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

‘You don’t seem to understand, Em,’ he said, slurring the penultimate word like a drunk. ‘I tell you the boy’s gone.’

‘He has, Dan. That’s true, I know.’ Emma’s hands were mobile too; her clasped fingers twisted restlessly together against her chest, inches below her chin. ‘He’s long gone.’

‘And those people have him now,’ Daniel continued, with quiet desperation. ‘They were so small, and they seemed harmless, but I realize now they were evil, malevolent. They lured me there somehow, because they wanted Marc. God knows what for. We’ve got to save him. We have to try.’

‘It’s much too late, Dan.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because I can’t take much more of this. It gets worse every time, because you have a different crazy story every time. They get crazier, in fact. I don’t want to listen to any more. I’m scared I might crack, and end up like you.’

Daniel blinked foolishly, and gave her an uncomfortable, mirthless smile. ‘You’re angry, Em. I can feel it. That’s okay. I expected it. But believe me, what happened to Marc wasn’t my fault.’

Emma retreated a few inches back behind the edge of the door. ‘I know, Dan. I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did just then. I’d better go now, before I say something to hurt you. Please leave me alone, and please don’t go to the police. They won’t find Marc, and nor will you, so forget everything that happened today.’

‘You don’t want me to do anything, Em?’

‘Just go home. Get some rest. You look terribly tired.’

Daniel’s body twitched, as though he had received a shock. ‘That’s right. I am.’

‘Will you be okay driving?’

‘Sure.’

Something seemed to have passed out of Daniel. His face had emptied and left him looking totally vacant. He was suddenly compliant. To Emma’s relief, he raised a hand in a gesture of capitulation or valediction, and turned and shambled off towards his car. She watched him pass through the gate before she shut the front door and trudged upstairs to her flat.

She knew the rest of the day would be hard for her. As soon as she was back in her room she phoned a friend and almost forced her out for an evening meal. Emma was determined that she would not to be alone with her memories of the one child she had conceived, but lost ten years ago.

There was a small parcel in his pocket. He took it out, glanced at it, and set it down between the handbrake and the driver’s seat. Where had he got that from? Gift-wrapped in gold and silver paper, it seemed somehow familiar. Before driving away, Daniel absentmindedly reached for it, picked it up again, and made an effort to remember where he had seen it before. For some reason, he expected it to be quite heavy and hard, but it wasn’t either. Whatever it contained was light and soft.

Daniel held the package up in front of him to give it a closer look. He saw the paper was creased and frayed, and partly faded — by sunlight, presumably, so, it had been around for some considerable time! When, after some moments, he still could not identify it, or recall whence it had come, he fumbled it open, rolling it in his hands and pressing with his thumbs to tear the paper to reveal what was inside.

He was mildly surprised to find it contained a fanciful, rather ridiculous woollen hat: the kind currently favoured by streetwise kids.

The price ticket was still attached. Obviously, it had never been worn.

Terry Lamsley’s stories have been published in a number of horror anthologies, notably The Best New Horror, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Year’s Best Horror Stories, Lethal Kisses, The Mammoth Book of Dracula and the first volume of Dark Terrors. Magazine appearances include Ghost & Scholars, All Hallows and Cemetery Dance. Ash-Tree Press published a collection of his stories, Conference With the Dead, and a hardcover reprint of his first collection, Under the Crust, recently appeared from the same publisher. ‘A village very like the one described in “The Lost Boy Found” exists somewhere in Yorkshire,’ Lamsley reveals, ‘but I’d better not name it. I went there for a weekend a couple of years ago, with a couple of friends, to play out a pool contest. It probably is a very nice place, but it seemed very peculiar and otherworldly to me, even in broad daylight. I was extremely pleased to get out of there in one piece. To make things worse, I lost the contest by a wide margin.’