The Mammoth Book of Nightmare Stories Read online

  “For a long time I’d wanted to write a story about the nature of luck,” explains the author. “Good luck. Bad luck. No luck. It’s something that people are very preoccupied with. I bet I’m not the only one who chose his six numbers for the first National Lottery draw with a ‘funny feeling’ that I was actually going to win. And virtually everyone I know has a lucky charm, number, day, teddy bear, pair of shorts, necklace, pint glass … whatever. Even people who claim to be skeptical about such things have their secret superstitions and beliefs.

  “I wondered what would happen if we actually knew of the factors that shaped our fates … and if it came to paying a price for good fortune, how far would we go?”

  Originally written for Lebbon’s first hardcover collection, As the Sun Goes Down, the powerful novella that follows was significantly revised for its appearance here …

  “OH, LOOK,” SAID Adam, “a four-leafed clover.” He stroked the little plant and sighed, pushing himself to his feet, stretching his arms and legs and back. He had been laying on the grass for a long time.

  He walked across the lawn and onto the graveled driveway, past the Mercedes parked mock-casual, through the front door of the eight-bedroom house and into the study.

  Two walls were lined with books. Portraits of the people he loved stared down at him and he should have felt at peace, should have felt comforted … but he did not. There was a large map on one wall, a thousand intended destinations marked in red, half-a-dozen places he had already visited pinned green. Travel was no longer on his agenda, neither was reading, because his family had gone. He was still about to make a journey, however, somewhere even stranger than the places he had seen so recently. Stranger than anyone had ever seen to tell of, more terrifying, more final. After the past year he was keener than ever to find his own way there.

  And he had a map. It was in the bureau drawer. A .44 Magnum, gleaming snake-like silver, slick to the touch, cold, impersonal. He warmed it between his legs before using it. May as well feel comfortable when he put it in his mouth.

  Outside, the fourth leaf on the clover glowed brightly and disappeared into a pinprick of light. Then, nothing.

  “Well,” Adam said to the house full of memories, “it wasn’t bad to begin with … but it could have been better.”

  He heard footsteps approaching along the graveled driveway, frantic footsteps crunching quickly toward the house.

  “Adam!” someone shouted, panic giving their voice an androgynous lilt.

  He looked around the room to make sure he was not being observed. He checked his watch and smiled. Then he calmly placed the barrel of the gun inside his mouth, angled it upward, and pulled the trigger.

  He had found them in the water.

  At least he liked to think he found them but later, in the few dark and furtive moments left to him when his mind was truly his own, he would realize that this was not the case. They found him. Gods or fairies or angels or demons—mostly just one or another, but sometimes all four—they appeared weak and delicate.

  It was not long, however, before Adam knew that looks count for nothing.

  Put on your life jackets, the cabin crew had said. Only inflate them when you’re outside the aircraft. Use the whistle to attract attention, and make for one of the life rafts. As if disaster had any ruling factor, as if control could be gained over something so powerful, devastating, and final.

  “THE SHAPES THAT ROSE OUT OF THE WATER WITH HIM WERE ALL THAT REALLY REGISTERED.”

  As soon as the 747 hit the water, any semblance of control vanished. This was no smooth crash landing, it was a catastrophe, the shell splitting and the wings slicing through the fuselage and a fire—brief but terrible—taking out First Class and the cockpit. There was no time even to draw away from the flames before everything fell apart, and Adam was pitched into a cool, dark, watery grave. Alison, he thought, and although she was not on the flight—she was back at home with Jamie—he felt that she was dead already. Strange, considering it was he who was dying.

  Because in the chaos, he knew that he was about to die. The sounds of rending metal and splitting flesh had been dampened by their instant submersion in the North Atlantic, but a new form of blind panic had taken over. Bubbles exploded around him, some of them coming from inside torn bodies, and sharp, broken metal struck out at him from all around. The cold water masked the pain for a while, but he could still feel the numbness where his leg had been, the ghostly echo of a lost limb. He wondered whether his leg was floating above or below him. Then he realized that he could not discern up or down, left or right, and so the idea was moot. He was blinded too, and he did not know why. Pain? Blood? Perhaps his eyes were elsewhere, floating around in this deathly soup of waste and suffering, sinking to the seabed where unknown bottom-crawlers would snap them up and steal everything he had ever seen with one dismissive clack of their claws.

  He had read accounts of how young children could live for up to an hour submerged in freezing water. They still retained a drowning reflex from being in the womb, their vocal chords contracted and drew their throats shut, and as long as they expelled the first rush of water from their lungs they could survive. Body temperature would drift down to match their surroundings, heart rate would halve, oxygen to the brain would be dramatically lessened, brain activity drawn in under a cowl of unconsciousness. So why, then, was he thinking all this now? Why panic? He should be withdrawing into himself, creating his own mini-existence where the tragedies happening all around him, here and now, could not break through.

  Why not just let everything happen as it would?

  Adam opened his eyes and finally saw through the shock. A torn body floated past him, heading down, trailing something pale and fleshy behind it. It had on a pair of shorts and Bart Simpson socks. No shoes. Most people kicked off their shoes on a long-haul flight.

  The roaring sound around him increased as everything began to sink. Great bursts of bubbles stirred the terrible brew of the sea, and Adam felt a rush of something warm brushing his back. A coffee-pot crushed and spewing its contents, he thought. That was all. Not the stewardess holding it being opened up by the thousands of sharp edges, gushing her own warm insides across his body as they floated apart like lost lovers in the night …

  And then he really opened his eyes, although he was so far down now that everything was pitch-black. He opened them not only to what was happening around him, but to what was happening to him. He was still strapped in his seat. One of his legs appeared to be missing … but maybe not, maybe in the confusion he had only dreamed that he had lost a leg. Perhaps he had been dreaming it when the aircraft took its final plunge, and the nightmares—real and imagined—had merely blended together. He thought he felt a ghost ache there, but perhaps ghosts can be more real than imagination allows, and he held out his hands and felt both knees intact.

  Other hands moved up his body from his feet, squeezing the flesh so that he knew it was still there, pinching, lifting … dragging him up through the maelstrom and back toward the surface. He gasped in water and felt himself catch on fire, every nerve end screaming at the agony in his chest. His mind began to shut down—

  yes, yes, that is the way, go to sleep, be that child again

  —and then he broke surface.

  The extraordinary dragged his sight from the merely terrifying. He was aware of the scenes around him—the bodies and parts of bodies floating by, the aircraft wreckage bobbing and sinking and still smoldering in places, the broken-spined books sucking up water, suitcases spilling their insides in memory of their shattered owners—but the shapes that rose out of the water with him were all that he really registered, all that he really comprehended. Although true comprehension … that was impossible.

  They were fairies.

  Or demons.

  Or angels.

  Or gods.

  There were four of them, solid yet transparent, strong yet unbelievably delicate. Their skin was clear, but mottled in places with a darker light, st
riped like a glass tiger. They barely seemed to touch him, yet he could feel the pinch of their fingers on his legs and arms where they held him upright. The pain seemed at odds with their appearance. He closed his eyes and opened them again. The pain was still there, and so were the things.

  They were saving him. He was terrified of them. For one crazy moment he looked around at the carnage and wished himself back in the water, struggling against his seat restraint as it dragged him down, feeling his ears crunch in and his eyeballs implode as awful pressures took their toll, sucking out the last of his air and flooding him and filling him. Perhaps he would see Alison again—

  she’s dead!

  —love her as he had always loved her, feel every moment they had shared. He thought it was a fallacy that a drowning man’s life flashes before him. But it was a romantic view of death, and if he had to die then a hint of romance …

  “You are not going to die,” a voice said. None of the things seemed to have spoken and the voice appeared in his head, unaccented, pure, like a playback of every voice ever saying the same thing.

  He looked around at them. He could see no expressions because their faces were ambiguous, stains on the air at best. He reached out and touched one, and it was warm. It was alive. He laid his palm flat against its chest.

  “That is all right,” the same voice intoned, “feel what you must. You have to trust us. If you have to believe that we are here in order to trust us, then make sure you do. Because we have a gift for you. We can save you, but … you must never forget us or deny us.”

  Adam held out his other hand. “You’re there,” he whispered as he felt a second heartbeat beneath his palm. For some reason, it felt disgusting.

  “So pledge.”

  He was balanced on a fine line between life and death. He was in no condition to make such a decision. That is why all that happened later was so unfair.

  He nodded. And then he realized the truth.

  “I’m dead.” It was obvious. He had been drifting down, down, following the other bodies deep down, perhaps watched by some of them as he too had watched. He had known his leg had gone, he had felt the water enter him and freeze him and suck out his soul. He was dead.

  “No,” the voice said, “you are very much alive.” And then one of the things scraped its nails across his face.

  Adam screamed. The pain was intense. The scratches burned like acid streaks, and he touched his cheek and felt blood there. He took his hand away and saw a red smear. He looked down at his legs; still whole. He looked back up at the four things that were holding him and his wrecked seat just out of reach of the water. Their attitude had not changed, their unclear faces were still just that.

  He saw a body floating past, a person merged somehow with a piece of electrical paneling, metallic and biological guts both exposed.

  “We have something to show you,” the voice said.

  And then he was somewhere else.

  He actually felt the seat crumple and vanish beneath him, and he was suddenly standing in a long, wide street. His clothes were dry and whole, not ripped by the crash and soaked with seawater and blood. His limbs felt strong, he was warm, he was invigorated. His face still hurt …

  The four things—the demons, the angels, whatever they were—stood around him, holding out their hands as if to draw his attention to this, to that. They gave the impression that they lived there, but to Adam they did not seem to feel at home.

  “Where is this place?” Adam said. “Heaven?”

  “How is your face?”

  “It still hurts.” Adam touched the scratches on his cheek, but the blood had almost ceased flowing now, and already he could feel the wounds scabbing over. They were itching more than burning. He wondered just how long ago the crash had been.

  “You are alive, you see,” the voice said, “but we brought you here for a while to show you some things. And to give you a gift. Come with us.”

  “But who are you. What are you?”

  The things all turned to look at him. They were still transparent but solid, shapes made of flowing glass. Try as he might, he could not discern any features with which to distinguish one from another, yet they all acted in slightly different ways. The one on his far left tilted its head slightly as it watched him, the one to his right leaned forward with unashamed curiosity whenever he spoke.

  “Call us Amaranth,” the voice said, “for we are eternal.”

  Adam thought about running, then. He would turn and sprint along the street, shout for help if the things pursued him, slap off their hands if they chose to grasp at him. He would escape them. He wanted to escape them … even though, as yet, they had done him only good.

  Am I really here, he thought, or am I floating at the bottom of the sea? Fishes darting into my mouth. Crustaceans plucking at my brain as these final insane thoughts seek their escape.

  “For the last time,” Amaranth said, and this time two of them attacked him. One held him down, the other reached into his mouth and grasped his tongue. Its hand was sickly warm, the skin—or whatever surface sheen it possessed—slick to the touch. It brought his tongue forward and then pricked at it with an extended finger.

  The pain was bright, explosive, exquisite. Blood gushed into Adam’s throat as he struggled to stand. The things moved aside to let him up and he spat out a gob of blood, shaking with shock and a strange, subdued fury.

  “You are alive,” Amaranth said, “and well, and living here for now. We shall not keep you long because we know you wish to return to your world … to your Alison and Jamie … but the price of our saving you is for you to see some things. Follow us. And do not be afraid. You are one of the lucky ones.”

  Adam wanted nothing more than to see his family. His conviction that Alison was dead had gone, had surely been a result of his own impending death. And Jamie—sweet little Jamie, eighteen months old and just discovering himself—how cruel for him to suddenly be without a father. How pointless. Yes, he needed to see them soon.

  “Thank you,” Adam said. “Thank you for saving me.”

  Amaranth did not reply. Adam was truly alive, the pain in his tongue told him that. This was unreal and impossible, yet he felt completely, undeniably alive. As to whether he really had been saved … time would tell.

  One of the things gently took his hand and guided him along the street.

  At first Adam thought he could have been in London. The buildings on either side presented tall, grubby facades, with their shop fronts all glazing and posters and flashing neon. A bar spewed music and patrons into the street on one corner, some of them sitting at rickety wooden tables, others standing around, mingling, chatting, laughing. They were all laughing. As he watched, a tall man—hair dyed a bright red, body and legs clad in leather, and sporting a monstrous tattoo of a dragon across his forehead, down the side of his neck and onto his collarbone—bumped into a table and spilled several drinks. Glass smashed. Beer flowed and gurgled between brick paviors. The couple at the table stood, stared at the leather-clad man and smiled. He set his own drinks down on their table, sat, and started chatting to them. Adam heard them introducing themselves, and as he and Amaranth passed the bar, the three were laughing and slapping each other’s shoulders as if they had been friends forever.

  The tall man looked up and nodded at Adam, then again at each of the things with him. His eyes were wide and bright, his face tanned and strong, and it shone. Not literally, not physically, but his good humor showed through. He was an advert for never judging people by their appearances.

  Within a few paces the street changed appearance, so quickly that Adam felt as though it was actually shifting around him. He could see nothing strange, but suddenly the buildings were lower, the masonry lighter, eaves adorned with ancient gargoyles growling grotesquely at the buildings opposite, old wooden windows rotting in their frames, pigeons huddling along sills. He could have moved from London to Italy in the space of a second. And if anything the street felt more real, more meant-to
-be than he had ever experienced. It was as if nature itself had built this place specifically for these people to inhabit, carving it out of the landscape as perfectly as possible, and even though the windows were rotting and the buildings had cracks scarring their surfaces like old battle wounds, these things made it even more perfect.

  “It’s like a painting,” Adam said.

  “It is art, true.” The thing holding his hand let go and another took its place, this one warmer, its flesh more silky. “This way.”

  The sudden music of smashing glass filled the street, followed by a scream and a sickening thud as something hit the road behind them. Adam spun around, heart racing, scalp stretching as he tried not to imagine what he was about to see.

  What he did see was certainly not what he expected.

  A woman was lying stretched over the high gutter, half on the pavement, half on the road. As he watched, she stood and brushed diamond-shards of broken glass from her clothes. She picked them from her face, too, but they had not torn the skin. Her limbs had not suffered in her tumble from the second story window, her suit trousers and jacket were undamaged, her skull was whole. In fact, as she ruffled up her hair, stretched her back with a groan and glanced up at where she had fallen from, she looked positively radiant. An extreme-sports fan perhaps? Maybe this was just a stunt she was used to doing day-in, day-out?

  She saw Adam watching her and threw him a disarmingly calm smile. “That was lucky,” she said.

  “What the hell’s lucky about falling from a window?”

  She shrugged. Looked around. Waved at someone further along the street. “I didn’t die,” she said, not even looking at Adam anymore. And without saying another word she walked past him and Amaranth to a small Italian café.

  Amaranth steered Adam past the café and into a side alley. Again, scenery changed without actually shifting, as if flickering from place to place in the instant that it took him to blink. This new setting was straight out of all the American cops and robbers television shows he had ever seen. There was a gutter running down the center of the alley overflowing with rubbish and excrement, boxes piled high against one wall just begging a speeding car to send them flying, pull-down fire escapes hanging above head-height, promising disaster. Doorways were hidden back under the shadows of walls, and in some of those shadows darker shadows shifted.