Best New Horror 29

by Stephen Jones

  “Ian!” she calls.

  She parts through people on her way to the water’s edge, which seems so far away. Why would he go to the pier? Somehow she knew he’d be there, and somehow the man with the moth-eaten neck ruffle knew. He was leading her to the…

  Your father and I would always ride the Ferris wheel, she had told Ian in the car. That’s where she’d find him. She couldn’t stop talking about it on their way to the carnival. It was always the last thing we did before going home, she had said.

  Running takes the air from her lungs and pierces her side, but she spots him at the base of the ride, gazing up in wonder. She spins him around to find his eyes glossy and terrified.

  “There’s no underwater Ferris wheel,” Ian tells the water.

  There’s only the reflection of the real Ferris wheel.

  “The card’s a lie.”

  He walks along the planks, peering over the side to the black water. If there was an underwater ride, he’d at least see some kind of glowing light from below.

  One last ride, his mom said.

  Suddenly, his stomach aches empty and craves a corn dog now. He doesn’t remember ever letting go of her hand while in line, but he must’ve let go at some point and grabbed the hand of the clown who wasn’t really a clown—the man with the bad card trick who gave him the stupid invitation to see something that wasn’t even there.

  Mom had warned him to stay close and not to wander.

  Ian knew the park and could find his way around easily enough, but finding his mom would be like finding his dad’s body, which the people looking for him couldn’t do after he went over the cliff. Even if he found his mom, she’d be mad and they’d leave early. They wouldn’t ride the Ferris wheel as their last ride like she remembered doing with Dad. Ian only had nine tickets anyway because he dropped one. He holds them to the light, counting again to make sure.

  The placid water breaks, enveloping you as you ride the yellow cart beneath the surface. Round you go as the un-reflection of the Ferris wheel above glows through a watery blur. As you come round, you see them gathered on the pier. A woman and boy embrace and it feels like home.

  MARK SAMUELS

  IN THE COMPLEX

  MARK SAMUELS lives in Kings Langley, England. He is the author of six short story collections (The White Hands and Other Weird Tales, Black Altars, Glyphotech & Other Macabre Processes, The Man Who Collected Machen, Written in Darkness and The Prozess Manifestations) and two novels (The Face of Twilight and A Pilgrim Stranger).

  His latest volume is a collection of essays from Ulymas Press on authors of weird fiction, entitled Prophecies and Dooms, while Hippocampus Press is scheduled to release a “Best of Mark Samuels” volume, The Age of Decayed Futurity edited by S.T. Joshi, in late 2019.

  About ‘In the Complex’ Samuels explains: “This story is partially inspired by two misfortunes that occurred to me in 2017—sudden homelessness and subsequent hospitalisation. The third inspiration was not misfortune, but rather a new locale initially coloured by the ongoing mental after-shocks of the then-recent traumatic experiences.”

  THE TRAINS ARE more frequent than ever. Their rumbling approach makes the room shake and causes the single, bare light bulb overhead to chart a tiny circle on its short cable. I make a small line on the wall in pencil as each train passes. I have not recorded fewer than five hundred a day. Each time the orderly enters the room with my daily ration of food he scrubs away the marks I have previously made. Whether he allows me to keep possession of the pencil through indifference or via an official order I cannot say. He refuses to speak a single word. For a long time I wished for a window to see outside, even one that was barred, tiny and high, as in a prisoner’s cell. But no longer. I am not, after all, entitled to the rights of a prisoner. Dr. Prozess has finally explained the facts to me; I am a symptom of a disease. He is the antidote to it.

  When they brought me here, by ambulance, in the dead of night, I first insisted I felt perfectly well and saw no need. But the orderlies calmly showed me the documents that confirmed my health was potentially in serious danger, explained sagely that an attack could occur at any moment, and ended by insisting that the peril was confined not only to myself but could affect others around me. I had a responsibility to be reasonable in the matter. If my condition worsened, as it was likely to do, then they would be obliged to confine me involuntarily anyway. To demonstrate compliance at this stage would be the first step on my road to recovery.

  Lying in the back of the ambulance, they strapped me down and administered a sedative by injection, and I slipped in and out of full awareness as the vehicle raced through the streets. I could not doubt, due to the length of the journey, that I had been taken out of the brightly-lit metropolitan area altogether and into the depths of the utterly dark countryside. When the ambulance reached its destination I was still groggy and they carried me across a driveway. The sound of shoes crunching gravel underfoot was accompanied by the rumbling of the trains nearby as the engine-cars hauled carriages over the tracks. I tried to gain some idea of my surroundings, but thick cloud covered the night sky. No outside light emanated from the building into which I was delivered. Only when we had passed through a set of huge metal doors was it possible to see again; and my eyes smarted at the sudden, brilliant white-blue glare caused by endless overhead strip lighting.

  When my vision adjusted I saw that the shadows were all wrong, like those of vast insects. They were cast upon the tiled walls, not the floors. They were the type of grotesque, distorted shapes that are thrown up by searchlights. I called out to be unstrapped from the stretcher but was told, with a hiss, to be quiet.

  On and on they carried me, deep into the labyrinth of what appeared to be a vast, level complex. As I turned my head from side to side I saw no sign of any other persons roaming inside the structure.

  I could, however, still detect the sounds of the trains passing in the distance.

  At last the orderlies carried me into a room with a single overhead bulb, gave me a different injection, and left me there as I sank into unconsciousness.

  Pain accompanied my awakening. My upper front teeth were broken. My lips were swollen and encrusted with blood. I could not see clearly through my right eye, which had half closed-up. I tried to call out but could make only a gurgling noise in the back of my throat. I was strapped to the bed in an unfamiliar grey smock. My possessions had been taken away, including my phone and watch, so I could not determine how much time had passed.

  Was it morning?

  The trains were still running. I could hear them. Perhaps they were freight trains—which often run through the whole night.

  Hours later the orderly made his first appearance. It was very brief. I think he simply wanted to make sure I was still alive. He would not reply to any of my questions but when he returned for a second visit, again, hours later, he tossed a crumpled note onto my bed upon which were a few words scrawled in pencil:

  You did this to yourself.

  When he departed, I heard the sound of bubbling laughter piped into my cell via what I presumed were hidden speakers. The sound must have been looped—a recording—because its intensity did not vary, and it went on and on and on until I actually began screaming to try and block it out. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the volume faded to zero and I became aware once more of that omnipresent, dim rumble of trains in the background.

  I think I passed days in this fashion. The orderly, though, must have entered the room on the few occasions I slept, for the jug of brackish water was replenished and two dollops of congealed muck, mostly rice, were left for me to eat from a round plastic plate. The bedpan was much less frequently replaced and its stench permeated the interior of the cell.

  They had removed the bonds that had kept me immobile, but I scarcely had the strength even to make a circuit of the room in search of its hidden speakers. When the noise of laughter returned it seemed to emanate from all directions at once, as if mocking my attempts to isola
te the source.

  It was, however, during one of these circuits, that I discovered the stub of pencil left behind by the orderly. The thing must have fallen from his pocket and rolled out of sight, concealed underneath the bed. Then again, perhaps it had been placed there deliberately, as part of some test—or experiment—which I could not fathom. I knew that it formed some sort of link with the reason for my being confined in the first instance, and that the use I made of it would be of significant import. Whether or not they anticipated my first impulse I cannot say; but it was to drive the point into the artery below my left ear, push deep, and put an end to everything.

  Instead, I began marking on the wall the passage of each train as it passed by. Quite why I began to do so it is difficult to explain; but to keep a strictly accurate record became an obsession with me. I felt, in some profound yet irrational way, that the rhythm of my own existence was intimately connected with their continued, regular motion. Some long delay between one and the next wrought panic in me, like that overwhelming sense of doom that prefigures impending heart failure.

  And so further days passed.

  Although the marks on the wall were regularly erased, I was allowed to keep the pencil. Perhaps I had done something that was expected of me, and regarded as the correct behaviour, for the orderly handed me another note, one which this time read:

  You are to be taken on a visit tomorrow.

  I had no idea exactly what this meant. Was I to be taken around the confines of the building or permitted to leave it (presumably accompanied by my captors)? I found it hard to believe that the latter could be the case. They surely would anticipate that the first thought to spring into my mind—as indeed it had done—was to consider an attempt to get away from their clutches altogether.

  I turned the question over and over again in my head during the waiting period. Moreover, as I did so, I gradually realised that a new consideration bubbled up therein. I became increasingly anxious that, due to this turn of events, trains would pass without my being able to keep up-to-date my record of their existence. I seriously considered making a protest about being taken on this “visit”, but then considered that the manner in which the note was phrased was more in the nature of an instruction, or an order, than a request. To make any objection might well mean the privileges I had gained since my arrival might be revoked. As a consequence, I might even damage myself, as I had been assured I had done previously, and I had no desire to re-open wounds that had only just begun to heal properly.

  But I need not have concerned myself.

  Before being taken on the visit, while being tied into a wheelchair for that purpose, the kindly orderly sat on the edge of my bed and continued to detail the passage of the trains on my behalf with the stub of pencil, since I could not do so.

  I was ferried about the structure by another orderly I had not previously seen, an individual as silent and inscrutable as his fellow employee.

  We passed down narrow corridors illuminated by the overhead strip-lighting I recalled from my last trip, and I saw again, too, the crazily distorted shadows on the tiled walls. They disturbed me more than ever. I had thought them to be drug-hallucinations or faulty memories on my part. Now there could be no doubt that they were as real as all the other objects I saw here in the complex. My mind, you see, was remarkably clear and focused; without any of the mental turmoil that had dogged my arrival.

  At last the journey terminated at the entrance to another cell. The orderly slid open the metal cover of a spy-hole, glanced within, turned on the light, unlocked the steel door and wheeled me into deepest darkness.

  He then walked out and re-locked the door behind him, with me still tied to the wheelchair.

  I could see nothing. The blind void inside that cell almost seemed tangible, as if I had been plunged bodily into a huge tank of thick black ink. I even struggled for breath, such was the shock of the transition. And then my hearing and smell began to gain in alertness; in reaction to the sudden sensory cessation from my eyesight. I detected a low moaning whisper, gradually getting closer and closer, accompanied by the rank smell of a long-unwashed body. Something flopped towards me awkwardly in the darkness, half-crawling and half-dragging itself across the short distance between us. The stench increased.

  I struggled in the wheelchair, but my binds prevented any movement away from the approaching entity, which sniffed the air around me greedily.

  It got hold of my legs, pulling itself up onto me. I turned my head away, but my chin was gripped by a claw-like hand, more bone than flesh. The stench now made me gag and a wet, curiously hollow mouth closed over my own and then slithered a wet path across my cheeks and neck. An inanity punctuated the assault, words in a language from the back of its throat. Words I seemed to know but could not understand, and definitely not foreign—“ereh fo tuo em teg”—something grossly reversed in its form.

  I struggled as best I could in the total darkness, resisting the clamour of the creature, shouting out for the orderly; nauseous with terror and repulsion.

  The door was unlocked.

  The thing that had latched onto me slipped away, crawling back to the corner whence it came.

  A shaft of vivid blue-light invaded the room as the door was thrust open.

  My eyes smarted at the flash, powerful as a lightning burst. The scene was doubtless rendered stark and clear to the orderly; he must have seen a tableau wrought from nightmare-made-life.

  But I was stunned by the intensity of the illumination and, before my pupils could make the adjustment, was turned around and wheeled out of the cell, back towards my own.

  When I had the opportunity to examine it again, shortly after the visit I have described, I had the distinct impression that the orderly had not kept up my accurate record of the passing of the trains. Some of his pencil marks were scarcely visible, as if he were unsure whether a train had really passed by or not. His attempt to substitute for me was slovenly, even if kindly in intent. Also, the number he set down in my absence appeared insufficient for the time that had passed. The trains kept to a regular schedule, of this I was certain; even though I could not confirm the fact by reference to the likes of a clock or stopwatch. (I would have given anything to obtain such a device.) It seemed to me that I had to try and impress upon the power running the complex that to cause my absence from my work was neither in their best interests or mine.

  During a lull in the passage of the trains back and forth, I found time to write a single sentence of complaint amidst the myriad of the day’s small straight lines.

  “I request not to be taken again from my cell,” I wrote.

  The following morning when I awoke the message was gone, with all of my lines (which was usual). They had obviously reacted badly to my impetuous request, however, since my feet had been crudely amputated at the ankles during the night. The stumps were wrapped in blood-caked bandages. Written multiple times on the bandages, although somewhat obscured by deep red stains, was the reply:

  You brought this upon yourself.

  The speakers were on full blast for the whole day.

  Thoughtfully, though, they still allowed me use of the pencil.

  I refrained (as I am sure you will appreciate) from making any other requests during the weeks that followed, and duly suffered no further, self-responsible, mutilation. I had the business of the trains to occupy me, after all, and did not care for any distraction from that all-important task. Although I had been corrected, I had also been left to concentrate on my work and had not been taken away again from my cell, which was quite in accordance with the request I had written down. The loss of my feet proved less of a punishment than I first imagined. For I had nowhere to go in any case, and no desire to be elsewhere. In fact, I even felt gratitude that they had been so considerate in their chastisement. I don’t doubt that the power behind the complex knew that the removal of my hands instead of my feet would have been for me truly intolerable.

  The wheelchair now stood as a fixture
in the corner of my cell and I would periodically sit in it and navigate around the room for my own amusement, especially when the speakers were on full blast. Of course I kept a mental account of trains passing whilst occupied in this diversion and then added them to the daily record on the wall once I had completed my circular navigations.

  You may wonder whether I ever thought of the outside world or of my past life, but I can honestly state that it is of little importance to me and a subject upon which I did not much dwell—except in one regard. After all, it was my actions therein that had led to my present state of affairs, and to this making amends for it, an extraction as much for my own benefit as for society’s benefit. My disease would infect others and my quarantine was only right. Communicable disease of my type is a form of violence when those afflicted by it refuse treatment. It is even more dangerous because it manifests itself unseen, with no physical symptoms.

  One afternoon I found my cell unlocked. The door was left ever so slightly ajar. I thought at first that the crack between the jamb and frame was an illusion. Wheeling myself over to it however, I discovered my eyes were not deceiving me.

  This, of course, presented me with a dilemma.

  Had it been purposefully left unlocked or not? Was it a test of some kind?

  I could scarcely neglect my work of recording the trains passing by and satisfy my curiosity on some unauthorised jaunt along the outside corridors. In any case, I had already advised them I did not wish to leave the cell. But what if I were meant to leave the cell? Removal of my feet had been a consequence of my expressing that desire to remain inside. And I was not leaving the confines of the whole complex itself after all, just venturing beyond this tiny sub-section of it.

  Perhaps there was a solution.

  I wheeled myself back to the wall and rapidly filled in enough pencil marks in advance to cover the period of my absence. Provided I returned to my cell within an hour or so it was impossible for me to have fallen behind in the tally. Recall, too, that I was very likely to encounter no one else wandering the corridors at this time. The orderlies made their rounds only in the morning.