The Best of the Best Horror of the Year

by Ellen Datlow

  “That’s what Doctor Laughton said. Chin up, move on, have yourself another. But she won’t see it like that.”

  I watched him go to the barn and return with a bucket of ochre in one hand and a stick in the other. The stick had a crusty rag wrapped around its end, for dipping and marking the fleeces.

  I said, “Are those John Petrie’s sheep?”

  “They are,” he said. “But someone’s got to dip ’em and clip ’em. Will he ever come back?”

  “There’s always hope,” I said. “What about his dog?”

  He glanced at the tethered animal, watching us from over near the house. “Biddy?” he said. “That dog’s no use to me. Next time she runs off, she’s gone. I’m not fetching her home again.”

  “A dog?” Nurse Kirkwood said. She braced herself against the dash as we bumped our way back onto the road. “Senior Sister Garson will love you.”

  “I’ll keep her in the barracks,” I said. “Senior Sister Garson doesn’t even need to know.”

  She turned around to look at Biddy, seated in the open luggage hatch. The collie had her face tilted up into the wind and her eyes closed in an attitude of uncomplicated bliss.

  “Good luck with that,” she said.

  That night, when the coast was clear, I sneaked Biddy into the ward.

  “John,” I said, “you’ve got a visitor.”

  I began to find my way around. I started to make home visits and I took the time to meet the island’s luminaries, from the priest to the postman to the secretary of the Grazing Committee. Most of the time Biddy rode around with me in the back of the Riley. One night I went down into town and took the dog into the pub with me, as an icebreaker. People were beginning to recognise me now. It would be a while before I’d feel accepted, but I felt I’d made a start.

  Senior Sister Garwood told me that Donald Budge, the undertaker, had now removed the infant body for an appropriate burial. She also said that he’d complained to her about the state in which he’d found it. I told her to send him to me, and I’d explain the medical realities of the situation to a man who ought to know better. Budge didn’t follow it up.

  The next day in town Thomas Tulloch came to morning surgery, alone. “Mister Tulloch,” I said. “How can I help you?”

  “It’s not for me,” he said. “It’s Daisy, but she won’t come. Can you give her a tonic? Anything that’ll perk her up. Nothing I do seems to help.”

  “Give her time. It’s only been a few days.”

  “It’s getting worse. Now she won’t leave the cottage. I tried to persuade her to visit her sister but she just turns to the wall.”

  So I wrote him a scrip for some Parrish’s, a harmless red concoction of sweetened iron phosphate that would, at best, sharpen the appetite, and at worst do nothing at all. It was all I could offer. Depression, in those days, was a condition to be overcome by ‘pulling oneself together’. Not to do so was to be perverse and most likely attention-seeking, especially if you were a woman. I couldn’t help thinking that, though barely educated even by the island’s standards, Tulloch was an unusually considerate spouse for his time.

  Visits from the dog seemed to do the trick for John Petrie. I may have thought I was deceiving the Senior Sister, but I realise now that she was most likely turning a blind eye. Afterwards his breathing was always easier, his sleep more peaceful. And I even got my first words out of him when he beckoned me close and said into my ear:

  “Ye’ll do.”

  After this mark of approval I looked up to find the Constable waiting for me, hat in his hands as if he were unsure of the protocol. Was a dying man’s bedside supposed to be like a church? He was taking no chances.

  He said, “I’m sorry to come and find you at your work, Doctor. But I hope you can settle a concern.”

  “I can try.”

  “There’s a rumour going round about the dead Tulloch baby. Some kind of abuse?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Some people are even saying it had been skinned.”

  “Skinned?” I echoed.

  “I’ve seen what goes on in post-mortems and such,” the Constable persisted. “But I never heard of such a thing being called for.”

  “Nor have I,” I said. “It’s just Chinese whispers, David. I saw the body before Donald Budge took it away. It was in poor condition after a long and difficult labour. But the only abuse it suffered was natural.”

  “I’m only going by what people are saying.”

  “Well for God’s sake don’t let them say such a thing around the mother.”

  “I do hear she’s taken it hard,” the Constable conceded. “Same thing happened to my sister, but she just got on. I’ve never even heard her speak of it.”

  He looked to me for permission, and then went around the bed to address John Petrie. He bent down with his hands on his knees, and spoke as if to a child or an imbecile.

  “A’right, John?” he said. “Back on your feet soon, eh?”

  Skinned? Who ever heard of such a thing? The chain of gossip must have started with Donald Budge and grown ever more grotesque in the telling. According to the records Budge had four children of his own. The entire family was active in amateur dramatics and the church choir. You’d expect a man in his position to know better.

  I was writing up patient notes at the end of the next day’s town Surgery when there was some commotion outside. Nurse Kirkwood went to find out the cause and came back moments later with a breathless nine-year-old boy at her side.

  “This is Robert Flett,” she said. “He ran all the way here to say his mother’s been in an accident.”

  “What kind of an accident?”

  The boy looked startled and dumbstruck at my direct question, but Rosie Kirkwood spoke for him. “He says she fell.”

  I looked at her. “You know the way?”

  “Of course.”

  We all piled into the Riley to drive out to the west of the island. Nurse Kirkwood sat beside me and I lifted Robert into the bag hatch with the dog, where both seemed happy enough.

  At the highest point on the moor Nurse Kirkwood reckoned she spotted a walking figure on a distant path, far from the road.

  She said, “Is that Thomas Tulloch? What could he be doing out here?” But I couldn’t spare the attention to look.

  Adam Flett was one of three brothers who, together, were the island’s most prosperous crofter family. In addition to their livestock and rented lands they made some regular money from government contract work. With a tenancy protected by law, Adam had built a two-storey home with a slate roof and laid a decent road to it. I was able to drive almost to the door. Sheep scattered as I braked, and the boy jumped out to join with other children in gathering them back with sticks.

  It was only a few weeks since Jean Flett had borne the youngest of her seven children. The birth had been trouble-free but the news of a fall concerned me. Her eldest, a girl of around twelve years, let us into the house. I looked back and saw Adam Flett on the far side of the yard, watching us.

  Jean Flett was lying on a well-worn old sofa and struggled to rise as we came through the door. I could see that she hadn’t been expecting us. Despite the size of their family, she was only in her thirties.

  I said, “Mrs. Flett?” and Nurse Kirkwood stepped past me to steady our patient and ease her back onto the couch.

  “This is Doctor Spence,” Nurse Kirkwood explained.

  “I told Marion,” Jean Flett protested. “I told her not to send for you.”

  “Well, now that I’m here,” I said, “let’s make sure my journey isn’t wasted. Can you tell me what happened?”

  She wouldn’t look at me, and gave a dismissive wave. “I fell, that’s all.”

  “Where’s the pain?”

  “I’m just winded.”

  I took her pulse and then got her to point out where it hurt. She winced when I checked her abdomen, and again when I felt around her neck.

  I said, “Did you have these m
arks before the fall?”

  “It was a shock. I don’t remember.”

  Tenderness around the abdomen, a raised heart rate, left side pain, and what appeared to be days-old bruises. I exchanged a glance with Nurse Kirkwood. A fair guess would be that the new mother had been held against the wall and punched.

  I said, “We need to move you to the hospital for a couple of days.”

  “No!” she said. “I’m just sore. I’ll be fine.”

  “You’ve bruised your spleen, Mrs. Flett. I don’t think it’s ruptured but I need to be sure. Otherwise you could need emergency surgery.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “I want you where we can keep an eye on you. Nurse Kirkwood? Can you help her to pack a bag?”

  I went outside. Adam Flett had moved closer to the house but was still hovering. I said to him, “She’s quite badly hurt. That must have been some fall.”

  “She says it’s nothing.” He wanted to believe it, but he’d seen her pain and I think it scared him.

  I said, “With an internal injury she could die. I’m serious, Mister Flett. I’ll get the ambulance down to collect her.” I’d thought that Nurse Kirkwood was still inside the house, so when she spoke from just behind me I was taken by surprise.

  She said, “Where’s the baby, Mister Flett?”

  “Sleeping,” he said.

  “Where?” she said. “I want to see.”

  “It’s no business of yours or anyone else’s.”

  Her anger was growing, and so was Flett’s defiance. “What have you done to it?” she persisted. “The whole island knows it isn’t yours. Did you get rid of it? Is that what the argument was about? Is that why you struck your wife?” I was aware of three or four of his children now standing at a distance, watching us.

  “The Flett brothers have a reputation, Doctor,” she said, lowering her voice so the children wouldn’t hear. “It wouldn’t be the first time another man’s child had been taken out to the barn and drowned in a bucket.”

  He tried to lunge at her then, and I had to step in.

  “Stop that!” I said, and he shook me off and backed away. He started pacing like an aggrieved wrestler whose opponent stands behind the referee. Meanwhile his challenger was showing no fear.

  “Well?” Rosie Kirkwood said.

  “You’ve got it wrong,” he said. “You don’t know anything.”

  “I won’t leave until you prove the child’s safe.”

  And I said, “Wait,” because I’d had a sudden moment of insight and reckoned I knew what must have happened.

  I said to Rosie, “He’s sold the baby. To Thomas Tulloch, in exchange for John Petrie’s sheep. I recognise those marks. I watched Tulloch make them.” I looked at Flett. “Am I right?”

  Flett said nothing right away. And then he said, “They’re Petrie’s?”

  “I suppose Thomas drove them over,” I said. “Nurse Kirkwood spotted him heading back on the moor. Is the baby with him?”

  Flett only shrugged.

  “I don’t care whether the rumours are true,” I said. “You can’t take a child from its mother. I’ll have to report this.”

  “Do what you like,” Flett said. “It was her idea.” And he walked away.

  I couldn’t put Jean Flett in the Riley, but nor did I want to leave her unattended as I brought in the ambulance. “I’ll stay,” Nurse Kirkwood said. “I’ll come to no harm here.”

  On the army highway I stopped at the moorland crossroads, calling ahead from the telephone box to get the ambulance on its way. It passed me heading in the opposite direction before I reached the hospital.

  There I made arrangements to receive Mrs. Flett. My concern was with her injury, not her private life. Lord knows how a crofter’s wife with six children found the time, the opportunity, or the energy for a passion, however brief. I’ll leave it to your H. E. Bateses and D. H. Lawrences to explore that one, with their greater gifts than mine. Her general health seemed, like so many of her island breed, to be robust. But a bruised spleen needs rest in order to heal, and any greater damage could take a day or two to show.

  Biddy followed at my heels as I picked up a chair and went to sit with John Petrie. He’d rallied a little with the dog’s visits, though the prognosis was unchanged. I opened the window eighteen inches or so. Biddy could be out of there like a shot if we should hear the Senior Sister coming.

  “I know I can be straight with you, John,” I said. “How do you feel about your legacy giving a future to an unwanted child?”

  They were his sheep that had been traded, after all. And Jean Flett had confirmed her wish to see her child raised where it wouldn’t be resented. As for Daisy’s feelings, I tried to explain them with Tulloch’s own analogy of a ewe unwilling to leave its dead lamb, which I was sure he’d understand. John Petrie listened and then beckoned me closer.

  What he whispered then had me running to the car.

  I’d no way of saying whether Thomas Tulloch might have reached his cottage yet. My sense of local geography wasn’t that good. I didn’t even know for sure that he was carrying the Flett baby.

  I pushed the Riley as fast as it would go, and when I left the road for the bumpy lane I hardly slowed. How I didn’t break the car in two or lose a wheel, I do not know. I was tossed and bucketed around but I stayed on the track until the car could progress no farther, and then I abandoned it and set myself to fly as best I could the rest of the way.

  I saw Tulloch from the crest of a rise, at the same time as the cottage came into view. I might yet reach him before he made it home. He was carrying a bundle close to his chest. I shouted, but either he didn’t hear me or he ignored my call.

  I had to stop him before he got to Daisy.

  It was shepherds’ business. In the few words he could manage John Petrie had told me how, when a newborn lamb is rejected by its mother, it can be given to a ewe whose own lamb has died at birth. But first the shepherd must skin the dead lamb and pull its pelt over the living one. Then the new mother might accept it as her own. If the sheep understood, the horror would be overwhelming. But animals aren’t people.

  I didn’t believe what I was thinking. But what if?

  I saw the crofter open his door and go inside with his bundle. I was only a few strides behind him. But those scant moments were enough.

  When last I’d seen Daisy Tulloch, she’d the air of a woman in whom nothing could hope to rouse the spirit, perhaps ever again.

  But the screaming started from within the house, just as I was reaching the threshold.

  DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA

  NEIL GAIMAN

  The Thames is a filthy beast: it winds through London like a snake or a sea serpent. All the rivers flow into it, the Fleet and the Tyburn and the Neckinger, carrying all the filth and scum and waste, the bodies of cats and dogs and the bones of sheep and pigs down into the brown water of the Thames, which carries them east into the estuary and from there into the North Sea and oblivion.

  It is raining in London. The rain washes the dirt into the gutters, and it swells streams into rivers, rivers into powerful things. The rain is a noisy thing, splashing and pattering and rattling the rooftops. If it is clean water as it falls from the skies, it only needs to touch London to become dirt, to stir dust and make it mud.

  Nobody drinks it, neither the rain water nor the river water. They make jokes about Thames water killing you instantly, and it is not true. There are mudlarks who will dive deep for thrown pennies then come up again, spout the river water, shiver, and hold up their coins. They do not die, of course, or not of that, although there are no mudlarks over fifteen years of age.

  The woman does not appear to care about the rain.

  She walks the Rotherhithe docks, as she has done for years, for decades: nobody knows how many years, because nobody cares. She walks the docks, or she stares out to sea. She examines the ships, as they bob at anchor. She must do something, to keep body and soul from dissolving their partnership, but none of the
folk of the dock have the foggiest idea what this could be.

  You take refuge from the deluge beneath a canvas awning put up by a sailmaker. You believe yourself to be alone under there, at first, for she is statue-still and staring out across the water, even though there is nothing to be seen through the curtain of rain. The far side of the Thames has vanished.

  And then she sees you. She sees you and she begins to talk, not to you, oh no, but to the grey water that falls from the grey sky into the grey river. She says, “My son wanted to be a sailor,” and you do not know what to reply or how to reply. You would have to shout to make yourself heard over the roar of the rain, but she talks, and you listen. You discover yourself craning and straining to catch her words.

  “My son wanted to be a sailor.

  “I told him not to go to sea. I’m your mother, I said. The sea won’t love you like I love you, she’s cruel. But he said, Oh Mother, I need to see the world. I need to see the sun rise in the tropics, and watch the Northern Lights dance in the Arctic sky, and most of all I need to make my fortune and then, when it’s made, I will come back to you and build you a house, and you will have servants, and we will dance, mother, oh how we will dance ...

  “And what would I do in a fancy house? I told him. You’re a fool with your fine talk. I told him of his father, who never came back from the sea—some said he was dead and lost overboard, while some swore blind they’d seen him running a whore-house in Amsterdam.

  “It’s all the same. The sea took him.

  “When he was twelve years old, my boy ran away, down to the docks, and he shipped on the first ship he found, to Flores in the Azores, they told me.

  “There’s ships of ill-omen. Bad ships. They give them a lick of paint after each disaster, and a new name, to fool the unwary.

  “Sailors are superstitious. The word gets around. This ship was run aground by its captain, on orders of the owners, to defraud the insurers; and then, all mended and as good as new, it gets taken by pirates; and then it takes shipment of blankets and becomes a plague ship crewed by the dead, and only three men bring it into port in Harwich …