The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Volume 1

by Paula Guran

  “Sure.”

  No birthmark.

  I stare at my screen, which is dark from having gone into sleep mode. My reflection is the only normal face I have seen today since leaving the apartment.

  * * *

  There’s no train delay tonight but I walk home anyway, take the same route as yesterday, hoping to see the homeless man again. I tell myself it’s because I want to apologize to him, but it’s not the truth.

  He’s in the same doorway. His prosthetic hand is attached to him again, poking stiffly out from the sleeve of his coat. For a moment it’s as if there’s the suggestion of worry in his face as he watches me approach, but of course it’s hard to tell.

  “Leave me alone,” he says as I get near.

  I hold my hands up. “I just want to talk.”

  His doll-eyes watch me. I’ve never seen any of them blink. I wonder if they even close. If when they lie down, the eyes roll downwards to reveal fake eyelids.

  “Does it hurt?” I ask.

  “The hand? No.”

  “I mean your face.”

  He doesn’t answer straight away. Instead he watches me. The eyes blink once, as if answering my earlier unspoken question.

  “Why doesn’t anyone notice it?” I ask. “Why was it only me who saw it happening, only me who notices people’s faces?”

  He cocks his head to one side. He looks left along the street, then right, as if checking that we’re alone. Then he leans forward like he’s going to tell me a secret. The streetlights leave little arcs of orange light on the surface of his eyes.

  “All we’re noticing is you,” he says.

  He starts to laugh. It grows, echoing off the shoddy buildings lining the street. I get up. The eyes are blinking now, madly, rolling up and down and up and down, spinning like reels in a slot machine, and the laughter’s growing, he’s roaring, it’s all there is, laughter and rolling glass eyes in a leering porcelain face, and I run.

  I search the internet. All the faces on there, in the adverts and on the websites, are porcelain. Lifeless eyes stare back from the screen. I wonder if Abigail and I are the last normal people left in the world.

  Abigail is at the table, sipping from a wineglass. She watches me. I know she’s worried. I want to explain. I want to tell her everything, but I know it won’t work, might only make things worse. I have it in my mind that telling her might be the thing that changes her. Like a jinx.

  I am going to protect us.

  I find what I’m looking for and choose next-day delivery. It feels better when you’re finally doing something about a problem. Action always feels better than inaction.

  I call in sick the next morning. I can’t face the hard-faced crowds again. Abigail’s deadline is tomorrow, and she says she needs to be left alone. I won’t get in the way, I tell her. She’ll barely notice I’m there. I describe it as a self-care day, tell her I need to just recharge, get myself back on track. She warms to the idea.

  The package arrives a little after ten. I try not to look at the delivery man’s face as I sign for the parcel. It’s surprisingly heavy. Abigail doesn’t even notice there’s someone at the door—she’s absorbed in her writing, papers and books and laptop spread out all over the dining table.

  In the bedroom, I sit on the end of the bed and open the package.

  They’re perfect.

  I show them to Abigail before bed, removing the lid and presenting her with the open box. The masks are nestled in plum-colored tissue. They have thick black elastic straps so you can wear them—the straps have to be thick because of the weight of the porcelain. They’re identical, although I’ve colored the lips of one of them with Abigail’s favorite lipstick.

  “It’ll be good for us,” I tell her. “Maybe we can be like everyone else.”

  She lifts hers out of the box, feeling the heft of it in her hand. Turns it over and looks at the inside, the face embossed now, like a photo negative.

  “I don’t think everyone else is into this,” she says after a while.

  “Into?” I ask.

  She looks at me. “Oh.” She gestures vaguely at the bed. “I thought—”

  “No,” I say. “No, it’s not that. It’s for us to just wear around the place. Maybe wear outside.”

  She’s watching me.

  “So we can be like everyone else.”

  Abigail puts the mask down on the bed and stands up to leave. I grab her hand.

  “Please,” I say.

  She studies me for a long moment before sitting back down. She exhales. None of this is easy for her, I know that. It’s difficult for me, too. I tell her this.

  Abigail takes my hand. “Fine,” she says. “We’ll try it, just tonight. But tomorrow we’re ringing the doctor.”

  “Of course,” I say. “Of course.”

  We put our masks on and lie down on the bed in our clothes. I switch off the bedside lamp. The mask feels like an embrace. It feels like a shield. The porcelain gradually warms. I feel contained, and it is good.

  I wake up late, still wearing the mask. The bed is empty—Abigail’s already gone to her office to go over the final article with her editor. Her mask is on her bedside table, and panic washes through me. They’ll be noticing her. She’ll stand out. I picture them gathering around her, staring, pointing, and what then?

  I go out into the lounge and call her mobile. She answers and tells me to be quick, she’s about to go in with the editor.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says. Pause. “Are you?”

  Sigh of relief. My breath lingers warm and moist inside the porcelain. “Yes,” I reply. “Although I’m late for work. I can still make it, though.”

  “Okay,” she says. “I’ll see you later. Don’t wear the mask out. Promise me. And ring the doctor.”

  “Okay,” I reply. “Promise.”

  She says she has to go, and hangs up.

  I shower, leaving the mask on. It feels important to keep everything normal, to act as if there is no mask, to act as though I’m just like everyone else, which is something I am used to doing. I dress and head out.

  * * *

  The commute to the office is the best I’ve had in a long time. The faces on the tube don’t bother me as much. Things almost feel normal again. There are the usual nods in my direction, which I return. One or two of them stare, but it’s a good kind of staring. It’s because they are used to seeing me with my old face. Inside my new sleek, pale visage, I smile.

  Things start feeling wrong when I get to the office. My co-workers stare as I walk to my desk. At first I try to ignore it, but then the doubts come avalanching in. It’s like when you were at school and the square kid came in one day wearing trendy clothes—it only made things worse for them. Know your place, the staring says. You aren’t like us. It’s a mask, it’s not real.

  Through the glass wall of his office, my supervisor watches me while he talks on the phone.

  Inside the mask, my face burns with shame. But I can’t take it off. Not now. I’ve committed. Ride it out, I tell myself. They’ll come around. They’ll see you’re just like them. Maybe they’ll recognize the effort. Maybe they’ll see that I’m really trying.

  Within an hour Abigail comes rushing in. She looks flustered, red-faced, there’s a sheen of sweat on her brow. She sees me and her face takes a moment to almost ripple, shiver, before settling on an expression of dismay.

  “Abigail,” I say, confused. “What’re you doing here? Why didn’t you wear your mask?”

  “Your boss called me,” she says.

  My supervisor is there then, between us, and with a smile he directs her to his office. Then he looks my way, the smile gone now, and says, “Come on.”

  Inside his office, he flicks a switch and the glass turns opaque. I’ve never been on this side of the glass when it goes like that. Beyond, the main office is deathly silent. Abigail and I sit down in the chairs in front of his desk, while he walks around to his side and sinks down in
to his leather seat.

  “Take that thing off,” Abigail hisses at me.

  My supervisor starts talking. He keeps his tone gentle, soft. He smiles sometimes. They must teach this stuff in supervisor’s school. But I’m not really listening. His words become blurry, faint. I am looking at his face. It’s not porcelain. It’s flesh. He’s got human eyes and a bulbous nose and ruddy drinker’s cheeks, and when he talks or smiles you can see little flashes of his yellow teeth. I look at Abigail, but of course her face is as it’s always been—we were the only ones left. I realize I’m talking over my supervisor. I’m telling him how great it is to finally see his old face, it’s been so long.

  I’m getting up, knocking my chair over by accident, and I’m pulling open his office door to gaze out at the dozen or so faces of my co-workers. I’m going to tell them to their smug flawless porcelain faces that it’s not just me, our boss is the same, but the faces looking back at me are all made of soft skin, all different hues and shades and complexions. Someone behind me tries to grab my shoulder, but I wheel away, staggering into the main office. Some of the guys come toward me and grip my arms, and I am sinking, sinking to the carpeted floor amongst pressed trouser legs and polished shoes. Abigail’s face floats above me, surrounded by all the others. Hands reach down, they’re Abigail’s, and I feel her delicate fingertips running up and down either side of my head. Everyone’s pushing down, I can’t rise, I just want to sit up, but all these strange fleshy faces crowd in instead, they’re nothing like mine. Where are your faces, I’m screaming, where have your other faces gone, and the only reply is Abigail, crying now as she pulls at the porcelain and tries to dig her fingers in.

  “I told you not to wear it out,” she says. “What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with your eyes? Take it off. Take it off. Why won’t it come off?”

  JACK WESTLAKE lives in the UK. He writes dark fiction which has appeared Black Static, BFS Horizons, The Dark, PseudoPod, Ambit, and elsewhere. He is currently working on a novel.

  PHANTOMS OF THE MIDWAY

  SEANAN MCGUIRE

  The sky over Indiana was Dorothy Gale blue, that shade of sun-bleached denim that spoke of faded dreams and dying youth and all the wasted days of summer. Aracely squinted up at the sky and wondered what they’d called that color before Baum came along with his silver slippers and his golden roads and his green, green fantasies of a better world. Probably nothing. Some things were so much a part of the way the world was that they never stood out until someone pointed out that it wasn’t always, hadn’t always, couldn’t always be that way.

  People in Indiana lived and died under this sky, and they thought it was exactly right, and she thought that was exactly wrong. She lowered her eyes and walked on, cutting a path across the boneyard as around her, the carnival bloomed like some incredible flower. Tents for petals, people for pollen, and the straight metal spine of the Ferris wheel for a stem, rising from the dry-baked ground one piece at a time. It was a miracle of modern engineering, the way the whole thing broke down and came back together, and she didn’t understand it and would only be in the way if she tried to help, so she kept walking, waving to people who weren’t too busy to wave back, smiling at the rest, so they wouldn’t have to worry she’d feel slighted when they didn’t drop everything to say hello to the boss’s daughter.

  The carousel sang as it was tested, calliope music drifting sweet as a dream over the field. A speaker buzzed with static louder than a beehive, sweeter than any honey. The garden Aracely had been cultivated for took shape, light and color and glorious, controlled chaos, and she breathed it in with a grateful heart, filling her lungs from tip to top with home, home, home. She did all right in motel rooms and trailers, but there was nothing like the honest, open air of the carnival.

  Her mama’s tent was already up, walls fluttering gently in the breeze, neon sign above the door flickering to draw the midway moths inside. The buzz of the needle cut through the tarp, and Aracely relaxed that tiny bit more. Everything was normal.

  She swept the hanging door aside with one hand and stepped through, into the surprising brightness of the tent. Her mother’s lighting array had been refined over more seasons than Aracely had been alive, until it would have taken a grand search to find a place—any place—with better visibility. The racks of inks and books of flash were in their places, and her mother sat, regal, next to Charlie, who drove the main wagon, his face pressed into the table, her needle pressed against his skin. A river unspooled behind it, waters dark and deep and beautiful, filled with mystery.

  “Hi, Mama,” said Aracely.

  “Hello, sweetheart. You have a good nap?” Her mother didn’t look away from her work, and that, too, was normal; that was the way things were supposed to go.

  Aracely, who had been sleeping when the carnival pulled into this new resting place, nodded. “I did,” she said. More shyly, she added, “I like to be asleep when we arrive.”

  Being asleep when the engines stilled and the unloading began meant waking to a garden already coming into bloom, a busy hive of chaos and choices. She hated to see the fields empty, knowing they would only be full—only be fully alive—for such a little time before the carnival moved on again, and the silences returned.

  “I know, baby.” Her mother reached for a cloth, wiped the tattoo, and went back to work. The carnie stretched out on her table didn’t make a sound. “Run along, now. I have a list to get through before we open.”

  Technically, tattoos could be done anywhere with light and power, and Daisy had done her share of work in roadside motels or while parked at rest stops. But there was something about the carnival air that the carnies swore sped their healing, and there was no advertisement like someone walking around with a smug smile and a bandage on back or bicep. Daisy only tattooed her employees on arrival day: after that, it would be townies until they rolled out again, and that made time on her table rare and precious.

  Aracely nodded. “All right, Mama. I love you.”

  “Love you, too, flower,” said Daisy, and then her tall, dream-dazed daughter was gone, leaving her alone with the buzz of the needle and the man on her table, who might as well have been a corpse for all the word he offered.

  “You dead there, Charlie? Because I’m not wasting any more of this ink on a dead man.”

  “Just thinking, Daisy.”

  “Thinking about what?”

  “Aracely.”

  Most men with the show, they’d said that, they would have had concern for their anatomy immediately after. Aracely was seventeen, sweet and kind and lovely as a summer morning, and her mother protected her like she was the last rose in the world. Daisy had her reasons. No one questioned that. She looked down at Charlie, thoughtful, needle in her hand shaking and ready to sting.

  “What about her, Charlie?”

  “She doesn’t know much outside the show, does she?”

  Daisy shook her head, aware he couldn’t see her, unable to put her answer, vast and awkward as it was, into words. Born in the back of the boneyard, that was Aracely, her first breath full of popcorn and sawdust and the tinkling song of the calliope. Raised where walls were either tin or canvas, where everything could change in an afternoon—that was Aracely too, daughter of the midway, anchored to the open road. Her life was an eternal summer, bracketed by deep-dreaming winters that passed without comment, leaving her exactly as she’d been before the snow fell.

  “Her daddy’s people were town,” she said finally. “We don’t go there anymore. No point to it. He didn’t want to know her when she was just getting started, he doesn’t get to know her now.”

  “How’s she going to take it when she has to leave?”

  Daisy sucked in a sharp breath, putting the needle down before she could do something they’d both regret. Her art was more important than her anger. A flare of temper could last a moment, but a line malformed by a hand that pressed down a bit too hard, a needle wielded in anger . . .

  Those were things that
would last, and they would shame her. More than anything else, Daisy was a woman who hated to be shamed.

  “She never has to leave, Charlie, so you set that thought out of your head,” said Daisy, picking her needle up again. “There’s nothing in the world outside that she can’t find right here.”

  Charlie, if he thought otherwise, was clever enough to keep his own counsel. The needle flashed and buzzed, and nothing more was said, and too much went unspoken.

  Aracely walked the midway as it came alive, a smile on her lips and a song trapped against her tongue, filling her with the heat of its hum. She walked the whole shape of the show, learning every inch of the land, every step of what was going to become her home, transformed by the sweet alchemy of light and sound and intention into something bright, and beautiful, and temporary.

  Always temporary.

  She stopped at the edge of the space portioned off for their use, melancholy washing over her like a wave, so that she had to press a hand against her chest to keep her heart from beating itself free and flying away. It wasn’t fair. Everyone else had a home that was allowed to endure more than the span of a season, but her home, her place had to disappear every time the wind changed.

  Was it so wrong to wish for something that could last?

  A piece of unsecured rope fluttered in the breeze. She glanced toward it and went still, gazing at the distant shape of a farmhouse. No: it wasn’t a farmhouse. She’d seen plenty of those, scattered across America’s heart-land like a gambler’s dice across a felted table. They possessed a certain similarity of form and function, all drawn from the same blueprints, all with their own detail and design. Farmhouses were like people. You knew them when you saw them, and every one of them was different, and every one of them was the same.

  This was a mansion. This was the kind of house where movie stars lived, the kind of house that got written up in the magazines that Adam who ran the hoochie-koo show liked to read, the ones he always hid when he saw her coming. Aracely didn’t understand why: there was nothing shameful in pictures of nice houses, or interviews with the nice people who lived in them. But Adam acted like he couldn’t think of anything worse, like she had no idea there was a world outside the carnival, and so Aracely went along with it. She didn’t want to make him uncomfortable.