The Mammoth Book of Nightmare Stories

by Stephen Jones

  “But you’re one of the lucky ones, like me? Amaranth said so. What happened to your family? What happened to your wife and your daughter Sarah?”

  Howards looked up, and for an instant he appeared much older than he had claimed, ancient. It was his eyes, Adam thought. His eyes had seen everything.

  “They’re all dead,” Howards said. “And still those things follow me everywhere.”

  Adam was stunned into silence. There was chatter around them, the sound of Howards’s rings tapping against his glass as he stirred his wine, the sizzle of hot-plates bearing steaks and chicken. He looked at Howards’s down-turned face, trying to see if he was crying. “They follow you?” he gasped.

  Howards nodded and took a deep breath, steeling himself. “Always. I see them from time to time, but I’ve known they’re always there for years now. I can feel them … watching me. From the shadows. From hidden corners. From places just out of sight.” His demeanor had changed suddenly, from calm and self-assured to nervous and frightened. His eyes darted left and right like a bird’s, his hands closed around his wine glass and his fingers twisted against each other. Someone opened the kitchen door quickly and he sat up, a dreadful look already on his face.

  “Are they here now?” Adam asked. He could not help himself.

  Howards shrugged. “I can’t see them. But they’re always somewhere.”

  “I’ve not seen them. Not since I dreamed them.”

  The old man looked up sharply when Adam said dreamed. “We’re their sport. Their game. I can’t think why else they would continue to spy …”

  “And your family? Sport?”

  Howards smiled slightly, calming down. It was as if casting his mind back decades helped him escape the curse he said he lived under in the present. “You ever heard Newton’s third law of motion? To every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

  Adam thought of Alison and Jamie, and without any warning he began to cry. He sobbed out loud and buried his face in his napkin, screwing his fingers into it, pressing it hard against his eyes and nose and mouth. He could sense a lessening in the restaurant’s commotion as people turned to look and, soon after, a gradual increase in embarrassed conversation.

  “And that’s why I have to ask you something,” Howards said. “I’ve been asking people this for many years now, those few I meet by chance or happen to track down. Amaranth doesn’t disturb me; they must know that no one will agree to what I ask. My asking increases their sport, I suppose. But I continue to try.”

  “What?” Adam asked. He remembered the certainty, as he floated in the sea, that Alison was dead. It brought a fresh flow of tears but these were silent, more heartfelt and considered. He could truly imagine nothing worse—except for Jamie.

  “Deny them. Take away their sport. They’ve made you a lucky man, but you can reject that. If you don’t … your family will be gone.”

  “Don’t you fucking threaten me!” Adam shouted, standing and throwing down his napkin, confused, terrified. The restaurant fell completely silent this time, and people stared. Some had a look in their eyes—a hungry look—as if they knew they were about to witness violence. Adam looked straight at Howards, never losing eye contact, trying to see the madness in his face. But there was none. There was sorrow mixed with contentment, a deep and weary sadness underlying healthy good fortune. “Why don’t you do it yourself! Why, if it’s such a good idea, don’t you deny them!”

  “It’s too late for me,” Howards said quietly, glancing around at the other patrons watching him. “They were dead before I knew.”

  “Fuck you!” Adam shouted. “You freak!” He turned and stormed out of the restaurant, a hundred sets of eyes scoring his skin. He wondered if any of the diners recognized him from his fifteen minutes of fame.

  As the restaurant door slammed behind him and he stepped out into the street, the sun struck his tearful eyes, blinding him for a moment. Across the pedestrianized area, sandwiched between a travel agent’s and a baker’s shop, a green door liquefied for a second and then reformed. Its color changed to deep-sea blue.

  Before his sight adjusted, Adam saw something clear and solid pass through the door.

  “So?” Alison asked.

  “Fruitcake.” He slid across the plastic seat and hugged his son to him. Then he leaned over the food-strewn table and planted a kiss squarely on his wife’s mouth. She was unresponsive.

  “The angels, then?” She was injecting good cheer into her voice but she was angry, she wanted answers, he knew that. He had never been able to lie to his wife. Even white lies turned his face blood-red.

  Adam shook his head and sighed, stealing a chip from Jamie’s tray and fending off his son’s tomato sauce retribution. He looked up, scanned the burger bar, searching for strange faces that he could not explain.

  “Adam,” Alison said, voice wavering, “I want to know what’s going on. I saw the look on your face when you were on the phone to him yesterday. It’s like you were suddenly somewhere else, seeing something different, feeling something horrible. You turned white. Remember that time, you tried some pot and couldn’t move for two hours and felt sick? You looked worse than you did then.”

  “Honey, it’s just that what he said reminded me of the crash.”

  Alison nodded and her face softened. She wanted to keep on quizzing, he could tell, but she was also a wonderful wife. She did not want to hurt him, or to inspire thoughts or memories that might hurt him.

  “And what your mum said to Jamie about the angels saving me. When Howards mentioned angels, it brought it all back. I was sinking, you know? Sinking into the sea. Bodies around me. Then I floated back up, I saw the sunlight getting closer. And … he just reminded me of when I broke the surface.” He was lying! He was creating untruths, but he was doing it well. Even so he felt wretched, almost as if he were betraying Alison, using her supportive nature against her. He looked outside and wondered whether those things were enjoying his lies. He felt sick.

  “Park!” Jamie shouted suddenly. “Go to park! Swing, swing!”

  “All right tiger, here we go!” Adam said, pleased to be able to change the subject. Tears threatened once more as he wrestled with Jamie and stole his chips and heard his son squeal with delight as he tickled him.

  Deny them, Howards had said. If you don’t … your family will be gone.

  He thought of the watch, and the interview money, and his painting, and the new-found closeness that surrounded him and Alison and Jamie like a sphere of solid crystal, fending off negative influences from outside, reflecting all the badness that bubbled in the world around them.

  How could he give any of this up? Even if it were possible—even if Howards was not the madman Adam knew him to be—how could he possibly turn his back on this?

  In the park, he and Alison sat on a bench and hugged each other. Jamie played on a toddler’s climbing frame, occasional tumbles making him giggle, not cry. He was an adventurous lad and he wore his grazed knees and bruised elbows as proud testament to this. Adam kissed Alison. It turned from a peck on the lips to a long, lingering kiss, tongues meeting, warmth flooding through him as love made itself so beautifully known.

  Then the inevitable shout from Jamie as he saw his parents involved in each other for a moment, instead of him.

  “I could have lost you both,” Adam said, realizing as he spoke how strange it sounded.

  “We could have lost you.”

  He nodded. “That’s what I meant.” He looked across to the trees bordering the park, but there were no flitting shadows beneath them. Nobody was spying on them from the gate. The hairs on the back of his neck stayed down.

  They watched Jamie for a while, taking simple but heartfelt enjoyment in every step he climbed, each little victory he won for himself.

  “I started a painting this morning,” Adam said.

  “I know. I saw you leave the room and heard you setting up.”

  “It’s … incredible. It’s already painted in
here,” he said, tapping his head, “and it’s coming out exactly how I envisaged it. No imperfections. You know the quote from that Welsh writer, I dream in fire—”

  “—and work in clay. Of course I know it, you’ve spat it out every month since I’ve known you.”

  Adam smiled. “Well, this morning I was working in fire. Dreaming and working in fire. I’m alight … my fingers and hands are doing the exact work I want of them. I can’t explain it, but … maybe the crash has given me new insight. New vigor.”

  “Made you realize how precious life is,” Alison mused, watching Jamie slip giggling down the slide.

  Adam looked at her and nodded. He kissed her temple. He worshipped her, he realized. She was his bedrock.

  He could smell the rich scent of flowers, hear birds chirping in the trees bordering the park, feel the warmth of the wooden bench beneath him, taste the sweetness of summer in the air. He truly was alight.

  He finished the painting the following morning. That afternoon he called Maggie, his former art agent, and asked her to come up from London, take a look. Two days later he had placed it in a major exhibition in a London gallery.

  The painting was entitled Dreaming in Fire and Ice. Only Alison saw it for what it really was: an affirmation of his love, and a determination that nothing—nothing—would ever rip their family apart. He was a good man. He would never let that happen.

  On the first day of the exhibition he sold the painting for seven thousand pounds. That same evening, Alison’s elderly mother, Molly, slipped and fell downstairs, breaking her leg in five places.

  “How is she?”

  Alison looked up from the magazine she was not reading and Adam’s heart sank. Her eyes were dark, her skin pale, nose red from crying. “Not too good. There’s a compound fracture, and they’re sure her hip’s gone as well. She’s unconscious. Shock. In someone so old, they said … well, I told them she was strong.”

  He went to his wife and hugged her, wondering whether he was being watched by Amaranth even now. He had seen one of them on the way to the hospital, he was certain, hunkered down on the back of a flatbed truck, raising its liquid head as he motored the other way. He had glanced in the rearview mirror and seen something, but he could not be sure. The car was vibrating, the road surface uneven. It could have been anything. Maybe it was light dancing in his eyes from the panic he felt.

  “Oh, honey,” he said, “I’m so sorry. I’m sure she’ll be all right, she’ll pull through. Stubborn old duck wouldn’t dream of doing anything otherwise, you know that.”

  “I just don’t want her to meet her god that quickly,” Alison said, and she cried into his neck. He felt her warm tears growing cold against his skin, the shuddering as she tried to stop but failed, and he started to cry as well.

  “The angels will save her,” Adam said without thinking, for something to say more than anything, and because it was what Molly would have said. He didn’t mean it. He felt Alison stiffen and held his breath.

  They won’t, he thought. They won’t save her. They’ve got their sport in me.

  Something ran a finger down his spine, and he knew that there were eyes fixed upon him. He turned as best he could to look around, but the corridor was empty in both directions. There were two doors half-open, a hose reel coiled behind a glass panel, a junction two dozen steps away, a tile missing from the suspended ceiling grid. Plenty of places to hide.

  “I wonder if she’s scared,” Alison said. “If she’s still thinking in there, if she’s dreaming. I wonder if she’s scared? I mean, if she dies she goes to Heaven. That’s what she believes.”

  “Of course she is, but it doesn’t matter. She’ll come around. She will.” Adam breathed into his wife’s hair and kissed her scalp. A door snicked shut behind him. He did not even bother turning around to look.

  He knew that Howards was right, purely because his senses told him so.

  He was being watched.

  Maggie’s call came three days later. An influential London gallery wanted to display his paintings. And more than that, they were keen to commission some work for the vestibule of their new wing. They had offered twenty-five thousand for the commission. Maggie had already accepted. They wanted to meet Adam immediately to talk the projects through.

  Alison’s mother had not woken up, other than for a few brief moments during the second night. No one had been there with her, but a nurse had heard her calling in the dark, shouting what appeared to be a plea: Don’t do it again, don’t, please don’t! By the time the nurse reached the room Molly was unconscious once more.

  “You have to go,” Alison said. “You simply have to. No two ways about it.” She was washing a salad while Adam carved some ham. Jamie was playing in their living room, building empires in Lego and then cheerfully aiding their descent.

  Adam felt awful. There was nothing he wanted more than to travel to London, meet with the gallery, smile and shake hands—and to see himself living the rest of his life as what he had always dreamed of becoming: an artist. It was so far-fetched, too outlandish. But he was a lucky man now. The faces at distant windows told him so. He was lucky, and he was being watched.

  Deny them, Howards had said. If you don’t … your family will be gone.

  He could still say no. Maggie had accepted but there was no contract, and she really should have consulted him before even commencing a deal of such magnitude. He could say no thank you, I’m staying here with my family because they need me, and besides, I’m scared of saying yes, I’m scared of all the good luck. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, you know.

  There was still money left from the interview. They didn’t really need the cash.

  And he could always go back to work—they’d been asking for him, after all.

  “I’m doing some of the best work of my life,” he said, not sure even as he spoke whether he had intended to say it at all. “It’s a golden opportunity. I really can’t turn it down.”

  “I know,” Alison replied. She was slicing cucumber into very precise, very regular slices. It was something her mother always did. “I don’t want you to turn it down. You have to go, there’s no argument.”

  Adam popped a chunk of ham into his mouth and chewed. “Yes there is,” he said around the succulent mouthful. “The argument is, your mum is ill. She’s very poorly. You’re upset and you need me here. And there’s no one else who babysits Jamie for us on such a regular schedule. I could ask my parents down from Scotland … but, well, you know.”

  “Not baby types.”

  “Exactly.”

  Alison came to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. She nuzzled his ear. When she did that, it made him so glad he had married someone the same height as him. “I know how much you’ve been aching for this for years,” she said. “You remember that time on holiday in Cornwall … the time we think we conceived Jamie in the sauna … remember what you said to me? We’ll have a big posh car, a huge house with a garden all the way around and a long gravel driveway, a study full of books; you can be my muse and I’ll work by day in the rooftop studio, and in the evenings I’ll play with my children.”

  “What a memory for words you have,” Adam said. He could remember. It used to be the only thing he ever thought of.

  “Go,” his beautiful wife said. “I’ll be fine. Really. Go and make our fortune. Or if you don’t, bring a cuddly toy for Jamie and a bottle of something strong for me.”

  Good fortune, he thought. That’s what I have. Good fortune.

  Deny them, Howards had said. But Howards was a crank. Surely he was.

  “Fuck it,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “I’ll go. And I promise I’ll be back within two days. And thanks, honey.”

  Later that night they tried to make love but Alison began to cry, and then the tears worsened because she could not forget about her mother, not even for a moment. Adam held her instead, turning away so that his erection did not nudge against her, thinking she m
ay find it horrible that he was still turned on when she was crying, talking about her injured mother, using his shoulder as a pain-sink.

  When she eventually fell asleep he went to look in on Jamie. His son was snoring quietly in the corner of his cot, blankets thrown off, curled into a ball of cuteness. Adam bent over and kissed his forehead. Then he went to visit the bathroom.

  Something moved back from the frosted glass window as he turned on the light. It may have been nothing—as substantial as a puff of smoke, there for less than a blink of an eye—but he closed the curtains anyway. And held his breath as he used the toilet. Listening.

  In the morning Alison felt better, and Jamie performed so as to draw her attention onto him. He threw his breakfast to the floor, chose a time when he was nappy-less to take a leak, and caused general mayhem throughout the house. And all this before nine o’clock.

  Adam took a stroll outside for a cigarette and looked up at the bathroom window. There was no way up there, very little to climb, nothing to hold onto even if someone could reach the window. But then, Amaranth did not consist of someones, but somethings. He shivered, took a drag on the cigarette, looked at the garden through a haze of smoke.

  He was being watched. Through the conifers bordering the garden and a small public park peered two faces, pale against the evergreens.

  Adam caught his breath and let it out slowly from his nose in a puff of smoke. He narrowed his eyes. No, they did not seem to be watching him—seemed not to have even noticed him, in fact—but rather they were looking at the house. They were discussing something, one of them leaning sideways to whisper to the other. A man and a woman, Adam saw now, truly flesh and blood, nothing transparent about them, nothing demonesque.

  Maybe they were staking the place out? Wondering when and how to break in, waiting for him to leave so that they could come inside and strip the house, not realizing that Alison and Jamie—

  But I’m a lucky man.

  Surely Amaranth would never permit that to happen to him.

  Adam threw the cigarette away and sprinted across the garden. The grass was still damp with dew—he heard the hiss of the cigarette being extinguished—and it threw up fine pearls of water as he ran. Each footfall matched a heartbeat. He emerged from shadow into sunlight and realized just how hot it already was.