“Well,” said Mrs. Timothy. “Well.” She got up to her feet. “Do you think you can sleep now?”
Yasmin nodded.
“Night night, my darling.” And—“You have lovely dreams.”
Still Yasmin wouldn’t say anything, but she did nestle deeper beneath the sheets.
“Night night,” Mrs. Timothy said again. And made to leave the room. “Mummy?” she heard, and turned around.
“Mummy,” Yasmin said, “I’m sorry about the story.”
“That’s all right. Never mind.”
“I’m sorry about what it’s let in.”
Mrs. Timothy didn’t know what to say to that.
“Please,” said Yasmin, “would you turn off the light for me?”
Her mother hesitated. Then did as she was told.
The hallway back to her bedroom seemed longer than usual, and Mrs. Timothy felt cold. A flash of lightning blazed through the house for a moment, it startled her.
She reached her room, closed the door behind her.
She got into bed.
The bed was very cold, and there was a sort of dampness to the cold. It was as if the rainstorm had got in, danced lightly about her bedspread, and got out before she’d returned.
It seemed such a big bed, stupidly big, so empty without her husband, and for the first time since he’d left she wished he was there to help fill it.
She wasn’t frightened by Yasmin’s story. But nevertheless she decided she’d turn the light on, just for a little while. Her fingers tugged at the cord above her head. Nothing, still darkness. The power must have gone off again.
No, she wasn’t frightened, that would be absurd. Indeed, she could barely remember what the story was even about now, it was already fading away like a dream—and she tried to grasp on to the memory of it, and then she made herself let it go, no, let go.
It wasn’t the story that was frightening. It was what the story might have let in. The words popped into her head like a cold truth, and she didn’t even know what that could mean—let what in? Still, it made her shiver.
She pulled up the sheets to her throat. She felt the wetness on her chin, it was damp. Disgusted, she threw the sheets off again. They formed a huddle on the floor by the side of the bed.
She looked around the room. She knew the room so well. She’d slept in the room for nearly four years, ever since they’d moved here, ever since she was pregnant with Yasmin. There was nothing to fear from this room. This room was her sanctuary. She had slept in this room over a thousand times, she had never been hurt here, had she? She’d never once been haunted by ghosts, or attacked by monsters, or bitten by vampires, or killed. She wished she hadn’t thought of that word, “killed.”
The shadows were bleeding out from the corners towards her. She knew why that was. The storm was doing strange things to the light, it was causing it to distort somehow, to break it into weird shapes. If she didn’t like it, she could always get up and close the curtains. Get up then, close the curtains. Get up.
She didn’t want to get up.
She was frightened of what the story might have let in. What had Yasmin done? She wanted to run to her bedroom, wake her, demand that she take her story back. Unsay it, make it all go away. She should get up and find her.
Oh, but she didn’t want to get up, did she? Why didn’t she want to get up? Think.
Because there was something under her bed. There was something under her bed. She knew it. She could sense it. If she listened closely, she could hear it whispering to her. Yes, and the moment she put her foot over the side, it would grab her, pull her under and into the darkness. Look at that body on the floor, it whispered. That could be you.—There isn’t a body on the floor, that’s just the sheets I kicked off, I did that myself.—No, it’s a body on the floor.
From downstairs she heard a knock against the door.
It was just the wind, of course—but there it was again, and this time there was a rhythm to it, a tattoo of three beats, thump-thump-thump. And again.
It must be her husband. And she’d wanted him there only a few minutes before, but now he seemed a very real and present danger, and she wanted him gone, she wanted him off her property—he couldn’t just turn up whenever he felt like, he’d made his choice, he’d made his bloody choice, and she’d go and see him and tell him just that—and she nearly got out of bed, this was something real, and she was just putting her foot down to the carpet when she felt it brush against her, it was too smooth and too oily, and she realized that the darkness had a texture to it now, the shadows were alive, the shadows wanted her.
She pulled her foot back to safety. The door kept knocking. You knock away, she thought, I’m staying where I am.
She closed her eyes. She tried not to think of all the darkness in her head when she did that, that the darkness she had within her might be the same darkness waiting for her without.
Thump-thump-thump—and then stop.
And nothing. No more of that.
And she kept her eyes closed, and stilled her breath, and listened for the slightest sound.
She heard nothing, but she felt it, a new weight on the end of her bed.
Her eyes snapped open, and there was nothing there—it was all right, of course there was nothing there—and she gasped with relief and thought she might even cry—and the door, her bedroom door, had she closed it?—the door was open.
She hadn’t closed it. That was it. She could go and close it if she wanted to. She would, just get up and close the door. Get up. Get up.
What had Yasmin’s story let in?
And at the doorway she saw the darkness harden, and grow denser, and turn into the shape of a person, and she thought her heart would pop—and she thought, this is how my little daughter will find me in the morning, slumped dead against the pillows, my eyes open so wide in fear, oh, Yasmin.
Yasmin?
“Is that you, Yasmin?” she made herself ask.
And the figure said, quietly, “Yes.”
She wanted nothing to frighten her, not now, not ever. “Were you afraid of the thunder? It’s all right, darling. You sleep with me. I’ll protect you. This bed’s big enough for both of us.” It was too big, that was a certainty—and now she’d have someone to hold again, and she’d be brave, and all the ghosts and monsters could come and she’d see them all off.
The figure came in, the figure wasn’t bothered by the shadows, or the darkness under the bed, or the sheet body on the floor—and the figure climbed in beside her, and Mrs. Timothy had one last terror, that maybe this wasn’t Yasmin after all—but it was, it was, and she could now see her clearly, this was her own little angel.
Mrs. Timothy hugged her. She smelled nice and sweet. “Don’t be scared,” she told her.
“I’m not scared,” her daughter replied. She whispered it in her mother’s ear.
“Good.”
Such a sweet smell, she recognized that smell. And Yasmin was slightly damp too, as if the rain had got to her. And Yasmin was right by her ear. “Shall I finish my story?”
And Mrs. Timothy pulled away from her, just for a moment, and she saw that Yasmin’s eyes were too wide, and her mouth was too big for her face, and then Yasmin pulled her back, she held on to her mother’s head tight so it couldn’t move.
She told her story. She made her understand that there were so many ghosts, you could never tell who was a ghost and who wasn’t. So very many—and some of them want to tear you apart, some of them want to drag you down to Hell—and some, if you’re lucky, just want to tell you stories.
The smell wasn’t of cigarettes and beer, it was of soft decay. And her touch was moist.
She told her mother her story, and her mother was good, and kept quiet during the whole thing. So she ruffled her hair before she got out of bed. And Mrs. Timothy’s mind still had some room to think, to wonder at how much bigger Yasmin had become, why, she looked quite the grown-up.
Yasmin stood there, and they were both stand
ing there, she was holding hands with a man without a face who had just leaked out of the shadows, perhaps he’d always been there, perhaps he had been waiting all this time.
They were holding hands, they looked down at the frightened little girl in the bed like they were mummy and daddy.
It was the daddy who said, “Sleep well, my pretty princess,” and the mummy who said, “There’ll be more stories tomorrow.” And they shrunk away into the darkness of the hallway, and closed the door, and locked it.
Robert Shearman has worked as a writer for television, radio, and the stage. Although he has received several prestigious awards for his theatrical work, he is probably best known as a writer for Doctor Who, reintroducing the Daleks for its BAFTA-winning first series, in an episode nominated for a Hugo Award. His collections of short fiction—Tiny Deaths, Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, and Everyone’s Just So So Special—have, collectively, won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Edge Hill Short Story Readers Prize, and the Shirley Jackson Award. Most recently, his best dark fiction was collected in Remember Why You Fear Me. He is currently writer in residence at Edinburgh Napier University.
I was looking at a hand of glory. Hacked from a murderer and pickled for use in the blackest of magic rituals . . .
HAND OF GLORY
Laird Barron
From the pages of a partially burned manuscript discovered in the charred ruins of a mansion in Ransom Hollow, Washington:
That buffalo charges across the eternal prairie, mad black eye rolling at the photographer. The photographer is Old Scratch’s left hand man. Every few seconds the buffalo rumbles past the same tussock, the same tumbleweed, the same bleached skull of its brother or sister. That poor buffalo is Sisyphus without the stone, without the hill, without a larger sense of futility. The beast’s hooves are worn to bone. Blood foams at its muzzle. The dumb brute doesn’t understand where we are.
But I do.
CP, Nov. 1925
This is the house my father built stone by stone in Anno Domini 1898. I was seven. Mother died of consumption that winter, and my baby brothers Earl and William followed her through the Pearly Gates directly. Hell of a housewarming.
Dad never remarried. He just dug in and redoubled his efforts on behalf of his boss, Myron Arden. The Arden family own the politicos, the cops, the stevedores and the stevedores’ dogs. They owned Dad too, but he didn’t mind. Four bullets through the chest, a knife in the gut, two car wrecks, and a bottle a day booze habit weren’t enough to rub him out. It required a broken heart from missing his wife. He collapsed, stone dead, on a job in Seattle in 1916 and I inherited his worldly possessions, such as they were. The debts, too.
The passing of Donald Cope was a mournful day commemorated with a crowded wake—mostly populated by Mr. Myron Arden’s family and henchmen who constituted Dad’s only real friends—and the requisite violins, excessive drinking of Jameson’s, fistfights, and drunken profanities roared at passersby, although in truth, there hadn’t been much left of the old man since Mother went.
My sister Lucy returned to Ireland and joined a convent. Big brother Acton lives here in Olympia. He’s a surgeon. When his friends and associates ask about his kin at garden parties, I don’t think my name comes up much. That’s okay. Dad always liked me better.
I’ve a reputation in this town. I’ve let my share of blood, taken my share of scalps. You want an enemy bled, burnt, blasted into Kingdom Come, ask for Johnny Cope. My viciousness and cruelty are without peer. There are bad men in this business, and worse men, and then there’s me. But I must admit, any lug who quakes in his boots at the mention of my name should’ve gotten a load of the old man. There was Mr. Death’s blue-eyed boy himself, like mr. cummings said.
A dark hallway parallels the bedroom. Dad was a short, wiry man from short wiry stock and he fitted the house accordingly. The walls are close, the windows narrow, and so the passage is dim even in daylight. When night falls it becomes a mineshaft and I lie awake, listening. Listening for a voice in the darkness, a dragging footstep, or something else, possibly something I’ve not heard in this life. Perversely, the light from the lamp down the street, or the moonlight, or the starlight, make that black gap of a bedroom door a deeper mystery.
I resemble Mother’s people: lanky, with a horse’s jaw and rawboned hands meant for spadework, or tying nooses on ropes, and I have to duck when passing through these low doorways; but at heart, I’m my father’s son. I knock down the better portion of a bottle of Bushmill’s every evening while I count my wins and losses from the track. My closet is stacked with crates of the stuff. I don’t pay for liquor—it’s a bequest from Mr. Arden, that first class bootlegger; a mark of sentimental appreciation for my father’s steadfast service to the cause. When I sleep, I sleep fully dressed, suit and tie, left hand draped across the Thompson like a lover. Fear is a second heartbeat, my following shadow.
This has gone on a while.
The first time I got shot was in the fall of 1914.
I was twenty-one and freshly escaped from the private academy Dad spent the last of his money shipping me off to. He loved me so much he’d hoped I wouldn’t come back, that I’d join Acton in medicine, or get into engineering, or stow away on a tramp steamer and spend my life hunting ivory and drinking and whoring my way across the globe into Terra Incognita; anything but the family business. No such luck. My grades were pathetic, barely sufficient to graduate as I’d spent too many study nights gambling, and weekends fighting sailors at the docks. I wasn’t as smart as Acton anyway, and I found it much easier and more satisfying to break things rather than build them. Mine was a talent for reading and leading people. I didn’t mind manipulating them, I didn’t mind destroying them if it came to that. It’s not as if we dealt with real folks, anyway. In our world, everybody was part of the machine.
Dad had been teaching me the trade for a few months, taking me along on lightweight jobs. There was this Guinea named Alfonso who owed Mr. Arden big and skipped town on the debt. Dad and I tracked the fellow to Vancouver and caught him late one night, dead drunk in his shack. Alfonso didn’t have the money, but we knew his relatives were good for it, so we only roughed him up: Knocked some teeth loose and broke his leg. Dad used a mattock handle with a bunch of bolts drilled into the fat end. It required more swings than I’d expected.
Unfortunately, Alfonso was entertaining a couple of whores from the dance hall. The girls thought we were murdering the poor bastard and that they’d be next. One jumped through a window, and the other, a half-naked, heavyset lass who was in no shape to run anywhere, pulled a derringer from her corset and popped me in the ribs. Probably aiming for my face. Dad didn’t stop to think about the gun being a one-shot rig—he took three strides and whacked her in the back of the head with the mattock handle. Just as thick-skulled as Alfonso, she didn’t die, although that was a pity, considering the results. One of her eyes fell out later and she never talked right again. Life is just one long train wreck.
They say you become a man when you lose your virginity. Not my baptism, alas, alack. Having a lima bean-sized hole blown through me and enduring the fevered hours afterward was the real crucible, the mettle-tester. I remember sprawling in the front seat of the car near the river and Dad pressing a doubled handkerchief against the wound. Blood dripped shiny on the floorboard. It didn’t hurt much, more like the after-effects of a solid punch to the body. However, my vision was too acute, too close; black and white flashes scorched my brain.
Seagulls circled the car, their shadows so much larger than seemed possible, the shadows of angels ready to carry me into Kingdom Come. Dad gave me a dose of whiskey from his hip flask. He drove with the pedal on the floor and that rattletrap car shuddered on the verge of tearing itself apart, yet as I slumped against the door, the landscape lay frozen, immobile as the glacier that ended everything in the world the first time. Bands of light, God’s pillars of blazing fire, bisected the scenery into a glaring triptych that shattered m
y mind. Dad gripped my shoulder and laughed and shook me now and again to keep me from falling unconscious.
Dr. Green, a sawbones on the Arden payroll, fished out the bullet and patched the wound and kept me on ice in the spare room at his house. That’s when I discovered I had the recovery power of a brutish animal, a bear that retreats to the cave to lick its wounds before lumbering forth again in short order. To some, such a capacity suggests the lack of a higher degree of acumen, the lack of a fully developed imagination. I’m inured to pain and suffering, and whether it’s breeding or nature I don’t give a damn.
Two weeks later I was on the mend. To celebrate, I threw Gahan Kirk, a no account lackey for the Eastside crew, off the White Building roof for cheating at cards. Such is the making of a legend. The reality was, I pushed the man while he was distracted with begging Dad and Sonny Hopkins, Mr. Arden’s number two enforcer, not to rub him out. Eight stories. He flipped like a ragdoll, smashing into a couple of fire escapes and crashing one down atop him in the alley. It was hideously spectacular.
The second time I got shot was during the Great War.
Mr. Arden was unhappy to see me sign on for the trip to Europe. He saw I was hell-bent to do my small part and thus gave his reluctant blessing, assuring me I’d have work when I came home from “Killing the Huns.” Five minutes after I landed in France I was damned sorry for such a foolish impulse toward patriotism.
One night our platoon negotiated a minefield, smashed a machine-gun bunker with a volley of pineapples, clambered through barbed wire, and assaulted an enemy trench. Toward the end of the action, me and a squad mate were in hand-to-hand combat with a German officer we’d cornered. I’d run dry on ammo five minutes before and gone charging like a rhino through the encampment, and thank Holy Mother Mary it was a ghost town from the shelling or else I’d have been ventilated inside of twenty paces. The German rattled off half a dozen rounds with his Luger before I stuck a bayonet through his neck. I didn’t realize I was clipped until the sleeve of my uniform went sopping black. Two bullets, spaced tight as a quarter, zipped through my left shoulder. Couldn’t have asked for a cleaner wound and I hopped back into the fray come the dawn advance. I confiscated the German’s pistol and the wicked bayonet he’d kept in his boot. They’d come in handy on many a bloody occasion since.
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