The Year's Best Horror Stories 14

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  and from that same depth beneath the ground, where the Fall had been so deep there came back not splash but merely hissing silence, came the Keeper’s voice, he who had vanished while the two animals he had made to their wish had met and merged ... “As for you, girl ... I have no gift for yooouuuu. All you desire is emptiness and that is in your grassssp ...” and the wind hissed and the two hollow human skins the German siblings had left behind danced like toy balloons half-deflated round the duts ... pink, plastic looking, sacks for any deformed person, any hunchback with hump upon her stomach, and humpback with hunch to hide her fears, to crawl inside and conceal wounded mind in misdirectingly purloined letter obvious physical misshapeness ...

  soft rain, and blackness ... and the run torn bleeding through sudden shallow ponds and dry ditches and thousands of red eyes on bushes and at last came this bed ... this resting place ... on which she lay like a storm down from the mountain seeking new victims, and instead lured to rest and flood like a breaking of belly water on an empty land, a waiting place ...

  and a long time later all her sobs even were done ... and her breath at the end quiet ...

  and, moving slowly, carefully, so’s not to spill any of this new found tranquility, she washed, changed, hid scratches with make-up, powder, suntan oil, all that was needful ...

  And unravaged, looking almost as a bride, faced husband and children when they at last reappeared ...

  Saying “Colin, kids, I’m glad you’re back ... did you have a nice day?”