Stephen (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18

“What does this say, my good man?”

“I beg your pardon,” responded Arnold, with a tone Cutley didn’t like at all. “What does what say?”

“This ticket, you bastard. What does this ticket say?”

“Third Class,” said the conductor. “Which is where you should be, if you don’t mind my saying. This is not the place for you. You would not be comfortable here. You would be conscious of your, ah, shortcomings.”

Cutley looked at his ticket. It must be some sort of funny.

“This isn’t mine,” he said.

“You said it was. You recognised it. You would not want to make a scene in the First Class Dining Carriage.”

“First Class! I don’t call a stale pork pie first class dining!”

“The fare in Third Class might be more suited to your palate. More your taste. Rolls are available. Hard-tack biscuits. Powdered eggs, snoek, spam. Now, move along, there’s a good fellow.”

Arnold, seeming bigger, stood between him and the booth where the others were downing champagne cocktails. Cutley tried to get their attention but Arnold swayed and swelled to block him from their sight. Cutley tried to barge past. The conductor laid hands on him.

“I must ask you to go back to your place.”

“Bastard,” spat Cutley into the man’s bland face.

Arnold had a two-handed grip on Cutley’s lapels. So where did the fist that sank into Cutley’s stomach come from?

Cutley reeled, hearing another long rip as a lapel tore in the conductor’s hand. His gut clenched around pain. He knew when he was beaten. He slunk off, towards the connecting door. Beyond was Second Class, not his place either. He was supposed to be at the back of the train, with the baggage and the mail, probably with live chickens and families of untouchables sat on suitcases tied with string, lost in the crowd, one of the masses, trodden under by bastards and bitches. In his place.

There were things back there which he could use. He knew where they were. He had overheard, at Euston. He remembered the long cases.

Guns!

He limped out of the dining carriage, into the dark.

IV

“What’s up with Harry?” Richard asked.

“Gyppy tummy?” suggested Magic Fingers.

“I should go after him,” said Annette, folding her napkin. “We shouldn’t be separated.”

Richard touched her arm. His instincts tingled. So, he knew at once, did hers.

Harry had stumbled past Arnold, who was briefly bewildered, and charged out of the carriage.

“You stay here,” said Richard. “I’ll go.”

He stood. Annette was supposed to admire his manly resolve. She radiated a certain mumsy pride as if he were a schoolboy striding to the crease to face the demon bowler of the Upper Sixth. Not quite what he intended.

Harry Cutley had been seized in the middle of a mouthful of pie. Not necessarily a phenomenon worth an Incident Form. Something in his eyes as he veered off, trying to staunch coughing, suggested he wasn’t seeing what Richard was. The man had been touched. Attacked, even.

“Your friend, sir,” said Arnold, with concern. “He seems taken poorly.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing repeatable, sir.”

“I’ll see to him, thank you, Arnold.”

“Very good, sir.”

Every time he spoke with Arnold, Richard had to quash an impulse to tip him. At the end of the journey, was it the done thing to palm a ten-bob note and pass it over with a handshake?

He walked the length of the carriage, rolling with the movement of the train. He had become accustomed to the Scotch Streak. He had to concentrate to hear the rattle of wheels, the chuff-chuff of the engine, the small clinkings of cutlery and crockery. Almost comforting. Catriona Kaye said the most dangerous haunted houses always feel like home.

Harry had barged past Mrs Sweet. Richard thought of talking with her, but she glared as he walked towards her. He was a duck’s-arse-quiffed affront to everything she believed. Real killers wore respectable suits from Burton’s and had faces like trustworthy babies. That was how they got close. Richard had a pang of worry that Mrs Sweet might have an extra gun about her – a hold-out derringer in her stocking-top or a pepperpot in her reticule – in case a wounded grouse flapped close enough to need its head dissolving with a single, deadly-accurate shot. This train gave people funny ideas. She might easily pot him on the offchance.

He got by Mrs Sweet unshot, looked over his shoulder at Annette and Myles, and stepped through the connecting door into the Second Class carriage. He checked the lavatory and didn’t find Harry – though he caught sight of a cracked mirror and started, shocked at a glimpse of an antlered, fox-faced quarry with a target marked on his forehead in dribbling blood. How others see us.

The carriage was empty. The corridor was unlit. Second Class did not have sleeping berths, but there were regular compartments, suitable comfortably for six, which could take ten in a pinch. The dark made it easier to see out of the windows. This stretch of track ran though ancient forest. Branches twisted close, leaves reaching for the passing express.

Richard made his way down the carriage, checking each compartment. None of the privacy blinds were down. One seat supported a huddle of old clothes that might have been a sleeping Second Class passenger – though it was early to turn in for the night. On a second look, no one was there. He knew better than be caught out that way, and looked again. Whatever had been huddled was gone back to its hole. He trusted it would stay there.

It couldn’t be the throat-cut spectre of “Buzzy” Maltrincham. The vicious Viscount wouldn’t have been caught dead in Second Class. 3473 had many more ghosts than him. Would Lord Kilpartinger show up again? Disgraced old Donald McRidley – assuming he was dead. The Headless Fireman? The passengers of ’31? The waterlogged witches of Loch Gaer?

It got darker as he proceeded. Turning back, he saw the glass of the connecting door was now opaque – had someone drawn a blind? – and the dining carriage cut off from view.

“Harry?” he called out, feeling foolish.

Something pattered, near the toilet cubicle. Fast and light. Not clumsy Harry Cutley. It might be a large cat. They had railway cats, didn’t they? There was one in Old Mother Possum’s . But usually on stations, not on trains.

Another of Catriona Kaye’s sayings was that sometimes observers brought their own ghosts and the haunted place merely fleshed them out. Was there a puma person still after Harry? Hadn’t Annette been bothered by something from the War? Her “it”, her Worst Thing? Some entities fished out your worst nightmare – your worst memory, your darkest secret – and threw it at you. But nothing dug for your happiest moments, your fondest wishes, your most thrilling dreams and wrapped them up as a present. What had Magic Fingers called it, Sod’s Law?

Richard remembered his father’s advice about how to see off a tiger if you were unarmed. Knock sharply on its snout, as if rapping on a front door. Just the once. Serve notice you are not to be bothered. The big cat would bolt like a doused kitten, leaving rending, clawing and devouring for another day. Pumas are just weedy imitation tigers, so the Major Jeperson treatment should send one chasing its tail. Of course, his father never claimed to have used his tiger-defying technique in the wild. It was wisdom passed down in the family – untested, but comforting.

“Harry?”

Now, Richard felt like an idiot. Plainly, lightfeet wasn’t Harry Cutley.

He walked back, past the compartments – that huddle was still absent, thank you very much – towards the toilet and the connecting door. He moved with casual ease, controlling an urge to scream and run. The puma was Harry’s Worst Thing. Not Richard Jeperson’s.