Year's Best Weird Fiction, Volume Three

by Simon Strantzas

  She had to face the fact that she was never going to get back with her ex. Distancing herself from everything had worked so far. A stone mask of apathy had been beneficial. But she could either be miserable for the rest of her years, or pursue something that made life less of a slog.

  A child would have ruined everything, she insisted. But her internal voice wasn’t convinced. She wasn’t sure if she was undecided due to a sincere desire to raise another human being, or an obstinate opinion derived solely from her wanting to defy Joel in the only way she was capable.

  She’d discovered a renewed sense of purpose in her art. A spark of hope there. And it just so happened her freedom was predicated on severing all ties with Joel.

  Such were the vagaries of life.

  After a week of persistent social network messages, Eleanor finally accepted her friend Lydia’s invitation to a gallery showing in Soho. Several artists were scheduled to attend, but Eleanor was mostly looking forward to Vashti’s participation.

  Vashti was phenomenal.

  Eleanor felt a visceral thrill when she’d first explored Vashti’s art online. Her sculptures tackled controversial issues—when conception began, how consciousness is predicated on the physical brain encased in a physical head with distinct features. Fetus shaped blobs of clay with adult-sized craniums; faces sculpted from soft earth that gave the objects an ontogenical quality; scalps adorned with flowing manes of real human hair. Sculpture was clearly her calling, her faith, her very purpose. Vashti’s creations were designed to confuse and outrage and elicit arguments. And judging by the comments on the site, she’d done that and more.

  Eleanor ran her forefinger across the smooth lips of her most recent clay model. Nothing as skilled or interesting as Vashti’s work. No comparison. Just another face. She’d no idea whose it was, but this stranger insisted it take form beneath Eleanor’s hands every time. Again and again. The clay sank slightly under her touch. Organic. The lack of a pulse seemed a mistake. Self-hardening clay should firm up soon enough.

  Someone was crying next door.

  Eleanor looked out the flat’s only window. Her building was separated by a narrow brick alley, the sole resident a fox living off of leftovers from the bins. The presence of such a creature was endearing, more romantic than the feral opossums and raccoons she encountered back in the U.S. Only two metres separated her window from the window of the other flat. As usual, the tenant’s lights were off.

  Eleanor had seen the woman a handful of times since she’d moved in, but only during the day, coming and going on her errands. The flat was always pitch black at night.

  She was a tall, graceful, willowy thing. An older woman, though Eleanor had never seen her face without a veil, assuming her age from her posture and the measured, confident way she moved down the street.

  There was an elusive, indescribable quality about her—in the vintage yet fashionable clothes she wore, in the luxuriously silver gleam of her healthy hair. Maybe a retired model? An actor who’d decided to spend her remaining years far away from anything resembling wealth or glamour? But the veil and the large demographic of Muslims in Whitechapel made Eleanor consider the religious possibility. But come to think of it, it was unusual she’d only seen the woman with a veil, not a traditional hijab.

  A candle flame bobbed inside the flat, much to Eleanor’s surprise. Flickering like a serpent’s burning tongue. This was the first time she’d ever seen any nocturnal presence across the way.

  The weeping grew more plaintive, a soul piercing cry that made Eleanor think of the helplessness and despair she felt that moment she was fully aware that Joel was gone from her life.

  Or the soul crushing terror from one of her bouts of sleep paralysis. The disorder had recently returned, reinvigorated by the increased stress in her life.

  She was about 5 when she’d first experienced it. Sleeping on the bottom bunk, her older sister snoring up top. A thin naked woman had settled on her chest, a coiled weight, loose skin slopping over her ribs onto the floor. Wild confusion of hair trembling in the air like shock lines around a comic strip character’s head. A stunningly beautiful face. Mask of someone else’s mask. All that hair whipping and hissing with blind aggression.

  And Eleanor unable to move a muscle. A slab of breathing marble.

  But she was an adult now and no longer feared any nocturnal visitations. She understood the physiology of sleep disorders, knew that it was a biological thing. Explainable. Not a strange entity visiting from some nameless place. Xanax would keep the phantom entity at bay.

  She held her breath to better hear the cries from the other flat, but just as quickly as it had started, the weeping was silenced.

  ###

  Eleanor had lunch with Lydia, then swung by Sainsbury’s on the way back home. She was glad to be in and out of the grocery store quickly; the place was a crowded madhouse. A sea of faces all blending together into a uniform expression of dumbfounded petulance and irrational rage. Cold granite, moronic countenances.

  Her shopping trolley was jostled by the tiniest of obstacles on the rutted sidewalk. Grocery bags rustled, glass clinked. London’s aging infrastructure was often in the back of her mind, as was the recent spate of exploding pavement—a consequence of worn electrical cables bursting underground when it rained. All those kilometers of passages down there to facilitate the sewage systems running into Battersea for processing. So many transportation tunnels allowed countless possibilities for disaster underfoot.

  The mysterious neighbor’s front door was ajar.

  She must be home then. Hadn’t Eleanor been living here long enough for introductions? Sure, Londoners were more private than tourists from the states, and Eleanor risked stepping over politeness into ugly American territory, but it would be rude of her not to officially greet a neighbor.

  She left her trolley on the sidewalk and knocked on the door.

  Nobody answered. She tilted her head to the door’s gap. Nothing. No voices or footsteps, no sound or movement whatsoever.

  “Hello? I’m your neighbor. Eleanor. You left your door open.”

  Silence.

  Eleanor entered the dim flat. It was completely unfurnished. No pictures on the walls, no gewgaws adorning the windowsill where she could see into her own home a metre away. She felt as if she were retracing her steps, going back over ground already covered. But that couldn’t be the case. She’d never been in this flat before.

  She opened one of the two closed doors. It was a bathroom. No toiletries or towels. Even the toilet paper dispenser was empty. She closed the door and went to investigate the other room.

  The wood floor creaked in protest when she stepped inside.

  The ceiling was high and narrow, the room longer than expected. A tall, thin window at the end allowed enough gray light to enter for Eleanor to see that the walls were decorated with various shades of small oval patterns. Wallpaper even covered the ceiling.

  A train rattled by on the Hammersmith line, its lights brightening the room briefly. The wall’s ovals had blond and black hair. Some wore glasses.

  The wallpaper wasn’t decorative.

  Thousands of photo booth snaps and passport pictures. Just the faces stapled and glued to every available surface. Strangers looking down, frozen like stone busts in an abandoned gallery. They even covered the back of the door. Eleanor instinctually averted her gaze from the cut out heads.

  A small box sat in the corner of the room. She’d known the box would be there. But that couldn’t be. There was no way she could have known.

  She removed the lid. It was filled with mutilated photos, driving licenses, passports from various countries. She stuck her fingers inside, moved the clipped papers and bits of plastic around.

  There was something at the bottom. She pulled out a journal, then another. Some with burgundy faux leather covers, others black and tan or shiny red plastic. She riffled through one. It was in French. Another in Japanese. She was quickly becoming uncomfortable with all o
f this. She placed them back in the box, at the bottom, beneath everything. On a whim she reached back in and withdrew a glossy mauve journal. She opened it to a random page.

  4/11

  I write this knowing that if you haven’t already had a butchers at what’s hanging from the attic’s rafters, you will soon enough. I can only imagine your expression—maybe a spot of exasperation at not being able to identify just what it is, mingled with curiosity over how something that size managed to crawl all the way up there.

  I know you’re all impatient chivvy along types, and I’ve refrained from complaining about that particular trait over the years. I’ll keep this brief. It’s time to burn bridges and I mean to do so in a spectacular fashion. I do intend to let the cat out of the bag.

  Well, not a cat exactly is it?

  Eleanor heard sobbing.

  The exhausted, hopeless cry of someone who’d lost everything that mattered. Hysterical yet constrained gasps that spoke of death and love. Something in the voice gave acknowledgement to the fact that nothing in life was worthwhile, cowardice the only reason they continued living. Eleanor had heard her own voice sound so very similar, on far too many occasions, since leaving her home and family.

  She closed the journal. Buried it with the others.

  She was certain the sound was coming from beneath her feet. She looked to the center of the room. The bare wood floor here was scuffed and deeply scratched. Hinges and a metal handle stood out in stark contrast to the dark wood.

  The old woman slipped through this hatch. There’s a tunnel down there that connects to all of the other hidey-holes in London. Why the fuck not?

  Eleanor tugged at the handle. The trapdoor was locked from below. Whoever was down there must be able to get out on their own then. She felt a bit relieved at this revelation.

  The smell hit her. A reptilian musk. Rotting meat. Like a poorly maintained vivarium.

  The old woman moves about freely down there. Unnoticed. In secret.

  The wailing increased in volume, though the tone was different now, a raw uninhibited quality to its fervor.

  The hungry cry of a newborn baby.

  Eleanor stepped back. Should she call out to make sure everything was ok? Ring the police? She backed out of the room. Abrupt, hurried steps led her to the entrance. She left the front door in the same position she’d found it. None of this was any of her business. She’d gone poking her nose in where it shouldn’t have. Best to leave well enough alone.

  All of her actions were familiar, like an old videotape recorded over long forgotten shows, fleeting images of the original programming peeking through.

  It had started to rain while she was inside. Thick, oily drops clung to everything. She rolled her grocery cart back to her flat, the soggy contents of the bags sloshing as the wheels caught every crack and bump in the sidewalk.

  When she arrived home she closed the blinds so she wouldn’t have to see the neighbor’s flat.

  ###

  The pattern had acquired Eleanor’s distinct chin and subtle shape of her forehead, yet retained the sunken black blemishes where eyes should be. It looked as if it had been intentionally sketched by a child with charcoal powdered hands, slapping their palms against the wall, wiping shadows across the surface. A trickle of moisture had further distorted the visage, lengthening it into a wedge shape not unlike a snake’s head. The hair was vibrant, growing further up the wall and across the ceiling.

  Eleanor wasn’t staring at her own face. She was seeing things that simply weren’t there, convincing herself that the water-stain hair was undulating with supple life. She’d been rash enough to enter a stranger’s home—she simply didn’t have her head screwed on right at the moment. Everything was coming across as threatening due to stress.

  She took a sip of Merlot from a juice glass, the daffodil design circling the base faded and chipped. A dark flake floated in the pink liquid. She let her mouthful trickle back into the glass, set it on the knife gouged Formica counter. There was some currant squash in the small refrigerator, but the thought of drinking the beverage weak left a cloyingly sweet memory in her mouth.

  Lydia had texted her a reminder that the art exhibit was that evening, so Eleanor had started on a new sculpture to get into the artistic mood of things.

  But this one looked like all the others. Same dull expression. Same features. She no longer felt she was an artist, more like a forensic anthropologist sculpting a corpse’s visage from the remnants of a former life, resurrecting an identity lost to violence and decay. She’d tried to make a simple object, a bowl, a vase, anything except an anthropomorphic representation. But every time she manipulated a blob of clay it demanded it take the shape of the head she’d become all too familiar with.

  She set her tools aside, pushed the modeling stand away in frustration. The wheels squeaked until it gently came to rest against the wall.

  A walk around the neighborhood would put her in a better frame of mind. Fresh air, would do wonders. Best to have a clear head before visiting the gallery tonight.

  The rain tapped her umbrella like impatient fingertips. She kept her head down, walking quickly, the need to stretch her legs and fill her lungs with untainted air more important than being aware of her surroundings. She only looked up briefly when passing the mysterious woman’s flat. The door was closed.

  She walked with a frenetic pace until she’d reached Shoreditch and the bustling crowds.

  Her umbrella scraped against a body. Eleanor turned to offer an apology. The businessman kept going, seemingly unaware of the intrusion. The drizzle and a fog of cigarette smoke thick around his shoulders made it appear as if his head was a lump of malleable clay, glistening with the silvery sheen of connective tissue.

  Eleanor nervously walked against the milling masses, down the stairs into the tube station. Her right foot slipped on the slick pavement. She waved her Oyster card over the reader, walked through the gate. She closed her umbrella, head low with determination, dreading eye contact with any stranger. She didn’t know why this was of such concern, but the fear was so palpable she didn’t even look up after roughly bumping against someone exiting the train.

  She stood inside the packed car, one hand holding a rail, the other gripping her umbrella as if it were a weapon. Passengers swayed listlessly as the train roared through dark tunnels. The lights grew dim, darkened, lit the interior again. Eleanor had the sense that people’s faces were jumping about every time the lights flickered, sliding from person to person, swapping identities. A bearded young man’s taciturn expression took the place of a woman wearing a headscarf who swapped the frown of a heavyset woman talking on her mobile who exchanged—

  The train’s announcer bellowed the name of the next stop, snapping Eleanor out of her daydream. The car slowed. Before the doors even slid open, Eleanor pushed her way to the front of the exiting passengers. She ran up the stairs to the surface. The bustling crowd moved in an unnatural manner, as if they were extras in a film that was so low budget they had to use the same faces over and over again.

  In her haste, she jostled an elderly woman. She stumbled to the ground despite Eleanor’s desperate attempt to slow her fall. Mortified, she moved to help her up.

  It must have been the adjacent fish and chip shop’s blue-green florescent lights molding the woman’s waxen forehead, cheeks and mouth into something soft. The gray hair uncoiling from her bun only accentuated the impression her skull was indented where she’d pressed up against the cashpoint machine.

  The woman raised her runny face and croaked a word that sounded more like a tarry bubble bursting than a coherent phrase.

  Eleanor apologized profusely, but the old woman didn’t respond. She regained her composure, wobbled to her feet, moved along. The dull, acne pocked face of the chip-shop’s cashier stared at her from behind the window. A hazy oval, like a splotch of grease.

  A panic attack. What else could account for the commuters changing into a stone-headed mob before her eyes? W
hat other reason could there be for their faces congealing into stony visages?

  Frozen mono-identities, manufactured statues. An assembly line of us all.

  Anxiety and an artist’s imagination. Guilt over trespassing and snooping in an old woman’s home. That explained everything.

  Everything.

  Eleanor opened her umbrella and walked back to her flat as fast as she could on the slick pavement without risking a fall.

  ###

  “The Shroud of Turin does not portray the face of Christ.” The short man stood just inches away from the tapestry. An unnamed artist had screen-printed the infamous image onto a sheet of denim, presumably as an anti-consumerist statement. “Don’t misunderstand, it is an acheiropoieton, but we are not gazing upon the visage of our Lord and Savior. The Turin cloak boasts the face of a demon.”

  Eleanor gave a wry smile in acknowledgement. The strange man was a squat stack of a human being. He was perspiring heavily. Lydia was nowhere to be found. She was growing more and more concerned that her friend had yet to respond to any text messages.

  Nothing but strangers here. Eleanor couldn’t retain the distinctive features of individuals in her memory. It was as if she’d been afflicted with a spontaneous case of prosopagnosia.

  “You’re familiar with the Shroud?” The short man asked without removing his gaze from Christ’s bloodied face. Thick glasses made the man’s eyes almost comically large.

  “I’m familiar. Not made by hands. I don’t think the real shroud is miraculous or anything. It’s a medieval painting.” Eleanor scanned the room, hoping she’d be able to place Lydia’s pretty smile in the crowd.

  “So is this art? Or sacrilege?” The little man waved his hand at the denim shroud as if offended.

  Eleanor raised glass to lips to hide her smile. “Art. Then again, I think Marcel Duchamp was onto something.”