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

by Paula Guran

  Shivering, Mary rubbed her cheeks. Rain pattered on the carriage roof and she found herself wishing the journey would never reach its end. For all her intellectual accomplishments, her much-prized rationality, she was terrified. Alone and abandoned she had been on several occasions, and penniless too, but never in so dire a situation as this. Never with a child—a girl child—for whom to care and somehow shield from the world’s most outrageous fortunes.

  “Oh!” she cried as her daughter’s round and rosy face flashed into her mind. “My little Fanny, I would have left you to them. How could I have thought . . . ”

  “Your thoughts were elsewhere,” the Grey Lady said. “They have been elsewhere for too long now, and it is past time you collected them.” She sniffed the air, her nose wrinkling in displeasure. “Spoiled yeast and calla lilies and desperation, still.”

  “I can smell only mud and sewage.”

  The Grey Lady chuckled. “That too, of course.”

  “My heart beats, yet this feels a living death.”

  “While it seems so, I will not leave you.”

  Mary pressed her face to the window. “It is dark outside.”

  “It is October; the days grow short.”

  “It is so very dark.” For the barest of breaths, Mary imagined she could feel the squeeze of gloved hands about her wrists. She closed her eyes. “I am frightened.”

  “Know that I am here,” the Grey Lady said. “And cling to this, if nothing else: you are not a fate-spun heroine from one of those Gothic Romances you so despise.”

  This time she was certain that she felt it, the touch of flocked velvet soft as infant skin against her bare, chilled flesh. The impossible pressure of those thin and gentle fingers.

  “You are Mary Wollstonecraft, and you will die for no man.”

  Even in darkness, words glimmered and beckoned, drawing her outwards. First, the mixed blessing of her journals, notes for the travelogue that Joseph Johnson had commissioned upon learning of her Scandinavian endeavor. She wrought from them an epistolary elevated by personal circumstance: a woman journeying alone with an infant; a woman caught in the process of betrayal and abandonment; a woman traversing the masculine spheres of commerce, politics, creativity and philosophy—and crafting such clever, such candid dispatches.

  Behold: Mary Wollstonecraft, Traveler-Philosopher!

  Her mind flexed, and lightened.

  Invigorated, finding solid footing once more among the literary circles of London, she conceived a fresh project by which she rapidly became consumed. Maria, the novel would be titled, or The Wrongs of Woman, and from the first she was resolved on a slow and calculated execution. The crafting of a truly excellent book was an arduous task, and this time Mary would not allow herself to be rushed. This time, she would reflect and revise and reconsider. This time, her words would ring with utter clarity.

  Behold: Mary Wollstonecraft, Polemic Novelist!

  Her heart, too, discovered a new fascination. Or perhaps rediscovered it.

  Upon the occasion of their first meeting years before at one of Johnson’s weekly dinners, Mary had found William Godwin irksome in his undiscerning admiration of supposedly eminent men. He had, in turn, thought her too outspoken in conversation, especially when he would have preferred to imbibe the opinions of others around the table. Other eminent men, an unspoken qualification she had perceived only too well.

  Newly reacquainted within overlapping social circles, they found themselves drawn to one another with the inexorable, near imperceptible weight of planetary bodies whose orbits, previously misaligned, now moved in startling synchronicity. Mary’s passions, never cooled, rekindled. William’s, to his own astonishment, burned all the bolder for their hitherto untested state.

  But non-planetary bodies, bodies of flesh and flagrant blood, follow their own particular, if not wholly predictable, paths and thus conceive projects of their own.

  See William Godwin, famous for his very public repudiations of marriage as a moral institution.

  See Mary “Imlay,” already sensitive to gossip and the subject of much speculation.

  Then imagine—oh imagine!—the fraught negotiation of these two proud and independent souls around the sudden expectation of a third. The small, private ceremony at St. Pancras. The quiet series of announcements to friends. The united front against those who shunned them, those who mocked and scorned and professed outrage, or merely snide amusement, at a marriage for which the catalyst would soon become roundly apparent.

  Behold: Mary Wollstonecraft, Mother-To-Be, Redux.

  The woman in the bed opens her eyes and tries to focus on the figures surrounding her. There is William, dear William, his tired face so pale, his eyes sunken. The doctor, the good doctor, whose name she cannot for the moment recall. And, of course, the other.

  “I did not finish,” the woman in the bed croaks. “I thought there was time, at last, to be still.”

  William clutches her hand. “There is time, my love.”

  “There is no time,” the Grey Lady says quietly.

  No attention is paid to her by any soul present save the woman in the bed, who struggles now to sit up, who is restrained by the gentlest of palms placed against her panting sternum, who is entreated to rest, to save her words for when she is well. William’s eyes are glossy with tears.

  The woman in the bed stares past him. “My baby, who will teach her, who will protect her?”

  “Hush.” William brushes damp hair from her face. “There will be time to talk of such matters.”

  “There is no time,” the Grey Lady repeats. “I will not lie to you, Mary.”

  “You must look to her,” the woman in the bed pleads. “Look to her as you have me.”

  Hush, my love, do not worry yourself so needlessly.

  “That is not my purpose,” the Grey Lady says.

  “Then make it your purpose. My daughter will not know her mother.”

  Carlisle? Carlisle, she is raving; see how her face contorts?

  Mr. Godwin, I can do nothing further to help her.

  The Grey Lady moves closer to the bed. A yellow wasp crawls down her sleeve and into the palm of her hand. “I am sorry, Mary. If it were in my power, I would ease all the suffering in the world, beginning with your own.”

  “It is dark,” the woman in the bed whispers. “It is dark as the Thames.”

  Carlisle, fetch that lamp here. Mary, see? There is yet light.

  I fear it will not be long, Mr. Godwin.

  “I felt as one standing on a precipice,” the woman in the bed says. “All the world bustled and buzzed below me and for once I need not race away. There would be time, the baby would come, and there would yet be time for all I wished to do.” Her chapped lips crack around a smile. “I should be at my desk.”

  Mary, be still now. Hush.

  “Do not leave me, I beg you.”

  Never, my love. I am here always.

  “I will not leave you.” The Grey Lady extends a hand. “But here, open your mouth.”

  Insect legs scratch and tickle as they crawl over her tongue. The woman in the bed presses the wasp against her palate, feels its barbed abdomen burst even as it sinks its sting into her flesh. Where she expected pain, there is instead a spreading languid heat and the taste of molasses on fresh-baked bread.

  “It is all I can do,” the Grey Lady says.

  It is enough.

  Do not suppose this to be her ending.

  It is a play truncated in its second act, a journey derailed before its terminus, a cloth cut short by miser’s blades; you cannot decipher the whole pattern from but a fragment in your hand.

  She would not have remained still. She could not have remained still.

  There would have been more words. There would always have been more words.

  Her story cannot be shaped to a convenient arc, to a neat and satisfactory conclusion.

  This is not her ending; it is merely where she left off.

  It is not her p
urpose and yet the Grey Lady comes regardless, propelled by curiosity perhaps, or perhaps by some deeper compulsion. The baby is sleeping in a simple wooden crib which once rocked the Reveleys’ own children to slumber, now retrieved from storage and pressed into tragic and unexpected service. Nearby, little Fanny plays mother to a favorite doll, fussing with its hair and dress and planting noisy kisses upon its porcelain cheeks. The child does not notice the Grey Lady’s arrival in the room, just as she has never noticed her myriad comings and goings. That is as it should be.

  The Grey Lady approaches the crib, drops to one knee beside it. “Let me look at you, then.” Her eyes scan the infant’s chubby features, hoping to discern some familiarity in the shade of the nose, in the turn of the mouth, but her efforts are ill-rewarded. Babies are, after all, babies. In time, there might be something of the mother in this one, or the father, but that time will not be the Grey Lady’s to witness.

  She sighs. “Good life to you, child, and to your sister.”

  The baby opens her eyes. Dark brown as her mother’s were, and curious, they fix themselves upon the Grey Lady’s face. Those eyes see her.

  “Oh my,” she whispers. Leaning forward, her nose inches from the newly fascinating creature in the crib, she takes a delicate sniff. Oh my, indeed. “Mary Godwin . . . ” The Grey Lady frowns; the name feels unfinished on her tongue. “Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, or however you shall be someday known, you smell of thunderstorms and secret truths and . . . and monsters?”

  The baby makes a soft, gurgling sound. Tiny fingers flex.

  “Oh, my dear girl,” the Grey Lady tells her. “I shall be keeping a very close watch on you.”

  Kirstyn McDermott has been working in the darker alleyways of speculative fiction for much of her career and her two novels, Madigan Mine and Perfections, have each won the Aurealis Award for Best Horror Novel. Her most recent book is Caution: Contains Small Parts, a collection of short fiction published by Twelfth Planet Press. When not wearing her writing hat, she produces and co-hosts a literary discussion podcast, The Writer and the Critic, which generally keeps her out of trouble. She can be found online (usually far too often) at kirstynmcdermott.com.

  The future is not knowable until it has become the past . . . right?

  CASSANDRA

  Ken Liu

  πόλλ ξ, ἀλλ’ ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα

  The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

  —Archilochus

  “Just doing my job.” He mugs for the cameras, that magnificent smile, that ridiculous cape and costume, that stupid quirk of the brow. Behind him is the unharmed research center building. Overhead the brilliant fireworks of the bomb he had heaved into the sky light up the scene, the sparks drifting down over his shoulders like confetti.

  He could have tossed the bomb into the river, of course, but this makes for better TV. This is why I’ve taken to calling him Showboat, which happens to also work well with the soaring “S” on his chest.

  “What do you have to say to her?” some reporter shouts.

  “Villainy doesn’t pay,” he says, like some baseball player with a repertoire of a dozen clichés that will play well for any purpose. Don’t be evil. Surrender and face a fair trial. The American people will not tolerate terrorism. Open your heart to the goodness around you.

  I flick off the TV. He had probably figured out my plans with the city’s help. With thousands of surveillance cameras everywhere these days, it’s almost inevitable that my image was captured by some of them. Computers and his super-vision would have done the rest. He does believe in at least one form of anticipatory knowledge then, the kind that concerns me.

  I’ll keep on trying, though I’ll need a better disguise.

  The apartment is well appointed, comfortable. The man who owns this place won’t be back until tomorrow morning; I’ll be safe here. I fall asleep almost immediately after a long day of crawling through ventilation ducts and utility crawlspaces carrying explosives.

  I dream about the building I failed to blow up, about the humming servers and cluttered labs I saw, about the knowledge that is stored within, about automated drones sweeping across the sky, over a busy market, over a remote hamlet, raining death upon the people below implacably. I feel the terror of the man through whose eyes I see these things, and the knowledge that it is wrong, all wrong, and yet also necessary, because war has its own logic, the perennial excuse of cowards trying to evade responsibility.

  But I am the villain. Right?

  You want to hear some dark, twisted origin story, some formative experience that explains how I’ve come to be me. That’s what Showboat wants, too. “I feel sorry for her,” he tells the cameras. “No one is born evil.” I want to throw the remote at the TV every time he says that.

  The real story is pretty mundane. It started with a search for cool air.

  It’s summer and there’s no air conditioning in my apartment. Buying a window unit and installing it and figuring out how to pay for the extra electricity—the very thoughts exhaust me. Planning has never been my strong suit. I like to take things one step at a time. It’s why I’m still in the city with no job after college, trying to put off making that phone call to my parents about possibly moving back home. You’re right, Dad; it looks like that degree in literature and history really isn’t so useful.

  So I go out for ice cream, for cold smoothies, for the cool air in discount stores where they sell everything you desire and nothing you need.

  There’s a family near the TVs with their color saturation turned up so high that the skin on the white actors look orange. The woman stands next to one of the 72-inch beasts, looking skeptical.

  “I think it might be a bit too big,” she says.

  The man looks at her, and I see his face go through this weird transformation. It was a handsome face, but now it’s not. It’s like she has just insulted him in some unforgivable manner.

  “I said I like this one,” he says. I don’t think I’m imagining that thing in his tone, the thing that makes the skin on the back of my neck cold, makes me want to cringe.

  She must be hearing it, too. She tenses, straightens up. One of her hands goes to the TV, leaning on it for support; the other hand reaches down and grabs the hand of her little boy, who’s maybe four and tries to shake her off but she refuses to let him go.

  “Sorry,” she says.

  “You think our place is too small, is that it?” he asks.

  “No,” she says.

  “You make ten dollars an hour and complain about not getting enough hours, but you think we should be in a bigger place.”

  “No,” she says. Her voice gets smaller. The boy has stopped struggling and lets her hold his hand.

  “I guess it must be my fault. I should be working more. That must be what you mean.”

  “No. Look, I’m sorry—”

  “I tell you I like this TV and you start this again.”

  “I like the TV.”

  The man glares at her, and I can see his face grow redder and redder as if he’s still figuring out all the ways she’s insulted him. I realize what a big man he is, how this rage magnifies him, gives him that aura of power. Abruptly, he turns around and heads for the exit.

  The woman lets out a held breath, as do I.

  She takes her hand off the TV and starts to follow the man, the boy obediently trailing her. Our eyes meet for a moment and her face flushes, embarrassed.

  I want to say something but don’t. What am I supposed to say? He’s got a temper, doesn’t he? You going to be okay? Is he hitting you? What do I know about the lives of strangers? What do I know about the right thing to do?

  So I watch as they leave the store, the fog from the air conditioning over the automatic doors enveloping her for a moment as she steps through.

  I go up to the TV they had been looking at, and for some reason that I can’t even explain, put my hand on the TV, put my hand where she put hers earlier. It’s like
I’m seeking the lingering trace of the warmth of her hand, some assuring sign that she’ll be all right.

  And it feels electric, feels like the moon opens up and the stars are singing to me.

  An apartment a few tiny rooms the bed the table the kitchen the carpet a mess Damn you’re lazy I’m sorry I was late Teddy was sick had to take him Damn you’re lazy

  A toy piano is like a window a handle on a polished shoe grinding mezzo soprano Daddy is angry He is he is my darling Let’s be quiet

  The link is with us woman with woman. Your eyes your face It’s nothing Why do you not leave Because So Because

  Why did you look at him?

  I wasn’t I wasn’t I wasn’t

  Lets dance So tender sometimes I’m sorry I was angry forgive me but sometimes you push me

  He can be so sweet

  A girl is a woman because a woman is an omen Oh man a whole man a hole in a woman a wholesome woman.

  An awl is a drill some sharply polished nail

  Broken dish a wailing a crying a tantrum Get him to stop! I’m trying I’m trying Damn you’re lazy I’m tired Talking back I told you not to push me Don’t don’t you’re scaring him get away from me

  A burst of crimson of red ink iron sweet

  Screaming and screaming and screaming he’s not stopping Call the police call

  My first vision leaves me breathless and ill.

  I ask myself questions in an attempt at persuasion: What have I seen? What am I supposed to do with these images? What is their epistemological status? What is the rational reaction?

  So I plead ignorance and do nothing.

  Then there she is in the news: on TV, on the web, in the stacks of papers they still put in the convenience stores.

  She was getting ready to leave him. Already found an apartment.

  He came at her with that awl while their son watched. I couldn’t stop him, and I tried. I tried.

  I show up to the funeral, where lots of strangers have gathered outside the chapel to lay flowers around a fountain. I watch the bubbling water and imagine the blood gushing out of her. Guilt gnaws at my insides like an iron file, but the rest of me feels numb. I catch sight of the boy once, and his stoic eyes stab at me like a pair of awls.