Dark Cities

by Christopher Golden

  “I’ll go then,” Liam said. “What should I tell Mother?”

  His father shrugged on his coat, tied up his shirt and looked grimly at his son. “Whatever you want. It hardly matters now. She’s lost, I’m lost. So are you.” Then he walked by his son and went back inside the bar.

  After a few moments of staring at the rubble and the life that was no longer hiding within the shadows, Liam turned and followed.

  When he went inside, the crowd of men had doubled. Everyone in the neighborhood seemed to be there, with the exception of the women, of course, all of whom would be at home tending to their sons and waiting for the end.

  * * *

  His mother was still standing by the stove when he returned with the bad news, but when she failed to answer him, he realized the blackening of the bacon and eggs had spread up to her elbows.

  “I tried,” he told her through the tears. “I always try. Sometimes it’s just bigger than me and I can’t make it any better.”

  She turned to look at him and he saw the grease sizzling in her eye sockets. Her hair fell out in clumps and landed in the frying pan, where it shriveled and died. When she opened her mouth to respond, he saw that it was full of straw, and as he looked on, the tears coming freely now, she collapsed in a heap on the floor. A sheep skull skittered across the stone and bumped against the leg of his chair, making it shriek.

  Despondent at his failure, he went upstairs to his sanctuary and shut the door behind him.

  Then he withdrew his sketchpad from beneath the bed.

  His limited talents, which would not reach their full potential for years yet, perhaps ever, frustrated him as he erased and replaced and scratched and scribbled, but never got it right.

  * * *

  “Mr. Thompson, did you hear a word I said?”

  Groggily, Liam raised his head from the protective darkness of his arms. When the other children saw that he’d been sleeping, a fine thread of drool connecting his lips to his desk, they giggled nervously. Nobody would outright laugh at him. They knew his history, knew what he’d done, and that only the fact that he was so young had kept him from being stuck in a white room with rubber walls somewhere.

  Blinking away the confusion, Liam looked up at his teacher. Dressed bat-like in the professorial robes typical of teachers in Catholic boys’ schools, Mr. Wyman clucked his tongue and grabbed the sketchpad from the desk. “More of this macabre doodling? Mr. Thompson, I daresay if you put half as much effort into your language studies as you did these… these…” He gestured helplessly at the peculiar, morbid rendition of their church and the school and the myriad monsters his subconscious suggested could inhabit them, and tossed the pad aside. It hit the desk with a bang.

  “Focus, child,” the teacher said, and headed back to the top of the class.

  Bright autumn sunshine turned the windows to gold and flooded the room with light, illuminating the dust. At Wyman’s request, the other children gradually tore their attention away from Liam, from the weird kid, and returned their attention to the scrawl of French on the chalkboard.

  “Je m’appelle John,” Wyman instructed, his patrician smile aimed at every child in turn as he punctuated the air with a wizened finger as if it were a conductor’s baton. “Je m’appelle Rebecca.”

  Liam tried to return his focus to the classroom, to the fraudulent construct his mind had created to protect himself from the wrath of the gods. Even though Wyman had moved away and let him be, he knew there would be consequences. Lately he was falling asleep more often, found it almost impossible to concentrate. His grades were dropping and the few friends who didn’t hold his past against him had drifted away. He was stared at in the halls, mocked in gym, bullied in the bathroom. And then home, the most dreaded place of all, where his mother did her best to make it seem as if the divorce was not tearing her asunder. She too had quit the pretense of being a loving mother, confining him to his room with his books and his drawings. Sometimes late at night he could hear her weeping through the wall. Sometimes early in the morning he heard her talking on the phone and screaming about her “loser husband” and that “musician whore he shacked up with.”

  None of it meant anything to Liam. He was safe in his sanctuary where everything was under his control. He could exist between these two worlds, but not forever. Sooner or later he would have to find a way to tie them together so some kind of balance could be restored.

  He glanced out the window through the glorious fraudulent day and saw the church on the horizon. Pristine, uncorrupted, normal. Dead leaves fell silently through the amber haze as the trees began to reveal their true selves. The city was like a held breath. Soon it would be time again to fill the scarecrows.

  “Mr. Thompson?”

  He snapped to attention and looked at Mr. Wyman, with his sweeping gray hair and rosy cheeks. “Yes, sir?”

  “Eyes up here, please.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Comment allez vous?”

  “Je m’appelle Liam.”

  “Très bon.” He began to pace, his focus moving to another child. “Alex? Comment t’allez vous?”

  Liam went back to pretending, but not before checking the ceiling behind him where in the corner nearest the door, the mold was starting to spread.

  MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

  by

  SHERRILYN KENYON

  “Ding dong, the bitch is dead.”

  Elliott Lawson looked up from her email to laugh at her assistant Lesley Dane. “And there is much rejoicing.”

  Dressed in a pink sweater and floral skirt, Lesley flounced around Elliott’s tiny office with a wide smile before she added yet another bulging manuscript to the top of the mountain of manuscripts in Elliott’s inbox. Was it just her or did that thing grow higher by the heartbeat? It was like some bad horror movie.

  The Stack That Wouldn’t Die.

  “Just think,” Lesley continued, “no more emails with her calling us names and complaining about everything from title to synopsis to… you know, everything.”

  That was the upside.

  The downside? “And no more selling three million copies the opening day either.” While Helga East had been the biggest pain in the ass to ever write a book, her thrillers had set so many records for sales that her unexpected death left a huge hole in their publishing program. One that would take twenty or more authors to fill.

  Elliott’s stomach cramped at that reality and at the fact that she’d just lost her star pony in the publishing race. “What are we going to do?”

  “We’ll build another blockbuster.”

  She scoffed at her assistant. “You say that like it’s an easy thing. Trust me, if it was, every book we published would be one.” And that didn’t happen by a longshot. They didn’t even break even on ninety percent of them.

  “Yeah, but still the bitch is dead.”

  It was probably wrong to be happy about that, but like Lesley, she couldn’t help feeling a little relief. Helga had been a handful.

  Oh who was she fooling? Helga had been the biggest bitch on the planet. A chronic thorn who had given Elliott two ulcers and a permanent migraine for four solid months around the release of any of Helga’s books. In fact, Helga had been screaming at her over the phone when she’d had a heart attack and keeled over. It was creepy really. One second she’d been calling Elliott’s intelligence and parentage into question and the next…

  Dead.

  Life was so fragile and tragedies like this rammed that home.

  Lesley’s phone rang. She left to answer it while Elliott stared out her tiny window at the red brick building next door where another drone like her worked a sixty-hours-a-week job at the bank. She didn’t know his name and yet she knew a lot about him. He brought his lunch to work, preferred a brown tweed jacket, and he tugged at his hair whenever he was frustrated. It made her wonder what unconscious habits she had that he’d pegged about her. They’d never waved or acknowledged each other in any way, yet she could see
enough personal details about him that she’d know him anywhere.

  Not wanting to think about that depressing fact, she returned her attention to the cover proofs piled in front of her. One was for Helga’s next book—the one she’d been working on when she’d died.

  Her phone dinged, letting her know she had a new email.

  Sighing, she picked up her phone and looked at it.

  For a full minute she couldn’t breathe as she saw the last name she’d ever expected to see again.

  Helga East.

  Relax. It’s just an old email that was forwarded by someone else or one that’d gotten lost in cyberspace for a couple of days. No need to panic or be concerned in the least. It was nothing.

  Still, her stomach habitually knotted as she opened it.

  Tell me honestly, Elliott, does it hurt to be that stupid? Really? What part of that heinous, godawful cover did you think I’d approve of? I hate green. How many times do we have to have this argument? Get that bimbo off the cover and take that stupid font and tell creative to stick it on the cover of someone too moronic to know better.

  H.

  PS the title, Nymphos Abroad, is disgusting, demeaning and insulting. Change it or I’ll have another talk with your boss about how incompetent you are.

  She sucked her breath in sharply as she realized the email pertained to the cover on her desk.

  A cover Helga had never seen. It’d only arrived that morning. Two days after Helga’s funeral.

  Yeah, there was no way it was Helga. Anger whipped through her as she hit reply to the email. “Okay, Les, stop messing with me. I’m not in the mood.”

  A second later, a response came back.

  Les? Are you on drugs? Surely you can’t afford them on your measly salary. I’ve seen the cheap shoes you wear and that sorry excuse for a designer handbag that you think no one will know you bought in Times Square for five dollars. Now quit stalling, stop reading your email and call down to art and get me a cover worthy of my status.

  She looked out her door to see Lesley on the phone, her back to her computer. Definitely not her pretending to be Helga.

  But someone was. And they were doing a good job of it, too. They sounded just like her.

  Who is this? she typed.

  Helga, you nincompoop. Who did you think it was? Your mother? I swear, is there no one up there with a single brain cell in their head?

  It couldn’t be. Yet the return address in the header was Helga’s. It was an email addy she knew all too well. Numberonewriter@heast.com.

  Maybe one of Helga’s heirs was messing with her. But why would they do such a thing? Surely they wouldn’t be as cruel as Helga had been?

  Then again, maybe it was genetic. Meanness like Helga’s had seemed to be hardwired into her DNA. Venomous cruelty was what the lonely old woman had lived and breathed.

  Her heirs wouldn’t be able to see that cover. They’d have no way of knowing what was on it.

  There was that. No one outside of their publishing house had seen it.

  Another email appeared.

  Why are you still sitting at your desk, staring into space? I told you what to do. Get me a decent cover, you twit.

  A chill went down her spine. One so deep that she actually jumped when her cell phone went off, signaling her that she had a new voice mail message. Weird, she hadn’t heard it ring.

  Reaching down, she pulled it up and accessed her box.

  “I will not stand for that tawdry, disgusting cover. Do you hear me, Elliott? I want it gone, right now. Hit delete.”

  Her heart pounded at a voice she’d know anywhere.

  Helga.

  “You all right?”

  She looked up at Lesley who was staring at her from the doorway. “I… I…” Pulling the phone down, she hit the four button to make it repeat. “Tell me what you hear?”

  Lesley put it up to her ear. After a few seconds, she scowled. “Man, I hate those pocket dials where all you get is background noise. What kind of imbecile doesn’t lock their phone?” She handed it back.

  Baffled, Elliott replayed it and held it up to her ear to listen. It was still Helga, plain as the desk in front of her. “It’s not a butt dial. Can’t you hear her?” She held it back out to Lesley.

  Again, Lesley listened. “There’s no voice, El. Just a lot of background sounds like trucks on the highway or something, and someone laughing. You okay?”

  Apparently not. How could they listen to the same thing and yet hear such radically different messages?

  She hung up her phone and gave Leslie a forced smile. “Fine. Stressed. Tired.”

  Crazy…

  Clearing her throat, she put the phone on her desk. “Did you need something?”

  “Just reminding you about the marketing meeting in five minutes.”

  “Thanks.” Elliott gathered her notes for the meeting while she tried her best not to think about the phone call and emails from a writer who was dead. It wasn’t Helga. Some sick psycho was messing with her head.

  Or it was a friend with a sorry excuse for a sense of humor.

  Yeah, that would be her luck.

  It’s not funny, folks. But the one thing she knew from being an editor was that humor was subjective. How many times had Helga written something that she’d rolled her eyes over only to have the billions of readers out there find it hysterical?

  Maybe I’m being Punk’d.

  Could happen… If only she was lucky enough for some hot celeb to pop out of a closet.

  But there was no hot cheese in the meeting. Only mind-numbing details about books they’d already gone over a million times that left her attention free to contemplate who was being highly cruel and unusual to her.

  Maybe it’s someone in this meeting.

  She looked around her coworkers, most of whom appeared as stressed out and bored as she was. No, they were too involved with their own lives to care about harassing her.

  Why is this meeting taking so long?

  It was hellacious.

  Subversively, she glanced down at her watch and did a double take. Was it just her or was the second hand making a thirty-second pause between each tick?

  By the time the meeting was out, she felt like she’d been stretched on the rack. Oh good Lord, why did they have to have these time-sucking wastes all the time? What Torquemada SOB thought this was a good idea?

  But at least it was finally over. She breathed a sigh in relief as she gathered her things and headed back to her personal space.

  The moment she was back in her office, she checked her email. There were ninety, n-i-n-e-t-y, messages from her wannabe Helga stalker.

  She deleted them without reading.

  Trying to put it out of her mind, she turned around in her chair to look at her “friend” in the other building. For once his office was dark. How strange. He never left early. But her attention was quickly drawn to something that was being reflected in the darkness of her glass. Something someone had attached to her cork bulletin board that she’d hung next to her door.

  With a gasp, she turned around to see if her mind was playing tricks.

  It wasn’t.

  Her heart in her throat, she got up and went to it. As she reached for it, her hand shook.

  Someone had taken the mechanical printout of Helga’s cover and pinned it with a blood-red tack to the board. It had nasty comments written all over it with a black magic marker. Worse? The handwriting looked just like Helga’s.

  Terror filled her as she ripped it down, then made her way to Lesley’s desk. Lesley paused mid stroke on the keyboard to look up at her.

  “Who did you let into my office while I was at the meeting?”

  “No one.”

  “Someone went in there.” She held the marked-up printout toward Lesley.

  She frowned. “Why are you showing me that?”

  “I want you to tell me who wrote on it.”

  Her scowl deepened. “You did, Elliott.”

  What?
She snatched it back and turned it over.

  All of Helga’s writing was gone from it. Now the only pen marks were where someone had approved the art by placing Elliott’s initials in the margins. “I didn’t do this.”

  Lesley looked at it carefully. “It’s your handwriting, hon. Believe me, I know.”

  But Elliott hadn’t written on it. Not even a little bit.

  How was this possible? How?

  Her head started throbbing. Without another word, she returned to her office and sat down to stare at the mechanical of the cover sans the nastiness.

  “I’m losing my mind.” She had to be. There was no other explanation for what was going on.

  The skin on the back of her neck tingled as if someone was watching her. She turned around in her chair to inspect her office.

  She was alone.

  Still the feeling persisted. And even more concerning was the prickly sensation that something wasn’t right.

  I’m being haunted…

  Yeah, that’s what it felt like. That uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Something evil was in the room with her. It was all but breathing down her neck.

  Panicked, she shot back to Lesley’s desk. She needed to feel connected to someone alive.

  Lesley gave her an arch stare. “You’re pale. Is something wrong?”

  If not for the fear of Lesley thinking her insane, she’d confide in her. But no one needed to know her suspicion. “Doing research for a book on my desk. You know anything about the paranormal?”

  “Not really, but…”

  “What?”

  “I have an exorcist on speed dial.”

  Elliott burst into nervous laughter. Until she realized Lesley wasn’t joking. “You’re serious?”

  “Absolutely. My best friend in the world is an exorcist and demonologist.”

  “Who in the world has a friend who’s an exorcist?”