The Year's Best Horror Stories 13

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  Mary Birdsall heard the bathroom latch rattle and the door shut.

  “Ron.” Sally had to take a step and a half to each stride of her brother’s to keep up with him. “It isn’t true what he said about our dog, is it?”

  She spoke very carefully because she had a lisp, so he knew what she was saying before she had finished, but even then she had to wait several paces before he replied.

  “It ain’t our dog.”

  “Well it nearly is. It comes to see us, and it don’t bark.”

  “You heard what Miss said. She said Black Shuck were just a story, so it can’t be Black Shuck or we’d be dead, both of us.”

  “We even patted it.” Her voice faded to a whisper as the thought widened her eyes. He felt her hand reach into his anorak pocket and he put his own hand in beside it. She gripped his fingers.

  “You got nothing to worry about, Sally,” he said, but he brought them both to a halt in the centre of the lane and they turned to look back. They could see the school against the grey sky, but most of the village was hidden in the dip of the cliffs. “I was just wonderin’,” he said, “if Wayne was tagging along behind us.” The tarmac strip of the lane, wet with the mist creeping in from the sea, gleamed emptily. “But there ain’t a smell of him. I might have known he’d be chicken.”

  “I’m scared.” Her voice was still very small. “I don’t want to be dead.”

  The cliffs were not high and the sound of the waves reached them, clapping down on the beach like falling gravestones. His courage almost flew from him and his grip on her hand tightened so hard she was startled. To disguise it he began to run, tugging her with him, leaving the village behind.

  I am unseen. My black tongue lolls like winter leaves. That pebble-glint is my eye, that bent stick my leg. Death is never far.

  It is centuries since I leapt for the shore across ice-gleam of oar blades and through hail hiss in sea spume. Icicles rattled in my pelt as I leapt, first foot on this shore.

  The tang of the sharp still touches my tongue, and I hear the song they sang as fierce forks of flame thrust through thatch and wooden walls. Then they bawled in their beer, bragged of battle; blades shone as they shouted and haled their hell-hound. I ran on before them, and death followed my swift feet; of that their sharp swords made sure.

  The two women in the shop watched Mary Birdsall as she went out. “I know where she’s off to now,” said one, and they both laughed.

  Behind the counter, Mrs. Groves said, “Well you can’t blame her, not with a mother like that. I never see that old woman but what she’s grumbling about this or complaining about that.”

  “I never do see her nowadays,” said the woman with the wire basket lifting her purchases from it and putting them on the counter. “Not that I want to. But they do say she have bad legs and can’t get about.”

  “Bad legs!” The shopkeeper knew better. “I’ll tell you one thing, Mrs. Spencer, her legs is good enough to get up here every single afternoon.” She nodded and pursed her lips. “No sooner does that school bell go to call the children in after dinner than she comes trotting up the road as fast as you like.”

  “She don’t!” But Mrs. Spencer believed it. “Where do she go?”

  “Here, of course. She sneaks in here and closes the door ever so softly as though Mary could hear her. That’s what she’s afraid of; Mary finding out. And that’s why she waits until Mary’s safely back in school. And you know why?”

  “No I don’t, Mrs. Groves.” The tins and packets from the wire basket were laid out between them waiting to be rung up on the till. “I’ve no idea.”

  “Chocolate.” Mrs. Groves raised her eyebrows and her chin and watched through her glasses until the word had made its impact. “Chocolate. Mars Bars. Marathons. Galaxies. It don’t matter to her what they are. ‘Give me one o’ them,’ she say, and point to it. And then she digs in her purse and thinks a bit, and says, ‘And one o’ them others. I’m that starved,’ she say, ‘Mary hardly left me nothin.”

  “Well, you surprise me. My Wayne say she’s ever so kind, and so do all the children. I never knew Mary Birdsall was like that.”

  “She’s not. Oh no.” Mrs. Groves had pursed her lips again and was shaking her head. “You know as well as I do, Mrs. Spencer, that Mary is generous to a fault. There ain’t a kinder person in the whole village. And I am the one who should know best of all. The food she buys here you would not believe.”

  “Well, it can’t be for herself. She’s hardly got any flesh on her.” Mrs. Spencer was looking out through the shop window, a faint smile on her mouth and her eyes glinting with interest at what she saw. “There she goes now; what did I tell you?”

  The shopkeeper leaned over the counter to look around a pile of tins. “It’s the same every time.” She did not have to speak loudly because her head was very close to Mrs. Spencer’s. “It’s a wonder people don’t start talking.”

  “They do say,” Mrs. Spencer began and then broke off as the two women watched Mary hesitate in front of the little bank at the corner. A light glowed in the corn merchant’s office above it, but the bank’s own windows were shuttered. “There she goes.” They saw Mary step across the pavement and push open the door. “And that bank’s supposed to be closed,” said Mrs. Spencer, and both women laughed. “Closed to everybody but Mary Birdsall, that is.”

  “Well, you can’t blame her.”

  “You’ve got to take your pleasures when you can and wherever you can, but a bank’s a funny place for it.” They laughed again. “Not that Mary minds, I dare say. He ain’t a bad looking feller for a bank manager.”

  “They won’t have long,” said the shopkeeper. “She’ll have to get home with that ham for her mother’s tea.”

  “I’d give her ham, the way she’s treated that girl. They’d be married now if it wasn’t for that old woman. Made such a fuss when Mary mentioned it.”

  The shopkeeper was nodding her head, agreeing. “Wasn’t going to be left on her own, wasn’t going to move, didn’t want anybody else in the house. I know what I’d have told her.”

  “But you’re not Mary, Mrs. Groves.”

  “Indeed I am not.”

  They watched through the window as the bank door opened and the teacher disappeared inside.

  “Poor Mary,” said Mrs. Spencer. “She can’t stand up to her mother. Never could.”

  In the lane the two children stopped running.

  “It ain’t no good,” said Ron. “He ain’t coming, not today.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Sally.

  “You ain’t afraid of dyin’ are you?”

  “Not after what Miss Mary Birdsall said, I ain’t. It was that Wayne. He made me frit.”

  Ron gave her hand a jerk of annoyance and imitated her lisp. “Miss Mary Birdsall. You don’t say a teacher’s whole name when you talk about her. She’s just Miss.”

  “But I like Miss Mary Birdsall. She ain’t very happy.”

  “She ain’t supposed to be happy, is she? She’s a teacher.”

  “She have sad eyes. She would cry if anything was to happen to us.”

  “I should think everybody would.” They stood together, hand in hand, and looked out over the low cliff. “They wouldn’t like it if two kids was to die.”

  They listened to the mournful suck of the sea below and for a moment felt the lonely luxury of slipping out of the world.

  “I seen her crying once, Ron. She come out of her house and she could hardly see me her eyes was so brimful. And you know what she done?”

  “How do I know? I wasn’t there was I?”

  “She picked me up and kissed me. She almost squeezed the life out of me. Why do you reckon she done that when she was crying?” Ron shrugged and did not answer. “Anyway, that’s why I like Miss Mary Birdsall.”

  Her brother listened for a few seconds to the dull clap of the waves then said, “Anyway she put that Wayne in his place when he was going on about Old Shuck didn’t she? She say that blac
k dogs sometimes bring good luck. If they’re ghosts, that is.”

  “Our dog ain’t a ghost, though.”

  I listen. In the field’s dark furrows my pelt is invisible. Their fingers have felt my coat and tugged at my neck. They have dealt with the Death-Dealer and there is no going back.

  A single light in a green shade shone over his desk in the bank, but they stood at a little distance and in shadow near the counter where all day he had been counting money to and fro through the brass grille.

  “For ever, Mary? Does this go on for ever?” He had drawn away from her, and his hand rested on the counter as though waiting for some document in a transaction. “Our lives are running away.”

  She knew that. Daily, in the mirror, she had seen the dark shadow under her eyes increasing and the edge of her lips beginning to blur with tiny wrinkles. “Even my clothes.” Her thoughts burst into words that were almost a cry. “Look at me. Jumper and skirt. Every day the same. Oh!”

  “Mary,” he said. At one time, when he spoke as softly as now, he would have reached for her and, clinging together, they would have ridden out the anguish. But this time he had made no move. “She’s got to let you go. You’ve got to leave her.”

  “I can’t!”

  He was a quiet man. The thin brown face, handsome at most times, was hollowed now into angular shapes. “She uses you. She’s taking your life away, can’t you see that?”

  “If only you could begin to like her.”

  He drew in his breath. “She won’t even see me, Mary. How many more times do we try?”

  “But . . .” And then she looked down. They had each rested a hand on the counter, but their fingers were curled, not touching. There was a space of polished wood between them and she could not cross it. All she could do was slide her hand back. She did so and turned away. “She relies on me. I can’t leave her.”

  Seen through the moisture of her eyes the floor was uncertain and she almost stumbled. He saw the awkwardness in her, but desperation gave him grim cruelty and he let her open the door and go out without calling her back.

  Mrs Groves pressed the keys on her cash register and watched the little electronic figures flicker, doing her sums for her. It’s a boon, she thought for the millionth time; I would have thought this was magic when I was at school.

  “There she goes.” Mrs. Spencer had seen Mary coming out of the bank, and was simpering slyly at the thought of what had been happening inside. “That never took long.”

  Mrs. Groves took her eyes from the magic figures. “She do have her head bowed low, don’t she?”

  Mary went by as though rain was beating into her face, and the smile faded on Mrs. Spencer’s lips. “She’s crying, that’s what she’s doing. What have he said to her? What have he done?”

  They watched her go by without being properly able to glimpse her face, then the shopkeeper said, “Well at least she’s going home and not the other way.”

  “What do you mean, Mrs. Groves?”

  “I’ve seen that girl looking so miserable at times,” Mrs. Groves was shaking her head, “that when she wanders down towards the sea I wonder whether she isn’t going to do something really silly.”

  The lane along the cliff bent away out of sight, and the thin sea mist put cold hands to their cheeks and foreheads.

  “There ain’t much point in going no further,” said Ron. “He ain’t coming to see us today.” His sister’s fingers lay quite still inside his hand in his pocket, and for some time she had walked steadily in silence. He glanced sideways and saw that her face was serious. Her small legs must be getting tired. “I reckon we’ve gone far enough, Sally. Time we went back.”

  “I was thinking about Miss Mary Birdsall,” she said.

  Her lisp made him tighten his fingers over hers. He wanted to protect her. “What about her?” he said.

  “She’s so sad I wondered if we could do something to cheer her up.”

  “What, for instance?”

  Her little shoulders rose and fell in a quick shrug. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, we’ve got to get back.” He turned in the road and the faint breeze pushed droplets into his face that thickened and made him blink just as Sally gripped his hand, tugged it from his pocket and began to drag him forward.

  “There he is!” she cried. “I knew he’d come for us.”

  They had descended a slope to where the clifftop almost touched the beach. Now, as they looked up, they saw the shape on the skyline.

  I stand between dull sea silver and the black bank. They see me. Their home hearth is at my back. The one track brings them to my muzzle.

  Sally slipped his hand and ran forward. He had not realized the dog was so large. She had to reach above her head to put her arms around its neck.

  “He’s wet,” she said. “He’s ever so wet on my face. Look.” She turned towards him, rubbing her cheeks in the dog’s pelt to pick up the beads of mist hanging there. Her face shone in the pale light as she laughed, and the dog lowered its mask to be level with her, but kept its eyes on the boy.

  Her brother’s footsteps faltered and she called out, “Hurry up, Ron, we’ve got to do something.”

  “What?” He came forward slowly and stood in front of them. The dog’s breath smoked across his sister’s face, and he wanted to reach forward and coax her fingers from the long hair of its neck, but the brown eyes set deep in the black skull made him, for the first time, afraid. “What have we got to do?”

  “Get hold of him, Ron, like I am.” She saw him hesitate. “You don’t have to be frightened.”

  Shame at being less daring than his sister made him put his hand forward and touch the dog between the ears. He felt the heavy bone and dug his fingers into the thick hair behind its head.

  “It’s cold,” he said. “Cold all the way inside.”

  She nodded. Her face was gleaming. “Do you know what I think we should do?” she asked. He shook his head. “I think we should take the dog to see Miss Mary Birdsall.”

  The dog’s tongue lolled over its black lips and its teeth showed, but it was docile between them and Ron’s courage returned.

  “It could get warm beside her fire,” he said. “She’d like that.” But it was the thought of walking through the village street and Wayne Spencer seeing him with the big black shape at his side that was strongest in his mind.

  The dog went with them. Sally was no taller than its head but she clung to the hair of its shoulder as though at a tug she could force it to go in any direction she demanded. And all the time she chattered.

  “Miss Mary Birdsall will be ever so pleased, Ron. It will make her happy, I know it will. She might be able to keep it.” She leant forward as she walked, and looked into its face. “Would you like that? She’ll give you a name, I reckon, if you haven’t got one. You’d like a name, I expect.”

  Names made her brother uncomfortable. “Why don’t you be quiet?” he said.

  Night was coming on fast, and as they entered the village the mist became a drizzle which dissolved the outlines of the houses. Suddenly he no longer wanted to be with the dog that padded between them. “Let it go,” he said. “Send it back.”

  “No!” She raised her voice. “I like him. He’s Old Shuck.”

  “Don’t say that!” He had thrust his head forward, turning to say more, but his words were choked off as the dog stopped suddenly and raised its head.

  It was then that they heard the footsteps. Coming along the street, one hand holding her coat collar closed against the drizzle, was the teacher.

  Sally tugged at the dog and tried to urge it forward. “Miss!” she called out. “Miss Mary Birdsall!”

  Mary heard her just as she was about to turn into the gateway of her cottage. She paused, frowning slightly, not wanting her thoughts to be disturbed, but Sally called again and she took her hand from the latch.

  “Sally,” she said, surprised to see the two children. “And Ron Stibbard. You’re soaking, the pair of you. You’d
better get home and get those wet things off.”

  At the sound of her voice the dog moved forward and they went with it to stand in front of her. She looked down at them and they saw that the blue of her eyes seemed to have widened with the moisture on her face.

  “Miss,” said Sally, and fell silent, suddenly shy.

  Ron had to speak. “We thought we’d like to give you something,” he said in a rush, and was going to go on, but the cottage door opened and distracted them.

  “Mary!” The voice was peevish. “What you doing standing out there with them kids? I been waiting ages.”

  “Just a minute, Mother. They want to tell me something.”

  “Can’t you see them in the morning? If I stand here any longer I’ll catch me death.” She turned her back and waddled inside.

  It was then, with their hands resting on its back, that they felt the dog’s pelt roughen. They glanced quickly down and saw its head lowered as though it was about to charge. They clenched their fingers in its stiff, black hair, half afraid it would turn on them, but it moved forward and slid easily from their grasp.

  They watched it pad through the garden to the open door, push it wider as though it already belonged there, and disappear into the shadows inside. They were listening for a shriek of alarm or anger from the old woman but no sound came, and Mary’s voice made them turn towards her, away from the blank doorway.

  “You were going to tell me something,” she said, and waited for an answer.

  “It was only about the dog,” said Ron.

  “What dog?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but as he looked directly into her eyes he saw that she did not know what he meant. The huge dog had stood between them but she had not seen it.

  It was Sally’s lisp that broke the silence. “Miss Mary Birdsall,” she said.

  Mary could not prevent herself smiling at the small, solemn face turned up towards her. “Yes?” she said.