Dark Winter Tales: a collection of horror short stories. Paul Finch

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СКАЧАТЬ that a life-size figure was standing behind them. But it was the usual thing – Bubbles, probably an animatronic version, looking more than a little mouldy and saggy, his scaly hide mottled, his eyes like ragged holes in rotted fabric, his crocodile snout deflated.

      Sharon ignored it, glancing back to the topmost tier of the Crazy Train, straining her eyes one last time for trespassers. It didn’t feel like the done thing, heading away from this place when there may have been a fatal accident here, but regardless of the Geoff Slater fiasco, she needed to get the word out. There was no-one up there she could see, so she turned and walked away, passing the children’s theatre on her left – and noticing from the corner of her eye that it was empty.

      She stopped in mid-stride and pivoted around to face it.

      At first she thought the Bubbles dummy had maybe slipped down out of sight. But how come the side-door to the theatre now stood open?

      And then she sensed a figure on her left.

      She pivoted again.

      In its present state of decay, the Bubbles costume was quite the most revolting thing she’d ever seen, hanging raddled and desiccated on the strangely emaciated form inside. His right hand was raised, causing Sharon to involuntarily giggle as she remembered the way Bubbles used to wave to the cameras with his right hand as he walked through Fun Land on hot summer days, hordes of gleeful kiddies trailing after him.

      But this time he held something in it.

      It looked like it was made of steel; it also looked heavy and very sharp.

      Even when she blasted him in the face with her CS agent, he swung this massive implement down – this cleaver, or whatever it was – aiming squarely at the side of her neck. With barely suppressed shrieks, she ducked away, jetting the CS spray into his face a second time, and hitting him dead-on – though perhaps the costume headpiece was masking him, because he spun after her, slashing again with his razor steel, knocking off her hat, her hair uncoiling every which way. She drew her baton again, snapping it open, trying to fend him off, but another arcing swipe caught it mid-stem, severing it in two. Blindly, she struck out with a different weapon – her torch, and this blow landed. The bulb audibly shattered on impact with her assailant’s head, but it also drew a grunt from him and he staggered.

      Sharon used the opportunity to run – in no particular direction.

      “PC requires,” she gibbered into her radio. “PC requires. Fun Land amusement park. Blair McKellan is here. I need back-up urgently … I repeat, urgently!”

      As before, there was no response. She turned along a side-passage, and found herself amid metal struts and under tarpaulin roofs. She was back in the Shambles, she realised, which surely was somewhere she could lose the bastard? She took turns at random, hoping to throw him off, constantly glancing behind, seeing no-one in pursuit – only to find herself confronted by the Gobstopper, its broad front standing open on the darkened recess in which the mounted clown figures were just vaguely visible.

      Her mind raced, thoughts tumbling over each other.

      There’d be missile weapons in there, of a sort – those hard wooden balls. Okay, they didn’t signify deadly force, but they would pack a wallop. She clambered over the counter and into the space behind, where she crouched low and fumbled on the floor, eventually finding two of the missiles – though they seemed much smaller and lighter than she remembered. Once in possession of them, she waited and listened, struggling to stop her teeth chattering. For a few minutes, even the wind seemed to drop – the only sound was Sharon’s heart thundering in her chest as she scanned the surrounding maze of stands and stalls, through which moonlight spilled in various fantastical forms, making it difficult to maintain depth or perspective.

      Nothing seemed to move.

      Had she thrown him off? She hardly dared consider the possibility. No-one could second-guess a monster like Blair McKellan, the Night Caller; an out-and-out madman who left his victims like sides of butchered meat. But surely he wasn’t completely demented? He’d retained sufficient of his faculties to lie low between kills, to evade the law for almost a year. If he’d identified her as a police officer, as he surely must, he’d be expecting her to call this in? Assistance would be en route. He’d be better running.

      A few dozen yards away, a figure emerged through the moonlit haze.

      Sharon sucked in a breath so tight it almost squeaked. She sank lower, only her eyes visible over the counter-top. But no … now that she looked carefully, it wasn’t a figure, it was just an awning, patterned with mildew, rippling in the stiffening breeze.

      She allowed herself to breathe again, filching the phone from her pocket. She would try Slater one more time. It seemed futile, pointless, but he was the closest to her, the only person who could provide immediate assistance. She prodded in his number – and immediately froze as she heard a tinny tune somewhere in her vicinity. It sounded like jazz; low, sleazy jazz played on a sax. And she recognised it.

      Slowly, incredulously, she turned around, riveting her eyes on the dummy clown directly behind her … except that, now her vision had attuned, it didn’t even resemble a clown. Or a dummy. True, like the others it was only a torso; the legs and arms were missing, and the mouth yawned open to impossible width, and it sat upright on a metal pole, though possibly in this case that was because the pole had been jammed ten inches or so into the object’s anus.

      A warm trickle soaked Sharon’s knickers and the crotch of her trousers.

      What she’d first taken for clown make-up streaking the figure’s cheeks wasn’t anything like make-up; and those eye sockets, which now contained nothing at all, let alone electric bulbs, would never light up again. In the gaping mouth, where once there’d been a tongue, sat a small, flat device, juddering its jazzy tune – until it switched abruptly to voicemail.

      Sharon had some vague thought that it was a good job she didn’t still have her torch. Because the last thing she wanted to see were the finer details of this atrocity. Even so it transfixed her. She could do nothing but sit there gawking – until she tasted something salty dripping down the front of her face and onto the tip of her tongue. Dazed, she craned her neck back to gaze overhead – and saw a massive rent in the canvas awning, into which a distorted figure was leaning, staring down at her. The fluid dripping from the end of his hanging snout was probably tears, or saliva, or nose mucus, or a combination of all three – a product of the spray she’d hit him with earlier.

      There are times in every police officer’s career when all sense of authority and decorum is lost. When you cease to be a stern pillar of law enforcement, and revert to your natural state: a frightened, vulnerable animal whose main instinct is to run.

      This Sharon now did.

      With hysterical shrieks. Throwing herself over the counter and haring off along the footway, blathering incoherently into her radio – even though she expected no response.

      Again, she ran in no particular direction, blindly, exhaustedly, threading between the stands and stalls, through moon and shadow, until she reached a broad thoroughfare, which, more by instinct than logic, she felt would lead her to the park’s entrance.

      It did. Right up to those towering, scroll-iron gates.

      They were closed of course. And locked.

      The chains holding them were thick with corrosion, the padlock fused into a lump of impenetrable rust. Sharon yanked on it futilely, tearing СКАЧАТЬ