Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 4

by Cheryl Mullenax

  “I did her laundry. I did the vacuuming and dusting once a week. I made sure she didn’t lack for anything. Anything. And I visited her. I sat with her like it wasn’t an imposition, unlike some people I know. And I was glad to do it, every time, because we never knew if that might be the last.”

  So many answers, so many combinations. Like a slot machine, pull the lever and see what comes up.

  [A] Yes, you did. You absolutely did, and I admire you for that. It can’t have been easy. It’s only now that I can appreciate how hard it must’ve been.

  [B] Remember when you yelled at her and made her cry and said you hoped somebody would shoot you if you ever got like her? That time you didn’t sound very glad.

  [C] Uh huh. Because you could. Because Daddy made sure you had the freedom to do it. He worked full-time in insurance with a side-gig in real estate to make sure you never had to work outside the home if you didn’t want to.

  [D] The reason you could do that is because you pulled her out of her home and moved her seventy miles to an assisted living facility three miles from your garage door. And guess who won’t hear of that for herself?

  [E] None of the above. Because sometimes, if you didn’t find a way to break the loop, get out of the rut, the loop would break you.

  “Okay, I’ll help you,” Casey said instead. “What you’ve been asking for? I’ll help you. I just have to know one thing. Has it just been talk from you, all this time, or is it what you really want?”

  For a change, her mother didn’t scurry back from being offered exactly what she said she wanted. So Casey told her how it had to be to work.

  She’d once heard it said that success in life could be correlated with the number of uncomfortable conversations you were willing to have. Well, this was uncomfortable, profoundly uncomfortable, but nothing about it felt like success. A conversation like this reeked of failure. This was a conversation of last resort.

  At least they’d only have to have it once.

  * * *

  What got to her most was hearing her mother murmur about being cold. A thing like that hurt to hear, and nearly made her get them back in the car and turn around, because it didn’t arise from looking for something to complain about. A thing like that was real. It was primal. Because it was late November and the air promised winter, so of course her mother was cold. Anybody would be.

  She’d worn her coat for as long as she could, for as long as Casey dared let her. But the town was never that big, so the drive was short, through the streets of her childhood and the roads of her youth, and the old byways along the edges where she and her friends had learned to live and lurk beneath the notice of adults.

  She knew where to drive to. Knew where to park so the car would never be seen, not as long as it was night. The trees were thirty years taller, and the old woodland paths still the same. It just took longer to walk them this time.

  “I have to take your coat now, Mom. I told you back at the house, it’ll look better if you’re not wearing a coat.”

  She needed some coaxing, but finally complied. Housecoat, slippers…she looked the part. It would work. Tragic. This happened more than people realized.

  “I can’t go with you past here, Mom. I’m sorry. But all you have to do is keep going a little farther. The walk isn’t that long. The highway’s right through there.”

  And as Casey watched her go, she thought of the rumors she’d heard all her life, of women who enjoyed lifelong good relationships with their mothers. My mom’s my best friend. I want you to meet my daughter, the best thing that ever happened to me. She was pretty sure she had never encountered one.

  Squabbles? Sure. Nattering? Naturally. Blow-ups? On occasion, but never bad, and five minutes later everything was forgotten.

  These women had to exist, but there was a measure of relief in suspecting they didn’t. They were tricks of light and swamp gas. They were cryptids, creatures that had gone extinct fifty thousand years ago, that someone thought they’d seen. They were mythological, avatars of an ideal worth striving for, but impossible to attain in the real world.

  She’d done the best she could. Maybe they both had.

  What a horrible thought.

  And as she drove back in the darkest depths of the night, to wait for the phone call in the morning, it went okay for an hour. Until she came to the first of the blood-smeared crossings where the last of the season’s deer had come to die.

  Mile after mile, she thought she saw them from the corner of her eye, emerging from the darkness into the edge of her headlights, and she swerved to miss them. But there was always another one ahead, until she realized no, these weren’t deer, they were her mother, tottering out of the night, so in time she stopped swerving, because if she was ever going to get home, she’d have to keep driving through the woman, every chance she got.

  <<====>>

  Author’s Story Note

  The roadkill came first. I was on a 1000-mile drive, not one I much wanted to make, but I hoped I could at least squeeze a story idea out of it. So I set the usual intentions: to notice, to see, then extrapolate; to weave connections between the unrelated, and out of that, meaning. Show me something.

  More highway carnage than I’d ever driven through in my life—that was the universe’s answer. If one isn’t ready for the feedback, one shouldn’t ask.

  If you’ve read the story, then you know where I went. If you read between the lines, you can surmise that the experience ranged from bittersweet to deeply ugly, and why.

  Sometimes writing gives you a place to put the shit when you don’t know what else to do with it, you just know you can’t hang onto it. Even when you warp and reinvent and transmute the details, the core remains the same. A couple months after that particular trip, this was where I put as much as I could.

  It was the last thing I completed before everything changed, and the story proved prophetic. Six weeks after writing it, I went back to help my dad move into a memory care unit. On his seventeenth day there, unexpectedly, he died. Back again. Twenty-three days later, my mom died, as well. Back again, to a silent, empty house, and certain rooms I didn’t want to go in unless it was absolutely necessary.

  Sometimes stories are like Donald Rumsfeld’s observation on armies and war: You go to work with the stories you have, not the stories you wish you had.

  CONTROL

  Jeff Parsons

  From The Captivating of Madness

  Hellbound Books Publishing

  A predator stalked New York City’s Central Park.

  Her name was Chelsea McCormick. Once as cute and cheerfully wholesome as a teenager as could be, she was now a dirty, vicious street whore, preying upon the helpless…doing anything, anything, anything to get another hit of crystal meth.

  She had the haunted look of a new addict: unkempt hair limp as dead grass; dark shadows around cold, calculating, desperate eyes; cracked peeling hungry lips; and pale-white blotchy skin. She could easily be mistaken for a Goth teen in her ragged jeans jacket and pants and black Plasmoids heavy metal tee shirt.

  Life was hell for her. Not long ago, almost a year past, she’d left home, forcefully kicked out by her disillusioned parents. She still looked her age, young, though the meth habit was extracting its toll.

  Just one more hit, she thought.

  A sharp spasm of pain twisted in her gut. She bent inward, pulling her jacket tighter as if warding off the cold.

  Whenever the flu cramps came, her sweaty skin felt like it would burst open to release the phantom spiders that burrowed within. Afterward, the ice-cold shivers would linger.

  The sensation passed, but the periodic nausea fueled her craving for meth. Her nose was also running non-stop. It was all maddening.

  She shivered so deeply she thought she’d never be warm again.

  The sun was beginning to set in the clear blue fall sky. Soon, the long night would come. She’d need a place to crash.

  Damn it, I need some ice.

  If she had
some serious money, all would be good, she could get some meth and maybe a room. She absolutely hated having to sleep outside or with some scary creep for a twenty and a bed. If she didn’t succeed, it’d be yet another dreadfully risky day in her life. There were more dangerous people on the streets than her—she’d learned that the hard way.

  Despite feeling anxious, she sauntered down the spacious smooth concrete walkway, trying her best to be inconspicuous.

  No one noticed her. No one cared.

  Her potential victims went about their normal lives, enjoying the brisk sunny day, typically unaware and unconcerned, even though they should know better. They were couples, making the circuit around the manmade lake; a cluster of Japanese tourist tossing pieces of bread to paddling ducks; health nuts jogging steadfast, weaving around crowds; roller bladers and skateboarders showing off their skills; dog walkers holding onto leashes and plastic poop bags; vendors selling everything from hot dogs to Big Apple souvenirs; children squealing with delight, surrounding a performer of some kind, mostly obscured behind a ring of parents.

  Chelsea stopped to take in the revelry of the children.

  The bubbly sound of young laughter resurrected a latent memory buried deep inside her. She must’ve been nine years old and the joyous elation she’d felt upon opening a birthday present was nothing less than miraculous. Beneath the bow-spruced silver wrapping was her dream doll. Lifelike, with a variety of outfits, this baby doll would fulfill her instinctive desire to take care of someone, to love. It was a wonderful gift. Her parents had been so thoughtful…but that changed. Her childhood memories darkened after those early years when the veil of cheerful kindness around her was revealed to be a manipulative ruse. Over time, the bliss she’d felt in those treasured princess years soured as her parents imposed more and more draconian demands upon her: demands for her to behave, to study, to do what she was told, to maintain a respectable appearance, to have the right friends and to have no say whatsoever in her life.

  Grinding her teeth, she realized that she wasn’t angry at the children. They were innocent like she once was. She hated their parents. Adults had created this god-forsaken world, on purpose or not, and their children had to live with the consequences.

  Those parents, intent on watching their children so closely, hovered around the nucleus of excited children drawn to the performer.

  The children were so happy…she wished she could feel that way again.

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, a girl screamed and turned to her parents.

  The surrounding crowd went quiet as the mother quickly scooped up her child. The father, fists beginning to clench, took a half-step forward before his wife’s touch stopped him. As the glaring parents moved away, the girl cried, snuggling close to her mother’s neck.

  With the moment of drama passed, the children continued with their delighted antics.

  Chelsea was astonished when she saw the center of attention. The performer was a woman, ancient, back bowed over, knobby knuckled, light brown skin shrunken like a dried autumn apple and shockingly offset by a trendy cut of stark white hair. Also, incongruously, she wore a loose-fitted, snappy business suit with perfectly matching blouse and pants, and if Chelsea’s instincts were correct, the ensemble was composed of outrageously expensive brands.

  The old woman’s right hand jumped and twitched with a flurry of movement. Connected between her nimble fingers and a marionette figure on the walkway, wispy wires reflected through the fading light like spectral claws phasing in and out of reality.

  The puppet figure was about a foot tall, clothed like a cowboy in blue jeans, brown boots, white shirt, red scarf and black wide-brimmed hat. Its hands and feet, and even its head, were comically oversized yet articulated with supple fluid manipulation.

  As Chelsea watched, fascinated, the shiny painted doll handed a shelled peanut to a boy, no more than two years old, who hopped up and down, holding the peanut up high like a prize.

  The venerable puppet master was undoubtedly an expert in the art form. Intent on her craft, she perfunctorily accepted gratuities with her free hand and stuffed them into a narrow suit pocket.

  Crazy ass. Correction, crazy ass with money.

  Chelsea’s outlook cheered considerably at the thought of taking the old hag’s money.

  A fleeting pang of remorse disturbed her conscience like the last bubble of air trickling from a drowned person’s mouth, rising to the surface and disappearing with a lazy pop as if it had never existed.

  I deserve that money, she reasoned. A sense of sanctimonious injustice raged through her, defiant and fierce like a flare sputtering against a dark abyss.

  Body aching and nose dripping, she carefully considered her plan of attack. She’d have to grab the money when no one else was around or else there’s be a fight from interfering onlookers. Or, worse yet, the cops would nab her.

  Soon enough, the sun crept behind the skyscrapers surrounding the large park. It would be soon be dark.

  A gentle breeze picked up, tickling the fine hairs on Chelsea’s neck with a frosty foreshadowing of the cold night ahead.

  It was getting late in the day. Most people had already left the park by now. Only a few scattered souls still strolled by the wind-rippled lake.

  Finally, the puppeteer absent-mindedly waved goodbye to her last child spectator. She shuffled away from the main thoroughfare towards a nearby stone bridge. The weathered bridge crossed over a thin channel of lily-choked water and led to a path that meandered through a secluded woody area.

  Perfect!

  Chelsea caught herself nervously scratching her hands and immediately stopped.

  Damn bugs. Real or not, their restless crawling underneath her skin often made her irritable.

  Chelsea tapped one foot in tempo with the old woman’s impossibly slow pace. Each halting step dragged on.

  A wave of nausea suddenly rolled through Chelsea. She almost threw up.

  Gasping for air, her craving for a meth hit escalated. She needed to escape the endless insufferable void of pointless existence that had become her life.

  Just one more hit…then I’ll be brave enough to quit.

  Her mantra comforted her. And she meant it. There was a free rehab clinic that was going to open soon on 5th Avenue and 11th Street. She’d check it out.

  At that moment, her conscience resurfaced, deciding to bother her like the irritating late-night buzz of an unseen mosquito. She tried quitting before. It didn’t work.

  The old hag finally passed over the top of the bridge’s shallow arch and inched her way out of sight.

  Chelsea exhaled a long exasperated sigh. She glanced around to verify that no one was watching, then ambled up to and over the crest of the bridge. The idyllic scene before her was reminiscent of a fairy tale about a nasty bridge troll that stalked hapless travelers, except real life was no fairy tale.

  And I’m the troll. She snorted at her lame observation.

  What!?!

  The old woman was nowhere in sight!

  What the hell-

  Chelsea raced down to the wooded trail.

  Uncertain what to do, she strained her eyes to see further up the curving trail. The old woman could barely walk, so she still had to be close by.

  In the woods…

  Frowning, Chelsea scanned both sides of the cobblestone trail. She could see maybe ten feet into the wild tangle of trees and bushes. Spruce, pine and scrub brush still held their foliage above a loam carpet of dead brown needles and leaves.

  She stilled her ragged breathing and listened.

  Despite the background rumble of nearby traffic and cry of city life, she thought she heard something to her left. She waited, cocking her head to one side, straining to hear anything out of place.

  There it was again. On her left. In the woods.

  It was a…groan.

  There she is!

  This job would be a piece of cake.

  Literally a walk in the park.

  Her grin was f
eral, teeth flashing like a hungry shark, circling closer and closer, about to attack.

  As she eased into the undergrowth, her boots cracked dried leaves and softly snapped twigs as low hanging branches closed behind her, leaving no sign of her passage.

  The groaning sound repeated, closer, louder, laced with raw pain.

  Chelsea’s gut gurgled briefly as though in sympathy.

  Her stealth brought her to the edge of a small rocky clearing.

  Just a running leap away, her victim sat groaning upon a small boulder, facing away from Chelsea. Hunched over, the old woman’s head bobbed and shoulders twitched erratically.

  The groaning grew worse as Chelsea closed the distance silent as death.

  Without warning, the old woman turned with a scowl. Her wild rheumy eyes locked onto Chelsea’s. Bloody droplets sprayed from her distorted mouth as she spat out, “Stay the hell away from me!”

  More words would’ve followed, but were lost as the old woman grimaced, eyes squeezed shut, in the grip of intense agony.

  Chelsea’s momentum had stuttered to a full stop, unsure what to do, transfixed by the old woman’s crazed audacity.

  Did she really want to mug a helpless old lady? Her mother’s shrill voice chose that moment to haunt her with barbed memories of proper civilized behavior.

  “Give me your money, you old witch!” Chelsea bellowed.

  Oblivious, the old woman clutched fitfully at her writhing body with clawed hands, one of which still held the marionette, sending it flying and skipping in a macabre dance across the ground. Leaning forward, her groaning became a convulsive gurgle that ended abruptly. Collapsing with a loose thump onto the stone ridge, she shuddered once, then breathed no more.

  Chelsea blinked several times, stunned by the sudden turn of events.

  She knew the signs of death; she’d been around it enough lately.

  Heart attack? No…Way…

  Chelsea’s hysterical laughter was cruel and mirthless. She couldn’t believe her good luck as she looked around the clearing. Only trees, no people, no witnesses, not even a bird or squirrel.