The Best New Horror 3 Page 23

  “I’m still alive. I’m still alive,” was all she could say. At last, she fell but L’Index was there to catch her.

  “Welcome to the Encyclopedia,” he said, salting her wounds so that they burned exquisitely. “Now you are Entry 207—The Meat Chamber.”

  She nodded, recognizing herself, and he led her out of the room and down an unfamiliar corridor. She could feel herself losing consciousness. There was something she had to ask him. That was all she could remember.

  “The Chateau,” she said, slurring her words. “Who owns the Chateau?”

  “Can’t you guess?” L’Index said.

  He brought her into the ballroom, where they were all waiting for her. Hundreds of people were waiting for her. She smiled weakly and said, “What now? Can I please sit down?”

  “These gatherings happen only rarely,” L’Index said. “The entire Encyclopedia is not often assembled together in one place and so our lives take on true meaning only at these moments. I can assure you that what is about to follow will transcend all your previous experiences of physical gratification. For you, this will be the ultimate, most beautiful defilement. I promise.”

  He sat her down in a heavy wooden chair.

  “I envy you so much,” he said. “I’m only the Index, you see. The mysteries and abominations of the flesh are denied to me.”

  He pulled a strap across her arms, tugged it tight and buckled it.

  “What are you doing?” she said. “Is this the Punishment Chair? It’s not, is it?” She began to panic now as he clamped her ankles to the legs of the chair. The Encyclopedia was arranging itself into a circle again. Footsteps sounded down the corridor.

  “This is the Chair of Final Submission,” L’Index said. “Goodbye, my love.”

  And he clamped her head back.

  “Oh no,” she said. “Wait. Don’t . . .”

  A clumsy bolt and bit arrangement was thrust into her mouth, chipping a tooth and reducing her words to infantile sobs and gobblings.

  The footsteps advanced and the Encyclopedia parted to make a passage. Shiny steel chinked slyly in a leather bag. L’Index leaned over and whispered in her ear.

  “Remember, you may always consult me . . .”

  She bucked and slammed in the chair but it was fixed to the floor by heavy bolts.

  “Oh my sweet,” L’Index said. “Don’t lose heart now. Remember what you were: alone, lonely and discontented. You will never be lonely again.” His breath stank of peppermint and sperm. “Now you can pass into a new world where nothing is forbidden but virtue.”

  A bag snapped open. A needle was withdrawn. It rang faintly, eight inches long.

  “Give yourself up now to the world of the Braille Encyclopedia! Knowledge shared only by these few, never communicated. Knowledge gained by sense of touch alone.”

  And she finally understood then, just before the needles punctured her eardrums. Her bladder and her bowels let go and the odors of her own chemical wastes were the last things she smelled before they destroyed that sense also. Finally her tongue was amputated and given to the angel to play with.

  “Now go,” L’Index said, unheard. There was sadness in his voice. His tragedy was to be forever excluded from the Empire of the Senseless. “Join the Encyclopedia.”

  Released from the chair, The Meat Chamber stumbled into the arms of her fellow entries in the Braille Encyclopedia. Bodies fell together. Blind hands stroked sensitized skin. They embraced her and licked her wounds and made her welcome.

  She screamed for a very long time but only one person there heard her. Finally she stopped, exhausted.

  And then she began to read.

  And read.

  And read.

  ELIZABETH HAND

  The Bacchae

  “I THINK I have seldom encountered a story as repulsive as ‘The Bacchae’ ”, wrote a disgruntled reader of Interzone, who continued: “It was a vile parade of anti-male hatred, an exhibition of baroque man-killing justified, so it seems, by the crimes of discarded beer cans and a dying fish.” He (of course it was a he) concluded, “. . . I hope that you’ll never again subject the magazine’s readers to similar chuckling depictions of agony (male or female)”.

  The test of all good horror fiction is for it to have some kind of impact on the reader, and the author of the above letter was obviously greatly disturbed by Elizabeth Hand’s story, which is as it should be. She knows what she’s doing, as her story “On the Town Route” in Best New Horror 2 proved.

  The author of the novels Winterlong, Aestival Tide, The Eve of Saint Nynex and Waking the Moon, her short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including several “Year’s Best” collections. Her literary criticism and articles appear regularly in the Washington Post Book World, Detroit Times and Penthouse, among other publications, and she is a contributing editor to Reflex magazine and Science Fiction Eye.

  As to whether “The Bacchae” is, as our letter writer complained, “nothing more than a snuff movie in prose, heaped with feathers, jewels and furs”, we’ll leave you to decide . . .

  SHE GOT INTO THE ELEVATOR WITH him, the young woman from down the hall, the one he’d last seen at the annual Coop Meeting a week before. Around her shoulders hung something soft that brushed his cheek as Gordon moved aside to let her in: a fur cape, or pelt, or no, something else. The flayed skin of an animal, an animal that when she shouldered past him to the corner of the elevator proved to be her Rottweiler, Leopold. He could smell it now: the honeyed stench of uncured flesh, a pink and scarlet veil still clinging to the pelt’s ragged fringe of coarse black hair. It had left a crimson streak down the back of her skirt, and stippled her legs with pink rosettes.

  Gordon got off at the next floor and ran all the way down the hall. When he got into his own apartment he locked and chained the door behind him. For several minutes he stood there panting, squinting out the peephole until he saw her turn the corner and head for her door. It still clung to her shoulders, stiff front legs jouncing against the breast of her boiled-wool suit jacket. After the door closed behind her Gordon walked into the kitchen, poured himself a shot of Jameson’s, and stood there until the trembling stopped.

  Later, after he had changed and poured himself several more glasses of whisky, he saw on the news that the notorious Debbie DeLucia had been found not guilty of the murder of the young man she claimed had assaulted her in a parking garage one evening that summer. The young man had been beaten severely about the face and chest with one of Ms. DeLucia’s high-heeled shoes. When he was found by the parking lot attendant most of his hair was missing. Gordon switched off the television when it displayed photographs of these unpleasantries followed by shots of a throng of cheering women outside the courthouse. That evening he had difficulty falling asleep.

  He woke in the middle of the night. Moonlight flooded the room, so brilliant it showed up the tiny pointed feathers poking through his down comforter. Rubbing his eyes Gordon sat up, tugged the comforter around his shoulders against the room’s chill. He peered out at a full moon, not silver nor even the sallow gold he had seen on summer nights but a colour he had never glimpsed in the sky before, a fiery bronze tinged with red.

  “Jeez,” Gordon said to himself, awed. He wondered if this had something to do with the solar shields tearing, the immense satellite-borne sails of mylar and solex that had been set adrift in the atmosphere to protect the cities and farmlands from ultraviolet radiation. But you weren’t supposed to be able to see the shields. Certainly Gordon had never noticed any difference in the sky, although his friend Olivia claimed she could tell they were there. Women were more sensitive to these things than men, she had told him with an accusing look. There was a luminous quality to city light that had formerly been sooty and grey at best, and the air now had a russet tinge. Wonderful for outdoor setups—Olivia was a noted food photographer—or would be save for the odd bleeding of colours that appeared during developing, winesap apples touched with violet, a glass of
Semillon shot with sparks of emerald, the parchment crust of an aged camembert taking on an unappetizing salmon glow.

  It would be the same change in the light that made the moon bleed, Gordon decided. And now he had noticed it, even though he wasn’t supposed to be sensitive to these things. What did that he mean, he wondered? Maybe it was better not to notice, or to pretend he had seen nothing, no sanguine moon, no spectral colours in a photograph of a basket of eggs. Strange and sometimes awful things happened to men these days. Gordon had heard of some of these on television, but other tales came from friends, male friends. Near escapes recounted in low voices at the gym or club, random acts of violence spurred by innocent offers of help in carrying groceries, the act of holding a door open suddenly seen as threatening. Women friends, even relatives, sisters and daughters refusing to accompany family on trips to the city. An exodus of wives and children to the suburbs, from the suburbs to the shrinking belts of countryside ringing the megalopolis. And then, husbands and fathers disappearing during weekend visits with the family in exile. Impassive accounts by the next of kin of mislaid directions, trees where there had never been trees before. Evidence of wild animals, wildcats or coyotes perhaps, where nothing larger than a squirrel had been sighted in fifty years.

  Gordon laughed at these tales at first. Until now. He pulled a feather from the bed-ticking and stroked his chin thoughtfully before tossing it away. It floated down, a breath of tawny mist. Gordon determinedly pulled the covers over his head and went back to sleep.

  He was reading the paper in the kitchen next morning, a detailed account of Ms. DeLucia’s trial and a new atrocity. Three women returning late from a nightclub had been harassed by a group of teenage boys, some of them very young. It was one of the young ones the women had killed, turning on the boys with a ferocity the newspaper described as “demonic.” Gordon turned to the section that promised full photographic coverage and shuddered. Hastily he put aside the paper and crossed the room to get a second cup of coffee. How could a woman, even three women, be strong enough to do that? He recalled his neighbour down the hall. Christ. He’d take the fire stairs from now on, rather than risk seeing her again. He let his breath out in a low whistle and stirred another spoonful of white powder into his cup.

  As he turned to go back to the table he noticed the MESSAGE light blinking on his answering machine. Odd. He hadn’t heard the phone ring during the night. He sipped his coffee and played back the tape.

  At first he thought there was nothing there. Dead silence, a wrong number. Then he heard faint sounds, a shrill creaking that he recognized as crickets, a katydid’s resolute twang, and then the piercing, distant wail of a whippoorwill. It went on for several minutes, all the way to the end of the message tape. Nothing but night sounds, insects and a whippoorwill, once a sharp yapping that, faint as it was, Gordon knew was not a dog but a fox. Then abrupt silence as the tape ended. Gordon started, spilling coffee on his cuff, and swearing rewound the tape while he went to change shirts.

  Afterward he played it back. He could hear wind in the trees, leaves pattering as though struck by a soft rain. Had Olivia spent the night in the country? No: they had plans for tonight, and there was no country within a day’s drive in any direction from here. She wouldn’t have left town on a major shoot without letting him know. He puzzled over it for a long while, playing back the gentle pavane of wind and tiny chiming voices, trying to discern something else there, breathing or muted laughter or a screen door banging shut, anything that might hint at a caller. But there was nothing, nothing but crickets and whippoorwills and a solitary vixen barking at the moon. Finally he left for work.

  It was the sort of radiant autumn day when even financial analysts wax rapturous over the colour of the sky—in this case a startling electric blue, so deep and glowing Gordon fancied it might leave his fingers damp if he reached to touch it, like wet canvas. He skipped his lunchtime heave at the gym. Instead he walked down to Lafayette Park, filling his pockets with the polished fruit of horsechestnuts and wondering why it was the leaves no longer turned colours in the fall, only darkened to sear crisps and then clogged the sewers when they fell, a dirty brown porridge.

  In the park he sat on a bench. There he ate a stale ersatz croissant and shied chestnuts at the fearless squirrels. A young woman with two small children stood in the middle of a circle of duncoloured grass, sowing crusts of bread among a throng of bobbing pigeons. One of the children pensively chewed a white crescent. She squealed when a dappled white bird flew up at her face, dropped the bread as her mother laughed and took the children’s hands, leading them back to the bench across from Gordon’s. He smiled, conspiratorially tossed the remains of his lunch onto the grass and watched it disappear beneath a mass of iridescent feathers.

  A shadow sped across the ground. For an instant it blotted out the sun and Gordon looked up, startled. He had an impression of something immense, immense and dark and moving very quickly through the bright clear air. He recalled his night-time thoughts, had a delirious flash of insight: it was one of the shields torn loose, a ragged gonfalon of Science’s floundering army. The little girl shrieked, not in fear but pure excitement. Gordon stood, ready to run for help; saw the woman, the children’s mother, standing opposite him pointing at the grass and shouting something. Beside her the two children watched motionless, the little girl clutching a heel of bread.

  In the midst of the feeding pigeons a great bird had landed, mahogany wings beating the air as its brazen feathers flashed and it stabbed, snakelike, at the smaller fowl. Its head was perfectly white, the beak curved and as long as Gordon’s hand. Again and again that beak gleamed as it struck ferociously, sending up a cloud of feathers grey and pink and brown as the other birds scattered, wings beating feebly as they tried to escape. As Gordon watched blood pied the snowy feathers of the eagle’s neck and breast until it was dappled white and red, then a deeper russet. Finally it glowed deep crimson. Still it would not stop its killing. And it seemed the pigeons could not flee, only fill the air with more urgent twittering and, gradually, silence. No matter how their wings flailed it was as though they were stuck in bird-lime, or one of those fine nets used to protect winter shrubs.

  Suddenly the eagle halted, raised its wings protectively over the limp and thrashing forms about its feet. Gordon felt his throat constrict. He had jammed his hands in his pockets and now closed them about the chestnuts there, as though to use them as weapons. Across the grass the woman stood very still. The wind lifted her hair across her face like a banner. She did not brush it away, only stared through it to where the eagle waited, not eating, not moving, its baleful golden eye gazing down at the fluttering ruin of feather and bone.

  As her mother stared the little girl broke away, ran to the edge of the ruddy circle where the eagle stood. It had lifted one clawed foot, thick with feathers, and shook it. The girl stopped and gazed at the sanguine bird. Carelessly she tossed away her heel of bread, wiped her hand and bent to pluck a bloodied feather from the ground. She stared at it, marvelling, then pensively touched it to her face and hand. It left a rosy smear across one cheek and wrist and she laughed in delight. She glanced around, first at her mother and brother, then at Gordon.

  The eyes she turned to him were ice-blue, wondering but fearless; and absolutely, ruthlessly indifferent.

  He told Olivia about it that evening.

  “I don’t see what’s so weird,” she said, annoyed. It was intermission of the play they had come to see: Euripides’ “The Bacchae” in a new translation. Gordon was unpleasantly conscious of how few men there were at the performance, the audience mostly composed of women in couples or small groups, even a few mothers with children, boys and girls who surely were much too young for this sort of thing. He and Olivia stood outside on the theatre balcony overlooking the river. “Eagles kill things, that’s what they’re made for.”

  “But here? In the middle of the city? I mean, where did it come from? I thought they were extinct.”

&nbs
p; All about them people strolled beneath the sulfurous crimelights, smoking cigarettes, pulling coats tight against the wind, exclaiming at the full moon. Olivia leaned against the railing and stared up at the sky, smiling slightly. She wore ostrich cowboy boots with steel toes and tapped them rhythmically against the cement balcony. “I think you just don’t like it when things don’t go as you expect them to. Even if it’s the way things really are supposed to be. Like an eagle killing pigeons.”

  He snorted but said nothing. Beside him Olivia tossed her hair back. Thick and lustrous darkbrown hair, like a caracal’s pelt, hair that for years had been unfashionably long. Though lately it seemed that more women wore it the way she did, loose and long and artlessly tangled. As she pulled a lock away from her throat he saw something there, a mark upon her shoulder like a bruise or scrape.

  “What’s that?” he wondered, moving the collar of her jacket so he could see better.

  She smiled, arching her neck. “Do you like it?”

  He touched her shoulder, wincing. “Jesus, what the hell did you do? Doesn’t it hurt?”

  “A little.” She shrugged, turned so that the jaundiced spotlight struck her shoulder and he could see better. A pattern of small incisions had been sliced into her skin, forming the shape of a crescent, or perhaps a grin. Blood still oozed from a few of the cuts. In the others ink or coloured powder had been rubbed so that the little moon, if that’s what it was, took on the livid shading of a bruise or orchid: violet, verdigris, citron yellow. From each crescent tip hung a gold ring smaller than a teardrop.

  “But why?” He suddenly wanted to tear off her jacket and blouse, search the rest of her to see what other scarifications might be hiding there. “Why?”

  Olivia smiled, stared out at the river moving in slow streaks of black and orange beneath the sullen moon. “A melted tiger,” she said softly.