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

by Paula Guran

  She tried to comfort herself by thinking of the end of the shift. She would get to go home, where her mother would be ready with a pot of hot tea even though she was even more tired than Giang.

  “Faster!” Her partner Nhung interrupted her daydream. “You’ve already made me fall behind. I don’t want to be punished!”

  Giang’s legs were so sore that she could not stand up straight. The room seemed to spin around her. But she tried, really tried to speed up. She threw her weight forward, hoping to use the momentum of the stack of uppers she carried to move faster.

  Her foot caught something on the ground. She dropped her load and barely avoided banging her head against the machine in front of her by grabbing onto it with her hands. The girls had often complained about how dangerous it was to leave broken machine parts around the factory floor, but Vuong just said they were careless.

  I’ll just take a little break, she thought.

  Time seemed to slow down, each moment lingering in her consciousness like a memory of childhood.

  She felt the pressure on her fingers, and a brief moment of unbelievable pain as the cutter blades sliced through.

  Nhung’s shouts and screams seemed to come from a great distance. Sorry, Giang thought, I didn’t mean to get you in more trouble.

  As she fell, she saw a broken, rusty spike at the foot of the machine rushing up at her face. She closed her eyes.

  Shadows gathered around her. More shouting. The loudest voice belonged to Vuong: “Back to work! Back to work!”

  Yes, Giang thought. I have to get back to work. I’ll get up in just a second, Mama.

  But she could no longer feel her hands, her legs, her body. She felt herself soaking into the stack of uncut uppers under her. She willed herself to grab onto the fibers, to entwine herself into the soft material. She couldn’t just fade away. She had work to do.

  “Why throw these away?” She heard Vuong speaking impatiently to someone. “They’re perfectly usable! Just a little blood. You want me to take it out of your wages?”

  And then she felt herself lifted onto the conveyer belt, sensed the sharp blades of the die cutter slicing around her, endured the metallic, heavy punch of the pneumatic press, bore the sting of needle and thread, and tasted the bitter flavor of hot glue. She wanted to scream, but could not.

  I’m sorry, Mama.

  Enclosed in a dark box, Giang remembered little of her journey across the Pacific, over the highways of this new continent, into the warehouse of the shoe store. By the time she finally woke up, she had been taken to a new home in this suburban house in Massachusetts, where she was wrapped in shiny paper and placed under a tree with many other wrapped packages.

  She didn’t understand the language spoken in the house. But she did understand the happiness on the boy’s face as she was unwrapped and taken out of her box. He flexed her and put her on his feet, and bounded around the house.

  She also understood the look on the faces of the parents as they looked on: Giang’s father used to smile at her just like that as he handed her the sweet bánh rán.

  With time, she learned that the boy’s name was Bobby, and that he wanted to run fast and long.

  Every morning, Bobby took her running. She loved running in the crisp, cold air. It was so quiet here, different from her home back in Vietnam. Bobby ran at an even, effortless pace, and she liked the graceful, rhythmic pounding sound she made against the pavement. Sometimes she imagined that she was flying, skimming, dipping over the ground, like a pair of fluttering sparrows.

  The pounding also allowed her to speak. Thwack, thwack, thwack, she sang to the dew-speckled grass and sun-warmed sidewalk. Crunch, crunch, crunch, she greeted the gravel in the driveways and the pebbles lining the road shoulders. She observed the comfortable, large houses around her, the clean streets, and the wide, open spaces. She listened to Bobby’s breathing, even and deep, as though he and she could run forever.

  Giang tried to not feel sorry for herself. Sure, she was no longer a person, but a thing. But in her old life at the factory, she had often felt that she was little more than an extension of the machines, a lever or belt made of flesh and bone instead of metal and rubber. Cradling Bobby’s feet as he ran made her feel almost more real, more alive by comparison.

  She did miss her mother, and often wished that she could get a message to her: Mama, I’m fine; I don’t worry any more about money, food, quotas, pain. She hoped that her father was feeling better, and that they found a way to keep her brother in school.

  Spring turned to summer, then to fall and winter. Giang liked the challenge of finding her footing in the ice, but running in the snow was hard on her body. Cracks appeared in her, and water seeped in. She could feel that she was losing traction, her grip on the ground.

  It was spring. Bobby opened a box and took out a new pair of shoes.

  Giang looked at the newcomers with dread. As Bobby kicked her across the floor, squeaking, she whispered to the new shoes, but they were not like her, not alive. Bobby laced the new shoes on his feet, and hopped around to try them out.

  Then he bent down and picked up Giang, lacing the two parts of her together. Her heart leapt. Bobby didn’t forget about her. She wasn’t being replaced. They would go on running together.

  Being draped around Bobby’s neck as he ran was a different sensation. She liked being high up, being able to see things. It was a bit like when she was little, when she rode on her father’s shoulders to watch the parades at the festivals.

  Giang wanted to sing an old song that her mother used to sing. She wished she still had her voice. She wanted to tell Bobby her story, about the dusty, noisy factory, the chattering girls, the sweet-smelling tea at home, her mother’s calming voice. Bobby would be interested, wouldn’t he? In a way, hadn’t his desire for good and cheap running shoes called her across the Pacific into this new life?

  Bobby stopped by the side of the road. Dark electric wires stretched overhead.

  And then she really was flying, high into the air. She reached the apex of her arc and began to fall, but her laces were caught on the wires, and she dangled high over the road, empty as far as she could see in both directions.

  Bobby was already disappearing down the shoulder of the road. He didn’t look back.

  Giang sighed and settled down. She imagined the years ahead, the rain, the sleet, the snow and the sun. She imagined herself growing old and falling apart.

  But a powerful gust of wind tossed her about, whistled through the holes in her sides and the cracks in her soles. Up here, the wind was strong.

  “Hello,” Giang tried out her new voice and startled the sparrows dozing on the wire. She was now loud, louder than she had ever been.

  I’ve finally run into the sky, she thought. I’ll become friends with the birds.

  As the wind continued to howl and groan through her decaying body, she began to sing her story.

  Ken Liu (kenliu.name) is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards, he has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, among other places. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

  Ken’s debut novel, The Grace of Kings, the first in a silkpunk epic fantasy series, will be published by Saga Press, Simon & Schuster’s new genre fiction imprint, in April 2015. Saga will also publish a collection of his short stories, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, in November 2015.

  For years, his job has shown him how easily people can fall apart— friendships, relationships, even all alone. Humans are fragile . . .

  And the Carnival Leaves Town

  A. C. Wise

  The first piece of evidence appears on Walter Eckert’s desk in a locked office to which he has the only key. It is wrapped in brown paper, neatly labeled with his name, no return address. He unwraps it with wary hands.

  Cheap plywood, as
if from a construction site wall, pasted with a handbill-sized poster. It could be advertising any event around town—a rock band no one has ever heard of, an avant-garde art exhibition no one will ever see—but it appears to advertise nothing at all.

  The paper is grayed. Darkened by soot, slush, city smog. Carved into the bottom righthand corner of the wood is a date—October 17, 1973—a date currently forty one years, one month, and fourteen days in Walter’s past.

  The image: A clown in whiteface, black crosses over his eyes, tilted slightly so they resemble X’s. A conical hat. Pompoms in black against the whiteness of his baggy uniform. The clown cradles an infant’s skeleton in his arms.

  The skull is human, but subtly wrong, enlarged. There is a hair-thin fracture, widening and darkening as it runs back toward where the skull meets the spine. Out of the camera’s view, one can only imagine the clot of darkness where the fissure disappears, the fragments of bone, caved in beneath a terrible blow. The ribcage appears human as well, but unnaturally small in comparison to the skull.

  Below the waist, the skeletal remains are not remotely human.

  Walter Eckert has investigated almost everything in his time—domestic violence, cheating partners, insurance fraud, arson, petty theft, and even murder. He has never encountered anything quite like this before. Cold case. Two parents, one child. House, abandoned. Cups half-filled with coffee. Beds, immaculately made. Clothing, neatly hung. Refrigerator, humming and full. Television, left on.

  The house remains; the evidence of daily life remains. The Miller family is simply gone.

  Walter isn’t certain what motivated him to look up the case. It wasn’t even his, back when he was on the force; he inherited the file from his partner, Don. Walter should be actively pursuing new clients, sleazily patrolling social media for rumors of infidelity and foul play. But there’s something about the poster, something about the date. They remind him of something, two seemingly disparate events that lodge in his mind and refuse to let go. So instead of seeking new business, Walter chases down the cold trail of business over forty years old.

  A carnival enters town in the fall of 1973. The Millers are a seemingly happy family, living the American dream. The carnival leaves town, and the Millers are gone.

  Their house is left in perfect condition. The only remarkable thing is thirteen-year-old Charlie Miller’s room. The posters of his favorite baseball players have been turned to face the wall; his baseball cards have been removed from their plastic sleeves and dealt out across his bed, facedown. In his closet, his stuffed animals—artifacts of a younger age—have all had their eyes removed.

  Three days after the Millers disappear, a group of kids gathers in an empty lot to play. Midway through the game of tag, the dust in the lot blows slightly to the west and uncovers the remains of two complete adult skeletons. The bones are aged, colored faintly as though with years buried under desert sands. The remains, lying side by side, holding hands, are eventually identified through dental records as Jasper and Anita Miller.

  Charlie Miller is never found.

  The second piece of evidence comes into Walter Eckert’s possession much as the first; appearing in his locked office, part of his life as though it has always been there. It is a flat, gray canister, holding an old reel of film. Walter is at a loss until he remembers the storage locker in the basement of the building. He finds the key in his desk, descends into the chilly, ill-lit space, and digs out the old film projector left behind by his former partner, Don. The man never threw anything away, and it seems Walter has picked up his habit.

  The film is black and white, jittery, and popping in the way old movies do. The camera fixes on an empty room, which contains only a surgical operating table. A man enters the room, walking from the left side of the frame toward the right. He strips out of his clothes, folds them neatly upon the floor, and lies on the table, face up. He wipes his palms against his legs, licks his lips, and blinks.

  His fingers twitch restlessly at his sides; his eyes are open, staring at the ceiling. He never looks at the camera. The film continues to skip and pop, phantoms skating through the scene, flaws in the medium or deliberate splices, Walter can’t tell.

  Another man enters from the left of the frame and stops in front of the table. He looks at the camera full on and smiles. He wears a white surgeon’s robe, but no mask or gloves. His motions are jerky and exaggerated, like any actor in a silent film. He reaches to his left, just beyond the frame. His arm returns with a scalpel held in his hand. He shows it to the camera, letting the blade glint as much as it can in black and white. This done, he makes a single, precise incision in the chest of the man on the table. He draws a line, in stark black against gray-white, from the man’s clavicle to his pelvic bone. And so the surgery begins.

  For the next fifteen minutes of film, the surgeon dissects the man upon the table, who appears conscious the whole time. His fingers twitch once more, drumming the table before he clenches them still, and with their stillness, holds his whole body rigid. The cords of his neck strain, his mouth set in what might be agony, or a wild, delirious grin, but he makes no attempt to leave. The surgeon slits open the man’s arms, his legs, his cheeks, and each one of his ten fingers and toes. The movement of the blade is straight and true every time. Blood is wiped away meticulously after each pass of the knife. The skin is peeled back, pinned. The surgeon’s eyes gleam and the crook of his mouth never wavers. There is no soundtrack, but one can imagine the movements set to a jolly tune.

  When there is only bone left, the skin and muscle vanishing by degrees between the lapses in the film, the surgeon once more reaches to the left of the camera frame, and returns with a silver mallet. This too gleams in the lack of light. The bones of the man lying upon the table are systematically and utterly shattered, one by one.

  The surgeon leaves the frame, but perhaps not the room. It is impossible to tell. Perhaps he waits, breathing, just out of the camera’s view.

  Another minute passes with the camera fixed securely upon the ruins of what was once a man.

  After that minute is done, the surgeon re-enters the frame backward. From there, the film proceeds as though it is being run in reverse, though when Walter checks, the projector—also inherited from Don—is still running as it should. The surgeon raises the mallet and the bones are restored; he runs the knife up from pelvis to clavicle and the skin is healed.

  At the end of the film, the dead man stands up from the table. He does not reclaim his clothes, but he takes the surgeon’s hand. Together, one smiling, one shaking, they face the camera and bow. Still holding hands, they exit the frame.

  The camera remains steady on the empty room for an additional thirty seconds. Within the last five seconds of film, a date flashes across the screen: December 14, 2015—a date three months and seven days in the future of Walter Eckert, who watches the scene over and over in a small, poorly lit room smelling of stale coffee and cigarettes, smelling of noir cliché and whiskey, smelling of, above all, fear.

  The pieces of evidence don’t match. Walter isn’t even certain they are evidence yet. Only Walter’s mother insists they are and they do.

  Walter’s mother is psychic, or claims to be. She even had her own 1-800 number once upon a time. His childhood memories are littered with phone calls landing like exotic birds at all hours of the night, lost souls seeking counsel and hope, weeping and giddy, desperate to be told exactly what they want to hear.

  Holding his breath so it wouldn’t be heard, Walter listened to his mother listen to Jeannie from Paramus asking about her job. He listened to John from Denver worrying about his health, Kirk from Sault Saint Marie wanting to know if he’d ever find true love, and Tina from Havertown who played the lottery every day and was willing to pay his mother $2.99 per minute for lucky numbers.

  December 14, 2015 is still two months and twenty-seven days in Walter Eckert’s future when his mother calls from her nursing home to tell him the pieces of evidence, the film and the photog
raph, are connected. There are two things Walter never discusses with his mother—his work and his dreams, which are usually about Twin Peaks and who really killed Laura Palmer.

  Walter has never entirely believed in his mother’s psychic powers, but when she calls him as he’s staring at the photograph of Charlie Miller paper-clipped to the cold case file, a shiver traces his spine.

  He hasn’t told her anything about the Miller family or the cold case file currently sitting open on his desk. He hasn’t said one word about the two pieces of evidence, not even that they exist, but she knows and she tells him they are connected anyway.

  Just before he hangs up, she says, “There’s more. Lemuel Mason. The name came to me in a dream. Find him.”

  After he hangs up, Walter slips the Miller file into his briefcase. He puts the picture of the clown, pasted to the section of plywood, and the reel of film into his briefcase, as well. Following what he would call a hunch and his mother would call a prediction, Walter ventures out into the blustery September weather and goes to the local library to do some serious and irrational searching.

  Virginia Mason, a resident of Pottstown, Pennsylvania from 1863 to 1887, wife of the Reverend Lemuel Mason, was generally known to be a pious woman. She aided her husband in his ministerial duties, and was much-loved in their town, known for organizing women’s charity drives and bake sales with all the proceeds going to support Mr. Clement and his one-room school house. The great tragedy of her life, as far as the town was concerned, is that she never bore the reverend a child.

  So the stories say.

  So some stories say.

  But there are other stories, too.

  There are stories of a certain tree where the devil was said to appear, and of Virginia, walking at night, restless and unable to sleep. Stories of Virginia growing large although her husband was away, conducting missionary work in Peru. Stories, contrary to the tutting of the townsfolk over the Masons’ childless life, that Virginia was indeed delivered of a babe. But what babe? Was it born sad, mad, twisted, and deformed, as rumors claimed? And who was its sire?