The Best New Horror 2

by Ramsay Campbell

  Haskell rubbed his eyes, making them bloodshot and teary. “Not long after that masterstroke, I decided to take my leave of the whole cesspool. I didn’t feel so goddamned superior anymore. To see the manipulation of the masses as something cleaner than outright murder, one-to-one, takes the keenest kind of egomania. I couldn’t lie anymore—especially to myself. So, as I’ve said, I went mad.”

  To Jonathan, Haskell looked deflated now, slightly shrunken, as if decanting his angst had left him physically diminished. He had become his job. He had been engulfed by his own obsession to leave footprints in the world of cinema, and now was kicking the underpinnings from the obsession itself and cannibalizing his existence. Consuming himself via confession. Jonathan half expected his old friend to dissolve away like a cinematic special effect, leaving a Cheshire cat rictus that would hold for a single, meaningful beat before fading to permanent black. He appraised Haskell through steepled fingers. After a precarious moment of silence he figured it out. “You didn’t really lose your mind.”

  Haskell nodded, perking up. “I got angry, not crazy. It was to my advantage to convince the Conclave that one was the other.” He used the tabletop to resume the liquor and cigarettes ritual, then leaned conspiratorially closer to Jonathan. “After the dazzle of the pay scale diminishes, you begin wondering what happens when Scripters say that’s enough—like I was about to. We all just assumed that a letter of resignation could be tendered, everybody would shake hands, and the retiree would traipse off to Monaco to spend his Swiss balance. Four Scripters announced their intentions to quit and did so, amid quite a lot of good cheer, during my tenure. Their replacements were introduced in a matter of days, as if the Conclave had a card file full of emotionally vulnerable hardcases . . . like me, like I had been. Even Scripting gets mundane after a few years, right?”

  Jonathan nodded, although he could not see how it could possibly get dull. He wanted more cognac for himself but the bottle was drained clean.

  “Then I stopped thinking like a schmuck and started thinking like a Scripter again,” said Haskell, pointing. “Wouldn’t it be much simpler for the Conclave to dispatch a white van to take care of the old blood? And juggle Swiss numbers so the ex-Scripter’s balance slides right back into the Conclave coffers? And thereby gain a fail-safe procedure against ex-Scripters multiplying, becoming a goddamned minority practically, and having one of them inevitably spilling the beans the way I’m doing right now?” His smile was sickly but expressive, the smile of a terminal cancer patient laughing at a tumor joke. “So yes, I did go mad. The mad are unpredictable, and if there is one quality the Conclave hates, it’s mad unpredictability—because it falls outside the realm of demographics and flowcharts.”

  “No by-the-book solutions,” said Jonathan, understanding Haskell’s drift immediately. “No cut-and-dried solutions. Each case is different—almost random, like the real-life, accidental deaths versus the Conclave’s planned ones. Yes.” He said yes again to himself as he rose and rummaged through the low cherrywood cabinet for another bottle of something suitable. Tension was chewing at his knotted muscles. A pulsing in his head made him aware that his jaws had been squeezing together, grinding his teeth for at least half an hour. Giving up on the cabinet, he said, “Wait a second. Got to go to the kitchen.”

  Wandering back from his empty kitchen, he stopped in his empty bathroom and forced himself to urinate five drops, and while staring at the brandy bottle he’d scared up, balanced on the tank lid of the toilet, he told himself that he had encountered no real problems. Haskell did not seem violent although he did seem delusional. There was no foreseable trouble.

  Haskell was peering through a slit in the den curtains when he returned. Jonathan dashed a fresh taste into a clean crystal highball glass for himself and made a point of setting the brandy bottle down on the low table near Haskell’s empty snifter.

  “The rain’s letting up.”

  “You’re not finished yet, Haskell,” Jonathan urged calmly.

  He turned. “Yeah. Permit me to tell you how and why I went bonkers, Jon.”

  “That’s not what I meant. You told me how you got into the mess with the Conclave, now I presume you’re going to tell me how you got out of it. I take it you evaded the guys in the white vans pretty expertly. You’re here, after all.”

  “Yes.” Haskell fingered the flap pocket of his shirt.

  “You must have outfoxed them, or found blackmail leverage against them, or both. If they were killing everyone else—”

  “I had no desire to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. I plotted my escape as a Scripter, not a fugitive. I took a lot of evidence against them—documents—and I ran to earth, and then I let them find me, apparently insensate . . . without the documents. They didn’t dare kill or lobotomize me in case I’d socked away something that would tip over their monolith in the event of my demise. So they tucked me away in a very cozy asylum, to keep an eye on me for a while. Rather, I let them do it.”

  “It was all a bluff?”

  “No. I went north with two knapsacks full of cash and documents. Both still exist as I speak.”

  “What, then?” Jonathan was inwardly exasperated. “Your brilliant plan was to finish out your days in a nuthouse?” He nearly startled himself with the word nuthouse.

  “Jon, I’m not there now, am I? Haven’t you read the papers lately?”

  Jonathan stopped to review.

  Haskell’s eyes glinted with something like sick glee. “I’ll give you a hint. They’re still shoveling corpses out of the wreckage and ashes.”

  “Briar Lane,” Jonathan murmured. “Good god, they filed you away in Briar Lane?”

  “Can you think of a more exclusive nuthouse? They keep the patient’s entire medical history right at hand there—even the dental records.” He resumed his seat, now fiddling with an unidentifiable metal knickknack he’d taken out of his pocket to play with.

  “You started the fire at Briar Lane?” Jonathan wanted more alcohol, but cut short his body’s urge to reach for the bottle.

  “It was a classic old mansion, Jon. Ultra-wealthy incurables only. Pyromaniacs need not apply. The Conclave paid my freight—nothing but the best for those who might turn on you—and access to the files proves pretty goddamn easy if you’re not really crazy. Or if you’re crazy in the right direction.”

  “Do you really expect the Conclave to be fooled by the old Hitler ploy? A body charred to unrecognizability and a set of labeled dental proofs, charred or not, are not going to reassure them much . . . from what you’ve said.”

  “On the other hand, it’s been over a year now since I went ‘nuts’ and they’ve seen no provocative action from my presumed blackmail securities. I want them to understand that the Briar Lane incident is their escape valve regarding me—that they should relax, pursue their new projects, maybe even write me off. They don’t hurt me and I don’t hurt them. Just let me fade, with the money I’ve stockpiled.”

  “Can’t they connect you to the money?”

  “Assumed name,” Haskell said, with the air of repeating prepared answers.

  “The period during which you vanished? ‘Ran to earth’?” Jonathan was aware of his own sharpened, inquisitive gaze, of his more aggressive posture in the chair. He was automatically grilling Haskell. To atone he added, “Said the devil’s advocate,” and Haskell’s eyebrows arched.

  “Jon, the Conclave doesn’t believe in what insurance companies call acts of God. They always try to anticipate what sort of scam will be run on them. I’m not the first to try, though I may be the first to succeed. The trick is knowing when to stop thinking like a Scripter. I planned not to plan, and wound up doing the sort of entirely random thing that would never be accepted in fiction. I took my knapsacks full of incriminata and hitchhiked. While I was riding my thumb, they went berserk scouring California, checking banks, monitoring LAX and municipal skyports and bus depots and Union Station and car rental agencies and I wasn’t even in Cali
fornia! But California is where they caught me. After I’d come back.” His eyes were aglint with some private joke, some fundamental trivium he was purposefully omitting from his story.

  “Without the knapsacks.” Jonathan tried to sum the bits and orts of information in order to extrapolate.

  Haskell stood up again and paced like Sherlock Holmes about to finger a murderer from suspects congregated before a Victorian hearth. “I know what you’re thinking, Jon—with a setup like I’ve described, it would seem reckless of me to just drop in on you after all these years, entirely by chance, right?”

  “I was going to ask why me.”

  “When I infiltrated the files at Briar Lane, I found a doctors’ directory—you know, that binder thing they constantly update with inserts. I looked up your name and hot damn, there you were. It was just like we’d speculated. I’d become a screenwriter—a Scripter—and you’d become a shrink. It even had your home address.”

  “Conveniently enough,” said Jon. “A paranoid mind might see a plot brewing in a simple fact like that.”

  “Oh yeah. My first thought. I guess that confirms me as a sicko. But consider, Jon: if you’d been seduced by the Conclave, you would’ve put me under with a drug in the cognac and remanded me to the boys in the white vans for pumping . . . except for one thing. The one thing they weren’t able to get out of me when they had me, through drugs or threats or promises, and the one thing they might be desperate enough to try subterfuge to win. The one thing I haven’t mentioned yet—the location of the blackmail material. Where I went when I took my little excursion.”

  “My office could have been bugged without my knowledge, Haskell.”

  “Now you’re thinking like a Scripter. Tempting job, isn’t it? At least, the way it looks from the outside. Mass manipulation of entire populations would especially intrigue a psychiatrist or a sociologist. I saw your sheepskins on both, Jon. They’re right behind the desk.” He watched Jonathan’s eyes track to the frames on the wall and back. “But I don’t think they’d try something as superhuman as bugging each of my past acquaintances in all of Los Angeles. The Conclave prefers buying people to equipment.”

  Jonathan gestured impatiently, urging Haskell to get on with it. “So what’s the punchline, Haskell? You going to string me along, or tell me whether you trust me or not?”

  Haskell smiled. “Ah, now you’re in character—do you see? The concerned analyst banking on his patient’s faith; just the right amount of deep sobriety and interest.” He held his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “Just enough irritation to prompt the patient to reassure him with the truth.” He moved to the closed curtains, arms spread as though entreating an unseen audience. “Is he playing a role?” He brought his hands together in one swift clap. “Or is he for real?”

  “All right, Haskell, goddamnit!” His fingers were clawed across the chair arms like marble spiders; his face was indignantly flushed. “I’ll play this stupid game just to help you!” He pointed his finger like a weapon. “Here it comes, look out for it! What did you do with the blackmail material?” His eyes were bulging, and when his lips stopped speaking they curled back, loading a full clip of invective.

  “The question!” Haskell shouted. “At last! And you know what, Jon? I’ll answer your question honestly if you’ll answer one of mine honestly.” He buried his hands in his pockets and leaned against one of the bookcases. “If you’re really my pal, then I’ve gotten this story out of my guts and into the ear of a real human being unlike those bloodless slugs in the Conclave. Plus I’ve gained a reliable fail-safe for my blackmail material; something very desirable and worth a risk like coming here and exposing myself. Right?”

  “Ask.” His gaze had turned metallic.

  “Have you ever heard of the Conclave before tonight?” Now Haskell had folded his arms. All humor had fled from his face.

  “No!”

  “Why haven’t you had any of the brandy you brought from the kitchen, Jon?”

  Jonathan grew flustered. “I thought you—” He stopped, wiped his face. “I was waiting to get rid of the Grand Marnier a bit before I had some.” The brandy bottle Jonathan had brought into the room sat untouched, as did Jonathan’s highball glass.

  “Why don’t you have some right now?” Haskell’s voice was level, reasoned. Strangely, he looked much healthier now than when he’d stumbled across Jonathan’s threshold earlier this evening.

  “In good time, Haskell.” He sighed, stabbing his finger in the air again. “I refuse to get angry with you. You’re—”

  “Come off it, Jonathan!” Haskell spun, ran his finger along the spines of the books against which he had been leaning, and drew out Jonathan’s thousand-dollar Arion edition of Moby Dick. He let the front cover drop open, revealing a hollow that had been sliced out of the thickness of pages. Secured within the hollow was a small Sanyo tape recorder. Haskell slammed the book shut, dropped it to the carpet with a thump, and pulled from his pocket a cassette tape, waving it in the air. “I took this out while you were in the john, Jonathan! Over half an hour ago!”

  Jonathan’s mouth was open but his teeth were not clenched anymore. His face went pale and he lost whatever words he had prepared.

  “Your eyes went right from the book to the telephone, Jon. You know the number as well as I do: 727–3933. The numbers make a word, Jonathan, that’s how we remember it. Punch in that number and a white van will roll up your drive in a neat five minutes.” He shook his head slowly. “I was hoping you might not sell me down the river, Jon.” He made a furious, frustrated motion with his fist. “Shit! It couldn’t have been the money. It had to have been the control they offered you. Had to be.”

  Jonathan pushed himself slowly up from the recliner. “The tape is part of my hardware, Haskell; it’s SOP for anybody who talks to me in as disturbed a state as you brought through the door with you. No plot, no boobytrap . . .” His voice had turned authoritarian and succoring. He was back in character.

  “Have a jolt of brandy, Jonathan,” Haskell said, indicating the untouched bottle, perceiving in his heart the kind of arrogance it took to carve a hole in a thousand-dollar book for the purpose of subterfuge.

  “I will not.” Teacher to unruly delinquent. Jonathan turned his back on Haskell and moved toward the desk. He heard Haskell catch up with him, felt his hand grasp his own fore-arm, expected to be turned back certainly, to be struck possibly. His fancied control of the situation admitted nothing further.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to insist,” said Haskell, grasping, and spinning, and striking him, but not in the way he expected.

  Jonathan saw Haskell’s flat, openhanded blow coming, with little real velocity to cause pain. He could weather the impact and remain standing. Then he saw the metal knickknack from Haskell’s pocket between his index and middle fingers, flying to meet him. He felt a sharp needle pain in the muscles of his neck. Haskell jumped away. Jonathan’s openhanded grab came up empty.

  “Damn!” The tiny puncture stung, enraging him. He lifted the receiver of the desk phone and punched two digits before his hand swelled up and got too fat to function. He dropped the receiver. It clunked on the desktop and fell to the floor, uncoiling the cable. He pawed for the desk edge with an incredulous expression on his face, missed, and followed the phone to the floor, where he lolled like some armless, legless thing attempting locomotion. Haskell stood by the sofa, near the curtains.

  “The CIA calls this thing a sting-bee, Jonathan. Like king bee, I guess. Most of your motor coordination will be out for about an hour. As you’re discovering, your eyes will still focus and you can hear me perfectly . . . but that’s it.” He parted the curtains for another check.

  “I’ve done a little deduction, too, Jonathan, with the result of leaving you in another quandary, as you said. Sorry. But here it is: I guessed the Conclave would appeal to you. They must have propositioned you right after your divorce from Janice—same as me. As an acid test, an invitation, they want you to snare m
e for them, and they give you my story. You arrange for your name to be planted at Briar Lane as a memory key—it’s easily predictable, like giving someone a university yellow pages. You’d automatically look up your old compatriots, well, so did I, and this was a specific listing of psychiatrists, which made it a pretty sure thing. In return, you promise to uncover for the Conclave the location of the blackmail leverage, having gained in confidence from me. After all, I’m years in your past; easy enough to screw over for the right kind of carrot.

  “But you’d better start worrying about this, Jon: what if I’m a loyalty test for you? My whole story could have been fabricated as a Conclave gambit to test your resiliency—how far do old friendships reach? Did I escape tonight, or did you let me get away? Think about it, when you’re explaining to the Conclave why I’m not here and why you don’t have what they want. That’s part one of your dilemma. Part two is this—if I’m not a test, then you’re going to have to cover for me. I anticipated this because I’m a veteran and you’re a tyro at this game. You’re going to have to dance pretty fast to convince them I’m either dead for real, or impotent as a threat to them, because if you don’t, they’ll kill you for botching things.

  “If you succeed in snowing them, then you’ll be in. You’ll get to be a Scripter. And after a year, three years, five, you’ll get just as sick of it as I have. You see, Jon, you’re exactly as I was when I went in. I know how you’ll react. And perhaps a few years from now we’ll run into each other out there in the wilderness somewhere. As for now, I’ve just relieved myself out of the onus of paranoia that’s dogged me ever since I opted out. I’ve given it to you. And with that shadow hanging over your shoulder, you’ll learn how horrible the Conclave really is—you’ll learn it in the only meaningful way to be had, and maybe it’ll turn you into an ally eventually. As for right now—”