The Year's Best Horror Stories 16

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  They finished their few preparations and then sat silently, eyes trained on the white ant mound. Geoffrey had to fight off the impulse to swing his legs over the side of the machan, which reminded him of a tree fort he and his brothers had built in an ancient oak beside his Malvern home.

  The darkness moved in quietly, casting long shadows. The hum of the cicadas was mesmerizing, and they both had to shake their heads frequently to stay awake.

  And then, suddenly, something moved by the mound, near a plum bush. Head up, sniffing the air, a full-grown wolf emerged.

  Geoffrey felt a hand on his arm, but he did not look around. Slowly he raised his gun as the colonel raised his, and they waited.

  Three cubs scampered around the bush. One dashed toward the blackthorn and a sharp yip from the she-wolf recalled him. The cubs scuffled at their mother’s feet.

  And then, as if on a signal, they all stopped playing and looked at the plum bush.

  Geoffrey drew in a deep breath that was noisy only to his own ears. The colonel did not move at all.

  From behind the bush a small childlike form came forth. It had an enormous bushy head and its honey arms and legs were knobbed and scarred.

  “The ape!” whispered the colonel as he fired.

  His first shot hit the she-wolf on the shoulder, spinning her around. At the noise, woods pigeons rose up from the trees, their wings making a clacketing sound. The colonel’s second shot blew away half the wolf’s head, from the ear to the muzzle. He leaped up, shaking the machan, crowing, “Got her!”

  The three cubs disappeared back behind the bush, but the manush-bagha went over to the wolf’s body and pawed at it mournfully. Then it dipped its face into the blood and, raising the bloody mask toward the mohua tree, found Geoffrey’s eyes. Unaccountably he wanted to weep. Then the creature put its head back and howled.

  “Shoot it!” the colonel said. “Geoffrey, shoot it!”

  Geoffrey lowered his gun and shook his head. “It’s a child, colonel.” he whispered as the creature scuttled off behind the plum bush. “A child.”

  “Ah, you bloody fool,” the colonel said in disgust. “Now we shall have to track it.” Gun in hand, he clambered awkwardly down the rope ladder and strode over to the bush. Geoffrey followed uneasily.

  Poking his gun into the bush, the colonel let out a short, barking laugh. “There’s a hole here, Geoffrey. Come see. An entrance of some kind. Ha-ha! They’ve gone to ground.”

  Geoffrey shuddered, though he did not know why. The clearing suddenly seemed filled with an alien presence, a darkness he could not quite name. He knew night came quickly in the jungle once the sun began its descent, but it was more than that. The clearing was very still.

  The Colonel had begun ripping away the branches that obscured the hole, his gun laid by. “Come on, Geoffrey, give us a hand.”

  Geoffrey put his own gun down, and found himself whispering a prayer he had learned so many years ago in the little stone church near his home, a prayer against “the waiters in the dark.” Then he bent to help the colonel clear away the bush.

  The hole did not go plumb down but was a tunnel on the slant, heading back toward the termite mound. After a moment of digging with his hands, the colonel straightened up.

  “There!” he said pointing to the mound. “It’s a bolt hole from that thing. I’ll guard this hole, Geoffrey, and you go and start digging out that mound.”

  Reluctantly, Geoffrey did as he was told. The termite mound stood higher than his head and when he tried to scrape away the dirt, he found it was hardened from the days and months in the rain. He cast around and found a large branch that had fallen from one of the blackthorn trees. With a mighty swing, he sent the branch crashing into the mound, decapitating the mound and shattering the stick.

  Scrambling up the side, he peered down into the mound but it was still too dark to see much, so he pulled away great handfuls of dirt from the inside out. After frantic minutes of digging, he had managed to carve the mound down until it was a waist-high pit.

  The colonel came over to help. “I’ve blocked off that bolt hole,” he said. “They won’t be getting out that way. What do you have?” His face was slick with sweat and there were two dark spots on his cheeks, as if he burned with fever.

  Geoffrey was too winded to talk, and pointed to the pit. But just then complete darkness closed in, so the colonel made his way back to the foot of the mohua where he found the lantern. It flared into light and sent trembling shadows leaping about the mound. When he held it directly over the open pit, they could make out five forms—the three cubs and not one but two of the apelike creatures wrapped together into a great monkey ball. At the light, they all buried their heads except for the largest. That one looked up, glaring into the light, its eyes sparkling a kind of red fire. Lifting its lips back from large yellow teeth, it growled.

  The colonel laughed. “I’ll stay here and guard this bunch. They won’t be going anywhere. You run back to the village and get our carters. And that Ramanrithan fellow.”

  “They won’t come here after dark,” Geoffrey protested. “And which of us shall have the lantern?”

  “Don’t talk nonsense,” the colonel said. “You take the lantern and tell them I’ve captured not one but two of their manushies and I’m not afraid to stay here in the dark with them. Tell those silly villagers they have nothing to fear. The British Sahib is on the job.” He laughed out loud again.

  “Are you sure ...” Geoffrey began.

  “One of England’s finest scared silly of three wolf cubs and a pair of feral children?” the colonel asked.

  “Then you knew ...” Geoffrey began, wondering just when it was the colonel had realized they were not apes, and not wanting to ask.

  “All along, Geoffrey,” the colonel said. “All along.” He patted the subaltern on the shoulder, a fatherly gesture that would have been out of place had they not been alone and in the dark clearing. “Now don’t you get the willies, my boy, like those silly brown men. Color is the difference, Geoffrey. They’ve no stamina, no guts, and lots of bloody superstitions. Run along, and fetch them back.”

  Geoffrey picked up the lantern, shouldered his smoothbore, and started back down the path.

  The cubs shivered together, trying to remember the feel of their mother’s warmth, knowing something was missing. The little hairless cub cried out in hunger. But the larger one closed her eyes, playing back the moment when the she-wolf’s head had burst apart like a piece of fruit thrown down by the langurs. She recalled the taste of the blood, both sweet and salt in her mouth. Turning her head slightly, she sniffed the air. Mother was gone but mother was here. There would be good eating tonight.

  By the time Geoffrey could convince the villagers that the colonel had everything under control, it was already dawn and they were willing to come anyway. But they brought rakes and sticks for protection and made Geoffrey march on ahead.

  The path had grown almost completely shut in the few hours since he had passed that way. He marveled at the jungle’s constancy. Around him, the green walls hid an incredible prolix life, only now and again pulling aside a viney curtain to showcase one creature or another.

  The tight lacings of the sal above showed little light, only occasional streaks of sun. From far away he could hear the scolding of langurs moving through the tree-tops. Behind him the villagers muttered and giggled and it seemed much hotter than the day before.

  When they got near the clearing, Geoffrey called out into the quiet, but the colonel did not answer. The men behind him began to talk among themselves uneasily. Geoffrey signaled them to be still, and moved on ahead.

  By the termite mound lay a body.

  Geoffrey ran over to it. The colonel lay as if he had been thrown down from a great height, yet there was nothing he might have been thrown down from. Horribly, his face and hands had been savaged, mutilated. “Eaten away,” Geoffrey whispered to himself. Even the nose bone had been cracked. Yet remarkably, his clothing was litt
le disturbed.

  Turning aside, Geoffrey was quietly and efficiently sick, not caring if the villagers saw him. Then, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he peered over into the mound. The cubs and the children were as he had left them, in that tight monkey ball, asleep. Thank God they had not been molested by whatever beast or beasts had savaged the colonel.

  Bending over the mound, and crooning so as not to frighten them, Geoffrey pried away the littlest child and picked her up. The stink of her was ghastly, an unwashed carrion smell. She trembled in his arms. Patting her matted hair gingerly, he cuddled her in his arms and at last she stopped shivering and began to nuzzle at his neck, making a low almost purring sound. She weighed no more than one of his nieces, who were two and three years old.

  “Here,” Geoffrey called out to the villagers, his back to the colonel’s mutilated corpse, “come see. It is only a child gone wild in the jungle. And there is another one here as well. We must take them home. Cleaned up they’ll be just like other children.” But when he looked over, he realized he spoke to an empty clearing as, from behind him, there came a strange and terrible growl.

  She comforted the cubs who still trembled in the light, patting them and licking their fur. Deep in her throat she made the mother sound. “Very good eating today.”

  EVERYTHING TO LIVE FOR by Charles L. Grant

  Born in Newark, New Jersey on September 12, 1942, Charles L. Grant has published over one hundred short stories since his first sale in 1968, and one suspects he has written or edited almost that many books. Novelist, short story writer, anthologist, critic—Grant is one of the premier authors, movers and shakers in the horror genre today. Grant prefers to refer to his own writing as “dark fantasy” and is an exponent of what he likes to call “quiet horror”—as exemplified by his selections for Shadows, an original anthology series published by Doubleday and now in its eleventh volume. While the current trend in horror fiction seems ready to swing toward spatter/gross out exercises spawned by the likes of Friday the 13th on Elm Street Part X or Rambo Meets the Chainsaw Zombies, Grant is a champion of the crusade that subtle is scarier. Have a look.

  Hate is a word I only use about my father.

  Not him personally, not exactly, but about the things he does that make me want to punch a hole in the wall, or a hole in his face. Like telling me that I can’t get on my little sister for going into my room without me saying she can—because Peggy doesn’t know any better, Craig, she’s too young to understand about privacy; like yelling at me for not listening to my mother when she’s talking to me, even though she’s always saying the same stuff—that I don’t respect her, that I don’t care about all the things she’s done for me, that I’d better watch my mouth because I’m not too old to be spanked; like wanting me to practically punch a stupid time clock every time I step out the door so, he says, he’ll know where I am in case of an emergency, as if I could be back here like Superman if the house were burning down.

  Like I have no business in the shed and I damned well better stay the hell away from his stuff or I’ll be grounded for just about the rest of my life.

  In fact, I’ve never been in there, not since we moved here almost ten years ago. It’s a little thing made of wood he built himself, not more than ten feet on a side, with a flat roof and one window; it’s stuck in the back corner of the yard under a weeping willow that almost buries it year-round. He doesn’t use it much, and when he does go out it’s like an army on secret maneuvers or something. He puts on a coat no matter what month it is, picks up his briefcase with his pens and pencils and things, and gives Mother a kiss like he’s going to the office.

  He likes to think in private, he says.

  He comes up with his electronics designs better at night, like writers and artists, poets, and other nuts like that.

  I thought maybe he kept some booze there and some porn, and used it to get away when my mother was in one of her moods.

  I never figured the real reason at all, until last night.

  Two weeks ago, after school, I was hanging around the practice field because I wanted to talk to Muldane. He was trying, for the third year in a row, to make first-string catcher, and it was really sad the way he worked so hard out there and failed so badly. I’d been telling him for days to loosen up, get stoned if he had to, but not think that the world would end if he didn’t get the spot. But he wouldn’t believe me. And he wouldn’t believe Jeanne, who stayed away that day because she knew she’d only make him nervous.

  So he fell right on his ass a couple of times, missed second base by three or four miles trying to cut down a steal, and generally acted like a goofed-up, hyper freshman. I couldn’t watch, and I couldn’t look away, so I spent most of the time staring at the grass and listening to the coach hollering and thinking maybe I should go home and apologize to my sister for tying her sheets into knots the night before.

  I didn’t know Muldane was done until he flopped down beside me and tried to bend the bars off his catcher’s mask.

  “Bad, huh?” I said.

  “Craig,” he said, “I am quitting baseball forever.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I am. No shit, Denton, I really am. I am going to join the debate club and talk my way into college, the hell with scholarships and crap like that.”

  We sat for a few minutes, watching the coaches weed out the other goofs, watched the creeps from last year strutting around with their chests puffed out to here, and finally watched Tony Pelletti run on the cinder track that goes around the field. He was taller than either of us, and about a hundred pounds skinnier, and probably the fastest man in the world.

  “God,” Muldane said glumly. “He’s going to catch his own shadow if he doesn’t watch out.”

  “Yeah.”

  We were jealous. Pelletti would probably go to college for nothing and end up as a wide receiver for some pro football team, making a zillion bucks a season and doing commercials on TV. And the worst part about it was, he was our friend so we couldn’t hate him and make up lies so we’d feel better.

  Pelletti saw us then and waved, pointed at the coach’s back and gave him an elaborate and elegant finger.

  I laughed, and Tony bowed as he ran by.

  Then Muldane slammed his mask against the ground a few times, and I checked the sky to see if it would rain.

  This wasn’t the way I’d planned things to happen. I was the one who needed someone to talk to; I was the one who had just been with the principal, getting suspended for a week because I cut a few lousy classes. Muldane was supposed to cheer me up, and this wasn’t like him. He knew he was a rotten catcher; he knew he’d never play anything more than park baseball with the guys; he knew that, and now he was acting like he was going to bust out crying.

  I was disgusted. The jerk was letting me down when I needed him the most.

  I got up and nudged him with a toe. “C’mon, let’s go find Jeanne and get a burger or something.”

  He shook his head, yanking at his cap, slapping that mask on the ground again and again.

  “Mike, for crying out loud, it isn’t the end of the world, you know. You can always—”

  “Craig, shut up, will you?”

  I stared at the top of his head. He’d never told me to shut up before, not that way, and I didn’t know whether to feed him a knuckle sandwich or kick in his butt.

  Then he looked up at me, fat cheeks shining and those pale eyes all watery, and he said, “My old man, the sonofabitch, will call my brother at college tonight. He’s gonna tell him what happened, and my brother’s gonna laugh.” He looked away, at the ball field. “I could’ve done it, Denton. I was trying, you saw me trying out there. But he’s like everybody else, y’know? Always pushing, never giving you a chance to think, and you gotta think once in a while, you gotta rest, right? I could’ve made it if he’d just given me the chance. I ain’t great, but he just wouldn’t let up, and he made me blow it. You know what I mean? He made me blow it.”

  Th
ere was nothing more then but the guys laughing, a plane overhead, the wind against the ground; and Mike just sitting there, pulling on his cap.

  I should have talked to him then, I guess. I should have gotten back down beside him and made him laugh. But I was so mad, so damned mad because he didn’t know the trouble I was in and didn’t care because he hadn’t made the stupid baseball team, that I shoved my hands in my pockets and said, “Christ, Mike, when the hell’re you gonna grow up, huh?”

  And I walked away, across the grass, across the cinder track, and around the side of the school to the front.

  I thought about going home and telling the folks the truth right off and getting it over with. But that was a scene I wasn’t about to rush, especially since it meant I would probably have to spend that whole week in my room, studying, and then doing everything around the house I hadn’t done in the past sixteen years.

  So I walked without knowing where I was going, just hoping that an angel would suddenly land beside me and get me out of this mess before I was skinned alive and hung out to dry.

  I was scared.

  I was never so scared in my whole life.

  And I was mad because I was feeling like a little kid, flinching every time a grown-up looked cross-eyed at me, thinking that everyone in the whole world was pointing a finger at me because they knew what I had done.

  And it really wasn’t all that bad. Mr. Ranto, my chemistry teacher, kept telling me I should be working harder, that I was smarter than I let on, and he wasn’t going to be the one to pass me on to the next level just on my good looks. So he made me miserable, giving me work and work and work until I couldn’t take it anymore and just stopped going. Just like that. I either hid out down in the gym, or out behind the school, taking a smoke with the greasers who couldn’t figure out what the hell I was doing there, but as long as I had the butts they weren’t going to argue.