The Best New Horror 3

by Stephen Jones

  How good it felt to be able to use his brain again! It had been so long since his thoughts weren’t cluttered or twisted with the Pied Piper’s invasive tactics. Tony felt human again.

  But he was beginning to think he had make a mistake. He was approaching the center of the city and he still hadn’t gotten rid of Snake’s head. It was partly due to the fact that Tony had not found a suitable place to dispose of it, but even more because he was simply attracting too much attention. People—every rotten one of them—were stopping in their tracks to gawk at him as he walked along the street. How could he dump his parcel with a big audience on hand? Somebody would step up to open the bag at once and then they’d all grab him before he could get away.

  To make matters worse, the aluminum foil skullcap and fringe were magnifying the heat and frying his brain. Tony was sweating like a pig now. He stopped abruptly and went into the department store he had almost passed. The air-conditioning came as a great relief. He wandered around for a few minutes, imagining that all the security people in the place were watching him.

  Shit! What if they demanded to inspect his bag? He couldn’t very well refuse, they’d just hold him until the cops came. Tony began to tremble with fear. Then he saw what he needed. He kept his shopping bag clutched tightly in one hand, and he went to the counter in the sports department. He paid for a New York Yankees baseball cap, which he put on immediately. It sat snugly on the aluminum foil. The clerk appeared to be in shock, but handed him his change and receipt without a word. Tony then strolled out of the store as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  Brilliant idea, he thought. The fringe was still hanging in plain view, and there was all that tape on his cheeks, but he now felt somewhat less conspicuous. It would be a lot better if Tony could do away with the fringe, but that was too risky. If he let the Pied Piper back in, he’d never be free again. Maybe he could do without the fringe, maybe the skullcap was sufficient to block out the Pied Piper, but Tony wasn’t about to take a chance.

  Burger Billy’s was crowded. Tony was pleased to see that he was indeed drawing fewer stares, thanks to the baseball cap, but there were still people watching him. He didn’t feel comfortable enough to drop Snake’s head in the trash bin, so he turned around and left the fast food restaurant.

  The public library. That was the place. There was a large litter barrel (disguised as a piece of mod sculpture) in front of the library. Tony had already tossed one of Snake’s feet into it and the newspapers had made no mention of its having been found. Best of all, it was located in the middle of a long sidewalk that went from the curb to the library, which sat back a distance from the street. That meant he could time it so that there was no one nearby when he walked past and dropped the dead man’s head in the artsy-fartsy opening of the litter barrel. In spite of the heat, he pushed on in a hurry.

  One more block, Tony thought. Then the park. He was sticky with sweat, tired but determined. I’m going to treat myself when this is over. A quick warm bath, followed by a long cool shower. Broil a T-bone steak, wash it down with that bottle of bubbly the TWA steward had given him, do a couple of lines and hit the bars. But tonight it would be for fun, not work.

  “Hey, fuckhead.”

  Tony was only a little way into the park when the half dozen or so teenagers descended on him. Assholes, every one. They had nothing better to do with their time than hassle the elderly, the drifters and the gays who lingered in the park. Anyone they felt they could pester without comeback. They closed around Tony like an evil cloak, taunting him, shoving him, flicking fingers at his Yankee cap, snatching at the plastic bag.

  “Fuck off, you little shits.”

  “Eat shit, fuckhead.”

  Some of them were a year or two older than he was, but that didn’t matter. Tony strode on toward the library, poking elbows at anybody who got too close. They answered by bumping him, and then he was tripped. As he fell, cursing them loudly, he was hit on the head and his hat went flying. The aluminum foil skullcap was knocked loose. Oh Jesus, no. He clamped his hands on it and tried to adjust the headband. Somebody was yanking at the strips of foil that hung across Tony’s face.

  “Nice hair, asshole.”

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “Open it.”

  The kids were already pulling at the tightly wrapped parcel. Tony jumped up and lunged for it, but they pushed him down again. He had been sweating so much that the masking tape wouldn’t stick to his cheeks anymore. Light flooded in, burning his eyes. Tony shrieked at them and swung out with his fists, but he didn’t make contact. In return, he was pummeled from all sides. The doubled sunglasses were ripped from his face.

  Tony fell to his knees, hands clapped tightly over his eyes. I’m okay, I’m okay, he tried to convince himself. But he already knew from the shouts and screams that they had discovered what he had in the bag. Now he was being kicked and punched, and when he tried to ward off the blows he was hit in the stomach so hard his eyes opened briefly. The color purple ravaged him—he was in a flowerbed full of violets.

  Tony screamed.

  “No! Don’t touch that, not that! Please don’t— ”

  But they did. They were ready to take his mug shot, and one of the cops calmly reached up and pulled off that stupid aluminum foil thing he had on his head.

  Zzzzzt.

  EPILOGUE

  Life isn’t disappointing, but people so often are. They may raise your hopes for a while, but sooner or later they’ll let you down. People are . . . Doctor Ladybank pondered the matter for a few moments, seeking to find the right word. Yes, he had it.

  People are unworthy.

  He was not entirely sure what they were unworthy of, but the point seemed irrefutable. It was difficult to follow every train of thought to the end of the line when you were drowning in a sea of disillusionment. The gift—for that was how Doctor Ladybank now regarded it, not as a skill or a technique—was apparently gone. Radio silence. Day and night he tried to tune in someone, anyone, but he found no one.

  What happened? Doctor Ladybank wasn’t sure. For a few days after Tony Delgado’s arrest, the boy could still be reached. But then he began to fade gradually, and after a month he disappeared altogether. It was not the effect of buildings and metalwork and power lines, or Doctor Ladybank never would have managed to reach across the city in the first place. Nor could it be a matter of distance, as he had driven the fifty-plus miles to the Bartholomew Forensic Institute, part of the state hospital for the criminally insane, where Delgado was being held pending trial. He parked in the visitor’s lot and sat there for an hour, trying feverishly to regain contact with the boy. Nothing.

  Doctor Ladybank wondered if the failure was his. But he did the same things with his mind, he hadn’t forgotten how it worked, anymore than you can forget how to ride a bicycle. Of course, it may have been a gigantic fluke, a scientific peculiarity that had its brief moment and then passed. But Doctor Ladybank could not believe that. He still had faith in his gift. All he had to do, he told himself, was persist. It would come back to him. And he would connect. Believe. Persist.

  His favourite theory about this temporary failure centered on the inadequacy of his two subjects. Snake had always been tricky to handle, a dim prospect. Doctor Ladybank had never enjoyed the same intimacy of mind with Snake that he had with Tony. To steer him out to Jack’s backyard and then get him over the hump—that was like composing the Gurre-Lieder. Delgado, on the other hand, was ravishing in his openness and malleability. Great potential, unlimited opportunity. But something had gone wrong, and Doctor Ladybank feared that he had gone too far with the boy. Now parts of Delgado’s brain had simply shut down and were incapable of any mental reception. How else to explain it?

  Of course, terrible things had happened. But no, don’t say that. Terrible is an emotive word that has no meaning. It would be more accurate to say that unfortunate things had happened. He couldn’t explain it, but it was hardly all his doing. When minds meet and interact in s
uch a pioneering way the results are almost certain to be unexpected. Two minds adrift in each other, it was like—and here Doctor Ladybank took comfort in the persistence of the musical metaphor—a vast orchestra lost in the aleatoric reaches of the night.

  Besides, Snake and Tony were hardly innocents.

  Fuck it, as they would say.

  Doctor Ladybank stared at the papers in front of him, but he couldn’t see the words. It was that time of day, when he usually summarized his notes on the patients he’d seen, but his mind just wouldn’t focus. Such boring and squalid lives that people insist on living . . . Doctor Ladybank was glad when the phone warbled.

  “Margaret Zuvella on the line for you.”

  I remember the bristol, but the face escapes me.

  “Yes, put her through.” Pause, click. “Hello, Maggie?”

  “Hi, Ian. How are you?”

  “Fine, thanks, and you?”

  “Busy as usual, but bearing up.”

  Doctor Ladybank gave the obligatory chuckle. “Now, what can I do for you on this rainy Tuesday?”

  “I was hoping you’d agree to examine a client of mine. He’s indigent, of course, so it’ll be at the usual lousy state rates. But he’s convinced you can help.”

  “Oh? What case is it?”

  “State versus Anthony Delgado.”

  “Ah.”

  “You know him, you saw him a while back on another case. He seems like a major league fuck-up, but what do I know? The state experts are picking his brain now, which is why we need you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, you remember him? Or yes, you’ll examine him?”

  “Both.”

  “Ian, you’re a doll.”

  Not really—but Doctor Ladybank didn’t say that. The tide had come in, his boat was lifted off the sand, and he was sailing again. The time would come, he knew beyond the slightest doubt, when he would make contact, and connect, with some other person. When that happened, Doctor Ladybank would progress with the gift, exploring new territory, achieving the unimaginable.

  But for now, thanks be to the void, he had a chance to learn more from one of his mistakes. Perhaps even to save it.

  Tony smiled when he saw Doctor Ladybank’s fountain pen, one of those fat expensive jobs. In happier times he’d had a couple of well-off tricks who used that kind of pen. Check-writers with skinny dicks.

  They were in a small consulting room at Bartholomew. It was painted the mandatory institutional shade of pastel green, and it was stuffy from a lack of air-conditioning, but it was as good as heaven—compared to the ward in which Tony was kept. The guard stood outside the door, keeping an eye on them through the sturdy wire-and-glass window. Doctor Ladybank had brought Tony a carton of cigarettes from Maggie. Tony had never smoked before, but in a ward full of wackos it seemed a perfectly natural, even healthy thing to do.

  The questions were stupid and boring, but Tony tried to give polite answers. There was something eerie and unreal about this. After so much time, he was still unsure of Doctor Ladybank’s true role in what had gone down. Had he been directly involved in all of Tony’s suffering? Was he partially responsible for the bleak future Tony faced? It seemed unlikely, because the same man was now trying to construct a “demon voice” insanity defence so that Tony would be spared hard prison time. Not that he relished the prospect of an indefinite committal to the nuthouse.

  “One problem,” Doctor Ladybank said, “is your assertion that the voice stopped communicating with you.”

  “Yeah, it did.”

  “When did that happen?”

  “When I was still in the city jail,” Tony said. “It took me a couple of weeks, maybe more, to get rid of it.”

  “You stopped the voice?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And how did you accomplish that?”

  “By banging my head on the bars and the cement floor,” Tony explained proudly. “See, it really bothered him when I banged my head on the floor at my apartment. He said the people downstairs would put the cops on me. But I figured, maybe he was afraid I’d shake up the works.” Tony tapped the side of his head. “So that he couldn’t get to me anymore. In jail, I had the time to try it out, to do it everyday, as much as I could take. And it actually worked. I could feel him getting weaker, and finally I couldn’t hear him at all anymore. If I’d only done that at the beginning, I’d have saved myself—my life.”

  “I see.” Doctor Ladybank put his pen down. “Do you have to continue this behavior, banging your head, in order to— ”

  “Hell, no,” Tony cut in. “It did the job, and that’s it. I never got a kick out of knocking myself senseless, you know. I’m not crazy. I just . . . went through something crazy. And I’ll tell you this too: he’s still out there, man. I know he is.”

  “Yes. Now, tell me— ”

  “Doc, I have a question for you.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why did you tell me about bright lights and colors?”

  “Pardon?”

  “The first time you saw me,” Tony said, leaning forward, his arms on the table. “You gave me some line about watching out for bright lights and bright colors.”

  “I’m sure I didn’t,” Doctor Ladybank insisted.

  “Yeah, you did. It sounded weird at the time, and I didn’t give it much thought. But later, when the voice came and all the trouble really started, lights and colors began to hurt me. They got so bad I had to wear sunglasses and dark clip-ons. But I was still in agony.” Tony paused. “Why did you do that?”

  “I can assure you I did no such— ”

  “What was it, some kind of test? Or were you just having a little fun with me?”

  “Anthony, you won’t help your case this way.”

  Doctor Ladybank was trying to sound calm, but he was clearly flustered. His cheeks had more color now and his eyes cast about evasively as he droned on about Tony’s “willful and naive attempt to embellish the delusion,” and other uptown bullshit.

  “Doc,” Tony interrupted. “I’m a whore. Maybe that’s why I can always tell when I’m being jived. I thought it was the CIA, or aliens from space, or that I was just crazy. I doubted it was you, I really did. Until now.”

  “I’ll speak with your attorney.”

  Doctor Ladybank was trying to look annoyed. He shuffled the papers on the table, picked up his pen and began to write. As if Tony were no longer there, and had indeed ceased to exist.

  Writing about me. The subject. That’s what you were doing. You weren’t trying to read my mind, Tony thought, you were trying to write it, to script my life like a dream or some kind of movie in your mind.

  “Plasmodium.”

  Doctor Ladybank looked up sharply when Tony spoke the word. A ghost of a smile formed around the psychiatrist’s eyes, seeming to say I cannot be hurt by you.

  The baleful, haunting expression on the man’s face triggered a profound claustrophobia in Tony. It felt as if the world, the universe itself, and every cell in his brain, was shutting down, blinking off, closing forever, and all that would be left was his sense of awareness—perpetual awareness of the dark around him. The room itself was being blotted out.

  Write this!

  Tony snatched the fat pen from Doctor Ladybank’s fingers and in a single swift motion rammed it nib-first through the shrink’s right eye. He pushed it as far into the demon brain as he could, and then sat back, experiencing a remarkable sense of clarity and peace of mind.

  Doctor Ladybank’s mouth opened slightly. Otherwise, he did not move. His left eye was still open, glistening sightlessly. He appeared to be considering the matter.

  NINA KIRIKI HOFFMAN

  Zits

  NINA KIRIKI HOFFMAN resides in Eugene, Oregon, with three cats and a mannequin. She is fast gaining a reputation as a short story writer with appearances in Asimov’s, Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Aboriginal, Pulphouse, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Weird Tales (she was a featured author
), and such anthologies as Doom City, Greystone Bay, Shadows 8 and 9 and The Ultimate Werewolf. She has also appeared in several volumes of Datlow and Windling’s The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and Karl Edward Wagner’s Year’s Best Horror.

  Two collections of her short fiction have so far been published, Author’s Choice Monthly 14: Legacy of Fire (Pulphouse Publishing) and Courting Disasters and Other Strange Affinities (Wildside Press). She collaborated with Tad Williams on the young adult fantasy Child of An Ancient City, and has a horror novella, Unmasking, coming from Axolotl Press.

  There are far too many child abuse stories being published in the horror field today, and most of them merely exploit their given theme. “Zits” is a welcome exception. It may be short, but it certainly packs an emotional punch.

  ONCE I READ A BOOK WHERE they put the jewels in the teddy bear’s stomach. A lot of people were chasing that teddy bear but the kids and the police got it in the end and when they sliced him open, there were all those colored jewels, sparkling and shining and promising everything.

  You have to dig deepest to find the best secrets, my daddy said, burying his in me.

  Some secrets you don’t want to keep.

  The worst zits are the red ones where you can’t see any white. You press them and the white doesn’t pop out. You have to dig around with a needle to find the white under the blood, because until you get the pearly white out the sore won’t heal no matter how many times you pull the scab off. And you’ve only got so much time in front of the mirror in the morning. If you leave the red zits alone and go to school then they get really big and everybody can see the pearl under the skin and they make jokes. Pizza face. Balloon factory.

  It’s always dark when he comes in. I used to have a night light, but when I turned thirteen a year ago, he said, “Now you’re a teenager. You’re all grown up, and you don’t need that little light anymore. That’s for scared little kids.”

  It’s always dark when the door opens, so I see the light from down in the front hall, faint and yellow, leaving a giant fuzzy shadow of him dark across the ceiling. Then he slips inside and the light goes away again, and that’s when I stop hearing myself, no breathing, no blood moving through my ears to let me know my heart’s still beating. I hear the click of the door closing, and I hear his feet as they slap the hardwood floor and pad across the rag rug by my bed, and I smell his soap and his aftershave and a little hint of Mom’s perfume because he’s been lying close to her.