The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2003, Volume 14

by Stephen Jones

  So there we were. The first thing that I noticed on entering the church, up on the empty balcony above our heads, was the nondescript man with his tripod and camera. Once we were in our seats, I looked around for the other three.

  And there they were. The boy was in the middle. Slumped, glowering. He was the one I felt sorry for. He looked like the normal one in the family and I could imagine his patience being tested to near-destruction by a day like this. It must have been Boy Hell, having to get scrubbed-up and endure hours of boredom and sitting still in the company of grown-ups, and all for your sister in the spotlight.

  Vicky was up third. She sang her piece, and sang it well. The throat problem hadn’t gone and she was up against her limit by the ends of some of the lines, but in contrast to the morning she was warmed-up and relaxed, and it was a great room to sing in. The atmosphere was completely different. The piping-little-kid factor was almost completely absent, but then I had to remind myself that all these mature and impressive young singers had probably been piping little kids once.

  While Vicky was singing, there was a sharp noise from one of the rows. It didn’t throw her – in fact, she told me afterwards that she hadn’t even noticed it – but it made me look back.

  Chantal’s brother had dropped something, I guessed. Probably a hymn book from the rail in front of him. His mother was giving him a kind of gritted-teeth, staring-eyes silent scolding. I looked past him to Chantal. She was completely slack, as if she’d been switched off.

  That was when I started thinking of her as a little dead girl, in her funeral home curtain dress. In fact I fantasized about the whole family of them living above the funeral parlour and climbing into the boxes to sleep at night.

  But not for long. My kid was still singing.

  Even the applause sounded better in here. She sat down flushed, and I could see that she was pleased with herself.

  Chantal was the youngest entrant in this class. She went up about twenty minutes later.

  If anything, her performance was more extreme than the one I’d seen that morning. Her diction was so sharp that it was unpleasant to the ear. Every r was rolled, every t was a gunshot. Whatever had served her well before, she was doing more of it now. The light-bulb smile was a bizarre face-pull.

  I nudged Vicky and she followed my glance over at the mother. The mother was doing it again, her mouth unconsciously making the shapes of the words, living the song with her daughter. I couldn’t see the balcony from my seat but I knew for sure that Cecil B would be up there, capturing it all on tape for endless home replay.

  It was only the youngest member of the family who seemed to have used up all his reserves of team spirit. He wasn’t paying his sister any attention at all. To be fair to him, he’d probably sat through this a hundred times at home. He squirmed in his seat and stuck an arm up in the air, stretching. His mother quickly pulled it down so he stuck it up again, instantly computing that he’d found a way to annoy her. She pulled it down almost violently now and he tried it a third time, but by then the damage was done. The movement must have caught the little girl’s eye and distracted her for a second. She’d stumbled on her words. I’d only been half-listening but when she went wrong, I knew it at once.

  So did her mother. God, now there was a look. Medusa would have asked for lessons.

  When it came time for the judge to give his results, Chantal got a kind mention along with everybody else but Vicky got a very respectable second prize. It was all the more welcome for being unexpected, and she was only one point behind the sixteen-year-old who took the first. I’d have been happy at the fact that she’d held her own so well among such a high class of singers. But what the hell, it was nice to get an envelope as well.

  “I bet you’re not sorry you stayed,” I said to her as everybody was gathering up their papers and their coats, and she made a face that could have meant anything.

  Outside the church, the sky was mostly dark and streaked with red but there was just enough light to see by. Some of the sessions would go on into the evening, but quite a few of us were dispersing to our cars.

  This was never my favourite kind of countryside. Far too flat and featureless. I imagine it had all been under the sea at one time, and the best thing you could say about it was that the views were uninterrupted. Looking out now, across the road and the fields beyond, I realized that I could see all the way to the far horizon. On the horizon sat the disappearing rim of the sun, on a strip of ocean that was like a ribbon of fire.

  In a minute or less, the sun would have dropped and the effect would be gone. I wasn’t the only one to have my attention caught by it.

  I could see Chantal about halfway across the parking area. She was out where there were few cars and she was alone. She was little more than a shadow-silhouette in the fading light but, as before, she was immediately recognizable.

  I saw this little ghost take a faltering step, and then another. And then I saw her break into a run.

  I don’t know why. But it was as if she’d seen a doorway open up between the sun and the sea, and she’d set her mind on reaching it before it closed.

  Whatever was in her mind, she was running straight for the road.

  I wasn’t near enough to reach her. I looked around for her parents and saw them, loading their stuff into a brown Allegro. I’ll swear to what happened then, because I saw it. I don’t think anyone else did.

  Her mother looked back over her shoulder. That was all she did. She didn’t call out and she didn’t even change her expression. Just looked at the running child, and the running child stopped about a dozen yards short of the road.

  A couple of cars zipped by. Then the child turned and started back.

  She climbed into the brown car without a word and they all drove off together.

  As I said, that was last year.

  This year, we went again.

  Vicky had picked up a first prize in one of the classes in the city festival a few months later, and it had raised her enthusiasm enough for her to want another crack at this one. When the time came around, we sent in the forms. We skipped that perverse morning session, finally giving in to the lesson of experience, and went straight for the afternoon.

  I remembered little Chantal, and when we got there I looked for her name in the programme. I felt a slight disappointment when I didn’t see it. I was curious to see how she might have developed – at that age, a year can make a lot of difference in one way or another – but it seemed that I wasn’t to find out.

  Well, it was only curiosity.

  But here’s the odd thing. Chantal wasn’t there, but her family was.

  I knew it as soon as I saw Cecil B up in the gallery with his camera. Of course I immediately looked around the pews, and saw the mother with the boy. But no little dead girl.

  The boy was in short pants and a clean shirt with a little bow tie. He was behaving himself. Or was he? By the look of him, you’d think he’d been drugged. He certainly wasn’t the squirming live wire I remembered from the year before. In fact he had the same kind of slack, dead-eyed expression that I’d seen on his sister.

  So if they were here, where was she? Could she have changed so much that I’d passed her outside and hadn’t recognized her? I looked towards the doorway, expecting her to walk in and join them, but the stewards were closing up the room ready to begin.

  The competition started, and the boy just sat there.

  Until a name was called, and with a nudge from his mother he got to his feet.

  Surprised, I watched him move to the piano. He took short steps. If body language could show a stammer, I reckon that walk is what you’d see. When he reached the piano, he turned to face the audience. And when the accompanist hit the first note, he switched on his smile.

  The woman leaned forward in the crowd, her gaze intent, her lips already beginning to shape the first of the words. Upstairs, the man rolled the tape.

  I looked at Vicky, and Vicky looked at me.

  And
down by the piano, when the moment came, the boy placed his hand over his heart, opened his mouth, and sang like a clockwork nightingale.

  BRIAN HODGE

  Nesting Instincts

  BRIAN HODGE IS THE AUTHOR OF EIGHT NOVELS ranging from horror to crime noir – most recently Wild Horses and its forthcoming successor, Mad Dogs, with a new one in the works.

  He has also written around eighty-five short stories and novellas, many of which have been pummelled into three acclaimed collections. The most recent of these is Lies & Ugliness, which marked the first appearance of “Nesting Instincts”. He also pens book and music reviews, and has even made sufficient peace with factuality to contribute regularly to a leading computer magazine.

  When not writing, Hodge wanders the hills around Boulder, Colorado, and is working on a CD’s worth of dark electronic music for an alter-ego recording project dubbed Axis Mundi.

  About “Nesting Instincts”, he says: “This one was a textbook case of working backwards. I no longer remember what prompted it, but the surreal imagery near the end came to mind one day. Live with a sight like that long enough, and you’ll eventually turn obsessive about discovering how it came to be.”

  CALL IT ANOTHER DAY HE WON’T REMEMBER by the time the next one gets here, nothing much to commend it even if there’s nothing much to condemn it, either. The whole idea of average is really starting to weigh on him, a kind of giant beige trash bin that the majority of everything gets swept into sooner or later. Average is the standard that special is judged against, which means that most of what anyone does in a day ends up being pretty pointless. It’s like the acres of wallpaper surrounding the framed photo or painting that’s actually all you’re really interested in looking at.

  Micah points this out to Charisse four blocks from his house – maybe not the best time to get into heavy conversation, especially not at the speeds she likes to drive, but it sort of slips out anyway.

  “You’re probably right,” she says, sounding neither pleased nor displeased about it. “But that’s just the way it is and it’s not like anybody gets any say in the matter, do they?”

  Really, he’s not trying to put a damper on the afternoon, only figure a few things out. It’s not like he has actual parents who can be relied upon to pitch in on that endeavor, even though if he did he would be probably be expected to pretend he wouldn’t really welcome their input. There’s Lydia, of course, but even if she were to agree that this was part of her domestic job description, and most likely she would, by all indications she’s still working on figuring things out for herself. And right now he would prefer to think that’s just a fluke instead of the norm.

  “You know what we need?” Micah says. “We need a good terminal illness. Or a near-death experience. That always seems to straighten people out. They come out of it and everything’s so clear from then on.”

  “Except when they don’t come out of it at all.” She’s laughing now, and when Charisse laughs, he can’t help but join in. Yeah, as if riding with her isn’t enough of a near-death experience in itself at least once a day. “You’re sick,” she tells him then.

  “I guess. But not in a good way.”

  Another intersection and half a block later, she cuts over to the curb in front of his house. Ranch-style, with two and a half trees in front. Could they have possibly made it any more average? Some days he’ll rotate through a series of imaginary dwellings as long as he’s somewhere else and not being confronted with the real thing. One day it’s a palace to look forward to coming home to, the next day a grass shack on a Tahitian beach, the day after that a New York subway station where he’ll go deep underground to rejoin the rest of the mole people. And then, on other days, as much as he hates to admit it, average isn’t really all that bad, because at least it’s predictable, it’s there, it’ll always be there.

  “I could come in. Want me to come in?” Charisse says. “I’ve got a little time before I have to go to work.”

  It hurts to shake his head no. Physically hurts. “Evan’s home.” Not that he can see past the closed garage doors but the main door is standing open on the other side of the screen door, and it’s sure not Lydia, not this early.

  “I’ll have to meet him someday, won’t I, if he and Lydia stay together?”

  What she really means to say, even if she doesn’t realize it, is if you and I stay together. That’s the scary thing she actually means.

  “Just not today, though, okay? It really should be when Lydia’s around too. It’d be too weird with Evan on his own.”

  “Want to hear my theory? The only reason you keep stalling is because there’s no way he can live up to what you keep saying he’s like.”

  She’s fearless in her way, Charisse is. As if somebody or something stepped down from the sky and with a voice so deep it left no room for doubt told her that nothing could ever go wrong for her. That everyone she would ever meet would like her, that her hair would forever twine effortlessly down around her face in perky loose curls, that she would always score ninety or above on every test, that traffic lights would stay yellow a little longer just for her. Imagine being able to go through life with that kind of assurance.

  Although it’s not that Evan is like anything, exactly. More that Micah would rather have him figured out first before Charisse gets to take a crack at him, probably diagnose his every neurosis from a psych class she’s taken that same afternoon.

  They kiss, then he grabs his bookbag by the straps and hoists it into his lap and levers the door handle.

  “You’re beautiful,” she tells him. It’s what she usually says instead of I love you. At first it used to bother him, figuring that it was her easy way out, her escape clause, her subtle declaration of non-commitment – that in her view, he could still go on being beautiful whether she was around to love him or not: I’m off to go live with another guy in a grass shack on the beach in Tahiti . . . and don’t forget, you’re beautiful. Lately, though, it seems like there’s more wrapped up in it than he first gave it credit for, since he’s never once heard her say this to anyone else. Maybe what she’s telling him is that she could never love anything she found ugly, or leave anything she found ugly’s opposite.

  Then he’s out of the car and she’s off, roaring down the street as he stares after her a moment, her arm out the window as she waves while veering around the corner. Charisse. For some of the guys at school, it’s already obvious what they are, the first thing they wrap their drooling senses around. Leg-men, some of them. Ass-men, others. Breast-men. Charisse – Micah tastes the word for the millionth time and has to wonder if he isn’t some sort of freak, a name-man. Sight unseen, he would’ve walked a thousand miles to meet someone named Charisse.

  Up by the house, he notices a few spiny dark shapes buzzing lazily under the eaves. He stops a moment at the door to watch them, a few more crawling over an alien grey wad stuck into the angle between the wall and the roof: wasps, and their nest. Why did they always have to build someplace like this, just a few feet from the door, where you couldn’t ignore them? Never in a spot where nobody went, like the side of the house facing the neighbors, so everyone could go about their lives peacefully, whether they walked or buzzed. No, it had to be someplace that was sure to doom them.

  Now he’ll have to go buy one of those spray cans that fires a solid chemical stream at them, soaking them with poison. The whole tiny civilization of them, nuked because they’ve got no sense of compromise. It’s the kind of task you’d think that Evan could handle, might even feel was his duty to handle, but no. Evan doesn’t do bugs. Just like Evan doesn’t do rugs. As long as the sun’s up, Evan doesn’t appear to do a whole lot of anything that’s useful.

  Micah is conscientious about banging the screen door good and loud when he walks in, make sure that Evan hears him. The worst thing he can think of is coming home some day and finding Evan playing with himself. He’d rather be a wasp in the nest on the day of its annihilation than endure such a trauma. Really, you�
��d have to leave home after an ordeal like that, and if there’s one thing Micah’s sure about, it’s that he’s fresh out of other homes.

  He’s not sure if guys Evan’s age still do that, but it’s safer to assume that the possibility exists. The guy’s forty or forty-one, around there, so on the one hand, ha ha, why should they as long as they have their own women, like Evan has Lydia. But then, on the other, it’s not like Micah can imagine just waking up one day and tossing out the magazines after realizing that, what do you know, he’s had enough of it, guess he won’t be going back to pump that particular well ever again.

  After ditching his bookbag in the kitchen and grabbing a bottle of guava juice from the fridge, he wanders back into the family room, although it’s always seemed that it should have a reserve name for houses where “family room” doesn’t quite fit. All he’s had to do is follow the music back here, Evan listening to the stereo like he does during so much of his down-time. Jazz, always jazz. If the man wanted to kill him, all he’d have to do would be kick back with some rap or metal when Micah comes home, and that would do it. Boom – instant coronary.

  No chance, though, because it’s like Evan has to steep himself in jazz, the way a teabag steeps in hot water, before he can head to the uptown club where he plays most nights. Where the paper-tearing fits into this routine, Micah can’t begin to guess, Evan just sitting on the edge of the easy chair and tearing paper – junk mail, catalogs, older newspapers, pretty much whatever he gets his hands on.

  “How was school?” he asks.