Inferno

by Ellen Datlow

  “I don’t get it.” I was calling so loud that people were turning to stare at me. “Why not tonight? You made this stuff happen before, why not now, right in front of me? Let me see, Bobby, I want to understand. You think you can summon up the devil?”

  His eyes were still focused over my left shoulder. “The devil is already here, my friend.”

  I twisted around to see who he was looking at, but when I looked back he had gone. They had all gone. And the tumble of the party rushed into my ears once more. I heard the blond girl laughing as the man fumbled his knife trick, and the point of the blade fell harmlessly to the floor, where it stuck in the wood.

  When the girl turned around, I saw that she was heavily pregnant, and heard someone say, “Come on Sharon, I’m going to drive you home, it’s late. What if Roman calls tonight?”

  She lived on 10050 Cielo Drive, I heard her say. And she had to get back, because the next night she was expecting her friends Abby and Jay, and they’d probably want to stay late drinking wine. She wasn’t drinking because of the baby. She didn’t want anything to happen to the baby.

  The next day was August ninth, 1969.

  It was the day our bright world began its long eclipse.

  They caught up with Charlie and his gang at the Spahn ranch, out near Chatsworth, but by then it was too late to stop the closing light. There were others, rootless and elusive, who would never be caught.

  I remembered those parties in the Hollywood hills, and realized I had always known about the rise of the Uninvited. Much later, I read about Manson’s children writing Helter Skelter on their victims’ refrigerator door, only they had misspelled the first word, writing it as Healther.

  I saw how close I had come to touching evil.

  The world is different now. It’s sectioned off by high walls, no-go zones, clearance status, security fences, X-ray machines. The gates remain shut to outsiders unless you have a pass to enter. The important parties and the good living can only continue behind sealed doors. At least, that’s what those who throw them desperately need to believe. That’s what I need to believe.

  I married Cheyenne. We have two daughters and a son. Against all reason, we stayed on in California.

  And we no longer know how to protect ourselves from those who are already inside the gates. I guess we lost that right when we first built walls around our enclaves and printed out our invitations.

  13 O’Clock

  MIKE O’DRISCOLL

  Mike O’Driscoll lives on Gower Peninsula, in South Wales. His stories have been published in genre magazines including The 3rd Alternative, Crimewave, and Interzone; online at Gothic.net, infinity plus, and Eclectica; and in a number of anthologies including The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Best New Horror, The Dark, Gathering the Bones, Lethal Kisses, Off Limits, Poe’s Progeny, Darklands, and Neonlit Volume 1.

  O’Driscoll’s first collection of stories, Unbecoming, was published in 2006. He writes a regular column on horror, fantasy, and science fiction, Night’s Plutonian Shore, for Interzone. His story, “Sounds Like,” has been turned into a one-hour TV movie directed by Brad Anderson, as part of the Masters of Horror series.

  The days were beginning to stretch out. Another couple of months and it would be surf and barbecue, cold beer out on the deck listening to Bonnie “Prince” Billy. Play some silly tunes on the guitar for Jack, teach him his first chords. Make some other kind of music for Polly. The sweet kind for which the diminishing nights left barely enough time. The cold still hung in the air at this hour though. Caleb Williams could feel it on his face as he followed Cyril across the rising field. He bent down, scooped up the mostly black mongrel terrier and boosted him up the stone ditch. He climbed up and over while the dog, resenting the indignity of having to be lifted, scrambled down by itself.

  They crossed the dirt track to the garden, where Caleb paused to lean against the unpainted block wall. The sun was a ball sinking below Cefn Bryn, leaving the mid-April sky streaked with red. Gazing up at the house, he felt a sudden, unaccountable yearning. The otherness of dusk made the cottage seem insubstantial. Shrugging off this unexpected sense of isolation, he opened the back gate and let Cyril bolt through. They got the dog two years ago for Jack’s birthday, but whether Jack had tired of it, or the dog had tired of the boy, it had ended up attaching itself to Caleb. Only now was he getting used to the idea of himself as a dog person.

  In the living room, Polly was curled up on the sofa, dark red hair breaking in waves over her shoulders, ebbing across her blouse. She was channel hopping as he came in, and had opened two small bottles—stubbies, she called them—of San Miguel. “Saw you coming from Jack’s room,” she said, her gray eyes lucent with mischief. “You looked like you need one.”

  Caleb took the beer and sat next to her. “Is it me,” he said, “or is the climb up from the bay getting steeper?”

  His wife swung her feet up into his lap. “It’s decrepitude,” she said.

  “Good. For a moment there I thought I was getting old.” He tapped his bottle against hers and took a sip.

  She smiled for a moment, then her expression changed. “You didn’t hear Jack last night?”

  “No. What?”

  “I meant to tell you this morning. He had a bad dream.” She frowned. “More than that, I guess. A nightmare.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Of course there is, fool.” She jabbed a foot playfully into his thigh. “This was a nightmare.”

  “How could you tell?”

  “I’m serious, Cale. He was petrified. He screamed when I woke him.”

  “Was he okay?”

  “After a while, yes.”

  “What did he dream?”

  “He was alone in the house at night. That’s scary enough for most eight-year-olds.”

  “Poor Jack. How is he tonight?”

  “He’s fine. Has been all day. I was half-expecting him to say something but he never mentioned it. I guess he’s already forgotten.”

  “Good,” Caleb said, feeling a vague sense of guilt. Should have been there for him, he thought.

  Polly sighed and rubbed her foot across his belly. “So, how was your day?”

  Caleb said nothing. He was thinking about Jack’s nightmare, trying to imagine how he must have felt. A yellow woman moved across the TV screen. He wondered where nightmares came from. What caused them?

  Polly wiggled her toes in his face. “What’s the matter? Got the hots for Marge Simpson?”

  He laughed and grabbed her foot. “It’s the big hair that does it for me.”

  She yanked her foot free. “There you go, making me jealous,” she said, sliding along the sofa.

  He drained his bottle and pulled her close. “I always thought blue would work for you,” he said, before kissing her. He didn’t think about Jack’s dream again until after they had made love, and then only for a short while, until sleep took him.

  Caleb taught basic literacy skills to young adult offenders, most of whom were serving community sentences for alcohol and drug-related crimes. Twice a week he held a class in Swansea Jail for those whose crimes were more serious. In all the time he had worked as an English teacher in a city comprehensive, he had seen countless faces just like theirs. The faces of disaffected boys who had never willingly picked up a book, or lost themselves in words. After ten years he had walked away. Now, watching these young men begin to find pleasure in reading, he felt he was finally doing something that mattered.

  All the more maddening then, not being able to comprehend his son’s terror. As he moved from one student to the next, his thoughts kept drifting back to Jack. He’d had another nightmare last night, worse than before. Hearing him, Polly had woken Caleb. When he’d gone to his son’s room, the look of terror on Jack’s face had shocked him. After he’d calmed the boy and returned to his own bed, he’d lain awake for hours, trying to comprehend the extent of Jack’s fear. His inability to understand the dream left him feeling helpless, and t
his in turn had added to his confusion and guilt.

  At lunchtime, he called Polly on her mobile. “Hi Cale,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “You busy?”

  “On my way to town. Got work to drop off at McKays.” She worked part-time, auditing small business accounts. “Can I get back to you?”

  “It’s okay,” Caleb sighed. “I was just wondering about Jack. How he was this morning.”

  “Okay, I guess.” Caleb heard the doubt in her voice. “He dreamed about a stranger. He, uh—”

  “He what?”

  “He said a stranger was coming to our house.”

  Caleb tried to imagine his son’s nightmare.

  “We spoke at breakfast and he was all right. I think he forgot most of it. Not like he was last night. He’s tough, you know, resilient.”

  “You’re right,” Caleb said. “I’ll stay with him tonight, till he’s asleep.”

  “He’ll like that, Cale. Really.” She broke the connection.

  I hope so, Caleb thought, as he flipped the phone shut. Despite Polly’s reassurances, he felt there was more he should be doing. Like being able to explain the dream to Jack, stealing its power through interpretation. Take away that ability to rationalize and he was no better than the most illiterate, most brutalized of his students.

  In the evening Caleb put his son to bed and read him a chapter from The Wind in the Willows. Jack liked it when he put on different voices for the characters. High-pitched and squeaky for Rat, ponderous and slow for Mole. Toad was his favorite. He always laughed at Caleb’s braying, exaggeratedly posh voice, but tonight there was no Mr. Toad, just the softer, more subdued notes of Rat and Mole as they searched the river for young Portly, the missing otter. He found himself strangely moved by the animals’ mystical quest, experiencing an emotion akin to the yearning regret that was all the memory Rat and Mole were left with of their encounter with Pan. He closed the book and forced a smile, trying to hide his mood, but his melancholy was mirrored in Jack’s eyes.

  “What’s wrong, Dad?” Jack asked.

  “I was thinking about the story.”

  Jack nodded. “Me too. About the friend and helper.” He frowned. “Why did they forget him?”

  Caleb hadn’t read the book since he was a child himself, and he’d forgotten how mysterious, how at odds with the rest of the tale, the “Piper at the Gates of Dawn” chapter had been. “So they wouldn’t feel sad,” he said, after a while.

  “But he helped them find Portly.”

  Caleb nodded. “Yes, but there are things …”

  “Why?”

  Caleb wondered what it had felt like when he had first become aware of his own mortality. Choosing his words carefully, he said, “Sometimes people know things they’re better off not knowing.”

  “Things in dreams?”

  “Yes.” Something resonated in Caleb’s memory. He couldn’t quite grasp it, though he suspected his feelings were an echo of Jack’s empathy for Rat and Mole. “You remember anything about your dream last night?”

  Jack shook his head.

  “If you’re scared, Jack, if something’s troubling you, I want you to tell me.”

  “Are you okay, Dad?”

  Caleb wondered why Jack would ask that question. It disturbed him, but he managed a smile and said, “’Course I am.”

  “Right,” Jack said, but the look of concern remained on his face. “I’ll say a prayer.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re ’sposed to,” Jack said. “Mrs. Lewis said you have to pray to Jesus to look after your family.”

  Mrs. Lewis was Jack’s teacher. Caleb had nothing against religion, but he was troubled by the notion of Jack taking it too seriously. “You don’t need to pray for me, son. I’m fine, really. Sleep now, okay?”

  “’Kay,” Jack said, closing his eyes.

  Caleb woke from a fretful sleep, scraps of memory gusting through his troubled mind. Though a film of sweat coated his body, he felt cold and vulnerable. A shaft of moonlight fell through the gap in the curtains, cloaking familiar objects in odd, distorting shadows that, in his drowsy state, unsettled him. He struggled to claw back the fragments of a dissipating dream and the sounds that had slipped its borders. A minute passed before he understood that he had followed them out of sleep, that he was hearing the same muffled cries from somewhere in the house. He sprang out of bed and crossed the landing to Jack’s room. His son was whimpering softly, making sounds unrecognizable as words. As Caleb approached the bed, Jack’s body spasmed and an awful scream tore from his throat. Caleb hesitated, unnerved by the intensity of his son’s fear. He wrapped his arms around the boy and felt the iron rigidity in the small, thin body. Downstairs, Cyril began to bark.

  “It’s okay, Jack,” he whispered. “I’m here.” Jack’s eyes opened, and in his disoriented state he struggled in his father’s arms. Caleb made soothing noises and stroked his face. Jack tried to say something, but the tremors that seized his body made him incoherent. “Ssshhh,” Caleb said. “It’s over.”

  “Duh-duh, Dad,” Jack cried.

  “I’m right here,” Caleb told him.

  Jack struggled for breath. “He-he was here. He knew you wuh-were gone.”

  Caleb shuddered involuntarily at the words, and felt the lack of conviction in his voice when he said, “Nobody’s here Jack. Just you and me.”

  Jack shook his head and looked beyond his father. “He came in the house. He was on the stairs.”

  Caleb held the boy in front of him and looked into his eyes. “There’s nobody here. It was a nightmare. You’re awake now.” Cyril barked again, as if in contradiction.

  “His face—it’s gone,” Jack said, still disoriented.

  It was the same nightmare, Caleb realized with disquiet. Polly had said Jack had dreamed of an unwelcome stranger in their house. How common was it for kids to have recurring dreams? He wondered if it signaled some deeper malaise. “I’ll go and check downstairs,” he told his son, in an effort to reassure Jack.

  “Please Dad,” Jack was saying, his voice fragile and scared. “Promise you won’t go.”

  A tingling frost spread over Caleb’s skin, numbing his brain. His thoughts stumbled drunkenly, dangerously close to panic. He wondered if what he was feeling was, in part at least, a residue of his son’s fear. He needed to be strong. “All right, Jack. You come sleep with us tonight, okay?”

  Jack nodded, his gaze still flitting nervously about the room. Caleb picked him up and carried him back across the landing. He laid him down in the middle of the bed, next to Polly. She stirred and mumbled something in her sleep. He put a finger to his lips, signaling Jack to keep quiet. Then he left the room and went downstairs to the kitchen. Cyril was standing at the back door, sniffing. Caleb crouched beside the dog and petted him for a few moments. “What’s wrong boy? You having bad dreams too?” The dog licked Caleb’s hand. He pointed to Cyril’s basket, stood up and glanced through the kitchen window above the sink. Moonlight silvered the garden. Nothing was out of place. When he went back upstairs and climbed into bed, Jack turned and clung to him for a while, until fatigue loosened his hold and sleep reclaimed him.

  The radio clock’s LED screen pulsed redly in the darkness, as if attuned to the rhythm of Caleb’s agitated mind. Vaguely disturbing thoughts had taken root there, but an unaccountable sense of guilt made him reluctant to examine them. They seemed born out of nothing. The darkness robbed him of reason, made his fears seem more real than they had any right to be. What could he do for Jack? Explain that his nightmares were the product of his own unconscious fears? As if reason could ever outweigh terror in the mind of a child. As if it could account for what seemed to him a strange congruence between Jack’s bad dreams and his own fragile memories. He felt powerless and bewildered. Though he believed he would do anything for his son, he was plagued by a small but undeniable doubt. He couldn’t escape the feeling that he was in some way responsible for Jack’s terror, that it was connected to some w
eakness in himself.

  Caleb strummed his guitar listlessly, his chord changes awkward and slow, like they had been when he’d first started playing. Maybe, once you got past forty, it was too late to take it up. The fingers were too stiff and the willingness to make a fool of oneself was not so strong as it had been. Yet, he didn’t feel that way about himself. When Polly had bought the guitar for his birthday and told him it was time to stop talking and learn to play, it hadn’t seemed such a crazy idea. And still now, after a year, the desire to play competently some blues and country tunes was as strong as ever. It was something else distracting him.

  He leaned the guitar against the table, got up, and walked to the sink. Polly glanced up from the book she was reading. “Not there today, huh?”

  Caleb shrugged and watched his son through the kitchen window. Jack was playing in the garden by the recently dug pond that still awaited its first koi carp. He was maneuvering his Action Men through the shallow water as if it were a swamp.

  “You okay?”

  Caleb looked at her. She’d put her book down on the table and was staring intently at him. He didn’t want to talk. He knew already what she’d say. “I’m fine,” he said, turning back to the window.

  “It’s Jack, isn’t it?”

  The boy was manipulating two of his soldiers into a fight. He paused suddenly, and cocked his head to one side, as if listening. Slowly, he swept his gaze across the garden. He seemed nervous, wary of something. After a moment or two, he continued with his game, but more guarded, as if aware that he was being observed. Caleb felt uneasy. He leaned closer to the window and let his gaze wander around the garden and down to the rear wall that backed onto the lane. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary.

  “He’s okay, Cale,” Polly was saying. “He’d be even better if you’d stop fretting.”

  “I was trying to help him,” Caleb said, still watching Jack.

  “By interrogating him?”

  “Talking about it will help him.” Jack was shielding his eyes from the watery sun as he gazed south toward the bay. “Expose the irrational to the cold light of day and it loses its power. Making Jack talk about the dream will weaken its hold over him.”