The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (30 page)

He closed the drawer, shifted on the chair, and looked around. The old wardrobe from Englewood stood where it had stood since they moved in. The doors were closed tight. It was filled with the rest of Junior’s stuff but Frank had no desire to open the wardrobe and look inside.

Then a strange thing happened. Frank’s eye caught some sort of movement where there could be no movement. He blinked and shook his head, hard, once. His eyes snapped sideways toward the wardrobe. Water was bobbing and sloshing against the inside of the mirrors on the wardrobe as if they were windows that looked into a swimming pool. Frank stared at it, then jumped and stood up.

The water swelled and rose against the inside of the glass and then subsided. Swelled and rose and subsided again. Frank stood frozen in the middle of the room. He knew it could not be so but suddenly he felt warm water moving all around him. His legs were light and only his toes were touching anything solid and he was floating and the water was holding him up. Then a swell came from behind him and caught him by surprise and his mouth and nose were filled with water and he was going under. Something was pulling at his legs and he tried to get his face out of the water to gulp air but he could not. For an instant he could see the line of the beach but the water pulled him downward. He needed help. He was afraid, for the first time in his life he was frightened, really frightened, in the water. He had to have help. Exerting all his strength and experience, he somehow raised himself in the water and got his nose and eyes above the surface for a moment. Junior! He could see Junior there on the beach, looking out toward the water, toward him. Couldn’t Junior see him? Couldn’t he see that he was in trouble?

Frank’s knees wobbled and he nearly collapsed. He lurched over to the chair at the desk and clung to it, then carefully lowered himself and sat on the edge of the seat. If Junior had come back to haunt him, he had done a good job of it. For a minute or two there, for as long as he had stood there looking into those mirrors on the old wardrobe, if that was what they were, he had felt and seen what Junior had felt and seen that day at the beach weeks before. Felt the water pulling at his legs and body and arms and rushing into his nose and mouth. Felt his lungs straining for air. Felt his heart hammering heavily in panic. And he had seen his brother, himself, standing there on the beach and looking right at him, right there where he was struggling for his life, and doing nothing, nothing at all.

Frank, of course, had never spoken of this strange experience to anyone and he never went into Junior’s room again and Junior never haunted him again.

But now, on this final Monday morning that he was going to spend in his childhood home, his father wanted to move that old wardrobe into his room.

Frank would be leaving on Thursday for the University of Iowa. After he applied and got a modest baseball scholarship and his parents had done the math and approved the decision, it occurred to Frank that, although it was not one of his reasons for applying to Iowa, Iowa was about as far as you could get in the United States of America from the ocean, any ocean. In fact, he thought, although he did not think about it a great deal, if he never saw the ocean again, he’d be just as happy. In high school he had read a novel called
The Sea of Grass
and he thought that a sea of grass or wheat or corn or whatever they had in Iowa would suit him just fine.

His imminent departure from the house did not seem to be troubling his parents a great deal. His mother was obviously worried about him and fussed about the clothes he was taking and the fierceness of winter weather in the Midwest. Big Bill was mostly silent with him, spoke briefly a couple of times about the cost of a college education these days and the importance of concentrating on studies instead of girls and beer, and let it go at that.

Frank knew that they were eager now to get on with their own lives. His departure from the house would make a complete break with the past. They had plans. They were already getting ready to go into the bed-and-breakfast business and they were excited about getting started.

The new business would only be opening at the Labor Day weekend, which was of course the official end of the summer vacation season, and a couple of their neighbors thought they were nuts and doomed to failure. But Big Bill and Frank’s mother were confident. Big Bill had already put up the new wall downstairs and converted the living room, resplendent now with a large table where breakfast would be served to guests, a small reception desk in the corner, and a new large-screen HD TV on the wall. On the reception desk sat a box with a thousand new business cards. The baseboard heating had all been checked and found in good condition. The porch had been painted and the screens replaced, and three more rocking chairs had been purchased. Waiting in the garage were new double beds and a huge supply of bedclothes and towels and little bars of soap. The one bathroom upstairs was definitely going to be a problem but Big Bill had already made plans for redoing the bedrooms and adding another bathroom just as soon as the money started coming in. They didn’t think it would be long. There was already a sign out on the gravel lawn announcing the place as “The Haven” and offering a/c in summer, heated rooms in winter, and breakfast every day and tea every afternoon. And the late start this year would actually be a good thing, they told themselves. They would almost certainly get some weekend business in September and maybe October too if the weather was good, maybe even some weekday business too for which The Haven would be pretty much the only game in town. And there were the added attractions of breakfast and afternoon tea, which were radical innovations at Seashore. Yes, it was going to be a great success.

Another week of final touch-ups on the paint, a few minor repairs, and moving the new furniture up from the garage, and they would be ready to welcome their first guests.

Big Bill only needed help with the old wardrobe because its size and weight made it hard to manage on the stairs and he was worried about snapping off the weak legs. It was going into Frank’s room, he said, because “the other room” was bigger and would get the newer furnishings and they could then charge more for it. They would replace the old wardrobe later when there was money coming in.

Frank said nothing and just sweated and grunted along with his father as they wrestled the old wardrobe up the stairs and into his room. Frank’s own wardrobe had already been moved into what had been the guest room and the clothes and things he was leaving at home were packed into cartons in a corner of the room.

That night Frank sat on the side of his bed and looked at the old wardrobe. It looked the same as it had always looked, the varnish still crackled and the mirrors still cloudy. Those mirrors, he thought, if that was what they really were. His heart thumped but he steadied his nerves and looked at them again. There was nothing unusual about them and what he had once seen in them seemed fantastic now. The wardrobe reminded him of Junior, of course, and he didn’t like to think about Junior, but that was two years ago and it was all behind him now.

He stood up and stepped closer to the wardrobe. There was nothing in any way unusual about it. Apparently his parents had cleaned it out and gotten rid of Junior’s things long ago because the wardrobe was obviously empty when he and Big Bill moved it. For a moment Frank thought he might open the doors and have a look inside. Maybe that would dispel once and for all that frightening vision of the ocean that still lingered at the edge of his memory.

He reached for the small wooden knob on the right-hand door, the one you had to pull open first. And almost instantly snatched his hand away. The knob was wet. But he was too late. His slight touch on the doorknob had released the catch on the doors that had seemed so firmly closed in place when he and his father had moved the wardrobe that morning. Now the two doors squealed and suddenly burst outward as if pushed by some mighty force from within. And from the quickly widening space between them welled a gushing cascade of sandy, salty water. Released now, the water, which seemed limitless, forced the doors back and a wall of it as tall as Frank himself, it seemed, and then taller still rushed out at him and covered the floor of the room, up to his ankles, almost instantly rising up to his knees, swirling around his waist, pulling at him, pulling him down into its currents and depths, cold against his throat, coming up to his mouth and his nose and making him gasp for air, stinging his wide-open, surprised eyes with its salt. He lost his balance and went over, his head beneath the water, his lungs laboring for breath, his arms spread in a struggle for balance, his neck stretching to lift his face above the seething surface. For an instant he got his face out of the water. He tried desperately to suck in air but got only more water. As he thrashed to keep himself upright and afloat, his vision cleared for a moment and he could see—so far away—the beach and people moving on it, an elderly couple, a woman carrying a small child, and one other figure, a boy, standing there and looking toward the water, looking right at him, Junior, it was Junior, back to haunt him again, standing there in that way of standing he had, but just looking, doing nothing to help him. Frank knew that shape and posture, that angle of the head. But why wasn’t Junior coming to help him? Surely Junior could see that he was drowning, that any minute he would go under and not be able to come up again. It was Junior, wasn’t it? Frank tried to cry out but only swallowed more water. But no, it wasn’t Junior, it wasn’t Junior at all. It was the shape of Junior, it was the unmistakable form and stance and posture of Junior, but it was not Junior at all. Junior was dead and buried and this was not him at all. Frank tried to wrench his body free of the silent current that gripped tightly and tugged downward on his legs. For one last instant he managed to get his face out of the water and he could see, far away there on the beach, Big Bill, his father, just standing there very still and looking straight at him and doing nothing, nothing, nothing at all.

Rakshasi are demon warriors, cursed to walk the earth as monsters, wreaking havoc wherever they go. Disturbers. Defilers. Devourers.

But they can redeem themselves . . .

Rakshasi
Kelley Armstrong

For two hundred years, I have done penance for my crimes as a human. After twenty, I had saved more lives than I had taken. After fifty, I had helped more people than I had wronged. I understand that my punishment should not end with an even accounting. Yet now, after two hundred years, that balance has long passed equilibrium. And I have come to realize that this life is no different than my old one. If I want something, I cannot rely on others to provide it.

I waited in the car while Jonathan checked the house. Jonathan. There is something ridiculous about calling your master by his given name. It’s an affectation of the modern age. In the early years, I was to refer to them as
Master
or
Isha.
When the family moved West, it became
Sir,
then
Mr. Roy.

My current master does not particularly care for this familiarity. He pretends otherwise, but the fact that I must refer to him by his full name, where his wife and others use “Jon,” says much.

He called my cell phone.

“Amrita?” he said, as if someone else might be answering my phone. My name is not Amrita. My name is not important. Or, perhaps, too important. I have never given it to my masters. They call me Amrita, the eternal one.

“The coast is clear.” He paused. “I mean—”

“I understand American idiom very well,” I said. “I have been living here since before you were born.”

He mumbled something unintelligible, then gave me my instructions, as if I hadn’t been doing this, too, since before he was born.

I got out of the car and headed for the house.

As Jonathan promised, there was an open window on the second floor. I found a quiet place away from the road, then shifted to my secondary form: a raven. Fly to the bedroom window. Squeeze through. Shift back.

There wasn’t even an alarm on the window to alert the occupant to my intrusion. Quite disappointing. These jobs always are. I long for the old days, when I would do bloody battle against power-mad English sahibs and crazed Kshatriyas. Then came the murderers and whore-masters, the Mob, the drug dealers. It was the last that made the Roys rethink their strategy. On the streets, drug dealers always came with well-armed friends. I may be immortal, but I can be injured, and while my personal comfort is not a concern, my income-earning potential is. They tried targeting the dealers at home, but there they were often surrounded by relative innocents. So, in this last decade, the Roys have concentrated on a new source of evil. A dull, weak, mewling source that bores me immeasurably. But my opinion, like my comfort, is of little consequence.

I took a moment to primp in the mirror. I am eternally young. Beautiful, too. More beautiful than when I was alive, which was not to say I was ugly then, but when I look in the mirror now, I imagine what my husband, Daman, would say. Imagine his smile. His laugh. His kiss. I have not seen him in two hundred years, yet when I primp for my target, it is still Daman I ready myself for.

I found the target—Morrison—in the study, talking on his speaker phone while working on his laptop. I moved into the doorway. Leaned against it. Smiled.

He stopped talking. Stopped typing. Stared.

Then, “Bill? I’ll call you back.”

He snapped his laptop shut. “How’d you get in here?”

“My name is Amrita. I am a surprise. From a very pleased client.”

I slid forward, gaze fixed on his. For another moment he stared, before remembering himself.

“But how did you get—?”

“I would not be much of a surprise if I rang your front bell, would I?” I glanced back at the door. “I trust we are alone?” Jonathan said no one else was in the house, but I always checked.

“W-we are.”