Fists like knotted clubs crept from sleeves and deposited something in Debbie’s palm, then in Sandra’s: wrapped boiled sweets. “There you are,” said the shrunken mouth, smiling dimly.
“Thank you very much.” Debbie almost screamed: she hadn’t heard her father follow her, to thank the woman. His finger was trying to prod her to gratitude.
“Let’s see if you like them,” the witch said.
Debbie’s fingers picked stiffly at the wrapping. The paper rustled like the dead grass, loud and somehow vicious. She raised the bared sweet toward her mouth, wondering whether she could drop it. She held her mouth still around the sweet. But when she could no longer fend off the taste, it was pleasant: raspberry, clear and sharp. “It’s nice,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Yes, it is,” Sandra said.
Hearing her voice Mop, who had halted snarling at the far end the path, came racing between the clattering grasses. “We mustn’t forget the dog, must we,” the voice said. Mop overshot his sweet and bounced back to catch it. Sandra made to run to him, but he’d crunched and swallowed the sweet. They turned back to the house. The closed front door faced them in the dimness.
“I’m going home now,” Sandra said and ran into her house, followed by Mop. Debbie found an odd taste in her mouth: a thick bitter trail, as if something had crawled down her throat. Just the liquid centre of the sweet: it wasn’t worth telling her father, he would only be impatient. “Did you enjoy yourself?” he said, tousling her hair, and she nodded.
During the meal her tongue searched for the taste. It was never there, nor could she find it in her memory; perhaps it hadn’t been there at all. She watched comedies on television; she was understanding more of the jokes that made her parents laugh. She tricked some little girls who came to the door, but they looked so forlorn that she gave them sweets. The street was bare, deserted, frosted by the light: the ghost of its daytime self. She was glad to close it out. She watched the screen. Colours bobbed up, laughter exploded; gaps interrupted, for she was falling asleep. “Do you want to go to bed?” She strained to prove she didn’t, but at last admitted to herself that she did. In bed she fell asleep at once.
She slept uneasily. Something kept waking her: a sound, a taste? Straining drowsily to remember, she drifted into sleep. Once she glimpsed a figure staring at her from the doorway—her father. Only seconds later—or so it seemed at first—she woke again. A face had peered in the window. She turned violently, tethered by the blankets. There was nothing but the lighted gap which she always left between the curtains, to keep her company in the dark. The house was silent, asleep.
Her mind streamed with thoughts. The mask on the wizened apple, the skull-faced boys, the street flattened by the glare, her father’s finger prodding her ribs. The face that had peered in her window had been hanging wide, too wide. It was the melting monkey from when she was little. Placing it didn’t reassure her. The house surrounded her, huge and unfamiliar, darkly threatening.
She tried to think of Mop. He ran barking into the tunnel—no, he chased cheekily around the witch. Debbie remembered the day he had run into the witch’s garden. Scared to pursue him, they had watched him vanish amid the grass. They’d heard digging, then a silence: what sounded like a pattering explosion of earth, a threshing of grass, and Mop had run out with his tail between his legs. The dim face had watched, grinning.
That wasn’t reassuring either. She tried to think of something she loved, but could think of nothing but her old bear that Mop had stolen. Her mind became a maze, leading always back to the face at her window. She’d seen it only once, but she had often felt it peering in. Its jaw had sagged like wax, pulling open a yawning pink throat. She had been ill, she must have been frightened by a monkey making a face on television. But as the mouth had drooped and then drawn up again, she’d heard a voice speaking to her through the glass: a slow deep dragging voice that sagged like the face, stretching out each separate word. She’d lain paralyzed as the voice blurred in the glass, but hadn’t been able to make out a word. She opened her eyes to dislodge the memory. A shadow sprang away from the window.
Only a car’s light, plucking at the curtains. She lay, trying to be calm around her heart. But she felt uneasy, and kept almost tasting the centre of the burst sweet. The room seemed oppressive; she felt imprisoned. The window imprisoned her, for something could peer in.
She crawled out of bed. The floor felt unpleasantly soft underfoot, as if mouldering in the dark. The street stretched below, deserted and glittering; the witch’s windows were black, as though the grime had filled the house. The taste was almost in Debbie’s mouth.
Had the witch put something in the sweets? Suddenly Debbie had to know whether Sandra had tasted it too. She had to shake off the oppressively padded darkness. She dressed, fumbling quietly in the dark. Squirming into her anorak, she crept into the hall.
She couldn’t leave the front door open, the wind would slam it. She tiptoed into the living-room and groped in her mother’s handbag. Her face burned; it skulked dimly in the mirror. She clutched the key in her fist and inched open the door to the stairs.
On the stairs she realized she was behaving stupidly. How could she waken Sandra without disturbing her mother? Sandra’s bedroom window faced the back yard, too far from the alley to pelt. Yet her thoughts seemed only a commentary, for she was still descending. She opened the front door, and started. Sandra was waiting beneath the streetlamp.
She was wearing her anorak too. She looked anxious. “Mop’s run off,” she said.
“Oh no. Shall we look for him?”
“Come on, I know where he is.” They muffled their footsteps, which sounded like a dream. The bleached street stood frozen around them, fossilized by the glare; trees cast nets over the houses, cars squatted, closed and dim. The ghost of the street made Debbie dislike to ask, but she had to know. “Do you think she put something funny in those sweets? Did you taste something?”
“Yes, I can now.” At once Debbie could too: a brief hint of the indefinable taste. She hadn’t wanted so definite an answer; she bit her lip.
At the main road Sandra turned toward the supermarket. Shops displayed bare slabs of glazed light, plastic cups scuttled in the underpass. How could Sandra be so sure where Mop had gone? Why did Debbie feel she knew as well? Sandra ran past the supermarket. Surely they weren’t going to—But Sandra was already running into an alley, toward the cutting.
She gazed down, waiting for Debbie. White lamps glared into the artificial valley; shadows of the broken walls crumbled over scattered bricks. “He won’t have gone down there,” Debbie said, wanting to believe it
“He has,” Sandra cried, “Listen.”
The wind wandered groping among the clutter on the tracks, it hooted feebly in the stone throat. Another sound was floated up to Debbie by the wind, then snatched away: a whining?
“He’s in the tunnel,” Sandra said. “Come on.”
She slipped down a few feet; her face stared over the edge at Debbie. “If you don’t come you aren’t my friend,” she said.
Debbie watched her reach the floor of the cutting and stare up challengingly; then reluctantly she followed. A bitter taste rose momentarily in her throat. She slithered down all too swiftly. The dark deep tunnel grew tall.
Why didn’t Sandra call? “Mop! Mop!” Debbie shouted. But her shouts dropped into the cutting like pats of mud. There might have been an answering whine; the wind threw the sound away. “Come on,” Sandra said impatiently.
She strode into the tunnel. The shadow hanging from the arch chopped her in half, then wiped her out entirely. Debbie remembered the little boy who had vanished. Suppose he were in there now—what would he be like? Around her the glistening cartons shifted restlessly; their gaping tops nodded. Twisted skeletons rattled, jangling.
Some of the squealing of metal might be an animal’s faint cry; perhaps the metal was what they’d heard. “All right,” Sandra said from the dark, “you’re not my friend.�
��
Debbie glanced about hopelessly. A taste touched her mouth. Above her, ruins gleamed jaggedly against the sky; cartons dipped their mouths toward her, torn lips working. Among piled bricks at the edge of the cutting, a punctured football or a crumpled rag peered down at her. Unwillingly she walked forward.
Darkness fell on her, filling her eyes. “Wait until your eyes get used to it,” Sandra said, but Debbie disliked to keep them closed for long. At last bricks began to solidify from the dark. Darkness arched over her, outlines of bricks glinted faintly. The rails were thin dull lines, shortly erased by the dark.
Sandra groped forward. “Go slowly, then we won’t fall over anything,” she said.
They walked slowly as a dream, halting every few feet to wait for the light to catch up. Debbie’s eyes were full of shifting fog which fastened very gradually on her surroundings, sketching them: the dwindling arch of the tunnel, the fading rails. Her progress was like a ritual in a nightmare.
The first stretch of the tunnel was cluttered with missiles: broken bottles crunched underfoot, tin cans toppled loudly. After that the way was clear, except for odd lurking bricks. But the dark was oppressively full of the sounds the girls made—hasty breathing, shuffling, the chafing of rust against their feet—and Debbie could never be sure whether, amid the close sounds and the invisibility, there was a whining.
They shuffled onward. Cold encircled them, dripping. The tunnel smelled dank and dusty; it seemed to insinuate a bitter taste into Debbie’s mouth. She felt the weight of earth huge around the stone tube. The dimness flickered forward again, beckoning them on. It was almost as though someone were coaxing them into the tunnel with a feeble lamp. Beneath her feet bricks scraped and clattered.
The twilight flickered, then leapt ahead. The roundness of the tunnel glistened faintly; Debbie could make out random edges of brick, a dull hint of rails. The taste grew in her mouth. Again she felt that they were being led. She didn’t dare ask Sandra whether the light were really moving. It must be her eyes. A shadow loomed on the arch overhead: the bearer of the light—behind her. She turned gasping. At once the dimness went out. The distant mouth of the tunnel was small as a fingernail.
Its light couldn’t have reached so far. Something else had illuminated their way. The taste filled her mouth, like suffocation; dark dripped all around her; the distant entrance flickered, dancing. If she made for the entrance Sandra would have to follow. She could move now, she’d only to move one foot, just one, just a little. Sandra screamed.
When Debbie turned—furious with Sandra: there was nothing to be scared of, they could go now, escape—shadows reached for her. The light had leapt ahead again, still dim but brighter. The shadows were attached to vague objects, of which the nearest seemed familiar. Light gathered on it, crawling, glimmering. It had large ragged ears. It was her old lost teddy bear.
It was moving. In the subterranean twilight its fur stirred as if drowned. No, it wasn’t the fur. Debbie’s bear was covered with a swarm that crawled. The swarm was emerging sluggishly from within the bear, piling more thickly on its body, crawling.
It was a lost toy, not hers at all. Nothing covered it but moisture and unstable light. “It’s all right,” she muttered weakly. “It’s only someone’s old bear.” But Sandra was staring beyond it, sobbing with horror.
Further in, where dimness and dark flickered together, there was a hole in the floor of the tunnel, surrounded by bricks and earth and something that squatted. It squatted at the edge; its hands dangled into the hole, its dim face gaped pinkly. Its eyes gleamed like bubbles of mud.
“Oh, oh,” Sandra sobbed. “It’s the monkey.”
“Perhaps that was the worst—that Sandra knew the gaping face too. But Debbie’s horror was blurred and numbing, because she could see so much. She could see what lay beside the hole, struggling feebly as if drugged, and whining: Mop.
Sandra staggered toward him as if she had lost her balance. Debbie stumbled after her, unable to think, feeling only her feet dragging her over the jagged floor. Then part of the darkness shifted and advanced on them, growing paler. A toy—a large clockwork toy, jerking rustily: the figure of a little boy, its body and ragged sodden clothes covered with dust and cobwebs. It plodded jerkily between them and the hole, and halted. Parts of it shone white, as if patched with flaking paint: particularly the face.
Debbie tried to look away, to turn, to run. But the taste burned in her mouth; it seemed to thread her with a rigid frame, holding her helpless. The dim stone tube was hemmed in by darkness; the twilight fluttered. Dust crawled in her throat. The toy bear glistened restlessly. The figure of the little boy swayed; its face glimmered, pale, featureless, blotchy. The monkey moved.
Its long hands closed around Mop and pulled him into the hole, then they scooped bricks and earth on top of him. The earth struggled in the hole, the whining became a muffled coughing and choking. Eventually the earth was still. The squat floppy body capered on the grave. Thick deep laughter, very slow, dropped from the gaping face. Each time the jaw drooped lower, almost touching the floor.
Another part of the dark moved. “That’ll teach you. You won’t forget that,” a voice said.
It was the witch. She was lurking in the darkness, out of sight. Her voice was as lifeless now as her face had been. Debbie was able to see that the woman needed to hide in the dark to be herself. But she was trapped too efficiently for the thought to be at all reassuring.
“You’d better behave yourselves in future. I’ll be watching,” the voice said. “Go on now. Go away.”
As Debbie found she was able to turn, though very lethargically, the little boy moved. She heard a crack; then he seemed to shrink jerkily, and toppled toward her. But she was turning, and saw no more. The taste was heavy in her. She couldn’t run; she could only plod through the close treacherous darkness toward the tiny light.
The light refused to grow. She plodded, she plodded, but the light held itself back. Then at least it seemed nearer, and much later it reached into the dark. She plodded out, exhausted and hollow. She clambered numbly up the bank, dragged her feet through the deserted streets; she was just aware of Sandra near her. She climbed the stairs, slipped the key into the handbag, went into her room, still trudging. Her numb trudge became the plodding of her heart, her slow suffocated gasps. She woke.
So it had been a dream, after all. Her mouth tasted bitter. What had awakened her? She lay uneasily, eyelids tight, trying to retreat into sleep; if she awoke completely she’d be alone with the dark. But light flapped on her eyelids. Something was wrong. The room was too bright, and flickering. Things crackled loudly, popping; a voice cried her name. Reluctantly she groped to the window, toward the blazing light.
The witch’s house was on fire. Flames gushed from the windows, painting smoke red. Sandra stood outside, crying “Debbie!” As Debbie watched, bewildered, a screaming blaze appeared at an upstairs window, jerking like a puppet; then it writhed and fell back into the flames. Sandra seemed to be dancing, outlined by reflected fire, and weeping.
People were unlocking doors. Sandra’s mother hurried out, and Debbie’s father. Sandra’s mother fluttered about, trying to drag the girl home, but Sandra was crying “Debbie!” Debbie gripped the sill, afraid to let go.
More houses were switched on. Debbie’s mother ran out. There was a hasty discussion among the parents, then Debbie’s father came hurrying back with Sandra. Debbie dodged into bed as they came upstairs; the witch’s house roared, splintering.
“Here’s Sandra, Debbie. She’s frightened. She’s going to sleep with you tonight.” Shadows rushed into the room with him. When Sandra took off her dressing-gown and stood holding it, confused, he threw it impatiently on the chair. “Into bed now, quickly. And just you stay there.”
They heard him hurrying downstairs, Sandra’s mother saying “Oh God, oh my God,” Debbie’s mother trying to calm her down. The girls lay silent in the shaking twilit room. Sandra was trembling.
�
�What happened?” Debbie whispered. “Did you see?”
After a while Sandra sobbed. “My little dog,” she said indistinctly.
Was that an answer? Debbie’s thoughts were blurred; the room quaked, Sandra’s dressing-gown was slipping off the chair, distracting her. “What about Mop?” she whispered. “Where is he?”
Sandra seemed to be choking. The dressing-gown fell in a heap on the floor. Debbie felt nervous. What had happened to Mop? She’d dreamed—Surely Sandra couldn’t have dreamed that too. The rest of the contents of the chair were following the dressing-gown.
“I dreamed,” Debbie began uneasily, and bitterness filled her mouth like a gag. When she’d finished choking, she had forgotten what she’d meant to say. The room and furniture were unsteady with dimming light. Far away and fading, she heard her parents’ voices.
Sandra was trying to speak. “Debbie,” she said, “Debbie.” Her body shook violently, with effort or with fear. “I burned the witch,” she said. “Because of what she did.”
Debbie stared in front of her, aghast. She couldn’t take in Sandra’s words. Too much had happened too quickly: the dream, the fire, her own bitter-tasting dumbness, Sandra’s revelation, the distracting object that drooped from the chair—But until Sandra’s dressing-gown was thrown there, that chair had been empty.
She heard Sandra’s almost breathless cry. Something dim squatted forward on the chair. Its pink yawning drooped toward the floor. Very slowly, relishing each separate word, it began to speak.
BROKEN GLASS by Harlan Ellison
In the twenty-five years since he sold his first science fiction story, Harlan Ellison has published some forty books—an accomplishment made all the more astonishing for an author primarily known for his short fiction. Born in Ohio in 1934, Ellison moved to New York in the mid 1950s where he launched his career writing for the numerous science fiction magazines of the period. Moving away from the confinement of the science fiction ghetto, by the close of the 1960s Ellison had established himself as a major modern author—and certainly one of the most controversial. Multitalented, Ellison has edited the equally controversial anthologies, Dangerous Visions (1967), Again, Dangerous Visions (1972), and the forthcoming Last Dangerous Visions, and he has written two volumes of collected essays, The Glass Teat (1969) and The Other Glass Teat (1975). Since 1962 Ellison has lived in the Los Angeles area, where he has achieved considerable acclaim as a television script writer. In 1975 a film adaptation was released of his post-nuclear holocaust novella, “A Boy and His Dog,” itself incorporated into Ellison’s forthcoming novel, Blood’s a Rover. In recent years three important collections of Ellison’s fantasy stories have been published: Deathbird Stories (1975), Strange Wine (1978), and Shatterday (1980).
The Year's Best Horror Stories 10 Page 25
