by Clive Barker
She’d given a gift in return, too. She must always remember that as well.
Mason, his breath quickening; the laughter and fireworks in the distance; the woman bending close, her hair made of smoke.
Mason seeing her face, knowing her, truly knowing her, as she reached down and gently passed her hand over each of his eyes.
WATER THY BONES
Mercedes M. Yardley
There’s a loveliness to bones. Their shape. Their weight. Their strength and fragility.
A body uses them to run. Uses them to stand timidly against a wall. They hold a person upright, if they’re working correctly. They’re a framework for an entire system, a complete body, and the significance of that is very nearly overwhelming
Yet at the same time, bones are so exceptionally frail. They can be broken. Sawed through. Pulverized. Bleached. Painted. Kept. Valued. Destroyed.
Remembered.
Taken.
Oh, yes, they can be taken. While the victim still hangs on them, a skinsack of meat. Veins still connect, blood still carries oxygen back and forth like it’s a precious thing, and at that point it still is.
That’s when their beauty becomes something real. When bone is exposed to the air for the first time, and the marrow gasps as it breathes in deep. The rest of it, the tissue, gristle, and muscle is pulled away, and the skeleton is allowed to be free.
That’s the part Michael Harrison liked the best. Peeling away the stinking red refuse and letting the white parts glitter and shine through. It’s the most awe-inspiring kind of birth, the most natural. Give all of us time and nature will do it for us. But sometimes nature needs a push.
***
Nikilie was a strong, beautiful thing. She suffered from pain that pressed behind her eyes like delphiniums, but she still got out of bed and moved around the world as living things do. Her tongue was red and her eyes the warmest of browns. Eyes you could fall into, dark skin smooth as butter. It invited the unwanted stares and hands of men and women everywhere she went. At least it used to, until she started taking razor blades and serrated knives to her body in the dim quiet of her bathroom.
“You’re so lovely, Nikilie,” friends told her. She cut and sawed at the skin on her thigh, leaving tight, slim lines beaded with blood. Jewels on the skin of a goddess. That was beauty. That was purity, right there.
“Baby, come here.” Cat calls on the street and lascivious glances turned into something genteel, something finer under her blade.
“I want you,” her boss told her behind his office door. He was one of many, simply another person abusing authority. His hand slid up and under her shirt. “A gorgeous woman such as yourself should never be lonely.”
“I never am,” she replied, but her whispers disappeared under the sound of fabric ripping, her favorite top turned into rags. Her words, though, shone as she carved them into her skin in the silence of night.
Never lonely. Never. Never never never.
Fabric can be rent, and so can skin, but at least she made the choice this time. Pried under the coating. Saw what lay underneath.
She wasn’t simply her face or her skin or the smooth Island accent of her words. She was herself. Nikilie. She was what ran under her skin, not merely the features built out of it. She wanted somebody who would love her from the inside out.
The first time Michael saw Nikilie, he stopped and stared at the aggressive way her skull pressed against the paper-thin skin of her face. She pursed her lips and worked her jaw, the bones moving in such a way that Michael had to stifle a groan.
“What is your name?” he asked her. She sat on the hard, plastic seat of the subway, an exotic flower growing from the cracks in the pavement. He stood next to her, holding loosely to the straps above.
“Trudi,” she said, not meeting his eyes.
“I don’t blame you for lying. I’m a stranger on the subway. My intentions may not be honorable.”
Her eyes flicked up, then, warm and wet. He saw moss and flowers and lovely things growing in their humidity. A tropical paradise.
“You’re not from New York,” he said, and then blushed.
This made her laugh, and she scratched at her wrist. It always itched.
“No, I’m not. But you are. And yet you’re easily embarrassed. How can this be?”
He shrugged, grinning, and she smiled back. Beautiful white teeth, strong, and one overlapped the other just a bit. Perfection.
He wanted to run his fingers across them. He wished to wear them as pearls.
“I’m awkward,” he said, and lifted his shoulders again. A what can I do? gesture. The self-realization of a different man. “I say what I think instead of saying what I should. I don’t mean to make people uncomfortable. I just do. I’m no good at small talk.”
“Why is that? If you realize it makes it difficult to fit in?”
The movement of the subway shook them, made him dance and sway with unusual grace. His suit coat looked like bird feathers. He was something exotic, something from the islands, and for a second a look of recognition, of delight, shone from Nikilie’s eyes. Ah, yes, her eyes seemed to say. This is something I’ve seen before.
“Life is too short, I suppose,” he answered. “There seems to be so little time. Yet we’re supposed to dance around this and barely mention that. I don’t understand it. In two minutes I’ll step off this platform and will most likely never see you again, so why shouldn’t I say what I’m thinking instead of wasting that time with faux pleasantries?”
“And what are you thinking?”
He could read her expectations in the lift of her brow, in the tiredness that suddenly came into her eyes. You’re beautiful. Could we go out for coffee? Or perhaps, Such an exquisite face you have. Something about her face, her lips, her eyes. About her body or long, long limbs. But he had caught sight of the black, healed skin on her wrists, under her bangles, and when her shirt fell off her shoulder just a bit, before she automatically pushed it back up, he saw the fresher wounds there.
“Your bones,” he said, and gestured with one hand. “Your elbows and knees. The things that make you you, underneath everything else. I’ve never seen anything more striking.”
Nikilie’s mouth fell open. The subway stopped and Michael was gone in a flurry of suit coats and umbrellas, moon boots and patchouli.
Nikilie stared at the floor for the remainder of her ride. That night she took a razorblade to her inner thigh, but the cuts were heartless and shallow.
***
They had coffee at a safe, generic, neutral spot. Nikilie thought about discussing the weather, but Michael had no interest in such niceties.
“Did you ever break your leg?” he asked. “You have a slight limp.”
She had, indeed, broken her leg a few years ago. Skiing, she told him.
“An island girl on skis is just as tragic as you’d think,” she told him, and when he laughed, she saw the fillings in his teeth. It made her heart hug close, just a little.
“When you are dead and gone,” he said, “they’ll look at your skeleton and be able to see that break. How it healed itself over. People will hold your bones and wonder what caused it. Running from a predator, perhaps? Or something that happened as a child? No, it didn’t heal correctly for that. It must have happened when you were a strong, adult woman. I bet they wonder. I bet they speculate. You’ll give them pause, and joy, and something to puzzle over.”
Michael talked so tenderly, so gently, of strangers holding and caressing her bones. It nearly made her frown. It made her want, and she wasn’t a woman accustomed to wanting.
“What’s wrong, Nikilie? Am I disturbing you with this talk?”
His eyes were open and very nearly alarming in their earnestness. She should demure. She should excuse herself and go back to her hopeless, helpless life. That’s the way society worked. That’s the way the script played out.
“No, you’re not,” she said, and the boldness and sheer honesty of her words shocked her. “
It sounds strangely wonderful. Isn’t that an odd thing?”
“Not at all,” he said reverently. “You want to be loved and worshiped the way a woman should be. Not because of your airs or your face. Not because of the fine clothes and jewelry you wear. But because of you. Who you are at the heart. At your very center.”
His talk tasted so sweet that she turned down her boss the next time he made advances.
“What’s wrong, baby?” he asked. “Don’t be like this, a beautiful woman like you.”
“This bag of flesh is the very least of me,” she said, and quitting her job felt like the best thing in the world. She walked out of the building and blinked in the cold New York sunshine. She took off her high heels and walked all the way home.
Nikilie and Michael began to visit zoos and aquariums. Cemeteries. They twined their thin fingers close, bone rubbing against bone. When she curled up with her feet in his lap, he ran his hand down her ankles, caressing the tendons and scarring there.
“Tell me why you cut yourself.”
No judgement. No sad-eyed face of faux concern. Her Michael Harrison wasn’t like that, and he would never be like that. He just wanted to know, and Nikilie found she wanted to tell him.
“A few reasons, I guess. It makes me feel better.”
“How so?”
“My skin itches, for one thing. It tickles from underneath. Like there’s something below that is trying to break through the crust.”
“Like what?” His eyes were bright, dilated with interest and the strangest type of arousal. Nikilie briefly thought she should feel stupid or embarrassed, but she didn’t. She watched Michael run his tongue over his lips unconsciously, and she swallowed any would-be embarrassment away.
“Rivers, perhaps? Oceans. Stars. Lianas, maybe. May I have a drink of water?”
“Of course,” he said, and poured her a glass from the pitcher he always kept nearby for her. “Why else?”
She drank the entire glass of water without pausing, and then held the cool cup to her cheek.
“What? Oh. I . . . ”
The words really did fade away, then, because she simply didn’t know what to say. Beauty is a curse, perhaps, although that sounded so terribly arrogant. More importantly, it wasn’t what she meant. I hate all of the trappings of being human didn’t make sense, either, although it was closer. I want to scrape it all off and be free. That was the closest yet, but it made her feel quite mad and restless inside, even as the thought thrilled her.
So instead she sighed, and that was the best she could do. Sighed and fluttered her hand to her scars uselessly. She shook her head and searched out Michael’s eyes.
They blazed. They contained passion and desire and exquisite care and something so akin to purpose that Nikilie’s breath caught in her throat with hope.
“You’re trapped by something that covers you. Beauty, yes, but it’s like a cold, wet blanket draped over your true self. There’s something superb inside, the true you, but it’s shrouded in fluff and perfume and bubbles. Is this how you feel?”
Nikilie felt something move, deep within her bones. Her marrow uncurled and stretched. Something bloomed. It felt like Hibiscus.
“Yes,” she whispered, and her voice didn’t shake. It felt alive. It climbed from her throat and wound around Michael’s hand, searching for sunlight.
“Beneath your skin, which is indeed fine, and subcutaneous layers of fat, there are veins and ropes of nerves. Meat and muscle. All of this excess. So much bloat! Ah, but under that? At the very core of you?”
If her eyes were alight, then his were on fire. They burned. Sparked. Two delirious gorgeous infernos of famine and desire, burning away the refuse of her body to get to the bare essence underneath.
He saw the basics of her, the very base, and that’s what he wanted. Not the trappings. Not the prettiness. He wanted the deep and dark and ugly. The most honest and primal parts.
You are everything I ever wanted, she told him. She didn’t say a word, but she felt his grip tighten on her bony wrist and knew he understood.
Her hand shook, but not in self-loathing this time. It was a wondrous thing. She cleared her throat.
“Could you hand me my purse?”
He did, his eyes never leaving hers. They radiated sunlight, and she felt a physical itch under the skin on her wrist.
She reached into her bag and pulled out a small box. Inside was a tissue-wrapped razor.
“Just in case,” she said, and when she smiled, the island erupted in full bloom.
He was hungry, starving, and watched her like any predator watches its prey. It was, perhaps, the first time she had ever desired to be consumed.
The razor glistened in the light like ice in a polar cave. The aurora borealis held between her fingers. A wishing star fallen to earth and seeking to sup from her veins.
“Shall I feed it?”
Nikilie’s voice held the slightest hint of teasing, but underneath the playfulness, it carried so much more.
Shall I?Shall I do this now, here with you, and will we both accept the consequences that come with it?
He didn’t reply, but touched her face softly. He traced her jawline, felt down her neck, and ran his fingers across her collarbone. That’s where he let his fingers rest, and the warmth of them felt volcanic to Nikilie.
“There,” she said, and placed her hand atop his. “This bone specifically belongs to you. It’s yours, always.”
“You know I’ll treasure it,” he said, and his voice was thick and heavy.
“I know you will. You genuinely will. You’re the only one who loves me from the inside out.”
The first cut went deeper than planned, the blade ice cold and giving her that momentary instant of surprise. Her mind went blank, her body confused, her nerves short-circuiting and her mouth curling in a soft “oh” of surprise. Then the pain hit, and she closed her eyes against the glorious rush.
Michael sank to the ground and held his arms out to her. She crawled into his lap, and he wrapped himself around her. Blood soaked into his sweater.
“Are you all right, my love?” he asked, and her lips curved in response.
“I have never felt so alive,” she answered, and cut again.
No holding back. No fits of guilt or shame, of wondering how she should hide her wounds, of cradling her head in her bloody hands and sobbing. She only felt euphoria. Excitement. She was unearthing the deepest, best parts of herself, and most precious of all, she wasn’t doing it alone.
She grew too weak to cut with the force necessary, and she blinked sunny, Caribbean eyes at Michael.
“Would you?”
She spoke so softly that he leaned forward to hear her, but with such love that her words reverberated through him.
“Of course.”
He guided her fingers, and they both gasped as something green and fresh unfurled from her vein.
“I knew it,” she breathed.
She was fading fast, her voice nearly gone, and Michael helped her go deeper, discovering the cosmos and Garden of Eden hidden away all of these years. Before the light in her eyes went out, she wanted to see everything, to see the value and gold hidden at her very center.
“Hang on just a little longer, love,” he said,and worked furiously until lilies spilled from her wrists, and heliconias, orange and gay, and vines, and all of the flowers she had ever seen. Cereus bloomed furiously, reminding her of the moon at night.
“You make me feel not so alone,” she said, and then the vines overtook her, covering her frail neck, twisting into her mouth and twirling over her eyes. Petals bloomed and fell. Michael was left holding something delicate and wonderful, beautiful from within as well as without.
“You’ll never be alone. Never. I’ll always, always be with you. I promise.”
A girl missing in the city didn’t retain the public’s attention for long. But Michael was a man who cherished a special thing, the inner wholeness of a person. He tenderly unwrapped flowers an
d leaves until he found skin and flesh, and then he looked deeper. He cut, scraped, and boiled until he was left with bone. It was white and fresh and pure, with life blooming from the marrow. He held each flowering vertebra gently in his hands, and kissed each and every rib.
His garden was exquisite, a thing of wonder and beauty. Flowers bloomed from eye sockets, thrived from femurs. Nikilie was broken down into the most astounding of parts. True to his word, Michael never forgot her. He watered her bones daily.
A HAUNTED HOUSE IS A WHEEL UPON WHICH SOME ARE BROKEN
Paul Tremblay
ARRIVAL
Fiona arranged for the house to be empty and for the door to be left open. She has never lived far from the house. It was there, a comfort, a threat, a reminder, a Stonehenge, a totem to things that actually happened to her. The house was old when she was a child. That her body has aged faster than the house (there are so many kinds of years; there are dog-years and people-years and house-years and geological-years and cosmic-years) is a joke and she laughs at it, with it, even though all jokes are cruel. The house is a New England colonial, blue with red and white shutters and trim, recently painted, the first floor windows festooned with carved flower boxes. She stands in the house’s considerable shadow. She was once very small, and then she became big, and now she is becoming smaller again, and that process is painful but not without joy and an animal-sense of satisfaction that the coming end is earned. She thinks of endings and beginnings as she climbs the five steps onto the front porch. Adjacent to the front door and to her left is a white historical placard with the year 1819 and the house’s name. Her older brother, Sam, said that you could never say the house’s name out loud or you would wake up the ghosts, and she never did say the name, not even once. The ghosts were there anyway. Fiona never liked the house’s name and thought it was silly, and worse, because of the name preexisting and now post-existing it means that the house was never hers. Despite everything, she wanted it to always be hers.