The Year's Best Horror Stories 14

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  “It wouldn’t be the same.” Mother kneaded the edges of the afghan with her spindly fingers, refusing to look up at her son. “This is our home, always. Your father practically rebuilt this place all by himself, in his spare time, when he wasn’t out making a good life for us all. He’d never forgive me if I let you move me out of here. He’d roll over in his grave.”

  There was the specter of Father again, and this time Donald couldn’t ignore it. The pain ran too deep; the memories cried too loud. “It wasn’t my fault,” he said plaintively.

  Mother waited a second too long before answering. “I know that. You couldn’t help it. I’ve always known that.”

  He’d been sixteen years old; half his life ago. November. The early morning had provided a light dusting of snow, as if to aid them in the hunt. He remembered a pewter sky and the sharp cold air, like a knife in his lungs. There was a clearing in the woods, a gently sloping hillock, and beyond that a copse of young birch trees tangled up with wild ivy. Father had circled and gone ahead to flush the buck. Now there came a rustling in the birch grove and a slight movement as the brush parted ahead of Donald. He raised the 12 gauge to his shoulder, a deer slug ready in the chamber. Another movement in the trees. He hesitated a lifetime, and then fired.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Donald muttered to himself, as he yanked the caulking gun from his tool box and inserted a tube of elastic sealant. Using a utility knife to cut the tip off the tube, he watched the white goo ooze slowly up the nozzle and he set to work plugging the gaps around the aluminum storm windows.

  The house had been quiet for the last two hours while Donald labored to complete the weatherization project. Mother stayed in her converted bedroom, browsing aimlessly through one of the many mail order catalogues she kept under the bed. She never disturbed Donald when he was taking care of her house. The job moved along at a satisfactory pace; the duty was light this day. Still, Donald couldn’t keep his mind on what his hands were doing. The memories wouldn’t let him.

  It was always like that when he came to the house. He would walk up the front steps and remember when Father had built them to replace the crumbling cement steps that had been there before. He could see the corded muscles in father’s shoulders when he swung the sledge, breaking down the old steps into defeated bits of concrete. He would come into the foyer and see the closet father had built in the corner and the ten-point antlers, father’s prize kill, mounted above the kitchen door. He would go down to the basement to change a fuse and stumble across the steamer trunk full of battered bowling trophies father had won and the stacks of yellowed outdoors magazines father had collected.

  Everywhere he looked, Donald saw Big Bill Heidler, the man’s man, and himself, a terrified sixteen-year-old boy all alone on a November morning in the woods.

  A tragic accident, the minister had said. Instantaneous death due to a gunshot wound in the chest, the coroner had ruled, and the authorities had closed the book on it. At least he didn’t suffer, said those who only wanted to be kind. But Donald had suffered, and suffered still with every reminder. He saw Ellen and remembered the accusatory tears. He saw the old neighborhood and remembered the long lines at the funeral parlor. He saw this house and remembered it all. And so did Mother.

  “Donnie Bear, how’s it going out there?” she called to him from her bed.

  “Fine,” Donald answered. “I’m just about done.”

  “I was thinking I might like some tea,” she said. “Wouldn’t a nice hot cup of tea be good?”

  “Sounds great,” Donald called out, as he finished caulking the last gap on the last of the living room’s three windows. “You take it easy, Mother, and I’ll put the water on to boil.”

  Putting away the caulking gun, he carried his toolbox with him as he passed through the foyer to the kitchen. The tea kettle sat in its usual place atop the massive forty-inch range, the very one Father bought years ago when Donald was seven or eight. He remembered trying to help as Father and the man from the appliance store carried the great white monster into the kitchen, and Father telling him he was too small and that he should just stay out of the way.

  Now the big range was old and less formidable somehow; the porcelain enamel was chipped in spots and worn off completely on the rounded corners. Donald carried the kettle to the sink, filled it halfway with fresh tap water and replaced it on the left front burner. Taking a long wooden match from the box on the counter, he lighted the gas burner and watched, mesmerized, as the blue-orange flame licked the kettle’s underside.

  A huge roaring bonfire out at the landfill site, a senior class tradition at the old high school. Laughter and taunts as his classmates drank beer from cans and danced wildly around the pyre. Graduation in a week and, when summer ended, off to college at exotic-sounding places like Chapel Hill and Palo Alto. But not for Donald. He would stay home. Mother was all alone now, and she needed him. There would be his old room and menial jobs in restaurants and shoe stores. He would take, but fail, the entrance exam for the police academy. Then the eight long years of night school at City College and the desk job with the area’s largest manufacturing firm. Marriage to Angela, the new split level in the suburbs, a family of his own. But always there were the Saturday afternoons at Mother’s.

  “Here were are, all hot and delicious,” Donald announced as he placed the tray on the bedside table and handed Mother her cup of tea. Without comment, she reached below the table and brought up a nearly depleted bottle of blackberry brandy. Donald pretended not to notice when she poured a liberal portion of the elixir into the cup. He recognized the mildly glazed, mildly petulant look in her eyes and he knew what to expect. First she would be combative, then sweet and conciliatory; finally she would sleep, convincing herself when she awoke the next morning that it was the arthritis and assorted other ills—some real, most imagined—that had sapped her strength.

  “So you’re all done with the weatherization?” she asked, sipping the tea.

  Donald smiled, “All finished.”

  “Took long enough. Two whole afternoons.” She squinted up at him. “Your father was a lot handier than you. He’d have done it all in one day and had time to go fishing.”

  Donald set down his teacup and, struggling to stay calm, said, “Father was good at some things, I’m good at others.”

  “Your father was a good policeman, too,” Mother grumbled. “Everyone in the neighborhood respected Big Bill Heidler. You could have been a decent policeman yourself, if you’d tried. It’s what your father wanted, you know.”

  “I like being a cost analyst, Mother, believe it or not. I’m good at it. Besides, I took the police exam and failed.”

  “Hmmmph. On purpose, you failed, I know that.”

  “Believe what you want, Mother. I’m not going to argue with you.” Donald stood up. “Anyway, I have to go. Angela and I are going out to dinner with another couple tonight and I have to get home and shower.” He gulped down the rest of the tea and turned toward the kitchen door.

  To his back, Mother cried. “You’ll be back next Saturday, won’t you, Donny Bear? You won’t forget?”

  “Do I ever forget, Mother? Do you ever let me forget?”

  She let the remark pass. “Will I be able to turn up the thermostat a bit now, dear?”

  “Yes, Mother. The house is as airtight as I can possibly make it. You should see a difference.”

  “I appreciate your volunteering to do the job, Donny, I really do.” She was beginning to tire.

  Donald returned to the side of the bed and kissed her cheek. “I was glad to do it, Mother. Now, you get some rest. I’ll just put the dishes in the sink and let myself out the back.”

  “You’re really a good son, Donny,” she sighed. “Your father would be proud.”

  Proud? Donald thought as he carried the tray into the kitchen and stacked the dirty cups in the sink. When had Father ever been proud of me, Mother? When was he even satisfied? Eat all your vegetables, Donnie, so you can grow up to be a
big strong cop like me. Go out for the football team, son, it’ll make a man out of you. Do what I say, be what I am, like what I like. My house, my rules. Get a haircut. Throw away those dirty jeans. Turn down that rotten music. Forget college. Learn to be a man. Caress that rifle. Donnie, and shoot to kill.

  It was November again and he was in the clearing. The cold air, the light snowfall, the copse of birch trees ahead. There was the movement in the brush and. as he raised his gun and caressed it with his shoulder, a glimpse of red and black. Then the second movement in the trees. He could see the target clearly now. He hesitated a lifetime as Father turned toward him and raised his arms, anger and fear distorting Big Bill’s face. Donald smiled, satisfied, and pulled the trigger.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” he whispered, bending down to pick up the tool box. “It was fate, pure and simple. Father was meant to die. at that chosen time, in that chosen place. It was just his day.” Then, just before going out the back door to his waiting car and his waiting home and family, Donald reached over to the old forty-inch range and turned on the gas for the left front burner.

  “And today.” he smiled, as he went out the door, “is Mother’s day.”

  LAVA TEARS by Vincent McHardy

  Born April 26, 1955, Canadian writer Vincent McHardy currently lives in Agincourt, Ontario. Those long, cold winters seem to have made for a voracious reading appetite as well as a hot hand at the typewriter. In the last few years McHardy has written a great many short stories, quickly graduating from the amateur press to Night Cry, Borderland, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, and various anthologies. Recently he has had the honor of having a story sold to J.N. Williamson’s anthology, Cold Sweats, rejected by the publisher. McHardy has completed his first novel, Id Flesh (his agent’s title), and is at work on a second, Going Down the Drain. Branching out, another current project is a script, Dream Castles, written for a course given by Phil Hersh—which McHardy also may rework as a novel.

  Vincent McHardy has appeared in each of the last three volumes of The Year’s Best Horror Stories. Here’s a writer to watch.

  Silent and overnight it grew towering and single-minded.

  Like I asked. Without warning or tremor. Cracking up under the old Tee-Pee Drive Inn, facing the town and the sea.

  Paricutin took Dionisio Pulido’s cornfield.

  Pet will take my pain.

  It will come in beauty. On a clear, hot, late spring Sunday morning. (The first really hot day since Indian Summer.) I can see them now. Grateful for a day off. Nothing to do but sit and eat. Watching the grass and their asses grow fat. Mr. Horance will be out on his bedroom balcony rubbing his Industrial-Arts-Shop nicked hands over the rail. You loved the view. Loved being at the top of the hill. Loved telling people there was no better line of sight in all of Abbots Gate. Well, when you walk out on the balcony (the one that you built with your “own Goddamned hands”) take a look at my work. The kid you once offered to take a patch of sandpaper to, to clean up the rough edges. You’ve been around blocks of wood too long, Mr. Horance. It’s not that easy with people. People don’t take well to abrasive treatment. All the nicks and rasps of saw-toothed remarks leave stains. Nothing you can hide with a coat of paint.

  For you I’ll send something special. Out on the balcony, slack jawed and pulling tight your pajama cord, I’ll send a little tremor. Nothing big. It won’t smash the house. Just big enough to detach your home-fix-it project and you, send you down the hill over the retaining wall and on to the road. Oh you’ll roll well. A big beefy guy like you. It won’t kill you. You’ll hardly be skuffed. No. The vent will getya. You won’t be able to stop rolling. It’s quite a steep road. Flapping over and down, there, waiting at the bottom, open mouthed, and orange-red smiling earth mouth, quick as you please, popping you in.

  Glorious sight! Wondrous full smells! Like a ladybug under a magnifying glass at noon. Lung and intestine gas expanding, popping you like an overinflated circus balloon. Which is just what you are ... what you were ... Mr. Horance. All fluff and no guts. Tight and safe in your sausage skin ... till I banged you into the oven. Sorry you have to leave so soon. The first at the party. The first to fry away. I wish you could stay to see all the fireworks. But that’s for me. I’m calling the shots.

  Most of the shots. The special shots. The ones dear to my heart. I don’t know all the nine thousand people of Abbots Gate. I don’t suppose they’re any different from the ones I do know. Quick to jump and point and giggle. Not keeping their nose out of other peoples’ business. Much like spinster Gillard. Not someone I’d pick for a neighbor. Old as coal and not nearly as warm. She spends all the friction of her life cleaning. What for and for whom I don’t know. No one ever visits her. If she’s not inside dusting the bricabrac, shampooing the rugs and searching for silverfish, she’s outside instructing the hired help how to cut the lawn and paint the gingerbread board trim. Generally trying to stretch minimum wage work up to professional standards. No detail of mess escapes her. She’d long since cut down all the trees on her property. Fall no longer preyed on her mind. She spit her vinegar on neighbors who neglected to catch their own tree leaves as they fell. The sins of others carried on the wind to land on her lawn. She’d have covered her house in plastic were it not for the cost.

  And for all that I wouldn’t have minded. If she kept to herself. Played out her own nightmares in the dark. But she needed me. Spread the pain. Sighted me in her cross hairs every time circumstances offered a choice shot.

  “It is all a question of hygiene, diet, and moral persuasion,” she’d say, “It’s all so very clear. I’ve never seen you washed or with combed hair. Running, playing and weeping sweat demands care! And diet! That candy bar in your shirt pocket tells me all I need to know ... And morality! Teenagers today. Do you know the word? I think not. Lord, do you think you invented ... it?

  “It is up to you, Tom. You have only yourself to blame.”

  A small sermon but one she never tired of repeating, embellishing, thundering down at me. Though I tried to hide whenever I saw you drifting close I could never run clear of your evangelical selfrighteousness. Like a vengeful Nuee ardent, a tumbling, superheated multi-legged, glowing cloud covering all before it.

  So ... for you dust. A blizzard of gray-pink corruption. Choking down your chimney and seeping through windows and key holes. Dust will plop on your starched white linen bed sheets, cloak your sitting room, and crust your Daulton figurines into lumps. Windows will plaque over. And those delicate Spanish lace curtains will change into pillars of clay.

  You’ll spend a frenzied last minute. What to clean first before you fill up and gag-stop?

  There’s a question. What will you do? Nothing important. You never did anything important in the thousands of minutes gone by; why change at the end? When your numbing nothings are collected together you’ll die alone, forgotten. This way with me you’ll die for a reason. All of you together, bowing at the coronation of a king. Bright baubles for my crown. The day will dawn a new Christmas lighting the world I control.

  A Christmas Clarence and his crowned teeth won’t be around to laugh at. Clarence, who liked to call himself the town’s second ugliest boy after me. Well, he wasn’t so unhappy about being the second ugliest. He was happier that I was the first.

  “I’ll get these off someday,” he’d say, tapping at his grill work mouth of braces. “I’ll have a straight smile. I’ll be human. But you’ll never change.”

  Clarence! You look like an apple stuck on a stick. Removing the braces won’t change you into a swimwear model. Relieved of your metal armor you’ll be forced to cringe from your second worst feature. What to choose, your wide-spaced slightly off-center eyes, your curved spine, or your boot-like ears? Picky. Picky. Picky. Number two on your Deformity Hit Chart clearly will be a sell out.

  If those braces bother you so much I’ll remove them. I’ll open a new world for you. My secondary court jesters will come calling. Lightning will serve you. St. Elmo’s fire will danc
e and play your teeth. The electrical wind will heat and wash those braces away. Why worry about crooked teeth when you have a black hole for a face?

  To hell with fashion. It was never a love of mine, not even a flirt. But my Love’s love was fashion. Sue would throw up if she ever heard me say that or even think that I thought that we could ever be called lovers. She vomits quite a bit as it is with all those diuretics she takes to keep the weight off. I’m not complaining. I love her trim shape. The body swells just enough to hold her dresses and slips from an embarrassing fall. Fashion on her worked. She spent so much time and money on those clothes. Months would pass without her repeating a costume. Snuggly woolens for winter ice breezes; cottons for summer. No climate threw her off pace. She snapped rain and snow and desert blows into line. She slipped on a breeze of whims. Her hair the crest of fashion—teased, flipped, curled, straight, a ribbon, flowers, henna and a highlight or two. A wondrous panorama of change and reward for the attentive watcher.

  And Oh, how I watched.

  When she walked to and from school. When she went out on dates. Especially on dates. I always followed. Never seen. In shadows, from laneways and behind shrubs. Even into the hills where she’d go with Frank, Dave and more recently Bill. Even when she was so careful not to be followed, so fearful of being seen and caught ... I saw. I heard. And after, when they’d leave laughing, I touched the mucus wetness where they’d lain.

  For you Sue a whirlwind. A short, surgical puff that will leave you blind, naked, and hairless. The whirlwind could bake you and eat you to the bone. But I want my pretty mannequin to come crawling over matchstick bodies and broken sidewalk slabs. I’ll not turn you away. And you won’t be able to laugh and turn your nose in disgust when I look at you.