The Year's Best Horror Stories 22

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  “What smells like vanilla?” Anthony said.

  “The solution for the ribbon.” The geisha touched the pink strip with the equally pink tip of her tongue. Her purple eyes flashed. “It contains vanilla. And cinnamon.” The pink strip flew round and round the abdomen. “And oregano and ground quartz crystals and fish-eggs and white wine and—”

  “White wine?” Punkin exclaimed. His eyes went wide. “You told me ‘wine.’ You didn’t say that it had to be white.”

  “Oh.” Athena slowed in her wrapping. “Oh. Oh.” She paused, then continued to wrap at full speed. “Oh, well. Even the most precise recipes should allow for a degree of improvisation.”

  She covered one arm, the head, the other arm, then shot back down to the right leg. When she had finished with the wrapping, she fished through a large jar of marbles on one of the shelves.

  “Pretty green eyes for a pretty dolly,” she said, tucking two green marbles into the folds of the mannequin’s face. She then stepped back from her creation and pointed at it with the thumb and ring-finger of her left hand.

  “Be as we will. Be what we wish,” she murmured. “What you should be you shall be. You shall be what we wish you to be ...”

  Anthony had seen Athena perform this sort of ritual before. One can actually hypnotize soulless but spiritually energized objects through the repetition of significant nonsense. Athena did not have wiring in her house, but all of her appliances worked.

  “Now you must say a few words, Anthony,” she said. She grabbed him by the hands and pulled him from the soft jaws of the couch.

  He stood before the dolly. The wrapped figure was an inch or two shorter than himself. “What should I say?”

  “Tell it how long you wish it to live.” The geisha tapped him on the wrist. “And make the hand.”

  Anthony thought for a long moment. Then he pointed the appropriate fingers at the mannequin and said, “Live until you’ve done what you’ve got to do.”

  Slowly, the wrappings melded together, forming a smooth sheath of flesh. Openings appeared in the flesh—ears, nostrils, mouth and more. The sheen of life glowed in its eyes of solid green. The mannequin had no hair, nipples, or fingernails. The navel was shaped like a shallow clockwise swirl.

  The mannequin had a sweet, small-featured face. It took Anthony by the hand and led him out of the house as Punkin and Athena sang “Happy Birthday.”

  The mannequin tried to lead him into the very heart of the woods, but Anthony held back, keeping to the more familiar paths. He didn’t want to stray too far from the house. Athena was the eye of a magical hurricane ... Perhaps the dolly would cease to function if allowed to walk beyond the boundaries of Athena’s influence.

  “Can you speak?” Anthony asked.

  The mannequin opened its mouth and moved its lips, but the only sound that came forth was a faint hiss. Just as well, Anthony thought. The dolly had been alive for less than fifteen minutes. What was there for it to talk about?

  Soon they found a small open space where the ground was covered with moss. The mannequin settled down on this soft green bed.

  Anthony was about to join his companion when he heard a shrill, distant whistling. Was Punkin going home without him? He stared into the shadows of the woods. The sound was fading. He turned and looked down at the dolly. It was lovely and petite—and utterly boring. He suddenly wished that the dolly could be clever, like Athena. And exotic, like Athena. And stylish and sexy and wise. Like Athena.

  Rows of thin black lines began to slice across the dolly’s face and body, and Anthony leaned closer. Was this a trick of the moonlight? The effect resembled the shadow of Venetian blinds. Slowly he realized that the widening bands of blackness were not shadows at all.

  The wrappings were coming loose.

  Anthony backed away. The mannequin stared curiously at him. A hard look crept into its eyes.

  He turned and began to walk in the direction of the whistling. He heard a hiss—a hiss that grew steadily louder, angrier. Leaves crackled behind him and he began to run.

  “Punkin!” he cried. “Help me, Punkin!”

  Through the trees, Anthony saw the path. He broke through a tangle of weeds and landed in the dust. He scrambled to his feet and looked about. Which way to run? Surely Punkin couldn’t be too far away.

  Suddenly, Anthony was grabbed fiercely by the shoulder. He glimpsed a loosely-fleshed hand out of the corner of his eye. Grabbing the dolly’s wrist, he fell to his knees and pulled the creature to the ground.

  The mannequin’s hiss rose to an enraged squeal. Pale ribbons of its flesh hung down, revealing a pinkish-brown musculature that resembled wood grain.

  “Where are you?” Punkin voice drifted out of the shadows. “What’s that noise? Is it a pig?”

  One of the dolly’s eyes had fallen out—the other stared lividly at him. The creature tried to grab Anthony by the forearm, but he moved away just in time. He noticed a long loop of flesh trailing from the dolly’s knee. He seized the loop and pulled, ripping free a yard of skin. He dug the heel of a boot into the joint and the entire lower leg flew off.

  Shrieking with pain, the mannequin pushed Anthony onto his back and climbed on top of him. Pink ribbons flailed through the air as it pounded madly at his chest. The creature’s other eye popped out. One of its hands broke off as it pummeled him. A pinkish froth dribbled from its writhing lips. Anthony stared into the black sockets of the mannequin’s face. These sockets were not empty. They were filled with horrible, insatiable hunger.

  He was still staring when a hollow thump sounded and the face—disappeared.

  Punkin was standing by his side. “I kicked its head off,” the pale youth said. “Was that okay?”

  Anthony crawled out from under the mannequin. “Yes. That was fine, thank you,” he said tiredly. Punkin helped him to his feet.

  They looked down at the dolly’s still-writhing body. Then Punkin searched the weeds along the path until he found the head. He held it at arm’s length by ribbons of its skin. “It’s going to keep living ’til it does what it’s got to do,” he said.

  Anthony picked up the mannequin’s twitching hand. “Oh, how sad,” he said. “I weep big tears.” He threw the hand deep into the woods. Then he picked up the broken piece of leg and flung it in the opposite direction. He nodded to his friend.

  Punkin swung the ragged head by its ribbons to gather momentum. Finally he let go, and it flew through the night like a fleshy comet.

  Anthony entered Athena’s long, low house without knocking. He found her in the parlor.

  “Oh. Why, why ... hello,” she stammered.

  Anthony regarded her with what he hoped was a smoldering stare. “I want you.”

  “Oh. Oh.” Athena looked to the shelves—to the books, the jars, the statuettes. “Is Punkin with you?”

  “No. I asked him to go on home without me. Didn’t you hear what I said? I want you, Athena.”

  “I heard you.” Her eyes settled at last on a brown bottle nestled in a pile of yellow rags. “Do you realize what you are asking?”

  Anthony shrugged. “I don’t care if you’re a guy or a lady or what.”

  “ ‘Or what’ can cover quite a bit of ground.” She opened the bottle and poured a thin amber fluid onto one of the rags. “I’ve been many people over the years, Anthony. I’ve been old, young, large, small, male, female ...” She rubbed the wet cloth over her face and hands. “It takes quite a while to prepare an acceptable—facade, I think, is a good word. Still, it takes only a moment to undo the illusion. Only a moment to reveal the real me.”

  Athena’s thick makeup hid more than blemishes, more than even mere gender; this magical concoction hid the very contours of the flesh. Unleashed, her purple eyes crawled slowly over the surface of her opalescent face. A delicate lacework of gills fluttered at her jawline. Her shining claws fumbled at square black buttons, and the kimono dropped to the floor.

  “So,” she whispered through the uppermost of the mouth
s. “Do you still want me?”

  Anthony studied Athena Moth for a full minute. Then he took a step forward.

  Then another.

  THICKER THAN WATER by Joel Lane

  Born in Exeter in 1963, Joel Lane grew up in Birmingham, studied at Cambridge, and currently lives in Birmingham, where he is working for an educational publisher. Recent stories by Lane have appeared in Darklands 2, The Sun Rises Red, Sugar Sleep, Exuberance and Peeping Tom, with others forthcoming in Chills, The Science of Sadness and Little Deaths. A selection of Lane’s poems appeared in Private Cities, a three-poet anthology from Stride Publications, and a collection of his stories is due out from Egerton Press in autumn of 1994. Watch for that one.

  Lane’s fiction is surreal and downbeat, often about lives lost within the shadows of urban decay and despair. As Etchison and other kindred writers have learned: too disturbing for mainstream; too mainstream for horror. That was then. Commenting on “Thicker Than Water,” Lane says: “it was a difficult story to place, and was sent just about everywhere before ending up in Panurge, a literary magazine with offbeat sympathies (they’ve also published stories by D.F. Lewis and Brian Howell).” D.F. Lewis appears later in this book. I’ll be on the watch for Brian Howell.

  Paul had never seen any of the canal people, but he knew all about them. Everyone knew. The way Kevin had worded it, the assignment didn’t require him to find anything out. “Go and have a look. Get a feel for the district. It might give you some ideas for a feature ... What we need, Paul, is a serious campaign. Rumors are not enough. The city needs a real answer to this problem.” Of course, Kevin would never tell him to make things up. That way, he couldn’t be held responsible for what the Messenger printed; or its effects. Paul didn’t know if the Messenger’s editor was capable of feeling guilty. He only knew that guilt made you lie to yourself, as well as to others.

  The afternoon dragged, while Paul browsed through the archive office’s local press cuttings on “the problem.” It was too hot to do much active work; and there was no fan in the archive office, which smelled of old paper. There were reports, going back five or ten years, about the vagrant communities around Dudley and West Bromwich. One article said they were gypsies; another said they were just ordinary sub-citizens on the run from the authorities. They drifted up from the South and got stuck here. Paul didn’t like the word “sub-citizen,” it reminded him of “sub-editor,” which was his job most of the time. He preferred to use the old-fashioned words like scum, dropout or criminal.

  Even from the early years, there were stories about break-ins and thefts from shops and warehouses in these districts. Mostly food and clothes, rather than things to be resold. Lately, of course, the accusations were more serious. But the whole situation had changed. Groups of squatters were occupying the derelict offices and tenement buildings, driving out the legitimate community. They weren’t canal people any more, though the name had stuck. The Messenger had carried a story about disappeared babies and small children. Kevin wasn’t a fool. He’d remarked to Paul that when babies went missing in bad areas, especially when the parents were young, it was easier to blame the gypsies than to investigate. This summer, with the heat and the water shortages, disease was spreading in the unsafe areas. Most local peopled hoped it would wipe out the vagrants before they contaminated the city.

  The air in the archive office grew hotter as the afternoon progressed and the sun drew level with the windows. Paul’s vision blurred as his contact lenses began to swell up; rubbing his eyes got dust onto the surfaces, and he couldn’t blink it away. He gave up reading and let the anger in his mind edit and stress the thoughts. A big fly, droning at the window, had the same effect. When it settled within Paul’s reach, he smeared it with the palm of his hand. At once, he made for the toilets and washed his hands with a liquid soap that had the consistency of saliva. The sound of water running in the basin made him pause, briefly unable to move. He didn’t know why, and he felt guilty about wasting tap water. After that, he filed away the newspaper cuttings and left early.

  When he got home, Carol was in a bad mood. Their elder daughter, Dawn, had been off school with an attack of dysentery. Paul went up to see her, but she was asleep in a darkened room. “I want to talk to you after dinner,” Carol said. They ate in a fatigued silence; even Stella, their younger daughter, was unusually quiet. Dawn stayed in her room. After dinner, Paul watched the news on three channels in succession. The living room was still full of sunlight; it felt wrong, this late. The fly’s blood was a streak across his thoughts. He wondered why it was paler than human blood. The local news on the independent channel included a report on the new science and technology exhibition center at Monkspath. Someone from the city council described it as part of this year’s major initiative to brighten up the region’s image.

  Paul got up and went into the kitchen, where he poured himself a large gin. From habit, he filled up the glass with ice; then he wished he’d left it neat. He was still staring at the glass when Carol found him. “Paul,” she said. “I found this with your clothes.” It was a page from a local newspaper, not the Messenger; she had to unfold it several times. Paul blinked at it and restrained himself from drinking.

  “Yeh,” he said. “Story I covered. But they never used it. This is someone else’s write-up, for the Express and Star.”

  “What a tragic business. Was it someone you knew?”

  Paul shook his head. “No, I just investigated it. Didn’t find out any more than this reporter. Happens all the time, you know. Unwanted pregnancies, botched abortions, even this.” He swallowed his gin before too much of the ice could melt into it.

  Carol shrugged. “Funny thing to keep.” She folded up the page, then absentmindedly tore it into four pieces. “Sorry, did you want it?”

  Paul shook his head. He suppressed the impulse to shout, Fuck. What did you do that for? “How’s Dawn?” he asked as the gin started to blacken his nerves. He felt like a photograph left too long in developing fluid.

  “Shitting and vomiting,” Carol said. “But nothing dangerous, no blood. The doctor says she’ll be okay in three or four days. She needs to rest as much as possible. Paul, I found something else. In an envelope, in your desk. I’ve thrown them away.”

  “What were you looking there for?”

  “Paul ... You don’t use condoms with me. On the rare occasions that we have sex, you don’t use them. Who are they for?”

  “Keep your voice down. Stella will hear you.” Paul finished his drink. Carol was still staring at him. “All right,” he said. “I fuck the office boy in my lunch breaks.”

  “Was it that Alison Simmons?”

  “And coffee breaks.”

  “Did you forget once? Was that why ...”

  “Shut your face.” Paul stood up. With one hand, he mimed the closing of a mouth. Then he stared at his fist, remembering the fly and its thin blood. Thinner than water. He felt himself seize up. It never happened, he told himself. Only on the surface, the acts, the facts, the story. It was never real inside me.

  Was it real inside her? “Leave me alone,” he said quietly. Carol went upstairs. She was good like that sometimes. Paul looked around the kitchen. The wall was flecked with damp; it needed repainting. Perhaps he’d do it soon, and show he was a good family man. Only squatters let the places they lived in fall apart. It was growing dark outside. Paul carried on drinking. He heard Carol putting Stella to bed, heard Dawn saying good night. He’d seen her upstairs an hour before, heading for the toilet. She looked pale and dark-eyed, like a figure from a Munch engraving.

  When Paul went up to bed, the house was still. Carol was waiting for him. “Sorry,” he said, as if that could atone for all past, present and future offenses. In the dark, she tried to caress him. “Sorry,” he said again, this time meaning: It’s the drink. They both knew it wasn’t only the gin. He’d been impotent with Carol ever since ... well, since Alison died. He knew Carol would have connected the times when she saw the newspaper cu
tting. She always kept diaries and calendars. Why did she try to make love to him even when they’d had a row? Because she had no other source of comfort, Paul thought; he felt paralyzed with guilt. Carol lay still, holding him tight against her. He tried to will some of his alcoholic calm into her taut muscles. After a few minutes, she turned over and went to sleep, curled inward on herself.

  The next morning, Paul visited the canal district for the first time. It was another hot, bright day; the city center was choked with traffic. Young army recruits hung around the shopping precincts, their faces marked by the sun with a look of perpetual embarrassment. The shop windows were like dusty mirrors. Days like this numbed your vision, so you couldn’t see properly in the shade. Paul considered going into the office to catch up with some routine subbing and admin work for next Sunday’s issue of the Messenger. But instead, he caught the bus out toward West Bromwich. It took him past the house on the Hagley Road where Alison had lived. Further north, Smethwick was a gray chessboard of terraces and factory walls, like an open-plan prison. From a hilltop, Paul could see the glint of water in the reservoir’s drying socket.

  What was he looking for? Where he got off the bus, the street was empty. He walked through a circular shopping precinct, where only a few small offices were open. The shops themselves, including a bank, were boarded up, the boards sprayed with messages that overlaid each other into meaninglessness, like voices in a crowded place. This place felt crowded even though nobody was around. In the middle of the precinct, a hot-food kiosk had been literally plated with armor. On three sides, tower blocks reared up against the sky; their balconies overlooked the courtyard where Paul was standing. Each story was about eight feet deep. Looking upward, he had a terrible sense of the ground being hollow.