The Mammoth Book of Terror (15 page)

He sighed. “There would be if people weren’t so provincial in their attitudes about giving up the hides. The tanneries are offering a good price for them. I don’t understand
some people. Anyway, we have to import from the Third World. India is a great source.”

Denise picked up another, smaller bag of a similar shade. So soft, so smooth, just like Helene’s.

“Indian, too?”

“Yes, but that’s a little more expensive. That’s male.”

She looked at him questioningly.

His eyes did a tiny roll. “They hardly ever abort males in India. Only females. Two thousand-to-one.”

Denise put it down and picked up a similar model, glossy, ink black. This would be a perfect accent to so many of her ensembles.

“Now that’s—”

“Please don’t tell me anything about it. Just the price.”

He told her. She repressed a gasp. That would just about empty her account of the money she’d put aside for all her fashion bargains. On one item. Was it worth it?

She reached into her old pocketbook, the now dowdy-looking Fendi, and pulled out her gold MasterCard. Rolf smiled and lifted it from her fingers.

Minutes later she was back among the
hoi polloi
in the main shopping area, but she wasn’t one of them. She’d been where they couldn’t go, and that gave her special
feeling.

Before leaving Blume’s, Denise put her Fendi in the store bag and hung the new foet bag over her arm. The doorman gave her a big smile as he passed her through to the sidewalk.

The afternoon was dying and a cold wind had sprung up. She stood in the fading light with the wind cutting her like an icy knife and suddenly she felt horrible.

I’m toting a bag made from the skin of an unborn child.

Why? Why had she bought it? What had possessed her to spend that kind of money on such a ghoulish . . .
artifact
? Because that was just what it was – not an accessory, an
artifact.

She opened the store bag and reached in to switch the new foet for her trusty Fendi. She didn’t want to be seen with it.

And Brian! Good God, how was she going to tell Brian?

Brian never talked with food in his mouth. He had better manners than that. But Denise had just told him about Helene’s bag and at the moment his mouth, full of food, hung open as he
stared at her with wide eyes.

“Brian, please close your mouth.”

He swallowed. “
Helene
? Helene had something made of human skin?”

. . .not human . . . at least according to the Supreme Court . . .

“It’s called
foet
, Brian.”

“I know damn well what it’s called! They could call it chocolate mousse but it would still be human skin. They give it a weird name so people won’t look at them like
they’re a bunch of Nazis when they sell it! Helene – how could she?”

. . .
they’re already dead. Denise . . .

Brian’s tone became increasingly caustic. Denise felt almost as if he were talking to her.

“I don’t believe it! What’s got into her? One person kills an unborn child and the other makes the poor thing’s skin into a pocketbook! And Helene of all people! My God,
is that what a big pay raise and moving to Greenwich does to you?”

Denise barely heard Brian as he ranted on. Thank God she’d had the good sense not to tell him about her own bag. He’d have been apoplectic.

No doubt about it. She was going to return that bag as soon as she could get back into the city.

She pulled it out of the shopping bag and stared at it. Exquisite. Strange how a little extra time could turn your attitude around. The revulsion that had overwhelmed her right after she’d
bought it had faded. Perhaps because every day during the past week – a number of times each day, to be honest- she’d taken it out and looked at it, held it, caressed it. Inevitably,
its true beauty had shown through and captured her. Her initial beguilement had returned to the fore.

But the attraction went beyond mere beauty. This sort of accessory
said
something. Exactly what, she wasn’t sure. But she knew a bold fashion statement when she saw one. This
however was a statement she didn’t have quite the nerve to make. At least not in Fairfield. So different here in the city. The cosmopolitan atmosphere allowed the elite to flash their foet
– she liked the rhyme. She could be so very
in
here. But it would make her so very
out
in Fairfield – out of her home too, most likely.

Small minds. What did they know about fashion? In a few years they’d all be buying it. Right now, only the leaders wore it. And for a few moments she’d been a member of that special
club. Now she was about to resign.

As she turned to enter Blume’s, a Mercedes stretch limo pulled into the curb beside her. The driver hopped out and opened the door. A shapely brunette of about Denise’s age emerged.
She was wearing a dark grey short wrap coat of llama and kid over a long-sleeved crepe-jersey catsuit. In her hand was a black clutch purse with the unmistakable stitching of foet. Her eyes flicked
down to Denise’s new handbag, then back up to her face. She smiled. Not just a polite passing-stranger smile, but a warm, we-know-we’ve-got-style smile.

As Denise returned the smile, all doubt within her melted away as if it had never been. Suddenly she knew she was right. She knew what really mattered, what was important, where she had to be,
fashion-wise.

And Brian? Who said Brian had to know a thing about it? What did he know about fashion anyway?

Denise turned and strode down Fifth with her new foet bag swinging from her arm for all the world to see.

Screw them all. It made her feel good, like she was somebody. What else mattered?

She really had to make a point of getting into the city more often.

AFTER WORKING AS A
journalist and editor of a local newspaper, Basil Copper became a full-time writer in 1970. His first story in the horror field,
“The Spider”, was published in 1964 in
The Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories
, since when his short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, been extensively adapted for radio
and television, and collected in
Not After Nightfall, Here
Be Daemons, From Evil’s Pillow, And Afterward the Dark, Voices of Doom, When Footsteps Echo, Whispers in the Night
and
Cold Hand on
My Shoulder.

Along with two non-fiction studies of the vampire and werewolf legends, his other books include the novels
The Great White Space, The Curse of the Fleers, Necropolis, The Black Death
and
The House of the Wolf
Copper has also written more than fifty hardboiled thrillers about Los Angeles private detective Mike Faraday, and has continued the adventures of August
Derleth’s Sherlock Holmes-like consulting detective Solar Pons in several volumes of short stories and the novel
Solar Pons versus The Devil’s Claw
(actually written in 1980, but
not published until 2004 by Sarob Press with an Introduction by the late Richard Lancelyn Green).

The Hallowe’en story that follows has not been reprinted since its original appearance twenty years ago . . .

“I
T
’
S
H
ALLOWE
’
EN
TOMORROW
,” Kathy said.

Her father looked at her sharply. The little girl sat in the window seat watching the cold October wind send leaves whirling and scraping down the sidewalk beyond the broad strip of lawn which
separated the house from the street.

Kathy was ten now, small for her age, but with a rather strange, intense little face below the shock of blonde hair. Her eyes were the most extraordinary thing about her, Martin felt. They were
a vivid violet colour which seemed to penetrate deep within one; in fact, even though he was her father, she gave him an uneasy feeling sometimes. It was almost as though she could sense his
thoughts.

And that would never do, he felt, turning back to his work at the desk, answering the question with some banality, uneasily aware of Charlotte moving about somewhere upstairs in one of the
cavernous rooms of the big, old frame house.

Martin signed the cheque with a brittle scratching of the pen which seemed to echo unnaturally loudly above the soft crackle of the log fire which burned in the brick Colonial fireplace. He was
again aware of the little girl’s murmured remarks in the background.

“What was that?” he remarked irritably, clipping the cheque to the account and sealing it in the envelope.

Kathy still sat with her cheek pressed against the pane, watching the dusky street outside with rapt intensity.

“I’m going to have a nice skull,” she said firmly. “With a candle inside it. Better than the other children on the block.”

Martin bit back his first startled remark. He remembered then she had been talking about Hallowe’en. Tomorrow was the 31st.

He supposed she would dress up in sheets and wear a scary mask like the other youngsters and make the round of the neighbourhood houses on a trick or treat expedition. How tiresome it all
seemed, though once, many years ago, he had enjoyed it. Now he had other preoccupations.

“That will be nice, dear,” he said absently.

The little girl turned to him and gave a smile of great sweetness.

“A beautiful skull,” she said dreamily. “A skull for Hallowe’en.”

Martin bit back his rising irritation. He again turned to the desk, keeping his nerves under control with difficulty. There was something strange about the child; he hesitated to use the term,
even within the secret recesses of his own heart, but supernatural was not too strong a description. The child was an odd and unlikely fruit of a union such as his and Charlotte’s; the only
thing that had kept them together in twenty years of a lacerating marriage.

But it was all over. He would lose Janet if he hesitated any longer. He had everything planned. He stared down at the green leather surface of the desk, clasping his hands to prevent them
trembling, biting his lips until the blood came. There was no other way. He had decided to murder his wife.

He had thought it all out extremely carefully. It wanted only the necessary resolve on his part. Janet had given him that. With her delicate, esoteric beauty and warmth, her
vibrant personality, and smouldering sensuality, she epitomised everything Charlotte should have been and wasn’t. Charlotte was cold, bitter and revengeful; she suspected his affair with
Janet even if she didn’t actually know.

That suspicion had merely sharpened the knife and given a little extra venom to the barbs of her conversation; the war had gone on for long years, festering beneath the surface even when it did
not blaze into open resentment. It was time to end it all.

Martin glanced over at the innocent figure of his daughter, who had now turned her face to the window again. He was a clever man; a brilliant chemist with a multi-national corporation who had an
almost limitless future. But that future was now threatened. Janet was fifteen years younger than he. She would not wait for ever. She had hinted as much. One of these evenings she might even come
to the house.

Martin saw her three nights a week; it was a situation which might have continued for a long time in his case. It was not good enough for Janet. She had put the germ of the idea in
Martin’s mind, innocently enough. If only Charlotte would disappear, she had said. From that one remark had grown Martin’s plan. And he had not breathed a word of his scheme, even to
Janet.

He knew how to make people disappear; chemically, at least. He had a fully equipped workroom in the cellar with laboratory facilities. Discreetly, late at night, he had been moving in drums of
chemicals, carried from the city in the boot of his car. They had been purchased through his corporation and, due to the manipulation of invoices between one company and another, would now be
untraceable.

He had asked Charlotte to come down there before dinner, to discuss something important with him; he often worked at home. The suite of rooms below was warm and well equipped; there would be
nothing to arouse her suspicion. They often talked – or rather argued – there.

Martin caught a bitter smile on his mouth in the gracious oval mirror opposite; was conscious at the same moment that Kathy’s strange violet eyes were watching him. It was almost as though
every evil thought in his head was exposed to that candid gaze. He changed his expression to normal, waited until the child had turned away again.

Kathy was the problem. She and her mother were very close. She would be immediately suspicious at Charlotte’s disappearance. She would be at school early in the morning of course; the
housekeeper usually got her breakfast and saw her to the bus. Charlotte always slept late and she and Martin had long occupied separate rooms.

Kathy would be in bed before nine o’clock tonight. After tomorrow Kathy would not matter. She might be suspicious but she was a mere child and in no position to prove anything. Janet would
not want her custody; that was for certain. Perhaps his brother-in-law and his wife would take her. That was a problem best left for the future.