The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror
Page 87
“He was only doing a favour for his dad, who as you may remember had a stroke the year before last,” Gert wrote before going on to how it rained on the library’s end-of-summer lawn sale, and how disappointed they all were.
Gert doesn’t say in her three-page compendium of breaking news, but Annie is quite sure Jason fell from the roof of what used to be their cottage. In fact, she is positive.
Five years after the death of her husband (and the death of Jason McCormack not long after), Annie remarries. And although they relocate to Boca Raton, she gets back to the old neighbourhood often. Craig, the new husband, is only semi-retired, and his business takes him to New York every three or four months. Annie almost always goes with him, because she still has family in Brooklyn and on Long Island. More than she knows what to do with, it sometimes seems. But she loves them with that exasperated affection that seems to belong, she thinks, only to people in their fifties and sixties. She never forgets how they drew together for her after James’s plane went down, and made the best cushion for her that they could. So she wouldn’t crash, too.
When she and Craig go back to New York, they fly. About this she never has a qualm, but she stops going to Zoltan’s Family Bakery on Sundays when she’s home, even though their raisin bagels are, she is sure, served in heaven’s waiting room. She goes to Froger’s instead. She is actually there, buying doughnuts (the doughnuts are at least passable), when she hears the blast. She hears it clearly even though Zoltan’s is eleven blocks away. LP gas explosion. Four killed, including the woman who always passed Annie her bagels with the top of the bag rolled down, saying, “Keep it that way until you get home or you lose the freshness.”
People stand on the sidewalks, looking east toward the sound of the explosion and the rising smoke, shading their eyes with their hands. Annie hurries past them, not looking. She doesn’t want to see a plume of rising smoke after a big bang; she thinks of James enough as it is, especially on the nights when she can’t sleep. When she gets home she can hear the phone ringing inside. Either everyone has gone down the block to where the local school is having a sidewalk art sale, or no one can hear that ringing phone. Except for her, that is. And by the time she gets her key turned in the lock, the ringing has stopped.
Sarah, the only one of her sisters who never married, is there, it turns out, but there is no need to ask her why she didn’t answer the phone; Sarah Bernicke, the one-time disco queen, is in the kitchen with the Village People turned up, dancing around with the O-Cedar in one hand, looking like a chick in a TV ad. She missed the bakery explosion, too, although their building is even closer to Zoltan’s than Froger’s.
Annie checks the answering machine, but there’s a big red zero in the MESSAGES WAITING window. That means nothing in itself, lots of people call without leaving a message, but—
Star-sixty-nine reports the last call at eight-forty last night. Annie dials it anyway, hoping against hope that somewhere outside the big room that looks like a Grand Central Station movie set he found a place to re-charge his phone. To him it might seem he last spoke to her yesterday. Or only minutes ago. Time is funny here, he said. She has dreamed of that call so many times it now almost seems like a dream itself, but she has never told anyone about it. Not Craig, not even her own mother, now almost ninety but alert and with a firmly held belief in the afterlife.
In the kitchen, the Village People advise that there is no need to feel down. There isn’t, and she doesn’t. She nevertheless holds the phone very tightly as the number she has star-sixty-nined rings once, then twice. Annie stands in the living room with the phone to her ear and her free hand touching the brooch above her left breast, as if touching the brooch could still the pounding heart beneath it. Then the ringing stops and a recorded voice offers to sell her The New York Times at special bargain rates that will not be repeated.
INDEX TO TWENTY YEARS OF BEST NEW HORROR
Index by Contributor
ANTIEAU, Kim “At a Window Facing West”
#2
ASH, Sarah “Mothmusic”
#4
ATKINS, Peter “Adventures in Further Education”
#10
“Aviatrix”
#4
“Between the Cold Moon and the Earth”
#18
“The Cubist’s Attorney”
#17
BAILEY, Dale “Hunger: A Confession”
#15
“Spells for Halloween: An Acrostic”
#16
BARKER, Clive “The Departed”
#4
“Haeckel’s Tale”
#17
BARZAK, Christopher “Dead Boy Found”
#15
BENEDICT, Pinckney “The Beginnings of Sorrow”
#20
BIRCHAM, Emma “The Ball Room” [with China Miéville and Max Schaefer]
#17
BISHOP, Michael “Dr Prida’s Dream-Plagued Patient”
#18
“The Pile”
#20
BLAU, Gala [Conrad Williams] “Outfangthief”
#13
BLOCH, Robert “The Scent of Vinegar”
#6
BRENCHLEY, Chaz “How She Dances” [as Daniel Fox]
#5
“The Keys to D’Espérance”
#10
BRENNERT, Alan “Cradle”
#7
“Ma Qui”
#3
BREQUE, Jean-Daniel “On the Wing”
#2
BRITE, Poppy Z. “The Devil of Delery Street”
#16
“His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood”
#2
“How to Get Ahead in New York”
#4
“Mussolini and the Axeman’s Jazz”
#8
“O Death, Where is Thy Spatula?”
#13
“The Sixth Sentinel”
#5
BRUNNER, John “They Take”
#4
BRYANT, Edward “Colder Than Hell”
#3
“Human Remains”
#5
BULL, Scott Emerson “Mr Sly Stops for a Cup of Joe”
#15
BURKE, John “The Right Ending”
#9
BURLESON, Donald R. “Hopscotch”
#8
“Mulligan’s Fence”
#5
“Pump Jack”
#13
“Snow Cancellations”
#1
CADGER, Rick “The Brothers”
#5
CADIGAN, Pat “This is Your Life (Repressed Memory Remix)”
#9
CAMPBELL, Ramsey “All for Sale”
#13
“The Alternative”
#6
“Breaking Up”
#16
“The Decorations”
#17
“Digging Deep”
#18
“The Entertainment”
#11
“Fear the Dead”
#15
“Going Under”
#7
“Introduction: Horror in 1989” [with Stephen Jones]
#1
“Introduction: Horror in 1990” [with Stephen Jones]
#2
“Introduction: Horror in 1991” [with Stephen Jones]
#3
“Introduction: Horror in 1992” [with Stephen Jones]
#4
“Introduction: Horror in 1993” [with Stephen Jones]
#5
“It Helps If You Sing”
#1
“The Long Way”
#20
“No Strings”
#12
“Peep”
#19
“Ra*e”
#10
“The Same in Any Language”
#3
“The Unbeheld”
#14
“The Winner”
#17
“The Word
”
#9
CARROLL, Jonathan “The Dead Love You”
#2
CASE, David “Jimmy”
#11
CHADBOURN, Mark “The King of Rain”
#8
“The Ones We Leave Behind”
#18
CHISLETT, Michael “Mara”
#15
“Off the Map”
#13
CHONG, Vincent Cover
#20
CLARK, Simon “Exorcizing Angels” [with Tim Lebbon]
#15
“Swallowing a Dirty Seed”
#9
CLEGG, Douglas “Underworld”
#8
“Where Flies Are Born”
#3
COLLINS, Nancy A. “Raymond”
#3
COMEAU, J.L. “Firebird”
#2
“The Owen Street Monster”
#5
“Taking Care of Michael”
#3
CONSTANTINE, Storm “Of a Cat, But Her Skin”
#8
COPPER, Basil “Ill Met by Daylight”
#14
COWDREY, Albert E. “The Overseer”
#20
CROWTHER, Peter “Front-Page McGuffin and the Greatest Story Never Told”
#20
DANIELS, Les “The Little Green Ones”
#4
DAVIDSON, Avram “The Boss in the Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil” [with Grania Davis]
#10
DAVIS, Grania “The Boss in the Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil” [with Avram Davidson]
#10
DAVIS, Susan “The Centipede”
#15
DOWLING, Terry “Scaring the Train”
#7
DUFFY, Steve “The Oram County Whoosit”
#20
DUNCAN, Andy “The Map to the Homes of the Stars”
#9
DUNGATE, Pauline E. “In the Tunnels”
#15
EDELMAN, Scott “A Plague on Both Your Houses”
#8
“The Suicide Artist”
#4
EDWARDS, Les Cover
#1
Cover
#13
Cover
#14
Cover
#15
Cover
#16
Cover
#17
Cover
#18
ELLISON, Harlan “Jane Doe #112”
#2
“Mefisto in Onyx”
#5
“Objects of Desire in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear”
#10
“Sensible City”
#6
EMSHWILLER, Carol “I Live With You and You Don’t Know it”
#17
ERIKSON, Steven “This Rich Evil Sound”
#19
ETCHISON, Dennis “The Detailer”
#12
“The Dog Park”
#5
“Got to Kill Them All”
#13
“Inside the Cackle Factory”
#10
“No One You Know”
#9
“When They Gave Us Memory”
#3
FARRIS, John “Story Time with the Bluefield Strangler”
#15
FAUST, Christa “Tighter”
#16
FILES, Gemma “The Emperor’s Old Bones”
#11
“Kissing Carrion”
#15
FINCH, Paul “The Old Traditions Are Best”
#20
FINLAY, Charles Coleman “Lucy, In Her Splendor”
#15
FLINN, Russell “Subway Story”
#3
FRIESNER, Esther M. “Lovers”
#6
FOX, Daniel [Chaz Brenchley] “How She Dances”
#5
FOWLER, Christopher “Arkangel”
#20
“At Home in the Pubs of Old London”
#12
“Christmas Forever”
#9
“Crocodile Lady”
#13
“Learning to Let Go”
#10
“The Luxury of Harm”
#18
“The Most Boring Woman in the World”
#7
“Mother of the City”
#5
“Norman Wisdom and the Angel of Death”
#4
“Seven Feet”
#15
“The Twilight Express”
#19
“Unforgotten”
#8
FROST, Gregory “The Blissful Height”
#8
“Divertimento”
#2
“Lizaveta”
#1
GAIMAN, Neil “Bitter Grounds”
#15
“Feminine Endings”
#20
“Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Nameless House of the Night of Dread Desire”
#16
“Harlequin Valentine”
#11
“October in the Chair”
#14
“The Problem of Susan”
#16
“Queen of Knives”
#7
“The Wedding Present”
#10
“The Witch’s Headstone”
#19
GALLAGHER, Stephen “The Horn”
#1
“Little Dead Girl Singing”
#14