The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2015 Edition

by Paula Guran

  Two more Mr. Flat Affects have noiselessly appeared at her flanks. One in white, the other black. Their expressions are identically monstrous. She links arms with them and they glide into the shadows. “Good luck,” she says from somewhere. Her voice echoes as if bouncing around a canyon. “Enjoy yourself.”

  I do as she says and write down what I know. I stash the notebook in the fire safe. Sun devours moon and the second decade of the twenty-first century absorbs the 1990s. The Tooms mansion decays around me. The table becomes stone and the stuffed moose head wilts unto a living death. I’m once again thirty-something and utterly fabulous despite the bags under my eyes, the tremor in my hand, and the caked-on gore.

  Steely J, Julie Five, and Zane Tooms are long gone. The others remain as remains—Vadim, Morton, Candice, Clint, and Leo. Bloated, purple-black, in a pile near the hearth. Candice’s shoe has fallen off.

  Had the poison been in the ring or the liquor? The ring is how I bet. My crazy-person epistle isn’t going to do me any favors in a court of law. Story like mine is a one-way trip to the booby hatch. What will happen to me when the authorities make the scene? That gets an answer when the pair of troopers roll up to investigate after the anonymous call. They are none too reassured by my appearance and wild story. Two seconds after they nearly trip over the pile of corpses, I’m staring down the barrels of automatic pistols.

  My finger bleeds from a wound that will never close. I make a fist without a thought as I mumble apologies for being here in this house of horrors, wrong place, wrong time—oh, so most def the wrong time. I needn’t bother. The tearing pain in my hand lends an edge to my voice. My breath steams, a dark cone, and both troopers shudder in unison. Their guns clatter on the floor. Color drains from those well-fed faces, skin snaps tight and their eyes, their mouths, shiver and stretch. The transformation requires mere seconds. Their peculiar, click-clicking thoughts scritch and buzz inside my own psychic killing jar. They are mine, like it or not.

  I do like it, though. A bunch.

  Mist covers the world below this lonely hilltop. It’s bitter cold and I’m barely dressed, yet it doesn’t touch me. Nothing can. I am Bela Lugosi’s most famous character reborn and reinterpreted. The Tooms estate is my mansion on the moor, my gothic castle. Time has slipped and I wonder if Tony is still out there in Malibu, waiting to meet me and fall in love. Do I care? Must I?

  Who originally said some men want to watch the world burn? Whomever, he meant assholes like Zane and Julie. They chose me, corrupted me, and invested in me some profane force. Its trickle charge impresses my brain with visions of debauched revelry, of global massacre, fire, and slavery. Do my minor part to spread mayhem and terror and a few years down the road I can be on the ground floor of a magnificent dystopian clique. I can be a lord of darkness with minions and everything.

  What shall I do with such incalculable power?

  “Fix me a cosmopolitan,” I say to ex-trooper, ex-human, Numero Uno. He does and it’s passable.

  There are numerous doors inside the Tooms mansion, to say nothing of the crack that splinters through bedrock and who knows where from there. I could wreak havoc in the name of diabolical progress. Or I could flap my arms and fly to Hollywood, whisper in the right ears and watch a sea change transform the industry. Or I could return to my senior year and seize Stu Whitaker by more than the hip, tell Father dearest to get bent with a martini in one hand and a smoldering joint in the other.

  Decisions, decisions, you know?

  Laird Barron is the author of several books, including The Croning, Occultation, and The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. His work has also appeared in many magazines and anthologies. An expatriate Alaskan, Barron currently resides in upstate New York.

  Editorial Note: Between 1804 and 1856 about nine thousand women were confined in the thirteen penal colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land in Australia. These facilities were called “factories” because they were places of production. The inmates were assigned jobs ranging from needlework and spinning to rock breaking and “picking” oakum. An estimated twelve to twenty percent of modern-day Australians are descended from these women.

  The Female Factory

  Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter

  The isolation cell had fallen into disuse since Mrs. Avice Welles, purported widow, had become Matron of the Bridewell Female Factory. It wasn’t that her reign was any gentler or kinder at the Van Diemen’s Land facility, but she had other methods of reprimand and rehabilitation upon which she preferred to rely. Indeed, some of the inmates, grownup and child alike, had come to think fondly of the old lockup. As with most nostalgia, it conveniently forgot there was nowhere for the breeze to go in the two by three space, that it soon became stuffy, somehow both stifling and cold. In winter, snow and sleet came through the rusted bars like an unwelcome guest, and any rations served to prisoners being punished within were less in both quantity and quality than what was scraped up at Cook’s table, and much more liable to contain weevils and maggots.

  And it was also conveniently forgotten that the isolation cell was designed as a place of lost hope.

  Bridewell grew from the earth like a polyp of stone and mortar. Set at the feet of gently rolling hills, on gold and green land, it was lapped by the waters of Mason Cove. If the inmates should so choose—and be in a position to do so—they could cast their eyes seaward and find the Isle of the Dead, crouching low and dark, clutching its inhabitants firmly in its earthen breast.

  Around it, the landscape was quilted with fences, the earth plotted and parceled, presented as gifts to notable sailors. A good mile away was the township, far enough from the incarcerated to feel superior, but close enough to access their labor with speed. Though wood and wire demarcated ours from theirs, Nature provided no real barriers against attacks by the local Mouheneener tribe—nor against convict escape.

  Bridewell’s perimeter was made of mottled sandstone, topped with a crust of broken glass. Beside the main gate, shut and barred now for the night, a single torch hung from the stone’s sheer face, its tiny fire reflected in the shallows of the empty cove. There were no finger-holds to be found in the walls, no crevices in which to jam the toe of a pointed boot, no ropes long or sturdy enough to surmount those jagged heights. With the men’s barracks within spitting distance, it was by necessity, so Superintendent Rook always said, that the ramparts were erected thus, To protect the women from harassment.

  Inside, the Factory was more yard than structure. The Matron’s tiny cottage shared the same wall as a small kitchen block, a washhouse, and a miniscule shed. On the north side, in the furthest crook, a single privy reeked six days out of seven. Downwind from the long-drop, Bridewell’s isolation cell stood on its own, weeds making merry around it. Slightly off-center, surrounded by a sea of sand and pea shell gravel, loomed the women’s quarters. A broad rectangular building with gabled roofs left, right, and middle, it housed as many souls as Her Majesty saw fit to banish across the seas. Hardened criminals shared the same corridor as the Second class girls, all of whom were separated from the fancy ladies—those in First class, whose chambers were closest to the dining hall, whose doors weren’t always locked behind them, who had permission to marry, who didn’t work their hands raw picking oakum or breaking rocks, and who got red calico jackets, muslin frills, bonnets (bonnets!) and gingham handkerchiefs to wear to Church on Sunday.

  Beyond the workhouse and rooms, tucked close beside the washhouse, a small gate was set in the western wall. Its frame was warped, the wood sun-bleached, the hinges liable to creak if Bert forgot to grease them once a week with the pat of butter he got with his bread. Tonight, the door hadn’t complained as it was pushed open after curfew. It swung shut just as quietly behind the children as they snuck out of the compound, creeping past the Surgeon’s cottage and barn-turned-workshop, past the stockyard and the Constables’ hut, past the gallows and beyond. Down to the shore, to the thin jetty and one of the large dory boats used for trips to the
Isle of the Dead.

  Ned and Alf were the biggest so they sat on the middle thwart, each plying an oar. Bert, aft, navigated, with Millie beside him. Victoria and Little Sarah huddled fore, the latter sitting in the wheelbarrow they’d brought along. Big Sarah and all five Marys had stayed behind, lucky enough to draw the long straws in the lottery, but unlucky enough to have to wait in the shadows for the others’ return. No one fought to go out to the island, even though there were benefits if they did. It was cold, so cold on the water, and the children considered themselves blessed if they avoided catching a chill. Jack and Harry and Abigail had gone that way, not long ago, shivering themselves into the grave.

  Once they’d beached on the small shingle, the band trooped up to where freshly dug earth betrayed the resting place of the lately departed Ada Habel. If that didn’t make it easy enough to find, the fact they’d visited the plot right next to it last week (one Hippolyte Pollitt) certainly helped—and neither of these women had been buried close to the others. Armed with spades slightly too big for their frames, Bert and Alf faced each other across Miss Habel’s grave and began digging. At first it was easy enough work—the criminal had been found only yesterday, suspended between heaven and earth by her garters. But there was so much soil, newly turned though it was, and the body buried so deep. They were sweating hard before long.

  “Get lower,” Bert grumped at Millie and Victoria, who were crouched by the graveside holding lanterns to help the boys see. The beam could be spotted across the water quite easily if the sentries were sober and paying attention.

  The piss-yellow light did nothing to improve Miss Habel’s appearance. Frowning, Bert brushed the dirt from her cheeks. Every dead female he saw seemed to look like his departed mother. He knew it was not so, could not be so—but in the three years since Mary Ann Ross’s death, he’d forgotten her features. They’d drifted away, eroded by time, and other women’s faces had left something in their place. The picture in his mind was now a piecemeal thing, a nose from one, eyes from another, cheekbones from yet another still . . . even the mouth, the top lip and lower sourced from different women.

  Though her face was gone, Bert remembered every secret she’d told him.

  The return journey was no easier or faster, certainly no warmer. By the time they’d heaved Ada Habel and her meager belongings into the barrow, rowed until their arms burned, and, aided by the waiting Marys and Big Sarah, pushed the dug-up to the rear entrance of the doctor’s surgery, Little Sarah was shaking so badly her teeth went rat-a-tat-tat. Millie and Victoria tried to get some warmth into her, rubbing her limbs though their own hands were icy. Bert knocked, two soft raps; even at this time of night he wouldn’t be abed. Almost instantly the portal swung wide and Dr. Nelson Dalkeith stepped forth. Quickly, wordlessly, he ushered them around to the barn, refusing to speak until the door was firmly shut behind them.

  The children looked about, as if they’d never seen this room before. But it was the same as it had ever been; only the displays changed, the bodies and their state of dissection. Heads down, they wheeled Ada Habel to the middle table and hefted her onto it with a good deal of thudding and thumping.

  “Good show, Albert,” Dr. Dalkeith said absentmindedly. No one called Bert that. Albert, as inscribed in full in Superintendent Rook’s registry, picked at random from a list of other, unwanted monikers. Not inherited, not given with love. Just given. The good doctor’s Scottish burr dragged the name out, made it sound even more foreign. The man was tall and strapping—or so Bert had heard the girls say—and he dressed well, though he often smelled of malt and burnt tobacco. His eyes were brown and kind, if unfocused, his hair and beard a red-gold that drew attention. He fished about in his vest pocket and pulled forth five sovereigns. “For Matron Welles. Oh and here’s tuppence apiece for your efforts.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Bert, making the coins disappear with a dexterity that his mother had never had, else she might have kept out of jail.

  Dr. Dalkeith’s large, red-knuckled hand reached into his trouser pocket and brought forth a battered brown paper packet. One by one he gave each of the children a piece of boiled taffy, a treat for their industrious Burking. Even as he handed out the last bonbon, his fingers twitched, gaze sliding towards the saws and knives, scalpels and clamps on the wheeled bench beside Ada Habel’s unlovely head.

  “Millie?” whispered Bert, directing her with his eyes to a dismembered corpse waiting to be scooped and barrowed off to an abandoned pile. “Get the arm.”

  Reliable Millie always did as she was told, no questions asked, especially if it was Bert doing the telling. Without hesitation, she tiptoed to the heap, freed the pale blue limb and held it snug behind her. Bert looked back at Dr. Dalkeith. Past experience told him the direction the man’s mind was taking. Past experience told him their mutual mistress would not be pleased to find the corpse chopped up without her say-so. He said, “Shall I tell Matron Welles to come at the usual time?”

  “Oh, yes. Please do.” The man sounded disappointed, but he was back in the room now, fully, not in the airy place he drifted when engaged in his researches. He herded them out, snuffed the lantern hanging from the eaves, then closed and bolted the door.

  There was neither warmth nor light to welcome them home. A single barred window faced the door, the rusted iron rungs relics of earlier days, when these quarters had been used for storage. No glass filled the frame; mosquitoes and flies buzzed in on streaks of silvered blue summer nights, but not in winter. Wielding a twig broom before them, Big Sarah took a few swings in the darkness to make sure the Constables weren’t there, crouched in the near-black, poised to scare them. Rats scurried up the small room’s clapboard walls and scratched along wooden rafters as the bristles whipped through the air, meeting no resistance.

  “It’s safe,” Sarah said, stepping fully inside to lean the broom against the jamb. Eyes adjusting to the gloom, the children felt the way to their bed, sweeping the dirt floor in great arcs with their toes. There were no separate pallets in here, just a pile of sacking and old cloth in one corner, a combination of fresh and rank straw beneath to give some padding against the hard ground. When all twelve were sitting cross-legged in a circle on their rough mattress, Victoria scraped a pilfered match along the bottom of her shoe. The tiny flame flared like hope; in its glow, Millie handed Bert the arm so he could examine it more closely. Turning it over, once, twice, the boy nodded, pleased, though the hand was crabbed, the fingers clawed—that could be replaced.

  None of them asked what he was doing or why he’d wanted such a grisly souvenir. Though not the oldest among them, Bert had proved himself time and again to be their natural leader. Though they burned with curiosity, no one followed him when he snuck back outside, only to reappear a few minutes later, the arm no longer in evidence.

  If they had faith in nothing else in their small world, they had faith in Bert.

  Dawn had barely broken, but Matron Welles was already dressed and seated at her small desk, making entries in the Superintendent’s journal. Absentminded fool that he was, Martin Rook couldn’t be relied upon to keep Bridewell’s daily records—but Avice was pleased to benefit from his idiocy. After years in his service—rather, at his side—Rook trusted her to oversee the schedules and inventories, to keep the women and children in check. Such trust was far more valuable than a larger cottage, she told herself, or even promotion. Within Bridewell’s walls, the old duffer’s trust gave her unprecedented freedom.

  Leaning over the hard-covered black journal, Avice formed each letter carefully. The knowledge of how to write had been hard-won; she took great pride in her copperplate script. She had done well for herself, she had worked so hard; and would do better still.

  18 May 1852

  Ada Habel (female convict, Third class: prostitution, assault) found dead by Taskmistress Fiona. Suicide by hanging. Buried in unhallowed ground on the insistence of the Reverend Tanner.

  Pausing to replenish the inkwell, Avice admired
the pot’s violet glass and the filigreed silverwork chased up its bulbous belly all the way to the inscribed cap. The initials weren’t hers, though they were close enough; the beautiful A.N.D. reminded the Matron there was nothing wrong in the slightest with asking for more. From lid to base, it was a perfect heirloom . . . as was the chain of black pearls Avice wore under her collar, the cameo ring on her pinkie finger, the opal-tipped pin in her thick dark bun. The women who’d owned these trinkets before her—no, not owned, she corrected, held maybe, purloined most likely—had had no real right to them in the first place. Once they’d passed through Bridewell’s gates, these delinquents became the Governor’s burden and property. By extension, they were also the Principal Superintendent’s, the Superintendent’s, and hers.

  The same, Matron Welles thought, applied to said criminals’ worldly goods.

  It wasn’t theft, she thought, so much as preservation. The lonely dead had no belongings, therefore they could not be stolen from.

  Buried in unhallowed ground on the insistence of the Reverend Tanner. Changing her mind, Avice dragged the full stop into a comma and added, with no more than the sin in her heart and the devil’s mark on her neck. She made a mental note to search the children’s mattress, if they failed to produce Miss Habel’s grave goods in the morning.

  Taskwork Reckoning—Labor Effectiveness—Needlework.

  1. Caps Ladies Night; 10 hr days.

  a. 1st Class, Maximum: 6/16

  b. 2nd Class, Medium: 6/16

  c. 3rd Class, Minimum: 4/16

  2. Cases Pillow; 10 hr days.

  a. 1st Class, Maximum: 3

  b. 2nd Class, Medium: 2 4/16