Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Terror

“What do you mean? Damn you, answer me!”

Her anger startled him. “Mean? Nothing. It’s just that you’re fond of making an entrance. To be the centre of attention. Most beautiful women are. Like flowers they love the sun.”

Flattery but she was worthy of it and was it flattery to tell the truth? She was beautiful and, sitting on the floor before where she sat in the only remaining chair, he could appreciate the curved perfection of her body. Mentally he assessed it as the wine warmed him with a pungent glow.

“Stephen?” Diane was staring at him, her mouth tense. “Your eyes – is anything wrong?”

“No.”

“Your expression. I’ve never seen you look like that. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing is the matter. I was just looking at you and thinking of the early days of our marriage and remembering just how lovely you are.” Smiling he reached towards her, touched her, fingers running over the smooth contours of her calves and thighs. “You look wonderful, darling.”

And was wonderful in a variety of ways. He felt her withdraw from the touch of his hand as his mind filled with bizarre images. What games had the owners played? Isolated in the hills how had they amused themselves? Bonded servants chased and slaughtered in a travesty of the hunt? Nubile girls tormented, beaten, whipped, flayed and used as objects of sexual gratification? Things easy to believe; the painted faces held a demented perversion. What would they have thought of Diane? Her physical attraction?

“Stephen!”

Her tone snapped him from his reverie.

“Sorry.” He found the wine and drank from the bottle ignoring the cups as he did the portraits. “I was thinking about something.”

“Tell me about it.”

“This is a vacation, darling, so why not enjoy it?” Rising, he moved to stand behind her, his hands dropping to her shoulders, moving lower in an intimate caress. “Two people,” he whispered. “Lost in the hills. An old deserted house. The storm. A perfect setting for them to perform the act of love that confirms their union. Please, darling, I need you.”

“Are you crazy!” Twisting in his arms she glared her distaste. “You want to use me? Here? Not on your life!”

Once she hadn’t been so particular. His hands cradled softness as thunder blasted the air with force enough to shake the window.

“See, my darling? The gods are with me. They demand we perform the ancient rite.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I’ve had a drink,” he admitted. “But that has nothing to do with it. I want to make love to you. Here and now.” His fingers closed with sudden, hurtful strength. “Damn it, woman, you’re my wife!”

“Don’t be an animal.” She rose, breaking his grasp as she stepped aside. “You think I’d do that? On the floor? Before them?” She gestured at the portraits, her painted nails looking as if tipped with flame. “Look at them! Degenerates! Filthy lechers! Scum!”

“They’re only paint and canvas. If you want I’ll turn them to face the wall.”

“Won’t that spoil your fun?” She glared her anger. “Is that what you really want? To have others watch while you kiss and grope and slobber? You disgust me! Get out! You drunken pervert! Get away from me! Leave me alone!”

He went with the wine, weaving down the stairs and into the hall, the gloom, the watchful eyes of painted faces. To a window where he stared into darkness, his features reflected in the pane. To a spot on the floor where he sat and leaned his back against a wall. To finish the wine. To close his eyes. To sleep. To dream.

The house became alive with whispering susurrations. Figures moved, stepped from their frames, followed the steps of an elaborate saraband. All were men. No women. This house belonged to men and he felt a part of it. Felt he had returned to something he had once known. A companionship that embraced him with its comfort. The storm murmured in the distance, walking the sky on feet of lightning, talking in the voice of thunder. He stirred in his sleep as the dream turned into nightmare.

The figures became ghosts, which merged into him, sinking into his body as if he were a sponge absorbing their souls. They became him and became a host to them all. Together they roved through the house and, as they roved, hunger came to join them.

A blast and the house shook to the dying fury of the storm and abruptly he was in a small, familiar room. One flanked by painted faces, the litter of a picnic spread before them. He wasn’t alone.

Before him, facing him, a naked figure with a cleft chin and heavy jowls stooped and lifted things high into the air their juices dappling his face and head with carmine smears. Scraps that had been torn from something lying on the floor, which had once been round and smooth with velvet skin and nails the colour of flame. Something that was now red all over.

Diane, her stomach ripped open, intestines spread in greasy ribbons. The proud breasts missing from the wall of her chest. Flesh torn from her buttocks, back, the soft flesh of her thighs. Delicacies to feed a degenerated appetite. All illuminated by the guttering flame of a wick set in bowl of rancid, human fat. Light which shone on the prominent teeth of the ghoul as it feasted on the body of the dead.

Stephen cried out and lunged forward and saw the creature vanished with the breaking of the bowl to leave only darkness and the crystalline shatter of the window it had broken. The mirror of the night.

BRIAN MOONEY’S FIRST PROFESSIONAL sale was to The London Mystery Selection in 1971. Since then, his fiction has been published in such anthologies and magazines as The Pan Book of Horror Stories, Dark Voices, The Mammoth Book of Werewolves, The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein, Final Shadows, Dark Horizons and Fiesta.

His adventures of the psychic detective Reuben Calloway have appeared in Dark Detectives, Shadows Over Innsmouth, The Anthology of Fantasy & the Supernatural Cthulhu: Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos #2 and Kadath , and the author is currently working on a new tale featuring the character.

“The idea for ‘Maypole’ came to me during a rail journey,” recalls the author, “and was just one of those odd chains of thought which lead to inspiration. The train passed a field where a solitary tall post or stake had been driven into the ground. Several children were chasing each other around this post and it occurred to me that they had a ready-made Maypole for May Day.

“This led me to remember something I had once read about the possible origin of the Maypole and in turn, the wonderful ‘What if . . .?’ question popped into my mind. I pulled out a large notebook I had in my case and by the time I reached my destination, I had roughed out the opening section of the story.”

DEATH’S EMISSARIES CAME FOR Thomas Comstock a few minutes before midnight on a fine spring evening. The limping man was there, as was the man with the blemished face. The two were overshadowed by their companion, the giant. The three were expected and Comstock received them with joy in his heart.

When the men arrived, one of them gave a sharp rap on the front door of the tied cottage and they entered unbidden. Comstock had prepared himself in the ordained fashion and he awaited them in his cramped living room.

The mantel above the open fireplace was littered with tacky souvenirs and a wall-mounted pendulum clock ticked away the minutes of Comstock’s life. A battered Welsh dresser, its shelves crammed with paperback Westerns, stood against one wall, while at the opposite was a folded dining-table with two ill-matched chairs. A greasy black leather sofa faced the television and the floor was covered with a threadbare carpet. Amidst this mundane clutter, the men’s garb was incongruous and anachronistic.