The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, 2010

by Elizabeth Bear

  He reached down and pulled her arm, but she was immovable, inviolate in her agony. A statue would have moved more readily; but where a statue would be cool stone, she was fevered, damp flesh. She looked into his eyes.

  “Go,” she said. “Go, before it is too late.”

  Footsteps rattled the scaffold. Persistence and Luke moved forward as one. Father Quine urged them on. Persistence grabbed Joss Coffington by the collar and pulled him down, his fingers slicing into Coffington’s shoulders. Luke slammed his right knee into Coffington’s face with a wet crack, again and again. Persistence kicked his spine and slashed at his side. Coffington fell limp.

  The crowd barely reacted. If anything, they regarded the entire event as an inconvenience, something that kept them from the momentary miracle of standing before Ruth and seeing her bruises and her pain. They had all come so far to see her. They had waited so long.

  Ruth saw Joss Coffington lying on the scaffold. She sat still. Her hands opened and closed.

  A silence fell on the crowd.

  Ruth seemed to whisper to herself, looking down.

  “What is it, child?” said Father Quine.

  She whispered again.

  Father Quine moved to her side, leaning down to hear.

  Striking like a cobra, Ruth grabbed Father Quine’s arm and he dropped to his knees. The memory of her every wound passed through her fingertips and burned into his mind. His skin grew damp and darkened with Biblical scenes. Bone snapped and feathers smoked. Reddish spittle fell from his mouth, followed by a scream. Father Quine slumped forward, his wings aflame.

  Ruth stood and looked toward her brothers. “Stand back,” she said, her fingertips smoldering. “I have ages within me.”

  Persistence and Luke stood still, shocked by her feral eyes. But their surprise gave way and as one they smiled and slowly circled her like hungry wolves. Their mother shouted from the chaotic crowd. People pushed and shoved to get out of the way, their eyes fixated on the strange tableau upon the stage. Those wise to the danger of crowds drifted away from the stage, forking their fingers and spitting twice.

  The brothers lunged, but they were thrown back

  Thrown back not by force, but by a look, a casual gesture. Each jerked upright, like fish upon the line, held in place by unseen chains. Dark, bruised lines slipped across their faces, across the skin of their throats; the painful lines formed angels, magi, and flibbertigibbets by the dozen. Reptilian in their speed, they shifted so quickly that it seemed the figures danced. The skin split in their wake, bleeding. The lines slowed and dissipated, leaving the brothers’ sweat-sheeted skin red. Spent, they dropped to the platform, one atop the other.

  Ruth’s dripping hands were ruined now, tattered and charred.

  She knelt beside Joss Coffington and touched his face. She listened at his mouth for breath. Her shattered fingers trailed across his chest and found no heartbeat.

  She turned to face the crowd, and her eyes held only vengeance. Not the petty vengeance of rage or jealousy, but that primordial ire that ignited the stars. Ruth found her mother and pointed directly at her, freezing her in place. Ruth’s gaze took in the entire crowd, each one a celebrant, each one an idolater. Ruth shouted a word heard only in the quiet days before the caul dried on the world, and she tore her throat to shreds.

  Everyone in the town felt it, though none would ever agree what had happened.

  Some said it was a simple feather or the passing of warm wind over a cloudy dandelion; others said it was the touch of a lover, of a mother, of a glass-eyed stranger. Some said it felt like grass growing. Others mentioned razors, warm oil, and the cracking of a knuckle. Old Khoas said it was rust, and he was right. A few said nothing at all, but it was there in their eyes. It entered them, unfurled itself, and never left.

  She opened Joss Coffington’s shirt and pressed her smoldering hand against his chest. The blood spilling from her mouth sizzled when it hit her fingers. She leaned against him, putting all her weight against that hand. Her shirt fell away, and her bruises were lambent.

  There was that strange wind again and Ruth stood, her eyes wild.

  Joss Coffington sat up and winced. He looked up and took Ruth’s waiting hand.

  The mark of her hand on his chest had swollen already, the skin shiny and red. What she did to the townsfolk that day, she did to him, too, only different. Everything they were, the secrets of their blood and memories, was now in him, coiled like so many serpents, all clenched at the base of his skull like a writhing fist. He was legion.

  She put an arm around him and they walked off the stage and down the stairs, heedless of the crowds around them. A few of the townsfolk knelt, reaching out to touch them as they passed. One brushed a finger against the gaping wound at Coffington’s side, pulling it away with awe.

  They walked out of the town, and they walked until their feet bled, and then they walked until the stars filled the sky. Those that followed after Joss and Ruth lost them in the darkness in a matter of hours. None saw them after that.

  Behind them, in Promise, it took several weeks for the stories and rumors to die down. The townsfolk tried to carry on as they had before, but something was amiss. Old Khoas was the first to notice, but he said nothing. The wooden platform fell during a bad nor’easter and the town was suffocated in white. The frightened elders called a meeting on the town common and patiently waited as everyone came. The blue moonlight blackening their faces, the townsfolk listened as the wingless Quine began to speak, but his words were unnecessary. It had become increasingly clear that the wet nurses had nothing to do, and most in the town were certain they never would again. Other elders took their turns to speak, but most townsfolk had stopped listening, and alone or in small groups they drifted off into the darkness, until, at long last, there was only the bruised whiteness of the empty Common beneath the cold winter moon.

  About the Author

  Robert Davies writes stories about voracious babies, eidolons, and exploding suns. Mimetic fiction is for wimps. Raised on a steady diet of weird paperbacks, Infocom games, and comic books, Rob has always wanted to be a writer. (Well, actually, he first wanted to be a dinosaur, but that didn’t work out so well.) His stories have sold to Weird Tales, Interzone, Shroud Magazine, and Murky Depths. His novella, Hiram Grange and the Digital Eucharist, was recently released. His is working on his first novel, The Bitter Taste of the World Snake’s Tail. Rob lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with his high school sweetheart Sara and two cats, Lilith and Tiamat. He thinks Brian Wilson is God.

  Story Notes

  Hey, you really expect me to comment on this story? Okay: It’s a love story. A weird love story.

  RESPECTS

  RAMSEY CAMPBELL

  By the time Dorothy finished hobbling downstairs, somebody had rung three times and knocked several more. Charmaine Bullough and some of her children were blocking the short garden path under a nondescript November sky. “What did you see?” Charmaine demanded at once.

  “Why, nothing to bother about.” Dorothy had glimpsed six-year-old Brad kicking the door, but tried to believe he’d simply wanted to help his mother. “Shouldn’t you be at school?” she asked him.

  Brad jerked a thumb at eight-year-old J-Bu. “She’s not,” he shouted.

  Perhaps his absent siblings were, but not barely teenage Angelina, who was brandishing a bunch of flowers. “Are those for me?” Dorothy suggested out of pleasantness rather than because it seemed remotely likely, then saw the extent of her mistake. “Sorry,” she murmured.

  Half a dozen bouquets and as many wreaths were tied to the lamp-standard on the corner of the main road, beyond her gate. Charmaine’s scowl seemed to tug the roots of her black hair paler. “What do you mean, it’s not worth bothering about?”

  “I didn’t realise you meant last week,” Dorothy said with the kind of patience she’d had to use on children and parents too when she was teaching.

  “You saw the police drive our Keanu off the road, didn’t
you?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t say I did.”

  At once, despite their assortment of fathers, the children resembled their mother more than ever. Their aggressive defensiveness turned resentful in a moment, accentuating their features, which were already as sharp as smashed glass. “Can’t or won’t?” Charmaine said.

  “I only heard the crash.”

  Dorothy had heard the cause as well—the wild screech of tyres as the fifteen-year-old had attempted to swerve the stolen Punto into her road apparently at eighty miles an hour, only to ram a van parked opposite her house—but she didn’t want to upset the children, although Brad’s attention seemed to have lapsed. “Wanna wee,” he announced and made to push past her, the soles of his trainers lighting up at every step.

  As Dorothy raised a hand to detain him, J-Bu shook a fist that set bracelets clacking on her thin arm. “Don’t you touch my brother. We can get you put in prison.”

  “You shouldn’t just walk into someone else’s house,” Dorothy said and did her best to smile. “You don’t want to end up—”

  “Like who?” Angelina interrupted, her eyes and the studs in her nose glinting. “Like Keanu? You saying he was in your house?”

  Dorothy might have. The day before the crash she’d come home to find him gazing out of her front room. He hadn’t moved until she managed to fumble her key into the lock, at which point he’d let himself out of the back door. Apart from her peace of mind he’d stolen only an old handbag that contained an empty purse, and so she hadn’t hurried to report him to the overworked police. If she had, might they have given him no chance to steal the car? As Dorothy refrained from saying any of this, Charmaine dragged Brad back. “Come out of there. We don’t want anyone else making trouble for us.”

  “I’m sorry not to be more help,” Dorothy felt bound to say. “I do know how you feel.”

  Angelina peered so closely at her that Dorothy smelled some kind of smoke on the girl’s breath. “How?”

  “I lost my husband just about a year ago.”

  “Was he as old as you?” J-Bu said.

  “Even older,” said Dorothy, managing to laugh.

  “Then it’s not the same,” Angelina objected. “It was time he went.”

  “Old people take the money we could have,” said J-Bu.

  “It’s ours for all the things we need,” Brad said.

  “Never mind that now,” said Charmaine and fixed Dorothy with her scowl. “So you’re not going to be a witness.”

  “To what, forgive me?”

  “To how they killed my son. I’ll be taking them to court. The social worker says I’m entitled.”

  “They’ll have to pay for Keanu,” said Brad.

  Dorothy took time over drawing a breath. “I don’t think I’ve anything to offer except sympathy.”

  “That won’t put shoes on their feet. Come on, all of you. Let’s see Keanu has some fresh flowers. He deserves the best,” Charmaine added louder still.

  Brad ran to the streetlamp and snatched off a bouquet. About to throw them over Dorothy’s wall, he saw her watching and flung them in the road. As Angelina substituted her flowers, Dorothy seemed to hear a noise closer to the house. She might have thought a rose was scratching at the window, but the flower was inches distant. In any case, the noise had sounded muffled by the glass. She picked up a beer can and a hamburger’s polystyrene shell from her garden and carried them into the house.

  When she and Harry had moved in she’d been able to run through it without pausing for breath. She could easily outdistance him to the bedroom, which had been part of their fun. Now she tried not to breathe, since the flimsy shell harboured the chewed remains of its contents. She hadn’t reached the kitchen when she had to gasp, but any unwelcome smell was blotted out by the scents of flowers in vases in every downstairs room.

  She dumped the rubbish in the backyard bin and locked the back door. The putty was still soft around the pane Mr Thorpe had replaced. Though he’d assured her it was safe, she was testing the glass with her knuckles when something sprawled into the hall. It was the free weekly newspaper, and Keanu’s death occupied the front page. LOCAL TEENAGER DIES IN POLICE CHASE.

  She still had to decide whether to remember Harry in the paper. She took it into the dining-room, where a vaseful of chrysanthemums held up their dense yellow heads towards the false sun of a Chinese paper globe, and spread the obituary pages across the table. Keanu was in them too. Which of the remembrances were meant to be witty or even intended as a joke? “Kee brought excitement into everyone’s life”? “He was a rogue like children are supposed to be”? “There wasn’t a day he didn’t come up with some new trick”? “He raced through life like he knew he had to take it while he could”? “Even us that was his family couldn’t keep up with his speed”? Quite a few of them took it, Dorothy suspected, along with other drugs. “When he was little his feet lit up when he walked, now they do because he’s God’s new angel.” She dabbed at her eyes, which had grown so blurred that the shadows of stalks drooping out of the vase appeared to grope at the newsprint. She could do with a walk herself.

  She buttoned up her winter overcoat, which felt heavier than last year, and collected her library books from the front room. Trying to read herself to sleep only reminded her that she was alone in bed, but even downstairs she hadn’t finished any of them—the deaths in the detective stories seemed insultingly trivial, and the comic novels left her cold now that she couldn’t share the jokes. She lingered for a sniff at the multicoloured polyanthuses in the vase on her mother’s old sideboard before loading her scruffiest handbag with the books. The sadder a bag looked, the less likely it was to be snatched.

  The street was relatively quiet beneath the vague grey sky, with just a few houses pounding like nightclubs. The riots in Keanu’s memory—children smashing shop windows and pelting police cars with bricks—had petered out, and in any case they hadn’t started until nightfall. Most of the children weren’t home from school or wherever else they were. Stringy teenagers were loitering near the house with the reinforced front door, presumably waiting for the owner of the silver Jaguar to deal with them. At the far end of the street from Dorothy’s house the library was a long low blotchy concrete building, easily mistaken for a new church.

  She was greeted by the clacking of computer keyboards. Some of the users had piled books on the tables, but only to hide the screens from the library staff. As she headed for the shelves Dorothy glimpsed instructions for making a bomb and caught sight of a film that might have shown an equestrian busy with the tackle of her horse if it had been wearing any. On an impulse Dorothy selected guides to various Mediterranean holiday resorts. Perhaps one or more of her widowed friends might like to join her next year. She couldn’t imagine travelling by herself.

  She had to slow before she reached her gate. A low glare of sunlight cast the shadow of a rosebush on the front window before being extinguished by clouds, leaving her the impression that a thin silhouette had reared up and then crouched out of sight beyond the glass. She rummaged nervously in her handbag and unlocked the door. It had moved just a few inches when it encountered an obstruction that scraped across the carpet. Someone had strewn Michaelmas daisies along the hall.

  Were they from her garden? So far the vandals had left her flowers alone, no doubt from indifference. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness she saw that the plants were scattered the length of the hall, beyond which she could hear a succession of dull impacts as sluggish as a faltering heart. Water was dripping off the kitchen table from the overturned vase, where the trail of flowers ended. She flustered to the back door, but it was locked and intact, and there was no other sign of intrusion. She had to conclude that she’d knocked the vase over and, still without noticing unless she’d forgotten, tracked the flowers through the house.

  The idea made her feel more alone and, in a new way, more nervous. She was also disconcerted by how dead the flowers were, though she’d picked them yesterday; the
stalks were close to crumbling in her hands, and she had to sweep the withered petals into a dustpan. She binned it all and replenished the vase with Harry’s cyclamen before sitting on the worn stairs while she rang Helena to confirm Wednesday lunch. They always met midweek, but she wanted to talk to someone. Once she realised that Helena’s grandchildren were visiting she brought the call to an end.

  The house was big enough for children, except that she and Harry couldn’t have any, and now it kept feeling too big. Perhaps they should have moved, but she couldn’t face doing so on her own. She cooked vegetables to accompany the rest of yesterday’s casserole, and ate in the dining-room to the sound of superannuated pop songs on the radio, and leafed through her library books in the front room before watching a musical that would have made Harry restless. She could hear gangs roving the streets, and was afraid her lit window might attract them. Once she’d checked the doors and downstairs windows she plodded up to bed.

  Girls were awaiting customers on the main road. As Dorothy left the curtains open a finger’s width she saw Winona Bullough negotiate with a driver and climb into his car. Was the girl even sixteen? Dorothy was close to asking Harry, but it felt too much like talking to herself, not a habit she was anxious to acquire. She climbed into her side of the bed and hugged Harry’s pillow as she reached with her free hand for the light-cord.

  The night was a medley of shouts, some of which were merely conversations, and smashed glass. Eventually she slept, to be wakened by light in the room. As she blinked, the thin shaft coasted along the bedroom wall. She heard the taxi turn out of the road, leaving her unsure whether she had glimpsed a silhouette that reminded her of stalks. Perhaps the headlamps had sent a shadow from her garden, though wasn’t the angle wrong? She stared at the dark and tried not to imagine that it was staring back at her. “There’s nobody,” she whispered, hugging the pillow.

  She needed to be more active, that was all. She had to occupy her mind and tire her body out to woo a night’s unbroken sleep. She spent as much of Saturday in weeding the front garden as the pangs of her spine would allow. By late afternoon she wasn’t even half finished, and almost forgot to buy a wreath. She might have taken Harry some of his own flowers, but she liked to support the florist’s on the main road, especially since it had been damaged by the riots. At least the window had been replaced. Though the florist was about to close, he offered Dorothy a cup of tea while his assistant plaited flowers in a ring. Some good folk hadn’t been driven out yet, Dorothy told them both, sounding her age.