The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (16 page)

It is a tiny world. The men talk of the larger, outer one, but they know nothing. They know goats, and mountains, but there is so much more that they can’t imagine, that they will never see.

I shower. I wash off the blood and the scents of the princess, the bottled one and the others, more natural, of her fear above and of her flower below that I plucked—that I
tore,
more truthfully, from its roots. I gulp down shower-water, lather my hair enormously, soap up and scrub hard the rest of me. Can I ever be properly clean again? And once I am, what then? There seems to be nothing else to do, once you’re king, once you’ve treated your queen so. I could kill her, could I not? I could be king alone, without her eyes on me always, fearful and accusing. I could do that; I’ve got the dogs. I could do anything. (I lather my sore man-parts—they feel defiled, though she was my wife and untouched by any other man—or so she claimed, in her terror.)

I rinse and rinse, and turn off the hissing water, dry myself and step out into the bedroom. There I dress in clean clothes, several layers, Gore-Tex the outermost. I stuff my ski-cap and gloves in my jacket pockets, my pistol to show my father that my tale is true. I go into my office, never used, and take from the filing drawers my identifications, my discharge papers—all I have left of my life before this, all I have left of myself.

Out on the blood-smeared couch, my wife-girl lies unconscious or asleep, indecent in the last position I forced on her. She’s not frightened any more, at least, not for the moment. I throw the ruined ruffled thing, the wedding-dress, to one side, and spread a blanket over her, covering all but her face. I didn’t have to do any of what I did. I might have treated her gently; I might have made a proper marriage with her; we might have been king and queen together, dignified and kind to each other, ruling our peoples together, the three giant dogs at our backs. We could have stopped the war; we could have sorted out this country; we could have done anything. Remember her fragrance, when it was just that light bottle-perfume? Remember her face, unmarked and laughing, just an hour or so ago as she married you?

I stand up, away from what I did to her. The fur-slump in the corner rises and becomes the starving gray, the white bull-baiter, the dragon-dog with its flame-coat flickering around it, its eyes fireworking out of its golden mask face.

“I want you to do one last thing for me.” I pull on my ski-cap. The dogs whirl their eyes and spill their odors on me.

I bend and put the pink Bic in the princess’s hand. Her whole body gives a start, making me jump, but she doesn’t wake up.

I pull on my gloves, heart thumping. “Send me to my family’s country,” I say to the dogs. “I don’t care which one of you.”

Whichever dog does it, it’s extremely strong, but it uses none of that strength to hurt me.

The whole country’s below me, the war
there,
the mountains
there,
the city flying away back
there.
I see for an instant how the dogs travel so fast: the instants themselves adjust around them, make way for them, squashing down, stretching out, whichever way is needed for the shape and mission of the dog.

Then I am stumbling in the snow, staggering alongside a wall of snowy rocks. Above me, against the snow-blown sky, the faint lines of Flatnose Peak on the south side, and Great Rain on the north, curve down to meet and become the pass through to my home.

The magic goes out of things with a snap like a passing bullet’s. No giant dog warms or scents the air. No brilliant eye lights up the mountainside. My spine and gut are empty of the thrill of power, of danger. I’m here where I used to imagine myself when we were under fire with everything burning and bleeding around me, everyone dying. Snow blows like knife-slashes across my face; the rocky path veers off into the blizzard ahead; the wind is tricky and bent on upending me, tumbling me down the slope. It’s dangerous, but not the wild, will-of-God kind of dangerous that war is; all I have to do to survive here is give my whole mind and body to the walking. I remember this walking; I embrace it. The war, the city, the princess, all the technology and money I had, the people I knew—these all become things I once dreamed, as I fight my frozen way up the rocks, and through the weather.

“I should like to meet them,” she says to me in the dream, in my dream of last night when she loved me. She sits hugging her knees, unsmiling, perhaps too tired to be playful or pretend anything.

“I have talked too much of myself,” I apologize.

“It’s natural,” she says steadily to me, “to miss your homeland.”

I edge around the last narrow section of the path. There are the goats, penned into their cave; they jostle and cry out at the sight of a person, at the smells of the outside world on me, of soap and new clothing.

In the wall next to the pen, the window-shutter slides aside from a face, from a shout. The door smacks open and my mother runs out, ahead of my stumbling father; my brothers and sisters overtake them. My grandfather comes to the doorway; the littler sisters catch me around the waist and my parents throw themselves on me, weeping, laughing. We all stagger and fall. The soft snow catches us. The goats bray and thrash in their pen with the excitement.

“You should have sent word!” my mother shouts over all the questions, holding me tight by the cheeks. “I would have prepared such a feast!”

“I didn’t know I was coming,” I shout back. “Until the very last moment. There wasn’t time to let you know.”

“Come! Come inside, for tea and bread at least!”

Laughing, they haul me up. “How you’ve all grown!” I punch my littlest brother on the arm. He returns the punch to my thigh and I pretend to stagger. “I think you broke the bone!” And they laugh as if I’m the funniest man in the world.

We tumble into the house. “Wait,” I say to Grandfather, as he goes to close the door.

I look out into the storm, to the south and west. Which dog will the princess send? The gray one, I think; I hope she doesn’t waste the gold on tearing me limb from limb. And when will he come? How long do I have? She might lie hours yet insensible.

“Shut that door! Let’s warm the place up again!” Every sound behind me is new again, but reminds me of the thousand times I’ve heard it before: the dragging of the bench to the table, the soft rattle of boiling water into a tea-bowl, the chatter of children.

“You will have seen some things, my son,” says my father too heartily—he’s in awe of me, coming from the world as I do. He doesn’t know me any more. “Sit down and tell us them.”

“Not all, though, not all.” My mother puts her hands over the ears of the nearest sister, who shakes her off annoyed. “Only what is suitable for women and girl-folk.”

So I sit, and sip the tea and soak the bread of home, and begin my story.

Perhaps death is neither as easily defined nor quantified as we might think . . .

Tell Me I’ll See You Again
Dennis Etchison

Say it happened like this:

All the lawns were dry and white that day. Cars hunkered in driveways or shimmered like heat mirages at the curb. Last summer the four of them had tried to fry an egg on the sidewalk. This year it might work. As she walked past Mrs. Shaede’s rosebush she noticed a cricket perched on the bleached yellow petals. When she stopped for a closer look the insect dropped off and fell at her feet. She studied it, the papery body and thin, ratcheted legs, but it did not move again. So she reached down, picked it up and slipped it carefully into her shirt pocket.

At that moment there was a rumbling in the distance.

She knew the sound. Mr. Donohue’s truck had a bad muffler. She glanced up in time to see it pass at the end of the street. A few seconds later a bicycle raced across the intersection, trying to catch the truck. The spokes flashed and the tires snaked over the hot pavement.

“David!” she shouted, and waved, but he pedaled away.

The muffler faded as the pickup headed for the boulevard. Then she heard a faint metallic clatter somewhere on the next block. It could have been a bicycle crashing to the ground.

She hurried for the corner.

Vincent came out of his house, drinking a Dr Pepper. “Where you going?” he said.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

Now there was only the buzzing of bees, the raspy bark of a dog in a backyard.

“I think it was David.”

“What about him?”

“He’s in trouble,” she said, and hurried on.

Vincent followed at a casual pace. By the time he caught up she was squinting along the cross street.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know!”

“Don’t worry about it.” He showed her the can of soda. “Want one? I got some more in the basement.”

“Not now!”

“Aw, he’s all right.”

“No, he’s not. Look.”

A couple of hundred feet down, before the turn onto Charter Way, the bicycle lay on its side in the grass, the front wheel pointing at the sky and the spokes still spinning. David was twisted under the frame, the handlebars across his chest.

She ran the rest of the way, stopped and waited for him to move.

“Not bad.” Vincent walked around the crash scene. “I give him a seven.”

“This isn’t a game.” She studied the boy on the ground, the angle of his neck. She watched his eyelids. They remained shut.

“Sure it is,” said Vincent. “We used to play it last summer. Remember?”

She got down on her knees and pressed her ear to his chest. There was no heartbeat. She unbuttoned his shirt to be sure. Then she moved her head up until her cheek almost touched his lips. No air came out of his nose or mouth. This time he was not breathing at all.

“Help me,” she said.

“I don’t see any blood.”

Vincent was right about that. And the bike seemed to be undamaged, as if it had simply fallen over.

“David? Can you hear me?”

“It looks pretty real, though. The way he’s got his tennis shoe in the chain . . . ”

“Are you going to help or not?”

Vincent raised the bike while she worked the foot free. She slipped her arm under David’s shoulders and tried to sit him up. “David,” she whispered. “Tell me you’re all right.”

“Okay, okay,” Vincent said, “I’ll give him an eight.”

She lowered David back down, dug her fingers into his hair and tapped his head against the ground. Then she did it again, harder. Finally his chest heaved as he began to breathe. His eyelids opened.

“I knew he was faking,” Vincent said.

“You take the bike,” she told him.

“Eric used to do it better, though.”

“Shut up.”

Vincent started to wheel the bike onto the sidewalk. He had to turn the handlebars so he did not run over a small mound on the grass.

“What the hell is that?” he said. “A dead raccoon?”

“Leave it.”

“I hate those things.” Vincent raised his foot, ready to kick it like a football.

“It’s a possum. I said
leave it.
”

She got up quickly, walked over, took hold of the animal by the fur and tapped it against the ground. Once was enough. The frightened creature sprang to life, wriggled free and scurried off.

“Faker!” said Vincent.

“Take the bike, I told you. We’ll meet at his house.”

She went back to David and held out her hand.

“Come on. I’ll walk you home.”

David blinked, trying to focus. “Is my dad there?”

“I didn’t know you went out,” said his grandmother from the porch.

“Sorry,” said David.

“You should always tell someone.”

“Do you know where my dad went?”

“To get some kind of tool.”

“Oh.”

“Come in the house. You don’t look so good. Would your friends like a cold drink?”

“Not me,” said Vincent.

“No, thank you,” said the girl.

“Is he coming back?”

“Why, of course he is, Davey. Now come in before you get heat stroke.”

“I have to put my bike away.”

“Well, don’t be long.” She opened the screen door and went inside.

“I gotta go, anyway,” Vincent said. He started out of the front yard. “Wanna come over to my place?”

“Not right now,” said David.

“We can play anything you want.”

David was not listening. His eyes moved nervously from the driveway to the end of the block and back again. The girl moved over and stood next to him.

“Maybe later,” she said.

“Okay. Well, see ya.”

She sat down on the porch as Vincent walked away.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you got hit by a car or something.”

“Naw.”

“What do you remember?”

“Nothing.”

“You never do. But that’s okay. We’ll figure it out.”

There was the rumbling of the muffler again, at the end of the block. David stood by the driveway until the pickup truck rounded the corner and turned in. His father got out, carrying a bag.

“Hey, champ,” he said.

“Where were you?”

“At the Home Depot.”

“Why didn’t you take me?”

“Did you want to go?”

“I always do.”

“Next time, I promise. Hello, there. Charlene, isn’t it?”

“Sherron. Hi, Mr. Donohue.”

“Of course. You’re David’s friend, from school. How have you been?”

“Fine.”

“You knew Eric, didn’t you? David’s brother?”

“Yes,” she said in a low voice.

“Dad . . . ”

“I have an idea. Why don’t you stay for lunch? Would you like that?”

Something moved in her chest, or at least in the pocket of her shirt, trying to get out. The cricket from the rosebush had come back to life. “I would. I mean, I do. But I sort of have to get home. My mom’s expecting me. She’s making something special.”

“Another time, then.”

“I was wondering,” she said carefully. “Could David come, too? She said it was all right.”

“Why, I think that’s a fine invitation. Don’t you, son?”

David considered. “Are you leaving again?”