The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2003, Volume 14

by Stephen Jones

  The powerful hand, or paw, or appendage – it was hard to say, really, what it was, although it was depicted with clear sharp lines – was decidedly huge, grotesque, and malformed. The painter had, with a few hints of the brush, perfectly suggested a pale, mottled skin, covered with welts and half-burst blisters, bubbled as if diseased. It had its victim in an unbreakable hold, and was dragging him towards the unseen owner of the monstrous limb. She shuddered, glad that there were no more fragments to show what the ugly thing was attached to.

  Studying her find a bit more, Elizabeth saw that the painter had even tried to give a hint of depth, by clearly indicating, with only a few economical strokes, a background of thorn-bush. Perhaps it had something to do with a mystery religion; the Greek world was so full of those in the olden times. She put her find into the boat.

  Charles was thoroughly lost. That is to say, having taking the wrong way, he had no clear sense of where he was in the thicket, other than a vague impression that he was approaching its edge somewhere in the general direction of the beach where Elizabeth waited. It was hard to tell – the light was gradually weakening, and if he was not to spend the night amid the thorny jungle, he would have to leave it soon.

  As he crouched, stumbling over rocks in the waxing dimness, he found growing within himself a faint perception of someone walking parallel with him. The illusion took the form of a faint echo of his own footsteps, and was so strong that he stopped at one point to see if it would continue on its own. But there was nothing save the humid stillness and the choking clouds of dust that he had kicked up in his progress down.

  He came to an intersection of tunnels that he took to contain a subtle hint, triggering a weak memory of having been there before. Perhaps, unknowing, he had rejoined his original trail. One thing was certain, though: there was something tracking alongside him, in the seemingly impossible snarl to his left, the uphill side. From the time he had started again, the faint echo had grown louder; he was convinced that some curious beast was following him, although he could not imagine what it might be. But from the sound it made, it was large. How anything could manage in the impenetrable brush, so thickly grown together, was beyond his comprehension. The uncomfortable feeling that he was being herded glimmered through his mind, and lingered faintly. He found himself feeling faint, and on the edge of panic, wishing more than anything else that he was through the thicket jungle and out on the hillside on the way down to Elizabeth and the boat, which they could row out, if they had to.

  Just then, Charles suddenly saw the tunnel widen ahead of him, and, seeing the light beyond, hoped that it was the end of his trials, the end of the impenetrable brush.

  The narrow throat of greenery opened to a wide mouth, and he tumbled into the open, having to climb up a metre or more over a solid tangle of bleached small branches. Dazed by the heat, salt in his eyes, he dully registered that these were broken into bits, perhaps the result of coppicing or cutting, covering entirely what he now saw was only a large clearing, about as wide as a football pitch, with no other exit. His despair at not having broken out was mixed with relief on realising that whatever had been following him was now silent, perhaps having given up its stalking.

  Out of the dark interior of the thorns, he could see that there was still a surprising amount of light, making for good visibility, even though twilight was not too far off. There was still a glare from the sun, which had not yet departed the ridge of Tiflos, now visible across the strait to his left. Although light and colour were here in sufficiency, his impression of the clearing was shades of black and grey.

  Looking about, Charles saw in the middle of the open space a thin blackish stone, upright and flat, a little taller than the height of a full-grown man, standing in position on some kind of platform, loosely supported in its vertical position by a couple of small rude boulders at its base. He walked towards it, the cracking twigs and branches under his feet making an odd sound, something like the wind-chime noise that comes when walking on beaches made of broken coral branch.

  Going around the object, he saw that it was roughly anthropomorphic. What could have been wide shoulders now came into view, along with a narrowing at the top that perhaps was meant to represent a head. The whole plan of it suggested the smoothly polished Cycladic figures he had seen with his wife two years before in Athens. But when he came to the base of the menhir-like object, he saw that where the museum figures had folded arms and breasts and genitals incised, this figure was more rough, and whatever was meant to be represented by the crude hacking of the basaltic rock departed from the canonical in a suggestive, frightening and ugly fashion. He was not sure what was being shown, but he did not like it at all.

  Looking from the base of the platform, he could see that a long section of the hedge on the far side of the clearing was full of openings, through which the light showed. Perhaps only a bush thick, it was woven into a meshlike net: he had reached an edge of the tangle after all. The gaps between the twisted interlocking vines were too small to crawl through without enlargement. The glint of the sea below was beckoning; if need be, he could use the saw on his pocket tool to cut through the few tough branches and wiggle through. He would not, under any circumstance, consider trying further maze-wandering with the daylight diminishing so quickly.

  Just then, starting towards the thin remaining barrier and freedom, Charles kicked something, and looked down. By the tip of his right toe, amidst the carpet of broken wood, rested a round object, looking somewhat like a blanched fragment of rubber beach ball that had sat too long out in the sun. Reaching down and picking it up, he was stunned to see that it was a piece of a human cranium.

  This focused his thinking sharply for the first time since he had entered the clearing. Looking around him, seeing details he had ignored, he felt sickened to realize that what he had thought was stripped wood was, in fact, bone. The entire open area was covered with cracked splinters of it, and the pit of his stomach dropped when this simple fact sank in.

  Nauseated, he stumbled, and his hand reached out for support towards the primitive statue behind him. He leaned on to it, only to have it move under the pressure. Charles jumped back, and saw it crash and crack across its middle on the rim of the platform.

  At which moment, from the edge of the clearing by the single entrance, a clatter arose. Something big had somehow forced its way under the blanket of bones, and was moving smoothly and rapidly along, like a shark on land, throwing out a visible ripple along the axis of its movement, which was towards Charles. The clacking was more resonant than the chimelike sound he had made crossing to the sculpture. Something was rising through the loose whitened mass as it approached, with a small bow-wave of skeletal remains and pieces being tossed out to either side.

  As the white bulk beneath the bony sea neared him, Charles broke, screaming, and ran for the far tangle.

  * * *

  Elizabeth shivered with the sudden coolness as the sun disappeared behind the ridge, at a loss for to what to do. Going up into the thicket in the darkness would be no good whatsoever. She was better off waiting below, in case Charles made it out soon. Nothing would be worse than his coming down, finding her gone, and then running up into the impossible bushes again in an effort to find her.

  While rationalizing this choice, the sound of a motor behind her intruded into her thought. Full of unease, she wheeled around, and saw a boat similar to theirs approaching. Splashing into the shallows, she saw at the throttle a single figure that resolved into Panagiotis as the inflatable neared the strand. She stumbled backwards as he ran the craft up on to shore, cutting the motor and lifting and locking it into an angled position in one neat motion, to protect the propeller from the bottom rocks. A young goat, a kid, was trussed up in the bow, bleating poignantly.

  With the man’s appearance, Elizabeth’s reserve broke down. She grabbed his thick hairy arm by the wrist even before he set foot on land. “Thank God you’re here! Charles has wandered up on to the hillside, and I’m afr
aid he’s lost. Is there anything you’ve got that we can use to signal him, to help him find his way down?”

  The Greek, who had been smiling slightly, was suddenly grim. “Where on the hillside did he go? Up by the olives?”

  “No, higher. He was trying to get up on top, to see if he could find a path or help. You see, our motor stopped and we couldn’t get it started again, so—” Her breathy explanation was interrupted by some loud but distant sound from above, at the edge of the green wall nearest them.

  A tear ran down Elizabeth’s cheek. Panagiotis peered into the gloom, and then more noise came to them, something like a loud ripping of leaves mingled with a splintering sound. He turned his gaze to Elizabeth, and she saw that he had begun to sweat. A look was in his eyes that she had never seen in anybody’s before. It was extreme fear, with undertones of greed and awe commingled, and a hint of undisguised lust. She could not, in her building panic, interpret its import.

  He turned as the intensity of the racket from the distant thicket increased, and dragged the kid roughly from the boat, tossing it on the pebbles where it rested, supine, tongue hanging from its mouth, slitted eyes bulging with fear. The sound from high up now changed, both like and unlike the roar of a lion.

  “Get in the boat.”

  “We— I can’t. Charles is up there, he’s in some kind of trouble. We can’t leave him!”

  Panagiotis said nothing more while she protested, but took the line of the disabled vessel and knotted it to a cleat on his boat. About to shove the couple’s disabled transport out into the water, something caught his attention, and he reached down into the raft, taking something out. Stepping briskly up to her, he shoved the ancient pottery into her face, demanding loudly, “What is this? What is this?”

  “It’s nothing, nothing, it’s only pottery I found here by the shore! What does it matter? Can’t you help Charles?” By now she was nearly screaming, while the sounds above them increased.

  Between clenched teeth, anger having got the better of fear momentarily, the Greek muttered, “I told you not to come here! What fools!” and flung the two sherds from him.

  Elizabeth started away, going up, inland, when something totally unexpected happened. Panagiotis took her by the shoulder, swung her around, and slapped her across the face so hard that she saw stars.

  She was stunned, and stood motionless while he shoved the boats into the shallows. Without any prelude, he walked back, grabbed Elizabeth by the wrist, and dragged her out to the bobbing Zodiac. She tried to dig in her heels, but his bulk and strength made her effort futile, and he effortlessly threw her into the vessel before jumping aboard himself. He started the motor and the two craft began to draw away swiftly, their prows swinging around towards the darkening channel that separated them from Tiflos.

  Limp, drained of all resistance, all thinking gone from her mind, Elizabeth slowly lifted her gaze to where the sounds still came from, and saw, for the first time, something very large, and white, tearing uselessly at the barrier of thorn from inside. It threw itself again and yet again at the shaking net of roots and branches, but could not penetrate it. The barrier yielded, sagging beneath the impact, but did not give. It was as if the massive thing was trapped, and was raging inside, casting itself against the wall of vines that held it in. Something wet was being slapped against the thicket, and then being picked up and dashed against it again. Now and then she thought she saw a splotch or two of red against the huge paleness, but she was not sure. Half in shock, she remained passive when she felt Panagiotis’s grip high up her thigh, kneading it in his oversized paw, stroking the inside of her leg.

  She knew that whatever it was saw them in the boat, and that its rage was somehow connected with this. At that knowledge, she broke down and finally began to weep, collapsing onto the gunwale, as the pulsing motor unwaveringly pushed them across the channel, into the night.

  DAVID J. SCHOW

  The Absolute Last of the

  Ultra-Spooky, Super-Scary

  Hallowe’en Horror Nights

  DAVID J. SCHOW, A CONTRIBUTOR TO several past volumes of The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, still lives in the Hollywood Hills, and still works in the “script mines”, and now wonders what the cinema equivalent of black lung might be.

  His collection of essays from Fangoria magazine, Wild Hairs, won the 2001 International Horror Guild Award for Best Non-fiction. The author’s more recent books include the final volume of the Lost Bloch trilogy (subtitled Crimes and Punishments), and Elvisland, a landmark collection of John Farris’s short fiction (both of which he edited); a resurrected, polished and spiffed-up reissue of his first collection, Seeing Red; a trade paperback edition of his fourth collection, Crypt Orchids; a new collection of living-dead stories entitled Zombie Jam; a short novel, Rock Breaks Scissors Cut, and a new mainstream suspense novel, Bullets of Rain.

  “ ‘The Absolute Last of the Ultra-Spooky, Super-Scary Hallowe’en Horror Nights’ was completed on Hallowe’en, 2001,” recalls Schow, “and immediately performed (read aloud) for a ready audience at the home of monster-memorabilia collector Bob Burns.

  “It is yet another story in the ‘monsters old versus monsters new’ cycle which keeps growing when I’m not looking, and currently includes ‘Monster Movies’, ‘Last Call for the Sons of Shock’, ‘(Melodrama)’ and ‘Gills’ – I suppose a book collecting them all is inevitable.

  “This one also permits me to blow off a little steam over the etymological removal of the apostrophe from ‘Hallowe’en’, which became a common usage sometime after the release of the eponymous film, and annoys me to this day. The reader may perceive a vague whiff of roman-à-clef in regard to certain Southern California amusement parks and movie studios; please be assured that any similarity to existing persons, places, or events is entirely coincidental, and that no werewolves were harmed in the making of this little fiction.”

  “MUMMIES, TAKE THE TRAM to the prep trailer in Area Two. Ghouls and zombies, anybody who’s not a straight rubberhead – trailer four, right behind me. I want the Frankensteins to line up according to height in the parking space over by Ops, which is right next to Security on your map. Draculas, your dressing room is the big space near the cafeteria. Rubberheads, you’ve got a thing looks like a sorta circus tent not too far from the restrooms, ’cos you don’t need so much prep. Everybody else – if you’re a Wolf Man or a Pinhead or a Freddy or Leatherface; all the Aliens and Jasons and Beetlejuices – report directly to Ops to see the script grid and get an assignment from Tracy or Kimberly; pick up your chainsaws, whatever gear your character needs. Everybody tracking? Can you all hear me, monsters?”

  That’s the problem with monsters, thought Oscar. They never pay attention.

  He looked around at his fellow players. They were probably all like him, wondering how the performance life had brought them to this low ebb – playing monsters for some movie studio’s amusement-park exploitation of Hallowe’en. Oscar had six years of formal dance training and tutelage with top choreographers under his Spandex belt. He had been in Cats and The Lion King, for Christsake.

  He was still waiting for the first review that actually named him.

  Hallowe’en SpookyNight had come via the usual cattle-call, and making the cast cuts, for Oscar, was a breeze. The ads for the annual horror-themed in-park “adventures” promised a hair-raising, bone-chilling smorgasbord of monsters. Basically, it was your standard All Hallow’s haunted house gauntlet, but super-sized into a combination of live theatre, wax museum and modular walk-through chamber of horrors, diverse and just time-consuming enough to justify the pricey admission fee – just over thirty bucks per head. The adjacent multiplex was screening a Spook-a-Thon of cheap rentals (nothing not already available in better shape on DVD), and patrons could avail their bone-chilled psyches of genuine alcohol at several clearly labeled watering holes. Needless to say, the Spook-a-Thon cost extra, as did the cocktails. No specials or mark-downs, especially during a buying season where retaile
rs were already caterwauling about making their nut.

  The show runner with the megaphone was named Randy . . . something. He was slumming, too, having lost an assistant director slot on some sitcom. From beneath his studio-logoed baseball cap, which might as well have been embroidered with the word ASSHOLE, he deployed attitude as though he was Patton, whipping the Third Army into a killing frenzy.

  “A-Number One priority, people,” announced Randy. He had one of those bullhorns that strapped to his shoulder and permitted him to speak through a mike. “We can’t stress this enough. You are reminded not to grab or physically interface with the guests.” Everyone nodded or murmured; they had all been told dozens of times, and this item came first on the hot sheet that had been distributed on the first day.

  Following the Disneyland rule, visitors to the park were called “guests”, though that term was freighted with none of the obligatory courtesy. The unspoken understanding was that the “guests” were really the Enemy, and for the entire crew staffing the studio’s annual scare show the objective was to survive long enough to get paid the going flat rate for “ambient atmosphere”, that is, monsters.

  The juice of genuine danger had amplified the touchy proposition of having live monsters on the lurk. Last year, one of the Draculas had gotten dragged to death when he got hung up in the tailgate of a tour tram. A teenager had gotten hit in the shoulder by a bullet fired into the air outside the park. And more and more non-preferred social element was showing up just to raise hell and start shit. Park security was lumbered beyond their capacity just breaking up gang fights, so a visible police presence had been attenuated. The show had to go on, basically, because the gate was irresistible to the studio suits, who thus deterred blame when their movies flopped.