The Year's Best Horror Stories 7 (12 page)

The decor was a little stodgy, even to her taste-fat chairs and divans with chintzy prints, pictures of children and grandchildren propped everywhere, but William liked it and it was comfortable. Annmarie sat by the window in her housecoat, warming her hands on a coffee cup. The mornings were still a little cool. The house was becoming familiar now, though sometimes she awoke in the night and thought she was in older homes, and so the contours of these rooms would be a shock until she remembered. The feeling that she was never alone in the house had deepened with residence, though she'd never said anything like that to William. He lived in a pretty matter-of-fact world. He'd simply deny that anything like that existed, and maybe he was right.

She looked away from the sun-filled window back into the darkened room. Her vision filled with dancing spangles; she thought she saw something by the fireplace, a slight figure poised for flight, the suggestion of glossy dark hair. When her vison cleared, of course nothing was there, except a dust-winged moth that fluttered a moment and then darted up the chimney. Still there was that impression of a childlike figure-a kind of sprite. She finished the bitter dregs of the coffee with a grimace. She hardly had time to sit here dreaming. There was the church bazaar to manage.

She smiled as she put on the layers of undergarments that strapped her bulk into a firmer but no slenderer package and applied the makeup that really did nothing to hide the lines of her face. She had been a little afraid to come back to her home town, though she never would have admitted it to William. She was afraid that someone would remember Annie Byrd, the daughter of old Crikbank Ed-Anytime Annie. She had heard the name, though it was always in whispers and giggles. And there were those who should have remembered, stolid old citizens whom she passed in the streets or greeted in church with a circumspect nod. It must have been the time that had passed and the way that she had changed in the meantime. Perhaps it was as if that other person, that other life hadn't existed at all.

Full summer made the scraggly trees along the creekbank swell with layers of foliage. Annmarie had begun, now that it was warm, to walk here. The shack where she and her father had lived, now long torn down, was some miles from here. She had no desire to return to that place, but it was pleasant to walk among the trees, and she never walked here alone.

She had accepted it because there was literally no one she would talk to about it She could see it, in the undulant green gold shadows under the trees, a. figure straight, slender, but barely female with breasts that were no more than bud-swellings. The skin was butterscotch brown-all over. The hair, with the color and texture of moss, hung raggedly in peaks about the small face, and the eyes were large and luminous, the color between sunlight and leaf shadow. A woodspirit- sprite-dryad.

For all its lucent beauty, the thing still made her uneasy as It paced her through the trees. She knew that if she tried to approach it, speak to it, it would be gone and a squirrel, or garter snake would disappear into the tangle of underbrush, so much had it grown to be one with the natural life of this wood. She felt she could almost run with it through the aisles of forest, bare feet intimate with soil and moss, diving into the tepid brown water on a sultry dog-day evening with the water a long coolness against the skin-a sheath of silk. Then toward morning, dressed in the rough garment of the tree, just peering out a little to see the sunlight falling in slanted shafts to the forest floor.

She shook off the feeling and turned toward the path back to the house. Whenever she found her thoughts running free like this, she pulled them up, as if she were approaching memories she did not dare relive. And she had
to
get sandwiches ready for her bridge club, which would meet that afternoon.

The country club was decorated with streamers of red, white and blue, but they were drooping and wilted as the dance drew to a close. Smoke wreathed a few somnambulant dancers. While William was enmeshed in some interminable talk of politics, she stepped outside a moment to get out of the smoky atmosphere. A bulky shape approached her, and for a moment she thought it was William; then she saw that it was not

"Mrs. Dudley?"

She nodded, frostily, as this kind of meeting didn't seem exactly proper to her.

"Annmarie-Annie Byrd?"

She searched the sagging gray face, with its dewlaps and eye pouches, but she couldn't remember the name.

"David-Davy Brubaker." He stood a little unsteadily, leaning forward to exhale a breath of stale alcohol on her. "Don't you remember me?"

She felt she should deny acquaintance, yet somehow she couldn't.

"We had us some good times back there in those woods," he said hoarsely. His poor, time-broken face tried for an obscene wink, but couldn't quite bring it off. "Us guys never knew where you went after-"

She pushed him away from her and fled back to the dance, feeling in one way naked, in another almost relieved. Was there an undercurrent of talk she'd been unaware of all this time, she wondered. William greeted her loudly, having had a little too much to drink. She managed to get him to the car, to drive him home. A slight, free figure seemed to fly before them in the beam of headlights. She put William to bed, but she was unable to sleep. As she roamed the house, she felt an awful constriction and a desire to be free of it. It was as if she were slipping from the confines of her tree, her body light and firm, her hair vegetable cool when it blew against her cheeks. She ran lightly to the deep pools and waited there. Through an endless twilight they came to her, one by one, shaggy boyish satyrs, the moon bringing coppery highlights from the curling hair of chest and flanks, young forest gods, their faces and bodies as self-consciously perfect as those of Greek statues. Her buttocks had squirmed their shape into the moist earth of the bank, not once-many times. They were all young, all beautiful; no wonder she had difficulty distinguishing one from another. She supposed one of them had been David Brubaker, ludicrous as that seemed. Sated, she returned to draw the substance of the tree close about her and in the morning she awoke on the divan, struggling to draw the rough blanket tighter against morning's coolness.

The following day was not as difficult for her as she had thought it would be; there were all those things to do. She visited the beauty parlor, had lunch with several of the girls. After lunch there was her volunteer work at the hospital in a nearby city. She had gone through the day like a sleepwalker; there were ways to let routine take over and the time passed very quickly, but as she undressed in her bedroom, removing the tight layers, the bindings, she was remembering things. She had heard herself mouthing platitudes at a woman who was in the process of dying, a little at a time, and who had looked vaguely amused. She had read greeting-card type verse to a man in a body cast

William was sitting open-mouthed and snoring in front of the TV set. She turned off the set but didn't wake him. It seemed that there was a tension in the air; the wind blew in the scent of rain. She remembered that smell. A few fireflies blinked above the grass as she hurried toward the shelter of the trees. It did not seem odd to her to be running out barefoot, dressed only in a thin robe. The wind whipped stingingly cold drops against her skin, but she ran on. She knew she would recognize the glade with its soft floor of forest debris and its single great twisted oak. A dryad could never lose its own tree. She thought as she ran that she had almost forgotten what it was like to feel this free-not since the days when she'd gone skinny-dipping with the town boys, one and then another, in the deep pools. She knew now that it had been done in true innocence, not in guilt as they had made her believe, and if she ran swiftly she might yet recapture that innocence.

Breathless, she reached the glade at last and fell panting to the soft forest floor. Lying there brought back that other time.

She'd escaped another of her father's fits of rage, the names he'd called her burning in her ears. She'd blundered clumsily along the bank until she'd come to this place, where she'd collapsed, the pains beginning in earnest, as the midwife had warned they would. All the other tales the old woman had told her were in her head, too; and she'd been sure she was going to die as the pain washed over her, coming and going in waves and rhythms that had nothing to do with what she wanted. Some old knowledge that she hadn't known she possessed had taken over then, must have. for she'd survived.

The rain was quite steady now, comforting, a kind of release. She rose, the thin robe gaping, pieces of brush and straw clinging to her white, doughy flesh. She approached the tree with a rapt expression. There was a hollow there and the dryad lay cocooned in rough bark in organic-smelling darkness. She reached in; her fingers scraped brittle wood pulp, felt a dry, twisted mass. "How strange to realize now," she thought, "that you are all I have ever had of beauty and innocence. I'll make them wear the name-bastards-and give them back their guilt." She cradled the dark object in the crook of her arm; it was shriveled and brown like some old, earth-buried tree root. "Won't William and the others be surprised," she said, "when they see how beautiful you've become."

7: Jack Vance - The Secret

Sunbeams slanted through chinks in the wall of the hut; from the lagoon came shouts and splashing of the village children. Rona ta Inga at last opened his eyes. He had slept far past his usual hour of arising, far into the morning. He stretched his legs, cupped hands behind his head, stared absently up at the ceiling of thatch. In actuality he had awakened at the ususal hour, to drift off again into a dreamlike doze-a habit to which lately he had become prone. Only lately. Inga frowned and sat up with a jerk. What did this mean? Was it a sign? Perhaps he should inquire from Takti-Tai…But it was all so ridiculous. He had slept late for the most ordinary of reasons: he enjoyed lazing and drowsing and dreaming.

On the mat beside him were crumpled flowers, where Mai-Mio had lain. Inga gathered the blossoms and laid them on the shelf which held his scant possessions. An enchanting creature, this Mai-Mio. She laughed no more and no less than other girls; her eyes were as other eyes, her mouth like all mouths; but her quaint and charming mannerisms made her absolutely unique: the single Mai-Mio in all the universe. Inga had loved many maidens. All in some way were singular, but Mai-Mio was a creature delightfully, exquisitely apart from the others. There was considerable difference in their ages. Mai-Mio only recently had become a woman- even now from a distance she might be mistaken for a boy-while Inga was older by at least five or six seasons. He was not quite sure. It mattered little, In any event. It mattered very little, he told himself again, quite emphatically. This was his village, his island; he had no desire to leave. Ever!

The children came up the beach from the lagoon. Two or three darted under his hut, swinging on one of the poles, chanting nonsense words. The hut trembled; the outcry jarred upon Inga's nerves. He shouted in irritation. The children became instantly silent, in awe and astonishment, and trotted away looking over their shoulders.

Inga frowned; for the second time this morning he felt dissatisfied with himself. He would gain an unenviable reputation if he kept on in such a fashion. What had come over him? He was the same Inga that he was yesterday… Except for the fact that a day had elapsed and he was a day older.

He went out on the porch before his hut, stretched in the sunlight. To right and left were forty or fifty other such huts as his own, with intervening trees; ahead lay the lagoon blue and sparkling in the sunlight. Inga jumped to the ground, walked to the lagoon, swam, dived far down among the glittering pebbles and ocean growths which covered the lagoon floor. Emerging he felt relaxed and at peace-once more himself: Rona ta Inga, as he had always been, and would always be.

Squatting on his porch he breakfasted on fruit and cold baked fish from last night's feast and considered the day ahead. There was no urgency, no duty to fulfil, no need to satisfy. He could join the party of young bucks now on their way into the forest hoping to snare fowl. He could fashion a brooch of carved shell and goana-nut for Mai-Mio. He could lounge and gossip; he could fish. Or he could visit his best friend Takti-Tai-who was building a boat Inga rose to his feet. He would fish. He walked along the beach to his canoe, checked equipment, pushed off, paddled across the lagoon to the opening in the reef. The winds blew to the west as always. Leaving the lagoon Inga turned a swift glance downwind-an almost furtive glance-then bent his neck into the wind and paddled east.

Within the hour he had caught six fine fish, and drifted back along the reef to the lagoon entrance. Everyone was swimming when he returned. Maidens, young men, children. Mai-Mio paddled to the canoe, hooked her arms over the gunwales, grinned up at him, water glistening on her cheeks. "Rona ta Inga! Did you catch fish? Or am I bad luck?"

"See for yourself."

She looked. "Five-no, six! All fat silver-fins! I am good luck! May I sleep often in your hut?"

"So long as I catch fish the following day."

She dropped back into the water, splashed him, sank out of sight. Through the undulating surface Inga could see her slender brown form skimming off across the bottom. He beached the canoe, wrapped the fish in bisipi-leaves and stored them in a cool cistern, then ran down to the lagoon to join the swimming.

Later he and Mai-Mio sat in the shade; she plaiting a decorative cord of colored bark which later she would weave into a basket, he leaning back, looking across the water. Artlessly Mai-Mio chattered-of the new song Ama ta Lalau had composed, of the odd fish she had seen while swimming underwater, of the change which had come over Takti-Tai since he had started building his boat.

Inga made an absent-minded sound, but said nothing.

"We have formed a band," Mai-Mio confided. "There are six of us: Ipa, Tuiti, Hali-Sai-Iano, Zoma, Oiu-Ngo and myself. We have pledged never to leave the island. Never, never, never. There is too much joy here. Never will we sail west- never. Whatever the secret we do not wish to know."