The Year's Best Horror Stories 7 (20 page)

And what else could it have been but a miracle, which brought me at last to a monastery of blind monks, who discovered by feel the wound on my arm, and said, "Look brothers, he is afflicted even as us," while carrying me to a bed and stumbling to fetch medicines?

Later, when again I was reduced to beggary, I refrained from telling stories, lest I somehow forget myself and accidentally relate how I lost my left hand twice.

10: Ramsey Campbell - Heading Home

Somewhere above you can hear your wife and the young man talking. You strain yourself upward, your muscles trembling like water, and manage to shift your unsteady balance onto the next stair.

They must think he finished you. They haven't even bothered to close the cellar door, and it's the trickle of flickering light through the crack that you're striving toward. Anyone else but you would be dead. He must have carried you from the laboratory and thrown you down the stairs into the cellar, where you regained consciousness on the dusty stone. Your left cheek still feels like a rigid plate slipped into your flesh where it struck the floor. You rest on the stair you've reached and listen.

They're silent now. It must be night, since they've lit the hall lamp whose flame is peeking into the cellar. They can't intend to leave the house until tomorrow, if at all. You can only guess what they're doing now, thinking themselves alone in the house. Your numb lips crack again as you grin. Let them enjoy themselves while they can.

He didn't leave you many muscles you can use; it was a thorough job. No wonder they feel safe. Now you have to concentrate yourself in those muscles that still function. Swaying, you manage to raise yourself momentarily to a position from which you can grip the next higher stair. You clench on your advantage. Then, pushing with muscles you'd almost forgotten you had, you manage to lever yourself one step higher.

You maneuver yourself until you're sitting upright. There's less risk that way of your losing your balance for a moment and rolling all the way down to the cellar floor where, hours ago, you began climbing. Then you rest. Only six more stairs.

You wonder again how they met. Of course you should have known that it was going on, but your work was your wife and you couldn't spare the time to watch over the woman you'd married. You should have realized that when she went to the village she would meet people and mightn't be as silent as at home. But her room might well have been as far from yours as the village is from the house; you gave little thought to the people in either.

Not that you blame yourself. When you met her-in the town where you attended the University-you'd thought she understood the importance of your work. It wasn't as if you'd intended to trick her. It was only when she tried to seduce you from your work, both for her own gratification and because she was afraid of it, that you barred her from your companionship by silence.

You can hear their voices again. They're on the first floor. You don't known whether they're celebrating or comforting each other as guilt settles on them. It doesn't matter. So long as he didn't close the laboratory door when he returned from the cellar. If it's closed you'll never be able to open it And if you can't get into fee laboratory he has killed you after all. You raise yourself, muscles shuddering with the effort, your cheek chafing against the wood of the stair. You won't relax until you can see the laboratory door.

You're reaching for the top stair when you slip. Your chin comes down on it, and slides back. You grip the wooden stair with your jaws, feeling splinters lodge between your teeth. Your neck scraped the lower stair, but it has lost all feeling save an ache fading slowly into dullness. Only your jaws prevent you from falling back where you started, and they're throbbing as if nails are being driven through their hinges with measured strokes. You close them tighter, pounding with pain, then you overbalance yourself onto the top stair. You teeter for a moment, then you're secure.

But you don't rest yet. You edge yourself forward and sit up so that you can peer out of the cellar. The outline of the laboratory door billows slightly as the lamp flickers. It occurs to you that they've lit the lamp because she's terrified of you, lying dead beyond the main staircase-as she thinks. You laugh silently. You can afford to. When the flame steadies you can see darkness gaping for inches around the laboratory door.

You listen to their voices upstairs and rest. You know he's a butcher, because once he helped one of the servants to carry the meat from the village. In any case, you could have told his profession from what he has done to you. You're still astonished that she should have taken up with him. From the little you knew of the village people you were delighted that they always avoided the house.

You remember the day the new priest visited the house. You could tell he'd heard all the wildest village tales about your experiments; you were surprised he didn't try to ward you off with a cross. When he found you could argue his theology into a corner he left, a twitch pulling his smile awry. He'd tried to persuade you both to attend the church, but your wife had sat silent throughout. It had been then that you decided to trust her to go to the village. You'd dismissed the servants, but you told yourself she would be less likely to talk. You grin fiercely. If you'd been as inaccurate in your experiments you would be dead.

Upstairs they're still talking. You rock forward and try to wedge yourself between the cellar door and its frame. With your limited control it's difficult, and you find yourself leaning in the crack with no purchase on the wood. Your weight hasn't moved the door, which is heavier than you have ever before had cause to realize. Eventually you manage to wedge yourself in the crack, gripping the frame with all your strength. The door rests on you, and you nudge your weight clumsily against it

It creaks away from you a little, then swings back, crushing you. It has always hung unevenly and persisted in standing ajar; it never troubled you before. Now the strength he left you, even focused like light through a burning-glass, seems unequal to shifting the door. Trapped in the crack, you relax for a moment. Then, as if to take it unawares, you close your grip on the frame and shove against the door, pushing yourself forward as it swings away. It returns, answering the force of your shove, and you aren't clear. But you're still falling into the hall, and as the door chops into the frame you fall on your back, beyond the sweep of the door.

You're free of the cellar, but on your back you're helpless. The slowing door is more mobile than you. All the muscles you've been using can only work aimlessly and loll in the air. You're laid out on the hall floor like a laboratory subject, beneath the steadying flame.

Then you hear the butcher call to your wife "I'll see," and start downstairs.

You begin to twitch all the muscles on your right side frantically. You roll a little toward that side, then your wild twitching rocks you back. About you the light shakes, making your shadow play the cruel trick of achieving the roll you're struggling for. He's at the halfway landing now. You work your right side again and hold your muscles still as you begin to turn that way. Suddenly you've swung over your point of equilibrium and are lying on your right side. You strain your aching muscles to inch you forward, but the laboratory is feet away, and you are by no means moving in a straight line. His footsteps resound. You hear your wife's terrified voice, entreating him to return to her. There's a long pondering silence. Then he hurries back upstairs.

You don't let yourself rest until you're inside the laboratory, although by then your ache feels like a cold stiff surface within your flesh, and your mouth like a dusty hole in stone. Once beyond the door you sit still, gazing about. Moonlight is spread from the window to the door. Your gaze seeks the bench where you were working when he found you. He hasn't cleared up any of the material that was thrown to the floor by your convulsion. Glinting on the floor you see a needle, and nearby the surgical thread which you never had occasion to use. You relax to prepare for the next concerted effort, remembering.

You recall the day you perfected the solution. As soon as you'd quaffed it you felt your brain achieve a piercing alertness, become precisely and continually aware of the messages of each nerve and preside over them, making minute adjustments at the first hint of danger. You knew this was what you'd worked for, but you couldn't prove it to yourself until the day you felt the stirrings of cancer. Then your brain seemed to condense into a keen strand of energy that stretched down and burned the cancer out. That was proof. You were immortal.

Not that some of the research hadn't been unpleasant. It had taken you a great deal of furtive expenditure at the mortuaries to discover that some of the extracts you needed for the solution had to be taken from the living brain. The villagers thought the children had drowned, for their clothes were found on the river bank. Medical progress, you told yourself, had always involved suffering.

Perhaps your wife suspected something of this stage of your work or perhaps they'd simply decided to rid themselves of you. You were working at your bench, trying to synthesize your discovery when you heard him enter. He must have rushed at you, for before you could turn you felt a blazing slash gape at the back of your neck. Then you awoke on the cellar floor.

You edge yourself forward across the laboratory. Your greatest exertion is past, but this is the most exacting part. When you're nearly touching your prone body you have to turn around. You move yourself with your jaws and steer with your tongue. It's difficult, but less so than tonguing yourself upright on your neck to rest on the stairs. Then you fit yourself to your shoulders, groping with your perfected mind until you feel the nerves linking again.

Now you'll have to hold yourself unflinching or you'll roll apart. With your mind you can do it. Gingerly, so as not to part yourself, you stretch out your arm and touch the surgical needle and thread.

11: Lisa Tuttle - In The Arcade

Eula Mae woke. She peeled the sheet away from her perspiring body and sat up. Man, she was hot. The moon shone directly into the room through the uncurtained window, falling in a pool on the bed and giving the white sheets an almost phosphorescent glow against her dark skin.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed. It was strange to be awake so late at night. Everything was so still. Her husband slept silently in his half of the old, spring-shot bed. Eula Mae wondered what, in all this silence, could have awakened her.

It was odd, to be awake while everyone slept. She didn't think it had ever happened to her before. To go back to sleep seemed the only reasonable thing to do now, but she wasn't the least bit sleepy. She got up and walked to the window. That moon certainly was big and bright and low in the sky.

She put her palms flat on the rough, paint-peeling window sill, ducked her head beneath the sash and leaned out into the night. No lights gleamed from any of the crumbling tenements that lined the street, and only two street lamps shone-the rest stood darkly useless, bulbs shattered by children or angry drunks. Nothing moved. There was no sound. Eula Mae frowned slightly, and listened. The quiet wasn't natural-there should have been
some
sound, if only the faraway monster of traffic making itself heard. Did everyone and everything sleep without dreams? It was not natural; it was the stillness of a machine at rest, not the restless sleep of a city. She strained to hear the sounds she knew she should hear.

There! Was that…? But now Eula Mae could not be certain. Had she heard that faint humming noise, or had she only felt the blood and breath traversing the highways of her own body?

Eula Mae sighed deeply and wondered how close to morning it was. She would not sleep again this night. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and raised her eyes to the moon.

The sight of it shocked her, and shook the center of things. The known world, her world, ceased to be. The moon had always been there, she'd looked at it almost every night of her life. And now she looked up and saw not the familiar moon at all but a simulacrum, a falsehood, a stage moon: a light. Nor was that the night sky it shone in-attached to an invisible ceiling, the light shone down through swaths of deep blue drapery. The familiar horizons became limited and strange. If that was not her moon, this could not be her city. Where was she?

"Howard," she said unhappily, turning back into the room. A cry for help. "Oh, Howard, wake up."

The still form did not stir. Eula Mae sat on the edge of the bed, which sagged still more under her weight, and put her hand on her husband's bare shoulder. His skin was smooth and cool.

Her lips formed his name again, but she did not speak. She had suddenly comprehended just what was so unnatural about his stillness. He was not breathing.

She moaned and began to shake him, trying to shake him back into life, to get him started again, knowing it was hopeless.

Oh, Howard. Howard. Howard.

He lay there like a doll, like a bolster on the bed, still and sleek and cool. He was somewhere very far away from the close heat of the room.

Eula Mae sat with her hands resting on her husband's body. Tears ran down her cheeks. She did not move. Perhaps, if she were still enough, she would go where Howard was. But the sobs forced themselves up from her gut, wrenched her body, made her shake.

Then the fear prevailed. The fear made her get up off the bed (slowly, trying not to jar the body), the fear made her stop crying. She had to go somewhere, she had to be with someone. She fumbled about in the big metal wardrobe, seeking her clean housedress, but it took too long, and the sagging, hanging door on the locker kept swinging inward, bumping her, and the fear overruled all. She had to get out. She thought of her children, sleeping in the next room. She would take them and go to her sister's place.

The front room was dominated by the big bed where the children slept. Eula Mae noticed the wrongness as soon as she stepped through the door. There was no sound. Taddie's usual adenoidal snore didn't ripple the air-none of them, in fact, were breathing. She forced herself to go close to the bed, but she couldn't make herself touch them. If she touched them, felt them lifeless beneath her fingers, they would be turned into strangers for sure.