New Fears II--Brand New Horror Stories by Masters of the Macabre

by Mark Morris

  “It’s not yours.”

  “It’s not yours either.”

  “It belongs to everyone.”

  “It belongs to whoever can get the fucking thing open.”

  “Check it out, Mags.” Isla stepped in. “Niall’s been at the same spot for twenty minutes and the paint’s not even blistered. Go on, show him.”

  Niall pulled off his glove and slapped his palm against the spot that he’d been trying to cut. Magnus reached out with a tentative fingertip to check for himself. The metal was like ice.

  “I thought I’d made myself clear.” It was Simon, standing shoulder to shoulder with Cormac. “I told you all to leave it alone. We don’t know what it is. It might be military. There could be something dangerous in there.”

  “Then it’s something they’ll pay to get back,” Niall countered.

  “The military don’t pay ransoms.” Cormac rolled his eyes. “They’d take it by force.”

  “As soon as the radio’s working, we’re calling it in.” Simon was adamant.

  “You’re full of shit.” Everyone turned to look at Magnus.

  “Less of that.” Cormac stepped forward.

  “What, you and Simon are best buddies now? I remember when you picked on him every chance you got.”

  Cormac flushed.

  “We’re not fourteen any more.” Simon shook his head. “Cormac had an interview, just like you. He was the better man for the role. Is that why you’re so sore?”

  “No, it’s you. You want to be part of the community. For all of us to work together. What’s in there could help fund wind turbines to replace that shitty old generator.”

  “I’ve applied for a grant for that. I told you.”

  “You’re full of ifs and when. Nothing’s guaranteed. And you’re ignoring my point.”

  “Which is?”

  “That you don’t listen to any idea that runs contrary to your own. Everything’s fine as long as we all do what we’re told.”

  “You mean I ignore you. You’re bitter because you don’t get a personal invitation to meetings. Because you don’t get the last word in everything. If you bothered to listen you’d understand.” Simon paused. “What exactly is your problem with me?”

  “You’re blind. More and more of us leave each year. You’re not one of us. You don’t understand. Your rich daddy bought this place for a song. And your stuck-up mother didn’t even want to live here.”

  Simon’s face was a mask.

  “My mum was painfully shy. She didn’t come back here because she didn’t feel welcome. She was anorexic. She spent most of her life after I was born in and out of clinics being fed through nasogastric tubes. Little Isle was all Dad and I had left. I care about it as much as you do.”

  “Refurbishing a few cottages and building a kiln isn’t going to save us.”

  “And who made you the mouth of the people?” That was Cormac.

  “I know the art world. My mother was a dealer. I have connections through college. I can make this happen. People will come. They’ll need housing and food.” Simon was talking to everyone now. “We’ll bring back farming. Rare breed sheep. We can start dyeing and weaving again.”

  All the colours of the landscape in the warp and weft.

  “That’s not sustainable industry. The other islands are developing halibut farms.”

  “Which is exactly why we need to be different.”

  “What we need is to be rid of you. Form a community council and a development company. Flog that big house of yours for capital. Attract people with business ideas and young families.”

  The sky was getting darker. The air smelt of iron. Their anger was calling in the gale. Clouds were as unreliable as the sea; they too were water, after all. Now they were in scud formation, black and loaded with rain. Magnus felt the gust front on his face, the cold downdraught a harbinger.

  “And you’d be in charge, I suppose. The problem with you, Magnus, is that you need to feel important. Most of us are keen for this to work. And Hildy will be a massive draw when her book deal is announced.”

  “What?”

  “She’s not told you? Maybe you should show more interest in your wife.” Simon’s laugh was bitter. “You never liked me, not really. Hildy’s a diamond. Did you know that I persuaded her to apply to St Martin’s when I did? She turned down one of the most prestigious art schools in the country to stay here with you. She made me promise not to tell you. All you’ve done is hold her back—”

  Magnus was a juggernaut. He barrelled Simon over. He felt a satisfying crunch as he landed on the man. They made a furious knot. It came down to who was bigger. At least here, in the muck and brawl, Magnus was the better man.

  Hands gripped his arms. Jimmy and Iain hauled him off. Cormac pulled Simon to his feet. The rain was coming down hard.

  “I’m not sleeping with your wife, you stupid sod.” Simon wiped his bloodied nose. “She’s too good to cheat. In fact, she’s better than both of us put together.”

  Magnus deflated. He felt Iain’s grip slacken, then he threw another punch at Simon.

  * * *

  “Where have you been all day?”

  Hildy was sat in the hall chair, facing the front door. Magnus’s hair and coat were dripping. He bristled at her tone. She threw him the towel that had been folded on her knee. He kicked off his boots and started to pat himself dry.

  She followed him into the kitchen, picking up his soggy shirt and trousers and throwing them into the washing machine. He pulled warm clothes from the clothes maiden that she’d left in front of the radiator.

  “Where are the boys?”

  “At Jack and Helen’s.”

  “Why?”

  “So we could talk properly. Why have you been fighting with Simon?”

  “He had it coming. I don’t want that man in this house. I don’t want you to ever see him again.” Magnus sat on the kitchen stool, his mouth rucked up. “You and Simon have already done a fair bit of talking. What’s this about you getting a place at a posh college when we were kids?”

  “Mags, that was such a long time ago.”

  “Well, it’s news to me.”

  “Your dad had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Your granddad had died a few years before. I didn’t want to leave you.”

  “Didn’t stop you applying, though.”

  She tilted her chin at that, all remorse gone.

  “My chance at that’s long gone, so you’ve no need to worry.”

  “Yet here it is, another reason for Simon to insult me.”

  “How exactly has Simon insulted you?”

  “He’s robbed me of the chance to provide for my family.”

  The washing machine drum started to gain speed. The spiralling clothes made Magnus’s stomach churn.

  “Simon offered you good work on restoring the cottages and knitting.”

  “Men don’t knit.”

  “Of course they do. All the men here used to. You learnt from your dad.”

  Knitted cables represented fishing lines and nets, knot stitches added together formed fishes. Each fisherman had a unique pattern, so that their sea-mauled corpse could be identified from their sweater if washed ashore.

  “I want to make nets, not jumpers for rich boys.”

  “What’s the difference between selling them jumpers or oysters? You heard Simon. He can get you a hundred quid for each one from a boutique in London. You have real skill. You could even teach it.”

  “It’s not proper work!”

  “There. There it is,” she hissed. “That’s what you really think of what I do. Dabbling with paints. Not proper work. I cook, clean and take care of the kids, and then I sit down at night and work while you stride around like a king, doing fuck all. Well, it’s my dabbling that’s been paying the bills and clothing our sons.”

  “That’s not fair. And art college isn’t the only thing you’ve been keeping secret from me.” He had another reason to take the high ground. “Simon loved
telling me all about your book deal. Why exactly does he know and I don’t?”

  “He promised not to say anything. It was him that sent my book to a friend of his in publishing. That’s why he knew. They want me to write and illustrate a whole series of books. If Simon’s plans work I’ll have my own studio at the big house, beside the classrooms.”

  “I bet you will.”

  “You’re being ridiculous. There’s no room here to work properly. And I tried to tell you last night but you weren’t listening. You started going on about Mairi. What is it about her and the men in your family?” Hildy didn’t wait for an answer. “The worst bit is that I’ve been waiting for you to be in a good mood to tell you, so that I can pretend you’re genuinely happy for me. If you spent as much time looking for a job as you do moaning about everything we’d all be a damn sight better off. If you don’t want to work for Simon get on the ferry each day and go work somewhere else.”

  “Why should I? We could have a life here. Simon’s destroying what’s left of us.”

  “Listen to yourself. It’s always about Simon. Your issue with Simon is that he went off to university and came back with new ideas that don’t involve you.”

  Magnus stared at the floor. The words wouldn’t come. Something was rising inside him.

  “Sea fishing’s dead. There aren’t the stocks left. Get over it. Everyone laughs at you because they know all those stories you tell are hand-me-downs. You’ve never worked on a boat in your life and you bleat on about making nets.” She followed him to the door. “And while we’re at it, your grandfather was a tyrant. He trampled over everyone, including your mum and dad. He gave them a dog’s life.”

  “He loved this place. He sacrificed everything for it.”

  What? What exactly had he sacrificed?

  “You don’t want a job or a future. You want the past.”

  Magnus couldn’t help it. The past persisted in his blood. He craved what was lost. Lighting a candle and carrying it in a cow’s skull through the byre and out into the black night of the new year. Stargazy pie. Gifts launched on the tide. A time when men ruled the seas and themselves and life was easier to navigate.

  “All that crap about wanting things to be better for the boys. The problem with you is that you want them to live the life you want for yourself.”

  The problem with you is that you want to be important. The problem with you.

  Simon and Hildy had talked behind his back. They’d talked and laughed.

  “I love you, Mags. There’s only ever been you, but I don’t know how much more I can take. I need you to think about this. I’m telling you so that we can try and change. I’m telling you because if things don’t change I’m going to leave.”

  “Leave? The island?”

  “I’ll take the boys somewhere, just until we both work things out.” She started to cry. “I’m not trying to punish you. I’m trying to save our marriage.”

  Peter and Donald had been born at the cottage. Magnus had cut the cords tethering them to Hildy. Every inch of the squalling babies was his from the fine down on their backs to their screwed-up faces. They made him immortal. Part of an unbroken line. His heart had flipped and flopped in his chest. Fear and awe gnawed at him. It was his duty to remake the world for them.

  Nothing would part him from them.

  “Say something. Anything. Tell me you’ll fight for us.”

  The swell inside him threatened to wash him away. He would pummel Hildy with his fists. He would snap her neck. This body that he promised to worship would fall before him. Beautiful Hildy. Strong Hildy. The mother of his sons. She held out her arms to him.

  “I have to go out.”

  “Not like this—”

  “No.” He backed away from her, pleading on his face. “Let me be for a little while.”

  At the door he turned back. “I’ll make it right, I promise, no matter what it takes.”

  * * *

  The beach was clear as the tide was coming in. As Magnus approached he could see that a figure was crouched beside the container. When it stood, he could see it was Mairi.

  She stood up, paint dripping from the brush as she slapped it against the container’s side. She made a clumsy spiral with a shaking hand. Red stood out against the blue paint.

  “Mairi.”

  Her nightdress flapped around her legs. Her bare feet were covered in dark smears of paint.

  “You must be freezing.” He took off his coat and put it around her shoulders.

  “It won’t stay.”

  The spiral was fading. It was sinking in. She turned to him, crying.

  “What’s happened to you?” He clutched her head in his hands.

  One side of her mouth drooped. She looked like a lopsided doll. He recognised it as a stroke. It wasn’t paint on her feet. They were bloodied from cuts and abrasions.

  “Come on, let’s get you to my place.”

  She pulled away, intent on daubing more marks. BRID. The word faded fast.

  “Who’s Brid?”

  “You dare ask me that, John Spence?”

  “I’m Magnus, not John.”

  Herring gulls gathered on the rocks around the container, more and more coming in. Some of them landed on the container’s top edge. A pair faced off, screaming at one another. Their wings made acute angles with their bodies in furious symmetry. Then they flew at one another, intent on blood. Red-stained grey and white feathers. The other gulls piled in, finishing off the weaker one.

  “I should be young and beautiful. I used to run ahead of the lightning. Now it hurts when I get up in the morning and it’s all your fault, John.”

  “Mairi, we need to get you inside.” He reached out for her.

  “No, you don’t touch me. I’m not Mairi. I’m the Cailleach. You’ve tricked me before, you devil. I used to summon the wind and fly down to visit my brother, Maw, in the water. You, with your silky promises and kisses. Then it was too late. You made me just a woman. You stained my plaid. It’ll never white again.”

  “What about Brid?”

  “You know! Our little Brid,” she keened. “I hate you. I hate you and your family, John Spence. Little Brid was the only good thing to come from you.” Spittle landed on Magnus’s face. “You’re a damn liar. You said she wasn’t real because she came from me. That she was bound for Maw. She was just a baby, and I let you do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “You know,” she wept, “you know.”

  Magnus did know. John Spence was a determined man.

  Beneath the wind and waves there was the sound of their breathing and a click.

  The container door was open.

  “Will you kiss me, John?” Mairi’s voice was full of self-loathing. “Will you love me, like I love you?”

  Magnus leant down. Her lips were dry and withered. Her breath was sour. Her fingers fluttered around his face.

  He picked her up. She was like dry kindling in his arms. The old woman’s eyes were paler than he’d ever seen them. She rested her head against his chest and sighed.

  She needed to be airlifted off the island to a hospital. How long would it be before the storms cleared and they could radio for help? He knew Mairi wouldn’t want that. She wouldn’t want to leave, not for anything.

  The tide was closing in, faster than he’d ever seen, and another weather front directly behind it. Scud clouds were just the messenger. They hid the vast heights of the thunderhead above them. The air crackled with energy and the wind rose. Lightning discharged from cloud to cloud, not as a zigzag but a vein. The closing rumbling became a crack. Rain poured through.

  Mairi wasn’t a fallen goddess or an elemental trapped in flesh. She was an addled old woman, touched in the head. It didn’t matter though. Maw had sent the container and now the tide was coming in.

  THE AIRPORT GORILLA

  Stephen Volk

  So, this.

  I see him. He sees me. Thinking these black-bead eyes unknowing, he gets an ape’s
grin back from the stack of cuddly toys in the bin next to the checkout at Duty Free. He fans and counts the last of his Euros, joke money to him that looks like it came with a game of Monopoly.

  Boarding pass?

  Certainly.

  He thinks the Dutch speak better English than he does. Always felt his Aussie drawl embarrassing. Damn thing still made him self-conscious several degrees and doctorates later, called upon to talk at international conferences on matters that save lives. Still, to him, the snarl of sheep dip and hats with dangling corks, and he hates it.

  Screwy-angled, I scrutinise him back.

  Above his ears I see lines each side made by the arms of glasses he’s not wearing. Atop, blond beach-bum waves now fading to the colour of his scalp. Aeons since he felt sand between his toes. House brick jaw he got from his dad. The twinkling eyes, his ma. Sky-coloured.

  He stares down at me with something between curiosity and incipient affection.

  I recognise that look.

  I’ve watched it day in, day out, in the myriad glances that slide over me. The micro-glimmer of tears that accompany flashbacks to hearth and home.

  Most turn away, not wanting to acknowledge that inner surge of sentimentality. Not him. He lets the guilt and separation anxiety rise in his chest and I feel in my complete-lack-of-bones his pang for the child he left behind.

  The one he will see at the end of his journey. Soon, but not soon enough.

  The one he’ll sweep up in his arms. No weightier than a toy herself. Who snores now somewhere in her suburban Melbourne dreamsleep. Yet he cannot hear that. He is robbed of it, that moment, that silly, cherished everyday nothing as the flight announcements drone.

  His wife and nipper, waiting for Dad to return, miss him with an indescribable ache. This is the real currency of the airport—longing.

  And so. I am here to be touched, loved, adored. Made for it, and he knows it. I am the salve to the pang he feels in his heart—and I have been waiting.

  He touches my plastic ear.

  Air from his nostrils.

  I amuse him. Hey. No problem with that.

  I’m not a serious figure. My lips are too big. My mouth sticks out like an over-size bagel. I’m covered in black fur. My legs are short. Wouldn’t stop a pig in a passage. Toes like fingers and thumbs. My arms reach way below my knees. I wear a T-shirt with the name of the city we’re in and a logo of a tulip. I’ve got a comical, idiotic expression. My grin mirroring the one he dreams of seeing on his daughter’s face.