The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 19 Page 15

  “The previous leaders of the Order here.”

  “But there are women,” she said before she could stop herself. Babbas turned back to her. There was light from somewhere ahead and for a moment, he was simply a silhouette in the passage. He stretched his arms out, placing his palms against the walls. Leaning forward, he let his arms take his weight. His face came into the light and Charlotte saw his teeth, gleaming a terrible ivory. He stared at her and smiled, although there was no humour in it.

  “This is not a branch of the Orthodox Church,” he said, “and we have always known that God gave women the same role to play in the struggle between good and evil as men. He cares not whether it is a man or a woman who lights the candles and lamps and torches, as long as they are lit. Try to understand, this place has a function, a purpose, beyond simply mouthing words and performing ceremonies, the reason for whose existence most have forgotten. To these walls, men and women are called equally to play their role as God intended.” He glared fiercely at Charlotte and then whirled about, his belt ends and the hem of his robe flailing around him. Charlotte, against her better, more rational, judgment, followed.

  The passage opened out into a cave that took Charlotte’s breath away. It looked as if the whole of the huge outcrop of rock in the island’s centre had been hollowed out. Looking up, she saw a roof far above her that was ragged with gullies and peaks, like a sonar map of deep ocean floors. Here and there, chisel marks were visible and she realized that this must have been a natural opening in the rock, and that man had expanded what nature (God? She wondered fleetingly) had begun. The floor was inlaid with white marble and the walls painted the same yellow and orange as in the church, although there was no black stripe around the base of the walls. At either side of her, doorways were set into the wall, carved rectangles of darker air. The nearest one, she saw, opened into a small carved room that appeared to contain nothing but a bed. He lives here as well! she thought in surprise, and then her eyes were drawn to what lay in the centre of the cavern.

  There was a large opening in the floor.

  Charlotte walked to the opening, beckoned on by Babbas who had gone to stand at its edge. It was roughly square and at each corner was a burning torch set on top of a metal stand. Lamps burned around the walls, she noticed, and then she was looking into the hole.

  It was pitch black. Charlotte stared down and immediately felt dizzy, as though she were having an attack of vertigo and, in truth, it was like looking down from a great height. The darkness in the hole seemed to start just feet below its rim, as if it was filled with inky water. Why doesn’t the light go into it? she had time to think and then Babbas’ hand was on her shoulder and he drew her gently away. He guided her back to where she had been standing, to where the floor was all around her, gleaming and white.

  “There is the function of the Order of St John of Patmos,” he said in a soft voice. “We keep the light burning that holds the darkness at bay, and it is what you have come here to do.”

  Charlotte stood, breathing deeply to overcome her dizziness. The old man stood looking at her kindly. His eyes glimmered with . . . what? Expectation? Hope? She could not tell and then the thing that he had said last of all lurched in her memory and the individual words connected, made a sentence, gained meaning.

  “I’m not here to do anything!” she said loudly. “I just wanted to look around!”

  “Of course you did not,” said Babbas, and the sadness was there again in his voice, the sound of a teacher coaxing a particularly slow child. “You were called here, as I was before you and the others were before me. No one comes here to look; we come because God needs us.”

  “No,” Charlotte said as emphatically as she could, “I wanted to see the church. Now I’ve seen it, I’ll go. Thank you for showing it to me.” She took a step back, moving towards the passageway. Babbas did not move, but simply said, “You may leave, if you wish, of course. I shall not stop you, but you will find that the world has already forgotten you.”

  Charlotte opened her mouth to say something, to say anything to counter the oddly threatening madness that was coming from the old man’s mouth, but nothing came. She wanted to tell him that he was insane, that the place she had made for herself in the world was as secure as it had ever been, but instead, the thought of Roger popped unbidden into her mind. Or rather, the memory that Roger had been gone when she looked for him a second time. Could he have forgotten her? Gone back to their hotel room because she no longer existed for him? No, it was madness, she was real, she had a home, a job, a boyfriend.

  “He has forgotten you,” said Babbas, once more guessing at what she thinking, seeing her thoughts and fears reflected in her expression. “Already, the skin of the world is healing over the space you have left in it. In a few days, no trace of you will be left. Now, your place is here.”

  Charlotte stared at the old man and took another step back towards the passage. He was looking at her with that calm, lecturer’s assurance again, confident in the absolute truth of what he was saying. She wanted to say, that’s impossible, but she dared not speak. Saying anything would be an admittance of the fact that, just for a moment, she had wondered, and in her wondering, Babbas’ words attained a sort of reality. But he couldn’t be right, could he? It was an absurdity spouted by an old man driven mad by solitude and religious extremism. Wasn’t it? How could he believe it? she asked herself, and in that moment, she realized that she did not want to leave yet. She had to persuade him of his folly, make him see that he was wrong. Frantically, she went through the things she could say that might puncture his reality and let hers in. Finally, she came across what she felt was the perfect argument.

  “But I can’t,” she said, “I don’t believe, and how can I have been called if I don’t believe?”

  Babbas did not reply and Charlotte thought, for the shortest time, that she’s done it, had made him see his error. But then, the sad little smile never leaving his face, he said, “Believe in what? This church, this place? It is all around you, more solid than your own flesh can ever hope to be. God, perhaps? Well, he does not care, he exists outside of your beliefs or mine and He does not need your faith or mine to continue. Ah, but I see that it is not Him that you do not believe in, but the function of this place. You think, maybe, that all here is ceremony without purpose, or that the purpose itself has become obsolete, like the act of watering a dead plant?”

  Babbas’ smile widened into a grin that showed his teeth. Under his eyebrows, his eyes were lost in pools of flickering shadow. “This is no place of idle ceremony,” he said. “Watch.”

  Babbas took hold of Charlotte’s arm in a grip that was gentle but unyielding and pulled her to one corner of the pit in the floor. Nodding at her, he took hold of the torch and removed it from the bracket in the floor. Holding it high over his head like a lantern, he retreated to the far side of the cavern and stood in the entrance to the passage. With the torch above him, the light danced more frenziedly around him. The walls, their colours melting and merging, were flames about Charlotte’s skin and felt herself try to retreat from them, wrapping her arms tightly around her stomach. She made to step away, but with his free hand, Babbas gestured to the pit by her feet. She looked down.

  The surface of the darkness was writhing and bucking. Even as she gasped in surprise and fear, Charlotte imagined some great creature roiling and thrashing just below the surface of inky water. There were no reflections within the pit or the boiling darkness.

  Charlotte never knew how long she watched the moving darkness for; it may have been one minute or one hour. She only knew that she was mesmerized by the rippling thing that moved before her. There was no light in it, but there were colours, things she could neither name nor even recognize, flashes and sparks and flows that moved and swirled and came and went. She felt herself become trapped in it, like a fly in amber, and it was only with an effort that she pulled herself away, brought her mind back in to herself.

  The darkness in the co
rner of the pit nearest her had risen.

  The black, moving thing had crept up and was lapping at the edge of the pit and tiny strands of it had slithered out onto the marble floor. It no longer looked like a liquid to Charlotte, but like some shadowed thing slowly reaching out tentacles, sending them questing across the marble floor. They reminded her of tree roots groping blindly through the earth for sustenance. Even as she watched, the first tendril had found a patch of shadow, cast by the holder that Babbas had removed the torch from. The tendril (or root ? or feeler ? she did not know how to explain what she was seeing) writhed furiously as it reached the shadow, thickening and pulsing. The shadow itself seemed to bulge and sway and then it was solid, more solid than it ought to be. She could not see the floor through it. More tendrils found other shadows, moving with a greedy hunger, and with them came a sound.

  It was the noise of insects in the nighttime, of unidentifiable slitherings and raspings, of rustling feet and creaking, ominous walls. Claws tickled across hard floors and breathing came, low and deep. There was the whisper of saliva slipping down teeth as yellow and huge as the bones of long-dead monsters, of hate given voice and pain that hummed in the blood.

  Charlotte tried to scream as the noise slipped about her but the air became locked in her throat as she looked at her feet and saw that the questing tendrils had reached her. They caressed her gently and then the shadows between her toes thickened, became as impenetrable as velvet. When she tried to lift her foot to kick them away, she felt them cling with a warm tenacity that nuzzled gently at her instep and the back of her ankle. It was soft, like the touch of a lover, and it pulsed with a rhythm all of its own, and then she screamed.

  Charlotte stumbled back as she screamed, and it seemed to her as she stumbled that her own shadow felt different, had a weight and a solidity that it had never had before. She felt it hold on to her knees and ankles, slipping across her skin like rough silk. She kicked out, knowing the irrationality of being frightened of your own shadow but kicking nonetheless, and then her back hit something else, something warm and she screamed even louder. The warm thing wrapped itself around her and she caught a flash of light at her side. She recognized the same sweet, sickly smell as she had caught before and then Babbas was saying in her ear, “It is alright. Do not panic.”

  The old man had the torch in front of Charlotte, its flaming head close to the floor. He swept it around in great arcs, forcing it into the shadows and using it as though he were driving an animal away. He was breathing hard, the air coming from his mouth in heavy puffs across her cheek. It was warm and moist and made her want to cringe. The heat of the torch flashed near her foot and she yelped in surprise and pain. She started to cry, helpless in his arms, tears of frustration and fear and anger rolling down her face. She closed her eyes and waited, useless, until the old man let her go.

  “It is gone,” he said simply. Charlotte heard the rattle of the torch being placed back onto its stand. Trembling, she opened her eyes.

  The cavern was normal again or at least, as normal as it had been when she first saw it. The walls still seemed to move with a fluid, balletic grace around her, the light from the torches giving the colours life. Now, the vibrancy she felt was a blessing, something that pinned the contents of the pit down with its warmth and vitality.

  “What was that?” she asked, hearing the idiocy of the question but having to ask anyway.

  “Darkness,” said Babbas. “There are places where darkness gets into the world, through pits and caverns and sunless spots. The Order of St John of Patmos is dedicated to finding these places and to keeping in them the light of God, to keeping the darkness at bay. It has been my job on this island for many years, and now it is yours.”

  Babbas went past Charlotte and stepped through one of the openings carved into the cavern’s wall. Charlotte, terrified of being left alone near the pit, scurried after him. At the doorway, she stopped, peering through into the shadowed beyond. There was a flare of a match igniting and then the softer glow of a lantern spread around in tones of red and orange, revealing a small room.

  The walls were lined with shelves, and the shelves bristled with leather-bound book, their spines black despite the light. The far wall was curtained off and in front of the curtains was a desk. Its scarred surface held an open journal and a pen.

  “This is where the records are written,” said Babbas, gesturing first at the open journal and then at the books lining the shelves. “The activities of each day are listed, written in confirmation of their completion.”

  Charlotte, interested despite herself, said, “Are these the records for the whole order?”

  “No, only this church. The Order has churches in other places and they keep their records as they see fit.”

  “How many other churches?”

  “I do not know. People are called, and the order receives them. We do not move around. There are many places where darkness can escape into the world, and when the Order discovers them, it takes in light to combat it. That there is still darkness means that we have not found all of the places. Now, we must go. There are things to do.”

  Charlotte wanted to refuse, to tell him that she could not leave her life behind, but the sheer size and complexity of the loss she was facing meant that the words would not fit around it. No more saunas, she thought. No more work or going out at lunchtime with my friends. No more nights curled up on the sofa with a bottle of wine watching a movie. No more pizza or restaurants, no more telephone calls. No more life. I can’t, she thought hopelessly, I can’t do it. And yet, as she thought, she heard again that slithering, chitinous noise and remembered the darkness slipping across her foot like the warm kiss of some terrible, moistureless mouth, and she could not turn him down. Instead, she said, “Why can’t you carry on?” A question, she knew, to avoid her own final acceptance.

  “I’m dying,” Babbas said. “I have something growing inside me and it is killing me. I cannot carry the oil for the lamps any more. I am slow. I have not yet, but one day I will slip and fall, or forget something, and then? It will escape. I can stay and teach you, but I cannot carry the responsibility any longer. It is why God called you.” He removed the stained white cloth from his head and came towards her, holding it out in front of him reverently. She saw the marks of the old grease that stained it like tree-rings denoting age, and smelled the sickly scent of his decaying, dying flesh.

  “We wear this, those of us who carry the burden,” Babbas said. “It is, perhaps, our only symbolic act, the only thing we do that is devoid of true function. This is the mantle of light.”

  So saying, Babbas draped the cloth over Charlotte’s hair so that it hung down, brushing her shoulders. It smelled old and sour. Babbas smiled at her and stepped back as the weight of centuries settled on Charlotte’s head.

  CHRISTOPHER FOWLER

  The Twilight Express

  CHRISTOPHER FOWLER LIVES IN King’s Cross, London. He is an award-winning novelist best known for his dark urban fiction. He has written seventeen novels and over 120 short stories collected in ten volumes. After his latest “Bryant & May” mystery novel, The Victoria Vanishes, comes an autobiography, Paperboy. He then plans to return to suspense and horror.

  About the following story, he says: “I wanted to create a timeless, dream-like feel in a piece of short fiction, and always loved the more disreputable funfairs and amusement parks because they expose your inner child, your excitement and fears.

  “The ghost train on Brighton Pier bothered me as a kid, because it depicted a train carriage filled with nodding, skeletal passengers. But fairs also leave you feeling regretful and disappointed – so I wanted to catch that as well. The result is ‘The Twilight Express’.”

  THE FUNFAIR BLEW IN one hot, windy night in early July, while everyone’s doors and windows were sealed against the invading desert dust. Billy Fleet knew it was coming when he heard the distorted sound of a calliope drifting faintly on the breeze, but he didn’t think then that it
might hold the answer to his problem.

  He leaned on his bedroom sill, watching the soft amber light move across the horizon of trees, beneath a velvet night filled with pinhole stars. The country dark was flushing with their arrival. On another night he might have climbed the trellis in his peejays and sat on the green grit of the tarpaper roof to watch the carnival procession, but tonight he had too much on his mind. The fair had travelled from Illinois to Arizona, and somehow made the detour here. There were a few dates yet that weren’t played out, small towns with bored kids and fathers jingling chump change, but soon the carnies would be looking to put down roots before the dying summer cooled the hot sidewalks and families grew more concerned with laying in stores for winter than wasting good money on gimcrack sideshows and freak tents.

  Billy turned restlessly under his sheets, wondering what it would take to clear his troubles, and the more he thought, the more desperate he became. His mother would cry, his father would beat him, and then a subtler meanness would settle over his life as friends and teachers pulled away, shamed by his inability to do what was right. It was a town that put great store by self-discipline.

  But it wasn’t cowardice that would prevent him from pleasing them, it was preservation. He wasn’t about to throw his life away just because Susannah’s period was late. No matter how hard she pushed, he wouldn’t marry her. Hell, he wasn’t sure he even liked her much, and would never have gone up to Scouts’ Point if she hadn’t complained that all the other girls had been taken there. The entire bluff was crowded with creaking cars, and though the scent of rampant sex excited him, it all felt so tawdry, so predictably small town. He had no intention of staying in Cooper Creek for a day longer than he had to, for each passing moment brought him closer to stopping forever, just as his father had done, and boy, the family had never heard the end of that.