The Year's Best Horror Stories 6

by Gerald W. Page (Ed. )

  Too bad, never mind, come on! But the shock of its fall nagged at him. He glanced at the photograph, which had fallen upside-down. The inverted tufted face stared up at him.

  All right, it was the face he had dreamed in the window: why shouldn’t it be? Just let him drag clothes over his pajamas—he’d spend the night outside if need be. Quickly, quickly—he thought he could hear the room twitching. The twitches reminded him not of the stirring of ornaments, but of something else—something of which he was terrified to think.

  As he stamped his way into his trousers, refusing to think, he saw that now there were cracks in the floor. Perhaps worse, all the cracks in the room had joined together. He froze, appalled, and heard the scuttling.

  What frightened him most was not how large it sounded, but the fact that it seemed not to be approaching over floors. Somehow he had the impression that it hardly inhabited the space of the house. Around him the cracks stood out from their surfaces; they looked too solid for cracks.

  The room shook repetitively. The smell of earth was growing. He could hardly keep his balance in the unsteady room; the lines that weren’t cracks were jerking him toward the door. If he could grab the bed, drag himself along it to the window—His mind was struggling to withdraw into itself, to deny what was happening. He was fighting not only to reach the window but to forget the image which had seized his mind: a spider perched at the center of its web, tugging in its prey.

  WITHIN THE WALLS OF TYRE by Michael Bishop

  Michael Bishop is the author of the science fiction novels Beneath the Shattered Moons (original title: And Strange at Ecbatan the Trees), A Little Knowledge, and Stolen Faces, and such well-received shorter works of sf as “Death and Designation Among the Asadi,” the Urban Nucleus series, and “The House of Compassionate Sharers.” But—and almost secretly—Bishop has been developing himself as a writer of horror stories (his novel Stolen Faces is a fine example, an efficiently grim sf horror masterpiece). The following story is not science fiction, however, though it is efficiently grim where it has need to be. It features an idea that might have teased the imagination of a John Collier at his peak, and a vivid portrayal of characters and setting which should fire the envy of any contemporary novel, and that compassionate humanism that has become the hallmark in Bishop’s fiction.

  As she eased her Nova into the lane permitting access to the perimeter highway, Marilyn Odau reflected that the hardest time of year for her was the Christmas season. From late November to well into January her nerves were invariably as taut as harp strings. The traffic on the expressway—lane jumping vans and pickups, sleek sports cars, tailgating semis, and all the blurred, indistinguishable others—was no help, either. Even though she could see her hands on the wheel, trembling inside beige, leather-tooled gloves, her Nova seemed hardly to be under her control; instead, it was a piece of machinery given all its impetus and direction by an invisible slot in the concrete beneath it. Her illusion of control was exactly that—an illusion.

  Looking quickly over her left shoulder, Marilyn Odau had to laugh at herself as she yanked the automobile around a bearded young man on a motorcycle. If your car’s in someone else’s control, why is it so damn hard to steer?

  Nerves; balky Yuletide nerves.

  Marilyn Odau was fifty-five; she had lived in this city—her city—ever since leaving Greenville during the first days of World War II to begin her own life and to take a job clerking at Satterwhite’s. Ten minutes ago, before reaching the perimeter highway, she had passed through the heart of the city and driven beneath the great, gray, cracking backside of Satterwhite’s (which was now a temporary warehouse for an electronics firm located in a suburban industrial complex). Like the heart of the city itself, Satterwhite’s was dead—its great silver escalators, its pneumatic message tubes, its elevator bell tones, and its perfume-scented mezzanines as surely things of the past as . . . well, as Tojo, Tarawa Atoll, and a young marine named Jordan Burk. That was why, particularly at this time of year, Marilyn never glanced at the old department store as she drove beneath it on her way to Summerstone.

  For the past two years she had been the manager of the Creighton’s Corner Boutique at Summerstone Mall, the largest self-contained shopping facility in the five-county metropolitan area. Business had been shifting steadily, for well over a decade, from downtown to suburban and even quasi-rural commercial centers. And when a position had opened up for her at the new tri-level mecca bewilderingly dubbed Summerstone, Marilyn had shifted, too, moving from Creighton’s original franchise near Capital Square to a second-level shop in an acre-square monolith sixteen miles to the city’s northwest—a building more like a starship hangar than a shopping center.

  Soon, she supposed, she ought also to shift residences. There were townhouses closer to Summerstone, after all, with names just as ersatz-elegant as that of the Brookmist complex in which she now lived: Chateau Royale, Springhaven, Tivoli, Smoke Glade, Eden Manor, Sussex Wood . . . There, she told herself, glancing sidelong at the Matterhorn Heights complex nestled below the highway to her left, its cheesebox-and-cardboard-shingle chalets distorted by a teepee of glaring window panes on a glass truck cruising abreast of her.

  Living at Matterhorn Heights would have put Marilyn fifteen minutes closer to her job, but it would have meant enduring a gaudier lapse of taste than she had opted for at Brookmist. There were degrees of artificiality, she knew, and each person found his own level . . . Above her, a green and white highway sign indicated the Willowglen and Summerstone exits. Surprised as always by its sudden appearance, she wrestled the Nova into an off-ramp lane and heard behind her the inevitable blaring of horns.

  Pack it in, she told the driver on her bumper—an expression she had learned from Jane Sidney, one of her employees at the boutique. Pack it in, laddie.

  Intent on the traffic light at the end of the off-ramp, conscious too of the wetness under the arms of her pantsuit jacket, Marilyn managed to giggle at the incongruous feel of these words. In her rear-view mirror she could see the angry features of a modishly long-haired young man squinting at her over the hood of a Le Mans—and it was impossible to imagine herself confronting him, outside their automobiles, with the imperative “Pack it in, laddie!” Absolutely impossible. All she could do was giggle at the thought and jab nervously at her clutch and brake pedals. Morning traffic—Christmas traffic—was bearable only if you remembered that impatience was a self-punishing sin.

  At 8:50 she reached Summerstone and found a parking place near a battery of army-green trash bins. A security guard was passing in mall employees through a second-tier entrance near Montgomery Ward’s; and when Marilyn showed him her ID card, he said almost by way of ritual shibboleth, “Have a good day, Miss Odau.” Then, with a host of people to whom she never spoke, she was on the enclosed promenade of machined wooden beams and open carpeted shops. As always, the hour could have been high noon or twelve midnight—there was no way to tell. The season was identifiable only because of the winter merchandise on display and the Christmas decorations suspended overhead or twining like tinfoil helixes through the central shaft of the mall. The smells of ammonia, confectionery goods, and perfumes commingled piquantly, even at this early hour, but Marilyn scarcely noticed.

  Managing Creighton’s Corner had become her life, the enterprise for which she lived; and because Summerstone contained Creighton’s Corner, she went into it daily with less philosophical scrutiny than a coal miner gives his mine. Such speculation, Marilyn knew from thirty-five years on her own, was worse than useless—it imprisoned you in doubts and misapprehensions largely of your own devising. She was glad to be but a few short steps from Creighton’s, glad to feel her funk disintegrating beneath the prospect of an efficient day at work . . .

  “Good morning, Ms. Odau,” Jane Sidney said as she entered Creighton’s.

  “Good morning. You look nice today.”

  The girl was wearing a green and gold jersey, a kind of gaucho skirt of imitation leather, and sued
e boots. Her hair was not much longer than a military cadet’s. She always pronounced “Ms.” as a muted buzz—either out of feminist conviction or, more likely, her fear that “Miss” would betray her more-than-middle-aged superior as unmarried . . . as if that were a shameful thing in one of Marilyn’s generation. Only Cissy Campbell of the three girls who worked in the boutique could address her as “Miss Odau” without looking flustered. Or maybe Marilyn imagined this. She didn’t try to plumb the personal feelings of her employees, and they in turn didn’t try to cast her in the role of a mother confessor. They liked her well enough, though. Everyone got along.

  “I’m working for Cissy until three, Ms. Odau. We’ve traded shifts. Is that all right?” Jane followed her toward her office.

  “Of course it is. What about Terri?”

  The walls were mercury-colored mirrors; there were mirrors overhead. Racks of swirl-patterned jerseys, erotically tailored jumpsuits, and flamboyant scarves were reiterated around them like the refrain of a toothpaste or cola jingle. Macramé baskets with plastic flowers and exotic bath soaps hung from the ceiling. Black-light and op-art posters went in and out on the walls, even though they never moved—and looking up at one of them, Marilyn had a vision of Satterwhite’s during the austere days of 1942-43, when the war had begun to put money in people’s pockets for the first time since the twenties but it was unpatriotic to spend it. She remembered the Office of Price Administration and ration-stamp booklets. Because of leather shortages, you couldn’t have more than two pairs of shoes a year . . .

  Jane was looking at her fixedly.

  “I’m sorry, Jane. I didn’t hear you.”

  “I said Terri’ll be here at twelve, but she wants to work all day tomorrow, too, if that’s okay. There aren’t any Tuesday classes at City College, and she wants to get in as many hours as she can before final exams come up.” Terri was still relatively new to the boutique.

  “Of course, that’s fine. Won’t you be here, too?”

  “Yes, ma’am. In the afternoon.”

  “Okay, good . . . I’ve got some order forms to look over and a letter or two to write.” She excused herself and went behind a tie-dyed curtain into an office as plain and practical as Creighton’s decor was peacockish and orgiastic. She sat down to a small metal filing cabinet with an audible moan—a moan at odds with the satisfaction she felt in getting down to work. What was wrong with her? She knew, she knew, dear God wasn’t she perfectly aware . . . Marilyn pulled her gloves off. As her fingers went to the onion-skin order forms and bills of lading in her files, she was surprised by the deep oxblood color of her nails. Why? She had worn this polish for a week, since well before Thanksgiving . . .

  The answer of course was Maggie Hood. During the war Marilyn and Maggie had roomed together in a clapboard house not far from Satterwhite’s, a house with two poplars in the small front yard but not a single blade of grass. Maggie had worked for the telephone company (an irony, since they had no phone in their house), and she always wore oxblood nail polish. Several months before the Axis surrender, Maggie married a 4-F telephone-company official and moved to Mobile. The little house on Greenbriar Street was torn down during the mid-fifties to make way for an office building. Maggie Hood and oxblood nail polish—

  Recollections that skirted the heart of the matter, Marilyn knew. She shook them off and got down to business.

  Tasteful rock was playing in the boutique, something from Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life—Jane had flipped the music on. Through it Marilyn could hear the morning herds passing along the concourses and interior bridges of Summerstone. Sometimes it seemed that half the population of the state was out there. Twice the previous Christmas season the structural vibrations had become so worrisome that security guards were ordered to keep new shoppers out until enough people had left to avert the danger of collapse. That was the rumor, anyway, and Marilyn almost believed it. Summerstone’s several owners, on the other hand, claimed that the doors had been locked simply to minimize crowding. But how many times did sane business people turn away customers solely to “minimize crowding”?

  Marilyn helped Jane wait on shoppers until noon. Then Terri Bready arrived, and she went back to her office. Instead of eating she checked outstanding accounts and sought to square away records. She kept her mind wholly occupied with the minutiae of running her business for its semi-retired owners, Charlie and Agnes Creighton. It didn’t bother her at all that they were ten years younger than she, absentee landlords with a condominium apartment on the gulf coast. She did a good job for them, working evenings as well as lunch hours, and the Creightons were smart enough to realize her worth. They trusted her completely and paid her well.

  At one o’clock Terri Bready stepped through Marilyn’s curtain and made an apologetic noise in her throat.

  “Hey, Terri. What is it?”

  “There’s a salesman out here who’d like to see you.” Bending a business card between her thumb and forefinger, the girl gave an odd baritone chuckle. Tawny-haired and lean, she was a freshman drama major who made the most fashionable clothes look like off-the-racks from a Salvation Army outlet. But she was sweet—so sweet that Marilyn had been embarrassed to hear her discussing with Cissy Campbell the boy she was living with.

  “Is he someone we regularly buy from, Terri?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know who we buy from.”

  “Is that his card?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “Why don’t you let me see it, then?”

  “Oh. Okay. Sorry, Ms. Odau. Here.” Trying to hand it over, the girl popped the card out of her fingers; it struck Marilyn’s chest and fluttered into her lap. “Sorry again. Sheesh, I really am.” Terri chuckled her baritone chuckle, and Marilyn, smiling briefly, retrieved the card.

  It said: Nicholas Anson / Products Consultant / Sales Representative / Latter-day Novelties / Los Angeles, California. Also on the card were two telephone numbers and a zip code.

  Terri Bready wet her lips with her tongue. “He’s a hunk, Miss Odau, I’m not kidding you—he’s as pretty as a naked Swede.”

  “Is that right? How old?”

  “Oh, he’s too old for me. He’s got to be in his thirties at least.”

  “Decrepit dear.”

  “Oh, he’s not decrepit, any. But I’m out of the market. You know.”

  “Off the auction block?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Yeah.”

  “What’s he selling? We don’t often work through independent dealers—the Creightons don’t, that is—and I’ve never heard of this firm.”

  “Jane says she thinks he’s been hitting the stores up and down the mall for the last couple days. Don’t know what he’s pushing. He's got a samples case, though—and really the most incredible kiss-me eyes.”

  “If he’s been here two days, I’m surprised he hasn’t already sold those.”

  “Do you want me to send him back? He’s too polite to burst in. He’s been calling Jane and me Ms. Sidney and Ms. Bready, like that.”

  “Don’t send him back yet.” Marilyn had a premonition, almost a fear. “Let me take a look at him first.”

  Terri Bready barked a laugh and had to cover her mouth. “Hey, Ms. Odau, I wouldn’t talk him up like Robert Redford and then send you a bald frog. I mean, why would I?”

  “Go on, Terri. I’ll talk to him in a couple of minutes.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” The girl was quickly gone, and at the curtain’s edge Marilyn looked out. Jane was waiting on a heavy-set woman in a fire-engine-red pantsuit, and just inside the boutique’s open threshold the man named Nicholas Anson was watching the crowds and counter-crowds work through each other like grim armies.

  Anson’s hair was modishly long, and he reminded Marilyn a bit of the man who had grimaced at her on the off-ramp. Then, however, the sun had been ricocheting off windshields, grilles, and hood ornaments, and any real identification of the man in the Le Mans with this composed sales representative was impossible, if not
downright pointless. A person in an automobile was not the same person you met on common ground . . . Now Terri was approaching this Anson fellow, and he was turning toward the girl.

  Marilyn Odau felt her fingers tighten on the curtain. Already she had taken in the man’s navy-blue leisure jacket and, beneath it, his silky shirt the color and pattern of a cumulus-filled sky. Already she had noted the length and the sun-flecked blondness of his hair, the etched-out quality of his profile . . . But when he turned, the only thing apparent to her was Anson’s resemblance to a dead marine named Jordan Burk, even though he was older than Jordan had lived to be. Ten or twelve years older, at the very least. Jordan Burk had died at twenty-four taking an amphibious tractor ashore at Betio, a tiny island near Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. Nicholas Anson, however, had crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes and glints of silver in his sideburns. These things didn’t matter much—the resemblance was still a heartbreaking one, and Marilyn found that she was staring at Anson like a star-struck teenager. She let the curtain fall.

  This has happened before, she told herself. In a world of four billion people, over a period of thirty-five years, it isn’t surprising that you should encounter two or more young men who look like each other. For God’s sake, Odau, don’t go to pieces over the sight of still another man who reminds you of Jordan—a stranger from Los Angeles who in just a couple of years is going to be old enough to be the father of your forever-twenty-four Jordan darling.

  It’s the season, Marilyn protested, answering her relentlessly rational self. It’s especially cruel that this should happen now.

  It happens all the time. You’re just more susceptible at this time of year. Odau, you haven’t outgrown what amounts to a basically childish syndrome, and it’s beginning to look as if you never will.