The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2013

by Angela Slatter

  This is beyond me now. I don’t know if I’ve destroyed something or unleashed it, and I’m too terrified of either possibility to stay and find out.

  At the same time, I know there is one thing left to do.

  He found you, and led you to me. Now find me, and I will lead you to him.

  * * *

  When I reach the chapel door, Illar, or whatever is left of Illar, is still screaming, but there’s almost a rhythm to it now, like a chant, like a ritual. I don’t stop, just close my eyes and run straight through the steel door. For the briefest of moments, the smallest portion of a second, I feel a drag on my skin, a coldness grasping at my bones, and then I’m through and colliding with the footless knight, bruising my head on the edge of his shield. Out of the chapel and into the old nave, the showroom, and there is the blind glass again, the first one—the only one, my grandfather said, the other one of an entirely different kind and now shattered but still blind, still seeing. In this one, I see the steel door open in the background, the empty doorway an escape for whatever chaos is erupting in that cold stone chamber below. The mirror cannot see, and so cannot lie about what it sees. So if it can’t see an open doorway, then the doorway must be closed. I run to the mirror and heave it around on its ornate black-iron stand, then run back into the chapel, stand before the door, close my eyes.

  Push.

  Solidity resists my trembling hands. I push again, harder, and still the door refuses to give way. My eyes clamped fiercely shut, I throw my whole weight at the door, and nearly dislocate my shoulder.

  I sob then, I cover my face in my hands and cry like a child in fear and relief. I feel slickness on my hands, on my lips; open my tear-filled eyes and see blood on my fingers, and a distant part of me tries to distinguish between the two different tastes of salt.

  One thing left.

  In a back corner of the nave there is a stack of shelves for the showroom, still packed in cardboard and thick paper. Next to this is a bundle of the semi-rusted iron bars used to support the display shelves. I draw one out, the scrape of metal echoing in the high space and jarring my teeth.

  I walk slowly back to the mirror, to the singular, blind glass. When I stand before it and raise my eyes to see, what I see is only right, the only thing I could have expected. An invisible, impossible self rising before me, coalescing, a bright star cooling into visceral flesh. Not me, not my own body, but the body I have become.

  I smile, and I smile back, and I raise the bar above my head, and I bring it down.

  The Nest

  C.S. McMullen

  The walls were filled with ants—a seething, burrowing mass of them.

  “Come in, come in!” the man said, sitting like a god in the middle of the room, grinning at me through broken teeth. He levered himself out of his chair, breathing heavily, and then tottered over to the wall and pressed hard against it. Under his hand, ants scurried frantically through their tunnels. “It’s quite safe. Two solid sheets of Perspex, each over an inch thick, layered over the original house’s walls. They’ve got a gap of about four inches between them, for the dirt, but the whole thing is completely sealed. There’s no chance of them escaping.”

  I slowly inched my way further into the house, stifling a scream when I looked up and saw that the ceiling was part of the nest as well. There was an industrious hum in the background, almost a whispering; thousands upon thousands of living organisms working towards a goal. If that goal was to terrify anyone who was foolish enough to enter their domain—well, it was working.

  “Are you Mr Marsden?”

  He snorted, and gestured around him. “I don’t know. Do I fit the description? Crazy old man, lives in a giant ant’s nest?”

  I had to concede that there weren’t many other plausible candidates.

  “You’d be the girl from the real estate agency then? Here to see about the house?”

  After we had ascertained that, indeed, I was the girl from the real estate agency, and that I was here to see about the house, Mr Marsden led me on a full tour of what he fondly referred to as “The Nest.”

  This was his home, and he wanted me to tell him how much it was worth.

  Shit.

  * * *

  I had only been working a few months at my job. My pencil skirt was always neatly ironed, my buttons always undone to reveal just the right amount of cleavage. My boss had insisted that I take this home valuation, emphasising how Mr Marsden was a valued and loyal client.

  But, as I got further and further into the house, I had a sneaking suspicion that this was the real estate equivalent of a hazing ritual.

  According to Mr Marsden, “The Nest” had been under construction for over twenty years, and the original house had been gutted long ago. Only the walls and some of the kitchen and bathroom fixtures remained. In each room, the walls had been layered with two giant pieces of clear Perspex about four inches apart and filled almost completely with dirt. Large plastic tubes ran haphazardly from one room to the next. At the edge of the walls, where the Perspex met the plaster, there were thick lines of sealant.

  And everywhere I looked—sealed up within every wall—crawled the ants. And while I tried to tune it out, under our conversation, disconcertingly, there remained that soft whispering, that pervasive sound of the ants in their nest.

  I’d already been to quite a few house valuations, and I was getting used to how nervous people are; the covert glances at cracks in the walls, covered haphazardly with plaster, the assurances that their small, humble house normally looks a lot better than this.

  This man wasn’t nervous, though. He practically burst with pride as he led me from room to room in the small house, pointing out various interesting nest formations in the walls, or a particularly clever piece of mechanical ingenuity. In fact, he seemed to enjoy how I stayed half-crouched, terrified of the weight of the dirt above my head, and the ants that scurried within it.

  Perhaps I was overwhelmed by the house, by the magnitude of The Nest, but I would swear that the ants followed us as we toured through—a murmurous rush of activity that poured into the walls of each room. They seemed small, malevolent entities, tracking us, and I felt judged and observed as I had never felt before. I somehow knew that The Nest itself was looking at me, and had found me wanting.

  But then, I always do this.

  I had realized early in my life that I had a tendency to become painfully anthropomorphic, assigning excessive personality to animals or things that wasn’t there in reality. It was why I still had a collection of over fifty soft toys, packaged up in my basement. I kept even the most battered ones, the ones that should have been thrown away long ago.

  And as I toured through this small, strange house, I knew that this was why I couldn’t help myself, that this was why I gave this collective group of insects a personality.

  But still, even knowing that it wasn’t real, I could feel it. I could feel the weight of The Nest’s mind upon me.

  Judging me.

  * * *

  The Nest was huge, almost two hundred thousand individuals, Mr Marsden estimated, although it was impossible to know how many there were exactly. The entire house was kept purposefully dark for the ants to function properly, but there were small, muted lights in each room, which gave me just enough light to inspect everything. The walls seemed solid, as far as I could tell, and there was minimal furniture; just the walls, filled with tiny bodies moving constantly. There was haphazard electrical wiring throughout the house, going around doorways and through holes, following a logic that only this madman—presumably—knew.

  It was like nothing I’ve ever seen, before or since then.

  Mr Marsden seemed to enjoy showing off his house and its small inhabitants, and he had a well-rehearsed patter, spouting off interesting facts and bits of information about ants. He was surprisingly articulate, and I gradually felt myself relaxing as I listened to him.

  “Each room acts as a different part of the normal structure of an ant nest,�
�� he explained, his fingers pointing to hollows within the walls. “There are several main chambers that we can see, and some we can’t. Somewhere, deep within The Nest, is the Queen’s chamber, where she lies, producing a seemingly endless supply of eggs.” He grinned at this, and I found his eyes staring at me intently, his large frame filling up the room, his pale skin almost luminescent in the dim light. I had the urge to do up the buttons on my shirt; even tasteful cleavage suddenly seemed like too much.

  Inside the Perspex, the material of The Nest was layered, beginning with large granules at the bottom, a mixture of sand and dirt for the main part of the nest, and then, right at the top, a section that was left to act as a pretend “topsoil.” It gave each room a strange appearance, almost as if it was part of a living painting: a strange thesis about modernity, nature, and life.

  The Nest had been built haphazardly, and Mr Marsden had worked around the light switches and pipes, cutting and sealing the Perspex with precision. A labour of obsessive love, his work was impressive in its thoroughness, as well as its complete impracticality.

  It was hard to look at the features that I would normally focus on for a valuation: size and functionality of the dwelling, the acreage and location of the land. This clearly wasn’t going to be a normal job where I was in and out in twenty minutes. I considered stopping it then; telling him that this wasn’t worth my time, and leaving, going back out into the bright daylight, and relieved to be out of that strange place.

  But my professionalism won out.

  Well, that, and my crippling fear of failing this arcane rite of passage. I would not be known forever as the real estate agent that had cracked and fled screaming from the crazy old man who lived in a nest.

  He took me down to the basement, where, bizarrely, it was lit up as bright as day. There were two large tanks on the floor, made of glass, that looked like aquariums. They had plants and rocks in them, and several pipes led down from the main nest into each of them.

  “This room acts as the “surface” for the ants,” he said, pulling on a pair of work gloves. “I put food into these tanks, and they forage along the ground and bring it back to the nest, like they would in the wild.”

  He opened up one of the tanks, and gently brushed the ground with his fingers, allowing several ants to crawl onto his gloves.

  “Solenopsis invicta. More commonly known as fire ants. Their sting feels as if your skin is on fire. They can sting smaller mammals to death, and carry their bodies back to their nests, piece by piece.” I stared, horrified at the tiny creatures on his finger tips, and he laughed. “A fully grown human would be able to get away well before they were stung to death, unless they were sick or allergic to their venom. Or unless they were caught in a swarm of them, defending their nest.” He opened the lid of the glass tank again, and gently blew the ants off his hand, and back into their enclosure. “See? They’re perfectly safe.”

  “And you’re allowed to have these?”

  He paused. “I’ve got all the correct permits for them.” It had the sound of a lie, and wanting to break the suddenly awkward silence, I looked around the room for something innocuous to discuss. “Why are there two of these tanks? Wouldn’t you only need one feeding enclosure?”

  He looked at me, surprised. “Not many people notice that.” Lowering his voice, he asked, “Want to know a secret?”

  I hate secrets between strangers. It breeds forced camaraderie, a sharing of something exclusive. He took my silence for assent though, and gestured to one tank and then the other. “The name “The Nest” is actually a misnomer. The house actually contains two nests; rival nests, in fact.”

  “There are two different types of ants in here?”

  “No, no, they’re the same species. They’re both fire ant nests. But they’re rival nests, with two different queens. That’s why I have to have two separate feeding enclosures. When they encounter an ant from the other nest, they fight.”

  We watched the ants forage peacefully in their tiny habitats for a while, and then he led me back up into the main house, saying cheerfully, “There’s just one more room to see now.”

  I felt as if the ants watched from all sides, wondering what I was doing here with him, with their emperor-god. I kept straining to hear what they were saying, even though I knew the whispers were just them moving, burrowing through the dirt. I could feel them around me, stronger than before, and I knew I wasn’t imagining it as they swarmed from room to room, following us.

  As he pushed open the final door, I prepared for the worst; perhaps the bodies of women from other real estate companies, who had been foolish enough to come here alone.

  But it was just his bedroom.

  There was a sad mattress on the floor, and almost no other furniture, except for the mess of wiring near the headboard of his bed. There were various switches and levers, and it looked as if he had rigged up a rudimentary climate control system. The walls on either side of his bed were part of The Nest, filled in with dirt and humming with activity, but the wall that faced the bed directly was empty; the only empty wall in the house. There was a small hatch in the middle of the wall, with a handle on it.

  He said, “I don’t usually take people in here. This room is the dividing line between the two nests.” He looked over at me. “Maybe, next time, I’ll show you why this room is so special.”

  This was exactly why I didn’t like people sharing their secrets.

  * * *

  The tour complete, we went back to the living room. Mr Marsden sat back down heavily in his chair and put his feet up, gesturing to the flat-screen TV in front of him, inviting me to look closer. It was made up of regular lines of white and black sand, with the ants burrowing through to create “static.” He laughed and said, “Whenever I turn it on, it seems to be showing the same program.” It had the feel of a well-worn joke, and I laughed politely.

  “So, Mr Marsden, you’re interested in a full valuation of your current property. Is this with a view to eventually selling?”

  “No, no, I’d never leave. This is my home. I’ve finally got the decor just how I like it,” he said, laughing wheezily. “When I started, it was just a small nest in the basement, more of a hobby than anything else, really. I just like to get an update occasionally, check how much it’s worth.” He leaned forward, eyes intent on my face and said sharply, “It’s priceless, you understand? There will never be another house like this.”

  I smiled reassuringly at him, and nodded carefully. I was on firmer ground here. This part of the conversation was the same as all the other valuations I had done. They wanted reassurance. Reassurance that the place that they lived in, that they had put so much time into, that it was worth something. That they were worth something.

  “It certainly is an amazing house. I’ll have to do some further research, if that’s all right with you? Just to get a better idea of the house’s value, in light of its . . . unique characteristics.”

  He nodded and settled back into his chair again, the sharpness in his eyes disappearing as if it had never been there, the genial-yet-creepy uncle once more. Clasping his hands over his large stomach, he asked, “Did you ever keep ants? When you were a child?”

  “My brother did. Just one of those little farms, two clear bits of plastic, with some gel inside. You could light it up. We captured some ants from the garden and put them in, and they burrowed through the gel, making little tunnels.”

  As I spoke, his hands drifted down from his stomach to the front of his groin, scratching slowly. I looked away, but he didn’t seem embarrassed at all.

  “And the ants. How many days until they died?”

  “They . . . they only lasted about five days. Will, my brother, was inconsolable. He thought he had done something wrong.”

  He snorted. “Little death camps, those plastic sets are. The ants have no way to nest, nowhere to go, no chambers, no rooms, the light burning them. They just burrow through the gel, eating it until they reach the edge. Then they di
e. No fun at all, them dying that way.”

  There was an awkward silence. In my head, I saw the ants, burrowing to nowhere, dying at the end of their small, sad tunnels. It was definitely time to leave.

  I stood up, brushed off my skirt, and turned on my real estate charm. “Thank you so much for your time, and the tour. I’ll be in touch next week.” As I left, he handed me a small book, with the words Facts YOU didn’t KNOW about ANTS!!!! on the cover. It had the feel of a vanity press book: all ugly fonts and cheap paper.

  “Take this. It’s all my own work. It might be good for research on The Nest.”

  Never question where they live, or how they live, my boss always said. That’s not your job. Your job is to tell them how much their house is worth, and then to try and sell them a new house.

  But it never was that simple. Just by being there, in dilapidated houses and small apartments, I was judging their lives, telling them their worth. And I had never been in a place that was so inherently personal as this house; this shrine to the many. I paused at the doorway.

  “Why ants?”

  He shrugged. “I just like them, I guess. Always have. Ants are just . . . ants.”

  I plastered a smile on my face and shook his hand, promising I would be in touch within the next few weeks.

  * * *

  I had no fucking idea how much this house was worth.

  I did all my normal due diligence. Even if it was just a hazing ritual, I was determined to treat it like a real job for a real client. I researched how much the house had sold for previously, before it had metamorphosed into The Nest. I checked average property prices in the area, and what schools were nearby. Were there shops in the neighbourhood? A mall? What were the crime rates like?

  But it was all pointless, really. Essentially, the question I was asking was: What was the value of a habitable roadside attraction?

  I couldn’t find any other houses made of ants. Or any other houses that were made of living organisms. There were Scandinavian turf houses that used grass as insulation, but they seemed sensible in comparison. There was a house in New York that had been nicknamed “The Mushroom House,” but this just referred to the shape, and I found that I was disappointed when I realized that mushrooms didn’t sprout from the walls.