The Year's Best Horror Stories 16 Part 17

"Come here," I whispered, voicelessly, staring into pale eyes in a suppurating face, transfixed, waiting for the great smile. My knees were shaking. I gripped the window sill helplessly until she filled my sight: there was nothing in the world except her. She reached out to me.

"Oh, warm," she said in a voice like fire, and her face suddenly blazed with joy and delight, bright as a phosphorous flame. I jerked my eyes shut in startled reflex: she burned behind them like lightning.

Something touched my face, then-a cool, scented hand, it felt like. It traced the line of my shoulder, touched my arm; then ran gently through my hair, and was gone.

Ice flooded at me, freezing wind surged round like a sudden blast from the Arctic. My eyes opened wide with the shock of it, and with a great racking breath I realized I was standing in front of an open window in the depths of winter, stark naked and alone, and my hands were frozen to the window sill.

I panicked and tore them loose, leaving skin and flesh behind, though I couldn't feel a thing. There was frost on my fingers. Shuddering with cold, I lurched across the room to the radiator, having enough sense left to drape a towel over it-holding it between my wrists, for my fingers were useless.

Feeling gradually returned, and pain with it, like being slashed with knives of ice. Blood seeped out of my hands and soaked into the towel, but at least it showed me I was alive.

Whether I was about to die from hypothermia was another matter. I was s.h.i.+vering so much my body didn't want to obey me, and my hands throbbed and burned, but I struggled into a haphazard collection of clothes and crawled into bed, wrapping the towel clumsily around my lacerated fingers and palms. Eventually I drifted into a fitful doze.

Some warmth had regenerated when I woke, but I was weak and sick and chilled to the bone. My hands were an utter mess, the towel glued to them with clotted blood, but I didn't feel capable of moving, far less seeing what was under that gory fabric.

However, there was the telephone. On the dial was a note reading "Ring 0 for Room Service" (which meant the landlord's wife with a mug of tea). It was the first time in my life I had approved of a pushb.u.t.ton phone: I told them I'd caught a chill and needed a day in bed. The landlord's wife fussed a bit, and brought the expected scalding tea, which did not warm me: the cold was like agony.

I honestly don't know how I got through that day. I'd never been really ill before: the worst had been measles at sixteen, and I don't remember a whole lot about that, except being terribly weak. This time I kept slipping in and out of wild dreams which were both hideous and erotic at the same time-I don't really know whether I was s.h.i.+vering with cold, or terror, or desire. It was frightful. At one stage I remember longing to sleep but not daring to, in case I never woke up; another time I was so desperately cold that I found myself deliriously counting my toes, over and over, just to make sure they hadn't fallen off with frostbite.

But the worst, the very worst, thing, was that she had gone. I felt that everything inside me which had ever had meaning had drained away, leaving a hollow, frozen, empty wasteland that nothing could fill.

Or one thing could fill.

What does a haunted man look like? I wondered dully, but was too weak to look in the mirror.

Adam Merrilees showed me. He came in, kindly, to see how I was; took one look and his face blanched.

"You've seen her," he said bleakly. I nodded-it was all I could manage. The tundra inside me was too cold. Adam picked up a mirror from the table and showed me my reflection.

My face had gone gaunt, gray: along the path which a cool finger had traced was a livid red blistering line, and my hair was singed in places. I turned my head painfully and saw the trail of blisters continuing down inside my clothes; as soon as I was aware of it, it began to burn, making me draw my breath in sharply. I stared dispa.s.sionately at my hands: the towel had come loose, revealing seeping, raw patches.

"Michael, listen to me," said Adam. "I believe she's a type of vampire. She seems to feed on heat. Body heat-not emotions. She could drain you as completely as any blood-sucking Dracula."

I touched the track of burns, listlessly. It felt very hot to my flayed fingers. "What am I supposed to do?" I said, and it was difficult to get the words out.

"Fight her."

"How?" I didn't want to. I wanted her back.

"Do what William Merrilees did. Give her something hotter," said Adam Merrilees.

I sat by a vast open grate in the house in Bell Lane where the twentieth-century Merrilees lived, and where the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Merrilees had founded bells and fostered an insatiable desire. The fire in the grate was huge, whole logs, it seemed, piled one on top of the other. On the other side of the kitchen, an Aga stove pumped out great waves of warmth. Despite this, despite overcoat and blankets, I s.h.i.+vered. Only my bandaged hands and the strings of burn on my face and shoulder throbbed with heat. Some of the blisters had burst: under them were more blisters.

Ever since darkness had fallen, drawing shadows in early, Adam had been feeding the fire. The center was, now, probably literally as hot as a furnace, and he was finding it difficult to sit any nearer than six feet away. From time to time he tried to talk to me, in a low, wounded voice, as though he had failed in some way; I hardly replied, first through weakness, then through a growing excitement which was constricting my chest and throat. For I was looking forward to seeing the blanched figure which burned with cold fire: more, I wanted it with increasing desperation as the minutes pa.s.sed.

Around midnight I removed the blankets, and later the coat. I was growing warm, physically warm, as the longing and the antic.i.p.ation increased.

Adam saw it first, I think. Saw the little flames at the edge of the fire wither. He got to his feet: he seemed to be moving very slowly, as if through mercury. I looked into the flames and saw their fiery center sucked into blackness which spread outward from the core until the whole blazing ma.s.s was cold gray and white ash.

She arose from the center of the grate, powder falling off her which seconds before had been the heart of an inferno. She had absorbed the fire, and it was not enough for her.

I stood up. I was blazing now, the longing was pure heat inside me, aching, desperate for her to smile again, that smile of joy incarnate. Dimly, I was aware that Adam had stopped on the other side of the fireplace and that his mouth was working.

Her side and her face were seething. She crackled.

"So much warmth," she whispered. "But not enough." And reached out her hand to me, as her destroyed lips smiled again and I was lost once more in an overwhelming, staggering rush of delight.

She put her hand on my chest, and I felt my skin start to burn through my jumper, through my s.h.i.+rt. I put out my arms to embrace her, seeing little runnels of her flesh like wax spilling off her at the same time, around and down from that sweet, sweet smile; but all there was in me was desire.

Adam's voice, strained and unrecognisable, broke into my trance. He was yelling something-I couldn't tell what. I saw his brawny arm rise and fall: she glowed; she was lambent; and then she was gone, and suddenly the pressure inside me too was gone and I fell to the floor as if all my strings had been cut.

It was Jack Merrilees who found us first, followed by Jane and Lesley: though I never found out what, if anything, Adam had said to them. Adam and I were lying either side of a long furrow of scorch, burned four inches deep in the stone kitchen floor. His arm was seared with a burn like the track of a lightning strike, and I was in a worse state. Jane gave me some water: I drank about three pints.

When I felt able to speak, I croaked at Adam-even my throat felt scorched-"What did you do?"

"I ... applied ... the final ... straw," he said, his voice as painful as mine, and pointed stiffly to a small fused lump of bright metal on the blackened floor. "I hit her ... with the poker ... from the Aga." He paused again, and swallowed. "It acted ... like ... a lightning conductor."

"She's gone," said Jack, with a touch of sadness. "Gone for good now, I think. I also think," he added, more sternly, "that you might have done my family a favor, Mr. Denehey."

"Please don't call me that," I said, with some difficulty.

"Pardon?"

"Only my bank manager calls me that."

"You nearly paid more than you ever paid into your bank," said Jack Merrilees, quietly, looking at me.

"We didn't ... know," added Adam, looking slightly embarra.s.sed.

I thought for a moment. "Did you ever feel it-the loss and the emptiness, when she left?"

"No," said Jack; Adam shook his head. "No. You had the desire, which we never had. It seems you acted as a-catalyst, I think the word is. A channel for the cold fire."

A burned channel, I thought. And my hair grew back white where she had touched it.

You may be surprised to learn that I went back to Lacey Magna. Something pulled me back: a fair Renaissance face with the eyes of a ghost. I married Jane Merrilees last year, not long after Jack died (at the respectable age of eighty-nine). Adam doesn't ring very much anymore, though he seems content with his lot, and I don't attend the practice every week. For one thing, Jane, who runs them now, has got the band up to five-spliced now, which is way beyond me; for another, my hands get sore after I've been ringing for any length of time-though I'm lucky: I can wield pen and pencil still; my occupation's not gone.

Only sometimes, when I happen to wake in the dead hour of a winter night, and look at Jane asleep with moonlight on her face and her pale hair fanned out, I sense a shadow growing there: a shadow like mottled stone all down one side; and then my hands draw and ache, and the old burn on my scalp grows warm.

Of course, it might be my imagination. But, somehow, I don't think so.

THE SCAR.

by Dennis Etchison.

Now, with twenty-five years of professional writing under his belt, Dennis Etchison has grudgingly become recognized by editors and publishers as one of the horror genre's foremost writers and thinkers. But then, that's something readers have known all along. So, why did it take so long for the people who move their lips when they read to catch on? For one thing, Etchison is not enormously prolific-not to count his screenplays and movie novelizations. Aside from that, Etchison has worked almost exclusively in short fiction, with his first major novel, Darkside, coming out in 1986. Primarily though, Etchison's fiction sort of falls between the cracks of genre labels. Disturbed editors riffle in confusion through his ma.n.u.scripts, searching for rotting zombies, demonic children, or any handle upon which to grasp to explain the uneasy impact of his fiction. A mood of paranoid urgency isn't easy to label, or to forget.

Born in Stockton, California on March 30, 1943, Dennis Etchison currently lives in Los Angeles-there keeping close to the movie scene, which is his major interest after champions.h.i.+p wrestling. He is presently at work on a number of screenplays; is awaiting publication of the third Scream/Press collection of his short stories, The Blood Kiss; is hard at work on his stories for a forthcoming Night Visions volume from Dark Harvest; editing Masters of Darkness III; is planning a new anthology, Double Edge, to follow his tremendously successful Cutting Edge. Keeps him off the streets, and that's just as well.

This time they were walking a divided highway, the toes of their shoes powdered white with gravel dust. The little girl ran ahead, skipping eagerly along the shoulder, while her mother lagged back to keep pace with the man.

"Mind the trucks," called the woman, barely raising her voice. Soon the girl would be able to take care of herself; that was her hope. She turned to him, showing the good side of her face. "Do you see one yet?"

He lifted his chin and squinted.

She followed his gaze to the other side of the highway. There, squatting in the haze beyond the overpa.s.s, was a Weenie Wigwam Fast Food Restaurant.

"Thank G.o.d," she said. She thought of the Chinese Smorgasbord, the Beef Bowl, the Thai Take-Out and the many others they had seen already. She added, "This one will be all right, won't it?"

It was the edge of the town, RV dealers.h.i.+ps and fleet sales on one side of the road, family diners and budget motels on the other. Overloaded station wagons and moving vans laden with freight hammered the asphalt, bringing thunder to the gray twilight. Without breaking stride the man leaned down to scoop up a handful of gravel, then skimmed stones between the little girl's thin legs and into the ditch; he held onto one last piece, a sharp quartz chip, and deposited it in his jacket pocket.

"Maybe," he said.

"Aren't you sure?"

He did not answer.

"Well," she said, "let's try it. Laura will be hungry, I know."

She hurried to catch the little girl at the crossing. When she turned back, the man was handling an empty beer bottle from the roadside. She looked away. As he moved up to join them, zippering the front of his service jacket, the woman forced a smile, as if she had not seen.

In the parking lot, the man took their hands. A heavy tanker geared down and pounded the curve, bucking and hissing away behind them. As it pa.s.sed, the driver sounded his horn at the traffic. The sudden blast, so near that it rattled her spine, seemed to release her from a bad dream. She laced her fingers more securely with his and swung her arm out and back and out again, hardly feeling the weight of his hand between them.

"This is a nice place," she said, already reading a banner for the all-day breakfast special. "I'm glad we waited. Aren't you glad, Laura?"

"Can I ride the horse ?" asked the little girl.

The woman looked at the sculpted gray-and-white Indian pinto, its blanket saddle worn down to the fibergla.s.s. There were no other children waiting at the machine. She let go of his hand and dug in her purse for a coin.

"I don't see why not," she said.

The little girl broke away.

He came to a stop, his empty hands opening and closing.

"Just one ride," the woman said quickly. "And then you come right inside, hear?"

On the other side of the gla.s.s, couples moved between tables. A few had children, some Laura's age. Families, she thought. She wished that the three of them could go inside together.

Laura's pony began to wobble and pitch. But the man was not watching. He stood there with his chin up, his nostrils flared, like an animal waiting for a sign. His hands continued to flex.

"I'll see about a table," she said when he did not move to open the door.

A moment later she glanced outside and saw him examining a piece of brick that had come loose from the front of the restaurant. He turned it over and over.

The menus came. They sat reading them in a corner booth, under crossed tomahawks. The food items were named in keeping with the native American motif, suggesting that the burgers and the several varieties of hot dogs had been invented by hunters and gatherers. Bleary travelers hunched over creased roadmaps, gulping coffee and estimating mileage, their eyes stark in the chill fluorescent lighting.

"What would you like, Laura?" asked the woman.

"Peanut b.u.t.ter and jelly sandwich."

"Do they have that?"

"And a vanilla milkshake."

The woman sighed.

"And Wampum Pancakes. Papoose-size."

She opened her purse and counted the money. She blinked and looked at the man.

He got up and went over to the silverware station.

"What's he doing?" said the little girl.

"Never mind," said the woman. "His knife and fork must be dirty."

He came back and sat down.

"And Buffalo Fries," said the little girl.

The woman studied him. "Is it still okay?" she asked.

"What?" he said.

She waited, but now he was busy observing the customers. She gave up and returned to the menu. It was difficult for her to choose, not knowing what he would order. "I'll just have a small dinner salad," she said at last.

The others in the restaurant kept to themselves. A man with a sample case ate a piece of pecan pie and scanned the local newspaper. A young couple fed their baby apple juice from a bottle. A take-away order was picked up at the counter, then carried out to a Winnebago. Soft, vaguely familiar music lilted from wall speakers designed to look like tom-toms, m.u.f.fling the clink of cups and the murmur of private conversations.

"Want to go to the bathroom," said the little girl.

"In a minute, baby," the woman told her. A waitress in an imitation buckskin mini-dress was coming this way.

The little girl squirmed. "Mom-my!"

The waitress was almost here, carrying a pitcher and gla.s.ses of water on a tray.

The woman looked at the man.

Finally he leaned back and opened his hands on the table.

"Could you order for us?" she asked carefully.