The Best New Horror 3

by Stephen Jones

  “Now—be careful,” she told the boy. What was his name? She couldn’t remember. There were so many things she couldn’t forget . . . Maybe her head had filled up, and there was no more room for anything else. The mounded leaves, slick with the drizzling rain. Her father scratching at the door, the word when there had been words in his mouth, the little word that used to be her name . . . The boy’s name; what was it? She couldn’t remember.

  The boy had tugged her arm around to the side, not trying to run now, but stopping to press his other hand against one of the trees whose empty branches tangled the sky.

  “You don’t want to do that.” She pulled but he dug in, gripping the tree trunk. “It’s all dirty.” His red mitten was speckled with crumbling bark. A red strand of unraveled wool dangled from his wrist.

  You do want to . . . That was her father’s voice inside her head. The old voice, the long-ago one with words. She could have, if she’d wanted to—she’d done it before—she could’ve recited a list of sentences, like a poem, all the things her father had ever said to her with the word want in them.

  “There’s something up there.”

  She looked where the boy pointed, his arm jutting up straight, the mitten a red flag at the end. On one of the wet branches, a squirrel gazed down at her, then darted off, its tail spiked with drops of rain.

  The boy stared openmouthed where the squirrel had disappeared. The boy’s upper lip was shiny with snot, and there was a glaze of it on the back of one mitten, and the sleeve of the cheap nylon snow jacket. She shuddered, looking at the wet on the boy’s pug face. He wasn’t beautiful, not like the one before, the one with the angel lashes and the china and peach skin.

  “Come on.” She had to bite her lip to fight the shudder, to make it go away, before she could take the boy’s hand again. “It’s gone now. See? It’s all gone.” She squeezed the mitten’s damp wool in her own gloved hand. “We have to go, too. Aren’t you hungry?” She smiled at him, the cold stiffening her face, as though the skin might crack.

  The boy looked up at her, distrust in the small eyes. “Where’s my mother?”

  She knelt down in front of the boy and zipped the jacket under his chin. “Well, that’s where we’re going, isn’t it?” There were people across the street, just people walking, a man and a woman she’d seen from the corner of her eye. But she couldn’t tell if they were looking over here, watching her and the boy. She brushed a dead leaf off the boy’s shoulder. “We’re going to find your mother. We’re going to where she is.”

  She hated lying, even the lies she had told before. All the things she told the boy, and the ones before him, were lies. Everything her father had ever told her had been the truth, and that was no good, either.

  Her knees ached when she stood up. The cold and damp had seeped into her bones. She squeezed the boy’s hand. “Don’t you want to go to where your mother is?”

  Now his face was all confused. He looked away from her, down the long street, and she was afraid that he would cry out to the people who were walking there. But they were already gone—she hadn’t seen where. Maybe they had turned and gone up the steps into one of the narrow-fronted houses that were jammed so tight against each other.

  “And you’re hungry, aren’t you? Your mother has cake there for you. I know she does. You want that, don’t you?”

  How old was he? His name, his name . . . How big, how small was what she really meant. If he wouldn’t move, tugging out of her grasp, wouldn’t come with her . . . She wanted to pick him up, to be done with saying stupid things to his stupid little face, its smear of snot and its red pug nose. Just pick him up and carry him like a wet sack, the arms with the red-mittened hands caught tight against her breast. Carry him home and not have to say anything, not have to tell lies and smile . . .

  She had tried that once and it hadn’t worked. Once when there hadn’t been any other little boy that she could find, and the one she had found wouldn’t come with her, wouldn’t come and it had been getting dark, yet it had been all light around her, she had been trapped in the bright blue-white circle from a street lamp overhead. And the boy had started crying, because she had been shouting at him, shouting for him to shut up and stop crying and come with her. She had picked him up, but he’d been too big and heavy for her, his weight squirming in her arms, the little hard fists striking her neck, the bawling mouth right up against one ear. Until she’d had to let him go and he’d fallen to the ground, scrambled to his feet and run off, crying and screaming so loud that other people—she had known they were there, she’d felt them even if she couldn’t see them—had turned and looked at her. She’d scurried away and then started running herself, her heart pounding in her throat. Even on the bus she’d caught, she’d known the others were looking at her, even pointing at her and whispering to each other. How could they have known? Until she’d felt a chill kiss under the collar of her blouse, and she’d touched the side of her face and her fingers had come away touched with red. The boy’s little fist, or a low branch clawing at her as she’d run by . . . The tissue in her purse had been a wet bright rag by the time she’d reached home.

  That had been a bad time. The little boy had run away, and she’d been too frightened to try again, scared of people watching when it had gotten so dark, so dark that she couldn’t see them looking at her. She’d had to go home to where her father was waiting. And even though he couldn’t say the words anymore, to say what he wanted, she knew. One or the other, and the little boy had run away.

  She’d stood naked in her bathroom, the tiny one at the back of the house, her face wet with the splashed cold water. She’d raised her arm high over her head, standing on tiptoe so she could see in the clouded mirror over the sink. A bruise under one breast—the little boy had kicked her; that must’ve been where she’d got it, though she couldn’t remember feeling it. Her father couldn’t have done that, though her ribs beneath the discolored skin ached with a familiar pain. He wasn’t strong enough, not anymore . . .

  “Where are we?”

  The boy’s voice—this one, the little boy whose mittened hand she held in her own—brought her back. They were both walking, his hand reaching up to hers, and the streetlights had come on in the growing dark.

  “This isn’t my street. I don’t live here.”

  “I know. It’s okay.” She didn’t know where they were. She was lost. The narrow, brick-fronted houses came up so close to the street, the bare trees making spider shadows on the sidewalk. Light spilled from the windows above them. She looked up and saw a human shape moving behind a steam-misted glass, someone making dinner in her kitchen. Or taking a shower, the hot water sluicing around the bare feet on white porcelain. The houses would be all warm inside, heated and sealed against the black winter. The people—maybe the couple she had seen walking before, on the other side of another street—they could go naked if they wanted. They were taking a shower together, the man standing behind her, nuzzling her wet neck, hands cupped under her breasts, the smell of soap and wet towels. The steaming water would still be raining on them when he’d lay her down, they’d curl together in the hard nest of the tub, she’d have to bring her knees up against her breasts, or he’d sit her on the edge, the shower curtain clinging wet to her back, and he’d stand in front of her, the way her father did but it wouldn’t be her father. She’d fill her mouth with him and he’d smell like soap and not that other sour smell of sweat and old dirt that scraped grey in her fingernails from his skin . . .

  The boy pressed close to her side, and she squeezed his hand to tell him that it was all right. He was afraid of the dark and the street he’d never been on before. She was the grown-up, like his mother, and he clung to her now. The fist around her heart unclenched a little. Everything would be easier; she’d find their way home. To where her father was waiting, and she’d have the boy with her this time.

  Bright and color rippled on the damp sidewalk ahead of them. The noise of traffic—they’d come out of the houses and d
ark lanes. She even knew where they were. She recognized the signs, a laundromat with free dry, an Italian restaurant with its menu taped to the window. She’d seen them from the bus she rode sometimes.

  Over the heads of the people on the crowded street, she saw the big shape coming, even brighter inside, and heard the hissing of its brakes. Tugging the boy behind her, she hurried to the corner. He trotted obediently to keep up.

  The house was as warm inside as other people’s houses were. She left the heat on all the time so her father wouldn’t get cold. She’d found him once curled up on the floor of the kitchen—the pilot light on the basement furnace had gone out, and ice had already formed on the inside of the windows. There’d been a pool of cold urine beneath him, and his skin felt loose and clammy. He’d stared over his shoulder, his mouth sagging open, while she’d rubbed him beneath the blankets of his bed, to warm him with her own palms.

  Warm . . . He had kissed her once—it was one of the things she couldn’t forget—when she had been a little girl and he had been as big as the night. His eyes had burned with the wild rigor of his hunt, the world’s dark he’d held in his iron hands. The kiss had tasted of salt, a warm thing. Long ago, and she still remembered.

  She took off the boy’s jacket in the hallway. Her shoes and his small rubber boots made muddy stains on the thin carpet runner. Her knees were so stiff now that she couldn’t bend down; she had the boy stand up on the wooden bench against the wall, so she could work the jacket’s zipper and snaps.

  “Where’s my mother?” Coming in to the house’s warmth from the cold street had made his nose run again. He sniffed wetly.

  “She’ll be here in a minute.” She pushed the open jacket back from the boy’s shoulders. “Let’s get all ready for her, and then we can have that cake.”

  The boy had just a T-shirt on underneath the jacket, and it was torn and dirty, with a yellow stain over some cartoon character’s face. The boy’s unwashed smell blossomed in the close hallway air, a smell of forgotten laundry and milk gone off. She wanted that to make her feel better. The boy’s mother was a bad mother. Not like that other boy’s mother, the one three or four times ago. She remembered standing by the greasy fire in the backyard, turning that boy’s clothing over in her hands, all of it clean-smelling, freshly washed. Inside the collar of the boy’s shirt, and in the waistband of the corduroy trousers, little initials had been hand-stitched, his initials. That was what she’d do if she’d had a child of her own; she would love him that much. Not like this poor ragged thing. Nobody loved this little boy, not really, and that made it all right. She’d told herself that before.

  “What’s that?” He looked up toward the hallway’s ceiling.

  She pulled his T-shirt up, exposing his pink round belly. His hair stood up—it was dirty, too—when she pulled the shirt off over his head.

  “Nothing.” She smoothed his hair down with her palm. “It’s nothing.” She didn’t know if she’d heard anything or not. She’d heard all the house’s sounds for so long—they were all her father—that they were the same as silence to her. Or a great roaring hurricane that battered her into a corner, her arms over her head to try to protect herself. It was the same.

  She dropped the T-shirt on top of the rubber boots, then unbuttoned the boy’s trousers and pulled them down. Dirty grey underwear, the elastic sagging loose. The little boy’s things (little . . . not like . . .) made the shape of a tiny fist inside the stained cotton. (Great roaring hurricane) (Arms over her head) She slipped the underpants down.

  The boy wiggled. He rubbed his mouth and nose with the back of his hand, smearing the shiny snot around. “What’re you doing?”

  “Oh, you’re so cold.” She looked into his dull eyes, away from the little naked parts. “You’re freezing. Wouldn’t a nice hot bath . . . wouldn’t that be nice? Yes. Then you’d be all toasty warm, and I’d wrap you up in a great big fluffy towel. That’d be lovely. You don’t want to catch cold, do you?”

  He sniffled. “Cake.”

  “Then you’d have your cake. All you want.”

  His face screwed up red and ugly. “No. I want it now!” His shout bounced against the walls. The underpants were a grey rag around his ankles, and his hand a fist now, squeezing against the corner of his mouth.

  She slapped him. There was no one to see them. The boy’s eyes went round, and he made a gulping, swallowing noise inside his throat. But he stopped crying. The fist around her heart tightened, because she knew this was something he was already used to.

  “Come on.” She could hear her own voice, tight and angry, the way her father’s had been when it still had words. She tugged the underpants away from the boy’s feet. “Stop being stupid.”

  She led him, his hand locked inside hers, up the stairs. Suddenly, halfway up, he started tugging, trying to pull his hand away.

  “Stop it!” She knelt down and grabbed his bare shoulders, clenching them tight. “Stop it!” She shook him, so that his head snapped back and forth.

  His face was wet with tears, and his eyes looked up. He cringed away from something up there, rather than from her. Between her own panting breaths, she heard her father moving around.

  “It’s nothing!” Her voice screamed raw from her throat. “Don’t be stupid!”

  She jerked at his arm, but he wouldn’t move; he cowered into the angle of the stairs. He howled when she slapped him, then cried openmouthed as she kept on hitting him, the marks of her hand jumping up red on his shoulder blades and ribs.

  She stopped, straightening up and gasping to catch her breath. The naked little boy curled at her feet, his legs drawn up, face hidden in the crook of his arm. The blood rushing in her head roared, the sound of a battering wind. The saliva under her tongue tasted thick with salt.

  For a moment she thought he was still crying, little soft animal sounds, then she knew it was coming from up above. From her father’s room. She stood for a moment, head tilted back, looking up toward the sounds. Her hair had come loose from its knot, and hung down the side of her face and along her back.

  “Come on . . .” She kept her voice softer. She reached down and took the boy’s hand. But he wouldn’t stand up. He hung limp, sniffling and shaking his head.

  She had to pick him up. She cradled him in her arms—he didn’t feel heavy at all—and carried him the rest of the way up the stairs.

  Her father was a huddled shape under the blankets. He’d heard them coming, and had gotten back into the bed before she’d opened the door.

  She knew that was what he’d done. A long time ago, when he’d first become this way—when she’d first made herself realize that he was old—she had tried tying him to the bed, knotting a soft cord around his bone-thin ankle and then to one of the heavy carved lion’s paws underneath. But he’d fretted and tugged so at the cord, picking at the knot with his yellow fingernails until they’d cracked and bled, and the ankle’s skin had chafed raw. She’d untied him, and taken to nailing his door shut, the nails bent so she just had to turn them to go in and out. At night, she had lain awake in her room and listened to him scratching at the inside of his door.

  Then that had stopped. He’d learned that she was taking care of him. The scratching had stopped, and she’d even left the nails turned back, and he didn’t try to get out.

  She sat the little boy at the edge of the bed. The boy was silent now, sucking his thumb, his face smeared wet with tears.

  “Daddy?” She pulled the blanket down a few inches, exposing the brown-spotted pink of his skull, the few strands of hair, tarnished silver.

  “Daddy—I brought somebody to see you.”

  In the nest of the blanket and sour-smelling sheets, her father’s head turned. His yellow-tinged eyes looked up at her. His face was parchment that had been crumpled into a ball and then smoothed out again. Parchment so thin that the bone and the shape of his teeth—the ones he had left, in back—could be seen through it.

  “Look.” She tugged, lifted the little boy farth
er up onto the bed. So her father could see.

  The eyes under the dark hood of the blanket shifted, darting a sudden eager gaze from her face to the pink softness of the little boy.

  “Come here.” She spoke to the boy now. His legs and bottom slid on the blanket as she pulled him, her hands under his arms, until he sat on the middle of the bed, against the lanky, muffled shape of her father. “See, there’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just nice and warm.”

  The shape under the blanket moved, crawling a few inches up to the turned-back edge.

  The boy was broken, he had been this way a long time, it was why she’d picked him out and he’d come with her. Nobody loved him, not really, and that made it all right. He didn’t fight as she laid him down, his head on the crumpled pillow, face close to her father’s.

  A thing of twigs and paper, her father’s hand, slid from beneath the blanket. It cupped the back of the boy’s head, tightening and drawing the boy close, as though for a kiss.

  The boy struggled then, a sudden fluttering panic. His small hands pushed against her father’s shoulders, and he cried, a whimpering noise that made her father’s face darken with his wordless anger. That made her father strong, and he reared up from the bed, his mouth stretching open, tendons of clouded spit thinning to string. He wrapped his arms around the little boy, his grey flesh squeezing the pink bundle tight.

  The boy’s whimpering became the sound of his gasping breath. Her father pressed his open mouth against the side of the boy’s neck. The jaws under the translucent skin worked, wetting the boy’s throat with whitespecked saliva.

  Another cry broke out, tearing at her ears. She wanted to cover them with her hands and run from the room. And keep running, into all the dark streets around the house. Never stopping, until her breath was fire that burned away her heart. The cry was her father’s; it sobbed with rage and frustration, a thing bigger than hunger, desire, bigger than the battering wind that shouted her name. He rolled his face away from the boy’s wet neck, the ancient face like a child’s now, mouth curved in an upside-down U, tongue thrusting against the toothless gums in front. His tears broke, wetting the ravines of his face.