“Once a year you gets your chance. This year mine come round,” she said, but didn’t elaborate. A cloud of black smoke rose from the rear of the house, then billowed up above the red roof and dispersed into the darkness that smothered the park.
“Another pet in here?” Ray asked, nodding at the trolley as he wheeled it across the pavement to his car. “Sure it’s legal to have an animal inside? Can it breathe?”
The woman said, “It’s all I got and she don’t mind.”
He dropped the woman and her shopping trolley off at an address in Sandwell Valley, close to the large farm that was open to the public. Like the elderly Asian woman, his passenger did not speak during the journey, and had only broken into, “Here, here it is. This one, it must be,” as Ray pulled up outside a large white private house with high walls. “I can’t wait to see her.”
“Who?”
Judging by her gleeful expression, she was too excited to answer, and the woman clambered out with a groan. He received the impression his passenger had been utterly indifferent to the person who drove the vehicle she’d travelled in; the person responsible for her safety, let alone her enigmatic schedule. Nothing new there.
Ray wheeled the tartan shopping trolley up to the white house. It banged against his leg and he heard the scrape of claws against the trolley’s lining. The trolley stank of smoke. He left it outside the front door and returned to his car.
And so the curious nature and sequence of his afternoon and evening’s work continued. He’d made forty quid and was on a roll, but his curiosity about his passengers and their respective cases was beginning to stifle his delight at the abundance of work. So he decided to be more assertive with the next passenger: an elderly black man.
Ray helped the passenger position a large holdall in the rear. A little brass lock secured the end of the bag’s zipper. The interior of the car bloomed afresh with the fragrance of cold air and wood smoke. Ray climbed into the driver’s seat and cracked the window wider. “Where to, mate?”
“He say he gonna be here.” A piece of paper was passed between the seats.
Ray frowned. It was the very first address he had picked up John and the cane basket from, at the edge of Hockley.
In the rear view mirror, Ray looked at the man in the rear. The man met his eye without even blinking: stolid, unfriendly, obstinate, and somewhat entitled.
Ray glanced at the bag beside his passenger. It was the type of canvas sports bag that teenagers favoured. It had West Bromwich Albion’s badge at one end. “Baggies fan?”
“My son,” the man said, and looked out of the window.
Ray drove in silence, but struggled to keep his mind on the road. Just as well he knew them so well. “Not being funny, like, but do you mind if I ask you a question?”
As if he hadn’t heard Ray, the passenger never moved his head.
“But I pick your mate up at this address that we are going to. And he gets in the car with his pet in a basket. And then we go to another house and another house, and each time it’s the same thing. Someone with an animal, I think, in a bag. So I’m guessing you got one in there, too, yeah? So what’s it all about, yeah? ’Cus I am clueless.”
The man never spoke for at least a minute. He just stared at the buildings they passed as they neared the city centre. And Ray found it hard to read the passenger’s mood from glances into the rear view mirror; though he suspected he intuited a grave sadness in the man’s eyes whenever the headlights of a passing vehicle flashed through the car at the same time Ray checked his mirror.
“Life is full of repetition,” the man eventually said. “Same bad things keep happening.”
The statement, because that is what it was, mystified Ray. Nor was it information he felt capable of responding to. “You all right, mate?” was the best he could do. “Ain’t none of my business, but I’m just wondering out loud what you’re all doing. Curiosity, like.”
“You realise it’s not just you. There’s others who been through the same thing.”
“What, like? You talking about John and that Asian woman, and that woman with the shopping trolley?”
The man briefly looked up from his morbid self-absorption, but never spoke.
Ray pushed. “The others, like? With the bags I been picking up here, there and everywhere?”
“Here, there and everywhere,” the man said and then sighed. “I don’t know them. Only met John once.” He pinched his fingers in his eye sockets as if he were stoppering tears.
As his curiosity became discomfort, Ray looked forward and drove through the dark in his own silence. He only spoke after he’d pulled up outside the first address. “Fifteen pound.”
The man paid him with a hand that shook with nerves, or palsy. “Help me with my bag, please.”
“Right ho.”
The two men held one strap of the sports bag each and carried what could have been a long, well behaved dog, zipped inside a holdall, up to the front door of John’s address. The passenger depressed the bell.
Though Ray heard nothing chime inside the house, John opened the front door within seconds. “You made good time.” John said this as if the passenger had driven the car. “She’s been in there long enough. Bring her through.” He ignored Ray.
With the bag wedged between them, Ray and his passenger squeezed into the hovel. There were more lights on inside the house now, though the place was still dim as if the shadow upon it would never allow the brightness of the lights to grow. When they passed through the room filled with boxed clothes, the last passenger paused and said, “All these?”
Over his shoulder, John said, “And more every year. Mostly kids. Nine and ten we find. Now, to the kitchen, if you please. And I’ll tell you where you can set her down.”
Ray struggled into the kitchen with the holdall. Whatever was inside the bag had begun to sniff at his trouser leg through the side of the canvass.
The kitchen was remarkably tidy in contrast to the rest of the house. A small table, with a floral pattern printed on its surface, stood at one side of the room with two chairs pulled out as if in anticipation of imminent use.
“He’ll come in through here, Glenroy,” John said to the passenger, once they were all inside the kitchen with the holdall.
“Here? You sure?” Glenroy asked his host.
Ray’s bafflement and curiosity compelled him to stay a little longer. He wanted to see what was inside the bag.
“Never fails,” John said, in a softer voice that Ray hadn’t thought the man capable of. “This was Wendy’s favourite place. And I always use it for those of you that can’t entertain at home. As long as this is your son’s bag, there won’t be any problem, I can assure you.”
Glenroy nodded and then looked at the back door. It opened onto a cold, darkness that flickered with firelight. “Through there?”
“We done? I gotta get on.” Ray said to both men. Neither seemed to hear him, or they were ignoring him. “Look–”
“Just set it down on the patio,” John said curtly to Ray, and stepped through the back door.
“Come on, we got to get this done,” Glenroy said to Ray.
“What?” Ray asked.
“Once you have helped me outside with this, it’s over,” the black man said.
Ray carried the bag out of the kitchen and into a small paved yard that cringed beneath what could have been a viaduct. And his attention was seized by the size of the pyre in the yard, set against the far wall. Beside the pyre of bracken and wooden pallets was an oil drum that belched black smoke. Upon the top of the pyre was an old vinyl car seat. A small set of metal steps, the kind you see in warehouses or large libraries, had been positioned at the foot of the pyre and led to the seat.
Glenroy muttered, “Dear God.”
“This part is always difficult,” John said, to soothe the nerves of the elderly man.
“What is this?” Ray asked, looking from one man to the other.
They ignored him.
; John touched the passenger’s elbow. “Glenroy, believe me, you won’t even notice the fire as soon as you see your son. Just go and find yourself a seat at the table and he’ll be here shortly. I suggest you sit with your back to the garden to avoid distractions in what will be a very precious time. You will probably hear a bit of fuss out here, and then your son will arrive and embrace you. There is no need for you to see this part of the proceedings, though some clients prefer to make the offering a joyous occasion.”
Glenroy nodded and headed for the kitchen.
The undisclosed connection between fire and the contents of the bags, suddenly made Ray eager to get back to his car. Besides being just too weird, the sinister implication of such a backyard installation was not lost on him. He thought of the black plumes of smoke he had seen at every address that evening, of the photo on the dining room wall, and of the distant screams. Ray turned to follow his last passenger out of the yard.
“Not you, driver.” John said into the back of Ray’s head, in a tone of voice that made Ray tense. There followed the sound of a zipper being quickly undone in the cold air of the cement yard. “We’re not done with you yet.”
Ray had heard enough. “What’s your game, eh? I’ve been driving–” he said as he turned to confront the man standing behind him. But then lost the ability to speak, and the strength in both of his legs seemed to drain through the soles of his shoes, at the sight of what had climbed out of the sports bag and now stood upright. Something that had travelled in his car all evening. And it wasn’t a dog, or a cat, or any kind of pet.
“Now.” John raised both hands into the air and made a series of rapid gestures as if he were performing sign language. “You either take your seat unassisted up there” – John nodded at the summit of the unlit pyre – “or she will be forced to seat you.”
The back door closed and Ray heard a key turn in the lock. He turned his head and watched Glenroy take a seat at the kitchen table.
“The duration of the event is mercifully short,” John said. “A bit longer than it took you to knock Glenroy’s son from his bicycle on Rocky Lane.”
“I... I... I...”
“Yes, yes, that’s all very well. But there are consequences, and it’s getting late and you’re the last one this year and there’s no time for any fiddle, so please take your seat.”
“What...”
Within the ebb and flow of the firelight and what illumination it offered, even though the thing on the patio was as tall and hairy as a fully grown male chimpanzee, what had been inside the sports bag was not an ape. For as long as he could bear to look at it, Ray could see that it wasn’t a primate, because there were trotters on the end of its short rear legs. And though the thing’s face was horribly reminiscent of a pig, it wasn’t a pig either, because it stood upright like a child. The little figure shivered in the night air.
When it grinned at Ray, he whimpered and stepped towards the garden fence.
John’s brusque voice penetrated his shock. “You’ll only feel the flames for about three seconds, driver. Nothing more is required of you, then she’ll bleed you out. So I always suggest that you raise your chin, or you will burn for longer than is necessary in this particular ritual. Now, to your chair please, driver.”
Ray turned and fell at the fence. It was old and sagged with rot. He would kick it down, run.
“Soon as I drop my hands, driver, she will be released. I can assure you that you will get no further than my yard.”
“Wha...?”
“Hit and run,” John said with all the pomp of a scout master. The firelight from the oil drum flickered across the lenses of his spectacles and Ray could no longer see the old man’s eyes. “She followed the scent of your callousness. A challenge. Guilt, shame, and even pride are more established spores. And she’s had three of you today and reunited three mothers with their children, albeit for an incredibly short time.”
“What is–”
With the impatience and irritation that John had shown him that day, the scruffy old man cut him short. “She became a good friend of my wife. After Wendy was killed on a pedestrian crossing not far from here in 1994. And her killer sat in the chair far longer than you will tonight, driver. So be thankful that time has mellowed me. Time ever heals, they say. You even start to forget. This is how I remember. Now, shall we begin?”
Ray gripped the top of the wooden fence. “Fuck off!”
John dropped both of his arms. The palms of his hands slapped his hips.
RAY BEGAN TO scream even before he sat buckled into the car seat at the summit of the pyre. And when John stuck a blazing taper of rolled newspaper into the base of the bracken, that had been soaked in the petrol, whose fumes now clung to his face, Ray looked to the kitchen as if to appeal for mercy.
He saw his last passenger, Glenroy, through the glass panel in the kitchen door. And over the kitchen table the old man embraced another darker and more indistinct figure. One who had already buried a face, that Ray could not see, on its father’s shoulder.
Ray screamed afresh when the heat of the flames burst upwards to crisp the hair on his exposed ankles.
He thrust his head back and exposed his throat. “Now!”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jay Caselberg is an Australian author based in Europe. His work has appeared in multiple venues and several languages worldwide and includes horror, science fiction, fantasy, literary and mixes of all of them, including poetry, but generally with a dark edge. His novel Empties, billed as a novel of brutal psychological horror, is due soon. More can be found at his website: www.jaycaselberg.com.
Zen Cho is a Malaysian writer based in London. Her short fiction has appeared most recently in Esquire Malaysia, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and Prime Books anthology Bloody Fabulous. She is a 2013 finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
S. L. Grey is a collaboration between Sarah Lotz and Louis Greenberg. Based in Cape Town, Sarah is a novelist and screenwriter and die-hard zombie fanatic. She writes crime novels and thrillers under her own name, and as Lily Herne she and her daughter Savannah Lotz write the Deadlands series of zombie novels for young adults. Louis is a Johannesburg-based fiction writer and editor. He was a bookseller for several years, and has a Master’s degree in vampire fiction and a doctorate on the post-religious apocalyptic fiction of Douglas Coupland. S. L.’s first novel, The Mall, was published by Corvus in 2011. The Ward came out in 2012 and The New Girl, the last of their Downside novels, in October 2013. They have also published a handful of short stories.
Rochita Loenen-Ruiz is a Filipino writer who currently lives and writes in the Netherlands. A graduate of the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop, she was the recipient of the Octavia Butler Scholarship in 2009. Rochita’s fiction has been published and anthologized online and in print and she was the first Filipino writer to be shortlisted for the BSFA short fiction award. Aside from writing a regular column for Strange Horizons, she also writes essays, reviews, commentaries and criticism. She is working on her first novel. Follow her on twitter (@rcloenenruiz) or visit her website at rcloenenruiz.com.
Helen Marshall is an award-winning Canadian author, editor, and bibliophile. Her poetry and fiction have been published in The Chiaroscuro, Abyss & Apex, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and Tor.com and has been reprinted in several Year’s Best anthologies. Her debut collection of short stories Hair Side, Flesh Side (ChiZine Publications, 2012) was named one of the Top Ten books of 2012 by January Magazine. It has been short-listed for an Aurora Award and a British Fantasy Sydney J. Bounds Award, and has been long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize.
Sophia McDougall was supposed to be an Oxford English literature academic before running away in 2002 to write fiction. She is the author of the bestselling Romanitas trilogy (published by Orion/Gollancz and twice shortlisted for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History), set in a contemporary world where the Roman Empire never fell. Her first novelfor
children, Mars Evacuees, will be published by Egmont and Harper Collins US in 2014. Her short stories have been published by Jurassic London and NewCon, as well as Solaris. She also creates digital art and mentors aspiring writers.
Paul Meloy is the author of Islington Crocodiles and Dogs With Their Eyes Shut. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. He is the recipient of the British Fantasy Award, for his short story “Black Static”. He lives in Torquay.
Anil Menon’s short fiction can be found in a variety of anthologies and spec-fic magazines including Albedo One, Apex’s Digest, Interzone, LCRW and Strange Horizons. His novel The Beast With Nine Billion Feet (Zubaan, 2009) was short-listed for the 2010 Vodafone-Crossword award and Carl Baxter Society’s Parallax Prize. Along with Vandana Singh, he co-edited Breaking the Bow (Zubaan, 2012), an anthology of spec-fic stories inspired by the Ramayana. He can be reached at [email protected].
Adam Nevill was born in Birmingham, England, in 1969 and grew up in England and New Zealand. He is the author of the supernatural horror novels Banquet for the Damned, Apartment 16, The Ritual, Last Days, and House of Small Shadows. He lives in Birmingham and can be contacted through www.adamlgnevill.com
Philip Reeve is the author of numerous books for children and young adults, including the Mortal Engines quartet, Fever Crumb, Larklight, Here Lies Arthur, Goblins, and Oliver and the Seawigs (with illustrator Sarah McIntyre). He lives on Dartmoor with his wife and son.
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