The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror Page 13

  “Shakespeare has been dead for years,” I replied, “and people still appreciate him.”

  “But he wrote plays and sonnets of lasting beauty,” she persisted. “These people you listen to were just working comics. It’s lovely to collect things, Stanley, but this stuff was never meant to be taken so seriously. You can’t base your life around it.” There was an irritating timbre in her voice that I had not noticed before. She sat smugly back in her wheelchair, and for a moment I wanted to smother her. I could feel my face growing steadily redder with the thought.

  “Why shouldn’t these people still be admired?” I cried, running to the shelves and pulling out several of my finest tapes. “Most of them had dreary lives filled with hardship and pain, but they made people laugh, right through the war and the years of austerity that followed. They carried on through poverty and ill-health and misery. Everyone turned on the radio to hear them. Everyone went to the pictures to see them. It was something to look forward to. They kept people alive. They gave the country happy memories. Why shouldn’t someone remember them for what they did?”

  “All right, Stanley. I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said, reaching out her hand, but I pushed it away. It was then that I realised my cheeks were wet, and I turned aside in shame. To think that I had been brought to this state, forced to defend myself in my own home, by a woman, and a wheelchair-bound one at that.

  “This is probably a bad time to mention it,” said Saskia, “but I’m going to be leaving London earlier than I first anticipated. In fact, I’ll be going home tomorrow. The tests haven’t taken as long as the doctors thought.”

  “But what about the results?” I asked.

  “They’ve already made arrangements to send them to my local GP. He’ll decide whether further treatment is necessary.”

  I hastily pulled myself together and made appropriate polite sounds of disappointment at the idea of her departure, but inside a part of me was rejoicing. You see, I had been watching her hands as they rested on the arms of her wheelchair. They were trembling.

  And she was lying.

  Diary Entry #9 Dated 2 November

  I have much to relate.

  After our altercation last night, both of us knew that a new level in our relationship had been reached. The game had begun. Saskia refused my conciliatory offer of tea and went straight to her bedroom, quietly locking the door behind her. I know because I tried to open it at two o’clock this morning, and I heard her breath catch in the darkness as I twisted the knob from side to side.

  I returned to my room and forced myself to stay there. The night passed slowly, with both of us remaining uncomfortably awake on our respective beds. In the morning, I left the house early so that I would not be forced to trade insincere pleasantries with her over breakfast. I knew she would be gone by the time I returned, and that, I think, suited both of us. I was under no illusions – she was a dangerous woman, too independent, too free-minded to ever become my friend. We could only be adversaries. And I was dangerous to her. I had enjoyed her company, but now she would only be safe far away from me. Luckily, I would never see her again. Or so I thought. For, fast as the future, everything changed between us.

  Oh, how it changed.

  This morning, I arrived at work to find a terse note summoning me to my supervisor’s office. Naturally I assumed that I was finally being notified of my promotion. You may imagine my shock when, in the five-minute interview that followed, it emerged that far from receiving advancement within the company, I was being fired! I did not “fit in” with the new personnel, and as the department was being “streamlined” they were “letting me go”. Depending on my attitude to this news, they were prepared to make me a generous cash settlement if I left at once, so that they could immediately begin “implementing procedural changes”.

  I did not complain. This sort of thing has happened many times before. I do not fit in. I say this not to gain sympathy, but as a simple statement of fact. Intellect always impedes popularity. I accepted the cash offer. Disheartened, but also glad to be rid of my vile “colleagues”, I returned home.

  It was raining hard when I arrived at the front gate. I looked up through the dark sycamores and was surprised to find a light burning in the front room. Then I realised that Saskia was reliant on the council for arranging her transport, and as they were never able to specify an exact collection time, she was still in the house. I knew I would have to use every ounce of my control to continue behaving in a correct and civilised manner.

  As I turned the key in the lock I heard a sudden scuffle of movement inside the flat. Throwing the door wide, I entered the lounge and found it empty. The sound was coming from my bedroom. A terrible deadness flooded through my chest as I tiptoed along the corridor, carefully avoiding the boards that squeaked.

  Slowly, I moved into the doorway. She was on the other side of the room with her back to me. The panels of the wardrobe were folded open, and she had managed to pull one of the heavy-duty bin-liners out on the floor. Somehow she sensed that I was behind her, and the wheelchair spun around. The look on her face was one of profound disturbance.

  “What have you done with the rest of them?” she said softly, her voice wavering. She had dislodged a number of air fresheners from the sacks, and the room stank of lavender.

  “You’re not supposed to be in here,” I explained as reasonably as possible. “This is my private room.”

  I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. She looked up at the pinned pictures surrounding her. The bleak monochrome of a thousand celebrity photographs seemed to absorb the light within the room.

  “Saskia. You’re an intelligent girl. You’re modern. But you have no respect for the past.”

  “The past?” Her lank hair was falling in her eyes, as she flicked it aside I could see she was close to tears. “What has the past to do with this?” She kicked out uselessly at the plastic sack and it fell to one side, spilling its rotting human contents onto the carpet.

  “Everything,” I replied, moving forward. I was not advancing on her, I just needed to get to the bedside cabinet. “The past is where everything has its rightful place.”

  “I know about your past, Stanley,” she cried, pushing at the wheels of her chair, backing herself up against the wardrobe, turning her face from the stinking mess. “Nurse Clarke told me all about you.”

  “What did she say?” I asked, coming to a halt. I was genuinely curious. Nurse Clarke had hardly ever said more than two words to me.

  “I know what happened to you. That’s why I came here.” She started to cry now, and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Something plopped obscenely onto the floor as the sack settled. “She says you had the worst childhood a boy could ever have. Sexual abuse, violence. You lived in terror every day. Your father nearly killed you before the authorities took charge. Don’t you see? That’s why you’re so obsessed with this stuff, this trivia, it’s like a disease. You’re just trying to make things all right again.”

  “That’s a damn lie!” I shouted at her. “My childhood was perfect. You’re making it up!”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head, snot flying from her nose. “I saw the marks when you were in the kitchen that first night. Cigarette burns on your arms. Cuts too deep to ever heal. I thought I knew how you must have felt. Like me, always shoved around, always towered over, always scared. I didn’t expect anything like this. What were you thinking of?”

  “Are you sure you don’t know?” I asked, advancing towards the cabinet. “I’m the kind of person nobody notices. I’m invisible until I’m pointed out. I’m in a private world. I’m not even ordinary. I’m somewhere below that.”

  I had reached the cabinet, and now slowly pulled open the drawer, groping inside as she tried to conceal her panic, tried to find somewhere to wheel the chair.

  “But I’m not alone,” I explained. “There are many like me. I see them begging on the streets, soliciting in pubs, injecting themse
lves in alleyways. For them childhood is a scar that never heals, but still they try to stumble on. I end their stumbling, Saskia. Miss Chisholm says I’m an angel.”

  My fingers closed around the handle of the carving knife, but the point was stuck in the rear wall of the drawer. I gave it my attention and pulled it free, lowering the blade until it was flat against my leg. A sound from behind made me turn. With a dexterity that amazed me, the infuriating girl had opened the door and slipped through.

  I ran into the lounge to find her wheelchair poised before the tape archives and Saskia half out of the seat, one hand pincering a stack of irreplaceable 78s featuring the vocal talents of Flanagan and Allen.

  “Leave those alone!” I cried. “You don’t understand.”

  She turned to me with what I felt as a look of deliberate malice on her face and raised the records high above her head. If I attacked her now, she would surely drop them.

  “Why did you kill those people?” she asked simply. For a moment I was quite at a loss. She deserved an explanation. I ran my left thumb along the blade of the knife, drawing in my breath as the flesh slowly parted and the pain showed itself.

  “I wanted to put their pasts right,” I explained. “To give them the things that comfort. Tony Hancock. Sunday roast. Family Favourites. Smiling policemen. Norman Wisdom. To give them the freedom to remember.”

  I must have allowed the knife to come into view, because her grip on the records faltered and they slid from her hands to the floor. I don’t think any smashed, but the wheels of her chair cracked several as she rolled forward.

  “I can’t give you back the past, Saskia,” I said, walking towards her, smearing the knife blade with the blood from my stinging thumb. “I’m sorry, because I would have liked to.”

  She cried out in alarm, pulling stacks of records and tapes down upon herself, scattering them across the threadbare carpet. Then she grabbed the metal frame of the entire cabinet, as if trying to shake it loose from the wall. I stood and watched, fascinated by her fear.

  When I heard the familiar heavy boots quickening on the stairs, I turned the knife over and pushed the blade hard into my chest. It was a reflex action, as if I had been planning to do this all along. Just as I had suspected, there was no pain. To those like us who suffered so long, there is no more pain.

  Diary Entry #10 Dated 16 November

  And now I am sitting here on a bench with a clean elastic bandage patching up my stomach, facing the bristling cameras and microphones, twenty enquiring faces before me, and the real probing questions have begun.

  The bovine policewoman who interrogated me so unimaginatively during my initial detainment period bore an extraordinary resemblance to Shirley Abicair, the Australian zither player who performed superbly as Norman’s love interest in Rank’s 1954 hit comedy One Good Turn, although the Evening News critic found their sentimental scenes together an embarrassment.

  I think I am going to enjoy my new role here. Newspapers are fighting for my story. They’re already comparing me to Nilsen and Sutcliffe, although I would rather be compared to Christie or Crippen. Funny how everyone remembers the name of a murderer, but no one remembers the victim.

  If they want to know, I will tell them everything. Just as long as I can tell them about my other pet interests.

  My past is safe.

  My future is known.

  My present belongs to Norman.

  1993

  Mefisto in Onyx

  Harlan Ellison

  BEING AN EDITOR is a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.

  Regrettably, as a full-time author, Ramsey decided that he could no longer devote so much of his energy to ploughing through the piles of submissions, and so he reluctantly decided that The Best New Horror Volume Five would be his last as co-editor.

  I certainly enjoyed our five years of collaboration and, generously, he has remained an unofficial advisor and sounding board for this series over the subsequent years.

  With the fifth volume, Robinson decided to give the book a total re-design. And thank goodness that they did. With a new, improved, logo, a split cover design, and Luis Rey’s superb artwork now highlighted in spot-varnish, the book finally achieved the impact it deserved. It also resulted in Carroll & Graf dropping its alternative hardcover edition in favour of the new-look trade paperback, finally bringing a sense of cohesion back to the series.

  With the book’s total extent now more than 500 pages, the Introduction hit its stride at twenty-five pages, and the Necrology expanded to fourteen. For our final editorial together, Ramsey and I went on at some length about the current state of censorship on both sides of the Atlantic.

  As we concluded: “So long as such controversy can be fanned by the cynical media, hypocritical politicians and misinformed public opinion, we should all be on our guard. It is all too easy to use horror fiction and films as a scapegoat for economic and social deprivation. As most intelligent people realize, fiction is only a reflection of life. The real problems exist elsewhere . . .”

  Over the intervening fifteen years, nothing very much has happened to change that opinion.

  Among the twenty-nine contributions was the first appearance in Best New Horror of the amazingly talented Terry Lamsley, along with Dennis Etchison’s British Fantasy Award-winning story “The Dog Park”. In fact, Ramsey and I dedicated the book to Dennis in recognition of our first visit to Mexico with him some years earlier, when he acted as our intrepid guide.

  Choosing a representative story from this particular volume was easy.

  Harlan Ellison has a reputation of sometimes being difficult to work with. Ye t in all my dealings with him over the years, I have never found him to be other than extremely pleasant and accommodating. In fact, when it comes to publishing his work, he is the consummate professional – something an editor always appreciates.

  At the time, the Bram Stoker Award-winning novella “Mefisto in Onyx” was one of the longest pieces of fiction Harlan had written in some years. It was also, without any doubt, one of the most powerful . . .

  ONCE. I ONLY WENT to bed with her once. Friends for eleven years – before and since – but it was just one of those things, just one of those crazy flings: the two of us alone on a New Year’s Eve, watching rented Marx Brothers videos so we wouldn’t have to go out with a bunch of idiots and make noise and pretend we were having a good time when all we’d be doing was getting drunk, whooping like morons, vomiting on slow-moving strangers, and spending more money than we had to waste. And we drank a little too much cheap champagne; and we fell off the sofa laughing at Harpo a few times too many; and we wound up on the floor at the same time; and next thing we knew we had our faces plastered together, and my hand up her skirt, and her hand down in my pants . . .

  But it was just the once, fer chrissakes! Talk about imposing on a cheap sexual liaison! She knew I went mixing in other peoples’ minds only when I absolutely had no other way to make a buck. Or I forgot myself and did it in a moment of human weakness.

  It was always foul.

  Slip into the thoughts of the best person who ever lived, even Saint Thomas Aquinas, for instance, just to pick an absolutely terrific person you’d think had a mind so clean you could eat off it (to paraphrase my mother), and when you come out – take my word for it – you’d want to take a long, intense shower in Lysol.

  Trust me on this: I go into somebody’s landscape when there’s nothing else I can do, no other possible solution . . . or I forget and do it in a moment of human weakness. Such as, say, the IRS holds my feet to the fire; or I’m about to get myself mugged and robbed and maybe murdered; or I need to find out if some specific she that I’m dating has been using somebody else’s dirty needle or has been sleeping around without she’s taking some extra-heavy-duty AIDS precautions; or a co-worker’s got it in his head to set me up so I make a mistake and look bad to the boss and I find myself in the unemployment line again; or . . .

  I’m a wreck for weeks after.

/>   Go jaunting through a landscape trying to pick up a little insider arbitrage bric-a-brac, and come away no better heeled, but all muddy with the guy’s infidelities, and I can’t look a decent woman in the eye for days. Get told by a motel desk clerk that they’re all full up and he’s sorry as hell but I’ll just have to drive on for about another thirty miles to find the next vacancy, jaunt into his landscape and find him lit up with neon signs that got a lot of the word nigger in them, and I wind up hitting the sonofabitch so hard his grandmother has a bloody nose, and usually have to hide out for three or four weeks after. Just about to miss a bus, jaunt into the head of the driver to find his name so I can yell for him to hold it a minute Tom or George or Willie, and I get smacked in the mind with all the garlic he’s been eating for the past month because his doctor told him it was good for his system, and I start to dry-heave, and I wrench out of the landscape, and not only have I missed the bus, but I’m so sick to my stomach I have to sit down on the filthy curb to get my gorge submerged. Jaunt into a potential employer, to see if he’s trying to lowball me, and I learn he’s part of a massive cover-up of industrial malfeasance that’s caused hundreds of people to die when this or that cheaply-made grommet or tappet or gimbal mounting underperforms and fails, sending the poor souls falling thousands of feet to shrieking destruction. Then just try to accept the job, even if you haven’t paid your rent in a month. No way.

  Absolutely: I listen in on the landscape only when my feet are being fried; when the shadow stalking me turns down alley after alley tracking me relentlessly; when the drywall guy I’ve hired to repair the damage done by my leaky shower presents me with a dopey smile and a bill three hundred and sixty bucks higher than the estimate. Or in a moment of human weakness.

  But I’m a wreck for weeks after. For weeks.

  Because you can’t, you simply can’t, you absolutely cannot know what people are truly and really like till you jaunt their landscape. If Aquinas had had my ability, he’d have very quickly gone off to be a hermit, only occasionally visiting the mind of a sheep or a hedgehog. In a moment of human weakness.