The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales (2 page)

Outside, the air was cold, clammy and thick. The shock of it made Knox gasp for breath momentarily. For a second he thought of returning to the café and forgetting about the whole thing. But he pressed on instead, accompanied by the sound of his heels clattering across the slippery cobblestones. He could see only a short distance ahead, and the streetlamps burned like spectral pools of light in the gloom. Knox knew he could not have kept pace with a younger, slimmer, fitter man, and it was only the fact that his quarry was as overweight as Knox that made the chase a contest. He had no idea if the stranger even knew he was being followed along the series of narrow alleyways and claustrophobic courtyards, although from the circuitous route taken, it seemed likely.

The streets became a delirium of images, of skeletal trees, arched passageways and tendrils of fog.

Just as Knox had reached the point of breathless collapse and could not continue, he found that the stranger’s stamina had also given out only moments before. He saw the fat man’s bulk leant up against railings, hunched over and gasping for air. Knox summoned his last reserves of energy and hurled himself towards the fat man before he could land a first blow.

All the hatred, rage and disappointment he had ever felt in life seemed to well up inside him and demanded vengeance upon this individual. Knox could not even bring himself to say anything to the fat man, but found his hands fumbling madly towards the stranger’s throat. The fog fortuitously closed in around them in order to hide Knox’s crime. The blood seemed to boil in his veins, and he squeezed and squeezed the fat man’s fleshly throat, choking him to death. Knox heard a voice, its accent indistinguishable, croak out the words
I waited for you
, or what sounded like them, before a gurgling sound and then final silence.

Impossible that he had not seen his tormentor’s—
his victim’s
face. But it was true. And Knox realised that, had the fog not closed in, he would have deliberately avoided looking at it, because he was unaccountably terrified of what he would see. He was grateful to have been spared the sight of the dead stranger’s face at the end, since he had pulled out the jack-knife he always carried in his breast pocket, the one with the corkscrew at one end and the blade at the other, and slashed madly at the countenance of the corpse, tearing through flesh and scratching against the bone of the skull. He used the weapon to slice and hack until his hands were dripping, and the cuffs of his Harris Tweed jacket soaked with blood.

But the deed had not been carried out silently. The sounds of the struggle, and of his victim’s cries, had been heard. Knox heard the noise of advancing footsteps racing across the cobblestones behind him. There was more than one person closing in. Knox was sure no-one could have seen him commit the murder, for the darkness and all-encompassing fog had been his ally, but he had to flee now and flee quickly.

A return to his hotel in order to collect his meagre luggage seemed out of the question, for haste was of the essence, and Knox resolved to make his way to Strasgol Station, which he recalled was close by. He would board the first available train; clean himself up immediately in one of the compartment toilets and travel as far away from the town as he was able. As he stumbled through the narrow alleyways that weaved between the mouldering buildings, he thought to check his wallet. He’d cashed some traveller’s cheques yesterday, and had a sudden fear he might have lost it in the struggle with the fat man. Nothing was missing.

Knox heard no sound of pursuit and, after walking for some ten minutes, arrived at the ill-lit and rundown concourse of the train station. A few passengers milled around inside under grimy fluorescent strip lighting, but it was late at night, and, in order to hide the blood on his hands and on the cuffs of his jacket, he stuffed his hands deep into his pockets. The ticket office had closed, and a sign on the notice board indicated that payment should be made to the conductor on the train. Also pinned to the notice board was a timetable. The final service, at eleven fifty, was scheduled to depart in five minutes, and was the express to Losenef.

Knox kept his head down as he joined the other seven passengers who were making their way onto the platform. The train was already waiting for them. It consisted of six coaches painted with olive livery and a driving cab, marked PKP SN-61. The passengers climbed aboard, hauling their luggage into the compartments, and Knox waited until the other seven travellers had chosen seats before he joined the service. He wanted to find a seat where he could not easily be seen by anyone else, at least until he had managed to clean himself up. The very last compartment of the rear coach was completely unoccupied and so Knox chose this one for his purposes, climbing inside only as the platform guard blew his whistle and the train actually began to move.

Once he was seated and the train picked up speed, leaving Strasgol Station behind, he removed his jacket with the bloodied cuffs and rolled up his shirtsleeves in order to conceal the blood that had soaked through. He folded his jacket so that its arms were hidden beneath folds, and nestled the garment under his arm. Then he left his compartment and looked along the narrow, rubbish-strewn corridor that ran along the length of the coach. It was deserted. At the end was the door to the toilet, and Knox was relieved to see, as he approached, that the indicator above the handle was green; it was unoccupied.

The inside was tiny and dirty. There was not even enough room to stretch one’s arms out to their full extent. A light bulb had been screwed into a socket on the low ceiling and provided a urine yellow glare by way of illumination. The lid of the squat plastic toilet was down, and for this mercy Knox was grateful, for he could detect the lingering stench of unflushed excrement. Above the crack-webbed washbasin was a round mirror about six inches in diameter. Its surface was coated with a thin layer of silvery-white residue, making it appear to be filled with mist. Knox turned on the tap above the sink, put the bloodied cuffs of his jacket underneath the dribble of cold running water and rubbed them vigorously with a token sliver of hand soap. After a few minutes of work, the cuffs turned from crimson to pink. No further change seemed likely, and the soap had been used up, so Knox ceased his labours. He looked up from the sink into the recesses of the small mirror.

At first he saw his own haggard face staring back at him, the eyes haunted, but then the image lost focus, and it dissolved into something else. He discerned a smear of red and black, until at last the vision gained form, and Knox stared at the ravaged features of the man whose face he had obliterated with his knife. The mutilated reflection in the mirror gazed back at him with Knox’s eyes. Its lipless grinning mouth breathed out a single sentence in a gloating whisper;
I still await
. For one terrifying instant it even seemed to Knox that he had switched bodies with the revenant in the mirror and was looking out from it through a cloud of mist at his own face. He raised his hands and covered his eyes to block out the sight, and when he lowered them it had vanished. His hands were trembling and his nerves were shredded. He needed a drink to calm himself down. No, he needed much more than that; enough to blot out the night journey until morning came, and he was hundreds of miles away from Strasgol and the scene of the senseless murder he had committed.

He cupped water from the tap in his hands and splashed it across his forehead, his cheeks and his beard. He looked again in the mirror, and to his relief, saw only his own face and the background of the toilet, but nothing more.

He passed along the corridor to the next carriage and found the buffet cabin situated in a small section at the end. The metal shutter in front of the counter was down, and Knox knocked on it, hoping to draw the attention of a recalcitrant railway staff member. The possibility that the buffet was closed on this service was one he did not wish to entertain; such was the desire he had for the relief only alcohol could provide. There had been no initial response to his knocking and so Knox tried again, more forcefully this time, using his fist, until he felt someone tap him on the shoulder. Knox turned and saw the train conductor. This individual was muffled up against the cold and had wrapped a scarf high above his neck and just beneath his nose. He wore a tatty railway-issue greatcoat, with the collar turned up and it seemed, from its condition, the garment had seen many years of service. His dark green cap was pulled down low across his forehead, its brim resting on the top of thick-lensed and impenetrable eyeglasses.

“
Ticket, sir?” the conductor said, his voice hollow and his English heavy with an Eastern European inflexion.

Knox rummaged in the pockets of his jacket, turning over loose scraps of paper, until he remembered he had no ticket and had intended to pay his fare on the train.

“
I have no ticket,” Knox said, “can’t I buy one from you now?”

“
More money. Two hundred zlotys,” he said.

“
I see,” Knox replied, irked that the conductor had immediately marked him out as an American tourist, and was prepared to take financial advantage accordingly. Still, Knox thought, perhaps the man could be useful.

“
How much extra would it cost to get a bottle of something warming to drink from the buffet? How about a discount for U.S. dollars?” he asked, pulling out his wallet from the inner recesses of his tweed jacket with the pinkish cuffs.

“
Buffet is closed. No buffet. No drink. Unless you pay maybe,” the conductor said, as his head nodded towards the notes Knox had drawn out and held in his hand.

The conductor flashed a set of keys attached to a chain that he drew from the pocket of his greatcoat and rattled them ostentatiously. He unlocked the door of the buffet cabin, disappeared inside and then emerged a few moments later bearing a half litre glass bottle and a plastic cup.

Knox handed over twenty dollars in denominations of five each. He was not at all sure whether this amount would cover both the cost of the ticket and the unknown booze provided by the conductor, but the man looked at the notes, held them up to the lamplight above their heads and grunted something unintelligible Knox took as a sign of satisfaction.

For his part, Knox was busy examining the bottle he’d just purchased. It contained a cloudy green liquid. The label gave no clue, at least in English, as to its contents. It was decorated with an obscure design, something five-pointed and akin to a swastika. Certainly, at least, the legend ‘85% vol’ inspired confidence.

“
It’s good,” the conductor said, as if aware an American would not be familiar with the brand. “It is the Nepenthe drink.”

“
A brand of absinthe?” Knox asked.

“
Better. You drink. Have a good trip.” He laughed and then shuffled off, making his way along the length of the corridor, swaying with the motion of the train.

Knox went in the opposite direction, back towards the coach in which he’d boarded the train. He wanted to lose himself in the strange green liquid as quickly as possible and feel it coursing down his throat, filling his stomach with warmth and turning his brains into a soothing grey mush. He noticed that his fellow passengers appeared to be as uninterested in mingling with one another as was he; they sat as far apart from one another as they could, in individual compartments where possible, or at the opposite ends of seating where a compartment was already occupied. They slumped in their places as if they had already travelled for hours and hours. Some were either already drunk or else in a dull confused state between sleep and waking. One could not easily tell which.

He pulled open the door to the unoccupied compartment at the rear where he’d boarded and sat down on the edge of the seat, gazing at the liquid in the bottle finding its level as the train rattled over points on the track. It had a screw top, for which he was grateful; since his hands still trembled to the extent he was not confident about working a cork free with his jack-knife (say rather, he thought, grimly,
murder weapon
). As it was, he still fumbled with the plastic cup whilst pouring out a large measure, and almost split its contents. He knocked back the first dose swiftly, coughing as the liquid passed down into his insides. Christ, he thought, what is this stuff? It felt as if someone had kicked him in the head. He leant forward, feeling a wave of nausea, and was momentarily afraid he would vomit. But after the second shot, taken as quickly as the first, all the unpleasant sensations passed and he was overcome with a deadening numbness. He could not feel the ends of his fingers and toes, his anxiety ebbed away, the tide of fear was at last drawing out, and he exhaled what seemed to be an eternal breath. He slumped back into the long seat and nestled the bottle on his lap, watching the green liquid inside tumble like a captured ocean wave.

The darkness outside made it seem, from within, as if the train were stationary. Knox flopped along the length of the seat towards the carriage window and peered out through the glass into the gloom. He saw vague shapes and branches of trees that had not been sufficiently cut back—their sharp ends scraped along the sides and roof of the train.

His eyes refocused and instead of looking through the glass, he now saw his own reflection on the surface of the window. His gaze was filled with hatred. There was a sneer on his lips. Knox was terrified the reflection would reach across the divide and strangle him. He backed away from the sight, afraid of its taking on the appearance of the torn and bloodied revenant he’d seen earlier. He heard a voice in his head, the same voice as before, but this time the words it spoke were different;
“you come closer,”
it said,
“you draw close to me
”.