The Year's Best Horror Stories 6

by Gerald W. Page (Ed. )

  “She hasn’t got another name.”

  Mrs. Williams, listening to the sounds of the mopping-up operation in the kitchen, did not want to become involved in a childish argument, and did not press the question.

  “You must ask her round some day. You know I like to see your friends.” She thought she heard the rattle of coffee cups. “Play on the lawn or something.”

  “Ineed doesn’t like people to look at her,” mumbled Geraldine. “She thinks they laugh at her nose.”

  “I’m sure we’re much too polite. I wonder if Daddy wants a hand with the coffee.”

  “I’m going to make her do something about my headaches,” said Geraldine. “I’m going to make her promise.”

  “I expect you have some jolly games together.”

  “She says that the headaches happen right inside my head, but she doesn’t know yet how to get inside. She’s not sure how I’m put together. So I’m going to get the book. With pictures. Then she’ll have to promise. She mended my teeth when they were twisted, didn’t she?”

  “I always liked that dentist,” said Mrs. Williams. “So young and so enthusiastic.”

  “She says my eyes ought to get better at the same time. Then I shan’t have to wear these glasses.” She snatched them off, and squinted short-sightedly at her mother.

  “Ah, coffee!” crowed Mrs. Williams.

  With a sigh Geraldine replaced her glasses. Ineed was right. They didn’t understand. They would never understand. No wonder Ineed wanted to avoid them. She and Ineed understood each other. Ineed was going to find a way to get inside her head. Geraldine knew where the book was kept—in the low bookcase that was never dusted. The book had pictures of people without clothes, without skin, and without flesh. That should show Ineed how people were put together. It even had a picture of the gray sponge called a brain. When Ineed saw that, she would be able to stop the headaches, and to make her see as well as anyone else. She only needed the book.

  Mrs. Williams eventually found volume two of the encyclopedia open on the lawn. The pages were stained with grass cuttings, and the covers curled in the afternoon sun. Mrs. Williams had no idea how the volume came to be out there, but she was used to finding things where they ought not to be. So she returned to the house with the book. She did not associate Geraldine with its removal until she later found the child in a state of near hysteria.

  Mrs. Williams heard the sound coming from her daughter’s bedroom—half-screaming, half-sobbing. She found Geraldine lying face downward on the bed. For a while the child would not answer, no matter how gently questions were put; instead she drummed her feet, beat the pillow, and screamed.

  Eventually Mrs. Williams was able to make out words. “She promised. She promised I should be next.” The trouble with Geraldine was then correctly diagnosed as an attack of temper.

  Mrs. Williams sat on the bed, and waited for the storm to subside, having learned from experience that this treatment was the most effective. At last the sobs died away, and the little girl looked up. She had hurled her spectacles into the corner of the room, and her eyes were inflamed, rubbed raw around the lids.

  “Feeling better now, dear?” asked Mrs. Williams mildly.

  “I hate her,” said Geraldine.

  "Tell Mummy all about it.” She tried to put an arm around the child, but found the position too awkward to keep up. “Who did it, and what did they do?”

  “She mended Barry’s legs,” sniffed Geraldine.

  Mrs. Williams hunted for a handkerchief. “Go on, dear. Mummy’s listening,” she said, wondering where she could have tucked the spare one that she always kept handy for when she lost the first.

  “She took them off and straightened them and then put them back again. Now he can walk as well as anyone.”

  “That’s nice,” murmured Mrs. Williams. “Just a minute, dear, while I fetch a piece of toilet paper. Then you can blow your nose.”

  “But I was supposed to be next,” bellowed Geraldine as her mother pattered toward the bathroom. “She was going to look inside my head. That’s why I took the book to her. Instead she used it to mend Barry’s legs, and didn’t do anything for me at all. She said she still wasn’t sure because the inside of my head wasn’t like the inside of her head, and my eyes weren’t like her eyes. I know her eyes are different, but that doesn’t mean she can’t do anything about mine. Does it?”

  “Of course not, dear,” agreed Mrs. Williams absently, returning with a great loop of paper, and making a mental note to renew the toilet roll, knowing already that she would be the one to be caught. “Here you are. Wipe your eyes. And your nose.”

  “How can I make her do it?” whined Geraldine. “What can I do?”

  “Let’s put on our thinking caps, shall we?” said Mrs. Williams, trying to sound bright. “Now where did you throw your spectacles?”

  Geraldine vaguely indicated the wall at which the glasses had been thrown in the first onslaught of her rage.

  “She can do it. I know she can. I’ve seen her do things. She has very long fingers, and she can . . .”

  “Oh, dear,” murmured Mrs. Williams as she picked up the pieces. “Now I’ve trodden on them.”

  The spectacles had snapped in half. One lens was cracked, and Mrs. Williams’s heel had pressed on the other, shattering it.

  “You’ll need a completely new pair,” she went on. “And I really don’t know what you’ll do without them. You won’t be able to watch TV or to read or anything. Right in the middle of the summer holidays, too. I don’t know what you’ll do with yourself.”

  To her irritation she realized that Geraldine was smiling. It was a slightly malicious, worldly-wise little smile: the sort of smile that no eight-year old has a right to be smiling.

  “You’re a very naughty girl, dropping your glasses where I—where anyone could step on them,” she cried. “I ought to . . .” Her imagination gave out, and her voice with it; partly because she had no idea what she ought to do, and partly because the child’s smile worried her. “I’ll tell your father,” she added weakly.

  “Now Ineed will have to do something,” said Geraldine calmly.

  “Oh, damn Enid,” snapped Mrs. Williams. “And as you’re in your bedroom, you can stay here ’till teatime. Yes, you can stay here until your father comes home. Then we’ll hear what he has to say about buying new glasses.”

  She left the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. On the landing she paused, wondering whether she ought to have locked the door, or whether she ought to go back and apologize; then at last deciding to leave everything to Eric. Her husband might have irritating eyebrows, but he always knew what to do in an emergency.

  Mr. Williams decided that there had been faults on both sides. He thought that Mrs. Williams ought to make more of an effort to understand the child and to enter into the spirit of her fantasies. If Geraldine had an imaginary friend called Enid, who took off people’s legs and straightened them, then Mrs. Williams ought to enter into the game. No wonder the child flew into a tantrum. On the other hand Geraldine must learn to control her feelings, especially when they resulted in expensive breakages; however, the child had been sufficiently punished and could now be allowed downstairs.

  As Mrs. Williams retired to the kitchen feeling vaguely hurt—but fortunately just in time to catch the steak before it was irrevocably burned—Mr. Williams called upstairs.

  “It’s all right, Geraldine. You can come down now.”

  There was no reply.

  “Geraldine, this is Daddy. I want to talk to you about, er, about Enid.”

  There was still no reply. Either the child was asleep or she was being obstinate. Mr. Williams went upstairs and found the bedroom empty. Of course that was typical: to send Geraldine to her room, and then not to be sure that she stayed there. Mr. Williams quickly smothered the spark of rising indignation because he prided himself upon being a reasonable man. Anyway the girl couldn’t be far away. He looked out of the bedroom window.


  There were two tiny figures by the hedge at the bottom of the garden. The height and distance made them look almost like dolls. One figure was bent over the other. By her dress she must have been a little girl, though she was incredibly thin, and her hair seemed to shine dark green in the late afternoon sun. Then she straightened up, and Mr. Williams could see the other figure more clearly.

  “My God!” he shouted.

  He charged from the bedroom and almost tumbled headlong in his rush down the stairs. He crashed through the kitchen and into the garden, screaming as he ran. “My God! My God! My God! My God!”

  Mrs. Williams dropped a bowl of mashed potatoes and hurried after him.

  The little girl with the leaf-colored hair, intent on the task before her, did not turn as Geraldine’s father and mother raced the length of the lawn. The frantic parents were spurred by the sight of what lay on the grass under the hedge. Geraldine’s headless body was spread-eagled on the grass. Her head lay some distance away, face upward. There was a hole where one eye should have been, and even as they ran toward the children, they saw the dark-haired girl pluck out the other eye.

  Mr. Williams seized the child’s shoulder, and at last she looked around. He glimpsed something deformed that the mind at once rejected, and would later refuse to recall except in nightmares; pale, phosphorescent, wrinkled skin of something that had lived for many, many years in the dark; bulging eyes giving a sickening hint that they might be extendable; gill-like slits for ears, and a drooping snout of a nose.

  Mr. Williams swore, tightened his grip, but the creature twisted in his grasp. It reached up, its finger-like tentacles curling round under his arm. Immediately a pain tore through his muscles as though they were being removed with a white-hot scalpel. His arm flopped useless to his side.

  There was a rustle in the hedge, and the thing was gone. Mrs. Williams was on her hands and knees by the remains of the child. She made vague fluttering motions with her hands. It was the same gesture that her husband had seen her make many times before, kneeling by a piece of broken china, and waiting for someone to fetch a dustpan. Except that this time she was giving voice to little high-pitched moans.

  With his good arm Mr. Williams patted her shoulder. He told her to stay there and touch nothing until the police arrived. Then he went to the telephone. He knew the correct procedure for occasions such as this.

  The eyes lay staring where the creature had dropped them. Mrs. Williams vaguely hoped that someone would be able to put them back. She noticed that Geraldine’s mouth was moving, but guessed that this was only a muscular spasm, just as a chicken is reputed to run around after its head has been cut off. She did not recognize that the lips were forming words.

  “Ineed!” the head wanted to cry out. “Let Ineed put me together again. Didn’t you ever listen to what I told you about Ineed? I shall be better after she has put me together again. Where is Ineed? Ineed! Ineed!”

  But divorced from lungs and larynx, no sound came from the mouth, and Ineed would take care never to be seen in Longbarrow again. Without Ineed, the head and body had to remain apart.

  They were buried like that.

  SCREAMING TO GET OUT by Janet Fox

  If you have ever wondered what editors talk about when they get together, one answer is that they discuss writers. A few months ago, Grant Carrington (former associate editor with Amazing and Fantastic) and your obedient servant were conversing, and whose name should crop up, but that of Janet Fox. Her handful of stories had left an impression on both men and the question was—why weren’t more of them appearing? Well, this past year more did appear, including this small gem about a man who bit off more than he could chew, and a woman who couldn’t.

  The city shone with a gauzy sleazy phosphorescence as things do in the later stages of decay. He could move through it, unthinking, unfeeling, in perfect safety, and though a lot had happened to make him what he was, at this moment he might as well have existed forever in this state, a suspension between blind exaltation and despair. But it must not be imagined that he knew this about himself any more than a rat is aware of its own prowess in the gritty levels just above bare survival. If it paused to consider, it would no longer be a rat.

  He cruised in the dark, anonymous car until he felt the hunger come on him. That last one had been good. He remembered her face, ugly even before the tears streaked it and made her eyes red and swollen and her expression, that of an animal suffering and not knowing the reason why.

  “You’re like the Kleenex I blow my nose into,” he had said.

  She had pulled a sheet over her nakedness. Her body was ugly, too, bony and underdeveloped. He always chose the ugly ones. They seemed his legitimate prey in a world that worshipped physical beauty. She had started crying then in a satisfying way, the half-repressed, agonized sound of an adult’s crying. Her inner self was as unattractive as the rest of her; no resources there, though she had probably been told at some point in her life that plain girls had “character.” He had called her a couple of appropriate names and left, whistling down the street past the crumbling facades of the buildings, the castoffs of a technological society, the skeleton of a ruined bike, rusty blades of an electric fan, beer cans, and got into the car as one shoulders into a comfortable garment. The torn and sagging seat accommodated itself to his weight and the motor coughed into tenuous life.

  He had read about her later in the paper. How she had closed all the windows and doors and turned on the gas. That was icing on the cake to him. The landlady (nosy old bag) had smelled the gas and had gone upstairs just in time to save her. That was even better, he thought. Let her live, that was the ticket. A suicide that failed was even better than one that succeeded. He had felt sated for days after that one, and was almost chary of trying again because the next one might not measure up.

  Even though with each encounter it seemed he carried something away, it must not be thought that he did what he did with any malice. That it was something he could do and so did was all the explanation there was.

  He drove up to a drive-in restaurant and watched the car hops go in and out with clockwork precision, parading their majorette legs in white short-shorts. They were safe from him and showed little interest in waiting on him, choosing instead the cars that spilled over with wise-cracking, rude-talking boys. He left the car and went inside and sat at a table where he ordered a coffee and drank it in measured sips. No one noticed him particularly because he wore that best of all disguises in the city, a face like everyone else’s. Only the expressions moving quickly across his face at times insinuated a deformity of the spirit.

  He looked around the room. Even though the place had a surface semblance of shining newness, a careful eye could see everywhere the signs of decay and ultimate fall. Corrosion had begun to eat in a circular pattern at the metal feet of the shining pseudo-marble tiles. There were bum scars where someone’s cigarette had melted the gleaming black plastic tabletop. But he really didn’t see these things as individual phenomena, because he himself was a part of the larger phenomenon which was slowly eating the city and all the people, its component parts.

  She was behind the counter so that only half her bulk was visible, stomach rising to meet the pendulous breasts straining the white fabric of her uniform, chins, stacked one upon the other, sloping downward like tallow melting, features a distorted blur of protruding cheeks, doughy white skin, tiny wise eyes like something peering out, a prisoner beneath the weight of all that gross flesh. What was it they always said about a thin person screaming to get out? He ran his tongue rapidly across his lips. She moved serenely like some huge sea beast, and she had deft, seemingly boneless white hands that worked swiftly, almost with a life of their own.

  Like him, she too was able to be what she was without thinking about it. As she worked, her white hands lifted toward her face French fries dripping with oil, sandwiches oozing mayonnaise, candy bars richly coated with chocolate, hiding in their centers crunchy, oily nuts. Although she did not bot
her to wonder why she was allowed to eat up this much of the profits, the manager was able to figure up how much he made on a worker who was never sick, never late, never complained and who worked untiringly at substandard wages. She did not wonder about it because she did not realize she was eating all these things. She lived almost every waking minute with a hunger that was a dull ache inside her and seemed to have nothing whatever to do with the rich foods her hands were continually putting into her mouth. Sometimes she tried to think about herself, who she was, but she could only feel herself as a mouth, empty and salivating for something, she didn’t know what.

  He studied her heavy body as she moved back and forth behind the counter. What must she look like naked: an outré buddha, shaped by dirty hands from a wad of dough, then allowed to rise . . . and rise. He smiled at the thought, and she orbited toward him, greasy patches shining on forehead and cheeks.

  “D’you want it warmed up?”

  “What?”

  “Your coffee.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Business slow tonight?”

  And she started, all the way through the layers of fat, as though she wasn’t used to having anyone notice that she was human, let alone address a remark to her, let alone a man!

  “Yeah, yeah, it is,” she said in a small, strangely unresonant voice. They looked at each other, each seeming to awaken from a sleep. There was a meeting here, as of two large though dormant powers, testing strength, then each subsided and for the moment slept again.

  He toyed with the coffee cup, playing at self-consciousness. “What time do you get off work? I suppose it’s late.”

  “About twelve.”

  “Is it . . . all right if I pick you up? It’s just that I . . . get lonely sometimes. You know how it is.” And he knew that she did know.

  “Okay.”

  He put a quarter on the table and left hastily, not sure that he would be back. He sensed a strength in her where there should be nothing but weakness. Well, he didn’t have to come back, not if he didn’t want to.