The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 22 Read online

  The walk back to Iken was blisteringly hot despite the month, not improving R.’s mood as he tried to cover the ground at an Olympian pace. As R. approached the cottage he could see something white and fluttering pinned to the front door. It was a note. When he ripped it off and read it, R.’s sweat turned cold and clammy. It was from a friend, a good friend, a writer like himself. Couldn’t get an answer, read the note. You’re obviously out somewhere. Had a look along the marshes, then went out back to see if you’re there. If you return before me, go out back and give me a shout. G.

  R.’s hands shook as he read the note over and over again.

  He then opened the front door with the old iron key and rushed to the back of the house, opening the back door.

  “G!” he called. “Are you out there? G?”

  No answer.

  “This is stupid,” R. said to himself. “What am I getting so worked up about? I’ll just go out there and find him.”

  He strode purposefully into the wasteland out back, calling G’s name every few yards. When he reached the shallow gully where H.’s body had lain, he stumbled over something and almost fell full length into a patch of nettles. At first he gave a strangled cry, thinking it was a dead animal, but it turned out to be a rotten log. Just a lump of wood. He sat up, his head aching, and stared around him. Evening was coming on now: the gloaming settling in. Shadows slid like fat black snakes along the ground, between the gorse bushes. R. realised he hadn’t drunk anything since the pub, four hours ago. He felt giddy and sick. Alcohol dried a man out. He actually needed fluid. Water, preferably. Climbing to his feet he stared ahead, seeing something on the far side of a hump. It wasn’t clear in the dying light, but the shape suggested a body.

  A human corpse? He peered hard. Surely not? But it had to be. However, the contours were strangely misshapen. What was it? Yes – yes. There was no head, not even a neck. Surely that slick-looking black patch of shadow was a pool of blood? Some creature with enormous strength had physically torn G.’s head from his shoulders. R. let out a terrible scream and began running, back towards the cottage. He could sense something behind him, in the tall grasses, watching him intently. A monster was out there, its hot breath fouling the afternoon air. R. felt he had escaped a horrible death by the merest split second. Had he not turned and run when he did, he felt sure his headless corpse would lay beside that of G.’s, their blood staining the dirt together.

  R. reached the cottage and ran inside, slamming the back door behind him. He leaned against it, gasping for breath. Shit. That was G. back there, headless. Poor bastard. Poor sodding bastard. What the hell had done that? What manifestation of evil was out there ripping the heads from the shoulders of the living? A werewolf? Did werewolves do that? There was indeed a moon, if not full. Vampires simply drank the blood of their victims: they didn’t bury their faces in gore. What else was there of that ilk? Banshees. R. had no idea what banshees did. Or was it just one Banshee, like the Grim Reaper? You couldn’t have two Grim Reapers, could you? Two harbingers of death. Well then, perhaps a wild man, the Green Man, the wodwo of Ted Hughes’ poem? He knew how to kill a werewolf and a vampire. How did you kill a wodwo?

  “It knows I’m here,” he croaked. “It knows I’m in here.”

  He felt dreadfully thirsty and went to the brass kitchen tap serving that big white square chipped enamel basin, and drank the running water. Then he stuck his head under, to cool it, hoping the cold water would help clear his thoughts and give him the ability to think through his problem clearly. Water cascaded over his brow, soaking what was left of his hair, washing away the sweat and the dust of the last few hours.

  “Are you in there?”

  R.’s body jerked upright sharply with shock. He struck his head on the spout of the brass tap. Silently, he slid to the floor, unconscious. There were various dreams of the telescope kind, where events fold into one another and make no sense whatsoever. R. woke on the floor to find G. standing over him with a wet sponge. R.’s face was running with cold water and he spluttered as it entered his nose and mouth.

  “You’re drowning me,” he protested.

  “Sorry,” said G., “but that’s a horrible crescent moon cut you’ve got there from the edge of the tap.”

  R. touched his forehead and felt the bloody indentation.

  “Ow, that hurts.”

  “It looks as if it does.”

  A memory came shooting through R.’s pain.

  “Wait a minute . . . you’re . . . you were . . . that is, I thought you were dead.”

  “Dead?” G. looked shocked.

  “You left a note to say you were going out back.”

  R. sat up and felt his wound again.

  G. said, “I did, but I couldn’t get past the gorse bushes, so I turned around and went to the church instead.”

  “But I saw – that is, I thought I saw . . .”

  G. made him a cup of coffee and they sat on an over-stuffed sofa and talked. R. told him everything that had happened since he’d been at the cottage. G. listened thoughtfully, before saying, “So you thought that was my headless body, lying out back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now then,” said G., thoughtfully, “let’s go over this carefully. First H. was killed. There’s no doubting that. You saw the headless carcass. Then you heard about Mr E., who went missing and this was tied in with another missing person from this very same village – but not necessarily from this address? Right?”

  R. nodded.

  “Okay, fine. H. is dead. But that doesn’t mean Mr E. is also a headless corpse, now does it? And this second missing person – R.K. – why, he simply went missing from the village. I would say you’ve been on your own too long. You’ve started tying things together that just don’t go – like a fishing line and wharf rope. My guess is your brain is feverish and throwing out all sorts of images, all kinds of scenarios. Dammit, you’re a creative writer for God’s sake. A fantasy writer. We both are. I know if I spent a few weeks in this place I’d be imagining things too. Listen, that body you saw out back. My guess is it was made of bits of old branches, rocks and shadows. Believe me.”

  “You – you think so?”

  R.’s head was pounding.

  “Listen man, you’ve just lost your pet cat – in a horrific way. I’d be devastated if it was me. And I bet you haven’t told S. yet? Am I right?”

  “Right.”

  G. glanced towards the window. “Look,” he said, “there’s a moon out there. Almost as clear as daylight. Let’s you and I go out back and find your so-called headless body, and I’ll prove it to you. Are you on?”

  “Not really. My head hurts.”

  “Aspirin, paracetamol, we’ll soon sort that out. The main thing is for you to get some good rest tonight. How can you sleep properly believing what you believe at the moment? There’s nothing out there. Take my word for it. I’m the sane one here. You’re the loopy bugger. We’ve got to unloop you, man, before you go to bed.”

  R. gathered his courage and finally nodded. “All right.”

  “Good. Now you just stay behind me. If there’s any ghoulies or ghosties out there, they’ll get me first.”

  That was some comfort to R.

  “I guess so.”

  “Here we go then.”

  They left the cottage and went out back, R. pointing out the path he had made through the gorse bushes. It was cool and eerie outside and despite what G. had told R. the visitor felt a little spooked by the place. It wasn’t a happy land out back, that much was certain. No doubt it had been left wild too long. Who knew how long? Maybe years, maybe a decade, perhaps even a century? After all, why would anyone go there, except to look for a lost cat? It had a – what was it – yes, a pre-Christian feel to it. Pagan? Something of that nature. One of those areas which had been left well enough alone to be able to retain its ancient spirits. But that did not mean, G. reminded himself, that there was anything out here that could harm a modern man. By no means.


  “Are we near yet?” he asked R.

  “There,” came R.’s voice, from some way back. “Out there in front of you.”

  G. looked down. There was a dip in the landscape, then a shallow rise. He was standing on the edge of the hollow. About ten yards away, below him, he could see a strange lumpy shape, half-hidden in the moonshades, camouflaged as it were by a confluence of darkness and light. It seemed out of place, not quite part of the natural scene. Was it a trick of the mind? Perhaps it was indeed composed of bits of tree, pieces of stone, shards of shadow? Perhaps. It was so difficult to tell being as it was in amongst the shrubs and weeds of the wasteland. The more he stared at it, the more the mound looked as if it were somehow unnatural in the setting. Not a part of the landscape but placed there.

  From behind R. made a noise clearing his throat.

  The shape seemed to stir at the sound. A ripple, a quiver went over its pale broad surface. Then something quite horrible happened. It actually sat up. Two arms appeared on the sides of the lump. A shock wave went through G.’s body. What had risen from the ground appeared to be the torso of a headless man. This had to be a trick. Someone was pulling strings, or working some sort of mechanism. Headless bodies do not lift themselves up of their own accord. G. looked around, wildly, hoping to see some grinning local, hoping to hear giggling in the bushes, hoping that what he was witnessing was a fool’s joke.

  The next moment he almost swallowed his tongue.

  R. let out a frightened and frightening scream.

  A monstrous figure rose from its sitting position in front of the two writers. It was taller than they were, much taller, despite the fact that there was no head on its shoulders. It was a man, or would have been had its facial features not been on its chest. The creature was naked, its skin covered in strange markings or tattoos which the scholar in G. thought he recognised as runes. The mouth in the abdomen opened in a kind of angry sneer to reveal rows of square white teeth. The chest-eyes widened as it stared at the two writers. The look was at first focused on G.’s facial features. Then its eyes switched to R., intently studying that globe-shaped appendage on the other man’s shoulders.

  “What the fuck is it?” said G., shuddering with both disgust and terror.

  “Blemmyae,” replied the quietly hysterical voice of R. from behind him. “I remember seeing pictures of Blemmyes in a Medieval bestiary when I was researching one of my books. Ugly bastard, isn’t it? Do you – do you think it envies us our heads? Or maybe it sees them as nature’s abominations and wants to help us, by removing them?”

  On hearing speech the Blemmyae began to croon shrilly, from somewhere in the back of its abdomen. The sound was that of a vesper spilling from the mouth of a castrato. It rose in volume gradually, until it cut through the evening. The creature rolled those horrible dark lidless eyes, one either side of its sternum. Its long narrow nose, in the parting between the ribs, was dribbling thick mucus down its torso and matting the hairy regions below its mouth. This foul demonic-looking being had a face on its chest, but where was its brain? Did it indeed have one? Perhaps a brain where its heart should be?

  “It’s singing. Is that a good sign? I don’t know what that means. What shall we do, R.?” croaked G. from his dry throat. “Any ideas?”

  “Only one,” cried R. “Run!”

  Both men turned at once and began crashing through the gorse bushes, ignoring the shredding of their shins on the long wicked thorns, falling more than once and piercing their hands and faces, as well as their legs. Gasping for breath, sick with fear, G. almost overtook R. on the straight race to the back door of the cottage. However R. held his head start jealously, even though he was half-dead with fright. Not once did either man look back to see whether they were being chased. They had written many a story themselves, each of them, where the victims were running for their lives and the monster was close on their heels.

  A welcome rectangle of light grew ever nearer.

  Thank God, each of them thought, as they scrambled through briar, thorn and nettle, thank God we left the back door of the cottage open.

  They almost made it.

  ALBERT E. COWDREY

  Fort Clay, Louisiana:

  A Tragical History

  BORN AND BROUGHT UP in New Orleans, Albert E. Cowdrey was educated at Tulane and Johns Hopkins universities, and worked for twenty-five years as a military historian, mostly in and around Washington, D.C.

  He is possibly the only writer to receive awards from both the American Historical Association and the World Fantasy Convention. Fifty of his stories have appeared or soon will appear in print, as well as one novel, Crux.

  “‘Fort Clay . . .’ had its genesis long ago in picnics and snake-collecting expeditions to the defences originally built to protect New Orleans from the British fleet,” explains Cowdrey. “(By the time they were completed, the Battle of New Orleans was over – the Brits didn’t come back, but the Yanks did.)

  “Fort Jackson, Fort St Philip and Fort Pike were as close to castles as I could get – grand places, shadowy and creepy and cool even in the hottest weather, beloved of serpents and the small boys who pursued them. Later, as a researcher for the Interior Department, I worked at Baltimore’s Fort McHenry – where the British fleet did come, provoking Francis Scott Key to write ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ – and studied Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour, where the Civil War began.

  “It seemed only right to think about deeds of blood in such appropriate places, about the intersection of past and present, and about drowned men who emerge from lapping waters to take a hand in the affairs of the living. And so this tale took form.”

  “WELL, DOC!” CRIED SAFFRON, throwing open the door of her little Bywater studio to the tall, thin old man who stood on the stoop, blinking in the light. “Come in out the rain!”

  Mumbling apologies, Corman handed over his streaming black umbrella and shed his antique London Fog. Saffron took only a minute or two to get him seated amid the clutter of lights, tripods, strobes, reflectors, and other photographic equipment that filled the room. She’d already made tea, and pressed a chipped mug of fragrant oolong into the Doc’s surprisingly big hands. The hands were the kind of detail she noticed. He may be a scholarly scarecrow now, she thought, but sometime in his long life he’s done manual labour.

  Then it was time to make him a present of her book, A Lost World – one of the ten free copies her publisher had sent her. Saffron had all the usual artistic mixture of arrogance and butterflies, and wondered: what if he hates it? Watching him begin to leaf through the pictures, pausing to scan the text, she reminded herself of her agent’s last letter modestly comparing her to Annie Leibovitz, Diane Arbus, Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange – not quite to Ansel Adams, but then she’d never worked in Yosemite.

  She was smiling at her own egotism, a bit mocking, a bit tense, when Dr Corman began muttering under his breath. “Remarkable,” he said. “Quite remarkable!”

  Saffron relaxed. He liked it too. Everybody needed to like it. The world needed to like it. She smiled at the old scarecrow with real affection, and when he asked for an inscription, she picked up a felt-tip pen and wrote, “To Dr Quentin Corman, without whom this book might never have existed at all.”

  Strange now to think that she’d hardly noticed him the first time they met – if you could call it meeting.

  He’d been standing behind the desk in the Chief Ranger’s office at Chalmette on the field of the Battle of New Orleans, as silent and almost as thin as the flagstaff. Meanwhile the well-barbered bureaucrat in his uniform, with his Smokey the Bear hat hanging from a rack, gave Saffron her instructions.

  “We’re about to lose Fort Clay, Ms Genève, so we want to document it while it’s still here. That’s what the contract you’ve signed is about. We want a thorough pictorial record. We don’t want art,” he said, pronouncing the last word as if it soiled his palate.

  She made a noncommittal noise, figuring that once alone on Île du Sabl
e, she’d do what she damn well pleased. Didn’t this guy realise that two of her Katrina pictures had appeared in Vanity Fair? Sure, she was young, still struggling, she needed the job and expected to do competent work. But on her own terms. She certainly didn’t expect Smokey to send Dr Corman along to watch her.

  But that was exactly what he did. Under orders, she met Corman at Pilot Town just above the Passes of the Mississippi, and during their two-hour boat trip on a Corps of Engineers lighter he lectured on his specialty. He was a National Park Service historian, an expert on 19th-century fortifications, and like most experts wanted to share everything he knew about the old brick forts that ringed the Atlantic and Gulf coastlines – why they’d been built, and when, and by whom.

  Old farts like old forts, thought Saffron sourly, deciding, as they bucked and rolled through choppy brown water between the jetties of Pass à Loutre and headed out into the open Gulf, that Corman knew more about less than anybody she’d ever met. Even after the boat dropped them on the island, he went on and on, like a cricket that gets into your house in autumn. Still chirping, he led her through an impressive arched gateway and up a flight of weedy brick steps.

  “Fort Clay,” he admitted, “had rather an uneventful history. Yet I’ve made a special study of it.”

  Figures, she thought, taking her new Macron ZX-300 digital camera (9 megapixels, 10x Zeiss optical zoom) out of its carrying pouch. While she hungered for fame, Corman seemed to have an inverted lust for celebrity. The less important something was, the better he liked it. He was a moth drawn to obscurity instead of light.

  “In the forty years it was in service,” he nattered on, “the garrison never heard a shot fired in anger. In 1870 it was decommissioned and stood abandoned until a group of enthusiasts (myself included) managed to get it on the National Register. The Park Service restored it, and it became a popular destination for boaters who stopped off to sunbathe and swim and picnic. And, I suppose, to satisfy their morbid curiosity.”