Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

My God, thought Don. He thought of Julie. She would have loved this. She had been dead for one year. The water coming through here, it was difficult to imagine it would ever stop. It would still be sluicing through two million years hence. The cave wider, deeper, but essentially the same. People coming and going so quickly, like glyphs on the pages of a flicker book.

The colours were amazing. Blues and greys and greens. Orange heating up to red. Stalagmites reached up to stalactites, fangs in a closing jaw.

“How big is the cave?”

“Who knows,” Kerner said. “It extends further than anybody thought. Come on, I’ll show you.”

They advanced through the cave, and it expanded around them. Handrails and steps had been put in. The electric lights, subtly positioned, showed off the ripples and thrusts of rock while ensuring there was no chance of becoming lost. Behind them, the lights shut off, like portions of a stage during a play. It was all very dramatic.

Don gradually relaxed. Kerner was a knowledgeable and amiable guide and Don grew to become grateful for his company. They walked through various sections, separated by natural kinks in the path they were following; all were given grandiose names: Hall of the Kings, The Chamber of Hanging Knives, Grey Lion’s Lair. The names were attributed to the shapes in the rock. Some looked like crowns, or daggers, or a flowing mane. It was like hunting for faces in the fire, or the clouds.

The path ran out at a boulder choke surrounded with safety rails and more threatening red signs. Don had been so engaged by the alien surroundings, the assault of the cold and the clean, mineral flavour in his nostrils and throat, that he’d completely forgotten about the lump on his cheek. But now, as its pain re-announced itself to him, he stopped and pressed his hand to his skin.

“Okay?” Kerner asked.

“Yeah, just. I don’t know. Spot or something.”

“Oh, I noticed that too, but I didn’t say anything.”

Don tried to laugh it off but the sound came out all wrong. Beautiful place, unkind acoustics. “I’m turning into a teenager again,” he said.

“You should maybe see a doctor. It might be an infection. You don’t want it to become an abscess or anything like that. They’ll have to cut a big chunk out of you. Bad scars. I have photographs of people, post-op. People who had tumours. One guy who was bitten by a flea or a tick or something. Half his face turned rotten, virtually slid off him. Imagine that.”

Don tried to ignore him. He removed the sticking plaster from his skin and pushed ahead, leaving Kerner to his study of a small, visible stretch of churning water. His fingers fretted at the sore. The surrounding skin was puffed up and tender. There was a hard core beneath. It wobbled under the dome of taut skin, making him queasy. Maybe it was the air pressure that was nagging at it. Or the cold. Something was being drawn out. Maybe it was just time. The body healed itself of most things, given enough time.

“Look, see,” Kerner said. He was pointing at a small hole in a cluster of rocks at the foot of the choke. “They dropped cameras through that last year and found a huge. I don’t know how you’d describe it. amphitheatre of white rock. They dubbed it ‘the blizzard bowl’. Crystal city. Like landing in one of those daft ornaments, you know. What are they called?”

“Snow globes,” Don whispered.

“Snow globes, yeah. That’s the chappy. Anyway, the idea is they’re going to send a man down there. Apparently there’s a guy known as Rat lives in the village. Spelunker extraordinaire . He can squirm his way into holes like that. No fear in him. He’s going to see what’s what and then they’re going to open the whole thing up. I mean, it’s anyone’s guess. How far can you go? There might be worlds upon worlds beyond that blizzard bowl. Who knows what we might find? There are new species being discovered every day in the rainforests.”

There was a moment, just as the lights were turned off, and they began the walk back to the cavern entrance, when Don thought he heard the scrabble of movement, but he chose not to mention it, because he didn’t want to appear nervous, or stupid to Kerner. The slide of insecure pebbles. A rat, or a bat. It was nothing.

“Let’s have a pic,” Kerner said, when they were outside. He got Mac to take a photograph of them, standing in front of the cavern entrance, and then they were ushered out of the grounds and it was much colder out here and the stars were studs of glass scattered across an oily hard shoulder.

“Nightcap?” Kerner asked.

Don shook his head. “I’m wiped,” he said. “Thanks for an interesting evening.”

“Sad to leave ya, Eurasian beaver.”

“Good night.”

Again. Did it become a ritual if it happened more than once?

A hot bath. The Scotch. The music she loved, Joni Mitchell. He mustered the memory of the smells that made her who she was. Tea tree oil. Fennel. He thought back to the last time they had made love. The flush of red on her chest. The eyes closing. The quickening of her breath. Don, Don .

Sleep was over him and around him, closing, like a thin blanket, but it was not yet in him. His breath deepened. His eyes rolled back. He submitted himself. Sleep sank into him like something taking a bite. And just at the moment he felt himself go under, he was aware, in the dark, of a shape at the foot of his bed. It was heart-shaped, a muted grey, and it took a while to understand that it was the shape of someone’s back: the arms and head lost to shadow. Slowly, it shifted. He heard the shiver of nylon moving against itself. He saw the nubs of vertebrae in a spine curve subtly against the fabric of a cardigan. And it was her cardigan. His heart leaped. Until:

Why are you doing this?

He flinched. Her voice was too close, as if she were whispering in his ear. And there was something wrong with it. She sounded as though she was thirsty. The voice, full of holes.

I love you but you have to let me go don’t blame yourself

“Julie? Julie, what can I do? Where are you?” He stared at the figure at the end of the bed as it stretched and writhed. “Don’t leave me. It was so sudden.”

I have to go I want to go to the white I want to run through the snow you can set me free

The shush of her nylons. but she never wore tights.

“Julie?” He jerked upright in bed, blinking himself awake. The shape toppled forward, turning. Her hair fell across her face so he could see only a sliver of gleaming eye through the mouse blonde bands of it. She raised her thin limbs and showed him where she’d cut through the veins of her arms with the shattered remnants of her snow globe.

The blood hissing like water from punctured hoses, eternal.

I’d have killed myself anyway, eventually. don’t blame yourself

In the second it took him to wrench himself free of the bedclothes, winter sunshine was streaming through the window and his alarm clock was droning and she was gone. He turned back to see his pillow, streaked with red. A pebble of glass sitting there like something the tooth fairy had forgotten to collect.

“Woah, pal. Easy. What bit you this morning?”

Don had dropped his glass of cranberry juice. He watched the spreading red stain around his breakfast plates and tried to stop his hands from shaking. Surely everyone could see that. They’d think he’d been drinking at daybreak. Or that he had something terrible to hide. Kerner watched him while he chewed his interminable muesli. His question hung in the air. Don ignored it.

He poured coffee and tried to hide in its steam. The plaster on his face felt tight and itchy, but he wasn’t going to sit there with a wet hole flapping in front of all these people while they tucked into their grilled tomatoes.