Dark Winter Tales: a collection of horror short stories. Paul Finch

chattering. For a few minutes, even the wind seemed to drop – the only sound was Sharon’s heart thundering in her chest as she scanned the surrounding maze of stands and stalls, through which moonlight spilled in various fantastical forms, making it difficult to maintain depth or perspective.

      Nothing seemed to move.

      Had she thrown him off? She hardly dared consider the possibility. No-one could second-guess a monster like Blair McKellan, the Night Caller; an out-and-out madman who left his victims like sides of butchered meat. But surely he wasn’t completely demented? He’d retained sufficient of his faculties to lie low between kills, to evade the law for almost a year. If he’d identified her as a police officer, as he surely must, he’d be expecting her to call this in? Assistance would be en route. He’d be better running.

      A few dozen yards away, a figure emerged through the moonlit haze.

      Sharon sucked in a breath so tight it almost squeaked. She sank lower, only her eyes visible over the counter-top. But no … now that she looked carefully, it wasn’t a figure, it was just an awning, patterned with mildew, rippling in the stiffening breeze.

      She allowed herself to breathe again, filching the phone from her pocket. She would try Slater one more time. It seemed futile, pointless, but he was the closest to her, the only person who could provide immediate assistance. She prodded in his number – and immediately froze as she heard a tinny tune somewhere in her vicinity. It sounded like jazz; low, sleazy jazz played on a sax. And she recognised it.

      Slowly, incredulously, she turned around, riveting her eyes on the dummy clown directly behind her … except that, now her vision had attuned, it didn’t even resemble a clown. Or a dummy. True, like the others it was only a torso; the legs and arms were missing, and the mouth yawned open to impossible width, and it sat upright on a metal pole, though possibly in this case that was because the pole had been jammed ten inches or so into the object’s anus.

      A warm trickle soaked Sharon’s knickers and the crotch of her trousers.

      What she’d first taken for clown make-up streaking the figure’s cheeks wasn’t anything like make-up; and those eye sockets, which now contained nothing at all, let alone electric bulbs, would never light up again. In the gaping mouth, where once there’d been a tongue, sat a small, flat device, juddering its jazzy tune – until it switched abruptly to voicemail.

      Sharon had some vague thought that it was a good job she didn’t still have her torch. Because the last thing she wanted to see were the finer details of this atrocity. Even so it transfixed her. She could do nothing but sit there gawking – until she tasted something salty dripping down the front of her face and onto the tip of her tongue. Dazed, she craned her neck back to gaze overhead – and saw a massive rent in the canvas awning, into which a distorted figure was leaning, staring down at her. The fluid dripping from the end of his hanging snout was probably tears, or saliva, or nose mucus, or a combination of all three – a product of the spray she’d hit him with earlier.

      There are times in every police officer’s career when all sense of authority and decorum is lost. When you cease to be a stern pillar of law enforcement, and revert to your natural state: a frightened, vulnerable animal whose main instinct is to run.

      This Sharon now did.

      With hysterical shrieks. Throwing herself over the counter and haring off along the footway, blathering incoherently into her radio – even though she expected no response.

      Again, she ran in no particular direction, blindly, exhaustedly, threading between the stands and stalls, through moon and shadow, until she reached a broad thoroughfare, which, more by instinct than logic, she felt would lead her to the park’s entrance.

      It did. Right up to those towering, scroll-iron gates.

      They were closed of course. And locked.

      The chains holding them were thick with corrosion, the padlock fused into a lump of impenetrable rust. Sharon yanked on it futilely, tearing her fingernails, before glancing back. A figure approached along the main drag; at first it looked distant – was only visible through the intermittent patches of moonlight – but very quickly it assumed those grotesque quasi-reptile proportions. Its faltering, lumbering gait was also unmistakable; as was the glint of steel in its clenched right hand.

      With more breathless shrieks, Sharon ran back into the park, veering right when she spied an open doorway. She had no idea what to expect beyond it, but immediately found herself in a complex network of passages, smoothly glazed walls encompassing her from every side. Phantom Sharon Joneses leapt and cavorted, bodies elongated, heads expanded; illusions rendered even more demonic by the refracting moonlight. Not that twists and turns were a problem for her pursuer. Somewhere close behind, mirrors exploded one by one as he put his shoulder to them. Billions of fragments rained ahead of his wild, bullocking charge. Sharon attempted the same, arms wrapped around her head. Despite her stab-jacket and the thick tunic beneath, flecks of glass wormed their way under her collar and cuffs, cutting, stinging. When she blundered through one already-broken frame, a hanging shard of glass drew a burning stripe across the top of her head, though in truth she barely felt this. She snatched the shard down; it was twelve inches long and shaped like a dagger – its edges sliced into her fingers, and yet she clung onto it.

      With hot blood dribbling into her eyes, she hobbled left, groping along a side-passage that seemed to lead to brighter moonlight, so desperate to reach this that even when another mirror disintegrated in front of her, and a brutal form blocked her path, she drove straight on.

      Perhaps McKellan was more surprised than she was. He had a weapon, but now so did Sharon – and she was the one who struck first, plunging the shard into the top right side of his chest, puncturing the rumpled costume and the human tissue beneath – the glass grating on bone as she drove it deep, to half its length at least, before lodging it fast. Her foe made no sound but reeled backwards, allowing her to shove past him and head on to the light, which, as she’d hoped, turned out to be a window. She kicked it until it fell to jangling pieces, and clambered through.

      After the hallucinogenics of the Mirror Maze, the moonlight outside brilliantly bathed another thoroughfare lying straight and open. She’d staggered fifty yards along it, mopping blood from her brow, before glancing back. McKellan had emerged behind her, but now was toppling sideways rather than following. Even as she watched, he fell heavily to the tarmac.

      She turned to run on, and slammed into a massive, iron-hard body.

      Sharon screamed and lashed out with her fists, before strong, gloved hands caught hold of her wrists. Through fresh trickles of blood, she gazed up into the saturnine features of Sergeant Pugh.

      “What the devil … PC Jones, what the …?”

      “McKellan,” she whispered. “It was Blair McKellan … he killed DS Slater …”

      “Slater … Blair McKellan?”

      “But I killed him!”

      “What …?” Pugh looked perplexed. “What are you talking … what happened?”

      Aware that she was ranting unintelligibly, she tried to explain, not even attempting to conceal the nature of her relationship with the late detective. Halfway through, Pugh – looking very alarmed – checked the gash on her scalp, and after mumbling something unsympathetic about it only being a flesh wound, strode back along the thoroughfare, ordering her to stay close.

      “No!” she yelped. “I’m not going back there!”

      “Pull yourself together, girl! You’re supposed to be a police officer!”

      She stammered out a few more semi-coherent objections, but the sight of Pugh, stern as ever, unimpressed by anything, seemed to restore a half-sense of normality. And in any case, McKellan was dead. He had to be.

      “How many other units are attending?” she whimpered, following from a distance.

      “None, as far as I’m aware.” Pugh’s features tautened as he spotted the shape lying on the tarmac