The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 17

by Stephen Jones

  Say, that reminds me of an Early Music joke: what’s the difference between a crumhorn and a lawn mower? You can tune a lawn mower.

  Someday you’ll appreciate just how funny that really is.

  Who knows if we’ll still be doing it when you’re old enough to humiliate, but for now, I’m with a group of like-minded women who specialize in the hits of the late medieval era and beyond. The Hedgewaifs, we call ourselves, and our performances have begun to attract a devoted little following, although there’s endless debate about whether that’s because of the music or what we wear to perform in. Well, we do make quite a fetching quintet, in our lace and corsets and dark lipstick.

  Whenever we play or practice, I’m sure that in each of us it scratches different itches. For my friend Heather (she plays the viola da gamba, and can’t wait to meet you), it’s the best way to shut out the rest of the world. She grew up in a factory town, where even her dreams were filled with the sounds of machinery, so taking up a horsehair bow was her way of driving them back.

  For myself, our music recalls a different age, in which I can at least imagine there was more civility than today. That’s important, civility. You wouldn’t think I could miss it so badly, an age I never even knew. Oh, but I do. Especially on days like today, after encounters like the one this afternoon.

  After school, I went to my favorite used record/CD shop to see if I could find a few things I wanted for class. Buried treasures always seem to await there, which makes it worth straying into the block it’s in. A few doors away, I walked past this guy who wasn’t doing much of anything, just leaning against a grimy brick wall and smelling of whatever he’d been drinking during the day. He noticed me, I could tell. If you live here, you can’t help but develop this radar; you know when somebody’s just decided to include you in his day, in all the wrong ways. He looked at me – looked down at you, actually – and here’s what he said:

  “So. Haven’t lost it yet, have you?”

  I had no idea what to say to that. Not that it deserved a response.

  He went on: “Maybe later. Looks like there’s still time.”

  The thing that got me is that he didn’t even say this with any particular scorn. It was so flat and without affect, as if all the losses going on around him were complete trivialities. What kind of deadness is at the heart of a person when he thinks that’s an acceptable thing to say to someone?

  He’s far from alone, too. This may have been the most face-to-face it’s been, but I’ve been encountering these kinds of sentiments for months. They’re in homemade signs, in graffiti, even in new music from local artists . . . an undercurrent that seems to regard this death-of-innocents as some answer to a prayer for population control. I’ve seen the most terrible clinical pictures reproduced on flyers, with the most terrible slogans, actually celebrating what’s going on.

  We’re getting it from both sides by now, too. Let one woman miscarry, and she’s treated with sympathy. Let it happen to a thousand, and we’re often shunned as defective, or contagious. Or those who claim to have a direct link to God’s brain shout at the top of their lungs that we’re undergoing the cleansing of his latest judgmental wrath, one final warning before he toasts the rest of us from the face of the earth.

  Awfully considerate of him, don’t you think?

  I’ve just now taken enough of a breather to realize what I’m saying and who I’m saying it to. Shame on me. I shouldn’t be venting to you before you’re even born. So if you’re reading this someday and wonder what the black marker scratch-outs are all about, trust me, the letter has been censored to protect you from wondering what the hell was wrong with Mom back then.

  Hi, Tadpole. My little miracle worker.

  I’ve heard of people becoming addicted to support groups, and have been hoping that that isn’t what impels me to go as often as I do, but I’ve finally realized the appeal. Out in the world, I’m just another one of the growing number of defectives. But at group, because I have you, I’m a beacon of hope. It doesn’t matter what I’ve lost. I’m the glass that’s still half-full, rather than half-empty.

  I just thought you should know how deeply you’ve touched a couple dozen lives already, before you’ve even drawn your first breath.

  And if there’s anything that’s needed now, it’s hope. Group wasn’t especially supportive tonight. It’s nobody’s fault. We were just preoccupied with the news that the miscarriages are spreading. At first it was local. Now we’re the epicenter, the red dot on the map surrounded by concentric rings.

  A thousand times a day I wrap my arms around the bulge you’ve made of my belly, trying to hold you inside me. There are even times I think I’d rather keep you there forever, where it’s safe and warm and snug, away from what’s waiting for you on this side. This machine out here that only wants you to be one more tooth in its grinding gears.

  I wish I could play now, for both of us, to take our minds off what’s going on, but it’s too late at night. I know the reaction it would bring: hostile pounding on the ceiling over our heads from, yes, the very same upstairs neighbor who thinks nothing of blasting his TV six hours at a stretch, so loud I can sometimes tell what he’s watching. He has a name, I’m sure, but I just like to refer to him by a word you’re not allowed to speak until you’re twenty-five.

  Goodnight, Tadpole. Feel free to dogpaddle around tonight, a little. You and I are as close right now as two people can be, which makes it all the more difficult to explain how alone I feel sometimes.

  It’s my free period at school, so we don’t have much time, but I’m wondering:

  Just what do you hear inside there?

  In one sense you’re a world away, yet I also have to remember that there’s only a few layers of me between you and the world that’s waiting. All in all, that’s much less insulation than what’s protecting us from the neighbors.

  I remember the doctor telling me that you – not just you, but all of your short, damp, wrinkly kind – hear a constant soft rush of the blood as it’s pumped through my body. But you wouldn’t just hear it, would you . . . you’d be enveloped by it.

  So I wonder what else you hear. Everything, I imagine, as long as it’s loud enough. Maybe it sounds muffled and watery, like hearing something going on beside a swimming pool while you were sunk a foot or two under. But you’d hear it.

  This is really starting to concern me lately. Like, I’ll walk by a construction site near my school, and the earthmovers will be scraping away, or some worker will have a jackhammer going, and I’ll wonder, “Oh, what must Tadpole think of that?”

  Because you have no context for these things. You’ve never seen them. You’ve never had them explained to you. You just know what they sound like, somewhere on the other side of the wall.

  If it seems like I’m fixated on this, we can thank Danika for it. Remember her, one of the women at group? The other night she got to talking about the day before her loss, something I hadn’t heard about before. She lives in the flight path near the airport, and on the day in question, a commuter plane crashed two blocks away. So for hours, her neighborhood was this ungodly riot of sirens and fire trucks and ambulances and wreckage equipment, and all the screaming and shouting that goes along with them.

  Danika blamed her miscarriage on the stress of that day.

  Sometimes, when I think of everything you must hear, I think that all of us out here have so much to apologize for.

  Like I said, support group is a way of life these days.

  But now you attend at your peril.

  I told you how the miscarriages were spreading beyond? Well, they just keep going. The way they’ve spread, you’d suspect there was something viral about it, except nobody has managed to find a single thing to indicate that. Which hasn’t stopped some people from jumping to the conclusion anyway. They come in from miles away and they look at us here, the first ones affected, as having caused it. They want someone to blame for their own losses, and we’re the most convenient Typhoid
Marys.

  They firebombed the locations of two groups earlier tonight. Not mine, and nobody was hurt, but the ignorance and hatefulness in such an act is beyond my comprehension. I’ve been watching it on the news and wondering if this is the way of the future for us now . . . we’ve lost our babies so now we’re pariahs, and the only response is to drive us away, into hiding or extinction.

  I don’t know what’s worse: trying to get this all out of my system by telling you about it, or sitting here dwelling on it. Either way, it feels like I’m putting you at risk, that it will seep into you.

  We can’t have that. You keep me going, you know?

  You’re much too little to lean on, but you still keep me going.

  Do you dream, Tadpole? Do you dream in there?

  If we can watch cats and dogs while they’re asleep, with their paws twitching and their mouths smacking, and accept that they must be dreaming, then why not unborn babies? You just wouldn’t dream like the rest of us, would you? You couldn’t dream about things you could see, because you haven’t seen anything yet. You haven’t smelled or tasted anything, either, so you couldn’t dream about those. You can only feel and hear. That’s all your developing mind has to work with.

  Maybe now I know what it’s like, a little, because last night I had a dream like that. I dreamed of what it must be like to be you, in the only place you’ve ever known, curled up all warm and wet, in the complete absence of light. I was inside myself, I guess . . . literally. And it felt wonderful, until the noise began and it all started to get oppressive, as if everything was shrinking around me . . . like I was in a duffel bag and someone had cinched the opening and was twisting it around and around, squeezing me into a smaller and smaller space. And the whole time there was no getting away from the noise, this huge screeching roar that revved and pulsated and just went on and on and on . . .

  Did you dream that, Tadpole? Was that your dream in there?

  We share things all the time. Oxygen, nutrition, blood, going back and forth between us. With so intimate an exchange going on, why not a dream?

  I woke up and you were kicking, but it wasn’t quite like any kicking that I can remember. It wasn’t . . . strong. More like you were flailing weakly about in there, or just trembling. In five seconds I went from being sound asleep to being absolutely terrified, so I did the only thing I could think to do: got my mellowest recorder, a tenor made of maple wood, and tried to serenade you, tell you somehow that everything was all right . . . and who cares if Mr A **hole upstairs hears and thinks it’s after-hours.

  It seemed to work and you quieted down, so we could go back to sleep. Except by then the damage was done. Not to you, to me. Next it was my turn to come up with bad dreams. Should I tell you? You’ll think I’m silly if I tell you. You’ll be disappointed if I don’t.

  Very well . . .

  I was in the classroom where we have group, okay, but it was obvious nobody had been in the room for a very long time. Nobody came here to learn, nobody came here to mourn. Nobody came here at all anymore. All that was left was a lot of dust and a couple empty chairs. I was sitting at a desk in the very center of the room, both feet on the floor and facing forward, the way we rigid teachers expect you to sit. And then you came in . . . crawled in, actually. You couldn’t have been more than several months old. I watched you crawl across the front of the room, then turn the corner and crawl down the length of the room at my left side. The whole time, you were moving along the baseboard, stopping to eat the paint chips flaking from the walls. Do they even use lead-based paint anymore? I don’t think so, but it didn’t matter, because the place was so old. I kept trying to tell you not to put them in your mouth, but you never seemed to hear me. You just kept going until you moved out of sight, behind me, into the back half of the room. I could see the trail you’d left in the dust, and every now and then I’d hear you eat something else, so I waited for you to come around into view again, on the right side of the room. Except you never did. And I couldn’t turn around to see where you were and what had become of you . . . because nobody had given me permission.

  If we’re sharing dreams, I hope it’s a one-way connection, that that one didn’t seep through to you, along with the soy milk I had before bedtime.

  And you’re probably wondering again, aren’t you: What the hell was wrong with Mom back then?

  Don’t judge her too harshly. I think she was afraid she was poisoning you, just by being alive.

  If anyone knew how many support groups I’ve attended lately, they’d think there was something wrong with me. That I’m developing an unhealthy obsession, unable to function without them. True, that’s about all my life is lately – school and group.

  But I call it something else: research.

  I started out by asking the question at my own group. Then, night after night, I’ve been going to another, and another, and another. I’ll walk up and be sure to thank the cop or security guard on duty, assigned to look after the place and protect it from attacks. They don’t seem to have them covered 100%, except on the north side, but it’s better than nothing.

  It isn’t just loss groups anymore, either. Now there are meetings for pregnant women who still have their babies, praying they won’t have to change groups.

  I can go to either one, and belong.

  I’m quiet at first, the way newcomers are. Even within tiny, temporary societies founded on grief and fear, there are unwritten rules, taboos you don’t break. I listen to their heartbreaking stories, their outpouring of anguish. The voices may be new, but I’ve heard their stories already. There can be only so many variations.

  After a while, they make room for me, ready to accept me because I’ve been respectful, so I tell my own version . . . or part of it. Whether or not I say much about you depends on the group. Sometimes I get the feeling that they’d think I was gloating, so I say as little as possible. Other times I know how much hope you’ll bring, so you’re front and center in more ways than one. I’ve gotten good at judging the moods of these groups.

  And finally, when I sense that I can, I’ll ask the question: “Do you/ did you ever get the feeling that your babies are/were dreaming?”

  Some of them look at me like they think I’m crazy. Others, it’s obviously the first time they’ve considered this, but they don’t necessarily dismiss it. And others . . . I can tell just by looking into their eyes that they’ve felt it too. They know exactly what I’m talking about, each woman thinking it was something unique to her, or that it was her imagination, and that nobody has quite brought it up before.

  So we talk about the experiences that everyone’s had, and, in fewer instances, whatever impressions we felt were shared between our babies and ourselves. There are variations; I’d expect this. But compared to the dream of yours that I felt I tapped into, they’re all much more alike than not.

  My God, all of you, you tiny things, you’re in there, and you’ve grown terrified at what you hear waiting for you, haven’t you?

  “So they’ve been letting go,” a woman said tonight, the conclusion she’d drawn. This was the first I’ve heard it spoken aloud, but maybe it’s something that many of us, deep down, have intuited. Because for all the tests, all the theories, nobody has come up with an explanation for this plague, much less a way to stop it.

  And I think that’s about as far as anyone was willing to go tonight. But what I want to know is: If it’s true you’re letting go by the dozens, by the hundreds, who told you how? Who told you all that you could? Who gave you permission?

  So now I keep wondering what would’ve happened if I hadn’t awakened the other night, if I’d remained asleep and so had you, without me to serenade and reassure you, knowing what you were dreaming in there: the noise and the compression, squeezed before your time . . . like garbage in a truck. In such a dark place, experiencing the first dreams you’ve ever had, how could you possibly distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t?

  And from all the way out her
e, how can I possibly protect you every moment?

  No school today. For me, that is. For everyone else it’s education as usual.

  I did get halfway there. Walking, like normal. I’ve always maintained it’s good for us . . . me and my Tadpole, out for a stroll. Ever since the jumper, though, I’ve been detouring from the usual route. My mistake. Keep going by the bell towers, and all I would have had to contend with is a daily reminder of what that poor girl did in front of me.

  The block I was in is kind of run-down, but then, close to home, they all are; it’s just that this one wears its age in a more picturesque way. There’s a deli that’s been in the same family for four generations, and a flower shop run by a woman old enough to have diapered at least three of those generations from the deli. I wasn’t even there yet, just crossing the street, when I started to hear someone crying. I wasn’t quite sure where it was coming from, just that it was getting louder, and seeming to echo off the bricks.

  Before I saw even saw her, I knew where she must’ve been, because by then a little crowd had gathered, so as I came up, I was thinking, “Well, surely somebody’s with her, somebody must be taking care of this . . .”

  Except nobody was.

  She sat at the bottom of a stairwell leading up to some second-floor apartments, half-in and half-out of the doorway, one leg tucked underneath her as she sat beneath a row of mailboxes, one hand hanging onto the doorknob. And the other . . .

  The main thing I remember is the bright red stain seeping through the yellow fabric bunched around her waist.

  Somebody pointed and laughed, I recall that much. Everyone else, once they had the idea, they went on their way. Conversations resumed, footsteps quickened to be away from her. I wanted to help, I really did, and I know that I would have if she could’ve just shut up for a minute, but instead she kept crying, and crying, and . . .