The Immaculate
Authors: Mark Morris
AND
THE IMMACULATE
!
“Skillfully constructed, with a mind-boggling twist.”
â
The Times
(London)
“Easily Mark Morris's best novel so far. A real contribution to the literature of the ghostly.”
âRamsey Campbell
“Mark Morris is one of the finest horror writers at work today.”
âClive Barker
“Fast gaining a reputation as the most stunningly original dark fantasist working in Britain today.”
âStarburst Magazine
When Gail returned she found him sitting bolt upright, eyes squeezed tightly shut, hands clutching the edge of the table as if his life depended on it.
“Jack?” she said tentatively.
Without opening his eyes, he asked in a low, urgent voice, “Has he gone?”
“Has who gone?” Gail said, looking around.
“My father.”
“What?” She looked confused.
“My father. Did you see him? He was standing out there, in the street. Looking at me.”
Gail followed Jack's gaze. She was silent for a long moment. Eventually, in a guarded voice, she said, “What do you mean, Jackâhe was standing out there?”
“He was there. In the street. Beneath that light.”
Gail crouched beside him, took his face in her hands and turned him toward her. “Jack, I don't know what you're talking about. Don't say things like that.”
“Like what?”
“About your father. You can't have seen him, can you? He's dead. You know that.”
Jack stared back at her, his face and voice suddenly becoming calm. “Yes, I do. I do know he's dead. But I still saw him.”
IMMACULATE
M
ARK
M
ORRIS
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DORCHESTER PUBLISHING
Published by
Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
200 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016
Copyright © 2006 by Mark Morris
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Trade ISBN: 978-1-4285-1753-0
E-book ISBN: 978-1-4285-0279-6
First Dorchester Publishing, Co., Inc. edition: February 2006
The “DP” logo is the property of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
Printed in the United States of America.
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IMMACULATE
CONTENTS
Prologue
1970
It was October 10
th
, still three weeks shy of Halloween, but to the people of Beckford it must have seemed that the ghouls had come early that year. The storm began as a mutter of wind in the treetops, a mischievous tugging of skirt hems, a tossing of litter through the grey streets. Above the Pennines the sky was the colour of dirty sheets, bestowing so little light that lamps burned in many houses throughout the day. By mid-afternoon the wind was stronger, rattling the windows of the local primary school where children sat huddled in the warmth, distracted by newspapers that wheeled about the playground in a mad game of chase. In the village itself, shoppers leaned into the wind, hair streaming behind them; the awning over the butcher's shop was flipped inside out, then torn from its metal framework. The Union Jack that flew above the village's only hotel, The Connaught, cracked like a whip, as though to cow the smaller buildings below.
In the home of Terry and Alice Stone the coming of the storm went largely unnoticed. Their house, built of the rough local sandstone, was situated over two miles from the centre of the village and some four hundred yards from their nearest neighbours, the Butterworths of Daisy Lane Farm. Daisy Lane was a bumpy track of hard-packed earth that ran past the front of the house and was bordered by dry-stone walls and surrounded by fields and clumps of encroaching woodland. Some parts of Daisy Lane were so narrow that two cars could not pass; Terry Stone had once witnessed a fist fight between two drivers, each of whom had stubbornly refused to reverse. He stood now in the kitchen of his home, rocking back and forth on the creaky floorboard before the sink. His hands, the fingernails dirt-encrusted, clutched the rim of the sink, above which a window afforded a view from the back of the house. Terry stared at the view without seeing it, his gaze skating over the cobbled yard and the patch of scrubland from which, some two hundred yards distant, rose the dense mass of trees that marked the boundary of Beckford Woods. The trees were creaking and swaying as if in fury, the wind creating a tidal wave of sound as it rushed through the leaves. But Terry was aware only of the floorboard protesting rhythmically beneath his weight. Beyond that, silence.
He stopped rocking and looked up at the ceiling, as if hoping his gaze would penetrate the plaster and then the floorboards of the room above. He had not heard his wife cry out for a while now. Perhaps, for the time being, her contractions had eased. He looked at the clock on the wall, of which the ticking was so much a part of his life that he had to make a real effort to hear it, and saw that it was inching toward six. Almost an hour before, Alice, her belly huge, had ascended the wooden stairs to her bed, goaded by her elder sister, Georgina, who had told her it was the best place for her despite the obstacle of the steps. Usually Georgina's brisk manner irritated Terry, but just this once he was grateful for it. He had called Dr. Travis' surgery only to be informed that the doctor was out making housecalls and asked if he could possibly take his wife to the hospital in Leeds fifteen miles away.
“Me wife's having her baby at home,” Terry had told the nurse or the secretary or whoever it was. “The doctor said that'd be all right.”
“In that case,” said the woman, “I'll try to contact him for you. I'm sure he'll be there as soon as he can.”
Terry had thanked her and put the phone down, then had wandered aimlessly from room to room on the ground floor, listening for sounds from upstairs. He had picked up objects, toyed with them a moment, then put them down again; he had sat in his armchair and stood up almost immediately; he had looked at the newspaper, on which there were so many meaningless black squiggles; he had poured himself a glass of milk and left it untouched on the kitchen table.
Finally he had settled, if settled was the word, on the creaky floorboard before the kitchen sink. The storm was making the day prematurely dark but he didn't notice it. The sound of the wind echoed his own raging thoughts but he didn't notice that, either.
The minutes ticked by and still nothing happened. At last Terry left his place by the sink and called the surgery once more. He was told that Dr. Travis had been informed of the situation and would be with the Stones as soon as possible. Terry was relieved, but when another twenty minutes passed and still the doctor had not arrived, he began to get agitated again. He considered calling an ambulance to take his wife to the hospital, but then decided against it. Alice had been adamant that she would have her baby at home, and at least Georgina was with her, who was more than capable in a crisis. Besides, Terry reasoned, his wife was not ill, was she? She was simply having a baby. It was a natural process, life-
giving,
not life-threatening. Women had babies all the timeâin mud huts in the jungle, in tents in the desert, in fields and cars and barnsâand most of them survived.
Most but not all,
said a little voice inside his head, and Terry's stomach clenched as if he too was suffering birth pangs. It was no good. He couldn't stand here hour after hour worrying himself to death. He had to feel he was doing something, however bloody pointless it might be.
He stomped to the kitchen, snatched his old jacket from its peg on the back door, then made for the hallway, arms struggling to fill their tunnels of cloth. His hands emerged from the cuffs like funnel-web spiders and he yanked his collar straight. As he clodded along the narrow, dingy hallway toward the front door, there was a creak on the stairs to his left and the thumps of descending footsteps. Georgina's sleeves were rolled to her elbows and her face was red; she looked as though she'd been baking. “Where are you going?” she demanded as if Terry were a schoolboy sneaking out to play before he'd finished his homework.
He felt the familiar tightening in his throat and temples. “I'm off to see what's bloody going on. Me wife's having a baby and nobody seems to give a toss except me . . . and you, of course,” he added grudgingly.
She gave a brusque nod and continued to descend. “Well, if that doctor doesn't come soon he's going to miss all the fun.”
Terry stared at her. “It won't be that soon, will it?”
Her expression softened at the anxiety in his voice. “No, pet, I shouldn't think so. She's quiet at the moment. Could be hours yet.” She rounded the post at the foot of the stairs, hand squeaking around the polished carved acorn on top of it. “Don't worry,” she said, touching his arm with her other hand. “She'll be fine, you'll see.”
Terry nodded, unconvinced. Georgina gave his arm a final squeeze, then pushed past him. “What have you been doing, sitting in the dark?” she exclaimed as she entered the kitchen. She glowered at the leaden sky and switched on the lights, instantly darkening the sky still further.
“I'll be off then,” Terry said, trying to sound as if his intentions were not purposeless. He left Georgina filling a bowl with hot water and opened the front door.
The wind almost ripped it from his grasp. Terry flinched, screwing up his eyes, cursing as he struggled to close it again. He heard Georgina's voice, a wordless thread of annoyance in the twisting swathes of wind, and knew instinctively that she was exhorting him to close the door.
“What do you think I'm trying to do, you silly cow?” he muttered. His words were snatched from his lips and carried howlingly away. The wind sounded crazed and triumphant, as though celebrating its release from some asylum. Swirling autumn leaves speckled Terry's vision like ticker tape.
At last he won his battle with the door. He leaned against the heavy wood for a moment, breathless. When he exerted himself like this he could taste the accumulation of smoke at the back of his throat, could not help but imagine his lungs struggling to work beneath their coating of tar. Terry's father had died of lung cancer five years before, at the age of sixty, his grandfather of the same disease at the age of sixty-two. After his father's death Terry had tried to stop smoking, but had been only partially successful. He had not smoked yet today, which was a miracle considering how tense he felt, but he did not think his abstinence would last. He turned from the door to face Daisy Lane, and told himself, as always, that the law of averages would protect him. The likelihood of three successive lung cancer deaths in the same family must be pretty minute.