Nailbiters Read online

  Nailbiters

  Tales of Crime & Psychological Terror

  By Paul B. Kane

  First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

  Black Shuck Books

  a division of

  Great British Horror

  Kent, UK

  All stories © Paul Kane

  Stalking the Stalker © 2003. Originally published in Cemetery Poets: Grave Offerings (Double Dragon Press)

  Grief Stricken © 2014 (Originally published in Noir (NewCon Press)

  Check-out © 2002 (Originally published in Horrorfind)

  The Opportunity © 2001 Originally published in Hidden Corners Issue 1

  Cold Call © 2010 Originally published in HorrorBound Magazine Issue 12

  The Torturer © 2002 Originally published in Touching the Flame (Rainfall Books)

  Remote © 2002 Originally published in Redsine Issue 10 (Prime Books)

  Gemini Rising © 2017

  The Anniversary © 2002 Originally published in Tourniquet Hearts (Prime Books)

  1,2,3…1,2,3 © 2006 Originally published in Estronomicon Issue 6

  The Greatest Mystery © 2011 Originally published in Gaslight Arcanum (Edge Publishing)

  Baggage © 2010 Originally published in Un:Bound

  Graffitiland © 2017

  The Protégé © 2001 Originally published in Hidden Corners Issue 3

  Nine Tenths © 2010 Originally published in Horror Drive-In

  At the Heart of the Maze © 2000 Originally published in The Dream Zone: Special Nightmare Edition

  Blackout © 1999 Originally published in Graveyard Rendezvous Issue 20

  The Cyclops © 2002 Originally published in House of Pain

  R.S.V.P. © 2002 Originally published in The Chronicle Issue 11 (Eternal Night)

  A Nightmare on 34th Street © 2003 Originally published in Scary Holiday Tales To Make You Scream (Double Dragon Books)

  Sin © 2017

  Suit of Lies © 2003 Originally published in The Wildclown Chronicles Year 2, Issue 1

  A Suspicious Mind © 2003 Originally published in FunnyBones (Creative Guy Publishing)

  Cover design and interior layout © Great British Horror, 2017

  The moral right of the author has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For my friends Peter James and Michael Marshall Smith, who walk this fine line better than I ever could.

  Other Books by Paul B. Kane (as Paul Kane unless stated):

  Novels

  Arrowhead

  Broken Arrow

  Arrowland

  Hooded Man (Omnibus)

  The Gemini Factor

  Of Darkness and Light

  Lunar

  Sleeper(s)

  The Rainbow Man (as P.B. Kane)

  Blood RED

  Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell

  Forthcoming: Before & Deep RED

  Novellas & Novelettes

  Signs of Life

  The Lazarus Condition

  Dalton Quayle Rides Out

  RED

  Pain Cages

  Creakers (chapbook)

  The Curse of the Wolf

  Flaming Arrow

  The Bric-a-Brac Man

  The P.I.’s Tale

  Snow

  The PI’s Tale

  The Crimson Mystery

  The Rot

  Collections

  Alone (In the Dark)

  Touching the Flame

  FunnyBones

  Peripheral Visions

  The Adventures of Dalton Quayle

  Shadow Writer

  The Butterfly Man and Other Stories

  The Spaces Between

  Ghosts

  Monsters

  The Dead Trilogy

  Forthcoming: Disexistence & Shadow Casting

  Editor & Co-Editor

  Shadow Writers Vol. 1 & 2

  Terror Tales #1-4

  Top International Horror

  Albions Alptraume: Zombies

  The British Fantasy Society: A Celebration

  Hellbound Hearts

  The Mammoth Book of Body Horror

  A Carnivàle of Horror: Dark Tales from the Fairground

  Beyond Rue Morgue

  Forthcoming: Dark Mirages

  Non-Fiction

  Contemporary North American Film Directors: A Wallflower Critical Guide (Major Contributor)

  Cinema Macabre (Contributor)

  The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy

  Voices in the Dark

  Shadow Writer – The Non-Fiction. Vol. 1: Reviews

  Shadow Writer – The Non-Fiction. Vol. 2: Articles & Essays

  My thanks to Steve Shaw at Black Shuck Books for taking a chance on this publication, not to mention for the superb cover. A huge thank you to Paul Finch for his wonderful introduction, and a massive thank you to all the editors and publishers who took some of these stories originally. As usual, hugs and thank yous to all my friends in the writing and film/TV world, for their continual help both now and in the past; people like Clive Barker, Stephen Jones, Mark Miller, Christopher Fowler, Alexandra Benedict, Stephen Volk, Tim Lebbon, Sarah Pinborough, Mike Carey, Barbie Wilde, John Connolly, Pete & Nicky Crowther, Simon Clark and so many more. Lastly, a big words are not enough thank you, as always, to my wonderfully supportive family and my lovely wife Marie, who keep me going sometimes. Love you guys tons and tons.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Stalking the Stalker

  Grief Stricken

  Check-out

  The Opportunity

  Cold Call

  The Torturer

  Remote

  Gemini Rising

  The Anniversary

  1, 2, 3…1, 2, 3

  The Greatest Mystery

  Baggage

  Graffitiland

  The Protégé

  Nine Tenths

  At the Heart of the Maze

  Blackout

  The Cyclops

  R.S.V.P.

  A Nightmare on 34th Street

  Sin

  Suit of Lies

  A Suspicious Mind

  About the Author

  Introduction

  I hesitate to say that one of the most recognisable features of Paul Kane’s fictional world is its ‘kitchen sink’ atmosphere because readers might take that as a detrimental comment, maybe even an insult – whereas in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

  One of the great strengths of this Chesterfield born-and-bred author, whose father was a coalminer and who grew up entirely immersed in the working class ethos of industrial North England, is that he can find chills – and raw-boned, shudder-inducing chills at that – in what are seemingly the most mundane of situations: a supermarket check-out; a suburban garage; a street-corner boozer; the cramped confines of a telesales office…

  Okay, that isn’t the whole story. We also visit New York in this collection; we join a manhunt across a hellish wasteland; we investigate crime alongside Sherlock Holmes for Heaven’s sake! But for much of the time, quite mischievously, I feel, Kane prefers to tease us on our own everyday turf.

  And just take a minute to consider what that actually means.

  Fear is not a
lien to ordinary folk like us. Some unfortunate lives are ruled by fear. But most of our lives are ruled by routine. We sleep, we work, we shop, we walk our dogs, we have a few pints in the pub, and if we’re lucky we get to go on holiday once a year. It’s not wonderful, but it’s not awful either. Hell, things could be a lot worse.

  And that is where Paul Kane comes in.

  Because Kane’s thing is to craftily twist this everyday normality; to infuse the commonplace with the dark and unexpected; with the aid of a few deft key-strokes, to turn the humdrum into the horrific. And that’s not easy. It takes a rare talent even among writers of the weird and wonderful.

  But it’s not just Kane’s upbringing in life that has allowed him to nail this recognisable world of the ordinary and then effortlessly transform it into something extraordinary, it’s his upbringing as a writer too.

  Perhaps I should explain that…

  I know Paul Kane personally and, I like to think, very well. We have been friends for a long time, having risen together through the ranks of the British Small Press during that late, lamented ‘golden age’ of the 1980s/90s, when hundreds of genre magazines and home-grown horror and fantasy anthologies vied for the attention of a relatively small but intensely enthusiastic readership. We were part of an active group (many members of which have now graduated to bigger and better things), who called themselves the ‘Terror Scribes’, and we would meet on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons in pubs and bars across the North of England. For the most part these were chaotic, smoke-filled drinking dens, crammed with football fans and workers coming off shift, echoing to the blare of the race-meet on the telly in the corner, the clatter of pool balls in the snug, or the shouts of the bar staff as they worked hand-over-fist to supply the noisy throng with a constant river of beer and whiskey.

  In such environments as this, shouting to be heard against a friendly but rowdy backdrop, the whole gang of us honed our skills together as fledgling authors, exchanging ideas, performing our latest pieces aloud, offering critiques, proof-reading, editing, workshopping, and of course invariably sinking gallons and gallons of the local brew.

  That said, don’t be led into thinking that what you’re about to get here is Saturday Night and Sunday Morning mark II – remember, this is horror. I mean, Paul Kane might hail from the same factory-belt background that produced so many of our angry young men of the ’50s and ’60s, but I strongly doubt he thinks of himself in those terms. He’s certainly never been a ‘class warrior’. Everything Kane writes is informed by his past, but his fiction rarely constitutes a polemic, or a treatise on Broken Britain (though there is plenty of Broken Britain in here, trust me). So often it’s the case that Kane’s everyman protagonists lead mundane and even oppressed lives, but his concerns are strictly with the strange, the weird, the unexplained, the deadly.

  Take the householder whose irrational terror of the dark is only made a thousand times worse by an untimely power-cut. Take the shy guy who meets a lovely girl via a dating service, only to discover that when she says she’s got baggage, she means it in the most ghastly way possible.

  Of course, for all these reasons, Nailbiters could be as much a bag of thrillers as horrors. And this is something else we should perhaps take a second or two to admire.

  It’s fashionable these days to pigeon-hole our fiction. Often this is due to the way modern novels, anthologies and even movies are packaged and sold. Crime and thriller stories can be no less gut-thumping in terms of chills, spills, violence and terror than horror stories. But they look and feel different. At least, that is the way we are supposed to think. Thrillers are connected to the ‘real world’, we are told. They could be happening right now, right next door to where we live. Horrors, on the other hand, are more of the imagination. There is a harrowing and surreal darkness at the heart of the horror story, which may disturb us temporarily, though afterwards we can always wipe our brow and say: ‘Phew, thank goodness that couldn’t happen in reality.’

  Well, I’m pleased to say that Kane cheerfully blurs these lines. Without ranging into the realms of complete fantasy he can make the most unlikely nightmares seem very real indeed. Check out the woman so damaged by numerical events in her early life that simply counting is now an ordeal for her. And what about the department store Santa who’s so fed up with his lot that he no longer just gives presents at Christmas? By the same token, with a few subtle psychological tricks, Kane can transform the everyday into something beyond appalling – take the ‘plain Jane’ shop-girl so isolated by her peers that she dreams daily of annihilating her customers. Take the run-of-the-mill job application that leads to a life-shattering catastrophe.

  And what, ultimately, does all this add up to?

  Well, it means you’re holding a very special book in your hands. It contains a bunch of stories that will take you to the edge of your seat and beyond. It is laced with the tough, down-to-Earth realism of the classic noir and yet at the same time, often unexpectedly, it hits the full-on horror button hard. You’ll be charmed by the quality of the writing but shaken by the subjects under discussion

  This won’t be an easy read, or a comfortable one, and though you may feel you’re in familiar territory, don’t be lulled by that either. You’re going to need to brace yourself, though if you’ve already bought this book, I suspect you knew that anyway.

  So sit tight. For all its deceptively homely environs, this is going to be quite a ride.

  Paul Finch, 2016

  Stalking the Stalker

  He doesn’t know it yet,

  But I’m stalking him, stalking her.

  As he sits up a tree outside,

  Her apartment:

  I’m there.

  When he raises his binoculars,

  I raise mine.

  In the street, the crowd,

  He follows her.

  I follow him.

  He loves her – in a way he can’t explain.

  But I understand because…

  I love him.

  In fact I’m mad about him.

  Do you see?

  He’s her number one fan,

  Her secret admirer.

  It’s how he signs himself.

  But I am his – so secret he has no idea,

  That I am even alive.

  Once or twice she’s turned,

  Caught sight of him. Of something…

  A figure.

  He’s turned himself, looking for…the police?

  Or for me?

  Does he know?

  Does he know I’m here, watching him?

  Waiting, anticipating?

  Can he really see me?

  Feel me?

  He’s clever – that’s why I want him.

  But I’m just as sharp as he is.

  I hope it’ll make him proud.

  I’m every inch the stalker…

  Of the stalker.

  I walk the walk,

  I talk the talk.

  I stalk the stalk…

  That makes me smile.

  So much.

  But what’s this?

  I’m turning myself…

  The glint of something,

  Of moonlight reflecting,

  Off glass: a figure.

  Could it be?

  No, it’s too ridiculous.

  I hardly dare hope.

  Just a shadow, that’s all.

  Not…

  Not someone who loves me?

  Who wants me?

  Not a stalker,

  Stalking the stalker,

  Of the stalker.

  Grief Stricken

  There he is, Lomax’s quarry.

  The man chats, flirts with members of staff; hasn’t the faintest idea what’s waiting for him. Lomax grunts – he’ll wipe that look of smug satisfaction off the prick’s face. One way or another, that bastard will come to grief.

  Images fill Lomax’s mind: the cutting of skin; flesh parting; blood spurting and pooling, organs being sliced into, r
emoved.

  The man finishes his conversation with his female co-workers, who fawn in front of him, giggling like schoolgirls, pushing back strands of hair over their ears – might as well be sucking his cock right there and then in the corridor, in front of everyone. The man laughs too; Lomax fucking hates that. What right does he have to be happy? What right does anyone?

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’ Lomax is startled by the question, didn’t hear anyone come up behind him, beside him. You’re meant to be a hunter, what the fuck? He was too focussed on the object of his pursuit. He turns to face her, and she reminds him so much of… Lomax shakes his head, more to clear his mind than to answer her question. But she can’t help him. Nobody can; not even God or the Devil or anything in-between. Not anymore. ‘Only you look a little…lost.’

  He is lost. He has been for some time. But there’s nothing this woman can do about it. Only he can do that, work things through – follow this to its logical conclusion. Only then can he find some sort of release.

  Lomax knows he has to say something, but isn’t sure what. He manages, ‘I’m fine, thanks.’ It’s clear he is far from okay.

  ‘Only you were—’

  ‘I said I’m fine!’ he snaps, and the woman takes a step back.

  Don’t give yourself away. Don’t let her see what you’re really here for, what your purpose is, Lomax tells himself. He smiles awkwardly. ‘I’m sorry, it’s been a long day. Long week, in fact. I’m here…you know, visiting someone.’

  The woman nods her understanding. She’s seen all kinds of ways of handling this stuff, of dealing with such heightened emotional states – though not his, he can guarantee that. She won’t have seen Lomax’s way. It’s unique. She leaves him alone, however, so his ploy has worked. He turns back, looks over at the space he’d been scrutinising. The man is gone.

  Shit!

  Lomax moves forward, his long coat flapping behind him like a superhero. He is anything but. Can’t leap tall buildings or dodge bullets, or…or turn back time by flying round the Earth. But he can do one thing, and he does it well. He’s a hunter, he finds people. He’s been doing it all his life. So find him; find the man you’re chasing.