The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 16

by Stephen Jones

  He took the last train home. By the time it reached the station, he was the only one left in his car. He unchained his bicycle and rode it home in the dark. Rabbits pelted across the footpath in front of his bike. There were rabbits foraging on his lawn. They froze as he dismounted and pushed the bicycle across the grass. The lawn was rumpled; the bike went up and down over invisible depressions that he supposed were rabbit holes. There were two short, fat men standing in the dark on either side of the front door, waiting for him, but when he came closer, he remembered that they were stone rabbits. “Knock, knock,” he said.

  The real rabbits on the lawn tipped their ears at him. The stone rabbits waited for the punch line, but they were just stone rabbits. They had nothing better to do.

  The front door wasn’t locked. He walked through the downstairs rooms, putting his hands on the backs and tops of furniture. In the kitchen, cut-down boxes leaned in stacks against the wall, waiting to be recycled or remade into cardboard houses and spaceships and tunnels for Carleton and Tilly.

  Catherine had unpacked Carleton’s room. Night-lights in the shape of bears and geese and cats were plugged into every floor outlet. There were little low-watt table lamps as well – hippo, robot, gorilla, pirate ship. Everything was soaked in a tender, peaceable light, translating Carleton’s room into something more than a bedroom: something luminous, numinous, a cartoony midnight church of sleep.

  Tilly was sleeping in the other bed.

  Tilly would never admit that she sleepwalked, the same way that she would never admit that she sometimes still wet the bed. But she refused to make friends. Making friends would have meant spending the night in strange houses. Tomorrow morning she would insist that Henry or Catherine must have carried her from her room, put her to bed in Carleton’s room for reasons of their own.

  Henry knelt down between the two beds and kissed Carleton on the forehead. He kissed Tilly, smoothed her hair. How could he not love Tilly better? He’d known her longer. She was so brave, so angry.

  On the walls of Carleton’s bedroom, Henry’s children had drawn a house. A cat nearly as big as the house. There was a crown on the cat’s head. Trees or flowers with pairs of leaves that pointed straight up, still bigger, and a stick figure on a stick bicycle, riding past the trees. When he looked closer, he thought that maybe the trees were actually rabbits. The wall smelled like Fruit Loops. Someone had written HENRY IS A RAT FINK! HA HA! He recognized his wife’s handwriting.

  “Scented markers,” Catherine said. She stood in the door, holding a pillow against her stomach. “I was sleeping downstairs on the sofa. You walked right past and didn’t see me.”

  “The front door was unlocked,” Henry said.

  “Liz says nobody ever locks their doors out here,” Catherine said. “Are you coming to bed, or were you just stopping by to see how we were?”

  “I have to go back in tomorrow.” Henry said. He pulled a toothbrush out of his pocket and showed it to her. “There’s a box of Krispy Kreme donuts on the kitchen counter.”

  “Delete the donuts,” Catherine said. “I’m not that easy.” She took a step towards him and accidentally kicked King Spanky. The cat yowled. Carleton woke up. He said, “Who’s there? Who’s there?”

  “It’s me,” Henry said. He knelt beside Carleton’s bed in the light of the Winnie the Pooh lamp. “I brought you a new toothbrush.”

  Carleton whimpered.

  “What’s wrong, spaceman?” Henry said. “It’s just a toothbrush.” He leaned towards Carleton and Carleton scooted back. He began to scream.

  In the other bed, Tilly was dreaming about rabbits. When she’d come home from school, she and Carleton had seen rabbits, sitting on the lawn as if they had kept watch over the house all the time that Tilly had been gone. In her dream they were still there. She dreamed she was creeping up on them. They opened their mouths, wide enough to reach inside like she was some kind of rabbit dentist, and so she did. She put her hand around something small and cold and hard. Maybe it was a ring, a diamond ring. Or a. Or. It was a. She couldn’t wait to show Carleton. Her arm was inside the rabbit all the way to her shoulder. Someone put their hand around her wrist and yanked. Somewhere her mother was talking. She said—

  “It’s the beard.”

  Catherine couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry or scream like Carleton. That would surprise Carleton, if she started screaming, too. “Shoo! Shoo, Henry – go shave and come back as quick as you can, or else he’ll never go back to sleep.”

  “Carleton, honey,” she was saying as Henry left the room. “It’s your dad. It’s not Santa Claus. It’s not the big bad wolf. It’s your dad. Your dad just forgot. Why don’t you tell me a story? Or do you want to go watch your daddy shave?”

  Catherine’s hot water bottle was draped over the tub. Towels were heaped on the floor. Henry’s things had been put away behind the mirror. It made him feel tired, thinking of all the other things that still had to be put away. He washed his hands, then looked at the bar of soap. It didn’t feel right. He put it back on the sink, bent over and sniffed it and then tore off a piece of toilet paper, used the toilet paper to pick up the soap. He threw it in the trash and unwrapped a new bar of soap. There was nothing wrong with the new soap. There was nothing wrong with the old soap either. He was just tired. He washed his hands and lathered up his face, shaved off his beard and watched the little bristles of hair wash down the sink. When he went to show Carleton his brand new face, Catherine was curled up in bed beside Carleton. They were both asleep. They were still asleep when he left the house at 5:30 the next morning.

  “Where are you?” Catherine said.

  “I’m on my way home. I’m on the train.” The train was still in the station. They would be leaving any minute. They had been leaving any minute for the last hour or so, and before that, they had had to get off the train twice, and then back on again. They had been assured there was nothing to worry about. There was no bomb threat. There was no bomb. The delay was only temporary. The people on the train looked at each other, trying to seem as if they were not looking. Everyone had their cell phones out.

  “The rabbits are out on the lawn again,” Catherine said. “There must be at least fifty or sixty. I’ve never counted rabbits before. Tilly keeps trying to go outside to make friends with them, but as soon as she’s outside, they all go bouncing away like beach balls. I talked to a lawn specialist today. He says we need to do something about it, which is what Liz was saying. Rabbits can be a big problem out here. They’ve probably got tunnels and warrens all through the yard. It could be a problem. Like living on top of a sinkhole. But Tilly is never going to forgive us. She knows something’s up. She says she doesn’t want a dog anymore. It would scare away the rabbits. Do you think we should get a dog?”

  “So what do they do? Put out poison? Dig up the yard?” Henry said. The man in the seat in front of him got up. He took his bags out of the luggage rack and left the train. Everyone watched him go, pretending they were not.

  “He was telling me they have these devices, kind of like ultrasound equipment. They plot out the tunnels, close them up, and then gas the rabbits. It sounds gruesome,” Catherine said. “And this kid, this baby has been kicking the daylights out of me. All day long it’s kick, kick, jump, kick, like some kind of martial artist. He’s going to be an angry kid, Henry. Just like his sister. Her sister. Or maybe I’m going to give birth to rabbits.”

  “As long as they have your eyes and my chin,” Henry said.

  “I’ve gotta go,” Catherine said. “I have to pee again. All day long it’s the kid jumping, me peeing, Tilly getting her heart broken because she can’t make friends with the rabbits, me worrying because she doesn’t want to make friends with other kids, just with rabbits, Carleton asking if today he has to go to school, does he have to go to school tomorrow, why am I making him go to school when everybody there is bigger than him, why is my stomach so big and fat, why does his teacher tell him to act like a big boy? Henry, why are
we doing this again? Why am I pregnant? And where are you? Why aren’t you here? What about our deal? Don’t you want to be here?”

  “I’m sorry,” Henry said. “I’ll talk to The Crocodile. We’ll work something out.”

  “I thought you wanted this too, Henry. Don’t you?”

  “Of course,” Henry said. “Of course I want this.”

  “I’ve gotta go,” Catherine said again. “Liz is bringing some women over. We’re finally starting that book club. We’re going to read Fight Club. Her stepdaughter Alison is going to look after Tilly and Carleton for me. I’ve already talked to Tilly. She promises she won’t bite or hit or make Alison cry.”

  “What’s the trade? A few hours of bonus TV?”

  “No,” Catherine said. “Something’s up with the TV.”

  “What’s wrong with the TV?”

  “I don’t know,” Catherine said. “It’s working fine. But the kids won’t go near it. Isn’t that great? It’s the same thing as the toothbrush. You’ll see when you get home. I mean, it’s not just the kids. I was watching the news earlier, and then I had to turn it off. It wasn’t the news. It was the TV.”

  “So it’s the downstairs bathroom and the coffee maker and Carleton’s toothbrush and now the TV?”

  “There’s some other stuff as well, since this morning. Your office, apparently. Everything in it – your desk, your bookshelves, your chair, even the paper clips.”

  “That’s probably a good thing, right? I mean, that way they’ll stay out of there.”

  “I guess,” Catherine said. “The thing is, I went and stood in there for a while and it gave me the creeps, too. So now I can’t pick up e-mail. And I had to throw out more soap. And King Spanky doesn’t love the alarm clock anymore. He won’t come out from under the bed when I set it off.”

  “The alarm clock too?”

  “It does sound different,” Catherine said. “Just a little bit different. Or maybe I’m insane. This morning, Carleton told me that he knew where our house was. He said we were living in a secret part of Central Park. He said he recognizes the trees. He thinks that if he walks down that little path, he’ll get mugged. I’ve really got to go, Henry, or I’m going to wet my pants, and I don’t have time to change again before everyone gets here.”

  “I love you,” Henry said.

  “Then why aren’t you here?” Catherine said victoriously. She hung up and ran down the hallway towards the downstairs bathroom. But when she got there, she turned around. She went racing up the stairs, pulling down her pants as she went, and barely got to the master bedroom bathroom in time. All day long she’d gone up and down the stairs, feeling extremely silly. There was nothing wrong with the downstairs bathroom. It’s just the fixtures. When you flush the toilet or run water in the sink. She doesn’t like the sound the water makes.

  Several times now, Henry had come home and found Catherine painting rooms, which was a problem. The problem was that Henry kept going away. If he didn’t keep going away, he wouldn’t have to keep coming home. That was Catherine’s point. Henry’s point was that Catherine wasn’t supposed to be painting rooms while she was pregnant. Pregnant women were supposed to stay away from paint fumes.

  Catherine solved this problem by wearing the gas mask while she painted. She had known the gas mask would come in handy. She told Henry she promised to stop painting as soon as he started working at home, which was the plan. Meanwhile, she couldn’t decide on colours. She and Carleton and Tilly spent hours looking at paint strips with colours that had names like Sangria, Peat Bog, Tulip, Tantrum, Planetarium, Galactica, Tea Leaf, Egg Yolk, Tinker Toy, Gauguin, Susan, Envy, Aztec, Utopia, Wax Apple, Rice Bowl, Cry Baby, Fat Lip, Green Banana, Trampoline, Finger Nail. It was a wonderful way to spend time. They went off to school, and when they got home, the living room would be Harp Seal instead of Full Moon. They’d spend some time with that colour, getting to know it, ignoring the television, which was haunted (haunted wasn’t the right word, of course, but Catherine couldn’t think what the right word was) and then a couple of days later, Catherine would go buy some more primer and start again. Carleton and Tilly loved this. They begged her to repaint their bedrooms. She did.

  She wished she could eat paint. Whenever she opened a can of paint, her mouth filled with saliva. When she’d been pregnant with Carleton, she hadn’t been able to eat anything except for olives and hearts of palm and dry toast. When she’d been pregnant with Tilly, she’d eaten dirt, once, in Central Park. Tilly thought they should name the baby after a paint colour, Chalk, or Dilly Dilly, or Keelhauled. Lapis Lazulily. Knock, knock.

  Catherine kept meaning to ask Henry to take the television and put it in the garage. Nobody ever watched it now. They’d had to stop using the microwave as well, and a colander, some of the flatware, and she was keeping an eye on the toaster. She had a premonition, or an intuition. It didn’t feel wrong, not yet, but she had a feeling about it. There was a gorgeous pair of earrings that Henry had given her – how was it possible to be spooked by a pair of diamond earrings? – and yet. Carleton wouldn’t play with his Lincoln Logs, and so they were going to the Salvation Army, and Tilly’s armadillo purse had disappeared. Tilly hadn’t said anything about it, and Catherine hadn’t wanted to ask.

  Sometimes, if Henry wasn’t coming home, Catherine painted after Carleton and Tilly went to bed. Sometimes Tilly would walk into the room where Catherine was working, Tilly’s eyes closed, her mouth open, a tourist-somnambulist. She’d stand there, with her head cocked towards Catherine. If Catherine spoke to her, she never answered, and if Catherine took her hand, she would follow Catherine back to her own bed and lie down again. But sometimes Catherine let Tilly stand there and keep her company. Tilly was never so attentive, so present, when she was awake. Eventually she would turn and leave the room and Catherine would listen to her climb back up the stairs. Then she would be alone again.

  * * *

  Catherine dreams about colours. It turns out her marriage was the same colour she had just painted the foyer. Velveteen Fade. Leonard Felter, who had had an ongoing affair with two of his graduate students, several adjuncts, two tenured faculty members, brought down Catherine’s entire department, and saved Catherine’s marriage, would make a good lipstick or nail polish. Peach Nooky. There’s The Crocodile, a particularly bilious Eau De Vil, a colour that tastes bad when you say it. Her mother, who had always been disappointed by Catherine’s choices, turned out to have been a beautiful, rich, deep chocolate. Why hadn’t Catherine ever seen that before? Too late, too late. It made her want to cry.

  Liz and she are drinking paint, thick and pale as cream. “Have some more paint,” Catherine says. “Do you want sugar?”

  “Yes, lots,” Liz says. “What colour are you going to paint the rabbits?”

  Catherine passes her the sugar. She hasn’t even thought about the rabbits, except which rabbits does Liz mean, the stone rabbits or the real rabbits? How do you make them hold still?

  “I got something for you,” Liz says. She’s got Tilly’s armadillo purse. It’s full of paint strips. Catherine’s mouth fills with water.

  Henry dreams he has an appointment with the exterminator. “You’ve got to take care of this,” he says. “We have two small children. These things could be rabid. They might carry plague.”

  “See what I can do,” the exterminator says, sounding glum. He stands next to Henry. He’s an odd-looking, twitchy guy. He has big ears. They contemplate the skyscrapers that poke out of the grass like obelisks. The lawn is teeming with skyscrapers. “Never seen anything like this before. Never wanted to see anything like this. But if you want my opinion, it’s the house that’s the real problem—”

  “Never mind about my wife,” Henry says. He squats down beside a knee-high art deco skyscraper, and peers into a window. A little man looks back at him and shakes his fists, screaming something obscene. Henry flicks a finger at the window, almost hard enough to break it. He feels hot all over. He’s never felt this angry b
efore in his life, not even when Catherine told him that she’d accidentally slept with Leonard Felter. The little bastard is going to regret what he just said, whatever it was. He lifts his foot.

  The exterminator says, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You have to dig them up, get the roots. Otherwise, they just grow back. Like your house. Which is really just the tip of the iceberg lettuce, so to speak. You’ve probably got seventy, eighty stories underground. You gone down on the elevator yet? Talked to the people living down there? It’s your house, and you’re just going to let them live there rent-free? Mess with your things like that?”

  “What?” Henry says, and then he hears helicopters, fighter planes the size of hummingbirds. “Is this really necessary?” he says to the exterminator.

  The exterminator nods. “You have to catch them off guard.”

  “Maybe we’re being hasty,” Henry says. He has to yell to be heard above the noise of the tiny, tinny, furious planes. “Maybe we can settle this peacefully.”

  “Hemree,” the interrogator says, shaking his head. “You called me in, because I’m the expert, and you knew you needed help.”

  Henry wants to say “You’re saying my name wrong.” But he doesn’t want to hurt the undertaker’s feelings.

  The alligator keeps on talking. “Listen up, Hemreeee, and shut up about negotiations and such, because if we don’t take care of this right away, it may be too late. This isn’t about homeownership, or lawn care, Hemreeeeee, this is war. The lives of your children are at stake. The happiness of your family. Be brave. Be strong. Just hang on to your rabbit and fire when you see delight in their eyes.”

  He woke up. “Catherine,” he whispered. “Are you awake? I was having this dream.”