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

by Paula Guran

  Summer sunshine, green lawns, the smell of the marshes coming faintly from east of town. Tittering children eating frozen yogurt with sprinkles.

  Gil was repelled by it.

  “I’m sick of Rowley, man.” He didn’t say it too loud. That dickhead Curston was sitting at one of the picnic tables, maybe forty feet away, jawing about baseball. Deputy Curston was all full of smiles because his Red Sox had a clear road to the playoffs. He’d given Gil at least two completely unnecessary traffic tickets.

  Lymon shrugged. “Rowley’s okay.” He was thoughtfully eating his extra large sprinkled cherry-chocolate frozen yogurt. He was the kind of guy who could eat anything and never get fat. Freckled, “pale as fishbelly, skinny as an eel,” was what Lymon’s dad said. Lymon’s dad hinted that Lymon wasn’t actually his kid. True, Lymon didn’t look like his pop. Recessive genes, is all.

  Gil was half Mexican, ran to chubby and always fighting it. “You got to eat that giant triple cone in front of me?”

  “Surrender, surrender to the lure of the fro-gurt, Gil!”

  Gil snorted. “Hell, It’s not just Rowley. I’m sick of Massachusetts too.” Gil muttered. “I don’t like the cops, I don’t like the tourists, I don’t like the ocean—especially around here. Water’s too fucking murky and dark. I want to go to one of those islands where the water is crystal clear. You can see whatever’s down there. And there’s some kinda real culture going on. You know? Like in Hollywood.”

  “Kind of boring here,” Lymon admitted. “Nothing to do but . . . ”

  “But this,” Gil said. He waved a hand at the little tents and canopies and shade structures of the Rowley Arts and Crafts Festival. His other hand was holding a plastic wine glass from the “tasting booth.” Eight dollars for one glass of lame wine from Virginia.

  “If you left Rowley where would you go? You got free rent with your folks here.”

  “I’d go to California. Maybe L.A. Or San Diego. Get into film making or . . . ”

  Lymon looked at Gil and raised the red-blond eyebrow that was always half raised anyway. “Film making. Really.”

  “Okay, listillo. I’ll start small—work for a videogame company. Do design, maybe direct cut scenes.” Gil drank some of his wine. “I got an uncle in L.A. He’s kind of a dick but he offered me a job. I could work there while I was getting my shit together to apply to Pixil Arts.”

  “You mean that uncle who has the car repair shop? You don’t know anything about cars either. You’ve been studying to be a pharmacist, man.”

  “He’d teach me. I hate being in a classroom. I want to be out doing something.”

  “You could go back to work for your Pops.”

  Gil made a face. “I don’t want to touch another goddamn fish. That’s why I took pharmacy—there’s nothing to do with fish. Dad still tries to get me to go out on Eddie’s boat.” His brother’s name was Edwardo but he went by Eddie. “I get seasick. And it’s all fished out, anyway, around here. Mostly jellyfish out there. Eddie’s getting desperate—starting to fish around Innsmouth. Those reefs out there.”

  Lymon blinked at him, genuinely startled. “That even legal?”

  “Sure it’s legal. Nobody does it much, is all—just a tradition not to fish there. I’m not going out on the boat, no way. I’m not even working at his fish market—the smell makes me sick.”

  “Everything makes you sick today, man. I like fish.”

  “I know you do. You and your fish tanks. Come on, Lymon, we should both go to L.A. Your dad’s trying to get you to move outta his place anyway. We can stay with my uncle.”

  “I’m doing pretty good with the bookstore. Assistant manager.”

  “They’re gonna close that store, man. Chain’s downsizing.”

  “Maybe.” Lymon ate some more frozen yogurt. “You wanta come over, play some Skyrim? You can use my sister’s computer, we can meet online.”

  Gil sighed. He drank a little wine. It was supposed to be cabernet but it tasted vinegary to him. “You and me used to talk about working in gaming. Gotta go to New York or L.A for that. You can code. I can draw. We can get a job at Pixil Arts.”

  “Yeah, right. And we could date Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, drive em around in our new Porsches. Sure. You want some of this fro-gurt stuff? I bought too much.”

  “No.”

  “I’m playing Skyrim. You coming?”

  Gil sighed. “I guess so. It’s that or this. But I’m telling you . . . ”

  “I know. You’re leaving town.”

  2. Gilberto Lopez, Lymon Barnes. October 2028.

  “How long you back for this time, Gil?”

  They were standing on the top of the dike protecting Rowley from the ever-rising sea. Lymon had taken up cigarettes, Spirit Naturals, and he was blowing smoke upward to go with the breeze sucked toward the Atlantic as the tide went out.

  Gil made a faint groan. “I don’t know. Maybe a long time. Lost that gig at Vapor Arts. Actually—I got mad and quit.”

  “You ever got past designer assistant?”

  “No. Finally they offered me a job in the cafeteria.”

  “Christ.” Lymon shook his head. “Assholes. You’re a good artist.”

  “I don’t know how to use the new e-pens, all that stuff.” Gil shrugged, and admitted, “That technology’s been around twenty years—I could’ve learned. I got all caught up in Melda and that just didn’t work out. Nothing much worked out. I feel like growing up here just sapped all the life out of me. And L.A. couldn’t give it back.”

  “Well, zip up your coat, and I’ll show you something to take your mind off all that.”

  Gil zipped up his coat—not that easy to do. He was getting into his late thirties now and putting on significant weight, like his pops. He glanced at the sky. “Getting dark.”

  “Naw, won’t be dark for like three hours. It’s just how it is, now, lot of haze all the time, makes it murky out. Climate change. Florida’s half underwater, north Georgia’s turning into a desert. Carolinas it’s storms all the time. Here, it’s like this. And the ocean slopping right at our feet. But—do not despair, Gil, I got a pint of Hennessey on me too.”

  “You know how to get to me. Offer me liquor. I’m a cheap date. It’s sad, dude.”

  “Dude, he says. The legacy of L.A. Come on.”

  Gil let himself be drawn along with Lymon. They tramped along the curving dike that followed the Plum Sound. The dike was high and strong, the best the Army Corps of Engineers could put up as the rising seas threatened Rowley. But if the dike cracked open, Rowley would be drowned.

  Lymon handed him the pint of brandy. For something to say as he unscrewed the top—so he didn’t feel like such an alky—Gil asked, “So your job’s still going good?”

  “Yeah. Have to learn new coding languages sometimes but—I like coding. Keeps my mind busy.”

  Gil glanced at Lymon and thought, Getting fifteen years older hasn’t helped him out much. Lymon’s profile seemed bloated; his lips thicker; eyes popping. Did he have some kind of thyroid issues?

  Walking along the top of the dike as if it were a sidewalk, they passed the pint of brandy and looked out over the water. Up ahead, the dike curved to follow the contours of Plum Island Sound; on their right, the mirrorlike water of the marshes reflected the dull sky; a sea gull skated through the reflection.

  Soon they’d left the sound behind. Now, the sea gnashed close to hand, to the left; it churned, slowly, like a colossal ruminant chewing at something. The dike curved on between sea and marsh squeezed to a thin charcoal-colored line that pointed at Innsmouth Harbor.

  Gil glanced at his watch. It was low tide, but the water washed against the wall just ten feet below them. “How high’s it get on the dike when the tide’s full?”

  “Runs over the top, sometimes, if there’s a storm.” Lymon sniffed, and wiped his nose with one hand. “So far, not enough to do much damage. But that dike wasn’t ever high enough. Sea’s rising even faster than they expected.”
>
  He passed the brandy bottle.

  They fell silent for a time. The dike was flat, the brandy warming, and the miles seemed to melt away. Finally Gil said, “I kind of wonder, sometimes, why I always hated living out here. Rowley’s not so bad I guess. People treated me okay. Mostly. But something was always telling me I didn’t belong and—how many Mexican families in Rowley? Almost none. A few Puerto Ricans, a few Cubans. Me, I’m half—not fish nor fowl. And I don’t like the fish part.”

  Lymon gave him a sharp look.

  Gil went on, “I had this, like, fantasy, when the ocean was rising and all the dikes were being built . . . that Rowley would screw up and the whole town would be sunken. I figured my folks would get away on their boats and . . . ” He shrugged and chuckled in a nervous kind of way. “Sick, I know.”

  “Huh. ’Kay. Kind of weird that you mentioned that but then again . . . You want to see a sunken town? You can pretend it’s Rowley.”

  Gil started to answer, then his cell phone rang. He dug it out of his pants pocket, glanced at it, saw it was his brother’s number. He thumbed Answer. “Eddie?” Gil listened. The phone crackled, then Eddie’s voice cut through. “ . . . Gil? The . . . don’t . . . If they . . . that side . . . stay away . . . ” Every third syllable was swallowed in a void. “They’re looking from . . . ”

  “Eddie, what’s up, I’m losing your signal, here, man. Can’t make out what you’re saying.”

  “ . . . looking up at me . . . windows underwater . . . their mouths . . . windows under the . . . just don’t . . . not with . . . ”

  A furious crackle arose on the phone, as if something in the air was angrily drowning the voice out. “Eddie?”

  Eddie’s voice had fallen into a void of static. Then the static ended—there was only silence. Call ended, it said on the screen.

  “Lousy reception out here, don’t even bother trying to call him back, it’s hopeless, man,” Lymon said. “Hey—you see that? Over there, look! There’s your drowned town, man . . . ”

  The sun was going down behind them; the sea in front, in this light, was strangely translucent, here; as if for a moment, just before it got dark out, it had chosen to disclose what was normally hidden.

  They were looking out at the sunken harbor of Innsmouth; the water had covered the old ruins. The high, razor-wired fences that had kept people out were fallen and rusting; between the remains of the fences the old brick and granite buildings were mostly tumbled into shapeless heaps; here and there in the ruins were recognizable constructions; peaked gables and gambrel roofs, a few chimney pots, something that might have been a warehouse. A narrow shape almost like an obelisk was poking out of the water, just its sharp peak showing—Gil realized, as he stared at it, that it was the top of an old church spire. No cross adorned its tip.

  The warehouse, if that’s what it was, had some recognizable windows, though their frames were skewed by the partial collapse of the building into rhomboids. Something moved, inside one of them—a large fish, of some kind, looking back at him. Might be the face of a big moray eel.

  “Holy fuck,” Gil murmured. “The water’s so clear! That’s . . . really not normal around here!”

  “Normal for the time of day,” Lymon said. His voice sounded low, croakingly low, oddly melancholy. “It’s just—a trick of the light. The old town shows itself as the night comes.”

  “I didn’t know the water had, like, totally swallowed it up. You remember when we used to come and look at the town through the fence?”

  “Sure. The ruins of Innsmouth. Try to figure out which story was true. Some kind of dumping place for World War One mustard gas—that’s the story my old man used to repeat. Toxic dump. People had to be evacuated and the place destroyed, so stay away.”

  “I always liked the devil worshipper story. That was cooler.”

  Lymon chuckled—again his voice had that oddly low, silky intonation Gil wasn’t used to. “Devil Reef is just out there past the harbor . . . so maybe that’s how the story got started. But it was never about worshipping the Devil, whoever that may be.”

  “I don’t think it was the Devil, like Lucifer. But—some other ‘devil.’ Half fish and half man. From the Bible.”

  “Sure. He was mentioned several times in the Old Testament. Like from Judges—Now the lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their God . . . ”

  Gil glanced at him. “Impressive, dude! You memorized it!”

  Lymon gazed fixedly into the sea. “My favorite is from First Samuel—Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon . . . But when they rose early on the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the LORD, and the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off on the threshold . . . ”

  Gil stared. “That’s . . . a long passage to memorize. When did you get all, uh, theological?”

  “It’s nothing to do with theology. It’s about things that are old and powerful and different. Some creatures were simply powerful enough to be worshipped. That Bible story—a lot of propaganda. I don’t imagine the Ark of the Covenant would have bothered Dagon much.”

  Gil licked his lips—and looked at his watch. “We got a long way to go back. I need to find out what Eddie was all worked up about . . . ”

  “Sure. Here—you finish the brandy. I’m going out on the fishing platform for a minute.”

  He handed Gil the brandy bottle, and walked off down the dike, toward a flat wooden structure Gil hadn’t seen before. It was a kind of short jetty cantilevered from the dike, jutting out over the sunken remains of Innsmouth. The support beams were bolted into the dike below the water level.

  As the sun went down, the sea breeze was rising, wet and cold, making Gil shiver. Good excuse as any, he thought, opening the brandy bottle. He drank down the last quarter of it, tossed the bottle in the water, and stuck his hands in his coat pockets to warm them as he walked over to the platform.

  Lymon was standing right on the edge, looking down, as Gil joined him. “What’s up with this thing, Lymon? Something for tourists?”

  “It’s for fishing.”

  “Fishing here? Supposedly all the fish from here is toxic.”

  Lymon didn’t respond. He just stared down into the water.

  After a long moment he said, “You ready, Gil?”

  “Yeah. We should get back. Hey—when the tide goes out, does it expose the town?”

  “Only some of the higher bits. The water’s getting darker but you can still see . . . there! Look—you see that?” Lymon pointed.

  “What?”

  “Over by the spire . . . ”

  Something was moving toward them, making a rippling wake as it came. Gil thought it was a sea lion, probably. That was a head, sticking up out of the water, approaching them, not a fin.

  “Is that a . . . ” He broke off, and stepped closer to the edge to peer at the thing. “No. Not a seal—maybe a dolphin?”

  “No. That’s my cousin,” Lymon said. “She’s been down there for years.”

  Then Gil felt a painful punch in the middle of his back. Lymon was knocking him headfirst into the water.

  Gil’s mouth was open to shout and it filled with saltwater as he plunged down, toward sunken roofs, darting black shapes and rippling columns of yellow-red light.

  He felt saltwater burning his throat, searing his lungs. Drowning. Got to get to the surface.

  He flailed, but thrashing only sent him deeper.

  Then a thick-bodied, naked woman rose up before him, a graceless blue-white shape, intermittently scaly—was it a woman? She was looking unblinkingly at him from enormous, bulging eyes set a little too widely. He could see the pink and blue gills respiring on her neck; he could see . . .

  Nothing. Could see nothing. Darkness swirled around him, icy cold penetrated to his bones, water pressure squeezed him—and something gripped him tightly by the ankles, pulling him deeper, a
nd he thought, Strange way to die . . .

  Gil woke, and, after a while, decided he was alive—in some fashion.

  The six-sided chamber, perhaps thirty-five feet long and twenty wide, was cut from ancient layers of coral and stone; the smell made him think of his father’s fish market on a hot day. But it was cold in there, and misty.

  Gil raised himself on one elbow to look around. Where was the light coming from? It pulsed softly from the corners of the room, hand-sized growths shaped something like mushrooms but filmy, transparent, laced with veins that glowed roseate-tinged blue.

  On the wall to Gil’s left was a bas-relief of a sort of bearded merman wearing a crown, rising up from the sea spreading his brutish claws in perverse benediction.

  Dagon, Gil thought.

  Now and then the walls shivered with a soft hollow booming—the sound of the sea, up above. Cracks in the ceiling dripped in rhythm with the boom.

  Gil sat up, and after the throbbing in his head subsided, he found he was naked, except for a clean dry blanket. He had been laid upon a wet, plastic-wrapped mattress, probably dragged from some sunken boat; the mattress lay upon a stone slab. Where was the door to the room? He couldn’t see one.

  “Hey!” he called out—his voice was raspy from salt He noticed a plastic bucket on the floor holding what looked like fresh water. And a terrible thirst took hold of him.

  It could be drugged . . .

  But he was soon crouching beside it, drinking clean water, clearing his throat.

  “I’m glad you’re up,” said Lymon. Gil turned to see Lymon sauntering in. There was a deep shadow behind him that emitted a grinding sound as it closed behind Lymon. Some sort of hidden door.

  Gil stared at Lymon. A kind of slippery membrane oozed across Lymon’s otherwise naked skin. Gill-slits had opened in Lymon’s neck; his face was more elongated, now, his mouth rounder, thicker; his ears seemed to have vanished entirely; most of his hair was gone. There were only wisps of his orange hair remaining, hanging lankly to his thin shoulders. Some of the membrane had been pulled back from his head, flopped down his back like a hood made of jellyfish stuff. There were webbings of skin between his fingers.