The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

He almost put out his hand to take it back; wondered if, without her noticing, he could slip the packet back into his pocket.

Drewett brought in the sherry in the graceful decanter with a long, fine glass spout at one side. He commented on it.

“My husband bought it in Spain,” she said. “Twenty years ago. I have always taken great care of it.”

The look on her face gave him again that chilly feeling of uneasiness. “Another glass?” she asked him.

“No, I really have to go.” He looked at his watch, and said with relief, “My taxi will be coming back for me in five minutes.”

There came a sudden curious mumbling sound from a dim corner of the room. It made him start so violently that he spilt some of his sherry. He had supposed the place empty, apart from themselves.

“Ah, feeling better, dear?” the old lady said.

She walked slowly over to the corner and held out a hand, saying, “Come and see poor Sarah’s husband. Just think — she had a husband — isn’t that a queer thing?”

Orford gazed aghast at the stumbling slobbering creature that came reluctantly forward, tugging away from the insistent white hand. His repulsion was the greater because in its vacant, puffy-eyed stare he could detect a shadowy resemblance to Sarah.

“She’s just like a child, of course,” said the old lady indulgently. “Quite dependent on me, but wonderfully affectionate, in her way.” She gave the cretin a fond glance. “Here, Louisa, here’s something pretty for you! Look, dear — lovely hair.”

Dumbly, Orford wondered what other helpless, infirm pieces of humanity might be found in this house, all dependent on the silver-haired old lady who brooded over them, sucking them dry like a gentle spider. What might he trip over in the darkness of the hall? Who else had escaped?

The conscious part of his mind was fixed in horror as he watched Louisa rapaciously knotting and tearing and plucking at the silver-gold mass of hair.

“I think I hear your taxi,” the old lady said. “Say good-night, Louisa!”

Louisa said good-night in her fashion, the door shut behind him — and he was in the car, in the train, in a cold hotel bedroom, with nothing but the letter her mother had written her to remind him that Sarah had ever existed.

STEVE RASNIC TEM Miri

STEVE RASNIC TEM’S LATEST novel is Deadfall Hotel from Solaris Books, while New Pulp Press has recently published a collection of the best of his noir and crime fiction, Ugly Behavior. Forthcoming is Celestial Inventories, a major collection of his more recent strange fiction from ChiZine.

“‘Miri’ came out of a meditation on vampirism,” explains the author, “and those extremely needy people who leave you drained even in the most casual of relationships. Good sense tells you to stay away, and yet your humanity will not let you simply ignore the sadness of their situation — balancing the two impulses is never easy.

“Along the way the difficulty of acting honourably in such a relationship entered into the equation, and the shame we sometimes feel that our younger selves failed to meet our current standards.”

* * *

THEY SPREAD THE blanket over the cool grass and took their places. The puppet stage was broad and brightly lit, with a colourful and elaborate jungle set. Rick framed his children inside the LCD screen on the back of his camera as they settled in front of him: Jay Jay who was too old for this sort of thing but would enjoy it anyway, and seven-year-old Molly, worrisomely thin, completely entranced, her large eyes riveted on the stage as oversized heads with garishly painted faces danced, their mouths magnified into exaggerated smiles, frowns, and fiercely insistent madness.

The colours began to fade from the faces — the painted ones, and his children’s — he took his eyes away from the camera and blinked. The world had become a dramatic arrangement of blacks and whites. Molly raised her stark face and stared at him, her eyes a smoulder of shadow. Where is she? he thought, and looked around. He thought he caught a glimpse — there by a tree, a pale sliver of arm, a fall of black hair, lips a smear of charcoal. He could feel the breath go out of him. Not here. But he couldn’t be sure. He closed his eyes, tried to stop the rising tide of apprehension, opened them, and found that all the colours had been restored to the world with sickening suddenness.

He quickly took a dozen or so more shots, his finger dancing on the shutter button. Elaine patted his hand and took the camera away. “Enough already,” she whispered into his ear. He tried not to be annoyed, to no avail. She had no idea what she was talking about. It didn’t matter how many pictures he took — it would never be enough.

Between the kids lay the pizza box with their ragged leftovers. Jay Jay would finish it if they let him. Molly would sneak a guilty glance but would not touch it. Rick had no idea what to do to help her; next week he would make more calls.

“You’re a wonderful dad, and a really good person,” Elaine whispered, and kissed that place above his ear where his hairline had dramatically begun to recede. Especially in this early evening light she was lovely — she still managed to put a hitch into his breath.

He smiled and mouthed thanks, even though such naked compliments embarrassed him. He’d finally learned it was bad form, and unattractive, to argue with them. So even though he was thinking he just had a few simple ideas, like always giving your kids something to look forward to, he said nothing. In any case it would be hypocritical. Because he also would not be confessing that he wasn’t the good person she thought he was. Or telling her how often he wished he’d didn’t have kids — it had never been his dream, and sometimes spending an entire day with them and their constant need left him drained, stupid, and angry. He was ashamed of himself — perhaps that was why he sometimes made himself so patient.

An unreal ceiling of stars hung low over the lake, the park, the puppet stage, and all these families sitting out on their assorted colourful blankets. Elaine pulled closer to him, mistakenly saying “I love that you still love the stars.”

But he didn’t. These stars were a lie. This close to the centre of the city you couldn’t see the stars because of the electric lights. And the dark between them had a slightly streaked appearance, as if the brush strokes were showing. Somehow this sky had been faked — he just didn’t know how. But he knew by whom.

Was he lying when he allowed Elaine to mistake his silence or his distraction, for something sweet and good? If so he was a consistent and successful liar.

His gaze drifted. Off to his left an elderly couple standing on their blanket looked a bit too textured, too still. At the moment he decided they were cut-outs the vague suggestion of a slim female form moved slowly in behind them, looking much the cut-out herself, a black silhouette with a painted white face, a dancing paper doll. She turned her head toward him, graceful as a ballerina, presenting one dark eye painted against a background of china white, framed expressionistically by black strokes of hair, black crescent cheekbones, before she turned sideways and vanished.

“I’ll be right back,” he whispered to Elaine. “Bathroom.” He climbed absently to his feet, feeling as if his world were being snatched out from under him. If I could just get my hands on that greedy, hungry bitch.

The kids didn’t even notice him leave, their eyes full of the fakery on stage. He quickly averted his glance — the colour in their faces, the patterns in their shirts, were beginning to fade.

He moved through the maze of blankets quickly, vaguely registering the perfectly outfitted manikin couples with rudimentary features, their arms and legs bent in broken approximations of humanity. Near the outer edge of the crowd he bumped into a stiff tree-coat of a figure with a grey beard glued to the lower part of its oval head. He