The Best Horror of the Year Volume Eleven

by Ellen Datlow

  “Bea?” I’m not sure how many times I called my daughter’s name, but I remember screaming, remember shaking her until it was her again, her voice crying the same way she had when she was much, much younger, and there was Nathan beside me, his voice filled with authority as he asked what was happening.

  I forced my hands to be still. There was nothing wrong. Nothing. But then Andrew told me about the bottle. Golden Sun. I should have paid attention.

  Coincidence, I thought, but that is not the way of the world. There are no coincidences.

  “It’s from my song,” Bea said, and I forced myself to believe her. It was just a song. Just a song.

  “You better tell me you three didn’t drink out of it,” Nathan said, but I already knew Cat and Andrew would have done no such thing. It was only Bea I was worried about. Only Bea who would have tried to drink her Golden Sun.

  “No way. It was full of yucky water. We threw it away,” Andrew said, and I wanted to grasp his shoulders and squeeze and ask if he was sure, but I kept my hands balled into fists at my sides.

  It was Cat who told me. Cat who told me that Bea had tried to drink from the bottle. I glanced at Nathan, but he looked unconcerned, as if this was just another scene, just another ridiculous moment in a long string of moments that added up to being a parent.

  Gonna come for me.

  Nathan asked me why I’d been screaming, but I cannot remember what I told him. Some bullshit answer that would make sense. It was just a jingle. Just a memory. None of it was connected.

  There was dinner where the kids stuffed themselves to the point of gluttony. I poked at my salad and listened as they circled about the things they had come to define themselves by.

  “The old man was . . . .” Cat said, and Nathan looked up.

  “What old man?” he said, and Bea shot a glance at her big sister.

  “Shut up,” Bea said, and Andrew giggled.

  “What old man?” Nathan said again. Cat shrugged and popped another shrimp in her mouth.

  “Just some old dude. He gave us some bread. To feed the seagulls. No big deal,” Cat said, and Nathan let it drop.

  When I went in one last time to kiss the kids goodnight, Bea was already asleep, her arm thrown over her face, and her mouth slightly open. I should have sat with her a moment longer, but even now, I wonder if this is a false memory. Something my brain invented to keep me from pain.

  Perhaps she was gone even then, and I just don’t remember.

  Sometimes, I think if I’d held her to me, if I had absorbed her as a part of myself, I would still have her, and this hole tearing through the very center of me would stitch itself up.

  I like to imagine this is how I can forgive myself, but then I think of that lump of blankets riding in the back of the van, and I know there is no forgiveness at the end of everything that has happened.

  Nathan says he remembers Bea on that last morning. Galoshes. She was wearing her galoshes, but what I don’t tell Nathan is that Bea didn’t bring her galoshes.

  At least, I don’t think she did.

  That morning, all I could think of was Bea’s song. I tripped through the words over and over until all that was left in my mind was a kind of madness, and so we loaded our bags into the car, the kids subdued and quiet, and there was that lump of blankets in the back I told myself was Bea, but I do not remember her on that morning.

  Nathan hummed the tune for Bea’s song for a bit, and I wanted to scream at him, to tell him to stop, but I was on edge and overreacting. I counted my breaths and watched the sky ahead of us and told myself it would all be fine once we got home. We just had to get home. When I drifted off, the sleep was fitful, and I woke feeling disoriented.

  We stopped for gas. I got out and stretched, my back compressed and my legs jumpy. Cat and Andrew may have gotten out as well. I don’t remember. Everything was colored with the air of normalcy. The five of us lethargic, the apathy of our normal lives descending like a cloud. We did not think to look beyond the things in front of us.

  And then she was gone.

  Cat and Andrew turn pale faces on the world, and their cheeks are salt-stained, but at night, I can hear them humming, can catch the edges of Bea’s song, and I know my children are keeping something from me.

  Nathan says there is no such thing as Golden Sun. He’s scoured the edges of the internet, hunting for the jingle or a photo of the bottle I saw on that last day, but there’s nothing to find.

  Some nights, I think I can hear Bea moving through the dark, think I can hear her just outside our door, her hand on the knob, and she is singing softly. So quietly it’s almost not a voice at all but a breath, and I cannot bring myself to get up, to open the door to whatever waits on the other side.

  Nathan thinks I blame him, but I can’t bring myself to tell him of the girl I knew when I was young. I can’t bring myself to tell him how she disappeared.

  Because I fear that no amount of trying to piece together how and where our little girl went is going to bring her back.

  I whisper the song to myself now. Sing it when there’s no one else around. Perhaps, if I sing it enough, Bea will come back. Perhaps she will hear my voice in whatever spot she’s come to inhabit.

  I pretend to sleep, and when I do, there are the dreams. Bea’s body in my arms as I walk into the ocean, the cool water closing over our skin until it covers our mouths, our noses, and then we are choking as salt water fills our lungs.

  But there is no sand, no water where we live.

  No way to find the road back.

  CAT

  I told my parents the man on the beach with the bread was old, but he wasn’t. Not all the time anyway. Maybe it was the way the sun slanted through the air, cutting gold into his cheeks and pillowing clouds inside his eyes, but sometimes he looked younger than Mom and Dad. Sometimes he even looked like a boy, but that can’t be right. I’m not even sure how I know because when I try to remember his face it’s fuzzy. Either there’s a part of me that can’t remember or part of me that won’t.

  And everyone wants me to. Tell us what you remember, they say. Tell us. When’s the last time you saw your sister? When’s the last time you saw Bea? They think they’re asking the same question, but they aren’t.

  The man said to tell our parents he gave us bread for the seagulls, and even now my fingers remember the way the stale crusts curved against my palm and shed hard little dandruff bits. I remember the gulls swooping wide-winged over the water, greedy mouths open and demanding. But these memories are lies. There was no bread, there were no gulls, there was only the warmth of the sand on my soles and between my toes and his voice his voice his voice. The song he sang got in my head and wrapped around my thoughts, taffy thick and sticky, but I saw his eyes when they looked at Bea. How the clouds gathered there, growing darker as they gained strength. I think he would’ve taken any of us—where and why I can’t answer because I don’t know and that’s the truth, I swear it—but she’s the one he wanted all along.

  I tried, though. I tried to make him look at me instead. I arched my back and cocked my hip to the side and looked through my eyelashes, the way Bells, my best friend, does. When she does it, heat blooms in men’s faces and they shift from foot to foot and look away fast. And the thing is, I’m not flat-chested or skinny or still “growing into my face” the way Sasha is. Mom’s words, not mine. We’re mostly the same, Bells and me, but when she does the look, there’s something else, something I’m missing. I call it her Isabella pouty lip gloss face, even though she’s not always wearing gloss when she makes it. I keep practicing in the mirror at home, though, and I think I’m close. I want to be close. You can’t lose something before you ever have it, can you?

  My dad always seems upset that I’m growing up. When he looks at me, it feels like he’s searching for the daughter he knew, not the one who’s becoming someone else. Maybe the new me isn’t good enough. Isabella pouty lip gloss face or not, I definitely wasn’t good enough for the not-old man. When
he looked at me, all he saw was who I wasn’t. He looked at Andy the same way, but it’s different. It’s always different for little kids and boys.

  I don’t understand why my parents don’t remember the man. When he first walked over to us, he waved to them and they waved right back. Both of them. He even told Bea, Andy, and me to turn back and wave so Mom and Dad would know we were fine. “We don’t want them to get worried,” he said, and it was before the song—I’m sure of it—but his voice was still music. We all put on parade-march smiles and waved, and I swear that memory isn’t a bread and gull fake because it feels too bright. So why don’t my parents remember him? It must be for the same reason I can’t picture his face. He doesn’t want us to.

  Part of this is Bells’ fault. If she hadn’t texted me that she was hanging out with Sasha—and we agreed we weren’t going to until she apologized to both of us for being such a bitch—I wouldn’t have been mad. I wouldn’t have followed Bea and Andy down the beach. And I really wasn’t following them, just heading in the same direction. The last thing I wanted to do was spend time with Annoying Sibling 1 and Annoying Sibling 2, but of course the minute I got close they both came running, even though I know my face said back off.

  Then the man was there. I knew something was wrong when he started singing because that stupid song was too big and even when his mouth wasn’t singing it, the words were hanging over us, as heavy as the salt air. But even though my head knew, my feet wouldn’t move. I stayed where I was, a mannequin caught in his spotlight.

  He put that song inside us. He told us to find the sun. He said, “If you find it, you’ll shine bright forever.”

  “How do you find it?” Bea said.

  He said something else, but instead of hearing it, I was underwater and waves were crashing over me. Everything went blurry; my body was too warm and then too cold. And I heard his song again, but I didn’t want a sun to come for me or anyone else. Then I didn’t want anything or hear anything or feel anything. The world snapped back into focus and I crossed my arms over my chest, cheeks burning, and not from the sun.

  “Bread and gulls,” the now-old man said, and the song was gone, replaced with a whip. “That’s what you’ll tell your parents. Bread and gulls and nothing more.”

  When he walked away, I looked at Andy and Bea but they were watching him go, their faces circus bright. “We should tell Mom and Dad,” I said.

  “Tell them what?” Bea said, her eyes hard and shiny.

  My spine went cold, and I couldn’t think of anything to say so I brushed imaginary crumbs from my hands.

  I tried to forget about the man, the song, about everything. I got into another fight with Bells about Sasha, and then I just didn’t care so I apologized and she seemed okay with that. I had to be careful about texting, though, because if I did it too much, Mom would glare at me sideways, like I was doing something completely horrible. But it was my vacation too; if I wanted to text 24/7, shouldn’t I be allowed to?

  Mostly I was waiting for it to all be over. I wanted to be home where the creepiest thing around was old Mrs. Edwards from down the street with her clicking false teeth and her drawn-on eyebrows. But I knew if I said anything to my parents about wanting to go home, they’d be pissed.

  When Bea started singing, I even tried to ignore it. She was always singing something—songs from the radio, TV themes, made up stuff, whatever. It didn’t mean anything weird. It didn’t mean anything at all. But it wasn’t just the words, it was the way she sang it, low and serious.

  Golden sun gonna come for me, golden sun gonna come for you.

  She sounded like one of those religious people you see on TV, crying mascara tears and pretending to be good so people will send more money.

  We were on the beach, Mom reading, Dad sleeping—I think—Andy and Bea building a castle. I rolled over and glared at Bea. “Shut up.”

  “Come to the dune with us,” she said.

  “No.”

  “I’ll stop singing,” she said, too low for anyone but me to hear. “Pinkie swear?”

  She twined her pinkie with mine, and I wanted to believe her so I did. Andy and Bea got to the dune first, ran up and flopped over, rolling down into the grass below. No one was watching, so I did it, too. After a while, Andy started digging in the grass, flinging sand and rocks and pebbles all over the place.

  Halfway back down the dune, Bea got super still.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “The sun,” she said, her voice watery and goosebumps danced on my skin. “It’s not his to find.”

  She moved fast, making it to the bottom as soon as Andy said, “Hey, look what I found!”

  I snatched it from his hand, ignoring his whining pleas to give it back. It was a green glass bottle with Golden Sun written on the label. The bottle was uncapped and half full of murky liquid. It smelled wet and musty, the way our grandparents’ basement smelled after a big storm. It was awful, but I took another sniff and it wasn’t. It was something honey sweet and the green glass was glowing lightning bug—bright and the bottle grew warm in my hand and—

  Golden sun gonna come for me, golden sun gonna come for you.

  —I lifted it to my lips without thinking.

  But I didn’t drink it. I swear I didn’t. The smell turned wrong again and I shoved it away from my face, stomach all knotty the way it is before you throw up. Bea grabbed the bottle from me with both hands, and I couldn’t stop her. I couldn’t I couldn’t I couldn’t.

  I told Mom she tried to drink from the bottle, but it was another lie. She didn’t just try. She drank it because she wanted to find the sun.

  Andy smacked it out of her hand, and the glass shattered into a hundred glittering pieces, but it was too late.

  It was already too late even before that.

  Bea started crying, but it wasn’t her normal crying, not even her I’m really hurt cry. It was a cry a baby would make, her eyes all wet and glassy, and Andy and I just stared at her. She started running to our parents so we followed her. A few minutes later, Mom was shouting. She dropped to her knees in front of Bea and started shaking her by the shoulders, asking her what was wrong, what happened. My dad’s eyes were still puffy and half-asleep, and he looked from Mom to me and back again, yelling at her, yelling at me and Andy, asking what was going on.

  “Nothing,” I said, scrunched my toes through the warm sand down to the cool beneath. Other than Bea and Mom freaking out, I didn’t say.

  He didn’t believe it. I could see it in his face.

  “Why is your sister crying?” Mom directed the question to me and with it, she gave me The Look—the one that says no phone, no Internet, no hanging out with Bells—so I told her how we were by the dune and Andy found the bottle buried in the sand. How Bea got mad when Andy broke it.

  “Did you drink it?” she asked, and her eyes were too big as she looked back and forth at me and Andy. “Did any of you drink it?”

  Andy pulled a face. “No, there was gross water inside, not soda.”

  I shook my head, and Bea kept wailing so Mom took that for an answer, too. Dad was wide awake now, but he looked confused. And I was thinking of the way those pieces of broken glass caught and held the light, and how I wanted to fall inside and keep falling, even though I knew they weren’t shining for me.

  You can fall into the sun. You can fall a long, long time. I know that doesn’t make sense, but it’s how I felt then, how I feel now. We’ve all been falling since that day. Just in different ways.

  The night before we left, we went to dinner at this seafood place. We got steamed shrimp and I kept eating and eating, even after my stomach hurt. It was like if I was eating, then everything was okay, and it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all. I couldn’t look at Bea because when I did I imagined the Golden Sun on her lips and tongue, all that sweetness, all that warmth. It was wrong, I knew. It was a lie same as the man’s old face, and I didn’t really want it, but I didn’t want her to have it either.

  A
ndy took a roll from the plastic basket in the center of the table and started picking pieces from the crust. He blinked at me, his eyes suddenly teary. “The bread wasn’t real.”

  “But the old man was,” I said, the words meant for him alone.

  I guess I wasn’t quiet enough because Dad said, “What old man?” His voice was sharp, his eyes sharper still. I waited until he asked a second time before I told him it was just an old guy who gave us bread to feed the seagulls. Not a big deal. I held my breath, waiting for Andy to say something about the bread again, but he didn’t.

  The next morning, Dad woke us up early, telling us to get a move on, he wanted to be on the road by nine so we’d miss the traffic. I usually hated that part, but I helped Mom pack without complaining once.

  Bea got in the back of the van, the way back. I remember that. She stretched out across the whole seat, holding Chester, her old stuffed bear, and pulled the blanket up to her chin.

  Except she wasn’t Bea.

  I’m not sure when it happened or how it happened. She was Bea when we met the man on the beach, she was Bea when we found the bottle, she was Bea when she drank the Golden Sun, but she wasn’t the girl in the van. If they write a book about us or make a movie, that’s what they can call it—The Girl in the Van. Everyone will buy it if it has girl in the title.

  I don’t even remember if she was Bea at the restaurant. I just remember eating too much shrimp, Andy’s comment, and Dad’s suspicion.

  I only know that my sister’s gone, and she was gone before we got in the van. Whoever—whatever—was in the van with us was only there so no one would be suspicious until we were too far away to change things.

  If anything could’ve been changed anyway.

  Now, Mom is hardly sleeping and sometimes I hear her walking around the house at night. She’s looking for Bea, but she’ll never find her here. Wouldn’t matter if she walked a dozen steps or a thousand miles, she won’t find her at all.

  I asked Andy last night if he was okay, and he said yeah, but his eyes went far away. “He won’t come for us,” I said, clamping a hand over my mouth as soon as the last syllable left.