Stephen Jones - Dark Terrors 3 - The Gollancz Book of Horror

He limped towards the centre, trying to recall how it had gone. In some ways he could remember everything; in others it was as if it had never happened to him, was just a secondhand tale told by someone else. A phone call to an office number he’d copied from Susan’s filofax before she left. An agreement to meet for a drink, on a night Richard knew she’d be out of town. Two men, meeting to sort things out in a gentlemanly fashion.

The stalks of Susan’s abandoned plants nodded suddenly in a faint breeze, and an eddy of leaves chased each other slowly around the walls. Richard glanced towards the living-room window. Inside it was empty, a couple of pieces of furniture stark against walls painted with dark triangular shadows. It was too dark to see, and he was too far away, but he knew the dust was gone. Even that little part had been sucked up and buried away.

He felt a strange sensation on his forearm, and looked down in time to see the gash there disappearing, from bottom to top, from finish to start. It went quickly, as quickly as it had been made. He turned to look at the verdant patch of grass, expecting to see it move, but it was still. Then he felt a warm sensation in his crotch, and realized it too would soon be whole. He had hacked at him there long after he knew Ayer was dead; hacked symbolically and pointlessly until the penis which had rootled and snuffled into Susan had been reduced to a scrap of offal.

The leaves moved again, faster, and the garden grew darker as if some huge cloud had moved into position overhead. It was now difficult to see as far as the end wall of the garden, and when he heard the distant sounds from there Richard realized the ground was not going to open up. No, first the wound in his chest, the fatal wound, would disappear. Then the cuts on his stomach, and the nicks on his hands from where Ayer had resisted, trying to be angry but so scared he had pissed his designer jeans. Finally the pain in his side would go; the first pain, the pain caused by Richard’s initial vicious kick after he had pushed his drunken rival over. A spasm of hate, flashes of violence, wipe pans of memory.

Then they would be back to that moment, or a moment before. Something would come towards him, out of the dry, rasping shadows, and they would talk again. How it would go Richard didn’t know, but he knew he could win, that he could walk away back to Chris and never come back here again.

It was time. Time to go.

Time to play a different game.

Michael Marshall Smith’s short stories have appeared in many major anthologies and magazines, including Dark Terrors, Dark Voices, Darklands, The Best New Horror, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Omni and Interzone. His first novel, Only Forward, won the British Fantasy Award, while his second, Spares, has been optioned for filming by Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks SKG and has so far sold for translation in eight countries. The author is currently working on his third book, One of Us, and on a movie adaptation of Robert Faulcon’s Nighthunter series. ‘“Walking Wounded” was written — as may be fairly obvious — after moving from a lonely apartment in London’s Belsize Park to a tiny hole in Kentish Town,’ says Smith. ‘While nothing else in the story is even remotely true, my grumpiness at having half of my possessions put in storage and not being able to buy good pates is accurately represented — and I did in fact break two ribs during the move. Since writing the story my attitude to the area has mellowed somewhat — to the point where we have now bought a house just fifty yards down the road. I’m still a bit annoyed about the pate, though.’

Emma must have been watching out from the window on the first floor and shouted down to the boy. The front door of the house opened before Daniel had reached the garden gate. Marc stepped out, glanced at his father without giving any gesture of recognition, then trudged towards him with his shoulders hunched and his head bent forward, staring at the ground a yard ahead of him. Daniel stopped to wait for him. In spite of the heat of the day his son was wearing the expensive designer-branded woollen hat he had brought him for his birthday on his last visit. The choice of present had been unfortunate; Daniel now thought it made the boy look foolish.

‘How’re you doing, Marc?’

‘Fine, Dad.’ Marc thrust a white plastic box forward. ‘My lunch,’ he explained. ‘Mum said don’t buy me any more of the sort of food you gave me last time.’

‘You told her about that?’

‘I had to. She asked.’

Automatically, Daniel turned and looked up towards his wife’s window. He could just see her, standing well back in the room, with her hands clasped together under her chin, as though she was cold. He waved, but got no response.

‘A bit of fried chicken every now and then won’t kill you, Marc,’ Daniel observed, as they walked down the street.

‘Mum said there’s no need to eat animals. It’s cruel.’

Daniel didn’t want to get dragged into that. ‘The car’s parked around the corner,’ he said, ‘as close as I could get. The town’s very busy.’

‘It always is on Saturday. You usually come on Sundays.’

‘I thought we’d do something different today,’ Daniel said carefully, anticipating opposition to this proposal.

‘You mean we can’t go bowling?’

‘We’ll give it a miss for once. The weather’s so fine. We’ll drive out into the country.’

The boy was silent then, but Daniel could sense his disappointment. As they drove away, to change the subject, he said, ‘How are your eyes now? No more headaches, I hope?’

Marc had had minor eye surgery a few weeks earlier. Daniel had been working in Scotland at the time, and hadn’t been able to visit him in hospital.

‘They’re okay. I can see for miles. And they say I won’t have to wear those thick glasses again. That’s why I’d rather have gone to the Indoor Sport Centre. I wanted to see if it made my bowling better. I bet I could beat you nearly every time now, Dad.’

‘You did pretty well before.’

‘But you were better.’ Marc reached out towards the radio. ‘Can I have some music?’

Daniel nodded resignedly. After all, the boy had taken his disappointment about the bowling quite well, and his reason for wanting to play games was a good one.

The car filled with yelping, thudding, electronic pandemonium.

From then on, conversation was out of the question.

Half an hour later Daniel had driven deep into the countryside and was following his inclinations, rather than map directions. He had more or less lost his way, though he didn’t want to admit that to Marc. When the boy, taking advantage of his newly improved vision, pointed out a limestone village, gleaming in the glaring sun, that had come into view a couple of miles ahead, Daniel drove towards it automatically, as though it had beckoned to him, and he was unable to resist its allure. It was the only point of interest in an otherwise featureless landscape. It seemed to be hovering a little way in the air, like a vision or mirage, but it sank back into its surroundings as they got nearer. The narrow lanes Daniel found himself negotiating to get to it were maze-like and confusing, but he navigated his way through into the little community at last, after a deal of twisting and back-tracking, and stopped the car at the first opportunity. He turned off the blaring radio at once, and clambered out of the car into an austere silence that was almost a shock.

The village was backed on three sides by hump-like hills, the lower slopes of which were divided into mutton-and lamb-infested fields enclosed by low stone walls. Ahead, a substantial, if somewhat squat looking, eighteenth-century house and an even older pub stood at right angles to each other, apparently blocking the way, though a sign indicated that the road turned left between them. A broad, deep stream slid smoothly alongside the street. Tiny houses, each with its own natty bib of garden at the front, clustered round the dusty parking space where Daniel had come to a halt, and others similar climbed one side of the slope the car had just descended. It was a picturesque setting, and the whole village had a neat, compact, scaled-down, almost toylike look about it.