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  FESTIVAL OF FEAR

  Graham Masterton

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published 2012

  in Great Britain and in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  Copyright © 2012 by Graham Masterton.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Masterton, Graham.

  Festival of fear.

  1. Horror tales, English.

  I. Title

  823.9'2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-225-2 (ePub)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6408-6 (cased)

  For Maria Wiktoria Raczkowska,

  with thanks for everything.

  Who needs more vinegar, anyway?

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  Contents

  The Press

  The Burgers of Calais

  Anka

  Dog Days

  The Scrawler

  Sepsis

  Camelot

  Reflection of Evil

  Neighbors from Hell

  Son of Beast

  Anti-Claus

  Sarcophagus

  The Press

  Few people shed any tears when Padraic Rossa died at the age of eighty-nine, even his publishers, because he hadn’t produced a book that was either comprehensible or commercial since the mid-1970s, and he was probably the most cantankerous man that Irish letters had ever known. Even Brendan O’Neill, who was loved by authors everywhere for his emollient reviews in the Cork Examiner, had called Rossa ‘a foul temper on legs.’

  Rossa’s last work, All Hallows’ Eve, was published in 1997 and was little more than a splenetic rant about the way in which the Irish had allowed the rest of the world to turn a sacred Celtic ritual dating back to the fifth century into a ‘cash cow for the makers of plastic pumpkins and Hallmark Cards. It was one thing to turn our folk music into fiddle-de-dee for the tourist trade, and our magical beliefs into garden gnomes. But by allowing the commercialization of Halloween we have dragged the souls of our dead ancestors out of the eternal shadows and hung them up in the common light of the marketplace for every inquisitive passer-by to finger.’

  When it was published two weeks before Halloween, Rossa’s book was widely excoriated in the book pages of the Irish Times and several other newspapers and magazines for being ‘a saliva-spraying welter of Celtic superstition and Druidic mumbo-jumbo, by a man who seems to believe that “fun” is a notifiable disease.’

  You no doubt remember, though, that five of the reviewers who gave Rossa such critical notices disappeared on the night of All Hallows’ Eve, and no trace of them was ever found. There was a lengthy investigation by the Garda Síochána, during which Rossa was questioned several times, but he made no comment about their vanishing, except to say that they had probably got what they deserved. Nervous jokes were made in the press about ‘the curse of Padraic Rossa’ and stories were told in Henchy’s Bar that he had summoned up Satan to drag his critics down to hell, their way lit by embers, in turnip lanterns.

  After he died, Rossa’s huge Victorian house on the steep hill overlooking the River Lee in Montenotte came up for auction almost immediately, since there were bills to be settled and Rossa’s books hadn’t made any decent money in decades. The coal bill alone hadn’t been paid for six and a half years.

  I was called up by Irish Property to write a feature about the house and I went up there one slick, wet Thursday morning with John McGrorty, who was to take the photographs. John was a very humorous fellow with a head of hair like a bunch of spring carrots and a taste for ginger tweed jackets.

  We parked in Lovers’ Walk and John took a selection of pictures of the outside. The house was a four-story building in the Gothic style, painted pale green, with dark green window-frames, as tall as a cliff. I think ‘forbidding’ would be your word for it. It stood on the brow of the hill with the river far below, and from the steep back garden you could see all of Cork City and all the way beyond to the drizzly grey-green hills.

  We rang the doorbell at the glass front porch and a young woman from the auctioneers came to answer it. A large, yellowish slug was clinging halfway up the window and John touched it with the tip of his cigarette so that it shriveled and dropped on to the flagstones.

  ‘You’re a sadist,’ I told him.

  The young woman from the auctioneers was pretty enough, with a short brown bob and a pale heart-shaped face and sea-green eyes and rimless glasses. ‘My name’s Fionnula,’ she said, holding out her hand.

  ‘I’m John,’ said John, ‘and this is Michael. Do you know what “Fionnula” means in Swahili?’

  Fionnula shook her head.

  ‘It means “bespectacled beauty from the auctioneers”.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘and do you know what “John” means in Urdu? It means “red-headed chancer in a clashing orange coat”.’

  ‘Well, girl, you give as good as you get,’ John told her. ‘Are you going to be conducting us on a tour of these delightfully gloomy premises, then?’

  The hallway was vast. Over a marble fireplace hung a dark oil portrait of Padraic Rossa himself, clutching his lapels as if he were trying to tear them off his jacket. He had a blocky-looking head, and he looked more like a bare-knuckle boxer than a writer.

  ‘He was a sour-tempered man and no mistake,’ said Fionnula. ‘I met him only the once. I came up here to make a valuation but he wouldn’t let me into the house. He said that he wouldn’t be dealing with an empty-headed young girl who knew nothing of the Celtic tradition.’

  She showed us the drawing room with its heavy velvet curtains and its strange paintings of pale men and women, peering out of the darkness with luminous eyes. Some of them had beaks like owls, while others had foxes’ claws instead of hands.

&
nbsp; ‘You could well believe that Rossa was a close friend of his Satanic Majesty, now couldn’t you?’ said John. The flashes from his camera seemed to make the people in the paintings jump, as if for a split second he had brought them to life.

  We toured the bedrooms. The ceilings were damp, and in some places the wallpaper was hanging down. In Rossa’s own bedroom, the mattress on the four-poster bed had a dark stain in the middle of it, and there was an overwhelming smell of urine and death.

  At last we came back downstairs to take a look at the dining room. At the far end of the room stood a huge mahogany cupboard, with carved pillars and bunches of grapes, which must have been used for storing china. In Ireland we would call a cupboard like this a press.

  ‘That is a massive piece of joinery and no mistake,’ said John, taking pictures of it. Its finial touched the ceiling, and it had a wide drawer underneath with handles in the shape of demons’ faces, with rings through their noses.

  Fionnula turned the key in the lock and opened up the press so that we could look inside. It was completely empty, but it was unexpectedly large inside, almost three times as deep as it looked from the outside. It had that sour, vinegary smell of old cupboards that have been closed up for years.

  ‘You could almost live in this,’ said John. ‘In fact I think it’s bigger than my flat. And look . . . what’s that written on the back?’

  The back of the press was covered in lettering, faded black, with some gilded capitals. It looked like Gaelic.

  ‘We’ll have a picture of this,’ said John. ‘Here, bespectacled beauty from the auctioneers, do you think you could hold my light for me?’

  He helped Fionnula to climb up into the press, and then he climbed in after her. He handed her his electronic strobe light and started to take pictures of the lettering at the back. ‘Now I recognize some of the words here,’ he said. ‘Beó duine d’éis a anma . . . that means “a man may live after his death”.’

  He peered at the lettering even more closely. ‘This is some kind of Celtic incantation . . . a summoning-up of dead souls. It must be connected with Rossa’s book on All Hallows’ Eve.’

  As his fingers traced the words, however, I heard an extraordinary noise. A slow, mechanical ticking, like a very loud clock, but punctuated by the clicking of levers and tumblers, and the flat donk sound of expanding springs.

  ‘What the hell’s that?’ asked John, turning around. But before any of us could do anything, the huge doors to the press swung silently shut, and locked themselves, trapping John and Fionnula inside.

  ‘Will you open the effing doors, Michael?’ shouted John. ‘This isn’t a joke!’

  ‘For God’s sake, let us out!’ said Fionnula. She sounded panicky already. ‘I can’t stand enclosed spaces!’

  I turned the key, but the doors wouldn’t budge. I went to the sideboard and pulled open the drawers. One of them was full of tarnished cutlery, so I took out a dinner knife and tried to pry the doors open with that. They still refused to open. Both John and Fionnula were hammering and kicking on them, but they were so solid that they didn’t even shake.

  It was then that I heard two more sounds. A high-pitched squeaking, like a screw turning, and then a sliding noise.

  ‘John!’ I shouted. ‘John, are you all right? I’m going into the garden, see if I can find a shovel or a pick or something!’

  But John yelled, ‘The ceiling! The ceiling’s coming down!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The ceiling’s coming down! It’s going to crush us!’

  The squeaking went on and on. I ran into the rainy garden and came back with an iron fence-post, and I beat at those doors until the fence-post almost bent double. John and Fionnula were both screaming and then I heard something break, and John crying out in agony. ‘Oh Mary Mother of God save us! Oh Mary Mother of God forgive me!’

  After that there was nothing but a slow complicated crunching. I stood outside the press with my eyes filled with tears, trembling with shock. Eventually the squeaking stopped, and then I heard ratchets and cogs, and the doors to the press slowly opened themselves. Inside, there was nothing at all. No John, no Fionnula.

  For a moment I couldn’t understand what had happened to them. But then I saw blood dripping from the edge of the drawer at the bottom of the press. I took hold of the demon’s-head handles and slowly pulled it open.

  If you have never seen human beings compressed until they are less than an inch thick, it is almost impossible to describe them to you. The most horrible thing is their faces, which look like pink rubber Halloween masks, with scarlet lips, and empty, liquid eyes.

  But John and Fionnula’s bodies weren’t the only remains in the drawer. Underneath them were the crushed remains of several other people, their skin as papery and desiccated as wasps’ nests.

  I could only guess how Padraic Rossa had persuaded his critics to step into his cupboard. Perhaps he had pretended to be conciliatory, and invited them up to his house to explain the mysteries of Halloween to them. Then perhaps he had suggested that they examine the Celtic incantations at close quarters. Whatever had happened, he had made sure that they, too, had a very bad press.

  The Burgers of Calais

  I never cared for northern parts and I never much cared for eastern parts neither, because I hate the cold and I don’t have any time for those bluff, ruddy-faced people who live there, with their rugged, plaid coats and their Timberland boots and their way of whacking you on the back when you least expect it, like whacking you on the back is supposed to be some kind of friendly gesture or something.

  I don’t like what goes on there, neither. Everybody behaves so cheerful and folksy but believe me that folksiness hides some real grisly secrets that would turn your blood to iced gazpacho.

  You can guess, then, that I was distinctly unamused when I was driving back home early last October from Presque Isle, Maine, and my beloved ’71 Mercury Marquis dropped her entire engine on the highway like a cow giving birth.

  The only reason I had driven all the way to Presque Isle, Maine, was to lay to rest my old Army buddy Dean Brunswick III (may God forgive him for what he did in Colonel Wrightman’s cigar box). I couldn’t wait to get back south, but now I found myself stuck a half-mile away from Calais, Maine, population 4,003 and one of the most northernmost, easternmost, back-whackingest towns you could ever have waking nightmares about.

  Calais is locally pronounced ‘CAL-us’ and believe me a callous is exactly what it is – a hard, corny little spot on the right elbow of America. Especially when you have an engineless, uninsured automobile and a maxed-out Visa card and only $226 in your billfold and no friends or relations back home who can afford to send you more than a cheery hello.

  I left my beloved Mercury tilted up on the leafy embankment by the side of US Route One South and walked into town. I never cared a whole lot for walking, mainly because my weight has kind of edged up a little since I left the Army in ’86, due to a pathological lack of restraint when it comes to filé gumbo and Cajun spiced chicken with lots of crunchy bits and mustard-barbecued spare ribs and key lime pies. My landlady Rita Personage says that when she first saw me she thought that Orson Welles had risen from the dead, and I must say I do have quite a line in flappy, white, double-breasted sport coats, not to mention a few wide-brimmed white hats. Though, not all of those are in prime condition since I lost my job with the Louisiana Restaurant Association, which was a heinous political fix involving some of the shadier elements in the East Baton Rouge catering community and also possibly the fact that I was on the less balletic side of 290 pounds.

  It was a piercing bright day. The sky was blue like ink and the trees were all turning gold and red and crispy brown. Calais is one of those neat New England towns with white clapboard houses and churches with spires and cheery people waving to each other as they drive up and down the streets at two and a half miles per hour.

  By the time I reached North and Main I was sweating like a cheese and severely in n
eed of a beer. There was a whip, whip, whoop behind me and it was a police patrol car. I stopped and the officer put down his window. He had mirror sunglasses and a sandy moustache that looked as if he kept his nail brush on his upper lip. And freckles. You know the type.

  ‘Wasn’t speeding, was I, officer?’

  He took off his sunglasses. He didn’t smile. He didn’t even blink. He said, ‘You look like a man with a problem, sir.’

  ‘I know. I’ve been on Redu-Quick for over six months now and I haven’t lost a pound.’

  That really cracked him up, not. ‘You in need of some assistance?’ he asked me.

  ‘Well, my car suffered a minor mechanical fault a ways back there and I was going into town to see if I could get anybody to fix it.’

  ‘That your clapped-out, saddle-bronze Marquis out on Route One?’

  ‘That’s the one. Nothing that a few minutes in the crusher couldn’t solve.’

  ‘Want to show me some ID?’

  ‘Sure.’ I handed him my driver’s license and my identity card from the restaurant association. He peered at them, and for some reason actually sniffed them.

  ‘John Henry Dauphin, Choctaw Drive, East Baton Rouge. You’re a long way from home, Mr Dauphin.’

  ‘I’ve just buried one of my old Army buddies up in Presque Isle.’

  ‘And you drove all the way up here?’

  ‘Sure, it’s only one thousand nine hundred and sixty miles. It’s a pretty fascinating drive, if you don’t have any drying paint that needs watching.’

  ‘Louisiana Restaurant Association . . . that’s who you work for?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I lied. Well, he didn’t have to know that I was out of a job. ‘I’m a restaurant hygiene consultant. Hey – bet you never guessed that I was in the food business.’

  ‘OK . . . the best thing you can do is call into Lyle’s Autos down at the other end of Main Street, get your vehicle towed off the highway as soon as possible. If you require a place to stay I can recommend the Calais Motor Inn.’