Horror Stories to Tell in the Dark

by Anthony Masters

  ‘Two years. Roaming the coast – picking up contract work where he could.’

  The Lady Jane came nearer, easing her way into the harbour with a melancholy blast from her horn. There seemed to be a figure crouched in the wheelhouse, but the perspex was so salt-caked that it was impossible to make it out very well. The wipers had cleared a patch to see through, but the helmsman’s vision must have been dangerously limited.

  ‘Those decks are almost awash,’ I said.

  ‘Got a leak – maybe the pump’s packed up,’ the Captain suggested.

  ‘Why did he sail off like that? Isn’t this his home port?’

  ‘If you can call this dump a port. Yes – he used to belong here. He was born and bred in the town, but he was a swine,’ Captain Soames repeated darkly.

  ‘How do you mean?’ I asked, and then hoped the old man wasn’t going to ramble. I’d had a sudden desire to go home for tea; the arrival of the Lady Jane seemed to have brought a chill to the early autumn evening. I looked down at her, wallowing in the grey-green water, and felt an unreasonable sense of revulsion. There was something menacing about the way she lay so low in the water, as if she was bulging at the seams, heavy with something to hide.

  ‘He beat his wife and kids – and then hated the town because they were taken away from him by the social services. The kids were put in care and his wife went to a shelter, but they’ve got a house in East Street now and they’ll be sorry to see him back. Maybe I should go and alert them.’ He paused. ‘I wouldn’t hang around if I were you – he’s a nasty bit of work. Swore vengeance on the whole town —’ Captain Soames stopped speaking abruptly as the wheelhouse door opened and a long, lean man with a narrow face appeared. He was dressed in greasy overalls, but it was his presence, like that of his trawler, that was particularly unpleasant. His long features glittered with malevolence, and for a moment I thought it was almost a satisfied malevolence, as if he had come home with a purpose – and that purpose was radiating from him. I stared at him, and as I stood there I was sure that I could hear a horrible scurrying, scratching sound from the hold. Maybe it’s all my imagination, I tried to tell myself, but somehow I knew it wasn’t.

  ‘Soames,’ the man said to the Captain.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I remember you.’ The sentence was like an accusation, spoken raspingly, mockingly, and with a certain pleasure.

  ‘And I remember you, Tod Marling. You’re not welcome in Sungate – and you should know that.’

  ‘You old fool. Always were a bag of wind. I’m back here to claim my own.’

  ‘Your own?’

  ‘Freda and the kids.’

  ‘They’re not yours.’ Soames’s voice was more positive and a rush of affection for him filled my heart. I knew the old man was afraid, yet he was still determined to stand up to this long, thin streak of evil. ‘You think you own them, but they’re not your possessions, you know.’

  Tod Marling barked with laughter, like a hound scenting blood. ‘You’re going to regret the way you treated me – all of you in this hole of a town. You deserve plague and pestilence and, believe me, you’ll get it.’ He laughed uproariously and I suddenly realized that he was more than a little mad.

  ‘You’ve had a restraining order placed on you,’ yelled Soames, suddenly beside himself with hot rage. ‘You’re not to go near Freda.’

  ‘They can’t stop me.’

  ‘I will, though. I’m going to warn them. Come on, young Barry, you’re coming with me.’

  He didn’t have to ask me a second time, for I could see the glazed fury in Tod Marling’s eyes and knew for a certainty that he must have come home to Sungate for some terrible revenge.

  ‘He’s just a troublemaker,’ said Captain Soames as we strode up the hill to the town, but I couldn’t help feeling the old man was trying to make light of the situation so that I wouldn’t be scared. ‘No more, no less. He’ll go back to sea.’

  ‘What did he mean about plague and pestilence?’ I asked.

  ‘Lot of hot air.’

  ‘You don’t reckon there’s anything in that hold, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t. She’s either sprung a leak, or he’s caught too many fish,’ said the old man briskly, but I didn’t feel entirely convinced.

  I returned home, had my supper and went to bed, but I lay awake wondering about Tod Marling and his evil eyes, and when I finally drifted into sleep I dreamt of the battered, forbidding old trawler, now so low in the water that its decks were awash.

  Next day I went to school, and when I came back I found my mother looking distraught and my younger sister, Stella, morbidly excited.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked at once.

  My mother hesitated, but Stella immediately burst into speech. ‘Haven’t you heard?’

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘Captain Soames is dead.’

  I froze. ‘How?’ I asked eventually, and then could have kicked myself for heightening Stella’s all too obvious dramatic enjoyment.

  ‘Sharon said he was bitten to death.’

  ‘Bitten?’

  ‘Now, we don’t know anything of the kind,’ my mother intervened angrily. ‘You know what Sharon’s like – always spreading awful rumours. The poor man probably died of a heart attack. He was very old.’

  ‘But Sharon lives next door to him, and her dad found him. He was all —’

  ‘Be quiet, Stella. Can’t you see you’re upsetting your brother? Barry was very fond of the Captain.’

  Bitten to death, I thought. Why had Tod Marling’s trawler been so low in the water – and what was that scampering sound I had heard in her hold?

  By the time I reached the harbour, I had convinced myself that I was overreacting. Who on earth would bring in a cargo of rats? The whole idea was completely ridiculous. Mum had to be right and poor old Captain Soames had died of a coronary. He was always wheezing and his pipe had hardly ever been out of his mouth.

  The Lady Jane was riding surprisingly high in the water and the tide was full. She was locked up and silent, only her mooring lines making a slight creaking sound as she rode up and down by the old seaweed-covered stones of the wall. I watched her until the light faded, trying to think what I should do. Eventually I decided there was nothing I could do. After all, I had no evidence whatsoever.

  Walking back, I took a short cut through Knot Alley – one of a number of narrow passages running between the old clapboard cottages of Sungate. This was the ancient part; the rest of the town had grown up after the war as a tatty holiday resort and now, with the season over, was mainly boarded up and had an air of melancholy.

  My dad is a long-distance truck driver, and we had moved to Sungate from London because it didn’t really matter where we lived and Dad had thought a house by the sea would be good for Stella’s asthma. Unfortunately, the only place he could afford was Sungate – one of the ugliest towns on the south coast. Its only attraction was the old harbour area which I loved, but there wasn’t much of it left and developers were always threatening to knock the rest of it down to provide holiday flats.

  I’d always loved lingering in the old alleys: the mixed smells of tar and pitch, fish and cork. That day I poked about amongst the scattered and abandoned old lobster-pots and netting, noticing that there was even the hulk of a sloop, dragged up to dry land and probably forgotten. This was what Captain Soames had also loved about Sungate and a sudden anger at his death flooded my mind. Even if the Captain had had a heart attack, maybe it was because Tod Marling had frightened or upset him in some way. My rage increasing, I left the alley and walked past the old cinema that, like the lobster-pots, had been abandoned for many years. The stuccoed façade of the Roxy was peeling, yet there was still a battered poster for a horror movie, Killer Bees, stuck firmly to the wall.

  I paused for a second as out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of something flashing past. The first sharp pang of fear stabbed at me as I saw it crouched there. A rat. An enormous rat that was wa
tching me from beneath a litter-bin. Its eyes were venomous, but it was the sheer size of the rodent that riveted me. The rat’s thin lips were curled back to reveal hideously yellowed fangs and soft pink gums. I stepped back quickly as the vile thing raced past me into a gap under the boarded-up door of the Roxy.

  Revolted, I would have liked to run home, but instinctively feeling it must have something to do with Tod Marling and the death of Captain Soames, I climbed over the wall and cautiously edged my way down another alley, this time running beside the old cinema. I had to pick my way through old rotting mattresses, a mass of rusty bed-springs, a very ancient mangle and a stinking pile of old newspapers, but eventually I reached the window of the old cinema and found that it was illuminated by the bright neon lights of the supermarket next door. With a grunt of satisfaction I pulled myself up on the ledge – and then felt a crushing sense of anticlimax, for I was looking into the shadowed interior of a derelict office and could see nothing but an old filing cabinet with its drawers pulled out and a stained desk covered with yellowed cinema magazines and handbills. But a door led into the remainder of the building and behind it I was sure that I could see a small, gleaming, beady eye. Did I really have the guts to see if the rats were in the cinema, or wouldn’t it be better just to go and ring the police? Surely that was the most sensible move.

  I clambered down from the window-ledge – and found myself held in a vice-like grip.

  ‘Curious, son?’ rasped Tod Marling, placing his horny hand over my mouth while keeping the crook of his arm around my neck. ‘Curiosity killed the cat.’

  I kicked and struggled as hard as I could, but Marling was strong and wiry, so I soon became exhausted.

  ‘Come and see my friends,’ Marling whispered. ‘They’re hungry, you know, desperately hungry. But I’ve promised them the feast of a lifetime. You’ll simply be the aperitif – just a minuscule bite for them all. Trouble is, my family aren’t civilized. I don’t mean Freda and the kids – I mean my real family.’ He gave a little whimper of quickly suppressed laughter.

  He’s crazy all right, I thought. What am I going to do now? I caught a glimpse of the interior of the supermarket. There was a stack of cornflakes packets and a worn-out old lady pushing an overloaded trolley, and faintly, very faintly, I could hear the music that was being played in the store. What was the tune? My mind insisted on trying to remember – anything to block out what was going to happen. Oh yes, it was ‘The Happy Wanderer’. Valderee, valderaa, sang the tinny choir, With my knapsack on my back. It was all so ordinary, so familiar in the supermarket, but out here, I was about to die.

  ‘Once they smell blood,’ said Tod Marling, ‘my family get very greedy.’

  He dragged me, still squirming, through the debris, to the back of the cinema and then thrust me through an open door.

  I was standing in some kind of small storage area and there was a musty smell of disuse and something rank. I guessed what it was immediately, as Tod Marling pulled the door behind him until we were both standing in the pitch-darkness.

  ‘We paid Captain Soames a visit last night,’ he whispered, the sharp beam from his torch probing in the dark corners. ‘Not all of us. Just enough to share a bite.’ He gave a raucous little laugh. ‘He got to Freda and the kids first – warned them I was coming, so when I arrived they’d done a bunk. Never mind.’ He paused reflectively. ‘They can’t have gone far. They haven’t got any money, so I’ll catch up with them soon. In the mean time I’m going to set my family on the town – tell them to really live it up. After all, a port’s a place to have fun in and my family haven’t been to a port in months. They even had to live off each other – and they still do, you know. Mark you, they prefer human flesh.’ He paused again and smiled. ‘I trained them into that, you know, when I was in the Friesian Islands. They’re wild and remote, so my family grew without being disturbed – without running away from me like my old family does.’ He laughed again and the sound was terrible to hear, backed up as it was by the flurried scampering from the main body of the cinema. They must be everywhere, I thought, and when I imagined them swarming over the faded crimson seats I felt horribly sick.

  I’ve got to play for time – got to take him off guard, I thought. Tod Marling, still in his filthy overalls, was standing by the outside door, but there was another door, behind which I could hear them scampering. To get away from Marling I would have to run through there – into the pitch-darkness and the clusters of rancid furry bodies, with their darting teeth and shining boot-button eyes. In the darkness I would find no way out and they would have me down, snapping at me until they buried their decayed teeth in my body.

  ‘How – how did you get them all?’

  ‘Oh, it was easy. The islands are full of them. I collected my family – they didn’t collect me.’ He gave a little giggle. ‘Boats and boatyards, grain silos and deserted farmhouses, barns and cellars – even an old, wrecked cargo ship. I lured them into my hold with hunks of meat – hunks of human meat. They soon got the taste for it and now they won’t have anything else. My family don’t scavenge any more; they wait to be shown.’ Again he giggled, and then his humour deserted him. ‘This town rejected me – ran me out – I could have been tarred and feathered. So when my family’s had their little hors-d’oeuvre I’ll release them on Sungate.’

  ‘The pest control people’ll soon mop them up,’ I said.

  ‘Not before they’ve spread plague and pestilence.’

  ‘How will they do that?’

  ‘They’re disease carriers.’ He grabbed my arm and whispered, ‘Come and meet them.’

  ‘Wait,’ I pleaded.

  ‘But they can’t wait. They’re hungry.’ His breath was as rank as I imagined the rats’ would be.

  ‘How did you get them here?’

  ‘Oh, I wanted to find an overnight shelter for us – this seemed the best place.’

  ‘They followed you here?’ I asked, desperately trying to keep Tod Marling talking.

  ‘I’m the Pied Piper.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘They know I’m their provider. Even rodents have instincts, you know. I’m their father.’ His eyes glittered. ‘I’m the rat king.’

  You’re also crazy. Absolutely stark, staring, raving, horribly crazy, I thought, and I began to shake so much that I could hardly stand. ‘Please,’ I whispered like a small child. ‘Let me go. I won’t tell – I promise I won’t tell on you.’

  ‘But you will. You will tell,’ said Tod Marling, his eyes wide and staring. ‘You’ll tell Freda and the kids – just like Soames did, won’t you?’

  ‘No!’ I howled.

  ‘Come on. We’ve done enough talking, don’t you think?’

  I began to struggle again, but Marling’s grip on my arm was now so fierce that it hurt badly as he propelled me on towards the door that led into the cinema.

  Marling switched off the torch and there was an abrupt stillness except for the scraping of a paw, a muffled squeak and a quick movement. But none of this seemed to matter – none of this terrified me as much as the sudden shock of the hundreds and hundreds of eyes glinting in the deep darkness.

  ‘My family,’ breathed Tod Marling.

  Then he switched on the torch again and its brilliant light swept the serried ranks of rats. They were huge, and the smell of their massed bodies was appalling. My eyes travelled to the half-eaten carcasses amongst them, those weaker rats who had been used as food by the starving cannibals.

  ‘You see how hungry they are,’ whispered Marling. ‘Just think what they’ll do to the good citizens of Sungate. After all, the Captain was only a demonstration – as you’ll be. They’ll pick your bones in seconds. Do you know what I’m going to do?’

  ‘No,’ I stuttered.

  ‘I’m going to prop up your gleaming white skeleton just outside that supermarket. They’ll all think it’s a joke at first – until it happens to them. When they open at nine, I’ll release the rats amongst the shelves. There’ll be
human fodder first – and then more passive fare.’ He laughed again, but this time more calmly, soberly.

  By the light of the powerful beam, I could see that we were both standing on the derelict stage of the cinema from which the screen had been removed. Below us the rats waited, packed into the area where the stalls had been. Slowly the beginnings of an idea began to take shape in my mind. I had no idea whether it would work or not, but I knew I had nothing to lose.

  ‘Come on then.’ Marling turned to the rats. ‘Hello, family. I’ve got a little present for you. Sorry it’s so puny.’

  His torch swept their eyes, hopeful and baleful. There was a joyous mass squeal and a moving forward of the tightly packed ranks, as they trod over the half-eaten corpses of their fellows.

  Taking him completely by surprise, I shoved Marling as hard as I could and he plunged to the floor, cracking his head as the rats swiftly parted. Almost immediately, blood ran down his forehead and I gasped in mingled relief and horror. This was what I had just planned, but I never thought it would work out so beautifully. Beautifully? Marling sat up, the blood pouring down his face now. The rats squealed, darted and charged. Within seconds Marling was a mass of obscene wriggling brown bodies, whose tails lashed and teeth snapped in ecstasy.

  At this point Gill wanted to go home – to forget all about this harrowing party. But glancing around she saw eyes alight with excitement. They were on her now and Gill knew that she would have to prove herself. ‘I knew someone who was very sentimental once,’ she began. ‘At least – that’s the way she looked.’

  5

  A Deprived Child

  Mrs Jackson was one of those old ladies who looked as if she could do no harm to anyone. She was a widow; her husband had been dead for many years, her children were grown up, and she devoted herself to good works in the village. She looked like I imagined she was – a sweet, white-haired old lady; round, plump, homely, and dressed in trim little outfits with powder-blue cardigans that matched her eyes, tweed skirts, lisle stockings and sensible shoes. Most of the time she wore tortoise-shell National Health glasses, red mittens in winter and, almost always, lilac gloves in the summer.