The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

two fistfuls of vicious-looking sewing needles of every shape and size, some of them as long as meat skewers. She glanced at the china figurine she had knocked over and then turned her malevolent stare on the occupants of the room.

“He ought to have known better,” she said, her voice as unsteady as her hands. “I can still count, you see. Eight, nine, ten!”

Frederique gasped. “The swords,” she whispered.

Perkins was edging slowly towards the old lady, apparently intent on catching her off guard and disarming her. George noticed and moved to distract her.

“Look here, Flo,” he said. “Let me have those things. You’ll do yourself an injury, old girl.”

“I know what the numbers mean,” Florence said icily, brandishing the needles at him. As she raised her arms they could see that she was only holding a few of the needles; the rest had been shoved through her palms like crucifixion nails.

Suddenly Perkins rushed her. But he wasn’t quick enough. The old lady drove her hands against either side of his head as though crushing a mosquito in mid-air. Some of the needles remained in his face while others were simply forced through the backs of Florence’s hands. Perkins shrieked with pain as he fell to the floor, clawing at the pincushion his face had become.

With unbelievable speed Florence went for the next nearest victim. George and Elizabeth had already dodged away but Cornelia was unable to get out of the chair in time. She screamed and flailed helplessly as the old lady fell on her and set about raking the metallic claws across her face and throat.

Frederique saw her chance and fled. Perkins lay writhing and groaning in a spreading pool of blood as he tried to dig the needles out of his face. George and Elizabeth watched in horror for a few moments before running after Frederique. Perkins got to his feet and stumbled after them, trailing blood in his wake.

The old lady soon grew bored with Cornelia, whose cries had grown weak and feeble before she finally lost consciousness. Her baleful gaze swept the room and fell for a moment on Krauss and Anna, who stood calmly by the window.

The remaining needles clicked together as the old lady moved her fingers in the air like skewered spiders. “Snick snick snick,” she mumbled. Then she turned back to where the butler had been. Seeing he had escaped, she smiled like a child at play and crept after him. From the corridor came the sound of a struggle. There was a shout, then the sound of gurgling, moaning, then silence.

Alone at last, Krauss turned Anna to face him. A slow grin spread over her features and she placed her bloodstained hands on either side of his face.

“Apparently I’m the daughter of a clergyman,” she said. “And you’re in league with the Devil.”

“Is that so?”

“I suspect the Dalrymples have already made his acquaintance.”

Krauss nodded. “A few drops in the jug of water by their daughter’s bed earlier this afternoon. If she isn’t dead by morning she’ll wish she was.”

From somewhere outside, Frederique began to scream.

“Let’s go somewhere quieter,” Krauss said.

He led Anna up the stairs and into the master bedroom. Once there, he undressed her slowly and laid her naked on the fourposter bed. She writhed in anticipation, her hands leaving streaks of blood on the white silk sheets. Krauss kissed her gored palms.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

“Oh yes,” she said, breathless. “But not nearly enough.”

He withdrew a knife from his pocket. It gleamed like a smile in the candlelight. “Where shall we begin?” he asked.

She guided him to the soft skin of her abdomen and lifted her hips, pressing herself against the tip of his blade. “Here,” she said. “Sign your name.”

JOHN AJVIDE LINDQVIST The Music of Bengt Karlsson, Murderer

JOHN AJVIDE LINDQVIST WAS born 1968 and grew up in Blackberg, a suburb of Stockholm. He is probably the only Swedish person who makes his living from writing horror.

A former stand-up comedian and expert at card tricks, Lindqvist’s first novel, Let the Right One In, has sold over half-a-million copies in a country with nine million inhabitants. The book has been published in thirty countries and been made into two movies, one Swedish and the other American (under the title Let Me In).

The author’s other novels include Handling the Undead and Harbour, both of which are in the process of being turned into films, and Little Star. A collection of his short fiction, Let the Old Dreams Die (which includes sequels to both Let the Right One In and Handling the Undead), was recently published in the UK by Quercus.

The following novella is Lindqvist’s first story written specifically for an English-language market and, as he explains: “The idea for ‘The Music of Bengt Karlsson, Murderer’ came to me four years ago, when my son was ten years old and started taking piano lessons.

“The disjointed, unharmonic notes coming from his room gave me the thought, What if he would accidentally hit on a series of notes that. summoned something? I wrote down the idea and waited for that critical second idea that could turn it into a story. It never came by itself, so the original idea just lay slumbering in that special file on my computer.

“When asked for a contribution to an anthology, I opened the file, shook life into the notes-that-summon idea and examined it more closely. Originally I had a vague plan of some Cthulhuesque monster being attracted by the music, but that didn’t work out. Then the idea of a father and son being alone and isolated clicked together with the image of mylingar, the ghosts of murdered children. and the rest was the usual sweat and tears to forge those images into a story.

“It might be the one story I have written that has scared me the most. It plays deeply on my own fears of losing all I love. Especially towards the end, I wrote on in a state of mild but constant horror.

“It was a relief when it was over.”

**

I’M ASHAMED TO admit it, but I bribed my son to get him to start learning to play the piano.

The idea came to me one night when I heard him sitting plinking and plonking away on the toy synthesiser he’d been given for his birthday two years earlier. He’d actually taken a break from playing computer games — imagine that. So I went into his room and asked if he’d like piano lessons.

No, he would not. No way. I hinted that an increase in his pocket money might well be on the cards if he agreed. Eighty kronor a week instead of fifty. Robin must have realised how desperate I was, because he refused even to come and look at the community music school unless we were talking about doubling the amount. A hundred kronor a week.

I gave in. What else could I do? Something had to change. My son was sliding towards unreality, and if a piano lesson now and again could bring him back to the IRL-world to some extent, then fifty kronor a week was a cheap price to pay.

IRL. In real life. I don’t know what the other world is called, but that was where Robin spent almost all of his waking hours when he wasn’t in school. Online. Wearing a headset and with a control in his hands, he had surfed away to a coastline where I could no longer reach him.

Not too much of a problem, you might think. Completely normal, the youth of today, etc. Well yes. But he was only eleven years old. It just can’t be healthy to sit there locked inside an electronic fantasy world for five, six,