The Year's Best Horror Stories 4

by Gerald W. Page (Ed. )

  Circling the shed where the generator pulsated faithfully, out of old custom he carefully avoided entering its shadow. A path began here, smoothed by his long use. It led directly out into the wasteland, where even greasewood and creosote bush could find no subsistence.

  He trod the path without hesitation. He could have done so with his eyes closed, had not such an action placed him in the lonely dark. Rather than permit such a contingency, the blink of his eyelids was ophidianly rapid. The intervals between were more than ordinarily long.

  The man's vision covered a wide range. He constantly scanned the pebbled surface of the desolate terrain. Only furiously dancing ghosts spiraled upon it in frantic saraband, in this most deadly hour of the day—most brilliantly bathed with painful light, most frightfully scourged with whips of sunfire.

  He came upon a dead skink. The tiny lizard, unable to reach the protecting shade of a rock a few feet from the path, had been struck down while racing for shelter. Already its cold blood was dried out by the greedy, parching air. It lay, vampire-stricken, shrunken like a twisted root.

  The man felt that he was being watched. Well used to this sensation, he had long since acquired peripheral vision to a high degree. He halted, encompassing a full hundred and eighty degrees without turning his head. Perceiving nothing, he wheeled about, almost expecting to detect a swiftly nearing menace, yet knowing what his cringing soul abhorred, could not, by the very laws of its being, exist in such blistering brilliance.

  He sneered, in self-contempt, and resumed his journey. Scorn hastened his steps. As he walked rapidly on, other tiny trails cut into the path. Delicate prints of kangaroo rats; the dragging fat width of furrow created by the tails of Gila monsters; the scrawl of a sidewinder. He knew them all as neighbors, needing water even as himself. He had no fear of any of them, nor they of him. They dwelt in amity and tolerance.

  The man came, at last, after a long hour of such traveling, in sight of his destination. Here, almost invisible to anyone at desert level, a crack in the calcined soil, little more at its beginning than a scratch along the ground, widened to the width of his body and descended to become a long ramp.

  He followed it down, into shade which would have been welcome to any other thirsty traveler. He ran, feeling himself in a veritable valley of the shadow, gasping with horror at the unavoidable necessity which drove him. It was not until he frantically burst into an open, enclosed space bathed in merciless sunlight, that he felt safe and flung himself down to rest

  Long ago, some ancient people—the mysterious cliff dwellers?—the Hohokam?—he did not know who it could have been—had discovered their secret salvation in this deep dimple in the desert.

  Here was water, held in a carved reservoir in the living rock below arid subsoil. Leading into it, grooves, long and slanting, led drops of night dew captured on the front of the stone above the little tank.

  He lay with one burning cheek in soft, cool mud, gloating upon his private treasure until his heart quieted and breathing became easier. Now that the Apache were long gone from this pitiless country, only he and the little desert people knew of the hidden pool. He felt himself kin to them—even the scorpion that he saw not far away.

  His euphoria, brought on by the successful conclusion to his trip, did not last long. The descent never failed to recall to his mind that other plunging below the level of upper earth, which had brought upon himself the dragging curse of inevitable doom under whose threat he labored.

  Everything reminded him of that implacable foe. The ooze, which should have soothed him, for example. There had been cold slime on the floor of that gelid tunnel which he and his partner had discovered in the temple of Ah-Puch, deep within the crumbled ruin of jungle-shrouded Ixcopan.

  This hidden retreat, sunbathed as it was—how similar in size to the deep crypt below! Even the ramp he had just followed down—downward, another ramp, deeper, darker, more ominous than this had led the two explorers where Ah-Puch, The Black Captain, awaited his worshippers.

  Into his ruminative solitude, the irreverent intruders had burst, seeking treasure, only to discover a second ramp behind the altar—a tunnel, slanting deep beyond the illumination of any torch, and still in use. Tracks not to be considered footprints, lined the slime in this second tunnel where beings came up from unguessable depths to make obeisance to their god.

  That such intrusion was resented was not long in doubt. At the first opening of those baleful eyes, the first stirring of broad, scaly wings, the first ululation from that massive throat—the two heard the slither of fast answering hulks in the profound gut into which they had peered.

  They turned then, to flee. The man had known, instantly, that only one could escape—as soon as he saw the white, lurching shapes emerge and heard the wet slap of their lolloping bodies against the floor of the crypt.

  The terror of his partner's eyes had not deterred the man from striking the Judas blow. It had not hindered him from the sudden backward thrust which hurled the staggering form of his friend to fall upon the altar, to lie there, stunned, until that which hungered, descended to rip and tear.

  Now, thinking upon this—even in this safe, sun-drenched refuge, that lightless tunnel up which he had clawed his way to humid daylight, leaving the entrance wide open behind him—he relived the horror of the dark.

  It had never left him. It never would. The mark of Ah-Puch was upon him. It would attract that which pursued, if so be it he permitted darkness to fall upon himself, even for an instant

  While a man lives he must cling to life, be it however so burdensome. He picked up the olla, hesitated to enter the corridor—the shadows in it seemed denser now—then, cursing his timidity, he set his feet to the ramp.

  When he emerged from the crack in the desert and came out upon its surface into the heat, it struck him like a blow. His head reeled, inured as he was to this harsh and hopeless life. Dazzled, he did not raise his eyes toward the malevolent sun.

  The man, isolated from the world as he was, detached from the reality and the affairs of the world and the news of happenings within and without it ignorant of the announced eclipse which had fascinated astronomers and the general public, now found himself a prisoner of distance and of time.

  It was hopeless to attempt to reach the shack, but he threw down the heavy olla of water and began to run.

  He was still running, with far to go, when blackness overwhelmed the sun and racing shadow overtook him. He was running when night and noonday came upon him, alleviated only by the flick of Bailey's Beads which glittered along the ground and speedily passed him by.

  He was running when that which had long awaited this moment swooped upon him as the tarantula-wasp had upon the spider—and took him away.

  THE GLOVE by Fritz Leiber

  Fritz Leiber's novel Conjure Wife is unquestionably the best known story from the pages of the legendary fantasy magazine Unknown. Leiber is well known for his science-fiction (he won another Nebula earlier this year, this time for his short story "Catch That Zeppelin!") and for his heroic fantasy stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. But it may well be that it is with the story of supernatural horror in a modern setting that Leiber really excels, and he has provided us with a number of small, chilling masterpieces such as "The Black Gondolier" and "Ms. Found in a Maelstrom." If you are unfamiliar with those stories, then do not hesitate to read the following one to find out what we mean. If you are familiar with them, then you need no urging.

  My most literally tangible brush with the supernatural (something I can get incredibly infatuated with yet forever distrust profoundly, like a very beautiful and adroit call girl) occurred in connection with the rape by a masked intruder of the woman who lived in the next apartment to mine during my San Francisco years. I knew Evelyn Mayne only as a neighbor and I slept through the whole incident, including the arrival and departure of the police, though there came a point in the case when the police doubted both these assertions of mine.

  The phrase "vic
tim of rape" calls up certain stereotyped images: an attractive young woman going home alone late at night, enters a dark street, is grabbed . . . or, a beautiful young suburban matron, mother of three, wakes after midnight, feels a nameless dread, is grabbed . . . The truth is apt to be less romantic. Evelyn Mayne was sixty-five long divorced, neglected, and thoroughly detested by her two daughters-in-law and only to a lesser degree by their husbands, lived on various programs of old age, medical and psychiatric assistance, was scrawny, gloomy, alcoholic, waspish, believed life was futile, and either overdosed on sleeping pills or else lightly cut her wrists three or four times a year.

  Her assailant at least was somewhat more glamorous, in a sick way. The rapist was dressed all in rather close-fitting gray, hands covered by gray gloves, face obscured by a long shock of straight silver hair falling over it. And in the left hand, at first, a long knife that gleamed silver in the dimness.

  And she wasn't grabbed either, at first, but only commanded in a harsh whisper coming through the hair to lie quietly or be cut up.

  When she was alone again at last, she silently waited something like the ten minutes she'd been warned to, thinking that at least she hadn't been cut up, or else (who knows?) wishing she had been. Then she went next door (in the opposite direction to mine) and roused Marcia Everly, who was a buyer for a department store and about half her age. After the victim had been given a drink, they called the police and Evelyn Mayne's psychiatrist and also her social worker, who knew her current doctor's number (which she didn't), but they couldn't get hold of either of the last two. Marcia suggested waking me and Evelyn Mayne countered by suggesting they wake Mr. Helpful, who has the next room beyond Marcia's down the hall. Mr. Helpful (otherwise nicknamed Baldy, I never remembered his real name) was someone I loathed because he was always prissily dancing around being neighborly and asking if there was something he could do—and because he was six foot four tall, while I am rather under average height

  Marcia Everly is also very tall, at least for a woman, but as it happens I do not loathe her in the least. Quite the opposite in fact.

  But Evelyn Mayne said I wasn't sympathetic, while Marcia (thank goodness!) loathed Mr. Helpful as much as I do—she thought him a weirdo, along with half the other tenants in the building.

  So they compromised by waking neither of us, and until the police came Evelyn Mayne simply kept telling the story of her rape over and over, rather mechanically, while Marcia listened dutifully and occupied her mind as to which of our crazy fellow-tenants was the best suspect—granting it hadn't been done by an outsider, although that seemed likeliest. The three most colorful were the statuesque platinum-blond drag queen on the third floor, the long-haired old weirdo on six who wore a cape and was supposed to be into witchcraft, and the tall, silver-haired, Nazi-looking lesbian on seven (assuming she wore a dildo for the occasion as was nuttier than a five-dollar fruit cake).

  Ours really is a weird building, you see, and not just because of its occupants, who sometimes seem as if they were all referred here by mental hospitals. No, it's eerie in its own right. You see, several decades ago it was a hotel with all the rich, warm inner life that once implied: bevies of maids, who actually used the linen closets (empty now) on each floor and the round snap-capped outlets in the baseboards for a vacuum system (that hadn't been operated for a generation) and the two dumbwaiters (their doors forever shut and painted over). In the old days there had been bellboys and an elevator operator and two night porters who'd carry up drinks and midnight snacks from a restaurant that never closed.

  But they're gone now, every last one of them, leaving the halls empty-feeling and very gloomy, and the stairwell an echoing void, and the lobby funereal, so that the mostly solitary tenants of today are apt to seem like ghosts, especially when you meet one coming silently around a turn in the corridor where the ceiling lights burned out

  Sometimes I think that, what with the smaller and smaller families and more and more people living alone, our whole modern world is getting like that.

  The police finally arrived, two grave and solicitous young men making a good impression—especially a tall and stalwart (Marcia told me) Officer Hart. But when they first heard Evelyn Mayne's story, they were quite skeptical (Marcia could tell, or thought she could, she told me). But they searched Evelyn's room and poked around the fire escapes and listened to her story again, and then they radioed for a medical policewoman, who arrived with admirable speed and who decided after an examination that in all probability there'd been recent sex, which would be confirmed by analysis of some smears she'd taken from the victim and the sheets.

  Officer Hart did two great things, Marcia said. He got hold of Evelyn Mayne's social worker and told him he'd better get on over quick. And he got from him the phone number of her son who lived in the city and called him up and threw a scare into his wife and him about how they were the nearest of kin, goddamn it, and had better start taking care of the abused and neglected lady.

  Meanwhile the other cop had been listening to Evelyn Mayne, who was still telling it, and he asked her innocent questions, and had got her to admit that earlier that night she'd gone alone to a bar down the street (a rather rough place) and had one drink, or maybe three. Which made him wonder (Marcia said she could tell) whether Evelyn hadn't brought the whole thing on herself, maybe by inviting some man home with her, and then inventing the rape, at least in part, when things went wrong. (Though I couldn't see her inventing the silver hair.)

  Anyhow the police got her statement and got it signed and then took off, even more solemnly sympathetic than when they'd arrived, Officer Hart in particular.

  Of course, I didn't know anything about all this when I knocked on Marcia's door before going to work that morning, to confirm a tentative movie date we'd made for that evening. Though I was surprised when the door opened and Mr. Helpful came out looking down at me very thoughtfully, his bald head gleaming, and saying to Marcia in the voice adults use when children are listening, "I'll keep in touch with you about the matter. If there is anything I can do, don't hesitate . . ."

  Marcia, looking at him very solemnly, nodded.

  And then my feeling of discomfiture was completed when Evelyn Mayne, empty glass in hand and bathrobe clutched around her, edged past me as if I were contagious, giving me a peculiarly hostile look and calling back to Marcia over my head, "I'll come back, my dear, when I've repaired my appearance, so that people can't say you're entertaining bedraggled old hags."

  I was relieved when Marcia gave me a grin as soon as the door was closed and said, "Actually she's gone to get herself another drink, after finishing off my supply. But really, Jeff, she has a reason to this morning—and for hating any man she runs into." And her face grew grave and troubled (and a little frightened too) as she quickly clued me in on the night's nasty events. Mr. Helpful, she explained, had dropped by to remind them about a tenants' meeting that evening and, when he got the grisly news, to go into a song and dance about how shocked he was and how guilty at having slept through it all, and what could he do?

  Once she broke off to say, almost worriedly, "What I can't understand, Jeff, is why any man would want to rape someone like Evelyn."

  I shrugged. "Kinky some way, I suppose. It does happen, you know. To old women, I mean. Maybe a mother thing."

  "Maybe he hates women," she speculated. "Wants to punish them."

  I nodded.

  She had finished by the time Evelyn Mayne came back, very listless now, looking like a woebegone ghost, and dropped into a chair. She hadn't got dressed or even combed her hair. In one hand she had her glass, full and dark, and in the other a large, pale gray leather glove, which she carried oddly, dangling it by one finger.

  Marcia started to ask her about it, but she just began to recite once more all that had happened to her that night, in an unemotional mechanical voice that sounded as if it would go on forever.

  Look, I didn't like the woman—she was a particularly useless, venomous sort of
nuisance (those wearisome suicide attempts!)—but that recital got to me. I found myself hating the person who would deliberately put someone into the state she was in. I realized, perhaps for the first time, just what a vicious and sick crime rape is and how cheap are all the easy jokes about it.

  Eventually the glove came into the narrative naturally: ". . . and in order to do that he had to take off his glove. He was particularly excited just then, and it must have got shoved behind the couch and forgotten, where I found it just now."

  Marcia pounced on the glove at once then, saying it was important evidence they must tell the police about. So she called them and after a bit she managed to get Officer Hart himself, and he told her to tell Evelyn Mayne to hold on to the glove and he'd send someone over for it eventually.

  It was more than time for me to get on to work, but I stayed until she finished her call, because I wanted to remind her about our date that evening.

  She begged off, saying she'd be too tired from the sleep she'd lost and anyway she'd decided to go to the tenants' meeting tonight. She told me, "This has made me realize that I've got to begin to take some responsibility for what happens around me. We may make fun of such people—the good neighbors—but they've got something solid about them."

  I was pretty miffed at that, though I don't think I let it show. Oh, I didn't so much mind her turning me down—there were reasons enough—but she didn't have to make such a production of it and drag in "good neighbors." (Mr. Helpful, who else?) Besides, Evelyn Mayne came out of her sad apathy long enough to give me a big smile when Marcia said "No."

  So I didn't go to the tenants' meeting that night, as I might otherwise have done. Instead I had dinner out and went to the movie—it was lousy—and then had a few drinks, so that it was late when I got back (no signs of life in the lobby or lift or corridor) and gratefully piled into bed.