Dark Winter Tales: a collection of horror short stories

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 her fingernails, before glancing back. A figure approached along the main drag; at first it looked distant – was only visible through the intermittent patches of moonlight – but very quickly it assumed those grotesque quasi-reptile proportions. Its faltering, lumbering gait was also unmistakable; as was the glint of steel in its clenched right hand.

With more breathless shrieks, Sharon ran back into the park, veering right when she spied an open doorway. She had no idea what to expect beyond it, but immediately found herself in a complex network of passages, smoothly glazed walls encompassing her from every side. Phantom Sharon Joneses leapt and cavorted, bodies elongated, heads expanded; illusions rendered even more demonic by the refracting moonlight. Not that twists and turns were a problem for her pursuer. Somewhere close behind, mirrors exploded one by one as he put his shoulder to them. Billions of fragments rained ahead of his wild, bullocking charge. Sharon attempted the same, arms wrapped around her head. Despite her stab-jacket and the thick tunic beneath, flecks of glass wormed their way under her collar and cuffs, cutting, stinging. When she blundered through one already-broken frame, a hanging shard of glass drew a burning stripe across the top of her head, though in truth she barely felt this. She snatched the shard down; it was twelve inches long and shaped like a dagger – its edges sliced into her fingers, and yet she clung onto it.

With hot blood dribbling into her eyes, she hobbled left, groping along a side-passage that seemed to lead to brighter moonlight, so desperate to reach this that even when another mirror disintegrated in front of her, and a brutal form blocked her path, she drove straight on.

Perhaps McKellan was more surprised than she was. He had a weapon, but now so did Sharon – and she was the one who struck first, plunging the shard into the top right side of his chest, puncturing the rumpled costume and the human tissue beneath – the glass grating on bone as she drove it deep, to half its length at least, before lodging it fast. Her foe made no sound but reeled backwards, allowing her to shove past him and head on to the light, which, as she’d hoped, turned out to be a window. She kicked it until it fell to jangling pieces, and clambered through.

After the hallucinogenics of the Mirror Maze, the moonlight outside brilliantly bathed another thoroughfare lying straight and open. She’d staggered fifty yards along it, mopping blood from her brow, before glancing back. McKellan had emerged behind her, but now was toppling sideways rather than following. Even as she watched, he fell heavily to the tarmac.

She turned to run on, and slammed into a massive, iron-hard body.

Sharon screamed and lashed out with her fists, before strong, gloved hands caught hold of her wrists. Through fresh trickles of blood, she gazed up into the saturnine features of Sergeant Pugh.

“What the devil … PC Jones, what the …?”

“McKellan,” she whispered. “It was Blair McKellan … he killed DS Slater …”

“Slater … Blair McKellan?”

“But I killed him!”

“What …?” Pugh looked perplexed. “What are you talking … what happened?”

Aware that she was ranting unintelligibly, she tried to explain, not even attempting to conceal the nature of her relationship with the late detective. Halfway through, Pugh – looking very alarmed – checked the gash on her scalp, and after mumbling something unsympathetic about it only being a flesh wound, strode back along the thoroughfare, ordering her to stay close.

“No!” she yelped. “I’m not going back there!”

“Pull yourself together, girl! You’re supposed to be a police officer!”

She stammered out a few more semi-coherent objections, but the sight of Pugh, stern as ever, unimpressed by anything, seemed to restore a half-sense of normality. And in any case, McKellan was dead. He had to be.

“How many other units are attending?” she whimpered, following from a distance.

“None, as far as I’m aware.” Pugh’s features tautened as he spotted the shape lying on the tarmac ahead. “No-one even knows where you are. It’s pure good fortune I swung by North Shore and spotted your vehicle.” He hurried forward, speaking urgently into his radio. Though Sharon fancied she heard a fizzing of static, she didn’t hear anyone at Comms respond. He tried again as he knelt beside the casualty.

She halted a few yards away and held her breath.

Wasn’t there a lack of blood? She’d stabbed McKellan deeply, and yet there was no blood spattered across the footway. How much of what she’d penetrated was McKellan, and how much was monster suit?

And where was the shard she’d used?

That last question struck her like a mallet.

She’d left it jutting from beneath the killer’s collarbone. Yet it wasn’t there now – because it was in his left hand.

Sharon watched as, in seeming slow-motion, that long bayonet of glass plunged up and around, striking Sergeant Pugh in the left eye. By the time the steel blade appeared and sheared into the side of Pugh’s neck, she was already running again. She only looked back once – but this was sufficient to show her supervisor’s limp corpse being whirled around like a rag doll and launched into the Mirror Maze through its demolished window. It was also sufficient to distract her so that she blundered headlong into a low barrier, fell over it and landed upside down in a litter-filled concrete channel.

The blow to her already-wounded cranium was dizzying, but her adrenalin kept flowing, pumping her full of energy. As awareness seeped quickly back into her head, she sighted the costumed horror approaching the other side of the barrier. She lurched to her feet and staggered along the channel, following it through an arched entrance into another indistinguishable building. She ran blindly again, hands out in front. A single backwards glance showed an ungainly silhouette coming relentlessly in pursuit.

From the next corner, she spied a downward shaft of moonlight. She tottered towards it – only to be stopped short by a fearsome face apparently suspended about twelve feet in the air. Heart-pounding moments followed before she recognised it as the face of an Aztec god, and realised that she was in the River Caves. What was more, now that her eyes were attuning, she saw a framework of scaffolding standing alongside the statue. At the top of this, some kind of trapdoor hung open. Without thinking, she climbed. He would know where she’d gone – the hollow bars rang and echoed – but would he be able to follow her in his monster get-up?

At the top, Sharon hauled herself through the aperture, which in fact was an old skylight, and found herself on a sloped roof greasy with moss. She slipped as she tried to turn around, landing heavily on her bruised side. As she lay winded, she peered down into the darkened interior. His twisted form was already ascending the scaffolding with no discernible difficulty. Just like he’d ridden the Crazy Train. Just like he’d survived a deep stab wound in the chest. It was impossible, it made no sense – but it was happening.

Weeping at the unfairness of it, Sharon tried to scrabble down the roof on her buttocks and ankles, but gravity took over and she began to slide, rocketing over the edge and dropping a considerable distance before hitting another, lower roof. This one, apparently consisting of plywood and tar-paper, simply collapsed underneath her, jarring her left ankle and turning her upright again as she fell through it. Some seven feet below, her injured ankle blazed with even more pain as she hit a solid, cage-like frame, which possibly had once contained a motor or generator.

The collision flung her sideways onto an old mattress made sodden with decay – at least, she thought it was due to decay.

She sat bolt-upright as she realised that she wasn’t in this dingy place alone. The moonlight shining through the shattered roof revealed a figure seated on the floor against the wall opposite – though the destruction wrought on this poor soul made even the combined agonies of her lacerated scalp and sprained ankle dwindle. Whoever he had been, someone had hacked and slashed his face and throat to a ghastly ruin. Sharon scampered away crablike, hands sliding in pools of clotted gore, clattering through empty bottles and cans, only to slam into a second figure slumped against the other wall. This one had been propped up in a musty sleeping bag; as it now fell over her, its head detached and bounced into the shadows.

Whining and weeping, scrabbling through newspapers and rags all slimy and foul, she wriggled free and had to use a wall of rubble-cluttered shelves to drag herself to her feet. Dust and cobwebs plumed into her face, clogging her nose and mouth. There was a thunderous impact on the roof, and splinters erupted downward. A black shadow blotted out the moonlight.

Gasping, she flung herself around the walls, trying to find the door, hammering into more obstructions, jolting her injured ankle, barking her shins. She twisted as she tripped, grabbing at another shelf. It tore away from the wall, showering her with bric-a-brac, which she wildly rummaged through, seeking any kind of weapon she could find. But all that came to hand was something like a stiff tube of plastic with a grip on one end. The idea struck her that, if all else failed, she could jab this at her tormentor, maybe take out his eyes the way he had taken out Slater’s.

Dear God, Dear Christ … Geoff!

There was another heavy impact, this time on the floor behind her. She spun, hefting the ridiculous tube as though it were a knife – and only then, in the better light, realising what it actually was. Even as she did this, the interloper rose to his feet and turned his crazy, crumpled face towards her – and lunged.

More by luck than design, Sharon fell to one side, the blade bypassing her and striking a large plastic object in the recess behind. Whatever this was, it burst apart, gouts of fluid exploding over Sharon, but also drenching McKellan, sloshing not just down his costume but around his feet. The chemical stench of it brought immediate tears to her eyes – diesel. The maniac had ripped into some kind of fuel container.

She scrambled back across the room on all fours, now through a slurry of mingled blood and oil. The blade slashed over her head as McKellan twirled, gashing a huge chunk from the wall.

The door, where was the fucking door?

Clambering over a corpse, she saw it: an upright crack of light. She jumped up and threw her shoulder against it. It shuddered in its frame, but resisted. With hoarse screams, she scrabbled for a lock, sensing the presence turning around behind her. She found the latch, lifted it and yanked the door open. As she did, she spun back, pumping her thumb on the plunger built into the handgrip of the butane candle lighter.

It had to work, it had to work …

But it wasn’t doing.

Until a tiny flame suddenly spurted to life at the end of the tube.

Sharon flung it at the monstrous vision – which in less than one second was engulfed in a curtain of roaring flames.