The Best New Horror 3 Read online

  Not everything remained the same; not everything could be saved.

  “Cora, hey!”

  At the corner she turned and smiled as a young man, lank and blond and red-cheeked and running, waved at her to stop, hang on, hold up a minute. He had to grab a lamppost to keep from skidding into the street, and she grabbed his hand to steady him while he exaggerated gasping, his other hand clamped dramatically to his chest.

  “I’ve been calling you for ages,” he said. “Where were you, dreamland?”

  She shrugged. “Looking around, that’s all. Memories. You know.”

  They had met when she’d stepped off the bus in front of the barbershop three days ago. A collision, actually. He’d been carrying a crate of fruit to the greengrocer down the block, and she’d been trying to make sure she wouldn’t trip over her own well-traveled suitcase. Fruit and underwear, then, all over the pavement. Anger to laughter. Hands helping her to her feet, chasing after a nightgown that had decided to ride the wind to Indiana.

  Dinner that night.

  Lunch the next day.

  She felt no guilt at all since she hadn’t known, not then, that she’d be leaving him so soon. And even if she had known, there would have only been relief—Parker Arnold wouldn’t end up like Keith and Rex and all the rest.

  A finger tapped her forehead lightly. “Hey, in there.”

  She giggled. “Sorry.”

  She took his arm and let him lead her across the street, accepting an invitation to a late lunch at one of the new places a few blocks on. Why not? she thought. A free meal, a few laughs, and when I’m gone, he’ll find someone else he thinks he loves.

  You are not going, young lady, and that’s final.

  Mother!

  Stop your caterwauling! You sound like a spoiled child!

  Mother, you’re not going to stop me. He loves me.

  You’re only sixteen, don’t be foolish.

  I am not being foolish.

  And you are not going.

  They sat at a table near the window, in the Ploughman’s Lunch, and watched the pedestrians dodge the traffic, each other, and hold the line against the increasing wind. She couldn’t see the clouds, but even inside she could feel the storm coming.

  Him, she prayed. Please let it be him.

  “Too bad,” Parker said, using his fork to point at the weather outside.

  “It won’t last.”

  “I mean, the rain. Sure looks like it.”

  A slight pressure against her knee. She almost frowned.

  He sighed. “It would have been great.”

  Sometimes, even in the short time that she’d known him, Parker could exasperate her with his enigmatic speech. She figured he read too many plays from the 1940s—lots of meaningful pauses and symbols and such. He was a teacher, after all; it was probably in his blood.

  She poked him with a spoon. “Would you mind explaining just what the hell you’re talking about?”

  He winced.

  She stuck out her tongue playfully. He didn’t like swearing; it almost made him cute.

  “The carnival thing.”

  The pressure against her knee increased just enough for her to realize it was no accident.

  She ignored it. “What carnival thing?”

  He fumbled in his back pocket, nearly knocking over his water glass, pulled out a folded sheet of paper, and dropped it next to her plate.

  She gaped at it.

  “It won’t bite, you know,” he said with a laugh.

  Yes, it will. Lord, yes, it will.

  Carefully, as if it were a cursed Egyptian scroll, she smoothed it out on the tablecloth. Closed her eyes. Felt her breath catch and hitch in her lungs. Felt her heart try to claw its way free.

  COOGER AND DARK’S PANDEMONIUM SHADOW SHOW

  She didn’t have to read any more.

  A woman walked past their table, turned, and looked over Parker’s shoulder. “Excuse me,” she said. “I don’t mean to be forward, but . . . don’t I know you?”

  Cora blinked shadowtears from her eyes and looked up.

  The woman, in a topcoat and veiled hat, the veil pinned up, was too heavily made up for her age to be ignored. Fifty-five, sixty, and obviously not what she saw in the mirror. She smiled when Parker twisted around to look up at her, smiled at Cora expectantly.

  “I don’t think so,” Cora answered politely.

  The woman’s smile trembled, a white-gloved hand pointing to her own breast. “Eileen Islin. Thirty years ago. We worked in the bank?” The smile vanished, snapped off. The woman stepped away. “Oh, of course not, forgive me.” She held her black purse tight against her side. “Forgive me,” she said to Parker. “I didn’t mean . . .” Another look. “I’m sorry, but you look so much like her, I thought . . . I’m sorry.”

  And she was gone.

  Cora let her eyes close.

  “Now that,” said Parker, “was one weird lady.”

  No, she thought. Just one with a memory too close for comfort.

  It was bound to happen sooner or later, this time. She should have stayed in her rooms the way she usually did. But Parker had drawn her out, let her see the town again, and she hadn’t been able to resist. Again. As she hadn’t resisted with Keith and Rex and Johnny and Drake.

  Suddenly she yanked her napkin from her lap and dropped it over her plate. Stood. Made a false hasty check of her watch. “Oh Lord, I just remembered something,” she explained as Parker began a protest. “I’ll call you later, all right?” A sweet smile, a kiss to his cheek. A whisper in his ear: “I’ll call you, don’t worry.”

  The clouds were closer, heavier, the circle of blue shrinking as the wind raced through her hair.

  She tried not to cry out, to dance, to wave her arms, to kiss every man she passed as she raced home. She tried not to smell every autumn blossom in every garden, not to return every Halloween pumpkin’s grin. She tried not to weep when she burst into the living room and stood before the mantel.

  The last hourglass was nearly empty.

  “Soon,” she whispered to it. “Soon.”

  But not soon enough.

  She paced through each room, willing the sun to make its move, willing the moon to begin its climb.

  She paced and laughed and clapped her hands and felt the joy; paced and laughed and clapped her hands and felt the cold.

  Mother, let me out!

  You will stay in there, child, until you come to your senses.

  Mother, please! He’s waiting!

  Go to bed, Cora. There’s nothing more you can do.

  She didn’t know how to dress and so didn’t bother to change. It didn’t matter. He would take her no matter what. Gloves this time, however, and a muffler to keep the wind from sluicing down her neck.

  She hurried without running.

  She listened for the sound of the calliope and train.

  The storm flicked lightning over the western horizon.

  Impatience grabbed her at last, and she ran across the deserted meadow, leaves flying like startled bats around her head, glaring up at the sky, glaring at the empty tracks, pressing her fists to her temples to stop the pounding there.

  When exhaustion finally stopped her, dropped her to her knees, she ordered herself to be patient. It was the only way. She had waited this long, she could wait a few minutes longer.

  The cold of the ground seeped through her jeans. The wind finally slowed, though the lightning moved closer. She watched the flaring white warily, having seen it before, knowing what it could do, and what it had done. It shouldn’t be here. Not this year. He was coming, not the fire.

  “I’ll be waiting, Miss Sixteen.”

  “Yes.”

  “But if you fail— ”

  “No, don’t say that!”

  “I’ll be waiting nevertheless. Sometime, but always here.”

  “But—”

  And he had laughed and he had kissed her and he had pressed into her hands an exquisitely wrought hourglass of cry
stal and wood: and he had whispered that Time would be hers always so long as she knew how to fill it and protect it with the fire of their love.

  “Corny,” she whispered and grinned to the ground, to the approaching storm, to the dark. “God, that was so corny.”

  The fire of their love.

  How sweet sixteen that was.

  How agonizingly true.

  “So where are you?” she demanded of the dark and Mr Dark.

  “Where the hell are you?”

  A glow, white and bobbing at the meadow’s far edge.

  Holding back a cry, she leapt to her feet and pushed at her hair and dusted the weeds and dirt from her knees and watched the light bounce toward her, flaring at the belly of the storm overhead, blinding her for a moment, cutting a silver path across the meadow. She wanted to run toward it, but commanded herself to remain calm. He mustn’t see her as too anxious; he mustn’t know his power.

  “Cora?”

  She almost screamed.

  The light grew, and grew brighter.

  “Cora?”

  It wasn’t him.

  Damn, it wasn’t him!

  Before she could duck, veer away, somehow find a hole in the night to cover her, the flashlight swept over her face, away and abruptly back. Parker’s footsteps on the ground sounded like the dirge of hollow drums.

  “Hey, there you are!”

  Cora felt the tears and didn’t bother to hide them.

  “Cora,” Parker said, wrapping an arm around her waist. “God, I’m glad I found you. You ran away so fast this afternoon, I didn’t get a chance to tell you where the exhibit was. I waited at the library for over an hour before— ”

  “Exhibit?” She pushed him away, but gently, listening to her voice grow too suddenly old. “What exhibit?”

  “The flyer I showed you,” he said, as if she should have known. “You know, that carnival exhibit. Didn’t you read it?”

  No, she thought. Lord, no, not all.

  He chuckled. “I didn’t think so.” He hugged her again around the waist, and this time she didn’t, couldn’t remove his hand. “So I went to your rooms, and the landlady let me in because we were so worried when you didn’t answer. As soon as I saw you weren’t there, I had a thought. I don’t know why, but I did.” His face grinned, in a burst of lightning, as he passed the beam over the meadow. “Pretty smart, huh?”

  Not here, she thought: he won’t be here, not this year.

  A finger nestled under her chin. “Hey, don’t cry. I didn’t mean to scare you. Honest.”

  Not here.

  He put something into her hands, turning her so that the wind was at his back, so that he sheltered her. “This came for you after you’d left.”

  Weary; so weary as her fingers, no longer young, no longer nimble, tore the gaily wrapped package open and held its contents to her chest.

  “Hey,” he said, putting the beam on her prize. “Hey, you’ve got some of those on the mantel, right?” The beam shifted, and she averted her face, covered it with a free hand. “Sorry again. But it’s beautiful, you know. The hourglass, I mean. That wasn’t sand in the others, though, was it? It didn’t look like it.”

  “No,” she said quietly, to hide the years that sped toward her on the lightning.

  He laughed. “Looked like ashes, actually. My aunt has my uncle on the mantel. Morbid, I’ll tell you.”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  He leaned closer, the beam tightening, brightening. “Damn, this one’s empty. I think you got gypped.”

  For the first time that night, there was thunder.

  She almost laughed at the melodramatics of it, and the storm.

  His grip on her waist strengthened, the smell of him now and of his autumn-cold clothes. “Cora.” Hoarsely.

  She inhaled slowly, deeply, and felt the warmth, felt the heat; she lowered herself and him to the ground where she fumbled off the top of the hourglass he had sent her. He had. So he still loved her. And this just wasn’t the time, this just wasn’t the year.

  “What . . . what are you going to put in it?” Parker wanted to know, lightly kissing her brow.

  The hourglass between them.

  The heat of her as she kissed him back.

  “It’s dumb,” he said breathlessly, pulling away for a second. “It’s really dumb, but I really think I love you.”

  “And I do love you,” she answered, bringing him back. “For a time.”

  Embracing him, and kissing him.

  “For a time.”

  Letting him know the fire of her love.

  GRANT MORRISON

  The Braille Encyclopedia

  GRANT MORRISON lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland, and is the writer of numerous successful and critically acclaimed graphic novels, including the “controversial” St Swithin’s Day and The New Adventures of Hitler, Bible John, Dare, and the revisionist Batman book, Arkham Asylum.

  His plays Red King Rising (examining Victorian morality through the eyes of Lewis Carroll’s Alice) and Depravity (about the life of Aleister Crowley) were performed to full houses during their respective runs at the 1989 and 1990 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Red King Rising won both the Fringe First and Independent awards, while Depravity was recipient of the Evening News Award.

  Morrison has also won the Speakeasy, UK Comic Art, Eagle and Inkpot Awards for Best Writer and Best Graphic Novel of 1990 (Arkham Asylum). He is currently working on Sebastian O (a graphic novel inspired by the fin de siecle Decadent writers); Table and Chairs, a new play, and Mystery City, a novel. He continues to write the monthly Doom Patrol for DC Comics, plays and sings with the band Super 9, and is the author of various short stories and articles.

  “The Braille Encyclopedia” is perhaps somewhat reminiscent of Clive Barker’s Books of Blood and, like those ground-breaking stories, has the power to both shock and awe the reader at the same time.

  BLIND IN THE CITY OF LIGHT, Patricia walked carefully back through the Cimitière Père-Lachaise.

  “Are you all right?” Mrs Becque said again. “Now be careful here, the steps are a little slippery . . .”

  Patricia nodded and placed her foot tentatively on the first step. Through the soles of her shoes she could feel the edge of a slick patch of moss.

  “Are you all right?” Mrs Becque said again.

  “I’ll be fine,” Patricia said. “Really.”

  All around, she could feel the shapes of sepulchers and headstones. The echoes they returned, the space they displaced, the subtle patterns of cold air they radiated; all these things gave the funeral monuments of Père-Lachaise a weight and solidity that lay beyond sight. From the locked and chambered earth, a fragrance arose. The elaborate alchemy of decay released a damp perfume which combined with the scent of spoiled wreaths and hung like a mist around the stones. Rain drummed on the stretched skin of Patricia’s umbrella.

  “So what did you think?” said Mrs Becque. “Of Wilde’s monument, that is? Did you like it?”

  “Lovely,” Patricia said.

  “Of course, the vandals have made a terrible mess, writing all over the statue, but it’s still very impressive, don’t you think?”

  Mrs Becque’s voice receded into a rainy drone. Patricia could hardly mention how amused she’d been when she’d run her hands over Epstein’s stone angel, only to discover that the balls of the statue had been chopped off by some zealous souvenir fiend. Mrs Becque would most certainly disapprove of so ironic a defacement, but Patricia felt sure that Oscar Wilde would have found the whole thing thoroughly entertaining. Mrs Becque, in fact, seemed to disapprove of almost everything and Patricia was growing desperately tired of the woman’s constant presence.

  “We must get in out of this awful rain,” Mrs Becque was saying. They crossed the street, found a café and sat down.

  “What would you like, dear?” asked Mrs Becque. “Coffee?”

  “Yes,” Patricia said. “Espresso. And a croissant. Thanks.”

  Mrs Becque ord
ered, then eased herself up out of her seat and set off in search of a telephone. Patricia took her book from her bag and began to read with her fingertips. She found no comfort there. More and more often these days, books did nothing but increase her own sense of isolation and disaffection. They taunted and teased with their promise of a better world but in the end they had nothing to offer but empty words and closed covers. She had grown tired of experiencing life at second hand. She wanted something that she had never been able to put into words.

  A waiter brought the coffee.

  “Something else for you, sir?” he said.

  Patricia started up from her book. Someone was sitting at her table, directly opposite. A man.

  “I’m fine with this,” the man said. His voice was rich and resonant, classically trained. Every syllable seemed to melt in the air.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” the man said. He was talking to Patricia now, using English. “I saw you sitting all alone.”

  “No. Actually, I’m with someone,” Patricia said. She stumbled over the words, as she might stumble over the furniture in some unfamiliar room. “She’s over there. Over there.” She gestured vaguely.

  “I don’t think you’re with anyone at all,” the man said. “You seem to me to be alone. It’s not right that a pretty girl should be alone in Paris.”

  “I’m not,” Patricia said flatly. The man was beginning to disturb and irritate her.

  “Believe me,” the man said. “I know what you want. It’s written all over your face. I know what you want.”

  “What are you talking about?” Patricia said. “You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I can read you like a book,” he said. “I’ll be here at the same time tomorrow, if you wish to hear more about the Braille Encyclopedia.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Patricia’s face flushed. “I really don’t . . .”

  “Everything all right, dear?”

  Patricia turned her head. The voice belonged to Mrs Becque. Foreign coins chinked into a cheap purse.

  “It’s just this man . . .” Patricia began.