The Best New Horror 5

by Ramsay Campbell

  He crossed the road and hurried down the slope towards the town.

  It was almost nine o’clock and the shops were beginning to close. Few people remained to brave the weather. By the taxi rank and phone booths a large Christmas tree, scantily decorated with cheerless lights, drooped its arms under the weight of rain. Next to it a crib stood empty and unblessed due to the depredations of hooligans who had run off with the statues of the Holy Family and their guests. The ululation of seasonal pop music nagged away out in the darkness.

  His way home led him past The Crescent, Buxton’s major claim to architectural distinction, and he took advantage of the sheltered promenade at the front of the building to get out of the rain. The many small arches, dimly lit, the boarded-up windows along the first floor of the empty, decaying building, made Mr Rudge, who had once been taken to an exhibition of Di Chirico’s work, feel that he had walked into one of that painter’s sinister, vacant, echoing canvases.

  Twice, through the arches curving to the left ahead of him, he thought, no – he was sure – he saw the dark figure hurrying along. The fact that he, Mr Rudge, now found himself trailing behind whoever it was that he had first feared had been following him, was particularly distasteful to him. The figure could almost have been leading him back to his own home!

  He was reluctant to consider the implications of this; indeed, he felt a general dullness throughout his system, a numbness blanketing a core feeling of dread that had come to occupy the base of his consciousness.

  As he was passing the “Old Hall Hotel”, his favourite local eating and drinking place, he had what was almost his last glimpse of the figure that he had first seen less than forty minutes earlier, on the otherwise empty station. He had just come in sight of the front of his flat, on the first floor of a block that overlooked the parklands of the Pavilion Gardens, when he clearly saw the tall, caped form, now almost familiar, crossing the road ahead of him.

  It was running.

  It took the road that forked behind the buildings along the Broadwalk, the pedestrianized lane that fronted Mr Rudge’s flat. That was the road that he would have to take, as the only entrance to the flat was from the rear.

  Feeling in his pocket for his key, Mr Rudge went in pursuit.

  The door of his flat was safely locked when he reached it. He had feared that it would not be. He had a vision of it hanging open wide; perhaps smashed off its hinges.

  Inside all was quiet.

  He cautiously ventured through into his kitchen and switched on his electric kettle. He took off his soaked overcoat, took the gifts out of its pockets, and draped it over the back of a chair. He pulled a clean towel out of a drawer and set about drying his face and what little remained of his hair. He put his bags in a corner, intending to deal with them later, and made a pot of tea. His hands were shaking so he made his drink in a mug with a big handle.

  He discovered he had a headache and took two paracetamol.

  After half an hour he felt better, but very tired. Despite the fact that his mind was full of the events of the evening, he decided he would go to bed and try to sleep. He picked up his overcoat, and went into the hallway to hang it on its customary peg.

  Someone had beaten him to it.

  In the place where he always hung his coat was a dark cape that did not belong to him. It looked old. Its surface shone with damp. It had a drawstring of faded yellow cord around the neck.

  It was some time before Mr Rudge could bring himself to go near it. He watched it intently, as though he expected it to move, to jump down, or run off. It did none of these things. When at last he did come close to it, he noticed at once its smell. It stank of soot, hot coal, and steam. And age; it smelled of old sweat and decay.

  It was somehow both disgusting and deeply intimidating.

  Close up, he could see the collar of the cape was frayed with use. Otherwise, it was undamaged except for a number of sharp tears, or cuts, a few inches long, on the left front.

  Mr Rudge, who had fought in a war, had never felt panic charge up inside him with such force before. Panic and loathing!

  He absent-mindedly touched his lips with a finger that had touched the cape, in a gesture of bewilderment, and there was a flavour like acid on his tongue. He spat grossly, and scrubbed his mouth with his sleeve, to be rid of the taste.

  Angry now, he stepped over to a large brass pot where he kept his collection of walking sticks and a few umbrellas. He selected his biggest stick and swiped out at the cape as though he was being assailed by it. He hit it again and again. The cape swung to and fro until at last it fell off the peg. Mr Rudge gave a grunt of satisfaction, kicked it into a ball, then kicked the ball away down the hall towards the door. He leaned against the wall, gasping from the violence he had done, and watched the cape, waiting for something to happen.

  He waited a long time, and nothing did happen. Satisfied, he hung his coat on the peg, and went back into the kitchen. Thirsty, he made more tea. He drank two cups slowly, washed his mug, and went back through the hallway towards his bedroom.

  In the hall, the cape was back on the peg and his coat, torn to shreds where it had been pulled down, lay on the floor.

  Mr Rudge snatched the cape and ran with it into the kitchen. Holding it firmly under his arms, he found a roll of plastic sacks and tore one off. He thrust the cape inside the sack with the vigour of a man trying to drown a large animal. He tied a tight knot at the top of the bag and flung it to the ground. He went out of the kitchen and into his study, closing the door behind him. He waited there for almost an hour, then went back into the kitchen.

  To his surprise, the bag was just as he had left it.

  He looked out into the hallway. He coat also lay where he had left it, and the peg was empty.

  Feeling almost cheerful, Mr Rudge returned to the kitchen and prodded the bin bag with his foot. He could feel the cape inside it. For some reason he felt the need to put a weight on the bag. He found a wooden box, placed it on the bag, and filled it with the heaviest items he could find.

  Then he went to bed and tried to sleep with the light on.

  Next morning, tired and timorous after his nightmarish night, Mr Rudge stepped gingerly into his kitchen at just after nine o’clock.

  The box had not been moved and the plastic sack remained under it. He knew the cape was still inside the bag because the shape of its surface had not changed.

  There were tears in his eyes as he made his breakfast. He was scared that he was going mad or senile.

  He forced fried food into himself, in spite of a total lack of appetite, then imagined that he felt much better. He left the bin bag under the box and kept himself busy all day with various non-urgent tasks about the flat. At nine in the evening he sat down in front of the TV and drank two inches of whisky from a bottle of Bells; not his favourite, but cheaper than broaching the Laphroaig.

  Then, when his dander was well and truly up, as he would have phrased it, he went into the kitchen and hauled the box off the black plastic bag. He lifted the bag, feeling with satisfaction the weight of the cape inside, and slung it into a cupboard under the stairs that led to the flat above his.

  Then he went to bed and slept for twelve hours.

  During the next couple of days Mr Rudge found it difficult to settle to anything but, on the third morning, he woke up feeling more like his old, calm, clear and capable self.

  With a shock he realized that it was less than a week to Christmas.

  He spent the morning wrapping presents and signing and addressing cards. After a trip to the Post Office to send them off, he returned to the flat with the determination to dig out his box of Christmas decorations. It was time to brighten things up a bit.

  Though he never did much about Christmas, he had discovered that it was better, since his wife had died and he had been living alone, to make some concessions to the festive season, rather than try to turn his back and ignore it. It was his habit on Christmas Day to eat a turkey dinner at the Old Hall
Hotel then, if the weather permitted, to take a turn or two round the Pavilion Gardens. He would then return to his flat and, sitting under strips and chains of coloured paper and, with a bottle of malt by his side, he would read or watch television until his eyes drooped shut. It was the only sensible way to deal with Christmas.

  On Boxing Day he would visit his daughter in Derby, staying overnight and returning next day. He never lingered longer. His daughter’s toleration of him only lasted twenty-four hours at most.

  The Christmas decorations he kept on a shelf at the back of the cupboard under the stairs.

  He opened the door and paused for some seconds before switching on the light.

  The air smelt stale in there.

  “No,” he thought, poking his head inside, “it smells downright unpleasant; it stinks!”

  He had noticed a smell in the flat for a few days now.

  He flicked the switch on. The low-powered bulb lit with a pallid light tidy piles of bags and boxes and orderly shelves stacked with household equipment and cleaning materials. The only object in there that had not been placed with neat precision was the plastic bag containing the cape. It sprawled at an angle up against a wall. Mr Rudge, who had not visited the cupboard since he had flung it there, noticed that it had become fuller. The bag now looked as though it had something in it other than, or as well as, the cape, because it was bulging where it had once been flat.

  Mr Rudge decided to throw it out.

  He reached down, grabbed the knotted part, and gave a tug. It was surprisingly heavy; very heavy, in fact. He felt the plastic stretch as he pulled it.

  “God, don’t let it burst!”, he thought, and let go of it.

  He stood considering the situation for some moments. He thought of untying the knot to look inside the bag but dismissed the idea because he was sure the smell was coming from inside there, and he thought it would be best to leave it undisturbed. He bent down closer and gave it a prod with the tip of a tin of wax spray polish. It was only a gentle prod, but something hard inside fell away, or did it move away? It almost looked as though something had – retreated.

  He stood up and, as he did so, whatever he had moved swiftly slid back in place. There was a soft sound in the cupboard, the kind of noise an old, sick dog might make when it was dreaming. It could only have come from inside the sack.

  Mr Rudge flicked off the light and slammed the door shut with a speed remarkable for a man his age.

  It was hours before he remembered why he had gone to the cupboard. Then he decided he would do without Christmas decorations for once that year.

  The incident in the cupboard brought back thoughts about his homeward journey three days previously, which he was just beginning to hope he had put at the back of his mind for ever. Now, he had to confront them.

  He sat in the classic posture of a deeply troubled man, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, and went over and over the events that had occurred while he had been waiting on the station and, after that, when he had returned home.

  Particularly he had in mind the image of the figure he had seen then, of the man in the cape. Memories began to stir, fugitive, fragmentary, and trivial, of something he had seen or done, perhaps years ago, that had some connection with the figure. He remembered how quickly the shape of it had become almost familiar to him that night, and he began to think that somewhere, somehow, he had seen the figure before. Then, for no apparent reason, his mind filled with reminiscences of his working life.

  He had been a junior school teacher until he had retired at sixty, nine years before. Out of a haze of general impressions of that time, he began to recall some of the work he had so enthusiastically done. He had been a very good teacher, and it had been a pleasure for him to organise extracurricular activities and projects for the children in his classes, because he had the knack of stirring their interest, and because they responded so well, and produced sometimes quite remarkable work for him. Some of the projects had unearthed facts and information of such high quality he had thought them worth preserving and even, in some cases, publishing, if only in a very small, limited way. He had never actually got round to this, but he still kept a lot of work from those years, meaning to take a look at it again someday. He had piles of such stuff in his little study.

  Then he remembered a particular project; one he had set the older children in the top form.

  It had been called, not very excitingly, “The Story of my Home”.

  He had asked his pupils to research back as far as they could go to discover what they could about the places where they lived. Some of them, with the aid of their mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, came up with some astonishing facts, amounting almost to family histories. To set an example of what he hoped to achieve from the project, he had compiled a history of his own home; the flat he now occupied, but had then been living in for little more than a year.

  Suddenly, disturbed by some foreboding, Mr Rudge jumped up. He went into his study and began sifting through boxes of files. It took some finding, but at last he had it; a dingy green folder, faded across the top by sunlight, and stuffed full to bursting.

  The photographs he wanted were close to the top, in the opening section of the project. They were both of the same man; Mr Rudge remembered his name as he lifted them out; George Nathan-Dyson, Architect and Engineer. A “Great Man” of the Victorian period. He had designed and built a huge range of buildings in his brief life, but he was in Mr Rudge’s file because he had built the house where he, Mr Rudge, now lived. Nathan-Dyson had put the place up with his own money and had lived in the very same apartment that Mr Rudge had moved into over one hundred years later. He had lived there until the time of his death.

  The first photograph had been taken at an extensive building site, at the early, excavational stage of the work. Men with shovels toiled in deep mud in the background while, in the left foreground, others hauled cumbersome equipment into place. A little right of centre of the picture, also in the foreground, a tall, imperious, youngish looking man was watching the work in progress. He stood with his legs apart, with one hand on his hip while the other, clenched into a fist, hung by his side. The photographer had got the focus slightly wrong, bringing out more detail in the middle distance than in the foreground so the central figure’s features were indistinct, but there was no mistaking his body language; his posture was quite unambiguous. Here was an arrogant, egotistical, merciless man who would have his own way, no matter what. Here was George Nathan-Dyson.

  Mr Rudge studied the picture for a long time. He noted that Nathan-Dyson wore the tight, tapered trousers of the period and that he wore a cape over his shoulders. Also, the picture was not so blurred that Mr Rudge could not, with the aid of a magnifying glass, make out the loops of a pale cord tied under the man’s chin to hold the cape in place.

  The other picture was a formal portrait of Nathan-Dyson taken at home in his study. This was not the small room that Mr Rudge called his study, but the larger one next to it.

  At first glance, the picture was of little interest. Nathan-Dyson, his pose as wooden as the chair he sat in, stared at the photographer and, down the years, at Mr Rudge, with an expression of tight-lipped, self-satisfied contempt.

  He was surrounded by tables almost invisible under masses of bric-a-brac. Glass-fronted cases, full of more of the same, stood in the background. To Mr Rudge it looked as though anyone who took two steps in any direction would send dozens of ornaments and artefacts tumbling. He certainly would have done. It was hard to imagine a man the size of Nathan-Dyson moving amongst them without accident, but the ability to do so was plainly one of his many skills and talents.

  Mr Rudge was interested in the details of the room. It was fascinating to compare the way it had looked then to the way it was now. His eyes wandered from window to fireplace, from fireplace to door, and he noticed the door behind Nathan-Dyson was open. He could see out into the hall. A beam of light shone, as it still did on sunny days, th
rough the window above the main door, making every detail of the hall’s interior astonishingly clear.

  “Some of those Victorian photographers produced remarkable results with what must have been quite primitive equipment,” mused Mr Rudge, as he explored details revealed in the hall with his magnifying glass.

  It was then he saw the cape, hanging on its peg.

  It was clearly to be seen, even without the aid of the glass, hanging where he had found it a few days earlier, in the place where he had used to hang his own coat in recent years. The cape in the photograph was the one that he had stuffed into the plastic sack and hidden under the stairs; he knew it, and dark clouds, present at the back of his mind for days, began to roll forward.

  He threw the photograph down and pushed the file away from him.

  Facts he had forgotten about Nathan-Dyson, products of his researches into the life of the man, returned to Mr Rudge out of nowhere. Facts so unpleasant he had decided not to include them in a project that children would read.

  Nathan-Dyson had a reputation for cruelty. His wife had left him after only two months of marriage and there had been a national scandal when she had revealed details of his treatment of her in court. Prostitutes had come forward to support her allegations against him, and to add their own. Mrs Nathan-Dyson got her divorce, and the man escaped prison by a hair’s breadth.

  Nathan-Dyson used and abused the people who worked for him without scruple. That had finally caused his downfall. The wife of a man who had died in an accident caused by Nathan-Dyson’s negligence stabbed him in the heart. The woman had waited on a station for him to arrive by train. There was a story that he had pulled the knife out of his heart and stabbed the woman in the face and arms in the moments before he died.

  The murder had taken place on the platform where Mr Rudge had been waiting a few nights earlier.