The Year's Best Horror Stories 22

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  My jacket’s over my other arm so I’m lucky that I don’t drop it and give the woman the chance to strike again. She lunges but I’m away down the street running for my life. When it’s clear she’s not chasing me I stop for breath. One or two passersby look at me with mild curiosity. I head back in the direction of the railway station. Down a side street on my right I recognize one of the hotels I saw earlier—the Esedra. Then I hadn’t liked the look of it, but now it’s my haven from the streets. I approach the glass doors and hesitate when I realize there are several men in the lobby. But the thought of the drugged-up woman makes me go on. So I push open the door and the men look up from their card game. I’m about to ask for a room when one of the men, who’s had a good long look at me, says something to the man behind the little counter and this man reaches for a key from room 17’s pigeon hole. I realize what’s happening—they’ve mistaken me for someone who’s already a paying guest—and there was a time when I would have been tempted to accept the key in the desire to save money, but these days I’m not short of cash. So, I hesitate only for a moment before saying that I’m looking for a room. The man is momentarily confused but gets me another key—room 19—from a hook and quotes a price. It’s cheap; the hotel is probably a haunt of prostitutes but right now I don’t care. I just need a bed for the night.

  “It’s on the third floor,” the man says. I pay him and walk up. There are lightbulbs but they’re so heavily shaded the stairs are darker than the street outside. On each landing there are four doors: three bedrooms and one toilet cum shower. I unlock the door to room 19 and close it behind me.

  I have a routine with hotel rooms: I lock myself in and switch on all the lights and open all the cupboards and drawers until I feel I know the room as well as I can. And I always check the window.

  There are two single beds, some sticks of furniture, a bidet and a washbasin—I open the cold tap and clean up the scratch on my arm. The window is shuttered. I pull on the cord to raise the shutter. I’m overlooking the Corso Uberto I which runs up to the railway station. I step on to the tiny balcony and my hands get covered in dust from the wrought-iron railing. The cars in the street below are filmed with dust also. The winds blow sand here from the deserts of North Africa and it falls with the rain. I pull a chair on to the balcony and sit for a while thinking about Flavia. Somewhere in this city she’s sitting watching television or eating in a restaurant and she doesn’t know I’m here. Tomorrow I will try to find her.

  I watch the road and I’m glad I’m no longer out there looking for shelter. Small knots of young men unravel on street corners and cross streets that don’t need crossing. After a while I start to feel an uncomfortable solidity creeping into my limbs, so I take the chair back inside and drop the shutter. I’d prefer to leave it open but the open window might look like an invitation.

  I’m lying in bed hoping that sleep will come but there’s a scuttling, rustling noise keeping me awake. It’s coming from the far side of the room near the washbasin and the framed print of the ancient city of Pompeii. It sounds like an insect, probably a cockroach. I’m not alarmed. I’ve shared hotel rooms with pests before, but I want to go to sleep. There’s no use left in this day and I’m eager for the next one to begin.

  Something else is bothering me: I want to go and try the door to room 17 and see why the proprietor was about to give me that key. The scratching noise is getting louder and although I can’t fall asleep I’m getting more and more tired so that I start to imagine the insect. It’s behind the picture where it’s scratched out its own little hole and it’s lying in wait for me to go and lift the picture aside and it will come at me, slow and deadly, like a Lancaster bomber. The noise works deeper into my head. The thing must have huge wings and antennae. Scratch ... scratch ... scratch. I can’t stand it any more. I get up, pull on my trousers and leave the room.

  The stairs are completely dark. I feel my way to the next landing and switch on the light in the WC to allow me to see the numbers on the doors. I push open the door to room 17, feeling a layer of dust beneath my fingertips, and it swings open. The chinks in the shutter admit enough light to paint a faint picture of a man lying on the bed who looks not unlike me. I step into the room and feel grit on the floor under my feet. As I step closer the man on the bed turns to look at me. His lips move slowly.

  “I came straight here,” he says, “instead of walking into the city to find something better.”

  I don’t know what to say. Pulling up a chair I sit next to him.

  “I found her,” he continues. “She lives above the city on the west side. You can see Vesuvius from her window.”

  I grip his cold hand and try to read the expression on his face. But it’s blank. The words rustle in his mouth like dry leaves caught between stones.

  “She’s not interested. Watch out for Vesuvius,” he whispers, then falls silent. I sit there for a while watching his gray face for any sign of life but there’s nothing. Feeling an unbearable sadness for which I can’t reasonably account I return to my room and lie flat on my back on the little bed.

  The unknown insect is still busy scratching behind the ruins of Pompeii.

  I wake to heavy traffic under my window, my head still thick with dreams. On my way downstairs I pause on the landing opposite room 17 and feel a tug. But I know the easiest thing is not to think too much about it and just carry on downstairs, hand in the key and leave the hotel for good. Even if I don’t manage to locate Flavia, I won’t come back here. I’d find something better.

  I walk across the city, stopping at a little bar for a cappuccino and a croissant. The air smells of coffee, cigarettes and laundry. Strings of clothes are hung out in the narrow passages like bunting. Moped riders duck their heads to avoid vests and socks as they bounce over the cobbles. Cars negotiate alleys barely wide enough to walk down, drivers jabbing at the horn to clear the way. Pedestrians step aside unhurriedly and there are no arguments or remonstrations.

  The sun is beating down, but there’s a haze like sheer nylon stretched above the rooftops—dust in the air. I’m just heading west and climbing through distinct areas. The class differences show up clearly in the homes—the bassi, tiny rooms that open directly on to the street, and higher up the huge apartment blocks with their own gate and security—and in the shops and the goods sold in them. Only the dust is spread evenly.

  As soon as I’m high enough to see Vesuvius behind me, I take out the photograph and use it to direct my search, heading always west.

  It takes a couple of hours to cross the city and locate the right street. I make sure it’s the right view before starting to read the names on the bell-pushes. The building has to be on the left-hand side of the road because those on the right aren’t high enough to have a view over those on the left. I still don’t know if I’m going to find the name or not. Through the gaps between the buildings I can see Vesuvius on the other side of the bay. By looking ahead I’m even able to estimate the exact building, and it turns out I’m right. There’s the name—F. Sannia—among a dozen others. I press the bell without thinking about it.

  When Flavia comes to open the door I’m surprised. Perhaps it’s more her place to be surprised than mine, but she stands there with a vacant expression on her face. What a face, though, what extraordinary beauty. She was good looking when we first met, of course, but in the intervening years she has grown into a stunning woman. I fear to lean forward and kiss her cheeks lest she crumble beneath my touch. But the look is blank. I don’t know if she recognizes me. I say her name then my own and I must assume her acquiescence—as she turns back into the hall and hesitates momentarily—to be an invitation. So I follow her. She walks slowly but with the same lightness of step that I remember from before.

  As I follow her into the apartment, I’m drawn immediately to the far side of the main room where there’s a balcony with a spectacular view over the Bay of Naples and, right in the center at the back, Mount Vesuvius. Unaware of where Flavia has disappeared to
, I stand there watching the view for some minutes. Naples is built on hills and one of them rises from the sea to dominate the left middle ground, stepped with huge crumbling apartment buildings and sliced up by tapering streets and alleys that dig deeper the narrower they become. The whole city hums like a hive and cars and scooters buzz about like drones. But the main attraction is Vesuvius. What a place to build a city: in the shadow of a volcano.

  It’s a while before I realize Flavia has returned and is standing behind me as I admire the view.

  “What do you want to do while you are in Naples?” she asks with a level voice. “You’ll stay here, of course.”

  “You’re very kind. I meant to give you some notice, but I don’t think I had the right phone number.” I show her the number in my book.

  “I changed it,” she says as she sits in one of the wicker chairs and indicates for me to do the same. “I’ve been widowed six times,” she says and then falls silent. “It’s easier.”

  I don’t know what to say. I think she must have intended to say something else—made a mistake with her English—although she seems so gray and lifeless herself that the statement may well have been true.

  We sit on her balcony for half an hour looking out over the city and the volcano on the far side of the bay, during which time I formulate several lines with which to start a fresh conversation but each one remains unspoken. Something in her passivity frightens me. It seems at odds with the elan of the city in which she lives.

  But Flavia speaks first. “With this view,” she says slowly, “it is impossible not to watch the volcano, to become obsessed by it.”

  I nod.

  “My father was alive when it last erupted,” she continues, “in 1944. Now Vesuvius is dormant. Do you want to see Naples?” she asks, turning toward me.

  “Yes, very much.”

  We leave the apartment and Flavia leads the way to a beaten-up old Fiat Uno. Her driving is a revelation: once in the car and negotiating the hairpin, doubleparked roads leading downtown Flavia is a completely different woman. Here is the lively, passionate girl I knew in London. She takes on other drivers with the determination and verve she showed in my room overlooking the hotel car park when we took it in turns to sit astride each other. She rode me then as she now drives the Fiat, throwing it into 180-degree corners and touching her foot to the floor on the straights. She’s not wearing her seat belt; I unclip mine, wind down my window and put my foot up on the plastic molding in front of me. At one point—when I draw my elbow into the car quickly to avoid a bus coming up on the other side of the road—Flavia turns her head and smiles at me just as she did eight years earlier before falling sleep.

  We skid into the parking place and Flavia attacks the handbrake. Once out of the car she’s quiet again, gliding along beside me. “Where are we going?” I ask her. Beyond the city the summit of Vesuvius is draped in thick gray cloud. Out over the sea on our right a heavy wedge of darkest gray thunderheads is making its way landward trailing skirts of rain. In the space of two minutes the island of Capri is rubbed out as the storm passes over it and into the bay.

  “She must want to be alone,” Flavia says and, when I look puzzled, continues: “They say that you can see a woman reclining in the outline of the island.”

  But Capri is lost behind layers of gray veils now and just as Flavia finishes speaking the first drops of rain explode on my bare arms. Within seconds we are soaked by a downpour of big fat sweet-smelling summer rain. My thin shirt is plastered to my back. The rain runs off Flavia’s still body in trickles. She seems impervious to the cleansing, refreshing effect that I’m enjoying. Dripping wet with rain bouncing off my forehead, I give her a smile, but her expression doesn’t change. “Shall we walk?” I suggest, eyeing some trees in the distance that would give us some shelter. She just turns and starts walking without a word so I follow. The trees—which I realize I have seen previously from Flavia’s balcony—conceal the city aquarium, housed in the lower ground floor of a heavy stone building. I pay for two tickets and we pass in front of a succession of gloomy windows on to another world. It’s so damp down there I feel almost as if we’ve entered the element of the fishes. My shirt clings to my back, getting no drier under the dim lights. Flavia’s white blouse is stuck to her shoulders but there’s no tremor of life as far as I can see. She stares unseeing at the fish, the sinister skate, and lugubrious octopus which regard us with an expression I feel but can’t put a name to. Because I’m beginning to feel quite anxious I hurry past the shrimps and seahorses—which I see only as a blur of commas and question marks—and I’m relieved to get back into the open air.

  Flavia takes me to a restaurant she knows and I eat cousins of the creatures we’ve just seen in the aquarium. Flavia orders mineral water and oysters but then hardly touches them. My teeth grind on tiny particles of grit of shell in my sauce, but I don’t say anything because it seems to be a city-wide problem. The waiter’s black patent leather shoes are matt with a fine layer of dust.

  I watch Flavia as I eat and she stares out of the window at the teeming rain. When she moves, it’s with an incredible slowness that sets up a tension in me. Her stillness makes me want to protect her. She must have suffered so much, like a tree that’s been buffeted by so many storms it’s been stripped of leaves and twigs, but still stands, proud and defiant. I want to reach across and touch her cheek in the hope she might soften and smile, but such a deliberate act seems reckless. The worst thing would be if she remained indifferent to my advance.

  As I continue eating, however, I’m filled with desire for her. I want to take her to bed and hold her and stroke away the years with her thin layers of clothing.

  The feeling grows throughout what remains of the day. We go to a couple of basement piano bars and a club where crowds of strikingly beautiful people spill out on to the street. The atmosphere of intoxication and sexual excitement does nothing to spark Flavia into life. She simply trails her fingers through the dust which seems to coat the tables in every bar we go in.

  Only in the car does she come alive as we race from one venue to another, bouncing down noisy cobbled escape routes and diving into alleys thin as crevices. The car’s headlamps startle cats and in one hidden piazza a huddle of unshaven men emerging from a fly-posted door. “This is a dangerous quarter,” she says, pointing at streets I remember from my first night. “Camorro. Our Mafia. They kill you here as soon as look at you.”

  Way past midnight we end up in a park above the city on the same side as Flavia’s apartment but further round the bay. “This newspaper,” she indicates piles of discarded newsprint lining the side of the road. “People come here in their cars and put the newspaper up to cover the windows. Then they make love.”

  I look at the vast drifts of newspaper as we drive slowly around the perimeter of the park. “Why?” I ask. “Because they live at home? It’s their only chance?”

  She shrugs. “They do it in the cars then throw the newspaper out of the window.”

  “And what a view they have,” I say, looking across the bay at the brooding shadow of Vesuvius.

  Back home again she retreats inside her shell. The sudden change throws me. I want to touch her, sleep with her, but suddenly it’s as if we’re complete strangers. She sits on the balcony staring at Vesuvius and I bring her a drink. As I put it down, I place my other hand on her arm and give it a brief squeeze. She doesn’t react, so I pull one of the wicker chairs round to face hers and sit in the darkness just watching her watch the volcano. The moon paints her face with a pale wash. I can see the shape of her breasts under the white blouse and as I concentrate I can see the merest lift as she breathes. Otherwise I might have doubted she was still alive. “Do you want to go to bed?” I ask.

  She just looks at me. Inside me the tension is reaching bursting point. When Flavia gets up and walks to her bedroom, I follow. She undresses in front of me. The moonlight makes her flesh look gray and very still. I undress and lie beside her. She doesn’t push me
away but neither does she encourage me in any way.

  When I wake in the morning, she’s gone. The pillow on her side is still indented and warm to the touch. I wish I’d done something the night before, but her terrible passivity killed my desire. A night’s sleep, however, has returned it to me. If she were here now, I’d force her to decide whether to accept or reject me, either being preferable to indifference.

  I get dressed and step out on the balcony. The top of Vesuvius is covered with cloud. The air over the city is hazy. On the little table there’s a note for me from Flavia. She’s had to go out for the day and can I entertain myself? I’m to help myself to whatever I want. She suggests I visit Pompeii.

  The Circumvesuviana railway trundles out of the east side of Naples and skirts the volcano, calling at St Giorgio and Ercolano, the sun beating down on the crumbling white apartment buildings. I avoid the modern town at Pompeii and head straight for the excavations. German tourists haggle over the entrance fee. I pay and go through, detaching myself from the crowd as soon as I can. They saunter off down the prescribed route armed with guide books from which their self-elected leader will read out loud, peculiarly choosing the English-language section, as they pass by the monuments of particular note. The same man—he’s wearing a red shirt which bulges over the waistband of his creamy linen trousers—carries the camcorder and will listen impassively to anyone who suggests they operate it instead. They’re a distraction from my surroundings: city preserved to a far greater degree than anything I had been expecting. I wander off into an area of recent excavations where I’m alone with the buzzing insects and basking lizards that dart away at my approach. The heat is overpowering and after a quarter of an hour threading my way through dug-out paved streets bordered with shoulder-high walls and great swathes of overflowing undergrowth I have to sit down for a rest. I look up at Vesuvius, a huge black shape jiggling from side to side behind the thickening haze.