The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 13 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  Further correspondence confirmed that Mrs Hardy would also be welcomed at the Dimsby demesne, and that if it were convenient for the Hardys, the invitation would be so timed as to include dinner at the Dimsby home. Mrs Dimsby was an accomplished chef, Simeon Dimsby asserted, and would be pleased to prepare her finest dishes for the Hardys.

  Regis Hardy could barely contain his joy. He dispatched an enthusiastic reply, jotted the date of the proposed dinner party in his desk planner, and made a note to phone a local travel agent and book a flight for himself and his wife to the airport nearest Repentance, Maine.

  It was fortunate for Regis Hardy’s peace of mind that Simeon Dimsby worked rapidly, for even so Mr Hardy found himself counting the days until his and Mrs Hardy’s flight, like a child counting days until a birthday, or Christmas, or the end of the school year. Standing before the bathroom mirror in his pajamas, Mr Hardy took note of his lined visage, his largely naked scalp and the snowy whiteness of what little hair he retained.

  He was an old man, but in his chest his heart leaped like that of an eager and joyous youth.

  At last the long-awaited day arrived. The Hardys were driven to the airport by one Albert Tindle, a former colleague of Mr Hardy’s at the Department of Social Services. They boarded the huge, sleek jetliner, Mr Hardy commenting almost involuntarily at the contrast between it and the far smaller, propeller-driven monoplanes of his youth.

  Their journey was uneventful, and upon reaching Repentance, Maine, the Hardys checked into a motel. This was a locally owned affiliate of an international chain. It was well managed in accord with corporate guidelines. The Hardys’ room was comfortably appointed in a standardized and impersonal style. Mrs Hardy remarked that they might as easily have been in Brazil, Syria, or Thailand, or even on the moon, had there been motels on the moon, for all the local character of their lodgings.

  Mr Hardy telephoned the home of Simeon Dimsby. Mrs Dimsby took the call, reiterated the invitation to dine that evening, and even offered the services of her husband to pick up the Hardys at their motel. Mr Hardy expressed gratitude for the offer but indicated that he and his wife would take a cab to the Dimsbys’ house.

  Dusk was falling when the driver pulled to the curb at the address Regis Hardy had given him. The warm autumnal afternoon had yielded to a chill breeze with the disappearance of the sun, and an early moon was rising red and menacing above the eastern horizon. Mr and Mrs Hardy stood side by side, gazing at the tall frame structure. A brightness flickered in the front window as if electrification had somehow bypassed the Dimsby house and its occupants relied on old-fashioned oil lamps for illumination.

  An unexpected chill caused Mr Hardy to shudder almost imperceptibly. He took his wife’s hand and advanced, opening a protesting gate in the waist-high iron fence. The lawn surrounding the house had not been mowed in a very long time. The wooden stairs that led to the front porch creaked with each of Mr and Mrs Hardy’s steps.

  A search for a doorbell or knocker having failed, Mr Hardy rapped tentatively on the wooden panel with his knuckles.

  At once the door swung back. A plump woman of below average height looked up at the Hardys. The roundness of her face was offset by the grey hair which she had pulled back into a bun. She wore a patterned housedress and cloth apron. A small birthmark above one eye evoked a mildly distasteful fantasy on Regis Hardy’s part.

  ‘You must be the Hardys. Come in. I’m Mrs Dimsby. Eustacia Whipple Dimsby. Please call me Eustacia.’

  She took Mr Hardy’s fedora and Mrs Hardy’s wrap and escorted them to a parlor furnished as it must have been a century before. ‘Mr Dimsby is in his workshop. Make yourselves comfortable while I fetch him.’

  She disappeared down a hallway.

  The Hardys exchanged glances.

  A door slammed. The pendulum of a tall clock swung to and fro. There were footsteps. A figure appeared where Eustacia Dimsby had last been seen.

  ‘I am Simeon Dimsby.’

  Regis Hardy rose to his feet. Dimsby shook his hand, then bowed over Helena Hardy’s as would have a Regency dandy. It took an effort for Regis Hardy to refrain from flinching away from Dimsby’s icy fingers. The artist was cadaverously thin, his pale countenance set off by a high-collared white shirt and heavy black suit. Waves of cold seemed to waft from him.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he explained. ‘My workshop is below the house and I keep it cool at all times, to preserve my compositions.’

  ‘You work in oils?’ Hardy asked. He knew little of artistic media.

  Dimsby shook his head from side to side. ‘No.’ He offered no further explanation.

  ‘But if you have to keep your work refrigerated, how do you deliver it to your publishers?’ Dimsby did not answer at once, and Hardy filled the silence. ‘That is, your pictures are so fine, both your black-and-white illustrations and your paintings. Helena and I have admired them for a long time. I was thrilled when Mr Mantigore told me you were to illustrate my book, Return to Elmwood. But what do you use for ink? For paint? Wouldn’t it spoil?’

  ‘Such is the wonder of modern invention,’ Dimsby explained. He had crossed the room and opened what appeared to be an eighteenth century cupboard. He turned with a graceful decanter in one hand and two round-bellied snifters in the other. ‘The day has taken a chilly turn, has it not? Won’t you each try some brandy to warm yourselves while Mrs Dimsby prepares our dinner.’

  Each of the Hardys accepted a snifter of shimmering, copper-colored liquid. As Regis Hardy held it before his face the fumes of the liquor rose with a pleasant sharpness and warmth. It was delicious on his tongue. From the corner of his eye he observed his wife sampling the beverage.

  ‘You were speaking of technology,’ Hardy addressed his host.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And won’t you have some brandy yourself?’ Hardy asked.

  ‘I do not,’ Dimsby said. After a brief silence he resumed. ‘My compositions would, ah, de-compose if exposed to heat,’ he explained, laughing at his own play on words. ‘Therefore I scan them into a computer and deliver them to my publishers in the form of electronic files.’

  Hardy nodded. ‘A shame. I was hoping - that is, I had thought, maybe - once Return to Elmwood is completed, that you might be willing to part with one of your originals. It would have a place of honor in our house, wouldn’t it, dear? Especially if we might purchase - if Mr Dimsby would consider parting with - the jacket painting.’

  His wife agreed that, yes, a Dimsby original would be treasured in the Hardy home.

  ‘Alas, I fear that would be impossible,’ Simeon Dimsby commiserated, ‘but perhaps after dinner you would enjoy a tour of my workshop. You may have some comments on the renderings I have done for Return to Elmwood.’ Before he could say more his wife returned from the kitchen and summoned them to the dinner table.

  The Dimsby dining room, like the parlor, could have served as the set for a period motion picture, but there was no sense of artificiality or unreality to the room. Rather, upon entering its confines one had the impression of having stepped backward in time.

  Mrs Dimsby bustled into the kitchen and returned bearing a large platter. It was covered with a green, shimmering mass of interwoven strips that reminded Mr Hardy of marine vegetation that he had seen on past visits to the Pacific Ocean near his home. Mrs Dimsby set the platter in the center of the gleaming linen cloth that covered the table.

  Mr Dimsby asked if the Hardys would object to the old-fashioned practice of saying grace prior to dining. They did not. Mr Dimsby then folded his grey, bony hands in a manner unfamiliar to the guests. He lowered his head and closed his eyes, murmuring what Regis Hardy took to be his devotion. Mr Hardy had no notion of Simeon Dimsby’s ethnic heritage or his religious affiliation. The prayer was in a language unfamiliar to Hardy, a disquieting mixture of sibilants and gutturals. As the prayer ended the room seemed to shudder. Accustomed as he was to occasional small earthquakes in California, Regis Hardy was unalarmed by the minor temblor, despite
never having heard of earthquakes in Maine.

  The green substance proved to be a pre-prandial salad. Its flavor was mildly unpleasant, the dressing of an odd gelatinous consistency and its odor peculiarly marine, but Mr Hardy managed to down a small portion of it, as did his wife.

  Mrs Dimsby removed the platter and salad plates.

  Mr Dimsby said, ‘The main course is Mrs Dimsby’s specialty, an old family recipe handed down ever since Colonial times here in Repentance. In fact, local legend has it that the dish was a favorite of the aboriginal inhabitants. Unlike other native peoples they neither died out nor moved away, but were assimilated by the settlers. Or, perhaps more accurately, one might say that the settlers were assimilated by the local inhabitants.’

  Mr Hardy was about to ask if his host’s prayer had been spoken in the natives’ language, but before he could do so, Mrs Dimsby returned from the kitchen bearing a massive iron pot. Mr Hardy was amazed that the short woman could handle its weight, but she hefted it onto a blackened trivet. The contents of the iron pot bubbled and hissed, emitting visible columns of steam.

  ‘I hope no one is allergic to shellfish,’ she announced. Receiving no objections she nodded to her husband, who lifted a long-handled implement and dipped it into the pot. Beside him stood a stack of deep bowls. He ladled a portion into one for Helena Hardy, then for Regis Hardy, then for his wife, Eustacia, and finally for himself.

  Regis Hardy gazed at the contents of his bowl. Taking his clue from Mrs Dimsby’s comment, he assumed that the meal consisted of a shellfish stew or bouillabaisse. Not only bits of marine carapace but tiny tentacles, claws, and even eyestalks were clearly visible, floating in a viscid red broth. The meal must have been brought to the table while still a-boil, for bubbles rose to the surface, tentacles waved and minuscule claws seemed to snap at Mr Hardy’s spoon. He shot a glance at his wife, sharing with her his distress.

  He managed to secure a spoonful of the broth and convey it to his mouth, all the while staring at a small marine crustacean that seemed to stare back at him from his bowl. The broth was hot in both main senses of that word, and as it reached the back of Mr Hardy’s tongue he could have sworn that a tiny, serrated claw nipped at his uvula, sending a wave of pain and nausea through him.

  The Hardys managed to down a bare polite minimum of their meal while the Dimsbys emptied their bowls and refilled them repeatedly, smacking their lips and exclaiming in pleasure at the textures and flavors of the repast. Conversation was desultory, and it was with relief that Mr Hardy pushed his old ladder-back chair away from the table at the end of the meal, helping his wife to follow suit.

  Eustacia Dimsby excused herself in order to clear the table and attend to her duties in the kitchen. Helena Hardy volunteered her assistance. Simeon Dimsby renewed his offer to Regis Hardy, to tour the subterranean workshop. Hardy attempted to beg off, pleading fatigue after the day’s transcontinental travel, but yielded to Dimsby’s persuasive words and the astonishingly powerful, even painful, grip on his elbow.

  Dimsby insisted that Hardy precede him down a lengthy narrow stairway. The first flight was of creaking, wooden risers and treads. Thereafter the flight plunged more steeply into what seemed bedrock, the stairs carved out of ancient New England granite.

  Illumination was provided by concealed fixtures.

  Mr Hardy’s breath rose coldly in visible clouds.

  After an exhausting trek which left Mr Hardy wondering how he would ever be able to climb back to the surface, the staircase ended. He found himself in a small antechamber. A single iron door met his gaze.

  Simeon Dimsby stepped past Mr Hardy. He drew an oversized, old-fashioned key from his suit pocket and inserted it in a massive, time-blackened lock. Turning the key, he snapped the lock open and pulled the door toward himself.

  Inside the chamber the temperature seemed to plunge still farther. Mr Hardy stood, surrounded by magnificent yet macabre images. At a sound he turned and observed Simeon Dimsby, who had pulled the heavy door shut behind the pair of them with a jarring, metallic impact.

  ‘Let me show you my sketches forReturn to Elmwood,’ Dimsby grated. ‘We won’t be disturbed. Only Auric Mantigore and I have keys to this door. Not even my wife, dear as she is, can enter unless we permit it.’

  He opened a drawer in a rough wooden table and removed a huge envelope. He undid the hasp on the envelope and withdrew one of a sheaf of renderings on stiff illustration board. He turned toward Hardy. ‘I hope you will be pleased.’

  The top drawing was Dimsby’s illustration for Mr Hardy’s story ‘Narcotics from Neptune’. The illustration for this tale in Interstellar Stories, by one Barton Gorgon, had been a literal representation of the climactic scene of the narrative, in which Hardy’s beleaguered space voyagers, imprisoned by amoeboid creatures from the frigid outer planet, injected with a deadly, addictive drug and forced to work in the noxious mines of Neptune’s rocky moons, confronted their captors in an apocalyptic rebellion.

  Gorgon had focused on the haggard, bearded faces of the enslaved earthlings. Regis Hardy had always felt that Gorgon’s drawing, while not ineffective, had lacked considerably in impact.

  Not so Simeon Dimsby’s version.

  Dimsby had dealt directly with the aliens. His rendition of them was horrifying. Dimsby had transcended Regis Hardy’s own description of the aliens’ physical appearance and had managed in some undefinable way to capture their overwhelming sense of monstrous power.

  Hardy gasped. ‘How did you do this?’

  A thin smile curled Dimsby’s lips. ‘Do you like it? The medium is a substance that I manufacture myself. The primary ingredient is the ink of deep-water Atlantic kraken. And there are other ingredients as well.’

  Dimsby retrieved the drawing from Regis Hardy’s grasp, replaced it carefully in the envelope and removed another. He looked at the drawing himself, smiled once more, again faintly, and extended the illustration toward Hardy’s outstretched hand.

  This time the drawing was clearly based on ‘Vampire Town’. The tale had been Regis Hardy’s first sale. Not his best work, he felt, but one for which he held a great affection because of its landmark importance in his career. The art director of Mayhem Monthly had assigned the story to Walter Wallace, a longtime hack illustrator who hadn’t done a good drawing in thirty years, but who managed to eke out an existence on the basis of name recognition and long-standing connections if nothing more.

  In contrast to Wallace’s crudely gory imagery, Simeon Dimsby’s night scene of the village - torch-wielding undead pursuing the last surviving day-dweller to his inevitable doom - was enough to send a shuddering frisson down Regis Hardy’s spine.

  Dimsby’s images for Hardy’s other stories were all powerful and frightening, but more than this they were strangely disquieting. As Regis Hardy looked at each drawing he felt as if Simeon Dimsby had seen past the prose of his story and penetrated into the nethermost and most fear-haunted recesses of his soul.

  At last Simeon Dimsby’s grey hand retrieved the last of the drawings from Regis Hardy’s unsteady grasp. He returned the leaves to their envelope and the envelope to its drawer. He tilted his head on its abnormally long and flexible neck, twisted his thin lips into a suggestion of a smile, and asked, ‘Had you any thoughts, Mr Hardy, regarding the jacket illustration for Return to Elmwood?’

  ‘I thought you and Mr Mantigore had already made a choice,’ Hardy replied.

  ‘We have held several meetings and exchanged a number of notions, but Mr Mantigore felt that you deserved to be consulted before a final decision was made.’ He paused. ‘As the author, you see. Mr Mantigore has the greatest respect for us - what he calls, “creative geniuses.” I believe that he uses the term in an ironic sense, but perhaps I am mistaken.’

  He placed a bony, grey hand on Hardy’s wrist. His grip was amazingly strong and his hand was frighteningly cold.

  ‘Did you - have a medium in mind?’ Hardy asked. ‘I mean, I’m pretty ignorant where art is conc
erned, but I’ve heard of oils, watercolors, something called gouache.’

  ‘You’re not as uninformed as you pretend, Mr Hardy.’ The artist still had hold of the author’s wrist. He leaned closer, peering into Hardy’s face. In Dimsby’s eyes Hardy saw distant flames dancing, yet the eyes seemed oddly ice-like, almost crystalline, and the flames emitted chill instead of warmth.

  ‘I don’t - I don’t really know,’ Hardy managed to stammer.

  Dimsby said, ‘Well then, let me show you some of the materials I have left from my last painting.’ He released Hardy’s wrist and Hardy shrank back, breathing a sigh of relief. Dimsby knelt in front of a safe-like storage cabinet. He twirled the lock that held it shut, then pulled the heavy door toward himself. ‘A pity that Mr Mantigore has been unable to join us,’ he commented.