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

The area between cubicle and door was untenanted. He thought. He held the door-handle, torn. He couldn’t return to Annette and Myles with no news of Harry, but didn’t want to venture further into the train without reporting back, even if he raised a fuss. Harry, technically, was in charge. He should have left instructions – not that Richard would have felt obliged to follow them. If it had been Edwin Winthrop , maybe. Catriona Kaye, certainly – though she never instructed. She provided useful information and a delicate nudge towards the wisest course.

The nagging imp came again – he was just a kid, he wasn’t ready for this, he wasn’t sure what this was. None of that nonsense, he told himself, sternly, trying to sound like Edwin or his father. You’re a Diogenes Club man. Inner Sanctum material. Most Valued Member potential. Bred to it, sensitive , a Talent.

Click. He’d tell Annette that Harry had gone far afield, then co-opt Arnold and make a thorough search. This was a train, it was impossible to go missing ( Lord Kilpartinger did ) and Harry was simply puking his pie, not held by the Headless Fireman and clawed by a Phantom Puma.

He opened the connecting door.

And wasn’t in the dining carriage, but the First Class Sleeping Compartments. Discreet overhead lights flickered.

At the end of the corridor, by an open compartment-door, stood a small figure in blue pyjamas decorated with space-rockets, satellites, moons and stars. Her label was tied loosely around her neck. Her unbound red hair fell to her waist, almost covering her face. Her single exposed eye fixed on him.

What was the girl’s name? He was as bad as Harry.

“Vanessa?” it came to him. “Why are you up?”

Setting aside the Mystery of the Vanishing Carriage, he went to the child, and knelt, sweeping hair away from her face. She wasn’t crying but something was wrong. He recognised emptiness in her, an absence he knew well – for he had it himself. He made a smile-face and she didn’t cringe. At least she didn’t see him as a werebeast whose head would fit the space over the mantelpiece. She also didn’t laugh, no matter how he twisted his mouth and rolled his eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“Dreams,” she said, hugging him around the neck, surprisingly heavy, lips close to his ear, “ bad dreams.”

V

“. . . and then, chicklet, there were two.”

Magic Fingers wished the Scotch Streak’s famous facilities stretched to an espresso machine. He could use a Java jolt to electrify the old grey sponge, get his extra-senses acting extra-sensible. Like most night-birds, he ran on coffee.

Annie pursed her lips at him and looked at the doorway through which Hard Luck Harry and now the Kid had disappeared.

“You said we shouldn’t split the band and you were on the button,” he told her. “We should have drawn the wagons in a circle.”

“You’re not helping,” she said.

Was he picking up jitters from her? When Annie was discombo-bulated, everyone in the house came down with the sweats. It was a downside of her Talent.

“Chill, tomato, chill,” he said. “Put some ice on it.”

She nodded, knowing what he meant, and tried hard. There was a switch in her brain, which turned off the receptors in her fright centre. Otherwise she’d never have made it through the War.

Danny Myles had been blind during the War, evacuated from the East End to the wilds of Wales. He had learned his way around the sound-smell-touch-tastescape of Streatham in his first twelve years, but found the different environment – all cold wind-blasts, tongue-twisting language and lava bread – of Bedgellert a disorienting nightmare. He had run away from Mr and Mrs Jones the Farmers on his own, and felt his way back across two countries, turning up in his street to find it wasn’t there any more and Mum was with Auntie Brid in Brixton. Lots of cockney kids ran away from yokels they were packed off to during the Blitz – some from exploitation or abuse far beyond lava bread every evening and tuneless chapel most of the weekend – but they weren’t usually blind. It was a nine days’ wonder. Mum wasn’t sure whether to send him back to the Jones’, with a label round his neck like that chick who took a shine to the Kid, or keep him in London, sheltering in the Underground during the raids.

Born without sight, it was hard for Danny to get his head around the idea of blindness or realise his extra-senses were out of the ordinary. Then, the switch in his brain was thrown. No miracle operation, no bump on the bonce, no faith healer – it was just like a door suddenly swinging open. There was a black-out, so there wasn’t even much to see – until the sun came up. He didn’t stop whooping for a week. At first, the bright new world in his eyes blotted out the patterns of sound and touch he had made do with, but when things settled, his ears were sharper than ever. Soon, he could channel music through anything with eighty-eight keys, really earning his “Magic Fingers” handle. Then Edwin Winthrop came into the scene and the Diogenes Club took an interest, labelling him a Talent.

He’d been doing these gigs for years. In ’53, he’d unmasked the Phantom of the Festival of Britain. Then, he’d busted the Insane Gang. Defused the last of Goebbels’ Psychic Propaganda Bombs. Rid London Zoo of the Ghost Gorilla and his Ape Armada. It was a sideline. Also, he knew, an addiction. Some jazzmen popped pills, mainlined horse, bombed out on booze, chased skirts – he went after spooks. Not just any old sheet-wearers, but haints which could turn about and bite. Heart-eaters. Like 3473-S. This was a bad one, worse than the Phantom, worse than the Ghost Gorilla . He knew it. Annie and the Kid knew it too, but they hadn’t his extra-senses. They didn’t know enough to be properly wary. Hell, not wary – terrified .

“You’re doing it again,” Annie chided him.

He realised he’d been drumming his fingers. “Stella By Starlight”. A song about a ghost. He stopped.

His hands hurt. That snap from the piano-lid was coolly calculated to show him who was boss. The sides of his thumbs were numb. His knuckles were purple and blobby. He spread his fingers on the tablecloth.

“Like, ouch, man,” he said.

Annie giggled.

“It hurts, y’know. How’d you like it if your face fell off?”

She was shocked for a moment.

“Not a lot,” she said.

“These hands are my fortune, ought to be wrapped in cotton wool every night. If I could spring for payments, I’d insure them for lotsa lettuce. This . . . this train went for them, like a bird goes for the eyes. Dig?”

“The Worst Thing in the World.”

“On the button, Mama.”

“Less of the ‘Mama’. I’m not that much older than you.”

The Kid ought to be back by now. But he was a no-show. And Harry Cutley was far out there, drowning.

Magic Fingers cast his peepers over the dining car. There’d been an elderly frail strapping on the feed-bag down the way. She’d skedaddled, though he didn’t recall her getting up. Arnold – the conductor-waiter-majordomo-high priest – was gonesville also. He and Annie were alone.

Man, the rattle and shake of the train was fraying his nerves with bring-down city jazz! It was syncopation without representation! All bum notes and missed melodies.

At first, movement had been smooth, like skimming over a glassy lake. Now, the waters were choppy. Knives and forks hopped on the tables. Windows thrummed in their frames. The cloth slid by fractions of an inch and had to be held down, lest it drag plates over the edge and into the aisle.

He felt it in his teeth, in his water, in his guts, in the back of his throat.