The Best New Horror 2

by Ramsay Campbell

  He watched a Beetle worm its way out of a side street between two Escorts into the traffic-flow. If this was a stream of traffic then it was a stream of mud. He looked for the Beetle again: was it an old one with a tiny back window and semaphore indicators or a more recent model with big rear-light clusters and fat bumpers? But he couldn’t see it and when he thought about it he couldn’t remember if he’d caught sight of it in his rear-view mirror or through the windscreen.

  On the other side of the road a red Escort nosed out from beside the snooker centre and was allowed to pass between two VW Beetles. The driver of the Escort waved her thanks. Behind Linden impatient drivers pipped their horns, making him jump: the queue in front of him had moved forward.

  The traffic didn’t get any better; when the M1 intersected the M25 and then merged with the M10, it got worse.

  He asked Melanie to put on a tape. She chose the Organ Symphony; at least while they proceeded at 10 miles per hour he was able to hear it.

  “Why don’t you go to sleep?” he asked her.

  “Your car’s too noisy,” she said. “I wouldn’t be able to.”

  Every few hundred yards the congestion would just dissolve and Linden would get up to 30 or 40. However, it was always a brief respite and inexplicably the queue tightened up again. Eventually, though, thanks to the domestic attraction for the majority offered by places like Luton, Leighton Buzzard, Milton Keynes, Newport Pagnell and Bedford, there were fewer cars sharing the same lanes and all of them travelling at at least 65 miles per hour. The novelty soon wore off and the tedium of motorway driving set in, exacerbated by the fact that it was by now quite dark.

  The tape clicked off, but since he hadn’t been able to hear it for the last half hour he didn’t bother putting another one on. He wished Melanie were with him to keep him awake. Would she be at the cottage yet, he wondered. He tried to guess who might be driving the Fiesta in front. What kind of person? He accelerated to get closer. A woman, he decided, but not like Melanie, more of a career woman, someone who saw great intrinsic worth in belonging to a company, a Company Girl. A female Egerton. He toed the accelerator again. Her hair would be fixed in a ‘go-ahead’ style like some kind of fossilized bird’s nest, the brain-eggs long since hatched and flown the nest, leaving only the corporate gloss of cranial vacancy in her eyes.

  He was suddenly right on top of the Fiesta.

  When the back end collapsed at his side and the car began to swerve, he had no idea what had happened.

  He glanced at the passenger seat and seized the steering wheel like the reins of a bolting horse. Steer into the skid, they always said. But what did that mean? Go with it or against it? He swung to the left, trying to aim the front of the car at the hard shoulder and braking as gently as he could without sliding into a new skid.

  He never knew how close he came to being hit by the cars which flew past him as he shuddered to a halt on the hard shoulder. He didn’t need to hold his hands out to see how much he was shaking: he was still holding the steering wheel and it was trembling, and not on account of the engine, which had stalled. Climbing over the empty seat, he got out on the passenger side, and walked unsteadily round the back of the car to see what had happened. A blowout. The back tyre on the driver’s side was shredded. He could just make out the word REMOULD.

  He got back in the car and told Melanie what had happened. She was calmer now; the shock had been greater for her since she’d been asleep when it had happened.

  He took his spanner and a jack from the boot and set about taking the wheel off. The first nut was a bit difficult so he worked at the other three, which all came off after some effort. The first one wouldn’t budge; the spanner’s grip began to slide on the nut.

  “Shit!” He leant against the Mini, watching the cars streaking past.

  He tried the nut again but the spanner was now far too big for it; he was just wearing the edges away; if he continued, it would become impossible to remove.

  Linden stopped for breath and looked back up the hard shoulder to see if he could still see the Mini. The car itself was invisible but the hazard lights flashed on and off and on again. They were much brighter than he would have imagined and he was grateful for them. He continued walking.

  Cars sped past him, occupants’ faces blank white spaces turned towards him, yet he’d never felt more alone. The sky was black, clouded over; the darkness of the land beyond the motorway uninterrupted by lights. Not even farmers lived here. People only drove through. He fastened all three buttons of his jacket and pulled up the collar. Where the hell was the emergency telephone? One just a few yards from his car was out of order. As was its opposite number which he had reached illegally by crossing the six lanes of the motorway.

  Eventually he came upon a telephone which worked and he was able to call for assistance. It seemed so unlikely, that there should be a man waiting by a telephone to take his call and send another man out in a van to rescue him. And yet that was the system he paid for. He was of course glad now that he had subscribed.

  He began to walk back. The cold penetrated his thin jacket. Cars swept by only a few feet away, making him feel vulnerable. He lost count of the bridges he passed under. The horizon failed to yield the flashing orange of his hazards. He began to worry that somehow he’d gone wrong. He’d not crossed back after running over to try the telephone on the other side. “Don’t be stupid,” he said out loud, but the sound of his voice, so feeble and vain, frightened him. He decided that he would turn back at the next bridge, and as the next bridge came into sight, so too did the hazard lights.

  They belonged to a P-reg Ford Cortina. A woman with bad teeth sitting in the passenger seat threw him a nervous glance then looked away.

  The Mini was another 200 yards further up. As he narrowed the gap from behind, a trick of the shadows cast by passing headlamps made it look like there were two people already sitting in the front seats.

  He clambered in and waited for the van to arrive.

  Each passing car shook the little Mini. He put some music on but imagined that it prevented him from hearing the footsteps of an interloper approaching the car. He pressed EJECT. Melanie said: “They won’t be long.”

  It started to rain. Big fat drops exploded on the windscreen. He pictured Melanie at the cottage: making a drink, running a bath, watching the television. He wished he were with her. How long would it be before she started to worry? The rain rattled on the roof as if it were a tent. Suddenly a brilliant flash created a second’s daylight in the night. Then the thunder began to roll, like a solo by a drunken timpanist.

  When the serviceman arrived, Linden joined him in the teeming rain, but the man couldn’t shift the nut either.

  “It’s only a mile to the next services,” the man shouted over the noise of the storm. “I’ll tow you there. It’ll be easier. I’ll be able to get this nut off. More space, more light.”

  Linden nodded and climbed into the cab as directed.

  “It’s not far,” the man said, when he’d hitched up the back of the Mini to his truck. They moved off and stayed on the hard shoulder. After ten or fifteen minutes the lights of the services sparkled through the rain. Linden left the man to change the wheel and walked across the rain-slick tarmac to the complex.

  In the self-service restaurant he sat down in a red plastic seat with a cup of stewed tea. He was alone in the place apart from a smartly dressed couple who stared miserably at each other’s shoulders across a crumb-strewn table.

  He stood looking at the telephones, wishing they’d gone to the trouble and expense of installing one in the cottage.

  Crossing over the covered footbridge, he stopped in the middle and watched the traffic sweeping underneath in both directions. He felt like a pivot between the two carriageways, as if with his mind he could just switch them. A flash of lightning printed a colour negative on his retina, sending a shiver down his back and dropping a chilled weight in his stomach. With a vague sense of foreboding he reached the end of
the bridge and walked down the steps. In the hall area a number of people were grouped around a video game. He joined the back of the group, which was murmuring its praise of the game-player. Someone moved to give Linden a better view. He stood behind a man with tight curly blond hair, whose hands, he now saw, were manipulating the game’s joystick and firing button.

  Ships and creatures fell from the top of the screen towards the bottom. The game-player had his own unit which he had to defend and from which he could attack the ships and creatures which if they came into contact with his unit would destroy it. The game was probably an old one, but the curly-haired man was obviously playing it extremely well to have attracted spectators.

  The screen was bright green.

  Linden was transfixed. He barely registered the man clicking his fingers as he relaxed between one attack and the next.

  The screen seemed to get brighter, like a television in a darkening room.

  Linden leaned closer. Slowly he began to turn his head to see the face of the man who was playing. But before he finished the turn he shot round the other way and barged his way out of the crowd, running for the doors.

  His head pounding, he searched for his car. On the far side of the parking area he saw the serviceman’s truck, its orange light still revolving. The man was bending down at the Mini’s rear nearside, just tightening the last nut on the changed wheel.

  “Quickly,” Linden croaked. “I’ve got to go.”

  “All right, all right,” the man said, kicking the wheel trim into place. “You’ve got to sign my forms.”

  The man walked too slowly to the cab of his truck and shuffled around some papers on a clipboard. Linden hovered at his shoulder.

  “There,” the man said, pointing with a stubby finger.

  Linden leaned over. The paper was red. He looked at the man, who pointed again and rubbed a sore red eye with his free hand. Linden scrawled his signature.

  “And there.”

  He signed again and dropped the pen onto the floor of the cab in his haste to get away.

  He jumped into the Mini, rammed it into first, thrust the key into the ignition and started the engine as he released the handbrake and turned the wheel. He accelerated and stamped on the brake when he thought he was going to run the serviceman over: but he was behind him in the rear-view mirror, waving his arms and shouting something Linden couldn’t hear. He screeched away and built up speed, aiming for the slip road to get back on the motorway. He ignored a road sign which he didn’t recognise—a solid red circle—and sped between two bollards. The man’s alarmed face receded to a fleck in his mirror.

  The motorway was fairly clear so he accelerated straight into the centre lane, pressing the pedal to the floor. He soon caught up with the red lights ahead. Too quickly, in fact. Suddenly there were swarms of red lights apparently speeding towards him in all three lanes, as if reversing down the motorway at 70 miles per hour.

  He turned to Melanie in bewilderment and fear.

  But she wasn’t there.

  And within seconds neither was he.

  THOMAS LIGOTTI

  The Last Feast of Harlequin

  AFTER YEARS TOILING in the small press field, Thomas Ligotti is finally making a name for himself with his unique and bizarre stories in such anthologies as The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales, Prime Evil, Fine Frights, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and, of course, Best New Horror.

  He was born in Detroit and currently lives in nearby Michigan. His jobs have included grocery store clerk, working in the circulation office of a local newspaper, telephone interviewer for a marketing research firm, assistant teacher, and various editorial capacities for a reference book publisher.

  His collection of short fiction, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, was published to great acclaim by Robinson and Carroll & Graf on both sides of the Atlantic, and it was recently followed by the equally remarkable Grimscribe: His Lives and Works.

  The Washington Post has described Ligotti as “the most startling and unexpected literary discovery since Clive Barker”; when you read the story that follows, you’ll understand why . . .

  To the Memory of H.P. Lovecraft

  I

  MY INTEREST IN THE TOWN OF MIROCAW was first aroused when I heard that an annual festival was held there which promised to include, to some extent, the participation of clowns among its other elements of pageantry. A former colleague of mine, who is now attached to the anthropology department of a distant university, had read one of my recent articles (“The Clown Figure in American Media,” Journal of Popular Culture), and wrote to me that he vaguely remembered reading or being told of a town somewhere in the state that held a kind of “Fool’s Feast” every year, thinking that this might be pertinent to my peculiar line of study. It was, of course, more pertinent than he had reason to think, both to my academic aims in this area and to my personal pursuits.

  Aside from my teaching, I had for some years been engaged in various anthropological projects with the primary ambition of articulating the significance of the clown figure in diverse cultural contexts. Every year for the past twenty years I have attended the pre-Lenten festivals that are held in various places throughout the southern United States. Every year I learned something more concerning the esoterics of celebration. In these studies I was an eager participant—along with playing my part as an anthropologist, I also took a place behind the clownish mask myself. And I cherished this role as I did nothing else in my life. To me the title of Clown has always carried connotations of a noble sort. I was an adroit jester, strangely enough, and had always taken pride in the skills I worked so diligently to develop.

  I wrote to the State Department of Recreation, indicating what information I desired and exposing an enthusiastic urgency which came naturally to me on this topic. Many weeks later I received a tan envelope imprinted with a government logo. Inside was a pamphlet that catalogued all of the various seasonal festivities of which the state was officially aware, and I noted in passing that there were as many in late autumn and winter as in the warmer seasons. A letter inserted within the pamphlet explained to me that, according to their voluminous records, no festivals held in the town of Mirocaw had been officially registered. Their files, nonetheless, could be placed at my disposal if I should wish to research this or similar matters in connection with some definite project. At the time this offer was made I was already laboring under so many professional and personal burdens that, with a weary hand, I simply deposited the envelope and its contents in a drawer, never to be consulted again.

  Some months later, however, I made an impulsive digression from my responsibilities and, rather haphazardly, took up the Mirocaw project. This happened as I was driving north one afternoon in late summer with the intention of examining some journals in the holdings of a library at another university. Once out of the city limits the scenery changed to sunny fields and farms, diverting my thoughts from the signs that I passed along the highway. Nevertheless, the subconscious scholar in me must have been regarding these with studious care. The name of a town loomed into my vision. Instantly the scholar retrieved certain records from some deep mental drawer, and I was faced with making a few hasty calculations as to whether there was enough time and motivation for an investigative side trip. But the exit sign was even hastier in making its appearance, and I soon found myself leaving the highway, recalling the roadsign’s promise that the town was no more than seven miles east.

  These seven miles included several confusing turns, the forced taking of a temporarily alternate route, and a destination not even visible until a steep rise had been fully ascended. On the descent another helpful sign informed me that I was within the city limits of Mirocaw. Some scattered houses on the outskirts of the town were the first structures I encountered. Beyond them the numerical highway became Townshend Street, the main avenue of Mirocaw.

  The town impressed me as being much larger once I was within its limits than it had appeared from the prominence just outside. I saw
that the general hilliness of the surrounding countryside was also an internal feature of Mirocaw. Here, though, the effect was different. The parts of the town did not look as if they adhered very well to one another. This condition might be blamed on the irregular topography of the town. Behind some of the old stores in the business district, steeply roofed houses had been erected on a sudden incline, their peaks appearing at an extraordinary elevation above the lower buildings. And because the foundations of these houses could not be glimpsed, they conveyed the illusion of being either precariously suspended in air, threatening to topple down, or else constructed with an unnatural loftiness in relation to their width and mass. This situation also created a weird distortion of perspective. The two levels of structures overlapped each other without giving a sense of depth, so that the houses, because of their higher elevation and nearness to the foreground buildings, did not appear diminished in size as background objects should. Consequently, a look of flatness, as in a photograph, predominated in this area. Indeed, Mirocaw could be compared to an album of old snapshots, particularly ones in which the camera had been upset in the process of photography, causing the pictures to develop on angle: a cone-roofed turret, like a pointed hat jauntily askew, peeked over the houses on a neighboring street; a billboard displaying a group of grinning vegetables tipped its contents slightly westward; cars abutting steep curbs seemed to be flying skyward in the glare-distorted windows of a five-and-ten; people leaned lethargically as they trod up and down sidewalks; and on that sunny day the clock tower, which at first I mistook for a church steeple, cast a long shadow that seemed to extend an impossible distance and wander into unlikely places in its progress across the town. I should say that perhaps the disharmonies of Mirocaw are more acutely affecting my imagination in retrospect than they were on that first day, when I was primarily concerned with locating the city hall or some other center of information.