La Mort, Lady Death, La Voleuse, La Tueuse. The trick, the violent blade. And then the third means to destruction, the seductive death who visited poets in her irresistible caressing silence, with the petals of blue flowers or the blue wings of insects pasted on the lids of her eyes, and: See, your flesh, also, taken to mine, can never decay. And this will be true, for the flesh of Armand, becoming paper written over by words, will endure as long as men can read.
And so he left the window. He prepared, carefully, the opium that would melt away within him the iron barrier that no longer yielded to thought or solitude or wine. And when the drug began to live within its glass, for an instant he thought he saw a drowned girl floating there, her hair swirling in the smoke ... Far away, in another universe, the clock of Notre Dame aux Lumineres struck twice.
After a little while, he opened the door, and looked out at the landing beyond. There in the nothing of the dark he sensed her, and moved aside, welcoming her with an ironic courtesy into his room, his bones.
She was even more beautiful, now he saw her closely, than when he noted her at the end of the bridge.
Her skin was so pale he could gaze through it to a sort of tender, softly-blooming radiance. Her eyes were mysteriously sombre. As her cloak unfurled, he observed the ice-blue flowers on her breast, and the corsetting of her bodice where La Danse Macabre was depicted in sable embroidery.
She seated herself with a smile before him, and he, his hand already moving of its own volition, as if possessed, began to write.
La Seductrice was his death. The drug would kill him in a year, having burned out his brain, nervous system, and marrow. But his spirit would be left behind him in the words he had now begun to find. We are not given life to cast it aside, but neither is life to be lived for life’s sake only. What cries aloud within us must be allowed its voice. Or so it seemed to him, dimly, as the seascapes of the opium overwhelmed him, and the caverns of stars, and the towering crystal cities higher than heaven.
She is three: Thief, Butcher, Seducer. Do not seek her out. She is all around you, in the blowing leaves, the cloud across the moon, the sweet sigh behind your ear, the scent of earth, the whisper of a sleeve. If she is to be yours, she will come to you.
Across the river the clock sounded again.
Un, deux, trois.
SPRING-FINGERED JACK by Susan Casper
Susan Casper writes: “I am a native of Philadelphia, where I currently reside with my teenage son, Christopher, and two cats. I attended Temple University as a speech pathology major—no degree, then went on to hold none of the obligatory crazy jobs that writers are so famous for. I am now working for the Penna. County Board of Assistance as a welfare worker.”
Casper attended her first science fiction convention in 1970, and since then many of her close friends have been writers. After resisting that burning urge to write for years, Casper eventually gave in to temptation in 1982. “Spring-Fingered Jack,” which reflects her enthusiasms for video games and Jack the Ripper lore, is her first published story. She has stories forthcoming in Whispers, Shadows 7, Imago, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and she has had to get her own typewriter.
He knew where he was going as soon as he walked into the arcade. He moved past the rows of busy children, blaring computer voices, flashing lights and ringing bells. He walked past the line of old-fashioned pinball machines, all of them empty, all flashing and calling like outdated mechanical hookers vainly trying to tempt the passing trade.
The machine he wanted was back in the dimly lit corner, and he breathed a sigh of relief to see it unused. Its mutely staring screen was housed in a yellow body, above a row of levers and buttons. On its side, below the coin slot, was a garish purple drawing of a woman dressed in Victorian high fashion. Her large and ornate hat sat slightly askew atop her head, and her neatly piled hair was falling artistically down at the sides. She was screaming, eyes wide, the back of her hand almost covering her lovely mouth. And behind her, sketched in faintest white, was just the suggestion of a lurking figure.
He put his briefcase down beside the machine. With unsteady fingers, he reached for a coin, and fumbled it into the coin slot. The screen flashed to life. A sinister man in a deerstalker waved a crimson-tipped knife and faded away behind a row of buildings. The graphics were excellent, and extremely realistic. The screen filled with rows of dark blue instructions against a light blue field, and he scanned them sketchily, impatient for the game to begin.
He pressed a button and the image changed again, becoming a maze of narrow squalid streets lined with decaying buildings. One lone figure, his, stood squarely center screen. A woman in Victorian dress, labeled Polly, walked toward him. He pushed the lever forward and his man began to move. He remembered to make the man doff his cap; if you didn’t, she wouldn’t go with you. They fell in step together, and he carefully steered her past the first intersection. Old Montague Street was a trap for beginners, and one he hadn’t fallen into for quite some time. The first one had to be taken to Buck’s Row.
Off to one side, a bobby was separating a pair of brawling, ragged women. He had to be careful here, for it cost points if he was spotted. He steered the pair down the appropriate alley, noting with satisfaction that it was deserted.
The heartbeat sound became louder as he maneuvered his figure behind that of the woman, and was joined by the sound of harsh, labored breathing. This part of the game was timed and he would be working against the clock. He lifted a knife from inside his coat. Clapping a hand over “Polly’s” mouth, he slashed her throat viciously from ear to ear. Lines of bright red pulsed across the screen, but away from him. Good. He had not been marked by the blood. Now came the hard part. He laid her down and began the disemboweling, carefully cutting her abdomen open almost to the diaphragm, keeping one eye on the clock. He finished with twenty seconds to spare and moved his man triumphantly away from the slowly approaching bobby. Once he had found the public sink to wash in, round one was complete.
Once again his figure was center screen. This time the approaching figure was “Dark Annie,” and he took her to Hanbury Street. But this time he forgot to cover her mouth when he struck, and she screamed, a shrill and terrifying scream. Immediately the screen began to flash a brilliant, painful red, pulsing in time to the ear-splitting blasts of a police whistle. Two bobbies materialized on either side of his figure, and grabbed it firmly by the arms. A hangman’s noose flashed on the screen as the funeral march roared from the speaker. The screen went dark.
He stared at the jeering screen, trembling, feeling shaken and sick, and cursed himself bitterly. A real beginner’s mistake! He’d been too eager. Angrily, he fed another coin into the slot.
This time, he carefully worked himself all the way up to “Kate,” piling up bonus points and making no fatal mistakes. He was sweating now, and his mouth was dry. His jaws ached with tension. It was really hard to beat the clock on this one, and took intense concentration. He remembered to nick the eyelids, that was essential, and pulling the intestines out and draping them over the right shoulder wasn’t too hard, but cutting out the kidney correctly, that was a bitch. At last the clock ran out on him, and he had to leave without the kidney, costing himself a slew of points. He was rattled enough to almost run into a bobby as he threaded through the alleys leading out of Mitre Square. The obstacles became increasingly difficult with every successful round completed, and from here on in it became particularly hard, with the clock time shortening, swarms of sightseers, reporters and roving Vigilance Committees to avoid in addition to a redoubled number of police. He had never yet found the right street for “Black Mary ...”
A voice called “last game,” and a little while later his man got caught again. He slapped the machine in frustration; then straightened his suit and tie and picked up his briefcase. He checked his Rollaflex. Ten-oh-five: it was early yet. The machines winked out in clustered groups as the last stragglers filed through the glass doors. He followed them into the
street.
Once outside in the warm night air, he began to think again about the game, to plan his strategy for tomorrow, only peripherally aware of the winos mumbling in doorways, the scantily dressed hookers on the corner. Tawdry neon lights from porno movie houses, “adult” bookstores and flophouse hotels tracked across his eyes like video displays, and his fingers worked imaginary buttons and levers as he pushed through the sleazy, late-night crowds.
He turned into a narrow alley, followed it deep into the shadows, and then stopped and leaned back against the cool, dank bricks. He spun the three dials of the combination lock, each to its proper number, and then opened the briefcase.
The machine: he had thought of it all day at work, thought of it nearly every second as he waited impatiently for five o’clock, and now another chance had come and gone, and he still had not beaten it. He fumbled among the papers in his briefcase, and pulled out a long, heavy knife.
He would practice tonight, and tomorrow he would beat the machine.
THE FLASH! KID by Scott Bradfield
“The Flash! Kid” first appeared in Interzone, a maverick British science fiction/fantasy magazine that has brought about a controlled rebirth of the New Wave fiction of the 1960s. Scott Bradfield, however, is a Californian, presumably too young to have been reading during the era of New Worlds and Impulse, all of which proves that new ideas and concepts in writing are not necessarily limited to certain literary cliques and trends.
Bradfield calls himself “certifiably an unknown” and explains: “As far as my biography, it won’t keep anybody up late nights. I’m now 28, a graduate student at UC Irvine. I sold a few stories back when I was in high school—they were generally awful. I quit writing for a while, continued reading and learning the craft, and have in the last couple of years begun submitting and publishing stories again.” Interzone and Twilight Zone Magazine have both published his infrequent fiction, and Bradfield should soon have other magazine editors standing in line.
Rudy McDermott’s siege of the termite nest was inspired by the funny word “attrition,” introduced to him by his birthday book, We Were There at the Hundred Years War. He shoveled a moat circumscribing the infested oak log and filled it generously with Pennzoil looted from Father’s outboard. The termites, busy inside their mouldering apartments, exhibited no immediate concern, and Rudy dashed home for lunch. He returned a half hour later to find the insects constructing a bridge across the moat with accumulating drowned corpses, swarming headlong into the muck in a sort of conscientious frenzy. Rudy struck a match and ignited the moat. The ring of fire flashed and heat rushed his face. The fried insects smelled like burnt popcorn. Greasy black smoke lifted into the bright mountain sky, flames dwindled into the scorched earth. Rudy replenished the moat and lay back against the warm flinty hill, watching the discombobulated insects struggle and squirm in the ashey sludge. He flicked small stones at them as they carted their sizzling brethren into deep, buzzing tombs. Rudy reignited the moat and ran home for an ice cream and a brief chat with Father.
Father was out back on the raised sun-deck with Mom. Bushwah! Father roared, and flung his newspaper over the railing. A few loose white sheets skimmed down the surface of the hill like manta rays. What’s this I read? My tax deductible religious contributions go to providing flak jackets for Sister Maria Theresa’s guerilla force in Uruguay! And who’s Sister Maria fighting for? Subversives, that’s who! And who do subversives hate most of all? Successful men like me, that’s who!
For godsake, Mom groaned, prone on her lawn chair and bikinied, brown and glistening with oil like a very old salad. If there’s one thing you sound stupid about it’s politics.
Father grumbled, his face flushed. A black vein pulsed ominously in his forehead. He poured another icy Margarita, sprinkled it with salt.
Termites, huh? Father said later, solaced by now with his fishing rod. He reeled in line from a spool that twitched and tumbled on the deck, and Rudy watched raptly over his dribbling ice cream. My old pal Bob Probosky and I knew all about termites. Or at least I did, yessir. When I was your age I busted open a termite nest, that’s what I did. Bob was chicken, scared he’d get stung. Not me, though. I reached in and yanked out that mamatermite with my bare hands, diced her for bait. She caught trout like a goddamn Gatling gun—yessir, she did! But did I let that fag Probosky have any? Nosir, I didn’t! Sure I got stung. But I knew what I had to do and I did it—and I reaped the reward. The world’s a jungle, boy. Only the toughest survive. You have to act fast if you want to make your mark on the world. You have to be tough if you want to become a successful man like your Father—
For godsake, Mom said, and reached for her sunglasses. If there’s one thing you sound stupider about than politics it’s your crummy childhood.
With a sledgehammer Rudy returned and demolished the nest, pried loose sheaves of rotted wood. The mamatermite was enormous, Rudy startled. Gravid and glistening, as long and thick as Father’s forearm, the queen’s convoluted envelope fitted snugly inside the log like the meat of some gigantic walnut. Reach in and yank it out? He would need a bucket. Rudy improvised, swung the sledgehammer again. Pus and slime spattered his arms and face. The stench was terrible, and he wiped the sour taste from his lips. He ran away crying and crashed through bushes and a small stream. The crowd of trees stood around making shadows, birds chirped in the leaves. Rudy forced himself not to shiver, obligated by Father’s nostalgic courage. He returned solemnly to the ruined nest. Termites swarmed away from the exploded queen, dragging bits of her flesh. Rudy unscrewed the lid from a jelly jar, crouched, shut his eyes. He scooped blindly at the nest and the jar made a thwucking sound. He screwed back the lid and flung the jar against the flinty hill where it thudded soundly. Rudy’s hands were sticky, he wiped them on the ground. The ground was dry and crusty and broke apart in shards. Rudy threw the flinty dirt over the ruined nest, cut more dirt loose with his bowie knife. Something metallic clanged and the knife bucked against his hand. He scraped the dirt cautiously. Metal screeched. Gradually Rudy cleared a patch of gunmetal black. The black was remarkably smooth, like the surface of an eyeball. A sense of great heaviness surfaced in his mind when he touched the buried object. Like deja vu, abstract but firm. Patiently he uncovered the statue’s entire surface. Two feet long, tubular, black and smooth and unblemished, without any markings or delineations whatever, seamless as the skin of an egg. He struck it sharply with his knife and the knife’s point cracked. His fingers were drawn again and again across the smooth surface, as if here was condensed the enigmatic stuff of the universe. He clenched his teeth. Overhead the moon hooked vague clouds, and Rudy wondered, Who to tell? Who, indeed?
Sure, we’ll take a look at it, Father agreed. Someday, someday soon. But not today, not right this minute. Right this minute there was fishing to do, imported beer to drink, Mom to inanely bicker with. That afternoon Mom drove to Tahoe and returned by dinner, her freshly dyed hair piled high atop her dry red face, accompanied by a strange noisy couple. The man was in the stock market, the woman in the Book-of-the-Month Club. The woman hugged Rudy viciously. The man said ha ha ha, what’s that, young buck? A termite how big? I saw that movie. Jon Agar saves the world, doesn’t he?
The image of the submerged, neglected statue infiltrated Rudy’s dreams. They were deep black dreams without faces, a quicksand effluvium which filled his mind like molten ore, as if his identity and the identity of the statue were being inverted. The dreams encased Rudy in darkness; he felt warm, secure; his body was a vessel, hard and unimpressionable, like something fired in a kiln, like the heart of a planet, like the fine black powder he discovered inside the abandoned jelly jar the following morning. The fine kinetic powder jingled sibilantly as he swirled it around the inside of the glass, keening, eerie, celestial, like purported music of the spheres.
The first person Rudy lured to the statue took it away from him. A young surveyor had been prowling the woods for several days, unshaven, muttering, scratching himself,
toting a small intricate telescope and clipboard. Rudy’s approach was determinedly casual. He was learning that a child’s enthusiasm is inversely proportional to the scale of adult priorities. Hey, Mister. Want to see something weird? Hey, Mister. It’s right over here. Maybe somebody lost it. Hey, Mister. Maybe there’s even a reward.
Okay, okay, the young man conceded finally. Show me something weird. But then promise you’ll go home, all right? Could you do that for me? Promise?
Mmmmmmmmmmmm. Interesting ... The surveyor touched the statue briefly, as if testing a hot iron. Cautiously he laid his palm flat against the frictionless surface, whistled slowly through his teeth. So heavy, he said, and clenched his jaws.
As the surveyor stared, Rudy’s sanctioned enthusiasm burst free. He babbled hectically of his discovery: the doomed termites, the Pennzoil, Father’s nostalgic fishbait, Mom’s new hair style, the gravid queen, the immanent dreams and the fine black powder.
The surveyor grumbled, scratched his oily hair, scrawled something on his clipboard, and proceeded to the fishing lodge.
The Year's Best Horror Stories 12 Page 22