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

Her hair — it appeared silver, but then that was probably just the effect of the light. more probably blonde — looked like it had been hacked at as well: one side cut short, possibly with a knife, while the other was still long and fell over her left shoulder. That too was exposed and horribly scarred. Her head was tilted, and to be honest she still looked dead, but she was moving, and she was speaking. “H-Help. Help me,” repeated the woman, and this time Ted saw a saliva bubble form in that ruined cheek, popping as she spoke her next word, “P-Please.”

What could he do? Ted was in no position to help anyone, even if they were gazing at him like that — so pleadingly. It was all he could do to even look at the poor wretch, her appearance so far removed from the usual beauties he liked to associate with. He said nothing, merely attempted a half-hearted shrug.

“ P-Please ,” came the voice again, filled with such agony Ted felt compelled to finally say something.

He’d opened his mouth, but before any words could emerge something else moved in the darkness. Something silent and deadly. The something that had come up behind him in the car park, hidden in the shadows all this time. A figure, which sidled up behind her now, grabbing the woman’s neck and jerking it backwards, so the cords there were standing proud. Ted wanted to look away, but it all happened so fast. The large knife was suddenly up and being drawn over the woman’s throat, like a cellist with a bow. Except the only music that emerged were the deep grunts and chokes of someone trying to breathe. A concerto in death minor. It took just moments for the noise to stop, but it seemed like hours to Ted — must have seemed like years to the woman with the ruined face.

The figure still held back behind the hanging body, for now it was a body and nothing more. That final bit of life had been extinguished, such as it was. Ted wanted to ask who this person was, but couldn’t get a word out now through fear. Blood was pouring from the slit in the blonde woman’s throat, spilling over her shredded blouse. Ted caught a flash of eyes looking at him, the killer’s wild stare sending chills through his body. When the figure revealed itself, he did gasp.

Audrey? No, it couldn’t be!

Ted took in the sight before him, the small woman dressed in dark clothes, almost like she was in mourning: black top, black trousers. black gloves. It matched her raven-coloured hair, which, unlike the dead blonde woman’s, had been styled by a professional. Even after all that excitement there was barely a curl out of place, the mark of an expert hairdresser. An expensive one, at that.

Ted could do nothing but gaze at her, that knife still in her hand, dripping with the blood from her fresh kill. Audrey? His Audrey. She was no murderer. She wouldn’t even let him kill spiders in the bath.

His mind flashed back to their first meeting, at that club in the city. She’d been with a couple of friends, he’d been alone and had zeroed in on her, flashing that confident, charming smile, guaranteed to work. Her friends had giggled at his jokes, Audrey had told him she wasn’t interested, that she even had a boyfriend — he hadn’t lasted long once Ted was on the scene — but by the end of the night he’d secured her phone number.

On their first date, he’d picked her up in his Corvette ZR1 and impressed her with talk about his business ventures. He found out that she was very family orientated — devoted to her father, because he’d brought her up when her mother had died in childbirth.

“I feel so comfortable telling you all this,” Audrey had said. “Don’t know why.”

“I do,” Ted replied, grinning.

It hadn’t been long before he’d become a permanent fixture in her life. and her bed. Soon after, they were dividing their time between his place and her apartment. Not long after that, she’d taken Ted to meet her father, Frank, at the family home — a huge house just outside the capital. It was far enough away to pretend it was the countryside, but just close enough to smell the exhaust fumes from the cars. Here Frank lived, all alone — retired due to ill health, but content. Ted had done the same with her silver-haired father, charming him as they drank wine out in the garden, finding out more about the family business.

Frank had made his money through scrap over the past few decades, but the trade went back a long way. “I can remember doing the rounds with my dad as a kid, collecting all kinds of stuff in a horse-drawn cart on the streets, ringing the bell. Nowadays it’s all in trucks and vans,” he laughed. “You know, a lot of people think that Rag and Bone men only go back a couple of hundred years, but some say it’s further. To the middle ages, or maybe even before that.”

“That’s fascinating,” Ted told him, stifling the yawn that was building.

“They got their name because they’d even collect rags, which could be sold to paper-makers and weavers, and the bones from meat. That could be turned into bone char, bone ash, bone carver. even glue!”

Ted listened, humoured the man, but he didn’t care about how Frank had come by his cash — the heritage obviously important to the guy. He was only interested in the fact that Audrey would come by it one day. Less than a week later, and with Frank’s approval, Ted proposed and was delighted when Audrey said yes. They were happy, both of them, and went on that way for a good year or more—

So why was she doing this? He felt like asking her, then hesitated, still seeing that crazed look in her eyes. Something had changed. She was no longer the woman he knew as his fiancée. She was something else — something unhinged .

His eyes were at least adjusting to the light better, and he could see more of his surroundings. More of the corpses that filled this place, although he still didn’t recognise it.

“There, that’s better,” Audrey said, stepping away from the dead woman, her voice cold and hard. “Another one of your whores silenced.”

Ted frowned. What was she talking about? His eyes flitted from the psychopathic Audrey to the dead woman. Did he know her? Forget about the scarred face and body, the blood; take all that away and did she look familiar? Ted still couldn’t see it. He looked around at the other bodies nearby, and beyond Audrey. Yes, they were all female, he could see that. But—

Another one of your whores.

He tried to swallow, but was having difficulty. He’d never known their names, any of them, but yes, the more he looked, the more his eyes adjusted to the light in here. Jesus , he said to himself. He thought he’d been so careful.

It stood to reason, no one woman was ever going to satisfy him . That wasn’t how he was made. He loved Audrey, in his own way, and the others were just conquests — to keep his hand in. Sex, nothing more. Plus which, they all knew he was engaged: he’d told them and they hadn’t seemed to mind. If anything, some of them found this a turn-on.

The more he focused, forcing himself to see the walls of that room, the more he could make out the evidence of those encounters he couldn’t resist. No, that made it sound like they seduced him, when it was so obviously the other way around.

All those nights working late, at conferences or attending business meetings, when actually he was on the prowl again, on the hunt. The photos were there, tacked up on those walls: large, grainy, black and white prints. Some of him and women at bars, at hotels, at clubs like the one where he met Audrey. Some were even worse. Snapshots of the hot, frenzied couplings, rutting like animals — through windows, and some from inside the room itself (a professional then, some kind of PI. so Audrey hadn’t been as naïve as he thought; it explained why she’d stalled over the wedding).