“Andy!” Arachne cried suddenly. “He’s not dead! He’s breathing!”
Gale swayed forward again, saw that she was right. Slayton’s blood-smeared body was twitching; some strange force inside him was fighting its way back, through a mist of dark agony, to consciousness. Gale pushed the hysterical girl aside and lifted the man to a sitting position.
“We’ve got to get him out of here,” he muttered. The answer to that came not from Arachne but from the doorway, in a guttural voice that was vaguely familiar.
“You ain’t goin’ out of here, mister! You’re stayin’—for keeps.”
Andy Gale whirled. The menacing muzzle of a small-bore rifle jerked to a level with his chest and stopped him. He took a faltering backward step and stood rigid.
Arachne stifled a scream. Fada, stupidly staring, said nothing.
The man in the doorway was Clem Degnan, his battered face still swollen and discolored from the beating Andy had given him.
“This,” Degnan said, slowly advancing, “is a real pleasure. I told you I’d get even.”
Gale stood quite still, blood ebbing slowly from his taut face. If he leaped, that gnarled finger would tighten on the trigger; and at that range the bullet would shred his chest to pulp.
“What do you want, Degnan?” he asked, almost inaudibly.
“You.”
“Then let the women go.”
“Let ’em go?” Degnan’s wide mouth curled in a leer. “Let ’em run to the state troopers and tell what they found in this room of mine? I ain’t that big a fool!”
It was a chance to stall for time. Gale seized it rapaciously. “Your room? You’re crazy! This is Brukner’s laboratory.”
“It ain’t Brukner’s laboratory, and Brukner never had the faintest idea of what was goin’ on in here, mister. It’s my laboratory, this is. It was me that brought the first load of red spiders here and turned ’em loose to ruin the crops; and it’s me that’s breedin’ more and bigger spiders to make sure the farmers clear out of Flood River Valley and turn their land over to Brukner. I want that land—see? Soon as it’s mine, I’ll get rid of the spiders in short order, and the land’ll make me rich.”
With an effort, Gale pretended to be unafraid. The man behind that menacing rifle was of low mentality—not low enough to be classed as a moron, but still not blessed with any great intelligence. Unless he suddenly became enraged, there was a feeble chance of talking him out of his obvious intent to murder his three prisoners in cold blood.
“How do you figure you’ll get the land?” Andy scowled.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get it.”
“But if the farmers can’t pay their debts, the land will belong to Brukner, won’t it?”
“Brukner’s dead. I killed him.”
“You shot him?”
“No, I killed him the same way I’m fixin’ to kill you.” Degnan took a step forward. “It ain’t lawful to shoot people Gale. They’d put me in jail for doin’ that. So I made it look like Brukner died accidental—and that’s how they’ll think you died—you and Fada and Miss Reid. You see that tank there?”
He pointed, and Gale’s gaze wandered to a large metal tank in a corner of the room. A length of black hose lay curled on the floor beside it.
“That,” Degnan said, grinning, “is full of poison. I worked in a chemical plant before I come here and married—before I come here to be a farmer. I learned plenty about poisons, and that stuff was all mixed up, ready for use, even before I brought the spiders here. I wouldn’t be fool enough to turn an army of spiders loose unless I knew how to destroy ’em. Not me! That stuff is real powerful—as you’re about to find out!”
A series of slow backward steps carried Degnan to the tank. Helpless to stop him, Andy Gale clenched both hands and stood stricken. A thick, viscous volcano of fear erupted inside him.
“You can’t do it, Degnan! My God, you can’t kill helpless women!”
“It’ll be an accident,” Degnan declared, grinning again.
Stooping, he seized the black hose and slid his hand along to the gleaming nozzle. There was a gleam of unholy triumph in his narrowed eyes as he straightened. He was remembering the beating he had received.
“Go on—crawl,” he said, glaring at Gale. “Get down on your knees and beg for your life. See what good it does you!”
Gale stayed erect, fists clenched and body swaying slightly on stiff legs. The room was slowly turning. He didn’t want to die. Even though he had sworn to marry a mad woman, he didn’t want … to … die. God!
Through the mist, Arachne moved to his side. Strangely calm, she put her head on his shoulder.
“I love you Andy,” she said dully. “I know you don’t believe it, and there isn’t time to explain now; but I do love you. Hold me. I—I’m terribly afraid.”
He took her in his arms. Clem Degnan leered at them and put down the rifle. He didn’t need the rifle anymore; his right hand gripped the gleaming nozzle of the hose.
Fada, the mad one, neither moved nor spoke, but stared straight at Gale.
“Well,” Degnan said shrugging, “here goes!”
A hissing sound filled the room as he turned the nozzle, The black hose writhed on the floor, uncoiling like a sleek snake. Oily liquid dripped from the lip of the nozzle but failed to spew forth under pressure.
Degnan, his back to the wall, did not see what had happened; did not know that John Slayton, conscious from the beginning, had wriggled slowly forward like a great human slug and seized a section of hose in his hands, squeezing it to prevent the flow of liquid.
Degnan, snarling, thought something was wrong with the nozzle. Frantically he twisted it, trying to make it work.
Andy Gale flung Arachne aside and hurtled forward.
There was a prayer in Gale’s heart as he lunged. Death had been horribly close, and the nearness of it had twisted something in his brain, made a mumbling madman of him. He struck with the force of a battering ram. Both he and Degnan fell over John Slayton’s sprawled body and crashed into the wall—but Degnan still clung to the hose.
John Slayton’s hands lost their grip. The hissing sound became a shrill, whining voice of horror, and the nozzle vomited forth a dark stream of liquid.
Gale writhed away from that hellish torrent as it fumed toward him. He seized Degnan’s wrist, twisted with all his strength. A bone snapped, and Degnan shrieked in agony. The serpent of horror seethed wildly about the room, soaking walls and floor and ceiling. Once—just once—it leaped into the startled, bewildered face of Fada, the mad woman.
Fada sank to her knees, moaning. With both hands she clawed at her eyes. Arachne, stumbling forward to help her, fell back when Gale bellowed a warning.
The hose, unchecked by human hands, writhed and slithered on the floor while Gale fought a life-and-death battle with the pain-crazed Clem Degnan. He had defeated Degnan before; defeated him easily. But the man was no longer human!
Hooked fingers tore at Andy Gale’s eyes. An upthrust knee sought for his groin. Like a jungle beast gone amuck, Degnan fought with insane fury.
A blinding fist hurled Gale against the wall and stunned him. Blood trickled from his nose, bubbled at the corners of his mouth. He fought for breath, but the room seemed empty of air, and the stifling stench of the poison brew strangled him as it burned through his lungs.
Dazed, he saw Degnan reach with both hands for the death hose; saw the man’s twitching fingers wrap themselves around the nozzle. Terror gave Andy Gale the needed strength for one last lunge.
He hurled himself at Degnan’s bent body, buried an elbow in the man’s twisted face. Degnan sprawled sideward, off-balance, and the weight of Gale’s body slammed him to the floor.
Gale’s right hand shot out and down, seizing the hose. The seething stream of liquid described a ghastly semicircle, spraying the ceiling, and then, at close range, centered its full fury on Degnan’s face.
When Degnan’s mouth opened to scream, Gale rammed the nozzle into
it, breaking teeth. The hose writhed. Degnan’s death shriek was smothered under a roaring rush of oily liquid.
For one hideous moment the man squirmed as if endowed with some strange, inhuman form of life. Then the life subsided. Horribly bloated, he rolled over, pawed feebly at his rigid face, and died.
Shutting off that ghastly river of death, Andy Gale staggered erect.
Fada, the mad one, was dead. By some blessed miracle, Arachne was still on her feet, still unhurt, and stumbled forward to put her arms around Gale as he swayed and would have fallen. John Slayton was able to stand when they helped him.
“Dead, is he?” Slayton muttered, staring at Degnan. “Dead? Well, he deserved it. His was a fiendish plan—to ruin the farmers and murder Nicklus Brukner, so he could take over all the land. A clever monster if ever there was one!”
“But how would he take over the land?” Gale demanded, scowling.
“This man was Fada’s husband. Only this morning I talked with the minister who married them. Degnan never lived here, because he and Brukner hated each other. But he knew that with Brukner dead, everything would belong to Fada—and to him.”
Arachne, clinging to Gale, looked at the acid-eaten body of the crippled girl and shuddered. Andy stared, too.
“Lord, she must have been mad,” he whispered, “wanting me when she already had a husband! Just—just a child, playing with toys.”
“I’m through here now,” Slayton said. “I can take a sample of Degnan’s poison brew to Headquarters and have enough of the stuff made to clean the spiders out of Flood River Valley. Degnan knew what he was doing when he imported his horde of red spiders. The things breed so rapidly it’s almost impossible to control them.”
“Did you say—Headquarters?”
Slayton and Arachne exchanged glances and then, with a shrug, Slayton nodded.
“I pledged Arachne to secrecy because this job looked mean and dirty,” he said simply. “Now that it’s over I don’t mind telling you I’m an inspector in the Government Quarantine Service. And”—he smiled—“I’m also your future brother-in-law, old man.” He thrust out his hand. “Mighty glad to know you, Gale. We met under strange circumstances, but I knew all along that my sister would pick the right sort of man—and you’re certainly that.”
“You,” Gale choked, “are Arachne’s brother?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. My name’s John Reid, not John Slayton.”
Tears gleamed in Andy Gale’s eyes. Trembling, he turned to Arachne and knew that he had been wrong, dead wrong, in all his suspicions.
“I’ll clean up this mess,” John Reid said gently. “You two had better get started on your wedding trip.”
THE ART NOUVEAU FIREPLACE
CHRISTOPHER FOWLER
Christopher Fowler is the award-winning author of a number of story collections and more than thirty novels, including the popular Bryant & May series of mysteries.
He has fulfilled several schoolboy fantasies—releasing a terrible Christmas pop single, becoming a male model, posing as the villain in a Batman graphic novel, running a night club, appearing in The Pan Books of Horror Stories, and standing in for James Bond. His work divides into black comedy, horror, mystery, and tales unclassifiable enough to have publishers tearing their hair out.
His often hilarious and moving autobiography, Paperboy, was about growing up in London in the 1950s and ’60s, while The Book of Forgotten Authors, featuring insightful mini-essays on ninety-nine forgotten authors and their forgotten books, was based on a series of columns he wrote for the Independent on Sunday newspaper.
“I wanted to write a timeless ghost story of the kind I had been so fond of as a youth,” reveals the author. “I was a fan of the Not at Night books, as well as other volumes like Tales My Mother Never Told Me and Not at Bedtime. Such collections often contained novellas that would have made great Alfred Hitchcock movies.
“The traditional tales are challenging because of the rules one must follow to construct them correctly. I collect a lot of arcane facts, and the one which forms the lynchpin of this story is quite true. This story comes from a period when I was obsessed with punishing guilty characters. Now I’m happy to punish the innocent—it’s more like real life!”
AT NINE THIRTY-FIVE on a wet Monday morning a man telephoned Brockton & Shipley about a house. There was nothing odd in that. After all, Linnea Shipley was an estate agent. No, it was the manner of the man that was strange. He sounded vague and disinterested, as if he hardly cared about the house at all. He wanted it valued, today if possible, and as the property was situated in an extremely desirable location, Linnea decided to attend to the matter personally. She had already been at work for two hours, and felt like stretching her legs.
It was a very rare thing for a building in Rathbone Terrace to come on to the market. Usually a For Sale board only appeared there if an owner had died. Linnea brought the car to a stop and ricked up the handbrake, dipping her head to look through the windscreen as she did so. It was a curving, leafy road of pleasantly terraced red-brick houses. They had been built in a style which dated from the turn of the present century. The decorative scrollwork around the doorways, the carefully rendered window surrounds showed a craftsmanship rarely found these days, one which evoked memories of a forgotten era. Linnea was aware that every house in the street was a potential goldmine, and that their proximity to the new railway station added further to their value. In fact, she and Simon had been wanting to move to this particular part of North London for quite some time.
The front garden of number 35 was wild and overgrown with enormous nettles. Linnea stung her hand on them as she edged her way up the half-hidden path. The windows were dark and coated with grime, but the brickwork appeared to be in sound condition. And at least the bell seemed to work. She quickly checked her appearance, then unbuttoned the top of her blouse. Every little helped when it came to impressing a future client.
“THEN SUDDENLY SHE WAS LOOKING INTO ANOTHER PAIR OF EYES STARING BACK AT HER FROM WITHIN THE CAVITY.”
The man who opened the door was indeed as strange as he had sounded on the telephone. He was tall and dark and thin, all angles and elbows, and walked with a shuffle as he beckoned Linnea in. He wore spectacles with black plastic frames, and an old nylon shirt that was buttoned right up to the collar. As he showed the estate agent from room to room he threw out odd little gestures, as if suffering a minor affliction. Linnea had seen plenty of people like this on valuation trips, but they were normally old and had lived too long alone. This man could scarcely have been more than thirty-five.
The house was decorated in the worst excesses of mid-1960s taste. Orange-patterned wallpaper in the lounge, op-art swirls in the bedrooms, cheap fitted cupboards in white Formica, all showed signs of long-term neglect. Linnea smiled to herself. The owner was obviously penniless, and could be beaten into the ground when it came to settling the price. What little furniture there was appeared damaged and worn. There was also a very unpleasant smell emanating from the ancient carpet … but the walls were sound and dry, the floorboards strong, the ceilings unbowed.
And there was the fireplace.
She had noticed it the second she walked into the lounge: an art nouveau fireplace with curling, fluted columns, and long-gowned women standing on either side of the bricked-in grate. It was sculpted in the style of Alphonse Mucha—indeed, it could have been created by him. The women stood facing each other with their hands demurely folded together and their hair piled high. They were exquisitely detailed, with budding roses and climbing vines entwined about them in a complex Parisian motif. The fireplace had been sloppily painted over a number of times and was currently a sickly pea-green, but it was easy to see how extraordinary the thing would look cleaned up. It had to be worth a fortune.
Linnea studied the vendor, who was now drifting into the kitchen, muttering about having to sell up quickly and get out. The man obviously inhabited his own private world and knew nothing a
t all about selling a house. She asked her new client, whose name was Mr. Myson or at least something which sounded very much like it, how he had come to pick Brockton & Shipley as his estate agent. Myson pointed to the circular that Linnea’s company dropped through letterboxes in the area, then resumed mumbling on about his reasons for wanting a quick sale—something to do with a dream he’d had recently.
It was then that Linnea knew she could undervalue the house, buy it for herself and make a killing.
She was quick to exaggerate the building’s faults—the lack of central heating, the dangerous electrics, the medieval plumbing—and she invented a few new drawbacks of her own. She played down the good features and pointed out the bad, and finally, with much heart-searching and shaking of her undeniably attractive head, produced a selling figure so low that she shocked even herself. But the owner seemed unsurprised, and half-heartedly agreed to the terms, and Linnea shook his hand and left with a promise to draw up the details immediately and send them on.
She couldn’t wait to tell Simon the news, but it was better not to mention anything until the sale had gone through. Linnea stuck to her original low valuation, typed out the description sheet within an hour of returning to the office, and then delivered it to Rathbone Terrace by hand. The sale that followed was one of the fastest she had ever made. She handled the documentation by using her maiden name on the forms. Naturally, it was important for Mr. Myson not to discover that she was buying the place for herself.
Seller and purchaser met just once more, on the day that Linnea arranged to collect the keys. Mr. Myson looked as if he had not slept for a week. He promised to collect the few remaining sticks of furniture, which had been carelessly stacked at the back of the hall, then passed the keys to Linnea as if the ring to which they were attached had suddenly grown red hot in his hand.
It began to rain just as Linnea reached her car, but the young estate agent failed to notice. She was already thinking about the bottle of champagne she would open in celebration as soon as she returned to the office.
The Mammoth Book of Nightmare Stories Page 29