The Mammoth Book of Terror (73 page)

“What on earth happened?” I asked.

Ramsey didn’t seem to hear my question.

“When I was younger, I used to ice-skate,” he said, speaking slowly. I blinked. I thought he was deliberately, and rather discourteously, changing the subject, and I reached for the
ignition keys. But Ramsey continued. “I learned to skate quite well,” he said. “I was never particularly adept at sports or games but in ice-skating I seemed to be more talented
than most. I enjoyed it enormously. I learned to figure-skate, to cut designs across the ice. People used to watch me, admiring my abilities. But there was one strange thing. I wouldn’t skate
when it was dark. All the young people used to go to the rink at night, but the very thought gave me a chill. I had a vague dread – a fear even – of what lay beneath the ice at night. I
visualized it – saw it in cross-section, as it were. There I was, cutting my smooth figures across the flat, predictable surface of the ice, and beneath that level there was the dark body of
unfrozen water. The ice and water were related and yet they were not the same. I fashioned my designs at one plane while beneath me lay uncharted depths and inconceivable forms. So it is with life
– with the human mind. We live our allotted years and carve out patterns upon a solitary level of existence, content and satisfied perhaps, and then something happens which opens a window,
just for an instant, through the surface and allows us to glimpse the deeper, darker dimensions with which we share existence. We peer through this hole, we see cowled shapes and malformed concepts
bloated in the waters and we shudder and look away until the ice freezes over once more and our world is smooth and flat again. Our world is as we know it, as we wish it, and we skate off and leave
our pitiful little etching under our runners. And yet, from time to time, those broken areas of open waters appear to disrupt our placid world. Most men shun the glimpse, ignore the depths, pretend
the ice is solid. But not all men. In the minds of a few, the hole does not freeze over quickly enough, they stare too long through the break – long enough for something to rise and crawl
from that hole and take possession of the upper levels . . .”

Ramsey coughed and looked out through the windscreen.

“Madness?” I said.

“Who knows? Not sanity, surely. But madness belongs to our surface ice. After all, it is we who have defined it. It is our minds which have hardened into ice. What may come up from below,
from those regions we have not labelled and named because we have not conceived of them . . .”

He shrugged and we sat in silence for a time. I began to feel uncomfortable and once more reached for the ignition. Ramsey’s eyes slid sideways at the motion.

“Yes, I am surely being too dramatic,” he said. “I was reacting to a personal awareness. The facts scarcely warrant such imagery. And yet they are disturbing. I expect I owe
you an explanation.”

I was far too curious to decline. I waited. The keys still waited in the ignition. Ramsey, who seldom smoked, asked for a cigarette. He inhaled and then studied the smoke, as if wondering
whether he were doing it properly. Then, his voice very matter-of-fact now, he said, “The remarkable aspect of the murder is this: the victim was killed by human teeth.” And he stared
at me.

“Good Lord,” I said.

Ramsey nodded.

“But you told Grant he’d been strangled . . .”

“And so he had. Indeed he had. He had been strangled by the pressure of human jaws.”

I shook my head.

“That is the extraordinary thing – the combination of the two. I’ve seen corpses who had been strangled by human hands before. I’ve heard – although I’ve
never encountered it, thank God – of instances where a man, in a fit of blind rage or insane passion, had committed murder with his teeth. But the combination is quite unique. The flesh was
not even broken on the throat. There had been no attempt to tear or slash, nor even any bloodshed. The pressure of those jaws had been applied slowly and carefully. Thoughtfully, even. Obviously,
the killer did not want his clothing stained by blood. It appears he had used his teeth strictly for convenience. For efficiency.”

“But why?” I asked.

“I can only surmise . . . you see the object of my rambling talk of darkness beneath the ice? Of course. It is exactly that. It is alien to me and I can only draw conclusions within my own
frame of reference. They are undoubtedly inaccurate. But this is what I assume. The killer, for some unknown reason, wished to kill this old man. He had no desire to torture the man, for every
action was designed to bring death. There were no bruises or contusions to imply a beating, no signs of any attempt to cause suffering, no wounds other than the death grip. The killer, again for
unknown reasons, did not use a weapon. I can reconstruct the scene within my own scheme of deduction. The victim was probably sitting or lying on his bed. It was a small furnished room with only a
straight backed chair, and I think it likely he used the bed to relax. He was, after all, an old man. He would have wanted what comfort was available to him. But that is irrelevant. The murderer
came in through the door. Whether he was known to the victim or not would, of course, alter the preliminary movements. But that, too, is irrelevant here. Whether already there, or forced there, the
old man wound up on the bed, on his back. The killer knelt over him, one knee on either side of his chest and placed his hands on the man’s throat. The man struggled – his fingernails
were broken where he clawed at the killer’s hands and forearms – but he was old and weak. The killer tightened his grip remorselessly. I feel sure there was no haste, no frenzy. He
merely closed his hands with great deliberation. But perhaps this was the first time he’d committed murder with his bare hands. This seems likely. And it always takes a long time, relatively
speaking, to choke a man to death. It must seem very long indeed to the killer . . . and to the victim. The old man’s tongue came out, his eyes ballooned, and yet he did not die. It
undoubtedly seemed, to the killer, that he had been strangling the man for sufficient time to kill him. And his mind was working, calculating. It occurred to him that he was not able to bring
sufficient pressure to bear with his hands – that some air was still passing into those lungs. At this point, most men would surely have panicked. They would have shaken the man violently and
snapped his neck, or seized a heavy object – there was a large glass ashtray beside the bed, I understand – and bludgeoned him into unconsciousness. But not our killer. There was no
panic, no frenzy. He misjudged the time factor and then he sorted all the aspects out quite logically in his mind and decided that more pressure was necessary to complete the act. And when he had
decided this, he followed the rational course . . .”

“Rational,” I whispered.

“Absolutely rational. He lowered his head and placed his mouth upon the man’s throat and proceeded to close his jaws. He didn’t snap, he didn’t tear, he used his teeth
not as fangs but as a vice. The human jaws are very powerful. They are capable of exerting incredible strength. And so, after a while, the old man was dead and the killer unclenched his teeth and
that was that.”

I stared at Ramsey. I could feel the blood draining from my face, heavy and sluggish. He read the contortion of my countenance and nodded.

“Oh yes,” he said. “It was horrible.”

“To use his teeth for . . .
efficiency
!”

“Exactly. That was the point that disturbed me.”

“It must have been a maniac,” I said.

“Or a philosopher,” said Ramsey, and he looked at me and I looked at him and after a while I started the motorcar and drove away. The traffic was light. The wind blew and the leaves
fell and as the sun slipped down behind the afternoon angles I felt a distinct chill at my spine.

I wasn’t present at the identification this time, and came to hear of the crime through a particularly sensational newspaper story – a borrowed newspaper, as it were, belonging to
one of the regular visitors to the museum. Museums seem to be addictive. They each have a set of regulars who have formed the habit of frequent visits, and in the course of my research, I came to
meet several of these people time and time again. One of these was a middle-aged gentleman who walked with a stiff leg and used a malacca cane, a quiet and dignified man who always nodded
pleasantly, wore well-cut tweeds, and seemed a trifle lonely. I usually encountered him wandering through the natural history rooms but in this instance we met in the library. I had just finished
my book and was about to go to lunch when he entered, his cane tapping through the resounding silence of leather and oak. He took a seat next to me and placed a folded newspaper on the table. I
glanced over to nod and happened to notice the headlines.

“So the killer has struck again,” I said.

“It would appear so.”

“May I see your paper?”

“Of course.”

He handed it to me and I unfolded it.

“Not the paper I usually take,” he said, smiling, as if to apologize for the gutter press. It did not, in fact, seem the sort of paper this rather dignified gentleman should
subscribe to, and I had always avoided it. But it carried a very detailed account of the crime, stressing the sensational aspects. The story had been written from the point of view of one of the
children who had discovered the body. He was twelve years old. It was the sort of thing that sold newspapers, no doubt of that.

“It’s a terrible thing,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“These deaths.”

“Death? Oh, death is natural.”

His attitude surprised me.

“Death, yes. But not murder.”

He shrugged and tilted his hand in a gesture.

“Murder? But what is murder other than a form of death? It is only unnatural in legal terms, you know. Murder did not exist before we came to define it; before we made laws against it. It
is law which is unnatural, not murder.”

I looked at him, wondering if he were serious. He seemed so.

“I’m sure it didn’t seem natural to the victims,” I said.

“Oh? I should think it did. It may have seemed unjust, but certainly natural. But then, at the moment of death, one does not think in forensic terms.” He smiled slightly.
“Death is a jealous concept. It will not tolerate other thoughts to exist with it envelops the mind, it refuses to share with alien sensations.”

“You seem well acquainted with the subject, sir.”

He smiled again.

“Oh, I’ve held the concept of death,” he said. “I’ve been very very close to dying and, I assure you, it was the most natural thing in the world.”

“What manner of death?”

“By violence,” he said. “By violence.”

I could not picture him in conjunction with violence. I waited for him to continue, but he said no more; sat there with that slight smile. After a moment I turned to the newspaper.

The twelve-year-old boy and several other lads had been playing by the river at the old disused wharf. There was always a great deal of debris in the water at that point. The docks and pilings
had collapsed over the years and timber and planks had broken away to float in the river while the pilings which still stood acted as a bottleneck, gathering the various flotsam of the river. The
children had developed a game in which the debris was an enemy fleet of warships and they were a defending shore battery, using rocks and stones for ordnance. It was an exciting game. The object
was to sink the enemy ships before they came into contact with the pilings and the youths were positioned along the embankment and on the dock. They were laughing and shouting and having a fine
time. Their artillery was proving accurate and effective and they had already sunk an orange crate destroyer and scored several crashing hits upon an empty oil can escort vessel. Suddenly one
shouted a warning. The enemy fleet was being reinforced by a new ship which came floating out from beneath the pilings in treacherous sneak attack. It appeared to be a gnarled log dripping with
moss and sea weed and it floated just below the surface. The children decided it must be a nuclear submarine and posed a most serious threat; knew they had to sink it before it could release its
missiles and turned the full force of their lithic ordnance on it. They bombarded it from all sides and with every calibre. Small stones cascaded around the object, and larger rocks hit the water
with great splashes, causing the submarine to roll and sway in the riled waters. But all the awesome might they unleashed proved ineffective. The submarine was actually rising to the surface. In
desperation three of the youths joined forces to lift a huge slab of stone and carry it out on the dock, directly above the menacing ship. The slab was an aeroplane piloted by a suicide pilot
willing to give his life for his country. They took careful aim and tilted the stone from the edge of the dock. It fell, turning in the air, and scored a direct hit amidships of the submarine. The
vessel seemed to crack in half. The bows and stern rose up and the children howled in victorious glee. And then, very very slowly, the log rolled over and spread out arms and it wasn’t a log
at all. The children fell silent. They stared in shocked disbelief. This was something unique, beyond the rules of their game, and for some time they stood lined along the dock, gaping down at the
body. It was an old woman. Her body bobbled about and her grey hair spread out like moss around her bloated face, writhing on the surface. And then comprehension came and they ran for help with
shouts which were not of gaiety . . .

The police were summoned and they dragged the body out. It was the old flower seller who had a stall on the embankment, not far from the wharf. Investigation showed she had been dragged to the
water and immersed until she drowned. There were no injuries on her body and she must have been conscious the whole time. The time of the murder was estimated at nine o’clock the night
before, about the hour she usually closed her stall. There was still light at nine o’clock. There were invariably people strolling on the embankment and along the docks and perhaps young
lovers had stood, hand in hand, directly above the old woman dying beneath the pilings. It was an eerie thought. One could not help but wonder what thoughts had screamed through her mind during
those eternal instants of silent struggle, while the water felt like an avalanche of hard rocks pouring into her erupting lungs. It was far easier to imagine her thoughts than to conceive of those
dark concepts in the mind of her killer – the mind of a man who killed without motive, without reason, without passion.