Widowmakers: A Benefit Anthology of Dark Fiction

by James Newman Benefit Anthology

  He felt the sensation of many hands hoisting him into the air, carrying him away.

  Then, he felt nothing at all.

  VIII. CRO-AT-OAN

  TWO DAYS. That was how long they said he slept, in their broken English. When he finally awoke, with an old Indian chieftain who had skin as rough as dried snake hide hunching over him, he at first thought he had been dead and come back to life.

  He was injured; not fatally, but enough to make even the slightest movement excruciating. It took time for him to heal, but his saviors were patient and the compassion he saw in their eyes told him they were no savages, that they understood that there were some wounds that would never heal, no matter how much time passed. Losing Anna and his family would be a scar he would carry on his heart forever, they said. Their spirits lived on in him, now.

  He asked about the trees.

  Cro at Oan, the ancient chief said, in a hushed whisper drenched in a millennia’s worth of fear and respect.

  Ancient beast, oldest of all earth creatures, he said. Here long time before sky gods brought our people to this world, to the first garden. First father and first mother disobey sky gods. They ate of tree, then tree ate of people. Cover their nakedness with leaves to hide from tree.

  Micah asked them how the trees came to be here.

  Sky people move people from the garden, across the big sea. Our tribe left to guard Cro at Oan, to make safe the world, to give sacrifice of single body every forty seasons to stop the hunt, to make no breed. But children of first people come back across the ocean and no listen to warning. We tell them, “Stay away from the Roaming Oak,” as we call the place in your language. But like your fathers, they not listen, they not understand. They laugh and call their village “Roa-noke,” they build houses under the branches and eat of Cro at Oan fruit on the island by the sea. Then Cro at Oan awaken and eat all the first people. They breed, they come here and we follow until they rest.

  Micah asked them if the creatures could be killed.

  Skin like stone, blood like fire. Only after certain seasons pass do they feed, they move, under the big moon – unless sacrifice be made. Then they eat only sacrifice and sleep, bellies full, till certain seasons more.

  Once he was able to walk on his own, one of the scouts led Micah to an outcrop that overlooked a well-used trail. They camped there for several days, until finally a rising cloud of dust on the horizon signaled the approach of a wagon train headed west, Micah’s ticket out of the prairie and into his future.

  IX. A SACRIFICE IS REQUIRED,

  SAYETH THE LORD

  TIME DOES HEAL wounds, despite opinions to the contrary - or in Micah’s case, time at the very least thickened the scars to the point that he could no longer believe his own memories. He wasn’t even convinced he had once been part of a family traveling across the prairie. He wasn’t sure if anything he remembered happening really had happened.

  As he aged, he felt somewhat certain that during his childhood he had, in fact, eaten some sort of poisoned apple - or whatever kind of fruit it had been – but beyond that a feeling settled upon him that his other memories and recollection were nothing more than hallucinations - the whole thing, his childhood, a fairy tale. He became convinced that he had spent his entire youth lost, running around madly in a delirium, that everything before he finally became lucid again in San Francisco was but a fever dream.

  Deep down, however, his subconscious mind stewed and festered. Even after he became an old man with his life behind him, dying in California, a small part of him always wondered if his family - his beautiful Anna (who still visited him in his dreams) - were still living somewhere out on the prairie, in the little houses under the big trees.

  Eventually the lurking thought of it bothered him so much that, despite his better judgment and the certainty that he was acting out of nothing more than the dementia that came with old age, Micah found himself at a train station. He bought himself a ticket on an east-bound train. He boarded the train and, guided by nothing but instinct, he scanned the distant horizon for hours, as it crept along the tracks laid across the land.

  As soon as his eyes lit upon the ridge, he knew it was the place where his life had very nearly met its end so many years ago.

  He disembarked at the next station and hired a carriage to drive him out past the small town that had sprung up around the railroad station. Distance was hard to gauge in the wide open spaces, and Micah watched the buildings of the town thin out into nothingness. He crossed empty miles onto the open prairie, as he directed the driver towards the ridge he had recognized from the train.

  Eventually, the horses slowed to a stop in the valley that nestled in the curve of the ridgeline. He instantly recognized the houses there as those from the fever dream of his youth. They slumped on their foundations, empty and decrepit, and he felt happiness for a moment that the town nearby had chosen not to settle in this evil place.

  Micah lightly climbed the dry-rotted steps of the first house, the one he remembered from his dreams, where he had lived with the family he couldn’t possibly have had. The front door was unlocked, though he could have easily pushed it in, even at his age. The house was still furnished exactly as he remembered – it was all coming back to him now, becoming real as he searched through it. In abandoned dressers he found the dusty tattered remains of his family’s clothes.

  In the upstairs bedroom, underneath the dry-rotted mattress, now barely more than a collection of rusted springs, he found the old faded drawing of Anna he had hidden there so long ago, her piercing eyes gazing at him from the past. He brushed a hot tear aside as he looked out the window towards the orchard, and a cold fear filled his heart as he realized what he saw there. Nothing.

  The trees were gone. No stumps, no piles of decaying wood, no sign of any kind that they had ever been there. The verdant, green lawn that had once carpeted the valley below was also gone, he realized, as was the pool of clear water at the end of the valley, and the thick cesspool, too – both now dry as a bone.

  He slipped the drawing of Anna into his pocket and headed back to the waiting carriage, the thick ache of forgotten fear welling up inside of him. As he left that cursed valley he knew the nightmares of his imagined childhood were real, and that his attempt to forget what had happened here as an adult, was, in reality, the childish dream.

  The carriage bumped its way along the rough road, it headed back into town and Micah spied the tall white spire of a church piercing the sky in the center of town, framed on each side by an impossibly enormous green canopy of trees, looming above the town.

  After certain seasons pass - the words of the old Indian Chief rose up in Micah’s mind. The last great beasts of hell were well equipped to wait, he remembered, and like every living organism regardless of size, to adapt.

  He leaned over the front seat and asked the driver to head into the center of town. As the carriage rolled to a stop near a curb by the church, bathed in the cool shade of the massive trees, Micah spotted a child’s tricycle a few feet from the gargantuan trunk. It was overturned and deserted, front tire still spinning. On the ground beside the tricycle rested a single, impossibly red apple, shiny and delicious. From down the street he heard a mother’s panicked cry approaching.

  The Cro at Oan had survived. Now they stood before him, hiding in plain sight – the monsters of his childhood made flesh and blood, drawn from the faded memories of days long past and suddenly thrust into the vivid realness of now - patiently waiting to feed.

  God had cast mankind from the Garden of Eden for a reason - for their own protection - but now the garden had found man again. The ancient guardians were gone, rounded up and herded off to the reservations. There would be hell to pay for this town, without a sacrifice.

  Micah opened the carriage door and stepped onto the curb, pulling his wallet from his pocket to pay the driver. He started to pull out several bills, then thought better of it and handed over his entire wallet to the driver instead, waving aside protesta
tions.

  He walked over to the tricycle, stopping the spinning wheel gently with his shoe before reaching down to pick up the apple. As he felt the warm pulse of the fruit’s flesh in his hand, he closed his eyes and smiled.

  The Lurker

  By Gary Fry

  Gary Fry has a first-class degree and a PhD in psychology, though his first love is literature. He lives in Dracula's Whitby, literally around the corner from where Bram Stoker was staying while thinking about that legendary character. He has been writing seriously for about 10 years, despite dabbling with prose since his teens. His first sale was rather a grand one: a short story, 'Both And', to Ramsey Campbell for inclusion in the international anthology Gathering the Bones.

  Gary has had a number of books published, including short story collections, novellas and novels. His first collection included an introduction by Ramsey Campbell in which Gary was described as a "master". All these books reflect Gary's predilection for page-turning narratives, complex thematic development, and compelling characterisation.

  Gary has a deep interest in psychology and philosophy; indeed, related concerns inform his fiction. He likes to think that every facet of his thought can be strung together by reading his assorted pieces, each adding to the whole -- a 'vision', if you like, and if that doesn't sound too pretentious. But he's never been one to flinch away from ambition.

  Finally, Gary wishes to welcome all to his presence on the Web and may be contacted at gary.fry@virgin.net

  “You’d better believe it, honey.”

  That was the way Kate had responded to many questions I’d asked, her rich American accent always melting my jaded London heart. We’d regularly come on walking holidays to the Cotswolds, and Gloucester had been one of her favourite cities – a place in which she could enrich her outsider’s passion for all things historically English.

  And now there was Pam. Who wasn’t Kate, of course, because my wife was dead.

  Pam had never really been interested in outdoor pursuits, though I suppose at my age, you shouldn’t be picky. I’d met her in a supermarket, our trolleys colliding at the top of two aisles, and we’d got talking like only the bereaved did: warily and yet mindful of friends’ well-meaning platitudes about life going on. Then we’d had coffee together, then a meal, and before we knew it, we were dating.

  The weekend break in the Cotswolds had been my idea, a way of placating my doctor who’d told me to take some exercise to get my cholesterol in order. It was true that since Kate’s death I’d been neglecting my fondness for walking, so I’d put the trip to Pam one afternoon in Regent’s Park. She’d agreed, saying walking and sightseeing weren’t really her thing, but that she’d give it a go. She was fifty-six and I was nearly sixty. It wasn’t as if we had time on our side or the luxury of choice. Either we made a serious go at this . . . or we didn’t.

  We used trains and buses to get between picturesque locations, exploring idyllic villages in which time seemed to have wound backwards (and in idle moments, that was truer than I felt comfortable with, because I’d imagined Kate in my company, speaking in that fine US accent). The countryside in this area was peerless, rolling hills and farm fields stitched together by crooked walls and hedges bustling with wildlife. Escarpments like slippages in memory had left limestone layers exposed, filled with fossils not yet excavated. At one point, I remembered my late wife saying –

  “Arnold, are there many shops in Gloucester?”

  That was Pam, standing at the bus stop in the street from which I’d just strayed to take in the glorious views. I turned and replied, “Yeah, I believe so. To be honest, I’ve never really taken much notice of that. There’s a quite magnificent cathedral, though.”

  “A cathedral. Ah, right,” she said, and that was when the bus arrived, we got on, and were headed for the great city.

  It must have been about four years since I last visited Gloucester, and I was immediately struck at how different it looked. I wondered whether this was because standards in the district had slipped or because I’d committed to memory only its good aspects. This time I noticed rough places rubbing up alongside the splendid spots, noisy pubs full of yobs squeezed between fine old buildings with original features. Eventually, after steering Pam from a bank of high street stores, we reached the cathedral and entered, she motivated by my promise of a restaurant meal later this evening.

  For a building full of rich history, Pam seemed to take little interest in any of it. Not for her the tombs of ancient monarchs and bishops, nor the many century-spanning examples of sculpture. Her interests perked up a little when we entered the famous cloisters, with their arched elaborate carvings and intricate stained glass windows (she’d seen this place in films, apparently). On the final stretch, a bride was being photographed, her dress almost as elegant as her surroundings. When this woman saw us approach, she turned from the male photographer, caught Pam’s tender look in particular, and said, “Hey, I’m not getting married, you know. I’m not that foolish.”

  By this stage, with my memories stirred by the stroll around the cathedral, I was struggling to work out what was real or otherwise, but then I realised that this young woman was a model, posing for an upmarket catalogue. Nevertheless, her comment had upset me, and Pam didn’t appear too happy, either . . . though I wasn’t sure our responses to the woman’s catty remark had an identical source.

  Back outside, we paced along the river Severn, admiring disused dock storehouses converted into kitschy malls and eateries. We ate pâté and lobster while seated outside, watching youths rather more interested in each other than the rich heritage of their native environment. Pam just smiled at these embracing couples, looking occasionally at me as if remembering her own first adventures in love. I glanced away, tired and troubled.

  I was very fond of Pam, but there was . . . something in the way of our relationship. After the meal, we strayed back into the city centre, catching a street performance by a juggling clown and evading a number of tramps hoping to acquire some of my money. The architect game had certainly furnished me with plenty of that, but not a penny had helped combat the cancer that had taken Kate so quickly, so brutally . . .

  Shoving aside in my mind the hurtful past, I tried to interest Pam in a local attraction I recalled from my previous visits. This place of archaeological interest was the base of a Roman tower located at the foot of one of the city’s main shopping streets. Little more than the bottom few stones had survived the inevitable ravages of history, and a glass casement had been built over it, presumably to prevent vandals from finishing off what more nobly motivated enemies had attempted in the past.

  “Isn’t that sad,” I said to Pam, who, to her credit, had also stooped to peer into the space beneath a thick sheet of protective glass situated above the monument. Declining sunshine animated the gloom down there with twitching shadows, impossible movement.

  “Isn’t what sad?” Pam replied, as if her husband hadn’t died only years ago and she was unfamiliar with this devastating emotion.

  I tried to imagine what Kate might have said in response to my comment. You’d better believe it, honey, was one option. She’d always been so intimately in touch with the way I thought, and it grieved me to reflect on what I’d lost.

  Nevertheless, knowing little could be achieved thinking this way, I went rapidly on. “Well, this tower was presumably erected to help protect the city from intruders, and now it clearly needs protecting from its own people.”

  At that moment, a group of hooded youths came strutting along the street, shouting and laughing scornfully. This was an element of English life my late wife hadn’t cared for, and as I thought I saw something stir near the shadowy monument beneath us, I reached out an arm to reassure Pam, foolishly believing that, in the event of any trouble, I could do anything positive to protect us.

  The youths soon passed on, however, and I was able to slacken my hold on my new partner and look back inside that glass-topped chamber.

  It was as empty
as it had been earlier: as empty as my heart often felt these days.

  We walked back to our hotel, a place I’d booked online from my plush Islington office. This was an old building, three stories high, and we’d been assigned a room right at the top. For some reason, I thought this was both a good and a bad thing, as if what would keep us safe would also prevent access to something offering redemption . . . Once I’d unlocked the door, Pam rushed inside, marveling audibly over the grand four-poster, heavy curtains at a big bay window, and – perhaps most effusively of all – a flat-screen television mounted on one wall. She activated the TV and watched some light entertainment show while unpacking the few items of clothing she’d brought along in her backpack.

  We’d both been wearing walking gear, and after a long shower, during which I pinched the ache from my eyes with taut fingertips, I returned to find Pam dressed in her nightgown, a breeze from the dark outside blowing up the curtains with spectral restlessness.

  “Feel better now?” she asked, blinking in the way she had whenever she was apprehensive. In truth, I found this an endearing characteristic, which drew out my protective nature.

  At the time, however, I was still a little fraught, all the events of the day – the things the Cotswolds had done to my vulnerable mind – undiminished by the hot assault of water. “Better?” I asked, and knew I was being deliberately evasive. “Better than what, exactly?”

  “Well,” she replied, and lowered the volume of the TV, which was now broadcasting some inane situation comedy, “better than you’ve been all day.”

  “And how’s that, then?”

  “Grumpy is how I’d describe it.”

  “Nonsense, Pam,” I said, lying in my dressing gown beside her on the bed. “I’ve just been . . . tired lately, that’s all. Pressure of work, you know. That big job for the council.”