The Best New Horror 1

by Stephen Jones

  “Immediately, a dream overtook me, vivid as the night before. At first I didn’t know I was dreaming, because I was in my room still. But then I noticed how dark it was outside. The window across the room was open wide, the curtains drawn back. I could see stars for a moment, but then a shape blotted them out. The me in the dream got up and turned up the lamp, then carried it over to the window. The flame reflected me in the glass, but through myself I could see the child, Akaky, floating beyond, more hideous than ever, more withered and malicious. ‘Let me in,’ he said, ‘you must help me.’ I stepped back with the lamp, gesturing him through the window. He slid over the sill and settled on the floor. A mist curled over the ledge at his back. He stood hunched, grimacing in pain. I put the lamp down beside the bed and turned back to help him, remembering that he had been too weak to come to school, but he said, ‘Lie down.’ I found myself obeying him. A part of my mind watched me performing, but the rest of my will had been left outside the dream. He came to the foot of the bed and began picking up the discarded clothes lying there—the ones from the previous day—and my nightgown. Each item he held to his nose and sniffed, like a dog. Then he dropped each one and took another, until he had soiled everything. All the while, his liquid eyes glistened at me. Finally he came along the side of the bed and stood beside me. His crippled hand that he kept always curled at his side unfolded over my face. The fingers all ended in long, sharp nails like tiny blades. With his other hand he untied the bow at my throat, then grabbed the blouse and pulled it apart, exposing my breastbone. He turned the hand slowly and the nails hung above me. It no longer appeared deformed in any way. He let his hand descend slowly, savoring the moment. The promise of ecstasy gleamed in his cruel eyes—I’ve seen it in many lovers since. His hand dropped below my view, and I waited, not breathing, not thinking. Waiting. And then those nails sank into my skin. I went rigid. It was like terrible ice inside me. My back arched away from the bed until I thought it would snap, but I couldn’t make myself move to stop him. He sighed, and I could feel him wriggling his fingers down into my heart. That pain—how can I explain the sweet edge it had to it, pain that was almost unbearable pleasure. I began to scream and scream, trying to roll away from his clutch. He laughed—not a child at all, but a fiend. He rose up straighter. His eyes swelled, growing closer until they blotted out everything else.

  “When I did wake up, the afternoon sun blinded me, coming in the window from just above the horizon. I got up, but rocked back from dizziness and had to catch my breath before I could stand. These nightmares, I thought, were draining my reserves. I went to the washstand to pour some water and cool myself, and I saw myself in the mirror. Between my breasts was a bruised ring of five tiny white scars. The bruises are gone now, but if I turned the lamp up I could show you the scars. I began to cry when I saw them. A moment later, Shaldin’s wife called us all to dinner. I didn’t know what to do. Should I tell them? There seemed no point; they would not be more sympathetic now than before. They might drive me from their home. I wiped away my tears and splashed my face, then buttoned and neatened my blouse.

  “At dinner, I kept to myself, which seemed to satisfy them all. I must have eaten something, but I don’t know what it was. The family made countless covert glances at me. Both children showed concern, but the parents had fear in their eyes. I had no energy left to cope with them, and I excused myself and retired.

  “In the hallway outside my room, I heard Shaldin’s caustic voice. ‘I told Trifon I won’t bring this on us,’ he said. ‘Some other house can have her, some other family can suffer on her account.’ I had gone from guest to intrusive enemy. The man blamed me, even though he obviously had known of Akaky’s powers beforehand. Why had he said nothing? I cursed him for his cowardice then and slammed my door so that he would know that I had heard.

  “Once inside, I went to the window and latched the shutters before closing the window. The air would become stuffy. I hoped it would make me uncomfortable, and keep me awake, but it had just the opposite effect, and put me to sleep. But no one came into the room, and no dreams came to trouble me.

  “In the morning, I sought out Trifon again. He sat in the corner of the store where they served pastries and tea. When I arrived, he was speaking with some others and his back was to me. I waited a short distance away. The men with Trifon grew uncomfortable and, one by one, they got up and left. He still had not turned to look at me, but he gestured over his shoulder for me to come and join him. I sat down. He took an empty cup and gave me tea. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  “‘I will know all the things that you didn’t tell me the other day.’ He pursed his lips, then brushed the crumbs from his mustache. ‘What would you know?’ I said, ‘Akaky.’ I needed to say no more than that. Trifon was a huge man, but that name seemed to shrink him. He nodded as if he had long expected this, but he did not speak, so I prodded him further. ‘Why do you all tolerate him?’

  “‘You know nothing of us, not even as much as you think you do,’ he answered. ‘We believe in God, yes, but also we believe that when a person is murdered, that soul enters the heart of the murderer to plague him.’ I remarked that this was an interesting belief, but of no relevance I could see. ‘Not relevant?’ he said. ‘It’s the reason we’ve let the monster live. It’s the reason he is the way he is. His father killed a neighbor—I’m sure it was an accident of emotion, but it happened. And the boy was born within weeks of that. Born evil, cruel, powerful, and desiring nothing more than to ruin himself and his family. The harm that he has done has been directed at them, at no one else. That is how we know whose soul he has, that’s why his family lives in shame.’

  “ ’How can you say he’s harmed no one but them? What about the house out there that’s sunk in the ground? What about that poor family?’

  “Trifon stared at me as if to say I was a fool. ‘That was his house. That was where his family lived. He brought it down.’ As if to dismiss me, he shoved his cup away, but I had not finished.

  “’What of my predecessor?’ I demanded.

  “‘Her? She witnessed the event and fled from us. Nothing happened to her, just as nothing will happen to you. She lost her position. Akaky withdrew afterward, and no one here saw him. His family keeps away still in shame. They told us he had fallen into a trance and would die. We acted on that, believing—Merciful God, hoping for it. He should have died. We sent for you then. Now you’re here and Akaky’s weaker than before, so let him be, let him rot. Just don’t run away in fright or we’ll have to send for another teacher. Evil he is, but he won’t do anything except frighten you. Especially at the house of Shaldin, because he fears Larissa—her gifts outshine his, and the rest of us. Oh, yes—you see, I told you that you knew less than you thought. We all have some powers like his. But we take precautions, and we don’t use our gifts frivolously. If we did, we would all look like Akaky. Now you know why we put you there of all places in spite of Shaldin’s objections.’

  “‘No,’ I insisted, ‘no, she didn’t run away.’

  “‘What? Who didn’t run away?’

  “‘Your last teacher. She’s dead. Akaky sucked her life away.’

  “‘Rubbish—now you think him too powerful.’

  “‘Really?’ I said. ‘Well, let me tell you, wise ataman, the reason I know what Akaky did to the last outsider is that he is doing the same thing to me.’ I wanted to show him the marks, the bruises and scars, but the high-necked blouse I had put on to hide them would not let me. He would have denied them, too, I was certain. He had his system of belief, as did the entire village—of witches or devils or whatever they were in Devashgorod. Angrily, I got up and marched out of the shop. I was no demon, nor had my predecessor been. We were something altogether different. We were prey.

  “That afternoon I went into the church, as orthodox a church as you’d find in any village. I prayed for my soul, though I feared that I now dwelled somewhere that God did not visit. Afterward I returned to my room in Shaldin’s house. My
thoughts collided, but as I sat there I spied my trunk at the foot of the bed and I thought that I should obey my instincts and flee. I could steal a cart, but how could I drag the trunk out of here without the whole house knowing of it? The situation had trapped me, do you see, my captain? There was no way to leave and no hope of survival unless I could deal with Akaky. I thought then that perhaps I could make him leave me alone.

  “At dinner I said nothing of my intention, but that night I dressed for bed and then opened the window into my room. A cool breeze from off the mountains blew in, and I settled back on the bed to wait. This time I hoped that the cold would keep me awake. For a while I tried to read some Gogol but could not concentrate, so I set it aside, lay back and waited.

  “Even with the cold I eventually drifted to the edge of sleep. I might have dozed but it was at that moment that Akaky thumped against the window. Again a mist trailed in behind him. He was grinning. I sat up and said, ‘I’ll speak with you’, as harshly as I could muster. My tone dismayed him for a moment, but then he sneered and came forward again. ‘Lie back,’ he said, ‘I’ve no desire to speak with you. It’s your life I want, not talk.’ I fought his control over me, but my body obeyed against my will. Still, I could talk, and I said, ‘You burn your own life up, doing this. Stop before you damn yourself.’

  “He laughed, which turned into a cough. ‘I burn either way,’ he rasped. ‘You can help me live a little longer.’

  “‘Why not stop, why not rest?’ I asked him.

  “‘Because I love it too much. What would life be without the burning inside?’ And his eyes rolled up in ecstasy as he lost himself in his own fire. In the room, as he did that, the furniture began to rattle and shift. The bed beneath me trembled, creaking. Then Akaky’s rheumy eyes settled on me again. ‘You can’t imagine it,’ he said. ‘Or if you did, you’d give in to the pleasure with me—only your kind doesn’t have the knowledge we do.’

  “‘Then why don’t the rest burn themselves up, too?’ I asked. ‘Why aren’t all the villagers out devastating their town for the sheer pleasure it brings?’

  “‘They’re afraid. But I’m tired of talking to you. Be quiet now.’ He uncurled that deformed hand of his and it was whole again, the nails glinting as if sharpened. The part of me that he controlled ached for him to insert them again. Terrified even of myself, I tried to roll free of him, but I might have been paralyzed. He undid the bow on my gown, exposing the bruise he had made. Then, behind him, a shape emerged from the shadows. Slender hands closed over his wrist above me and yanked him around. I found myself able to move, and I turned my head to see Larissa there. She whispered sharply in the Kazaki tongue, words I didn’t know. What she said must have been a curse of some kind, because he reacted by spitting at her. With his free hand he swung at her face and knocked her against the door. Then he didn’t touch her, only looked at her, but somehow this seemed to mash her against the wood of the door. She answered his assault, and he stumbled back a foot. She might have superior powers, but Akaky was willing to use his at a murderous level, which Larissa dared not. I thought of her withered and dried out from saving my life, and I couldn’t let that happen.

  “Akaky’s head swiveled and his teeth creaked. He jerked with his neck and Larissa spun away, smashing against a chair and onto the floor. He seemed to expand, to rise almost to the ceiling. The house groaned and snapped. It must have spun somehow, because I was tossed across my bed.

  “Larissa climbed up quickly. Blood was running out of her nose. ‘Akaky,’she said, but he shook his head and replied, ‘It’s too late, you waited. I’ve new strength, from the teacher, and you shouldn’t have picked now to try me, you shouldn’t.’ He closed the distance between them. I sat up, but reeled with dizziness, and I fell on my side, my face pressed against the cool binding of my book. The house lurched with a bounce. It would sink like the other one, and because of me. I grabbed the volume of Gogol in both hands, and I swung around and smashed it down across the back of his wretched skull. The blow drove him across to the door, and I heard something in him crack when he hit it. I thought I had killed him, but when Larissa and I turned him over we saw that only his nose had been broken. She could hardly stand and I made her sit in the chair she had fallen across, while I wiped the blood from her face. Beneath it, she had lines I’d never seen before—she had aged years from that short confrontation. ‘He’ll come again for you, night after night,’ she assured me. ‘In each generation here, there’s one like him, who does damage until he perishes from his own obsession. Evil is always consumed by its own heat. But never before have there been outsiders. Now the evil will spread to the outside from us.’

  “‘The world has evil in it already, Larissa,’ I told her.

  “She nodded. ‘True, but no evil before had your name on its lips.’ I considered then finishing what I had started, killing the child. Larissa sensed this and told me that I would be foolish to do so. She believed the myth of her village. Perhaps I had come to as well.

  “Larissa sighed, exhausted. I was surprised that no one else had stirred. She must have seen my distant look, because she said, ‘They’ve been kept asleep. Akaky’s magic. He wouldn’t want to fight us all—it would drain him utterly.’

  “‘But why not destroy him like that?’ I asked. Here they had what seemed to me the perfect solution to their problem; but Larissa shook her head. ‘You don’t understand us,’ she said. ‘He’s evil, but he is of us nevertheless. We must tolerate him though we don’t want him. In this way he destroys only himself, nothing else.’

  “‘Except me,’ I pointed out.

  “‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘He can destroy you. You should never have been allowed here before the village knew for certain that he had perished. And now you must go. I’ll take you to the ataman, and he’ll send you from here tonight.’ She left my room to put on her clothes. I changed mine, stuffing my belongings into the trunk. When I came around the bed, Akaky’s hand shot out and grabbed my ankle. ‘Larissa!’ he wheezed. ‘I’ll murder you. I’ll wear you down till you’re a rotting corpse.’ He clutched my skirts, and dragged himself up me. Blood covered his lips and outlined the stubs of his teeth. I shoved him away, but he hung onto me with those fingers. I tried to reach the door, but he pulled me off balance. I fell, catching myself against the doorknob. Akaky was on his knees. I whirled around and slammed him against the wall. He growled, and his eyes rolled back, and a horrible pain opened in my breast. Akaky was grinning in pain and pleasure combined, his head back, the blood drawing lines up his face now. Frantically, I tore him from me, peeling his tiny hand away, crushing the fingers. He became weaker and more fragile by the moment. He laughed at me then, as if rejoicing in both our sufferings. I was not of their village; I could not block him out, and I could not endure this any longer. I slapped him as hard as I could. It was like hitting old, thin plaster. His cheekbone shattered under my hand. That whole side of his face caved in. He hissed, his breath foetid; but his hand went limp and he tumbled back across the chair.

  “I stood there, shaking, waiting. If he had moved again, I would have taken something and beaten his head into the floor. Instead, he lay unmoving, as repellant a sight as if I had disinterred a corpse and brought it into my room. The stench of him seemed to fill the room.

  “Larissa returned and saw him. In a mad rush I explained what had happened. Horrified, she bent over the chair. ‘I think you’ve killed him,’ she said. ‘Come on, you have to get away now.’ She grabbed my arm and pulled me from the room. I wanted to go back for my trunk but she insisted that someone else would get it. I was not to return to that room.

  “Trifon listened to her story morosely. Was it me, I wondered, who shadowed the ataman’s thoughts? But no, it was Akaky, for Trifon cursed him and spat. He agreed to hitch up his horses. My trunk was loaded on his wagon and I left Devashgorod in the dead of night, like a criminal, a spy. At the edge of town, Shaldin’s house now stood canted to the right, as if the pit that had swallowed the
neighboring house was growing, unseen.

  “On the way along the road, Trifon handed me some money. ‘This is payment for as much of the year as I can afford. You won’t have a successor. Not till Akaky is taken care of.’

  “I thought, But he’s dead. I’ve killed him, what of me? I lost myself in gloom until I saw him. He stood beside the road as we went past. Trifon didn’t see him, but I did. I saw the moonlight on his wild eyes, and I turned to watch him hobble into the dust after us. In terror I watched him recede into the night. When we reached the main road, Trifon wanted to leave me, but I wouldn’t let him go. I pleaded with him to stay, not to leave me where Akaky could prey upon me. Trifon remained until morning, when he assured me in the sunlight that I was safe. Then he would not be kept there and drove off. His village needed him, he explained. Larissa Shaldin needed him. The troika was due around midday, or so he had claimed. I sat on the trunk, surveying the landscape for that hunched, repulsive shape. The trunk shifted under me, so gently at first that I didn’t understand what was happening. Then it shook violently. I jumped up at the instant that the latch burst. The lid flew open so hard that one hinge tore free. Clothing, all that I owned in the world, went spinning up like a fountain. At the center of it, a shape rose up—Akaky. His bleeding mouth drooled. The indented side of his face was purple and black. He scrabbled at me with those claws, but in his blind lunge he fell over the side of the box. I thought: Now is the time to finish him. I took a step. Should I kill him with a rock? Then he sprang from the ground, and his sharp fingers reached for my face. He missed but tangled them in my hair. I grabbed his wrist and tore myself free; his arm snapped and he wailed. I turned and ran.