What Fears Become: An Anthology from The Horror Zine

by Piers Anthony

  Rachel would have hated this part of the carnival. People being unkind to each other; people exploiting their own misfortunes. Thinking of her disapproval, I start to turn away. Then fury at her propels me back. Rachel is dead. She let herself be killed, raped, mutilated. She brought this horror into my life and will make it stay forever. I owe her nothing.

  But there's nothing more to see. I've come to the end of the freakshow already. It must be hard to staff these days, when people accept so much. Reluctantly, I move away from the almost-silent row of tents and cages toward the carousel on the other side of the midway.

  The carousel is unstable. I watch it make a couple of rotations, remembering Rachel in pigtails on a pink horse, and the platform is noticeably lopsided and rickety. The same two or three bars of its tune are endlessly repeating, as if the tape is stuck. The old man who apparently runs the ride is asleep on his bench, legs stretched out in front of him, arms folded crookedly across his belly. At first I think he might be dead, but then I hear him snoring. The painted animals go around and around, up and down, without anybody on them.

  I step over the old man's feet and duck under the rope. When my chance comes, I leap up onto the merry-go-round. It creaks and tilts under my weight.

  I prowl among the animals. There are no pets here, no horses or noble St. Bernards, only lions with teeth-lined gaping mouths, giant cats perpetually stiff-tailed and ready to pounce, snakes with coils piled higher than my waist and fangs dripping venom as peeling yellow paint.

  The three variations—lion, tiger, snake—are repeated to fill up the little merry-go-round with perhaps a dozen wooden animals to ride. I've seen them all. I sit down near the edge of the platform and, with curved upraised arms and crossed legs, make another place where somebody could ride. A child, maybe. A pretty little girl. Her parents would let her on this ride because, unlike the teetering Ferris Wheel at the other end of the midway or the roller coaster whose scaffolding is obviously listing, it would not seem dangerous. She would spot me right away and curious about what sort of animal I was supposed to be, she would come and sit in my lap. After a few rotations, a few stuck bars of the music, I would tighten my arms and legs around her until neither of us could breathe, and I'd never let her go.

  "Fifty cents for the ride, lady," comes the stern, cracked voice.

  Dirty hands on gaunt hips, the old man glares at me as his carousel takes me slowly past him, but he doesn't stop it. Maybe the control is stuck, so that it will only stop if it's dismantled. I get awkwardly to my knee, leaning into the turning motion and fishing in my hip pocket. On my next trip around, I hand him an assortment of nickels and dimes.

  "See here," he says, and with unsettling agility leaps up beside me. "You missed the best one."

  I can feel my nostrils flare at his odors: coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, dirt and cold sweat. Under the ragged jacket, his new-looking bright blue sweatshirt reads: burn Brian burn.

  He takes my forearm in his horny fingers and leads me toward the center pole, which is unevenly striped and nowhere near vertical. With his other hand, he points. "There now, ain't she a beauty? Made her myself." Seeing at once what it is, I catch my breath.

  A heavy wooden chair, tall as my head and wide as my shoulders, sturdy and polished, its surfaces reflecting the carnival lights. Leather straps across the back, seat, arms; shiny metal buckles. On the plank between the front legs, two inverted metal cones: electrodes. The cord, snaking so cleverly away that you have to look closely to see that it isn't plugged in. I prefer to pretend that it is.

  "Gettin' a lot of business this week," the old man says with satisfaction. "Just like I thought."

  Thrilled, I'm almost afraid to ask, "May I try it?"

  He squints at me in a caricature of shrewdness. "Fifty cents extra."

  I pay him without argument and take my place in the chair. The old man straps me in—one thong too tight across my breasts, another too low across my abdomen. He's just finished fastening the sharp buckles at my wrists when I notice that his jacket pockets are stuffed with trinkets, tiny replicas of this chair. "Wait," I say breathlessly. "Those are wonderful."

  He chuckles and extracts a glittering handful. "Special shipment di-rect from Florida. Quarter apiece."

  "I'll take them all."

  He peers at me. I can tell that this is the first time he's noticed my face, but he doesn't seem particularly interested.

  "All? Must be a couple hundred here. Wasn't such a hot item as I thought. Might be some market for 'em tomorrow, after— "

  "He killed my daughter." Killed and raped and...

  There is a pause. We've made a complete rotation together, although here near the center it's harder to feel the motion. The magician across the way is still trying to get his frayed scarves untangled. "Well," the old man says, "I guess you're entitled."

  "Yes."

  "Let's say twenty cents apiece since it's quantity. Forty bucks."

  "The money's in my back pocket." I manage to lift my hip off the seat of the electric chair long enough for him to slide his hand in and out of my pocket. I have no idea how much he takes. It doesn't matter. He empties his pockets of all the little electric chairs and piles them on the platform at my feet.

  "Enjoy the ride," he tells me. He's leaning close over me, and my head is secured so that I can't avoid his rancid breath. He could avoid mine, as most people do, but he doesn't seem to mind. He's grinning. So am I. "Not much business this late, so you can stay on as long as you like."

  Absurdly grateful, I try to nod my thanks, forgetting for the moment that my head won't move. He hasn't shaved my head, of course, but I can easily imagine that for myself. When I try to speak, my voice cracks and growls. He waves a twisted hand at me as if he knows what I want to say. Then he makes his way expertly among the silent and forever raging beasts and off the carousel, out of my restricted line of vision.

  I'm alone. I can't see my watch anymore, but it must be nearing one o'clock. Brian Dempsey will die in a chair like this in four hours. The carousel keeps turning; before long, even its jerks and bumps have melded into a somnolent pattern.

  I'm in my house, in my back yard filled with flowers. Rachel loved flowers. Under the rose arbor is a chair, so polished it glows, so sturdy I know it has rooted to my garden. In it is tied a handsome young man. He's crying. They're going to execute him.

  I go to him, kneel, smell the roses, put my arms around him. His body stiffens as if he would pull away from me if he could. I look at his face and see that he's afraid of me, and I know that he has reason to be. I hold him. I can feel his heartbeat, the pulse in his temple. The executioner is approaching, from the back door of my house, a whole parade of executioners each wearing a party hat and swallowing fire. They're going to kill him. I'm not trying to stop it. I just want to comfort him. I hold him close and am suffused with sorrow for us all.

  I wake up enraged. I've been betrayed by my own dreams. It's still pitch dark. I'm aware of a steady rotation, and of music that is scarcely music anymore, and of lights, and of hands at my wrists and under my arms. "Wake up, lady," says the voice of the old man, not, I think, for the first time. "It's time."

  "Oh. God, what time is it?"

  "It's five o'clock."

  Then from all up and down the midway comes a ragged cheer, and the triumphant cry of "Brian Dempsey is dead!" I imagine the Siamese twins saying it to each other, the Wolf Boy snarling it through bared teeth, the fire swallower spitting it up. I say it, too: "Brian Dempsey is dead!" Saying those words makes me tremble as though an electric shock has gone through me, although I don't recognize them coming out of my mouth and I hardly know what it means.

  The old man is staring at me. He's not frightened, and he's certainly not surprised, but he can't seem quite to take in what he's seeing. I raise my hands to my face, but neither my face nor my hands are there anymore in any recognizable form.

  He lifts me out of the chair. I can hardly walk; I stumble over the scattered trink
ets as if they were bits of bone. My spine has bent at a sharp angle; my feet hurt too much to bear my weight.

  The old man picks me up in his arms, finds places finally to hold onto my body. He steps off the still-turning platform of the carousel, and without effort takes me the short distance to the end of the midway to the row of tents and cages that make up the freakshow.

  Next to the Two-Headed Calf, on the very edge of the carnival where the park leads to other people's houses, a cage is empty, except for a chair like the one I dreamed in. The old man drops me into it, but doesn't bother to strap me down. He leaves, clangs the door shut behind him, but doesn't lock it.

  An early-morning line of watchers and revelers, celebrating the execution, is already starting to form outside my cage. They've come to see what I've turned into, what Brian Dempsey has made me, what they all can turn into if they try.

  About Melanie Tem

  Melanie Tem's chronicles of the terrors that haunt families and the amazing resilience of the human spirit have collected a Bram Stoker award, a British Fantasy Award, and praise both here and abroad. Stephen King said of her first novel, Prodigal, "Spectacular, far better than anything by new writers in the hardcover field." Dan Simmons declared it "A cry from the very heart of the heart of darkness...Melanie Tem may well be the literary successor to Shirley Jackson." David Morrell called her ghost novel Revenant, "Hauntingly beautiful. Achingly on target." And of Black River, her latest novel published by Headline in England, the British critics said, "Fascinating, overwhelming, compelling...Melanie Tem is one hell of a writer." (SFX) "One of the most resonant, moving novels of recent year…a near-masterpiece." (Darlington Northern Echo) You can visit Melanie Tem at:

  http://www.m-s-tem.com

  THE CHAMBER

  by David Landrum

  Talaith felt hunger pull at her stomach as she kneaded bread. The grain bin was low; it was three months to harvest, and the wheat had hardly grown past a man's knee for lack of rain. She puffed, sweating with the effort, knowing that the loaf taking shape under her hands would be made to last all week—and she would not get much of it. Her brothers and father would get the most. She and her mother would get what was left, and usually that was hardly anything at all.

  Of course, she thought, her father and brothers had to work the fields and that meant they needed to be strong. The women, on the other hand, could be allowed to suffer.

  Talaith had lost weight. Her last menstrual cycle came a week late, and when it did come she only bled for one day. If this continued, she thought, grunting and sweating as she pushed the dough down, gathered it, and pushed it down again, she might not be able to have children. She frowned at the unfairness of it. Only women were starved. Only women did without while the men had enough. And only women, she reflected, a shudder passing over her, were sacrificed.

  People had been talking about it. It had not rained for two months, and many whispered that Artemis, the goddess to whom the village was dedicated, was angry. The priestess sacrificed; the people brought gifts as well. Twice the entire village gathered to pray for mercy. Silence from heaven answered. No rain came, and the people feared the worst.

  A small room stood to the left side of the image of Artemis in the temple. No one spoke of it out loud, but everyone knew what it was. When women did speak of it, it was always in whispers, and they called it "the chamber." It had not been used for forty-five years. Now, some people said, it would have to be used again.

  The elderly women remembered the famine back then and how the priestess cast lots and chose a girl named Kora. The young girl Kora was dressed in white, dedicated to the goddess, and placed in the tiny, airtight room. The villagers sealed the seams of the door with wax, all the time weeping and praying that the goddess would accept their offering and spare their village. Women who served as acolytes that night said that though Kora initially went bravely and willingly, later they heard her scream, plead, and pound on the door when the air in the room was gone and she began to suffocate. In the morning, they said, her body was as blue as the sea on a sunny day. The rains had come that afternoon.

  Talaith finished kneading, covered the bread with a cloth, and put it on a windowsill in the sun. She stood by, guarding it. People stole. She had heard reports of rising dough taken from doorsteps and out of kitchens. These were desperate times.

  Her stomach ached. She thought of pinching off some raw dough and eating it, but knew she could not do such a thing. Besides, her older brother Pythius always brought her something. He said anger shook him every time their father cut her a portion only a third the size of what everyone else got. Once when the boys speared a fish and her father said she would get none of it, Pythius gave his entire portion to her in front of the whole family. She offered to split it with him. He took one bite and told her to eat the rest. Her father had beaten them both for that offense.

  She waited, keeping an eye on the bread. She heard footsteps and saw her mother come through the door. She smiled to welcome the visit, but then she saw the look on her mother's face and felt a chill wrack her body. Talaith realized that the Chief Priestess and the Head Man of the Village Council were both standing beside her mother.

  Talaith froze. She suddenly understood what this meant, and as she tried to stand, her legs failed to support her weight and she collapsed to the floor in a swoon.

  The full moon blazed in the sky. The priestess had dressed her in a garment made of lamb's wool that no one else had worn and only virgins had touched. The midwife had examined her to confirm she was a virgin and qualified to be an attendant of the chaste Artemis. Talaith stood as the priestess Modthryth anointed her forehead and put a heavy gold tiara on her head. She smiled a grim smile.

  "Talaith, it is an honor to be given to the goddess," Modthryth said.

  But Talaith did not feel gratitude. "Why do I have to die?"

  "You were chosen after much prayer and the casting of lots."

  "The rain falls from clouds, not from idols," Taliath cried.

  Modthryth frowned. "Do not blaspheme. You may anger the goddess. Do you want everyone in our village to die? Better one should die than all perish."

  "Some people are saying that rain is caused from moisture in the clouds," Talaith said, startled at the boldness of her own reply.

  Anger flashed in the priestess's eyes. "How dare you speak so in the very temple of the goddess?" she said. "You may bring a curse on us all."

  Talaith fell silent. She had been taught to fear the goddess, but she could not entirely push away the anger that smoldered in a corner of her heart. Younger people had other explanations about rain, but the elders would never listen. Which was real and which was not? Who was right? Her very life depended upon who was right.

  "We want the curse to lift," Modthryth said, her face barely concealing the gloating cruelty she seemed to feel about having the power of death over someone she made defenseless. "That is why you will be given as an offering. The rain will come when you are given over."

  Talaith was desperate to reason with the priestess. "My brother Pythius says rain comes when the vapor from the sun draws up from the sea and becomes too heavy for the sky, and so it falls back to the earth."

  "Pythius sat at the feet of a philosopher who corrupted his mind. It is not wise to share these beliefs. You may offend the goddess and she may destroy your soul in Tartarus. Artemis is a stern and merciless immortal."

  Talaith knew the legends about Artemis. The goddess could be cruel and vengeful. The priestess was correct, though, about where her brother got his new ideas. After Pythius studied a year with Heraclitus of Ionia, he ceased to believe in the gods—at least as they were presented in traditional myths and stories. During winter, when he did not have to work in the fields, he would tell her what his teacher had said. She listened as she carded wool or churned milk. His words struck fear in her, but at the same time she felt fascination and longed to hear more. A frightening thought occurred to her that moment: what he had whispered
about the cruelty and capriciousness of the villagers had its ultimate proof in this sacrifice of her life.

  The priestess's subaltern came in the door and nodded. This meant the full moon was at its zenith. Modthryth turned to Talaith. "It is time. Do you have anything to say before you are delivered to the goddess?"

  She considered blaspheming, cursing Artemis, or spitting on the priestess; and then she considered begging, falling on the floor and pleading for her life. She decided it would be pointless to do either thing. So instead she decided her last words would be brave ones. "If truly she is a goddess," Talaith said, her voice clear, "Artemis will spare my life. If she is kind and good, as she requires us to be, she will have no other choice."

  Modthryth stared at her in astonishment. After a moment, she recovered. "Your words will be the destruction of your soul."

  She chanted a prayer, anointed Talaith's head with perfumed oil, and opened the door to the chamber.

  The room was about four feet square. In the center sat a throne that looked to be carved out of solid stone. The ceiling was tall.

  The priestess told Talaith to sit. She obeyed, taking her place on the roughly hewn throne. Above the lintel stood a bas-relief image of Artemis: ceramic, pale in its coloration, its design ancient. It looked down on her with the coldness of stone—like the coldness in the priestess's gaze. Modthryth positioned herself in the doorway as if to block any attempt Talaith might make to escape.

  "Blessings on you, Talaith, daughter of Polybius," she intoned. "Soon you will be in the presence of the goddess. Keep your eyes on her image. It is said that just before you depart your body and your spirit goes to join Artemis the Chaste, the face of her image will glow with light."