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

The room was in commotion. Calloway was on his feet, shouting. Branch was pounding his fist on the table, shouting, “What are you going to do, milk them like snakes?”

Vlad’s startled blue-gray eyes met Jack’s — both men looked shocked, troubled. “I think we’ve found the kernel in the nut,” said Vlad. “He can’t be serious.”

“Frost sees himself in the newspapers,” said Jack Stewart. “On the cover of Time. Or even more in the Readers Digest, which is what he probably reads. He doesn’t know what kinds of worms are in that can, and he doesn’t want to know either.”

Branch leaned over to Vlad; grimly he said, “Well, now you know why I didn’t want to tell you before. why I wanted to protect you. Have you seen enough? Are you happy now?”

Vlad said, “I wasn’t happy before, but I’ve seen enough for now.”

“- details must be worked out as we go along, doctors, professors, admittedly there is an immense amount of work, but — ”

Frost had staked his claim. Who knew where the assay office was? It could hardly be said yet that the rush was on, but certainly the brawling had already started in the mining camp.

Why had Hillsmith not received his usual dose of Thorazine? No one really knew. Doors would slam and heads would roll, thorough investigations be made: the facts would never be discovered. Things sometimes happened which should not. Confusion followed. For in fact the hospital was always overcrowded and understaffed. Even the locked ward could not always be kept locked; could every linen locker?

Hillsmith, for once alert and cunning, had turned into a quick-change artist. Finding the ward briefly unlocked, he slipped into the staff physician’s shower-room, and emerged with the clothing and ID badge of someone in the shower. Properly clad and badged, he calmly strolled along, looking here and there and, sure enough: “ There’s my bag,” he said, aloud, but not loudly. The car keys were in the bag, and the gate guard, due for retirement, had other things on his mind. Never mind the gate guard. Hillsmith didn’t.

He got as far as Bewdley Hill when the car ran out of gas. Hillsmith continued on foot. He persuaded young Eddy Fritz at the gas station to keep the doctor bag as security for a can of gas.

It was always a question around Bewdley Hill; was that Nasser Fauntleroy boy crazy, or just plain mean ? Nasser greeted Hillsmith at first sight with a loud cry of “Hey, Doctor Flim-Flam! Watchew wearing them funny clothes for, Doctor Floy-Floy? I says hey! Hey!”

This getting no response (and perhaps desiring none), he fell into step a safe distance behind, and began following his latest victim in an exaggerated version of the victim’s gait, all the while jeering and hooting and mocking. In fact it was almost impossible to get rid of him. If ignored, he kept on. If confronted, he increased his attack. If smiled at, he became more brutal. He had been known to follow someone for miles.

Hillsmith kept on, carrying the can of gas. So did Nasser Fauntleroy, flinging out fists and feet, breaking out when he saw fit. Hillsmith turned up River Road, and up a lane containing a certain old house. He began to gather wooden rubble from the littered lane. At this point a curious change came over Nasser Fauntleroy. His stiff-legged steps faltered, and he looked all around. He slowed. He made many faces. He never entirely stopped, but he did, however, fall quite quiet.

Vlad had seen enough, and now he wanted only to see his family. His favorite niece, Elizabeth, answered the phone. “How’s your Aunt Elsa?” asked Vlad.

“She’s playing gawlf. They’re all playing gawlf.” said Elizabeth.

“Say, that’s great!” Vlad exclaimed. “And Bella?”

“She’s taking her nap on the screened porch.”

“Cooler, eh?”

“Well, she won’t sleep in side.”

Vlad winced. “Is she having any of her attacks?”

“Nope,” said Elizabeth.

“Does she smile and laugh?”

“Nope.”

“Does she eat or talk?”

“Little bit.”

“Listen, I’m coming to pick her up… to take her for a drive, okay?

There commenced a pause and a series of squalid sounds which Vlad analyzed as those of a teenager eating an apple. Then: “Yeah, I guess so, okay.”

Vlad dropped off Jack Stewart to attend to some business of his own, and went to pick up Bella. After he drove for a while with the quiet and withdrawn child beside him in the car, he had the great and good idea of returning to the old house. Bella would see the place in the sunlight, as he had first seen it — when the creature would be quiescent — and she would realize there was nothing to fear. It seemed worth a try; all the psychologists and medications clearly weren’t helping. Bella did not recognize the old house, so Vlad took her inside, to the room where the tragedy had occurred.

Hillsmith paused in the lane in front of the old house, and eyed a car parked near the overgrown drive. Then he continued his stride. There was a lot of debris in the yard: fragments of furniture, frayed boards, sloughed shingles and the like. Hillsmith gathered and put some of this under his arm, and, walking tiptoed, went up to the house. Fauntleroy did the same. Still he kept silent.

Hillsmith carried the rubble to the verandah surrounding the old house, and made a neat trail of wooden debris all the way around. Then he paused to listen at the walls. Was there, in the sultry silence of the ebbing day, was there any sound at all? If so, was it made by the wind in the huge old trees? Was there any other sound? A rustle? A click?

Nasser Fauntleroy mocked his movements in silence. Why did he not leave? He was certainly in no way at ease.

What is there which makes them both stop now? Perhaps Nasser Fauntleroy stops because Hillsmith stops, but why does Hillsmith stop? Why does he scan the moldering wall so carefully? Hillsmith picks up his can and runs. Hillsmith runs and runs, a-teeter and a-totter, around the verandah, and it is a marvel how thin a stream of fluid he has managed to spill, almost to spray, along the base of the walls as he runs and runs, tossing lit matches like fireflies.

Then with no warning, with no word, with no sound, Hillsmith seems to leave the floor to hurtle through the air, to burst through the rotting wall, to seize — suddenly — something in both his hands — something which rustles. and rattles. and clicks. and kicks. and struggles. and slips out of Hillsmith’s grip as Hillsmith staggers and half-falls to the ground. Does Nasser Fauntleroy scream? If not, who then did?

Once again, Vlad Smith heard his small daughter’s shrill scream, and felt her body arch in his arms. Did he smell smoke or was that the stench of.? Did he hear the crackle of flames or was that the clicking sound of.? “My god,” he whispered, and he felt his body grow cold. They poured out of cracks in the walls as if a roaches’ nest had been disturbed. They surrounded him with their horrible stenches and their horrible sounds; then they clambered, roachlike, up the walls towards the ceiling.

Now Vlad saw the smoke and the flames through the window, and he knew what had wakened them, and he knew they had to get out. But a Paper-Man lay on the floor in the doorway, blocking their escape. It began to crawl towards them with its terrible claws extended, shedding scraps of rotting paper as it moved. Its stinking odor hit Vlad in waves. He watched for a moment, and willed his stomach to be still. He recalled that the best way to kill a Paper-Man is to break its neck. Vlad dashed forward and aimed a long-unused soccer kick at the creature’s head. Something snapped lightly and rolled. It was the head, which stared with open eyes at him and writhed its lips at him and clicked its foul teeth at him.