The Best New Horror 6

by Stephen Jones

  Most cross-streets were dark, streetlights shot out and businesses shuttered up behind graffiti-covered steel rollers. Scotchman drove slower, and Stuart felt the crunching caltrop-like obstructions under the armoured tyres. The roads were very poorly maintained, far worse than in Britain.

  To the left, a shutter rolled up like a broken blind, and light flooded out of a garage. Stuart flinched: the shutter reminded him of flaps going up over a pirate ship’s gunports as the cannons delivered a broadside.

  A sleek black van slid swiftly out, crossing a forecourt in a liquid instant like a panther. The van nudged the patrol car’s nose as it took possession of the street. Stuart felt the impact in his teeth as Scotchman braked.

  García swore in rapid Spanish.

  The van slipped into the night, at once beyond sight. With its one-way black windows and reflective paint-job, it could be swallowed by shadow. Stuart had seen no visible license plate.

  “Shouldn’t we go after that?” he suggested.

  Neither cop said anything. Light from the garage still filled the car.

  “Should check for damage,” García said, at last.

  Scotchman nodded. He unlocked his driver’s side door, and stepped out, hand easy on his gun.

  “Stay here, Stuey,” García said, also leaving the car.

  Stuart bridled. He couldn’t pick up much from sitting in the back while the world went on outside. Then again, he wasn’t sure how much he wanted to pick up.

  The cops examined the hood, where the van had side-swiped. They talked intensely, maybe argued, but Stuart couldn’t lipread. He looked at the garage. It seemed floodlit and yellow light poured down the forecourt. In the yellow were trickles of red that gave him a bad turn. Knowing he’d regret it, he opened the door and got out.

  II From the Corrido of Diego

  “I was born within a day’s ride, as distances were measured then, from El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora de la Ryena de los Angeles de Rio Porciunculo. My mother was an Indian, my father was a Jesuit. They were, of course, not married. Such arrangements were common in our neglected corner of the Empire.

  “My father baptised me Diego, and finally, grudgingly, left me his family name. My mother birth-named me Fox, for her totem animal. You may know me by the Spanish form of my Indian name, Zorro.

  “This was 1805; five years before the Grito de Dolores, Father Hidalgo y Costilla’s call for revolt against Spain; sixteen years before the end of the rule of Madrid over Mexico; forty-three years before California was ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; forty-five years before the territory attained statehood . . .

  “Had I merely lived out my expected years, I should have experienced history enough for any man. As things happened, history and I have become intertwined until we are each inseparable from the other.

  “Mine is not a story, as an anglo would have it, but a corrida, a song. What is true and what is not have long ceased to matter. From the very beginning, I have been a legend as much as a living creature. Often, I lose myself inside the legend.

  “Sometimes, I am Diego, masked as Fox; sometimes, I am Fox, hiding inside Diego. In this, what you know from motion pictures and television, is true. Little else is.

  “I was born hispanic if not a Spaniard, and I shall die an American if not an anglo. Stories represent me as of the ricos, strutting around a hacienda in absurdly embroidered finery, galloping over peon-tilled land on a purebred Castilian steed, elegantly dueling with a Toledo blade. Such men were fewer than stories would like, and rarely made themselves evident. I was of the pobres, the nameless thousands who were born, dug out goods from the ground with their hands, and, in the normal course, died.

  “The ricos left behind their names (the streets of this city bear them still), but the pobres passed utterly from the land, leaving not even a memory.

  “Except mine.”

  “The viejo had changed me. That I knew from his last touch, which struck like lightning. I thought myself dead but trapped in my body. I felt the weight of my limbs but could not make them move. Then I realized my body merely had an unfamiliar shape. With a little concentration, I could move.

  “I was different.

  “Since early childhood, my back had been bent in field labour, my hands had fought earth and rock. Pain was as much a part of my body as the taste of spit in my mouth. Now the pain was gone. For the first time, I had pleasure in movement. Simply raising my hand to my face was an exhilaration.

  “Against sky, I saw my long-fingered, sharp-nailed hand. It was dark and thinly furred. The knuckle of my forefinger burned with pain. My finger lengthened, joints popping. See, my forefingers are as long as my middle fingers. That is part of the old stories.

  “I no longer felt the cold of the night. My clothes were stretched in some places and loose in others, and confined me intolerably. I looked at the full moon and saw not the familiar silver disc, but a ball of light brighter than the sun, containing all colours of the rainbow.

  “As I looked about, the dark was banished. Each rock, each plant, was as plain as if under a frozen streak of lightning. Bright, moving forms were animals. I saw movement as well as colour, and could discern a grey rabbit which would by day have been hidden in similarly-coloured scrub.

  “I rent apart my shirt, my thick pelt bristling as I let night air at my rough skin, and brought down the rabbit. The animal moved slowly as a muddy stream and I was swift as a hawk.

  “Swift as a fox.

  “The rabbit’s blood was like a pepper exploding on my tongue, like peyote blazing in my brain. My powerful jaws, lined with sharp teeth, could crunch through bone; my mouth was wide enough to finish the rabbit in three bites.

  “Sights and smells and tastes blossomed. I was lost in a new world. I could stand straight-backed, as never by day; and I could run swiftly on all fours, my claws striking sparks from stone.

  “The viejo lay in the moonlight, body dry, limbs like black sticks. The Indian, who my mother said was of the People Before Our People, might have been buried in the desert and unearthed after ages. His face had turned from leather to parchment. Dead for only a few moments, it seemed life had fled from him many years ago.

  “As he died, something had passed from the tired old man to me. I, Diego, ran under the moon and fought beasts for my food. Soon, I would fight beasts for my people.”

  III

  Thin blue smoke swirled hypnotically under the striplights. Thick smell stung his nose and eyes like teargas.

  A pedantic copy editor at Real Press had told him not to call it cordite (the stuff wasn’t used any more), but couldn’t suggest an up-to-date alternative term for the afterstench of discharged guns. Something Stuart had never smelled before, it was unmistakable.

  The garage was filled with people. There was no doubt about how dead they were. The far wall was pocked with bullet-holes and splashed with bright blood. A line of young men slumped where the skirting board would have been, limp arms overlapping, surprised heads lolling on chests. It was his Dad’s usual suggested solution to industrial disputes; they’d been put against the wall and shot.

  The predictable thing to do was bend over double and bring up his doughnuts and coffee. Stuart, in this case, was highly predictable.

  García and Scotchman found him on his knees, coughing into a pool of chyme. Clear, bitter fluid hung in ropes from his mouth. His head was whirling.

  Scotchman whistled and García swore.

  Stuart shut his eyes, but his mind’s instamatic developed polaroids in his head. Gouting wounds in colourful jackets, puckered out and leaking meat stuffing. Criss-cross trails of blood like raffia strands on a concrete floor. One man, a boy, hanging from chains, stripped not only to the waist but almost to muscle and bone.

  “This fool got special treatment,” Scotchman said.

  The hanging boy had been chubby; pockets of fat stood out in his flayed torso. Stuart was carrying around about half a stone more than he should have been.


  His gut twisted again, but there was nothing left inside.

  “Stuey, man,” García said, not unkindly, “clean yourself.”

  He found a handkerchief and wiped his wet face. He tried to lick the ghastly taste out of his mouth.

  Now he had stopped being sick, he had time to get scared.

  When he opened his eyes, it wasn’t so bad. He told himself it was special effects. In movies, he had seen worse.

  The hanging boy’s arms were wrenched upwards, probably out of his shoulder sockets to judge by the stretched tendons, and fastened to the chain above his head. His wrists were cinched together like beercans by one-piece plastic cuffs. Whoever had worked on him had known what they were doing.

  Scotchman whispered a report into his wafer-phone, glancing over each of the dead. He mentioned that all the boys had been given a just-to-make-sure head shot. That was where a lot of the mess came from. García rooted around on a work-surface. He found some car mechanic tools, and a large chemistry set.

  “Looks to be a zonk house, man.”

  Zonk was the latest packaging of the product, cocaine. It came in squeezable plastic bulbs, like tomato-shaped ketchup containers. A single oily drop on the tongue was a force ten hit. Connoisseur zonkbrains preferred to drip it into their nostrils or onto their corneas. Chief Ryu had declared War on Zonk.

  As well as taking out the zonk krewe, the killers had raked their equipment with gunfire. The chemistry set was smashed and odorous. Pools of different coloured liquids mixed and steamed on the bench-top.

  “Party favours,” García commented, flipping open a deep Samsonite to reveal densely-packed zonk squeezers. “Couple of hundred K, easy.”

  Scotchman had made his report. He folded up his wafer-phone and slipped it back into his top pocket.

  “Gang activity,” he diagnosed. “These are Caldiarres. They’ve been warring over turf with the Eyes.”

  All the dead people flew colours. Scarves and symbols and jackets and headbands. The Caldiarres’ badge was a red, angry demon face. From the tribalism, you’d have sworn the Indians had won in the Americas.

  “Wouldn’t another gang take the drugs?” Stuart asked.

  García looked into the face of the hanging boy and said “Think I recognize this fool. Esquiverra, Escalante, Esca-something. . .”

  Scotchman looked around, crossing names off his mental wanted list.

  García picked out a squeezer and felt the weight of it. A single hundred dollar pellet of zonk was inside, diluting in liquid.

  “Feels like a tit, man. Really does.”

  Zonkbrains called their poison Mother’s Milk, and talked about “sucking Diablo’s Teat”.

  García gave an experimental squeeze and a tiny gusher of whitish fluid dribbled from the nipple.

  “Ever wonder what it’s like, Stuey?”

  Stuart had a particular horror of drugs. When his sister was fourteen and Stuart eleven, Dad had caught Brenda with a joint and gave them both a scarifying tour of a rehab clinic. Neither of the Finn kids so much as smoked cigarettes; Stuart worried about the amount of coffee he drank.

  “Let’s post the Crime Scene: Keep Out notice and be on the road,” Scotchman said. “The clean-up will be here in minutes.”

  “You just leave these people?” Stuart said, astonished.

  “They’re not going anywhere. And nobody is going to mess with them.”

  Scotchman took a last look around the garage. The smoke had dissipated.

  “A message has been delivered,” he said. “Let’s hope it gets to the right people.”

  IV From the Corrido of Diego

  “My mother had fourteen babies that I know of, at least five with my father. By my twenty-fifth year, I alone still lived. My brothers and sisters were taken by illness and the land.

  “My father wished to give me work at the mission. Don Esteban would not hear of a peon being taught to read and write. I was in all but name a slave of the patrón. Under the Spanish statutes of California, I was prohibited from tilling earth or raising livestock for my own table. I was paid six reales (twelve cents, American money) a day. Obliged by law to buy food from Don Esteban, I never saw a coin. Like all peons, I inherited the debt of my family. The debts of my dead brothers and sisters, which fell upon my shoulders, were numbered in thousands of reales.

  “This was the way things had been under Spain; this was the way things were under Mexico; this was the way things would be in the United States.

  “The mission collected its tithe from Don Esteban, who deducted it from the earnings of the peons. My father taught us to be devout and dutiful, for we would receive our reward in Heaven.”

  “One night of the full moon, soon after the change, I hunted down and killed Don Esteban.

  “In the stories, Don Esteban might be a tyrant, lashing about with a whip, striping the backs of the peons. Perhaps one of my sisters survived to young girlhood and became beautiful. Or maybe one of the daughters of my neighbours was comely and promised to me in marriage. From his steed, the patrón espied beauty under dust and carried her back to his hacienda to be abused. Or the priest might raise gentle protest against the lot of the peons and be turned away roughly by Don Esteban, falling dead in the dirt with a throwing knife buried to its hilt in his godly back. One night, Don Esteban and his men might become distracted with wine and, as a sport, ride through the village, pulling down the one-room jacales in which we lived, emptying one-shot pistols at random at any human shadow.

  “None of these things were the case. By his own lights, Don Esteban was a pious man. He treated his peons as he treated other beasts that he owned, strictly but with care. His wealth was founded upon our work, and you do not slaughter a good horse or ox until it is too old to work.

  “Killing Don Esteban was something that came to my animal mind. He was not the first man to feed my night hungers, but he was the first whom I sought out.

  “If the patrón’s home was a hacienda, it was a modest one. It was made of stone but its floors were beaten earth. My feet made no sound as I entered. Don Esteban was reading his Bible by firelight. As I stalked towards him, he gripped a rosary tight and stared.

  “At the first sight of me, Don Esteban fouled himself. To my snout, the smell was intense and exciting.

  “With my long fingers, I gripped the patrón’s head firmly as I tore out his throat. I chewed through the fine lace of his collar. My teeth hurt as I bit down on a silver button. His muttered prayer cut off sharply.

  “When finished, I found my hooked thumbnail had cut a zig-zag-zig into Don Esteban’s cheek as he struggled. A red letter stood out in the brown skin above his beard. The letter Z.

  “A servant found me squatting over Don Esteban. As often after tasting human blood, I had fallen into a reverie, distracted by patterns in the flames of the hearth. The servant gave the alarm and I was chased into the hills.”

  “Next morning, when I returned exhausted to my jacale, the peons mourned the passing of the patrón. Many loved Don Esteban as a dog loves its master. The mission bells tolled for his death. By this time, my father was dead of fever and a young Jesuit, Fray Molina, had taken his place.

  “A cousin of Don Esteban sold his lands, and we had a new patrón, Don Luis. He was much like the old patrón and, after some years passed, I took the opportunity to kill him also. Of course, there would always be patrónes. This was understood. I could not exterminate the breed. Also, I killed Fray Molina, whom I knew troubled the young boys of the village. And I killed Capítan Cordoba, who hanged Tío Pancho for speaking against the Church. I killed many. Still, I kill many.

  “With my long finger, I took to leaving my zig-zag-zig on my kills. Others took to using my mark. Often, I saw it cut into the bark of trees or the adobe of a wall.

  “By now, there was much talk of a curse and a demon. The old women, more Indian than Spanish, said the curse was always upon the land. In the times before the conquistadores, when the Apache preyed upon the Pueblos,
the demon fought the raiders. It was a fox, a wolf, a bear, a wild man . . .

  “Some said the demon was an angel, that only the unjust were struck down by its hand. I was drawn to certain men: cruel officers, venal priests, murderous bandits, harsh overseers. If I chanced upon one such by daylight in the period just before the full moon, their flesh seemed to glow like the moon through my altered eyes. I would be certain our paths would cross by night.

  “By day, I took a wife, Dolores, Lolita. She grew old and died in short years. I did not grow old and die. My sons seemed to me like my brothers, then like grandfathers, then they too died. Few remarked upon my situation, but other peons kept their distance from me. After I buried my Lolita, I could find no other to wed me. My grandchildren avoided me. I was no longer welcome at the mission.

  “Eventually, I would have been driven from the land. Those who sang of the Fox of the Night wished to deny the Diego of the Day. I became as a phantom, entirely invisible to those among whom I lived. If I did not work the land, no overseer reprimanded me. If I found my sustenance by night, no one questioned my well-fed appearance. My jacale fell into disrepair, but that did not trouble me.

  “Each month, the Fox had five or six nights, immediately before, during and after the full moon. Only then did I live. I hunted, I found lovers, I struck. Sometimes I wished Diego would disappear forever into the Fox. Then I could depart for the hills, there to live away from the cares of man.”

  V

  “Be a blue moon tomorrow, man,” García said, thumbing up at the sky.

  Stuart looked up through the wide window, puzzled. The moon above was silver, as usual.

  “A moon can be called blue when it’s full twice in a month,” Scotchman explained. “It was full on the first and we’ve a couple of days to go ’til September.”

  So that was what “once in a blue moon” meant. Stuart guessed you got a better education on the streets of LA than at Sexey’s School for Boys. Maybe night patrol was so boring, you picked up all this trivia.