The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Seven

by Jonathan Strahan

  One time, just to see what would happen, Jack had asked the cashier about “the old guy who just sits in a chair upstairs.”

  “Oh, that’s Barney,” the man said.

  “Well, what does he do? He doesn’t seem to ever leave his spot.”

  The cashier looked confused. In a tone that suggested Jack had asked a really dumb question, he said, “I don’t know. He’s Barney.”

  Today, Jack walked up with a smile, waiting for Barney’s usual “Hey, kid,” but instead the Door Man tilted his head to the side slightly and squinted at Jack like he was trying to make out who he was. “Can I help you?” he said.

  Jack stared at him. “Barney? It’s me. Jack Shade.”

  Barney shook his head, then laughed. “Jack!” he said. “Sorry, kid. My old eyes ain’t what they used to be, I guess.”

  Jack touched his face to make sure the mask was gone, and in fact, for just a moment he thought he felt smooth skin, but no, there were the scars. He said, “It’s probably just me, Barney. I had to dupe my face for something and there’s probably traces of the overlay still on it.”

  Barney nodded. “Ah, that must be it.”

  Jack said, “I’ve got something for you.”

  “Hey, you’re all right, Jack,” Barney said as he took the box and undid the ribbon. “Ah, Charlie Lawrence,” he said. “You know he calls himself Charles Laurentian now?” He pronounced it “Sharl Lor-en-zhin” in the worst French accent Jack had ever heard. “I guess whatever sells product, right, Jack?” He smiled at the candy in its gold foil nest. “You know, Jack, you’ve got taste. That’s what I tell the others. Jack Shade, I tell ’em. He knows what to bring an old man.” Biting down, he waved Jack to the door.

  The handle was hot, like the door to a furnace, and when Jack opened it all he could see was a red glow so intense his face felt on fire. As soon as he stepped through, however, and felt the dirt and leaves under his feet, a cold wind hit him. He gasped, as he always did, for knowledge of what’s to come doesn’t help much in the Forest. It wasn’t really cold, just as before it wasn’t really hot. If he’d had to guess the actual temperature he would have said around 60. But it felt like his bones would freeze so tight his toes would snap off.

  Jack paid no attention, only took a piece of red chalk from his jeans pocket and marked “JS” on the door, which stood incongruously all by itself, surrounded by trees. Jack made his mark graffiti style, with block letters and a flourish at the end. Almost as soon as he finished, the door just faded away and all that was left were trees. Endless trees, all sizes and shapes, a few with dusty leaves or yellowed needles, but most bare, the branches black and twisted. Unlike an actual woods, where the trees grow densely together, blocking your view, here each tree stood by itself, as if they refused any contact, so that Jack felt like he could see for miles and miles with no horizon, only twisted trees, forever and ever. It was twilight, dim, the only color the faint fire that wound in and out of the branches like pale weightless ribbons.

  Jack Shade closed his eyes and took a breath, and when he looked again everything had changed. A department store. He was in some kind of large store, standing in the watch and jewelry section, looking out toward various clothing sections for men, women, and children as shoppers moved in and out of mannequins displaying middle-of-the-road clothes, the kind you might see in suburban malls. People in winter jackets rushed about, some checking lists, and as if that observation triggered a next step, red and green ribbons appeared on the walls and displays, while voiceless holiday Muzak whined through the noise of the crowd. It all looked so real—except for the wisps of flame that snaked through the shoppers and the mannequins.

  Jack moved slowly, careful not to touch anything, the people, the displays, the clothes on the racks. He knew only one thing for certain, that Alice had to be somewhere nearby, for part of the reason for the cut on his arm was to act as a kind of homing signal to bring him to that part of the Non-L Forest where Alice was trapped. But he couldn’t begin to summon her until he could identify the trees in all this crowd of goods and shoppers.

  He kept looking, staring, until suddenly he realized he was doing it all wrong. You don’t look in the Forest, you listen. Jack was staring round corners, and through the crowds, and even under the counters in the unconscious hope he would spot Eugenia. Unconscious and useless. This wasn’t his dream, after all, and if his daughter was even in this part of the Forest, she would show herself only if she wanted to. Right now he was here for Alice.

  He said out loud, just to be sure, “Genie, if you’re anywhere around, and you want to show yourself, I want to see you. Right now I’ve got a job to do, but I’m here. I love you.”

  Then, reluctantly, he closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, another. On the third exhale he heard the Forest. Voices, whispers, a roar of whispers, waves and surges of grief and loneliness, hurricanes of rage. Jack screamed, fell on all fours where he shook wildly, like a terrified dog, and it was all he could do to keep from howling. But when the voices subsided enough that he could stand up and open his eyes he knew.

  The mannequins. The trees were the mannequins, the plastic bodies in absurd poses prisons for the dead. Jack could see it in the blank smooth faces, where underneath the plastic eyes something pulsed. He could hear, or just feel, the whispers in the rigid half-opened mouths.

  Jack slipped his knife from its sheath and in one stroke sliced open the left sleeve of his shirt. Years ago, when he was first learning, Jack had laughed and asked his teacher why he couldn’t just roll it up. “Oh, Jack,” she’d said. “Carefree Jack. Don’t you know you have to sacrifice something? Even if it’s just a shirt?” These days Jack figured he’d sacrificed more than enough in his years as a Traveler, but you didn’t mess with tradition. He held up his exposed arm like a signpost, the cut bright and shiny.

  Slowly he turned around, like a lighthouse lamp. “I’m looking for Alice Barlow!” he shouted, then, “Alice! I’m carrying your mark. Your memory. Show yourself! I’ve come from the Old World to release you to the New. You don’t have to stay here anymore. I’m here to help you. Alice Barlow! Show yourself!”

  For a long time nothing happened, and Jack wondered if somehow, some way, he’d made a mistake. Why didn’t she respond? Usually, all the dead wanted was to get free of their tree prison. Could he possibly have screwed up the action and took himself to the wrong part of the Forest? He thought back over everything he’d done and it was all correct, he was sure of it. There was Barney’s odd reaction when he first saw him, but that was just—

  Then he saw it. In the men’s sportswear section, a mannequin dressed in jeans and a checked shirt and one of those denim jackets with a corduroy color gave off a faint pulsing light.

  Jack walked over to it, still with his arm up and held so that the cut faced the mannequin’s face. “Hello, Alice,” he said gently. “I’m very glad to meet you. I’ve been searching for you for some time.” The mannequin—the tree—didn’t move, of course, but Jack thought he saw a glow of heat in the smooth plastic and even the sweatshop polyester clothing. “It’s okay,” Jack said. “I know you’re scared. And angry. That’s always the way it is. But now I’m here, Alice, and it’s all going to end. Here’s what I’m going to do, Alice. I’m going to bring you out, and once you’re free, I will open a gate so you can leave here. Are you ready, Alice?”

  Not just a glow this time, but a real flash of light. It lasted only a second but there was no mistaking it. He nodded. “Thank you, Alice. Thank you for showing yourself.”

  Without turning his back on her he moved a few feet away, far enough that he could draw a circle with his chalk on the floor in front of the mannequin. Jack sometimes thought that in all his Traveler training the hardest thing had been to learn to freehand a circle. Now he looked at his work and couldn’t help but smile a moment. Taking Alice as due south he marked the compass points, then drew various signs in the cross-quarter. Using the various points to guide him he found the circle�
��s center, where he drew an eight-pointed star. It was a little awkward because he had to make sure he didn’t actually step inside the circle or touch the rim. “This is your mark, Alice,” he said. “This is where you’ll go. It won’t be long now.”

  He stood up and took a position behind north so he would face the mannequin, with the circle between them. He reached in his jeans pocket and took out the silver bracelet he’d worn in Alice’s bed and held it up high. Slight shocks ran from the bracelet to the cut in his arm, but he ignored them. “Remember this, Alice?” he said, his eyes fixed on the blank plastic face and the fire he could sense under it. “It holds the genuine you. Your existence here isn’t real, Alice. This is real. I’m going to open a kind of door. You’re going to feel it more than see it. And when you do you’ll know the bracelet is calling to you. Just like I’ve been calling you. I’m going to start now, Alice. Are you ready?”

  As Jack leaned over to lay the bracelet on the chalk star a strange smell almost made him stumble. For a few seconds the air stank of dead meat and wet fur, of layers of urine and feces. Some kind of animal den, large, like a bear. Was that how Alice experienced her imprisonment? Not what Jack saw, not a mannequin or even a tree, but the prey of some wild animal?

  The smell faded, and with it Jack’s attempts to figure out what it meant. It was time to do what he’d come for. Jack pulled out his knife and raised it in his left hand to point at the ceiling. Then as hard as he could he brought it down to slice the air inside the circle. “Alice Barlow! “ he shouted. “The way is open!”

  All around him the shoppers, just props after all, paid no attention but continued to chatter and check their lists and hold clothes up against their bodies. The Muzak, however, crackled, then sputtered out halfway through “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” Within a range of twenty feet or so the mannequins all turned dark, then suddenly flashed with light so brightly Jack had to shield his eyes to prevent retina burn.

  He kept his focus on the blank manly face of Alice Barlow’s prison. The expression didn’t change, of course, or the pose, but the whole thing shuddered and swayed, as if something was shaking it. From the inside.

  Slowly something began to emerge, first a vapor so fine Jack wasn’t sure he was really seeing it, then more pronounced, an ooze that came out of the mannequin so slowly it might have been sweating. The sweat turned to a thick mass, the colorless gelatin that a French Traveler in the nineteenth century called “ectoplasm.”

  Jack held his breath. This part was tricky, for the dead person could emerge as anything, and he had to be ready to welcome it. Usually they ended up as who they were in life (though sometimes idealized, with bigger breasts, say, or poutier lips), often naked but sometimes so dressed up they looked like they’d stepped out of Downton Abbey. But sometimes they emerged as something else entirely, a different person, some other kind of creature, even an object. Once, Jack brought forth a child who’d died too young, but instead of a boy there was a school composition book, full of handwriting in some alphabet Jack had never seen.

  This time it was going exactly right. The ecto was firming up, becoming recognizable, first as arms and legs with overly long hands and toes, then a torso, then at last the head, and it was her, Alice Barlow. She came out naked, thin, the body all tensed, the eyes squeezed shut as if afraid to look, the skin darker and rougher than in her photos, the hair longer and wilder, the muscles in her arms and legs more defined. She wasn’t quite the same, but she was who, and what, she was supposed to be, and that was all that mattered. Jack let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, unsure why this woman he’d never met could have such a powerful effect on him.

  With a sudden violent twist Alice broke fully from her mannequin prison and pitched forward into the circle, where she landed on all fours. She trembled wildly, like a terrified dog.

  Jack became aware that the whispers had risen all around him, drowning out the fake sounds of the store. If the souls in their trees could witness this, what were they thinking? Did they know, or sense, someone had broken free? Were they proud? Hopeful? Jealous? He looked down at the only one who mattered. “Hello, Alice,” he said. “Welcome back.”

  She didn’t get up, didn’t move from her spot. Only her head moved, tilting up to look at him, and as it did so it changed. The cheekbones stood out, so sharp they almost cut through the skin. The eyes became bigger, the pupils flat and dark, the chin narrowed, became almost triangular, the lips stretched thin. And when she opened her mouth the teeth had grown long and sharp.

  Jack stared at her, no idea what to do. “Alice,” he said, “it’s going to be okay.”

  She sprang at him. Leaped from all fours directly at his face. No, not his face, his throat. The long sharp teeth nearly tore out his trachea. Jack grabbed her, he wasn’t sure where, and somehow managed to fling her wildly twisting body away from him. He tried to get her back in the circle, where he might hope to contain her but she managed to break away and land on all fours just to the left of it. Immediately she spun around to face him again, shaking her head and growling. Strangely the Muzak came back, and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” bounced cheerfully above the snarls of the creature on the floor.

  Jack reached up to touch his neck and face and feel the damage. As soon as he did so he forgot all about blood and wounds, for instead of his own tight skin and scars his fingers found a soft fleshiness. Wrinkled middle-aged skin over sagging jowls. And in that instant, with Alice about to spring again, Jack knew what had happened. He understood, finally, too late, what William Barlow had done to him.

  In The Traveler’s Bestiary, or “guide to Non-Linear fauna,” as Jack’s teacher once called it, there were many pages—files in the smart-phone version—devoted to Beasts of Fury. This is what Alice Barlow had made of herself. Enough human to hold on to her purpose, and enough animal to rip Jack apart. And when she was finished? Would she realize what had happened, what her husband had done to her as well as Jack?

  Twice more Jack managed to fling her away, and both times she landed on all fours and turned right around to bare her teeth before her next leap. Both times Jack considered running, but knew he’d never make it. The watch and jewelry section was only twenty or thirty yards away, but it would take time—and energy—to open the door. And Alice had cornered the market on both. Powered by all the rage in existence, from jealous lovers to hungry babies to dying stars, a Fury could go on forever. But not Jack Shade. Everything he did in the Forest, even just seeing through its masks, drained him.

  One more time. He could throw her off once more—maybe—and then she would take him. “Goodbye,” he whispered. Goodbye to everyone, his daughter most of all, but also Irene, Mr. Dickens, to Ray, who’d tried to warn him but couldn’t follow him into the Forest, and even the Blindfolded Norwegian Girl. And Alice, whom he’d tried to help but got it wrong.

  As if she could feel his thoughts, Alice shook wildly, screamed, and threw herself through the air. Jack braced himself. His clothes were in shreds, his arms and chest bleeding. Alice leaped, arms straight out, clawed fingers spread wide for greatest impact, teeth bright in the holiday lights. And then she stopped.

  As if she’d hit an invisible net set up by some Fury hunter, she twisted wildly in midair, screaming in frustration. No, not a net, and not invisible. A yellow cashmere scarf had come off a counter display to wrap around Alice’s abdomen, and even though it was attached to nothing, hold her above the floor. She thrashed and clawed and managed to cut herself loose, only to have two more scarves, cheap nylon this time, spin around and once more hold her suspended.

  Jack spun around, searching, looking. “Where are you?” he shouted above the Muzak, which now played “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”

  “Genie!” Jack called to her, and then he saw her, small in her red dress and pink sneakers, her hair in pigtails. The only living resident—prisoner—in the Forest of Souls stood among a display of fake leather luggage. It was all fake, of course, the whole place.
Everything in it was a prop. Except for Eugenia Shade. And Alice Barlow.

  Jack started toward his daughter, only to have her shout, “No! You have to go, Daddy. I can’t hold her. Hurry!”

  For just a second he hesitated, but he could see she was right. Alice was already pulling loose, and Genie was swaying with the effort to contain her. He ran to the watch counter, dropped to the floor, and frantically drew a threshold with the blue chalk. Then he used his knife to trace the form of a door in the air.

  Three of them appeared, lined up in a row, identical—except the one on the right bore the graffiti “JS.” With his hand on the knob he turned around. If he could somehow grab Genie before Alice broke loose, could he take her with him? But he’d already tried that, more than once, and he and his daughter both knew the door would let him pass, and no one else. “Genie!” he called out. “Sweetheart. I’ll find a way to bring you back.”

  He had the door half-open, he could even smell the oil and grease air of Empire Garage, when his daughter called to him. “Daddy?” she said in a voice that sounded like she was eight. “Daddy? Did I kill Mommy?”

  “No, baby,” Jack said. “It wasn’t you. It was the geist.” And at that moment Alice Fury broke loose to fly at him, and it was all he could do to slide through the door and slam it shut before Alice crashed into the back of it.