Best New Horror 29

by Stephen Jones

  “He knows of such things, Aunt Beatrice,” said Edward, as if that settled it.

  A second letter was addressed in Emilia’s distinctive handwriting. It held a single newspaper clipping, cut from the Southwold Examiner of two days before.

  A most curious recent find on the shore at Dunwich has today been handed to the Southwold museum, being a carved wooden heart of some age. The curator plans to place it…

  I could not read on.

  My case is packed. I have my late husband’s revolver and money to buy sufficient petroleum products for the task ahead. My nephew’s funeral is the day after tomorrow.

  Before I see him lowered into the ground, I shall visit the Southwold museum, and I shall not be turned away. I shall see the dark heart of Eva van der Druysen burn until it is no more than ashes, and those ashes buried deep in consecrated ground.

  RICHARD GAVIN

  BANISHMENTS

  RICHARD GAVIN is the author of five books of numinous horror fiction, including Sylvan Dread and At Fear’s Altar. He is presently finalising a sixth collection. Several of his tales have been chosen for previous volumes of Best New Horror and his story ‘The Hag Stone’ was adapted into a short film in 2017.

  The author has also published numerous works of esotericism, as well as meditations on the macabre. He lives in Ontario, Canada.

  “‘Banishments’ is one of the rare stories whose genesis I can acutely pinpoint,” explains Gavin. “Back in 2014, the neighbourhood where I’d grown up suffered a massive flood when a creek swelled and breached its banks. Watching news footage of the footpaths and creekbanks where I’d spent countless hours exploring, reading books and daydreaming being interred in roaring waters stirred deep feelings in me. It felt as though a piece of my past was being washed away or buried at sea.

  “Some months later these impressions and images gained a new and chilling context when the image of a dwarfish iron casket floating down a swollen creek slithered up from my subconscious…”

  THE STORM HAD swollen the creek and infused it with sludge. The brothers had come to the bank to take in some of the elements’ power, perhaps even to feel rinsed and purged by these forces. But the sight of the muddied current gushing past caused Will to think that this brackish water was in truth thicker than the blood that supposedly bonded him to the man standing beside him.

  Mutely they watched the parade of bobbing wreckage—a porch rocker, a bicycle tyre, the shorn remnants of a tarp. These and more seemed to be flaunted by the roaring current, like a victor flaunting the spoils of battle; trophies from the homes that the hurricane had pummelled.

  Dylan sighed melodramatically; a wordless urging for them to be moving on. The pair stood under a sky that glimmered dully, like a vast slab of irradiant granite. Will was secretly counting the seconds until this ritual of contrived grief could be tastefully concluded. He opened his mouth to speak, to remind Dylan that his house had been scarcely grazed by the storm, when they witnessed Death encroaching.

  It came shimmying along the bends, using the current as its pallbearer. Under a sky whose grey conveyed a celestial exhaustion, death swam swiftly. It came in the form of an oblong box of tarnished iron. A fat padlock sculpted in the shape of a spade bounced on its latch, clunking against the angled side; a lone drumbeat to provide the scene a dirge. The coffin bobbed, spun in an eddy, then jutted towards the bank behind Dylan’s home. Its motion was so forthright that Will believed it was meant to reach them. It grew entangled in the low-looming branches and thickets that bearded the mud.

  Will watched as his brother charged down the embankment and entered the creek until its rushing waters rimmed his waist. Dylan managed to grip the end of the case just before it drifted out of reach. Dragging it towards him, he nearly lost his footing, the sight of which inspired Will to leap to the water’s edge.

  Both of Dylan’s hands were now clutching the oblong box. His movements were unnervingly jerky.

  “Heavy!” he shouted.

  Will reached out to keep his brother righted.

  The case struck the bank with a thump, followed by a faint sucking sound as the clay began to inter it. Will concluded that it must have been a struggle for the creek to keep this weighty thing afloat.

  Dylan stood shivering. His pants hung heavy upon his legs and his boots were weighted with frigid water. The brothers took a moment to study their treasure, which was, they discovered, more akin to a basket than a box. It was composed of iron bands, each approximately ten centimetres wide. The bands were woven together as one might do with wicker. The knit was airtight. Not a speck of the interior was visible. Will used the heel of his hand to wipe away some of the droplets from the lid. Two of the bands—one vertical, the other horizontal—felt rougher than the rest. Kneeling, squinting, Will surveyed the engravings.

  If words they were, they were in a language of which Will knew nothing. If symbols, Will had neither faith nor imagination enough to understand them. The markings were crude. Their asymmetry and jagged texture suggested that the engraver was rushed, or possibly enraged. The wedges, gashes and curlicues formed a decorated cross that stood out from the rest of the iron weave.

  Will was suddenly seized by a divergent memory: he hearkened back to Dylan’s and his parochial education. He envisioned the two of them now as being Pharaoh’s daughters, rescuing a floating ark from its reedy doom.

  “Let’s get it inside,” Dylan said, breaking his brother’s reverie. “I’m freezing to death.”

  Past draped windows and still backyards the brothers carted their strange and grim treasure.

  They returned to the house. Will entered first, snapping on the chandelier as a defence against the gloom. The light made the dining room inappropri-ately cosy. It also illuminated Julie’s letter, which had been left on the walnut table—two tiny islands of white upon a sea of black wood. When Will had first arrived, he’d found his younger sibling locked in a toxic fixation with this missive. Dylan had not merely studied it to the point of being able to recite both pages from memory, but had begun to autopsy its script in search of hidden truths. Like a cryptographer, he was compiling lists that twisted the “Dear John” note into anagrams, into weird insect-looking hybrids of letters, not unlike the iron basket’s engravings.

  Will hurried to the table and swept away the hand-written leaves and the handsome envelope that had held them.

  Dylan approached the table.

  The foul run-off from the iron case made a brown stippling pattern on the carpet. Dylan grunted as he set down the box.

  Will held out his hands dramatically. “What now?”

  Dylan, breathing heavily, tapped the heart-shaped padlock and then exited the room. For Will the wait seemed vast. When his brother returned, he came bearing a small tool chest. Mute with focus, Dylan went about unlocking the oblong box.

  A squeeze of bolt-cutters made short work of the heart-shaped lock, which fell uselessly to the floor. Will studied this heart, which, despite being made of iron, could evidently be broken as readily as any other.

  “Ready?” asked Dylan. Will shrugged. He truly was unsure.

  The clasps that held the lid in place made a shrill peeping noise as Dylan peeled them back. He asked for his brother’s assistance in lifting off the lid.

  One glimpse of what the box contained caused Will to lose his grip. The lid crashed against the dining table, knocking over one of the high-backed chairs in its descent. Dylan brought a hand to his mouth.

  The infant corpse was hideously well preserved. Its flesh, which looked as though it had been doused in powdered azure, still sat plump upon the bones. Its eyes were shut but its mouth was mangled wide, its final mewl trapped silently in time. Naked as the day it was born—if born it was—the babe’s body glistened under the electric chandelier’s clinical light. Will, who was unable to bring himself to study the thing closely, assumed this sheen was creek water, but he made no effort to confirm this.

  The creature’s head was horrible. W
ill was unsure whether it was supposed to be a canine or a swine. Either way it was misshapen, like a hammer-forged sculpture by an unskilled artist. It also looked like it had been skinned. Its anatomy was hideously apparent.

  “Look,” urged Dylan, “come see. It’s a wax figure. It’s just so…”

  “Gruesome?” offered Will.

  “…so real…”

  He was touching it now, his fingers passing in a reverential pattern over arms, belly and tortured face. “Feels like it’s made of wax.”

  This process ended with a hiss. Will looked at his brother, whose fingers were welling up with blood.

  “Its eyes are filled with pins.”

  Will’s brow furrowed. He leaned into the coffin. His brother’s blood sat like minuscule gems upon the infant’s livid brow, shining fresh like the beads of a sanguine rosary. Dylan was correct. What had been inlaid into the waxen eyelids were not lashes but rows of keen pins. The tongue appeared to be some form of curved blade. Will was also able to see the strange studded rows that lined the baby’s wrists, shoulders, waist. They were nails—rugged and angular, the kind an old-world blacksmith might have wrought with hammer and flame. Some of the nails had been welded to the coffin itself. These held the figure in place, bound it. (Though he hadn’t wanted to, Will accidentally noted that the infant was sexless.)

  “There’s salt in its mouth,” Will added.

  Radiating from the casket’s interior was the stench of musty vegetation, the decay one smells just before winter buries autumn’s rot. Shielding his nose, Will stared down at the collection of waterlogged roots, leaves and petals that clung to the bottom of the box. This strange potpourri had formed a bed for the eidolon of crib death. The underside of several iron bands also bore the same mad engravings as the cross on the lid.

  “We should call someone,” suggested Will.

  “Like who, the police? There’s been no crime here.”

  “Maybe not, but this isn’t right.”

  Dylan replaced the iron lid. “We don’t even know what this is. It could be valuable. A work of art, maybe even some kind of relic. I’ll do some online research later.” Dylan lifted the casket with a grunt.

  “Where are you taking it?”

  “Downstairs. I’m going to towel it off so I can get some clear pictures of those engravings. Somebody has to know what they mean.”

  Will stood listening to the clunks and puttering coming from the basement. His brother began to whistle some cheery, improvised tune.

  For supper Will prepared them pork chops and steamed greens. They ate at the tiny kitchen table, for Will was unable to bear dining where the casket had been.

  The only soundtrack to their meal was the sound of their own chewing. Dylan scarcely lifted his gaze from his phone, which sat next to his plate. He scrolled through photo after photo of the infant effigy, of each incised character upon the iron coffin.

  “How many pictures of that thing did you take?” Will finally asked, uncapping a fresh beer. He did not take his eyes off his brother as he drank.

  Dylan merely shrugged.

  “Why don’t you put that thing away so we can talk about what’s really going on?”

  The wooden chair creaked as Dylan leaned back. “What’s there to say? Julie left. End of story.”

  “There’s a whole lot to say,” replied Will. “Why don’t you tell me how it reached this point? As far as I knew, you and Julie had the perfect marriage. Not to mention a free house with no mortgage to carry.” Will could hear the edge creeping into his voice but didn’t care. “No kids to take your money or your time, free lodgings. And then two days ago I read this panicky social media post from you, telling all your friends that she’s gone. When I phoned, you sounded like a shattered man. You were barely coherent. I tell you I’m coming home to see you, and now you expect me to believe that after just one day you’re fine?”

  “I’m getting there.”

  “Well that’s something, I suppose.” Will rubbed his chin, sighed. “Can you tell me what happened at least? I mean, not every detail, but just what led to Julie walking out?”

  Dylan shrugged. “Two days ago she left me that letter telling me that we’ve drifted apart. She said she doesn’t love me anymore. I told her to stay away for good. She said she would.” Coolly, he then took up his phone. “So it looks like those engravings are a mix of all sorts of different languages; Coptic, Germanic Runes, ancient Greek.”

  Though he didn’t fancy talking about their grotesque find, Will resigned himself to the fact that the topic of conversation had irretrievably shifted. “Did you find out what any of them mean?”

  Will was given a simple “yes” as an answer but received no elaboration. After a few frustrating moments had passed he rose and hastily collected the plates.

  Later he went down to their father’s old workroom, where the casket sat upon the antiquated workbench. Dylan had already settled onto a wooden stool and had resumed his study of the etchings, referencing them against various websites on his phone.

  “Where do you suppose it came from?” Dylan’s tone was so wistful it rendered his question rhetorical. “Upstream obviously, but from where?”

  “What, are you planning on returning it somehow?”

  “I want to see if there’s more. I want to know.”

  “Know what? Dylan, you’d better start giving me some straight answers. I came all the way back here to help you, so the least you can do is be honest with me.”

  Unable to bear being ignored, Will retreated upstairs in a manner both childish and melodramatic. Storming off to the bedroom he’d occupied until he left home at sixteen felt surreal, but surreal in an ugly, off-putting way, like he was willingly stepping back into the very cell from which he’d managed to escape years earlier. The original wardens might have perished, but the prison was being maintained by the heir apparent.

  He stood listening to a house that had grown too still. Stepping into the hall, he found it vacant and dim. Descending the stairs, Will’s nose was affronted by the scent of smoke.

  “Dylan?” he called. When no reply came, Will hurried to the basement, where the smoke was thickest and its fragrance was chokingly strong. His eyes stinging, he made his way to the workbench, where faint embers spat upwards like tiny fireflies.

  The floor suddenly went unstable beneath him. Will was hurled forwards. Peering through the smoke, he could just discern the dozens of woodscrews that carpeted the concrete and had tripped him up. Turning his gaze to the workbench, he saw the last of the embers fluttering down in grey husks to the open Mason jar that sat half-filled with the black remnants of burned paper. The jar was one of dozens their late father had used to store screws, nuts, bolts. This one had been set atop the casket.

  Amongst the jar’s blackened leavings was a scrap of paper that had not succumbed to the flames. Will recognised Julie’s handwriting. He called his brother’s name. The only sound was the patter of rain beginning to strike the windows.

  He hadn’t intended on falling asleep. He’d only retired to the living room sofa because there seemed little else he could do. He’d tried to watch television, but the storm had knocked out the satellite signal. The newspaper was a jumble of meaningless words. There had been no sign of Dylan.

  He’d closed his eyes and felt a soothing numbness passing through him. He’d watched distorted memories of his own boyhood in this very house pass across his mind’s eye.

  Had he always felt this way about his brother, he wondered? Always brimming with such jealousy over the ease and comfort with which Dylan’s life seemed to have been blessed? Had it not been his own decision to leave home at sixteen and allow himself to grow estranged from his kin? Not even the successive deaths of both his parents was enough to lure Will back. It took discovering that Dylan had inherited the house and was now enjoying a happy marriage.

  Will had learned of this through obsessive, covert searches on social media. He was grateful for the technology that allowed h
im to keep tabs on his brother’s life cheaply and easily. It was this same medium that had allowed Will to watch his brother’s life dissolving. Ever a sponge sopping up attention, Dylan posted regular updates about his crumbling marriage, which gave Will the privilege of watching his brother’s life crumble in real time. Only after a particularly fatalistic-sounding post about how Julie had left for good did Will finally attempt to reach out. Dylan had positively gushed over his brother’s first communication in two decades. He’d immediately invited him back to the old house. Little did he suspect that what was driving Will’s actions was not empathy but schadenfreude.

  His sadistic pleasure was short-lived. Within hours of arriving home, Will found his brother’s state of mind…disquieting. Whatever heart-sickness Dylan had been detailing for his online friends seemed to have been replaced by a kind of mania. Will had even wondered if the whole drama had been nothing more than a ploy to bait him back to this suburban trap. But to what end?

  Will’s reverie was violently disrupted by a phone ringing. Blindly he fished out his cell from his shirt pocket. It was turned off.

  Across the room, Dylan’s cell phone rattled upon the dining room table. Will rose and shuffled towards it.

  The caller ID consisted of a smiling selfie of Julie, along with her name and a tiny heart icon glowing beside it. Will took up the phone and wrestled with the idea of answering it. It went still and silent before he could decide.

  He turned and began to search the house for his brother, but his efforts were in vain. Only after he’d stepped outside to check the backyard did he spot Dylan. He was stepping through the gate at the far end of the yard. From the vantage of the back deck, Will could see beyond the wooden fence to the elegiac creek that rushed ahead in order to eventually merge with Baintree Lake.