Jane was at my side, white and distraught.
"Edward," she pleaded. "Dr. Spiros is only trying to help you as am I."
"Fools!" I shrieked. "I am fully awake for the first time. It is he, THE KNOCKER, who is responsible!"
For I had looked beyond my struggling adversaries. It was indeed a dreadful sight. A tall, emaciated stranger with parchment face, stubbled beard and the white hair of an old man. Pale yellow eyes proclaimed the madman. Then I reeled, my senses tottering, as the two men bore me down. Another servant produced a strait-jacket.
As I went backwards a fearful mosaic formed before my eyes. I saw the knife in the madman's hand, still smeared with blood, and the sign in wrought iron over the porch; SPIROS ASYLUM FOR THE INSANE.
The truth was born in upon me as my senses collapsed. For the back of the hall was a brilliantly illuminated mirror and this pitiful madman reflected in the glass, with writhing features and foaming jaws was beyond all mortal help. THE KNOCKER AT THE PORTICO WAS MYSELF!
The manuscript had a note attached to it in another hand. It said that the patient 642 had spent three and thirty years in the asylum and had died there at the age of seventy-eight. I put back the papers in the box and sat in thought. My name is also Edward Rayner. I am the third son. The writer of the narrative was my great-grandfather. I also heard the knocking for the first time tonight.
5: Steve Chapman - The Throwaway Man
Lots of things happen that people don't see. They happen just the same. Lots of things move through the air and walk on the ground, that nobody knows about. That's because so few have the time to watch the moths and leaves and the little things that sometimes get stirred up like dead flowers on river water when something odd is going on.
Something was moving in the junk yard. Something deep in the centre of the stockpiled radio tubes and twisted fenders and tomato cans and cog wheels was making tiny clanking and scratching noises in the moonlight. The moths knew it. The leaves knew it.
The ocean beside the junk yard was wise and knew that the clockwork thing was bad. The machine didn't want to stay where it was, and it wanted to leave because it wanted to slice and rip and crush.
Why? Even the tides didn't know surely. Maybe the junk didn't want to be junk. Maybe it had anger in it.
But first the machine had to be ready. Every oddly shaped piece of metal had to be in place, before it could hobble down the road and out the gate into the world of people like you who break things and use things up and throw things away.
Which comes first: good or evil? Usually evil. Good counters.
Because something was moving under the wharf. Something was putting itself together from the algae strands and snails and tiny centipedes and wood slivers and oil slick on the rotten wooden posts of the wharf by the junk yard.
Was it good? Maybe. It only knew about the junk one and knew that the clockwork, spider-crab, stainless-whistle chopper had to be stopped in its tracks, before people could even see it and know enough to be afraid.
And the wharf one had time. Time to accumulate itself, sort itself out, gather strength from the tides and warm rain and cold wind. Time to wait for the full moon. Did I tell you that the confrontation was to take place under a full moon? That's what the crickets thought, and they should know.
The carp stayed away from the pier for fear of being sucked into the demanding goodness. Fishing was poor that month. Fishermen in hip boots and barefoot kids and curious dogs and stray cats didn't know what was going on. But the crayfish in the muddy underwater peered into the shadow of the wharf with their eyes on stalks and wondered. Sparrows avoided the junk yard. Migratory patterns were interrupted by the vibrations in the air and quiet wind.
So. The time came. The sharp-metal, ratchet-wheel, tinker's nightmare snapped and clattered and sharpened itself against itself and jerked into motion. The wet thing shivered and squinted and poured onto the wharf and rolled toward the mainland with a rustle and a scuffle.
They met at the fork in the road, the one thing heading for the world of people like you, the other thing heading for the machine. The wharf one lapped against the pipe-legs of its enemy and climbed up from there.
So they fought. A fight to the death from death.
Since the ocean thing had no substance and no strength to batter metal or pull apart joints, the best it could hope to do was to stop up the works. It seeped into the centre of the machine, past the brass knobs, past the aluminium plates, through the iron grids. The springs and cogwheels of the shiny thing felt the rippling snail-scrape on its insides, and it turned its scissor-claws inward. The ticky thing snapped at its own coil-spring muscles and tried to use its bent knives to scrape away the devouring goodness that ate away at its bright tin fingers.
They did not hate each other. They felt nothing. Not even pain. But they were drawn together. They had no choice.
Soon it was hard to tell the two of them apart. The glittering jacknife appendages thrashed in a pile of seething colloid. The bug-leg appendages were snapping listlessly, rusting away, going limp, one by one.
But an evil star sparkled in the night sky and reanimated the scrap-metal day-creeper, which went sputtering, hammering, rolling, chugging into the ditch by the road. They tumbled and slid and lurched past the towers of plastic throw-aways and discarded appliances and abandoned conveniences and through a barbed wire fence, which was re-strung the next month, and down a slope of clean grass. And onto the wharf. That decided the battle.
With a liquid roar of triumph, the slime glued itself tight and sucked at a rotten wharf post and threw them into the waves, destroying the web of a dock spider which began repairs immediately.
There were no bubbles to mark the spot. Only a trail of grease and sand which ended abruptly. And a small pile of filth and junk ripped off by a razor blade mouth. The hunk was kicked aside two days later by an early fisherman.
Whether the salt sea rinsed away the substance of the wharf thing, or rusted out the soul of the junk thing, or both, no one knew. Not even the crayfish wanted to look.
And no one knew what had happened, or what had cancelled out what, or why. No one knew at all.
But the sparrows are waiting on the wharf for something to come up.
6: Rosemary Timperley - The Woman With The Mauve Face
I keep seeing her. Does she really exist?
I mean-perhaps-does she exist in some other sphere and only I see her? Or do others see her too?
How to find out?
Impossible. You can hardly say to a stranger in the street: "Can you see that woman with the mauve face?"
Suppose you did. What would the stranger answer?
Two possible answers:
"That woman with the mauve face? Sure. She's over there."
Or: "What woman? I can't see anyone."
The latter answer would destroy me. That's why I can't take the gamble, can't take the risk. As long as I have the hope that she really is an ordinary woman with a mauve face and I do really see her, then I can delude myself that I'm sane.
Yet why do I try to hang on to this delusion?
I know it is one.
The woman with the mauve face is mine. I don't want her. I never invited her. Yet wherever I go, sooner or later, I see her.
She's usually sitting on a bench somewhere-in a station booking-hall-in the public gardens-outside the ladies' loo. Anywhere, everywhere. Wherever there are benches for the lost and lonely to sit on-there she is.
And I wouldn't mind seeing her so often if she didn't glare at me so.
Yet she does.
Why?
Why does she hate me? And who is she? And why does she turn up anywhere and everywhere? Honestly-I've only got to go out to meet someone, take a train, and I'm trying with all my might to feel fairly confident and pulled-together-and there she is-in the same train-on the opposite seat-glaring at me.
Same in a bus. Up to the top deck. Seems empty. Sit down, light a fag, scrabble for money when the conduc
tor comes up to collect-and then-peace broken-the woman with the mauve face is there too.
When the conductor comes up, he collects my fare, but not hers.
Why not?
Had she been on the bus earlier on and paid her fare already, and I just hadn't noticed her when I got on?
Or is she a figment of my own mind?
If only someone could tell me!
But I daren't ask anyone.
Well-what would you do if you were haunted by a woman with a mauve face?
Any advice would be welcome.
None?
Of course, I know really.
She is myself of the future. She hates me as much as I hate myself. No-not "as much as"-more. She looks at me and says, silently: "You did this to me!" She goes on: "You were passionate and self-willed and non-thrifty and cruel sometimes. You thought that you would die before the reckoning came. But you won't you know. You haven't the guts for suicide so you'll just go on, and on, and on, playing your part, saying the right things, acting the polite-until one day you'll reach me-and dissolve into me-and you will be me."
She says it so clearly, in that silent voice of hers, which articulates so accurately, yet makes no outward sound.
She is mine. I am hers.
But this is ridiculous. Surely other people see her too. Next time I see her, I really will ask someone…
Opportunity comes. The station booking-hall. There she is, the woman with the mauve face, sitting on a bench. Aside from her the booking-hall is deserted. It's early Sunday evening. A quiet time. I go to buy my ticket. The man behind the window shows a familiar face. "Hello, dear," he says. "Usual?"
"Yes, please. Cheap return to Mansion House." And then: "Who is that woman over there?"
'What woman?"
"On that bench-over there."
"There's no one there, dear. Slack time of night. You've been dreaming."
Pay for ticket. Smile a goodbye to the official. Go down to the platform. Wait for the train. On train now. Near-empty carriage. Where is she?
Nowhere. The sensible ticket-seller was right. No one there, dear… You've been dreaming.
Three stations later, she was sitting on the seat opposite me.
Please go away, I said silently.
I can't until you stop thinking of me she said silently.
You're me tomorrow?
Yes.
But why did you have to come and tell me? I don't want to know.
You must have wanted to know or I wouldn't be here.
When do we die?
For me, quite soon. For you-not until you've caught up with me.
No escaping the in-between stint?
No.
The silent conversation went on. And on. And on.
When I reached the station where I must alight, I got off and she followed me.
As I knew she wasn't real I ignored her. That is-I knew she was real-but I didn't think getting on and off trains would bother someone as future-other-world as her.
Until I heard a bump behind me. Then I looked back.
A woman had fallen on the platform. The train went on its way. A station official came hurrying towards us.
"Fall off the train, did she?" he asked.
"Yes, I'm afraid so."
The official and I bent over the figure of the fallen woman.
"Poor old dear," said the man. "I've seen her before. She gets a cheap ticket, then travels on the trains for hours and hours, she's got nowhere to go. When we of the trains let her down," he added, "she sits on benches-anywhere. And do you know, Madam, that one of the newest modern stations doesn't provide benches-because they don't want their booking-halls made untidy? Don't know what the world's coming to. Come on, then, dear-" And he tried to heave up the woman lying on the station platform.
She made no response. Only stared up at us with sightless eyes, from her mauve face.
"It's the meths what does it," said the kindly official. "Oh, well. Guess she's better off dead than alive. Don't you wait around, dear. You go to wherever you were going. I'll see to things. This is all run of the mill here."
I took him at his word. I went on to where I was going. And, selfish as I am, I was relieved! The woman with the mauve face was dead! She wouldn't sit around and glare at me anymore! Splendid!
Except-that she still does. Wherever I go-and always unexpectedly-and especially if I have an appointment to keep-and I really must be confident and "pulled-together" -then I see her-wherever I go-
But the difference now is that I don't think she hates me anymore. She's stopped, and I am still catching up and she knows that I'll reach her one day-and now that she's out of it all anyway, she's almost sorry. It's as if she feels my pain, and doesn't resent me for not feeling hers. A kindly feeling.
I know that it will take years for me to catch up with her, my alter ego.
Or maybe it will come sooner. For the other day I looked into my bedroom mirror-and saw, starkly, definitely, without any possiblity of imagination or self-deception-
The woman with the mauve face.
7: Ronald Blythe - Shadows Of The Living
The activity, both inside and outside Springwaters, had been immense. Springwaters, because the source of the broad, short, sluggish Bourton river literally sprang from the rough pasture just behind the house. Faulkner had watched all the preparations with his usual oblique gaze, keeping them at bay, as it were, and not allowing them his full interest.
He was in the study doing the farm accounts but the door was ajar and he could see all the to-ing and fro-ing; Sophie heaving the furniture about and Mrs. Blanch helping her. They were making a space in the library so that seventeen clergymen, including a bishop and an archdeacon, might robe. Through a series of doorways like those in a Velasquez, Faulkner was also able to see the darting movement in the Great Hall as the village ladies spread an enormous parish tea.
"What can I do?" he had offered.
Sophie had not needed to consider the question. "You can keep out of the way, that's what you can do."
The upheaval was bothering him, he realised. There was something over-reaching about it; a sense of going too far. Some kind of misjudgment, not so much of the occasion but of the person who was central to it. Once, he had got as far as the "field of operation", as Sophie called it, to suggest some kind of calming-down in all the preparations. It was after all, the induction of the new rector, not a hunt ball they were about. But the women wove around him, like ants round a stone, impervious to everything except their tasks and burdens. So now he ran his fat old-fashioned Parker up and down the feed bills, trying to concentrate, trying, too, to take the day in his stride. After all, parsons came and went, and Mr. Deenman would be no exception.
Staring straight ahead, Faulkner saw the familiar heart of the village, the huge shapeless, green, its little paths busy with people, its surround of lanes glittering with cars and vans. The embryonic river trickled through it and children sailed over it on the swings which he and Sophie had given to commemorate the Festival of Britain. What had somebody said-quoted-when looking at the same scene from the Hall? "And all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." Well he certainly hoped so! Church and Hall shone towards each other in the late April light, as they had done for centuries.
A figure dramatically appeared on the top of the tower and soon the patronal flag hurled on the wind, a vivid cross on a white field, a scaffold as a matter of fact, thought Faulkner, surprising himself. A peculiar stomach-fluttering wax smell drifted through the room. "Blasted polishing and cleaning!" he grumbled to the sleeping dog. "What's it all about, eh? You tell me, boy!" It's about God, he thought morosely. It's either about God or it's about nothing. The alternatives see-sawed in his sub-conscious. If I believe, then what do I believe? he wondered. "Sophie!" he shouted.
She put her head round the door.
"Sophie, I was thinking, something has happened to us, hasn't it? To us and to our world. God isn't here as He was, well
when grandfather was here, is He? It's the truth, isn't it? It should make us scared or sad, yet it doesn't. Think how big God was when the man built the church and how little He is when you cut sandwiches for Terence!" Terence was the Bishop.
"I refuse to think anything of the sort," said Sophie. "You look a bit pale; are you all right?"
"I'm O.K. It's that damn floor polish. It seems to upset me."
"Darling, nobody has been polishing anything, and don't complain. Why don't you pack those accounts in if you don't feel like it? Go and do something in the garden for an hour-you've got time before lunch."
'I'm your tiresome little boy, aren't I?"
"You're my dear old boy," she said, kissing his thinning hair.
The gules and martlets and lozenges in the armorial window were caught in sunlight and spattered the pair of them with gaudy shadows. A few minutes later, Faulkner was happily walking through the orchard, noting the swollen buds and disturbing the finches. The smell of wax persisted but it no longer upset him. On the contrary, it seemed to lift and strengthen him. And when the first tentative sounds of the practise peel broke from the church tower he felt a return of ease which was almost as good as a return of certainty. What a relief! How could he have explained to Sophie-to anyone-that there had been moments during the past month when he had heard (although that was too strong and definite a word, maybe) the tumult of a destroying force making its relentless way towards the village, and seen wisps of smoky darkness, and had known the taste of substances which drew the lips back from the tongue in gagging refusal? Strolling back to the house, he heard the pips for the World at One and Mrs. Blanch calling, "Colonel!-her Ladyship says 'Lunch and hurry!' "
Sitting with the two women at the great scrubbed kitchen table, Faulkner ate quickly, as though solid food could fill what pockets of emptiness might remain within him. He thought, as he frequently did, though without rancour, of that enviable thing in most people's eyes, his inheritance, and how much better his life would have been without it. All the rooms and acres and farms, and the duties which festooned them, the local bench, the committees and, of course, the church. He and Sophie were museum-keepers, both in the metaphysical as well as in the material sense. Lumbered! He might, with a bit of conniving, heave the house and its contents into the lap of the National Trust but he could scarcely shed his duties. Not at his age. But he wished that life had provided him with more than merely a decent response to social obligations. It would have been nice to have been clever like Sophie, or really good like Mrs. Blanch. The trouble was, he never did have much imagination.
Richard Davis (ed) - [Year's Best Horror Stories 02] Page 9