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

by Paula Guran [editor]

  I was right; it was a cop. As the motorcycle drew closer, I told myself not to worry. I was going just under the speed limit, my tax disc was valid, the exhaust and tires were good, there was absolutely no reason for him to pull me over . . . but he did.

  Even as I was slowing to obey his peremptory command I was no more than annoyed. It was only when I was stopped, watching the cop dismount, that I remembered there was a dead body in the trunk of the car.

  I knew I must not panic, that I had to stay calm and convince the cop I was a good, law-abiding citizen he could have no interest in detaining. He came over to my window, asked to see my driver’s license, told me to get out of the car and step away, keeping my hands where he could see them. I obeyed, but perhaps not quickly enough, or maybe there was something in my attitude he didn’t like, because he became more aggressively authoritarian with every passing second. He sneered at my hairstyle, asked where I went to church, and about my political affiliations, and when I reminded him that this was America, the land of the free, he said I sounded like a limey bastard, and demanded my passport.

  The tedious, threatening argument went on and on, and I was relieved to wake up before my guilty secret was revealed.

  I found that dream unusually disturbing. I had no idea whose body was in the boot, or how it had come to be there. I didn’t even know if I was a killer. In the dream there had been no guilt or shame attached to the knowledge that I was driving around with a dead body, only anxiety about the consequences if it was found. Did that mean I wasn’t a murderer? Or did it indicate the opposite, that my dream persona was a cold-blooded psychopath?

  Over the next few weeks, the dream continued to haunt me. I’d had recurring dreams before, anxiety dreams in which I was forever doomed to miss my flight, getting lost on my way to take an exam, or finding I had to give a speech wearing nothing but a skimpy bathrobe. Now, my pleasurable dream of driving across America had been spoiled, turned into another variant of angst.

  After the first time, as soon as it began I was obsessed with the problem of how to dispose of the body. My every attempt to find a hiding place was foiled: There were fishermen on the lake, a family having a picnic in the woodland glade, kids playing in the old quarry, people with their prying eyes everywhere I went.

  Gradually I came to understand that the body was that of my former girlfriend, but what had actually happened, and why I was burdened with her corpse remained unclear. I knew that my past connection with her would make me the prime suspect if her body was discovered, but I didn’t actually know how she had died, and I didn’t feel guilty.

  In my waking hours I thought more and more about this dream, although I wished I could forget it. I wondered if talking to someone might help, and I thought of Grace.

  Another coincidental meeting would have been perfect, but of course that wasn’t going to happen. If I knew where she lived, though, I could make it happen, so in the end I phoned Mardi.

  “Her address?” She made my simple request sound outrageous.

  “I thought I might send her a card.”

  “Oh, really.” Her skepticism was palpable.

  “All right, then, phone number.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not? You try to match us up, and then—”

  “I did not. Anyway, that was a month ago, and you clearly didn’t get on. In fact—”

  “That’s not fair. She was quite interesting, actually. Not my type, but—I’d like to talk to her again. I’ve been thinking about her.”

  “Well, don’t.”

  I wished we were speaking face to face instead of on the phone. “Why do you say that? Did she say something about me?”

  “Of course not.”

  But there had been a pause before she answered. “Did she tell you we ran into each other about a week after dinner at yours?”

  She made a noise and I winced, remembering how Grace had suddenly taken flight. What had she said about me to Mardi? How bad was it?

  “I want to apologize. Please, Mardi.”

  “I’ll tell her.” When I said nothing more, she sighed. “I promise. I’ll call her tonight and give her your number, and then, if she wants, she can call you.”

  Grace did not phone me, but about a week later, she returned to me in a dream.

  I was on the road again, and had pulled into a service station to fill the tank. When I came back from paying, there she was, in the front seat. She was a prettier, idealized version of Grace in a tight-fitting cashmere sweater beneath a trench coat. Her hairstyle was long, old-fashioned, hanging down in waves, one dipping across an eye like Veronica Lake’s in an old black and white movie. I think the dream was in black and white, too.

  “Drive,” she said.

  It was night now, and raining, but there was enough traffic on the road for the passing headlights to reveal her to me in occasional, strobe-like glimpses.

  “I hear you’ve got a case for me,” she said.

  An enormous wave of relief washed over me, and between the pulsing beats of the windshield wipers I told her my story: brief, laconic, just the facts, ma’am. When I had finished, she continued to gaze straight ahead for a while before saying, her voice low, “Pull over.”

  “Where?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Wherever you can.”

  There was an exit just ahead, sign-posting a roadside picnic area, so I pulled off the highway and drove even deeper into darkness, away from the lights and the traffic, to a secluded spot, utterly deserted on this dark and rainy night.

  When I had parked, I turned to face the detective. Light from an unknown source gently illuminated her features. She looked wise and gentle and I was suddenly certain she was the one person who could save me from this nightmare.

  “Do you know who killed her?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Will you help me?”

  “Yes.” She touched my hand. “I’ll take you in.”

  “What?”

  “To the police. You have to turn yourself in.”

  “No.”

  “It’s the only way.”

  “I can’t. I won’t. They’ll think I’m the killer.”

  “You are the killer.”

  I looked into her eyes (one half-obscured by a silky fall of hair) and knew she told the truth.

  “Give me the keys,” she said. “I’ll drive. They may not go so hard on you if you confess, if you can explain . . . ”

  But how could I explain something I could not remember?

  As in a montage of scenes from an old black and white movie I saw my future: the grim faces of the jury, the old judge banging his gavel, the bleak and lonely cell, the walk—shuffling in ankle chains—to the electric chair, the hood coming down over my face, the soft voice of the priest exhorting me to confess and repent before I died . . .

  It wasn’t fair! I wanted to live!

  Driven by desperate need, I reached for Grace. My hands closed around her slender neck and squeezed. My reaction took her by surprise, and my thumbs must have been in just the right spot to inflict maximum damage, for she scarcely even struggled; when she could not draw another breath she went limp. I continued to squeeze, making sure, venting my terror and rage on her frail and vulnerable neck, and by the time I let go, she was dead.

  There was no one around to see, but I did not want to take the risk that some tired motorist might decide to drive in next to me, and considered simply pushing the detective’s body out of the car and driving away. Then I had an idea: why not get rid of both bodies at once? I discovered a shovel in the trunk, and with it I dug a single grave, deep enough to hold them both. I drove away feeling satisfied, certain the evidence of both my crimes was now hidden so well they would never be found. Even if in future years someone found the bones, there would be nothing to link them to me.

  I woke filled with regret and sorrow and a sense of terrible loss, but also with the cooler, steadying awareness that I’d done what I had to do, and it
was over. I never had that dream again. Case closed. I would have liked to see Grace’s reaction if I told her about it—but not enough to make any effort to find her. More than a year went by, actually closer to two, before I found out what had happened to her.

  Hannes had asked me to meet him in Waterstone’s at around six—I thought we were going for a drink, and had no idea why he’d suggested the bookshop rather than the pub across the street, not even when I saw him standing, grinning, beside the sign announcing a book-signing. He pointed at the author’s photograph, and still I didn’t twig, didn’t recognize her until the title of the book—Dream Detective—gave me a clue.

  “Grace Kearney—that’s your Grace?”

  “Not mine, mate!”

  The woman in the photo looked ordinary: was blandly pretty, smiling, heavily made-up, the eyebrows plucked into anorexia. “Really? That’s her? Mardi’s old friend? She wrote a book?”

  “And sold it for a bundle, and that’s the least of it. Have you never seen her on TV? First it was guest appearances, but now I’ve heard she’s going to have her own show.”

  I looked at the picture again, trying to summon up a mental image of the woman I’d met to compare it to, and failing. All I could think of was Veronica Lake struggling feebly in my murderous grasp.

  “Are we meeting Mardi?” I hadn’t seen her in months; although I tried to keep in touch, the two of them no longer entertained the way they’d used to, and rarely went out, since their baby had been born.

  “No way! She doesn’t approve.”

  “Of what, the book?”

  “The book, the TV show, the celebrity clients, the publicity, glitz, bling, dosh . . . ”

  I recalled how badly Mardi had responded to Grace’s telling me what she did. “Grace charges people money to investigate their dreams?”

  “You sound like Mardi! Yeah, well, everybody’s got to make a living. But my dear, idealistic wife does not approve. She thinks her old friend has gone over to the dark side. They don’t speak anymore.”

  The long-ago dinner party conversation came back to me. “Grace said she didn’t believe in taking money for her gift.”

  “That was the old Grace. She changed. Even before all this—” he gestured at the sign and the bookstore beyond. “Something happened. I have no idea what it was, but it changed her, like, overnight.”

  I felt a chill, an unwanted memory intruding, and repressed it.

  “Does Mardi know what happened?”

  He shook his head. “I told you, they don’t talk. ‘She’s dead to me,’ says my lovely wife. Or was it ‘She’s dead inside’—maybe both those things.” He shrugged it off. “Want to go for a drink?”

  “Maybe I’ll just get a book signed, first. Since we’re here.” I felt no nervousness about seeing her again, and I was curious. That mousey little girl, a celebrity! Recalling her vehemence about how wrong it would be to take money for using her gift, I realized I had met her at a moment of crisis, sounding out other people and arguing with herself over the decision she had to make. What I found harder to understand was how her imaginary profession could be taken seriously by so many. A TV show!

  Picking up a book, taking it to the counter to pay, I reflected that people were eager to believe in all sorts of nonsense. And there was the “entertainment” argument—that justified the regular publication of horoscopes in newspapers, and psychics making their predictions on television. Just a bit of slightly spooky fun. Grace had simply tapped into that. Why not? It might upset someone like Mardi, who believed she could see the future in her special deck of cards, but a realist like me ought to applaud her initiative.

  There was a small, orderly queue near the back of the shop. I joined the end of it by myself—Hannes said he’d meet me in the pub across the road—and while I waited my turn I wondered if Grace would recognize me, and decided she would not.

  But I was wrong. When I reached the front of the queue and put the book down, open, before her, she raised her eyes to mine, and at once, although there was no change in her mild, professionally pleasant smile, greeted me by name.

  I looked into her eyes and saw nothing there. The emptiness was unsettling. “I’m surprised—I didn’t think you’d remember me,” I said, stammering a little.

  “How could I forget? After what you did . . . If not for you, I wouldn’t be here now. In a way, I owe my whole career to you.”

  A woman standing near the wall behind her took notice and stepped forward. “Really? That’s very interesting! I don’t recall this from your book . . . Will you introduce us, Grace?”

  Grace went on smiling mildly at me and staring at me with her dead eyes; without turning she said, “Not now”—and although there was nothing threatening or even unpleasant in her tone, it was enough to make the other woman fall back.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  “I think you do.”

  If I said Grace was dead, that the woman signing books was only a simulacrum, or some kind of zombie, who would believe me? Yet I knew, and so did she, that it was true. Mardi had sensed it as well. She was physically still alive, but dead inside—and it was my fault.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said. While I had stood there speechless, she had finished writing in my book and now she handed it back to me. “Thank you. Next!”

  At her command, I stumbled away. I’d forgotten everything else in the horror of my discovery, forgot I was supposed to meet Hannes, and made my way home, alone, across the city. There was no one I could talk to about it, and I could think of nothing else. What had I done to that poor girl?

  Poor? I could just imagine what Hannes might have said: “Are you kidding? She used to be poor, and now she’s not. She’s a success! I can’t see how it’s anything to do with you, but she thanked you, right? She’s changed, sure, and maybe her old friends don’t like it, but that’s life.”

  Mardi alone might have understood—but if I told her what I’d done to the dream-Grace, she would have hated me, and however much I deserved it, I couldn’t bear the thought.

  When I got home, I took a cursory look at Dream Detective, reading a few pages, wondering if it would give me any answers, but there was something smug and flat and false about the paragraphs I skimmed that killed that hope. I turned back to the title page where I found what I later learned to be the author’s standard inscription: My name, and Dream well! Sincerely yours, Grace Kearney.

  Her signature was a florid scribble, which I imagined she had worked up as an impressively individual, if nearly illegible, autograph. Yet there seemed to be something wrong with it. A closer look revealed that something had been written in the same space before she signed; two words in tiny letters, hand-printed, almost obliterated by the signature. I knew they had not been there when I bought the book, were not on the page when I opened it before her, and they were written with the same pen—Grace herself was the only possible author. Had she started to write a more personal message, then changed her mind?

  Under the brightest light I had, with the aid of a magnifying glass, I examined the page until the half-hidden words became clear:

  save me

  Those words have changed my life. I’ve been asked to do something, and although I don’t know how, I will find a way.

  Some things, once broken, can never be mended. Murder, no matter how deeply the killer repents, can’t be undone—except, of course, in dreams.

  Lisa Tuttle began writing while still at school, sold her first stories at university, and won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Writer of the year in 1974. Her first novel, Windhaven, was a collaboration with George R. R. Martin published in 1981; her most recent is the contemporary fantasy The Silver Bough, and she has written at least a hundred short stories— science fiction, fantasy and horror—as well as essays, reviews, non-fiction, and books for children. Born and raised in Texas, educated in New York, later a resident of London, she now makes her home in a remote, rural part of Scotl
and.

  I don’t know why he started feeding the house,

  but I think about how hard it is to look away from it,

  how hard it is to keep from going there . . . it calls us.

  EVENT HORIZON

  Sunny Moraine

  On Tuesdays and Thursdays we go to feed the house.

  Zhan takes me. We walk down the cracked sidewalk, hopping the places where the cracks are almost chasms. At points we have to push through high weeds. We go in the middle of the day when the sun is a hammer beating on your head and it’s too hot for the flies to buzz. There’s hardly anyone outside then and never anyone down this end of Pine Street, which is probably the only reason we can come and feed the house at all.

  Because if the rest of them had their way they’d just let it starve.

  Can you starve a house? I asked Zhan once, and he just spat tobacco at me and smirked. It was a stupid question and I know that now. Of course you can starve a house. You can starve anything that’s alive.

  Zhan flips his shaggy black hair back from his face, huffs out a laugh at nothing in particular. Zhan is three years older than me and all angles and he doesn’t know I’m in love with him.

  In my mind, all three of those things are of equal importance. In my mind, none of them can exist independently of the others.

  Zhan has two squirrels in a steel box trap under his arm. They scurry back and forth and rattle the wire mesh on the ends. I can feel their panic. Once it would have bothered me but I’m over that now. I’m focused ahead, trying not to trip over anything but also because I want to see the house the second that seeing it is possible. I don’t want it sneaking up on me. It keeps up the appearance of dormancy but we know that it’s like any predator; it only seems passive when it has to.

  “Step it up, Tom.” Zhan glances back over his shoulder and speeds up a little. We’re not supposed to be here. If we’re seen by an adult nosy enough we’ll get busted for truancy and they’d probably want to know what we were going to do with the squirrels. I move faster, grass whispering around my ankles.