Year's Best Horror Stories XVIII Part 12

Nicholas Royle may well be the fastest rising new star among British horror writers. Born in Manchester on March 20, 1963, Royle made his Year's Best Horror Stories debut last year with the macabre tale, "Ours Now." By the time of this, his second appearance here, he has already sold more than thirty stories to such magazines and anthologies as Interzone, Fear, Fantasy Tales, Cutting Edge, Book of the Dead, Obsessions, and, among others, Reader's Digest.

He is currently editing an original horror anthology, Dark-lands, which I'll be checking out for Year's Best Horror contenders.

Of course, horror writers cannot live on short fiction alone. On the novel front, Royle reports: "My first novel, Counterparts -- an examination of doubles and split personalities and b.l.o.o.d.y Australian Aboriginal ceremonial rites set against a West/East European backdrop -- is currently with agents in London and New York. I'm currently working on two novels, one a 'speculative dark fantasy'

about two jazz saxophonists in a changing eastern Europe, and the other a 'horror thriller' about ma.s.s murder and mummification in contemporary London."

In respect of the weather, as she would later discover, it was a typical Archway day, the Friday that Bella moved into the flat. How terribly British of her to talk about the weather, Bella's sister wrote in reply to the letter Bella had sent a few days after moving in. Not at all like her, wrote Jan. What did she know?

thought Bella. Jan had always sought arguments on trivial matters. Her provocations were best ignored.

She crumpled up the letter and looked out of the kitchen window. The sun was casting sharp rectangles of light on the huddled walls and buildings; large black-gray clouds moved in from the southwest like airships to obscure the light.

The weather followed the same pattern every day: bright intervals followed by the intrusion of these heavy gray clouds, which were soon blown over by the ever- persistent wind. Bella had become something of a weather-watcher, it was true, but not because she responded to the Britishness of the occupation; rather, it served as a distraction.

She threw Jan's letter in the bin and crossed the kitchen. Her finger alighting on the percolator switch, she froze. There was that noise again. She'd heard it a few times that week and had been able neither to locate it, nor with any certainty identify it. Sometimes it was like an asthmatic's wheezing, sometimes an old man's derisive laugh. Asthmatics and old men there may well have been in the upper and lower flats and on either side, but the noise sounded as though it came from within her walls. Just an acoustic trick, she a.s.sured herself, the source of which would no doubt one day soon come to light.

"There you are, then. You can have a day to think about it if you want," the landlord had said after giving his lightning tour of the flat. "But the sooner you decide the better. I don't know if you know what the present housing situation is like, but..."

"I know exactly what it's like," she interrupted him. "I've been looking for over a month and some of the places I've seen, well, I wouldn't live in them if you paid me."

"There's plenty would. Can't turn your nose up these days. Anyway, that's another matter. This is a good flat and I'll have no trouble finding someone for it.

So, when can you tell me?"

Bella thought quickly. It was the first flat she'd seen which satisfied all her requirements -- self-contained, own front door, bath fitted, telephone already in, adequately furnished, ten minutes from the tube, rent just within her means provided she got the housing benefit.

"I'll take it," she said, surprised at how easy it was, not believing the search was over.

"Right. You can move in on Friday. A month's rent in advance, a month deposit. When can you let me have a reference?"

"Pardon?"

"Reference. From your employer."

"Oh, by the end of this week, I should imagine." She should be able to get it by then. In fact, the matter of a reference had slipped her mind, but it was of course essential. She remembered the miles of cards in newsagents' windows, which repeatedly stressed "No DHSS" and "Professional people only".

Bella straightened the framed photograph, which had drawn her attention. Now at the white wall she fingered the crack. It was nothing to worry about, the landlord had said in his booming voice. But she found she was able to slide her finger into the gap -- she was sure she hadn't been able to do that before. She heard the photograph move and reached to straighten it again. The crack widened a fraction and a solid lump of darkness fell into the room. Bella stooped to pick it up but it dissolved in her hand like it was nothing. Suddenly the light in the room dimmed as black light dribbled from the crack. The crack gaped and a great absence of light seemed to pour into the room, thick and viscous like tar, yet neither liquid nor solid.

It laughed at her.

Bella rose from contemplation of her breakfast, depressed after a bad night, and straightened the photograph on the wall. As she touched the frame she felt a tug of familiarity. She didn't remember anything else until some time later when she was on her way out of the door and she heard somebody laugh where n.o.body could have been.

Lunch was busier than usual at the restaurant. Again she felt glad she was not a waitress, rushing around with never enough time to do all that was demanded. Bella was happier sitting at the cash desk, steadily working through hundreds of pounds and as many indecipherable bills. Not that she was content, however. The cash system at the restaurant she'd worked at before coming here had been much more straightforward, and her work as a result had been more efficient.

But that restaurant had closed for refurbishment work only a couple of weeks ago; its employees effusively thanked and put out on the street. So she'd asked around and found a job here. The wages were better, which was good, now that she had the flat to pay for. As for the reference, she was sitting on it. The manageress had typed up a short note, which was now in the back pocket of Bella's jeans.

The telephone rang shrilly. It was for Marilyn. Bella called her, although she wasn't supposed to pa.s.s calls on to the staff. Not a word of thanks. But that was nothing new: these waitresses were not really disposed to friendliness. Bella regretted not having swapped numbers with the friends she'd made in the old place.

When Bella climbed out of the underground at Archway, the sky was almost completely blacked out by thick cloud, like a domed lid propped from the earth in the east by high-rise blocks silhouetted against brilliant white. As she stood at the exit the rain began to fall, heaving heavy drops onto the litter-strewn pavement.

"It's always the way, isn't it?" she said to a middle-aged woman who slipped away, bowing her head to protect the cigarette which clung mollusk-like to her bottom lip. A tramp moved slowly through the flow of people toward the station entrance. Seeing Bella standing there he held out a hopeful hand. She turned away and walked home through the rain and dirty streets. A crowd of boys collected at the end of Fairbridge Road. They wore training shoes, jeans slashed a little way up the side seams at the ankle, Paisley shirts whose tails hung out, gold chains and expensive haircuts. The rain had stopped; the clouds fled eastward as if scared of the light, which once more seeped into the streets. Bella counted sixteen boarded- up houses on Fairbridge Road. She began to wonder at the landlord's audacity in describing this area of Upper Holloway as "desirable."

Her resolution not forgotten, Bella searched the flat for a possible source of the noise which had frightened her. She was examining the bedroom door hinges when the laughter rang out clearly from the bathroom. She ran through immediately and pulled the blind up onto its runner. The ventilator groaned as it turned in the breeze: it slowed to a wheezing trickle: then laughed as a squall sent it spinning. She leaned over the toilet to pull the cord to shut it up. Below, a face turned from Bella's direction and a figure slipped across the waste ground into the shadow of a wall. "Nosy creep," muttered Bella as she let the blind unroll back into place.

It was just an ordinary salt cellar -- metal top, gla.s.s body, almost full, a few grains of salt clinging to the downward slope of the silver top -- but Bella could not tear her eyes from it. It was safe, rea.s.suring, and unambiguous.

She had been moving an easy chair from the living room to the bedroom and had dragged it across the bamboo curtain. The noise it produced -- like a rattling of bones -- had scared her, set her nerves on edge, even though she knew it was harmless. That being the first ambiguous sound, each new sound was exaggerated and misinterpreted. She'd positioned the chair in her bedroom and straightening up had given a little cry. But the face looking in at her had been her own. She'd pulled the curtains across and had sat down in the chair to try and relax. But the immersion heater had sighed like an old man. She'd stood up to straighten the photograph on the wall. Hadn't she done that before? she'd asked herself. So, she had come to the kitchen, sat down at the table and focused on the saltcellar.

At the edge of her field of vision hung the black oblong of the uncurtained kitchen window. Orange fog loomed outside, pressing at the gla.s.s, trying to force a way in. The conversations of her neighbors, m.u.f.fled through the thin walls, became sinister. A radio played in the flat above but seemed to come from within her own rooms. What could she do to remain calm? She would call someone. Who could she call? There wasn't anybody. She'd lost touch. Her sister; she'd call Jan.

As she touched the receiver the telephone rang. Bella jumped back and hit her head against the wall. This was ridiculous: she was being terrorized by nothing in her own home. She collected her wits together and picked up the receiver. A man's voice asked for Deirdre, insisted that Bella was she, would not be dissuaded. Bella hung up; she would have to get the number changed. She no longer wished to use the telephone. Jan would only say she was being hysterical. She retreated to the bedroom, away from the billowing fog wiping itself over the kitchen window, and to distract herself opened a book. There was a gaping black divide in the wall, out of focus beyond the pages of the book. Bella looked up but the crack was no more than three or four millimeters wide. Tiredness was causing her to hallucinate. She undressed and got into bed.

"What do you mean you can't manage to keep my shifts open?" she asked of the manageress.

Cheryl said: "Your figures aren't balancing, Bella."

"But that's not my fault. It's the antiquated till and that stupid system. I'm sorry, but it really is a stupid system. And that business of me having to keep the waitresses' money as well. I don't know what they write on their tip cards. I'd suggest you watch some of them before giving me the sack."

"I'm sorry, Bella. Don't you think this is very difficult for me? I'm only doing what I've been told to do."

They all said that, thought Bella. Their hypocrisy had always distressed her.

Don't let the staff have 'phone calls, Cheryl had said. She'd accepted her own calls though. Standing there gossiping with her friends while Bella tried to do two jobs at once. There was much about the restaurant, which was undesirable; however, Bella needed the job.

"I need the job," she told Cheryl. "You can't just get rid of me."

"I'm afraid that's the situation, Bella. We are no longer in a position where we have need of you."

It was becoming obvious that the management were not to be budged. "Well sod you, then!" Bella shouted and stormed out of the office.

Leicester Square tube station. Northern Line. Three trains had thundered into the station and rattled out again while Bella remained seated, trying to calm her anger and nerves. Feeling a little less violent by the time the fourth train arrived, she got on. A crowded tube train was not the best place to be when feeling angry and resentful. Bella had a tendency, when in that state of mind, to misinterpret dim-witted behavior as antagonistic. And the tube was a great one for dulling the responses.

The clouds raced overhead at Archway. Bella felt insignificant beneath them. A vicious wind hurled itself along Junction Road and buffeted pedestrians emerging from the station. Bella didn't feel up to going back to the flat: she chose to walk about until she regained her calm. A tattered wretch of a man was stopping pa.s.sersby and asking for money. Bella turned and walked toward Highgate Hill.

Brooding was pointless, she realized. She was in a mess though. No job, no money.

Think positive!: she would have to sign on the dole. There could be no immediate prospect of finding another job. She'd been lucky to get the one she'd just lost.

Even if she found a vacancy, she'd be in a mess if they checked up on her reference. Why did you leave your last job? They sacked me on suspicion of dipping into the till. She wished now she had done so, if only to validate her dismissal and to give her something to show for it. She turned right into Hornsey Lane. Northbound lorries hurtled up the Archway Road under the overpa.s.s, under the Archway. The sky was re-forming: the remaining dark clouds drew together and formed a band joining the horizons. Bella felt small. She walked down the little path to the Archway Road and stood in the shadow of the Archway and felt smaller still.

She had to wait fifteen minutes before it was her turn. Yes, she wanted to sign on. Yes, she'd signed on before, but years ago, and not here. She was claiming from today and would sign on whichever day suited them. Yes, she needed to have her rent paid. Yes, she would fill in the B1 and take it to the DHSS in person rather than post it.

She took the B1 home. "Claim Supplementary Benefit on this form," it said at the top. There were eight pages of questions. The walls of the room bowed in above her. A dull creeping light from the window hung over the mismatched furniture. A car turned a corner, but the fly, which buzzed around the lampshade, was louder. She got up to make a cup of tea and pa.s.sed by the kitchen window.

Down below on the patch of waste ground a figure turned its face up to her window. Bella froze to the spot. The face just stared, its eyes quite clearly defined.

Bella's flesh crawled, her scalp tightened. She shivered, and a change came over the face. It became elongated as the mouth opened and formed a black triangle.

Symmetrical lines deepened about the eyes and mouth, accentuating the apex at the chin and reducing the eyes to black slits. The features formed a hideous triangular mask and became fixed in that image. It was the mime artist's version of an evil sneer; malice and twisted pleasure. The person had gone when Bella looked up again.

The B1 presented its problems. "Why did you leave this job?" The walls around her began to press, the air to thicken. "What is the name and address of your landlord, landlady, or council?" Bella's temples ached. The light had deteriorated. "Is your home very difficult to heat because of things like damp or very large rooms?" Another early firework exploded outside. "Are you, or any of the people you are claiming for, pregnant? Who is pregnant?" A fly buzzed over the b.u.t.ter-dish. "Who is blind?" "Who needs to have extra washing done? Please tell us why. If you wash at home how many loads of washing do you do each week? How much do you think this costs you each week for washing powder, hot water and electricity? Do you, or any of the people you are claiming for, have any other illness or disability which you would like us to know about? Who is ill or disabled? What is the illness or disability? Remember that if you deliberately give false information you may be prosecuted."

"Excuse me." It was Bella speaking. "I've got a question about the Bl form you gave me yesterday. It asks for the landlord's name and address. Does this mean you'll be writing to him to check the rent paid and so on?"

"I don't know," said the girl, her hand straying to a pile of cards. "It's not us who pays you."

"Well who pays me?"

"DHSS.".

"Yes, but I just want..."

"Look, if you take it to the DHSS they'll explain it for you." "I don't need it explained. I just want to know if my landlord will be contacted. He doesn't know I'm unemployed, you see. He'd kick me out if he did."

"George." The girl leaned around the part.i.tion. "Lady wants to know if the DHSS will contact her landlord."

"Can't say. You'd have to ask them," said George, edging round to face Bella.

"Well, how do I do that? I don't want to put the form in till I'm sure. If the landlord knows, he'll kick me out. No one lets to the unemployed, you know. Not if they can help it. Sc.u.m of the earth, as far as they're concerned."

"You'd better go to the DHSS, love. Archway Tower. Tenth floor. Ask there."

On her way out of the unemployment office, bewildered and annoyed, Bella scanned the long queues static before the unforgiving windows, and a familiar face revealed itself to her from shadows. She rushed out, clutching her Bl, imagining the face grinning horribly at her back.

She hoped a bath would cheer her up and prove fortifying for her jaunt up the Archway Tower. There was nothing -- or very little -- to equal the pleasure of total immersion in hot, foamy water. And somehow the prospect seemed extra attractive in the middle of the day.

The steam condensed on the windows so that she didn't have to drop the blind and resort to artificial light. She began to ease her body gradually into the water, but experience had taught her to opt instead for immediate total submersion: it was always a shock, but you soon got used to it. She lay there for ten minutes without moving, without cares; simply enjoying the sensation of the hot water holding her body in its grasp. She brushed her palm over her thigh and thrilled at the tingling feeling produced. Her body was important; she enjoyed the indulgence of its desires. It was a long time since she'd had a man. Her hand floated between her legs. Water splashed out of the bath and onto her slippers. She trembled and lay back; the water regained its stillness; all was very quiet, so that the laughter was particularly shocking when it suddenly rattled through the ventilator. Bella jumped in fright and turned to the window. The ventilator spun and groaned. A dark shape loomed on the other side of the gla.s.s. Her first thought was simply that she'd been seen, and guilt filled her; then, as a patch of condensation cleared, she recognized the mad triangular face.

Bella took the lift to the tenth floor and made her way to enquiries. The room distressed her. Rows of benches on which slumped tired, unhappy claimants.

Some tramps sat at the back with an upsetting air of permanence and propriety. All the faces in the room were devoid of hope; cheerless, lacking vitality, staring at the part.i.tioned windows, only one of which was being used. There was no apparent queuing system, no ticket distributor, no future in hanging around, thought Bella.

She did try to discover from one person whether or not there was any system, but the eyes, which turned upon her, were so empty and lifeless that Bella could not have stood waiting for an answer without loss of self-control and tears of pity and frustration.

She left the room and stood on the landing opposite the lift doors. These suddenly opened and a piteous group of people moved slowly over to the room Bella had just left -- they seemed as if drawn there on an ever shortening thread.

Over to the left Bella saw a door to another room. The door was unlocked, but the room empty. Rows of benches faced two windows above which was a sign bearing the words: "Appointment holders wait here. Your name will be called at the appointed time." You could wait here a lifetime and never have satisfaction.

Here was a system supposed to care for and help those who needed it. Instead it gave you nothing. No, that wasn't true, it didn't dare give you nothing. That would be too definite, too cut-and-dried, too much like an answer to your plea. Instead it gave you the forms, the questions you didn't know how to answer, the delay before the inevitable mistake or refusal.

"It is dangerous to allow children on the window sill," read another notice underneath the window. Bella looked down and saw the people moving below, crawling like carrion flies over the s.h.i.t-heap carca.s.s of their city. There would be a poetic justice about it all -- the city getting the filth it deserved, and the flies by similar token winning their carrion -- were it not for the fact that the flies were actually people; a fact which dwindled to a possibility, easily refutable, from this ivory tower.

There was a second door on the other side of the room. Bella went through into a long, narrow room, part.i.tioned on the left of the aisle into cubicles. Chair, gla.s.s, desk, chair; six times repeated. No people, no papers, nothing. At the end, walls and two doors sectioned off a cubicle. From within came a noise, scuffling and m.u.f.fled sounds of movement. Bella beat a hasty retreat, not wishing to be apprehended where she probably was not supposed to be. Back on the landing Bella waited for the lift to come. She looked out of the window down to the roof of the Archway Tavern where a person stood looking up at her. Even at that distance she recognized the laughing face. She swung round and nearly b.u.mped into a man emerging from a door which could only lead to the room where she'd heard the noise. He pointed hideous grinning features at her. The lift arrived and she dived into it. The face was in the lift. She thrust her hands back through the gap and forced the doors open to let her out. She looked about wildly and saw a sign, "Fire Exit." The swing doors banged behind her and she clattered down the cold stone steps.

Her eye was drawn to the yellow stickers, which decorated the gray walls of the staircase. "ASBESTOS," she read. "This material must not be worked in any way without written permission from the PSA District Works Officer. Accidental damage should be reported immediately to line manager." Here within the skeleton of the building one became aware of the rotten core, potentially mortally dangerous; the truth to which the lift pa.s.sengers, ferried up and down through the bowels and guts of the tower, remained oblivious.

Bella came out into Junction Road and was accosted by a red-faced derelict who asked her for twenty pence. She stepped aside -- he would only drink it -- and left him to the charity of wealthier pedestrians.

Twice she walked back past the church -- her mind all indecision -- before actually going in for the Friday evening service. Her parents had brought her up to believe. She hadn't set foot inside a church, however, for as long as she could remember. The faces around her were solemn, the service also. She'd come for solace -- there was little enough to be found elsewhere -- and ended up condemning her naivete in thinking that the old lie, if believed in, might help when other sources couldn't. When she came out of the church, the sharp pointed face on the other side of the road laughed at her before retreating into the shadows of a dark alleyway. She was made to feel humiliated for trespa.s.sing where she didn't belong, like a wounded soldier seeking help in the enemy camp. Guilt followed close upon this shame and she was unable to shake it off, even when home with the doors locked and blinds down. Solitary in her prison she felt threatened from without: lonely yet not alone.

Loneliness had proved the stronger and Bella had wrapped herself up in a warm coat and gone out. She'd found one pub off Holloway Road, which wasn't, as the others had appeared to be, colonized by drunken Irishmen. She'd made herself be congenial and had accepted the offer of a drink, which a man called Brian Monkton had made her.

"These are my friends here. Colleagues really," said Monkton. "We're journalists."

"Right," said Bella. "I've never met any journalists before, I don't think."

"Well, I hope you like us. We're going to a party soon. Not far from here.

You can come too if you like."

"Thanks, I think I will."

"What do you do, then? Sorry, what's your name again?"

"Bella."

"Bella. That's right. Lovely name. So, anyway, Bella, what do you do?"

She felt unable to admit she was unemployed. It might be a stigma among these journalists, whose company was better than none.

"I work in the restaurant business."

"Oh right, what, waitress?"