She allowed her hands to attend unerringly to her tasks, unaware of everything except the hunger that now seemed to intensify. She never understood it, and tried to appease it by eating, but it rarely went away.
Rain began to tap insistent fingernails against the plate glass. The car hops squealed and ran for cover, and since it was getting late, the manager let them go home. They laughed and chattered among themselves, then scattered into the wet night. To her they were alien creatures. She could not imagine their lives, and she couldn’t remember ever having been as young as they were. She didn’t try very hard to recall. There was a dim memory of a damp, dark, closed-in space. She stopped trying to remember and thought instead of the nice young man. Her mind spiraled out into the rainy night as though willing him to come back.
The windshield wipers worked violently against the torrent of wind-driven rain. Not even rain could cleanse the city; the stuff in the air polluted the rain, giving it a chemical smell; the water in the gutters was brown, yearning toward sewers that underlay the city in myriad dark channels. He eased the car into one of the parking stalls before the deserted drive-in. The place looked haunted with its girls departed, its neons blinked out. He thought for a moment that she hadn’t waited, then he saw the bulk of her outlined in the dim glow from a street lamp.
The rain didn’t matter to her; she walked toward him placidly as if she didn’t feel it. Her ponderous form was grotesque, draped in a wrinkled tan raincoat and her sparse hair hung around her face in limp strands. Then she was inside the car. He felt the seat go down the extremity of its springs. She brought with her the smell of wet hair, wet clothing and some other scent, not really unpleasant, not perfume. He was suddenly comfortable in her presence, as though her size was something to lean against.
“A good thing I came back for you. You’d get soaked walking home. You need someone to take care of you.” That line always appealed to them. “What’s your address?”
“415 Fenwick.”
“That’s quite a ways. Do you walk every night after dark?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d think you’d be afraid.”
“I’m not.” A statement of fact.
The car was one of the few on the rainblack street. Water was dashed across the windshield and hissed under the tires. She didn’t speak further but sat, imposing and imperturbable. It should have made him nervous, but somehow it didn’t. For all her weight she didn’t seem quite real. It was as though he might look away for a moment and look back to find her gone.
He entered her street. The buildings sagged subtly one against the other, their facades crumbling off in layers. Gaping stars in windowpanes attested to emptiness. “Have you lived in this neighborhood long?”
She stopped and tried to think. “I've lived here . . . all my life, she said, surprised to realize that it was true. White bodies writhing and the beginning of the hunger.
“The city’s funny,” he said. “You think of it as civilized, and maybe some parts of it are nice and safe, but there are back alleys, deserted buildings, cellars, perfect hiding places for—” He stopped himself, his imagination straining but not quite able to conclude something that had been clear at the beginning. He slipped his arm around her, hoping to offer reassurance, but she only looked at him in an odd way, so he removed his arm, and was glad of it. The wet raincoat had a clinging, yeasty quality. Perhaps she was one of the ugly ones who had come to terms with herself as she was. These were not vulnerable to him, but (his hunger prompted him) this one did not really have that feel.
He pulled the car into a parking space beside many other empty spaces before a building as anonymous as others along this street. The rain washed in rhythmic waves across the roof. He got out and went around to open her door. She would not run and he did not have the strength to compel her. The rain pelted them as they walked from the car to the door of her building.
A flight of stairs carpeted with a threadbare, colorless runner, squeaked, he supposed, familiarly under her weight. The staircase and hallway was dimly lit by flyspecked light fixtures of antique design. The walls displayed their many coats of paint in peeling layers, green, cream, blue, green again. Someone had scrawled obscenities in a childish hand. The hallway was littered, broken toys, bits of mold-colored organic matter.
Someone who was not what he was would have felt pity to see the squalor in which she lived, but he was pleased. That would make it easier for him.
She opened the door. The apartment seemed only a continuation of the corridor. Mildew had added subliminal designs to the cheap flower-printed wallpaper. The furniture was that predictable collection of odds and ends that inevitably ends up in a furnished room. There were no pictures, pillows, rugs or books to show that someone had even attempted to make a home here. He was discomfited. That was wrong; they all had the nesting instinct; he depended upon it. Sometimes he promised marriage first and saw the ghosts of suburban ranch houses and magazine-ad children flicker in their eyes.
“I’ll put on some dry clothes. I’ll bring you a blanket. No, don’t turn on the lights. At work my eyes get kind of tired.”
He imagined her night after night groping about the darkness like some huge blind grub in its burrow. Why wasn’t she being giggly and coy about the changing of clothes? She tossed in a blanket and he undressed and wrapped himself in it.
She came in carrying two jelly glasses with wine in them, her massiveness enhanced by a shapeless bright pink house coat with ruffles at neck and sleeves. It was old how he was surprised by her bulk each time he saw her. She sat down on the couch, causing him to slide down the slippery cushion until he was pressed against her in the hollow formed by broken springs. Her bloated face swam before him, the image in a bad dream, indistinct in the dimness. There was only the insistence of the rain against the windows. He took her hand or did she take his, and her skin was moist, faintly adhesive. She squirmed out of the robe, her body immense and white, the flesh bulging and folding upon itself. As she put her arms around him, he had the dream-like sensation of warm water lapping gently against his body. At first her largeness was comforting, a great warm wall of flesh, then he felt himself falling . . . into? it? Her body became liquescent and began to engulf him. Darkness surrounded him and when he attempted to scream, his mouth was filled and he gagged. He struggled as the corrosive acids in her body began to digest the outer layers of his skin. As she lolled back she remembered briefly the dark underground place where she had, as one pale larva among dozens, burst from the egg and how she had grown to resemble, through protective mimicry, the occupants of these structures.
By morning her body would eject those indigestible parts, the teeth, the hardest parts of the largest bones, and she would carry them down into the burrow and place them beside the several dozen eggs that she had deposited there. She lay, sated, on the sofa, what looked like a huge woman in a dainty pink house coat. She had assuaged the hunger this way before but she didn’t know how many times. It was hard for her to remember. In the morning she might even wonder what had happened to the kind young man who had driven her home.
UNDERTOW by Karl Edward Wagner
Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane, the anti-hero of heroic fantasy, is known to thousands of readers who have discovered him in such novels as Darkness Weaves, Bloodstone, and Death Angel's Shadow. Kane is a mysterious figure, powerful sorcerer, capable swordsman, shrewd soldier, and often a villain who might prove a match for Conan (a fact you might keep in mind in reading this story). Wagner has said something to the effect that Kane is drawn from the Biblical story of Cain, if only in inspiration. The story that follows is a horror story in the tradition of those marvelously flavorsome tales which Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard used to produce for Weird Tales in its hallowed heyday. It concerns Kane at his most villainously grim and demonstrates why he has become so popular, and shows also that Wagner is a writer about as skilled as anyone now writing this sort of thing.
“She was brought in not l
ong past dark,” wheezed the custodian, scuttling crab-like along the rows of silent, shrouded slabs. “The city guard found her, carried her in. Sounds like the one you’re asking about.”
He paused beside one of the waist-high stone tables, lifted its filthy sheet. A girl’s contorted face turned sightlessly upward—painted and rouged, a ghastly strumpet’s mask against the pallor of her skin. Clots of congealed blood hung like a necklace of dark rubies along the gash across her throat.
The cloaked man shook his head curtly within the shadow of his hood, and the moonfaced custodian let the sheet drop back.
“Not the one I was thinking of,” he murmured apologetically. “It gets confusing sometimes, you know, what with so many, and them coming and going all the while.” Sniffling in the cool air, he pushed his rotund bulk between the narrow aisles, careful to avoid the stained and filthy shrouds. Looming over his guide, the cloaked figure followed in silence.
Low flamed lamps cast dismal light across the necrotorium of Carsultyal. Smouldering braziers spewed fitful, heavy fumed clouds of clinging incense that merged with the darkness and the stones and the decay—its cloying sweetness more nauseous than the stench of death it embraced. Through the thick gloom echoed the monotonous drip-drip-drip of melting ice, at times chorused suggestively by some heavier splash. The municipal morgue was crowded tonight—as always. Only a few of its hundred or more slate beds stood dark and bare; the others all displayed anonymous shapes bulging beneath blotched sheets—some protruding at curious angles, as if these restless dead struggled to burst free of the coarse folds. Night now hung over Carsultyal, but within this windowless subterranean chamber it was always night. In shadow pierced only by the sickly flame of funereal lamps, the nameless dead of Carsultyal lay unmourned—waited the required interval of time for someone to claim them, else to be carted off to some unmarked communal grave beyond the city walls.
“Here, I believe,” announced the custodian. “Yes. I’ll just get a lamp.”
“Show me,” demanded a voice from within the hood.
The portly official glanced at the other uneasily. There was no aura of power, of blighted majesty about the cloaked figure that boded ill in arrogant Carsultyal, whose clustered, star-reaching towers were whispered to be overawed by cellars whose depths plunged farther still. “Light’s poor back here,” he protested, drawing back the tattered shroud.
The visitor cursed low in his throat—an inhuman sound touched less by grief than feral rage.
The face that stared at them with too wide eyes had been beautiful in life; in death it was purpled, bloated, contorted in pain. Dark blood stained the tip of her protruding tongue, and her neck seemed bent at an unnatural angle. A gown of light-colored silk was stained and disordered. She lay supine, hands clenched into tight fists at her side.
“The city guard found her?” repeated the visitor in a harsh voice.
“Yes, just after nightfall. In the park overlooking the harbor. She was hanging from a branch—there in the grove with all the white flowers every spring. Must have just happened—said her body was warm as life, though there’s a chill to the sea breeze tonight. Looks like she done it herself—climbed out on the branch, tied the noose, and jumped off. Wonder why they do it—her as pretty a young thing as I’ve ever seen brought in, and took well care of, too.”
The stranger stood in rigid silence, staring at the strangled girl.
“Will you come back in the morning to claim her, or do you want to wait upstairs?” suggested the custodian.
“I’ll take her now.”
The plump attendant fingered the gold coin his visitor had tossed him a short time before. His lips tightened in calculation. Often there appeared at the necrotorium those who wished to remove bodies clandestinely for strange and secret reasons—a circumstance which made lucrative this disagreeable office. “Can’t allow that,” he argued. “There’s laws and forms—you shouldn’t even be here at this hour. They’ll be wanting their questions answered. And there’s fees . . ."
With a snarl of inexpressible fury, the stranger turned on him. The sudden movement flung back his hood.
The caretaker for the first time saw his visitor’s eyes. He had breath for a short bleat of terror, before the dirk he did not see smashed through his heart.
Workers the next day, puzzling over the custodian’s disappearance, were shocked to discover, on examining the night’s new tenants for the necrotorium, that he had not disappeared after all.
I. Seekers in the Night
There—he heard the sound again.
Mavrsal left off his disgruntled contemplation of the near empty wine bottle, and stealthily came to his feet. The captain of the Tuab was alone in his cabin, and the hour was late. For hours the only sounds close at hand had been the slap of waves on the barnacled hull, the creek of cordage, and the dull thud of the caravel’s aged timbers against the quay. Then had come a soft footfall, a muffled fumbling among the deck gear outside his half-open door. Too loud for rats—a thief then?
Grimly Mavrsal unsheathed his heavy cutlass and caught up a lantern. He catfooted onto the deck, reflecting bitterly over his worthless crew. From cook to first mate, they had deserted his ship a few days before, angered over wages months unpaid. An unseasonable squall had forced them to jettison most of their cargo of copper ingots, and the Tuab had limped into the harbor of Carsultyal with shredded sails, a cracked mainmast, a dozen new leaks from wrenched timbers, and the rest of her worn fittings in no better shape. Instead of the expected wealth, the decimated cargo had brought in barely enough capital to cover the expense of refitting. Mavrsal argued that until refitted the Tuab was unseaworthy, and that once repairs were complete, another cargo could be found (somehow), and then wages long in arrears could be paid—with a bonus for patient loyalty. The crew cared neither for his logic nor his promises, and defected amidst stormy threats.
Had one of them returned to carry out . . .? Mavrsal hunched his thick shoulders truculently and hefted the cutlass. The master of the Tuab had never run from a brawl, much less a sneak-thief or slinking assassin.
Night skies of autumn were bright over Carsultyal, making the lantern almost unneeded. Mavrsal surveyed the soft shadows of the caravel’s deck, his brown eyes narrowed and alert beneath shaggy brows. But he heard the low sobbing almost at once, so there was no need to prowl about the deck.
He strode quickly to the mound of torn sail and rigging at the far rail. “All right, come out of that!” he rumbled, beckoning with the tip of his blade to the half-seen figure crouched against the rail. The sobbing choked into silence. Mavrsal prodded the canvas with an impatient boot. “Out of there, damn it!” he repeated.
The canvas gave a wriggle and a pair of sandled feet backed out, followed by bare legs and rounded hips that strained against the bunched fabric of her gown. Mavrsal pursed his lips thoughtfully as the girl emerged and stood before him. There were no tears in the eyes that met his gaze. The aristocratic face was defiant, although the flared nostrils and tightly pressed lips hinted that her defiance was a mask. Nervous fingers smoothed the silken gown, adjusted her cloak of dark-brown wool.
“Inside.” Mavrsal gestured with his cutlass to the lighted cabin.
“I wasn’t doing anything,” she protested.
“Looking for something to steal.”
“I’m not a thief.”
“We’ll talk inside.” He nudged her forward, and sullenly she complied.
Following her through the door, Mavrsal locked it behind him and replaced the lantern. Returning the cutlass to its scabbard, he dropped back into his chair and contemplated his discovery.
“I’m no thief,” she repeated, fidgeting with the fastenings of her cloak.
No, he decided, she probably wasn’t—not that there was much aboard a decrepit caravel like the Tuab to attract a thief. But why had she crept aboard? She was a harlot, he assumed—what other business drew a girl of her beauty alone into the night of Carsultyal's waterfront? And
she was beautiful, he noted with growing surprise. A tangle Of loosely bound red hair fell over her shoulders, framed a face whose paleskinned classic beauty was enhanced rather than flawed by a dust of freckles across her thin bridged nose. Eyes of startling green gazed at him with a defiance that seemed somehow haunted. She was tall, willowy. Before she settled the dark cloak about her shoulders, he had noted the high, conical breasts and softly rounded figure beneath the clinging gown of green silk. An emerald of good quality graced her hand, and about her neck she wore a wide collar of dark leather and red silk, from which glinted a larger emerald.
No, thought Mavrsal—again revising his judgment—she was too lovely, her garments too costly, for the quality of street tart who plied these waters. His bewilderment deepened. “Why were you on board then?” he demanded in a manner less abrupt.
Her eyes darted about the cabin. “I don’t know,” she returned.
Mavrsal grunted in vexation. “Were you trying to stow away?”
She responded with a small shrug. “I suppose so.”
The sea captain gave a snort and drew his stocky frame erect. “Then you’re a damn fool—or must think I’m one! Stow away on a battered old warrior like the Tuab, when there’s plainly no cargo to put to sea, and any eye can see the damn ship’s being refitted! Why, that ring you’re wearing would book passage to any port you’d care to see, and on a first-class vessel! And to wander these streets at this hour! Well, maybe that’s your business, and maybe you aren’t careful of your trade—but there’s scum along these waterfront dives that would slit a wench’s throat as soon as pay her! Vaul! I’ve been in port three days and four nights, and already I’ve heard talk of enough depraved murders of pretty girls like you to . . ."
The Year's Best Horror Stories 6 Page 3