The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, 2010

by Elizabeth Bear

  That sounded ominous. Was it a sex thing? You heard about these posh people. Aloud I said, “Encounter?”

  “Rendezvous. Rencontre. Whatever.” He waved a hand, as if granting me the freedom to fill in the synonym of my choice. “You see, my role here tonight—my purpose—was primarily to observe. Nothing more for now. And then when I saw that we were both observing the same thing . . . Well, it seemed only polite to consult, so to speak. One aficionado to another.”

  Sometimes when he spoke there was the slightest pause before the noun, as if there were other names for everything—secret names some of them—and he had to be careful which names he used. Careful, because his choice would determine how much he might reveal of his true intent—of his true nature, maybe.

  “What do you mean?” It was hypnotic, the dance of the language, but treacherous as well. A snake will dance and weave before it strikes.

  The guest sighed, and leaned forwards. Clasping his hands, he rested the point of his chin on the extended tips of his index fingers. Still his face was indistinguishable in the dark. “The matter of Emily,” he said, and a shudder passed through the room, passed all the way through me. I swear it did.

  “Little Emily.” Savoring the words. “So special—but you saw that straight away, didn’t you? I noticed you noticing. Such a lovely girl. So . . . vivacious.”

  I wanted to stop him right there, before he went any further. Our parents’ generation had a phrase—it sounds absurdly dated now, but it expressed exactly what I felt—I don’t like the tone of your voice. But he was speaking still:

  “Vivacious. I wonder, is that exactly the word I was looking for—I mean, in terms of its etymology? Ah, though, I was forgetting: I doubt that sort of thing is covered in college any more. Lively, tenacious of life; long lived.” He tutted, like a Sunday painter who’d selected the wrong color. “What do you think?”

  “I know what vivacious means,” I said sullenly. I wished I knew the word that would get him to piss off, though politely.

  “But is it appropriate to the matter at hand? Is it apposite? Is it correct?” With that last word, a hard flinty quality came into his speech: the k sounds practically knapped sparks off the edges of the air.

  “Eh? What are you getting at?” For the first time since my arrival at High Thornhays I was on the defensive. Old habits born of inadequacy coming to the fore: truculence, sullenness . . . and just the beginnings of fear. The man with no face there in the armchair: I was already afraid of him. Not nearly as afraid as I ought to have been, not yet. But soon; very soon.

  Already I had that sick black-hole sensation of sliding towards something awful, the kind of feeling we associate only with bad dreams, because we’re conditioned to believe that such things never happen in real life. Then why do they seem so familiar in our dreams? And why did I feel as though I knew this man, when I’d never to the best of my recollection met him? Why could I already sense what he was going to say, when I asked him “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, she looks healthy enough,” began the guest; and there it was. It was that odd dreamy foreknowledge of his answer that made me panic, as much as what he said. “She looks healthy enough, I grant you that. But how could you know, just from looking? How could you possibly be sure?” He spread his hands wide. “How could you know what’s inside?” The word fell very heavily in the darkened room. Absurd as it sounds, I was already thinking, Yes, exactly, how can you know?

  “I mean, what about leukemia?” said the guest, pronouncing that tricky first syllable to a nicety. “Hyperplasic transformation of leucopoietic tissue. Half of all cancers in teenage children. Or meningitis: presents as a headache and irritability. Well.” He tittered. “Irritability, in teenagers? How could you even guess, until it was far too late? So many forms; so many causes. Viruses, fungi, bacteria, carcinomas . . . ” A languid flourish of his hand, sketching out a process of infinite regression.

  “Carcinomas? What do you mean?” There was a tremor in my voice I didn’t like. “Nobody’s got cancer.”

  “Ah, well, cancer.” He might have been describing an old bad penny of a friend, a mischievous roué impossible to dislike. “I suppose there’s always that moment, isn’t there, when the first cell divides in a slightly different way? And you don’t know it, but inside you something is already changing—the traitor cell, the Judas tissue? And it starts like that—at the snap of a finger.” A dry clicking of cold bones.

  “Cancer. Limbs of the crab. And there are so many places it can hide. Have you ever stopped to consider this? The body is infinitely tolerant in this respect, Mike, infinitely welcoming. All the major organs, of course—but the big toe? The humble hallux, this-little-piggy-went-to-market? Cancer in your big toe? Look it up in the textbooks. And while you’re there, try cancer of the rectum. Cancer of the womb. Cancer of the tongue—even cancer of the eyeball. Imagine that, Mike!”

  How could I not? I wonder: did he know that anything to do with eyes terrified me, ever since that playground fight when I’d nearly lost the sight in my right eye? I think he probably did. I don’t think there was much he didn’t know. He wanted me terrified, you see. He wanted me to panic. And there was no stopping him, he was off again.

  “Or the neurodegenerative diseases! It’s a list as long as your arm, all the Herr Doktors jostling for immortality in the medical texts. Sandhoff, Spielmeyer, Kreutzfeld-Jakob, Pelizaeus-Merzbacher, Schilder and Pick. Body dementia. Corticobasal degeneration. Spinocerebellar ataxia. All of it lying in wait as you grow old, and you never know. Neurons deteriorating, connections broken all across the cortex, until all of a sudden you’re sitting in the day ward in incontinence pants, crying because you’ve dropped your sippy-cup. It could happen to anyone. To Emily, even—why not?”

  “Are you a doctor?” It was all I could think of to say. I hoped it might distract him.

  He chuckled, softly and disagreeably. “A doctor? Let me see. What would be the opposite of doctor, do you think? A doctor; no. No, I’m afraid not, Mike—but I could have a look at it for you, if you like?” Again that creepy chuckle, hardly aspirated, pent up jealously in his throat. “Isn’t that how the old joke goes?”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “In the context of Emily? Why not? Why not, Mike? Just because you’re besotted with her after what—a day?—that won’t save her. She can’t be sheltered from the world indefinitely, you know! Nothing protects a person forever. All the love in the world weighs less than a new strain of flu—remember that. The love of the poets may be constant and unchanging, but viruses mutate. Viruses win in the end.” I knew he was smiling; I knew how hideous that smile would be. “You’re smitten; how sweet. But that won’t save her. Bear that in mind, while you consider all the possibilities.”

  How desperately I wanted this filth to stop; this madness, this indecency. Suppose I simply left the room, got up and walked out? Either the dream would be over and I’d wake up, or I’d be out in the hallway at least, and hopefully he wouldn’t come after me. But before I could shift a muscle he said, “No, wait,” as casually as that, almost absentmindedly, the way you’d invite someone to take a seat . . .

  . . . and there I was, pinned against the cushions. I couldn’t move. I tried, but found myself rooted in the chair. Again, it was that feeling we get in dreams, when we’re trapped in the grip of the monster, unable to escape. That was the point at which I lost it, in retrospect, the point at which I came to believe that the shape in the armchair was something other than a commonplace pervert or sadist, something other than conventionally wicked, or conventionally insane. The fear was racking up inside me, mounting in an exponential clamor, as he spoke again:

  “I mean, accidents! We haven’t even mentioned accidents yet, have we? That road down to Tawton, for instance. Monica takes it far too fast, you know, that sharp right-hander near the junction with the A30. She drives Emily and Trish down to pony club each Sunday. Trish goes in the passenger seat, but Emily’s in the back
, without a seatbelt. Now, what if one fine day in . . . May, shall we say? May the twenty-third, next year? Just for the sake of argument. Now, suppose on that bright May morning, something were to be coming the other way along that lane. A Land Rover, say—or better still, a tractor. A big Massey Ferguson, with a tank full of silage behind it. Both going a bit too fast, neither of them concentrating . . . and poor Emily in the back, without a seatbelt, remember? No protection; no chance. Massive head trauma, a grievous insult to the brain—that’s what the doctors would say at the post-mortem. It could happen. I could make it happen.”

  So calm, so matter-of-fact, but such a terrible depth of malice and psychosis behind every word he spoke. Such a wicked joy in destruction. I was so scared now; so scared, you wouldn’t believe it. Dream or not, I knew I was trapped in the presence of a very bad thing, maybe the worst thing of all, and I didn’t dare imagine what it wanted with me.

  “Or suicide.” I must have tried to say something, because he raised his voice insistently. “Yes. Suicide. It would take longer, quite a while longer, but in the end there is nothing more sure. You see, deep in every human heart there is a place with no way out—you might not believe it, Mike, but it’s true, it’s true, it’s so terribly true. And I could find that place. I could take her by the hand and lead her there, and then vanish with a puff of smoke—like that!”

  He raised his closed fist to his mouth, blew it open to show nothing. And behind his spread fingers, the nothing where his face should have been.

  “Why are you saying this?” I was almost sobbing. I’d tried to get up again, tried to run away like a child, but I couldn’t. I was rooted to the chair. He had me fast. “Why are you telling me these things? What do you want?”

  “What do I want?” He sounded positively jovial. “Well, Mike, I want to ask your opinion on something. I’d like you to make a choice.”

  Somehow, I’d known he was going to say it; feared that he would. Aloud I said, “I don’t understand,” but I’d known before he even spoke, the way you do in dreams. And of course he was having none of it.

  “Yes you do. Don’t play the innocent, Mike; don’t waste my time. You’re a part of this now. Look it up in your Schrödinger: the presence of an observer necessarily affects that which is observed.” He emphasized each beat with a tap of his finger on the chair arm, like an impatient lecturer pointing out the relevant passage in a textbook. “You stuck your nose in at a critical juncture. Don’t complain now when you get it nipped.”

  I heard his teeth click together as he suited the action to the word. It was a silly thing to do, a childish thing, beneath his dignity really, but it scared me more than I can ever hope to tell you. From then on, the notion of his teeth simply paralyzed me with fear. I was terrified of how they might look, if I could only see them. How long; how sharp . . . how many.

  “This is the very essence of free will.” He was back in control now, any momentary irritation suppressed. He knew he had me where he wanted me, after all. “A God-given gift, the measure of man. You ought to be glad of the chance to use it—I mean really slam it on the table for once, that existential joker. Isn’t it exciting? Isn’t it . . . stimulating?

  “Look! Here’s our little Emily, tripping through the maze, tra-la. The paths fork ahead of her, and at the end of each path lies death. Those are the rules. This path is long and meandering, with primroses growing in the borders and bluebirds singing. This path is the shortest of short cuts.” A chop of the hand; final. “And at the fork, we stand together, you and I. Our job is to send her this way, or that. So, again: I would like you to choose. How shall it be? How shall it happen? Which path? What will come to pass?”

  “You can’t do this,” I said, sobbing almost; but he didn’t even dignify that with an answer. He could do it: of course he could. That was his job, and I was co-opted. I knew it, and he knew I knew.

  There followed a gap—I have no way of judging how long it lasted. It seemed like hours, and I couldn’t say anything. The fear was so complete, like a ball of molten glass blown all around me, leaving me perfectly, hermetically trapped. In the space of a few minutes I’d been subtracted from the world of chance and accident and scraping through, and thrown screaming into the awful arena of first causes. Five minutes’ conversation in the dark. It had the skewed and brutal logic of a nightmare, the worst you could ever have. It might even have been a nightmare, except for the wetness of the tears on my face. The tears at least felt real.

  And all the time he waited, the guest with only shadow for a face. He sat with steepled fingers and waited for me to betray myself. Eventually he leant forward. “Poor Mike. It isn’t easy, is it? But I’m afraid I’m going to have to press you, you know. Time’s a-wasting, and we haven’t got all night.”

  Hanging there between us was a threat—a threat every bit as real as a drunken skid on the motorway or a sharpened razor’s edge; the crumbling edge of a precipice without a bottom, the ground giving way beneath your feet. Again he spoke:

  “So?”

  I knew I had to say something. “Not her,” I managed, just. “Not her.”

  “Not her?” Such disappointment in his voice; such contemptuousness. “Is that it? Is that the sum and aggregate of your deliberations? Not her? T’ch. I think someone isn’t trying.”

  “Do it to someone else.” It was all I could think of to say.

  “Michael! But we were supposed to decide!” Almost petulant. “The garden of forking paths, remember?”

  “Do it to somebody else.” I was actually sobbing now; my face was absolutely drenched with tears. “It doesn’t have to be her.”

  “Really?” the guest asked, as if this was an aspect of it that had never struck him until now. “You think not?”

  “No! Do it to someone else! Anyone!”

  “Anyone?” He sounded shocked. “Oh, not to anyone, Mike. Those aren’t the rules at all. We aren’t the agents of blind chance, you know. Don’t think that for a moment. No, if it were to happen—I only say if, mind—then it would have to be someone else further down the line. One of the other branches of the path, you understand. That’s the only way it could happen. The repercussions otherwise . . . ” He spread his hands, sketching an immensity of disruption.

  “Do it to someone else, then,” I begged. It was the only way out that I could see.

  “You’re sure?” He seemed disappointed. It was horrible. “You’re absolutely sure?”

  “Yes,” I said unhesitatingly.

  “Oh, very well,’ he said. “If you insist. Now, who?”

  “Who? I don’t know!”

  “It has to be somebody, Mike. Not just anybody.” He was explaining the rules of the game, very patiently, to an idiot. “You are choosing certain death for a known person, not just throwing a coin off the top of the Empire State Building. I have to have a name.”

  “I—I—I don’t know . . . ” He’d blocked off my escape. Again, I could feel myself sliding down into total, suffocating horror.

  “Do you want me to help?” Kindly, yet at the same time inexorable. “Is that it? Shall I narrow it down for you?”

  I couldn’t speak. I just nodded, and he inclined his own head. “After all,” he said, “I suppose I have the advantage in some respects. When you can see a little further along the forks, then you have the ability to make an aesthetically pleasing choice—and that is important, Mike. It’s important to have standards.

  “Goodness!” He sighed. “Let me think. Something equivalent, something . . . something fitting. There is a balance in all things, Mike, though it may not be immediately apparent. Interconnections, synchronicities. One woman wakes up well, and half a world away another feels the lump in her breast and tries to decide whether to bother the doctor with it.

  “I’m prevaricating. A name, a name. How about . . . oh! How about Alethea Kakoulis? I don’t think you know her, do you?”

  The name meant nothing to me, nothing whatsoever, so of course I seized upon it, like a man
in a shipwreck grabbing a lifebelt out of the hands of another survivor. “Her! Yes! Whatever you said. Do it to her. Do it to—”

  Without warning the room exploded into light, sharp bright searing white, and I threw up my hands to guard my eyes. “Do what?” said a voice at my elbow. “Christ, Mike, you all right? You sounded like you were having a right go at someone, there.”

  It was Dave, come down to check on me. The armchair over by the window was empty. There was no one else in the room.

  He said he’d heard a voice from out in the hallway, so he’d come in and switched the light on, thinking I was already awake, that there was someone in there with me. But I was on my own. Clearly, I’d been talking in my sleep. “You’d better not make a habit of that,” he told me, “or else I’ll be putting in for a new roommate. Jesus, Mike, you were screaming like your throat had been cut!”

  Quite. Anyway, Dave fetched me a glass of water and led me upstairs to my bedroom, but even there I couldn’t shake the feeling it was all still happening, that I hadn’t woken up at all—or that I’d never been asleep. I remember sitting propped up against the pillows with my arms around my knees, bedside lamp switched on, thinking no, it couldn’t have been a dream, it couldn’t . . .

  . . . and then, the next thing I knew, it was Sunday morning, and High Thornhays was coming to life once more. The rumble of Victorian plumbing, the clattering of feet on wooden floorboards, the high clear laughter of the girls through all the passageways. Nothing drives away your fears quite like the rising sun over gleaming snowfields. It’s white magic, proof against all the terrors of night.

  Going down to breakfast I was already well on the way to sublimating all my memories of the long room: a bad dream, nothing more. I couldn’t look Emily in the face over the breakfast table, though, not quite. That much at least had changed. But nobody noticed—and hey, I was entitled to be a little quiet that morning, after my drunken-eejit stumblings of the night before. By mid-morning we’d dug out the driveway, and the snowplow was laboring up the main road to meet us, and by teatime Tom Headley was driving us back to Exeter in the car.