The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 19

by Stephen Jones

  Who the hell wouldn’t.

  The phone rang and no one was there. It happened more and more.

  I kept bleaching the bloodstain and finally it faded enough so folks could walk over it again. I got another royalty check, this one for $12.13. In a moment of spite I grabbed the end of it and flicked my lighter. The corner started to brown but I dropped it before there was any real damage. There was no point in ruining what little of mine they were actually sending through. I should be happy the Danes or the Portuguese or whoever the fuck were reading my books. We all make our deals with the Devil.

  A private investigator hired by the parents of one of the rape victims came around asking questions. He eyed me up good. A handyman with no set hours, no clock to punch. He’d asked around and found out about the murder. He tried to brace me and I held onto my dwindling cool. He lacked subtlety and hoped to push my buttons, whatever they were. He ran out scenarios where I couldn’t get laid so I waited in dark hallways and leaped down onto teenage girls. I let him talk the talk because it was for a good cause. I wanted him to hunt down the bastard in the area.

  I awoke to laughter outside the basement window. Mojo pressed his face to the glass and waved to me. I saw the feet of boys and girls go by. A breeze blew the stalks of weeds and wildflowers against the pane. I got dressed, took the back door, and went out to the garden.

  Ferdi and the kids were following Mojo around, all of them in a line and sort of dancing the Conga. They went around and around while I watched. Mojo’s little bag around his neck, stuffed with the pad and pen on a string, bounced as he jumped onto the vines and the lower limbs of a couple of gnarled trees bursting up from brick.

  I turned and saw a man with eyes like a dull metal finish. He whispered something I didn’t understand. It wasn’t English. I thought maybe it was German. My stomach tightened but I could feel myself smiling. The mysteries of life and death, baby, and everything in between.

  A sweet moist aroma wafted from him, and suddenly I knew what the Rhine Falls must smell like.

  “Nobody uses ice-picks anymore,” I said. “So he lied. So what? He just wanted to meet girls.”

  Dr Lauber held his hands up to show me they were empty. He seemed eager to explain to me that his intent was friendly and forgiving. He said something else I couldn’t understand. I approached and the sunlight shimmered off him.

  I said, “It wasn’t you?”

  Dr Lauber firmed his lips. He shook his head. He reached out to touch me but the touch never came. He had a lot more he wanted to say. The words poured out of him. He had admissions and apologies and declarations to make. We all did. I knew I would die before making all of mine too. It seemed nobody could do any differently. I listened, thinking about Gabriella. By the time the chain of children came around again he was gone.

  Mojo skipped by and then the kids, one after the other. As Ferdinand the Magnifico was about to pass, I reached out and grabbed hold of his coat sleeve.

  He stopped and faced me. “My good friend, the wonderful writer Will Darrow! Is it not a glorious day!”

  “Why’d you do it, Ferdi?” I asked. “Why’d you kill the aluminium foil guy?”

  Our eyes locked and I watched the real person slip out from beneath the costume of his caricature. I saw a sorrow and a resolve there that I hoped I would never have to experience. A strength that had been thoroughly hidden and an anguish that would never depart but had been recently muted. He was trying to regain his soul.

  He spoke in a quiet voice for the first time since we’d met. “He murdered my wife in Denmark fourteen years ago. You don’t need to know the details.”

  He was right. I didn’t.

  I knew he’d told me the truth. We can go our whole lives believing we’ll recognize the cold hard truth when we hear it, but when it finally arrives it’s like nothing that’s ever come before. It strikes a chord that’s never been hit, and my head somehow rang with it. Ferdi waited for me to make a move. He appeared ready for any judgment.

  The aluminium foil liar had told me he’d done terrible things. He had struck his mother. He had broken the hearts of his children. He had made a woman bleed. He didn’t think he deserved to be forgiven.

  I shrugged and let go of Ferdi’s sleeve. He nodded with a slightly accepting, thankful smile. I lit a cigarette and he rushed to catch up to the kids, and the dance continued around the garden.

  I saw someone crouched at the foot of my bed. It was my old man again, facing away from me like always. He held his fist up, and in it was clutched a note. I threw the covers aside and walked to him. Maybe now he would talk to me.

  But he couldn’t turn around, no matter how close I came. Of course he couldn’t face me, he was dead. Without looking at me, he stuck his arm out and offered me the note.

  It was five pages long and read:

  WE HAVE COME TO A SPOT WHERE THE TISSUE IS THINNEST AND ALREADY TORN. IT IS A DESTINY FEARED AND WORSHIPED. THERE ARE THOSE WHO DESIRE AND CANNOT OWN, THOSE WHO DIE IN NEED. THE HEART SWELLS AND FAILS. I HAVE SEEN HER, IN THE DEPTHS OF THIS HOUSE, IN THESE ROOMS, LOST AND AT A LOSS BUT STILL RETAINING THAT LUMINESCENCE OF LIFE. SHE IS LIGHT ITSELF TO SOME. WE CANNOT AFFORD THIS LOSS. SHE HAUNTS THE HALLS EAGER TO REACH OUT TO US AS WE PASS. CAN YOU MAKE SENSE OF IT? I HAVE TRIED BUT I AM INDISPOSED BY THE PART I MUST PLAY. SURELY YOU HAVE HEARD HER IN YOUR DREAMS? YOUR NAME CALLED. HOW BRIGHT SHE IS IN THE DARK PLACES. SHE SPEAKS OF YOU STILL. SHE UNDERSTANDS YOUR LOVE. IT IS NOT TOO LATE.

  MOJO

  When I looked up again my old man was gone. There was a knock at the door. I opened it and there stood Mojo, smiling, holding his cup, his little hat askew. I looked out into the lobby for Ferdinand, but he was nowhere in sight.

  I glanced down at the chimp and said, “Okay, Mojo, fess up. I need to hear it. If you really know how to talk, buddy, then now’s the time. It’ll be our secret, I swear. But this is important. What happens next is going to change the course of a life or two around here, I think.” I went to one knee and got in close. He cocked his head and did a dance and put a paw out to touch my nose. “So I want to hear it from your own lips. Talk to me. Did you see it happen? Did you see Corben kill Gabriella?”

  Mojo went, “Ook.”

  I stared at him and he stared at me.

  I nodded and said, “Fuck all, that’s good enough for me,” and went to confront my oldest friend, my only enemy.

  I was wired and hot and ready to break bones, but when he opened the door all my rage left me. Almost all of it.

  He hadn’t shaved or eaten in days. He’d been steadily losing weight and his sternum stuck out like a spike. His eyes had sunken in even further, his lips crusted and yellow, and his breath stank like hell. He hadn’t quit the sauce. His sweat was stale and smelled like whisky and disease. There was a time I would’ve gloated and been filled with a sick joy. Now I just wanted to know what had happened to his wife.

  “I want to talk to you,” I said.

  “All right.”

  We sat in his living room again. He hadn’t opened a window in ages. The dust swirled in the rays of the sun lancing down through his windows. He’d been drinking too much but I didn’t know what else to do for him, so I mixed him a screwdriver. At least he’d get a little orange juice in his system. He looked just a little closer to death than the aluminium foil guy had with the ice-pick vibrating in his head.

  His eyes kept wandering to a spot on the wall behind the couch. I couldn’t help riffing on Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” and “The Black Cat”. But he wasn’t checking the place where he’d might’ve stuck Gabriella’s corpse and sealed it over with stucco. He wouldn’t keep her so close at hand. He was writing behind his eyes.

  “I know you killed her,” I said.

  “You’re a fool.”

  “The monkey saw you do it.”

  It made him open his mouth so wide that the hinges of his jaw cracked. “What?”

  “Mojo told me what you did.”

  “The chimp . . .
?”

  “You shouldn’t have left any witnesses. You didn’t think the world’s first talking writing monkey would tell somebody? He knows his business. Knocks ’em dead in South Dakota.”

  “I was wrong. You’re not merely foolish. You’re insane.”

  The word caught in his throat. He almost didn’t get it out. It wasn’t an easy one for him to say aloud. I usually had a hard time with it too. Anyone who spends that much time inside his own head had to be extra cautious of tossing words like crazy and insane around. But in this building, in this city, on this day and during this particular conversation, it seemed even more reckless than usual.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  He finished his screwdriver and set the glass aside. “Visiting her mother in Poughkeepsie.”

  I took it in and felt a clash of relief and disbelief. “That’s not what you told me. You said you didn’t know.”

  He made an effort to appear embarrassed. Instead he just looked cornered but sly. “I didn’t want to admit to it.”

  “Cut the horseshit.”

  “You say that to me after telling me about talking monkeys?”

  “That’s right, I say it to you, asshole.”

  Corben refused to keep his mind on Gabriella. I backed away a step. His gaze slid over me. It slid over everything. He couldn’t keep his focus on any one spot or idea. It was more than just the writing going on in his head. He was tumbling around inside Stark House without moving. I’d never seen him like this before – lost and at a loss. I stopped trying to control the conversation. I would allow him to take the lead.

  We sat there and I finally looked all around the place, letting myself take in his riches and treasures. I went for room to room. Holy shit, there really was a solarium. The beauty and the effort and love that Gabriella had put into her home. How could a man not think it was enough? Are any of us ever satisfied? I wondered if I would have so easily been led down the wrong path if I’d had his successes. Become so self-absorbed, so unappreciative. I supposed it could happen to anyone.

  We stayed like that for a half an hour. I thought he’d forgotten about me, so entwined by himself. I didn’t mind waiting. I sat down and felt comfortable in his chair, noting all the small details and touches that were of Gabriella.

  “Stark House is haunted,” Corben said.

  “Maybe,” I told him.

  His upper lip drew back in a wild leer. He ran a hand through his hair and I realized how thin and grey it had gone. He looked around like he wanted to start kicking shit again. He flung the empty screwdriver glass. It shattered against one of his rare paintings. “How can you say that? How can you still be unsure? You must feel it, Will. Every moment of the day! I can’t write anymore. There’s no need. The books write themselves. There’s always someone else at the keyboard. Even now. Right now, this very minute, in my office. Go look if you don’t believe me.”

  “I believe you,” I said.

  “I accept my sins and vices, I do, sincerely,” he said sounding wholly insincere. “I’ve done terrible things, every man has, but . . . but this – I have seen them in the corridors, in the doorways, in my bed – my God, they stare at me. They’re the damned. The forsaken.”

  I shrugged again. I was doing it a lot. “Everyone is, more or less. We muddle through. So what?”

  “Doesn’t it fill you with black terror?”

  “No.” I lit a cigarette, got up, and walked around the room.

  “How can it not?”

  “Why should it?”

  Corben glanced up and we went deep into each others eyes. I knew he’d crossed the line. I knew it with all my heart. He’d killed Gabriella, just to see what it felt like. We’d been reading stories about such men since we were kids: the ones who thought they were too good for moral law. He wanted to feel blood run just so he could write about it. And now it was writing itself without him.

  I knew something else. He really had loved her – more than anything, more than he could possibly love anything in this life – except for himself and his art. He’d cast himself in the role of villain of his grandest dramatic work. The one that needed no author. He’d learned what he hadn’t really wanted to know, and it was destroying him. He’d gone bony but soft.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “I already told you. Stop asking me!”

  “What did you do to her?” I asked. “Where did you leave her?”

  “You’ve no right to question me like this!”

  I moved in on him. Two great forces worked through me at once – a jealous rage and a wild desire to shove aside the wasted years and have my friend back again. I wanted to save him and I wanted to crush him.

  I swallowed heavily and said, “I heard you two arguing that morning. What were you fighting about?”

  “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

  “See, now there’s where you’re wrong.”

  I hadn’t gone soft. I was all nerve-endings and adrenaline. I had dreams I needed to pursue. I still had to learn French. I’d make another stab at trying caviar. I had to track down my foreign rights and royalties. I had to find my love. “Where is she?”

  “She’s my wife! Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “What did you do to her!”

  Corben glowered at me, the corners of his lips turned up as if silently asking why I hadn’t discovered her body yet, why I hadn’t already smashed him to pieces and rammed a steak knife into his belly. Like all of us, he wanted to live and he wanted to die. His need was so apparent it invigorated and disgusted me. I made a fist and drew it back and willed all my hatred, remorse, and broken potential into it. My blood and bone, our lost friendship, our endless understanding of one another. It was no different than any other time I made a fist. Or smiled. Or wrote. Or made love. Or polished the banister.

  I dropped my arm to my side, and he cried out, “She’s at her mother’s house in Poughkeepsie! It’s the truth! It’s the truth!”

  “You’re lying.”

  “She left me!”

  “She would never do that.”

  “She did!”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Am I? Maybe I am. Your voice, Will, it sounds so much like mine.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Am I only fighting with myself? Sometimes I think I may be the only one alive in this building. I sit here and can almost start believing that you and all the others are only figments, phantoms, that all of you are—”

  “Yeah?” I said. I got up close. “Tell me. You ever think that maybe you’re the only one who’s dead?”

  The thought had never crossed his mind, but now it did. It hit him like I’d never seen anything hit him before. His eyes widened and his breathing grew shallow. He started floundering in his seat, his hands flapping uselessly. I got another glass and gave him a tall one of straight vodka. He chugged it down until the glass rattled against his teeth.

  He stared at me and I stared at him. After a while I got up and left him there alone, receding deeper into shadows of his own making. His eyes implored me as if I could, or ever would, have the capacity to save him. Now as he began fading beyond even my memory until he too had almost completely vanished. I turned around once before I got to his door, and he was nowhere.

  Maybe we were both already dead.

  There had been a night a few months ago when he and I passed each other on the stairway, and I’d thought that I shouldn’t turn my back on him. That he might, right then, decide to draw the derringer he supposedly always kept on his person and pop me twice in the back of the head. The thought had been so strong that I’d watched him carefully as we went by, my hand on a small screwdriver in my pocket, thin enough to slip between his ribs and puncture his heart. We moved on in opposite directions, wary, but alive.

  Or so I’d thought. But now, I wasn’t so sure.

  Perhaps Corben had murdered Gabriella and hidden her under some alleyway garbage not far from Stark House. Maybe h
e’d tossed her body in the East River or buried her deep in the garden beneath the wildflowers or beneath the brick. Or maybe she actually was up in Poughkeepsie, at home with her mother, calming herself before a time when she might be willing to return to the building and make amends. With him, or only with herself. The dead roam here the way they roam everywhere else – intact, lost and at a loss. The living were no different. I was no different.

  She might eventually come back, for her belongings if not for him. To say goodbye to me if no one else. She might appear in the garden one morning, joining in when the children and Ferdi and Mojo danced together. There were more chances and choices than I’d ever believed in before.

  Gabriella might call me tomorrow evening and ask me to come fix her kitchen tap, and I will find her there alone on the fifth floor. She’ll have a bottle of wine and a jar of caviar. I won’t make faces chewing down the crackers. The window will be open and a cold breeze will press back the curtains. Moonlight will cast silver across the dark. The sheets will be clean but rumpled. I’ll do my best to speak French. Total darkness for a moment and then the pressure of her body easing against mine.

  Whatever the truth, I would wait for her.

  Because, I’ve been told, she speaks of me still.

  She understands my love.

  I burn silently. It is not too late.

  CHRISTOPHER HARMAN

  Behind the Clouds:

  In Front of the Sun

  CHRISTOPHER HARMAN’S FIRST story appeared in 1992. Since then his work has been published in All Hallows, Ghosts and Scholars, Enigmatic Electronic, Dark Horizons, Kimota, Supernatural Tales, New Genre, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Acquainted with the Night and Strange Tales Volume II.

  He is currently working on a novel, although short stories remain his primary interest. He lives in Preston, England, and is a librarian.

  “I wanted to write a supernatural story based around a familiar artefact,” Harman says about the following tale, “and chanced upon some intriguing possibilities in Miller’s Antiques Price Guide.