The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2014 (Volume 5)

by Kaaron Warren

  “Again? Why, what have I done?”

  “Enabled us, Jem. Given us the power to begin work on our next target. You could be invaluable. Who knows what else you’ll help us do?”

  “Unless I guess your secret name. Some do, you said. It’s likely I’ve seen it, you said.”

  “Correct. We keep to the rules.”

  Everyone had gone still again, holding, waiting.

  Jem looked down at the case, at the tiny world contained there, trying to grasp what he’d seen amid the misdirection, the deflections, the word-play, desperately seeking a Get Out of Jail Free Card, some ultimate name of power that compelled obedience.

  Maybe it was in old carnival lore, old circus customs, like “Hey Rube!”—the old carnie cry for calling for help in a fight, a special Mayday. And Mayday itself—a distress call in all kinds of emergencies, from m’aider—Come help me!—in French. Things meant things. Words mattered here. Things half-heard. Misdirection.

  Like Skylab Land!

  The Mermaid!

  And Mr Fleymann! Flayman indeed! Power in names.

  Mum on the Sofa. Couch Ma! Cauchemar! Nightmare.

  And Mally Quinn, for heaven’s sake! How could he have missed it? Mallequin! Mannequin!

  He looked down at the glare and the dazzle, the tiny world, at everything the world was here. The only world.

  Corpse Rose!

  Could it be? Of course.

  That name! That name of power!

  That was it! He knew it.

  He said it out loud, blurted it, said it a second time.

  “Dammit!” someone said, possibly Mally.

  “Bugger!” muttered someone else.

  Mr F.’s grin held, but the light went out of it like sand sliding around stones. Just the grimace remained, leached and horrid. Finally it relaxed, broke apart.

  “Well played, Jem. But no matter. You’ve set us on our way. Tomorrow, the International Space Station will have a small but annoying toilet blockage, and one of its lesser windows will get the first signs of pitting. Nothing major yet, and a bit theatrical, I know, but it made the folks in Washington and Moscow very nervous when those faces appeared in their station windows. More nations involved with the ISS. Harder to hush up. It’s time to bring the house down, but we’ll make sure it’s haunted first.”

  “What happens to me?”

  “Get Out of Jail Free, lucky boy. You were everything we hoped you’d be.”

  * * *

  Jem woke leaning against a tree in the dusty main street of Cook, legs thrust out in front. Someone was talking to him, a tall weathered brunette who kept glancing at her watch, clearly had things to do.

  “Train’s in tomorrow,” she said, then indicated the old man standing next to her. “Pete says you can sleep on his verandah tonight. You’ll be fine.”

  Jem fought to get his bearings, remember everything, anything, watched the woman walk over to a Jeep Cherokee, climb in and start the engine.

  “Heat stroke’ll get ya, young fella,” the old man said. “Like the lady says, you’ll be fine in a day or two.”

  Jem managed to stand. “Say, Pete, did you see a sign on that Jeep’s door? Name of a property or something?”

  “Never did. Mally’s pretty much a loner. You see somethin’?”

  “Not sure. For a moment I thought I saw that old name from the Bible. Lazarus.”

  “Wasn’t he the fella that rose from the dead?”

  Jem watched the Jeep driving off amid the dust. “At the very least.”

  Signature

  Faith Mudge

  Priya Gowda had never met a book she wouldn’t read, and she’d met a lot of them. She was born to sell books, or at least that was what Rieke told her.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” he confessed one Friday morning, while they were unpacking a delivery: six boxes of a new thriller that had the author’s name in bigger type than the title. “I feel like a dietician selling chips.”

  “I like chips,” Priya said, slitting the tape on the last box and gathering up an armful of books. “What’s wrong with chips?”

  “They’re the twenty-first century’s cigarettes. They have no nutritional benefit whatsoever, and they increase the burden on an already dysfunctional medical system. What’s right with chips?”

  “They taste nice.” Priya shrugged. “Life’s not all soul searching any more than it’s all salad.”

  She straightened up, books stacked on her lap, and maneuvered her wheelchair out of the storeroom. Behind her, Rieke paused to check the shelving of the children’s section. He hated books being misplaced and took every opportunity to reshuffle them into their proper order.

  “Doesn’t it drive you mad, though?” he asked. “When you see the classics passed over for an empty fad?”

  “The classics are still there if I want them,” Priya pointed out. “In the meantime, I’m going to read the heck out of sexy super spies.”

  Priya had worked with Rieke at Nightingale and Priest for just over two years, and she knew he meant well. He was a fully accredited hipster, a bony young man in his mid twenties with ice blonde hair and thick black-rimmed bifocals, and his favorite authors were all ill-fated poets or nineteenth century social activists. He accepted his duty to sell people what they wanted to buy the way a clergyman might tolerate wayward members of the flock, in the hope of converting unwary customers to greater things.

  The bookshop was inner city, between a sushi bar and a bakery, with displays of paper art in the windows and a blackboard by the door listing new releases and discounts. Inside, the floor was glossy black, the walls papered in the design of a seventeenth century map. Sleek red lamps hung from the ceiling at key points, radiating warm light.

  A landmark compromise between caffeine-junkie computer programmer Cassandra Nightingale and her indie publisher girlfriend Emilia Priest, the shop was a fusion of their passions. Shiny black shelving overlooked a cluster of red-topped tables, with barstools arrayed along the counter, and there was even a shelf of free books—an eclectic, eternally changing collection, pages dog-eared and margins full of other people’s thoughts. Added to wi-fi and Saturday night author talks, it really wasn’t surprising that Nightingale and Priest had gained a devoted community.

  Cassandra was rarely in the shop, providing funds rather than presence. When she dropped by it was like receiving a visiting dignitary, sending her employees into a delighted panic. Emilia came in more regularly. She liked to arrange impromptu poetry readings and was currently editing an anthology of modern verse, including several original poems by Rieke. He adored her.

  Priya loved bookshops on principle, and Nightingale and Priest had always been her favorite. In her last workplace she had been the brown disabled girl. Here, Emilia wanted her marketing suggestions and Rieke was supportive to the point of being overprotective. Later that day when a customer asked Priya where she was from—rather, where she was really from—he came barreling out of the aisles like a very tall, thin tank, and Priya had to talk fast to get in first.

  “Woodridge,” she said brightly, pushing the woman’s bagged book across the counter. “How about you?”

  “The racism in this country!” Rieke fumed afterwards. “She took one look at your skin and assumed you’d just set foot on Australian soil. How do you put up with people like that?”

  Priya sighed. “If I were an ambassador for immigration, I’d have a big fancy car with flags on it. My job isn’t to explain myself, it’s to sell them books.”

  “You were born to do this,” Rieke said, and Priya tucked the words away in a corner of her memory to savor later on the way home.

  Her brother Kabir met her at Central Station, as usual, because her mother worried about her on public transport alone at night. He was not much of a bodyguard, slender rather than toned, boyishly scruffy with his rumpled black hair and electric blue shoelaces, but he worked in the city too, taking calls for the ambulance service. On the way home he told her about the stu
pid pranks that had wasted his time that day, and she told him about Rieke’s latest protest against populism.

  “He’s got a point,” Kabir said. “I mean, maybe the classics need some defending.”

  “You only say that because you fancy him.” Priya glanced at her brother slyly. “Has he made you read Keats yet?”

  Kabir went pink. “How did you know?”

  Priya settled back contentedly. “I’m your inside woman on this. Trust me, it’s a good sign.”

  * * *

  In Queensland, August could be the golden month on the cusp between unnatural cold and unbearable heat. Priya’s family spent a lot of time outside in weather like this. Their four-bedroom house was not really designed to accommodate seven people, let alone one with a wheelchair—sometimes the only place to get some quiet was in the street outside. The best space they had was the back deck, where everyone could gather around the same table. After dinner they lingered to talk while the younger kids chased each other around the lawn, but as the others began to drift away, Priya stayed, watching the dusk fall.

  “Come inside,” her mother called from the kitchen window. “Why must you work out there? You’ll be devoured by mosquitoes.”

  Priya held up a textbook, inviolate armor to her parents. “I’ll be in soon.”

  When she was sure she wasn’t being watched, she reached into the book bag at her feet, bringing out a notepad and a sleek white cell phone. She kept an eye on it as she worked. It had been in her possession for well over a year, but it wasn’t hers. Every time she wondered whether she was being tricked, all she had to do was look at the phone. It never needed credit, or even signal.

  It was dark when the call came, later than usual. Priya answered at the first ring and the voice on the other end purred against her ear like a chilly breeze.

  “What have you been up to, my dear?”

  “Keeping busy!” Priya said, forcibly bright. “How about you?”

  “Don’t be facetious, child.” The voice sharpened, from a purr to a growl. “I know everything you do. It would not hurt, I think, for you to remember that.”

  “A good night to you too.” Priya opened the notepad to a list of names. “Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

  The bargain had been a bad idea. Priya had known that from the moment she found the phone and heard her name at the other end, but she had made it anyway. Fate had reached out a helping hand when she needed it most.

  The bargain had brought her to the bookshop.

  * * *

  Emilia was there when Priya arrived the next morning, sitting at one of the barstools and spinning a spoon dejectedly in her empty cup. She was a slight, elegant woman in her late thirties, wearing a pearly chiffon scarf to complement her black and white polka dot dress. It was only close up that Priya realized one spot was spilt coffee.

  “Good morning,” she said tentatively. “Is everything okay?”

  “No,” Emilia said. Her voice, still crisply British after eight years living in Australia, was terse with exhaustion. “Things are anything but okay.”

  “What’s happened?”

  Instead of answering, Emilia got up and made herself more coffee. She made a cappuccino for Priya too, nudging aside a chair to make space for her to roll up.

  “So what’s wrong?” Priya asked, breathing in the aroma rising from her cup.

  Emilia sighed. “Look. You’re a smart girl, Priya, and you know me pretty well, so if I tell you something weird, you’ll know I mean it. Yes?”

  Priya nodded.

  “We’re about to be evicted. By a Fate.”

  Priya opened her mouth at the first sentence. The second froze her in place.

  “By Fate,” Emilia added, “I mean an actual manifestation of destiny. Go look it up in the mythology section if you like. I have. It doesn’t help much.”

  Priya put down her cup with inordinate care. “Oh,” she said. “No.” Her voice sounded hollow. What have I done?

  “It’s all my own stupid fault,” Emilia sighed. “I’m a stone cold bibliophile, you know that. My press means the world, but you would not believe the bad luck . . . I only kept in the black by working around the clock. Eventually Cass gave me a deadline: find a new job or a new girlfriend.”

  Emilia smiled tiredly. “A bookshop seemed the best balance—that way I could keep up my press on the side—but bookshops aren’t exactly hot stuff right now. I couldn’t get the money I needed from a bank. Then I met her. Imagine a female Rumpelstiltskin in a nice business suit who lends out all the golden straw and makes you sign a contract as long as your arm.”

  Priya choked. “You’ve seen her?”

  “She gave me three years to figure out her name,” Emilia continued, as if she hadn’t heard. “It seemed such a long time. I mean, there are books, online databases, census records. I thought I could do it. Three years, and it’s up on Monday. I was so stupid.”

  She lifted her head. “You’re taking this well. You must think I’ve gone crazy.”

  “I don’t,” Priya whispered. “I still have a year and a half left.”

  The bookshop had never been so silent.

  “What,” Emilia said, at last, very carefully, “did you ask for?”

  “I needed a job.” Priya looked at her hands while she spoke. “It was—I couldn’t afford to keep studying. Either I had to ask my parents for a loan or give up my degree, and they don’t have the money to spare. Somehow, she knew.”

  “She brought you here?”

  Priya nodded. Emilia stood up abruptly. “I need more coffee.”

  One of the glass doors swung suddenly open and both women jumped, but it was only Rieke. He unwound several yards of thin sage green scarf and came over to their table, slowing down as he took in their expressions.

  “What’s wrong?” he demanded.

  “It’s complicated,” Emilia sighed. “What do you know about Fates?”

  Rieke dropped his scarf. He stared at Emilia, panic-stricken. “I didn’t have a choice! I had nowhere to go, and she found me—”

  Emilia braced herself against the table. “Dear God.”

  * * *

  Priya had been grateful at first. If she could guess the Fate’s name within three years, she would be left in peace; if she could not, her degree and all results therein would be forfeit. Like Emilia, she had been sure she could find the name in the allotted time. Like Emilia, she was no closer now than she had been on the day she’d signed the contract.

  Emilia paced back and forth, listening as Rieke told the same story. When the old-fashioned station clock above the counter struck nine, though, she pulled herself together.

  “We are unspeakably screwed,” she said fiercely, “but we can still sell books. Priya, open the doors!”

  Saturdays were the busiest day of the week at Nightingale and Priest and this was no exception—the tables were full all morning, and Priya kept busy behind the counter bagging books. Occupied with the familiar pattern of the day, she didn’t notice anything was wrong until Emilia suddenly stiffened and leaned over to hiss, “She’s here.”

  Priya followed her glare to an elderly woman in a crisp white business suit with a crocodile skin handbag hooked over her arm. Her white hair was twisted into a complicated knot at the back of her head. She met Emilia’s glare and smiled sweetly, like someone’s executive granny.

  “I am not serving her,” Emilia muttered. “I just won’t.”

  They couldn’t kick her out, though, not in front of a whole café of oblivious onlookers. Priya might not know much about magic, but customer service, she understood.

  “You go,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

  By the time the old lady, or Fate, or whatever she was reached the counter, Emilia had fled to the furthest reaches of the history section. Priya dredged up a smile.

  “Hello, ma’am, how can I help you today?” she reeled off. She had said the same words so often that they sounded permanently strung together, like a hackneyed song lyri
c. The old lady smiled too, her lips pastel pink, her teeth very white.

  “Well, I’m not sure yet,” she said. “What can you offer?”

  “We have coffee, tea, hot chocolate, iced chocolate, fruit juice or mineral water.”

  The old lady looked at the laminated menu propped up in front of the coffee machine. “A pomegranate juice would hit the spot.”

  Priya smiled. Maybe she would be losing the best job of her life tomorrow because of this woman, but if it came to a contest, she could out-smile her. She wheeled to the glass-fronted fridge, bringing her legs into full view. Their distorted shape was visible under Priya’s skirt; she didn’t dress to hide it. When she turned around with the juice in her hand, the Fate looked vaguely horrified, the very picture of a sweet old lady feeling embarrassed for her.

  “Oh my,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s no trouble,” Priya replied, placing the chilled bottle on the counter. “That’s four-fifty, thank you.”

  The Fate opened her crocodile skin handbag. “How did it happen, dear? Your . . . impairment, I mean. It must be so hard.”

  “Well, it would be nice if more trains connected to platforms properly,” Priya agreed. “Do you happen to work for Queensland Rail?”

  The Fate gave her a hard look. Priya kept smiling. Her “benefactor” had been more frightening anonymous at the other end of a phone. Priya knew how to deal with people like this, the ones who felt better by trying to make her feel worse. It made sense that the Fate would be one of those. What was the use of people who were content with their lives if you made your living out of desperate souls?

  “Thank you, dear,” the Fate said, no longer smiling.

  “Have a nice day.” Priya beamed.

  * * *

  Priya didn’t go home when the shop closed that evening. She called her mother to say she was out with friends and repeated the message to Kabir, assuring him she’d take a taxi later. Then she joined Emilia and Rieke at their table.