Best New Horror #26, page 29
In the corner of his eye he caught a brief flash of white against the outer darkness of the lawns and then a crash and tinkle of breaking glass sounded in the shadows at the far end of the room. One of the barn owls must have dashed itself against the glass of the library again, he thought, no doubt attracted by the glimmer of lights inside. He saw that the lower part of the window had been completely smashed by the impact and a glittering spray of shards littered the floor of the room inside. The shattered remains of the windowpane were covered with the same dusty traces as before, but there was nothing to be seen either within or without the library walls.
Leventhorp felt utterly alone in the midnight emptiness of Gaulsford and was seized by a sudden unaccountable chill of anxiety. The National Trust had installed a central fuse-box by the main desk, which controlled all the internal and external lighting in the house, and he ran and grappled with the switches until the entire building was a blaze of light. Outside, the blue-grey nocturnal landscape of the lawns brightened as if at the impending approach of dawn, but the shadows cast by the house lights were deeper, more impenetrable, more concealing.
The lights of the upper landing came on behind him and he turned and gaped at the scene of wanton destruction which had been revealed on the Great Staircase.
The Leventhorp family portraits had been utterly defaced by some unseen hand. Each one had had its face roughly scraped away just as on the medieval rood screen at Brockstone, and to his disgust he saw that his own portrait had not been spared the outrage. He climbed up the stairs past each ruined picture until he came to the remnants of his own self-commissioned likeness. His face had been gouged out in a series of deep scars through the canvas and, as if to heighten the atrocity, a single eye remained visible between the vicious stripes, peering out sorrowfully from the midst of the surrounding carnage.
Clearly a gang of local yobs had found their way inside somehow and had embarked on a vandalism spree. If they came across him in the midst of their mindless rampage he would probably end up with a good kicking, or worse. He needed to raise the alarm with the security guard, and somewhere on the upper floor, he remembered, was a house phone. As he hurried along the corridor he noticed a roll of crumpled linen, about four or five feet in length, lying in front of the door to one of the bedchambers. A dust-sheet, thought Leventhorp in passing, fallen from one the housekeepers’ baskets perhaps, while they were closing up the house. But as he moved closer, the fabric began to stir fitfully as if animated by a network of unseen puppet strings and he paused and watched with incredulous fascination as slowly, and with a snakelike undulation, it began to creep across the floor towards him, leaving a faint spoor of whitish dust in its wake.
At the last instant Leventhorp recognised it not as a piece of forgotten household linen, but as a foul and decaying roll of ancient grave cloth. And at that very moment, the creature within raised itself semi-erect like some hooded serpent to reveal the expressionless and desiccated face of one dead for centuries. Around its withered neck was traced a band of twisted flesh, the eternal imprint of the hangman’s rope. The sightless eye-sockets were crammed full with the festering dirt of the grave, and a forked tongue flickered back and forth from within the crumbling jaws, tasting the air like a ravenous viper seeking out its prey.
Leventhorp staggered back to the main bedchamber, slamming the door shut on the awful vision, but there was no lock or bolt with which to secure it. He looked around in desperation for some means of escape, but the drop from the upper windows was too great to attempt. There was only one place of concealment left to him: the priest hole.
He crammed his body inside the tiny space, and pulled the panel of wainscoting closed behind him. As he cowered in the suffocating darkness, he now realised its true significance. Sir Samuel Leventhorp was no secret Catholic, there were no renegade priests sheltering in his house, and there never had been. The priest hole had been made for himself alone. It was a sanctuary, a castle keep, a refuge of last resort from the tormenting demon sent by Dame Sadleir to plague him and his descendants. Despite his terror, vague recollections of Sunday School scripture lessons came whispering to him, echoes of yet another vengeful incantation: the awful words of Psalm 58, which now bore a stark and literal relevance.
The wicked are estranged from the womb
Their poison is like the poison of a serpent
They are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear…
Through the wainscoting Leventhorp heard the door of the bedchamber slowly creak open inch by agonising inch and the dark air around him seemed to thicken with the stench of decay. Then a knock came at the panelling beside him: polite, gentle, a dainty rat-tat-tat of someone requesting an entrance…
The sadly premature death of Sir Jonathan Leventhorp came, paradoxically, as rather a boon to the National Trust, because a codicil in the original deed of bequest meant that the remainder of the estate and trust fund became their prerogative with the extinction of the family title after ten generations.
The priest hole is still featured on the house tour, but thankfully for the long-suffering guide, no visitors have yet had the insensitivity to mention the unfortunate accident that occurred within its confines. Though some, thinking themselves out of earshot, will still mutter amongst themselves as they gaze into its dark airless cavity:
“That’s where they found him, you know. They say he had some sort of nervous breakdown and destroyed all the ancient family portraits that used to hang in the stairway. And he was missing for a full week before anyone even thought of looking for him in the priest hole. The police reckoned he squeezed himself inside somehow, but then couldn’t open the panel to get out again and went stark staring mad from being locked up alone in the darkness.
A pretty sight he was too when they found him. Tore his own face off with his fingernails, so they say, right down to the bone.”
DENNIS ETCHISON
THE WALK
DENNIS ETCHISON is a three-time winner of both the British Fantasy and World Fantasy Awards. His collections include The Dark Country, Red Dreams, The Blood Kiss, The Death Artist, Talking in the Dark, Fine Cuts and Got To Kill Them All & Other Stories.
He is also the author of the novels Darkside, Shadowman, California Gothic, Double Edge, The Fog, Halloween II & III and Videodrome, and the editor of Cutting Edge, Masters of Darkness I-III, MetaHorror, The Museum of Horrors and (with Ramsey Campbell and Jack Dann) Gathering the Bones.
His latest collections are A Little Black Book of Horror Tales (Borderlands Press) and a massive career retrospective, It Only Comes Out At Night & Other Stories, from Centipede Press. His e-books are available from Crossroad Press.
Etchison has written extensively for film, television and radio, including more than 150 scripts for The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas, and he served as President of the Horror Writers Association from 1992-94.
“I once had a business lunch with someone who constantly interrupted our meeting for cell phone calls to or from his wife,” the author recalls. “At some point, perhaps out of boredom, a story popped into my head. That can happen at any time, without warning, and when it does it usually takes about eight seconds for an entire scenario to play out before my mind’s eye, sort of like a time-compressed movie.
“The meeting came to naught—the man turned out to be a con artist, of which there are more than a few in the town where I live—but I managed to jot down a title and brief description of the idea so I wouldn’t forget it.
“When I finally decided to write the story (or, perhaps more accurately, when the story decided it was time to be written), I was concerned about how improbable it all seemed, so I added an extended explanation to make it more logical. But ‘The Walk’ was overlong and peculiarly less convincing that way.
“As Terence McKenna observed, logic and reason may have been caught in bed together a few times, but it was a set-up. So goodbye, Aristotle; as far as I’m concerned he’s overrated anyway. Sometimes less really is more, after all.
“It was a film-maker, Guillermo del Toro, who said, ‘If you can live without it, leave it behind’. Good advice for any story-teller.”
THE BRIDGE WAS not very long, but after a few steps the boards began to jerk unsteadily. The writer stopped.
“Told you not to look down,” he joked without turning around. It was all of six feet to the shallow creek-bed. “Hold on and we’ll make it. Promise.”
“We can do this, Chaz!” said his wife in her best cheerleader voice.
He resumed walking, very deliberately. The ropes of the suspension bridge grew taut as the three people behind him followed. Then the boards began to sway and buck again, as if a wind had come up, though not even a breeze strafed the surface of the water.
“Everything okay back there?”
“Damn heels,” the director muttered.
The writer moved to one side. “Amber, why don’t you take the lead? So I can help our friends.”
The writer’s wife, who was wearing tennis shoes, slipped easily around him, rolling her eyes as she passed.
“Sorry,” said the director’s wife, embarrassed. “They keep getting stuck.”
The writer reached back, waving her forward. What was her name? “Chanel. Put your hand on my arm. Can you do that?”
“Not her heels,” said the director miserably.
Now the writer glanced over his shoulder. Chanel was wearing sensible flats but he hadn’t noticed the director’s cowboy boots. One tapered heel was wedged in the gap between two planks. Well, he thought, what do you expect? Chanel lowered her cell phone and smiled patiently at her husband.
“Give it a little jerk, Gerry,” she told him.
“Lean on me.” The writer grasped the padded shoulder of the director’s sport-coat while the man freed himself. “There. You got it.”
Amber stepped onto solid ground and turned to the others with an exaggerated smile. “We did it! Now who’s ready for a drink?”
“Me!” said Chanel. “I mean, if everybody else…”
“Hey, no sweat.” The writer led Chanel and Gerry off the end of the short bridge. “I’ve got some cold ones in my office.”
Chanel looked around. “Where?”
“You’ll see,” said Amber, winking privately at her husband.
Chanel scrolled through the images in her phone, stopped on the last one and compared it to the landscape ahead. The writer caught a glimpse of the frame, a long shot of the path as it entered the dense foliage behind his house. From here it might have been the wildly overgrown fairway of an abandoned golf course; either that or the longest backyard in the world. The ridge was only a few narrow acres but from this angle, the trees on both sides overhung with a shroud of vines, it resembled an unlighted tunnel. In the distance, at the end of the leafy canopy, the newly-painted top of a mansard roof flashed in the setting sun.
“Is that it?” asked Chanel.
“Ah,” said her husband. “I should have known.”
The writer sighed. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”
Chanel squinted at the hillside and a crinkle appeared on her smooth forehead for what might have been the first time. “What is it?”
“Come on,” the writer said. “I’ll show you.”
They followed him carefully into the maze of damp vegetation. Too carefully, he realised. As if they’re afraid of stepping on quicksand. There was still a half-mile to go, with so many twists and turns it would be easy to lose your bearings if you didn’t know the way. Amber could walk it in her sleep, of course; she had helped with the landscaping, which he had designed to double for a forest, even a jungle, depending on the script; that was his plan. But he hadn’t considered the night scenes. It could be dangerous then. What if somebody from the crew went exploring and broke a leg? Lawsuit city, that’s what. During the shoot he would close off the footpath and put up some Tiki lights just to be safe.
“Ger?” he heard Chanel say to her husband. “What’s wrong, babe?”
The writer saw that Gerry had paused beneath a transplanted palm tree, his snakeskin boots sinking into the freshly-irrigated mulch. The director curved his fingers to form a tube, as if sighting through an imaginary viewfinder. Between the drooping fronds was a brief glimpse of the hillside ahead, where shadows collected below the truncated gables of an old-fashioned house. It was hard not to imagine a square-shouldered young man standing on the porch, about to descend the rickety steps.
“Not too shabby,” the director said admiringly.
“I know, right?” said Amber. “Chaz built it himself!”
Chaz chuckled. “Well, not with my bare hands. After our house was finished, there was a pallet of wood left over. So I had to do something with it.”
Amber beamed. “Isn’t it amazing?”
“You know how much it would cost to build a set like that?” the director said.
“How much?” said Chanel.
“Half the budget of this whole picture,” Gerry told her.
“Is it a copy?” she asked.
Amber was puzzled. “Of what?”
“The one at Universal.”
“That one’s a copy, too,” Chaz said to the director’s wife. “They reconstructed it for the tour. The original was just a façade.”
“Perfect for the frat house,” the director said. “I see why Freddie wants to shoot here.”
“Four-fifths scale, I’m afraid. And only two functional rooms—my office and a bathroom. I rigged a water tank and a pipe to the main line.”
“No problem. The interiors can be on a stage. Is there a graveyard yet?”
“Right behind it.”
“Chaz thinks of everything,” said Amber.
“Like the one in Baltimore?” asked the director.
“Who knows?” Chaz said. “Those are all night shots, anyway.”
“What’s in Baltimore?” said Chanel.
“The real one,” Gerry told his wife.
“The real what?”
“You’re supposed to know these things.”
Why? Chaz wondered. What did it matter what she knew about the film? Unless he had gotten her a job as his personal assistant. Well, of course he had. What do you expect?
The director kept his fingers curled and made a short pan between the trees: a patch of dry sage, ready to blow away in the tropical heat, on a hillside wide enough to carve faces, and the top floor of a Gothic folly where shadows grew like goatees under a waning sun.
“We’ll shoot exteriors during the Magic Hour,” he announced.
“Magic?” said Amber.
“The last hour before sunset. Everything looks fantastic, with the right lens. Technovision’s the best.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” said Chaz. “Freddie likes to use his own equip-ment.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Gerry. He glanced at Chanel. “Are you getting all this?”
“Sure, babe.”
With what? thought Chaz. Her phone? If she’s going to be his assistant she should carry a notebook. A thin one might fit in the back pocket of those skinny jeans. Barely.
Chanel clicked off several more exposures, then balanced gracefully against a tree trunk, slipped off one of her designer flats and knocked out a gob of moist, leafy earth. “What time is it?”
“I know, right?” said Amber. “It gets dark so fast now!” Tiny goosebumps rose like lines of Braille on her perfectly-tanned legs. The writer had picked this outfit for her, white shorts and a loose, scoop-neck blouse over a neon green bikini top. A perfect image for the one-sheet. He hoped the director was paying attention.
“If Gerry doesn’t get a meal every three hours,” said Chanel, “he’s not himself.”
“Four,” said the director. “Don’t worry about it. I brought my meds.”
“We can go back to the real house,” Amber suggested. “I could whip something up. Plus there’s some wine left. Robert Mondavi. It’s awesome.”
“No worries,” the writer told his wife, reaching for the phone in his pocket. “I’ll make reservations at Ernie’s.”
“I can do it,” said Amber quickly, opening her phone. “Ooh, you’re gonna love Ernie’s,” she said to Chanel. “The chicken molé is crazy!”
But Chanel already held a clear-coated fingernail over her own phone’s keypad. “What’s the number?”
“Not yet,” Gerry said to her.
“Why?”
“You have work to do.”
“Oh.”
The director Turned to Chaz. “I was thinking.”
“Oh?”
“After she leaves the party. Cuts through the woods to her car, trips and falls in a hole, blah blah. Starts to claw her way up. Then a sound, crunch crunch. Before she can climb out, someone steps on her fingers. She screams…”
The writer nodded. “Scene fifty-eight.”
“Yeah, well,” the director said, “I don’t think so.”
“No?”
“We’ve seen all that before.”
The writer managed to control himself. “How do you mean?”
“Try this. She hears something, I don’t know, twigs, crack crack. Keeps walking, follow-shot, handheld, till she’s in the clear. She thinks she’s safe…”
“That’s not in the script,” said Chanel.
The writer was surprised. She actually read it? Why?
The director shrugged. “So? We change it. She makes it to the cars. Music cue. Peaceful, calm. Starts to call her boyfriend. Then cut to her car. The door’s already open! Her eyes bug out, she backs away—and there he is, right behind her!”
“Who is?” asked Chanel.
“Our boy Eddie. Who else?”
Amber tried a grin. “That’d be cool. I mean—d’you think so, Chaz?”
“I don’t know,” Chaz said in a low voice. Now he’s a writer, too. Sure he is. “It’s a classic set-piece. I did a lot of research…”
“I have a question,” said Chanel.
“Yes?” said the director impatiently.
“Well, what’s her motivation?”
What’s it to you? the writer wondered.
“To get away,” Amber told her.
“Oh.” Chanel considered. “Then why doesn’t she run? Instead of walking, I mean.”
