The Year's Best Horror Stories 15 Part 9

He snorted, courage returned when he wasn't looking in her eyes. "Look, lady-"

"You're here," she said quietly, "because you've no place else to go, isn't that so? No home. No family. You live in the past, and England is perfect for ambitions like that. And so do I, Brian. So do I." The rustle of velvet. "My past, not yours."

He yanked the door open and stepped into the hall; and once out of the wash of white light, he took a deep breath, and shuddered, and headed for the stairs. It was time, he thought, to move on. Another city, perhaps the Continent. Maybe even go back to the States. It didn't matter as long as he didn't stay here.

Melody hurried up behind him.

"Tote the tab," he said as he climbed toward his room. "I'll be down in a few minutes."

"You don't get it yet, do you?" she said.

"Get it?" he look down. "C'mon, Mel, you know me."

She wiped her nose with a sleeve. "Do you know who had that picture before you?"

"You did. You told me."

"No. Not me. Mr. White."

He blinked, and grinned. "Mel, this isn't the time. I-"

"I killed him."

He fumbled for the banister and lowered himself to the step. "You didn't."

"She was tired of him. With a few exceptions, he was growing to like older women."

"So?"

"Older women, Brian, don't have much time left."

He stood angrily. "Jesus, Mel, what the h.e.l.l are you pulling here, huh?" His eyes closed, and opened. "Oh, I get it. Your grandmother has the power to take what life is left from a person, right? She then gives that portrait to someone, and it brings them good luck-like not dying when they should." He spread his hands. "No problem, Mel. If it'll make you feel better, I'll leave it behind. O.K.? Are you happy?"

He started up again (my past) and reached the landing, then turned around (not yours) because he saw the cab, and the blood, and young Bess on a stretcher.

"Let me get this straight," he said to Melody, who was still waiting. "You arranged, somehow, for me to get the picture because Mr. White didn't pick the girls, he picked older women?"

"You were the type," she said. "She always knows the type."

"And ..." He put a finger to his chin. "And no matter where I go, because of me people are going to die just to keep her where she is."

Melody lifted a helpless hand.

"You," he said, "are insane. So is that imposter in there, or was the old woman the fake?"

He pulled open the fire door- "Brian, how did you feel when poor Bess was dead?"

-and stepped into the hall, s.n.a.t.c.hed his key from his pocket, and slammed into his room.

He didn't turn on the lights.

He didn't look at Crystal's picture.

He stood at the window and stared down at the street through the gauze of the curtains.

What a stupid thing to say, he thought, spinning the key in one hand; I felt lousy, I felt rotten, I felt ...

And he knew then what Crystal wanted.

Not the dead, not the dying, but the fact that good old Brian, like Thurmond White, would never really care.

A polite knock on the door.

"What!" he said as a tour coach drifted by.

"The bill," Melody said. "Do you still want it?"

A pair of young women in jeans and down jackets huddled on the opposite pavement, knapsacks at their feet, and they were studying a map.

"Brian?"

"No," he said loudly, and parted the curtain.

One of them looked up and saw him, poked her companion, and they smiled.

He heard Melody s.h.i.+ft the picture so it faced his bed.

"Brian, she's waiting."

Girls, he thought; they're not much older than girls.

He watched them without expression, watched their flirting and their intent, and when he nodded at the last, the light in the room above switched off, and he waited.

Listening to the girls hurry over to the door.

Listening as Melody left to let them in.

Waiting, and sighing, because he didn't feel a thing.

RETIREMENT.

by Ron Leming.

Ron Leming is another writer struggling out of the pack of small press writers. His stories have appeared in Potboiler, Sycophant, Twisted, The Horror Show, Eldritch Tales, and other leading small press magazines, and he has had recent sales to professional markets such as Mayfair and Outlaw Biker (from which the following story is reprinted). Leming is also a small press editor with the d.a.m.nations anthology series and the forthcoming Slice of the Razor. Just at this moment he is concentrating on his budding career as an artist.

Ron Leming says that he was supposedly born on September 11, 1950, but doesn't know where, as he is an orphan. For now he lives in Berkeley, California. As for his background: "Just out of high school I went into the music business and played in several well-known bands during the sixties. I've been an actor in very cheap, very bad B movies, a chef, a biker, a gas station manager, a professional full contact martial arts fighter and instructor, owned my own restaurant, built custom vans, dug ditches, flown planes, worked for a year as a mortician's a.s.sistant ... I love cats, s.e.x, drugs and rock and roll. Presently I'm playing in a rock and roll band called CHAINSAW REDEEMER. Part punk, part metal, and all hardcore rock and roll." Isn't it amazing just how many horror writers like cats?

"I want to be laid out nice and neat on my stomach," Jack said, "with my pants down around my ankles so everybody can kiss my a.s.s goodbye."

"Jack," Ch.e.l.l said reproachfully.

"Well," Jack said, "it's true." He took another drink of Rebel Yell and looked l.u.s.tfully at Ch.e.l.ly, behind the bar. "What about you?" he asked. "How do you want to be buried?"

Ch.e.l.l was my best waitress-my only waitress. It was an exceptionally slow night at Diamond Dog's-a very slow bar, at best-and how we'd gotten round to talking about death and burial, I'll never know. It had just seemed to come up in the conversation. I wouldn't be the one to object, though. DD's was all I had-since my wife had died-so my customers and neighbors and regulars were my friends, and I depended on their good will to fill my time and stimulate my mind. Not a good life, maybe-but life enough.

"I don't rightly know," Ch.e.l.l said. "I never thought about it much. I guess I'll just do whatever everybody else is doing when the time comes-'cept maybe with a little less money." She laughed and slapped Jack lightly on the shoulder. "Us poor folks cain't afford to die, you know, Jack? We just get so d.a.m.n depressed that we cain't move no more. Then they wrap us up and dump us in a hole. Easy enough, eh?"

Jack snorted as if the answer hadn't had imagination enough for him and he turned to me. There was only the three of us in the bar. It was near midnight and the weather outside was gettin' real unfit. A slow night at a slow bar, like I said.

"What about you, Don? How do you want the deed done?"

"Me?" I answered, pretending to think while I dried an unused beer gla.s.s. "My daddy always told me I was too downright mean and nasty to die. I'm just gonna cut loose with a big ole fart someday and that'll be it. I'll collapse like a sack of Jell-O and seep away into the ground."

Ch.e.l.l bent over laughing, and I smiled, but that answer wasn't enough for Jack.

"C'mon, Don," he said, pus.h.i.+ng. "Really now-how do you want it done?"

I thought for a moment, recalling what my "real" serious answer was. "Oh, I guess I'd want to be cremated, you know. Have my ashes hauled around in some nice Chinese jug-put up a tasteful bra.s.s plaque somewhere. Have it read, 'I knew something like this was going to happen'."

"There you go," Jack said, lifting his gla.s.s to me. "That's the spirit. Why be serious about it? h.e.l.l, it's only death, after all. Nothing to worry about."

Jack shut up for a moment. He was an insurance salesman, and he could be a real pain in the a.s.s, sometimes. Besides, I had been serious-and it hurt a little for him to think I was joking about what I wanted done. But he gulped the rest of his drink down and turned to Ch.e.l.ly for a refill. It was all dusty-windy outside, the hot summer wind picking up the desert sand and playing attack civilization with it. A little Rebel Yell went a long way toward giving a man like Jack the courage to face the desert and go home to an unhappy marriage with a semblance of a smile on his face because maybe things ain't as bad as they look sober. Even if, as Jack did, he lived only a block from the bar.

Ch.e.l.l took his gla.s.s and began to pour from the thick-necked R.Y. bottle. When the front door slammed open she spilled some on the counter. I looked at it for a moment and thought d.a.m.n. That'll take the varnish off.

And it suddenly grew chillingly hot. I thought it was only the wind and wet and emptiness from the storm outside. Thunder cracked and lightning flashed. I sure wasn't looking forward to the drive up the mountain home.

Everyone's eyes were on the stranger. You could almost see the dust fall off him as he seemed to shake himself. He stomped his feet up and down to knock the wet dirt off them. He was all dressed in black-black boots, black jeans, black s.h.i.+rt, black jacket and a big, s.h.i.+ny black Stetson hat which he held in one hand as he brushed his hair down with the other. He wasn't no local, that was for sure-else I'd have seen him before.

"C'mon in, partner," I said. "Have a seat and a shot to make yourself comfortable."

I like to try to be friendly with newcomers. Jack and Ch.e.l.ly were looking at him like they thought he was a man from Mars or some such. I figured him for an old biker-cowboy, sort of like a tourist, but not in as much of a hurry. Or else he'd just ended up in Satan's Rockpile by accident-some of 'em still did that since they'd moved the freeway.

He stomped on over to the bar and hunkered up onto the chair right next to mine. That gave me a chance to study him a mite closer. He was an odd lookin' fella-all dry skin and chapped bones and angles-road worn-elbows and knees stickin' out like the vanes of a ramshackle windmill. One of those fellas that don't look like they belong in the body they're wearing.

He looked like he hadn't had a decent meal in a week, maybe more. His cheekbones were red and raw and high, and his eyes were sunk tired and deep. Under his hat, his head was nearly bald, with only a few stringy ropes of tangled blond hair hangin' down at the sides and back-long and straggly. A pitiful lookin' cuss, all in all. It looked like he had let himself go a long time ago, bone tired. A little like I felt sometimes.

Ch.e.l.ly sidled on over to him, wiping the counter off with the towel she keeps hangin' out her back pocket and settin' a napkin down in front of him. She was a good ole girl and a crack waitress.

I heard a little tremble in her voice when she asked, "What'll it be?" that made me think this stranger had upset her, or frightened her, though I didn't know why.

"I'll have a beer," the stranger said, "a Grizzly beer."

His voice was low and deep and hoa.r.s.e, as if he'd been riding for miles and years in the throat-ripping desert heat.

Jack came suddenly to life. "Hey, buddy," he said tentatively. "Where you from?"

The stranger looked at him oddly. "Where am I from?" he asked with a sigh. "Well, I guess you could say I'm from all over. From Texas, originally-but I've been many places since then. All over the world."

"Iz'zat a fact," Jack commented, brightening up. "What do you do for a living?"

The stranger sighed and took a long drink of his beer. I was surprised to see the gla.s.s was empty when he set it down on the bar again. I signaled to Ch.e.l.l to fill it again-which she did-while he continued.

"I suppose," he said-a little sadly, I thought, "I suppose you could call me an undertaker, of a fas.h.i.+on. I deal in death, at any rate."

Jack's face beamed like he'd just found a flapping catfish on a muddy bank and was determined to lie and say he'd caught it himself. Course, he'd throw it up in the air, first. Some of Jack's best customers were undertakers.

"Well," he said, "that's a strange coincidence. Just when you came in, we were all talking about that very subject-death and burying, I mean. We were all saying just how it was we all wanted to be laid out and buried." Jack smiled again, rather maliciously, and his gaze rested intensely on the man. "What about you, Mister ... ah, what'd you say your name was?"

"I didn't," the stranger said, giving out with a short, cackling laugh. "But you may-if you must-call me Spider. Spider Ransome."

"Well, Mister Spider. What about you? How do you want to be done up?"

"Oh, I suppose I'd prefer to be burnt. It seems so clean. There's just something comfortable and purifying about the flames."

"You'd have something in common with Don, then. He feels like he wants to be cremated, too."

The stranger turned to me-there was a hungry, curious look on his face. I stared into his eyes-deep and black-and for a moment, I was afraid. Don't know why, but even after the fear pa.s.sed I was still uneasy.

"Indeed!" he said. "Is that true?"

"Yep," I answered. "Leastways, I think so. To tell you the truth, I ain't plannin' to die at all, if I can help it. You know? But if I have to, I guess I'd prefer to be cremated. I know I don't relish the idea of bein' planted in the ground-not this d.a.m.n ground, anyway. I'd be afraid of what might grow from outta me."

The stranger didn't crack a smile or raise an eyebrow-just looked at me all serious-like.

"A commendable att.i.tude, friend. Very sane. But ... you don't have to at all, you know."

"What?" I asked. I was a little high from the three gla.s.ses of beer I'd drunk, and I didn't quite understand what he'd meant. "Don't have to be planted?"

"No," he said in a whisper, "you don't have to die."

He looked at me expectantly. Ch.e.l.l was just starting to pour Jack another gla.s.sful and they were talking to one another, ignoring the stranger and I. Ch.e.l.l caught me looking at her and raised an eyebrow, but I signaled her that it was okay and her attention wandered back to Jack. I leaned closer to the stranger so I could hear him better. "Would you say that again, partner?" I asked him. "I don't think I heard you quite right."

He smiled at me and drank the rest of his second beer. He smacked his lips an sighed. "You. Don't. Have. To. Die." he said. "Not at all. Not ever."

I suddenly felt, somehow that I was going to vomit my boots up from my throat. I swallowed hard and looked straight at him. "Whad'ya mean, mister? And what was it you said your name was?"

"My name has no relevance," he said. "I have been called many things. Been called a son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h and worse. But you, Don-you may call me Death."

"s.h.i.+t!" I laughed. "How many bars you been to tonight, partner?"

"This is my first," he said-and he was dead serious. "This is my first stop of the night. And," he said, draining the remains in his gla.s.s, "with luck, it'll be the last."