The Year's Best Horror Stories 22

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  “Thank God you’re coming back.” Was that what she’d said? I shifted in bed, feeling too much like something packaged and waiting to be unwrapped. The footsteps above me completed one final circle then began to descend. Outside, the grass wakened with a soft roar and it was then, as a shadow spoiled the thin line of light beneath my door, that I realized Gran hadn’t been mourning my departure so much as celebrating my arrival.

  ICE CREAM AND TOMBSTONES by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  Born in Los Angeles on March 20, 1955, Nina Kiriki Hoffman grew up in Southern California, fled to Idaho, and now resides in Eugene, Oregon. I bet she has cats. Hoffman has burst rather suddenly onto the horror scene, rapidly earning acclaim for her thoughtful and unpredictable manner of messing with your brain.

  Hoffman says: “My first novel, The Thread That Binds the Bones, came out from Avon last year. Am working on another for them, and looks like I sold a fantasy young adult book, too. Been selling lots of stories to anthologies.”

  I’ll be watching.

  She was sitting on my mother’s tombstone, eating an ice cream cone. I wanted to kill her.

  “Hi, kid,” she said. “Nice day, huh?” She licked the strawberry scoop, between the chocolate scoop and one that looked like coffee, but might be maple or butter rum or something like that. Then she leaned back, eyes closed, and let the sun shine on her face.

  For the middle of winter, it was a pretty nice day. Sun in an ice-blue sky shone bright enough so that bare trees looked brown instead of black and skeletal. I wanted to kill this woman, but I couldn’t help wondering how she could eat ice cream on a morning when there was still ice across all the puddles, and piled slush along the streets. I had stepped in a puddle on my way here with the flowers, broke through the ice (it was half an inch thick), and splashed water on my sneakers and socks. My feet were freezing. It was my twelfth birthday, and nobody had given me a card or a present at breakfast—maybe they forgot. I felt grumpy.

  “Get off there!” I yelled.

  She crossed her legs so she looked like some kind of leprechaun or something perching on the stone. She wore pink satin slippers, black-and-white striped socks that went up above her knees, and what looked like three coats on top of each other. Some sort of dark wool skirt stuck out from under them a little. She also had a green muffler around her neck and she wore tan knitted gloves with holes in most of the fingers. She looked familiar, and I didn’t know why.

  “Oh, now,” she said, “now.”

  “Go on!” I yelled. I ran at her, wanting to push her right off so she’d break a leg or her head or something vital.

  “Lexi,” she said.

  I stopped. She said my name as if it belonged in her mouth. It gave me pause. Most everybody called me Alexandra, except Daddy. He called me Lexi. He said it was what my mother had planned to call me before I was born. When my stepmother, Candace, called me Lexi, I yelled at her to stop it.

  “Lexi,” said this woman, sitting up straight and opening her eyes so she could stare at me. Her eyes were brown, like mine. She licked the chocolate scoop on her ice cream cone. “Want a bite?”

  I felt so cold inside I couldn’t even speak. I shook my head.

  Her hair was brown like mine, too, and she had those cheekbones and that chin, what Daddy called a valentine face, pointed at the bottom, broad in the middle, with at widow’s peak at the top—a face like mine.

  “I wanted to talk to you about the flowers,” she said. She held out the ice cream cone to me. “Sure you don’t want some?”

  I looked at my mother’s gray granite tombstone. MOIRA ALONZO it said, BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER. The day she was born and the day she died. She had died the day I was born.

  “I don’t want any ice cream,” I said.

  “Yes you do. Everything you do says so. Lexi, I’ve been dead for twelve years now, and you only started bringing me flowers six months ago.” We both looked down at the frozen roses from yesterday, and the dozen pink and white carnations I was carrying today. I was babysitting for everybody on our block, and spending all the money on flowers.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t bring them before,” I said.

  “I don’t want them now, honey,” she said. “They aren’t really mine. They smell funny. They smell like you’re thinking about somebody else when you’re buying them and bringing them here.”

  I looked at the carnations in their waxed paper. I sniffed them. They smelled like carnations always smell, spicy and fragrant.

  “By the time they get here, the flowers have turned to knives,” she said. “I would rather not have my grave covered with weapons.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Lexi,” she said, her voice soft. “Every evening you buy a bouquet and put it in the refrigerator where everyone in the house will see it. You’re spending all your energy trying to hurt someone, and that’s like eating ice cream in the snow.”

  I thought about Candace, who wanted me to call her Mom. She was always trying to touch me. She wanted to hug me every time I came home. It was enough to make me want to leave home forever.

  “What you do is up to you, of course,” she said. “Happy birthday, honey.” She offered me the ice cream cone one more time, and this time I took it from her. She smiled and disappeared.

  I laid the carnations on the grave. Leaning against the tombstone, I took my first lick of the ice cream, from the bottom scoop. Definitely coffee, my favorite flavor. It tasted good, but now my tongue was freezing, along with the rest of me. I tasted the other two flavors anyway. It was the best ice cream I’d ever had.

  Still holding the cone, I knelt and picked up the frozen roses. They wore clear sheaths of ice. Then I looked at the carnations.

  School would start in a half an hour and I had to go home and collect my lunch and change my shoes and socks. I hesitated a long time, staring at the pale flowers against the dark earth and grass of the winter grave. The ice cream cone didn’t even pretend to melt. At last I collected the carnations too. I left the ice cream sitting upright in the little vase place on the grave.

  I put the roses in the trash by the cemetery gate.

  I took the carnations home and put them in a glass, then placed them on the desk in my bedroom. Maybe everybody else forgot it was my birthday. My mother and I knew it. I sat on my bed and changed my shoes and socks. When I looked up at the flowers, they were blurry. My face felt hot. I thought it was as good a place as any to start warming up.

  SALT SNAKE by Simon Clark

  Simon Clark was born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire on April 20, 1958, and presently resides in the South Yorkshire village of Adwick-le-street with his wife and two children. Clark first appeared in The Year’s Best Horror Stories: XIV; this is his fourth appearance here, and in the interim his writing career has prospered. Connection?

  Clark offers this bit of chill regarding himself: “When Simon Clark was five years old, he fell through the ice of a frozen lake into deep water. Drowning, his cries for help unheard, he realized he’d have to save himself. Somehow he managed to haul himself out. Maybe this near death experience in the water has infected his writing. Many of his stories involve the other worldness of the sea or rivers or lakes. For him deep waters hold more dangers than common-or-garden drowning. In his novel Nailed By The Heart, the ocean delivers up miracles, monsters, and an old, old god with an appetite for sacrifice. In ‘Salt Snake’ the sea threatens once more—only this time it’s not content to sit beneath the high tide mark and wait for man to venture into its cold, briny body.”

  “Are you going to give the bitch one?”

  “Aye, go on. Then drive the car through the front of the house and set it on fucking fire. Burn the bloody lot.”

  “Shut it, bollock brain. I’m thinking.”

  Viper, leader of the gang, sat on the edge of the antique oak table smoking a cigarette. Tattooed snakes writhed up his long bare arms in red coils. Two tattooed snake heads, jaws open, fangs dripping blobs of venom protruded
from under his FUCK YOU! T-shirt. Around his neck was the tattoo he did in Borstal with a safety pin and a biro nicked from some fat-arsed screw. The dotted blue line bisected his neck. Ugly letters pricked CUT HERE.

  Viper cleared his throat and spat thickly on the rich carpet. “You ’aven’t touched her then, Spuggy?”

  “Course I ain’t,” said a blond-haired lad.

  “Good job, or I’d split your fucking face.”

  “If you ask me,” said the third, Joe, in a leather jacket that smelt of piss, “she’s out of her tree. All she does is look out of the window and go on about the sea being full of salt.”

  “Well Viper’s not going to give her an IQ test first, is he?”

  Viper threw what was left of the cigarette at a fireplace big enough to roast a whole pig in, and stood up. “I’m starving. Get the beer from the car, Joe.” To the blondhaired one he said, “Spuggy, get some snap on the go. Chips with something. Make it a boat load. I’ll give the mad bitch upstairs a seeing-to later.”

  Spuggy smiled as an idea prodded into his mind. “We got them video cameras on the last ram. We could—you know—film it.”

  Viper scowled as he lit another cigarette. “No one’s taking home movies of my bollocks.”

  “No.” Spuggy looked sly. “Get Joe to—you know—after you’ve done. Then we could do a snuff film. Sell it. You know, make a few grand.”

  “What, kill her? Yer out of ya tree, Spuggy. Go peel some spuds.”

  Viper returned to the polished table to smoke the cigarette. For the past week they’d torn through Lincolnshire, twoccing cars and ram raiding shops. Anything from off-licenses to electronic stores. Now they’d got enough booze, cigs, videos and hi-fis to return to the Yorkshire estate where they squatted and to live like the sons of Tory MPs for a few weeks. Viper spat. The only trouble was the cops had got too friggin close. When the weather got bad, fog so thick you couldn’t see as far as your arse, they’d lost them. Then they’d driven the van along roads that seemed to get narrower and more twisted by the mile. At one point, they’d seen a sign that told them they’d made it into Norfolk. They’d kept going, looking for a nice empty house. Miles from anywhere.

  By dark they’d reached one. A big old manorhouse or something at the edge of the sea. The nearest village was ten miles away. This was nice and quiet. They’d rest, fill their bellies, get pissed, shit all over the duvets and kick in the oak paneling. Then they’d go.

  But the house hadn’t been deserted.

  In a bedroom, they’d found a girl of about eighteen, just dressed in a short cotton nightie. With the longest legs you’ve ever seen, Spuggy had said she was wearing no knickers but Viper hadn’t seen anything. Not that it mattered. She’d got long blonde hair all the way down her back. And her face ... Well, it was no oil painting but there was something striking about it.

  “Did you notice,” said Spuggy later, “she’s got a squint, you know, boz-eyed.”

  Joe had laughed. “Not much of one. Not enough to put you off giving her one. Or are you queer or something, Spuggy?”

  That had nearly caused a fight until Viper quelled it with a scowling look. One thing they all agreed on though: she had a slate missing.

  Joe sniffed. “Wonder why they left her here?”

  “Her folks have gone to some poncey do,” said Viper. “They didn’t want her farting in front of the vicar or peeing in the soupcon.”

  The what-son?

  “The soupcon, stupid. Right, search the rest of the house.”

  There was no one else. The cellar was full of dusty bottles of wine. They opened some, but it tasted like vinegar. A few bottles they smashed against the whitewashed walls in explosions of red like blood. Spuggy laughed and babbled on about dropping nuns out of helicopters. He used to be funny. Now he was just a pain. Viper told himself he’d blow him out when they got back home.

  “Christ, it’s getting like cottage cheese out there. You don’t get fog like that on the Warwick estate.” Joe set half a dozen packs of Carlsberg Special Brew on the table.

  “Aw, scared are we?” jeered Spuggy as he shoved a plateful of sausage and chips across the table.

  “Get stuffed.” Joe stuffed a handful of chips into his mouth. A couple fell on the carpet. “I was ready for that ... Jesus! Look at that!”

  Viper’s patience was running thin. “What?”

  “On me skin.” Joe held up his hands. “There’s something on me skin.”

  “Nivea hand cream, I shouldn’t wonder,” chuckled Spuggy, stabbing a sausage.

  Joe looked at his hand closely. It looked white. “You know it’s ...” He licked the back of his hand. “Salt,” he announced. “I’m covered in bloody salt. Look at me jacket.” A thick film of white covered the black leather.

  “It’s bloody obvious.” Viper opened a can of Carlsberg to wash the chips down. “Sea fog. And like the dippo upstairs says, the sea’s full of salt. Now eat your bastard chips before I start cracking someone.”

  They ate in silence, apart from the sound of their jaws mashing sausage and chips and sucking on the cans.

  Christ, this’s good, thought Viper opening his third lager. A car full of good shit to sell; more beer and food than you could ever get into your belly; a place of your own—Foggy Mansions he’d call it—and an ace-looking tart waiting upstairs for yours truly to work his own brand of magic on.

  “Who do you think she is?” Viper jabbed his fork toward the ceiling.

  “God knows,” said Spuggy. “Dippy tart won’t say. She won’t even tell you her name. If I were you, Viper, I’d go up there and give her a slap.”

  Viper spat on the floor. “You’re not me, so I’m not. These sausages are bloody burned. Can’t you cook owt?”

  Spuggy couldn’t answer back so he tried to wind up Joe, asking him when he was going to get some clothes that hadn’t been in fashion in 1966. Joe grunted and shoved his empty plates away from him. “I’m going to see if that bird wants owt to eat.”

  Spuggy winked at Viper as Joe left the room. “Reckon I hurt sweetheart’s feelings.”

  Viper opened another can. No doubt about it, he’d ditch Spuggy when they got back home. Okay, he’d been a mad bugger ever since they’d gone to school together. He used to be a laugh.

  Now you just didn’t know what he’d do next.

  “She’s legged it.” Joe stood panting in the doorway.

  “You’ve checked all the rooms?” Viper was on his feet.

  “All of them. She’s gone. Front door’s open.”

  Viper rubbed the coiling snake tattoos on his forearm. “Well, she can’t get far.”

  Spuggy smashed an empty can against the table with his fist. “What that tart needs is a good slapping.”

  Viper ignored him. “Come on, let’s find her.”

  Outside, the fog was thick—thicker than any fog Viper had seen before. It was like pressing your face into wet cotton wool. He licked his lips.

  Sea fog. Salt. He could taste it on his lips.

  “Split up,” he ordered. “She won’t be far away.”

  Even though it must have been still dusk, visibility was near nil. Within half a dozen paces he could no longer see the house or the other two. Although he could hear Spuggy muttering something half-baked.

  Viper worked his way along a garden path—one of those made out of broken slabs they call crazy paving. Crazy? He chuckled under his breath. Spuggy would be at home here. Crazy bastard.

  The fog seemed to grow more dense. Sometimes he brushed against unseen bushes, a branch would catch his hair like bats’ claws. Christ, it was so thick you even breathed it in. He coughed. The salt taste bit his tongue. Where the hell was she?

  Viper searched, tripping and sliding across the uneven path. He could see nothing. He might as well have been in a sack full of cotton wool. Hell, he could hardly see his bastard feet. The tattoo snakes on his arms began to prickle, the way they did when he began to get aggravated.

  The next thing he
heard was a faint roaring sound. It grew louder as he walked. He paused, listening to the sound—a constant roaring, roiling across the garden and away into the mist like a ...

  Sea, he told himself. Fucking sea. He wished he’d got a cigarette.

  With the unseen surf roaring in the distance masking any sound, and the thickness of the fog, he found himself searching almost by touch alone.

  Just as he began to think about giving up, his finger tips brushed soft fabric.

  “Where did you think you were off to, luv?” Viper watched as she slowly turned to look at him with an odd blank expression. She did not speak. Viper spat into the grass. “You’ll end up losing yourself in this muck, you know.”

  “The stream is all dried up.” She turned to look down into a waterless ditch. “The water doesn’t flow there any more.”

  “S’been a good summer, luv.” He cringed at the thing he heard in his voice. Gentleness? Christ! Just give the bitch a clip. Or give her a damn good shag here and now in the long grass. Then send her back home with grass stains all over her arse. He’d done that before now. But he couldn’t do it to her. He couldn’t even bring himself to swear at her.

  “It’s dry,” she said softly. “Look.”

  He took a pace forward into the long grass and looked into the ditch. Beneath a few leaves and the odd stick, the mud was cracked and hard.

  “Careful,” she said in that soft voice again. “There are snakes in the grass.”

  “Snakes?” Viper gave a laugh. “What, like this, luv?” He held out his arms, showing her the crimson tattoo snakes. She gazed at them for a moment but said nothing.

  He sighed. “Come on, luv. Back to the ranch.”

  Viper was going to take her by the arm, but she walked purposefully ahead of him back to the house. It was only then that he noticed she wore the same short nightdress. Her feet were bare.