The Future of Horror

by Jonathan Oliver

  She wandered about the place looking for something to do. Tamara no longer spoke to her. Although the pregnancy didn’t show, it was as if the change transmitted itself to other people, separating her from them. She felt different too; she had experienced something they had not, and it had matured her.

  She was about to make coffee and watch a DVD when a sudden spear of pain cut across her groin.

  It came in hot sharp stabs about fifteen to twenty seconds apart. As each attack subsided, it left behind an ache that felt like food poisoning. She made her way to the kitchen and filled a hot water bottle from the hot tap, pressing it against her lower abdomen, then lay down on her bed. The pain remained at the same level of intensity, each burst dropping back to a cruel, persistent gnawing. Finally unable to stand it any longer, she went to the bathroom and ran the tap until the water was nearly scalding.

  She wanted to lower herself into it but was too frightened to do so, and besides, while the heat might deaden her pain it could also harm the baby. Placing her hands over where she felt the new life to be, she was certain she sensed something tiny shifting about, twitching and nipping, pulling at its life-cord. But whatever was inside her had altered somehow. It felt upset and anxious, but surely it was too small to experience such feelings?

  She took two sleeping pills from Karen’s bedside table and washed them down with cola. Then she undressed and fell asleep on her bed, hugging her old Edward Bear. It was a little after ten o’clock.

  Her dreams were storm-tossed, crimson and violent, not scary but merely disorienting, strange and sad. She seemed to be tilting about on a raft in a hot red sea.

  Then she awoke to find the bed streaming with her blood.

  It had just turned midnight. The bedside light did not work. The street lights made the blood look black, and when she gingerly lowered her hands between her legs she knew the baby was gone. Using the light from her cellphone she searched through the bloody covers, sure it had somehow chewed through its cord and freed itself, but there was no sign of it.

  She saw the trail, though. It led from the bed to the chest of drawers, smeary little prints on the cream carpet, first on all fours and then in tiny pairs, as if it had already learned to walk.

  A wave of weakness overcame her, but as soon as she felt strong enough she pulled the dresser out and searched behind it. She found it in the corner, black and shiny with dried blood; an upright foetus with a bulbous delicate head and tadpole eyes, a mouth that would have been comical, so wide and gummy, but it just looked unfinished and unready to be born. She had arrested its development but the magic had allowed it to live on.

  The baby was making a noise. It sounded like the folk-song Martitia hummed in the hotel room, but now some of the notes were wrong, and the melody was menacing. She found herself thinking This is absurd, it’s so tiny, what possible harm can it do? But when it suddenly pulled itself away from the wall and took a faltering step toward her she found herself backing toward the door.

  It hissed now, a startling high-pitched noise that resounded inside her head. What scared her most was not knowing what it wanted. She had kept the slip of paper with the telephone number on it. Snatching it from beneath her computer she fled from the room, convinced that the ugly little thing could not possibly travel any distance.

  Dropping to the landing steps she punched out the number. It rang eight times.

  “This is a strange time to be calling.” Martitia sounded half-asleep. “I’m guessing the baby has left your body, hasn’t it?”

  “It’s in my bedroom. I don’t know what it wants.”

  “I can’t help you now. You should have come back. It’s not human anymore.”

  “It still has my genes.”

  “Yes, but in a mutated form. It’s between two worlds. It’s very hard to understand what such creatures want.”

  “Can’t you do something?”

  “I’m afraid not. I can’t see you, Sasha. It knows I poisoned it and will only try to hurt me.”

  “What about me? What will it try to do?”

  “It will either love you, or it will hate you.”

  “What should I do?”

  “You must wait for it to tell you what it wants. Neither result is desirable. If it loves you it will try to hide inside you, where it feels warm and safe. It will tell you what to do next, because it is you.”

  “And if it hates me?”

  “It will eat your flesh until it reaches normal size, so that it can continue to grow after you’ve gone. Soon it will make up its mind. Until then you must try to stay awake. It’s dangerous to fall asleep.”

  “When I went near it, it started hissing.”

  “Then maybe it’s already decided that it hates you. I don’t know. It’s clever. It knows exactly what you’re thinking because it’s a part of you. You can try to kill it, but it will know where to hide and how to hurt you. It knows what you really want. It will wait in the dark until you’ve fallen asleep. You can’t run away, because it will always be near you until it gets what it wants.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “It will decide for itself. It will tell you.”

  “It’s a foetus, you crazy bitch, how can it talk?”

  Martitia sighed as if she’d had enough of the conversation. “It will. It’s hard to explain. You see, it isn’t really there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I told you, it’s between two worlds. Yours and his.”

  “You’ve seen this before?”

  “Only once.”

  “What happened to the mother?”

  Behind her there was a sound of scampering feet.

  “What happened to the fucking mother?”

  The sound of the baby was coming nearer.

  She lowered the phone and held her breath, slowly turning. Behind her, no more than two feet away, the baby swayed in the shadows on shiny wavering legs, its blackened flesh cord hanging down like a puppet’s cut string.

  She stared down at it and tried to understand what it wanted.

  The baby slowly raised its wet tadpole eyes to her and opened its gummy mouth to speak.

  Its voice sang inside her head.

  It said, Let’s kill Daddy.

  DO AS THOU WILT...

  STORM CONSTANTINE

  I first encountered Storm Constantine at Fantasycon, when I was but 17 years old. I didn’t know Storm or her work at the time, but I picked up a copy of her novel Sign for The Sacred and was very glad I had. There’s a real warmth and complexity to Storm’s writing, which the following story beautifully demonstrates. Storm writes movingly about how we empower ourselves and others through symbolic acts.

  FOLLOWING THE STRANGE affair with Brett Lyle it took Leah Metcalfe almost five years to realise the level of his scorn merited action. She might never have done anything, simply allowed the pain to heal and fade, get on with life, as you’re supposed to do after a bereavement. She read stories in the media of men who conned gullible women out of all their money – she had always thought them rather careless women – but in her case of conning, Lyle, she felt, had cleaned out her soul rather than her bank account. Or at least he had murdered a little bit of it. She grieved for this sundered part, long after it was polite or sane still to be noticeably doing so. After the vanishing years of moping and longing, which had felt like some nightmarish enchanted sleep, she had eventually become utterly disgusted with the emotions and had put them away, at last awake, and aghast at herself for wasting so much time on what had ultimately proved to be nonsense. Only when her friend Sophie, in whom she had confided during the two years of her involvement with Lyle, brought his name up in conversation during one of their fortnightly lunch meetings did Leah think about him again.

  The two women still met each other with an embrace and the greeting, “Blessed be,” even though Leah had not been part of Sophie’s magical group for several years. She and Sophie rarely spoke of such matters nowadays; their friendship was confined to
the mundane. It had been Sophie who’d put considerable effort into maintaining their relationship; Leah was fully aware of this. Perhaps Sophie considered it a charitable act.

  A few minutes after they sat down to their lunch, Sophie eyed Leah carefully. “Brett Lyle,” she said. “I don’t know if this is still a ‘no go’ area for you, but I thought you should know. It’s just burning a hole in me. You weren’t the only one, you know. He was still at it after you. Still is.”

  Leah shifted awkwardly on her seat. The cafe was hot, felt steamy. Outside cold rain hammered the shopping precinct, where women marched about their business. Some had bare legs. Rather unwise, Leah thought, in February. “I’m hardly shocked,” Leah said, although just the sound of his name had shocked her.

  “Well, of course. I realise that. But... Not everyone is as aware as you. Not everyone can get over things so easily.”

  Leah did not really think squandering years of precious life on mourning the loss of a man like Lyle could be described as being aware or getting over it easily, but decided to let this pass. Perhaps Sophie meant it as a compliment. “Why do you mention it? Have you heard something?” Leah realised she was in fact eager to know. She wanted to hear details of another woman’s emotional car crash. Inside, we are all ghouls, she thought.

  “This one is a lot younger than you,” Sophie said, sipping her latte, “thought it was for real.”

  Leah coughed up a laugh. “And I didn’t?”

  Sophie screwed up her eyes briefly, shook her head. “Sorry, you know what I mean. She doesn’t have your experience, you know? At least you did get over it. I saw the way you were. You did... incredibly.” She grimaced. “Ack, whatever I say sounds crass.”

  “Don’t worry about it, tell me what you know.”

  “It’s this girl I work with. You’ve probably heard me mention her: Cassy.”

  “The one who got burned on a sunbed?”

  Sophie smirked. “Yes, that one. Complete airhead, but a kind girl. I didn’t even know about this circumstance until it was too late. We don’t talk that intimately, you know. I just noticed something was wrong with her. She was... listless. Totally not like her. So I asked her. And this look she gave me... I recognised it, Leah. Made me shiver.” Sophie shivered theatrically to emphasise her words, and Leah found herself freckled by a shiver too.

  “She was haunted, lost...” Sophie continued. “For a moment she was you, and that was even before she told me his name.”

  “What a chilling coincidence.”

  “You seem to be taking this very calmly.”

  “I don’t know what I’m taking yet, go on.”

  “Well naturally, she didn’t spill her guts to me immediately. As I said, we’re not that close, but she wanted to talk, I suppose, and simply told me ‘this guy, he’s doing my head in’. I just said something soothing like ‘Oh men, bane of our lives, aren’t they? Can’t live with or without, as they say.’ Cassy answered, ‘yes, it’s just like that,’ then walked away from me, right as I was saying something else. At the time I thought it was rather rude.”

  Leah didn’t interrupt or make any noises or gestures of encouragement. She found, in fact, she was becoming increasingly frozen and was aware of a soft whistling noise in her head.

  “Cassy didn’t get any better, and it started to affect her work. As her supervisor, I was eventually obliged to get her into the office and have a little talk.” Sophie paused, clearly waiting for a signal Leah was listening or interested. “Are you OK with this?”

  “Of course. Merely waiting to hear.”

  “You’re not completely OK with it, are you? You just can’t resist knowing.”

  “Then just tell me.”

  “The merest comment on Cassy’s recent behaviour had her in tears. She told me she had a disease, and at first I took that at face value and thought she’d got herself into some embarrassing trouble, but even little airhead Cassy can speak in metaphor. I told her to tell me about it, and she did, then. What she described, the mind games, the hot and cold episodes, the yearning to escape, only to be reeled back in, it was familiar. I think I knew even before she found the courage to say his name.”

  “Lots of people behave like that, men and women alike,” Leah said. “That kind of behaviour isn’t confined to one man, or even one gender.”

  “It goes further than that with him, you know it does.”

  Vampire, Leah thought. “I’m not sure. My views on the man are hardly unbiased.”

  “Take it from me, it does,” Sophie continued. “Cassy told me how she’d met him, how he’d seemed like a brother at first. He brought light to her, she said. She fell into love, like someone falling into a vat of acid; to be eaten away, slowly and painfully. They met almost every day – to talk. Sometimes, he’d lightly touch her... his eyes would hold her with promises he never said aloud. She wanted more and expected it, even dared to make subtle moves.”

  “And then the shutters came down.”

  Sophie nodded. “But of course not entirely, because that’s not part of the game, is it? He knows how to drive someone crazy, so he cracked his knuckles and got on with it.”

  “Poor girl.”

  “When she revealed his name, I had to... I hope you don’t mind, I didn’t mention yours... but I told her I’d heard of him and that someone I knew had gone through the same thing. I told her she had to break contact immediately, because it could go on for years, him feeding off her; it would get worse, and never better.”

  “Did she listen to you?”

  “Did she, hell! Did you?”

  “And does she know about the wife?”

  “Yes. She got the same story as you did, too pathetic and clichéd to be real, but utterly gobbled up.”

  Leah grimaced. “His problem is, he’s bored and wants affairs, but lacks the balls to do anything physical about it. He’s more conventional than he likes to think he is. It’s no more than that, and some of us are stupid enough to think we can change people.”

  Sophie raised her brows. “Is that how you’ve cleaned it up in your head?”

  “I believe it to be the truth. I – and also this Cassy – are just as at fault as he is. Neediness, insecurity, the garbage we carry around.” Leah made a casual gesture. “Tell her that.”

  “You don’t believe a word of that,” Sophie said. “He has magic. He might not know it, but he has, and he uses it. Perhaps it’s time for others who have it to take him to task.”

  “It’s none of our business. Everyone is responsible for...”

  “Leah, stop it, you’ve not heard me out. I spoke with Matty about it.”

  Matty was a mutual friend, who was also a friend of Lyle’s. Leah still met him once a month for dinner. Lyle was never mentioned, probably because Matty still felt guilty for introducing Leah to Lyle in the first place. “What did he say?”

  “He told me there had been two others, who he knew of, after you. Cassy would be the third. Apparently, the second one got out quick, although the first one was beaten up pretty badly by it. Matty only knew about them because they were part of his and Lyle’s social circle and he saw it happening. He didn’t know about Cassy. And gods know how many more there are! Lyle sucks the living energy out of people, Leah. It’s food to him. Do you honestly think it’s OK to know predators like that are hunting vulnerable people and not do something about it? Don’t you want to help Cassy? She’s helpless, she’s... bewitched.”

  “What do you propose to do?”

  “Turn a mirror on him,” Sophie said grimly. “Throw that leech energy back at him. Make him taste his own self. If that doesn’t choke him, nothing will.”

  “Pointless,” Leah said. “He’s impervious to magic, believe me.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yes, because I threw the book at it. I tried everything to bring harmony into our sick situation, communication, honesty, all that bullshit...”

  “Bullshit?”

  Leah shook her head. “It
was a waste of time. He’s impervious.”

  “And that’s what killed your faith in yourself,” Sophie said, folding her arms and leaning back in her chair. Her expression had become flinty. “You lost your faith in magic, which is why you left the group. That’s the truth, isn’t it? The real bullshit was the excuse you gave us about how you’d suddenly become too busy to be spiritual.”

  Leah gestured helplessly. “I don’t want to argue about this, we should drop it. I don’t want any further... contamination... by even thinking about Lyle, never mind doing some ritual to try and bring him into line, which wouldn’t work anyway.”

  Sophie wiped her hands over her face, sighed. “I remember a woman who believed we were capable of anything. I remember the amazing times we had, the energy we raised, the good we did. That woman was an inspiration. I can’t – and don’t want to – believe a shit like Brett Lyle could destroy that woman for good.”

  “I let him happen to me,” Leah said. “If you must look at it in terms of magic, let’s just say he was a test I failed. And much as I would like to see him gunned down in cold blood, never mind be given a civilised, chastening lesson in self-awareness and responsibility, it’s unethical to try and influence another’s will. You know that, Soph. We’ve always abided by that.”

  “But what about the will of those he targets?”

  Leah shrugged. “Like I said, a test. We don’t have to fall for it, but some do. And you mentioned the ‘second one’ who got away quick. She passed the test. There are no doubt others.”

  “I don’t want to believe Brett Lyle is on this earth as a life lesson for vulnerable women,” Sophie said. “That’s too cruel to contemplate.”

  “Yes it is. It’s bloody cruel. And however many rituals you do, or believe that the universe loves you and wants the best for you, the cruelty is still there. I’m sorry, Sophie. We should have talked about this before. Yes, I lost my faith. Magic is a comforting illusion, like the religions we so scorned, and there’s nothing wrong in that, or the aim of groups like ours who want to make a difference. But at the end of it all, most of the positive results must be down to luck, or coincidence. I think focused will can move mountains, yes, but perhaps not to order, and not all the time. One thing I learned is that we are truly alone. There is no greater power looking out for us.”