The Year's Best Horror Stories 16

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  She opened her purse and counted the money. She blinked and looked at the man.

  He got up and went over to the silverware station.

  “What’s he doing?” said the little girl.

  “Never mind,” said the woman. “His knife and fork must be dirty.”

  He came back and sat down.

  “And Buffalo Fries,” said the little girl.

  The woman studied him. “Is it still okay?” she asked.

  “What?” he said.

  She waited, but now he was busy observing the customers. She gave up and returned to the menu. It was difficult for her to choose, not knowing what he would order. “I’ll just have a small dinner salad,” she said at last.

  The others in the restaurant kept to themselves. A man with a sample case ate a piece of pecan pie and scanned the local newspaper. A young couple fed their baby apple juice from a bottle. A take-away order was picked up at the counter, then carried out to a Winnebago. Soft, vaguely familiar music lilted from wall speakers designed to look like tom-toms, muffling the clink of cups and the murmur of private conversations.

  “Want to go to the bathroom,” said the little girl.

  “In a minute, baby,” the woman told her. A waitress in an imitation buckskin mini-dress was coming this way.

  The little girl squirmed. “Mom-my!”

  The waitress was almost here, carrying a pitcher and glasses of water on a tray.

  The woman looked at the man.

  Finally he leaned back and opened his hands on the table.

  “Could you order for us?” she asked carefully.

  He nodded.

  In the rest room, she reapplied makeup to one side of her face, then added another layer to be sure. At a certain angle the deformity did not show at all, she told herself. Besides, he had not looked at her, really looked at her in a long time; perhaps he had forgotten. She practiced a smile in the mirror until it was almost natural. She waited for her daughter to finish, then led her back to the dining room.

  “Where is he?” said the little girl.

  The woman tensed, the smile freezing on her lips. He was not at the table. The food on the placemats was untouched.

  “Go sit down,” she told the little girl. “Now.”

  Then she saw him, his jacket with the embroidered patches and the narrow map like a dragon on the back. He was on the far side of the room, under a framed bow and arrow display.

  She touched his arm. He turned too swiftly, bending his legs, his feet apart. Then he saw who it was.

  “Hi,” she said. Her throat was so dry that her voice cracked. “Come on, before your food gets cold.”

  As she walked him to the table, she was aware of eyes on them.

  “I had a bow and arrow,” he said. “I could pick a sentry out of a tree at a hundred yards. Just like that. No sound.”

  She did not know what to say. She never did. She gave him plenty of room before sitting down between him and the little girl. That put her on his other side, so that he would be able to see the bad part of her face. She tried not to think about it.

  He had only coffee and a small sandwich. It took him a while to start on it. Always travel light, he had told her once. She picked at her salad. The people at the other tables stopped looking and resumed their meals.

  “Where’s my food?” asked the little girl.

  “In front of you,” said the woman. “Now eat and keep quiet.”

  “Where’s my pancakes?”

  “You don’t need pancakes.”

  “I do, too!”

  “Hush. You’ve got enough.” Without turning her face the woman said to the man, “How’s your sandwich?”

  Out of the corner of her eye she noticed that he was hesitating between bites, listening to the sounds of the room. She paused, trying to hear what he heard. There was the music, the undercurrent of voices, the occasional ratcheting of the cash register. The swelling traffic outside. The chink of dishes in the kitchen, as faint as rain on a tin roof. Nothing else.

  “Mommy, I didn’t get my Buffalo Fries.”

  “I know, Laura. Next time.”

  “When?”

  Tomorrow? she thought. “All right,” she said, “I’ll get them to go. You can take them with you.”

  “Where?”

  She realized she did not know the answer. She felt a tightening in her face and a dull ache in her throat so that she could not eat. Don’t let me cry, she thought. I don’t want her to see. This is the best we can do—can’t she understand?

  Now his head turned toward the kitchen.

  From behind the door came distant clatter as plates were stacked, the squeak of wet glasses, the metallic clicking of flatware, the high good humor of unseen cooks and dishwashers. The steel door vibrated on its hinges.

  He stopped chewing.

  She saw him check the room one more time: the sharply-angled tables, the crisp bills left for tips, the half-eaten dinners hardening into waste, the full bellies and taut belts and bright new clothing, too bright under the harsh fixtures as night fell, shuttering the windows with leaden darkness. Somewhere outside headlights gathered as vehicles jammed the turnoff, stabbing the glass like approaching searchlights.

  He put down his sandwich.

  The steel door trembled, then swung wide.

  A shiny cart rolled into the dining room, pushed by a busboy in a clean white uniform. He said something over his shoulder to the kitchen crew, rapid-fire words in a language she did not understand. The cooks and dishwashers roared back at his joke. She saw the tone of their skin, the stocky, muscular bodies behind the aprons. The door flapped shut. The cart was coming this way.

  He spat out a mouthful of food as though afraid that he had been poisoned.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “See? They’re Mexicans, that’s all ...”

  He ignored her and reached inside his jacket. She saw the emblems from his Asian tour of duty. But there were also patches from Tegucigalpa and Managua and the fighting that had gone on there. She had never noticed these before. Her eyes went wide.

  The busboy came to their booth.

  Under the table, the man took something from his pants pocket and set it beside him on the seat. Then he took something else from the other side. Then his fists closed against his knees.

  “Can I have a bite?” said the little girl. She started to reach for the uneaten part of his sandwich.

  “Laura!” said the woman.

  “Well, he doesn’t want it, does he?”

  The man looked at her. His face was utterly without expression. The woman held her breath.

  “Excuse,” said the busboy.

  The man turned his head back. It seemed to take a very long time. She watched, unable to stop any of this from happening.

  When the man did not say anything, the busboy tried to take his plate away.

  A fork came up from below, glinted, then arced down in a blur, pinning the brown hand to the table.

  The boy cried out and swung wildly with his other hand.

  The man reached under his jacket again and brought a beer bottle down on the boy’s head. The boy folded, his scalp splitting under the lank black hair and pumping blood. Then the cart and chairs went flying as the man stood and grabbed for the tomahawks on the wall. But they were only plastic. He tossed them aside and went over the table.

  A waitress stepped into his path, holding her palms out. Then she was down and he was in the middle of the room. The salesman stood up, long enough to take half a brick in the face. Then the manager and the man with the baby got in the way. A sharp stone came out, and a lockback knife, and then a water pitcher shattered, the fragments carrying gouts of flesh to the floor.

  The woman covered her little girl as more bodies fell and the room became red.

  He was going for the bow and arrow, she realized.

  Sirens screamed, cutting through the clot of traffic. There was not much time. She crossed the parking lot, carrying the little girl toward
the Winnebago. A retired couple peered through the windshield, trying to see. The child kicked until the woman had to put her down.

  “Go. Get in right now and go with them before—”

  “Are you going, too?”

  “Baby, I can’t. I can’t take care of you anymore. It isn’t safe. Don’t you understand?”

  “Want to stay with you!”

  “Can we be of assistance?” said the elderly man, rolling down his window.

  She knelt and gripped the little girl’s arms. “I don’t know where to go,” she said. “I can’t figure it out by myself.” She lifted her hair away from the side of her face. “Look at me! I was born this way. No one else would want to help us. But it’s not too late for you.”

  The little girl’s eyes overflowed.

  The woman pressed the child to her. “Please,” she said, “it’s not that I want to leave you ...”

  “We heard noises,” said the elderly woman. “What happened?”

  Tall legs stepped in front of the camper, blocking the way.

  “Nothing,” said the man. His jacket was torn and spattered. He pulled the woman and the little girl to their feet. “Come on.”

  He took them around to the back of the lot, then through a break in the fence and into a dark field, as red lights converged on the restaurant. They did not look back. They came to the other side of the field and then they were crossing the frontage road to a maze of residential streets. They turned in a different direction at every corner, a random route that no one would be able to follow. After a mile or so they were out again and back to the divided highway, walking rapidly along in the ditch.

  “This isn’t the way,” said the little girl.

  The woman took the little girl’s hand and drew her close. They would have to leave their things at the motel and move on again, she knew. Maybe they would catch a ride with one of the truckers on the interstate, though it was hard to get anyone to stop for three. She did not know where they would sleep this time; there wasn’t enough left in her purse for another room.

  “Hush, now.” She kissed the top of her daughter’s head and put an arm around her. “Want me to carry you?”

  “I’m not a baby,” said the little girl.

  “No,” said the woman, “you’re not ...”

  They walked on. The night lengthened. After a while the stars came out, cold and impossibly distant.

  MARTYR WITHOUT CANON by t. Winter-Damon

  t. Winter-Damon is a poet from Tucson, Arizona whose work is a splendid example of the spontaneous generation of new writing talent within the small press field. Multitalented, he has published fiction, poetry, texts and illustrations here and in Europe—appearing in such publications as Bad Haircut Quarterly, New Blood, Back Brain Recluse, Poet’s Corner, Opossum Holler, Tarot, The Rhysling Anthology, Haunts, Fantasy Tales, Ice River, and many, many more. Don’t look for these at your supermarket newsstand, however.

  Baptize me with the wanton venom of your serpent kisses!

  Thrust your thorns of pleasure deep into my skull!

  Hammer your rusted spikes into my outstretched palms,

  My Courtesans of Darkness!

  Transfix my feet into an entrechat of frostbite-searing rapture

  Rack me high upon the Tree of Pain

  —Let Passion’s roses bloom upon my chastened nakedness

  in bright profusion

  —Let the winnowing winds flay me to the twisted shape

  of your desire

  —Let my screams of silence echo in the arid canyons

  of your mercy

  Seduce me with the hollow promise of your empty chalice

  Moisten the fevered leather of my lips with your soaked sponge

  of vinegar and brine

  Inhale the poppy fragrance of my fear that trickles in chill rivulets

  of feather-tonguing torment

  —Let the ravens feast upon the tainted colors

  of my soul

  —Let the flies crust black and emerald upon the budding blossoms

  of my transformation

  —Let the Dark Dreams swirl like incense smoke from out this flesh

  emancipated from its chains of Reason!

  This wickerwork of bone no longer claims me ...

  Rack me high upon the Tree of Pain

  Where Herakles in his masque of Everyman still strains—

  unable to escape the spasms of his ravished logic.

  all quivers to the violet howl to steel wolves of electric desolation & Van Gogh & Janis J. & Goya slash the sky of amethyst with brush-strokes frantic. unremitting. manic. & the shadows scream in jagged lines of desperation, & the howl of violet stirs the coals of arctic flame into a crematory blast that chars the pinkest clouds into gray ash. & from out of Golgotha erupt the arcs of blinding blackness like a wildly vacillating pendulum. like a metronome of epileptic tic/tic/ticking ... obsidian in shattered curves of razor. ripples of deadly beauty.

  ... black/yellow/red. black/yellow/red. black/yellow/red ... like smoke rings of silken venom. & the coral snake like Ouroboros slithers through the tunnels of perception. Rimbaud & Jim of The Doors & Baudelaire. & the Seps shall share the tonguing of my ardor in French kisses of necrotic splendor. & below the violet blades of grass we writhe in visions of abandon. (do not hunger yet to drink my sins! grind not the gruel of bool keban! the maize shall rot before my steeping! even now i stride!). & i shall feast upon the dragon’s flesh to know the fullness of the barrow. to savor the secrets of the mound. & i shall swill deep trenchers of his black & fiery liquor. & i shall bathe my flesh-that-is-no-longer-flesh in torrents of his steaming essence. (& i shall toast the blood elixir!)

  Flow the sacred wine of madness!

  —ORPHEUS—

  Madness of wine! Sacred the flow!

  & Blind Lemon Jefferson & Balder & James Joyce. & glaciers & waterfalls of molten indigo geyser up into the carbon void where once the planets & the constellations reeled in fiery rituals of birth & death prolonged in seconds of eroding diamond. pinpricks & chrysanthemums. & irises of indigo of shattered glass of repetitions of the first expression & echoes of steel & gut reaction. rhythms of indigo equation. & the audience applauds with white-gloved hands of flogging hunger & the flowers of the belladonna blossom rising like velvet curtains from the stage of dramas & tragedy. & the Sorcerer of cruel angular. frenetic. oystereyed. like the psychopompos escaped from the asylum. & he breathes. he breathes the meanings of meaningless. the Navel of Limbo. he breathes & gestures with exaggeration. & the brush flows sepia upon the canvas ... & Faust & Gretchen & their analyst the angel of the light invites them to the couch. & the brush flows sepia upon the canvas ...

  & Heinrich von Kleist & Sid Vicious & de Nerval. & the gift of liberated second sight. & beneath a black sun the exiled prince of Aurelia wanders. & the prince in exile wanders through the twisting shadows of the lamppost forest. & Sex Pistols. & the queen of amazons/the lioness of snowy wastes. & her hounds bay at the stony moon. & her guest (baptized in frigid waters) races forever second to the tortoise. & her feast of red roses. & The Last Supper ... & the phoenix revels in the flame. & Isis & her sacred cobra. & Carnea jingles temptingly her keys ...

  RACK ME HIGH UPON THE TREE OF PAIN

  UNLOCK THE GATES OF UNDERWORLD

  Lenny Bruce & Crimes of Passion & Apollinaire. & images in ultraviolet. delusions/nihilist/phantom/peacock ... the one-eyed god ... moonshadow/arabesques/mouths shrieking/minarets/mooncrimson ... the one-eyed god ... fissures yawning like dissolute pariah priests. & beggars belching coffin stench. brimstone. fermented bile ... the one-eyed god ... silk/satin/velvet/serpent & sparrow/chinchilla/leather/lace ... the ebon horse ...

  & i wander a forest bare-limbed as bone. where featherless birds sing voiceless songs ...

  RACK ME HIGH UPON THE TREE OF PAIN

  Capture my vagrant flesh within your brazen bell! Beat upon it with your hammers of sensation. Drum forth the clamor of the Joyous Damned! Rupture the
se fragile tympani with ringing madness. Until i only hear the iridescent whispers of the evernight!

  Gouge out my eyes! Your shafts of mistletoe shall blind me. Until i only see the roaring colors of the evernight!

  Corrupt my tongue with maggots’ lust! Until i only taste quicksilver/acid/liquor ...

  Until i only taste the sap

  of the moon-plant/resin of the wise. Until I only speak in syllables of scoured bone! in syllables of evernight ...

  Baptize me with the wanton venom of your serpent kisses—

  Thrust your thorns of pleasure deep into my skull—

  Hammer your rusted spikes into my outstretched palms,

  My Courtesans of Darkness—

  Transfix my feet into an entrechat of frostbite-searing rapture—

  RACK ME HIGH UPON THE TREE OF PAIN.

  THE THIN PEOPLE by Brian Lumley

  Born in Horden, Durham on December 2, 1937, Brian Lumley joined the army at age 21 and served twenty-two years in Berlin and Cyprus among other postings. Retired from the army, he writes full time now and lives with his wife, Dorothy, in Devon. At conventions Lumley has been known to share a bottle of brandy with other late-night program participants, and he’s a good man to have on your side if a fight erupts afterward in the bar.

  In addition to numerous short stories, Brian Lumley has published some twenty-five books—most recently, Necroscope II. Many of his earlier books—The Caller of the Black, The Burrowers Beneath, Beneath the Moors, The Transition of Titus Crow—were rooted in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, and while he has not abandoned this interest, Lumley’s recent novels—Psychomech, Necroscope—have been ambitious delvings into more contemporary horrors. A case in point is “The Thin People”—certainly not a Cthulhu Mythos story. However, after reading this I intend to examine closely the next bottle of brandy Lumley offers to share.