The Best Horror of the Year Volume Eleven

by Ellen Datlow

  Papa Yaga walked out first, back to us, his men dropping in behind. It took a few moments for my eyes to adapt to the darkness. Until then I followed the sound of his footsteps. We stopped by one of the pontoons, a narrow ladder built into the giant hydraulic foot.

  “I don’t like to bring currency outside until it’s leaving my possession,” he said by way of explanation.

  He climbed first. I followed. I had the feeling if I let Pasha go next he would get some stupid idea he could take advantage of that turned back. From the top of the dragline’s foot we climbed a second ladder, then a third.

  I’m only guessing, but I’m pretty sure when the dragline was tearing millions of years of geology from open cast mines there was no need for a panoramic penthouse.

  In the center was a small lounge. What wasn’t covered in leather was coated in chrome. Two young, half-naked models, one male, one female, draped over a white leather sofa the size of a family car.

  “Please, take a seat,” Papa Yaga said. He nodded to one of his men who returned a few minutes later with a holdall. I glanced in the top. Stacks of 500 Euro notes bulged against the open zip. I caught Pasha’s eye and got a gut feeling he was going to say something. I shook my head and hoped no one else noticed. Beside me, one of the models smirked.

  “That all looks fine,” I said, the need to be somewhere else getting more intense by the minute.

  “Another delivery soon?” Papa Yaga said, the glow from the in-floor lighting glittering off his igneous teeth.

  “As soon as we can. We try to not harvest the same stone circles too often. We need tragic accidents, not rumors. If there are rumors there won’t be any product.”

  “Of course,” Papa Yaga said. “But not too long. I have a lot of buyers waiting.”

  I spent three more nights with Pasha, on the edges of stone circles consuming the land, while he severed throats and ropes. Three seemed like a good number to put distance between the audience at the dragline, while still getting out before Pasha got me killed.

  My instincts were right. Each time we went out he got more erratic. More unpredictable. I could tell his attention was elsewhere. If I’d have known where I’d have let the stones take him.

  I went to see Papa Yaga in person, because he struck me as a man who believed in etiquette, and explained Pasha would be carrying on with a new partner. Explained I was retiring for family reasons.

  “Families can be very problematic in our line of work,” he said, and held out his hand. I moved to Hamburg where I had no family and knew no one.

  They caught me in Munich six months later, grabbing me as I left a small goth club in Kultfabrik. Whatever they injected into my arm cascaded me through a thousand personal hells. It was a long time before I smelt dry ice without checking to see if my skin was being scalded from my face. Waking to find both arms dislocated was a relief.

  It was dusk and I was halfway along the dragline boom, legs a meter above the ground, arms wrenched out of my sockets behind my back. All my weight hung on narrow bracelets of gristle eroded into my wrists. I gritted my teeth and tried to stay still.

  “I really appreciated your honesty in coming to speak to me in person, even though you were lying about family. It was an understandable, and acceptable, lie.”

  Papa Yaga was below me, sitting on his shooting stick, his tweed jacket thrown across his shoulder.

  “If I’d found out my partner was so much of a liability I would have lied for a solution. The better lie would have been: ‘I’m sorry Papa Yaga. My partner had an unfortunate accident where he impaled himself on an iron spike, and as I’m too old in the tooth to work with another partner I wish to retire.’ I’d have tried to persuade you. You would have reluctantly, but politely, declined, and we’d have parted ways to never cross paths again.”

  He grabbed my bare foot and massaged the arch with his fingers, a soothing sensation going up my leg.

  “I knew you weren’t retiring to look after family. You struck me as far too sensible to work for me and have any relatives. Your ex-colleague, it won’t surprise you to find out, was not as bright. He decided to try and rip me off. Keep the Giant’s Dough for himself and give me some white ambergris with cattle bone pushed in. As if I couldn’t tell the difference. We caught his partner, some junkie amateur, and flayed the blistered skin from him over several days. Pasha must have got wind and ran. We had to pick up some cousin he stupidly visited a couple of months ago. The cousin didn’t know anything.”

  Using my bare foot, Papa Yaga slowly spun me around until I faced the main body of the dragline. The figure was pinioned just below the pelvis, steel cable on one side, pulley wheel on the other. Precision-placed to prolong life. The early evening light was too faded to make out to many details. Even over the sound of my own torn tendons I heard the whimpering.

  “It’s rare these days I have a reason to fire up this old darling. I felt finding your ex-colleague’s cousin justified the cost in electricity.”

  The dragline came alive. Vibrations from the engine sent tears further into my tendons. I screamed despite myself. Above me, steel cable rattled against metal guides then started to move. The cousin was dragged further into the crush of the pulley, hoist ropes resisting the blockage.

  Papa Yaga held me.

  “Don’t close your eyes or look away. I’ll cut your eyelids off myself.”

  The air filled with the stench of friction, until momentum eroded through the cousin’s pelvis. The two halves of torso tumbled into a patch of corn stubble, plumes of steam rose as the last of the body heat hit the cold air.

  “If you’re amiable, I would like you to track down your ex-colleague and give me the address. Then we really will never have to see each other again.”

  If this was a film I would have asked “And if I don’t?” He’d have tortured me in increasingly inventive ways. It wasn’t a film, and I had every intention of doing this last bit of dirty work for Papa Yaga. It wasn’t like I had any lasting loyalty to Pasha.

  Over the next few hours they gave me a few more scars, just to make sure I understood my place in the plan, but all the while they seemed almost apologetic.

  Another syringe finished me off. When I woke I was in a nice, anonymous medical facility overlooking some rolling moorland. I was sure the purple heather was dancing and I couldn’t help wondering where the nearest stone circle was, or how long it would be before the laminate-coated walls would be dragged to be crushed to splinters between the orthostat molars.

  I don’t know what worried me more. Papa Yaga suspending me until my shoulders tore out of their sockets, or paying for the best healthcare money could buy to patch me up before I did his hunting for him.

  I lost track of how many days I spent in that private room. At some nod from the consultant, I was dressed in my own clothes, bundled into a van and dumped into the nearest town, a mobile in my pocket with a single phone number in the contacts.

  Addicts are creatures of habit. Goes with the territory. Around other people Pasha was always too keen to impress to give any truths away. The truth was too mundane. He gave up trying with me a long time ago, and had slipped into his natural accent several times without realizing. Specific enough to identify his hometown, if you paid attention. Other occasions he talked about a club night here, or a landmark there. Enough detail to confirm my suspicions.

  The town was small and too many people knew each others’ business for Pasha’s whereabouts to stay hidden for long. He’d splashed around stolen cash to try and find a hiding place, and I splashed around my own to find him.

  The squat was on the edge of town. A large house, insides gutted by fire. Recent enough for the stonework to be blackened with soot, and the air still thick enough with ash to stick in my throat. The people living there didn’t notice. They didn’t notice me. They didn’t notice what week it was. A bit of bad air wasn’t going to bother them.

  I found Pasha in the basement. Seeing his silhouette I thought he was praying, knelt
in the far corner, away from the worst of the leaking pipes dripping verdigris water into stinking pools on the stone flags. The damp made my wrists ache, and I rubbed the still-raw skin to ease the pain.

  I thought about saying his name, but he was always faster than me. We were far beyond trust and loyalty now.

  At first I thought the noise was a wasp nest in the room somewhere. The sound of constant chewing and tearing. I stilled my breath and listened. The grinding sounded too familiar. A memory of dead songbirds and decaying rubbish came back. I turned on the torch.

  I don’t know how much Giant’s Dough Pasha had used. From the look of him I guessed we were talking kilos.

  All his teeth had turned to stone, erupted vertically from his upturned face, and started grinding against each other. His skin was split by needle-thin rips. Inch by inch, fat and capillaries were dragged over the tiny menhirs and ground to paste. Around his neck wet muscle fibers were exposed, stretched taut as they too were dragged upward to be crushed and gnawed.

  I shone the beam of light into Pasha’s face. His eyes were open, staring straight up at the ceiling. Feldspar glittered in his pupils. Clear gelatin seeped over his mineralized jaws and down his torn cheeks.

  Wrapping my jacket around my hand, I rolled up Pasha’s trouser leg. Underneath all the dried blood it was impossible to tell where his ankle ended and the flagstones began. I dialed the number and waited for the call to connect.

  Papa Yaga came into the basement by himself while his private army cleared the rest of the building.

  I stood up from where I’d sat waiting on the damp steps.

  “Weren’t you worried it was a trap?”

  He just smiled, and even in the dark I saw his teeth glitter.

  “Where is he?”

  I took him over into the corner and turned the torch on Pasha, the chewing loud enough to drown out the sound of leaking pipes and footsteps on the floor above. He ran a finger over Pasha’s face, collected a nail full of the pale gel and rubbed it into his gums. Reaching out, he steadied himself against the wall.

  A woman came down the stairs, a Stihl saw in her gloved hands.

  “You OK, Papa?” she said, looking at me and placing the saw on the basement floor.

  “I’m fine. You won’t need that. Call our land agent and have him buy this building. When you’ve done that, bring our guests from the holding cells. As many as you think this place can hold,” he paused, and nodded toward the stairs. “Bring down those individuals you found in the rest of the house. Let’s give them a purpose in life. Also, bring our entire stock of Giant’s Dough down here.”

  “Everything is already on contract and packaged to go out,” she said, still looking at me as if uncomfortable having this conversation in front of a witness. I knew I was uncomfortable being a witness to them having this conversation.

  “Take samples of the white ambergris dribbling from that traitorous fuck in the corner, and get them out to our clients in the hour. First though make sure we have the deeds to this building.”

  The woman nodded and picked up the saw, leaving me alone in the cellar with Papa Yaga, and the constant sound of stone teeth grinding skin to paste.

  “I’m sure you knew you weren’t getting out of this room alive,” Papa Yaga said, reaching out to take my hands in his. They felt warm and soft. Expensive. He massaged the back of my knuckles and leant in until his lips were against my ears. Peppermint on his breath stung my recently healed scars. “I hadn’t decided whether to let my people take turns on you, or cut you up and feed you to our little crushing circle of stones in the corner. But considering the amount of money your ex-friend is going to make for me I’m giving you one chance to fucking run.”

  I looked at Pasha, now more self-consuming geology than man, and I did exactly what Papa Yaga suggested. I fucking ran.

  A BRIEF MOMENT OF RAGE

  BILL DAVIDSON

  I keep the gun hidden. The gun keeps me alive. It’s a fair exchange. Apart from having a loaded Glock in my jacket, the only plan I’d had since killing the old man was to avoid survivors and keep moving south. South was as good as any, but you run out of it, after a while.

  I was on the outskirts of a seaside town, moving quietly between houses, when somebody behind me said, “Hey.”

  I turned, slowly. A very young man, maybe only eighteen, something like that. I could have imagined that Jake might have grown up to look very like this tall, skinny boy. I was thinking of him now as a boy, shivering in his jeans and hoodie, messy dark hair flopped across his brow.

  “Hey yourself.”

  He jerked, nervous. Not used to speaking to people, I guessed. He bobbed his head and said, “You’re alive, then.”

  NINE MONTHS EARLIER

  It started just like any morning, with the Pure DAB showing 6:45 and playing Classic FM down low; “The Lark Ascending.”’ Jeff, without really waking, rolled over and tapped the handle to give us five minutes, coming back to pull me in, my big warm bear.

  He snored like he was enjoying the racket, then muttered, “We need another alarm.”

  “What, one that goes off in the afternoon?”

  “One with bigger numerals.”

  That surprised me. “You can’t read the display? Really?”

  “Hit forty and everything goes to shit.”

  I pushed my face into his chest and breathed him in. Then pulled my head up, hearing Abbie starting, not crying yet, but it would get there in a hurry.

  I pushed myself against him, “Your turn.”

  “I was up in the night.”

  I tried to remember that, and maybe could. It was all blending into one, hard not to wish your baby’s life away, wanting her to sleep through. Get out of bed herself. She was coming to the end of this stage anyway, a toddler rather than a baby now. I still called her my baby.

  Just a normal morning. Normal, normal, normal.

  Half an hour later we were in the kitchen. I had been trying to get Abbie to eat a boiled egg, but she had other uses for it. Breakfast News was on in the background, Steph and Charlie sitting on the red couch, but I wasn’t taking any of it in. Normal.

  I stood to look out of the window, down at the street four floors below, already busy with cars and bicycles. Pedestrians walking, others standing at the bus stop, looking tired. And, as usual, it made me feel itchy, lives being lived out there while I would be killing the hours, tied to Abbie. Get myself out for coffee at Angela’s house, so the babies could hit each other with spoons and we could bitch about Marcus and Jeff, the brothers we married. Maybe waste some time at the Borough gardens if it didn’t rain. I’d forgotten to notice the weather forecast, as usual.

  Jake had put his school uniform on but still couldn’t manage his tie, no matter how hard he tried. Jeff knelt in front of him, telling how he couldn’t do it when he was six either, talking him through the steps as he tied, using his patient voice that wasn’t patient at all. Jake caught my eye over his Father’s back and waggled his eyebrows.

  I said, “Wait a damned minute here. I got up in the night. Me. You did it Saturday.”

  “What, are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Christ, Jeff, I’m going to be here all day while you . . .”

  I caught myself, about to accuse him of going out gallivanting. I honestly couldn’t understand how he stuck with that job, that horrible woman who was his boss.

  I remember the next moments like they are branded on my consciousness, seared in, so they can come at me again and again, any time, bring me to my knees. Abbie, see her, big blue eyes looking round to make sure she had our attention before her hand comes out and opens, quite deliberately. The egg hitting the floor. Jeff pressing his lips together in a failed effort to stop himself from laughing. Me coming over and being unable to resist pressing my face into her lovely curly head for a second to catch that unbelievable brand-new scent, the skin of her brow so soft under my lips it was almost like powder. She waved her Pooh Bear fork, smiling her triump
hant, two-toothed smile.

  As I picked the spilled egg from the floor, I was suddenly angry. Not just angry, furious, enraged in a scalding way I had never been before and had no idea I could be. That little shit and her fucking egg. Did she think I was her slave?

  Instead of putting the mess on the table, I squeezed it in a tight fist before hurling it across the floor. Then I stood, with my teeth bared, wanting this anger. Loving the liberating heat of it, sizzling its ferocious way from my head to the burning tips of my fingers.

  Abbie was still in her high chair, but had half clambered out, her face a red mask of fury. She swiped with her Winnie the Pooh fork, raking my forearm. I was going to hit her, was pulling back to do it, but suddenly Jeff was there, huge and crazy in his anger. I screamed at him and he roared back and, as he closed in, I threw a chair with everything I had, knocking him back and giving myself time to go for the knife. He hadn’t gotten up in the night, that was me, the selfish bastard.

  Jeff was coming on again, his face contorted with fury but Jake was on his Father’s back, biting his neck, and I saw my chance and stabbed my husband, the carving knife going most of the way into his belly. I pulled the knife out, ready to plunge it in again, when he caught me with a roundhouse punch that smacked my head against the wall. Only my incredible burning fury kept me upright to stab him again, but his next punch caught me square in the face and my legs buckled. I was on my knees and he was beating me, pummeling me with his club like fists as blood from his belly and chest sprayed me.

  I came to, my head on the kitchen floor. I was looking at Abbie, lying broken only inches from my face. There was no doubt that my baby was dead. I could hear a noise coming from my mouth as I pulled myself shakily to my knees, a keening note that I hadn’t known I had. I stopped as I caught sight of Jeff. He wasn’t dead, but was sitting glazed eyed at the base of the fridge freezer, in a pool of blood that widened even as I watched.