The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 19

by Stephen Jones

As a result of their continuous complaining and sniping, they managed to suck much of the energy and a little of the lustre from what should have been a valedictory event.

  In the end, we get the conventions – like governments – that we deserve. The horror field is no different. What the future holds for the World Horror Convention rests in the hands of the fans and those hard-working volunteers who are willing to put one together for little reward or recognition.

  If the people who attempted to sabotage the 2007 event ever manage to gain control, not only are they unlikely ever to become the kind of professional horror writer that most of them claim to aspire to, but they may also find they are left without a convention at which to enjoy their success.

  And that would be a very bad thing for the genre indeed.

  The Editor

  May 2008

  MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH

  The Things He Said

  MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH’S first novel, Only Forward, won the August Derleth and Philip K. Dick Awards, and his next two – Spares and One of Us – were both optioned by major Hollywood studios. His “Straw Men” books, written under the name “Michael Marshall”, were Sunday Times and international bestsellers, and his most recent urban thriller, The Intruders, is currently in development as a series with the BBC.

  The year 2008 sawthe publication of a short supernatural novel, The Servants, under yet a further pen name, “M. M. Smith”. He has also worked extensively as a screenwriter for clients in London and Hollywood, both individually and as a partner in Smith & Jones Productions. He lives in North London with his wife, a son, and two cats.

  As the author explains: “One of the things I love about horror stories – and it’s something that people who look down on horror simply don’t understand – is how effective and honest they can be at examining the reality of how people respond to extreme circumstances: showing both our capacity for equally extreme responses, but also the way in which we will often just get on with things, make the best of it, adjusting our lives and standards to the new conditions. In the end, whatever the state of the world, sometimes every day is just another day . . .”

  MY FATHER SAID SOMETHING to me this one time. In fact he said a lot of things to me, over the years, and many of them weren’t what you’d call helpful, or polite – or loving, come to that. But in the last couple months I’ve found myself thinking back over a lot of them, and often find they had a grain of truth. I consider what he said in the new light of things, and move on, and then they’re done. This one thing, though, has kept coming back to me. It’s not very original, but I can’t help that. He was not an especially original man.

  What he said was, you had to take care of yourself, first and foremost and always, because there wasn’t no one else in the world who was going to do it for you. Look after Number One, was how he put it.

  About this he was absolutely right. Of that I have no doubt.

  I start every day to a schedule. Live the whole day by it, actually. I don’t know if it makes much difference in the wider scheme of things, but having a set of tasks certainly helps the day kick off more positively. It gets you over that hump.

  I wake around 6:00 a.m., or a little earlier. So far that has meant the dawn has either been here, or coming. As the weeks go by it will mean a period of darkness after waking, a time spent waiting in the cabin. It will not make a great deal of difference apart from that.

  I wash with the can of water I set aside the night before, and eat whatever I put next to it. The washing is not strictly necessary but, again, I have always found it a good way to greet the day. You wash after a period of work, after all, and what else is a night of sleep, if not work, or a journey at least?

  You wash, and the day starts, a day marked off from what has gone before. In the meantime I have another can of water heating over a fire. The chimney is blocked up and the doors and windows are sealed overnight against the cold, so the fire must of necessity be small. That’s fine – all I need is to make enough water for a cup of coffee.

  I take this with me when I open the cabin and step outside, which will generally be at about 6:20 a.m. I live within an area that is in the shade of mountains, and largely forested. Though the cabin itself is obscured by trees, from my door I have a good view down over the ten or so acres between it and the next thicker stretch of woods. I tend to sit there on the stoop a couple minutes, sipping my coffee, looking around. You can’t always see what you’re looking for, though, which is why I do what I do next.

  I leave the door open behind me and walk a distance of about three hundred yards in length – I measured it with strides when I set it up – made of four unequal sides. This contains the cabin and my shed, and a few trees, and is bounded by wires. I call them wires, but really they’re lengths of fishing line, connected between a series of trees. The fact that I’m there checking them, on schedule, means they’re very likely to be in place, but I check them anyway. First, to make sure none of them needs re-fixing because of wind – but also that there’s no sign something came close without actually tripping them.

  I walk them all slowly, looking carefully at where they’re attached to the trees, and checking the ground on the other side for signs anything got that far, and then stopped – either by accident or because they saw the wires. This is a good, slow, task for that time in the morning, wakes you up nice and easy. I once met a woman who’d been in therapy – hired a vacation cottage over near Elum for half a summer, a long time ago this was – and it seemed like the big thing she’d learned was to ignore everything she thought in the first hour of the day. That’s when the negative stuff will try to bring you down, she said, and she was right about that, if not much else. You come back from the night with your head and soul empty, and bad things try to fill you up. There’s a lot to get exercised about, if you let it. But if you’ve got a task, something to fill your head and move your limbs, by the time you’ve finished it the day has begun and you’re onto the next thing. You’re over that hump, like I said.

  When that job’s finished, I go back to the cabin and have the second cup of coffee, which I keep kind-of warm by laying my breakfast plate over the top of the mug while I’m outside. I’ll have put the fire out before checking the wires, so there’s no more hot water for the moment. I used to have one of those vacuum flasks and that was great, but it got broken. I’m on the lookout for a replacement. No luck yet. The colder it gets, the more that’s going to become a real priority.

  I’ll drink this second cup planning what I’m going to do that day. I could do this the night before, but usually I don’t. It’s what I do between 7:30 and 8:00 a.m. It’s in the schedule.

  Most days, the next thing is going into the woods. I used to have a vegetable patch behind the cabin, but the soil here isn’t that great and it was always kind of hit-and-miss. After the thing, it would also be too much of a clue that someone is living here.

  There’s plenty to find out in the woods, if you know what to look for. Wild versions of the vegetables in stores, other plants that don’t actually taste so good but give you some of the green stuff you need. Sometimes you’ll even see something you can kill to eat – a rabbit or a deer, that kind of thing – but not often. With time I assume I may see more, but for now stocks are low. With winter coming on, it’s going to get a little harder for all this stuff. Maybe a lot harder.

  We’ll see. No point in worrying about it now. Worry don’t get nothing but worry, as my father also used to say.

  Maybe a couple hours spent out in the woods, then I carry back what I’ve found and store it in the shed. I’ll check on the things already waiting, see what stage they’re at when it comes to eating. The hanging process is very important. While I’m there I’ll check the walls and roof are still sound and the canvas I’ve layered around the inside is still watertight. As close to airtight as possible, too.

  I don’t know if there are bears in these parts any more – I’ve lived here forty years, man and boy, and I ha
ven’t seen one in a long time, nor wolves either – but you may as well be sure. One of them catches a scent of food, and they’re bound to come have a look-see, blundering through the wires and screwing up all that stuff. Fixing it would throw the schedule right out. I’m joking, mainly, but you know, it really would be kind of a pain, and my stock of fishing wire is not inexhaustible.

  It’s important to live within your means, within what you know you can replace. A long game way of life, as my father used to say. I had someone living here with me for a while, and it was kind of nice, but she found it hard to understand the importance of these things, of playing that long game. Her name was Ramona, and she came from over Noqualmi way. The arrangement didn’t last long. Less then ten days, in fact. Even so, I did miss her a little after she walked out the door. But things are simpler again now she’s gone.

  Time’ll be about 10:30 a.m. by now, maybe 11:00, and I’m ready for a third cup of coffee. So I go back to the cabin, shut and seal up all the doors and windows again, and light the fire. Do the same as when I get up, is make two cups, cover one to keep it semi-warm for later. I’ll check around the inside of the cabin while the water’s heating, making sure everything’s in good shape. It’s a simple house. No electricity – lines don’t come out this far – and no running water.

  I got a septic tank under the house I put in ten years back, and I get drinking and washing water from the well. There’s not much to go wrong and it doesn’t need checking every day. But if something’s on the schedule then it gets done, and if it gets done, then you know it’s done, and it’s not something you have to worry about.

  I go back outside, leaving the door open behind me again, and check the exterior of the house. That does need an eye kept on it. The worse the weather gets, the more there’ll be a little of this or that needs doing. That’s okay. I’ve got tools, and I know how to use them. I was a handyman before the thing and I am, therefore, kind of handy. I’m glad about that now. Probably a lot of people thought being computer programmers or bankers or TV stars was a better deal, the real cool beans. It’s likely by now they may have changed their minds. I’ll check the shingles on the roof, make sure the joints between the logs are still tight. I do not mess with any of the grasses or bushes that lie in the area within the wires, or outside either. I like them the way they are.

  Now, it’s about midday. I’ll fill half an hour with my sculpturing, then. There’s a patch of ground about a hundred yards the other side of the wires on the eastside of the house, where I’m arranging rocks. There’s a central area where they’re piled up higher, and around that they’re just strewn to look natural. You might think this is a weird thing to do for someone who won’t have a vegetable patch in case someone sees it, but I’m very careful with the rocks. Spent a long time studying on how the natural formations look around here. Spent even longer walking back from distant points with just the right kind of rocks. I was born right on this hillside. I know the area better’n probably anyone. The way I’m working it, the central area is going to look like just another outcrop, and the stuff around, like it just fell off and has been lying there for years.

  It passes the time, anyway.

  I eat my meal around 1:00 p.m. Kind of late, but otherwise the afternoon can feel a little long. I eat what I left over from supper the night before. Saves a fire. Although leaving the door open when I’m around the property disperses most of the smoke, letting it out slowly, a portion is always going to linger in the cabin, I guess. If it’s been a still day, then when I wake up the next morning my chest can feel kind of clotted. Better than having it all shoot up the chimney, but it’s still not a perfect system. It could be improved. I’m thinking about it, in my spare time, which occurs between 1:30 and 2:00 p.m.

  The afternoons are where the schedule becomes a tad more freeform. It depends on what my needs are. At first, after the thing, I would walk out to stock up on whatever I could find in the local towns. There’s two within reasonable foot distance – Elum, which is about six miles away, and Noqualmi, a little further in the other direction. But those were both real small towns, and there’s really nothing left there now. Stores, houses, they’re all empty and stripped even if not actually burned down. This left me in a bit of a spot for a while, but then, when I was walking back through the woods from Noqualmi empty-handed one afternoon, I spied a little gully I didn’t think I knew. Walked up it, and realized there might be other sources I hadn’t yet found. Felt dumb for not thinking of it before, in fact.

  So that’s what I do some afternoons. This area wasn’t ever home to that many vacation cabins or cottages, on account of the skiing never really took off and the winter here is really just kind of cold, instead of picturesque cold – but there are a few. I’ve found nine, so far. First half-dozen were ones where I’d done some handy work at some point – like for the therapy woman – so they were easier to find. Others I’ve come upon while out wandering. They’ve kept me going on tinned vegetables, extra blankets. I even had a little gas stove for a while, which was great. Got right around the whole smoke problem, and so I had hot coffee all day long. Ran out of gas after a while, of course. Finding some more is a way up my wish list, I’ll tell you, just below a new vacuum flask.

  Problem is, those places were never year-round dwellings, and the owners didn’t leave much stuff on site, and I haven’t even found a new one in a couple weeks. But I live in hope. I’m searching in a semi-organized grid pattern. Could be more rigorous about it, but something tells me it’s a good idea to leave open the possibility you might have missed a place earlier, that when you’re finished you’re not actually finished – that’s it and it’s all done and so what now?

  Living in hope takes work, and thinking ahead. A schedule does no harm, either, of course.

  Those lessons you learn at a parent’s knee – or bent over it – have a way of coming back, even if you thought you weren’t listening.

  What I’m concentrating on most of all right now, though, is building my stocks of food. The winter is upon us, there is no doubt, and the sky and the trees and the way the wind’s coming down off the mountain says it’s going to land hard and bed itself down for the duration. This area is going to be very isolated. It was that way before the thing, and sure as hell no one’s going to be going out of their way to head out here now.

  There’s not a whole lot you can do to increase the chance of finding stuff. At first I would go to the towns, and had some success there. It made sense that they’d come to sniff around the houses and bins. Towns were a draw, however small. But that doesn’t seem to happen so much now. Stocks have got depleted in general and – like I say – it’s cold and getting colder and that’s not the time of year when you think hey, I’ll head into the mountains.

  So what I mainly do now is head out back into the woods. From the back of the cabin there’s about three roads you can get to in an hour or so’s walking, in various directions. One used to be the main route down to Oregon, past Yakima and such. Wasn’t ever like it was a constant stream of traffic on it, but that was where I got lucky the last two times, and so you tend to get superstitious, and head back to the same place until you realize it’s just not working any more.

  The first time was just a single, middle-aged guy, staggering down the middle of the road. I don’t even know where he’d come from, or where he thought he was going. This was not a man who knew how to forage or find stuff, and he was thin and half-delirious. Cheered right up when he met me. The last time was better. A young guy and girl, in a car. They hadn’t been an item before the thing, but they were now. He believed so, anyway. He was pretty on the button, or thought he was.

  They had guns and a trunk full of cans and clothes, back seat packed with plastic containers of gasoline. I stopped them by standing in the middle of the road. He was wary as hell and kept his hand on his gun the whole time, but the girl was worn out and lonely and some folks have just not yet got out of the habit of wanting to see people, to mix wi
th other humans once in a while.

  I told them Noqualmi still had some houses worth holing up in, and that there’d been no trouble there in a while on account of it had been empty in months, and so the tide had drifted on. I know he thought I was going to ask to come in the car with them, but after I’d talked with them a while I just stepped back and wished them luck. I watched them drive on up the road, then walked off in a different direction.

  Middle of that evening – in a marked diversion from the usual schedule, but I judged it worth it – I went down through the woods and came into Noqualmi via a back way. Didn’t take too long to find their car, parked up behind one of the houses. They weren’t ever going to last that long, I’m afraid. They had a candle burning, for heaven’s sake. You could see it from out in the back yard, and that is the one thing that you really can’t do. Three nights out of five I could have got there and been too late already. I got lucky, I guess. I waited until they put the light out, and then a little longer.

  The guy looked like he’d have just enough wits about him to trick the doors, so I went in by one of the windows. They were asleep. Worse things could have happened to them, to be honest, much worse. There should have been one of them keeping watch. He should have known that. He could have done better by her, I think.

  Getting them back to the cabin took most of the next day, one trip for each. I left the car right where it was. I don’t need a car, and they’re too conspicuous. He was kind of skinny, but she has a little bulk. Right now they’re the reason why the winter isn’t worrying me quite as much as it probably should. Them, plus a few others I’ve been lucky enough to come across – and yes, I do thank my luck. Sure, there’s method in what I’ve done, and most people wouldn’t have enjoyed the success rate I’ve had. But in the end, like my father used to say, any time you’re out looking for deer, it’s luck that’s driving the day. A string of chances and decisions that are out of your hands, that will put you in the right place at the right time, and brings what you’re looking for rambling your way.