Free The Mammoth Book of Terror by Stephen Jones Page A

ancient curses used to work? ‘Cause they’re
ancient. Victims sickened and died, they wasted away when they discovered they were cursed. Belief, man.” He thrust his outstretched fingers at Mats’ brain, then his own.
“There’s no belief anymore, so curses no longer work. Who do you believe now? Do you think God will answer your prayers and sort out your life? No. Do you buy the whole Judeo-Christian
guilt-trip? No. Do you believe your computer when it tells you your account’s overdrawn? Yes. The new world order can’t survive on images of demons and the fiery pit, ‘cause
we’re just slabs of flickering code running to infinity. The only things you have faith in are digitised. Digital society needs digital beliefs. Most people’s brains are still hardwired
to analogue. Not our fault, that was the world we were born into, but it’s all gone now. So change your perception.”
    Mats glared at the tiny silver handset. “What, with this?”
    “What I think? A programmer somewhere spotted an anomaly in his binary world and opened up a crack, a way through. Then he leaked it. A five-digit number punched in five times, somewhere
near a powerful signal, near a transmitter, all it takes to open the whole thing up. Send the message. Make it something that could alter the way you see the world.”
    “Like what?”
    “I don’t know, use your imagination.”
    Mats stared at the falling rain. Unable to think of anything interesting, he typed MY PARENTS LIVE IN A BIG HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY, then sent the message to 7–2–8–2–6.
    MESSAGE SENT
    “Now what?”
    “That’s it, dude.” Daz was grinning again.
    “You fuck. ” Mats angrily stamped to his feet and shoved his way into the downpour. “You almost had me believing you.”
    He took the lift to the ground and walked off toward the bus stop, annoyed with himself for being so stupid. While he was waiting for the bus he rang his father, thinking that maybe he could tap
his old man for a cheque after all, despite having failed to return home for the holidays. He’d told his mother he couldn’t come back for Christmas because there was no God, and how
could they all be so fucking hypocritical? He stared absently at the falling rain, waiting for the call to be answered. His mother picked up the receiver. When she realised who was calling, she
adopted a tone that let him know she would be displeased with him until they were all dead.
    “Just let me talk to Dad.”
    “You’ll have to hold on for a minute, Matthew,” she warned. “Your father’s in the garden fixing the pump in the pond.”
    Which was interesting, because they didn’t have a pump, a pond or a garden. They lived on the fourth floor of a mansion block in St John’s Wood.
    “What are you talking about?” he asked.
    “The garden doesn’t stop growing just because it’s raining,” she answered impatiently. “Hold on while I call for him.”
    Mats snapped the phone shut as if it had bitten him. He fell back on the bus stop bench in awe. In the distance, a bus appeared. He felt his flat pockets, knowing there was no more than sixty
pence in change. Minimum fare was a pound, and the bus driver got so weird if he tried to use a credit card. Money – he needed money.
    It was a good reason to go back and try again.
    He ran to Montgomery House and hopped the lift, but found that Daz had left the roof. Stepping out into the rain and flipping open the mobile, he redialled 7–2–8–2–6,
adding text: BUS DRIVER GIVES ME TEN POUNDS, punched SEND. Then he shot back down, jumped on the next bus, and waited to see what would happen.
    Red doors concertina’d back. The wide-shouldered Jamaican driver had surprisingly dainty hands, which she rested at the lower edge of her steering wheel. She did not move a muscle as he
stepped up and stood before her, never raised her eyes from the windscreen before hissing the doors shut. Then she reached into her cash dispenser and handed him two five