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

“Long enough. We’d have to give you full marks for persistence. Are you in a cupboard, by the way? It sounds like one. Your trick nearly worked.”

“It’s a coffin, God help me. Can’t you hear that?” Coe cries and scrapes his nails across the underside of the lid.

Perhaps the squealing is more tangible than audible. He’s holding the mobile towards it, but when he returns the phone to his ear the policewoman says “I’ve heard all I want to, I think.”

“Are you still calling me a liar?” He should have demanded to speak to whoever’s in charge. He’s about to do so when a thought ambushes him. “If you really think I am,” he blurts, “why are you talking to me?”

At once he knows. However demeaning it is to be taken for a criminal, that’s unimportant if they’re locating him. He’ll talk for as long as she needs to keep him talking. He’s opening his mouth to rant when he hears a man say “No joy, I’m afraid. Can’t trace it.”

If Coe is too far underground, how is he able to phone? The policewoman brings him to the edge of panic. “Count yourself lucky,” she tells him, “and don’t dare play a trick like this again. Don’t you realise you may be tying up a line while someone genuinely needs our help?”

He mustn’t let her go. He’s terrified that if she rings off they won’t accept his calls. It doesn’t matter what he says so long as it makes the police come for him. Before she has finished lecturing him he shouts “Don’t you speak to me like that, you stupid cow.”

“I’m war ing ou, ir—”

“Do the work we’re paying you to do, and that means the whole shiftless lot of you. You’re too fond of finding excuses not to help the public, you damned lazy swine.” He’s no longer shouting just to be heard. “You weren’t much help with my wife, were you? You were worse than useless when she was wandering the streets not knowing where she was. And you were a joke when she started chasing me round the house because she’d forgotten who I was and thought I’d broken in. That’s right, you’re the bloody joke, not me. She nearly killed me with a kitchen knife. Now get on with your job for a change, you pathetic wretched—”

Without bothering to flicker the light goes out, and he hears nothing but death in his ear. He clutches the mobile and shakes it and pokes blindly at the keys, none of which brings him a sound except for the lifeless clacking of plastic or provides the least relief from the unutterable blackness. At last he’s overcome by exhaustion or despair or both. His arms drop to his sides, and the phone slips out of his hand.

Perhaps it’s the lack of air, but he feels as if he may soon be resigned to lying where he is. Shutting his eyes takes him closer to sleep. The surface beneath him is comfortable enough, after all. He could fancy he’s in bed, or is that mere fancy? Can’t he have dreamed he wakened in his coffin and everything that followed? Why, he has managed to drag the quilt under himself, which is how the nightmare began. He’s vowing that it won’t recur when a huge buzzing insect crawls against his hand.

He jerks away from it, and his scalp collides with the headboard, which is too plump. The insect isn’t only buzzing, it’s glowing feebly. It’s the mobile, which has regained sufficient energy to vibrate. As he grabs it, the decaying light seems to fatten the interior of the coffin. He jabs the key to take the call and fumbles the mobile against his ear. “Hello?” he pleads.

“Coming.”

It’s barely a voice. It sounds as unnatural as the numbers in the answering messages did, and at least as close to falling to bits. Surely that’s the fault of the connection. Before he can speak again the darkness caves in on him, and he’s holding an inert lump of plastic against his ear.

There’s a sound, however. It’s muffled but growing more audible. He prays that he’s recognising it, and then he’s sure he does. Someone is digging towards him.

“I’m here,” he cries and claps a bony hand against his withered lips. He shouldn’t waste whatever air is left, especially when he’s beginning to feel it’s as scarce as light down here. It seems unlikely that he would even have been heard. Why is he wishing he’d kept silent? He listens breathlessly to the scraping in the earth. How did the rescuers manage to dig down so far without his noticing? The activity inches closer – the sound of the shifting of earth – and all at once he’s frantically jabbing at the keypad in the blackness. Any response from the world overhead might be welcome, any voice other than the one that called him. The digging is beneath him.

JOHN GORDON

The Night Watch

JOHN GORDON WAS BORN in Jarrow-on-Tyne and now lives in Norwich with his wife, Sylvia. As a child he moved with his family to Wisbech in the Fens of Cambridgeshire, where he went to school. After serving in the Royal Navy on minesweepers and destroyers during World War II he became a journalist on various local newspapers.

His first book for young adults, The Giant Under the Snow , was published by Hutchinson in 1968 and gained praise from Alan Garner, among others. It was reissued in 2006 by Orion, with editions in Italy and Lithuania and as a talking book. Since then Gordon has published a number of fantasy and horror novels including The House on the Brink, The Ghost on the Hill, The Quelling Eye, The Grasshopper, Ride the Wind, Blood Brothers, Gilray’s Ghost, The Flesh Eater, The Midwinter Watch, Skinners and The Ghosts of Blacklode .

Gordon’s short stories are collected in The Spitfire Grave and Other Stories, Catch Your Death and Other Stories, The Burning Baby and Other Stories and Left in the Dark . He was one of five authors who contributed to the Oxrun Station “mosaic novel” Horror at Halloween , edited by Jo Fletcher, and his autobiography Ordinary Seaman appeared from Walker Books in 1992.

“Museums are potent places for storytellers,” reveals the author, “none more so than Norwich Castle, which is the setting for ‘The Night Watch’. It stands on Castle Mound overlooking the heart of the city as it has done for eight centuries, but internally its bright and intriguing exhibits and showcases disguise a dark period of its history.

“It was once a prison, and I was standing in the corner of a picture gallery one day when one of the attendants told me that I had my feet on the spot where felons were hanged. Where once a trapdoor had let go under the feet of quite minor wrongdoers there was now smooth parquet flooring.

“There is also a deep well at the centre of the Castle’s main hall where children drop coins and count the seconds before the ripples spread. It is all so innocent . . .”

IT HAD BEEN A HARD DAY in the dungeons. Now, as the summer sun dipped to the horizon, Martin Glover stood on the Castle battlements and gazed out over the city. The golden cockerel at the tip of the of the Cathedral’s thin spire glinted in the setting sun and urged him to lean out through the crenellations as if he was about to fly to it across the rooftops. He tested the notion by opening his mouth as if to feel the rush of air.

“We want none of that, young sir.” There was a harsh rasp to the voice that made him start and look over his shoulder. “We wouldn’t want to have to scrape you up off of the street, would we, son?”

Dr Martin Glover, the scholar, was amused to be addressed as son. He was young, but not young enough for that. But he was aware he had just been spotted leaning too far over the parapet like a schoolboy showing off to a girl. “I was just enjoying the view,” he said.