The Best Horror of the Year Volume Eleven

by Ellen Datlow

  But at least now I’m down here I can read the Post-it.

  THE END IS NEARER THAN YOU THINK

  THE ONLY THING TO DO IS DRINK

  Yes, that’s all very well, and I’m literally dying of thirst, but there’s no fucking glass. Not any more.

  Hysterical laughter wells up inside me once again. Who cares if there isn’t a glass, stupid? I can still hear water trickling out of the tap. I begin to crawl back towards the ever more distant basin, and everything is getting darker, and I’m aware it isn’t the light that’s fading this time; it’s my eyesight. Glass splinters embed themselves into my hands and knees, but I try to ignore the stinging pain, and keep moving, head down like a purposeful household pet moving towards its feeding bowl. Can I reach the basin before I bleed to death and the light goes out for ever?

  “I know you’re there!” he says.

  Of course I’m there. Where else would I be, for fuck’s sake? But he’s moved again, and without me even noticing. Now he’s towering over me. He raises his arm, sending a long dark shadow racing across the ceiling, and I can feel the air being displaced with a whoosh as the fingernails swoop down. I manage to twist sideways so they miss my neck, but instead they sink into the soft flesh of my abdomen. He doesn’t draw them out, but screws them deeper, exploring, until I can feel them grasping something and pulling it out. I look down and see grey coils spilling out of a deep, dark hole hemmed by wayward flaps of shredded skin. As I watch in horrified fascination, the hole wells up with viscous brown liquid which overflows and drips out and is absorbed into the carpet. This is me, or what’s left of me, and soon there will be nothing left.

  I resume my epic crawl towards the basin, because the alternative is to curl up and bleed, or be eaten alive or dismembered. Who knows, maybe he’ll decapitate me and put my head in a bag. Maybe I’ll end up glowing bile-green and speaking words I don’t understand to other people who don’t understand them.

  I must have blacked out but suddenly I’m there, the washbasin looming over me like a grimy porcelain stump. I wrap my failing arms around the pedestal and pull myself up, slithering in my own blood in a big fat parody of a pole dance. And then I’m slumped over the basin, watching my blood circling the plughole. Thank god he didn’t shut the tap off, because I don’t think I would have had enough strength left to turn it on.

  The dripping blood forms fuzzy-edged tributaries which branch out and rejoin each other in a delta of gore. The sight is so mesmerising I almost forget why I’m there. But then it comes back to me. Ah yes. The only thing to do is drink.

  More laughter, this time from right behind my ear. I can smell his rank and meaty breath as his teeth snap like scissors close to my neck. Just as his fingers seize my left arm and start to pull it out of its socket, I manage to dip my head beneath the tap so water trickles into my open mouth. At first there seems too much of it, and it makes me cough and splutter. But then some of the wetness leaks into my parched throat, soaking into the cracks until my insides are filling out and swelling up, all pink and plump and juicy again. Then I swallow.

  The effect is instantaneous. I feel more like my old self again. The putty-coloured candle flares up one last time and goes out. But it doesn’t matter. Light or dark, it’s all the same to us now.

  And now I know everything. I know it will take another few hours for the wounds to heal, but heal they will, and I can already feel my torn flesh knitting itself back together, like a million pins and needles in a sewing factory. One by one, the ruptured veins and arteries are sealing themselves. It’s a good feeling, the strength seeping back, and then even more strength. Inhuman strength. I look down fondly at the grey loops extruding from my torso, feeling an urge to play cat’s cradle with them before they heal. So badly fashioned, these bodies. All those fragile tubes and layers, flapping uselessly around.

  And there’s more. I can feel my fingernails growing longer and sharper, like his. I straighten up and stretch like a big cat and turn to greet him with a wide smile, showing off my rows of new teeth.

  “I was beginning to think you’d never make it,” he says in his new voice.

  “Christ, I’m starving.” My voice sounds like his, deep and dark and guttural. Not my voice at all. Correction, it is mine. This is my real voice. The other one was just a placeholder.

  Together, we finish off the leg, which has a gamey taste, but it doesn’t matter because it’s still delicious, and when we’ve eaten that, we start on the head. We reach into the bag and prise off the top of the skull with our fingernails and pull out chunks and stuff them into our mouths. It’s like a panettone full of juicy sultanas and crunchy bits of cranium.

  When the bag is empty, our stomachs are still roiling with hunger, but our body clocks inform us it’s after midnight. Feeding time. The leg and head were just an amuse-bouche. Time to go out on the town again, drinking and dancing and crashing cars, setting things on fire and eating people. The usual stuff.

  Before we go, we kiss, long and deep. His tongue snakes all the way down my throat and tickles my lungs. Mine worms its way up through the back of his nose into his brain and lingers there, lapping at the lobes from the inside, and I look forward to tasting his greasy green semen again, and laugh with delight, remembering how earlier I found it so repulsive. What a fool I was. It’s not repulsive at all. It’s a delicacy.

  For a while, we feel our way around each other’s bodies. Our real bodies, not the stupid ones we were lumbered with. They’ll be back, probably. I certainly hope so. Maybe we’ll regress every now and again and be obliged to grope around blindly, desperately seeking our true selves, but we’ll carry on leaving Post-its and severed body parts to point the way back. And I know the clues will never stop being cryptic, because tormenting those other selves is all part of the fun. So feeble. So useless. So stupid. How could you not want to torture them?

  We lick the last of the blood off each other. Then open the drawers and find the clothes where we left them several aeons ago, clean and neatly folded. They’re rough and grey, like army surplus. We put them on, and then the greatcoats, which smell of nutmeg, and inspect each other with mutual admiration.

  “Good to have you back,” he says.

  “Good to be back,” I say.

  On the way to the door, I pause to examine the dark picture on the wall. Up close, I can finally make out an intricate tangle of human figures, some with bird or animal heads, others sinking into black pits or trussed to spiked wheels. Nails hammered into tendons, entrails spilling out in steaming coils, heads roasting like chestnuts, mouths gaping in inaudible screams, and . . . something else.

  “Hey!” I say, pointing at two smiling figures holding saws, poised in the act of removing one victim’s legs from the rest of his torso. “They look just like us!”

  He grins. “So they do. Shall we go?”

  I could stare at that amusement park of pain all night, but he wrenches the locked door open with a flick of the wrist, leaving the jamb in splinters, and extends his arm towards me in invitation. I take it as we step outside.

  It feels good to be us.

  MONKEYS ON THE BEACH

  RALPH ROBERT MOORE

  Foam slid down the station wagon’s windshield, bubbles and whiteness, towards the black wipers.

  Selena, holding the green hose by its neck, water gushing out, offered it to Geoffrey. “Do you want to spray the soap off?” Geoffrey glanced at Lisbeth. His older sister thought about it a moment, conscious of Selena waiting patiently. Nodded.

  Geoffrey took the rushing water from his stepmother, fingers feeling the vibration in the hard green rubber. Sucked in breath. So many new adventures, when you’re young.

  Don, tall and broad-shouldered, on his haunches at the rear tire of the station wagon, scrubbing the hubcaps but keeping an eye on the hose being switched from a delicate hand to a small hand, caught Selena’s eye. Smiled. Another little inroad into getting his kids to accept his new wife.

  He felt great. Didn’t f
eel at all like he might pass out. Maybe it was the island air, all that healing salt from the ocean carried in the Caribbean breezes. Down by the rear tire, sandals wet, he could see past their rented villa to the beautiful green blueness of the bay. Never lived anywhere with such a view. Always wanted to.

  He actually didn’t mind passing out. Had come to enjoy it. To be on your feet, and suddenly start losing consciousness, limbs falling off, that underwater confusion, mind muffled to where you can’t put a sentence together, and in sweeps the blackness.

  Something magical about coming to on a floor, returned to your life, looking across the flatness at dust and forgotten paperclips. Where am I? And of course the pain. A body, falling, unconscious before it starts collapsing, doesn’t defend itself on the way down. So when you come to, an elbow aches, maybe a knee, fingers fumbling over your face, feeling.

  Every time he passed out he had been by himself, in the garage, up in his study, out in the yard. Usually, it was easy to get back to normal before he returned to whatever room Selena was in. He never told her what had just happened. Not sure why. Didn’t want to worry her? Wanted to keep this part of his life to himself? Something secret, like drugs or an affair? Probably she had secrets too.

  The station wagon was looking a lot better. After the four of them landed at the island’s one airport, about the size of a bus depot, descending onto the tarmac in Hawaiian shirts, sunglasses and straw hats, they had strolled through customs and out into the pink parking lot, heat and palm trees, and found the only rental available to them was this station wagon, so old it had wood trim along the sides. But the kids loved it, and Selena was game.

  The rental agent hadn’t even had it washed. “You arrived on time! We expected you to be late. Would you and your family like to sit inside and listen to the radio while I find someone to wash it for you?”

  Selena came up with the idea of them washing it themselves, the next morning, at their villa. “What do you think, guys? We’ll turn it into an adventure.” Joan would have pouted the rest of the vacation, her disapproval aped by the kids.

  When you have something old, just wash it new.

  She had made a lot of inroads with them. Geoffrey wasn’t a hard sell, he still took his cues from others, but Lisbeth, older and a woman herself, although only twelve, took more time. Don watching from his aisle seat, on the flight down, as Selena flirted with her.

  She was a great flirt.

  He took the hose from Geoffrey, used his thumb to eclipse most of the brass opening, turning the gush into a high-powered spray. Worked his way down the soapy length of the wagon, walking backwards.

  Selena and Lisbeth were facing each other, Selena holding the length of Lisbeth’s pale hair in her fingers. “Mom said I shouldn’t cut it.”

  Selena’s hands lifted Lisbeth’s hair on either side of her face, to just below her chin. “I don’t know, sweetheart. Maybe if we didn’t cut-cut it, but just had it trimmed? Maybe up to here? It’d really frame your face. And it would dry a lot faster after you washed it.”

  “Dad?”

  Don saw Geoffrey’s worried face. Turned around to see where his son was looking.

  Parked across the entrance to the driveway, blocking it, a police cruiser.

  Don raised his jaw, eyes watching the man dressed in a sheriff’s uniform headed towards him. “Good morning.”

  The sheriff got closer, shaking his head. Seemed upset. “What are you doing?”

  Don ambled forward, to meet him. “You mean washing this wagon?”

  The sheriff gave Don an exasperated look. “Did you not see the signs at the airport, warning that there is a water shortage? This is an island, Sir!”

  Geoffrey and Lisbeth both moved closer to Selena. She put a hand on each child’s shoulder.

  Don shrugged. “I didn’t. In any event, we’re finished. I’ll be sure we’re more careful in the future.”

  The sheriff thrust both hands at the rear of the driveway, where soapy water was sliding towards the lawn. “In the future! What about now? That is all wasted water. That is a crime.”

  Don gave the older, shorter man a quick up and down. Open collar, probably because of the heat. Sheriff’s badge pinned to his beige shirt. Unusually wide black belt with a pair of handcuffs dangling by one hip, side arm by the other hip.

  “Look, I apologize. The car rental gave us a dirty car. We rinsed it off.”

  The other man snorted. “I think it’s more than a rinse! Look at how many liters of our water you have wasted. Did you ever think that perhaps there’s a reason why they gave you an unwashed car? Why nobody washes their car on this island?”

  The fact the sheriff said “liters” rather than “gallons” reminded Don he was in a foreign country, where he didn’t know much about the culture. He bobbed his head. “You’re right. I’m very sorry. I didn’t see the sign at the airport. I have custody of my kids for the next two weeks, and I wanted to show them a good time. You have my word we’ll be extra careful about using water the rest of our stay in your country. I appreciate you letting me know.”

  “Well, you appreciate me letting you know. I hope you can appreciate me writing you a ticket, a fine, for what you have done.”

  Don said nothing for a moment, then smiled. Raised his black eyebrows. “Of course. Only fair.”

  Watched as the shorter man fussily made entries in the thick pad of forms he had pulled out of a back pocket. Glanced back at Selena and the kids. She stood relaxed, hip cocked. Gave him a wry smile.

  “Just because we are a small island does not mean we can be pushed around, Sir.”

  “Of course not. This was my mistake. I assure you it won’t happen again.”

  “You are American, right?”

  Don spread his big hands apart. “I am.”

  “You have a lot of water in your country. The Great Lakes. Five of them, correct? We don’t have that down here.” He tore the top sheet off his pad. Handed it to Don.

  Don glanced at the fluttering paper. He hadn’t learned what the conversion rate was on the local currency, but it seemed like a large amount. Read the rest of the form. “Thank you, Sheriff Axonil. I’ll take care of this right away.”

  Don took up the rear as the hostess wound his family past the small tables, the lamp-lit faces, to a large table by the side window.

  As he followed behind his group, he saw different men at the tables notice Selena, do that double take where they stare longer. Trying to hide their interest from their dates, mumbling distracted responses to the conversation, which never works. Don used to get angry when other men noticed Joan, but with Selena, who was younger and prettier, he had gotten more relaxed. Maybe because being as attractive as she was, she was more used to male attention, and was less flattered by it. Better at ignoring it, rather than being grateful. He remembered that moment in bed when he first saw her face for exactly what it was, how it actually looked. Which always happens. Without makeup, without a pose. Just a naked face, bony features and excited eyes. And it still looked good. Not as attractive as he originally thought, that day in the bookstore, rain outside, faces never are, but a face that even at this most vulnerable moment was still young and confident.

  Once everyone was seated, menus passed over their heads to the family, he ordered a Manhattan for himself, Cosmopolitan for her. The waiter bowed, went away.

  Lisbeth was sitting up straight in her chair, still getting used to her new hairstyle, trying to act more sophisticated. Selena had lent her one of her necklaces. Pearls around a kid’s throat. She took on an affected air. “I’ve always wanted to try steamed clams.”

  Selena laid her hand on the little girl’s wrist. “Your dad loves clams.”

  “That sounds like what I’ll have for my appetizer, then. Are you having clams?”

  “You know? I think I will! Thanks for the idea, sweetie.”

  Lisbeth’s eyes read left to right as she considered the entrees, but her mind was obviously elsewhere. Still staring at the
different entries, their fancy fonts, she made a too-casual shrug. “So how did you and my dad meet, anyway?”

  Don sipped his Manhattan. Lit a cigarette. Sat back in his chair. “Your stepmother and I met in Manhattan. It was a rainy day. Like in a movie. We talked for a while, like adults do, then I asked her to have a drink with me after work.”

  “So did you know you really liked her?”

  Selena answered for him, winking at Lisbeth, which caused the little girl to blush. “He did. Know how I could tell? He started courting my hand.” Selena held up her slim left hand in the candlelight. “He’d kiss its knuckles, hold it, pat it. Gave it lots of treats. Food, clothes, jewels. Eventually, it let him slip a heavy ring on its finger. Kind of like a saddle. But I like saddles.”

  Don shifted in his seat.

  “And you guys are going to stay married, like, forever?”

  Don leaned towards his daughter. “Absolutely. And the four of us are always going to have adventures like this.”

  A commotion at a nearby table.

  The man at the head of the table spoke in a loud voice meant to be heard throughout the immediate neighborhood of tables. “Do you not know how to open a bottle of wine?”

  The waiter, much smaller, tilted his head to one side, trying to screw the corkscrew into the cork. “I am opening it for you, Sir. It will only take a moment.” More furious twisting, base of the bottle clamped between the elbow and ribs of his white waiter’s jacket.

  The customer spread his hands apart, shoulders lifted, with a Can you believe this shit? look of disbelief played to the other tables. Held out a paw. “Do you know who I am? You ever hear the name Oslov? That’s me. Here. Hand me the bottle. Let me give you a lesson in how to uncork a wine.”

  “I am doing it, Sir.”

  A waitress brought Don’s table their soup. Brown, flecked with green. He stubbed out his cigarette. “Smells fantastic. Thank you.”

  She nodded, left.

  “Hand me the bottle! I’m paying for it. Hand it to me.”