Table Of ContentHorror
Stephen Jones(ED) - The
Anthology of Horror Stories
Table of Contents
1/ Clive Barker – The Last Illusion
2/ David J. Schow – Bunny Didn't Tell Us
3/ Hugh B. Cave – Murgunstrumm
4/ Dennis Etchison – The Late Shift
5/ Lisa Tuttle – The Horse Lord
6/ R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Jumpity-Jim
7/ Ramsey Campbell – Out of Copyright
8/ Karl Edward Wagner – The River of Night's Dreaming
9/ Basil Copper – Amber Print
10/ Brian Lumley – The House of the Temple
11/ Robert Bloch – The Yougoslaves
12/ David Campton – Firstborn
13/ Manly Wade Wellman – The Black Drama
14/ Charles L. Grant – Crystal
15/ F. Paul Wilson – Buckets
16/ David A. Riley – The Satyr's Head
17/ Stepehen Laws – Junk
18/ Graham Masterton – Pig's Dinner
1/ Clive Barker – The Last
Illusion
WHAT HAPPENED THEN-when the magician, having mesmerised the
caged tiger, pulled the tasselled cord that released a dozen swords upon its
head-was the subject of heated argument both in the bar of the theatre and
later, when Swann's performance was over, on the sidewalk of 51st Street.
Some claimed to have glimpsed the bottom of the cage opening in the split
second that all other eyes were on the descending blades, and seen the tiger
swiftly spirited away as the woman in the red dress took its place behind the
lacquered bars. Others were just as adamant that the animal had never
been in the cage to begin with, its presence merely a projection which had
been extinguished as a mechanism propelled the woman from beneath the
stage; this, of course, at such a speed that it deceived the eye of all but those
swift and suspicious enough to catch it. And the swords? The nature of the
trick which had transformed them in the mere seconds of their gleaming
descent from steel to rose-petals was yet further fuel for debate. The
explanations ranged from the prosaic to the elaborate, but few of the throng
that left the theatre lacked some theory. Nor did the arguments finish there,
on the sidewalk. They raged on, no doubt, in the apartments and
restaurants of New York.
The pleasure to be had from Swann's illusions was, it seemed, twofold.
First: the spectacle of the trick itself-in the breathless moment when
disbelief was, if not suspended, at least taken on tip-toe. And second, when
the moment was over and logic restored, in the debate as to how the trick
had been achieved.
"How do you do it, Mr Swann?" Barbara Bernstein was eager to know.
"It's magic," Swann replied. He had invited her backstage to examine the
tiger's cage for any sign of fakery in its construction; she had found none.
She had examined the swords: they were lethal. And the petals, fragrant.
Still she insisted: "Yes, but really …" she leaned close to him. "You can tell
me," she said, "I promise I won't breathe a word to a soul."
He returned her a slow smile in place of a reply.
"Oh, I know…" she said, "you're going to tell me that you've signed some
kind of oath."
"That's right," Swann said.
"-And you're forbidden to give away any trade secrets."
"The intention is to give you pleasure," he told her. "Have I failed in
that?"
"Oh no," she replied, without a moment's hesitation. "Everybody's talking
about the show. You're the toast of New York."
"No," he protested.
"Truly," she said, "I know people who would give their eye-teeth to get
into this theatre. And to have a guided tour backstage… well, I'll be the
envy of everybody."
"I'm pleased," he said, and touched her face. She had clearly been
anticipating such a move on his part. It would be something else for her to
boast of: her seduction by the man critics had dubbed the Magus of
Manhattan.
"I'd like to make love to you," he whispered to her.
"Here?" she said.
"No," he told her. "Not within ear-shot of the tigers."
She laughed. She preferred her lovers twenty years Swann's junior-he
looked, someone had observed, like a man in mourning for his profile, but
his touch promised what no boy could offer. She liked the tang of
dissolution she sensed beneath his gentlemanly facade. Swann was a
dangerous man. If she turned him down she might never find another.
"We could go to a hotel," she suggested.
"A hotel," he said, "is a good idea."
A look of doubt had crossed her face.
"What about your wife…?" she said. "We might be seen."
He took her hand. "Shall we be invisible, then?"
"I'm serious."
"So am I," he insisted. "Take it from me; seeing is not believing. I should
know. It's the cornerstone of my profession." She did not look much
reassured. "If anyone recognises us," he told her, "I'll simply tell them their
eyes are playing tricks."
She smiled at this, and he kissed her. She returned the kiss with
unquestionable fervour.
"Miraculous," he said, when their mouths parted. "Shall we go before the
tigers gossip?"
He led her across the stage. The cleaners had not yet got about their
business, and there, lying on the boards, was a litter of rose-buds. Some had
been trampled, a few had not. Swann took his hand from hers, and walked
across to where the flowers lay.
She watched him stoop to pluck a rose from the ground, enchanted by the
gesture, but before he could stand upright again something in the air above
him caught her eye. She looked up and her gaze met a slice of silver that
was even now plunging towards him. She made to warn him, but the sword
was quicker than her tongue. At the last possible moment he seemed to
sense the danger he was in and looked round, the bud in his hand, as the
point met his back. The sword's momentum carried it through his body to
the hilt. Blood fled from his chest, and splashed the floor. He made no
sound, but fell forward, forcing two-thirds of the sword's length out of his
body again as he hit the stage.
She would have screamed, but that her attention was claimed by a sound
from the clutter of magical apparatus arrayed in the wings behind her, a
muttered growl which was indisputably the voice of the tiger. She froze.
There were probably instructions on how best to stare down rogue tigers,
but as a Manhattanite born and bred they were techniques she wasn't
acquainted with.
"Swann?" she said, hoping this yet might be some baroque illusion staged
purely for her benefit. "Swann. Please get up."
But the magician only lay where he had fallen, the pool spreading from
beneath him.
"If this is a joke-" she said testily, "-I'm not amused." When he didn't rise
to her remark she tried a sweeter tactic. "Swann, my sweet, I'd like to go
now, if you don't mind."
The growl came again. She didn't want to turn and seek out its source, but
equally she didn't want to be sprung upon from behind.
Cautiously she looked round. The wings were in darkness. The clutter of
properties kept her from working out the precise location of the beast. She
could hear it still, however: its tread, its growl. Step by step, she retreated
towards the apron of the stage. The closed curtains sealed her off from the
auditorium, but she hoped she might scramble under them before the tiger
reached her.
As she backed against the heavy fabric, one of the shadows in the wings
forsook its ambiguity, and the animal appeared. It was not beautiful, as she
had thought it when behind bars. It was vast and lethal and hungry. She
went down on her haunches and reached for the hem of the curtain. The
fabric was heavily weighted, and she had more difficulty lifting it than she'd
expected, but she had managed to slide halfway under the drape when, head
and hands pressed to the boards, she sensed the thump of the tiger's
advance. An instant later she felt the splash of its breath on her bare back,
and screamed as it hooked its talons into her body and hauled her from the
sight of safety towards its steaming jaws.
Even then, she refused to give up her life. She kicked at it, and tore out its
fur in handfuls, and delivered a hail of punches to its snout. But her
resistance was negligible in the face of such authority; her assault, for all its
ferocity, did not slow the beast a jot. It ripped open her body with one
casual clout. Mercifully, with that first wound her senses gave up all claim
to verisimilitude, and took instead to preposterous invention. It seemed to
her that she heard applause from somewhere, and the roar of an approving
audience, and that in place of the blood that was surely springing from her
body there came fountains of sparkling light. The agony her nerve-endings
were suffering didn't touch her at all. Even when the animal had divided
her into three or four parts her head lay on its side at the edge of the stage
and watched as her torso was mauled and her limbs devoured.
And all the while, when she wondered how all this could be possible-that
her eyes could live to witness this last supper-the only reply she could think
of was Swann's: "It's magic," he'd said.
Indeed, she was thinking that very thing, that this must be magic, when the
tiger ambled across to her head, and swallowed it down in one bite.
Amongst a certain set Harry D'Amour liked to believe he had some small
reputation-a coterie which did not, alas, include his ex-wife, his creditors or
those anonymous critics who regularly posted dog's excrement through his
office letterbox. But the woman who was on the phone now, her voice so full
of grief she might have been crying for half a year, and was about to begin
again, she knew him for the paragon he was.
"-I need your help, Mr D'Amour; very badly."
"I'm busy on several cases at the moment," he told her. "Maybe you could
come to the office?"
"I can't leave the house," the woman informed him. "I'll explain
everything. Please come."
He was sorely tempted. But there were several outstanding cases, one of
which, if not solved soon, might end in fratricide. He suggested she try
elsewhere.
"I can't go to just anybody," the woman insisted.
"Why me?"
"I read about you. About what happened in Brooklyn."
Making mention of his most conspicuous failure was not the surest method
of securing his services, Harry thought, but it certainly got his attention.
What had happened in Wyckoff Street had begun innocently enough, with a
husband who'd employed him to spy on his adulterous wife, and had ended
on the top storey of the Lomax house with the world he thought he'd known
turning inside out. When the body-count was done, and the surviving
priests dispatched, he was left with a fear of stairs, and more questions than
he'd ever answer this side of the family plot. He took no pleasure in being
reminded of those terrors.
"I don't like to talk about Brooklyn," he said.
"Forgive me," the woman replied, "but I need somebody who has
experience with… with the occult." She stopped speaking for a moment. He
could still hear her breath down the line: soft, but erratic.
"I need you," she said. He had already decided, in that pause when only
her fear had been audible, what reply he would make.
"I'll come."
"I'm grateful to you," she said. "The house is on East 61st Street-" He
scribbled down the details. Her last words were, "Please hurry." Then she
put down the phone.
He made some calls, in the vain hope of placating two of his more excitable
clients, then pulled on his jacket, locked the office, and started downstairs.
The landing and the lobby smelt pungent. As he reached the front door he
caught Chaplin, the janitor, emerging from the basement.
