The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 17

by Stephen Jones

  WHEN SHE ENTERED THE UNDERPASS between the Avenue and the park, she found Raz and a couple of his boys hanging out there, at one with the mould-and-urine smell and the insomniac sodium light. Raz, who somehow knew her name.

  “Sexy Sadie,” the pimp sang, a line from an old song. “Sex-y Sa-die.”

  She fixed her eyes on the tunnel end, where a flight of stairs led to the dusk of grass and autumn trees, and walked, her face stiff with a mask of no-fear.

  “Hey, Sadie, are you hungry yet?” one of Raz’s boys whispered at her back. The tunnel magnified his voice, her footsteps, the growl of traffic overhead. “Are you hungry yet?”

  “Sex-y Sa-die.”

  As much as she hated the tunnel, she loved emerging into the freedom of the park. A dangerous place after dark, people said, haunted by rapists and crazies who treated insanity with alcohol and crack. Night was the time street kids came together to canvass the restaurant diners and movie crowd, and to share their scores in the cold of an abandoned store. Safety in numbers. But Sadie hated the press of dirty bodies, the mumble of drugged voices, the grope of unwanted hands – hated the pack and hated the fear that dragged them all together – so when the whisper had come her way, Mullein’s Park on Friday night, she had determined to come, Raz or no, shadows or no.

  Under the trees the air smelled of burning leaves.

  It was Rayne who had whispered in her ear. (How did Sadie come to meet them, Rayne and Leo and Tom? They must have spoken to her first, she was too shy, too wary to talk freely to strangers. But she had watched them since her arrival on the Avenue, spent weeks yearning after their cleanliness, their fierce swagger, their mysterious affairs. They were bright as firelit knives, shining as jewels.) Rayne, slip-thin and blond, had sauntered over to Sadie panhandling on the corner and whispered, promise or tease, Mullein’s Park on Friday night, and it was the smell of her, soap and new leather, that had conjured Sadie’s need. Need, not courage. Courage is a flame that requires fuel, and Sadie was too hungry to sustain that kind of fire.

  Too hungry for that, not hungry enough for . . . Sex-y Sa-die . . .

  A breeze scattered frost-dried leaves from the trees. The rustle made a screen for footsteps or voices. Sadie doubled her oversized cardigan around her and started down the gravel path. Mullein’s Park covered a whole block. There were a lot of tall lamps casting pools of light, a lot of trees shedding black skirts of shade. The three could be anywhere, if they were here at all, if Sadie wasn’t too early, or too late, or otherwise entirely wrong. She couldn’t think what she had done to earn this invitation.

  Someone was running towards her, dashing from shadow to man back to shadow as he passed through a lighted space. Sadie caught a flash of his face – beard and weathered skin, eyes wet with fear – then he was in the dark and past her, and all there was left of him, all there was left of any human thing in the night, was the stink of aged sweat and the phut-phut of newspaper shoes retreating to the tunnel stairs.

  Then a woman laughed. The sound was a bright echo to Sadie’s fear, a spark to warm her hollow gut: relief as the three of them walked towards her into the round of light. Rayne, tall catling with a tuft of pale hair and a silver ring in the curve of her smile. Tom, like his name, big, soft-walking, ruddy and cool of eye. Leo, with wind-tossed straw for hair and the loose-limbed, big-handed grace of an athlete. The warmth in Sadie’s middle grew, tentative, but strong enough to light a smile.

  “Sadie!” Rayne cried.

  “Sadie,” Tom murmured.

  “Sadie,” Leo said, smiling and reaching out a friendly hand.

  And she was among them. Rayne laughed and slipped an arm around her shoulders. “A true name three times spoken,” she said. “You’re ours, now, Sadie.”

  Sadie didn’t know what she meant, but it sounded like a joke, so she laughed.

  They took her to a house on the other side of the park. It was a neighbourhood she hardly knew. Old houses, some indifferently kept, some fixed up like new, most guarded this month by a candlelit pumpkin scowl: a welcome for children, but not for the homeless or the lost. Even in company she shrank a little in her thrift-store clothes. Be invisible, instinct whispered. Make yourself too small to see. She dragged her feet through harsh leaves when the trio turned off the pavement and onto the front walk of a house.

  But Rayne tugged at her sleeve, her silvered grin bright in the streetlight dusk. “Come on, Sadie, don’t be shy. We’ll get you all dressed up and you won’t have a thing to fear.”

  “But I don’t have any clothes?”

  Rayne laughed. She had an easy laugh, a tripping chuckle that sounded happy and true. “Trust Sister Rayne,” she said. “We’ll find everything you need.”

  “Don’t worry,” Leo added, more sensibly. “The owner’s a friend. He lets us keep our things here.”

  “And he’ll lend you a mask,” Tom finished.

  “A mask?” This brought Sadie to a stop. “But it isn’t Hallowe’en for . . .” But she wasn’t sure what day it was, maybe the month’s end was closer than she thought.

  “ ’Tis the season,” Leo said, smiling. “Hallowe’en all October, just like when we were kids.”

  “Only more fun.” Rayne hummed it in her ear, and somehow she was moving again, along the walk and up the stairs. There was a glass panel in the door, stained glass that flashed as the door opened, something red, something green, and a creature’s snarling or laughing face, white fangs and cat-languid eyes – just a colourful glance as the door swung open and she passed through, and then she was inside.

  The hall was dark save for the glow that came through a doorway on the right. The air was warm and smelled of honey, beeswax, maybe, for the banister on the stairs caught a yellow gleam. The place was so alien to her after a summer of living city rough, Sadie felt disoriented, almost dizzy. She looked at smiling Leo, at Tom’s watchful eye.

  “Come on.” Rayne slipped her arm through Sadie’s. “We still have to wash and change before everyone else arrives.”

  Shower? Clean clothes? Sadie let Rayne pull her up the stairs, still dizzy, but now it was luck that spun her head, and warmth, and the sweet welcoming smell of the house. Trick? Or treat? She did not have to ask.

  Thick candles that slumped under their own heat. Deep tub, hot water, vanilla foam. Oval mirror in a swivel frame. Sadie stroked the wet cloth up and down her skin and watched while Rayne came in to try her costumes in the mirror. Every passage made the candle flames jump and flicker; Rayne’s reflection shimmered with mystery. Sadie was fascinated to see the same gamin face and pale shock of hair become twenties flapper wearing a sheath of blue-green beads, renaissance lady in an embroidered bodice, fantastic pirate in tight leather and parrot scarves.

  Sadie wrung out the cloth and draped it on the rim of the tub before soberly clapping her hands.

  “Yes?” Pirate Rayne cocked her head in the mirror, studying Sadie’s face rather than her own form.

  Sadie twisted her hair into a knot on her neck and reached for the towel rack. “Yes.”

  Rayne quit posing long enough to hand her the towel, then turned back to the mirror. For a moment her face was still, almost numb, all the life in her searching eyes. Then, as Sadie stood in the tub, dripping foam, and steam swirled through the candle light, Rayne planted her fists on her hips and threw back her head, arrogant and laughing.

  “Yes!”

  There was a bottle of wine in the next room. Glasses, too, but Rayne-the-pirate drank from the neck of the bottle, and Sadie did the same, when she wasn’t burrowing in the deep closet full of clothes. The smell was strangely delicious: rich fabrics, faded perfumes, and the dim hint of strangers’ skin.

  “Your friend must have a lot of parties,” Sadie said as she emerged with an armful.

  “He loves them,” the pirate said, swigging. “He lives for this time of year.”

  Sadie spread her choices on the bed. A double bed with a brass frame and wine-dark spread, it was the only furniture in th
e room. The window, uncurtained, looked out on the back yard. Sadie was wary of the naked glass, suspecting eyes in the night beyond, but Rayne was careless, so she pretended she was as well.

  “Here,” she said, holding a gown against her towelled body. It was Ginger Rogers elegant, with a fringe of fluffy feathers at hem and shoulders.

  Rayne made a face and shook her head. The feathers felt good on Sadie’s skin, but she put the dress aside. “How about this?” Another flapper dress, peacock-beaded with a fringe.

  “No,” Rayne said, reaching over her shoulder. “This.”

  In the mirror she looked surprised. The silk frock coat, blue-white-gold, was a little too long in the sleeves, the matching breeches a little tight in the ass, but the ruffled collar and buckled shoes made her, even with her damp brown hair tangled on her shoulders, a youth from one of the French Louis’ courts. Blinking her surprise away, she tossed her head and tweaked the lace of her sleeve. Rayne, just a scarved head at her shoulder, grinned and nudged her elbow with the bottle, now mostly empty of wine.

  The boys were waiting at the top of the stairs, Tom in a Chinese robe of crimson silk and dragons, Leo a cheerful Hamlet in black doublet and hose. The hall below was still dark, but through the lighted doorway came the murmur of voices and the melancholy dance of a gypsy guitar. Leo clapped as Sadie and Rayne came up. Tom padded round them, nodding his approval. Enjoying their scrutiny, Rayne struck a pose, and Sadie bowed, a little drunk, a little happy, and trying not to wonder . . . why me?

  Another pair of hands joined Leo’s applause. Sadie, who’d almost forgotten the host she had yet to meet, straightened with a flush. He was tall, taller than Leo, and like Leo dressed in black, but the blackness of his clothes, the straight simple cut of them, made Leo seem like the imitator, himself the original. He wore a tight cap of black hair and, making Sadie stare, a mask, skin-tight black velvet with eye-holes rimmed in black sequins, and mouth outlined in red.

  “This is Sadie,” Rayne said, nudging her in the back.

  “Sadie.” The masked man’s clapping hands drifted apart, white against the black of his coat. “Sadie.” His voice was musing. His teeth were white as he smiled. “Sadie, you are welcome.”

  “Thank you,” she said, remembering the manners of another life. “It’s nice of you to have me.”

  “Any friend of Rayne’s.” Her host’s laugh was dark and velvet as his mask. “Any friend of Rayne’s is a friend of mine.”

  She knew, then, that there was something wrong here. Knew it in the way Rayne went stiff and still at her back, in the way Tom’s eyes drifted to a far distance and Leo’s smile grew wide and false. Knew it, most of all, in the way her own skin shivered down her spine. Instinct sang a warning. But it’s Rayne, Sadie thought and, seeing the slant of the masked man’s look, she was sure. Rayne, not her. Relief, a buoyant burst of defensive anger for her friend (Rayne became her friend in that instant), even a dark slink of curiosity, they all crowded out the twinge of fear. The wine probably helped as well.

  “Thanks,” she said again.

  Then their host took them aside to choose their masks.

  Leo: a black domino, diamond slits for his nervous eyes.

  Tom: a snarling dragon, red and gold to cover his own stiff calm.

  Rayne (hesitated, started a hand for this one, fiddled another’s ribbons, bit her lip over a third): finally: a spangled cat drawn in crazy lines that made her eyes seem not fearful but wild.

  And then Sadie. The room was all masks, on tables, on stands, on hooks on the walls. A crowd of eyeless orbits and breathless mouths awaited life. It was strange, so strange, and then the others’ faces were hidden, and she was the only one exposed.

  “Here,” said their host, though he had stood silent in the corner shadows while the rest had made their choices. His white hand offered Sadie a pale mask formed in wicked, laughing lines, an imp’s face, a cheerful demon’s. It was not quite ugly, but not what she would have chosen. She wanted something to suit her costume, something gilded from the Sun King’s court.

  But, “Take it,” their host said. “I insist.” As if she hesitated because she thought the honour too great for her to accept.

  So she took it, and she put it on.

  A mask’s eyes are brighter than the eyes in a naked face. They are livelier, more intelligent, more eloquent of meaning: doorways onto being, windows on the soul. Eyes. And mouths, lips taut or smooth, humorous creases, lascivious tongues. And the voices that spill forth. The laugh that, by a twisted lip, is proved a lie. The word that, by the witness of the shining eyes, is proven true.

  And the touch of her own mask, at first cool and clammy leather, but quickly like a second skin, and the play it gives her, herself a stage, her every breath a performance, and yet (herein lies the magic) also and entirely true. Every game, every lie flirting and cruel – and the house is full of them, games and lies – is real as knives, for the masquerade has come to define the night. The false face of everyday, that hides reality beneath flesh and skin, is itself hidden beneath the fantasy that, because it is a product and reflection of the mind, is an honest facade. Sadie has lived a wary, defensive life, always urged by that self-preserving instinct to stay small, hidden, safe. She did not know she had an imp inside her until she wore it on her face.

  Of course it lived inside her, somewhere deep within. What else drew her to Rayne and Leo and Tom to begin with? What else carried her through risk to their meeting place, and from there, here, to this stranger’s house?

  The imp, who knew where freedom waited.

  And now it’s free, indeed. Sadie-imp, frock-coated and masked, has become the perfect androgyne, and therein lies the heart of her game. A broad man with a grizzled braid and the mask of a weary angel feeds her tiny pastries (cheese and herbs, she’s greedy for them, and bites the tips of his fingers to catch the crumbs) and then stands confounded while from a bare-breasted Kali she teases sips of wine, importunate youth from her tangled hair to her buckled shoes. And that’s only one game, there are a dozen more, until she’s bored and so:

  she dances to campfire music of guitars and drums, as like to the mechanical rhythm of a rave as the giddy wine is to the chemical sterility of the pills she’s swallowed there. No, here, here is life, here is the blood leaping wine-bright in her veins. She dances, imp-Sadie, with men, with women, with no one – once in the arms of dragon-Tom, who moves softly on his feet – once (or did she only glimpse his mask in the whirl?) with their host all in black, his red-sequined mouth smiling, white teeth agleam – once with Rayne, whose laughter sounds like wine in the neck of a bottle, like water cascading down a drain—

  then, though the music comes tangled behind them, they are not dancing but running through the wild-tree moonlit-lawn park, the park grown to woodland, an autumn forest all in a city block, running, no, hunting (but still dancing, too, perhaps this is a dream?) imp dragon cat and leaping Hamlet chasing after their quarry

  poor shambling bear, shaggy and lost in the forever city-block wood, weeping when they bring him down

  and then there is wine again, poured from a weeping bottle opened by imp’s needle teeth and passed all around

  bright wine in all their veins

  Or perhaps this is a dream?

  Sadie sat on the park bench in the morning drizzle, elbows on her knees, head in her hands. She sat for what seemed like a long time, watching a dirty trickle of water run between her feet toward the middle of the path, nothing much in her mind. Then someone sat down beside her and said in a half-familiar voice, “Hangover?”

  She straightened and turned. Leo, in jean jacket, sweater, jeans. She, also, was in her usual clothes, though she couldn’t quite remember changing, or how she came to be sitting here. Too much wine. Leo looked tired, incipient lines running from nose to chin, his eyes a little sunken into shadow. Half-familiar, half a friend.

  She remembered his question and said, “Not yet.”

  He smiled, but she hadn’t
meant it as a joke. She felt odd, not sick, not hurting, but weirdly, ominously full. Not just in her belly, but under her skin as well, as if she’d been inflated like an inner tube. She glanced at the backs of her hands, but the bones were as prominent as ever, the veins like faint blue worms.

  “Have a good time last night?” Leo asked.

  She looked at him again, but he was watching a puddle form. The rain was cold in her hair, heavy on her shoulders. She’d been sitting there a while, then. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it was amazing.”

  He nodded, then swallowed as if he didn’t feel too well himself. “Good.” He passed his hands over his hair, making it stand out in all directions, then turned with a smile and a nudge to her arm. “C’mon. Let’s go find some breakfast.”

  “I’m not really all that hungry.”

  He laughed. “Coffee, at least. Yes? Coffee? My treat.”

  As if the word conjured the reality, she could smell the possibilities, dark roast, hot steam . . . “Coffee. Yes.”

  When they were sitting in the café, immersed in the Saturday morning crowd, Sadie asked Leo, “Why did you guys ask me to go with you?”

  Leo lifted his brows. “Why wouldn’t we?”

  “You hardly know me.”

  He carefully tore the corner off a packet of sugar and poured it into his cup.

  “We know you better now.”

  Somehow she thought things would change. Maybe she thought she would be included in the trio’s mysterious business, maybe she just thought her luck had turned. But after Leo said goodbye that noon, she did not see them for days. Days of Please can you spare some change? in the October rain. Days of grocery store alleys at closing time, waiting for the bruised fruit and stale bread to be thrown away. Nights huddled with others as cold as herself, wondering if it would be the cops or the suburban punks who would roust them next. Wondering if she’d been forgotten. Wondering if she shouldn’t, herself, forget.

  It would be easy to forget such a night, its passages so like a dream’s. Yes, she’d gone to the house, had a bath, drunk wine with Rayne. The clothes, all right, she remembered the feel of silk on her skin. But the masks? The black, white-handed figure of the nameless host? Yet she also remembered the feel of cool leather on her face. Indeed, sometimes when the rain touched her cheek she started, surprised even after so long to find her face exposed. But the chase in the park-that-was-a-forest – the bear hunt in the trees – that had to be a dream. So where did the real night end, and the dream night begin? That was what troubled Sadie.