Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 2

by Nathan Ballingrud

  “It seemed to be afraid of us.”

  “It was alone,” Edith replies. “Maybe next time it won’t be.”

  *

  Stalactites extend from the tunnel’s ceiling, leaving just enough room to crawl through. After a while, they can’t see the tunnel walls anymore, just irregular pillars stretching in every direction. Winged insects with glowing abdomens crawl over the pillars. They’re easy to catch. Bitter and sour juice bursts over her tongue when Edith bites down on them.

  Gregor slips on a loose stone and twists his ankle so badly that his foot hangs limp at the end of his leg with a fist-sized lump on the ankle bone. Edith wraps it with her stockings as well as she can, and helps him climb onto her back. They continue in silence, Gregor occasionally wheezing in pain.

  “There was a storm, a firestorm,” he says after a while.

  “I woke up because my house was rocking back and forth. I opened a hatch and looked outside and there it was, a glow between the trees, and all the air was rushing toward it. People were climbing out of their homes, screaming. Someone banged on the walls and made them ring. We threw out ropes and climbed down to the ground. Some people panicked and just jumped. I’ll never forget that noise.

  “We picked up the children and the frail and ran, but we couldn’t run fast enough. The fire was catching up with us, eating everything in its way. We heard the pops and bangs as houses exploded or fell to the ground. A woman shouted, Save us! Save us! Soon we were all chanting, Save us! Save us!

  And there it was: a tree, the biggest tree I had ever seen. The same woman who had led us here banged on the bark and screamed, Let us in! Hide us from the fire! We all echoed her: Hide us! Hide us!

  “A door swung open in the tree. We crowded inside. Inside was a stairwell. And the reason the stairs are blocked is that either the danger hasn’t passed, or…because we asked the tree to hide us, but we forgot the rest. We forgot to tell the tree that it should let us out again once it was safe. It’s just doing what we asked.”

  Gregor pauses.

  “We should be going in that direction.” He points into the murk.

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  Edith doesn’t feel any such thing, but does as he says.

  *

  Her back is hurting badly when she realizes that the stalactites are trees, and that grey light is filtering down from above. The floor is a carpet of brown needles.

  “Gregor,” she whispers.

  From where he clings to her back, Gregor lets out a small sob. “I know these trees.”

  He slides down from Edith’s back and hobbles over to a tree, resting his cheek on the bark. He turns to Edith, and tears are running down his face. “We’re home.”

  He points upward, and there they are, spheres hanging in branches. Rope ladders trail down from their hatches. The spheres look pristine, waiting for new occupants. Silence is complete.

  “We’re home!” Gregor shouts.

  Edith frowns. “You said this place burned.”

  “Obviously it’s here now,” Gregor says acidly.

  Gregor waves at the spheres. He hobbles over to the nearest rope ladder.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  The soft silence eats the sound of Gregor’s voice. He tries to tug at the ladder, but the rope somehow slips out of his fingers. He grabs futilely at it.

  The silence makes Edith’s ears ring. The spheres have no dust on them, no dirt. There’s no trace of the firestorm Gregor talked about.

  “I’m not sure we should be here,” Edith says.

  “I don’t understand why I can’t get the…”

  Gregor throws himself at the rope ladder. He somehow manages to miss it by an arm’s length. He lands on the ground with a huff.

  Edith scoops up a handful of soil and pine needles and sniffs it. Her hand might as well be empty. “Gregor. Shouldn’t the trees smell like trees?”

  “Of course they do,” Gregor replies absently, staring at the ladder. “Look, I’m staying. The others are here, we just have to wait for them to come out.”

  Edith shakes her head. “I don’t want to be here. It’s all wrong. And it’s not home.”

  The look Gregor gives her is full of pity. He’s never looked at her like that before. “I’m sorry.” His right hand is still grabbing for the rope ladder. He doesn’t seem to notice.

  “I’m sorry too, Gregor. I’m leaving.”

  “I’ll be here,” Gregor replies. “I’m climbing up and I’m going to find out what to do. A weaver, maybe. A singer. It depends on what the others are.”

  Edith turns around. She doesn’t look back. The forest seems to push at her back as she leaves.

  *

  There’s no way to tell whether she’s walking in the right direction. The stalactites spread out in an irregular grid. She should have a feeling of where to go, like Gregor did, but she doesn’t. Occasionally, she finds traces of others passing through: a scarf, some chewed insect carapaces, dried excrement. She follows them like a trail at first, only to end up where she started. Eventually she just pushes forward without thinking much.

  At last, the rushing in her ears is more than her own blood. It rises and falls, rises and falls, and in the distance shines the warm yellow circle of a cave mouth.

  *

  It’s an ocean, far below, and Edith is standing on a ledge high up on a cliff wall. The sky is bright blue, fading into white; somewhere behind the cliff is a sun. A path snakes down toward the water. The ocean is green. Edith knows it must be warm, like blood. She steps out onto the ledge and follows the little path down. The path ends in a beach, dotted with thousands of tiny holes. She crouches down next to a cluster of them just in time to see a little crab run for shelter. Dark recesses sit in the cliffside. Edith looks into the nearest one; inside is a narrow bed, a little table and two chairs. No dust, no sign that anyone lives there. The only sound is that of waves. Just like Gregor’s rope ladder, it proves impossible to climb into the caves. Somehow her foot falls short of the threshold again and again. She’s not supposed to be in this place, or the place isn’t ready for her. She climbs back up the path.

  *

  The glow of a lamp lures her out from between the stone pillars. It’s a lantern with glass walls, suspended from the cave ceiling. It lights up a wall of grass that grows higher than her head. It parts before her easily enough, giving off a sharp and herbal scent as she touches the blades. It eventually parts onto a circular clearing. The sky is dark; the only light comes from the lanterns suspended on curved poles over the doors of little houses standing in a tight circle around a high central lamppost. Someone is scuttling between the houses, their movement pattern human but somehow not quite. The caretaker is setting down little brown boxes in front of the door of each house.

  It’s delivery day.

  Edith watches as the caretaker scurries into the high grass, and the sky brightens into a uniform blue, brighter at the edges. People come out of the houses and wave at each other across the lawn. They pick up the boxes, tearing them open with delight. Edith recognizes none of them. They’re dressed just like her but they’re tall and gangly, their skin slightly darker than her own, and with large, shining eyes. She backs away into the grass before any of them can see her.

  *

  Edith finds her neighbors in a huddle among the stalactites, holding each other and whimpering. Everyone is there. They look at Edith in astonishment as she approaches. The janitor, who no longer has a janitor’s bearing, slowly gets up on her feet.

  “We tried to go home,” she says weakly. “Someone was already there. Are you here to help us?”

  Irma is leaning on the stalactite closest to Edith and hugging her legs. She doesn’t seem to recognize Edith at all.

  “Irma,” Edith says, but Irma doesn’t react to her own name.

  Edith looks at the others. “What happened to you all?”

  They merely gaze at her.

  “We need to go home
,” the person who once was Irma whispers.

  “Then why aren’t you walking?”

  No reply, just uncomprehending stares.

  “Come,” Edith says. “We have to go.”

  They meekly get up and follow, shuffling blindly forward. The janitor, if it still is the janitor, takes her hand and holds it so tightly it hurts.

  And finally, a slight tug in Edith’s chest. A direction: this way.

  *

  The stalagmites become thick and rough and stand on upturned blocks with carved faces, and this is a familiar place at last: a colonnade, and the metallic scent of granite and sun-warmed wood, and the sound of voices. Home.

  “This is it,” Edith says. “We’re here.”

  “But there are people here,” the janitor whispers, and points at a person walking further ahead.

  Edith recognizes the gait, that strange grace. They walked just like that when they came to invade and take over. Here they are, usurpers, living in a place that doesn’t belong to them. Someone is living in her house, sleeping in her bed, playing at her profession.

  She looks at the others. Their faces are blank. They have no memory of this. But they do have hunger. It shines out of their eyes.

  “It’s our turn,” Edith says. “This is our place. Let’s take it.”

  And she starts toward the usurper at a walk, and it turns around and sees her, and when it breaks into a run, her heart floods with a wild joy.

  *

  The bed is very soft. The hut has just enough room for a bed and a table with chairs. There is also a shelf with some interesting objects. One in particular is very smooth and comfortable to the touch: a bowl edged with soft thorns.

  Outside, the sun has risen almost all the way to zenith. The others are already up, wandering among the houses, picking up objects and talking about them. Their faces are different, and so are their gaits; they have already started. By the platform’s edge, gazing out across the desert, stands a man.

  “Hello.”

  The man turns around. “Hello.” He smiles. “I’m not quite awake yet. You know how you wake up some mornings, and you have to tell yourself, ‘Here I am, Urru-Anneh is my name, and I dive in the sand for shells’. It’s one of those.”

  “Exactly one of those. I woke up, and I had to remind myself, ‘I’m…”

  Urru-Anneh waits patiently.

  “Arbe-Unna,” she finishes.

  “And where are you going this fine morning, Arbe-Unna?”

  Arbe-Unna hesitates. “I’m on …an errand.”

  “Good luck with your errand then.” Urru-Anneh smiles and turns back to gaze at the desert.

  Arbe-Unna wanders off into the village, where the others are greeting each other and helping each other remember who they are and what they do. A silo stands at the edge of the platform. Inside, it’s very quiet. In the middle of the floor sits a crate on wheels. The crate is filled with little brown parcels. An enticing smell rises from them. Arbe-Unna catches a glimpse of something moving on the loft—a head, an arm?—but when it doesn’t happen again, decides it must have been nothing.

  Arbe-Unna grabs the edge of the crate and pushes it outside. The other villagers throw their hands up in joy when they see the crate and the parcels.

  “Good morning!” cries Arbe-Unna. “It’s me, Arbe-Unna, your janitor.”

  The others cheer, and form an orderly line as the janitor hands them each a parcel. Arbe-Unna chats with each of them, finding out their names and professions. They are more than happy to talk about themselves, sometimes helping each other to remember details. At the end of the ceremony, they’re all good neighbors, although they don’t all agree on how old the village is or who’s related to whom. But that’s how people are.

  It does feel as if someone’s missing, but that might also be because of the dream she had last night. A cave, a forest, a friend who stayed behind. Something had gone wrong. It was a relief to wake up and find everything alright with the world, everyone in their right place.

  CHARLES WILKINSON

  –

  Hidden in the Alphabet

  THE AUTEUR HAS been tripped up on the pavement outside the Acme Hotel. He’s just come through the revolving doors, down the marble steps and turned in the direction of the main thoroughfare. It was not the tip of the sole of his right shoe (chestnut gleam of leather on the upper) catching an uneven paving-stone. And no, it has nothing to do with an occasional weakness of the knees, allowable in a man of seventy years, or even a failure to adjust to his new bifocal spectacles, which lie broken (spider-cracks in both lenses, the frames askew) six inches away from his outstretched right arm (hand marked with chalky grazes, a droplet-chain of blood). It is as if someone’s curled a foot, or the curved handle of an umbrella, around his ankle and jerked his leg violently upwards.

  Later, he will tell himself that he lost consciousness for several seconds, although now as he levers himself upright, blood dripping from the side of his chin, he is not aware of having done so. But this will be his only explanation for the fact no one is anywhere near him on the street.

  *

  The pigeon (iridescence of wing-glaze, white mark on the throat) perched on the roof of a derelict warehouse is not an adequate witness to what happened, though it knows the south side well: has flown many times through the open windows of buildings that glass has forgotten; alighted on chimney tops tufted with wild grass; hopped under bus shelters to inspect abandoned Chinese takeaways; examined crisps wrappers with a critical eye. It has an excellent view of the Acme Hotel: the marble steps, washed every day; the brass glint of the revolving doors; the shafts and arrowheads of black railings; the orange-red brick of the façade; the Gothic windows in all storeys but the sixth, from which you can see the gleaming towers of the second city’s centre, though not the ring road that ropes them in.

  The pigeon may have noticed the auteur, his silver hair and white linen jacket bright in the sunshine of a waning summer, when he pushed the revolving door, walked down the marble steps and into the street (just as a blue van was passing, too quickly for the driver to witness what happened next) and he could have observed a man or the shadow of a man or a shadow from a nest of English shadows, slipping out from an abandoned factory, or a shop with shuttered windows, where no one has been served for thirty years, and coming up swiftly behind a man leaving a hotel on his way to a meeting with the son, his only child, that he has not seen for a quarter of a century.

  As the man brushes himself down (an action he immediately regrets as a streak of blood appears on the right pocket of his linen jacket) and hobbles back to the Acme Hotel, the pigeon flies off in the direction of a café, where there will be the crumbs of croissants and sesame seeds, left over from de luxe burger buns.

  *

  Cotton wool, commiserations, antiseptic cream and directions to the nearest optician have been provided by the staff at the Acme Hotel. The auteur has phoned his niece and asked her to postpone the meeting. He must not appear in the restaurant (expensive, central, overlooking a canal) with sticking plaster on his hands and chin. As he will be unable to see further than his own table, the other diners will be indistinct blobs of colour, the details on the menu squashed insects on a white background. It is most important that he should meet with his son. There are questions he must ask. He will need to observe his reactions closely.

  It is a hot day. The domed mosque with a minaret, the greengrocers selling unfamiliar fruit, the women in niqabs, the men with their long beards and traditional dress—all surprise him. Only the red brick of the shop frontages and the scarlet pillar boxes are familiar. He has not visited his native city for many years; it pains him that on his return he is no longer a wealthy man.

  The optician’s shop is in a side street and as he walks past a row of semi-detached Victorian villas (bow-windows, trimmed box hedges, neat front gardens) he feels a faint longing for his childhood. Opposite is a low white building with a flat roof that consists of three shops. There is a
florist and the optician, but the middle unit is empty. A yellow skip sits next to a pile of salmon-pink bricks. The auteur is slightly early for his appointment. He peers through the window. The reception area is not welcoming. No one is behind the desk, and only one rack, which is attached to the wall, has any frames for sale. A free-standing display unit is just shining skeletal bars, somehow sinister, as if it has been expertly boned. In one corner, there are two uncomfortably upright chairs and a low table. Just as he takes the decision to kill time in the florist’s, a door at the back opens and a man in an open-necked white shirt steps out. As he is standing in front of an oblong of yellow light from the treatment room, the auteur cannot see his face, but there is no mistaking the gesture signalling him to come in. A bell rings, a tiny ecclesiastical note; for a second, the auteur thinks he can smell incense. Then the dust coats the back of his throat and he coughs.

  Instead of waiting for him, the optician has gone back into his room, but the door is open. The auteur knocks once and then enters without waiting for an answer.

  The optician, who has his back to him, is bowed over a work space. His elbows are moving very slightly as if he is carrying out some delicate operation.

  “Please sit down. I won’t be long.”

  “I’m sorry to be slightly early.”

  “Don’t worry. I assure you that will not be a problem.”

  The treatment chair reminds him of the dentist (a sharp psychosomatic stab in a back molar) but he takes his seat. As the optician materializes behind him and swiftly positions the chin and head rests, the auteur thinks of a film he once made: the head of a knight encased in a helmet.

  “I just need you to sit very still, eyes wide open, look this way.”