The Best Horror of the Year Volume Eleven

by Ellen Datlow

  “‘You can imagine, the men rowed with all the speed they could summon. When they reached the ship, they saw her canted to port, a column of thick smoke rising from the hole in her starboard side. A fierce fight was underway on the sloping deck between the sailors and a small army of men and women. They were bone white, these people, armored in the shells of the crab men they had slain, which proved little match for the Spaniards’ steel. But their weapons, spears with fire-hardened tips, axes with sharpened rock heads, were no less deadly when they found their mark, and there were more, many, many more of the Cimmerians than there were of the crew. Dancing across the bloody boards, Pan stabbed this man in the leg, cut the hamstrings of another, jabbed a third in the back. The air was full of the grunts and cries of the sailors, the cracks of their swords on the shell-armor, and the battle song of the Cimmerians, which is a low, ghostly thing.

  “‘Once the boat was within reach of the deck, the captain leapt onto it, his blade at the ready. A swordsman of no small repute, he cut a path to the spot where Pan was engaged in a duel with the first mate, who had succeeded in scoring his opponent’s legs and forearms with the tip of his sword. Just as the captain reached them, Pan jumped over the mate’s swing and drove his blade into the man’s chest. Enraged, the captain lunged at the god, but the blood of his lieutenant betrayed him, causing his foot to slip and him to lose his balance. A kick from Pan sent him tumbling down the deck, into the water.

  “‘Unlike the crew, the captain could swim. He was hindered, though, by his fine coat, whose fabric drank the water thirstily, dragging him deeper. Clenching his sword between his teeth, he used his hand to pull the garment from him. He was almost free of it when the right sleeve caught on his hook. Try as he might, the captain could not extract his arm from the coat; nor was he able to loosen the straps securing the hook. What air remained in his lungs was almost spent. There was no choice for him but to haul the coat with him, as if he were pulling a drowning man to safety.

  “‘By the time he climbed onto the ship, the battle was done. The crew was dead or dying. They had acquitted themselves well against their attackers, but the Cimmerians had the advantage of overwhelming numbers, and the assistance of a god. The captain found that deity’s sword pointed at him, together with a dozen spears. However skilled he was with his own weapon, he was a realist who recognized defeat when it confronted him. He lowered his blade, reversed it, and offered it to Pan, telling him the ship was his.

  “‘If he was expecting his surrender to result in mercy, the captain was disappointed. Pan had sworn death to all the Spaniards, and a god will not break his oath. At his signal, the Cimmerians seized the captain’s arms. A pair of them tore the coat from his hook, then used their stone knives to cut the bindings of the hook. They sliced away the captain’s garments until he stood naked. They forced him to the deck, and held him there by the elbows and knees while an old woman pressed a sharpened shell to his thigh and began the laborious work of removing his skin.

  “‘She was skilled at her work, but the process took the rest of the afternoon. The captain struggled not to cry out, to endure his torture with dignity, but who can maintain his resolve when his skin is being peeled from the muscle? The captain screamed, and once he had done so, continued to, until his throat was as bloody as the strips of his flesh spread out to either side of him. Occasionally, the old woman would pause to exchange one shell for another, and the captain would survey the ruination fallen upon his vessel. The Cimmerians had taken the crew’s weapons, and select items of their clothing, scarves, belts, and boots. Already, they had cut down the sirens’ remains and were hanging Spanish corpses in their place. Grandfather croc’s hide had been gathered from the bowsprit and folded into a mat, which Pan sat upon as he watched the Cimmerian woman part the captain’s skin from him. He had donned the captain’s fine coat, waterlogged as it was, and was holding the hook, turning it over in his hands as if it were a new, fascinating toy. Every so often, he would raise his right hand, his index finger curved in imitation of the metal question mark, and grin.

  “‘As the day was coming to an end, the old woman completed the last of her task, the careful work of separating the Captain from his face. He had not died, which is astonishing, nor had he gone mad, which is no less amazing. Pan stood from his crocodile mat and approached him. In his right hand, he gripped the captain’s hook. He knelt beside the man and uttered words the captain did not understand. He placed the point of the hook below the captain’s breastbone and dug it into him. With no great speed, the god dragged the hook past the man’s navel. Leaving it stuck there, Pan released the hook and plunged his hand into the captain’s chest, up under the ribs to where the man’s heart galloped. The god took hold of the slippery organ and wrenched it from its place. This must have killed the captain instantly, but if any spark of consciousness flickered behind his eyes, he would have seen Pan slide his heart from him, raise it to his mouth, and bite into it.’”

  Mr. Haringa paused. The assortment of dark shapes within the crimson lights faded, brightening the room. The pocket watch dropped in volume, its tick-tock merely loud. When the teacher spoke, his voice no longer seemed to nestle in each student’s ear. He said, “In his years at sea, Conrad had heard tales that were no less fantastical than this one. He had taken them with enough salt to flavor his meals for the remainder of his life. His inclination was to do the same with the narrative Heuvelt had unfolded, admire its construction though he might. The very location in which Heuvelt delivered it, however, argued for its veracity with brute simplicity. All the same, Conrad found it difficult to accept that the boy who had seated himself at the front of the boat, where he had succeeded in prying open the pocket watch and was studying its hands, was the avatar of a god. He expressed his doubt to Heuvelt, who said, ‘You know the story of Tantalus? The king who served his son as a meal for the gods? Why, eh? Some of the poets say he was inspired by piety, others by blasphemy. It does not matter. What matters is that one of the gods, Demeter, ate the boy’s shoulder before Zeus understood what was on the table in front of them. A god may not taste the flesh of man or woman. To do so confuses their natures. Zeus forced Demeter to vomit the portion she had eaten, and he hurled Tantalus into Tartarus, where Hades was happy to devise a suitable torment for his presumption. Demeter had been duped, but Pan sank his teeth into the captain’s heart with full awareness of what he was doing. Nor did he stop after the organ was a bloody smear on his lips. He dined on the captain’s liver and tongue, and used the hook to crack the skull to allow him to sample the brain. Sated, he fell into a deep slumber beside the remains of Diego de la Castille, captain in the navy of his majesty, Phillip II of Spain.

  “‘In the days after, Pan changed. The Cimmerians had departed the ship once the god was asleep, taking with them the captain’s skin, whose pieces they would tan and stitch into a pouch to carry their infants. Alone, Pan roamed the ship, dressed still in the captain’s scarlet coat. He loosened the hook from its collar, cut a strip of leather from a crew member’s belt, and fashioned a necklace for himself. The captain’s remains he propped against the mainmast and sat beside, engaging in long, one-sided conversations with the corpse. He was becoming split from himself, you see, this,’ Heuvelt gestured at the child, ‘separated from this,’ he swept his hand to encompass their surroundings. ‘The Cimmerians, who had faithfully followed the god into a battle that had winnowed their numbers by a third, grew to fear the sight of him rowing toward them in the ship’s remaining boat, a strange tune, half-hymn, half-sea shanty on his lips. He was as likely to charge them with his sword out, hacking at any whose misfortune it was to be within reach of its edge, as he was to sit down to a meal with their elders. The sirens, too, learned to flee his approach, after he lured one of them to the ship, caught her in a trap made from its sails, and dragged her onto the deck. There, he lashed her beside the captain’s corpse and commanded her to sing for him. But the words that once had pleased the god now tormented him, and i
n a rage, he slew the siren. He loaded the captain’s body into the stern of the boat, and roamed the islets of this place. He chased the herd of goats in and out of the water until they were exhausted and drowned. He hunted the flocks of bright birds roosting in the trees and decorated his locks with bloody clumps of their feathers. He piled stones on top of the rock opening in which he had tucked the head of the dismembered demigod, entombing him.

  “‘The transformation that overtook Pan’s form as man affected his form as nature, as well. In days gone by, the routes here were few. A fierce storm might permit access, as might the proper sacrifices, offered in locations once sacred to the god. Now the place floated loose in space. Its trees would be visible off the coast of Sumatra, or in a valley in the Pyrenees. Rarely were those who ventured into the strange forest seen again, and the few who did return told of their pursuit by a devil in a red coat rowing a boat with a corpse for its crew.’

  “‘And you,’ Conrad said, ‘how did you come here?’

  “‘An accident,’ Heuvelt said. ‘The boiler had been giving me trouble, to the point of almost stranding me in the middle of the lake with a full load of passengers. Not very good for business. Compared to the trials I had faced on the open sea, it was modest, but a difficulty will grow to fit as much room as there is for it. I labored over the boiler until I was sure I had addressed the fault, and then took the boat out. I should have stayed in. There was a heavy fog on the water. But so obsessed had I become with the problem that I could not wait to test its solution. I flattered myself that my skill at the wheel was more than sufficient to keep me from harm.

  “‘Harm, I avoided, but I stumbled into this place, instead. You will appreciate my wonder and my confusion. I spied our young friend balanced on the ship’s bowsprit, and when he challenged me, I knew enough of Greek and enough of Spanish to speak with him. Of course, I took him for an orphan (which from a certain point of view he was, abandoned by himself). Only later did I understand the peril I had been in. Our first exchange, halting as it was, gave me the sense that there was more to this boy than was apparent to my eye. When I left, I offered to take him with me, but he refused. For the gift of my conversation, though, Pan permitted me to depart unharmed.

  “‘Thereafter, I might have avoided the western end of the lake. Whether I judged my experience a waking dream or a visit to fairyland, I might have decided not to repeat it. As you can see, I abandoned prudence in favor of the swiftest return I could manage. I half-expected the way to be closed: I had made inquiries of several of my passengers the next day, and no one expressed any knowledge of strange rivers amongst the mountains. Yet when I searched for it that night, the passage was open. More, my young friend was eager to see me. Since then, I have visited whenever the opportunity has presented itself. I have learned my way around the tongue Pan and the Spaniards cobbled together. As I have done so, I have had his story, a piece at a time, in no order. The majority of these fragments, I have assembled into the tale you have heard; though there remain incidents whose relation to the whole I have yet to establish.

  “‘From the beginning, I had the conviction I must save this child, I must rescue him from this place. My own son died of a fever shortly after he learned to walk, while I was away at sea. I understood the influence this sad event exerted on my sentiments, but the awareness did nothing to diminish them. Each time I voyaged here, I brought candy, cakes, toys, whatever I guessed might tempt the boy away. After I understood what he was—as much as any man could—I continued my efforts to bring him with me. For if it is accounted a good deed to help a child out of misfortune, what would it mean to come to the assistance of a god?

  “‘Only the timepiece,’ Heuvelt nodded at it, ‘has continued to interest him. Every time I remove it from my pocket, it is as if he sees it anew. It fascinates him. Occasionally, I believe it frightens him. I have told him that, should he come with me, I will make a gift of it to him. The lure of the watch is strong, but not yet greater than the fear of venturing forth from his home. I think he will choose to accompany me into the world of men. It is why I have been able to travel the waters here so often. For the trespass he committed against his divinity, he must atone.’

  “‘What form would such a thing take?’ Conrad said.

  “‘I do not know,’ Heuvelt said. ‘Perhaps he would live as a mortal, resolve the conflict in his being by walking the path we tread all the way down to the grave. Or perhaps he would require more than a single lifespan. How long is needed for a god to atone to himself? He might spend centuries on the effort.’

  “There was a clatter from the front of the steamboat. Conrad glanced in that direction to see the child leap onto the railing and from there up to the roof. Another astonishing jump carried him from the boat to the tip of the ship’s mainmast, which he caught one-handed and used to swing onto the mast. While he was running down the spar to the ship, Heuvelt brought the boat’s speed up and turned the wheel in the direction of home. The child had left the watch on the deck; Conrad retrieved it and handed it to Heuvelt, who tucked it into his coat with a sigh. ‘The next visit,’ he said, ‘or the one after that, perhaps.’

  “Although Conrad remained at the Swiss spa another two weeks, and continued to take the ferry every day, he and Heuvelt did not discuss their voyage to the wrecked galleon, their encounter with the figure Heuvelt claimed was a god gone mad. He understood that the man had given him a gift, shared with him a secret mysterious and profound. But there was too much to say about all of it for him to know where or how to begin, and as Heuvelt did not broach the topic, Conrad chose to follow his example. Heuvelt did not invite him on a second expedition.

  “Nor would Conrad speak or write of the trip until the last years of his life, when he spent fifteen pages of a notebook detailing it, more or less as I’ve related it to you. By then he had been contacted by a number of critics, each of whom wanted to know about the sources of his fiction. He’d never made any secret of his life on the sea, but many of the letters he received sought to connect his biography to his writing in a way that stripped the art from it. He grumbled to his friends, but he answered the inquiries. He also recorded his experience in the Swiss mountains. Once he was finished, he turned to a fresh page and listed the titles and dates of a handful of narratives: “The Great God Pan” (1890), “The Story of a Panic” (1902), The Little White Bird (1902), The Wind in the Willows (1908), Peter and Wendy (1911). Under these, he wrote, ‘A coincidence, or a sign Heuvelt at last succeeded in his quest, and delivered the god to his long exile?’ Not long after writing these words, Conrad died.

  “In the interest of scholarly integrity, I should add that the majority of Conrad scholars consider the notebook story a bizarre forgery. Even those few who accept it as Conrad’s work dismiss it as a five-finger exercise. It’s an understandable response. How could such a tale be anything other than pure invention?”

  The pocket watch stopped. With a click, the crimson lights switched off, flooding the classroom with darkness. Something vast seemed to crowd the space with the students. Mr. Haringa’s voice said, “Aidan, would you get the lights?”

  After the dark (which took a fraction of a second too long to disperse), the fluorescent lights were harsh, prompting most of the students to turn their heads aside, or lift their hands against it. By the time their eyes had adjusted, Mr. Haringa was behind his desk, shuffling through the folders in which he kept his selection of relevant newspaper clippings. Without looking up, he said, “All right, people, you’re free to go. Thank you for indulging me. Don’t forget, next class we’re starting Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium.” Anyone who feels particularly ambitious can take a look at “Byzantium,” which is a different poem.”

  Still half in a daze, the students rose from their desks and headed for the door, some shaking their heads, some mumbling, “What was that?” A pair of students, the girls who competed for the highest grades in the class, paused in front of the teacher’s desk. One cleared her throat; the
other said, “Mr. Haringa?”

  “Yes?” Mr. Haringa said.

  “We were wondering: what do you think happened? To Pan? What did the Dutch guy do with him?”

  Mr. Haringa straightened in his chair, crossing his arms over his scarlet waistcoat. “What do you think?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “You have no idea, whatsoever?”

  “Can you just tell us, please? We have to get to Pre-Calc.”

  “All right,” Mr. Haringa said. “We know Heuvelt was using the watch to lure Pan out of his world and into ours. The question is, once you have him here, how do you keep him here? Or—that’s not it, exactly. It’s more a matter of, how do you accommodate him to this place, with all its strangeness? I’d say the answer lies in language, story, poetry, song. He knew some Spanish, so you might begin by reading him Don Quixote, a little bit at a time. As his fluency improved, you could introduce him to Lope de Vega, who wrote a long poem about the Spanish Armada. Yes, the same one the galleon had been part of. Maybe you would move on to Bécquer, his Rimasy legendas. Then—you get the idea. You teach him other languages, French, Italian, Dutch, English. You introduce him to Racine, Boccaccio, van den Vondel, Shakespeare. You bind him to our world with narrative, loop figures of speech around him, weight him with allusions. Does this answer your questions?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Kind of?”

  “Didn’t you say Pan would have to atone, for eating the captain?”

  “Ah.” Mr. Haringa paused. “To be honest, I’ve wondered that, myself. I have no idea. I’m not sure how the god would figure out what he had to do, especially if he was cut off from himself, from that fullness of being he had known before his trespass. I can picture him telling and retelling the story of that event in an effort to discover whether the answer lay somewhere in its details. In this case, your guess is just about as good as mine.”