The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 17

by Stephen Jones

  Sink or swim, and so easy to imagine the icy black well water closing thickly over her sister’s face, filling her mouth, slipping up her nostrils, flooding her belly, as clawed hands dragged her down.

  And down.

  And down.

  And sometimes, Dr Valloton says, sometimes we spend our entire lives just trying to answer one simple question.

  The music is a hurricane, swallowing her.

  My Lady. Lady of the Bottle. Artemisia absinthium, Chernobyl, absinthion, Lady of Waking Dreaming, Green Lady of Elation and Melancholy.

  I am ruin and sorrow.

  My robe is the color of despair.

  They bow, all of them, and Hannah finally sees the thing waiting for her on its prickling throne of woven branches and bird’s nests, the hulking antlered thing with blazing eyes, wolf-jawed hart, the man and the stag, and she bows, in her turn.

  DAVID MORRELL

  Time Was

  DAVID MORRELL IS THE AUTHOR of First Blood, the award-winning novel in which the character of Rambo was created. He holds a Ph.D. in American literature from the Pennsylvania State University and was a professor in the English department at the University of Iowa until he gave up his tenure to devote himself to a full-time writing career.

  “The mild-mannered professor with the bloody-minded visions,” as one reviewer called him, Morrell has written numerous best-selling thrillers that include The Brotherhood of the Rose (the basis for a highly rated NBC-TV mini-series), The Fifth Profession and Extreme Denial (the latter set in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives).

  His short stories have appeared in many of the major horror/ fantasy anthologies, including the Whispers, Shadows, Night Visions and the Masters of Darkness series, as well as The Twilight Zone Magazine, The Dodd Mead Gallery of Horror, Psycho Paths, Prime Evil, Dark at Heart, MetaHorror, Revelations, 999 and Redshift.

  Two of his novellas received Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers Association. He has also received Bram Stoker and World Fantasy Award nominations a total of four times for other stories. His non-supernatural horror novel The Totem, which reinvented the werewolf myth, was covered in Horror: 100 Best Books.

  Morrell’s latest novel, the award-winning Creepers, has been called “genre defining” because of its unusual combination of thriller and horror elements.

  “A lot of my fiction deals with struggling to keep one’s identity,” the author explains, “about the fear of walking down the wrong corridor and entering the wrong room, only to discover a dangerously different version of reality.

  “Often, these themes are dramatised against large landscapes. In ‘Time Was’, the landscape is the American Southwest. I live in New Mexico and often drive through Arizona. I’m struck by how vast the country is, and how forbidding it can be.

  “On one occasion, I travelled from Tucson, Arizona, to Phoenix, and I wondered what would happen if a blocked highway forced a motorist to take a detour through the desert. What might he find out there? And what if the thing he found caused him to lose everything he held dear?”

  “DEBBIE, I’M GOING TO BE LATE,” Sam Wentworth said into his cell phone.

  “Late?” In the shimmering desert, the weak connection made his wife’s voice hard to hear, but the strength of her inflection compensated.

  “Maybe not till after dark.”

  “You promised Lori you’d be at her birthday party.”

  “I know, but—”

  “You missed her birthday last year, too.”

  “Traffic’s backed up for miles. The radio says a big motor home flipped over and burst into flames. The reporter says it’s going to take hours before the police clear the wreck and get traffic moving again. I’ll try to make it up to her. Look, I realize I haven’t been home a lot lately, but—”

  “Lately?”

  “You think I enjoy working this hard?” As the Ford Explorer’s temperature gauge drifted toward the red zone, Sam turned off the engine and the air conditioning. He opened the window. Despite the desert’s dry heat, sweat trickled off his chin.

  “I don’t mean to sound complaining.” Debbie’s voice was fainter. “It’s just . . . Never mind. Where are you?”

  “On I-Ten. The hell of it is, I planned ahead, finished my appointments, and left Tucson an hour ago. If everything had gone smoothly, I’ve have been home in time for Lori’s party.”

  Static crackled.

  “Debbie?”

  “If we hadn’t bought the new house, maybe you wouldn’t have to—”

  The static got louder.

  “Debbie?”

  “Don’t rush and maybe get in an accident just because—”

  Something broke the connection. Now Sam didn’t even hear static. He almost called back but then thought better. The conversation hadn’t turned into an argument. Leave it at that. Besides, the car ahead of him budged forward a little.

  Maybe traffic’s starting to move sooner than the radio predicted, Sam hoped. Then he realized that the car ahead was only filling a gap created when a vehicle pulled off the highway and followed the shoulder to an exit ahead. A handful of other vehicles did the same. So what? he thought. Maybe those drivers live in whatever town that exit leads to. But I need to get back to Phoenix.

  Traffic inched forward, filling the other gaps. He started his SUV, noted that the heat gauge had fallen to normal, and followed the slow line of vehicles. Now he saw that the exit led to a gas station, a convenience store, and about twenty sun-faded adobe houses whose cracked stucco indicated their losing battle with the desert. Something else caught his attention: A few of the cars that had taken the exit were now throwing up dust as they continued along a sandy road that paralleled the highway.

  What do they know that I don’t? he wondered. When traffic stopped again, he opened the glove compartment and pulled out a map, spreading it across the steering wheel.

  A faint broken line went from a town called Gila Gulch – the name on the exit sign – to a town farther along called Stage Stop. Must be from when stage coaches came through here, Sam thought. The distance looked to be about twenty miles and would bring him back onto I–10 past the mile marker where the radio news had said the motor home was blocking the highway. He looked at the dashboard clock. 5:25. I’ve got a chance to get home in time, he realized.

  The next thing, he steered onto the highway’s shoulder, reached the exit ramp, drove into Gila Gulch, and stopped at the gas station. His fuel gauge showed between a quarter and a half tank. Enough to get home. But why take chances? Fill it up. As the sun’s heat squeezed him, he also bought a jug of radiator fluid and added some to the Explorer’s reservoir, which looked slightly low, accounting for the increase he’d noticed on the temperature gauge. He always kept plenty of bottled water in the car. No problem there. Time to hit the road.

  “Hit” was almost the word. As Sam headed along the road, which had looked smooth from the highway, he was surprised by its bumps, but if he kept his speed at forty, they were tolerable. Nothing that the Explorer, built for rough terrain, couldn’t handle. At this speed, he’d finish the twenty miles in a half-hour. A hell of a lot better than sitting in traffic for three hours, as the radio had predicted. Pleased that the temperature gauge remained at normal, he closed the window, turned the air conditioner back on, and put a Jimmie Dale Gilmore CD into the car’s player. Humming to Jimmie’s definitive version of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”, he glanced at the traffic jam he passed on his left and smiled. Imagine the look on Lori’s face when I show up, he thought. The look on Debbie’s face will be even better.

  What Sam hadn’t told her was that the trip to Tucson had been pointless, that the land his boss thought might be worth developing – Grand Valley Vistas – turned out to have once been a toxic dump site. Lawsuits about it could go on forever. Another waste of my time, he thought. If Sheperton – Sam’s boss – had done his homework, the site never would have seemed tempting in the first place. It took a lot of investigating to discover the
liabilities. But that’s why Joe pays me the bucks. To keep him from screwing up. If I had his money, I could make Sheperton Enterprises (Wentworth Enterprises, Sam fantasized) ten times as successful as it is.

  He glanced to his left and wondered if he was imagining that the traffic jam on the highway seemed a little farther away. There seemed more rocks and saguaro cactuses than there’d been before. An optical illusion. But peering ahead, he was forced to admit that the road did seem to be shifting to the right. No big deal. When they built this road a long time ago, they probably needed to adjust for going around obstacles like that hill ahead. Dust clouds beyond it indicated the progress of the handful of cars preceding him. In the rearview mirror, another plume of dust showed a vehicle following. I’m surprised a lot more drivers haven’t realized how to save time, he thought. Or maybe they don’t have what it takes to try something different. Or they don’t have a good enough reason.

  As Jimmie Dale sang another mournful song, Sam’s attention drifted to the tall, sentry-like cactuses that now stuck up everywhere around him. Many looked sick, with drooping arms and black spots that might have been rot. That’s supposed to be from global warming, he thought. From the thinning ozone layer and unfiltered ultraviolet rays. From air pollution and car exhaust. He could actually see haze over the blocked traffic on the highway farther to the left.

  The hill got bigger. As the road veered to the right around it, noises startled him. Shots. He stomped the breaks and gaped at what confronted him. An old-fashioned western town had board sidewalks, mule-drawn wagons, and one of the stage coaches he’d earlier thought about. Horses were tied to wooden railings. Unlike the adobe buildings in Gila Gulch, these structures were wooden, most painted a white that had paled in the sun and the blowing sand. Most had only one level. Men in Stetsons and women in gingham dresses walked the dirt street he’d been about to enter. The noises he’d heard came from cowboys shooting at each other outside a corral. A man with a rifle fired from a roof. One of the cowboys turned, aimed upward, and shot him, sending him falling onto the street.

  The gunfight might have continued to alarm Sam if anybody else in the town had paid attention. But the men in Stetsons and the women in gingham dresses went on about their business, never once looking in the direction of the shots, making Sam quickly conclude that this was a tourist attraction. He’d heard of a similar western-town replica called Old Tucson, where tourists paid to see chuck-wagon races and staged gunfights. A lot of western movies had been made there also, including one of Sam’s favorites, John Wayne’s Rio Bravo. He’d also heard that Old Tucson had been destroyed in a fire. Perhaps it had never been rebuilt. Perhaps this town was its replacement. If so, it was situated awfully far from Tucson to be a success. The lack of cars and tourists made that clear. Back at the highway, a couple of signs would have helped.

  Maybe they’re not open for business yet, Sam thought as the gunfight ended and the survivors carried the bodies away. Maybe this is a kind of dress rehearsal. Noticing a sign that read MERIDIAN, he eased his foot onto the accelerator and passed a livery stable, a blacksmith shop, and a general store. They looked as if they’d been recently built and then cleverly made to seem aged. A muscular man came out of the general store, carrying a heavy burlap sack of what might have been flour toward a buckboard wagon.

  Impressed by the realism, Sam continued past a restaurant where a sign in the lace-curtained window indicated that a steak dinner could be obtained for fifty cents. A boy rode past on a mule. I’ve got to bring Lori and Debbie to see this, Sam thought. They won’t believe their eyes. I won’t tell them where we’re going. I’ll make it a surprise.

  Swinging doors led into a saloon. A large sign boasted about whiskey you could trust, beer that was cold, and (in less bold letters) the best sarsaparilla anybody ever tasted. Sam had heard sarsaparilla referred to in the westerns he enjoyed watching. A rancher was always buying a bottle for his son, or a gunfighter trying to mend his ways was always being told that he wasn’t man enough to drink whiskey anymore, that he needed to stick with milk or sarsaparilla. In the movies, they always called it “sasparilla”, though. Sam had no idea the word was actually spelled the way the sign indicated.

  And what on earth was sarsaparilla anyhow? Sam had always assumed it was a carbonated drink. But what did it taste like? Root beer? He suddenly had an idea. Why not buy a case and take it home for the party? “Have some sarsaparilla,” he’d tell Lori and her friends. “What’s sarsaparilla?” they’d ask, tripping over the word. “Oh, you’ve got to try some,” he’d say. “It’s just out of this world.”

  And Debbie would give him a smile.

  He stopped the car. When he got out, the heat was overwhelming, literally like an oven. How the hell does anybody think tourists will tolerate coming here? he thought. There weren’t any poles for electricity or phones. The lines must have been underground. Even so, doors and windows were open in every building, indicating that they didn’t have air conditioning. A slight breeze did nothing to cool him but did blow dust on his lips.

  Well-trained, none of the actors gave him a second look (or a first look for that matter) as he approached the saloon’s swinging doors. In western movies, that type of door – with open space at the top and the bottom – always seemed fake, as if in the old days people hadn’t cared about dirt blowing in. He pushed through, leaving the searing daylight for smoke-filled shadows that felt no cooler than the outside. Then he noticed that, on each side, solid doors had been shoved back. So the entrance could be closed if the weather necessitated, he thought, and was reassured by the realistic detail. He heard a tinny, somewhat out-of-tune piano playing a song that he didn’t recognize but that sounded very old. The piano was in the far left corner. No one sat at it as the keys rose and fell and its mechanized music drifted through the saloon. On the far right, stairs led up to rooms on an indoor balcony. In the old days, that’s where the prostitutes would have taken their customers, Sam thought. On the left, cowboys sat at circular tables, drinking and silently playing cards. Their cigarette smoke thickened, almost making Sam cough. They’ll never get families in here, he thought.

  On the right was a room-length bar, its wood darkened with age and grime. Cowboys leaned against it, silently drinking from beer mugs or shot glasses that probably contained tea or ginger ale. A barkeep wore a white shirt and vest and stood guard, arms crossed, next to the cash register.

  Sam went over. “Is that sign outside accurate? Do you sell sasparilla?” Realizing that he mispronounced it the way actors in movies did, he hurriedly said, “I mean sarsaparilla.” The word felt strange in his mouth.

  The barkeep didn’t answer. None of the cowboys looked at him. Part of the show, Sam thought. We’re supposed to feel like we’re back in the 1800s and can’t be seen.

  “How much for a case?” Sam asked.

  Again no answer.

  Sam glanced to the right along the bar and noticed generic-looking soda bottles on a shelf behind it, near the front window. They were made of clear glass that showed dark liquid in them – like root beer. They were labeled sarsaparilla. Corks were held in place with spring devices that he’d occasionally seen on pressurized bottles, indicating that the contents of these bottles were probably carbonated. Like root beer.

  Sam counted ten bottles. “I’ll take them all. How much?”

  No answer. The actors maintained the illusion that he wasn’t there.

  Sam went over to the bottles and saw a price tag on each. Five cents.

  “This can’t be true,” he said. “What’s the real price?”

  The only sound came from the tinny piano.

  “Okay then, if that’s how you want it. I’ll give you a bonus and take the whole lot for a dollar.”

  Sam put a dollar on the counter and moved to pick up the bottles.

  No one bothered to stop him.

  “I don’t know how you’re going to stay in business,” he said.

  Then he started wondering about what he
was buying. Suppose these bottles were merely stage props, or suppose this was the worst-tasting stuff imaginable. Suppose he took it home and gave it to Lori and her friends, only to watch them spit it out.

  “Is there anything wrong with this stuff?”

  No answer.

  “Well, if there is, you’re about to be involved in a lawsuit.” Sam picked up a bottle, freed the spring device, and tugged on the cork, needing a couple of tries to yank it out. Dark fluid fizzed, running over the bottle’s mouth.

  He sniffed it. Smells like root beer, he thought.

  “I’m going to drink this now. If it’s gone bad and makes me sick or something, you’re all going to be out of jobs.”

  The piano kept tinkling. No one turned.

  Hell, they’re not going to let me poison myself, Sam thought.

  “You had your chance.”

  He sipped.

  A tickle roused him. On his hand. As the tickle persisted, he forced his heavy eyelids open and found himself lying face down in the sand, his head angled sideways toward his outstretched right arm. The last rays of sunset showed a scorpion on the back of that hand. The creature was about two-and-a-half inches long. Despite the crimson of the dying sun, its yellow was vivid. Its pincers, its eight legs, its curved tail, stinger poised, made him want to scream.

  Don’t move, he thought. No matter what, pretend you’re paralyzed. If you startle this thing, it’ll jab you. You could die out here.