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

The pasta was too expensive, so he opted for pie and chips, which didn’t remind him of anything. It didn’t taste of anything either. The bearded man played invisible drums in the air. The sound of voices arguing at another table rose to a violent pitch, though Paul couldn’t see any movement. He left his pint unfinished. On the way out, a grey-haired woman turned her head towards him and smiled. “How’s it going?” He didn’t recognise her; she must be speaking to someone else. But she looked disappointed when he didn’t stop. Embarrassment made him head for the door as quickly as his shaky legs would go. Was it possible that every memory he regained had to be paid for with another one?

A grey dawn was filtering through the curtains, turning his bed to concrete. Paul sat up and gripped the sides of his head to absorb the dull throbbing before it could break free. His throat was dry. Flakes of dead skin drifted from his fingertips. Was that what old age meant, that the layers of skin went deeper so that less and less of you was alive? He reached out to the bedside table, switched on the lamp and picked up a second-hand book. A detective story. But his eyes were too tired: the lines of print crept across the yellowing paper. When he couldn’t read, why was he convinced that Midnight Flight would release him from pain and loneliness? Was it just because it had done that for him as a child?

Perhaps the local library could help him. Not that it would have the book, or any book published in the last century. But the computers whose blank screens had frozen him out might hold some answers. Paul washed and dressed a little faster than his usual lethargic morning pace, putting on his favourite cardigan despite the holes he noticed in its left shoulder and arm. Midnight Flight was out there, nestling on a wooden shelf, its pages waiting to be turned again. Maybe the same copy he’d read and re-read all those years ago.

The library’s few bookshelves were mostly taken up with standard reference works and large print volumes — which Paul, for the first time, wondered if he ought to borrow one of. A few newspapers were scattered on the tables between the long ranks of computers.

The librarian, a short middle-aged man with an oddly boyish expression, looked up Midnight Flight on his desk terminal. “No copies in the library system any more,” he said. “There’d be one at the British Library, of course, but that’s in London. Have you tried ABE Books?” He didn’t know what that was. The librarian checked his ticket, then found him a computer and showed him how to search. No second-hand copy seemed to be available online. The librarian left him to further searches. “Good luck, Mr Cooksey.” Paul wondered who he was talking to. He had to look back at his own ticket to see that was his name.

A search for Thom Creighton Parr yielded seven links. Three of them were to listings of second-hand copies of his book on bowling, Green Pastures , while two more were bowling society websites that cited the same book. Another was a Wikipedia entry that gave Parr’s birth date as 1923, but no death date. It mentioned Midnight Flight , but only to describe it as a “long-forgotten horror anthology” with only one edition, in 1954.

The final link was to a website called Crypt of Cobwebs, dedicated to British and American horror fiction. Paul hadn’t read much in that genre since Midnight Flight . He’d tried a few other anthologies in the 1960s and ’70s but had given up, nauseated by severed heads and vats of acid. The linked passage was in an article on British horror anthologies before 1980. It said:

One of weird fiction’s great “lost books” is

Midnight Flight

edited by Thom Creighton Parr (Acheron Press, 1964), which is thought to have included tales by Lovecraft and Jacobi. All the stories involve winged nocturnal creatures. A reviewer called the book “too disturbing to read”, and it was never reprinted — though of course, true weird fiction stood little chance of being appreciated in the Marxist 1960s. Copies are hard to track down. It’s rumoured that copyright problems led to copies of the book being recalled. Or maybe they just flew away.

The article was by Niall Verde. Working back through the Crypt’s elaborate structure, which seemed to extend under a broad church, Paul found topics ranging from an early Gothic novel to a recent erotic vampire thriller. Verde was among the most frequent posters. His comments, always made in the early hours of the morning, were mostly concerned with how little “the herd” understood about “true weird fiction”. In the course of a bitter argument with another insomniac, he remarked that “visionary” works such as his own collection The Veil of Fail were doomed to oblivion because “writers who care more about creating great fiction than self-promotion will always be passed over.” There was a link to Verde’s personal website, but Paul had seen enough. He cleared the screen, then tried a search for Acheron Press. Much to his surprise, the imprint still existed. He wrote down the address, which was in Stafford.

The train shuddered as it lost and gained speed, pausing between stations in a landscape of shut-down factories and empty fields. The view had been sprayed white and called morning, but he could see the night sky underneath. Then the young man sitting in front of him pulled down the grey curtain so he could read his phone. Paul closed his eyes and shivered. He didn’t want to be alone with his memories, because they couldn’t be relied on. The gaps were spreading, a ragged pattern of darkness like the wings on the cover of Midnight Flight .

He’d written to Acheron Press, and a typed letter had come back with a shaky signature. The original publisher was still alive, though a decade older than Paul, and said he still got occasional queries about Midnight Flight . Their stock had been destroyed in a fire in 1971. There’d been some ex-library copies in circulation for a while. They’d never considered reprinting the book because, after the fire, they’d switched to publishing non-fiction — mostly natural history and Egyptology. The business was steadily winding down, though a few local societies and museums supported it.

What had made Paul buy the train ticket was the news that Parr was still alive. The Acheron publisher still sent him occasional royalties for some entomology books he’d provided photographs for. Since 2006 he’d been living at a nursing home in Stoke-on-Trent. The publisher had commented: “He and I used to keep in touch, but these days I’m afraid he’s hardly there.”

The train ground to a halt. Paul wiped his eyes with a hand that felt dry as paper. Surely this was the fool’s errand to end them all. A man losing his memory on a quest to find a man who’d already lost his own. He wanted to believe that Parr could help him find the book — or even tell him, from further down the road, where his own journey into darkness was heading. Perhaps this happened to everyone who’d read the book.

Last night he’d sat by the phone, trying to remember his sister’s number or the number of anyone he knew. His address book had flown away months ago. Paul had lived alone since his teens. Hadn’t slept with a woman in thirty years, still missed it though he doubted much would happen if he got the chance. All in all, he’d rather miss things than forget what they were like. Hence the ticket.

On the platform at Stoke, Paul was surprised how unsteady his legs were. As if not just the two-hour journey but the change of scene had affected his connection with the ground. He bought an A — Z map in the station newsagent, but couldn’t make out the street names.

Outside the station everywhere seemed to be boarded up. He’d never find the way. It was hard enough with places he knew. Behind the derelict buildings, the illusion of daylight seemed more fragile than ever. He waved down a black cab and asked the driver for the Tyton Retirement Home.