The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015

by Paula Guran

  He arrived at Skelley’s a great deal earlier than usual, and stayed until closing, at which point he realized he didn’t have his wallet.

  Doug, the bartender, told him he could pay the next time he came. “But no more drinks until then.”

  “You don’t know of a place I could stay?” Pete asked.

  Doug shrugged. “What about that friend of yours, that towelhead? Why don’t you stay with him?”

  In Pete’s state, this seemed a perfectly reasonable suggestion. He reached for his keys, but Doug deftly scooped them up. “I’ll take you,” he said. “You can get your car in the morning.”

  Pete had no idea where Raj and Tamara lived, but Doug did. “Everyone in town knows,” he said.

  Pete slurred his thanks, then weaved up to the house, where he leaned on the bell until Raj opened the door. Tamara stood behind him, wearing a red robe and holding a crying baby.

  “My wife kicked me out.”

  “I wonder why,” Tamara said, then turned and walked down the dark hall.

  “I don’t mean to cause problems.”

  Raj put his hand on Pete’s shoulder. “You look like you could use a drink, my friend.”

  Over tea, Pete told Raj what Theresa had accused him of.

  “You need a lawyer,” Raj said.

  But by that time, Pete was crying. “I need my family.”

  Tamara woke up to the baby’s crying. It seemed like he had only just gone to sleep. Then it stopped. She closed her eyes, but they popped right back open. That’s when Raj burst into the room, holding the baby in front of him, extended at arm’s length, the baby’s wings rising and falling as gentle as breath, the strange man who had arrived in the night right behind Raj.

  “He was flying! He was flying!” Raj said.

  Tamara looked at her husband. “You’re drunk.”

  “Tamara,” Raj said, “I am not drunk. And neither are you.” He opened his arms. Ravi rose into the air, his wings fully extended. He hovered, then flew higher and higher.

  “Catch him,” Tamara shouted.

  Ravi laughed.

  “Ravi Singh, you come down here this instant,” Tamara shouted.

  Laughing, dangerously close to the ceiling fan.

  Tamara screamed. Raj leapt onto the bed and jumped, trying to catch Ravi by the foot. Instead, Raj grazed the baby’s heel. That set him into a cartwheel, which luckily landed on the bed. Ravi lay crying, a strange bend to his shoulder, but Tamara kept screaming at the men not to touch him. They watched the dark wings shrivel until they were gone. Only then did Tamara scoop Ravi up, holding him close to her chest.

  “I think we need to call the hospital,” Raj said. “I think maybe his shoulder is broken.”

  “Oh, right,” Tamara said. “And then what do we do? Tell them he fell from the sky?”

  “That’s what happened, Tamara. That’s the truth.”

  Tamara looked from Raj to the man beside him. “Who are you?”

  “Pete Ratcher.”

  “From the farm out by the old mill?”

  Pete nodded.

  “If you tell anybody what you saw, I’ll kill you.”

  “Tamara!” Raj turned to Pete. “She doesn’t mean it. She’s hysterical.”

  Tamara didn’t look hysterical. She looked like she meant it. It was the second murder threat Pete had received in twenty-four hours, and he felt he was becoming something of an expert.

  “I’ll call the doctor,” Raj said.

  “No,” Tamara said. “I’m taking him in. I’ll take him.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Raj said. “It’s going to be all right. We can handle this, honey.”

  “Just stay here with your friend.” She nodded towards Pete. “We’ll talk when I get home. You stay here, okay?”

  This was the kindest Tamara had been to Raj in so long that he agreed. “I’ll call the doctor and let her know you’re coming.”

  “Please,” Tamara said. “She doesn’t know you. She knows me. I’ll call from the car.”

  Again, Raj agreed. He even helped pack the baby’s bag, not thinking to wonder why Tamara needed so many diapers, so many sleepers, so much stuff. He was distracted, he would later tell the television reporter. It never even occurred to him that she was lying.

  When Tamara left the house, she turned right out of the driveway, but circled around Caster Lane, heading west. Ravi, in his car seat, had stopped crying and looked at her with his beautiful blue eyes, while chewing on a teething ring. Of course he was way too young for teeth, but they were coming in. She’d seen them, and she’d felt them too, when he bit down on her nipple. “Okay, baby. We’re going on a road trip, but first we’re going to make a little stop at Mr. Ratcher’s house. I hear they have a new baby there. Let’s see if we can make sure Mr. Ratcher has good reason never to tell anyone our secret.”

  Tamara would never hurt Pete Ratcher’s baby. But he didn’t know that. All she wanted to do was scare him. All she wanted to do was make sure he didn’t hurt her baby. In a way, you could say her intentions were good.

  It is just a little after 4:00 a.m. when Tamara Singh approaches the Ratcher driveway. She turns off the headlights, cuts the engine, and coasts in. What she’s doing isn’t dangerous—it’s more on par with a high school prank—but Tamara thinks that maybe she now understands, just a little bit, what motivates a criminal. Beyond everything else there is this thrill.

  When she unbuckles Ravi from the car seat, he is sound asleep; even touching his shoulder doesn’t wake him. Tamara concludes they must have overreacted. She breathes a sigh of relief.

  The air is heavy with the odor of manure, dirt, tomato plants, grass, and green corn stalks. Tamara walks across the gravel on tiptoe, but the noise breaks through the dark. In the distance, a dog barks. She walks to the back door, opens it, and enters the house. The Ratchers, like most of the residents of Voorhisville, do not lock their doors. Who can be bothered with keys, in this world that no one wants? Tamara wishes she had a sheet of paper so she could write that thought down.

  The kitchen is lit by the stove light. The window over the sink is open, and the white curtains flutter slightly. Ravi stirs in her arms. Tamara leans her face close to his. “Shhh, baby,” she whispers. Miraculously, he does. Tamara concludes that all the excitement must have worn him out. Suddenly she’s aware of how tired she is. She tiptoes through the kitchen and into the living room.

  The couch, plaid and sagging, faces a TV set with a small cactus on it. Between the couch and the TV, there is a coffee table littered with a parenting magazine, a paperback, unused diapers, a box of tissues, a half-filled glass of water, and an empty plate. On the TV wall stands the only nice piece of furniture in the room, an antique sideboard with a lace runner and two white taper candles in glass holders. Tamara lies down on the couch. As she falls asleep, she can hear the faint twittering of birds and—from upstairs—a baby’s cry; the sound of footsteps.

  When Pete woke up, feeling like he slept on rocks instead of a pullout couch, he found Raj sitting at the kitchen table, making designs with Cheerios. Pete didn’t really have the energy to comfort Raj—after all, his wife accused him of molesting their daughter; he had serious problems of his own. The phone rang, but Raj continued rearranging Cheerios. “Should I get that?” Pete asked. He walked over to the phone. “Hello?”

  “Is this Raj Singh?”

  “Theresa?”

  “Pete? What are you doing there?”

  “Theresa, I never—”

  “I need to talk to Raj Singh. Is he there?”

  “Theresa, you have to believe me.”

  “I don’t have time for this right now. Tamara Singh is here, and their baby is dead. Are you going to tell him, or should I?”

  Pete watched Raj carefully place a Cheerio in-between two others. “But what should I say? How should I say it?”

  “Tell him his wife, for some reason, came here last night and fell asleep on the couch with the baby, and when she woke up, he w
as dead. Tell him not to call the doctor or the undertaker. His wife wants to bury him right here. Nothing formal. Just him and us. Tell him that’s what she wants, so we’re going to do it that way. Tell him the baby’s wings are still out, and if anyone else sees them they’ll probably want to take him, run tests and stuff. Tell him his wife could never live through that. Make sure he understands.”

  “That’s what it was like with Elli’s baby. The other one—the one that died.”

  “Tell him you’ll bring him with you when you come home.”

  “Theresa? You don’t still think—”

  “I screwed up. Okay? I’m sorry, Pete. I’ve been under a lot of stress lately. What can I say? I’m sorry.”

  “But you know, right? You know I would never?”

  “Are you going to tell him?”

  “But how? I mean, how did it happen?”

  “She said something about a fall, but I think she suffocated him by mistake. Just get here, okay? Don’t let Raj call anyone.”

  “Theresa, did Elli say I did that to her?”

  “No, it wasn’t Elli. It was me. What do you want? I already apologized. It was a mistake, okay? Can we just move on, here? There’s other stuff to deal with. Do you want to tell him, or do you want me to?”

  “I’ll tell him,” Pete said, so loudly that Raj looked up from his Cheerios. Pete hung up the phone. “I have bad news,” he said.

  Raj nodded, as if—of course, naturally—it was just as he expected.

  “Your baby’s dead.”

  Raj collapsed across the kitchen table, scattering the Cheerios. Pete placed a hand on Raj’s back, kept it there for a moment, and then walked out of the kitchen, through the living room, and out the front door.

  Pete stood on the front porch, his head pounding. Crazy; it was just crazy that his wife thought he’d do such a thing. How could she ever have loved him if she thought he was capable of such evil? Pete knew that this was not the time to get angry at her, not when she realized her mistake, but he’d gotten drunk last night, and then there was all that business with the baby, and he’d been too distracted to feel it before.

  The door popped open. Raj stood there with red eyes. “Tamara?”

  “She’s at my house. She stopped by to visit my wife, I guess.”

  “I have to make some calls—”

  “No.” Pete explained how Raj wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, because of the wings, and how Tamara wanted the baby buried at the farm.

  “I don’t think that’s legal.”

  Pete shrugged. “Theresa—and I guess your wife too—they think that if anyone finds out about the wings, they’ll take the baby, and you know, run tests and stuff on him.”

  Raj considered this. “Okay. Give me a minute. And then you can drive me to your house?”

  “We have to take your car. Mine is—”

  Raj shut the door before Pete could finish.

  Nobody knew that Raj had developed such a deep fondness for his yoga teacher, Shreve. Not even Shreve knew, until Raj called that morning, and, in a choked voice, explained that his baby had died. He wanted her to come and read from the Upanishads at the funeral out on the Ratcher farm.

  “But don’t tell anyone else, please,” Raj said. “My wife is very worried because our baby had wings and she thinks it will cause problems if people find out.”

  “Your baby had wings?”

  “I only just found out recently, myself.”

  After Shreve finished speaking to Raj, she called Emily and told her what happened. “Apparently he had wings.”

  “Wings?”

  “Yep. What do you think about that?”

  “I think maybe something like that might freak some people out,” said Emily, choosing her words carefully, “but people are afraid of new things, you know? I mean who’s to say . . . like, remember what we were talking about a while back? Who’s to say it wasn’t an angel?”

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” Shreve said. “I’m nervous about doing this alone, anyway. Do you think you could come with me to the Ratchers?”

  Emily watched Gabriel doing a slow figure-eight pattern overhead, a sign that he was getting tired. “Actually, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you as well,” she said.

  Mrs. Vecker, Cathy’s mother, is in the grocery store when she overhears Emily Carr and Shreve Mahar having an animated conversation about what would be appropriate to bring to the Ratcher farm “at a time like this.” She tells Cathy later that day. “It’s all over town. Tracy Ragan’s daughter’s husband’s best friend works with someone who is the father of a boy who was helping on the Ratcher farm, and he says Pete Ratcher is a child molester. You remember his daughter; that pretty red-haired girl? Well, she had a baby with wings—that’s how Theresa Ratcher figured it out. Incest, you know, can create all sorts of problems. Theresa Ratcher kicked him out, and I guess the women are going there to see what they can do to help.”

  Sylvia and Jan Morris had just spent a couple hours together, talking poetry and mothering, when there was a knock at the door. Sylvia was happy to answer it, thinking it might be just the interruption needed to send Jan on her way. It was nice to have company for a while, but Sylvia was ready for a nap. She opened the door.

  “Did you hear about the Ratchers?” Cathy asked in a rush, half into the room before she stopped. “Oh, I didn’t know you had company. I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said, feeling oddly jealous.

  “What about the Ratchers?” Jan asked.

  “Pete Ratcher molested their daughter. She had a baby. They say it has wings.”

  “What do wings have to do with anything?” Jan asked.

  “We have to help,” Sylvia said.

  It was decided that Cathy and Sylvia would drive in Cathy’s BMW. They would meet Jan at the Ratchers’. Cathy and Sylvia stood by the roses and waved as she drove away.

  “It doesn’t mean he wasn’t molesting her,” Sylvia said.

  “But . . . another baby with wings,” said Cathy. “Don’t you think this is getting kind of strange?”

  Sylvia laughed. “Getting strange?”

  As Pete Ratcher drove up to his house, he glanced at Raj. Pete felt bad for Raj, but Pete’s overwhelming feeling was anger at Theresa. How could she accuse him of such a thing? How could she believe him capable of such an act?

  “We should probably go in,” Pete said.

  “I did not know that your wife and my wife even knew each other.”

  Welcome to the club, Pete thought. I didn’t know that my wife thought I was some kind of monster. The two men sat in the car, staring at the house.

  Theresa watched from the kitchen window. She glanced at Tamara, who sat at the table, staring into space. “They’re here,” she said. “Your husband is here.”

  Theresa thought Tamara might have sighed, but the sound was so faint, she couldn’t be sure.

  When they came inside, Theresa gave Raj a hug. In just that brief encounter, she felt the weight of his sorrow. Raj walked over to Tamara and tried to hug her, but she just sat there. He turned to Theresa and said, “Where’s my son? Can I see him?”

  Tamara stood up so suddenly that the chair toppled. “I’ll show you,” she said and led him out of the kitchen to the living room, where Theresa had laid the baby on the sideboard with blankets all around him, the unlit candles at either end, like he was some kind of weird centerpiece.

  Shreve and Emily park in front of the house, the engine off, the windows rolled down for air. “I’m glad we finally told each other,” Emily says.

  Shreve nods. “We have to figure out exactly what we need to know.”

  Emily twists in her seat to look at the two babies in the back. “We have to find out how he died—if it had anything to do with the wings.”

  “Or if it had something to do with Jeffrey, or the water, or something she ate.”

  “But how could Jeffrey have anything to do with Tamara Singh’s baby?”

  Shreve
just smirks.

  “Oh, come on,” Emily says. “Us? And Tamara? I don’t think so.”

  Shreve shrugs. “Remember, we’re here to help bury a baby. We have to be discreet.”

  The thought of Tamara’s dead baby casts a solemn shadow over them. Both women glance back at their children.

  #Elli watches from her bedroom window. It takes the mothers forever to unload the two babies, their diaper bags, a bouquet of flowers, and what looks like some kind of casserole or pie. Though both Timmy and Matthew are sleeping peacefully in the hot crib together, Elli keeps having a thought she doesn’t want to have. She keeps thinking, Why couldn’t it have been Timmy? then hates herself for having this thought. She doesn’t even want this thought, so she doesn’t understand why it keeps popping into her head. She looks at the sleeping Timmy. I would die if anything happened to you. (Why couldn’t it have been you?) It makes no sense. Elli watches the women walk to the back door. She hears the bell ring. The mind, Elli thinks, is its own battleground (like there’s a war going on up there and she’s just a spectator). The bell rings again. Jesus Christ, would someone just answer it? But it’s too late; the babies wake up, crying.

  What’s she supposed to do? Pick both of them up? She picks up Timmy; pats him on the back, jiggling him. The next thing she knows, Matthew is flying out of the crib and heading for the open window. There’s a screen on it, so naturally she thinks that at the worst he’s going to get a little banged up, but when he hits the screen, he hits it hard; it falls right off the window, and Matthew flies out.

  “Mom!” Elli screams.

  Shreve rings the doorbell, waits for a while, and then rings again. Emily carries Gabriel’s car seat in one hand and a plate of chocolate croissants in the other, the heavy diaper bag hanging from her shoulder. Shreve, who is similarly burdened, has to ring with the hand carrying the flowers, careful not to squash them. Inside, someone is screaming. “Sounds like they’re taking it hard,” she says.

  A shadow passes overhead.

  The door opens. Theresa stands there, her expression aghast.