The Spectral Book of Horror Stories (22 page)

And then he came out of the barn and walked up to me, standing there looking hesitant and soaked to the skin. His hair hung to his chest in sodden tendrils and he had to blink water from his eyes. Just another wet guy in the rain.

“Are you ready to take him back?” he asked.

“If that’s what you want,” I said. “What changed your mind?”

He started to say something, then shook his head. Nothing he wanted to articulate, to admit to. He just pushed past me, inside the cottage.

“I need to get the BZD, put him to sleep for the trip,” was all he said.

A part of me was relieved—the better part, I hoped. But another part of me was deeply disappointed. Because I was curious. I’d felt the currents churning around us, in the fabric of earth and rock and trees and sky. I’d seen
something
in the hayloft, be it manifest form or fleeting intelligence. I was ready to believe that nothing might be true, that everything might be permitted. Tomas—or Ghast—had persuaded me of that much.

So I wondered what would’ve happened next, if his nerve had held out a little longer.

Syringe in hand, Tomas—just Tomas—pushed past me again and returned to the barn.

And the rain hammered down.

I knew him well enough to suspect that this surrender of plans was something he’d want to handle without an audience, so I waited a couple minutes. Then a couple more. How long did it take to sedate one guy, anyway?

At least it doesn’t take any special powers to know when something’s not right.

So now it was my turn to get soaked to the skin.

I found Tomas on the barn floor, beneath the anvil. The enormous anvil heavy enough to anchor a man in place for three days. His chest and ribcage were as caved in as the bones of a serpent run over on the highway. But it hadn’t only hit him there. He’d taken a blow to the head, as well.

Put it this way: he no longer needed makeup to look like a nightmare.

And Derrick Yardley? He was as far away as ten feet of chain would allow, every last inch of it, wide-eyed and pressed against a support beam as if he wanted to merge with it. He was trying to talk. He just wasn’t there yet.

I looked up at the hayloft.

By day, the barn’s shadows retreated higher, and I followed them, drawn by movement that I sensed more than saw. But something was up there, and whether it scurried or flowed I couldn’t say, this malformed collective of rat and owl and snake… and now goat. The pen was empty. I followed its path up the sloping underside of the roof, until it reached the peak and kept going through the angled juncture, as if squeezing through a crack in time.

With nothing more to see overhead, I looked at Tomas again, not merely killed, but demolished. If I had to ascribe motivation to something beyond understanding, I’d have to say it was disappointed in him.

“It said it didn’t have much time,” Derrick Yardley finally got out, in a halting voice. “It said I’m more their servant than he ever was. What did it mean?”

He looked at me, pleading yet cunning, as if I were supposed to have his answers.

“What did it mean?
”

When I left, I closed the barn door behind me, and would’ve chained it shut, except the only chain I knew of was attached to Derrick Yardley already. I had a sense that it wouldn’t matter for long, anyway.

As the rain let up, anyone could feel it in the air.

THE OCTOBER WIDOW

Angela Slatter

Mirabel Morgan suspected herself hunted, though she’d caught no trace of whoever pursued her.

She was careful when she left the house, keeping a weather eye on the rear-view mirror, but able to discern no particular vehicle standing out from those sharing the road with her. At night, she made sure to close the curtains well before darkness fell, when lights might pick her out as a target against the evening gloom. Yet no one appeared on the pavement or stoop, there were no raps at the door, no envelopes in the mailbox. No sign that she should flee. She watched the calendar tick over with inexorable certainty and, as the day paced closer, the grid of nerves inside her chest tightened like wires pulled by circus strongmen. Tendrils of white had appeared at her temples regular as clockwork, and her face, though still handsome, had crow’s feet radiating from the corners of her eyes, and lines formed parentheses from nose to mouth. The chin was less firm than it had been, but her cheekbones still soared high, kept her profile patrician. Her knuckles were swollen, like dough sewn with yeast and carelessly kneaded, furrows left embedded. They’d been aching since the temperatures had lowered, the same gnawing pain that afflicted her at this time. Made it harder to do things when she most needed to be agile if not sprightly. Every cycle she told herself that the next would be different, that she’d be better prepared. Yet each turning she did the bare minimum, ensuring the new abode was liveable, then went off to enjoy her annual youth while it lasted. In the garden, the leaves changed colours, swapped out their green for amber and yellow, ochre and sepia. Those so inclined fell and were carried off on the biting breeze. The sky, perpetually iron-grey at this point, was occasionally lightened by white clouds, however more often darkened to thunderous black. The vegetables and flowers had died, turned dry and shrivelled. She didn’t plant fruit trees any more for she moved so often, and hated to watch them wither prematurely as they inevitably synched with her eternal, truncated rhythm. The small town of Ashdown had served her well, and she in turn had served it, bringing all the boons attendant upon the October Widow’s tenure. The secret tithes she took seemed, to her, rather insignificant. The tiny offerings that staved off the moment when a larger one had to be made.

#

Henry did as he usually did and went straight around the back of the house, to the little shed where Mrs Morgan kept her hand-mower. He was late, but he knew the older woman wouldn’t mind. “As long as it’s done by nightfall on Friday, Henry, I don’t care what part of Friday you do it!” she’d said. But he liked to be reliable. He liked her to know that she could count on him. This morning his pickup had a punctured tyre; it looked as though a knife had been stuck into the tread, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out who would want to do him an ill turn. He’d taken his brother’s battered VW instead of wasting time changing the flat.He began where he always did, out the front, with its tiny patches of grass broken up by flower beds filled with dead plants. The rose bushes looked especially sad, bare but for their thorns and the crinkled brown remains of red and pink blooms. The mower was stubborn, though he’d oiled it only last week, and took more than a few enthusiastic shoves before the blades loosened and did their job. He hated the thing, but enjoyed the workout it gave. If it were a bit warmer he’d have his hoodie and T-shirt off so the three teenage girls who lived next door could peek out and watch him sweat and glisten in the afternoon sun. But that time was done, the season passed. Too cold now for such exhibitionism; he had to keep his peacock preening to the public bar in the evenings until next summer.He moved into the back, which was the easier spot, the vegetable beds running along the side fences, out of the way, leaving the rest a clear run right up to the edge of the property where lawn met woods in a hard line. The garden did not gradually grow wild and blend into a creeping foliage that led to full-blown forest. Just ended in a stern demarcation line between the tame and the uncultivated. A creak and a tumbling sound snapped his head up to see three crows flapping and finding new perches; their previous branch had broken and hit the ground just as he looked. Black eyes regarded him, curiously, somehow fondly. There must have been something dead in the undergrowth he decided, or dying. They were waiting until it was weak enough.He reached the boundary and turned the recalcitrant machine. The curtains on the kitchen window twitched aside. Mrs Morgan stood at the sink, giving him a wide smile. She made the usual hand gestures:
Come inside when you’re finished, I’ll make you a hot drink
. And there’d be buns too, freshly baked, warm enough to melt the butter and run the thick raspberry jam thin. She’d put a little whiskey in his coffee:
Irish it up
, she’d say like she always did. And she’d smile and he’d smile back, watch her as she moved around the small kitchen, never still, but never hurried, always assured, seemingly always in the spot where she was meant to be. And he’d watch how her hips swayed, how her breath made the breasts covered by her lilac blouse shift up and down, how shapely her calves were beneath the hem of the black skirt. How her face was shaped just like a sweetheart, her lips full, her skin creamy, her eyes not quite blue and not quite green but caught somewhere between. How any wrinkles were shallow and made by laughter not loss. How graceful her hands, her wrists, her fingers were as they reached towards him to lead him upstairs so he might see to Mirabel Morgan’s other needs.

#

Cecil Davis, despite his grief and rage, had not become sloppy in anything but his personal hygiene. If the woman had gotten wind of his presence, she’d have fled, he was certain, no matter how invested she was in remaining in Ashdown. He’d tracked her for so long and, having found her, rented a house two doors down and on the opposite side of the street. It gave him an uninterrupted view of her property. He kept the curtains closed, but affixed cameras under the eaves, trained them on the woman’s cottage. The place had come furnished, which was convenient, but hadn’t mattered one way or the other to him. He’d have happily brought along the sleeping bag and air mattress he’d once used for camping and then, later still, for surveillance after…He’d even managed to plant a GPS tracking device on her car, something impossible to notice unless you were actively looking for it. He didn’t have to leave his four walls, just stared at the monitors he had rigged up so he could keep an eye on her comings and goings while he still managed to run his software support business from a separate laptop. The business he’d hoped to pass on now had as its sole purpose keeping the money coming in to fund his mission.She was going by
Mrs Morgan
now, though his researches showed she recycled her names as she went, different ones each time, no discernable pattern, but he’d learned them, if not all then many. Knowing what to look for meant he had found her at last, though it took him seven years. Seven years of hacking utilities records, bank records, seeing patterns, recognising names, catching the scent. As much as anything it was his willingness to believe in strange things when no one else would.It had taken all his determination, all the internal resources that had made him a successful businessman, to keep him focused. To keep him going after…Of course, he could only watch the exterior of the house. He’d not gone into her home, couldn’t bring himself to do that, though he’d never admit it was fear. It was caution, pure and simple.
Caution
, he’d have said if there’d been anyone to talk to about it; if the police in Ottery St Mary’s had listened with anything but pity, or the parents in the other small villages he’d gone to after…The young man who did the gardening was there again, in spite of the penknife Cecil had stuck in the back tyre of his vehicle, trying to put an obstacle in his way. Cecil had to admit it hadn’t been a very effective obstacle. He was aware that if he approached the man, tried to tell him what he knew, he’d come across as a nutter; that the lad would back away, go straight to the woman and warn her. Though he’d let things like bathing and general grooming fall by the wayside, Cecil knew there were some illusions he needed to keep intact.He’d do what he could to protect the lad, within reason. He was someone’s son after all, and Cecil had no wish for another father, another mother, to go through what he had; to wake and find their boy gone forever, become no more than motes of dust on the wind. He blinked as thoughts of Gil, tall and strong, young and vital, made heated tears rise, made the tendons of his heart thrum deep and discordant.Cecil looked away from the screens, to the corner of the sitting room, where his gear lay in a pile. He still wasn’t sure what to take with him. He knew where she would be, where she’d been going these past weeks, the place she had been preparing. But he didn’t know what to take, what would work, he didn’t really know
what
she was.He only knew that when he confronted her there would be no words, no recriminations, no time wasting that might give her a moment’s chance to escape. He doubted she remembered Gil. He doubted she remembered any, certainly not by name. He suspected there had been so many she couldn’t keep track of them all.No. No words. Whatever he might say didn’t matter. Wouldn’t matter. It was only what he
did
tomorrow evening that mattered.

#

She lay back, listening to Henry’s heavy footsteps retreating down the stairs, the rattling of the pipes as he ran a shower. The smell of him was strong in her nostrils, the sweat from manual labour ever an aphrodisiac. He’d been worried, when they first started this, that she’d become pregnant. She’d laughed so hard at the idea he’d been offended, thought she was impugning his fertility, his God-given right to get her up the duff. He’d required stroking, reassuring, promises that it wasn’t him but
her
. In their months together he’d had no more cause for complaint; his time might be brief but she gave him the best of herself, helped him live full. He got what he wanted and she took pleasure in it too; taught him a few things that had made his eyes grow round. Taught him a few more things she didn’t mind if he tried out on others, younger women. She was not jealous, did not need his singular adoration; considered her lessons a gift.
You’re welcome
.The mattress beneath her was soft and she gave it a fond pat. A fine thing that had done good service. She wasn’t always so lucky when she rented a new house: fully furnished was essential for her lifestyle. Having to pick up and pack everything once a year was a burden she’d long ago dispensed with. Only ever own what you can’t do without. Only ever have essential things that you can fit in a single small bag. Travel lightly, live deeply, serve faithfully.And she had done that. Done it for so long she could barely remember when she hadn’t been what she’d become. What she was. Could barely remember a time before that first fire, that first night, before she took the mantle from the one before her. She saw no time in front of her, either, when she might relinquish the position. It was her duty, her obligation, her keeping of faith. She would not let it go easily. Besides, where might she find someone to replace her?Sometimes it was hard, she admitted, to maintain such single-minded devotion when the world around her changed quickly, quickly. Much more so than before. Difficult to be a fixed point in a whirling universe, holding to an idea, a certainty, an allegiance, a moral obligation. She took some comfort when the core of things stayed true: soul cakes had become candy, but the idea of
benefaction
was still there.And the fires.The fires were always lit.The fires remained.And the sacrifices could still be made, though the ideas underpinning them drew cries and condemnations in this soft society. Still they were needful things; if only people appreciated that something had to be given back in order for the wheel to spin, for the earth to bloom anew. A child lost here, a pet taken there; the tiny sacrifices that kept the world going until the larger giving might happen.She did not like to take small girls, little cauldrons of life that they were, so much potential lost when their flame guttered. An unhelpful sacrifice that almost lost more than it gained. But the wee boys… ah, the boys were like tadpoles, only good for Mischief Night pranks, and so many of them spawned… how could one or three be missed? How could they be seen as anything but small coin in return for the greatest gift?But no one thought like her any more. Or no one worthwhile. Murderers, cultists, wasters, and nihilists, who neither knew nor cared what they did. Whose killings and leavings brought no benefit, just the brief satisfaction of destruction for the individual.No, no one thought like her any more. That was why she’d had to prepare the glade on the wooded tor herself, prepare the fire alone; there were no acolytes nowadays, no pretty maids to do the grunt work; her only handmaidens were black and feathered, sharp-eyed and beaked. She grinned. Just her, lugging branches, oak and larch and yew, collecting the smaller tinder, and constructing it all into something that resembled a bed, a bier, a pyre. Threading it with mistletoe, mandrake, mugwort and rue. Doing what was required for when the doors between life and un-life opened and the dead danced through, to visit loved ones or to exact vengeance on rivals and enemies.Downstairs the closing of the front door sounded. Henry was gone. Strangely, she felt bereft. She rolled onto her side, curled into a ball and closed her eyes, slowed her breathing, commanding her body to sleep deep and late. Soon the changes would come and she would need all her energy for the next night.