Best New Horror 29

by Stephen Jones

  But just as intergalactic elements influenced the birth and development of our sun and planets, so too has Earth’s dominant species played a part in the development of other forms of life.

  Between 50% and 80% of all life on Earth exists in the ocean, but of the 1.5 million species that are known, there are potentially 50 million as yet undiscovered.

  More statistics followed, with detailed information on mankind’s impact on the planet’s ecosystems, the melting of the ice caps and the rising sea levels. She speculated about the existence of distant planets with no land masses at all, where aquatic life could flourish.

  He began to skim, but he was brought up short by the word “sea-monkeys”. After a moment’s confusion, he saw she was describing the process by which the little brine shrimp were awakened from their dormant, desiccated state by adding “instant life eggs” to their environment. He couldn’t help but smile at the memory of the sea-monkey tank they had kept when they were little. It was probably many kids’ introduction to the concept of false advertising.

  But his smile vanished as Lea began describing her own similar process of reviving life forms from a cryptobiotic state.

  The combination of global warming and pollution has created a reaction chamber for these organisms, most of which have been inactive for billions of years. Now many more are beginning to awaken.

  As he read on, it became clear that she wasn’t talking about the fossilised remains of prehistoric species; she was talking about life that had come from elsewhere in the universe, organisms trapped inside the rocks and space dust that had formed the solar system. They had survived the journey and the incomprehensibly long sleep, and now mankind’s contamination of the planet was actually aiding in their re-birth.

  One phrase bothered him especially: “most of which have been inactive.” Was she seriously suggesting that aliens had been living among us for aeons?

  “Oh, Lea,” he said softly.

  As it went on, the paper began to lose its objectivity, and its way. He caught the word “mermaid” at one point, but couldn’t find the context for it. Several times she referred to the ocean as though it was alive itself and consciously nurturing both the creatures and the toxins inside it. There was her familiar theme about replacing what had been taken from the water so that it could transform. She talked as though the ocean itself wanted to transform, to drown the world. To reclaim it.

  He saw a list of dates and numbers, with vague descriptions of the things he had seen flitting in the container. Something about the process of stimulating them had seemed oddly familiar to him at the time, but he hadn’t made the connection with sea-monkeys. He knew almost nothing about the science behind this stuff, but if there were some 50 million unknown species in the ocean, then surely it made more sense that Lea had discovered one of those rather than something that travelled here from the far distant stars. Something that could be awakened just like those little brine shrimp.

  Other odd phrases caught his eye as he continued to scroll through.

  Eutrophication of the water triggered the Late Devonian mass extinc-tion, wiping out three-quarters of all life on Earth. Now, as a result of the levels of pollution, a similar over-abundance of nutrients in the water is causing other species to thrive. One creature’s poison is another’s sustenance. And we are their “instant life eggs”. As the sea levels rise, so will they.

  It was all beginning to sound sinister and apocalyptic. And his heart twisted as he realised it went on like that, page after page of escalating madness. Evan couldn’t take any more. He closed the laptop gently, and rested his hand on its warm surface before turning away, only to flinch at the sight of the room before him.

  It was a shambles. The open window had allowed both rain and seawater to saturate the wall beneath it. Books and papers lay scattered across every surface, spilling onto the floor. Figurines had been blown off the shelves by the wind and never put away.

  The bed was unmade, the sheet thrown back. And what he saw there made his skin crawl. It was full of sand. Not just a few grains either. She must have scooped up buckets of it and dumped it in her bed. Tears pricked his eyes and he turned to go, but a flicker of movement made him stop.

  He didn’t want to look, but he forced himself to move closer to the bed. There was something moving in the sand. A chill went through him as he realised not just what he was seeing, but what he had been hearing.

  These were larger than the ones she had woken for him, and entirely translucent. She had mentioned crabs and sea-spiders in her paper, and they resembled both as they clambered through the wasteland where she slept. Each was about the size of his hand, with a soft, segmented body and rounded flaps down each side that looked more suited to swimming than crawling on land. Two long spines extended backwards from the head, and the creatures tracked his movement as he inched closer to the bed. As one, they scuttled towards the edge of the mattress, stretching their antennae towards him.

  Outside, the storm sounded like a woman screaming.

  He’d seen enough. He rubbed away the prickling sensation on the back of his neck, steeling himself as he returned to the kitchen.

  Lea was standing over the container as if she’d never moved, still watching in fascination as the little creatures swam back and forth in patterns that she probably believed were attempts to communicate.

  “Come on,” he said, taking her gently by the arm. “We have to go.”

  She blinked in surprise. “What do you mean? You just got here. I thought we were going to have lunch.”

  He silently blessed her for providing the means to a perfect lie. “Exactly. I haven’t eaten anything all day and I’m starved.”

  She looked puzzled as he took out his car keys. “But Casa Mare is so close. We can walk—”

  “It’s raining, silly. Can’t you hear it?”

  She looked up and he saw her register the sound. She smiled, but it was a pale imitation of the one she’d shown earlier, when he’d first arrived. That seemed like years ago.

  He slipped his sandals on in the doorway. “It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t mind driving. Besides, I wanted to go to the Strand anyway.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  It was all he could do not to wilt with relief at her trusting compliance. As he led her down the stairs, through the rain and into the car, he felt like the villain in some old movie, luring the wide-eyed heroine to the asylum. Well, she could curse his tactics later, but there was no question that he had to get her away from this place. Away from the house, the water, the island. Most of all away from those…things.

  They were both drenched by the time they were settled in the car. Lea had thrown a flimsy shirt over her bikini-top, but she didn’t even seem to notice that she was still barefoot. Evan said nothing. He wasn’t even sure where to take her. There was probably a hospital in Galveston, but he didn’t know where it was and, in any case, he wanted her off the island.

  The sky had darkened, and the car rocked from side to side as the wind threw waves of rain against it. This was more than just a monsoon. There hadn’t been any weather warnings on the radio as he was driving over. But then, as always, he had been preoccupied.

  He retraced the route he had taken to get to her house, hoping she was too out of it to notice he wasn’t going in the direction of the Strand. The windshield wipers were having a hard time keeping up with the deluge, and when he glanced down a side street he saw white-capped waves leaping in the Gulf. Surely it was some trick of the light that made them look as high as the houses.

  Lea didn’t say a word, and her silence was even more disturbing than her fervent rambling. He’d expected her to freak out when she realised he was lying about where he was taking her. Instead, she was simply gazing out the passenger window. She was watching the same violent storm he was, but nothing about it seemed to faze her.

  Evan was terrified. It was one thing to hold the car steady driving through gale-force winds on a road on the island, quite another to
have to make it across the causeway in such conditions.

  It’s only two miles, he reminded himself. That was true, but reaching the mainland wasn’t going to make the storm magically abate. Once there, he’d still have the problem of what to do with his sister.

  One thing at a time.

  When the causeway finally came into view, he felt light-headed. But he put his foot down and barrelled ahead, refusing to look at anything but the line of road in front of him. He couldn’t maintain the speed for long, as the route was clogged with slow-moving traffic. He wanted to scream with frustration as he was forced to slow to a crawl.

  The palm trees on either side were whipping back and forth, bent double in the fury of the storm, ready to snap like matchsticks any second. Then they were past them, past the salt marsh, and out over the open water. The bay rippled around and beneath the causeway like a black carpet.

  “The boat.”

  Lea’s voice was so soft he wasn’t sure she had even spoken.

  “What boat?”

  He risked a glance at her and saw she was looking off to his left. As though exploiting his lapse in attention, the car swerved a little, pushed by a powerful gust of wind. He clutched the steering wheel and regained control, holding it steady as they edged further out onto the causeway.

  “The sunken boat. It’s gone.”

  Her words chilled him to the core. He desperately wished he could just jam his foot down on the accelerator, push the car up to 100 and rocket past all the other vehicles. Being trapped in this snail’s pace with them was maddening. He had to outrun the storm. He also couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t just the storm that was chasing them.

  He was approaching the top of the span, the point he hated the most. Thunderheads loomed over the bay and the water appeared to be boiling. Huge curtains of rain swept across the lines of cars. Lightning carved a jagged path through the black clouds, and a deafening crack of thunder followed instantly.

  The noise made Lea jump and she suddenly sat up, her eyes wide as she stared around, seeming to realise for the first time where they were. “Evan? What are you doing?”

  His fingers contracted, clutching the steering wheel tightly as he tried to will the traffic to move, to drive, to get off the causeway. He tried to make himself smile for her sake. “I’m taking you to my place,” he said. “We’ll be safe there.”

  She stared at him for a moment, her expression fearful. “You can’t take me away from here. The sea won’t let you. It’s part of me now.”

  He shook his head, wishing he could tune out her words. The traffic had come to a standstill at the crest of the hill, and the position gave him a view he would rather not have had. Horns blared as people became frantic, but they were trapped just like Evan was.

  Lea continued, her voice calm, her eyes shining with unnatural intensity. “I gave myself to the water. I’ve been drinking it. And they’ve been drinking me.”

  Her words made him feel sick. The rain had become hail, battering the windshield like pebbles. It was all he could do to stay calm as dark waves rose below the causeway, surging high enough to send spray up onto the road. Stranded fish flopped on the concrete.

  “Go, go, go,” he urged the other drivers. “Please move!”

  “It won’t let you leave,” Lea said again.

  “Well, I’m damn well going to try!” he shot back.

  But there was no way out of the gridlock. Occasionally he was able to creep forwards a few inches, but there was clearly some obstacle at the far end. Around him he saw people start to panic, abandoning their cars and running, stranding everyone else behind the roadblock of deserted vehicles. A man and woman pulled their two small children out of the Volkswagen stalled beside him and fled down the causeway.

  Another bolt of lightning ripped the sky apart with an explosion that made Evan cover his ears. He watched in helpless horror as the leaping waves gained strength, until one massive surge crashed over the causeway and swept the family over the side. His stomach plunged.

  Above them the clouds had massed together, fusing into an enormous storm-wall, sharply pointed at one end. Evan knew the danger signs. Anyone who’d grown up here would recognise that formation. They had no choice but to run.

  “Come on, Lea, we have to get out of here before—”

  But it was too late. The tornado dropped out of the cloud like a spike. It slammed straight down onto the railway, wrenching apart the girders of the drawbridge and sending them flying in all directions. The impact was deafening, almost drowning out the shrieking of the wind. It felt like an earthquake, and cracks began scurrying across the causeway. The road buckled, undulating impossibly, the motion sending stalled cars sliding and slamming into one another. Evan tried not to watch as people were trapped between them.

  The waves didn’t discriminate. They took both people and vehicles, pulling them off the road and into the watery hell below. For a split-second he remembered his escape plan and had to bite back a deranged laugh at the thought of calmly winding down the window and swimming free of the maelstrom.

  The tornado coiled and twisted, and at first it seemed to be dancing away from the causeway. Then, as though changing its mind, it paused. And turned.

  That was all the motivation Evan needed. He shouldered the door open against the pressure of the wind and grabbed Lea’s hands, dragging her out of the car. The strength of the wind was unbelievable. It was like trying to push through a brick wall.

  Lea shouted something, but he couldn’t hear her over the noise of the storm. He’d always been told that a tornado sounded like a freight train. And it did. It was the train from his nightmare, the one that jumped the track and smashed into the causeway.

  Waves leapt and crashed around them as Evan tried to run, yanking at Lea to get her to move. But she refused to go. He grabbed her in desperation and shook her, screaming her name. But she only gazed at him impassively, the picture of calm acceptance. He heard her next words clearly, and he had to wonder if she had even spoken aloud at all.

  “If you take something from the ocean, it will take something from you.”

  His heart sank as he realised she was referring to herself. He made a last attempt to pull her along the road, but she seemed to have the weight of the whole island behind her. He felt her hand slip from his, and before he could grab her again, a column of water rose from the vortex at the base of the tornado. It climbed higher and higher, a boiling wall of liquid darkness, until it reached the height of the causeway before arching and falling, raining down on Lea like a giant hand.

  Evan screamed as Lea vanished from sight and the force of the splash slammed him into the crash barrier. He scrambled to his feet and ran to the side, clinging to the guard rail as he looked down into the waves. But Lea was gone. There was nothing down there but churning black water.

  He was too overwhelmed to notice at first, but the wind had died down. The tornado had thinned to a dancing string and was only stirring up the smallest waves.

  Evan stared down into the sea, searching in desperation for any sign of Lea. As the choppy surface smoothed into a flat grey plane, a swirl of terrible colour moved in the darkness below. Something was taking shape. It had a strange, unnatural gleam, like a spill of oil. It grew in size as it rose towards the surface, and he thought he saw the flick of a large tail.

  Evan stood frozen at the edge of the ruined causeway, trembling. He remembered the word he’d seen in her paper that he couldn’t find a context for. Now he thought he understood. If flakes of Lea’s dried blood had revived those alien creatures, what might her whole body awaken when fed to the poisoned ocean? What might she become herself?

  He continued to watch as the humanoid shape darted beneath the surface, and something in its oily rainbow sheen felt like a message. But what it might NECRbe saying, he couldn’t begin to guess.

  NECROLOGY

  STEPHEN JONES AND KIM NEWMAN

  DEPRESSINGLY, IT WAS another record year for significant l
osses in the genre. Along with a number of major authors and artists, we also saw the passing of no less than four cast members from the recent revival of TV’s Twin Peaks, three memorable Hammer heroines, two great American horror directors, a pair of Hollywood Tess Trueharts, an iconic secret agent with a license to kill, and far too many good friends and colleagues…

  AUTHORS/ARTISTS/COMPOSERS

  American scriptwriter and TV producer Alan M. Surgal died on January 3, aged 100. His few credits include Arthur Penn’s surreal Mickey One (1965) and ‘The Canterville Ghost’ episode of Robert Montgomery Presents, starring Cecil Parker.

  British fanzine editor Peter Weston, who co-founded the Birmingham Science Fiction Group in 1971, died of complications from cancer on January 5, aged 73. From 1963-73 he published the Hugo Award-nominated periodical Zenith (aka Speculation), and later produced two issues of Prolapse before the magazine went on hiatus for twenty-three years and returned in 2006, changing its title to Relapse three years later. In the eary 1970s Weston helped launch Novacon and organised three Speculation Conferences. He chaired Seacon ’79, the 1979 World Science Fiction Convention in Brighton, and was Fan Guest of Honor at Noreason, the 2004 Worldcon in Boston. He also edited three volumes of the Andromeda SF anthology series in the 1970s, and his 2004 memoir was titled Stars in My Eyes: My Adventures in British Fandom.

  American light fantasy and religious artist James Christensen died after a long battle with cancer on January 8, aged 74. A painter and sculptor whose art appeared on many SF and fantasy books from the 1970s onwards, some of his highly-detailed work was collected in A Journey of the Imagination: The Art of James Christensen, co-written with Renwick St. James. The pair also collaborated with Alan Dean Foster on the 1996 children’s fantasy Voyage of the Basset and the annotated collection of Mother Goose verse, Rhymes & Reasons, published the following year. A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where he served as a bishop, Christensen won the Chesley Award three times.