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

We didn’t get to the creek till nearly lunch time, and Matt took his sweatshirt off and tied it round his waist. It’s a couple miles from the block, way past the waste ground and out into the bush. It’s a good creek though. It’s so good we don’t go there too often, like we don’t want to wear it out.

You just walk along the bush, not seeing anything, and then suddenly there you are, and there’s this baby canyon cut. into the earth. It gets a little deeper every year, I think, except when there’s no rain. Maybe it gets deeper then too, I don’t know. The sides are about ten feet deep and this year there was rain so there’s plenty of water at the bottom and you have to be careful climbing down because otherwise you can slip and end up in the mud.

Matt went down first. He’s best at climbing, and really quick. He went down first so that if Joey slipped he might not fall all the way in. For me, if Joey slips, he slips, but Matt’s good like that. Probably comes from having such a tidy room.

Joey made it down okay this time, hold the front page, and I went last. The best way to get down is to put your back to the creek, slide your feet down, and then let them go until you’re hanging onto the edge of the canyon with your hands. Then you just have to scuttle. As I was lowering myself down I noticed how far you could see across the plain, looking right along about a foot up from the ground. There’s nothing to see for miles, nothing but bushes and dust. I think the man was there too, off in the distance, but it was difficult to be sure and then I slipped and nearly ended up in the creek myself, which would have been a real pain and Joey would have gone on about it forever.

We walked along the creek for a while and then came to the ocean. It’s not really the ocean, it’s just a bit where the canyon widens out into almost a circle that’s about fifteen feet across. It’s deeper than the rest of the creek, and the water isn’t so clear, but it’s really cool. When you’re down there you can’t see anything but this circle of sky, and you know there’s nothing else for miles around. There’s this old door there which we call our ship and we pull it to one side of the ocean and we all try to get on and float it to the middle. Usually it’s kind of messy and I know Matt and Joey are thinking there’s going to be trouble when their Moms see their clothes, but today we somehow got it right and we floated right to the middle with only a little bit of water coming up.

We played our game for a while and then we just sat there for a long time and talked and stuff. I was thinking how good it was to be there and there was a pause and then Joey tried to say something of his own like that. It didn’t come out very well, but we knew what he meant so we told him to shut up and made as if we were going to push him in. Matt pretended he had a spider on his leg just by suddenly looking scared and staring and Joey laughed, and I realised that that’s where jokes come from. It was our own joke, that no one else would ever understand and that they would never forget however old they got.

Matt looked at me one time, as if he was about to say what was on his mind, but then Joey said something dumb and he didn’t. We just sat there and kept talking about things and moving around so we didn’t get burnt too bad. Once when I looked up at the rim of the canyon I thought maybe there was a head peeking over the side but there probably wasn’t.

Joey has a watch and so we knew when it was four o’clock. Four o’clock is the latest we can leave so that Matt gets back for dinner in time. We walked back towards the waste ground, not running. The sun had tired us out and we weren’t in any hurry to get back because it had been a good afternoon, and they always finish when you split up. You can’t get back to them the next day, especially if you try to do the same thing again.

When we got back to the street we were late and so Matt and Joey ran on ahead. I would have run with them but I saw that the man was standing down the other side of the block, and I wanted to watch him to see what he was going to do. Matt waited back a second after Joey had run and said he’d see me after dinner. Then he ran, and I just hung around for a while.

The man was looking back up at the block again, like he was looking for something. He knew I was hanging around, but he didn’t come over right away, as if he was nervous. I went and sat on the wall and messed about with some stones. I wasn’t in any hurry.

“Excuse me,” says this voice, and I looked up to see the man standing over me. The slanting sun was in his eyes and he was shading them with his hand. He had a nice suit on and he was younger than people’s parents are, but not much. “You live here, don’t you?”

I nodded, and looked up at his face. He looked familiar.

“I used to live here too,” he said, “When I was a kid. On the top floor.” Then he laughed, and I recognised him from the sound. “A long time ago now. Came back after all these years to see if it had changed.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Hasn’t much, still looks the same.” He turned and looked again at the block, then back past me towards the waste ground. “Guys still playing out there on the ‘ground?”

“Yeah,” I said, “It’s cool. We have a fort there.”

“And the creek?”

He knew we still played there: he’d been watching. I knew what he really wanted to ask, so I just nodded. The man nodded too, as if he didn’t know what to say next. Or more like he knew what he wanted to say, but didn’t know how to go about it.

“My name’s Tom Spivey,” he said, and then stopped. I nodded again. The man laughed, embarrassed. “This is going to sound very weird, but. I’ve seen you around today, and yesterday.” He laughed again, running his hand through his hair, and then finally asked what was on his mind. “Your name isn’t Pete, by any chance?”

I looked up into his eyes, then away.

“No,” I said. “It’s Jim.”

The man looked confused for a moment, then relieved. He said a couple more things about the block, and then he went away. Back to the city, or wherever.

After dinner I saw Matt out in the back car park, behind the block. We talked about the afternoon some, so he could get warmed up, and then he told me what was on his mind.

His family was moving on. His dad had got a better job somewhere else. They’d be going in a week.

We talked a little more, and then he went back inside, looking different somehow, as if he’d already gone.

I stayed out, sitting on the wall, thinking about missing people. I wasn’t feeling sad, just tired. Sure I was going to miss Matt. He was my best friend. I’d missed Tom for a while, but then someone else came along. And then someone else, and someone else. There’s always new people. They come, and then they go. Maybe Matt would return some day. Sometimes they do come back. But everybody goes.

Tanith Lee began writing at the age of nine. After school she worked variously as a library assistant, shop assistant, filing clerk and waitress before spending a year at art college.

She published three children’s books in the early 1970s, but it was only when DAW Books published her novel The Birthgrave in 1975, and thereafter twenty-six other titles, was she able to become a full-time writer. To date she has published nearly sixty novels, including such recent titles as White as Snow, A Bed of Earth and Venus Preserved , plus nine collections of novellas and short stories. Her radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC and she scripted two episodes of the cult TV series Blake’s 7 .

Tanith Lee has twice won the World Fantasy Award for short fiction, and in 1980 she was awarded the British Fantasy Society’s August Derleth Award for her novel Death’s Master .