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The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Volume 1

Page 42

by Paula Guran


  She carefully, gently disengaged.

  “How long?” she asked, quietly, but in the quiet that had fallen between them it echoed.

  “Five months. And you?”

  She did not pretend to misunderstand. “As many years. Go rest?”

  There were no swarms that night, no line of fowl to point the way to a disturbance. The low hum that came from farther down the coast, to the southeast, did nothing to calm Val’s nerves, but it helped her to stay awake. She was not properly grateful.

  In the morning, Lucian was. Not only was there porridge, but he asked clearly about his foraging plan instead of charging off to offend the neighbors. He also asked rather than reorganizing her linen storage, but his idea was far better than the one she had inherited from the previous lighthouse keeper, and they did the reorganization together cheerfully and efficiently.

  Val realized that he didn’t remind her of anyone from her days in the city. Not a single person.

  She already knew that she didn’t want to be reminded of any of them.

  Her shoulders relaxed a bit more, and she laughed at the expressive way he twisted his face when the shelves came loose. She watched his hands move. She watched how he tilted his head in consideration.

  It had been a long time since consideration had meant anything different from contemplation.

  There was cheerful work around the lighthouse, congenial quiet, the waves making peaceful and ordinary lake sounds, gulls being gulls without pretensions to anything more.

  Val felt guilty for her conviction that it couldn’t last.

  It didn’t.

  The honking of the V of wild geese made her flinch and scurry for cover. The stone walls of the lighthouse felt flimsy, and there were so many geese. She could hear them even inside. It had been a long week already. No one needed geese. The honking continued. Val knew there must be a second wing of them coming, a third, more.

  She looked around the interior of the lighthouse. Lucian was coming out of the bedroom she had begun to think of as his. She took a ragged breath to explain. “The geese are—”

  “They migrate. I know them,” he said. “The ones down in the city shift, do yours shift?”

  Val nodded tersely.

  “Not to human like the swans.”

  “No.”

  Lucian grimaced. “Wish there was something I could—”

  “Stay inside. Stay safe.”

  He looked out the windows, at the skies darkening with wings. “I keep thinking, there has to be some reason it’s geese. Whatever it is that’s . . . transformed them, become them, whatever it is. They could have been crows or sparrows or something. Why geese?”

  Val felt she should rush off to handle the geese, but the question stopped her. “They’re strong,” she said slowly. “And they flock . . . I mean, crows work together, back in the old days I saw them working to drive a marsh hawk off a meadow to take its eggs. I didn’t know it was called that then, I didn’t know what they wanted.” Internally she cursed herself for the tangent, but Lucian was nodding.

  “A lot of us didn’t. The species, the names, we just . . . didn’t. So when they turned like this, after the event—” She shook her head. “I have to deal with this now.”

  “I know, I know.”

  Val climbed to the tower, and Lucian followed without being invited. Upon reflection she decided she hadn’t asked him to stay out either. So that was all right. He was quiet, in the corner. Like a backstop.

  The geese were not. The geese were not flying on but circling around the lighthouse, blotting out the sunlight. Probably it was not personal, Val told herself. Probably the magic was like an odor. She made the place smell delicious.

  It felt wrong to be in the lighthouse tower in the dark and not light the lamp. And yet that was not the good she could do now.

  If there was any good she could do now.

  Goose wings buffeted stone solidly. It had to hurt them, but they kept at it, pushed, perhaps, by the bodies of their flock. Then they slurped and shifted together, wing eating wing. Val felt more than heard Lucian’s breath draw in, with the cacophony outside.

  The merging goose flock thumped and squeezed the tower. The stones creaked. And finally, with no particular hope for it, Val released a spell out the window of the lamp.

  The seething, grabbing mass that had been geese let out a thin honk and then a hum that modulated down to the noise of the night before. It jangled Val’s nerves and made her teeth ache. The former goosemass buckled back in front of the lamp. Val wanted to think she was killing it, or at least driving it away, but though she kept the pressure on, she never punched a hole through, never saw daylight. There was always more goose mass to patch it with, and more.

  The honking and humming was deafening. Her ears rang, popped, kept ringing.

  Val let the spell fall, panting. Simply battering at them wasn’t working. She remembered the days before the event, a creased science journal in a waiting room, when there were still waiting rooms, when waiting was something that didn’t come with chopping and carving and mending. It said something about magnetic fields. She modified the spell to make one of her own, to interfere with whatever remained of goose in the mass outside the lighthouse.

  The honk aligned itself in pain, fear. But the geese kept coming.

  She could feel the magic she’d harvested from the rice lake dwindling. Soon there would be only her own body’s supply left, and what she would do to live, and light the lamp, after that, she didn’t know.

  Lucian’s hand was on her wrist, then his other hand on her other wrist, from behind her, the entire length of him warm against her back. It would have been too much to ask of herself not to think of flinching—but she didn’t actually flinch, and that was something, something that would have been beyond notable—huge—were it not that she understood what he was offering, and it was far beyond.

  She wrapped his magic into her own and drew from his body instead.

  Finally there was a pinprick of daylight—fading daylight, reflected setting sunlight—through the squeezing, squirming mass. The hum modulated into a dissonant chord. Val pressed their advantage, forcing the breach wider, longer.

  With a shriek of scraping slates and a splash of ruptured organs, the goosemass went down.

  Lucian let go of her wrists.

  “Wood,” Val gasped, and he understood her immediately, leaping for the stairs with such boneless alacrity she was afraid he would fall. She built the fire for the lamp’s backup to take almost all wood, only the tiniest spark of magic, which she gave it and promptly passed out.

  It was full dark when she awakened in her own bed. It had been so many years since she slept in the dark in her bed that it was terrifying to awaken that way. But Lucian must have put her there, she realized after the first moment’s shock. She raked a hand through her sleep-mussed hair and padded up to find him.

  “Does this happen often,” he said, not turning away from the lamp. It burned hot and clear with the fire he was maintaining.

  “Not precisely this.”

  “Imprecisely.”

  “You know it does.”

  He was silent a long time. “I had hoped that cities—the pollution—”

  “Well, that’s the thing about pollution, isn’t it? It never stays in one convenient place. And farms and mines and logging concerns polluted plenty, back in the day. I don’t know that pollution caused the event, but if it did, we’re not safe here. Or anywhere.”

  The big lake made its deceptive placid lapping sounds against the rocks.

  “I would like to stay here and help you,” said Lucian in a low voice. “Once you’ve healed me. We work well together, if last night is any hint. I think we could work even better when I’m at full strength, and I think—forgive me—I think you could use the help.”

  Val looked for her indignation and found it missing. “I thought you wanted to fight in the cities.”

  “This is a fight too. And—you are a fight
too.”

  She glared at him.

  “We beat the geese.”

  “We did. There will be more.” But for the first time, she could let herself think ahead, plan, even hope beyond the light. She flexed her wrists. “All right. I’m going to have to harvest magic again today. You might as well come to see where it grows. We’ll see how this works out.”

  He didn’t try to kiss her. She didn’t move to kiss him. There was space that they might fill with that, or they might not. For the time, it could be filled with a magic harvest in the rice lake, and clearing a path to the forest through the goose corpses, and hope.

  MARISSA LINGEN is among the top science fiction and fantasy writers in the world who were named after fruit. Her stories have been published in venues including Analog, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Fireside Fiction, Nature, and Uncanny. She lives atop the oldest bedrock in the US with two large men and one small dog, where she writes, if not daily, frequently.

  SOME KIND OF BLOOD-SOAKED FUTURE

  CARLIE ST. GEORGE

  Here’s the thing about surviving a slumber party massacre: no one really wants you around anymore. All your friends are dead, and your mom is dead, and you get shuffled off to live with your miserable Aunt Katherine, who blames you for getting her sister killed because she’s an awful human being like that. And you try to move on, but you don’t know how because your nightmares are constant and therapy is hard, especially when a new killer arrives and murders your therapist with his own pencil. You survive that massacre, too—this one’s on a field trip—but nobody cares that you saved some band kid’s life because, clearly, you’re cursed and should just leave town. Even the band kid isn’t grateful, that pimpled little shit.

  So, you leave town. But first, you rob your aunt blind.

  Here’s the thing about leaving town: you start getting scared everyone’s right.

  You’re living in your car, which at first is pretty fun, right up until you realize you don’t have a diploma or a GED, and your entire work history is three months at a shitty diner, a job you still had to have a home address and three personal references to even apply for. Also, it’s four in the morning and you really have to pee, but it’s pouring and you’re alone, parked on some dark road near a forest full of howling things. Your only choices are either to brave the storm or finish the bottle of Gatorade and awkwardly squat over it in your back seat; you try the latter and end up with a mess, which means your car now smells like pee, which means your home now smells like pee, and you just want to give up, drive home, and admit defeat. Aunt Katherine would never take you back, though; you’d probably enter the foster system and get some abusive church lady, or, worse, somebody wonderful, someone who doesn’t know how to cook and earnestly fails at slang and lets you cry on her shoulder whenever you wake up screaming. And a month will pass, then two, and you’ll think it’s over, it’s okay, we’re safe, until one day you come downstairs to find New Mom at the table, an ax in the back of her head and blood pouring out of her mouth and into her cereal.

  You can’t let that happen to another mother. You can’t let anyone else die because of you, which means this is it; this is your future: alone, in a smelly car, until you run out of money and die. No. You have to do something. You have to make a plan. A five-year plan, just like in school, only cross out applying for scholarships or taking the SATs. Replace them with . . . replace them with . . .

  You can only think of the things you stole from Aunt Katherine, especially the gun.

  But you’re not ready. You’re so scared. You fought so fucking hard to live.

  Eventually, you fall asleep. In the morning, you drive to a new town. Buy an air freshener. Drink some coffee. Spot a flier for tonight’s frat party. Your dead friends would’ve loved a party like that, would’ve begged you to sneak in with them. Peer pressure isn’t really your problem anymore, though, so instead you drive south for hours. You only hear the news days later: FRAT HOUSE MASSACRE, 14 DEAD.

  It’s terrible. It’s a tragedy. It’s evidence you aren’t to blame, that there’s slaughter in this world that doesn’t solely belong to you. You didn’t talk to any of these dead guys. You aren’t responsible for any of this—

  But you can’t stop thinking about that band kid.

  Jesus, what an asshole. What a typical Nice Guy turd, and you could’ve let him die, but you didn’t, and there’s power in that. Maybe you’d have saved more people, if you’d gone to that party. Maybe if you came across the killer yourself . . .

  Well. You’re not going to find out anything sitting here.

  You drive back and it might be suicidal, but at least it’s suicidal in an active way? That sounds suspiciously unhealthy, but you’re too busy to consider it further: the frat’s sister house is planning a memorial kegger because nobody ever learns anything, because the definition of insanity is who the hell knows, but the definition of willful ignorance is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Whatever. The important thing is, you smell bad, so you sneak in a shower at some public gym before heading over to the sorority house. Can you pass for eighteen? Nope. But everyone’s drunk, so they let you in anyway.

  You try to find the killer before any of the girls die. It doesn’t work: one gets smothered with her own sorority flag, while another is chopped in half mid keg stand. But you do shoot the killer right in his creepy doll face before a freshman gets disemboweled. Well. Okay. She gets a little disemboweled, but she’s still alive when the paramedics come, and that means she’ll be okay, probably. Anyway, that’s still a dozen girls without a scratch on them. All psychologically scarred, sure, but there are limits to what you can fix.

  One of the drunk girls hides you until the cops leave, and there, under the bed, next to a bunch of dirty clothes and—gross—a used condom, you think, well, it’s a reason, anyway. It’s some kind of blood-soaked future.

  Altruism isn’t putting gas in your car, though, so you make that drunk girl give you a hundred dollars and some fancy Juicy Couture shit to replace your gory jeans.

  Here’s the thing about your new future: it’s hard and it’s sad, but mostly it works.

  You drive from town to town, looking for signs. Wild parties. Incompetent sheriffs. Fatal pranks one-to-five years prior. It gets easier to spot them. Easier to spot the girls, too, the ones killers gravitate toward: nice girls, good grades. Virgins, all of them.

  You used to have good grades. Used to be nice, too.

  Virginity, though, is still your superpower. It doesn’t keep you alive, but it improves your chances. It means you can kill the monster, or die trying. It means you die last. It means you find the bodies.

  Most people find that sort of thing traumatic, though, so you try and help them avoid it. Find the impending massacre. Track down the virgin. Get them the fuck out of town and slay the monster in their stead.

  It’s not a career for everyone. It’s hard on the clothes, and you can never have sex. But honestly, that last part’s a bonus, because you’re ace as fuck, and it’s really rewarding how your sexuality comes with practical benefits like this. Doesn’t pay great, though. Some can’t afford much, even when they’re grateful. Others are just assholes you have to persuade with your gun. Your mom would be pretty horrified; she didn’t believe in violence, so that ax to the head must’ve been an especially big shock. But you need that money: for gas and tampons and laundromats and weapons. Food, too, although there’s not always much left for that. You almost get killed once by some asshole in a Dobby mask—a Dobby mask—because you haven’t eaten in two days and get dizzy when you try to stab him in the balls.

  You make friends with this kid, José. You try not to make friends, but it happens sometimes: not all research can be done from the library, and you have to infiltrate the school: walk around, pretend you’re a new student, duck whenever a vice principal walks your way. You interrogate José for gossip because he looks sharp. He secretly follows you back to your car because, well, you weren’t
wrong.

  José tries to help you save virgin Zoe and the entire Valentine’s Day Court. The King and Queen are lost causes, but everyone else would’ve been fine if the bucktoothed sheriff hadn’t bust in and arrested you for vagrancy, among other things. Considering you were holding a hacksaw at the time, you’re lucky he didn’t just shoot you. Still, by the time José breaks you out, the killer has resurrected and killed the sheriff, two deputies, Zoe’s boyfriend, and Zoe’s mom.

  You decapitate the killer. It doesn’t feel like a win. You have an overwhelming urge to get so drunk you can’t even see straight. That’s sure what José does. You force him to drink water, get him into bed. He grabs your hand when you reach for the light.

  Stay, he slurs into his pillow. Please.

  You shush him gently, tell him he’s okay, but he shakes his head and almost rolls off the bed. YOU, he says loudly, pointing. Don’t go. You’re not. Don’t . . .

  No one’s ever asked you to stay before. Maybe you cry a little, but he’s too drunk to notice.

  It’s not safe to stay, though, and anyway, he’s wrong; you’re doing fine.

  Here’s the thing about never sticking around: the towns all blur into one another until one day, about ten months after you ran away, you’re back in California. You end up in this two-stoplight town where a gravedigger somehow impaled himself on his own shovel, but that was just an unfortunate accident, and those missing teenagers? Playing hooky, obviously. Can’t be anything more than that: this isn’t the big city, after all.

  You find the virgin almost immediately. Actually, she finds you: Joey Santiago, seventeen, named after Josephine Baker and Joey Guerrero, and, she tells you confidentially, Joey Potter, too. You’re not sure what to do with that information since you don’t know who any of those people are, but she’s already handing you a water bottle as you put your last five bucks in the tank. Apparently, Joey and her mom foster a houseful of rescue dogs, and you’re the human equivalent of a sad, hungry puppy with a broken tail. She insists you come home for dinner.

 

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