The Year's Best Horror Stories 15

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  “You’re late,” he said, in his faded voice, “I can hardly hold him.”

  Mrs. Paget briskly shed her cloak and began feeding another brazier from a little basket that lay beside it. Sukey was shocked to see that she was wearing nothing but the thin silk robe from the secret cupboard.

  Heavy wreaths of smoke, some sweet, some acrid billowed across their faces. The master stood up, wiping his face.

  “Take the child into the circle,” he said.

  Mrs. Paget went white. “What!” she hissed, “I know a trick worth two of that! Take her in yourself. I’ve done my part.”

  Sukey looked round for the circle they were talking about and saw it, drawn in what looked like brownish chalk on the white marble floor. There seemed no reason why anyone should be as frightened by it as Mrs. Paget and the master so obviously were. Sukey yielded to her curiosity and stepped in of her own accord to see what all the fuss was about.

  And at once she knew. The floor seemed to open in a sickening downward spiral and at the same time it could not be opening because she did not fall, although she felt all the horrible sensations of falling. Yet it must be opening for Something was coming through it. Sukey felt herself being engulfed in this Something in the most horrible way. The physical sensations might be compared to being drowned in freezing sewage, that burned like acid while it froze. The mental were indescribable, but included a sort of sickness of the mind that she was sure would have sent her mad if it had gone on a moment longer. For it stopped quite suddenly. The Thing rejected her, literally hurling her outside the circle, beyond the light of the braziers.

  She landed on her face in the grass. For a moment she lay still, until the sound of her godmother’s screams spurred her into action. She stood up, some instinct warning her not to look behind, and ran for the house. But however fast she ran, however often she fell, and stumbled up again and ran on, she did not lose her grip on that christening gift from her Aunt Deborah, that cross of dubious metal but undoubted power that she found herself clutching so tightly in her hand.

  The scandal, when it broke next morning, was only concerned with the master who had been found beside the lake, half naked and wholly dead, and Mrs. Paget who was still just alive, but “quite silly like” and wearing what appeared to be a red silk nightdress of the most indecent sort. The discovery in the lake of a collection of bones that seemed to have belonged to quite a number of young girls was hushed up. And Sukey never talked.

  She never told anyone, either, of what she found in her godmother’s secret cupboard. In fact, she burned it before any one could see it, which was a pity perhaps. A contract with the devil’s own signature might have interested a number of people. But Sukey felt justified. No one likes to make public that she has been sold to Satan by her own godmother, and that there appeared to be no escape clause.

  The master’s will was made public, and caused quite a lot of gossip. He gave instructions that he should be buried in a room built on to the family mausoleum especially for him. He was to be sitting in a chair, fully dressed, in his everyday clothes, with a bottle in his hand. The floor was to be sprinkled with certain herbs and a quantity of broken glass. The gossips said that all this was to prevent the devil collecting his body. His soul had already been lost that night by the lake when he failed to deliver whatever he had agreed to provide, every seven years, in return for long life, riches and beauty.

  It was all a lot of nonsense, of course. Sukey had been sent to a less glamorous but safer place, grown up, married, and tried to forget. Over the years she had managed to persuade herself that everything had indeed been some sort of nightmare, the product of an overactive imagination ...

  But now Mrs. Rothiemay had been forced to reconsider. It had been the half forgotten name of Satterthwaite that had drawn her eye to the newspaper item with its unpromising headline: “So much for tradition.” It told, reasonably accurately, what it described as the legend of how the master of Satterthwaite had been buried, and described how that little room had been opened recently by a curious historian, wishing to check the accuracy of what he called “folk memory.”

  Of course, he had found that the story had been all nonsense. The room was quite empty.

  The devil, Mrs. Rothiemay could see, was not so easily cheated.

  “PALE TREMBLING YOUTH” by W.H. Pugmire and Jessica Amanda Salmonson

  W.H. Pugmire (a.k.a. Wilum Hogfrog Pugmire) is well known to members of Lovecraftian fandom for his many contributions to the fan press. Born in Seattle, Washington on May 3, 1951, Pugmire began seriously writing fiction in the early ’70s after serving two years in Ireland as a Mormon missionary. Disgusted with his early tales, he stopped writing for seven years, at which time he became involved in the local Seattle punk underground, publishing his fanzine, Punk Lust, for five years. At the urging of Salmonson, he has recently returned to writing fiction. Pugmire says that his hobbies are “dressing up like Boy George and cruising construction sites.”

  Jessica Amanda Salmonson is another wild talent from Seattle, and a writer who has moved from the small press to the big leagues, but who still finds time for fiction and poetry for the fan publications—in fact, she edits the small press magazines, Fantasy Macabre and Fantasy & Terror. She has written a number of fantasy novels, edited fantasy series (Amazons and Heroic Visions), and a horror novel is forthcoming.

  The following collaborative effort appeared in Dennis Etchison’s Cutting Edge, a groundbreaking anthology of contemporary horror. Not all horrors are drowned in blood.

  Dykes, kikes, spics, micks, fags, drags, gooks, spooks ... more of us are outsiders than aren’t; and that’s what the dear young ones too often fail to see. They think they’ve learned it all by age fifteen. Perhaps they have. But they’re not the only ones who’ve learned it.

  They’re wise youngsters, no doubt about it, and I wish them all survival, of one kind or another, though few of them will have it. They’re out there on the streets at night; they’ve spiked their hair and dyed it; they’ve put roofing nails through their earlobes and scratched their lovers’ initials in the whites of their eyes. And they’re such beauties, these children. I have empathy for them, though by their standards, at thirty, I’m an old man. Am I a dirty old man? Perhaps. But I keep my hands to myself and am outraged by the constant exploitation I have seen. I help who I can, when I can. They laugh at me for it; I don’t mind. Much as they hate to admit it, they appreciate the helping hand; they assuredly need it.

  The new bands have power. They have raw, wild, gorgeous, naive energy. The temporary nature of these bands, the transience of the sound they create, the ephemeral nature of their performances and their youth has a literal and symbolic truth to it that breaks my heart. Ah, the dear young ones! Their own parents hate them. Their parents hate themselves. How morosely, pathetically beautiful it all is!

  But I have my criticisms. I don’t tell them what to do with their lives, but I do tell them they’re not the first and only ones to know. They all think they’ve invented it; invented everything. Twelve-year-old artists of the street—don’t ever doubt that some of them are geniuses—their music, dress, and Xerox flyers are undeniably brilliant works of art. Stripped of technical gaudiness and the veneer of social dishonesty, these kids and their art alienate people because of the reality that’s exposed.

  Reality is pain.

  But none of it is new. A punk who’s a good friend, a good kid, I gave him a rare old dada poster for his birthday. He loved it. He thought it was something new. “No, sir,” I told him. “It was printed before World War I.” He was impressed. He got some white paste and smeared it onto the window of an uptown jewelry store. What brilliance! It breaks my heart.

  So there’s nothing new. Least of all pain. It’s the oldest thing around. I want to tell them, “Yes, you’re outsiders. Yes, this thing you’re feeling really is pain. But you’re not alone.” Or you’re not alone in being alone. A poison-bad planet. For everyone.

  On the
north side of Lake Union, visible from about any high point in and around the city, is a little spot called Gas Works Park. Considering how visible it is on the lake’s edge, it’s rather out of the way. It has the appearance of war’s aftermath—a bombed factory. When the gasworks closed shop several decades back, no one knew what to do with that extraordinary network of chimneys and pipes and silos. For years they sat rusting. Then someone had the fat idea of painting the whole thing, laying a lawn, and calling it a park. It looks good. It looks monstrous. It is urban decadence at its best and worst. It’s not much frequented at night.

  A pathetic old faggot took me across on his sailboat. He’s not only pathetic, but rich; spent his whole life “buying” his way to the inside. But he’s an outsider, too. We met in a downtown park in the days of my own alienated childhood, when he wasn’t much younger but his gums were less black; and we’ve pretended we’re friends ever since.

  I’d been on his boat most of the late afternoon and early evening, until the sun was going down. Then I said, “I don’t need to go back into town. Let me ashore at Gas Works Park.”

  He let me off. I stood on the concrete landing and waved to the old man, who looked almost heroic pulling at the rigging—but not quite.

  The sun had set. The last streaks of orange were visible beyond the city’s silhouette. The skyscrapers south of the lake were shining like boxes full of stars. I turned my back, climbed the grassy knoll, and gazed toward the antiquated gasworks. The garish paint had been rendered invisible by the darkness.

  I breathed deeply of the cold, clean evening air and felt invigorated. The decayed structure before me was huge, the skeleton of a gargantuan beast. Its iron pipes, winding steel stairs and catwalks, variety of ladders, planks, chains, and tanks had a very real aesthetic charm. “Danger—keep off,” a sign read on a chain-link fence. Even in the darkness, the evidence of the structure’s conquerors—their graffiti—was palely visible on the surface of its heights.

  Hearing footsteps in the gravel behind me, I turned and saw a tall skinhead punk shambling toward the fence. He nodded and smiled at me, then leaned toward the fence, curling fingers around the links. I thought I detected a sadness in his eyes. He was looking upward into one particular part of the gasworks, with such intensity that I could not help but follow his gaze. It seemed that he was staring at a particular steel stairway that led up and into a long pipe.

  The sound of his deep sigh made me look at him again. He had taken a pack of cigarettes from a pocket in his black leather jacket. “Smoke?” he offered, holding the pack toward me.

  “No, thank you,” I replied. Kindness and gentility, contrasted against a violent image, no longer surprised me in these youths.

  “Something else, ain’t it?” he said, nodding at the structure.

  “It is,” I replied, not in a mood for conversation.

  He continued: “My band and I used to come here at midnight to record tapes of us banging on parts of it. Fucking inspiration! You get some really cool sounds.”

  “You’re in a punk band?” I asked lamely.

  “Naw. Industrial band. Kind of an offshot of punk and hard-core, a lot of screaming and banging on pipes and weird electronic sounds. Put it all together and it makes an intense noise.”

  “Hmmm,” I said, having trouble imagining why anyone would want to sit around banging on pipes and screaming. I must, occasionally, admit to a gap between this generation and mine.

  “But we broke up,” he continued in a quiet voice. “Our singer hanged himself. Up there.” He turned to gaze once more at that particular section of the structure. I felt a chill. Talk of death was unpleasant to me, and this was too sudden an introduction of the subject.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Yeah, it’s sad. He had a great voice. He could scream and make you feel like you’d die. Then he could sing so tenderly you couldn’t hold back tears. But he was messed up. His dad was always getting drunk and beating on him, so he took to the streets. Came to live with me and some others in an abandoned building. We called him Imp, he was so small. He’d never eat, just drink coffee and do a lot of speed. He shook all the time and he had so little color to his skin that some of us took to calling him the ‘pale trembling youth,’ which he didn’t like as much as Imp.”

  He paused to take a drag from his cigarette. The night had grown especially dark. The gasworks stood silently before us and seemed to listen to the young man’s tale.

  “He really loved this place. Used to come at night with a wrench or hammer to investigate sounds. He slept here a lot. He’d bring his girls here.”

  He stopped again, his face sad.

  “His last girlfriend killed herself with sleeping pills. He loved her like none of the others. A few days later he was found up there, swinging from that pipe, his studded belt around his broken neck.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Sixteen.” After a pause, he tossed his cigarette to the ground and shoved his hands into pockets. “Well, it’s getting cold. Think I’ll head on back to the District and find me some anarchy and beer.” He smiled kindly. I returned his smile. “Nice talking to you.” We nodded to each other. He turned and stalked into the darkness.

  It had indeed grown cold, but as I turned to look once more at the weird structure, I felt drawn near. Looking with dismay at the fence before me, I took hold of it and began to climb.

  When I reached the top of the fence, I moaned softly at the difficulty climbing over and down the other side. I felt cold air against my neck. Looking at a section of the gasworks where the punk had taken his life, I thought I saw a shadowy figure watching me. Then the shadows blended and the image was gone.

  Wind played with my hair. With sudden resolve, I climbed over the top of the fence, almost falling down the other side.

  I stood near a huge rusted pipe. It was perhaps forty feet long and five feet high. I felt a thrill of boyish excitement, for I have had a love of tunnels since I was small. Going to one end of the pipe, I stood to look inside.

  I entered.

  My footfalls echoed weirdly as my boots hit the metal surface. The sides felt cold and rough. When I reached the middle, I sat down, bending knees to chest, listening to the sounds of evening. Then I heard a pinging, coming from the end of the pipe that I had entered. I looked and saw a small person standing there, looking at me. From its stance I took it to be a boy. The figure held something in its hand, which it slowly, nonchalantly struck against the pipe. Then my vision seemed to blur. I rubbed my eyes with shaky fingers; when I looked again, I saw nothing.

  I sat for what seemed endless moments. Finally, I raised myself on unsteady legs.

  From above came a sudden banging, a horrible and ferocious sound, as though a madman were leaping from place to place and violently striking at pipes and metal surfaces with something large. The sound of it shook the pipe I was in. I felt the reverberations like a throbbing pain in my skull. Shouting in alarm, I fell to my knees, covering my ears with moist palms. On and on it went, until I was sure that I would lose my mind.

  Then it stopped. For a few moments all I could hear was the ringing in my ears. Then another sound came to me: low sobbing. I had never heard such misery and loneliness in a voice. It tore my heart to listen to it. It froze my soul. Gradually it faded into silence.

  I was too weak to rise. When at last I found the strength, I crawled weakly out of the pipe, into the waiting dark.

  RED LIGHT by David J. Schow

  A relative newcomer to the field, David J. Schow has become a favorite of readers and reviewers of The Year’s Best Horror Stories with his entries in the last three volumes. It has to be a matter of writing excellence, since each story evoked a different mood than the others—and “Red Light” is no exception.

  The versatile David J. Schow was born on July 13, 1955, in Marburg, West Germany—a German orphan adopted by American parents. After seeing the world in his younger days, Schow seems to have settled in Los Angeles. His sho
rt fiction has appeared in Twilight Zone Magazine, Night Cry, Weird Tales, Whispers, and elsewhere, and he has been a columnist for various publications and a contributing editor to film books. His most recent opus is The Outer Limits: The Official Companion from Ace—the long-expected guide to that television series. Schow has also written some sixteen television/film tie-ins and series books, under various names. Under his own name, look out for The Kill Riff and The Shaft, both horror novels from Tor. Meanwhile Schow is busy over a pair of horror anthologies. He admits to having invented the term “splatterpunk” at a very-late-night party.

  Tabloid headlines always make me laugh. You know: I Aborted Bigfoot’s Quints, or See Elvis’ Rotting Nude Corpse, or Exclusive on Jack the Ripper’s Grandson! Earlier today, while passing one of those Market Street news vendors, I saw similar hyperbolic screamers, and I laughed. I did not want to laugh: it came out as a sick coughing sound.

  TASHA VODE STILL MISSING

  Terrorist Kidnapping of International Cover Girl Not Ruled Out

  What the hell did they know about her? Not what I knew. They were like vampires; they sucked, ethically. Morally.

  But what did that make me?

  At the top of the dungheap was the good old National Perspirer, the hot, steaming poop on Tasha’s disappearance, and how one of three juicy fates had befallen her. One: She had pulled a Marilyn Monroe. Two: She had had a Dorothy Stratten pulled on her by some gonzo fruitbag lover. Three: She was tucked away in the Frances Farmer suite at some remote, tastefully isolated lunatic asylum.

  Or maybe she was forking over richly to manufacture all this furious controversy in order to boost her asking price up into the troposphere—in a word, hoax time.

  It was pathetic. It made my gut throb with hurt and loss, and downtown San Francisco diffused behind a hot salt-wash of welling tears. I blamed the emissions of the Cal Trans buses lumbering up and down the street, knowing full well I couldn’t cop such a rationalization, because the buses ran off electricity, like the mostly-defunct streetcars. Once, I’d nearly been decapitated by one of the rooftop conductor poles when it broke loose from the overhead webwork of wires and came swinging past, boomlow, alongside the moving bus, sparking viciously and banging off a potted sidewalk tree a foot above my head, zizzing and snapping. Welcome to the Bay Area.