Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome

Book 0: TerrorTome

by Garth Marenghi

Genres: Black Humor; Horror

Synopsis

From the mind of horror master Garth Marenghi: a masterful multi-volume horror masterpiece thirty years in the making...

Dare you crack open the TerrorTome? (Mind the spine)

When horror writer Nick Steen gets sucked into a cursed typewriter by the terrifying Type-Face, Dark Lord of the Prolix, the hellish visions inside his head are unleashed for real. Forced to fight his escaping imagination - now leaking out of his own brain - Nick must defend the town of Stalkford from his own fictional horrors, including avascular-necrosis-obsessed serial killer Nelson Strain and Nick's dreaded throppleganger, the Dark Third.

Can he and Roz, his frequently incorrect female editor, hunt down these incarnate denizens of Nick's rampaging imaginata before they destroy Stalkford, outer Stalkford and possibly slightly further?

From the twisted genius of horror master Garth Marenghi - Frighternerman, Darkscribe, Doomsage (plus Man-Shee) - come three dark tales from his long-lost multi-volume epic: TerrorTome.

Can a brain leak?
(Yes, it can)

(P) 2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Release date: November 3, 2022

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 304

Sample

CHAPTER EIGHT

They flipped me over on to my front. I realised I was dripping body juice all over the floor, but they didn’t seem to care about the mess I was making, although I’d have been absolutely livid if it was my flat. I’d gone mad enough about that lone crack in my kitchen tiles, after all. I guess I was delirious, but I was inside my own mind, and it was sure as hell working in mysterious ways. I forced what was left of my neck upwards and glimpsed another figure emerging from the shadows. It was a tiny woman in a tweed suit resembling a mousy-looking librarian I’d once berated for failing to enforce overdue fines on my books, thereby reducing my personal PLR income over a ten-year period by nine pounds and seventeen pence. She dangled a black marker pen in her right hand, and as she drew close to me, held it out against my benumbed derriere and drew a thick black line across my skinless buttocks. I felt that, alright.

But the old hag wasn’t finished.

ADDITIONAL FRIGHT BREAK

Yet again, the following passage has been excised on grounds of good taste by the publisher. For those of a mature disposition, who aren’t abject failures of human beings, the passage is available to read in full on here. Meaning for those of you who still require reins to engage in what I deem to be your pathetic excuse for an existence, do not read said page. For avoidance of doubt, neither the author nor the publisher will be held responsible for any offence or devastating psychological injuries sustained by reading the page in question. You have again been warned.

 

‘Do your worst, you old bag. You won’t break me.’

YES, WE WILL.

‘Like hell,’ I screamed. ‘I’m all that stands between you and a demonic invasion of our mortal realm by cosmic beings from another plane of reality, and there’s no way I’ll let being completely flayed from top to toe and cruelly remaindered prevent me fighting off a legion of black angels hellbent on vanquishing the existence of Mankind!’

SORRY, WE WEREN’T LISTENING TO YOU.

He would in time. Though I’d been flayed, balded and unshoulderedFN7 in this parallel dimension of eternal physical and psychological torture, I began to wonder what else Type-Face could possibly do to me that would make my situation any worse.

THIS.

Yet another Hell-Priest of bodily horror emerged from the shadows, scuttling towards me like a giant spider. I saw it had two gigantic thumbs, which rubbed together periodically like feelers. The thing was a grotesque parody of the human hand, haired and greasy; a hand so large and distorted it could only have belonged to a particularly low-grade type of worker. Perhaps a door-to-door tradesman or overweight trucker. The creature moved upon what looked to me like a spread of fat, knobbled fingers. A knuckular beast then, resembling the hand of those particular readers I loathed at book-signings. The sort who would take a brand-new copy of your latest book, seize it twixt both hands, then bend the pages so far backwards they practically formed a rounded cylinder which they then expected you to sign.

BEHOLD . . . THE SPINE-CRACKER.

‘I’m beholding him already.’

Rubbing its large thumbs together so hard they began to generate smoke, the hideous form reared its mighty thumbs skyward, raising itself over my prone body. Without warning, it scurried speedily on to my back.

Pausing for a moment to perform its strange ritual, caressing both thumbs together like an insect preparing to mate, the creature then slammed either one hard across my opposite ends, imprisoning my feet and head as its bed of knuckles underneath locked me in place, clamping my body tight as if in an ironmonger’s vice. I screamed again, quite hoarse now, as the thing proceeded to force my spine backwards, with the intention, I presumed, of making me meet myself in the middle.

To crack said spine, in other words.

EXACTLY. PRECISELY. YOU GOT IT.

I felt it going. Sensed the balls of my feet approaching the back of my head. Felt the calloused skin of the creature’s thumbs against the front of what used to be my forehead as it bent me round and into myself, forcing the bones outwards, towards breaking point. I could almost hear the mighty split approaching; a slow but steady cracking of my spinal shaft, like the settling of a rented wooden log house in a summer heatwave, with all the attendant sanitary issues. I heard the steaming hiss of bubbling spinal fluid, threatening to erupt into a terrible life-draining geyser of my . . .

THIRD AND FINAL FRIGHT BREAK

The next two words have been excised by the publisher on grounds of good taste, although they are available to read immediately on here. Previous warnings apply.

*  *  *

I didn’t care anymore. I felt myself slipping into painless (though still hugely painful, tbh) oblivion as my numbed, mangled frame gave way to the natural process of death, even though this particular death was anything but natural (I was currently bent backwards between two giant disembodied thumbs, remember).

Was I dead, or only dreaming now? For I thought I could sense via what used to be my nose the sweet scent of summer flowers. Then a strange calmness swam over me.

Was I now so divorced from my mangled nerves that complete detachment from insufferable agonies had finally been granted by whatever power ruled this realm of complete and total pain?

Was that sweet smell I sensed the mystical scentage of my own spurting spinal fluid, that blessed internal tincture wrought by merciful Nature to spirit its owner loftily oblivion-wards on soft clouds of numbing back-vapour during one’s final seconds? Or was it but the calming breeze from yonder sward, seeking a route through the darkness ’twixt life and death, in an effort most nobleth, to comfort this poor, nayfaring wayfarer?

Or was it Shalimar, by Guerlain?

I sniffed hard, struggling to draw something in via the twin sunken craters of my mashed nasal cartilage.

Yes, it was definitely Shalimar, by Guerlain.

Mustering what little strength remained in my flayed and salted body, I forced my eyes open (which actually wasn’t hard, as my lids had completely gone and they were permanently open anyway) and I saw, like a miracle before me, the silhouette of a delectable female form I knew all too well. For Shalimar, by Guerlain was Roz’s perfume of choice, and here she was, an angel standing before me in the Hell of my own head, staring down Type-Face and his demonic horde.

‘You leave Roz out of this!’ I yelled, spluttering on my own juices.

LEAVE HER? EDITORS ARE A THREAT TO OUR VERY EXISTENCE. WHY, EVEN HERE, ROZ MAY ATTEMPT TO TIDY UP THE PROLIX. TRIM, CLARIFY AND ERASE EXCESS WORDAGE. SHE MIGHT EVEN ATTEMPT TO TIDY THE PLACE UP AND MAKE IT MORE PRESENTABLE. VACUUM MY ENTIRE REALM AND DUST IT. REARRANGE MY BOOK CUPBOARDS SO THAT THE LOUNGE AREA LOOKS MORE SYMMETRICAL. FOR THAT REASON, SHE TOO MUST BE DESTROYED.

I watched, helpless, as the demons started moving towards her.

‘Roz!’ I yelled. ‘I don’t know how you got down here, but I feel it’s fair to warn you that if you attempt to edit this place, these guys will flay you.’

My voice must have snapped her out of it. She shook her head and turned towards me.

‘God, Nick,’ she yelled, tears forming in her eyes. ‘What have they done to you?’

‘Flayed me, Roz. Plus remaindered me and cracked my spine. It’s literally a bloody nightmare.’

GET HER.

As the horde advanced upon Roz, all I could do was watch helplessly. I considered looking away to give her some dignity, but as her arms dug into her handbag, I realised what they were clasping. A small white bottle. Roz lifted up the object in her hands, twisted off the lid, then flung the contents into the faces of her demonic tormentors.

NO! NEVER! NO WAY!

The demons shook and shrunk into themselves, curling up like sprayed insects. Meanwhile, Type-Face shrieked as another white stream of correcting fluid struck him directly between his typebars.

AAARRGGHHH! CORRECTION FLUID! HOW IT BURNS! HOW IT STINGS! HOW IT SMARTS! HOW IT NEGATES MY SENSE OF SELF BY ERASING MY OWN THOUGHTS AS I TYPE!

‘Run, Nick!’ Roz yelled. ‘We have to get out of here!’

‘But there is no way out, Roz! The place keeps changing form, and right now it’s essentially an oubliette. Then again, given that it has changed before now, it could theoretically change again. Maybe we should just run into a small area of darkened shadow? There might actually prove to be a tunnel or similar corridor-type affair somewhere close by? Perhaps mere centimetres beyond the furthest scope of my vision, which is impaired anyway given the current state of my flayed eyes,’ I screamed.

‘Then let’s try and find one, Nick,’ she yelled back, grabbing what remained of my hand before immediately letting go of it and retching.

‘You look like one of those illustrations in old medical journals,’ she gasped.

‘You mean, not quite skeletal but as good as? All red and white musculature with a mass of exposed tendons?’

‘That’s it, exactly. Look . . .’

She pulled a small lady’s mirror out of her lady’s handbag and flashed it at me. The mirror immediately cracked, exploding in her hands, but I’d already seen enough. Now I was retching.

‘Listen, Roz, I’ve only been flayed,’ I said, between heaves. ‘It’s still me.’

‘Nick, we don’t have time to retch. Any second now, Type-Face is going to wipe that Tippex off, and I only have a few drops left. We need to run away from here, like I said a minute or so ago.’

‘What about the area of complete darkness we’re fleeing into for safety, Roz?’ I asked, despairing. ‘How will we see in front of us?’

‘Luckily, I have a torch,’ she said, producing a small lady’s flashlight from her lady’s handbag. ‘I stopped by your house on my way home, so I had all my work stuff with me. Including my trusty bottle of correction fluid.’

‘Thank God for that,’ I said as she flicked on the torch. Nothing happened.

‘Out of batteries!’ she cried.

‘Dammit, Roz, don’t you keep a spare?’ I shouted, aware that Type-Face had now wiped off most of the correction fluid, although a couple of keys had gone a bit stiff and crusty.

‘Hold on,’ she said, scrabbling about in her lady’s handbag again.

‘Be quick about it, Roz!’ I yelled. ‘He’s picking bits off with his nails!’

‘Here!’ she shouted, producing a fresh new pack of double-As.

‘Quick, Roz! Change the torch batteries!’

‘Dammit, Nick, I can’t!’ she yelled, starting to lose control of herself. ‘I forgot, this torch takes D-batteries!’

‘I don’t believe it, Roz!’ I screamed. ‘I really don’t. Of all the times to find that out, this must be the absolute worst.’

If Roz didn’t locate the right pack of batteries soon and change them at record speed, Type-Face would soon have removed all remaining crusts of correction fluid from those stiffened typebars I mentioned, and would once more be able to concentrate his efforts on attacking us.

‘Here they are!’ Roz exclaimed, pulling out a brand-new pack of D-batteries.

‘Are they rechargeables?’ I asked. ‘Because we have no time at all to recharge.’

‘They come fully charged when you buy them, Nick,’ she cried. ‘But dammit, these ones went off six months ago!’

‘For crying out loud, Roz!’ I yelled. ‘Why do you girls never keep up-to-date batteries in your handbags?’

She looked as if she was about to cry, then rallied suddenly. ‘I’ve found them, Nick! I’ve found them!’

She unzipped a side pocket on the bag and pulled out another pack, holding them up so I could see them. ‘And they’re in date – just!’ She was crying hysterically now, the stress of the situation finally getting to her, too, it seemed.

‘And they’re D-batteries, not double-As?’

‘D-batteries. It says right here. Look.’

I looked and confirmed that they were indeed D-batteries, and the pack was in date, like she claimed.

‘Great, Roz,’ I said, knowing I’d have to coax her a bit now, having snapped at her for endangering my life and hers. ‘Now change them pronto, babe.’

She began to do as I commanded, then nicked one of her nails on the torch’s battery compartment and winced.

‘Just give the thing to me, for God’s sake,’ I said, grabbing the torch from her. Within ten minutes, I had the battery compartment open and was just starting to change them over when Type-Face at last shifted the final clogs of correction fluid from his face and began approaching us again, teeth chattering like a row of clacking typewriter keys. ‘Hold him off, Roz!’ I yelled.

She flung the last few remaining drops at our attacker. The leather-coated monstrosity hissed as the fluid once more splashed his face. He bent over, slapping at his head with both hands, trying in vain to remove the stain.

Roz screamed, in tears again. ‘There’s no more correction fluid left.’

‘One more minute,’ I said, swapping the batteries back round, having been unable to physically locate the + and - symbols in this dimly lit space.

‘Quick, Nick! He’s coming for us!’

After two more goes, I finally had them changed back round. I slid back the cover, resealing it with the small Phillips screwdriver I kept on me for emergencies, and had previously employed to open the battery compartment in the first place. I flicked the on switch to ‘on’ but realised there was still no light emerging from the bulbed end, so banged it against the ground a couple of times until the thing finally lit up.

‘Now, Roz! Run!’

I’LL GET YOU BOTH.

Dammit, Type-Face was right behind us.

YOU JUST SEE IF I DON’T. AND WHEN I DO, YOU’RE BOTH REALLY FOR IT.

‘God, Nick, I’m so frightened by Type-Face!’

I grabbed Roz’s hand in mine, which made her retch again, but to be honest, I was getting used to the gagging. Then together we fled into the darkness, which, as we ran, ceased to be darkness owing to the light emanating from the torch I was holding, and for which I’d fought so dearly and bravely against overwhelming odds. It began to flicker, and soon I realised that my blood was seeping into its mechanism via the sealed grooving, so I reluctantly handed it to Roz.

‘Look, Nick,’ she said, shining the torch at the walls of the tunnel we were now fleeing down. ‘You were absolutely right about the darkness being a tunnel or some sort of corridor-type affair, and it having been concealed from our view in that confined area of darkness, which has since been exposed by the beams of torchlight. Good thinking.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘If I’m not mistaken, these walls seem to be formed from some kind of papier-mâché. Look, there are occasional sections of typed print visible, exposing assorted words and phrases.’

‘I know all that already, Roz,’ I said. ‘They’re shreds of my life’s work, now hellishly and fiendishly strewn hither and thither in an effort to torment and ridicule my very sense of self. We’re in the Prolix, Roz – a realm of total suffering and excess wordage. Type-Face was using me as a psychic portal into our own reality so that he could commence an invasion of Earth.’

‘God, Nick, that’s awful.’

‘Sshh . . .’ I said, suddenly. I could hear Type-Face behind. Gaining on us. Sniffing out our whereabouts.

‘Where do we run to?’ asked Roz.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, staring at a million different signposts, all pointing nowhere. ‘There must be over a million different signposts in here, all pointing nowhere. We’re lost, Roz. In the Prolix. With Type-Face right behind us. And time running out. Trapped. Maybe forever. In the Prolix. A realm of eternal chaos and suffering. The Prolix.’

‘Oh God,’ she whispered.

‘He won’t help us,’ I said. ‘God, that is. We’re truly doomed, Roz.’

And she couldn’t even hold me tight for fear of retching again.

The poor cow.

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘What’s that smell?’ said Nick, gagging. His keen nostrils were becoming momentarily overpowered by a sharp, musky scent slowly filling the room. A complex blend of corrosion and decay, he noted, one gradually revealing subtler shades of corruption as the dank aroma unfurled around them. Nick caught several notes of intestinal rot infused with layers of degenerated surface corrosion, balancing finer hints of regurgitated worm and moist cemetery shroud. Strongest, though, was the heavy, almost faecal stink of crusted, decalcified bone.

‘Delectable, isn’t it?’ said Strain, inhaling deeply as he stepped towards the two intruders. ‘The unmistakable aroma of bone putrefaction, magnified tenfold by the rejuvenating qualities of my soon-to-be patented reviving fluid.’

He clicked his fingers and the tall lab-coat-wearing skeleton behind them relaxed its grip on the men’s shoulders, stepping back into the shadows to block the passage behind. Meanwhile, Strain held up a glass phial containing a small amount of the green, glowing liquid. It seemed to shimmer inside the bottle, as if attuned to some unseen psychic energy – perhaps even a higher cosmic power, Nick posited.

‘Radiation fluid,’ Nick whispered, the unspeakable fear of untold generations realised at last in the contents of this conventional, nondescript sample bottle. ‘The juice of destruction.’

‘Not quite, Mr Steen. Although it is a man-made agent, and hugely destructive. As you will soon discover.’

Strain held out something else in his other hand. Prone and still upon the black rubberised surface of his gloved palm, lay the small, skeletal remains of a diseased human toe.

‘You can see, it’s quite dead,’ Strain said, nudging the toe bone with his thumb. ‘Necrified beyond repair. Yet behold . . .’

Carefully, yet evidently enjoying every second, Strain slowly tipped the phial in his other hand sideways, until a small, single drop of the liquid gathered at its spout, growing heavier as it hung suspended briefly in mid-air over the grey, rotten toe husk below, then dropped.

It hit the toe directly in the central phalanx. There was no hissing, Nick noted. No sudden burst of steam. No loud crackle or electrical sparking. Yet within seconds, before their astounded eyes and shocked comprehensions, the toe in Strain’s palm began to move.

‘Kill it!’ yelled Capello, half-mad with terror. ‘Stamp on it. Crush the bastard. Spray that sonofabitch with Raid. Anything!’

‘We can’t, Capello,’ Nick said, eyes trained at all times on the crawling toe bone as it wriggled confidently over Strain’s palm towards the ends of the doctor’s fingers. ‘I don’t have a tin of it with me. Though ironically, I could easily have picked one up from B&Q.’

‘Yes, but would it work on a toe?’

‘Probably not. But you’re the one suggesting using a tin of Raid, not me.’

‘Look, it wants to say hello,’ said Strain, holding the zombified digit closer to Nick’s face.

‘Hello, toe,’ Nick replied, trying in vain to make friends with the miniature monstrosity. As it leaned out over the abyss beneath Strain’s palm, millimetres from plunging into the dark region of Nick’s particulars, Steen forced himself to look up, defiantly.

‘What’s it made of?’

‘Like I said, human bone.’

‘I meant the liquid.’

‘Oh, I see. Well now, Mr Steen . . .’ Strain glanced briefly at his second prisoner. ‘And Mr Capello . . .’

There was a look of recognition there, Nick noted. Capello, too, was glaring at Strain with a look of barely concealed contempt. Nick knew there was a backstory between these two men – that Capello had been there when Strain was first arrested, that he’d subsequently spent five years trying to cure Strain of his lunacy before giving up and imploring the authorities to see sense and kill this dangerous lunatic rather than releasing him back into an unsuspecting society. But although he knew all this, there was something else going on here that Nick suspected he didn’t know.

Maybe it had only been put there by his unconscious mind, seeded via his liberated subconscious imaginings, but he couldn’t help feeling that there was something personal going on with these two. Not quite an understanding ’twixt opposites, one that might be expected to arise naturally between patient and therapist, say, but more an implied yet firm commitment to mutual destruction. A rift of some nature, Nick ventured to guess. Perhaps a blood feud. Maybe a terrible crossed path of two-way vengeance.

‘To answer your question, this tincture I hold in my humble hand is my own creation. A surprisingly smooth yet simple combination of basic elements, all of which were in abundant supply at the very asylum you and those so-called “authorities” elected to imprison me in. A heady concoction of high-energy drinks from the asylum’s vending machines – Lilt, Tizer, Quatro and Diet Irn Bru – mixed together with a generous solution of diseased rat urine, which, as you know, possesses a life-force strong enough to withstand nuclear apocalypse.’

‘So you’re building an army,’ Nick spat, unable to conceal his anger. ‘An unholy force of skeletal evil.’

‘A legion of Boners, who will rise upwards, forcing Mankind to do its bidding. Thrusting it deep into a titanic struggle for its very survival. Yes, soon my Boners will stand proud, hardened against the withering, wilted flock of flaccid prannies you call Humans. Against you, my Boners will rise, their spirits stiffened within, and at my command, they will plunge themselves into all who oppose them.’

Nick grinned wryly at Strain’s choice of words. The kid’s development must have been severely arrested. No one called humans ‘prannies’ these days.

Strain laughed maniacally, the green glow from the phial in his hand lighting his face demonically in the semi-darkness. It was a crazed visage of ultimate insanity.

‘I should have strapped you in the electric chair myself!’ snapped Capello when the young doctor had finally stopped laughing, approximately three minutes later.

‘Save it, Capello,’ said Nick. ‘We’re the prisoners now, remember?’

‘Your companion is right, Clifford Capello,’ said Strain. ‘Except you won’t be prisoners for much longer. For you will both soon be dead. And I will take great pleasure in ensuring that you’ – Strain jabbed his gloved finger at Capello – ‘die slowest, longest and lastest.’

The young trainee doctor picked up the big toe, which had been rearing upwards on his palm like a miniature cobra python, and tossed it into a jam jar on a nearby table. The jar was filled to the brim with green reviv. . .