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

by Paula Guran [editor]

  “Do you know of any reason why the victim might have done this?”

  “I told you, Inspector, I’ve never met the man. It was just a picture I took while I was in Mexico a few years ago.”

  He nods to himself, rubbing at his chin as though what I’ve just said is the key to some grim insight.

  Then he asks if I have any objection to being fingerprinted.

  “Am I a suspect?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “I very much doubt it. But you did turn up here at the scene and there are procedures.”

  As one of his underlings takes my fingerprints and particulars, Greer presses me some more, with questions relating to my whereabouts and movements the previous night, perhaps hoping I’ll be distracted by the bureaucratic chores and give myself away. He takes down Sioni’s contact number so she can corroborate my alibi. I wonder if she will. Finally he decides I’m either innocent or a complete drongo and gets one of his men to show me out.

  In the days that follow I discover from one of Grace’s PR acquaintances that ballistics indicates it was definitely Alex Rivera who pumped three bullets into Escena de un Asesinato #1 of 20—but no other rounds had been fired.

  “What about the one that killed him?” I ask. “He was clearly shot in the head.”

  “Not so, apparently,” she replies. “No other bullets anywhere, no chemical residue in the wound, no projectile scoring on the skull fragments. He wasn’t shot, or battered to death for that matter. They don’t know what caused it. That’s what’s got them confused.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Incidentally,” she adds, “were you aware that he was a native of Chiapas state?”

  “What?”

  “Born in San Cristóbal, Mexico. Quite a coincidence, eh? Apparently his father was in the Mexican army during the 1920s and fought against the rebels. He may have been ex-militia himself. At any rate the cops suspect that Rivera was a member of one of the larger drug cartels and involved in illegal importation. They think he may have swindled his Mexican bosses. That’d be why he was killed. Retribution.”

  I’m aware of someone sitting on the bench at my feet, their presence obvious to me though I haven’t opened my eyes yet. Do not resist him, a female voice whispers. My pulse quickens. I pull my old coat off my head and push myself onto one aching elbow. The night has been cold and my joints are stiff. There’s no one there.

  “What d’you want of me?” I shout at the empty space, scaring a group of pigeons into panicked flight. An early morning commuter across the park glances in my direction and quickly looks away again. He hurries toward the sounds of traffic beyond the trees.

  June 1996. In retrospect, I realize that I can’t remember ever feeling Coronela’s breath on my skin, hearing her heart beat or sensing her warmth as our bodies press together. Is she still here beside me, I wonder? Was she ever here?

  “We avenge our men and ourselves,” she whispers. “It may be the men who die, but it is the women who suffer.”

  I want to reach over and touch her, but suddenly I’m afraid of what I’ll find. It makes no sense.

  The darkness thickens and night palls.

  “Why me?” I ask.

  Her voice seems to linger, no longer immediate, but more like a memory.

  “I’m sorry, Señor Morley,” she whispers. In the morning, she’s gone.

  August/September 1999. A cleaner named Emilio Torres dies in his flat, his skull shattered, though from what investigating officers can’t tell. Inconsistencies in the forensic detail run counter to evidence that it might have been the result of a physical blow. Torres wasn’t a rich man, and had lived alone, yet he’d felt compelled to buy one of my overpriced Escena de un Asesinato prints. He’d limped badly—from an injury sustained during the Chiapas uprising of 1994, he told Grace. That’s why he was so fascinated with the photo. She sold him one of the later numbers, unframed. It was found crumpled near his body.

  A few days later Gabriel Moreno, owner of a chain of Mexican restaurants, is shot in the head in his home, though no bullet can be found at the scene and nor does forensic analysis reveal sign of a weapon’s discharge. He was holding the print of Escena de un Asesinato that he’d purchased the previous evening. His wife and son are found dead in other parts of the house, though their bodies reveal no signs of violence at all.

  Robert Ortega and his wife die under mysterious circumstances the following evening. They have also bought one of my Escena de un Asesinato prints. Ortega has diplomatic connections with the Mexican government, though none of my sources can discover what those connections are. Whatever his job might be, it ensures that the details of his death remain hidden from the press.

  I sleep badly. In the night I dream I am running through the streets of Ocosingo, pursued by a man with no face. There is a pattern, I’m sure of that, and I also know that if I can only work out what it is, I can escape the inevitable fate that awaits me. But in my blind panic I can’t see the pattern, only chaos. I try to change the dream, knowing the outcome, but am unable to. Inevitably the faceless man will catch me.

  Juliana Estranez buys Escena de un Asesinato #5 of 17, takes it home and subsequently tries to burn it. She fails and is discovered next day by her cleaner, dead on the floor near the fireplace. There is no sign of violence. Later I learn that her father had been an officer in the Mexican army during the first half of the twentieth century.

  Before too long, manic with weariness and fear, I embrace what my rational mind has been avoiding and collect all remaining copies of Escena de un Asesinato from Grace. She doesn’t understand and I can’t explain. We argue.

  “At least leave me a couple of them,” she pleads.

  “I can’t.”

  “What are you going to do with them?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Just push the other photos, Grace.”

  “No one wants the others, Morley. They want Escena de un Asesinato.”

  “I’m not selling any more of them. That’s it.”

  In frustration, she points out that this sort of idiosyncratic behavior might be tolerated in the Greats of the Art World, but it isn’t going to do a second-rater like me much good at all.

  I shrug.

  She cancels the exhibition not long after I leave.

  I’m too fixated on my absurd belief that the prints are haunted, too terrified of the impossible, to care one way or the other. Back in my studio, I rip the remaining prints of Escena de un Asesinato apart, tossing the shreds into a metal waste bin and setting them alight. For a while, as I decimate the run, I don’t notice the decrease in room temperature that causes my breath to cloud, despite the flames and the heated air rising from the bin. After four or five prints have turned to ash, it seems as though my strength has leaked away, weariness overtaking me and turning the deepening shadows into a weight I can barely carry. Any blood still flowing through my veins becomes lethargic.

  “Leave me alone!” I growl at the shadows that seem to fill the room.

  But I’ve been careless. I don’t have the Zapatista doll on me. It lies on a nearby bench, far away, and I glance at it now, fighting despair. My muscles have weakened to the point of almost total incapacity; I fight the feeling, staggering forward with my hand extended. The remaining prints drop from my fingers, scattering across the floor. I stagger. Ambient hiss in my ears becomes louder and louder as the sound of traffic beyond the walls disappears. And then, all around me, yet dim as though echoing from far away, I hear voices shouting in Spanish. I can’t make out what they’re saying, but the fury they express is unmistakable.

  My fingers clasp the doll. Instantly the sounds disappear and my strength returns. The atmosphere lightens.

  “Just stay away!’ I rasp at the room. “I won’t let this continue. ”

  Holding onto the doll with one hand, I scoop up the scattered prints and one-by-one drop them into the fire. Flame consumes them. But as the last blackens and shrivels, consciousness leaks out of me and I collapse onto the floo
r.

  Living on the streets should make you feel free, but it doesn’t. It’s like a constant ache, a bone-cold reminder of the human connections that have foresworn you—or that you have foresworn. You are not part of the current that rushes time and the world forward. Rather, you dwell in a psychological billabong of your own, a stagnant backwater where the detritus of your past gathers to groan, to mutate, to drown you.

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

  A cold wind rakes its claws through the park and I shut my eyes and hunker further into my coat. It is old and no doubt smelly, but I’m used to the stink and it’s at least thick, the weave tight. It keeps out some of the chill.

  Half the time now I can’t remember why I burned the photos, what it was that made me imagine that posthumous resentments lingered in dark places within my mind and escaped via memory of that confused three-week visit to Mexico. The ghost of El Roto? I looked him up, back when I had internet access. El Roto—Chucho el Roto—was a bandit active at the end of the nineteenth century. He was famous, an ambiguous hero, a lover of the theatre, a seducer, and a “non-violent” thief, but he died in prison in Veracruz in 1885, possibly beaten to death. Not in the streets of Ocosingo in 1994. The woman I knew, Coronela—she’d said the doll was Genaro el Roto. Not Chucho. The designation “el roto”— “broken,” “discarded,” “abandoned”—has been applied to many unfortunates, many outlaws. What does it mean? Why did he, whoever he is, pick me to be his courier, his “people smuggler”?

  You, too, are El Roto, she said.

  It wasn’t until much later—expelled from my studio and my apartment with whatever prints I could scavenge—when the money was gone, and I was hungry and desperate—that I decided to do what others did and sell my old, unwanted goods on the street. Some spruiked ink drawings, some old comic books, some bits of metal twisted into ornaments. Photographs? Why not? What good are they to me? As I pinned them to a scrap of cardboard in the hope that someone would buy them, one grabbed my attention. I seemed to remember it. Escena de un Asesinato. Hadn’t I destroyed them all? One of that run, just one, had somehow survived. I couldn’t recall why I’d burned the rest.

  Why does knowing that one still exists give me the tremors? I clutch at the doll I keep stuffed in my coat pocket till the fear subsides.

  Escena de un Asesinato has a strange possessing power, there’s no doubt about that. Though I know I shouldn’t, I can’t help displaying it with the other, harmless prints of Mayan ruins and Chiapas countryside. An overweight man in a brown business suit is staring at me from further down the street. I recognize him, even though I see many people in a day at my railway-entrance post. He’s been here before. He shuffles up, hesitant, frowning.

  “That photo?’ he says. “I want it.”

  I know which one he’s referring to.

  “It’s not for sale.”

  Obsession’s twitching his muscles. I imagine the fire that scalds his belly and tightens its grip on his heart, so intensely I imagine for a moment that I can see the flames burning away his resistance.

  “Fight it,” I say, feeling the eyes of the hooded man in the picture drilling the back of my skull.

  “What?”

  “It’s him.” I gestured at the image. The eyes are visible through the mask; at that moment their intensity makes me pull away. “It’s El Roto,” I explain. “He’s the one that’s making you want the picture.”

  I force myself to stand, though I feel weak and unsteady. As I lean toward him the man draws back.

  “He was murdered,” I whisper. “His hatred runs deep.”

  The man looks panicked and for a moment I believe he’s about to run off again.

  “He’ll kill you,” I tell him. “He’ll kill your family.”

  I see the moment he capitulates. El Roto’s fire leaps into his eyes. He reaches out and grabs me by the coat, teeth gritted and violence turning his desire into a weapon. “Shut up!” he snarls, and pushes me aside. I’m too weakened to resist. I stumble and fall, cracking my head against the brickwork. Commuters drift past like ghosts, some looking, conflicted, but declining to commit to helping me. I’ve been exiled from their stable, civilized lives and don’t command protection.

  Dazed, I watch the man in the business suit grab the picture, but it’s too quick and my vision is too blurred for me to tell if there is triumph in the eyes of Genaro el Roto.

  “Wait!” I manage, reaching into my coat and extracting the doll. “Take this. It belongs with the picture.”

  The man stares at it.

  “They belong together,” I insist, desperate for him to have it. “It’ll save you.”

  For a moment he clutches at his forehead, as though the pressure is already building within his skull. Perhaps, at a level beyond the control of El Roto, he knows I mean what I say, even if my words seem to be nonsense.

  He leans down and snatches the rough doll from my outstretched hand.

  The undercurrent of guilt that lies beneath El Roto’s passion breaks through. I see it on his face.

  Then it’s gone. The man turns and runs. Perhaps I saved him. I’ll never know.

  Three days later, I huddle in a disused sewer outfall, listening to the obsessive sounds of my own inner workings. The rush of blood through veins and the tighter hiss of its passage into smaller capillaries leading to the brain. Gurgling from my stomach and intestines, as they struggle to deal with whatever scraps I can find to send to them. The thudding of my heart. The white noise of tinnitus.

  It should comfort me perhaps, this symphony of corporeal existence, but instead it fills me with dread. I don’t know if they’re the sounds of life or reminders of mortality.

  Something—a shadow of something—has appeared in the photographs of ancient Mayan ruins that I took one afternoon in Toniná. It’s a shape formed from shadows and I think it is coming closer. At first I believed it was El Roto, back to have his revenge on me. But no, this is something different, something more ancient and perhaps more terrible.

  I don’t know what to do. I’m too weak to resist, and Coronela’s protection is gone.

  Keep it with you at all times, she’d whispered. So all I can do is sit.

  And wait.

  Perhaps she’ll come back to me—and change my memories once again.

  Robert Hood has had over one hundred stories published, as well as three collections, and several novels including four of his Shades series of supernatural young adult novels. He’s been nominated for several awards and won two Atheling Awards for Genre Criticism. He co-authored (with David Young) a vampire-oriented, text-based interactive game designed to be played via mobile phone networks. Hood co-edited (with Robin Pen) three anthologies of giant monster stories, the first of which Daikaiju! Giant Monster Tales which won a Ditmar Award. He currently lives with his partner, Cat Sparks, and a number of small-c cats on the Illawarra Coast of Australia and serves the Graphic Design/Publications Coordinator of the Faculty of Commerce at Wollongong University. His website is www.roberthood.net.

  The old magic seems to be leaving the land. A more powerful kind of magic has come . . .

  GOOD HUNTING

  Ken Liu

  Night. Half moon. An occasional hoot from an owl.

  The merchant and his wife and all the servants had been sent away. The large house was eerily quiet.

  Father and I crouched behind the scholar’s rock in the courtyard. Through the rock’s many holes I could see the bedroom window of the merchant’s son.

  “Oh, Tsiao-jung, my sweet Tsiao-jung . . . ”

  The young man’s feverish groans were pitiful. Half-delirious, he was tied to his bed for his own good, but Father had left a window open so that his plaintive cries could be carried by the breeze far over the rice paddies.

  “Do you think she really will come?” I whispered. Today was my thirteenth birthday, and this was my first hunt.
r />   “She will,” Father said. “A hulijing cannot resist the cries of the man she has bewitched.”

  “Like how the Butterfly Lovers cannot resist each other?” I thought back to the folk opera troupe that had come through our village last fall.

  “Not quite,” Father said. But he seemed to have trouble explaining why. “Just know that it’s not the same.”

  I nodded, not sure I understood. But I remembered how the merchant and his wife had come to Father to ask for his help.

  “How shameful!” The merchant had muttered. “He’s not even nineteen. How could he have read so many sages’ books and still fall under the spell of such a creature?”

  “There’s no shame in being entranced by the beauty and wiles of a hulijing,” Father had said. “Even the great scholar Wong Lai once spent three nights in the company of one, and he took first place at the Imperial Examinations. Your son just needs a little help.”

  “You must save him,” the merchant’s wife had said, bowing like a chicken pecking at rice. “If this gets out, the matchmakers won’t touch him at all.”

  A hulijing was a demon who stole hearts. I shuddered, worried if I would have the courage to face one.

  Father put a warm hand on my shoulder, and I felt calmer. In his hand was Swallow Tail, a sword that had first been forged by our ancestor, General Lau Yip, thirteen generations ago. The sword was charged with hundreds of Daoist blessings and had drunk the blood of countless demons.

  A passing cloud obscured the moon for a moment, throwing everything into darkness.

  When the moon emerged again, I almost cried out.

  There, in the courtyard, was the most beautiful lady I had ever seen.

  She had on a flowing white silk dress with billowing sleeves and a wide, silvery belt. Her face was pale as snow, and her hair dark as coal, draping past her waist. I thought she looked like the paintings of great beauties from the Tang Dynasty the opera troupe had hung around their stage.

  She turned slowly to survey everything around her, her eyes glistening in the moonlight like two shimmering pools.