The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2015 Edition

by Paula Guran

  The corpulent body sat motionless, dressed in the same encompassing purple robes, his lifeless arms on the wheelchairs handles, his feet on the tiny steps. Everything was as it should have been. Except his head. His head was gone, and only a hole remained.

  The air was sucked from Girder’s lungs; replaced with ice. He closed his eyes, but in the darkness it did not matter, the image remained burned on his retina, developing further instead of fading. Girder could see things he had not initially: the tiny undone clasps that ran up the front of Rasp’s robes; the cauterized hole of a neck, red and puckered. Without Rasp’s head, bobbing as he spoke, his body appeared artificial, a mere costume. But if that were the case, what did it disguise? And, more frighteningly, what had happened to whatever wore it?

  Girder heard that wet sound again, like something dragged across the floor, so near it would be upon him at any moment. He reached down to retrieve the painting at his feet and prayed he could escape without turning on the light. He couldn’t bear to see Rasp’s body again. But without that second look, relying only on his quickly fading memories, he misjudged his dash and grazed something that could only have been the headless body. There was no sound from the heavy mass beyond a heavy sigh, but something fell behind Girder, hitting the floor with a sound like hollow wood, and Girder knew there was no time left for him.

  He groped for his final painting, finding it where he imagined the doorknob to be. The wet sound recurred louder and faster, and he scrambled out and into the dark hallway.

  He ran blindly, unsure of where he was going. The hallway looked different in the night—corners where there shouldn’t have been, solid walls that ought to have been doors. And with each crooked step rattling in his head, with each breath wheezing in his ears, he heard the wet sound, rasping as if it too were breathless.

  The painting under his arm made flight difficult, but it did not occur to Girder to drop it, to throw it aside. Everything he was, everything he had become since suffering under his father’s fists was in it, and he would let no one steal it from him. He held the canvas tight, pushed it against the air that tried to knock it loose, to slow him down. Even when that scrambling wetness was overhead, echoing in his ears from above, he couldn’t think of releasing the painting. From somewhere there was a hiss through ravaged flesh, a final rally before the deadliest blow, and Girder’s bent leg finally faltered—a part of his soul already surrendering to his end.

  But the hands that thrust out for him, dragged him into the light, were not from beyond. They were long-fingered and multicolored, and attached to narrow arms of similar complexion. Girder saw little else as he was flung sideways, the canvas slipping from his numb fingers as he tumbled over tangled limbs and onto the hard floor. The air filled with screeching, desperation denied, and Girder’s tearing eyes stung from exertion. He could not comprehend what was happening, his head swimming, delirious from impossibilities. All connection to reality slipped away, and it was only the solid smack of a flat hand against his face that focused him. But when the truth solidified, he felt no better off.

  Nadir stumbled from the door, his eyes red and rheumy, his thick black hair twisted. He had stripped down to his undershirt, and for the first time Girder saw the intricate tattoos that stretched all the way from wrists to shoulders, interrupted only by the length of plastic tubing tied around one arm.

  “You’re safe here, for now,” Nadir slurred, then picked up his glass of liquor from a table covered with needles and spoons and slumped into his only chair. Above his head and on every wall painted artwork hovered like unfamiliar cherubs.

  “What’s happening?” was all Girder’s terror would allow him to say.

  “What’s happening?” Nadir mocked. “What do you think is happening? Rasp wants what’s his. That’s all he ever wants.”

  “I don’t understand. What is he?”

  Nadir staggered, tried to refill his tumbler from the dark glass bottle of bourbon on his table, but most of it merely spilled past. Nadir was oblivious to his failure.

  “You ruined everything. You had no right. No right.” He coughed violently, then took another gulp of his drink before pointing at the paintings above. “You should never have come here. I should have stopped you, I should have made you leave, or killed you when you didn’t. I should have reached my fingers around your throat and squeezed!” Nadir’s eyes bulged as he said it, his fist clenched so tight it paled, and Girder scrambled to his knees. The storm on Nadir’s face passed instantly, and he slid down into his chair. “Everything is ruined. Everything. I remember what it was like, I remember the joy and freedom, before I gave myself over. I believed it all because I was nearly as blind as you. It cost me everything. So long now I’d forgotten. Then you come in here—” Nadir’s eyes flared again, the bleariness replaced by something worse as they focused on Girder—“you come here and knocked on the door and demanded it all for yourself. You walk by my work, even here, in my own private inch of this circus, and you ignore it, laugh at it, diminish it, and think you’re something more than you are. You’re so desperate for it that the trap isn’t even baited before you walk into it. You come and chaos comes with you.”

  Nadir stood and downed the rest of his bourbon. He looked at Girder, but it was clear he didn’t see him. Those bloodshot watering eyes looked right through to someplace cold and dark. He sniffled, and Girder pawed for his painting and dragged it closer. A ripple appeared on Nadir’s face, beginning around the edges of his swollen eyes and moving outward. Skin and meat and teeth trembled, a swell of emotion that was focused on the fallen Girder. The artist’s fear returned, pulling the cloak of colors over his eyes, and before he went blind he scrambled to his feet, painting hugged close. Even behind that returning veil, Nadir’s shaking fury made him appear twelve feet tall.

  “Why didn’t you leave when you had the chance? Why didn’t you save yourself as I couldn’t? Why did you have to upset and awaken it?”

  “What is it?” Girder pleaded. “What is it?”

  But Nadir did not answer. Instead, he threw his empty tumbler at the floor and lunged at Girder, long fingers like painted claws, eyes rolled up in glassy hate. Girder stepped back and instinctively reacted, swinging the painting in his hands as hard as he could. Canvas split and frame cracked. All Girder had was destroyed in an uncontrolled instant, and Nadir fell to the ground, wailing, cursing. Then a wave of convulsions took hold, and while his neck muscles spasmed, he spewed foul liquid over the floor, wave after wave, but did not take his hate-filled eyes from Girder. Instead, he crawled forward, reaching for the terrified artist. Girder could not think, only react. He stepped back, still brandishing a piece of shattered wooden frame, and hit the weakened Nadir with it until splinters flew and Nadir’s body slumped. Once the convulsions ceased, the veil of colors dropped from Girder’s eyes. He let go of the bloody piece of wood, and it splattered on the floor. Girder knew he had to escape, but when he reached the door his slick hands were unable to twist the knob. He was trapped. Then, beneath his touch, the door vibrated; a pounding that echoed the rush of blood in his ears. It was the sound of something trying to get inside the room.

  Girder heard the sickly slurp as he backed away, the drooling suck of ravenousness, and the door visibly rattled with each blow.

  His head raced with terrified thoughts of all Nadir had warned.

  “It’s gone!” he pleaded. “It’s gone! I don’t have it! There’s nothing here for you!”

  But the pounding did not stop. The wooden doorframe split; the air crackled, full of pungency. Girder rushed around the room, around the incapacitated Nadir, looking for some weapon to protect himself from Rasp or whatever it was that was coming through the door. All he found was a slim dull knife, one he could barely hold in his tired, bloodied hands.

  The banging, that ugly noise intensified, interspersed with the door being clawed. Girder noticed the doorframe separate from the wall with each succeeding blow, pulling away and opening the entrance that much fur
ther. Girder hunkered behind a fallen piece of furniture and waited, thin dull knife dancing in his trembling hand. Unexpectedly, he imagined his father kneeling in his place.

  What came though the torn opening on that final blow was nothing Girder was prepared for. It had the face and head of Elias Rasp, but contorted and stretched, the skin like vellum, the eyes dead and staring wide. But the head was supported by the blackest flesh, wrinkled and covered in a bloody sheen. Its conical body, nearly three foot long, twisted as it reached its tail, an appendage that flicked spasmodically while hundreds of long spindly legs carried the creature scurrying toward Nadir’s unmoving body. And the torn and broken remnants of the painting he still wore. A trail of greasiness followed after, but the thing with Rasp’s face was not slowed by it. Unencumbered by its previous corpulent body, it moved with precision, black tongue hanging limply from a dislocated jaw. The knife slipped from Girder’s hand, his fear too great to control himself.

  The thing stopped a few feet short of Nadir’s body, its oversized head cocking too far, and rolled its cataracted eye. Girder stared, transfixed, as the thing perched on Nadir’s face and spun its head in the other direction, jaw to its back, eyes moving skyward, and from the grey skin on the rear of the presumable skull a thin spongy gland pushed out. It then gathered its legs to itself and hunkered to feed.

  But it was not the bloodied Nadir who was the meal; it was what remained of Girder’s masterpiece. Colors from the torn canvas bled, then faded from the surface as the sickening mouthparts pulsated over the rough canvas. Ropes of greasy slime slid forth as it moved, removing the hours and days and weeks of Girder’s work, and with each pulse the creature seemed to grow fuller. It fed off everything Girder had given, and the sight left the artist cold and emptied. He reached down to retrieve the dull knife, his grip that much more sure.

  The Rasp-thing fed, the smell and sound of it overpowering, as Girder crept behind it. Each staggered step reminded him of the games Rasp had played over the intervening weeks, of the disappointment in Mr. Raymond’s eyes, of the way his father had—as they all did—of diminishing him, of making him believe he was less than he was. They had all stolen so much from Girder, taken so much of him, and given him nothing in return.

  Except that was not true.

  His father had given him two things.

  The first, a connection to his emotions so strong that a veil of burning red rage consumed his sight; the second, an understanding of how a person’s hands might quickly inflict the maximum amount of damage.

  He stepped over Nadir’s prone body and into range; Rasp’s dull dead eyes rolled and glared. Its jaw quivered, tongue lolled.

  It knew.

  Girder could no longer hesitate.

  The slim dull knife stabbed black flesh repeatedly, throwing indescribable color across the walls. The creature gurgled, squealed, spun in circles as the foul liquid spurted. It darted and Girder leapt back, but with broken body and legs it managed only circles, spraying everything. Girder nearly slid in the mixture of hemolymph, grease, and bile as he struggled, his nerve gone and twisted leg screaming. But the damage to the Rasp-thing was done, and as it slowed its mindless convulsions the vestigial face on its back flickered and twitched with ebbing control. It was only when it had ceased moving beyond an occasional dying tic that Girder was brave enough to crush it beneath the weight of Nadir’s empty chair.

  Girder stood panting on wobbling legs, taking in what lay before him. Nadir, broken and unbreathing. Rasp, a severed head crushed to a soft lump. Blood and vomit and colors spread across the canvas of floors and walls, and upon them an abstract expressionist composition unlike any other revealed itself. Girder observed the patterns, breaks, details of flecks and spots, and read their meaning. The composition’s intent was clear. It spoke directly to him. It spoke of freedom, of release, of a life finally his own. While outside the storm raged fiercely, inside Girder’s great tumult was finally at an end.

  Simon Strantzas is the author of Burnt Black Suns (Hippocampus Press, 2014), Nightingale Songs (Dark Regions Press, 2011), Cold to the Touch (Tartarus Press, 2009), and Beneath the Surface (Humdrumming, 2008), as well as the editor of Aickman’s Heirs (Undertow Publications, 2015) and Shadows Edge (Gray Friar Press, 2013). His writing has been reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, The Best Horror of the Year, The Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror. It has been translated into other languages; and been nominated for the British Fantasy Award. He lives in Toronto, Canada, with his wife and an unyielding hunger for the flesh of the living.

  He had nothing except taunting dreams of castles and meadows and the screams of dragons, fading so fast he could barely remember the sound at all . . .

  The Screams of Dragons

  Kelley Armstrong

  “And the second plague that is in thy dominion, behold it is a dragon. And another dragon of a foreign race is fighting with it, and striving to overcome it. And therefore does your dragon make a fearful outcry.”

  —Cyfranc Lludd a Llefelys, translated by Lady Charlotte Guest

  When he was young, other children talked of their dreams, of candy-floss mountains and puppies that talked and long-lost relatives bearing new bicycles and purses filled with crisp dollar bills. He did not have those dreams. His nights were filled with golden castles and endless meadows and the screams of dragons.

  The castles and the meadows came unbidden, beginning when he was too young to know what a castle or a meadow was, but in his dreams he’d race through them, endlessly playing, endlessly laughing. And then he’d wake to his cold, dark room, stinking of piss and sour milk, and he’d roar with rage and frustration. Even when he stopped, the cries were replaced by sulking, aggrieved silence. Never laughter. He only laughed in his dreams. Only played in his dreams. Only was happy in his dreams.

  The dragons came later.

  He presumed he’d first heard the story of the dragons in Cainsville. Visits to family there were the high points of his young life. While Cainsville had no golden castles or endless meadows, the fields and the forests, the spires and the gargoyles reminded him of his dreams, and calmed him and made him, if not happy, at least content.

  They treated him differently in Cainsville, too. He was special there. A pampered little prince, his mother would say, shaking her head. The local elders paid attention to him, listened to him, sought him out. Better still, they did not do the same to his sister, Natalie. The Gnat, he called her—constantly buzzing about, useless and pestering. At home, she was the pampered one. His parents never seemed to know what to make of him, his discontent and his silences, and so they showered his bouncing, giggling little sister with double the love, double the attention.

  In Cainsville the old people told him stories. Of King Arthur’s court, they said, but when he looked up their tales later, they were not quite the same. Theirs were stories of knights and magic, but lions too and giants and faeries and, sometimes, dragons. That was why he was certain they’d told him this particular tale, even if he could not remember the exact circumstances. It was about another king, beset by three plagues. One was a race of people who could hear everything he said. The third was disappearing foodstuffs and impending starvation. The second was a terrible scream that turned out to be two dragons, fighting. And that was when he began to dream of the screams of dragons.

  He did not actually hear the screams. He could not imagine such a thing, because he had no idea what a dragon’s scream would sound like. He asked his parents and his grandmother and even his Sunday school teacher, but they didn’t seem to understand the question. Even at night, his sleep was often filled with nothing but his small self, racing here and there, searching for the screams of dragons. He would ask and he would ask, but no one could ever tell him.

  When he was almost eight, his grandmother noticed his sleepless nights. When she asked what was wrong, he knew better than to talk about the dragons, but he began to think maybe he should tell her of th
e other dreams, the ones of golden palaces and endless meadows. One night, when his parents were out, he waited until the Gnat fell asleep. Then he padded into the living room, the feet on his sleeper whispering against the floor. His grandmother didn’t notice at first—she was too busy watching “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” He couldn’t understand the fascination with television. The moving pictures were dull gray, the laughter harsh and fake. He supposed they were for those who didn’t dream of gold and green, of sunlight and music.

  He walked up beside her. He did not sneak or creep, but she was so absorbed in her show that when he appeared at her shoulder, she shrieked and in her face, he saw something he’d never seen before. Fear. It fascinated him, and he stared at it, even as she relaxed and said, “Bobby? You gave me quite a start. What’s wrong, dear?”

  “I can’t sleep,” he said. “I have dreams.”

  “Bad dreams?”

  He shook his head. “Good ones.”

  Her old face creased in a frown. “And they keep you awake?”

  “No,” he said. “They make me sad.”

  She clucked and pulled him onto the chair, tucking him in beside her. “Tell Gran all about them.”

  He did, and as he talked, he saw that look return. The fear. He decided he must be mistaken. He hadn’t mentioned the dragons. The rest was wondrous and good. Yet the more he talked, the more frightened she became, until finally she pushed him from the chair and said, “It’s time for bed.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  She said, “Nothing,” but her look said there was something very, very wrong.

  For the next few weeks, his grandmother was a hawk, circling him endlessly, occasionally swooping down and snatching him up in her claws. Most times, she avoided him directly, though he’d catch her watching him. Studying him. Scrutinizing him. Once they were alone in the house, she’d swoop. She’d interrogate him about the dreams, unearthing every last detail, even the ones he thought he’d forgotten.