The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2016 Edition

by Paula Guran

  After he leaves, I use Lillian’s finger to trace the stitches. They divide us into sections like countries on a map. The head, neck, and shoulders are mine; the upper torso, Molly’s; the lower torso, Grace’s; Diana, the arms; Lillian, the hand; Therese, the legs and feet; Sophie, the scalp and hair.

  I make all the pieces of this puzzle move, I feel touches or insult upon them, but they never feel as if they belong completely to me. He may know how everything works on the outside, but he doesn’t know that they are here with me on the inside, too. We plan to keep it this way.

  Once a week, in the small operating theater, he has me strip and he inspects all the stitches, all the parts. He checks my heart and listens to me breathe. I hate the feel of his eyes upon me; it’s far worse than enduring his weight in my bed.

  Not long after he brought me back, I tried to stab myself with a knife. At the last moment, I held back and only opened a small wound above the left breast. Stitches hold it closed now.

  He says the mind of all things, from the smallest insect to the largest animal, desires life, no matter the flesh. He says I am proof of this.

  But it was Emily’s doing. She was with me from the beginning, and she was always kind, always patient. She helped me stay sane. Like a mother, she whispered soft reassurances to me when I cried; told me I was not a monster when I insisted otherwise; promised me everything would be all right. She taught me how to strip the farm from my speech.

  He tried hard to save her, carving away at the rot a bit at a time, but in the end he could not halt its progress. She screamed when he split apart the stitches. I did, too. Sometimes I feel as if her echo is still inside me and it offers a small comfort. Therese is kind, but I preferred my walk when it carried Emily’s strength.

  “I will unlock your door when the party is over,” he says.

  I nod.

  “You will stay silent?”

  “Yes.”

  “I would not even hold this party if not for my father’s insufferable tradition. I curse him for beginning it in the first place, and I should have ended it when he died.”

  I know nothing of his father other than a portrait in the music room. He, too, was a doctor. I wonder if he taught his son how to make me.

  The key turns in the door. I sit, a secret locked in with the shadows.

  Even from my room, I can hear the music. The laughter. I creep in the passageway with small, quiet steps, extinguish my lamp, and swing open the spyhole. The year before, I was recovering and did not know about the passageway; the year before that, I was not here.

  I twine a lock of Sophie’s hair around my finger and watch the men and women spinning around on the dance floor, laughing with goblets of wine in hand, talking in animated voices. He is there, resplendent in a dark suit, but I don’t allow my eyes to linger on him for too long. This smiling man is as much a construct as I am.

  “I had a gown like that blue one,” Grace says. “Oh, how I miss satin and lace.”

  “Please,” Lillian says. “Let us go back. I can’t bear to see this. The reminder hurts too much.”

  “Hush,” Molly says.

  “I wish we could join them,” Diana says.

  Sophie says, “Perhaps he will bring us some wine later. And look, look at the food.”

  Therese makes a small sound. “Look at the way they dance. Clumsy, so clumsy.”

  I sway back and forth, my feet tracing a pattern not from Therese, but a dance from my childhood. I remember the harvest festival, the bonfire, the musicians. My father placed my feet atop his to teach me the steps, and then he spun me around and around until we were both too dizzy to stand.

  Therese laughs, but there is no mockery in the sound. I close my eyes, lost in the memory of my father’s arms around me, how safe and secure I always felt. I would give anything to feel that way again.

  The music stops, and my eyes snap open. A young woman in a dark blue gown approaches the piano, sits, and begins to play. The music is filled with tiny notes that reach high in the air then swoop back down, touching on melancholia. It’s the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. Everyone falls silent, even Lillian.

  Then I see him watching the girl at the piano. His brow is creased; his mouth soft. I hear a strange sound from Sophie. She recognizes the intensity of his gaze. As a kindness, I let go of her hair. Does he covet this girl’s arms? Her hair? Her face?

  Lillian begins to weep again, and it doesn’t take long for the rest to join her. All except Sophie. She never cries.

  “He will not,” I say.

  “He will do whatever he wants. You know that,” Sophie says.

  “She is not sick,” Grace says.

  “Neither was I,” Sophie hisses. “He saw me in the Hargrove market. He gave me that look, then I woke up here.”

  “But you do not know for certain,” Therese says. “The influenza took so many.”

  “I was not sick.” Sophie’s voice is flat. Then, she says nothing more.

  Hargrove is even farther away than my parents’ farm. I bend my head forward, and Sophie’s hair spills down, all chestnut brown and thick curls. My hair was straight and thin, best suited for tucking beneath rough-spun scarves, not hanging free, but still I cried when he replaced it.

  He is drunk again. His voice is loud. Angry. I pull the sheets up to my shoulders and hope he doesn’t come to visit. When he is drunk, it takes longer.

  Sometimes I want to sneak into his study and take one of the bottles and hide it in my room. On nights when I can still hear my mother saying my name; when I can remember the illness that confined me to my bed and eventually took my life; when I recall the confusion when I woke here and knew something was wrong.

  But those nights happen less and less, and I’m afraid I will forget my mother’s voice completely. Would she even recognize me with Sophie’s hair in place of my own? Would she run screaming?

  On Sunday morning, I creep through the passageway. Step outside. The servants have the day off, and he has gone to mass. Even here, I can hear voices in song. I remember these songs from my own church where I sang with the choir. I have never known if he heard me somehow and chose me because of my voice, but I remember seeing him on the farm in my fifteenth year when Peter broke his arm, two years before the influenza epidemic.

  “We should leave,” Sophie says.

  “Yes, we should run far away,” Lillian says.

  “And where would we go?” Molly asks.

  “Anywhere.”

  Therese laughs. “And who will fix us if we rot?”

  “Better that we rot away to nothing than remain here,” Sophie says.

  The others start speaking over each other, denying her words. In truth, I do not know what I want. When I head back inside, the voices outside are still singing and those inside still arguing.

  Days pass, then weeks. The stump remains rot free, but he says nothing of it, only nods when he does his inspection.

  He spends his days in the town, ministering to the sick. I spend mine in the library, reading of wars and dead men and politics. Rachael taught me how to read; now Sophie helps when I find myself stuck on a word.

  “Wake up.”

  His voice is rough, scented with whiskey.

  “Now?”

  “Yes, hurry.”

  “No, oh, no,” someone says as we approach the small operating theater, but I cannot tell who it is.

  He tears away my chemise. Pushes me down on the table.

  “But there is nothing wrong,” I say.

  “Don’t let him do this,” Lillian screams. “Please, don’t let him do this to me.”

  He lifts a blade. I grab his forearm, dig Lillian’s nails in hard enough to make him wince.

  “Please, no.”

  He slaps me across the face with his free hand. The others are shrieking, shouting. Lillian is begging, pleading, screaming for me to make him stop. I grab his arm again and try to swing Therese’s legs off the table. He slaps me twice more and presses a sharp-s
melling cloth over my mouth and nose. I hold my breath until my chest tightens; he pushes the cloth harder.

  I breathe in, and everything goes grey—I’m sorry, Lillian, so sorry—then black.

  I wake in my bed, the sheets tucked neatly around me. The others are weeping, and Lillian is gone. I choke back my tears because I don’t wish to frighten the newcomer.

  “What has happened to me?” she asks. Her voice is small and trembling.

  “What is your name?” I ask.

  “Anna,” she says.

  “Welcome to madness,” Sophie says, her voice strangely flat.

  “Hush,” Molly says.

  “Who is that? What is this? Please, I want to go home.”

  “I told you,” Sophie says, still in that strange, lifeless tone. “We should have run away.”

  “Where am I?” Anna says. “How did I get here?”

  I try to explain, but nothing I say helps. Nothing can make it right, and in the end, we are all weeping, even Sophie, and that frightens me more than I could have imagined.

  I don’t see him for several days. The music room remains dark, the door to the operating theater locked. I retreat to the library, lose myself in books, and pretend not to hear Anna cry. We have all tried to offer support, but she rebuffs every attempt so there is nothing to do but wait. Eventually, she will accept the way things are now, the way we’ve all been forced into acceptance.

  There are no signs of rot along the new stitches. They’re uneven both in length and spacing—not nearly as neat as the others—but they hold firm. Anna’s hands are delicate with long slender fingers, the skin far paler than Diana’s. The weight is wrong; they’re far too light, as if I’m wearing gloves instead of hands.

  I miss Lillian so very much. I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye.

  When he enters the library, I notice first his disheveled clothes, then the red of his eyes. He tosses my book aside, drags me to the music room, and shoves me toward the piano.

  “Tell her to play.”

  Everyone falls silent. Surely we have heard him wrong.

  “I don’t understand.”

  He steps close enough for me to smell the liquor. “Tell Anna to play,” he says, squeezing each word out between clenched teeth.

  I sit down and thump on the keys, the notes painful enough to make me grit my teeth. I poke and prod, but Anna is hiding the knowledge deep inside, and I cannot pull it free. I offer a tentative smile even though I want to scream.

  “Shall I sing instead?”

  He groans and pulls me from the bench. The skirts tangle and twist, and I stumble. He digs his fingers into my shoulders, brings my face close to his. “Did you truly believe I didn’t know? I have heard you speak to them. I know they are in there with you. You tell her to play. Or else.”

  “Never,” Anna says.

  Therese’s legs are no longer strong enough to hold us up, and I sink to the floor. He smiles, the gesture like a whip. Eventually, he stalks from the room, and I sit with Diana’s arms around me.

  Sophie hisses, “Bastard.”

  “You must teach me how to play,” I tell Anna.

  “I will not.”

  “Please, you must. If you don’t, he will kill you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I am already dead.”

  “But he may kill us all, and we don’t want to die.”

  The others chime in in agreement.

  “I do not care,” Anna says. “I will give him nothing. He killed me. Don’t you understand? He killed me!”

  “Yes, I do,” says Sophie. “We do. But this is what we have now.”

  “I do not want this. It is monstrous, and you, all of you, you’re as dead as I am.”

  “Please,” I say. “Teach me something, anything that will make him happy. I’m begging you, please.”

  She doesn’t respond.

  Three more trips to the music room. Three more refusals that leave me with a circlet of bruises around the arms; red marks on my cheeks in the shape of his hand; more bruises on the soft skin between breasts and belly. The others scream at Anna when he strikes me, but she doesn’t give in.

  She is strong. Stronger than any of us.

  The fourth trip. The fourth refusal. He pulls me from the bench with his hands around my neck. His fingers squeeze tighter and tighter until spots dance in my eyes and when he lets go, I fall to the floor gasping for air as he walks away without even a backward glance.

  I wake to find his face leering over mine. I bite back the tears, begin to lift my chemise, and he slaps my hand.

  “If you cannot make her play, I will find someone else who will.” He traces the stitches just above the collarbone, spins on his heel, and lurches from the room.

  I sit in the darkness and let the tears flow. I don’t want to die again. I will not.

  I creep into the passageway and make my way into the kitchen. Cheese, bread, a few apples. An old cloak hangs from a hook near the servants’ entrance. I slip it on and pull up the hood before I step outside. The air is cold enough to sting my cheeks, too cold for the thin cloak, but I head toward the gate, searching the ground for a rock large enough to break the lock.

  Perhaps my mother will scream, perhaps my father and brothers will threaten me with violence, but they cannot hurt me more than he has.

  I’m five steps away from the gate when he grabs me from behind. All the air rushes from my lungs. I draw another breath to scream, and his hand covers my mouth. He leans close to my ear.

  “I had such high hopes for you. Perhaps I will have better luck with the next one.”

  I fight to break free. The gate is so close. So close.

  He laughs. “Do you have any idea what they would do to you? Even your own parents would tear you limb from limb and toss you into the fire. If I didn’t need the rest of them, I’d let you go so you could find out.”

  He presses a cloth to my mouth, and I try not to breathe in.

  I fail.

  I wake in the large operating theater. The smell is blood and decay, pain and suffering. I scream and pound on the door, but it’s barred from the outside. I sink down and cover my eyes; I don’t want to see the equipment, the tools, the knives, and the reddish-brown stains. There are no windows, no hidden doors, no secret passageways. There is no hope.

  I have no idea how much time passes before he comes. “This is your last chance,” he says. “Will you play?”

  “No,” Anna says.

  “Please, please,” the others beg.

  “I will not.”

  “She will not play,” I say, my voice little more than a whisper.

  He smiles. “I thought not.” He closes the door again.

  Does he mean to leave us locked here until we die? I bang on the door until tiny smears of blood mark the wood, then I curl up into a small ball in the corner.

  I wake when he opens the door again and drags something in wrapped in a sheet. No, not a something. A body. I lurch to my feet.

  “No, no, you cannot do this. Please.”

  “I can do whatever I want. I made you, and I can unmake you.”

  He approaches me with another cloth in his hand. I know if I breathe this time, I will never wake again. Sophie is shrieking. They all are.

  I stumble against a table and instruments clatter to the floor with a metallic tangle. I reach blindly with Anna’s hand, find a handle, and swing. He steps into the blade’s path, and it sinks deep into his chest. He drops the cloth; his mouth opens and closes, opens and closes again, then he collapses to the floor as if boneless. Anna lets out a sound of triumph, but I cannot speak, cannot breathe, cannot move.

  “No, no,” Sophie shouts. “What have you done?”

  Therese and Grace scream, Diana lets out a keening wail, Molly babbles incoherencies that sound of madness, and all the while, Anna laughs.

  His eyes flutter shut, and his chest rises, falls, rises. I drop to his side and pull the blade free, grimacing at the blood that fountains forth. His
eyes seek mine. His mouth moves, and it sounds as if he is trying to say, “I’m sorry,” but perhaps that is only what I wish he would say.

  Nonetheless, I say, “I’m sorry, too.”

  Then, I begin to cut.

  “Thank you,” Anna whispers, right before the blade touches the last stitch and she is set free. I close my eyes for a brief moment to wish her well on her journey, but there is not enough time to mourn her properly.

  My stitches are clumsy, ugly, but they seem sturdy enough for now. His hands are too large, the movements awkward, but gloves will hide them, and soon I will know how to make everything work the way it’s supposed to.

  He whispers he will never tell us how. We laugh because we know he will eventually; he will not want his creation, his knowledge, to fall apart or to rot away and die. He mutters obscenities, names, and threats, but we ignore him.

  We are not afraid of him anymore.

  In the ballroom, I set fire to the drapes and wait long enough to see the flames spread to the ceiling and across the floor in a roiling carpet of destruction.

  “Where shall we go?” Therese asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Sophie gives a small laugh. “We can go anywhere we wish.”

  The heat of the blaze follows us out. The air is thick with the stench of burning wood and the death of secrets. The promise of freedom. We pause at the gate and glance back. A section of the roof caves in with a rush of orange sparks, flames curl from the windows, and the fire’s rage growls and shrieks.

  When we hear shouts emerge from the town below, we slip into the shadows. This is our, my, body, and I will be careful. I will keep us safe.

  Damien Angelica Walters’ work has appeared or is forthcoming in various anthologies and magazines, including The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2015, Year’s Best Weird Fiction: Volume One, Cassilda’s Song, The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu: New Lovecraftian Fiction, Nightmare Magazine, Black Static, and Apex Magazine. Sing Me Your Scars, a collection of short fiction, was released in 2015 from Apex Publications, and Paper Tigers, a novel, in 2016 from Dark House Press.

  Sorrow is surprisingly malleable, capable of adjusting its shape to fit the box that holds it, but it fights moving from one place to another, and it has thorns. Sorrow is a bramble of the heart and a weed of the mind . . .