Best British Horror 2014 Read online

  THE BEST BRITISH HORROR 2014

  Welcome To The New Home Of Horror

  ‘Johnny Mains is the go-to man for horror in the UK. His extensive knowledge of and unbound passion for the genre is amazing. If there was a government Ministry of Horror (which there should be), Johnny would be in charge. He is the Minister for Horror. He has extraordinary energy and is fighting a one-man battle to preserve and revitalise the noble tradition of the horror anthology. Oh, and he is a nice bloke as well.’ —Charlie Higson

  ‘Mercy stands before her, wielding a mud-caked pickaxe in both hands ...’ —When Charlie Sleeps, Laura Mauro

  ‘Too much Semtex was an obvious, beginner’s mistake, and I noted I needed to remove more brain in future ...’ —Exploding Raphaelesque Heads, Ian Hunter

  ‘There isn’t much time. Blood is already spattering the paper on which I am writing ...’ —The Secondary Host, John Probert

  ‘It appeared to be an insect of some kind, perhaps a beetle or a spider with a bloated body ...’ —Come Into My Parlour, Reggie Oliver

  Best British Horror is a new anthology series dedicated to showcasing and proving, without doubt, that when it comes to horror and supernatural fiction, Britain is its obvious and natural home.

  This new anthology includes stories by: Simon Bestwick, Ramsey Campbell, Kate Farrell, Gary Fry, Muriel Gray, Ian Hunter, Joel Lane, Tanith Lee, V.H. Leslie, John Llewellyn Probert, Michael Marshall Smith, Laura Mauro, Mark Morris, Adam Nevill, Thana Niveau, Reggie Oliver, Marie O’Regan, Robert Shearman, Elizabeth Stott, Anna Taborska, Stephen Volk and D.P. Watt.

  Praise for Johnny Mains

  ‘Johnny Mains is the go to man for horror in the UK. His extensive knowledge of and unbound passion for the genre is amazing. If there was a government ministry of horror (which there should be) Johnny would be in charge. He is the Minister For Horror. He has extraordinary energy and is fighting a one man battle to preserve and revitalise the noble tradition of the horror anthology. Oh, and he is a nice bloke as well. ‘ —CHARLIE HIGSON

  ‘Johnny Mains not only carries a flame for the old horrors, but wants to cause a bit of a conflagration of his own.’ —STEPHEN VOLK

  ‘Johnny Mains is one of these people, his encyclopaedic knowledge and private collection of books and memorabilia is stunning. Seriously Johnny should lay on some catering and provide guided tours round his house. I et excited when I get a personalised book, this guy probably has the authors soul locked up in a mason jar in his cellar.’ — JIM McLEOD

  ‘Johnny Mains’ brain is a dank but vast cellar, an alexandrian library designed by MR James. His knowledge of fantastical fiction is enormous and his instinct with narrative as powerful as a James Herbert rat propelling itself to an injured tube traveller.’ — ROBIN INCE

  Best

  British

  Horror

  2014

  JOHNNY MAINS is an award-winning editor, author and horror historian. He has written for Illustrators Quarterly, SFX and The Paperback Fanatic. He was project editor to Pan Macmillan’s critically acclaimed 2010 re-issue of The Pan Book of Horror and is currently co-editing Dead Funny with multi-award winning comedian Robin Ince. Mains has also written the introduction to Stephen King’s 30th Anniversary edition of Thinner. He is the author of two short story collections and editor of five anthologies.

  Also by Johnny Mains:

  EDITED

  Back From The Dead: The Legacy of the Pan Book of Horror Stories

  The Pan Book of Horror Stories (2010 re-issue, Project Editor)

  The Mask and Other Stories by Herbert van Thal

  Bite-Sized Horror

  Party Pieces: The Horror Fiction of Mary Danby

  The Screaming Book of Horror

  The Burning Circus

  The Sorcerers: The Original Screenplay by John Burke

  WRITTEN

  With Deepest Sympathy

  Lest You Should Suffer Nightmares: A Biography of Herbert van Thal

  Frightfully Cosy and Mild Stories For Nervous Types

  Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

  12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

  All rights reserved

  Selection and introduction © Johnny Mains, 2014

  Individual contributions © the contributors, 2014

  The right of Johnny Mains to be identified as the editor of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

  Salt Publishing 2014

  Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

  This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN 978-1-78463-007-2 electronic

  This book would not have happened without

  Charles Birkin, Christine Campbell Thompson, Dennis Wheatley, Herbert van Thal, Christine Bernard, Mary Danby, Ronald Chetwynd Hayes, Robert Aickman, John Burke, Peter Haining, James Dickie, Hugh Lamb, Michel Parry, Rosemary Timperley, Cynthia Asquith, Richard Dalby, David Sutton, Mike Ashley, Ramsey Campbell, Nicholas Royle and Stephen Jones.

  I am honoured to be following in the footsteps of these great editors.

  Credits

  All stories are copyright their respective author

  ‘When Charlie Sleeps’ by Laura Mauro was originally published in Black Static (Issue 37)

  ‘Exploding Raphaelesque Heads’ by Ian Hunter was originally published in The Tenth Black Book of Horror

  The Bloody Tower by Anna Taborska was originally published in Terror Tales of London

  ‘Behind the Doors’ by Ramsey Campbell was originally published in Holes for Faces

  ‘The Secondary Host’ by John Llewellyn Probert was originally published in Exotic Gothic Volume 5, Part 2

  ‘The Garscube Creative Writing Group’ by Muriel Gray was originally published in The Burning Circus

  ‘Biofeedback’ by Gary Fry was originally published in Shades of Nothingness

  ‘Doll Hands’ by Adam Nevill was originally published in The Burning Circus

  ‘Guinea Pig Girl’ by Thana Niveau was originally published in The Tenth Black Book of Horror

  ‘Touch Me With Your Cold, Hard Fingers’ by Elizabeth Stott was originally published as a stand alone chapbook.

  ‘Dad Dancing’ by Kate Farrell was originally published in The Tenth Black Book of Horror

  ‘The Arse-Licker’ by Stephen Volk was originally published in Anatomy of Death

  ‘Doll Re Mi’ by Tanith Lee was originally published in Nightmare Magazine

  ‘Laudate Dominum (For Many Voices)’ by D.P. Watt was originally published in Shadows and Tall Trees (Issue 5)

  ‘Someone To Watch Over You’ by Marie O’Regan originally published in Terror Tales of London

  ‘Namesake’ by V.H. Leslie was originally published in Black Static (Issue 31)

  ‘Come into my Parlour’ by Reggie Oliver was originally published in Dark World: Ghost Stories

  ‘The Red Door’ by Mark Morris was originally published in Terror Tales of London

  ‘Author of the Death’ by Michael Marshall
Smith was originally published in Everything You Need

  ‘The Magician Kelso Dennett’ by Stephen Volk was originally published in Terror Tales of the Seaside

  ‘That Tiny Flutter Of The Heart I Used To Call Love’ by Robert Shearman was originally published in Psycho-mania!

  Introduction

  horror

  Pronunciation: //

  noun

  [mass noun] an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust.

  Origin:

  Middle English: via Old French from Latin horror, from horrere: ‘tremble, shudder’.

  Welcome to a new strand (or should that be strain?) of Salt’s ‘Best’ series. It’s always nice to be asked to do things, rather than ask to do them, so when the people who run Salt approached and broached the idea of me becoming the series editor of ‘Best British Horror’, it wasn’t a request taken lightly. Of all the genres out there at the moment, I think that fans of the horror genre are the most passionate and are not scared to wear hearts on sleeves. And they deserve to be treated with respect, not to be taken for fools. So from one passionate fan to another, this book is for you. Yes, it’s a completely subjective list and your idea or definition of horror may be wildly different to mine, but I think the following stories will slake your thirst, whether you like your horror bloody, psychological, tied to the everyday, quiet, or hidden under a layer or two of obscurity.

  I’m also excited by the prospect of bringing to you names you may not have heard of before and setting you on the path to discovering other works by them. And that was part of my selection process; I was adamant in wanting a book in which there were authors I was unfamiliar with, and ‘discovering’ Laura Mauro, Ian Hunter, Elizabeth Stott, and D.P. Watt’s work were amongst the true highlights of 2013.

  We must not, of course, forget names who are familiar on the high street bookshelves or in popular culture and it is indeed an honour to use stories from Ramsey Campbell, Muriel Gray, Adam Nevill, Michael Marshall Smith, Mark Morris and Robert Shearman. The depth and range of stories, not just from these authors, but from everyone in the book have blown me away; 2013 was indeed an embarrassment of riches.

  Sadly, 2013 also saw the untimely death of Joel Lane, a fellow editor and author whose body of work will be talked about in the same breath as Robert Aickman and M.R. James. Joel’s legacy is honoured at the end of this gathering of stories.

  I am incredibly proud of this selection, I think it’s a strong and challenging one, and would love to hear what you think. We now live in the days where social media is king, so leave your reviews (good and bad) on Amazon and Goodreads, spread the word on Facebook and Twitter; it helps other fans discover the book and its authors, and the more people this volume reaches the better. There are not enough horror stories on the high street, but if we all shout loud enough, we might be able to change that for the good.

  JOHNNY MAINS

  When Charlie Sleeps

  LAURA MAURO

  Propped against the bathroom door, clutching an old guitar, Hanna sings Charlie another lullaby.

  Go to sleep, Charlie.

  He’s awake in there, still. The black beetles that come from under the bathroom door are his messengers. They walk ponderous circuits, antennae trembling, moving jerkily like windup toys.

  Sleep, Charlie, sleep.

  The guitar is held together by duct-tape and willpower. It belongs to Mercy, who can coax delicate music from the four remaining strings. Hanna strums nonsense chords and sings old pop songs, though she is not much good at either of these things. Charlie doesn’t seem to mind.

  The flickering of the lights is slow now, the blinking of a single sleepy eye. It’s a good sign. An agitated Charlie is quite a thing to behold; every light in the squat flashes wildly, though they were disconnected years ago. Stella says Charlie creates his own energy. As she sits in the hall, breathing white in the dark, Hanna wishes he’d channel a little of it into the central heating.

  Even more than that, she wishes he’d go to fucking sleep.

  So Hanna sings. And when the song finishes, after what feels like hours, Hanna holds her breath, and her heart sinks when she hears Charlie’s insectile nonsense-chatter emanate from the keyhole. She knows, by now, what this means: Another.

  She starts anew. The back of her skull beats a steady rhythm against the door and outside, as the sun struggles over the horizon, London stirs.

  The previous night – the night Mercy brought her to the squat – Hanna woke with a violent start. She sat up, heart hammering, tongue thick in her dry mouth. She searched in the dark but Steve wasn’t there, his space in the bed was cold as a bone, and Hanna wanted to scream for him but then she remembered. She wasn’t at home anymore. There was no home, at least not one she could go back to. No doubt there’d be another woman in their bed tonight. Stupid girl, Hanna thought, fingers trailing up her forearms, tracing old bruises in the shape of Steve’s fingers. Her swollen nose throbbed in the dark.

  She needed the toilet. She got up, wrapping the sleeping bag around her like a shawl. She wore only an old T-shirt, one Mercy lent her, several sizes too large. The bathroom was next door. When Mercy first showed her around, she’d mentioned in passing that the upstairs bathroom was off-limits. Something about rotten floorboards, but Hanna was disorientated and rattled and by the time she remembered, the door was already open and the black expanse of the bathroom revealed. For a moment, Hanna thought she’d opened the wrong door; that this was no room but a void, and then something had risen above the rim of the bath, slowly, eyes glowing like embers in the dark.

  It wasn’t as if Hanna woke Charlie on purpose. She hadn’t even known he was there. She tells Mercy this, over and over until Mercy is sick with it, threatening to lock her in with Charlie and throw away the key. That shuts Hanna up. Subdued, she stares at Mercy, wanting to ask how she could have let her sleep next door to a monster.

  Stella comes down the stairs, finger pressed to her lips. She has accomplished what Hanna could not. It stands to reason; she has had prior experience with Charlie, has spent long, sleepless nights reading him stories and coaxing him to sleep. She and Mercy, working shifts.

  Neither of them seems outwardly angry at her, although Hanna thinks they’d have a right to be; she is an accidental guest, after all. She’s here only out of kindness. The squat is theirs. Actually, it’s his: an Edwardian townhouse in the heart of Lambeth, imposing even in its neglect. The windows are scabbed over with sun-bleached newspaper. The front garden is a snarl of bindweed. The neighbours don’t notice them. Nobody knocks at the door. Hanna suspects that this is not a coincidence.

  ‘He’s napping. He’ll be awake again soon,’ Mercy says. She’s a stout Filipina, an ex-nurse; she had found Hanna dazed and bleeding in a Southwark underpass, clinging desperately to a tattered rucksack as if her entire life were within it and begging to be taken home to the man who’d relieved her of several teeth. Mercy had brought Hanna back to the squat instead, let her sleep next door to Charlie. Just for one night, supposedly.

  ‘You’ll have to change his water when he wakes up again,’ Stella tells Hanna. She doesn’t bother to hide how put-out she is by it all. She piles her thick hair beneath a bandana in lieu of washing it, rubs her tired eyes with the back of her hand. ‘You woke him up. You do your bit.’

  Nobody shows Hanna what to do, but it seems like common sense. She takes the bucket into the back garden and, hidden by snarls of overgrown foliage, quietly siphons water from the neighbour’s hosepipe. Like changing a litter tray, or cleaning a fish tank, except Charlie’s no pet. Hanna pushes the back door open with one foot, clutching the full bucket to her chest. Who’d want a pet like Charlie?

  It’s hot in the bathroom. A thick, tropical heat like the inside of a vivarium. Hanna closes the door behind her with a click. Across the room is a cast-iron bathtub, the enamel stained yellow like old bones. The tiles are
furry with black mildew, the windows obscured by newspaper. She breathes deep, easing her nerves, and heaves the bucket onto the counter.

  ‘Hello, Charlie,’ she says.

  The tinkle of displaced water indicates his acknowledgement. She sees him as she approaches, a dark smudge beneath the surface. His form is distorted but recognisable. Red eyes stare up at her, unblinking. She doesn’t know if he’s holding his breath under there; Charlie, neither man nor frog but something else, something other. It wouldn’t surprise Hanna if he didn’t breathe at all.

  Hanna sits on the lip of the bath and Charlie rises with slow grace; his skin is the glossy grey of a wet paving slab. He smells like an underpass, the ammoniac stench of week-old piss and gutter mulch. Clubbed fingers splay towards her, grasping. She leaps to her feet, backing quickly away. He is ugly, and alien, and although she senses nothing but benign curiosity, she keeps her distance.

  ‘I’ve come to change your water,’ she says, trying to hide the quiver in her voice. Charlie regards her with what she interprets as disappointment. His features are primitive; dull, Neanderthal jaw, empty black slit-mouth, heavy brow. Clicks and whirrs emanate from the depths of his pulsating throat. The glut of mucus obstructing the plughole comes away with a thick sucking sound. Clots of stinking matter streak the bathtub as the water drains. He stares up at her, awaiting her approach.

  Hanna fetches the bucket from the counter. Her sweat-damp hair sticks to the back of her neck.

  ‘Ready?’ she asks – why is she talking to him? If he understands, he doesn’t care to answer. As the water spatters against his skin the clogged-sewer stink of him rolls up into the air. Hanna presses her sleeve to her mouth until the water settles, already stained a pale sepia. Charlie chitters in what might be joy. It’s so unexpected, such an innocent sound that Hanna almost smiles. Almost forgets he’s a monster.