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

by Paula Guran [editor]

  “Using your Nightside Eye.”

  Rathcar gave a wry smile. “To call it that. I enjoyed the theatricality, I suppose.”

  “I’ve read all the interviews, all the available transcripts.”

  “That’s all there are.”

  “I accept that. But I thought—since you asked to see me—that there was something you remembered and were prepared to share.”

  “Jared, I remember nothing of what I saw, just that it was enough to make me obliterate the memory of whatever it was. It’s strange to find myself asking you to abandon the whole thing now when I have no memory of what it is I’m warning you away from. Feels a bit silly really, especially when it puts me in the position of wanting more than anything to know exactly what I did see. But I have to allow that there were vitally important reasons. Please reconsider going ahead with this.’

  The request surprised Jared. “What about your own reply to Sandra Cartwright on 60 Minutes in July 2009? ‘This is science. Learning about the world.’ ”

  “I won’t insult your intelligence by giving the line that was put to me in the same interview, that there are things we are simply not meant to know. I still hold with what I said. If we can know it, it’s science and there to be known. It’s only right that I should wonder now about what I saw that night that led me to take the final step. Theatricality is one thing, melodrama quite another, and I really do hate sounding this way after years of advocating rigorous investigation myself. But it had to have been important. I pretty well committed professional suicide with what I did.”

  “Surely not. It was always going to be a case of their having to take your word for whatever you saw. You just pissed off a lot of people. Deprived them of an answer to something they would have called inconclusive anyway.”

  “Which, nevertheless, many say was because I saw nothing. That this was my intention all along.”

  “Dr. Rathcar—Martin—your reputation, your previous work in perception, suggests otherwise.” Jared hesitated. “It really did take your memory of it?’ He had never been truly convinced, he realized.

  “That’s the thing, isn’t it? I should have insisted on a second subject doing it with me from the beginning, or at least waited until whatever I saw could be verified in a subsequent procedure. But Trioparin is effective only on recent memory. I was told it affected only an hour, ninety minutes tops. It’s like a mindshock that way, very different to Diprovan and other amnesiacs. Whatever I saw made me decide that I could not by any means wait for subsequent verification.”

  “It bothered you that much.”

  “I have to allow that it did. I desperately needed to forget. Anyway, the drug worked better than expected. My short-term memory of the twenty-six hours preceding the injection was lost. Twenty-six hours, can you believe it? Far longer than anyone expected. Part of me wants to know what it was I saw, now more than ever given your intentions tonight, I can’t deny it. But I have to accept that I gave myself that injection knowing what it was I did.”

  “But to have arranged for that contingency in the first place, you must have seriously suspected—sensed that something could go wrong. Trioparin is a last-resort trauma amnesiac. Prohibitively expensive.”

  Rathcar nodded. “At the time I simply allowed that there could be intense trans-perceptual trauma. It seemed entirely likely. You deprive one eye of its normal tasks for months on end, suppress at least three key neurotransmitters in doing so, then suddenly restore sight to that—let’s use the pop term—Nightside Eye. Well you know the outcome, though now I wish I’d never mentioned arranging such a precaution. The media seized on it, had a field day.”

  Though he hadn’t automatically expected it, Jared found himself liking this man. “You didn’t just accept that whatever you saw might be dismissed as hallucination, hyper-perception. It suggests you believed what you saw.”

  “It does, doesn’t it? I’m glad you think so.”

  “You wanted it all gone regardless, though you knew in advance that it would be intolerable for you afterwards. The not knowing.”

  Rathcar gave a forbearing smile. “That’s what made me drive up here tonight and ask to see you. Weird position to find myself in, like I say, but I have to allow that it really is as serious, as important, as my subsequent behavior suggests. I was never much given to pranks or over-reaction, believe me.”

  “But what could it be? What must you have seen—even as a hallucination that could possibly make you want to forget it forever?”

  Rathcar sat with his hands on the wheel for a time, staring at nothing. Then, noticing Jared glance at his watch, he continued. “You understand my dilemma. I have to allow that it was either a hallucination for me, something purely subjective, or a reality for us all. They’re the alternatives, the least I can claim. But, Jared, you stand to face the problem I faced: failing in your duty as a scientist. I clearly didn’t want even the possibility of it being real in the objective sense. You see the extremes here, why I can’t help but be fascinated with what you’re about to do. I knew it might happen in time, but now, tonight, I keep reproaching myself for not seeking corroboration before taking my memories of what I saw.”

  Jared smiled grimly at the implications. “It really must have been something.”

  “Well, no matter. At least you’re doing it at the same place I did. And I understand you’ve duplicated my procedures for fostering the Eye precisely.”

  “That was the whole point, duplicating what you did.”

  “Again, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I’m fascinated to know what will happen. Maybe I was wrong to do what I did. But that’s the other reason I wanted to see you. Would you consider using a lethophoric like Trioparin to take your memories?”

  “Frankly, Martin, I’m more the budget operation. You had institutional funding. I can’t afford luxuries like that.”

  Rathcar smiled again. It was a good smile. They truly did like each other. He took one hand from the wheel, patted the pocket of his jacket. “I have some here in case. The last of my supply, pocketed that night, thank goodness. Everything else was confiscated. I’ll wait out here in the car.”

  “Come inside.”

  “No, I must not be in there. You must appear unbiased. But just remember that it’s here. I’m here.”

  “If I do come out to you, you won’t ask what I’ve seen?”

  “I’ll want to more than anything in the world. But, no. I promise I won’t. I must believe in myself to that extent. You say you’re not doing this for me, and I believe you. In a sense, I’m not just doing this for you either. It’s because I have to trust myself—trust that I acted for the right reasons. I do not need to know what you see. But if you come out and ask for the Trioparin, I will at least know that you’ve seen something as unbearable and that I was right in doing what I did that night. Right now that means everything.”

  Jared made it back to the Delfray Room with seven minutes to spare. Both Sophie and Craig wanted to ask about what had happened, but Jared raised a hand.

  “He just wanted to wish me luck and try to talk me out of going through with it.”

  “Really?’ Sophie said. “No insights?”

  “Unfortunately not a thing,” Jared told her. “But we can talk about this later. It’s nearly time.”

  At 8:24, Jared crossed to the fireplace again, retrieved the bottle, the wooden block, and the toy locomotive from the floor where they had fallen, and began setting them back on the mantel making sure that the placing of the train coincided with Craig’s three-two-one countdown to 8:25 exactly. Jared then moved to the right of the fireplace, watching the three objects, wondering how long it would be—if at all.

  It was a different sort of vigil now, of course, marked by a wholly new kind of tension, such a definite—pressure was the only word. Jared’s breathing was so loud in his ears. He could feel his heart thumping, his pulse racing, was aware again of the silence out in the room, of how far away the others were across the dull shee
n of the parquetry. A quick glance showed Sophie and Craig at their monitors, faces ghost-lit just a touch, showed Susan looking up from the screens to him, the screens then him.

  Geoff and Amin sat behind them, darker shapes in the open doorway, eyes fixed and glinting.

  The pressure became everything. It could happen at any moment, any instant. He felt he could almost guess when. It was like the waiting tension in a game of Snap or that kids’ game where closed fists were placed knuckle to knuckle against one another, and the kid who was it got to hit the other’s hand before it could be snatched away.

  Jared’s thoughts raced. What was it? Who was it? Was it really something as simple as electro-magnetic fluxes, atmospheric and geomorphic glitches, nothing supernatural at all? Or was there motivation behind it? Purpose? That was the real question here. What was out there drawing ever nearer, was even now preparing to sweep the objects aside, so dramatically, so brutally. Where did it come from? How far did it have to travel to do this simple mindless thing? Is that what the delay meant, or was this poltergeist always here, holding back out of a sense of mischief? But why did it have to be done—this furious sweeping aside? That remained the issue. The real priority wasn’t just shifting the patch to see what there was after the event, but shifting it in time to catch who or what was doing it just as it was about to happen!

  It would be departing from Rathcar’s procedure, certainly, but this was about finding answers, seeing the process as process. Complete process, with more than just an ending, an outcome. With a beginning, a definite lead-up and possibly—could it be?—with intent.

  The pressure was building, definitely growing stronger, Jared was sure of it. Something was about to happen, was beginning even now out there in the room, there to be seen if he dared risk it, dared throw it all away on a conviction, this felt certainty, totally unprovable.

  Jared felt his hand clench, felt himself preparing to take that risk, commit that violation.

  This was what it needed to be! Knowing what it was before it happened, as it happened, not afterwards. Seeing the cause, not the effect.

  The pressure was too much.

  His hand was at the patch, shifting it from one eye to the other, uncovering the different kind of seeing.

  Jared reeled at what he saw, had to reach out and steady himself with one hand on the mantel edge.

  There was no sign of Susan or the others, none of the equipment, not even the spotlight. The room was crowded, too crowded, with row upon row of dead-white forms, pallid near-human shapes pressing shoulder to shoulder with not a space between them, dozens, hundreds of sexless, minimalist things like mannequins, but with mouths hanging open and dull red eyes fixed mindlessly ahead, looking beyond him, fixed on nothing.

  He was frantically registering the enormity of what he was seeing when there was a commotion in the throng, a sudden rippling forward as someone, something came pushing through, finally thrusting aside the figures in the foremost row to stand slavering, heaving. It was another of the pallid shapes, but this one had eyes that were wildly animated, blazing red, and a mouth stretched wide in a grotesque toothless grin.

  No sooner was it there than it raised one long white arm and swept everything from the mantel. The familiar clatter echoed in the room, in no way muffled by the crowding forms.

  Jared stared in utter dread. It wasn’t just the dead-white face, the grinning, gaping mouth, the imbecilic, red-eyed glare.

  It was the idiot glee in those eyes, the look of absolute manic delight at having done this single, simple, stupid thing yet again. It was like a puppy waiting for the next throw of a ball a witless automaton for whom only this had meaning.

  And worse still was the sense that the rest of the crowding, slack-faced throng had their special things too, tasks waiting to be triggered and just as mindlessly resolved, whatever they were, however long they had to wait, however long it took.

  “Susan!” he shouted, not to Sophie or Craig, but to the young woman who was nearest in his thoughts, had been the focus of so much recent attention.

  And there she was, visible now, moving from the back of the shapes, moving forward through all the still figures, but not alone. One of the pallid, gaping forms moved with her, followed close behind, in attendance, her eager companion.

  We all have them, Jared realized. Following, always following, always there, biding their time.

  Are they what waits for us? All that is left of us? What simply wears us down, brings us to death, what?

  There was no way of knowing. But this was what Rathcar had seen. What Martin Rathcar had understood.

  Jared couldn’t help himself. He reached up, snatched the patch back over the Nightside Eye so the room, the hotel the world became normal again.

  Seemed to.

  “What was it?” Susan asked, still moving towards him across the empty, never-empty room. “What did you see?”

  “Nothing,” Jared managed, giving the beautiful lie. “There was nothing. It was too much of a shock. Just too much disorientation for the brain. It didn’t work.”

  And he gazed out at the welcome emptiness, the normal world, knowing it could never be that again, knowing that Rathcar was right and realizing what had to be done.

  If Rathcar had waited, kept his word, was still out by the highway.

  Jared ran to the double doors, rushed out to the main entrance. Susan hurried behind. Sophie and Craig abandoned their monitors and ran after him. Geoff and Amin exchanged glances and followed.

  Behind them the abandoned equipment hummed quietly.

  The things from the mantel lay scattered where they had fallen.

  The windows reflected only the empty room, showed not a trace of the darkness beyond the old, old panes.

  Terry Dowling is the author of the Ditmar Award-winning Tom Rynosseros saga, as well as Wormwood, The Man Who Lost Red, An Intimate Knowledge of the Night, Antique Futures, Blackwater Days, and Basic Black: Tales of Appropriate Fear (which won the International Horror Guild Award), Make Believe: A Terry Dowling Reader, Amberjack: Tales of Fear & Wonder, and Clowns at Midnight. He is editor of several anthologies including the World Fantasy Award-winning The Essential Ellison. Find out more about the Australian writer at terrydowling.com.

  My life is a torrent of memories and desires, regrets and delusions. But why do the memories keep changing? Everything can’t be true.

  ESCENA DE UN ASESINATO

  Robert Hood

  “Buy a photo?” I say without hope, talking to a rotund man in a business suit. He’s stopped to check out the prints stuck on my tatty pin-board, which leans uncertainly on the wall next to me.

  “I don’t think so,” he mutters, on the verge of turning away. But something in the photographs keeps him standing there.

  “Some of them aren’t bad,” he mutters at last.

  I shrug, feeling the texture of the brick wall against my back, the cold resistance of the footpath under my arse. I can smell my own sweat and despondency. “Ten dollars. Give an aging ex-photographer a break!”

  “How much for that one?” He points at a street scene in a Mexican town. There are two people prominent in the foreground. One is an old woman, the other a masked visage with only the eyes showing. Though the masked man is not always in the photo, he’s there now. He’s rarely been so close. The intensity in his eyes is unnerving.

  “You from Mexico?” I ask.

  The man scowls, considering. “My mother was.”

  “Did she work for the government?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “You have a wife? Kids?” He nods absently.

  “I can’t sell you that one,” I say, resisting the deep-seated compulsion that urges me to do the opposite. I grip the object hidden in my pocket.

  “Why not?”

  “The masked man in the picture means you harm.”

  My potential customer scowls again, more expressively this time. He thinks I’m crazy and
he might be right. Yet even if he deserves the ill fortune owning that photograph would bring, I can’t do it to him.

  “How about another one?” I gesture vaguely at a picture of Mayan ruins. Landscape only. No people. I’ve never seen anyone in that particular photograph.

  The man shrugs. “No thanks.” He flicks a coin into the empty camera case I use as a pauper bowl and takes off down the street, looking back once or twice as though afraid I’ll follow him.

  I feel the anger radiating from the photo of the woman and the masked man. El Roto’s eyes burn with frustration.

  “I won’t let you kill again,” I whisper, holding onto the small primitive doll for my life.

  August 1999, it’s cold, and I’m in Sydney—that ex-colonial metropolis hunkering down in fin de siècle tension between rising ocean and expanding desert interior. Westward, tendrils of suburban indifference spread outward from its heart. I stare through reflections on glass at the city’s patterns of artificial light, burnt into the haze and dark. I’m not feeling optimistic.

  My exhibition of travel photography—Susurros del Roto—opens tonight. There are fewer than thirty people in attendance, one of the them an influential TV talking-head who writes for the Herald’s culture pages and is likely to give me a much-needed review if the work either impresses him or he thinks I’m on the rise and wants to hedge his bets. At the moment he’s talking to an over-sexed, under-dressed young woman in high heels who’s offering him a sultry smile. My most recent girlfriend. I’m hoping Sioni’s rather crude allure will get him on side.

  “That streetscape is a work of genius, Morley,” a middle-aged woman says with undue familiarity, sleazing up to me and waving her umpteenth glass of New Zealand Pinot Noir between the tips of over-painted fingers. I have no idea who she is. “You’ve absolutely captured the essence of the country’s post-revolutionary despair.”

  The “framed silver gelatin” (aka black-and-white) print she alludes to is one I took a few years ago in Ocosingo, a town in the Chiapas state of Mexico. I can’t give an exact date. My notes are less than precise and my memory’s a bag with holes. An ordinary street behind the market area, made evocative by shallow depth of field, a splash of darker paint on flimsy-looking walls, and close focus on the wrinkled features of an old woman just appearing out of a doorway. Parts of the street are suspended in her gaze. She looks as though she’s about to curse.