The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 24

by Stephen Jones

  Livia looked at me. Her eyes were cold. “You better hope no one else does,” she said.

  She lifted her rifle and fired. The woman’s head exploded.

  After that, we began to fire at will, and I think I blew the heads off four, though someone else’s shot might have taken one of them. I couldn’t be sure. Livia hit at least seven in the head and dropped them. She hit several more in the body, and dropped them. Eventually, someone firing at the same targets got the head.

  When it was all done, the guides gathered up the bodies with hooks and carried them to a large and long pile of lumber that had already been laid out and had weathered some. They put the dead on the pile and poured gasoline over all of it and set it on fire.

  When the fire was going, the rifles were gathered and stored and the windows went up, and we broke for clean-up and then dinner, just as the train was starting to move.

  Back in our little room we could really smell the gun oil and the stink from the firing. We decided to shower and dress for dinner. There was to be a big formal dinner in the dining car tonight, a celebration of the completion of the hunt. On the way back the train wouldn’t stop, but would run full speed night and day until we arrived back east.

  Before I got in the shower, I looked at Livia, and she was obviously different, relieved, as if a poison had been drained from her. I went to the bathroom and undressed. It was tight in there and the shower was close. I turned on the water and began to soap up and shampoo my hair.

  I heard the curtain slide back, and there was Livia, naked. She didn’t smile at me. She didn’t say a word. She got in and pulled back the curtain and took hold of me and got me ready and then before I knew it was happening, I was inside of her, pushing her up against the shower wall, going at her for all I was worth.

  She was amazing, animal-like even. It was over quickly for both of us. We leaned together, panting. Then Livia was out of the shower, and was gone, and I was left dazed and amazed, satisfied and confused.

  When I came out of the bathroom, drying myself with a towel, the lights were on, but Livia had already gone to bed. She was lying in our little bunk beneath the sheets with her back to me, her face turned to the wall. The blanket was folded back to her feet.

  I was about to put on my pyjamas, when she said without turning toward me, “Don’t bother with your pyjamas. Put out the light and come to bed.”

  I did. And we did.

  It was a great, long night of love, and even as I mounted her, and enjoyed her, and she squirmed beneath me and moaned, I couldn’t help but somehow be reminded of that night with the woman we shot. Like that night, what Livia and I did was not so much making love as it was a pounding of each other’s genitals. It was a savage pelvis fight that left bruises and redness and utter exhaustion.

  Later, lying beside Livia, holding her, listening to her breathe, I wondered how long it would be before things went back to the way they used to be. Not just how we could be together without the thing I had done not hanging before us in the air, but the sex, as well; how long before it became mild again, as common as a subway ride, and as boring.

  I thought of that and I thought of the strange time I had had with the dead woman in a room on 41st Street, and I told myself that such a thing couldn’t happen again, but I knew, too, that while Livia and I had been at it this night, when I closed my eyes, it was not Livia I saw. It was the dead woman I imagined beneath me.

  What in hell were the desires of man?

  No profound revelation presented itself in answer to my question.

  I closed my eyes and thought about many things, but mostly I thought about that dead woman, and how she had been, and how it had been to shoot her today, and how it had made Livia and me fill up with the lava of passion. I tried to think of Livia, and our life, and how much I loved her, but in my mind all I could see was that dead girl being screwed by me or shot by us, and the Fast Train fled eastward.

  SIMON KURT UNSWORTH

  The Cotswold Olimpicks

  SIMON KURT UNSWORTH was born in Manchester in 1972 and has not yet given up the hope of finding that the world was awash with mysterious signs and portents that night.

  His work has been published in a number of anthologies, including Ash-Tree Press’s At Ease with the Dead, Shades of Darkness and Exotic Gothic 3, Dark Horse’s Lovecraft Unbound, PS Publishing’ PostScripts and Gray Friar Press’s Where the Heart Is. This is his fifth appearance in the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror series, and he has also appeared in The Very Best of Best New Horror.

  His first collection of short stories, Lost Places, was released by Ash-Tree in 2010 and was (along with Angela Slatter’s Sourdough) Black Static magazine’s reviewer Pete Tennant’s collection of the year. His latest collection, Quiet Houses, was long-listed for the Edge Hill Short Story Collection prize, and he has two further collections due: Strange Gateways from PS Publishing and an as-yet-unnamed volume that will launch the Spectral Press “Spectral Signature Editions”.

  As he admits: “When I was asked to contribute to Terror Tales of the Cotswolds (in which ‘The Cotswold Olimpicks’ first appeared), I agreed without having thought through the fact that I’d never actually been to any of the places that constitute the Cotswolds.

  “I started to research the area, coming eventually across a reference to ‘The Cotswold Olimpicks’; the name stuck in my head, and when I read an article about the games and the man who set them up, the story appeared in my mind pretty much fully formed. It seemed to fit perfectly with my new-found love of folk music, with my sense of old notes stretching tendril fingers back into the past, with my realisation that folk tunes are darker than I’d ever understood – full of sex and rebellion and anger.

  “I liked the idea of the Cotswold Olimpicks, of the unofficial histories of places and the curious traditions that pepper the UK like secret blisters, and I wanted to write something that not only celebrated these folk traditions but that also poked and played with their origins. It is, I suppose, my version of The Wicker Man, only without Summerisle, Britt Ekland’s dancing, Christopher’s Lee’s suavely evil urbanity and kilt, Sergeant Howie’s dour and unforgiving Christianity and unattractive pyjamas, or crowds in a pub bursting into bawdy song.

  “It’s a story about the past and the now and the dancing we do when we get caught between the two; it’s also a story about tradition and alcohol, and I’m rather proud of it.

  “Robert Dover’s poem at the end of the story is, incidentally, genuine.”

  FILLINGHAM FIRST SAW the women by the dwile flonkers. He had spent the day walking around Dover’s Hill, the shallow amphitheatre where the Cotswold Olimpick Games took place and had taken, he thought, some good photographs so far. The place was heaving and he had captured some of that, he hoped; the shifting bustle as people flocked from event to event and laughed and shouted and ate and drank. The sound of cymbals and mandolins and violins and guitars filled the air about the crowd, leaping around the brightly costumed figures and the smells of roasting meat and open fires.

  There were five of them and they were watching as a circle of men held hands and danced counter-clockwise around another group of men. The men in the centre of the circle had a bucket and were dipping cloths in it and hurling them at the dancers; every time one of the cloths hit its target, the crowd laughed good-naturedly. When the cloth missed, arcing into the people beyond, a cheer went up and a man dressed in a costume of rags and wearing a hat that was too big for him would shout, “Ha! Jobanowl declares a penalty!” and the cloth thrower was given a large glass of ale to drink. The women were smiling as they watched, clustered tightly together, dressed similarly in white shift dresses and with their hair long and loose. Fillingham wondered if they were some kind of act and took their photograph, thinking that if he could catch another one of them later, in performance, it might make a nice pair, Artists at rest and work or something.

  The women were definitely a group, seemed to be in tune with each other somehow, their heads
bobbing to the rhythms of the music slipping through the air around them, their bodies turning in the same direction as though responding to invisible currents like birds wheeling through the sky. When one of the sodden cloths, the dwiles, came towards them, they danced aside as though choreographed. The crowd cheered again as Fillingham lowered his camera, a knot of people jostling between him and the women as they tried to avoid the dripping missile, and when they moved aside the women were gone.

  Fillingham let the press of the crowd drift him along the field, taking more photographs, this time of men dressed in smock shirts and clogs kicking at each other’s shins, and then of another team of men destroying an old piano as people around them cheered and chanted a countdown. As dusk crept across the valley, his images took on a sepia tone, bleached of colour’s vibrancy, becoming timeless. This was what he was after, he thought; a set of pictures that captured some of the sense of history of this event, of people stepping back for a day to celebrate nothing but tradition and enjoyment itself. This was a folk event, owned by everyone here.

  On the cusp of the gloaming giving itself to darkness, someone appeared as Robert Dover, the founder of the games some time in the early seventeenth century. He was riding a huge chestnut horse, was dressed in a tunic with a heraldic crest on his breast. A yellow feather bristled jauntily from the brim of his wide hat, bobbing as he rode around. His face was a white mask hanging down from under the hat, gleaming like bone, and he was waving a wand above his head that glittered and spat sparks. It was a sign that the bonfire was to be lit and the crowd began to move back towards the huge pile of wood at the far side of the fields, following the horseman as he capered and called exhortations for people to hurry, to dance on. Fillingham took more photographs, catching a good one of Dover rearing his horse in the centre of a mass of people, like some ancient leather-bound general, all buckles and gleam and leadership.

  Moving with the crowd, Fillingham found himself walking behind the women in white and spent a few moments appreciating the sway of their buttocks under the thin dresses before realising they were barefoot; mud was spattered up the pale skin of their bare calves in dark, irregular tattoos. The hems of their dresses were damp and dirty as well, he saw, the material swinging in sinuous patterns as the women moved. It was surprisingly erotic, this shift of skin and muscle under skin and cotton and dirt that crept up to where Fillingham’s eyes could not follow, and he suddenly felt guilty, as though he was peeping. Feeling himself blush and glad of the darkness to cover his embarrassment, he raised his eyes to deliberately look away.

  The fire caught quickly, leaping orange into the sky and throwing its heat across the crowd, creating a fug of temperature and sweat. Dover cantered around the blaze, crying “To ale! To ale!” as people cheered and shouted, his motionless face reflecting the fire’s colours. Fillingham took more pictures, wishing, not for the first time, that his camera could somehow catch sound and smell as well, that it could trap the intensity of the heat and the noise and the scents of mud and flame and grass, and preserve them.

  From huge bags on the ground near the fire, stewards in reflective tabards began to take long white candles and hand them out. The first few they lit and then let people ignite each other’s, a chain of flames that stretched out in a long, snaking line as the crowds began to walk slowly back towards Chipping Campden. Fillingham declined a candle and let the line carry him, snapping all the while.

  The procession ended up in the small town’s market square, where more revels were starting up. Most of the shops were still open, filling with tourists buying souvenirs, and stalls along the sides of the square did a brisk trade in food and drink. Down the streets off the square, small canvas tents with open fronts nestled between the shops, offering people the opportunity to play chess and draughts, or games of chance like three card marney or craps. The square soon became busy, clusters of people spilling out into the surrounding streets, drinking and talking and shouting, filling the tents and shops, moving, and Fillingham photographed as many of them as he could.

  He had been in the square for around an hour when he saw one of the women again; she was moving through the crowds holding a beaten pewter flask and stacks of small plastic cups. Fillingham followed her, intrigued; this wasn’t what he’d expected. The women had looked like a singing group, as though they were about to launch into madrigals or choral songs at any moment, but now they were separated and were doing . . . what? The woman he was following, tall and dark, was doing little other than giving drinks away, pouring small amounts of liquid into the cups and handing them out. Fillingham took photographs of her, watching as she distributed the cups, dipping her head and saying something each time someone drank. Fillingham moved closer, hoping to get a clearer image and hear what the woman was saying, but he kept losing her in the press of bodies. Her white dress glimmered in amongst the shifting masses like a faltering beacon, and he followed.

  The woman moved surprisingly quickly, without apparent effort, slipping along the alleyways around the square, darting through knots of people and giving out her drinks, nodding and speaking. Fillingham wondered where the other women were; doing the same thing throughout the crowds, he supposed, giving out their drinks and adding to the atmosphere. The day’s games were over; now the celebrations started in earnest. He took more photographs as he followed the woman, of stall-holders serving, of a group of Morris Men drinking beer from tankards, their bells jangling as their arms moved. Fillingham saw that the tankards were attached to their belts by lengths of string or leather cord; some of the Morris Men had more than one, spares hanging to their side as they supped. Children ran between the legs of adults, chasing and chased and laughing.

  “Would you like a drink, sir?” The voice was friendly, the accent difficult to place, not local but redolent of somewhere hot and dry and surrounded by embracing blues seas. It was the woman, holding out one of her cups to Fillingham. He took it and sniffed at the liquid it held; it was sweet and rich and pungent. The woman was looking at him expectantly, but he held the cup back out to her. “No, thank you,” he said. “I’m not drinking at the moment.” Not drinking alcohol, he almost added, but didn’t. Instead, he indicated his press badge in its plastic sheath dangling against his chest and gave her a rueful smile, saying, “I’m working. Perhaps later.”

  “The celebrations go on for many hours,” said the woman. Above her, in the sky, a firework exploded, showering multi-coloured flames across the stars. “You can pay fealty at any time.” Another firework tore open the sky, streams of colour painting the woman’s shift blue and green, throwing their shadows downwards. For a moment, the woman’s shadow self moved against the shadow Fillingham, pressing to him, and then another explosion above them sent them dancing apart, wavering, their edges rimed with yellows and reds, and then the woman was moving again.

  She stopped at the people next to Fillingham, offering them drinks which they took. As they drank, she dipped her head again and spoke, and this time he was close enough to hear what she said. It was doggerel, some old rhyme he presumed, intoned as though it were a prayer. Atmosphere, he thought, snapping a last picture of her before her head rose from its penitent’s pose. On the screen in his camera’s rear, she looked small and pale, the swelling of her breasts only just visible under the cotton of her dress, her hair draping down in front of her face, her neck exposed and delicate. She lifted her head, giving Fillingham a last look that he couldn’t quite fathom, and then she was gone.

  By the time Fillingham decided to go back to his hotel, the atmosphere was definitely changing; most children and their parents had emptied from the crowd, leaving only the adults who were drinking seriously. The amount of dancing had increased and the town-square was full of moving figures and noise. Three or four different groups of musicians were playing, with more in the pubs, and the sound of violins and guitars and differing beats and voices was creating a discordance that Fillingham didn’t enjoy.

  The fireworks display had lasted
for a few more minutes after the woman had left him behind, and had culminated in a huge explosion of reds and greens and blues and Dover using a megaphone to cry “To ale!” again, the wand above his head spitting like some giant sparkler as he waved it around, creating endless looping patterns in the air above him. Fillingham had taken more photographs, trying one last time to catch the feelings and the sounds and the smells of Chipping Campden, with its twisting streets and cobbles and stalls and olde worlde charm that managed, somehow, to seem vibrant and real and not clichéd or faked. After, he had put his camera in his bag and gone back to his room.

  He was staying in a chain hotel, and not an expensive one either. He used the cheap chains unless he was on a commissioned assignment and could charge the room to someone else, and had grown used to their uniformity. Each room was the same; identical cheap veneer with its woodgrain pattern to make up for the fact that the surfaces were all plastic, identical small TVs bolted to the wall with a limited number of channels available, identical beds and bedding. Everything the same, from city to city, even down to the pictures screwed to the corridor walls and the carpet with its not-too-subtle pattern of brown and skeined red. He had become almost fond of it, in the knowing what to expect and surpriselessness of it all. At this end of the market, there were no individual flourishes in the room, no soap or shampoos in the bathroom, only two sachets of coffee, two cartons of milk, two tea bags by the small white kettle that each room came equipped with.

  Like most of the hotels Fillingham stayed in, part of the reason it was cheap was that it was out of the town centre. Chipping Campden was small enough to be charming at its heart, but even it had a business district and some minor industry, and the hotel was in this area, a ten-minute walk from the cobbled lanes and town-square. The view from his window was of a car-park for an office block and, beyond this, the corrugated roof of a garage. The garage was also part of a chain, Fillingham noticed, his mood oddly low; after a day amongst so many people, so many colours and tradition and vibrancy, looking out on identikit companies from an identikit hotel was depressing. It wasn’t how he usually felt, and it was unsettling in a way he couldn’t quite identify. Dropping the blind down, he went and lay on his bed. The mattress was unpleasantly soft and moved under him, his book and camera, lens cap on, bouncing gently beside him. He turned on the television, turned it off again after hopping through the channels and finding nothing but blandness. Finally, he sat up, sighing.