The Best Horror of the Year Volume Eleven

by Ellen Datlow

  “Actually, I’m pretty sure it isn’t.”

  “It’s the thumb which separates man from the animals,” said Tuck. “The opposable digit, which allows us to wield tools, to make something better of ourselves. Without our thumbs we would be nothing. The thumb is the greatest gift God gave us. And just because he loves us so, he gave us a second one, on the other hand, as a spare!”

  “I don’t really believe in God.”

  “I can see you’re not a man who believes in things.” He smiled at me, to show he wasn’t blaming me for this—if anything, he pitied me. “You’re an individual, yes? But what gives you the key to your individuality? The thumb. You know your fingerprints are unique. And the thumbprint is that uniqueness writ large. Thicker and wider and prouder than any mere finger.” He leaned into me, and I wanted to back away, but I didn’t dare somehow, and his voice was now so calm and gentle. “Do you know why babies like to suck their thumbs?”

  “Um. To feel secure?”

  “Because they know. Because at the very core of us, before civilization moulds us and corrupts us, when we’re still pure and newly born, we know. The thumb is sacred. They tuck it away into their mouths to mother it, to comfort it and keep it safe. Why else would you think God designed the tongue so that it would fit so exactly around it?”

  I looked down at my thumb. I didn’t want to. I felt compelled to.

  “When did you last suck your thumb?” J. C. Tuck asked me.

  “I don’t know.”

  “So long ago,” whispered Tuck. “A time of comfort, so far away.” And I don’t know why, but I felt my eyes begin to prick with tears. “It’s all right,” said Tuck. “Bring your thumb home. Suck your thumb for me now.”

  I put my thumb in my mouth. It didn’t feel especially comfortable, it certainly didn’t feel like it had been brought home. My tongue lolled around the intruder awkwardly, it wasn’t really sure what to do with it.

  “Not like that,” said Tuck. “Let me show you.”

  And his gloved hand reached for mine, he drew it away from my lips and towards his. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t bite.” And he opened his mouth, and pulled my thumb inside.

  The first thing I noticed was how warm his mouth was, warm like a bed on a frosty morning, warm that was cosy and nice. And it was such a big mouth—mine had been all teeth and tongue, and half-chewed food most probably, there was barely room for my thumb at all—but in Tuck’s mouth the thumb could roam wide and free, the plains were vast and empty and my thumb for the taking. Tuck clamped my thumb gently to his soft palate with his tongue. The soft palate yielded like a sponge, the tongue was firm and it knew its business and it brooked no argument, it kept me pressed there and then it stroked me—it didn’t lick, it was nothing so uncouth, it flexed and flexed again, it seemed to pulsate.

  And then, so soon, it was over. He pulled me out of his mouth, his lips pressed hard so they slid against my skin.

  “Was that all right?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. “And now then. Maybe you would do a little something for me.” He began to tug off his glove.

  “You want me to suck your thumb?” I asked.

  “No, as I say, my tastes have changed.” And he lifted up his hand.

  There, on the end, was now just a stump. It cut off abruptly above the knuckle. There were tooth marks, some fresh too, there were still traces of blood—I saw little specks of bone.

  “I like to chew,” he said.

  And he brought it up to my face, that stub of raw meat, and I wasn’t going to open my mouth, I wasn’t, but I had to breathe, and I felt my lips part. “Share the bounty.”

  “Let him go,” said my father.

  J. C. Tuck didn’t take his eyes off me for a moment, his face now so close to me I could taste that warm breath once more. The warmth that was so cosy. “Get back inside,” he said genially enough. “You’ll get wet.” And it was only then I realised that it was now raining very hard indeed.

  “Let him go.” Father sounded frightened, he sounded as if he would run away at any second. “He’s my son. I brought him here to know me better. To understand. I . . .” I thought he had stopped, so did Tuck, who gave his attention back to me.

  “He’s my son,” said my father one last time.

  Tuck didn’t move for a moment. Then he looked down at the ground, and he stepped back from me. “Then go home,” he said softly. “Both of you.” And he went indoors.

  Father and I held back in the garden for a minute, we didn’t dare follow. I went to my father and I smiled. He smiled back, weakly. There was a line of guacamole on his chin.

  It was raining heavily as we walked to the tube station, but Father was in no hurry, and I didn’t feel I could rush him. I took his hand. He held on to me, but there was no grip to it. I looked down at him, and thought once more how old he was.

  “What am I going to do now?” he said at last.

  “There’s still cricket,” I said. “There’s still Wodehouse.”

  We reached the station. And he looked so sad, and I opened my arms wide for him, and took him in a hug. I kissed him. I kissed him on the top of the head, and then I kissed him on the cheek.

  “I’ll call you,” I said.

  He nodded, and he turned, and he went.

  When I got back home, Peggy was watching television. I settled down on the sofa next to her. When the commercials came on, she spoke to me. “Your Dad all right?”

  “I think so.”

  “Did you have steak?”

  I realised I hadn’t eaten all evening. I wasn’t hungry. “Yes,” I said.

  We watched the programme together. And I suddenly felt a rage inside me, that this was what our lives had become, that the love I knew we still had for each other had become so passionless. There was a time we could barely keep our hands to ourselves, and now—this, just this. And I wasn’t sure whether the rage was at her, or at myself. And then it passed.

  I took her hand. She held on to it happily enough.

  A few minutes later, I raised her hand to my lips. She let me do so. It was a dead weight. It had no will of its own. I kissed it gently. I put the hand back.

  I waited until the commercial break. And then, I raised her hand to my lips again. But this time I took her thumb inside my mouth. And it filled my mouth. I had never realised how large my wife’s thumb was.

  At last I released her. And I lowered her hand gently back to her side. She didn’t say a word, she seemed a world away, a world of washing powder and furniture discount sales.

  The programme ended. “Shall we watch another?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “Let’s go to bed.” So we did.

  YOU ARE RELEASED

  JOE HILL

  GREGG HOLDER IN BUSINESS

  Holder is on his third Scotch and playing it cool about the famous woman sitting next to him when all the TVs in the cabin go black and a message in white block text appears on the screens. AN ANNOUNCEMENT IS IN PROGRESS.

  Static hisses from the public address system. The pilot has a young voice, the voice of an uncertain teenager addressing a crowd at a funeral.

  “Folks, this is Captain Waters. I’ve had a message from our team on the ground, and after thinking it over, it seems proper to share it with you. There’s been an incident at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam and—”

  The PA cuts out. There is a long, suspenseful silence.

  “—I am told,” Waters continues abruptly, “that U.S. Strategic Command is no longer in contact with our forces there or with the regional governor’s office. There are reports from off-shore that—that there was a flash. Some kind of flash.”

  Holder unconsciously presses himself back into his seat, as if in response to a jolt of turbulence. What the hell does that mean, there was a flash? Flash of what? So many things can flash in this world. A girl can flash a bit of leg. A high roller can flash his money. Lightning flashes. Your whole life can flash b
efore your eyes. Can Guam flash? An entire island?

  “Just say if they were nuked, please,” murmurs the famous woman on his left in that well-bred, moneyed, honeyed voice of hers.

  Captain Waters continues, “I’m sorry I don’t know more and that what I do know is so . . .” His voice trails off again.

  “Appalling?” the famous woman suggests. “Disheartening? Dismaying? Shattering?”

  “Worrisome,” Waters finishes.

  “Fine,” the famous woman says, with a certain dissatisfaction.

  “That’s all I know right now,” Waters says. “We’ll share more information with you as it comes in. At this time we’re cruising at thirty-seven thousand feet and we’re about halfway through your flight. We should arrive in Boston a little ahead of schedule.”

  There’s a scraping sound and a sharp click and the monitors start playing films again. About half the people in business class are watching the same superhero movie, Captain America throwing his shield like a steel-edged Frisbee, cutting down grotesques that look like they just crawled out from under the bed.

  A black girl of about nine or ten sits across the aisle from Holder. She looks at her mother and says, in a voice that carries, “Where is Guam, precisely?” Her use of the word “precisely” tickles Holder, it’s so teacherly and unchildlike.

  The girl’s mother says, “I don’t know, sweetie. I think it’s near Hawaii.” She isn’t looking at her daughter. She’s glancing this way and that with a bewildered expression, as if reading an invisible text for instructions. How to discuss a nuclear exchange with your child.

  “It’s closer to Taiwan,” Holder says, leaning across the aisle to address the child.

  “Just south of Korea,” adds the famous woman.

  “I wonder how many people live there,” Holder says.

  The celebrity arches an eyebrow. “You mean as of this moment? Based on the report we just heard, I should think very few.”

  ARNOLD FIDELMAN IN COACH

  The violinist Fidelman has an idea the very pretty, very sick-looking teenage girl sitting next to him is Korean. Every time she slips her headphones off—to speak to a flight attendant, or to listen to the recent announcement—he’s heard what sounds like K-Pop coming from her Samsung. Fidelman himself was in love with a Korean for several years, a man ten years his junior, who loved comic books and played a brilliant if brittle viol, and who killed himself by stepping in front of a Red Line train. His name was So as in “so it goes,” or “so there we are” or “little Miss So-and-So” or “so what do I do now?” So’s breath was always sweet, like almond milk, and his eyes were always shy, and it embarrassed him to be happy. Fidelman always thought So was happy, right up to the day he leapt like a ballet dancer into the path of a 52-ton engine.

  Fidelman wants to offer the girl comfort and at the same time doesn’t want to intrude on her anxiety. He mentally wrestles with what to say, if anything, and finally nudges her gently. When she pops out her earbuds, he says, “Do you need something to drink? I’ve got half a can of Coke that I haven’t touched. It isn’t germy, I’ve been drinking from the glass.”

  She shows him a small, frightened smile. “Thank you. My insides are all knotted up.”

  She takes the can and has a swallow.

  “If your stomach is upset, the fizz will help,” he says. “I’ve always said that on my deathbed, the last thing I want to taste before I leave this world is a cold Coca-Cola.” Fidelman has said this exact thing to others, many times before, but as soon as it’s out of his mouth, he wishes he could have it back. Under the circumstances, it strikes him as a rather infelicitous sentiment.

  “I’ve got family there,” she says.

  “In Guam?”

  “In Korea,” she says and shows him the nervous smile again. The pilot never said anything about Korea in his announcement, but anyone who’s watched CNN in the last three weeks knows that’s what this is about.

  “Which Korea?” says the big man on the other side of the aisle. “The good one or the bad one?”

  The big man wears an offensively red turtleneck that brings out the color in his honeydew melon of a face. He’s so large, he overspills his seat. The woman sitting next to him—a small, black-haired lady with the high-strung intensity of an overbred greyhound—has been crowded close to the window. There’s an enamel American flag pin in the lapel of his suit coat. Fidelman already knows they could never be friends.

  The girl gives the big man a startled glance and smooths her dress over her thighs. “South Korea,” she says, declining to play his game of good versus bad. “My brother just got married in Jeju. I’m on my way back to school.”

  “Where’s school?” Fidelman asks.

  “MIT.”

  “I’m surprised you could get in,” says the big man. “They’ve got to draft a certain number of unqualified inner-city kids to meet their quota. That means a lot less space for people like you.”

  “People like what?” Fidelman asks, enunciating slowly and deliberately. People. Like. What? Nearly fifty years of being gay has taught Fidelman that it is a mistake to let certain statements pass unchallenged.

  The big man is unashamed. “People who are qualified. People who earned it. People who can do the arithmetic. There’s a lot more to math than counting out change when someone buys a dime bag. A lot of the model immigrant communities have suffered because of quotas. The Orientals especially.”

  Fidelman laughs—sharp, strained, disbelieving laughter. But the MIT girl closes her eyes and is still and Fidelman opens his mouth to tell the big son-of-a-bitch off and then shuts it again. It would be unkind to the girl to make a scene.

  “It’s Guam, not Seoul,” Fidelman tells her. “And we don’t know what happened there. It might be anything. It might be an explosion at a power station. A normal accident and not a . . . catastrophe of some sort.” The first word that occurred to him was holocaust.

  “Dirty bomb,” says the big man. “Bet you a hundred dollars. He’s upset because we just missed him in Russia.”

  He is the Supreme Leader of the DPRK. There are rumors someone took a shot at him while he was on a state visit to the Russian side of Lake Khasan, a body of water on the border between the two nations. There are unconfirmed reports that he was hit in the shoulder, hit in the knee, not hit at all; that a diplomat beside him was hit and killed; that one of the Supreme Leader’s impersonators was killed. According to the Internet the assassin was either a radical anti-Putin anarchist, or a CIA agent masquerading as a member of the Associated Press, or a K-Pop star named Extra Value Meal. The U.S. State Department and the North Korean media, in a rare case of agreement, insist there were no shots fired during the Supreme Leader’s visit to Russia, no assassination attempt at all. Like many following the story, Fidelman takes this to mean the Supreme Leader came very close to dying indeed.

  It is also true that eight days ago, a U.S. submarine patrolling the Sea of Japan shot down a North Korean test missile in North Korean airspace. A DPRK spokesman called it an act of war and promised to retaliate in kind. Well, no. He had promised to fill the mouths of every American with ashes. The Supreme Leader himself didn’t say anything. He hasn’t been seen since the assassination attempt that didn’t happen.

  “They wouldn’t be that stupid,” Fidelman says to the big man, talking across the Korean girl. “Think about what would happen.”

  The small, wiry, dark-haired woman stares at the big man sitting beside her with a slavish pride, and Fidelman suddenly realizes why she tolerates his paunch intruding on her personal space. They’re together. She loves him. Perhaps adores him.

  The big man replies, placidly, “Hundred dollars.”

  LEONARD WATERS IN THE COCKPIT

  North Dakota is somewhere beneath them but all Waters can see is a hilly expanse of cloud stretching to the horizon. Waters has never visited North Dakota and when he tries to visualize it, imagines rusting antique farm equipment, Billy Bob Thornton, and furtive act
s of buggery in grain silos. On the radio, the controller in Minneapolis instructs a 737 to ascend to flight level three-six-zero and increase speed to Mach Seven Eight.

  “Ever been to Guam?” asks his first officer, with a false fragile cheer.

  Waters has never flown with a female co-pilot before and can hardly bear to look at her, she is so heart-breakingly beautiful. Face like that, she ought to be on magazine covers. Up until the moment he met her in the conference room at LAX, two hours before they flew, he didn’t know anything about her except her name was Bronson. He had been picturing someone like the guy in the original Death Wish.

  “Been to Hong Kong,” Waters says, wishing she wasn’t so terribly lovely.

  Waters is in his mid-forties and looks about nineteen, a slim man with red hair cut to a close bristle and a map of freckles on his face. He is only just married and soon to be a father: a photo of his gourd-ripe wife in a sundress has been clipped to the dash. He doesn’t want to be attracted to anyone else. He feels ashamed of even spotting a handsome woman. At the same time, he doesn’t want to be cold, formal, distant. He’s proud of his airline for employing more female pilots, wants to approve, to support. All gorgeous women are an affliction upon his soul. “Sydney. Taiwan. Not Guam, though.”

  “Me and friends used to freedive off Fai Fai beach. Once I got close enough to a blacktip shark to pet it. Freediving naked is the only thing better than flying.”

  The word naked goes through him like a jolt from a joy buzzer. That’s his first reaction. His second reaction is that of course she knows Guam, she’s ex-navy, which is where she learned to fly. When he glances at her sidelong, he’s shocked to find tears in her eyelashes.

  Kate Bronson catches his gaze and gives him a crooked embarrassed grin that shows the slight gap between her two front teeth. He tries to imagine her with a shaved head and dog tags. It isn’t hard. For all her cover girl looks, there is something slightly feral underneath, something wiry and reckless about her.