Dark Terrors 3: The Gollancz Book of Horror

If they ever outlawed jewellery in Santa Fe, the city would go belly-up, he thought. That’s fairly uncharitable, he realized. He could add that to his long list of growing sins.

The autumn light filtered in through the dirty window and he felt warm standing in front of the bookcase. It was a comfortable feeling, and for a moment he didn’t want to move, didn’t want to do anything, and it was as if he’d gone into another dimension because he couldn’t hear anyone, couldn’t smell anything, not even the too-sweet perfumes and incense. It was just him and the bright sunshine, and—

‘Jimmy, come look at this!’

The sound of his wife’s voice was like the ripping of a membrane, and he shook himself, almost more a shudder. He left the mildewing tomes and headed across the room. At first he couldn’t locate her, then he saw her standing at a counter. She was being waited on by an old man.

He became aware then that there were two girls — excuse me, he chided himself, that was young women these days — standing not far from Bev, pointing at something in the glass case; one was talking while the other giggled. He came up alongside his wife and smiled automatically. If he did anything else, she’d want to know what was wrong, and he would say nothing was wrong, but she wouldn’t believe him, and they’d go back and forth like that until something was the matter.

‘Look, Jimmy, aren’t they great?’ She dangled a pair of silver earrings from her fingers, while the clerk smiled expectantly at him. She was waiting, he knew, for his response. His positive response.

‘They’re nice, honey. Really nice.’ Actually he thought they looked like a dozen or more other pairs of earrings she had pawed through in the dozen or more other shops they’d stopped in today.

There you go exaggerating, his teachers said, that’s very unprofessional and unnecessary.

These earrings, though, had inlaid turquoise in the silver triangles, and were pretty in an unflashy way. But still.

She was watching him, waiting for him to speak the magic words, although she hardly needed permission.

‘Well, Bev, if you want them, go ahead and buy them.’ His smile widened, and it seemed like his face was about to crack open. There, he’d said them. She had dozens of earrings in her jewellery cases, maybe more, and she had her own income and didn’t need his permission to buy anything, but she always waited for him to say that.

She looked at the old man and shook her head. ‘Not quite right. What else do you have?’

Jim never understood that, either. He said the so-called magic words, thinking she wanted to hear him say it was all right to buy whatever, and then she always put the item back. As if she no longer wanted it. He wondered what would happen if he didn’t say go ahead and buy it/them/whatever. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to find out, at least not now. This was, after all, their reconciliation trip.

For the next half hour Bev examined all the silver earrings in the three trays the old guy put up on the counter. She held one from each pair up to an ear and asked Jim for his opinion, and he smiled, his face now feeling frozen into that expression, and she’d sigh and put the earring down and pick up the next one. She went through a fourth tray, then decided to look at rings, trying each one on. The minutes ticked by, and Jim shifted from one foot to another. Behind him the warm sunshine tugged, and he wanted to stand there in the golden light and pretend to read the titles of the books even though he wasn’t cold or anything, but he knew the minute he did, Bev would call to him.

And he would go to her, like an obedient dog.

He sighed.

The girls were still there, and now they were talking louder, or maybe he was listening more carefully, and the brunette was examining a strand of pale coral called angel skin. It was more white than pink, and he’d never seen coral that colour. She was talking about how it was formed from the bodies of dead sea creatures. The other girl interrupted.

‘You’ve got it all wrong, Trisha. Actually, you see, angels die, and their skins just sort of slough off and drift down from Heaven into the seas, and the coral forms from the skins.’

Next to him he sensed Bev crossing herself, and he felt a surge of annoyance at the gesture. She didn’t go to church, hadn’t been in one since before they got married — at least she couldn’t blame him for that — but she still crossed herself. She still had her rosary, and he always wondered why, when she’d turned her back on the church when her faith seemed so strong. His faith had left him years ago; one day he had it, the next it was gone, and he hadn’t stepped inside a church since, hadn’t felt the need, didn’t know why anyone did.

You just don’t understand. That was Bev’s voice, and his mother’s, and maybe that girl back in high school, the one he had dated in junior year.

It occurred to him that all the little things that annoyed him about his wife were probably what bothered her about him. Only more so, since he’d been told enough by her and his parents and everyone else that he had numerous faults. Sometimes at night as he lay next to Bev and listened to her wheezy breaths he wondered why she had married him if he possessed all these character flaws. It wasn’t like he’d changed radically after marriage. He was basically the same as when he got out of college. Marriage hadn’t made him any better or any worse. He thought. He was sure there were others who could tell him different.

Maybe Bev was one of those women who see a flawed man as a challenge and think that once they’ve married him they can change him, as if he were so much clay to be moulded by her perfecting hands.

Or perhaps she liked the thrill of marrying a man so far from perfection.

Or maybe she married him, despite what everyone counselled her, because she was the type to defy everyone’s good intentions.

Or maybe she just hadn’t seen any of these flaws.

‘Let me look at some coral,’ Bev was saying now.

Well, there was white coral and red coral and blue coral, and God knows what other colours waiting in other velvet trays. Out of the corner of his eye Jim could see dust motes swirling in the rays still streaming through the window. They drifted downwards, and he remembered what the girl had said. Skins drifted downwards. He felt the pull of the light, and yawned lazily.