Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Terror

“ Of all men, ” she whispered. “ You have been the most faithless, and you will be punished. ”

Katie was on her knees, struggling to free herself from the curtains. The woman seized Katie’s curls, lifted her up, and bit into her neck, with an audible crunch. Katie didn’t even scream. She stared at Mark in mute desperation and fell sideways onto the carpet, with blood jetting out of her neck and spraying across the furniture.

The woman came slowly toward him, and Mark took one step back, and then another, shifting the armchair so that it stood between them. But she stopped. Her skin was already shining, as if it were melting, and she closed her eyes. Mark waited, holding his breath. Katie was convulsing, one foot jerking against the leg of the coffee-table, so that the empty beer-cans rattled together.

The woman opened her eyes, and gave Mark one last unreadable look. Then she turned back toward the mirror. She took three paces, and it swallowed her, like an oil-streaked pool of water.

Mark waited, and waited, not moving. Outside the window, the rain began to clear, and he heard the whine of a milk-float going past.

After a while, he sat down. He thought of calling the police, but what could he tell them? Then he thought of tying the bodies to the mirror, and dropping them into a rhyne, where they would never be found. But the police would come anyway, wouldn’t they, asking questions?

The day slowly went by. Just after two o’clock the clouds cleared for a moment, and the naked apple-tree in the back garden sparkled with sunlight. At half-past three a loud clatter in the hallway made him jump, but it was only an old woman with a shopping-trolley pushing a copy of the Wincanton Advertiser through the letterbox.

And so the darkness gradually gathered, and Mark sat in his armchair in front of the mirror, waiting.

“ I am half-sick of shadows, said

The Lady of Shalott. ”

E.C. TUBB IS PROBABLY BEST known as a science fiction author. Since 1951, he has published more than 120 novels, plus 230 short stories in such magazines as Astounding, Analog, Authentic , Galaxy, Nebula, New Worlds, Science Fantasy, Vision of Tomorrow and, in more recent years, Fantasy Annual and Fantasy Adventures. His work has also been translated into more than a dozen languages.

His long-running “Dumarest of Terra” series of science-fantasy novels ran to thirty-one volumes from DAW Books, and a further entry in the series was published by New York small press imprint Gryphon Books after first appearing in a French translation.

Since then, he has published two supernatural swords and sorcery novels, Death God’s Doom and The Sleeping City , a new SF novel Footsteps of Angels , and an original Space: 1999 novelization, Earthbound. The Best Science Fiction of E.C. Tubb is a recent retrospective collection.

Interspersed with Tubb’s many SF short stories of the 1950s and early ‘60s were a smaller number of supernatural stories, many of them written under pseudonyms. The best of these were reprinted in 2003 by Sarob Press in the hardcover collection Mirror of the Night. Originally published in 1998, the title story marked the author’s first return to horror fiction in more than twenty years.

“You think and brood and odd things seem to come together to form a logical whole,” explains Tubb. “A strained marriage and an effort to make repairs. Ajourney into unfamiliar places. The emotive strain building and the biological facet enhanced as the man wants, desperately, to gain a measure of independence and respect. An illustration, perhaps, of the awesome power held by every woman over the man who adores her.

“And then the all-too familiar compliment paid by almost every man to every attractive woman: ‘You look ravishing my dear. You look good enough to eat’

“Sometimes, in the right circumstances, a man might mean exactly what he says . . .”

THUNDER MADE A FITTING accompaniment; sonorous echoes rolling from the surrounding hills, the fitful glare of lightning dancing like silver ghosts on the shadowed peaks. Savage brilliance which threw into sharp detail the massed vegetation, the winding road, the branches which, almost meeting from side to side, made a laced canopy overhead and enhanced the Gothic mystery of the terrain.

One Stephen Aldcock appreciated and would have used earlier in his career. It gave an added dimension to the trip he was making into the Appalachians following narrow, unmarked and near-forgotten roads, the wheels of the car bouncing into ruts, the sides lashed by hanging fronds.

A journey Diane wasn’t enjoying. She hadn’t spoken since he’d switched off the radio. Trying to argue she had met defeat and now sulked in silence wreathed by a haze of smoke. Yet he had been right to insist; the region held an atmosphere of its own and the noise had been a distraction.

Glancing at her he tried to explain.

“We’re travelling back in time,” he said. “Into the pastwhen people lived close to nature. This region has hardly changed since the settlers first came. Try to imagine it,” he urged. “They had to move along narrow paths winding between scattered habitations. These woods would have sheltered all kinds of danger and travellers would have been attacked, ripped, clawed, shot, stabbed, left to lie bleeding on the ground. Think of being injured, lying out there in the woods with night closing in just as it is now. Hurt, knowing you’re alone with death very close. Knowing too that something could be watching you. Something inhuman.”

“You’re sick,” she said. “Crazy.”

“It happened.”

“Sure it happened.” She lit another cigarette. “No matter what you imagine somewhere, at some time, it has happened. So people died out here – so what?”

“Can’t you feel it? The atmosphere? The magic?”

“I feel cold,” she snapped impatiently. “I feel hungry and tired and cramped. I need a good meal, a bath, a warm bed. How much longer are you going to amuse yourself by dragging me around these godforsaken roads?”

She had no imagination, but he had known that when he married her. Then it hadn’t seemed important and he had traded compatibility for appearance. She had dazzled him with her physical beauty and he had lusted after the prize. Now, too often, he regretted having won it.

Patiently he said, “Try harder, darling. Look at these hills, each as old as time. Listen to the thunder. Feel the atmosphere of the place. It’s odd. Strange. As if aliens had landed here eons ago and performed mysterious rites to unknown gods. See!” He pointed to a distant rift, one suddenly touched by the glare of lightning. “Beyond that cleft could lie a forgotten village in which at each sunset, a sacrifice is made. A hen or a rat, maybe, but once a year something larger. A dog, a goat, even a girl. A real, live unblemished virgin!”

“Stop it!”

“You wouldn’t qualify, of course, not as a virgin. But they’d settle for your beauty.”

She snapped, savagely, “That’s enough of this stupid talk. Writers are supposed to be a little crazy but this is too much. If you’re trying to frighten me you’re wasting your time. Now let’s get back to civilization and find a decent motel.”

It wasn’t that easy. As the night closed around them he realised they were lost. The road he followed branched into smaller tracks and, choosing one at random, he drove down a path on which it was impossible to turn.

As Diane complained he said, quickly, “This must lead to a farm. When we reach it there’ll be room to turn. Just sit and relax.”