Best British Horror 2014 Page 6

  ‘I’ll come back for you,’ Shakil called out to the night.

  The Warden and the interrogating officer were returning from the site where Jeffries’s headless body had been found. The multiple lacerations on the dead guard’s back and the lengthy blood trail leading up to the body suggested that Jeffries had managed to run a fair distance before succumbing to the killer’s axe.

  ‘I’m going to have to get the police involved.’ The Warden looked defeated.

  ‘We’d better get the prisoner off the rack,’ the interrogator reminded him.

  ‘Christ, I forgot all about him. Let’s go and get him ourselves. There are hardly any guards left, for God’s sake.’ The two of them went down to the torture chamber, but Shakil was nowhere to be found.

  ‘Goddammit! Goddammit!’ The Warden’s vocabulary – never huge – shrank to one word.

  After a final search of the Tower complex by what was left of his staff, the Warden finally called the police and admitted to having a terror suspect on the loose and a bunch of dead guards with missing heads.

  The executioner was not happy. The pathetic slip of a girl had outfoxed him, robbing him of the head of the traitor on the rack. It was his duty to collect as many heads for the Queen as possible – and he would have to hurry if he was to get a decent quota before daybreak.

  Shakil made it back home before dawn. His luminous yellow jumpsuit was almost dry, but he had to ditch it as soon as possible. He used the last of his strength to scale a tree at the back of the house, and quietly opened his sister’s bedroom window. He gazed at Adara, longing to hug her, but what was the point of waking her up? Things would never be the same again, and it was best not to get her hopes up. He looked in on his parents, also sound asleep. Then he went to his room and changed his clothes. He noticed an old history book from school and quickly flipped through the pages, looking for something. And there it was: a reproduction of Paul Delaroche’s painting of the execution of Lady Jane Grey. Recognition and sadness crept into Shakil’s eyes. ‘Jane.’

  Shakil moved swiftly and silently to his father’s study, opened a drawer and took out the keys to his father’s office and warehouse. He put on a long, loose-fitting coat, and tucked the jumpsuit under it – he would dispose of it later, away from the house, preventing any repercussions against his family. He took a final look at his sleeping parents, then went into Adara’s bedroom and left quietly through her window.

  Adara woke up, looked around her room and shivered. For a moment she had the vague feeling that something wasn’t right, but sleep quickly reclaimed her and she sank back onto her pillow.

  Shakil disappeared around the corner just as the first police cars pulled up.

  The Warden and the interrogating officer were on their way to the Warden’s office in the White Tower, when their path was cut off by a brick shithouse of a man, carrying an axe in one hand and Jeffries’s head in the other.

  ‘Shit!’ The Warden froze for a moment, and the interrogating officer was first to draw his gun.

  ‘Drop the axe!’ But the giant didn’t drop the axe; he raised it and ran at the interrogator. The interrogating officer emptied his gun into the giant’s chest, then turned and ran towards the Wakefield Tower. The Warden paused long enough to ascertain that the killer was following the interrogator, then ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

  The interrogating officer ran down the stairs to the basement. Before he knew it, he found himself in the torture chamber, cowering behind the Scavenger’s Daughter and listening to the heavy footsteps coming closer. He’d barely had time to reload his gun when the heavy door of the chamber swung open, its hinges breaking, and the executioner strode in, Jeffries’s head still swinging by one side and the axe held firmly on the other.

  The guard emptied his gun into the advancing giant’s head and chest, then fell to his knees and started to pray. The executioner raised his axe over the guard’s head, and then thought better of it. He placed the axe and Jeffries’s head carefully on the ground. Then he grabbed the sobbing interrogator by the back of his neck and the seat of his pants, squeezed his head down towards his knees, and thrust him into the Scavenger’s Daughter, fastening the iron bonds with ease.

  ‘So that’s how it works.’ The ridiculously inappropriate thought slipped into the interrogator’s head before the monster tightened his bonds, forcing blood from his nose and mouth, and cracking his spine.

  The executioner contemplated his handiwork for a moment, then picked up his axe and cut the man’s head off.

  The Warden had locked himself in his office and was calling the police again when he heard heavy footsteps approaching. He put the phone down and stood very still, hoping the footsteps wouldn’t stop outside his office door, but they did. There was a moment’s silence, and then an ear-splitting thud as the axe came splintering through the thick wood of the door. The Warden thought he was going to have a heart attack. For some reason all he could think of was Jack Nicholson breaking down the bathroom door in The Shining. Then he remembered that the door on the far side of his office led to an adjoining chamber, which in turn led back round to the stairs.

  When the executioner burst in, the Warden was already leaving through the back and heading downstairs. As he ran for the main entrance leading out of the Tower, the Warden ran straight into the escaped prisoner.

  ‘You’re back!’

  ‘Yes, I’m back.’ And Shakil opened his jacket, revealing the vast amount of explosives strapped around his waist, and the detonator in his other hand. The Warden turned around, planning to go back the way he’d just come, but the executioner was striding towards him, axe in one hand, Jeffries’s and the interrogator’s heads in the other.

  The Warden turned back to Shakil.

  ‘We can make a deal. I can get you released from here.’ Shakil looked the Warden in the eye and raised the detonator in front of the man’s face. ‘No!’ The Warden raised a hand in protest and backed away as Shakil placed his thumb over the detonating button. ‘Please, don’t. I have a wife and kids.’ The Warden didn’t have a wife or kids. In fact he hated both kids and women, only using the latter sporadically when his urges got the better of him. But Shakil wasn’t to know. The Warden sensed the boy’s hesitation. ‘I have two kids, and a third on the way.’ Shakil’s thumb wavered over the detonator.

  The Warden held the boy’s gaze. He didn’t see the axe rise behind his head; nor did he see it swing down and round. But he felt the sharp pain in his neck, and then the world spun and became red and orange, as the Warden’s head went one way and his body went another, flailing arms lashing out in reflex action and grabbing Shakil’s hand, pushing the boy’s thumb down on the detonator.

  Debris flew everywhere: stone, timber, metal, body parts and shards of glass. Among the body parts were severed heads, which fell – some of them burning, all of them thudding – to the ground.

  Had there been any witnesses at that early time of the morning, and had those witnesses looked closely, they might have noticed orbs of light and strange wisps of mist rising from the burning ruins and merging with the dawn sky.

  Police, fire trucks and ambulances were on the scene within minutes; news vans not much later.

  Adara woke up to the sound of the news on her television.

  ‘Police are puzzled by the disproportionate number of heads among the remains . . .’

  She sat up, startled, convinced that she’d switched her TV off the night before, and saw her brother standing before her. He wore his favourite leather jacket and smiled at her, pushing a thick lock of shiny black hair away from his eyes. Adara’s grogginess was instantly replaced by astonishment, then pure joy. She smiled back at Shakil and reached towards him, but he faded away, revealing the television with the newsman still reporting on the explosion.

  Adara cried out and burst into tears.

  ‘The authorities believ
e that the explosion was an act of terror. Many will no doubt be saying that the Prime Minister’s new anti-terror legislation has already been justified; some that it is still not enough.’

  As Adara stared at the television uncomprehendingly, several ravens hopped past the reporter’s back and perched on a nearby wall, overlooking the burning wreckage.

  Behind the Doors

  RAMSEY CAMPBELL

  As Adam ran to the school gates he cried, ‘Look what the teacher gave me, Grandad.’

  It was an Advent calendar, too large to fit in his satchel. Each of the little cardboard doors had the same jolly bearded countenance, with a bigger one for Christmas Day. ‘Well,’ Summers said as the mid-December air turned his breath pale, ‘that’s a bit late.’

  The ten-year-old’s small plump face flushed while his eyes grew wider and moister. ‘He gave me it because I did best in the class.’

  ‘Then hurrah for you, Adam.’ Summers would have ruffled the boy’s hair if it hadn’t been too clipped to respond. ‘Don’t scoff all the chocolates you should have had already,’ he said as Adam poked at a door with an inky finger. ‘We don’t want your mum and dad telling me off for letting you spoil your dinner.’

  ‘I was going to give you one,’ the boy protested, shoving the calendar under one arm before he tramped across the road.

  Summers kept a sigh to himself as he followed Adam into the park opposite Park Junior. He didn’t want to upset the boy, especially when he recalled how sensitive he’d been at Adam’s age. He caught up with him on the gravel path along an avenue of leafless trees, above which the sky resembled an untrodden snowfield. ‘How did you earn the prize, Adam?’

  ‘The maths teacher says I should be called Add ’Em.’

  ‘Ha,’ said Summers. ‘Who’s the witty teacher?’

  ‘Mr Smart,’ Adam said and glanced back to see why Summers had fallen behind. ‘He’s come to our school because Miss Logan’s having a baby.’

  Summers overtook him beside the playground, a rubbery expanse where swings hung inert above abandoned cans of lager. ‘What else can you tell me about him?’

  ‘I expect he was teaching when you were at school.’ With some pride in the observation Adam said, ‘He must be as older than you than I’m old.’

  ‘Does he always give his pupils calendars like that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Shall I ask him?’

  ‘No, don’t do that. Don’t mention me, or say anything I said.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever get one?’

  Summers attempted to swallow a sour stale taste, ‘Not that I could tell you.’

  Adam considered this while his expression grew more sympathetic, and then he said, ‘You can have mine if you like.’

  Summers was touched by the offer but disconcerted by the prospect. ‘I tell you what,’ he said, ‘you give me that and I’ll buy you another.’

  He was glad for Adam as soon as the boy handed him the calendar. Even if only the winter day made the cardboard feel cold and damp, the corners were scuffed and the colours looked faded. The jovial faces were almost as white as their beards, and the floppy red hats had turned so brown that they resembled mounds of earth perched on the heads. Summers thrust the calendar under his arm to avoid handling it further. ‘Let’s get you home,’ he said.

  Beyond a bowling green torn up by bicycles, a Frugo Corner supermarket had replaced a small parade of shops that used to face the park. As the automatic doors let out the thin strains of a carol from the overhead loudspeakers, Summers wondered if it was too late for Advent calendars to be on sale. He couldn’t bring the date to mind, and trying to add up the spent days of December made his head feel raw. But there were calendars beside the tills, and Adam chose one swarming with creatures from outer space, though Summers was unclear what this had to do with Christmas.

  His old house was half a mile away across the suburb. Along the wide quiet streets the trees looked frozen to the sky. He saw Adam to the antique door that Paul and Tina had installed within their stained-glass wrought-iron porch. ‘Will you be all right now?’

  The boy gave the elderly formula an old-fashioned look. ‘I always am,’ he reminded Summers and slipped his key into the lock.

  The streets narrowed as Summers made his way home. The houses grew shabbier and their doorbells multiplied, while the gardens were occupied by seedy cars and parts of cars. Each floor of the concrete block where he lived was six apartments long, with a view of an identical block. Once Elaine left him he’d found the house too large, and might have given it to his son even if Paul hadn’t moved in with a partner.

  The apartment was something like halfway along the middle balcony, two doors distant from the only other number with a tail, but Summers knew it by the green door between the red pair. He marched down the hall to the kitchen, where he stopped short of the bin. If the sweets in the calendar weren’t past their edible date, why shouldn’t he finish them off?

  He stood it on the mantelpiece in the main room, beneath Christmas cards pinned to the nondescript wallpaper. As he searched for the first cardboard door he heard an object shift within the calendar, a sound emphasised by the silence of the hi-fi and the television and the empty suite that faced them. At last he located the door in the midst of the haphazard dates and pried it open with a fingernail. The dark chocolate behind the door was shaped like the number. ‘One up for me,’ he declared, biting it in half.

  The sweet wasn’t stale after all. He levered the second door open as soon as he found it, remarking ‘Two’s not for you,’ as he put the number in his mouth. How many did he mean to see off? He ought to heed the warning he’d given Adam about dinner. ‘Three’s a crowd,’ he commented once he managed to locate the number. That had certainly felt like the case when, having decided that Paul was old enough for her to own up, Elaine had told Summers about the other man. The taste in his mouth was growing bitter yet sickly as well, and any more of it might put him off his dinner. Perhaps it already had, but since taking early retirement he’d gained weight that he could do with losing. There was no point in eating much when he was by himself.

  For a while he watched the teachers’ channel, which seemed to be the only sign of intelligence on television. An hour or two of folk music on the hi-fi with the sound turned low out of consideration for the neighbours left him readier for bed. He brushed his teeth until the only flavour in his mouth was toothpaste, and then he did his best to be amused by having to count a multitude of Santas in the dark before he could fall asleep.

  At least his skull wasn’t crawling with thoughts of tomorrow’s lessons and more lessons yet to plan, and tests to set, and conflicts to resolve or at any rate address, both among the children and within themselves. However badly he might sleep, he no longer had to set the alarm clock, never mind lying awake for hours before it went off or struggling to doze until it did. Since it was Friday he needn’t bother with breakfast; he would be meeting some of his old colleagues from Dockside Primary – and then he realised he’d lost count of the weeks. His friends would be preparing for tonight’s Christmas play at the school, and they’d cancelled their usual Friday lunch.

  He could still do without breakfast, given the stale sweetish taste in his mouth. He brushed his teeth at length and used mouthwash before swallowing his various pills. Once he was dressed heavily enough to switch off the heating he wandered into the living room to feed himself today’s date from the Advent calendar. When at last he put his finger on the eighteenth he felt he’d earned a walk in the park.

  In spring he’d liked to take his classes to the one near Dockside Primary – to imagine that their minds were budding like the trees. That was before teaching had turned into a business of filling in forms and conforming to prescribed notions as narrow as the boxes on the documents. Now he could think that the children in the schoolyard of Park Junior were caged not just by the railings but by the educational sy
stem. He couldn’t see Adam, but if he ventured closer the boy might be embarrassed by his presence. What was Summers doing there at all? The children’s uninhibited shouts must prove that Smart was nowhere near.

  Summers watched the school until he saw teachers trooping back from lunch, but none of them looked familiar. Once the yard was empty he stood up from the bench. Ambling around the park used up some time, and then he strolled to the Dockside library, where he might have found work if the job had involved fewer numbers. People even older than he was or just as unemployed were reading the papers, and he had to content himself with a tabloid. Perhaps the prose as terse as the bitten-off headlines was all that some people could read. That was a failure of education, like the young and even younger criminals who figured in many of the reports. The paper took him a very few minutes to read, and then he hurried back to the school. He wanted to be there before anyone emerged.

  Some teachers did in the midst of the flood of children, but he recognised none of them, and Adam was impatient to question him. ‘How many did you have?’

  Summers was thrown by the irrational notion that it could have been a problem set by Smart. ‘Not as many as you, I expect,’ he retorted.

  ‘I just had one and then we had some after dinner.’

  ‘Good boy.’ Summers felt a little sly for adding ,‘Did your teacher say anything about it?’

  ‘He wanted me to add up all the days till today in my head.’

  ‘Just this month, you mean. And did you?’

  ‘I got it right. He said everyone should be like me.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be much of a world if we were all the same, do you think?’ Summers sensed that the boy had more to tell. ‘Is that all he did?’

  ‘Jimmy was next to top in class, but he got the answer wrong.’