Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Terror

But the attraction went beyond mere beauty. This sort of accessory said something. Exactly what, she wasn’t sure. But she knew a bold fashion statement when she saw one. This however was a statement she didn’t have quite the nerve to make. At least not in Fairfield. So different here in the city. The cosmopolitan atmosphere allowed the elite to flash their foet – she liked the rhyme. She could be so very in here. But it would make her so very out in Fairfield – out of her home too, most likely.

Small minds. What did they know about fashion? In a few years they’d all be buying it. Right now, only the leaders wore it. And for a few moments she’d been a member of that special club. Now she was about to resign.

As she turned to enter Blume’s, a Mercedes stretch limo pulled into the curb beside her. The driver hopped out and opened the door. A shapely brunette of about Denise’s age emerged. She was wearing a dark grey short wrap coat of llama and kid over a long-sleeved crepe-jersey catsuit. In her hand was a black clutch purse with the unmistakable stitching of foet. Her eyes flicked down to Denise’s new handbag, then back up to her face. She smiled. Not just a polite passing-stranger smile, but a warm, we-know-we’ve-got-style smile.

As Denise returned the smile, all doubt within her melted away as if it had never been. Suddenly she knew she was right. She knew what really mattered, what was important, where she had to be, fashion-wise.

And Brian? Who said Brian had to know a thing about it? What did he know about fashion anyway?

Denise turned and strode down Fifth with her new foet bag swinging from her arm for all the world to see.

Screw them all. It made her feel good, like she was somebody. What else mattered?

She really had to make a point of getting into the city more often.

AFTER WORKING AS A journalist and editor of a local newspaper, Basil Copper became a full-time writer in 1970. His first story in the horror field, “The Spider”, was published in 1964 in The Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories , since when his short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, been extensively adapted for radio and television, and collected in Not After Nightfall, Here Be Daemons, From Evil’s Pillow, And Afterward the Dark, Voices of Doom, When Footsteps Echo, Whispers in the Night and Cold Hand on My Shoulder.

Along with two non-fiction studies of the vampire and werewolf legends, his other books include the novels The Great White Space, The Curse of the Fleers, Necropolis, The Black Death and The House of the Wolf Copper has also written more than fifty hardboiled thrillers about Los Angeles private detective Mike Faraday, and has continued the adventures of August Derleth’s Sherlock Holmes-like consulting detective Solar Pons in several volumes of short stories and the novel Solar Pons versus The Devil’s Claw (actually written in 1980, but not published until 2004 by Sarob Press with an Introduction by the late Richard Lancelyn Green).

The Hallowe’en story that follows has not been reprinted since its original appearance twenty years ago . . .

I

“IT’S HALLOWE’EN TOMORROW,” Kathy said.

Her father looked at her sharply. The little girl sat in the window seat watching the cold October wind send leaves whirling and scraping down the sidewalk beyond the broad strip of lawn which separated the house from the street.

Kathy was ten now, small for her age, but with a rather strange, intense little face below the shock of blonde hair. Her eyes were the most extraordinary thing about her, Martin felt. They were a vivid violet colour which seemed to penetrate deep within one; in fact, even though he was her father, she gave him an uneasy feeling sometimes. It was almost as though she could sense his thoughts.

And that would never do, he felt, turning back to his work at the desk, answering the question with some banality, uneasily aware of Charlotte moving about somewhere upstairs in one of the cavernous rooms of the big, old frame house.

Martin signed the cheque with a brittle scratching of the pen which seemed to echo unnaturally loudly above the soft crackle of the log fire which burned in the brick Colonial fireplace. He was again aware of the little girl’s murmured remarks in the background.

“What was that?” he remarked irritably, clipping the cheque to the account and sealing it in the envelope.

Kathy still sat with her cheek pressed against the pane, watching the dusky street outside with rapt intensity.

“I’m going to have a nice skull,” she said firmly. “With a candle inside it. Better than the other children on the block.”

Martin bit back his first startled remark. He remembered then she had been talking about Hallowe’en. Tomorrow was the 31st.

He supposed she would dress up in sheets and wear a scary mask like the other youngsters and make the round of the neighbourhood houses on a trick or treat expedition. How tiresome it all seemed, though once, many years ago, he had enjoyed it. Now he had other preoccupations.

“That will be nice, dear,” he said absently.

The little girl turned to him and gave a smile of great sweetness.

“A beautiful skull,” she said dreamily. “A skull for Hallowe’en.”

Martin bit back his rising irritation. He again turned to the desk, keeping his nerves under control with difficulty. There was something strange about the child; he hesitated to use the term, even within the secret recesses of his own heart, but supernatural was not too strong a description. The child was an odd and unlikely fruit of a union such as his and Charlotte’s; the only thing that had kept them together in twenty years of a lacerating marriage.

But it was all over. He would lose Janet if he hesitated any longer. He had everything planned. He stared down at the green leather surface of the desk, clasping his hands to prevent them trembling, biting his lips until the blood came. There was no other way. He had decided to murder his wife.

II

He had thought it all out extremely carefully. It wanted only the necessary resolve on his part. Janet had given him that. With her delicate, esoteric beauty and warmth, her vibrant personality, and smouldering sensuality, she epitomised everything Charlotte should have been and wasn’t. Charlotte was cold, bitter and revengeful; she suspected his affair with Janet even if she didn’t actually know.

That suspicion had merely sharpened the knife and given a little extra venom to the barbs of her conversation; the war had gone on for long years, festering beneath the surface even when it did not blaze into open resentment. It was time to end it all.

Martin glanced over at the innocent figure of his daughter, who had now turned her face to the window again. He was a clever man; a brilliant chemist with a multi-national corporation who had an almost limitless future. But that future was now threatened. Janet was fifteen years younger than he. She would not wait for ever. She had hinted as much. One of these evenings she might even come to the house.

Martin saw her three nights a week; it was a situation which might have continued for a long time in his case. It was not good enough for Janet. She had put the germ of the idea in Martin’s mind, innocently enough. If only Charlotte would disappear, she had said. From that one remark had grown Martin’s plan. And he had not breathed a word of his scheme, even to Janet.

He knew how to make people disappear; chemically, at least. He had a fully equipped workroom in the cellar with laboratory facilities. Discreetly, late at night, he had been moving in drums of chemicals, carried from the city in the boot of his car. They had been purchased through his corporation and, due to the manipulation of invoices between one company and another, would now be untraceable.