Best British Horror 2014 Page 30

  ‘Without God, there is no Kingdom of Heaven,’ said Jo firmly.

  Chloe spent the train journey back to London the next day gazing bleakly out of the window. How easy it would be to abandon her career and return home. She imagined herself withdrawing from the stress and responsibility of city life, of giving up her independence and becoming an unofficial housekeeper to her father. She could grow stout and spinsterish in the bucolic tranquillity of the village where she had grown up. And once there, surrounded by God’s love, perhaps she would rediscover her faith, even if only by default.

  These thoughts dismayed her, even while they comforted her. Was her faith really so fragile that the merest test was enough to rattle it to its foundations? Jo had told Chloe that the real test of faith was to remain steadfast in the face of challenge and adversity, but it was easier said than done. Jo was tough, inflexible. Was it Chloe’s fault that she was less robust than her sister? Was it a sin to be sensitive, to be lacking in confidence?

  As the train drew closer to London, and the surrounding fields and villages were gradually superseded by urban sprawl, Chloe felt her spirits sinking still further. In recent weeks she had become obsessed with the notion that the very fabric of the city had become imbued with the decades of wickedness perpetrated within its confines, that the stones and bricks and timber of its buildings had soaked up every bad deed, every foul thought.

  The walls and roofs of houses and factories and apartment blocks flashed by the grimy window, many of them old and crumbling and dirty, their facades stacked and angled haphazardly, as if the buildings they supported had been crammed in wherever there was space. Lost in her thoughts, Chloe barely registered them, and yet all at once something snagged her eye – something so fleeting that it was nothing but an impression, gone before she could focus upon it.

  Nevertheless, whatever she had seen was unusual enough to lodge in her mind, as irritating as a sharp morsel of food stuck between her back teeth. As she disembarked at Euston, her mind was probing at it, trying to bring it into the light, but it wasn’t until she had sat on the rattling Northern Line tube to Tufnell Park, and had trudged the maze of streets back to the Victorian house containing her third-floor flat, and was fitting her key into the lock of the front door as the daylight faded into smoky dusk, that it suddenly popped into her mind.

  It was a door. That was what she had seen. A door in a wall. The door had been painted a deep, shimmering red, though what had been odd about it – what had snagged her attention – was that it had been not at ground level but half-way up the wall. And furthermore, it had been upside-down.

  That, at least, was how she remembered it. That was the image that had lodged in her mind. A bright red, upside-down door, half-way up a wall.

  It was ridiculous, of course. That can’t have been what she’d seen. And even if it was, there must have been some reason for it. It must have been a contrivance, an architectural gimmick, perhaps even part of some obscure advertising campaign. London was full of oddities, of things that didn’t make sense. Some people loved that about the city – its quirkiness, its hidden corners, the fact that it was crammed with bizarre sights and bizarre stories.

  By the time Nick called, Chloe had put the red door to the back of her mind. She ate some pasta and was washing up her plate, pan and cutlery in her tiny kitchen when her mobile rang. Thinking it might be her dad calling to make sure she’d got home okay, she went through to the main room, drying her hands on a tea towel, and retrieved her burring phone from her jacket pocket. Seeing Nick’s name she almost didn’t answer. But then she reluctantly pressed the ‘Accept’ button and said, ‘Hi.’

  ‘Chloe?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Oh, it is you. I wasn’t sure. You sounded weird.’

  ‘I’m just tired.’

  His voice grew soft, concerned. ‘Are you okay? How was it?’

  ‘It was fine. As far as these things go.’

  There was a silence, as though he expected her to elaborate. When she didn’t, he said, ‘You’re not all right, are you? Do you want me to come over?’

  The thought wearied her. ‘Not tonight, Nick. I really am tired. I’m going to have an early night.’

  ‘Tomorrow then. Let’s do something tomorrow. Take your mind off things.’

  She knew he was only trying to be kind, but she wanted to snap at him, ‘Do you think I can just forget as easily as that? Do you think I’m that shallow.’ But instead she said, ‘Yeah, okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘This used to be a power station,’ Nick said, the wind whipping at his wispy blond hair and twitching the scarf at his throat. ‘It’s pretty impressive, don’t you think?’

  Chloe gazed at the imposing edifice of the Tate Modern, the chimney stack high above her stabbing at the grim sky as if mockingly pointing the way to Heaven. Troubled, she turned her attention to the wide slope leading down to the entrance doors.

  ‘I think it’s ugly,’ she said.

  ‘Really?’ Nick looked half-surprised, half-offended, as if he was personally responsible for the building’s design and construction. ‘Well, just wait till you see inside. It’s amazing. Like a cathedral.’

  It had been Nick’s idea to come here. He had wanted Chloe to see an installation in what he called, with a sense of ominous grandeur, ‘The Tanks’. Since they had met two months ago, after Chloe’s friend and work colleague Christine had all but bullied her into trying online dating, he had made it his mission to take her to all the places in London where she hadn’t been that he thought were worth visiting. In recent weeks he had introduced her to the South Bank, to Highgate Cemetery, to Camden Market, and to several of his favourite restaurants. Chloe had tried to match his enthusiasm as he unveiled each new treasure, but she had thought the South Bank hideous, Highgate Cemetery depressing, Camden Market gaudily pretentious and most of the restaurants too expensive.

  Nick was a nice guy, and had been nothing but supportive throughout the last days of her mother’s illness, but Chloe had begun to wonder whether their relationship was really going anywhere. They had little in common – he loved London, she didn’t – and she had so much to contend with right now that she couldn’t help thinking the timing was all wrong. A year hence things might have been different, but currently Nick was less a pleasant distraction than simply one more thing to worry about.

  ‘Isn’t this amazing?’ he said as they passed through the entrance doors and entered the vast, echoing space inside. Shivering, she tugged her coat tighter around her. In truth she felt nothing but dwarfed and daunted, and further away from God than ever.

  ‘It’s certainly big,’ she admitted.

  ‘Come on,’ Nick said, taking her hand. ‘What I want to show you is this way.’

  The Tanks, located on level 0, had originally been a trio of huge underground oil tanks, and were accessed via a series of side doors arranged either side of a wide, dank, low-ceilinged corridor. The sign outside the door that Nick led her to bore the name of a Japanese artist – all spiky, sharp syllables, like jags of broken glass – and a long explanation about dreams and shifting states of consciousness which Chloe’s eyes skimmed over without taking in.

  The interior was dark, though not pitch black. However the lighting, such as it was, had been angled in such a way that it played with Chloe’s perceptions, disorientating her, making her unable to tell where the floor met the walls, and the walls the ceiling. As a result she felt unsteady and uncertain, even a little sick.

  ‘I’m not sure I like this,’ she whispered.

  ‘It does take a bit of getting used to,’ Nick murmured. ‘But it’s worth it. There’s nothing here that can hurt you.’

  Ahead of her, Chloe could see shadows blundering about – other visitors tentatively picking their way forward. The room was full of ambient noise – slow, soft booms and the continuous echo of wordless whispers – and un
dercutting that, as though coming from a nearby but as-yet-unseen room, she could hear the drone of a voice speaking in a foreign language, its tinny quality suggesting that it was a radio or TV broadcast of some kind.

  Edging forward, she was distracted by movement to her left, and turning she saw a number of figures, blacker than the darkness around them, standing in silhouette, their arms upraised. They looked to be pleading for their lives, or begging for help, but drifting closer Chloe realised that they were simply visitors like herself, standing on the other side of a thick glass wall which, she had assumed, until she was close enough to touch it, was a continuous dark space. These people had their faces pressed to the glass and were peering through; Chloe could see the glint of their eyes in the gloom. From their blank expressions she guessed that the glass was one-way, that she could see them, but that they couldn’t see her. The thought unsettled her, and she shivered and moved away.

  It was only now, with a jolt of surprise, that she realised Nick was no longer holding her hand. When had the two of them disengaged? It must have been when she had stepped to her left, but she couldn’t for the life of her consciously remember tugging her hand free of his grip. She peered into the gloom, but could not distinguish him from any of the other shadows bobbing ahead of her.

  ‘Nick?’ she said softly, but her voice was instantly swallowed up, incorporated into the ambient soundscape. She tried again, raising her voice a little, though oddly reluctant to draw attention to herself. ‘Nick?’

  None of the shadows responded.

  For a moment Chloe considered retracing her steps, waiting for him outside, but then she moved forward. He couldn’t be more than a few metres ahead. He was probably waiting for her to catch up. She held her hands out like a blind woman as she tentatively placed one foot in front of the other. Remembering how the glass wall had been invisible until she was standing right next to it, she felt vulnerable, certain she was about to walk into or trip over something.

  The shadows ahead seemed to be bearing left, like fish following the course of a stream, and so she moved with them, going with the flow. She realised she must have rounded a corner, for all at once the space in front of her opened up, and she could see the source of the droning voice, which had abruptly become louder. It was a television, icy blue in the gloom. It seemed to be suspended in mid-air, hovering like a ghost. On the screen a bespectacled Japanese man – possibly the artist – was giving what appeared to be a lecture direct to camera. However, as he spoke, white circular scribbles jittered constantly around his eyes and mouth, giving him a monstrous, corpse-like appearance. Chloe knew that the effect had been achieved simply by scratching circles around the man’s features on each individual frame of film, yet in this environment the sight was unsettlingly nightmarish. A huddle of dark shapes was clustered around the TV, motionless as mannequins; they seemed to be hanging on the man’s every word. Did they really understand what he was saying? Or could they see something in the overall work that she couldn’t – something fascinating, even profound?

  Feeling isolated, she peered into the shadows beyond the droning man on the screen, and her eyes were instantly tantalised by a shimmer of red in the distance. Drifting away from the throng around the TV, she moved deeper into the darkness. She wondered if what she was seeing was an illusion, whether it was even possible to pick out colour when there was no discernible light source. Certainly at first the redness seemed to shift both in and out of her vision, and in and out of the darkness, causing her to constantly adjust her eyesight. Then as she moved closer it seemed to rise from the gloom around it, to become more solid, and she realised that it was a door.

  She halted in astonishment. Not only was it a door, but it was the door she had glimpsed yesterday from the train – or at least, like that door, it was upside-down, and positioned not at ground level but a metre or so above it. All at once Chloe felt frightened, as if she had stumbled across something very wrong, possibly even dangerous. Instead of backing away, however, she instinctively stepped forward, overwhelmed by a compulsion to touch the door, to check whether it was real. But before she could raise a hand, something hard slammed into her forehead, rocking her backwards and filling her head with sudden, unexpected pain.

  Almost abstractedly, as if the shock had jerked her consciousness from her body, she became aware of her legs giving way, of her surroundings dissolving into black static. The only thing that prevented her from passing out was the sensation of surprisingly strong arms curling around her body, holding her upright. A particularly strident burst of static close to her right ear gradually resolved itself into a voice.

  ‘Chloe? Chloe, can you hear me?’

  Ten minutes later she was sitting in the café with a handkerchief which Nick had soaked in cold water pressed to her forehead. She could feel a lump forming there, the blood pulsing in thick, soupy waves just above her right eye. There was a clatter of crockery and Nick was back with tea and cake. She looked up to see his concerned face, and then turned her attention to the cup and saucer which he was pushing across the table towards her.

  ‘Here you go,’ he said. ‘How are you feeling now?’

  ‘Like an idiot,’ she admitted.

  ‘How’s the head?’

  ‘Throbs a bit, but I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Oh God, I feel so responsible,’ he said. ‘They ought to warn people about those glass walls. They’re dangerous.’

  Chloe sipped her tea and said nothing.

  ‘Maybe we should complain,’ he continued.

  Chloe squinted at him. The electric light hurt her eyes. ‘Did you see anything through the wall?’

  ‘Like what?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘A red door.’

  ‘No. But then I was more worried about you.’ He looked at her curiously. ‘Maybe we ought to get you checked out. You might have concussion or something.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said firmly. ‘I just need a couple of paracetomols and a lie down.’ She finished her tea and replaced the cup in the saucer with a clatter. ‘Sorry to be a party pooper,’ she said, ‘but I think I’d like to go home now.’

  ‘Hi, Dad, it’s me.’

  ‘Chloe, my darling. How are you?’

  ‘Oh . . . fine. A bit sad.’

  ‘Well, that’s understandable. How was your journey back yesterday? I’m sorry I didn’t ring. I felt exhausted once everyone had gone. These last few weeks have taken it out of me rather.’

  Chloe felt tears prick her eyes. She pictured her stout, bespectacled father, the wispy white hair receding from the pink dome of his head. Trying to keep the waver from her voice, she said, ‘Will you be all right in that big house on your own?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be fine,’ he said, with a confidence she suspected was entirely for her benefit. ‘My parishioners are spoiling me rotten. You should see how many fruit pies and lasagnes and goodness knows what else I’ve got in the freezer. And of course none of us are ever truly alone, are we? Not with God to see us through.’

  At first Chloe was unsure whether she could respond, but finally whispered, ‘No.’

  Her father’s voice was suddenly full of concern. ‘Chloe, my love? Are you all right?’

  She sniffed and swallowed. The tears which had been threatening to come brimmed up and out of her eyes, forming dark coins on the leg of her jeans as she leaned forward. Forcing out the words, she said, ‘It’s just . . . Mum. I miss her, Dad.’

  ‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘We all miss her, my love. But isn’t it a great comfort to know that her suffering is finally over, and that she’s now at one with God?’

  ‘That boyfriend of yours been knocking you about?’ said Christine cheerfully.

  Chloe blinked at her. ‘What?’

  Christine gestured at her forehead. ‘That lovely bruise on your bonce. Get a bit carried away in the bedroom, did we?’

  Chloe hop
ed she wasn’t blushing, though she rather suspected she was. Chris was the best of only a handful of friends Chloe had made since moving to London, but that didn’t prevent her fellow copy editor from taking a perverse delight in poking fun at what she regarded as Chloe’s naiveté.

  ‘Believe it or not, I bumped it on a glass wall,’ Chloe said.

  Chris’s false eyelashes gave her widening eyes the appearance of Venus fly traps sensing prey. ‘I’m intrigued. Tell me more.’

  Ironically, for a magazine with a ceaselessly relentless publishing schedule and a strict remit to keep its finger firmly on the rapidly beating pulse of city life, the atmosphere in the London Listings editorial office was mostly relaxed and easy-going. Chloe would have preferred to have worked slowly and steadily through the week, but so much of what she did was reliant on the output of her colleagues that she had little choice but to adapt herself to the long-established regime and culture of the workplace. What this effectively meant was that for eighty per cent of the time she was either making or drinking coffee, exchanging gossip and twiddling her thumbs, and for the other twenty per cent she was engaged in a grim, feverish, to-the-wire race to meet her weekly deadlines.

  Chloe told Chris about her and Nick’s less than successful visit to Tate Modern, though felt oddly reluctant to mention the red door. Already it was adopting the texture of a dream-memory in her mind, of something that, paradoxically, was both vivid and unreal. It disturbed her to think that the door might be a figment of her imagination, though the alternative was more disturbing still. She tried to console herself with the assertion that she had been under stress, that grief could play funny tricks with the mind, and that this was subsequently only a temporary aberration. She had even been trying to convince herself that ‘seeing’ a door was a sign of hope and optimism, that it was a symbol of new beginnings.