The Year's Best Horror Stories 15 Part 18

She gave a theatrical shudder. "Don't burn them. That's too much like a horror story I read once. I might shuffle off the coil along with my own pictures."

The rolls of film were lined up on my miscellaneous shelf downstairs, in the darkroom, the room with the red lightbulbs. Expose the film to anything but that mellow, crimson glow and it blanked into silver nitrate nothingness. The rolls could stay down there, sealed into their little black plastic vials. Forever, if that's what she wanted.

She kept watch on the sea while we destroyed our Continental breakfast. "I thought maybe we could brave the overcast later, and drive down past Point Pitt for dinner," I said. "Steaks, salads and a bottle or two of Cabernet. If anybody asks whether you're Tasha Vode, just blink and say, 'Who?' "

The life had surged back in to her expression. "Maybe. Or maybe seafood. But I want you to do something for me, first."

"Your wish ..."

"Don't you have any work to do today?"

Who were we kidding? I think we both knew I'd do almost anything she asked. "Nothing that can't wait."

"Then carry me back up to the bedroom."

My narrow little stairway was a tight shot, but we negotiated it successfully after a mild b.u.mp or two. Our robes got in the way, so we left them crumpled on the stairs about halfway up.

Her need for contact was vital.

Outside the bedroom window, it got dark. I did not notice. All I could see was her.

Her eyes were capable of a breath-catching syllabary of expressions, and I felt my own eyes become lenses, trying to record them. I stopped being friend or lover to be a camera, to try and trap what it was about her that made strangers hear those jungle drums. There were thousands, maybe millions of men out there who fantasized being inside her the way I was, who played my role and spoke my half of the dialogue whenever they pa.s.sed a newsstand. Their wanting never ceased.

Her eyes told me she knew what I was up to. They did not approve.

Hers was one of the few callings that made you a veteran before p.u.b.erty was left behind. If you lucked out, it could make you wealthy while still a child; if you weren't so lucky it could leave you a burned out has-been before you graduated high school. The attrition rate was worse than that for professional athletes, who could at least fall back on commercials for razors and lite beer when middle age called them out. But she did not seem the sort of human being who could relish the living death of celebrity game shows. Staying beautiful had been an unending war; each touchup a skirmish that stole away another irreclaimable chunk of time. Doing it for ten years, and staying the best, had been draining. Her outside was being used up. Her hipbones felt like flint arrowheads beneath soft tissue paper.

Her hand slid down and felt the cingulum cinched drawstring tight above my b.a.l.l.s. Comprehension dawned in her eyes, followed by that strange tolerance of hers for my various idiocies. I can't relate the exact sequence (to come was, for me, a necessary agony by now), but I was almost certain that her rapidfire contractions began the instant she slipped the knot of the cingulum. Unbound, I offloaded lavishly. Her fingers whitened with pressure on my shoulders, then relaxed, reddening with blood. I watched the pupils of those warm Arctic eyes expand hotly in the dimness as she took what was mine. Until that moment, her own o.r.g.a.s.ms had seemed insubstantial somehow. Disconnected from her. Spasms of her equipment more than sparky showers in her brain. Her breath had barely raised condensation on my skin. Now she came into focus, filled, flushed, and radiating heat.

After holding me for a lapse of time impossible to measure, she said, "Don't try to impress. You're not performing with a capital P." Her eyes saw that I had been intimidated by the imagined skills of her past decade of lovers, and thus the girdle cord trick. Stupid. "Don't you see? You're the only one who ever gave anything back."

"Tasha, you don't really believe that-"

"Try Claudia." It was not a command but a gentle urging. But it, too, was vital. "You're the only one who can give me back some of myself; replace what the others have taken. Give me more." Her reverent tone bordered on love-the word I could rarely force myself to speak, even frivolously.

Who better to give her back some of herself? I was a G.o.dd.a.m.n repository of her ident.i.ty. With other women I had never bothered worrying, and so had never been befuddled as I was now. I'd made love to Claudia, not the exterior self that the rest of the world was busy eating. And now she was steering.

I gave her back to herself; her eyes said so, her voice said so, and I tried to hush the voice in my head that said I was not being compensated for this drain. I tried to ignore the numberless black canisters of film that beckoned me from the room with the red light. And later, past midnight, when the storm thundered in, I carefully took twice what I had given her. No matter how much we have, as Nicole the waitress would say, we always want more.

"Skull full of sparrow s.h.i.+t," she said the following day, as we b.u.mped knees and elbows trying to dress for dinner. "Gorgeous but ditzy. Vacuous. Vapid. Pampered. Transient values. A real spoiled-rotten-"

"I think I get the stereotype," I said. "You're just not stupid enough to be happy as a model anymore, right?"

"Ex-model." She watched the sea bounce back the glare of late afternoon. "You don't believe me, do you?"

"What I believe scares the c.r.a.p out of me." I tried to veneer what I said with good humor, to defang my fears. "I believe, for example, that you might be a ghost. And ghosts never stay."

She waggled her eyebrows. "I could haunt your lighthouse. Or maybe I'm just your wish-fulfillment."

"Don't laugh. I've often thought that I'm not really earning a living as a photographer." Merely speaking that last word caused the slightest hesitation in the natural flow of her movements; she was that sensitized to it. "I'm not really sleeping with Tas ... uh, Claudia Katz." She caught that slip, too, but forgave it. "Actually, I'm really a dirtbag litter basket picker up in the Mission. And all of this is a hallucinatory fantasy I invented while loitering near a magazine rack with Tasha Vode's picture at hand, hm?"

"Ack," she said with mock horror. "You're one of them. The pod-folk."

"Are we gone, or what?"

She stepped back from the mirror, inside of a bulky, deep-blue ski sweater with maroon patterning, soft boots of gray suede, and black slacks so tight they made my groin ache. Her eyes filled up with me, and they were the aquamarine color of the sunlit ocean outside. "We're gone," she said, and led the way down the stairs.

I followed, thinking that when she left me again I'd at least have those hundreds of photographs of her in my bed. Ghosts never stay.

Outside there was a son of a b.i.t.c.h, and an a.s.shole.

The son of a b.i.t.c.h was crouched in ambush right next to my front door. His partner, the a.s.shole, was leaning on my XLS, getting cloudy fingerprints all over the front fender. I had backed out the front door, to lock it, and heard his voice talking, before anything else.

"Miss Vode, do you have any comment on your abrupt-"

Tasha-Claudia-started to scream.

I turned as she recoiled and grabbed my hand. I saw the a.s.shole. Any humanity he might have claimed was obliterated by the vision of a huge, green check for an exclusive article that lit up his eyes. A pod-man. Someone had recognized us in the restaurant last night, and sent him to ambush us in the name of the public's right to know. He brandished a huge audio microphone at us as though it was a scepter of power. It had a red foam windscreen and looked like a phallic lollipop.

Her scream sliced his question neatly off. She scrambled backward, hair flying, trying to interpose me between herself and the enemy, clawing at her head, crus.h.i.+ng her eyes shut and screaming. That sound filled my veins with liquid nitrogen.

The son of a b.i.t.c.h was behind us. From the instant we had stepped into the sunlight, he'd had us nailed in his viewfinder. The video rig into which he was harnessed ground silently away; the red bubble light over the lens hood was on.

And Tasha screamed.

Maybe she jerked her hand away, maybe I let it go, but her grip went foggy in mine as I launched myself at the cameraman, eating up the distance between us like a barracuda. Only once in my whole life had I ever hit a man in anger, and now I doubled my own personal best by delivering a roundhouse punch right into the black gla.s.s maw of his lens, filling his face up with his own camera, breaking his nose, two front teeth, and the three middle fingers of my fist. He faded to black and went down like a medieval knight trapped by the weight of his own armor. I swarmed over him and used my good hand to rip out his electronic heart, wresting away portacam, tape and all. Cables shredded like torn ligaments and s.h.i.+ny tape viscera trailed as I heaved it, spinning, over the pier rail and into a sea the same color as Tasha's eyes. The red light expired.

Her scream ... wasn't. There was a sound of pain as translucent as rice paper, thin as a flake of mica, drowned out by the roar of water meeting beach.

By the time I cranked my head around-two dozen slow-motion shots, easy-neither of her was there anymore. I thought I saw her eyes, in Arctic-cold afterburn, winking out last.

"Did you see-?"

"You're trespa.s.sing!" bellowed d.i.c.kie Barnhardt, wobbling toward the a.s.shole with his side-to-side Popeye gait, pressed flat and p.i.s.sed off. The a.s.shole's face was flash-frozen into a bloodless bas-relief of shock and disbelief. His mouth hung slack, showing off a lot of expensive fillings. His mike lay forgotten at his feet.

"Did you see ... did ... she just ..."

d.i.c.kie bounced his ashwood walking stick off the a.s.shole's forehead, and he joined his fallen mike in a boneless tumble on the planks of the pier. d.i.c.kie's face was alight with a bizarre expression that said it had been quite awhile since he'd found a good excuse to raise physical mayhem, and he was proud of his forthright defense of tenant and territory. "You okay?" he said, squinting at me and spying the fresh blood on my hand.

"d.i.c.kie, did you see Tasha?" My own voice was switching in and out. My throat constricted. My unbroken hand closed on empty s.p.a.ce. Too late.

He grinned a seaworthy grin at me and nudged the unconscious idiot at his feet, who remained slack. "Who's Tasha, son?"

I drink my coffee left-handed, and the cast mummifying my right hand gives me something to stare at contemplatively.

I think most often of that videotape, decomposing down there among the sand sharks and the jellyfish that sometimes bob to the surface near d.i.c.kie's pier. I think that the tiny bit of footage recorded by that poor, busted-up son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h cameraman would not have mattered one d.a.m.n, if I hadn't shot so much film of Tasha to prove she had nothing to fear. So many pieces. I pushed her right to the edge, cannibalizing her in the name of love.

The black plastic cans of film are still on the shelf down in my darkroom, lined up like inquisitors already convinced of my guilt. The thought of dunking that film in developer makes me want to stick a gun in my ear and pull the trigger, twice if I had the time.

Then I consider another way out, and wonder how long it would take me to catch up with her; how many pieces I have.

I never cried much before. Now the tears unload at the least provocation. It's sloppy, and messy, and unprofessional, and I hate it. It makes Nicole stare at me the way the street b.u.m did, like I've tipped over into psycholand.

When she makes her rounds to fill my cup, she watches me. The wariness in her eyes is new. She sees my notice dip from her eyes to her sumptuous chest and back, in a guilty but unalterable ritual. I force a smile for her, gamely, but it stays pasted across my face a beat too long, insisting too urgently that everything is okay. She doesn't ask. I wave my unbroken hand over my cup to indicate no more, and Nicole tilts her head with a queer, new expression-as though this white boy is trying to trick her. But she knows better. She always has.

IN THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN.

by Brad Strickland.

Born in New Holland, Georgia on October 27, 1947, Brad Strickland says that he's just a "small-town kid still trying to make good." Strickland holds a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia, and he and his family now reside in Oakwood, Georgia; he teaches English at both high school and college levels.

Brad Strickland's short fiction has appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction, Amazing, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. His first novel, To Stand Beneath the Sun (science fiction) was published last year by Signet; the same publisher brought out his fantasy novel, Moon Dreams, this year. Strickland's next book will be "a horror novel set in North (NOT "Northern." Only Yankees say "Northern") Georgia. This is called ShadowShow and marks a return of sorts-my first story was a horror piece set in North Georgia."

Charles was unmistakably in the country of dreams. He stood alone in a shallow, bowl-like valley, scooped from fine-grained, silvery sand. Here and there boulders interrupted the gently curved surface, boulders that were themselves smooth and golden, like polished statues of sleeping elephants.

Charles' own body seemed indistinct. He could not say whether he wore a suit, s.h.i.+rt and trousers, or nothing at all. Otherwise his senses registered nothing unusual. The air smelled like air. When he stooped and thrust his hand into the sand, it was silky and cool to the touch. It tasted of nothing. Standing with head bowed, as if intent on prayer or thought, he heard no sound. And as for vision, except for the bowl-shaped valley and the boulders, all he could see was the sky, domed like a lid badly put into place over him, a luminescent mother-of-pearl gray all around the horizon's edge, darkening in the concavity overhead to a red-purple, reminding him of the color of a bruise.

I am dreaming, Charles thought suddenly. How strange, to be dreaming, and to be aware that he was dreaming! As strange, he suspected, as to be fully awake and to be aware that one was fully awake. The notion struck him as in some sense profound, and to himself, he thought, That is something I must remember. I must hold on to that idea for the time when I awake.

"Excuse me." In that silence the voice boomed loud as an earthquake, startling as summer thunder. "Excuse me. I am dreaming of you, I know, but I don't know you."

Charles turned. The speaker had just come from behind one of the boulders. He was a man about Charles' age-thirty-one-but shorter, much darker of hair and eye, and more muscular. Oddly, Charles had less trouble seeing the stranger than he had seeing himself: the man wore tan trousers, no s.h.i.+rt, no shoes. Heat glistened in the perspiration underlying the dark mat of chest hair. "That's odd," Charles said. "I am dreaming you, and you believe yourself to be dreaming me. How very odd."

The other man had a one-sided smile, a quarter inch higher on the left side of his face than his right. "You're wrong. I am dreaming you. Don't confuse yourself by imagining you really exist."

Charles laughed. "Certainly I exist. I have a name and address. I am Charles Dayton, and I live on Revere Drive in Somerville. My students at the university would be very surprised to find that I don't exist. Maybe not unhappy, but definitely surprised."

The stranger shook his head, still smiling his onesided smile. "I don't know how I came to dream of a teacher from Somerville. I don't even know where that is-if there is such a place. But I know I exist. I'm Paul Dupont. I'm a trial lawyer. And I live in Sierra Heights, outside of Santa Rosita, with my wife."

"I've got a wife, too," Charles blurted, feeling obscurely as if the other had scored a point. "Now look, I never dream of strangers. Always people I know, or sort of odd conglomerations of people I know. I don't know you-and I don't believe there's even a place named Santa Rosita."

Paul looked annoyed. "Come to think of it, I've never dreamed up a stranger, either. Not one with a phony name and address, anyhow. But there's always a first time."

"What am I wearing?" Charles asked.

Paul frowned. "What do you mean by that?"

"Come on," Charles said. "You call yourself a lawyer-you're supposed to have some intelligence, aren't you? Just tell me what you see. How am I dressed?"

"You're barefoot. You have on some white shorts; tennis shorts, I guess. That's all. So what?"

"What are you wearing?" Charles asked.

Paul frowned down at himself. "Something's keeping me from seeing it. I guess I haven't dreamed that part yet."

"You're not dreaming at all. Get it through your head that you're the imaginary one. I am real, and my home and family are real. There's no Paul, no wife, no Santa Rosita."

"Nonsense!" The lawyer paced back and forth on the silver sand, his head down. Then he paused and gazed sidelong at Charles. "Is it not true that you never know when you're dreaming?"

"No. I know I'm dreaming now."

"Have you ever done it before? Known you were dreaming while you were dreaming?"

"Not that I remember."

Paul turned to face Charles. "Then you would say that it's unusual for you to be aware of your own dreams, while you are actually dreaming?"

"Very unusual," Charles agreed, amused at how much like a real lawyer his imaginary lawyer sounded.

Paul's voice rang with triumph: "Then that indicates, wouldn't you say, that the probability is that you are not dreaming now-because you cannot dream, you are just a figment of my imagination?"

"That's idiotic. Look, Paul whatever-your-name-is, you may think you're real, but that's only because I dreamed you so well. I gave you the illusion of reality so strongly that you believe in yourself."

Paul wouldn't give up. "But isn't it at least as likely that I have given you the illusion of reality? That I have dreamed you so well that you believe you exist, when in fact you do not?" He stooped suddenly, s.n.a.t.c.hed a handful of sand, and flung it at Charles.

Charles spun, lifting his arm to ward off the stinging particles. They hit forearm, shoulder, neck, but missed his eyes. "Hey!"

"Funny," Paul said. "I thought it'd go right through you. Maybe I ought to try a rock."

Charles rubbed a hand across his face and held up a dripping palm. "Look at that. I suppose you think that isn't real?"

"Imaginary sweat," scoffed Paul. "You fool. Even if you were right, you'd still be dreaming it, so even then it wouldn't be real. And if I dreamed of something as unpleasant as you, I could certainly dream of sweat."

Charles stalked over to Paul. He came so close he could feel the exhaled breath of the other man stirring the air, could hear the faint rush of it through the other's nose and sinuses. "See if this seems real," he said, and hit the other man in the mouth.

Paul reeled back, blood spurting from a cut lip. He shook his head, scattering drops that made pear-shaped red spatters on the sand, and then lunged head down at Charles. The two rolled over in the silver sand, and though Charles strained muscle and sinew, it was no use. They were too evenly matched and too inexpert for either to get a temporary advantage.

Charles' breath burned hot and harsh when at last both of them rested on hands and knees, a yard away from each other. Both were panting, sweating, and bleeding. "This is nonsense," Paul said. "Soon I'll wake up, and you will be gone."

"I agree," Charles said. "Except I'll wake up, and you will vanish."

"Then all we have to do is wait." Paul pushed up, grimacing as if weary and in pain. He backed away and sat on one of the golden boulders. His shoulders bowed and his chest heaved.

Charles sank onto another stone. He felt every ache in his muscles, every rip in his skin, every drop of sweat that crawled like a warm little snail down his face. I am real, Charles thought. I will wake up, and it will all be as it has been before. He will vanish. He looked into the other's haunted eyes. He really believes that he is the dreamer, Charles thought. He really does-just as I do. Panic fluttered light b.u.t.terfly wings in his belly. What if he is right? Charles wondered for the first time.

Almost simultaneously, he read the exact thought in the other's eyes.

Exhausted, helpless beneath the bruised dome of the dreamed sky, the two sat staring at one another, hating one another, and waiting out the hour before dawn.

Waking came quickly, with an outrush of breath. He looked up at the familiar white ceiling. From the corner of his left eye, he could see the night table where he had carelessly thrown his trousers last night. Through the open bedroom door came kitchen sounds and smells. Meg making Monday's breakfast for the two of them.

He had not wept in ages, but he did now. He closed his eyes. "G.o.d," he said. "What did I do to deserve that?" Then he laughed silently, his chest bucking beneath the sheet.