The Future of Horror

by Jonathan Oliver

  Lee turned away, shivering. Mad bastards, anyway. The cops were bound to see the fire and then the arsonists would be joining him in here.

  HIS MATE GARY got moved onto C-Wing two days later. When the screw unlocked Lee’s door at ten o’clock, he found Gary waiting outside, leaning against the railing that circled the landing. He grinned beneath his crooked nose. He’d cut his cornrows since he’d been banged up and he was running his hand over the dark stubble as if he still hadn’t quite got used to the feel of it. They clasped hands as they embraced and Lee had a brief lungful of Gary’s cheap deoderant.

  “Fucking bastards,” Gary said. “Fuck-ing bastards.”

  Lee shook his head. “Gotta be more specific, man.”

  Gary blinked, then his face fell. “You don’t know. Shit.”

  Aaron was his first instinct. It was a freezing thought, painful even to touch with the edges of his mind. It must have showed in his face because Gary shook his head. “No, man. Nothing that bad. It’s just your beemer. Someone nicked it. The cops found it burnt-out outside that windmill. Fuck knows how the little fuckers got it in there.”

  The cold warmed to a burning rage. It flushed Lee’s cheeks and sped his heart. “Who was it? I’m gonna kill ’em. Who was it?”

  Gary backed away a step as he shrugged. Lee’s temper was legendary. He’d spent a long time cultivating the legend, and he’d watered it with enough blood. “Don’t know, man,” Gary said. “They didn’t catch nobody.”

  Lee remembered the dark figures, dancing and leaping and laughing round the burning car. He’d joined in the laughter, but now he understood that it had been at him. Did they know he’d been watching, trapped behind the bars of his cell while they roamed free? They’d find out that his reach extended beyond the walls of the prison. He was due another visit from Tasha today. She could get the word out.

  HE HUNG AROUND the wing’s front desk, waiting for freeflow when he’d be allowed to make his own way to the visitors’ centre. Only when the bell rang and the two metal gates to the wing were opened, the screw on the door put a hand out to stop him.

  “I’ve got a visit,” Lee said.

  The screw shook his head, looking down at his paper and not at Lee. He had a blue tattoo below his shirt sleeve, a crude heart he could have got in the nick.

  “I’ve got a fucking visit,” Lee said. “Check again.”

  “All right, Curtis – don’t fraggle out on me.” The screw sighed, like Lee was just a minor irritation for him, and turned the list around so he could read it. His name wasn’t on it. “Looks like you’ve been stood up. Can’t imagine why, with your winning personality.”

  Another prisoner pushed past him, some big Turkish bastard, and Lee had half a mind to let him know how he felt about that. His fist clenched, but he made himself step back. A few days in seg was the last thing he needed right now, and one of the screws on the wing had a score to settle with him from when he’d kicked off last time he was in. He was just looking for an excuse to dish out a beating.

  Most people were off at work or education, so at least there was no queue for the phone. He punched in his pin, followed by Tasha’s number. A group of Jamaicans lounged at a table beside him, and the slap of dominoes echoed through the wing as it rang seven times – then her answer phone kicked in. He swore and slammed the phone back on its hook. Fucking woman. What the hell was she doing that was more important than seeing him?

  He saw one of the Jamaicans staring at him and snarled back before heading down to the gym to work off some of the rage on the weights.

  EVENINGS INSIDE WERE always long, but that one felt endless. The cell pressed in on him, the ten foot width seeming to shrink to five, and then four, then narrower still until he imagined he could feel the concrete walls rubbing against his shoulders. The only escape was the window, but the window meant the windmill.

  It was full dark now. His eyes strained for the familiar shape, but it was no more than a dark stain on the horizon. The wreck of his car had probably been removed. The mark where it had stood would remain, grey ash against the green grass. He wondered if it would still be there in two years’ time when he was released.

  “What you looking at?” Arif said. Lee had thought he was asleep, curled like a child on the top bunk. But his eyes peered out, bright and blinking, from beneath the thin blanket he’d wrapped around his shoulders and head.

  “Nothing,” Lee said. “It’s dark.”

  “Then why’re you looking?”

  He gritted his teeth, but the other man didn’t seem to be taking the piss. “’Cause I’d rather look at nothing than look at you, you useless cunt,” Lee said.

  Arif’s face fell. It had filled out in the last few days, his cheeks rounding beneath hair which had finally been washed and allowed to dry in a black wave over his heavy brows. “Whatever,” he muttered and wiggled round until all Lee could see of him was his bony shoulder.

  Lee’s eyes were drawn back to the windmill, like a nail to an itchy scab. There were flashes of light on it now, sudden illuminations of a decaying vane, a strip of crumbling brick, scorched grass. For a moment he thought it was lightning, though there wasn’t any thunder. Then one of the beams caught a figure, a flash of white face and the black hole of its mouth, and he realised it was them. They were carrying torches as they milled at the base of the windmill, and now he could hear their voices too. No clear words, just the impression of an angry kind of excitement.

  There was something almost hypnotic about the whirling of the torch beams and the black shadows which danced between them. It reminded him of nights down the Academy. As if the thought had given birth to it, music started, a pounding bass beat with only scraps of melody floating above it. Lee looked at the scene for a long time. Hours maybe, drifting. When he blinked back into full awareness Arif was snoring and the lights inside the prison had died.

  Outside, the dancers still flickered through the shifting torchlight as if they were tireless. Inhuman. Lee couldn’t work out what had caught his attention and dragged him from his half-sleep. Then his attention focussed on a tight, dark knot of figures in the centre of the action. Their movements were different, less carefree. There was a sense of struggle about them – of coercion.

  They had a prisoner. It was obvious once he realised it. One shadow among the others was being restrained and dragged somewhere it didn’t want to go. Lee heard a shrill yelling. It grated down his spine and made his fingers twitch with the need to do something. But there was nothing to do, not here, behind the door, behind the bars.

  They were dragging their prisoner towards the windmill. The wandering torches began to focus in on the drama like a stage spotlight falling on a singer as they did their solo. The figure’s arms were lifted and long hair swung to obscure its face. Hair just like Tasha’s.

  Lee pressed his palms against the glass, pushing, knowing it was futile. And he couldn’t see her face, anyway. Loads of women had long hair. Loads. Why would it be her?

  They’d dragged her to the base of the windmill. More of them had joined in, dropping their torches in their hurry. The beams criss-crossed at their feet, a jumble of shadows and light as her legs kicked and struggled – and suddenly stiffened as something yanked her upward with shocking suddenness.

  The beams of light swung to follow her, a little slow, so they caught her feet first, heels pattering frantically against the bricks, and then her long legs and finally her head, hair wild over a face that was impossible, fucking impossible, to recognise for sure, though he could see the thick rope around her neck just fine.

  Then every single light flicked out. The darkness surrounding the windmill was absolute. The hanging figure was lost in shadows and only the building itself retained its outline, blotting out the stars behind it. Lee stared at it for a long time, his eyes straining to make out the woman who hung from it.

  HE DIDN’T SLEEP at all. The sun rose with him still at the cell’s window, but when the first glow lit the sky behind the
windmill, there was nothing to be seen. The sails stood out in silhouette against the fiery clouds and no other shape broke their symmetry. The figures had gone and the woman as well. He could almost have imagined it.

  The wait until they opened the cell door was agony, the second hand on his watch moving sluggishly from number to number. When the key finally turned in the lock they were only supposed to get their breakfast and head back to the cell. Lee ignored the food. His stomach felt tight, no room inside it for anything but worry. He pushed past the screw who’d let them out and headed for the nearest payphone.

  The screw grabbed his arm but he used the other to dial the pin, then Tasha’s number. It rang three times and he thought it would stay unanswered, which was an answer in itself. Where could she be at this time of the morning? But then the ring ended and it took him a moment to realise the phone had been picked up.

  “Tasha!” he shouted. “Where the fuck have you been?” He shook his arm impatiently, trying to shift the screw who was still clinging to it like a limpet.

  The phone hissed at him. A bad connection, maybe. Then the hiss changed, growing higher and irregular, until it was clearly laughter.

  “Tasha?” he said again, not so certain now.

  The laugh went on, rising and falling, almost but not quite like the wind.

  The screw pulled harder and Lee dropped the phone and let himself be dragged away. He shook his head, partly denial, partly an attempt to clear it of the fuzz of adrenaline and panic. Where the fuck was Tasha? What the fuck had happened to her?

  He realised he was being led back to his cell and didn’t resist, the speeding, circling, churning working of his mind seeming to use up all the energy that should have powered his body.

  “What’s up with you, Curtis?” the screw said. “Been getting high on your own supply?”

  He laughed at his own joke, but Lee didn’t reply, even as he was pushed into the cell and the door slammed shut behind him. It was only when he turned to face the thick, cold metal that he realised he’d lost his chance to find out anything more, try to phone one of his other friends, or maybe Tasha’s sister. He banged on the door, hurting his hands, but nobody came. They were used to it and it was breakfast time and the junkies were crowding round the meds hatch and the bastards obviously thought they had more important things to worry about.

  “Bad day?” Arif said. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, feet dangling like a carefree child on a swing. Lee could see the windmill behind him, looking almost whole in the grey morning light. Arif looked whole too, and healthy, a different man from the one who’d first crawled into the nick less than a fortnight ago. He was smiling at Lee, as if he was having a laugh at his expense, and it was all too much.

  “You little shit,” Lee growled. “You think this is funny?”

  “Nah,” Arif said. “Losing your bird ain’t funny. I know that.”

  Losing your bird. But Lee hadn’t said anything about that – not to anyone. He grabbed the other man’s throat, pressing him back against the wall. “What the fuck do you know about that?”

  Arif kept on smiling. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  Lee found his hand unclenching against his will. Arif’s shirt slipped through his fingers like fog. “I’ve been sharing a fucking cell with you. ’Course I remember you.”

  “I bought off you for four years and you never even knew my name.” Arif was standing by the window now, his thin face framed by two of the bars and the windmill behind him. “My family begged me to stop – kicked me out when I didn’t. My girlfriend said she’d marry me if I stopped. I knew I was destroying myself. But I couldn’t stop. And you were always there to give me what I wanted. Killing me with every dose.”

  “Boo-fucking-hoo. It was your choice.” But he’d backed away until his spine pressed against the cold metal of the locked door.

  “It was an OD finished me off,” Arif said. “I’d been inside a month and I’d kept clean, but I went straight to you when I got out. Same old story, innit? I went to that old windmill to shoot up. Nice and peaceful, no one around I could call to for help. And I just lay there, feeling fucking awful. I knew I’d done it, then – and I thought about you. Thought about all the money I’d given you. All the people I’d hurt to get it. I’d seen you that night, with your bird. She was expecting and so was mine. And I thought how I’d like to take it all away from you. Everything you’d robbed off me.”

  “What are you saying?” Lee said. “What are you saying?”

  Arif smiled. Lee remembered something Mr Williams told them in GCSE biology, back before he’d really known what shape his life was going to take. Teeth are just bones, Mr Williams had said, bones exposed to the air.

  “He’s a sweet little baby you’ve got, innit?” Arif said. “Wonder how he’s doing without his mum. No one to look after him. Anyone could walk in and do whatever they wanted with him.” He looked behind him, towards the windmill.

  Lee flung himself at Arif, roaring with rage. He hit him again and again and again. There was a terrible pain in his hands and he heard cracks that might have been his knuckles breaking. It felt like he was hitting metal, not flesh, but it didn’t stop him. Behind Arif’s head he could see the windmill, the figures milling at its base and the little bundle they’d brought with them. He screamed as they threw it between them, laughing.

  “I’ll kill you!” he shouted. “Just fucking die!”

  The laughter outside mingled with Arif’s and the crack of his fists striking the metal bars drowned out the sound of the cell door opening. He felt hands on him, dragging him away, and he fought against them.

  “Jesus,” someone said. “He’s totally fraggled out.”

  “He killed my baby!” Lee shouted as they pushed him to the ground, arms pinioned behind him. “Get him, not me! Get him.”

  “Who the hell’s he talking about?”

  “Fucked if I know. Better get him to F-Wing.”

  F-Wing – where the head cases went. Lee struggled even harder. “My boy,” he said, surprised to find that he was sobbing. “My baby.”

  He lifted his head as they pulled him to the door. He expected to see Arif smiling in triumph as he was dragged away. But the other man was gone. Only the windmill was visible through the barred window of his cell, the wind creaking its broken sails above the dead grass at its feet.

  MORETTA

  GARRY KILWORTH

  Garry Kilworth is a diverse writer, having written for both adults and children over a variety of different genres. I’ve been a fan of Garry’s SF work for a long time, but it was his YA novel, Attica, that inspired me to ask him to write a story for House of Fear. In Attica a group of children find themselves lost in a seemingly infinite world found in the attic of a house. The rich and creepy atmosphere of that novel showed Garry’s skill as a master of unsettling prose; a talent that is very much in evidence in the following story.

  “MY GOD, WHAT an ugly-looking place,” I said, staring at the photograph. “Lucy lived there?”

  “Moretta, not Lucy. She liked to call herself Moretta.”

  Elaine, my niece, sighed and expanded on this piece of information. “It’s the name of one of those Venetian masks, that they wear at carnival time. Black, of course. You know Moretta was into the macabre in a big way. Black clothes, black lacy gloves. All that sort of thing.”

  “A Goth?”

  “I suppose you could call her that, though I think she took the thing a step further than just a fashion statement. The house...” Elaine paused. Elaine herself was a university professor. She lectured in economics at the LSE. She was worldly and no prude. “...you should see the house. You will see the house. It’s dreadful. Full of ghastly-looking furniture and ornaments straight out of a horror film. Dracula would have a hard time living there without tripping over a stuffed raven.”

  I peered again at the photo. It was, yes, a Gothic-looking mansion on the top of a cliff: dark, brooding, bristling with those corner spires that s
eem only to appear on seaside town houses. The ocean below it was caught in mid-flamenco. In the distance there was a ruin of sorts, beyond a tangle of brambles and gorse, half-hidden amongst some raggedy pines.

  “What’s this place?” I asked, pointing.

  Elaine peeked over my shoulder. “Oh, the old leper colony. It’s no longer in use.”

  “I should bloody well hope so.”

  “Well, Steve, there are still lepers in the world, you know. Probably in England. Is James going with you, by the way?”

  “Yes, you don’t think I’d go to a house like this” – I flicked the photo – “without a bodyguard.”

  She laughed at that. The idea of a gentle creature like James being the tough heavy of the two of us was strongly ludicrous.

  “So, tell me again what happened.”

  Elaine sat down on one of her kitchen chairs.

  “About two months ago, Moretta was found dead in her bedroom; in her bed, actually. It appeared she passed away in her sleep. However, the autopsy found signs of suffocation – oh, nothing like a pillow over her face, or anything like that – it seemed pressure had been put on her lungs. You know that torture they used to have in the Inquisition? And other Medieval institutions, I suppose. Where they laid heavy stones on the victim’s chest to crush them to death? Apparently that would have produced the same effect. There were no stones of course, nor heavy weights of any kind. Poor dear Moretta. Something had squeezed her to death, but what? The coroner’s verdict was left open.”

  “And Lucy – sorry, Moretta – left the house to you in her will.”

  Elaine shrugged. “Yes, to me and Lloyd. My sister was quite conventional in lots of ways, you know, despite her eccentricities in others.”