Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 2

by Nathan Ballingrud

He grasps the horizontal bars. A puff of air in each eye. The beam of a torch and then the test card appears in the wall mirror. One lens is exchanged for another until the letters start to clarify. He reads the top two lines only. A change, much sharper now, AXO TVH and then—quite clearly—SEX.

  *

  The woman who gets off the bus dresses with an eloquent simplicity unusual for the area. Her skirt and blouse are a vibrant blue. In the midst of shoppers in shades of milk chocolate, grey and mouse-brown she has the electric plumage of an American jay in a garden of house sparrows. She was seen in the lobbies of Parisian hotels. If it were not for her tinted glasses, we might recognize the eyes that once stared at us from the back covers of magazines (Vogue, Tatler). Her blonde hair touches her shoulders and is cut straight across her forehead. And she wears a loose silk scarf (perhaps Jaeger or Hermes) with a blue and yellow pattern. Her shoulder bag has the sheen of soft Italian leather bought in Milan.

  She walks quickly, ignoring the outstretched hand of the beggar in khaki trousers (army surplus) squatting on a rug outside the supermarket. At first she appears to be heading past the pawnbrokers, the snooker hall and the curry house towards the patisserie on the corner, with its display of baked bread in the window, its coffee shop and small courtyard garden: the one place redolent of France in a suburb of chain shops, halal butchers, convenience stores, moneylenders, estate agents and one laundrette that smells of hot metal, washing powder and Saharan-dry heat. But without pausing to look at the baskets filled with almond croissants and pain-au-chocolat, she makes her way past the chairs on the pavement. One man looks up from his newspaper and knows in an instant the damage done to the perfectly symmetrical features: the hairline cracks beneath the repaired porcelain skin, the brittle lips that threaten breakdown and grief. And then she turns down a side street.

  Now that she is away from the crowds, her pace slows, and once she halts and rummages in her shoulder bag. Beneath her dress is a slim white body that appeared naked in a film made in Paris. An art house movie directed by her uncle. Every night and every morning when she steps into the shower, she returns to a scene in the film when she showered with a camera on her side of the curtain. But now she is thinking of a building with a flat roof and three shops, a florist’s that sells red flowers only on Tuesdays, an empty room that was formerly filled with brochures for holidays abroad, and an optician’s. She knows that if she maintains her pace she will reach her destination in under two minutes. As she is moving more slowly, it is easier to see the streaks of silver in her blonde hair. But there is no one else in the street to observe this. In spite of the heat, the thick green foliage of the trees lining the pavement suggests the dampness of the winter months has yet to be entirely dissipated. The refuse is to be collected today and the front gate of every house has at least one squat black sentry with a topknot on guard next to a wheelie-bin.

  She catches sight of the yellow skip and the pile of pink bricks ahead of her and knows there’s not much further to go; and indeed it is not long before she opens the door of the optician’s (the bell gives its priestly tinkle) and walks over to the reception desk. Although there is no one there, a spectacle case, with a rubber band wrapped around it, is waiting for her. This she slips into her shoulder bag and turns to leave. But before she reaches the front door she hears the sound of someone moving around heavily in the treatment room. She looks at the skeletal frames on display in the racks, the uncomfortable straight-backed chair and the side-table that has no magazines on it. Perhaps she should tell someone that she has collected the glasses. The noise in the treatment room stops. Which would be worse, she wonders: opening the door and seeing no one or finding somebody there?

  *

  Even objects he knows to be hard-edged are indistinct. The hotel staff, from Poland, Lithuania and the Tamil-speaking tip of southern India, hover as they walk, their white-sleeved arms blurred like the wings of hummingbirds. The auteur can’t read his newspaper, which lies folded on his lap. He is waiting in a fudge-coloured leather armchair in the residents’ lounge. His niece has agreed to fetch his glasses (he is shaky, a delayed reaction to his fall) from the optician’s and then meet him for lunch. What troubles him most is that he remembers neither the second half of his eye examination nor choosing his frames—or his return to the Acme Hotel. His first recollection is waking in the middle of the night and knowing he has been dreaming about the alphabet: black letters, like those on the treatment chart, swirling in a space as white as snow.

  At first light, he wakes up, with a sentence half-formed on his tongue.

  A message has been left at the reception desk. His new glasses are ready for collection. Has he already paid the optician? He cannot remember having done so. But now the swing doors of the residents’ lounge open and a figure in a blue dress advances (even in the soft world there is a familiarity about her flowing movements) towards him.

  He rises and they kiss. (A perfume he doesn’t recognize).

  “Have you got my…”

  “Yes, they are here.”

  He takes his spectacles and puts them on. The residents’ lounge takes a pace sideways. He sees the silvery wires in his niece’s blonde hair, scuffed leather on the arms of the sofa; the pattern on the carpet sets in sharply delineated surroundings.

  “Do I owe you anything?”

  “I don’t think so. There was no one there to pay, but since there wasn’t a bill I assume you must have paid already. Can’t you remember?”

  “I’ve told you—it’s all a bit hazy.”

  As they walk towards the dining room, he remembers the scene in the waterfall: his eighteen-year-old son naked with his niece, the patches of glistening light on their slippery flesh, the sun picking out streaks of lemon and ash in their hair. Their dancing steps in the brilliant white water foaming about their feet. That was the first of his films to be shot in colour. It had something of the freedom of the times, he thought. But later, when his reputation declined, the critics claimed there were scenes that marked his transition from film-maker to pornographer. Such snobs! Why was it that black-and-white had this curious kudos? And as for those people who couldn’t distinguish simplicity of vision and candour from pornography…

  The maitre d’ fussing with the chairs. Two enormous menus and a wine list. Would they like a bread and jug of iced water? Olives, perhaps?

  “And so he’s refusing to meet up tomorrow?” the auteur asks.

  “I wouldn’t put like that. It’s simply not possible. He has other engagements.”

  “Ah, I see he’s punishing me for not turning up yesterday. Didn’t you explain to him how badly I was shaken? Since I’ve come all the way from Paris to meet him, I want to be on reasonable form.”

  “He’s not trying to punish anyone. And he’s had to fly from America.”

  The auteur remembers the ten-year-old who lurked outside his study when he was trying write. Always a creak of the floorboards or a tentative knock at the door just when the words had begun to flow. Of course, it was understandable. So much time had to be spent away, on location or talking to potential backers. And of course, the boy loathed his boarding school.

  “Well, tell him it’s absolutely necessary that we meet as soon as possible. I’ve urgent business in France, but it’s unthinkable that I should leave without seeing him. Especially as he won’t even agree to speak on the phone.”

  “He’s every bit as keen to meet up as you are. He wants an explanation.”

  A summer afternoon years ago. And a creeping about on the landing outside the study. A deadline for a script and no ideas. What did the child want now? He was good-looking boy in a slightly pale way. Delicate features and enormous blue eyes, but with a sort of shivery sensitivity that was irritating, like a pedigree dog that had been badly inbred. The auteur gave up and they went to the shops and bought comics (Beano, The Dandy) and ice creams.

  They were in the garage when it happened. The boy had both feet on the floor and one arm trailing slightly
behind him when the auteur slammed the door shut. A scream, the fine lines of a face crumpling, jets of tears. The auteur opened the door, took the boy’s hand in his: a half moon of hanging flesh, the beginning of the blood grin on a middle finger that would have to be ice-packed and bandaged.

  Even now the auteur is not sure whether he did it deliberately.

  “An explanation for what? In the circumstances, I’d say that we are the ones who are owed explanations, don’t you think?”

  “Have you chosen?”

  He lifts up the menu, but it’s a blur. The glasses aren’t bifocals.

  *

  The lunch and the wine have made her drowsy. She is not used to being the object of hospitality in the middle of the day. And now it is well past four o’clock and none of the small tasks (the payment of a bill, the visit to the dry cleaners) she set herself have been accomplished. She knows that if she were to change out of her blue dress and shower, or even make herself a cup of tea (fragrant, lemony), she would revive, but she is listless, heavy with the inertia of late afternoon. There are four more days left before she is due to return to the office. Although spending her holiday in the city where she works has had the virtue of economy, she regrets the loss of the two weeks on a Greek island that she had planned.

  There is a small patio with plants in terracotta pots and garden furniture bleached by the sun. She pours herself a glass of iced water from the fridge and goes outside.

  If she takes her shoes off, she knows the warmth of the flagstones will remind her of the summer she was an actress. The year she was in a film written and directed by her uncle. She remembers the scene, shot from behind, in which she and her cousin are standing on the fringe of the beach: dunes and marram grass beside them, and beyond the full length of the bay at low tide. The sugar-sparkle of white sand. The sheen darkest where the tide last reached. They wriggled out of their clothes. Her cousin was naked first and for a moment he stood beside her. The viewer knew from the angle of his head that he was looking down at her. Waiting for the moment when she too was naked and they would run off together, their footprints the first of the day, the dents almost invisible at first, then slowly darkening until the first wave came dazzling across the breadth of the beach.

  What the film will never remember was how the fine the sand was, silkily running through her toes. The first shock of the wave, unexpectedly cold on such a hot day. And later the taste of salt on her cousin’s skin.

  They were often mistaken for brother and sister. To be close seemed natural.

  She sips the water. The sunlight falls on the bench opposite her and the dark shadows of the slats paint the flagstones. At the western edge of the city the evening is gathering melancholy light.

  She was just that much older than him, and so it was that she went to his room. The moonlight shone through the blinds, striping his blanket with silver. Then she was with him, skin to skin, both loving as if untarnished.

  Later they were told, after the anger, shame and embarrassment subsided, that the children of such close unions are frequently, and quite naturally, stillborn.

  *

  At dusk there is a hint of pink in the red brick of the Victorian villas. The trees in the front garden darken and hover, as if about to float towards nightfall. There is no traffic and the auteur is conscious of how his every step rings clearly in the street. Yellow-gold light drenches the lace curtains in front windows. A small wooden summer house is mysterious as a shrine. Then, sooner than expected, he is there. At twilight, the white building looks almost nautical. He would not be surprised to see a funnel appear on the flat roof. Although the florist has closed, the shutters have not been drawn. The auteur can see white flowers pressing against the window pane as if they are the trapped ghosts of seabirds longing for flight.

  His appointment with the optician is inconvenient, but tomorrow he is due to fly back to Paris for a meeting on La Rive Gauche after he has had lunch with his son. Now that he is no longer rich he can’t afford to turn down the optician’s offer to replace the lenses without further charge. Contacting him to make this arrangement has not been easy. He’d phoned repeatedly from the Acme Hotel and had no answer. It was late afternoon (past 5 o’clock) before he finally managed to speak to the optician’s assistant (her voice distant, muffled, possibly foreign) and he’d had to ask her to repeat what she said several times. But when at last he’d explained his predicament in sufficient detail, she told him that since the optician was working late she would find him an appointment, provided he was prepared to come after eight o’clock.

  He is one minute early. Although the front of the shop is in darkness, a cord of light is visible, shining from under the door of the treatment room. He presses a button and waits, but there’s no sign anyone is prepared to come out to greet him, although he can hear a ringing. He turns the handle and slips inside: the sound of the bell (a memory of kneeling to pray). At once the door of the treatment room swings open, as if its release has been triggered by his action.

  An empty chair held in a cone of light.

  “Please go in and take a seat. I’ll join you in a minute.”

  The voice comes from right behind him. Yet this is hardly possible since the auteur has taken no more than a couple of steps into the room. Either the man must have been pressing himself against the inside wall or he has followed him in soundlessly. The auteur begins to turns round and then stops. What if there is no one there? The front door shuts with a sharp click.

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me at this late hour,” says the auteur, making his way towards the chair.’

  “Not at all, not at all.” The voice is soft, difficult to place.

  And now he’s in the chair, hands from behind him move the head and chin rests into place. Something is being attached to the top of his skull. He can’t remember this happening before.

  “What’s that?”

  “Just a metal cap. Something of my own devising. I use it when I want to make absolutely sure that the head stays completely still. Look upwards and left. And now you’ll just feel a puff of air…”

  “Are we going to go through the whole thing again? Surely you must have most of the information already.”

  “Unfortunately my colleague did not keep the notes from your last appointment. No doubt he thought that because you live abroad they would not be needed again.”

  “And so you’re not the optician I saw last time?”

  The man laughs lightly, as if acknowledging a whimsical remark made by a small child.

  “I assure you I will accept no fee for this appointment.”

  A test card appears in the mirror; the letters are twigs blurred beneath ice. Lenses change in quick succession until the top two rows sharpen. And then quite plainly, on the third line from the bottom…L O V E.

  “Love! It said ‘sex’ the other day. That’s not usual, is it? I mean the letters don’t normally spell anything?”

  “I’ll change the card.”

  Once again, the auteur begins to read from the top. Everything is much clearer now. He is even able to make out the second to last line without too much difficulty:

  “D…A…no, E…A …T …Sex, Love & Death. That’s the title of one of my films! What’s going on here?”

  The test card vanishes. He can hear a faint rustling as the optician comes round to the front of the chair. The auteur tries to raise his head so he can see the man’s face, but even the slightest movement is impossible. A white shirt and the bottom of a tie come into view.

  “I hope my glasses will be ready by tomorrow. Half-past eleven at the latest. I have an urgent meeting with my son before I fly back to Paris. At six in the evening.”

  How pressing is an engagement with a son who has been dead for thirty years? A son, briefly famous as the co-star of Desir, l’amour et la mort, who was supposed have taken his life in the state of Illinois nine months after he had made it plain that he would never speak to his father again. The auteur still has the p
rivate detective’s report in the bottom drawer of an escritoire in Paris. But now his niece has been saying that this was all lies: his son had bribed the detective.

  “You can be quite sure that everything will be arranged. Now can you see my middle finger?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me what you notice as I move it slowly towards you.”

  “There’s no nail facing me and the remaining three fingers and the thumb have been tucked into the palm of…”

  A silver crescent in the flesh, an old wound’s emblem.

  “I think I’ll leave now, if you don’t mind.”

  “If you could stay for a little longer, I’d be grateful. There are a few things I may need to attend to.”

  The man has moved round to the back of the chair. A cabinet rolling open followed by the reassuringly professional rustle of paper. The auteur sighs and tries to relax. To panic would be unbecoming. Even at the most difficult times on set, he always remained utterly unruffled. The scar could be anybody’s scar. As a writer he should know how the alert mind is always ready to find hidden words, however the alphabet is presented. And anyway his film had a French title.

  But now there is no sound from behind him. Although he has not heard the creak of the door, he knows the man is no longer in the room. Indeed, he can hear noises coming from the reception area. Furniture is being shifted. He is quite sure the display stands and the uncomfortable chairs are being manoeuvred onto the street. Voices; bottles are being opened. The murmur sounds civilized. Like the opening of an exhibition or a book launch. Then, very faintly, there’s a series of gentle chinks. At first he thinks it’s merely celebratory: glass glancing convivial glass. But soon the chink changes to a clink and a scrape. Then another clink and scrape. Something is being built. He remembers the bricks and the skip outside. He begins to struggle, and shout and scream, but he is being held fast in the treatment chair. He has never heard himself beg before.