by Neil Gaiman
Willy, I dun’t think he liked bein’ reminded I could beat him at them things. He got that stubborn look on his face and said: ‘But I could beat you this time, Zeb, I knows I could.’
‘Willy, you’re a real winner,’ says I, ‘and my onliest true friend, too – but I’m older, bigger and stronger’n you. Now you think real clever and no question, but you’re just thirteen and—’
‘I can beat you!’ he says.
‘Okay,’ says I. ‘I believe it.’
‘No,’ says he, ‘that ain’t no proof. This here’s a endurance test, Zeb, and we got to try it out.’
‘Now, Willy,’ says I, ‘I got a good many chores to do for Paw. Iffen I’m not home an hour from now, he’ll—’
‘You first,’ says Willy.
See, it makes no matter no how arguin’ with him when he’s in that there stubborn mood o’ hissen. So we climbs up and hauls up the rope and he ties it round my feet in a noose. Then I climbs back down and lets go and swings to and fro ’til I’m all still, and Willy Jay sits up there lookin’ down at me and a-grinnin’. ‘There you go,’ says he, and he keeps the time.
Now then, Sheriff, after ’bout an hour or so Willy says, ‘Hey, Zeb! You all right down there?’
‘Sure,’ says I. ‘My ears is a mite poundin’, and I got pins and needles in my legs – but I’m okay, Willy Jay.’
‘Sure?’
‘Sure, I’m sure!’
‘Well, enough is enough,’ he says, soundin’ a bit sore at me. I can’t say why he’s sore, but he sounds it. ‘You better come on up now, ’cause it’s time you was a-startin’ home to them chores o’ your’n.’
‘But what about the endurance test?’ says I.
‘Well, we’ll finish it another day,’ he says.
So I clumb up – but truth to tell I nearly didn’t make it, my arms and legs was so stiff and all. And I got the rope off and staggered about and stamped my feet ’til I could feel ’em again. ‘How long’d I do?’ I asks.
‘Oh, an hour and three and a half minutes,’ says Willy, sort of half-sneerin’ like.
‘Hey!’ says I. ‘I could go a lot longer but for them chores. Why, I could go another ten or twenty minutes easy!’
‘Oh, sure!’ says he. ‘Listen,’ he says, ‘I beat you hands down, Zeb. I could stay up that there rope a whole week iffen I wanted to …’
Now that was boastin’ pure and simple and I knowed it.
‘Willy,’ says I, ‘ain’t nobody – but nobody – could do that! Why, you’d git all hungry, and how’d you sleep?’
‘Hell!’ he says. ‘There’s meat enough on my bones, Zeb. I’d not crave feedin’. And as for sleepin’ – well, bats do it, dun’t they? They spends all winter a-hangin’ and a-sleepin’. Hell, I bet I could do that too, iffen I put my mind to it.’
‘Well all I knows,’ says I, ‘is that I’m real glad I’m down after only one hour, three and a half minutes, that’s all.’
‘You’re you and I’m me, Zeb,’ he says, ‘but I can see you needs convincin’. Okay, how long’s them chores o’ your’n a-goin’ to take?’
‘Oh, ’bout an hour, I reckon.’
‘Okay,’ says he. ‘I’m a-goin’ to tie up my feet right now and hang here ’til you gets back.’ And he did. And Hangin’ there, he says: ‘Now this is stric’ly ’tween you and me, our secret. Dun’t you dare tell a soul ’bout this, hear? See, I’m a-goin’ to stick my thumbs in my belt, like this—’ and he did, ‘—and just rest here easy like. And I’m a-goin’ to concentrate. Now dun’t you go breakin’ my concentration nohow, Zeb, hear?’
And I said, ‘Okay.’
‘Iffen I feels like hangin’ here a week, you just let me hang, right?’
‘Right,’ says I. But o’course, I dun’t believe he can do it.
‘So off you go and do your chores, Zeb Whitley, and I’ll be right here when you gits back.’
‘Okay,’ I says again, and I scoots.
Well, I was late home and Paw gives me some talkin’ to. Then I did my chores – chopped firewood, fetched-n’-carried, this and that – until I figured I was all through. A good hour was up by then, but Paw saw me a-headin’ off and says: ‘Hey, boy! Where you a-goin’?’
‘Why, nowheres, Paw.’
‘Danged right!’ says he. ‘You was late, and so you can do some more chores. I got a whole list for you.’ And he kept me right at it all evenin’ ’til dark come in. After that – well, I ain’t allowed out after dark, Sheriff. Paw says he dun’t want no trouble, and people bein’ ready to lay the blame too quick and all, it’s best he knows where I’m at after dark. So off I goes to bed.
But when I hears him a-snorin’, up I jumps and runs to…to the place o’ the endurance test. And wouldn’t you know it? There he is a-hangin’ in the dark, quiet as a bat, all concentratin’, his thumbs tucked in his belt just like afore. And Lord, he’s been there all of five or six hours! And him so quiet, I figures maybe he’s a-sleepin’ just like he said he could. So I just tippy-toed out o’ there and snuck home and back to bed.
Anyhow, next mornin’ Paw gets a note from Uncle Zach over the hill, sayin’ please come and bring big Zeb, ’cause Uncle Zach’s a-clearin’ a field and there’s work a-plenty. And hey! – that was excitin’! I mean, I really do like Uncle Zach and him me. So Paw hitches up the wagon and off we goes, and we’re all the way to Uncle Zach’s place afore I remembers Willy.
By now he’ll be down off of that rope for sure and madder’n all hell, I reckon, ’cause I wa’n’t there to check his time. But heck! – he beat me every which ways anyhow …
And we was at Uncle Zach’s six days.
This mornin’ we comes home, and soon’s Paw’s done with me I gits on over to…to the place o’ the endurance test, and—
That’s right, Sheriff! Now how’d you guess that? Sure ’nough, he’s still up there. Nearly a week, and that spunky boy still a-hangin’ by his feet. So I goes up to him – but not too close, ’cause it’s all shut in and hot and all, and the summer flies is bad and the place stinks some – and I says: ‘Willy, you been here six days and seven nights and some hours, and you sure beat the hell out o’ me! You see that old clock out there over the schoolhouse? It’s near noon o’ the seventh day. Dun’t you reckon you should come on down now, Willy Jay?’ And I reaches up and gives him a little prod.
Sheriff, are you okay? You sure do look groggy, Sheriff …
Well, I shouldn’t prodded Willy like that ’cause I guess it spoils his concentration. Down comes a arm real slow and creaky like, and it points to the door. He’s a tellin’ me to git out, he ain’t finished yet! So off I goes, and I’m a-comin’ up the street when you grabs me and—
Why, yes, I did say I could see the schoolhouse clock from the place o’ the endur—
Aw, Sheriff! You’re just too danged clever for your own good. You guessed it. That’s right, Old Man Potter’s livery – and him away visitin’ and all. His old barn, sure – but dun’t you go disturbin’ Willy none, or—
Okay, okay, I’m a-comin’ – but I just knows there’ll be trouble. He told me not to say a word, and there I goes blabbin’ and a-blabbin’. And he wun’t thank me none for bringin’ you down on him, Sheriff, and that’s a fact. Okay, I’ll be quiet…
Oh, sure, I knows the door’s shut and bolted, Sheriff, but there’s a loose board there, see? Yes, sir, you’re right, it is a danged hot summer. And did you ever see so many flies? Only quiet now, or you’ll disturb Willy.
See him there? Yes sir, Sheriff, I knows it’s gloomy, but—
Hey! Lookit them flies go when you touched him! And…Sheriff? Are you sure you’re feelin’ okay, Sheriff?
What?
The rope was too tight ’round his ankles? His blood pooled and swelled up his belly? His belt got wedged under his ribs, you say, and trapped his thumbs? And he’s…he’s…
No! You must be mistook, Sheriff Tuttle. Just give him another little shake and you’ll see how wrong you are. Why, he�
�ll go up that rope like a monkey up a stick, all a laughin’ and—
But he cain’t be dead, not Willy! He’s just a-concentratin’, that’s all. Maybe he’s a-sleepin’ even, like them bats do. What, Willy Jay – dead?
See! See! I’m right. I done told you, Sheriff. See what he’s a-doin’ now? That there’s his worm trick!
Dang me, Willy Jay, but I never seen you get that many in your mouth afore – you really game boy!
Brian Lumley began writing in the 1960s with stories, and later novels, set in the milieu of the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’; but later he turned his attention to more contemporary horror. His output was necessarily limited because he was a serving Royal Military Policeman – a twenty-two-year man – until December 1980, when he handed in his uniform and became a full-time author. In the 1980s he began to write his best-selling, multi-reprinted Necroscope® series, an ‘alleged trilogy’, which now runs to seventeen volumes in English, with translations in fourteen countries! Among other literary awards, the author received a Grand Master Award from The World Horror Convention, a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Horror Writers Association, and another Lifetime Achievement Award from The World Fantasy Convention. As for the preceding story: ‘A Really Game Boy’ was originally written in 1981 but…‘Was laid aside and forgotten, and only came to light among a pile of old manuscripts when the editors asked my agent if there was anything available …’ With what we imagine is a monstrous grin, Lumley adds: ‘Now we find ourselves wondering what else may be in there – “rotting down”, as it were – among those old manuscripts…’
To This Water (Johnstown, Pennsylvania 1889)
CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN
HARDLY DAWN, AND already Magda had made her way through the forest into the glittering frost at the foot of the dam. When the sun climbed high enough, it would push aside the shadows and set the hollow on fire, sparkling crystal fire that would melt gently in the late spring sunrise and drip from hemlock and aspen branches, glaze the towering thickets of mountain laurel, later rise again as gauzy soft steam. Everything, ice-crisped ferns and everything else, crunched beneath her shoes, loud in the cold, still air; no sound but morning birds and the steady gush from the spillway into South Fork Creek, noisy and secretive, like careless whispers behind her back.
Winded, her breath puffing out white through chapped lips and a stitch nagging her side, she rested a moment against a potato-shaped boulder, and the moss there frost-stiffened too, ice-matted green fur and grey lichens like scabs. Back down the valley towards South Fork, night held on, a lazy thing curled in the lee of the mountain. Magda shivered and pulled her shawl tighter about her shoulders.
All the way from Johnstown since nightfall, fifteen miles or more since she’d slipped away from the darkened rows of company houses on Prospect Hill, following the railroad first and later, after the sleeping streets of South Fork, game trails and finally the winding creek, yellow-brown and swollen with the runoff of April thaw and heavy May rains. By now her family would be awake, her father already gone to the mill and twelve hours at the furnaces, her mother and sister neglecting chores and soon they would be asking from house to house, porches and back doors.
But no one had seen her go, and there would be nothing but concerned and shaking heads, shrugs and suspicion for their questions and broken English. And when they’d gone, there would be whispers, like the murmur and purl of mountain streams.
As the sky faded from soft violet, unbruising, Magda turned and began to pick her way up the steep and rocky face of the dam.
This is not memory, this is a pricking new thing, time knotted, cat’s cradled or snarled like her sister’s brown hair and she is always closing her eyes, always opening them again and always the narrow slit of sky is red, wound red slash between the alley’s black walls and rooftops, pine and shingle jaws. And there is nothing left of the men but calloused, groping fingers, the scalding whiskey soursweetness of their breath. Sounds like laughter from dog throats and the whiskery lips of pigs, dogs and pigs laughing if they could.
And Magda does not scream, because they have said that if she screams, if she cries or even speaks they will cut her tongue out, will cut her hunkie throat from ear to ear and she knows that much English. And the big Irishman has shown her his knife, they will all show her their knives, and cut her whether she screams or not.
The hands pushing and she turns her face away, better the cool mud, the water puddled that flows into her mouth, fills her nostrils, that tastes like earth and rot and the alcohol from empty barrels and overflowing crates of bottles stacked high behind the Washington Street saloon. She grinds her teeth, crunching grit, sand sharp against her gums.
And before she shuts her eyes, last thing before there is only raw pain and the sounds she won’t ever shut out, Magda catches the dapper man watching from the far away end of the alley, surprised face peering down the well. Staring slack-jawed and light from somewhere safe glints coldly off his spectacles, moonlight on thin ice.
The demons growl and he scuttles away and they fold her open like a cockleshell.
By the wavering orange oil light, her mother’s face had glowed warm, age and weariness softened almost away, and she had been speaking to them in Magyar, even though Papa said that they’d never learn that way. And she had leaned over them, brushing her sister Emilia’s hair from her face. Her mother had set the lamp carefully down on the wobbly little table beside their bed, herself in the wobbly chair, and it had still been winter then, still dirty snow on the ground outside, the wind around the pine-board corners of the house, howling for its own misfortunes. And them bundled safe beneath quilts and rag-swaddled bricks from the hearth at their feet.
Magda had watched the shadows thrown across the walls, bare save for knotholes stuffed with old newspapers and the crucifix her mother had brought across from Budapest, blood-dark wood and tortured pewter. And the lamplight had danced as her mother had spoken, had seemed to follow the rise and fall of her words, measured steps in a pattern too subtle for Magda to follow.
So she had closed her eyes tight, buried her face in pillows and Emilia’s back, and listened to her mother’s stories of childhood in the mountain village of Tatra Lomnitz and the wild Carpathians, listening more to her soothing voice than the words themselves. She knew all the old stories of the house elves, the hairy little domovoy that had lived in the dust and sooty corner behind her grandmother’s stove, and the river people, the Vodyaniyie and Rusalky; the comfort her sister drew from the fairy tales, she took directly from the music of timbre and tender intonation.
‘And in the autumn,’ her mother had said, ‘when a fat gander was offered to the people who lived under the lake, we would first cut off its head and nail it to the barn door so that our domovoy would not know that one of his geese had been given away to another.’ And then, sometime later, the lamp lifted from the wobbly table and her mother had kissed them both, Magda pretending to sleep, and whispered, her voice softer than the bed, ‘Jo ejszakat,’ and her bare footsteps already moving away, sounding hollow on the floor, when Emilia had corrected her, ‘Good night, Mama.’
‘Good night, Emilia,’ her mother had answered and then they had been alone with the night and the wind and the sky outside their window that was never quite black enough for stars, but always stained red from the belching foundry fires of Johnstown.
It was full morning by the time Magda reached the top, and her eyes stung with her own sweat and when she licked her lips she tasted her own salt; not blood but something close. Her dress clung wetly to her back, clammy damp armpits, and she’d ripped her skirt and stockings in blackberry briars and creeper vines. Twice she’d slipped on the loose stones and there was a small gash on her left palm, purpling bruise below her thumb. Now she stood a moment on the narrow road that stretched across the breast of the dam, listening to her heart, fleshpump beneath cotton and skin, muscle and bone. Watching the mist, milky wisps curling up from the green-grey water, burning away in the sun.
Up here, the morning smelled clean, pine and the silent lake, no hint of the valley’s pall of coal dust or factory smoke. There were clouds drifting slowly in from the south-west, scowling, steelbellied thunderheads, and so the breeze smelled faintly of rain and ozone as well.
Magda stepped across the road, over deep buggy ruts, pressing her own shallow prints into the clay. The pockets of her skirt bulged with the rocks she’d gathered as she climbed, weather-smoothed shale and gritty sandstone cobbles the colour of dried apricots. Four steps across, and on the other side, the bank dropped away sharply, steep, but only a few feet down to water, choked thick with cattails and weeds.
Quickest glance, then, back over her shoulder, not bothering to turn full and play Lot’s wife proper. The fire burned inside her, scorching, righteous flame shining through her eyes, incapable of cleansing, scarring and salting her brain. And, careful, Magda went down to the cold water.
And when they have all finished with her, each in his turn, when they have carved away at her insides and forced their fat tongues past her teeth and so filled her with their hot seed that it leaks like sea salt pus from between her bloodied thighs, they slosh away through the mud and leave her; not for dead, not for anything but discarded, done with. For a long time, she lies still and watches the sky roiling above the alley, and the pain seems very, very far away, and the red clouds seem so close that if she raises her hand she might touch them, might break their blister-thin skins and feel the oily black rain hiding inside. Gazing up from the pit into the firelight her own Papa stokes so that the demons can walk the streets of Johnstown.
But the demons have kept their promises, and her throat is not sliced ear to ear, and she can still speak, knows this because she hears the animal sounds from her mouth, distant as the pain between her legs. She is not dead, even if she is no longer alive.
‘Tell us about the Rusalky, Mama,’ her sister had said, and her mother had frowned, looked down at hands folded on her lap like broken wings.
