The Mammoth Book of Zombies by Stephen Jones

Author:Stephen Jones [Jones, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Anthologies, Fantasy, Horror, Lang:en
Published: 2012-04-01T20:27:44+00:00

When I stepped inside the hallway I was surprised to find that Poole had gone out. Having told me before I left for Fenley that he would not be going out this afternoon, his present absence was inexplicable. It was totally unlike Poole to say one thing and do another. With more urgency, therefore, than the superficial reasons for it might explain, I began to search for him. Perhaps he had had an accident, I thought, remembering the patches of decay in several of the uncarpeted floors upstairs. As the minutes passed, room after room revealing itself empty of the least sign of him, my intangible fears began to intensify into alarm.

"Poole! Where are you?" I shouted as I strode through the hallway, looking up into the grey-brown gloom of the stairs. But my cries were re-echoed without reply through the cacophonous depths of the house.

A cold, insidious feeling of solitude began to oppress me. Enmixed with this was a feeling of foreboding, a strange premonition of doom. I knew that if Poole was in the house he would have answered me by now. I scorned myself without conviction as a panicking fool who would laugh at himself with derision when Poole, unaware of my childish alarm, returned home. But I could not suppress the feeling that something was drastically wrong. What it was, I did not know. It was too enigmatic for explanation in words. And yet, subjective though it may be, and, like hindsight, made stronger in my memory now by what happened afterwards, it was as if the very atmosphere of the house, changed or transmuted in some subtle way, confirmed for me then that something had happened while I was away. Something so awful that its presence, like the last reverberations of a scream, had not completely disappeared. Earnestly though I searched through the house, from the ground floor upwards, even to the attics themselves, there was still one place which I had ignored - perhaps, I thought guiltily, on purpose - and it was, even when all else had proved fruitless, with a feeling of reluctance that I eventually approached the cellar door. One glance, however, at the shelf alongside showed how futile my reluctance had been, for one of the two paraffin lamps stored there had gone.

Grasping the remaining lamp, I ignited it with a match and stepped to the cellar door. It came open at the merest touch. Glancing down, I saw that it was unbolted and must have swung shut - or so I surmised - after Poole had stepped inside. But why had he decided to come here? Pausing nervously at the head of the stairs I stared down into the cloying darkness, whose depths were but tenuously touched by the feeble light from my lamp. The amount of resolution that Poole must have needed to go down into that seemingly sentient darkness alone impressed itself upon me. I was afraid, and I could not deny it. After a momentary hesitation, I called out for Poole.

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