Stephen Jones: The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Vol 15

“How do you mean?”

Machen pointed with the stem of his pipe. “See how the trees are spaced? See how regular the shrub borders are? All very ordered and fake, a sham of reality, and we made it for our own pleasure. Real nature has an order all its own.”

Smith looked around, frowning, wishing that the old man would make his point but not wanting to push him.

“Yet most people come here and are fooled,” Machen said. “They view this place and see what the designers and gardeners intended, yet at the same time the truth is far different. Just as I do with my writing, they dream in fire and work in clay. Their ultimate aims are effectively unachievable, because the perfection of nature cannot be manufactured. They are deceived. They are…” He trailed off, seemingly confused for a few seconds, puffing his pipe to gather his thoughts. “They think they see something that is not really there. They believe that they view one thing, while in reality it’s something quite different. Do you understand my meaning?”

“You mean,” Smith said, “that my story and yours are not alike. That even through all the similarities, I am deluding myself. That’s what you mean.”

“In a way, yes.”

“But that is not what I believe.”

Machen stood and extended his hand. “I have to go home, Lieutenant Smith. It has been a night I shall not forget in a hurry! You have opened my eyes a little, and for that I am thankful.”

“But that’s not all!” Smith said, becoming agitated. This had not gone the way he had intended, nowhere near, and now that there was an end in sight his frustration came to the fore.

“No, it is not. Please be my guest this evening, lieutenant, at a little church on Banwick Road. A church I often frequent.”

“The church where…?”

“Indeed,” Machen said. “The church where my muse first presented me with this tale. Perhaps there, in that divine place, the truth may be more readily visible. Now, sir, I must bid you farewell.”

Machen walked from the park, and within seconds he had disappeared behind a row of trees.

Smith sat on the bench and looked around, trying to analyse what Machen had said about this little park. Did he mean that it was not as it should be, and therefore that Smith’s story was unbelievable? Or was he trying to get across that many people came here and thought they were in the depths of nature… whereas, in fact, they were deceived?

Was Smith deceiving himself? Were his memories as trustworthy as he believed?

He closed his eyes and smelled the mud, the stench of rotting dead friends, saw earth blossoming skywards in slow-motion explosions, felt the slick coolness of trench foot, heard the report of a rifle and the scream of a fallen man, on one side or the other, dying in pain whichever country he fought for.

No, he was not deceived. Now more than ever he believed that what he had seen in those trenches, what he and hundreds of others had witnessed, had been provoked by this one old writer. A man whose words had far more power than he was ready to admit.

A man who could conjure angels.

Smith was staying in a hotel not far from where he and Machen parted company. He walked slowly through the streets, musing upon what the night had brought, and wondering whether anything had really been resolved.

The sun was edging above the horizon but it was a cloudy morning, and although it had stopped raining the light was still weak. He took a back street as a short cut, keen to reach his bed and sleep for a few precious hours, and that was when he realised he was being followed.

There was no sound to give away his pursuer, no fleeting figure glimpsed from the corner of his eye; he simply knew that he was not alone in that street. He stopped and turned around, scanned the way he had come. No one hid in doorways, no one hunkered down behind a parked car, no one turned and fled. Yet that sense was there, an undeniable crawling down his spine, a certainty that he was being watched.

“Hello!” Smith called, brave now that night was sinking back into shadows. Perhaps Mr Machen had followed to ask him something else, or simply to prove to himself that Smith was no madman? But nobody answered his call. Pigeons fluttered on window ledges, a dog trotted across the street and a cat watched him from inside a house, tail twitching as it regarded him coolly.

He hurried to the end of the street and turned left… and then stopped, pressing himself against a wall, listening out for footsteps or the panting of a running man. He heard neither. A car passed him from left to right, its driver giving him a wary glance, and Smith tried to smile. But the expression no longer fitted his face. He was tried and confused. He needed a sleep without dreams, a long rest, and then tonight perhaps he and Machen would experience some epiphany, the truth made plain to their refreshed minds. His own conviction had been diluted by Machen’s scepticism.

He took one last quick glance around the corner, and saw light fade away.

It might have been a blur on his eye, a piece of dust floating on the air. Or perhaps it was a trick of the sun, someone opening a window and casting a fleeting reflection. But the sun was hidden by thick clouds. And though he wiped his eyes, still he saw the silvery light crawling across an expanse of red brick. No shadow was cast there. The brick sucked in the light and stood as silent testament to its existence.

Smith closed his eyes, opened them again, thought of the illuminated downpour of rain outside the Bloomsbury archive building. Searchlight, he had thought at the time, but now that seemed unlikely. Now, he had to wonder just who or what was following him.

He hurried away, comforted by the appearance of several people in the street. He glanced back often, pleased that daylight had now taken a firm hold, and yet somewhat disappointed as well.

He had not felt threatened, fearful or in danger.

In fact, he wished the light would appear again. It reminded him…

Smith reached his room, drank a glass of water to wash away the dust of the previous night, stripped off his clothes — torn and made tatty by his virtual burial in the collapsed house — and within a minute of lying down, he slept.

Perhaps he dreamed.

When he woke he shouted out loud, rolling from the bed and huddling beneath the sheets, hiding himself, making it safe. The room was brightly lit, a shimmering illumination that seemed to be peering in from outside, assaulting his senses in concert with the squeal of brakes (the scream of a falling shell), the shout of a newspaper seller (the cry of a dying man calling for his mother), the sound of rain hitting the window (water in the trenches, squelching underfoot, trying to suck him down into the mud where so many of his friends lay rotting… for ever). Smith shivered and groaned, perceiving the shifting light even through the thickness of the blanket. He tried to link his fears with what had happened all those years ago, but that time felt vague as a dream, fading like dreams do into a feeling, a sensation, a memory with no definable detail.

Smith remembered where he was and why. He held in a breath, threw aside the blanket, and the room was lit by sunlight. It slanted in through dusty window-panes, catching a million specks of dust dancing before his eyes. It was still raining — a summer shower, fresh and invigorating — and perhaps that accounted for the strange quality of light. Constantly shifting. Refracted through raindrops, diluted and silvered by the water.

Or perhaps he dreamed.

The church was small, innocuous, subsumed by other large, contemporary buildings. Whereas its history and standing should have made the surrounding structures look out of place, the opposite was true. The church, here for hundreds of years, had lost its identity to its new companions. Its facade was blackened from the effects of exhaust fumes, its once-proud oaken door a darker entrance now than had ever been intended. Even the openings of its bell tower had been bricked in.