The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2003, Volume 14

by Stephen Jones

  Soon even the abandoned rooms of the Silence lost their hold on Hoegbotton. He would go in with the workmen and find old, dimly lit spaces from which whatever had briefly imbued them with a ghastly intensity had long since departed. He stopped acquiring such properties, although, in a sense, it was too late. Ungdom, Slattery, and their ilk had already begun to slander him, spreading rumors about his intent and his sanity. They made life difficult for him, but by ignoring their barbs, he had survived it.

  Hoegbotton did not give up. Whenever he could, he bought items that had some connection to the grey caps, hoping to find the answers necessary to quell his curiosity. He read books. He spoke to those who remembered, vaguely, the tales their elders had told them about the Silence. And then, finally, the breakthrough: a series of atrocities at one mansion after the other, bringing him closer than ever before.

  Hoegbotton finished reading the ledger, took a last sip of the port he had poured for himself, and walked out of the room in time to hear the bell that announced the arrival of a customer. He put the books back in their place and was about to lock the door to Samuel Hoegbotton’s dining room when it occurred to him that the cage might be more secure inside the room. He picked it up – the handle seemed hot to the touch – walked back into the room, and placed the cage on the far end of the table. Then he locked the door, put the key in his desk, and went to attend to the needs of his customer.

  IV

  That night, he made love to Rebecca. Her scar gleamed by the light from her eyes, which, at the height of her rapture, blazed so brightly that the bedroom seemed transported from night to day. As Hoegbotton came inside her, he felt a part of her scar enter him. It registered as an ecstatic shudder that penetrated his muscles, his bones, his heart. She called out his name and ran her hands down his back, across his face, her eyes sparking with pleasure. At such moments, when the strangeness of her seeped through into him, he would suffer a sudden panic, as if he was losing himself, as if he no longer knew his own name. He would sit up, as now, all the muscles in his back rigid.

  She knew him well enough not to ask what was wrong, but, sleep-besotted, the light from her eyes dimming to a satisfied glow, said, simply, “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” he said. “Your eyes are full of fireflies.”

  She laughed, but he meant it: entire cities, entire worlds, pulsed inside those eyes, hinting at an existence beyond the mundane.

  Something in her gaze reminded him suddenly of the woman with the missing hands and he looked away, toward the window that, though closed, let in the persistent sound of rain. Beside the window, his grandmother’s possessions still lay in shadows on the mantel.

  The next day, as he sat in Samuel Hoegbotton’s room writing out invoices for the past week’s exports – Saphant carnival masks, rare eelwood furniture from Nicea, necklaces made by yet another indigenous tribe discovered at the heart of the great southern rainforests, all destined for Morrow – he noticed something odd. He drew in his breath sharply. He pushed his chair back and stood up.

  There, growing at a right angle from the green cloth that covered the cage, was a fragile, milk-white fruiting body on a long stem, the gills tinged red. It was identical to the mushrooms that had appeared in Daffed’s mansion. He cast about for a weapon, his gaze fixed on the cage. There was nothing but the bottle of port. Beyond the cage, the fungus that had infiltrated the cracks of the mirror appeared to have darkened and thickened. Irrationally, he decided that he had to remove the cage from the room. The room had caused the fruiting body. Picking up a napkin, he wound it around the handle of the cage and carried it out of the room, to his desk.

  He stared across the store, trying to locate Bristlewing. His assistant stood in a far corner, helping an elderly gentleman decide on a chair. Hoegbotton could just see the back of Bristlewing’s head, nodding at something the potential customer had said, both of them obscured by a column of school desks.

  Slowly, as if the mushroom was watching him, Hoegbotton slid his hand over to the top drawer of his desk, pulled it open and took out a silver letter-opener. Holding it in front of him, he approached the cage. Images of the woman and her son flickered in his mind. He couldn’t keep his hand still. He hesitated, wavered. A vision of the mushroom multiplying into two, three, four came to him. Hoegbotton leaned over his desk, chopped the mushroom off the side of the cage. It fell onto his desk, leaving behind only a small, circular white spot on the green cover, as innocent as a bird dropping.

  Hoegbotton pulled his handkerchief out of his breast pocket and squashed the mushroom in its folds, careful not to touch any part of it with his bare skin. Then he stuffed the handkerchief into the wastebasket at his side. A moment’s hesitation. He fished it out. Decided against it and placed the handkerchief back into the wastebasket. Fished it out again.

  Hoegbotton realized that both Bristlewing and his customer were now standing a few feet away, staring at him. He froze, then smiled.

  “My dear Bristlewing,” he said. “What can I help you with?”

  Bristlewing gave him a disgusted look. “Mr Sporlender here was interested in a writing desk, for his son. We’ve a good, solid chair but nothing appropriate in a desk. Anything in storage?”

  Hoegbotton smiled, extremely aware of the dead mushroom in his hand. The irritation caused by the handle of the cage flared up, pulsing across his palm. “Yes, actually, Mr Sporlender, if you would come back tomorrow, I believe we might have something to show you . . .” Or not. Just so long as he left the shop – now.

  Hoegbotton nudged Bristlewing out of the way and guided the man toward the door, through the crowded stacks of artifacts – babbling about the rain, about the importance of a writing desk, about anything at all, while Bristlewing’s disgusted stare burned into the back of his skull. Hoegbotton had never been more impatient to reach the rain-scoured street. When it came, it was like a wave – of light, of fresh air. It hit him with such force that he gasped, drawing a sharp look from Mr Sporlender.

  As they stood there, on the cusp of the street, the iron door at Hoegbotton’s back, the man stared at him through narrowed eyes. “Really, Mr Hoegbotton – should I come back tomorrow? Would you truly advise that?”

  Hoegbotton stared down at his hand, which was about to rebel and throw the handkerchief and mushroom as far away as possible. Some of the early-afternoon passers-by already stared curiously at the two of them.

  “I suppose you shouldn’t, actually. We don’t have a desk in storage or anywhere else . . . I have a condition of sudden claustrophobia. It comes and goes. I cannot control it.”

  The man sneered. “I saw what you put in the handkerchief. I know what it is. Will I tell? Why bother – you’ll be dead soon enough.” The man stalked off.

  Hoegbotton immediately began to fast-walk in the opposite direction, past sidewalk vendors, a thin stream of pedestrians, and an even thinner stream of carts and carriages, which the rain rendered in smudges and humid smells. Only after three or four blocks, soaked to the skin, did he feel comfortable tossing the handkerchief and its contents into a public trashcan. He already had an image in his head of the Cappan’s men searching his store for traces of fungi.

  A man was throwing up into the gutter. A woman was yelling at her husband. The sky was a uniform grey. The rain was unending, as common as the very air. He couldn’t even feel it anymore. Everywhere, in the cracks of the sidewalk, in the minute spaces between bricks in shop fronts, new fungi was growing. He wondered if anything he did mattered.

  Back at the store, Bristlewing was grumpily moving some boxes around. He spared Hoegbotton only a quick glance – watchful, wary. Hoegbotton brushed past him and headed for the bathroom, where he scrubbed his hands red before coming out again to examine the cage. It looked just as he had left it. The green cover was unblemished but for the white spot. There had been no proliferation of mushrooms in his absence. This was good. This meant he had done the right thing. (Why, then, was it so hard to draw breath? Why so diff
icult to stop shaking?)

  He sat down behind the desk, staring at the cage. The inside of his mouth felt dry and thick. Nothing happened without a reason. The mushroom had not appeared by coincidence. This he could not believe. How could he?

  Almost against his will, he reached over to the cage and pulled the cover aside, the green giving way to the finely etched metal bars, the shadows of the bars letting the light slide around them so that he saw the perch, gently swinging, and, below it, a pale white hand. Slender and delicate. The end a mass of dried blood. A vision overtook him: that he was Samuel Hoegbotton, staring across the dining-room table at the cage, which was the last thing he would ever see . . . The hand, he had no doubt, was from Daffed’s wife. What would it take to make it go away?

  But then his mind registered a much more important detail, one that made him bite down hard on his lower lip to stop from screaming. The cage door was open, slid to the side as neatly as the cover. He sat there, motionless, staring, for several seconds. Throughout the store, he could hear the hands of myriad clocks clicking forward. No mask could help him now. The hand. The open cage. The fey brightness of the bars. A rippling at the edges of his vision.

  Somewhere, Hoegbotton found the nerve. He reached out and slid the door back into position with both hands, worked the latch shut – just as he felt a sudden weight on the other side, rushing up to meet him. It brushed against his fingers and chilled them. He drew back with a gasp. The door rattled once, twice, fell still. The perch began to swing violently back and forth as if something had pushed up against it. Then it too fell still. Suddenly.

  He could not breathe. He could not call out for help. His heart was beating so fast, he thought it might burst. This was not how he had imagined it. This was not how he had imagined it.

  Something invisible picked up the hand and forced it through the bars. The hand fell onto his blotter, rocked once, twice, and was still.

  It took five or six tries, his fingers nimble as blocks of wood, but he managed to find the cord to the cover and slide it back into position.

  Then he sat there for a long time, staring at the green cover of the cage. Nothing happened. Nothing bad. The sense of weight on the other side of the bars had vanished with the drawing of the veil. The hand that lay on his blotter did not seem real. It looked like alabaster. It looked like wax. It was a candle without a wick. It was a piece of a statue.

  An hour could have passed, or a minute, before he found a paper bag, nudged the hand into it using the letter opener, and folded the bag shut.

  Bristlewing appeared in his field of vision some time later.

  “Bristlewing,” Hoegbotton said. “I’m glad. You’re here.”

  “Eh?”

  “You see this cage?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need you to take it to Ungdom.”

  “Ungdom?” Bristlewing’s face brightened. He clearly thought this was a joke.

  “Yes. To Ungdom. Tell him that I send it with my compliments. That I offer it as a token of renewed friendship.” Somewhere inside, he was laughing at Ungdom’s future discomfort. Somewhere inside, he was screaming for help.

  Bristlewing snorted. “Is it wise?”

  Hoegbotton stared up at him, as if through a haze of smoke. “No. It isn’t wise. But I would like you to do it anyway.”

  Bristlewing waited for a moment, as if there might be something more, but there was nothing more. He walked forward, picked up the cage. As Bristlewing bent over the cage, Hoegbotton thought he saw a patch of green at the base of his assistant’s neck, under his left ear. Was Bristlewing already infected? Was Bristlewing the threat?

  “Another thing. Take the rest of the week off. Once you’ve delivered the cage to Ungdom.” If his assistant was going to dissolve into spores, let him do it elsewhere. Hoegbotton suppressed a giggle of hysteria.

  Suspicious, Bristlewing frowned. “And if I want to work?”

  “It’s a vacation. A vacation. I’ve never given you one. I’ll pay you for the time.”

  “All right,” Bristlewing said. Now the look he gave Hoegbotton was, to Hoegbotton’s eye, very close to a look of pity. “I’ll give the cage to Ungdom and take the week off.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Right. Bye, then.”

  “Goodbye.”

  As Bristlewing negotiated the tiny flotsam-lined pathway, Hoegbotton could not help but notice that his assistant seemed to list to one side, as if the cage had grown unaccountably heavy.

  Five minutes after Bristlewing had left, Hoegbotton closed up the shop for the day. It only took seven tries for him to lock the door behind him.

  V

  When he arrived at the apartment, Hoegbotton told Rebecca that he was home early because he had learned of his grandmother’s death. She seemed to interpret his shakes and shudders, the trembling of his voice, the way he needed to touch her, as consistent with his grief. They ate dinner in silence, her hand in his hand.

  “Tell me about it,” she said after dinner and he cataloged all the symptoms of fear as if they were the symptoms of loss, of grief. Everywhere he turned, the woman from the mansion confronted him, her gaze now angry, now mournful. Her wounds bled copiously down her dress but she did nothing to staunch the flow.

  They went to bed early and Rebecca held him until he found a path toward sleep. But sleep held a kaleidoscope of images to torment him. In his dreams, he walked through Samuel Hoegbotton’s apartment until he reached a long, white hallway that he had never seen before. At the opposite end of the hallway, he could see the woman and the boy from the mansion, surrounded by great wealth, antiques fit for a god winking at him in their burnished multitudes. He was walking across a carpet of small, severed hands to reach them. This fact revolted him, but he could not stop walking: the promise of what lay ahead was too great. Even when he began to see his head, his arms, his own legs, crudely soldered to the walls using his own blood, he could not stop his progress toward the end of the hallway. The hands were cold and soft and pleading.

  Despite the dreams, Hoegbotton woke the next morning feeling energetic and calm. The cage was gone. He had another chance. He did not feel the need to follow in Samuel Hoegbotton’s footsteps. Even the imprint on his hand throbbed less painfully. The rain clattering down made him happy for obscure, childhood reasons – memories of sneaking out into thunderstorms to play under the dark clouds, of taking to the water on a rare fishing trip with his father while drops sprinkled the dark, languid surface of the River Moth.

  At breakfast, he even told Rebecca that perhaps he had been wrong and they should start a family. Rebecca laughed, hugged him, and told him they should wait to talk about it until after he had recovered from his grandmother’s death. When she did not ask him about the funeral arrangements, he wondered if she knew that he had lied to her. On his way out the door, he held her close and kissed her. Her lips tasted of honeysuckle and rose. Her eyes were, as ever, a mystery, but he did not mind.

  Once at work, Bristlewing blissfully absent, Hoegbotton searched the store for any sign of mushrooms. Donning long gloves and a fresh mask, he spent most of his time in the old dining room, scuffing his knees to examine the underside of the table, cleaning every surface. The fungus embedded in the mirror had lost its appearance of renewed vigor. Nevertheless, he took an old toothbrush and knife and spent half an hour gleefully scraping it away.

  Then, divesting himself of mask and gloves, he went through the same routines with his ledgers as in the past, this time reading the entries aloud since Bristlewing was not there to frown at him for doing so. Fragments of disturbing images fluttered in his mind like caged birds, but he ignored them, bending himself to his routine that he might allow himself no other thoughts.

  By noon, the rain had turned to light hail, discouraging many erstwhile customers. Those who did enter the store alighted like crows escaping bad weather, shaking their raincoat wings and unlikely to buy anything.

  By one o’clock, he had only made
100 sels. It didn’t matter. It was almost liberating. He was beginning to think that he had escaped great danger, even caught himself wondering if another rich family might experience a grey-cap visitation.

  At two o’clock, his spirits still high, Hoegbotton received a shock when a grim-faced member of the Cappan’s security forces entered the store. The man was in full protective gear, clothed from head to foot, a grey mask covering his entire face except for his eyes. What could they know? It wasn’t time for an inspection. Had the man looking for a desk talked to them? Hoegbotton scratched at his wounded palm.

  “How can I help you?” he asked.

  The man stared at him for a moment, then said, “I’m looking for a purse for my mother’s birthday.”

  Hoegbotton burst out laughing and had to convince the man that it was not directed at him before selling him a purse.

  No customers entered the store for half an hour after the Cappan’s man left. Hoegbotton had worked himself into a fever pitch of calm by the time the messenger arrived around three o’clock: a boy on a bicycle, pinched and drawn, wearing dirty clothes, who knocked at the door and waited for Hoegbotton to arrive before letting an envelope flutter to the welcome mat outside the door. The boy pulled his bicycle back to the sidewalk and pedaled away, ringing his bell.

  Hoegbotton, softly singing to himself, leaned down to pick up the envelope. He opened it. The letter inside read, in a spidery scrawl:

  Thank you, Robert, for your very fine gift, but your bird has flown away home. I couldn’t keep such a treasure. My regards to your wife. – John Ungdom.

  Hoegbotton stared at the note, chuckling at the sarcasm. Read it again, a frown closing his lips. Flown away home. Read it a third time, his stomach filling with stones. My regards to your wife.