He blundered across the room, feeling as though the must and mould of ancient books was lining his lungs like silt, and scrabbled at the dark blot of shadow that was the handle to the door that led upstairs. It opened smoothly, devoid of the creak he was expecting. He caught a glimpse of the stairs – little more than bands of differently-hued shadow – before the door clicked shut behind him, taking the last vestige of light with it.
A part of him welcomed the blackness. He wished he could curl up and close his eyes and lose himself in its folds. It was almost with reluctance that he forced himself on, edging forward until his toe-end connected with the bottom stair. He began to climb, his body now incredibly weary, his joints grinding with glassy pain. He tried not to wonder where this would end, whether – by some miracle – he would escape the clutches of his pursuers, recover his memory and find his way home. Without knowing why, he had become a fugitive, and the purpose of a fugitive was to run, and to keep running until he either got away or was caught.
Maybe his new-found ally would help him. Maybe, when Mea-cher’s pursuers had gone, the two of them would sit down together and the shop owner would answer all his questions. Meacher couldn’t hear anything from downstairs, couldn’t even hear the pounding. Was the shop owner talking to his pursuers at this moment? Or had they simply moved on? Had they knocked on the shop door not because they had known he was inside, but because they were knocking on every door, hoping to either rouse and question the occupants or simply to frighten him into bolting from wherever he might have chosen to hide?
He knew he had reached the upper landing only when his raised right foot failed to encounter another stair. He settled it gently next to his left and used his arms as antennae to probe the way ahead. Encountering no resistance, he shuffled forward, the soles of his feet scraping along a surface that felt like rough, gritty wood. After a few steps he moved to his right, and within seconds encountered a wall of what seemed to be cold, uneven plaster.
Feeling his way along, it only took him several seconds more to locate a door. His hands slithered over it until one of them found the knob, which was twisted in both directions several times before Meacher concluded that it was locked.
What was it the shop owner had said? Go upstairs and into the unlocked room? Something like that. Which meant, presumably, that of several rooms up here, only one was unlocked. He simply had to find it, that was all, simply had to be methodical.
Rather than move across to the other side of the landing, he decided to feel his way to the next door on this side, then there would be no chance of missing one. Blinking into the darkness and finding it unchanging, he probed the way cautiously forward with his feet, and almost immediately his left palm, caressing the wall, bumped against the jutting side of a second door frame.
Even without his sight, his hand moved unerringly to the door knob, and this time, with barely a twist, the door opened. Meacher stepped inside and quietly closed it behind him. Remembering what the shop owner had said about locking himself in, his searching fingers found a key, which rewarded him with a satisfying click when he twisted it clockwise.
Turning to face the room, he realised that it was not as dark as he had first thought. The faint, brownish illumination was provided by a meagre spill of light through a small window coated in grime and dust. Though the light was barely managing to establish itself, Meacher could just make out a bed with rumpled bedclothes and a tall blocky wardrobe. He did not notice the child, however, until it started whispering.
His head twisted so sharply that a hot thread of pain flared in his neck. The child was standing so closely to the wall furthest away from the door that until he focused on it fully it resembled nothing so much as a particular fall of shadow on an uneven patch of plaster. Thinking that his fumblings at the door may have caused the child to scuttle across the room and press itself against the wall in fear, Meacher moved closer to reassure it, more out of fear that it would give him away than because of a genuine urge to offer it comfort. However he had taken no more than four steps towards it when he stopped.
He had assumed the whispering to be a prayer, or an attempt by the child to find its voice, but now that he was close enough to hear it clearly he realised it was neither. What the child was whispering were the words that it, or some other child, had wailed in abject terror down the phone in the square at him. “Nodaddynodaddynopleasedon’tpleasestopdaddynopleaseno.”
It was as though, by repeating the words, the child was giving them the power of an incantation, was mocking or damning him with them. Meacher felt anger, or more than anger, boiling inside him and he took two further steps across the room. It was only at this point, some six or eight feet from the child, that the scant light finally enabled him to make out particular details that had been denied him from further away. It was these details that caused the strength to drain from his legs so abruptly that he thumped forward on to his knees.
The child did not have its back to the wall at all; it was facing the wall, presenting its back, almost insolently, to him. Furthermore, like the mannequins, like his pursuers, like the statue in the square, it was wearing a bag over its head.
It was the sight of the bag – black plastic wound round with masking tape – that triggered the memories in Meacher’s mind. Now, finally, he was beginning to realise why he was here. He held out his hands in supplication.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. Please. Have mercy.”
Slowly the child turned to face him. “Nodaddynodaddynoplease don’t – pleasestopdaddynopleaseno,” it whispered.
As though relishing the moment, the child raised its hands, its fingertips resting on the black plastic, making it crackle. Then, still whispering, it hooked its fingers into the plastic and began to tear the bag from its face.
LYNDA E. RUCKER
The Last Reel
LYNDA E. RUCKER WAS BORN in Birmingham, Alabama, and currently lives in Portland, Oregon, but will be packing it in shortly to go vagabonding around other parts of the world, for as long as those other parts of the world will have her.
In the last few years she has taken time off from writing fiction to pursue a graduate degree and, as an inexplicable result, has several stories scheduled to appear this year.
Her fiction has been, or will be, published in The Third Alternative, Black Static and Supernatural Tales, among other periodicals. This is her second appearance in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror.
“This story came from two places,” she reveals: “an imagined dialogue – which practically wrote itself – between a film lover and his girlfriend playing a silly game (and friends who read this commented that I seemed to have written a story in which my partner was the main character); and my grandmother’s house in rural Georgia, which I found spooky as a child.
“I once dreamed a witch lived behind that house – and to this day, as it falls further into dereliction and collapses into the woods surrounding it, it still feels like a terrifying, magical place to me.”
“WAIT A MINUTE,” Sophie said, “give me a clue, I know this one.”
“If you know it, you don’t need a clue, do you?” Kevin lit another cigarette and sank back against the seat.
She shot him a look. “Watch the road,” he cautioned, and she reached over to punch him in the shoulder.
“Smartass,” she said.
He sang softly, in a deep false bass. “Seven, seven, seven . . .”
“The Magnificent Seven,” she finished for him. “I said give me a clue, not give it away.”
“Well, if you didn’t get the Seven Samurai reference what could I—”
Sophie hit the brakes. The car slewed to the right and skidded to a stop.
“That was the turn back there,” she said. “Way to go, navigator.”
“I know that one. Kiwi film about Black Death victims who time-travel to modern-day New Zealand. And there was a Buster Keaton flick with the same name. Either way, I am trouncing your ass!”
“That w
asn’t part of the game. Could you stop being a movie geek for five damn minutes?” Sophie asked rhetorically, dragging the gear stick into reverse.
“I’m a film critic. I know no other way.”
“Well, next time we’ll play some kind of – of cooking game or something and I will trounce your ass, as you so elegantly put it.”
“A cooking game? Food geek.”
“At least we eat well. You guys would live on popcorn and Junior Mints if it wasn’t for people like me.”
The missed turn was unsignposted and, he noted, not visible until you were upon it and saw the break in the trees and brush that grew right to the edge of the highway. He decided not to mount a self-defense at that particular moment.
“Great,” Sophie murmured moments later as they bumped up the narrow gravel lane, rocks popping ominously against the underside of the car, branches scraping at the sides. “I wonder if the rental company has a ‘back of beyond’ clause absolving us from damages incurred in the actual middle of nowhere . . .”
She trailed off as they rounded a bend and the house was before them, all at once. It lurked in a clearing where all the grass had died and been dug up by the six dogs Sophie’s Aunt Rose had kept. According to the animal control people they were all feral, and had to be destroyed.
The house itself was low and dark, all blank windows and weathered boards the color of old dishwater.
Kevin said, “It’s haunted, right? I mean, it would have to be. Jesus, what a dump.” He hated the way his voice went up at the end, losing control a little bit like the sight of the house had really shaken him. “Jesus,” he said again.
“Well. It’s not like we have to spend the night here or anything.” Sophie was brisk, the way she always got when something made her uneasy.
“House on Haunted Hill,” he said.
“What?”
“William Castle feature. Vincent Price offers ten thousand dollars to whoever will spend the entire night in a haunted house.”
“Ah, but ten thousand dollars doesn’t go nearly as far as it did back in those days, even if having Mr Vincent Price do the offering makes it a little more attractive. Did they up the going price in the remake?”
“In the what?”
“The remake.”
“Blasphemer!” he said.
“Race you!” she answered. She was out the door before he knew it, her sandals clattering on the steps when he was only halfway across the yard.
“No fair,” he said, “you tricked me.” They were both laughing until she turned round to face the house, when it suddenly seemed rude to display too much levity as they prepared to survey the meager estate of poor deceased Aunt Rose.
Sophie’s key stuck in the front door, and for a moment he hoped it wouldn’tworkatall, butthenthelockturnedeasily.Thedarkspilledout.
They crossed the threshold into a foyer smelling of mold, and stale with the heat of a hot September day. Just a few feet ahead he could make out monstrous shapes that were revealed, once Sophie touched the light switch, to be a coat-rack bearing numerous heavy coats, and a hulking wardrobe. The hallway was short, a few steps across the worn grey carpet carrying him to the end.
Sophie had shown him photos late last night at her mother’s condo back in Atlanta, the mutilated snapshots with sister Rose snipped from every one. It struck him as cruel and excessive, the way family interactions so often do to anyone on the outside, the story behind it all – for there always is one – too convoluted and painful to ever be properly recalled or recounted by the perceived injured party. You have no idea what she did to me, you can’t understand, you see she always.
Already the estrangement made more sense, though, now that he’d seen the house. He tried to imagine two sisters more different than Sophie’s bright, intimidating mother, vice-president of something-or-other at a big Atlanta bank, and this weird reclusive woman lost like a fairy tale witch in her spooky house in the woods. “Can you remember her at all?” he’d asked.
“Once,” Sophie had told him; she’d been very young – she couldn’t say for sure how young, but once, at some family gathering, maybe a funeral. “She scared me.”
No, that wasn’t right, her mother had insisted. Sophie and her Aunt Rose had never met. “I can’t fathom any circumstance under which that would occur,” her mother had told Kevin with a brittle laugh.
Sophie just shrugged. “She’s lying. Aunt Rose taught me a weird little dance, like a jig or something, but then Mother made me stop doing it when she found out who I learned it from. So I used to do it in secret, in my bedroom.” It was all, she said, that she did remember, and now scary Aunt Rose was dead and she was doing the responsible grown-up thing where her mother could not. I’ll go out there. I’ll look the place over, for crazy scary Aunt Rose had left the dump to Sophie in her will.
Sophie’s mother had been opposed.
“I’m telling you, you don’t even need to deal with it, honey. You stay right where you are. I’ll have people take care of it – get some appraisers out there, get the place sold, have the money deposited straight into your account.”
The harder her mother pushed, the more Sophie’s resolve grew to handle matters her own way. Kevin stayed silent and stayed out of it.
The doors to either side of them leading out of the foyer were closed. “Well,” Sophie said, and reached for the one on her right. Kevin had a moment of uneasiness as she passed into a darkness that swallowed her up. “Good God.” A dim light went on and he joined her just at the doorway of the kitchen, where the rancid smell of spoiled food hit him full on. “Will you look at that,” Sophie said, and he did. All three windows – one over the sink, and two at the front of the house – were covered with cardboard and held in place with black duct tape.
The rest of the room was unremarkable, old but standard appliances, rough wooden cabinets. The refrigerator door stood open, the bulb burned out, and unidentifiable bundles – perhaps packages of meat – littered the floor before it, some of them leaking thin rivulets of dark fluid. Scattered across the counter, lumps that had presumably been fruit or vegetables were grey and furry.
“I’ve worked in kitchens that were almost this unsanitary,” Sophie said, but neither one of them smiled.
He wanted to tell her to stop then, not to go into any more rooms ahead of him. She’d laugh at him, or get annoyed. This place is creepy enough, don’t freak me out.
“Enough seen,” she said, pinching her nose, backing out, pulling the door shut after them. “How I hate to say this, but maybe my mother was right.”
The other door, now. Blackness, but this time he was prepared for it. In the second before Sophie found the switch he heard her finger scrabbling along the wall. It reminded him of something dried out and dead.
“Well,” said Sophie, “what have we here?”
“Wow,” he said, struck stupid.
Even without the contrast of the squalid kitchen, the suffocating opulence of the living room would have been striking. Oriental rugs covered every inch of wall space, including, presumably, the windows. His knowledge of old furniture was confined to an occasional stroll through an antique mall back in Seattle, idly wondering what would possess people to pay hundreds of dollars for old Coca-Cola merchandise. But even his unpracticed eye spotted some value in the chaos of clashing eras and continents. A Chinese lacquer cabinet was wedged against one wall, next to it a couple of heavy ornate chairs, and a sleek Art Deco lamp. A mostly clear path meandered through the clutter to the opposite door, but you still had to make yourself compact to get through.
Sophie had already done so, fighting her way past a roll-top desk and tugging at an unremarkable looking occasional table that blocked the next door. He had a passing irrational urge to beg her not to open it. Too late anyway, as miraculous afternoon sunshine fell across her path.
“Auntie’s bedroom,” she said as she stepped through the doorway, and he hurried to join her with a growing anxiety that the first two rooms had left i
n him, a sense of being lost, buried alive.
The unblocked windows helped him to breathe easier. “I wish you’d stop going ahead of me,” he said. Auntie’s bedroom was as neat and bare as a nun’s cell. A single iron bed, white pillows, white coverlet pulled up tight. One wooden nightstand, empty save for an overflowing ashtray and a crumpled cigarette package. The cigarette butts were ringed with bright red lipstick. They reminded him of how badly he wanted to smoke, and he fumbled for his lighter before remembering he’d left his pack in the car. He crossed to one of the windows.
“I can’t see our car,” he said.
“Of course not. You’re looking out the back of the house.”
But that was nonsense. He ought to be seeing the driveway, and the ruined front yard, but there was only a stretch of bare ground and then a line of trees thickening into forest. He had a sense then that they moved, like curtains fluttering when something stirred on the other side.
“Look,” Sophie said. She lifted a shoebox from the other side of the bed and set it on the night table. He saw her flinch and jump back. The back of her hand caught the ashtray, and it smashed to the floor.
“Shit!” Sophie yelled.
“Are you okay?”
“I thought a spider ran out of the box. What an idiot.”
He came round the side of the bed and saw beads of blood welling up on her legs and sandaled feet where the shattered glass had pierced her skin. “I’m okay,” she said, “it just scared me. There’s probably Band Aids in the bathroom.” She pushed past him and opened the last door. He caught sight of a heavy porcelain sink and a bathtub on feet, then Sophie said, “Ew” and he went in after her. Brown water sputtered from the faucet.
“It’s just because it hasn’t been turned on in a while,” he said, “it’ll clear in a few minutes.”
“No Band-Aids,” she said, “no medicine cabinet, nothing. Apparently Aunt Rose didn’t even use soap. Doesn’t matter. They’re shallow.” Working in a kitchen had left her inured to minor cuts and burns. “Let’s see what’s in the box.”
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