The Best Horror of the Year Volume Eleven

by Ellen Datlow

  Tony and Eddie barely acknowledged your joke before discussing between them the technical difficulties we’d face filming in Echo Caves. I was concerned about the sound quality but of course they were preoccupied with the visuals. One of them said a rope pulley and counterweights would do it, and the other wanted a crane shot, but either way it was going to be a hassle lugging all the equipment around. You sided with Eddie, and Tony said you didn’t know what the fuck you were talking about, you were just the tits with the script and you even managed to fuck that up. “The script part, anyway.”

  I said something pathetic like, “Hey, guys, come on,” but it worked. Enough to create an awkward silence for a while, at least.

  Tony, surprisingly, was the one to finally break it.

  “Anybody got a beer?”

  It was a joke wearing thin—he’d asked every night so far—but this time it was funny again and I think it was sort of an apology. Maybe that’s why you gave me up.

  “Tom’s got a bottle of something.”

  Were you still just trying to fit in? Or were you doing your bit to accept his apology? Maybe you were simply deflecting the attention away from yourself for a moment.

  “Is that true, Tom? You been holding out on us?”

  I’d bought a large bottle of mampoer but I was saving it for celebrating the end of the shoot. I busied myself checking the connection between camera and monitor, pretending not to hear the question. Infrared is invisible to most animals, including humans, but the camera picks it up. I was able to see everybody in the camp even with the lamps off. It was sound that would be a problem in the cave.

  “What are you doing, mate?” Eddie asked.

  “Giving the gear a test run before the caves.”

  So much for pretending to not hear him.

  “He’s filming us for the DVD extras,” you joked, and everybody laughed. I went along with it, glad some more of the tension was lifting.

  “Is Jenny right? About the beer, mate?”

  How could I not give it to them?

  “Mampoer,” I said. At Eddie’s puzzled frown I added, “Brandy. Sort of. To celebrate our last day in Africa.” I added that as a final attempt to put them off.

  “Brandy?”

  I smiled, and nodded, thinking Eddie’s mockery might mean he wouldn’t ask for it. And he didn’t, because Eddie never asks.

  “Let’s have it, then,” he said. “This is pretty much the last day anyway.”

  Everything is green and black when you film at night. Your skin was green on the screen. Eddie and Tony, too, though their eyes, looking at you, were dark pools of shadow. Shark eyes. You were crouching, doing an impression of Attenborough as if he was stalking around the campsite; good enough so we knew who you were doing but bad enough that it was funny. I’m half convinced it’s how you got this gig in the first place because you did the exact same thing in the Big Brother house for one of their challenges or something. Everybody was laughing.

  “And capturing what has never been seen before, not even by us at the BBC, with all our budget and big names like me . . . an African wild dog hunt.”

  “Fuck yeah,” said Tony, raising his cup.

  And you, still Jenny-Attenborough, “Please, Tony. Watch your fucking language.”

  The camera loved you. I zoomed it in.

  You seemed to sense what I was doing and struck a provocative pose. “Make sure you get my good side.”

  “Which side is that?” asked Tony.

  “They’re all good,” said Eddie.

  “Aww, thanks, Eddie mate,” you said, exaggerating your vowels, switching to Australian, “Not bad for a Sheila, eh?” You turned and posed and turned again. Catalogue poses. Magazine parodies. Eddie smiled with his mouth but not with his eyes, not on the black and green screen.

  And then behind Eddie, stepping quietly out of the night, was an African hunting dog. I could see it, panting, just over his shoulder. Behind Tony there was another.

  “Yeah, that’s good. That’s your good side,” said Tony. You were on all fours and looking behind with wide-eyed feigned surprise.

  One of the dogs, with its head down, made a single bark at the ground. It was how they called to the pack, drawing them to the echo.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “What was that, mate?”

  You were all looking at me now.

  “The dogs are back,” I said. “They followed us.”

  Eddie and Tony looked at each other. Eddie took another mouthful of brandy. “They’re miles away.”

  “No,” I said. “They’re here.”

  You couldn’t see because of the dark, and because of how the lamps had ruined your night vision. Didn’t stop you looking around, though. “Where?”

  They were gone.

  I checked back and forth between the monitor and the darkness around us. “They were here. They looked . . . I don’t know. They looked hungry.”

  Tony exaggerated a sigh. “You’re not going to start quoting Tennyson again, are you?”

  “You’re still shook up from the kill,” Eddie said, “that’s all. There’s nothing out there.”

  He was right. Or half right. I couldn’t tell. I panned the camera around but found nothing.

  “They must be hiding. Waiting. For the right moment.”

  “People love to anthropomorphise animals,” you said. “You know; project human characteristics onto them. Maybe that’s what you’re doing?”

  “Anthropo-what?” Eddie said. “That’s a big word, sweetheart.”

  You grinned. “Oh, I like them big. The bigger the better.”

  “Seriously,” I said. “The dogs . . .”

  But you waved that away, “Don’t worry about them,” and teased me with, “I’ll take care of you.”

  “You can take care of all of us,” said Tony.

  For him, you turned an imaginary crank at your fist to raise your middle finger. “Fuck you, Tony.”

  He raised his cup. “That’s the spirit.”

  You raised your cup as well, but aimed the smile at me. Were you trying to include me? Or were you just posing for the camera? “To nature,” you said. “Red in tooth and claw.”

  “And a bitch to get on film,” said Eddie, tipping his cup to you.

  Your eyes were vast dark circles, like the empty cavities of a skull. Caves in your face. I looked away from them and searched again for the dogs. I couldn’t see them, not even with the night monitor, but I felt them out there in the dark.

  Waiting.

  I’ve seen things few other people in the world have ever seen. I’ve seen birds of paradise performing their complicated mating dances, flashing their feathers like capes in a fashion show of arousal. I’ve seen colourful lizards leaping like acrobats to feed on swarms of black fly, a bright rainbow devouring a buzzing cloud. I’ve seen the peaks of the Himalayas, Ayers Rock, Victoria Falls. I’ve seen lots of beautiful things.

  I’ve seen you.

  But I’ve also seen a crocodile roll its prey. Heard the thundering chaos of splashing and devouring. Seen Komodo dragons wait patiently for the inevitable, heard them hiss at a buffalo already dying. I’ve seen a zebra, serene, brought down by dogs that tore at her flesh and burrowed into her body. Seen them shove their way inside and—

  “You okay, Tom? Where are you?”

  You . . .

  . . . you . . .

  . . . you.

  Now I can’t see anything. The dark here is absolute. But I must be quiet. Sound travels far down in the Mpumalanga escarpment. Down in the Echo Caves.

  They exist because of erosion, these caves. Limestone. It covers approximately ten percent of the Earth’s surface. Rain shapes it. Rivers sculpt it. The water, slightly acidic and loaded with carbon dioxide from the soil, slowly eats away at the rock. But over time it builds, as well, depositing calcite to make stalactites and stalagmites. It breaks and it builds, it wears down and it hardens, and all of it is very natural.

  “Tom?”
>
  I’ll not say a word.

  In Deer Cave, Borneo, there are three million bats. Three million at least, all flapping around in the dark. They use echo-location to navigate, hearing to see. Some animals do away with eyes completely in the caves, that’s how dark it is. The Texas cave salamander, for example, devolving so it has no eyes at all. It doesn’t have to see a thing. I envy it. Sometimes it’s better not to see. There’s a cave in New Zealand that has a ceiling of stars, cave constellations held in an underground night sky. These beautiful glowing lights attract insects, drawn in by what they see, but the stars are not stars. The bright lights come from the bodies of glow worms that drop delicate strands of silk to trap their prey, hauling it up like a fisherman’s catch.

  Safer, sometimes, not to see.

  “Tom? It’s okay.”

  But just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. When oil in the Earth’s crust releases hydrogen sulphide, a cave can be filled with dangerous toxic fumes. Poison you can’t see. And when it mixes with the oxygen in water you get sulphuric acid, eating away at the world around it. That’s how I used to imagine Hell. But Hell is a black and green screen that I’ll carry with me forever. It’s whimpering sounds, grunting sounds, growling away at my insides. Hell is the things I heard with my eyes closed. It’s the sound of wild dogs with prey.

  “Thomas!”

  My name resounds in the dark and I hear an echo of it fade like the hiss of Komodo dragons.

  “You can come out now.”

  The “now” echoes in the cave like a series of howls. They surround me. They keep me cowed, hunkered down in the dark. I won’t say a word.

  “What do you like most out here?”

  I wonder what would have happened if you hadn’t asked that question. I wonder if, without that to think about, it would have been a normal night.

  “The brandy,” said Tony, upending the bottle.

  “The wilderness,” that’s what Eddie said. “All this space and nobody around to watch everything you do. The freedom to do whatever you want.”

  “How about you, Tom?”

  I shrugged. “You?”

  You didn’t hear it as an answer, but then you weren’t meant to. You heard the question passed back.

  “Same as Eddie, really,” you said. “On Big Brother people watched everything I did, and most of it was stupid or embarrassing and really badly edited. They made me look like a bimbo. I like being a part of something serious now. None of that messing around in front of the camera.”

  “You’ve done that,” Tony said.

  “Exactly.”

  “I mean you’ve done that out here. Today.”

  “Hey, come on.”

  Eddie and Tony laughed.

  “Seriously, they made me look like an idiot.”

  “I thought you looked pretty good,” Eddie said.

  Tony nodded. “The Jacuzzi,” he muttered, but you heard him. You were meant to.

  “That was part of a stupid game thing, and we were all drunk.”

  “We’re all drunk,” Eddie pointed out, though I don’t think he was. Not at all.

  “Yeah,” said Tony, “So let’s play a ‘stupid game thing,’” He spun the empty mampoer bottle. A teenage game. A Big Brother game for no one to see but me.

  I looked out into the darkness for the dogs. There was nothing at first. A turn of the camera, though, and I had them on the monitor. Two of them, maybe three, standing with their mouths open, panting despite the cool night air. Their eyes flashed from empty black to bright green when I moved the camera over them.

  “We can’t play that,” you said, reaching to stop the bottle. “I’m the only girl.”

  “I know.” Tony moved the bottle away and span it again. “This is just for deciding who’s first.”

  You laughed. It sounded false to me, but to the others I don’t think it made any difference.

  You stood. “Right, that’s it. Time for bed.”

  “See,” said Eddie, “she gets it.”

  “Sorry, I’ve been fucked enough by a film crew already. Good night, boys.”

  On the screen the dogs were pacing. Agitated. There were lots of them now. Some of them growled. You looked around and I wondered if you’d heard them too but then, “Whoops,” said Eddie as if you’d stumbled when really he’d pulled you down to the ground, into his lap. Maybe it was meant to be playful at first, I don’t know, but then he gave you that crude grope—“Like that?”—and you clearly didn’t; shoving him away should have been answer enough, never mind the way you spat his name. But like I said, Eddie never asked. Maybe he was telling you to like it. Maybe he just meant he did.

  “Of course,” Tony said, “It’s only natural.”

  “Come on, Jenny, nobody’ll know.”

  “No.”

  I heard you from over by the truck so they must have heard you, too. Even when the dogs started yipping and barking I heard you say no, and no, and I heard you say stop.

  But Eddie didn’t stop.

  And afterwards, neither did Tony.

  “Tom? We know you’re in here.”

  I just want you all to leave me alone. So I push my way deeper, groping in the dark, forcing myself into narrow fissures of rock. It’s wet, or cold, or both. I can’t tell.

  “We can wait, Tom. You’ll have to come out eventually.”

  Troglodytes can go months without food. If I go deep enough, maybe I’ll find something hungry enough to end this.

  There are plenty of things in here with me. There’s a baby giraffe. There’s a wildebeest. There’s an elephant, a buffalo, a zebra. You brought them with you, you must have done. Or maybe I did. They glow like stars that aren’t stars, and they thrash and they mewl and they kick, fighting tooth and claw against something unseen. Maybe the darkness. I’ve seen these throes too many times. Heard them, too. Nature sounds wonderful when the sun’s coming up, but it sounds very different in the dark.

  “Tom.”

  Crouching in the darkness, hiding in caves we will never film, I hear the echoes of my name. It bounces my location back to you.

  I imagine you surrounded by those others I’ve seen destroyed. I imagine you leading them, a procession into the dark to find me. A slow and ghostly stampede. I’ll be mauled, gouged, rendered to chunks by tooth and nail and claw, crushed and broken by hooves and jaws. You’re coming for me, and you’re bringing all of them with you.

  Teamwork. It’s the key to successful mammal behaviour.

  What I fear most, though, is that you’ll find me and do nothing. That you’ll just look at me. Record it in your memory and remain unsatisfied.

  Something down here growls. It may have been me.

  I can still hear the smacking sounds of flesh against flesh. I can hear the dogs, howling and barking and rutting in the dark.

  It would have happened whether I’d been there or not.

  There’s nothing I could have done.

  The things I’ve seen, the things I’ve heard. They wear me down, like water on limestone. And they harden me beyond calcite.

  These caves are well named: I have become your echo: “No. No. Please. Don’t.”

  Don’t . . .

  . . . don’t . . .

  . . . don’t.

  “Don’t worry, Tom. Nobody will know.”

  No . . .

  . . . no . . .

  . . . no.

  Rocks scatter under scrambling feet. Yours, mine, theirs. The animals.

  “She’s coming for me.”

  Laughter in the darkness. “I dunno about that.”

  Those sons of bitches.

  “Did you film it, Tom?”

  You know. You must know. I feel for the memory card in my pocket. Is that what you’re after?

  “Something for the DVD extras?”

  Your words, but I’m no longer sure the voices down here have been yours. Maybe you’re pretending to be someone you’re not as well.

  You’re either sp
ots or stripes in this world. Someone said that once. Was it you? Dogs or zebra. Predator or prey. But they get mixed up don’t they? Plus tigers are striped, so that fucks up the analogy. It helps them hide. Helps them blend in.

  But I’m no tiger. I’m a sleeping lion. You’re just trying to get me to move and make a sound. You stir things up, that’s what you do. Something you did, something you said, it stirred something up. In Eddie, in Tony. In all of us. Woke something. A sleeping dog best left lying.

  I am Gomantong Cave. I’m full of shit.

  “It’s just nature, Tom.”

  “Come on, mate.”

  Come on. Mate.

  I hear the dogs in here with me. They howl. And eventually, just as before . . . I’ll join in.

  SHIT HAPPENS

  MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH

  I was pretty drunk or maybe I’d’ve figured out what was happening a lot sooner. It’d been a hell of a day getting to Long Beach from the east coast, though, kicking off with a bleary-eyed hour in an Uber driven by a guy who ranted about politics the entire way, then two flights separated by a hefty layover, because Shannon my PA is obsessed with saving every penny on travel despite—or because—of the fact she’s not going to be the one spending hours wandering an anonymous concourse in the middle of the country, trying and ultimately failing to resist the temptation to kill the time in a bar. Once I’d had a couple/three there it seemed only sensible to keep the buzz going with complementary liquor on the second flight, and so by the time the cab from LAX finally deposited me on the quay beside the boat I was already sailing more than a few sheets close to the wind.

  When I say “boat” I mean “ship.” The company conference this year was on the Queen Mary, historic Art Deco gem of British ocean liners and once host to everyone from Winston Churchill to Liberace, now several decades tethered to the dock in Long Beach and refitted as a hotel. I stood staring up at the epic size of the thing while I snatched a cigarette, and then figured out where the stairs were to get up to the metal walkway that took you aboard. I hadn’t even finished check-in before a guy I know a little from the London office strode up and said everyone was in the bar and it was happy hour for God’s sake so what the hell was I waiting for?