The Best Horror of the Year Volume Eleven

by Ellen Datlow

  American Gothic Literature: A Thematic Study from Mary Rowlandson to Colson Whitehead by Ruth Bienstock Anolik (McFarland) is a critical examination tracing the evolution of American gothic from its British roots into fiction that deals with the wilderness and the dispossession of Native Americans and African Americans. From there, it further explores the input of immigrants in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries writing of their own cultural experiences. A Place of Darkness by Kendall R. Phillips (University of Texas Press) examines early cinema’s use of ghosts, monsters, and witches, follows its tendency in the 1920s to explain away supernatural elements, and the gothic’s reemergence from the 1930s on. The Routledge Handbook to the Ghost Story edited by Scott Brewster and Luke Thurston (Routledge) has forty-eight essays devoted to an historical perspective of mostly English language ghost literature. H. P. Lovecraft: Letters to Maurice E. Moe and Others edited by David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi (Hippocampus Press) includes discussions about poetry and also hints of reminiscences of Lovecraft’s early adolescence. Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror by W. Scott Poole (Counterpoint) is a fascinating cultural history of WWI’s influence on the blossoming of horror film from Nosferatu, F. W. Murnau and Albin Grau’s unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, and continuing through monster movies of all types up to today. She Bites Back: Black Female Vampires in African American Women’s Novels 1977 - 2011 by Kendra Parker (Lexington Books) is a critical study of five books by four writers investigating how the representations of black female vampires in African American women’s literature simultaneously negate, reinforce, or dismantle historical stereotypes of African American women.

  ODDS AND ENDS

  Zagava, a small press run by Jonas J. Ploeger out of Germany, produces lovingly designed books in the weird tradition. Only a few would be considered horror, but for adventurous readers, they’re worth your time and money. In 2018, among the several books published were The Friendly Examiner: Episode 1 by Louis Marvick, a very strange tale of a man, an old woman, and a spider: a novella titled The Bellboy by Rebecca Lloyd, which begins with a young man starting a coveted job as bellboy at a London hotel. His passion for Egypt and admiration for Howard Carter, discoverer of Tutankhamun’s tomb, leads him to befriend an elderly recluse living in the hotel who knew Carter. The Feathered Bough is a novella of the weird written and illustrated by Stephen J. Clark. The story is about a therapist who upon encountering a patient in an asylum, is taken by that patient into an imaginary land. Illustrations throughout.

  Sleeping With the Lights On: The Unsettling Story of Horror by Darryl Jones (Oxford University Press) is a handy, pocket-sized hardcover book with bits of wisdom such as: “Horror is an extreme art form. Like all avant-garde art, I would suggest its real purpose is to force its audiences to confront the limits of their own tolerance—including, emphatically, their own tolerance for what is or is not art.” A highly enjoyable 162-page compression covering the major horror tropes.

  The Ghost Box II edited by Patton Oswalt (Hingston + Olsen) is a lovely package of eleven reprinted ghost stories from writers ranging from Gertrude Atherton and Patricia Highsmith to Harlan Ellison, Joe Hill, Michael Shea, and Tananarive Due. Each story is an individual chapbook and all are in a black box with a black satin ribbon.

  I REMEMBER NOTHING

  ANNE BILLSON

  The light is dim and dirty yellow, but it’s enough to bleach what’s left of my frontal lobe. Feels like I wiped off my mascara with sandpaper. I’m so dehydrated my eyes are going to shrivel up and roll out of their sockets, so I squeeze them shut again and try to sink back into unconsciousness. But too late, because now I’m awake, and shivering because it’s cold and the only thing covering me is a clammy sheet.

  Must have been the noise that woke me up. It’s like the constant hum of a distant power tool, the buzzing of a thousand bees, rising and falling, and before I know it my heartbeat has fallen into synch, and my mind is fixating on some tune I once heard, and lo, I’m in the grip of a fucking earworm. That one dirgelike phrase, over and over again until I feel like screaming, except I don’t think my head could take the extra volume. Oh and by the way I’m never going to drink again.

  There’s a strange smell in the air too, like yesterday’s Chinese takeaway, making me simultaneously hungry and nauseous. And then someone who isn’t me says, “Jesus fucking Christ my head.” A man’s voice, if you can call it a voice. More of a rasp, really. But at least it stops the earworm in its tracks.

  Any sort of movement is torture, but after several abortive attempts I manage to flip myself over and find myself face to face with something small and square. Yellow, even more so than the light. I blink until it comes into focus. A Post-it Note, not really sticking to the pillow but resting there like a dry leaf, ready to blow away.

  I adjust the angle of my head a fraction, just enough to read the words.

  WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF PAIN

  YOUR BODY’S MINE SO IS YOUR BRAIN

  Wow. What does that even mean? The writing is spindly and careless. Could be mine, but I can’t imagine being in any condition to hold a pen. And why would I have written that anyway?

  Beyond the Post-it, something is moving. A mouth, forming words. Someone lying alongside me.

  “Don’t suppose you’ve got paracetamol?”

  The eyes above the mouth are bloodshot. As they focus on my face, they bulge, as if they’ve spied a gorgon with a mane of snakes. But it’s not the bulging eyes that concern me so much as the red stipple across the nose and one cheek and part of the forehead, as though the face has been spattered with paint, the yellow light making the red even redder. Yellow and red, like someone burst a boil.

  As I realise what the stipple is, the air rushes out of my lungs, so I suck it back in, and once again it escapes, and before I know it I’m hyperventilating and I think I’m going to pass out.

  “Calm down,” says the man’s voice, sounding anything but calm.

  I wrestle with my breathing until I get it under control, more or less, but the humming and the stipple on his face and neck and hands are making me feel sick.

  I say, “You’ve got blood on you.”

  He brings his hand up and examines it curiously, as though he’s never seen a hand before, then looks back at me, eyes no longer bulging but narrowed into a squint. “So have you.”

  I blink through the half-light, peering down at the sheet covering my body, and for the first time notice the faint crimson splotches like faded chrysanthemums. I look at my own hand and make out a dark red crust between the fingers. Surprised I’m not more shocked, but now my reactions are numbed, and it’s as though the hand belongs to someone else.

  What the fuck happened? Was there an accident? I can’t remember. I take another, longer look at the man lying next to me. I’ve never seen him before. How much did I drink last night? I struggle to sit up, tugging at the sheet to keep my breasts covered, though clearly it’s too late for modesty. He grips his side of the sheet and pulls it back. For a while the humming is counterpointed by hoarse panting as we engage in a small but what seems like a vitally important tug of war.

  I give up, let go of the sheet and reconfigure the pillow to raise my head, just enough to let me look around. I see enough to realise this place means nothing to me. It’s like a waiting room, with a bed. No windows, but on the wall facing us there’s a drab brown door with a small yellow blob in the middle. Another Post-it Note, I’m guessing, but too far away to see what might be written on it. A wooden chair which looks ready to collapse if anyone were to put their weight on it. A chest of drawers, IKEA by the looks of it. On top of that, a putty-coloured candle jammed into a tarnished metal holder. Above the chest, a picture on the wall, something murky, can’t see properly from here. Further along, in the corner, a washbasin the colour of pale urine, or maybe it’s just the yellow light making it look that way. A single tap, a glass tumbler. Above it a mirror, and above that, fixed to the wall
, a cheap light fitting, so weak it leaves half the room wreathed in shadow. As I stare at it, I notice an almost imperceptible flicker. Maybe the humming is coming from that.

  No clues as to why I’m here, or why I’m hurting. I turn inwards to examine the pain. Each muscle in my body feels as though it’s been extracted and twanged like a guitar string before being twisted back into place. But especially the muscles around my thighs, which are aching as if I . . .

  My heart skitters. Muscle ache around my thighs means one thing. Sex. But I don’t remember it. So I must have been raped. Kidnapped, beaten up, and raped. And probably drugged as well, because there’s a black hole where my memory should be. All I know is that I’m here now, lying in bed next to my kidnapper and rapist. I peek sideways at him. He looks almost as dazed as I feel. I need to pull myself together and do something before he recovers his wits and assaults me again.

  Think! Think!

  I look around the room again, trying to push back the panic, trying not to let him see I’ve figured out his game. I look around for something, anything, to use as a weapon. The candlestick? Too small. Perhaps I could hit him with the chair, but I’d need to knock him out with a single blow, because otherwise it would only enrage him. And then what? Then he’d get violent again, and hurt me some more.

  Did he snatch me off the street? From a bar? I should try talking, make him see reason. I read somewhere that if you can get your kidnapper to see you as a person instead of an object they’ll be less likely to hurt you. I could plead with him, promise not to run to the police if he lets me go. But would he believe that? I wouldn’t believe it myself—the second I got out of here I’d be banging on doors and screaming for the emergency services. Any sane person would do the same.

  But all this is academic, because I’m not sure I’m even capable of standing up, not right now. Whatever he drugged me with, it sapped not just my willpower but basic muscle coordination and motor function. An acute pain stabs at my stomach and I don’t even have the energy to double up as I identify it as hunger. But I’ll worry about that later. Right now, my priority is protecting myself.

  He says, “What did you put in my drink?”

  Not what I was expecting. “What?”

  “Last thing I remember . . . No, fuck it. Nothing. It’s a blank.”

  I lie flat on my back, staring at the ceiling and trying once again to hack some sort of logical path through the infernal humming. Maybe my rapist is playing a sadistic game, pretending he’s the victim here, trying to get me to trust him so I don’t fight back. Well, I’m not going to fall for it.

  He struggles into a sitting position, the sheet sliding off his torso, which like the rest of him is streaked with dried blood. As he takes in our surroundings it’s his turn to seem confused. As though he too is seeing this room for the first time.

  And I realise with a quiver of dismay that he doesn’t know where he is, any more than I do. Unless he’s bluffing, and I don’t think he is. I’m not sure this makes me feel better. At least the kidnap and rape scenario made a horrible kind of sense. This new scenario doesn’t make any sense at all. He looks frightened of me.

  “Where’s it coming from?”

  I assume he’s referring to the noise. “The light fitting?”

  “No, the blood.”

  He’s probing his face now, opening and closing his mouth, pushing fingers into the flesh of his cheeks like someone preparing to shave. I understand what he’s searching for and explore my own face the same way, then lift the sheet and peer down through the ochre shadows at my body. No cuts or scrapes or incisions, nothing that might have bled. I reach between my thighs, but no blood there either, and anyway my periods have never been that heavy, and they’ve certainly never sprayed everyone with blood.

  But there is something down there. I feel around in mounting revulsion and bring my fingers up to examine them. They’re smeared with something greasy, like chilblain ointment. I sniff them and wince. Rancid and noxious and green, like no semen I’ve ever encountered, and I’ve encountered quite a lot of it, in my time. Worse, it’s giving off a faint glow, casting a sickly viridian shadow on to the underside of our faces. I shudder and wipe the inside of my thighs with the sheet.

  “What did you put inside me, you fucking freak?”

  This seems to confuse him even further, so I come out with it.

  “I’ve been raped.”

  He stares at me, long and hard, before shaking his head.

  “Don’t look at me. You’re not my type.”

  “You think rapists only rape their type?”

  “Who says it was rape?”

  “I don’t remember consenting.”

  “Babe, I didn’t touch you,” he says. “I’m not that desperate.”

  I can’t believe he’s smiling. I feel like smashing his face in.

  “Don’t call me babe.”

  “OK. Girl. Woman. Whatever.”

  He’s a prick, that much is clear, but I force myself to simmer down because we’re in the same boat, unless he really is playing a sadistic game. But I don’t think so. His act is too convincing, and now even the obnoxiousness is leaking out of him, leaving him a punctured balloon of bewilderment.

  “Maybe we did have sex,” he says. “I don’t remember.”

  “What do you remember?”

  We question each other, tentatively, like a couple on a first date. We each remember growing up, going to school. We remember our names. I remember being picture editor on a magazine. He remembers working as a trainee chef. But beyond that, our memories are fogged, as though someone opened the door to the darkroom of our minds before the images could be fixed. All I can summon are vague sensations, but I can’t sort them into any sort of context. We don’t think we’ve ever met before, but we can’t be sure. Maybe we did meet, and that’s just another of the things we’ve forgotten.

  One thing I do know. “I drank too much.”

  He nods. “Me too. I take it you don’t have paracetamol.”

  I tell him there might be some in my bag, but I don’t know where it is. I can’t see a bag here. But at least I’ve remembered something. I do have a bag. Or had one. So where is it now?

  I try to lick my lips, but there’s not enough moisture in my mouth to do it efficiently. I would sell my soul for a drink of water. My gaze wanders longingly across the room, towards the basin where the glass is waiting to be filled. . . . But it’s an impossible dream. I’m still not capable of standing up, let alone walking all the way over there.

  And then, scattered fragments come back to me. Running down some backstairs, stumbling, laughing. A castle in ruins. Picking my way over rubble towards the gateway to a city. Something on fire. Maybe a car, or a person. Twisting, tearing, screaming . . .

  I attempt to put these impressions into words, but they resist so stubbornly I give up. “Probably a dream.”

  “Wait,” he says. He screws up his face in concentration. “The sound of breaking glass, right? Running down a long staircase? I remember that too. Dark streets, flashing lights . . .”

  “Did we dream the same thing?” I begin to shiver so hard my teeth knock together. Up until now my terror has been blunted by befuddlement, but now it forces its way through the numbness and hits me, hard. The windowless room suddenly feels smaller, the walls closing in on us. I need to get out of here right now. Where are my clothes? They must be here somewhere. I lean over the edge of the bed, and my head swims as the pattern on the carpet comes up to meet me with its interlocking semi-abstract swirls which might be flowers, or birds with sharpened beaks. And I’m struck by the feeling—no, the absolute conviction—that I’ve done all this before. But that’s not possible. How could I not remember a hangover this bad?