Year's Best Weird Fiction: 1

by Laird Barron

  So I sit at the window of my apartment in that southernmost town, watching leaves turn red and gold that had only for the first time yesterday been green, watching the sun wax fat and throw off the late summer sparks I knew so well when I lived in the northern town, feeling the air grow camphor-bloated warm and sickly sweet. I sit at my window, turning the pages of school books I'll never learn from, watching the buildings do what I have never done. They age, morph, change. They bloat, fuzz over, and release soft spores from fat cankers sagging off their rotting faces, they malform and reform, they become more familiar with each calcifying day. The southernmost town is disappearing, and the northern town is rising, again. A steam engine howls in the distance as it gobbles up the miles, and so much more. The townspeople's movements weaken, slow, stop. They fade and drift away like vapor. The face of the pale young man appears in the windows, sliding from the flickering edges of my sight into full view as the weeks pass: and then the day will come when he will stand in the street below, as he has stood in all the other dusty streets of all the other towns, his large black eyes fixed on me as the twin-beaked raven in his grasp grotesquely struggles to call out my name, all the names of the monsters of my mother's memories. Behind and around him, behind and around me, the fully formed streets of my childhood soon will stand, birthed out of the ruins of the southernmost town like a still-born giantess, a puppet of calcified dreams and bone, pulled into unwanted existence by the strings of someone else's desire. This, this is my mother's endless suffocating desire, slowing time down around us, winding it back, back, until it becomes the amber-boned river in which I am always and only her little girl, eternal and alone.

  I place the blue pen at the small pale circle of my throat.

  I can stop time, too.

  Damien Angelica Walters

  * * *

  SHALL I WHISPER TO YOU OF MOONLIGHT,

  OF SORROW, OF PIECES OF US?

  Damien Angelica Walters’ work has appeared or is forthcoming in various magazines and anthologies, including Nightmare, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Apex, Glitter & Mayhem, Shimmer, and The Best of Electric Velocipede. Sing Me Your Scars, and Other Stories, a collection of her short fiction, will be released in Fall 2014 from Apex Publications.

  She’s also a freelance editor and a staff writer with BooklifeNow, the online companion to Jeff VanderMeer’s Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer. You can find her online at http://damienangelicawalters.com.

  Inside each grief is a lonely ghost of silence, and inside each silence are the words we didn’t say.

  I find the first photograph face down on the mat outside the front door. In a rush to get to the office, I tuck it in the pocket of my trousers, thinking it a note from a neighbor. An invitation to dinner maybe.

  I pull my car onto the highway, into a mess of brake lights and angry horns, and shake my head. Morning traffic is always the same. Not sure how anyone could expect otherwise.

  When I reach for my cigarettes, I pull out the photo instead—you, with a lock of your hair curling over one cheek, the trace of a smile on your lips, and your eyes twin pools of dark, a touch of whimsy hidden in their depths. Beautiful. Perfect. A spray of roses peeks over your shoulder, the blooms a pale shade of ivory. Far in the distance, a faint strain of music, your favorite song, echoes away.

  The surface of the photo is slick beneath my fingertips, and when I lift it to my nose I catch a hint of perfume. Sweet and delicate, but with an undertone of some exotic spice. I will never forget that smell.

  I close my eyes tight against the tears. Yes, tears, even after all this time. I knew you’d find me. I’ve always known.

  Please let me go. Please.

  Never.

  In the middle of the night I wake to the smell of flowers. I move from room to room with a dry mouth and a heart racing madness, turn on all the lights, and check the windows and doors. Locked or unlocked, it doesn’t matter. If you want to come back, they won’t stop you. Nothing will. The photographs are proof of that. Still, the locks are a routine that makes me feel as if I’m doing something other than waiting.

  I peer through the glass to the back yard where moonlight is dancing across the grass. The tree branches sway gently back and forth like a couple lost in the rhythm of a dance. I whisper your name, my voice breaking. Only house noise answers. I rake my fingers through my hair. I don’t know if I can go through this again, but I also know I have no choice.

  I never did.

  The next photo appears face up on the coffee table in the living room. Same smile, but with your hair pulled back in a ponytail. A thin chain of silver circles your neck; the fingertips of your right hand are barely touching the small medallion hanging below the hollow at the base of your throat. A trace of dark shadows the skin beneath your eyes.

  Baby, those shadows say.

  Yes, I still remember the sound of your voice.

  I fumble a cigarette free from the pack; it takes three tries before I can hold my lighter still enough to guide the flame where it needs to go.

  When my job transferred me from one coast to another, I thought the distance would be too great for you. Even when I still lived in the old house, it had been over a year since you left the last photo. I’d thought you were gone.

  I know it won’t be any different this time, no matter how much I want otherwise. This hope is a strange thing, a wish wrapped in barbed wire. Or maybe delusion.

  The smell of flowers again in the middle of the night. I stay in bed, the sheet fisted in my hands. Heart full of chaos; head full of images.

  My coworker catches me at the end of the day when I’m slipping into my coat. “Hey, a bunch of us are going to happy hour. Want to come?”

  “No, maybe next time.”

  He raises his eyebrows and shakes his head. “That’s what you said the last time.”

  “Sorry, I already have plans.”

  “You said that, too.”

  I shrug one shoulder and step away before he can say anything else.

  I sit with the television on mute, listening to the silence. A book sits unread on the sofa beside me; a glass of iced tea long gone warm rests on the table. Condensation beads around the base of the glass like tears.

  The minutes tick by. The hours pass. I listen to nothing. I wait.

  Another photograph. On the bottom step of the staircase this time. You, captured on a blue and white striped blanket, shielding your eyes from the sun. Even in the frozen bright, the shadows under your eyes are visible and your skin is too pale. Next to you on the blanket is a crumpled napkin, a plastic cup on its side, a bit of cellophane wrap holding a rainbow’s arc on its surface, a few grains of sand. I hear the rush of a wave as it touches the shore then another as it recedes. The salt tang of the ocean hovers in the air, but only for an instant.

  I smell flowers in the night. Maybe it’s my imagination, but the scent is growing stronger. A promise or recrimination?

  The landing at the top of the stairs. The next photo. Your face half in shadow, half in light. The almost-smile is still there in spite of the pallor of your skin, the hollows beneath your cheekbones, the scarf wrapped round your head. I hear the last breath of a laugh. Smell honeysuckle drifting on a cool breeze.

  Always the same photographs in the same order. I don’t know how, but the how doesn’t matter. And I already know the why.

  (Please let me go.

  Never.)

  It will be the last photo, just like the last time. I know it will, but I check the locks anyway. Everything is as it should be. It’s too cold to leave the windows open or I would.

  A throat clears. I look up to see my boss standing in my office, a small frown on his face. “Are you okay?”

  Yes,” I say. “Why?”

  “You look a little tired, that’s all.”

  “Just a bout of insomnia,” I say. The lie slips easily from my tongue.

/>   “You have my sympathies. My wife’s had that for years. Try a glass of wine before bed. That helps her.”

  “Will do.”

  He lingers for a few moments longer and for one quick instant, I think of telling him everything. I tried that once with your sister; she told me I should talk to a doctor, and then she stopped answering my calls.

  I unlock the windows, as always, but my hand remains on the lever. I am so tired of waiting. I’m wearing shadows under my eyes now and I have a knot in my chest that won’t go away. Maybe I could learn to forget about you. To move on. Throw away the photographs, let time fade the memories. Lock the doors and the windows instead of unlocking them. Go out with my coworkers. And maybe you’ll stop.

  I flip the lock, sigh, and turn it back. No, I want you to come back. It’s what I’ve always wanted. Maybe that small sliver of doubt is the reason you haven’t yet.

  And then I find a photo in the hallway just outside the bedroom door. I sit with my back against the wall. I’ve never seen this photo before. You’ve never made it this close.

  The smile is no longer a smile, but a grimace. The shadows beneath your eyes are now bruises of dark. I taste the bright sting of antiseptic. Hear the ticking of a clock winding down and down and down.

  “Please, baby, please,” I whisper, my voice hollow.

  I take that tiny trace of doubt and shove it away. Hold the photo to my chest. This time will be different. I know it will.

  I toss and turn for hours, listening to the quiet. The distance between the hallway and the bed seems so small, yet miles, worlds, apart as well.

  Please, baby. Please.

  The last words you said to me.

  The next door neighbor is outside watering her plants when I get home. She waves. Smiles. I return the gesture, but not the expression. When she starts to head in my direction, I hightail it into the house. Rude, I know, but she caught me when I first moved here and kept me outside for an hour, her voice flitting from topic to topic like a bee out on a mission for nectar. She doesn’t pick up on any of the signs that I want to be left alone, or maybe she does and just chooses to ignore them. The way she ignores the ring on my finger.

  Another photo, left on the foot of our bed. It shows only clasped hands. Matching silver bands. Fingers entwined. One hand is hale and hearty; the other frail, the veins standing out like mounds in a field of fresh graves. I feel the paper skin beneath my palm. I hear a whisper of words, promising lies, promising everything. I taste a kiss laced with despair and loss.

  I can’t stop the tears. I can’t stop my hands from shaking. But I run to the florist and buy three dozen red roses, long-stemmed with thorns, the way you like them. On the way back, I brave the mall and buy a fresh bottle of your favorite perfume.

  But one day becomes two. One week turns three. No trace of flowers in the air. No new photos. I’m still alone with empty arms and a knot in my chest. I smoke cigarette after cigarette. Pace footprint divots in the carpet. Choke back tears as the hope leaks out, a little more with each passing day.

  My boss was wrong about the wine. It doesn’t help at all. Nothing does.

  After two months, I slide the photographs into an envelope, tuck the flap over as best as I can, and pull a battered shoe box out from under the bed. Nine sets of photos. Ten envelopes, the last one sealed. The paper clearly reveals two small circular shapes. The saint on the medallion never offered assistance; the ring is only a circle of empty without your skin to bind it.

  When I close my eyes, I recall every plane and curve of your face, before illness turned you pale and hollow, but I wonder, if not for the photographs, would I? Would time have turned my heart to scar instead of open wound?

  I shove the box back under the bed, my mouth downturned. I should’ve known better. You’ve tried nine times in five years. All the want in the world can’t bring you back.

  The next time my coworkers ask me to go to happy hour, I say yes. I say yes the second and third time, too. By the fifth time, I don’t have to force a laugh at a joke or fake a smile when someone catches my eye. I feel a loosening in my chest. An ease in my breath.

  I take the box of photographs and put them on the top shelf of my closet. I make sure all the doors and windows are locked before I go to bed. And, finally, I take off the silver ring. My eyes burn with tears, but I blink them away before they fall.

  “Please let me go,” you whispered through cracked lips. “Please.”

  “Never,” I said, arranging the scratchy hospital blanket around your shoulders.

  Your bare scalp was hidden under a yellow scarf, but nothing could hide the matchstick legs, the grey tinge of your skin, or the pain in your eyes that morphine couldn’t touch. No amount of perfume could mask the shroud of illness and breaking hearts.

  I held your hand and told you for the thousandth time about that night, our first date, after I dropped you off. How I turned and saw you standing with your hair full of moonlight and your lips full of smile. How I knew I would spend the rest of my forever with you.

  “Please, baby, please.”

  And then only silence. I sat with your hand in mine until your skin began to cool. I didn’t cry until a nurse led me out of the room.

  I wake on a cool morning in early autumn to find the photograph on the mat outside the front door. The lock of hair, the little smile, the pale roses. I stand with my hands in my pockets for a long time, but eventually I carry the photo back into the house.

  I’ll leave the windows open every night, weather be damned. I’ll put flowers out every day. Because you were so close the last time. So very close. That has to mean something.

  I slip the ring back on my finger. It was a mistake to take it off in the first place. I won’t make it again.

  Please, baby, find your way back home to me. I’ll wait for you no matter how long it takes. I promise I will. If you make it all the way this time, I’ll say the goodbye I should’ve said in the hospital.

  Maybe then I’ll be able to let you go.

  John Langan

  * * *

  BOR URUS

  John Langan is the author of two collections, The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies and Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters, and a novel, House of Windows. With Paul Tremblay, he has co-edited Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters. He lives in upstate New York with his wife, younger son, and a raft of animals.

  I love a big storm. I love the buildup to it: the meteorologists, flushed with their sudden importance, narrating the flow of the oranges and reds across the local maps; the supermarkets, crowded with people whose furrowed brows and pursed lips grant the soup cans and bottled water in their carts a promotion to provisions; the neighbors, diligently preparing their houses and yards for the high winds by rolling trash cans into the garage, securing the shutters as best they can. I love the storm itself: the house creaking as the wind moans against it; the rain rattling on the windows, reducing the yard to an impressionistic blur; the lightning burning the air white, the thunder shaking the walls. And I love the aftermath: the cautious step onto the front porch to survey the trees, their branches still saturated, bent; the walk around the house to pick up any items that were blown loose; the drive to town, to observe the storm’s more general ruin.

  It’s the emotions that accompany each stage of the storm: I savor them. On one side, there’s anticipation, a half-pleasurable dread at what’s bearing down on us that makes the air hum, the way it does before any big event; on the other side, there’s relief, which may also be tinged with dread at whatever damage awaits discovery, whatever crash must be sourced and reckoned with, but which is more an emptied-out feeling, as if, for a moment, we’re as clear as the air the storm has just washed. In between dread and relief, though, is the most rarefied sensation, a terror at our utter powerlessness in the face of what’s enveloped us, a panic at the trees whipping side to side deliriously, the power lines bouncing
like jumpropes, the wineglasses ringing at each clap of thunder—which borders the ecstatic. When a storm is at its peak, and the world outside seems on the verge of tearing itself apart, a kind of radical openness comes briefly into view, as if, with each blanching of the view out the front window, something else, a more essential state of existence, draws that much closer to being unveiled.

  At some point, I began to suspect that my figurative response to the violence of a severe storm might be pointing me in the direction of actual truth. I was a teenager, fifteen, sixteen, that point of maximum narcissism when it seems entirely reasonable to think that you are privy to special insight, able to intuit secret knowledge. However, unlike so many of the other notions that occupied my brain at that time, which steadily decamped as my teens drained into my twenties, this one dug in more firmly. It was buttressed by bits and pieces of magazine articles read in waiting rooms, by fragments of documentaries stumbled onto while late-night channel-surfing. The details were fairly incoherent, but the gist of the theory I assembled was, if there are other dimensions, parallel universes, alternate planes of existence—call them what you will—then mightn’t the tremendous release of energy in a serious storm unsettle, destabilize things sufficiently for that other place to be glimpsed, even entered? Anyone with a modicum of scientific knowledge, let alone actual expertise, on whom I tried out this line of reasoning treated it with a species of amused tolerance, much the way they probably would have a declaration of belief in alien visitation. This lack of support did nothing to unseat my conviction; in fact, it was during my twenties that I first ventured out into the midst of a storm, to see what I could see.