The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

curlies.”

Sad old bastard. Like anybody has pubic hair anymore. I dropped the nasty little flower — wet and rubbery and pulsing unpleasantly like it hadn’t yet decided its final shape — and moved ahead of him, conceding reluctantly to myself as I walked on that things were not looking good for our plucky girl detective. Fact, I could feel The Adventure of the Hollow Hill lobbying to give itself a real fucking downer of an ending as I stepped out from the walkway into what he’d called the central chamber. There was a bubbling quicksand-like pool at its heart, surrounded by several ill-defined shapes that put me in mind of the grotesque statue that Cody’s body had become. More formal offerings, I thought. The place was a compost heap, a mulch pit, and Frankie’s ode to its insane splendour confirmed as much.

“You’ve doubtless seen all that pentagram and puff of smoke nonsense in the movies,” he said. “But the truth is it takes time and effort to actually effect a materialisation. The ground must be prepared. I’ve been seeding it for years, Kitty. Seeding it with frozen pain, with artefacts that contain the captured essence of human suffering. I’ve brought such treasures here. The skulls of slaughtered children, a letter to the media that one of our most celebrated serial killers wrote in the blood of a victim, a copy of the De Vermis Mysteriis bound in human skin. ‘The Devil Rides Shotgun’ would have been a beautiful addition, but alas. ”

He let his voice trail off theatrically. Prime fucking ham.

I’d have asked him the obvious question — why the hell are you doing this? — but I knew there was no point. He wouldn’t have an answer because he wasn’t really here anymore. He was as hollow as his hill, and just as much in the process of transformation. Whatever the human motivations that had kicked him off — curiosity, excitement, thrill of the forbidden, whatever — he was now merely a vessel of the Other’s desire to manifest itself. He had nothing to do with it. He was long gone. Whatever was blossoming in his cavern had eaten Frankie Metcalfe from the inside too.

So why leave the crust?

He was staring at the bubbling pool at the heart of it all and, for a second or two, hardly paying attention to me. I’d think later that perhaps either outcome was equally acceptable to what was left of the man he used to be, but I wouldn’t think about it much because it allowed for too much human ambiguity in the monster he’d become. I sure as shit didn’t think about it in the moment. I was younger and faster, and all his meditative pause in the proceedings meant to me was this: forget the gun, close the gap, get one hand on his skull and the other on his chin, and snap his wretched ancient neck like a fucking twig.

I’d have run anyway, but the terrifying re-ossification of the whole cavern lent my legs a whole new level of motivation. Killing Frankie had been like flipping a power-down switch on whatever he’d been ushering in to our world. It made sense, I suppose. Any other death down here — like, you know, mine — would have been just more mulch on the shit-pile of its becoming, but the death of its possessed summoner threw everything into reverse. Whatever had been coming was now retreating, and the hill was reclaiming its solidity. Reclaiming it, thank fuck, not quite as fast as I reclaimed the rope ladder and clambered my way back up into the house.

By the time I let myself out of the front door and headed for the Cadillac, the sun was just starting to set. California perfect. Orange and blue and purple and beautiful.

But I wasn’t really thinking about that. I was thinking about this:

Neck tattoo, five-foot-six, name of Scott.

Catch you later.

SIMON STRANTZAS An Indelible Stain Upon the Sky

SIMON STRANTZAS IS THE critically acclaimed author of Nightingale Songs, Cold to the Touch and Beneath the Surface — three collections of the strange and supernatural currently available from Dark Regions Press.

His award-nominated fiction has appeared previously in the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror series, Zombie Apocalypse! Fightback, PostScripts and Cemetery Dance.

At the moment he is hard at work on his fourth collection, while also editing an anthology about thin places by some of the genre’s best new talent. He still lives in Toronto, Canada, with his ever-patient wife and an unyielding hunger for the flesh of the living.

“My wife and I once took a weekend trip on the advice of a friend,” Strantzas recalls, “and it turned out to be the most horrendous experience either of us had ever had. So horrendous, in fact, that it did not take long for aspects of the trip to end up incorporated into my fiction, along with my long-standing fear of punishment dolls and my obsession with regret.

“But it wasn’t until I incorporated the oil spill from one of my failed novellas that the piece really clicked, and the echoes of past and present began to clearly assert themselves.

“It’s a story of loss and despair — the perfect combination for an easy summer holiday on the beach.”

* * *

I WALK THE SHORELINE as I did ten years ago but everything has changed. The intervening decade has not been long enough for wounds to heal; everywhere I look I see the scars of what’s been done. It all looks dead, covered in a thin viscous layer of regret.

The name is infamous even now. The oil tanker Madison, one thousand feet long and one-sixth that wide, ran ashore on the reef not twelve miles from where I stand, and the sharp coral sliced through its two hulls as though they were made of paper. From that long gash flowed the darkest, most vile blood into McCarthy Sound, and it spread faster than any estimate could predict. It raced towards the shore, hungry for life to feed on, and it took all birds and fishes and animals in its way until their deaths numbered into the thousands. Everything it touched withered and died, and then it took the life of Port McCarthy, the once peaceful town that could do nothing but watch itself succumb.

Suzanne and I had been there only a few months earlier, when everything seemed as though it would remain beautiful forever. It was still early June, when the days stretch their longest and we had nothing but warm weather to look forward to. We had by then only been together a short while, yet like the summer I could only see happiness laid before us, mapped out across the white sands of the beach. It’s strange now to remember; the accident was so close, and in hindsight I can see the ripples it sent backwards through time, yet I was too ignorant to recognise them for what they were. Portents of change, and what they promised has haunted me every day since.

We had driven half a day to reach the small town, sent on the recommendation of a close friend. Suzanne wore a straw hat, and through its wide woven brim a checkerboard of light dappled her soft face and filled her eyes with something akin to a sparkle every time she looked at me. Her laugh made me in turn laugh, and I still recall the sight of her newly shaven legs rubbing against one another and the feeling of absolute happiness it brought me. Were I somehow able to have frozen that moment, I would gladly have spent my remaining life there, wrapped in that beatific feeling of joy. That is the worst of the hauntings: the reminders of what I shall never again have.

The Port McCarthy that lies before me now is overcast, and I must work to remember that this is due to the shorter late autumn days and not that the oil has stained the sky.

I check myself into the Windhaven Inn, the same place where Suzanne and I stayed those many years ago. I must admit I’m surprised it’s still there and doing business, but one step inside shows me that it has hung on only by the thinnest of threads. The smiling woman who greeted us a decade ago is nowhere to be seen. Instead, in her place, a girl no more than sixteen, her faded black clothes stretched over her thick body, coils of seeping tattoos wrapped around her arms. I notice her pierced tongue as she speaks to me, and the words leave me feeling cold and wet.

“I’ve a reservation,” I tell her. “For the weekend.”

“Sign here,” she says, and I see her chipped nails are painted a matching dull black as she points to an empty space in the smudged guest book. I take the pen and try to sign my name, but after more than two attempts the ink