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

by Paula Guran

  When their attention wandered Mario drew them back with a sharp clap of his hands.

  When the lights came on people had shifted around. Some had lost their socks, others found a rose on their lap. For them it was mostly meaningless because they were used to the disconnect of change. They were used to appearing at the breakfast table and having no idea how they got there.

  “Isn’t it magic?” the residents said. “Isn’t he wonderful?”

  I had seen that other face, though, and I couldn’t look at him in the light. I went to the corner where Mum kept my box of rocks, and I ran my fingers through them, thinking of my father before he died, when he would show me the rocks and tell me their long-forgotten names.

  “What’s that you’ve got there? A boxarox? I know a lot about rocks.”

  Mario picked up a pale blue one. “This one is called a poo pellet.” I giggled. This was silly. He went through my box, naming them all. He was so rude, so outrageous, that I wept with laughter and the old people, those who could move, came to watch.

  This was the moment, I think, that they came to consider him a suitable boyfriend for Mum.

  She kept a lot of secrets. I remained unaware of their changing relationship, even as he came to perform again and again.

  He had yellowed fingers but told me he hadn’t smoked for a long time. He lit a cigarette, “Don’t smoke,” he said, “Don’t you ever,” and he held it up. “I love the smell and the burn,” he said. “That glowing red tip.” He touched it to a patient’s hair, which flared brightly before fizzling out. It was our secret.

  I started taking my friends on private tours of the place when I was fifteen. Like most kids, we were obsessed with ghosts and killers, with creepy people and disgusting things; we loved to be scared. I’d lead them through the hallways, making up stories about what the residents had done. Showing them where my father had died, lifting the table to show them his blood. I asked the old people to lend me a dollar and you should have seen them, searching for wallets or purses they no longer owned or, if they still had one, opening it again and again and again, looking for money that wasn’t there. My mother didn’t notice until the man who called himself John John moved in.

  John John would cut himself with anything. Plastic forks, the edge of the drink trolley, a sugar spoon. It was a challenge for him and it was terrifying for my friends to watch him. If you took his weapon away he’d scream like a hyena. He’d attack the nurses or anyone who got close, so we stood far away. Until one of my friends snuck up to him, wanting a closer look at all his scars. John John roared, stabbed the boy with a key he’d stolen. The boy was fine but it meant Mum finally found out.

  Jesus, when Mum found out. It was her disappointment that got me more than anything else. “I can’t believe you could treat them this way. Such disrespect,” she said, her voice flat, depressed, as if I made her very tired. She laid her head on Mario’s shoulder. We sat in her office with the door shut, the old people shuffling outside, wanting to come in.

  Mario said, “Jessie has the greatest respect. She’s allowing them to entertain, one of life’s great privileges.” He was on my side; he understood me. He’d comforted me when one of them threw shit at me. He’d said, “It’s okay to be upset, but I know you want to be strong for your mum. You don’t want to freak her out.” He’d brought me shampoo, a secret supply, stuff that didn’t smell like the home. He really did understand.

  The old people scrabbled at the door, and my mother had to call for backup to get them all settled down.

  Once they were all drugged and asleep, Mario said, “I’ve been thinking of something for a while now, something that might work here. Let me play with the Nursery Corner. I’ve done it before. I’ll make it a place for calm reflection. You’ll see. It might help with people like John John.”

  “It’s Jessie’s corner. Your time. It’s up to you two.”

  “What do you think, Jessie? Do you mind if I mess your corner up?”

  I didn’t mind for a second.

  He was back a couple of days later, laden with a carpet, a chair, other stuff. He stacked all my toys from the Nursery Corner into a box and handed it to me. “Bin it if you like,” he said. The residents started to gather as they often did when he was around. The drugs made them slow, made them flap their gums, suck on their teeth. The sound of it made me ill.

  Mario moved around among them, talking, building his corner.

  “Keep watching!” he said, and it seemed to me as if the residents stiffened, lost control of their ability to move.

  First, he rolled out the carpet. It was bright yellow, like a sun, with purple edges and a large dark stain in the center. “I was born on this carpet,” he said, “right there, so it symbolizes the beauty and the miracle of birth. The beginning.”

  They barely reacted, except Aunt Em, who had no children yet loved to judge those who did.

  “I can still see the bloodstain.”

  “It’s possible I top it up every now and then. For the sake of a good story.”

  He placed the rocking chair on the carpet. It looked rugged, unpolished. There was a crocheted cushion cover, filled with a thin cushion, and a white fluffy blanket.

  “I’ve traveled the world with this chair,” he said. “It’s all that is left of the place I was happiest in all my life. School.” Some of them shifted in their seats. Others were asleep. One ground his finger into the back of the woman in front of him; she acted as if it wasn’t happening.

  “Imagine a time,” Mario said, “before we had light at the flick of a switch. He remembers, he was there!” pointing at Jerry Everard who, at ninety-eight, remembered very little.

  Some chuckled. I sat on a chair with my knees tucked under my chin until a nurse told me down. They usually used single syllable words with me, as if I was a dog. They mostly didn’t like me there; they thought I was a distraction, that I upset the patients. It wasn’t true; the patients liked me. The staff were jealous, more like.

  He set a bowl of jelly beans down on a small table beside the rocking chair. I did not ever see that bowl empty.

  “That’s when my school was built. It was a place for the lost, the lonely. It was the place we could go when our families didn’t want us and nobody could teach us. It sat out in the bush, bright, with impossible gardens around it.”

  Were they listening? It was hard to tell. Jerry smiled, but that was his default expression. “It was full of lost children. All of us being given a future. And then . . . it burnt down.”

  There was no more reaction to this than to anything else he said. “How did it burn down?” I asked.

  He closed his eyes and tears squeezed down his cheeks. “A horrible bloody accident.” He swung his lantern. “No one’s fault.” He didn’t try to make it funny; he’d stopped entertaining.

  “But you survived.”

  “I did. I was the only one who came out alive.”

  He gave the rocking chair a push. “Who would like to be first? Who wants to experience the pure calm of the Nursery Corner?”

  I did. “Me first!” I said. He glanced at my mother, who nodded indulgently.

  He said, “Not yet for you. Not yet. You’re happy, and innocent, and have a life to live. There is nothing to calm in you.”

  John John, up the hall in his room, screamed as he did every five minutes or ten, often enough to make me want to scream myself.

  “Let’s start with him,” Mario said. He wriggled his fingers like a puppet master. Two of the nurses wheeled John John down the hallway, his arms strapped to the chair but his fingers reaching for them as if they could stretch beyond their means and scratch eyeballs out.

  Four nurses lifted him into the chair in the Nursery Corner, one for each limb to keep him still. Mario set it rocking as they held him down. The rhythm of it did calm him, and one by one, the nurses tentatively let go. John John sat quietly, eyes closed, rocking, rocking, finding muscles he hadn’t used in months.

  This seemed to quiet
all of the residents, and they mimicked his movement back and forth, back and forth.

  “How long does he get to stay there?” Aunt Em said. She’d elbowed others out of the way to stand in front.

  “As long as he likes.”

  It was over an hour before the man stirred and lifted his head. His face seemed gentler, and there had been silence from the moment he sat in the chair.

  “He’s happier now,” Mario said. “Now, who is good at sharing? Sharing is Caring!”

  The Nursery Corner worked on all of them. If they started to throw a tantrum, if they screamed, became violent, if they attacked a staff member, they were placed in the Nursery Corner and they would come out softer, quieter. It was a godsend, my mother said, and she said that Mario was a godsend as well.

  I didn’t like it. To me, it was like they became puppets. Diminished.

  “Where did you go?” I asked when they came out. “What did you see?”

  Many forgot instantly, their eyes clouding over. Others remembered long enough to say, “The air was fresh,” or “I saw my father there,” before memory was gone. I didn’t keep a record, but I reckon many of them gave up the ghost not long after a visit to the Nursery Corner. As if they’d seen heaven and no longer feared it.

  One night, I heard a creaking sound. I crept out to have a look at the Nursery Corner. The hallway was lit only by the floor lights set to guide the staff in the dark.

  The Nursery Corner seemed to glow, but I knew that wasn’t possible. It made me think of when the circus was in town, set up in the school’s playing field. From home, at night, the lights of the circus set a halo of light around the school, and this is how the Nursery Corner seemed, as if there was something bright and exciting beyond it.

  I heard creak creak. It was Aunt Em, gently rocking. She clutched the soft white blanket and her mouth drooled.

  There was a noise behind me and it was Mr. Simons, completely naked, pulling at his penis in a way I have never seen since, stretching it almost to his mouth. I was enthralled, and that’s where my mother found me, staring, open mouthed, and Aunt Em, rocking and drooling, and Mr. Simons, tugging and tugging.

  She bundled me up and put me to bed. She stayed and talked with me for an hour. My sleepiness, and the shock, and her quietness as I was talking led me to say more than I should have about the things I saw and heard.

  “I hadn’t quite realized. I’d forgotten how young you are,” she said.

  “It’s okay, Mum. It doesn’t bother me,” but still she spoke to my teachers, and to the nurses, and between them they decided the home was not a good place for me, at least until I was older. Mario said he was jealous I was going to boarding school; best years of his life, bar none.

  “Until it burnt down,” I said.

  “You be careful. No smoking in the cupboards,” he said, and I shook my head, because I knew what smoking did and that I’d never do it. He was a private school boy and Mum was too. Fancy schools, they both went to. My father went to the nasty local, my mother said, and she always said it in that way of knowing.

  “You’ll make connections for life at these schools,” Mario said, but he appeared to have no friends from childhood at all.

  I had time to say goodbye to all my substitute grandparents, but none of them really noticed. Aunt Em complained that her arms hurt. She held them out, weeping, and the nurse, in attendance said, “There is nothing wrong,” like the doctors told her to say, but gave Aunt Em pain relief nonetheless.

  So many of these old people felt pain others saw no reason for.

  My cat was old and slow and I couldn’t consider taking her. Besides, she loved it there; so many laps. So many hands to stroke her. And she knew, she had learnt, when a person was about to turn nasty.

  She knew when it was time to get off a lap.

  Boarding school was not all that, but it was okay. It was boring compared to the old people and what they told me. Those secrets and outrageous stories.

  My mother’s letters grew increasingly bizarre, listing all the deaths, first up, before anything else. Then it was all about Mario and how wonderfully the Nursery Corner worked to calm people down.

  She spoke of aches and pains her patients suffered that the doctors couldn’t identify. The doctors never listen, is the problem. They think these people are making it up, but none of them have the imagination any more. Mr. Simons left us the watch collection he was always talking about. Turns out it was worth money after all.

  At first, I visited every term break; less often as I got older. Mario looked after Mum and he wanted me to understand that, to the extent that he kept his hand firmly on her arse, as if to let me know the story, in case there was any doubt. Mum looked happier every time, less severe, more full of genuine laughter. She worried over her patients, always, but she somehow seemed to believe they were safer now.

  “He’s a wonder,” everyone told me. “What he does for these people,” and truly, the place was far quieter. They all sat in their chairs, smiles on their faces. Some played with toys, holding them weakly in their laps. Others gazed at the TV, especially if a singing show was on.

  When school was done I moved back home. After starring in the drama productions for two years I thought my path was set, but finding work as an actor proved to be soul-destroying (“Lose some weight and get back to us”) and not what I thought it would be. I moved back to help Mum out and bide my time, waiting for Hollywood to call.

  “How’s my favorite audience member? My favorite movie star?” Mario said most mornings, winking at me. He knew I was worldly wise, now, not the innocent I once was.

  I wondered what he got out of it all. What he gained. Was it just the adulation? The love of a good woman like my mother? He still traveled, giving shows around town and sometimes further afar, but he was always there for her, he always called if he was late.

  The staff still rolled residents into the nursery corner if they got a bit Bolshie. The nasty ones, the whining ones, they’d get sat there every few days, because after an hour, they’d come out child-like. Happier. More willing to work at the repetitive tasks and activities that were supposed to help them. Vaguely useful things, like making lavender bags or packing candles. Sometimes they tied bows for funeral homes, black ribbons needed in the hundreds. Cruel but they have to face it, Mum said. She didn’t think you should pretend death isn’t going to happen. It wasn’t like other places, where people simply “went away,” as if they moved to a pleasant place we’d never visit. Here, we had wakes.

  We had a lot of wakes.

  There was always movement in the Nursery Corner. A trick of the light, the nurses said (the doctors were never there long enough) more so at night when the whole floor flickered with shadow as if there were candles but there were none.

  Sometimes I watched it like a movie, straining my eyes to identify shapes.

  Sometimes my old cat curled up on the chair, emerging hours later with fur ruffled and a wild look in her eye.

  No visitor wanted to stand in the Nursery Corner. Sometimes it happened by mistake and they’d shiver, look up and down for a draught, a fan, an explanation. But there was also a sense of comfort. Of well-being. Like the good days of childhood. Warm summer holiday mornings. Nights when dinner was your favorite meal. A birthday when you liked every present so didn’t have to lie. Those moments when your mother was her real self, laughing like a young girl. This is what they told me; I never stood there myself. The breeze of the corner, and the scent I smelled there put me off. Sometimes it was new books. Sometimes it was boiled cabbage.

  Grandchildren and great-grandchildren brought in to visit were sent to the Nursery Corner as if it was a treat.

  They sat on the edge of the rug, bunched up. “Go on, have a rock in the chair,” but you couldn’t get many of them to step into the corner or sit in the chair. Those who did would come out quiet, very quiet. What would a child see, if an adult saw childhood? Past lives?

  I heard the chair rocking late some
nights and wondered who was in it. I’d find out the next day; the one who was the most vacant.

  I thought they sank into dementia with greater speed and less resistance once they’d been in the Nursery Corner.

  “What do they see?” I asked Mario.

  “Lots of friendly people; you’ve never felt so welcome.”

  “Have you ever been?”

  He said he hadn’t, but I knew he had. I’d seen him rocking there at night, especially on nights my mother was out shopping, or visiting her sister. Not often.

  “Are there other places like this one? Other Nursery Corners?” He still traveled to perform, but rarely spent more than a night away.

  “A few. I like to help where I can.” He listed them and there were more than a few. He had Nursery Corners set up wherever he visited.

  Mario told me that, depending on the sort of person you are, you’ll find peace or sorrow in the Nursery Corner. “You might see battered children, lost to a parent’s fury. Or tiny babies, sucked from life like metal filings to a magnet. Or a train filled with laughing families, or a table laden with sweets. Each of us sees something new in there, something different. You, I think you will see a thing of great beauty. You will feel more loved and needed than you have ever felt before. You will be at the very center of the universe. A star. Like moi.”

  I’d missed out on a dozen auditions (“lose some weight”) and was beginning to think I was kidding myself, so this fantasy of his resonated with me.

  I never bothered Mum with my audition woes. Tried to help out where I could. We attended to Mrs. T, who had stripped naked and was attempting to climb onto the table.

  “Come on, now, into the Nursery Corner. Let’s have a nice sit.”

  Mrs. T sat in there, folded into a blanket, rocking, tears coursing. “They’re good tears,” Mum said. “Best to have something to remember with sadness than to have no memory, no sorrow at all.” She looked me straight in the eye as she said this. She thought I needed to get a life, or I’d have nothing to cry about when I was that age. “You’re twenty-four, Jessie. What have you experienced? Who have you loved? You need to take chances.”