Best British Horror 2014 Read online

  Bob was patrolling the Wakefield Tower with Pete. There were only ten minutes left until the end of the shift, but Pete couldn’t wait that long.

  ‘I need to take a leak, mate. Wait for me, won’t you?’

  ‘Sure.’ But as soon as Pete disappeared around the corner, Bob heard the heartbreaking sobbing of a child – the little boy from the night before. ‘Pete? Pete!’ But Pete couldn’t hear him and Bob couldn’t wait, as the child’s crying receded down the corridor, joined by the voice of the older boy. Bob threw one last, undecided glance in the direction of the toilets, then took off after the boys.

  Bob followed the voices and footsteps, calling out to the children as he spotted them heading out of the building. He couldn’t see them clearly in the darkness, but the little one looked about ten, and the older one couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen. What the hell were they doing here, and where were they hiding during the day? It wasn’t that much of a surprise that the dogs hadn’t found them – Max and Theo seemed to be about as much use as his late aunt’s toy poodle – but the massive hunt for Crewes’s and Hampel’s heads should have unearthed the boys’ hiding place. Then again, the heads hadn’t turned up, so perhaps where the heads were so too were the boys . . . what a horrible thought. And speaking of Crewes’s and Hampel’s heads . . . as Bob followed the boys into the Bloody Tower, he suddenly realised the folly of what he was doing. He stopped for a moment and thought about turning back and rejoining Pete, but then the little boy cried out somewhere in the darkness ahead of him, so he drew his gun and hurried inside.

  Pete came out of the toilet and returned to the place where he’d left the younger guard. He called out to his colleague, then glanced at his watch and figured that Bob must have gone back to the guards’ quarters. ‘Thanks for waiting,’ he muttered under his breath, and followed suit.

  The boys were gone. By the time Bob realised that he was in the same chamber as he’d shot the woman in, it was too late – the woman was running at him from the far end of the room, shrieking. Bob’s brain stalled, but his automatic pilot engaged and he pointed his weapon at the woman, shouting for her to stop. This time he did not fire and, as the woman drew closer to him, Bob noticed that she was not looking at him – she was running in his direction, but not actually at him. Now she was close enough for Bob to see the terror and madness in her eyes. As the screaming woman reached Bob, he jumped back, weapon raised, ready to let her pass, but she fell bleeding to the floor, exactly as she had the other night when he’d thought he’d shot her.

  When Bob recovered enough to lower his weapon and think rationally, he bent down and studied the gashes in the woman’s back. It was obvious now that he wasn’t responsible for them. It was as if someone had hacked into her from behind, over and over, while she was running away. Bob looked in the direction from which the woman had come, and that was when he heard the footsteps – heavy and getting closer. Then a sight more monstrous than anything he could have imagined appeared at the far end of the chamber. Striding rapidly towards the guard, giant axe in hand, was a mountain of a man, with a black hood-like mask over his head, holes cut out for the eyes – and the eyes unblinking, deathlike, yet burning with a malevolence that could only have come from Hell itself.

  Bob fought to keep a hold of himself. ‘Stop or I’ll shoot!’ The monster paused for the briefest moment, looking directly at the guard. Bob could have sworn that the fiend smiled beneath his mask, before moving forward again with added determination. As he approached Bob, he raised his axe. ‘Stay back!’ Bob took aim and squeezed the trigger, but his gun jammed. He tried not to panic; he managed to unblock the gun, and discharged several shots at the approaching giant. He kept shooting, but the monster kept coming. Bob was still shooting as the axe came down. The last thing he saw was the room spinning over and over, and then his own headless body slumping to the ground, then receding in the distance, as his head was picked up and carried off into the darkness.

  Shakil had fallen into a restless sleep. He dreamed that he was in a different cell. There was a window at eye level and he looked out of it onto the patch of land known as Tower Green. A scaffold had been erected there and Shakil could see a small crowd gathering. Then he saw a procession of people walking from the White Tower in the direction of the scaffold. Among them was an elderly man, leading the most gorgeous girl Shakil had ever seen. She was slim and petite, with a beautiful face, rendered very pale against her jet black dress. Her hair was hidden by a silk scarf, but a lock of it had escaped, and shone once reddish, once golden in the cold February sun. She held a small book in her hand, and walked like a goddess or a queen might walk.

  As Shakil watched, the girl was led towards the scaffold. Shakil expected her to take a place among the crowd, but the elderly man led her up the steps, onto the wooden structure itself. That’s when Shakil noticed the large block of wood, and the huge, monstrous-looking, hooded man who stood in the shadows at the side of the scaffold, holding a massive axe. Shakil looked at the girl, who addressed the crowd and read something out of her book, and then the reality of what was going to happen dawned on the boy and he felt sick. As he watched, the girl removed her scarf and coat, and handed them to one of the women attending her. Then she took a handkerchief and tied it around her eyes. Shakil tried to open the window, but it was stuck. He rattled it in a desperate attempt to get it open, but to no avail. He shouted, but nobody could hear him. He was forced to watch helplessly as the beautiful girl kneeled, then panicked as she couldn’t locate the block by touch alone. Shakil watched in horror as someone from the crowd scaled the scaffold, and guided the girl’s hands to the chopping block. She calmed down, and lay her head upon it. The masked man stepped out of the shadows and raised his axe.

  As the axe came down, Shakil cried out and woke up. His relief that it had only been a dream dissipated as soon as he realised where he was. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw a figure watching him from a corner of his cell. He pulled back, frightened, but then he recognised the girl from his dream. The gentleness emanating from her dispelled Shakil’s fear in an instant. Confused, but unafraid, he watched the girl draw closer. He could smell her perfume, and wondered why it was familiar. The girl touched his face and Shakil closed his sore eyes for a moment, then opened them again and gazed into the girl’s sad face. He reached out and touched her reddish-gold hair, smiling back when she smiled at him.

  The first light of dawn crept into the cell. Pain clouded the girl’s delicate features and a thin red line appeared on her pale neck. Shakil watched in horror as the girl put a hand up to her neck, and blood oozed out between her fingers. Shakil started to panic, and the girl held out her free hand to him, trying to reassure him even as she fought to stem the flow of her own blood with her other hand. As she bled, the girl’s features became soft and blurred, and she faded away, leaving only a pool of blood on the floor; a second later that too was gone.

  Shakil pushed himself back against the cold damp wall of his cell and sat there, shaking. He was still sitting there when the guards came to hose him down.

  ‘We’re going back upstairs now,’ said the Warden, ‘but bear in mind that this is where we’ll be having our little chats from now on if you don’t tell us what we want to know.’

  Shakil’s hands were handcuffed behind his back and his ankles loosely chained together. He was speechless following the interrogating officer’s demonstration of the rack, unable even to protest his innocence, which he’d done at every given opportunity up until now. The Warden took Shakil’s silence to be an admission of guilt, and congratulated himself silently on his first small victory over the youth. The interrogating officer, on the other hand, was still miffed that the plaques about the torture instruments had been removed – along with all the other tourist information – as his urge to try out the Scavenger’s Daughter was growing daily, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how the damned thing worked. If only someone had
told him about Google.

  Back in the interrogating room, the officer ordered Shakil to name the other people in his terror cell. Shakil was still unable to speak, and the Warden thought that perhaps he’d been wrong: the stubborn little shit was not on the verge of spilling the beans after all; his silence was merely a new and irritating resistance tactic. The Warden nodded to the interrogating officer to get physical. The interrogator grinned and was about to take a swipe at Shakil when Pete appeared, and informed them in a trembling voice that the body of Bob Dawson had been found in the Bloody Tower – the body, but not the head. The Warden had no choice but to order Shakil to be taken back to his cell.

  ‘You are one lucky son of a bitch,’ the interrogating officer hissed in Shakil’s ear as Pete led the boy out of the room.

  Shakil was left alone for the rest of the day, as everyone in the Tower complex was preoccupied with the search for a psycho killer and three missing heads. The boy spent much of the day lying on the hard stone floor. At night he couldn’t get to sleep, and when he finally did, he dreamed about the execution again. This time he was right there, standing among the small group of people at the foot of the scaffold. As the executioner moved towards the girl and raised his axe, Shakil started screaming, ‘Stop! Let her go!’

  The hooded monster turned away from the girl and headed towards Shakil.

  ‘Run! Go! Now!’ The girl’s voice rang out over the agitated whispers of the crowd. She had raised her head from the block and, the blindfold still over her eyes, moved her head around, as if trying to locate Shakil through sound alone. ‘You can’t stop what will happen to me. It will go on happening over and over – as long as the Tower stands.’

  The executioner went to descend the scaffold, axe raised, eyes on Shakil.

  ‘Run! Please go! Now!’ So urgent was the plea in the girl’s voice that Shakil ran.

  He woke up to the familiar sound of his cell door slamming open. As Shakil was hosed down, his family were preparing to see a woman from Amnesty International. By the time they had arrived at the Amnesty office, and the woman had said that she would try to help them, but it would be a slow and difficult process, Shakil was already strapped to the rack in the basement of the Wakefield Tower.

  ‘I don’t know!’ he half screamed, half pleaded.

  ‘You don’t know their names?’ asked the Warden, as the interrogating officer got ready to tighten the ropes one more time. Shakil was stretched out on the iron frame, his feet secured at one end, his hands at the other. The replica of the sixteenth century original worked just fine. The lever on the central wooden roller allowed the interrogating officer to turn the rollers at the head and foot of the rack simultaneously, pulling the ropes that secured Shakil’s hands and feet in opposite directions.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

  The interrogating officer was about to turn the roller again, when Pete came running in and informed the Warden that Jeffries was missing. If looks could kill, the filthy look that the interrogator gave Shakil would have dispatched the boy to the next life for sure.

  ‘What shall I do with him?’ the interrogator asked the Warden.

  ‘Leave him where he is.’

  Luckily for Shakil, the ropes on the rack were not stretched tight enough to do any serious damage, but as the day wore on, the agony of having his arms pulled taught over his head grew. At lunchtime a fly found its way into the basement, and tortured the sweating, suffering boy by buzzing round his head and sitting on him, again and again; every time he managed to move enough to dislodge it, it would be back. This carried on for about an hour until the fly grew bored and flew off to find some dog shit to feed on. Half an hour later Shakil’s nose started to itch for no apparent reason, and the boy squirmed, tried to blow on his nose and did whatever he could to alleviate the itch, but it persisted for a good forty minutes, driving him crazy, and then suddenly it eased. By teatime his muscles began to cramp painfully and Shakil cried out in pain and fear.

  As darkness fell, the chamber changed. Shadows moved around Shakil, and he could hear whispers and moans in the dark corners. Despite his great discomfort, exhaustion overcame him and he almost dozed off, but the approach of heavy footsteps brought him wide awake. The night was at its darkest now, and Shakil peered into the gloom near the chamber door with growing trepidation. The footsteps grew louder, the shadows and whispers around Shakil stilled, and a terrible silence fell on the chamber.

  Shakil struggled against his bonds as the footsteps came closer. Then the chamber door swung open, and in the scant light from the corridor Shakil saw the silhouette of a massive man. As the giant entered the chamber, Shakil recognised him: it was the hooded monster that had cut off the girl’s head in his nightmare – it was the executioner, and he had seen Shakil, and was advancing towards him, raising his axe.

  Shakil thrashed about on the rack, crying out and twisting madly from side to side. An image of his parents and his sister flashed into Shakil’s head, and he was sure he was going to die. When a white mist formed before his eyes, he thought he was passing out, but the mist quickly solidified and took on human form. It was the girl from Shakil’s dreams – the girl who had visited him in his cell – and she now stood between the boy and the executioner, small and slender, but more corporeal and stronger than the other night.

  The executioner went for the girl immediately, but she ducked his blow and fled from the chamber, leading him away from Shakil. The boy shouted out in protest, but the executioner and the girl were gone. Shakil struggled on the rack again, terrified for the girl. Eventually he exhausted himself and gave up. Tears for the girl welled up in his eyes, and he closed them. Then all of a sudden there was that perfume again, and a gentle, soothing presence was in the room. The girl was back. She touched Shakil’s face and chest; she touched his hands and studied his bonds closely.

  Ever since the presence of people in the Tower at night had disrupted the fine balance between the living and the dead, the girl had found herself increasingly able to interact with the physical world. For many years those who walked in the Tower during the day and those who walked there at night had been separate. Now the order was destroyed, and the girl, and the realm of nightmare in which she resided, had entered the waking world. And she had fallen in love again – and again her love was doomed.

  Jane Grey had been fifteen when she was bullied into marrying a young man she hardly knew, but she had grown to love him. Nine months after their wedding, she had watched from her confines in the Tower as he was taken for execution and brought back a while later – his rag-covered head rattling around beside his headless body in the horse-drawn cart. An hour later, Jane suffered the same fate. Her crime: being too young to withstand the machinations of her ambitious parents and powerful in-laws, who had made her queen of England for nine days, incurring the wrath of the rightful heir to the throne.

  Jane loosened Shakil’s bonds and let him down. The boy’s body slumped, his arms temporarily useless, and he fell into the girl’s arms. Drawing on his life-force to give her strength, Jane led Shakil out of the dark building.

  Jones was checking the area west of the White Tower when he spotted the prisoner whose head he’d shaved leaving the Wakefield Tower with a girl in an old-fashioned dress. He raised his weapon, shouting for them to stop, then gave chase.

  Jane and Shakil fled towards Traitor’s Gate and the River Thames beyond. The only obstacle in their way was the portcullis on the south side of the Bloody Tower. The pins-and-needles had eased, and Shakil had enough feeling back in his arms to work the ancient mechanism that pulled up the seven hundred and fifty year old spiked gate. He and Jane ran under the portcullis just as Jones was catching up with them. The guard paused for a moment, taking aim at Shakil’s back. There was a loud creaking noise as the mechanism holding up the portcullis gave way, and the two and a half tonne structure came crashing down, its spikes impalin
g the guard through his head and his shoulders. He held onto his weapon a moment longer, and then it fell from his hand. His body remained upright, fixed by the iron spikes, surprised eyes staring ahead.

  Jane and Shakil ran down the steps leading to the water-logged Traitor’s Gate. Water levels had risen in the last few years, the river’s tides had increased in strength, and the land beneath the water-gate had been worn away. The bottom of the gate no longer sat on the mud beneath the water, but hung free in the water itself, the gate now held up by the solid walls on either side of it. As Shakil inspected the bottom of the gate, he understood why the girl had brought him to this spot.

  ‘We just have to swim under it,’ he said to her. ‘I’ll go first, then I’ll help pull you under the gate.’

  Shakil lowered himself into the freezing water and went under, using the bars to pull himself down one side, then up the other side of the gate. He came up, gasping for breath, and stood chest-high in water, shaking from the cold. He reached out to Jane through the bars.

  ‘You just have to get down and under the bars, and I’ll help pull you up,’ he told her.

  Jane gazed at Shakil, sadness and longing in her eyes. As Shakil watched, her features began to soften and fade. She turned from the boy and fled back towards the Bloody Tower, disappearing before she reached the top of the steps.