The Best of the Best Horror of the Year

by Ellen Datlow

  Click click click, went the rocks in the distance, as the creature shifted and then grew still.

  And Diane leant close to me, and breathed in my ear: “We’re going to have to make a move.”

  To our left was the way we’d come, the scree-thick path sloping up before blending with the moraine. Twenty yards. It might as well have been ten miles.

  The base of the peak was at our backs. It wasn’t sheer, not quite, but it may as well have been. The only handholds were the occasional rock or root; even if the fall didn’t kill you, you’d be too stunned or injured to stand a chance. The base of the opposite peak—even if we could have got past the creature—was no better.

  To our right, the main body of the ravine led on, thick with rubble, before vanishing into the mist. Running along that would be nothing short of suicide, but there was still the gully we’d seen before. From what I could see the floor of it was thickly littered with rubble, but it definitely angled upwards, hopefully towards higher ground of solid earth and grass, where the thing from the moraine couldn’t follow. Better still, there was that second boulder at the gully mouth, as big and solidly rooted-looking as this one, if not bigger. If we could make it that far—and we might, with a little luck—we had a chance to get out through the gully.

  I looked at the boulder and back to Diane. She was still studying it. “What do you reckon?” I breathed.

  Click click click, came softly, faintly, gently in answer.

  Diane glanced sideways. “The bastard thing’s fast,” she whispered back. “It’ll be a close thing.”

  “We could distract it,” I suggested. “Make a noise to draw it off.”

  “Like what?”

  I nodded at the rocks at the base of the boulder. “Pick a spot and lob a few of them at it. Hopefully it’ll think it’s another square meal.”

  She looked dubious. “S’pose it’s better than nothing.”

  “If you’ve got a better idea...”

  She looked hurt rather than annoyed. “Hey…”

  “I’m sorry.” I was, too. I touched her arm. “We’ve just got to make that boulder.”

  “And what then?”

  “We’ll think of something. We always do.”

  She forced a smile.

  Reaching down to pick up the bits of rubble and rock wasn’t pleasant, mainly because the thing had gone completely silent and there was no knowing how close it might be now. Every time my hands touched the rocks I was convinced they’d explode in my face before something grabbed and yanked me under them.

  But the most that happened was that once, nearby, the rocks clicked softly and we both went still, waiting, for several minutes before reaching down again after a suitable pause. At last we were ready with half a dozen good-sized rocks apiece.

  “Where do we throw them?” Diane whispered. I pointed to the footpath; we’d be heading, after all, in the opposite direction. She nodded.

  “Ready?”

  Another nod.

  I threw the first rock. We threw them all, fast, within a few seconds, and they cracked and rattled on the slate. The slate nearby rattled and hissed as something moved.

  “Go,” Diane said; we jumped off the boulder and ran for the gully mouth.

  Diane’d often commented on my being out of condition, so I was quite pleased that I managed to outpace her. I overtook easily, and was soon a good way ahead. The boulder was two more strides away, three at most, and then—

  The two sounds came together; a dismayed cry from Diane, and then that hiss and click and rattle of displaced scree, rising to a rushing roar as a bow wave of broken rocks rose up behind Diane and bore down on her.

  I screamed at her to run, covering the rest of the distance to the boulder and leaping onto it, turning, holding my hands out to her, as if that was going to help. But what else could I have done? Running back to her wouldn’t have speeded her up, and—

  Oh. Yes. I could’ve tried to draw it off. Risked my own life, even sacrificed it, to save hers. Yes, I could’ve done that. Thanks for reminding me.

  It got to her as I turned. There was an explosion of rubble, a great spray of it, and she screamed. I threw up my hands to protect my face. A piece of rock glanced off my forehead and I stumbled, swayed, losing balance, but thank God I hadn’t ditched my backpack—the weight dragged me back and I fell across the boulder.

  Rubble rained and pattered about us as I stared at Diane. She’d fallen face-down on the ground, arms outstretched. Her pale hands, splayed out on the earth, were about three feet from the boulder.

  I reached out a hand to her, leaning forward as far as I dared. I opened my mouth to speak her name, and then she lifted her head and looked up. Her glasses were askew on her pale face, and one lens was cracked. In another moment I might have jumped off the boulder and gone to her, but then she screamed and blood sprayed from the ground where her feet were covered by a sheet of rubble. Her back arched; a fingernail split as she clawed at the ground. Red bubbled up through the stones, like a spring.

  Diane was weeping with pain; she tried to twist round to see what was being done to her, but jerked, shuddered and cried out before she could complete it. She twisted back to face me, lips trembling, still crying.

  I leant forward, hands outstretched, but couldn’t reach. Then I remembered the backpack and struggled out of it, loosening the straps to give the maximum possible slack, gripping one and holding the backpack as far out as I could, so that the other dangled closer to her. “Grab it,” I whispered. “I’ll pull you in.”

  She shook her head hard. “No,” she managed at last. “Don’t you get it?”

  “What?” We weren’t whispering anymore. Didn’t seem much point. Besides, her voice was ragged with pain.

  “It wants you to try. Don’t you see? Otherwise it would’ve dragged me straight under by now.”

  I stared at her.

  “Steve… it’s using me as bait.” Her face tightened. She bit her lips and fresh tears leaked down her pale cheeks. Her green eyes squeezed shut. When they opened again, they were red and bloodshot. “Oh God. What’s it done to my legs? My feet?”

  “I don’t know,” I lied.

  “Well, that’s it, don’t you see?” She was breathing deeply now, trying to get the agony under control. “I’ve had it. Won’t get far, even if it did let me go to chase after you. Can’t get at you up there. So stay put.”

  “But… but…” Dimly I realised I was crying too. This was my wife. My wife, for Christ’s sake.

  Diane forced a smile. “Just stay put. Or try… make a getaway.”

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  “Yes, you are. It’ll go after you. Might be able… drag myself there.” She nodded at the boulder. “You could go get help. Help me. Might stand a chance.”

  I looked at the blood still bubbling up from the stones. She must have seen the expression on my face. “Like that, is it?”

  I looked away. “I can try.” My view of the gully was still constricted by my position. I could see the floor of it sloping up, but not how far it ultimately went. If nothing else, I could draw it away from her, give her a chance to get to the boulder.

  And what then? If I couldn’t find a way out of the gully? If there wasn’t even a boulder to climb to safety on, I’d be dead and the best Diane could hope for was to bleed to death.

  But I owed her a chance of survival, at least.

  I put the backpack down, looked into her eyes. “Soon as it moves off, start crawling. Shout me when you’re here. I’ll keep making a racket, try and keep it occupied.”

  “Be careful.”

  “You too.” I smiled at her and refused to look at her feet. We met at University, did I tell you? Did I mention that? A drunken discussion about politics in the Student Union bar. More of an argument really. We’d been on different sides but ended up falling for each other. That pretty much summed up our marriage, I supposed. “Love you,” I managed to say at last.

  She gave a tight, buc
kled smile. “You too,” she said back.

  That was never something either of us had said easily. Should’ve known it’d take something like this. “Okay, then,” I muttered. “Bye.”

  I took a deep breath, then jumped off the boulder and started to run.

  I didn’t look back, even when Diane let out a cry, because I could hear the rattle and rush of slate behind me as I pelted into the gully and knew the thing had let her go—let her go so that it could come after me.

  The ground’s upwards slope petered out quite quickly and the walls all around were a good ten feet high, sheer and devoid of handholds, except for at the very back of it. There was an old stream channel—only the thinnest trickle of water made it out now, but I’m guessing it’d been stronger once, because a mix of earth and pebbles, lightly grown over, formed a slope leading up to the ground above. A couple of gnarled trees sprouted nearby, and I could see their roots breaking free of the earth—thick and twisted, easy to climb with. All I had to do was reach them.

  But then I noticed something else; something that made me laugh wildly. Only a few yards from where I was now, the surface of the ground changed from a plain of rubble to bare rock. Here and there earth had accumulated and sprouted grass, but what mattered was that there was no rubble for the creature to move under.

  I chanced one look behind me, no more than that. It was hurtling towards me, the huge bow-wave of rock. I ran faster, managed the last few steps, and then dived and rolled across blessed solid ground.

  Rubble sprayed at me from the edge of the rubble and again I caught the briefest glimpse of something moving in there. I couldn’t put any kind of name to it if I tried, and I don’t think I want to.

  The rubble heaved and settled. The stones clicked. I got up and started backing away. Just in case. Click, click, click. Had anything ever got away from it before? I couldn’t imagine anything human doing so, or men would’ve come back here with weapons, to find and kill it. Or perhaps that survivor hadn’t been believed. Click. Click, click. Click, click, click.

  Click. A sheep bleated.

  Click. A dog barked.

  Click. A wolf howled.

  Click. A cow lowed.

  Click. A bear roared.

  Click. “John?”

  Click. “Shona? Shona, where are ye?”

  Click. “Mummy?”

  Click. “Oh, for God’s sake, Marjorie. For God’s sake.”

  Click. “Down yonder green valley where streamlets meander…”

  Click. “Christ.” My voice. “Christ.”

  Click. “Steve? Get help. Help me.” Click. “Steve. Help me.”

  I turned and began to run, started climbing. I looked back when I heard stones rattling. I looked back and saw something, a wide shape, moving under the stones and heading away, back towards the mouth of the gully.

  “Diane?” I shouted. “Diane?”

  There was no answer.

  I’ve been walking now, according to my wristwatch, for a good half-hour. My teeth are chattering and I’m tired and all I can see around me is the mist.

  Still no signal on the mobile. They can trace your position from a mobile call these days. That’d be helpful. I’ve tried to walk in a straight line, so that if I find help I can just point back the way I came, but I doubt I’ve kept to one.

  I tell myself that she must have passed out—passed out from the effort and pain of dragging herself onto that boulder. I tell myself that the cold must have slowed her circulation down to the point where she might still be alive.

  I do not think of how much blood I saw bubbling out from under the stones.

  I do not think of hypothermia. Not for her. I’m still going, so she still must have a chance there too, surely?

  I keep walking. I’ll keep walking for as long as I can believe Diane might still be alive. After that, I won’t be able to go on, because it won’t matter anymore.

  I’m crawling, now.

  We came out here to see if we still worked, the two of us, under all the clutter and the mess. And it looks like we still did.

  There’s that cold comfort, at least.

  AT THE RIDING SCHOOL

  CODY GOODFELLOW

  ONE

  “Come quick,” she said, in a voice so leaden each word took a year off my life. “Bring the black bag… There’s been an accident.”

  The call woke me up, and I knocked over a water bottle getting out of bed. For an instant, the glimmer of my ex-husband’s terrified countenance flashed through my murky thoughts. Shaking his horrible visage off, I realized that the cabin was freezing, then I began to worry about what really mattered: getting to Madame fast enough…

  I had only been in town six months, struggling to make a name for myself when Madame Dioskilos had called the first time. I had already heard that she owned a large barn and twenty-four horses, but that she was a rather difficult client, and stingy. She and her charges did all the routine medical work, and she’d had the same blacksmith since opening the Academy.

  I found her to be demanding, but fair; I kept her secrets, and she—so far—kept mine.

  I was all packed before I woke Tonio. He had only been with me for a few months, and I was afraid of spooking him, but he got dressed and helped me load the truck, then climbed in with his sketchpad and box of colored pencils. I told him only that we were going to see a sick animal. A ward of the state for almost all of his ten years, he was well trained to follow directions. I knew Madame Dioskilos would become irate about the boy—no men were allowed on the estate after dark, unless sent for—but I was more worried about him waking up alone in an empty house.

  Anyway, it was time, if this was what I thought it was, for Madame to see—

  I brought my special kit bag, though I doubted if it would do any good. She would have the only sure cure loaded and propped beside the stable door, like always.

  We didn’t pass any cars going through town to the coast road. My windshield was frosted over, and it was freakishly cold for Big Sur, even in winter. The lights were out at the Yogic Retreat at the end of Main Street and the few streetlamps lit only coronas of sleet, but I had to keep myself from driving too fast. The road spilled out of the trees and clove to the sheer cliffs over the Pacific, surfing the uneasy edge of the land for sixty unlit white-knuckle miles. The state hadn’t replaced the guardrail where the last car had gone over, only a week before. Nearly ten years prior, I’d learned, Greta Spivak, a local vet who’d worked for Madame Dioskilos before me, drove over the edge during a winter storm. They found no body in the truck, and it was blithely assumed that the sharks got her before she could drown.

  Tonio fell asleep, rocked by the swaying, serpentine highway. I turned the radio on as loud as I dared to keep myself from thinking.

  Only four other emergencies had called me up to Madame Dioskilos’s house after dark in the whole seven years that I had worked for her. That first time, she had explained our situation: she had found me out, and we both understood that her leverage meant that I could be trusted with what I must do.

  There are many veterinarians between Big Sur and Monterey who would have done the work and had no qualms about it—bitter, middle-aged divorcees; born-again pagans; misanthropic bull-dykes… but, they were all too clean for her. Just as I needed her, she needed someone like me.

  The entrance to her estate is nestled in one of the box canyons that the highway wanders into, seeking an escape from the sea, only to veer away in a panicky hairpin turn. The gate itself is formidable, shrouded in veils of coastal live oak and laurels, wrought-iron barbs ten feet high, a press conference’s worth of cameras fixed on the road.

  I always paused to look at the sculpture in the grove, just outside the gate. Most thought it was a modern piece, the angular severity shaming the mathematical fascism of the Italian Futurists; but the sculpture was symptomatic of Madame Dioskilos herself: so easy to completely misread. Like her, it came from the Cyclades Islands, and was a forgotten relic before Athens had er
ected its first temple.

  It depicted a lithe blade of a human figure—somehow, undeniably a girl—riding the back of a rampant chimerical beast Madame told the curious was a centaur, though its hindquarters seemed to be broken off and lost to posterity. It might have been Nessus’s abduction of Alcmene, the bride of Hercules, but when you got to know Madame Dioskilos, you figured it out. The centaur was not broken, and it wasn’t a centaur, and the myth depicted was not in any storybooks.

  The gates were swinging open as I turned up the drive, braking cagily on the slippery driveway, one arm out to brace Tonio. They’d let me adopt him with no problems, glad to empty a bed at the struggling group home in Oakland where we met. Though they did a thorough background check, the authorities never found any red flags in the short, happy life of Ruth Wyeth. Of course, they hadn’t dug half as diligently as she had…

  TWO

  Artemisia Dioskilos, Madame’s mother, was a fiery vamp and celebrated equestrian from a tiny Greek island. She married an ancient Italian Count who died in WWI, then fled to California with his wealth and title. The Countess ran a riding school in the Hollywood hills until 1926, when she retreated from society under a shameful cloud and purchased an estate on the Central Coast of California to raise her only daughter, Scylla. No inquiry was ever made into the identity of the child’s father.

  Alone on the estate with her mother and servants, the young Scylla Dioskilos must have pined for friends as a child. When her mother died in 1960, she went back to the Old Country to live for three years. When she returned, Scylla opened a new private school.

  For forty years now, she’d run the Delos Academy, and if there were occasional problems with the state, no one had ever raised an eyebrow. She boarded no more than twelve children at a time, taught them to read, do sums, and shoot arrows at deer from the back of a horse. She could have charged ten thousand a semester to the snots in Carmel and gotten it, but she didn’t need money, and she avoided publicity like the plague.