The September 2009 Special Guest Story
Trevor Denyer, Editor of Midnight Street Magazine
Please feel free to contact Trevor at: tdenyer@ntlworld.com
The Silent Hours
By Trevor Denyer
Martin is nine years old and frightened.
He’s sure something has touched him. Lying in the vast double bed, he shivers at the thought. Perspiration clings to him, cold upon his skin. He tries to move. His body feels heavy, as if an invisible weight holds him there.
Silence fills the room. Old, browned pictures hang from the walls, and long-dead ancestors watch him from behind dusty glass. He feels their gaze, and whimpers, imagining he sees their smiles widening.
He sighs raggedly, remembering to breathe. Fear beats in time with his heart, fluttering through his body. He tries to ease himself from the winding sheets of the bed, but the weight keeps him there, a prisoner of the silent hours.
* * * *
Grandma sleeps in the other room, subdued by memories. Martin knows that the people in the pictures are real to her.
Grandma would remember them: smiling, laughing, crying, living….and then dying.
Grandma would recall the times as being sunlit or wooded, stormy or snow-covered, dappled….real.
“They’re all dead.”
He turns his head towards the whisper. There’s nobody there.
A cool breeze, smelling of apple blossoms, brushes his cheek. He notices a picture that seems to be hung lower than the others. In it, Granddad stands in an orchard, surrounded by smiling people.
“Who are you?” Martin says, forcing the words out. There is only silence now, but he can see the picture in the gloom. The eyes of the dead draw him in. The picture glows faintly, and Martin thinks he sees movement.
* * * *
The previous day, Grandma had taken Martin to the barber’s. The shop had been full of old men and cigarette smoke. The walls were green and cream under yellow light.
“This is where your Granddad used to go,” Grandma had said proudly.
Martin thought he had caught a glimpse of Granddad in the mirror while Old Ben was busy giving him a short “back n’ sides.” Granddad had been smiling and showing his yellow, tobacco-stained teeth. Grandma sat in the back, dozing.
Martin had closed his eyes, feeling tears loitering behind the lids. When he opened them, Granddad was gone.
“I remember your Granddad,” Old Ben had said as the electric clippers grazed the back of Martin’s head. “We were at sea together in the war. ‘Course, you wouldn’t know much about that, would you?”
Martin had smiled but didn’t reply. The old man’s eyes were glazed in memory.
* * * *
When he had gone to bed this night, hours ago, Martin had cried, stifling his sobs in the covers. He wanted to go home but knew he couldn’t. Mum and Dad were in the hospital, recovering from the accident.
“Car just swerved and went out of control,” Grandma had told him. “They don’t know how it happened yet. Lucky to be alive, they are.”
She had flexed her arthritic hands and grimaced with pain.
“Never mind,” she turned to him and smiled. “You’ll be all right with me for a week or two, won’t you?”
“Yes, Gran,” he had told her, but her smile disturbed him. It was almost predatory.
* * * *
There’s movement.
Dead eyes turn to him. They are watching and waiting.
Martin whispers hoarsely, disturbing the silence. “What do you want?”
“You.” It comes from a shadowed corner where heavy curtains hang.
He drags his eyes away from the picture and peers into the gloom. A figure stands there, indistinct; a darkness against a deeper darkness.
“You must see for yourself.” The voice is thin and dry like dust in a tomb.
The figure moves forward into the dim light. Granddad, dressed in a burial suit, smiles at Martin. “Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid any more,” says Martin, trying to believe it.
“Good.” The tombstone teeth click.
Shadows detach themselves from dark recesses, becoming corporeal. The inhabitants of the silent hours stand around the bed, filling the room.
“Take him,” they say, their voices deep, as though buried in earth. The words congeal on the air as the nightmare gathering leans closer.
Martin feels their breath, stale and cold, raising his flesh. Dead hands reach out. He curls up fetally into the bedcovers.
“No,” he says weakly.
He feels suffocated as they lean forward. Buried alive.
“Wait,” says Granddad suddenly. “It’s not his time.”
They back away, sighing. Thin light catches their faces, bloodless and lined in death. They turn their sunken eyes to Granddad.
“You must sleep,” he tells Martin, leaning forward and pressing his cold, parchment lips against his grandson’s forehead.
Mixed up with the musty stench of tobacco is the bright, sharp smell of apple blossoms.
* * * *
When he awakes, the room is bright with sunlight. It shines through the grimy, casement window, catching dust motes in its warmth.
A residue of fear remains, hanging on the sleep-filled air like stale perspiration. The breath catches in his throat as he remembers.
He pulls himself from the clutches of the bed. The room swims as he stands up. He doubles over, dragging in air. Reality returns, silvered for a moment by stars.
The picture on the wall of Granddad in the orchard draws him. He moves across the room and stares at it in disbelief.
Panic rises as he stumbles from the bedroom. He pauses at the top of the stairs. They fall steeply away, offering escape. He moves on, coming to Grandma’s bedroom door. As he turns the handle, he knows what he will find.
And back in his bedroom, on the wall, Grandma has joined Granddad in the orchard. Friends and family stand around. They’re young, and smiling, captured in sepia; frozen in time.
September 2009 Special Guest Writer
TREVOR DENYER
Trevor Denyer has been an advocate of the independent press for many years. His magazine, Midnight Street, has been shortlisted for the British Fantasy Society Best Magazine Award 2009 (results to be announced at FantasyCon in September). Previously, he edited 'Roadworks', which ran from 1998 to 2003 and 'Legend' from 2000 to 2003. Many of the stories published in his magazines have been reprinted in anthologies and collections, and have received Honourable Mentions in the Year's Best Fantasy & Horror anthologies (edited by Ellen Datlow) over the years. Last year, a story by Ralph Robert Moore was reprinted in the collection.
Trevor has been writing for many years, and has been extensively published in the independent press. His stories have appeared in many magazines, including Scheherezade, Nasty Piece of Work, Symphonie's Gift, Night Dreams, and on-line at Time Out Net Books and Gathering Darkness. In recent years, his writing output has been reduced considerably, mainly as a result of his editing activities, but he intends to rectify this soon.
His first collection, The Edge of the Country, is now published and includes a wide ranging selection of his work, from horror, through supernatural, to fantasy. Of the book The Edge of the Country, Ralph Robert Moore has said, "Absolutely beautiful, and moving. You made me care about the characters. And I love the ease of the descriptive phrases." Allen Ashley says about it, "Enjoy this unexpected bonus, a baker's dozen of memorable tales." Jeani Rector says, "The Silent Hours is truly the BEST ghost story I have ever read." In fact, Jeani Rector has asked to publish The Silent Hours in this month's The Horror Zine. The Silent Hours is just one of the 13 genre + 1 mainstream stories in the collection. There are still signed and numbered copies available at no extra cost.
For more information, and to purchase copies of the magazines and collection, go to www.midnightstreet.co.uk
