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

Twice she started across the stream, one foot out and plenty enough stones between her and the other side to cross without getting her feet wet, and twice she stopped. Thought that she glimpsed dark shapes moving just below the surface, undulating forms like the wings of stingrays or the tentacles of an octopus or squid, black and eellong things darting between the rocks. And never mind that the water is crystal clear and couldn’t possibly be more than a few inches deep. Never mind she knows it’s really nothing more than shadow tricks and the last glimmers of the setting sun caught in the rippling water. These apprehensions too instinctual, the thought of what might be waiting for her if she slipped, sharp teeth eager for stray ankles, anxiety all but too deep to question, and so she’s stood here, feeling stupid, calling them like she was their goddamn mother.

She looks up again and there they are, almost stumbling down the hill, the steep dirt path leading down from the creepy old trailer, Crispin in the lead and dragging Lark along, a cloud of dust trailing out behind them. When they reach the stream they don’t even bother with the stepping stones, just splash their way straight across, splashing her in the bargain.

“Mother fucker” Tam says and steps backwards onto drier sand. “Will you please watch what the fuck you’re doing? Shit. ” But neither of them says a word, stand breathless at the edge of the stream, the low bank carved into the sand by the water; Crispin stares down at his soggy Docs and Lark glances nervously back toward the trailer on the hill.

“Where the hell have you two bozos been? Didn’t you hear me calling you? I’m fucking hoarse from calling you.”

“An old man,” Lark gasps, wheezes the words out, and before she can say anything else Crispin says, “A sideshow, Tam, that’s all,” speaking quickly like he’s afraid of what Lark will say if he doesn’t, what she might have been about to say. “Just some crazy old guy with a sort of a sideshow.”

“Jesus,” Tam sighs, pissytired sigh that she hopes sounds the way she feels and she reaches out and plucks a wilted poppy from Crispin’s hair, tosses it to the sand at their feet. “That figures, you know? That just fucking figures. Next time, Magwitch comes or your asses stay home,” and she turns her back on them, then, heading up the beach toward the car. She only stops once, turns around to be sure they’re following and they are, close behind and their arms tight around one another’s shoulders as if they couldn’t make it alone. The twins’ faces are hidden in shadow, night-shrouded, and behind them, the sea has turned a cold, silvery indigo and stretches away to meet the rising stars.

Michael Marshall smith’s debut novel, Only Forward, won the British Fantasy Society’s August Derleth Fantasy Award in 1995. His second novel, Spares, has been optioned by Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks SKG, while his latest, One of Us, is being developed as a movie by Di Novi Pictures and Warner Bros.

He has had his short fiction published in anthologies and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic, including several volumes of the Darklands, Dark Voices, Dark Terrors, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and The Best New Horror series. He is a three-time winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Story, and has been nominated three times for the World Fantasy Award. His short fiction is collected in When God Lived in Kentish Town & Others and What You Make it.

As the author recalls, “This story is loosely based on a time when my family lived in Armidale, in New South Wales, Australia. One Sunday we went out to visit the family of a school friend of mine, who lived in the outback. While the parents chatted about grown-up stuff, my friend took me into the bush.

“It was a hot day, and the land was flat and featureless. We found this little canyon in the middle of the open plain, much as described in the story, with steep walls and a door floating in the pond at the bottom. In retrospect, I suppose that if someone had taken the trouble to drag a piece of rubbish that heavy to it then we can’t have been that far from civilisation — but in my memory we were on the surface of Mars. We messed around, as boys will, and we had fun, and then we walked home through the stillness. It was a good day.”

I saw a man yesterday. I was coming back from the waste ground with Matt and Joey and we were calling Joey dumb because he’d seen this huge spider and he thought it was a Black Widow or something when it was just, like, a spider, and I saw the man.

We were walking down the road towards the block and laughing and I just happened to look up and there was this man down the end of the street, tall, walking up towards us. We turned off the road before he got to us, and I forgot about him.

Anyway, Matt had to go home then because his family eats early and his Mom raises hell if he isn’t back in time to wash up and so I just hung out for a while with Joey and then he went home too. Nothing much happened in the evening.

This morning I got up early because we were going down to the creek for the day and it’s a long walk. I made some sandwiches and put them in a bag, and I grabbed an apple and put that in too. Then I went down to knock on Matt’s door.

His Mom answered and let me in. She’s okay really, and quite nice-looking for a Mom, but she’s kind of strict. She’s the only person in the world who calls me Peter instead of Pete. Matt’s room always looks like it’s just been tidied, which is quite cool actually though it must be a real pain to keep up. At least you know where everything is.

We went down and got Joey. Matt seemed kind of quiet on the way down as if there was something he wanted to tell me, but he didn’t. I figured that if he wanted to, sooner or later he would. That’s how it is with best friends. You don’t have to be always talking. The point will come round soon enough.

Joey wasn’t ready so we had to hang round while he finished his breakfast. His Dad’s kind of weird. He sits and reads the paper at the table and just grunts at it every now and then. I don’t think I could eat breakfast with someone who did that. I think I would find it disturbing. Must be something you get into when you grow up, I guess.

Anyway, finally Joey was ready and we left the block. The sun was pretty hot already though it was only nine in the morning and I was glad I was only wearing a T-Shirt. Matt’s Mom made him wear a sweatshirt in case there was a sudden blizzard or something and I knew he was going to be pretty baked by the end of the day but you can’t tell moms anything.

As we were walking away from the block towards the waste ground I looked back and I saw the man again, standing on the opposite side of the street, looking at the block. He was staring up at the top floor and then I thought he turned and looked at us, but it was difficult to tell because the sun was shining right in my eyes.

We walked and ran through the waste ground, not hanging around much because we’d been there yesterday. We checked on the fort but it was still there. Sometimes other kids come and mess it up but it was okay today.

Matt got Joey a good one with a scrunched-up leaf. He put it on the back of his hand when Joey was looking the other way and then he started staring at it and saying “Pete. ” in this really scared voice; and I saw what he was doing and pretended to be scared too and Joey bought it.

“I told you,” he says — and he’s backing away — “I told you there was Black Widows. ” and we could have kept it going but I started laughing. Joey looked confused for a second and then he just grunted as if he was reading his Dad’s paper and so we jumped on him and called him Dad all afternoon.