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Synopsis
Over 20 terrifying stories and short novels by the masters of gore, including Graham Masterton, Ramsay Campbell, R. Chetwyn-Hayes and Neil Gaiman. This sequel to the classic Mammoth horror anthology features five new and unpublished stories from some of the biggest and brightest names on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as gems from acknowledged masters.
All veins of the genre are represented including suspense, visceral horror and sheer razor-slashing terror. From Brian Lumley's disturbing 'Fruiting Bodies' and Basil Copper's 'The Candle in the Skull' to Christopher Fowler's 'Turbo-Satan' and Kim Newman's 'Amerikanski Bed at the Moscow Morgue', this is a spine-chilling collection guaranteed to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck!
Release date: August 4, 2011
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Print pages: 160
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The Mammoth Book of New Terror
Stephen Jones
STEPHEN JONES lives in London. He is the winner of three World Fantasy Awards, three Horror Writers
Association Bram Stoker Awards and three International Horror Guild Awards as well as being a fifteen-time recipient of the British Fantasy Award and a Hugo Award nominee. A former television
producer/director and genre movie publicist and consultant (the first three Hellraiser movies, Night Life, Nightbreed, Split Second, Mind Ripper, Last Gasp
etc.), he is the co-editor of Horror: 100 Best Books, The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales, Gaslight & Ghosts, Now We Are Sick, HP. Lovecraft’s Book of
Horror, The Anthology of Fantasy & the Supernatural, Secret City: Strange Taks of London, Great Ghost Stories and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Dark
Terrors, Dark Voices and Fantasy Taks series. He has written Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide, The Essential Monster Movie Guide, The Illustrated
Vampire Movie Guide, The Illustrated Dinosaur Movie Guide, The Illustrated Frankenstein Movie Guide and The Illustrated Werewolf Movie Guide, and compiled The
Mammoth Book of Terror, The Mammoth Book of Vampires, The Mammoth Book of Zombies, The Mammoth Book of Werewolves, The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein, The
Mammoth Book ofDracula, The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories By Women, The Mammoth Book of New Terror, Shadows Over Innsmouth, Dark Detectives, Dancing With the Dark,
Dark of the Night, White of the Moon, Keep Out the Night, By Moonlight Only, Don’t Turn Out the Light, Exorcisms and Ecstasies by Karl Edward Wagner, The Vampire Stories of R.
Chetwynd-Hayes, Phantoms and Fiends and Frights and Fancies by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, James Herbert: By Horror Haunted, The Conan Chronicks by Robert E. Howard (two volumes), The
Emperor of Dreams: The Lost Worlds of Clark Ashton Smith, Clive Barker’s A-Z of Horror, Clive Barker’s Shadows in Eden, Clive Barker’s The Nightbreed
Chronicks and the Hellraiser Chronicles. You can visit his web site at www.herebedragons.co.uk/jones
INTRODUCTION: RECREATING THE TERROR copyright © Stephen Jones 2004.
FRUITING BODIES copyright © Brian Lumley 1988. Originally published in Weird Tales No. 291, Summer 1988. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, Dorian Literary
Agency.
NEEDLE SONG copyright © Gary Hoppenstand 1979. Originally published in Midnight Sun Number 5. Reprinted by permission of the author.
TURBO-SATAN copyright © Christopher Fowler 2004.
TALKING IN THE DARK copyright © Dennis Etchison 1984. Originally published in Shadows 7. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE CIRCUS copyright © Sydney J. Bounds 1980. Originally published in The Thirteenth Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories. Reprinted by permission of the author and the
author’s agents, Cosmos Literary Agency.
FOET copyright © F. Paul Wilson 1991. Originally published in Borderlands 2: An Anthology of Imaginative Fiction. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE CANDLE IN THE SKULL copyright © Basil Copper 1984. Originally published in Hallowe’en Hauntings. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE CHIMNEY copyright © Stuart David Schiff 1977. Originally published in Whispers: An Anthology of Fantasy and Horror. Reprinted by permission of the author.
DARK WINGS copyright © Phyllis Eisenstein 1982. Originally published in Shadows 5. Reprinted by permission of the author.
REFLECTION OF EVIL copyright © Graham Masterton 2004. Originally published in an abridged version as “Half-Sick of Shadows” on www.bbc.co.uk/cult/vampires. Reprinted by permission of the author.
MIRROR OF THE NIGHT copyright © E.C. Tubb 1988. Originally published in Fantasy Annual #2. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, Cosmos Literary
Agency.
MAYPOLE copyright © Brian Mooney 2004.
UNDER THE CRUST copyright © Terry Lamsley 1993. Originally published in Under the Crust. Reprinted by permission of the author.
TIR NAN OG copyright © Lisa Tuttle 1999. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 1999. Reprinted by permission of the author.
A LIVING LEGEND copyright © R. Chetwynd-Hayes 1982. Originally published in Tales from Beyond. Reprinted by permission of the author’s Estate.
WAKE-UP CALL copyright © David J. Schow 2004.
THE FOURTH SEAL copyright © Stuart David Schiff 1981. Originally published in Whispers III. Reprinted by permission of The Karl Edward Wagner Literary Group.
UNLOCKED copyright © Tanith Lee and John Kaiine 2004.
CLOSING TIME copyright © Neil Gaiman 2003. Originally published in McSweeny’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales. Reprinted by permission of the author.
IT WAS THE HEAT copyright © Pat Cadigan 1988. Originally published in Tropical Chills. Reprinted by permission of the author.
FODDER copyright © Tim Lebbon and Brian Keene 2002. Originally published in Shivers. Reprinted by permission of the authors.
OPEN DOORS copyright © Michael Marshall Smith 2003. Originally published in More Tomorrow & Other Stories. Reprinted by permission of the author.
ANDROMEDA AMONG THE STONES copyright © Caitlín R. Kiernan 2002. Originally published in Andromeda Among the Stones. Reprinted by permission of the author.
FLOWERS ON THEIR BRIDLES, HOOVES IN THE AIR copyright © Glen Hirshberg 2003. Originally published on SciFi.com, August 2003. Reprinted by permission of
the author and the author’s agents, Anderson Grinberg Literary Management, Inc.
AMERIKANSKI DEAD AT THE MOSCOW MORGUE OR: CHILDREN OF MARX AND COCA-COLA copyright © Kim Newman 1999. Originally published in 999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense. Reprinted by
permission of the author.
AMONG THE WOLVES copyright © David Case 1971. Originally published in Fengriffen: A Chilling Tale. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE FIRST BOOK I ever edited in the hugely successful Mammoth series was The Mammoth Book of Terror back in 1991.
At the time, I wanted to assemble a hefty, non-themed horror anthology featuring some classic stories by many of the biggest names in the field, along with a scattering of tales that would be
original to the book.
The result was more successful than I could have imagined. The volume was reprinted in the UK and went through four printings in the United States. There was also a hardcover version, various
budget editions and even an Italian translation. Even more importantly, the book was a precursor to an entire series of Mammoth titles that I have continued to edit up to this day.
So when I was offered the opportunity to put together this follow-up volume, I naturally jumped at the chance. There are still many superb stories of horror and dark fantasy that, for one reason
or another are not currently in print, or have never been previously published on one side of the Atlantic or the other.
It is therefore my pleasure to welcome back to this volume such esteemed authors as Ramsey Campbell, Basil Copper, Dennis Etchison, Brian Lumley, Graham Masterton, David J. Schow, Lisa Tuttle
and F. Paul Wilson. Although they are no longer with us, R. Chetwynd-Hayes and Karl Edward Wagner are also both remembered with examples of their finest work, which will most likely be unfamiliar
to many readers.
Such other respected names as Sydney J. Bounds, Phyllis Eisenstein, Charles L. Grant and E.C. Tubb are also represented with classic tales of unease, and there is more recent or original work
from Pat Cadigan, Christopher Fowler, Neil Gaiman, Glen Hirshberg, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Terry Lamsley, Brian Mooney, Kim Newman and Michael Marshall Smith, many of whom were only just
starting their professional careers when the first volume of Terror was originally published.
Finally, I am delighted to present two powerful collaborations between rising stars Tim Lebbon and Brian Keene and the talented writing team of married couple Tanith Lee and John Kaiine, along
with David Case’s classic psychological novella “Among the Wolves” which, like all the author’s early work, deserves to be back in print again.
So there you have it – another bumper volume of contemporary terror, brought to you by some of the finest writers currently working in horror fiction. And remember, if you enjoyed this
volume, then there are many more stories out there just waiting to be told . . .
Stephen Jones
London, England
BRIAN LUMLEY WAS BORN on England’s north-east coast nine months after the death of H.P. Lovecraft. He claims that is just a coincidence. He was
serving as a sergeant in the Corps of Royal Military Police when he discovered Lovecraft’s fiction while stationed in Berlin in the early 1960s. After deciding to try his own hand at writing
horror fiction, initially set in HPL’s influential Cthulhu Mythos, he sent his early efforts to editor August Derleth. The latter’s famed Arkham House imprint published two collections
of Lumley’s short stories, The Caller of the Black and The Horror at Oakdene and Others, plus the short novel Beneath the Moors.
Lumley’s many other books include the Psychomech trilogy, Demogorgon, The House of Doors, Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi, A Coven of Vampires, The Whisperer and Other Voices
and Beneath the Moors and Darker Places.
More recent publications include Freaks, a collection from Subterranean Press that includes a new story, and a reprinting of Khai of Khem from Tor Books. Delirium has reissued the
first Hero of Dreams novel in a very limited leatherbound edition, and the third issue of H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror is a “Brian Lumley Special” that
features two original tales.
These days Lumley is best known as the author of the popular Necroscope vampire series. Published in 1986, the first book in the series made him a best-seller all over the world. That
initial volume was followed by Necroscope II: Wamphyri! (aka Necroscope II: Vamphyrif), Necroscope III: The Source, Necroscope TV: Deadspeak and Necroscope V: Deadspawn.
The Vampire World trilogy appeared in the early 1990s, and that was followed by the two-volume Necroscope: The Lost Years, the three-volume E-Branch series, and the collection
Harry Keogh: Necroscope and Other Weird Heroes! Forthcoming is The Touch, a new “E-Branch” spin-off.
In 1998 he was named Grand Master at the World Horror Convention, and The Brian Lumley Companion, co-edited with Stanley Wiater, appeared from Tor in 2002.
“‘Fruiting Bodies’ won a British Fantasy Award in 1989,” reveals the author. “It had some stiff competition and I count myself lucky to have won. Whether it’s
frightening or not is for you to decide. If it’s entertaining, and gives that certain frisson, then I’m satisfied.
“One thing’s for sure, there isn’t any blood here: mushrooms don’t bleed.”
MY GREAT-GRANDPARENTS, and my grandparents after them, had been Easingham people; in all likelihood my parents would have been, too, but the old
village had been falling into the sea for three hundred years and hadn’t much looked like stopping, and so I was born in Durham City instead. My grandparents, both sets, had been among the
last of the village people to move out, buying new homes out of a government-funded disaster grant. Since when, as a kid, I had been back to Easingham only once.
My father had taken me there one spring when the tides were high. I remember how there was still some black, crusty snow lying in odd corners of the fields, coloured by soot and smoke, as all
things were in those days in the north-east. We’d gone to Easingham because the unusually high tides had been at it again, chewing away at the shale cliffs, reducing shoreline and derelict
village both as the North Sea’s breakers crashed again and again on the shuddering land.
And of course we had hoped (as had the two hundred or so other sightseers gathered there that day) to see a house or two go down in smoking ruin, into the sea and the foaming spray. We witnessed
no such spectacle; after an hour, cold and wet from the salt moisture in the air, we piled back into the family car and returned to Durham. Easingham’s main street, or what had once been the
main street, was teetering on the brink as we left. But by nightfall that street was no more. We’d missed it: a further twenty feet of coastline, a bite one street deep and a few yards more
than one street long had been undermined, toppled, and gobbled up by the sea.
That had been that. Bit by bit, in the quarter-century between then and now, the rest of Easingham had also succumbed. Now only a house or two remained – no more than a handful in all
– and all falling into decay, while the closest lived-in buildings were those of a farm all of a mile inland from the cliffs. Oh, and of course there was one other inhabitant: old Garth
Bentham, who’d been demolishing the old houses by hand and selling bricks and timbers from the village for years. But I’ll get to him shortly.
So there I was last summer, back in the north-east again, and when my business was done of course I dropped in and stayed overnight with the Old Folks at their Durham cottage. Once a year at
least I made a point of seeing them, but last year in particular I noticed how time was creeping up on them. The “Old Folks”; well, now I saw that they really were old, and I determined
that I must start to see a lot more of them.
Later, starting in on my long drive back down to London, I remembered that time when the Old Man had taken me to Easingham to see the houses tottering on the cliffs. And probably because the
place was on my mind, I inadvertently turned off my route and in a little while found myself heading for the coast. I could have turned round right there and then – indeed, I intended to do
so – but I’d got to wondering about Easingham and how little would be left of it now, and before I knew it . . .
Once I’d made up my mind, Middlesbrough was soon behind me, then Guisborough, and in no time at all I was on the old road to the village. There had only ever been one way in and out, and
this was it: a narrow road, its surface starting to crack now, with tall hedgerows broken here and there, letting you look through to where fields rolled down to the cliffs. A beautiful day, with
seagulls wheeling overhead, a salt tang coming in through the wound-down windows, and a blue sky coming down to merge with . . . with the blue-grey of the North Sea itself! For cresting a rise,
suddenly I was there.
An old, leaning wooden signpost said EASINGH – for the tail had been broken off or rotted away, and “the village” lay at the end of the road. But right
there, blocking the way, a metal barrier was set in massive concrete posts and carried a sign bearing the following warning:
DANGER!
Severe Cliff Subsidence
No Vehicles Beyond This Point
I turned off the car’s motor, got out, leaned on the barrier. Before me the road went on – and disappeared only thirty yards ahead. And there stretched the new rim of the cliffs.
Of the village, Easingham itself – forget it! On this side of the cliffs, reaching back on both sides of the road behind overgrown gardens, weedy paths and driveways, there stood the empty
shells of what had once been residences of the “posh” folks of Easingham. Now, even on a day as lovely as this one, they were morose in their desolation.
The windows of these derelicts, where there were windows, seemed to gaze gauntly down on approaching doom, like old men in twin rows of deathbeds. Brambles and ivy were rank; the whole place
seemed as despairing as the cries of the gulls rising on the warm air; Easingham was a place no more.
Not that there had ever been a lot of it. Three streets lengthwise with a few shops; two more, shorter streets cutting through the three at right angles and going down to the cliffs and the
vertiginous wooden steps that used to climb down to the beach, the bay, the old harbour and fish market; and, standing over the bay, a Methodist church on a jutting promontory, which in the old
times had also served as a lighthouse. But now –
No streets, no promontory or church, no harbour, fish market, rickety steps. No Easingham.
“Gone, all of it,” said a wheezy, tired old voice from directly behind me, causing me to start. “Gone for ever, to the Devil and the deep blue sea!”
I turned, formed words, said something barely coherent to the leathery old scarecrow of a man I found standing there.
“Eh? Eh?” he said. “Did I startle you? I have to say you startled me! First car I’ve seen in a three-month! After bricks, are you? Cheap bricks? Timber?”
“No, no,” I told him, finding my voice. “I’m – well, sightseeing, I suppose.” I shrugged. “I just came to see how the old village was getting on. I
didn’t live here, but a long line of my people did. I just thought I’d like to see how much was left – while it was left! Except it seems I’m too late.”
“Oh, aye, too late,” he nodded. “Three or four years too late. That was when the last of the old fishing houses went down: four years ago. Sea took ‘em. Takes six or
seven feet of cliff every year. Aye, and if I lived long enough it would take me too. But it won’t ‘cos I’m getting on a bit.” And he grinned and nodded, as if to say: so
that’s that!
“Well, well, sightseeing! Not much to see, though, not now. Do you fancy a coffee?”
Before I could answer he put his fingers to his mouth and blew a piercing whistle, then paused and waited, shaking his head in puzzlement. “Ben,” he explained. “My old dog.
He’s not been himself lately and I don’t like him to stray too far. He was out all night, was Ben. Still, it’s summer, and there may have been a bitch about . . .”
While he had talked I’d looked him over and decided that I liked him. He reminded me of my own grandfather, what little I could remember of him. Grandad had been a miner in one of the
colliery villages further north, retiring here to doze and dry up and die – only to find himself denied the choice. The sea’s incursion had put paid to that when it finally made the
place untenable. I fancied this old lad had been a miner, too. Certainly he bore the scars, the stigmata, of the miner: the dark, leathery skin with black specks bedded in; the bad, bowed legs; the
shortness of breath, making for short sentences. A generally gritty appearance overall, though I’d no doubt he was clean as fresh-scrubbed.
“Coffee would be fine,” I told him, holding out my hand. “Greg’s my name – Greg Lane.”
He took my hand, shook it warmly and nodded. “Garth Bentham,” he said. And then he set off stiffly back up the crumbling road some two or three houses, turning right into an
overgrown garden through a fancy wooden gate recently painted white. “I’d intended doing the whole place up,” he said, as I followed close behind. “Did the gate, part of the
fence, ran out of paint!”
Before letting us into the dim interior of the house, he paused and whistled again for Ben, then worriedly shook his head in something of concern. “After rats in the old timber yard again,
I suppose. But God knows I wish he’d stay out of there!”
Then we were inside the tiny cloakroom, where the sun filtered through fly-specked windows and probed golden searchlights on a few fairly dilapidated furnishings and the brassy face of an old
grandfather clock that clucked like a mechanical hen. Dust motes drifted like tiny planets in a cosmos of faery, eddying round my host where he guided me through a door and into his living-room.
Where the dust had settled on the occasional ledge, I noticed that it was tinged red, like rust.
“I cleaned the windows in here,” Garth informed, “so’s to see the sea. I like to know what it’s up to!”
“Making sure it won’t creep up on you,” I nodded.
His eyes twinkled. “Nah, just joking,” he said, tapping on the side of his blue-veined nose. “No, it’ll be ten or even twenty years before all this goes, but I
don’t have that long. Five if I’m lucky. I’m sixty-eight, after all!”
Sixty-eight! Was that really as old as all that? But he was probably right: a lot of old-timers from the mines didn’t even last that long, not entirely mobile and coherent, anyway.
“Retiring at sixty-five doesn’t leave a lot, does it?” I said. “Of time, I mean.”
He went into his kitchen, called back: “Me, I’ve been here a ten-year. Didn’t retire, quit! Stuff your pension, I told ‘em. I’d rather have my lungs, what’s
left of ‘em. So I came here, got this place for a song, take care of myself and my old dog, and no one to tip my hat to and no one to bother me. I get a letter once a fortnight from my sister
in Dunbar, and one of these days the postman will find me stretched out in here and he’ll think: ‘Well, I needn’t come out here any more.’”
He wasn’t bemoaning his fate, but I felt sorry for him anyway. I settled myself on a dusty settee, looked out of the window down across his garden of brambles to the sea’s horizon. A
great curved millpond – for the time being. “Didn’t you have any savings?” I could have bitten my tongue off the momentl’d said it, for that was to imply he
hadn’t done very well for himself.
Cups rattled in the kitchen. “Savings? Lad, when I was a young ‘un I had three things: my lamp, my helmet and a pack of cards. If it wasn’t pitch ‘n’ toss with
weighted pennies on the beach banks, it was three-card brag in the back room of the pub. Oh, I was a game gambler, right enough, but a bad ‘un. In my blood, like my Old Man before me. My
mother never did see a penny; nor did my wife, I’m ashamed to say, before we moved out here – God bless her! Savings? That’s a laugh. But out here there’s no bookie’s
runner, and you’d be damned hard put to find a card school in Easingham these days! What the hell,” he shrugged as he stuck his head back into the room, “it was a life . .
.”
We sipped our coffee. After awhile I said, “Have you been on your own very long? I mean . . . your wife?”
“Lily-Anne?” he glanced at me, blinked, and suddenly there was a peculiar expression on his face. “On my own, you say . . .” He straightened his shoulders, took a deep
breath. “Well, I am on my own in a way, and in a way I’m not. I have Ben – or would have if he’d get done with what he’s doing and come home – and
Lily-Anne’s not all that far away. In fact, sometimes I suspect she’s sort of watching over me, keeping me company, so to speak. You know, when I’m feeling especially
lonely.”
“Oh?”
“Well,” he shrugged again. “I mean she is here, now isn’t she.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Here?” I was starting to have my doubts about Garth Bentham.
“I had her buried here,” he nodded, which explained what he’d said and produced a certain sensation of relief in me. “There was a Methodist church here once over, with
its own burying ground. The church went a donkey’s years ago, of course, but the old graveyard was still here when Lily-Anne died.”
“Was?” Our conversation was getting one-sided.
“Well, it still is – but right on the edge, so to speak. It wasn’t so bad then, though, and so I got permission to have a service done here, and down she went where I could go
and see her. I still do go to see her, of course, now and then. But in another year or two . . . the sea . . .” He shrugged again. “Time and the tides, they wait for no man.”
We finished our coffee. I was going to have to be on my way soon, and suddenly I didn’t like the idea of leaving him. Already I could feel the loneliness creeping in. Perhaps he sensed my
restlessness or something. Certainly I could see that he didn’t want me to go just yet. In any case, he said: “Maybe you’d like to walk down with me past the old timber yard,
visit her grave. Oh, it’s safe enough, you don’t have to worry. We may even come across old Ben down there. He sometimes visits her, too.”
“Ah, well I’m not too sure about that,” I answered. “The time, you know?” But by the time we got down the path to the gate I was asking: “How far is the
churchyard, anyway?” Who could tell, maybe I’d find some long-lost Lanes in there! “Are there any old markers left standing?”
Garth chuckled and took my elbow. “It makes a change to have some company,” he said. “Come on, it’s this way.”
He led the way back to the barrier where it spanned the road, bent his back and ducked groaning under it, then turned left up an overgrown communal path between gardens where the houses had been
stepped down the declining gradient. The detached bungalow on our right – one of a pair still standing, while a third slumped on the raw edge of oblivion – had decayed almost to the
point where it was collapsing inwards. Brambles luxuriated everywhere in its garden, completely enclosing it. The roof sagged and a chimney threatened to topple, making the whole structure seem
highly suspect and more than a little dangerous.
“Partly subsidence, because of the undercutting action of the sea,” Garth explained, “but mainly the rot. There was a lot of wood in these places, but it’s all being
eaten away. I made myself a living, barely, out of the old bricks and timber in Easingham, but now I have to be careful. Doesn’t do to sell stuff with the rot in it.”
“The rot?”
He paused for breath, leaned a hand on one hip, nodded and frowned. “Dry rot,” he said. “Or Merulius lacrymans as they call it in the books. It’s been bad these
last three years. Very bad! But when the last of these old houses are gone, and what’s left of the timber yard, then it’ll be gone, too.”
“It?” We were getting back to single-word questions again. “The dry rot, you mean? I’m afraid I don’t know very much about it.”
“Places on the coast are prone to it,” he told me. “Whitby, Scarborough, places like that. All the damp sea spray and the bad plumbing, the rains that come in and the
inadequate drainage. That’s how it starts. It’s a fungus, needs a lot of moisture – to get started, anyway. You don’t know much about it? Heck, I used to think I knew
quite a bit about it, but now I’m not so sure!”
By then I’d remembered something. “A friend of mine in London did mention to me how he was having to have his flat treated for it,” I said, a little lamely. “Expensive,
apparently.”
Garth nodded, straightened up. “Hard to kill,” he said. “And when it’s active, moves like the plague! It’s active here, now! Too late for Easingham, and who gives a
damn anyway? But you tell that friend of yours to sort out his exterior maintenance first: the guttering and the drainage. Get rid of the water spillage, then deal with the rot. If a place is dry
and airy, it’s OK Damp and musty spells danger!”
I nodded. “Thanks, I will tell him.”
“Want to see something?” said Garth. “I’ll show you what old merulius can do. See here, these old paving flags? See if you can lever one up a bit.” I found a
piece of rusting iron stave and dragged it out of the ground where it supported a rotting fence, then forced the sharp end into a crack between the overgrown flags. And while I worked to loosen the
paving stone, old Garth stood watching and carried on talking.
“Actually, there’s a story attached, if you care to hear it,” he said. “Probably all coincidental or circumstantial, or some other big word like that – but queer
the way it came about all the same.”
He was losing me again. I paused in my levering to look bemused (and maybe to wonder what on earth I was doing here), then grunted, and sweated, gave one more heave and flipped the flag over on
to its back. Underneath was hard-packed sand. I looked at it, shrugged, looked at Garth.
He nodded in that way of his, grinned, said: “Look. Now tell me what you make of this!”
He got down on one knee, scooped a little of the sand away. Just under the surface his hands met some soft obstruction. Garth wrinkled his nose and grimaced, got his face down close to the
earth, blew until his weakened lungs started him coughing. Then he sat back and rested. Where he’d scraped and blown the sand away, I made out what appeared to be a grey fibrous mass running
at right angles right under the pathway. It was maybe six inches thick, looked like tightly packed cotton wool. It might easily have been glass fibre lagging for some pipe or other, and I said as
much.
“But it isn’t,” Garth contradicted me. “It’s a root, a feeler, a tentacle. It’s old man cancer himself – timber cancer – on the move and looking
for a new victim. Oh, you won’t see him moving,” that strange look was back on his face, “or at least you shouldn’t – but he’s at it anyway. He finished those
houses there,” he nodded at the derelicts stepping down towards the new cliffs, “and now he’s gone into this one on the left here. Another couple of summers like this ‘un
and he’ll be through the entire row to my place. Except maybe I’ll burn him out first.”
“You mean this stuff – this fibre – is dry rot?” I said. I stuck my hand into the stuff and tore a clump out. It made a soft tearing sound, like damp chipboard, except it
was dry as old paper. “How do you mean, you’ll ‘burn him out?’”
“I mean like I say,” said Garth. “I’ll search out and dig up all these thread
Association Bram Stoker Awards and three International Horror Guild Awards as well as being a fifteen-time recipient of the British Fantasy Award and a Hugo Award nominee. A former television
producer/director and genre movie publicist and consultant (the first three Hellraiser movies, Night Life, Nightbreed, Split Second, Mind Ripper, Last Gasp
etc.), he is the co-editor of Horror: 100 Best Books, The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales, Gaslight & Ghosts, Now We Are Sick, HP. Lovecraft’s Book of
Horror, The Anthology of Fantasy & the Supernatural, Secret City: Strange Taks of London, Great Ghost Stories and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Dark
Terrors, Dark Voices and Fantasy Taks series. He has written Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide, The Essential Monster Movie Guide, The Illustrated
Vampire Movie Guide, The Illustrated Dinosaur Movie Guide, The Illustrated Frankenstein Movie Guide and The Illustrated Werewolf Movie Guide, and compiled The
Mammoth Book of Terror, The Mammoth Book of Vampires, The Mammoth Book of Zombies, The Mammoth Book of Werewolves, The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein, The
Mammoth Book ofDracula, The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories By Women, The Mammoth Book of New Terror, Shadows Over Innsmouth, Dark Detectives, Dancing With the Dark,
Dark of the Night, White of the Moon, Keep Out the Night, By Moonlight Only, Don’t Turn Out the Light, Exorcisms and Ecstasies by Karl Edward Wagner, The Vampire Stories of R.
Chetwynd-Hayes, Phantoms and Fiends and Frights and Fancies by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, James Herbert: By Horror Haunted, The Conan Chronicks by Robert E. Howard (two volumes), The
Emperor of Dreams: The Lost Worlds of Clark Ashton Smith, Clive Barker’s A-Z of Horror, Clive Barker’s Shadows in Eden, Clive Barker’s The Nightbreed
Chronicks and the Hellraiser Chronicles. You can visit his web site at www.herebedragons.co.uk/jones
INTRODUCTION: RECREATING THE TERROR copyright © Stephen Jones 2004.
FRUITING BODIES copyright © Brian Lumley 1988. Originally published in Weird Tales No. 291, Summer 1988. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, Dorian Literary
Agency.
NEEDLE SONG copyright © Gary Hoppenstand 1979. Originally published in Midnight Sun Number 5. Reprinted by permission of the author.
TURBO-SATAN copyright © Christopher Fowler 2004.
TALKING IN THE DARK copyright © Dennis Etchison 1984. Originally published in Shadows 7. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE CIRCUS copyright © Sydney J. Bounds 1980. Originally published in The Thirteenth Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories. Reprinted by permission of the author and the
author’s agents, Cosmos Literary Agency.
FOET copyright © F. Paul Wilson 1991. Originally published in Borderlands 2: An Anthology of Imaginative Fiction. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE CANDLE IN THE SKULL copyright © Basil Copper 1984. Originally published in Hallowe’en Hauntings. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE CHIMNEY copyright © Stuart David Schiff 1977. Originally published in Whispers: An Anthology of Fantasy and Horror. Reprinted by permission of the author.
DARK WINGS copyright © Phyllis Eisenstein 1982. Originally published in Shadows 5. Reprinted by permission of the author.
REFLECTION OF EVIL copyright © Graham Masterton 2004. Originally published in an abridged version as “Half-Sick of Shadows” on www.bbc.co.uk/cult/vampires. Reprinted by permission of the author.
MIRROR OF THE NIGHT copyright © E.C. Tubb 1988. Originally published in Fantasy Annual #2. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, Cosmos Literary
Agency.
MAYPOLE copyright © Brian Mooney 2004.
UNDER THE CRUST copyright © Terry Lamsley 1993. Originally published in Under the Crust. Reprinted by permission of the author.
TIR NAN OG copyright © Lisa Tuttle 1999. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 1999. Reprinted by permission of the author.
A LIVING LEGEND copyright © R. Chetwynd-Hayes 1982. Originally published in Tales from Beyond. Reprinted by permission of the author’s Estate.
WAKE-UP CALL copyright © David J. Schow 2004.
THE FOURTH SEAL copyright © Stuart David Schiff 1981. Originally published in Whispers III. Reprinted by permission of The Karl Edward Wagner Literary Group.
UNLOCKED copyright © Tanith Lee and John Kaiine 2004.
CLOSING TIME copyright © Neil Gaiman 2003. Originally published in McSweeny’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales. Reprinted by permission of the author.
IT WAS THE HEAT copyright © Pat Cadigan 1988. Originally published in Tropical Chills. Reprinted by permission of the author.
FODDER copyright © Tim Lebbon and Brian Keene 2002. Originally published in Shivers. Reprinted by permission of the authors.
OPEN DOORS copyright © Michael Marshall Smith 2003. Originally published in More Tomorrow & Other Stories. Reprinted by permission of the author.
ANDROMEDA AMONG THE STONES copyright © Caitlín R. Kiernan 2002. Originally published in Andromeda Among the Stones. Reprinted by permission of the author.
FLOWERS ON THEIR BRIDLES, HOOVES IN THE AIR copyright © Glen Hirshberg 2003. Originally published on SciFi.com, August 2003. Reprinted by permission of
the author and the author’s agents, Anderson Grinberg Literary Management, Inc.
AMERIKANSKI DEAD AT THE MOSCOW MORGUE OR: CHILDREN OF MARX AND COCA-COLA copyright © Kim Newman 1999. Originally published in 999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense. Reprinted by
permission of the author.
AMONG THE WOLVES copyright © David Case 1971. Originally published in Fengriffen: A Chilling Tale. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE FIRST BOOK I ever edited in the hugely successful Mammoth series was The Mammoth Book of Terror back in 1991.
At the time, I wanted to assemble a hefty, non-themed horror anthology featuring some classic stories by many of the biggest names in the field, along with a scattering of tales that would be
original to the book.
The result was more successful than I could have imagined. The volume was reprinted in the UK and went through four printings in the United States. There was also a hardcover version, various
budget editions and even an Italian translation. Even more importantly, the book was a precursor to an entire series of Mammoth titles that I have continued to edit up to this day.
So when I was offered the opportunity to put together this follow-up volume, I naturally jumped at the chance. There are still many superb stories of horror and dark fantasy that, for one reason
or another are not currently in print, or have never been previously published on one side of the Atlantic or the other.
It is therefore my pleasure to welcome back to this volume such esteemed authors as Ramsey Campbell, Basil Copper, Dennis Etchison, Brian Lumley, Graham Masterton, David J. Schow, Lisa Tuttle
and F. Paul Wilson. Although they are no longer with us, R. Chetwynd-Hayes and Karl Edward Wagner are also both remembered with examples of their finest work, which will most likely be unfamiliar
to many readers.
Such other respected names as Sydney J. Bounds, Phyllis Eisenstein, Charles L. Grant and E.C. Tubb are also represented with classic tales of unease, and there is more recent or original work
from Pat Cadigan, Christopher Fowler, Neil Gaiman, Glen Hirshberg, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Terry Lamsley, Brian Mooney, Kim Newman and Michael Marshall Smith, many of whom were only just
starting their professional careers when the first volume of Terror was originally published.
Finally, I am delighted to present two powerful collaborations between rising stars Tim Lebbon and Brian Keene and the talented writing team of married couple Tanith Lee and John Kaiine, along
with David Case’s classic psychological novella “Among the Wolves” which, like all the author’s early work, deserves to be back in print again.
So there you have it – another bumper volume of contemporary terror, brought to you by some of the finest writers currently working in horror fiction. And remember, if you enjoyed this
volume, then there are many more stories out there just waiting to be told . . .
Stephen Jones
London, England
BRIAN LUMLEY WAS BORN on England’s north-east coast nine months after the death of H.P. Lovecraft. He claims that is just a coincidence. He was
serving as a sergeant in the Corps of Royal Military Police when he discovered Lovecraft’s fiction while stationed in Berlin in the early 1960s. After deciding to try his own hand at writing
horror fiction, initially set in HPL’s influential Cthulhu Mythos, he sent his early efforts to editor August Derleth. The latter’s famed Arkham House imprint published two collections
of Lumley’s short stories, The Caller of the Black and The Horror at Oakdene and Others, plus the short novel Beneath the Moors.
Lumley’s many other books include the Psychomech trilogy, Demogorgon, The House of Doors, Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi, A Coven of Vampires, The Whisperer and Other Voices
and Beneath the Moors and Darker Places.
More recent publications include Freaks, a collection from Subterranean Press that includes a new story, and a reprinting of Khai of Khem from Tor Books. Delirium has reissued the
first Hero of Dreams novel in a very limited leatherbound edition, and the third issue of H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror is a “Brian Lumley Special” that
features two original tales.
These days Lumley is best known as the author of the popular Necroscope vampire series. Published in 1986, the first book in the series made him a best-seller all over the world. That
initial volume was followed by Necroscope II: Wamphyri! (aka Necroscope II: Vamphyrif), Necroscope III: The Source, Necroscope TV: Deadspeak and Necroscope V: Deadspawn.
The Vampire World trilogy appeared in the early 1990s, and that was followed by the two-volume Necroscope: The Lost Years, the three-volume E-Branch series, and the collection
Harry Keogh: Necroscope and Other Weird Heroes! Forthcoming is The Touch, a new “E-Branch” spin-off.
In 1998 he was named Grand Master at the World Horror Convention, and The Brian Lumley Companion, co-edited with Stanley Wiater, appeared from Tor in 2002.
“‘Fruiting Bodies’ won a British Fantasy Award in 1989,” reveals the author. “It had some stiff competition and I count myself lucky to have won. Whether it’s
frightening or not is for you to decide. If it’s entertaining, and gives that certain frisson, then I’m satisfied.
“One thing’s for sure, there isn’t any blood here: mushrooms don’t bleed.”
MY GREAT-GRANDPARENTS, and my grandparents after them, had been Easingham people; in all likelihood my parents would have been, too, but the old
village had been falling into the sea for three hundred years and hadn’t much looked like stopping, and so I was born in Durham City instead. My grandparents, both sets, had been among the
last of the village people to move out, buying new homes out of a government-funded disaster grant. Since when, as a kid, I had been back to Easingham only once.
My father had taken me there one spring when the tides were high. I remember how there was still some black, crusty snow lying in odd corners of the fields, coloured by soot and smoke, as all
things were in those days in the north-east. We’d gone to Easingham because the unusually high tides had been at it again, chewing away at the shale cliffs, reducing shoreline and derelict
village both as the North Sea’s breakers crashed again and again on the shuddering land.
And of course we had hoped (as had the two hundred or so other sightseers gathered there that day) to see a house or two go down in smoking ruin, into the sea and the foaming spray. We witnessed
no such spectacle; after an hour, cold and wet from the salt moisture in the air, we piled back into the family car and returned to Durham. Easingham’s main street, or what had once been the
main street, was teetering on the brink as we left. But by nightfall that street was no more. We’d missed it: a further twenty feet of coastline, a bite one street deep and a few yards more
than one street long had been undermined, toppled, and gobbled up by the sea.
That had been that. Bit by bit, in the quarter-century between then and now, the rest of Easingham had also succumbed. Now only a house or two remained – no more than a handful in all
– and all falling into decay, while the closest lived-in buildings were those of a farm all of a mile inland from the cliffs. Oh, and of course there was one other inhabitant: old Garth
Bentham, who’d been demolishing the old houses by hand and selling bricks and timbers from the village for years. But I’ll get to him shortly.
So there I was last summer, back in the north-east again, and when my business was done of course I dropped in and stayed overnight with the Old Folks at their Durham cottage. Once a year at
least I made a point of seeing them, but last year in particular I noticed how time was creeping up on them. The “Old Folks”; well, now I saw that they really were old, and I determined
that I must start to see a lot more of them.
Later, starting in on my long drive back down to London, I remembered that time when the Old Man had taken me to Easingham to see the houses tottering on the cliffs. And probably because the
place was on my mind, I inadvertently turned off my route and in a little while found myself heading for the coast. I could have turned round right there and then – indeed, I intended to do
so – but I’d got to wondering about Easingham and how little would be left of it now, and before I knew it . . .
Once I’d made up my mind, Middlesbrough was soon behind me, then Guisborough, and in no time at all I was on the old road to the village. There had only ever been one way in and out, and
this was it: a narrow road, its surface starting to crack now, with tall hedgerows broken here and there, letting you look through to where fields rolled down to the cliffs. A beautiful day, with
seagulls wheeling overhead, a salt tang coming in through the wound-down windows, and a blue sky coming down to merge with . . . with the blue-grey of the North Sea itself! For cresting a rise,
suddenly I was there.
An old, leaning wooden signpost said EASINGH – for the tail had been broken off or rotted away, and “the village” lay at the end of the road. But right
there, blocking the way, a metal barrier was set in massive concrete posts and carried a sign bearing the following warning:
DANGER!
Severe Cliff Subsidence
No Vehicles Beyond This Point
I turned off the car’s motor, got out, leaned on the barrier. Before me the road went on – and disappeared only thirty yards ahead. And there stretched the new rim of the cliffs.
Of the village, Easingham itself – forget it! On this side of the cliffs, reaching back on both sides of the road behind overgrown gardens, weedy paths and driveways, there stood the empty
shells of what had once been residences of the “posh” folks of Easingham. Now, even on a day as lovely as this one, they were morose in their desolation.
The windows of these derelicts, where there were windows, seemed to gaze gauntly down on approaching doom, like old men in twin rows of deathbeds. Brambles and ivy were rank; the whole place
seemed as despairing as the cries of the gulls rising on the warm air; Easingham was a place no more.
Not that there had ever been a lot of it. Three streets lengthwise with a few shops; two more, shorter streets cutting through the three at right angles and going down to the cliffs and the
vertiginous wooden steps that used to climb down to the beach, the bay, the old harbour and fish market; and, standing over the bay, a Methodist church on a jutting promontory, which in the old
times had also served as a lighthouse. But now –
No streets, no promontory or church, no harbour, fish market, rickety steps. No Easingham.
“Gone, all of it,” said a wheezy, tired old voice from directly behind me, causing me to start. “Gone for ever, to the Devil and the deep blue sea!”
I turned, formed words, said something barely coherent to the leathery old scarecrow of a man I found standing there.
“Eh? Eh?” he said. “Did I startle you? I have to say you startled me! First car I’ve seen in a three-month! After bricks, are you? Cheap bricks? Timber?”
“No, no,” I told him, finding my voice. “I’m – well, sightseeing, I suppose.” I shrugged. “I just came to see how the old village was getting on. I
didn’t live here, but a long line of my people did. I just thought I’d like to see how much was left – while it was left! Except it seems I’m too late.”
“Oh, aye, too late,” he nodded. “Three or four years too late. That was when the last of the old fishing houses went down: four years ago. Sea took ‘em. Takes six or
seven feet of cliff every year. Aye, and if I lived long enough it would take me too. But it won’t ‘cos I’m getting on a bit.” And he grinned and nodded, as if to say: so
that’s that!
“Well, well, sightseeing! Not much to see, though, not now. Do you fancy a coffee?”
Before I could answer he put his fingers to his mouth and blew a piercing whistle, then paused and waited, shaking his head in puzzlement. “Ben,” he explained. “My old dog.
He’s not been himself lately and I don’t like him to stray too far. He was out all night, was Ben. Still, it’s summer, and there may have been a bitch about . . .”
While he had talked I’d looked him over and decided that I liked him. He reminded me of my own grandfather, what little I could remember of him. Grandad had been a miner in one of the
colliery villages further north, retiring here to doze and dry up and die – only to find himself denied the choice. The sea’s incursion had put paid to that when it finally made the
place untenable. I fancied this old lad had been a miner, too. Certainly he bore the scars, the stigmata, of the miner: the dark, leathery skin with black specks bedded in; the bad, bowed legs; the
shortness of breath, making for short sentences. A generally gritty appearance overall, though I’d no doubt he was clean as fresh-scrubbed.
“Coffee would be fine,” I told him, holding out my hand. “Greg’s my name – Greg Lane.”
He took my hand, shook it warmly and nodded. “Garth Bentham,” he said. And then he set off stiffly back up the crumbling road some two or three houses, turning right into an
overgrown garden through a fancy wooden gate recently painted white. “I’d intended doing the whole place up,” he said, as I followed close behind. “Did the gate, part of the
fence, ran out of paint!”
Before letting us into the dim interior of the house, he paused and whistled again for Ben, then worriedly shook his head in something of concern. “After rats in the old timber yard again,
I suppose. But God knows I wish he’d stay out of there!”
Then we were inside the tiny cloakroom, where the sun filtered through fly-specked windows and probed golden searchlights on a few fairly dilapidated furnishings and the brassy face of an old
grandfather clock that clucked like a mechanical hen. Dust motes drifted like tiny planets in a cosmos of faery, eddying round my host where he guided me through a door and into his living-room.
Where the dust had settled on the occasional ledge, I noticed that it was tinged red, like rust.
“I cleaned the windows in here,” Garth informed, “so’s to see the sea. I like to know what it’s up to!”
“Making sure it won’t creep up on you,” I nodded.
His eyes twinkled. “Nah, just joking,” he said, tapping on the side of his blue-veined nose. “No, it’ll be ten or even twenty years before all this goes, but I
don’t have that long. Five if I’m lucky. I’m sixty-eight, after all!”
Sixty-eight! Was that really as old as all that? But he was probably right: a lot of old-timers from the mines didn’t even last that long, not entirely mobile and coherent, anyway.
“Retiring at sixty-five doesn’t leave a lot, does it?” I said. “Of time, I mean.”
He went into his kitchen, called back: “Me, I’ve been here a ten-year. Didn’t retire, quit! Stuff your pension, I told ‘em. I’d rather have my lungs, what’s
left of ‘em. So I came here, got this place for a song, take care of myself and my old dog, and no one to tip my hat to and no one to bother me. I get a letter once a fortnight from my sister
in Dunbar, and one of these days the postman will find me stretched out in here and he’ll think: ‘Well, I needn’t come out here any more.’”
He wasn’t bemoaning his fate, but I felt sorry for him anyway. I settled myself on a dusty settee, looked out of the window down across his garden of brambles to the sea’s horizon. A
great curved millpond – for the time being. “Didn’t you have any savings?” I could have bitten my tongue off the momentl’d said it, for that was to imply he
hadn’t done very well for himself.
Cups rattled in the kitchen. “Savings? Lad, when I was a young ‘un I had three things: my lamp, my helmet and a pack of cards. If it wasn’t pitch ‘n’ toss with
weighted pennies on the beach banks, it was three-card brag in the back room of the pub. Oh, I was a game gambler, right enough, but a bad ‘un. In my blood, like my Old Man before me. My
mother never did see a penny; nor did my wife, I’m ashamed to say, before we moved out here – God bless her! Savings? That’s a laugh. But out here there’s no bookie’s
runner, and you’d be damned hard put to find a card school in Easingham these days! What the hell,” he shrugged as he stuck his head back into the room, “it was a life . .
.”
We sipped our coffee. After awhile I said, “Have you been on your own very long? I mean . . . your wife?”
“Lily-Anne?” he glanced at me, blinked, and suddenly there was a peculiar expression on his face. “On my own, you say . . .” He straightened his shoulders, took a deep
breath. “Well, I am on my own in a way, and in a way I’m not. I have Ben – or would have if he’d get done with what he’s doing and come home – and
Lily-Anne’s not all that far away. In fact, sometimes I suspect she’s sort of watching over me, keeping me company, so to speak. You know, when I’m feeling especially
lonely.”
“Oh?”
“Well,” he shrugged again. “I mean she is here, now isn’t she.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Here?” I was starting to have my doubts about Garth Bentham.
“I had her buried here,” he nodded, which explained what he’d said and produced a certain sensation of relief in me. “There was a Methodist church here once over, with
its own burying ground. The church went a donkey’s years ago, of course, but the old graveyard was still here when Lily-Anne died.”
“Was?” Our conversation was getting one-sided.
“Well, it still is – but right on the edge, so to speak. It wasn’t so bad then, though, and so I got permission to have a service done here, and down she went where I could go
and see her. I still do go to see her, of course, now and then. But in another year or two . . . the sea . . .” He shrugged again. “Time and the tides, they wait for no man.”
We finished our coffee. I was going to have to be on my way soon, and suddenly I didn’t like the idea of leaving him. Already I could feel the loneliness creeping in. Perhaps he sensed my
restlessness or something. Certainly I could see that he didn’t want me to go just yet. In any case, he said: “Maybe you’d like to walk down with me past the old timber yard,
visit her grave. Oh, it’s safe enough, you don’t have to worry. We may even come across old Ben down there. He sometimes visits her, too.”
“Ah, well I’m not too sure about that,” I answered. “The time, you know?” But by the time we got down the path to the gate I was asking: “How far is the
churchyard, anyway?” Who could tell, maybe I’d find some long-lost Lanes in there! “Are there any old markers left standing?”
Garth chuckled and took my elbow. “It makes a change to have some company,” he said. “Come on, it’s this way.”
He led the way back to the barrier where it spanned the road, bent his back and ducked groaning under it, then turned left up an overgrown communal path between gardens where the houses had been
stepped down the declining gradient. The detached bungalow on our right – one of a pair still standing, while a third slumped on the raw edge of oblivion – had decayed almost to the
point where it was collapsing inwards. Brambles luxuriated everywhere in its garden, completely enclosing it. The roof sagged and a chimney threatened to topple, making the whole structure seem
highly suspect and more than a little dangerous.
“Partly subsidence, because of the undercutting action of the sea,” Garth explained, “but mainly the rot. There was a lot of wood in these places, but it’s all being
eaten away. I made myself a living, barely, out of the old bricks and timber in Easingham, but now I have to be careful. Doesn’t do to sell stuff with the rot in it.”
“The rot?”
He paused for breath, leaned a hand on one hip, nodded and frowned. “Dry rot,” he said. “Or Merulius lacrymans as they call it in the books. It’s been bad these
last three years. Very bad! But when the last of these old houses are gone, and what’s left of the timber yard, then it’ll be gone, too.”
“It?” We were getting back to single-word questions again. “The dry rot, you mean? I’m afraid I don’t know very much about it.”
“Places on the coast are prone to it,” he told me. “Whitby, Scarborough, places like that. All the damp sea spray and the bad plumbing, the rains that come in and the
inadequate drainage. That’s how it starts. It’s a fungus, needs a lot of moisture – to get started, anyway. You don’t know much about it? Heck, I used to think I knew
quite a bit about it, but now I’m not so sure!”
By then I’d remembered something. “A friend of mine in London did mention to me how he was having to have his flat treated for it,” I said, a little lamely. “Expensive,
apparently.”
Garth nodded, straightened up. “Hard to kill,” he said. “And when it’s active, moves like the plague! It’s active here, now! Too late for Easingham, and who gives a
damn anyway? But you tell that friend of yours to sort out his exterior maintenance first: the guttering and the drainage. Get rid of the water spillage, then deal with the rot. If a place is dry
and airy, it’s OK Damp and musty spells danger!”
I nodded. “Thanks, I will tell him.”
“Want to see something?” said Garth. “I’ll show you what old merulius can do. See here, these old paving flags? See if you can lever one up a bit.” I found a
piece of rusting iron stave and dragged it out of the ground where it supported a rotting fence, then forced the sharp end into a crack between the overgrown flags. And while I worked to loosen the
paving stone, old Garth stood watching and carried on talking.
“Actually, there’s a story attached, if you care to hear it,” he said. “Probably all coincidental or circumstantial, or some other big word like that – but queer
the way it came about all the same.”
He was losing me again. I paused in my levering to look bemused (and maybe to wonder what on earth I was doing here), then grunted, and sweated, gave one more heave and flipped the flag over on
to its back. Underneath was hard-packed sand. I looked at it, shrugged, looked at Garth.
He nodded in that way of his, grinned, said: “Look. Now tell me what you make of this!”
He got down on one knee, scooped a little of the sand away. Just under the surface his hands met some soft obstruction. Garth wrinkled his nose and grimaced, got his face down close to the
earth, blew until his weakened lungs started him coughing. Then he sat back and rested. Where he’d scraped and blown the sand away, I made out what appeared to be a grey fibrous mass running
at right angles right under the pathway. It was maybe six inches thick, looked like tightly packed cotton wool. It might easily have been glass fibre lagging for some pipe or other, and I said as
much.
“But it isn’t,” Garth contradicted me. “It’s a root, a feeler, a tentacle. It’s old man cancer himself – timber cancer – on the move and looking
for a new victim. Oh, you won’t see him moving,” that strange look was back on his face, “or at least you shouldn’t – but he’s at it anyway. He finished those
houses there,” he nodded at the derelicts stepping down towards the new cliffs, “and now he’s gone into this one on the left here. Another couple of summers like this ‘un
and he’ll be through the entire row to my place. Except maybe I’ll burn him out first.”
“You mean this stuff – this fibre – is dry rot?” I said. I stuck my hand into the stuff and tore a clump out. It made a soft tearing sound, like damp chipboard, except it
was dry as old paper. “How do you mean, you’ll ‘burn him out?’”
“I mean like I say,” said Garth. “I’ll search out and dig up all these thread
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