The Immaculate Read online

  PRAISE FOR MARK MORRIS

  AND THE IMMACULATE!

  “Skillfully constructed, with a mind-boggling twist.”

  —The Times (London)

  “Easily Mark Morris’s best novel so far. A real contribution to the literature of the ghostly.”

  —Ramsey Campbell

  “Mark Morris is one of the finest horror writers at work today.”

  —Clive Barker

  “Fast gaining a reputation as the most stunningly original dark fantasist working in Britain today.”

  —Starburst Magazine

  IMPOSSIBLE

  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, Jack—he 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.”

  THE

  IMMACULATE

  MARK MORRIS

  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.

  Visit us online at www.dorchesterpub.com.

  THE

  IMMACULATE

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  PART ONE

  1 STRANGE WORLDS

  2 SEAFOOD

  3 THE OGRE

  4 CROSS MY HEART

  5 THE UNRAVELLING KNOT

  6 GOLD

  INTERLUDE ONE

  PART TWO

  7 FIRE AND LONELINESS

  8 THE SEVEN STARS

  9 WASPS

  10 THE GRAND DESIGN

  11 MAGIC

  12 JEWEL

  13 CAR TROUBLE

  INTERLUDE TWO

  PART THREE

  14 LOVE AND FURY

  15 ARRIVALS

  16 ENGINES

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  1970

  It was October 10th, 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 ow
n 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 time—in mud huts in the jungle, in tents in the desert, in fields and cars and barns—and 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.

  When he moved from the protection of the house the wind came at him again, almost bowling him over. “Bloody hell,” he exclaimed, as if at a boisterous dog. The flowers in the small front garden that his wife had tended so lovingly were squashed flat. The grass on the hills appeared to turn different shades of green as the wind cavorted through it.

  Terry kept his head down, and so at first thought the dark smudge moving along Daisy Lane in his direction was some article of clothing propelled by the wind. Then a voice calling his name reached him, and he looked up to see Martin Butterworth, eldest of the three Butterworth sons, clumping towards him, hand raised. The Butterworths were all blond-haired, red-cheeked and built like brick shithouses. The muscularity of their youth, however, had a tendency to decline into obesity as the years progressed. Even so, old man Butterworth, with his four chins and a belly larger than Alice’s, still possessed fearsome strength. Though Terry had never seen him do it, Butterworth senior was reputed to be able to sling fully grown cows across his shoulders and carry them on his back with no trouble at all.

  Terry raised his hand in response, though did not speak until he and Martin were a few feet apart. “Hello, Martin, how’s it going?” he yelled then, hoping that his greeting would not inspire one of Martin’s interminable monologues, for which he was renowned. Butterworth’s frown, though, suggested that he had more pressing matters on his mind.

  “I was just comin’ to see you,” he said.

  “Oh, yes?”

  “There’s a tree down up yonder. A big ’un, blockin’ the road. The doc’s there. He says your wife’s havin’ a bairn.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Aye, well, he’s havin’ to walk down. He says to tell you he won’t be long.”

  Terry grinned in relief. “Thanks, Martin. How long exactly, do you know?”

  Martin considered, wide face childlike in its solemnity. “I reckon the tree’s about half a mile up the road. I ran all the way ’ere, but the doc can only walk slowly on account of his arthritis. He sent me on ahead ’cause he thought you might be worried. He’ll probably be . . . ten minutes or so.”

  “Thanks again, Martin,” Terry said. He patted Butterworth’s arm, which felt solid as a tree-branch. “Do you want to come back to the house? Have a cup of tea or something?”

  “No, I’ll be gettin’ off. The beasts are restless. There’s a bugger of a storm comin’, I reckon.”

  “Okay. Well, I’ll see you around.”

  “Aye. Good luck wi’ the bairn.”

  Terry watched Martin stomp away, then turned and headed back to the house. The sky was now so dark that the building was almost in silhouette. The thrashing woods beyond it reminded Terry of westerns he had seen, the trees like the black flurry of Indians on the horizon. Terry’s imagination had been largely stifled by his father, and when it occasionally resurfaced, such as now, he couldn’t help but feel vaguely ashamed. He remembered the beating he had received at the age of nine or ten when his father had discovered his collection of comics, which he’d secreted under his bed. But worse than the weals left by the strap had been the sight of the comics being fed one by one into the fire, their fabulous, lurid images shrivelling to black ash. After the burning his father had sat Terry down and assured him that in the long run he would be thankful that his mind had been saved from poisoning. This sort of rubbish was written by dropouts and “poofters” and possibly even Nazis who had fled to America after the war.

  As soon as Terry re-entered the house he knew that something was wrong. Five minutes ago Georgina had said that Alice was quiet, yet nevertheless there was something, some thrum of tension in the air, that convinced him otherwise. Hoping he was simply being overanxious, he strode to the foot of the
stairs, hand sweaty on the banister rail. “Hello,” he called. “Georgina, it’s me. The doctor’s on his way.”

  There was a moment of silence, then the shuffle of movement and the sound of a door opening. Georgina’s creaking footsteps were followed two seconds later by the woman herself. The expression on her face seemed to confirm Terry’s fears; suddenly there was a large rock in his stomach, a smaller one in his throat. He stared up at her, unable to speak. She snapped, “How long will he be? Where is he now?”

  Hesitantly Terry ascended two steps. His legs felt disturbingly weak. He tried to swallow his panic and croaked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Where’s the doctor? I need him here now. I can’t handle this by myself.”

  “Handle what?” Terry said, then when she looked impatient, “There’s a tree down half a mile up the road. Travis is having to walk here. Shouldn’t be no more than ten minutes.” His feeble legs lifted him another step. “Georgina, what’s wrong with Alice?”

  Some of the anger left her face and was replaced by worry. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “The contractions started again suddenly. She’s in a lot of pain and she’s losing too much blood.”

  “Too much? What do you mean, too much?”

  “Come up, Terry. She needs you. Maybe you can calm her.”

  He ascended like a marionette, feeling as if a cold fever were throbbing in his veins. Though desperately anxious, he felt strangely disembodied. When he was barely halfway up the stairs Georgina turned and clumped back to the bedroom he shared with his wife, the house creaking under her weight. He heard his sister-in-law making shushing noises, uttering soothing words. Beneath that was a series of tiny whimpers and gasps that terrified him; it sounded as if his wife had gone beyond normal pain, that her agony was now so acute it would not even allow her to scream. He did not realise he was biting his lip until he tasted blood in his mouth. Even then, though, he tried to tell himself that Georgina was exaggerating. The doctor would arrive and tell him everything was normal, that the blood and pain were just part of the process, that there was nothing to worry about.