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

It took a few moments to get my bearings, my eyes unable to cope with the change in light. A shadow moved before me and I tried unsuccessfully to blink away the spots that blinded me. In the faux darkness, small black blobs squirmed across my vision, making the world appear murky. As my sight cleared, the first thing I saw was Suzanne, inspecting a polyester dress that hung shapelessly from its hanger. Around me were the beginnings of a consignment shop, filled with crafts of all different kinds, each vying for the attention of tourists. But beyond the items displayed for sale it was clear that no other work had been done to transform the house into a proper store.

“This place fascinates me,” she said. “I could spend hours in here.”

From room to room we travelled while Suzanne inspected the clothes slowly, her fingers lingering on sizes that would forever be too large for her, and in every corner I saw the same traces of the store’s previous function. A single standing lamp in each room were the only sources of illumination, and those oversized ugly dresses were displayed from small hooks screwed into the rafters and walls. I shook my head. It was a terrible place, that converted former house. I thought I heard it scream for release, then realised it was not the house, but Suzanne, and I was immediately certain I had underestimated just how bad things would become.

In my memory, the events play out in slow motion, as though trapped in amber, or perhaps oily tar. I know these things occurred many years ago — so many they may not have happened at all. All I have left of those times are ghosts; dark shadowy ghosts that hover and remind me of what I’ve lost, of what I’ve given away without thinking. They are blemishes on my life, like the stains on the Port McCarthy beach that are still working their way into the ground a decade later, killing the seeds of any life they find.

“Look at this. Who makes these things?”

Suzanne whispered to me in that converted house, and though it must have been loud enough for anyone to hear, I was far too unnerved by spinning uncontrollable fear to check. There before us stood a doll the size of a small child, dressed in a small child’s clothes. It faced the wall as though it were being punished, its arms raised to cover its missing eyes. I shivered, and then saw a second doll. Then, another. They stood throughout the house in the same manner, faces turned to the wall, their little bodies impossibly real. Except their faces. I knew immediately that if I were to check the dolls’ faces they would be blank, lifeless, and part of me wished that would not be the case.

“They’re so creepy,” Suzanne said. “They look so real.”

“I don’t know who would buy one,” I said, looking away because I could no longer bear the sight. An older man across the room smiled at me from behind a counter, his teeth too large.

“The sign says they’re called ‘hide and seek dolls’,” Suzanne said. “Where do they get their clothes?”

“Maybe from their dead children,” I said, mesmerised by the man’s widening smile — so wide I doubted reality for a moment. Then my own words registered, and the sickness they filled me with snapped me back to attention. “I mean, they were probably donated. Some kid outgrew them.” I smiled at Suzanne in hopes she had forgotten what I had said. Instead, she grimaced.

I carry that image of her in my head still, and sometimes it amazes me it’s there at all when so many other things I wish I could recall have been forgotten. Memories are strange and elusive, yet they can return at a moment’s notice and from out of nowhere, appearing so vividly it feels as though time has not passed. But time has passed, and those memories that return most often have crashed just off the shore of my life, and the dark sweep of destruction continues to move towards me over the churning water’s surface.

I can’t be sure if it’s going to rain, but the air feels wet and chilled and I decide I don’t want to take the chance. By the time I return to the Windhaven Inn, I know I was right, as the rain has started, but even so it is not a hard cleansing rain. Rather, it’s a drizzle, barely more than a mist, and all it succeeds in doing is making my shoes damp enough that each step feels as though I am wading through water.

Outside the Inn’s front door is a small garden in which an old cat squats. Its fur is grimy and matted as though it has spent an inordinate amount of time underground, and there is a glazed look in its dull ancient eyes. It chews grass slowly, and doesn’t seem to know I’m there, or if it does it cannot be bothered to acknowledge me. Perhaps one of us is a ghost, though neither of us is sure which.

“It has six toes, you know. Born like that. Six on every foot. You know what they say about that , don’t you?”

It is the young tattooed woman. She stands at the door smoking a cigarette, looking at me as though I have disturbed her with my thoughts. I smile weakly.

“No. What does it mean?”

She shakes her head, disappointed, and looks up at the sky. I look too, but the rain is a cloud hovering too close to the ground.

“Your key is at the front desk.”

I nod. She signals me with some hand sign that belies her youth, then retreats inside. I try and push the cat out of the way with my foot, but it doesn’t move, not at first. My foot sinks into sickly soft fur that feels no different from a dish of rotted meat. The cat makes a low gurgling noise, and finally gets to its feet and staggers a few steps before falling on its side, out of breath.

My room is dark when I return to it, the overcast day filling the emptiness with the kind of shadows that do not dissipate when I turn on the lamps. I take my shoes and socks off to dry them, then sit on the edge of the bed. I scratch at the underside of my beard, less from discomfort and more for something to do with my hands, and look out the window at the solid wall of mist that hovers there. Part of me wants to draw the drapes, but I can’t. The swirling reminds me of a flood that will wash over everything and make it new. I just wish I knew what colour the water would be.

Suzanne and I made love that first night at the Inn, when the summer was warm and the scent of the beach was in the air. I remember it clearly, remember how soft and slow it was, remember us pausing to share a cigarette afterward, the smoke curling around the curve of her small breasts. And then I again see her grimacing face before me, only now she’s joined me on the edge of the bed, and with a sense of ten-year-old déjà vu I ask what’s wrong. She hangs her head so I can’t see her face behind her hair, and covers her eyes. “A ghost must have just walked past me.” She laughs and I laugh with her though I’m not sure why. The vision begins to recede again until all that is left is the memory of a sky turned dark orange, and Suzanne’s hand fidgeting awkwardly as it lights on her abdomen. But there is something else, a flicker on the edge of my vision. I turn to the source and see in the darkness that the crack in the wall is longer, and the stain spreading from it is creeping across the carpet towards me. There’s something intriguing about it, but before I can determine just what that is I realise the stain is in fact something more.

In my head, words still echo like ripples in time spreading out from the past. I try to push them aside, try to drown them with alcohol or noise, but I can still hear them as they leave an indelible mark on my soul.

“What are we going to do?” I remember Suzanne asking me, her eyes wide while I only wanted to close my own to dull the throbbing.

“What can we do?”

There were no answers. What had seemed so clear only a few hours before we spoke had become suddenly so muddy, as though the oil that had flooded McCarthy Sound had contaminated my mind. I rubbed my temples as she spoke, and the fear she filled me with was thick and suffocating. She cried and hugged herself because I could do neither for her. I was afraid. I was young and afraid and selfish, and I could not understand why such a thing was happening.