The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2003, Volume 14

by Stephen Jones

  More fire crews and emergency teams were finding their way into the city, but it was all over. Desperate salvage jobs were failing. Men were weeping or consoling the weeping. Cassie passed a pile of archaic manuscripts someone had pulled from the smoking ruins of the library but had then abandoned on the pavement. Gothic script and illuminated letters, handwritten by an ancient monk, left to char and blow along the street.

  Cassie drifted through the streets with the surety of a sleepwalker, passing fire crews hosing mechanically and without hope. One fireman nodded to her, with a blackened face and with an insane grin twisting his mouth, as if he wanted her to share in some joke. It was all over. It was burning, and everything was gone. A fine, cold drizzle started to descend, mixed in with the swirling ash and soot and dust, forming a warm smog that brushed the face like hot cobwebs. The reek was one of cooked filth, of cracked drains and broken sewers, the spices of hell’s kitchen.

  No more raids came in, but it was not until six-fifteen that the all-clear sounded, mournful and hollow in the grey light. The drizzle made for steam, and where black smoke wasn’t belching from the rubble, white vapour added to the dense, evil pall draped over the city. Cassie wandered without purpose, feeling herself like smoke, thinning, vague, unable to remember her purpose. Almost a ghost.

  The city itself was a spectre. The steam and the mist and the smoke rendered the remaining walls and angles of broken buildings like vague pencil sketches, or photographic negatives, or perhaps they were only after-images of toppled buildings. Unrecognizable shells stood on weird stilts. Landmarks had vanished into rubble. Millions of bricks, splinters of wood, twisted girders, clumps of plaster and shards of glass spread in huge barrow-mounds across the streets. Cassie wandered down Cross Cheaping alongside the remains of a department store and saw a tailor’s dummy hanging from a window. Amid a pile of rubble an ironwork lamp stand boasted an untouched sign reading BUSES FOR KERESLEY STOP HERE. Beneath it was the twisted, melted skeletal frame of a double-decker.

  And the people began to emerge. They picked their way over the bricks and the rubble, and they didn’t speak. Cassie watched them, saw them making internal inventory, trying to orientate themselves. They moved about in huddles. They touched their faces a great deal as they moved, silently, through the desolation.

  Some business proprietors and shopkeepers arrived, bent on getting into the remains of their stores. Brief arguments broke out with police and ARP men. One tobacconist, finding only a single wall remaining, had salvaged a few bales of tobacco. He found a piece of card and wrote on it: Tobacco sale, slightly smoked. Half price. Then he sat down on a timber joist and waited for trade.

  “I’d like a smoke,” Cassie told him.

  The tobacconist looked up at her. “Been at it all night, have you?” he said brightly. “You look all in. Here, help yourself. On the bleedin’ house.”

  “Would you roll one for me? My fingers are numb.”

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll roll one for you, and one for me. And we’ll sit down here together and we’ll smoke ’em, and we’ll say we’re glad to be alive. How about that?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Right, then.” The tobacconist made a big show of finding Cassie a spot on the timber beside him, dusting it off for her before she sat down. “Shouldn’t have a problem finding a light,” he said. Cassie smiled. He rolled two neat cigarettes, lighting them both before handing one to her. They sat and smoked, each in honour of the other, and each not taking their gaze from the other until the cigarettes were done. And during that time Cassie hummed a tune, very softly.

  “ ‘Moonlight Serenade’,” said the tobacconist. “Funny. I had that tune going round in my head afore you sat down.”

  Cassie grinned, as if she knew something. People stopped to look at them, and everyone cracked a thin smile at his sign. “You need to go home, darlin’,” said the tobacconist. “If you’ve a home to go to.”

  “Hadn’t thought of that,” Cassie said.

  She trudged through streets now thronged with people. Incredibly, most of them seemed to be up and dressed and on their way to their places of employment, as if they thought the morning ritual in preparation for work might change the events of the raid. They wheeled their bicycles through the rubble, they carried their knapsacks or their briefcases. A large number of houses outside the city centre had been demolished or damaged, and as she approached home Cassie’s footsteps quickened.

  The house was untouched. The front door was slightly ajar. Martha stood inside with Beatie. When they saw her come in – Cassie, with blackened face and filthy clothes and with her tin helmet – they peered hard at her. Then Martha screamed and ran to her and hugged her and howled and beat her child’s back and head with her fists, hard, so hard that Beatie had to pull her away, before letting their mother hug Cassie to her.

  “Cassie,” Martha wailed. “What are you, Cassie? What must we do with you? Wherever have you been?”

  “I’ve been helping the dead,” said Cassie. “Beatie, you can have my record player.”

  And she sat down and slept.

  DON TUMASONIS

  The Prospect Cards

  DON TUMASONIS DESCRIBES HIMSELF AS: “A washed-out academic aspirant once given to obscure scribbling for barely existent journals and books from here to Kathmandu.” He claims to now prefer the fame and adulation resulting from such pieces as those printed in this book.

  The author also takes care to warn potential admirers desiring to camp out on his doorstep that he releases his large three-headed cat Heliogabalus outside each morning, to empty the compound, as it were. The resultant mess must be cleared away due to restrictions imposed by his suburban Scandinavian housing council – sticklers for neatness – so he really would prefer visitors to use armoured cars.

  The following story won the International Horror Guild Award, and as Tumasonis explains about his second contribution to this volume of Best New Horror: “Like many authors, I keep notes of themes and odd ideas for future use. Seeing one day that the drawer for such scraps was overflowing one room, I sat down to write ‘The Prospect Cards’ with the view of freeing needed space, but soon discovered the tale would exceed the length of War and Peace, were all motifs developed in a straight linear fashion. It was then that I hit upon the idea of the broken narrative, thinking ‘Why should I, as writer, have to do all the work?’ ”

  Dear Mr Cathcart,

  We are happy to provide, enclosed with this letter, our complete description of item no. 839 from our recent catalogue ’Twixt Hamman and Minaret: 19th and Some Early 20th Century Travel in the Middle East, Anatolia, Nubia, etc. , as requested by yourself.

  You are lucky in that our former cataloguer, Mr Mokley, had, in what he thought were his spare moments, worked to achieve an extremely full description of this interesting group of what are probably unique items. Certainly no others to whom we have shown these have seen any similar, nor have been able to provide any clew as to their ultimate provenance.

  They were purchased by one of our buyers on a trip to Paris, where, unusually – since everyone thinks the bouquinistes were mined out long ago – they were found in a stall on the Left Bank. Once having examined his buy later that evening, he determined to return the following day to the vendor in search of any related items. Alas, there were no others, and the grizzled old veteran running the boxes had no memory of when or where he had purchased these, saying only that he had had them for years, perhaps since the days of Marmier, actually having forgotten their existence until they were unearthed through the diligence of our employee. Given the circumstance of their discovery (covered with dust, stuffed in a sealed envelope tucked away in a far corner of a green tin box clamped onto a quay of the Seine, with volumes of grimy tomes in front concealing their being), we are lucky to have even these.

  Bear in mind that, as an old and valued customer, you may have this lot at 10% off the catalogue price, post free, with insurance additional, if desired.<
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  Remaining, with very best wishes indeed,

  Yours most faithfully,

  Basil Barnet

  Barnet and Kort,

  Antiquarian Travel Books and Ephemera

  No. 839

  Postal view cards, commercially produced, various manufacturers, together with a few photographs mounted on card, comprising a group of 74. Mostly sepia and black-and-white, with a few contemporary tinted, showing scenes from either Balkans, or Near or Middle East, ca. 1920–30. The untranslated captions, when they occur, are bilingual, with one script resembling Kyrillic, but not in Russian or Bulgarian; the other using the Arabic alphabet, in some language perhaps related to Turco-Uighuric.

  Unusual views of as yet unidentified places and situations, with public and private buildings, baths, squares, harbours, minarets, markets, etc. Many of the prospects show crowds and individuals in the performance of divers actions and work, sometimes exotic. Several of the cards contain scenes of an erotic or disturbing nature. A number are typical touristic souvenir cards, generic products picturing exhibits from some obscure museum or collection. In spite of much expended effort, we have been unable to identify the locales shown.

  Entirely unfranked, and without address, about a third of these have on their verso an holographic ink text, in a fine hand by an unidentified individual, evidently a travel diary or journal (non-contiguous, with many evident lacunæ). Expert analysis would seem to indicate 1930 or slightly later as the date of writing.

  Those cards with handwriting have been arranged in rough order by us, based on internal evidence, although the chronology is often unclear and the order therefore arbitrary. Only these cards – with a single exception – are described, each with a following transcription of the verso holograph text; the others, about 50 cards blank on verso, show similar scenes and objects. Our hypothetical reconstruction of the original sequence is indicated through lightly pencilled numbers at the upper right verso corner of each card.

  Condition: Waterstain across top edges, obscuring all of the few details of date and place of composition. Wear along edges and particularly at corners. A couple of cards rubbed; the others, aside from the faults already noted, mostly quite fresh and untouched.

  Very Rare. In our considered opinion, the cards in themselves are likely to be unique, no others having been recorded to now; together with the unusual document they contain, they are certainly so.

  Price: £ 1,650

  Card No. 1

  Description: A dock, in some Levantine port. A number of men and animals, mostly mules, are congregated around a moored boat with sails, from which large tonnes, evidently containing wine, labelled as such in Greek, are being either loaded or unshipped.

  Text: not sculling, but rather rowing, the Regatta of ’12, for which his brother coxswained. Those credentials were good enough for Harrison and myself, our credulity seen in retrospect as being somewhat naïve, and ourselves as rather gullible; such, however, is all hindsight. For the time being, we were very happy at having met fellow countrymen – of the right sort, mind you – in this god-forsaken backwater at a time when our fortunes, bluntly put, had taken a turn much for the worse. When Forsythe, looking to his partner Calquon, asked “George, we need the extra hands – what say I tell Jack and Charles about our plans?” To that Calquon only raised an eyebrow, as if to say it’s your show, go and do as you think fit. Forsythe, taking that as approval, ordered another round, and launched into a little speech, which, when I think back on the events of the past weeks, had perhaps less of an unstudied quality than his seemingly impromptu delivery would have implied. Leaning forward, he drew from his breast pocket a postal view card, and placed it on the table, saying in a lowered voice, as if we were fellow conspirators being drawn in, “What would you think if I told you that from here, in less than one day’s sail and a following week’s march, there is to be found something of such value, which if the knowledge of it became common, would

  Card No. 2

  Description: A view of a mountain massif, clearly quite high and rugged, seen from below at an angle, with consequent foreshortening. A fair amount of snow is sprinkled over the upper heights. A thick broken line in white, retouch work, coming from behind and around one of several summits, continues downward along and below the ridge-line, before disappearing. This evidently indicates a route.

  Text: – ania and Zog. Perfidious folk! Perfidious people. Luckily, our packet steamer had arrived and was ready to take us off. A night’s sailing, and the better part of the next day took us to our destination, or rather, to the start of our journey. After some difficulty in finding animals and muleteers, we loaded our supplies, hired guides and, after two difficult days, arrived at the foothills of the mountains depicted on the obverse of this card. Our lengthy and laborious route took us ultimately up these, where we followed the voie normale, the same as shown by the white hatched line. Although extremely steep and exposed, the slope was not quite sheer and we lost only one mule and no men during the 1500-metre descent. Customs – if such a name can be properly applied to such outright thieves – were rapacious, and confiscated much of what we had, including my diary and notes. Thus the continuation on these cards, which represent the only form of paper allowed for sale to the

  Card No. 3

  Description: A panorama view of a Levantine or perhaps Balkan town of moderate to large size, ringed about by snow-covered mountains in the distance. Minarets and domes are visible, as is a very large public building with columns, possibly Greco-Roman, modified to accommodate some function other than its original religious one, so that the earlier elements appear draped about with other stylistic intrusions.

  Text: vista. With the sun setting, and accommodation for the men and food for the animals arranged, we were able to finally relax momentarily and give justice, if only for a short while, to the magnificence of the setting in which the old city was embedded, like a pearl in a filigreed ring. I’ve seen a lot of landscapes, ’round the world, and believe me, this was second to none. The intoxicating beauty of it all made it almost easy to believe the preposterous tales that inspired Calquon, and particularly Forsythe, to persuade us to join them on this tossed-together expedition. I frankly doubt that anything will come of it except our forcing another chink in the isolation which has kept this fascinating place inviolate to such a degree that few Westerners have penetrated its secrets over the many centuries since the rumoured group of Crusaders forced their

  Card No. 4

  Description: A costume photograph, half-length, of a young woman in ethnic or tribal costume, veiled. The decolletage is such that her breasts are completely exposed. Some of the embroidery and jewellery would indicate Cypriote or Anatolian influence; it is clear that she is wearing her dowry in the form of coins, filigreed earrings, necklaces, medallions, and rings. Although she is handsome, her expression is very stiff. [Not reproduced in the catalogue]

  Text: Evans, who should have stuck to Bosnia and Illyria. I never thought his snake goddesses to be anything other than some Bronze Age fantast’s wild dream, if indeed the reconstructions are at all accurate. Harrison, however, has told me that this shocking – i.e. for a white woman (the locals are distinctively Caucasian: red hair, blue eyes and fair skin appearing frequently, together with traces of slight Mediterranean admixture) – déshabille was common throughout the Eastern Ægean and Middle East until a very short while ago, when European mores got the better of the local folk, except, it seems, those here. I first encountered such dress (or undress) a week ago, the day after our late-evening arrival, when, out early to see the market and get my bearings, and totally engaged in examining some trays of spices in front of me, I suddenly felt bare flesh against my exposed arm, stretched out to test the quality of some turmeric. It was a woman at my side who, having come up unnoticed, had bent in front of me to obtain some root or herb. When she straightened, I realized at once that the contact had been with her bare bosom, which, I might add, was quite shapely, with nipples
rouged. She was unconcerned; I must have blushed at least as much

  Card No. 5

  Description: A naos or church, on a large stepped platform, in an almost impossible mélange of styles, with elements of a Greek temple of the Corinthian order mixed in with Byzantine features and other heterogeneous effects to combine in an unusual, if not harmonious, whole. The picture, a frontal view, has been taken most probably at early morning light, since the temple steps and surrounding square are devoid of people.

  Text: light and darkness, darkness and light” Forsythe said. “With this form of dualism, and its rejection of the body, paradoxically, until the sacrament is administered, the believers are in fact encouraged to excess of the flesh, which is viewed as essentially evil and, ultimately, an illusion. The thought is that by indulging mightily, disdain is expressed for the ephemeral, thus granting the candidate power over the material, which is seen as standing in his or her way to salvation.” “What does that have to do with your little trip of this morning?” I remonstrated. We had agreed to meet at ten o’clock to see if we could buy manuscripts in the street of the scribes, for the collection. Paul reddened and replied “D’you know the large structure on the square between us and the market? I was on my way to meet you, when I happened to pass through there. It seems” – and here he went florid again – “that in an effort to gain sanctity more quickly, parents, as required by the priests, are by law for two years to give over those of their daughters on the verge of womanhood to the temple each day between 10 and noon, in a ploy to quicken the transition to holiness. Any passer-by, during that time, who sees on the steps under the large parasols (set up like tents, there to protect exposed flesh) any maiden suiting his fancy, is urged to drop a coin in the bowls nearest and