The Mammoth Book of Terror (12 page)

Rex Christian greeted him with a sparkling grin.

“Tell me about your new book,” said Victor breathlessly. “I want to hear everything. I guess I’ll be the first, won’t I?”

“One of the first.” The author folded his tiny hands. “It’s about an epidemic that’s sweeping the country – I don’t have the details yet. I’m
still roughing it out. All I gave my editor was a two-page outline.”

“And he bought it?”

Rex Christian grinned.

“What kind of epidemic?”

“That’s where you can help, Vic.”

“If it’s research you want, well, just tell me what you need. I used to do a lot of that in school. I was in premed and . . .”

“I want to make this as easy as possible for you.”

“I know. I mean, I’m sure you do. But it’s no sweat. I’ll collect the data, Xerox articles, send you copies of everything that’s ever been written on the subject,
as soon as you tell me . . .”

Rex Christian frowned, his face wrinkling like a deflating balloon. “I’m afraid that would involve too many legalities. Copyrights, fees, that sort of thing. Sources that might be
traced.”

“We could get permission, couldn’t we? You wouldn’t have to pay me. It would be an honor to . . .”

“I know.” Rex Christian’s miniature fingers flexed impatiently. “But that’s the long way around, my friend.”

“However you want to do it. Say the word and I’ll get started, first thing in the morning. Monday morning. Tomorrow’s Sunday and . . .”

“Monday’s too late. It starts now. In fact it’s already started. You didn’t know that, did you?” Rex’s face flushed eagerly, his cheeks red as a newborn
infant’s. “I want to know pwrfeelings on the subject. All of them.” He pumped his legs and crept forward on the cushion. “Open yourself up. It won’t hurt. I
promise.”

Victor’s eyes stung and his throat ached.
It starts here
, he thought, awe-struck. The last thirty-three years were the introduction to my life. Now it really starts.

“You wouldn’t want to know my feelings,” he said. “They . . . I’ve been pretty mixed up. For a long time.”

“I don’t care about what you felt before. I want to know what you feel tonight. It’s only
you
, Vic. You’re perfect. I can’t get that in any library. Do you
know how valuable you are to me?”

“But why? Your characters, they’re so much more real, more alive . . .”

Rex waved his words aside. “An illusion. Art isn’t life, you know. If it were, the world would go up in flames. It’s artifice. By definition.” He slid closer, his toes
finally dropping below the coffee table. “Though naturally I try to make it echo real life as closely as I can. That’s what turns my readers on. That’s part of my mission.
Don’t you understand?”

Victor’s eyes filled with tears.

Other people, the people he saw and heard on the screen, on TV, in books and magazines, voices on the telephone, all had lives which were so much more vital than his own wretched existence. The
closest he had ever come to peak experiences, the moments he found himself returning to again and again in his memory, added up to nothing more significant than chance meetings on the road, like
the time he hitchhiked to San Francisco in the summer of ‘67, a party in college where no one knew his name, the face of a girl in the window of a passing bus that he had never been able to
forget.

And now?

He lowered his head to his knees and wept.

And in a blinding flash, as if the scales had been lifted from his eyes, he knew that nothing would ever be the same for him again. The time to hesitate was over. The time had come at last to
make it real.

He thought: I am entitled to a place on the planet, after all.

He lifted his eyes to the light.

The dwarf’s face was inches away. The diminutive features, the taut lips, the narrow brow, the close, lidded eyes, wise and all-forgiving. The sweet scent of an unknown after-shave lotion
wafted from his skin.

“The past doesn’t matter,” said the dwarf. He placed the short fingers of one hand on Victor’s head. “To hell with it all.”

“Yes,” said Victor. For so long he had thought just the opposite. But now he saw a way out. “Oh, yes.”

“Tell me what you feel from this moment on,” said the dwarf. “I need to know.”

“I don’t know how,” said Victor.

“Try.”

Victor stared into the dark, polished eyes, shiny as a doll’s eyes.

“I want to. I . . . I don’t know if I can.”

“Of course you can. We’re alone now. You didn’t tell anyone I was coming, did you, Vic?”

Victor shook his head.

“How thoughtful,” said the dwarf. “How perfect. Like this house. A great setting. I could tell by your letter you were exactly what I need. Your kind always are. Those who live
in out-of-the-way places, the quiet ones with no ties. That’s the way it has to be. Otherwise I couldn’t use you.”

“Why do you care what I feel?” asked Victor.

“I told you – research. It gives my work that extra edge. Won’t you tell me what’s happening inside you right now, Vic?”

“I want to. I do.”

“Then you can. You can if you really want it. Aren’t we all free to do whatever we want?”

“I almost believed that, once,” said Victor.

“Anything,” said the dwarf firmly. “You can have anything, including what you want most. Especially that. And what is it you want, Vic?”

“I . . . I want to write, I guess.”

The dwarf’s face crinkled with amusement.

“But I don’t know what to write about,” said Victor.

“Then why do you want to do it?”

“Because I have no one to talk to. No one who could understand.”

“And what would you talk to them about, if you could?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I’m afraid.”

“Tell me, Vic. I’ll understand. I’ll put it down exactly the way you say it. You want me to relieve your fear? Well, in another minute I’m going to do that little thing.
You will have nothing more to fear, ever again.”

This is it, Victor thought, your chance. Don’t blow it. It’s happening just the way you had it planned. Don’t lose your nerve. Ask the question – now.
Do it.

“But where does it come from?” asked Victor. “The things you write about. How do you know what to say? Where do you get it? I try, but the things I know aren’t . .
.”

“
You want to know
,” said the dwarf, his face splitting in an uproarious grin, “
where I get my ideas
? Is that your question?”

“Well, as a matter of fact . . .”

“From you, Vic! I get my material from people like you! I get them from this cesspool you call life itself. And you know what? I’ll never run out of material, not as long as I go
directly to the source, because I’ll never, ever finish paying you all back!”

Victor saw then the large pores of the dwarfs face, the crooked bend to the nose, the sharpness of the teeth in the feral mouth, the steely glint deep within the black eyes. The hairs prickled
on the back of his neck and he pulled away. Tried to pull away. But the dwarfs hand stayed on his head.

“Take my new novel, for instance. It’s about an epidemic that’s going to sweep the nation, leaving a bloody trail from one end of this country to the other, to wash away all of
your sins. At first the police may call it murder. But the experts will recognize it as suicide, a form of
harakiri,
to be precise, which is what it is. I know, because I’ve made a
careful study of the methods. Perfect!”

The underdeveloped features, the cretinous grin filled Victor with sudden loathing, and a terrible fear he could not name touched his scalp. He sat back, pulling farther away from the little
man.

But the dwarf followed him back, stepping onto the table, one hand still pressing Victor in a grotesque benediction. The lamp glared behind his oversized head, his eyes sparkling maniacally. He
rose up and up, unbending his legs, knocking over the bottles, standing taller until he blocked out everything else.

Victor braced against the table and kicked away, but the dwarf leaped onto his shoulders and rode him down. Victor reached out, found the bottle opener and swung it wildly.

“No,” he screamed, “my God, no! You’re wrong! It’s a lie! You’re . . . !”

He felt the point of the churchkey hook into something thick and cold and begin to rip.

But too late. A malformed hand dug into his hair and forced his head back, exposing his throat and chest.

“How does
this
feel, Vic? I have to know! Tell my readers!” The other claw darted into the briefcase and dragged forth a blade as long as a bayonet, its edge crusted and
sticky but still razor-sharp. “How about this?” cried the dwarf. “And this?”

As Victor raised his hands to cover his throat, he felt the first thrust directly below the ribcage, an almost painless impact as though he had been struck by a fist in the chest, followed by
the long, sawing cut through his vital organs and then the warm pumping of his life’s blood down the short sword between them. His fingers tingled and went numb as his hands were wrapped into
position around the handle. The ceiling grew bright and the world spun, hurling him free.

“Tell me!” demanded the dwarf.

A great whispering chorus was released within Victor at last, rushing out and rising like a tide to flood the earth, crimson as the rays of a hellishly blazing sun.

But his mouth was choked with his own blood and he could not speak, not a word of it. The vestiges of a final smile moved his glistening lips.

“Tell me!” shrieked the dwarf, digging deeper, while the room turned red. “I must find the perfect method!
Tell me!
”

SYDNEY JAMES BOUNDS BEGAN
his career by contributing “spicy” stories to the monthly magazines produced by Utopia Press in the 1940s. He was
soon writing hardboiled gangster novels for John Spencer under such house names as “Brett Diamond” and “Ricky Madison”, and he contributed short stories to their line of SF
magazines which included
Futuristic Science Stories, Tales of Tomorrow
and
Worlds of Fantasy.

He became a regular contributor to such magazines as
New Worlds Science Fiction, Science Fantasy, Authentic Science Fiction, Nebula Science Fiction, Other Worlds Science Stories
and
Fantastic Universe.
However, as the science fiction magazine markets started to dry up during the 1960s, the author began to notice the growth of paperbacks. Although he continued to be
published in such periodicals as
London Mystery Magazine, Vision of Tomorrow, Fantasy Tales, Fantasy Booklet, Fantasy Annual
and
Fantasy Quarterly
, he quickly became a prolific and
reliable contributor to such anthology series as
New Writings in SF, The Fontana Booh of Great Ghost Stories, TheFontana Booh of Great Horror Stories
, the
Armada Monster Book
, the
Armada Ghost Book
and
Fantasy Adventures.

Bounds has also pursued parallel careers as a successful children’s writer and a Western novelist for Robert Hale, and in 2003 Cosmos Books issued the first-ever collections of the
author’s work as two paperback volumes,
The Best of Sydney J. Bounds: Strange Portrait and Other Stories
and
The Wayward Ship and Other Stories
, both edited by Philip
Harbottle.

One of the author’s best-known stories, “The Circus” was adapted by George A. Romero for a 1986 episode of the syndicated television series
Tales of the Darkside.

“One of the tricks a writer has for producing a new story is to reverse a standard situation,” explains Bounds. “Back in the 1970s, werewolves and vampires were considered evil
and words like horror and terror were applied to them. So why not devise a story based on the wonder of the differences in nature? Here it is . . .”

He was on his way back from Cornwall where he’d been covering a story, an expose of a witches’ coven, for the
Sunday Herald.
He drove an MG sports car and, as always with a
few drinks inside him, drove too fast. With time to spare, he’d left the A30 at a whim. It was a summer evening, slowly cooling after the heat of the day. The countryside was what he called
“pretty”, with lanes twisting between hedgerows. He took a corner at speed and rammed the trunk of a tree that jutted into the road around the bend.

Shaken but unhurt, he climbed from his car and swore at a leaking radiator. Then he got back in and drove on, looking for a garage. He found one, a couple of miles further along, next to a pub
with a scattering of cottages; there were not enough of them to justify calling them a village.

A mechanic glanced at the bonnet and sniffed his breath. “At, I can fix it. Couple of hours, maybe.”

Arnold Bragg nodded. “I’ll be next door when you’ve finished.”

It was the kind of pub that exists only in out-of-the-way places, and then rarely: a house of local stone with a front room converted as a bar. The door stood open and he walked in past a stack
of beer crates. The walls were thick and it was cool inside. On a polished counter rested two casks, one of cider and one of beer. A grey-haired woman sat knitting behind the counter, and two
oldish men sat on a wooden bench by the window