Lightspeed Magazine - September 2016

by John Joseph Adams [Ed. ]

  A visit

  But not our own sweet Rose! How could this have happened? We often wondered where we went wrong. Through all the years of that house’s torments, never did our own children go near it. We taught them well, or so we thought. But that house would get what it wanted. Our own sweet Rose. How we have fretted these past three years she has been gone from us. How we pray for her and for Mary Kay Billings nightly. And how Mary Kay suffers. How she holds herself together, never mentioning her daughter unless we ask after her. Never wanting to burden us. And how we all have our crosses. Which is why we did what we have done.

  We had let the Addleson family linger under the spell of the house’s evil, and because of that Jonas’s father took his own life, and Jonas himself became the wreck he is today. We thought we were doing best by them, leaving them to their own choices, trying not to interfere with the lives of others. But we saw how wrong we were when —— House took our Rose, when it took our Rose’s little girl. And then, recently, when Mary Kay Billings mentioned to one of us that Rose had been asking after her cousin, Marla Jean Simmons. “Could you send her on up here, Mother? I’m sort of lonesome. And I could use some help around the house.”

  It was then we decided to take action. Not one more of our children would we let that house ravage.

  We approached Mary Kay Billings with our plans, and tears, buckets full of them, were shed that day. Poor Mary Kay, always trying to be the tough woman, the one who will not be disturbed, yet when we came to her and said, “We shall make that house a visit,” she burst, she broke like a dam.

  “Thank you,” she told us. “Oh thank you, I can’t do it alone any longer. Maybe with all of us there she’ll let us talk some sense into her.”

  So we selected representatives. Mr. Adams, the town lawyer. He inspired fear in his opposition, so we chose him hoping the house would fear his authority. Mrs. Baker, the principal of our elementary school, who Rose once respected as a child. Pastor Merritt, since a man of God in cases such as this is necessary. Tom Morrissey, the undertaker, who has dealt with death long enough not to fear it. And Shell Richards, one of our school bus drivers, because she is simply a force to be reckoned with, and we all of us stay out of her way, especially when she’s been drinking.

  Together, led by Mary Kay Billings, we trudged up the road to —— House on a cool spring evening when the buds were on the trees, the sap rising. At the gate, we hesitated for only a moment to look at each other and confirm our convictions by nodding. Then Mary Kay swung the gate open and up the path we went.

  As soon as our feet touched those porch steps, though, we felt the life of whatever lived there coursing beneath us. We shuddered, but continued. Since it was not a social visit, we didn’t bother knocking, just opened the door and went straight on in. “Rose!” we called loudly. “Rose!” And soon enough, she appeared on the landing above us, looking down at us with a peculiar glare, icy and distant.

  “What are you all doing here?” she asked. Her voice sounded far away, as if she were speaking through her body, as if her body were this thing that came between her and the rest of the world. Her hand rested on the newel post of the landing, massaging it as she waited.

  “We’ve come to help you, darling,” Mary Kay said. We all thought it best that she spoke first.

  “I don’t need any help now,” said Rose. “What help would I be needing, Mother? Why didn’t you send Marla Jean like I asked?”

  We immediately saw Mary Kay’s resolve fading, so Mr. Adams spoke up. “Dear,” he said. “Come down to us. We’re taking you out of this place. We’re taking you home this very instant.”

  Rose cocked her head to the side, though, and slowly shook it. “I don’t think so,” she told us. “I’m a grown woman. I can make my own decisions. And my home is here, thank you very much.”

  “Where’s your husband?” asked Mrs. Baker. But Rose didn’t answer. She only looked at Mrs. Baker suspiciously, as if a trap were being set.

  “We’re going to help him, too, dear,” said Pastor Merritt. “But we need to get you both to safety. We must ask God to help us now.”

  “God?” said Rose, and we shivered. We’d never heard a word so full of goodness said in such a way that it sent chills up and down our spines. “God?” she said again, then started down the stairs toward us. “I haven’t heard Him in a long time,” said Rose. We nodded. We remembered. She hadn’t come to church since she was twelve.

  “He is always listening,” said Pastor Merritt. “All you have to do is ask for His help, and He will provide.”

  “I don’t talk,” said Rose. “I’m the one who listens.”

  We didn’t nod this time. We weren’t sure what to make of what she was saying.

  “Enough of this,” said Shell Richards suddenly, and we all, even Rose, looked at her, puzzled by her outburst. “Enough dilly dallying,” said Shell. She stepped right up to Rose, grabbed her arm, and said, “You’re coming with us, little girl.”

  Mary Kay ran up the stairs to gather a few things for her daughter while Rose fought to free herself from Shell’s grip. “Stop struggling,” Shell warned, but Rose struggled. She slipped, and as she fell, buttons poured out of her sweater pockets, scattering across the floor.

  Then a scream spilled down the staircase and we knew Mary Kay Billings was in trouble. We abandoned Rose on the floor and rushed up the stairs, one after the other, the steps creaking beneath us, until we came to the baby’s room with the mural of the orchard painted on the walls and the sky on the ceiling. Mary Kay stood in the center of the room, near the crib, staring apparently at nothing. We followed her stare, and in the mural we saw the Blank boy, Ephraim, sitting in an apple tree, looking out at us. You could tell it was him by the dark eyes and the ruddy cheeks.

  We took Mary Kay Billings by the arm and led her back down the stairs then, only to find that Rose had disappeared on us. “Who saw her last?” we asked each other, but no one had stayed with her. We had all gone running to Mary Kay when she called.

  We searched the house from top to bottom, shouting for either of them to come to us. “Rose!” we called. “Jonas!” But all we found were buttons, and all we heard were the screams of dead mothers, and all we smelled was the house’s evil circling us like a dark cloud.

  We were too late. Our chance had come and we had failed her. The house had taken her and Jonas before we could free them, and so we left, defeated, not bothering to close the door behind us. Let the wind have it, we thought, let the rain flood it, let it all fall down in ruin. For that was the last family that —— House would take, we decided at that very moment. Never again would we allow anyone to go near it.

  If walls could talk

  And they do talk, if you know how to listen. If you know how to pay attention to the way a roof sighs, or a window slides open with relief, or a step creaks its complaints out. If you know how to hear what those walls are saying, you will hear unbearable stories, stories you would never imagine possible, stories we would rather turn away from. But we cannot turn away, for they will only follow us. They will find us, one by one, alone and frightened, and tear us apart if we try to stop our ears up.

  The Blank family is still with us. The Olivers, too. And those poor dead girls from Pittsburgh still linger, howling through the night as we try to sleep. And Jonas’s father, the gun cracking his life open like a pocket watch, to let all of the time spill out of him. And now Jonas, too. Wherever he is, we hope he’s restful. And Rose. Poor Rose. We don’t hear from Rose, though. She never talked to us. She only listened.

  © 2007 by Christopher Barzak. Originally published in Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing, edited by Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  *

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Christopher Barzak is the author of the Crawford Fantasy Award winning novel, One for Sorrow. His second book, The Love We Share Without Knowing, was a finalist for the Nebula and Tiptree Awards. His short fic
tion has appeared in a variety of venues, including Asimov’s Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy. He grew up in rural Ohio, has lived in a southern California beach town, the capital of Michigan, and has taught English in suburban and rural communities outside of Tokyo, Japan, where he lived for two years. His most recent book is Wonders of the Invisible World. Currently he teaches fiction writing in the Northeast Ohio MFA program at Youngstown State University.

  *

  Horn

  Peter M. Ball | 21773 words

  One

  The phone call came at three a.m., about a half-hour after the body arrived at the morgue. It didn’t wake me. I don’t sleep well, not anymore. I used to work Homicide back when my life made sense and insomnia’s one of those bad habits I picked up on the job, right up there with the cigarettes and the tendency towards one glass of gin too many. It’s just another little twitch to remind me that my body doesn’t pay attention to the lies I tell myself about the past.

  My name’s Miriam Aster. Ask most of the cops I used to work with and they’ll tell you that now I’m a freelance detective, an ice-hearted bitch, or a fucked-up lush who killed her own career. Pick one, they’re all right. I was busy feeling sorry for myself when the call came through. The phone went to voicemail and I ignored the insistent beep that told me they’d left a message. They rang back. Twice.

  I watched my phone vibrate along with the ringtone, rattling across the bedside table. It should’ve been a relief to hear it—a three a.m. call meant a desperate client, and I knew the kind of money the desperate threw around. I spent two minutes pretending I didn’t care about paying rent before I rewarded their persistence and flipped the receiver open.

  “Aster?” It was a man’s voice, surly and brusque; familiar enough for me to figure it for Tim Kesey. A bad feeling twisted into my stomach and stuck there like a fishhook. Kesey hadn’t exactly approved of me since I was booted off the Force. He hadn’t actually liked me since I slept with his sister, but you know the old saying: Some mistakes you regret, some mistakes you celebrate.

  “Tim?” My voice snarled, anger seeping through.

  “Aster, we need you.” Kesey sounded older, a little more worn around the edges and wary about talking to me. I double-checked the caller ID to be sure it was him. “Listen Aster, I know it’s late, but Heath’s insisting. We need to bring you in, off the books, as a consultant. You up for it?”

  I groped for the rumpled soft pack of Camels by my bed, then realised my lighter had fallen off the bedside table. I sighed, letting the weariness creep into my voice. “It’s still early by my watch. Intrigue me.”

  “We’ve got a body. A kid.” I could hear the buzz of a crowd filtering in from his side of the call, the momentary chirp of a police siren as a car pulled in. “Heath says we need you on it. Wake the fuck up.”

  “I’m awake,” I said, and I was. The old instincts still triggered when someone mentioned a body, even if it’d been a decade since corpses were a part of my daily business. “How old’s the kid?”

  “Ask Heath when you see him. If you’re on the job.” My searching fingers found a glass instead of the lighter. There was a shallow mouthful of gin settled in the base. I took the cigarette out of my mouth and drank instead, a precaution against the way Kesey’s tone was setting my teeth on edge. He was the kind of cop who was big on protocol but it wasn’t like him to be evasive. Half the reason he avoided calling me in was his dislike of ambiguity on his paperwork—the Department tended to list me as a consulting specialist and leave the details blank when they filled in the books.

  “Sure, I’m on the job,” I said, “if you’re willing to pay the consulting fee. I don’t work cheap anymore. Not even for old friends.” Then I named an hourly rate, a big one. I expected Kesey to swear at me, fuck off, and let me get to sleep, but he didn’t. “Fine,” he said. “Come in on this, play it by the book for once, and log your time with the precinct. I’ll pay you any fee you want, Aster. Just get to the morgue. Fast. Got it?”

  “You’re getting soft, Tim.”

  “Don’t give me shit unless you’re here, doing the job. The money doesn’t matter, not this time.”

  I figured that for bullshit. I’m not the kind of girl who believes anyone when they say that, least of all a bastard like Kesey. “The money always matters,” I said. “Tell Heath I’m on my way.”

  I hung up and considered the bottle sitting on my bedside table. Decided against it and pulled on one of my better suits, a charcoal pinstripe over a black turtleneck instead of a button-down shirt. It’s my meeting money outfit. The one I break out to give an illusion of respectability around clients who were nervous about airing their dirty laundry with a stranger. Not the kind of look you needed when consulting on a murder case, but I figured what the hell—if Kesey’s got money to throw around, I might as well look the part while putting my two cents in.

  • • • •

  The early hours of the morning are a bad time to hit the city morgue, but I tend to hate it more than most. If you dig beneath the t-shirts and turtlenecks that make up my wardrobe, there’s a big Y-shaped scar running down my chest, the two arms starting beneath my collarbone, meeting the downward cut between my breasts. It’s a big, ugly thing, thick and purple; a lingering reminder of my first-hand experience with the autopsy slab. Don’t get too curious, there’s not much of a story behind it; once upon a time I fell in love and got involved in some trouble on her behalf. When I ended up dead, she pulled some strings and got me back. It seems like a good deal on the surface, but you don’t bounce back from something like that. My life turned to shit afterwards and my heart got broke. The rest just isn’t worth talking about.

  I sat out front for a bit, putting it all off with another cigarette, watching the glum square of light spilling out of an office window on the top floor. The morgue and I have had plenty of chances to get reacquainted under better circumstances, but it hasn’t done much to help my nerves. Something bad was going down inside. I could feel that familiar itch on the back of my neck, the same one I always got when the weird shit started. I smoked, hoping the itch would go away, and wished I’d asked Kesey for more money.

  I was looking for Heath Morrow, a morgue institution. Heath was bottom of the whole freaky pile when it came to the city coroners. He preferred working the late shift and had a fetish for the odd cases, which meant he called me in every chance he got. I should have hated Heath, but we got on okay. For all his ambient creepiness, he never assumed I was crazy, and he’d become a lot more bearable since I’d come back to life on his autopsy table. His tendency to talk to my chest vanished after he’d cut me open. Apparently it’s hard to objectify someone once you’ve had a scalpel poking around their innards.

  I found him sitting in front of his computer, hunched over the keyboard like a wire-thin mannequin with too-long arms. He was transcribing autopsy notes in one window, fingers hammering the keys as he listened to the mp3 recording of his own voice explaining his actions. Another open window streamed grainy, grayscale porn from one of those poorly dubbed Russian sex sites, filling the computer speakers with tinny moans and the wet slap of flesh on flesh. One of the black-and-white nudes started groaning, heading for climax, and a second figure turned to smile at the camera. He had ridiculous fangs, probably fake. They hung down from his gums like cigarettes, but the blood trailing down the nude girl’s neck looked real enough for video; black ink on white flesh, it did the job. I rolled my eyes and coughed, just loud enough to warn Heath I was there. He bounced, startled. “So,” I said. “How’s things?”

  He spun on his office chair, all smiles and crazy hair. “About fucking time,” Heath said. “We got a live one for you.” In Heath’s world, this passed as a joke, but I was too tired to offer a courtesy laugh. I gave him a beat to realise the comment had flopped, then aske
d the question of the hour: “Where’s Kesey?”

  “Back at the crime scene.” Heath switched off the porn and his smile stretched out a little, showing off the bad teeth. “You know how he gets. Things are a little too weird here for his taste, plus, you know—” He nodded at me and spread his hands. “I kinda had to push to get you signed on to this one, Aster.”

  He tossed a thin folder on the bench, started twisting in his office chair as I picked the paperwork up and flicked through. Sally Crown, age fourteen. Reported missing a year back, found facedown in a dumpster, wearing baby doll makeup and a plastic tiara, a little under an hour ago. Nothing in the file made it worth paying the kind of money I was asking. I looked up over the edge of the folder, flicking through the crime scene photos without really looking.

  “You want to summarise, Heath?”

  He shrugged. “External bruising suggests she’s been the victim of blunt trauma to the back of the head and shoulders, the kind of impact you’d get if you were dropped. No broken bones, so I’m assuming it was a short fall. If it was a fall. There’s some doubt there. It doesn’t quite add up. She’s got some fresher lesions on her scalp and neck, consistent with being dragged by the feet or scraped along the ground, probably posthumously.”

  “And I’m here because?” Heath’s grin threatened to slit his face open.

  “Mystery details,” he said. “I didn’t want to write them up until you had a chance to look at them, just in case and all that. Follow me.” He led me down the dark corridors into the bowels of the morgue, stepping into one of the sealed autopsy rooms that they used for infectious work. Heath hadn’t bothered to put the warning light on, but I worried just the same. The room was a frozen box that stank of formaldehyde and stale blood. Sally Crown was laid out on the table, street-kid thin and pale even before she’d become a corpse. Heath had her opened up already, ribs folded back like origami wings. My chest twinged in sympathy, my scars itchy. “Meet Sally,” Heath said. “She’s our little conundrum for the evening. Take a look.”