The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 24 (Mammoth Books)

by Stephen Jones

  Her body in its black clothes tautened, so tight, so intense she thought it might suddenly change, in a flicker, into something else. Footsteps. Coming steadily towards her. Heavy, too, sending echoes into the tunnel. His? Elias? She felt something surge in her, a burst of hot defiance. Her fingers tightened on the corded handle.

  He could feel the waters rising. Already they would be filling up the underground channels, surging into the vaulted chambers, clawing at the walls. The deep, dark stench of the water called to him; already he had offered it two bodies he’d found prowling about after him. They’d been distracted by some babbling young fisher-boy, who clung on to them, shouting about a face he’d seen, a face that was writhing. The boy would have more to talk about now.

  But there was a greater urging in him too, more overpowering than the river. He knew she was here: the sense coursed in his limbs like a shot of silver. He waited. Then his eyes seemed to form the image of an iron disk, and draw his body towards the shadow of the warehouse with insistent force.

  She heard the grating noise, saw the lid rise up. A face of white shone in the gloom, and then a form slid easily down and dropped beside her. She felt her body become even more tense. And then stared at his black eyes, stared hard, and saw her own reflected back. She was seized and thrust into the dark waters. They closed about her head. For a few moments she was blinded and numb. Then she kicked out, thrust herself forward, and at once felt her body become part of the current. Around her, forms moved in the water.

  When they emerged into the cellar, her breath was soiled at once by the burning smell from the smoking gallows above them in the building, which seemed to permeate every streaked brick. She felt a plunge of fear, and she wanted to cry out. But then a hard rage seethed through her and her eyes gleamed in hatred.

  Her companion touched her, and beckoned. Their dark, dripping forms moved lithely to a stair and quickly ascended. Flight followed flight, in a crooked route through corridors that glistened as they left behind them a trail of the black slime.

  And there was his door. Behind it, the man who liked to be called the King of Babylon. Now the hatred was so fierce in her that she knew it would change her forever: her body could not contain that dark fire. She heard the bell shout for her from its bronze throat; she heard that name bawled, “Nix! Nix!”; she heard the threats that followed. Her fingers felt the silver scar upon her face.

  Her companion thrust her to the stone floor, and crouched beside her. Then, together, as if they were one being, they lunged, and burst through the door. There was a sharp, keening sound, and a barbed glieve thrust through the air toward them. They twisted with a wild instinct, and it clanged uselessly aside. It was raised again for another strike, but stopped: it was held before them, holding them at bay. But still within them, they felt that instinct surging strong.

  Then the king saw the intruders’ faces change. They seemed to pulse rapidly, to quicken and writhe before him. And the flesh began to turn colour. It had been white, like the skinned strips dangling from the gallows below. Now it was darkening, becoming brown, like the river water, rank green, like its weed, and finally black, black like its depths of mud. And the shape of their faces was changing too: becoming sleek, sharp, pointed; until at last he knew exactly what he faced, and stared into the utter glinting dark of the eyes.

  Elias Smith, alias the King of Babylon, bellowed, and backed quickly into an ante-chamber. He spun an iron wheel in the corner of the outer wall. With a grating noise, a door swung heavily open. There was a large arched tunnel, like an open mouth, with a brick throat, sloping steeply down. He leapt into its maw, skimming its streaked surface, feeling the foetid air rising to fill his breath as he descended at reckless speed.

  Behind, he could sense the things slithering even faster after him.

  TERRY DOWLING

  Nightside Eye

  TERRY DOWLING is one of Australia’s most respected and internationally acclaimed writers of science fiction, dark fantasy and horror, and author of the multi-award-winning “Tom Rynosseros” saga. He has been called “Australia’s finest writer of horror” by Locus magazine, the country’s “premier writer of dark fantasy” by All Hallows, and its “most acclaimed writer of the dark fantastic” by Cemetery Dance magazine. The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series featured more horror stories by the author during its twentyone-year run than by anyone else.

  Dowling’s award-winning horror collections include Basic Black: Tales of Appropriate Fear, An Intimate Knowledge of the Night and Blackwater Days, while his most recent titles are Amberjack: Tales of Fear & Wonder (Subterranean Press, 2010) and his debut novel, Clowns at Midnight (PS Publishing, 2010), which the Guardian called “an exceptional work that bears comparison to John Fowles’s The Magus.” He has also written three computer adventures (Schizm: Mysterious Journey, Schizm II: Chameleon and Sentinel: Descendants in Time), and co-edited both The Essential Ellison and The Jack Vance Treasury, amongst many other titles.

  “As so often happens, ‘Nightside Eye’ is the result of a number of separate ideas coming together at just the right time,” explains Dowling.

  “A tactic I often use to prompt the creative unconscious is to keep a list evocative titles and check on them occasionally to see if any speak to me and reveal how they might be resolved. It can be a good way of blind-siding yourself and coming up with all manner of unexpected treasures. One such title was ‘The Delfray Mantel’, a deliciously old-world title if ever there was one.

  “Even as I was pondering how such an architectural feature might be explored in narrative terms (things like where you might find such a mantelpiece, what you might put on it or find missing from it), and as the idea of poltergeist events became ever more compelling, I learned how old-time mariners quite likely preserved a useful day- and night-sightedness when going below-deck from the bright light of day by wearing eye-patches and swapping them from one eye to the next as needed. The elements connected, became intriguing, then irresistible.

  “Meanwhile, the marvellous Hydro Majestic Hotel at Medlow Bath in the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney had stood vacant for many years awaiting renovation. It was the perfect place to locate such a haunted mantelpiece. I visited the old Hydro and photographed key features, hoping, hoping, hoping that the resulting story would see print before the long-overdue renovations began. I thank the unseen occupants of the Delfray Room for letting this be exactly how it happened.”

  THE FACT THAT the guest lounge, ballroom, whatever it had originally been, was devoid of furniture only intensified the feeling of something waiting to happen.

  Jared had read the latest tender updates for the old Hydro Majestic Hotel, knew that they all listed the Delfray Room as a minor function room.

  “So that’s it?” he said, indicating the mantelpiece above the handsome fireplace in the eastern wall.

  “That’s it,” Susan answered, clearly intrigued, possibly even disconcerted at knowing someone who actually wore an eye-patch like the traditional black one over Jared’s left eye. Jared was thirty-six, lean enough, his features regular enough, to make him attractive to many women at first glance. The patch lent him an unexpectedly rakish air, friends and colleagues said. Susan Royce was in her late twenties, with ginger hair in a pixie crop, and was clearly taken with him – in spite of the patch, because of it, who could say? Now she led the way across the parquetry floor to the black iron fireplace, looking for a moment as if she were actually going to touch the unadorned marble ledge. “Put anything on it, it ends up on the floor.”

  Jared did reach out and touch the cold smooth marble. “But not immediately, I understand. It takes time.”

  “Not immediately, no.” Susan seemed interested, wellintentioned. She was a different heritage representative to the one assigned to Martin Rathcar fifteen months before. Without Rathcar’s media brouhaha, the scale of that whole publicity circus to draw attention, she may have had only a token briefing on what this evening’s proceedings were all about.
“But an hour, two hours later. It always happens. Used to take days, weeks, months, but it’s much more frequent now, a matter of hours, sometimes minutes. Even heavy weights end up being shifted. They say it’s something electro-magnetic, a freak of nature.”

  “You’ve seen it?” Jared asked. Though he’d been hoping he’d get Cilla Paul, the same heritage rep Rathcar had dealt with, things seemed to be shaping up well regardless.

  “Only on CCTV. I’m still pretty new.”

  The Delfray Room seemed larger from this angle than it actually was. Being painted a stylish off-white probably helped create that effect. At the far end, the western end near the double doors, four long sash windows were curtained with light brown drapes, gathered back with the same tasselled silken cords as on the other westward-facing windows in the hallways of the old Hydro Majestic. Like those hallway windows, these too looked out over the vastness of the Megalong Valley, gave the spectacular views that had made the place so famous in its heyday. Now the Hydro was in its third year of being closed, officially awaiting restoration to all its former glory as a world-class spa resort if only the appropriate government, licensing and restoration bodies could agree. Having read the various tender documents, Jared knew how dauntingly expensive it was going to be. The old Victorian and Edwardian buildings made a gentle chevron along the ridge-line, set fifty metres in from the main highway that led across the Blue Mountains from Sydney out to Lithgow, Bathurst and beyond. It was the sort of white elephant that was so costly to maintain yet too dramatically part of the local landscape and local history to be ignored.

  The late-autumn sun had already set beyond the last of the ranges. The famous view was gone from the long windows now, their old panes turned to so many mirror reflections by the light from the Deco wall sconces and the chandelier overhead. The black iron fireplace, clean but inevitably dusty, was the room’s most distinctive feature, the mantel a modest afterthought by comparison, even more simple and functional than the CCTV footage had shown it to be.

  “The previous owners must have become fed up with the whole thing,” Jared said.

  Susan nodded. “None of the various management groups ever said much about it but, you know, who wanted the publicity? It could happen at any time. It was always there. And, like I say, it’s been getting more frequent.”

  “Hard to live with.”

  “They only used the Delfray Room as an overflow room for special occasions, last-minute wedding bookings, that sort of thing. They just made sure they put nothing on the mantel. Records show that the occurrences – you call them ‘events’, don’t you? – started soon after the hotel was first opened in 1891 as the Belgravia Hotel, though very infrequently then. When it became the Hydro, only a few people knew about them. Management had to consider their more refined and sensitive clientele, so hushed things up pretty quickly. There was originally a large mirror mounted over it, quite ornate, so no one really questioned the lack of other adornment.”

  “Except the occasional guest who suddenly found his drink on the floor.”

  Susan laughed. “Exactly. The ultimate party trick. I imagine it’s a bit like trying to sell or lease out a murder house. Something you just don’t mention, just work around as best you can. Mr Ryan – Jared – if you’ll excuse me asking. I understand that you’re not blind in that eye. You’re just masking it for what’s being done tonight. Is what Cilla said true? This whole thing is about seeing what’s doing it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You don’t mean it’s someone? A person? A ghost?”

  Jared shrugged. “We can’t know. Martin Rathcar proceeded from the certainty that something was doing it – whether resident poltergeist or freak of nature. He found serious funding to develop a method for seeing anomalies like this a different way.”

  “But the patch. I understand that—”

  “Dr Rathcar called it the Nightside Eye as a media drawcard in 2008, back when the funding proposals went in. Made it sound sexy, mysterious. He got the idea from one of those myth-buster programmes on TV.”

  “Really. How so?”

  “It seems veteran seamen aboard sailing ships in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries often wore a patch over one eye when they went below-deck. They swapped the patch from one eye to the other so they were nightsighted and could see immediately. It let them find things quickly, stopped them bumping their heads. Very practical.”

  Susan looked sceptical. “That really happened?”

  “It’s highly likely. Dr Rathcar expanded on the idea, kept one eye completely isolated from all the customary vision tasks for nine months, took injections of several quite powerful, very specific neurological regulators to intensify the ‘nightside’ function in that particular optic nerve.”

  “Biased it?”

  “Many claimed so, though the regulators weren’t known to be hallucinogens. More like the drugs used in eye surgery, optical trauma events, sight retrieval situations. Increased receptivity and adaptivity. Intensification of the optic process.”

  “I remember now. Rathcar’s the guy from Sydney University who wouldn’t say what he saw. He took his own memories with another drug. I remember that interview on 60 Minutes.”

  “That’s the guy. Martin Rathcar.”

  “You’re doing what he did?”

  “As best I can.” Jared touched the smooth marble ledge again. There were no frissons, no untoward sensations, nor had he expected any. He took his hand away. “When he injected the Trioparin, took his memories, he breached quite a few legal agreements. He ended up being locked out of his own facilities, forfeited his database and research material. But some preliminary theory was already published. There was even a popular article in New Scientist to generate interest. The rest of the procedure was relatively easy to duplicate. The main thing was getting access to the same location he used a year ago. You can see why I’m so grateful to you and your office.”

  Susan smiled. “Cilla briefed me as well as she could before she left for London. Her mum is unwell, all last minute. She said I just have to be here and watch. Make sure rules are followed.”

  “You’re doing more than you realise. You and the security guards rostered on tonight become impartial observers as well.”

  “Hey, I like that. Independent witnesses!”

  “I’m glad you think so. I wonder if you’d be okay with us using your names in our observation log? It could really help.”

  “Sure. It’s exciting. I’ll ask Geoff and Amin later.”

  “My camera and sound people will be here soon, Sophie and Craig, my volunteer assistants and official witnesses. It’s six o’clock now. Once we’re set up, we’ll begin at 7:00 p.m., the same time Dr Rathcar did fifteen months ago. We’ll do the whole thing twice if we can, put several objects here on the mantel – a plastic bottle, a child’s wooden block, a toy train – and simply record what happens. Second time through, if we are lucky tonight and the phenomenon occurs, the moment they’re moved, disturbed in any way at all, I shift the patch from one eye to the other and see what I get. It shouldn’t take long.”

  “You do that once it happens?”

  “As soon as it happens. As close to. The first time is a control to establish parameters: event frequency and duration, lighting levels, things like that. But the second time round I stand over here by the fireplace and shift the patch, just as Rathcar did.”

  “But the camcorders will only catch your reactions. Not what you see.”

  “Right. But whatever we get may match reactions in the CCTV footage from the Rathcar attempt. Rathcar’s own footage hasn’t been made available yet, but may be released once we do this. Rathcar called out a single word – ‘Kathy!’ – his assistant’s name. We don’t know why now, and of course he can’t tell us.”

  “Or won’t.”

  “Or won’t. But there may be some key detail or other that emerges. Later spectrographic analysis may show even more, who knows?”

  “It�
�s all very uncertain,” Susan said, looking at him intently, or possibly at the eye-patch that was to play such a key role in what was about to happen.

  “True. But it’s all we can expect in a situation like this, and hopefully what we do tonight will actually duplicate Rathcar’s results, whatever those ultimately were. All we know is that there was an event and that Dr Rathcar shifted his patch, reacted strongly to something, called out Kathy Nicholls’s name, just her first name, then shifted the patch back. It’s what he did afterwards that caused the fuss. Gave himself the injection.”

  “So you’re doing this to help Dr Rathcar?”

  “In a sense. Not out of some noble motive or anything; I’ve never even met the man. But I have to allow that he saw something. A respected research scientist took his own memories of what seems to be the key moment in a serious experiment. Grandstanding aside, something probably significant happened to make him do that.”

  “The resident poltergeist,” Susan said.

  “I’ll settle for that, whatever it is.”

  “You hope to see it?”

  “That’s the idea. Hopefully see something.”

  “So why do it at night? It happens in daylight too. Surely that’d be easier?”

  Jared had to smile. “Rathcar did it at night, so we do likewise. I think it was Channel 9’s idea, having the nightshoot. Spookier. More dramatic.”

  “I can understand that. The smallest things are scarier at night.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But whatever you see may just be sensory overload. All those drugs you mentioned.”

  “I know. Large-scale perceptual trauma. But those optical regulators aren’t known for that, have been deliberately tailored to avoid it in fact. Ah – here are my long-suffering volunteers!”

  Sophie Mace and Craig Delmonte had appeared at the doorway to the Delfray Room, laden with camcorders, audio equipment and a portable lighting stand, assisted by Geoff and Amin, the security guards rostered on for the evening.