The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 17

by Stephen Jones

  That, and why her new friends had decided she was not one of them after all.

  One night, cold and hungry and numb, she passed Raz on the street.

  “Sex-y Sa-die.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “C’mon, Sadie-girl. Let me buy you a hot meal. A nice hot meal, and then maybe you and me can party, after. You like to party, don’t you, Sadie-girl? Sexy Sadie. Aren’t you hungry yet?”

  “Not enough,” she said, and he let her pass.

  But, “You will be,” the pimp said to her back, and she went on sick with the realization that it might, it just might be true.

  Then Friday night came around again, the month creeping farther into the hunting season, and because she couldn’t help herself, she went to Mullein’s Park. No Raz in the underpass this time, just a couple of winos sharing a bottle.

  “Nice night,” one said as she passed. “Nice night to stay in out of the rain.”

  His voice reverberated in the tunnel. Like his own echo, he mumbled the phrase over again, as if he couldn’t figure out how it worked. In out of the rain. In out of the rain. Sadie climbed the stairs to the sharp bonfire smell of the park, the treed darkness run through by the lighted paths, and felt the week’s misery cut loose by hope. Maybe . . . Maybe . . .

  Rayne, with a whoop, grabbed her in a hug, big-handed Leo ruffled her hair, and even cool Tom was grinning. She was home free.

  Only the second time, and already it had the feeling of a ritual: the bath, the wine, the clothes.

  This time Rayne was a spacewoman in white zipper boots and a skin-slick jumpsuit of green. She wet her hands in Sadie’s bath water and smoothed back her pale hair, becoming sleek and cold, while Sadie, already feeling the wine, slithered into silk pantaloons and flowing robe and became a Persian prince. Like an older sister, Rayne pulled the tangles out of her hair and wrapped it up in a black fringed scarf. Ready, they stood for a moment at the mirror, Rayne a long cool pillar at Sadie’s back.

  Sadie, stupid with pleasure, said, “I thought you’d forgotten about me.”

  Rayne ducked to prop her chin on Sadie’s shoulder. Now they were two faces on one body. “Nope.”

  “I never saw you all week.”

  “Places to go, people to see.” Rayne tipped her head against Sadie’s. “You shouldn’t have worried, Sadie-girl. Didn’t we say you were ours?”

  Sadie flinched at the echo of Raz.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just don’t call me that. Okay?”

  Rayne looked in her eyes, reflection-wise. “Somebody giving you a hard time?”

  Sadie shrugged, making Rayne’s head nod. Rayne wrapped her arms around her.

  “Don’t worry. We take good care of our own.”

  She smiled, and Sadie smiled back, but she was thinking, Like you did all this week?

  But the hug felt good.

  Leo was a medieval alchemist with a skull cap and spangled robe. Tom was a British huntsman, red coat, tall boots, riding crop and all. Spacewoman, magician, huntsman and prince, they stood at the top of the stairs and watched as people came through the glass-panelled door, into the dark hall and the lighted room beyond.

  “They all have their own masks,” Sadie said.

  Tom put a heavy hand on her shoulder. “It’s only special guests who are granted access to Mr Nero’s private collection.”

  A warm buzz of excitement grew in Sadie’s belly, fed by the touch, by the pleasure of watching unseen from above, by the anticipation of the revels to come. She was glad, too, to finally know their host’s name.

  “Nero,” she said. “Wasn’t he an emperor or something?”

  They all laughed.

  “Probably,” Tom said.

  “Or something,” Rayne said.

  “The question is,” Leo murmured, “what is he now?”

  Sadie turned to look at him and saw a ghost at his back. She yelped, jumped a little. Tom’s hand held her fast. The ghost stepped forward and she saw it was their host, Mr Nero all in white, his mask of clinging feathers white as swans save for the corners of his mouth that were splashed with macaw scarlet. Only his hair and his eyes were still black.

  He bowed. “My friends. Another night, another dance.” He looked at Sadie and held out his hands. “And you have come back again.”

  Guided by the pressure of Tom’s grip, she stepped forward and put her hands in Mr Nero’s. Slender and strong, they closed about her fingers. His eyes were bright as a bird’s. “Sadie, lovely Sadie. Welcome.”

  “Thank you,” she said, breathless.

  He did not let go. “I hope this means you enjoyed yourself a sennight ago?”

  “Last week,” Tom murmured in her ear.

  “Yes, thank you. It was. . . It was. . .”

  “Yes.” Mr Nero squeezed her hands, his teeth bright in his smile . . . and her blood seemed to ebb and draw strangely through her veins . . . and then everyone was laughing, and he let her go. “Yes,” he said, “it always is.”

  The mask touched her face damply, like a kiss.

  Imp-Sadie dances with the red-coated hunter who wears the fox’s face, with the magician who has a bat’s visage, with the tall all-in-white birdman. The spacewoman with the fractured-glass ice-mask eludes her.

  “Have you seen Rayne?” she asks the satyr while his hands burrow like moles beneath her robe.

  “I’m looking for Rayne,” she tells the Egyptian slave who bows his jackal head against her thigh.

  “Do you know Rayne?” she asks the King’s Fool, who capers and howls, “Not well enough to come out from in!”

  Come out from in. In out of the rain. Rayne? It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring . . .

  There is a game. Everyone is looking, everyone has a clue to give, no one knows the object of the search. There is much hilarity. The imp finds a button lost from someone’s costume and yells, she has the prize! Then spins off and away through the crowd leaving a tangle of would-be captors behind her. Hide it again, hide it again! Shivering with silent laughter, the imp slips through a door into a darkened hall and is hunting out a corner when she comes upon the fox-faced hunter and the alchemist-bat conferring beneath the stairs.

  The bat says, “It’s wrong.”

  The fox says, “I agree that if she’s going to go through with it, she should at least be here.”

  The bat says, “You know what I mean. The whole thing is wrong.”

  The fox says, “And losing Rayne would be right? The girl is—”

  “Right as rain!” the imp cries. “Come on, you guys, shouldn’t we be dancing?”

  So the white-bird man calls for music, and so the musicians play.

  A princely imp goes dancing, she-prince, Persian djinn, fire-dervish of the Eastern sands. Dancing, dancing, the Eastern night hot as blazes and lit by lampshade stars. Her court is a wild place, rowdy randy and raucous, and a white bird hangs over all, black eyes bright with reflected glory. Greedy white bird with a red beak wet with the juice of the Persian fruits, berries plucked from burning coals. Dancing, dancing, huntsman-fox and squeaking bat and ice-cool spacewoman who melts in the heat of the star-lamps, dancing, dancing, caught in the whirl spun by the dervish-prince and the white bird’s fanning wings, dancing, dancing, until the fever races them out of doors into the cold, the dark, the giddy giddy night where the fox blows his horn and the sweet bat sings and the ice-woman runs into rain and the princely imp wins the game, a button, a bottle, a bear!

  And pours them all a glass of the red, of the red, of the blood-red wine.

  With the end of the month and the beginning of winter in sight, Sadie was not willing to be ignored.

  She waited two days, three days, though not patiently. She was so restless in the daytime she could not settle on any corner but walked and walked, listening for three bright voices and gleaning no money at all. Night time, too hungry to sleep, she haunted lit sidewalks, ignored by the roaming police cars (no need to hide from the indiffer
ent) and almost too angry to hide from the scavengers who preyed on the abandoned.

  Almost.

  Though angry was perhaps the wrong word. Wounded? Yes, but fiercely so. Everything was fierce, her hunger, her hurt, even her fear. Perhaps the imp inside her, twice released, was less content to hide beneath her weekday face. Finally, midweek, she gave up the pretence of survival and on the Wednesday dusk dropped down to the tunnel to Mullein’s Park.

  There was a crowd in the sodium-lit underpass. A conclave of bums. Like dead leaves washed into the gutter by rain, the homeless littered both of the tunnel’s curved walls, leaving a narrow alley down the middle. Some stood, some sprawled, most hunkered down. The stink was of old sweat and older piss, of wood smoke and booze, and the sound was a growl of low voices and ruined lungs.

  The weird thing was, it wasn’t even raining.

  Sadie walked by the bleary, crazed, grieving eyes, startled a little way out of her mission, though not much afraid. These men and women were far more likely to be victims than perpetrators – more likely even than she was. Towards the park end, one man in a burn-scarred army coat raised a bottle to her in a toast and said, “Nice night.”

  “Nice night to be in out of the rain,” she said impishly.

  He peered at her, then slowly pulled his bottle close to his chest, eyes widening with – what? – shock, fear – recognition – something that shocked Sadie in her turn.

  Taking this exchange for encouragement, the woman crouched beside him held out a cupped palm. “Pardon me, ma’am—”

  But the man in the burned coat pulled at her arm and whispered in her ear, and she clasped both hands beneath her chin, staring at Sadie with the same wide look.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. . .” echoing down the tunnel as Sadie hurried to the stairs and climbed into the park.

  Not her, the crazy man in the burned coat had said, his voice magnified by the steel walls. She’s one of the hungry ones.

  The sun had shone for a while that afternoon, and now the evening sky was deep and blue above the waking streetlights, the air sharp with the coming frost. People lingered, ordinary folks taking advantage of the fine weather and the unusual absence of beggars. Sadie got a few wary looks (street kid, watch your purse), but nothing to match the tunnel people’s eyes. She’s one of the hungry ones. An after-work jogger pounded along the path, his sweatshirt going from grey to blue to grey again as he passed beneath a lamp, and Sadie felt a surge of dizziness.

  The runner goes from grey to blue to grey.

  from shadow to man back to shadow

  Not her. She’s one of the hungry ones.

  beard and weathered skin, eyes wet with fear

  a button, a bottle, a bear!

  Flicker, flicker, like flames catching a draft, just enough seen to make up a dream. What did it mean?

  the blood-red wine

  Sadie bent double on the path and retched. Too long since she’d eaten, too long since she’d slept. The park was darker now, and emptier. When she spat out the taste of bile and straightened, no one was watching. There was no one near enough to watch. She wiped her mouth, her sweating face. Ran her tongue over her scummy teeth.

  She’s one of the—

  She shook her head, chasing out the lunatic’s words and the dizzy delirium they had conjured. Just a crazy bum. Just a street kid too long without food. Too long without friends. She followed the path to a water fountain and drank, filling her belly with a water ballast to keep her steady. Then paced back to where she’d met them before, under the street lamp, gravel gritting under her feet, thread of breeze pattering through the last of the leaves. The park was hemmed in by traffic, yet somehow the trees’ bare limbs invoked a kind of silence, a listening quiet, an expectant hush. No peace, though, no tranquillity. Sadie paced the diameter of the circle of light. Traced the circumference. Measured out the geometry of waiting and found it added up to nothing. Nothing.

  The imp was jumping inside her skin.

  Brisk and sure, as if she knew what she were doing, she left the park. Not through the underpass. Across the street on the other side.

  Heading for Mr Nero’s house.

  There were children everywhere. Innocent witches, monsters, heroes, ghosts, small and colourful, with treasure sacks in their hands. Party guests, Sadie thought, and then she shivered with hot and cold: not children, not in Mr Nero’s house. She was confused, she hadn’t noticed, or had forgotten, what day it was. What night it was. She tried to remember the taste of chocolate melting on her tongue, and could only conjure the dusky warmth of wine, the scent of honey candles and vanilla foam, sweeter than candy, warmer than the pumpkin lanterns grinning at her from every step. A guardian parent herded his clutch of movie stars and thieves around her, protective as a sheepdog in wolf country, and she realized she was standing in the middle of the sidewalk. Before her, the gate, the narrow walk, the door with the stained glass panel faintly lighted from within. She looked away from the father-shepherd’s eyes and headed for the stairs.

  Knock? Ring the bell? There was no bell that she could see. Her fist hovered over the half-visible face of the creature in the glass, then touched, knuckle to cool, too softly to make a noise. She stepped close and pressed her ear to the panel. The glass seemed to hum, but to traffic or music or voices inside? Children were shouting up and down the street. Sadie couldn’t tell. Her hand closed around the doorknob. She let it turn. The door was open, and she was in.

  The party, if there was to be a party tonight (but of course there was) had not started yet.

  Halfway up the stairs, she heard voices and paused. Her heart was beating hard, and yet the familiar dark, the scent of beeswax and wine, reassured her. She was even strangely elated. This was not survival, she realized. This was an adventure!

  Then a door slammed upstairs and feet clattered in the hall – she was frozen, caught – and Leo was running down the stairs.

  “Sadie!” He rocked to a stop one step above her.

  She craned her neck to look up at him, unsure if she should laugh or run. “The door was open.”

  “Christ!” He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, his eyes staring at someone, something, else. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you,” she said. Then, hearing how that might sound: “Looking for Rayne.”

  His eyes did see her then. He rubbed his knuckles against his palm, then reached to put his fingers against her cheek. He was so much taller, and she was a step down. She might have been a child next to him. “Listen, Sadie,” he began, very sober.

  A man was speaking, coming towards them from the back of the house.

  “Shit,” said Leo. “Come on.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her up the stairs. But in the upper hall they heard a door shut, and footsteps, and Leo, quick as reflex, opened the nearest door and shoved Sadie inside.

  “Don’t move until I come for you. Don’t!”

  Then he pulled the door shut and she was standing alone in the dark, listening to what happened on the other side.

  Rayne’s voice: “You weren’t in there, were you?”

  Leo’s: “No. Well, yes. I do, sometimes, just to look. Don’t you?”

  Rayne: “Not anymore.”

  Brief pause.

  Leo: “They’re waiting.”

  Rayne: “Leo. . .”

  Pause.

  Rayne: “I know you’re angry at me.”

  Leo: “I’m not.”

  Rayne: “I don’t blame you. I don’t like it either. You don’t think I wanted this to happen, do you?”

  Leo, sighing: “No.”

  Rayne: “It was Tom that brought us here.”

  Leo: “Don’t blame Tom! We all wanted to be here. We all wanted. . .”

  Rayne: “Yes. We all wanted. And we still do, don’t we?”

  Long pause.

  Rayne: “Don’t we?”

  Leo: “Yes.”

  Rayne: “Then Sadie can wear the mask t
he third time and I—”

  Leo, interrupting: “Come on. We’re already late.”

  Footsteps retreating.

  Sadie put her back against the door and slid to the floor. I can wear the mask the third time and she. . .what? What?

  Light from a street lamp came through the bare window. As her eyes adjusted she began to see the eyes and mouths crowding the room. The mask room. Staring eyes and gaping mouths, mindless, breathless, lifeless. Sadie shuddered, folded her arms around her knees.

  They all wanted. . .what?

  The masks seemed to hoard what little light there was. Beak, horn, scale, howl, laugh, scream – the night wore all the faces, watching and waiting for someone, for Sadie, to put it on. Put on the night, dancing prince, courtly youth. Sadie, imp, put on the night and run.

  Not her. She’s one of the hungry ones.

  Hungry. Well, she was, as hungry as anyone, as empty. Empty eyes, empty mouths, empty, empty . . . except . . . one? On the table beneath the window, propped on a stand so that it could peer down at Sadie sitting huddled on the floor. Slant-laughing eyes gleamed with lamp-shine, shifted, looked her up and down as a car on the street drove by, headlights shining. Crooked grinning mouth ghost-gleamed with teeth and lapping tongue. A wind tilted through the tree outside and the left eye winked. Sadie, imp, put on the night and run.

  Sadie leapt to her feet and slapped at the wall by the door. One mask flew, another, a tick-patter of broken beads. Then her hand found the light switch, and lamps on the walls blinked on.

  When Leo came back, she was at the window, watching the groups of children that still prowled the street, although it was getting late. The imp mask was on its face beneath the table.

  He slipped through the door and said, “You shouldn’t have turned the light on.”