The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2013 Edition

by Paula Guran [editor]

  I picked up a spade, uncertain what I meant to do with it, staring down at the tumult in the earth as though it were something happening a long way off, and long ago. Then Father was beside me with the other spade, frantically shoving everything—dirt and odd scraps of wood and twigs and even old wine corks from the cellar floor—into the grave, shoveling and kicking and pushing with his arms almost at the same time. By and by I recovered enough to assist him, and when the hole was filled we both jumped up and down on the pile, packing it all down as tightly as it would go. The risen surface wasn’t quite level with the floor when we were done, but it would settle in time.

  I had to say it. I said, “He’s down there under our feet, still alive, choking on dirt, with her holding him fast forever. Keeping her company.” Father did not answer, but only leaned on his spade, with dirty sweat running out of his hair and down his cheek. I think that was the first time I noticed that he was an inch or so shorter than I. “I feel sorry for him. A little.”

  “Not I,” Father said flatly. “I’d bury him deeper, if we had more earth.”

  “Then you would be burying Great-Grandmother deeper, too,” I said.

  “Yes.” Father’s face was paper-white, the skin looking thin with every kind of exhaustion. “Help me move these barrels.”

  Thanks to classic works such as The Last Unicorn, Tamsin, and The Innkeeper’s Song, Peter S. Beagle is acknowledged as one of America’s greatest fantasy authors. In addition to stories and novels he has written numerous teleplays and screenplays, including the animated versions of The Lord of the Rings and The Last Unicorn, plus the “Sarek” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He is also a poet, lyricist, and singer/songwriter. In 2007, Beagle won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for his original novelette, “Two Hearts.” For more details see conlanpress.com and facebook.com/petersbeagle.

  He had the impression of something huge in front of him, something vast hanging over him, like a wave, only solid, ready to crash down . . .

  RENFREW’S COURSE

  John Langan

  “So this is the wizard,” Neil said.

  “Supposedly,” Jim said.

  Six feet tall, the statue had been carved from wood that retained most of its whiteness, even though the date cut into its base read 2005, seven years ago. Jim thought the color might be due to its not having been finished—splinters stood out from the wood’s uneven surface—but didn’t know enough about carpentry to be certain.

  “Looks kind of Gandalf,” Neil said.

  He was right. The wide-brimmed hat, long beard, staff and robe, all suggested Tolkien’s character, an impression the squirrel at the figure’s left foot, fox behind its right, owl on its shoulder did little to argue.

  “I know,” Jim said. “It’s like that statue of William Wallace—did I tell you about that? They wanted to put up a new statue of Wallace—somewhere out near Stirling, I think—so what did the artist come up with? Mel Gibson in Braveheart.”

  “No wonder there’re so few Jews in Scotland.”

  “Apparently, the real guy was much stranger.”

  “Gibson? I know,” Neil said, starting up the hill towards the dirt path that would take them into the nature preserve.

  “No, the wizard.” Once he had caught up to Neil and they were walking under the tall pine and oak, Jim continued, “In one story, the King of France was causing some kind of difficulty for the local merchants—an embargo, I think. Michael Renfrew mounted his iron horse and in a single bound crossed the distance from Kirkcaldy to Paris. When he showed up at the French palace, its doors flew open for him. The King’s guards found their swords red hot in their hands. Needless to say, Louis-the-whatever changed his mind, and quickly, at that.”

  “An iron horse, huh?”

  “Legend says you can still see its hoofprint on the cliff it leapt off.”

  To their right, separated from them by dense rows of pine, a stone tower raised its crenellated head above the tree line. “See?” Jim said, pointing to it. “Over there—that’s Renfrew’s keep.”

  “Which has seen better days.”

  “It’s like seven hundred years old.”

  “So’s Edinburgh Castle, isn’t it?”

  “Anyhoo,” Jim said, “Renfew only stayed there part of the time. He was the court astrologer for the Holy Roman Emperor.”

  Neil grunted. No longer angry about the Rose incident, neither was he all the way over it. Had he been familiar with Scotland, he might have gone off for a few days on his own, left Jim to worry about what he was up to, whom he was having long, heartfelt conversations with over steaming mugs of chai. The trip, however, had been Jim’s baby, a chance to share with Neil the place in which he’d passed the summers of his childhood while also promoting his surprisingly successful book. Neil could not make sense of the timetables for the trains or buses, and as for driving on the other side of the road, forget it. He had no choice but to remain with Jim and his revelation about his affaire de coeur with Rose Carlton, which he had dealt with from inside a roiling cloud first of anger, then pique. Jim met this change in their personal weather the way he always did, the way he always had, by talking too much, filling the charged air with endless facts, opinion, speculation.

  Not for the first time, the irony of his book’s title, The Still Warrior, struck him. How often had he urged his students at the dojo not to be afraid of their own quiet, of remaining in place, controlling their sparring bouts by forcing their opponents into committing to action first? It was a perspective he’d spent one hundred and forty-eight pages applying to a wide range of activities and situations, and based on the early sales figures, it was a viewpoint in which a significant portion of the reading public was interested. Look at his life off the dojo’s polished hardwood, though, and he might as well have been writing fiction, fantasy rooted in the deepest wish fulfillment. Especially when it came to Neil, he was almost pathologically unable to leave things be, let the kinks and snarls in their relationship work themselves out, as the vast majority of them likely would. Instead, he had to plan excursions like this one, a walk along a nature path that was supposed to bring them . . . what? Closer? “You can’t make a scar heal any faster,” Neil had said, which Jim wasn’t sure he believed but which Neil certainly did.

  Ahead, the path was intersected by a secondary trail slanting up from the right. The new trail was little more than a disturbance in the forest’s carpet of needles, but Neil turned onto it. “Hey,” Jim said.

  “I want to see where this goes.”

  Neil knew he wouldn’t argue. Prick. Jim followed him off the main path . . .

  . . . and was seized by a vertigo so extreme he might have been standing at the edge of a sheer cliff, rather than a not-especially steep trail. He leaned forward, and it was as if he were on the verge of a great abyss, an emptiness that was coaxing him forward, just one more step . . .

  A hand gripped his arm. “Hey—you all right?” The voice was high, familiar.

  Vision swimming, Jim said, “I don’t,” and heard the words uttered in a different voice—in what sounded like the voice on his and Neil’s videos of their old vacations, his voice of ten years ago.

  The hand steadying him belonged to a young man—to Neil, he saw, Neil as he had been when Jim had met him at a mutual friend’s Y2K party. His hair was down to his shoulders and, as was the case when he let it grow, both curlier and a shade closer to strawberry blond. The lines on his face were not cut as deep, and his skin was pale from a life lived in front of the computer. Mouth tucked into the smirk that had first caught Jim’s notice, he said, “Steady,” and released Jim’s arm.

  Jim raised his right hand and brushed the half-dozen earrings that climbed his ear. He could feel his own hair ponytailed along the back of his neck. “Oh my God,” he said.

  “What is it?” Neil said.

  “I—don’t you—”

  “Maybe the mushrooms weren’t such a good idea.”

  “Mushrooms?” Jim said, even
as he was thinking, Yes, mushrooms, because that’s the kind of shit you do now, at twenty-five, psilocybin and pot and occasionally hash and once in a great while a little E, because you’re still five years away from the ambush of turning thirty, when you’ll throw away all this stuff and more besides—soda, fast food, desserts—in favor of Shotokan karate seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. That’s the future: right now, you’re pursuing your private version of the systematic derangement of the senses.

  “Man,” Neil said, “I guess those things were strong. I’ve never seen you like this before. Wish they would do something for me.” He waved his hand in front of his eyes. “Nada.”

  “We—how did we get here?”

  “We walked.”

  “No, I mean Kirkcaldy—Scotland.”

  “Wow.”

  “How did we get here?”

  “Easy, there, easy,” Neil said. “Work exchange, remember? I’m over here six weeks, that guy—Doug Moore, right?—is enjoying life in NYC. You tagged along because—well, because you’re cute and I like you. Okay?”

  Of course that was the case. The moment Jim heard Neil’s explanation, he realized he already knew it. Cheeks burning, he said, “Okay. I’m sorry, it’s just—those were some strong mushrooms.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I was having this whole fantasy that you and I were here, only, in the future.”

  “The future, huh? What were we like?”

  “I had written this really popular book. We were here promoting it. You were . . . still programming, I think.”

  “Oh, so you’re the famous writer and I’m just some computer nerd. Very nice.”

  “Hey, you were my computer nerd.”

  “Flattery.”

  “It’s gotten me everywhere.”

  “You’re feeling better.”

  “I guess.”

  “Good.” The expression on Neil’s face looked as if it might portend sex, a quickie amidst the trees, but he turned and continued down the secondary path. As Jim followed, he said, “Before you went all freaky, you were talking about the wizard, old Michael Renfrew.”

  “I was? Yeah, I suppose I was. Look to your right, ahead and you’ll see Renfrew’s keep.”

  “Where? Oh, yeah. What part is that?”

  “Must be near the base. That’s—I think that’s a doorway. Hard to tell through the trees.”

  “So what about Renfrew?”

  “Did I tell you about the iron horse?”

  “And the King of France, yeah.”

  “There’s a story about him and the Devil.”

  “Oh?”

  “Or a devil: I can’t remember which. At some point, he summoned a devil. I’m not sure why. Maybe for knowledge, or maybe to prove his power. It’s one of those things magicians do all the time in old stories. Anyway, dealing with this guy was more dangerous than your run-of-the-mill evil spirit. If Renfrew could name a single task the devil could not perform, then he could make whatever use of him he wished for a year and a day. If not, the devil would pull him down to hell.”

  “And?”

  “Renfrew took him to the beach, and commanded him to weave a rope out of sand.”

  “Not bad. What did he have the devil do for him?”

  “The story doesn’t say. It’s more concerned with him outsmarting the devil than with Renfrew using him for his personal gain.”

  “Maybe that was how he got the iron horse.”

  “Could be.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Not really. He’s supposed to have had something to do with this book, Les mystères du ver, but I’m not sure what.”

  “Les—what?”

  “Les mystères du ver: The Mysteries of the Worm. It’s some kind of evil book, Satanic Bible, witch’s spell list, that sort of thing.”

  “The Mysteries of the Worm, huh? No wonder you’re interested in this guy.”

  “Worm? Try snake.”

  “Somebody’s overcompensating.”

  “Merely stating the facts.”

  Neil did not answer, and Jim could not think of a way to extend their banter that did not sound forced, banal. It’s all right, he told himself. Silence is all right. You don’t always have to be talking. Wasn’t that one of the things that had attracted him to Neil in the first place, his ability to be comfortable in his own quiet? Even in the length of time they’d been together, hadn’t he learned that Neil’s sometimes prolonged periods of silence rarely had anything to do with them, that he was usually turning over some work-related problem? He didn’t feel the need to fill the air with words, and if that made Jim anxious, that wasn’t Neil’s fault, was it?

  Plus, the sex is fantastic.

  Maybe fifteen feet in front of Neil, the path leveled off and was met by another, slanting down from the right to join theirs at an acute angle. When Neil turned at the junction and started up it, Jim said, “Hey.”

  “Come on,” Neil said. “This should take us back to the main trail.”

  No arguing with that. This track appeared clearer than the one they’d just descended, more sharply-defined. He followed onto it and it was as if he’d tried to walk up a wall. The path rose above him, impossibly high; he staggered backwards, dropped onto his ass. The path loomed overhead, a dark strip of ground about to fall on him, and—

  A silhouette leaned in front of him. “What happened?” The voice was flat, familiar.

  Struggling against the urge to throw his hands in front of his face, to protect himself from the collapse of dirt and rock, Jim said, “I don’t,” and was shocked to hear the fragment delivered in a voice whose underlying tones were his but which had been roughened, broadened.

  The outline before him resolved into Neil, but a different Neil, a Neil whose face might have received the attentions of a makeup artist instructed to advance his age by twenty, twenty-five years. His hair was crew-cut short. His skin was grooved across the forehead, beneath the eyes, to either side of the mouth. Under the open collar of his shirt, a faded line of green ink scaled the left side of his neck, the edge of a tattoo, Jim knew—remembered. Were he to look into a mirror, he would see its twin on the left side of his neck, a memento of the aftermath of the Rose Carlton incident, when he and Neil had sought a way to reaffirm their bond. The eclipse had been Jim’s idea, a symbol that, whatever events might darken their relationship, they would pass.

  (Except that he’d developed a staph infection, which the tattooist, a mutual acquaintance, had spent days insisting could not be happening—he ran a clean shop—until Jim had wound up in the hospital, tethered to an IV antibiotic drip for a week. Nor had Neil moved past Rose, not really: Every time an argument escalated to a certain pitch, he reached for her like a favorite weapon.)

  “You all right?” Neil asked, the words tinted with something resembling concern.

  He’s worried about my heart, Jim thought. The infection affected my heart, weakened it. (What the hell is happening to me?) “Fine,” he said, climbing to his feet. “I’m fine, just . . . a little lightheaded.” (Is this some kind of long-term aftereffect of being sick? Did it mess with my head?) He gestured at the path. “Go on.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Go.”

  “Take it easy,” Neil said. “This isn’t a race.” Nonetheless, he hurried to keep in front. “Okay?” he called over his shoulder.

  “Great.”

  After a minute of trudging up the thick, rocky earth, Neil said, “Do you feel like continuing the story?”

  “Story?”

  “Story, chapter, whatever you want to call it. ‘Renfrew and the Giant.’ ”

  Almost before he knew he was speaking them, Jim found the words at his lips. “Having endured Renfrew’s displays of power, the Giant was less than impressed by his offer of an alliance between them. He said, ‘Little man, you have already shown me that I have nothing to fear from you. Why should I cast my lot in with yours?’

  “Although obviously exhausted, Renf
rew stood straighter and answered, ‘Because you have everything to benefit if you do, and everything to lose if you do not.’

  “At this, the Giant laughed, and it was the sound of an avalanche, of boulders crashing into one another. ‘Little man,’ he said, ‘your boldness does you credit. I will eat you quickly.’ He reached one enormous hand toward the wizard.

  “Renfrew did not flinch. He said, ‘I know your name—your true name.’

  “The Giant’s hand halted, inches from Renfrew. His vast brow lowered. ‘Impossible,’ he said. ‘I hid that where no man—no one might find it, ever.’

  “ ‘Yes,’ Renfrew said, ‘in a cavern under a lake watched over by three mountains, locked inside a brass casket guarded by a basilisk. I have been there.’

  “The Giant’s hand retreated. He said, ‘You read of this in one of your wizard’s books.’

  “Renfrew said, ‘The sole means to open the casket is the tooth of a hydra, which is in the basilisk’s stomach. The casket contains a pale blue egg resting on a white pillow. To touch the egg is like touching a furnace; to hear its shell crack is like hearing your own death. Within the egg, there is a stone into which has been carved a single word.’

  “The Giant’s hand had retreated all the way to his great mouth.

  “Renfrew said, ‘That word is Mise.’ ”

  Neil said, “Meesh?”

  “I think that’s how it’s pronounced. It’s Gaelic, means, ‘I am.’ ”

  “I am?”

  “Yeah. The original story doesn’t say what the Giant’s true name was, only that Renfrew had discovered it and used it against him. I thought about making it something like ‘stone’ or ‘mountain,’ but that seemed too obvious.”

  “Why?”