The Best New Horror 2 (54 page)

Using chimneys to steady himself, the stinking guttershite ran across the rooftops. He had his revolver out, and fired blindly into the darkness behind him, panic tearing him apart from the inside. Then, he came to the end of his run.

He stood calmly, arms folded, his cloak flapping in the breeze, silhouetted sharply against the fiery skyline. The thin lips formed a smile, and the child-raping libellous Israelite scum knew he was justly dead.

“Hello, Harry,” said Dr Shade.

—Donald Moncrieff, “Dr Shade, Jew Killer”
(unpublished, 1942)

“Hello, Harry,” said Greg, jiggling the phone in the regulation hopeless attempt to improve a bad connection, “I thought we’d been cut off . . .”

Harry sounded as if he were in Jakarta, not three stops away on the District Line. “So there I was, face to goggles with Dr Shade.”

He could make it sound funny now, hours later.

“The guy was on his way to the masquerade. There are always people in weird outfits at these things. He had all the details right, airgun and all.”

Greg had called Harry from his hotel room to tell him about all the excitement the Return of Dr Shade was generating with the fans. Kids whose parents hadn’t been born when the Argus went out of business were eagerly awaiting the comeback of the cloaked crimefighter.

“Obviously, the Doc has percolated into our folk memory, Harry. Or maybe Leech is right. It’s just time to have him back.”

His panel had gone well. The questions from the audience had almost all been directed at him, and he had had to field some to the other panelists so as not to hog the whole platform. The fans had been soliciting for information. Yes, Penny Stamp would be back, but she wouldn’t be a girl reporter any more. Yes, the Doctor’s Rolls Royce “Shadowshark” would be coming out of the garage, with more hidden tricks than ever. Yes, the Doctor would be dealing with the contemporary problems of East London. When someone asked if the proprietor of the paper would be exerting any influence over the content of the strip, Greg replied “well, he hasn’t so far,” and got cheers by claiming, “I don’t think Dr Shade is a
Comet
reader, somehow.” Somebody even knew enough to ask him to compare the Donald Moncrieff Rex Cash with the Harry Lipman Rex Cash. He had conveyed best wishes to the con from Harry, and praised the writer’s still-active imagination.

At the other end of the line, Harry sounded tired. Sometimes, Greg had to remind himself how old the man was. He wondered whether the call had woken him up.

“We’ve even had some American interest, maybe in republishing the whole thing as a monthly book, staggered behind the newspaper series. I’m having Tamara investigate. She thinks we can do it without tithing off too much of the money to Derek Leech, but rights deals are tricky. Also, Condé Nast, the corporate heirs of Street and Smith, have a long memory and still think Moncrieff ripped off The Shadow in the ’30s. Still, it’s worth going into.”

Harry tried to sound enthusiastic.

“Are you okay, Harry?”

He said so, but somehow Greg didn’t believe him. Greg checked his watch. He had agreed to meet Neil and a few other friends in the bar in ten minutes. He said goodnight to Harry, and hung up.

Wanting to change his panelist’s jacket for a drinker’s pullover, Greg delved through the suitcase perched on the regulation anonymous armchair. He found the jumper he needed, and transferred his convention badge from lapel to epaulette. Under the suitcase, he found the bundle of
Dr Shade Monthlies
he had bought for Harry. He hadn’t mentioned them on the phone.

Harry couldn’t have got back to bed yet. He’d barely be in the hall. Greg stabbed the REDIAL button, and listened to the clicking of the exchange. Harry’s phone rang again.

The shadows in the room seemed longer. When Harry didn’t pick up immediately, Greg’s first thought was that something was wrong. He imagined coronaries, nasty falls, fainting spells, the infirmities of the aged. The telephone rang. Ten, twenty, thirty times.

Harry couldn’t have got back to bed and fallen into a deep sleep in twenty seconds.

You also couldn’t get a wrong number on a phone with a REDIAL facility.

The phone was picked up at the other end.

“Hello,” said a female voice, young and hard, “who’s this then?”

“Harry,” Greg said. “Where’s Harry?”

“’E’s got a bit of a problem, mate,” the girl said. “But we’ll see to ’im.”

Greg was feeling very bad about this. The girl on the phone didn’t sound like a concerned neighbour. “Is Harry ill?”

A pause. Greg imagined silent laughter. There was music in the background. Not Harry Lipman music, but tinny Heavy Metal, distorted by a cheap boombox and the telephone. Suddenly, Greg was down from his high, the good feeling and the alcohol washed out of his system.

“Hello?”

“Still here,” the girl said.

“Is Harry ill?”

“Well, I’ll put it this way,” she said, “we’ve sent for the doctor.”

Evidence has come to light linking Derek Leech, the man at the top of the pyramid, with a linked chain of dubious right-wing organizations here and abroad. A source inside the Leech organization, currently gearing up to launch a new national evening paper, revealed to our reporter, DUNCAN EYLES, that while other press barons diversify into the electronic media and publishing, Derek Leech has his eye on a more direct manner of influencing the shape of the nation.

“Derek has been underwriting the election campaigns of parliamentary candidates in the last few by-elections,” the source told us. “They mostly lost their deposits. Patrick Massinghame, the Britain First chairman who later rejoined the Tories, was one. The idea was not to take a seat, but to use the campaigns to disseminate propaganda. The
Comet
has always been anti-immigration, pro-law-and-order, anti-anything-socialist, pro-hanging-and-flogging, pro-military spending, pro-political-censorship. But the campaigns were able to be rabidly so.”

Leech, who has regularly dismissed similar allegations as “lunatic conspiracy theories,” refused to comment on documents leaked to us which give facts and figures. In addition to funding Patrick Massinghame and others of his political stripe, Leech has contributed heavily to such bizarre causes as the White Freedom Crusade, which channels funds from British and American big business into South Africa, the English Liberation Front, who claim that immigrants from the Indian Sub-Continent and the Caribbean constitute “an army of occupation” and should be driven out through armed struggle, the Revive Capital Punishment lobby, and even Caucasian supremacist thrashmetal band Whitewash, whose single “Blood, Iron and St George” was banned by the BBC and commercial radio stations but still managed to reach Number 5 in the independent charts.

Even more disturbing in the light of these allegations, is the paramilitary nature of the security force Leech is employing to guard the pyramid that is at the heart of his empire. Recruiting directly from right-wing youth gangs, often through advertisements placed in illiterate but suspiciously well produced and printed fanzines distributed at football matches, the Leech organization has been assembling what can only be described as an army of yobs to break the still-continuing print-union pickets in docklands. Our source informs us that the pyramid contains a well-stocked armoury, as if the proprietor of the
Comet
and the forthcoming
Argus
were expecting a siege. Rumour has it that Leech has even invested in a custom-made Rolls Royce featuring such unusual extras as bullet-proof bodywork, James Bond-style concealed rocket launchers, a teargas cannon and bonnet-mounted stilettos.

Derek Leech can afford all the toys he wants. But perhaps it’s about time we started to get worried about the games he wants to play . . .

—
Searchlight
, August 1991.

*

The minicab driver wouldn’t take him onto the estate no matter what he offered to pay, and left him stranded at the kerb. At night, the place was even less inviting than by day. There were wire-mesh protected lights embedded in concrete walls every so often, but skilled vandals had got through to them. Greg knew that dashing into the dark maze would do no good, and forced himself to study the battered, graffiti-covered map of the estate that stood by the road. He found Harry’s house on the map easily. By it, someone had drawn a stickman hanging from a gallows. It was impossible to read a real resemblance into the infant’s scrawl of a face, but Greg knew it was supposed to represent Harry.

He walked towards the house, so concerned for Harry Lipman that he forgot to be scared for himself. That was a mistake.

They came from an underpass, and surrounded him. He got an impression of Union Jack T-shirts and shaven heads. Studded leather straps wrapped around knuckles. They only seemed to hit him four or five times, but it was enough.

He turned his head with the first blow, and felt his nose flatten into his cheek. Blood was seeping out of his instantly swollen nostrils, and he was cut inside his mouth. He shook his head, trying to dislodge the pain. They stood back, and watched him yelp blood onto his chest. He was still wearing his convention tag.

Then one of them came in close, breathed foully in his face, and put a knee into his groin. He sagged, crying out, and felt his knees going. They kicked his legs, and he was on the ground. His ribs hurt.

“Come on, P,” one of them said, “’e’s ’ad ’is. Let’s scarper.”

“Nahh,” said a girl—the one he had talked to on the telephone?—as she stepped forwards. “’e’s not properly done yet.”

Greg pressed his nostrils together to stanch the blood, and realized his nose wasn’t broken. There was a lump rising on his cheek, though. He looked into the girl’s face.

She was young, maybe fifteen or sixteen, and there was blonde fur on her skull. Her head was lumpy, and the skinhead cut made her child’s face seem small, as if painted on an Easter egg. He had seen her the last time he was here. She wore Britannia earrings, and had a rare right-way-round swastika tattooed in blue on her temple.

“Come on . . .”

P smiled at him, and licked her lips like a cat. “Do you need telling any more, Mr Artist?”

The others were bunched behind her. She was small and wiry, but they were like hulks in the shadows.

“Do you get the picture?”

Greg nodded. Anything, just so long as they let him alone. He had
to get to Harry.

“Good. Draw well, ’cause we’ll be watching over you.”

Lights came on in a house opposite, and he got a clearer look at their faces. Apart from P, they weren’t kids. They were in the full skinhead gear, but on them it looked like a disguise. There were muffled voices from the house, and the lights went off again.

“Kick ’im, Penelope,” said someone.

P smiled again. “Nahh, Bazzo. ’e knows what’s what, now. We don’t want to hurt ’im. ’e’s important. Ain’t ya, Mr Artist?”

Greg was standing up again. There was nothing broken inside his head, but he was still jarred. His teeth hurt, and he spat out a mouthful of blood.

“Dirty beast.”

His vision was wobbling. P was double-exposed, a bubble fringe shimmering around her outline.

“Goodnight,” said P. “Be good.”

Then they were gone, leaving only shadows behind them. Greg ran across the walkway, vinegar-stained pages of the
Comet
swirling about his ankles. Harry’s front door was hanging open, the chain broken, and the hallway was lit up.

Greg found him in his kitchen, lying on the floor, his word processor slowly pouring a long manuscript onto him. The machine rasped as it printed out.

He helped Harry sit up, and got him a teacup of water from the tap. They hadn’t hurt him too badly, although there was a bruise on his forehead. Harry was badly shaken. Greg had never seen him without his teeth in, and he was drooling like a baby, unconsciously wiping his mouth on his cardigan sleeve. He was trying to talk, but couldn’t get the words out.

The phone was ripped out of the wall. The printer was scratching Greg’s nerves. He sat at the desk, and tried to work out how to shut it off without losing anything. He wasn’t familiar with this model.

Then, he looked at the continuous paper. It was printing out a draft of the first month of new Dr Shade scripts. Greg couldn’t help but read what was coming out of the machine.

It wasn’t what he had been working on. It wasn’t even in script form. But Harry had written it, and he would be expected to draw it.

Unable to control his shaking, Greg read on.

“I’m sorry,” said Harry. “It was Him. They brought Him here. He was here before Donald started writing Him. He’ll always be here.”

Greg turned to look at the old man. Harry was standing over him, laying a hand on his shoulder. Greg shook his head, and Harry sadly nodded.

“It’s true. We’ve always known, really.”

Beyond Harry was his hallway. Beyond that, the open door allowed Greg to see into the night. The shadowman was out there, laughing . . .

. . . the laughter faded into the noise of the printer.

Greg read on.

He thought for a moment before selecting the face he would wear tonight. The Chambers identity was wearing thin, limiting him too much. These were troubled times, and stricter methods were required. He considered all the people he had been, listed the names, paged through their faces.

Sitting behind the desk at the tip of the glass and steel pyramid, he felt the thrill of power. Out there in the night cowered the Crack dealers and the anarchists, the blacks and the yellows, the traitors and the slackers. Tonight they would know he was back.

The press baron was a useful face. It had helped him gain a purchase on these new times, given him a perspective on the sorry state of the nation.

He thought of the true patriots who had been rejected. Oswald Mosley, Unity Mitford, William Joyce, Donald Moncrieff. And the false creatures who had succeeded them. This time, things would be different. There would be no bowing to foreign interests.

He fastened his cloak at his throat, and peeled off the latest mask. Smiling at the thin-lipped reflection in the dark mirror of the glass, he pulled on the goggles.