The Hidden World Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Titles by Graham Masterton

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Cries in the Night

  The Girl in the Mirror

  Where are the Children?

  Up in the Attic

  Chairs and Clothes

  Under the Ice

  Diamonds and Wolves

  The Sapphire Ring

  The Leaves of Memory

  Pretty Face, Ugly Heart

  Follow the Flowers

  Through the Woods

  Into the Light

  Down by the Sea

  Running from the Robes

  Shadow Cats

  Out in the Snow

  Angel of Mercy

  Over the Lake

  Splinters

  House of Mirrors

  Night of the Stain

  Screams in the Dark

  Waking

  Titles by Graham Masterton

  The Sissy Sawyer Series

  TOUCHY AND FEELY

  THE PAINTED MAN

  THE RED HOTEL

  The Jim Rook Series

  ROOK

  THE TERROR

  TOOTH AND CLAW

  SNOWMAN

  SWIMMER

  DARKROOM

  DEMON’S DOOR

  GARDEN OF EVIL

  Anthologies

  FACES OF FEAR

  FEELINGS OF FEAR

  FORTNIGHT OF FEAR

  FLIGHTS OF FEAR

  FESTIVAL OF FEAR

  Novels

  BASILISK

  BLIND PANIC

  CHAOS THEORY

  COMMUNITY

  DESCENDANT

  DOORKEEPERS

  EDGEWISE

  FIRE SPIRIT

  GENIUS

  GHOST MUSIC

  HIDDEN WORLD

  HOLY TERROR

  HOUSE OF BONES

  MANITOU BLOOD

  THE NINTH NIGHTMARE

  PETRIFIED

  UNSPEAKABLE

  HIDDEN WORLD

  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 published in Great Britain and the USA 2003 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9-15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey SM1 1DF.

  eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2003 by Graham Masterton.

  The right of Graham Masterton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Masterton, Graham, 1946-

  Hidden world

  1.Horror tales

  I. Title

  813.5'4 [F]

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-5962-4 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0117-1 (ePub)

  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

  For Wiescka

  Cries in the Night

  They caught her as soon as she came out of the art-room door. There were five of them – Sue-Anne, Charlene, Micky, Calvin and Renko. They came rushing down the corridor, howling and whooping and swinging their schoolbags around their heads.

  ‘It’s Gimpy!’ screamed Sue-Anne. ‘Show us how you run, Gimpy!’

  ‘Yayy, Gimpy!’ echoed Charlene. ‘Dot one, carry one! Show us how you run, Gimpy!’

  Jessica backed against the wall, clutching her art portfolio. Micky danced around her, tugging at her bunches. ‘What you been drawing today, Gimpy? Fairies and elves? Why don’t you never draw nothing but fairies and elves?’

  ‘She’s off with the fairies, that’s why,’ said Calvin.

  Renko flicked Jessica on the tip of her nose with his finger; when she raised her hands to protect herself he snatched her portfolio away from her.

  ‘Give me that!’ she gasped.

  Renko held it out to her and then snatched it away again. ‘I just want to see what you’ve been drawing, that’s all. I’m an art lover!’

  ‘More like a fart lover,’ Micky put in.

  Sue-Anne stood on tiptoe like a ballet dancer and teetered around and around with her hands held over her head. ‘Look at me, I’m Jessica and I’m a little fairy!’ Suddenly she started to hop grotesquely on one foot. ‘Or I would be, if I wasn’t such a gimp!’

  ‘Give me back my drawings,’ Jessica insisted. ‘Please, Renko, that’s my whole year’s work, practically.’

  ‘I told you,’ said Renko, ‘I just want to take a look. I happen to have a thing for fairies and elves, you know?’

  ‘Please, give them back.’

  ‘So what are you going to do if I don’t?’

  ‘Are you going to tell Ms Solomon?’ said Sue-Anne.

  ‘Are you going to cry-y-y?’ said Charlene.

  Renko offered Jessica the portfolio again, and again whipped it away from her. He took it to the top of the staircase and unclipped the fasteners.

  ‘Renko, no!’ Jessica pleaded, limping after him.

  ‘What are you worried about, Jessica? Don’t you know that fairies and elves can fly?’

  ‘Don’t!’

  But Renko tipped all of her artwork down the stairwell – all of her drawings of fairies flying with swarms of bees and humming-birds, her watercolor paintings of elves building villages out of twigs, her sketches of corn-cockle flowers, meadow-pinks and shooting stars.

  They twisted and sailed down three stories, scattering on the stairs and the floors below, and as they did so Class III came in from the snowy schoolyard, with their scarves and their gloves and their dirty wet boots, and started to trample on them without even realizing what they were.

  ‘My drawings!’ Jessica shouted down to them in panic. ‘Don’t tread on my drawings!’

  One or two of the children looked up, but at first they didn’t understand what she was trying to tell them. Then Billy Muñóz looked down and saw that he was standing on her best drawing – a fairy castle, with spires and turrets and spider’s-web walkways, and scores of fairies promenading on the battlements. Billy nudged Dean Schmitters, who was standing next to him, and very deliberately wiped his boots on it, smearing the pencilwork and crumpling up the paper.

  ‘No! Stop! No!’ Jessica begged him. Behind her, Sue-Anne mimicked, ‘No, stop, no, you’re squashing all my little fairies!’ and Charlene said, ‘Now she is going to cry!’

  Jessica grasped the handrail and hobbled down the stairs as fast as she could.

  ‘Hey, look at the gimp go!’ laughed Calvin. ‘World downhill speed record for gimps!’

  Only Renko said nothing. He slung Jessica’s portfolio aside and walked away down the corridor.

  Jessica reached the second floor and began to gather up her drawings as she went, clutching them close to her chest. She was panting hard and trying not to cry. As she reached the top of the last flight of stairs, however, she saw Billy Muñóz pick up one of her
paintings and hold it up in both hands as if he were going to rip it in half.

  ‘Come and get it!’ he taunted her. ‘Come and get it before it’s too late!’

  Jessica took one step, and then another, and then she stumbled. She tried to grab the handrail but her arms were crowded with drawings and she missed. She thought to herself: I’m falling, and she fell.

  For one long suspended moment, she looked almost as if she were a talented acrobat, turning a graceful cartwheel on the stairs. She flew through a cloud of paper; she could hear the sheets clapping against each other like applause. One more cartwheel, then another, and she would land in the lobby on her feet, ta-da!, and nobody would ever call her Gimpy ever again.

  But her hip caught the metal edge of the stairs, and then her shoulder, and then she was nothing but a tumbling whirl of arms and legs and her head hit the marble-tiled floor at the bottom with a sickening hollow knock.

  Class III stood silent for a moment, shocked. Jessica lay on her side, unmoving. Her limbs all looked as if they were in the wrong position, and her wristwatch was broken. The last of her drawings see-sawed down from the second story and settled beside her.

  Fay Perelli knelt down beside Jessica and shook her shoulder.

  ‘Jessica? Jessica? Are you OK? Jessica, say something!’

  Jessica’s face was gray, and when Fay tried to turn her over a dark pool of blood slid out from under her like a snake and slithered across the tiles toward the door.

  ‘Call a teacher,’ Fay whispered. The class stared at her, still in shock.

  ‘Call a teacher!’ she shrilled.

  Jessica opened her eyes and her room was filled with the strangest light. It was a bright, chilly light, almost blue, the kind of remote radiance you see on a moonlit night. She wondered if she were dead, and this was heaven. She certainly felt as if she were dead. She waited for an angel to come and tell her what to do next. She was still waiting patiently when her eyes closed again.

  ‘Help us.’

  Her eyelids flickered.

  ‘Help us, please.’ The voice was very close to her ear, and it was high and whispery, like that of a badly frightened five-year-old.

  ‘Mmwhah?’ she said. Her lips felt dry and when she tried to lick them they felt all crusty.

  ‘You have to help us, it’s coming to take us.’

  She turned over and soon she was asleep.

  The bright blue light gradually faded to violet and shadows gathered like thickening cobwebs in the corners of her room.

  ‘Help us,’ whispered the voice with even greater urgency, but Jessica still slept.

  Next time she opened her eyes she heard a door closing. Two or three people were discussing something very quietly, just outside her door.

  ‘… long way to go yet, but the signs are good …’

  Hm. That must mean that she would have to walk somewhere, perhaps to another part of heaven, but if the signs were good, she shouldn’t have any difficulty in finding her way. Perhaps they were going to send her to be reunited with her parents.

  ‘… we’ve been talking to her, singing her favorite songs – never thought you’d catch me singing “I’m A Loser, Baby, Why Don’t You Kill Me?”.’

  She could feel herself frowning. That sounded so much like Grandpa Willy. But Grandpa Willy wasn’t dead, was he? So what was he doing in heaven?

  ‘Once she’s fully regained consciousness, she should make very rapid progress – the scan showed no signs of any permanent damage—’

  ‘You have no idea how relieved …’

  The voices faded. She fell asleep again. The shadow spiders spun their webs thicker and thicker, and soon it was completely dark.

  ‘Help us.’

  Jessica stirred and made a whuffling noise.

  ‘Help us.’

  She opened her eyes. Suddenly, she was very awake.

  ‘Help us, please. It’s coming to get us.’

  She sat up and looked around her, but there was nobody there.

  ‘Where are you?’ she whispered.

  ‘We’re here, we’re here. Please, help us. It’s coming to get us and it’s coming closer.’

  ‘I can’t see you,’ said Jessica. Her heart was banging, and she was beginning to feel seriously off-balance. She realized now that this definitely wasn’t heaven. This was her room at Grannie and Grandpa’s house: she could even see her bathrobe hanging on the back of the door. Maybe she wasn’t dead after all, unless heaven was the same as Earth except that you weren’t alive.

  ‘Help us.’

  ‘Where are you? I can’t see you.’

  ‘It’s coming after us. It’s going to take us all.’

  ‘Who’s after you?’

  There was a faint, quick rustling sound, and then silence.

  ‘Who’s after you?’ Jessica repeated. ‘I can’t help you if I don’t know who you are and where you are and why they want to kill you.’

  Again, silence.

  Jessica waited and waited but she didn’t hear the frightened voice again. She drew back the thick patchwork quilt on top of her bed and carefully swung her legs around. She switched on her bedside light, the one with the flower-fairies on the lampshade. Her right ankle, her good ankle, had a tight elastic bandage on it, and it was throbbing, as if she had sprained it. Her left ankle was the same as always, twisted to one side, with red scars all around it. She straightened her back and flexed her shoulders. She felt sore and bruised all over, the way she had felt after the car crash. She reached up and patted her head. She found that she was wearing a large turban of bandages, like the princess in Ali Baba. She stood up and limped over to the mirror; she was shocked by what she saw. Both of her eyes were surrounded by rainbow-colored circles and there were big black scabs on her lips. She was waxy pale and she looked even thinner than she usually did.

  She was still staring at herself when the bedroom door opened and Grannie came in, all wild white hair and bright red hand-knitted sweater.

  ‘Jessica! Sweetheart! You’re awake! Grandpa Willy, will you come quick! Jessica’s woken up!’

  Grannie put her arm around her and guided her back to her bed. ‘How are you feeling, sweetie-pie? Does your head hurt? How about your ankle? Oh my Lord, we’ve been so worried about you.’

  ‘I’m fine, I think,’ Jessica told her. ‘I just feel like I fell downstairs or something.’

  ‘That’s exactly what happened. You fell downstairs. You dropped your drawings at school and when you tried to pick them up you fell downstairs. You had a terrible concussion.’

  Grandpa Willy came in, his hair just as wild and white as Grannie’s, and he spread his arms wide to give her a hug. ‘I haven’t been to bed in five days, fretting about you. Thank God you’re OK.’

  ‘Five days? You mean I’ve been sleeping for five days?’

  ‘That’s right. You were in the hospital for two of them, but you were showing all the signs of coming around and the doctor thought it would help you along if we brought you home. You gave yourself one hell of a crack on the bean there.’

  Jessica said, ‘I don’t really remember. I remember I was trying to pick up my drawings but that’s all.’

  ‘It’ll come back to you, sweetie-pie,’ said Grannie, sandwiching Jessica’s hand between hers. ‘Dr Leeming said that you might suffer a little short-term memory loss. I’m just so glad you’re awake.’

  ‘Better get back into bed,’ Grandpa Willy suggested. ‘Are you hungry at all? Dr Leeming said we could give you some soup when you woke up, if you had the taste for it.’

  Jessica shook her head. ‘Maybe later. I still feel … strange.’

  ‘Of course you do, going to school on Wednesday and waking up the following Monday. Listen, you rest. How about watching TV for a while? I’ll bring you up some warm milk.’

  ‘Thanks, Grannie.’ Jessica didn’t really want any warm milk, but she knew how much pleasure it gave her grandmother to mollycoddle her. In a small way, it helped to ease the pain of
losing the girl whose photograph stood on the mantelpiece above the living-room fire. The girl who looked just like Jessica.

  ‘Grannie—’ said Jessica, as she went to the door.

  ‘What is it, sweetie-pie?’

  ‘I don’t know, maybe I dreamed it. I guess I probably did.’

  Her grandmother came back and sat on the side of the bed. ‘What is it?’ she asked. In the dim light from the beside lamp, her skin was as soft and wrinkled as ruched velvet, and face powder clung to the tiny hairs around her upper lip.

  ‘Is there anybody else living here? Apart from us?’

  ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It must have been a dream.’

  ‘It wasn’t a bad dream, was it?’

  ‘I’m not sure. But there aren’t any children staying here, are there?’

  ‘Only you, sweetie-pie.’

  She kissed Jessica on the forehead and went downstairs. Jessica sat up in bed, straining her ears. Once she thought she heard another furtive shuffle, and she jumped, but it was only a lump of thawing snow dropping off the roof into the garden below.

  The Girl in the Mirror

  It was snowing like a thousand burst-open pillows as they crawled out of the city that afternoon. A truck had overturned on the Hutchinson Parkway and they had to take a three-mile detour. Even though it was only three o’clock, the sky was charcoal gray and everybody was driving with snow-clogged headlights.

  ‘We should have left an hour earlier,’ said her mother.

  ‘We’ll be OK,’ said her father. ‘Once we get past White Plains, we’ll be fine.’

  ‘You know how fussy my mother is about everybody being on time.’

  ‘So why don’t you give her a call? Tell her we’re just about to hit Danbury.’

  ‘We’re miles from Danbury.’

  ‘I know we are. But once we get onto Route six-eighty-four I can really put my foot down.’

  In the back of the Buick, on the warm red leather seats, Jessica was playing with two of her fairy figures, Queen Titania and Princess Fay. Oh, Princess Fay, the snow-beasts are flying at us from all sides, what shall we do? Never fear, I shall use my wand to make a wall of glass, and they will never harm us.

  ‘Hello, Mother? It’s me. Yes, we’re doing fine. We should be passing Danbury in five or ten minutes. Sure. Well, it’s snowing here too. I hope you’ve got some of your hot fruit punch waiting for us!’