The Year's Best Horror Stories 21

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  The train stopped in the tunnel before King’s Cross and the bank clerk in the Oxford Street suit behind me huffed and tutted. I squared my shoulders against his pathetic noises. Such irritability on the part of other passengers was always worse than the wait for the train to go again. I told myself that if he tutted again I would turn round and ask him to be quiet, but mercifully the train moved.

  “Good morning to you,” Egerton practically shouted as I stepped into the office. He was striding past the door, clicking his fingers purposefully as if they were part of the dynamo which powered his ceaseless activity. He always placed stress on the you. Perhaps he thought because he hadn’t yet been smacked in the mouth or taken out by precision bombing that people liked him and his studied eccentricity. They didn’t.

  I rang Melanie but she said she couldn’t talk—too busy. We said goodbye. “I’ll ring you later,” I said, but she hung up and I didn’t know if she’d heard me or not. So I rang her back.

  “Melanie,” I began.

  “Alex. I’m busy.” She sounded pissed off.

  “Are you all right?” I asked anxiously.

  “Will you stop asking if I’m all right?” She was pissed off.

  “Sorry. Look, I only wanted to make sure you’re all right.”

  “I’m busy. I’ve got to go.”

  Again she hung up. I hated being hung up on, but I couldn’t possibly ring her again. So I waited. Five minutes. Then pressed redial. This is stupid, part of my mind told me. I knew that was right. It was stupid, destructive, doomed to failure. But I couldn’t leave the phone alone when it sat there, saying, go on, use me. Phone her back. You might as well.

  “It’s me,” I said quickly. “Listen, don’t hang up. I just want to apologize ...”

  She hung up.

  I had to get up and walk around to try and calm down. But Egerton’s animated hand movements between keyboard and phone, and chin and coffee cup, just put me more on edge. I left the office and walked round the block, wondering what I could do about Melanie. I couldn’t leave things the way they were. I’d upset her and I needed to let her know I was sorry. It wasn’t just for my own peace of mind. I needed to know she wasn’t angry with me. Maybe it was just for my own peace of mind. But if she was still angry with me, ringing her again would only make her angrier.

  When I got back to the office I rang a mutual friend, Steve.

  “She’s all right, Alex,” was Steve’s opinion. Then the conversation veered away from Melanie and I formed the impression that Steve knew something he wasn’t telling. Something about Melanie.

  “Is everything all right, I mean, does she still fancy me?”

  “Of course she fancies you,” Steve said before once more steering the conversation into some gloomy sidetrack that seemed to lead nowhere. I allowed myself to be drawn along, as the feeling grew inside me that Steve had placed a particular emphasis on the word fancy, suggesting that yes she still fancied me but that was all and the least of my worries. I wanted to ask him if she still loved me but didn’t dare in case the answer was either no or an awkward silence.

  When I got home I rang Holly, one of Melanie’s friends whom I knew well enough to chat to, and asked her if she thought Melanie still cared for me.

  “Of course Mel cares for you,” Holly tried to reassure me. I was sure she stressed the verb and once more I was too cowardly to use the word love.

  Now I began to convince myself that Steve and Holly were on the same track: they both knew the same thing about Melanie. Maybe it was that she still found me attractive and was fond of me but no longer loved me. Or that she had met someone else or that she had come out. Whatever it was, I worked myself into such a state of anxiety that when the phone rang I found myself virtually paralyzed. I tried to extricate an arm—they were folded around my body and I was rocking gently on the chair—but couldn’t and the effort dragged me off the chair and on to the floor.

  Meanwhile the phone rang off after only one or two rings.

  Who was trying to contact me? If I managed to answer, would a familiar voice soothe me and calm my fears or would some malicious interloper take delight in confirming my paranoid fears? I had a strong feeling that the world wasn’t as simple as I had always imagined. Not all lives proceeded at the same pace and there were different tracks.

  It seemed to me that someone was trying to get through to me, but something about me or my flat was blocking them. Something needed to change, but I didn’t know what.

  The phone rang while I was cleaning my teeth. I thought I would just carry on because it would ring off after one ring and I wouldn’t get to it. But it continued to ring and I still brushed.

  It rang a third time.

  I dropped the brush in the bowl and ran through to the other room, reaching for the phone. But it had fallen silent. I picked up the receiver and listened to the dialing tone for a moment.

  I drifted off to sleep determined to catch the postman out in the morning. As soon as I heard the alarm I reached across and silenced it, then slid out of bed. I stood in the cold kitchen while the kettle heated up, and drank my coffee looking out of the sloping skylight, through which I could see only sky. The dawn was a gentle clash of violets and oranges. The coffee in my cup went down slowly. At quarter to eight I moved into the hall and took up a position two meters from the front door. If the postman came, if the letter box was lifted, if a delivery was made, I would see it. There would be no question that I wasn’t fully awake. I squatted and waited, patient in the pursuit of my objective. Nothing happened. I heard someone downstairs lock their door and leave the building. I wondered about Melanie without taking my eyes off the letter box. Did she love me? What would she say in her letter if one should arrive? That she loved me and I should stop worrying or that I had been right all along and she didn’t love me at all?

  My haunches tingled with pins and needles then went numb. Straining my ears for sounds with which the postman might betray his approach, I began to notice a hum in the flat. Electrical appliances, storage heaters, the immersion, all would no doubt contribute, but it seemed as if the flat itself were alive and trying to tell me something. It was the first time I had sat and listened so intently. Normally I played a compact disk or boiled a kettle, switched channels or ran a bath. At night when I lay still, I covered my ears with the duvet.

  Now, however, for the first time, I was listening to the flat.

  I thought that maybe it was telling me not to take my eyes off the letter box. But I couldn’t live like this—watching the letter box every morning.

  The humming seemed to acquire a rhythm, a beat, like a clock, as if my flat was in tune with the universe, a quartz clock. The flat was part of the great design. I felt it protecting me, like a mother or the mother’s womb itself. I watched the door. The flat hummed. It felt completely right.

  Then the flap lifted slowly and the white corner of a letter slid through into the flat. I heard my heart beating faster. The letter pushed the flap open wider and fell on to the doormat. The metal flap fell back with the familiar rattle.

  My body was tense, ready to spring. I wanted to open the letter. I realized I was sweating. The flat was still all right. I crawled forward and picked up the letter. It was a bill. I snapped it down on the narrow bookshelf in disgust and disappointment, and some small degree of relief.

  The hum receded until it was barely perceptible, as if the flat was satisfied it had demonstrated to me that all was in order. A letter had arrived—although not the one I would have wanted—and I had been reassured that the world was still functioning as it should. Possibly had I not been watching, the letter box might have banged open and shut while some hateful, terrible communication slipped, not into sight, but between the tracks upon which my life ran, into the void I knew I would have to face one day. How many letters waited there for me? How many unanswered phone calls? How any small hands stretched out unseen? How many open mouths and proclamations of terrifying truths which would destroy the lies o
f the life that had gone before?

  As I dressed I debated whether or not to phone Melanie. I needed to speak to her and get that part of my life back on the right track. Derailed, it could slip into the space where the letters and phone calls waited. But I left it too late to act: she would have gone to work. I realized I was late myself, so I grabbed my jacket and rushed out, locking the door behind me.

  The morning was crisp with fragmented memories of winter. The promise of spring lifted my spirits. The world went on and it was good.

  Halfway down the road I felt in my pocket for my travel pass and found it wasn’t there. For a moment I considered going on without it and paying a couple of quid on fares. But I could scarcely afford it and I didn’t know what I would be doing after work.

  So I turned round and went back.

  I unlocked the door and instantly felt the difference. It was like stepping into a stranger’s home. The flat was as quiet as death. No humming. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I had left for the day and in coming back after only two minutes found myself intruding. I felt as if I had penetrated some membrane in reality. Everything seemed colorless in the weak natural light my windows allowed. I stood stock still in the hall listening, but the flat was silent. I began to shiver. The hairs on the back of my neck pricked and gooseflesh crept up my arm.

  The volume control on the phone was turned low, but when it rang in the stillness of the gray flat it was the shrillest, most frightening sound in the world. My heart faltered. But I wouldn’t miss the phone this time. I strode into the living room, wading tearfully through the thick air. I reached the phone and picked it up while it was still ringing. I held the receiver to my ear and listened. The flat had become like a photograph printed in a newspaper and the dots were gathering and re-forming and swarming before my eyes.

  “Hello?” My voice was toneless and compressed with the suppression of terror.

  A voice said, “Go to the door. Quickly. Go to the door!” The voice was familiar but seemed constricted by anxiety.

  I could only obey.

  The flat knew. I wasn’t supposed to be there so it couldn’t protect me. I shouldn’t have come back when I did. The flat knew everything but could do nothing to help me.

  I stepped into the hall just as I heard the letter box bang shut and a letter fell through on to the mat. Had I not got there in time there would have been no letter; just an empty rattle.

  I tore at the envelope, though I didn’t need to because I had recognized her handwriting and I knew what the letter would say.

  Having crossed over accidentally from one track to another, I was now staring into the space in between.

  Just as I had strained the relationship by worrying at it and asking all the wrong questions, so had I colluded now in my own downfall both by making the call and by answering it in time. Too late I realized it had been me also on the other occasions, when I’d hung up to save myself.

  From the other room I could hear my own distressed voice on the phone shouting, “No no no!” It’s a bit late for that, I thought bitterly.

  LARGESSE by Mark McLaughlin

  Mr. Pash, Mr. Pash. Could anyone be more wonderful than Mr. Pash? He was the best employer I ever had—a wise, thrilling person. And so generous.

  Bosses are usually such atrocious beings. You have to nod and grin and act as though you are not afraid of them. You must appear to condone their boorish, money-hungry wickedness. You must pretend to be other than yourself. Such was not the case with Mr. Pash.

  My work in the Tons of Tapes video store was quite simple. I waited on customers, kept the display boxes in neat rows, vacuumed a bit. Nothing too strenuous. Every now and then Mr. Pash stopped in to check on the store. To peek into the cash register. To offer a word of encouragement.

  His eyes were deep, brown, and utterly unfocused. His nose was long and curved like the beak of a bird that eats meat. Thick brown hair, pale skin, a mildly spicy body odor, black stubble no matter what the time of day ... and fat. Mr. Pash was fat, yet obliquely so in his bulky sweaters and baggy pants. It was hard to tell where Mr. Pash ended and the sag of his loose outfits began. But make no mistake: his clothes were clean and more or less fashionable.

  When he placed his long white fingers on your shoulder, you knew instantly that he cared. If your mother was ill, or if your pet lost a limb in a freakish accident, he would give you the day off without question. If he had candies in his huge pockets, and he usually did, he would give you several nice plastic-wrapped mints. Large and fresh, with red and white swirls. No lint on these pocket treats.

  The customers at Tons of Tapes often spent a great deal of money. Our gentlemen rented six or seven tapes at a time. I say “gentlemen” because our female clientele never exceeded a handful of poorly dressed, foreign-looking women of indeterminate age.

  There was always plenty of time for me to watch movies during working hours. Mr. Pash did not mind: in fact, he insisted that I watch the movies so that I would be able to tell our gentlemen about them. A salesperson should be thoroughly familiar with his products. The bulk of the inventory was esoteric. To this day, I have no idea where Mr. Pash had acquired such oddities. New videos were never delivered to the store; Mr. Pash brought them personally.

  The Green Claw was very popular, as were a number of other releases—Spine-Eaters, Flytrap Hell and Liquifier III: The Bubbling Death. There were many more, but those four were our top renters. The store’s computer inventory did not list any prequels to Liquifier III, and I have not been able to find this series in any catalog.

  Mr. Pash brought Liquifier III to the store on a rainy My afternoon. It was a very hot day, and the rain made the air steamy. I remember worrying that so much moisture in the air had to be bad for the tapes.

  “This should rent well,” Mr. Pash said; his voice was low and purring. “I watched it last night. Very exciting—I think you will agree. Let me know how it does.” He wandered the store for a minute or so, biting his nails (not out of nervousness, I’m sure: perhaps out of hunger or mild ennui). Then he left, smiling so warmly that I thought for a moment of my mother, who also had a large nose.

  I watched the movie on the store monitor. The Liquifier of the title was a giant demon from outer space—a spiderish humanoid over sixty feet tall, with three-fingered hands and milky eyes. The Liquifier spun its victims into cocoons and injected them with acid venom, turning them into large slopping bags of dinner. I did not feel uncomfortable about running such a graphic feature; children rarely visited the store.

  I was not Mr. Pash’s only employee. A frail old man named Bernard was also on duty. Bernard had unusually tight skin—so tight that it gleamed. I doubt if facelifts had been performed; he didn’t make that sort of money. “How can you watch that garbage?” he said, pointing at the screen with his cigarette. “All that death and screaming and whatnot. A movie didn’t used to have blood spilling all over the place to be scary. It’s not right. Don’t tell me it is.”

  “Variety is very important these days,” I said. “What’s life without variety? Even sex would get pretty boring if that was all you ever did.”

  “That’s for damn sure.” Bernard blew a cloud of smoke in my face. “You never met my Mrs. Spoon ...” Bernard prefaced every anecdote about his deceased wife with this remark. “The woman was an animal. Whittled me down to a pencil, she did. Sometimes I’d catch her giving that look of hers to some man on the street. A nice-looking guy like you—she’d have sized you up. How did I ever get mixed up with a woman like that? She fixed a decent meal, though—I’ll give her that.”

  A customer came in and Bernard went to wait on him. Bernard’s stories about his dead wife always included some reference to her voracious sexual appetites. The week before, he had shown me a yellowed photograph of Mrs. Spoon, taken on their honeymoon. The woman had been quite handsome in a cruel sort of way, with short blonde hair, sharp features, and snarling, oddly inviting lips.

  The next day, I asked Mr. Pash if he
had ever met Mrs. Spoon.

  “The sex monster? She passed away just before Bernard came to work for me. Has he told you about the farm incident yet?” He didn’t wait for my answer. Instead, he moved to the New Releases shelf. “Good—someone has rented Liquifier. Is Spine-Eaters in? I haven’t seen that for a while.”

  Whenever Mr. Pash borrowed a movie, he paid full rental price. Bernard and I were allowed to take movies home for free. Mr. Pash was a wonderfully generous man.

  Bernard popped his head around the corner of a large display. “I heard you two badmouthing my Mrs. Spoon. The woman may have had her faults, but I won’t have you slandering my dear departed wife. If I want to talk about her, that’s my business.” He came closer, scowling. “You two. I don’t know about you two. Why do I even stay here?” He shook his head. “You two. At least Mrs. Spoon knew her way around a kitchen. I mix a drop of Holy Water with her ashes every Sunday so she won’t have to stay in hell too long. As for you two—I just don’t know.”

  Mr. Pash raised an eyebrow as Bernard shuffled off. “Spine-Eaters please, Roger. And The Green Claw. I never tire of the scenes in the temple of Uranus.”

  Business improved as the summer temperatures rose. Obviously, our gentlemen were spending more time indoors. For my birthday, Mr. Pash gave me a box of monogrammed handkerchiefs. He also brought a box of pastries to the store. Bernard ate most of them.

  I had never especially favored The Green Claw, not being a fan of fantasy epics, but at Mr. Pash’s gentle insistence I watched it again with a critical eye.

  The story, set in ancient Atlantis, concerned an amplebreasted, sexually active princess who needed to find a way to protect her people from a swarm of giant winged goats. The Green Claw was a rather avant garde production. The princess often spoke directly to the camera, and her breastplates were made of fluorescent plastic.