The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories

by James D. Jenkins

  ‘Are your parents here too?’

  ‘No, they passed away.’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘Yes, it’s been almost two years.’

  ‘So long?’

  I nod. ‘My mom had a stroke and two months later my father’s heart went out. They could never make it without each other.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, man.’

  ‘Thanks. Have you seen that dog before?’ I motion to where the dog is sitting with its rear against the window.

  ‘No. I thought it was yours.’

  ‘No. He came sniffing around at Tamason. We played a little and ate and now he doesn’t want to go home.’

  Tolla laughed. ‘That’s what happens when you feed a dog.’

  ‘Well, would you maybe hang this up somewhere?’ I give him the paper.

  ‘Sure thing.’

  In the early evening I start another fire and meanwhile open a package of chips and a Castle. Sebastian comes to sit beside me – I’ve decided to give him a name, because how are we supposed to have a relationship if I think of him as The Dog? – and we watch the flames.

  Sebastian snatches a couple of chips out of my hand when I make the mistake of holding it too low. After that he wants more and more. But he’s not getting any beer. I found an old margarine tub in one of the kitchen cupboards and filled it with water.

  After the meal, I’m back on the swing. Sebastian comes to lie at my feet, buries his muzzle between his paws, closes his eyes and gives a contented sigh.

  I look towards the lake. When the water is as still as it is this evening and it’s a new moon, a person can almost forget it’s there. But of course it’s there.

  Just like Deloris Mouton.

  It’s hard to run away from yourself.

  Deloris Mouton, with her tidy hair and razor-­sharp eyes. The devil in a skirt. Could I still save my soul, or had the transaction already gone through?

  Before the faculty party she was Professor Mouton, the head of the Afrikaans-­Dutch Department. And I was just a lecturer, new to the university. But that evening we really talked for the first time. When I’d gone outside to get some air. What a cliché. I thought it was a coincidence but of course she’d followed me.

  As people do at such times, we shared our interests and quickly discovered that we both had a predilection for Romantic poetry. And it’s hard not to enjoy the attention of a beautiful woman. The light touching started that evening.

  It took her less than two weeks to seduce me. I was a willing victim. Her age didn’t bother me; she was attractive, intelligent, self-­confident. Available. And she could open doors at the university.

  Then I found out she was married. The ring she always so deftly hid when we ran into each other on campus was actually not as great a shock as who had given it to her. The dean of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy.

  Yet I allowed her to convince me not to break off the relationship. And thus to weave me into her web.

  And here I sit in Knysna, and it’s already been a year that we’ve been going on like this.

  I wake up with a start. Sebastian is barking. I stand up and walk carefully down the stairs. I had left the sliding door open a little in case he needed to go out. That was obviously not such a great idea.

  Sebastian stands a little way back from the sliding door and growls, his body tense.

  I look but don’t see anything.

  He walks a couple of steps closer to the door, barks, and trots towards me.

  Whoever or whatever was there isn’t there anymore.

  I can’t get back to sleep. I push the sheet off, pull it up, roll on my side, turn the pillow over, kick the sheet off my feet . . . give up, lie on my back and stare at the ceiling.

  It’s just before three.

  I get up and creep down the stairs, over the tiles, and out the sliding door. The night air is delicious on my skin; I’m wearing only a pair of pajama pants.

  I walk over the rough sand to the water. In the early morning hours it’s just a large dark pool, a mysterious, opaque mass. A lake is different from the sea. There isn’t the constant energy of the surf breaking on the shore, it’s like something that breathes.

  That waits.

  When we were here ten years ago over the December holidays, a little girl drowned. Her name was Samantha and she was six. It was a particularly warm day and I recall how her mother’s screams cut through the air, right through the laughter and buzz of vacation. I remember that little body on the sand. She was wearing a neon pink bikini. She lay there so still, her eyes half open.

  And beside her was the lake.

  The lake gives life and takes life. The lake feeds the village and the village feeds the lake.

  But why a six-­year-­old child?

  Goosebumps break out on my upper body and I fold my arms.

  I become conscious of something to my left. She’s standing there like a statue, looking out over the water. She has the same white dress on.

  At first I just stare and then begin to step closer, slowly, like in a dream. ‘Excuse me?’

  She doesn’t answer. It’s as if she’s not aware of me.

  I look at the dark hair that covers her shoulders, the roundness of her cheek, and I want to reach out and touch her.

  She turns and looks at me. Her eyes are dark and unfathomable. I can’t look away. She begins to hum a little tune, soft and sweet, takes my hand and starts to dance with me. Slowly and dreamily we turn, her fingers cool. Beside us the lake murmurs. I drown in her eyes.

  I feel her lips against my collarbone, cool and soft. Her mouth moves along my neck and I close my eyes. I put my hands on her hips and lose myself in her touch.

  She takes a step back.

  I open my eyes, reach for her. ‘Wait. Don’t go.’

  She just looks at me.

  ‘Who are you?’

  She takes my hand and turns around. I follow her over the sand, alongside the lake. I don’t care where she’s leading me. I’m only aware of her fingers against mine.

  She stops at the old hanging tree with the long misformed branches that touch the water. She turns around and I raise my hand to touch her cheek. I can’t stop looking into her dark eyes. There’s a heartache in there. I want to take it away.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I whisper.

  She holds her index finger against my lips, comes closer and presses her mouth against mine. Her lips are cool. Her mouth is cold. I taste the taste of the lake and then water, in my mouth, in my throat, in my lungs

  (kira)

  and I cough, bring the water up, and pant.

  I look around, but she’s just gone.

  I’m awakened by someone licking my ear. I open my eyes and see it’s Sebastian.

  ‘Oh, no, man.’ I push his head away.

  And remember last night. Or did I dream it? I imagine the mineral taste of the lake in my mouth and feel even more confused.

  Sebastian sits and looks at me with his head at an angle.

  ‘Yeah, I’m going crazy.’

  I shake my head and stand up. I go wash my face in the bathroom and look at my eyes.

  And then at my neck.

  At the red mark where she sucked on me.

  I touch the mark gingerly.

  It wasn’t a dream.

  I’m still smiling as I wash the breakfast dishes. My hands feel like they’re charged with electricity. I can’t wait to see her again.

  The last time I felt like this was at university, when I met my first love. Mariska, a shy beauty with bright eyes, round cheeks and light brown hair that never wanted to stay behind her ears. It was she who taught me to appreciate Romantic poetry, to see the deeper beauty in it. In the afternoon we lay in bed and talked and laughed and drank. We read poems aloud to each other, discussed the words and
emotions and fought over what the poet had meant. I traced her form with my finger

  never before have i painted more beautifully than last night

  i painted your whole back full of pictures

  frolicking tangerines, guitars, and coins

  We walked to class across the colored leaves and threw the leaves at each other on the way back. We stared out the window at the rain and wrote messages in the steam. Her name was the prettiest word I knew,

  her figure is my coolness in the day

  my brazier filled with red-­hot coal in the night

  We drank so much green tea that we couldn’t stop giggling. We climbed under the covers with a bottle of red wine and talked about profound things. We forgot time and words and everything but each other. But

  our love died with the dawn

  and we buried it, pale and mute

  tender grass and fragrant spring soil

  cover it, unadorned by wreath and flower

  And then came Deloris Mouton, not a second love, but a second-­rate love, false, a trap, a fraud, a waste, like Langenhoven’s moth . . . will the end of it be my ashes?

  The long weekend is almost over.

  You can run, but you always catch up to yourself.

  The day doesn’t want to end. Sebastian and I play on the sand and cool off in the lake. We eat and I play listlessly on my guitar. My thoughts are already on tonight, waiting anxiously for time to catch up.

  After dinner I lie down on the bed in a T-­shirt and jeans. I try to read but I keep having to flip back to find out what happened. A little after eleven Sebastian starts barking. I walk down the stairs to where Sebastian stands stiff-­backed and growling.

  She’s standing outside, on the sand in front of the porch, barefoot in her white dress.

  Sebastian growls again. I press my hand against his chest and hold him back while I slip out the opening in the sliding door. He forces his way towards me and I struggle to get the door closed. He stands up against the glass and barks.

  I turn around.

  She’s still standing there. Her hair rises and falls in the wind. Her dress makes little waves over her body.

  She takes a step back. Her eyes are large and haggard. She takes another step away from me.

  ‘Don’t be afraid.’ She looks different tonight, so defenseless that I just want to put my arms around her. I want to feel her head against my shoulder and tell her that nothing else matters.

  Slowly I go closer.

  She turns around and runs.

  I run after her. The sand shifts and grinds under my feet. I don’t try to catch up with her. I know where she’s going.

  She’s standing beside the old hanging tree. She’s looking out over the dark water.

  I grab her by the hair and turn her towards me. Her eyes are wet. I kiss the tears off her cheeks. It tastes like the lake.

  (kira)

  She turns around and I grasp her hand. She looks over her shoulder, her eyes large and sorrowful, and pulls her fingers slowly out from between mine.

  Her feet are in the lake and the water foams against her ankles. She looks at it sadly and takes a step back.

  ‘Don’t go.’

  The water bubbles hungrily around her legs, oozes into the material of the dress and sucks it tight against her skin.

  ‘Stay with me.’

  I can see she wants to, but she turns around and walks deeper into the lake. The water swirls around her waist. The white fabric clings to her body as if the lake is greedy to have her. The water spits up against the ends of her hair.

  I walk after her. It’s as if the water is holding me back. I use my hands and force my way ahead.

  She looks around and her eyes beg me to go back. But I’m almost to her. She disappears under the water, as if something has grabbed her ankles and pulled her under.

  I dive after her, search with my hands, but grab only water, cold and heavy. I run out of breath. I have to swim to the surface, but then I dive again and keep searching. I don’t even know which side the shore is on anymore.

  And then my fingers touch something. Material. I grab it, clutch it tightly. It’s her. I get hold of her arm and pull, but she won’t come to the surface. It’s the lake. The lake doesn’t want to let her go. My lungs burn, but I clutch her wrist firmly because if I let her go I’ll never get her back again. My fingers hurt and at the same time start to go numb from the cold. The lake is too strong. I can’t . . . Her arm slips between my fingers and I scream my last bit of oxygen away.

  Something pulls me under. I flail my arms, but it has no effect. A weight presses against my chest. Panic takes over. I swallow water, the rich mineral taste of the lake

  (kira)

  see only black around me. My arms are too heavy and tired to flail. The burning in my lungs is far away. I just sink, slowly, down, down, down into the cold.

  Pain cuts deep into my arm and something pulls me up. My head breaks through the surface and I pant and cough and choke. It takes a while for me to breathe normally again. And then I see the grayish object beside me. I see the teeth and the forepaws treading water.

  Not an object. Sebastian. I grin back at him.

  Around us the dark water is still.

  I stand on the sand and watch the sun come up over the lake. The rays can’t penetrate its surface. The lake doesn’t share her secrets easily.

  Sebastian licks my fingers.

  I smile and rub his head. ‘Come on. You get a special breakfast today.’

  I still don’t know how Sebastian got out the sliding door last night. I don’t think I had closed it all the way, but the space was too narrow for him to fit through.

  Sebastian sits and watches me while I grill boerewors in a pan. I set his portion down in front of him and he devours it like it’s the first time I’ve ever fed him.

  While I tidy up a little, he jumps up, barks once and wags his tail. He looks towards the sliding door.

  A little girl runs up to the door and starts to smile. ‘Nemo!’ Sebastian runs towards her and licks her face. She giggles and throws her arms around him.

  A man appears behind her. He knocks on the sliding door.

  He tells me how they’ve looked for Nemo everywhere and how many tears they’ve cried over him the past couple days. The thing that really strikes me is when I hear how far Sebastian came to find me.

  I kneel down and rub his head for the last time. ‘So, Nemo, then.’ I smile and whisper in his ear: ‘Thanks.’

  I stand on the porch and watch them go. Sebastian looks back once and barks. Even if his teeth marks hadn’t left scars on my left arm, I wouldn’t ever forget him.

  He presses his muzzle against the little girl to steer her farther from the water’s edge.

  I close the door to Tamason, the soft purling of the lake behind me. It’s time to go back to Stellenbosch, to tell Deloris Mouton that it’s over. And if that derails my career at Stellenbosch University, there are always other schools.

  I walk across the sand to where the water begins. The lake lies stretched out before me, shiny but opaque. I squat down, cup my hands and scoop some water. I suck it into my mouth, close my eyes, and I remember her

  (kira)

  fingers, light against my forehead that first evening, her

  (kira)

  mouth, cool against my neck, her

  (kira)

  cheek, soft and wet against my lips.

  I let the last of the water drip back into the lake, stand up, and walk to the car.

  Translated from the Afrikaans by James D. Jenkins

  Author’s Note: The poetic excerpts are taken from the following poems in Die Mooiste Afrikaanse Liefdesgedigte, compiled by Fanie Oliver: Jeanne Goosen, ‘Nog nooit het ek mooier geskilder’, Rosa Keet, ‘My pols sing ’n minnelied’, and Eli
sabeth Eybers, ‘Eerste liefde’.

  Lars Ahn

  Donation

  Of the Scandinavian countries, Denmark probably has the most active contemporary horror scene, including a number of authors who have had at least some of their work appear in English, such as Steen Langstrup, Michael Kamp, A. Silvestri, and Teddy Vork. In fact, there’s so much horror fiction being published in Denmark that there’s even a Danish Horror Society (Dansk Horror Selskab) that gives out an award each year for the best work of Danish horror. The 2017 award went to a volume of short stories by our next author, Lars Ahn. In deeming Ahn’s book ‘a worthy winner of this year’s award’, the jury noted that the collection ‘twists the horror genre’s tools in surprising directions’ and said the author ‘manages to make a short story unfold like a novel and inspires re-­reading’. He is the author of a novel, Rød Høst (Red Harvest), and his short stories have appeared in over thirty anthologies. He has also won the Niels Klim Prize for best Danish science fiction story twice. In ‘Donation’, Ahn gives us perhaps the most frightening monster in this book, in the unlikely form of a seemingly innocent young boy.

  It was the loveliest of mornings.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt better. Every­thing had gone beyond expectations yesterday. She had said yes immediately and seemed genuinely surprised, and he amazed himself by shedding a tear when he realized how happy she looked.

  I should have done it a long time ago, he thought, before they started calling friends and family.

  They had spent the rest of the day talking and constantly touching each other, as if they wanted to assure themselves that it was actually real and not a dream. If they weren’t holding hands, she was lying in his lap while he caressed her hair, and at regular intervals they broke out in laughter because they couldn’t believe they were finally ready to do it after having talked about it for so long. After dinner and red wine, they rewatched their favorite film before taking their intimate contact to a new level in the bedroom.

  He still felt a little sore as he sat there at the dining table checking the latest congratulations on his phone. He could hear her humming in the kitchen as she prepared their brunch. He had offered to help, but she had ordered him to stay seated and read the thick Sunday edition of the news­paper, which still lay unopened before him.