A Collapse of Horses
Page 22
He rode behind the other man, wondering about the shape on the side of the other horse. And then all at once it came to him. It was like the shapes he had made as a child when he lay down on the ground after a snowstorm, moving his arms and legs back and forth to clear the snow away. A snow angel, he thought. And then thought, no: a blood angel.
And only once he had thought this could he admit to himself the other man must be dead. But since the dead man himself did not know, that was where the trouble started. He watched the way the blood had run around the belly of the horse and begun to drip down, Nils said, and smiled in a way that showed his teeth. It slowly drizzled a path in the dirt—
But at this point, Karsten bolted into the night and kept running until he ran face-first into a tree.
When he awoke, he was back before the fire, the flames very low. Nils was there with him now, on the same side, kneeling over him but not touching him. Karsten wanted to push him away, but was afraid to. Besides, he wasn’t sure he could move.
“There you are,” said Nils.
Karsten tried to open his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He tried to turn his head, but it didn’t turn. Nils was peering at him, smiling slightly. And then Nils leaned in close to him, almost touching his lips, and drew in a deep breath.
When he straightened up and Karsten could see his face again, he looked different, not quite like himself.
He leaned in again, and this time did touch Karsten’s lips, and drew the breath out of him. When he raised his head again, he was different still. It was as if Karsten was looking into a mirror.
No, said Karsten, but no sound came out.
“Shall I finish my story?” the face looming over him asked in a new voice, in the voice it had stolen. “In a way, it’s the least I could do.”
He stayed there hunched over Karsten, waiting for an answer. When no answer came, he smiled and nodded. Then, making that same soft hissing sound, he leaned in.
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Praised by Peter Straub for going “furthest out on the sheerest, least sheltered narrative precipice,” Brian Evenson is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes and has been a finalist for the Edgar Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He is also the winner of the International Horror Guild Award and the American Library Association’s award for Best Horror Novel, and his work has been named in Time Out New York’s top books.
A Collapse of Horses was designed by Bookmobile Design & Digital Publisher Services.
The text has been set in Adobe Caslon Pro, a typeface drawn by Carol Twombly in 1989 and based on the work of William Caslon (c. 1692–1766), an English engraver, punchcutter, and typefounder.