Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2016

by Charlie Jane Anders

  But Anne knew she couldn’t tell anyone that. Madrigal looked like the child they’d lost, the child whose face had appeared on the flyers they’d pasted to poles and sticky-taped in shop windows, the face that had graced the front pages of a dozen newspapers ever so briefly, and flashed even more briefly across television screens while the tragedy was fresh. And the child was fine, seemed fine, but for the few times Anne had found her by the front door in the middle of the night, sleepwalking. She didn’t wake when shepherded back to bed, and didn’t remember the episode in the morning, just laughed and made a joke about how lucky she was that her mother kept such a good watch over her. That hurt, a tiny bit. Anne felt it stab at the raw ball of guilt which had surfaced when Madrigal first disappeared, the reminder that she’d not kept her daughter safe. But she could discern no intent in the comment, no sharp edge to the grin, nor cruel gleam in the eyes. It was just a child’s throwaway line, nothing meant to cut a maternal heart.

  Yet something was gone from her little girl, and a piece of cold had taken up residence inside Madrigal though she still chattered and chuckled, hugged her family, talked to the cat and dog just as she used to. Soon, they’d arrange for her to go back to school—the social worker said they had to, couldn’t keep her locked in for the rest of her life; hadn’t she had enough of that? But Anne wanted to say that she didn’t know; that no one did, for Madrigal hadn’t told where she’d been or who’d taken her. Whether she couldn’t or wouldn’t was a matter for some debate, but the psychologist seemed to think it would be drawn out with time and understanding. It would surface if they kept giving her the anti-anxiety meds and taking her to the therapy sessions where she got to talk about her feelings and memories (before and after were parentheses, the lacuna in the middle what she could not remember or would not discuss), whether she had dreams (yes) or nightmares (sometimes), and how it felt to be home again (good).

  Anne went along too, and the psychologist asked about her feelings and her memories. Anne smiled, although the expression always felt thin on her face, and said she was happy and relieved to have her daughter restored. That she tried not to think of the day when Madrigal was taken, for it made her feel very sad and anxious. Sad and anxious were her most-used words. Sometimes, she wanted to shake both the psychologist and Madrigal; they were so calm, kept so much hidden, and Anne had had enough of hidden things.

  She pushed the window open into the summer dusk and called, “Maddie? Come in for tea.”

  Anne had waited for three years, after all; what was a little longer?

  * * *

  “You’ve got to let it go, Mum.” Jason’s tone held all the bored superiority of a child gone off to university to attain a qualification neither of his parents had.

  The house was quiet around her, the only sound the young man’s voice on the other end of the phone with its slight long-distance buzz. Brian had taken Maddie to the psychologist today because it was his turn to talk, though she doubted he would. He’d locked his feelings away ever since their girl had returned, determined to forget the pain and torment. As if asking no questions would mean he’d be rewarded for his faith like some modern-day Job; as if silence might ensure God’s baleful eye would not be drawn to the Barkers again.

  She’d taken the opportunity to call Jason. He was, she thought, unusually well-adjusted for everything that had happened. He didn’t seem to have felt neglected by the attention paid to his sister’s disappearance, nor her subsequent return. He’d come home when she’d been found and spent as much time as he could spare away from uni before heading back for exams; he phoned regularly. Usually, she could talk to her eldest about anything, but now Anne regretted it. She’d asked if he thought there was anything different about his little sister, and received a lecture about Capgras delusion, where a parent with paranoid schizophrenia fails to recognise their own offspring, indeed becomes convinced a child has been replaced by an imposter. He’d been talking to his father, obviously—nice to know Brian confided in someone—and was stern as he told her he couldn’t believe she was thinking this way. Couldn’t believe Maddie was in danger of being rejected by her own mother.

  “I’m not suffering a mental disorder, darling,” she said quite evenly, although she could feel her teeth grinding as she bit down on the words. “I was just asking because I’m concerned that she never talks about when she was away. What was so bad that she either forgot it or refuses to discuss it?”

  He softened, as if realising how harsh he’d been; he sounded again like the little boy she’d loved so much, it hurt to let him out of her sight. “I’m sorry, Mum. Look, it’s only a matter of time. We don’t know what happened and you need to remember that even though she’s home, Maddie’s got to learn to trust the family again. Maybe somewhere in her head, there’s the idea that we failed her. Doesn’t matter how we tried, Mum; we didn’t succeed, and that will always be there until she confronts it and us. One day, she’ll yell and scream, and hopefully, the resentment will go away.”

  “But we tried so hard, Jase; how can we be blamed for it?” She felt tears flood her eyes and her voice. She’d thought there were no more to cry, but helplessness overcame her. “We did everything we could.”

  “And one day, she’ll understand that. But for the moment, she’s a frightened little girl with nightmares. She’s only been home two months, Mum; that’s such a short span when you consider how long she was gone. Not really time enough for her to settle, to feel entirely safe. She’s still waiting for something she can’t control to happen again.”

  When they’d rung off, friends again, she dried her eyes and put a piece of corned meat into the slow cooker, generous with the apple cider vinegar just like her mother had taught her. Then garlic and onions, and a lot of salt. Lid on, set on high. She took her coffee out to the sun lounger in the backyard and sat.

  Anne wondered if it was her. Was she going mad? Did paranoid schizophrenia manifest in a forty-five year old woman with no previous history of mental problems? She didn’t think so but she’d google it later.

  Was it her?

  Did she imagine everything? Did she imagine the shadow-shape behind her daughter? Had she become so fatigued, so battered by the constant enquiries, the constant prying? The fascination that the folk of Finnegan’s Field seemed to have with the return? People asked after Madrigal, the little miracle, each and every time Anne left the house, went to a doctor’s appointment, dropped in to the butcher’s for a roast, or bought tampons at the pharmacy. Would it ever end?

  Even those who’d been under suspicion—the ones whose names she knew from indiscreet young cops, or actively dropped by malicious gossips or bad journalists—even they asked. As if to show how big of spirit they were, that they didn’t hold a grudge. Like Tom Pike, the school principal with a taste for young flesh, who had divorced his twenty-three-year-old wife only to marry a girl just out of high school. Or Bodie Hogan, who bagged groceries at the supermarket and offered kids lollies though he’d been warned not to, over and over. Or neat, precise Andrew Engle the dentist, with his bowties and highly polished shoes, who’d left town unexpectedly the same day Maddie’d been taken, and been uncontactable for a month. Men Anne couldn’t help but run into more times than she cared to each week.

  Even when Anne dragged the wheelie bin out to the kerb every Tuesday morning, Mrs Flynn, the across-the-street-but-one neighbour, was waiting without fail, somehow always within hailing distance. It was as if she had radar, and was either watering her lawn or pulling her own green rubbish receptacle behind her, always ready for a chat. She’d never ask directly if the child had said where she’d been, but carefully cloaked her inquiries with concern. Anne had tried getting up earlier and earlier, but she still couldn’t beat Mrs Flynn to the footpath. Even when she tried taking the rubbish out the evening before pickup, the woman who knew everything that went on in their cul-de-sac and even in a half a dozen streets around them was there.

  But Mrs Flynn had been unaccountably kind
the last time she’d asked after the little girl, when Anne found she had no words, no answers left, or at least none she could bear to give. She’d stared at the old lady, swallowing and swallowing everything she couldn’t let out, and Mrs Flynn had patted her arm. “You just need time, Annie-girl. Things will come clearer with time.”

  The gentleness touched her, pierced her, and annoyed her. Anne couldn’t work out how the other woman could be so certain. She didn’t see Mrs Flynn at the kerb again, though she did spot her on occasion, peeking from behind curtains, smiling a mournful smile that reminded Anne of her own great-grandmother, the last of the family whose feet had touched the old sod.

  * * *

  Anne didn’t know why she woke. There was no sound she could recall, no smell, no sense of being touched, none of the things that might make one stir, but wake she did, suddenly and in fright. Brian slept on, not even snorting when she shook him, though the cat looked haughtily at her from the end of the mattress. She strained her ears, hearing nothing, yet unable to ignore the sense that something was wrong. With a last look at her husband, she swung her legs off the bed and crept into the hall.

  The door to Jason’s old room was latched back as always, but Maddie’s, which she closed every night because it made her feel safe, hung ajar. Anne hooked a hand around the frame and peered in, eyes adjusting to the darkness. The covers were rumpled, but the only form on the mattress belonged to D-fer, his red fur almost black in the night, huffing and snuffling as he chased rabbits in his sleep.

  Swallowing to keep herself calm, Anne checked the bathroom and loo. Finding no trace, she took the stairs a little too quickly and almost tripped as she went, recovering just as she reached the bottom step. She would have headed for the kitchen to see if her child had gone for a midnight snack, but the front door was open. Standing on the threshold, scanning the darkened street, she felt a scream clawing its way up … until a flash of white caught her attention, disappearing into the shadows of the intersection, then reappearing between the solid trunks of trees lining the footpath. Part of her, the frantic part, wanted to call, to shout, to cry; the other part, the rational part, the part that had grown increasingly cold in the past three years, the past two months, said, Wait. Wait, watch, follow.

  Without shoes, wearing the pink cotton nightie with a rip at the right shoulder where the embroidered flowers had worn away, she took to the asphalt, feeling every rock, every stick, every fragment of glass from shattered windscreens and broken beer bottles that had ever littered their cul-de-sac. She stayed what she judged a safe distance, keeping sight of the flickering spectre of her daughter’s nightshirt as it meandered here and there, through one suburb and into the next, sometimes stopping in front of houses, peeping in windows, then continuing on, until the randomness seemed almost intentional and Anne pondered whether the child knew herself pursued.

  At last they came to a park, a small green space with wood fire barbecues and covered picnic pergolas. During the day, it was pretty enough, surrounded by trees, with a shallow pond in the middle where ducks managed to glide as if they were on an ocean rather than just a large puddle. At night, however, it was where drunks and drifters and dangerous men washed up, found somewhere to sleep; precisely the kind of folk Inspector Jasper Dawson had taken in for questioning more than once in the days after Madrigal’s vanishing.

  Anne’s throat tightened as she narrowed her eyes, trying to make out how many, if any, of the benches and tabletops were occupied by slumbering figures reeking of booze and body odour. It seemed the place was empty, a rare occurrence, and Anne relaxed. Her daughter was sleepwalking. There was nothing sinister in what the little girl did, just erratic dreams directing her hither and yon. Anne was being paranoid; it was time to steer Maddie home. Past experience had shown she wouldn’t wake but would follow quite happily if she was led by the hand. Anne, hiding behind the trunk of a big old ghost gum, prepared to break cover and collect her child. She hesitated.

  The clouds uncovered the moon, streaming pale silver light into the park. Madrigal approached a seat where a long, lean-looking figure lay. The little girl paused, head to one side as if considering, then carefully removed her nightshirt, folding the fabric precisely and putting it and the tiny pink undies neatly on another bench.

  She returned to the man, crouched, then leapt far higher than her mother would have given credence. Madrigal landed on the sleeper’s chest with enough force to crack ribs and send the resultant snap to where Anne waited, dizzy and alternately shivering and sweating, her knees suddenly without the strength to support her. The child’s legs slithered down to clamp her victim’s arms by his sides. An unrecognisable voice issued from the little girl, a sound that carried though she spoke low, a voice that was many voices, raw and rough and angry, as Maddie demanded, “Is it you? Is it you?!”

  All the man had to offer were curses until the child grabbed him by the jaw and held it with what must have been tremendous pressure. He simply whimpered after that. Anne could see his expression, twisted in terror. She wondered how her daughter could possibly be so transfigured.

  With no answer forthcoming, or at least none that satisfied the girl, it became obvious that the fellow had no use. Maddie tore a rag from his shirt and stuffed it into his mouth, and then the little hands with their neat pink nails changed, growing talons that tore into the flesh beneath the chin, and Anne saw blood run black. Claws were jammed into eye sockets, one after the other, plucking eyeballs, which her daughter ate with great relish. The man struggled but couldn’t move, clasped as he was between the child’s thighs. Next, she bent as if to kiss him, shook her head the way a dog shakes a rat and jerked up with a tearing noise. The man’s lips were gone, and the sound of Maddie’s chewing came to Anne far too clearly.

  Though her stomach rebelled, Anne refused to vomit. Lest the child hear. Lest the child see. She couldn’t move, couldn’t leave, had to remain. Had to witness.

  Madrigal ate everything, just as she’d been taught at home—clean your plate, baby—bones and all, flesh, organs, fluids, everything, both hard and soft, until there was nothing left. Nothing for the police to find, for the girl licked the bench clean and scuffed any dark marks in the dirt to disguise what had happened there. When her child waded into the narrow pool to wash, Anne fled, softly as she could on bruised and battered feet. Along the streets, across lawns, climbing fences so she could short-cut back to her own home.

  She left the front door open and raced upstairs, reaching the toilet and letting hot vomit pour loudly into the bowl. More followed, more acidic. She’d barely finished when she heard a scratching—of fingers, not claws!—and a small voice say, “Mum?”

  She wedged a heel against the base of the door, then threw up again. When at last she was empty, she gasped, “It’s alright, baby. I’m a bit crook. Go to bed, sweetie-heart. Go back to sleep.”

  “I love you, Mum.”

  “I love you, baby.” Anne closed her eyes, squeezed them tight, hoped to a God she didn’t believe in that her child, her monster, had been convinced.

  * * *

  She wasn’t sure how many would be needed.

  One for an adult?

  Half for a child?

  She considered searching the internet for the correct dosage but didn’t want to leave a trail. Christ knew she had a big enough supply; the bathroom cabinet was packed because Dr Marten’s automatic response to seeing her in the doorway of his office was to reach for the prescription pad. But she only wanted to make them sleep. No matter what she’d seen, the last thing on her mind was killing, though the vision of Maddie perched atop the drifter had to be forced aside, as did the looped soundtrack of chewing and tearing and muffled screams. After dinner, she crushed two pills into her husband’s hot chocolate, just to be sure, and half into her daughter’s.

  It wasn’t too much later that Brian began to drowse. Anne sent him off, saying she’d take Maddie, that he was too tired and unsteady to carry her, that he shouldn’t worry, she
would take care of everything. He didn’t even grumble.

  She sat on the couch beside their daughter, stroking the dark head in her lap, feeling the grease against her fingers, listening as her husband stumbled up the stairs, wandered heavy-footed along the landing, and finally fell with a thud onto their bed, the familiar squeak of the springs her signal. Anne shuffled away from the slight weight, then slid an arm under the little girl’s neck, another beneath her legs, and lifted the bird-boned child. So light, so light.

  Some years before, Brian had partitioned off a part of the garage, just beside the laundry, so Jason could use it as a practice studio. Its walls were soundproofed so the noise of his drumming didn’t bother the neighbours—or his parents. That’s where Anne took Maddie. The space was disused and full of dust since Jason’s musical obsession had ebbed—in considerably less time than it took Brian to build the small room. With some difficulty, Anne tied the jelly-limbed girl to an old office chair, careful with the knots, not wanting to cut off circulation, but equally certain she didn’t want whatever her daughter had become to get loose. When she was satisfied that they’d hold fast, she took a step backwards, steeled herself, and then slapped Madrigal as hard as she could.

  The seat slid across the floor on clunky casters; the little girl’s eyes opened wide rather faster than Anne expected and she saw something else there, something that was not her child. Something dark and withered, with sharp teeth and bloodshot orbs in the sockets, something that struggled against its bindings and snapped at her when she pulled it to the centre of the room.

  Anne took up position on the stray kitchen stool Jason had used to store sheet music. She hooked her feet over the pedestal of the office chair and held it in place, scrupulously remaining out of reach of the neat, snapping little teeth her daughter was trying to deploy so viciously.