The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, 2010

by Elizabeth Bear

  She went to move away but a loud exclamation from the man stopped her. Tourette’s, she realized, noting the involuntary roll of his head and the click-click-clicking sound of his tongue.

  “Not mine,” he said, “not mine, not-mine.”

  “Sorry?” Shel said.

  He was trying to hand her something, plucking it from the palm where she’d laid her change.

  “Not mine,” he said again, and his posture relaxed. “You gave me your key accidentally.”

  “What? No, I didn’t.”

  Shel took the key and turned it over between her fingers. She felt in the pocket where it had ostensibly been, but found no imprint, no supernatural sign that the thing had ever rested there.

  “I don’t think it’s mine,” she murmured.

  It was small and bright, like the key from a little girl’s journal. It took her back. Afternoons on a window seat, rain outside, adults in other rooms. It was a long time since she’d felt like that. Hidden, secretive, lost in her own world.

  The homeless guy shrugged and turned away.

  “Tell me,” she called, “you around here much?”

  She moved towards him.

  “Sure,” he said. “Sometimes. More down by the casino. People going in, they sometimes think it’s lucky to give money to a bum.”

  With a laugh.

  Shel pointed back to the apartment complex.

  “You seen a woman here recently, come out of the building?”

  The homeless guy looked at her like she might be crazy.

  “In the last two days,” she persisted. “Short. Long dark hair. Wears trousers with oversized shoes and, and shirts with high collars. Even in summer.”

  Recognition was streamlining the man’s face, smoothing out his premature wrinkles.

  “You a friend?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m a friend. You’ve seen her, right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Where’d you see her?”

  He shrugged, looked to his dirty feet, looked away.

  “You’re not in trouble, I just need to know where she is.”

  The man shook his head and then his neck dissolved in a series of ticks and jerks. His hand fisted around the coins she’d given him. She waited silently, pretending more patience than she had.

  When his attack subsided, he said, “I can’t explain it.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “I can show you,” he said. “But only because you’ve got the key.”

  “The—right. I’ve got the key.”

  She held it up so he could see it.

  “Show me then,” she prompted.

  He turned and walked along the dark street, and she followed.

  They walked the perimeter of the apartment complex, signified by a smooth eight-foot fence. Faux cast iron poles every half-foot, the tops bent inwards to make climbing impossible. With a rope you could drag yourself to the top, but you couldn’t easily get over to the other side. And you sure couldn’t get back out.

  The homeless guy banked where the fencing parted from the sidewalk. He followed it around through a full tropical planting of tall ferns and an uneven groundcover.

  Shel kept following. Nearly rolled her ankle a couple times, but managed to keep up. Just. The figure in front of her disappeared behind hanging palm leaves. She had to duck to avoid their recoil. She kept one hand on the fence while she followed, trailing her fingers along it. Tried not to imagine snakes and other monsters in the plants with her. Tried not to think about what it would be like to be dragged through here, or pushed or kidnapped.

  Tried not to think about the fact she was following some stranger into the dark. The city, with its instant access to all parts of humanity, had made her nonchalant. Her mother would be horrified to see her here like this, alone but for a man she didn’t know and the congestive anonymity of the dark.

  Her ankle rolled again and she let out her breath in a hiss. In front of her the homeless guy didn’t even slow.

  “Hey, what’s your name?” she called.

  He didn’t answer.

  She stumbled to keep up and almost bumped into him when he stopped.

  There was no noise except for the faint heartbeat of traffic and the more immediate sound of the wind. From here the dense foliage obscured even the power of the city lights. She could see the eastern edge of the apartment complex, the edge that fell away into the ocean. She could feel the ocean winds on her skin and smell salt and tropical plants. It felt wrong, to be perched on the edge of a city and feel like you were in the middle of a jungle.

  The wind ripped around them, through the trees, pulling at Shel’s jacket. She folded her arms against it. In the moonlight she could just make out the dirty arm of the homeless man pointing.

  “Your friend,” he said, “that her apartment?”

  Shel followed his hand.

  “Which one do you mean?” she asked to be sure.

  The man twitched as he counted.

  “Third one down.”

  “Which building? Which side?”

  He explained. She had to concede he was right. That was Mish’s apartment. But from here there was barely anything to be seen. Only the tops of the French doors were visible over the brick balcony. A rectangle of Mish’s ceiling, the light fixture on the balcony. She stood on her toes to be sure.

  “Did you see something there?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “When?”

  “Two nights back.”

  When he failed to continue, she prompted him.

  “And what the fuck,” she asked, “did you see?”

  “No need for the language,” he said.

  He gave her a hurt look. But in the sweep of shadow and wind it only served to deepen the darkness under his brow and exaggerate the curl of his lip.

  “Sorry, sorry,” she said quickly. “Sorry. Listen! Tell me what you saw.”

  He nodded, obliged.

  “The woman in the apartment. The woman with long thin arms and small shoulders and hair that was straight and black and—”

  “Yes,” said Shel. “What was she doing, when you saw her?”

  He chewed like he had a mouthful of cud.

  “Opening a door.”

  A pause. Nothing but the wind and the night to fill it.

  “Is that it?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “She went through it,” he said. “And she never came back.’

  Shel fought the urge to run back to the apartment. It couldn’t be true, her adult brain knew that. She’d looked in every room and the cupboard, too. It wasn’t like the apartment afforded many places to hide. There weren’t that many doors. The front door, the bedroom, the bathroom, that was it. Maybe the cupboard doors counted, but as small as Mish was, Shel doubted she was curled up in a cupboard somewhere.

  Still, when she thought of it her heart leapt into her throat. What if, against all sense, Mish was curled like a shell in a cupboard in the kitchen. What if she was rolled, foetal-like and calcified, rocking in a grave behind the—

  She pushed the images aside.

  “I figure,” said the man, “the door took her into the center.”

  Shel couldn’t help herself.

  “Of . . . ?”

  He twitched.

  “The heart of things. The center of this place.”

  “What in god’s name,” said Shel, “are you talking about?”

  “She found a way out,” he said. He added thoughtfully, “Or a way in.”

  Shel was about to give him a piece of her mind when he hushed her. Held a finger against his lips and whispered around it.

  “Can’t you feel it?”

  “Feel what?”

  “You have to be quiet,” he said.

  Apart from the exasperated scream in her head, she was quiet. Her hair caught in the wind and she had to pull it off her face and hold it in a fist at the back of her head.

  “You have to be really quiet,” said the home
less guy. “Inside and out. Like you’re meditating.”

  “Meditating?” she said. “The fuck?”

  It was a knack she figured she didn’t have. But since nothing else was forthcoming, she silenced herself and waited, watching the homeless guy. If it wasn’t for Mish, she wouldn’t be out here, standing in the midst of this, this damned darkness, this craziness.

  If it wasn’t for Mish, she wouldn’t have tried. And maybe that was true of a lot of things. Mish made her feel anything was possible. That’s why they were friends.

  She stood and shut her eyes, trying for stillness.

  “It’s all about what you’re prepared to witness,” said her companion. “See?”

  No.

  She focused on the glint of city lights on the water, the echo of traffic. She focused on the meniscus of light where the night sky bled out over the lumps of buildings and bridge and light and light.

  She was quiet enough and still enough for long enough to finally understand what he meant. Perched out here above the ocean, she could feel it. Something ancient and lost, something whole but with a missing piece at its heart. She felt the dread rise from the earth beneath her feet and crawl up her legs, making hollows in her skin.

  She thought she was going to be sick.

  Shel turned and stumbled from the space, falling more than once to her knees. Something was eating the space behind her. She had to pull herself along the fence to stop from being dragged backwards. She kept moving, the stink of squashed leaves and ground beneath her. It smelled wrong.

  When she broke into the light of the street she stumbled, nearly into the path of a white minibus. She tripped backwards and fell, landing hard on the gutter.

  “Stupid bitch!”

  There were shouts and jeers from inside the bus as the rest of the dozen occupants joined in. Their echo added to the reassuring perfume of fuel fumes.

  Shel got to her feet uncertainly. Her hip ached where she’d landed on it in the gutter. Her knees were scraped and raw. She was shaking all over, so hard her teeth were chattering.

  She kept her back to the road and faced the dark space where the homeless man had led her. There was no sign of him. He was probably watching her from the dark. He would probably always be watching her.

  She thought she would never be free of his eyes ever again. He had seen right into her. And the city with its mega-watt load of noise and energy and its million babbling examples of humanity had climbed right into his gaze after her and drilled into her core.

  He’d been right. She could feel it. The whole fragile sugar castle of the city, with nothing for its foundations but two hundred years of loss.

  6. Two Days Earlier: Mishi

  Mishi had thrown away the other half of the sandwich. It was one am. She couldn’t sleep and the meditation wasn’t helping. She couldn’t clear her mind. How desirable was that, anyhow? She’d spent a lifetime cultivating this mind. Clearing it was the last thing she wanted.

  She roamed the narrow edges of the apartment. Looking for something, looking for—

  The lights on the roof of the casino pulsed reassuringly. Always made her feel like there was life nearby. Something going on. People, if she needed them. Sometimes she went and sat in one of the bars, taking in the noise. She never stayed long.

  But not tonight.

  She sat back on the floor by the doors and wrapped her arms around her waist. To hold herself together. Figured she’d ride out the evening, wait for morning.

  It was cold, with the night air dribbling off the harbor into her apartment. She leaned forward so her elbows covered her knees. For warmth, she told herself. A posture of obeisance to the world outside her window.

  Strange.

  Before her in the floorboards, a small key was caught. Angled into the gap in the wood point-first with only one round edge protruded.

  She dug at it with a thumbnail, working it out of the wood. A small plain key, bright and practically weightless. She turned it over and over in her hand.

  “Never seen you before,” she murmured. “Where’d you come from?”

  In the buzz of distant noise her voice felt wrong. She kept it to herself after that.

  The key was light. She could feel neither its temperature nor weight. Was it metal? She tapped it against her forehead, trying to get a sense of it.

  Nothing.

  She bent her nails against it, trying to prove it was real.

  The key defied her.

  She dropped it on the floor, listening to the ding it made against the wood. Pushed it back and forth on the boards beside her meditative cards.

  She wanted to feel something.

  Adventure, she thought. Surrender. Serenity. Like the cards said.

  She squeezed her eyes tight and tipped forward, bowing her head. She tipped and tipped over the key, bending at the waist, anticipating the smooth, cool floor on her forehead. Surrender. It was an escape, a release, stomach on her thighs, forearms over her head, face towards floor.

  Serenity.

  She tipped forward with a sense the floor would catch her.

  When it didn’t, there wasn’t even time for surprise. Only a pure static feeling like emotional white noise.

  She spiraled through the floor and out of reality like she was falling through a trapdoor. In one swooping gesture she was released to live free between the bones of the city.

  About the Author

  Deborah Biancotti is a writer based in inner-city Sydney, Australia. Her first short story collection, A Book of Endings, was shortlisted in 2010 for the William L. Crawford Award for Best First Fantasy Book. Her short stories have appeared in Clockwork Phoenix, Ideomancer, Eidolon 1, Borderlands, and Infinity Plus, and anthologies including The Year’s Best Australian SF & Fantasy and Australian Dark Fantasy and Horror. She has upcoming fiction in Baggage, a novella for three-author anthology Ishtar, and a non-fiction essay in Twenty-First Century Gothic. Biancotti is now working on her first novel (working title: Broken) and planning her second (Body). You can find her online at deborahbiancotti.net.

  Story Notes

  When someone opens a door in a story and never comes back through it, one is left to wonder: Rather than being the end of the story—is this really just the beginning?

  NUB HUT

  KURT DINAN

  Four of us surround the hole in the ice, each lying with an arm submerged deep in the water. This is nothing like I pictured. In my mind I saw smaller, individual holes and a sense of transformation. Instead, the hole is one large opening maybe ten feet across, and all I feel is the great freeze as we wait under the Alaskan moon, the snow twinkling down like millions of tiny flash bulbs.

  Hannah wears only jeans and a Gamecocks sweatshirt. She hasn’t moved or said a word since we began, but her frozen breath still occasionally drifts up. Beside her, Nigel Nine Toes is pants-less. His argument that his missing toe should make him an automatic for the Nub Hut ended with the admission that he lost it to a lawnmower when he was sixteen. The Nub Hut, Sheila proclaimed, must have standards.

  The smart money is on Gillian. She’s built like a lumberjack, even wearing flannel shirts and boots like she’s off to chop down sequoias. Gillian’s worked the slime line at the cannery for years. She’ll be radiating fish stink the rest of her life, however long that is.

  Me, I’m in true winter wear—thermals, rubber-soled boots, an Arctic jacket—and am resting on a blanket I swiped from the bunkhouse. Using a gutting knife, I cut off a coat sleeve so nothing would come between my bare arm and the water. All four of us are alike in that respect. That and the mandatory rope, of course, one end tied around an ankle and the other spiked through the ice.

  We wait in the glow of the Nub Hut. What once housed two snowcats and the back-up generator now sits thirty yards away onshore. The windows are covered with thick black plastic, but orange firelight seeps through the slats. A spray painted Nub Hut streaks down the door. Muffled music plays inside, evidence someone scavenged a battery.
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  “Think you can guess how long it’s been, Alan?”

  Nigel Nine Toes speaks through chattering teeth. He may be thirty, he may be fifty; it’s hard to tell. Alaska weathers a man, and that’s just what he wants. “To be reduced to my base animal” is how Nigel puts it. He stalks around camp spouting about the chaotic beauty of the tundra while making sure we’re all aware of his Che Guevara shirt. To most of us though, he’s just the guy who complains that his recreations of famous paintings infused with aborted fetuses are kept out of galleries due to an elaborate conspiracy.

  “Come on,” Nigel says. “Take a guess. How long?”

  I can’t turn his way because my ear is frozen to the ice. “An hour?”

  “Forty minutes. And that’s why you won’t make it. Your mind is weak. Only the primal can survive. All humanity must be whittled away until all that remains is a god, a creator, an explosion, and implosion of raw energy.”

  So that’s Nigel.

  This is the first conversation in some time. All of us shouted in solidarity when we first plunged our arms in, but the camaraderie wore off fast. This isn’t about friendship; this is about the Nub Hut. Tell four people only two will be chosen and inevitably this is what happens.

  “I’m having a hard time breathing,” Gillian says. “Can’t catch any air.”

  “Arm feels like it’s in a vice,” I tell her.

  “I can’t keep my thoughts straight.”

  “I’m seeing double.”

  And on and on.

  The first few minutes of submersion were the worst. Nothing but burn. The icy water collapsed around my arm squeezing out the blood. Only through sheer will power was I able to keep it in the hole. But you want willpower? Sheila’s nothing more than a torso now. There’s talk she’ll do her ears soon. None of us doubt it.

  The door to the Nub Hut opens and music pours into the night. Nigel Nine Toes says it’s Neil Young but Gillian says it’s America and now they’re arguing over who sang “A Horse with No Name.”

  For a brief moment I see inside—firelight, shadows, maybe a table—then someone steps out and shuts the door before anyone can see. Whatever happens inside the Nub Hut is a mystery, but it must be wonderful.