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

I’d heard enough of Jeremy’s stories to be able to make a pretty good guess, but I couldn’t seem to make my mouth say the word. Mr Fuzzy was shaking he was so scared. He was shaking real hard, and he was mad, too. He was mad at Jeremy for trying to scare me like that.

“It was blood, Si,” Jeremy said.

That was when I heard it again, a whisper of metal against metal like the sound the butcher makes at the grocery store when he’s putting the edge on a knife.

Jeremy gasped. “Did you hear that?”

And just like that the sound died away.

“No,” I said.

We were silent, listening.

“What happened?” I whispered, because I wanted him to finish it. If he finished he could do his dumb little mad-scientist laugh and admit he made it all up.

“He ran,” Jeremy said. “He ran through the house and it was all dark and he went down the basement, down where you found those rusty old tools. Only it wasn’t rust, Si. It was blood. Because you know what else they found down there?”

I heard the whisper of metal again — shir shir shir, that sound the butcher makes when he’s putting the edge on a knife and his hands are moving so fast the blade is just a blur of light. But Jeremy had already started talking again.

“They found the missing kids,” he said, but it sounded so far away. All I could hear was that sound in my head, shir shir shir. “They were dead,” Jeremy was saying, “and pretty soon Mueller was dead, too. They killed the guy right on the spot, he didn’t even get a trial. They put him down the same way he’d killed those kids.”

I swallowed. “How was that?”

“He used those long nails on them, those skewer things. He knocked them on the head or something and then, while they were out, he just hammered those things right through them — wham wham wham — so they were pinned to the floor, they couldn’t get up. And then you know what he did?”

Only he didn’t wait for me to answer, he couldn’t wait, he just rolled on. He said, “Mueller used the scalpel on them, then. He just ripped them open and then-” Jeremy’s voice broke. It was a masterful touch. “And then he started eating, Si. He started eating before they were even dead-”

Jeremy broke off suddenly, and now the sound was so loud it seemed to shake the walls — SHIR SHIR SHIR — and the room was so cold I could see my breath fogging up the dark.

“Christ, what’s that sound?” Jeremy whimpered, and then he started making moaning sounds way down in his throat, the way he always did, like he wanted to scream but he was too afraid.

Mr Fuzzy was shaking, just shaking so hard, and I have to admit it, right then I hated Jeremy with a hatred so pure I could taste it, like an old penny under my tongue. The darkness seemed heavy suddenly, an iron weight pinning me to my bed. It was cold, too. It was so cold. I’ve never been so cold in my life.

“Christ, Si,” Jeremy shrieked. “Stop it! Stop it! STOP IT!”

Mr Fuzzy was still shaking in my arms, and I hated Jeremy for that, I couldn’t help it, but I tried to make myself get up anyway, I really tried. Only the dark was too thick and heavy. It seemed to flow over me, like concrete that hadn’t quite formed up, binding me to my mattress with Mr Fuzzy cowering in my arms.

Jeremy’s whole bed was shaking now. He was grunting and wrestling around. I heard a pop, like a piece of taut rubber giving way, and a metallic wham wham wham. There was this liquidy gurgle and Jeremy actually screamed, this long desperate scream from the bottom of his lungs. I really had to admire the job he was doing, as much as I couldn’t help being mad. He’d never taken it this far. It was like watching a master at the very peak of his form. There was another one of those liquidy thumps and then the sound of the hammer and then the whole thing happened again and again. It happened so many times I lost track. All I knew was that Jeremy had stopped screaming, but I couldn’t remember when. The only sound in the room was this muffled thrashing sound, and that went on for a little while longer and then it stopped, too. Everything just stopped.

It was so still. There wasn’t any sound at all.

The dark lay heavy on my skin, pinning me down. It was all I could do to open my mouth, to force the word out-

“Jeremy?”

I waited then. I waited for the longest time to hear that stupid Vincent Price laugh of his, to hear Jeremy telling me he’d gotten me this time, he was only joking, Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha.

But the laugh never came.

What came instead was the sound of someone chewing, the sound of someone who hadn’t had a meal in ages just tucking right in and having at it, smacking his lips and slurping and everything, and it went on and on and on. The whole time I just lay there. I couldn’t move at all.

It must have gone on for hours. I don’t know how long it went on. All I know is that suddenly I realized it was silent, I couldn’t hear a thing.

I waited some more for Jeremy to make that stupid laugh of his. And then a funny thing happened. I wasn’t lying in my bed after all. I was standing up between the beds, by the milk crate we used for a nightstand, and I was tired. I was so tired. My legs ached like I’d been standing there for hours. My arms ached, too. Every part of me ached. I ached all over.

I kept having these crazy thoughts as well. About ghosts and hunger and how hungry Mad Dog Mueller must have been, after all those years down in the basement. About how maybe he’d spent all that time waiting down there, waiting for the right person to come along, someone who was just as hungry as he was.

They were the craziest thoughts, but I couldn’t seem to stop thinking them. I just stood there between the beds. My face was wet, too, my whole face, my mouth and everything. I must have been crying.

I just stood there waiting for Jeremy to laugh that stupid mad-scientist laugh of his and tell me it was all a game. And I have to admit something: I was scared, too. I was so scared.

But it wasn’t the dark I was scared of.

God help me, I didn’t want to turn on the light.

Christopher Fowler lives and works in central London, where he is a director of the Soho movie-marketing company The Creative Partnership, producing TV and radio scripts, documentaries, trailers and promotional shorts. He spends the remainder of his time writing short stories and novels, and he contributes a regular column about the cinema to The 3rd Alternative.

His books include the novels Roofworld, Rune, Red Bride, Darkest Day, Spanky, Psychoville, Disturbia, Soho Black, Calabash, Full Dark House and The Water House, and such short-story collections as The Bureau of Lost Souls, City Jitters, Sharper Knives, Flesh Wounds, Personal Demons, Uncut, The Devil in Me and Demonized. Breathe is a new novella from Telos Publishing.

Fowler’s short story “Wageslaves” won the 1998 British Fantasy Award, and he also scripted the 1997 graphic novel Menz Insana, illustrated by John Bolton.

“I wrote this story when I was researching feral animals in London,” the author explains, “and found that proximity to rats was changing in cities because of fast-food outlets. During the hot summer of 2003, I noticed that at 2:00 a.m. every morning I could hear scampering noises across my bedroom ceiling. I went up on the roof (it’s a terraced street) but didn’t see anything. However, a few nights later, a rat came into my kitchen from the open back door and I found myself battling it with a broom.

“My hysterical overreaction to what was basically a small terrified rodent is apparently normal. The rat-catcher relies on this to charge me Ј200.00 for putting poison down while telling me horror stories about rats, some of which I’ve included here.”