The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2014 Edition

by Paula Guran [editor]

  “But I can,” Corlan said stubbornly aloud, “I can get free. Hris,” he called, his voice strengthening suddenly again, “Hris—come on, my boy—come on.”

  The wolf dropped its heavy head right down, and turned away. It padded off into the dark above the stair.

  A blazing rage filled Corlan Von Antal.

  He found he ran forward up the stairs, leaping from shallow stone to stone, all his body, his skeleton, protesting, but never missing a step.

  When he reached the very top Hris had vanished.

  Corlan stood panting. Then he drew the sabre, and deftly sliced a thin line along his left arm, ignoring vital veins but letting out the blood. Its color astonished him, as if never had he seen a drop till now. Vermilion beads dripping from a thread of air—What in God’s name had he done?

  “Well, Hris,” Corlan said, leaning only his right elbow next on the upright of the door. “Well, wolf. What do you say?”

  Outside in the corridor the bowl of blood-milk was dry.

  Here the wolf was, fully leaning his side on the four-poster bed, but his head back to look at Corlan through the cobweb draperies. Both the wolf’s eyes were open now, if one rather wider than the other.

  “Come on.”

  The long nose of the wolf wrinkled.

  Without further preface it shoved itself off from the bed, turned right round, and slunk across the floor. Its claws ticked on the stone. It halted about a meter from him.

  “All you’ve had is blood with this muck in it. And I’m poisoned too, but only yesterday, and I’m still fighting, still alive. Let me share the life with you, wolf. No, not that way—” for Hris had thrust his head down to the floor to lap up one of the glowing drops. Corlan held out his bleeding arm. (Oh, how the vampire would have exalted. Fresh young blood, offered up. Insanity on insanity. He’ll tear my arm off—)

  The wolf’s tongue slipped along Corlan’s wounded skin. It felt like silk. The man reached out and dug his fingers into the coarse rich fur of the ruff. The wolf drank, stopped, politely lifted his head, both eyes wide and gleaming. They were like the eyes of a young man, a comrade. Human. Brother.

  “Now we go out, Hris.” The wolf watched him.

  Corlan covered up his arm with the torn coat, and swung out of the room. He felt like a dry husk inside which pain and flame and courage were writhing in a wild knot: the desperate agonies of a living thing.

  He did not need to look back. Heard the measured tick of the claws padding after him, and the occasional sponge-like gourmet note as Hris licked his snout.

  In the unlight everything had grown ghostly and insubstantial. The stairs, the floor, seemed spinning off in all directions. On the high cliffs of the walls banners and weapons nearly transparent.

  Corlan reached the barrier of the outer door. Its bolts—were all undone.

  He pushed against it brutally, and the quarter door sighed and tumbled back.

  Night was coming in after all behind the snow. The landscape seemed to Corlan like a shattered mosaic, white, black, the whole globe flying to pieces.

  A voice without voice or words called behind him, silently, deafening as a trumpet note:

  Behold Emptiness. Behold Nothingness. Behold the Abysm of Unremitting Death.

  The hot nose of the wolf punched Corlan hard in the side. “Behold,” Corlan whispered, grasping the wolf’s snow-glittered mane, “behold rebellious life. No surrender.” Swaggering, staggering, halting, faltering, they crossed the remains of the drawbridge above the cavity once a lake and white with swans, now patched white with snow. Down the steep hill they went, the man and the wolf. When they reached the first trees, those whose boughs were snapped, Corlan dropped headlong on the ground. He was laughing. Then he forgot to laugh.

  He saw a ballroom, lit like topaz. The snow was warm and kind. He was barely aware when Hris came closer and his meat-breath steamed across Corlan’s face. Oh he’ll kill and eat me now. God bless him. “Welcome, my friend,” murmured Corlan. And he sank into the depths of what must be the night. But only that.

  Because of it he did not see, and could only afterwards surmise, how the wolf got hold of him, by coat and boot leather, probably, and hauled him on beneath the first impoverished pines, on and on into the thicker shadow of the forest. Forest-deep Hris dragged Corlan Von Antal, out of the Night of Nothingness and back into the night of the winter world. Behold the rebellion of the living. Pines tall as mountains posted up into the snow- starred ether; later a moon, ivory and aquamarine, rising to pierce and to engulf the dark with the bright.

  And Hris lifted his platinum head and howled the lunar love- song of his kind, before the snow closed in again. Then the wolf sat down beside the fallen man. Then the wolf lay down beside him. The snow began to cover them both, as if caringly, with a long pale quilt.

  Afterword

  Nacek was unable to sleep.

  The untold story of Corlan Von Antal kept running through his head.

  Of course, for Nacek, it was a compendium of rumor and gossip, which the old Commander—Ursus—had never confirmed or denied.

  They said, back then, he had killed a fellow officer, some shameful scum the army was glad to be rid of, the murder therefore blamed on enemy action, and Von Antal exonerated. Yet by then he had gone missing. He was found some two weeks later, in deep snow—and protected by a huge hound at least part wolf, (evidently the progenitor of Von Antal’s current companion.) The oddest thing about this tale was not the dog, let alone the murder and its hushing-up, but the fact—according to all versions—that Von Antal, then in his early thirties, appeared to have aged ten years: a man of barely thirty-four had become a man of forty-four. However, if anything he was soon proved stronger than he had been, courageous and cunning in the chess game of conflict. More than a score of secret missions (they said) had been successfully undertaken by him since. While his men loved and admired him, and for the many battles in which he and his troops shone, a whole galaxy of medals and concomitant wealth had been awarded. At last retiring from the field, he had found this remote place among the forests, some antique, ruined castle, and from its stones, its bones, had had rebuilt the colossal keep and lowering tower, a König Ragen more than seven stories high. From miles off, as Nacek had seen, you could make out its crenellated skull looming up above the team of pines, and after dark always with a russet light burning like a beacon, or a vow.

  No doubt Ursus was there now, in his rooms, sleeping, or reading—for old men did not sleep the way young ones did. Not that Nacek could sleep.

  He swung himself off the narrow cot, pulled on his greatcoat, and went out into the passageway, where a single candle offered light.

  Confound the old boy. He must know how they all fretted to hear the truth. Like some coquette, flirtatiously hiding it from them.

  Up above the last twist of the stone stair, something shouldered forward. It was the wolf-dog, Hris, caught like a phantom between glim and gloom. It had a ruff like a lion’s. Two blue emeralds for eyes.

  Nacek braced himself. Hris’ Master was not here now, and wolves were wolves—

  A voice said mildly from above, “Come up, why don’t you?”

  In God’s name! Had the bloody wolf spoken to him? Then a man’s shadow, long and lean, fell sword-like downward from a blur of copper lampshine: Von Antal. Laughing maybe at Nacek, who had thought a dog might talk.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Nacek said humbly.

  “At your age? Well it happens. Come and take a glass of Italian wine. You’ll sleep after that. Even I do.”

  His own rooms were spacious, Nacek presently saw. Some swords, an old flintlock, hung on the walls, and two oil paintings, one a landscape, the other the portrait of a stern and upright old man, not so unlike Ursus himself. “My grandfather,” the Bear said, handing Nacek a silver cup of wine.

  Afterwards Nacek was aware, given this rare chance with Ursus alone, he had meant to try to persuade from him some of the facts behind the stories. And so, as he
sipped the full and fragrant wine, Nacek asked, “Is it true, what they say about your cloak, Sir? The bearskin.”

  “What do they say?” inquired Ursus, almost lazily.

  In this lower, older firelight, despite the goblet-silver of his hair, Von Antal gave a definite illusion of youth. He had the effortless physical grace of a young man, while the clearness of his black eyes was remarkable; it always had been.

  Nacek told him the consensus was that the dog—that was the first dog (wolf) all those thirty or forty years back—had killed the bear.

  Von Antal smiled. He lowered his eyes for a second. Yes, he was a flirt where the truth of this was concerned.

  He did not explain to Nacek that the wolf now was the same wolf, Hris, that he had redeemed from Veltenlak, the very wolf too that grappled and pulled him through the forest, and warmed him in the snow. The wolf he had given his blood, as perhaps Hris’ original master, the vampire, had given it. As for the bear, they had killed it between them. Hris by leading it to the clearing, Corlan Von Antal by looking into its eyes, then touching it. It had died swiftly, quick and clean, but even in that moment he had learned that he need never kill his prey. As the Herr Veltenlak had done, Corlan required only very little to sustain him, and by a transfer—less will than desire—in return he could give back an incredible enduring energy and vigor to any who served him.

  He wore the skin of the bear afterwards not as a boast, but to honor it for the lesson.

  Corlan had been hesitant initially, concerned at what he had become. But subsequently, that way, he never harmed another. And soon his doubts were done. When at length he returned to the ruin, as he had surmised, the Absence was gone. Hunger had destroyed it. The pines grew close and thick. And so he had the tower rebuilt from its own stones. He did not take on the name of Veltenlak. For it was not the vampire lord of the castle who had remade Corlan Von Antal. It was his own duel with that infinitely more terrible demon, Absence, Nothingness, the Void. In such a pass the vampire and its power represented the vitality of Life itself. As Corlan’s violent and frantic war with the void had also done. The vessel had been drained—but given that influx of courage and rage, vitality rushed back like a river breaking through a riven dam. This world lives, and, always, Absence must give way to Presence. While the transposition from decay to renewal aged Corlan, thereafter it made him slow to age. Just as the same force did with the wolf. They might not now be set to live forever, but they would live longer and more hale than most. The phoenix rises from the ashes because the surrender to the personality of the Abyss must never be. Poor Tils, poor Teda, crumbled away by the hour Corlan reclaimed the Schloss, had not known to fight, had missed the basic principle of survival. But Corlan and Hris knew all along inside their warrior souls.

  “Oh,” said Ursus, to Nacek, “that tale isn’t true. I won the cloak in a card game.” And next Ursus, looking into the young man’s eyes, fixed him in the gentle trance, then touched and took, respectful and with care, leaving him in exchange fitter and more sturdy, handsomer even—as Nacek’s fiancée would observe, when again he met her.

  But Nacek himself (knowing not a jot of any of that) would always count himself a perfect idiot. He had sat in the Bear’s own study, with every possibility to wring from him the whole story. And Nacek had sipped Italian wine and fallen asleep like a child. When he woke in the morning, someone had carried him back to his bed—one of the tower servants, he concluded. And he had slept wonderfully well. They all had, it seemed. And really, if he had not uncovered the truth, none of his fellow officers had either.

  As, if it came to it, none of them, ever, would.

  Natura Vacuum Abhorret (Nature Abhors a Vacuum)

  François Rabelais [1494(?)–1553]

  After the Latin of Plutarch

  Tanith Lee was born in the UK in 1947. After school she worked at a number of jobs, and at age twenty-five had one year at art college. Then DAW Books published her novel The Birthgrave. Since then she has been a professional full-time writer. Publications so far total approximately ninety novels and collections and well over three hundred short stories. She has also written for television and radio. Lee has won several awards; in 2009 she was made a Grand Master of Horror and honored with the World Fantasy Convention Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. She is married to the writer/artist John Kaiine.

  The house, for reasons I didn’t understand,

  wasn’t acting like a house.

  A COLLAPSE OF HORSES

  Brian Evenson

  I am certain nobody in my family survived. I am certain they burned, that their faces blackened and bubbled, just as did my own. But in their case they did not recover, but perished. You are not one of them, you cannot be, for if you were you would be dead. Why you choose to pretend to be, and what you hope to gain from it: this is what interests me.

  Now it is your turn to listen to me, to listen to my proofs, though I know you will not be convinced. Imagine this: walking through the countryside one day you come across a paddock. Lying there on their sides, in the dust, unnaturally still, are four horses. All four are prone, with no horses standing. They do not breathe and do not, as far as you can see, move. They are, to all appearances, dead. And yet, on the edge of the paddock, not twenty yards distant, a man fills their trough with water. Are the horses alive and appearances deceptive? Has the man simply not yet turned to see that the horses are dead? Or has he been so shaken by what he has seen that he doesn’t know what to do but proceed as if nothing has happened?

  If you turn and walk hurriedly on, leaving before anything decisive happens, what do the horses become for you? They remain both alive and dead, which makes them not quite alive, nor quite dead.

  And what, in turn, carrying that paradoxical knowledge in your head, does that make you?

  I do not think of myself as special, as anything but ordinary. I completed a degree at a third-tier university housed in the town where I grew up. I graduated safely ensconced in the middle of my class. I found passable employment in the same town. I met a woman, married her, had children with her—three or perhaps four, there is some disagreement on that score—and then the two of us fell gradually and gently out of love.

  Then came an incident at work, an accident, a so-called freak one. It left me with a broken skull and, for a short time, a certain amount of confusion. I awoke in an unfamiliar place to find myself strapped down. It seemed to me—I will admit this too—it seemed for some time, hours at least, perhaps even days, that I was not in a hospital at all, but in a mental facility.

  But my wife, faithful and everpresent, slowly soothed me into a different understanding of my circumstances. My limbs, she insisted, were restrained simply because I had been delirious. Now that I no longer was, the straps could be loosened. Not quite yet, but soon. There was nothing to worry about. I just had to calm down. Soon, everything would return to normal.

  In some ways, I suppose everything did. Or at least tried to. After the accident, I received some minor compensation from my employer, and was sent out to pasture. Such was the situation. Myself, my wife, my children, at the beginning of a hot and sweltering summer, crammed in the house together with nowhere to go.

  I would awaken each day to find the house different from how it had been the day before. A door was in the wrong place, a window had stretched a few inches longer than it had been when I had gone to bed the night before, the light switch, I was certain, had been forced half an inch to the right. Always just a small thing, almost nothing at all, just enough for me to notice.

  In the beginning, I tried to point these changes out to my wife. She seemed puzzled at first, and then she became somewhat evasive in her responses. For a time, part of me believed her responsible: perhaps she had developed some deft technique for quickly changing and modifying the house. But another part of me felt certain, or nearly so, that this was impossible. And as time went on, my wife’s evasiveness took on a certain wariness, even fear. This convinced me that not only was she no
t changing the house, but that daily her mind simply adjusted to the changed world and dubbed it the same. She literally could not see the differences I saw.

  Just as she could not see that sometimes we had three children and sometimes four. No, she could only ever see three. Or perhaps four. To be honest, I don’t remember how many she saw. But the point was, as long as we were in the house there were sometimes three children and sometimes four. But that was due to the idiosyncrasies of the house as well. I would not know how many children there would be until I went from room to room. Sometimes the room at the end of the hall was narrow and had one bed in it, other times it had grown large in the night and had two. I would count the number of beds each morning when I woke up and sometimes there would be three, sometimes four. From there, I could extrapolate how many children I had, and I found this a more reliable method than trying to count the children themselves. I would never know how much of a father I was until I counted beds.

  I could not discuss this with my wife. When I tried to lay out my proofs for her, she thought I was joking. Quickly, however, she decided it was an indication of a troubled mental state, and insisted I seek treatment—which under duress I did. To little avail. The only thing the treatment convinced me of was that there were certain things that one shouldn’t say even to one’s spouse, things that they are just not ready—and may never be ready—to hear.

  My children were not ready for it either. The few times I tried to fulfill my duties as a father and sit them down to tell them the sobering truth, that sometimes one of them didn’t exist, unless it was that sometimes one of them existed twice, I got nowhere. Or less than nowhere: confusion, tears, panic. And, after they reported back to my wife, more threats of treatment.

  What, then, was the truth of the situation? Why was I the only one who could see the house changing? What were my obligations to my family in terms of helping them see and understand? How was I to help them if they did not desire to be helped?