Slugs Read online

  CAFFEINE NIGHTS PUBLISHING

  SHAUN HUTSON

  Slugs

  Fiction to die for

  Published by Caffeine Nights Publishing 2016

  Copyright © Shaun Hutson 2016

  First published in Great Britain by W H Allen & Co Ltd, 1982

  Published by Sphere Books Ltd 1990

  Reprinted 1990

  Reprinted by Warner Books 1996

  Reprinted 1998, 1999, 2000

  Reprinted by Time Warner Paperbacks in·2002

  Copyright © Shaun Hutson, 1982

  Shaun Hutson has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author of this work

  CONDITIONS OF SALE

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher

  This book has been sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental

  Published in Great Britain by

  Caffeine Nights Publishing

  4 Eton Close

  Walderslade

  Chatham

  Kent

  ME5 9AT

  www.caffeinenights.com

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-910720-13-4

  Cover design by

  Mark (Wills) Williams

  Everything else by

  Default, Luck and Accident

  Also by Shaun Hutson:

  ASSASSIN

  BODY COUNT

  BREEDING GROUND

  CAPTIVES

  COMPULSION

  DEADHEAD

  DEATH DAY

  DYING WORDS

  EPITAPH

  EREBUS

  EXIT WOUNDS

  HEATHEN

  HELL TO PAY

  HYBRID

  KNIFE EDGE

  LAST RITES

  LUCY'S CHILD

  MONOLITH

  NECESSARY EVIL

  NEMESIS

  PURITY

  RELICS

  RENEGADES

  SHADOWS

  SPAWN

  STOLEN ANGELS

  THE SKULL

  TWISTED SOULS

  UNMARKED GRAVES

  VICTIMS

  WARHOL'S PROPHECY

  WHITE GHOST

  Hammer Novelizations

  TWINS OF EVIL

  X THE UNKNOWN

  THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN

  SLUGS

  It was almost three a.m. when he came round. His head was thumping from the combined effect of the fall and the whisky.

  Ron felt something wet on his chin and, for a second, thought he’d vomited but then he felt something fat and slimy gliding over his lips and into his open mouth. He snapped his teeth together, biting down on the jellied lump, cutting it in half. A foul, obscene taste filled his mouth and, as he tried to scream, half of the sticky lump rolled back into his throat. Ron coughed, feeling the hot bile clawing its way up from his stomach. He put a hand up to his cut and, as his probing fingers found the gash in his scalp, he felt a plump, mucus-covered form burrowing into the wound itself…

  Slugs

  SHAUN HUTSON

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  If I lived to be one hundred, wrote five books a year and won the Booker Prize every year (yes I am joking) there is just one book I'd probably be remembered for and it's SLUGS. And I'm very grateful for that. It launched me, it made my name (I'm not quite sure as what) and it's stuck with me throughout what has remained of my career.

  The fact that it was filmed (not particularly well I hasten to add) doubtless helped and certainly the anecdotes surrounding the book and the film have given me something to talk about since it was first published back in 1982.

  I never wanted to do a book about flesh eating slugs, originally the book was to be about blood sucking leeches which were radioactive and would transform their victims into vampires (elements of the story would later be integrated into EREBUS two years later) but I had written a novel called DEATHDAY which had been published in the U.S the previous year under the name of Robert Neville that featured a scene with a giant slug and my agent at the time said “why not write a book all about slugs?”

  As I was only 23 at the time this seemed like a really dumb idea. How the fuck would slugs kill and eat people? It wasn't as if they could outrun them was it? However, as this agent (Bob Tanner) was also the man who had published James Herbert's “THE RATS” I was reasonably sure he knew what he was talking about when it came to terror by animals books so, I went off and did some research and discovered enough about slugs to realize that there was more than enough material for a novel. Not only were there three species of carnivorous slug in this country, they could also spread a disease that caused worms to grow in victims brains. I was in heaven! The book was like a throw-back to the “terror by animals” films of the fifties when radioactive creatures ranging from giant squids to huge lizards attacked mankind. The thing with SLUGS was that these creatures were only six inches long and they weren't radioactive or demonic. They actually existed.

  As was my way in those days the book was written quickly (less than three months as I remember) and had only minimal editing (I know some will say that's obvious!). It was launched with a huge splurge of publicity that included bus front advertising and radio advertising and it actually became a best-seller. I was delighted and amazed and went into shock when I got the first royalty statement! I was also inundated with letters from people telling me how good the book was and how much they hated slugs. It seemed I'd touched a nerve. Even before the book was written I'd been told that five years later I'd do a sequel (which duly appeared in the shape of BREEDING GROUND in 1986) and then five years after that I'd do a third instalment which never materialized due to various circumstances.

  Not long after its release a Spanish company acquired the film rights to SLUGS and the film appeared a few years later. I first saw it on a big screen at a Horror Film Festival in London. The organisers had flown a copy from the States specially to show at the festival and asked me to attend. Fuck me, talk about embarrassing. Obviously every author wants their work to be faithfully brought to the screen but it's a lottery to be honest. I just wish they'd paid more money for the rights to make the transition less painful!

  It's weird but over the years it's achieved this kind of cult status that only truly bad films can acquire but, having said that, I've sat through much worse films over the years and if you put SLUGS up against any of the TWILIGHT movies or any number of so called “popular” films since 1988 I'd watch SLUGS anytime.

  But, back to the book. It was very successful and spawned an entire sub-genre of “terror by animals” books such as BLOWFLY, EAT THEM ALIVE (about giant preying mantises), CARACAL, BATS, COMES A SPIDER etc. etc. In fact, the only thing that no one wrote about was leeches! Perhaps I should do that some day.

  I still shudder when I see slugs in the garden, they are truly revolting things to look at I think but the weird thing was, until SLUGS was published I had never seen any of them around the house but on the day the book was published I went to get the milk in from the front step and there were two on the bottles! Maybe they knew some
thing I didn't...

  Shaun Hutson 2016

  This book is dedicated to my daughter, Kelly and not just because she missed it the first time around.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to the following people for reasons which they will appreciate. Meg Davis, Darren Laws and Holly Andrews at Caffeine Nights, Graeme Sayer, Rod Smallwood and Phantom Music. Steve, Bruce, Dave, Nicko, Janick and Adrian. My Mum, obviously. All the management and staff at Cineworld Milton Keynes especially Mark, Dani, Adam, Phillip, Alun, Mel, Hannah, James, Rae, Phil and anyone else I've forgotten. A big thanks also to the Broadway Cinema in Letchworth. A huge thank you to all of my readers who bought this book the first time around and, of course, to all of you who've bought it since.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE 13

  One 15

  Two 21

  Three 26

  Four 32

  Five 34

  Six 39

  Seven 43

  Eight 52

  Nine 56

  Ten 62

  Eleven 67

  Twelve 72

  Thirteen 84

  Fifteen 94

  Sixteen 104

  Seventeen 112

  Eighteen 121

  Nineteen 132

  Twenty 139

  Twenty-one 146

  Twenty-two 155

  Twenty-three 167

  Twenty-four 173

  Epilogue 186

  ‘The Devil Damn thee Black ...’

  - Macbeth; Act V; Scene 111

  PROLOGUE

  The slug’s eye stalks waved slowly as it moved towards the crimson lump on which several of its companions were already feeding. It slithered onto the meat and buried the long central tooth in the flesh, its rows of sharp radular teeth moving back and forth like rasps as it chewed off pieces of meat, enjoying the new coppery taste of blood.

  The slugs had grown accustomed to this taste over the past few months, hidden away in the cellar beneath the old house, they had discovered this new source of food. They had tired of their hunting and concentrated, instead, on the raw meat which was tossed down into the rank, fetid darkness. A dozen or so swarmed over the rotted chop, covering it with their own slime trails, chewing until there was nothing but a tiny bone left.

  At one time, the slugs had been forced to compete with the other scavengers in the cellar for the precious scraps. With the cockroaches, the wood-lice and centipedes. But now, with a regular supply of meat, they were the dominant group. By sheer weight of numbers, they had made the damp cellar their own. When there were no scraps they fed on the other creatures which shared their pitch black domain. Sometimes they fed on each other.

  They had begun to breed more prolifically and many had increased in size. Even though the cellar was large, its floor was covered by them, a vast seething black mass almost invisible in the impenetrable gloom. Only a single shaft of weak light broke through the darkness, forcing its way in by way of a small hole in the cellar bulkhead. But, the slugs paid it no heed. They enjoyed the blackness and the damp and they waited eagerly for the bloodied scraps.

  They had heard the footsteps above them many times, felt the vibrations. It made them restless.

  In that stinking cellar they slithered over one another in their impatience like an undulating black carpet.

  The footsteps seemed to grow louder each day.

  One

  Ron Bell got through one verse of ‘Mull of Kintyre’ then threw up. He slumped heavily against the wooden gatepost, wondering why the world was spinning round so fast. He bent double over the fence, clutching his stomach, trying to persuade the remaining Scotch to retreat back down his gullet. He swallowed hard and blew out his cheeks. A thin film of perspiration had formed on his face and he muttered to himself as his stomach continued to somersault. He turned and gazed up at the street lamp, its sodium glare reminding him of a gigantic glow worm. Amused at his little analogy, Ron started to giggle. He pushed open the gate and stumbled down the path towards. the front of the house, stumbling once over one of the chipped granite slabs. He fell forward, the bottle of Haig dropping from his grasp. It landed in the thick grass on one side of the path and remained unbroken. Ron felt something wet beneath him as he sat up and he thought it was the whisky. He put a hand to the crutch of his trousers and started to giggle again.

  ‘Please let it be blood,’ he said, laughing loudly. The sound carried far in the stillness of the night and someone walking past the gate peered at him disdainfully.

  ‘Evening,’ Ron slurred, trying to get up. He spotted the Haig bottle lying in the waist high grass and retrieved it gratefully, realising at the same time that he’d wet himself. A dark stain was fanning out from his crutch, staining one leg of his trousers too.

  ‘Shit,’ he murmured and stumbled on towards the front door. He spotted some ants hurrying away from his clumsy feet and wagged a reproachful finger at them.

  ‘Isn’t it about time you lot were in bed?’ he chuckled. ‘Dirty stop-outs.’ With a gleeful whoop, he brought his foot down on the nearest group of insects, crushing them into the pavement. Laughing like an idiot, he made his way up the remainder of the path, rummaging through his pockets for the front door key. He stuffed the whisky bottle into his coat pocket and steadied himself for the difficult task of trying to find the key hole. At the third attempt he made it and tumbled into the hall, his nostrils immediately assailed by the familiar odour of damp. But it was a smell he’d come to live with, almost to welcome. He slapped on the hall light and, being careful to remove the Haig bottle first, slung his coat at the rack. It missed and landed in an untidy heap. Ron looked at it for a moment then blundered into the sitting room. He flicked the light switch. The bulb glowed brilliantly for a second then, with a loud pop, blew out.

  ‘Shit,’ grunted Ron. To hell with it, he’d manage without. At half past eleven at night, pissed out of his mind he didn’t fancy clambering up step ladders to put a new bulb in. He staggered across the room towards the small portable TV set up on the sideboard. He yelped in pain as he banged his shin on the coffee table and he bent to rub the injured spot, cursing to himself. He finally groped his way to the TV and pressed the ON button, watching as a hazy monochrome picture gradually took shape. Ron fiddled with the aerial until the people on screen possessed the regulation number of heads then he fumbled in the cabinet beneath for a glass. All he could find was a pint pot. He shrugged and, clutching the tankard, stumbled back towards his chair. He bumped his shin again and, as he bent to massage the throbbing bruise, he caught sight of his own reflection in the glass top of the table. His eyes were sunken into their sockets and it looked as if someone had coloured his lower lids with charcoal. The accumulated growth of four days whiskers licked around his chin and cheeks and crackled as he ran a rough hand across them. He shook his head and reached his chair, slumping into the threadbare seat. A spring dug him hard in the backside and he jumped, almost dropping his tankard. Muttering to himself, he unscrewed the cap on the whisky bottle and half filled the pint pot, watching the bubbles rise to the top of the amber liquid. He swallowed the fiery fluid in deep gulps, gasping when he’d finished. He sat for long moments, gazing at the flickering TV screen, not seeing what was on. His mind was elsewhere. He rubbed his bruised shin once more and looked at the coffee table angrily.

  Bloody monstrosity. Margaret had bought it not long after they moved into the house. She said it gave the house a touch of class. Ron scoffed at the recollection. What the hell had she known about class? He smiled, wondering what she would have thought seeing him the way he was now. It had been more than two years since she’d walked out on him. It was as if, all his life, he’d been living a false existence, trying to be something he really wasn’t. He’d been manager at the local branch of Sainsbury’s and it was his salary which had enabled them to buy the house in the first place. The last owner had left it in pretty good nick and there was no need for full scale renovation. A fact which pleased Ron no end, never havin
g been one for painting and decorating. The house was old but without the feeling of antiquity usually felt in buildings erected at the turn of the century. In the beginning they had lived happily together, had built a nice home but Ron had just got bored. As simple as that. He started off by having an affair with one of the cashiers in the supermarket. He usually worked late hours so Margaret never suspected but his ruin had come with the arrival of Debbie. She had been seventeen the first time Ron went to bed with her and, at forty-two, he’d had trouble keeping up with her. By God, she knew what was what between the sheets, he remembered wistfully. He was smitten. He bought her gifts, he took her out, no longer seeming to care whether Margaret found out or not. The money dwindled. Bills didn’t get paid.

  Then, one weekend, Margaret had gone to stay with her sister and Ron had invited Debbie to stay. He’d never forgotten that weekend. They spent nearly all their time in bed and she was insatiable. So caught up in their wanton lovemaking was he, Ron didn’t even notice Margaret standing in the bedroom doorway watching them. She’d come back a day early.

  He didn’t even try to explain.

  Margaret packed her bags that night and walked out on him.

  Debbie had tired of him two weeks later and finished the affair. She’d had his money and his love but she only wanted the former. So, for the past two years he’d lived alone in the old house, watching it go to seed as he did himself. His work suffered. He received endless reprimands from his superiors until, finally, after over-ordering the wrong product three weeks running, he’d been dismissed.

  After that it was onto the dole. The bills piled up, the rates were overdue and, just that morning, the eviction notice had arrived. He reached for it, picking it up from the table beside him and waving the manila envelope before him. Inside, an official notice told him that he had twenty-four hours to come up with the money or he’d be forcibly evicted. Fuck them, thought Ron, they’ll have to drag me out of here bodily. He emptied the bottle of Haig into the pint pot and tossed the empty receptacle over his shoulder where it shattered against the wall. His head felt as if someone had wrapped a blanket around it. The images on the TV blurred and Ron grunted as he downed the last of the Scotch. They were playing ‘God Save the Queen’ on the telly and, swaying precariously, Ron stood up and saluted until the music died away. The announcer reminded him to switch his set off and the screen dissolved into a network of lines and dots, the hiss of static making it sound like an enraged snake. Ron put a hand to his head then stepped forward to turn the set off.