but the whites now had other things on their mind. Fooling me was not a priority.
“What do we do?” I asked Ellie, sure even now that she would have an idea, a plan. “How many shots have you got left?”
She looked at me. The candle was too weak to light up her eyes. “Enough.” Before I even realized what she was doing she had flipped the shotgun over, wrapped her mouth around the twin barrels, reached down, curved her thumb through the trigger guard and blasted her brains into the air.
It’s been over an hour since Ellie killed herself and left me on my own.
In that time snow has been blown into the attic to cover her body from view. Elsewhere it’s merely a sprinkling, but Ellie is little more than a white hump on the floor now, the mess of her head a pink splash across the ever-whitening boards.
At first the noise from downstairs was terrific. The whites raged and ran and screamed, and I curled into a ball and tried to prepare myself for them to smash through the hatch and take me apart. I even considered the shotgun . . . there’s one shot left . . . but Ellie was brave, Ellie was strong. I don’t have that strength.
Besides, there’s Jayne to think of. She’s down there now, I know, because I have not heard a sound for ten minutes. Outside it is snowing heavier than I’ve ever seen, it must be ten feet deep, and there is no movement whatsoever. Inside, below the hatch and throughout the manor, in rooms sealed and broken open, the whites must be waiting. Here and there, Jayne will be waiting with them. For me. So that I can be with her again.
Soon I will open the hatch, make my way downstairs and out through the front doors. I hope, Jayne, that you will meet me there.
2000
The Other Side of Midnight
Anno Dracula, 1981
Kim Newman
REMEMBER WHEN I SAID earlier that Best New Horror 2 was the only book I have ever had censored by a publisher? Well, that’s not strictly true.
After having been recently ripped-off by a British small press imprint to the tune of several thousand pounds, I decided that my editorial commentary for The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volume Twelve would be about integrity in publishing. Over the previous few years I had noticed that problems with publishers had been increasing as new technologies were steadily introduced, and I wanted to give a warning to new and upcoming writers. I felt that I was addressing a genuine concern in the horror field.
It therefore came as somewhat of a surprise when my agent informed me that my editor at the time was deeply upset about the piece and was “reluctant” to run it. Despite various attempts, I never did discover what she found objectionable about the editorial, yet I was forced to replace it with a hastily written rebuttal to (American) accusations on the Internet that I was including too many British writers in the series.
However, the whole baffling incident got me thinking. Obviously something in my piece had struck a nerve with my publisher and, for any writer, that is exactly the kind of response you hope to achieve with any kind of critical essay. So perhaps I had something worthwhile to say, after all . . .?
The original editorial eventually saw print a few years later in the World Horror Convention souvenir book and is available on my website, where it continues to attract positive comments.
But the problems with this volume did not end there. The publisher originally wanted to use a hilariously inappropriate image from an old Guy N. Smith novel on the cover that depicted a wormy corpse rising from the grave. After I strenuously complained, I was allowed to choose something more subtle from Les Edwards. Regrettably, the final image was cropped, but it was still a huge improvement over the initial choice.
Even with an abridged editorial, the Introduction came in at seventy-two pages, and the Necrology ran to forty-one. The book, which once again won the British Fantasy Award for Best Anthology, was dedicated to the memory of two old friends and colleagues, R. Chetwynd-Hayes and Richard Laymon.
The twenty-two stories were a nicely balanced selection that included Iain Sinclair’s second contribution to the series and a story by Hollywood film director Mick Garris.
As I had done with Terry Lamsley and Steve Rasnic Te m in earlier volumes, I top-and-tailed the contents with two stories by the same author. This time the honour went to Kim Newman, whose fiction had been appearing regularly in the series since the very first volume.
Although “Red Reign” (in Best New Horror 4) is arguably his most influential story and became the basis of the hugely successful series of Anno Dracula vampire novels, it has been widely anthologized over the years. So I have therefore chosen another tale set in the same alternate universe. One that skilfully combines Kim’s ability to mix real people with imaginary characters and his encyclopaedic knowledge of movie history . . .
I
AT MIDNIGHT, 1980 flew away across the Pacific and 1981 crept in from the East. A muted cheer rose from the pretty folk around the barbecue pit, barely an echo of the raucous welcome to a new decade that erupted at the height of the last Paradise Cove New Year party.
Of this company, only Geneviève clung to the old – the proper – manner of reckoning decades, centuries and (when they came) millennia. The passing of time was important to her; born in 1416, she’d let more time pass than most. Even among vampires, she was an elder. Five minutes ago – last year, last decade – she’d started to explain her position to a greying Califo
rnia boy, an ex-activist they called “the Dude”. His eyes glazed over with more than the weed he’d been toking throughout the party, indeed since Jefferson Airplane went Starship. She quite liked the Dude’s eyes, in any condition.
“It’s as simple as this,” she reiterated, hearing the French in her accent (“eet’s”, “seemple”, “ziss”) that only came out when she was tipsy (“teep-see”) or trying for effect. “Since there was no Year Nothing, the first decade ended with the end of Year Ten AD; the first century with the end of 100 AD; the first millennium with the end of 1000 AD. Now, at this moment, a new decade is to begin. 1981 is the first year of the 1980s, as 1990 will be the last.”
Momentarily, the Dude looked as if he understood, but he was just concentrating to make out her accented words. She saw insight spark in his mind, a vertiginous leap that made him want to back away from her. He held out his twisted, tufted joint. It might have been the one he’d rolled and started in 1968, replenished on and off ever since.
“Man, if you start questioning time,” he said, “what have you got left? Physical matter? Maybe you question that next, and the mojo won’t work any more. You’ll think holes between molecules and sink through the surface of the Earth. Drawn by gravity. Heavy things should be left alone. Fundamental things, like the ground you walk on, the air you breathe. You do breathe, don’t you, man? Suddenly, it hits me I don’t know if you do.”
“Yes, I breathe,” she said. “When I turned, I didn’t die. That’s not common.”
She proved her ability to inhale by taking a toke from the joint. She didn’t get a high like his; for that, she’d have to sample his blood as it channelled the intoxicants from his alveoli to his brain. She had the mellow buzz of him, from saliva on the roach as much as from the dope smoke. It made her thirsty.
Because it was just after midnight on New Year’s Eve, she kissed him. He enjoyed it, non-committally. Tasting straggles of tobacco in his beard and the film of a cocktail – white Russian – on his teeth and tongue, she sampled the ease of him, the defiant crusade of his back-burnered life. She understood now precisely what the expression “ex-activist” meant. If she let herself drink, his blood would be relaxing.
The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror Page 48