The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 24 (Mammoth Books)

by Stephen Jones

  Emma looked away, drew deeply on the wine. Her hand shook. She couldn’t remember a time when he had said such things, and now she didn’t want to think about him at all; only of her mother. She remembered the face in the souk. She would have given anything to speak to her, longed for the woman whose funeral she had attended; not this father who stood in front of her.

  A crowd gathered around a tent, laughing and jeering. Emma stood on tiptoes, though she didn’t stand a chance of seeing anything. Ibrahim, a head taller, looked over and laughed. “It is an old Moroccan joke,” he said, “about a man and his wife. The wife is also played by a man, of course.”

  The crowd convulsed with laughter. And the image that sprang into Emma’s head was of Punch and Judy, sitting on some frigid English beach while a puppet’s neck grew longer and longer. She grimaced.

  “It is an old tradition,” Ibrahim said, and she nodded.

  She followed him as he pointed out men rigging tents for the evening barbecues, ladies offering henna tattoos. He didn’t pause, assuming she wouldn’t be interested, and Emma peered down at the photographs of flowered hands and feet. She was half tempted to stay, but daunted by the women’s harsh invitations.

  Ibrahim had offered to show her around, and he was taking his role as tour guide seriously. “Djemaa el Fna,” he said, “the centre of Marrakesh; at least, of its spirit. Hundreds of years old. Once, they sold slaves here, stolen from their homes and bound for Europe. Or the other way around.”

  Emma blinked. Ibrahim smiled at her. “Europeans were stolen too,” he said. “Some were brought here by the corsairs. Not so many as Africans, of course.”

  Emma frowned, trying to understand the import of his words, but he went on. “Djemaa means congregational mosque,” he said. “Fna is courtyard, or death. No one agrees what it means. It could be mosque with a courtyard. Or it could be assembly of death, place of death. You see? Morocco has many meanings.” He waved a hand, taking in the snake charmers, the street dentists with human teeth laid out on rugs, Moroccan teenagers buying dried apricots and

  “But which?” asked Emma. “What does it mean? They must know.”

  Ibrahim smiled. “It is for you to choose.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s—” but Emma’s voice faded. She had seen someone across the field of paving slabs, someone who was standing quite still amidst the movement.

  “Emma?”

  “It’s her.” Emma started walking, was jerked back when Ibrahim caught her arm.

  “You mustn’t,” he said, urgently. “It isn’t her. Do not.”

  She wriggled free and started across the square, hampered by the press of people, the haphazard placing of tents and rugs. She didn’t call out; she knew her mother would never hear. Then she saw that the figure had stopped. Her mother was pale, her skin white against the dark, straight hair. Her eyes were hollow, their expression impossible to make out.

  Emma began to run. She had to know, to understand what her mother was trying to tell her. The woman was in a narrower part of the square now, heading for the road that marked its edge, moving easily between throngs of tourists. Emma wove in and out as people stopped in her path to check that their bags or their children were safe. She heard the road, its honking and screeching.

  There: a flash of dark hair. Then it was gone. Emma let out a cry, felt Ibrahim’s hand close once more on her arm. She struggled and he let go, spreading his hands in the air.

  “Please.” Ibrahim looked hurt, anxious. He glanced around to see who might be watching.

  Emma clenched her hands on nothing, pressed them against her face.

  “I am sorry. But you mustn’t. It is not a good thing. You should not follow. You must not look for her, Emma.”

  “It was my mother.” She choked on the words, and as she did, she knew what she needed to do. Before Ibrahim could react, she turned and ran once more for the road. A taxi was parked at the kerb, discharging passengers. Emma grabbed the open door, jumped inside. When the driver looked at her with startled eyes, she gave the name of the cemetery where her mother was buried.

  Emma couldn’t find the caretaker anywhere. Eventually she asked in a local shop and the shopkeeper led the way down narrow streets to a small tumbledown house. He banged on the door until another man came, but it was the shopkeeper who asked what she needed and Emma realised he had stayed to interpret. He looked at her kindly, and tears welled in her eyes. Suddenly there was a chair, a glass of hot, sweet mint tea. They brought flatbreads, a dish of honey. Their generosity made everything worse.

  “I have to know what happened to my mother,” she said. “I have to know if the grave was empty.”

  They exchanged looks, speaking to each other in rapid Arabic. Eventually the shopkeeper explained. “No,” he said, “your mother’s grave was not empty. But it was – opened, yes?”

  Emma stared down at her glass of tea, feeling hot vapour on her cheeks. “But if she was there – what happened?”

  There was more conferring. This time the shopkeeper’s voice was gentle. “He says there may have been animals. A hyena, maybe. But they did what they could for her.”

  “Animals?” Emma looked up. The man’s eyes were fixed on hers and they were dark, almost black. She saw the message in them, and suddenly felt sick.

  “He is very sorry.” The man indicated the caretaker. “He would watch all the time, but he has a family. He says they took care of it.”

  Emma nodded. She knew they’d filled in the grave, fixed it, as her father had said. No need for you to come. She hesitated. “But how do you know it was my mother? And where is she now?”

  This time, the translation came quickly: “But of course it was your mother. And she is back in the ground. We buried her again.”

  Emma shook her head, staring at the floor. Hyenas, this close to the city? It didn’t make sense. And she thought of what she had seen in the shopkeeper’s eyes, when he had said it: he was protecting her. His expression had been gentle, as if the truth he was hiding was somehow worse than his lies.

  When Emma got back to the hotel, her father was waiting. He ushered her into his room. This time, Ibrahim wasn’t there. “Emma, what you did. It was reckless.” He put a hand on her arm and she pulled away. “I know you think you saw your mother.”

  She turned on him, her eyes fierce. “I did see her. I went to the cemetery. I know what happened.”

  “I am sorry.” Her father didn’t say if he was sorry for what happened, or sorry that she had found out.

  “You left her for the animals. Animals.”

  Now her father looked angry. “I did not,” he said. “I loved her. I buried her. Do you understand that?”

  She was silent.

  “Your mother lived, and now she is dead. It was not your mother you saw. Your mother is safe, wherever she is.”

  “I saw her.”

  “No. It was not your mother.”

  “Her ghost, then. Her spirit.”

  “No. You come here, seeing nothing.” He looked away at last. “I told you of the djinn, Emma. I have – dug too much and too far. I fear I have angered them. And now one of them has come to punish me.”

  Emma stared, astonished.

  “They are everywhere, Emma. And one of them – an evil djinn – has tasted your mother’s body and now it has taken her form.”

  She shook her head. “You’re—”

  “Crazy, yes. But I know what I know. This thing has your mother’s face, but it is not her. It is a grave robber, a ghul, Emma. And if you follow it—” he looked away. “It will take you too.”

  Emma lay awake, listening to the anodyne sounds of a hotel in the early morning: the clanking of the maid’s cart, banging doors, the distant buzz of the lift. She pressed her hands against her face, remembering her mother as she had last seen her; dark-smudged eyes set into white skin, an expression she couldn’t read. If she had been closer, perhaps she would have known what her mother had been trying to say. She would have been able to
tell if her father’s words were true.

  She screwed her hands into fists. If she had seen her dead mother in England, would she then only have been a spirit – a ghost? Could she have spoken to her – had her father robbed her even of that, by bringing her to a place where the djinn walked?

  Emma shook her head, rose, and headed for the lobby. When she reached it she heard a familiar voice. She turned to see Ibrahim, dressed smartly, a heavy-looking sample case at his feet. “Emma,” he said, only that, but his tone said everything.

  She shook her head. “I’m going back to the square. Just once more. And then I’m going home.” She paused. “I have to understand.”

  He looked at her, his gaze steady, until she had to look away. He spoke only once before picking up his case and turning to leave. “I do not think it is a place you understand,” he said. “I think it is a place that you feel.”

  She thought of those words as she left the hotel and headed for the square. She hadn’t been talking about the place, at all: it was her mother that had been in her mind. All the same, as she entered Djemaa el Fna, she knew that he was right. The bustle was there, but it was different. She saw now that the square wasn’t the paving or the mosque or the buildings that marked its edge; it wasn’t even its history. It was the people who filled it, selling and buying and entertaining, telling their stories, filling the air with charcoal-smoke and music, so that every moment it changed, becoming somewhere new. She couldn’t understand this place, would never understand, because it was never the same. And if she couldn’t understand this place, something man had made and torn up and remade, how would she ever understand what she had seen?

  The discord of music filled her mind, confusing everything. The square was a whirl of people going about their lives, their daily dance. All of life is here, she thought, and remembered her mother’s face looking back at her: No. All of life and death.

  Emma started to walk. Despite her earlier resolve, she was no longer sure she wanted to see her mother. All that was left was hollowness, and a strange kind of yearning. Yet as she passed through the square, she realised her mother was there: she was walking ahead of her through the throng, clearing a path for Emma to follow. This time she looked back and smiled, and it was the old smile, clean and good. This time no one got in Emma’s way; the crowds drew back as the spirit passed, as though they saw or sensed what it was.

  Emma’s heart beat faster, the music around her transforming into light and air, rising and falling in perfect rhythm. This was where she was meant to be. She knew this place, belonged in this moment. She scarcely noticed as her mother entered a narrow alleyway, a shadow falling across her features. She pulled a layer of fabric from her dress, drawing a veil across her face; then she stepped back into a recess, her back to the stone, and beckoned her daughter in.

  * * *

  There were images behind Emma’s eyes, a multitude of them: the chaos of goods in the souk, curious faces, men staring or calling out in Darija, intricate tiles on a floor or wall, donkey carts, delicately whorled stones. There were sounds, too: the deep call of the muezzin, the higher wail of the pipers. Their music no longer made sense to her. She moaned, putting her hand to her forehead, trying to wipe away the things she saw or didn’t see. There was pain there, but she realised it was not a headache. She touched a hand to her neck, lower down, the hollow place above her shoulder blade. She felt something dry under her fingers. When she looked at her fingertips, she found them powdered with blood.

  She opened her eyes and saw the plain, blank ceiling of her hotel room. By the harsh light slashing the rectangle, she knew it must be about mid-day. Then a sound began to register. Someone was hammering on the door.

  When she opened it her father was standing there. Emma opened her mouth to greet him then closed it again. What was the use? There was no name she could call him. “Father” was too formal, like something out of a book; “Dad” was too familiar. Instead she stared as he guided her back inside and felt her forehead. Emma caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, her skin pale, her eyes nothing but dark smudges.

  Her father had her lie down, brought her water to drink, rubbed life into her hands. He kept talking, though Emma didn’t listen to the words. Eventually, she spoke.

  “Why did you stay here?” she asked.

  This time, his words were halting. “Because I had to,” he said. “Because it would have killed me not to.”

  Emma let his words drift over her.

  “Sometimes a place takes hold of you. And you know you have to stay, because anywhere else – the homesickness—” he paused. “You are homesick for somewhere that was never your home.”

  For a while, there was silence. The knife of sunlight drew across the ceiling. Emma pushed herself up; found her father resting his head on his arms. He stirred and looked back at her. She put out a hand and touched the whorls of skin around his eyes, thinking of the ridged curls of an ammonite.

  “What did you call it?” she asked.

  He looked puzzled; then he understood. “Emmaceras,” he said, and smiled. “You know, Emma, ammonites are named for the Egyptian god Ammon. The god of procreation. Of life.”

  She nodded. She pushed herself up and examined her neck in the mirror. The wound was shallow and surrounded by scratches, but it was clean. Her father must have washed it.

  “Do you think it’s happy now?” she asked.

  He merely sighed, raising and lowering his hands. He didn’t try to explain, just looked at her face, his gaze steady. And then he said: “You should stay here.”

  Emma started. Touched a hand to her neck. She had expected him to say she should go home, get as far away from Morocco – and the square – as she could. And yet, now the words were out, she felt she understood. All of life is here, she thought. And all of death. She knew this, had been touched by it. And yet the heart of it, the sound, the chaos – it was inside her, too.

  Life and death. Death and life. Vivid and loud and bright and dangerous. Not something to be ignored, to be analysed or regulated or wrapped in plastic, layers and layers of it, so that when either of them surfaced, it was frightening.

  The thought made her dizzy, made her want to laugh. She looked at her father’s face, feeling the ties that ran between them despite the years and the distance. She caught his hand in hers, felt the thinness, the bones beneath the papery skin.

  When she closed her eyes, though, what she saw was a doorway; a large, beautiful doorway in the shape of a keyhole, dusty and grimed. On the other side of it was her desk at work: clean, bare, organised. And she knew that she could step through, take her seat, resume her life. And then what? Would she turn again, look back the other way, to see – what? Already there was an odd pang in her stomach, a deep sort of longing she couldn’t understand but that she could feel.

  She opened her eyes and she didn’t know for whom or what she felt it.

  Her father was watching her. He smiled. “It’s very simple,” he said, and when she looked back into his eyes, she knew that it was true.

  DALE BAILEY

  Necrosis

  DALE BAILEY lives in North Carolina with his family, and has published three novels: The Fallen, House of Bones and Sleeping Policemen (with Jack Slay, Jr.). His short fiction, collected in The Resurrection Man’s Legacy and Other Stories, has won the International Horror Guild Award and has been twice nominated for the Nebula Award.

  He has recently published stories in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells and Oz Re-Imagined: New Tales From the Emerald City, and has work forthcoming at Tor.com.

  About the tale that follows, he recalls: “This story was spurred by a close encounter with an essay about flesh-eating bacteria – truly a horrifying malady – in Atul Gawande’s Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes On An Imperfect Science.

  “In writing it, I posed a dual challenge to myself: I wanted to compose an old-fashioned club story, and I wanted to tr
y out an unusual point of view, first-person collective. I can only hope that I succeeded on both counts.”

  IN RETROSPECT NONE of us could say with any precision when it began. Condon had never been part of our set. Grandfathered into the club by one of those old robber barons whose fortunes had declined, he was essentially nondescript – capable of maintaining a decent conversation, pleasant enough to be around, but not the kind of man with whom one formed deep and lasting relationships.

  When we met him, we were friendly. When we didn’t – which was the norm, Condon not being ubiquitous in our circles – we didn’t think of him at all. So it was hard to say, as we thought the thing through among ourselves, when precisely it had begun – a task complicated by the fact that none of us had known anything had begun, until it was over.

  Westfall claimed it had started in the late fall. He’d run into Condon Christmas shopping – we usually trade small gifts among ourselves – and had detected a faint unpleasant smell around the man. But the rest of us disagreed: the scent could have been nothing but some poorly chosen cologne, and besides, in the thronged department store in late November, the smell, which even Westfall admitted was subtle and brief, might have belonged to someone else altogether, brushing past in the crowded aisle where they stood conversing.

  Symes put the date a little later. He’d run into Condon on the street outside a bakery, and had concluded that Condon looked splotchy and pale, rather wrung out. He’d thought nothing of it at the time. But in retrospect—

  Nothing, the rest of us agreed.

  Who doesn’t look splotchy and wrung out when the city bustles with the holiday season, and a mere passing hello – which Symes confessed was the extent of their intercourse that mid-December afternoon – hardly provided the opportunity for the concentrated study needed to identify something as subtle as what Condon must have already been experiencing in its early stages.