The Best New Horror 7

by Stephen Jones

  Tievar smiled. “I am afraid my position here is too comfortable. If I should force my palms to remain upward in my lap, toward Heaven, then, like the Buddha, I shall go there when I die.”

  Sajit nodded, turned toward the gates of Angkor Thom.

  “. . . But if you could do me one kindness. I cannot move my arms. Could you place the smiling mask of Hanuman upon my face? Thus I may sleep behind the mask yet have the appearance of watchfulness should the armies return.”

  “Of course.”

  When Sajit leaned over the dwarf to attach the mask, he saw the blood which had gathered in a pool behind Tievar, caused by a gash in his back that had paralyzed him.

  “I shall leave a carving of the Buddha beside you, for safety and luck,” Sajit said, hoping Tievar could not see his hands tremble as he swung the sack of bones back over his shoulder.

  The dwarf only smiled.

  Sajit Xuan-Ti entered Angkor Thom, the eyes of kings above him, a man weeping blood behind, the sun just another eye – jaundiced yellow, with a spirit of evil within its corona which made him want to lie down and weep; to put aside his bag of carvings and hug the loamy ground to him.

  But the bones in his legs held him upright. The bones in his legs continued to lift his feet and let them fall.

  They fell now upon bodies, the hole in his sandal driving him past madness with the feel of flesh beneath his own flesh. Soldiers by the hundreds littered the interior – dragged over walls, battlements, and each other. The battles had raged for months so that the dead were layered three deep, a light green moss coating the most recently fallen, a yaw of bones sticking up from the earth the only marker for those who had died months before. The smell hit Sajit at the gateway: mingled blood and rot and earth and flesh. It scoured his clothes, curled into his nostrils, made him faint. He half fell, put out a hand to balance himself, and splashed his thumb into the water-filled pool of an eyesocket, scattering mosquito larvae.

  Strangest of all to Sajit were the fresh wounds he saw as he wandered toward the central courtyard. These bodies – like those of animals in his father’s butchershop – still had moist flesh upon them, some bloated with the rains. Beneath the pale flesh, the slashing yellow-red of unclean wounds, he could see the startling white riddle of bone, a purity at odds with the surrounding offal. The flesh disturbed him. It frightened him, and he hurried by the bodies. Here was a substance he could not make beautiful or carve to his own desires.

  The sky had turned a blue shot through with amber. There was no sound. Even the birds were silent: enormous Malay vultures that moved with a slow respect for the dead, a daintiness which spoke of morticians more than grave robbers.

  He found Prei Chen where Tievar had told him to look – beneath the shadow of the Naga Queen, whose nine stone heads reared skyward in denial of the death beneath her coils.

  Beside the grave, an elephant had died, falling onto its side. Four men lay within the caved-in flesh, and this puzzled Sajit until he realized that the men had died atop the elephant and had fallen through to rest among the beast’s organs once the flesh had grown too infirm to support them.

  Somehow, the sight of the elephant calmed him. Perhaps it was the peaceful way the four men seemed to sleep within its womb, or the white tusk which reminded him of the god Ganesha.

  All such speculation left him when he saw Prei Chen, lying half-in, half-out of a shallow grave, flesh still clinging to her body. Her face had disassembled itself until he barely recognized her, could not even catalog the bones which stuck through to ruin her beauty. Someone had placed her serunai within her encircling arms. He approached on hands and knees until he had crept to her side. The earth covered her torso, but her arms lay free. He put down his sack and took her hand in his. The flesh had dried so that he could feel the bones beneath. Her skin was warm, but so was the earth beneath her.

  He tugged at her arm, but she would not move; there was too much dirt and he was too weak. The Malay vultures watched him with idle interest from atop the elephant’s skull.

  He tugged again.

  “Prei Chen,” he said, speaking to her as he tugged a third time. “Prei Chen.”

  But she would not move from beneath the Naga Queen.

  When he tried one last, desperate time, her arm came off in his grasp and he sprawled, panting, against the side of the elephant, looking into the faces of the four men it had swallowed after its death. The dirt of the grave stung his chin. The taste of the grave coated his tongue. He looked at Prei Chen’s arm, which he still held in his left hand; yellow bone stuck out from the end, but he felt no desire to carve it. Instead, he shuddered and tears came to his eyes, though he could not pin a reason to them. He could not remember the features of Jen Jen’s face. He could not even remember the first rule of bone carving. His craft seemed to him no art at all, but artifice and deception. There was nothing except flesh, and there never had been, and he had forgotten more than he learned when he carved the bone.

  He crawled up from the elephant, until he came again to Prei Chen’s corpse. He looked full into her rotting face and covered her body with his, caressed her hair with his calloused, bone carver hands and said, “Prei Chen, Prei Chen,” until it became a meaningless chant, a ritual to hold off despair which even Tievar eventually heard, sitting in his tears of blood, among the visages of the Kings of Angkor Thom, in the land of Kampuchea, where the Mekong River flows into the China Sea.

  NEIL GAIMAN

  Queen of Knives

  NEIL GAIMAN WAS born in Porchester, England. When he was twelve years old he was told by a school adviser that it would be impossible to work in comics. He has since gone on to become one of the most acclaimed comics writers of his generation, and he recently concluded his epic World Fantasy Award-winning Sandman series with issue 75.

  His books include The Official Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Companion, Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett), Ghastly Beyond Belief (with Kim Newman), Now We Are Sick (with Stephen Jones), the shared-world anthology series Temps, The Weerde and Villains!, and various graphic novels. More recently, DreamHaven Books published a bestselling collection of his short fiction, Angels & Visitations, and a chapbook story entitled Snow, Glass, Apples. His latest novel is Neverwhere, based on the BBC-TV series he created, with also “an audio book, a computer game, a line of comics and, probably, a new refreshing after-shave for men” in the works as well.

  “ ‘Queen of Knives’ is the third of a set of three story-poems about men and women and violence,” explains Gaiman. “The other two are ‘The White Road’, which is reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and ‘Eaten (Scenes from a Moving Picture)’ which appeared in Ellen Datlow’s Off Limits: Tales of Alien Sex anthology. However, due to the vagaries of publishing, ‘Queen of Knives’ was the first to appear.

  “It was written for the interestingly designed Tombs anthology. I see it as a companion piece to the graphic novel I did with Dave McKean, Mr Punch, with its view of the adult world from a child’s perspective. It is, of course, true in every detail. The comedian is the now almost completely forgotten Harry Worth.”

  “The re-appearance of the lady is a matter of individual taste.”

  – Will Goldston, Tricks and Illusions

  WHEN I WAS a boy, from time to time,

  I stayed with my grandparents

  (old people: I knew they were old –

  chocolates in their house

  remained uneaten until I came to stay,

  this, then, was ageing).

  My grandfather always made breakfast at sun-up:

  A pot of tea, for her and him and me,

  some toast and marmalade

  (the Silver Shred and the Gold). Lunch and dinner,

  those were my grandmother’s to make, the kitchen

  was again her domain, all the pans and spoons,

  the mincer, all the whisks and knives, her loyal subjects.

  She would prepare the food with them, singing her

&
nbsp; little songs:

  Daisy Daisy give me your answer do,

  or sometimes,

  You made me love you, I didn’t want to do it,

  I didn’t want to do it.

  She had no voice, not one to speak of.

  Business was very slow.

  My grandfather spent his days at the top of the house,

  in his tiny darkroom where I was not permitted to go,

  bringing out paper faces from the darkness,

  the cheerless smiles of other people’s holidays.

  My grandmother would take me for grey walks along

  the promenade.

  Mostly I would explore

  the small wet grassy space behind the house,

  the blackberry brambles and the garden shed.

  It was a hard week for my grandparents

  forced to entertain a wide-eyed boy-child, so

  one night they took me to the King’s Theatre. The King’s . . .

  Variety!

  The lights went down, red curtains rose.

  A popular comedian of the day,

  came on, stammered out his name (his catchphrase),

  pulled out a sheet of glass, and stood half-behind it,

  raising the arm and leg that we could see;

  reflected

  he seemed to fly – it was his trademark,

  so we all laughed and cheered. He told a joke or two,

  quite badly. His haplessness, his awkwardness,

  these were what we had come to see.

  Bemused and balding and bespectacled,

  he reminded me a little of my grandfather.

  And then the comedian was done.

  Some ladies danced all legs across the stage.

  A singer sang a song I didn’t know.

  The audience were old people,

  like my grandparents, tired and retired,

  all of them laughing and applauding.

  In the interval my grandfather

  queued for a choc-ice and a couple of tubs.

  We ate our ices as the lights went down.

  The “SAFETY CURTAIN” rose, and then the real curtain.

  The ladies danced across the stage again,

  and then the thunder rolled, the smoke went puff,

  a conjurer appeared and bowed. We clapped.

  The lady walked on, smiling from the wings:

  glittered. Shimmered. Smiled.

  We looked at her, and in that moment flowers grew,

  and silks and pennants tumbled from his fingertips.

  The flags of all nations, said my grandfather, nudging me.

  They were up his sleeve.

  Since he was a young man,

  (I could not imagine him as a child)

  my grandfather had been, by his own admission,

  one of the people who knew how things worked.

  He had built his own television,

  my grandmother told me, when they were first married,

  it was enormous, though the screen was small.

  This was in the days before television programmes;

  they watched it, though,

  unsure whether it was people or ghosts they were seeing.

  He had a patent, too, for something he invented,

  but it was never manufactured.

  Stood for the local council, but he came in third.

  He could repair a shaver or a wireless,

  develop your film, or build a house for dolls.

  (The doll’s house was my mother’s. We still had

  it at my house,

  shabby and old it sat out in the grass, all rained-on

  and forgot.)

  The glitter lady wheeled on a box.

  The box was tall: grown-up-person-sized, and black.

  She opened up the front.

  They turned it round and banged upon the back.

  The lady stepped inside, still smiling,

  The magician closed the door on her.

  When it was opened she had gone.

  He bowed.

  Mirrors, explained my grandfather. She’s really still inside.

  At a gesture, the box collapsed to matchwood.

  A trapdoor, assured my grandfather;

  Grandma hissed him silent.

  The magician smiled, his teeth were small and crowded;

  he walked, slowly, out into the audience.

  He pointed to my grandmother, he bowed,

  a Middle-European bow,

  and invited her to join him on the stage.

  The other people clapped and cheered.

  My grandmother demurred. I was so close

  to the magician, that I could smell his aftershave,

  and whispered “Me, oh, me . . .”. But still,

  he reached his long fingers for my grandmother.

  Pearl, go on up, said my grandfather. Go with the man.

  My grandmother must have been, what? Sixty, then?

  She had just stopped smoking,

  was trying to lose some weight. She was proudest

  of her teeth, which, though tobacco-stained were all

  her own.

  My grandfather had lost his, as a youth,

  riding his bicycle; he had the bright idea

  to hold on to a bus to pick up speed.

  The bus had turned,

  and Grandpa kissed the road.

  She chewed hard liquorice, watching TV at night,

  or sucked hard caramels, perhaps to make him wrong.

  She stood up, then, a little slowly.

  Put down the paper tub half-full of ice cream,

  the little wooden spoon –

  went down the aisle, and up the steps.

  And on the stage.

  The conjurer applauded her once more –

  A good sport. That was what she was. A sport.

  Another glittering woman came from the wings,

  bringing another box –

  this one was red.

  That’s her, nodded my grandfather, the one

  who vanished off before. You see? That’s her.

  Perhaps it was. All I could see

  was a woman who sparkled, standing next to my

  grandmother

  (who fiddled with her pearls, and looked embarrassed).

  The lady smiled and faced us, then she froze,

  a statue, or a window mannequin.

  The magician pulled the box,

  with ease,

  down to the front of stage, where my grandmother waited.

  A moment or so of chitchat:

  where she was from, her name, that kind of thing.

  They’d never met before? She shook her head.

  The magician opened the door,

  my grandmother stepped in.

  Perhaps it’s not the same one, admitted my grandfather,

  on reflection,

  I think she had darker hair, the other girl.

  I didn’t know.

  I was proud of my grandmother, but also embarrassed,

  hoping she’d do nothing to make me squirm,

  that she wouldn’t sing one of her songs.

  She walked into the box. They shut the door.

  He opened a compartment at the top, a little door. We saw

  my grandmother’s face. Pearl? Are you all right Pearl?

  My grandmother smiled and nodded.

  The magician closed the door.

  The lady gave him a long thin case,

  so he opened it. Took out a sword

  and rammed it through the box.

  And then another, and another

  And my grandfather chuckled and explained

  The blade slides in the hilt, and then a fake

  slides out the other side.

  Then he produced a sheet of metal, which

  he slid into the box half the way up.

  It cut the thing in half. The two of them,

  the woman and the man, lifted the top

  half of the box u
p and off, and put it on the stage,

  with half my grandma in.

  The top half.

  He opened up the little door again, for a moment,

  My grandmother’s face beamed at us, trustingly.

  When he closed the door before,

  she went down a trapdoor,

  And now she’s standing half-way up,

  my grandfather confided.

  She’ll tell us how it’s done, when it’s all over.

  I wanted him to stop talking: I needed the magic.

  Two knives now, through the half-a-box,

  at neck-height.

  Are you there, Pearl? asked the magician. Let us know

  – do you know any songs?

  My grandmother sang Daisy Daisy.

  He picked up the part of the box,

  with the little door in it – the head part –

  and he walked about, and she sang

  Daisy Daisy first at one side of the stage,

  and at the other.

  That’s him, said my grandfather, and he’s throwing

  his voice.

  It sounds like Grandma, I said.

  Of course it does, he said. Of course it does.

  He’s good, he said. He’s good. He’s very good.

  The conjuror opened up the box again,

  now hatbox-sized. My grandmother had finished

  Daisy Daisy,

  and was on a song which went

  My my here we go the driver’s drunk and the horse

  won’t go

  now we’re going back now we’re going back

  back back back to London Town.

  She had been born in London. Told me ominous tales

  from time to time to time

  of her childhood. Of the children who ran into her

  father’s shop

  shouting shonky shonky sheeny, running away;

  she would not let me wear a black shirt because,

  she said, she remembered the marches through the East End.

  Mosley’s Blackshirts. Her sister got an eye blackened.

  The conjuror took a kitchen knife,

  pushed it slowly through the red hatbox.

  And then the singing stopped.

  He put the boxes back together,

  pulled out the knives and swords, one by one by one.

  He opened the compartment in the top: my

  grandmother smiled,

  embarrassed, at us, displaying her own old teeth.

  He closed the compartment, hiding her from view.

  Pulled out the last knife.