Pain Cages Read online

  PAIN CAGES

  By

  Paul Kane

  ‘Paul Kane’s writing has a style and elegance, he’s a first rate storyteller.’

  ~ Clive Barker – Bestselling author of The Hellbound Heart

  - BOOKS of the DEAD -

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  ‘An exceptional volume… Welcome to Kaneworld!’

  ~ Stephen Volk, BAFTA-winning creator of Ghostwatch

  ‘Paul Kane’s lean, stripped-back prose is a tool that’s very much fit for purpose. He knows how to make you want to avoid the shadows and the cracks in the pavement.’

  ~ Mike Carey – Bestselling author of Lucifer

  ‘Wonderfully unsettling… Paul Kane has offered you a dark and contemplative gift.’

  ~ Christopher Golden – Bestselling author of King Kong

  ‘Paul Kane’s fiction shows intelligence and imagination – he's a writer who’s going places, and I can't wait to see what he comes up with next!’

  ~ Sarah Langan – Bestselling author of Audrey’s Door

  ‘Definitely a name to watch out for in the future of British Horror fiction.’

  ~ Graham Joyce – Bestselling author of The Silent Land

  ‘Paul Kane has crafted a nifty little story with that greatest of gifts: the element of surprise.’

  ~ Mick Garris, Creator of Masters of Horror

  ‘This is one area where Kane shines, his sense of character: each and every one is real, and as such the reader immediately latches onto them…’

  ~ Dark Horizons

  BOOKS of the DEAD

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, events, dialog, and situations in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of reprinted excerpts for the purpose of reviews.

  Collection copyright 2011 by Paul Kane

  PAIN CAGES

  Cover Art by Daniele Serra

  Edited by James Roy Daley

  Signs of Life: copyright 2005. First published in Signs of Life

  The Lazarus Condition: copyright 2007. First published in The Lazarus Condition

  Pain Cages: copyright 2011. Original for this collection

  Halflife: copyright 2011. Original for this collection

  Visit us at: Books of the Dead

  Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  PAIN CAGES

  HALFLIFE

  SIGNS OF LIFE

  THE LAZARUS CONDITION

  AUTHOR’S BIO

  Living and Breathing Horror:

  An introduction to Paul Kane

  By

  Stephen Volk

  Stories. What stories?

  Shamefully, when I first met Paul Kane I had no idea he wrote stuff.

  Truly.

  I’m an idiot. I admit it.

  The perpetually smiling guy I met for the first time at FantasyCon (or was it World Horror?) several years ago was clearly a mover and shaker in the British Fantasy Society. You could see a mile off he was obviously well known and well-loved in that crowd. (A crowd, I hasten to add, I was starting to feel all group-huggy about myself.)

  What was also blindingly obvious within seconds was that this guy was a fan of Horror. Bigtime. (I mean, come on––the black t-shirt was somewhat of a giveaway.)

  He talked with massive enthusiasm for the genre he adored. And still adores, with a palpable conviction. Books. Movies. Authors. Filmmakers. No question: you cut Paul Kane, the love of horror will come gushing out and splatter the porcelain.

  But… stories?

  I say this only to emphasize my ignorance. And thereby pump up my delight in discovering said stories, a clutch of which you hold in your hands right now.

  And they’re beauties.

  It seems inconceivable now that I didn’t recognize Paul from the off as the editor of Terror Tales, Shadow Writers and numerous fine BFS publications; that his fiction crept up on me from Peripheral Visions, planted its clammy hand on my shoulder with RED, breathed its acrid stench on the back of my neck with Alone, Of Darkness and Light and, more recently, donkey-punched my quivering soul with the Arrowhead books and his editing of a masterful compilation spawned by the Clive Barker universe he loves––Hellbound Hearts.

  Paul Kane is the real deal because he quite simply lives and breathes horror.

  By breathing, I mean, he couldn’t not do it. Right, Paul? Any more than you have a choice about taking the next breath. You just do it. It’s you.

  And I love that.

  I love that this is a big, chunky Stephen-King-like portmanteau of novellas, and you have that Stephen-King-like way of delivering on genre expectations, but twisting the knife.

  The following tales are not just of the unexpected, but of the uncomfortable and the uncontrollable, the unwelcome and the impossible made flesh.

  They are about pain and longing, threats and loneliness, the need for connection and connections severed, brutally.

  And did I mention pain?

  Yes. These are stories of shackles and emaciation. Of mutilation and psychic ruin.

  Somewhere buried here is a dream of being lost in a forest of bones.

  Of bones…

  But stop. I won’t tell you the stories. God forbid. Instead I’ll tell you what glimpses I had when Paul Kane lifted the veil on the unknown. The things once seen that can’t be unseen…

  Like a place called “The Cut”…

  Like a brotherhood dedicated to pain…

  Like the interlocked fates of a zodiac of travelers…

  A rueful ex-band member struggling with a violent secret––motivated by the taste of human meat…

  A girlfriend who asks to be taken beyond her limits…

  A dead man walking home to see his mum…

  Teeth sinking into a tanned brunette…

  The virus behind the virus…

  A man lost in his own brain, surrounded by infected tissue, infected memories…

  Another with a voice in his head, asking him to wonder what a woman’s insides look like…

  Blood appearing black in the moonlight, with the sheen of motor oil…

  A monster, flooring the accelerator, thinking about the future…

  A man who vanishes, ushering in a new dawn for Mankind…

  Get the picture? You won’t.

  Not till you read them. And you’ll realize ultimately that though the rough path through Paul Kane’s world involves a lot of pain and anguish, the pain isn’t what the journeys are about. Not really.

  Horror’s never really about that. Not good horror. Pain is just a way to get your attention. Paul knows that.

  This exceptional volume will show you a kind of tapestry of separate experiences that make up one quilt (so to speak), where the maker is the same, and the sum is far more than the constituent parts.

  Welcome to Kaneworld. You’re in his hands now. Follow the guide at your peril. But be assured, the author never puts a foot wrong.

  The collection before you finishes up with a terrific story about ordinary folks’ inability to cope with the metaphysical. So much more than a “zombie story” many lesser Horror writers would have been content to make it. Paul recognized that his idea could be a metaphor for something bigger. The biggest. He followed his instinct and it paid off. Wonderfully, in my opinion.

  Because in the end, the “condition” Paul Kane is interested in isn’t death, but the condition called living.

  And the remarkable, almost supernatural truth, that in spite of the pain, we get through.

  Stephen Volk

  Bradford-
on-Avon

  April 2011

  * * *

  PAIN CAGES

  Prologue

  Ask someone to describe pain…

  And they might say, the feeling they get when they stub their toe on a table, or accidentally hit their thumb with a hammer when they’re banging a nail into the wall. Pain can be more than merely physical, of course: it can hurt when a marriage breaks up or a loved one dies. That’s even harder to put into words.

  But these are all just shadows, echoes of something much greater.

  Pain, true pain is impossible to describe, no matter how hard anyone tries. It can rip apart a person’s soul, leaving them a shell of what they once were. And if it is hard to endure, it is certainly much harder to watch.

  For some.

  This story is about pain, in all its forms. We enter this world screaming and crying as we fight to take our first breath––being struck on the back to rouse us into consciousness. Most of us leave this world the same way: with a jolt. If we’re lucky it will be quick, if we’re not…

  This story is about pain.

  True pain.

  One

  The piercing screams wake me.

  Not straight away, but slowly. They sound as if they’re coming from a million miles away. The closer to consciousness I draw, though, the louder they are, like someone turned up the volume on a stereo: surround sound, sub woofers, the works. Then that I realize they’re not part of some strange dream, but coming from the real world.

  From somewhere nearby.

  I open my eyes, or at least I try to. I never would have thought it could be so difficult; the amount of times I’ve taken this simple action for granted. But now… Actually, I can’t tell whether they’re open or shut because it’s still so dark and I can’t really feel my eyelids. My guts are doing somersaults; I feel like I need to be sick.

  And all the time the screaming continues.

  My face––my whole body––is pressed up against a hard, solid surface. I’m lying on a smooth but cold floor, curled up like a cat in front of a fireplace, though nowhere near as contented. I try to lift my head. I thought it was difficult to open my eyes, but this is something else entirely. Jesus, it hurts––a shockwave traveling right down the length of my neck and spine. Instinctively I try to clutch at my back, but I can’t move my hand either. Must have been one hell of a bender last night. And the screaming? Had to be a TV somewhere, someone watching a really loud horror film with no thought for anyone else. Wait, had I turned it on after managing to get back home in God alone knows what state?

  This is the weirdest hangover ever. I have some of the symptoms––head feels like it’s caving in, aching all over, stomach churning… But my tongue doesn’t feel like someone’s been rubbing it with sandpaper; I’m not thirsty from dehydration. Maybe someone slipped something into my glass?

  Maybe you took something voluntarily. Wouldn’t be the first time.

  There’s movement to my left and my head whips sideways. I immediately regret it as stars dance across my field of vision. I still can’t see anything, even after the universe of stars fade. Now I realize some sick son of a bitch has put a blindfold over my eyes.

  More movement, this time to the right. I try to lift my hands to pull down the material, but again they won’t budge, neither of them. My fingertips brush against metal and now I know why. It’s not because of any fucking hangover: I’m handcuffed. My fingers explore further and find a chain attached to the cuffs. The manacles?

  When I hear the screams again, the terror racked up a notch, it dawns on me that I’m in a whole world of trouble. Maybe my groggy condition made me slow on the uptake, I don’t know, or perhaps I just couldn’t acknowledge the shouts of agony as real. But they are; there’s no doubting that now. And I’m definitely suffering from the after-effects of drugs, just not in the way I thought. Drugs designed to knock me out rather than get me high.

  More movement, this time a swishing sound in front of and behind me at the same time. How is that possible? My heart’s pumping fast, breathing coming in heavy gasps. I try to say something but all that comes out are a series of odd grunts.

  “Sshh,” whispers a voice; can’t tell whether it’s a man or a woman, but they’re close. “Keep quiet, and stay still!”

  The advice seems sound, but I’ve never been one for taking any kind of orders. I pull at the chains holding my hands in front of me. Now I realize my feet are shackled too.

  “Do as he says,” comes another hushed voice, this one definitely a woman, “or you’re going to get yourself killed.”

  “And us with him,” spits the first person.

  Killed? What the fuck? So many questions: where am I? Who are these people talking to me? Why can I feel heat on my face? Smell something burning? No… cooking. Like roasting meat on a barbeque.

  Struggling again, I scrape my face against the floor, trying to pull down the blindfold. The screams reach fever pitch, mixed with pleas for help. The cloying smell is in my nose, down my throat; I gag.

  I nose at the ground like a horse eating hay, and the blindfold slips a fraction. I can see a little through my right eye; there isn’t a lot of light, but I see metal bars in front of me, all around me. A glimpse of the cages on either side: a man, no more than forty, cowering in the corner of his. A woman––the one who’d told me I’d get myself killed––is transfixed by something right in front of her, tears tracking down her cheeks.

  I follow her gaze and wish I hadn’t.

  I see the shape, the thing in yet another of these round cages. It’s smoking, charred almost black, but here and there are patches of pink. A tuft or two of singed hair at the top of what must have been its head. Its eyeballs have melted, the liquid running down its cheeks, viscous and thick; flesh pulled taut over teeth that gleam so brightly they could have been used in a toothpaste commercial. This hunk of burnt flesh I’m looking at is––was––a person. That makes the stench even more pungent; just that bit more sickening.

  I notice the screaming has stopped. It must have been coming from inside that cage as the flames did their worst before petering out.

  It feels like I’m watching the body for hours, but it can’t be more than a minute.

  Then, without any warning, the burnt figure lurches forward. No screams this time––its vocal chords are jelly––but its body rattles against the bars of the cage, which swings, suspended above the ground (as we all are).

  Flesh, and what’s left of the person’s clothes, have stuck to the bottom of the cage, coming away from its body like molten plastic and revealing more raw pinkness. It makes only one last-ditch attempt for freedom before collapsing, never to move again.

  This time I really do throw up, seeing stars again as the blindfold slips back over my eye. Too late, I’ve seen it now… I can’t ever forget.

  When I pass out I barely notice the transition––darkness replaced by darkness, black with black.

  But I still see that body, hanging. A scorched mess that had once been human.

  The ghosts of its screams following me back now into the void.

  Interlude:

  Twenty Years Ago

  This happened to me when I was ten; still holding on to childhood for grim death, in no particular hurry to be an adult.

  I grew up on a council estate away from the city––farms and fields within walking distance. The houses were all uniform grey, there was a small park that the older kids wrecked periodically, and the council failed to keep any of the streets tidy. Old women gossiped over fences while young girls left school and became baby-making machines so they could live off benefits for the next twenty or thirty years.

  Mum and Dad were still together back then. She worked part-time in a bookies and he worked on the busses. At family gatherings I’d sometimes hear my Uncle Jim telling people Mum could have done so much better than Dad. “With her looks, she could have had her pick.”

  He was right about my Mum, though. She was beautifu
l in a kind of film star way, all blonde hair and curls like Marilyn Monroe or Jean Harlow, and even at that age she’d lost none of the glamour. Sure, Dad was boring, but I like to think she ended up with him because he was a kind man with a kind face. In the end she did ‘do better’ as my Uncle would have called it, running off with owner of the bookies. She ended up with money, but was as miserable as sin. And, we suspected, the guy beat her. While my Dad wallowed in a tiny flat, getting drunk until his liver just gave up the ghost. But that’s another story, and long after this one.

  I first saw The Monster one Bank Holiday. Dad was working overtime, but Mum had the day off. I was an only child, so had to amuse myself a lot of the time. That day I was getting under my mother’s feet while she was trying to watch some musical on TV.

  “Christopher Edward Warwick, do you have to make such a row!” she finally bawled. I couldn’t really blame her: I’d turned the whole house into a spaceship and was busy piloting it into the deeper reaches of the Galaxy, battling one-eyed aliens with veiny skins.

  She sent me out to play with the other kids, but that wasn’t really my thing. I ended up wandering off to explore what the locals called ‘The Cut’––I never understood why, because it didn’t look like anyone had cut the grass down there in centuries. Maybe it was because a pitiful excuse for a canal ran the length of it like a wound. Here I could pretend that I was in the jungle where giant snakes and lions lived, and down by the water there were man-eating crocodiles (in actual fact you were more likely to find used condoms and fag ends).

  I didn’t go down there very often, not many kids did, but on that day I wandered further than I meant to––up a winding path to a small iron bridge crossing the canal. There I played Pooh sticks, something I hadn’t done since I was six or seven, dropping twigs in the water on one side of the bridge to see which would come out first on the other side. Not much of a game, but the snakes and lions appeared to be hiding that day.