Read Feelings of Fear Online

Authors: Graham Masterton

Tags: #Horror, #Fiction, #Short Stories (Single Author)

Feelings of Fear (31 page)

BOOK: Feelings of Fear
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“Oh, Christ!”
shrieked Terence. The shining steel disks dragged him in like gristle into an old-fashioned meat mincer. His right arm was crushed into a bloody rope of bones and thin white tendons, and twisted around the spindle. Another disk cut diagonally into his shoulder and opened up his chest, so that one of his lungs blew out like a balloon. His groin was minced into bloody rags, and his legs were twisted in opposite directions.

The plow-blades stopped. Martin could see Terence's head wedged against one of the disks. His eyes were wide with exhilaration.

He tried to say something, but all that came out from between his lips was a large bubble of blood, which wetly burst. His eyes slowly lost their focus, and he died.

Although Terence's death was so grisly, Martin was strangely elated by it. It was the expression on his face, as if he had found at last what he had always been looking for – as if he would have laughed, if he had been able to.

*      *      *

The following Saturday, inside the garage, Tybalt slowly reversed a Mercedes saloon over Sticky's stomach. Martin stayed outside, but he heard Sticky sobbing in pain for almost twenty minutes, and a single runnel of blood crept out from underneath the closed garage doors, and soaked into the pea-shingle.

“Have you seen anything yet?” he asked Tybalt, as the two of them sat over supper the following evening.

Tybalt poured himself another glass of Fleurie. “Not yet,” he said evasively. “But you will, won't you? It's your turn tomorrow.”

Martin didn't sleep that night. He sat on the end of the bed staring at his reflection in the dressing-room mirror and wondering if he were mad. Yet somehow, it seemed the most perfect and logical way to go. Even if he didn't meet Sarah in the afterlife, at least he would have shared the same death.

At seven o'clock, Tybalt knocked discreetly on his bedroom door and asked him if he were ready.

It had been impossible to find a lake or a reservoir where they could moor two boats close together and stretch a steel line between them. So Tybalt had devised a substitute: a motorcycle, and a wire tied at neck-level between two substantial horse-chestnut trees.

It was a sharp, sunny morning. They walked together down to the paddock, with Martin pushing the motorcycle.

“I haven't been on a bike for years,” he told Tybalt. What he was trying to say was: I hope I don't make a mess of this, and blind myself, or cut half my face off, instead of dying instantly.

Tybalt said, “You'll be fine. Just make sure you're going full-throttle.”

He sat patiently in the saddle while Tybalt attached the electrodes. “It's funny,” he said. “I feel really at peace.”

“Yes,” said Tybalt. “Death is a good place to go to, when you understand what life really is.”

“So what
is
life, really?”

“Life is mostly imaginary. That's what I saw when I nearly died, coming off that motorbike. Our imagination always protects us from ugliness, and unhappiness, and fear. We have a gift for rationalizing
our existence, to make it seem bearable. We're always looking on the bright side.”

“It's human nature,” said Martin.

“No, no. You don't realize what I'm talking about when I say ‘imaginary.' I mean that our lives as we know them and recognize them are mostly in our minds. You'll see, believe me. Beauty is imaginary. Happiness is imaginary.”

“I was happy with Sarah.”

“You
imagined
you were happy with Sarah.”

“I just don't follow.”

Tybalt stuck on the last electrode. “I can't explain it any more clearly than that. You'll just have to experience it for yourself.”

“No-tell me!”

Tybalt shook his head. “If I told you, Martin, you wouldn't believe me. This is something you have to witness for yourself. Now, start up your engine, and think of Sarah. Think how
she
felt.”

Martin took a deep breath. It was plain that Tybalt wasn't going to explain himself any further. All the same, what he had said had given Martin a strange feeling of dread, as if there were something far worse beyond those horse-chestnut trees than instant oblivion.

He pressed the self-starter, and the motorcycle whined into life. Tybalt leaned close to him and said, “You're still sure about this? You can change your mind … go home, build a new life. I won't think any the less of you.”

Go home to what? A silent flat, with Sarah's clothes still hanging in the closet? Years of grief, and loneliness?

“The recording wires will play out behind you,” said Tybalt. “Don't worry about them. Go as fast as you can. And keep your chin up.”

Martin revved the motorcycle again and again. The sun began to come out behind the trees, and the morning looked almost heavenly. At last he thought: this is the moment. This is it. The dew was glittering and a flight of starlings came bursting past. You couldn't leave the world at a better time.

The motorcycle sped across the paddock. Martin thought of Sarah, on her jet-ski. He could see the two horse-chestnuts but he couldn't even see the wire yet. It must have been the same for Sarah. Perhaps she didn't see it at all. He opened the throttle wider and the motorcycle
bucked and jostled over the grass at more than fifty miles an hour. The breeze fluffed in his ears; the sun shone in his eyes. Chin up, remember.

He felt the blow. It was like a tremendous karate-chop to the adam's apple. He heard the motorcycle roaring off-key, and then suddenly everything was spinning out of control. His head hit the grass, and bounced, and he
saw,
he could actually
see.

And he understood then what Tybalt had been trying to tell him, and why Tybalt had been trying so hard to see what only the dying can see.

He couldn't scream, because he was decapitated, and his brain was a split-second instant away from total death. But he could scream inside his mind. And that was how he died, screaming.

Tybalt sat alone in the house in front of his computer, running the recordings again and again. Martin's was one of the clearest. He could see him approaching the horse-chestnut trees. At the last second, he could see the wire.

Then – as Martin's head flew from his body – he saw what he himself had seen when he nearly died on the Kingston bypass.

He saw the polluted yellow sky, with tattered rooks circling everywhere. He saw gnarled and shriveled trees, and grass as slimy as seaweed. He saw a distant house with a sagging roof, and fires burning in the distance. He saw hideous, hunched creatures running along the lane. He even glimpsed a brief blurred image of himself, the way he really was.

A tall, white-faced figure, distant and sinister, with frightening deformities.

He switched off the computer and went downstairs. He opened the back door and stepped out into the garden. The sun was still shining – or, at least, it was still shining in his imagination. He lit a cigarette.

A cat came stalking through the grass. It stopped for a moment, and stared at him, almost as if it instinctively knew what he had discovered with technology: that it was not a tortoiseshell with gray eyes and gleaming fur, but something grotesque, like he was, and that both of them were living in a hell on earth.

 

This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

Copyright © 2000 by Graham Masterton.

The moral right of author has been asserted

All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this
publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation
electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any
unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution
and civil claims for damages

ISBN: 9781448204441
eISBN: 9781448203857

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BOOK: Feelings of Fear
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