The Year's Best Horror Stories 14

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  Richard refilled his tumbler, and stood looking at the tree. It was about the same size as the one in that woman’s house, Mrs. Campbell. Decorated in the same way, with tinsel and silver balls and colored bulbs and metal stars and chocolate novelties. He smiled. Who did Susan think would eat those? Timothy was only eleven months old. He glanced toward the hatch, then unhooked a chocolate pocket watch, stabbing himself with green pine needles. He pried off the silver foil, and bit the chocolate in two. As he went to drop the wrapper in the bin, it fell out of his hand.

  He looked at it on the floor, trying to remember why it seemed so familiar. Then he remembered the foil wrappers in the murder house last night. They too must have come from a Christmas tree. The killer had eaten them. Could it be that he’d pulled the tree over to get at them?

  Sitting down, the glass in his hand forgotten, Richard stared at the tree, his mind going back to the previous night. The chocolate wrappers. The empty lemonade bottle. The empty milk bottle. Perhaps the killer was mentally retarded. Or teetotal. He smiled to himself for a moment, then it was gone.

  Suddenly it came to him. It was so simple. So simple yet so unbelievable.

  He got up and walked to the telephone. As he began to dial, he heard voices start to sing outside the front door.

  Once in Royal David’s city ...

  And the doorbell rang. Richard hardly noticed the bell or the singing. He’d somehow dialed the wrong number, and had to start again.

  He saw Susan go past him into the hall, subconsciously knowing that she was going to peep through the window to see who was at the door. A few seconds later, he got through.

  “Yes, Rich?” said Malcolm Kegan.

  Richard didn’t answer. He dropped the phone, and ran into the hall. Susan had drawn the bolt, and undone the chain, and now she was turning the latch.

  “Susan!” he yelled. “No!”

  His wife turned and looked at him, “But they’re only children,” she said, beginning to open her purse to give them something.

  Then the door was pushed open, Susan knocked aside, and silently they rushed in. There were about ten of them, aged seven or eight. Their eyes were bright, their cheeks rosy, and the knives they pulled out of their pockets, and held in their woolly-gloved hands, were very sharp.

  Susan backed away to stand next to Richard as the deadly choir moved swiftly toward them. As the last one closed the door, Richard noticed that it had started to snow.

  TOO FAR BEHIND GRADINA by Steve Sneyd

  Steve Sneyd was born in 1941 in Maidenhead, Berkshire, and now lives in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire—where Robin Hood is said to have been buried. Presently he is employed as a copy-writer for a regional evening newspaper. Sneyd’s interests include visiting castles, pubs, walking, photography, and reading crime and historical books. Sneyd is primarily a poet, whose work has appeared extensively in small press publications throughout the world. His fiction has been published in Whispers, Dark Dreams, and other little magazines, in addition to book appearances in Whispers III and in The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series VIII. Sneyd’s work has also appeared in a dozen or more booklets—among them: Four Minute Island, The Rex Quondam File, Star For Head And Feet, and The Pleasing Creatures. “Too Far Behind Gradina” also was first published as a separate booklet by SF Spectrum Publications Ltd. The novella is an unnerving tour de force that only a gifted poet could have accomplished. It is Sneyd’s most ambitious work, and it is my privilege to be able to present it to the wider audience it deserves.

  PROLOGUE:

  the master speaks in the castle ...

  i give moths a light everlasting as fate against which

  to beat and blast and burn themselves

  in an intolerable excess of unanswered love

  i give the wasps too what they wish a place a face

  against which to crash the

  scent that drives them mad rotting mankind to ape for them

  a summer’s end in which to end in

  sting-desperate with frustration of

  the sexy senses of nearing dying and

  so little time to waste

  the peasant torn between God’s warning

  & the hand of communist man promising

  car TV a dishwasher

  I give a third alternative

  against which the other two can

  unite & fight & reknit

  his shriveled personality

  stretched thin between

  this year and 1550

  lizards their wish to become inconspicuous i give

  no tail i leave to them to show them up

  blocking the bright

  ness of the day when all they wish

  thick with self-shame and

  sense of insufficiency is to

  drop out of sight and live on

  indivisibly invisible

  among great tangled roots

  & to you you foolish new people

  so faithless you have become

  incredibly more credulous than maddest

  bigot or fanatic of

  these blackcloaked churches who

  slaver upon the agony the Crucified appears

  to demonstrate,

  you I will give just what you wish

  name it and I

  will interpret the dish you seek

  as does a master chef to make

  from cheap ingredients a lake

  of fire a cake whose icing is the

  farthest stars

  and bake your half-formed thoughts to slake

  the agony you dare not speak

  the longing deep as woman’s gate

  to suffer that is all your fate

  which otherwise like amateurs

  you practice in badly-driven cars

  or with a cigarette or beers

  shoved down your throat the nearest you dare go

  towards taking

  poison to annoy

  a universe that will not love you.

  “Have a nice holiday, dear?”—pouring tea with the smooth automatic motions of a Longbridge assembly-line worker as she spoke.

  It was the day after getting home, with Mariella still dazed by going and by coming back, and her mother tranquilly warm and ripe to bursting with a fortnight’s pent-up gossip, longing to get the ritual inquiry about their holiday over with so she could launch guiltless and unchecked into her own preoccupations with neighbors’ petty spites and sillinesses and the latest calls on people who’d got above themselves on the street by the friendly neighborhood bailiff ...

  And rather than scream, or try to explain to someone who as long as she could remember wished only to know that her own brood were tidy and clean and hard-working so she could out-face any gossip, and never ever wanted to look below the smoothness of the skin, Mariella merely said, “Yes, fine.”

  “And the hotel?”

  “Really nice.”

  “And the children?”

  “They loved it—we’re just waiting for the photographs back. How have you been?”

  And the subject was safely forgotten for the moment at least, buried in a safe avalanche of brightly catty trivia. “For which relief great thanks,” thought Mariella—and then remembered the quote was one of her husband’s favorites, and mentally cursed again how he maggoted her brain.

  And still none of it all made any real pattern of sense or logic anyhow. Colin always said she was scatterbrained, yet when he wasn’t there to make her every word seem foolish by interruption or pitying “ignore the little woman, she’s only a dumb blond anyhow” smile, she could think and talk as clearly at least as most, and certainly more than most of those girls she’d been to school with: but this—it was beyond her.

  A fortnight’s holiday: so long looked forward to, so planned for even to minutiae of suntan oils and seasick pills and drawing books to quiet the children, towels in case the hotel ones were too harsh, and every other damn fool thing enjoyed in the preparations just because it was, ev
en the relentless ticking off of lists of must-take necessities, part of preparations for a change, an escape.

  And then, when they’d got there, the whole fortnight, up to the very last day anyway, had been so dreadfully sane at “their” hotel in “their” resort, her family unchanged and her escape each day postponed, she might as well have stayed at home—as if all those months’ anticipation of a change as unimaginably great as leaving school had once seemed, full of dreams and possibilities, was just one more proof after all that life always has you by the short and curlies and never more so than when you’re fool enough to look forward to something new too much.

  As for the last day before the return to good old Helmebridge where life began and doubtless had already ended, well that day she could neither discuss with anyone nor really with herself: nightmare was the only word she could think of, desperately trying to cocoon it away in unreality like a late night, too frightening TV play you laugh off next day: and never never would she even begin to admit to herself, she thought, that something like that had really been what she had longed for all along.

  And watching her mother’s hands, still busy shifting cakes and plates and teapot in parody of genteel hospitality as if it were a Lord Lieutenant she entertained, not her daughter, the occasion rather than the person mattering most as trigger for the ritual, Mariella, letting the bright stream of chatter flow over her unheard save with enough unconscious understanding to answer “Yes” or “Fancy” a nibbling leer at the edge of thought, go back over that last day in Gradina as their package holiday on “the Adriatic coast, pearl of the Mediterranean’s unspoiled holiday playgrounds,” neared its predestined end.

  All holiday Colin had been busy as a bee putting himself across as Mr. Knowitall, insisting at the top of crow-harsh voice on telling all the fellow passengers every last detail of history, geography, place of note, in this place or that they went to on excursions, his facts all culled from an extensive guidebook bought the first day, not for any pleasure of knowledge, she was sure, but merely to be sure of always being one up, the man “who knew what’s what,” even to correcting guides, insisting on trying to bargain down the price of the boat already hired by the courier to take them to the Roman temple in a grotto across the lake, even insisting on some obscure wine which of course the hotel didn’t have although the guidebook said it came from nearby: and causing a scene till the manager in person swore that vineyard destroyed by the war, no wine still made—and everything had been like that, day after day ... Colin shouting the kids down every time the least spontaneous shout of joy or excitement at some new sight had interrupted one of his set-piece lectures at what they should be looking at, as in an old donkey running mad in a field while a bewildered little boy shrieked after it helplessly couldn’t, and wasn’t bound to be, ten times as exciting to an eight and a ten year old as some pile of shapeless Turkish stones?

  Maddening, doubtless, the middle-aged fellow passengers, who for some reason known only to himself he had set out to impress, yet could not forbear to show contempt loudly toward every time they preferred shops or a cafe to endless meticulous examination of every sight the guidebook listed that they came near.

  And, whenever Mariella asked him to look after the kids for an hour or so, while she had a headache (her period, that, just like her luck, came right in the middle of the holiday and left her pained, listless, longing only to crawl into a hole and hide for days), all he could say was “Can’t you manage them anymore, then?”, cool superiority and telltale irritation showing in frown wrinkles deepening, in a combination that made her ready to shriek with frustration.

  The morning of the last day came, and she at last rebelled. There hadn’t been, she knew as clear as she knew she was awake as the light dancing off harbor water walked across the shadowed ceiling, and Colin snored still (something he always swore he never did), one whole hour save in sleep she’d really had to herself—or had chance to be herself—all through the holiday, holiday so-called that was, when except for cooking she had every other bit of the running round after husband and children that made up time at home too, even the hours they were away at work or school taken up with starting meals ready, mending clothes, doing Colin’s endless errands to bank, library, post office, building society, that he would not do himself yet was ever ready to instruct her how to carry out as if to a child, “Say this to the TV people, say that to the electricity people,” never-ending instruction. And just this one day had to be hers, saved out of all the anticipation, out of all this year at least.

  Not that she rebelled directly: she could not have faced Colin’s sulks, his attempts to foist the kids on her and escape himself, feeling a bigger man still with no children around to remind him he was not as young as he was, or even the children asking, “Why aren’t you going with us today, mum?”, treating her as a possession necessarily kept in sight all the time lest it stray or be nicked, like the dog or train set or the dolls at home.

  No: she deliberately toyed with her breakfast, finishing neither bread and apricot jam nor coffee, ignoring the children, leaning at least head in hand till reluctantly, following necessary pattern gracelessly like a wild animal posing as laboratory specimen to escape detection, Colin asked, “What’s up?”

  “Sorry, Colin, I don’t feel so well. I’ve got a sick headache, maybe that wine last night.”

  “You’d better go back to bed, take an aspirin and lie down.” Reluctant the concession: obviously he expected her to say “I’ll be all right.”

  But she took his words at face value, “Yes, if you don’t mind I think that’d be better. You wouldn’t mind taking the kids to the Falls and the Pirate Town with the others, would you? I’m sure they’ll be good.” A perfect trap: Colin did try saying, “Don’t you want me to stay and look after you?” but she insisted she didn’t want them to miss a treat so long looked forward to, and knowing how many pages in the guidebook there were about both places, so many nuggets for Colin to bring out and show his cleverness, she was sure this impulse would override his unwillingness to be stuck with the kids, particularly when she casually motioned the kids to say “good morning” to the coach-driver, the one who with nine kids of his own was immune, even liked children, and so reminded Colin by this hint that after all the driver’d probably be willing to let their two stick with him most of the day, relieving Colin.

  So, at last, at last, leaving abruptly at the end, his unwillingness to waste sympathy on anyone but himself so rope-strong he was obviously maddened by having to offer comfort to Mariella’s well-timed groans, Colin was off into the big Routemaster coach, busy at one and the same time grabbing a seat good for photography and issuing unwanted advice to everybody else, fellow passengers too far past youth or too polite to tell him to piss off: and the kids, too, aboard, waving, perched on the engine by the driver’s casually-given leave, both looking so sweet she almost regretted not keeping them at least with her for the day: too late, they were gone, the dust puffing up from the cracked dry road round the headland from the hotel into the town: and a few minutes later, as she lingered over the coffee, enjoyable now with her jailor gone, the coach reappeared across the bay, climbing the headland road through pines to swing out of sight, she guiltily an instant imagining Colin could somehow see across all that distance and spot her beginning to dare to relax and enjoy herself.

  And the coach was gone: only the headland, and the little boats, and, far above, the great half-seen fortress that no matter how clear the day had never really been sharply visible, that in Colin’s book had been a last-ditch hold against Romans, Venetians and Turks alike, loomed.

  She did not wait to try to see the coach’s dust reappear far off where the coast-road looped again along the inland sea, or bay it was really, but finished her coffee, though no waiters hovered. They never seemed to here—and climbed back to the room to collect her things and try to decide which of the many treats she could have today she wanted to do first, temporarily paralyzed from decision as when
in a sale of clothes too many things attracted her till she dare not try to decide, each choice so fraught with possibilities to make a fool of herself—and whichever choice she didn’t take doubtless the one that would have made her unimaginably happy.

  And lay a few minutes on the bed, trapped by inertia while these precious minutes moved by. A cigarette: that’d help her think.

  A whole day before her: they wouldn’t be back till seven at the earliest, the courier’d said; and she could blissfully do nothing, lying on one of the concrete slabs set like islands among the rocks of the beach, each more inviting than the next. Or walk past the campsite where perhaps if she were alone one of the bronzed young men who’d doubtless been here all summer would revive her spirits by whistling, out through the groves of olives where no one seemed to bother with the fruit and each tree sat in its own man-high wall of stones laboriously picked like Cyclop’s monument, so the book said, over years to make clear patches of soil for the tree’s growing: to end at the lighthouse with its lace-shimmer of tiny fish about the water at its foot.

  She could perhaps sit on the hotel terrace and order wine—and drink it without having to listen to Colin telling her at every sip what it ought to taste like and what she should watch for in the way of impudence or subtlety or raw inferiority to Reisling, as if she didn’t know damn well he got all his knowhow out of the Observer Color Supplement.

  The smoke from her cigarette curled against curtain. A sound of movement down the corridor: the maid on her way, doubtless—she’d have to move to let the woman get at bed and room. That was the one thing that she hated about the holiday that even Colin being different wouldn’t have altered: having people fussing round, waiting on you at meals and doing the bed and things that you’d much rather do yourself and get done with. Colin said she was silly, that these people’d be out of work if they didn’t work in the hotels, and anyway they enjoyed it, and what did it being called a socialist country have to do with it, she was just old-fashioned and ignorant. End of conversation. Mariella a fool again ... o forget him, damn it; he was out of the way for a day: try not to think of him once. As soon as she thought that, of course, she thought of him even more—like the last day of school holidays not all that long ago, really, Christ, eleven years if she thought about it, anyway, the more you tried not to think of school tomorrow, the more you thought of it.