The Best New Horror 3

by Stephen Jones

  “Evohe,” whispered Olivia. The face she turned to him was white and merciless, her eyes inflamed. “Evohe.”

  “What?” said Gordon. He stepped backwards and stumbled on one of his shoes. When he righted himself and looked up he saw that there were other people in the room, other women, three four six of them, even more it seemed, slipping silently through the door that Olivia had left open behind her. They filled the small apartment with a cloying smell of smoke and burning hair, some of them carrying smoking sticks, others leather pocketbooks or scorched briefcases. He recognized many of them: though their hair was matted and wild, their clothes torn: dresses or suits ripped so that their breasts were exposed and he could see where the flesh had been raked by their own fingernails, leaving long wavering scars like signatures scratched in blood. Two of them were quite young and naked and caressed each other laughing, turning to watch him with sly feral eyes. Several of the older women had golden rings piercing their breasts or the frail web of flesh between their fingers. One traced a cut that ran down her thigh, then lifted her bloodied finger to her lips as though imploring Gordon to keep a secret. He saw another grey-haired woman whom he had greeted often at the newstand where they both purchased the Wall Street Journal. She seemingly wore only a furtrimmed camel’s-hair coat. Beneath its soft folds Gordon glimpsed an undulating pattern of green and gray and gold. As she approached him she let the coat fall away and he saw a snake encircling her throat, writhing free to slide down between her breasts and then to the floor at Gordon’s feet. He shouted and turned to flee.

  Olivia was there, Olivia caught him and held him so tightly that for a moment he imagined she was embracing him, imagined the word she repeated was his name, spoken more and more loudly as she held him until he felt the breath being crushed from within his chest. But it was not his name, it was another name, a word like a sigh, like the whisper of a thought coming louder and louder as the others took it up and they were chanting now:

  “Evohe, evohe . . .”

  As he struggled with Olivia they fell upon him, the woman from the newstand, the girl from down the hall now naked and laughing in a sort of grunting chuckle, the two young girls encircling him with their slender cool arms and giggling as they kissed his cheeks and nipped his ears. Fighting wildly he thrashed until his head was free and he could see beyond them, see the open window behind the writhing web of hair and arms and breasts, the moon blazing now like a mad watchful eye above the burning canyons. He could see shreds of darkness falling from the sky, clouds or rain or wings, and he heard faintly beneath the shrieks and moans and panting voices the wail of sirens all across the city. Then he fell back once more beneath them.

  There was a tinkling crash. He had a fleeting glimpse of something mauve and lavender skidding across the floor, then cried out as he rolled to one side and felt the glass shatter beneath him, the slivers of breath-spun fins and gills and tail slicing through his side. He saw Olivia, her face serene, her liquid eyes full of ardour as she turned to the girl beside her and took from her something that gleamed like silver in the moonlight, like pure and icy water, like a spar of broken glass. Gordon started to scream when she knelt between his thighs. Before he fainted he saw against the sky the bloodied fingers of eagle’s wings, blotting out the face of a vast triumphant moon.

  DAVID J. SCHOW

  Busted in Buttown

  DAVID J. SCHOW is another regular in Best New Horror, although the short short story which follows marks something of a departure from his usual contributions.

  The author of the novels The Kill Riff and The Shaft (the latter still published only in Britain), and the collections Seeing Red and Lost Angels, Schow has also co-written the nonfiction study The Outer Limits: The Official Companion and edited the horror movie anthology Silver Scream.

  Recent projects include a mini-collection of eight non-supernatural stories, Look Out He’s Got a Knife, introduced by Robert Bloch, and a third book-length collection, Headshots. On the movie front, he wrote Critters 3 and 4, both released directly to video, and has completed a script for The Crow, based on the cult comic book. He is also thinking about writing a “sci-fi comedy remake” of It Conquered the World, which would be “wetter and funnier”.

  ROOK WAS IN AND OUT IN three flat.

  His ethics were few, but rigid. Nonapparent, but ironclad, like dementia, rules visible only to himself. Rook jazzed on ripping off pawnshops. An educated person might suggest the act appealed to Rook’s sense of symmetry, but Rook was not educated. Born an angry Mex, he sensed he would die an angry Mex, and so he devoted himself to the immediate goal of riding the razor and getting his. Whoever got in his way, in this bad old world, deserved to eat pain.

  Symmetry. Rook crowbarred the rusty iron bars off the bathroom window one by one. He knew the silver racingstripe pattern of the alarm tape was just for show, and seconds later the McKnight Small Loan Company had a midnight visitor. Rook enjoyed stealing items he had previously thieved from other establishments, then rehocking them at different pawnshops. Symmetry.

  His heart galloped with the suspense of it all: if there was one thing Rook had, it was heart. The scars on his face and arms throbbed with the beat of his own blood. He ignored his distinguishing marks until times such as these—action time, crisis time, payoff time. His heartbeat reminded him of the old wounds, like ritual incisions that had failed in their magical purpose and left his soul open for barter. His hands sought out the scars and rubbed them, seeking appeasement and prompting a fast-forward playback of memories: flights, Juvie, County, the gang strafings. That one time the hubby had wanted to grapple for his billfold; that other time when Rook himself had been mugged minutes after relieving some white cunt of her purse at knifepoint. She’d only had 50 bucks and two credit cards. Shit. Not worth the crescent ridge on the back of his skull: the ghosts that had laid him flat had used a tire iron for persuasion.

  He eased through McKnight’s bathroom window. Skinny had its advantages. Rook was lanky and buttless, thin arms bound by still jailtime sinew, narrow waist, legs too short for the pro hoops, and the gnarliest feet on the entire West Coast. He hid them inside fat Nikes, purchased with pawnshop profits. He grimaced when he heard one of his treasured fliers slam-dunk itself into McKnight’s toilet. He was in.

  Not inside the high-value prison of McKnight’s cage, no, but in to pick and choose from the front shelves. Free to pilfer the fruits of the failures and strangers and junkies who kept Noddy the Queen in business. His prefigured grab was a videotape deck or two, plus pocket goodies, whatever was lying loose. Penetrating steel mesh and confounding the mechanics of Noddy’s half-ton safe were beyond Rook’s mean capabilities. Rook would not dream, but he would lend the cage a passing glance of avarice for the things he had convinced himself he would never have. Society was to blame.

  At least Noddy had not taken the paranoid route of bike locking goods to the shelves. In the past year, Rook had hit Noddy twice and sold his own swag back to him once. Some citizens just never learned. Or maybe Noddy was scamming the insurance buckos.

  Life went on, in its way.

  Three flat, and Rook was out the window. Two DiscMans and a dictation recorder in a nylon backpack. One of those techie tape decks that could play videos from Europe; something about scanning a different bias, more lines to the screen. Rook appreciated adaptability. He had also appropriated a silver cigarette case (though he did not smoke), a tray of quarters (a whopping seven bucks there, easy), a cheap metalzoid batwing ring with a fake eyeball in the center, and two sticks of gum Noddy had left on the counter.

  Rook chewed one and saved the other for later.

  At least, the cigarette case looked like silver.

  The alley was silent, dark and quiet as a PG cinema. Rook looked both ways before crossing. In, then out. He was innocent again.

  Until the spotlight nailed his buttless backside. A metallic loudspeaker voice told him not to move. This was not in Rook’s nature. Keep haulin’ keep changin’ .
. .

  He was supposed to stay right where he was.

  . . . keep your ass out of the cinderblock Hilton. Rook was sprinting before the echo died.

  The LAPD cruiser was slewed across the mouth of the alley, giving Rook a half-block lead. To pull in, the cops would first have to back up. Not a hell of a lot they could hit at the distance. Moving target, bad light, handguns.

  Rook lit out for where he knew the fence to be.

  The usual protests were shouted from behind, fading as he made yardage. No gunshots. He could hear his big Nikes slapping puddles, his breath wheezing, in and out, loud to him. His brain saw it all slo-mo and grainy, a film noir cliché. He’d die at the fence, nine-millimeter slugholes perforating him. He’d rasp out a little speech, blaming society, then tilt his head, close his eyes, and get ready to rip off God, or the Devil.

  Nobody was shooting movies here.

  He smashed the fence fullspeed and leapt, tearing loose a slat and falling rearward with a palmful of splinters. The trashcan he’d used to launch his running jump spun out, topheavy, and in one grand, awkward flail he was headed for the pavement.

  He skinned his forearm on impact—a fresh scar in the making—and grabbed wildly to recover the backpack. He’d stolen that, too. It had been right in front of him, begging to be taken.

  Already, running footsteps. They’d stop at 10 paces, drawn down, dead bang, and if he blinked at them the music would be over. It was called making a threatening motion.

  He hooked the fence, scrambling with cockroach speed through the egress he’d just made. Breaking. Entering. First out, now in. Panic and adrenalin helped him ignore the blunt nail head that skewered the heel of his hand. He felt an abrupt, rude blurt of blood. He did not see it. It was what he paid to win darkness, for hiding.

  Hey! The cops pounded up to their 10-foot limit. The drama point. Rook hated cop shows.

  Rook blew through in total dark, overturning another garbage can, blind from the lack of light in somebody-or-other’s backyard. He got his Nikes under him again and hugged the first turn in the fence he could feel. His abraded and punctured arm tried to betray him. He clamped.

  Police baton flashlights, now, there at the broken slat. Police voices, mere yards away, making police decisions.

  “Christ, don’t stick your head in there, Jimbo!”

  “Fuggit, I wanna nail the little prick!”

  “He might have a gun, come on, man. From the shop, if not on him before. Hold up.”

  A hiss of disgust. “Fuck. He’s gone, Duke.”

  Rook did not let his breath free. Drama time had passed him by in a flash. Beat. Beat. Nobody moved.

  Then: “Hell with it. He didn’t have no gun.”

  “Jimbo, who cares?”

  “He didn’t have a gun, Duke, you buttwad! He was so jumped he woulda started shootin’. I coulda plucked the sumbitch!”

  “Yeah, so? Then what?”

  “We got plenty of fuckin’ guns in the car, Duke. We coulda stuck one in his hand. Shitfire.”

  “Oh, now we’re Mister Gung-Ho tonight. S’matter with you? Domestics getting too dangerous for you? We don’t bag him today, we’ll bag him tomorrow. Problem with you, Jimbo, is too goddamn many donuts. All that sugar is spiking your killer instincts.”

  Pause. “Bite me where I pee, Duke.”

  Steamvalve hiatus, from Duke. “Fag.”

  Rook was starting to suffocate, his brain hammering him with the need to draw new air, his lungs cement. This was not the first time he’d had to outlast cop macho.

  “Come on. Before somebody steals the car.”

  Later, Rook could brag about besting LA’s finest. Too swift. Too bad there was no home video to prove how he’d outclassed them.

  It might have been half an hour, or a week, that Rook played frozen cat in the dark, trying crazily to concentrate on sugar and cop metabolism. When he finally budged, his muscles cracked audibly across his joints. The alley and yard were as silent as the pillow in a buried casket.

  Rook still had the stolen knapsack, still full of stolen freedom. No bullet holes. An ounce of flesh, a drop of blood had bought him options for one more day. In a curious flash of felon superstition, he felt not only protected, but invulnerable, as though he’d passed some cosmic test. Now he could walk home untouched.

  Who’d want to steal from a thief who didn’t boast?

  Not that the good feeling in his heart would permit him to ignore the white van curbing itself behind him, not for a second, no way. It parked smoothly. Crisp sound. New tires. Good suspension. A panel job with no rear windows. A mystery van loaded with spies, perhaps.

  Or a hit.

  Paranoid bullshit. Any pro running a mobile attack play wouldn’t bother popping Rook. His senses tingled to the rear anyway. Dat ole debbil magic, keeping an eye on his poor felonious ass.

  Rook kept pace and didn’t gawk back. Never panic.

  Never let them know you see them . . . till it’s fight or flight.

  He made distance efficiently. Another half block and he could forget the van. False alarm.

  The feathered dart took him high in the neck, whap, missing his jugular vein by an inch.

  Rook had turned his head back to look. And given them a clean shot at his strike zone. Something hot as slag overran his vascular pipework, and put him out better than the best orgasm of his life.

  He heard the voices again. Distantly, as before. Not Duke and Jimbo. Two new contestants. They talked about him. He could not see them.

  Perhaps he was still in the alley.

  “Blood types as AB positive. See?”

  “This machine comes up wrong if you do it too fast.”

  “I say we got a winner.”

  “I say wait for the tissue workup.”

  Maybe it was Jimbo and Duke. They’d run off to the donut shop and gotten better educations.

  “Hand me the phone. King Seven-oh Baker, this is mobile unit Four. We have a prelim match for Tucson, available now.”

  A new voice, not human. “That’s a copy, Mobile Four. Ice him down and bring him on home.”

  “Clean out that puncture and spike him.”

  Rook was stretchered. He cracked his eyes and saw a guy wearing a white surgical breathing filter. A lot of LED pinpoints. Lurching city lights as the van rolled.

  “Where the hell is that fucking . . . oh here.”

  Rook was strapped down.

  “Whoa, whoa, Artie, he’s awake!”

  “So do it! Just—!”

  A needle invaded the crook of his arm. Another puncture. More warmth. Rook fogged. As smooth as he’d slid into Noddy’s pawnshop, the drugs invaded him.

  “Go back to sleep, pal.” The voice was muffled by the mask.

  “Check,” said the driver. “And mate. Guy’s got stamina.”

  “We needed a guy with heart.”

  Artie chuckled, upfront. “You check out those DiscMans and shit? You need one?”

  “Why not. Nobody’s gonna inventory this citizen. Not for what he stole, anyway.”

  Rook felt coldpacks nestle into his armpits and crotch. Distantly, so distantly. Sleepybye time. It was first class dope. He’d never get to that second stick of gum. He blamed society, but nobody could hear him.

  He’d never feel the knives, either, when they slid in to steal what was his. In and out.

  If there was one thing Rook had, it was heart. But not for very much longer.

  RUSSELL FLINN

  Subway Story

  RUSSELL FLINN is a new writer whose fiction, interviews and articles have so far appeared in such small press publications as Dark Dreams (UK), Phenix (Belgium), New Blood (USA) and the 1991 British Fantasy Society collection Stirring Within. He cites his influences as Ramsey Campbell (“of course”), Robert Bloch, Ian McEwan and Alan Bennett.

  However, disenchanted with his career as an author, Flinn had all but given up writing when we approached him about reprinting the story which follows. “In curious synch
ronicity with the acceptance of my story for Best New Horror 3,” he reveals, “I discovered my notes for all the stories so rashly truncated, and which I now feel compelled to complete. The first will be one of unease, self-discovery/denial and tainted sexuality—certainly worthy of researching if not writing!”

  After reading “Subway Story”, we think you’ll agree that Flinn has a talent that shouldn’t be allowed to go to waste.

  “To Scarlet”

  EMERGING FROM BEHIND THE brewery, Whittle saw the same four women loitering by the subway. To his right, the Careers Centre, and a man chasing amongst the roosting pigeons. The women, he consigned to his eyecorners, prodding passage with his briefcase. Today, he was too angry with Daniel to notice them as he usually would. The one similarity was that they both got in Whittle’s way. Each day that week, the boy had pushed him as far as he dare, silent impertinence. Whittle no longer enjoyed his work in the bookshop, thanks to the young assistant. My God, the runt had even learned the formalities and regulations assiduously, as if to make the comparison more overt!

  The boy had sensed Whittle’s militant mood, too, for he had been at Terry’s heels all day. Well, friend or partner, Terry would hear of his dissatisfaction. The boy did nothing that did not harden Whittle to his purpose. He stamped up out of the grey hood of the subway, slamming his doors behind him and eating in the company of a bottle of wine. Perhaps writing would improve his mood. He scribbled the letter to the newspaper while he still felt fierce, and posted it the next morning.

  A daunting morning, and not just through the realism of his dream of the four tramp women and their subway tomb. Perhaps that would teach him not to ignore them in future! But even more, Terry was evidently learning tardiness from the boy. A glance at the wallclock only made them both smile, shrug. Peevishly, he directed troublesome customers on to the two of them. Mightn’t the boy bear up best under pressure: less time to scheme. He glared at the crewcut and embryonic moustache, the tattoo and t-shirt. How adult childish people yearned to be. Whittle himself, was too confident, too competent, to concern himself with how he looked to others.