The Dark

by Ellen Datlow

  “Fuck you, Marty.”

  Gerbasi stepped around behind Shellane, and a weakness spread from the center of Shellane’s chest outward. He fixed his eyes on the door, but he seemed to see everything in the room and sensed his isolation, the gulf of the surrounding dark with its trillion instances of life. Spiders, beetles, roosting birds, serpents, badgers, moles, fish streaming through the dim forests of the lake bottom. Every least scrap of vitality enviable to him now. He managed to summon the image of Grace’s face, and her olivine eyes struck deep into him, filling him with acceptance. This was the end to which he had come. This woman, this unstable chair, this badly hung door, this shabby room drenched in orangey lamplight. He felt he was falling forward into a dream.

  “Wanna say a prayer?” Gerbasi asked. “I’ll give you a minute.”

  Shellane did not answer, fascinated by the particularity of his senses, the thousand details.

  “You hear what I said, Roy? Want me to give you a minute?”

  “Now would be good,” said Shellane.

  IN THE BEGINNING there was the memory of pain, a pain so vast and white it seemed less a condition of the mind and body than the country of his birth. But it was only a memory and did not afflict him long. As he moved through the dark, fogbound country of his death, he came to think that being shot had not left him much the worse for wear. He recalled what Grace had said about dying and realized that he, too, felt stronger, more settled in his head … and yet he also felt out of sorts, plagued by an ill-defined sense of wrongness and foreboding. He presumed this feeling would intensify once he reached the black house, and that it probably contributed to the low energy and aimlessness of its residents; but he told himself that none of them had been informed with such clear purpose, such determination, and he believed this would shield him from the effect. Even after he saw the gabled roof rising from fog and the black fist protruding from the wall, after he opened the door and was drawn inside, he remained hopeful, focused on his intention to find Grace and escape with her. Where they might escape to … well, that was not something he had given a great deal of thought. The potentials of the afterlife no doubt incorporated worse places than the house, and should they succeed in reaching a better one, what would they do then? There were many things he might have considered before acting. Matters of personal as well as metaphysical consequence. But they involved questions best answered by him and Grace together, and so would have to wait a judgment.

  Upon opening the door, he was admitted to a corridor that appeared to be endless, an unrelieved perspective of black doors and black walls, black floors and ceiling, the surfaces of the boards shiny like newly exposed veins of coal. From each door he passed, he received an impression of menace and he wondered if his ability to smell such a psychic reek had been enhanced by his transition. The black perspective continued to recede. If there was an end to the corridor, he had made no appreciable progress toward it. He would have to pick a door and deal with whatever lay behind it. But before he could finalize this decision, Grace spoke from behind him, giving him a start, just as she had on their first morning on the beach.

  “Hello, Roy,” she said.

  She was standing about fifteen feet away, two of the uglies crouched at her side, flanking her like faithful hounds. Her hair was loose about her shoulders and she wore a white, filmy gown, flimsy as a peignoir, its ultra-feminity at odds with her customary clothing. She betrayed no hint of anxiety, no uncertainty, and her smile was an act of disdainful aggression. She absently trailed the fingers of her left hand across the scalp of one of the uglies, and it trembled, rolling its sunken eyes toward her.

  “Grace …” Stunned, unable to match her coolness, her poise, with anything he knew about her, Shellane was at a loss.

  “Roy!” She made the name a husky mockery of passion and laughed. “Thanks for getting rid of Avery. That was so sweet! I knew you wouldn’t let me down.” Her tone grew chilly. “All that bullshit self-involvement you do! You’re too much of a coward to admit you’re a bully, so you invent these moral dilemmas to hide the truth from yourself. I knew you’d find a way to kill him. It’s who you are.” She gave her hair a toss. “Things couldn’t have worked out better. You’ll be much more fun than Avery. He wasn’t a deep thinker, but you’ll drive yourself crazy trying to understand what’s going on. You’ll be all understanding at first. You’ll try to make me into something I’m not. An unhappy woman brutalized in life and empowered by death. It’s only natural I act out my resentments, and you’ll think if you give me time, I’ll get over it. You’ll drown yourself in that kind of crap. Take my advice, Roy. The only thing you need to understand is that I’m a lot smarter than you.”

  In her frilly glory, she reminded him of the figures on the cakes in an X-rated bakery near his apartment in Detroit. Shellane couldn’t believe he had been so wrong about her.

  “Come on!” she said. “Deep down you must have known the truth. Nobody could love something like you.”

  Stiffly, he said, “This is about revenge?”

  “You say that like it’s trivial! Haven’t you ever been hurt?” She giggled. “Before now, I mean. Didn’t you just want to fuck the bitch up? Tear her life apart … like what she did to you? Don’t undervalue revenge. Thinking about it may be the only thing that’s going to keep you sane.”

  Incredulous, he said, “Why … how did you bring me here? To the lake? I don’t—”

  “I didn’t do anything. You found me. You found the house. Your whole life you’ve been looking for a place that fit you perfectly. That’s how you see it, anyway. The truth is, you were looking for a suitable punishment.” She tipped her head coquettishly and said, “And here you are!”

  “But what did—”

  “No more clues. Figure it out yourself … if you can. I’m not sure I understand it. But understanding’s way overrated. Try and stay in the moment.”

  “I can still take us out of here, Grace,” he said. “It—”

  “Don’t you get it? I don’t want to leave! This is my little slice of heaven. I own this place. It’s mine. I’m not about to give up what I’ve won.”

  The uglies strained forward, craning their necks, making whimpering sounds.

  “When I came here,” Grace went on, “when I saw all these fucked-up people, hurting themselves the same way in death as they did when they were alive, I swore I’d break the mold. I was fed up with taking a beating, and I worked hard to get where I am. But I don’t think it’s in you, Roy. What you did in life was run, and you’re not going to change here.” She patted the uglies’ heads with rough affection. “The boys are dying for some exercise. So in a minute I’m going to let you do what you do best.”

  His mind burned with questions she would never answer … or that she never could answer. And that, he thought, was key. She didn’t have all the answers. If she was the queen of the house, why hadn’t the people he talked to known who she was? Maybe they were dissembling, afraid to speak, but it might be that Grace was not the only power here, and that there was still power to be had by someone resourceful enough to grasp it.

  “I can hear the wheels spinning.” Grace tapped her forehead. “You go, Roy! If anybody can beat the odds, it’s a great big criminal type like you!”

  The uglies surged forward, but she snapped at them and they heeled.

  “I won’t be able to hold them much longer,” said Grace, “so if you want a head start …” She shrugged, smiled sweetly. “Your call, lover.”

  As he turned to the door behind him, he was astonished to find that he still loved her, that mixed in with the shocks bred by her duplicity were skeins of longing and the hope he could persuade her that their relationship had not merely been a device, part of her scheme to kill her husband. He refused to believe she was that accomplished an actress. The iron hand of the doorknob clasped his fingers snugly and the contact put a cold charge in his emotions. Love notwithstanding, if she wanted a game, he’d give her one; but then his anger was dro
wned beneath a tide of terrible recognitions. The hopelessness of his situation; the complexity of the problem he confronted; and most disabling of all, the appropriateness of the punishment he faced. To run ceaselessly, to hide, to exist—however fractionally—without the consolations that had made his old existence endurable. He understood why the lake had seemed such a good fit. It was to be his resting place, his final worldly destination. He’d spend eternity, if eternity there was, scurrying through the maze of that black, sedated house like a rat in a ruin and mooning about the lake where death and love had found him. He entered the room, passing through flickering white lights into the shadowy space beyond and thought once again of Grace, her clean beauty, all the simple qualities he had desired. Dressed in her frillies, voice dripping with sarcasm, she no longer seemed to embody those qualities, to be someone toward whom he had any relation, and it was not desire, not love, not guilt, not even regret or sorrow that ruled him now. Those emotions were going to shades, draining of color and force. It was hate, a freshly excavated core of it, that urged him on as he began to run.

  AFTERWORD

  My favorite ghost story is Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. As ghosts are by nature elusive and allusive; to my mind, the best ghost stories are studies in ambiguity, and—in addition to being masterfully written—James’s story sets the standard in this regard.

  KELLY LINK’S stories have recently appeared in Conjunctions and McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales. Her first collection, Stranger Things Happen, was published in 2001. She has won a World Fantasy Award, a Nebula Award, and the James Tiptree, Jr., Award. She works with her husband, Gavin J. Grant, on the zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and is the editor of Trampoline, an anthology just out from Small Beer Press.

  THE HORTLAK

  KELLY LINK

  ERIC WAS NIGHT, and Batu was day. The girl, Charley, was the moon. Every night, she drove past the All-Night in her long, noisy, green Chevy, a dog hanging out the passenger window. It wasn’t ever the same dog, although they all had the same blissful expression. They were doomed, but they didn’t know it.

  Biz buradan çok ho, landik.

  We like it here very much.

  The All-Night Convenience was a fully stocked, self-sufficient organism, like the Starship Enterprise, or the Kon-Tiki. Batu went on and on about this. They didn’t work retail anymore. They were on a voyage of discovery, one in which they had no need to leave the All-Night, not even to do laundry. Batu washed his pajamas and the extra uniforms in the sink in the back. He even washed Eric’s clothes. That was the kind of friend Batu was.

  Burada tatil için mi bulunuyorsunuz?

  Are you here on holiday?

  All during his shift, Eric listened for Charley’s car. First she went by on her way to the shelter and then, during her shift, she took the dogs out driving, past the store first in one direction and then back again, two or three times in one night, the lights of her headlights picking out the long, black gap of the Ausable Chasm, a bright slap across the windows of the All-Night. Eric’s heart lifted whenever a car went past.

  The zombies came in, and he was polite to them, and failed to understand what they wanted, and sometimes real people came in and bought candy or cigarettes or beer. The zombies were never around when the real people were around, and Charley never showed up when the zombies were there.

  Charley looked like someone from a Greek play, Electra, or Cassandra. She looked like someone had just set her favorite city on fire. Eric had thought that, even before he knew about the dogs.

  Sometimes, when she didn’t have a dog in the Chevy, Charley came into the All-Night Convenience to buy a Mountain Dew, and then she and Batu would go outside to sit on the curb. Batu was teaching her Turkish. Sometimes Eric went outside as well, to smoke a cigarette. He didn’t really smoke, but it meant he got to look at Charley, the way the moonlight sat on her like a hand. Sometimes she looked back. Wind would rise up, out of the Ausable Chasm, across Ausable Chasm Road, into the parking lot of the All-Night, tugging at Batu’s pajama bottoms, pulling away the cigarette smoke that hung out of Eric’s mouth. Charley’s bangs would float up off her forehead, until she clamped them down with her fingers.

  Batu said he was not flirting. He didn’t have a thing for Charley. He was interested in her because Eric was interested. Batu wanted to know what Charley’s story was: he said he needed to know if she was good enough for Eric, for the All-Night Convenience. There was a lot at stake.

  WHAT ERIC WANTED to know was, why did Batu have so many pajamas? But Eric didn’t want to seem nosy. There wasn’t a lot of space in the All-Night. If Batu wanted Eric to know about the pajamas, then one day he’d tell him. It was as simple as that.

  RECENTLY, BATU HAD evolved past the need for more than two or three hours sleep, which was good in some ways and bad in others. Eric had a suspicion he might figure out how to talk to Charley if Batu were tucked away, back in the storage closet, dreaming his own sweet dreams, and not scheming schemes, doing all the flirting on Eric’s behalf, so that Eric never had to say a thing.

  Eric had even rehearsed the start of a conversation. Charley would say, “Where’s Batu?” and Eric would say, “Asleep.” Or even, “Sleeping in the closet.”

  Erkek arkada var mi?

  Do you have a boyfriend?

  Charley’s story: She worked night shifts at the animal shelter. Every night, when Charley got to work, she checked the list to see which dogs were on the schedule. She took the dogs—any that weren’t too ill, or too mean—out for one last drive around town. Then she drove them back and she put them to sleep. She did this with an injection. She sat on the floor and petted them until they weren’t breathing anymore.

  When she was telling Batu this, Batu sitting far too close to her, Eric not close enough, Eric had this thought, which was what it would be like to lie down and put his head on Charley’s leg. But the longest conversation that he’d ever managed with Charley was with Charley on one side of the counter, him on the other, when he’d explained that they weren’t taking money anymore, at least not unless people wanted to give them money.

  “I want a Mountain Dew,” Charley had said, making sure Eric understood that part.

  “I know,” Eric said. He tried to show with his eyes how much he knew, and how much he didn’t know, but wanted to know.

  “But you don’t want me to pay you for it.”

  “I’m supposed to give you what you want,” Eric said, “and then you give me what you want to give me. It doesn’t have to be about money. It doesn’t even have to be something, you know, tangible. Sometimes people tell Batu their dreams if they don’t have anything interesting in their wallets.”

  “All I want is a Mountain Dew,” Charley said. But she must have seen the panic on Eric’s face, and she dug in her pocket. Instead of change, she pulled out a set of dog tags and plunked it down on the counter.

  “This dog is no longer alive,” she said. “It wasn’t a very big dog, and I think it was part Chihuahua and part Collie, and how pitiful is that. You should have seen it. Its owner brought it in because it would jump up on her bed in the morning, lick her face, and get so excited that it would pee. I don’t know, maybe she thought someone else would want to adopt an ugly little bedwetting dog, but nobody did, and so now it’s not alive anymore. I killed it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Eric said. Charley leaned her elbows against the counter. She was so close he could smell her smell: chemical, burnt, doggy. There were dog hairs on her clothes.

  “I killed it,” Charley said. She sounded angry at him. “Not you.”

  When Eric looked at her, he saw that that city was still on fire. It was still burning down, and Charley was watching it burn. She was still holding the dog tags. She let go and they lay there on the counter until Eric picked them up and put them in the register.

  “This is all Batu’s idea,” Charley said. “Right?” She went outside and sat on the curb, and in a while Batu came out of
the storage closet and went outside as well. Batu’s pajama bottoms were silk. There were smiling hydrocephalic cartoon cats on them, and the cats carried children in their mouths. Either the children were mouse-sized, or the cats were bear-sized. The children were either screaming or laughing. Batu’s pajama top was red flannel, faded, with guillotines, and heads in baskets.

  Eric stayed inside. He leaned his face against the window every once in a while, as if he could hear what they were saying. But even if he could have heard them, he guessed he wouldn’t have understood. The shapes their mouths made were shaped like Turkish words. Eric hoped they were talking about retail.

  Kar yaacak.

  It’s going to snow.

  The way the All-Night worked at the moment was Batu’s idea. They sized up the customers before they got to the counter—that had always been part of retail. If the customer was the right sort, then Batu or Eric gave the customers what they said they needed, and the customers paid with money sometimes, and sometimes with other things: pot, books on tape, souvenir maple-syrup tins. They were near the border. They got a lot of Canadians. Eric suspected someone, maybe a traveling Canadian pajama salesman, was supplying Batu with novelty pajamas.

  Siz de mi bekliyorsunuz?

  Are you waiting, too?