Christopher Fowler - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 10

“Not if you ain’t got any,” the man replies and blinks once, vellum lids fast across those bulging eyes.

“It’s getting late and our car’s broken down,” Lark says and the man makes a noise that might be a sigh or might be a cough. “It don’t take long,” he says and smiles, shows crooked teeth the color of nicotine stains.

“And you’ve got all the things that those signs say in there?” Crispin asks, one eyebrow cocked, eager, excited doubt, and the man shrugs.

“If it’s free, I don’t expect you’ll be asking for your money back,” as if that’s an answer, but enough for Crispin and he nods his head and steps toward the door, away from the shark jaws. But Lark grabs his hand, anxious grab that says “Wait,” without using any words, and when he looks at her, eyes that say, “This isn’t like the dinosaurs, whatever it is, this isn’t plaster and plywood,” and so he smiles for her, flashes comfort and confidence.

“It’ll be something cool,” he says. “Better than listening to Tam bitch at us about the car, at least.”

So she smiles back at him, small and nervous smile and she squeezes his hand a little harder.

“Come on, if you’re coming,” the man says. “I’m letting in the flies, standing here with the door wide open.”

“Yeah,” Crispin says. “We’re coming,” and the man holds the door for them, steps to one side, and the trailer swallows them like a hungry, metal whale.

Inside, and the air is chilly and smells like fish and stagnant saltwater, mildew, and there’s the faintest rotten odor somewhere underneath, dead thing washed up and swelling on the sand. Crispin and Lark pause while the man pulls the door shut behind them, shuts them in, shuts the world out. “Do you live in here?” Lark asks, still squeezing Crispin’s hand, and the old man turns around, the tall old man with his billygoat beard and looking down on the twins now as he scratches at the scaly, dry skin on his neck.

“I have myself a cot in the back, and a hot plate,” he replies and Lark nods; her eyes are adjusting to the dim light leaking in through the dirty windowpanes and she can see the flakes of dead skin, dislodged and floating slowly down to settle on the dirty linoleum floor of the trailer.

The length of the trailer has been lined with wooden shelves and huge glass tanks and there are sounds to match the smells, wet sounds, the constant bubble of aquarium pumps, water filters, occasional, furtive splashes.

“Wonders from the blackest depths,” the old man sighs, wheezes, sicklytired imitation of a carnie barker’s spiel, and “Jewels and nightmares plucked from Davy Jones’ Locker, washed up on the shores of the Seven Seas. ”

The old man is interrupted by a violent fit of coughing and Crispin steps up to the nearest shelf, a collection of jars, dozens and dozens of jars filled with murky ethanol or formalin, formaldehyde weakteabrown and the things that float lifelessly inside: scales and spines, oystergrey flesh and lidless, unseeing eyes like pickled grapes. Labels on the jars, identities in a spideryfine handwriting, and the paper so old and yellow he knows that it would crumble at his most careful touch.

The old man clears his throat, loud, phlegmy rattle and he spits into a shadowmoist corner.

“Secrets from the world’s museums, from Mr. Charles Darwin’s own cabinets, scooped from the sea off Montevideo in eighteen hundred and thirty-two…”

“Is that an octopus?” Lark asks and the twins both stare into one of the larger jars, three or four gallons and a warty lump inside, a bloom of tentacles squashed against the glass like something wanting out. Crispin presses the tip of one finger to the glass, traces the outline of a single, dimewide suction cup.

The old man coughs again, throaty raw hack, produces a wadded and wrinkled, snotstained handkerchief from his shirt pocket and wipes at his wide mouth with it.

“That, boy, is the larva of the Kraken, the greatest of the cephalopods, Viking-bane, ten strangling arms to hale dragon ships beneath the waves.” And then the old man clears his throat, and, in a different voice, barker turned poet, recites, “ ‘Below the thunders of the upper deep, / Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea, / His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep / The Kraken sleepeth. ’ “

“Tennyson,” Lark says and the old man nods, pleased.

Crispin leans closer, squints through the gloom and dusty glass, the clouded preserving fluids, and now he can see something dark and sharp like a parrot’s beak nested at the center of the rubbery molluskflower. But then they’re being hurried along, past all the unexamined jars, and here’s the next stop on the old man’s tour.

Beneath a bell jar, the taxidermied head and arms and torso of a monkey sewn onto the dried tail of a fish, the stitches plain to see, but he tells them it’s a baby mermaid, netted near the coast of Java a hundred years ago.

“It’s just half an old, dead monkey with a fish tail stuck on,” Crispin says, impertinent, already tiring of these moldy, fabricated wonders. “See?” and he points at the stitches in case Lark hasn’t noticed them for herself.

The old man makes an annoyed sound, not quite anger, but impatience, certainly, and he moves them quickly along, this time to a huge fish tank, plateglass sides so overgrown with algae there’s no seeing what’s inside, just mossygreen like siren hair that sways in whatever dull currents the aquarium’s pump is making.

“I can’t see anything at all in there,” Crispin says, as Lark looks nervously back past the mermaid toward the trailer door. But Crispin stands on his toes, peers over the edge of the tank, and “You need to put some snails in there,” he says. “To eat some of that shit so people can see. ”

“This one has no name, no proper name,” the old man croaks through his snotclogged throat. “No legend. This one was scraped off the hull of a Russian whaler with the shipworms and barnacles and on Midsummer’s Eve, put an ear to the glass and you’ll hear it singing in the language of riptides and typhoons.”

And something seems to move, then, maybe, beyond the emerald scum, feathery red gillflutter or a thousand jointed legs the color of a burn and Crispin jumps, steps away from the glass and lets go of Lark’s hand. Smug grin on the old man’s long face to show his yellowed teeth, and he makes a barking noise like seals or laughing.

“You go back, if you’re getting scared,” the old man says and Lark looks like that’s all she wants in the world right now, to be out of the trailer, back on the beach and headed up the cliff to the Impala. But Crispin takes her hand again, this very same boy that’s afraid of banana slugs but something here he has to see, something he has to prove to himself or to the self-satisfied old man and “What’s next, sea monkeys?” he asks, defiant, mock brave.

“Right here,” the old man says, pointing to something more like a cage than a tank. “The spawn of the great sea serpent and a Chinese water dragon,” planks and chicken wire on the floor, almost as tall as the twins and Crispin drags Lark along toward it. “Tam will be looking for us, won’t she?” she asks, but he ignores her, stares instead into the enclosure. There’s muddy straw on the bottom and motionless coils of gold and chocolatebrown muscle.

“Jesus, it’s just a stupid python, Lark. See? It’s not even as big as the one that Alexandra used to have. What a rip-off. ” and then he stops, because the snake moves, shifts its chainlink bulk and now he can see its head, the tiny horns above its pearlbead eyes, and further back, a single, stubby flap of meat along one side of its body that beats nervously at the air a moment and then lies still against the filthy straw.