The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2013

by Angela Slatter

  Don’t call me again. I’m done.

  “You sound tired,” Linda says. “Are you getting much sleep?”

  Even after he hangs up on her, Tim can’t stop laughing.

  * * *

  He keeps the bag of dog parts beneath his bed, right beneath the spot where he lays his head on the pillow.

  On the pillow, and sometimes under it, those nights he definitely doesn’t hear the pad of small, bare feet on the hallway boards outside his door, or the high-pitched keening that might be the cry of a child waking in darkness, or delight. Those nights he absolutely does not feel the subtle shift of the mattress at his back, or the tickle of breath over his cheek.

  Those nights especially, Tim’s eyes remain resolutely closed.

  Because there is definitely, absolutely nothing to see.

  * * *

  Walking home from the train station after Friday night drinks with the guys from sales, Tim’s half-blinded by a sudden flash of headlights, twice in quick succession. The car is parked out the front of his house, its paintwork pale and gleaming beneath the glare of the streetlight. He can make out the vague shape of a driver, but nothing else.

  Tim pauses. The headlights flash again. Just once.

  Cautiously, he keeps walking. As he approaches the vehicle, its passenger side window slides down with a low, mechanical hum and the interior light switches on. “Tim?” the Crane asks. “Do you have a few minutes?”

  A mild sense of relief shivers through him. “I thought you were done,” he says, annoyed. “Isn’t that what you told me?”

  “Please.” She reaches over and opens the door, pushes it outwards.

  “Uh, it might be more comfortable inside.”

  The Crane shakes her head. “I’d rather stay out here. No offence.”

  “Whatever.” Tim slides into the passenger seat, pulling the door closed behind him. The heater is running on full; sweat beads along his hairline almost immediately. “How long have you been waiting here?”

  “Long enough.” Her lips press so tight together they turn white. “What you brought to the café the other day. My sister really sent it?”

  “I think so. The box is long gone but the handwriting—what I can remember about the handwriting—I’m pretty sure it was Mellie’s.”

  She sighs. “I suppose it’s the only logical explanation. I turned our flat upside down this past week, you know, in case she had hidden it somewhere. Nothing, so it must be the same one.”

  “She was still living with you?”

  “It was easier. Melanie was . . . problematic.”

  Tim isn’t dumb enough to take that sort of bait. He simply nods and waits.

  “She called him Jacob,” the Crane says.

  “The dog?”

  “No.” She glares at him, pointedly. “Not the dog.”

  Tim lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “There was a kid.”

  “No,” she repeats. “I told you, she never had a child.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “Here.” The Crane reaches around to the backseat and retrieves a green canvas shopping bag, thrusts it towards him. It’s full of toys—rattles, stuffed animals, oversized plastic Lego blocks—padded out with neatly folded baby clothes. “Melanie bought all of that, and more. I kept sending it off to charity shops, but she replaced it quicker than I could keep up. That wooden dog you have, that was the very first thing. She was hysterical when I donated it along with a load of other stuff. I had to go down to Vinnies the next day and buy the bloody thing back.”

  Tim takes a bright blue teddy bear from the top of the bag. “Why would she do that?” The bear stares back at him with eyes of empty glass.

  “I used to hear her talking aloud in her bedroom,” the Crane says. “Sometimes I even thought I heard someone talking back.”

  “Someone?”

  “She called him Jacob.”

  Tim drops the bear back into the bag. “Why?” he asks again.

  “Melanie wanted that child so badly,” she whispers. “Sometimes I worry that maybe it would have been the best thing after all.”

  “Anna, you have to tell me what’s going on.”

  “Why do you think I’m here?” She smiles at him then, that same broken smile he remembers from the café. “I’m so tired of keeping it all to myself. Maybe if I tell you, maybe I can start to let her go.”

  * * *

  Tim closes the front door behind him, lets the green bag fall to the floor. He can’t summon any hatred for the Crane, no matter how much he would dearly like to, no matter how much easier that would make everything. Because she’s probably right. She was probably always right.

  After you broke up with her, Melanie found out she was pregnant.

  Why didn’t she say something?

  She didn’t want you to come back just because of a baby.

  You mean, you didn’t want me to come back.

  I did agree with her, yes.

  You never thought Mellie and me should be together.

  It’s a moot point, Tim. You wouldn’t have come back anyway.

  Leaving the lights off, he feels his way into the bedroom, gets down on his hands and knees and reaches into the darkness beneath the bed. His fingers brush plastic, and he pulls the bag towards him. Wood rattles against wood; the sound is as close to comfort as he deserves.

  Melanie wanted to have the baby on her own. She thought being a mother would be fun; she thought it would be fulfilling.

  I bet you didn’t agree with her about that.

  Melanie could barely cope with being Melanie most of the time. How could she possibly bring up a child?

  His toolbox is in the laundry. Nothing flash—he’s never been much for DIY—but Tim finds a proper screwdriver among the assortment of Allen keys, along with an adjustable wrench and probably enough orphaned bolts and screws of various sizes to get the job done. Satisfied, he snaps the lid shut and takes the toolbox with him.

  You should have told me, Anna.

  Melanie didn’t want me to.

  I could have helped.

  I’m sure you could have. But the question is, would you have?

  Sitting cross-legged in the middle of the kitchen floor, Tim empties the plastic bag out in front of him. Dog parts scatter across the tiles. The little brass bell tinkles to a stop beneath the fridge. He uses the screwdriver to fish it back out, blows away the dust bunnies with a couple of forceful breaths. Holding the bell between finger and thumb, he shakes it, gently. “Are you there, Jacob?” he whispers and shakes the bell again.

  What happened to him? How did he die?

  I’ve told you already, Tim. She didn’t have the baby.

  But you just said she wanted him.

  I convinced her otherwise. It wasn’t easy.

  You convinced her to . . .

  She could always have had a child later. With someone who cared, someone who was serious about her and actually wanted a family.

  You made Mellie get an abortion? You made her get rid of her baby—our baby—is that what you’re saying?

  Be honest, Tim. What would you have made her do?

  The house is silent and still. Tim arranges all the pieces carefully on the floor, putting them in some sort of dog-shaped order so he can see how they’re meant to go together. Most of the bits of dowel are broken. He uses electrical tape where he can, decides to substitute a couple of bolts where he can’t. It’s not like the toy needs to be kiddie-safe.

  She called him Jacob.

  He thinks about Mellie, whose face he can now only picture in the cast of that awful memorial photograph. She was always so anxious, so clingy, constantly needing to be touched, to be reassured that, yes, he loved her, yes, he thought she was beautiful. A need so hungry, not even the ghost of a child, summoned from frantic desperation and the smallest scraps of half-formed flesh, could begin to quell it. Maybe a real child could have. Maybe the Crane was right about that too.

  Neither of t
hem would ever know.

  “I’m sorry, Jacob.” Tim fits the dog’s head onto its neck, makes sure the joint is loose enough to bob. “See, I’m fixing it for you, mate. I’m guessing it’s your favourite, right, your very first toy?”

  There’s no sound, no change in temperature from one heartbeat to the next, nothing at all to indicate that the boy now stands behind him. Merely the calm, absolute certainty that he’s there.

  “Your mum loved you a lot, Jacob, she really did.” Tim spins a wheel around on his finger. He should buy some sandpaper to smooth out the gouges, some red paint to touch up the damage. “But she was sick, you know, so sick she had to go away. And I think maybe that’s why she sent you to me. She wanted to make sure there would be someone to take care of you.”

  Bare feet shuffle against the tiles. Closer, closer.

  “It must have been scary, being in a strange place all of a sudden, without your mum.” Tim tries to laugh. “Guess we scared each other pretty good, hey?”

  A small face presses its cheek against his back. It’s a curious sensation, the presence of a weight he doesn’t so much feel as believe in. A tiny hand flutters by his ribs. Tim closes his eyes. He wonders if the boy will keep growing, keep getting older. If one day he’ll be demanding Wiis and iPhones, or whatever will have taken their place in another ten years. If there ever will be one day.

  daddy

  Less whisper than vibration, this word he hasn’t even dreamed of wanting to hear before now. It runs through him, beating a rhythm along with the blood in his veins, a yearning inexpressible and sudden and vast.

  daddy

  He can sense the boy standing right in front of him now, that unseen face leaning in towards his own, those tiny teeth bared in the sharpest of smiles. “I’m sorry, Jacob.” A tear slips warm down his cheek. “I didn’t realise, I didn’t know who you were.”

  daddy

  “I’m so sorry.” Tim says, and opens his eyes.

  Born and Bread

  Kaaron Warren

  There was once a baby born so ugly her father packed his bags in fury when he saw her.

  “Who did you lie with, the baker or his dough?” he called over his shoulder as he left. Already he was planning to surprise his girlfriend who always smiled when she saw him and asked for nothing.

  “Only you!” the mother called back. She held her baby in a soft brown blanket, though she had to lean against the wall for support.

  The baby was as heavy as a calf and the size of the award-winning pumpkin at the fair five years earlier, a pumpkin that had never been matched before or since. Yet the baby had slid out sweetly, like dough through a piping bag.

  And yes, she was pale, pasty and fleshy.

  “Don’t leave her in the sun,” Mrs. Crouch, the cruellest woman in the village said. “Or you’ll have a loaf of bread for a daughter.” (In her defense, her husband spat brown juice wherever he stood, beat her with a stick when he felt so inclined, terrified the children with ghost tales, and never, ever spent a dollar when a cent would do.)

  Still, the mother loved the daughter very much, especially once she learned how to laugh. Chuckles bubbled out of her like the froth in fermenting yeast, and anybody close by couldn’t help but join in. She was so gentle and sweet they called her Doe, and that suited the way she had grown to look as well, like well-risen dough waiting to be baked into bread or sweet rolls.

  Children loved to make her laugh, because her whole body quivered with it and it was beautiful to watch.

  Each night she and her mother would sit together and tell stories and jokes. Sometimes her father would visit. (Always at dinner time. Her mother was the most marvellous cook. Her pastry was like flakes of pure heaven.) And he would tell them stories of his journeys. His girlfriend was long-since departed, and he now travelled the world selling and buying clever items for the kitchen. He bought Doe’s mother a gadget for lemons and one for eggs, he bought spices and seasonings that made the whole house smell delicious.

  Neither of them hated him for his early desertion; he was, for the most part, a good man and they loved his stories and gifts.

  Each night Doe’s mother would stroke, mould, press, and knead her flesh, stretch and smooth it. Sometimes this hurt, but it also always felt good.

  By the time Doe was eighteen, she had transformed into a beautiful, lithe young woman with a sense of humour, an infectious laugh and a vast storehouse of stories.

  In short, she became marriageable.

  She had no interest in such a thing, though. She knew she could not have children because those parts of her were not fully formed, and she saw no other reason to tie herself to one man.

  Like her father, she enjoyed journeys, explorations, and with her mother’s blessings and warnings, her father’s financial help, she set out for adventure.

  She spent ten years exploring the world, tasting, seeing, learning, becoming, loving. She ate damper, dinkelbrot, pain de mie, bagels, sangak, roti and pandesal. She learned how to cook each loaf, loved to watch it brown, hug it to her chest warm from the oven. And like each loaf, each lover felt different, because she could mould herself around them. Encase them. More than once a man wept after their lovemaking.

  “Nothing. Ever. So beautiful.” The words in gasps.

  Each encounter left her dented and stretched. She could massage herself back into shape, but she missed her mother’s gentle touch and the stories they shared.

  One day, her mother contacted her. “Your father is buying me a wonderful gift. A bakery! I will make cakes people will want to keep forever and others they will eat while still standing at the shop counter and order another.”

  “Will you bake bread?” Doe asked

  “If you come back, you can be the bread baker. My dear little Doe.”

  But Doe had changed. She felt as if all she’d eaten, smelt, and seen so much; all the men she’d loved, all the women she’d spoken with, all the stories and jokes she’d shared: all of this had altered her. Would her mother still love her?

  Her mother sighed as they embraced, but there was no judgment, no disappointment. “I’ve missed you!” she said, and her fingers pressed and stroked until Doe felt ordinary again.

  And she set to work baking the most wonderful breads for her mother’s bakery.

  * * *

  All this is to explain how it came to be that Doe helped to fulfil the awful Mr Crouch’s dying wishes and thus lay his cruel ghost to rest.

  As he lay on his deathbed he said to Mrs. Crouch, “You have been a bad wife. Only this many times have we had relations.” There is some dissention as to how many fingers he held up. “You owe me three more. After my death, you will lie with me three nights, or this village will suffer the consequences.”

  He lay back, then, and demanded bread. He loved Doe’s tiger bread and chose that as his last meal.

  Doe walked into his sick room. Even though she’d been warned, the stench was overwhelming. She knew the odour of yeast left to ferment too long, but that was nothing compared to this. She’d smelt dead animals in the roof drains and the worst toilets any nightmare could dredge up. She’d smelt a man who hadn’t bathed for twenty years.

  Nothing came close to the stench of this room.

  She pinched her nose and squeezed to close her nostrils.

  “Here she is, the beautiful baker,” Mr Crouch said. “Come and knead me, darling. I am ready for you,” and he weakly tugged away the covers to reveal his naked body.

  She placed the tray of bread beside him and left the room.

  It is said he choked on a crust; that was not Doe’s doing.

  They buried him three nights later. Fearful of his curse, the women of the town went to Mrs. Crouch, to help prepare her to go to his grave.

  She said, “He was repulsive alive. I cannot lie with him dead. And you know he was a cruel man; he means to damage me. Destroy me.”

  She refused to go that first night. The next day ten fields were found withered.

>   She refused to go that second night and the next day the clinic for the unwell was burnt down. Many would have been lost were it not for the early-rising Doe and her mother, who sounded the alarm.

  The villagers went to Mrs. Crouch to beg her to lie with her dead husband. “He will take the children next. You know he will,” they said.

  She refused. “He means to destroy me. Mar me for life, haunt me into eternity, kill me.”

  They turned from her, distraught but not surprised. She was selfish and cruel and didn’t care about the rest of them.

  “I am driven by bad fortune! All my life!” she called after them, as if that made a difference.

  Doe had led a blessed life, really. Full of good fortune and windfalls.

  She went to Mrs. Crouch, who sneered at her as she always did.

  “My deepest sympathies,” Doe said, and she held Mrs. Crouch close, squeezing until the woman made an imprint in Doe’s soft body.

  In the bakery, she mixed dough, let it rise, punched it down, shaped it, let it rise again.

  She baked this bread hard and brown. She baked Mrs. Crouch with her eyes closed.

  As the moon rose high, she carried the bread lady to the cemetery. It was light, as good bread should be.

  She laid it on Mr Crouch’s grave. “Darling,” she called out. “Darling, I’m here.”

  Then she tripped away to hide.

  At first, there was stillness, a terrible quiet that made her doubt her ears. Then a disturbance in the dirt, a writhing, then four nubs appeared, then eight, like pink growing tendrils of an unpleasant plant.

  He rose up naked and fully erect.

  He fell upon his bread lady, roaring, biting, thrusting, filled with lust and fury. Doe looked away and she thought, I will tell her I understand. What woman could lie with this man and ever feel clean again?

  He fell upon his dough-wife, the Lady Bread, and his sweat, his juice, the dampness of the air, helped to dissolve the bread into a pale mush. He did not seem to care. He stood up, shook himself like a dog, then nodded and sank into his grave.