The Best Horror of the Year Volume Eleven

by Ellen Datlow

  “Now, then. First things first,” he said, filling our glasses. “Did you contact the police at all before you came over here? Did you call them?”

  It was a sensible and practical question. I should’ve done that, and felt embarrassed to admit I hadn’t. “No . . . I suppose my first thought was to get somewhere I’d be safe. But we can call them now. We should do that right away!’ I stood up and felt for my phone, but as I pulled it from my pocket Tom said:

  “And what will you tell them? You see, that’s why I asked. What would you say to them or anyone? That the Sleators were fighting with a monster in your cottage? Is that what you’d tell them?”

  I couldn’t grasp what he was saying and went on the defensive, waving my arms about to press my point home.

  “But that’s what it was like! You didn’t see it! You can’t imagine what it was like! I don’t know what it was . . . something sick, some sick, deformed thing.”

  “A goat.”

  I gaped at Tom, feeling totally exasperated. Was he making fun of me? Did he think I’d exaggerated what I’d seen? Was his look of concern the sort he wore professionally to soothe hysterics and madmen and drunks?

  “It wasn’t a goat. It really, really wasn’t a goat.” I said.

  He drew his chair closer to the fireplace, and studied what was left of the logs in the basket grate. Then he turned and spoke.

  “Let me tell you something,” he said. “Around here we have a saying: “Three days to lay a Sleator to rest.” And do you know why? The Sleators, well . . . they don’t . . . die right. Never have. They die twice, you see. What’s buried in the graveyard behind the church isn’t what gets burnt to ash and cast upon the ground in their orchard back along the old track. I can’t change that and nor can they and it’s not for me or anyone else to say as we should. We leave them be and things go on quite well. In a place like this you make allowances; you have to or life becomes unbearable and that’s how it is. It’s just a shame you happened along when one of them decided to pass and got you caught up in something you shouldn’t have been. It’s a pity, that is. It isn’t always like that, but John Sleator was one of the worst of them and was bound to go hard.”

  I studied his face, hoping his solemn expression would suddenly break into laughter, willing him to slap his big hand on the table and shout, “Oh, I had you going there!” But that didn’t happen. He looked entirely, frighteningly, serious as he sat waiting for me to speak.

  “Tom—do you mean it? But how can they die twice? What was that thing? How can they die twice? What was it I saw?’

  “I can’t explain that in any way you’d like to hear or in any way that would do you any good. So I say it was a goat. A goat got loose. That’s what they’d say. And that’s what I’d say to anyone that asked. You being a worried sort of bloke, got confused in the dark. When people from the city come down here, that can happen. They’re just not used to the dark.”

  And he poured us both another brandy and we sat, not speaking, watching the end of the fire, ash falling like paper onto the worn stone of the hearth, the last dying forks of blue-yellow flame.

  MASKS

  PETER SUTTON

  The morning fog soaked him to the core, like always. He had spent too long here and now night touched day. He shivered. The wood-and-bone mask he turned over and over in his hands, made slippery with dew. No one remembered whose idea the masks were. No one wanted to remember. The masks were idealised animals. They had made birds, reptiles, cats. Predators made from flotsam and jetsam, and the bones of unfortunates: animals, and men, washed ashore. He sighed, time to return. He spun the likeness of a hare between his fingers.

  He clambered to his feet and contemplated the sea. The booming rolling breakers, one wall of their prison on the beach, sounded ethereal in the fog. Their constant susurrus accompanied all waking and sleeping hours. He remembered his nightmares, the long tolling of alarm bells, the screams, the battering force of the water.

  The cold wet clothes made him shiver again as the first intimation of the morning sun started to burn off the fog. A fogbow arched over the waves as they smashed into the coast. A dim ship’s outline, ghostly black in the white of the fog, became perceptible. Seabird shapes on all its surfaces shook themselves in preparation. The fog wisped away as if it had never existed. In a short amount of time he wished that the cold had remained: the sun blazed as it rose. Having watched the uncovering of the grave of many of his friends a fierce need to survive gripped him.

  All he could focus on was the wreck—stark against the fathomless sea, covered in guano, nothing more than a nest for birds. Merely one example of the rapine sea’s harsh legacy upon the beach.

  They’d explored many miles in both directions, until the cliffs to the north stopped them and the unknown vastness of desert dunes to the south. Wrecks and bones littered the landscape. Hundreds of years of failed seamanship; death from thirst, from hunger, from worse. Hyenas roamed at night cracking the bones and sucking the marrow from them. Not the first to wash up here; they wouldn’t be the last. The vast salt pan to the east, a featureless plain that stretched for countless miles of waterless waste, their last barrier to escape.

  The sun, the enervating sun—their captor.

  The black, somehow vulpine, seabirds sprang aloft as one, their voices raised like mocking laughter.

  The mask, face up with sightless eyes judging him. He already knew who would celebrate and who would be worried. Shana would have woken by now. The box of masks open, his absence—signs and portents. She’d wait for him to announce it but by the time he returned—his nonappearance, her being alone—would alert some of them. His coming into camp from the direction of the sea, the mask in his hands, the bright red ribbons fluttering in the rising breeze, would be all the signs needed. His reluctant steps brought him closer to the camp.

  As ever, after a still night, after a drowning fog, the sun burned the sand. He steamed in the sunlight. He narrowed his eyes in what had become an instinctive gesture. The sun burnt all and everyone, young and old alike, displayed white crow’s feet from the eternal scrunching. A breeze sprang up that would build throughout the day. The finest particles of sand, ancient ground bones, tiny particles of quartz, mica, feldspar, scoured the camp.

  Driftwood and whalebone huts rose from the sand haphazardly. His path brought him to one slightly larger than most, a little lopsided, once green tarpaulin, much-mended, billowing in the swell of the breeze. It reminded him of the sea; another of their captors. He paused at the entrance. A few men had watched him return to camp. They had planned for fishing, were up early to put it into play. He knew that they’d fail. Like all the others had failed. He turned away from their eyes, sighed deeply, squared his shoulders then swished the material aside and entered his dwelling.

  The contrast between blinding sun and blinding dark confounded his eyes for a few seconds. His partner Shana sat very still by the box of masks, the red velvet bag—a recovery from the wreck that had once held something of monetary worth—a splash of colour upon the grey and white.

  “So soon?” she asked.

  He nodded. The silence stretched. He sighed again. “The children . . .”

  She closed her eyes, turned her head. He yearned to offer comfort but knew she would take none. Their own child a memory sharp and painful; nothing grew here. His hands opened and closed. In two strides he was at the box and let slip the mask he carried which landed with a soft sound onto the piles of its siblings.

  “We have to.”

  Only silence greeted his words. “I’ll let the council know.”

  Today the council, a collection of former ship’s crew and a couple of representatives of its former passengers, met, ostensibly to hear the report from the cliff committee and the fishing committee. But they’d know by now that he’d raise the issue, that a new hunt would be soon. He stalked out of the hut casting a last glance over his shoulder at Shana, sat forlornly. It had to be now. He marched over to where the co
mmittee, former ship’s officers, squatted talking about lost rope, lack of projectile weapons to reach the birds, the hyenas and other such trivia.

  “It’s time for another hunt,” he said dropping the words into the uncomfortable silence. He watched their reaction: sideways glances, a smirk from the purser swiftly hidden, a deckhand closing his eyes, a woman’s hitched breathing and blush. No one argued; the necessity was beyond doubt—they needed to eat. “We must think of the children,” he said.

  The nurse spoke: “About the children. The baby is likely permanently blind . . .” When they’d first arrived, before they’d created shelters, before squinting became second nature, many had suffered eye complaints. The baby had been exposed, helpless. Its mother was one of those that had been buried shortly after they arrived. She’d survived to see her baby to the beach then her heart had given out. The swim had tested each of them to their limits.

  He thought about Shana and their lost child. “Do what you can.”

  The nurse looked as if she might say more but then gave a swift shallow nod.

  The driftwood burned with an eerie green flame that cast a lambent glow upon the castaways gathered like penitents around the box of masks. He lifted the velvet bag and shook it, the clack of disks of bone sounded loud in the hushed assembly. Eager hands plunged towards the bag. He watched with some detachment. Different people had different strategies. If you chose early the odds were in your favour of choosing a white bone disk rather than the blackened one. Others hung back, wanting to defer the knowledge of which they’d be until the very last minute, hoping that someone would pull the fire-blackened disk before they had to make a choice.

  Those that pulled from the bag first trooped across to where Shana handed out the masks.

  “No! No-no-no.” The man who’d pulled the black disk stared at it in horror. The grabbing hands disappeared and people, without glancing at the prey, clamoured for the rest of the masks. Unlike some of the others the man, one of the passengers, didn’t beg. He skipped directly to running. One by one the people putting on the masks changed—their stances, the way they moved, became baser, regressed. Arms dangled, backs slouched, hunched. Figures cavorted around the campfires. A bacchanalian vortex ready to explode into the hunt, awaiting his signal.

  He turned the mask over in his hands and glanced at Shana. He wondered if people just used the masks as an excuse, a communal shucking of responsibility to be more than animal; a shared hallucination of devolution. Some of them expressed excesses of guilt afterwards, the taste still in their mouths, dirty fingernails. But the masks gave them a convenient willed illusion. He could never bring himself to share in that illusion. He had to retain more control than the rank and file. He retained the “honour” to give the signal.

  The fire leapt as a log burnt through and crashed into pieces spitting sparks high. He lifted the bone whistle to his mouth and gave three sharp blasts. With a great roar the congregation sped off in pursuit of its prey. He ran to catch up.

  As they rushed across the sand the sudden tolling of a great bell rang out. Pursued and pursuer froze. The tones came from the sea. An alarm. Without pausing to take off their masks the crowd moved as one towards the waves. Still shambling and shuffling like degenerates.

  He lifted his mask so it rode on his head like a hat. He wondered, was it a rescue, a summons? He sprinted past the horde of animal-headed figures. But once he got to the ocean he could see a ship in trouble. Some way off but clearly struggling. Its lights swung crazily and the bell tolled deep, a sound he remembered from his nightmares. The treacherous coast boasted swift currents and riptides, hidden sandbanks and rocks, deep fogs. It was too easy to become lost and run aground. That looked to be the problem. The sea smashed the ship against a hidden obstacle like a thrush knocking a snail against a stone again and again with a deep thumping crack.

  Then vague shouts and cries split the night air in the distance. The gloom of the evening obscured events, with just the light of a half-moon granting half-glimpses. The sound of lifeboats being put to sea was unmistakable though. He strained his eyes searching the darkness; what was happening?

  He remembered their own efforts at rowing to shore. The lifeboat turned into a plaything of the ocean, smashed against the sea floor within the monumental and insurmountable breakers. Each of the boats having to contend with walls of water. Many didn’t make it. Some did but lay like shattered dolls on the beach afterwards, their brains shaken, their limbs broken, ruined.

  He spotted the prey hanging some distance away, observing the spectacle of another wreck in progress, unable to stay away.

  He watched the masked flock strung out across the beach, waiting expectantly. He swallowed and tasted salt; the spindrift a fine spray even so far from the waves. The long black birds swirled above the new ship, their squawks mixing with the screeches of the men and women in torment upon the sea.

  The lifeboat approached, figures gesticulated, called out. The gathering on the beach had been spotted. Surely the people in the boat thought rescuers stood ready. They expected help. The boat reached the swell, then climbed atop a wave, then spun side-on and flipped. He could clearly see the round holes of mouths in pale faces as the boat’s complement screamed into the breaking waves. If anyone had watched when his ship had been wrecked they would have seen the same thing. The boat’s human cargo was regurgitated at random, some swallowed by the sea, some never to be seen again—just as some of his ship’s crew and passengers had disappeared. Some would be washed up on the beach, days later.

  He watched the breakers carefully and the first body was thrown clear to land unmoving. The collected crowd took a step closer. Masked figures squatted to haunches like cheetahs ready to sprint. The waves spat forth another body, some crawled, some dragged by shipmates. He pulled the mask back over his face. The cries of the newly castaway became nonsensical. He raised the whistle to his mouth and gave three sharp blasts. With a howl the pack surged forward. Fresh screams rent the night air.

  THE DONNER PARTY

  DALE BAILEY

  Lady Donner was in ascendance the first time Mrs. Breen tasted human flesh. For more years than anyone cared to count, Lady Donner had ruled the London Season like a queen. Indeed, some said that she stood second only to Victoria herself when it came to making (or breaking) someone’s place in Society—a sentiment sovereign in Mrs. Breen’s mind as her footman handed her down from the carriage into the gathering London twilight, where she took Mr. Breen’s arm.

  “There is no reason to be apprehensive, Alice,” he had told her in their last fleeting moment of privacy, during the drive to Lady Donner’s home in Park Lane, and she had felt then, as she frequently did, the breadth of his age and experience when measured against her youth. Though they shared a child—two-year-old Sophie, not the heir they had been hoping for—Mr. Breen often seemed more like a father than her husband, and his paternal assurances did not dull the edge of her anxiety. To receive a dinner invitation from such a luminary as Lady Donner was surprising under any circumstances. To receive a First Feast invitation was shocking. So Mrs. Breen was apprehensive—apprehensive as they were admitted into the grand foyer, apprehensive as they were announced into the drawing room, apprehensive most of all as Lady Donner, stout and unhandsome in her late middle age, swept down upon them in a cloud of taffeta and perfume.

  “I am pleased to make your acquaintance at last, Mrs. Breen,” Lady Donner said, taking her hand. “I have heard so much of you.”

  “The honor is mine,” Mrs. Breen said, smiling.

  But Lady Donner had already turned her attention to Mr. Breen. “She is lovely, Walter,” she was saying, “a rare beauty indeed. Radiant.” Lady Donner squeezed Mrs. Breen’s hand. “You are radiant, darling. Really.”

  And then—it was so elegantly done that Mrs. Breen afterward wasn’t quite certain how it had been done—Lady Donner divested her of her husband, leaving her respite to take in the room: the low fire burning in the grate and the lights o
f the chandelier, flickering like diamonds, and the ladies in their bright dresses, glittering like visitants from Faery that might any moment erupt into flight. Scant years ago, in the era of genteel penury from which Mr. Breen had rescued her, Mrs. Breen had watched such ethereal creatures promenade along Rotten Row, scarcely imagining that she would someday take her place among them. Now that she had, she felt like an impostor, wary of exposure and suddenly dowdy in a dress that had looked little short of divine when her dressmaker first unveiled it.

  Such were her thoughts when Lady Donner returned, drawing from the company an elderly gentleman, palsied and stooped: Mrs. Breen’s escort to table, Mr. Cavendish, one of the lesser great. He had known Mr. Breen for decades, he confided as they went down to dinner, enquiring afterward about her own family.

  Mrs. Breen, who had no family left, allowed—reluctantly—that her father had been a Munby.

  “Munby,” Mr. Cavendish said as they took their seats. “I do not know any Munbys.”

  “We are of no great distinction, I fear,” Mrs. Breen conceded.

  Mr. Cavendish seemed not to hear her. His gaze was distant. “Now, when I was a young man, there was a Munby out of—”

  Coketown, she thought he was going to say, but Mr. Cavendish chuckled abruptly and came back to her. He touched her hand. “But that was very long ago, I fear, in the age of the Megalosaurus.”

  Then the footman arrived with the wine and Mr. Cavendish became convivial, as a man who has caught himself on the verge of indecorum and stepped back from the precipice. He shared a self-deprecating anecdote of his youth—something about a revolver and a racehorse—and spoke warmly of his grandson at Oxford, which led to a brief exchange regarding Sophie (skirting the difficult issue of an heir). Then his voice was subsumed into the general colloquy at the table, sonorous as the wash of a distant sea. Mrs. Breen contributed little to this conversation and would later remember less of it.