The Year's Best Horror Stories 15

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  Then I consider another way out, and wonder how long it would take me to catch up with her; how many pieces I have.

  I never cried much before. Now the tears unload at the least provocation. It’s sloppy, and messy, and unprofessional, and I hate it. It makes Nicole stare at me the way the street bum did, like I’ve tipped over into psycholand.

  When she makes her rounds to fill my cup, she watches me. The wariness in her eyes is new. She sees my notice dip from her eyes to her sumptuous chest and back, in a guilty but unalterable ritual. I force a smile for her, gamely, but it stays pasted across my face a beat too long, insisting too urgently that everything is okay. She doesn’t ask. I wave my unbroken hand over my cup to indicate no more, and Nicole tilts her head with a queer, new expression—as though this white boy is trying to trick her. But she knows better. She always has.

  IN THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN by Brad Strickland

  Born in New Holland, Georgia on October 27, 1947, Brad Strickland says that he’s just a “small-town kid still trying to make good.” Strickland holds a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia, and he and his family now reside in Oakwood, Georgia; he teaches English at both high school and college levels.

  Brad Strickland’s short fiction has appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction, Amazing, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. His first novel, To Stand Beneath the Sun (science fiction) was published last year by Signet; the same publisher brought out his fantasy novel, Moon Dreams, this year. Strickland’s next book will be “a horror novel set in North (NOT “Northern.” Only Yankees say “Northern”) Georgia. This is called ShadowShow and marks a return of sorts—my first story was a horror piece set in North Georgia.”

  Charles was unmistakably in the country of dreams. He stood alone in a shallow, bowl-like valley, scooped from fine-grained, silvery sand. Here and there boulders interrupted the gently curved surface, boulders that were themselves smooth and golden, like polished statues of sleeping elephants.

  Charles’ own body seemed indistinct. He could not say whether he wore a suit, shirt and trousers, or nothing at all. Otherwise his senses registered nothing unusual. The air smelled like air. When he stooped and thrust his hand into the sand, it was silky and cool to the touch. It tasted of nothing. Standing with head bowed, as if intent on prayer or thought, he heard no sound. And as for vision, except for the bowl-shaped valley and the boulders, all he could see was the sky, domed like a lid badly put into place over him, a luminescent mother-of-pearl gray all around the horizon’s edge, darkening in the concavity overhead to a red-purple, reminding him of the color of a bruise.

  I am dreaming, Charles thought suddenly. How strange, to be dreaming, and to be aware that he was dreaming! As strange, he suspected, as to be fully awake and to be aware that one was fully awake. The notion struck him as in some sense profound, and to himself, he thought, That is something I must remember. I must hold on to that idea for the time when I awake.

  “Excuse me.” In that silence the voice boomed loud as an earthquake, startling as summer thunder. “Excuse me. I am dreaming of you, I know, but I don’t know you.”

  Charles turned. The speaker had just come from behind one of the boulders. He was a man about Charles’ age—thirty-one—but shorter, much darker of hair and eye, and more muscular. Oddly, Charles had less trouble seeing the stranger than he had seeing himself: the man wore tan trousers, no shirt, no shoes. Heat glistened in the perspiration underlying the dark mat of chest hair. “That’s odd,” Charles said. “I am dreaming you, and you believe yourself to be dreaming me. How very odd.”

  The other man had a one-sided smile, a quarter inch higher on the left side of his face than his right. “You’re wrong. I am dreaming you. Don’t confuse yourself by imagining you really exist.”

  Charles laughed. “Certainly I exist. I have a name and address. I am Charles Dayton, and I live on Revere Drive in Somerville. My students at the university would be very surprised to find that I don’t exist. Maybe not unhappy, but definitely surprised.”

  The stranger shook his head, still smiling his onesided smile. “I don’t know how I came to dream of a teacher from Somerville. I don’t even know where that is—if there is such a place. But I know I exist. I’m Paul Dupont. I’m a trial lawyer. And I live in Sierra Heights, outside of Santa Rosita, with my wife.”

  “I’ve got a wife, too,” Charles blurted, feeling obscurely as if the other had scored a point. “Now look, I never dream of strangers. Always people I know, or sort of odd conglomerations of people I know. I don’t know you—and I don’t believe there’s even a place named Santa Rosita.”

  Paul looked annoyed. “Come to think of it, I’ve never dreamed up a stranger, either. Not one with a phony name and address, anyhow. But there’s always a first time.”

  “What am I wearing?” Charles asked.

  Paul frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Come on,” Charles said. “You call yourself a lawyer—you’re supposed to have some intelligence, aren’t you? Just tell me what you see. How am I dressed?”

  “You’re barefoot. You have on some white shorts; tennis shorts, I guess. That’s all. So what?”

  “What are you wearing?” Charles asked.

  Paul frowned down at himself. “Something’s keeping me from seeing it. I guess I haven’t dreamed that part yet.”

  “You’re not dreaming at all. Get it through your head that you’re the imaginary one. I am real, and my home and family are real. There’s no Paul, no wife, no Santa Rosita.”

  “Nonsense!” The lawyer paced back and forth on the silver sand, his head down. Then he paused and gazed sidelong at Charles. “Is it not true that you never know when you’re dreaming?”

  “No. I know I’m dreaming now.”

  “Have you ever done it before? Known you were dreaming while you were dreaming?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  Paul turned to face Charles. “Then you would say that it’s unusual for you to be aware of your own dreams, while you are actually dreaming?”

  “Very unusual,” Charles agreed, amused at how much like a real lawyer his imaginary lawyer sounded.

  Paul’s voice rang with triumph: “Then that indicates, wouldn’t you say, that the probability is that you are not dreaming now—because you cannot dream, you are just a figment of my imagination?”

  “That’s idiotic. Look, Paul whatever-your-name-is, you may think you’re real, but that’s only because I dreamed you so well. I gave you the illusion of reality so strongly that you believe in yourself.”

  Paul wouldn’t give up. “But isn’t it at least as likely that I have given you the illusion of reality? That I have dreamed you so well that you believe you exist, when in fact you do not?” He stooped suddenly, snatched a handful of sand, and flung it at Charles.

  Charles spun, lifting his arm to ward off the stinging particles. They hit forearm, shoulder, neck, but missed his eyes. “Hey!”

  “Funny,” Paul said. “I thought it’d go right through you. Maybe I ought to try a rock.”

  Charles rubbed a hand across his face and held up a dripping palm. “Look at that. I suppose you think that isn’t real?”

  “Imaginary sweat,” scoffed Paul. “You fool. Even if you were right, you’d still be dreaming it, so even then it wouldn’t be real. And if I dreamed of something as unpleasant as you, I could certainly dream of sweat.”

  Charles stalked over to Paul. He came so close he could feel the exhaled breath of the other man stirring the air, could hear the faint rush of it through the other’s nose and sinuses. “See if this seems real,” he said, and hit the other man in the mouth.

  Paul reeled back, blood spurting from a cut lip. He shook his head, scattering drops that made pear-shaped red spatters on the sand, and then lunged head down at Charles. The two rolled over in the silver sand, and though Charles strained muscle and sinew, it was no use. They were too evenly matched and too inexper
t for either to get a temporary advantage.

  Charles’ breath burned hot and harsh when at last both of them rested on hands and knees, a yard away from each other. Both were panting, sweating, and bleeding. “This is nonsense,” Paul said. “Soon I’ll wake up, and you will be gone.”

  “I agree,” Charles said. “Except I’ll wake up, and you will vanish.”

  “Then all we have to do is wait.” Paul pushed up, grimacing as if weary and in pain. He backed away and sat on one of the golden boulders. His shoulders bowed and his chest heaved.

  Charles sank onto another stone. He felt every ache in his muscles, every rip in his skin, every drop of sweat that crawled like a warm little snail down his face. I am real, Charles thought. I will wake up, and it will all be as it has been before. He will vanish. He looked into the other’s haunted eyes. He really believes that he is the dreamer, Charles thought. He really does—just as I do. Panic fluttered light butterfly wings in his belly. What if he is right? Charles wondered for the first time.

  Almost simultaneously, he read the exact thought in the other’s eyes.

  Exhausted, helpless beneath the bruised dome of the dreamed sky, the two sat staring at one another, hating one another, and waiting out the hour before dawn.

  Waking came quickly, with an outrush of breath. He looked up at the familiar white ceiling. From the corner of his left eye, he could see the night table where he had carelessly thrown his trousers last night. Through the open bedroom door came kitchen sounds and smells. Meg making Monday’s breakfast for the two of them.

  He had not wept in ages, but he did now. He closed his eyes. “God,” he said. “What did I do to deserve that?” Then he laughed silently, his chest bucking beneath the sheet.

  “You awake?” Meg called.

  He did not trust himself to speak.

  After a moment she called again, closer, louder, “Honey, wake up. Time to get going. You have to be in court at nine.”

  He frowned. “Court? What in hell do you mean?”

  A strange woman stood in the doorway. “Paul, get up. What’s got into you this morning?”

  Open-mouthed, she backed into the hallway as the man in the bed held out his dark-skinned arms, studied his compact hands, and started to scream.

  NECROS by Brian Lumley

  Brian Lumley is another stalwart from the early volumes of The Year’s Best Horror Stories who returns to the series after too long an absence. Chalk it up to a recent series of successful horror novels and an excursion into heroic fantasy which have reduced his output of horror stories. Born in Horden, Durham on December 2, 1937, Lumley initially made his mark as an indefatigable writer of Lovecraftian horror fiction with such books as The Caller of the Black, The Burrowers Beneath, Beneath the Moors, The Transition of Titus Crow, and The Horror at Oakdene. It has been pointed out that Lumley was born some nine months after Lovecraft’s death.

  Trained as a sawyer, Brian Lumley joined the army at age 21 and served 22 years in Berlin and Cyprus among other postings. Since retiring from the army six years ago, he has devoted himself full time to writing. Two years ago he moved to a Devon fishing village, where he has recently finished Necroscope II, a horror novel that makes about his twenty-fifth book. Lumley is an avid swimmer and spear-fisher and is fond of seafood in all its most wriggly forms. So much for the Lovecraft connection.

  I

  An old woman in a faded blue frock and black head-square paused in the shade of Mario’s awning and nodded good-day. She smiled a gap-toothed smile. A bulky, slouch-shouldered youth in jeans and a stained yellow T-shirt—a slope-headed idiot, probably her grandson—held her hand, drooling vacantly and fidgeting beside her.

  Mario nodded good-naturedly, smiled, wrapped a piece of stale fucaccia in greaseproof paper and came from behind the bar to give it to her. She clasped his hand, thanked him, turned to go.

  Her attention was suddenly arrested by something she saw across the road. She started, cursed vividly, harshly, and despite my meager knowledge of Italian I picked up something of the hatred in her tone. “Devil’s spawn!” She said it again. “Dog! Swine!” She pointed a shaking hand and finger, said yet again: “Devil’s spawn!” before making the two-fingered, double-handed stabbing sign with which the Italians ward off evil. To do this it was first necessary that she drop her salted bread, which the idiot youth at once snatched up.

  Then, still mouthing low, guttural imprecations, dragging the shuffling, fucaccia-munching cretin behind her, she hurried off along the street and disappeared into an alley. One word that she had repeated over and over again stayed in my mind: “Necros! Necros!” Though the word was new to me, I took it for a curse-word. The accent she put on it had been poisonous.

  I sipped at my Negroni, remained seated at the small circular table beneath Mario’s awning and stared at the object of the crone’s distaste. It was a motorcar, a white convertible Rover and this year’s model, inching slowly forward in a stream of holiday traffic. And it was worth looking at it only for the girl behind the wheel. The little man in the floppy white hat beside her—well, he was something else, too. But she was—just something else.

  I caught just a glimpse, sufficient to feel stunned. That was good. I had thought it was something I could never know again: that feeling a man gets looking at a beautiful girl. Not after Linda. And yet—

  She was young, say twenty-four or -five, some three or four years my junior. She sat tall at the wheel, slim, raven-haired under a white, wide-brimmed summer hat which just missed matching that of her companion, with a complexion cool and creamy enough to pour over peaches. I stood up—yes, to get a better look—and right then the traffic came to a momentary standstill. At that moment, too, she turned her head and looked at me. And if the profile had stunned me ... well, the full frontal knocked me dead. The girl was simply, classically, beautiful.

  Her eyes were of a dark green but very bright, slightly tilted and perfectly oval under straight, thin brows. Her cheeks were high, her lips a red Cupid’s bow, her neck long and white against the glowing yellow of her blouse. And her smile—

  —Oh, yes, she smiled.

  Her glance, at first cool, became curious in a moment, then a little angry, until finally, seeing my confusion—that smile. And as she turned her attention back to the road and followed the stream of traffic out of sight, I saw a blush of color spreading on the creamy surface of her cheek. Then she was gone.

  Then, too, I remembered the little man who sat beside her. Actually, I hadn’t seen a great deal of him, but what I had seen had given me the creeps. He too had turned his head to stare at me, leaving in my mind’s eye an impression of beady bird eyes, sharp and intelligent in the shade of his hat. He had stared at me for only a moment, and then his head had slowly turned away; but even when he no longer looked at me, when he stared straight ahead, it seemed to me I could feel those raven’s eyes upon me, and that a query had been written in them.

  I believed I could understand it, that look. He must have seen a good many young men staring at him like that—or rather, at the girl. His look had been a threat in answer to my threat—and because he was practiced in it

  I had certainly felt the more threatened!

  I turned to Mario, whose English was excellent. “She has something against expensive cars and rich people?”

  “Who?” he busied himself behind his bar.

  “The old lady, the woman with the idiot boy.”

  “Ah!” he nodded. “Mainly against the little man, I suspect.”

  “Oh?”

  “You want another Negroni?”

  “OK—and one for yourself—but tell me about this other thing, won’t you?”

  “If you like—but you’re only interested in the girl, yes?” He grinned.

  I shrugged. “She’s a good-looker ...”

  “Yes, I saw her.” Now he shrugged. “That other thing—just old myths and legends, that’s all. Like your English Dracula, eh?”

  “Transylvanian Dracu
la,” I corrected him.

  “Whatever you like. And Necros: that’s the name of the spook, see?”

  “Necros is the name of a vampire?”

  “A spook, yes.”

  “And this is a real legend? I mean, historical?”

  He made a fifty-fifty face, his hands palms-up. “Local, I guess. Ligurian. I remember it from when I was a kid. If I was bad, old Necros sure to come and get me. Today,” again the shrug, “it’s forgotten.”

  “Like the bogeyman,” I nodded.

  “Eh?”

  “Nothing. But why did the old girl go on like that?”

  Again he shrugged. “Maybe she think that old man Necros, eh? She crazy, you know? Very backward. The whole family.”

  I was still interested. “How does the legend go?”

  “The spook takes the life out of you. You grow old, spook grows young. It’s a bargain you make: he gives you something you want, gets what he wants. What he wants is your youth. Except he uses it up quick and needs more. All the time, more youth.”

  “What kind of bargain is that?” I asked. “What does the victim get out of it?”

  “Gets what he wants,” said Mario, his brown face cracking into another grin. “In your case the girl, eh? If the little man was Necros ...”

  He got on with his work and I sat there sipping my Negroni. End of conversation. I thought no more about it—until later.

  II

  Of course, I should have been in Italy with Linda, but ... I had kept her “Dear John” for a fortnight before shredding it, getting mindlessly drunk and starting in on the process of forgetting. That had been a month ago. The holiday had already been booked and I wasn’t about to miss out on my trip to the sun. And so I had come out on my own. It was hot, the swimming was good, life was easy and the food superb. With just two days left to enjoy it, I told myself it hadn’t been bad. But it would have been better with Linda.