“He -” Wilf’s face convulsed so violently it appeared to jerk his head down as he took a step towards Gummer. Claire thought he meant to kick the corpse, but he controlled himself enough to raise his head. “How do you know?”
“His mother lied about his alibi. Either she said she was awake when she was asleep or she knew he wasn’t at home when he said he was, when - when he . . .”
“All right, love. It’s all right.” Wilf veered around the body and offered her his hands, though not quite close enough for her to touch. “How did you find that out?”
“She let it slip one day and he tried to shut her up.”
“Why couldn’t you have told the police?”
“I did.”
“You - oh, I get you.” He was silent while he dealt with this, and Claire took the opportunity to retrieve her glass, not to finish her drink but to place it out of danger on the sideboard. Gummer’s body seemed such a fixture of the room that she was practically unaware of blotting out her sense of it as she picked up the glass. The clunk of the tumbler on wood recalled Wilf from his thoughts, and he said almost pleadingly “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What would you have done?”
He stepped forward and took her hands at last. “What do you think? When the police didn’t listen, probably the same as you. Only I wouldn’t have done it here where it can’t be hidden.”
“It’s done now. It can’t be helped, and I don’t want it to be.”
“I wish to God you’d left it to me.” He stared around the room, so that she thought he was desperate for a change of subject until he said “What did you use?”
“The gin. The bottle, I mean. It did some good for a change.”
“I won’t argue with that.”
Nevertheless he relinquished one of her hands. Before she knew what he intended, he was hefting the bottle as though to convince himself it had been the weapon. “Don’t,” she protested, then saw her concern was misplaced. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Your fingerprints would be on it anyway.”
“So would yours.”
“What are you getting -”
“Just listen while I think. We haven’t much time. The longer we wait before we call the police, the worse this is going to look.”
“Wilf, it can’t look any worse than it is.”
“Listen, will you. We can’t have you going to prison. You’d never survive.”
“I’ll have to do my best. When everyone knows the truth -”
“Maybe they won’t. You used to think he was sniffing round you. Suppose that got out somehow? I know how lawyers think. They’ll twist anything they can.”
“He wasn’t interested in me. It was Laura.”
“You say that, but how can you prove it in court? Your instincts are enough for you, I know that, for me too if I even need to tell you. But they won’t be enough if his mother sticks to her story, and if your lawyer tried to break her down too much think how that would look, them harassing an old woman with nobody left in the world.”
“All right, you’ve shown me how wrong I am,” Claire said, feeling not far short of betrayed. “Any suggestions?”
“More than a suggestion.”
He reached out and drew his hand down her cheek in a slow caress as he used to when they hadn’t long been married, then patted her face before sidling around her into the hall. She had no idea of his intentions until he unhooked the phone. “Wilf -”
“It’s all right. I’m going to make it all right. Hello.” Though he was gazing so hard at her it stopped her in the doorway, the last word wasn’t addressed to her. “Detective Inspector Bairns, please.”
“Wilf, wait a minute. Ring off before he can tell who you are. Don’t stay anything till we’ve -”
“Inspector? It’s Wilfred Maynard. I’ve killed the man who took our daughter from us.”
Claire grabbed the doorframe as her knees began to shake. She would have snatched the phone from him if it hadn’t been too late. Instead she sent herself into the room as soon as she felt safe to walk. She could hardly believe it, but she was hoping she hadn’t killed Gummer after all. She fastened her fingertips on the wrist of the sprawled empty flesh. She held it longer than made sense, she even said a prayer, but it was no use. The lump of flesh and muscle was already growing cold, and there wasn’t the faintest stirring of life within.
“I’ll be staying here, Inspector. I give you my word. I wouldn’t have called you otherwise,” she heard Wilf say. She walked on her unwieldy brittle legs into the hall in time to see him hang the receiver. “Wilf,” she pleaded, “what have you done?”
“Saved as much that we’ve got as I could. I know I can take prison better than you can. Quick now, before they come. Help me get my tale straight. How did you bring him here? Was he just passing or what?”
She thought of refusing to answer so that Wilf couldn’t prepare a story, but the possibility that their last few minutes together might be wasted in arguing was unbearable. “I called him at home.”
“Will Mrs Gummer know?”
“He said she’d be wondering where he’d got to.”
“You hadn’t long come in from gardening, had you? Did anyone see him arrive?”
“Not that I noticed.”
“Just say he stopped when he saw you gardening and you invited him in. And when you’d both had a drink you accused him over Laura, and I came home just in time to hear him say what?”
“I don’t know. Wilf -”
“ ‘You can’t prove anything.’ That’s as good as a confession, isn’t it, or it was for me at any rate. He was shouting, so he didn’t hear me, because I let myself in quietly to find out what the row was. How many times did you hit him?”
“Do you have to be so calculating about it? I feel as if I’m already in court.”
“I have to know, don’t I? How many times?”
“It just took the once.”
“That’s fine, Claire. Really it is.” He offered her his hands again, and finding no response, let them sink. “It’ll be manslaughter. I heard Laura’s name and him saying you couldn’t prove it, and that was enough. There was a moment when I lost control, and then it was done and there was no turning back. That’s how it must have been for you, am I right? They’ll believe me because that’s how these things happen.”
He must be trying to live through her experience, but she felt no less alone. “Do they, Wilf?”
“Wait, I’ve got it. They’ll believe me because I couldn’t have had any other reason to kill him. It’s not as though I could have imagined anything was going on between you two, even if you did imagine he fancied you.”
Even in the midst of their situation, that felt cruel to her. “Thank you, Wilf.”
“I have to say it, haven’t I? Otherwise they might get the wrong idea. Look, there’s a good chance the court will be lenient, and if it isn’t I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a public outcry. And I can’t imagine I’ll have too bad a time of it in jail. It’s his kind that suffer the worst in there, not the ones who’ve dealt with them.”
“You sound as though you’re looking forward to being locked up.”
“What a thing to say, Claire. How could anyone feel like that?”
As she’d spoken she’d known the remark was absurd, yet his need to persuade her it was made it seem less so. “Why would I want anything that’s going to take me away from you?” he said.
Claire had a sense of hearing words that didn’t quite go with the movements of his mouth. No, not with those - with his thoughts. Before she could ponder this, she heard several cars braking sharply outside the house, and a rapid slamming of at least six doors. “Here they are,” Wilf said.
The latch of the gate clicked, and then it sounded as though not much less than an army marched up the path. The doorbell rang once, twice. The Maynards looked at each other with a deference that felt to Claire like prolonging the last moment of their marriage as it had been. Then Wilf moved t
o open the door.
Bairns was on the step, and came in at once. Five of his colleagues followed, trying to equal his expressionlessness, and Claire didn’t know when the house had felt so crowded. “He’s in the front room, Inspector,” Wilf said.
“If you and Mrs Maynard would stay here.” Bairns’ gaze had already turned to his colleagues, and a nod sent two of them to stand close to the Maynards. He paced into the front room and lingered just inside, hands behind his back, as a prelude to squatting by Gummer’s body. He hardly touched it before standing up, and Claire felt as if he’d confirmed her loathing of it. “I must ask you to accompany us to the police station, Mr Maynard,” he said.
“I’m ready.”
“You too, Mrs Maynard, if you will. You’ll understand if I ask you not to travel in the same car.”
“In that case do you mind if I give my wife a cuddle, Inspector? I expect it may be her last for a while.”
The policeman’s impassiveness almost wavered as he gave a weighty nod. Wilf took hold of Claire’s shoulders and drew her to him. For a moment she was afraid to hug him with all the fierceness in her, and couldn’t quite think why. Of course, he’d scratched himself with his patrolman’s badge that night on the golf course. The scratches would have healed by now, not that she had seen his bare chest for years. When he put his arms around her she responded, and felt him trying to lend her strength, and telling her silently to support his version of events. They remained embraced for a few seconds after Bairns cleared his throat, then Wilf patted her back and pushed her away gently. “We’d best get this over and done with then, Inspector.”
Bairns had been delegating men to drive the Maynards. He directed an unambiguously sympathetic glance at Claire before turning a more purposeful look on Wilf. Wilf was going to convince him, she thought - had already convinced him. She had never realised her husband could be so persuasive when he had to be. She saw him start towards the front door, matching his pace to that of his escort as though he was taking his first steps to his cell. Her sense of his persuasiveness spread through her mind, and in that instant she knew everything.
“I’ll drive you whenever you’re ready, Mrs Maynard,” a youngish policeman murmured, but Claire was unable to move. She knew why Wilf had seemed relieved at the prospect of the sentence he was courting - because he’d been afraid he might be jailed for worse. Everything made its real sense now. Nobody had been more obsessed with the way Laura dressed and was developing than Wilf. Claire remembered accusing Gummer of being attracted to a girl as a preferred version of an older woman she resembled. The accusation had been right, but not the man.
“Mrs Maynard?”
She saw Wilf’s back jerking rhythmically away from her, and imagined its performing such a movement in the bunker. For a moment she was certain she could emerge from her paralysis only by flying at him - but she was surrounded by police who would stop her before she could finish him off, and she had no proof. She’d nursed her rage until tonight, she had hidden it from the world, and she could do so again. She felt pregnant with its twin, which would have years to develop. “I’m ready now,” she said, and took her first step as her new self.
Wilf was being handed into the nearest police car as she emerged from the house. Shut him away, she thought, keep him safe for me. His door slammed, then the driver’s, but apart from a stirring of net curtains the activity went unacknowledged by the suburb. As Claire lowered herself stiffly into the next car, Wilf was driven off. One thing he needn’t worry about was her confirming his tale. She would be waiting when he came out of prison, and she could take all that time to imagine what she would do then. Perhaps she would have a chance to practise. While she was waiting she might find other men like him.
<
* * * *
LAWRENCE WATT-EVANS
Upstairs
Lawrence Watt-Evans was born and raisedin Massachusetts, but after sojourns in Pennsylvania and Kentucky he is now firmly settled in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. He is a full-time writer of horror, fantasy, and science fiction, with more than two dozen novels and a hundred short stories to his credit, as well as articles, comic books, poetry, etc.
In 1988 he was nominated for a Nebula and won the Hugo Award and the Asimov’s Readers’ Poll Award for his story “Why I left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers”. He served two years as president of the Horror Writers Association (1994-1996), and his most recent novels are Touched by the Gods and Dragon Weather.
* * * *
T
hey’re so damn loud up there. Yelling and fighting, and then that thumping - I guess it must be folk dances or something.
They could show a little consideration, couldn’t they?
And then there was the time they left the water running and it leaked through the bathroom ceiling and damn near flooded the place, and of course it was the weekend and we couldn’t get hold of the landlord until Monday - no, Tuesday, it was a long weekend! And there was wet plaster falling all over the sink and the floor. And stains everywhere.
I tell you, if we could find a decent apartment we’d have been out of this rathole years ago.
And they won’t talk to us when we see them in the halls, when I shout at them they just walk right on by like they didn’t even hear me. I went up there once to complain, but they wouldn’t answer the door.
Maybe they were busy; I think their refrigerator must have broken down or something, because even with the door closed I could smell something rotten.
They can’t be very clean.
Anyway, tonight was the last straw, more yelling, and singing this awful high-pitched song, like something the Arabs sing in one of those old movies, and then thumping about and I swear I heard the furniture breaking.
“I’ve had enough,” Jack said, and I agreed and said he should call the cops, and he said no, he’d settle it himself, and he went up there.
There was more yelling then, and banging, but then it stopped. I guess he talked some sense into them.
I wish he’d get back, though. There’s something dripping through the ceiling again.
It’s not water, though, it must be paint.
It’s bright red.
<
* * * *
CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN
Postcards from the King of Tides
Caitlín R. Kiernan’s short fiction has appeared in such anthologies as Love in Vein II, Dark Terrors 2 and 3, Dark of the Night, White of the Moon, Silver Birch, Blood Moon, Darkside, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and Best New Horror.
Her first novel, Silk, was published in 1998 and has so far received both the International Horror Guild and Barnes & Noble Maiden Voyage awards for best first novel. She also writes the graphic novel series The Dreaming for DC Comics/Vertigo. A collection of her short fiction, Tales of Pain and Wonder, is forthcoming from Gauntlet Publications, and her second novel, Trilobite, will appear from Penguin/Roc. The author also publishes her own irregular newsletter, Salmagundi, and her official website is http://www.negia.net/~pandora , which she shares with Poppy Z. Brite and Christa Faust.
As Kiernan reveals, “I think that the ocean has always affected me the way that outer space affects a lot of people - that same dizzying sense of awe at the vastness of it, at the unknown. A lot of my childhood was spent by the sea, and it was always fascinating and terrifying at the same time. It still is.
“In ‘Postcards from the King of Tides’, the main thing I wanted to do was communicate these feelings about the sea, in particular, the way that my first visit to the Pacific coast of Oregon and northern California affected me. There aren’t many things I love as much as the sea, but there aren’t many things that frighten me as much, either. The title was suggested by George Darley’s poem, ‘The Rebellion of the Waters’ (1822).”
* * * *
H
ere’s the scene: The three dark children, three souls past twenty but still adrift in the jaggedsmooth limbo of childhoods exte
nded by chance and choice and circumstance, their clothes impeccable rags of night sewn with thread the color of ravens and anthracite; two of them fair, a boy and a girl and the stain of protracted innocence strongest on them; the third a mean scrap of girlflesh with a blacklipped smile and a heart to make holes in the resolve of the most jaded nihilist but still as much a child as her companions. And she sits behind the wheel of the old car, her sagegrey eyes straight ahead of her, matching their laughter with seething determination and annoyance, and there’s brightdark music, and the forest flowing around them, older times ten hundred than anything else alive.
The winding, long drive back from Seattle, almost two days now, and Highway 101 has become this narrow asphalt snake curving and recurving through the redwood wilderness and they’re still not even as far as San Francisco. Probably won’t see the city before dark, Tam thinks, headachy behind the wheel and her black sunglasses because she doesn’t trust either of the twins to drive. Neither Lark nor Crispin have their licenses, and it’s not even her car; Magwitch’s piece- of-shit Chevrolet Impala, antique ‘70s junk heap that might have been the murky green of cold pea soup a long, long time ago. Now it’s mostly rust and bondo and one off-white door on the driver’s side. A thousand bumper stickers to hold it all together.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 10 - [Anthology] Page 24
