The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 22

by Stephen Jones

  He sat down under the tree and found the presents he had for his wife and child. He pushed them aside, leaving them wrapped. He opened those they had given him two Christmases ago. He liked all of them. The socks. The underwear. The ties he would never wear. DVDs of movies he loved, and would watch, sitting on the couch with Buffy, who he would soon make fat.

  He sat for a long time and looked at his presents and cried.

  Using the porch light for illumination, inside the fenced-in yard, he set about putting up the decorations. Outside the fence the zombies grabbed at it, and rattled it, and tugged, but it held. It was a good fence. A damn good fence. He believed in that tediously built fence. And the zombies weren’t good climbers. They got off the ground, it was like some of whatever made them animated slid out of them in invisible floods. It was as if they gained their living dead status from the earth itself.

  It was a long job, and when he finished climbing the ladder, stapling up the lights, making sure the Santa and snowmen were in their places, he went inside and plugged it all in.

  When he came outside, the yard was lit in colours of red and blue and green. The Santa and the snowmen glowed as if they had swallowed lightning.

  Buffy stood beside him, wagging her tail as they examined the handiwork.

  Then Calvin realised something. It had grown very quiet. The fence was no longer being shaken or pulled. He turned quickly toward where the zombies stood outside the fence. They weren’t holding onto the wire anymore. They weren’t moaning. They weren’t doing anything except looking, heads lifted toward the lights.

  Out there in the shadows, the lights barely touching them with a fringe of colour, they looked like happy and surprised children.

  “They like it,” Calvin said, and looked down at Buffy.

  She looked up at him, wagging her tail.

  “Merry Christmas, dog.”

  When he glanced up, he saw a strange thing. One of the zombies, a woman, a barefoot woman wearing shorts and a T-shirt, a young woman, maybe even a nice-looking woman not so long ago, lifted her arm and pointed at the lights and smiled with dark, rotting teeth. Then there came a sound from all of them, like a contented sigh.

  “I’ll be damn,” Calvin said. “They like it.”

  He thought: I will win. I will wait them out. They will all fall apart someday soon. But tonight, they are here with us, to share the lights. They are our company. He got a beer from inside, came back out and pulled up a lawn chair and sat down. Buffy lay down beside him. He was tempted to give those poor sonofa-bitches outside the wire a few strips of jerky. Instead, he sipped his beer.

  A tear ran down his face as he yelled toward the dead.

  “Merry Christmas, you monsters. Merry Christmas to all of you, and to all a good night.”

  KIRSTYN

  McDERMOTT

  We All Fall Down

  KIRSTYN MCDERMOTT WAS BORN in Newcastle, Australia, on Halloween – an auspicious date which perhaps accounts for her life-long attraction to all things dark and mysterious.

  She has published short fiction in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies, including Aurealis, Scenes from the Second Storey, Macabre, Southerly, Island, GUD and Southern Blood.

  Her debut novel, Madigan Mine, was published by Picador Australia in 2010. Her second, Perfections, is due for release in 2012. McDermott’s work has been nominated for Bram Stoker and Australian Shadows Awards, and has been the recent recipient of Aurealis, Ditmar and Chronos Awards.

  She lives in Melbourne with her husband and fellow scribbler, Jason Nahrung.

  “I carried the bones of this story around for quite a few years before I finally stumbled upon its beating heart,” explains the author. “In my head was the image of a doll house, huge and not quite right, and a woman searching desperately for something concealed inside. But I could never work a story around it that didn’t seem twee. Doll houses, you know?

  “But then Emma and Holly appeared – trapped within their own fractured, futile relationship – and everything just, well, fell together. Beautifully. Awfully. And now I have a doll house story. Of a kind.”

  “NO WAY, NOT AGAIN you’re not,” Holly snaps, leaning forward to switch off the radio before Wham even gets past their second jitterbug. “What’s that, the hundredth time they’ve played that piece of crap song today?”

  Emma shrugs. “It’s been in the charts for weeks, I guess they have to play it.”

  “Yeah, well I don’t have to listen to it.” Pissy little voice getting pissier by the minute, and Emma keeps her eyes on the road. Cyclone Holly brewing ever since the cassette player chewed up her mix tape an hour ago, but Emma doesn’t want to fight. Not this weekend. Not their weekend.

  “Check the glove-box,” she suggests. “There should be a couple tapes in there. Velvet Underground maybe, and—”

  Holly snorts. “Fuck Lou Reed.”

  “Or we can just talk.” Another snort, served with extra derision, and Emma leaves it alone. Less than an hour and they’ll be at Buchan anyway, though with the sun already an hour past setting it’ll be too late to go up to the caves tonight. They hadn’t even left Melbourne until after four – Holly not being able to find first her boots, then her keys – and it’s ended up being a longer drive than either of them predicted while studying maps on the kitchen bench. Somehow, this is Emma’s fault, along with the Corolla’s dodgy cassette player and the fact that Holly has left her camera back at the flat. She only hopes the motel is as good as it looks in the tourist guide. Hell, clean sheets and high-pressure hot water will do. With Holly coaxed into the shower, few are the wonders a pair of soap-slicked hands cannot work.

  “What are you grinning about?”

  “Huh?” Emma shakes her head. “Nothing much, just thinking how good a hot shower’s gonna feel tonight.”

  “If they even have hot water out here. Fricken Hicksville.”

  “Hol, come on. Stop looking for problems.”

  “Don’t have to look very far, do I?”

  Emma sighs and sneaks a sideways glance at the girl in the passenger seat. Even in the post-twilight haze she can see the crease drawn deep at the corner of her mouth, the strand of long brown hair winding, unwinding and winding again round her index finger, tight enough to stop blood. Fair warnings for foul weather, and Emma feels the angry spark of tears behind her eyes. God damn it to hell, nothing ever seems to go right these days; the rift widening between them for weeks and every attempt to bridge it proving futile. Holly is falling away, faster than Emma can run to catch her, and she hasn’t the faintest idea why.

  What has she done? What hasn’t she done?

  And if the girl is planning to leave her, why doesn’t she just bloody well get it over and done with instead of scattering this daily minefield of eggshells for Emma to tiptoe over? Damn it, why doesn’t—

  “Em! Fuck!”

  She’s already seen the animal by the time Holly screams, but it’s still a fraction of a second too late and her stomach rolls as she wrenches the wheel to the left, riding the brakes as the car skids off the road and into the shoulder. Gravel crunches, sliding sharp beneath the wheels, and the kangaroo seems to almost turn in mid-air, a balletic turbo-charged leap to clear the bonnet and in its place a looming, shadow-thick shape that Emma barely registers as a telegraph pole before the car slams into it. Sickening metallic crunch louder than the blood beating in her ears, the seatbelt jerking tight against her collarbone, throwing her back against the seat with a sharp whiplash jolt, and throughout it all the flow of time slower than honey poured out on a cold winter morning.

  Beside her, Holly starts to cry.

  “Holly? Baby, are you okay?” The girl has her face in her hands, breathworn sobs hitching her shoulders in sharp, spastic rhythms, and when Emma touches her thigh she whimpers. Soft, kicked-puppy whimper and then she’s fumbling with the door handle, half-climbing, half-falling onto the road, with a wet-dark shadow on her cheek that makes Emma sick to see. Calling for the gi
rl to wait, to please just wait, as her own seatbelt refuses to unbuckle and her masochistic brain flashes up every Hollywood post-crash explosion she’s ever witnessed. Damn it, Holly, help me. Then the belt slips loose at last and she clambers out, panting in the chill night air.

  Fresh night air. No stink of leaking petrol, no greasy smell of smoke.

  Holly is standing in front of the car, what’s left of the front of the car, skinny arms crossed over her chest. The headlights are still shining, albeit askew, and Emma can see the blood on the girl’s face. Dark red smear like the worst kind of raspberry birthmark, and she swallows the panic that threatens to rise. “Holly, are you hurt? How badly are you hurt?”

  The girl shakes her head. “I’m fine.”

  “But you’re . . .” Emma limps around the car, a dull pain throbbing in her right knee. “You’re bleeding, baby. A lot.”

  Holly pushes Emma’s hand away. Sniffs and wipes at her face with the back of her wrist. “Just a bloody nose, I must have bashed it.”

  “You sure, ’cause it looks—”

  “What the fuck was that, Em?”

  “A kangaroo, I think.”

  “I know it was a kangaroo, I mean what the fuck were you doing? Why weren’t you paying attention to the road instead of . . . of . . . of whatever it was you were doing? You could have killed me, Em. Don’t you fucking realise that?”

  Emma bites her lip, reaches out, but the girl pushes her away. Hard. Pushes her away and lands a series of savage kicks on the crumpled radiator grill, as though she could hope to outdo the telegraph pole in the damage stakes. “Look. At. This. Shit.”

  “Holly, calm down.”

  “You calm down.” Crying again, her voice hoarse and broken.

  Emma says nothing, because nothing will help, just grabs the girl and pulls her close. Holly such a tiny thing, little more than skin and bone and sharp, furious elbows, and Emma holds her until she stops struggling, holds her tighter than she ever has, than she ever might again, and makes soft, soothing noises into her hair. It’s okay, she whispers when the girl finally gives up, burns out, and sags exhausted against her. It’s okay, we’re okay, we’re okay, we’re okay. Over and over and over again, until she’s no longer talking about the accident.

  Until it no longer feels like so much of a lie.

  There isn’t a clear path up the hill, not one that is lighted at least, and Emma swears loudly as she trips for the third time. Her knee is really hurting now, little darts of pain marking every step, but she isn’t about to beg for a rest break.

  “Em?” Holly’s voice falls down through the darkness. “You all right?”

  “Yeah,” she grunts. “Just tripped on something.”

  A sigh, short and sharp, edged with frustration. “Come on, almost there.”

  Which seems about right, looking up. Close enough to the house to make out the striped curtains hanging on each side of the lighted window, the shapes of furniture within. No movement inside, though, and Emma lets out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. If no one is home after all, if they’ve walked up this damn hill for nothing . . .

  “Em?”

  “Coming.” One foot in front of the other, never mind the pain, never mind the fact that they probably would have been picked up by a passing motorist by now if they’d just waited by the car. Once Holly noticed the light on the hill – Come on, Em, we can use their phone – that was that. The girl refuses to wait for anything if she can help it, if there is something she can be doing instead. Even if the alternative ends up costing more in time and effort, for Holly anything is always better than standing still.

  It’s one of the things Emma loves about her. Most of the time.

  There’s a yellowish porch light shining by the time they reach the house, so maybe someone’s heard them coming and rolled out the welcome, or maybe she just didn’t notice it before. No bell or knocker, so Holly thumps three times on the front door with the flat of her fist. Loud enough to raise the dead but there’s no response from inside the house, no footsteps or floorboard creak, and Emma opens her mouth to say something she probably shouldn’t, how Holly better be prepared to carry her back down that fucking hill now but—

  “Shhh,” Holly says, tilting her head. “Listen.”

  So Emma does. Closes her eyes and even holds her breath for a couple seconds, trying to pluck a sound from beyond the ratch-ety, rhythmic buzz of the cicadas which seem to have colonised the surrounding trees in near plague proportions, but there’s nothing. Nothing whatsoever until she opens her eyes again to see Holly with her cheek pressed close against the front door, her lips slightly parted, and even then it’s not something that she hears exactly. More like feels, or senses.

  Something standing motionless on the other side of that door, its lean-long face turned in precisely the same manner as Holly’s, with two slim inches of hardwood the only thing between them.

  Emma doesn’t think, just grabs the girl’s arm and jerks her backwards. Away from the door, away from whatever it is that’s waiting on the other side – “Let’s go, Holly!” – and she’s still tugging on her when the door swings abruptly open, and both of them shriek in sudden fright.

  All three of them, actually: Emma, Holly and the plump, middle-aged woman who stands before them with one hand on the doorjamb and the other fluttering at her throat like a pale, panic-struck bird.

  Holly is the first to recover. “Sorry, we didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “That’s all right.” The woman forces a dry, cracked chuckle which says otherwise. “Seems I scared the two of you just as badly.”

  Emma doubts that as well. The woman has lowered her hand, but her fingers still tremble at her side, and her face is ashen. It’s the face of a woman who lives alone, who has no one to come running from the back of the house should she cry out again. A woman who is already regretting the decision to open her door that night, and who might just slam it shut again at any second.

  “I’m Emma Vargus,” she says quickly. “This is my friend, Holly Davidson.” Nudging Holly with her elbow to ward off the scowl that’s already forming at her use of that word – that friend word – ’cause now is damn sure not the time for flag-waving, and for once the girl steps into line, switches gears and produces a smile that would put the sun to shame. When the woman makes no attempt to offer her own name, Emma presses on, rushing to explain about the accident and the long walk up the hill and how bloody glad, excuse her language, they are that someone was home and how much gladder they’ll be if they could just make a quick phone call to the RACV and get a tow-truck organised.

  “Or you could call for us,” she finishes. “If that’s easier.”

  “Are you hurt?” the woman asks.

  “No, I don’t think so, not really. My knee’s a bit sore and Holly had a nosebleed for a while, but I think we’re okay.” Emma grins, hopes it looks less psychotic than it feels. “I mean, we managed to walk up your hill without keeling over.”

  The woman nods – satisfied, decisive – and steps back from the doorway. “The mozzies will eat you alive if you stand out there all night.” A strange half-smile shadows her lips. “There’s no getting rid of them, once they have a taste.”

  Holly is scowling as she stalks back into the living room where Emma has been studying an unframed painting of two little girls sitting on a merry-go-round. It’s the old-fashioned kind, with prancing horses and gold-spiralled posts, and one of the children seems to be half-climbing, half-falling from her saddle as she reaches for something off-camera. The other girl clutches the hem of her friend’s bright red sundress, her mouth a round splotch of paint the colour of maraschino cherries. The execution is clumsy, the expression on the young faces ambiguous, and the rolling white eye of the closest horse gives Emma the creeps.

  “Useless!” Holly says.

  Emma turns to face her. “What did they say?”

  “Nothing, I was disconnected three times.”

  “You didn
’t get through at all?”

  “Yeah, I think I just said that,” Holly snaps.

  As though it’s Emma’s fault the damn RACV have a dodgy phone line. But then everything seems to be Emma’s fault these days.

  Behind them, the woman who finally introduced herself as Mrs Jacoby clears her throat. “If I can make a suggestion?” She is less nervous now, obviously no longer afraid that her unexpected guests might be about to slit her throat and make off with the family silver. “Why don’t you both stay the night and try again in the morning? If you still can’t reach anyone then, I can drive you into town myself.”

  Emma looks at Holly, who shrugs, noncommittal. Those two vertical frown-lines between her eyebrows have deepened, and her lips are drawn tight. It’s obvious she’s going to leave all the decision making to Emma from this point on – all the better for apportioning blame later – and anger flares hot and sudden in her guts. Fine, what-the-fuck-ever. “That’d be great, Mrs Jacoby,” she says, forcing a smile. “I mean, if it’s not putting you to too much trouble.”

  “Not at all. I always keep the spare room made up.” The woman’s gaze flicks between them as she runs a hand through her short, silvery-grey hair. “It’s a double bed; I hope you girls won’t mind sharing?”

  Emma, this time refusing Holly even the briefest of glances, barely skips a beat. “I’m sure we’ll manage.”

  Mrs Jacoby smiles – that queer, slim twist of the lips – and Emma wonders if perhaps she isn’t in on the joke after all.

  Rubbing her shower-damp hair with one of Mrs Jacoby’s fluffy green towels, Emma closes the bedroom door quietly behind her. “All yours,” she says, and then, “Jesus, Hol, you still mucking about with that thing?”

  The doll house is huge. A massive Victorian, its base covering almost the entire surface of the table upon which it has been set up, easily a metre square and maybe more, and inside there are three separate storeys, plus some extra little rooms in the attic. Holly is poking about inside these now, standing on tip-toes to lift out and examine pieces of scale replica furniture from the very back corners.