The Best New Horror 2 (10 page)

“Christ, Stephen.”

“No, it’s all right,” he said. His eyes closed, held, then opened slightly. “It was a long time ago.”

“You said one of the last sets of visitors were the church people. Who were the last?”

“Two insurance salesmen. I saw who they were, and went to sleep. I think they were more than relieved. I’ve been asleep most of the time since.”

“Stephen.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “Really.”

Stephen shut his eyes. Anne watched his face. The nurses had done only a fair job of shaving. There was a small red cut on his chin. Then Stephen looked at her.

“Why wouldn’t you touch Michael?”

Anne started. “You were listening.”

“Yes.”

“I can’t. It’s not part of the job, you know. People might take it the wrong way.”

“Why are you a counselor, Anne?”

“So I can help people.”

“There are lots of ways to help. Doctors, physical therapists, teachers.”

“Yes.” ‘But they have to touch people. I can’t touch, not now, not ever. Phillip touched me. Sweet God, he touched me and touching is nothing but pain and . . .’

“Your family hoped you’d be a counselor?”

“No, I don’t think it mattered to them.” ‘. . . anger and disgust. Touching is filth, degradation. It is losing control.’ Anne’s feet planted squarely on the floor. She was ready to run. ‘Touching is cold and hateful, like putrid, black water.’

“Tell me about your family.”

“I already did.”

“You have a mother. A brother.”

“I already did!” Anne’s hand flew to her mouth and pressed there. She had screamed. “Oh, God,” she said then. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

Anne’s throat felt swollen. She swallowed and it hurt. “I didn’t mean to shout. It was rude.”

“It’s all right.”

“Stephen,” Anne began, and then hesitated. She inched herself forward on her chair. Stephen’s eyes watched her calmly, and they were not eyes of a blue and frightening ocean, but of a blue and clear sky. She saw an understanding there, and she wanted to reach out for it.

She wanted it, but knew the only way to have it was to touch it.

She sat back. “Good-night, Stephen,” she said.

“Good-night,” he answered. And he slept.

Randy was being released from the center. The staff threw him a good-bye party, complete with balloons and ridiculous hats and noisemakers which Randy pretended to hate but obviously loved. He made a point of hooting his paper horn into the ear of everyone present. Randy had landed a job in the camera room of the local newspaper. His going away gift was a framed, fake newspaper front page, complete with the headline “RANDY MYERS, AKA CLARK KENT, SECURES POSITION AT DAILY PRESS.” Beneath the caption was a large black and white photo of Randy, cigar in teeth, leaning over the billiard table. A cue stick was in his hand.

“I taught him everything he knows,” said Michael, as he looped about among the partiers. “He ought to take me with him, or he’ll just make a mess of things.”

Anne left in the midst of the hubbub and went down to the pond behind the Administration Building. The sky was overcast, and mist covered the algaed water.

Water, the dark trough of fears.

She stood beside the edge. The wind buffeted her.

Her mind, wearied, could not hold back the rush of memories.

Phillip, as a boy, touching Anne in secret. First as a game, then as an obsession. Anne growing up, Phillip growing up ahead of her, and his touching becoming even more cruel. His body heavy and harsh; his
immense organ tearing into her relentlessly. Anne crying each night, knowing he would come to her and would have no love for anything except the sensation of his own explosive release. Phillip swearing that if she told anyone, he would kill her.

Anne, promising herself over and over that if she was not killed, she would never let this happen again. She would not touch or be touched.

And then came the night when Phillip decided blood would make it more rewarding. He was tired of the same old thing; he said he was going to change Anne just a little, like a sculptor changing a piece of clay to make it better. With the door locked and his underwear in Anne’s mouth, he carved. He took off her little toes, stopping the blood with matches and suturing with his mother’s sewing kit. He decorated her abdomen with a toothed devil face into which he rubbed ink from Anne’s cartridge pen. Across her breasts he etched, “Don’t fuck with me.” The ink finished it off.

The next morning, Mother wanted to know why there were stains on the sheets. She accused Anne of having a boyfriend in at night. She shook Anne until the confession was made. Anne took off her bedclothes and her slippers. Mother shrieked and wailed, clutching her hair and tearing hunks out. Then she said, “The grace of God has left you! You are one of those deformed creatures!”

Mother confronted Phillip.

Phillip killed Mother in the tub that evening with scalding water and an old shower curtain.

Then he had found Anne, hiding in the garage.

Anne doubled over and gagged on the bank of the pond. She could still taste the sludge and the slime from so many years ago. She drove her fists into the wall of her ribs, and with her head spinning, she retched violently. At her feet lay brown leaves, stirred into tiny, spiraling patterns by the wind and the spattering of her own vomit.

She wiped her mouth. She stood up. Her vision wavered, and it was difficult to stand straight.

She made her way to Michael’s room.

Michael’s tape player was on the bed table. Michael had left it on, though softly, and as Anne picked it up she could feel the faint hammering of the percussion. The player was slender and cool and Anne could wrap both hands about it easily. Much like Phillip’s cock, when she was just a young girl. With a single jerk, she pulled the cord from the wall. The table teetered, then crashed to the floor. The music died in mid-beat.

Anne hauled the player, cord dragging, to Stephen’s side of the room. There was sweat on her neck, and it dripped to her breasts and tickled like roach legs. She ignored it. Stephen was asleep.
Anne threw the player into the sink and it shattered on the dulled enamel.

“This is for you, Stephen,” she said. “No more music. You won’t have to suffer it anymore.”

She ran the water until the heat of it steamed her face and stung her eyes. She grabbed up the pieces of broken player and squeezed them. Sharp edges cut into her hands and she let the blood run.

“And this is for you, Phillip. Goddam you to whatever hell there is in this world or the next.”

She looked at Stephen’s bed. He was awake, and watching her.

“Anne,” he said.

Anne wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Blood streaked her chin.

“Tell me, Anne.”

“My brother killed my mother. Then he tried to kill me.”

“Tell me.”

Anne looked at the dead player in the sink. The hot water continued to run. Anne could barely catch her breath in the heat. She stepped back and licked the blood from her hands. “He tried to kill me. He was fucking me. Ever since I can remember, he was fucking me, hurting me, and enjoying it like any other boy would enjoy baseball.” She turned to Stephen, and held out her wounded hands. “Touching is wrong. And he knew it. When Mother found out, he killed her. He took me down the back road to the water treatment plant, and threw me into the settling pool. It was not deep, but I could not swim, and the bottom was slick with sludge and it was rancid, Stephen, it was sewage and garbage, and I slipped under and under and every time I came up Phillip would lean over the rail and hit me with a broom handle. It was night, and I could no longer tell the difference between up and down, it was all black and putrid and I couldn’t breathe. Phillip kept hitting me and hitting me. My blood ran into the sewage and when I screamed I swallowed the sludge.”

Anne moved closer to Stephen’s bed, her hands raised.

“Someone heard us. Phillip was stopped and arrested. I spent a good deal of time in the hospital, with concussions and infections. Phillip has since moved out of the country.”

Stephen watched between her bloodied hands and her face.

“I wanted to help people,” Anne said. “I don’t think I ever can. Phillip has seen to that.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Tell me, Stephen. What can I do for you?”

Stephen sighed silently, his chest lifting then falling. His head rolled slightly to the left, and he stared at the light above the bed.

“Love me,” he said finally.

“I do, Stephen.”

His eyes blinked, the light reflecting tiny sparks. He looked back at Anne. His mouth opened, then closed. His jaw flexed and he licked his lips with his dry tongue. “Love me,” he said.

Anne hesitated. Then slowly, she lowered the side rail of the bed. She knelt beside the bed and put her head onto the pillow beside Stephen. For a moment she held still, and then she brought her hand up to touch Stephen’s lips with her fingers. They did not move, yet she could fee the soft blowing of his breath on her skin.

She moved back then. Stephen watched her. Then he said, “You knew about my music.”

Anne nodded.

“My dreams are different now.”

Anne nodded.

After a long moment, he said, “Anne, love me.” His voice was certain, kind, and sad.

Anne touched her face and it was hot, and wet with the steam and her own sweat. She touched Stephen’s face and it was fevered. She traced his cheekbone, his chin, his throat, and the damp, tendoned contour of his neck. She let her palm join her fingers, and felt slowly along his flesh among the myriad of tapes and tubes and wires. When she reached his heart, she pressed down. The beating quickened with the pressure, and Stephen moaned.

“That hurt,” Anne said.

“No.”

Anne stood straight. She unbuttoned her blouse and let it drop from her shoulders. She could not look at Stephen for fear of revulsion in his eyes. She removed her bra, and then slipped from her skirt and panties.

She looked at Stephen, and thought she saw him nod.

Anne climbed onto the foot of the bed. Beneath her knees the folded, unused blanket was cold. She moved forward, and bent over Stephen’s body. Around her and beside her was the tangle of supports. Her body prickled; the veins in the backs of her hands flushed with icy fire. She tried to reach Stephen, but the web held her back.

“I can’t,” she said.

Stephen looked at her.

“These are in the way. I can’t.”

He said nothing.

And Anne, one by one, removed the web which kept her from him. She loosened the wires, she withdrew the needles, she pulled out the tubes. She touched the bruises and the marks on the pale skin. “I do love you,” she said.

Anne lay with Stephen. Her hands were at first soft and tentative, then grew urgent, caressing his body, caressing her own. As she touched and probed and clutched, her fingers became his fingers. Gentle, intelligent fingers studying her and loving her.

Healing her.

She rode the current, rising and falling, her eyes closed. Stephen kissed her lips as she brought them to him, and her breasts as well, and as she lifted upward, he kissed the trembling, hot wetness between her thighs. She stretched her arms outward, reaching for the world, and then brought them down and about herself and Stephen, pulling inward to where there was nothing but them both. His breathing was heavy; her heart thundered. An electrical charge hummed in the pit of her stomach. It swelled and spread, moving downward. Anne opened her mouth to cry out silently to the ceiling. The charge stood her nerves on unbearable end, and it grew until it would hold no longer. The center of her being burst. She wailed with the pulses. And she fell, crumpled, when they were spent.

“Dear God,” she whispered. She lay against Stephen, one hand entangled in the dark curls. Their warmth made her smile.

Her fear was gone.

Then she said, “Stephen, tell me. Only if you want. Why are you here? What put you in this place?”

Stephen said nothing. Anne hoped he had not slipped into sleep again.

“Stephen,” she said, turning over, meaning to awaken him. “Tell me why you had to come to the center. What happened to you?”

Stephen said nothing. His closed eyes did not open.

Anne pressed her palm to his heart.

It was still.

The party was over. Back in the recreation hall, Anne could hear Michael tooting his paper horn and calling out, “Hey, Miss Zaccaria, where are you? I’m ready to give you that swimming lesson. What about you?”

The water in the pond did not move. The breeze had died down, and the mist was being replaced by an impenetrable fog that sucked the form and substance from the trees and the benches around the surface of the blackness.

There were leaves at her feet, and she kicked them off the edge of the bank and into the pond. Small circles radiated from the disturbances, little waves moving out and touching other waves.

Anne took off her shoes, and walked barefoot to the end of the pier. The boat was still moored there, full of leaves.

The deep water below was as dark as Stephen’s hair.

Some have their dreams, others nightmares.

Stephen had his dreams now. Dreams without end.

Amen.

And Anne would now accept her nightmare.

The leaves on the water were kind, and parted at her entrance.

J
ONATHAN
C
ARROLL
prefers to remain mysterious to his readers. What we do know is that he has been described as “the most innovative and original fantasist today.” He’s an American who has lived overseas for almost twenty years, currently residing with his family in Vienna. He also has a bull terrier that doesn’t talk.

He taught courses in world literature before becomming a full-time writer and has published six highly acclaimed novels to date:
The Land of Laughs, Voice of Our Shadow, Bones of the Moon, Sleeping in Flame, A Child Across the Sky
and
Outside the Dog Museum
, along with the novella
Black Cocktail
and a short story collection, only published in German translation, entitled
Die Panische Hand
. He won the World Fantasy Award in 1988 for his short story, “Friend’s Best Man”, a recent issue of
Weird Tales
was a Jonathan Carroll special, and he was Guest of Honour at the 1991 British Fantasy Convention.